Tunnel Conversations

Evan stepped into a maintenance tunnel, leaving behind the familiar subway station. Except that everything in his life was already in turmoil, in free fall; nothing was familiar. It was almost a relief to be somewhere he'd never been; he couldn't be expected to know anything about it. The monster – though he looked exactly like a man - was striding along, perfectly at home apparently.

"What am I to call you?" he asked, abruptly realizing that he didn't know the creature's name. If it had one.

The monster slowed, then turned to face him. "Hi. My name is Vincent Ryan Keller. Call me Vincent." He extended a hand.

It was a very normal looking hand. No claws at the moment.

Evan took a deep breath and shook Vincent's hand. "And I'm Evan Marks, though I suppose you already know that. Can't exactly say I'm pleased to meet you."

Vincent smiled a little. "Likewise. C'mon, let's go."

"Right." They resumed walking, and Evan studied the figure ahead of him. The creature – Vincent – did not look anything like what he'd imagined. If he hadn't seen it – him – jumping from the fifth floor to the street, he wouldn't have thought anything was off about him at all. Yet Evan knew that this could not be the whole story. He'd studied the DNA; it was not entirely human, and becoming less so. The cases he'd seen had indicated great speed and strength, and those lacerations had definitely been inflicted by claws.

Still, just knowing Vincent's name made him seem more human. His scientific curiousity began to surface. "So, if you weren't born this way, what happened?"

"Muirfield was experimenting," Vincent explained, not turning around. "Wanted to create super-soldiers. They gave us injections – they said it was vitamins, antibiotics, but actually it messed with our DNA. It heightened our senses and reflexes, but there were … side effects. And when the adrenaline kicked in, well, we were uncontrollable, so they gave orders to shut down the whole program. My whole squad was killed. It was just dumb luck that I survived."

"When did this happen?"

"2002, in Afghanistan."

"You were in the military?"

"Hadn't really planned to be." Vincent shrugged. "My brothers were firefighters. They were in the towers. I left med school and enlisted right after that."

Evan's head was spinning, trying to assimilate all this unexpected information. "So, you've lived with this cross-species DNA for a decade now?"

"Yeah. Mostly hiding out in that warehouse with JT."

"Except for the occasional prowl around the city," Evan pointed out acidly, reminded of the vigilante cases.

"Yeah, except for that," Vincent agreed, sounding somewhat grim. He didn't elaborate.

There didn't seem to be much more to say. Shortly after that, they emerged from the tunnel into a larger room that had a few old pieces of equipment installed. There were also some much newer boxes. A voice emerged from across the room, and a head came out from behind boxes. "V, where did we pack the… uh-oh."

"JT. I think you know Evan."

"You invited Evan? The dude who joined Muirfield and sent a kill squad after you?" JT threw a glance at Evan. "No offense."

Evan smiled tightly. "None taken."

"Yeah, well, he thought he was protecting Catherine," Vincent explained. "I went to talk to him, to explain."

"If I've made the wrong decision," Evan put in, "I want to rectify it."

"Good. Great." JT turned back to Vincent. "So first we bring in Tess, and now Evan? Why not invite the whole precinct? There's plenty of room. Except wait, there's a problem. It's hard to have houseguests when we don't actually, you know, have a house."

"Relax, JT. He just wants a chance to talk to Catherine, without Muirfield listening in. He already knew too much to be wandering around, anyway."

"This just keeps getting more complicated." JT threw up his hands and walked around the stack of boxes. "Remember those eight whole years we were able to lay low and stay out of trouble? Good times, good times."

Vincent was smiling, obviously unphased by the dramatics. "Yeah, listen, JT, I'm going to go find Catherine and let her know that Evan's safe and wants to talk to her." He turned towards Evan to add, "She's working now, I think, but as soon as she gets a chance she'll be down. In the meantime, you and JT can talk shop."

Without waiting for an answer, Vincent strode back out of the room, leaving Evan and JT standing there to stare at each other. After a moment, Evan shook his head. "When I think of all the lies you must have told me… oh, what's the use."

JT had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah, sorry about that. I just needed to do whatever I could to protect Vincent. I've been looking out for him for about a decade now; it's a hard habit to break. So, you want to sit? We've got some not-totally-uncomfortable places to sit. I don't know about you, but I could use a beer."

"That's the best idea I've heard yet today," Evan said, finding a sturdy-looking box to sit on. JT passed him a beer bottle, which reminded him of the previous occasion. "You were trying to warn me off Cat, weren't you, the other day? And you two stood in my morgue and pretended not to know one another!"

JT shrugged. "This past year has been kinda crazy."

Evan took a long drink. "But the eight years before that were quiet?"

"Mostly." JT sat and opened his own beer.

"So what changed?"

"Catherine found us." JT sounded disgruntled. "And she kept coming to visit. About gave me a heart attack when she first walked in on me and Vincent, cool as you please, and just said "hi" to the man who's supposed to be dead and thus *not* living with me. And then Vincent just said "hi" back. Turns out they'd met earlier in the day, but did V tell me that? No, he did not."

"On the subway, he…" Evan paused, the name still seeming strange. "Vincent said he'd tried to keep her out."

"He tried. God knows I tried. But she had all these questions about her mom, and then Vincent started helping her out on cases, and honestly, they couldn't keep away from each other. Doesn't keep him from regularly freaking out about putting her in danger, but she always talks him down. Stubborn woman."

Most of that news was unwelcome but not unexpected. Except for the first bit. "Questions about her mum? I knew she'd been murdered, but that was nine or ten years ago."

"Yep. Turns out, Mama Chandler was working with Muirfield, and they were cleaning up loose ends. They'd have killed Catherine, too, but Vincent stopped them. We've still got the newspaper clipping around here … somewhere. I think. Anyway, she didn't get a good look at him, just told people she'd been saved by a mysterious beast. They all thought she was nuts, of course."

"Nine years ago? They've known each other nine years? I'd thought this was a recent thing."

"Well, Vincent knew who she was, and unbeknownst to me, he was keeping tabs on her, but she had no clue until he tried doing CPR and left a fingerprint behind. Not to mention some of his DNA. I'm sure you remember that."

"I'd thought the mass spectrometer was broken. Made the department shell out for a new one."

"When you told Cat about the DNA sample, she got in contact with the FBI, thinking that it was related to her mom's case. Only really, she ended up talking to Muirfield. They tried to kill her. Three against one. She put one of them out of commission, but Vincent had to come in and take care of the other two for her. That's when she chased him down and figured out what'd happened all those years ago, that he'd been there."

"So she's been in danger all this time, and it was partly my fault." That was appalling, and it made Evan feel even more foolish for his late, scrambling efforts to protect her. "I accused Vincent of dragging her into this, but…"

JT shot him a sympathetic glance. "Yeah, no. She charged into it full steam. He could avoid her for a while, but she could still track me down at the university. And, like I said, he started getting involved in her cases."

"The art gallery," Evan mused, trying to remember.

"Among other things. I don't know details, never wanted to. But then she was showing up at our place, he was hanging out on her fire escape, and it just kinda grew. I got dragged into it when Vincent started having these black-outs, psychogenic fugue states."

Evan stared, his heart beginning to race. "Fugues? That sounds extraordinarily dangerous."

JT shrugged uncomfortably. "It wasn't good. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"No, JT, I *need* to know. What happens when he… changes? He said that the program was shut down because they were uncontrollable. Has he ever… hurt Catherine?"

"Okay, fine. Normally, he only… changes during, um, moments of stress. If he's threatened, or someone else is. And I'm not gonna lie; he freaks me out sometimes. His face changes, his eyes glow, he gets stronger, he moves more like an animal. Oh, and the claws show up. He can barely speak, and yeah, not in total control. But even then, he only goes after the bad guys. And listen, Evan, I swear to you, he's never hurt Catherine. She's not even scared of him, and she's seen him at his worst."

Evan frowned, struggling to understand. "How… what happens?"

"I don't normally see it, but there was one time… she came to the warehouse, and he had sort of fugued out, recovering a suppressed memory and reliving an old fight. She had her gun out, but she just talked him down. He listened, and he came out of it. Me, I'd have tranqed him; I've got a tranquilizer gun for emergencies. She just… talked to him. And she brought him back."

"Has he… what about the fugues?"

"We figured out that it was a side-effect; Vincent recovered some memories of it happening to the other guys in his unit. Catherine's mom had been working on fixing that when the program was shut down. So we found Dr. Chandler's notes, and figured out how to synthesise a serum. Only we didn't have the DNA analyzer we needed, so that's when I sort of borrowed yours. Thanks, by the way."

Evan actually laughed at that. "So you were the mysterious intern that Tess saw."

"'Fraid so. You about gave me a heart attack when you showed up at the university wanting to partner up on the cross-species DNA thing. We could maybe work on it again, now, though. I've got lots of test results and notes from things we've tried over the years, and we have Dr. Chandler's notes. The serum helped V get some more control over himself but it's not even close to a cure."

Evan hesitated. It was a tremendous opportunity, but he had no idea what his future might hold. "Well, if you think you could promise *not* to contaminate my samples this time… perhaps we could."

"You got it. I really would like to have your perspective on some things; Vincent has a medical background but that only takes him so far."

"I'll need to get my notes…" He stopped, suddenly reminded of the elephant in the room. "I can't go back to my apartment, can I?"

"Not if the Evil Arches are looking for you. We'll figure something out." He grinned suddenly. "Maybe if you can't stay in New York, you could go work at… oh, say, a free medical clinic in Mexico."

Evan lifted one eyebrow skeptically at that non sequitur. "Right. Well, one day at a time for now, hmm?"

"If we had a secret club, that'd be the secret club motto." JT handed Evan a fresh bottle. "Welcome to our world."

The End

(of this part, anyway. I think Evan still needs to have that talk with Cat, don't you?)