Disclaimer It's all somebody else's. No money made. Suing will profit no one.
Want? Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)
Crouched deep in the shadows, she was utterly still. Dirty blond hair was hanging over a face barely recognisable with the lips drawn back over carnivore's teeth and eyes glowing a hellish tone. Her nails were pin sharp, flexing in and out of her fingers and feeling so right.
Finally the sleek cat in the body of Shalimar began to pace the perimeter of the room, the cage, snarling softly deep in it's throat. How dare he shoot her. How dare he. Her. She licked the last of his blood from her claws, cleansing them one by one and savouring the coppery tang. Too bad it wasn't hot. If she hadn't been hunting the trespasser, he could never had done this, but she had welcomed him on her hunt. Tried to show him the claws at Brennan's door.
He should have known better, she would never have hurt him, or any of them. They were her pack, weak and slow as they were. Blunt toothed and clawless, helpless. She would have protected them. But now she had been challenged, and he had been stupid enough not to kill her for her place.
She wouldn't make that mistake, not with any of them.
"So, what you're saying is, if I don't find a cure for this virus within sixteen hours, my team will die and shortly after that so will the vast majority of the mutant population. But not before the virus' effects on them cause wide spread death and destruction on a massive scale."
Jude didn't look the still dangerously calm man in the eyes as she replied. "Essentially, yes."
"And Eckhart considered infecting my team with ten times the dose they would receive normally from the air-born variant was more conducive to me helping him than, say, a politely worded message on the disk we stole?"
"Actually, it was my idea. He wasn't going to approach you at all. I considered a Postit note, but this is so much more efficient. None of that awkward bargaining, pleading and recriminations stage where you invariably give in anyway because of your overwhelming sense of guilt. I saw the file, you've helped us with loose virus' before, you'll help with this one."
For a moment she thought he would snap and go for her throat just as Jesse had done. To be fair, she probably wouldn't blame him. In his place, she wouldn't be settling for a steady glare and a clenching of the hands into tight fists, she would be sharpening her Task Unit and giving orders with words like 'kill' and 'slowly' in them. Apparently he was a better 'man' than she, or alternatively he was plotting something really nasty by way of retaliation.
"Well, we had better be on our way then hadn't we?"
Adam shifted his attention to where Brennan was almost literally hovering over the two figures laid side by side on the lab-beds. Jesse had finally stopped fighting the sedative, the effect of it halting his random phasing in and out of existence for the moment. Definitely became worse when the infected party was conscious, perhaps it was feeding in someway off the chemicals released by the brain when active. He would have to isolate the virus into a culture and test against that, but that would take weeks he didn't have.
He jerked his thoughts away from the ways he could speed the process up to find the attentive gaze of Jude upon him.
"What do you want to do with them?" A slight nod to the three across the room, none able to hear the muttered conversation even if two of them weren't out. "I don't recommend taking them with us, although I'm sure Mr Eckhart would be willing to make them safe for the duration. There are always spare stasis pods."
Brennan glanced up at the two talking in lower murmurs, not quite able to make out the exact words, but body language was speaking volumes just perfectly. The woman he'd labelled "Ms Evil Gene Nazi 2002" was standing tall, but relaxed. Either convinced she was in complete control of the situation, or trying to convince them she was. Adam had an aura of barely contained energy in contrast, adrenaline just being held in check. But they seemed to have reached some kind of decision when they both turned and looked at him in a measuring fashion. He stood straighter and let the suspicious apprehension narrow his eyes, bouncing lightly on his feet as they approached.
When neither appeared to be willing to speak first, his misapprehension hardened further, into a dark foreboding. Sedatives were going to be a big topic of conversation, he just knew it.
"Okaaay, what? Sleep time again? Hope I get a bedtime story ... there's this cool one where this guy slept for a hundred years, and then woke up. The important part, you know, the moral, being that he woke up."
Adam held his hands out, attempting to placate in the face of what he recognised as mindless babble. He'd had enough of it running commentary in his own mind for the last twenty-four hours to have even become something of an expert when he heard it. This loosely translated as 'I'm a tough guy, so there's no way I'm worried about this, but tell me it's going to be okay anyway so I don't have to ask and look like a girly-man in the presence of the enemy, even if she is cute.'
"Brennan, it's going to be okay." The other man subsided into silence, still watching him warily. He had to admit this wasn't like the Elemental, even when he was under stress he had never shown signs of being quite so unsteady. Then again, he'd never become a walking EMP waiting to happen before either. "Ms Riley and I are going to go to the Genomex Labs where we have a hope in hell of doing something constructive with the next fifteen hours. I need you to hold out as long as you can, someone has to keep Emma and Jesse sedated. If you think you can do the same for Shalimar do, but you might have to use the rifle."
Okay, he hadn't been expecting that, and frowned as he replied. "But ... I've got two hours, three at most before I go ..." he mimed an explosion with his hands, making the sound of a soda can being opened. A surprisingly accurate replacement for the actual sound the electricity had made as it disrupted everything in it's path.
"I know. Leave it as long as you can, and then ..."
Yeah. Then. Brennan gave a curt nod, his eyes meeting Jude's for just a moment, and he found a gleeful enjoyment in seeing her take a step back from whatever dark expression he was wearing. Perfect. He grinned and allowed a small charge to build, not leashed in his hands now, but crackling in a nimbus around his entire body. The electrics dancing over his eyes and through his hair were, for him nothing more than the touch of a gentle breeze; for her one touch would be almost instantaneously deadly. Before Adam could step in, he pointed one finger wreathed in blue fire.
"You get him in there, he does the job, and then you let him out. If I have to come in and extract him, I'm going to be really annoyed."
An empty threat and they both knew it, so maybe she was just humouring him as she gulped thickly and took one step back, stammering.
"Well, naturally. We have an agreement now."
Adam coughed once, then passed Brennan to give one last check to Emma and Jesse. Damn, he didn't want to leave them, none of them. Gently he felt for pulse, assured himself there was no fever as yet, and generally delayed until it was Jude's own turn to cough.
"I was under the assumption you would like to leave within the next week or so?"
"I'm coming."
Expressionless he walked towards the door, and he didn't look back.
The helicopter pick-up was almost immediate and the journey to the Genomex head building passed in a blur of familiarity. How many times had he been rushed here in a helicopter? In the early days it seemed like it had been every morning, and no few midnight scrambles. There was always some kind of crisis, or a miraculous new breakthrough that needed his immediate attention as the only one with the capacity to actually understand what had happened. He had always like the view of the grounds from above, the security of looking down on the project like he felt it looked down on the people it was meant to be trying to help.
'Playing God so you don't have to' - it wasn't the company slogan, but it should have been.
Very little had changed, now he had the leisure to actually note faces as they entered the building, he could swear it was the same security guard on day shift. Pete ... something. Bred tropical fish in his spare time to try and make the college fund for his kid just that bit fatter. Pete didn't return his smile.
Jude's voice came through to him after a moment, she was tugging gently on his sleeve. "I said, Mr Eckhart will want to see you before I take you to the labs. I'll get a team organised while you're in there so you won't have to do any prepping when you get out, okay?"
Adam managed a curt nod and left her where she stood, confidently making his way to Mason's office alone. As he strode across the floor, trying not to look at the stasis pods, he glanced up to the private view windows onto the hub area from Mason's little version of a sky box. The man was standing behind them, looking down at him with nothing but that flat arrogance. Well, if he wanted a verbal spar today, he was going to be out of luck, right now his host was just a waste of time.
Eckhart had re-seated himself by the time Adam opened the door to his office and didn't feel the need to get up as he studied his nemesis for a moment. Nemesis. Such a melodramatic word, but what they were. And he had always had a compulsion to use words as precisely as he could.
"Good afternoon Adam. Do stop lurking in my doorway and come in, you'll make security nervous. This won't take a moment, I'm sure you want to be getting to work as soon as possible."
He flicked a casual glance to the clock, ticking quietly away, on the polished surface of his desk.
"What do you want Mason?"
"Well, I was considering gloating for a few minutes, followed by a few well placed slights on your team, your manhood and your ancestors. But that's getting remarkably tedious. You know, I really never thought it would, but the charm has entirely gone out of our relationship. So, while you're here you will be accompanied at all times by the gorilla-like gentleman cracking his knuckles behind you; otherwise I sincerely wish you the very best of luck with your vaunted genius discovering a cure. I'm starting to run out of places to freeze the afflicted."
Adam thinned his lips and bit down hard on a retort, he had no time for this stupidity. "Fine." He called to the missing link who was to be his own personal shadow as he spun to walk out, "Heel!".
There was a scratching at the door and it held her attention fixated to the spot, as if she could see through the barrier and get a clear line on her prey. Every muscle coiled in wait, she balanced lightly on the balls of her feet and the pads of her fingers, crouched down and ready to spring upon whatever came within striking distance.
Soon, she would have her chance soon.
And then the great cat could hunt free once more.
The clawing at the door ceased and she heard the faint sound of footsteps coming closer. Light and sure, a long stride, it could only be Brennan. She licked her lips slowly.
The light from the corridor outside glinted off sharp white fangs, for a moment Brennan thought he might be fast enough to close the door before the very awake Shalimar, who was meant to be very asleep for another half an hour, sprung at him in a blur. As her weight slammed into him, and the rifle was torn away to rattle to the floor and slide to a stop twenty feet from him he knew one sure thing. He wasn't fast enough to close the door.
Notes
Feedback is really appreciated, it lets me know what to do next! ::grins:: What?. You thought I had a plan? :P