A/N: Daily updates, because the next couple of chapters will prove most interesting. Moooost interesting indeed. I've got twisted muses.

Ch. 16

Harsh Conditions

" Jooooohhhnn."

Oil on the brain. Firm pressure on his shoulder, like a vice.

John bolted up with a harsh gasp that shredded his throat. The pressure on his bare shoulder remained firm against him trying to jerk his limb free, and his other shoulder soon suffered the same sensation. John blinked sweat and tears from his eyes, sucking in air and heaving it out with his chest straining against the bandages on each intake.

In the dusky light of the fire, John gradually registered Bren's dark-angled face outlined by orange. Bren's grip was solid, unrelenting, but gentle. He stared into John's face with the patience a father might have for a terrified child. The fire of the parlor didn't defeat the drafts that managed to worm their way in through the old mansion. Cool air touching John's exposed, sweat-drenched back escalated his shivering.

He'd chucked wearing a shirt to bed since he pretty much always ended up having to wash it the next morning. With or without one, he kept waking up cold.

The oil in his brain, the fingers prodding, burrowing, and caressing his mind, slid from him with a reluctance that made him want to puke. He dropped his head against Bren's own shoulder, and gulped back the burning liquid crawling up his throat.

" Sorry Bren," he rasped. Bren pushed him back into sitting, then removed one hand to type on the pad.

They're worse?

John, his breathing minimized, shook his head. " No. They're the same. Always... Always the freakin' same." He rolled his shoulder. The tendrils of oil seemed to want to linger along his spine. He'd done his best to describe them to Bren – the voice for the most part. The rest was too damn embarrassing to go into.

Something's touching me, and lately I've not been too fond of being touched. Being violated would have been a better word. This constant invasion of inner space was sickening.

Bren typed: Will you try the medicine now?

Krissa had offered to make John a medicative Sriotian tea that was supposed to have the effectiveness of one of Beckett's magic sleeping pills if John determined Krissa's description of it right. John shook his head again.

" No. I told you, it's too dangerous. You need to be able to wake me up in case something happens. Besides, I know from experience medicine doesn't always stop the dreams."

Bren nodded and typed some more. I understand. But this is making you ill."

John put his hand to his face, then ran his fingers through his sweat-slicked hair. " I know. But it's not like it's unfamiliar territory either. Damnit, why is this happening?" he gasped, and shuddered. Wraith dreams, Genii dreams, Cy dreams, dreams of becoming bugs, and dreams of bugs – those he got. Waking to alarms in his head, screams, cries of pain was what normally passed for sweat drenching bolts into the waking world.

John could give no name to what marred his mind during the night. Somehow, though – despite the lack of imagery, being a dream of sensation – it was starting to top his list of the worst of all dreams by far.

Bren showed John the pad. Don't know. Wish I did. Bren then patted John's shoulder and stood. John fell back against his pillow and rolled onto his uninjured side. Sweat had soaked into the bandages. Not like he really needed them anymore, except for his ribs which still reacted violently whenever he forgot how tender they were.

Countless days of this crap, off and on, coming even when he didn't let his guard down. Some nights he slept without incident, and like the occasional scrap of food tossed to the starving man, the uninterrupted sleep kept John on his feet. But the setbacks were creeping in, sometimes in the form of slowed reaction time, but mostly as a soreness in his limbs, a throbbing in his head, and an increasing and annoying itch in his chest. Not even his appetite was being spared, especially because there was no getting used to neon blue peas.

John had stopped counting days to determine weeks and such. The passage of time, for him, was in Krissa's progression with the Sil. It was coming together nicely according to her, and had now reached the point where it had a form other than being a mess of parts strewed on the table. Cylindrical, black, with two access panels on either end. When quitting time came, she would lock it in a special case brought from home, the kind with a lock requiring an eye-scan to open.

John rolled back onto his back when his healthy side began to protest by aching. He passed both hands over his face, then through his hair, stopping at the crown of his skull. His eyes darted to the fire when it blazed. Bart was stoking it, its head swiveled one eighty on its neck to look at John with its never ending indifference.

" What?" John asked without expectation of an answer.

Adhering to expectation, Bart swiveled its neck back around to stare into the flames. As much as the creature's nonchalance amused John with countless hours of trying to get the thing to react, most of the time it just creeped him out.

John dropped his arms, heaved a breath, and coughed. He still had an hour – according to his watch – before he took the next shift. He rolled his head to the void-black window, and found a modicum of comfort at not being able to see anything. He couldn't explain why, just that the darkness was like a wall, reminding him that he was not out there, where the not so pleasant wild things were.

John's eyes slid closed, more by force. Firelight writhed through his eyelids.

Maybe that's what took the Genii soldier. Since the little spat, the man had gone missing the very next day, and the majority of suspicious scowls were being geared toward Krissa's party. John wasn't about to take the blame should he be confronted, but until such time, he found no qualms in letting people sweat under the assumption. It was keeping the rivals at bay.

A howl like a trumpet cross-bred with a lion's roar rose tempered by distance but still strong enough to rattle the window. John opened his eyes, then ponderously sat up with head tilted to one side, listening. Glancing over at Bren, the older man was rigid as a tree, staring darkly at the window. The roar rose, just a little, in pitch, then drifted off into a single howling echo. Silence returned thicker than before, even with the fire popping.

Bren looked at John, and John continued to stare at Bren.

" What was that?" John asked, keeping his voice low though he didn't know why.

Bren shook his head and shrugged. Both looked at Bart. Bart was turned away with its back to them, stabbing the wood glowing with hell-fire until the flames sparked and hissed. " Things of the woods," it said without looking away, as though the flames were all that mattered in the world.

The roar came again, closer, more powerful, vibrating the window until the reflections in the glass pulsed. At the same time it was joined by another - farther away - and another just as close. John's heart slammed and he scrabbled backwards off of the couch and onto the floor back first as though the emitter of that howl had been right next to him. He managed to grab his P-90 but couldn't get to his feet until Bren grabbed his arm and hauled him up. The two men faced the window with weapons raised. The howls kept coming - rising, falling, rising again, joined by snarls, or sometimes ending abruptly.

Krissa bolted from the bed chamber, panting in whimpering breaths of terror. " What is that?"

Bren held his arm out to her, then placed it around her shoulders to bring her in close between him and John.

" We don't know," John said between fast coming breaths. Bart remained planted before the fire with a blanket wrapped around its small body.

" We are safe here," Bart said.

The three were stationed in the center of the room. John had the window, and Bren shot anxious looks to the door.

" You sure about that?" John countered. The howls kept coming, closer, farther, louder, quieter. They were all over the place.

Bart gave the fire another stab so that it flared. " Quite."

The howls became less scattered, and more subdued as space was put between the noise and the parlor. Eventually they drifted, becoming trumpeting reverberations.

Then they stopped as though someone had finally hit the mute button. The only noise remaining was harsh breathing and the crack of a prodded fire, rising like a beast seeking the weak spot of its cage.

John refused to lower his P-90, and Bren was showing the same stubbornness.

" That," John said between pants, " is pretty damn good incentive for never going to sleep at night."

SGASGASGASGA

" You sure this is a good idea?" John said. He scuffed the pebbled path that wound through the garden with his boot, and eyed the pounds of ivy that buried the wall it grew on with unhidden mistrust. There were places big enough to hide a body – species unimportant. The garden seemed the only exterior part of the mansion – besides the stables – that was well kept. The garden of The Secret Garden it could have been, except that flowers were sadly lacking. It was mostly well-trimmed hedges, trees, a few dead fountains, and plants John couldn't even describe. Out of the center of the garden rose a massive green-house where most of the flowers could be found. At least that's how it seemed when Krissa and John moved in close for a peek. The place was locked, and both were in agreement that it was better observed from the outside if this was where Savine kept her mutant plants.

Thinking of the wicked witch, her lack of presence was just as unnerving as the thick ivy and hedges. The woman and her three goons, including the gimpy Vice, made quick and occasional appearances during the evening meal, but were next to being ghosts the rest of the time. John had seen - during walks such as now, and while traipsing the halls for whatever reason – a rare glimpse of one of the three body guards, fleeting and always making John do a double take. They were being watched, that much was a certainty. So it wasn't as though John had put Savine completely at the back of his mind. She still ruled the forefront, along with the wild things that partied in the deep of night, ripping out noise to wake the dead.

Both were what made him edgy about these afternoon walks, even with daylight overhead – daylight minimized by thick, scattered clouds.

Krissa looked up at John uncertainly. " Bart said the grounds are safest during the day. And being in that lab was making me sleepy."

John couldn't argue with that. The lab had a way of turning into a sweat box minus the heat throughout the day – stuffy and dull. John had caught Krissa's head bobbing once or twice, all between his own bouts of nodding off all together.

Bren typed on his pad. Krissa's mother was insistent she spend small moments in fresh air, and exercising.

John could definitely not argue against motherly advice.

The path turned, hugging along the wall. John scuffed more pebbles to send them scattering on ahead.

Two more days. Krissa had promised two more days, and the sil would be ready for testing. But the contest did not really begin until all entries were complete, so the completion of the sil was no guarantee that John would be getting out of this place any time soon, and it was starting to settle on him like a rock in his stomach. He had ignored the passage of time as best he could, and stifled his thoughts from drifting to Atlantis, and what might be going on there. He couldn't think about it for the sake of sanity. Even giving in to a fond memory or two started the invisible bugs to go haywire beneath his skin.

But even brains had brains of their own, and thought what they wanted. He could no more put Atlantis out of mind than he could force Diavante to lift that stupid shield. So he did think, and squirm, and increase in agitation until some occurrence in the present pulled him from it – which was pretty much often.

And pretty much now.

" This will be a short walk, though," Krissa said as her gaze shifted around nervously. " Very short."

Go back now, maybe? Bren typed.

" I won't argue with tha..." John's words ended in a choked squeak when he was yanked back by the collar of his vest, jacket, and shirt to go slamming into an ivy-thinned area of the wall. No sooner had he impacted when a thick hand with sausages for fingers wrapped around John's neck and pinned him to the spot.

" Careful Glot. That is a rather fragile looking neck you are holding. Appears as though it wouldn't take much to break it."

If Glot's hold was lose, then John didn't know how to pilot a jumper. The mere presence of the hand on his throat was enough to decrease the circumference of his trachea. John's breath rasped, and his vision was starting to spark. He tried to pull the hand from him but it was solid as a statue.

" Let him go!" Krissa screamed. John focused through the sparks to see Krissa standing with arms rigid at her side and fists shaking. Her eyes shimmered with tears. " Leave him alone! You're hurting him!"

Bren had his weapon raised, and the need to say something was a torment manifested in the increasing red spreading through his face. The man was pissed.

" Glot will release him when we have talked," Sareeka snapped. The woman was standing on the other side of the ogre, dressed in brown leather pants, a cream-colored smock, and brown leather vest. Her stance was that of an impatient woman with hand on hip and heeled boot tapping. But John caught – even in his hazed state of mind – the flicker of fear that went whizzing through her features like Roadrunner with Coyote on his tail.

" You will release him now!" Krissa shriek. She advanced – actually advanced – on the mountain of muscle that was Glot and began beating the thick man on the small of the back with her tiny fists. " Let him go!"

Bren made to pull her back, but not before Glot shoved her back to send her sprawling on the ground.

Oh hell no! Using Glot's unwavering hold, John pushed his back against the wall and brought up both feet to ram into Glot's groin.

Glot grunted, doubled up, but only pressed John harder into the wall. John gritted his teeth against his own pain spiraling up both ankles.

What's he got in there, metal?

Grot's lip curled. He pulled John from the wall, then slammed him harder against it. The pain in his ankles became a trifle compared to the pain ripping through his shoulder-blades. His only verbal response was another pathetic squeak as he tried to suck in air that wasn't coming.

" Enough!" Sareeka snarled. " Glot! Stow your pried. I wanted him subdued, not dead." Sareeka turned her red-hot gaze on Krissa. The girl was back on her feet, looking from John to Sareeka, altering between fury and fear.

" What do you want?" Krissa asked, her head ping-ponging back and forth.

" An ultimatum, nothing more. You leave me be, I leave you be. Reasonable enough."

Krissa squinted uncertainly. " Huh?"

" Oh don't play ignorant, girl! I know you're the ones who made the Genii vanish. You can deny it, plead innocent, but I was there when that Genii and this one," She pointed a stiff finger at John, " came at odds. I've heard of the confrontation you had with Avril. I have yet to figure your means, but I will not become your next victim. You dare to cross paths with me in any way, and you will die, all of you. Let me be, and I will pretend that you are not here. You may stay in the contest, continue to exist, and I will not get in your way. All as long as you do not get in mine. Do we have an understanding?"

Krissa opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. She looked from Bren, to John, to Sareeka, then back to John. Confusion was present, coupled with dread and the struggle to maintain calm. But she was at a loss, a total loss, and John knew it was because she wanted to refuse having had anything to do with the disappearances. The girl was honest to a fault, and it was getting harder for John to breathe. He looked at Krissa pleadingly, sorrowfully because he understood. It was what he liked about Krissa, her honesty and her abhorrence toward harm.

Her kindness, which Sareeka knew nothing about.

" O-okay," Krissa said in a small, defeated voice.

A mile curved Sareeka's lips. " Good. Glot?"

Glot released John. John's legs gave way, and he fell to his knees, rubbing his throat. Krissa hurried to his side, checking his neck. Sareeka and Glot sauntered past without a second look.

" John?" Krissa's voice faltered. John looked over at her, at the tears still pooling at the edges of her eyelids.

John coughed, then rasped. " You all right?"

Gradually, a smile was allowed to come out on Krissa's face, tentative at best but genuine all the same. " Yes. Are you?"

John began rising to his feet, and Krissa helped by keeping a firm hold on his arm.

" I will be," he rasped.

Bren gave him an okay nod, and clasped him on the shoulder.

" Time to go in, then," Krissa said hurridly. They walked more quickly down the garden path until they came to the north-end gate.

" I hope this contest ends soon," Krissa said. She was between Bren and John. But as they neared the gate, all three slowed. It was blatantly apparent something was wrong.

The black iron gate was clinging to the wall by a single hinge, and leaning drunkenly to the side.

" Well," John mused, " guess this place isn't as well kept as I thought."

The gate whined at the slightest movement. Krissa was the first to move close, and leaned in while at the same time keeping distance as though not wanting to touch it – or more logically allow it to fall on her.

" I see no rust," she said. Then shook her head. " No, the metal is twisted. This gate was torn off. Maybe in a storm? I've heard storms that have shown such power..."

John took up the scrutiny when he was near enough, along with Bren. Bren nodded in agreement. The hinge was twisted, and the metal scarred. Krissa touched the gate lightly. It moved with a whine. She looked it up and down, then looked up. The color vanished from her face as though all the blood had drained from her. John noticed.

" Krissa?" He moved to stand by her. There was a red spot in the middle of her forehead. Then another landed with a plat next to the first. John looked up.

" Son of a...! Crap!"

He grabbed Krissa, covering her eyes while twisting her away to shield all view using his own body. But he couldn't tear his own sights away from the mangled and near fleshless face staring down at him with mouth gaping and single eye bulging in perpetual terror. Everything was pretty much gone – flesh, muscles, an arm, a few fingers. The corpse from trunk to head was hanging from the tangle of ivy at the top of the wall. Blood dripped from it, fresh. Insects swarmed droning around it, drinking it up. John could see into its mouth where the tongue was supposed to be.

" Krissa," John said, shuddering. " Don't look. Just... keep looking away."

Krissa became heavier in his arms. He looked down at her to see her head hanging limply from her neck, and arms dangling.

She'd passed out.

SGASGASGASGA

A/N: The end. So just kidding. More like TBC... (Someone should end a story like, then finish the rest as a sequel. I would laugh.)