Chapter 153 A Mysterious Deed
POV: Professor Fell | Hermetic Order Facility, Sub-basement, St. Thomas Hospital
The facility ran four levels below the hospital's lowest registered floor, which was an architectural achievement the Order had spent eleven years and considerable money ensuring remained undocumented. The structural surveys on file with the city showed bedrock at the depth where the first facility level actually sat. Bedrock and nothing below it.
Fell walked the corridor of the second level with a clipboard and the unhurried pace of a man conducting routine rounds.
The cells on this level held twelve hybrid subjects ranging in age from three years to sixteen. All were in good health by any objective clinical measure, which was something Fell was particular about. The program required viable subjects, and viable subjects required adequate nutrition, medical care, and conditions that prevented the kind of psychological deterioration that compromised biological data. He was not cruel. He had never understood why people assumed scientific rigor and basic care were in opposition.
He checked his clipboard at each cell and noted the morning readings that his assistants had logged before his arrival. Ash, the sixteen year old in cell seven, was the longest-running subject and the most medically interesting, the hybrid biology having had more time to stabilize and express itself fully. Ash watched him through the cell door with the flat attention of someone who had stopped expecting anything from observation and simply endured it.
He noted Ash's readings and moved on.
The new cell was at the corridor's end. Cell twelve, occupied as of four hours ago.
Lily was sitting on the cot with her knees pulled to her chest and her face pressed into them. She was small for five, which was common in hybrid development, the two biological inheritances negotiating growth rate with each other and producing something that didn't follow either parent species' normal curve. Her hair was dark and her skin carried the particular quality of hybrid skin, slightly luminescent at certain angles, the vampire component expressing itself in ways that human or wolf genetics alone wouldn't produce.
He opened his notebook.
She looked up at the sound. Her eyes were red from crying, which was recent, the puffiness still fresh. She looked at him with the direct assessment of a child who had learned to read adults quickly because reading them accurately was a survival skill.
He kept his voice even and quiet, the same register he used with all the young subjects. Loud voices produced stress responses and stress responses compromised data.
"My name is Professor Fell. You're safe here."
She said nothing.
"I know you're frightened. That's a reasonable response to a new environment." He made a note on the clipboard. "You'll be given breakfast shortly. Is there anything you need?"
She pressed her face back into her knees.
He noted her stress indicators, her respiratory rate visible from the rise and fall of her small shoulders, and continued the examination from a clinical distance. The hybrid biology was expressing beautifully, even in distress. Possibly because of the distress, which activated certain genetic pathways that baseline conditions didn't trigger.
He made additional notes and moved to the next item on his rounds.
From cell eleven, which shared a wall with cell twelve, came a sound so quiet it was almost nothing. A voice just above a whisper, coming through the gap at the bottom of the wall where the ventilation ran.
"Don't scream," the voice said. "They hurt you more if you scream."
Fell paused in the corridor.
"My name is Ash," the voice continued, still barely above breath. "We'll escape together."
He noted that in the log as well. Subject seven initiating contact with new intake. Predictable behavior, the older subjects frequently attempted to orient the newer ones, a social bonding instinct that expressed itself regardless of circumstance. He would account for it in the data.
He moved on down the corridor toward the Lucia chamber, where his real work was waiting.