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Viper and the Mandrill
JUNE...YEAR 5
“I feel embarrassed doing this.”
“Shh…”
“How am I supposed to keep my ammo around while we’re crawling through here?”
“OK. I admit I didn’t give it enough thought. But I can’t see any better option, so…”
“I’m worried that the place was designed so this is even possible. Did the architect never watch Aliens?”
“Shh… please?”
“OK, OK… sheesh.”
“Cascade,” Owen said, only just remembering to use the alias, “we are attempting to crawl through the air vents into a position to attack the setup in the biochemistry division. We are up against people with some pretty damn good technology, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’re not professionals at this sort of thing. That could well mean they have listening devices around just waiting for that stray decibel to pin us down, whereupon said air vent will be riddled with the same sort of bullets that were being fired at us earlier. I am not entirely happy about having a conversation in such circumstances… please?”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Grudgingly. “Sorry.”
The driver of the car picked his approach road well, almost certainly on the basis of previous observation. The two police officers diverting traffic on this entry were both female. He parked the car just round the bend from their position and strolled casually toward them, and, beyond them, toward his ultimate goal; the research complex.
“Sorry, sir, but you can’t go up there,” the first officer said, smiling politely. Minimum public fuss, the orders were.
The man, hidden deep within his trenchcoat and hat, smiled. Lips curled into a not entirely human grin. He paused for a couple of seconds, nothing suspicious, before responding.
“Oh. Oh, dear… are you sure you couldn’t bend the rules, just this once, my dear?”
My dear. He called me his dear. The words echoed dizzyingly around the suddenly befuddled head of the WPC. She felt her knees go weak… just for a second, she told herself angrily. She breathed in deeply, trying to get her head together, get a grip on the situation… It didn’t work. If anything, it made things worse. She recognised the signs; she was developing an infatuation with this man… Which was ridiculous. She couldn’t even see his face - what was he doing in such a bizarre outfit, anyway? - and there hadn’t been nearly enough interaction for anything to start. Yet… the air was heady, somehow. Was this love at first sight? - And she hadn’t even seen him, she reminded herself. But lust was washing through her.
“You could come with me, even,” he continued, his voice sounding odd, somehow… but suave, too, she felt. “You know… make sure I don’t get into trouble.”
The way she felt was stupid, she told herself. But that didn’t matter; emotion was in control. She was suddenly a raging ball of hormones. Maybe it was pheromones.
“Well… if you put it that way…”
“Thank you, my love. Follow me, then.”
She watched, dazedly, as he repeated the conversation almost word for word, pause for pause, breath for breath, with the other WPC present at the diversion. She, too, quickly acquiesced; breathless, neither woman was going to let themselves be torn away from this man.
“Well done, ladies. I’ll count you among my servants with pleasure,” said the Mandrill, doffing his hat. Apelike features looked out over the uniformed women, who stared back, enthralled. And yet… Half of his neck and the lower side of the left side of his face glinted metallically. It appeared the Mandrill was no longer entirely organic.
The policewomen followed him in obedient silence, not even thinking of questioning his assumption that they would serve him. After all, they would.
“Right,” Owen muttered to himself. “Now I think it’s time I admit I have no idea where we are.”
One of Viper’s green-suited technicians finished consulting his screen, and silently pointed upward. “Just a whisper,” he mouthed, “but it’s there.”
Viper nodded, the inclination of her head precise as ever, and looked upward.
“Track the movement for now.”
“Sir?”
“Jones?” The voice came tinnily back through the police marksman’s radio.
“Someone’s approaching the building entrance, sir. He’s… he’s got two officers with him.”
“What?”
“No visible sign of coercion, sir.”
“OK.” There was a pause as the officer on the other end of the connection tried to sort this information so that it made sense. “Well, either you’re missing something, or they’re plants who were supposed to let him in. Can you read the ID numbers on their uniforms?”
“’Fraid not, sir. The ‘scope’s not built for that sort of thing; it’s not the right precision.”
“Bugger. Right… Well, hold your fire for now. You might have missed something and in any case, we haven’t made him aware we’re armed. Can you give me a description on the party?”
“Well, the officers… you know, sir. WPCs. Nothing exactly out of the ordinary. Bloke’s a bit odd, though.”
“Odd?”
“Yes, sir. For one thing, he’s wearing a trenchcoat.”
“A trenchcoat, Jones? It’s June, and it’s actually sunny for once!”
“I know, sir. Apart from that… well, he’s ginger, and he’s a hairy one. Looks a bit… I dunno; if he wasn’t done up like a man I’d say he was a monkey. And I’m getting a heavy glint off his neck area, like he’s wearing a big silver collar or something.”
“A monkey.” Jones could tell his superior was sceptical; there was something about the flatness of the voice.
“Yes, sir. Some kind of ape, anyway. Er… He’s entering the building now, sir.”
“Oh… bollocks. Right… OK, nothing we can do about it yet. He must have been warned if they’re with him. I’ll get some more officers on diverting traffic where they came from… Just keep watching. We’re waiting for people going out rather than coming in, really.”
The Mandrill walked into the biochemistry division through the corridor opened up by Cascade’s water blast*, flanked by the two policewomen.
Viper had her back to the entrance at the time, but her men had fallen back to allow him entrance; the soft motion of boots on the floor had told her someone had entered. The heady scent that filled her nostrils and once more reshaped her world told her who it was.
She reflexively straightened up from inspecting the biochemists’ work on the computer screen - not that she knew what they were doing, but she did have more than a passing interest in the project, and turned.
“My lord,” she said, her voice striving to be mocking and failing, the mockery drowned by pheromone-programmed obedience.
The Mandrill nodded at her; her obeisance, he felt, nothing more than his due. He shrugged himself free of the trenchcoat that had hidden his simian bulk earlier, and stood revealed.
To look merely at his right side, the Mandrill was much the same as he had been before his death. But on the left… His heart, and a circular area around it reaching up as far as his neck, gleamed chromium in the harsh lighting of the laboratory, plated over. Cybernetics kept the apelike mutant going, now; an electronic heart beat under that shining carapace. It didn’t seem to have affected him much; his movements were as lithe and agile as ever. He now sported a pair of armoured trousers much like those of the Dark Beast.
“Indeed,” he said, and his voice held amusement. “I thought I’d see how the project was going for myself. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not, lord,” Viper said swiftly. She hesitated for a moment, but something twisted inside her and she went on. “It is for you that this work is done, after all.”
“Though it was your idea,” the Mandrill returned. He walked across to her, taking her chin in one leathery, black hand, almost caressing. “And a most useful one… After all, my scent is addictive, is it not? And I must remain near my thralls for much of the time, that they may drink it in. How much more useful if they can simply inhale it regularly… The analogy with drugs grows ever stronger. But I feel my… symptoms… are much more beneficial.” He smiled that twisted smile again.
Deep in the gut of the woman who called herself Viper, hatred and rage at her powerlessness stormed against the pheromonal lust. It lost, again. She knew the best she could hope for was to escape with a method of synthesising the Mandrill’s hormones, simply to counter her own addiction. As it was, he had her like a dog on a chain; she had to come back regularly to drink in his scent, and, much as she hated to admit it, it carried a compulsion to obey him with it. She wasn’t going anywhere until she could obtain an alternative source.
Hence this entire expedition; though of course she hadn’t explained it to the Mandrill like that.
An observant part of Viper noted the way the female biochemists were succumbing to him, and smiled smugly. At least she wasn’t alone in this curse of obedience. She hated being a slave.
Still, the Mandrill was possessed of superhuman strength, and while here, she could perhaps put him to use.
“My lord,” she said, smiling sweetly despite herself, “there is perhaps one thing you could do…”
“It’s gone quiet,” Chloe whispered, softly. Owen nodded, though she couldn’t see it; the sound of voices wafting along to them from grilles further on had been guiding them for the last few minutes, and now that guide was gone. He wasn’t sure what to do now-
The sides of the vent buckled inward around Chloe’s waist, just ahead of Owen, the sound of crumpling metal echoing loud through the piping. He froze, not certain of what could be coming.
The piping was jerked downward, the section they were in tearing loose of the section beyond it. Chloe lost her footing on the smooth steel and slid forward.
Owen altered his gravity, anchored himself against the piping, reached out to steady her -
His hand failed to close around her ankle by mere inches. She screamed, sliding forward uncontrollably toward whatever lay below, and lost her mental control over her ‘ammo’. The sphere of water that had maintained a position hovering beside her lost cohesion and followed her down as if someone had emptied a bucket after her.
She hit the ground with a thud, not landing either well or badly, and was promptly drenched as her ammo caught her in the back of the head. The Mandrill released his grip on the venting and reached for her, snatching her up and lifting her off ground before she had a chance to take in her surroundings, let alone react. He wrapped his arms around her and bore her in tight to him, forcing a stronger exposure to his pheromones upon her.
Chloe struggled only briefly and with increasing confusion, then relaxed with a contented sigh, whereupon the Mandrill set her down and turned her to face him.
They smiled at each other.
Meanwhile, Owen was still taking stock of how the situation had altered. He was, to all intents and purposes, cut off from his girlfriend - the pipe had not buckled enough to prevent Chloe’s passage, but there was no way he was going to squeeze through it. His best chance was to try and push the dents back out and get past that way, and he knew that was going to attract attention.
Still, that was his lover out there… He braced his arms against the dents and realigned his personal gravity once more; now each arm was being pulled outward past the dent. It slowly began to work…
The piping creaked. The Mandrill looked up, then back down at this new superheroine in front of him.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“My partner,” she answered; not her lover, not now. Not now she understood… “Bodyweight, he calls himself.”
“A man… Damnation. Still, all is not lost. Viper, and you, my dear… Get him.”
Chloe smiled at him, then began to draw the water out of her hair, forming it into something hovering in front of her face. Densely packed, it began to resemble a fist.
Viper simply drew a gun.
At this point, Owen realigned his personal gravity again, and strengthened it somewhat. He shot out of the end of the vent as if flying, corrected his ‘fall’ and fell off in a different direction, eventually landing.
Viper’s gunshot, meanwhile, tore harmlessly through the now empty venting.
A water fist caught him under the chin as he stopped moving, never losing it’s coherency. It hit him like a solid object, and - in his temporary state of gravitic normality - catapulted him over the lab bench he stood near.
He took the landing well, all things considered; but then, gravity didn’t work as hard to drag him down as it might have done.
Another shot flared over the top of the bench. The next tore through it and impacted inches away from him. Owen shut his eyes and prayed for a couple of seconds to Odin - on the basis that Odin’s existence had been proved, and so that seemed fairly rational. He ignored this fairly blatant faith problem and started wondering how to get out of there, preferably with Chloe - but then, she had a more readily available source of ammunition than whoever it was had the gun, and he figured they’d probably both been mentally controlled the same way. So the easiest subject to extract was the most sensible next priority. Then he could start figuring out how to turn the tables on the missing link calling the shots.
Except his survival had to take a higher priority than either. He slid to the floor, slid enough of his head around the side of the desk to see the open vent piping, and fell upwards into it at speed. Three gravities’ acceleration and about twenty yards to accelerate over, to be accurate.
The Mandrill sighed. “Wait, my latest,” he said, raising a hand to halt Chloe. She’d been ready to sprint after Owen, but he didn’t intend to let her. “Viper. You go after him. He’ll stay in the building, I’m sure of it. Hunt him down.”
The hardened terrorist leader swallowed and nodded. “Right,” she said, spun on her heel and sprinted off down the corridor, gun at the ready.
“I didn’t want you to go, my dear,” the Mandrill told Chloe, “because you’re not yet addicted to my presence. I can’t guarantee your behaviour until you are.”
Hello again! We’re halfway into this saga now, so drop me a line and let me know what you think… please?
Now, onto the letter:
Good stuff, Tom!
Reminds me of those movies where folks are trapped somewhere and they have to find their way out while fighting some baddie, kinda like "Predator" or the end of "Hollow Man".
-Sam Everett
Well, he’s the BE, so maybe he’s biased. But, as you can see, he’s also a little inaccurate. First, you sneak out… then you go back in and hit the baddie. This way there’s more time for the press to get there and fewer people who can identify you.
-Tom Lynch, just finished term…
NEXT: Bodyweight and Viper clash! Also, the end is in sight for one of our pairings… so come back and find out which one.