No ownership. No profit. And, wonder of wonders, it's not webisode based.
Please be aware that all is not sweetness and light in this tag to Revelations II.
The night beyond the library windows offered no answers. Helen Magnus turned slowly, avoiding the man behind her. He alone had any kind of right to question this debacle, but he was the last person on this earth whose questions she intended to entertain.
'Once I cherished how his native intelligence was the match to James's enhanced intellect, but no more, and not now,' she told herself. 'Not when I have a daughter who's defected, and two eager young things who expect me to make it all come out right, and a plague that may literally mean the end of the world for me and mine due to be released in less than two days and the only hope of a cure is gone thanks to his daughter – '
Helen Magnus turned away from those thoughts – but that only brought the shocked and searching gazes of those two eager young things into view, and that only made her want to wince.
One of them so obviously craved reassurances, someone who knew what was happening and what to do to make it all come out right, who could make sure nothing horrible would happen to her. It made her want to shake the girl until her eyeballs rattled. God knew that Nigel had been the same in the day: "Helen, tell me I'll be all right!" There had been moments when she'd wanted to make things quite definitely, and oh-so deliberately, even painfully wrong for him – just to silence the constant bleat of his emotional needs. Insecurity it seemed, was every bit as inheritable as invisibility.
The other eager young thing so obviously ached for the chance to tell her things, to use words to make the horror she was feeling real enough to overwhelm the rage that had inflamed her soul from the instant she saw the blood was gone, and that she would not permit, not yet, not while she required that rage just to deal with the increasingly wounded stare of the man behind her, the man she had quite deliberately turned her back to.
And she most definitely did not want to be told that insanity was as inheritable as invisibility.
'My daughter, my weapon – is gone,' she thought. 'If it is of her own free will…I now have a dangerous enemy. And I will crush her. If it is not – the Cabal has one, in me, and I will crush them, because they absolutely demand to be crushed, and I've been training to be the one to do it my whole life whether I knew it or not. And they will be crushed, whether I ever get Ashley back or not. I will do it regardless of Ashley. But God – I feel betrayed already. Like father like daughter, when I need them, they fail me. They aren't even there. That she definitely inherited from her father, Jack the Ripper.'
She turned from that thought, too.
But that only put the monitors of the library computer in her line of vision. And that still showed a tangle of covers, blue and white and empty on the abandoned bed. The image that fed to the monitor of the library computer from the camera in the infirmary room still showed that and nothing more.
She shook her head, staring at the screen.
Dear God. It was… senseless. Without sense. It made no sense. Surely Ashley had to know better than to take up with the Cabal? Than to betray her own mother –
'She is her father's daughter,' some blunt little voice in her mind supplied the thought with an immediacy that made her curl her lip in recognition of a facet of her relationship with her daughter that she'd never intended to acknowledge, even to herself, no matter how much it had always shaped that relationship. But in light of these events –
Behind her, John cried out, a great, raw groan, and Helen startled, jerking around to look. But the chair and nook amid the bookcases were empty. She turned again. He was gone –
Damn him. It was just like him to be gone when disaster had been perpetrated and she might need his gifts.
Only to reappear in a fluid blur in the image in the monitor. The blur became a man – a man in the grip of some passion that approached mania, Helen thought, grimacing at what she saw, and what it made her think, and remember...
He ripped the covers from the rucked bed, tearing them free and throwing them to the floor as he whirled, staring at the empty, vacated room, more stricken than she'd ever seen him. Horrified eyes lifted to the camera, to her, no doubt, and she had no time to read what might have been communicated in that gaze before he was dissolved info the aether again.
Helen heard his return behind her, the ragged, puffing breaths almost like sobs.
"And pray tell what that proved, John? One can see she's gone."
"There could have been a sign, a trace, a clue – something!" he insisted, his voice still raw unto the edge of tears. "Oh, God – Ashley. My poor, poor child…"
Helen turned to glare at him.
"Your child? You've taught her your powers, haven't you! You taught her to teleport before the two of you came to Rome, and now she's taken up with the Cabal!"
Somewhere, irrelevantly, she heard Clara Griffin's yelp of surprise at her shout, and made a peremptory gesture to silence her and Zimmerman both, saw the two of them scuttle back and out of the way from of the tail of her eye, their alacrity utterly gratifying in this new and erratic world, and then wrinkled her nose in disgust as she realized it wasn't obedience to her command at all, merely wariness of the gun still in her moving hand.
John Druitt shook his head, frowning, but not at her, his eyes bright with something that Helen simply couldn't believe were what they appeared to be – unshed tears.
"No. I did not," he insisted. "I cannot speak to the odds of Ashley having inherited the power, but she showed neither sign of it, nor interest in learning it. All her concern was that she not be – like her father. And that we save her mother from imminent danger."
Helen rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Spare me your tales, John! You were always the master of rationalizing your own actions, no matter how appalling – "
"Helen! Ashley is the product of two mutated genotypes. If her own genetic profile were to prove normal, it would be nothing short of miraculous! The Cabal would not recruit our daughter, Helen. They would use her. Use her as they did the Morrighan."
"Oh, please. Even your powers do not compare to theirs – "
"Magnus!"
They both turned at that shout, and Helen shoved John's hand away as he made an instinctive, startled, attempt to draw her behind his taller frame.
"Did he do it?" Zimmerman asked, his voice grim and the blade of a brass letter opener that belonged on the table beside him gleaming in the hand to which Miss Griffin did not cling. "Take the blood and kidnap Ashley – again?"
"I did neither. Put that thing down before you injure someone," Druitt growled.
"Magnus? Should we put him back in the SHU?"
"'We'!?" Clara squawked.
"As if you could," Druitt scoffed.
"John," Helen snapped. "Do be quiet. It was Ashley, Dr. Zimmerman. It must have been. She took the Sanguine Vampiris blood. Probably straight to the Cabal."
Zimmerman gaped, blinked, frowned, and finally lowered the letter opener.
"Ashley? But – how?"
Druitt pulled a wry face. "Shouldn't we be asking you that, Mr. Profiler? Judging from wheat Helen's said – it would appear she has inherited my powers. And while she was – "
"Your powers! How could that happen? Ashley's never had any powers! And your powers are a result of treatment with a serum produced from ancient vampire blood! Ashley was never injected with the serum, so how could it affect her!"
"You ask foolish questions indeed with the evidence of the inheritability of the Five's powers and traits hiding in your very shadow," the bald man pointed out.
"Hey! I'm not hiding!" Clara complained. "Jack the Ripper's the one who disappeared out of history, not Nigel Griffin!"
The bald man took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, eyeing the girl with affront, then turned to Zimmerman again.
"The serum literally re-writes the DNA of every cell in the body – including the gametes," Druitt snarled at him. "Surely Ashley came by her powers via inheritance, just as Miss Griffin, there came by hers. And they would – "
"She's never shown any sign of it," Zimmerman argued. "How did she learn to control it? From you?"
"I reiterate – No," Druitt growled. "I would have taught my daughter if she had shown any hint of inclination or interest, but she showed neither."
"She's shown a lot more than a hint now, if she took that vampire blood," Clara muttered, holding tight to Will's arm.
"Quite," Druitt bit out, glowering at the girl.
"But – how? How did she learn to do it?" Zimmerman persisted before he could say anything else.
"Henry said they were separated for a long time, and that they tormented him," Druitt muttered. "Perhaps they did the same to Ashley to the point where it triggered her latent powers. Or perhaps - "
"You mean as a defense mechanism? Wouldn't she have said something?" Will interrupted.
"She may not have been able to," Druitt whispered, abruptly finding reason to study the floor.
"Perhaps not," Helen agreed, hearing her anger color her tone, and letting it. "Ashley is always… exceedingly reluctant… to make any show of her backwardness."
"What?" both men blurted simultaneously.
Clara looked from one of them to the other, then to Helen, the same question vivid on her face.
Helen Magnus rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. It's quite noticeable. The girl has no judgment to speak of. I doubt she even knows what forethought means. She lies at the drop of a hat, and on any subject, even to me. She jests at others' expense on a given subject, but cannot then recognize the double entendres in her own words on that same subject. She cannot conceive of the consequences of her actions, let alone plan for them. I doubt she's capable of planning ahead, period. She has the impulse control of a hyperactive six year old. She sulks, sneaks out at night – shows off. She is a connoisseur of criminality. Her intelligence is every bit as variable as her mood, and that is a thing of moments only. She is continually hormonal, dependable only in terms of hitting what she shoots at, disobedient, defiant, self-involved, stubborn, arrogant, and rarely, if ever, diligent, thoughtful, or industrious. Her plan for her own life appears to be no more than to shoot what I tell her to shoot. She is, in short, a teenager – a very young teenager – despite her twenty three years. And she is quite the expert at not mentioning her own shortcomings, regardless of how important it might be that others be made aware of them."
Helen aimed a speaking glare at Ashley's father.
"Oh, no, my dear. She inherited that last from both sides of the family," he drawled.
"I beg your pardon!" Helen snapped.
"As clearly evidenced by this current – situation. Did Ashley know what kind of surveillance equipment secured the perimeter of the Cabal site? And the interior? Did she know the internal layout of the facility? Did she know about the internal security – locks of what kind, cameras, sensors, pressure plates, keys, codes, cards? Did she know how many workers and security guards to expect, and how they would be armed? What kind of static defenses to expect and how to handle them? How to tell if the security system had reported their breach of it? What failsafe and contingency plans would be implemented if that breach were discovered? Could she recognize an anti-viral agent prepared to counter the virus if she found one? Or did you actually trouble to check your – by your own admission – foresight-impaired daughter's plans to infiltrate a very highly secured enemy site before you took off for your own much more intriguing little adventure, with old friends, in the Himalayas? Do you know if she had a plan at all?"
"'Him-mahl-yas'?" Clara asked the air, wrinkling her nose.
Druitt and Magnus ignored her.
"I trusted to her expertise in – " Helen huffed.
"And you just declared she had no judgment to speak of!" Druitt barked. "Without judgment there is no expertise! There can be no expertise!"
"She is an adult! I cannot hold her hand forever!"
"You just called her a hormonal, lying, undependable teenager with no judgment to speak of! Which is it, Helen? Impaired teenager or expert adult!"
Helen cocked her head and glared at him.
"How dare you!" she growled. "I made her. I saved the embryo. I studied it. I mapped it. I designed it. I engineered it. I made her what she is, and I've dealt with it ever after! Alone! Her father's never lifted a finger to help me! Yes, I made mistakes when I engineered her, but all in all my efforts produced not only a viable life-form, but one with multiple enhancements despite the induced impairments! She is faster, stronger, tougher, more coordinated than any normal human! The developmental delay I induced may not have solely affected her physical development as I planned, but its effect in retarding her mental and emotional maturity has given me the years I desperately needed to train her in hopes of avoiding the manifestation of certain paternal tendencies that I have every cause to believe the world need never see again! I did a damned fine job making my daughter, and I'll thank you to respect that, Sir!"
Helen Magnus glared at John Druitt, and sniffed in triumph when she realized he was staring back at her with the expression of a man too astounded to speak. She pivoted to tell Zimmerman to go and instruct Henry to devise a way to track Ashley's movements, only to find the psychologist also staring at her with an expression that duplicated the stunned look on Druitt's face with a degree of precision that almost brought a snicker to Helen's lips.
Clara Griffon peeped around Zimmerman, his arm clutched tight in her shaking hands. She opened her mouth to say something, swallowed hard, and tried again.
"You – you mean… your daughter, Ashley, is… impaired… " she began.
"Yes! How many times must I say it!" Helen snapped. "Now – "
"And you did it to her?" Clara blurted. "You did it to her – intentionally? You made her to be like this – retarded like this? Her own mother made her retarded – intentionally!"
Helen huffed out another breath, and jerked her chin up, filing the offense away for later. 'One of the joys of this infinitely elongated life – there's always a later,' she acknowledged to herself.
"Oh, please," she drawled. "I did not intend this result, as I also said. I wanted her to grow up more slowly physically. But I seem to have succeeded only in making her far shorter in stature than she should have been otherwise. At least that gave her a more feminine mien. Which is no bad thing in Ashley's thoroughly unrefined case. If she were the physical Amazon she had had to the genetic programming to be, I've no doubt people would run from her in the streets," she declared with a wave of her free hand.
Zimmerman and Clara both jolted back from her to stumble against the library table, and there was no way to tell herself it was because of the Sig Sauer this time.
"What is wrong with you two!" Helen complained.
"They are, I believe, appalled," Druitt suggested, quietly.
Helen aimed a glare at him over her shoulder.
Zimmerman put Clara more fully behind him, swallowed hard.
"In – in all the time I've been here. I've never heard you praise Ashley for anything but her skill as a marksman, Magnus. You – the first thing you ever told me was that her skill on the hunt made up for what she lacks – like everything else about her is a deficiency. The only things she planned herself that you didn't revise to your satisfaction, or rip apart completely, was her coming to get us in the Hindu Kush, and you didn't really have a chance to complain about that beforehand, but you still ripped into her for leaving Henry in charge here when she came. Everything she's planned by herself that you knew about you've criticized and made her do it differently to suit you. You only approve of what she does when she acts on your direct orders. She can't even beat up the bad guys without you telling her she did it wrong. You make Bigfoot follow her around, or send me with her, so much of the time it's like you can't trust her to take care of herself, or business, or whatever she's doing. So… So, how – why were you sure she had a good plan to get in, if you didn't give it to her? How does she have the expertise to infiltrate a Cabal stronghold with her own plan? I mean – did she even have a plan? I thought you'd made the plan, and Ash was just executing it? I thought – I thought Ashley was obeying your direct orders, like she always did when it was anything important! And now – and now – "
"Oh, please!" Helen snapped. "Ashley rarely if ever does what she's told to! It's all part of the induced immaturity!"
"Helen, if she's that immature, that irresponsible, that – impaired – why is our daughter the chief shooter of your operation?" Druitt whispered.
"She is a most excellent shot," Helen said proudly.
Druitt bit his lip, then shook his head. "You mistake me, Madam. She – if Ashley is so immature, why is she also authorized to use deadly force?"
"Because she is also obedient."
"But – you just said she was disobedient," Clara pointed out. "That she doesn't do what she's told to - "
"Now I remember why the Five truly parted ways!" Helen interrupted. "It had less to do with the powers we were developing than the continual bickering – and the incessant questioning of each other's motives! Indeed, of each and every word we spoke to each other!"
"And the incessant interruptions," Druitt murmured. "And the paucity of answers."
"Huh?" Clara said.
"Helen – why is Ashley the chief shooter of your operation?" Zimmerman asked steadily, watching the doctor. "Despite these... issues... why is she the chief shooter for the Sanctuary?"
"Because that's what she was designed to do, what I engineered and enhanced her to do! To hunt. To track and fight and hunt. That is what I channeled all her undesirable hereditary tendencies and instincts into when I realized they were intrinsic and could not be removed. That is what I created her for. And she is an unstoppable hunter," Helen told him. "Perhaps the finest in the world. None other could have penetrated our defenses thus, and the Cabal doubtless knew it. The skills I gave my daughter are justly famed – and envied – throughout every facet of Abnormal society, and apparently every organization which studies them! As well they should be! There is no Abnormal she cannot hunt, and kill, too, it if comes to that! None! Not even you could escape her if she had her orders, John!"
Helen watched them stare at her, all three of them.
'Zimmerman looks as if he's thinking hard, and Clara is clinging to him, not me, at least. As for my erstwhile former fiancé, at least he's using that warped and capacious intellect of his for something other than hectoring me.'
"Well? You can't all have lost your powers of speech!"
"Oh, Dear GOD! We are such FOOLS!" Druitt bellowed – and was gone.
For a moment, the three of them could only blink at each other through the echoes of his shout in the library's disturbed atmosphere.
"Um. Where did he go?" Zimmerman asked, carefully, as Clara Griffon cautiously released his arm, looking around like a child waking from a nightmare.
Helen Magnus simply eyed Zimmerman.
"As you're the profiler, I might ask you that same question, Dr. Zimmerman."
He frowned, that open-mouthed thinking frown, he wore so often, and Helen raised her brows at him, giving him a patented 'I'm waiting' expression.
"There!" Clara cried, pointing at another monitor on the console that had suddenly shifted from screensaver to a blinking, glowing, neon green caption over a view of a monumentally cluttered, horseshoe-shaped workstation tucked into a dim, arched, concrete-walled bay, crowded with the two men currently in it. "EM Surge Detected" blinked in huge, painfully bright letters as a man typing at a computer console whirled so fast he nearly fell out of his swivel chair, confronted by the sight of a tall, raw-boned, bald man looming over him as furiously as an avenging angel.
'Or demon,' Helen thought with a sniff as the three of them watched Druitt grab the shoulder of a cringing Henry Foss and shove the flustered, and apparently gibbering, werewolf at his computer console, obviously shouting at him.
"Now what!" Helen growled, and strode out of the library, Will and Clara at her heels.
"You will raise that EM shield of yours now!" Druitt shouted in his face.
"But – how? Why? How did you get here! I don't – " Henry gabbled, trapped against the back of his chair, with Jack the Ripper bellowing between him and any hope of escape.
"And I do not care! If you value Helen's life, RAISE IT NOW!"
Echoes came back from the concrete vaulting.
Henry Foss quailed from that shout, arms instinctively wrapping themselves around his head, and John Druitt clipped him impatiently across the unprotected top of his skull.
"Now, damn you!"
Henry yelped, trying to crab out of reach along his cluttered workbench.
Druitt simply grabbed him by an ear and yanked him back.
"OW!"
"Type, damn you! Or Helen Magnus may well die this very night!"
He shoved Henry at the computer console on his cluttered workbench, and the smaller man looked up at him, holding his abused ear.
"'Helen'…" he echoed, confused out of his terror.
"Yes, Helen! The Cabal may well be sending an assassin, and if that shield is not up, that assassin will succeed!"
And, abruptly, Henry knew exactly what the wild-eyed, bellowing man feared.
"Oh, God…" he whispered, and whirled to type, feeling the tears begin to prickle in his eyes. "Oh, God. No. No. No… "
"You have no idea of what evil they are capable," Druitt husked, palming his scarred face, shakily, with one long hand.
"They tortured me for hours!" Henry shot back, still typing.
"I appreciate that. And you still have no idea," the other man told him, as the shield came on line, and the displays on Henry's monitors changed to show it in action.
"Does this mean – we are shielded?" Druitt asked, his voice gone faint, bending to touch a screen with one long finger.
Henry sat back, turned to look at him, and somehow, the lines of tears that he saw tracking down the scarred face came as no surprise.
"Yeah. It's up. No one – can get in like you do."
Druitt nodded slowly, straightening. "Good. Good. Thank you. I apologize for my behavior. I – cannot lose Helen now. Not now, when – "
"John! Whatever you're doing to Henry, stop it!" that same Helen Magnus shouted from down the corridor, her Sig Sauer raised and cocked as she approached at the trot.
Druitt backed away, his hands up and carefully in sight, then turned to walk away, his hands still out and visible, until he literally bumped into the wall of the bay beyond Henry's work area, and there he stayed, silent in the shadows, his bald head bowed against the chamfered rib of a cement arch, and his long hands fisted and braced against that arch.
Helen frowned, and motioned Zimmerman to watch the other man with a jerk of her chin.
Zimmerman looked at the brass letter opener still in his hand and gulped, but he went, Clara scurrying after.
"Henry?" Helen prompted gently, touching his cheek.
"Nothing, Doc," Henry managed. "I'm okay. He – just had me put the EM shield up. It's okay."
"Henry – you're not 'okay'. You're in tears," Helen pointed out, rubbing his neck.
"I know," Henry choked out. "I know."
On the monitor, something flared like a nova in the EM shield.
Druitt jerked as if he'd been struck and Clara jumped, pressing closer to Will, with a shudder.
"What was that?" she whispered to anyone and no one, staring around the cluttered work bay.
"Did it hold?" Druitt said, his voice toneless.
"Yeah," Henry mumbled. "Will she – "
The shield flared again, brighter still, and Druitt staggered to his knees with a moan and Clara yelped, clutching her temples.
"What!" Helen demanded, looking from one of them to the other, to Henry sobbing as he did something to the EM shield, and back to Zimmerman. "What is happening!"
"The Cabal sent our daughter to kill you, Helen," Druitt whispered. "Your EM shield stopped her."
"No! What utter nonsense! Ashley would never – "
"She would have no CHOICE!" Druitt screamed, still on his knees at the wall.
"Oh God," Henry whispered, and Helen moved to squeeze his shoulder, glaring at Druitt over her own.
"Henry, it's all right. It's not true - "
"Yes it is, Doc. It's the same energy signature in the sensors. It's just like him – but he's here. It was Ash - and I can't even tell if she survived..."
"Henry, no," Helen insisted, looking back to the werewolf. "Ashley would never - "
"Not even if she was controlled?" he asked, looking up to her again, with tears still in his eyes.
Helen grimaced at him.
"Henry," she warned. "Don't be melodramatic."
"He has a point," Druitt murmured. "Helen – you must face the facts - your unstoppable hunter is now the Cabal's newest weapon."
"There was no scarab. I did check, you know," Helen declared, rolling her eyes at the bald man and rubbing Henry's back as he leaned against her, sobbing. "Your theory fails, John."
"The Morrighan didn't have scarabs," Zimmerman whispered.
"They were also taken by the Cabal generations ago," Helen snapped. "Why would they revert to archaic methods just for Ashley?"
"Maybe we don't understand the theory yet," Zimmerman muttered, frowning as he thought. "Maybe – the method of control has to take the subject into account. Maybe – the scarabs can only be inserted into fully normal humans, like your father and Danny and me. Then you have to make them abnormal after they're controlled. Maybe they don't work if the subject is already abnormal. Maybe – if an abnormal has… I don't know… a certain type of abnormality, like the Morrighan, the scarabs don't work at all and they have to do something else…"
"If I may reiterate, Ashley was not like the Morrighan!" Helen snapped out. "Good God, you'll have the girl set up as some sort of paranormal prodigy if no one injects any sense into this discussion."
"'The Morrighan'?" Clara asked.
"A group of three women, with extremely powerful psychokinetic gifts," Helen said briskly. "Psychokinetic gifts which Ashley did not share, I can assure you. Thank God. We accidentally captured the trio from the Cabal some months ago. It was how we came to discover the existence of the Cabal, period."
"But not how they came to discover yours," Druitt muttered, as he staggered back to his feet, still facing the concrete of the wall and holding his head with one long and callused hand.
Helen aimed a glare at the man, but his back was to her and she settled for a derisive sniff.
"'Psychokinetic'?" Clara asked. "Um, what's that? Some special kind of crazy?"
"No, insanity is John's department," Helen cracked.
The bald man didn't react with so much as a twitch, and Helen huffed as she patted Henry again, then turned away and walked over to Zimmerman and Clara Griffon.
"The word means 'Producing Motion By the Power Of The Mind Alone', which the Morrighan were able to do to a truly frightening degree."
Clara shook her head. "'Producing Motion By The Power Of The Mind'… But… that's what he does – and what you're saying his daughter can do, too. I mean, he moved all of us to India and back, and she moved that blood."
Helen shook her head impatiently
"External things," she corrected. "What John does is properly called teleporting."
"Um, I'm external to him. And you – and – "
"That is different," Helen interrupted, making her tone sharp. Why was the little fool arguing with her?
"Why? The Morrighan could move themselves, too – " Will said, turning from watching Druitt.
"The Morrighan did not have to touch what they moved! It is different!"
Clara flinched back from Helen's vehemence, and Will touched her arm gently. She gave him a quick, nervous smile, and Helen frowned at both of them.
'Dear God, please see that I do not have romantic complications to tend to in the midst of this debacle,' she thought.
"John and Ashley do not have that kind of power," she informed them. "I refuse to even consider it."
"I think – you'd better consider that their power is related," Will murmured, watching, as behind Helen, Druitt trudged back over to Henry, and crouched beside his chair as if his knees wouldn't hold him upright any more, grey-faced and still crying silently. The bald man spoke, quietly, staring at the concrete floor, and Henry bent to listen, his face pale and pinched and streaked with tears.
"I think – we'd better all consider that this whole thing, maybe even the virus itself, was a ploy from the very beginning for the Cabal to get its hands on the Sanguine Vampiris blood – and Druitt, or your daughter," Zimmerman continued.
"No daughter of mine, if she'd stoop to taking up with the likes of the Cabal!" Helen declared.
"Think about it," Will insisted, looking back to Ashley's mother from her father. "They're making Abnormals out of normal humans, to use them as weapons. What better weapon is there than one or other of them? Druitt and Ashley? Two deadly fighters who can come and go with nearly total impunity, who can reach nearly any target, anytime, anywhere. The Morrighan's powers may be greater, more destructive, but Druitt's and Ashley's power, combined with their skills, makes them much, much more useful in killing off any opposition, Abnormal or normal."
"'Normal' – the Cabal wants to destroy Abnormals, Will. What could normal humans have to do with that?" Helen scoffed, one brow high.
"And when they've 'saved the world' from the 'Abnormal menace' do you really think the Cabal will just hold a big corporate victory bash, and then apply for government bailout money to pay for it, like the average greedy little corporate citizens?" Zimmerman shot back. "Remember what Squib – Squid – whatever – told Ashley about them? That they were just one step away from taking over everything? What if this – this whole thing, the virus, the vampire blood, Ashley – is that final step? Destroy the Abnormals that don't have gifts or abnormalities that lend themselves to battle or that can't be eliminated or intimidated with the virus. Take the ones you can use, control them, immunize them, and put them to work destroying any troublemakers with a fluke resistance to the virus. Study the Sanguine Vampiris blood for your own use. Maybe you can make more Nigel Griffons, or James Watsons – or Helen Magnuses – only under your control, this time. At the very least, for one hell of a giant profit. Control the elite with the threat of taking away their powers, their immortality, either by withholding the serums you derive from the Vampire blood, or by the threat of Ashley – of silent and inescapable death. Control the riff-raff, the rest of us who can't afford the Vampire serum with the threat of the Abnormal army you created to destroy the intractable Abnormals; by then, they'll be battle hardened and completely under your control. And between the threat of assassination and outright destruction by creatures their normal soldiers can't begin to fight, what government in the world isn't going to capitulate to blackmail, at least, to avoid the Cabal's retribution?"
Helen Magnus could literally feel the blood draining out of her face. It would be a diabolically clever plan. 'But I refuse to believe our foes are that clever. John has been running amok for upward of a hundred years – why bother with Ashley now when they could have had him at any time in that period?'
"No, no. I cannot believe it. I have contacts in many governments, many intelligence services. I can tell them how to counter Ashley, the vulnerabilities and limitations of the Abnormals. No – "
"And that would be why they just had your daughter attempt your assassination," Druitt said from beside Henry, his deep, choked voice carrying across the space between with eerie ease. "Why they've always wanted you dead, Helen."
"Dear God," Helen murmured, asking herself if they might be that clever. But no. No. "But Ashley would not. Not ever!"
"Not even under the same control they held over the Morrighan, Helen? They were not evil in the beginning either."
"Ashley is not evil! Wild, willful, addicted to her own battle-lust – a born predator, even. But the girl who went out to that Cabal installation was not evil, John! She was not evil!" Helen insisted.
"One need not begin as evil in order to end doing evil's work" he said, his gaze still fixed on the concrete floor.
Helen glowered at him, but she didn't reply. There was no reply for that. Damn the man and that warped and capacious mind of his.
Druitt sighed and looked up at Henry, raised a brow.
The werewolf nodded. "Yeah. I don't like it, though."
Druitt caught his shoulder, squeezed it, but lightly. "Good man. And I'd think no one would expect you to like it – certainly not I."
Henry nodded again, and Druitt rose, walking slowly over to Helen.
"You're crying! What're you crying for?" she snapped.
"Ashley, my only child, is in the grip of something she has no hope of controlling, nor, I fear, even recognizing, let alone fighting, with her impairments," he murmured.
"John," Helen began, her rage back on the instant. "We have already discussed that matter. Don't you dare start – "
"My apologies for even the fact that I exist," he interrupted, in a voice so downcast and weary that Helen stared at him, the rest of her tirade vanished.
"Henry is going to go and lock himself into one of the isolation chambers, as we've no way to know if he has sleeper programming awaiting its trigger in his brain, too," Druitt continued, never looking up to Helen's shocked expression. "I will see if I can find your father, and fetch him to you if I can."
"I – that is a good idea, John. I – thank you."
He nodded listlessly.
"Anything to avoid imagining how Ashley will be punished for this failure," he murmured. "If she even survived."
"'Failure'! You would call not killing me a failure!" Helen snarled. Oh, but he could irritate her as no one else ever had -
'And that was once part of his appeal,' a little voice murmured from something that sounded suspiciously like her conscience. 'Montague John Druitt always could spark your emotions – every single one of your emotions - as no one else had before or has since. And that was precious to you, once upon a time.'
"The Cabal will call it failure, Helen. My opinion is of no moment," he whispered without raising his eyes to her.
"And I don't suppose you even care that she failed," Helen sniffed, unwilling to give him the last word on the subject.
The man sighed. "You are my only care now, Helen. I do not know if my daughter even lives. Or will, when Dana Whitcomb finishes with her," he murmured. "Be careful, Helen. Take no risks. Don't leave the Sanctuary without protection. You are all I have left."
"John! The situation is dire, certainly, but that's no excuse for such melodrama!"
"Please. Take every precaution, Helen. Even against your own. All of your own."
"Including you?" Helen asked, drawing herself up.
He bowed to her and walked away, his broad shoulders hunched, to join Henry where he waited at the other end of the workstation, and they trudged off together, silent and downcast.
"How extraordinary..." Helen murmured, to no one in particular.
Clara made a little startled sound, and began stripping as fast as she could.
"Clara!" Will hissed, wide-eyed.
"Well somebody had better watch them! At least until Henry's in the isolation chamber and Druitt's out the gate. You don't really trust the one, and you'd better stop trusting the other, and they won't see me, at least!" the girl said, suddenly invisible as clothes, apparently suspended in mid-air abruptly began to lob themselves at Will.
"Hey – wait - "
"I'll be careful! You guys be careful, too – we don't know what this Ashley may have done to all the equipment in this place before she left!" a voice declared as a low-cut, under-wire bra pressed itself quite deliberately into Will Zimmerman's hand.
A low, nervous chuckle sounded from the empty air, and then the footfalls of bare feet pattered off after Henry and Druitt, and Will stared at Helen Magnus – since the author of the idea had taken herself out of sight, quite literally.
"It is a good idea. A valid idea," Helen confirmed.
"So's Druitt's idea that Henry might have sleeper programming, actually," Zimmerman agreed, looking around for a place to ditch Clara's clothes, and finally bundling them between two desktop towers that had been tagged with taped pieces of paper that read 'Fried RAM' and 'Bad NIC Card'.
"Mmm. I suppose. I'll need your assistance in creating some means to determine the truth of the matter."
"Of course – and we need to change the password on the isolation room lock, too," Zimmerman said slowly.
Helen snorted and walked over to Henry's keyboard.
"And then – we need to talk about how Druitt seems to be so sure about what the Cabal will do with Ashley. And why he uses the same phrase to describe her situation now as he does to describe his state of mind during the Ripper murders. And... maybe... we need to ask him if the Cabal had to resort to kidnaping Ashley when they hadn't been able to capture him for more than a century."
Helen jerked around to stare at him. "I beg you pardon - "
"Or recapture him..." Zimmerman finished.
But Helen was the one who shuddered.
She stumbled out of the air to a graceless fall on the bare concrete of the laboratory floor, the knife clattering down beside her, the shining blade winking in the cold glare of the fluorescent lights.
High heels clacked across that cement floor.
"So. I see you've failed," Dana Whitcomb drawled, looking down at this newest animal in her menagerie, panting and whimpering on the gray floor. "I had hoped that with Watson dead, none of the rest of the freaks and freak lovers would perceive the possibility, but the EM shield was obviously up when you arrived."
She looked down at that spill of blonde hair, the lush curve of one full breast barely confined by the t-shirt the creature wore, and planted the pointed toe of her pump in the thing's side with all the force that the cut of her chic suit allowed her to apply.
The little animal screamed, and Dana kicked it again, grinning at the second shriek it produced.
She reached down to where the creature sobbed, curled up around its injuries, and dragged it upright by the hair, producing another raw cry of pain.
"A screamer, eh? Well that's something I know you inherited from your mother," she chuckled. "But you're going to have to do much better, Ashley. Your mother is a soprano, you know. I know – let's try... this."
She caught one of those full, heavy breasts with her free hand and ground the flesh between her fingers.
The latest scream was gratifyingly higher in pitch.
"Ah, I knew you had it in you. Now... we'll just dye that hair of yours, Ashley, and then it's offf to our studio for your punishment. I'm so looking forward to this. I hope your mother's email address accepts video attachments."