The sight of the warehouse sent a little shiver up Jenny's backbone; somehow it was even eerier now that it was near dark. Only the faintest light of day still lingered, and it was fading fast. Still, she felt somewhat better with a gun in her hands. Cutter had given them tranquilisers with an upped amount of the drug. Stephen feared it to be fatal, but the professor assured him that it would barely knock out the hybrids if things turned eventful. Becker's men—the ones still standing—surrounded the building. The captain himself was there, despite a medic's warning that he wasn't fit for work yet, still wounded. The Deadly Dozen, sans Connor, followed just behind them, holding the long, slender subjugation rods in their hands; strange, how such a harmless-looking object could cause so much pain.
"Stay close," said Cutter softly, his voice nearly inaudible. But she could just hear him, and she edged a little nearer to him. Then he raised his voice slightly, looking at the others. "Look, when we go in there, you let me handle it. I know you think that you'll need to protect me, but unless I give the word, you let me take care of it. Understood? This is important," he said. And this was important. The felids operated like a pride of wild cats, and his position as head of the pride had been earned by proving his worth to every other contender. They were savage creatures, for the most part, and those animal instincts wouldn't allow for a weak leader. He had become leader through blood and violence and pain. If he wanted to keep his place as head of the pride—and therefore maintain his authority over the hybrids—then the others couldn't help. He had to keep them in order by himself.
"Will things get eventful when we go in there?" asked Becker. If the captain was in pain, he was doing a fair job of keeping it hidden; apart from a slight paleness in his skin, he didn't look any different. He held onto his shotgun firmly.
Cutter stared at the building. In the past two weeks, Merinus had been getting more and more ornery, more volatile. He knew that she was trying to take his place, but damned if he'd let her take over. Something in her had gone wrong in the Complex, something had…broken inside her mind. She had gone off her rocker at some point, but she was also the one of the strongest fighters he had. Which meant he couldn't kill her just yet, but he knew that she was going to try and make her little power play. "More than likely, yes," he answered truthfully. "I mean it. When we're inside, don't fire, don't raise your weapons, don't speak, and don't make any sudden movements until I say so."
"And if we do?" Danny wondered, eyebrows going up. "Hypothetically speaking?"
Cutter glanced over at him. "Then you will have your throat torn out by one of the hybrids. Hypothetically speaking," he answered. "C'mon. Let's go."
As they walked into the warehouse, Stephen blinked at the sudden, harsh illumination that greeted them. The overhead lights were glaringly bright and hot, bathing the inside of the warehouse in their unforgiving radiance. With its concrete floors and lack of all furnishing, it somehow reminded him of a gladiator ring or a stadium. There were people up on the walkway above, some fifty-odd in number, dressed in ragged, unwashed clothes; their eyes seemed the only thing alive about them, shining eerily bright in their thin, pale faces. They couldn't seem to be still, shifting and hissing softly; most of them kept their eyes on the eleven black-clad members of the Dozen.
The clack-clack of heels on concrete echoed through the warehouse, and a woman stepped forward, the only other person on the ground floor besides them. It was Merinus. Her thick red hair fanned around her shoulders like a lion's mane, her eyes near glowing green. She wore a formfitting black vest and jeans with heeled leather boots. The scars on her arms and shoulders were clearly visible, and there was a wild flicker in her eyes. "You brought them here?" she asked, flicking her gaze towards the Dozen.
Cutter nodded, stepping forward; thankfully, none of the others followed him, and he advanced until he stood only about ten paces from Merinus. "I did. The place I work in, it's called the ARC. I told you about it," he said, his voice echoing in the well-built acoustics of the warehouse; the other hybrids were all looking down at him with intense, eerily shiny eyes. "The man who runs it, he has a place for you lot to stay, better than this. It's a government facility with shelter for all of us, protection. We need to be together for when Helen comes back with the canine hybrids. You know she isn't just going to let us go. She will come for us, and we have to stay together if we want any chance of surviving."
Merinus shook her head slowly, her green gaze never straying from his; she didn't need to blink as often as normal people did, it seemed. "I don't think so, Cutter. We're not going to work with those things—" She pointed to the Dozen with one finger. "—and we're for damn sure not going anywhere near any 'government facility.' We're not going anywhere with you. I'm going to find that bitch and kill her myself, her and her dogs."
"You can't do that, Merinus. Helen's too strong. With all the canine hybrids and those clones, she'll have you torn apart before you get anywhere near her," Cutter answered. She was going to fight him. He knew it for a fact now. And he had this feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was probably going to have to kill her. They had come to a fork in the road. One path was Merinus's—she would try to go at Helen headfirst and get all of the hybrids either killed or recaptured—and the other was Cutter's—he would take them back to the ARC where they could regroup and hopefully survive.
"Then you know what's going to happen," she said.
"It doesn't have to," he replied.
"It does."
She moved so fast it was hardly visible to the humans watching and practically flew at Cutter. They moved faster than any human being could, almost a blur of movement, fast and agile, their claws extended like sharp hooks. It wasn't like the Dozen moved, with all the elegant grace of a dance flowing across the stage; this was raw animal strength and power. Every time they managed to land a blow against each other, the sheer force of it made the human audience wince. It was almost as if a giant was swinging a sledgehammer, and each sledgehammer was armed with five steel spikes…. Standing there watching, Jenny was clutching her gun so tight her fingers were starting to cramp, and the rest of the team looked just as anxious. It wasn't easy, having to stand there and watch their friend and leader fight. The hybrids, however, watched with rapt attention, hissing eagerly, feeding off the violence and fury of the battle below.
Cutter, on the other hand, had lost himself in the thick red haze that eliminated all thought, allowing the inner animal to surge forward and overtake his human instinct. Rage pulsated within him like a second heartbeat, and his mouth tasted like burning metal and thick, heavy blood. Fire coursed through him as if molten iron had replaced his blood, and his own heartbeat thundered in his ears. Every sense was on hyperdrive, and he felt alive with power. The strength he forcibly held under wraps ran free through him. All his attention was on Merinus, and he could tell that the animal was alive in her as well.
When she came at him again, he jumped back, waiting for her to make some sort of misstep, waiting for her to stagger the way he knew she eventually would. He would not allow this usurper to take his place. This was his pride, not hers. She crashed into him, intending to throw him to the floor, but he was too large and heavy to be knocked over so easily. Instead, on inspiration, he grasped her shoulders, hooked his claws deep into her flesh, and threw himself backwards, using her own momentum to drag her over and slammed her to the floor. Merinus shrieked and bucked, trying to throw him off, but he used his greater weight and superior strength to keep her pinned down. He pinned her arms beneath her, trapped her legs with his, and fisted his hand in her hair, jerking her head back. Her throat was right there, the faint bluish veins pulsing beneath her fair skin. It'd be easy, so easy, just to sink his teeth in and rip the life right out of her with the taste of her blood on his tongue.
But then some little thread of human thought pushed back against the animal. He couldn't kill her. Not yet, anyways. Cutter forcibly wrestled the animal back down, forcing himself to keep that fury in check, to not simply bite down and kill her. He could feel the beast roaring in protest, but he kept himself in check. He placed his forearm across her throat and pressed down, cutting off her air, and he watched as her face began changing colours. "And you'll do as I tell you to unless you've got a goddamned good reason otherwise. Understand that?" he ground out. When he got no response, he pressed a little harder on her throat; she gave a little gurgling noise, turning a peculiar shade of purple, and nodded. He pulled his arm from her throat and rolled to his feet. Merinus turned over on her side, coughing and spluttering, returning to a normal shade of colour. Cutter turned to look up at the hybrids still on the walkway above. "Well? Anyone else have an argument they'd like to run past me?" he asked, voice echoing in the warehouse; there was only silence to answer him. "Alright then."
He was not Connor Andrew Temple. Or at least, he was not the old Connor. Old-Connor was timid and easily frightened. He couldn't handle a gun and had once shot his little bird full of tranquilisers. He was a bundle of nervous energy and could barely walk straight. He was overlooked by everyone around him, seen as a nuisance, ignored and ridiculed. He was easily forgotten, despite the brilliance that he possessed. He was the one that was shuffled off to the side and left behind. He was the one that wanted nothing more than to love and be loved in return and yet was always pushed away as unworthy of affection.
He was not Echo Thirteen Omega. Echo was the spider's pet, a tool made only to kill whomever she so wished at the snap of her claws. He was a serpent with fangs of steel and hate, all tied in sticky spidersilk as a blood-drenched marionette, dancing as the spider of doors pulled upon his threads. He was a hollow man, his insides all carved out and replaced with sick, oily darkness that swallowed his thoughts and drenched his soul in death. He had no thoughts, no will, no emotions.
He had become something new. When he managed to put all his pieces back together, built around his love for his precious Abby—little bird, lizard girl, warrior woman—he realised that he was not Old-Connor nor was he Echo Thirteen Omega. No. He was all new, though he didn't know exactly who he was just yet. He was not timid or scared of his own shadow. He was not hollow and without thoughts. He was fast and strong and smart, tied to his brothers and sisters with silver cord and bound to his Abby with all-new threads that were delicate-strong. And crazy. He was quite crazy. He knew that he was. He doubted that he'd ever be not-crazy ever again.
As he fitted together more of his broken, scattered pieces, he knew that he could now function. He could survive with this, even though he was not yet complete. He had to wake, find his brothers and sisters, find the rest of his old team, and warn them of the spider. Everyone had to know of the spider and her treachery. He could hear music now, a soft, shimmering melody that reminded him of the past when he was still a person, and he allowed the soft velvet touch to guide him back to himself.
His eyes opened.
As Cutter guided the rest of the hybrids into their new accommodations, Stephen stood beside one of the Dozen—the slightly-stocky short woman with cinnamon-coloured hair and warm brown eyes. He tried to remember what her name was. They all had a 'subject title' that consisted of a phonetic letter, a number, and then a Greek letter; seeing how they couldn't remember their proper names, they went by the first part of their subject titles instead. He knew that Connor was Echo Thirteen Omega, and he knew Whiskey Two Lambda and Quebec Sixteen Rho, but it was hard to keep the rest of them straight. The rest of the Dozen had taken up positions around the vehicles, eyes never straying from the hybrids, not missing anything.
True to his word, Lester had a place for the hybrids to stay by the time they got back. There was a bunker, identical to the one that the SAS crashed in between shifts, except this one was in an entirely separate building, connected only by an enclosed breezeway. It was fully equipped with a kitchenette and gym and enough beds for the lot of them. It'd been a living hell coaxing the hybrids into the trucks to bring them back to the ARC. Most of them were more animal than human, and the idea of being in an enclosed space freaked them out worse than a claustrophobic. Only by way of much growling and snarling had Cutter managed to get some of them into a vehicle at all; there was one girl, a young little thing that looked like she ought to still be in secondary school, that'd done her fair share of pushing and shoving as well. The redhead that the professor had gotten into a knockdown-dragout fight with had helped with bullying the other hybrids into the trucks, looking utterly cowed herself.
"I wanna ask you something, if that's alright," Stephen said.
She glanced up at him. Her hair was in a tight braid that hung between her shoulder blades, and her small frame was sheathed in the black uniforms of the Dozen. They all wore the same boots, fingerless gloves, trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and jackets, all of it solid black; the clothes fit to their forms like a second skin, and when the light shone upon them just right, they seemed to shimmer with a faint iridescent sheen, like the glimmer of oil upon water. He wondered what it was made of. "That is satisfactory," she replied.
"When Lester said you and the others all had to give up your weapons, you agreed, just like that. Didn't even cheque at the gate," he said. "Why'd you do it?"
She glanced up at him again. Foxtrot, that was her name, Foxtrot One Kappa. "Because if we truly wanted to damage you, we would not require access to our steel fangs," she answered calmly. "I will give you an example. Within a two-metre radius from where we stand, there are fourteen items that could be construed as weapons. Three of them are sharp, and eleven of them are blunt. As the majority of the possible weapons are blunt, I will continue on that hypothetical pathway. From this position, there are twenty-three ways of combating an assailant with a blunt weapon. Four will kill you, twelve will permanently disable you, and the remaining seven will cause injuries that, whilst being extraordinarily painful, you will recover from in the course of several months."
Stephen stared at her in disbelief, his shock clear on his face. Apparently he was right when he thought of them as living weapons, and it seemed to go further than just having skill in a fight. She had an inherent knowledge of weaponry and finding impromptu weapons when unarmed. "Wow," he mumbled at last.
Foxtrot continued on without even hesitating. "And if I was in a situation that did not have any item that could be construed as a weapon—trapped in an empty room with an assailant, for example, I am more than proficient in numerous forms of hand-to-hand combat. I know every major pressure point in the human body as well as all of the most vulnerable areas of your anatomy and several nerve clusters that, if struck with sufficient force, would leave you or any one of your limbs partially or fully paralysed for several hours. You may have superior height and weight, but I was designed to have far superior strength and agility, as well has extremely heightened endurance and a high pain tolerance as well," she said.
He didn't quite know what to say to that. It seemed that Cutter hadn't been lying when he said that they really were built to be weapons. "That is…quite impressive," he managed to get out at last.
Clasping her hands together behind her, Foxtrot nodded then turned her large, sweet brown eyes up to his face. "You have seen me fight, Mr. Hart, so I believe you already know the answer to your own question. If we had not been equipped with our knives during combat in the ARC the day previous, would the outcome have been any different?"
Abby had gone home only to feed her pets, shower, and change her clothes before returning to the ARC. Rex had been even more excitable than usual, chittering and squawking excitedly; she wondered if he could smell Connor on her. Cutter and the others hadn't come back yet, and she hoped that everything had gone well with those other hybrids. When she returned to the medical bay, he was exactly as she'd left him, pale and unmoving on the cot. He almost looks like he's dead, she thought, then shivered coldly at the mere thought of having him dead. She'd been tormented enough in the year that he'd been missing with nightmares of him dead or captured or tortured.
She sat on the edge of the cot beside him, reclining on the pillows. His skin felt cooler than hers, as if his body temperature was just a degree or so lower than normal. There was a stray lock of hair hanging in his face, and she gently brushed it back, for a moment just taking in the familiar sight of him. The angles of his face had shifted, become more mature. The dark stubble that shadowed his jaw no longer made him look like a boy that'd forgotten to shave but a young man with physical appeal. The dark hair that framed his face looked silky soft and practically begged to have someone's fingers comb through it. There was a new scar on his face, a diagonal line that cut through his right eyebrow. She lightly traced it with her fingertip, wondering how he'd gotten it.
Please, Conn, wake up soon, she thought. The Dozen said that his semi-comatose state was due to his memories—his former self and everything that made him Connor—colliding with all the mental programming and behavioural conditioning that'd been forced into his brain. Cutter described it as shorting out his programming. She just wanted him to wake up. She didn't know if he'd remember anything or if he'd still be like the rest of the Dozen, but she hated to see him just lying there. She sighed and turned on her mp3, sitting beside him with head on his shoulder; it was far too quiet in the ARC without her music. And of course, the first song to come on was the one that meant the most. A smile pulled at her lips. She couldn't for the life of her remember what it was called or who'd written it, and it was one of those slow, pleasant songs that could easily be a lullaby. Remember this song, Conn? You used to sing it 'round the flat all the time, she thought, and he had; whenever he thought he was alone, he'd either hum the tune or sing it so softly it was barely audible.
She pulled her lashes open and let out a strangled gasping cry of surprise; Connor's head was turned towards her, and his eyes were open. A wide grin spread across his face, putting the familiar dimple in his cheek. "Hello, Abby," he said.
A/N: points go to Lady Silverbird, who spotted and correctly guessed my salute to my other fandom in the last chapter. For those of you who may have missed it, in the previous chapter, Stephen said that he'd named his favourite rifle Vera...just like Jayne Cobb from Firefly, created by the man who is boss, Joss Whedon.
"A trade? Hell, it's theft. This is the best damn gun made by a man. It has extreme sentimental value. It's miles more worthy than what you got."
"'What I got'? She has a name."
"So does this! I call it Vera."