Well i'm glad somebody read it! xD And don't worry Oddey, Dan and Red will make a reapperance in due time.
Anyway, here's the next chapter:
Ask anybody and they would tell you: Coal Pines dealt with airships. That’s all it did and that’s all it would ever do, as it didn’t have much potential for anything else. That being said, anybody unfortunate enough to be stranded there for a great period of time would usually find themselves bored out of their minds doing odd-jobs that needed to be done while they waited for an airship to come and take them very, very far away.
Helix was no stranger to this feeling. In fact, he had been waiting for three months now for an airship that would take him somewhere he could forget everything that happened in the past year. Due to the fact that Coal Pines was managed by the two rivaled companies Aviol and Vykkers Labs, it was near impossible to coordinate landing-and-launching times for ships that would be efficient for both parties.
To Helix, this was even more frustrating than the busy work he’d been assigned. Ross, the owner of the company known as Aviol and coincidentally his boss, had given him a job training medical newbies. This wasn’t such a bad thing- it kept him occupied. The
real bad thing was that he wasn’t the only one who had been assigned to this job.
“Heeeelix!” Brux called, interrupting his unfortunate associate for the fifth time. “When will I get a turn to cut something up?”
Helix dug his claws into the side of the operating table he was working at to keep himself from jumping the idiot. “You will get a turn…” he hissed, turning slowly to give Brux a stare that looked as if he were trying to set him on fire, “…as soon as I’m finished with this lesson!”
The handful of younger vykkers in the room looked at each other skeptically. Helix grumbled something illegible and picked up his scalpel. He had managed to keep Brux preoccupied with a box of crayons and a notepad for a while, but after the idiot had accidentally
swallowed one of the crayons, Helix had taken them away. Now he was being forced to put up with Brux’s antics.
“Try to ignore him.” Helix growled, aggressively slicing open a fuzzle strapped to the table. “I think he was dropped down a flight of stairs as a baby. Its tragic, really. Anyway, as I was saying, you have to make sure the first cut is clean. Use just one solid cut, and try not to pierce any of the internal organs…”
Somebody knocked on the door. Helix sighed and dropped his scalpel on the operating table, wiping blood off his claws with his apron. “One moment, please.” He said in exasperation, walking over to the door and opening it.
Vhern was standing there, smiling at him. His bodyguards were at his sides.
Helix closed the door carefully. He counted to ten under his breath and opened the door again. Vhern was still there. Cursing, Helix glanced back over his shoulder. “Give me a sec,” he said, stepping outside and closing the door behind him.
The look on his face was a mixture of anger, exhaustion, and irritation.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Helix asked bluntly.
“Its nice to see you too.” Vhern said with a smile, tapping his clipboard. Helix stared at it. “I’ll make things short and sweet. I have a proposition for you.”
Helix glared, one hand on the doorknob. “I’m not interested,” he said, pulling the door open. One of Vhern’s bodyguards abruptly pushed it shut. Helix flinched, struck with the sudden memory of their huge hands around his neck.
Vhern smirked. “I’m not going to let you leave without at least hearing what I have to say. Be polite, Helix.”
Helix hissed in irritation. “Okay, I’m listening.” He said, crossing all four of his arms. “But make it fast. I have things to do.”
Vhern sighed. Then he said quite calmly “We have reason to believe Nedd is still alive.”
Silence.
Helix had worked very, very hard to try and keep his memories of the airship incident in the back of his mind. But with Vhern’s words his mental façade quickly crumbled, bringing on a flood of memories he could very happily live without, most of which involved the cylonite-ridden bastard in question.
“You think--” Helix began.
“We
know,” Vhern corrected. “And we know where he’s been hiding. I have sligs running searches on the forests near the location of the crash. He’s somehow managed to survive these past few months. He’s still
alive.”
Helix didn’t know how to respond. Multiple things were being thrown at him at once, namely- one: Vhern knew where he was working. Two: Nedd had survived the crash. Three: Nedd had survived
cylonite for three whole months, and Four: he was being thrown back into the very incident he was trying to run away from.
Vhern glanced down at his watch as though he were trying to be politely inconspicuous, but didn’t care if Helix actually noticed.
Helix opened his mouth like he was going to speak. However, instead of screaming an onslaught of curses like he’d been planning to do, he exhaled pathetically. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” Vhern grinned at him happily, his eyes wide with excitement. “We tracked him down a week ago. Apparently he’s not been doing too well- he isn’t exactly suited to living in the outdoors, especially in this kind of climate. But he’s surviving, and that’s the important thing. I’m going to catch him.”
Helix’s face went pale, his silence suddenly broken. “What?”
Smugly, Vhern repeated “I am going to catch him. Not me
literally, of course--”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Helix hissed, his claws twittering with repressed hostility. “Do you even realize how
stupid you sound right now? You’re talking about catching the man who destroyed an entire airship
on his own as though you were planning a vacation! He ruined MY LIFE, Vhern, and I thought he ruined YOUR CAREER!”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Vhern said, uncharacteristically forgiving of Helix’s insults. “I explained the situation to Mr. Ross, leaving out a few factors, of course---”
“Like the fact you KEPT NEDD ALIVE when you should have KILLED HIM?”
Vhern narrowed his eyes. “It was for the benefit of the company, Helix. Let me finish.
Yes, Nedd killed people. Lots of people in fact. And he did not make their deaths quick and painless. That was… unfortunate.” Vhern adjusted his glasses. “But I spoke privately to Mr. Ross a couple of weeks ago. I explained to him what destroyed his airship, and how, and where that certain factor was at that point. He was particularly interested when I mentioned the effect of cylonite on Nedd in particular.” He smiled. “You see, me and Ross have something in common. We both can sense a money making opportunity. Of course, I prematurely judged Nedd as the sort of person I could leave unattended… but I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
“So what do you need me for?” Helix asked tiredly, leaning his back against the door. “I can’t imagine I could help you catch Nedd at all.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that; I have people who can take care of that for me. You will come into play
after he’s been captured. I’ll need someone who can monitor his progress throughout the various tests we’ll be performing on him- preferably somebody who’s studied cylonite, as well as had experience with cylonite-infected subjects like Nedd.”
“And I’m the first person you thought of?”
“Exactly. You won’t be the only person working with me, of course- a former associate of mine was willing to help out our cause. We’ve already managed to develop an antibody that we believe will counteract the more negative effects of cylonite- we just have to test it out.”
Helix snorted at Vhern‘s previous comment. “’Former associate?’ What other unfortunate loser have you screwed over to help you help Nedd?”
Vhern scowled at Helix’s choice of words, but replied calmly “He was my business partner a decade or two ago. But that’s beyond the point. The thing is, I’ll be needing you to perform certain tests on him involving the antibody that will ultimately judge our best course of action in delaying Nedd’s death.” Upon seeing the look on Helix’s face, Vhern added quickly “This won’t be applied to Nedd exclusively- once we begin the trial and error phase of testing our final produced form of cylonite, we’ll be using whatever method used on Nedd to keep our prototype ‘super-workers’ alike and kicking. If this project is a success, Helix, we’ll have millions, even
billions of moolah dragged in by those willing to buy the final product.”
Helix crossed his arms irritably, his face impassive. Though every fiber of his sanity was screaming at him to decline the offer, something in the back left him seriously considering the option of continuing his previous studies and raking in the moolah. But Nedd… well, he wasn’t sure that he could handle the psychopathic intern a second time.
Vhern seemed to understand what Helix was thinking. He smirked, scrawling something down on his clipboard. He tore it off and handed it to Helix.
It was a fone number.
“Ask for me when you dial- that is, if you’re interested.” Vhern said. He snapped his claws at his bodyguards. “Lets go.”
Vhern and his bodyguards left, just like that. Helix didn’t move a muscle. His eyes were fixed on the number, but he wasn’t really seeing it; what he was seeing were opportunities, ones that would either make him a roaring success, or leave him the victim of violent -and definitely not painless- murder.
Brux glanced up when Helix re-entered the room, the door clicking softly behind him. Helix’s students had already gotten to work cutting apart the remaining fuzzles, and appeared to be enjoying watching puddles of their blood form on the medical table.
“Is something wrong?” Brux asked when Helix walked right past him. Helix didn’t answer. Instead he rummaged around in the papers at the very bottom of his filing cabinet until he came to a grey accordion binder, purposely hidden by his other documents. It was unmarked, and wrapped in tape. He carefully peeled back the tape, reached into the folder, and pulled out a marked piece of paper.
CYLONITE TEST AND STUDIES - 01
TRIAL AND ERROR LEADING TO POSSIBLE FURTHER INSIGHT INTO PARISITIC DISEASE, AIRSHIP 1:3:8.
He slid the paper back into the folder in silence.