Utterly Mad

Timeline: ? ? ? ?
Location: [REDACTED]
Characters Involved: Dr. Hoyt Upton, Head of Security Carrol Hitchcock.

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The relatively spacious overseer's office was debatably far more cramped once you factored in that it was being used as a living space for two people. It was one of the few relatively nice rooms in a building of cold cement and bulletproof glass and misplaced shadow so thick you could lose your hand in it.

It had an actual carpet. It was an ugly, speckled maroon and green pattern, but nonetheless, it made it feel a little more homely. There was a brown leather couch with a quilt thrown over it in front of a glass table. There were cluttered wooden filing cabinets lining the wall. And there was a grand mahogany desk, a massive, beautiful thing, positioned in front of a small bed that folded neatly into the wall for space.

There was a man sitting on the bed behind the desk, and a woman sitting on the couch with the quilt. They weren't talking. They hadn't talked for hours, and they normally preferred it that way. Not that they didn't like associating with each other. In fact, they were something akin to best friends. As close as people like themselves could have to friends, at least.
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The woman was staring hard at two objects on the table before her. The first was a bottle of vodka, about half full. It was some premium stuff, not your run-of-the-mill rotgut. It was distilled from Californian wine grapes. It wasn't flavored. She preferred it straight and to the point. She'd already had a good amount, but not as much as she usually had. The second object was a gun.

It was a sleek, black, intimidating thing. State-of-the-art. Caseless rounds and worth a small fortune. It was a perk of the job. Hadn't even undergone military trials yet. Not that it ever would, mind you. Some PMC in South America probably had access to it from their corporate sponsors. Probably executed a few dozen kids with it. The usual. Not that it mattered anymore. She guessed those kids would be dead anyways. So would the mercs. So would everyone else outside of this building, as far as she knew at this point.

Not that they'd last much longer, either. She'd seen what was in the basement. Hell, she'd fought against what was down there. Not that it did much. Lost some of her best men and women to masses of screaming intestines and fat men with the heads of drooling bulls and roiling protoplasmic piles of eyes. Those things were locked down there, for now, but who knows how long that'd last.

At the thought, she made up her mind and grabbed the vodka. She'd need some more in her if she really meant to do the honorable thing and blow her own brains out.
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And then, there was the man. He could sense his compatriot's internal struggle, but he did nothing to stop or encourage it. She was strong, and capable of making her own decisions, even when blackout drunk. Something they have in common, he thought, as he tipped back a small pill bottle and swallowed the last two morphine tablets within.

Before him, on the grand mahogany desk, was a book and a vial. The latter was a delicate thing, thin, almost crystal-like glass and an antique cork stopper. It was filled with something that, to the untrained eye, was a bit hard to identify, to say the least. It was a wispy, almost ghost-like powder, light blue, almost white. Its movements were hard to describe when the vial was moved. But they were off, no doubt about it.

This was of secondary importance, however. The doctor had already examined this substance thoroughly. They'd gotten a good amount, after all. He'd seen it before. Long before he'd seen his compatriot in the room blast it out of a screeching tendril with a shotgun. He couldn't remember what state it was in. New England, for sure, around where he was now. There were recollections of a basement in an estate. A corporate retreat. Meeting the donors. The reputable men and women who fund research into modded sex slavery and turning homeless people into bio-weapons. Something to do with a "ritual," robes, and other bullshit. Something to do with "true alchemy," whatever that was supposed to mean.

Now he wished he had learnt what that was supposed to mean. Damn that donor's expensive wine and uncut cocaine.

It was no large worry, though. The book held the secrets, he was sure. It was hard to glean them, exactly. It was hard to read a book written in seven languages, two of which were obviously carefully manufactured ciphers. Either that, or he had just never encountered a language made of spiked triangles and swirls before. He'd met people who could speak and write in multiple languages in the past, but never a man or woman who could eloquently, hauntingly write in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin before. Especially not while combining the five, sometimes in the same sentence.

Thankfully, he had all the time in the world and more. There was a lot of steel between him and the outside world, and a lot of guns between him and the basement. He had no idea how long it had been. Time sped up and slowed down at the whim of the chemical train he was a passenger on. His friend on the couch probably couldn't tell him her own name half the time. Sometimes he forgot his own.

His reading was interrupted by a knock on the steel door to the corridor outside. It was a steady, polite sound, delivered three times by a gloved hand.

"It's open." He rasped, unused to the clicking of his recently fanged teeth.

The door retreated into the slot at its side at the knocker's touch, revealing a relatively tall silhouette dressed in a lab coat much like his own.

"Ah. Ilyushin. Come in, sit."

The figure stepped forward a few paces, a stiffly pronounced gait, obviously somewhat tense.

"If this is about the dead guards, I've already notified you. They're to be fed to the subjects. We're low enough on food as it is.
 Hell, might be an improvement for them." He coughed into his coat's sleeve, the woman on the couch finally looking over from the sound.

"It isn't about the dead, Hoyt." There was a pregnant pause, and a more pronounced tensing of the figure's form. "It's about the living."

One of the figure's gloved hands slipped into his coat pocket. There was a telltale mechanical click as he pulled the hammer back.