Chapter Text
The little yellow car struggled valiantly towards Albuquerque. It had traveled thousands of kilometers, and every inch of its paint was decorated with new dents and dings. Battle scars, the driver thought. Well earned. Just a little bit further. Just a bit more.
Manousos Oviedo was in better shape than his car, though not by much: face drawn with exhaustion and lean from hunger. He had tied his yellow bandanna around his head to keep the sweat from trickling into his eyes as he consulted his precious paper map, again and again.
There. There it was. The road was right, and the gates swung wide as he approached them. She was there, the one who had miraculously contacted him. The woman who know a way for this nightmare to finally end. Carol Sturka. Right here, at the top of this hill ...
The house was there, more a fortress than a home, but all his attention was focused on the woman standing at attention in the doorway, waiting for him.
She was as she had been in the video: blonde and fierce. She wore a tailored silk blouse with a white medical lab coat over it, and gloves that were more like gauntlets, gleaming black rubber that reached past her elbows.
He stopped his car before her, and stepped out. He stood at attention as well, and said the greeting that he had practiced so many times. “My name is Manousos Oviedo. I am not one of Them. I wish to save the world.”
“Hello, Manousos Oviedo!” Carol Sturka smiled, and her blue eyes glittered. She pushed the doors open wide, and a breeze laced with ozone and chemicals blew around them both. She said something in English, still smiling. She spoke too fast, too hard, and he didn’t understand – she had said experiments? What was -
A hand on his arm, then many hands: he tried to draw his machete as he turned but They were there, their smiling soft mouths and hands. They had crept up around him on bare feet and hands and knees and now their hands were all over him, pulling him down, taking away his weapon, pulling him away from his car and towards the black entrance way. Carol Sturka smiled cruelly, waving her hand as though welcoming him in. She barked orders at the Others and they did as she said, and Manousos finally realized that he was not here as a fellow savior, but as something else.
He bellowed and fought, roaring her name over and over again, and it was only when he was dragged into the laboratory and saw what was waiting for him there that he screamed ...