What Isn't And Came To Be
Chapter 7: Weird Science
Jack Kline looked up with his wide unfocused new born eyes, taking in the sight of a familiar face, one he had only ever seen reversed, in murky memory. Green eyes welling with concern looked down at him from behind framed lenses and messy bangs.
"Oh!Poorbaby, poorJack, Iknow, Iknow, ithurts.
Shhhsweetheart, Shhh… We'regoingtohelpyou…"
The voice was soft and soothing, but the sounds held only the barest shadows of meaning.
Warm, gentle hands ran over his body. There was a familiarity in the touch, despite the awful pain spiking through his chest, he was comforted by it.
Reaching out a weak flailing hand, Jack wrapped one of the kind woman's fingers in his fist, wanting desperately to communicate his bewilderment with everything he had experienced so far of the world.
Floods of sensation, sound and half focused images flowed out of him in a surge of golden radiance.
...ooo...
His mother's voice, telling him that she loves him, one last time; as an overwhelming constriction grips him and propels him into blinding light.
A sensation of tearing and sundering.
Then, an overwhelming feel of absence and loss.
A lessening of what he was, words and knowledge slipping away out of his grasp as his mother's soul and spirit depart, leaving him alone.
An unknown time later, something overshadows him, a huge monolithic figure that looms high above. It makes loud, sharp noises, reaching out to shake at the rapidly cooling bulk that was once his mother. But the body is empty of everything that was once Mother, achingly unresponsive to his cries, or the stranger's attempts to rouse her.
Suddenly, he is swept up into the air, lifted from where he has been lying.
Blue eyes peer down at him from under a halo of gold wavy hair.
But it is all wrong.
The eyes are wrong.
They aren't the eyes of an Angel, there is no resonance behind the flesh.
This isn't Castiel, the one who was supposed to be here, to be his father.
The being holding him is human, like his mother was, but something about the woman is… off. Waves of confusion, resentment and fear batter at him, emanating from her and a darkness flickers in and out of the warm radiance of her human aura.
The stranger carries him away from Mother's body.
A flurry of sensations follow.
The crystalline sound of running water.
A warm wet cloth rasping over his skin.
Hands, seemingly huge and all encompassing manipulate his oddly weighted and unresponsive body.
Fabric covers his chilled skin.
Then the stranger goes away and he is left for what seems like a long time.
When she returns, her aura is more stormy, shot through with anger, fear and grief and yet more of that stomach churning darkness.
Something long, gold, beautiful and glimmering is in her hand.
…The way the light from the window runs along its shiny length, reflecting onto the ceiling is wondrous to his newborn eyes.
Pain! Sudden, sharp and shocking! How could something so beautiful and shiny-gold make such hurt!?
He has no control of the blast of power that lashes out, battering the strange woman away from him.
The universe whimpers. The strange woman's spirit and soul go away, the darkness goes away.
He is totally alone.
Hurt and afraid, crying … An eternity abandoned.
So alone, so confused, so scared.
Wailing unanswered, till the pain in his throat and chest are the whole world.
Then she comes and he knows her.
He remembers, "I am," and images of faces that she shared. Her face, a family, a child, like him, that she loves, as Mother once loved him.
...ooo...
"Mary stabbed you, how could she?… I know, I know sweetheart, I'm going to help… I'm just worried I'll hurt you worse, just hold on, okay?"
Something has changed inside him, with the sharing.
Jack understands the sounds, they carry emotion and meaning now.
It is as if the ship of his being has found safe harbour in the hands that comfort him, and in the green depths of the eyes looking down upon him, with warm compassion.
She wraps that warm comforting hand around the beautiful-horrible golden pain and draws it out.
She makes the agony stop.
She is everything that is good, like mother.
He watches as the beautiful shiny-gold thing that caused such pain, slips through her fingers and falls away out of sight.
…ooo0ooo…
After Crowley left with Mary's body, Michele looked down at the child in her arms, with a shocky, sick fear welling somewhere near her stomach.
It was hard to comprehend that something so small and defenceless looking, could kill.
It scared her, the thought of bringing this child back to where Johnny was, it scared her.
But what could she do, Crowley wanted them to play happy families and he had all the power.
Jack had changed her body in the blink of an eye, made her start producing milk. Because he was hungry.
Crowley had already done something to her, when he brought her back, he'd made her body years younger, somehow. And now this child was twisting her physiology to suit its needs on whim! Everything, even her own body seemed to be slipping out of her control.
Crowley said he hadn't known, hadn't planned it, but everything seemed like a setup, like he was dealing cards from a loaded deck in a magic act.
The demon wanted to use Jack as a weapon, and wanted to use her as something to hold over Jack's head, to elicit obedience, the same way he was with Johnny on her. It all felt so inescapable.
Michele was both a scientist and a mother, she knew the major hormones involved in lactation. Oxytocin and Prolactin.
Oxytocin, the love hormone, which affected recognition, trust, empathy and emotional bonding, as well as attraction, sexual or otherwise.
It was part of the chemical cocktail Sirens and Mermaids used on their victims for a reason.
And then there was Prolactin, a hormone which altered neural circuits, reduced negative reactions to stress, helped with adaption … and also increased the production of dopamine. Dopamine was a hormone that played a pivotal role in motivation, reward and pleasure, it was implicated in the formation of addiction.
From a survival standpoint, it made sense. Nephilim were creatures that killed their real mothers on birth; they required another nurturer; to feed and care for them, to love them.
From that scientific, survival standpoint, Michele could almost appreciate the elegance of it all.
From a personal standpoint, however, it felt like entrapment and manipulation.
Crowley wanted her to be a doting, willing and malleable caregiver and Jack, by some inbuilt reflex was acting as his accomplice. What else could, or would the two of them do to her, to get what they desired? The thought horrified her.
Except… she looked down at the baby in her arms… and her heart whispered, 'I know you.'
She'd known this child, from the moment he'd been just a glimmer of possibility; just a wistful idea and a string of words on his mother's lips.
She'd known him, before he was born; when he swum in darkness to the ebb and flow of Kelly's blood and breath, and dreamed his watery dreams. She'd shared with and taught him about the world; of love and loss, and helped to save his life when his mother, Kelly, lost all hope.
She had been there, holding his hand, in some odd way, when Jack had broken free of the will and purpose of Lucifer and burned Dagon to ash.
She'd been there when Kelly named him, Jack, and built his crib, and recorded her tearful goodbyes.
She and Jack had always, always, shared some kind of bond, and despite everything, Michele couldn't help but believe that God meant for her to love and care for him.
Jack had been through a lot, in such a short time. He'd lost so much, been hurt, afraid, hungry and alone.
Michele sunk into the rocking chair and unbuttoned her shirt, cradling the child close.
Chris had never managed to breastfeed, and she'd ended up having to milk herself like a cow, with a machine, for a year, because of his oral issues (and refusals, from several quarters, on the topic of baby formula.) it had been more than 7 years since she'd held Johnny in her arms and fed him like this. But, it was surprising how easily she fell back into the task.
The cold-hot electric shock pain-sensation of milk let down.
The demanding clamp and tug of the small mouth latching on.
It hurt.
They never told you that in antenatal class, but, at the start, breastfeeding was pretty much an act of endurance.
You did it for love and because you had to, because it was expected and you'd come this far; endured this much pain already, getting the child into the world. What was a little more? Worn out by the trauma of the birthing experience and shellshocked, discomfort came secondary to the necessities of nature.
She might not have given birth, but Michele felt more than a little shell shocked herself. Yesterday she had died.
…ooo0ooo…
Crowley collected the two corpses snapping himself and his cargo of dead, between North Cove, Washington and Beijing China in the blink of an eye.
The laboratory facility where he stood, was a far cry from his days poking and fumbling at monster corpses in abandoned warehouses;
that smug tub of guts Leviathan, who'd pranced around wearing Dick Roman's face, had been correct saying science had it's uses.
This slick hightech research laboratory, was just one of several medical interests Crowley now had in China; all housed in unremarkable buildings in forgettable Jiāoqūs. Far, far away from Winchester meddling and Men of Letters snooping.
Crowley had come to adore communism, fascism, despotism and any other -ism that squashed free press and devalued human life, in the years since his first taste, back in good old Nazi Germany. All the -isms churned out a populas of fearful, obedient dupes, conditioned against questioning authority figures.
Asians tended to be polite, honorable, dutiful and useful. And it definitely didn't hurt that they tended towards shorter stature; unlike the looming, overgrown oafs he had been forced to tolerate, while working in the States.
The people of communist China also raised far fewer objections against incorporating magic and ritual into their scientific endeavours, as a culture they had yet to banished the supernatural to fairy tales; like their biased, western counterparts.
When some of China's top scientific minds had simply vanished out of circulation, into Crowley's employ, no one had so much as raised an eyebrow. Things like that happened, all the time, and prying was discouraged. Unless you wished to disappear also.
This current facility, was a top secret anex of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences; proportedly run by the strong arm of the people's republic of China.
The research scientists and various hangers on, working there, believed Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan, Director General of the Health Department, for the people's republic, had approached each and every one of them personally. Hand picking them, for their loyalty, exceptional scientific prowess and dedication to their country.
Of course, Crowley was the one that had told them all these lies, while wearing Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan's meat, to seduce them away from their lesser paying, actual government employment.
Crowley laid the corpses out on a pair of metal gurneys in one of the large walkin refrigerators and paused for a moment to study what was left of Kelly Kline and Mother Winchester.
He didn't have any specific plans for the two corpses. Yet. But had benifited from a happy whim to collect the vegetative dregs of Lucifer's previous vessel. Such little momentos often proved incredibly useful at later junctures.
Crowley found his head scientist, He Jiankui, staring at a computer screen attached to the damnably expensive scanning electron microscope, he'd purchased the previous year.
He cleared his throat, making the little Asian man jump in shock, wrenched him out of what ever mad scientist pondering he was currently persuing.
Jiankui straightened stoically as he barked a string of Mandarin orders pertaining to the where abouts and storage of the two corpses and grinned at him, slanty eyed. Bowed his head in eager compliance. The scientist looked for all the world like he had just won the lottery, rather than ordered to store a brace of corpses.
He Jiankui had always been a tad eccentric, had long skated the edge of what others (even from fascist or communist countries, obsessed with progress at all costs) considered ethical, to further his ground breaking research into fetal stemcell transplantation, cloning, DNA and human gene modification.
It had been easy to tumble Jiankui over those arbitrary, pesty ethical lines and into live human (and monster) experimentation. Crowley's little farce with Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan had been just the job. He fully believed the people's republic and his revered leaders, endorsed all his explorations (for the greater good, of course) into realms where lesser men feared to tread.
Crowley's monster samples and little projects had led He Jiankui in fascinating new directions of scientific study, he was enthusiastic to assist.
When Crowley had desired to extract the DNA of one Samuel Winchester from various hair and blood samples, and then find a way to incorporate that DNA into the vegetative body of a Caucasian male, (who had once housed Lucifer) in order to solve the vessel degradation issue and create a permanent prison for his enemy, Jiankui had willingly complied.
Crowley fed and valued his scientific proclivities and as a result the little Asian scientist was as sold as any deal candidate Crowley had ever convinced to pucker up, at a crossroads. Jiankui's soul was undoubtably still headed to Hell, but Crowley's foresight in not involving a demon deal in this, his little side endeavour, had proved wise again and again over the years. Jiankui and co stayed off the books. Work had continued here, throughout every ebb and flow of Hell's leadership squabbles.
His head scientist sent some minions off to deal with the bodies, and began to undate Crowley on the progress of the various projects. Crowley hid the fact he only understood one in every five words of technical jargon the man was spouting. He didn't want a repeat of the incident where he'd complained about the cost of running that damn electron microscope. And asked, rhetorically, if the thing ran on gold. Only to be told, by the insufferable little scientist that, yes indeed, part of the visualisation process did involve coating the sample with gold atoms."
Jiankui continued on unabated, prattling on animatedly at him in Mandarin, about his personal project (Creation of gene therapy to render an individual genetically immune to certain viruses,) and the unforeseen (by Jiankui) issue of the recipients developing haemophilia as a result. (Fancy that, considering the man had been using jinn genetic material to confer the immunity.)
But Crowley barely paid mind, his thoughts mostly taken up by planning his next moves.
First he needed to organise a safe, secure location to store Lucifer's nephilim spawn and his caretakers.
A comfortable gilded cage for his new pets. Not in America, New Zealand or some other English speaking nation, he decided. Not after Ma Cherie had been all set to run off and blab to Jodie Mills.
Not China either, he decided irritably, China and New Zealand, his pet prophet's home country, shared too many political ties.
He wanted somewhere situated in a pleasantly misogynistic nation, preferably with a bad track record of human rights, especially, for foreign women. One of the Arab nations, perhaps.
And then, after his amusing little toy family was settled in their gilded cage, there was the ever present issue of Hell, and his erstwise throne to deal with.
—/—-/—-
Authors note: Thankyou to Celine (as always) and the unnamed Guest for reviewing my previous chapter.
To answer Guest's comment about chapter one being too quick, I felt that rehashing the scenes leading up to Michele's Death, and the death scene itself from "The Thing You Hate" felt a little too much like dumping my previous fic into this one, and if you do that where do you start? (Back at Michele's first vision of the demon king? When Crowley turns up in her kitchen?) Even cutting out everything but Michele and Crowley's interactions it adds up to a hell of a lot of words and would require effort to prune down and craft into a coherent narrative. I find I'm not passionate about rehashing a story I've already told and want to play with This story. I doubt the effort required would gain me much constructive feedback on my writing or the plot for all that work. If you are keen "The Thing You Hate" is always there.