Infusion

By Claviculae

A/N: Cool. I'm getting reviews again! Thanks guys.

Sheba woke up in a drug-enduced stupor. As her mind began to clear slightly, she began to hear people talking. After a few minutes, the fog lifted enough to where she could understand some of the voices.
"Great. Just great. Now we have a super-enhanced monster on our hands. What are we going to do?"
"Don't panic. She's asleep now and we're going to keep her that way until we can come up with some sort of plan."
"I say we kill her now. We don't want to wait around for something to happen."
"You're probably right. At any rate, we'll keep her sedated."
Sheba lifted her head and clenched her hand, trying to cast something. Anything! She didn't care so long as it would get her out of here. She had just managed a few sparks when she dropped from exhaustion. She slowly drifted back to a comatose sleep.

Ivan had reached the bottom of the hill and was leaning against the side of one of the buildings. He tried to catch his breath as he peaked around the corner.
"Good, looks like it's clear."
He slipped around the corner and ran towards the entrance of what looked like the main building. It was locked.
Ivan walked over to a window. It was also locked.
"Fine then."
Ivan clenched his fist and formed a small ball of lightning and slammed it into the window. The glass shattered and flew inside, scattering fragments all over the floor.
Ivan glanced around. He needed to find cover fast before someone came to inspect the noise. There were three doors in the room. The first led back outside. The other two led off to the left and right. Ivan tried the door on the right. To his relief, it opened. He quickly ducked inside and shut the door behind him.

He found himself in the guards' headquarters. There were several benches along the left and right walls. At the far end, there was a desk with a sleeping guard at it. Behind him was a door that presumably led to the lockers or the armory.
Ivan raised his hand and cast a light Sleep spell on the guard, just to make sure he stayed asleep until Ivan reached him.
Ivan crouched down and quietly paced across the room, slipping around the desk and behind the guard. He drew his dagger and held it at the guard's throat. Reaching forward, he clamped his hand across the snoring man's open mouth.

The guard woke with a start and instinctively struggled to get free. Ivan held him still and moved his blade onto the guard's throat.
"Quiet now. Don't make a scene."
The guard stopped struggling and held still.
"That's better. I'm looking for a girl that was brought in here earlier this afternoon."
He released his grip on the man's mouth so he could talk, but kept his hand near in case his captive decided to try yelling. "She's being held in the infusion lab. I heard someone say that they tried the experime-uh, that she's being held there."
"What experiment?"
"Nothing. I made a mistake."
"What experiment?" Ivan gripped the man's throat and started to squeeze.
"I told you I slipped up!" The man squirmed under Ivan's grip, trying to breathe but not wanting to test the knife.
"What experiment?" Ivan slowly pressed the blade into the man's skin until a trickle of blood appeared.
"Fine! Okay. It's an experiment with some kind of concentrated Psynergy. That's all I know."
"You're using my friend for an experiment?" The rage in Ivan's voice was unmistakable.
The guard smirked. "Ah, did we hurt your poor little girlfriend?"
Ivan clamped his hand down on the guard's esophagus and slid the knife around the man's neck, cutting a deep gash. The guard tried to scream and break free, but Ivan held him in the chair. After a couple seconds, the thrashing subsided and the guard fell limp.

Ivan stuffed his body under the desk and walked over to the door behind it. He cast Reveal and glanced through the now-semitransparent door. He didn't see anyone on the other side of it. He opened it slowly and peered in. The room looked clear, so he pushed the door open and walked in.

The room was obviously an armory. Swords of all sizes and descriptions lined the walls, along with many different bows.
One rack in particular drew Ivan's attention. It was lined with little glass tubes. Each one was about five inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide. They all had a metal cap on one end and were filled with different solutions. Some contained a thin, gray liquid. Others had a thick, green syrup in them. The one that Ivan grabbed was filled with a dark black fluid.

Ivan carefully inspected one but couldn't find any kind of a trigger mechanism. Not having any use for a device he didn't know how to use, Ivan put it back on the shelf. As he was walking away, he heard it tip over. He turned just in time to see it fall from the shelf and shatter on the floor. As the black liquid spilled on the floor, a large plume of thick, black smoke hissed out of the puddle.

Ivan heard someone behind another door.
"What was that?"
Ivan jumped into the shadows behind a weapon locker and cast Cloak, vanishing into the darkness.
The door opened and a guard walked in. He ran into the smoke cloud and checked the shelf of vials. Reassured that they were still there, he stepped back.
"Is everything all right in there?" a voice from behind the door asked.
The guard took another step back and coughed. "Yeah. Looks like someone was careless when they put a smoke tube back. It tipped over and fell on the floor."

The guard took another step back, putting himself about four feet away from Ivan. Ivan saw his chance and stepped forward. He quickly cast Mind Read, trying to find out were the "infusion lab" he'd heard about was located.

The guard felt a tingle at the back of his head and stepped forward, not knowing what was happening. Ivan drew his knife and followed. As his Cloak dispelled, he reached forward and grabbed the guard. He tried to clamp his hand down on the man's mouth, but he wasn't fast enough. The guard let out a short yelp before Ivan stabbed him in the throat.

The door opened and another guard stepped out. "Hey, are you all right?"
Then he noticed Ivan. "Intruder!"
All at once, four more men were in the doorway. Ivan ran to the shelf with the vials and grabbed one, hoping to delay them with another smoke cloud. As he threw it, however, he noticed that it wasn't the same black goop. As it hit the floor, gray liquid splashed everywhere. A split second later, there was a loud "BANG" and a dull red explosion. Glass fragments flew everywhere. The two guards in front were cut to ribbons. Ivan threw another gray tube, finishing off the other two. Ivan grabbed the last three gray tubes and doubled back.

Back in the first room, Ivan ran across and took the other door. To his dismay, he found a huge network of hallways. Rather than try and find his way through this maze, he found the nearest unlocked door. He quietly stepped in and looked around. About eight feet away, a man was sitting at a desk and writing. Ivan quickly closed the gap and grabbed him, managing to keep him quiet.
"Gotcha! Now show me the way to the infusion lab or I'll have to cut you open and look for the directions inside your head." Holding his captive guide by the throat, Ivan forced him to show the way to the lab. Ten minutes later, the guard opened a door and walked in, Ivan's knife still at his throat. Ivan looked across the room and saw Sheba strapped to a bed, obviously drugged.
"You bastard! What did you do to her?"
He loosened his grip on the man's throat ever so slightly. "They infused her, intending to make her smarter. But something went wrong and she enhanced her psynergy. We've had to keep her drugged so she won't kill us all!"
"If I find out that you're lying, I WILL come back for you. She'd better be okay."

Ivan walked his captive over to the wall and slammed the man's face into it. He set his unconscious victim on the floor and ran over to Sheba. He found her in a drugged sleep, but otherwise unharmed. As he struggled to wake her, he heard the door open behind him.
"Quick, there he is!"
Ivan turned just in time to see a guard rushing at him. Ivan timed the man's approach, jumping out of the way at the last second and dealing a swift chop to the guard's neck. As he landed on his feet, he jumped to the side and hit another charging guard, dropping him to the floor. The leader of the group sent another guard at Ivan, then turned to a man behind him.
"We need to sedate him. He's too powerful!"
The other man, obviously a pencil-pushing assistant pulled out a syringe. "My boss told me to hang onto this. I think it's a sedative!"
He handed the syringe to the leader, who quickly pulled back and whipped it at Ivan.
Ivan felt a sting in the back of his upper arm. He reached back and removed the now empty syringe. "Ah crap!" He tossed it aside and continued fighting.

The leader stepped back and smiled. "Now we just have to keep him busy for a couple minutes."
As Ivan continued fighting, he began to feel strange. His muscles began to feel hot and then to freeze up. He kept hitting the guards as hard as he could, but it was getting harder and harder to move. He had to throw two of the gray tubes to keep them back. Finally, he dropped to floor, unable to move. The leader walked up to him and turned him over. Ivan's labored panting was audible across the room.

"Good. He's down. Come here and tie him up. We have a lot to do to him and his girlfrie-Uhkkhhh!"
Before he had seen what was happening, Ivan's hand had shot up and was now crushing his windpipe. As he struggled to get free, Ivan grinned at him and stood up. He held his strangling captive at arm's length above the floor and clenched his hand down. There was a crumpling noise as the man's trachea collapsed. Ivan dropped the writhing form to the floor and stared at the guards. They were stunned and didn't know what to do.

Finally, one of them screamed and rushed towards him. The rest followed close behind. Ivan turned into a blur as he flew around the room, striking at everything in his path. He couldn't understand why he was moving so fast now.

After dropping most of the guards, the last three ran out of the room. One of them stopped outside the door, threw a green tube in, and slammed the door shut. Ivan tried to catch the tube before it hit the floor, but he was too late. As soon as it shattered, a large, green cloud began to form. Ivan tried the door, but it was locked. He began to choke on the gas. It was like no matter how hard he breathed out, there was no room for air in his lungs. As he ran over to try and untie Sheba, he fell to the floor and didn't move.

A/N: Well, what do you think? What will happen to Sheba now? Thanks so much to the people who reviewed this story. I think I'm going to wrap this one up in the next chapter. Please review! Pretty please?

Claviculae 6/30/05
10:10 PM
4 pages
200 lines
2021 words