I Can't Stand To Fly

Another Round

"It's been a few hours and we haven't come up with a plan. She could be dead by now for all we know," Carmilla growls. "If Raggedy Ann here had just let me go back––"

"––Your mother would've torn the entire plane apart and you'd all be dead or captured," Mel interrupts. "We're lucky that she wasn't there when we went back and got that prison riot under control."

Carmilla covers her face in her hands and takes a deep breath.

Danny walks over hesitantly. "Look, your mother needs you, okay? She may be acting all high and mighty about it, but if you're as powerful as Laura and J.P. said your numbers indicated, then she's probably grooming you to take over. Which means she doesn't want you dead. We'll propose a trade. You for Laura."

"A trade she's no doubt expecting," Theo points out. "The Dean probably knows she's a bargaining chip and wouldn't just kill Laura."

"But are we just going to hand Karnstein over?" Mel asks.

"Laura would totally kill us if we do that," Kirsch notes.

Someone clears their throat and everyone glances over to see that it's LaFontaine. "What was wrong with our original plan to just capture the Dean in an insulated box? Sure, it needs some tweaking, but I thought whoever came up with that plan was a genius." They grin and enter the room, but waver a bit and Perry helps them sit on the couch.

"We could still do that," Danny says slowly.

"I, uh, assume you guys also didn't find Jeep?"

Perry shakes her head. "I'm not even sure if he's still... You know..."

"Yeah." LaF puffs out some air and runs their hand through their hair. "But he was working on it, right?"

Carmilla nods. "He called Laura this morning to help him with some last details."

LaF beams. "Great! So if he's gotten it pretty far, I could just finish it up, and Perry can build it, and we can just trap your mother in there and not have to worry about making any trade-offs."

"We'll get Laura back, dude," Kirsch says gently to Carmilla.

"You've got an incoming video call," LaF says, right before an alert pops up on their main computer. LaF waves their hand and a large monitor boots up.

"I don't recognize the number," Theo frowns.

Carmilla sighs. "It's my mother's."

"Don't answer it yet," Danny says immediately. She grabs Carmilla and gestures for her to sit in a chair. "Perry–– duct tape and rope, now."

Perry materializes both and hands them to Danny. They quickly wrap the rope around Carmilla–– loosely–– and place some duct tape over her mouth.

"Okay, answer it," Danny says to LaF.

The video call opens to a small, dark space.

"Oh, you answered. I wasn't sure you would," a voice says from off-camera. The Dean appears and scans the screen. "I see that my daughter isn't being treated like a guest of honor." She grins and it sends shivers up everyone's spines. "It's okay. Neither is Laura."

The camera turns and ends up pointed at a clear plastic rectangular prism with holes in it. Someone is lying inside of it and the camera focuses on the person, making it clear that it's an unconscious Laura.

"According to my records, Laura can only shrink to about a fourth of an inch," the Dean says, standing next to the box. "These holes are smaller than that." She taps on the box and Laura, in restrains within the box, stirs. "So don't you bother trying to escape that way, okay?"