{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+} CH 4

Violet followed the group through the winding tunnels, knowing that if she hadn't had them as guides, she'd have been lost a while ago. Finally, after what felt like a few miles, the tunnels opened up into an open area similar to the Labyrinth, though not as large.

From the old, cracked tiles and the broken metal rails, Violet could only assume that it was an old subway station that was no longer in use.

"Talon," a voice so similar to Elisa's came from their left, that Violet had to check where the detective was.

"And then there's Delilah," Elisa, standing on Violet's right, said softly. "I'll explain later."

Violet frowned, just in time for a gargoyle to run to their sides. Violet jerked in reaction at the sight. Where Nayeli looked very much like her mother, and very human except for the wings and tail, Delilah was more Gargoyle in appearance.

Same skin tone, she mused. Same hair, voice, and similar facial structure, but that's where the similarities ended.

Delilah gave Violet a shy smile and extended her hand, "It is good to meet you," she said.

"It's nice to meet you as well," Violet replied. There was a story here, she thought, but wisely decided to wait and ask later.

"You are here to meet my brothers?" Delilah asked.

"I am," Violet said.

"Alright," Delilah said, though there seemed to be a hesitancy there. Not so much in the words or the tone, but in her actions.

"Is there something wrong?" Violet pushed.

"Maybe," Delilah said.

"Well, I'm here to try to help," Violet said with a gentle smile. "Can you introduce me to them?"

Delilah nodded and turned to lead the way farther into the labyrinthine corridors.

Violet followed right behind the female, and only the soft footfalls behind her let her know that the others were still there. She was still pretty much coming into this situation blindly, but she'd ask questions later if needed.

There was a large grate with what looked to have been a gate on it, the padlock, if there had been one, was long gone. There was a long, rusted chain swinging from the door and backing Violet's assumption that it had been locked at some point.

Delilah led the group through the door, and into the larger open area that held a few of Manhattan's homeless population who had sought shelter there. Several were gathered around a barrel that held a small fire for added warmth.

As they approached, many of the occupants called to both Talon and Delilah by name.

Delilah made a turn into what appeared to be an old employee locker room. The dark lines and bolt holes on the ground outlining where locker banks had once stood.

Despite those lines, the space had been well taken care of. The walls had been wiped down, floors swept, and a few spare cots had been stacked in a corner, awaiting the next occupants.

Delilah's clan gave Violet a brief pause. She'd known they were clones, but being told one thing and actually seeing it was a bit… jarring.

"Hello," Violet greeted them.

"Hello," they returned, almost in unison.

Oh, boy, Violet thought warily. This was going to be interesting…

{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}

Violet put the last blood sample into her custom carrying case. Similar in appearance to an old fashioned zippered make-up case, it was thickly lined with foam and insulated to keep the samples from exposure to outside temperatures and keep them as "fresh" as possible.

Even she had to admit, however, that she probably wouldn't need to run the samples to get the results that she needed.

It had taken her moments to realize that the samples would show her exactly what she was afraid of…

They were suffering the same degeneration as that monster, Thailog, had been experiencing. It wasn't obvious, but the signs were there.

The only one not showing signs and symptoms was Delilah.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the cloned clan, Elisa had started asking questions.

Violet had answered her honestly, then began asking questions of her own, including the one that she'd known would make Elisa and Talon uncomfortable.

"What is Delilah?" she'd asked, saving that one for last. "She's not a clone."

"No," Elisa responded, shaking her head. "She's not a clone."

"We don't exactly have a good answer for that," Talon admitted. "I guess the easiest definition is that she's a hybrid."

"She is a mix of genes from myself," Elisa said with a grimace, "and another female gargoyle. She was created to be a… companion for Thailog."

Violet couldn't help the flinch in reaction, though she was unclear if it was in horror or sympathy. Most likely both, she admitted.

"Which is why," Talon said softly, "Elisa and I are a little uncomfortable around her. The clones, well," he shrugged, "They were preprogrammed to be subservient. They were meant to follow orders, and have a diminished capacity for thought and reason. They have the ability," he hurried to explain, "and they're not ignorant."

"I could see that," Violet said. "It might take them a moment or two to get their thoughts together, but they have the information and the knowledge."

"You understand them," Elisa said with a sigh. "It took us a while to see it."

"We were hesitant," Talon admitted. "When the clones began asking for more independence. Delilah stood up for them, made her case, and we were willing to give it a shot because Delilah was there to help them. In the end, they're more capable than we'd thought they would be."

"They've improved a lot," Elisa said, jamming her hands in her pockets. "I wonder sometimes, what would have happened if they had remained with Thailog. If they would have been allowed to develop this far, and if they would have stayed with him?"

"Or would they have seen him for the monster he was?" Violet asked.

"Yes," Talon answered.

The group grew silent as they entered the main Labyrinth area.

{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}+{+}

Violet stood in shock and looked around her.

She'd been warned, hadn't she?

She stood in the middle of the pure white walls of her laboratory area and stared in awe.

Shrink wrapped pallets filled the lobby. New centrifuge machines and DNA processing machines, dealer tags still taped to the sides, had already been moved into the lab rooms.

New computers were humming, already in place on the new desks that had been assembled inside the cubicle sized offices.

Elisa had told her that Owen and Mr. Xanatos would probably have things in place by the time they returned.

She'd had no idea…

Even the machines she'd had in her prison laboratory hadn't been this high tech. She hoped the learning curve on this equipment wasn't a steep one, as she wouldn't be hiring people for a while.

Not until the Clones were taken care of. She didn't want to have to start off a professional working relationship with lies. Lies were too complicated to keep up.

She wished she still had access to all of those notebooks with her research in it, but she'd destroyed them with the laboratory on the night she'd gotten free. She'd saved a few pages, but they had more to do with the findings of Nayeli's blood, and not the deterioration that had been so prevalent in Thailog's samples.

She wasn't flying completely blind, but with no earlier samples to compare them with, she'd be leaning heavily on her memory from a time that she would very much rather forget.

She chose a small station and claimed it as her own for the moment. She set up the necessary equipment, a laptop for her findings and notes, and set up the slides.

She started with the clones, and was disheartened to find similar cellular weakening to Thailog's.

Each and every one of them.

Delilah, however, showed no such problem. In fact, her blood samples were that of a healthy young woman.

Violet sat back in her chair and frowned.

So, Mr. Xanatos had hired this mad scientist… What was his name again?

Sevarius. That was it.

Xanatos hired Sevarius to make Thailog and clone Goliath. From there, Thailog had hired Sevarius again, and made clones of the clan here. He purposely did not pre program them with any kind of knowledge, probably to make them the perfect "tools" to suit his purpose.

The common denominator there was this Sevarius guy.

Then there was Delilah. Although uneasy to talk about her, understandably so to Violet's way of thinking, Elisa told her as much as she knew.

Delilah, while technically a clone, was created more along the lines of being a hybrid rather than a straight up clone.

Violet was curious if she actually had more in common with the mutates than the clones...

And she'd been made by Thailog, without any interference.

Violet found it a safe bet that Thailog hadn't known about the defect in the clone's makeup, and if he did, he hadn't known it was in his genetic makeup as well.

'So,' Violet mused, 'If Thailog hadn't known about the defect, he wouldn't have put it in Delilah's mix of genes. Or, if he had known about it, maybe he thought that was going to be unique to the clones and left it out of Delilah's process entirely.'

Violet rubbed at her neck. She'd already been at it for hours, studying, logging and hypothesizing.

In a few days, she'd take another sample from the clones to get a better idea of the rate of deterioration.

In the meantime, she had a blood sample from Nayeli in hand. She'd work on trying to isolate the healing property there and do an analysis to see if it would be synthesizable.

Hopefully, once that was done, she could perhaps use that artificially created compound to slow what was happening to the clones enough to find a cure.

That was the hope anyway…