Author: Lucinda
Similar to the series, with chances of violence and moderate sexuality
main characters: Riley, Graham
Faith and Second Chances 14: Crushing Truths
disclaimer: I do not own any characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
distribution: Wic, Paula, Cat - anyone else ask first.
set in season 4, just after the body-switching has been reversed.
The next day, Riley went down to the Initiative base to find Dr. Walsh. Regardless of the chaos that was going on, he was still the TA for her psychology class at the university. There were tests to be returned and some essays for the abnormal behavior class, all of which she'd had in her office.
He wasn't expecting the bustling confusion. There were scientists looking confused, and scowling soldiers. Looking around, he finally spotted Graham, who would at least be someone that he knew could give a coherent response. "Graham, what's going on here?"
"Walsh is dead." Graham replied, and then looked at the hall, leading to some of the smaller laboratories. "She was found in one of the rooms, and it looked like something had stabbed her."
"Stabbed?" Riley repeated, a dark and unhappy feeling rising inside. "Stabbed with what?"
"Maybe impaled would be a better word." Graham mused, before looking back to Riley. "Dr. Caldwell said the wounds were almost identical to the one that killed Forrest. She said that it was probably the same creature responsible for both deaths."
"But the Polgara was dead. Not only that, but Dr. Walsh was in here, not out in the field." Riley felt confused by the whole thing. The pieces were trying to fit together, but he really didn't like the picture that they were starting to make.
"I know. Apparently, she was working on some sort of project in one of the labs. Whatever it was, apparently the entity responsible for her death took or destroyed the project." Graham's voice was very calm, very flat. "That's the verdict from Captain Keller."
Riley nodded, and made his way towards her office. "I need to pick up those papers for the psych classes."
Graham followed, his silence somehow conveying a feeling of not-aloneness. "You'll have to take those by yourself for now."
Inside the office, he looked over the desk, focusing on remembering where things were put. "The papers..."
There was a stack of computer disks in the drawer next to the psych papers. Sighing, he picked them up. "At least I've got the lesson plans."
As he made his way back towards the elevator, Riley couldn't help but wonder if it was really so simple. The patchwork monster... His mind kept going back to it. Making a decision, he turned towards the records room instead.
There was a soldier on duty, scanning reports into the computer. "Can I help you, sir?"
"Yes, I wanted to see a picture of the Polgara, if you can." Riley fought to keep his voice level, to sound casual. "There was something last night, I wanted to try to make an identification."
The clerk nodded, and called up a new window on his computer. "It might take me a few moments to find it, sir."
Riley nodded, and tried to wait quietly as the clerk searched for a picture. "There was a briefing prepared on a Polgara, sir. I'll load it up, there should be several pictures in it."
As the images flashed on the screen, Riley felt himself go cold inside. The Polgara had killed Forrest. And he would never forget it's ugly appearance. That arm, with the bone spike that had shot out...
The arm was exactly the same as the right arm on the patchwork demon.
"There was a note to try to bring this one in as intact as possible, so the scientists could study its physiology." The clerk's words only added to that bad feeling. "Does this help, sir?"
"Some." He was dimly surprised that his voice was steady. "The creature that we spotted last night wasn't a Polgara, but now that I can see the picture, there were some definite similarities."
"Glad to be of assistance, sir." The clerk replied, returning his attention to the stack of reports. "Was there anything else?"
"No, that's all for now." Riley murmured, already moving. The patchwork monster had the Polgara's arm. The arm from something that he knew had been killed, and the body taken into the Initiative for study. Doctor Walsh had been working on a project when she was killed...
What if her killer hadn't destroyed the project? What if he or she had taken it?
It wasn't until he was sorting though the papers to see what had been graded and what hadn't that a darker suspicion arose. What if the killer had been the project?
"No, it couldn't be. She couldn't have." The words were a soft plea, though he wasn't certain quite whom he addressed them towards.
In a state of denial, he started to grade the remaining tests. She couldn't have done that to her own soldiers. She'd once said that they were like the children that she'd never had. It had to have been someone else.
He picked up the first disk, noticing that they were only labeled with numbers, not any words. Would it have been too much trouble to label them by the classes that she was teaching?
As he slid it into the computer, he had a moment of guilty thought, wondering if maybe the disks were something else, unrelated to her psychology classes. No, they had to connect to the classes, or else why would they have been in that drawer? It had only held college stuff, her class schedule, the syllabi for the classes, class rosters, and the papers to be graded. They had to connect.
There certainly did seem to be a lot of them for a couple classes though. Maybe it was just that PowerPoint presentations took a lot of memory space, and she liked to use those to explain things. Yes that had to be it.
The disk contained several long files, and one short one, none of which had names that made him think of psychology. Actually, they looked more like some sort of lab reports.
The short one was labeled 'Project 300.'
He didn't breathe as he opened the file. A part of his mind whispered that this was wrong, this was an invasion of her privacy. It wasn't connected to her classes; he had no business to look into this. But he looked at the screen anyhow.
It was some sort of study about physical enhancement drugs. His first thought was steroids, but what would a psychologist be doing with a report about steroids? Looking more carefully, he realized that it wasn't steroids but hormone supplements and adjustments. That made a little more sense, adjusting the levels of hormones could cause changes in behavior.
All the subjects appeared to be males between the ages of eighteen and twenty six. That didn't seem quite right; didn't a good study require a broader range? Older or younger volunteers, or maybe a check for the effects on females? There were female athletes as well as men. Performance enhancing hormones were possibly safer than steroids, but he was pretty sure that there were steroid problems among women athletes as well.
He looked further down the report, frowning as he came to a single, glaring phrase - 'the subjects are still unaware of the effects, and side effects have remained within acceptable parameters.' What were these 'acceptable parameters', and what sort of side effects did the report mean? Who had been doing this study anyhow?
The more he read, the worse he felt. He didn't recognize the designations for some of the hormones, but maybe that was just because his studies had been in psychology, not biology? Regardless, it was becoming clear that this wasn't some sort of double blind study, but something where the subjects didn't even know that they were the subjects of an experiment.
Those poor guys. Experimented on without their knowledge or consent. Given who knew what all sorts of hormones that would do who knew what to their bodies... Changing anything in the body had further effects.
The study was listed as ongoing. Ongoing where? What research facility would be willing to risk everything on something so... Unprofessional? Illegal?
The very end listed names of the people responsible for this study. Dr. H. L. O'Brien. Dr. D. I. Hubbard. Dr. M. R. Walsh.
Dr. Walsh was one of the people responsible for this study?
How could she do something like that?
He almost dropped the disk as he took it out and put in another one, from closer to the bottom of the stack. It had more massive files, and he could only conclude that those were the detailed reports about the project, not the report that summarized them. This one was labeled 'Project 312.'
Everything went cold as he read this file. It should have been perfectly fine, just a bit of medical documentation. Apparently, organs had been successfully transplanted, with the new drugs preventing tissue rejection. But something about it didn't sound quite right. Organ transplants were done in hospital surgical suits, not private labs, weren't they? They tried to get as close of a genetic match as possible, they didn't depend on hormone supplements and immuno-suppresants to prevent a rejection.
The pieces fit themselves together. Project 312 was organ transplants, and he was starting to think that the organ donors weren't human. Dr. Walsh had been doing hormone studies on people who didn't know they had become the subjects of an experiment. Either she had been involved, or she had known what was happening and permitted it to continue.
Now, someone had to do was figure out how to clean up after this mess. Someone had to find a way to prevent the patchwork monster from killing again. Someone had to figure out if the same thing had been done to any of the other fallen soldiers.
"How's it feel to be someone?" Riley whispered to himself.
End F&2ndC 14: Crushing Truths.