Nightlife: Hunter

          “Contain him!” Dr. Ailan shouted. His hand snapped up to a button clasped to his collar and his thick fingers fumbled with it for a time. When at last he pressed it, a once concealed door to the lab flew open and several people ran in.

         Their thick black cloth and black plating uniforms rendered the guards sexless. Each anonymous figure moved into a practiced formation, trapping Ebon within their semi-circle barrier and the chrome covered wall. “Tone it down, Ebon.” The muted voice of one of the guards called out.

         ”Get the hell out of my way!” Ebon growled, his fury rising past breaking point. Throwing his arm in front of him the air rippled momentarily and a guard crumpled to the ground.

         ”Ebon!” Sela cried, reaching out for the seething Telepath, “Don’t! They’ll kill you!” She thought she saw a flicker of recognition and understanding pass over Ebon’s rage contorted features. Her hopes were instantly dashed when Ebon turned on another guard and bore him to the ground.

         In an almost unanimous gesture the remaining guards reached up and pulled their visors down over their faces. To Ebon, where there once had been a wall of fright stained mental energy, there was nothing. He spun about, trying to catch even a glimpse of the Shader guards, but he could not. As his own icy gaze met with Sela’s forest green one, the gun fired.

         The first bullet whizzed past Ebon’s head, cutting away some of his hair. As the strands fell, another bullet was fired, this one hitting Ebon in the shoulder. Rocked forward with the force, Ebon rolled with it, turning to face the shooter. Letting loose another bolt of telekinesis, he smiled with grim satisfaction when it connected and the guard rematerialized. Its newly revealed brainwaves only revived to be snuffed out by death.

         Orvaflies, when heated, can be put to destructive uses instead of reparation and Ebon was feeling the repercussions. The bullet in Ebon’s shoulder began to liquefy and he could feel the carefully crafted poison bullet seeping into his veins. Ebon’s vision swam and he was beginning to feel drained; searching for the hidden guards, keeping his own shields up, and firing off energy. Darkness began to close in and Ebon cursed. Dropping his shields - the sudden rush of mental energy making his head ache – he ran blindly through the wall of guards.

         Another bullet embedded itself into Ebon’s calf and he almost fell. Grunting against the pain, he continued, but he knew that his leg wasn’t going to hold out much longer. Deep within his mind Ebon could feel a twisted energy, much more altered than his own. Behind him Sela shouted his name again. “My experiment!” shouted Dr. Ailan. Ebon screwed his eyes shut and ran on.

.::.::.::.

         ”C’mon Fallen, how many tracking devices have you got on Ebon? It shouldn’t take you this long to find him!” Laelin stomped her foot impatiently. Her black dress slacks fell over heavy black combat boots and she wore a khaki tee tucked into her belt. With her hair pulled back into a horse’s tail, she looked like a failing boot camp escapee. “Hurry it up!”

         ”Calm down, Laelin,” Tor buzzed over Fallen’s com system. “She only works so fast. Anyway, Ebon could be anywhere.”

         ”Target located,” Fallen said quietly. It often annoyed Laelin that the acolyte was so soft spoken. Then again, she often wondered what part of Ebon had wanted a soft spoken acolyte in the first place.

         ”Oh! Well, where?” Laelin practically tackled Fallen. She pulled herself up on the robot’s shoulder and looked at the small GPS embedded in her hand. The dot was moving fast, but in sharp turns and backtracks. “Where is he?”

         ”Delta Genome Co.” A little status screen popped up. Status: Closed/condemned. Founded: 4032 B.F. Closed: 1346 A.F.

         ”That’s old.” Laelin mused.

         ”So,” Tor beeped from the com, “It was founded one hundred years before the moon split and was closed one thousand three hundred and six afterwards. That doesn’t make sense. There’s no company that old and Delta Genome Co. doesn’t even show up on any tax lists from that time frame.”

         ”What would Ebon be doing in there?” Laelin straightened her shirt. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

         ”If he didn’t go there of his own free will per –“

         ”No one forces Ebon to go anywhere! If he’s there then he’s supposed to be.”

         As if just to dash Laelin’s claims to Ebon’s safety, Fallen piped up, “Target status: Critical.”

         ”What?” Laelin jumped back onto Fallen’s shoulder.

         ”Ebon’s injured.” Tor said matter-of-factly.

         ”Shit, I kind of got that! How do we get to this Delta Genome Co.?”

         ”This way,” Fallen said in the same monotone voice. She motioned for Laelin to follow and sprinted away.

.::.::.::.

         After a few blocks Laelin was gasping for breath and stumbling along the beaten and worn sidewalks. “Fallen!” she huffed, stopping and putting her hands on her knees. “C’mon wait up. What? Hey!” Fallen had turned around, grabbed Laelin around the waist, hoisted her to her shoulder and taken off running again.

         When they arrived at the supposed Delta Genome Co. all that Laelin could see was a rundown warehouse. “Damn, no wonder this place was shut down.”

         ”It’s only been shut down a decade by the numbers Fallen gave us.” There was some tapping and Tor coughed, “Most of the complex was underground when it was still operating. Other than the information that Fallen picked up somewhere, there is no sign that the majority of the lab even ceased running.”

         ”So, you think that Ebon is down there?”

         There was silence. Laelin assumed that Tor had just nodded. “Come on Fallen.” They made their way around the dilapidated building until they found some sort of entrance. It wasn’t what Laelin had expected, simply a gap where a section of the wall had collapsed. Fallen worked her way in first, knocking off a few more chunks of wall.

         The inside was in no better shape than the outside. Old crates lined the walls from floor to ceiling and several of the support beams didn’t look like they were going to support their weight for very much longer. Sneaking across the room, using the crates as cover, Laelin spotted a booth, lit harshly – compared to the dimness of the rest of the building – with fluorescent lights.

         Laelin grabbed Fallen by the hand and shoved her arm out past the edge of the box, “Can you see it, Tor?”

         ”Yeah. Looks like a security clearance booth. I’ll have Fallen counterfeit you some IDs just in case.”

         Laelin cringed as Fallen began to whirr. The vast emptiness of the building echoed the noise and to Laelin, tense as she was, it seemed a thousand fold louder. Finally after several agonizingly long minutes, they both had IDs. Laelin’s read, Genetics Engineer and Fallen’s Biochemical Engineering Supervisor, she could only hope that the labs didn’t already have those particular professions filled at the moment.

.::.::.::.

         Ivory almost gasped aloud, his prey had dropped its shields and was reeling in pain. He could almost taste Ebon’s agony. The sustaining fluid - now crystallized from exposure to air - still floated about him. As he made his way down a hall that he figured would lead him to this new energy source an intern stumbled out of an adjoined room.

         ”Die.” He murmured. In his vexation the orbs sped up, one smashing into the side of the young man’s head. He grunted and collapsed. Ivory paused to make sure the young man’s vital signs had all but stopped and continued on.

         ”Ivory?” a scientist walking down the hall looked at Ivory quizzically. “Dr. Ailan has decided to let you out?”

         Ivory recognized the man as the person who had refilled the sustaining fluid tank and checked his vital signs. “No,” Ivory let his corpse blue lips form a tight smile, “I let myself out.” The elderly scientist seemed to choke and he clawed at his throat. Within a few moments where a scientist had once stood a mummified corpse now laid.

.::.::.::.

         Laelin tried to look like she worked here, but she was so far beyond nervous that she would have bet money she looked like a rabbit fresh after a pack of dogs had run by. The man inside the booth was a classic cop. Chubby, looked to be middle aged, with a doughnut and a Styrofoam cup of coffee up on the top of the security consul. He looked up, obviously weary of sitting here doing nothing, “A bit late aren’t you?” he mused, holding his hand out.

         She looked at him blankly for a while until she realized the he wanted her ID, “Yeah,” Laelin answered, handing over her card, “Bad morning.”

         ”Aren’t they all?” he asked placidly as he took Fallen’s ID. “Be worse if anyone were to blab to the press about the shit that goes on down there.”

         Laelin couldn’t stop herself, “What stuff?”

         ”New too, I guess, experiments, all sorts of creepy shit, you know. Turning men into monsters and bendin’ the brain until we can do stuff we shouldn’t.”

         ”Like? I wasn’t told anything before I was sent down. All ‘undisclosed location’ kind of stuff.”

         The security guy raised an eyebrow and handed back the cards, “I don’t need to tell you, you’ll find out soon enough and wish you hadn’t.”

         She shuddered despite herself and headed towards the door just past the booth. More harsh blue fluorescent lights lit the way down into the polished tile and whitewash halls. When she reached the bottom of the narrow stairwell a young woman popped seemingly out of the wall, “New intern? Right this way!” she seemed way too perky for the horror story that the security guy had told. Laelin just nodded and followed.

         ”Go.” Laelin whispered.

         ”What?” the perky woman asked, walking down another corridor.

         ”Oh, nothing.” Laelin continued to follow the woman and listened as Fallen’s footsteps faded. As she walked she slid the small needle tipped tracking device under the skin on her arm.

.::.::.::

         Some distance away a young woman, no older than 23 perhaps, sat in a high backed chair behind a solid oak desk. Her palms were pressed together before her face and her devil’s red lips were pursed. “Are you sure, Dragonmaw? I want you to know that if any harm comes to my company, your head will compensate for it.”

         In the shadows a tall, lithe man stood. His slender frame was draped in silk the color of midnight and an odd assortment of belts, chains, and hooks. A pair of goggles covered his eyes, one of the lenses was glowing a demonic and furious red. His left arm hung at his side and his right hand, which was nothing but a set of steel claws, was hooked over the steel plate on his left shoulder, “I am sure, Night. Do not worry - the head of Finalsight is gone. I made sure to tell the good Dr. Ailan that the man was vulnerable.”

         ”Are you sure the old man has sufficient hold on him? Ebon is not one to be taken lightly.”

         ”Yes, I am. You have heard of ‘Project I.V.O.R.Y’ have you not?”

         ”I have. What of it?”

         ”Dr. Ailan tells me that the power of one Ivory Vector is something that would make even Ebon obsolete.”

         ”And you trust him, this doctor?”

         ”Not entirely, but it is not my job to trust. Just garner information.”

         ”Good, that’s what I wanted to hear,” Night turned in her chair and laid her hand on her desk. Each on of her silver manicured nails tapped on the desk in a discordant rhythm as she stared at the shadows where the spy Dragonmaw was barely visible, “How much do you want for this job exactly? You agreed to the job before you asked for the payment.”

         Dragonmaw laughed dryly, “Nothing more than the assurance that Ebon is dead and the satisfaction of seeing his corpse drawn and quartered.”

         Night raised a sharp black eyebrow, “Interesting choice.” She murmured.
.::.::.::.

         Ebon was running on automatic now. He knew if he stopped he wasn’t going to be able to make himself start again. His lungs pleaded for air and his veins cried in fiery chorus for clean blood, but he would not stop. Ebon plowed through guards and scientists blocking the way and only hoped he was running out and not father into the complex. That was when the full force of the twisted energy consumed him.

         Ebon reeled, teetering back into heels and finally collapsing altogether. He couldn’t bring his shields back up and the malicious energy was beating his sensitive mind to a pulp. A withered form flew into the wall at the end of the corridor and a floating red orb came into view. Some mercury-like substance flowed in a controlled manner into the hall and riding not far behind was a man.

         His white hair snapped about him like it was caught in a horrendous storm and the blood of the tempest had washed it of its color. His face was gaunt, thin bones covered in skin the color of chalk. A white lab coat covered the sinewy muscles of the man’s chest and he wore the bottoms to the scrubs that Ebon recognized as the garb of an experiment.

.::.::.::.

         Fallen walked quietly through the halls, her artificial blonde hair covering the milky skin of her bowed head. Sky blue eyes studied the GPS in her hand as she walked the maze of corridors. She was getting nearer to Ebon now, as the small dot had stopped moving.

         ”Excuse me, ma’am,” an intern walked up to Fallen. “You can’t be down here without clearance. Do you have an ID to be in here?”

         Fallen held up her ID, “Yes, I do.”

         The intern nodded and crept past Fallen. She watched him as he disappeared around a corner and then turned back to the GPS. The target status display read as Failing and Fallen felt the strangest sensation and she didn’t understand it.

         She studied the GPS, memorized the route, and ran. It took her several moments and several more glances at the GPS to reach Ebon’s location, but when she did, the feeling skyrocketed and she almost screamed aloud.

.::.::.::.

         It seemed a natural defense. Ebon forced himself up onto his knees and threw the last of his energy at the approaching corpse. As a result, he could no longer hold up his defenses against the poison, the mental onslaught, and the pain of his own injuries. He fell with his eyes open. Though all that followed was fuzzy, it seemed as if it were done in water, a slow, exaggerated surrealism to the passing events.

          The mercury bound man slid backwards, loosing his tenuous hold on the liquid steel, which gushed around the hall, solidifying quickly. The orbs shattered into a million blood red shards as the man howled in unbound rage. There was the heavy clunk of metal on metal and Fallen slammed into the ground before Ebon, arms thrown out wide. Hasty footsteps filled the rest of Ebon’s available hearing.

.::.::.::.

         Laelin had broken away from her guide in the chaos that had followed the news of Ivory’s breakout. She had no idea who this Ivory was, but it had taken a while for the mayhem to reach the forward most reaches of the complex. She followed the rest of the running scientists and interns to the rear of the complex to a horrendous scene.

         Ebon was on the ground, trying to stand it seemed. Fallen was standing in front of him, her legs spread and her arms thrown out to the sides. Defiance and fearlessness filled every one of her normally emotionless features and realization struck Laelin. A picture that Ebon had shown her when she had first come to live with him, when Ebon was still somewhat boyish himself. It was a picture of his mother, sunray blonde hair framing a face the color of lilies. Her eyes the color of the sky at false dawn and lips a shade of soft pink that no lipstick could ever conjure. Fallen had been modeled after Ebon’s mother, and Laelin had only realized it once emotion had flooded the acolyte’s facial features.

         The man that she assumed was Ivory, as that was what everyone was yelling at him, was regaining his footing amid a flurry of shards of something. She looked at Ebon, then at Fallen, and then at Ivory and her breath hitched. “No!” she screamed. Reaching into a nearby room she plucked a heavy piece of equipment from a counter top and dove into the tempest.

.::.::.::.

         Ivory heard the desperate cry. He spun around and his eyes widened, Ivory flung his hands up before his face, but it was too late. The woman whose vitals all registered the same as a mother protecting her children crashed in and the heavy metal thing she carried connected heavily with his head.

         As everything swam into darkness Ivory swung out. A few of the shards rent furrows in his arm and hand, but he hit the woman. He knew she had been flung away by the shriek, the sickening crunch of bone impacting far too hard, and the gasps of several of the onlookers. He dug his fingertips into the concrete wall beside him, hoping to hold himself up, but even as his digits broke the rock-like substance he lost his strength and fell.

.::.::.::

         Fallen spun as Laelin flew from the supernatural storm, dipping she picked up Ebon, sliding forward a bit she grabbed Laelin who groaned and shrieked as her broken arm smacked into Fallen’s side. While running Ebon regained consciousness and spotted Sela. He struggled from Fallen’s grasp and toppled to the ground. He laid there stunned for a time, then got to his feet. “Sela!” he shouted. She turned, a frightened look widening her forest green eyes to almost grotesque proportions.

         ”Ebon!” Sela answered. She wanted desperately to go to him, but she couldn’t will her legs to move.

         Fallen stopped, “Ebon.” She said to herself, better situation Laelin in her arms to spare her some pain. Ebon ran forward, grabbed the female scientists named Sela by the arm, and ran back. He threw is arm into the air, “Run! I’ll follow!” he bellowed.

         Sela barely found the opportunity to place her feet on the ground as Ebon flew through the corridors. She gripped his hand for dear life, and ignored the pain in her side and the searing in her lungs. After what seemed an eternity of batting away interns and horrified screams drifting on stagnant air, the group finally broke from the narrow stairwell into the warehouse.

         ”What the hell is going on?” the security man shouted, jumping up from his chair. As he struggled to free himself from the booth, Ebon shot him a look that could have peeled paint and the man crumpled unconscious into the little swivel chair within.

         They darted between boxes, Fallen leading the way. She plowed through the crumbling wall and out onto the street, Ebon and Sela on her heels.

.::.::.::.

         Back at Citadel Venompeak Ebon bolted the doors, “Fallen, take Laelin and Sela to the basement!”

         ”Yes sir.” She started off towards the basement, stopping a few feet away to make sure Sela was following.

         Ebon raced upstairs, “Tor! Lock up the Finalsight mainframe. I don’t care what’s going on. When that’s done start locking windows and pulling shades, I want the house dark!”

         Tor spun in his chair, “What’s going on?”

         Ebon shook his head, “No time to explain, just do it. I think we’ve just let all hell loose on our own heads.”

End --> Nightlife: Hunter

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