Chapter Three: Containment

The containment breach had occurred, I discovered, in the area of the facility where we housed the dangerously ill subjects - not the ill of body, whom we cared for in the medical wing, but the ill of mind, those who rebelled against we who attempted to cure them and ease their lives. We had offered them kindness, refuge from death and pain, and they had rejected our offer.

I was glad as I hurried towards the breach; had Max remained a moment longer she would have asked to see portions of the facility such as this. In the service of truth I could not bear to hide them from her, but neither could I bear to show to her the darkest portions of my new life.

I once had struggled for words to describe the subjects we housed; with sadness and relief I had abandoned the strictures of English in my search for words. Kinder, I called them, at least in my thoughts - the troubled children of our collective sins.

Today's problem child had come to us from an Itex affiliate; he had been found crouched along a roadside in the desert somewhere. Perhaps he had been dumped there to get rid of him; perhaps he had escaped. Either way, somehow he had survived, and come into our care.

Two men had died to bring him here; the man who found him and brought him to our attention, and the first man of ours to try and bring him home.

Naturally, none of us were exactly kindly disposed towards this latest arrival among our collection of Kinder. He showed no remorse for the deaths he had caused; he was aware that he had caused them, but cared no more than an animal does. Perhaps less.

I could not bring myself to despise him; even he might have value to us, and it was worth the effort to contain him, attempt to civilize him, here. But I missed my colleague; if I could have exchanged his killer for him, a death for a death, I would have done it in an instant.

As it was, although I did value his presence (if we had not picked him up - who would have? Unlike some of Itex's other abandoned children, he was mostly normal in appearance)... I would have given much to grant myself authorization to use lethal force against him, to give him an end to the existence he had spent struggling against every force he met.

I would have left him to the ministrations of our security team had it not been this particular subject - any other and I would have stayed with the cats to soothe my nerves. But this child - his body did not accept the standard tranquilizers, and we could not afford to risk his death by using bullets to subdue him.

Thus, rather than expend delicately-calibrated tranquilizers developed specially for him every time he disagreed with us, the agreement among the team working with him was that, unless it were impossible, we would apply non-violent means to restrain and re-contain him.

In practice, though it was usually possible for a member of the team to 'talk him down' into relative calm, I found myself called to subdue him more often than I liked. The team working with him claimed that I was quicker to subdue him than anything short of a tranquilizer dart or a bullet to the brainstem.

He had not gotten far after breaching his containment; the security team on duty in the 'violent wing' had backed him into a corner, where he snarled and paced like an animal.

"Sorry I'm late," I said to the team leader, trying to suppress my panting for breath - I had run most of the way from the room where I had left Josie. "Has anything important happened?"

A shake of the head sufficed for 'no', but the efficiency of the wordless communication was canceled out when the team leader amended himself. "Well, yes. Danny boy has been asking for you. Specifically you," he added in response to my raised eyebrows of doubt.

'Danny boy', as the security teams most often on duty in the 'violent wing' liked to call our most troublesome child, was screeching in anger at a member of the team who had stepped too close to him; he had wrapped his claw-like hands around the tranquilizer gun held tight in the team member's gloved hands and was shouting into his face in a nasally-accented voice I knew all too well.

"-ya do that again and I'mma turn ya into hamburgah is what I'm gonna do, fuckface, so don't you dare fuckin touch me-"

The security team member, I saw with a measure of amusement, was literally shaking in his boots - who would not, when berated by a seven-foot monster with claws on its hands and a nasal accent?

One of Danny's ears swiveled forward even as he continued to berate the poor fellow, and he broke off in mid-sentence to address me. It was a disarming conversational habit, constantly switching threads, but nowhere near as disarming as Danny's propensity to spontaneously disembowel anyone who displeased him. Or anyone who didn't displease him, depending on his mood.

"Hey doc, how ya been," he said, releasing the tranquilizer gun and allowing the man he had been threatening to step away. "If it ain't my favorite scumbag."

"Hello, Daniel," I said. Compared to him Max was nothing. "What's the trouble?"

He drew himself up to his full height. "Well, I was gonna take me a walk, get out and see the sun for once, and these guys says I can't do that. And I says, well, I'm a free man and I'm gonna take me a fuckin walk, and you can go fuck ya mother if ya don't like it. And this alarm keeps going off, it's really makin me mad, with all this fuckin wee-ooo bullshit goin on while I'm trying to have a conversation. So I says, look, I'm goin outside whether you like it or not, if you get out of my way ya gonna be a lot less dead, ya understand?"

I nodded. At one point I'd been fascinated by his vocabulary - where had he picked up that vocabulary, that accent, those patterns of speech? - but at this point it all blended together. The members of the team assigned to him agreed with me to a man; after a while, Daniel's ranting all blurred together, until all you had to do was nod and agree in the right places. "Then what happened, Daniel?"

"Well, then." He crossed his arms. "Then these guys is tellin me I can't have no walk without someone gives me permission, and I says the way they have it I can't take a shit without getting permission from somebody, I'm a free man and I got my rights, and one of them is the right to take a fuckin walk when I wanna take a fuckin walk, y'know? They says, Danny boy, you ain't got no rights, not unless one of the docs says you do, if they say you don't you don't. So I says fine, I'll stay right here, I ain't goin nowhere until one of the docs shows up, and I ain't goin back inside unless it's one of the head honchoes sayin I can take a walk, takin my side of the issue, yeah? And I knowed you was one of the head honchoes and I seen you around before, so I made up my mind I was gonna stay until I saw you, doc." His eyes were dark brown; as they studied me I had the feeling of being watched by an inhuman predator of some sort which was judging me by its own strange standards, even as I judged it by mine.

"Then what?" I dropped my gaze; his staring had begun to unnerve me, but I had the sense that I had just been challenged to an animalistic contest of dominance, and lost. No matter. I was the one in control: if I deemed it appropriate, I could have him killed - not that it was as simple as my only giving the word, but Daniel's life hung in the balance more than he knew. All those involved with his case were waiting for him to slip up again; the general consensus was that we had learned all we could from his particular case, and that the only real thing we could do for him now would be to kill him. We couldn't loose him upon the world as he was now, and our efforts to make him a civilized man, or at least capable of functioning in society, had met with flat failure across the board. He could stay here with us, or be turned out into the world.

As much as he longed for sunshine and freedom, and expressed it every chance he got - Daniel could never truly know either, barring a complete psychological miracle. And I doubted, greatly doubted, that that was in the cards.

"I waited for ya to show up, doc. I says to these guys I'm gonna stay right here in the corner until you come walkin down the hall, but they don't believe me, they never do. And this fuckhead-" He pointed at the team member he'd been arguing with when I arrived. "This fuckhead says I need to watch it or he's gonna put in a request to have my sorry ass terminated. He gets all up in my face and he says that. Well, I couldn't just let that go, doc, so I gave him a little piece of my mind. And that's when you walked in." He shrugged. "So you tell me, what's the trouble?"

"I don't know, Daniel," I said, tiredly searching my mind for the best thing to say. Normally I could spar with him for quite a while, or at least long enough to get the situation under control. Today I had already dealt with Max, who was enough for a week. "Right now... I am very sorry, but I will try to arrange for you to have some free time on the grounds, if you are on your best behavior. You'll have to be accompanied, of course," I continued, watching his face, especially the eyes, for any sign of anger, "but I am afraid it is the best I can do."

Another shrug. "Sounds fine, doc."

"Thank you, Daniel," I said, meaning it more honestly this time than usual. If I'd had to suffer through one of his petty outbursts, the likelihood was that there would have been a tragic little accident with one of the pistols the security team carried.

"Nah, thank you." He paused, brown eyes wide and unblinking - their color was average, but unlike in humans the white was invisible, leaving him with pure brown eyes like a dog's. Some sort of half-wild thing, he reminded me of sometimes, ready to turn on its master at a moment's notice.

"Is there anything else?"

I waited for his answer, thinking of coffee, of the chair in my office and Josie purring from her customary perch wherever I would be most inconvenienced by her presence.

"Nah," he decided, and laced his hands on the back of his head, the signal for the security team to escort him back inside; it was our common signal that he wasn't going to try anything funny while they escorted him, that the hijinks were over for the time being.

"Goodbye," he called back over his shoulder.

I waved one hand to him.

Josie bit my hand.

"Ouch, Josie," I said, shaking the injured appendage and darting my best reproachful look at her.

She hissed, but submitted herself to further thoughtful stroking by me, after an offering of truce via belly rub.

I had been studiously not thinking of Johannes since Max left, but now, in near-silence and something approaching peace, I allowed my mind to return to the topic it refused to keep away from, the wound I could not stop myself from picking at.

In 1987, Hans had been nineteen; I had been twenty-eight. He was the younger brother of one of my colleagues at the lab where I was working then, and I had met him by chance at a Christmas party. The young man was unusually intelligent, even by the standards of the elite cabal in which I began to occupy a place; he did not outsmart me, but he came close upon occasion. Despite the difference in our ages we had become fast friends.

I do not remember the car crash that took his legs; I was lucky and escaped with a broken arm and a concussion, but the concussion erased my memories for a two-week span before and after the crash. I know that I was not driving, but I am not sure who was.

Hans claimed to remember everything, but I had never pressed him for details; it was in the past, what did it matter?

I had known him more than half his life; he had known me for not quite half of mine. I trusted him not to lie to me.

Yet still, there was a part of me that believed what Max had said, that he was whole again and walking the world as he had not in so many years.

Talk was cheap, though - the man Max had met might simply have taken my friend's name. Or he might have lied to her.

I was not sure which I would rather be true: that she had met Hans, or that she hadn't. I knew which she believed, but I wasn't sure which I believed.

Oh hell, I was confused.

I sighed and looked at my watch; according to my schedule I had a meeting to attend in twenty minutes.

As per usual, the meeting was incredibly dull.

I sat with my hands folded on the wooden table, pretending interest and pondering the possibility of a sandwich after the meeting; I hadn't had a chance to eat yet that day, aside from coffee that morning.

"Doctor?"

I wasn't the only person bearing that title in the room, but I responded anyway. "Yes?"

"What do you propose we do?"

It reflects sharply on my life that I had responded to exactly that question before with 'kill them'.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I've been preoccupied for the past two days dealing with Max."

There was a nod of recognition from a junior staff member; I had known him at Itex, one of the many victims of Max's penchant for inflicting huge amounts of collateral damage.

I frantically cast about for anything significant to submit to the conversation, eventually stumbling upon a hedge. "I'd suggest we allow the team a little more time to work before making a decision over their heads."

A nod from the head of the table. "What do you suggest in the matter of Max?"

"She's very sick," I told him. "I argued her into coming back in a month. By that time I believe her condition may have worsened to the degree we may be forced to admit her to our custody for a prolonged period of time. I don't anticipate it will be easy to cure her."

"Thank you."

The conversation moved on, and as I sat there thinking of coffee, I couldn't help but dwell on the piece of information I was keeping from them, a lie by omission: whatever she suffered from, it might affect her whole family. It certainly affected her brother.

Untreated, I wagered it would kill her.

I hate this chapter and everything about it. So you know. But I felt guilty not continuing.

Ter Borcht's voice is really starting to piss me off.

Anon replies:

Kenikitten, let me cite chapter and verse at you like a fuckass.

"Entries not allowed: ... Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc."

Some SYOC stories also fall under another clause:

"Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes, and etc."

This occurs when the poster does not include any breath of plot, but only leaves a profile to be filled out and a request for characters.

Anyway, I'm a creeper with no life and that's why I read fanfic. Also it's a damn sight better than memorizing the anatomy textbook I haven't sold back yet.

Next chapter we return to Max, and after that I find in my files a terribad little piece of villainy that I think I'll post anyway because why not.