Chapter Text
Kristina let out a shaky breath. The screaming had finally stopped. She was used to screams, even very similar screams, but those were ordinarily carrying no danger that she might be joining in. When she and her colleagues were conducting experiments, everything was under control. But this… had been an absolute chaos.
She slowly raised her head to peer over the overturned filing cabinet she was hiding behind. There was some blood on the floor, most of it coming from around a desk, where she was sure she would find Doctor Schneider. Papers were strew around, knocked over during the fight.
Well, not fight. A fight would mean both sides had a chance. The door was gaping open, left there as the assistants had run for their lives. Kristina had no doubt that they were dead now, but at least their escape lured away the Proto-Nephilim, saving her own life in the process.
Good. They were quite competent assistants till the very end.
She finally rose to her feet. Her knees felt weak but she held herself up. She couldn’t stay here, if the Proto returned, there would be no-one to create a convenient diversion again. She needed to – well, she needed to get out of the sanitarium at the very least. She should have been up there, actually, meeting with the accounting department. But she had fallen asleep during her late lunch break and woke up to panicked rustles of her colleagues, learning that there had been a power outage.
And there was still no power, even now, so she couldn’t use the elevator. There were other ways… Other ways, which, if found by the Proto, spelled doom for most everyone in the fortress.
Kristina clamped down on the sudden surge of fear. Master Eckhardt would be merciless when he found out. If only she had been outside, learning about this emergency from the security – some would have had escaped to bring her the information. They answered to her, not Gunderson, so he wouldn’t know yet. This extended the time until some help would come considerably.
She was the one with the information. And if she had been up there right now, she could have brought the news to Master Eckhardt, who would be furious, but… but able to do something about it!
But instead, she was down here, maybe mere minutes from being mauled to death by her own creation.
She walked towards the door, her heels clicking unpleasantly loud on the tiles. Outside in the hallway it was darker than in the office, but the emergency lights still offered enough visibility throughout. The bodies of the assistants lay only a few meters ahead. At least from the number of limbs strewn around, she assumed it was the two of them. If it was someone else – well, she wasn’t staying around to identify the bodies. She walked on, in the direction of the nearest emergency exit. Sadly, “nearest” didn’t mean near at all.
Passing rows of cells while avoiding slipping on blood and entrails, she wasn’t surprised there were no noises coming from behind the doors. The test subjects shouldn’t be able to move for at least a day yet. Someone should have checked up on them soon – well, if everything was going normal, someone would have. The fact that she could lose a whole batch of specimen due to neglect rankled her, this experiment was a long-term one, with a strict schedule, but for now she had to focus on surviving, so she would even have a chance to ever continue her research.
She reached the first locked door with a keypad on the side. The power was out, but the keypads should have their own emergency power supply for exactly these occasions. The only reason her fingers weren’t shaking when she punched in the code was her long surgical practice.
The door hissed open. She let the relief wash over her before anxiety gripped her insides again. She listened carefully before going in. There was some buzzing, dripping and faint shuffling. Not the Proto, she didn’t think. It usually didn’t go long without growls and gruff panting. But the shuffling – those were certainly inmates. Unless they swarmed her, she should be able to avoid them. They might not even pay her any attention, they were a little unpredictable in that. She could even outrun them, but she would prefer not to enter any further places hastily.
Especially as there could be other inmates waiting. Those from another batch, the faster ones. More aggressive ones.
Taking a deep breath, she crept forward.
Three inmates were prowling the wide hallway, ignoring her. Good. That was… very good. If the Proto appeared now there was a seventy-five percent chance it would target one of them.
She walked on slowly, steadily, peered around a corner-
She gasped and stumbled back, only by a miracle not falling on her backside. The man staring back at her, a gun aimed between her eyes, had his own surprise painted all over his face. But he didn’t shoot. Instead, warily, he lowered the weapon.
Kristina’s heart was beating too fast and so hard he must have been hearing it too. Trying to get herself under control, she breathed in and out deeply while looking him over. A shirt and trousers, not a uniform, a little scruffy but holding himself with confidence. An unexpected sight, even without the scare he’d given her by appearing out of nowhere.
“Who are you?” she asked with genuine confusion and not a little wariness.
He was frowning at her, but then his expression lightened a little and he smirked. “The clean-up crew, I guess. What the hell happened here?”
That didn’t make any sense. If he was a special agent sent by Gunderson – he had all kinds of people under his employ – then he would know at least something before coming down here, right?
“If you don’t know, what would you be looking for to clean up?” Kristina’s uneasiness was rising now, with this new unknown variable.
The man shrugged. “I’m actually here to turn the power back on. Didn’t expect all the dead bodies though.” He looked her up and down and amended: “At least not in the hallways.”
If he was here just to restore the power, without the knowledge of what was awaiting him, why would he be armed? Despite the experiments conducted here, the sanitarium itself was a fairly safe place most of the time. It wasn’t adding up.
“Who sent you here?”
“Not important,” he deflected. “Do you know where the electrical room is?”
On the other hand, could he make this any worse? They couldn’t stay here for long, and if he was going to protect himself from the Proto, futile as it would ultimately be, he could give her a chance to get away. And if it was an intruder, trying to sabotage the Cabal’s operations? There wasn’t much to sabotage here, not more than this clusterfuck was currently doing.
At worst, he would kill her. But he hadn’t done it when he had first had the chance, so clearly she wasn’t the target. Or he was hoping to interrogate her first. Wouldn’t he prefer to get them out of there then, rather than looking for the circuit breaks? The dead bodies strewn around should have already told him he was in mortal danger as long as he stayed here.
She had been having a fairly good day until noon. And now she could as well be choosing if she would prefer to be killed by her experiment or a stranger with a gun. She was a scientist! A doctor! Gunderson was the one dealing with death-defying military operations.
For now, her best bet was to answer this stranger. Denying the answer wouldn’t help either of them, and if he was able to turn the power back on… well, that would be one step toward repairing all this.
Although she had a sinking feeling Master Eckhardt wouldn’t spare her life by now, no matter how she handled the situation. If only she could kill the Proto – but that was impossible, of course. She had known from the beginning. But her polite hints as to the necessity of the Shard had been cut off so sharply, she hadn’t dared to ask again. She had simply hoped the Proto could be held indefinitely. The best – the only – course of action in her situation.
“I know where it is,” she said at last. “I can take you there.” Not giving him directions, thus eliminating the possibility of being killed right then and there, in case this was the only relevant piece of information he needed from her.
“Yeah I can get there alone, just tell me the way,” the man sighed impatiently.
“I know all the door codes, it will be faster this way,” Kristina bargained.
The frown was really frustrated and unhappy – unprofessional, or just overconfident, to show off his emotions like that, Gunderson didn’t suffer such expressions in his ranks – but he didn’t say no outright.
“Fuck, I’m gonna so regret this,” he murmured then and Kristina knew she had won. For now. The man was still too much of a mystery to feel any way at ease around him.
She nodded sharply. “This way then,” she moved to her left. “Do not mind these inmates, they are harmless,” she pointed towards a pair prowling a little away. “Watch out for the faster ones, they are aggressive and will most probably attack.”
“Yeah, I’ve already met those,” the man said. “But you still didn’t answer me. What happened? It can’t be just the inmates partying in the hallways due to blackout.”
Kristina glanced at him, he was studying their surroundings while walking, the gun back in its holster, but his hand hovering nearby. She would have felt safer if he was still holding onto it. After all, it did seem like he wasn’t planning on killing her right now, so he could just be prepared for other things trying to kill them both.
He appeared… competent. He surely must have had some combat experience, even if his demeanor was rather casual. Sadly, that wouldn’t help against the Proto.
“The most dangerous experiment held in here has gotten out,” she finally revealed. “It killed most of the staff by now, I’m sure. It...” she didn’t want to scare off the man, not now when he was possibly helping her survive, but he had to know. “...it cannot be killed. We need to avoid it at all costs, or it will tear us apart.”
“Ugh, sounds fun,” the man griped. “Though I doubt it can’t be killed. Everything can be killed, or else you just didn’t figure out the way yet.”
It sounded like he was speaking from experience, which both reassured and deeply troubled her. Who, the hell, was this man?
His self-confidence was also irritating her a little bit. He had no idea what he was talking about, not when it came to the Proto. “Very well,” she amended impatiently. “It can be killed. By a particular, impossibly rare weapon, which I do not have. Therefore we may as well call it unkillable.”
“See, now we’re getting somewhere,” the man overtook her and glanced around a corner before nodding at her that it was safe, after which she took the lead again, “a rare weapon. Any specifics?”
“You can’t imitate it, it wouldn’t work,” Kristina scoffed. At least as far as she was aware. She wasn’t permitted to study the Shard, not that she was sure she would be able to understand it anyway. Unless it happened to be made of flesh.
“No harm in asking,” the man shrugged. “So? What is it?”
Kristina sighed. Maybe he would drop it if she told him what she knew. “It has a knife-like shape, I assume it is used by stabbing. It is made of at least two kinds of material, mineral or possibly metal, but I cannot rule out organic matter either. I have only seen it once, never held it in my hands. Even if there was a way to fake it, we don’t have enough information.”
“Hmm,” the man was thinking it over. Oh no, why was he still continuing this track of thought? They descended a short flight of stairs, arriving at a door with a keypad.
“So why would stabbing the creature with that thing be any different than stabbing it with something else?” Kristina hid her irritation by turning to the keypad and punching in the code.
“I don’t know,” she hissed, not willing to talk too loud in a new area. “But nothing else certainly worked when we tried.”
The man swept their surroundings with his eyes. Then grunts came from the right and before Kristina could react, he shot at the attacker. An inmate, waving his hands to use the straps as whips, was running towards them, but a few more shots downed him.
She breathed a sigh of relief, but the man looked unconcerned. “Okay, how do you even know this thing would work on the creature if you've never had it? What is it you’ve created here?”
Well, there was only so far she was willing to go with this, and telling strangers about the Nephilim was beyond that line. “That is certainly none of your concern.”
“Yeah it kinda is my concern if I can expect it to try and kill me right here. What about the weapon then? Any chance of getting our hands on the real deal?”
This conversation was leading nowhere yet he couldn’t let it go. Kristina assumed her most sarcastic tone: “Of course, because Periapt Shards just grow on trees around here.”
The man stopped so abruptly Kristina startled and began looking around for danger. When she couldn’t see anything, she turned back to him, and he was watching her with wide eyes, as if his worst fears had just been confirmed.
“What did you create?” he asked again, in a low, dangerous voice.
Kristina took a step back. “That is none-”
He grabbed her by her shoulders, tight enough to hurt. “What is it? I know you’re trying to bring back the Nephilim, so tell me!”
“How-” she gasped, but couldn’t go further. Maybe… maybe that was good. However he’d learned of the tightly kept secret, it meant she wouldn’t be revealing it herself. And if explaining the Proto to him made them only a slightly bit safer, if only because he would take the threat seriously – which he just might have, judging by his reaction…
She swallowed. “It’s… it’s a Proto-Nephilim. There is only about fifty percent Nephilim DNA in it, but that still makes it impossible to kill.”
The man was watching her intently just two seconds longer. “Fuck,” he finally breathed out and let go of her. “And the rest of the DNA?”
“Several animal species. Canines and primates.”
“So something quick and agile,” his sight was turned to the floor, thoughts running quickly through his head judging by the pinched expression. Finally he looked up. “Alright, it will be a pain in the ass, but I’ve killed nasty critters before.”
Kristina couldn’t believe her ears. She watched him walking past her with her mouth open. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” she asked his retreating back, aware her voice sounded slightly shrill. “It’s a half-Nephilim! That makes it impossible to kill without a Periapt Shard!”
“You mean something like this?” he pulled and object out of his pouch and held it up high.
Kristina could only stare in mute astonishment. There was no end to surprises today and she didn’t know how much more she could take. That… that was impossible!
Despite her denial, there was something warm growing in her chest. The beginning of hope.
“A Periapt Shard...” she whispered.
“Yeah,” the man glanced back at her with a frown, but then he smirked. “Now I just gotta stab your pet with it before it eats us.”
The warmth in her body grew cold again. Yes. The Shard wasn’t enough. The Proto was loose in the facility, not safely hidden in the containment area where it would’ve been easy to kill once and for all. But the confidence in the man’s eyes prompted her to contemplate a slight sliver of hope nonetheless:
“And you truly think you can do it?”
“Sure. Probably,” the man stashed the Shard back to its hiding place.
“Probably?” Kristina repeated weakly but finally followed him.
“Nothing’s really for sure, but I have better chances than anyone around here,” he walked up a few steps and tried to open a door made of metal bars. It didn’t budge. He tried again, a little stronger.
Kristina couldn’t see a keypad or a card reader anywhere, and started to worry they would need to turn around and take another way. That would make their stay down here considerably longer, and no matter how confident and conveniently armed the man was, she would prefer to be out and rid of him. Safe from everything around here including him, because… he clearly wasn’t working for the Cabal. But he had knowledge he shouldn’t have. That made him extremely dangerous. Did he know who she was?
She still didn’t know who he was.
“Who are you?” she tried again, watching him inspect the locking mechanism. It was now clear even from her position that the metal had been warped in an unnatural way, keeping the door jammed shut.
He huffed out a laugh. “What, you still haven’t figured it out?” he took several steps back, as if making a run-up. Was he going to try to knock down the metal door?
“Figured out? What do you mean?” She watched him warily. If he could throw his body against the metal bars and not cause himself more damage than to the door, she was going to assume his body wasn’t made of flesh at all.
But instead of preparing for a run, he… lifted one arm. Turned his open palm forward. His eyes narrowed in concentration.
Oh.