Fred
didn’t so much like paperwork. Paper? Sure, paper in and of
itself was fine. Good paper was paper that came wrapped around her
tacos from the stand on the corner. Good paper was what she published
before her psycho of an ex-advisor tried to send her to Hell. Again.
Not so good paper was what she seemed to be drowning in. Mountains
of it. Heaps of it.
There
were spending requests: fifteen new enchanted beakers for lab three.
There were transfer requests: Melinda Luchese from the particle
dynamics department had a conflict with the guy who ran the vacuum
cleaner at night- transfer him or she wouldn’t be responsible
for her actions. There were past due bills to be settled: the latest
shipment of sheep for sacrifice were lost in the mail and the firm
wanted reimbursement or new sheep.
And
then there was the other pile. The largest pile. The daunting pile.
The pile of all the old research that Fred was supposed to be caught
up on. She hated that pile. She was a physicist for heaven’s
sake, not a biologist, or a chemist, or a whatever it was that probed
other dimensions looking for new minerals to mine. It was giving
her a headache.
Particularly
the biomedical papers. It seemed they were researching something
to do with blood poisoning, trying to remove impurities, deadly
impurities. There were many technical terms she didn’t understand,
but some of the procedures listed, mystical and medical, seemed
incredibly painful. For the life of her, she couldn’t quite
see what they were geared towards…
There
was one thing, however, that caught her attention. At the top of
each report was a code. All reports had codes. All of these reports
had the same code- a routing code, a bank code.
Someone
was funding this research—it was not in house Wolfram and
Hart funds.
So
even though curiosity killed more cats than Schrödinger ever
thought of, she grasped the paper and wandered down to Accounts.
It was sort of eerie the way everyone deferred to her. Like she
was the boss or something. Oh wait, she was. Her minions even called
her El Jefe. It was unnerving.
Accounts
was even polite, a far cry from the grants department at UCLA that
would keep her waiting for hours just to talk about the tiniest
little amount of money. No, here she had the account number and
relevant person neatly printed on a piece of paper within seconds.
Seems evil was pretty well organized.
But
the name meant nothing to her, and the oh-so-helpful woman wasn’t
interested in providing character profiles. All she would say was
that further inquiries would be directed to Special Projects.
Lilah.
With
an only somewhat depressed slump of her shoulders, Fred was off
to Lilah’s office. Lilah was in, staring out at the bright
LA day, but she did manage to be slightly less condescending than
usual.
“Fred.
So… nice to see you. Anything I can do to help?”
Trying
not to fidget, Fred handed Lilah the paper from Accounts. Lilah
took one look, arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow, though Fred thought
she probably didn’t have to worry about stray eyebrow hairs
now that she was dead, and stifled a laugh.
“Oh,
this is too good. You’ve found a new project then?”
“Not
a project, more like curiosity. Want to know what my teams are doing
and all that.”
“Hmm,
well, I still think you should take this to Angel. He’ll probably
get a kick out of it. Doubt he realized we even handled this sort
of… situation.”
With
no more enlightenment than before, Fred left Lilah still staring
out at the sky, sharpening a letter opener on a miniature grindstone.
The trip to Angel’s office was shorter, and Harmony waved
her right in. Angel was chatting with Wes, slinging his coffee cup
around. When he got too excited, he’d slosh the blood out.
He’d ruined three shirts in the last month that way. Harmony
got him a lid for the cup, but he complained that it made him an
infant. So Wes charmed his clothes to repel blood.
She
didn’t know what they were discussing, but when she popped
her head around the door frame, they waved her in eagerly.
“Hey,
Fred, what’s up in the world of scientific doom?” Angel
seemed to be in a pretty good mood, and Wes smirked as the vampire
rustled around in his desk to proffer Fred a donut which she daintily
accepted.
“It’s
fine, really, no apocalypses coming from my department, though I
think Knox was underestimating the amount of evil in my work group.
Anyway, I’ve found this account that funds some interesting
research through Special Projects. I asked Lilah about it, but she
sent me to you. Seems she thought you’d find it amusing or
something.”
Angel
shrugged and reached for the paper, before tsking in disgust. “I
might have known.”
“Known
what?”
“That
our firm dealt with these creatures. Not even real demons.”
He frowned and walked over to his own daunting pile of unread research.
“I thought I read something with his name on it, but I didn’t
know it was the same… Ah, here it is.”
He
pulled a thick file out from under a sheaf of what looked like bound
skin and leafed through it. He arched an eyebrow with a snort. “You
have got to be kidding me.”
“What?”
Both Wes and Fred followed him to the table as he spread the information
out.
“Did
you know we had a medical safe house? It’s down Wilshire.
Anyway, we’ve got him housed here… seems a rogue Death
Dealer dropped him off.”
“A
what?” Fred wrinkled her nose in confusion.
Wes
rubbed his chin thoughtfully, flipping through papers. “They’re
like vampires, they even call themselves vampires, but they’re
not true demons like Angel here. Death Dealers are their assassins.”
“The
Scourge would probably classify them right about down with humans
on the extermination list. At least Vampires and true Werewolves
get some leniency from direct demon annihilation. The Scourge doesn’t
mess around.”
“And
Lycans and the pseudo-Vampires get no such consideration?”
Wes looked thoughtful and scrounged around for a piece of paper
to write some notes.
Fred
shook her head forcefully. “Would someone mind explaining
what you’re talking about? I thought there were only Vampires
like Angel… what’s a pseudo-Vampire. And is Lycan like
a lycanthrope?”
Angel
sighed and gestured for them to sit. “We don’t deal
much with them, Vampires or the Lycans and their ridiculous war.
They may be immortal, but they’re still an aberration.”
“I’d
love to hear your take on the subject. The Watcher’s Council
didn’t have any strict edicts against either, unless they
were threatening the general population. Their own councils of Elders
kept them more or less in line, when they weren’t killing
each other.”
Fed
up, Fred crossed her arms and spat out, “Hello! Still waiting
for an explanation here.”
Angel
ducked his head sheepishly. “It’s a warning tale that
sires tell their childer. Careful who you eat or you’ll be
responsible for the disaster that spawned the Lycan/pseudo-Vamp
line. Seems back in the dark ages, a fledge bit a Werewolf in wolf
form. This normally would just be an exercise in stupidity, except
this wolf was sick. Carried an anomalous virus, and when the vamp
bit his next victim, it spread to the humans. Except the vampire’s
system changed it. We’re not supposed to harbor diseases,
but this vamp… either he was too young and his body hadn’t
completely lost all of its human functions or this was one hella
virus, but when it hit the human, it created a plague.”
“A
plague? The watchers always wondered what happened to make the jump
from demon to human.” Wes eagerly scribbled down more notes.
“Yeah,
well, this virus killed almost everyone it touched- except one family.
The Corvinus family was resistant somehow, and the next generation
was born with interesting genetic traits. One child was the Lycan,
one child was the pseudo-Vampire. Both had aspects of the original
demon strains, both strengths and weaknesses, but the resulting
lines of hybrid abominations are more human than demon. True demons
will kill them on sight, normally, but the two strains have learned
to exist outside of the demon world, hiding in the shadows of human
existence. They both appear human to the point the Vamps have heartbeats
and reflections. They’re extremely picky about who gets made
in the next generation, as they’re forced to interact with
humans. Even the stupidest human gets suspicious.”
Fred
pulled her paper back into view. “And him, what does he have
to do with anything?”
“I’d
heard rumors he was still alive, but no one really paid any attention.
It wasn’t worth it. Then a few months ago, there was a phenomenal
upheaval in both the Lycan and Vamp camps. A pair of Elders were
killed, a Death Dealer went rogue to protect her Lycan/Vamp uber-hybrid,
and your new project, the Lycan leader… well, he was presumed
dead. Again.”
“So
what happened?” Fred leaned forward, elbows resting on the
table. “And a hybrid? They merged the lines?”
“Something
about the blood. It’s always about the blood. I don’t
really know, but I do know that this Lucian was trying to merge
the lines in himself, but something prevented it from working properly.
Hmm, says here he was attacked before he could finish the procedure,
and with the amount of poison swimming around in the bloodstream,
even the vampire blood he did manage to secretly inject didn’t
help him enough. Angel may have more of an idea, but the rumors
in the Watcher Headquarters, back before it blew up, were fairly
solid. Things got a bit chaotic for a while, and it ended up that
this Michael fellow, an actual descendant from the original resistant
family, got infected with both strains instead. Voila, hybrid.”
Angel
nodded along with Wes’ explanation. “And now Lucian’s
here. And we’re what? Putting him back together again?”
Fred
frowned. “I think so. They’re trying to remove traces
of silver nitrate from his system. He was near death when this Selene
person dropped him off, citing an account number, presumably his,
and said fix it. Or at least that’s the record we have. I
don’t know if another department might have more information.”
Angel
poked through his pile of papers again. “Looks about right.
Here’s a note saying she and Michael would be back to check
on his progress… unusual for a Death Dealer to care about
the fate of a Lycan, but Lucian was no ordinary Lycan.”
Wes
nodded slowly, “No, but having him here does add a level of
involvement for this firm that I’m not altogether comfortable
with. Their silly extermination war was fine when it was on the
sidelines. It seems to have gotten quite a bit bloodier for passersby--
and with Lucian here… Well, let’s just say if the pseudo-vampires
find out he’s alive, then we may have problems.”
Angel
rolled his eyes. “Just what we need.” He turned to Fred.
“So how’s your department handling it? How long before
he can be released or whatever?”
Fred
shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to go down to the medical
wing you mentioned and see.” She smiled, if a bit shakily.
“After all, I’m supposed to be up on all my projects,
what with being the head of Scientific Research and all.”
She
stood, still clutching the paper she’d brought, and waved
at the men before leaving Angel’s office. Too much to think
about, this trail of paperwork. But she did know one thing for sure,
this Lucian sounded like a puzzle, and Fred liked puzzles.
She
pulled a cell phone from her pocket and spoke brightly, “Hey,
Knox, yes, it’s me. Can you get a car to drive us down to
the Hayworth Facility. When? Um, nowish. Yeah, I think there’s
something I’d like to oversee personally.” She rolled
her eyes. “No, I’m not abandoning you; just getting
my feet wet other subjects. If I’m going to oversee medical
research, I should maybe go and actually, well, see it. Uh huh,
right. Okay then.”
She
clicked the phone closed and wandered down to the lobby. She checked
her appearance in the mirrored wall, noticing how many employees
had no reflection at all. With a sigh she sat down to wait. The
car would be here soon, and she had a mystery to unravel. It was
either that or more paperwork.
~Fin~
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