Title: Rebirth (Part 2/4)
Author: linaerys My Kroenen Fansite
Rating: PG for violence. No sex.
Characters: Manning, Kroenen, Abe, a few OCs from the BPRD, including pathologist to the undead, Dr. Leah Andrews
Summary: (Part 1) After the movie, Kroenen has been recovered and made a bargain to get the BPRD to help him repair himself.
Feedback: Pretty please! I can never get enough feedback!

"Abe, I hate to call your judgment into question but this, well, this is a humdinger," said Manning. The FBI bureaucrat shuffled the papers in front of him deftly between his hands and Abe caught flashes of names: Abraham Sapien, Leah Erin Andrews, Karl Ruprect Kroenen, Kyle James McDonald-deceased. Manning had been doing his homework.

"I had to say something to make him stand down," said Abe. He fluttered his gills in a gesture that was his equivalent for a shrug, but Manning didn't notice.

"I've faced that freak before." Manning turned his hand toward Abe, and Abe swam closer and saw the thin seam of a scar cutting across the other wrinkles on his palm. "His only use to us is what he can tell us about the others." Abe fought the desire to tell Manning to get to the point and instead executed a slow back flip through the waters of his tank. Manning tapped on the tank with his West Point class ring, a monstrous piece of metal that dwarfed the stubby finger wearing it.

Abe drifted back up to the front of the tank. "Well, I didn't think torture was really the way to go with him," Abe said fastidiously. He privately thought torture was never the way to go, and BPRD came close to the edge of it all to often, but Manning wouldn't want to hear it. "Physically, well, you've read what he does to himself for fun, and psychologically, I don't think it gets any worse than the sensory deprivation of the hole we found him in." Manning's frown deepened.

"We don't torture here. We're the US government," said Manning automatically. Abe bit back a snippy response: save it for the press. "What's your suggestion then?" Manning asked. "I've noticed the wind-up freak's friends don't tend to stay dead, so any information we get from him will be valuable."

"I've set a rotating team of psychics to listen in on his thoughts 24 hours a day. They, Dr. Andrews and whatever technicians she uses will make full daily reports," Abe explained.

"Can't we bargain with him for information? No more medical treatment without some intelligence," Manning suggested. Abe spread his hand helplessly.

"That was the bargain I made for Dr. Andrews's life," said Abe.

"New bargain." Manning rolled his eyes on seeing Abe's expression. "We can't afford personal integrity here, Mr. Sapien. Surely you remember what they tried to do last time." Abe nodded reluctantly. "Don't worry, I'll go break the bad news," said Manning.

"No, no, I'll do it," said Abe. His own personal integrity required that he see this through. He swam to the top of the tank to suit up for another venture into the air.

Leah hardly slept since she took on her new project. She remembered her moment of fear for her life, but that had been quickly replaced by an even greater fear that someone else would be allowed to do this work. Someone else would get the credit and the papers, would get the knowledge that she would certainly gain by working on such a unique creature. She was a pathologist, but not the only one working for the BPRD, and not the most favored.

But her quick thinking won her this project. She had been working on it two days, and every moment she discovered something new. One of the BPRD's pet psychics sat outside the operating theater with a laptop balanced on his lap, but his fingers were still, and his face wore an expression of frustration. Leah smiled inwardly--she had been reading their reports, which every day said that Kroenen revealed nothing more in his thoughts than immediate surgical plans. One of the psychics, a timid young woman who looked barely out of her teens, had been taken away in tears after just an hour. All she would say was that the images shook her too deeply to continue, but BPRD had her under hypnosis to try to find out anything further.

At first the psychics had helped relay Kroenen's instructions to Leah, but she found she did not need them. It was not words she heard from him, not precisely, but some deeper knowledge of what needed to be done, like a light guiding touch on her hands and mind. She did not spare too much time to think about it, lest her mind break like the young psychic's.

Leah looked at her watch. Her second day was coming to a close, and soon Abe's voice over the intercom would bid her stop for the day. He allowed her to work fourteen hours, no more, although Kroenen would have liked her to stay longer. She knew, at a level deeper than consciousness, that whether she wished it or no, she was bound to this creature; she had spilled what passed for his blood and he had spilled hers.

It wasn't the first time, but it was the strongest. He had not been the first creature on her operating table to rise up and cause injury--a vampire's nails once carved three deep grooves down her arm, and she had felt a similar sense of linkage, but that was severed quickly when the BPRD incinerated the corpse.

Leah finished the suturing she was doing on Kroenen's back. She ran the black autopsy suturing thread through holes sixty years old--no need to make new holes when these would never heal. She cut the thread and put away her supplies with a sigh. She could work all night, and there were other repairs to make. The holes through his arms and legs still had to be fixed, but it was not allowed.

She kept her eyes on the prone form as she backed out of the room. Would he jump up now that she had completed the most important surgery? She left his key within reach, and by now he would be able to wind himself up and test their refinements to his internal clockwork, but Leah did not want to be in the room when that happened.

Leah shut the door quickly behind her, and locked and sealed it. She pressed the combination of buttons that recessed her surgical tools behind the wall panels so he couldn't do any work without her. This was more out of professional jealousy than for safety's sake. He was her project now, not merely his own.

Outside of the operating theater she heard the sticky footfalls of Abe and turned. "Your mind is quiet, Leah," he said. "Are you well?" He reached out to touch her shoulder, but Leah pulled away. Common belief among BPRD rank and file was that he could read a mind more easily with physical contact. Abe held up his hands. "I mean no invasion."

"I am fine, Mr. Sapien, thank you for asking," Leah answered. What does he waaaaannnnnt . . . ? The question appeared in Leah's mind unbidden, and she jumped.

"What was that?" Abe asked. "Did you . . . nevermind."

"What do you . . . what are your plans for him?" Leah asked. Abe sighed.

"I suppose you should know. The director--it's been decided that he gets no more medical help without giving us some information in return," Abe said.

"And you don't like the idea?" Leah asked. Abe opened his mouth to speak, but they were both distracted by a crash from within the operating room. They turned to look at the window and saw it had gone dark. Enough light shone in to show Kroenen was no longer on the operating table.

Abe's mind was suffused with images and plans, and he held his head in his hands as he leaned back against the wall. One of the oxygen tanks could be used as a bomb . . . pick out some less necessary stitches and use them to sew up big holes . . . kill . . . die . . . steal a scalpel . . . where is the artificial hand? Abruptly as they started the thoughts cut off again, and Abe breathed a shaky breath. "I think he knows," said Abe.

Leah came over to him and put her hand an inch away from his shoulder, not quite touching him. "Mr. Sapien, are you okay? Can I get you something, or someone?" Abe blinked a few times.

"Thank you, my dear," he said and patted her hand. His skin was not as clammy as she expected. "When you ride the tiger . . . " he started. "What do you do with a creature of pure evil, Dr. Andrews?"

"That's not my department," said Leah blandly. "Turn him over to the Vatican? I don't know, I'm not a Catholic."

"I don't know either. I think we can let him think about it overnight. He's not getting out of there."

Leah kept a room at the BPRD headquarters, but she preferred to stay in her own apartment. It was in the top floor of a dingy row house in Jersey City, but it was her own. She liked to put on some light classical music while she typed up her days' reports, and watch the sun set over New York City across the water.

Tonight, however, the soft music gave her no rest. She sat down a wrote a few sentences ("Subject drew the following sigils and instructed me to etch them on his replacement spinal rod. See Fig. 15 a-d.") but then stood up again at her wind and looked at the cars going by. The light of the headlamps was hypnotizing, and she found herself almost dozing on her feet.

Then, deep in the part of her mind that no longer belonged to her, she heard plans for escape drawn up, and then rejected. She tried not to move or breath, lest she disturb this connection. She saw visions of rituals needed for summoning demons (no, too many wards in the BPRD), visions of weapons he could make from pieces of his own body, visions of herself dead, herself used as a hostage, or Abe dying with Kroenen standing over him. She didn't know if these were Kroenen's fantasies or his actual plans, but she sat down at her computer to write them down so Abe and the rest would be forewarned.

She called up a new document at her computer and started to type, but then her fingers froze. When would she next have an opportunity to make discoveries like this? Her knowledge of flesh reanimation was triple what it had been just two days earlier. And if she could sense this, surely the psychics could also? Leah had no special extrasensory talents.

She settled back at her desk and continued writing up the surgeries. Tomorrow would bring some kind of confrontation with Kroenen, and Leah realized she didn't know who she hoped would win.

Next: Moral Conflict