When Jonas and Rathbone reached the bottom level, Danzig, one of the life science team was waiting to meet them. He was now wearing a thick coverall over his t-shirt and shorts in deference to the freezing temperatures.

"Here you are Doc," He told the dark haired scientist.

"What is this?" Haagens said startled "What's going on?"

"No need to worry, Mr Haagens." Danzig took his arm "Just follow me and we'll take you somewhere a little warmer."

They escorted him down the short corridor at the end of which there was a thick steel door. Danzig went through the security checks and after a few minutes the door swung open. Even at a few feet away, you could feel the heat radiating out of the room beyond the door.

As they stepped inside Haagens was starting to get really jittery now "What the fuck is going on, man?" His voice was shaking.

The chamber they had stepped into was another control room, much like the one on the next floor up where the exotic was being held but the viewing window that took up one whole wall looked onto a room beyond that was much bigger and darker. Unpleasant organic, shapes were dimly visible in the half-light.

"The thing is Mr Haagens, you've become a cause for concern." Danzig said, little dark eyes glinting oddly in his too-pale face "I'm afraid you have a little too much information about our various projects to have you wandering around loose. So I'm afraid we're going to have to take steps."

Haagens shrank back in terror "What are those things?"

As the scientist began to unlock the very heavy door, in the viewing panel the shapes began to move lazily, slithering over each other in the half dark.

They pulled the struggling Haagens closer and shoved him inside, Danzig slamming shut the door after him, there was the sound of several different locking mechanisms clicking into place.

"Can you take things from here doc?" Rathbone asked dispassionately.

"Yes, certainly." The younger man said absently, now utterly absorbed in what was happening in the room beyond the soundproof glass.


Lex woke up two days later. It took her a few moments to fully resurface and realise where she was. Then her memory came flooding back and she sat bolt upright in the bed, wrestling against the leather restraints. Professor Iversson and one of her staff stood watching her from a safe distance.

"Iversson!" She hissed "Let me out of here! Where's my son?"

"Please be calm," Iversson said "The operation was successful. Selim is doing well."

"I don't believe you!" Lex said through gritted teeth "I need to see him! For God's sake, how long have I been unconscious?"

"Just forty eight hours, as I promised."

"Where is he? You take me to him now or I swear I'll –"

Iversson took a deep breath "Alexa, that's exactly what I have come here to do but you need to stop this." She said "Selim does need you, but if I'm to let you out of this room, you must be calm. Do you remember our agreement? You promised that if I helped your son there would be no more violence."

Lex stared at her for a long moment. Then she drew a deep, shuddering breath and her shoulders slumped as the fight went out of her. She knew Iversson held all the cards because she had absolute power over Selim's recovery.

"Alright." She said brokenly "Whatever you want. Just, please…"

Iversson's professional façade softened a little, her face seemed to register genuine sympathy.

"Alexa, there are some things I must tell you first. We were very lucky that Selim's tumour was both low grade and non-malignant. We were also incredibly fortunate that the growth was located in the cerebellum so we were able to entirely remove it… but there may still be side effects for a while. He may not recover right away, he'll need time. He's likely to feel very sick and weak – at least he will, at first. There might also be effects on his behaviour, speech or his ability to do certain things. He might require physical therapy and other help to get over it."

Lex nodded but she couldn't really imagine her clever, energetic, articulate little boy unable to move and speak properly, didn't want to. "But… Selim's so strong and so physical," She thought dully "He's always climbing and running and jumping!" She just couldn't picture him being confined to a hospital bed.

"Try to stay positive," Iversson said, quiet and calm "This operation was the best thing for him, you must know that. His recovery may take time but it's surely better than the alternative."

Lex nodded but she said nothing "Sure has her bedside manner down pat!" She thought bitterly.

As they escorted her down the corridor, she did her best to try and map the layout in her mind. This place seemed like something of a maze and she wanted to know where they were keeping her son. She noticed there were a couple of doors which required a pretty thorough security check in order to get through and filed this away for future reference too.

Finally they came to a door that looked exactly the same as all the other doors, but that was fifth along the corridor. She tried to commit it to memory. Two guards were stationed outside it.

She steeled herself as she entered the room, but nothing prepared her for his head; swaddled in bandages. His skin was pale and sweaty. His eyes were sunken into dark pits, almost as if he had two black eyes – as if the surgery had battered and bruised him like a prize fighter. He looked like a thin, frail child lying there on the pillow, so small, so vulnerable. Iron talons reached into her chest and wrung her heart, squashing it. Pulverising it.

"He's not awake." She said, her flat tones belying the chaos inside.

"No. He's still under sedation but it will wear off soon. I thought it would be best if you are with him when he wakes up." Iversson shot her a sideways look, seeing how she was taking it "I didn't want him to be frightened."

Lex walked forward as one in a dream. She reached out to touch Selim's face with trembling fingers and then took his hand.

"It's me sweetheart. Mommy." She cleared her throat, trying to keep her voice calm, cheerful "I've really missed you."

There was no response, only the sound of his little breaths as he slept, the occasional beeps of the monitoring devices. She sat there, keeping up a constant stream of talk though she barely knew what she was saying. Every moment she kept expecting that he would wake up and start talking to her, but he remained deeply asleep.

Sitting next to their sick child, she found herself thinking about his father, wondering where he was.

"Heaven knows he really doesn't do sympathy, but he's always been there when I needed him." She put her hand over her eyes "Where the hell have they taken that stupid Bonehead?"


Even with his eyes shut Selim could tell he was not at home on board the Chameleon. It was where he'd slept for the whole of his life so he could tell he wasn't there. Wherever this was, he could hear a constant noise like the wind in the treetops. It sounded like when the ship was in a forest and there was a storm happening but going on and on forever. He found it both weird and soothing. When he tried to open his eyes he then had to close them again. So much brightness! He couldn't tell if there was something the matter with his eyes or if he really was somewhere that white and bright. The place smelled strange, salty and like metal and oil.

The pain in his head kept coming and going and he thought he heard his mother's voice somewhere nearby, singing him a song that she had sung him often to get him to sleep but the words kept getting jumbled and confused in his mind. He couldn't make himself wake up properly. Sometimes he thought he felt his mother's hand – her soft, cool, human hand – holding onto his.

He never heard his father's voice, so he knew he must not be here. Selim wondered where he was. Normally when Selim was ill he would not go far away – where was he now?

If Selim had been properly awake he would have called out for his parents. Without them he was alone in this strange place with nobody to help him. When he heard his mother's voice he tried to move towards it, but he couldn't. A storm of evil darkness rose up to stop him, pushing down on his head.

He dreamed but did not remember.


"Why hasn't he woken up yet?"

Iversson looked into Lex's miserable, red-rimmed eyes, sighed and nodded to one of the guards "Just go see if someone can bring us some coffee," She said quietly "Would you please?" When the man's eyes flickered nervously over at the prisoner, she smiled and patted his arm "I'm sure we'll be fine with just two guards for five minutes."

When he'd gone, she said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone "You just have to be patient Alexa, Selim's been through major surgery, his body's taking the time it needs to recuperate. He'll wake up when he's ready."

It had been almost four days since Lex and Selim had arrived on Island South, almost thirty six hours since Selim came out of theatre. Iversson felt scarcely less worried but she knew she must not show it. This woman had proven in the past that she was capable of extraordinary violence when she felt she had nothing to lose, Iversson must not let her sink into despair. She needed her, the boy's recovery and well-being was dependent on his mother being present and in a tranquil frame of mind.

"I can't stand this." Lex's voice was low with exhaustion "Why couldn't it be me? Why couldn't I get sick, I swear I could handle that better than this!"

Iversson looked at her worriedly.

"Why can't you talk to me Professor?" She said miserably "I need a distraction. It's killing me sitting here hour after hour, not knowing if he…" She broke off, her voice tailing away miserably.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Anything! Tell me why you left your job with the government."

"Well," Iversson heaved a deep breath "When you broke out of the facility in Nevada, you know that you burned the place to the ground?"

"Well, I know I set the lab on fire." Lex said slowly "I didn't realise it would destroy the entire building." She grimaced as something occurred to her "I'm sorry about your car."

"I wasn't exactly happy about it at the time." Iversson frowned and shifted in her seat "Anyway you weren't acting alone, the exotic did his share of destruction. I believe he set off explosives. Between you, you did a pretty thorough job."

"We saw it; we did a sweep over Nevada trying to find you. It was deserted, a ruin."

"Yes," Iversson sniffed "That's why the department withdrew our funding, that and the fact we promised them the scientific find of the century but delivered a large number of fatalities and a huge damages bill. They shut us down pretty much the next day."

"Is that why you left the service?" Lex asked her "The unit closed and you got fired?"

"They didn't fire me," Iversson said curtly "I left. They had no vision."

"What does that mean?"

The Professor took a deep breath "I had to continue my work. There were things I wanted to do."

"What things? What work? What are you talking about?"

Iversson shifted in her seat, looking deeply uncomfortable "Alexa, that's something we should discuss…"

At that moment, Selim twitched and coughed. His lashes fluttered against each other like the wings of a butterfly in the sunshine. When they finally parted he blinked again in surprise as he focussed on his mother.

"Mommy?" He said in a croaky little voice.

Lex put her arms around him carefully "How do you feel sweetheart?"

Selim pouted, his voice sounding very babyish "My head still hurts."

"That will get better." Iversson said quietly "But we can get you painkillers for now Selim, if you're in pain."

Selim turned to look at the Professor, then back at Lex, his eyes lurid pools of yellow inside their dark hollows "Mommy," He said anxiously "Who is this human female?"

"That is Professor Iversson," Lex told him "She's been looking after you, to make your head feel better."

Selim shrank back a little against his mother. Then he said, his voice a tiny little whisper, "Where is my Father?"


"I must be back on the Void Cutter." Scar thought woozily. All round him he could hear the hum of engines, the constant whirr of machinery made him think he must be on the yautja warship. He felt groggy and sick; perhaps it was the liquid intoxicant. He remembered that when he had consumed it he'd felt utterly nauseated for almost a whole day afterwards. "But no, that cannot be right!" He realised "That was a long time ago. It is years since I left the Rough Skulls…I must be on a different ship…"

Suddenly an awful realisation struck him "I cannot move!" His arms and legs would not respond, he couldn't even feel them. His hands and feet were numb. Try as he might he could not get his limbs to obey him.

He wondered if it was permanent. That thought caused an odd sensation in him, his skin suddenly felt cold and hot at the same time, the tingling of horror crept through his brain, the sharp sensation of panic in sickening contrast to the numbness in his body "My spine must have been broken somehow… but when?! And how can it be that I do not remember?!" He thought desperately "How … can this have happened!? I do not understand?!"

He lay still, not having much option, and kept his eyes shut, not too difficult to achieve either as his eyelids felt like they had been glued together. He listened. There was no noise of any movement of other bodies in the room – wherever that was – so he concentrated on remembering, trying to gather together the jumbled puzzle pieces of his mind.

The memory came back to him of the argument with Lex and her shocking him with the bug zapper, but he knew that was not what had caused his current, crippled state because right after that he could remember… no… he had definitely not been paralysed then. As he was unspooling the trail of recollection slowly in his mind, suddenly the memory of Selim's illness surfaced and it all came back in a rush "How could I have forgotten?" He thought "What is wrong with me? I cannot command my body, my thoughts are scattered… I have to stop being so weak!"

At that moment, he heard a noise; a door opening – someone was in the room with him. He couldn't move but now he was all alertness.

Footsteps now coming closer; it was just one individual and definitely a human male by the smell of it. At least the mask on his face – which he guessed was some way of delivering sedative when needed – left some of his scent ducts uncovered, so he could tell that much. Scar breathed in, trying not to make it obvious. Overlaying all was a tangy fug of sodium; he wasn't really sure what that meant. He had not spent much time near to the ocean. Mixed in with this salty miasma he could detect a note of some sort of engine oil and a synthetic odour that he guessed was probably one of the many unguents that humans seemed to habitually slather themselves in.

Lex never did it - even if she had been able to lay hands on such things she knew how disgusting he found it - but being amongst all those other humans in the city he'd felt he would asphyxiate on the perfumed stink of them.

He listened, trying to work out what the human was doing. It seemed to be standing next to him; he could feel its proximity. Then he heard the door open again, more footsteps. Another human male, this second one didn't smell quite so strongly of chemicals but there was another scent clinging to him that snagged at Scar's attention. It was just a tiny trace, a few atoms of fragrance, so faint that he could barely say with certainty that it was there. This scent triggered a response in the murky depths of his subconscious; it was familiar somehow. He was trying to place it when the human spoke, distracting him.

"Lloyd, did the lab get back to you with the genetic summary?" The second human said, the one standing further away.

"Not yet," Said the one standing right above him "Iversson's gonna be pissed, she really wants to know if the Beast's DNA matches up to the kids."

"Iverrrrrsssssson!" Scar's thoughts ran red with blood. This human scientist was becoming a fixation for him. That name inspired in him a wave of hatred so strong he felt the perspiration might evaporate off his skin "Every time something awful happens in my life she is at the root of it! When I get out of here she will be first to know just how I deal with foolish little insects who think to hold me prisoner. Bitch goddess grant me vengeance! Let me get my hands on her someday – if I am ever able to use my hands again!"

The second human spoke once more, breaking into his imaginary torture chamber "Why the delay? It never took this long on Jerry Springer! What do those shitheads do all day?"

"Beats me man!" Came the weary reply "Briggs said cos the subjects aren't human they need to run more tests to be sure. All those guys do is bitch n' moan. They think they got it bad? They wanna try sweatin' it out down here. I swear I dropped – like – ten pounds this last three days."

Scar felt a little jolt of surprise at this "Three days?" He thought "Have I really been here that long?"

He had to exercise absolute, iron self-control as the human called Lloyd came even closer, closer than he would ever have been allowed to get had Scar been mobile. He could not feel very much that was going on from the neck down but there was the tiniest little sting, he guessed because it had slid a needle into the vein on the inside of his arm. Of course, he couldn't move – if he had been able to he would have twisted this human's head off for presuming to touch him – but he forced himself not to react at all, not even his jaws twitched.

"Careful!" Said the second human "I've been gradually reducing his morphia. Iversson wants him woken up today."

"Nah, he's still on the canvas," The one called Lloyd said "Look at the monitor dude, heart rate's on the level, brainwaves normal."

"Normal? How can you tell the difference? There's barely any reading! From what I can see there's not much activity going on in that big gruesome skull, when he's not doped to the eyeballs. He's probably got just about enough intelligence to kill something or fuck something – and I imagine it's luck of the draw which he chooses."

"Trust me Danzig, he's chillaxing."

"Trust you?" The second human laughed scornfully "You think I'm happy to put my life in the hands of someone who talks like a fucking mallrat?"

"You know he can't move anyway," Lloyd replied calmly "Not with these blockers Iversson put in his spine, nerve impulses can't get to the rest of his body so this mo'fo's gonna have to sit tight. He ain't goin' nowhere!"

Hope lit a tiny flickering flame in the dark subterranean cavern of Scar's heart "So, they have done it deliberately and so perhaps it is not a permanent condition!" He thought "If I cannot move because she has put something in my spine perhaps it would be reversed if it is removed but … again it is this human Iversssson I have to thank for my current incapacity. It seems I am more indebted to her than I ever knew."

Despite his loathing for the Professor, on one subject at least Scar would have been in total accord with her had he but known it. These two humans who had him at their mercy were morons, they did not sufficiently respect him or understand what he was capable of. There they were, inches away, blithely making jokes and talking about him as if he were no more aware than a lump of meat. They would both have blanched in terror if they could see what he was thinking.

"Still," He thought "It is best they do not know. If they call me 'the Beast' that is all to the good! In fact, the more bestial and stupid they think I am, the better. It is the one slim advantage I currently possess. They obviously do not even realise that I am listening or that I can understand their speech, or they would not talk so in my hearing."

The second human asked "Speaking of the boss lady, she seemed pretty testy earlier."

"Yeah man, she spent even more time busting my balls than usual!"

"She's sitting watch with the Beast's baby-mama up on Island South. The kid got out of surgery last night and you know Iversson..."

"So Lex and Selim are here, also." Scar thought, boiling with frustration "They have performed some kind of operation on my son and I am not able even to go and find out if he lived through it! Is Lex keeping vigil over him …or over his corpse tonight?"

Lex.

"She sided with that treacherous little worm of a friend of hers against me – how could she be so stupid? So disloyal!" He raged inwardly "It is down to her and her precious friend that I am down here and Selim is … the bitch goddess only knows where Selim is!"

He felt so angry it took quite some time before he was calm again. When he had regained mental balance his thoughts returned to his infernal female. Maybe she still hated him, he knew she was capable of bearing a grudge, but he told himself it made no difference "Whether she wants me or not, whether she forgives me or not, she needs me. They both need me. Lex and Selim are mine. Mine, If I could only move again…"

He tried not to think about the possibility that even if he could remove these 'implants' still he might be paralysed, helpless... no. He refused to countenance it.

"Sooner or later these idiots will make a mistake that allows me to get free." He told himself "Then I will slaughter them like pigs and then get all three of us as far away from this hole as possible!"

He thought that nothing could alarm or distress him any further but as he was digesting this information, the second human said "Lloyd! Did his hand just move? Are you sure those sensors are attached properly?"

"Come have a look, man!" Said Lloyd, who still stood nearby.

He heard footsteps as the second human, the one called Danzig, approached him. Then as the male came closer to where he lay suddenly the scent that had been faint and ghostly before hit him with all the power of a knife in his gut, a sharp acrid smell that clung to this other human. It evoked such a strong instinctive response in him that it was all he could do not to growl.

"The hard meat…"