Higgins followed McNabb across the base, his mind still and calm. There was a buzzing energy to the base around him, a sleepless, tuneless hum of fear and readiness. He mused inwardly that the silence of his own mind was as an oasis, a sunny, green little speck of quiet shade in a desert of cacophonous anxiety. He felt the weighty gaze of the general on his back and turned to him. McNabb frowned at him.
“You seem pensive,” McNabb observed. He’d never understood the need for loquaciousness in uncomfortable situations. People felt the need to talk, to jibber jabber, to never quiet their minds and simply be still. Higgins was not such a man. He shrugged at the general who gave him a small smile in return, seeming to understand.
The two men entered a plain building that was unmarked by any military insignia or designation, which Higgins thought odd. It didn’t bode well for the girl. If they didn’t want anyone to know where they were doing whatever it was they were doing, it meant that whatever it was they were endeavoring to was nefarious. Whatever Machiavellian skullduggery they were about was bound to be a hell of a predicament. The thought of that little girl in trouble made him take a deep breath, his deep harmonious center shaken, threatened by a volcanic fury he only barely contained.
McNabb swiped a key card and the building beeped at them, allowing them admittance. “I don’t want you to be surprised by what you see in here, Higgins,” he said. He glanced at Higgins again and sighed. “Listen, I don’t know why it is, but it’s important for me that you know that I didn’t know what they were going to do. Come to think of it, I still don’t. But…” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
Higgins placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded that he understood. McNabb was a soldier through and through but he wasn’t such a bad fellow. Higgins could believe that he really did have the most patriotic intent, tempered by a genuine desire to do the right thing.
They were greeted on the other side of the door by a young man in a lab coat; his eyes were reptillian and horrible, and Higgins, brave as he tried to be, didn’t want to look him in the eye ever again. He did anyway.
“General,” the young man said, without any obvious respect or even a salute. “My name is Hinter. I’m one of Dr. Irons’ assistants. Follow me please.” He eyed Higgins as though he might protest but in the end, did not.
The general rather pointedly said nothing in response, taking a page from Higgins’ book, and just gestured the young man to lead on.
Their footsteps echoed along the cold halls. They rang like unhappy bells to Higgins’ ears, clanging miserably.
Hinter stopped in front of a door; Higgins noticed it was one of only three that had key card locks on them. Furthermore, they looked new, as though they had only recently brought something here that needed to be contained.
Higgins wondered idly if it were because of Shavian or something worse. Or the combination of Shavian and something worse.
Hinter opened the third door and Higgins drew in a breath.
Shavian lay unconscious on a metal slab of a table, sterile and terrible in it’s sparse practicality. She was clothed but in a shapeless blue hospital gown and covered in a stiff white sheet tucked tight around her. A terrifying array of tubes and needles protruded from her arms, a rack of liquids feeding them. HIggins couldn’t even imagine what all the viscous and bubbling fluids could possibly be, his imagination beleaguered by the enormity of whatever it was they were doing to her.
Standing at her bedside was the most bizarre thing Higgins had ever seen: it was a man, or lately a man at least. It was humanoid but had a grey tinge to its skin. It’s eyes were lightless, the shine of humanity not just dimmed but extinguished. It was well dressed, the lines of its suit custom tailored, a top hat jaunty upon its head. It was tapping a shiny cane on the floor, each rap proclaiming his sophistication.
It smiled at Higgins, the blackness between its teeth like a void. “My dear gentlemen, welcome to the lab,” he said congenially. “What do you think?”
Higgins thought he had never seen anything more odious and execrable. He thought the ferocity of his ire was as a hippopotamus that had been set on fire: several tons of meaty, pre-angered degeneracy prepared to bite or set fire to anything in its path. His sorrow at seeing that sweet, fiery little girl in such a state, being pumped full of the gods alone knew what, filled him with a determination to free her, a Herculean task he was unsure he was prepared for but was more than willing to face.
What he said was, “Fuuuuuuuuuuck.”