Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the F.E.A.R. series in any way shape or form, or its characters. I own none of it. Really.
I do however, own Devyn and Gethin for all eternity.
Interval 02
[Sympathy for the Devil]
Gethin stood idly next to his superior officer's chair in the observation room, watching with mild interest as the woman seemed to be steadily slipping into a trance-like state. As her hands closed around the shoulders of the jacket, he could see her eyes slowly close and her eyes quickly reach a state of REM.
"Doesn't waste any time, does she." The man to his right commented, "But then again, I suppose none of their monsters do." Gethin shot him a sideways glance.
"Pardon?" His superior smirked icily, producing a thick file from beneath the table and handing it to him. The front of the folder was labeled in typical block lettering and bore the logo of Armacham Technology Corporation, but it was for a project he'd never heard of. The thick block letters stamped on the front of the file read 'Prometheus'. It was a clever side project hatched by a Ms. Lena Krieg, assumed to be Devyn's birth mother, that discussed the possibility of gleaning information from others in ways that would be completely unnoticeable. The method was described in excutiating detail, but was essentially the ability to look into the minds of others via physical contact and eventually through eye contact alone.
According to the notes, when Lena discovered she was with child, she offered to 'donate' her unborn daughter to the cause. Armacham was more than happy to accept her offer, wasting not an hour before giving her a strict new schedule to follow. The woman was given a variety of medications and serums, and monitored by what little staff that wasn't preoccupied with the young Wade children right up to the moment of birth. Devyn was monitored alongside her mother up until she reached the age of five. Showing none of the ability Lena had promised, the project was deemed a failure. Unfortunately for the scientist, the strict regimen she'd endured during her pregnancy wasn't without concequence. Slowly but surely, her mind slipped past its darkest fringes, causing her to suffer from terrible hallucinations. The woman eventually died of fright - her frail heart unable to withstand the worsening visions - and young Devyn was sent into the care of a different scientist. The girl eventually ran away from home and dropped off radar... until word of a teenager who seemed to 'just know' things floated up from the darkness. Cleverly disguised cameras were immediately set up and Prometheus was reopened. Devyn had been under surveilance for ten years.
"They've been watching her for some time now. That's why I had you play fetch, Maddox, what do you think they'll do if we turn one of their monsters against them?"
-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-
Devyn kept her eyes sqeezed tightly shut as she was pulled into yet another one of her visions. When the odd feeling of phantom movement ceased, the first thing she did was try to move her arms and legs. To her delight, she wasn't bound to anything this time around. As her eyes slowly opened, she found herself laying down as opposed to being stuck in a chair and in a nearly pitch black room. The bed she was laying in was of old wrought iron, which protested loudly as she tugged the scratchy little blanket away to sit up. Most of her surroundings were shrouded in darkness, though she could see white tiles and walls similar to the room her physical body was sitting in. Behind her, painted in dark grey just above the head of the bed, was the letter and number combination of "P2". While she tried to wrap her head around the possible meaning of this, she felt the room slowly become invaded by another presence. It's energy was heavy and opressive, it hit her in the chest like a speeding train. She could feel that cold, predatory stare snake its way from a hidden corner of the room to her left.
"It's you again." She tipped her head nervously to the side, searching the darkness for the man's eyes, "I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to talk." Not wanting to be anywhere near this menacing presence, she hopped off the bed and turned to a metal door with a very small window near its top. Standing on her toes to see if anyone was outside, she tried to open it.
"It's locked." His slightly raspy voice stated flatly. Devyn huffed, smacking the metal with her palm before turning to stare into the shadows.
"Obviously." She sighed, waving the coat in her hands in an overly dramatic fashion, "What do you expect me to do, play patty-cake until you decide to open it?" In the back of her head she was cursing at herself for running her mouth off to someone so sinister. She felt a seething glare shoot from the darkness, and heard the faint sound of unhurried footfalls approaching the small circle of light she stood in. Sure enough, the first thing she saw of this cruel entity was a brown, military grade boot. The shoe was followed by a leg - clad in some kind of black leather pants with a red stripe running down the side - with a rather threatening knife strapped to its thigh. Above that was some kind of black leather biker jacket with a red strip running up both sides and under the arms. It was zipped nearly to the man's neck and had an unfamiliar symbol on the left brest, which she wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't such a dirty shade of yellow. He was at least a foot taller than her, forcing her to look up to look him in the eye. The eyes that stared back at her were the same ones from her other vision: keen, intelligent, and completely predatory in nature. Devyn withheld a small gasp as her gaze was inevitably drawn to the man's most unsettling feature - the bullet wound in his forehead. The searing pain she'd felt when she'd come into contact with the piece of concrete returned briefly, and now made perfect sense. She had been connecting with a dead man.
"What I expect... is for you to tell me why you insist on probing your way into my subconscious." She took a half step away from him as he spoke.
"They asked me to find -" she swallowed, "- to find your mother." Her grip on the jacket in her hand tightened with her uneasiness. Everything about him screamed 'perfectly in control' to her. The title of commander shot through her mind for a fleeting second. At the same moment, he paused in the light, that same quiet chuckle from her other vision slithering out of his throat.
"They haven't given you much choice, locking you in a room like an animal." She shot him an agitated and surprised look, "Do you know why?"
"I don't tend to question those who ask for my help, so no, I don't." Devyn leaned her back against the door, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes were still locked on that hideous wound in his head, "I like being restrained about as much as I like dead ends, Fettel." Had the room just gotten colder all of a sudden? With a slight shiver, she slipped into the coat in her hands. It was much too big for her, but it kept the cold out quite nicely. Her stare shifted to his vicious eyes, trying to peer deeper into his thoughts. It wasn't working. If she wanted answers, she'd need to get close enough to grab his arm or something along those lines. That meant she'd need to keep goading him.
"You've got spirit, I'll give you that, but you're starting to get in the way. Last chance: leave before I force you out." It wasn't a pleasant idea. The last time she'd been forced from someone's mind, she'd been bed-ridden for nearly a week. Painkillers weren't even able to hold a lit match to the pain in her head after. Pushing her concerns into a small jar in the back of her head, she stepped away from the cold steel - how was it that she could feel this vision so plainly? - of the door and walked until she was a mere foot away from him. As soon as she was within arm's reach, he grabbed her roughly by the collar of her coat and hefted her off the ground with one hand; the knife at his side was pressed against her face just as quickly, resting comfortably just below her eye.
"Well tough shit." She grinned. Her smart mouth would more than likely get her killed this time, but she couldn't resist saying something as she stabbed her index finger into the obvious bullet hole in his forehead. She was immediately disgusted with herself, for like the door, she could feel every grotesque piece of torn flesh and metal in the wound. Her disgust was quickly replaced by a painful feeling of the blade sliding across her cheek in shock and a torrent of images shooting across her eyes.
At first it was only words: Armacham, origin, prototype, Perseus, Alma... but it was followed by images of horrific things. A room not unlike the one she was in now filled with blood and seven decayed skeletons. An army of identical soldiers tearing through some kind of compound, killing everyone in sight. Seeing through the eyes of a man eating both living men and their corpses. The bright muzzle flare of a gun being fired, followed by that sharp pain in her head. Gritting her teeth, she pressed beyond the images, her mind focused on the word 'mother'. Again, the name Alma flashed across her vision, followed by the image of a young girl in a red dress holding hands with an older version of herself. Before she could pursue the image further, she felt her back slam against the door and watched the images continue to block her sight. She was bombarded by feelings of pain and unbridled hatred, visions of burning corpses and twisted abominations.
Devyn could hear Fettel breathing heavily somewhere else in the room: both shocked and angry at her actions. Her vision slowly cleared giving her a moment to notice she was now laying on her stomach and bleeding. A single sympathetic tear crept from the corner of her eye as she thought of what a tortured soul he was - a thought that was torn away as she was violently lifted from the ground and placed on her feet. His hand tangled its way into her hair and pulled her head backward, leaving her throat exposed. From the corner of her eye, she could see him cleaning the blood from his knife with his tongue. She cringed as a look of morbid enjoyment flickered in his cold eyes. A blood red, smoky aura began to pour from his body.
"Looks like you'll be much more useful to me alive." Her eyes widened as a mad grin spread across his face. She blinked once in pure terror, and he vanished from sight entirely. Her eyes searched the room frantically for any sign of him, and found nothing but the shadows from which he'd appeared. Leaning against the wall, she exhaled slowly in a futile attempt to calm herself - only to have her breath catch in her throat as something slammed into her chest.
-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-
Gethin and his commander watched with increasing curiosity as the girl's trance deepened. She seemed to develop a chill, and even unconsciously slid into the coat she'd been given to use as a link. Suddenly, without any warning, rhyme, or reason, she began to violently convulse. A cut sliced across the upper prortion of her left cheek seeimingly from nowhere.
"Shit!" The commander muttered, "Get in there, now! Knock her out, do something, anything, to break the connection!" Gethin nodded and waved for three men to follow him as he sprinted out into the hallway. It took two attempts to punch in the appropriate numbers to unlock the door, and some not-so-gentle persuasion to get his men through the door. The three grunts didn't waste a moment in removing the offending jacket from the woman while he took a defensive position at the far wall of the room - a tranquilizer gun held tightly in his hands. With the coat no longer touching her, she seemed to calm down and fell lightly onto the bed. The unfortunate woman's breathing began to return to normal, prompting him to approach her slowly with his gun still at the ready. He reached a hand out to wake her when she inhaled sharply. Instinctively, he took two steps backward, using the heads up display in the glasses he wore to assess the situation before trying anything else.
One of the grunts placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and her eyes immediately snapped open. They weren't the same as when she'd first arrived. Her left eye remained the same golden-green as when she'd arrived, but her right one was now a piercing, icy blue. He almost shuddered; he'd seen photos of Fettel, and his eyes were unfortunately something you didn't forget. Before he could warn the grunt, the woman lunged toward the man's arm and sunk her teeth deep into his wrist. As he cried out in surprise and pain, she brought her right leg up and kicked him in the head. As he staggered toward the floor from the blow, he tore his own wrist wide open. Devyn idly spat the bloody chunk of flesh onto the floor as she sat upright, her eyes passing dangerously from one man to the next.
Completely unrushed or unphased by the men pointing their guns at her, she walked to the observation window and pressed her lower right arm against it, leaning toward it as though she could see inside. A cruel, feral smile spread across her face; her tongue slid across her upper lip slowly, catching some of the blood flowing from her face and silently threatening the man on the other side of the glass. Gethin grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and slammed her against the wall. She gasped in pain, her blue eye suddenly changing back to the same shade of green as her other one and a look of confusion overtaking the viciousness on her face. Her eyes stared past him to the bleeding man on the floor.
"Devyn. Devyn!" Her stare shifted to him.
"What?" She asked, her voice perfectly calm and even. He sighed with mild relief, she was back to her innocent self.
"Just wanted to make sure you were yourself again," He told her with a half-hearted smile. He tapped his comm link, "She's all right boss."
"And that idiot Leroy?" Gethin could hear the unease in the commander's voice. Whatever Devyn had done in front of that window had managed to rattle him.
"Jenkins needs a band-aid for both his wrist and his ego, but I think he'll live." A faint grumble and string of curses poured from the injured man's mouth as he did what he could to stop the bleeding.
"Fine. Restrain Miss Krieg and bring her in here. I want to know what she found."
Author's Note: I'd like to thank Chili Peppers102 and Saahren for their words of encouragement. It really means a lot when I hear I might be doing something right. At the same time, I'd like to apologize to readers if Fettel seemed a little... off... in this particular chapter. I'm trying to keep him as close to the same sadistic bastard we've come to know and love as I can, but it's very difficult. I'm also very sorry for the bad Leroy Jenkins joke. XD
Reviews and good tunes are the lifeblood of this story, so input is always valued (as long as it's not just to tell me I'm a terrible writer). The more reviews I get, the more I can use them to improve on the story.
