Shadowlands 17: Sherlock "Al" Holmes and the mystery of the well (title inspired by Patrick Bowen)

I stood at the top of the well holding my chain tightly. For you sticklers for the truth, my shoulder had been patched up quite nicely since the attack and I had enough sedatives to actively ignore it. 1

Alice staked my chain into the ground with the point of her staff. "Remember Al," she said in a teacherly tone, "You're not going down to do this by yourself, you're just going down to make sure it's safe, and then I'm following when you decide that there is no immediate threat."2

"I know Alice, it was my plan."3

"But you never seem to stick to them very well."4

I tried several arguments in my head but none of them really worked quite right. So I settled with, "Yeah? Well you're, a girl."5

"So are you Al. Down you go."6

I tried rappelling down the side of the well, but it was too slick, I ended up looping the chain under my foot and sliding down it.7

The bottom was dank and wet as expected, but it was not nearly as wet as I had anticipated. I touched down on a series of criss crossed metal bars set wide enough to allow a bucket through into the water below, but close enough that I had a solid footing.8

I looked around. The well seemed considerably more horizontal than I had expected as well. Little tunnels extended in the four cardinal directions about ten feet before coming to an end at Iron doors. The whole place was tiled with stone. Someone had spent a lot of time building this place.9

I looked down into the water's deep. I thought I saw something stirring, but wrote it off as imagination.10

I attempted to walk down a path, and felt a sharp tug back on the chain. "Al! You aren't supposed to go off by yourself!" Alice shouted down to me.11

"Okay! I'm sorry! It's clear!" I shouted back.12

"Not what you're supposed to say Al!" she was scholding me again. I really could not believe I was getting scholded by an adolescent girl.13

"Oh come now! Do you need to be so picky?"14

"How do I know you aren't being threatened?"15

"That's! Fine!" I paused a moment. This is rediculous. I shouted up in a mockingly cheery tone, "Alice! It's safe to come down now!"16

"That's better." She held her staff out horizontally, the tip still through the last link of the chain, forming a tight angle. Vix wrapped his knees around the staff and held onto the closest section of links, making a triangle of chain, staff and Vix, Upon which Alice sat as it lowered slowly.17

The door closest to -and behind- me swung open. A dog burst through, and tried tackling me. I dodged it, ducking into another passage as it struggled to stay up on the loose grating. As I moved, I threw Alice around the shaft of the well. "Ah! Al? What's going on down there?"18

"Attack dogs!" I shouted, as three more burst out of the other doors.19

The dogs looked strange. They had oddly bulging muscles. Their bodies had tubing running head to toe, looping in and out of their larger muscle bundles. On their backs were small tanks of a weird multi colored glowing liquid.20

I grabbed the first dog and threw it at one of the others. One of the hounds knocked me over and prepared itself for a go at my throat.21

I clenched my fist, and tendrils of shadow slithered down my arm. My knuckles made contact and I heard crunching.22

The dog flew off of me with a yelp. My fist felt like it had hit a brick wall.23

The two muts I had yet to injure croutched in front of me, ready to pounce.24

After a moment the other two joined them. They seemed to have weird growths of mishapen bone and muscle patching up their damaged bodies.25

One of the injured ones lunged at me. I dodged, and he bit the chain, snapping it where his teeth hit.26

The severed section of links evaporated in a thick, violently dissapating trail of smoke. Alice fell.27

She screamed as she dropped, and threw her hands out to brace the fall. She stopped a foot off of the ground. Damp air and dirt blasted my face.28

One of the dogs lunged at her, but Vix, who had decided not to fall, changed his mind in a sudden way and crashed into it at the last minute. He ripped skin off with the teeth in his beaklike jaws.29

Another dog lunged at me, this time I was prepared. I grabbed its neck, and slammed it against a wall. The momentary shock gave me a moment to put my hands around its throat and strangle it. Sorta.30

I couldn't quite squeeze its muscular neck enough to choke it, but I shook the little beast like it owed me money, and slammed it headfirst into the wall again. It squirmed around on the ground for a moment.31

I turned back to Vix, who was using his usual method of dealing with problems. He was blasting a single dog in the face with an intense jet of flame. It continued walking in his vague direction. One paw in front of the other, fuled by something more than hatred or insanity.32

Finally its excessively stimulated body slumped down. No longer able to maintain a solid state. The dog I had slammed into the wall was struggling at me, even with what I had done, it was making more progress than I liked.33

I reared back and slammed my fist into its body, pressing down with my strength and the shadows, until it was too deprived of air to continue the insane effort.34

"Well that was interesting," I said when the last severed piece of the last dog stopped twitching.35

"I'm not sure we have common interests," Alice replied, looking disgustedly at the mangled bodies, "What was wrong with them?"36

"Well, they were probably on a heavy treatment of some advanced anabolic steroid and a stimulant like I don't know, crystal meth? cocaine? or even better, who the hell cares? let's get this over with so I can run away like a little pansy."37

"Lead on then dearest Al."38

Grumbling, I led the way, with Alice behind me, and Vix hopping around ready to cook some more little bastards.39

The four tunnels all led down, and rejoined at the bottom of the catacombs. The setting changed at the lowest level. Everything started looking like a modern facility, like some sort of chemical plant.40

We walked through what looked like personnel rooms and offices until we finally reached the labs. There were little compartmented rooms full of random science. Everything was neat and sterile, nothing out of place, and above all, no people.41

Finally we got to the good part. The hallway led to a series of open bays, three stories high, and packed with clear glass tubes about twelve feet tall, and four feet in diameter. In each of the tubes a human figure was suspended in a glowy liquid. They were rigged up with tubing like the hounds, but where the canisters would have been there were empty receivers with tubes hooked up to an external source. 42

Every figure looked different, but there was a commonality. They were all deformed. Most of the women's bodies had become overly sleek, many of them had oversized forebrains, and their feminine features had become exaggerated.43

The men on the other hand were overly bulky. I could see where rapid growth had nearly torn their toughened skin.44

In the distance I saw a man with a clipboard examining a tube.45

I started walking to him quickly, "Hey you!" "Hey!" "YO JACKASS!"46

He did not notice me at all until I put my hand on his shoulder and he spun around surprised, slamming himself back away from me against a tube.47

"Oh! Don't scare me like that!" he shouted.48

He was a stereotypical beakerhead. White lab coat, pocket protector, glasses that could withstand a nuclear bomb... Yeah, I knew what this guy did for a living. I recoiled a little from his surprising response, but kept my harsh glare.49

"Oh! Oh yes! You, you're from the shades aren't you?"50

"Um, yeah."51

"Did he send you here to inspect his new army or is there some other message he would like me to give him. I've already sealed away archives and samples of everything I've accomplished so far. Those are in my other labs, as he instructed, but you must want to see what I've accomplished first hand."52

I looked around and said smoothly, “I’m here to inspect.”53

“Good," he said excitedly, "I’ll show you what I’ve done so far. As you can see there are varying levels and types of modification, as well as varying levels of side effects. 54

"I have not yet made an augment that can blend in a crowd for more than an hour, and I have not made any full batches yet. 55

"With my shortage of needed components to fight the damages to metabolic systems, most of my test subjects are only around long enough to snare a few new subjects before they overexert themselves. I have a few that should be able to maintain themselves indefinitely, but it takes a year or so to develop them. 56

"I also have a quick boost for shock troops. One in a week long process and one that takes only an hour. However your troops will only survive a day or so of combat. 57

"I also developed another method for you to maintain the unnatural life of your host body; you will no longer need to drain your victims through vampirism. I myself have been using it to keep myself young since your master’s last visit.”58

“Where have you been getting subjects from?” I asked in the brief pause.59

“The towns that I have access to through the catacombs; it’s all too convenient.” He pressed a button and a heavy steel vault opened, revealing an inner vault, protected by several different security systems. “But that’s not important. Now we get to the good part.” He was grinning with devilish intent as he typed in a pass code. He placed his hand on a screen and it scanned, while a red beam tested the back of his retina and his iris.60

Alice watched everything in disgusted awe. I knew she was torn between her love of life, and her love of learning and discovery.61

He led us into what looked like a display room.62

“These here are all the prototypes, I’ve been expending a lot of my resources to show you the best of what I’ve made.”63

We entered a room with several machines, and a section filled with the tubes. A long stretch of the room had been partitioned off and set up like a firing range.64

He demonstrated the differences between how this subject responded to pain versus how a live human responded to pain, or low oxygen, or fire, or being shot, or electrocuted; all very interesting to watch, and the only reason I allowed him to live at this point was the paranoid feeling that this place would kill me if I acted rashly.65

He also showed me some apparatus that he could use to drain the life out of a person from a great distance.66

“I’ve put all of this away in the other labs at your master’s request. Now comes the negotiation. How much will your master be paying me for my research?”67

“I’m not here to negotiate,” I replied, “I’m here to inspect and report. I’m sure though that you will be handsomely rewarded.”68

“I hope so.”69

“Which other labs did you send your work to?” I asked, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about.70

“Your master told me not to disclose that to anyone.”71

“One last question then, how do you run all this equipment?”72

He stared at me for a while, scrutinizing my question, my posture, my tone. “Follow me. The girl stays behind.”73

I hesitated, it would be my only chance, even with Alice I couldn’t destroy the whole facility without knowing what he was about to show me. At the same time I recognized that he was suspicious, thus the purpose for separating the group, making us easier to deal with if I tried anything.74

I left Alice in what seemed to be the vice office. It overlooked one of the tube rooms, and had a catwalk that led straight to the catacombs –a fact that I quietly reminded her of.75

I followed the scientist as he walked briskly through the hallways. We entered into an elevator and he looked straight ahead. The elevator dropped at tremendous speed. I watched little lights flash past the clear sides of the box.76

“You don’t trust me,” I said.77

“Why would you ask that?”78

“I’m not asking; you don’t trust me.”79

He glanced at me and asked, “You aren’t a shade yourself are you?”80

“Not that I know of,” I replied, “but, I’ve been surprised before.”81

“I hope to transcend like your masters one day,” he said calmly, not looking at me. There was a ding and the elevator opened. “And in order to achieve that, I cannot take chances.”82

“So you’re telling me not to take it personally.”83

“Yes. And I am aware that that was also, not a question.”84

He extended his hand and I stepped out first. We were again in the dank stone catacombs. These parts were less built up. The only stones were on the floor, the walls and ceiling were bare dirt, reinforced with wooden frames.85

We walked through the cool tunnels, arriving at a metal door. He pressed a button, and the door opened to a huge cavern. I could not see the ceiling above, or the floor below as we stepped out onto a catwalk.
The whole place was lined with reactors, each one compartmented to handle its own separate section of the labs. The center of the cavern was home to a geothermal plant, mixing water with some bright black and red swirling liquid reminiscent of the void plus magma.86

“This, is where the power comes from to run all my experiments,” he said. He stood behind me as I looked around in awe. “And it is also where you stay.”87

“Shouldn’t have warned me chap,” came my calm reply. I heard him move, and I scraped my foot back. Time distorted as my foot rose up and contacted his stomach.88

The elevator lifted away, someone had pressed the call button on the top floor.89

I allowed time to run its course and conserved my strength for fighting. 90

He righted himself and took a more aggressive posture. Metal strips slid out over his knuckles and his fingers.91

I crouched down with my feet in a wide stance and my body leaning toward him, turned away. I watched his hips as he stood, prepared to attack, taking note of the injection gun lying at his feet.92

“You are alone,” he said, “And in my domain. Die quietly please.”