Glad you liked it Dripik. It was a lot of fun to write, which is the main thing, and for the second time I felt guilty after finishing a chapter.
I would be honoured if you drew fanart based on my story!
Anyone notice Nova's last words? “Not Anni, please, not Anni! Hurt me! Do anything to me but leave Anni alone!”
Anyway, it's Wednesday, and as promised earlier this week, that means chapter 17! I can't believe I only got two replies for that last chapter though
Another long one coming...
Chapter 17
The clock in Emlech’s office ticked the seconds by noisily as the nine vykkers and two sligs stood on his moss-green carpet in front of his large wooden desk, wishing they were anywhere but there. The room was surprisingly small for an executive office, though the pale cream walls made it pleasantly bright. Emlech sat behind the desk, his face lowered to the papers before him. The clock stalwartly ticked away seconds and minutes and they waited so long that it seemed as if Emlech had forgotten that they were there. Every tick was a jab at their already frayed nerves and some of the vykkers began to realise why Emlech kept an old clockwork clock, instead of buying a digital one.
At last Emlech ushered over the two sligs. It is impossible to shuffle the feet of mechanical pants, but the two sligs gave it the best attempt that they could manage.
“You were charged with guarding the lab during yesterday’s experiments, were you not?” He asked in a very calm, very reasonable voice, and from listening to him you would never have guessed at the disaster the previous day had been.
The sligs nodded and muttered awkward ‘Yes sir’s.
Emlech raised his head, nodding contemplatively. “Two mudokons broke into the lab during the time you were guarding it. Care to explain how that happened?” Again, his voice was very calm, as if he was asking what the weather was like.
“Well sir, it was his fault-”
“Hey!”
The first raised his voice over the protests of the second, “He insisted on going off to have a cigarette and I told him not to cus we were there to do a job but he went off anyway.”
“Well I didn’t know you were just going to step aside and let the next muds to come along go inside without trying to stop them!”
“She nicked me gun! What was I ‘sposed to do?”
“I dunno, smack her before-”
Emlech cleared his throat softly and the two sligs immediately fell silent. “So,” He said softly, the first traces of anger edging into his voice, “You decided to leave your post to have a cigarette without notifying anyone else, and while he was gone you were confronted, tricked and overpowered by a child?”
The two sligs stood dumbly. The one who Nova had tricked looked ashamed. The room seemed suddenly very silent, except for the incessant ticking of the clock.
Emlech nodded. He gestured to the second slig, “Your gun.”
The slig looked surprised but after a moment’s hesitation he handed it over. The other slig smirked.
“And yours,” Emlech said softly to the other slig. He looked surprised but also handed it over.
Emlech place the two guns to the side of his desk. “Cigarettes?”
A few seconds passed and then two boxes of cigarettes joined the guns on the desk.
“And any other weapons either of you two happen to be carrying? Pistols, knives, grenades?”
The slig who had left his post to smoke shook his head to gesture that he didn’t have anything else. Emlech nodded and turned to the other who reluctantly handed over a flick-knife. He was at least clever enough to know not to disobey his boss in this situation.
Emlech took the knife and placed it with the guns and cigarettes. He gestured towards a corner of the room. “You will wait over there,” He said softly. One of sligs obeyed immediately. The one Nova had tricked hesitated, glancing at his gun on the desk, but he didn’t say anything, and went to join his companion in the corner.
Emlech gestured for the nine vykkers to come forwards. They each took a few awkward steps towards his desk.
“Yesterday I gave you permission to experiment on Nova,” He said calmly, “However, when I came down to Anni’s cell a few hours later I found it empty. Someone was nice enough to tell me that you had taken her and I came down to the laboratory you were using to find you torturing her to the brink of death. Would any of you care to explain?”
One of the vykkers opened his mouth and spoke with the air of a very-much planned speech. “Well sir, I think it was an accident. It’s a psychological fact that if an idea is implanted into the heads of a group of people they can inadvertently obey that idea without considering its consequences. Perhaps when we were preparing yesterday one of us mentioned Anni, and that person was misheard and someone thought they meant that we had been given permission to experiment on her, and through the group mentality phenomena we did so without considering it properly.”
Emlech nodded, “And that’s what you think happened?”
The vykker answered confidently, “Yes, sir.”
“One of you mentioned Anni, and the rest misheard and thought I had given permission to operate on my one remaining healthy female, and none of you even paused to consider how idiotic that idea was?” Still his voice remained even.
The clock ticked several seconds away. Emlech picked up one of the guns on his desk and began examining it before the vykker replied, “Well, we were excited, and it marred our judgement, so-”
Emlech interrupted, anger at last beginning to build in his voice, “And you did not simply decide to operate on Anni as well since she was as annoying to you, as interesting to you as Nova, and you thought that if you tested on her and made it out to be an accident I would forgive you without batting an eyelid?”
“Of course not, I-”
“And it did not occur to any of you that if you had killed Anni as you killed Nova then four years of our lives really would have been wasted?”
“I-”
“Do you think me a fool?” Emlech demanded loudly, banging the gun he had been holding down on the desk. The vykkers jumped back a step and even the sligs were taken by surprise. He was shouting now, his rage overflowing, “Do you think I will allow you to destroy all our work in your vendetta against those mudokons? Do you think you could kill her and no one would notice? Odd knows what you’ve done to her! She could be in a coma for the rest of her life! You may have done unlimited mental damage to her and you come in here and try and lie your way out of it? You try and brush it over, pretend it hasn’t happened? Do you think I’m an idiot?” He stopped shouting but he was breathing heavily now, standing up out of his chair. Slowly he calmed down, sank back into his seat. The clock went on ticking.
When he had calmed at last he said bluntly, “I have
never been so disappointed in any of my employees. You’re all fired,” He gestured listlessly towards the corner, “The sligs as well. In…” He turned to look at the clock, “Forty seven minutes the lift will be heading to the lab above ground. If any of you are not on it you will be recognised as intruders and dealt with accordingly. You may go,” And he turned his attention back to the papers on his desk, ignoring the others in the room.
The vykkers filed out. The sligs took last glances at their things still stacked on Emlech’s desk, but decided not to push their luck and left the office. They waited outside the door until the vykkers were some difference away, fully aware that they would be given full blame for their sacking and not wanting to get in more trouble.
A few minutes later they headed down the corridor. “He could have sent us to Skillya for that,” the smoker muttered. The other said nothing but walked on.
The two of them wandered aimlessly round the corridors for a while. Neither of them had many belongings beyond what they had left in Emlech’s office; they both carried their moolah with them and though they had a few things left at the bunks, they did not feel like it was worth facing the jeers of the other sligs to go and get them. Eventually they went their separate ways and the slig who had wandered off for a cigarette break headed towards the lab where they were keeping Anni.
The slig had spoken to her a few times and didn’t hate her as the other ones did. Sometimes, when she wasn’t feeling too playful and he wasn’t too hung over she was good for a brief chat, and though he did everything he could to keep his relationship with her secret, he couldn’t help liking the little kid. She was like a little sister or something (he couldn’t be sure, since he didn’t actually have any little sisters. Unlike mudokons, there simply were no female sligs other than the queen, and if there were any Skillya would probably have them killed the moment they hatched).
He arrived at the lab and poked his head through the door. It was empty, and he reminded himself that almost half of the vykkers working in this place had just been fired so they were probably a bit short staffed at the moment.
This lab was actually more like a small ward with four or five beds, and Anni was in one halfway down the room. He approached her and looked down at her.
She was almost unrecognisable from the chemical burns and the deep scratches that marred her once beautiful lilac skin. Her feather had almost been burnt away. Emlech had said she was in a coma, which meant she was unconscious and they didn’t know when she was going to wake up. Emlech didn’t know what they’d done to her, and from listening to other conversations he’d learnt that the vykkers hardly knew what they’d done as well. He clenched his fists; those
bzstrk vykkers deserved ten times what Emlech did to them!
What had Emlech said? ‘My one remaining healthy female’? Female mudokons were rare, but they weren’t worth that much. Why did Emlech care for her so much? He was a vykker so it certainly wasn’t any emotional attachment.
“Whatever it is, you mean a lot to him,” He said aloud, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Wake up soon, huh?”
Behind him a door opened and vykker yelled, “Hey, what are you doing? You don’t have permission to be in here!”
“Sorry sir,” The slig replied automatically and hurried out of the room. It occurred to him once he was through the door that he wasn’t an employee here anymore, and so he didn’t have to be polite to the vykkers now, but it seemed suddenly that he didn’t care. He looked at a digital clock on the wall: ten minutes until his lift was leaving. He grunted miserably and headed for the exit.
The lifts were the only way up from this secret underground lab (or at least the only one anyone other than Emlech knew about). He met the other slig and the vykkers there and at 11 O’clock, exactly the time Emlech had said, a lift arrived and they piled in.
With all of them inside it was crowded and smelly. He leant against the back of the lift, leaning his masked head against the wall, wishing the vykkers would shut up, would stop snapping at each other, and give him some peace. The distance to the surface wasn’t huge, but the lift was programmed to move slowly, to use less electricity and make less noise, plus it was slowed down by the weight of them all, so the journey took about 2 minutes. At last it stopped and with a
ping the doors slid open.
The 11 travellers in the lift were stunned to find themselves face to face with about 20 armed sligs, pointing their guns at them. One of the vykkers began mashing the lift controls to no effect. The other vykkers were shouting, yelling. The other slig lunged at the crowd, trying to get through, and was immediately shot to pieces before the guards turned their weapons on the contents of the lift.
The slig watched with a sort of numb distance as the vykkers were shot down and fell, shrieking and writhing, to the floor. The pain he felt as the bullets penetrated his own torso seemed distant, separate. It was as if he was watching from outside of his body as it was shot over and over again, as it collapsed, shaking, and dropped to the ground, joining the vykkers on the floor. And he found his eyes closing, watched as the world grew dark, and he joined the vykkers, and the other slig, and Nova, and he slept forever in silence.
* * *
Two weeks later Anni awoke. She took one look at the vykker in the room with her and began to scream.
She continued to scream until she was left alone, and she screamed again when any vykker approached her. Eventually they gave up and sent a slig to talk to her, making him promise to be nice. He grumbled for a while but obeyed, told them after speaking with her that her memory was fine, her thoughts were fine, but she was having terrible headaches that half drove her mad, that made it difficult to see or hear. Somehow she had known Nova was dead without being told. Emlech gave him a message to pass on to her.
“Tell her the operation the vykkers did on her was meant to help Nova get better, but it went wrong. The controls broke down and there was a sudden surge of electricity. That’s why it hurt so much and why Nova died.” The slig did as he was told and returned to tell Emlech that she had ignored every word and started crying when she mentioned Nova.
After a couple of days Emlech had the slig drug her covertly and while she was unconscious they did a quick check-up. It was hard to find anything out while she was asleep, but until she got over this ridiculous fear of vykkers it would be
impossible to learn anything while she was awake. They could see what parts of her brain were damaged, but there may have been other symptoms that were not apparent on the surface which they could not find without running the proper tests, for which she would have to be awake. And in her current state she simply wouldn’t cooperate with them.
They did what they could while she was unconscious, performing various scans of her brain, and they found out a little. “Most of the damage is centred on the hypothalamus, particularly the sections related to the production of serotonin.”
Emlech nodded, “That would account for the headaches, and her aggression.” Their progress was slow, what with their sudden shortage of staff, since treating Anni and the other projects they had going on that they couldn’t delay had left Emlech little time to pick out other vykkers he trusted enough to let them work so close to his mudokon female. They were keeping Anni unconscious for as long as they could without harming her further for Emlech was not sure if she would let another slig get close to her after the one drugged her.
“We’d better watch her eating and sleeping habits for a while as well, in case they’re affected. The damage might partially heal with time but it’s not certain, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on her. You notice the decreasing number of neurons on the hippocampus? A sign of depression: I suppose that’s no surprise after what’s happened to her.”
After a couple of days they decided they couldn’t safely keep her asleep any longer, and they returned her to her room. After she woke up Emlech sent the same slig to go and talk to her again, but he returned to tell them that she refused to speak to him. “She says there’s only one slig she’ll talk to.”
“Well send him then!” Was Emlech’s snappish reply. His temper was beginning to fray around the edges and this slig’s stupidity wasn’t helping.
“Can’t,” The slig replied casually, “He was one of the two you fired a few weeks ago.”
Emlech didn’t much believe in the supernatural – beyond the powers the savage mudokons often possessed – but occasionally he couldn’t help thinking that the universe was sticking its finger up at him.
He resolved to go and see her himself and lecture some sense into her, but he had to give up when she started throwing things at him.
Over the next few days she sank into a depressed stupor, lying in her bed all day, ignoring everything around her. Sometimes she cried but mostly she just lay there. She stopped eating the food they brought her. She barely slept more than three or four hours every night and Emlech began to face the fact that unless they did something quick it was likely he was about to lose his last female after all. She was wasting away, getting thinner and sicker with every passing day. He called a meeting with one of his most senior scientists to discuss a solution. He had a feeling that if he asked the rest they would just yell at him to electrocute her until she came around.
“What can we do with her?”
“Well look at the problem,” Was the ultimate answer. “She hates vykkers and she’s around them all day. She can’t trust sligs anymore, and that leaves her alone.”
“So you think I should move her into the lab above?” It was a risky idea, but he knew his friend wouldn’t suggest it if there was no other choice.
“It would allow her to meet others of her own race which might help. It could be too late, since she’s only known the other female all her life, but I think putting her in with other mudokons might be all that would save her. And getting her out of this place would mean she would see less of us vykkers. If you arranged to have mudokons spend time with her, look after her, then she might get better. She might even become useful for labour until she becomes old enough to start laying eggs.”
Emlech nodded. Other vykkers might at this point complain about the extra work, the fact that it would distract mudokons from labour, but he was willing to do what was necessary. His only concerns were of the issues of security: what if she was found out? He would have to do everything within his power to stop her getting injured, and if she was injured she would have to be treated by only the vykkers from this lower lab, and any vykker from the lower lab had to be watched on the surface to make sure they didn’t contact anyone. It would be difficult to stop the larger number of sligs from hurting her as well. But if it was all that could save her life…
Emlech nodded, “We’ll make preparations to have her moved immediately.”
His friend nodded, “The longer she’s in this state, the worse it will be, so the sooner she’s moved out the better.”
“I’ll try and have her up there by tomorrow. Pass on a message to announce to the staff of the arrival of a new and important mudokon experiment. Make sure a message is passed to the sligs so that they know not to beat her, and arrange for a mudokon to look after her. One will do for the time being, one who can take her food and look after her. If you check the employee records I’m sure you’ll find one suitable.”
The other vykker nodded, “I’ll do it immediately, sir.” He too recognised the importance of keeping Anni alive.
Emlech smiled for the first time in days as his friends hurried out of the office. It wouldn’t be easy, and it might not go smoothly, but he would not allow Anni to die.
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I might rewrite the end of that someday since I wasn't too pleased with it. The chapter I think nicely summed up the aftermath of her operation.
Reply and let me know what you think! Please...
Anni's story isn't over yet, so expect more of her in the near future!
Ooh, and it's almost Christmas! Woohoo!
EDIT: In other news, chapter 18 is finished and ready for posting. I'll be posting it next Wednesday, but for every person to reply after the first two I'll release it a day earlier, so if I get three posts I'll post it on Tuesday and so on. (This is really just cus I want to post it sooner since I'm really happy with it, but you can benefit from my enthusiasm!)