fredbassett (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fredbassett) wrote2012-07-18 08:26 pm
fredbassett) wrote2012-07-18 08:26 pm
Fic, Silk and Steel, Part 89
Title : Silk and Steel, Part 89
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Ryan, Norman, Lester, Nick, Stephen, Abby, Lacey, Blade, Annie, Thomson, Miller, Ditzy, Claire, Kermit
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ryan hears explosions and refuses to stay hidden while Lester’s life might be at risk.
Warning : Slave!fic.
A/N : The links to all previous parts can be found HERE. Captain Thomson appears by courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deinonychus_1, Tanya Lacey by courtesy of reggietate and Claire Bradley by courtesy of lukadreaming.
8.38am. The Basement. Anomaly Research Centre.
Ryan had both heard and felt the explosion that had rocked the building. The sound was unmistakeable, making it abundantly clear that the ARC was under some kind of attack. He started to pace the secret room, deep in the heart of Norman’s domain, like an animal in a zoo, desperate to find out what the hell was happening, but knowing that doing so would undo all the risks that his men had taken to save his life.
His body had started to heal from the injuries inflicted during his interrogation at the hands of Miller. He’d been given antibiotics by Ditzy – after he’d torn a very large strip off him for putting his own life on the line – in the hope of preventing a lung infection, and enough painkillers to leave him slightly light headed. He was slowly healing, but still had no real idea what his men intended, although he was rapidly getting to the stage of refusing to be fobbed off with vague statements that they had a plan but were just waiting for the right time to put it into action.
The only people he’d seen since his incarceration had been Norman, Ditzy and Blade. He’d been kept well supplied with food and drink and told to get as much rest as possible to help the healing process. In answer to his anxious questions about Lester, he’d been assured that the former director was now only under the very loosest of constraints in the building, and that an unholy and distinctly unexpected alliance between Leek and Thomson had developed, in which both men appeared to be determined to exonerate Lester from any suspicion of complicity in the sabotage. That news had brought Ryan a great deal of relief. Lester’s moment of weakness during Ryan’s torture had led to his downfall, but it now seemed as if Section 42 – or at least Thomson – had backed off from exploiting that chink in Lester’s armour.
The dull boom of a second explosion was too much for Ryan. He couldn’t lurk in hiding while Lester’s life – and the lives of the men and women he’d spent so long protecting – was in danger. He looked around for a weapon, his eyes alighting on a long crowbar lying on top of a pile of paint cans. He would have preferred a gun, but the bar was better than nothing. He also grabbed a heavy claw hammer and stuck it in the belt of his trousers. He was dressed in some of his own clothing, black combat trousers and a grey teeshirt, courtesy of Ditzy’s last visit, plus a pair his own old boots. A large adjustable spanner would also do as a makeshift weapon, so that too ended up stuck though his belt.
As well armed as he was likely to get, Ryan cautiously opened the door that led out into the rabbit warren of rooms and tunnels deep in the bowels of the ARC. He’d just have to hope that he could find his way up to the lower levels without a guide. The third door he came too was securely locked from the outside. Ryan cursed under his breath. Kicking doors down was nowhere near as easy as it appeared when it was done on the television and the effort needed to do enough damage by that method to get the door open would do even more damage to his cracked ribs.
Ryan quickly jammed the crowbar between the door and the frame, as close as he could to the lock, and heaved. Both the door and the frame started to splinter. Ryan grinned. It looked like the universal key was living up to its name.
The next door he came to was locked as well and Ryan wondered just how many doors he was going to have to get past. He was just about to position the crowbar again when he heard footsteps on the other side of the door. Ryan stepped into the shadows behind a large pile of boxes and waited.
The door swung inwards.
A shock of white hair told Ryan all he needed to know. He waited a moment to be sure the old man was on his own and then hissed, “Norman, what the fuck’s going on?”
“Some bugger’s finishing what they started,” Norman told him. “I didn’t reckon you’d stay put through this lot, laddie. There’s beasties up there that shouldn’t be. I’ve seen one of your lads and told ‘im to get folks down to the boiler room. If ‘e can do that then I can get ‘em out through the tunnels into the bunkers. If it’s ‘er upstairs that’s causin’ this lot then I know places under ‘ere that she won’t know nowt about.”
As Ryan followed Norman back through the maze of underground passages, he didn’t doubt that for an instant. There had been rumours amongst the lads that Norman’s kingdom was even more extensive than the rest of the ARC put together, but even Blade, who probably knew the maintenance supervisor better than anyone, had only scratched the surface of what existed.
“Where’s the bomb gone off?” Ryan demanded as they made their way quickly along a brick-lined tunnel.
“The science labs, I reckon,” Norman told him. “Hard to tell where else and I dunno where them blasted critters ‘ave come from.”
“Critters?”
“Critters,” said Norman. “Don’t ask me what, but they look like summat off the laddie’s computer.”
The old man was wheezing badly but still managing to keep up with Ryan. He unlocked each door that they came to, unerringly choosing the right key from the massive bunch that usually hung from his belt on a chain.
Eventually, Norman led Ryan up a metal staircase, swung open a door in a breeze-block wall and waved Ryan though into a basement room that he recognised as the boiler room. The door itself was concealed behind yet another stack of boxes and bore a large notice saying Maintenance Staff Only, and contained a small yellow sign bearing a skull and crossbones and the words High Voltage.
“I can take it from here,” Ryan said. On impulse, he stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Norman. For everything.”
The old man’s grip was firm and leathery, more calloused even than Ryan’s. “Take care of yourself, laddie.”
Ryan nodded, even though he knew it was a promise he would almost certainly be unable to keep.
8.38am. Sir James Lester’s Private Rooms. Anomaly Research Centre.
The dull boom of an explosion somewhere in the building brought Lester to his feet. Whilst loud bangs and Connor Temple all too often went hand in hand, the noise had sounded too loud even for one of their young genius’s best efforts.
He crossed the room quickly and pulled open the door. The security guard still stationed outside his room gave him a concerned glance and shook his head in mute answer.
Lester clearly wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
“I can’t raise Control on the radio,” the man told him. “All I’m picking up is static.”
The guard had unholstered his pistol and racked the slide to propel a bullet into the breach. He was obviously uneasy, but didn’t want to abandon his station.
“Then I suggest we both make our way to the operations room and find out what is going on,” Lester said, a good deal more calmly than he felt.
The ARC had come under attack once before and he had a nasty feeling someone had decided to finish what they’d started.
8.40am. Ventilation Shafts. Anomaly Research Centre.
“Stephen! I’m too bloody old and fat for this!”
Nick’s voice echoed along the metal tube and, despite their situation, Stephen found it hard to hold back a grin. “Keep wriggling, Cutter, I think there’s an access hatch coming up.”
Pushing the broken chair leg in front of him, Stephen continued to make his way forward in the darkness, hoping all the time that he wasn’t going to encounter another centipede. He’d only escaped the first one by the skin of his teeth, catching its strike on the pillow he’d been using as a shield while Nick had hammered his improvised weapon down on its head. Jumping onto its thrashing body and doing his best to stamp it into the floor had been amongst the most grisly moments of Stephen’s life and one that he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat.
Despite the fact that the centipede had fallen into the bunkroom via a ventilation grill and the prospect of others where that one had come from, they’d had no choice other than to attempt an escape that way as the gorgonopsid was clearly not going to be stopped by their attempts to block the doorway. Its terrible jaws had come very close to closing around Nick’s legs as Stephen had done his best to haul him up to safety.
A wild scramble had ensued, leaving their lungs heaving and hearts racing. They needed to get far enough away from the enraged gorgonopsid for safety, but Stephen knew they wouldn’t be able to stay within the ventilation shafts for long as he could already smell the smoke from the blasts that was being sucked to into the metal tubes. They were soon going to need to take their chances back on the ground.
8.40am. Science Labs. Anomaly Research Centre.
The muffled sound of a gunshot somewhere close at hand penetrated the fog that had settled on Blade’s mind. He’d been semi-conscious for some while, but hadn’t managed to shake off the torpor that had descended on him along with the dust and debris of a close-quarters explosion. Amidst the pain from his eardrums, he was now awake enough to recognise the symptoms of shock. He was cold and shivering and felt like shit, but at least he was alive.
Summoning every once of willpower that he possessed, Blade tried to sit up. Plaster dust crunched under the heel of his hand and although his eyes were open, he experienced a sharp pang of fear when he could see nothing but darkness. The realisation that the science labs were on one of the lower levels with no natural light was slow in coming, but when it did, Blade gathered his wits enough to fumble in one of the pockets of his equipment vest in search of the small but powerful pen torch he always carried.
The beam of light his torch produced revealed the full extent of the wreckage. The table that Blade had thrown onto its side appeared to have shielded them from the worst of the blast, but his heart gave another uncomfortable lurch at the sight of Annie Morris’s bone-white face covered with blood and plaster dust. He reached out with one hand and brushed her grey hair back from her face. A long scrape down one cheek was sluggishly leaking blood.
He felt for a pulse on her neck and struggled against the panic that rose up and threatened to overwhelm him when he failed to find one.
“Professor!” Blade picked the debris of shattered ceiling tiles off her and gathered her up into his arms. “Ma’am!” Shock washed through him like a wave of winter chill. He bent his head to hers and murmured, “Annie…”
But even that drew no answer.
8.42am. Ground Floor Corridor. Anomaly Research Centre.
Ryan looked down in disgust at the giant centipede as it twisted and turned in what he hoped was simply a delayed reaction from its central nervous system, like a lizard’s tail continuing to coil and uncoil even after being detached. He’d nearly stepped on the hideous thing as he’d yanked open the door to the corridor after taking the stairs two at a time. He’d come across the bloody things before on a call out and knew perfectly well that their venom was deadly.
He’d reacted immediately, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat, smashing the creature’s head against the wall before stamping hard on the back of its neck, hearing cartilage break with a satisfying crack. It continued to thrash around before the spasms had finally left its body and it went limp.
Ryan waited a moment to be sure it really was dead and then carried on down the corridor, heading for the armoury. If there were creatures loose in the ARC he wanted to be able to do more than just try to brain them with a crowbar or a hammer.
As soon as he’d come up out of the basement, the acrid reek of smoke had assaulted his nostrils and he knew that the building had sustained a lot of damage. Debris littered the corridor and it looked like a large chunk of wall had been blown out as well as the ceiling. He picked his way over chunks of plasterboard and breezeblock, noting blood splatters and what looked like lumps of flesh. The tattered black material he saw poking out from under a pile of ceiling tiles told him that one of the soldiers or security guards had been caught by the bomb. As far as he could tell, it looked like the bomb had detonated outside the door of the armoury. The door had withstood the blast, but gaining access wasn’t going to be easy.
He grabbed a section of plasterboard and heaved it out of the way, hoping that the door code hadn’t been changed in the last few days. He needed weapons and he needed them quickly. As Ryan worked, he heard the sound of footsteps crunching on plaster and turned to see Thomson’s pet pitbull, Sergeant Miller, approaching from the way Ryan had just come. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an old teeshirt, the man looked like he’d been off duty when the bombs had gone off. He looked like he was following the same imperative as Ryan, the need to be better armed, although he was currently one up on Ryan in that department, as the Sig Sauer P226 in his right hand showed.
Miller’s eyes widened in shock at the sight of Ryan working hard to clear a path to the doorway and in that second of hesitation, Ryan grabbed the hammer he’d showed through his belt and drew his arm back to launch it at the other man.
The sound of a gunshot was loud in his ears and blood bloomed like an obscene flower on Miller’s chest. He dropped the pistol, crumpled to the floor and lay there unmoving. Ryan didn’t need a medic’s expertise to know it had been a killing shot. He turned around, hoping to find himself facing one of his own lads.
That hope died as he stared down the barrel of another pistol, this one held in Captain Thomson’s steady hands.
It looked very much like Ryan had already broken the promise he’d made to Norman to take care of himself.
8.43am. 44b Newgate Avenue. West London.
Ditzy rolled over in bed, pushing the duvet off him as he opened his eyes and stared at the display on his digital clock.
He was about to take advantage of a rare day off, turn over and go back to sleep when he heard the sound of Claire’s footsteps on the stairs. His brain registered surprise that she was still at home. She would normally leave for work by 8.30 at the latest, even though it was only a five minute walk from their flat to the school she taught in. She came into the bedroom and promptly turned on the small television on top of the chest of drawers.
In answer to his mumbled query, she gestured at the screen. He saw the shattered frontage of a familiar-looking building, then the shot changed to another equally ruined building, one that he didn’t recognise, but according to the text streaming across the bottom of the screen it was the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
“There’s been at least three other bombs as well, in residential areas not far from here,” Claire told him. “David, what’s happening?”
Ditzy’s sleep-fuddled brain finally supplied the location of the first building he’d seen on the news. It was the bloody Home Office in Marsham Street… and Annie Morris used to work at the Cavendish labs… He grabbed his phone and scrolled down to get to Stringer’s number. The phone rang and rang before finally going to voicemail. Ditzy racked his brains for who else had been on call the previous night and tried Blade. That went straight to voicemail.
Connor. The lad practically had his phone surgically implanted in his body. He’d no sooner miss a phone call than fly to the moon. That attempt ended the same way, with a recording of Connor’s voice cheerfully inviting him to leave a message.
Ditzy threw the phone at Claire. “Try to get hold of someone at the ARC, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
He grabbed his clothes and started to dress. The years he’d spent in the military had honed that particular skill to perfection and he was ready to leave the house in under four minutes. As he grabbed his car keys off the hall table and glanced enquiringly at Claire, she shook her head and handed the phone back to him.
“Be careful, David.”
He pulled her into a quick kiss. “I’ll call you when I know what’s happening.”
8.44am. Ground Floor Corridor. Anomaly Research Centre.
“There’s plenty more where he came from,” Thomson remarked, surprising Ryan by lowering his pistol. “I’ve wanted to do that for rather a long time and now seemed as good an opportunity as any.”
Ryan stared at the Section 42 captain in amazement.
“I’d pick up that gun if I were you, Ryan. This place is overrun with monsters and more Sergeant Millers than any sane person would want to encounter in a lifetime, although I rather suspect that I’ve just killed the original rather than one of the copies.” Thomson’s smile turned wolfish. “I know you’re a man of few words, but I’d feel slightly more comfortable with some proof that you aren’t another one of Helen Cutter’s clones as well.”
At a loss for how else to prove who he was, Ryan pulled up the hem of his teeshirt to display the array of purple bruises across his stomach and chest, courtesy of the now deceased Miller during the torture session disguised as his interrogation.
“What the hell is going on?” Ryan demanded.
“I ought to be asking you the same question,” Thomson retorted. “But I need weapons more than I need answers at the moment.” He holstered his pistol and started to pull more debris away from the armoury door. “The ARC is under attack. Helen Cutter is almost certainly behind it. She’s opened anomalies inside the building and there are creatures everywhere. Will that do for now?”
“Pretty much,” Ryan acknowledged, ignoring the pain from his cracked ribs as he bent down to pick up the pistol Miller had dropped. He checked there was no bullet up the spout before he shoved the weapon into his belt and joined Thomson in the task of clearing a route to the door.
The sound of running footsteps down the corridor towards them caused both men to draw their weapons again, standing side by side as another black-uniformed figure came to a halt, looking stunned.
“Hello, Kermit,” Ryan said.
The young soldier looked like he’d seen a ghost but recovered quickly. “Hello, boss. We’re about to get company,” he panted. “And it’s going to take more than we’re carrying to bring it down.”
Without stopping to ask questions, Thomson punched in the entry code and, to Ryan’s relief, the door to the armoury swung inwards. The three men piled through the door and promptly started to arm themselves.
The sound of a shotgun blast echoed down the corridor.
Thomson looked up and commented, “I always knew Becker slept with that thing under his pillow.”
Ryan opened one of the gun cabinets and pulled out a Mossberg 590 and chucked it to Kermit. “Makes sense,” he acknowledged. “They’ve certainly got stopping power.”
His quiet exchange with Thomson on the subject of weapons struck Ryan as wholly bizarre, but it was probably just par for the course in a job that consisted of mopping up after whatever the latest rip in time threw at them. Working as quickly as possible, they armed themselves with as much hardware as they could carry. Ryan had grabbed a tactical vest off a peg and was now filling the pockets with stun grenades and flash bangs as well as spare ammunition clips, shotgun shells and anything else that might come in useful, while Thomson and Kermit did the same.
Another two shotgun blasts from the corridor told them that Becker – if Thomson’s guess was correct – was still holding his own, but could no doubt do with some help.
“Shall we see if something has managed to ruffle his hair?” Thomson asked.
Side by side with a man that he would once have happily seen dead, Ryan pumped a shell into the barrel of his combat shotgun and prepared to go hunting monsters.
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Ryan, Norman, Lester, Nick, Stephen, Abby, Lacey, Blade, Annie, Thomson, Miller, Ditzy, Claire, Kermit
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ryan hears explosions and refuses to stay hidden while Lester’s life might be at risk.
Warning : Slave!fic.
A/N : The links to all previous parts can be found HERE. Captain Thomson appears by courtesy of
deinonychus_1, Tanya Lacey by courtesy of reggietate and Claire Bradley by courtesy of lukadreaming.8.38am. The Basement. Anomaly Research Centre.
Ryan had both heard and felt the explosion that had rocked the building. The sound was unmistakeable, making it abundantly clear that the ARC was under some kind of attack. He started to pace the secret room, deep in the heart of Norman’s domain, like an animal in a zoo, desperate to find out what the hell was happening, but knowing that doing so would undo all the risks that his men had taken to save his life.
His body had started to heal from the injuries inflicted during his interrogation at the hands of Miller. He’d been given antibiotics by Ditzy – after he’d torn a very large strip off him for putting his own life on the line – in the hope of preventing a lung infection, and enough painkillers to leave him slightly light headed. He was slowly healing, but still had no real idea what his men intended, although he was rapidly getting to the stage of refusing to be fobbed off with vague statements that they had a plan but were just waiting for the right time to put it into action.
The only people he’d seen since his incarceration had been Norman, Ditzy and Blade. He’d been kept well supplied with food and drink and told to get as much rest as possible to help the healing process. In answer to his anxious questions about Lester, he’d been assured that the former director was now only under the very loosest of constraints in the building, and that an unholy and distinctly unexpected alliance between Leek and Thomson had developed, in which both men appeared to be determined to exonerate Lester from any suspicion of complicity in the sabotage. That news had brought Ryan a great deal of relief. Lester’s moment of weakness during Ryan’s torture had led to his downfall, but it now seemed as if Section 42 – or at least Thomson – had backed off from exploiting that chink in Lester’s armour.
The dull boom of a second explosion was too much for Ryan. He couldn’t lurk in hiding while Lester’s life – and the lives of the men and women he’d spent so long protecting – was in danger. He looked around for a weapon, his eyes alighting on a long crowbar lying on top of a pile of paint cans. He would have preferred a gun, but the bar was better than nothing. He also grabbed a heavy claw hammer and stuck it in the belt of his trousers. He was dressed in some of his own clothing, black combat trousers and a grey teeshirt, courtesy of Ditzy’s last visit, plus a pair his own old boots. A large adjustable spanner would also do as a makeshift weapon, so that too ended up stuck though his belt.
As well armed as he was likely to get, Ryan cautiously opened the door that led out into the rabbit warren of rooms and tunnels deep in the bowels of the ARC. He’d just have to hope that he could find his way up to the lower levels without a guide. The third door he came too was securely locked from the outside. Ryan cursed under his breath. Kicking doors down was nowhere near as easy as it appeared when it was done on the television and the effort needed to do enough damage by that method to get the door open would do even more damage to his cracked ribs.
Ryan quickly jammed the crowbar between the door and the frame, as close as he could to the lock, and heaved. Both the door and the frame started to splinter. Ryan grinned. It looked like the universal key was living up to its name.
The next door he came to was locked as well and Ryan wondered just how many doors he was going to have to get past. He was just about to position the crowbar again when he heard footsteps on the other side of the door. Ryan stepped into the shadows behind a large pile of boxes and waited.
The door swung inwards.
A shock of white hair told Ryan all he needed to know. He waited a moment to be sure the old man was on his own and then hissed, “Norman, what the fuck’s going on?”
“Some bugger’s finishing what they started,” Norman told him. “I didn’t reckon you’d stay put through this lot, laddie. There’s beasties up there that shouldn’t be. I’ve seen one of your lads and told ‘im to get folks down to the boiler room. If ‘e can do that then I can get ‘em out through the tunnels into the bunkers. If it’s ‘er upstairs that’s causin’ this lot then I know places under ‘ere that she won’t know nowt about.”
As Ryan followed Norman back through the maze of underground passages, he didn’t doubt that for an instant. There had been rumours amongst the lads that Norman’s kingdom was even more extensive than the rest of the ARC put together, but even Blade, who probably knew the maintenance supervisor better than anyone, had only scratched the surface of what existed.
“Where’s the bomb gone off?” Ryan demanded as they made their way quickly along a brick-lined tunnel.
“The science labs, I reckon,” Norman told him. “Hard to tell where else and I dunno where them blasted critters ‘ave come from.”
“Critters?”
“Critters,” said Norman. “Don’t ask me what, but they look like summat off the laddie’s computer.”
The old man was wheezing badly but still managing to keep up with Ryan. He unlocked each door that they came to, unerringly choosing the right key from the massive bunch that usually hung from his belt on a chain.
Eventually, Norman led Ryan up a metal staircase, swung open a door in a breeze-block wall and waved Ryan though into a basement room that he recognised as the boiler room. The door itself was concealed behind yet another stack of boxes and bore a large notice saying Maintenance Staff Only, and contained a small yellow sign bearing a skull and crossbones and the words High Voltage.
“I can take it from here,” Ryan said. On impulse, he stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Norman. For everything.”
The old man’s grip was firm and leathery, more calloused even than Ryan’s. “Take care of yourself, laddie.”
Ryan nodded, even though he knew it was a promise he would almost certainly be unable to keep.
8.38am. Sir James Lester’s Private Rooms. Anomaly Research Centre.
The dull boom of an explosion somewhere in the building brought Lester to his feet. Whilst loud bangs and Connor Temple all too often went hand in hand, the noise had sounded too loud even for one of their young genius’s best efforts.
He crossed the room quickly and pulled open the door. The security guard still stationed outside his room gave him a concerned glance and shook his head in mute answer.
Lester clearly wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
“I can’t raise Control on the radio,” the man told him. “All I’m picking up is static.”
The guard had unholstered his pistol and racked the slide to propel a bullet into the breach. He was obviously uneasy, but didn’t want to abandon his station.
“Then I suggest we both make our way to the operations room and find out what is going on,” Lester said, a good deal more calmly than he felt.
The ARC had come under attack once before and he had a nasty feeling someone had decided to finish what they’d started.
8.40am. Ventilation Shafts. Anomaly Research Centre.
“Stephen! I’m too bloody old and fat for this!”
Nick’s voice echoed along the metal tube and, despite their situation, Stephen found it hard to hold back a grin. “Keep wriggling, Cutter, I think there’s an access hatch coming up.”
Pushing the broken chair leg in front of him, Stephen continued to make his way forward in the darkness, hoping all the time that he wasn’t going to encounter another centipede. He’d only escaped the first one by the skin of his teeth, catching its strike on the pillow he’d been using as a shield while Nick had hammered his improvised weapon down on its head. Jumping onto its thrashing body and doing his best to stamp it into the floor had been amongst the most grisly moments of Stephen’s life and one that he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat.
Despite the fact that the centipede had fallen into the bunkroom via a ventilation grill and the prospect of others where that one had come from, they’d had no choice other than to attempt an escape that way as the gorgonopsid was clearly not going to be stopped by their attempts to block the doorway. Its terrible jaws had come very close to closing around Nick’s legs as Stephen had done his best to haul him up to safety.
A wild scramble had ensued, leaving their lungs heaving and hearts racing. They needed to get far enough away from the enraged gorgonopsid for safety, but Stephen knew they wouldn’t be able to stay within the ventilation shafts for long as he could already smell the smoke from the blasts that was being sucked to into the metal tubes. They were soon going to need to take their chances back on the ground.
8.40am. Science Labs. Anomaly Research Centre.
The muffled sound of a gunshot somewhere close at hand penetrated the fog that had settled on Blade’s mind. He’d been semi-conscious for some while, but hadn’t managed to shake off the torpor that had descended on him along with the dust and debris of a close-quarters explosion. Amidst the pain from his eardrums, he was now awake enough to recognise the symptoms of shock. He was cold and shivering and felt like shit, but at least he was alive.
Summoning every once of willpower that he possessed, Blade tried to sit up. Plaster dust crunched under the heel of his hand and although his eyes were open, he experienced a sharp pang of fear when he could see nothing but darkness. The realisation that the science labs were on one of the lower levels with no natural light was slow in coming, but when it did, Blade gathered his wits enough to fumble in one of the pockets of his equipment vest in search of the small but powerful pen torch he always carried.
The beam of light his torch produced revealed the full extent of the wreckage. The table that Blade had thrown onto its side appeared to have shielded them from the worst of the blast, but his heart gave another uncomfortable lurch at the sight of Annie Morris’s bone-white face covered with blood and plaster dust. He reached out with one hand and brushed her grey hair back from her face. A long scrape down one cheek was sluggishly leaking blood.
He felt for a pulse on her neck and struggled against the panic that rose up and threatened to overwhelm him when he failed to find one.
“Professor!” Blade picked the debris of shattered ceiling tiles off her and gathered her up into his arms. “Ma’am!” Shock washed through him like a wave of winter chill. He bent his head to hers and murmured, “Annie…”
But even that drew no answer.
8.42am. Ground Floor Corridor. Anomaly Research Centre.
Ryan looked down in disgust at the giant centipede as it twisted and turned in what he hoped was simply a delayed reaction from its central nervous system, like a lizard’s tail continuing to coil and uncoil even after being detached. He’d nearly stepped on the hideous thing as he’d yanked open the door to the corridor after taking the stairs two at a time. He’d come across the bloody things before on a call out and knew perfectly well that their venom was deadly.
He’d reacted immediately, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat, smashing the creature’s head against the wall before stamping hard on the back of its neck, hearing cartilage break with a satisfying crack. It continued to thrash around before the spasms had finally left its body and it went limp.
Ryan waited a moment to be sure it really was dead and then carried on down the corridor, heading for the armoury. If there were creatures loose in the ARC he wanted to be able to do more than just try to brain them with a crowbar or a hammer.
As soon as he’d come up out of the basement, the acrid reek of smoke had assaulted his nostrils and he knew that the building had sustained a lot of damage. Debris littered the corridor and it looked like a large chunk of wall had been blown out as well as the ceiling. He picked his way over chunks of plasterboard and breezeblock, noting blood splatters and what looked like lumps of flesh. The tattered black material he saw poking out from under a pile of ceiling tiles told him that one of the soldiers or security guards had been caught by the bomb. As far as he could tell, it looked like the bomb had detonated outside the door of the armoury. The door had withstood the blast, but gaining access wasn’t going to be easy.
He grabbed a section of plasterboard and heaved it out of the way, hoping that the door code hadn’t been changed in the last few days. He needed weapons and he needed them quickly. As Ryan worked, he heard the sound of footsteps crunching on plaster and turned to see Thomson’s pet pitbull, Sergeant Miller, approaching from the way Ryan had just come. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an old teeshirt, the man looked like he’d been off duty when the bombs had gone off. He looked like he was following the same imperative as Ryan, the need to be better armed, although he was currently one up on Ryan in that department, as the Sig Sauer P226 in his right hand showed.
Miller’s eyes widened in shock at the sight of Ryan working hard to clear a path to the doorway and in that second of hesitation, Ryan grabbed the hammer he’d showed through his belt and drew his arm back to launch it at the other man.
The sound of a gunshot was loud in his ears and blood bloomed like an obscene flower on Miller’s chest. He dropped the pistol, crumpled to the floor and lay there unmoving. Ryan didn’t need a medic’s expertise to know it had been a killing shot. He turned around, hoping to find himself facing one of his own lads.
That hope died as he stared down the barrel of another pistol, this one held in Captain Thomson’s steady hands.
It looked very much like Ryan had already broken the promise he’d made to Norman to take care of himself.
8.43am. 44b Newgate Avenue. West London.
Ditzy rolled over in bed, pushing the duvet off him as he opened his eyes and stared at the display on his digital clock.
He was about to take advantage of a rare day off, turn over and go back to sleep when he heard the sound of Claire’s footsteps on the stairs. His brain registered surprise that she was still at home. She would normally leave for work by 8.30 at the latest, even though it was only a five minute walk from their flat to the school she taught in. She came into the bedroom and promptly turned on the small television on top of the chest of drawers.
In answer to his mumbled query, she gestured at the screen. He saw the shattered frontage of a familiar-looking building, then the shot changed to another equally ruined building, one that he didn’t recognise, but according to the text streaming across the bottom of the screen it was the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
“There’s been at least three other bombs as well, in residential areas not far from here,” Claire told him. “David, what’s happening?”
Ditzy’s sleep-fuddled brain finally supplied the location of the first building he’d seen on the news. It was the bloody Home Office in Marsham Street… and Annie Morris used to work at the Cavendish labs… He grabbed his phone and scrolled down to get to Stringer’s number. The phone rang and rang before finally going to voicemail. Ditzy racked his brains for who else had been on call the previous night and tried Blade. That went straight to voicemail.
Connor. The lad practically had his phone surgically implanted in his body. He’d no sooner miss a phone call than fly to the moon. That attempt ended the same way, with a recording of Connor’s voice cheerfully inviting him to leave a message.
Ditzy threw the phone at Claire. “Try to get hold of someone at the ARC, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
He grabbed his clothes and started to dress. The years he’d spent in the military had honed that particular skill to perfection and he was ready to leave the house in under four minutes. As he grabbed his car keys off the hall table and glanced enquiringly at Claire, she shook her head and handed the phone back to him.
“Be careful, David.”
He pulled her into a quick kiss. “I’ll call you when I know what’s happening.”
8.44am. Ground Floor Corridor. Anomaly Research Centre.
“There’s plenty more where he came from,” Thomson remarked, surprising Ryan by lowering his pistol. “I’ve wanted to do that for rather a long time and now seemed as good an opportunity as any.”
Ryan stared at the Section 42 captain in amazement.
“I’d pick up that gun if I were you, Ryan. This place is overrun with monsters and more Sergeant Millers than any sane person would want to encounter in a lifetime, although I rather suspect that I’ve just killed the original rather than one of the copies.” Thomson’s smile turned wolfish. “I know you’re a man of few words, but I’d feel slightly more comfortable with some proof that you aren’t another one of Helen Cutter’s clones as well.”
At a loss for how else to prove who he was, Ryan pulled up the hem of his teeshirt to display the array of purple bruises across his stomach and chest, courtesy of the now deceased Miller during the torture session disguised as his interrogation.
“What the hell is going on?” Ryan demanded.
“I ought to be asking you the same question,” Thomson retorted. “But I need weapons more than I need answers at the moment.” He holstered his pistol and started to pull more debris away from the armoury door. “The ARC is under attack. Helen Cutter is almost certainly behind it. She’s opened anomalies inside the building and there are creatures everywhere. Will that do for now?”
“Pretty much,” Ryan acknowledged, ignoring the pain from his cracked ribs as he bent down to pick up the pistol Miller had dropped. He checked there was no bullet up the spout before he shoved the weapon into his belt and joined Thomson in the task of clearing a route to the door.
The sound of running footsteps down the corridor towards them caused both men to draw their weapons again, standing side by side as another black-uniformed figure came to a halt, looking stunned.
“Hello, Kermit,” Ryan said.
The young soldier looked like he’d seen a ghost but recovered quickly. “Hello, boss. We’re about to get company,” he panted. “And it’s going to take more than we’re carrying to bring it down.”
Without stopping to ask questions, Thomson punched in the entry code and, to Ryan’s relief, the door to the armoury swung inwards. The three men piled through the door and promptly started to arm themselves.
The sound of a shotgun blast echoed down the corridor.
Thomson looked up and commented, “I always knew Becker slept with that thing under his pillow.”
Ryan opened one of the gun cabinets and pulled out a Mossberg 590 and chucked it to Kermit. “Makes sense,” he acknowledged. “They’ve certainly got stopping power.”
His quiet exchange with Thomson on the subject of weapons struck Ryan as wholly bizarre, but it was probably just par for the course in a job that consisted of mopping up after whatever the latest rip in time threw at them. Working as quickly as possible, they armed themselves with as much hardware as they could carry. Ryan had grabbed a tactical vest off a peg and was now filling the pockets with stun grenades and flash bangs as well as spare ammunition clips, shotgun shells and anything else that might come in useful, while Thomson and Kermit did the same.
Another two shotgun blasts from the corridor told them that Becker – if Thomson’s guess was correct – was still holding his own, but could no doubt do with some help.
“Shall we see if something has managed to ruffle his hair?” Thomson asked.
Side by side with a man that he would once have happily seen dead, Ryan pumped a shell into the barrel of his combat shotgun and prepared to go hunting monsters.
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Bloody awesome action ep, with a brilliant cameo from Norman ...
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*g* I love writing Norman. And I must make him his own icon!
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Did someone scream?
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fkfwekfrkfrkgfrkgerkgkerlgrkegnkrngklergerkl *nfjfnjk* *ndjnsdfn*
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Bloody brilliant chapter. All action and tense and meepy.
No! Annie got to be OK. OOh, Thomson knows Ryan's alive. Yay for Lester, although he's walking into danger.
More! Fred, did you know it is next Wednesday?
*purrs loudly*
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And nothing - not even multiple explosions & an influx of Daves could ever ruffle Becker's hair.
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That was very fast-moving and exciting.
Nothing will have ruffled Becker's hair though.*g*
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But I'm loving that people are starting to find out that Ryan's alive - and that Thomson shot the original Miller and didn't even care! *eg*
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Wow!
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"Whilst loud bangs and Connor Temple all too often went hand in hand," **splorfl**
Very exciting!
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Can't wait till next week to see what else is in store.
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I need a good strong cup of coffee now to recover
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*eeping*
But yay for Ryan. YOU WRITE HIM SO HOTTTT!!
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*Waah* for Annie, and *meep* for poor Blade!
AND RYAN!!!!!
Great action scenes, and LOL for Cutter's "too old and fat".
And "overrun with monsters and more Sergeant Millers than any sane person would want to encounter" - I quite like Thomson :).
And Thomson does know Becker quite well, doesn't he? LOL
*sighs* But now I have to wait another week!!!!
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You've left several characters in extreme situations here.
ARGH! By the time I found this fic the first time, you had already written the first ARC siege. I could just keep reading and flip to the next chapter. *wibbles* Now I have to wait for the next week and then the next week and then the next week after that. *WAILS*
Only you two could write a chapter that intense with so much STUFF in it and leave me cracking up laughing at the end.
Thomson looked up and commented, “I always knew Becker slept with that thing under his pillow.”
*Howls laughing*
“Shall we see if something has managed to ruffle his hair?” Thomson asked.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just freaking brilliant. I love you two so much for this. LOL
EDIT: Oh, and I probably should add that I totally breathed a sigh of relief when you DIDN'T end it with Ryan facing down Thomson's gun. :-P
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And I'd had the bit with him shooting the original Miller in mind as soon as it became clear what was happening at the end. Do that's been in my mind for at least three years.
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I love Thomson's complete non-reaction to Ryan showing up alive! It had completely slipped my mind that Ryan was still actually in the ARC with Norman. I had a giggle over Cutter's "too old and fat" line, poor Nick!
Please let Annie be okay!
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Hee!
And oh no! Annie!
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And I love Ryan charging off all knight-errant to protect Lester and the scientists. And Becker's cameo via shot-gun! Awesome!!
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This was exciting and funny and nerve-wrecking and there is no way I am now going to have a shower now as planned and I can’t stop reading and don’t you dare killing anybody!!!!!!!
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