Author's Notes: I...didn't realize that I hadn't posted all of this yet. It's literally been written for months. Wow, I'm a genius. Stein would be proud. Some strong, triggering themes are starting to crop up. This is not a happy story. Medusa is not a good person. So basically, canon as hell. Unethical experiments on humans, animals, and the like.


there's something at work in my soul
chapter two: lunafaction


While Marie showered in their hotel bathroom, which alone was decorated more than his own place, Stein sat down at the foot of his bed to finally pore through the file. It was indeed lacking in evidence, much thinner than both he and the government would've liked in order to find the Vector Alchemist, but there were some intriguing points. He was able to peer into the research that she had shown the higher ups and not him and determine where she had purposely mislead them or was vague on certain details. She'd painted a different picture to them than him, like a work of Impressionist art, whereas she had been vivid, detailed, and precise with him.

Not enough in his opinion, considering that she hadn't even given him the full picture of her research, secretive as she was. For good reason though, considering the crimes that she'd committed. The photos capturing the effects of her alchemy were vibrant enough to tell a much different story. He had known that her alchemy research was not as harmless as she tried to make it out to be, but he hadn't pictured it being so bloody. The red was enough to make his mind race wildly.

It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. Stein knew that should've worried him, but it just intrigued him further. He was a mad dog with a scent and blood made for an easy trail to follow. The more of a bloodtrail, the better and easier to find her. There would be another victim before they would catch her, of that Stein had no doubt, but he knew that it would upset Marie. She would want to catch the other woman before anyone else was hurt.

But Medusa had been out of the government's sight for ten months even with a stack of human and animal bodies piled at her feet. They needed a new lead, fresh blood, and a warm trail.

Honestly, Stein hadn't thought this would interest him in the slightest, but he found himself grinning a little.

When Marie stepped out of the bathroom, wearing soft yellow pajamas and drying her hair, she spotted his grin before he could wipe his face clean. "Finally getting excited for the hunt?" she asked without a hint of irony. She had known what he was like for so many years. It still secretly marveled him that she had stayed at his side for so long when very few people seemed capable of being around him for more than an hour. "I knew those pictures would pique your interest. They're so...gruesome."

"And very creative," Stein added.

Marie rolled her eye, but didn't comment on his choice of words. Most people would've shivered, Spirit included probably, but she had grown used to his ways, perhaps even comfortable. Staying together again felt normal in a strange way that he tried not to linger on. It suggested that he missed her, but then that would beg the question on why he never contacted her or answered any of her calls or letters after she moved out.

Focus on the pictures, a voice in his mind told him. He gripped the photos tightly and stared at them until it was like he was in the photos themselves and not in this world.

"We have an early and long day ahead of us tomorrow, so you should try to get some sleep," Marie told him as she settled into her bed. His eyes went to her despite his mind telling them no. She slipped her eyepatch off to set it on the nightstand, allowing him a brief glimpse of the ruined, patched up skin underneath before she turned off her light, slid under the covers, and rolled over. He jerked his gaze back to the photos. "Goodnight."

Stein didn't respond to her, but then she wouldn't expect him to. He returned his focus to the file, reading through it again. Eventually, he turned off the light on his side of the bed and moved to the desk where the small lamp wouldn't disturb her as much. He was able to find some loose leaf paper that he could write notes on, although that didn't stop him from making notations in the file as well. It helped him organize his mind, even though to anyone else his notes would look like gibberish. He doubted even Marie or Spirit would be able to understand them. Writing in shorthand and code was just second nature to him, as it was to all alchemists.

The minutes passed. The file became his entire world. Time didn't matter in that world, and so he lost himself in it without even realizing it.


(There is no such thing as a good night's sleep in Ishval. He spends most of his nights drifting in a half sleep where he flitters between dreams and reality. The dreams are never vivid, not like this hell, but he thinks that he should be grateful. Some soldiers have nightmares; all the other alchemists on the frontlines do. He's slipping in that half dream world when a blood curdling scream rips through the night and violently jerks him awake. Twisted up in his thin sheets, he tumbles off his cot onto the gritty sand and has to awkwardly untangle himself even as the camp alarms begin to sound.

Dressed in only his military pants that he mended himself and a dusty white shirt, Stein storms out of the tent and watches as other soldiers do the same. Most of them are running around in confusion in a half state of dress or with their service weapons, panicked but without a clue as to why. No one is giving orders when even the higher ups don't know what's going on yet. Only the people that sounded the alarms do, if that.

Stein is tugging on his gloves when he catches Spirit staggering out of his own tent in just a pair of black pants, his red hair a bedhead mess. Before Spirit thinks to put on more clothes, he asks, "What's going on?" Which is a ridiculous question to ask, considering that it's obvious that Stein only left his tent seconds ago too.

Before Stein can tell him that, a loud explosion on the left erupts and flames shoot into the air. Gunfire begins to pop after that. Men's shouts echo into the night. And then it hits him, like a gunshot to the chest. The scream that came to an abrupt halt soon after the alarms went off came from the south side of the camp, not where the explosion happened. The south side of the camp is where the female soldiers sleep. Where Marie sleeps.

Even though nearly every soldier is running towards the gunfire, their training trumping their fear, Stein bolts through the crowd, like a half blind, twisted version of that Frogger game Marie loves so much. He vaguely hears Spirit shouting after him, but Stein ignores him. He only thinks of Marie and that awful, musical scream. The sand isn't conducive for running and rocks make it painful while barefoot, but he ignores that as well. Marie - he has to get to Marie.

He could find his way to her tent in pitch black, even though it looks the same as everyone else's, but when he sees blood pooling out from one of the tents, a lone military booted foot sticking out, his mind slips and he freezes. His breathing stops until he realizes that the tent isn't Marie's or even Kami's. He swings his head around until he finds her tent and then rushes to it, ripping the flaps open, only to find it empty. It's in a complete disarray though, which isn't normal, because Marie is orderly whereas he is an organized disaster. He pants as he stares at the mess, his mind trying to come up with a logical, good reason for her tent looking like there was a struggle in it.

There isn't one. The enemy ambushed their camp at night. The alarms were too late.

Stein backs out of the tent, watching as one female soldier drags the body of her dead comrade out of the tent and a Lieutenant barks out orders for the rest still around them. For a moment, Stein can only see Marie, even though he knows that it isn't her. He spots Kami tying her hair back and storms over to her, grabbing her by the arm.

"Stein," Kami growls, glaring at him, "what the hell-?"

"Where is she?" Stein demands.

"What are you-?"

Stein cuts her off again. He doesn't have the time for this. "Where is she? Where is Marie?"

He knows that he shouldn't be worried about one mere soldier. His job as a soldier is the protect the entire unit; his job as an alchemist is to incapacitate the enemy. But tonight, he doesn't give a damn about his job. He didn't join the military to go to war, although he knew the chances of being deployed. He didn't join the military to kill people, although he can't rightly say that it upsets him. Those things about the military never truly bothered him - until he found out that Marie signed up.

Kami's eyes flicker around and widen when she comes to same conclusion that Marie is not there. She snaps her gaze back to Stein, who remains still and blank-faced. "I don't know."

Everyone is shouting and the gunfire throughout the camp is so loud, but Stein is still able to pick out another scream from the outskirts of the camp that he knows is different from the rest. It's not the same scream as before, but it's just as horrific. He's never heard her scream so fearfully before - surprised, sure, and angry, most definitely - but he knows that it's her and his heart leaps so hard that he's shocked that he doesn't choke on it. He lets go of Kami and dashes off in the direction of the scream and into the night.

"Stein, you can't go alone!" Kami yells after him. He doesn't care. He doesn't care that he causes her to swear and disobey orders from her commander to follow after him. He doesn't care that he's running barefoot and seemingly weaponless into danger that he doesn't know.

He only cares about Marie. Besides, he's never weaponless. His alchemy makes him a weapon.

Just outside of the camp, Stein makes out a few figures wearing black cloaks struggling with something - or rather someone. They're trying to drag Marie away, but she's fighting back viciously, kicking out so hard that a tiny bare foot connects with one of her attacker's faces and knocks him back. However, the one holding onto her throws her to the ground and she hits a large rock.

It's dark, but Stein sees red.

The first attacker goes down easily. He's barely back to his feet from Marie's kick when Stein grabs a hold of him from behind and sends a violent shock throughout his body. The human body is only capable of handling so many volts, as Stein has tested himself, and the man actually wets himself as he screams in pain and crumples twitching and smoking to the ground. Stein doesn't care.

Marie is crying out in between gasps as she struggles with the second attacker on top of her, a knife in his hand. The sounds are enough to shake him to his core and he loses sight of everything else. Stein rips the man away from her. This time though, when his alchemy takes charge, he produces a shock that is meant to do more than just cause bodily damage. He uses every bit of knowledge that he hides in the dark recesses of his mind to violently rip the man's very being apart at the seams. It's pain beyond pain, but not enough to kill him at first. It's torture and it's horrific. Stein doesn't care.

He shoots another charge through the man, so forceful and full of hate that it causes the man to practically implode, like every blood vessel in his body bursts, making a sound like a squelching pop. What's left of his body is flung into the stone wall of a mostly collapsed building, but not before blood sprays everywhere on Stein, Marie, and the sand. The fight from the camp behind them sounds quiet compared to Stein's heavy breathing and Marie's whimpers.

The energy of using such vicious alchemy causes Stein to collapse to his knees, but he focuses on Marie and drags himself over to her. She's only wearing a once white shirt and underwear, most likely having been caught unawares while she was readying herself to sleep. It's stained in blood, but not all of it from the attacker Stein just killed. She's holding her face in her hands and Stein's mind reels when he notices blood slipping out from between her fingers and underneath her palms down her neck.

"Marie," he barely breathes her name, but his voice causes her to tremble.

"Stein," she chokes on his name, her voice muffled underneath her hands. She curls in on herself, like she's trying to hide how naked she is, but he doesn't look away from the hands on her face. She could've been completely naked and he wouldn't have noticed right now.

Pulling her up to rest in the crook of his arm, he puts a hand on top one of hers and she whimpers again, but she moves slightly into his touch. It's a marvel even to him that the same hands that are so soft and gentle with her just caused horrors and violence beyond measure. It amazes him that Marie is so willing to trust those hands when he sometimes thinks he can't trust them himself.

"You have to let me see the wound." Her blood stains his gloves further and trickles down the side of his hand.

"No," she cries out, "you can't- I can't-"

"Marie," he says quietly, and even as she tries to shake her head, she allows him to slowly pry her fingers away from her face. She's terrified now, but Stein doesn't think he knew what terror truly was until he saw the man over top Marie with a knife.

He's wrong, of course. Terror is the ice that runs deep in his veins when he finally pulls a hand away from her face and sees the ruined eye underneath. A once beautiful golden eye that will never see again. Tears spill out of from under the hand that shields her one remaining good eye. He sees the damage, the blood, the darkness that she sees when she looks up at him. And he knows that nothing has ever compared to this moment because he has never seen someone so vulnerable and broken in his life and he never wants to see it again.

He thought he did. He thought it would be intriguing to break someone down like this.

But not this. Not her. Not Marie. Not Marie.

"Franken," the words tumble out of her mouth, "I can't see with my left eye. I can't see."

Stein is fit to end the war right here right now. His soul seems to hurt and he hates it. He wants it gone. He wants them all gone. He wants to kill the man that did this to her all over again. He cares. Goddamnit, he cares.)


Snapping his eyes open, Stein sat up from the desk and rubbed his head. Some time in the night, he must've slumped over and finally succumbed to sleep. He ran his fingers through his prematurely gray hair, the fringes hanging in his eyes, and took a deep breath, trying to focus his thoughts on the notes sitting before him.

It had been a very long time since he had thought about that night. Why had it come to him now? Was it Marie's resurgence or something else?

An emotion that felt strangely like guilt gnawed at the back of his mind, and he forced himself to his feet and into the bathroom where he almost emptied the contents of his stomach. Not even staring at those violent and vicious crime scene photos had affected him as much as that memory. Maybe it was seeing the scars under Marie's eyepatch the night before that had brought it up. He'd been so careful when stitching her back up in Ishval, the only one qualified to give her such intimate and intensive medical care on short notice, but she'd hid it from him ever since. The scars were old now, older than the ones on his chest and face.

He was good at giving people scars.

But he had been so delicate with her in a way that he could not be with anyone else. He didn't know if he could still be that way now or if the years they'd spent apart had allowed that part of him to fade away. To be honest, he probably had more in common with Medusa than Marie these days, which was why it made twisted sense that he'd be the one to find her.

Taking a shower was one of his better decisions. The hot water washed away any stray thoughts and by the time he was done, he was focused on the mission again, his mind clear of the past. He couldn't be distracted by anyone or anything if he was going to one up the Vector Alchemist.

When he stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, Marie was out of bed, staring a few inches away at the collogue he had created using the crime scene photos and notes on the wall. It looked like a complete disaster, but was in fact organized very well according to his mind and thoughts. Marie's one eye was wide and her mouth was open in shock as she held her chin with one hand and was pouring over the notes with the pointer finger of her other hand.

"I can't believe you did all of this last night," Marie proclaimed without even looking over at him, having heard the shower turn off and the door open. "Did you even sleep?" She glanced at the bed, probably noting that the pillows and blankets had been left undisturbed, and then at the desk with the chair pushed back. "Please tell me you didn't sleep at the desk when there is a perfectly good bed right-"

That was when she finally chose to look at him and cut herself off, her eye somehow widening even further as she outright gawked at him. It wasn't like she'd never seen him in such a state of undress before (being roommates had made that almost impossible) and she reacted the same exact way. It didn't phase him in the slightest. The human body was just that - a human body - whether it had clothes on it or not. Upon realizing that she was staring at him though, blush flooded her cheeks and she started to panic.

"Stein, you're naked!" A very obvious description, but one she couldn't seem to help.

"I'd assumed that you'd want me cleaned and refreshed for the meeting at HQ and the interview," Stein replied, not sounding a hint sarcastic. "One typically showers sans clothes. I'm not that abnormal."

Marie spun on her heels and stared determinedly at the door, folding her arms across her chest. "Please put on your clothes."

"Do I have to wear the uniform?" Stein asked as he began to rummage through his belongings. He took his time, enjoying the way Marie squirmed the longer he stayed unclothed. It was a very different sort of uncomfortable squirming than he was used to making people do. It was humorous. It wasn't...scary. He was used to people being scared of him, but Marie wasn't terrified of the prospect of him being naked so much as embarrassed. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed making her blush.

"I don't care what you wear," Marie told him, "so long as you wear something."

Minutes later, once he was presentable, Stein cleared his throat and Marie hesitantly turned back around to face him, like she was afraid that he'd be standing there with the towel pooled at his feet. She'd never seen him in that state of undress before. He refused to wonder if she had ever wanted to or not. She nodded her head, cheeks still pink, and then gathered her uniform before darting to change in the bathroom. Unlike her, the closest he had ever seen her to being undressed was when back in Ishval the night she lost her eye.

That was a dark place. He didn't want to go down that thought path again. Instead he walked over to his wall of evidence and put on his glasses, focusing on the task at hand. This was going to take him on a darker path, but he was comfortable with that.


Feeling better about not being in uniform, Stein watched as soldiers walked past him with thinly veiled disdain on their faces. They thought he was a plain civilian visiting Eastern Headquarters for some reason. Many soldiers felt that civilians had no place working with the military for any reason - that they lacked courage or something else. Maybe they thought themselves better than people outside of the military. That was a side effect of a military government. Stein didn't care though.

He could've sent half of these soldiers to scrub toilets for disrespecting him if he ever pulled rank, not that he gave a damn about technically being a Colonel.

At the moment, however, he was seriously considering it when a Lieutenant-Colonel began to chat up Marie, getting far too close for comfort. The man even put a hand on her arm, like he was familiar with her, even though she clearly wasn't comfortable and was only listening to him out of politeness. Stein could tell from the terse smile on her face and the way she had her arms folded that she wasn't happy. He could pick her genuine smiles out every time. Maybe he could get away with hitting the other soldier with a shock of alchemy. Stein was, after all, higher ranked than him…

"Ah, sorry for being late," Spirit sighed as he breezed into the room, sliding his fingers through his hair. He froze when he saw the soldier with a hand on Marie and then narrowed his eyes. "I don't believe that you're needed here, Lieutenant-Colonel Buttataki."

The man turned red in the face, saluted, and then scurried out of the room. It was one thing for Stein to have said something being a Colonel, but it was quite another getting told to scram by General Albern. For a moment, Stein didn't see the girl crazy redhead that had once been his best friend. There was something in Spirit that made the Fuhrer pick him as his right hand man, after all.

After taking a deep breath, Spirit smiled at them, back to normal. "Did you rest well?"

"Medusa is trying to make the perfect chimera," Stein said instead.

Spirit damn near choked on his tongue and even Marie let out a squeak. "Damnit, Stein, not in public." He shot Stein a glare, which Stein ignored, and then waved for them to follow him. They hurried to the room that Spirit had secured as his office while in Eastern with Spirit slamming the door the second Marie stepped inside. "In case you weren't aware, the Vector Alchemist's...activities haven't been made public knowledge yet."

Stein sat down in a chair and leaned back precariously, staring Spirit down. "Hm, I wonder why. Not good advertisement for the State Alchemist Program? 'Join the program where you can fulfill your wildest, illegal dreams.' It has a pleasant ring to it." The grin that split across his face was more vicious than it should've been, but instead of making Spirit shiver, it only made the other man scowl.

"You would know," Spirit snapped.

"The government pays me quite well for my research," Stein pointed out. "Who lacks humanity: the one doing the horrifying research or the one demanding it?" When Spirit couldn't answer, Stein let the grin slide away from its place, putting a neutral expression back on, the one that made people more comfortable. He liked getting under Spirit's skin, but with Marie looking at him like she was disappointed, it wasn't as much fun. Besides, it wasn't the point. "The same could be said of Medusa. Does the government want to capture her to stop her or use her?"

"Do you expect an actual answer?" Spirit asked, as Stein knew full well that even if Spirit knew the answer, he wouldn't give it. The government liked its secret.

Stein shook his head. "I don't need one."

He already knew. They had him in their greedy, dastardly clutches, didn't they?

Marie stepped in between them. "Moral crisis aside, we need to find her and stop her before anyone else is killed in the name of science." Her eyes flicked to Stein, but then returned to Spirit. No one had died in his experiments, but none of the human subjects that the government had allowed him had enjoyed them either. There was a very thin line when it came to science, one that Stein often toed and even stuck his foot over every now and then. Only Marie and Kami had ever called him out on it; the government encouraged it. "So what's this about the perfect chimera?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Stein asked, looking from Marie to Spirit. When neither of them responded, he sighed. He sometimes forgot that they didn't know much about alchemy, despite having been around him for years. He hated having to explain things though; it involved way too much talking. "Starting a few months back, there was a string of animals vanishing - lost dog and 'have you seen my cat?' signs and the like - which the MPs obviously didn't care about. You'll be able to find the reports. People are sentimental."

His words suggested that he was not. He thought of the box of Marie's belongings in his closet that he'd never thrown away, the picture of him and Spirit with the redhead's arm slung around his shoulders the day they had graduated from the Academy, the letters Marie had sent him that he never responded to. But no, he was not the sentimental type. He just had better things to do than deal with those things.

"Those animals never came back home." Stein watched as Marie's face fell. Likely she was picturing all the sad children who lost their beloved pets. He'd never had a pet himself. His parents had enough foresight to not get their young son a pet after finding him dissecting a dead bird. "There was an uprise in animal carcasses being found throughout the city around that same time. I know because I called Animal Services this morning and checked. Apparently, it was some pretty gruesome work."

"Similar to the victims'?" Spirit asked.

Stein shrugged his shoulders. "They didn't take pictures, but most of the employees had trouble keeping their lunch down." Even the man on the phone had gagged when Stein had pressed for details. He would've liked pictures so he could examine the damage himself, but some people didn't have as much foresight as him. Or as strong of a stomach apparently. Even Spirit and Marie looked a tad queasy from thinking about it. "The trauma done to the animals was violent, bloody, and left most of them unrecognizable, like their human counterparts."

Sitting down in a chair, Marie fiddled with her eyepatch. She used to do that when she was scared; he wondered if it meant the same thing now. Likely she knew that Medusa Gorgon wasn't just a mere threat or rogue alchemist on the loose. She was a serious danger to society. He hadn't even gotten to the terrifying part though. "So what changed? The government knew that her alchemy was centered on chimeras. She wouldn't have to hide that, even if..." Marie bit her bottom lip. "Even if her experiments were heinous."

Blinking slowly behind his glasses, Stein regarded Marie for a moment. Was that what she truly thought of his own alchemy experiments? It was true that some of what he had done could be considered atrocious. He'd sacrificed a lot for his research, not just countless nights of sleep. She had never condemned him for it before, but then she had been extremely upset when it had come to light that Stein had used Spirit in a few experiments. She hadn't yelled at him like Kami had, but she hadn't spoken with him for almost a week. Her silence had hurt much worse than any yelling. Once more, he wondered if that was the true reason why she left.

"Like any scientist, she moved on to the next phase of her experiments," Stein said in a flat voice. "Human test subjects."

Spirit bunched his eyebrows together. "Trying to combine humans and animals? That's the perfect chimera?"

"No," Stein replied, not gently either. Spirit huffed in irritation at being shot down. "It's clear that she was trying to combine humans with animals, perhaps splicing animal DNA into humans to give them animalistic traits. The first three victims were practically covered in animal blood; she began to be more careful after that, but trace elements are still there. It's impossible to wash away all of the blood." He scratched the scruff on his chin. He had forgotten to shave this morning. "Did you know there are some alchemists that believe you can give an animal the ability to speak if you combine a human and animal just right? The vocal chords of the animals would literally have to be replaced with a human's though."

That statement garnered him shivers from both Spirit and Marie. The idea of taking a human and blending them with an animal was so beyond most people's darkest imaginations. It took away the very being a human. Even if they were able to retain most of their human-like behavior, could they even be considered human anymore? And that was only if the experiments were successful. Such alchemy would've been horrifyingly painful, the shock of which had probably killed the first few victims.

It was terribly intriguing and exquisite. Thoughts about what those humans had gone through had plagued Stein's mind and kept him up for half of the night while he was studying the case file.

"Each victim was missing for at least three days before their bodies were found," Marie said quietly.

"Three days of methodical experimenting," Stein confirmed.

"Three days of monstrous torture," Marie snapped, as if trying to remind him of his own humanity. It had been a long time since anyone had tried to do that. A lot of awful things could be done in the name of science. Sometimes he didn't know if it was worth looking back at the line he'd most likely already crossed, but then he would be like the Vector Alchemist. He wasn't like her, was he? "Does she even have a soul?"

"I can figure that out when we find her, if you'd like," Stein said, almost like a boy offering his coat to a girl on a chilly day. Back in the day, Spirit would've drawled at how romantic Stein could be, but he was too busy lost in thought about the case.

Marie's eyes shined brightly. She was a soldier and she had seen war and many terrible things and she had lived with him during some rough periods, but she didn't try to hide her emotions. She used them. It was an admirable if not confusing trait. "She tossed them out like they were...like they were trash."

"They were failed experiments."

"They were people! With families that loved them and miss them!" Marie jumped to her feet, her one golden eye glaring at him hotly. Even Spirit flinched. Her hands clenched into fists at her side, like she wanted to punch him in the face. He wouldn't have stopped her. Hell, he deserved it, although he had never hurt her. At least he didn't think he had. Maybe his frankness bothered her, but she knew what he was like and had never pushed him to change before.

Still, Stein conceded, nodding his head. "Yes, they were people."

Sensing the change in the room, Spirit cleared his throat and cut in, "But after victim eleven, there weren't any traces of animal blood. You said it was impossible to get rid of all of it."

"It is," Stein agreed. "As careful as she is, she's messy as well. Not sloppy, but you can't avoid leaving a mess behind with that kind of alchemy."

"So what's her endgame?" Spirit demanded. "Did she give up and just start losing it?"

"She most definitely didn't give up," Stein scoffed. An alchemist with a mind like Medusa's wouldn't just give up after a handful of failures. She would press on until she succeeded or was caught, which could mean only one thing. "She must have been able to create some sort of animal and human chimera."

"I'm pretty sure I'd notice a half human/half dog hybrid running around town," Spirit responded dryly.

Stein shook his head. "We have no idea what they would even look like or how they behave. For all we know, they could blend right in with society." They weren't getting it, despite the fact that Stein was practically spelling it out for them. Marie was quiet. She had sat down again and was staring at him, like she could peer into his mind and find all the answers she needed. Maybe she could. She had always been good at reading him. "More likely, she's keeping them with her. She can't let them loose, lest they lead the military to her, but you don't throw away a success like that. She's too obsessed with her research to destroy damning evidence."

Groaning, Spirit tossed his head back and put his hands on his hips. He wasn't enjoying this exercise in thought. Stein supposed he could've told them outright, but they wouldn't have been able to understand. It had taken him hours of studying the photos and evidence for him to piece together the grisly tale Medusa had left behind. When he had finally realized what she was doing, his heart and mind had begun to race against one another. Chimeras were on thing - combining animals and humans was another - but this…

This was one for the record books that would force a lot a lot of people to question the goodness of man.

"Animals to humans with animals to humans without animals…" Marie murmured, mostly to herself. "A new phase." She connected eyes with Stein. "Her experiments evolved again." Pleased that she had been able to follow him, Stein actually smiled a little, although there was nothing to smile about. It wasn't a cheerful smile though; he didn't do those. She frowned. "But to what?"

"A perfect chimera," Stein answered, "a human chimera."

Spirit paled. "What does that…?"

"A chimera is a creature composed of two or more animals," Stein said, "and humans are animals, are they not?"

"That's not…" Spirit shook his head, refusing to believe the evidence even though it was right in front of him. No one wanted to look at it that way though. It wasn't just unspeakable; it was unheard of. Chimeras were animals, but people forgot so often that humans were a species as well that could be experimented on and dissected. "That's absurd - revolting - it's… It can't be done."

"A lot of what people have accomplished in science was once considered impossible," Stein pointed out. "What is science if not testing what can't be done?"

Marie put a hand to her mouth in horror as she watched Stein stand up and retrieve Spirit's copy of the case file from his desk. He opened it and flipped to the pictures of the twelfth and thirteenth victims. Out of all the bodies found, these were the most degraded and destroyed, completely unrecognizable. They had been found separately and on different days, but the time of death had suggested they died roughly around the same time. Though neither of them wanted to look at the photos again, they both walked over to stand on either side of them and look down.

"The DNA for both victims was completely trashed and we were unable to identify either of them using it, despite Victim Twelve, Larrson, being a convicted felon." Stein tapped the photo of a man who was barely recognizable as a man. Only a few body parts remained intact. With all that blood, they should've found an easy match, but had been left using other means to identify the victim. "Victim Thirteen, Wright, was similar, although the damage sustained to the body was not quite as severe and he was left more intact."

"So she did something to their DNA and blood," Spirit sighed. "We already know she's doing that."

"It's not just that."

Stein found photos of the victims before they had been kidnapped, experimented on, and killed. Though a former criminal, Larrson had found happiness in his family after being released. He was smiling brightly and waving in the photo taken at some backyard barbeque, looking normal as could be. Wright, on the other hand, was single in that perpetual sort of twenties way, unlucky in love while all his friends were married. The two victims hadn't known each other or ever crossed paths, being thirty years apart in age and living completely opposite lives. In his photo, he was sitting nervously in a booth at a bar, clutching a beer like it was a lifeline.

"Look at Wright's left hand in the two photos," Stein told them. "Tell me what you see."

Both of them leaned forward to examine the photos more carefully, their faces writ with concentration. Marie even traced around the man's hand in the photo where he was alive, like she might be able to send sort of comfort to him in the past. Unlucky in love herself, she might've felt a connection with the victim. Her empathy was one of her greatest strengths, one that he would never be able to understand, but he thought it hurt her at times too.

And then Marie took in a sharp breath of air. "The tan line on his ring finger - that shouldn't be there. He was single, never married, and that photo was taken just a week before his disappearance. There's no ring or line."

"And yet that hand is clearly connected to his arm and body," Stein added. "Larrson, on the other hand…"

"Married for twenty years," Spirit confirmed, "and the wife said he never took his ring off. That's why she refused to believe it was him at first. No ring was found."

"Oh my god." Marie jolted upright, her face nearly as pale as it had been the night her eye was taken from her. She had witnessed horrors before - had them done unto her - but that didn't keep her from being shocked any less. Her gaze slowly swung from the pictures to Stein's face and he could see in her eyes that she knew that he was right. He would never lie to her. "That's not Wright's hand; it's Larrson's. She combined them."

The experiment had only been a partial success, which was a failure in Medusa's book. It had probably killed Larrson in the process while Wright had died slower but eventually. She'd thrown them in the trash, disgusted by the lack of proper results, and she didn't care if people saw them. It had drawn notice to her, which confused Stein after all the lengths she'd gone to vanish and hide. If she hadn't been so careless with the victims, the government might never have gotten wise to what she was doing and sent him after her. What was she doing now? He had to know, not just to stop her, but out of his own morbid curiosity.

He knew better than to voice that thought out loud.