New chapter alert! Three days late, thanks to exams, writers block and of course Abe's Oddysee, but here it is at last!
First, however, responding to my fans!
I got the OWI Art Book the same time I got AO, and I noticed there's a concept picture of a Big Bro without a mask, and the eyes appear to be rather sunken and stuff. Whether its an affect of the steroids or it's natural I don't know, but it will be taken into account and I might edit chapter 10 to include it.
As for sliggish, like Slaveless said, it's a fan concept. Dionysia won't be appearing in this section but will turn up later on, and yes, I will be covering time spent at Rupture Farms. When I get to that point I'll put this story on hold until the RPG progresses if I need to, though there's a fair amount that needs to happen first.
This chapter is safe for all, though it does include some technobabble, like most of Krik's chapters. Never mind, I shall continue.
Chapter 11
Krik began work at once. He was provided a room to live and sleep in, and another room to do up as a lab using the things brought over from his small rented place. He did it up as best he could and got to work.
Skillya was at first very interested in Krik’s project. A few days in when he had gotten all his equipment set up and had written out test plans and time sheets for the job, he asked for his first few sligs to run tests on and the next thing he knew he was (much to his dismay) being called into her ‘lair’. She demanded to know every detail of what he was going to do to these sligs and was somewhat disappointed when he managed to explain that he just needed to run a few minor psychological tests and take blood samples. She sent him out and after a while provided a few of her attendants for him to experiment with.
The main problem with trying to do research on the sligs Skillya provided was that they were all so nervous working around her that they were constantly in a state of extreme stress. Krik needed blood samples from sligs who were at least fairly relaxed to compare with the blood samples of stressed sligs.
It took him a few days to summon up the courage to confront Skillya about the dilemma. When he told her that he would need to leave her facility to interview sligs from outside, her eyes bulged with anger and he thought she was going to have him executed right then and there. “Thiss iss hah ur rehay hy chenerosity? Ur try tu escape ass soon ass my ack iss turnt? Ur think I’rn Stuthid?”
“No-no! That’s not what I meant!” Krik took a few gulping breaths and tried to continue, “All the sligs here are so sc- stressed! I n-need relaxed sligs to test on, as well as stressed ones!”
Her anger calmed down, but he could tell she was still seething. She didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her. “I have vykkers hurking thur me outtsside. Ur tell him hot ur need. He does tests hur ur, hyes?”
“Yes! Yes. You, I mean, if you tell me how to contact him, I’ll let him know what I need. Is there a fone?”
Skillya eyed him predatorily. “Na sligs show ur thone. Ur rink na vykker, no hon else.”
She sent him back to his lab and half an hour later a pair of sligs came and showed him to a fone, hidden behind a door opened via a voicelock. They gave him a number to ring and guarded him while he dialled and spoke.
The vykker that came onto the screen was a few years younger than Krik, and a little skinny, even for a vykker. “This is Dr Edward Cekyll speaking.”
“Um,” Krik began awkwardly, “I’m Dr Krik. I recently began working for Queen Skillya-” He was cut off by Cekyll, who began laughing loudly. Krik looked annoyed, “She informed me that you were also working for her and would help me with the project I’m working on.”
He had stopped laughing, but was grinning slyly. “Of course, of course. Once you start a job fro Skillya you never escape her claws.” Krik didn’t like the sound of that. He glanced over his shoulder at the two sligs but their faces were blank. Cekyll went on, “And what is it you need of me?”
“I hope you know something of biochemistry?” He didn’t like the young vykker much. He didn’t seem very intelligent and he clearly had no respect.
“Yes, yes. I was trained in all that, hormones, microbiology…”
Krik nodded stiffly. “Well I’m looking for information on the stress response in sligs. It’s rather hard to do any proper research here since all the sligs are nervous wrecks.”
“It’s not just the sligs,” Cekyll muttered. Krik ignored him.
“I’d appreciate it if you could run blood tests on about 75 to 100 sligs. Make sure the sligs are as close to being fully relaxed as you can get them before you take the samples. Then redo about half of them in more stressful situations. Make the appropriate notes and send me the results.”
“You don’t ask for much,” Cekyll told him sarcastically, but Krik could tell by the expression on his face that he liked the idea of stressing the sligs. Like most vykkers he would probably come up with a few creative methods of doing so.
Krik ended the conversation and was escorted back to his lab. For the next few weeks he went through most of the sligs in the facility, monitoring stress levels, taking blood tests and studying hormones. Skillya seemed to have lost interest in his work, leaving him to get on with it undisturbed. Just as his tests were nearing completion. Cekyll arrived at the facility in person with the results of his own research. Krik took them and thanked him and Cekyll told him just what he didn’t want to hear.
“I’ll be staying around to help you with your research. Queen Skillya thought giving you an assistant would speed you up, and I volunteered for the job. DNAse has saved me from a few tight corners and as soon as I realised you were
that Krik I decided I should return the favour and show you how to survive with her highness breathing down your neck all the time.”
Krik was not best pleased with this turn of events, though when he looked at the information Cekyll had gathered he was forced to admit that he was clearly very good at his job. The next few months were spent comparing data, studying patterns and drawing conclusions. Krik never became fond of the younger vykker, but he would grudgingly admit he was glad of his presence, not just for his help on the work but also because he was the only person Krik could talk to who wasn’t either near to nervous collapse or likely to eat him if he said the wrong thing.
After months of work they were finally ready to experiment on a live subject. Krik informed the younger vykker that he intended to ask Skillya for a number of slig eggs to test on. Cekyll disagreed and insisted they test on adult sligs, at least for the first few months. Krik agreed, though somewhat reluctantly, and they worked on putting together an injectable formula that should affect the behaviour of the subject for a few weeks. There was no doubt that it would affect the subject’s behaviour, though
how it would affect it was less certain.
Cekyll elected to go and tell Skillya the good news and ask for a test subject and came back satisfied. A few days later they were given a rebellious slig who did not seem particularly thankful towards the vykkers, even when they reminded him that they had saved him from a trip to Skillya’s kitchen.
They injected him with the formula and he spent the next few weeks rolling and thrashing in pain, much to Skillya’s delight, while the vykkers observed, ran a few tests when he stayed still long enough, and made scientific observations of his behaviour and the possible causes. The affects did indeed wear off after two and a half weeks and in the end it turned out the vykkers didn’t save him from Skillya after all.
The two scientists went back to the drawing board, clocked up some more sums and came up with a new formula which they tested on the next slig Skillya provided for them. They observed the affects with interest. “He doesn’t seem to be in quite as much pain as the last one,” Krik informed his partner.
Cekyll nodded. “It’s certainly and improvement. Not sure about all the bleeding though.”
If nothing else, Skillya seemed happier than ever, and didn’t seem to mind the fact that the slig died before it reached her oven.
So it went on for a few months more. As the unfortunate side effects began to diminish and the sligs tended to live longer, Skillya seemed to grow less pleased and Cekyll suggested that they use some of the older formulas for every third slig, just to keep her happy. Krik agreed that it might not be a bad idea.
He was still concerned by the fact that the sligs needed regular injections to make the effects last. Changing sligs’ behaviour had little purpose if it only lasted for three weeks. Cekyll suggested they simply make the product incredibly addictive, and so stop the sligs from not taking it. Krik, however, was not happy with this solution: for him it was permanence or nothing, and to make it permanent, the formula had to be administered during very early development, before the sligs hatched from their eggs. He made the suggestion, but Cekyll stated bluntly that he was
not going to ask Skillya for eggs to work on, and as he was still the only one of the pair who willingly went to Skillya to ask for test subjects, that seemed to settle the matter.
For Krik, however, it didn’t. One day he went to Skillya himself. She was no less frightening than she had seemed before, but that wasn’t going to stop him. She was surprised to see him instead of Cekyll, but he told her Cekyll was feeling unwell and, not wanting her to become ill, he was here to make the request instead.
Sweet-talk them; make them think you care. He started off easily, asking for another slig for them to experiment on. She asked what they were likely to do with him and how their experiments were progressing. He told her they were going to be testing something new and wasn’t sure if it would go well.
Tell them what they want to here; get them on your side. Finally, just as he was about to leave he asked her if they could have a few eggs to test on to try and make the effects more permanent.
She screamed at him in sliggish. However frightening he had found her before was nothing compared to the sheer might of her wrath in those few seconds. He stumbled backwards and before he really knew it he was outside of the chamber, his back pressed to the door, gasping for breath.
Cekyll rolled his eyes at him when he told him what had happened. “You never listen to anything you don’t want to hear, do you Krik?” He informed him.
“I don’t understand!”
Cekyll raised his hands in a desperate gesture, “Call it what you want, some perverse sense of justice or something; Skillya would never hurt a slig before he’s done anything wrong. Once they’ve broken the law, upset her or whatever then fine; she’ll gut them, cook them, let us torture them, but only if they’ve shown that they deserve it. And she won’t let
anyone touch her eggs, unless Queen Margaret authorises it. And she certainly wouldn’t let you.”
Krik looked defensive, “Why not me?”
“Because you walk around with your nose in the air like you’re better than the rest of us! She wants the people around her to grovel, to make her feel like she’s got power over all of us. You walk around like you can control her.”
Krik swore at him and stormed away.
A few days later he was forced to put aside his anger, however, because they had work to do and Skillya was waiting. Skillya didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Work went on, and Krik realised for the first time that he’d been working for Skillya for over two years, and at last they were approaching the climax of all their work. Krik was hoping to for the opportunity to test the product on a slig who wasn’t already a known criminal, but things were looking good, when they received a message from Skillya stating that she was cutting her funding for their project. Krik woke up one morning to be informed of the news by Cekyll.
“That’s it then,” He told Krik, “It was fun, but that’s it.”
“You’re just going to stop?” Krik demanded, “After all that work we’ve put it?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you thought she was going to let us finish? She let it carry on as soon as it provided an interesting way of killing prisoners, but she never actually wanted to you to improve the behaviour of her children! If they were all suddenly obedient she wouldn’t have any to punish would she? And she wouldn’t like that.” Krik was staring at him, dumbfounded. Cekyll gave him a pitying expression, “Look, we got paid, we had fun and that’s it. Don’t push your luck. We’ll probably be working here for a few more weeks to clear this up, and then if you’re lucky she’ll let you out into the world until she needs you again.”
The day was spent half-heartedly packing up equipment, filing papers and tidying away two years of work which had ended in the same way as his eleven years of the Mock-Queen project.
Krik made up his mind. After midnight he left his room and crept down to the hatchery. The sligs outside were sleeping and he moved past them as silently as he could.
He returned to his room a short while later with three rounded, green slig eggs. He unpacked some of his equipment from their boxes and, in his room in the near darkness, got to work.
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