Disclaimer: Hellboy characters do not belong to me, but all unrecognized characters do.
Kroenen watched helplessly as the giant cog plummeted toward him. How ironic was it that the spider's own trap was the one that snared him in the end? The cog landed heavily on his metal laced body, pinning him with no chance of escape.
Unable to die he heard his nemesis' speech and their departure. Unable to move he heard the great confrontation and later what could only be the fall of his idol. Unable to move, unable to die he lay their trapped in his own mind.
He felt rage and grief. He plotted ways to escape his trap that never grew to fruition. Eventually he went numb, a state like suspension. Time meant nothing because time was nothing; to him at any account, with his perfect geared heart and unmoving body.
Some short years passed and the half-man lay quietly as his mind buzzed and dimmed by parts. He reached a slumber at last and knew nothing. He dreamed.
His dreams were filled with blood and revenge upon his enemies. They were filled with beauty and peace. His night phantoms whispered black deeds and plots. Some murmured new and better ways for him to improve upon himself. His fall had proved his continued imperfection.
His sleep was not idle. Nor was it filled with forgiveness.
History is the greatest teacher of all and one of its most important lessons is the fool-hardy of human kind. They are too curious at times and often unearth things that they have no business meddling in. Such was the case now.
The excavation team deep within Russia was excited; you could taste it in the air. The cavern under the graveyard had been difficult to find but once there they had had little trouble. It had already been broken into and the traps had already sprung. Well, most of them anyway.
They were a ragtag team, of all races and nationalities. Half the group consisted of translators and the other of mercenaries. Those 'workers' were not the most usual of folk either. Most you would not want to tangle with on a dark night. In broad daylight for that matter.
Ashton Stahl sigh as she gazed out at the chasm stretched out ahead of her. She knew that to go across the chasm would be an extremely dangerous venture and they were sure to lose someone along the way. But she wanted to get there.
Her new translator, a small skittish man whose English was his third language, waited behind her to see what orders she might have. Ashton cocked her head at the problem, namely the large hole gapping inches from her boots.
A smile spread slightly on her pretty face and she turned on her heels to address the translator.
"We will bridge the gap," she said slowly and deliberately, "we will use the larger grapplings." He nodded and walked off to tell the men her orders. Ashton looked back over her shoulder at the doorway beyond, a sigh caught in her throat. Then she followed the man down the passage to their camp, hoping her superiors would approve her decision.
In the end they could find no better alternative and granted the mission to her. The only annoyance was that one of her superiors, a Russian man named Jokull, wanted to oversee the operation. She had nodded her head and left the tent to prepare her men. What else could she do?
It took two days to bridge the gap using steel cables and large machinery. Then another two to knock down the iron wall, which was not bad but still irritating. They lost one man when a metal cable snapped. Then three more men plummeted to their deaths when transporting equipment across the gap. No one complained, this was what they were being paid for after all.
From there they had cautiously gone forward, Ashton leading the way until they found a room with a huge circular pit in the center. She had stalled the men and scouted ahead, finding the room empty but for the pit and what she knew resided there.
Where the rumors true? After all, the information they got from inside the BPRD was not always accurate. This matched the agent's description completely though. She walked to the edge of the pit with the rusted metal inside of it.
Jokull marched up to her position and gazed down at the pit.
"He could be very valuable," said the giant man slowly in rough English, "but it is a risk to even retrieve him. He was known for being dangerous, yes." Ashton nodded. The man trapped beneath them was not their main quarry for the mission, but he could be ever so useful to them….
"We will have to decide how to detain him should he prove uncooperative" she stated before turning sharply to brief the men.
Jokull stared after her before glancing down again at the monstrous cog. A small grim smile worked its way onto his face before disappearing again into the moist air.
He followed Ashton back to the men.
"What are we doing working under a woman anyway," grumbled a man. Several others echoed his complaint. Several more leveled glares at Ashton as she reentered the room.
"Its not like she has any idea what is going on, heck if it weren't for us none of this could get done," said another. Their malevolence grew and boiled from being in such close quarters with their bitterness.
Slowly it spread through the men, settling on a dozen in particular and one man more than the rest. Peter was a rough British man who wouldn't have looked odd among a team of tough lumberjacks.
He stood, slightly drunk on his boasts, and swaggered toward the woman that dared presume to lead them.
Ashton looked up at the shadow that fell over her. She was not a small woman but this fellow towered over her. His unshaven face grimaced down at her and she wondered why.
"There is no way on this green earth that me and the boys here are going ta listen to yer orders any more. We know how to get this done and we don't need no woman to tell us how." The men behind him muttered encouragements and agreements.
Ashton sighed and put down the chart she had been reading. "Is that a threat?" she asked calmly.
"No it's an order," he returned haughtily. She smiled at him helpfully.
"Are you sure there is no way I can change your mind on this, you are all of an accord?" After several seconds of delay where translators spoke the in-between many of the workers nodded.
"Well then," replied Ashton as she began to shed her long coat, "I suppose then I will have to convince you." The men's faces seemed to droop as they saw what the coat had been concealing. A revolver and a long knife hung from belts about her hips and another pistol laid snuggly in a shoulder holster.
Ashton handed her weapon belts and coat to a Jordanian translator whom she had befriended. The small dark woman smiled mysteriously.
"Well then lad, it looks like you are going to have to kick me out." The man sneered at her proposal to fight . Not only was she female she was diminutive compared to him.
Of course Ashton knew; you didn't have to be big if you were crazy.
Seeing the man unwilling to attack her she struck like lightening, her fist instantly breaking his nose, before dodging back before he could grab her. He roared and lunged at her and she jumped back again, but not before scoring a hit on his right eye.
As usual when she fought hand to hand she wished that she was heavier; but her lithe build kept her fleet and agile. Plus she would never out bull men like the one before her. Her hits still found their mark and he would feel them in time.
A rush filled her. Was it fear or was it adrenaline? It didn't matter really, thought Ashton; the result was still the same.
The man charged her like a bull, leading with his head and shoulders low. She kicked him in the mouth.
On and on it went like that, the man's clumsy swings to her snake like scores. It didn't last long before he was on the ground wheezing for breath and clutching his face. Ashton straightened and looked all of the men in the eye one by one.
"Anyone else for a go?" seeing no takers she addressed them in a loud and commanding voice.
"See here, you have two choices. I can either out work you, or I can out fight you, it's your decision." None of the men offered resistance and Ashton smiled grimly.
Ihssan, the Jordanian translator, handed her gear back to her, the mysterious smile still on her face. Ashton nodded and began to strap her weapons on as the men around her gave her a new look of respect.
In the end they decided on magnets. What else to hold an indestructible man made partly of metal? They had brought in the radiographic equipment and Ashton dropped into the pit after they lower the machine in. Hopefully the cog wouldn't interfere with the image. If they were lucky they could find just what metals the scientist had melded into himself.
Turning the equipment just so and pushing several buttons and she began to shoot images. After only an hour and a half she was ready to be hauled back up.
With no lab she had to develop the film the old fashioned way, but in a tunnel complex it wasn't as hard as it could have been, with lots of dark abandoned rooms. Miraculously the film came through, if hazy. Ashton grinned crookedly, there was defiantly steel in their man.
The huge magnet was in place and the small cranes were waiting to lift the cog.
"What if the magnet has an adverse side effect?" she yelled over the sound of machinery at Jokull. "Might it not possibly kill him?"
Jokull only glared at her from across the room and resumed watching the men work. Ashton shrugged and went to help the men set the magnet and begin to charge it. The sound of the magnet being powered filled the room with throbbing, like a huge invisible heart. The cog was of the wrong metal to be attracted to the magnet luckily.
At last there was no going back and the lifts were utilized. The cog slowly rose, higher and higher. Finally it lifted past the lip of the pit and was maneuvered over the side. It rang out like a church bell as it was set on the stone floor.
Ashton noted several of the men draw pistols and shift nervously. They had a right to be nervous. She strode up to the pit and looked down. There he was, skewed like so much skis kabob. He didn't move and she began to worry. Then he twitched and a soft moan was heard over the machinery.
"What is wrong, what is happening?" asked Jokull anxiously.
"He's rusty" Ashton replied.
He was staring at her. Well, at least, that is what it appeared like. When you had no eyelids it was rather difficult not to stare.
He was unconscious, or at a state somewhat near it according to the monitoring machines. Knowing he was 'sleeping' and therefore unable to see her Ashton came to stand next to the table he was strapped to.
Scarred flesh and mangled features met her. He was physically gruesome but Ashton was not repelled. It wasn't so much worse than the patients she had seen in hospitals.
She glanced at a monitor. The reading stated that he was in a deep state of unconsciousness, nearer to true coma than anything else. Embodied by this she reached out with her ungloved right hand and traced the air above his face, a hair's breath from the man's skin.
Behind her the monitor's readings began to shift.
Tentatively she touched the scared tissue, careful no to stray to the parts not protected by skin. Her eyes focused on the point where her fingers touched his cheek. She gave a brief glance up to his gapping orbs and then quickly back. Those blank, empty eyes were no longer staring or empty. He was looking at her. Too late Ashton noticed his deeper breathing and muscle tension.
Taking her hand away from his face she addressed him.
"Good morning," she said in accented German, "how are you feeling?"
He said nothing.
After several long moments of silence Ashton's face grew a wry expression of annoyance and she yelled over her shoulder for Jon, her translator.
Jon hurried into the room, his appearance a chaotic disaster in contrast with Ashton's, with her white lab coat and long hair pulled back into a tight braid.
"Would you please inform the good doctor here," Jon blanched at her use of the word 'doctor', "that we know he can speak and that we may be able to…benefit one another."
Just as Jon was opening his mouth to translate he was interrupted by a voice raspy from disuse.
"English is not above me, 'good doctor'", the man on the table responded, throwing Ashton's words back at her, but in a most courteous manner possible.
Ashton raised one tawny eyebrow and smirked in amusement.
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance doctor." She stated with a slight stiff bow. "Leave us Jon, the doctor and I have much to discuss."
The translator quickly left, glancing furtively back over his shoulder.
"So I will illiterate, how are you feeling?" the blond woman standing over Kroenen asked.
"Restrained" he replied, gesturing with his head at all of the straps confining him to the table.
"Don't worry about that," Ashton answered, "that is purely for our protection."