Mutagen

Second random idea I had! Although I can probably stretch this out for at least two more posts since I actually have an idea of story here. Be warned though - the writing may still be rubbish. Appologies, etc.

Seran stifled a yawn as they hurried along, the soldiers silent and tense around her. It was around three in the morning, and every window they marched past showed nothing but black outside, not even starlight piercing the veil. There was no moon; it was a new moon tonight, after all, as Seran well knew. She wondered if it was possible to see the rest of the city from them, but dismissed the thought. They were moving far too fast for her to check. She wondered, not for the first time that night, what exactly the rush was.

They rounded a corner and started up the final corridor. Seran looked between the two soldiers striding in front of her and saw the ornate double doors awaiting them at the end, gilded garishly and gleaming softly in the lantern light. Servants still in their night things lined the walls, looking wide-eyed and scared, and Seran felt a pang of nerves. What had happened tonight? And why in the name of all that was holy was she here?

They arrived at the doors, and one of the soldiers in front of Seran had a hurried, muttered exchange with another standing on guard. He nodded, and slid inside the doors, apparently with slight difficulty: the doors seemed heavy under the gold. Light spilled out into the dimly lit corridor for a moment, and was accompanied by voices – a woman, angry and scared; a man, grim and calm, and the soldier, clanking slightly in his armour. Seran couldn’t make out the words. Then the doors were pushed wider, the soldier behind Seran nudged her forward slightly and she was inside the room, face to face with the Regent of Dalamann.

At first, the obvious gravity of the situation escaped her as she was distracted by the room itself. Seran had never seen so much silk in one place in all her life. The entire production lines for a year of three factories must have made the bed clothes alone, and that was before she noticed the silk-panelled walls and the sheets suspended from the ceiling. The lanterns had been carefully and astutely placed by the windows, she noticed, and a fire burned merrily in the enormous fireplace. The overall effect was of gold, and it was so effective that Seran found her eyes unwilling to look at the room’s other occupants.

It was an effect that did not last long, however.

“Are you the scientist?” the Regent demanded. She looked distinctly dishevelled, her anxiety plain in her sunken eyes.

“Professor Seran Dulann, my lady.” Seran bowed over the woman’s hands. “My pleasure.”

“We have urgent need of you, Professor,” the Regent said, although as she spoke a veil of self-control seemed to be slowly creeping over her. “We were visited by an assassin tonight.”

Seran’s breath caught in her throat. An assassin? Inside the citadel? How was that possible?

The man standing quietly behind the Regent stepped forward. He seemed pale, even more so than the Regent, but he radiated an aura of calm strength that she found somehow comforting.

“It wasn’t a normal assassin,” he said handing a luxograph to Seran, who took it mutely. “We caught him in the act, but before we could engage him he became…that.”

The picture showed a creature that could at best be described as humanoid, but was unrecognisable as anything human. Its entire skull had lengthened, its nose apparently on its way to becoming a snout, whilst its pupils had become slits in its eyes. Its nails were becoming claws, and it looked as though it had torn at its chest and throat with them, leaving gashes that could easily have been two inches deep. Its skin looked wet, slimy almost, and a disturbing grey that made her think of slugs. But its mouth disturbed Seran most. It was open, wider than should have been possible, with a pair of hinged, hollow fangs unsheathed and pointing outward, ready to kill, had someone not, with great foresight and presence of mind, buried the crossbow bolt between its eyes that rose merely an inch from its skull.

“Can you tell what it is?” the Regent asked. Seran glanced up, and saw that the woman was staring at her intently.

“Not just from a luxograph,” she said after a moment. “Although I have a few theories. Do you still have the corpse?”

“Oh yes,” the man said gravely, and Seran suddenly noticed the glasses he wore. He was blind. “It’s down in the dungeons at the moment, under heavy guard. We can take you to it momentarily. But first-”

“First you must see my son,” the Regent interrupted, and marched between them to the massive four-poster bed. Seran followed obediently.

“The boy in the bed was nine, Seran knew, but he looked like a six-year-old. He seemed white, the dark rings under his eyes in stark contrast and highlighting his sunken cheekbones and gaunt face. He looked close to death, and the enormity of the situation suddenly hit Seran. The Prince Regent…

“I’m no healer,” she said, alarmed.

“We don’t require one,” the man responded. “But we do need help with his diagnosis. We thought he had been poisoned, but we’ve flushed his system and performed every check we could think of, given him every antidote. If anything, he’s grown worse.”

The Regent sat gently on the edge of the bed, taking her son’s hand. She didn’t seem to hear them anymore. Seran’s heart went out to her.

“But why am I here?” she asked wretchedly. “I can’t diagnose something that no healer can.”

“Actually we think you may be able to,” the man answered. “Professor, I’ve been a devout follower of your research for the past three years. You’ve done studies into, shall we say, the more controversial aspects of our society with astounding results. And a large part of that research was concerned with Undesirable Viruses, was it not?”

Seran stared at him for a few seconds, and then turned back to the boy, hurriedly sitting on the other side of the bed and pulling up his eyelids. That was one scenario she’d been trying hard to deny, as soon as she’d seen the luxograph. Politically, the ramifications were too much.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” she commanded. “And get me a hand light.”

Surprisingly, it was the Regent who moved to fetch the light. Above the panic, part of Seran’s mind wondered if she’d be executed.

“We think he had help getting in,” the man said. Seran’s stomach clenched, and she quickly took the hand light offered by the Regent, who merely stood back and watched. “No one saw or heard anything, no doors were forced, no windows broken. We’d never have known until the morning if it hadn’t been for a soldier in one of the routine patrols who thought he heard something in the room. They burst in and found the assassin over the Prince. They engaged him –”

“Wait,” Seran said. Pupil reactions normal, and the veins in his eyes seem to be functioning normally. “What was he doing specifically over the bed?”

“There’s the problem,” the man answered quietly. “It was dark in the room, none of the lanterns were lit. They couldn’t see properly.”

Damn. “How long ago?” He’s sweating abnormally, we could test that…

“About four hours.”

“Symptoms?” Check his gums.

What you see,” the man replied. “Or so I’m told,” he added wryly.

“Any entry or exit wounds on him?” Seran asked. Her heart was beating so hard she was surprised no one else could hear it. “Even tiny stratches?” Tilt his head back, can you see the back of his throat?

“Yes.”

Seran froze, and looked up at the Regent. She seemed dazed, all semblance of self-control gone.

“It was cleaned up, but they took samples from it. It’s on his side, here…”

She joined Seran, and they both rolled the Prince gently onto his side, his mother tenderly rolling up his night shirt to expose a large dressing over his ribs. Seran carefully peeled it off, and examined the wound.

It was an unusual wound, but not what she had feared. The cleaning had been thorough, and it actually looked healthy enough. The blood supply was fine. Despite his colour, she could at least erase that worry from the Regent’s mind.

“He’s not got Magyarin Anaemia,” Seran said, and she could almost feel the relief that emanated from the Regent. “I mean, I’ll test his blood to be positive, but in my mind there’s no doubt. It’s very fast acting usually, but since he’s exhibiting no symptoms after four hours…”

She trailed off, rubbing her jaw worriedly. It hadn’t really been Anaemia she’d been worried about. Carefully, she picked the hand light back up and circled round to his mouth again. There was something not right there.

“When you engaged the assassin,” she addressed the man, “and he transformed, what happened?”

“Well, it was all very sudden,” the man said. “He heard the guards and looked round, and he went to stand up. But then, all of a sudden, he was bent double. That was when he started changing. He was clawing at his throat and chest, apparently, and screaming, and then one of the guards shot him. It was very fast. No more than about ten seconds.”

“Did anyone notice if the Prince was awake at the time?” Seran asked, her heart sinking fast.

“Yes,” said the man. “Apparently he was screaming too, but then he started choking, and then in seconds of the assassin being killed he fell unconscious. He’s been getting worse ever since.”

Seran stared hard into the boy’s mouth. Back of the throat, back of the throat…there. It was hard to make out, but the skin there was discoloured slightly in one patch. And part of his tongue on closer inspection, and the inside of his cheek…

“I need to see that corpse,” Seran said tightly.

**************

It had been strapped to a table, one probably used for torture under normal circumstances, and was distinctly dead. Seran was glad; she’d been very afraid that it would still be alive, but even from the door she could see that it wasn’t. Quickly, she strode closer to it.

It was hideous. Up close the resemblance to a slug was even more pronounced that it had been in the luxograph, and the stench was horrendous. Its eyes stared emptily up towards the ceiling, and Seran shuddered. The thing was wrong.

“Is it Lycanthropic?” the man asked behind her, making her jump slightly. She shook her head, and then remembered he was blind.

“No,” Seran answered. “Definitely not. Lycanthropy sufferers develop lupine forms only. This…thing, whatever it is, bears no relation to a wolf.”

“What is it, though?” he asked, moving closer. She looked back at it.

“Good question,” she muttered. “It looks like a cross between a man and…something slimy. Except-”

Seran stopped and stared at the claws. She couldn’t think of anything even remotely slug-like that had claws. And those fangs? They were hinged like snakes’ fangs, with sheathes in the roof of the thing’s mouth, although they didn’t seem to have developed properly yet. Carefully, Seran readjusted her surgical gloves and pressed upwards on one of them. A viscous clear liquid oozed out of the end, and she quickly caught it in a specimen jar. Venom? That didn’t bode well.

She looked at the wounds on the thing’s neck and chest next, clearly made by its own claws. Why had it done that? Seran wondered. Even without the crossbow bolt in its brain, the damned thing would have killed itself in mere minutes doing that. What on earth had possessed it to do such a thing? It was almost –

Seran caught her breath. Almost as though it couldn’t breathe.

She tilted its head to the side and up, and there, nestling under its jaw was a set of malformed, closed gills.

“It’s got gills,” she reported calmly.

“What?” The man stood by her elbow and she helped him into a pair of gloves before guiding his hand to them.

“There. Except, they’re not open yet,” Seran said. “When it transformed, I think it switched its breathing system over to the gills, but then it had no air. That’s why it clawed at itself like that. It was trying to get an airway clear.”

“But,” the man frowned, “why transform if what you transform into is aquatic anyway? Even if its gills were open it couldn’t have breathed in that room.”

“I’ve no idea,” Seran admitted. “My best guess is that it couldn’t control the transformation.”

“Ah.” The man nodded. “It didn’t mean to change, and once it had it couldn’t change back.”

“Probably.”

“What’s wrong with the Prince Regent?”

Seran closed her eyes.

“I think he may have swallowed some of its blood.”

The man stood perfectly still for a moment, and Seran could hear the wind whistling through a crack in the window at the top of the wall. She knew what he’d ask next.

“Will that infect him?”

“I don’t know,” Seran answered. “It’s possible. If it were simply Lycanthropic, then swallowing its blood wouldn’t have any effect. Only the venom carries the virus. But this thing is something else, and something is definitely wrong with the Prince.”

The man muttered something under his breath. Seran didn’t query it.

“Do you think he’ll turn into this?” he asked heavily. Seran bit her lip.

“Honestly?” she asked. “I think it’s killing him. Even with Lycanthropy, not everyone infected will actually develop the disease. Around sixty percent die as their bodies reject it. Obviously that may not be the case here, but…he’s in a bad way.”

“Tell me what this thing is, Professor.”

The man said it quietly, staring grimly and blindly down at the gleaming corpse on the table.

“I can’t,” Seran answered. “Can I study it a bit longer? If I can run some tests I may be able to turn something up.”

“Take all the time you need,” he said, straightening suddenly and turning to the door. I’ll have our scientists sent down to you, use them as you see fit. If you need me, if you find anything, ask for Reyfe. I’ll be with the Regent.”

Seran nodded, and turned back to the corpse. It was going to be a long night.