Sorry that this took SO long. I got a new job, life got ahead of me. This story was meant to hold me over until season 2, now the real world is up into season 3. I doubt any of you are still following me, but heck, here's to you anyway. You'll spot a few familiar faces this chapter, including my favorite one-episode-hero.
P.S. #ImStillCrying. #DollsCantBeGone #BringHimBack
.
When the quartet arrived at the base, they saw numerous lying either dead or incapacitated (none of the others felt like asking Doc which it was) and the gate open.
"Hot shit! You don't mess around." Wynonna said with enthusiasm as she span around, marveling at Doc's work.
"It's not much a challenge when they can't see you anyway. Fortunately for you, I was never one to insist on a fair fight."
"Well don't worry, I'm sure you'll have enough of those too."
The whole group rushed into the same building Waverly had entered earlier and scoured it for a way down. Wynonna and Doc wordlessly slipped into a routine where he would kick down a door, dodge to the side, and she would flip in to catch anyone inside off guard. This went for four doors before they found a stairwell down.
The stairwell led to a metal door which was, perhaps strangely, unlocked. On the other side, bleak concrete tunnels stretched to both the left and right.
"I know this is going to sound like the dumbest idea ever, but we should split up and find him as quick as possible. These asshole head honchos at Black Badge mean business, they're not going to just lie down and let us do this without some kind of asshole backup plan." Wynonna said as she cautiously peered down each corridor.
"Waves, you and Nicole go that way." She pointed to the right. "Me and Doc will head this way."
Waverly and Nicole both nodded and headed down the corridor. Wynonna quickly dashed down her direction, with Doc right behind her, until she reached the first door; a plain cold steel door with a simple handle that did not even appear to have a lock.
She hunched beside the door, and gestured with her gun for Doc to follow in after her. After taking a deep breath and preparing herself for what might be on the other side, she burst through the door.
The room appeared to be a mundane storage place, which was essentially what Wynonna was expecting, she could hardly imaging many rooms that would not have a lock down here. Of course that meant it was likely useless, but you never know what you might find…
Especially, when trying to break a prisoner out with no actual plan for opening a cell.
She didn't have long to take stock of the room though as, only the barest moment after entering, a box was flung across the floor into the door, slamming it shut and jamming it under the knob.
"What the fu-?!"
She tried to spot who, or what, flung the box as quickly as possible while diving for cover, but never made it. A sudden weight crushed down on her shoulders as a pair of legs wrapped around her neck and she began to collapse to the ground.
Wynonna Earp was not so easily brought down, however. Instead of stumbling over, she flung forward into the momentum of her attacker, bringing them both to the ground, but throwing them off of her. As they both rolled back to a standing position, she finally got a glimpse of her attacker.
The assailant looked to be a young blonde woman. Slim, incredibly fit, she was wearing black tights and a tight black top with long slits open up the sides. Her long hair was tied back.
"Ninja chic? Where do assassins find their fashion? 'Cause I need some sweet deals on 'deadly but hot' couture."
"I like to think of it as being more the confidence than the clothes." The woman smirked as the elder Earp readied herself for another attack. "Wynonna Earp, is it? Unfortunately, as much as I would love an excuse to hop on and give you another ride, Victoria told me to expect you. I'm here to help free Dolls."
"What?" Wynonna lowered her arms, shocked at the revelation that someone else had been working towards the same goal. "Who is Dolls to you?"
"My partner." The woman bluntly replied. "Dolls was my partner at Black Badge."
"Your…-What?!" Wynonna was extremely taken aback by this discovery.
"Look, my name's Eliza. I am, or was, a Black Badge Special Agent assigned to work with Xavier Dolls. And we need to get the hell out of here right now, because a strike team is already en-route to be air-dropped here and wipe out all intruders-and prisoners." The blonde launched into a rapid fire explanation as she kicked the box free from the door, which Doc could already be heard pounding on to attempt it open during their entire conversation.
"Okay, yeah." Wynonna shrugged. "Works for me."
Doc burst into the room and pointed his gun at Eliza.
"Well, that was easy." The blonde seemed surprised at how readily the Earp trusted her. "Whoah Cowboy! No need to go waving guns around."
"It's alright Doc." She nodded towards her partner. "I don't have time to figure out if you're honest or not." She addressed Eliza. "I need to find Dolls, if you betray me, I'll deal with that when it comes. Either way though, this probably gets resolved more quickly."
"Well then, I have no idea what just went on, but if our intention is to conduct this operation quickly, I do believe we should move." He then resumed moving down the hallway.
Meanwhile, Waverly and Nicole followed their hall in the opposite direction. They too, stopped to open the first door they encountered.
"This could be the place." Nicole observed, as she carefully aimed her gun around the room.
It was clearly a laboratory of sort; papers, computers, and scientific equipment lined tables. However, the edge of the room to the right of the door was lined with clear glass cells. Subjects were most definitely held in this room.
Both women cautiously entered the room eying the cells to check for prisoners.
"Why are they all empty? This base was clearly operational." Nicole pondered.
"And where are the scientists?" Waverly added. "I just met a cute one upstairs when I was lowering the wards."
"Wait, cute?" Nicole looked at Waverly curiously and cocked her brow.
"No! No, no. 'Cute' in a dorky friend kind of way. Not in a sexy way. Like, not at all. Ew." A flustered Waverly reassured her girlfriend.
"That's a relief. I was hoping mad scientist wasn't your type. I don't think I can fill that one." Nicole said with a bemused look.
While they were talking the two continued to explore the room. Nicole carefully peered at the areas around several of the tables.
"The workers here didn't just peacefully evacuate. The evidence is more subtle than I would expect from a massacre, but something bad went down here. Look a these." Nicole explained, gesturing to a small series of gouges on one of the desks, largely obscured by papers until Nicole brushed them aside. "Those are definitely fresh. And there are a few bloodstains on the ground, far less than I would expect from whatever made those gouges."
Waverly attentively watched Nicole's explanation at first. At the end however, she suddenly looked towards Nicole and raised her shotgun.
"What?!" The redhead tried to pivot around confused.
The Earp girl fired with a deafening bang.
"I think I just found what happened to the scientists." She pointed at the ground behind a stunned Nicole.
The redhead finished turning around and saw a body. It was a strange shriveled creature, like a human, but twisted and shrunken. Clad over its wrinkled, leathery body were the shredded remains of a lab coat.
"What the hell were they keeping in here?" She questioned in shock.
"I think this is a Ghul. That scientist I mentioned earlier warned me to look out for them." Waverly responded.
"Whatever it is, it looks like it was once one of the scientists. These things are probably contagious. Just to be safe, make damn sure they don't touch you. " Nicole cautioned. "Really, now it's zombies." She then mumbled under her breath.
"We should get moving." Waverly suggested. "We don't know if these things could reach Dolls before we do."
"Right." Nicole nodded.
The pair quickly moved out back into the hallway. Waverly thought she heard a scratching from behind Nicole. Spinning around, she saw one of the creatures attempting to knock out a small ventilation shaft near the ceiling, far too small for a normal human to crawl through. She immediately did exactly as she had back in the lab and fired at it over Nicole's shoulder.
"Coming out from the right!" Nicole shouted, nearly directly in her face, before firing her own gun over Waverly's shoulder.
"More of them coming!" The Earp girl shouted frantically.
More Ghuls began bursting open doors and spilling into the hallway. Some of the beasts wore the tattered remains of lab coats, some the same Black Badge uniforms as the guards above, others wore nothing but the many deep scars and gouges all of these creatures bore.
The two women were already facing opposite directions towards each other, and so reacted by immediately continuing to fire down the hallway. They were nearly face-to-face as they took aim and shot at the charging creatures.
Whatever these undead abominations were, they clearly weren't significantly tougher than humans. As the two of them fired down the hallway, the creatures readily fell to their bullets. Waverly began to feel confident as their numbers thinned.
"Up high." Nicole didn't need to shout, considering their position. Waverly couldn't see what she was referring to, but she rapidly figured out what her partner what she was warning her about.
The creatures changed tactic. Suddenly, they started embedding their claws in the walls and pulling themselves up. Soon the monsters were crawling along the walls and ceiling. This made it considerably harder to just fire down the hallway and keep dropping them.
Nicole leaned in close and spoke into Waverly's ear to be heard over the noise. The feel of her lover's breath on her skin nearly distracted Waverly from continuing to massacre the undead.
"On the count of three, we need to make a break down the hall. Fire as fast as you can, and be ready to use your gun to force them back. Fighting them all from one direction should be easy."
"One…" She paced the counts between shots.
"Two.." Waverly tried to steel herself, looking into Nicole's eyes for confirmation. The redhead slightly nodded.
"Three." Nicole was surprisingly calm in voicing the final count, her police training clearly showing through.
Waverly spun around, forcing herself to ignore the abominations closing in on her girlfriend's back, and ran; straight into the horde who were just moments ago closing in on her own.
They combined their fire. Forcing down the hall by brute force and a hail of bullets to reach the next door.
"Gah!" Waverly shouted as one of the (re)dying creatures made a surprise lunge at her from the ground. Nicole was forced to cover her as the Earp girl beat it off with the butt of her shotgun. The moment it was off of her, they both tumbled through the nearest door.
The Ghuls continued to rush at them, but now that they were being forced to funnel through a doorway finishing them off was easy.
Waverly turned to Nicole after the last creature fell.
"Did we just have a romantic 'stare into each other's eyes while shooting past each other' moment?"
"I know. It was so Fury Road." The redhead laughed. "Now come on, we don't have any time to spare."
The two rushed out of the room and down the hall again.
"The temporary holding cells are this way."
Eliza was guiding Doc and Wynonna down the hallway.
"Temporary cells?" Wynonna questioned as the continued to rush.
"A prisoner like Dolls is going to be transferred to our Black Site in the Balkans. The temporary cells are just glorified cages in the unloading dock." The blonde responded, just before the trio arrived at a door.
Eliza pushed up against the heavy, locked metal door first, gesturing the others to stay quiet. She quickly stuck something against the backside of the knob and waited with her ear pressed to the door.
Even from their farther distance away, Doc and Wynonna could faintly hear voices coming from behind the door. After only a few moments of listening Eliza stepped away from the door, gesturing for them to follow suit, and somehow set off whatever she had attached to the knob. The result was a small, but violent, explosion, completely flinging the door off its hinges.
The blonde rushed in first, before the smoke had even cleared. Wynonna and Doc where not far behind, however, and once they crossed into the room-and saw Eliza had somehow vaulted onto a guard to straddle him around the neck with her legs to fling him to the ground using her weight—they joined the attack immediately. Wynonna charged the first guard to lift his gun at Eliza, kicking him in the crotch and swinging a strong right-hook to knock him down while he was staggered.
Doc took a more direct approach, shooting the other guards in his line of sight who had started to react down where they stood.
Once Eliza had dispatched her first target she back-flipped across the room, landing on her hands right in front of Wynonna, and performed a split kick to drop the last two guards. Of course, this also had the effect of spreading herself out in her uniquely tight outfit right in front of Wynonna's face.
"You always fight that sexy?" The Earp sister skeptically asked, seeing that the fight was effectively over.
"Only when I'm fighting with a pretty girl to impress." The blonde smiled as she flipped back onto her feet.
"This is really going to keep happening, isn't it?" Wynonna muttered, shaking her head in disbelief.
Even as the spoke though, they were already taking stock of the room. There were actually three exits besides the one the came in from, one on each wall of the bleak, cube shaped room. Eliza pointed to the one across from the way they came.
"That way."
Doc and Wynonna acknowledged her instruction and moved to the next door.
"Up high!"
Nicole and Waverly were cautiously moving through the hallways, continuously warning each other when more of the ravenous creatures tore out of another vent or burst out a doorway.
Finally, as Nicole put a bullet through the next charging threat, they bumped into the door at the end of the hallway, and quickly pushed into the next room, closing it behind them.
It took a few moments for it to register just who was standing in the room with them as they recovered from their long run.
"Wynonna?"
"Waves?"
"These tunnels connect in a loop then. No luck finding Dolls?" Nicole surmised.
"Nope. Anything on your end?" Wynonna, Doc, and Eliza were just leaving the room when the other two stumbled in.
"Just flesh eating undead, so nothing out of the ordinary." The redheads shrugged.
"So, I'm the one who has to ask who the bad-ass lady ninja is?" Waverly spoke up,
"That's Eliza. Dolls' surprisingly hot former BBD partner." Wynonna replied. "She's here to help us find him. Or betray us and lead us all into a trap. I didn't have time to figure it out."
"That's nice. I'm Waverly. Now we might want to get out of here before the swarms of undead reach us."
The others quickly agreed a rushed through the next door.
The room on the other side was large, far larger than they expected. It appeared to be some sort of warehouse; the entire area was stacked with boxes up to the ceiling leaving only small passageways between the crates.
"This is the loading bay." Eliza explained. "The cells are nothing more than cages kept in here."
"We need to keep this quick. Fan out and search the area." Wynonna ordered, plunging ahead herself to find Dolls. The others followed suit, each cautiously taking their own path, weapons at the ready.
The paths, as they were, through the crates and boxes were confusing at best, and downright dangerous at worst. Waverly found herself having to duck and weave between out of place containers, and even outright junk that, apparently, no one felt the need to properly store.
"It's nice to be alone again. With you."
"Oh come on. You're really back at it again? I had hoped you'd given up." Waverly was irked to here the voice in her head. She was determined to keep moving and ignore it though.
"You didn't actually think you could win, did you? In any case, it doesn't matter. Just go about your rescue, I'm just looking for something. Nothing that should interfere with your little raid."
"Good, then try being quiet for a change."
Waverly was quite thankful that for once the demon possessing her seemed to listen. Content, she continued through the warehouse.
Wynonna cautiously looked around every corner as she pushed through, determined to find her goal. It wasn't long before she saw another shadowy form moving between the corridors. She quickly moved to intercept the route it seemed to be taking, when she heard it just around the corner, she spun around the boxes, gun first.
"Eliza." She immediately recognized the figure.
"Are you surprised? This place is big, but not nearly big enough for five people to move around without bumping into each other." The blonde observed. "Now come on, I'm pretty sure I know where to go."
Wynonna found herself running through the boxes at full speed, having to keep up with Eliza's purposeful movements. Soon though, she was waved to a stop. Peering through the darkness, she saw the boxes ended, opening into a large, illuminated clearing. Two guards in body armor like the others she had fought, and one very large, pallid man in a black suit were standing there. The light seemed to be natural, there must have been an opening out of sight.
"Jesus man! We've got to get the Hell out of here! The experiments are all running rampant, and It's still not time for pickup! That means backup could still be an hour away!" One of the guards pleaded to the other, clearly panicking.
"No. We hold the prisoner until pickup. That is our order." The huge man responded in a deep, rumbling, and entirely unnatural sounding voice.
"Fuck this, man! I'm going. They can court marshal me later!" The panicking guard ran off towards the light.
The strange suited man pulled a gun and shot him in nary a moment.
"Christ you freak!" The other guard screamed. "Oh man. I am fucked." He shook his head, clearly resigned to his doom.
"Three… Two… One…" Eliza drew her gun, and slowly counted down. Wynonna understood and readied herself.
The moment she finished saying one, Eliza burst into the clearing, gunning down the mundane guard, and firing four rounds into the strange one. Wynonna was unsurprised, but sorely disappointed when he didn't drop.
"What the hell is that thing?!" She cried out, hoping for an easy answer.
"A golem, Black Badge uses them to hold difficult points and keep other soldiers in line. I'll try to keep him occupied, try to deal with him quickly!"
"Deal with him how exactly?" The elder Earp tried shooting it in the head, considering it was making no effort to dodge. As expected, that had no affect at all.
"I don't know! I've never killed one. Killing weird shit is your thing. I was mainly recon." The blonde desperately dodged the behemoths fire, shooting uselessly into it.
"Oh. That's a great bomb to drop on the first date." She grumbled, re-sheathing Peacemaker in her boot and looking for another option.
"Ooh! So this is a date. I should have brought my formal guns. With these 9mm I might as well have worn Crocs" Eliza charged headlong at the golem.
"Well, you do know what a lady likes."
The blonde impacted the giant man. He didn't even flinch. A moment after her body impacted his with a dull thud, he grabbed her, lifted her into the air, and swatted her aside with a sickening crunch.
"I'm okay!" She groaned out after hitting the ground. "Just a broken rib. Agh!" She crumpled back down the moment she tried to sit up. "Or three."
"Over here!"
Just as Wynonna started to really panic, she heard a familiar male voice.
"Dolls?!" She looked off to the right end of the clearing, which she had never examined to to the considerable distraction of fighting an artificial human monster, and saw a crude barred cage against the wall. In it, was an equally familiar face.
"Bring it over here!" He whisper-shouted.
"Okay, fine!"
Wynonna assessed the situation. The golem was moving towards Eliza, clearly with the intention of finishing her off.
"Yeah, That's cool. While you're doing that, I'mma let that prisoner out. Cool?" She loudly shouted over to the being before heading towards Dolls.
The golem's response was immediate. It turned around in a rage, and began a lumbering charge towards her with surprising speed. Wynonna dashed for the cage. For all her energy, she was barely able to fling her body against the wall past the cage ahead of its charge.
Facing away, all she heard at first was a slight snarl. Then, almost immediately, a sound something like a furnace running at full blast right beside her head.
By the time she turned back around, all that was left was a pile of simultaneously oozing and ashen burnt clay, and a yellow eyed, snarling Xavier Dolls grabbing at the bars of his prison.
"Oookay… Dolls, did they-uh-do something to you?" The Earp was more than a little shocked.
"Oh fuck. Yeah, that's gonna leave a mark." Eliza rolled with an agonized groan onto her side. "Hey, D! Did you seriously not tell her?!" She shouted across the floor.
Rather than respond, Wynonna's trusted companion, now prisoner, continued to snarl and wrestle with his cage.
"Dammit, would even those assholes really take you off your meds? Come on D, snap out of it!" The blonde called over to Dolls, now sounding desperate.
Wynonna's face started to show her concern that this was something very serious.
"I don't know what you're going through Dolls, but I do know this isn't you. You are a strong, intelligent, and incredibly sexy, man. And most of all, you're a part of our family Dolls, not a dog for Black Badge to train. So I know you are strong enough to overcome this."
Wynonna slowly crept towards the cage as she pleaded with the reptilian eyed agent within.
At first, Dolls continued to growl and shake at his prison. Once he truly caught sight of Wynonna, however, his sounds of rage began to subside.
"Once he uses his power, it's almost impossible to regain control. Only the drugs make him human again. If they haven't been supplying him, then I don't know how he held on long enough to help us even." Eliza was still struggling to sit up, or crawl towards them. With another pained groan though, she gave up and laid down once again.
"Just… go Wynonna. It's not safe…" Dolls managed to regain enough control to slowly speak through gritted teeth.
"Like fuck I'm going without you. Freaky fire breathing or not, you are my boss, and we are leaving together, or we ain't leaving at all."
By the time Wynonna finished speaking, she was already looking for how to open the cage.
"Waves! Nicole! Doc! Over here!" She shouted to the others for help.
Waverly continued to work her way through the warehouse.
"Just how big is this place anyway?" She mumbled.
She ducked, crawled, and twisted through more of the towering piles of crates strewn across the floor. She noticed that a few of the ones in this section were broken open, their contents removed and in some cases strewn around the floor or lying on adjacent crates.
"Looks like they wanted to take some things with them." She thought to herself.
Waverly tried to move through the area without delay, feeling rather uncomfortable around the unusual, and often disconcerting objects around her. Before she quite got out of the area though, her eyes were drawn to a strange pendant sitting atop a box. It was gold, the shape looked somewhat like a star at first sight, but under closer examination it looked more like a cluster of completely random points or spikes coming from a central point than a normal star. In the center of those spikes was a deep, black jewel.
"Pick it up." The voice in her head spoke again. A simple command.
"What? No!" She protested.
"Pick it up."
"No" Waverly tried to move on, but her feet faltered.
"Pick it up."
"Pick it up."
"Pick it up…"
"Waverly! Nicole! Doc! Over here!"
The younger Earp heard the shout, her sister's words breaking her out of the daze she didn't even know she was in.
"What just happened?" She mumbled as she took stock of her surroundings. Seeing the same broken crates she last remembered finding, she rushed towards Wynonna's voice. There wasn't time to figure it out.
It only took a few moments running full speed to emerge from the crates and see Wynonna stand by Dolls' cage.
"You found him? He's alright? And what happened to her?" She looked over at Eliza. Emerging fully into the clearing, she saw Doc arrived before her, and Nicole was just arriving.
"S'aright. Taken worse." The blonde murmured.
"Help me open this cage!" The elder Earp pleaded.
"I brought slugs, they'll take that lock right off." Nicole offered. "Could you give me the shotgun Waves?"
Waverly immediately handed her the gun. She loaded the thick metal rounds.
"Everyone stay back."
She held the gun a few inches from the lock and fired. There was a loud report, and then a clattering sound of the lock falling to the ground.
Dolls fell to the ground outside the cage. He was still gasping and clearly struggling to control his transformation.
"It's okay. We've got you Dolls, you're safe." Wynonna instantly rushed to his side and tried to help him up.
"You aren't though. You've got to go." He painfully groaned out.
"And we are partner." Doc drawled as he walked up and hoisted Dolls onto his shoulder. "But you're a damn fool if you think you're not comin' with us."
"Now I think it's time to get the hell out of here." Wynonna pointed out. "Before the pickup those poor assholes were waiting for actually arrives."
"Can you move?" Nicole moved over to Eliza and kneeled beside her to check her condition.
"Well, I can move between 'curled up in pain' and 'splayed out in pain', but pretty much everything else is out." The blonde replied.
Nicole pulled up the blonde's shirt and examined her injury.
"Three ribs are badly fractured. Two are likely broken. This kind of injury is as likely as not fatal without rapid treatment. I can probably walk you back to the surface without puncturing a lung, but the ride back is going to be the real challenge." She gently explained her assessment.
"Hey, just give it your best Red." Eliza smiled confidently, although she was obviously in a great deal of pain, she didn't seem overly concerned. "I'm a bit tougher than you think."
"Alright." Nicole shrugged. At this point, a miraculous recovery wouldn't really surprise her. "Waverly, could you grab her other arm?"
"Huh? Yeah, okay." The younger Earp seemed a little distracted, but moved to do as asked.
"Oh." The blonde grunted as she was hoisted up incredibly carefully. "In the middle of two hotties. My favorite position."
"Yeah, maybe Wynonna should have handled this." Nicole said.
"No thank you." The older Earp retorted.
The whole group slowly and carefully backtracked through the complex. With all of them together, there was no substantial threat on the way out. Only a few ghuls, which Doc easily handled.
Soon enough, they found themselves back on the surface. They agreed to wait by the base while Wynonna drove the truck to them so as not to strain the already badly injured Eliza more.
They all piled into the truck and began the drive back to town.
"When did you get that, Baby-girl?" Wynonna noticed a strange amulet nestled in Waverly's shirt
"Huh? What?" Waverly looked confused.
"That necklace. It ain't your style." She pointed to the piece.
Nicole took a look, already concerned about what was going on with her girlfriend.
"You didn't have that going in." The cop observed, now a little unsettled.
"What are you all talking about. I don't go putting on strange jewelry." Waverly chuckled.
She fumbled with her shirt, grabbing the gold and black necklace.
"What is this?" She stared quizzically at it.
"A gateway."
"Uh, Waves?"
"Baby?"
Waverly could faintly hear the voices of her friends, and lover, trying to reach her. It was all very distant though. Faint, and fading fast. The world just seemed to slowly disappear into the amulet.
"We can finally meet now, Waverly."
Season 3 What What! Well, if you are reading this, please drop me a review. I'd love to hear from you.