Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (71 page)

As he took his first cautious breath he was relieved that the mask had been soaked in mint extract. So now instead of rotten meat and organs it was minty rotten meat and organs.

“Next time spray it with ether,” Doc gagged, taking a step in front of the two of them. “Where is the scientist’s office? Let’s get this over with.”

Leo walked in front of Greyson but Greyson stayed back, he walked over to the mirror on the side of the wall and looked at it.

The fur had started falling off of the little ones in thick chunks, and their flesh had turned a sick grey green. Their brains nothing but masses of grey with thick black veins snaking all throughout them. He must have smashed their tiny skulls in.

Greyson wiped his eyes and went to turn from the mirror when he stopped, it almost seemed to have moved. He shrugged it off and walked towards Leo and Doc. He had no desire to go into the enclosures the other animals had been kept in. The smell told him how their stories had ended. If there was a whipwolf in here somewhere it was surely dead.

Leo was looking down at Killian’s map, he looked stressed. His hazel eyes shot up to a far corner of the lab, Greyson followed his gaze and he saw what he was looking at. It was very small, but it was there, a small imbedded camera in the corner. The red light permanently shut off.

“Killian was never in his office, but I recognise this layout, it’s not all together different from Kreig,” Leo said, he walked towards a door to the left and opened it. He grabbed a box and propped the door open.

“I’m going to look for some more medical supplies, you two do your thing,” Doc called, then he made a disgusted noise. “These fucking things smell worse than the Slaught House.”

Greyson drew his combat shot gun, just to be safe and followed his husband. Listening out for anything out of the ordinary but there was none. The lab was empty of all things living, though not of the dead.

As Leo carried on down a small hallway Greyson looked in every window. They both walked past a dozen or so incubator tubes filled with murky grey liquid, their contents now dead without their surrogate parent to tend to them.

There was also jars and jars of preserved specimens in the rooms. All neatly labelled and placed on shelves. Horrible monster, some so deformed it was obvious why they had never lived. Others looked eerily human, small babies the size of your hand. Some covered in fur, others in scales.

Leo refused to look, Greyson knew why but knew better than to mention it.

“Here we go, yes, it has his name on it.” Leo stopped at a door. It had a small gold plaque on the front with Dr. Perish Dekker written on the front. With a quick scan of the card key they both walked inside.

Leo immediately walked to the computer and sat down, he turned on the computer and let out a small sigh of relief as it started up. “They’re still using the same operating system, I hope everything else is the same.” The blond haired leader wiped his face with his hand and took in a breath. “Are you going to look at the videos?”

“Only the parts with Nero, the rest I’ll leave. I’m having enough problems with Reaver as it is, if we get curious later we’ll have the files on the chip.” Greyson walked over and started massaging his husband’s shoulders, he was as tense as a cat in a deacon cage. “Are you sure you don’t want me here?”

He shook his head and put his hand on Greyson’s. “You know the saying, hun.”
“You can’t confess to something you don’t know,” Greyson sighed, he gave Leo one last squeeze.

“I know you don’t like it but... I just have to make sure they didn’t try and make more after. I want to trust Elish but...”

The thought made Greyson’s mouth twitch. “From what we’ve heard... he gave up after. Surely Elish has all this covered, you know he’s always two dozen steps ahead of us, even now.”

“I know... I just have to be sure.” Leo’s voice was a whisper. He brought out a small blue piece of plastic. To anyone else it looked like garbage, but it was computer memory. A small device that only King Silas’s scientists had.

“The memory is almost full, but Perish probably... has a few of them,” Leo said quietly. Greyson tried to rub his shoulders again, anything to try and relax his husband. The stress of him being here was more than Greyson could think to comprehend. He had left that life behind many years ago. It had been a long time since they had been in an underground lab.

Like the one they had spent their first few months together in.

Greyson leaned down and kissed Leo on the cheek. “Radio me if you need any help, love.”
“I will.”

When Leo came to check on him, hours had gone by. Every file Greyson clicked had two hours of feed on it, and it had taken him an hour to find the day that Nero was there. By that time he had seen several things he wished he could un-see, but on the positive side he had pages and pages of notes regarding the going ons of Skyfall’s lost scientist.

Though this wasn’t what was on the screen right now. Greyson had gotten distracted by the videos with Reaver in them. He was now watching Reaver get the ever loving shit beat out of him by Perish.

This was when he had first gotten captured, he was in the hallway stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers. The scientist was screaming at him and threatening him. Reaver wasn’t moving, wasn’t reacting, he was stone silent. Letting the mad man beat him. Very unlike the Reaver he had known, but Perish had the one thing that would make Reaver submit to him: Killian.

“I never thought I would see him like that.” Greyson shook his head. “I told you... he’s ready. Look at him? He’s putting Killian ahead of himself, ahead of the pain and the taunting. He could kill Perish right now but he’s not.”

He could hear Leo grasp the chair he was sitting on. “Please... not now.”
Greyson turned around and motioned to the screen. “This is proof, this is proof right here. He’s ready, what still needs work Killian will do for him. I told you, I told you Killian was good for him.” The leader let out an excited breath. “I think he’s ready for us to tell him.”

Dead silence. Just the humming of the computer and Leo’s fingers scraping against the back of the chair as they tensed.

“He’s too young,” Leo whispered. “He’s just a child.”
“He’s almost twenty, what were we doing at twenty?”

“
Almost
twenty,” Leo said strained. “And you promised me we would wait until he was twenty one.”
“You made me promise fifteen, then you made me promise eighteen and now you made me promise twenty one. What next twenty five? Forty? Sixty?”

“He just started dating Killian, they deserve time to be happy.”
“King Silas continues to destroy the future of the human race because you want Reaver and Killian to date awhile longer? I’ve waited long enough.”

“He’s just a child,” Leo’s hesitation quickly turned to anger. “And he never asked for this, this is your dream not his, he wants nothing to do with... he’s... he’s not a great wonderful hero, Greyson.”

“He can be!” Greyson raised his voice. “I see it in him, I see how he reacts to things now. There is hope. This hasn’t been a waste of time.” Greyson sighed and repeated it under his breath. “This hasn’t been a waste of time.”
“
MY SON
is not a waste of time!” Greyson jumped at the ferocity in his husband’s voice. “Don’t you ever say that saving him was a waste of time. We have a good son, who is a good person no matter what issues he has, but he deserves to choose who he wants to be. Not have you make the decisions for him.”

Greyson gave out an aggravate noise. “If we let him chose he will be a common sentry for the rest of his fucking life and never leave Aras.” He slammed the keyboard tray into the desk and stood up.

Leo’s eyes blazed, his stance was firm and unwavering. “If that is what he wants.”
“When we took him in... you said you would do this with me.”
“Then I realized how wrong it was to put that on a child. Especially one that hates helping people. Reaver isn’t the savior of the wasteland, Greyson. He wasn’t born to be one, and no matter how much you train him, or how much Killian helps him. I think we should accept that, and give him a good, simple life.”

The stoic faced leader of Aras shook his head stubbornly. “He’s proving that my methods are working.”
“Even if they are working, I wont put that on him... not yet, maybe not ever.”
Greyson pushed past the defiant Leo and stalked out of the room. He started walking back to the entrance to the second level. “King Silas will continue his reign until time ends because you want to give Reaver a mediocre life?” He turned a corner and glanced into one of the windows, seeing the rows of spliced specimens. “What a waste of talent.”

Leo followed him, but he didn’t say anything back. This aggravated Greyson, twenty years together and his husbands actions still baffled him at times.

“For someone who has a first hand experience with how fucked up King Silas is, I fail to see why you are so against this.”

Leo exhaled and for a moment there was silence between them. When he did talk, his tone had changed. “I don’t know Greyson, maybe it’s because I have experienced the fucked up things,” he said with a sad sigh. “And if you’re so willing to put Reaver in that situation, I don’t know. Maybe you’re the sociopath.”
Greyson seemed to ignore that comment. “Greater good, Lycos, greater good, remember?”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that since he was little... I have been saying that to myself every time I tucked him in at night... greater good.” Leo slid the card key through the door and stepped into the lab with the dead abominations and the giant mirror.

“Greater good.”

Greyson barely slept that night and he knew from his breathing that Leo wasn’t sleeping either, but they didn’t speak. He could hear Carson Jr and Gini talking in low voices, they were in the other room stationed beside the window. Donny and Owen were outside patrolling the area.

He had spent many lonely nights worrying about Reaver, and who he was becoming. If he would be able to guide and train the boy properly, if he could be trained at all.

When he was younger he had almost given up on him, until they had figured out that interfering was what was causing him to act out, but now he was older and used to them not interfering in his life.

He needed guidance the most right now though. If Greyson didn’t tell him soon, his faint hopes of Reaver being the person he needed him to be would be destroyed.

Leo was wrong, Leo thought of him as a son, nothing more. Greyson saw him as his own as well, but he was so much more than that. Leo’s parental urges clouded that in him, he couldn’t see his potential clearly. Only Greyson could.

He loved his son, dearly, but love didn’t equal sheltering, it didn’t equal selling his potential short. He loved him enough to have faith that he would be the person he knew he was.

Killian was helping him... and Reaver was responding. He was showing signs, small ones, of caring about others, of showing empathy, compassion, remorse.

It was slow going,  he had wished Reno would bring it out in him when they first got close, but it was going. That’s what mattered. Leo was wrong.

Even if he was wrong, he did love the idiot. Greyson kissed Leo on the cheek before getting out of their make shift bed. Just a mattress and a couple of blankets. They had both slept in their clothes with their guns in reach in case anything had gone wrong. But as Reaver had said, Donnely was empty.

“Where are you going?” Leo asked, he was just as wide awake as his partner.

“Back to the lab, I want to watch some more of those videos, better than pretending I’m asleep,” Greyson said, he was about to get a flash light out of their bag but he noticed it was getting lighter outside. Morning would be here soon.

“I’ll bring you some breakfast when it’s done then, I don’t want to go down there so early.” Greyson could hear Leo shifting around in bed.

“You’ll know where to find me,” Greyson said, he walked out of the room and past young Carson and Gini. “Go ahead and catch a few hours, Leo will be up soon.” The two were huddled over a game of poker from the looks of it. Both dressed in black bullet proof vests and combat armor. They were both invaluable to Aras and all of the Nevada family.

Like Greyson’s family the Nevada’s had been in Aras since the very beginning. There was always at least one Nevada on the council and one Nevada on the hill. It was a shame that Reno never burrowed himself into Reaver’s heart. When the two tip toed around it when they were teens both families thought it would become a sure thing.

It would have been nice to unite both families, even if Reaver wasn’t technically Merrik blood.

Greyson opened the door and slipped into the lab. Without Leo to tell him no he decided to make a pot of coffee.  As it was brewing he rooted through the fridge and grabbed himself some fruit. The spaghetti, and the meat in the fridge smelled like it was starting to turn so he left that be. If only they had been a few days earlier they could have had a feast. Now they would have to sacrifice it for Nero to find. At least the fruit he could eat.

He briefly wondered if Reaver and Killian’s minds had been blown when they first saw this place. All the pre-Fallocaust things Perish had, all the food, meat, technology. Leo’s lab had been smaller and wasn’t designed to grow food, but he still had coffee and other wonderful packaged things. He had thrown up the first time Leo had fed him cake. His body had never had so much sugar at once.

Chewing on a banana he made his way down to the second level. He stayed in front of the door and leaned against it, deciding very smartly to finish at least his banana before entering.

As he chewed away he looked around the hallway. They all looked the same. White walls with a grey band half way up, with white tile floors and a...

Greyson looked at the door way to his left, he reached out and pulled on the handle but of course it was locked. Leo still had the card key, all the doors they needed to get in and out of had been propped up, even the one to the outside.

Where did this one go to though? Greyson looked down and noticed there was a faint bit of dried blood on the handle. He scratched it with his fingernail and rubbed it between his fingers.