Don't Close Your Eyes: The Devil's Science (Part I)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Inside the dreamer's nightmares....

Klara, Yvette, Angel and Sarah are on vacation in a seafront town. What could possibly go wrong?





"So, what shall we do today?" Yvette asked as she laid down her spoon and picked up her coffee cup, cradling it between her long fingers. "The weather is so nice, perhaps we could go down to the beach?"

The dining room of the hotel was small and rather quaint, white tablecloths and pink cloth napkins, lacy curtains wafting in the breeze. The other tables were occupied by other guests dressed in summer shades; white cotton shirts and khaki shorts, floral dresses and tennis shoes. For the most part they seemed to be ignoring the four girls, but there was a tension in the room, mostly centered around those reading the morning's paper.

Angel glanced around them for a moment but then shrugged. She probably just hadn't had enough coffee yet - she remembered some vaguely bad dreams from the night before and thought that she just hadn't shaken them yet. "I think the beach sounds like a great idea," she responded, reaching for the coffee again. "Just layin' around, doing nothing but being on the beach." She sighed happily. "Sarah? Yea or nay?"

Fidgeting with her steampunk watch, Sarah undid and redid the strap on the same, trying to better center it on her wrist. She smiled over at Angel, nodding in response. "That sounds like a great idea to me. I brought a few books with me, maybe get a little reading in too while lounging on the sand. Well, on a towel on the sand." It was odd not having access to any computers but she looked at it as a vacation from that as well, which probably wasn't a bad thing. Probably.

"Reading in the sun would be pleasant," agreed Klara. She found most swimwear too immodest for her tastes, but sitting on a towel on the sand with a book appealed to her.

"It is good, that we came here," Yvette began, although she couldn't remember how they'd gotten there. Or where "there" actually was. "It is good to get away from the world, sometimes, just relax and do nothing." Except she wasn't a "do nothing" type. None of them were really.

The word 'here' made Angel frown suddenly but as she rubbed her forehead, the nagging feeling of something started to disappear again. "Better get the bill then!" she said, cheerfully. "And, hey, maybe a paper to go with it? Seems that's the thing around here - looks like everyone but us and the waitress has their nose in a paper, you know?"

"Something has caught their attention," noted Klara. "Perhaps it is something of interest locally?"

Sarah looked around, frowning. "Yeah, everyone does seems to be reading the paper for some reason. Maybe there's a celebrity in town or something? Ooh, maybe it's..." She squinted at the front page of a paper someone was holding up in another booth across from them. "...someone big and blue? Huh?" Maybe the Muppets were in town or something.

Yvette looked worried. "Big and blue? You mean, like a mutant?" As the most obvious mutant of the four of them, there was definitely something to worry about if the locals were unhappy.

Instantly, Angel reached out and patted her friend on the arm. She hated seeing Yvette worried about how people might react when they saw her and she scowled at the headline of the paper. "Or it could be some locals pulling a prank," she said, trying to be reassuring. "Come on, we'll head to the beach and relax - the locals'll leave us alone since we're not doing anything, you know?"

"That sounds like the good idea," Yvette agreed, although she was still concerned. "Maybe we can try our hands and making a sand sculpture and then you can turn it into glass."

"I like that idea, relaxing is always a good thing and Angel's right, it'll get us away from people, just in case, I guess." Hopefully there was no reason to have to get away from people but better to be safe than sorry, after all. "I make no promises on being any good with sand sculptures though!"

"Mine will not be very good either," said Klara. "But best to avoid standing out too much, right?"

***


From the shadows above, in the window of an apartment above a strangely silent pet store, a blue hand disappeared from sight as curtains shushed across the warm glass. Inside, a lone man, a predator, put on a long, dark coat and a floppy brimmed had that concealed most of his bestial features from anyone he'd run across, so long as he stuck to the shadows. He hated to stalk his prey during the day, but it was the only time he could truly catch them unsuspecting. Most people, whether they would admit it or not, had some plan for defense if an intruder appeared in their bedroom at night- some of them more effective than others. It was much easier to lure someone into a dark alleyway for an ambush.

On his way out the door, the blue man grabbed an abandoned newspaper off a cafe table and started off in the direction the mutants had gone. A quick glance at the headlines showed that he'd already made waves among the flatscan populous.

Suddenly the blue man paused, something was wrong here, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Shaking off the feeling, he tossed the paper in the gutter and thrust his fuzzy hands into the pockets of his coat, his elongated talons tapping against the glass vial of a syringe within. There was work to be done and he was just the beast for it. He would catch the mutants for his employer, or his name wasn't Doctor Henry McCoy.





On the way back from the beach, things start going very wrong.





It had been a lovely day. Yvette was sure of it. If pressed, she couldn't remember exactly what had happened between breakfast and finding themselves wandering back to their hotel in the late afternoon sun, but it must have been good, surely. They were on vacation.

Still, she couldn't help the feeling of unease. Were the townspeople watching them?

"Well, we learned a few things today," Angel said, breaking the silence that had fallen on the group. As she went through, she ticked them off on her fingers. "It's true, sand gets everywhere. I can pretty easily turn a sand castle into a glass castle - but woe to any beach balls that get near it. And I don't sunburn."

"It really does, ugh." Sarah was heading for the shower as soon as humanly possibly once she got back to her room. They'd had a nice afternoon, to be sure, but the sand was starting to get on her nerves now. "Hope I don't get a burn either. Anyone have any ideas for supper?" She looked around at the other girls for suggestions.

Klara had covered up, for the most part. She had worn a long t-shirt and capri pants for her beach wear. Not that it had protected her against a sunburn on her face, neck and forearms, but the burn wouldn't be too bad. Her face had been burned worse than this in the past when she helped with the chores on her family's farm.

"I will go along with what everyone else wants," said Klara quietly. She was feeling uneasy from the stares earlier and was more than willing to let the others make the decisions. "I have no preference for food. Privacy is more important than what we eat, I think."

The gaggle of young mutants, and he was now certain they were all mutated in some fashion, were strolling down the street ahead of him, unaware of the man in a trench coat who had been following them for some time. He'd observed their display of powers at the beach, the one who had melted the sand being very impressive. But the one he needed was the red girl, his employers wanted them to be visibly mutated in some fashion- the others could hide their powers and cause the buyers to lose faith in his ability to supply. He tapped the syringe in his pocket again, wondering how to divide the group to ensnare her. Brilliant though his mind was, in broad daylight, amongst the flatscans, it seemed impossible.

"Well, I vote not the place we had breakfast this morning," Angel chipped in. She knew they were all still feeling the unease and figured that going someplace new might help. "Our hotel's got to have a directory of some kind - why don't we go back there, shower and then figure out dinner?"

"That sounds like a good plan," Yvette agreed, although with her skin sand just kind of brushed off. "Perhaps fish and chips? We are at the seaside, after all." She drew nearer to Angel, and murmured in her ear. "I think we are being followed."


Okay, so it wasn't just her. Angel nodded slightly to let Yvette know she'd heard as they kept walking - maybe it was just a creep from the beach or a local who'd become upset by how Yvette looked. Normally deciding to do things on your own ended in tears - theirs - but they didn't have much of a choice. "Hey! I just realized I forgot something at the beach!" she said, giving the others a bit of a Look when they came to a stop. "Why don't you guys wait for us at the corner while Yvette and I run back for it?"

Sarah screwed up her nose a little at the Look. "Um, sure, yeah, we can do that." She smiled as if everything were completely alright but she was pretty sure it wasn't right now. Just what was wrong she didn't know, and she looked around at her friends to try and see what exactly was going on here.

Yvette gave Sarah a reassuring smile, even through her hair was already beginning to stiffen, a clear tell-tale that All Was Not Well. "We'll be back before you know it," she said, sounding cheerful, even as she turned to Angel. "I think that side street is a short cut, yes? Away from the sun, too."

"Yeah, that seems to be the best idea." She tilted her head at the others. "We'll be back in a few, okay? Have your phones out, though, just in case we need to call." That was one of their phrases - ready the phones just in case we need to hit the emergency button on them.

The girls turned away from the group and quickly headed for the side street that Yvette had just pointed out. "If there's trouble, we run if it looks too big for us," she said, quietly. "We're totally awesome but just in case ..."

Hank growled slightly, the group was splintering off on their own- and they seemed to be aware of him. The doctor knew that if he passed them he'd give himself away in the future, but he couldn't very well go after the two who'd scampered off on their own. Instead, he spotted a street preacher across the way that seemed to have a large crowd forming around him- a smile formed on his lips in shadow. The beast jogged across the street, now free of any traffic, and joined the small crowd. As the preacher spoke of damnation and of the devil behind among them, the doctor spoke up in a gruff voice, "They're over there! Witches, servants of the antichrist!"

The crowd turned to look at the two young women at the corner.

Sarah stared straight back at them, her mouth agape at the accusation. This would be the point in the cartoon where Wile E. Coyote held up a sign saying "Help." She blinked once, twice, then shook her head, trying to laugh as if it were the most preposterous thing she'd ever heard. "What do we do?" she mouthed to the other girl, hand still clutching her cell phone in one hand as they were asked to do.

Klara wasn't able to give a coherent response at first. This was what she ran away from before. It seemed like a lifetime ago, only now the past was catching up with her.

"I am a mutant, not a witch... I am a mutant, not a witch..." she murmured to herself, barely audibly. Without realizing it, she wrapped her arms around herself protectively. "A mutant is a creation of God, not His enemy..."

It had been her private mantra in those first few weeks after getting settled into the Mansion. A daily reminder to herself that she was not an abomination - instead, she was a child of God with an unusual gift. As she got to know her peers, the need to recite that to herself every day had disappeared. The thought of her peers was what snapped her back to reality. She looked to Sarah, looked at their phones, and made a decision.

"We walk away quickly," she said. "And we call Angel and Yvette to let them know where we went."

Back on the side street, unaware of the commotion from where their friends were at, Angel and Yvette slowly made their way the sidewalk. One way or another, they were looking for trouble and Angel couldn't help but think about how well that had gone the last time (or was it technically the first?) the two of them had done that. Still, that had been a completely different situation and years separated them from that fool hardy stunt; though, she couldn't help but think that they were just about to step in it all over again.

Yvette was having similar thoughts, but this was really the only way to avoid collateral damage. At the point she felt they had gone enough, she stopped and turned, only to realise the shape had gone. "What...?" Then she heard the ugly muttering of the crowd, the word 'witch' and looked at Angel with concern. "Klara and Sarah. They are out there." Cursing herself, she turned and sprinted on all fours back out of the side street to where the students were cornered.

The crowd had advanced on the girls, somehow surrounding them. No-one raised a hand to them yet, but the mood was ugly, the expressions unforgiving. "Witch," murmured some. "Devil spawn." "Murderers."

"Please...you are mistaken," said Klara. She looked toward Sarah, then at the surrounding plants. They were going to have to run, and her powers would have to create that opportunity.

Clasping her hands together as if in prayer, she whispered, "Grow."

The plants nearby obeyed the command. Tree branches reached out and knocked some of the people in the crowd aside. It was enough for Klara. She reached over to grab Sarah's wrist and began running.

For not the first time in her mutant career, and not for the last time either she was sure, Sarah cursed in her head that her powers couldn't be of more help in this kind of situation. Thankfully Klara's were, though, and she gladly held onto the other girl's hand, running along side of her as fast as she could to get away from the angry mob.

Sounds of shouting and something else that Angel couldn't place suddenly started to filter down the side street and she froze, eyes going a bit wide at the implication. "Crap, that cannot be good!" she said, turning on her heel just in time to see Klara and Sarah run past their street, quickly followed by what looked like an angry crowd. "Yvette, you catch up on foot, I'll get to them from the air!" She threw herself into the air, flames bursting into existence as she shot up and out, heading hot and fast for their two friends.

'What is happening?' Yvette thought as she hurried towards the two students. She was the RA, they were her responsibility. But there were too many people, more arriving all the time, and she had to be careful she didn't brush up against anyone with her hair. At least she had her gloves and body suit...

The crowd, already angry and afraid, panicked at the sight of the flying girl, flames wreathing her body. "More of them!' someone shouted. "Take them, stop them before they kill again!" someone else yelled. "We must save our town!"

Someone jostled against Yvette and pulled back, screaming as blood flowed down their arm. Horrified, Yvette glanced down at her suit - they'd brushed her shoulder, it was covered, there shouldn't have been... Only her suit was shredding before her eyes, whatever binding the molecules together was failing, exposing more and more of her skin. She held up her hands to ward people off, but her gloves were falling apart too, her fingers growing longer and sharper. "Keep away!" she screamed, trying to huddle in on herself, trying to calm herself, control her skin, but it wasn't working and more and more people were brushing against her, more cuts, more blood, more cries of pain. "Please..."

The blue man had no trouble navigating the panicked crowd, it was nothing new to him and the stench of their fear was intoxicating. He smiled to himself, creeping up behind his prey, thinking that he would not need the needle after all. Directly behind the girl, he raised a furry hand and brought it down on the back of her head hard enough to knock her out. Unscathed by her apparently razor sharp skin, the doctor picked up her unconscious body and began to head back to his lair, the crowd rioting to cover his tracks.

The shouting and screaming was getting louder as more people joined the angry mob chasing them. Sarah was still clutching her cell phone tightly, sparks flying from it thanks to her panic-induced powers. "Over this way!" she yelled out to Klara, cutting across the street towards another alleyway, trying to find another path away from everyone.

Reaching the other side, Sarah hid behind a parked SUV, leaning on the back of it and peering around the corner of the vehicle. She looked back to see if they were still being followed, and they were indeed. Not only that, she also saw Yvette, with her suit shredding off of her, and people were brushing against her and getting cut from the contact. Then a large, furry hand raised up from behind Yvette and smacked her on the back of her head, knocking her down. "Yvette!" Sarah screamed out, joined by the SUV's car alarm which was inadvertently activated by her powers.

She started coughing before she could say or do anything else. At first she thought she had started the SUV as well and it was just the vehicle's exhaust, but it was more than just simple exhaust that she was breathing in. After a few seconds she collapsed to the ground, passed out cold.

Klara tried to bend the nearby plants to her will, to make them scatter the crowds, to no avail. The grass tangled around the legs of a few people, and the monstrous size other local fauna grew to distracted a few more, but ultimately the mob was focused on the mutants they were pursuing. She began coughing a few seconds after Sarah. Something blunt struck the back of her head. Whether it was a rock or something else, she didn't get to find out. She felt the pain and felt her lungs burning and then darkness overcame her.

Despite her height advantage, Angel quickly lost sight of Klara as the mob surged in a wave of angry people. There was no way she could land safely in the middle of that without sending half of the people there to the hospital. And now matter how crazy the crowd was, she couldn't condone hurting them like that on purpose. Grimly, she tried to find Yvette but when she failed at that, she flew down another side street that was empty and dropped to the ground. She'd follow them and push through the crowd, safely, when she could.

Best to keep out of sight, Angel trailed the group, tugging up her hoodie to hide her face so that they wouldn't realize she wasn't a local. It was probably not a good idea to be seen as anything other than a normal, curious teenager.




Things go from bad to worse, as Yvette and Sarah find themselves in the hands of a Very Bad Man indeed.




Blinking once, twice, three times, Sarah's eyes started to finally work properly again. She couldn't see much, however, only the ceiling directly above her, and when she attempted to move her head to get a better look at her surroundings she found that she couldn't. A cry slipped from her lips as she remembered what she last saw before passing out: Yvette, getting attacked from behind, people screaming and chasing her and Klara. Where were Yvette and Klara now? She had to get up and find them, help them if she could.

Sarah tried to stand, to swing her body around on the table she now found herself laying on, but she couldn't move her legs or arms either. She was strapped to the metallic surface, and there was absolutely no give whatsoever to the devices binding her there. "HELP! SOMEBODY!" Yelling was the only option she had, though the surging fear coursing through her whispered in her brain that no one would hear her cries. It was all she could do, though, so she kept yelling and struggling in a futile attempt to escape.

Someone was calling for help. Was it her? Yvette shifted sluggishly, her head pounding. She'd been hit on the head, how was that possible? Her skin was like steel, her armour against harm. What had happened?


She tried to move, but she seemed to be stuck in a small, enclosed space, some kind of box. The glow of her eyes revealed dull metal walls, rivets... A packing crate. Oh God no, not a packing crate, not the smugglers again. Adrenaline coursed through her, forcing her body to harden even further, her skin stiffening to the point she was being pulled into a small ball. Trapped, she was trapped, by her own body and by the crate, there was no escape and why should there be? She was a monster, she'd injured countless innocent people in that crowd.

From the darkness, a throaty chuckle echoed off the concrete walls. Padded footfalls in sharp contrast to the wicked laughter approached the table and just out of reach of the buzzing florescent lights, a large figure loomed over Sarah. Bright white teeth shimmered over the shadows as the blue man began to speak, "Oh, young mutant, I'm afraid there is no help for you, save but the cool embrace of science and steel." Hank took a step forward, his fur messy as he grinned at his victim. He held up a dental drill next to his face and chuckled as he revved the motor.

Instinct made Sarah attempt to look in the direction of the chuckle, but she still couldn't move her head no matter how hard she tried. She squinted up at the dark figure that was backlit against the thrumming lights above him. "What are you talking about? Let me go! LET ME GO!" She resumed struggling again, with the same discouraging lack of results. Fear race through her veins, her shirt damp with sweat against the cold steel table, and all Sarah could do was close her eyes as the blue figure drew nearer and nearer.

Inside her box, Yvette heard the screams over her own rising panic. "SARAH!" she called back, scratching as hard as she could against the metal of the crate. "Sarah, I am here, hold on, I will help you!" Only she wasn't making any kind of mark on the crate, it was if she was scratching it with soft human nails instead of her steel-hard talons. "SARAH!"

The dental drill turned itself off just before it reached the girls forehead. Perplexed, the beast tried again with similar results. Realization dawned on him, "Oh-ho, so that's your trick, is it? A technopath...well, this is fortunate indeed. I was going to simply cosmetically alter you- my employers want their specimens to be visibly mutated in some way." Grinning he leaned forward, his silhouette over Sarah, his blue eyes barely visible. "Unfortunately," he sighed, "you still need to be visibly mutated somehow. But since you seem to have wooed my power tools, I will simply have to resort to more drastic measures." A razor sharp talon landed on Sarah's forehead, pushing and dragging down, slitting the skin in half. "Just say when, my dear."

Her arms and legs were starting to hurt now from all the futile thrashing she was doing, but Sarah couldn't stop. She felt a small pang of hope for a second when the drill stopped, but that evaporated the instant his claw dug into her flesh. "No, you don't have to do that, pleasepleaseplease AHHHHHHH!" A bloodcurdling scream burst forth from her as he tore the skin on her forehead, one that she'd never made before nor ever thought she'd be able to do. It broke in the middle, her throat already raw and aching from the earlier yelling, and Sarah sobbed in between shouts, unable to see now from the tears flowing from the pain he was inflicting on her.

He was hurting her. The monster was hurting one of her students, her friend and there was nothing Yvette could do about it. Yvette's scream of frustration joined Sarah's as she pounded futilely on the crate walls. "Let her go!" she sobbed, dull pain throbbing through her hands at each blow. "Leave her alone!"

Deep down in his core, the brutish doctor knew something was not right with this situation, but continued anyhow, humming a Gilbert & Sullivan tune to himself. The girl's skin cut like butter against his sharpened talons, and bright red blood cascaded onto the stainless steel counter top that was servicing as his operating table. The clock ticked away as Hank methodically cut and pulled her skin into a twisted visage of its former normalcy- a charicacture of horror and lament. She'd long since stopped screaming, which disappointed Hank on some level. As his wrist watch chimed, he smiled and washed his hands in a bucket of water before throwing it on the girl's open wounds. "Time to take a little trip my dear, but first," he held a hand mirror over her, "I wanted to see how you liked your new look."


Sarah had absolute no intention of opening her eyes and looking at what this maniac had done to her. The pain was absolutely unbearable and she'd kept her eyes squeezed shut as hard as she could the entire time. Once the cold water struck her face, however, it stung her open wounds, making her gasp and strain against her restraints once more, her eyes going open at the shock.


He was holding the mirror directly over her face, or something that used to resemble her face. Most of the blood was washed away with the water, but patches of it were smeared here and there, and flaps of skin were peeled back everywhere, revealing the raw muscle and nerves underneath for all to see. She was absolutely grotesque, and even though she'd shut her eyes as quickly as she'd opened them, that image was now forever burned into her brain.


There were no more tears left to cry, though the water dripping off her face emulated the same. Likewise, she had no voice left with which to scream, so her mouth hung wide open, intermittent choking sobs all she could muster now.


Yvette couldn't see, but she could hear, and Sarah's sobs, full of hurt and terror, cut her to the quick. "I am so sorry," she whimpered, curled into a ball now, letting her powers take over. Back to the beginning, a small red spiky girl in a coma, helpless to save herself, let alone anyone else. "I am sorry."



The engines began to chug - the boat was leaving. Taking them to Europe, where they'd be sold for whatever purpose they were best suited to. Tools, nothing more. With a small shudder, Yvette closed her eyes and let unconsciousness take her. She couldn't do anything to stop what was happening - this was the only escape she had.