Double

Posted on Jan 24, 2016 @ 7:02pm by Lieutenant Eve Dalziel
Edited on on Jan 24, 2016 @ 7:02pm

Mission: Promethean

“Double”
(Continued from “Echoes”)

=/\=

“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.”
-Publilius Syrus

=/\=

Location: LAVENZA II
SD: [2.16]0123.1300
Scene: Facility Command Centre
Time Index: The same time as “Echoes”



Cassidy Rainner shuddered. She blinked, still feeling the tears that had forced their way out and that she refused to acknowledge. Trixie was dead, mauled and sacrificed by Bronski in a blind act of preservation. Rainner had made the same mistake, thinking there was still a shred of humanity deep inside the behemoth’s menacing form. But, unlike Trixie, she hadn’t paid for it with her life.



“Conniston, do you *mind*?”

The head of the facility lifted his head sharply from a large fruit salad he had replicated minutes earlier. His glasses were still streaming data and remained impossibly balanced on his nose. He was completely unruffled. “I suggest you eat, Captain Rainner.” The truth was he wasn’t sure if the equipment was rigged differently in the command centre, or if it was on some kind of emergency backup.

“I’m not hungry.” She hadn’t been that upset seeing Goldstadt dissolved by the giant slugs; he was a lecherous, unsanctimonious bastard who had deserved it. But Trixie was... hers. *Was*. Now she belonged to a grim, dark place that the sloppy-eating Doctor said there was no escape from.

She’d been watching the monitors for the better part of three hours in forced captivity, protected from the creatures that roamed, but powerless to help the Lament’s crew or stick the proverbial fork in the Starfleet meddlers who had come after them and had been the cause of their precarious situation. But she had seen everything. At first, she had turned away in distaste. She believed Conniston and the resolute look in his anguine eyes when he said they were on lockdown. However, as time passed in a sickeningly slow display of horrific carnage, Cassidy began to believe in the hope that the events outside would eventually die down and she could make a run for it. She had the latinum, and when push came to shove she didn’t have to share it. She just had to survive. She studied the different parts of the isolated station in the unwelcome video feed, in an effort to memorize multiple ways to get to the surface level. She knew without a doubt the location of the turbolift, but if it was still on lockdown she wasn’t sure of the climb. Her eye twitched when she thought of Goldstadt’s remains behind the access panel.

Her weapon hung heavy against her hip. Her hands hadn’t gone near it, but her mind had paid it a great deal of attention. If she killed Conniston, she would be free to try any methods possible to extricate herself from the secret base. On the other hand, he knew the workings and structure better than any of them. The only problem was, he seemed perfectly content in his exile. He didn’t want to leave.

“Captain, have you ever heard of a Cassowary?”

“I don’t want to talk,” Rainner snapped, slumped in her chair like a mental patient.

He ignored her. “The Cassowary is a species of bird, a ratite in the genus Casuarius and they are native to the tropical forests of New Guinea, nearby islands, and northeastern Australia.”

“Ratite? Do you mean they are part rodent?”

“A ratite refers to a flightless bird without a keel on their sternum bone.”

“Oh.” She tried to sound interested.

Conniston continued the ornithology session, turning his tray into the matter reclamation unit. “Even though they are not the largest bird, I believe they fall behind ostriches and emus, they have very formidable claws. The retractable claw on their second toe reaches lengths of approximately thirteen centimeters. They have been reported to severely injure or kill humans by kicking them with their powerful feet.”

Cassidy’s eyes widened. “That’s… interesting.”

“You do not seem to appreciate the value of my work, Captain. Weapons malfunction. Frail humanoid bodies break. Single genotypes fail. It is only through science that we can develop the perfect specimen.” It was the first time he had spoken with any sort of annoyance.

“I refute that.”

“No, no, my dear lady, I think you mean you dispute that.”

“Dammit, I dispute it then.”

He laughed, a harping, brittle sound in Cassidy’s ears.. “Have you not borne witness to my handiwork? My experiments are superior to both your crew and our unwelcome guests.” He gestured to the monitors.

“You’ve taken away their souls. Their free will.”

“I have created the ultimate soldier!” he exclaimed triumphantly. The benefit to my employers and the rest of us far exceeds those intangibles such as a soul. Bronski dispatched that little flaxen moppet not only without malice, but also without anyone else getting their hands dirty. Just imagine a whole planet threatening what we hold dear, and being able to quell it without our own bloodshed.”

“You’re the real monster here. Not Bronski.”

“Tsk tsk, Captain Rainner. I didn’t see your morals showing when you agreed to procure the information we needed. Information I have *paid* you for,” he pointed out. “And you obviously weren’t careful enough to keep yourselves from being followed,” he spat.

Grief turned into anger and suddenly biding time wasn’t important anymore. “I’m leaving this place, Conniston. Either with or without you, but I’m leaving.” She held her arm out, prepared to fire her blaster at the strange man.

He leapt at her with the speed of wind in a valley, his eyes shining keenly, looking decidedly predatory. He embodied the essence of a falcon. Without hesitating, she pressed the trigger.

But nothing happened. She pressed again and felt nothing but numbness accompanied by a stinging sensation.

She looked down slowly. Any noise in the room was dampened by the sensation of blood rushing through her head. Her wrist was now an elegant stump, a completely smooth injury, spurting blood at beat intervals. Her right hand, still clutching the weapon, had fallen to the floor with a muffled thud.

Cassidy Rainner wretched involuntarily, grabbing her arm, looking at Saul Conniston. The index finger on his hand had produced a razor sharp retractable claw and sliced off the appendage that had posed danger to him only moments earlier. “What *are* you?” she panted weakly, sinking to her knees. They slid and wavered in her own sticky plasma on the metallic floor.

He held his hand up in front of her face as the claw retreated to its hiding place. “I *am* Doctor Saul Conniston. The third variant.”

‘What happened to the other variants?” she asked breathlessly, trying to put pressure on her wrist and only managing to soak the sleeve of her jacket in iron rich fluid vitae.

“They chose to die so they could be reborn. It’s a pity they could not be here to see this moment, but I will preserve the memory for any that come after me.” He walked behind Rainner, exerting pressure on her shoulder and making her lean against him. She could provide no protest. “But there is one thing that fills me with sadness.”

“W-what?” she sputtered.

“I won’t be allowing you the same option.” His arm moved across her throat in a swift motion, the slicing claw hand cutting across her throat in a gaping crimson smile. Her body fell over, her skull only hanging on by the vertebrae in her neck, pushed up at an odd angle to the floor. Blood pooled around her like a macabre spotlight.

A flicker of disappointment touched Conniston’s visage as he calmly wiped his hands clean and sat down. He had both the data and the money now, enough to start anew somewhere else, but he would have to explain the facility’s abandonment to Edgerton and his cronies. And much like the Captain had rationalized minutes earlier, he couldn’t make it out of the locked down facility by himself, even with his ‘enhancements’.

A green light on a nearby console caught his attention. Someone had shown the cunning to reactivate one of the workstations in one of the many labs that littered the facility. If they were smart enough to do that, than they might be smart enough to help him. He found the images of those in the lab and it appeared to be the Starfleet contingent. Within a few minutes of referencing his eyepiece and the console he was able to determine the Engineer of the PHOENIX was among the group. He would be the only one likely to have known how to fix the link. They obviously had no idea where the three missing crewmen were. That gave him an idea.

CRICHTON IS THAT YOU

=/\=

Susan Ledbetter

Lieutenant Eve Dalziel
Cns
USS PHOENIX