Author's note: Well, here's chapter 2. I've deliberately soft-pedaled the gore in favor of the humor – if it's the gore you want, read the original story 'Blood Ties', there's lots of it there.
Sam stared up at the killer leaning over her. Leaping into a fic had seemed like an awfully good idea at the time. Now it didn't seem quite such a good idea. She hadn't planned to end up tied to a bed with Susana Alvarez Lecter leaning over her.
"Um…what are you gonna do to me?"
"Changing your bandage," Susana said promptly. "Whatever did you think, Cousin Lisa?"
"Look," Sam tried, "there's a mistake here. I'm not your cousin Lisa."
Susana raised an eyebrow. "You're not? Perhaps you hit your head harder than I thought."
From behind her, Kurt tapped away on the handlink. It squealed at him.
"Damn Windows CE," Kurt said. "Ah…Sam…you have Lisa's aura. You look like her to everyone here. Well, except me. And back at the project, in the Waiting Room, Lisa is there and she looks just like you."
"How does that work?" Sam asked.
Kurt shrugged. "Plot device," he said.
"How does that work? Well, as you may recall you had a little accident. Following too close. But now it's time for dinner," Susana explained.
"No, no, I was talking to Kurt," Sam explained.
Susana removed the bandage. "Well, the old bandage is so terribly bloody and you need to look good for dinner," she said. "And who is Kurt?"
"Your creator. He's right over there."
Kurt interrupted. "Sam, she can't see me or hear me. It's that hologram thing. That reminds me, Saavik now wants regular coke instead of vanilla coke for getting this running."
"My creator?" Susana seemed amused. "My, I'm going to have to keep an eye on you, Lisa. Hopefully this will pass. I have such a fun evening planned."
Sam closed her eyes and let the killer change the bandage atop her head. She wondered if it actually looked like there was a wound. From Susana's look she thought it must. But her head didn't hurt at all. But she was having trouble remembering things: the leap had swiss-cheesed her memory. There were things she could remember and things she couldn't. She couldn't help but shake the feeling that there was something she ought to be remembering.
Susana reached into her bag and extracted a pill bottle. "Here you are, Cousin Lisa."
"Umm…no…that's okay, really."
"I insist," Susana said thinly. "It's just Vicodin, and the dose is perfectly standard."
"My dad always taught me never to take candy from strangers or pills from serial killers."
"Wise fellow. However, I'll open your mouth myself and ram it down your gullet with a stick if I must."
Sam glanced across the room at Kurt. "I can't believe you made her this mean," she scolded.
"It gets worse," Kurt said, looking slightly abashed.
"Who are you talking to, Lisa?" Susana took the opportunity to force the pills into Sam's mouth. "You're beginning to worry me."
"Well, in my reviews I said for you not to kill Lisa, so you get her on a web browser now and make her post a review saying not to kill me," Sam protested.
"I'm not planning to kill you, Lisa," Susana said, looking down at her captive with some puzzlement. "But I do think we'll have to keep you under observation. You're delirious."
She untied Sam then and pulled her to her feet, cuffing her hands behind her back and leading her downstairs.
"If any Lecter has to have me in handcuffs, why couldn't it be the GD?" Sam grumbled.
"The GD?" Sam heard a tinge of annoyance in Susana's voice. This didn't sound good.
"The good doctor. Hannibal Lecter," she tried to explain.
"I…see. You do know that my father's been dead for two and a half years."
"Um…sorry to hear that," Sam squeaked. She felt herself being forced forward, out of the bedroom and out the hallway.
"Okay," Kurt said, after consulting the handlink. "Effie says there's a ninety percent chance that you're here to save Susana."
Sam nodded. "I guess I'm wondering why I would want to, at this point," she said.
"Well, there's dinner…umm…I guess you don't remember it too well, so we'll skip over that, you'll see…then Ardelia Mapp breaks in and shoots you."
Just then, there was a click of static. A young woman's voice echoed around Kurt. "Dun dun dun!" said the voice dramatically.
"Saavik," Kurt said patiently, "quit playing with the voice chat."
"Awwww," the voice said, seeming disappointed. "But it was for extra drama!"
"Yes, it was. But we have to worry about figuring out what Sam has to do here."
"I don't like this," Sam said.
"And Susana gets killed in the crossfire…wait, that's not how 'Blood Ties' ended!" He hit 'refresh' again and pulled up the page. "Wow…wait a minute…someone is changing the fics on the FF.net server. Which means since you're here, it's changing history."
"Changing the fics?" Sam seemed dazed as she was forced down the stairs and towards the dining room. "That's not good."
"It must be an eeebil leaper," Saavik's voice chirped in.
"Maybe so, but this is just the first episode," Kurt said. "We'll get into evil leapers later."
A trembling man in a tuxedo awaited the two. He was sitting in a computer chair, with several strips of duct tape binding him to the chair. Sam looked at him and tried to remember who he was. Her memory had been swiss-cheesed.
"That's Agent Peter DeGraff," Kurt said. "Susana kills him."
Sam tilted her head and thought. "Oh yeah," she said. "The chauvinist."
Susana guided her to the chair and sat her down in it, tying her ankles and waist firmly to the legs and back of the chair.
"Why, yes," Susana said. "Agent DeGraff does indeed disapprove of women in law enforcement. He told me so, while you were sleeping. But I do have some things to do first."
Sam saw a metal cart over by DeGraff and tried to remember the chapter. How come I couldn't have leaped into a more recent fic? She did remember that something unpleasant happened to Lisa in the fic – actually, a whole lot of unpleasant somethings – and now she was Lisa, so that meant it would happen to her. On the metal cart was a plastic bag with the logo of a Baltimore medical supplies company emblazoned on it.
Susana took a bottle of wine and carefully poured three glasses. Sam noticed suddenly that there was an extra wine glass at each setting. That probably wasn't good. But what was it? Susana sampled the wine and nodded.
"d'Yquem is wonderful wine," Susana said. "From your birth year. Our birth year, actually. We share the same birthday, isn't that amusing?"
"What are you doing? Why are you keeping me here?" Sam asked.
"What am I doing? Why, making dinner, of course. Look around you. If you ever want to be in Behavioral Sciences permanently, you ought to notice these things, Cousin Lisa."
"How about being nice and letting me go? You let Lisa go in the end of 'Those Who Come After', so how about some…umm…advance niceness?" Sam suggested.
Susana's head tilted. "Whatever are you talking about?"
"Ah…Sam," Kurt added, "That's a different fic. And Susana's not nice in this fic."
"You know, Lisa," Susana said as she walked over to the cart, "in the old days, they used to treat insanity by bleeding the patient."
From the plastic bag she took a long, sharp needle and a short plastic tube. Sam cringed. She hated needles.
"No, wait," she said breathlessly. "Can't we talk about this?"
"I don't think so," Susana said. "Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor," Sam said.
"Not yet, no," Susana said. "But I have to learn somewhere."
"Practice on someone else," Sam pleaded. "Practice on him. He doesn't survive to the end of the chapter. Or practice on Kurt! He's a hologram. You can mess up and it won't hurt him a bit."
"Now Lisa, it'll be all right," Susana said. "I know what I'm doing."
"No it won't! Come on! What kind of sadistic psychopath could think of doing something like this to somebody?"
Kurt was studiously looking off into space as the handlink beeped a few times. He put his free hand in his pocket and started whistling nonchalantly.
"Kurt, she's your character! Make her stop! I don't want a heart thingy!"
"I can't make her stop," Kurt pointed out. "I'm a hologram."
The disembodied voice of Saavik spoke up again. "All right! Gore! Need gore…need gore….Go on, Susana. Do it, do it, do it."
"You're no help either," Sam scolded.
"Well, the project HMO will cover any necessary surgery once we leap you back," Kurt offered.
"Some comfort," Sam grumbled.
"Honestly, Lisa," Susana said. "This will just hurt for a little bit."
There were a great deal of complaints, pleading, frenzied shrieks, and promises of great violence towards her holographic observer for having written this scene in the first place from Sam, but eventually, the cardiac catheter was installed and capped off.
"My, I didn't realize you had such an extensive vocabulary of profanities," Susana said. She looked surprised.
"When needles are involved you'd be amazed," Sam grumbled, glaring openly at the killer.
"Well, anyway," Susana said, grinning, "where were we? Ah yes, we were discussing Agent Degraff's disapproval of women in law enforcement." She produced a pistol and aimed it at him for a moment before booting the clip and putting it down. She set about removed DeGraff's cummerbund and opening up his stomach to remove his intestines and cook them.
Saavik spoke up again. "Yes! It's even better the second time around. Ooooh, gore, goody goody."
Sam found herself distinctly not hungry after watching how the meal had been prepared. "Um…Susana…if you don't mind, I had intestines for lunch. Could I just skip to dessert, maybe? You go right ahead."
"I'm afraid not," Susana answered.
"I don't like this fic at all," Sam said vehemently.
A tinkle of glass interrupted the conversation. Kurt slapped the handlink, causing it to squeal at him.
"Okey doke Sam, that's your cue. Ardelia Mapp is going to break in and try to arrest Susana. You have to make sure Susana doesn't get killed in the crossfire."
"But I'm tied to the chair," Sam pointed out. "And wait a minute. Crossfire? That means two people shooting."
"Well, grab the gun and stop her. But there's your move."
In the meantime, DeGraff had died, and Susana began wheeling his corpse away. A long strand of intestine trailed behind the tuxedoed corpse. Sam sighed. Saavik cheered loudly, expressing her high approval of the gory scene.
A shadow appeared in the doorway.