Disclaimer: Mike Mignola owns all but mousy. Yes, that does mean Mike Mignola owns the world. Flee; flee for your lives!
Disgruntled patients lined the busy Munich sidewalk, complaining loudly to each other over the discomfort of being moved. They stood there, some on crutches, others in wheelchairs or lying on mobile beds, all waiting for the ambulances. Ward after ward had been emptied as the hospital was trying to deal with a 'gas leak' in one of the higher floors of the building. The patients, so consumed by their own ailments, failed to notice the garbage truck pulling up in the hospital's driveway behind them.
Dr Schnitt strode awkwardly down the sterile corridors, one of the nurses right on his polished heels as they made their way down the stairs to the back entrance of the hospital. Dr Schnitt was bristling with irritation as he spoke on his old, brick-like cellphone; "Ja, ja, all the patients in the intensive care unit have been helicoptered to the other hospitals. …Nein, she is still in critical condition, I don't know how long we can keep her alive."
"Alright; we're gonna bring in Red and Blue," spoke Myers on the other end of the phone, "You'll have to open the rear-entrance doors so we can get in; they can't be seen by the public."
Dr Schnitt felt his walrus-moustache twitch, 'Leave it to that little girl to find friends just as abnormal as she is.' "Fine, fine, bring them in!" Schnitt snapped, tossing the cellphone carelessly to the nurse following him. The nurse erupted into hurried German, asking the doctor why he was refusing a blood-transplant for their only patient, the little girl in the intensive care unit.
"Well what did the blood test say?" Schnitt barked angrily.
"O Negative," the nurse quipped.
Schnitt stopped in his tracks; 'She has a blood type?'
"Doktor, she will die without blood."
"Fine, give her the blood. But if her condition declines, stop the blood." The nurse nodded at the command and hurried off to get the blood ready.
Dr Schnitt continued on his way to the ambulance entrance of the hospital, checking his watch every two seconds out of habit, the time not registering even once in his mind. As he rounded the last corner the doctor felt a slight tremor shake the building, then another. They felt like the footsteps of a small elephant running on its hind legs.
Dr Schnitt, clinging to the side of the wall, almost had a heart-attack as a giant red monkey in pants sped past him, the hospital shaking with every one of his massive steps.
The ape turned his head to glance at Schnitt and recognition sparked in the creature's yellow eyes; "Hey, you're that guy—Dr Schnitt, right?"
The doctor nodded his head timidly, double chins trembling in fear. Hellboy gripped the tiny man by his shoulders; "Where's Mousy—Melissa?"
Dr Schnitt suddenly scowled, "Let go of me!" Hellboy released the doctor's shoulders and stood a pace back. "Thank you; she's in the intensive care unit upstairs. You must be what those Americans were calling 'Red'. Try not to rattle the building so when you walk, you could kill Melissa with all that banging about."
Hellboy turned a darker shade of red but followed the doctor's lead without protest. The agents caught up with them a few feet later, black boots squeaking against the polished floor as the group scrambled after Hellboy and the doctor. Abe was running along behind them with all the grace of a cougar crossed with a frog.
"Oh Lord…" Schnitt muttered upon seeing the ichthyoid.
"Hey; you got a problem with him, you've got a problem with me," Hellboy growled, knocking Schnitt's shoulder with his stone arm.
Schnitt ignored the threat, approaching the elevator. The metallic doors slid open to reveal a carriage already occupied by a handful of agents and Elizabeth Sherman. Schnitt's white moustache bristled; "I thought all of the patients had to be evacuated!"
Liz mirrored his scowl with one of her own; "I'm not a patient; I'm a visitor."
"Liz," Hellboy grinned, squeezing in the crowded elevator as the agents shuffled around to give the daemon more room. Schnitt stepped back, but Hellboy yanked the doctor in, just managing to fit the portly man in before the doors shut.
"I hope you weigh less than 200lbs," Schnitt muttered sourly. The elevator shuddered a little at the heavy load.
"How is she?" Liz asked quietly.
"Dying," the doctor snapped, "She tested as O negative, we are giving her blood—"
"You can't do that! It'll kill her!" Liz protested suddenly. Schnitt felt Hellboy's luminous eyes bearing down on him.
"If the nurses see trouble, they will stop the transition."
"What about her vital organs?" Myers piped up, his voice muffled from being wedged between the wall of the elevator and Hellboy's back, "Were any of those damaged in the attack?"
"Whatever attacked Melissa missed all of her internal organs. The wound is already beginning the healing process, but she has lost too much blood to be able to save herself," Schnitt sighed.
"What are her chances?"
"If she were a mere mortal like the rest of us, she would have been dead on arrival. I have no idea how to save her or how long she will live."
The elevator jolted to a still and the steel doors slid open, Schnitt hurried out of them and scuttled hurriedly towards the intensive care unit; a demon-man, the demon-man's girlfriend and a handful of American agents in black suits hot on his heels.
Abe was already in Melissa's room, bent over her unconscious form feeling the air around her body; a handful of nurses huddled in the opposite corner of the room almost in hysterics.
"Blue? How'd you do that?"
"Took the stairs."
"How is she?"
Abe shook his head, "I can't tell. Her body is not rejecting the blood, but I do not know what the consequences will be on her… abilities."
One of the nurses was shrieking at the sight of Hellboy, but one withering glare from the daemon shut her up. "What about her arm?"
"She has lost it forever. They tried extracting blood from it to try and save her, but they couldn't get enough to make a significant transition.
"Crap…" Hellboy looked down sadly on Melissa's sickly white face. The stump that reached halfway to where her elbow should have been had been sewn up and bandaged, red blood and yellow iodine staining the white gauze. A terrible scar ran along Melissa's midriff surrounded by purple blotches on her skin.
"That Nazi bastard," Hellboy hissed angrily, red nostrils flaring, "When I get my hands on that—"
"I don't understand why Kroenen would want to kill her… not after reading those letters he sent her…" Abe murmured. 'Why did he do it? Why does he hate her so much?'
"If there is a way you can save Melissa it's going to be in that laboratory you found earlier. Yes, I heard it through one of your agents, that talkative fellow…"
Abe met Hellboy's eyes with calm, "You decide Red; but remember, we haven't got that much time."
Hellboy nodded, "We'll go. Liz?" The raven-haired lady leaning against the doorframe looked up. "You stay here with Mousy; call us if anything goes wrong, okay?"
"Yes sir," Liz smirked.
"C'mon Dumpy, you're coming too," Hellboy growled, shoving the doctor along in front of him.
Liz wandered over to the side of Melissa's bed, looking down sadly at the girl she had hardly been aquainted with. She distantly heard Dr Schnitt yelling out 'Unhand me, sir!' further down the corridor.
"You'll be okay, won't you," Liz smiled quietly, pulling up a chair beside the hospital bed.
Unbeknownst to the pyrokinetic, an obsidian figure hovered in the shadows of the overhanging roof, blending with the absence of light. Kroenen waited, knowing he couldn't very well enter the building while Hellboy was still inside. The red daemon was the only one capable of defeating him in combat; he could not be allowed to interfere with his plans.
Slowly, unfurling like a spider, Kroenen crept down the stone wall, defying gravity in every way possible. Wrapping his leather-clad fingers around the window ledge, Kroenen pulled himself into the blind spot of the window. Inside he could see the pyrokinetic ladylove of Hellboy… and Christine.
"My Lord; look at this mess!" Dr Schnitt exclaimed, stepping over broken glass and spilled chemicals.
"Tell me about it. So, Doctor, where do we start?" Hellboy asked, accidentally knocking another glass beaker onto the floor with a tinkle of shattering glass.
"See if this doctor who did this kept a journal or some kind of documentary of his method… where's your, uh, fish?"
"Upstairs. This place gives him the creeps, too much death," Hellboy murmured, picking through the messy ruins of the laboratory.
Dr Schnitt dusted his hand over a packed bookshelf, revealing the gold-lettered spines of several German medical books. "Hmm," his podgy fingers stroked the leather spines.
Hellboy made his way over to the sarcophagus-like machine in the centre of the room, lifting up one of the severed pipes in his hand and examining it. The pipe was of black plastic, dried red stains clinging to the edges and sides. Hellboy's brows creased and he tugged experimentally on the tube, 'Where's this lead to…?'
"Found the journal," Dr Schnitt announced, sliding the book out of the crammed bookcase.
"Good start," Hellboy nodded, walking over to the old man.
Dr Schnitt flipped through the book; "What date are you looking for?"
"Abe said 7/6 was when she ran away."
"7/5… was the day of the 'operation'," Schnitt frowned, "That doesn't sound right…"
"Abe said that she was caught by her father on the night she tried to run away, then he operated on her." Hellboy shrugged, "Could've got the day wrong. Even I can't remember what the date is today. It's not like there's a calendar down here or anything," Hellboy shrugged.
"The day wrong? Oh, I forget, you're American, aren't you?" Schnitt stiffened, "Americans write the month before the day. Europeans…" Schnitt pointed at Dr Feilding's writing, "…write the day before the month. This is in June. The date in Melissa's diary would have been in July."
"How can that work? You're saying Christine ran away after her crazy father turned her into a freak and locked her away in this thing? And without noticing? Abe said Melissa went right through her diary. Nothing, nothing, mentions anything about her father or her father's lab; even before this."
"I don't understand this either, this is very… unusual…" Dr Schnitt sighed, his walrus moustache fluttering, "We need your fish-friend's help on this; perhaps he can read into the entry a little more."
"Did you tell Dr Schnitt about the laboratory?" Abe asked agent Myers casually.
"No," John replied indignantly.
Abe blinked his deep eyes in wonderment; "…You didn't…" 'But Dr Schnitt was referring to Myers. Did he lie?' "Did you ring Dr Schnitt before you and Hellboy arrived in Germany to see if Melissa was in the hospital?"
Myers' cheeks flushed, "Uh, no. I kind of… forgot to ring him. Abe? You okay?"
"Hey Blue," Hellboy called from within the crypt, emerging into the overcast daylight, "We found Dr Feilding's diary. This says he started the experiment a month before Mousy went missing—what is that?"
"M-Melissa… this is her grave. Right there, where Kroenen attacked her. Christine Fielding… died 1973." Abe was visibly trembling, his gills flapping wildly in an attempt to attain more air from the water in his respirator.
"What? I thought you said she was in that lab until somewhere in the 90s," Hellboy stared in shock at the mossy stone grave, "You sure you got the right Christine?"
"I… yes," Abe nodded. The ichthyoid looked at the ground, mouth slightly open as he tried to formulate the words to speak; "Red, b-before we left to find her I found, I found something…"
"What?"
"These photos," Abe reached into his belt, obviously flustered, "I didn't understand them at first… they don't seem possible… but they're real." The ichthyoid pulled out a handful of folded photocopied papers, handing them to Hellboy.
Hellboy took the papers in his left hand and carefully unfolded them. When he saw the image on the paper, the daemon inhaled sharply, "…It's Mousy…"
"That was taken in the '60s," Abe explained solemnly, "Before she was found by Dr Schnitt."
Hellboy squinted, "But she's an old lady… you can't just—"
Dr Schnitt snatched the photo away. The old man looked down at the rough print-out, squinting; "I know this woman."
"Yeah, she's lying on the bed in the hospital," Hellboy snarled.
"No; this was my mother."
Melissa looked around herself; the world was inky black and devoid of matter, nothing existed but empty space. She was a young girl again, and yet, so different. She felt an ache in her gut as the digestive acids burned through her stomach lining; she hadn't eaten in days. Pressing a hand to her waist, she could feel her ribs easily through the rags she wore. Her face was deathly white, as it always had been; she grew away from the sunlight.
Then she saw a mirror, a square piece of dirty glass hanging in the nothingness. Melissa stumbled towards it, but frowned at the reflection. It was she, the girl figured; but instead of facing herself, her reflection faced away from her. She moved closer, but the figure did not move. It was not a mirror, but a window.
Who was that in the window? It was her in the window, surely… she could see herself in the dirty sheen of the glass, the ghost of a reflection, and she looked identical to the girl in the window. Though, was the girl slightly older?
She could hear her father's steady mantra reverberating through her head, 'I made you. I made you better. I took out what was wrong and made you. You are perfect; you are pure. There is no wrongness in you; I made you.'
A/N: Creepy? Ooh, don't you just love the twists? ; ) sorry for the shortness of the chapter, and the long delay, and the cliff-hangers! (I know you all hate me now, hehe) I'll write more when I am given the time, whenever that may be. Thank you kind reviewers for all you support and enthusiasm. Sorry for the short responses, there isn't much time!
epalladino: But if Kroenen was in love with Melissa, what could have made him hate her so?
firepup: : D love you, mate.
theshadowcat: I would hurry, but I have no time any more and exams are coming! I will write as often as possible!
blade assassin: Thank you: ) reviews with relation to context are always great fun to read, Danke!
Bleeding Grey: Wow! First of all, thanks for the flattering comment, secondly… you're name is Melissa AND your nickname is Mousy? I must be stalking you or something! Can you change into animals, by any chance?
ToTaKeKe13: Ooh, what will happen? What will happen?
daydreamingal: Why thank you! I feel loved: )
boogalaga: Why indeed? That, my friend, will hopefully be revealed in the next chapter, stay tuned!
BeastBoyBlitz: The more you write, the better you become! Be like a sponge and absorb all the writing you can! (Mostly from published books so you don't pick up bad, unedited habits from me, lol) Hehe, I just couldn't refuse that quip, not even Mike Mignola owns Kroenen's ass! Haha!
Gestalt: She's not dead, yet. ; ) you liked those plot twist? Well, there's plenty more where that came from!
Blu Embyr: Oh wow! All those reviews! You've just completely made my day: D I'm so glad I made you laugh, I love making others laugh, it's mostly why I write fanfiction, lol! And Dr Schnitt is supposed to be alive, it's just his wife that died there… but who are his parents? The plot thickens! Thank you so much for all those reviews, they were wonderful!
FlyingFish15: It was more of a cling than a hug, really. She was embracing Kroenen as the embodiment of all that she had lost and that she longed to have back. Kroenen was probably a little shocked that she hugged him, hence his slow reaction. You see, some fangirls just aren't as lucky as my wee Mary Sue there ; )