Self-Help (Invite only)

[Doc]

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Earlier in March
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Doc wasn’t what one would call social. He was more likely to be called anti-social in the true sense of the word. Most people used the wording incorrectly. They use it to refer to ‘avoidance of social activities’, whereas its true meaning was ‘one whose behavior that lacks consideration for others and may cause damage to the society, whether intentionally or through negligence.’ He had been told, quite dryly in fact by Zodiac, “You seem to relish making people uncomfortable...” That was followed admonishments and then eventually a task to complete. He was to complete the aforementioned task and then report back to Zodiac about his success, or lack thereof. And that was how he found himself in the situation he was in.

His first few attempts had ended badly. Just like Zodiac had predicted. He was not about to tell her, she had been right. So he changed the rules of the game. His task had been to go into a social atmosphere that was unknown to him, and have a casual conversation with someone unknown to him, and not start a fight, or have them or him, leave in anger. Although He didn’t feel that making someone cry should count against him because it technically wasn’t anger, however he had a feeling Zodiac would disagree. So he had decided he would go, sit at the bar, listen and not engage anyone. Just be there. Pick up a few names via some eavesdropping, report those names back to Zodiac, and he would ‘win’, as it were.

So there he was, sitting at the bar, minding his own business; nursing a drink for a hour or more, when he overheard the most extraordinary conversation. At first he merely wanted to get names, a bit of the conversation, to prove to Zodiac he had been successful. But as the conversation went on his attention was well and truly caught. He was careful not make no movement that would alert them to his eavesdropping presence. It amazed him the idiocy of people in general. Information that should only be discussed in hushed tones in a well secured atmosphere, was being bandied about like it was a daytime soap opera. Stupid for them, but a boon for him.

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Later in March
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With the alert level at barely acceptable levels, Doc had been spending a lot of time in the Quarantine Zone killing ferals. It was monotonous and tedious and it didn’t appear to be having any discernible effect on the level. It wasn’t just him that was in the Quarantine Zone, there were lots of other vampires that were also taking out the ferals, and the alert levels still steadily crept up. But as he was resting there, waiting for his energy to rebuild, his penchant for eavesdropping asserted itself once more, rewarding him with some interesting information.

[Catherine Nilson]

Stephen Kramer had to die. Cat wondered sometimes if she should just go to his house and murder him. She knew how to get rid of bodies, after all. But something inside her kept telling her to wait. It wasn't Red. Red tended to goad her on about it. And it wasn't Green either. Cat wasn't sure that it was a voice at all telling her to wait for something magical to happen first. She had been on drugs most of her young life, and now that she was a vampire and her skizophrenia was somewhat under control, the young woman was feeling new things deep inside her spirit. In her guts. Like a wild salmon that knew when to swim up river even though it was just a dumb fish, Cat knew that the time wasn't right. So she had waited. And waited.

Time had passed. Cat acquired friends, a lover, a guild, all kinds of things, but she never forgot about Stephen. He was like that car she wanted. Every time she saw a guy who looked like him, her knife burned in her pocket. And she had put him on the shelf, even though sometimes she gave in and looked for him. He had a facebook. He lived close by. He was probably hurting more kids. So why didn't Cat just get it over with? She wasn't scared. Then one night, it all made sense. When she got into Tytonidae, her sire had signed her up for fall courses as a reward. He was going to pay her tuition and books. She had to take anatomy, though.

And there was no lab in that basic course. Cat wanted to supplement. What use was there learning stuff when you couldn't do the stuff you were learning about? And as if reading her mind, Doc had given her a keycard to his lab. Genesis Labs, home of state of the art equipment that Cat could never afford. It wasn't long before the Stephen dilemma fell into place. He was going to be her guinea pig.

First, Cat read up on vivisection. It was boring as hell to read about it while Stephen was still comfy at his home, but Cat suffered through it. One, she was going to have to get used to studying if she was going to go from high school dropout to college student. Two, she actually wanted to know this stuff. She had to keep Stephen alive for as long as possible, so she could open him up and see him in working order. Dead corpses? They were alright, but Cat wanted to do something special for the guy who had molested her.

So she made those plans, and read those books, and in March she finally approached Doc about it. She had explained that she wanted to do what he did, but he played dumb. Cat knew he murdered people. She knew it wasn't in her head. Living with him, it had always been an unstated secret, as if Doc was into cocaine, or something like that, it was a family secret. She had been fine with that, but now it was a matter of getting him to accept that she knew, so he could help her. She wanted him to help her. She had no idea what she was doing. She didn't want to kill the guy right away. But he would just keep denying that he knew how to help her.

She would have to get evidence.

She would have to confront him while he murdered somebody.

While Doc was in the bar, Cat was outside tailing him and waiting for him to come outside. He looked suspicious coming out, like he had a big secret, but Cat didn't think the old man had murdered anybody in there. The bar was too crowded for that kind of thing.

She tailed him night after night, she was beginning to get good at it, and he was disappointingly predictable. Especially at the hospital. Cat wondered if maybe she wanted to be a surgeon after all. What if she graduated and started here at the hospital and it was just boring and sterile? She wanted to traipse around inside somebody and explore their organs, and maybe fix them like a puzzle.

That night it was the quarantine zone. Cat slunk outside of Corvidae Flats. It was lively, as if they were singing Monster Mash in there. Gunshots on the first floor, gentle apartment lights on the above floors. It was kind of surreal. Cat found herself getting distracted.

[Doc]

As he left the Corvidae Flats lobby and headed outside, Doc found it hard not to grin ear from ear. People talked entirely too much. Now he himself, could on occasion, be verbose and loquacious, but he was typically aware of those there were listening, even when they appeared not be. But apparently the majority of people did not take that precaution or did not care; because they thought they hadn’t revealed ‘too much’. They thought they were safe. That no one would make a connection.

However, Doc had a habit of making notes of the interesting things he found out or overheard. If he wrote things down, he tended to remember them longer with more accuracy than merely hearing them once. And when a certain name came up for the second time in a couple of weeks, it stood out. But before he jumped the gun, he wanted to make sure his two plus two, did in fact equal four.

Normally he would use his home tome to return to Eyrie. But he wasn’t going to Eyrie was headed to his secondary apartment. The one Cat did not know about. She had been acting strange of late, he did not want to take a chance on her spotting him, and getting nosy and clingy. He needed to check his journal. To double check the name, and to make sure what he overheard then, when put together with what he overheard tonight, did ‘slot together’.

Slipping effortlessly into the sewer entrance, he made his way to the other apartment completely underground. No point in heading back topside, once his shoes were ruined. In for a penny in for a pound, as the saying went. Staying underground, gave him the time to think through his next step. If it was, as he suspected, this was huge. How to handle that kind of information? Sit on it? Hoard it until it could be used later? But then that takes the risk that you are not the only one who figured it out. You could lose your advantage.

However, it could be that he remember the name correctly, the details wrong. And this would all become a moot point. Useless to any and all, which would make the conversations he overheard more innocent than he prescribed them to be. He would know soon.

[Catherine Nilson]

Cat retreated behind the building when she saw Doc come around. He had the most distracted grin on his face. Sometimes he reminded her of a little kid always getting his way. Sometimes it really irked her. He had a house (well it had gotten blown up, but still), and a car and a nice job, and he was just so smug and spoiled. He'd never known the discomforts that Cat had endured in her humanhood, but he always acted like he knew what was going on with her. And the sad thing was, Cat had to admit to herself, usually he did.

She waited until Doc's shoes were a faint splash in the distance before dropping down herself. There were some gunshots far away. He wasn't likely to be suspicious of being followed. Cat paid attention to the echoing slosh of his shoes and reflected more on her mission. So she was bitter about him being a spoiled know-it-all. She still needed his help. He would understand, wouldn't he? She needed to do this. For once she agreed with the voices in her head.

It had been their idea. One night, after Doc had signed the high school dropout up for college courses using methods that were not exactly legal, they brought it up while she was going through the books Lyana bought already.

Practice on Stephen. You'll fail out of Anatomy if you can't even vivisect anybody.

But it's not a lab class, Cat responded to Red silently. Just exams and readings and lectures. Boring stuff.

Too boring. Too boring! You'll let everybody down. You'll get bored and you won't study. You'll fail the exams. But with a lab rat you'll stay interested won't you!

That's gross.

But she had thought about it, and the more she ruminated, the more it seemed like a good idea. The main issue was, that if Cat was going to actually murder somebody in cold blood, she was going to have to do it right. And the one man she knew who could teach her was in staunch denial. It was a family secret that Cat and he never acknowledged. As if her sire was a closeted homosexual, he guarded his secret, but living with him always made things jump out at Cat. Tiny indicators that she couldn't ignore.

So she stalked Doc through the tunnels relentlessly. She would figure out his secret, even though she already knew it, but he needed to know that she knew, and if she caught him in the act she could force him to help her. Not that she wanted to force him. She wanted him to understand. But he never understood. And he always said no to everything.

Who am I kidding? This isn't gonna work. Oh well, might as well see where he's going. He doesn't usually come here.

[Doc]

Doc entered the apartment, reset the sensors and locked the door behind him. He didn’t waste time changing clothes, he made straight for the books and picked up his journal. He carefully read the notes from a few weeks earlier, and as he read, that name leapt out at him. It was, as he remembered it. He closed the book and tapped his chin with it. Just exactly how should one proceed in a situation like this?

The information didn’t break the masquerade, therefore it was not a threat to the city. But that information could start a war between certain persons in the city. Information like this .. in the wrong hands, why that could be deadly. His lips curved slightly into a sardonic smirk, deadly or costly, which one would they prefer? It seemed the logical that instead of him surmising which they would prefer, he would give them the option.

Still holding the journal, Doc exited the apartment and headed straight back to the sewers. He made the twists and turns toward his secret dwelling, where he had taken to performing more of his ‘experiments’ now that the lab was a legitimate business. Experiments was a loose term. It was more like surgical practice. He didn’t want to get rusty. And he rather liked experimenting on live subjects more than cadavers, it was closer to surgery that he performed legitimately. But there were techniques that he wished to pursue and perfect that one could not do on cadavers or the random surgery he now did.

However experiments and surgical techniques was the last thing on his mind as he entered the dwelling. He absently checked experiment AP2 before moving to the locker that was hidden in the dwelling. Unless someone knew where to look, they wouldn’t find it. He had trouble at times trying to find the ******* latch. Once he had the door open, he put the journal in the locker, shut it and locked it. The information was safe for the moment.

As he pondered his options, he began cleaning up. There were some rotting body parts that were pretty rank that he had not had time to dispose of from a few nights previous. He attempted to start the incinerator. It was temperamental and finicky on a good day. Tonight it was in ***** mode. It took him fifteen minutes to get the thing to start, and took another ninety minutes to get it up to temperature to reduce bone to ash. That was, if he left it on for the full burn. Looking about the place he realized he had neglected it far too long; it needed a thorough cleaning.

AP2 was whimpering the entire time that he cleaned. He had shown it his sidearm once, and it wisely shut up. But when an hour later it began once more, he drew the weapon, walked over to it, placed the gun against it’s temple and pulled the trigger. He sighed in disgust. Now he had to clean up that mess. He needed a better class of experiments. Harper Rock was going to ******* hell. All the decent specimens had left the city. Something had to be done. He unlocked the shackles and dragged the now, lifeless body of AP2 to the incinerator and chucked it in.

Now he needed another specimen.

[Catherine Nilson]

The voices droned on in Cat's brain as she tenaciously trekked through the sewers. This didn't make sense. Her sire hated filth, but here he was slinking through it like he belonged as much as the rats. For weeks she had been trailing him, and things were just now getting interesting. Cat climbed into a pipe facing the first apartment Doc entered. She listened, and waited, and to her disappointment Doc came out with a book. ******* books. He loved them more than he loved her. Why was this so hard? She had followed him through sewage, so she could watch him get a dumb book? What even was that book?

If looks could kill, Doc might have felt daggers when he walked by the quiet pipe. His green-eyed childe was already making spiteful plans about stealing that book and mailing Doc pages of it at a time, smeared with sewer water, when it hit her. Like a wave of nausea, an overpowering deluge of terror, and she saw Doc change into a monster. But the hallucination was over in a matter of seconds. Left alone in the dark, Cat could only hear the voices whispering in her head, and then Doc's retreating steps.

"Uh oh."

Cat shook it off. She couldn't lose him over a visual hallucination. She started following again, and came to the door. Was this where he'd disappeared? There was only one way to find out. Cat tried the lock. Being the breaking and entering expert she was, the vampire had no problem getting past the lock. She let herself in and gave a look around, then glanced at the incinerator as it glowed.

Doc was pushing a dead lady in there. It was starting to smell crispy. Cat swallowed her nausea and closed the door behind her. No going back now.

"Dad."

[Doc]

He had tensed before he heard the voice. He had realized a millisecond before she spoke that someone was there. ****! He had gotten so preoccupied he had not been aware of his surroundings, and to make matters worse,he had become route and predictable to the point that Cat could follow him. ****!

His jaw clenched as he turned a cold gaze on her. “Catherine.”

He stared at her, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched and unspeaking. He played his options in his mind. His right hand twitched, his weapon was mere inches away in his shoulder holster, as he thought about sending her to the shadow realm. Not because she had messed up, but because he had. And sending her there would make him feel better. But she would come back and she would hate him. Cat was the only that really liked him ‘warts and all’ as they say. And, Velveteen would be pissed… again. Therefore that option was out.

Option two, ignore the situation. Pretend it was a normal day. Nothing untoward happening at all. He slid a surreptitious eye about the dwelling. That wouldn’t fly. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain this was a killing zone and Cat could be tenacious to the point of aggravation when she got her teeth in something. Her skills with passive aggressive stubbornness could win awards. It would piss him off more and eventually he would attack Cat.. and Velveteen would be pissed.. again. That option was out.
The next option was turn the situation back on Catherine. Make her feel the bite of parental guilt. Yes. It wasn’t about him. He should not allow it to be about him. He owed her no explanations and she would not be getting any. But Catherine did owe explanation. She broke into his residence, desecrated his solitude, broke the unwritten and perhaps, sacred covenant of between Sire and Childe. Yes, he would put the onus on Catherine. Make her explain herself, while he decided how to deal with her impertinence.

The brighter side of the situation, if one could look at it that way, was that he had been shown he had fallen into a predictable routine. He had gotten lazy and slack. Had it been anyone else that had discovered him here, he could be in some deep ****. But it was Catherine, tenacious little Cat. For that he would secretly thank her, though she would never hear those words pass his lips.

Doc carefully crossed his arms as he gave her a hard disappointed look. “Explain yourself, Catherine. Why did you desecrate the sanctity of my lair?”

[Catherine Nilson]

The young woman's dusky green eyes darted between hand and gun nervously. He had put a bullet in her over lesser violations before. But, to Cat's relief, he paused. She took a deep breath to speak. She had to make him understand. But he beat her to the punch, and were his sanctimonious words ever effective!

Cat squirmed. "Um. I tried to ask you about it before but you ignored me."

Oh sure, blame him, that's going to end well.

I know! Let's jump into that incinerator, then it's death on our own terms.

As usual, she ignored the voices and carried a serious, almost exhausted expression. She met his eyes firmly, held them, demanded understanding about something that she wasn't sure she knew how to express. Suddenly she was a toddler again who didn't even know how to explain anything.

You're an idiot. He's not going to want to help you. And if you do it yourself you'll screw-

"I mean, I would have changed the subject too, if I had a, uh, whatever this is. Murder dungeon." Cat sniffed the air. Fresh blood and rancid meat. Even if he didn't agree to help her, maybe she could convince him to let her live on as his maid. It wouldn't be such a bad life. And he really needed one, gross. She took a shuddering breath and swallowed in an attempt to hide her revulsion. This was ugly, did she really want to do it?

"But now I know. So you can't change the subject. No changing the subject, dad." Cat folded her arms across her chest and stared him down as if she was his equal. Her lips pinched at the corners, and her stare was as intensely focused as Doc's. If anyone else had been observing, the family resemblance would have been uncanny. And then she told him something she'd thrown around many times before, about trifling things.

"It's really important. Just listen to me for a second." She glanced at his gun again and lifted her hands to show him that she'd come unarmed, which in hindsight probably wasn't the best idea. "Please."

[Doc]

"--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--"

Doc: Her reaction was not precisely what he expected. He had expected a wide eyed attempt at innocence. Yet that was not what he received. He received a rather grim, implacable Catherine holding her ground. Holding her ground with a slight struggle. He could tell she was forcing herself to stay firm, but that parts of her wanted to flee. But it was that grim look on her face, not her words per se’ that made him decide he would hear her out. "Very well." His stance stayed the same, but his words were said with an air of 'listening' to them.

Catherine Nilson: He was intimidating enough without the glow of the incinerator casting his features into creepy shadow. The blood smeared floor didn't help either. "I want to vivisect St- ... There's this... I'm starting college and... SHUT UP YOU GUYS." When the voices were silent, she was able to use her words. "I want to kidnap Stephen Kramer and vivisect him because it will help in Anatomy class and I think I'll make an A. And okay, because I still hate him." Did she even tell him her mom's boyfriend's name before?

Doc: Doc listened to her disjointed and somewhat jumbled explanation. Stephen? Was that one of the cops that Jacq had introduced her to? Why would she hate him? And to want to vivisect someone, that was a powerful hate.. not a 'you dumped me and I hate you' hate. Hell she didn't even have any animosity for what Axel did to her, so what could this guy have done.. and why the **** didn't he know who the hell this guy was? First things first. Find out who the miscreant was, then proceed from there. "Who is Stephen?"

Catherine Nilson: Cat couldn't tiptoe around that one. Doc already knew, just not who the guy was. For all he knew, he was the man Doc killed along with her mother after hearing about her upbringing. But that was a different enabling asshole. This one was special to Cat. "He's the guy who... messed with me when I was a kid. Molested me." There, she said it. "It's all his fault about the voices. He's perfect to vivisect and, I know if I did this on my own? I'd just **** it up. I need your help. Please?"

Doc: He heard her explanation. Had he not told her that he had killed that asshole? That he had died begging like that dog he was, beside her wastrel of a mother. And Cat mentioned the voices. The voices had eased off, but earlier she had told them to shut up. The voices only came out when she was agitated. What ever caused her to think about that asshole, he would assure her, he was already dead. "You don't have to worry about him, Cat. I killed him when I dispatched that waste of skin that was your biological mother. You're safe from him. And even if he was around.. you do not need to be scared of him. You could make mincemeat of him with one hand tied down." However, he wanted to know what brought this up. What was happening in her life that made this creep back into focus.

Catherine Nilson: Cat shook her head. "No he's not. I checked his house. And his Facebook. You must have killed some other guy. Especially because he broke up with mom when I was twelve." Cat's look of frustration deepened and she itched at her head. "Anyway I don't want to kill him. I want to vivisect something for school. I'll **** up if I don't have something to do with my hands. If it's just books and lectures. I'll **** up and it'll be for nothing. I thought about doing a cat or something but it wouldn't be the same. And somebody else would just be weird." As if vivisecting Stephen wasn't weird.

Doc: "And you are sure he is still in Harper Rock?" The fact she was wanting to vivisect this guy didn't even phase him. It was as though they were discussing who was taking the car to get the oil changed and where they would end up taking it. It had been a while since he vivisected someone, this would be fun.

[Catherine Nilson]

"--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--"

Catherine Nilson: Cat nodded carefully. She knew exactly where he lived and where he worked. But she couldn't tell Doc until she was sure he wouldn't just go out and kill Stephen on his own. She wanted to do good in school, and for some reason her logic dictated that in order to do so, Stephen would play the role of her guinea pig. In a way, it was justice. His molestation of Beatrice the human caused the Schizophrenia that could have otherwise lied dormant in her brain to explode. Her grades had failed as a result, and ultimately she'd dropped out of school. So he would be helping her get an A.

Doc: Doc looked at her, his lips pressed in a line, "You will have to bring him here. Not the lab. The lab is a place of business now and the lab rats are far too nosy." The lab assistants he had, did good work, but part of the job was just plain boring. When waiting for an analysis to finish or a timed test to be ready, they had time on their hands that would cause them to snoop. He had a hell of a time explaining that the 'prison cells' were part of a psychological test sponsored by the university. Which, was why, his extracurricular activities now took place here, in the sewer. "How long do you need him alive?"

Catherine Nilson: "All semester. After that you can have him, if you want," Cat told him hopefully. She was growing more excited now that he was actually discussing it like it was a possibility. She didn't know how to keep Stephen alive, but Doc would. She was going to pass every test with flying colors in Anatomy 101. All the parts of the heart, all the bones, different names for muscles. Cat was particularly interested in the reproductive system, since her first 'lessons' had been with Stephen, how fitting that the real stuff would be inside Stephen. If, if, Doc actually allowed it. Cat fidgeted and kept staring at him.

Doc: He grimaced, "All Semester? That will be a stretch..." The longest he kept someone, an experiment, alive was eight weeks tops. And that one had been a control subject, in a clinical sterile atmosphere. They were in a sewer. "First, all semester is not going to happen. Look around. It is not exactly sterile here. And vivisection? You are looking at two weeks tops." Doc might be able to get three weeks out of him if she wasn't ham fisted about it. "And that is ..if you take your time and you dont nick a ******* artery. You hit an artery and he will bleed out on you in 5 minutes. And.. " He gave her a hard look, "You will have to stay down here with it during the day. You can't take the chance of a sewer worker stumbling across the place. And no visitors. You tell no one about this or this place.. understand?"

Catherine Nilson: She might or might not have told Zoey about her suspicions, but Cat nodded mutely. She wouldn't tell anybody that the suspicions had been actually true. Two weeks? That wouldn't be nearly enough. She was really going to have to cram the knowledge. She didn't think she could do it, but she didn't want to squander this chance. She couldn't believe that any of it was happening in the first place. College, and now this. He was listening to her, and he would help her! She could just hug him. Cat hugged him. "Thanks dad." She managed not to sniffle too much.

Doc: He sighed, he was turning into a ******* push over.. "No one.. tell no one!" As Doc patted her back awkwardly in his rendition of a paternal hug, he muttered under his breath, "I can't believe I am do this.. I am turning ******* soft.. First Ari.. now this.." Then louder he said, "Promise.. god dammit.. no one!"

Catherine Nilson: Cat had the decency to cower a little, though she didn't feel that scared now. "I promise." She stood on the tips of her toes and delivered a smooch to his murderous jowl, then tried to skip out before he could change his mind. This was going to be perfect.