Suspicions...

Sl'askia · #1 08-17-2001, 11:46 PM

(ooc: read 'Invisible Stalker...' first)

As Spider slept, another memory surfaced:

Spider fought back the gnawing hunger in his stomach and shuddered, he didn't want to think of what cruel test Myron was going to do next on him. He shivered from the coldness of the floor of his cage and sobbed. Oh how he wished things were back the way they used to be. It had been 3 months since he had found Bastek's murdered body, and Spider's life had made a complete turn for the worse. No longer did he have a bed and sheets to sleep on at night and solid walls around him. Now he had only a cold hard floor and iron bars. No longer did he have three solid meals a day; he was lucky to get even one no a days. Myron had ensured that all the luxeries Spider once had were taken away, to him....Spider was nothing but a specien; a lab animal to do as he wished to.

He jerked his head up at the familiar sound of the door opening. He saw two BBS's enter his cage; he knew what they were there for.
"No..." he whined as he backed away, "please no...no more...."
"Time fer 'nother 'session' with the boss yer worthless piece of shit." one of the BBS's sneered as they grabbed him.
"NO!" Spider cried as he struggled against their grip.
"Quit yer strugglin'!: The other BBS said as he smacked him on the side of the head, "Yer know it won't der yer any good. Though I don' mind poundin' on yer when yer der." The BBS smiled an evil smile and Spider cringed.
He sobbed as they dragged him to one of the 'examination' rooms and threw him roughly onto the table and strapped him down. They left him there, strapped down with drones around him, to await Myrons arrival. As they left Spider could here the 'click' of them locking the door behind them....

Spider jolted awake, eyes now wide open in alarm.
Why did he lock the door? he thought, breathing heavily in fear; paranoina setting in. Ter keep me from escaping....so he could 'examine' me? So he could study me?
To Spider it was the only reason he could think of; after all...why should a any mud take an interest in Vykker equipment? The more he thought about it, the more Olm seemed to be a Vykker in a mud's body. And the more he wanted to get out of there.

He slowly sat up and checked his surroundings. He saw the drone...it looked like it was 'offline' on the moment, still he didn't want to take any chances. He carefully slid off the bed and started for the door, keeping a weary eye on the drone. He stubbled and collapsed, and it took him a bit to get up again. After a couple more steps he stubbled again, this time he bumped into one of the smaller tables and it tipped over, spilling the equipment that was on it onto the floor. Needless to say....it wasn't very quiet....and Spider heard someone approaching the door.
"Dam it..." he mumbled as he tried to get to the bed. But again he collapsed, this time losing concsiousness....

Danny · #2 08-18-2001, 01:48 AM

"Oh, Spider!" Olm looked down at the mess around Spider's form, and shook his head. He knew he should have kept this place a secret. He should have erred on the side of caution, and given Spider more sedatives, but he hadn't wanted to cause any harm to Spider's already fragile metabolism. Now Spider would tell everyone where Olm got his medicines from, and Olm would be disgraced, and people would turn to unreliable tribal medicine men, even though they knew that Olm could cure them best...

Striding across the floor, he awoke Jase gently, and asked him to lift Spider back onto the bed. As Jase did so, Olm frowned. Spider had shown unusual strength, even for a Bigbro, but he hadn't been recovering as fast as he should; the wounds, while costing him a lot of blood, shouldn't have caused this much weakness simply by themselves. The only thing Olm could think of was that whatever had attacked Spider had been poisonous. If it is poison, he thought, then I may be able to synthesize an antidote. I have the equipment, but I would need a sample of the original toxin, which would mean reopening one of the wounds.

Olm made a decision. He decided that he couldn't risk Spider's life. If there was a poison, then finding an antidote was the only possibility. Sighing, he turned to Jase.

"Prepare the Operating Table..."

*************************************

Olm sat reflectively on a wooden chair beside Spider's bed. The operation had largely been a success; they had recovered a small amount of the poison, and despite the possibility of contamination, the sample should be pure enough to use. Also, the sedatives had worked adequately, so Olm's fears of Spider waking up in mid-operation were not realised, and Spider was recovering at much the same rate as he had before. They had moved Spider to another room, where he would be in more comfortable surroundings. The only real danger was that of Spider realising that they had operated; he would not be pleased...

However, Olm considered his discovery to more than outweigh the possible dishonour he might suffer. A Crossbreed, huh? Very interesting... That would explain why he had been so afraid of Olm's equipment, as well as his reluctance to be examined. Come to think of it, it also explained his resistance to sedatives: Paramites had always been hard creatures to anaesthetise...

Olm felt a pang of sympathy for his patient. He always tried to remain emotionally objective, but now that he knew why Spider hadn't wished to be examined, he felt guilty. Spider would almost certainly see this as a violation, if he found out. Well, all precautions will be taken to ensure that he doesn't discover that we know... he resolved.

He decided to concentrate on Spider's Medical Concerns, and to try his best to discover an antidote. He retired to the Laboratory with the sample, and helped Jase to analyse its chemical content. His efforts were hindered, however, by one nagging unexplained fact: the Toxin obtained from Spider's wounds was almost identical to a weaker poison produced by glands on Spider's own fingers...

Sl'askia · #3 08-18-2001, 11:34 AM

Spider was feeling something strange in his semi-conscious state, no more like a presence. He could hear very simple thoughts and he was postive they weren't his own. It couldn't be one of the dragon goddess he knew either; these thoughts had a male voice to them. This voice seemed familiar to him, yet Spider was sure he had never heard it before. He also was feeling a faint mental tug. It wasn't very strong, just enough for him to know that it was there. The familiarity of it all was nagging at him and it was starting to frustrate him.

Then he remembered something...he felt something simular before: He had felt this pull while he was being attacked...and partway on the way back to the village. He didn't notice it before because he was too busy saving his hide.

He opened his eyes, raised his head, and stared at a wall, his breathing increasing due to anxity. He didn't even notice that he was in a different room. He didn't notice Olm until Olm said something.
"Spider...whats wrong?" he heard Olm ask.
Not turning to look at him Spider replied:
"That thing that attacked me...its in the village. I...can feel it."

Olm was about to say something...but he was stopped by a bloodcrudling scream coming from outside....

Danny · #4 08-18-2001, 12:11 PM

[OOC: Read 'Searching' before this post]

Rushing outside, Olm was confronted by a small but rapidly growing crowd. Not for the first time, he cursed the morbid curiousity of Pyke's inhabitants, snatched up his medical bag, and pushed his way through the crowd.

"Excuse me... Coming through... Oh let me through, I'm a doctor... I... oh."

It was clear that there was nothing that could be done for this patient. Of his upper body, nothing remained. there was a bloody mass of flesh remaining in the top of his pants, but nothing more.

"What happened?"

Faces turned to him, en masse.

"Flew off into the air..."

"...Didn't see nothing..."

"...Must've been invisible or sonething..."

"...Never stood a chance..."

Putting up a hand to stop the outpouring of explanations, Olm began to scan the sky. Above the Blacksmith's, he saw a small red shape hovering in mid-air. As he watched, small pieces of the mass were torn off, and then vanished. Covering his disgust, Olm pointed it out to some of the villagers, then ran back into the surgery.

"Spider! It's got someone!"

Spider was already on his feet, and now he headed towards the door. "I knew it."

"Hey, where are you going? You can't attack that thing in the state you're in! It nearly killed you last time, are you going to let it try again?"

"I have to confront it."

"Well then, me and Jase are coming with you, then." Olm began to pack medicines and equipment into his bag.

"No thanks, I'll be better off without yer. I don't see what help a tin can and a mud who thinks he's a vykker could give me..."

"Spider, listen to me!" Olm tried to look as stern as he could when he was looking almost vertically up. "You are not even half-way recovered yet. If that thing gets another shot at you, you'll almost certainly be killed. And there's... something else."

Something in Olm's voice made Spider pay attention. "What do yer mean?"

"There's poison. In the claw marks. The samples we were able to extract from your wounds were not sufficiently pure for Jase to be able to synthesize an antidote. You're being kept alive at the moment by the antibiotics we've been injecting in you every hour. So we have to come with you, to keep you alive, and also to try and recover a pure sample of the poison from the creature itself."

Spider sighed. "Alright, but not the can. Just you."

Olm frowned. "Are you sure? Jase would greastly improve the chances of your success."

"I'm sure. Get what you need and we'll go."

Olm waved his bag. "Packed already." He led the way out to the crowd, which was gathered aimlessly about the square. Looking up, Olm saw that the red mass he'd seen had gone, and there was a calm in the air that suggested the creature had gone for now. But Spider turned his head both ways, then pointed roughly down a narrow street.

"This way."

And Olm tried his best to keep up.

Sl'askia · #5 08-18-2001, 12:41 PM

Spider and Olm ran to the edge of the village, where Spider stopped. There was about 50 ft of field before the forest started in front of them, but Spider could tell it hadn't gone into the forest.
"Where is it?" Olm asked.
"Close, very close. I can smell it." Spider said with a sniff.
Spider walked into the field a bit, shouting:
"I know yer here! Show yer self! I have a score ter settle with yer!"
There was an awkward silence and Spider tensed, ready to access his dragon powers at a moments notice.
Then he heard the sound of a wingflap and an excited screech. Something landed in front of him, only 5 ft away. Then it just 'appeared' out of thin air....

To Spider it looked like some sort of dragon. It was about 21 ft long, wingspan looked about 45 ft. Dark green skin with dark blue stripes, blue-green spines on its back and yellow eyes. It's wings were the only thing supporting its weight on the ground and it was roughly 9 ft in height. On its snout were hints of face tentacles, but those were only indentations with three claws at the tip of its snout.
It wasn't looking at him threateningly; instead it was cocking its head to one side as if looking at him curiously.

Two realisations hit Spider at once:
He remembered Dragadon telling him that dragons recongized their kin when they saw them, so this thing had dragon in it.
The other was shocking...the more he looked at it...the more he saw simularities between himself and this thing: the dark green skin, the arrangement of the spines, the eyes, the remeants of the face tentacles.
Spider backed up a bit as it dawned on him...this thing didn't just had simularities to him...it particality WAS him.
"Myron..." Spider said, mainly to himself but loud enough for Olm to hear, "Yer never did completely rediscover the formula my father used did yer? Instead, yer used my DNA as a guide ter create this one. Obviously...yer put more dragon in..."

[ August 18, 2001: Message edited by: Dragadon ]

Danny · #6 08-18-2001, 12:54 PM

Olm didn't hear what Spider was saying; he was frozen, partly through fear, partly through wonder. He was hypnotised by the savage beauty exhibited by the creature ahead of him. It was obvious that it was made from the same creatures as Spider, but whereas Spider seemed to have got the parts giving him brute strength, this creature was a far more graceful mix: it was sleek and streamlined, a far cry from the bulky shape that was Spider. But its eyes gave it away; there was no real glimmer of intelligence there, it was clear that Spider had got the best brains of the mix...

Olm shook himself. He looked round at Spider, who was as transfixed as he was, although probably for different reasons. He saw the creature and Spider slowly inching closer, then they stopped, their snouts mere inches away from each other...