{ Alright, everyone!
This is an original alternate universe brought to you by none other than me, Bip. Be prepared for blades and guns, life and death, conspiracies, secrecies and love lost and gained. Mine is a story of tragedy in the lives of our favourite characters who give as good as they get, are tough-as-nails quick wit killers and the compassion behind their less than earthly objective. I'm taking the crew of House M.D. to a whole new level. All I ask from you is your opinion, because I truly value criticism of any degree.
Okay then. Enjoy, and keep an open mind.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own them. }
There were three people in a room.
One was calm, a stony sentinel with a carefully engineered mask of control who looked like he was trying just a little too hard. Another was nervous; he had quick eyes set in an attractive face that slid periodically to the plates of black glass around them. The last had an air of innocence that contrasted the weary look in her eyes, a woman forever burdened with the weight of a knowledge that she hadn't even begun to comprehend.
Three very different creatures who could tell three very different stories, each plucked disgracefully from their place in the world only to be cruelly shoved into a fate that wasn't theirs to follow, but follow they had willingly. And now, there they were, sitting high-strung in black metal cones that had extensions that spiraled into the impossibly high roof, their anxious faces illuminated by three white-light bulbs installed into the hood of their chairs. Those were the only lights provided, and so it gave the illusion that they were floating in a void of blackness in which they were the only inhabitants; black walls, black floors, black outfits- one could begin to question the background of such an unusual room and why these apparently normal people were sitting, silently, within it.
The only problem with wondering such a thing would be the assumption that those three people belonged anywhere else. If you watched them, watched the way they moved and the way they sensed the oblivion around them, you might understand. Though completely contrasting, they had been trained to the same fine point of precision—they were elites.
And they were the type of elites that shadows draped themselves over.
They had entered through a door, but not one of them could remember where that had been. It was as if the entrance had simply melted back into its surroundings, leaving them practically stranded in the dark cube.
They had been summoned there by the boss herself, which in itself was an immeasurable honor. There had been word through the halls of the Academy that a new team, led by the legend, was going to be dispatched to eliminate a fresh threat that couldn't grow to be the catastrophe that it promised to flourish into. Surely it wasn't a coincidence that just as they had gotten whiff of such an incredible rumor, they were called for their first assignment?
A disjointed, obviously computer generated voice trilled pleasantly into the silence, "Please rise."
They glanced at each other and then slowly rose to their feet. The moment their weight was distributed off of the strangely shaped chairs, the tiles flickered away and the cones lowered silently into the floor. They blinked, and then the voice returned, "Please enter."
Suddenly, there was a mechanical wisp and the three watched as a portion of the glass to the left of them slowly slid into the adjoining walls, unveiling a whole separate room that was decorated just the same as the one they were currently in. The only difference, they noticed as they stepped forwards, was that in the center of this new room was a desk so blindly white that it physically hurt their eyes to look at. It seemed to emanate a glow into the rest of the room, and as far as the trio could see, there were no lamps or windows.
The dark-skinned man was the first in line as they filed in through the wide entrance, followed by the blonde-haired man and finally the strong-gaited woman. They lined obediently in front of the stark desk, shoulders rigid and heads held strong and proud.
Though their bodies were unmoving, their eyes wandered along the woman who lounged imperiously in the black leather chair. It must have been comfortable with the way she draped her body along it, and what a body it was; she was cloaked in a dipping ebony suit jacket with gold knobbed buttons, matching trousers that were so tight they might as well have been painted on, and as they followed the long line of her legs, they were able to take in the sooty black of her dangerously sharp stilettos.
She had pierced a man's heart with stilettos just like that, or so they had heard. (Finally seeing her now in person, with the full intensity of her storm-steel eyes unleashed upon them, they didn't doubt it for a second). All she was doing was watching them, and it was making the anxious white man's palms sweat. As for the other two, the woman seemed impressed if not intimidated, and the black man was simply watchful.
The woman in the chair had one eyebrow arched and her crossed calf slowly swung back and forth, reminiscent of the chesire cat swaying his tail. She seemed relaxed, but in control of ever flutter of her eyes and ever twitch of her calculating stare.
She had a certain magnetism about the way she inhabited space, like their attention was drawn towards her, and finally she straightened in her seat professionally. The three released a collective metaphorical breath. Had they passed some test?
The chrome nameplate that was front and center of the glowing desk read, "Cuddy."
"Welcome. I am Cuddy," she started, and her voice was dominating in the spacious room. Though she clearly needed no introduction, her tone seemed to imply that this was a speech that she had repeated thousands of times over to thousands of agents, and she wasn't about to modify it now, "You are here because the skills you have demonstrated in your latest evaluation are the best at the Academy. You are the fastest, the sharpest, the best at what you do."
She leaned forwards until she was no longer sitting but hunching over her desk with flat palms, the eerie glow illuminating her breathtaking features, obviously going for impact, "You are three of four applicants who have been hand-picked to accompany our finest into the fields. The fourth couldn't handle it." Cuddy's no-nonsense, meaningful down-glower sent shivers down their spines.
Teenagers, practically children, are abducted from their less-than ordinary lives by the Academy after years of close inspection. They diagnose those who realize at an early age that things are not right in the world, and then the Academy trains them to prepare for a truth that must not be revealed to the public.
The code of the Academy was considered the virtues for survival in this life the agents led. Failure to abide by the code, by your engraved instincts, was suicide.
If you went into the field, you either killed or were killed. That was the law of the jungle.
Cuddy folded her arms and cocked a curvy hip, stretching the material of her pants deliciously, "You are trainees Foreman, Chase and Cameron. You were inducted into the academy at 14, 16 and 19 respectively. I am giving you a single choice. This is your one and only chance to back out; after this, there is no alternative." She stopped talking and hesitated, waiting for one of them to declare something. Anything.
When they were silent, she tried again, "You have been given hints of what you are being prepared for. It is just little enough that, if you decide to leave now, we can still swipe your memory and release you back into the world without harm. When you finally know, that is not an option." Still, not a peep from them.
She shot them a sly smile, "Alright then." With a whirl, she spun on her heel and the glass behind her desk suddenly flashed bright, and became a huge screen that had two life-sized images. The three looked up, and the roof went farther than the artificial light could reach. They turned back to watch Cuddy dazzle them.
She stepped to the side, the heavy silk of her dark hair swaying like whitecaps down her shoulder blades, and she regarded the images. They both showed a mass of people in varying degrees of dress, some in business suits and others in jogging shorts, men and woman and children alike. An everyday crowd bustling around their lives and minding their own business.
"What do you see?" Cuddy asked mysteriously.
The man, Foreman, went to speak but Cameron cut him off, "A crowd of people on a sidewalk. It's in Washington D.C.," she pointed to the first photograph, "those men are senators. Probably heading for the Hill."
Cuddy inclined her head, "It is Washington D.C., Constitution Avenue. Look closer."
Cameron didn't seem satisfied with her five seconds of Cuddy's attention, and so she turned back to the picture with the other two and squinted determinedly. However, it was Foreman this time, masking his annoyance at the woman who had interrupted him, who drew attention to a man with a briefcase in the corner of the shot. He looked like any other businessman, "That man. That's… Michael Tritter. He was a successful hit carried out by Agent House in 2007."
Then Chase spoke at the second image, and he had a domestic Australian accent, "And that's Agent Warner, who was eliminated after she leaked a planned assassination of a Judge."
Cuddy didn't smile, but she seemed pleased, "And now?" She inquired sternly.
Abruptly, the pictures flashed. Gone was the mundane cityscape to be replaced with one gruesome stage; blood ripped across the scene in crescent splatters, dotted with lumps that looked like intestines but which were blue and black. Appendages were strewn over the floor and a gutted, armless torso hung from a fan. Bullet holes carved distinct open-trigger patterns on the wall behind the carcass and there was a severed head that had its jaw propped open with what looked like a fork; the skin of the creature was warped, stretched as if it could no longer contain the bones beneath, and they could see that half of the face had been skinned. Veins and gummy sinew looked sticky in the cheap motel light. Total mayhem to a traumatizing bloody degree. The rookies didn't seem disturbed, but became even more focused.
Realization dawned when they dissected the features of the mauled face. It was Tritter, recently killed. It had House's signature mess written all over it—he wasn't known for leaving the clean-up crew an easy job.
"Tritter. But… what are those abnormalities?" Cameron requested boldly, for she had not been spoken to. Cuddy watched the inquirer for a moment before her hand flicked almost imperceptibly, and the image zoomed in to the face. The eyes were a mercury red, pupiless. There were no ears to speak of, simply sealed-over holes, and his gums were puckered around holes that once held teeth. He had no tongue.
"This is the body of Michael Tritter. But, at the same time, it is not." They looked at her in confusion. Their highly tuned intellects didn't understand. "What you are seeing is not human. It is not animal. It is not earthly," her audience was becoming more and more disgusted, Cuddy could tell, but with that disgust came a strong sense of wonder.
"Then what—" Cameron. Again. The girl had a problem with keeping in hierarchy.
"This is what you will come to know as an Inke. It is an intelligence that parallels, if not surpasses, our own. It is a creature that will rip your throat out before you've even distinguished it for what it is. If it does not maim you upon sight, because it knows who you are just from the way you move, it will wait to slither through the pores of your skin and eat its way out if it doesn't nest in your body first. When you fight to kill it, you are not only fighting for the survival of mankind, but for your very identity. It can take you over, incubate in your brains and reproductive organs for up to three months wherein it will become you," Cuddy nailed them with an I'm-not-bullshitting look, "or that's what it'll look like." Another twitch of her hand, and the image switched to one of a woman's, Agent Warner, who was liquefied for the most part in a tub of blood and the grease-like substances.
Their jaws had hit the floor, and they were still working on picking them up.
"This is what remained of Agent Stacy Warner, killed post-infected. The inke in her leaked our secrets. The organism itself is nonsolid, from what we've observed. Cases of gas have not been reported, so we assume it can move only in a liquid form. If it escapes from its host before you have a chance to kill it, it can survive for only minutes before it will die without a body to live off of. You'll notice the blue. That's alive, and as it fades to black, its dying."
The screen went black again, and they stared in rapture as she gracefully hip-stepped back to fall into her chair. She interlocked her thin fingers, "Any questions, Agents?"
Chase let out a shuddering breath, and Cameron was still gaping at the wall. Foreman was staring at her as if she had five breasts.
She took their stunnedness as a positive, and waved her hand in the direction of a dark corner of her office.
"You will be supervised by the best son of a bitch I have," she sighed wearily, "meet House."
And out-stepped a smirking man with stubble and eyes as clear tiffany as cornflowers, hair graying in all the right places and a perpetual stoop that curved the broad expanse of his shoulders, a towering behemoth even if he did have bad posture. He had emerged from thin air; even they hadn't noticed his presence. The three recruits regained their cool as ice composure, and Cameron rushed forwards with an outstretched hand in a grapple for her faltered professionalism, too eagerly.
He dismissed it with a backwards lean against the wall, a platinum cane twirling slowly in circles in front of his face, half bathed in shadow.
He was legendary, his unorthodox insanity and mercilessness the standard bar that was forever raised too high for any common agent to breach. He was everything that they had dreamed of becoming, and there he was, sneering in a way that screamed roguish vagabond.
"Looks like you aren't in Kansas anymore," he growled, two parts amusement and one part dangerous, every bit of the assassin they had imagined him to be.
Three people had been sent to a room. They emerged a league.
{ What'd you think? What're your guesses; Who are they? What is the Academy? What would you like to see happen? Reviews appreciated. }