Survival

Chapter 26

Bugs

...

"Now that I've actually seen him, I'm kind of relieved. I mean, he's terrifying, but not knowing is worse than actually seeing him, because your mind supplies yo with all kinds of crazy images of your worst fears, and he just looks like a really tall, skinny bald guy in a suit with no face." Stiles leaned back in the chair, "He's not nearly as scary as Peter's Alpha form."

"He doesn't look anything like The Mute, not really," Sean said, "Now that I think about it, The Mute was worse. He had those eyes, those cold, heartless eyes that looked at me like I was nothing. Eyes that didn't care, the eyes of a true monster. He'd probably have killed his own mother if he thought he could get away with it. Slender Man is a blank, there's nothing. He's scary, but he has a harder time expressing whether or not he's evil or wants to kill you."

Okay, so maybe he was acting a little braver than he felt, none of them except Lydia could read his mind, right?

Oh, yeah, Werewolves can smell fear! So much for being macho, Sean...

If anyone noticed, they didn't bring it up. Probably because they were frightened too.

"The eyes are the windows to the soul," Stiles reflected, "Perhaps he has no soul."

"Whatever he is, he isn't very helpful. 'Scientist' it turns out, is a very vague term, you have forensic examiners, medical technicians, mechanics, chemists, several teachers, meteorologists, dietitians, veterinarians. The list is endless. And for all we know he could have been referring to Christian Scientists... And, yes, we checked that angle, turns out not a single member of the religion lives in Beacon Hills, though we do have one Scientologist, who is a woman. They referred to this Scientist as male." Sheriff Stilinski was tired of this crap. Why couldn't the stick-man just give them a name, a starting point?

"What about sociopaths? Can you track them?"

"It's hard. Medical records, including psychiatric records, are confidential, and we need evidence or strong suspicion on an individual to get a warrant, we can't issue a blanket warrant on all mentally ill men in Beacon Hills. Every man in town would be on it, myself included. But we can look at criminal records, see if there are known serial killers or hit men who kill by snapping the victim's neck. Jordan's running down that lead now."

"Hopefully we'll find him before anyone else gets killed."

...

Later,

The Pack was sitting around, trying to think of something they could do to help.

So far, they had nothing.

So Lydia decided to lessen the tension with an odd thought that occurred to her,

"Sean, have you ever worked as a lifeguard?" Lydia asked.

"Hn? No, I didn't get out much, I haven't been to a beach in years. Why?"

"For some reason I keep picturing you dressed as a lifeguard."

Sean smirked, "Oh really? Fantasizing about me?" He flexed his arms, displaying well-developed biceps.

"You were also a narcissistic idiot."

"Why thank you very much..." He mock pouted, "You still love me, don't you Willow?"

Willow rubbed up against his leg, purring as he picked her up.

"Are you hitting on my girlfriend, Sean?" Scott glared playfully at him.

"No. I happen to like living, thank you very much."

"Now that you mention it, I remember a lifeguard who looked like Sean..." Liam said, scratching his head, "Weird, huh?"

"I guess I have a doppelganger or something." Sean shrugged. "They say everybody has a twin somewhere..."

...

After the wolves had left, the cat came out to play.

Willow rubbed herself against the couch and noticed a slightly irritating sound, one she'd heard before in this part of the house. Well, she was tired of hearing it. Squeezing herself under the couch, she headed for the sound. It was coming from a small black bump on the side of one of the couch legs. Hissing, she batted at it, and it fell, sending out an odd ping.

"Willow, what are you doing under there?" Sean lifted the couch and saw Willow hissing at a small black bump that was making a barely audible buzzing sound. He picked up Willow in one arm and pushed the buzzing thing out with his foot. "What did you find?" He set the couch down, set Willow down, and picked up a small piece of plastic perforated with thousands of tiny holes.

Sean had never seen a 'bug' before, but he realized pretty quickly that this was some kind of listening device. Very quietly he walked upstairs to where Scott and Stiles were playing video games. He put his finger to his lips and handed the tiny device to Stiles, who took one look at it and turned pale and wide-eyed.

"Is that a...?"

Stiles clapped a hand over Scott's mouth.

"Willow was scouting out the living room. I left her on the couch, I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not, she's practically pack." Stiles played along, "Hey Scott, look out, it's a Covenant Elite!"

Stiles set the bug on top of his phone, set the volume to maximum, and started his playlist. He then motioned for the others to follow them as music blared through the room.

"Somebody's been spying on us!"

"Where did you find it?" Scott asked.

"Like I tried to say, Willow found it under the couch."

"Then we have to assume that no room in this house is secure. We have to get out of here, where we can talk." Stiles looked about wildly, "I knew it! Everybody thought I was paranoid but I knew I was right! EAT THAT GREENBERG!" Stiles looked at Sean, "That offer of your place still good?"

...

When The Scientist returned to review his recordings he was given an unpleasant and noisy surprise. First the cat hissing and batting around the listening device, then Sean presumably picking it up, silence, Stiles talking about 'a Covenant Elite', presumably something to do with a video game and a loud period of unpleasant sounds that young people these days call 'music'. Then the receiver went dead.

He'd been outmatched by a house cat.

Far worse than the loss of intelligence gathering equipment was the fact that The Slender Man and his Proxies had set the wolves upon him, literally. But he knew that he would not be left to the idiotically merciful Scott McCall. Slender Man wanted him, personally.

Well, two could play at that game.

He had perfectly aligned the multi-wavelength energy emitters. The configuration and frequency had to be precise, as he could not afford Slender Man slipping from his grasp, or, worse, himself falling into Slender Man's grasp. The Proxies could move the emitters if they were not trapped within, but, unable to call upon their master's powers it should be fairly simple to deal with them, using his rather violent associate and his own gun.

If Slender Man dared come for him, he was in for a surprise.

...

The Walcott home,

The assembled pack felt somewhat uncomfortable sitting in the living room of a house once owned by a family of cannibal Wendigos who had been brutally murdered in a room just up the stairs. Not to mention the hidden room beyond the stairs which contained a freezer full of human bodies. It was especially uncomfortable for the only member of said family to have survived the savage assault.

Still, they had to admit, it was much roomier and gave them more privacy than the other meeting places.

"I can't believe it. Who would bug us? Hunters?" Liam asked.

"That's not how hunters usually operate. And I can't see The Slender Man needing to use listening devices to spy on people. It could be the government, it could be that Scientist, it could be an enemy we don't even know about."

"That's all we need, more enemies." Kira moaned and rolled her eyes.

"Where is it? The bug, I mean."

"Danny has it. He's an even better techie than me, if we're lucky and the guy hasn't deactivated it yet, we might be able to trace the signal it's broadcasting back to the receiver."

"Could that put Danny in danger?" Brett asked. "They might be keeping track of those things."

"I doubt it, he's careful with things like that. Besides, everybody loves Danny, even Aiden didn't hate him, he just saw him as threat to Ethan because of Deucalion. If something happened to him, the whole town would chase the guy down."

"Shouldn't we call the police?"

"First rule of The Pack, Sean. We call on The Pack before we call the cops. I love my dad, but sometimes the police just get in the way."

"Can you check the house for more bugs?" Scott was uncomfortable that someone had been listening in on everything going on in the living room for who-knows-how-long. Including certain heated 'study sessions' on that very couch with his girlfriend... "They cold be hidden anywhere."

"Can a fish swim?" Stiles grinned and pulled a small device from his backpack, "I knew this would come in handy one day. It detects transmissions, like those from a bug."

"Sean, are you okay?" Derek looked at Sean, who was staring at the stairs. The stairs that he had taken to his room that awful night.

"Yeah. I'm just... Thinking." He swallowed hard. He hated The Mute, even dead he was screwing with his life, his mind. This was his home the home he had shared with his family, Mom, Dad, David... He wasn't so much afraid or anxious as angry. How dare that mouthless bastard come into his family's house, how dare he lift a hand against them!

Derek slung an arm around his shoulder. He knew that kind of thinking well.

"Speaking of killers, has anyone seen Peter lately?" Scott asked, "I know this isn't his style, he's more tear and shred, but if he's running around in the woods he could be in danger."

"Peter Hale, in danger? Even Slender Man wouldn't bother him. You know what happened to Kate, Jennifer and The Mute-" Malia quickly stopped talking as Sean's head shot up.

"Never mention that creature in this house. Ever." His voice was bitter and cold, "It does not deserve the honor."

"Sean, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about... That, I was just thinking about enemies Peter has killed."

Sean gave an odd smile, "It's alright, I should have told everyone, I just do not want it to ever defile this house again."

"So, Peter can take care of himself if he runs into Mr. Neck-Breaker or Mr. Scientist." Stiles said, changing the subject, "I'm more worried about what he might do. Or be doing. He's not exactly rational. He may be hunting The Slender Man himself."

"My uncle's not stupid. He knows when he's outmatched."

"He's a sociopathic killer."

"Maybe, but he's not the sociopathic killer we're looking for." Stiles retorted.

"He goes off alone for days at a time, sometimes weeks. I think he just tries to forget. And you've seen people he killed before he 'reformed', you saw Laura's body..." Derek looked at Stiles and Scott, "And Sean and I personally saw him kill... You know who. He has no restraint, he doesn't kill like a human, he kills like a wolf."

"One thing's for sure, the killer's not a Wendigo. I mean, a Wendigo will snap your neck... That's how I killed that deputy." Sean didn't like to bring up the unfortunate deputy he had killed in his feral state, but it was true, as much as he wished otherwise. "Anyway, a Wendigo would stash his kills away or eat them, or at least, part of them. Those bodies were untouched." Sean explained, "Even if someone forced a Wendigo to kill for them, they'd still have to feed him frequently or have him turn on them."

"Him or her." Malia added, "Besides, didn't you say The Voice kid said the killer was human?"

"That depends on your definition of 'human'. We're all people, intelligent, some more so than others, with emotions, feelings, values, or lack thereof. All of you wear human skins, and some of you, like Scott and Liam, were born 'human' to non-supernatural parents." Stiles reasoned, "So I figure you guys are all just different branches of the human family tree. Maybe Wendigo evolved because of a long and terrible famine, or Werewolves to cope with life in the wilderness."

"No." Brett shook his head, "We may be from human stock, but I don't think any natural evolution produced us. We're called 'supernaturals' for a reason. We've all seen and experienced magic, we've even encountered demons, well, you guys have. And now The Slender Man and his Proxies. We can't deny that supernatural forces exist in the world. I go along the lines of the 'blessing/curse' theory. Perhaps the first Werewolves were blessed by their tribes to become better hunters, and the first Wendigo-"

"Was cursed." Sean finished, "That's the traditional view. A Wendigo is a human being cursed with a spirit of insatiable hunger for human flesh as a punishment for cannibalism or excessive greed. Maybe my first ancestor was cursed by a shaman somewhere and became like this... Maybe his family was cursed too, or he married and had kids who passed down the curse."

"Well," Stiles said, "A cursed human is still a human. Not that you have done anything deserving of being cursed. Or any of your family. Or pretty much any other non-killer Wendigo on earth-"

"Shut up Stiles, before you dig an even deeper hole for yourself." Derek growled.

"Shutting up." He made a motion of zipping his lips together.

"It's alright. He was trying to be nice." Sean sighed. It really didn't bother him, besides, Stiles was a great friend, even if he did occasionally say something hurtful, he never meant it. He wondered idly if he might have a form of Tourett's Syndrome. He decided to shift topics slightly, "Stiles, did you ever find anything out about The Slender Man and triangles?"

"Well, nothing specific to him, but the triangle can represent the trinity, the number three, and ideas like past, present and future. Direction is also important, if it's pointing up, it represents male fertility, pointing down, female. It can also represent a spiritual ascent or a decent. The most interesting to us is that some religions view it as a 'Summoning Symbol'. During the ritual the summoned being is supposed to appear within the triangle. Of course, Slender Man was already here when the symbol was arranged, we know that from the tapes. If Slender Man or his Proxies arranged them, they might mean something totally alien, if The Scientist or his pet sociopath arranged them, who knows?"

"How do we know if it was facing up or down without some kind of point of reference?" Brett pointed out, "The bodies were in the middle of the road."

"Since all the bodies were lain out with heads facing Beacon Hills, I'd say it was up." Stiles answered.

"Like a road sign. Turn Here." Liam shuddered. "Maybe someone's trying to summon something else? Something to stop The Slender Man."

"I doubt it, we're not that lucky. Probably someone trying to summon The Devil."

...

After several members of The Pack had gone Sean walked over to the stairwell and reached for a key-rack on the wall, removing one with a key ring that held a smiley face with the tongue sticking out.

"This is the key to David's car. 2010 Ford Fusion, baby blue. Mom and dad's minivan is in the garage too, if we need something to carry several people at once." He explained to Liam, who was close behind him.

He picked up another key with a key ring charm that depicted The Loch Ness Monster. His father had always had a sense of humor about his homeland. Nessie is much bigger than Bigfoot, he always insisted.

His dad.

Son, every Scotsman knows that a kilt with underwear is just a skirt.

Sean smiled at the memory.

Not so much at the memory of that jerk brother of his pulling up his kilt in front of his grandparents when he was eight. He's sworn he'd never forgive David for that, but he had a long time ago.

Besides, he'd given David a nice shiner before mom separated the two of them.

He smiled again and pocketed the keys.

...

To be continued...

Notes

The lifeguard bit is a reference to a Teen Nickelodeon show called Bucket and Skinner's Epic Adventures, in which Glenn McCuen played a narcissistic lifeguard named John 'Aloe' Aloysius.

The information on triangles came from a website on alternative religions. These are not all of the possible meanings, and most are simplified here.

Wendigo do not possess enhanced hearing, or Sean would have heard The Mute even before he began killing his family. He would also have heard Willow under the bed. And Patrick would have heard Deaton approaching.

Covenant Elite is a reference to a militaristic alien race, The Sangheili, serving the enemy forces of The Covenant, a genocidal religious empire made up of several alien races in the Halo series video games.

The quote about kilts is not mine, I overheard it from a Scottish-American man at a Festival of Nations event.

Sean's grandparents are dead, he has no close living relatives.

I picked a car at random for David.