Participants:
| Scene Title | If Only They Died |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | …they would not have to suffer Edmond Rasoul. |
| Date | December 11, 2009 |
Muspelheim Bunker
Antananarivo Madagascar
Blurry half-consciousness is a reward for standing and fighting, delerious moments of waking confusion, the sight of concrete ceilings lined with recessed lights, strange men and women in military uniforms, doctors with white facemasks, so many lights. The pain comes with consciousness, muffled voices and the clatter of surgical tools, the cold press of steel to flesh that has not been numbed to its bite. Blood is drawn and tubes are strung up like lights at christmas, leather straps restrain freedom; hope is bled dry.
Truly waking consciousness only comes what might be a day or two later. Blurred vision is accompanied by the motion of a cockroach across a concrete floor covered with dirt and dark brown stains. The smell of filth clings in the air, and that shelled insect is scurrying towards a metal pie-plate on the floor with cornmeal mush slopped out into it.
Eyes focus beyond the bowl, and Candace Allard can feel a sharp pain in her arms, bandages wrapped around them. Injuries are gone, broken bones feel healed, and the terrifying sensation of paralysis seems to have somehow been stripped away entirely. There's bars, not far away, dark and thin lines of rusted metal with a narrow hall between them and another set of bars, darkened cages like an old civil war prison from America.
She's dressed in a hospital gown, open in the back, smudged with dirt and what looks like soot and ashes in places. Candy can feel how disgustingly oily her hair is, how sweat clings to her brow in heavy beads, and how humid it is in whatever this prison is. Bare footsteps on concrete are drawing closer, and she swears she remembers seeing Claire in that hospital room with the masked doctors.
Where in God's name are they?
Candy shudders as she returns back to conciousness, murmering something while she sits there. Her eyes looking around the dirty old cell that she has managed to find herself in, and her state of being. "I need a shower," she mumbles, half to herself as she begins to stretch out her limps, heading towards the bars to try and get a better look at where her new cell is located.
"Show- -er…" The voice that echoes down the hall is a murmured one, words being laid out in an uneven cadence. "Show her…" It sounds almost childish in tone, playing with inflection and word to make a new sentence. "Chow- -der." Bare footfalls that approach are soon joined by the soft sound of clinking chains, and the clatter of someone running metal across the bars in a tink-tink-tink staccatto rythm. "She— she ha'such a pretty voice…"
What rounds the corner of the hall and comes into view of Candy's cell can't truly be defined as a person so much as a monster. He is tall, or would be were his posture not hunched. A hairless head has not even eyebrows, but thick brow ridges and deeply set coal-black eyes. A jutting lower jaw is possessed of flat teeth and thin lips, almost ogre-like in appearance. His clothing attire is much the same as Candy's, a simple white frock that hangs down to knee length, a length of chain and a padlock around his neck like some sort of leash. "Pretty lady…" Dark pits for eyes turn to look down thorugh the bars at Candy, and the childish abomination reaches thorugh the bars, but can't quite reach her at this distance. In his presence, Candy can feel her skin crawling — a pin-prickling sensation like sleeping limbs and a knot forming in her stomach, as if she were going to be sick.
A sudden jerk of the chain at his neck yanks the creature away from the bars with a pathetic whimper. Soon, Candy can hear the soft click of hard-soled shoes coming down the hall, before a man as much contrast to the beast as rain is to fire comes into view. His skin is dark where the monster's is pale, hair cropped short and coal black, brown eyes set beneath manicured brows and accented by high cheekbones. He dresses well, a crisp midnight blue suit with a powder blue undershirt, collar unbuttoned down to his sternum. In one tanned hand, he carries the end of that chain leash.
"You're awake," his accent sounds South African, a mix of British and local dialects. "I— " His dark eyes settle on the bowl of cornmeal mush in front of her, "told them to prepare you a proper meal. I apologize."
Candy jerks away from the touch, and if she had anything in her stomach, she most likely would have lost it, instead she just looks to the man. She smiles faintly and replies, "IF you were thinking about me, you would have let me out of these bars, I think." She shakes her head a little, fists clenching as she can't feel her power, the woman almost wants to cry as memories of Moab come in to start to incapiciate her, but she ruthlessly shoves them away, denying them now and doing her best to remain calm and emotionless, the state that she is so used to being in.
"Well," the dark-haired man notes with a charming smile, "that is what I'm here for." His free hand comes out of his pocket, jingling keys between fingers. "We're going to have some proper food, sit, talk." Dark eyes sweep from Candy in her cell to the monster now crouching in front of the entrance. "But first I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine…" One of his tanned hands sweeps over the monster's bald head as if he were some sort of pet.
"His name is Six, and he's a very good boy." The soothing tone in which this man delivers those words is almost sickening, fingers cupped around one deformed ear at the monster's head. "My name, is Edmond Rasoul… I know you've heard of me, but I hope you can look past my reputation." Scratching his nails gently over the top of Six's head, Rasoul looks back to Candy with a disarming smile.
"Before I let you out of the cell, I'd like to show you something." He does not break eye contact between those words, and his expression becomes a bit more blank. "Do you know what it feels like, to… have a bone bent to the point of breaking, but never quite snap?" HIs head quirks to the side. "I'd like to show you what my friend Six can do. He's very talented."
Candy eyes the keys, and then the man who is before her, and she snarls faintly. "Look past your reputation, or the empty towns that I saw coming in? The stories of your bloodbaths, the way your men behave," she asks with a raised eyebrow, before she says softly, "No, I think I'd just as soon sit here, with bars between you and me." She shakes her head, nope, she's not gonna sit and listen to the major villian monologue. She winces as she hears his description, before she replies, "No, I can't really say that I have."
"I'm sure you'll change your mind." Rasoul notes with a shrug of his shoulders, looking out of Candy's line of sight down the hall, "bring her in." The barked command comes with the sound of a whimper, rattling chains and scuffing footfalls interspersed between the clomp of boots. Several men walk behind Rasoul, all of them in matte gray uniforms bearing a wolf's head emblem on the shoulder and black berets, these aren't the same militia soldiers she's seen around the country. Two of them are dragging someone in a hospital gown, arms in shackles, bare feet dragging and scuffing behind her. The dark hair hanging in her face does little to conceal the battered visage of Lieutenant Adelle Sanderson.
She's brought ot ht ebars, hair grabbed in a curl offingers and her face slammed between the bars. One of Sanderson's eyes is swolen shut, her lip split and nose broken, they've beaten her repeatedly and severely. "Six…" Rasoul intones, motioning to Sanderson. "Play your game with her, but do be gentle and put her back the way you found her." Six looks up, brows furrowed, and stares at Rasoul intently before looking at Sanderson.
"P— Pretty gorl…" His tongue slides across his lips. "Do— Do'n want to hurt gorl." His black eyes lift up to Rasoul, lips pressed together tightly. Rasoul scowls in disapproving fashion, bringing his free hand to the bridge of his nose, keys dangling across his face as he exhales a sharp sigh.
"Six." It's a tone like one a disapproving parent would give, and the monster crouches slowly and looks to the side, shoulders hunched. "Y— Yes… Six be good. Six be good." Apiteous look is offered to Sanderson, even as the marine tries mouthing a silent warning to Candy.
Close your eyes.
Candy looks at the Marine, and back to the thing that is there. "Go ahead and do what you want, what do I care about her," Candy says, as she continues to go back to burning all the emotions that she has felt since she left Moab, returning herself back to the emotionless being that she had been. Cold eyes look up at Rasoul, before she shrugs her shoulders and adds, "I don't give a damn about her, or anyone else for that matter. So, if you are under the impression that you can assure my co-operation by harming the others, you may need to think that." And here are the gifts of having sociopaths on your team, this kind of coercion just doesn't work.
"This isn't to try and get you to comply…" Rasoul says with a smile, "I just don't want you to say I didn't warn you." Waving one hand towards Six, Rasoul releases his leash, and the bald, disfigured man-child turns towards Sanderson. Without heeding Sanderson's warning, Candy is exposed to a sight that defies what the body should be able to undergo. With but a look from Six, Sanderson's arms begin to warm and bend, as if dozens of new elbows had become jointed in her arms, like some segmented spider. The scream she releases is one of unbridled paina s bone warps and bends like taffy, muscle twists and bends to form whorls and knots in exposed areas, and the flesh of her face begins twisting and dimpling, jaw opening and then splitting down the middle, tongue distending and curling, eyes swallowed by a mess of sloughed skin that bubbles like colliflour ears at her brows. He rlegs buckle and bend, toes stretch out line fingers and her thighs buckle into crescent shapes. Her voice is lost behind a horrified gag of pain before she goes limp and silent.
"Enough." Rasoul instructs as he takes up the leash again, giving it a tug. Six looks immediately horrified when the leash is given that yank, and Sanderson's flesh begins to bend and warp back into its original configuration. Skin slides into proper places, bones unwarm and her jaw reconnects to the rest of her body bloodlessly, as if it was supposed to disconnect in the middle like that. She is limp in the guard's arms, and Rasoul waves a hand sharply to them and points to one of the cells.
With the gruesome display over, Rasoul turns back to Candy and arches one brow, bright white teeth visible in a flash of a smile. "Behave, and you never have to see that again, or experience it. Your friend, she's alive— " perhaps unfortunately after suffering like that, "and you will be too, for as long as I can manage, whether or not you cooperate." Dark eyes look up and down Candy, and Rasoul exhales a sigh. "Now…" His shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. "Would you like to get out of that cell, get some fresh clothes on, and have a proper dinner at a table like a civilized person? I'd like to talk to you, about her, about Miss Bennet; small talk." His smile seems so honest, as if this isn't some barbarous act of inhuman nature. "I'd love to cook you a proper meal, if you'd have me."
Candy forces herself to watch it, much like cauterizing a wound. She doesn't flinch at Sanderson's screams, and doesn't show any emotion at all, beyond perhaps the twitch of an eyebrow. She's had practice at this, of just leaving her body behind and letting her mind walk better fields. As Rasoul begins talking to her, her attention goes to him. Though, it's doubtful he'll miss the empty and dull look in her eyes.
"You'll pardon me if I decline again, I hope. I've grown rather comfie in this cell, and besides, I'm not ready. I'm not washed, dressed, nor do I have any make up," Candy replies, there isn't any defiance in her eyes, the only hint of it is in the set of her jaw and the tilt of her shoulders. Her eyes are dead to the world, as she lets Moab fall back over her in an instant. Remembering long days in a cell with nothing to stare at but a wall.
"I have a closet full of clothing that I think will fit you," Rasoul offers politely, leaning his arms thorugh the bars of her cell and resting his forehead against the rusted metal, careful not to let the fabric of his suit touch those sweating metal pipes though. "YOu can get cleaned up, be… a little more accustomed to proper treating. I'd like to not have to leave you down here for the doctor, but that's the choice you're leaving me with." Then, with a crooked smile Rasoul adds, "Oh, did I forget to mention him?"
A look is given out of line of sight, down the hall, then back to Candy. "I have some very talented surgeons here, doctors— fine ones. You'll notice your spine isn't broken anymore? You can thank their ingenuity with your blone friend. Admittedly the good doctor Gregor is considerably busy with her right now, but I know he'd like to do some tests on you and— " Rasoul closes his eyes and shakes his head, jingling the keys inside of the bars.
Last chance for a hot bath and a warm meal."
Candy smiles lightly while she sits there and says, "You didn't say anything about make-up? How is a girl supposed to get presentable without a make-up, and I truly doubt that you have anything more to tell me then something about my doom, probably an offer to join you that I'll decline, and then its right back here." She shrugs her shoulders a little and says with a smile, "Please… spare me the agony of that. This cell," she waves a hand around it, "Is my home, and I don't feel safe going anywhere with an evolved-hating son of a bitch such as yourself."
Rasoul's expression sinks down, happiness and comfort bleeding away to turn to something more bitter. Breathing in deeply, his brows lower and he reclines out from where he leans against the bars, wiping away rust marks from his brow with one hand. "As you wish…" A look is offered to the soldiers that exit Sanderson's cell, nodding to them silently as they exit the prison area from the direction Rasoul had come from. "I'm sorry for the choice you made, young lady. I'm sure you will be eventually too…"
Yanking at Six's chain, Rasoul seems frustrated. "Come on you disgusting thing." He starts to turn, yanking tighter on the chain leash, even as the monster gives Candy a piteous expression, as if somehow he were afraid for her. He doesn't have time — or perhaps the mental capacity — to truly voice those concerns as he is dragged away when Rasoul takes his leave of the prison area. Once they are out of sight, silence returns to the prison, save for the buzzing noise of the fluorescent lamps in the hall ceiling.
By now, the cockroach has made its way into Candy's cornmeal bowl, and the bandage on her arm has started itching.
So much moisture in the air, and nothing to do with it.
Candy eyes the cockroach, and manages a bit of a smirk. "If Huruma were here, I'd offer her lunch," she chuckles at her own joke, before she reache sup to itch at those bandages. she shakes her head a little, and finds a the cleanest bit of wall she can to lean against it. Her eyes close, and she almost mediatates, or rather, just lets her mind clear of all things and sits there. Some say this is the path to enlightenment, Candy will tell you its the path to insanity.
"You're brave…" The voice comes from the cell adjacent to Candy's. "Or stupid." Gruff and taciturn, the man's voice is not a familiar one. "You been out f'almost two days I think." There's a shuffling sound beyond the concrete wall to Candy's right. "I remember you from the plane…" There's a clank of metal beyond the wall, and a low grumble of the man's voice. Now, hearing that offer of the plane the voice starts to sound a bit more familiar.
"Name's Dixon," he offers curtly, "this shit-heel's men picked me up the day of the crash. Didn't figure any'a you people actually made it out of that alive. I guess that's not such a good thing now, is it?" His voice is closer now, audible through the whole hall, there's nothing to speak of privacy in here. "Which one're you? I heard they grabbed a few people in Mandritsara, but I didn't get any names…"
Candy looks over at the man in the cell opposite and replies, "Allard." She just says that one word, before her attention goes back to the outside of the bars, and then she asks, "Do you know how they're suppressing our powers?" Her eyebrows knit together, while she tries to think of a plan.
"Dunno, I ain't got one." Dixon's tone sounds a little distrustful at that. "Ain't sure why they're keepin' me alive. You— I dunno either I guess. Good to know someone from Bravo's still alive, Allard. What the fuck happened to the rest of the team— what the hell'd they do to the Lieutenant?" His voice echoes dully off of the concrete wall, and there's the sound of scuffing cloth as he slouches back against the wall, listening to the sound of Candy's voice.
"I ain't never signed up for this sort've shit…" Dixon bitterly adds at the end, "this is some right fucking bullshit."
"You signed up for the Marines, didn't you? Aren't you supposed to be the best you can be? The best of the best? Don't tell me they've let down their standards," Candy says to the Marine, her voice a hiss of anger as she shakes her head and says, "Seriously, grin and bear it, dude. Most of Team Bravo did survive, I'm sure we'll have visitors soon enough, but I ain't waiting around, I'll be trying to escape and taking you lot out with me."
"Grin and bear it?" There's a loud thump against the wall, maybe the back of Dixon's head, maybe a fist. "You ain't been here as long as I have, girl. You ain't met the Doctor. This place is a fucking fortress. I was half awake when they brought me in, an' there's arsenals of weapons and vehicles down here. I dunno how far underground we are, but they took a cargo elevator down at least three hundred feet, maybe more, I kept blackin' out. Girl, this place ain't just a prison."
Swallowing awkwardly, Dixon's voice drops. "You ain't gonna get out, because once the doctor gets one'a that guy's worms in you…" There's a heavy sigh, tired and pained. "We're stuck here, Allard, till someone pulls our asses outt'a the fire. If we don't die first, or kill ourselves. You saw what that thing did t'the Lieutenant… Ain't gonna' be long 'fore one'a us is next. That shit don't kill you… but if I were her I sure wish it did."
"What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger, and it looks to me like that thing, as you so eloquently put it, is on a short leash and that he doesn't want to permanently harm us. So, I believe that we're safe for now. And besides, if I can figure out a way to get us out of here, or if I get my powers back. It'll be a hop and a skip to get us out of here," Canday says with a grin, before her lips spread into a feral grin, "Trust me." Candy doesn't tell the man, but if she gets her powers back, she'll bring the whole place down to get herself out of there. If she can manage to take Sanderson and Claire and protect them, she will, but they're on there own for now.
A gruff snort comes from Corporal Dixon, followed by another clunk against the concrete wall. His eyes fall shut, head shaking from side to side slowly as he strains a tired and weak sigh out his nostrils. "Best get t'workin' on figurin' out how to get your mojo back then, girl…" There's a sense of hopelessness in the Marine's voice. "'Cause we're livin' on borrowed time."
Meanwhile…
Soft electronic beeping echoes in the dark, a metered sound of measured digital noise that rises and falls on a perfectly even rythm. A sliver of light breaks the black, blurry and muddied with colors and shadows. Claire Bennet has come back from the dead several times, all of them from worse trauma than what it is she suffered in Mandritsara, but never has she come back from the dead without her ability. It's a new sensation.
Vision clears slowly, painfully, as light hits the back of her eyes from yellowed lamps recessed into a high concrete ceiling lined with cabling and electrical cords. The sound of clinking metal draws her attention, and the urge to vomit rises as she feels a tube down her throat. Tape covers her mouth, but she can't feel her arms to move them to remove the tube.
Vision clears more, the gagging reflex grows worse, and she struggles against some unfelt restraint. Her head is held down by a leather strap, on a table of some kind. In her periphery, a figure dressed in white looms at a distance her eyes still have not adjusted to.
"…is perfec…"
Claire can barely make out his voice, nasally and sharp consonants, a european accent. He turns, revealing the way light reflects down on his round-lensed glasses, blonde hair parted in the middle, white lab boat buttoned up to the top collar and blood-stained surgical gloves being tugged off with snaps.
"You're awake." His gait is slow and uneven, he walks with a terrible limp. Coming over to the table, the doctor's bare hands move down to Claire's mouth, pulling the tape away and slowly removing the tube from her mouth. It slides up from her throat, making the blonde gag again, and the wet length of plastic is laid down out of sight. "Your lungs are…" The doctor looks down, then back up to Claire. "Marvelous."
Something is terribly wrong, and she can start to feel it now.
Once the tube is out of her throat, Claire is reduced to hard painful coughing as the sensation the tube leave behind in her throat. Tears trickle out of the corner of her eyes as she struggles to get a breath in. It takes time, but once that tickling eases she draws in a deep shaky breath. Her mouth opens to say something, but the words fail to clear her throat, catching and making her give another short cough. Once she swallows she manages to scratch out a faint… "What… did you do… to me?"
It's a legitimate question, if a clich one. Blue eyes are barely seem past lowered lids, as if it's hard to keep them open that much. She tries to move her head to follow his gaze when he looks down at her, a sweep of panic pulling her fully awake. What he says…. No… He didn't… she isn't…. ?!?
"What didn't I do may be a shorter list, my— my dear." The doctor's clammy, pale hand brushes across Claire's forehead, a thin smile offered to her as he reaches up and undoes the strap holding her head in place. "I apologize— I— My name is Dmitri Gregor." A yellowed smile is offered to the cheerleader, and as he helps her tilt her head up and look down at the vivisection he has so cleanly performed. This is not the first time Claire has seen herself splayed open like a lab experiment, ribs spread and organs displayed. This is the first time, however, she has seen organs regrowing inside of her body; kidneys blossoming from shredded nubs where tey once were, sections of intestine slithering around and reconnecting.
Gregor is pleased with himelf.
"You— You are what I have been searching for all my life." His smile is so very earnest, and as he smiles, Claire can finally feel her arms again, or at least in part. When her eyes move down to look at them, she realizes the horrible truth, the only reason she can start to feel them now, is because they are only just now regrowing. Another pair of arms, surgically removed at the shouler, lay in an examination tray near her.
Several other trays are filled with collections of other organs and tissue samples, bloody saws and scalpels lay around on wheeled trays. He's been harvesting her organs.
Eyes widen as her head is tilted up… it's what she thought, only… worse. If she hadn't been who she is, she might have gotten ill, but this is Claire. Her eyes can't tear themselves off what is happening. When the process ends, her head drops back with a grimace, not wanting to watch anymore. She doesn't even bother with a glare when she looks at him, "Glad to be of service." The sarcasm thick and heavy in her voice, letting him see the disgust even though she knows it won't phase him. Her throat works a bit, the exposed lungs expanding with each breath, before she speaks again, "Let me guess….." Her eyes close a sigh escaping her. "This is my future now? Black market organ donor?"
Claire's mind wanders back to the MLF bunker and that night Gabriel attacked her… maybe that would have been better compared to this…. Maybe it would have been him here instead. That thought, actually gets a small quirk of her lip despite it all. A girl can dream.
"No market…" Doctor Gregor intones, eyes lingering on Claire and her strange ease that she takes tihs with. "Certainly— Certainly no market. Not for you," his lips spread into a broad smile, "I'm not that generous— no— not that generous." Brushing a hand over Claire's forehead, Gregor watches the bones in her arm reform, muscle stitching itself over tenson and skin crawling up over that. He lifts up his glasses, looking at the effect with his bare eyes before lowering them back down. "Unbelievable, unbelievable. It's just like he said…" A smile is offered to Claire, and the doctor turns his back to where she lays on the table.
"We used your blood and organs to repair injuries to your companions that were collected by the, ah, militia." Gregor looks over his shoulder, looking down at a small tape recorder on a shelf near the examination table, picking it up and clicking the record button, he speaks into the microphone on the corner.
"Sixteen hundred hours and ah…" His eyes flit about the room, looking for a clock that does not exist. "I think, anyway. Subject's regenerative qualities outstripe the ones in Doctor Wagner's journal… Absolutely astounding, absolutely astounding. She is a perfect match for Adam." Doctor Gregor looks back to Claire, clicking the stop button with his thumb.
"I should return you to your cell… soon." There's reluctance int he doctor's voice, eyes cast aside to the floor and then back up to the blonde on the examination table.
Eyes still shut from the sight, her brows drop slowly as she listens to him talk into his recorder. Adam? Doctor Wagner? Her eyes open again as she turns her head to look at her arm with a frown, then to Doctor over her, "Wouldn't want to spoil all your fun in one day, would you?" She asks again sarcastically, eyes dropping back to her arm as fingers reform, the nerves tingling as if it's only been asleep. Slowly even as the skin grows, Claire flexes her fingers. It's fascinating… even if she use to kill herself repeatedly, or cut off toes to watch them regrow.
It's all surreal for her still, laying there parts of her all around. Oh… Magnes would not be able to handle seeing this. She's pretty sure of that. Think of him, sends a wave of homesickness through her, and a desire to be back at the Library. She has to blink back sudden tears, eyes sliding shut as she works to rein in her emotions again. "Who is Adam?" She asks curiously, hoping he doesn't see that small moment of weakness, even if her voice is rough.
"I'm glad you asked!" Gregor says excitedly, tucking the reocrder in his pocket as he approaches the table she's laid out on. "Adam Monroe was like you, a regenerator. His ability is detailed in Doctor Wagner's journal, able to regrow severed limbs and removed tissue. He was… " there's a scrunch of the doctor's nose, a wave of one hand. "A predecessor in the research I am a part of, in a way. He was a member of a research team in Nazi Germany tasked with understanding the Ubermensch," Blonde brows raise, and Gregor cracks a smile. "That's what they called people like you, back them."
Circling around the examination table, Gregor unbuckles the straps at her legs, then unfolds a cloth hospital gown and offers it out to her. "If— If you would be so kind as to close yourself up and put this on?" He turns his head away, out of some misguided sense of modesty.
As soon as she is freed, her hands move quickly to grab edges of her chest, like she's grabbing a coat, and pulls the two halves together. There is a soft intake of breath, from the pain that comes from her tugging and then holding the edges of her body together, so that the fibers of muscles can seek out others and make her body whole again. The skin closes up and soon her skin is flawless again, of course the last o that process is hidden as she snatches the gown out of the creepy doctors hand.
Holding the gown to her chest, Claire gets an elbow under her and pushing up to sit, swinging her legs over the edge of the table. There is a rustle of cloth as she slips it on, getting back some of her modesty. "Alright." She croaks out softly, once it's tied into place. "Uburmech?" She fumbles with the word, trying it out. "What does that mean exactly?" She sits there, flexing her fingers, and glancing around at her surroundings now, getting a lay of the land. Looking for an escape. "And this Doctor Wagner experimented on this Adam like this?" She sounds completely disgusted by it, her arms laying on a table catches her attention and she reaches out to try and touch the fingers of the same hand laying cold, nose wrinkling a bit.
It German," Gregor proudly explains, "it— means super men." There's a crack of a smile, "All ridiculous, really. Oh, and no this— this Monroe figure in the books wasn't a test subject, he was one of the researchers. He was… from Wagner's perspective, very proud of what he could do, very proud of his ability and his immortality." One brow raises slowly. "Did you know he said he was over two-hundred years old?" Gregor's eyes narrow into a squint, and he leans in closer to Claire. "How— how old are you?"
The question comes with a quirk of his head, eyeing her hospital gown before leaning back. "You're more talkative than I imagined. I would have woken you up some time ago had I known you weren't going to— " he wiggles fingers in the air, "to scream like a— well you know— a girl." Teeth are bared in a smile, and Gregor carelessly wanders away from the table Claire is on, shuffling thorugh some notebooks before producing an old leatherbound journal.
"You saved your comrade's life with your ability, just like it was listed here. You are exactly like what Adam was— is— " a brow quirks up, "I wonder if he yet still lives?"
Leaning back slowly as he leans in, Claire offers up softly. "I'm twenty.. and I've been split open like that before… just not…. that way." The age is given reluctantly, but what else is she going to do. The idea of there being someone out there who was 200, it boggles her. "I use to kill myself repeatedly to see what would happen." Anything to keep him distracted. When he moves away, she looks around for a door, hand pressing behind her, ready of hop of the table, but then he turns back with the journal. That makes her pause, foot already reachign for the floor.
"I did? But — I'm not a healer." Blue eyes on that journal, brows high on her head, she is curious what else is in there. Is she more helpful then just a meat shield to die over and over.
"That…." She points to the journal in his hand, "That's the Doctor's journal?"
Doctor Gregor looks at Claire like she has three heads for a moment at the comment about her suicide attempts. "That is so very morbid." Even if there's a tone of appreciation buried somewhere in there, its begrudging. "You're not a healer in the strictest sense of the word, but your blood, it has some remarkable properties— just like Adam's was purported to." The leather-bound book is waved around in Gregor's hand, and his head quirks to the side slightly.
"Yes. This is one of them, anyway. The General offered them to me in exchange for my, ah— services." Gregor's eyes go from the journal to Claire and back again. "You're not like I expected at all. You're… intriguing." Eyes dart to one of the concrete-arch doorways, then back to the young blonde. "Only twenty? To think you have so much life ahead of you, so much, so much…" His nose wrinkles, brows furrow and one hand comes to his mouth. "I— " He hesitates. "No. No, you must go back to your cell. The General will kill me if I do not follow orders. Kill me dead."
Claire looks down at her hands, lanky blonde locks fall about her head, as if trying to see the blood flowing under the surface. How many of her friends could she had saved if she had known. Her small hands close slowly, her frown deepening. Had her father known? Did the Company? "Yeah.. I know it's morbid.. just like harvesting organs from a young girl, just to watch her regrow like some high school lab experiment.." Only her blue eyes lift to look at the doctor though the blonde curtain of hair. Despite the curiosity and talking, Claire doesn't like the man.
Sliding off the table, Claire ignores the chill of the floor, "I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to play with your personal living Operation game.." Her eyes fall to her heart laying in a basin. Besides she needs tim to herself.. to think about all this. Right now, it's too much to take in… to much. She really wished Cardinal was there, he always seemed to have the answer for tough situations.
Smiling broadly, Gregor rests a clammy hand against the small of Claire's back and guides her carefully towards one of the arched doorways. It's strange, how the architecture down here can both be spartan, rusted and cold but also have pointed arches and beveled stone moldings over the doors like some old castle. There's a distinct touch of old and new here in the construction, mixed with the dampness and rust. Nodding his head in silent agreement, Gregor is careful to bring the young woman towards the hall that will lead to the prison, where she can be locked up in a cell near Candy, not to his own personal office to be kept on a shelf like a china-doll.
"I'll be certain, to, ah…" Gregor offers anxiously as he leads the young woman out of the lab, "not touch the sides."