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This is the beginning of a novel set earlier in the timeline of stories than Hellhounds. |
Illora awoke sometime later. It was clear from her upright position that her body had been busily scrubbing blood from a concrete floor. She looked herself over. Her hair was just a few inches long. She wore a thick rubber apron and matching gloves. Beneath that, she wore hospital green scrubs. Her feet were bare. Illora examined her surroundings. She was in a poured concrete room, most likely some kind of basement. There were three bare steel doors in one wall. Heavy rivets held the hinges on. Bolts and epoxy set the other half of the hinges into the wall. A heavy padlock hung through a loop fastener, keeping the doors closed. A set of stairs lead up to another locked steel door. A threadbare canvas cot sat in the corner opposite the stairs. A pathetically thin blanket lay neatly folded on one end of the cot, and a nearly empty pillow sat on the other end. As for the blood, Illora assumed it came from around the large dissecting table at the center of the room. Most of it appeared to have drained out of a floor drain, but someone had splattered clots of blood and tissue on most surfaces. A pair of locked cabinets sat along the same wall as the cot. Illora didn’t know what to make of her situation. If she had to guess, they locked her up in Hannibal Lecter’s basement. Illora noticed a keyring hanging from a hook at the base of the stairs. Three of the keys looked the right size and shape to belong to the padlocks on the door. Illora didn’t know what she was doing there or what had passed since she passed out in that torture room, but she would not leave the doors locked if it was in her power to unlock them. Illora opened the first door and found a woman cowering in the corner. She might have been pretty if she weren’t filthy and bloody. Illora looked her over. The woman wore a torn and stained hospital gown. Someone had violently removed her fingernails, and there were a number half healed cigarette burns on her bare skin. Illora took a step towards the woman. The woman cowered away from her. “I’m here to help,” Illora stated. “Maybe him! You zombie! I have begged you for help. We all have!” The woman hissed. Illora looked at her feet, then she looked the woman square in the eyes, “I haven’t been myself. I don’t know what has happened, but I am here now. Now what do you mean by ‘We all have?’” “There are two other girls,” The woman said, coming out of her crouch. Illora left the cell and unlocked the other two doors. The women inside reacted similarly to the first. It took her twenty minutes for her to coax all three out of the cells. Once they were all in the stark light of the bare bulbs of the main room Illora could see they all had signs of similar torture. “I didn’t do any of that to you, did I?” “No, you just sat on that cot and stared at the blank wall in front of you. He had you out here cleaning up after his torture sessions. That’s my blood on the floor,” The woman from the third cell stated. She had several long gouges down her leg that were still oozing blood. “What do we do now?” Illora asked, mainly herself. “He’ll kill us if he finds us out,” Victim two whined. “No, we have the element of surprise,” Illora stated. She clutched the keyring and checked out the contents of the cabinets. The first one held various torture devices, some of them clearly improvised. The second cabinet held a pry bar, axes, saws, and various hacking utensils. Illora armed herself with a large ax. “It looks like he intended to kill us eventually, anyway.” Victim number one grabbed the pry bar. Two and three armed themselves as well. Illora locked the steel doors as though they still held their prisoners. She also went back and locked the cupboards. “Hide under the stairs. He won’t see you coming. One of you hold my ax!” The women took up positions beneath the stairs and Illora went back to scrubbing at the floor. The smell of blood and decaying flesh got to her, and she threw up. From the looks of things, he had been feeding her gruel. Illora wondered how long she had been here. She dropped the scrub brush and went to the cot, which was evidently hers and waited. Then she realized the keys weren’t on the hook. She ran over and hung it back up. She was walking back towards her cot when she heard the sounds of footsteps approaching the door upstairs. She heard the tumblers of several locks click into place and saw the man’s feet on their way down. Illora dove to the scrub brush and began scrubbing at the floor. “Stupid wench! You just keep getting slower. I swear if it didn’t worry me that bitch would follow through with fates worse than death… I think I am going to let off some steam and kill one of my pets,” he reached the bottom of the stairs and grabbed the keys, “Eenie meenie miinie mo.” He chose the door furthest from the stairs. The three women darted from their hiding places and placed themselves between their captor and the stairs. Illora ran to join them. Her quick motion drew his attention. Illora barely had time to claim her ax before he turned on them. He seemed unarmed, but Illora didn’t want to risk it. “You three get out of here I’ll hold him get help!” The three victims didn’t wait for any further suggestions and raced up the stairs. The man glared at Illora, “I knew a mindless slave was too good to be true. I should have dissected you months ago!” “If wishes were fishes…” Illora began backing up the stairs. The man lunged after her and she hit him upside the head with the flat of the ax. He crumpled into an unconscious pile on the concrete floor. Illora checked him for a pulse and searched him for keys. He had the keys to the metal doors and another set in his pocket. She took both and raced up the stairs. At the top she threw the door closed and locked it. The other women were in the kitchen on the phone, presumably on the line with 9-1-1. “We don’t know the address! The doors are all locked! Come help us!” Victim number two pleaded with the operator. Illora went to what looked like the front door and tried the keys on the deadbolt. One finally worked, and she stepped outside. Looking around carefully she returned to the kitchen, “We’re at fifteen fifteen Blake St. and the front door is unlocked.” She dangled the keyring from her thumb and forefinger. Within minutes, five police cars had converged on the house, and their captor was in handcuffs. The victims were each in their own ambulances. A detective was questioning Illora, “So you literally just woke up in the basement scrubbing blood off the floor?” Illora nodded. She had shucked the gloves and apron, “I literally have no memory of how I got here. I have no idea where here is. For all I know, I am on a completely different planet.” “Okay, what is the last thing you remember, before waking up here?” “I was walking home and four men jumped me. There might have been a woman dressed in black. It is all hazy,” Illora answered. “What’s your name?” The officer asked. “Illora, I think, Illora Peterson.” “Lora Peterson, I’ll see if I can find a missing person’s report,” The cop went back to his sedan, leaving Illora sitting on the tailgate of an ambulance. She thought about correcting him with her name, but what really was the point. She doubted this was the earth variant she had been born on. She looked at the cop as he typed on his computer, casually out of the periphery of her vision she caught someone dressed in all black. Illora looked that way, and for a moment she saw or thought she saw Dahlia. Icy fear shot up Illora’s spine. She wanted more than anything else to be somewhere else, and then she was. Illora sat on a park bench in front of a public library. It took Illora several months to figure out how to teleport intentionally. By then she had a job and a GED, thanks to some friendly fellow galactics. They had bumped into her during one of her teleportation attempts. They had taught her the fundamentals of surviving as a galactic on earth. They even paid to establish her an identity, Lora Peterson. They asked nothing in return, they really seemed nice. After Illora mastered teleportation, she took up an unusual hobby. She collected autographed comic books, TV Guides, and movie posters. She had them autographed by their writers, artists, actors and creators, and by the actual superheroes as they existed in parallel universes. For five years she lived on that earth. Illora continued her education. She earned her diploma and college degrees. Illoa earned a Ph.D. in computer sciences and a bachelor of English literature. Along the way she learned several languages, both local to her earth and spoken only in the greater universe, like Tanerian. Occasionally she used her abilities to inhibit crime passively. It was strictly small time. Mostly, she did everything she could think of to stay off of the dark radar. - - - - - - - - - - - - Annette finished reading the report Tina had written on the possibility of a new Riiad collective. It sent a shiver down her spine to her toes. At least three R groups had combined, and there were only seven. Annette forwarded the report to all the independent factors. Then she closed her blinds and raised her soundproofing shields. What followed was something between an angry outburst and collapsing into the fetal position, sucking her thumb and crying for her mommy. After a few minutes, she pulled herself together and sat at her desk. Then the blinds opened, and her shielding went down. She straightened her outfit and headed out of her office, “Carl, I’m going down to medical to talk to Tina about one of her reports. Hold down the fort.” Carl nodded and offered a slight salute. Annette silently thanked god for solid, reliable Carl. Then she went to the elevator. Annette took the long way to the medical center and Tina’s office. She arrived just as Tina’s receptionist was putting up the out to lunch sign. The receptionist waved her in and back to Tina’s office. Annette knew the way. Behind her, the receptionist called back with a warning that Annette was on approach. Tina opened the door for Annette before Annette reached it. “What’s up chief?” “Your report scares the crap out of me!” Tina grimaced, “I didn’t mean for it to be soothing.” “I had an idea while having my minor panic attack. We found a treatment for possession by Kavir using my immune responses. We have also discussed what you called, ‘My unusually strong and surprising immune system.’ Why don’t we find out what I am immune to? I mean, what if you exposed me in controlled circumstances and you treated me before it became dangerous?” Annette suggested. “Most likely there will be little I can do if the infection takes hold,” Tina stated. “We need to find some way to vaccinate everyone everywhere against infection by the collective,” Annette stated, “You have been doing a lot of work on infectious vaccines, couldn’t it be possible for you to work something like that up?” “I would need to study the immunological reactions of a resistant ho, hold on! No! just because you were resistant to Kavir doesn’t mean you would be resistant to these pathogens and parasites,” Tina argued. “Do some tests on animal subjects, then when you are sure you can extract a patient from the early stages of possession, you try it on me. It would give you the results you would need to make a cure, wouldn’t it?” Annette argued. “I can find other subjects,” Tina said flatly. “You said my immune system responded entirely differently than anyone else you had ever come across. Do you really have other qualified subjects?” Annette asked. She knew she had Tina argued into a corner, “Refuse to do this in a controlled fashion and I will go out into the field to get you the answers you need.” “You wouldn’t!” Annette smiled stiffly, “Try me.” “Fine, but give me a little time to develop treatments for the early stages of infection. Speaking of which, I will need samples collected and brought to Refuge. It requires special tech to get things like this through the shields.” Tina said with a scowl on her face. “I’ll arrange things,” Annette smiled, “Oh, and this will be a secret project.” “Of course, because no one in their right mind would let you do this.” - - - - - - - - - - - - Teo returned to Refuge with a bottomless bag full of intergalactic credits. But money wasn’t the only reward half a century out in the field had earned him. Thanks to the natural strengths he had discovered, seven intergalactic councils in seven diverse separate parallel realities had granted him the credentials of elite freelance catalyst. He had multiple bank accounts with each intergalactic council, all of them as full as they were legally allowed to be. He had awards and merit citations from many planetary and even interplanetary governments. None of those things meant as much to Teo as seeing Annette again, but first he was going to leave his donation to Max’s department. It only seemed right to pay forward the help Max had given him. If Max hadn’t fronted the credits for the catalyst training, then Teo would still be working under contract to the first intergalactic council attempting to pay off his training costs. Teo hummed a jaunty tune to himself while he waited for his medical check in. This was only his second entry into Refuge. Without Annette to expedite the check in, it seemed to take hours to get to the front of the line. “Name,” The medic finally asked him. “Teodrid D’astrid,” Teo answered. “Reason for exit?” “Establishing catalyst credentials, I got certified in seven parallels,” Teo answered with pride even though the medic seemed not to care why he was out there or why he was returning. “In the field did you encounter any unusual, possibly infectious or parasitic life forms?” That was a question they hadn’t asked before. He passed it off as having to do it being a working trip, “No, I worked mainly on temporal corrections and stabilizations.” “Uh huh, please sit on the table placing your palm on the surface of the table.” Teo hopped up on the exam table, following instructions. The medic scanned him with several devices, then checked the display on her tablet. “You’re clear.” Teo hopped down and teleported himself back to Max’s office door. He knocked. The response was faster than immediate. Max opened the door dressed and looking just as he had when he left Teo in the office of the first intergalactic council he worked for. It was exactly as Teo had expected. “Hey Max, I have a gift for you,” Teo pulled out the bottomless bag of credits. He had emptied one of his bank accounts into the bag. He handed the sack to Max. “What’s this?” Max asked. “I am paying it forward,” Teo smiled. Max opened the bag and fingered the layer of coins on top. “Teo, this isn’t necessary. Factor accounts fund my work. Most allied intergalactic councils pay us a tithe of catalyst fees to compensate us for any interventions our people make or might have to make in the future. All those credits just keep piling up.” “And here are a few more. It’s just a fraction of my net worth. I am certified in seven parallel universes,” Teo responded. “Thank you, I wish everyone I facilitate came out of the situation as profitable as you have. Most just go for training as a catalyst hoping to gain a back door admittance to the ranks of factors. Frankly, there is more to factoring than goes into catalyst work. I found that out the hard way,” Max explained. “I don’t want to be a factor. I just wanted a reputation and frankly resources that weren’t dependent on Annette’s kindness and affection,” Teo smiled. “I knew that when I signed you up. I don’t always pay for the entire training regime. Usually I just cover the basic minimum training, but any specialized training the individual has to fund themselves,” Max replied, “It is my way of ensuring they put their full effort into their training. I sensed you were self-motivated enough to be worth the money.” Teo gestured to the sack, “I hope I’m worth it!” Max laughed. “I’ll have to tell you sometime about how I came to be a factor. I started out as a catalyst…” “I know. They still tell the stories. You quit over a Tanerian princess?” Max blushed, “I quit because I was inexorably drawn to Yllera.” “The things we do for the women we love…” Teo stated. His palms itched with eagerness to see Annette again. “Why don’t you go check in with yours?” Teo smiled and nodded before teleporting off to do just that. - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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