[Danny]

Teb cocked his head to one side. "Why?"

"Well, because once yer friend's clients've finished with me, they'll want me dead."

"Why?"

Spider lifted his head weakly. "I kinda killed a few guys there."

Teb paused for a second, his head not moving. "Why?"

Spider sighed. "It int easy to explain."

"Could you try, please?"

Spider hung his head, partly in shame and partly in exhaustion. "It was just instinct. I was an animal back then."

Teb nodded, as if it all made sense. "Couldn't you just say sorry?"

Spider looked up at Teb as if he'd gone mad. "Say Sorry? We're talking about Vykkers here!"

"So?"

"Well, yer don't just apologise to Vykkers! They're evil!"

Teb cocked his head again. "What makes you say that?"

Spider spluttered for a second. "Well, they mess around with people's bodies! They mix and match animals, creating new kinds of things, they..."

Teb seemed to understand something then. "Like you?"

Spider sighed. "Like me..."

Teb sat down opposite Spider. "So these people created you?"

Spider nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"So don't you owe them any kind of gratitude? Without them, you wouldn't exist..."

Spider looked at Teb and shook his head. "Yer think I don't know that? Yer think I don't remind myself of that every ****ing day? I know, and I hate it! They made me! The made me! In one of their laboratories! I'm not normal! They created me so I could kill for them. That's my purpose in life!" He paused, gasping for breath. "And then when I do start to kill, they decide they don't want me any more, and dispose of me..."

Teb's face remained expressionless. "So I suppose you won't want to go back there?"

Spider smiled, despite himself. "Yer bet I don't! Yer've got a lot to learn, kid, but in the meantime, how 'bout untying some o' these ropes?"

"Don't listen to him, Teb!"

Spider and Teb turned to see the huge figure of Lanar framed in the doorway, with the smaller figure of Olm over his back.

"He's a freak and a killer, and he's just trying to corrupt you. If he gets free, he'll probably kill all of us. Fortunately, the good doctor here is going to give him a sedative, aren't you, doctor?"

Spider could see that Olm was terrified as Lanar set him down on the floor, with his hand over his mouth, but Teb was blind, and couldn't see the knife Lanar held to Olm's throat as he released his mouth.

Olm shivered. "Yes, okay..." With shaking hands, he pulled out a syringe, and filled it with a liquid from one of his bottles. Shuddering, he advanced slowly on Spider, looking over his shoulder at Lanar all the time. When he reached Spider, he gritted his teeth, and pressed the syringe into the flesh of his neck. As the sedative began to course through Spider's veins, his muscles began to relax, and his body sagged forward against his bonds.

"Excellent. Now, if the good doctor would be as good as to cure our friend here of whatever is wrong with him?" He smiled. "If we let him die on us now, we'd be as bad as him now, wouldn't we?"

Olm glanced up at Teb, who was nodding, thoughtfully. He wanted to cry out to Teb that Lanar was lying. He wanted to tell Teb the truth, but he knew he wouldn't get the chance; Lanar would kill him the moment he opened his lips. So he filled the syringe with antitoxins, and proceeded to administer them to the still form before him. When he was finished, he sidled up to Lanar.

"You do realise that this is only temporary. What we really need to do is find the creature that scratched Spider and develop a cure!"

"This will suffice."

Olm frowned. "But we don't know what side-effects the antitoxins might have in the long-term! They were only meant as a short-term-" Lanar's hand clamped across Olm's face.

"I think it's about time you were leaving, doctor, don't you?"

Oh Shit, he's going to kill me! Olm though, as he was carried from the room. But wait, he can't, can he? He needs me. Unless he knows what antitoxins to use...

He almost sighed with relief when Lanar simply opened a small trapdoor in the floor, and flung him down it.

"Don't think about trying to escape. This place is harder to get out of than that last place you were in, and it took me to get you out of that..." Laughing, he closed the hatch, and the only light came from the bars in the tiny window near the ceiling.

Shit, he thought, [/i]Out of the Frying Pan, as they say...[/i]