A/N: Things are officially going funky.
Ch. 17
Midnight Menagerie
Stop playing God. You're not good at it, and the position is already filled.
Unknown
John gathered Krissa up and deposited her into Bren's arms.
" Get her out of here." It came out almost like a plea more than instruction. John kept looking back to the meatless skull hanging like Hannibal the Cannibal's Pinata from the wall. It was still dripping.
Bren didn't hesitate and walked fast back up the path. John took up the rear and kept an eye open for the genetic servants that were supposed to be everywhere. Lack of other presences, even lack of sound say for the drunken warbling of some lunatic bird that didn't know when it was time to shut up, was making his heart speed up. It had never really hit John before how empty this place was. He had always assumed, since the first day they arrived to a stable yard crawling with hybrid creations, that servants were out there somewhere, felt more than seen. He'd never taken the time to actually look and prove himself right or wrong.
Not to say that they weren't out there, just wickedly good at keeping out of sight.
" Damnit! Where the hell is everyone!" John snarled. He leaned to the side to peer around shrubs, then craned his neck to peer over them. He negotiated his way through the plant life to the massive green house, but skidded to a stop when he saw Vice gimping his way out the door. The man had buckled down and adopted the use of a cane. He turned, heading John's way, only to halt abruptly on finally noticing John.
John had his mouth open in ready to report the body hanging from the wall, but was struck by sudden terror. If Vice was here, Savine couldn't be that far behind. Besides, John had a feeling Vice couldn't care less concerning corpses dangling upside down – unless it was John's corpse. The man's eyes narrowed with a feral hatred that had John gulping.
" Screw that." He spun on his heels and charged from the greenhouse and back up the path. He was through the gate, only to do another skidding halt on seeing a face-off ensuing between Bren and the smirking Savine.
" That slimey old bat," John seethed, then stalked up to stand beside Bren. Savine's two other cronies had her flanked, their hands hanging at their sides within inches of their weapons. John brought his P-90 to the forefront.
Savine's eyes were only for the unconcsious Krissa.
" What has happened to my granddaughter?"
" None of your business," John caustically replied. " So move. She needs to get inside."
Savine pulled her unfathomable gaze from Krissa to place it on John. " What happened to my granddaughter?"
Bren's own gaze narrowed into a glower, and his need for an audible retort was turning his face red. There was such a thing as smiling too much, and Savine was doing just that. John's own frustration coupled with Bren's could have fueled a good sized bomb. Oh, if only, if only...
" Why do you want to know?" John spat. " Because beneath that wrinkled ice burg you call a body your only pathetic spark of grandmotherly affection finally clawed through? Or are you just pissed because you think someone else got to your granddaughter first? Really think I'll give you the satisfaction of telling you?"
Savine clasped her hands together. " If you wish to pass, then yes."
John rolled his eyes and cursed. " You freakin'...! She passed out, you happy? She had the bad luck to look up at the wrong time and see a human chew toy staring down at her. There's a dead body at the north end of the garden, which I'm pretty sure isn't doing wonders for the reputation of your boss' place. So we can either stand around here all day and have a staring contest, or you could make your boss a happy man and tell someone about the body before it starts stinking up the place!"
It was a harsh way to put the matter, but John wasn't going to waste time trying to get Savine's sympathy's up for a face-less dead person. The woman didn't even twitch a facial muscle at the mention of corpse, and the way the competition was playing out, she was probably used to stumbling on bodies herself (maybe even planting a few).
The stance of Savine's goons eased out of their tense posture, and the twitching fingers stilled. John took that as the cue to go, and placed a hand on Bren's shoulder to urge him on. They swept around Savine and her men with only a ripple of air brushing between them. John chanced a quick peek over his shoulder. Savine and company had turned, and that smile was still plastered as though carved forever into her face.
John's spine pricked with cold irritation. He wanted to turn, storm back, and wipe that smile clean out of existence with a quick right hook across the jaw. As Carson might say, that woman is too bloody happy. The smile was almost – triumphant – it seemed, as though the old hag knew something, had done something, or was about to do something that would make all the world right for her and her alone.
Anger switched with shattering nerves. The woman was a nut job, and it was freaking John out. He looked away, but kept his head turned enough for Savine to remain in his peripheral vision.
Savine kept on smiling.
" Bart!" John called the moment he and Bren entered the parlor. Bren set Krissa down on the couch by the door, and John headed into the bed chamber to find Bart and a black, feline-faced genetic with a long, prehensile tail and huge bat-ears changing the sheets on the bed. After tucking the last corner, Bart turned to John.
" Yes, Mr. Sheppard?"
John jerked his thumb over his shoulder. " Problem. Dead body at the north end of the garden hanging from the wall. Should I be worried or do these things 'just happen'?"
Bart sniffed. " I fear, Mr. Sheppard, these things just happen. Chances were, the dead individual in question took a walk in the late evening and was caught by one of the woodland creatures."
The cat-bat twitched its over-sized ears. " Would not be the first time," it both rasped and purred.
Bart turned to the cat-bat and jerked its head in a nod. The cat-bat nodded back and scurried from the room, John stepping to the side to let it pass. He looked back at Bart, the creature pulling the blue quilt back over the layers of sheets.
All this impassivity, this cold dismissal for what on any other world would have had people up in arms and reacting, was chipping away at John one nerve ending at a time. People vanishing he could put up with, because it didn't mean they were dead.
Mutilated bodies were the final step crossing the line into full-fledged horror movie, and John didn't want to be around when the ax murderer finally shouted his 'Here's Johnny' through a butchered door. John stepped into the room. Bart was leaning forward, smoothing out the wrinkles in the blanket.
" What does it usually take for people to start getting worried?"
Bart moved to the pillows and fluffed them. " People already are worried." He swiveled his head ninety degrees to look at John. " About themselves. You, Miss Krissa, and Mr. Bren are the only ones who have extended their concern. That is not wise, Mr. Sheppard."
John leaned against the post of the bed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. " I just have a problem with people dying over a stupid contest. It's never attracted attention, from anyone? Family of the victims, Sriotian authorities?"
Bart turned from the bed to gather the discarded sheets piled on the floor into a large basket. " It has... in the past. But all know the dangers of the woods. And Master Diavante's is a difficult place to find."
Or was it more that Diavante had everyone under his thumb. The image of nervous children gathered off the path leading into an ink black forest, talking urban legend gibberish about a creature called Diavante, crawled back into John's recollection.
Who is this Diavante?
" Is there a way for me to meet your boss?" John asked.
" Why would you want to?"
John spread the fingers of one hand over his bicep. " To talk. To say hi. To see what he looks like. He can't be that bad a recluse. Doesn't anyone get to see him?"
Bart stuffed the sheets into the basket, shifting the folds until no inch of the coverings trailed out. " Diavante must come to you, there is no going to him."
Bart kept stuffing, an act of fidgeting hesitation. Facial expressions could be mastered, but it took more to keep minor actions in check. Bart shoved the sheets deeper and tighter until he had no more room for more shoving. Finally, the genetic little hob-goblin lifted the basket and ambled to the door. " Master Diavante does not wish to be seen."
John turned his head enough to watch Bart go. It was redundant to say that the creature was holding back on something, but John said it to himself all the same. The question was – how to get that something out of a being that expressed the same regard it held for a mote of dust over a dead, mutilated body? John knew he wasn't the first with deep suspicions concerning Diavante, or the first wanting information. Bart had that information, and probably the skills to hold it no matter how interrogated or threatened to give it up.
Besides, in the end, it probably wouldn't matter. With another scientist gone, this contest was drawing to its close. It would be over, the shield would be open, John could go home, and Krissa would be safe under Diavante's employment.
Except life was never so easy.
SGA
Krissa had become an automaton. On waking pale faced and stoic, she insisted on returning to the lab to work on the sil. There was no talking her out of it. She declared her desire, then made for the door, leaving the decision to follow up to Bren and John. Once in the lab the girl fell into the rhythm of construction – welding, sparking, cutting, and programming. She worked into the evening meal which Bart had brought since no one was in the mood for company, and didn't touch a single piece of food.
Bren was concerned, but John – even harboring his own concern – was understanding. Food would not be a pretty prospect for some time, and only Bren cleaned his own plate. John managed a roll, and a few scraps of meat. The red mashed whats-it was just too red to even look at.
On bringing the meal, Bart had also brought the news that the body had belonged the the short, pudgy scientist that could have won the contest for having the most protectors, had there been such a contest. He had been identified by his key card. The protectors were no where to be found.
Bart began gathering up the cold plates to set them on the silver tray.
John, sitting at a clutter-free lab table, ran his hand over his face, then rubbed his eye. His mind was floating in mist, a light insubstantial mist he was actually starting to enjoy as it leaked numbingly through the rest of his rebelling body.
Give him something corporeal to shoot. He was longing for a physical target. Something – someone – coming at him from the front. One shot, one fall, one down and the threat would finally have a face. Then, were there more than one, they could suffer the same fate.
The unknown had a kinship with heat-of-the-moment danger – both sparked the necessary evil of violent reaction. The difference was, heat of the moment was always here and now, with the mind working on automatic, and all thought process say for survival put on hiatus. For the unknown, there was no action until the moment for it came. Until then, there was only desire – the need to do something, find something, react to something. It was a kind of madness, really, one that accumulated like pressure building beneath a geyser, gathering toward combustion until one was shooting at the walls because shadows wouldn't stop flickering.
Mind games. Torture tactic finale, right before the fall.
John closed his eyes. Warnings whispered like timid, frightened children in his head. He would listen to them this time around. Even if they had him jumping off the roof, he would listen and do it.
John heard sniffling and opened his eyes to look at Krissa. Her shoulders were jerking, but her arms were still. Bren had the sil in his hands and was gently placing it back in the lock box. The old man looked at John, then at Krissa, both with a pitying expression.
John forced his stiff-limbed body to move from its numbed existence on the chair over to where Krissa sniffed and shuddered. He eased himself onto the stool next to her and leaned with both his arms on the table, hands clasped.
Tears traced glittering paths down Krissa's cheeks. When she spoke, it was in a small, altered voice.
" I wish I never came here."
" I thought you didn't have a choice?" John said.
Krissa wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then shrugged. " There's always a choice."
" Living on the run doesn't sound like much of a choice to me."
Krissa lowered her head to stare at her hands toying with a tiny bolt in her fingers. " I – I knew... I thought I knew... just how terrible things became during the competition. But... I don't think... I did." She did another wipe with her hand. Bren came up beside her and handed her a white handkerchief. She took it, wiped her cheeks, then crumpled it in her hands still holding the bolt.
" I don't want to live in a place that doesn't care what happens to people. I don't want to spend the rest of my life here." She took a deep breath, and sighed, shoulders sagging. " How can anyone be safe in a place like this? Or remain safe? If I win the contest, how do I know it's all over for good? It may just keep going – all these disappearances... and deaths. How does Diavante keep anyone safe? We don't even see him. This was stupid. Coming here was stupid."
John, at a loss, looked up at Bren. The older man looked just as lost as to what to do or say. John shifted his sights back to Krissa, and took the bolt from her hand. " You did what you felt needed to be done. If you ask me, it honestly sounded as though you didn't have a choice. Be a fugitive or die because you're grandmother's heart is a useless lump of coal."
Krissa did another hiccuping inhale with more tears racing eachother down her face. Her eyes, however, focused inward to distant thoughts that made her oblivious to her surroundings.
" I shouldn't have come. It was stupid. I should have known better."
John actually chuckled derisively at this, which brought Krissa out of her inward musings to look at him oddly.
" Known better," John repeated. " Ah, crap, where have I heard that before? You know what's funny about decisions? Sometimes, all you have to decide between is one evil versus another evil. Where I come from, we call it choosing between the lesser of two evils. Then – sometimes – you find out that there's no such thing as the lesser of two evils. They're both just as irritatingly wicked, and it doesn't matter which one you choose, you're still screwed. It's like this story – from where I come from. It's about a guy who's psychotically in love with this princess, but the king isn't too happy about it. So he puts the guy in an arena where he's faced with two choices. He can either choose the princess and get eaten by these giant, man-eating animals, or go for door number two and a forced marriage with another woman he doesn't love. You know which one he chooses?"
Krissa shook her head.
John grinned. " Yeah, neither do I, that's how the story ends."
Krissa wiped her nose with the cloth and furrowed her brow. " Sounds like a rather dumb story."
" Maybe. But, hey, it's also life. Some choices just suck either way you choose. I know. I've faced it enough, been forced to decide between the bad and the bad, swallowed my poison and had to live with it ever since. And each time, I didn't know better. You don't let yourself know better. You just go by hope, by faith, by necessity. You go by what you can. In the end, yeah you hate yourself, but..."
John looked down at the table and his warped reflection in the smooth metallic surface.
' If you'd stayed, you would have both died.' Kate's words. So poignantly true they stabbed into John's brain. Both die or one die, John's sucky choice. Such truths he tended to stubbornly refuse to except for the harshness of them. It was like with Sumner – he said the word 'necessity' in his head and out loud, but inside still loathed himself for doing it, because it had been a necessary evil.
" But you go with it," he blurted, his throat thick and his voice heavy. " You do it, because... as it turns out... it really was the lesser of two evils."
Still didn't mean he had to like it.
He felt the light weight of Krissa's hand on his arm, so he looked at her.
Such grown-up eyes in such a little girl. It wasn't right.
Then Krissa pursed her lips. " It's still a dumb story."
John burst out a breathy laugh. " Yeah, kind of irritated me too." He then looked at his watch. " Man, it's getting kind of late. Maybe we should head up to the room."
Krissa, doing one final wipe before stuffing the cloth into the pocket of her dress, nodded and stood. " Tomorrow, the sil should be ready. After that, we only need to wait for the others to finish."
They left the lab with Bart locking up behind them, then the dungeon to enter the darkened halls that required Bart to lead the way using a flashlight. Once it was lights out, it was lights out, and stragglers had to put up with it.
Everything was a black and white Picasso piece, warped by darkness and moonlight until nothing was familiar. The little' party's shadow doppelgangers glided within the mirrors like separate beings living on their own concordance. The group was silent, and the need to get out of the darkness was mutual enough not to be spoken. Upstairs, the darkness was worse, surrounding and stretching like a maw and its connecting throat. Bart's light danced off the ceiling, floors and walls, slicing the darkness without leaving a mark.
The light flitted off something that wasn't in keeping with the rest of the décor, and John caught it within the brief second he had to see.
" Whoa, wait! Pull the light back, on the floor. I though I saw something."
Bart swept the light over the carpet. It glanced off of a small lump that was immediately swallowed back into obscurity when the light passed. Bart quickly snapped the light to where the lump had been, then moved it up to show the lump connected to a bigger lump.
John brought up his P-90 and clicked on its light. Together, the two beams allowed them to piece the single massive form together as belonging to Grot. Krissa gasped. John moved closer.
Blood had soaked a misshapen circle in the rug beneath Grot, and blood continued to ooze from gashes and tears in the meaty body. Half of Grot's face was torn away, a shredded half-mask of meat and bone. Grot's back was shredded, his legs, his arm bent wrong at the elbow. It was the gaping tear in the chest that made John gag on rising vomit.
Then came the scream. A human scream. A female scream.
John's heart took off at a run. He whirled around, slicing the darkness with his light. " Get Krissa inside," he said barely above a whisper. " Lock the door."
Bren began hustling Krissa toward the room.
" B-but John," Krissa stammered. " What – what about you? Aren't you coming?"
" No. I'm going after Sareeka."
Krissa grabbed the door frame before Bren could haul her the rest of the way in. " John, no, you can't! You'll be killed!"
John pulled his nine mil and made sure it still had a clip. " I can't just let whatever happened to Grot happen to Sareeka. Nobody else around here may give a damn, but I do. If I can keep this from happening, I will. Now get inside!"
" John!" Krissa yelled, but her grip on the frame slid free and Bart closed the door before Krissa managed to wriggle from Bren's grasp.
Not even any time for a good luck, not that any of the three would know to say the words. John's heart beat like a cornered animal trying to break free of its bony confinement. This was stupid, foolish, dangerous – and pretty much the story of John's life. Had McKay been present, there would have been snide remarks concerning Kirk and saving damsels in distress.
Except John wasn't all that fond of Sareeka. He was doing this out of charity, not attraction, so his resolve wasn't quite so fixed. He was also doing this to spite the cold indifference that seemed to be the norm of Diavante's residents. To hell with the competition. It wasn't in John's nature to let death traipse where it would.
John shoved his nine mil back into the thigh holster. He moved to the wall, keeping to it as he crept toward the stairs. Good old silence, he could actually forgive its persistent presence this time around, because he was going to need it. At the moment, it had nothing to reveal. Not that John expected to hear any frantic whimpers or frenetic breathing within the next five seconds. The scream had had some distance to it.
John cursed the darkness. The light of the P-90 was a thin thread that didn't even put a dent in the shadows. This was yet another reason for his distaste toward opulence. The bigger the place, the better the hiding, and the more phantom flick of shadows that made John's nerves send out sudden bursts of electric pin-pricks.
He moved quick taking the stairs with a conditioned control that kept the silence in place. Not one step creaked or any of his footfalls thump – he knew how to play at being a ghost. Once at the bottom he crouched against the wall and swept his light through the hall. Light flashed off of mirrors and window pains, but no moving forms. The way cleared, John unfolded from his position and moved on, mourning his lack of a life-signs detector.
Note to self – Never stop carrying one!
A scream, farther away this time around. John paused to listen, then increased his pace. There followed a whining creak that made John halt and crouch at the ready. He stayed crouched as he moved toward the sound each time it came, only to straighten when he arrived at the front entrance. The door was ajar, and moving with each puffing gust of wind. John heard the scream again, garbled by greater distance. He was wasting time creeping about like a cockroach.
John slipped through the door out into the moist midnight so dark it actually hurt John's eyes. He kept to the wall of the mansion as a reference point, and went at a half-run toward the stables. He could hear, still with too much distance for comfort, the shouts, screams, and entreaties of Sareeka. As stuck up and cold as that woman was, it didn't deter John's sympathies for her.
He reached the stable gate – closed and locked tight when he tried to tug on the bars. Sareeka had most definitely not gone through there. John moved on, skirting around the corner to the other side of the wall where the forest was too close for comfort. John was running now, pumping his legs as fast as he could manage while still keeping the P-90 up. He rounded the next corner, and his light landed on a door swaying precariously from a single hinge. It was the way to the inner court of the place, where the storage sheds, never-used smithee, and wash room were.
The screams were closer, reverberating sharply to make John cringe. He slowed on approach to the door, and moved with a methodically light tread on entering the inner court.
A howl, like a trumpet and a roar, had John diving behind the nearest shed, pressing his back up against it. Within the howl was a shriek of terror-induced insanity that bubbled down into a broken, wailing sob.
Sareeka didn't have that much longer to live. John shoved back with infuriated force his own rising terror. With a deep breath, he bolted from around the building, and darted to the larger stone structure that was the old smithee.
Another howl shattered the air, vibrating John's bones. It banged like a jackhammer against his eardrums, forcing him to release his weapon to cover his ears before the fragile membrane was punctured. But he could still feel the sound beating against him like pressure building up around his body. When it died down, John released his ears to grab up his P-90 and do another bolt around the structure.
He slowed when the light fell on the prone body dressed in a red nightgown and robe. Sareeka was ten feet away before another of the dead fountains. She was also alone.
John passed his light around in a 360 circle, then brought it back to Sareeka.
" Sareeka?" His voice came out cracked and harsh. He moved to the form that had yet to move. Something was spreading beneath it, growing and growing. His light exposed the heavy crimson of a bloody pool, and with a sickening jolt as though the world had dropped out from beneath John, he realized that the gown wasn't supposed to be red. His light flashed off the remaining hint of sky blue at the hem of the robe.
John jerked to a halt as both stomach and heart attempted to cram themselves into his throat.
" Son of a...!"
His attention was so focused on Sareeka that the movement beyond the body didn't reach his attention until the gutteral purr sounded. John's light jerked up to the hulking mass of darkness hovering over the body.
John's terror was delayed by numbing confusion. John wasn't a stranger to beasts, but he sure as hell wasn't desensitized to them. This one – pale, scaled skin, blunt snout with an outward jutting and bloodstained jaw, arched spine ridged in spikes the length of a forearm, arms like an ape with knuckles that dragged on the ground, and claws scythe-curved and blood-painted. The thing drooled blood, licked blood from its lipless, serrated fang-filled maw with a worm-like tongue. It even had blood-red eyes.
But above all that, the one feature that struck John the hardest was that this thing was wearing clothes. Tattered, frayed, barely hanging on to the muscle thick body, but horribly familiar by its silver color.
The thing stared at John with a look of annoyance remarkably human in such ugly red eyes. The creature lifted an arm knotted with ropey veins, wiped its jaws, then pointed at John. The thing grunted. The next thing John knew, something heavy and foul smelling crashed into his body, bringing him down hard and painful to the ground. He barely cried out from the first pain when a second pain joined it in his arm brought on by claws splitting the flesh of his bicep.
John reacted on instinct. He swung his P-90 up, bashing whatever it was in its thick skull. The thing tilted to the side, so John rammed the business end into what he thought was the gut and fired. There was a shriek like metal being rended. The thing reared back, and John got his first good look.
The creature clawing at its bleeding belly was slender, copper furred, with a long, narrow, and toothy snout that curved into a sharp beak. It shredded the remainder of the shirt and leather jackets in its attempt at getting to the holes in its gut. But that was all John saw when he was grabbed by the collar of his vest and thrown back into the wall of the mansion with a crack.
The threatening fog of unconsciousness pulsated in his vision. He shook his head trying to clear it, then attempted to rise. He was brought back to the ground with a hiss of pain flaring through both his sides.
And there goes another rib. He tried climbing to his feet again, and slipped back down the wall, hugging his sides. Hisses, purrs, and growls were all around him. Panic kicked back the pain. He lifted his gun to sweep the light around. The beasts were gathered about the bleeder thrashing on the ground. The white lizard gorilla held it down. A brown, leather skinned anthropomorphic T-rex that walked with a gimp sliced the belly open and proceeded to pick out the bullets with its claws. The third, a black creature covered in small but jagged scales and with a beaked snout, held the bleeder's own snout shut. And they all wore clothes – what was left of clothes.
" What the hell?" John murmured. He braced his back to the wall, and pushed with his feet, inching up until he was returned to standing. But he was stuck using the wall as support. His legs shook. One step, and he'd go down like a chopped tree. He had until the creatures finally remembered that he was around to recover his strength.
John's heart dropped. I'm dead.
" Mr. Sheppard..."
John jolted and whipped his head around and down to see Bart standing like the ever patient butler with clawed hands clasped behind the back. Now John had to wonder if he was dreaming. He felt himself start sliding back down the wall.
" Wh-what...?"
Bart took John's hand and began tugging him along. " This way, Mr. Sheppard. Time is not on our side."
John shot one more bewildered look to the beasts playing back-woods surgeon with their buddy. Even under restraint by the hulking mutant gorilla, it still lashed and writhed.
" In here, Mr. Sheppard."
John looked back. Bart was guiding him through a hole in the wall, a door shaped hole big enough for Bart but forcing John to bend his back to get through. Once on the other side he was able to straighten, and fell against the moist stone walls.
They were in a narrow corridor dimly lit by small lamps evenly spaced. They hummed with that annoying low pitched sound normally associated with fluorescent bulbs, and a few flickered and strobed.
Bart pressed a small hand panel and a stone door slid into place, muffling the howls and shrieks of agony. With a wall of rock between him and the creatures, John let himself slide to the floor this time around, planting his elbow on his upturned knees, and his head in his hands.
He was trembling, and would eventually puke once the energy for it surfaced.
" Oh crap..." he moaned through his hands. " Oh gosh. What the hell... What the hell is going on?" He wanted to sob; honest to goodness break down in tears, curl up in a ball, and pass out. Wouldn't be the first time. He was conditioned enough through similar moments throughout his life to know how to shake it off, exhale it out, give himself a moment then get over it. At most, it lasted a minute.
After a minute, he lifted his head to stare at Bart in a penetrating way. John was still trembling. He sucked in a sharp lungful of air, and coughed when his ribs stabbed.
" What – the hell – was that?" he said between gritted teeth, flecks of saliva flying from his lips. Insane, irrational terror was trying to pound its way through his skull, creating a throb, making his blood pulse as though too much for his veins to contain. More than wanting to go home, he just wanted to wake up.
Bart didn't seem to hear. He was looking to the sealed door with large ears pricked forward. He sniffed.
" Hm. Seems they couldn't save him."
" What?"
" Listen."
John strained his hearing beyond the wall. The shrieks and howls had stopped.
" Sounds as though your aim had been true, Mr. Sheppard. Normally the thick or armored hides protect them. Most of the projectiles Mr. Vice suffered through were lodged in the skin. Little trouble digging them out. Not this time, it seems. Madame Savine is going to be very angry with you."
John raised an eyebrow at Bart. " What? What the hell are you talking about? What are those things? Savine's little pets?"
Bart turned to John and mimicked the brow movement. " Pets? Well, perhaps the other three... two now, it sounds like. Not really her pets, just under her employ. No, not pets. That had been Savine and her men."
John stared. " S-Savine? That thing – that thing that... um... mutilated Sareeka... That was Savine?"
" Yes. Mr. Sheppard."
John shrank against the wall, wishing he could shrink into it all together and out of existence. " Ah hell you've gotta be kidding me." The words came out almost as a whimper. " No freakin way. American Werewolf on another planet, what the hell!"
Bart sighed. " I do not know of this American Werewolf thing you speak of. Savine's altercation serum is one of her most prized creations. An accident, really, since it was not her objective to create a means to alter one's form. But so goes the ways of science. Took her many years to perfect - many tests."
Bart took John's arm and began tugging. " Come with me. There is something I must show you. Perhaps it will shed much light on the situation."
With Bart's help, John inched and struggled his way to his feet with one shoulder glued to the wall for support. His legs were rediscovering their strength, but he still didn't trust them. Bart led the way down the narrow corridor.
" Where are we, anyway?" John asked.
" Servants' passage. It's why you see so few of my kind. They are all asleep right now. Mr. Sheppard, I must warn you, the death of Mr. Rint has put you in dangerous standing with Madame Savine."
John snorted. " Like I wasn't already."
Bart, still moving, swiveled his head around. John hated that.
" Oh no, Mr. Sheppard. Whatever her ill will, Savine would never have harmed you as long as you remained on Master Diavante's property. Master Diavante will not allow it. Had Savine been able to kill you, you would have been dead days ago." Bart swiveled his head back. " But with Mr. Rint dead by your weapon, she may become angered enough to try anything to seek revenge. Madame Savine – she's not as she used to be in the head. I believe it is the serum. Prolonged use over the years has altered her and her men. Her men tend to give way to animal tendencies, which is why they are so messy with their kills. Tricky to control in their normal state, impossible to control in their animal state. Their own fault, really. They gave into the instincts. Madame Savine has not, but the power given to her by the form has made her..."
" Power hungry? Or a control freak?" John finished.
" Both, really. A most unhappy woman, Madame Savine. Use of the Serum has made her tendencies toward anger most volatile. You see, the serum wears off after a few weeks, sometimes three at the least, sometimes a month. It is prolonged the more one takes the form. First use is quite harmless, does little to the mentality. It is why Savine deemed it safe. But it has become her drug of choice. It is difficult to manufacture, and she spends much time doing so that she may not run out. It is a three part serum: The first being an inhibitor to keep the body from going into shock. The second the catalyst that forces the body to accept the animal biometrics. The final, the biometrics themselves. Initially, the serum was that whoever was injected became a creature and stayed that creature. She was missing a single component."
John rubbed his arm, wincing at the sting, and recalling the gashes Rint had so kindly bestowed upon him. He drew his hand away smeared with blood. He was really getting sick of that color. " Uh-huh. And you're telling me all this now because...?
Bart stopped and swiveled its head. " I like you Mr. Sheppard." The rest of his body followed the head, and Bart stepped up to John. " Have you a cloth?"
John pulled the emergency bandage from his ripped vest and handed it over. Bart unbound the cloth and stood tip-toe to wrap it around John's arm.
" Like me?" John said, laying the incredulity on thick. Last time someone had said similar words, a young soldier got his chest split open.
" Quite. You treated me as nothing more than an equal rather than a creature. You gave me a name. You did not exclude me. Rather disconcerting at first, but I found I rather enjoyed it. I feel a repayment is in order. I do not wish to see anything unfortold befalling you, Miss Krissa and Mr. Bren. Very unpleasant prospect."
When Bart had finished tying off the bandage, he resumed the trek down the corridor. John followed.
" So," John said. " This missing component?"
" Madame Savine creates the forms using the structural components of other creatures. Many creatures. The serums ingenuity is the control one has over it. I know since I was one of those who assisted in its creation. The structural components are many but the mind of the one taking the serum is actually able to choose which attributes of which creature it wants, and discards those attributes it does not want. You create your own form according to necessity, subconscious desire, and personality. Or, at least, that is what seems to be the case. Madame Savine's form has grown over the years, taking better attributes and discarding lesser. Changing into and back out of the form is also by choice, though extreme duress can trigger it without knowledge."
John shook his head and chuckled tiredly. " Man, if only Beckett could hear this. His jaw would never leave the floor."
" Beckett?"
" A doctor. Has a little thing for genetics himself. No where even close to this level though. Crap, he'd flip out if he heard about it."
They turned a corner, went twenty more feet, then Bart stopped to press another hand panel. A door slid away revealing a spiral staircase in a narrow stairwell. The metal case rang with each of their footsteps and shuddered. John gripped the rail until his knuckles were white.
" Sure this thing is safe?"
" Quite. We are almost there."
On reaching the bottom, another panel was pressed, another door slid away, and John found himself in the lab dungeon. They continued on past the lab doors with their darkened windows. One, however, was lit, and John peeked in to see that Genii scientist hunched over the table, welding something.
" So why was Sareeka killed, and that other guy?"
" Caught trying to break into Savine's lab, no doubt. Trying to steal her creations. Such actions are not allowed, and those who do such actions are no longer under Diavante's protection."
John curled his lip in disgust. " Diavante really has a talent for looking the other way, doesn't he?"
Bart sniffed. " More than you know. Here we are."
They had come to what had to have been the final chamber of the dungeon, and a large metal door with a small, square window. Bart pulled a key card from its pocket, slipped it through the slot, and waited until the tiny light changed color.
The door opened on its own accord, and lights flicked on.
Stepping inside was like stepping into the worlds coolest freak show, or the chamber where Ripley kept all the Believe it or Nots. All along the wall were small rooms sealed by unbreakable glass where mis-matched genetic creatures prowled, paced or slept. Between those were metal shelves of hightech 'specimen jars' where grotesque forms floated in yellow-tinted fluids. Some were small, some so large they couldn't be put on shelves but beside shelves. The center of the room was dominated by tables of equipment that made McKay's lab look like a day-care center full of cute, expensive toys. For John to just be looking at the stuff made him nervous concerning damage and the amount needed to be paid for that damage.
John and Bart moved along the walls of the freak show. Creatures hissed, snarled, even jumped against the glass with a boom and a thud, making John flinch. He was wired enough as it was to start at the drop of a pin. A few creatures regarded them indifferently, others with a penetrating sorrow. John swore the thing that looked like a furry Golum was pleading with him to let it out.
" One of the first to be tested with the serum," Bart explained. " Didn't quite go too well. The rest are merely sample creations." They walked by something resembling one of Bart's brethren, but doing nothing more than dribbling drool. " My kind were graced to have intelligence so that we might be useful rather than fill these cells."
A snake the size of a horse and a length John could not measure rose up, spreading two arms and clawed fingers. It began banging on the window, hissing and gaping its maw with fangs dripping poison.
" Another serum attempt. That one went quite feral."
They passed window after window, John's gut coiling tighter with each vicious and grotesque thing peering back at him. Then, at the next window, he halted so suddenly he stumbled. There, pacing behind the glass, thumping its tail, was a...
" Freakin' erak!"
Bart turned and regarded the mutant dog. " You are acquainted with this model?"
John's fingers twitched on the trigger of his P-90. " Oh yeah. Very, acquainted. Is there a way to let it out? Because I'd really like to acquaint it with a bullet to the brain. Why do you have one? Savine plan on making it worse?"
" Making it worse? Mr. Sheppard, the beast is as altered as it can get. Originally it was quite a docile creature, but the inhabitants of that world wanted something more fierce. It's bio-makeup was altered to make it bigger, stronger, while at the same time capable of being controlled."
The erak threw itself against the glass, clawed it, head-butted it, and howled out its frustrated fury at the invisible barrier between it and its pray.
John turned to Bart. " The Mykotes – Cyladrans. Those guys?"
" Yes."
" You do business with the Cyladrans?"
" For a number of years. You see, their world has precious metals that Diavante most desires, so many of Master Diavante's inventions have gone to them."
Oh how John wanted to laugh, and shoot something, and cry. Maybe even rip his hair out. Instead, he dropped both his arms, letting the P-90 dangle heavy in his hand. " Bloody freakin' hell!" Carson probably couldn't have said it better. John would have beaten him to saying it anyways. " Yeah, I've landed in hell. Crap, those bastards had us believing they were freakin' advanced!" John winced when the muted throbbing in his head became a pounding. His hand shot straight to his skull, and he had to gulp back rising vomit.
Bart's forehead wrinkled. " Mr. Sheppard? Are you all right? You look pale."
John, still shivering, lurched toward the nearest stool and dropped himself into it. " Yeah – um... No, not really. But, hey, no surprise. I mean look at my day. Headache was inevitable."
" We will head back soon," Bart said. " I brought you here to see this, and you have seen it."
John, rubbing the back of his neck, narrowed his eyes suspiciously. " Why did you bring me here? I already knew Savine was into genetics?"
Bart clasped his claws back behind his back. " Oh, it is much more than that. Mr. Sheppard. I did not bring you here as an insight toward Madame Savine. You once asked me about Master Diavante; what he was like, who he was. Mr. Sheppard, what I am about to tell you is no secret. It is something that has simply... never been known. Diavante is quite good at keeping his secrets, but is neither here nor there should they be discovered. Sometimes, he can't afford to keep his secrets. Madame Savine knows, she has to. Her purpose for being here stems around his secrets. I told you there was a missing component to the serum."
John would have nodded, but his head would have protested loudly. " Yeah?"
" Diavante provided that component from his own bio-makeup." Bart then sniffed. " He is... an unusual being, Mr. Sheppard. You asked to meet him?"
John grimaced. " I'm having second thoughts."
" You've been having dreams?"
" Yeah."
" Unpleasant ones?"
" Yeah."
" Do they make you ill?"
" Very."
" Then it is safe to say you have already met him."
SGASGASGASGA
A/N: So, what do you think?
