(fic: SPN) The Animal (1/3 + Epilogue)
Master Post
Sometimes, before he decides how to build the construct in his mind for self-defense, he is able to remember just what started the whole fucking thing. He feels like a monumental idiot but it wasn't his fault, originally. Well, whoever's fault it is, he's the only one who's able to get himself out of it.
But, as long as they leave Dean alone, it isn't too bad. The demons have sworn a blood oath that they will leave his big brother alone, and not interfere with Dean's hunts, and demons are bound by their oaths, right? Sealed with a kiss and a drop of blood, they can't weasel out of this.
Dean is safe, and while Sam himself isn't really what he'd call safe he isn't in pain. At the moment.
He isn't sure how long that will last.
First, he was treated as a prince, or a prized pet. That changed quickly enough.
~
“Samuel Winchester, it's an honor to finally meet you.”
He'd woken up in a strange room, but that wasn't all that uncommon. Or it hadn't been. But Stanford-
“Don't worry about Stanford, Sam - Eede will take your place so your brother doesn't go looking for you.”
Sam's eyes focused on an elegant woman with dark blonde hair and inhuman silver eyes. He then noticed who - or what - was beside her.
It looked just like him. It couldn't be him, though, so...
“Shapeshifter,” he rasped, surprised at how hoarse his voice was. The woman smiled in answer and tugged lightly at the thin collar around the shapeshifter's throat.
“Very good.” The woman pet the shapeshifter and it arched into her caresses, even though she only came up to its chest. “He's a very good mimic, so good that I'd be willing to bet that your dear brother won't know the difference.”
“Eye shine-”
“Well, it's not like you're actually living with your brother now, is it? He won't be able to tell the difference on the phone, after all, or any e-mails you send him. We might even have dear Eede helping Dean on hunts, when he needs the research.”
Sam jerked himself upright and glared at the woman - demon. “If you hurt my brother-”
“No, no, you misunderstand me, Samuel. We don't care about your brother, only you. He is merely assurance that you behave relatively well while you are here. Not, mind, that I think you'd need to worry overly-much. If it would make you feel better, I am prepared to offer an oath that no harm will come to your brother through any of the demons under my command as long as you remain here.” The demon's eyes were solid silver, no white and no pupil as she spoke.
“And what good is your oath?” Sam felt an instinctive urge to look away from the woman, but forced himself to meet her gaze head-on.
That's the last thing he remembered other than the taste of sea salt and blood in his mouth.
He has dreams about what happened, though he's not sure what was real and what was not.
After he woke up again, he was... courted was the only term he could think of to describe what they were doing. He was given servants, and God knew it was weird as hell to have servants, especially since he wasn't exactly sure what they were for other than making his bed, cleaning up after him, and bringing him whatever he asked for. He was well-fed, given access to anything he desired - except for internet access or a phone - and allowed free reign to wander the higher levels of the compound with a small dark-skinned woman named Erica, who was supposed to be either a guide or a bodyguard, Sam wasn't sure which. He didn't understand her purpose, except to provide companionship. He was glad that she'd never actually tried to hit on him, though she was reasonably attractive. At the time, he didn't notice but the idea of sex was repellent to him.
While he wandered the compound, he saw a few windows that showed what he assumed was outside. That was how he discovered that they were in the middle of what Sam suspected was a rainforest, though the thick windows kept the heat and humidity out so there was no way of knowing if it was real or an illusion. He didn't know enough about rainforest flora to make a guess, but he was fairly sure he wasn't in America. Or, at least, he was sure he was nowhere he'd been ever before. For all that the compound was shut in and self sufficient and so closed that he didn't see anything resembling a door to outside, there was still a scent in the air, one Sam didn't recognize, something sweet and yet sickening, like rotting flesh. He only noticed it when he was in certain hallways, and he always felt vaguely ill after he smelled it and would usually return to his room to recover.
He was certain, for some reason, that he wouldn't have any need to leave the compound. He didn't really want to leave anyway, not if they were going to keep their oaths. This was one way to protect his brother that he hadn't thought of before, though he knew Dean would be displeased and would probably call Sam a kept pet or something. He would occasionally worry about how his brother was, but the thought would drift away as another servant brought in a rare book or another brain-twisting scroll to be translated. He wasn't too worried about what was going on. He wasn't worried about much of anything, actually. It was a change from how he'd spent the last few years after he got Dean out of hell, certain that they'd both be dragged back into hell purely out of spite. The lack of stress and fear was a relief, really.
At first. That was, of course, prior to his figuring out exactly why it was that he was in the compound. Even after that it took time before the full horror of what he was in for sank in.
It started with the weird visions.
He didn't know how long it took before they started trying to... encourage the use of his abilities. Maybe they'd slipped something into the water, or the food they fed him, but for whatever reason he started having little flashes.
They didn't hurt, really; they were just annoying like a fly that constantly buzzed around his head until he had to take a swipe at them. The visions didn't make sense, but after a while they started coming more and more often. Soon they were happening when Sam was around other people. He was barely able to use the skills he'd gained from right after Dean came back to hide when a flash distracted him, trying not to let it show on his face while his brain short-circuited. He had finally gotten some sort of grip on his own visions, but these were different, these weren't visions that he was able to make happen now, or encourage to happen, or anything like that. It was like he had just started getting them again, unpredictable and annoying as hell, but at least they weren't painful. It was a small consolation.
Erica was the first to bring it up. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine.”
“It just looks like you're seeing something -”
“I'm fine. Really.” Sam didn't really understand just why, but some instinct stopped him from telling her anything about the visions.
She didn't believe him, not that that was very surprising. She called in the 'compound's medic' to speak to him about it, but Sam stonewalled the other man and refused to speak of it. The man was too eager to ask Sam questions, and something about him set Sam's teeth on edge. It didn't help that the man was clearly a quack and not worth the trouble to talk to.
A week later, after a particularly long vision that consisted of people Sam didn't recognize, Erica confronted him about it.
“Sam, I know you're seeing something. What is it?”
And that was the start of the questioning. First it was Erica, a person that played at being a companion and friend but wasn't. Then the 'medic' was brought back, though it was interesting that he showed no expertise at stitching up the gash Sam had accidentally-on-purpose gotten when he fell out of the bed and cracked his forehead on the edge of the nightstand. Hell, the small wound didn't even need sewing up, but it was just more proof that something was going on that Sam didn't like at all. The medic constantly poked and prodded at Sam, trying to get him to tell what Sam was seeing. He cited doctor-patient confidentiality, but Sam knew that was bullshit.
After that, Erica stopped showing up. Sam didn't ask.
Then things in his rooms started vanishing, starting with the laptop, then the television. Perhaps if Sam had had any understanding of raising children, or even if he'd been raised in a more normal household, he might have understood what was going on, but as he didn't he just thought it was peculiar. Whatever kept him there also kept him from wondering too much about it.
Before much longer, Sam was moved to a different room on a lower level, shared with several other young men. They all ranged in age from around sixteen to just a little older than Sam, from the looks of it. They didn't speak to Sam and left him alone. In fact, they didn't really seem to speak to each other, either. One by one they were taken away, and when they returned they simply crawled into bed and fell asleep within seconds.
Sam didn't realize until the youngest, a teen with white blond hair and dark brown eyes, had a nightmare why it was that they were so quiet.
He'd just woken up from his own nightmare, one of his normal ones that left him in a cold sweat curled in a fetal position when he heard the thrashing of the kid's bedclothes. With the only illumination coming from the door's tiny window, Sam couldn't see very well but he did see that the kid was flailing. He looked like he was trying to scream, his mouth wide open at every exhalation. The only sound Sam heard, though, was that soft, eerie whistling. The sound was disturbing, and what made it all the worse was that Sam just couldn't figure out why it was that the sound was vaguely familiar. Certainly it hadn't come from a human-
Then he knew what it was, what was making the whistling noise.
The boy's vocal chords had been cut. Sam had heard that noise once from a dog whose owners had bitched about how it wouldn't stop barking until they had the vet cut its vocal chords.
Jesus.
Sam felt sick. Or, he did for the moment before whatever kept them all calm kicked in and quieted the youth, sinking a thick fog over Sam's mind at the same time. He tried to fight it, but it settled like a heavy cloak and he went back to sleep.
They upped his dosage, or did something else to make Sam's sensitivity to whatever that grey fog was higher until he could barely stand and walk where they ordered him to. He barely noticed when he was taken into labs and hooked up to various monitors. He couldn't bring himself to care, and when they led him into the cafeteria he didn't even really notice the strange decorations on the walls, great pod-shaped things with faint shadows just visible inside. He just sat where they put him and ate the food they put in front of him. After a moment he stopped and picked at the dark brown scrubs that felt too tight on his wrists. They were too long and covered part of his hands. He shoved them up a bit to continue eating.
It was only when someone else brushed up against his arm that he realized there were other people around him, including a young woman that was probably about his age. She was tiny, barely five foot three at best, but when she brushed her hand over his forearm his mind snapped into focus and he could actually see what was going on around him again. He marveled at the room around him, surprised to see so many other people interacting and actually talking to each other. It took a second before it registered that the small dark-skinned woman was speaking to him.
“-haven't seen you around here before,” she said, her lips pursing with irritation by the time his attention finally focused on her. “What's your designation?”
“My... what?” Sam asked, thoughts scattered to the winds. God, he felt like hell. What the fuck had they put him on?
“Des. Ig. Na. Tion.” She turned her hand over on the table and shifted her sleeve out of the way to expose some sort of tattoo on her inner wrist. “You know, your barcode.”
Sam blinked at her. “I don't-”
The girl reached out and snagged his left wrist. Before he had a chance to react (god, his reaction time was shot to shit), she'd flipped his hand over to expose the underside.
Huh. Sam didn't remember that tattoo having been there earlier.
“Hmm... CV Viente...” She turned to the older man sitting beside her. “Isn't that a seer of some sort?”
The man nodded. “Clairvoyant. Twentieth they've caught, apparently.”
“Jesus Christ, they're going through them like toilet paper.” The girl seemed to notice Sam's stare and spoke to him sharply, “So what's your other name, then? Y'weren't born in the labs, so you must have a name of your own-”
“Sam,” he managed to rasp. His throat was sore. He snagged the plastic cup of water by his tray and drained it down.
The older woman sitting across from him stiffened. “What's your full name, child?”
“Samuel Winchester.” It didn't even occur to him to lie.
“Sam Winchester. Yeah, that name rings a bell...” the woman faded out, clearly thinking. She snapped back and smiled a bit. “We're being rude, haven't even introduced ourselves.” She smiled wider at Sam. “My name is Alice Townsend, and my friends here are Hawk and Saphira.” She gestured at first the man and then the girl. “Hawk and I were from the original brood, though he was caught after he hit adulthood and I was caught when I was about six. Saph here is from your generation, though she was found sooner than you were apparently.”
Sam's generation? Wait - “Do you mean to tell me you're all psychics?”
Hawk smiled grimly. “Of a sort. We each have different abilities, different designations. Saph is telepathic, which is why she was able to clear your mind from the lovely drugs they dose the newbies up with. Alice is a remote viewer. You know what that means?”
“She can see things that happen far away, right?”
“Something like that,” Alice admitted, poking at her food with a plastic fork and a grimace. “Not a very useful ability, though at least it's not something like a confessor or one of the dampeners.” She gestured at the weird decorations on the walls.
Sam squinted at them, thinking he'd gone mad and had to be hallucinating the humanoid figures in the thickly-frosted glass pods. There were many different sizes, like the things in there were of different levels of maturity. “Are those people?”
“They were,” Saphira said stiffly. She glanced towards one in particular and shuddered. “Freaky as fuck. They keep us from being able to really use our abilities.”
“But didn't you-”
“Yeah, well, they aren't as strong in the middle of the cafeteria. Notice how most of the others are closer to the center, and how some are almost clinging to the walls?”
Sam nodded, watching the other people. They seemed to stay in packs, eating slowly, though there were a few loners that clustered around the strange pods that Saphira had identified as people.
“The ones close to the walls have... rough abilities. That one,” she pointed at a thin kid of about sixteen that was hunched in a corner. “He's an elemental, can control electricity. The only time he doesn't send off sparks is when he's in the cafeteria close to one of the dampeners. That means he's powerful.”
Sam nodded, his mind making a connection between that kid Scott before the thought faded as the fog crept up to edge his vision. He poked idly at his lunch. If it was lunchtime. He wasn't quite certain just what the hell time it was, actually, and didn't even know how long he'd been in this place. It was suddenly important that he find out. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Not a clue.”
Lovely.
Shortly after that they were all herded in different directions, some off to the labs while others headed towards what Sam assumed were more sleep areas. Sam himself was led back to the small dormitory. The bed that had been the youngest kid's was stripped of its bedclothes and there was no sign that the boy would be back. Sam never saw him in the compound again.
As time passed, Sam started to get a better sense of where he was and how the compound was run. Some of the other psychics worked outside the labs, as cooks or gardeners in a huge underground garden a level down from where Sam's dorm was, and some even worked as guards. Sam still didn't really understand why the scientists were so interested in the psychics, though he had a bad feeling about it.
He also had a bad feeling about the fact that he was almost positive some of the guards were actually possessed. He hadn't quite worked up the gall under the grey fog to actually say 'Christo' around them, but sometimes they stared at Sam like something they wanted to eat. Others, maybe weaker demons, gazed at him with fear in their human-like eyes. It was damned unnerving.
He was in the compound for about longer than a month but less than half a year before they introduced him to the coffin. He was fairly sure, when the fog let him be sure of anything, that he was missing more than a few days.
The coffin wasn't what it was actually called; it was a sensory deprivation tank. Sam had heard... somewhere he couldn't remember that it could intensify psychic abilities, but he wasn't sure why they wanted him in it at the time. By that time the fog and stench was so thick that he didn't really give much of a damn about anything, let alone what they did with his body while his mind was elsewhere.
It turned out they wanted him in there to pump him full of drugs more easily. It got to the point where he couldn't tell what was reality and what was hallucination, and then they added something to the cocktail that made his veins burn and then yet another drug was added to force his visions and then he couldn't tell reality from hallucination from sleep from his visions.
Walking on a beach next to an ocean of blood -
Dean, bent over coughing up black ichor -
Dean, naked on his stomach being fucked -
A hanging man with his eyes lifted to heaven -
Sands spinning in a sandstorm, except it wasn't sand it was glass shards -
Pastor Jim, kneeling before a massive crucifix. Jesus's eyes were burnt out -
The blonde woman with silver eyes, her skin barely containing shadows that moved restlessly underneath the surface -
Explosions of flame and ice and mirrors -
Their mother Mary, with eyes black as pitch -
Dean with sulfur-yellow eyes -
Jo, being eaten alive by the ghosts of madmen -
Cassie being raped by a man with skin the color of champagne -
Sam screamed and tried to move in the coffin, but it was too close and all he could do was scream and scream and scream...
He didn't wake up until after they let him out of the tank and left him on his bunk bed. When he did, Alice was sitting in a chair close by. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, whispering “Madness is the key,” before she vanished.
Huh. So he was still asleep, and apparently dreaming Alice's presence.
The grey fog was thick in his mind again. Before long he was awakened to be taken to the cafeteria for what he assumed was lunch, though it could have been dinner for all he knew.
Hawk was there, sitting next to a thin, ridiculously attractive young man that looked about sixteen. The older man nodded at Sam as he was sat beside him, and the younger man cringed away from him and closer to Hawk. Sam watched him with mild puzzlement, then scooted his chair a little further away so as to make the kid more comfortable.
“Sam, this is Michael. Michael, this here is Sam. He's okay.” Hawk watched his charge and rubbed the younger man's back until the youth relaxed a bit.
Sam nodded to the kid. “Nice to meet you.” Michael muttered something quietly and shivered, leaning on Hawk for support.
“Sam is a seer, child. He ain't gonna hurt you.” Hawk looked up from the boy and said quietly, “Mike is a self-healer. For some reason a lot of the French designations - the ones with physical abilities - always like testing to see just how good the kid can heal.” He hugged Michael closer to him and Sam saw something black spread over Michael's skin where Hawk touched, only to watch it fade away quickly. It reappeared again, then vanished and Sam was distracted a moment before Hawk leaned away and snapped a finger in front of his nose.
Sam blinked. “If you don't mind me asking, sir, what is your ability?”
Hawk's mouth twisted, but he answered after a breath. “Death dealer, son. In particular, I cause organic things to rot. Michael is the only one who's able to survive close contact for very long.”
Sam shivered. Jesus, that was like the girl in Cold Oak, with the ability to stop a person's heart just from a touch, only more drawn out.
Before he could ask any further questions, like when his ability developed or how long he'd been in the compound, a group of younger men and one young woman approached the table. Michael cringed all the more and virtually tried to crawl under Hawk's skin.
“Mike, how you doing, man?” The apparent leader of the group, a young man with what looked like porcupine quills coming out of his scalp, rested his hand on the back of Michael's chair and leaned over the young man. He smiled widely at Sam and he saw with a start that the young man's teeth were changing to things that looked more comfortable in the mouth of a shark. “And who's this guy?”
Hawk's hand flew up to the young man's hand, but before he could touch the youth, the interloper yanked his hand out of reach. “Go away, Ezekiel.”
“Aw, but that's not very nice now is it, Hawk? I wanna meet the new guy.” Ezekiel offered his hand to Sam. When he closed then opened his eyes, they were the gold-green of a snake's, slitted until there was almost no pupil. “My name's Ezekiel, designation SS-six,” he pronounced 'six' with a French accent. “What's yours?”
Sam didn't offer his hand, not trusting the look of the young man. “Sam Winchester.” He glanced at Hawk. “I don't remember what my designation is.”
Hawk rolled his eyes and rubbed his thumb against Michael's side. “He's a seer, Ezekiel. Nothing of interest to you or yours.” He glanced at Sam. “Ezekiel's designation means he's a shapeshifter.”
Sam frowned. “But I thought shapeshifters weren't human.” He eyed Ezekiel. “Are you just borrowing that skin, or are you a different breed?”
Ezekiel bristled. Literally - his hair stood up and he sprouted fur over much of his body. “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but I'm human, just ain't one of the normals.” He thumped himself on the chest like he had something to prove. “We're better than normals and you ought to know that if you're here.”
“Whatever, 'Zeke, you know you wanna have a cooler ability than what you've got.” Saphira had joined them, sitting on the other side of Hawk. She nodded at the others. “Eve, Adam, Jobe. How's the baby doing?”
Eve, the young woman with a rounded figure, sighed. “Trouble, of course. Takes after her daddy, I'm sure.” She poked the young man apparently named Adam. “Gonna be the death of me if they let me keep her, I just know it.”
Hawk sighed. “You know they won't, Eve.”
“If she's a normal they will.” Eve rested her hand possessively over the curve of her stomach. “They wouldn't have any use for her. I could raise her.”
“And how often does that happen, especially since you know that you don't have any normal blood in you?”
“There's still a twenty-five percent chance that she'll be normal.”
“Are you willing to pin all your hopes on that percentage?”
“I have to.” Eve said this in a quiet voice, and it was clear to Sam that the young woman had already been through quite a bit. He wanted to offer her some comfort, some assurance that her child would be safe, but when he actually tried to see anything the Dampeners blocked it out.
Instead, he reached out a hand and touched hers lightly. “I wish you luck.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
Time passed, and as Eve crept closer and closer to term, the boys got tetchier. They started fights with the other psychics, scaring the weaker ones.
They especially liked tormenting Michael.
Then, the day that Eve was set to give birth, Sam found them in the process of raping Michael. Jobe, the young man whose ability was apparently like that of Jake's, was holding Michael down as he struggled. Adam was flicking fire over Michael's skin, watching blisters form and fade as quickly as he burned him. Ezekiel had his pants and underwear around his ankles and was just sliding in when Sam saw what was happening.
Before Sam had the chance to even think, he snapped Ezekiel's neck and was in the process of slamming Adam's face into a wall. Jobe was trying to get him off of the young man, but super-human strength is useless if you can't get ahold of who you're trying to use that strength against.
Guards came. Before Sam had managed to kill Adam he was dragged off by the telekinesis of one of the other psychics. In the confusion, Sam saw Hawk come and pick Michael up and carry him away. Once he knew Michael was safe, Sam relaxed and let them inject him with a sedative.
The fog descended, and when he awoke some time later, he was in a cage. He didn't know what became of Adam or Jobe, though he didn't care about them. Occasionally he would wonder about Michael and Hawk and the others but those thoughts were swept away into the mists.
Sam hadn't been in the cage for very long before he started to get the feeling that he was being watched. He didn't see anything at first, but he wasn't his father's son for nothing and soon managed to catch a glimpse of a whip-like tail out of the corner of his eye. He unfocused his eyes and in his peripheral vision he could see a sleek dark shape, like something out of a nightmare. He tensed and the figure vanished. He had a feeling it would take a while to teach himself to look correctly, but hell, it wasn't like he had anything else to do in the cage except stare at walls and get lost in thought.
He wound up with a splitting headache, something reminiscent of the migraines he got in the early months of his visions, and was not really any further along with seeing the beings when his lunch arrived. He watched the soldier approach and set the tray down with a thud before kicking it into Sam's cage and walking away.
There wasn't much on the tray, but it was better than starvation and even if they drugged the food it wouldn't do them any real good, since there weren't any mind readers in the room with him. Unless whatever it was he was catching out of the corner of his eyes...
Later on that week (he had to count his own sleep cycles as days since he still didn't know what day - or even month it was), he finally figured out what the creatures were.
Hellhounds.
It took watching them bring in a motionless body and seeing something invisible tear it to shreds before Sam got the picture.
He eventually learned to see the hounds without getting a headache. Of course, that was when the scientists decided to try using the sensory deprivation tank on him again.
While he was in there, he lost track of time and everything else. He relived every day of his being, including his own birth though he wasn't sure if that was real or another hallucination. Then his thoughts turned towards the future again, and somewhere in the middle he heard Alice's words again.
Madness is the key.
His mind chewed on that for some time. Nothing came to him.
Not until Alice visited him in his dreams.
He was sitting in the cage, having a quiet dream for once that involved watching two hellhound pups playing with a human skull when she appeared.
“Sam, how are you doing child?”
He blinked at her. “As well as can be expected. How are you doing?”
Alice smiled at him. “You think I'm a figment of your imagination, don't you?”
“You mean you aren't? I thought your ability was geared elsewhere.” He watched her and noticed she was more solid than the bars of his cage.
She sat down on a chair that suddenly appeared. “Well, my own was.” She leaned forward and lost her smile. “Let me tell you a story, Sam, and after that you can ask me anything you want to.”
“Okay.” It wasn't like he had anything better to be doing.
“Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Alice. She was special, and when she was little she had been found by a man with yellow eyes.”
Sam stiffened, but kept listening.
“He took her to a special building far from her home, in another country where nobody knew her. There, she met other special children, including a cute little blonde girl with a smile like the sun named Mary.”
Mom, Sam thought. He didn't speak.
“The man with yellow eyes had a group of scientists working with him, and they were trying to find a very very special child, more special than the two girls, though the girls didn't know that. The first little girl's specialness was that she could touch something and see what had happened in the thing's past, and the blonde little girl could heal small wounds on animals and sometimes people though it wore her out.
“The man decided that the blonde girl wasn't special enough to have live with him and the other special children, and so she was sent back to her family. The other little girl never saw her again, but when she was twenty-five she heard that the blonde girl had given birth to a little boy. The young woman was worried that the yellow-eyed man would take the little boy, but he never showed up at the special building.
“Apparently, that had given the yellow-eyed man an idea, and he passed that on to the scientists. They started encouraging the special young people to have children, to see if they would have special children themselves.
“Alice was paired with a young man who had been recently brought, a young man that was nicknamed Hawk. They had a baby together, a little boy they named Eden. He was a special child, but his power was terrifying, because he could take the soul right out of a person.
“Eden was so special that he was taken away from the couple, and the scientists were fascinated by him. They were so fascinated by him that when Eden turned sixteen he went crazy and wound up taking his own soul out so that he wouldn't suffer any more.”
Sam shuddered. He didn't want to know what happened to Eden's body - knowing what he already did know suggested that the poor boy's body was still somewhere, being experimented on.
“Alice didn't want anything else to happen to any other children she might have had, but before much longer she was forced to get pregnant again by another young man. She didn't want her baby to suffer, so one day when she was in the labs and the doctors were distracted, she touched a table nearby and saw that one of the nurses had recently had an abortion. She remembered that information, and when she saw her chance she fell down a flight of steps.
“The baby died, and Alice survived. However, the baby would have been another special child, one that could walk through dreams and talk to others that way, and when Alice killed her baby she got that ability instead. No one knew that abilities could be taken like that, and Alice kept that to herself, not wanting any more attention than she already had.
“Then, after a while Alice was left alone. She watched others come in, younger and younger, until a very special young man, possibly the most special of all, came in. He was the younger son of Alice's friend, and he had killed other special children in self-defense and had their abilities as well as his own Sight. Alice knew that this was the special child that the yellow-eyed man had been looking for, but by then he had been killed by the blonde woman's older son and the special building had been taken under new management.
“However, this special boy was meant for great things, and one of those things was told to Alice by another seer, the first one that the yellow-eyed man had found.
“He was going to be trained like a soldier, and would destroy the world as the people in the building knew it then rebuild it for the better. And Alice had to help him as best she could, and get the other special people to help him as well.”
Alice sat back and sighed. “So. Now you know all I know.”
Sam inhaled, then exhaled softly. “But what does 'madness is the key' mean?”
Alice laughed tiredly. “It means you're going to need to protect yourself. The best way to do that it to let go of that hard-won control you have there and lock your mind up so tight even you can't get through. They had you locked in the room with the mindreaders for two reasons, Sam: to find out just what you're capable of and to see if they could coerce you into finding other children for them to bring back here.” She sighed and started to fade out. “You're going to have to figure out your own way of protecting yourself, but I'd suggest mimicking what happens to the other seers and just going mad. Then your mind would be too chaotic for them to use against you.”
~
Sam wakes up and starts to plan, trying to be careful to try and add layers of thoughts for confusion. He isn't sure he's doing it right, but no one comes into the room with him so he assumes that he's hiding his thoughts well enough.
Eventually, he gets good at layering his thoughts. After that he starts building constructs in his mind to lock away everything that makes him who he is.
That is when he discovers that sanity is more fluid than he had first thought.
Around the fountain of his sanity he builds constructs and as he builds them he finds that he has locked away just what it is that keeps him sane. It worries him at first, but as the time goes and he continues building he just learns to save up some sanity in little pockets so he doesn't run dry too quickly. He wants to have enough defenses in his mind set up so that nothing can get through to him without considerable effort, and then only if Sam himself allows it.
One loop of sanity, he locks into the form of a red thread so that he can find his way back. That works fairly well... until he loses that thread somewhere in his mind.
Then, a haze - different from the fog of the drugs - descends over him.
There is a comfort in the haze, as much as what little is left of Sam's sanity would wish it were otherwise. He's too busy working on instinct, throwing surface thoughts up for the demons or psychics or whoever is listening in this time for much thought of how he'll be once he's finished with the constructs. He's about halfway through working on the bones of religion and belief and protection rites when some instinct tells him that he needs to come to the surface. He swims up and his eyes focus as he passes the level of white noise just below the surface thoughts.
Something is happening with the hellhounds. They're shifting restlessly: one of the females (a younger one with markings that were lighter before Sam went under) is pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. Most of the males are watching her with interest, and the other females are grooming each other though they occasionally pause to watch the pacing female.
Then, as if shocked by a Taser, the restless female jolts and then crouches, glaring at the males. She snarls at them, and Sam can almost see waves of red flickering over her body.
The males crouch down as well, watching her tail lash back and forth like a pissed off cat.
Without warning, she's running in a blur of motion and less than a second later the males are after her. There isn't much space in the kennel for her to really get some distance between herself and her followers (suitors?), so she dodges with speed and grace around them and the other females, trying to use them as obstacles to slow the males down.
Sam watches with interest, supposing that this is some sort of mating ritual for the helhounds. He is grateful, for once, of the cage that he's in - it protects him when the female bangs into it before using the wall beside the cage as a springboard for a spectacular leap over the heads of many of her suitors.
Before much longer, the female is caught by an older male and they fall into a frenzy of mating while the unsuccessful males wander back over to where the rest of the pack is lounging. They lick themselves, and Sam notices one in particular, a younger male, cleaning his groin area with forceful movements of his tongue. That's when he sees the thick black... something or another that has oozed out of the males' genitals. He looks around, studying the other males and one by one they all start cleaning that particular area as if their lives depended on it.
Hm. Some mating response, apparently. Sam glances around once more, making sure that the pack is calm again, then goes back to work in his mind, leaving noise about the mating on his surface level.
Time passes endlessly. Sam continues to build in his mind and watches the hellhounds. He stays in his cage, though he already knows how to undo the lock, as he's already seen just what the pack can do to humans. He watches the young female and sees how her belly starts to grow and drop. She becomes restless, unable to sleep well at all and Sam has taken to humming and crooning at her in an attempt to calm her whenever she approaches his cage. She starts whining sometimes, and tries to settle in amidst the pack, but they shift away from her as if she is contagious.
They know something is wrong with her. Sam doesn't know what it is, but it's making the pack act strangely. He doesn't like that.
One sleep cycle, Sam is awakened by the female's howling. He jerks awake and is immediately assaulted by images and feelings.
Pain pain pain sharp strange agony fire across belly three pups dead in her she can feel it no the pack will die her pups are dying -
Something compels Sam to unlock his cage. He creeps towards where the thoughts are coming from, though he would prefer to hide in a far corner. He can't just let some poor animal suffer like that, even a creature from Hell.
Once, a long time ago, Sam had watched one of Pastor Jim's congregation pull a calf out of a pregnant and dying cow. It was painful to see and the cow didn't survive, but the calf did and some things weren't all that different, were they?
The pack has surrounded the pregnant female, and she's twisting in agony, letting out unearthly howls and yips of fear and pain and terror. They are crooning to her as if in comfort and worry, and Sam tries to make himself as small of a threat as possible the closer he gets until he is crawling on hands and knees, his head lowered but eyes on the pregnant female.
He's not sure if she's actually come to term, or even if she has recognizable anatomy, but as he crawls to her he can see that her stomach is rippling like contractions. He tries to croon to her like the other hounds, and they ignore him even though he is human and thus prey. He presses a hand lightly to the female's belly and feels another contraction rip through. The female howls again, and her tail lashes before going up against her back. Sam watches in amazement as she expels a dark bag of fluid, and then another and another. Sam immediately begins to tear the sacks open, but he rears back at the smell of old death.
Those pups didn't survive. He backs away and one of the other females approaches the dead pups, licking and whining at the corpses to get up and move around. When they don't, the hound throws back her head and lets out the most mournful sound Sam has ever heard. The rest of the pack, except for the childless mother, joins in.
The young female trembles, and Sam can see that another sack is stuck halfway in and halfway out. He rests a hand against her side and she turns to look at him with dark eyes.
Save them.
The thought is clear as anything, and Sam is stunned into immobility for a moment before he nods to her and goes to her rear. He carefully croons to her, and since he's not sure that she's not psychic he sends her soothing images of pack and running through a forest for fun. She relaxes, and he tentatively reaches around and feels around the pup sack.
The pup feels fully formed - he can recognize two legs and when he slides his hands inside her he can feel two more and a little head. He gently feels around and finds the problem - two pups are trying to come at the same time, and they've tangled their umbilical chords around each other until they've stuck.
He tries to ease the female open a little more, hoping that that will help them move out more easily. He manages to get the first one to ease the rest of the way out and then immediately starts trying to encourage the female to push one more time. While she is doing so, he tears open the birthing sack and at first he thinks that it's another dead one but then he realizes that there is no stink of death on it and when he smooths away some of the birthing mess from the pups face and mouth it opens its mouth and breathes.
Then the other pup is coming out and even as Sam tears that sack open the pup is struggling inside, determined to get out and live. It lets out a demanding little whimper and starts moving immediately towards Sam. Sam gently pushes it towards its mother instead, and carefully takes the weaker one and places it against its mother's teat.
The weaker pup stirs, then latches on to the teat. The stronger one finds a teat of its own without any trouble and Sam withdraws so the mother can clean her babies without his interference.
He is a mess, covered in birthing fluids and in need of a bath or at least a quick rinse, but instead he finds himself falling asleep before he's even managed to leave the pack. He thinks he hears a thank you in his mind but he's not sure and before he can think on it any more he's gone.
He wakes up and he is warm. When he opens his eyes, Sam sees he is surrounded by the pack. The young mother is resting against his right side with her pups between her and Sam. The others are spread around with Sam and the mother in the middle. Sam doesn't think that he could actually get out from amongst them without waking at least one of them and possibly stepping on more than a few. He decides it isn't worth it, and just rests there with them all.
This close, he can see the peculiar markings on the hellhounds. Overall, they are very darkly colored, dark grey with a few that are nearly black. They have even darker patterns on their flanks visible from this distance, though, with long thick horizontal lines on either side of their spines and what look like a cross between leopard spots and Rorschach ink splotches. They are fascinating, and more than a little hypnotizing. The mother's face is turned towards him, and he can see that she looks like she has black tears going down either side of her face near her muzzle and horizontal lines under her eyes like thick black makeup.
For such vicious and dangerous beasts, they are beautiful in their own way.
The pups grow, and as they do Sam falls deeper into his madness. Soon enough he loses touch with all reality and before the pups are weaned the pack has adopted him and he feels safer in his madness than in his sanity and that-
The pups, grown and running with him -
Walking down a corridor filled with locked and unlocked doors -
Blue light flooding his veins -
Dean calling out his name and reaching for him -
His hand, covered with markings like that of the hellhounds -
His marked hands on a bare scarred back, sinking teeth into the back of a strong neck -
Blackness.
Nothing makes sense anymore, and that's fine with him. He doesn't really remember his name, doesn't remember how he got here or even when the last time it was that he ate. He only remembers some things, and the memories are vague at best.
He remembers green-brown eyes and a freckled nose, and a powerful dark beast of a car. He remembers golden-blonde hair and a wide smile atop a female figure. He's not sure who these people are, or even if they are real or just imaginary. It doesn't matter.
The dark beasts around him shift in their communal sleep and one pup suckles on his finger while the other rests at his armpit. Their mother is a warm presence at his back.
The pack is safety. The pack is his home. The memories aren't as important as the pack. They glitter like shattered mirrors and raindrops on windows and he tries to collect them but they slip out from between his fingers and he is not sad. He doesn't remember what sadness is, or what fury or pain or fear feels like.
In his head a battered cassette tape of Metallica plays, even though he doesn't remember who Metallica is or why it holds any significance to him.
Blood calls to blood, and he's eventually gotten used to the singing of his blood for something he's not got with him. It is far away, that thing that sings to him, and most times the fog drowns out the song with white noise. He can still hear it, though, like a radio station fading in and out of range. The song is sometimes swept up by the song of the pack, and little is as comforting and familiar as the two twined together.
Then, in one moment, that all changes.
He is shooed into his cage for some reason and the pack is displeased. It does not like members being taken from it, especially the nurse that watches the pups while the pack is hunting. The figures doing the shooing are dressed in fur the color of old and dried dung, while other figures in sun-white are talking amongst themselves. The pack shies away from the white figures, taking nips at the dung colored ones and making them twitch like prey animals.
He doesn't like being apart from the pack any more than it does. He bares his fangs at the white ones, but goes into the cage. He stays crouched low to the ground, ready to spring and fight if they get too close to him. The pack has taught him how to move and fight and kill when need be, and he does not fear the dung ones or the white ones.
The white ones talk amongst themselves, watching him like he is prey. He snarls at them, and they write on their little notepads and cluck to each other.
Then he hears a word he remembers, knows in the very marrow of his bones.
Brother.
His mind snaps into focus and he listens, the cluckings starting to make sense.
“-only one with a sibling other than the Dios, a brother-”
“-carrier of the gene?”
“-sure. One way or another we can find out when the scouts track him down -”
“-catch him? He is a hunter-”
“Shouldn't be a problem if they have teleporters with them, maybe the twins.”
“I don't trust those two, no matter what the higher ups say. They're creepy as hell-”
“What is the sibling's name?”
“Dean, but does it matter?”
Dean. He knows that name. Green-brown eyes come to his mind's eye and something further back flips a switch.
A voice he barely recognizes as his own speaks deep in his mind. They want to hurt Dean.
They won't get the chance. A feeling he should know stirs in a pocket of his mind. It is tinged dark red, like that of heart's blood.
Rage.
Steel-grey lines it and cages it for use. They won't get the chance to touch Dean.
A flicker of thought slides to the surface.
His name is SamuelSamSammy Winchester. And they will keep him no longer.
After a time they let him out of the cage. Apparently they don't notice a difference, as they pause by the cage after it's opened, not paying him any mind at all even though the pack has sensed his turmoil and is pacing back and forth, especially the pups. Their minds touch Sam's, a questing touch to see why he is acting as he is.
Pack safe? they ask him.
Danger he sends back, letting them rifle through his mind to understand him. They find his fears for Dean, understand that he is pack and love and mate and they howl.
The dung-colored humans - soldiers - start and lift their weapons to the hounds but it is already too late. The pack is on the move.
The one leading the charge is the mother of the pups, enraged with the thought of danger to her pups and her pack. She is a blur of motion, and when she lands on one of the soldiers Sam knows that he dies.
There are about twenty soldiers, and ten or so white ones - scientists - still in the room. Sam pounces the nearest scientist, his claws growing long enough to rip out the man's throat. A soldier tries to pull him off, jabbing a sharp jolt of electricity through Sam's body but another of the pack, a male this time, throws the soldier off with a powerful lunge. Sam is stunned for a moment, and he sees a scientist with a sharp needle approaching. He can't make himself move, but somewhere deeper in him a rush of blue floods his body and just before the scientist manages to touch him Sam reaches out and :touches the man.
He feels the scientist's heart stop. The needle clatters to the ground, and the calm in the area snaps. Sam looks around.
There is blood and ichor and some of the pack has been injured but most are fine. The surviving soldiers are fleeing, and the rest of the scientists are dead. The dead are chasing the soldiers. He doesn't know how or why but it doesn't matter.
He sits back on all fours and lowers his head to the alpha female. She rubs her face against his throat and the two pups clamber to him. He turns and, with the pups and the rest of the pack close on his heels, he stands and runs towards the entrance of the room.
As he approaches the door, the blue surges again and the door is blown off its hinges. The song in his blood sings louder and he knows that it is time to go home. He bounds out of the room and turns left, instinct and his nose telling him the right way to go.
Soldiers pour in but are defeated by the hounds; most of the soldiers can't even see them. They don't stand a chance against either the hounds or Sam.
He doesn't even have to touch them; the blue does its thing and simply spills out of him like sweat and blood and in its wake flames drip to the ground and crawl quickly over the floor and walls.
Then there is an alarm and the hounds huddle around him and between breaths he is gone from the compound.
~~
Main Post | Part Two
Sometimes, before he decides how to build the construct in his mind for self-defense, he is able to remember just what started the whole fucking thing. He feels like a monumental idiot but it wasn't his fault, originally. Well, whoever's fault it is, he's the only one who's able to get himself out of it.
But, as long as they leave Dean alone, it isn't too bad. The demons have sworn a blood oath that they will leave his big brother alone, and not interfere with Dean's hunts, and demons are bound by their oaths, right? Sealed with a kiss and a drop of blood, they can't weasel out of this.
Dean is safe, and while Sam himself isn't really what he'd call safe he isn't in pain. At the moment.
He isn't sure how long that will last.
First, he was treated as a prince, or a prized pet. That changed quickly enough.
~
“Samuel Winchester, it's an honor to finally meet you.”
He'd woken up in a strange room, but that wasn't all that uncommon. Or it hadn't been. But Stanford-
“Don't worry about Stanford, Sam - Eede will take your place so your brother doesn't go looking for you.”
Sam's eyes focused on an elegant woman with dark blonde hair and inhuman silver eyes. He then noticed who - or what - was beside her.
It looked just like him. It couldn't be him, though, so...
“Shapeshifter,” he rasped, surprised at how hoarse his voice was. The woman smiled in answer and tugged lightly at the thin collar around the shapeshifter's throat.
“Very good.” The woman pet the shapeshifter and it arched into her caresses, even though she only came up to its chest. “He's a very good mimic, so good that I'd be willing to bet that your dear brother won't know the difference.”
“Eye shine-”
“Well, it's not like you're actually living with your brother now, is it? He won't be able to tell the difference on the phone, after all, or any e-mails you send him. We might even have dear Eede helping Dean on hunts, when he needs the research.”
Sam jerked himself upright and glared at the woman - demon. “If you hurt my brother-”
“No, no, you misunderstand me, Samuel. We don't care about your brother, only you. He is merely assurance that you behave relatively well while you are here. Not, mind, that I think you'd need to worry overly-much. If it would make you feel better, I am prepared to offer an oath that no harm will come to your brother through any of the demons under my command as long as you remain here.” The demon's eyes were solid silver, no white and no pupil as she spoke.
“And what good is your oath?” Sam felt an instinctive urge to look away from the woman, but forced himself to meet her gaze head-on.
That's the last thing he remembered other than the taste of sea salt and blood in his mouth.
He has dreams about what happened, though he's not sure what was real and what was not.
After he woke up again, he was... courted was the only term he could think of to describe what they were doing. He was given servants, and God knew it was weird as hell to have servants, especially since he wasn't exactly sure what they were for other than making his bed, cleaning up after him, and bringing him whatever he asked for. He was well-fed, given access to anything he desired - except for internet access or a phone - and allowed free reign to wander the higher levels of the compound with a small dark-skinned woman named Erica, who was supposed to be either a guide or a bodyguard, Sam wasn't sure which. He didn't understand her purpose, except to provide companionship. He was glad that she'd never actually tried to hit on him, though she was reasonably attractive. At the time, he didn't notice but the idea of sex was repellent to him.
While he wandered the compound, he saw a few windows that showed what he assumed was outside. That was how he discovered that they were in the middle of what Sam suspected was a rainforest, though the thick windows kept the heat and humidity out so there was no way of knowing if it was real or an illusion. He didn't know enough about rainforest flora to make a guess, but he was fairly sure he wasn't in America. Or, at least, he was sure he was nowhere he'd been ever before. For all that the compound was shut in and self sufficient and so closed that he didn't see anything resembling a door to outside, there was still a scent in the air, one Sam didn't recognize, something sweet and yet sickening, like rotting flesh. He only noticed it when he was in certain hallways, and he always felt vaguely ill after he smelled it and would usually return to his room to recover.
He was certain, for some reason, that he wouldn't have any need to leave the compound. He didn't really want to leave anyway, not if they were going to keep their oaths. This was one way to protect his brother that he hadn't thought of before, though he knew Dean would be displeased and would probably call Sam a kept pet or something. He would occasionally worry about how his brother was, but the thought would drift away as another servant brought in a rare book or another brain-twisting scroll to be translated. He wasn't too worried about what was going on. He wasn't worried about much of anything, actually. It was a change from how he'd spent the last few years after he got Dean out of hell, certain that they'd both be dragged back into hell purely out of spite. The lack of stress and fear was a relief, really.
At first. That was, of course, prior to his figuring out exactly why it was that he was in the compound. Even after that it took time before the full horror of what he was in for sank in.
It started with the weird visions.
He didn't know how long it took before they started trying to... encourage the use of his abilities. Maybe they'd slipped something into the water, or the food they fed him, but for whatever reason he started having little flashes.
They didn't hurt, really; they were just annoying like a fly that constantly buzzed around his head until he had to take a swipe at them. The visions didn't make sense, but after a while they started coming more and more often. Soon they were happening when Sam was around other people. He was barely able to use the skills he'd gained from right after Dean came back to hide when a flash distracted him, trying not to let it show on his face while his brain short-circuited. He had finally gotten some sort of grip on his own visions, but these were different, these weren't visions that he was able to make happen now, or encourage to happen, or anything like that. It was like he had just started getting them again, unpredictable and annoying as hell, but at least they weren't painful. It was a small consolation.
Erica was the first to bring it up. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine.”
“It just looks like you're seeing something -”
“I'm fine. Really.” Sam didn't really understand just why, but some instinct stopped him from telling her anything about the visions.
She didn't believe him, not that that was very surprising. She called in the 'compound's medic' to speak to him about it, but Sam stonewalled the other man and refused to speak of it. The man was too eager to ask Sam questions, and something about him set Sam's teeth on edge. It didn't help that the man was clearly a quack and not worth the trouble to talk to.
A week later, after a particularly long vision that consisted of people Sam didn't recognize, Erica confronted him about it.
“Sam, I know you're seeing something. What is it?”
And that was the start of the questioning. First it was Erica, a person that played at being a companion and friend but wasn't. Then the 'medic' was brought back, though it was interesting that he showed no expertise at stitching up the gash Sam had accidentally-on-purpose gotten when he fell out of the bed and cracked his forehead on the edge of the nightstand. Hell, the small wound didn't even need sewing up, but it was just more proof that something was going on that Sam didn't like at all. The medic constantly poked and prodded at Sam, trying to get him to tell what Sam was seeing. He cited doctor-patient confidentiality, but Sam knew that was bullshit.
After that, Erica stopped showing up. Sam didn't ask.
Then things in his rooms started vanishing, starting with the laptop, then the television. Perhaps if Sam had had any understanding of raising children, or even if he'd been raised in a more normal household, he might have understood what was going on, but as he didn't he just thought it was peculiar. Whatever kept him there also kept him from wondering too much about it.
Before much longer, Sam was moved to a different room on a lower level, shared with several other young men. They all ranged in age from around sixteen to just a little older than Sam, from the looks of it. They didn't speak to Sam and left him alone. In fact, they didn't really seem to speak to each other, either. One by one they were taken away, and when they returned they simply crawled into bed and fell asleep within seconds.
Sam didn't realize until the youngest, a teen with white blond hair and dark brown eyes, had a nightmare why it was that they were so quiet.
He'd just woken up from his own nightmare, one of his normal ones that left him in a cold sweat curled in a fetal position when he heard the thrashing of the kid's bedclothes. With the only illumination coming from the door's tiny window, Sam couldn't see very well but he did see that the kid was flailing. He looked like he was trying to scream, his mouth wide open at every exhalation. The only sound Sam heard, though, was that soft, eerie whistling. The sound was disturbing, and what made it all the worse was that Sam just couldn't figure out why it was that the sound was vaguely familiar. Certainly it hadn't come from a human-
Then he knew what it was, what was making the whistling noise.
The boy's vocal chords had been cut. Sam had heard that noise once from a dog whose owners had bitched about how it wouldn't stop barking until they had the vet cut its vocal chords.
Jesus.
Sam felt sick. Or, he did for the moment before whatever kept them all calm kicked in and quieted the youth, sinking a thick fog over Sam's mind at the same time. He tried to fight it, but it settled like a heavy cloak and he went back to sleep.
They upped his dosage, or did something else to make Sam's sensitivity to whatever that grey fog was higher until he could barely stand and walk where they ordered him to. He barely noticed when he was taken into labs and hooked up to various monitors. He couldn't bring himself to care, and when they led him into the cafeteria he didn't even really notice the strange decorations on the walls, great pod-shaped things with faint shadows just visible inside. He just sat where they put him and ate the food they put in front of him. After a moment he stopped and picked at the dark brown scrubs that felt too tight on his wrists. They were too long and covered part of his hands. He shoved them up a bit to continue eating.
It was only when someone else brushed up against his arm that he realized there were other people around him, including a young woman that was probably about his age. She was tiny, barely five foot three at best, but when she brushed her hand over his forearm his mind snapped into focus and he could actually see what was going on around him again. He marveled at the room around him, surprised to see so many other people interacting and actually talking to each other. It took a second before it registered that the small dark-skinned woman was speaking to him.
“-haven't seen you around here before,” she said, her lips pursing with irritation by the time his attention finally focused on her. “What's your designation?”
“My... what?” Sam asked, thoughts scattered to the winds. God, he felt like hell. What the fuck had they put him on?
“Des. Ig. Na. Tion.” She turned her hand over on the table and shifted her sleeve out of the way to expose some sort of tattoo on her inner wrist. “You know, your barcode.”
Sam blinked at her. “I don't-”
The girl reached out and snagged his left wrist. Before he had a chance to react (god, his reaction time was shot to shit), she'd flipped his hand over to expose the underside.
Huh. Sam didn't remember that tattoo having been there earlier.
“Hmm... CV Viente...” She turned to the older man sitting beside her. “Isn't that a seer of some sort?”
The man nodded. “Clairvoyant. Twentieth they've caught, apparently.”
“Jesus Christ, they're going through them like toilet paper.” The girl seemed to notice Sam's stare and spoke to him sharply, “So what's your other name, then? Y'weren't born in the labs, so you must have a name of your own-”
“Sam,” he managed to rasp. His throat was sore. He snagged the plastic cup of water by his tray and drained it down.
The older woman sitting across from him stiffened. “What's your full name, child?”
“Samuel Winchester.” It didn't even occur to him to lie.
“Sam Winchester. Yeah, that name rings a bell...” the woman faded out, clearly thinking. She snapped back and smiled a bit. “We're being rude, haven't even introduced ourselves.” She smiled wider at Sam. “My name is Alice Townsend, and my friends here are Hawk and Saphira.” She gestured at first the man and then the girl. “Hawk and I were from the original brood, though he was caught after he hit adulthood and I was caught when I was about six. Saph here is from your generation, though she was found sooner than you were apparently.”
Sam's generation? Wait - “Do you mean to tell me you're all psychics?”
Hawk smiled grimly. “Of a sort. We each have different abilities, different designations. Saph is telepathic, which is why she was able to clear your mind from the lovely drugs they dose the newbies up with. Alice is a remote viewer. You know what that means?”
“She can see things that happen far away, right?”
“Something like that,” Alice admitted, poking at her food with a plastic fork and a grimace. “Not a very useful ability, though at least it's not something like a confessor or one of the dampeners.” She gestured at the weird decorations on the walls.
Sam squinted at them, thinking he'd gone mad and had to be hallucinating the humanoid figures in the thickly-frosted glass pods. There were many different sizes, like the things in there were of different levels of maturity. “Are those people?”
“They were,” Saphira said stiffly. She glanced towards one in particular and shuddered. “Freaky as fuck. They keep us from being able to really use our abilities.”
“But didn't you-”
“Yeah, well, they aren't as strong in the middle of the cafeteria. Notice how most of the others are closer to the center, and how some are almost clinging to the walls?”
Sam nodded, watching the other people. They seemed to stay in packs, eating slowly, though there were a few loners that clustered around the strange pods that Saphira had identified as people.
“The ones close to the walls have... rough abilities. That one,” she pointed at a thin kid of about sixteen that was hunched in a corner. “He's an elemental, can control electricity. The only time he doesn't send off sparks is when he's in the cafeteria close to one of the dampeners. That means he's powerful.”
Sam nodded, his mind making a connection between that kid Scott before the thought faded as the fog crept up to edge his vision. He poked idly at his lunch. If it was lunchtime. He wasn't quite certain just what the hell time it was, actually, and didn't even know how long he'd been in this place. It was suddenly important that he find out. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Not a clue.”
Lovely.
Shortly after that they were all herded in different directions, some off to the labs while others headed towards what Sam assumed were more sleep areas. Sam himself was led back to the small dormitory. The bed that had been the youngest kid's was stripped of its bedclothes and there was no sign that the boy would be back. Sam never saw him in the compound again.
As time passed, Sam started to get a better sense of where he was and how the compound was run. Some of the other psychics worked outside the labs, as cooks or gardeners in a huge underground garden a level down from where Sam's dorm was, and some even worked as guards. Sam still didn't really understand why the scientists were so interested in the psychics, though he had a bad feeling about it.
He also had a bad feeling about the fact that he was almost positive some of the guards were actually possessed. He hadn't quite worked up the gall under the grey fog to actually say 'Christo' around them, but sometimes they stared at Sam like something they wanted to eat. Others, maybe weaker demons, gazed at him with fear in their human-like eyes. It was damned unnerving.
He was in the compound for about longer than a month but less than half a year before they introduced him to the coffin. He was fairly sure, when the fog let him be sure of anything, that he was missing more than a few days.
The coffin wasn't what it was actually called; it was a sensory deprivation tank. Sam had heard... somewhere he couldn't remember that it could intensify psychic abilities, but he wasn't sure why they wanted him in it at the time. By that time the fog and stench was so thick that he didn't really give much of a damn about anything, let alone what they did with his body while his mind was elsewhere.
It turned out they wanted him in there to pump him full of drugs more easily. It got to the point where he couldn't tell what was reality and what was hallucination, and then they added something to the cocktail that made his veins burn and then yet another drug was added to force his visions and then he couldn't tell reality from hallucination from sleep from his visions.
Walking on a beach next to an ocean of blood -
Dean, bent over coughing up black ichor -
Dean, naked on his stomach being fucked -
A hanging man with his eyes lifted to heaven -
Sands spinning in a sandstorm, except it wasn't sand it was glass shards -
Pastor Jim, kneeling before a massive crucifix. Jesus's eyes were burnt out -
The blonde woman with silver eyes, her skin barely containing shadows that moved restlessly underneath the surface -
Explosions of flame and ice and mirrors -
Their mother Mary, with eyes black as pitch -
Dean with sulfur-yellow eyes -
Jo, being eaten alive by the ghosts of madmen -
Cassie being raped by a man with skin the color of champagne -
Sam screamed and tried to move in the coffin, but it was too close and all he could do was scream and scream and scream...
He didn't wake up until after they let him out of the tank and left him on his bunk bed. When he did, Alice was sitting in a chair close by. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, whispering “Madness is the key,” before she vanished.
Huh. So he was still asleep, and apparently dreaming Alice's presence.
The grey fog was thick in his mind again. Before long he was awakened to be taken to the cafeteria for what he assumed was lunch, though it could have been dinner for all he knew.
Hawk was there, sitting next to a thin, ridiculously attractive young man that looked about sixteen. The older man nodded at Sam as he was sat beside him, and the younger man cringed away from him and closer to Hawk. Sam watched him with mild puzzlement, then scooted his chair a little further away so as to make the kid more comfortable.
“Sam, this is Michael. Michael, this here is Sam. He's okay.” Hawk watched his charge and rubbed the younger man's back until the youth relaxed a bit.
Sam nodded to the kid. “Nice to meet you.” Michael muttered something quietly and shivered, leaning on Hawk for support.
“Sam is a seer, child. He ain't gonna hurt you.” Hawk looked up from the boy and said quietly, “Mike is a self-healer. For some reason a lot of the French designations - the ones with physical abilities - always like testing to see just how good the kid can heal.” He hugged Michael closer to him and Sam saw something black spread over Michael's skin where Hawk touched, only to watch it fade away quickly. It reappeared again, then vanished and Sam was distracted a moment before Hawk leaned away and snapped a finger in front of his nose.
Sam blinked. “If you don't mind me asking, sir, what is your ability?”
Hawk's mouth twisted, but he answered after a breath. “Death dealer, son. In particular, I cause organic things to rot. Michael is the only one who's able to survive close contact for very long.”
Sam shivered. Jesus, that was like the girl in Cold Oak, with the ability to stop a person's heart just from a touch, only more drawn out.
Before he could ask any further questions, like when his ability developed or how long he'd been in the compound, a group of younger men and one young woman approached the table. Michael cringed all the more and virtually tried to crawl under Hawk's skin.
“Mike, how you doing, man?” The apparent leader of the group, a young man with what looked like porcupine quills coming out of his scalp, rested his hand on the back of Michael's chair and leaned over the young man. He smiled widely at Sam and he saw with a start that the young man's teeth were changing to things that looked more comfortable in the mouth of a shark. “And who's this guy?”
Hawk's hand flew up to the young man's hand, but before he could touch the youth, the interloper yanked his hand out of reach. “Go away, Ezekiel.”
“Aw, but that's not very nice now is it, Hawk? I wanna meet the new guy.” Ezekiel offered his hand to Sam. When he closed then opened his eyes, they were the gold-green of a snake's, slitted until there was almost no pupil. “My name's Ezekiel, designation SS-six,” he pronounced 'six' with a French accent. “What's yours?”
Sam didn't offer his hand, not trusting the look of the young man. “Sam Winchester.” He glanced at Hawk. “I don't remember what my designation is.”
Hawk rolled his eyes and rubbed his thumb against Michael's side. “He's a seer, Ezekiel. Nothing of interest to you or yours.” He glanced at Sam. “Ezekiel's designation means he's a shapeshifter.”
Sam frowned. “But I thought shapeshifters weren't human.” He eyed Ezekiel. “Are you just borrowing that skin, or are you a different breed?”
Ezekiel bristled. Literally - his hair stood up and he sprouted fur over much of his body. “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but I'm human, just ain't one of the normals.” He thumped himself on the chest like he had something to prove. “We're better than normals and you ought to know that if you're here.”
“Whatever, 'Zeke, you know you wanna have a cooler ability than what you've got.” Saphira had joined them, sitting on the other side of Hawk. She nodded at the others. “Eve, Adam, Jobe. How's the baby doing?”
Eve, the young woman with a rounded figure, sighed. “Trouble, of course. Takes after her daddy, I'm sure.” She poked the young man apparently named Adam. “Gonna be the death of me if they let me keep her, I just know it.”
Hawk sighed. “You know they won't, Eve.”
“If she's a normal they will.” Eve rested her hand possessively over the curve of her stomach. “They wouldn't have any use for her. I could raise her.”
“And how often does that happen, especially since you know that you don't have any normal blood in you?”
“There's still a twenty-five percent chance that she'll be normal.”
“Are you willing to pin all your hopes on that percentage?”
“I have to.” Eve said this in a quiet voice, and it was clear to Sam that the young woman had already been through quite a bit. He wanted to offer her some comfort, some assurance that her child would be safe, but when he actually tried to see anything the Dampeners blocked it out.
Instead, he reached out a hand and touched hers lightly. “I wish you luck.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
Time passed, and as Eve crept closer and closer to term, the boys got tetchier. They started fights with the other psychics, scaring the weaker ones.
They especially liked tormenting Michael.
Then, the day that Eve was set to give birth, Sam found them in the process of raping Michael. Jobe, the young man whose ability was apparently like that of Jake's, was holding Michael down as he struggled. Adam was flicking fire over Michael's skin, watching blisters form and fade as quickly as he burned him. Ezekiel had his pants and underwear around his ankles and was just sliding in when Sam saw what was happening.
Before Sam had the chance to even think, he snapped Ezekiel's neck and was in the process of slamming Adam's face into a wall. Jobe was trying to get him off of the young man, but super-human strength is useless if you can't get ahold of who you're trying to use that strength against.
Guards came. Before Sam had managed to kill Adam he was dragged off by the telekinesis of one of the other psychics. In the confusion, Sam saw Hawk come and pick Michael up and carry him away. Once he knew Michael was safe, Sam relaxed and let them inject him with a sedative.
The fog descended, and when he awoke some time later, he was in a cage. He didn't know what became of Adam or Jobe, though he didn't care about them. Occasionally he would wonder about Michael and Hawk and the others but those thoughts were swept away into the mists.
Sam hadn't been in the cage for very long before he started to get the feeling that he was being watched. He didn't see anything at first, but he wasn't his father's son for nothing and soon managed to catch a glimpse of a whip-like tail out of the corner of his eye. He unfocused his eyes and in his peripheral vision he could see a sleek dark shape, like something out of a nightmare. He tensed and the figure vanished. He had a feeling it would take a while to teach himself to look correctly, but hell, it wasn't like he had anything else to do in the cage except stare at walls and get lost in thought.
He wound up with a splitting headache, something reminiscent of the migraines he got in the early months of his visions, and was not really any further along with seeing the beings when his lunch arrived. He watched the soldier approach and set the tray down with a thud before kicking it into Sam's cage and walking away.
There wasn't much on the tray, but it was better than starvation and even if they drugged the food it wouldn't do them any real good, since there weren't any mind readers in the room with him. Unless whatever it was he was catching out of the corner of his eyes...
Later on that week (he had to count his own sleep cycles as days since he still didn't know what day - or even month it was), he finally figured out what the creatures were.
Hellhounds.
It took watching them bring in a motionless body and seeing something invisible tear it to shreds before Sam got the picture.
He eventually learned to see the hounds without getting a headache. Of course, that was when the scientists decided to try using the sensory deprivation tank on him again.
While he was in there, he lost track of time and everything else. He relived every day of his being, including his own birth though he wasn't sure if that was real or another hallucination. Then his thoughts turned towards the future again, and somewhere in the middle he heard Alice's words again.
Madness is the key.
His mind chewed on that for some time. Nothing came to him.
Not until Alice visited him in his dreams.
He was sitting in the cage, having a quiet dream for once that involved watching two hellhound pups playing with a human skull when she appeared.
“Sam, how are you doing child?”
He blinked at her. “As well as can be expected. How are you doing?”
Alice smiled at him. “You think I'm a figment of your imagination, don't you?”
“You mean you aren't? I thought your ability was geared elsewhere.” He watched her and noticed she was more solid than the bars of his cage.
She sat down on a chair that suddenly appeared. “Well, my own was.” She leaned forward and lost her smile. “Let me tell you a story, Sam, and after that you can ask me anything you want to.”
“Okay.” It wasn't like he had anything better to be doing.
“Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Alice. She was special, and when she was little she had been found by a man with yellow eyes.”
Sam stiffened, but kept listening.
“He took her to a special building far from her home, in another country where nobody knew her. There, she met other special children, including a cute little blonde girl with a smile like the sun named Mary.”
Mom, Sam thought. He didn't speak.
“The man with yellow eyes had a group of scientists working with him, and they were trying to find a very very special child, more special than the two girls, though the girls didn't know that. The first little girl's specialness was that she could touch something and see what had happened in the thing's past, and the blonde little girl could heal small wounds on animals and sometimes people though it wore her out.
“The man decided that the blonde girl wasn't special enough to have live with him and the other special children, and so she was sent back to her family. The other little girl never saw her again, but when she was twenty-five she heard that the blonde girl had given birth to a little boy. The young woman was worried that the yellow-eyed man would take the little boy, but he never showed up at the special building.
“Apparently, that had given the yellow-eyed man an idea, and he passed that on to the scientists. They started encouraging the special young people to have children, to see if they would have special children themselves.
“Alice was paired with a young man who had been recently brought, a young man that was nicknamed Hawk. They had a baby together, a little boy they named Eden. He was a special child, but his power was terrifying, because he could take the soul right out of a person.
“Eden was so special that he was taken away from the couple, and the scientists were fascinated by him. They were so fascinated by him that when Eden turned sixteen he went crazy and wound up taking his own soul out so that he wouldn't suffer any more.”
Sam shuddered. He didn't want to know what happened to Eden's body - knowing what he already did know suggested that the poor boy's body was still somewhere, being experimented on.
“Alice didn't want anything else to happen to any other children she might have had, but before much longer she was forced to get pregnant again by another young man. She didn't want her baby to suffer, so one day when she was in the labs and the doctors were distracted, she touched a table nearby and saw that one of the nurses had recently had an abortion. She remembered that information, and when she saw her chance she fell down a flight of steps.
“The baby died, and Alice survived. However, the baby would have been another special child, one that could walk through dreams and talk to others that way, and when Alice killed her baby she got that ability instead. No one knew that abilities could be taken like that, and Alice kept that to herself, not wanting any more attention than she already had.
“Then, after a while Alice was left alone. She watched others come in, younger and younger, until a very special young man, possibly the most special of all, came in. He was the younger son of Alice's friend, and he had killed other special children in self-defense and had their abilities as well as his own Sight. Alice knew that this was the special child that the yellow-eyed man had been looking for, but by then he had been killed by the blonde woman's older son and the special building had been taken under new management.
“However, this special boy was meant for great things, and one of those things was told to Alice by another seer, the first one that the yellow-eyed man had found.
“He was going to be trained like a soldier, and would destroy the world as the people in the building knew it then rebuild it for the better. And Alice had to help him as best she could, and get the other special people to help him as well.”
Alice sat back and sighed. “So. Now you know all I know.”
Sam inhaled, then exhaled softly. “But what does 'madness is the key' mean?”
Alice laughed tiredly. “It means you're going to need to protect yourself. The best way to do that it to let go of that hard-won control you have there and lock your mind up so tight even you can't get through. They had you locked in the room with the mindreaders for two reasons, Sam: to find out just what you're capable of and to see if they could coerce you into finding other children for them to bring back here.” She sighed and started to fade out. “You're going to have to figure out your own way of protecting yourself, but I'd suggest mimicking what happens to the other seers and just going mad. Then your mind would be too chaotic for them to use against you.”
~
Sam wakes up and starts to plan, trying to be careful to try and add layers of thoughts for confusion. He isn't sure he's doing it right, but no one comes into the room with him so he assumes that he's hiding his thoughts well enough.
Eventually, he gets good at layering his thoughts. After that he starts building constructs in his mind to lock away everything that makes him who he is.
That is when he discovers that sanity is more fluid than he had first thought.
Around the fountain of his sanity he builds constructs and as he builds them he finds that he has locked away just what it is that keeps him sane. It worries him at first, but as the time goes and he continues building he just learns to save up some sanity in little pockets so he doesn't run dry too quickly. He wants to have enough defenses in his mind set up so that nothing can get through to him without considerable effort, and then only if Sam himself allows it.
One loop of sanity, he locks into the form of a red thread so that he can find his way back. That works fairly well... until he loses that thread somewhere in his mind.
Then, a haze - different from the fog of the drugs - descends over him.
There is a comfort in the haze, as much as what little is left of Sam's sanity would wish it were otherwise. He's too busy working on instinct, throwing surface thoughts up for the demons or psychics or whoever is listening in this time for much thought of how he'll be once he's finished with the constructs. He's about halfway through working on the bones of religion and belief and protection rites when some instinct tells him that he needs to come to the surface. He swims up and his eyes focus as he passes the level of white noise just below the surface thoughts.
Something is happening with the hellhounds. They're shifting restlessly: one of the females (a younger one with markings that were lighter before Sam went under) is pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. Most of the males are watching her with interest, and the other females are grooming each other though they occasionally pause to watch the pacing female.
Then, as if shocked by a Taser, the restless female jolts and then crouches, glaring at the males. She snarls at them, and Sam can almost see waves of red flickering over her body.
The males crouch down as well, watching her tail lash back and forth like a pissed off cat.
Without warning, she's running in a blur of motion and less than a second later the males are after her. There isn't much space in the kennel for her to really get some distance between herself and her followers (suitors?), so she dodges with speed and grace around them and the other females, trying to use them as obstacles to slow the males down.
Sam watches with interest, supposing that this is some sort of mating ritual for the helhounds. He is grateful, for once, of the cage that he's in - it protects him when the female bangs into it before using the wall beside the cage as a springboard for a spectacular leap over the heads of many of her suitors.
Before much longer, the female is caught by an older male and they fall into a frenzy of mating while the unsuccessful males wander back over to where the rest of the pack is lounging. They lick themselves, and Sam notices one in particular, a younger male, cleaning his groin area with forceful movements of his tongue. That's when he sees the thick black... something or another that has oozed out of the males' genitals. He looks around, studying the other males and one by one they all start cleaning that particular area as if their lives depended on it.
Hm. Some mating response, apparently. Sam glances around once more, making sure that the pack is calm again, then goes back to work in his mind, leaving noise about the mating on his surface level.
Time passes endlessly. Sam continues to build in his mind and watches the hellhounds. He stays in his cage, though he already knows how to undo the lock, as he's already seen just what the pack can do to humans. He watches the young female and sees how her belly starts to grow and drop. She becomes restless, unable to sleep well at all and Sam has taken to humming and crooning at her in an attempt to calm her whenever she approaches his cage. She starts whining sometimes, and tries to settle in amidst the pack, but they shift away from her as if she is contagious.
They know something is wrong with her. Sam doesn't know what it is, but it's making the pack act strangely. He doesn't like that.
One sleep cycle, Sam is awakened by the female's howling. He jerks awake and is immediately assaulted by images and feelings.
Pain pain pain sharp strange agony fire across belly three pups dead in her she can feel it no the pack will die her pups are dying -
Something compels Sam to unlock his cage. He creeps towards where the thoughts are coming from, though he would prefer to hide in a far corner. He can't just let some poor animal suffer like that, even a creature from Hell.
Once, a long time ago, Sam had watched one of Pastor Jim's congregation pull a calf out of a pregnant and dying cow. It was painful to see and the cow didn't survive, but the calf did and some things weren't all that different, were they?
The pack has surrounded the pregnant female, and she's twisting in agony, letting out unearthly howls and yips of fear and pain and terror. They are crooning to her as if in comfort and worry, and Sam tries to make himself as small of a threat as possible the closer he gets until he is crawling on hands and knees, his head lowered but eyes on the pregnant female.
He's not sure if she's actually come to term, or even if she has recognizable anatomy, but as he crawls to her he can see that her stomach is rippling like contractions. He tries to croon to her like the other hounds, and they ignore him even though he is human and thus prey. He presses a hand lightly to the female's belly and feels another contraction rip through. The female howls again, and her tail lashes before going up against her back. Sam watches in amazement as she expels a dark bag of fluid, and then another and another. Sam immediately begins to tear the sacks open, but he rears back at the smell of old death.
Those pups didn't survive. He backs away and one of the other females approaches the dead pups, licking and whining at the corpses to get up and move around. When they don't, the hound throws back her head and lets out the most mournful sound Sam has ever heard. The rest of the pack, except for the childless mother, joins in.
The young female trembles, and Sam can see that another sack is stuck halfway in and halfway out. He rests a hand against her side and she turns to look at him with dark eyes.
Save them.
The thought is clear as anything, and Sam is stunned into immobility for a moment before he nods to her and goes to her rear. He carefully croons to her, and since he's not sure that she's not psychic he sends her soothing images of pack and running through a forest for fun. She relaxes, and he tentatively reaches around and feels around the pup sack.
The pup feels fully formed - he can recognize two legs and when he slides his hands inside her he can feel two more and a little head. He gently feels around and finds the problem - two pups are trying to come at the same time, and they've tangled their umbilical chords around each other until they've stuck.
He tries to ease the female open a little more, hoping that that will help them move out more easily. He manages to get the first one to ease the rest of the way out and then immediately starts trying to encourage the female to push one more time. While she is doing so, he tears open the birthing sack and at first he thinks that it's another dead one but then he realizes that there is no stink of death on it and when he smooths away some of the birthing mess from the pups face and mouth it opens its mouth and breathes.
Then the other pup is coming out and even as Sam tears that sack open the pup is struggling inside, determined to get out and live. It lets out a demanding little whimper and starts moving immediately towards Sam. Sam gently pushes it towards its mother instead, and carefully takes the weaker one and places it against its mother's teat.
The weaker pup stirs, then latches on to the teat. The stronger one finds a teat of its own without any trouble and Sam withdraws so the mother can clean her babies without his interference.
He is a mess, covered in birthing fluids and in need of a bath or at least a quick rinse, but instead he finds himself falling asleep before he's even managed to leave the pack. He thinks he hears a thank you in his mind but he's not sure and before he can think on it any more he's gone.
He wakes up and he is warm. When he opens his eyes, Sam sees he is surrounded by the pack. The young mother is resting against his right side with her pups between her and Sam. The others are spread around with Sam and the mother in the middle. Sam doesn't think that he could actually get out from amongst them without waking at least one of them and possibly stepping on more than a few. He decides it isn't worth it, and just rests there with them all.
This close, he can see the peculiar markings on the hellhounds. Overall, they are very darkly colored, dark grey with a few that are nearly black. They have even darker patterns on their flanks visible from this distance, though, with long thick horizontal lines on either side of their spines and what look like a cross between leopard spots and Rorschach ink splotches. They are fascinating, and more than a little hypnotizing. The mother's face is turned towards him, and he can see that she looks like she has black tears going down either side of her face near her muzzle and horizontal lines under her eyes like thick black makeup.
For such vicious and dangerous beasts, they are beautiful in their own way.
The pups grow, and as they do Sam falls deeper into his madness. Soon enough he loses touch with all reality and before the pups are weaned the pack has adopted him and he feels safer in his madness than in his sanity and that-
The pups, grown and running with him -
Walking down a corridor filled with locked and unlocked doors -
Blue light flooding his veins -
Dean calling out his name and reaching for him -
His hand, covered with markings like that of the hellhounds -
His marked hands on a bare scarred back, sinking teeth into the back of a strong neck -
Blackness.
Nothing makes sense anymore, and that's fine with him. He doesn't really remember his name, doesn't remember how he got here or even when the last time it was that he ate. He only remembers some things, and the memories are vague at best.
He remembers green-brown eyes and a freckled nose, and a powerful dark beast of a car. He remembers golden-blonde hair and a wide smile atop a female figure. He's not sure who these people are, or even if they are real or just imaginary. It doesn't matter.
The dark beasts around him shift in their communal sleep and one pup suckles on his finger while the other rests at his armpit. Their mother is a warm presence at his back.
The pack is safety. The pack is his home. The memories aren't as important as the pack. They glitter like shattered mirrors and raindrops on windows and he tries to collect them but they slip out from between his fingers and he is not sad. He doesn't remember what sadness is, or what fury or pain or fear feels like.
In his head a battered cassette tape of Metallica plays, even though he doesn't remember who Metallica is or why it holds any significance to him.
Blood calls to blood, and he's eventually gotten used to the singing of his blood for something he's not got with him. It is far away, that thing that sings to him, and most times the fog drowns out the song with white noise. He can still hear it, though, like a radio station fading in and out of range. The song is sometimes swept up by the song of the pack, and little is as comforting and familiar as the two twined together.
Then, in one moment, that all changes.
He is shooed into his cage for some reason and the pack is displeased. It does not like members being taken from it, especially the nurse that watches the pups while the pack is hunting. The figures doing the shooing are dressed in fur the color of old and dried dung, while other figures in sun-white are talking amongst themselves. The pack shies away from the white figures, taking nips at the dung colored ones and making them twitch like prey animals.
He doesn't like being apart from the pack any more than it does. He bares his fangs at the white ones, but goes into the cage. He stays crouched low to the ground, ready to spring and fight if they get too close to him. The pack has taught him how to move and fight and kill when need be, and he does not fear the dung ones or the white ones.
The white ones talk amongst themselves, watching him like he is prey. He snarls at them, and they write on their little notepads and cluck to each other.
Then he hears a word he remembers, knows in the very marrow of his bones.
Brother.
His mind snaps into focus and he listens, the cluckings starting to make sense.
“-only one with a sibling other than the Dios, a brother-”
“-carrier of the gene?”
“-sure. One way or another we can find out when the scouts track him down -”
“-catch him? He is a hunter-”
“Shouldn't be a problem if they have teleporters with them, maybe the twins.”
“I don't trust those two, no matter what the higher ups say. They're creepy as hell-”
“What is the sibling's name?”
“Dean, but does it matter?”
Dean. He knows that name. Green-brown eyes come to his mind's eye and something further back flips a switch.
A voice he barely recognizes as his own speaks deep in his mind. They want to hurt Dean.
They won't get the chance. A feeling he should know stirs in a pocket of his mind. It is tinged dark red, like that of heart's blood.
Rage.
Steel-grey lines it and cages it for use. They won't get the chance to touch Dean.
A flicker of thought slides to the surface.
His name is SamuelSamSammy Winchester. And they will keep him no longer.
After a time they let him out of the cage. Apparently they don't notice a difference, as they pause by the cage after it's opened, not paying him any mind at all even though the pack has sensed his turmoil and is pacing back and forth, especially the pups. Their minds touch Sam's, a questing touch to see why he is acting as he is.
Pack safe? they ask him.
Danger he sends back, letting them rifle through his mind to understand him. They find his fears for Dean, understand that he is pack and love and mate and they howl.
The dung-colored humans - soldiers - start and lift their weapons to the hounds but it is already too late. The pack is on the move.
The one leading the charge is the mother of the pups, enraged with the thought of danger to her pups and her pack. She is a blur of motion, and when she lands on one of the soldiers Sam knows that he dies.
There are about twenty soldiers, and ten or so white ones - scientists - still in the room. Sam pounces the nearest scientist, his claws growing long enough to rip out the man's throat. A soldier tries to pull him off, jabbing a sharp jolt of electricity through Sam's body but another of the pack, a male this time, throws the soldier off with a powerful lunge. Sam is stunned for a moment, and he sees a scientist with a sharp needle approaching. He can't make himself move, but somewhere deeper in him a rush of blue floods his body and just before the scientist manages to touch him Sam reaches out and :touches the man.
He feels the scientist's heart stop. The needle clatters to the ground, and the calm in the area snaps. Sam looks around.
There is blood and ichor and some of the pack has been injured but most are fine. The surviving soldiers are fleeing, and the rest of the scientists are dead. The dead are chasing the soldiers. He doesn't know how or why but it doesn't matter.
He sits back on all fours and lowers his head to the alpha female. She rubs her face against his throat and the two pups clamber to him. He turns and, with the pups and the rest of the pack close on his heels, he stands and runs towards the entrance of the room.
As he approaches the door, the blue surges again and the door is blown off its hinges. The song in his blood sings louder and he knows that it is time to go home. He bounds out of the room and turns left, instinct and his nose telling him the right way to go.
Soldiers pour in but are defeated by the hounds; most of the soldiers can't even see them. They don't stand a chance against either the hounds or Sam.
He doesn't even have to touch them; the blue does its thing and simply spills out of him like sweat and blood and in its wake flames drip to the ground and crawl quickly over the floor and walls.
Then there is an alarm and the hounds huddle around him and between breaths he is gone from the compound.
~~
Main Post | Part Two