The Strain: Another Season
Episode 9
Spoiler Warning: This chapter spoils the ending of "Eventually Love" in a major way. Skip it if you don't want to know how that fic ends!
Creatures of the Twilight
Chapter Five
Guard Captain's home, Caffa -1347
The front door falls in with a crash and General Quintus stands there outlined by moonlight for a dramatic moment. He takes another moment to glance around assessing the situation before he explodes into fluid action.
Three seconds of balletic violence later and the two adults lie decapitated in pools of blood and worms and baby Sophia/Sexta lies in one of Quintus' huge hands, the blade of his gladius pointing at her throat.
Move XXXVII followed move L to dispatch Quintus' old comrade in arms, the captain of the guard. Move XXVI and the first part of XI disposed of his good lady and then the complex acrobatics of move XIV positioned the Born in a half crouch to catch the dropped infant.
However, the gladiator who challenged the gods seems to be taking an inordinately long time to kill a helpless newborn.
Caffa – 1357
Quintus watches Sexta to see how she takes the news. She is scowling and not meeting his eyes. Unconsciously, he holds his breath, as if her response is of life-and-death importance to him.
Quintus' home - Ancient Rome
The agonised screams of pre-epidural childbirth come from behind a closed door, while Quintus paces in the approved father-to-be style.
A middle-aged North African woman bustles out from the delivery room to heat more olive oil for the hot compresses and tries to push past Quintus. He grabs her arm and asks with anguished eyes, 'How much longer?'
The midwife looks up as if noticing him for the first time but his unnatural appearance leaves her completely unfazed.
'The child will choose his own time, my lord.' Her voice is heavily accented but not unkind. 'But I think not much longer, my lady is already on the birthing stool.'
'Already?' repeats Quintus. 'You call it "already", yet she has been suffering since sunrise.' His grip on her arm tightens. 'Can you do nothing to ease her misery?'
The woman looks down pointedly and then up into his eyes. Seeing his distress, her attitude softens, but only slightly.
'That is what the compresses are for,' she says coldly. 'Do not be concerned overmuch; your wife is young, and stronger than she looks.'
'But there is so much blood…' he says, staring at the closed door.
'How do you kn…' she begins, and then his expression forces her to change direction. 'Go outside, my lord,' she advises gently, 'if you cannot bear the sm… the suspense.'
She returns to her charge as another scream summons her.
Then she is back again at the door, still looking surprised at what she saw on the birthing stool. 'Change of plan, my lord,' she says hurriedly. 'Wait here.'
A matter of minutes rather than hours later, Quintus is ushered in to the room.
The baby, wrapped only in a loose cloth, is sucking at Tasa's breast.
Quintus stares, immobile and speechless, making his wife blush and smile shyly.
She gestures to the midwife who takes the now sleeping child and places it proudly in Quintus' arms. It has been considerately wiped clean of blood but the big man looks at it helplessly until a single sob wracks his body, making the baby's covering cloth fall open.
A pale, bald scrap with no penis lies in his arms. It has just finished sucking his wife. He flings it at the midwife and roars his horror and remorse at the ceiling.
The baby's piteous wailing almost drowns him out. Both women are furious.
'What do you think you're doing,' says Tasa snatching back the infant and soothing it.
'It's white and bald and it sucks you and it has no …..' sputters Quintus gesturing at his own sub-belt regions. '…just a slit. This is a strix.'
He's frantic and perplexed. 'How has this happened? I've hardly touched you since you came into my house.'
The midwife looks from one to another before hazarding a guess at the problem.
'You have a daughter, sir,' she points out. 'A baby girl. Perfectly healthy and if I might make so bold, more beautiful than either of you.'
'The child is human…?' Quintus murmurs as if, in his relief, he dare not believe.
'Yes, she is,' says the midwife.
Tasa just gazes at the tiny sleeping face, completely blissed out.
Quintus advances to her bedside and kneels down beside her. They look at each other in silence for a while before she voluntarily hands the baby back to him.
The midwife should have retreated unseen but this is the most unusual birth she's ever attended – the most unusual family.
'Have you decided on a name?' she asks quietly.
Quintus looks at Tasa, who smiles and says, 'Her name is Tidir.'
When the midwife bursts out laughing, he looks a question at Tasa who explains sheepishly, 'It means "alive".'
'You could use my name?' the older woman suggests.
'What is it?' Tasa seems a bit guilty that she doesn't know it already.
'Sura.'
'What does that name mean?' asks Quintus suspiciously.
'"Pretty name that won't forever remind my father of his stupidity on the day of my birth",' the midwife says sharply.
'It means "travels by night",' Tasa explains.
'She likes it,' says Quintus, looking down at her. 'Look she's smiling. She's smiling at me!'
'It's probably only wind,' says the midwife.
Guard Captain's home, Caffa -1347
Quintus and the baby stare into each other's eyes for several seconds before he murmurs, 'No. Never again,' replaces her in her cradle, and leaves.
Caffa – 1357
It takes far too long but eventually Sexta looks at Quintus again and says, 'So…I'm not really Born at all?'
'Sexta, I killed your parents,' Quintus says, slightly exasperated. 'Have you nothing to say about that?'
'I am sorry you had to release your friends, Quintus,' she says. 'But I'm glad it was you and that it was quick. But you must see that you have been my entire world for as long as I can remember. You, Quintus, not the woman who bore me or the man who sired me… oh, and Bernarda and the Piambos, I suppose.'
She thinks for a moment, while Quintus stares again, unable to understand her attitude and probably feeling a little bit let off the hook.
'So if you are a half-breed and I am more human, does that mean I'm a quarter-breed?' she asks next.
He shrugs. 'I suppose that would be a reasonably accurate supposition. It is not only your external appearance that is intermediate between that of an ordinary human and mine. Your growth rate, for example, has been approximately half of mine. You are only ten years old yet seem to be a fifteen-year-old human, but when I was your age, I was fully matured.'
She mulls this over for a moment and then follows a different tack. 'Would other quarterbreeds be created if the blood - but not the worms - of a turning human were to corrupt another person?'
'I do not know Sexta, but Filii de Opacare suggests that you are the only one of your kind - the only quarterbreed, as you put it - that has ever been or will ever be. And to my knowledge, the circumstances of your origin have never occurred previously. Usually the worms would also reach the victim. It was only my swift attendance that prevented them doing so in your case.'
Guard Captain's home, Caffa -1347
The baby is silent for only a second after Quintus sets her down and leaves. Then she starts to cry as if intending to keep it up until she dies.
However, she only has to sustain the howling for a couple of minutes before Quintus returns, frowning.
'Very well,' he says, picking her up.
The crying stops immediately he touches her.
'What are you?' he whispers. She looks completely human at the moment, but then it has only been minutes since she fed on virus-infected milk.
She wiggles a tiny fist and smiles disarmingly. Quintus almost cracks one in return before he mutters, 'It is probably only wind.'
'Whatever kind of thing you are… you will never be my daughter,' he warns her. 'Do you understand?'
The baby blows a bubble.
It was only wind.
SPOILER SCENE
The garden of Quintus' family home, Southern Italy – thirteen years after Sura's birth
Tasa, already turned enough to have a stinger, lies slain at Quintus' feet. Quintus, his face displaying absolute hatred for his Sire, watches the Master warily.
The Master, in the body of the legionnaire Tacitus, stands laughing on the roof of Quintus' house, the Born's adopted daughter Sura screaming and squirming in his grip. There's no evidence of stinger marks on her throat or any blood on her thighs but any hope for her is slight and dwindling.
'Papa,' Sura desperately cries out for help. 'Papa!'
Holding Quintus' glare, the Master slits his thumb with a finger claw, holds Sura's jaw open with the other hand and teases a single bloodworm from his hand into her terrified mouth. He holds her mouth shut and taunts Quintus.
'Now, she will be my daughter. For all eternity…'
Without pausing for any maniacal laughter, the Master tenderly picks Sura up as if he were rescuing a damsel in distress and flits away in a blur.
Caffa -1357
A happier Quintus, in a more peaceful time, continues his tale.
'There I was,' says Quintus, 'with either a baby or a strix in my hands and no aid or facility to cope with either eventuality…'
'What on earth did you do with me?' Sexta interrupts. 'How did you find out what I was?'
'Initially, I waited,' he says. 'Or to put it more accurately, I did nothing because I could think of nothing to do. I brought you here and watched you for several hours – until the sun rose and Bernarda came to clean for me as she usually did. As she still does.
'Bernarda came to me as the widow of a Sun Hunter and because a bachelor of independent means needs a woman of matronly respectability to keep his house and chaperone any lady visitors. As a rule, Sun Hunters do not live long enough to marry but Bernarda's husband came to the struggle later in life. She was therefore already aware of my special requirements.'
'She told me all this several years ago…'
'Did she indeed?' he muses. 'Well, she came in that morning and found me staring in perplexity at a screaming infant and assumed command. She engaged a wet nurse because you drank milk for the first three days of your life. We believed you might resist the transformation because your eyes were also still human...'
'What colour were they?'
'What?' Quintus' head jerks up. 'What an odd question... They were the dark blue of all the newly born, but I am certain that they would have become dark brown like those of your birth parents in time. You had hair also, at first. Similarly brown…'
His thoughts wander off again.
Sexta continues the story as far as she knows it. '…But then I bit the wet nurse and she refused to attend me again.'
'Yes…' says Quintus, his mind back with her again. 'That is when I brought you before the Ancients…'
Catacombs Beneath Caffa – 1347
The Ancients' home at this time is not a grotty concrete room with blood on the floor. It is much grander, almost palatial …if palaces had dark, quiet audience halls with sarcophagi lining the walls. The six coffins are of various different sizes and designs but they are all made of white oak and all filled with earth.
The Ancients themselves are all, save the Master, currently living harmoniously together. And they are not enthroned on metal frames, naked and immobile, as in New York, but walking about wearing robes like their youngest sibling.
'My Lords,' announces Quintus, as he enters with a sleeping baby in his arms. 'I beg your counsel on a sensitive subject.'
Only his words are deferential. He strides in confident and unaccompanied.
One Ancient, whose current host is still outwardly female, approaches and studies baby Sophia/Sexta.
I have felt it, she/it begins telepathically until she realises that Quintus, not being of her Strain, can't hear her thoughts.
'I have felt this creature, these last nights… My Born…' she adjusts to speaking aloud. 'Why have you not offered it to me before this time?'
'She is Born, then?' Quintus asks quickly, before adding, 'My Lord Wormwood.'
'Do you know of her creation?' says Wormwood.
'Do you?' he rejoins, making her/it hiss in displeasure.
'Certainly, I do. It is of my blood, yet not of my worm. "Born" is the most apposite term in this tongue.'
There appears to be some telepathic discussion going on between the other Ancients but it is not intelligible.
Wormwood takes the baby from Quintus after a brief, glare-filled struggle and examines her thoroughly. It removes the blanket, dress and nappy (diaper) and turns Sexta upside down, which naturally wakes her up. The child's instant reaction is to wail but as Wormwood's hot face sniffs and licks her, she starts to giggle.
Quintus is not as relaxed as the baby during this inspection and Wormwood notices.
The discussion between the other Ancients, meanwhile, has escalated into an angry dispute, with two apparently siding with Wormwood and Quintus and an opposing three arguing aloud for the baby Born's swift termination.
'Remember Quarta?' shouts one who is probably Quarta's sire, Kush, since he is clearly anxious… frightened even. 'And Primus?' he adds to Erlik of Siberia, as if trying to gain his support.
Erlik, despite being the most senior by nearly two centuries, does not seem to hold a special status amongst the six. He is, however, the calmest, saying, 'The child is nearly human. 'Think of the possibilities.'
'No more Born…!' yell the others.
'Are you blind to the opportunity…?' repeats Erlik before slipping into telepathy (perhaps for secrecy from Quintus) …the chance to produce a new weapon to fight for us?
'Against Quarta?' asks Kush aloud, hope beginning to dawn.
'Yes, and against the Young One'
'But they cannot be controlled,' protests another.
'The Sixth Born is MINE!' interjects Wormwood. 'The risk is MINE! And I choose to take it.'
This truth is acknowledged by all the others, albeit reluctantly, and the argument is over.
Wormwood issues instructions for Quintus to find someone to raise the child, to train her as a Hunter when she is old enough and to bring her back for examination every thirteen moons.
Quintus doesn't seem to notice that he is being ordered around. In fact, he seems quite satisfied with the outcome.
Caffa – 1357
'Bernarda was delighted to be able to keep you,' Quintus tells Sexta, 'and your upbringing was entirely her province until you were strong enough to learn the first unarmed manoeuvres. Nonetheless, I still had to find a way to feed you, to bring you fresh blood in a plague-ridden walled city under siege. The hunting was meagre enough for me that winter, so I…'
He is suddenly interrupted by a handsome young man in his late teens bursting through the door.
'I know what's going on…' pants Gerolamo Piambo.
