Chapter 15: It's Go Time
"Experiment twelve, day five. 8:00 am. Subject able to identify the location of four hibernating Cadou over the span of twenty metres in under one minute, with no negative side effects."
"Do you really have to call me a subject?" Iris sighed, she'd been dragged out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, something she'd gotten unused to as of late, denied coffee or breakfast and marched down to the examination room for "research". Sat on a cold metal table, wired to several machines with a camera and voice recorder shoved at her face, Iris was starting to wish that she'd never bothered to find her Boss when he'd left her that note.
"Experiment Will. Be. Silent for the rest of the examination, unless asked a question" Heisenberg didn't even turn to look at her, he had the habit of pacing when speaking into his beloved voice recorder. As he strided around his dank, dark examination room Iris was reminded of a cartoon villain, plotting against a superhero.
Iris rolled her eyes, then proceeded to the next "puzzle", this time locating Sturm, who had been released from his pen to wander around the factory. He was the easiest for her to locate besides Heisenberg, a beacon of energy compared to the Haulers or few Lycans that had been drawn to the factory's scrapyard with a couple chunks of boar scattered around.
She squeezed her eyes shut and focussed. These exercises had become a daily routine ever since their game of Hide and Seek, she was more confident now, more focussed. She could tap into her powers easier, focussing on her own Cadou first, then extending that focus to the Black God's network. If she were to picture it in her mind, she was essentially casting a large, megamycete-infected fishing net over the factory, and any wiggling parasitic fishies would light up to her brain.
Heisenberg hadn't really appreciated her explanation on how she utilised her powers, apparently not one for metaphors unless they were related to insulting his "family members".
"Sturms stuck again, he's managed to get into the lift, Level B3 I think"
"Oh for fucks sake" Heisenberg stopped pacing, stomping over to the speaker in the room and yelling down the mic
"JUST TURN AROUND AND GO BACK TO BED YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT"
"You're confusing him, he's going back and forth I think. I think the doors are shut"
Her boss slapped a hand to his forehead in exasperation, these more "advanced" projects of his seemed more trouble than they were worth at the moment. Sturm had gotten better at opening doors, picking up weapons and still, somehow, had his arms intact. But apart from that he was pretty much useless.
And the Soldat prototype Heisenberg had hidden away in the operation room? Even worse. It could barely walk without causing a huge scene, the weapons fused to its arms taking out anything in their way. Iris had already moulded two new doors and several panels for their generators after the thing decided to get up for a walk on its own one day and nearly took out power to the whole factory.
Lucky for the thing, the Soldat was Heisenberg's baby at the moment, and could do nothing wrong. He blamed the Haulers for the damage and "accidentally deleted the CCTV footage" when Iris had demanded to see proof that Her Haulers had done such a thing.
She desperately needed to get out of this village, they both did, treating reanimated corpses like wayward pets.
"Subject able to locate Soldat named Sturm, but not confident in precise location-"
"I said he was in the lift! That's pretty precise to me"
The recorder clicked off, Heisenberg spinning towards her with a scowl.
"How many times do I have to tell you to not interrupt? You said 'I think', if you were confident you'd have simply stated his exact location. When we are at war with Miranda, 'I think' will be nothing but a worthless waste of time. Got it?"
They glared at each other for a moment, Iris had become far more willing to argue and bite back with her Boss. She was no longer scared of the big bad wolf. He needed her as much as she needed him.
Despite this revelation, Iris always found herself giving in first.
"Fine."
Her Boss gave her a slimy smirk, the voice recorder clicking back on.
"Subject agrees that ability to locate Cadou from different levels of the factory is inadequate"
Oh she was going to kill this man.
The last puzzle was to try and manipulate her Boss's body using his Cadou. Like she had in her fit of anger, fresh out of surgery, her Cadou barely taking hold of her and already flexing its power. She hated this puzzle. The best she had mustered so far was a sudden tug towards her, but the man had barely moved a step, just briefly knocked off balance. He'd mocked her for it and ended the training immediately, leaving her in the examination room to stew in her anger.
Now, every day after successfully tracking and identifying the other Cadou, Iris would stand in front of her Boss, already pale and clammy from overexerting herself, glaring at him. Heisenberg would smirk at the fact that she is unable to manipulate him with her power. She thinks it makes him feel powerful still, the big bad wolf cannot be touched by his little assistant.
His Cadou is prominent but at rest, as if Heisenberg is trying to dampen his own powers to prevent her clutching onto the energy and using it to fling him across the room like she desperately wanted to.
She wasn't sure how long she glared at him, concentrating so hard it felt like an ice pick was lodged behind her eyes. Her nose was bleeding she was sure of it, but she'd be damned if she broke eye contact with the prick. She'd pass out glaring at him if she had to. This puzzle was more than training, it felt like a battle for power in their strange, desperate relationship.
A phone was ringing.
Her concentration evaporated. But fortunately, so did Heisenebergs.
"Shit"
Phone calls were never a welcomed occurrence in Factory Heisenberg. The phones were scattered around the factory, narrow ancient things that felt alien to Iris. She clung onto her memories of a black rectangle that she knew was somehow a phone, something she coveted greatly if her dreams were anything to go by.
Heisenberg charged out of the room towards the ringing, Iris stumbled after him, faint and nauseated. She could now taste the warm blood on her lips, it was already drying and crusting on her skin. She leaned heavily against the wall of the surgical suite, where the phone was still shrieking. She was thankful that it was on the opposite side of the room to the bed, the sight of that bed made her shiver, as if the Black God's tentacles were just brushing her spine, hiding in the shadows of the room.
"What"
Heisenberg never answered the phone politely, it always caused Iris to freeze in fear, in case Miranda is on the other end and will lay hell on them for his insolence. But it never is, Miranda has more important things to do than call her "son".
Her boss's face contorted into bared fanged teeth, narrowed hate-filled eyes. It was Dimitrescu.
Iris was always excellent at reading her "superiors" expressions, first Lady Dimitrescu, now Heisenberg. Even Miranda had her tells, during the brief, horrifying moments Iris was near her.
"Well, aren't you special?"
Heisenberg's sarcastic quip pulled Iris out of her dreaded thoughts of Miranda. She wished she had the hearing of a Lycan, the suspense of waiting for him to hang up and piece together information from his inevitable rage was killing her.
"FINE. I'll be there. Now don't you have some poor girl's wrist to be gnawing on?" He slammed the phone onto the wall and groaned loudly, stomping over to Iris and laying a heavy hand on her shoulder. She was mortified, Dimitrescu would know that she'd told him about her feedings, and despite being nowhere near the castle, having powers now that would ensure she'd never be caught out, ambushed, by anyone infected with Cadou, Iris felt scared.
Suddenly she was a young maid again, trapped in that castle, who just found out their beloved Lady was angry with them.
"Meeting, in an hour, you're invited"
Iris's brain short circuited.
"Me? W-why? I'm not a Lord?" There was a tremor to her voice, she wasn't ready for this, to see her dreaded Lady again.
"Sorry kid, Miranda's orders. This is real last minute, I think this might be it"
It was her leaving. It was their chance.
They discussed some ground rules, how to act, what to say. Heisenberg believed that her being invited was a test, Miranda wanted to know about her powers, was she really a dud or hiding something? Iris wasn't sure which option had the worst outcome for her.
The story would be that she was getting headaches a lot and seemed to be able to calm down the Lycans, maybe other animals if she had the chance to get close enough to one. If Miranda wanted proof, Iris would be able to easily seek out and subdue a Lycan using her influence over their Cadou. An animal loving princess was interesting enough, a new form of the "gift" for Miranda to study, but nothing powerful or threatening enough to risk further examination.
"Should I act like a maid again?" Iris had asked whilst getting ready, Heisenberg was hovering by the door of the bathroom, but she trusted him to not leer too much.
"I… I don't think that'll work. We'll play it safe, polite, but don't act like you're some underling. You've got powers like the rest of us and Miranda knows that, acting like you're not one of us will show weakness"
Iris nodded whilst debating on whether to put her hair up, as she always had, but decided against it. As Heisenberg said, she wasn't a maid anymore, an "underling". If he noticed her hair being down for once, something that usually only occurred when she'd gotten too drunk, too tired, too upset, he didn't mention it.
Time to go.