I'm back. First update of the new year! Anyway, as always, enjoy!
Lor
"Let me get this straight: some one not only took a sample of my blood without my permission but they also experimented on it?" I asked. "Better yet, its part of a weapon?" What a mess… The cig in my hand burnt half way to a nub with out my help. The ashtray had been nearly empty two hours ago. Now it was over flowing, little cinder soot was smearing all over the metal gossamer tabletop. I was slowly working my way through the leftovers of my third helping.
"That's the high and low of it," Leon commented, cutting Hunnigan off before she could talk. He leaned back in his chair, coffee cup in hand while Hunnigan shifted, leaning forward. She was nursing a slow bowl of soup. Her back had yet to touch the back of her chair. For the last two hours she had been bringing me up to date on just about everything underneath the sun.
"Isn't that illegal?" I took an idle breath, drawing up my cigarette.
"Illegal?" Hunnigan asked, pushing up her red glasses rims.
"Henrietta Lacks," I retorted, blowing away a cloud of blue grey. "You can't take and use body tissues or fluids without consent. Especially for medical or experimental use, especially if there's some kind of monetary gain from it." Hunnigan raised her chin, her fingertips lightly brushing against the tabletop.
"You know your history," Hunnigan said quietly, unruffled. I shrugged, drawing my fork through the buttery innards of my mashed potatoes.
"I know my legal cases." I paused, sucking on my cig again as I scooped up some yellow potato meat. "I also know its illegal," I commented, "and that I'm due any money you're profiteering off my blood." I still don't trust Hunnigan, I don't have a handle on reading her yet. She's in control of too much, she knows too much. Its almost like she was a spider, spinning out information at her own discretion. Another black widow with an ax to grind… She knew something about how my blood came to be a mass produced product. I wanted to know what she knew. Hunnigan regarded me coolly, folding her hands together neatly. Her impassive face left something to be desired however. She wasn't the iron maiden she thought she was.
"Its illegal to participate in bio terrorism," Hunnigan said lightly, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards into a complacently civil smile. "Which begs to question your involvement in Racoon City."
"Isn't it also illegal to beat the shit out of someone in a basement?" I ignored her implied conspiracy theory. Yes, I had been at Racoon City and she wouldn't be making implications if she had been there as well. That place was a nightmare. I really don't know how the viral outbreak had gotten so out of control. There were no survivors when I toured the place as it was I had barely gotten out of town before everything had been incinerated.
"This drug-this viral depressant-doesn't exist officially," Hunnigan continued, her hands moving across the table to play with a spare bullet. It was a 'Quietus' sample, the same ones I'd been shot to hell (twice thankyouverymuch) with. The stuff gave you a bitch of a hangover, but it was more than that. The Quietus was what put mufflers on my senses. Or at least that was the theory I was going with. Hunnigan tilted her head to the side. I glanced between her and Leon.
"Neither do I," I hazarded. "Officially."
"Officially," Leon agreed. He reached for his coffee and saluted me with it. "Welcome to the club." It figured boyscout didn't exist as anything but an agent.
"No wonder you don't have a life," I commented, eating my potatoes.
"Despite your discretion, I was able to dig up a substantial paper trail on you Lauren. I can see how you'd know your way around legal cases. You were pre-law before you dropped out of college." Funerals tend to depleat your college fund, you bitch. I grit my teeth together despite how impressed I was with her research. I don't like to think of the reason as to why I was forced to drop out of college.
"Its Lor," I retorted, swallowing my mash potatoes. "Not Lauren." Ignoring me, Hunnigan placed a thick folder on the table after reaching into the depths of her bag. It had to have been four inches thick. I whistled softly, pushing the food tray away.
"Damn, all that's mine?" I reached for the folder and flipped it open. Medical bills, lots of them, slid into view. Academic records, dental bills, rent bills, police reports, credit car bills, in school suspension slips, even some x-rays and the occasional child services paper work.
"The extent of medical attention you've received over your life is appalling," Hunnigan's voice had a shade of disgust in it. "It's no wonder your schools called child services on your parents." My gaze flickered to Hunnigan. The bitch had no idea what she was talking about. I brushed the irked nerves aside.
"I fell down a lot as a kid," I flash her a smirk as I flipped through the folder.
"You also beat up a lot of your classmates as a kid," Hunnigan said flatly. "You were profiled as overtly, physically aggressive as well as socially withdrawn. By the time you reached middle school, you'd been labeled with a LSDL." I raised an eyebrow, sparing Hunnigan a glance as I shifted through my paper work. "It stands for 'let sleeping dogs lie'." I glanced up from the folder.
"Sound Advice. You should learn from the past."
"And yet history is bound to repeat itself," Hunnigan pointed out. Touché. With a sigh, I flicked the folder closed and shoved it to the center of the table.
"So what exactly is it that you want?"
"I've already told you what we require," Hunnigan stated, crossing her arms.
"And my money?" I asked. Hunnigan's eyes narrowed.
"You don't exist, we can't put money into an account of an imaginary person."
"But you can grant the whims of an imaginary person." With that Hunnigan let another small smile fill her mouth, although her eyes stayed calculating. They were hiding my existence by getting rid of any potential money trail. In all actuality they were probably killing two birds with one stone. If I didn't exist, who could come looking for me? Interesting. Who was out there that would want my blood?
"Exactly."
"And what about this?" I asked, nodding to the folder. "I exist on paper."
"Not any more you don't," Hunnigan said, pulling the folder towards her. She nodded to the folder in her hands. "This is the last hard copy of documented proof that you exist." Brusquely she dumped the folder into the trash bin next to her seat. Setting the trash bin on the floor she leaned back in her seat.
"Riiiiight," I sucked on my cigarette. So I was a national secret. Great. "Speaking of whims and wishes," I leaned back in my chair as well, "what happened to the guy I was with?"
Hunnigan raised an eyebrow.
"The guy?"
"Yeah, the man," I said, grinding out my bud and reaching for my pack. "White hair, destroyed the better part of your compound along with that monstrosity of a beast." I cracked my neck as I tapped out a cig.
"What about him?" Hunnigan asked. She was watching me carefully, impersonally. That curve to her mouth was back again. So was a slight twitch of her right pinky finger.
"Oh so you some how missed all that upstairs?" I asked carelessly.
"We are all very keenly aware of what happened outside the facility," Hunnigan said. "The 'monstrosity' as you put it, has been disposed of."
"And the guy I was with? You dispose of him too?"
"Guy?" Hunnigan asked, repeating me.
"Really?" I asked her, grabbing my lighter. "I thought we were getting along so swimmingly too." I lit up. "Now would be a good opportunity to learn from history." I leaned forward. "I can be civil, but I can also turn on you with the drop of a hat."
"You'd never make it out of here alive," Hunnigan said coldly, unruffled.
"Neither would you sweet heart," I retorted flippantly, letting my finger tips play over the hard candy handcuffs on the table. Fat lot of good it did if the bastards weren't on my wrists.
"What do you know?" Leon asked, diffusing the land mine before it went off.
"What do you want to know?" I responded.
"You'd sell out your own ally?" Hunnigan demanded. Ally?
"What do you want to know?" I repeated.
"Why would we care about what you know? We can always find out information our selves," Hunnigan said coolly. Huh, she's affronted. Nice. Now I can really get my eyes on something worth seeing.
"You suck at playing hard ball Hunnigan," I nodded to Leon. "He asked, because in reality, you didn't find squat did you?" I asked. "Not locally and not globally. Nothing to match is DNA, his dental, his fingerprints, or hair fiber. In fact he's a ghost, isn't he? A weird, superhuman ghost."
"Weird?" Hunnigan asked. I gave her a meaningful look.
"I'm not going to play if you're just going to sit on the side lines, sweetheart." Hunnigan sat quietly chewing on that. She looked to Leon.
"His genetics are different," Leon said, his voice strained. "From what the technicians in the lab have observed he heals fast, faster than you." Leon paused, getting a dark look in his eye. "He moves faster than you as well and if I had to make a guess, I'd say he's stronger than you too." That's an understatement.
"He does a lot that isn't normal," I agreed. "Where is he?"
"Tell us what you know," Leon said.
"Tell me where he is."
"If this is going to be a working relationship, we've got to have a reason to trust you. We've kept our end of the bargain-"
"For the moment," I interrupted.
"Give us something to use," Leon finished, "and then we'll be able to move on from there." He had a point, still the pecker woods probably wouldn't believe the truth even if I told them.
"You're not going to believe me." Leon chuckled grimly.
"After what I saw out there? I think you'd better try." I gave boyscout a small grin. He thinks he's seen it all. I think its time to get creative….I'm not going to lie, but its not like I can just blurt out the fact that Vergil's a half demon. Without proof, who the hell would believe me? Besides, I can use this to my advantage.
"We were partners," I say after a moment.
"Were?" Hunnigan asked.
"As in past tense, yeah. Honestly, I don't know what he was doing here. He just tends to show up when the shit hits the fan and usually leaves just as easily."
"So its common for him to do things like," Hunnigan didn't bother to finish, she gestured towards the ceiling.
"That and worse," I said flatly. I sucked on my cigarette. "He was at Hope. Hell, he's killed me on at least one occasion."
"Killed you?" Leon asked skeptically, taking a drink from his cup.
"In a manner of speaking," I retorted. "I'm harder to kill than most humans."
"No doubt due to the particulars of you genetics," Hunnigan said. She was writing everything down on a legal pad that had miraculously appeared from now where. I watched her write for a moment.
"You're keeping him sedated." It wasn't a question. All the same, Hunnigan treated it as if it were.
"Yes." Hunnigan didn't look up as she wrote. She paused and raised her head, looking to me. "We're going to wake him up soon, for an interview." That's not good….
"You mean an interrogation," I corrected him, reading in between the lines. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Beg your pardon?" Hunnigan asked.
"Unless you're blind, then you've seen what Vergil did out there. He'll do the same to you."
"So his name is Vergil then?" Hunngian retorted curtly.
"Yeah, like in that book."
"Book?"
"The Divine Comedies?" I looked between Leon and Hunnigan. "It's a classic." Hunnigan took a breath.
"You concern is appreciated and noted however, we've taken precautions." She rose to her feet. I snorted.
"Precautions? You've taken precautions?" Like what the hell good would that do? "Listen babe, let me put this in perspective for you." I leaned forward. "On a scale of one to ten on the evolution-o-meter, pond scum scores a one, humans land at three. I'm a four and on a really good day, I'm a four point five. Vergil? He's like a solid eight. He annihilates things like us for the fun of it."
"You're saying he's dangerous."
"Did I switch to French at some point in the conversation?" I demanded, annoyed. "You already know he's dangerous."
"Just as we know you're dangerous." Leon said pointedly. "You're not in handcuffs and you're conversing normally with us two."
"I'm human," I said flatly. "He's not. You don't fuck with Vergil. Further more after going out of your way to make him a temporary prisoner, he'll go out of his way to make you suffer for it. He'll kill every person in this building just because he can." Unless by some miracle Vergil decided they don't pose a threat. Or if they had something he wanted, like maybe a cure to the virus...
"Vergil knows you though," Leon said. "You said you were partners."
"I also said he's tried to kill me." I stated. Hell he's already done that.
"But you might stand a chance of reasoning with him? A better one than any of our men would anyways." Leon asked carefully. I looked Leon in the eye.
"Are you making a suggestion of some kind?"
"Help us." Leon said. "If he is that dangerous, you could buy the time it would take to sedate him again."
"Are you kidding me? Help you? Wake up him? In here? Why the hell would I do that?"
"Consider it a down payment on our budding relationship," Leon said, a small smile on his face. He glanced to his watch as he got to his feet. "You've got three hours to make your decision. After that we're waking him up either way." This is black mail. I looked between Hunnigan and Leon. Hunnigan was watching Leon just as closely as she was watching me. I really didn't like her, but I didn't want an entire building of murdered people on my head. Especially since I failed to stop Vergil before. They're so damn idiotic!
"How many of your people has he killed already?" At that Leon had to look away for a moment before answering.
"One hundred and thirty five."
"And how many wounded do you have?"
"Nearly eighty are wounded or in need of medical treatment of some kind," Hunnigan said. "Not all of the deaths and injuries are from the final assault on this base."
"But roughly fifty percent of them are." I snapped back. "What the hell do you have to ask him so damn bad? What's worth your lives and the few remaining people still alive here?"
"The same thing we asked you," Hunnigan said calmly. "We need help preserving the human race." I snorted. Vergil? Preserving the human race? They are idiots. "We would like to ask for his participation in creating an inoculation to the virus." Viral inoculation?
"What do you mean by 'viral inoculation'?"
"A cure," Hunnigan said. "Quietus is merely a stepping stone. The only way to beat wide scale bio terrorism is to prevent it."
"Like polio or smallpox," I finished for her. "You tear apart whatever healing agents are in our blood, mix it with a microscopic amount of mutagen from whatever viral ooze you can get out of a zombie and that's your cocktail cure."
"As unsophisticated as that explanation was, yes, we believe vaccinating people against a weaponized virus would be the best method of preventing its spread."
"You're asking a lot," I said after a moment. Leon tilted his head to the side, waiting. I sighed and crack edmy neck. "Fine, I'll do it. I help you with Vergil. But, we're doing this my way, got it?" Leon smiled.
"Whatever you say Lor." You have no idea what you idiots are getting yourselves into….