Killing Dance/A Pound of Flesh

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

February 3rd, 2012 6:50 A.M. local time

Infinity, Inc. Etoile Isle Branch, Main Office

Grandville, Rogue Isles

Jun Soto paused for a second, outside Observer Room 4's door, to check his reflection on the polarized glass. Likely no one would see his pristinely-pressed crimson lab coat until he, in turn, was relieved at the end of his shift; but anyone in the Behavioral Design department knew that one's appearance affected one's attitude and performance.

A flick of his forearm past a sensor unlocked the door. Jun stepped into his duty station.

Fellow red-coated Observer Aron Cesari, minutes away from being relieved, slumped wearily in front of a console as he watched three monitors. Jun took a breath to greet his fellow employee when his eyes were drawn to a motion shown from three directions on the screens.

A long-haired man in rumpled, close-fitting clothing swung his wooden swords through a series of horizontally-swinging targets, so fast they did not have time to rotate back into position before the swordsman raced off to another section of the training mat. The observation subject's hands and feet left flecks of blood behind every motion.

Jun stared. He had to think for a moment to connect the sweat-soaked man on the screens, with his pale scars and his wildly tangled fine black hair, to one of their normal objects of study. "Is that...?"

Aron sighed. "Yeah, yeah, that's him. I ain't ever seen him like that. He made a deal with the devil, and now he's paying for it. He's been at it all night."

Jun glanced down at some of the readouts on the lower console. The subject's heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and the passive sensors for beta and gamma waves from brain activity were all spiked so thickly as to almost be a solid block. "His vitals are off the charts!" Jun snapped. "Why haven't you put a stop to this?"

Aron's eyes rolled up to give his co-worker an exasperated glare. "Gee. Why didn't I jump on that? Really, man. When he first exhibited serious warning signs, I tried a few gentle nudges. He ignored them, and set his music back where he wanted it. And then when he got really overstimulated in there, I started some alert protocols. We got Kinba Kushi standing by with a team, but he took one look through the door and said we had to let Killing Dance wear himself out first. He said if he goes in there now, someone is going to get hurt. And you know how Mr. Arkangel feels about damage to the resources."

Jun frowned. "Yes, but this," he pointed at the center monitor, "this is damage!"

As he spoke, the dancing swordsman paused long enough to collect another protein stimulant shake from a small dispenser in the wall. He finished it quickly, tossed the container into the recycler, and flew back into action.

"How many of those has he had?!" Jun demanded.

Aron shrugged. "He's been drinking them over and over. Like candy. He keeps mumbling something about 'Bob', and maybe something about killing him? I don't think we have a 'Bob' anywhere in this branch of the Corporation."

"We don't," Jun confirmed, "not that this makes for a better scenario. More to the point: stop giving him those!" To make his point, Jun leaned over so he could flip a particular switch off.

"I let him have them because I rather his mind wear down than his body. We've got Kinba Kushi on standby," Aron repeated, grumbling. "We've got Ceylon Spinel, loading tranq rounds, on standby. Kinba had me lock the door. There isn't much more we can do right now, but watch over him and hope he works whatever it is out of his system."

They watched the swordsman for several minutes in silence. Even in this strange state, the Killing Dance's actions kept to a rhythm.

"That's not his normal music," Jun finally guessed out loud.

Aron tapped a fingernail against the earphones dangling over the arm of his chair. "Nope. Death metal." At Jun's disbelieving expression, Aron explained, "It started out slow, soft, nice, like usual. He was just, you know, just practicing. Clearing his head a little. Had those wooden swords already; he's going to be training a new Alpha today, part of that deal he made with Mr. Arkangel. So nice, calm music, the stuff he uses to concentrate on getting the movements just right."

Aron pointed up at the monitors for emphasis. "I guess it wasn't right."

Lowering his finger again, Aron resumed his summary. "Then he called up Vivaldi's 'Storm'. Only sometimes his dance moves weren't the kind he always does with that music; for a few beats here or there, it was almost wild. That stuff he keeps encouraging the Fehral to do. He'd slip back into his own style again but it looked angrier, more vicious, every time." Slumping again, Aron finished ominously, "And then the storm just got bigger."

Running a hand through his short hair, Jun stared at the accelerating figure in the training room. "Tell me about this deal. I didn't hear about any such thing when I ended my shift yesterday."

Aron shook his head in dismay. "You want to watch the recording, man. Get the full effect, just like I did. It's like a black hole of indicators, except for one spot, and you'll know the one I mean when you see it. This all started after he and that other Delta, Brigid's Verse, came back from wherever they went -- what, five days ago? Four, maybe. I don't know what happened. Those two are such a good physical match to each other, you'd think they would make a good mated pair."

Immediately Jun made a firm dismissing motion with both hands. "Oh, no!" he insisted. "Those two catch on like fire and water. Bad markers everywhere. Fire and water!"

"Really?" Aron blinked. "Well, damn. Maybe that plays into all this, then." He thought about it for long enough that Jun finally nudged his colleague to log off the duty roster.

As Jun scanned the readouts, the Killing Dance's performance gradually became more chaotic, with larger motions that tossed his already knotted hair and the tips of his wooden swords around in seemingly uncontrolled bursts.

"Long story short," Aron concluded as he marked a few lines on a clipboard, "there's a new Alpha shipping in tonight from one of the other facilities. Discipline case. If Killing Dance wants his leopard back, he has to teach this obstinate Hungarian goat to start blending himself with a Delta's art. Goat doesn't smarten up, leopard stays in redesign."

Jun's fingers paused in mid-adjustment of his console. "The longest on record that Fehral ever spent in redesign was five weeks, two days, seven hours, back under the Omega trainers. She's already had two and a half days. How fast is Killing Dance supposed to pull off this job, exactly?"

Aron just shrugged.

"We're going to have to reformulate the bloody protein stimulants," Jun swore.

On screen, the swordsman's dance grew steadily more ordered again. His blows still made the fixed targets vibrate in place, but they landed with the precision and the rigidity of his earliest days at the Grandville facility. While Aron cycled himself out of Observer Room 4, Jun leaned forward to contemplate his charge.

"What are you thinking?" he asked the screen quietly. "What imaginary scene keeps running through your mind? Or is it that you want to stop thinking?"

Fifty-four minutes into Jun's shift, just shy of the mental deadline Jun had set himself for contacting his department lead, all motion in the training room came to a halt. Killing Dance stood in the space between two practice mannequins, back and legs rigid, the rest of him limp. A snarled curtain of damp hair veiled his downturned face. Jun saw the indicator light for the sound system wink off; he tugged the earphones into place in time to hear the leaden thump as both wooden swords slid out of Killing Dance's slack fingers and fell to the mat.

For long minutes, the only sound in the room was exhausted, deep breathing. The swordsman's chest heaved, but even so he did not sway in place.

Jun reached for the microphone switch, intending to offer medical assistance, when the Delta spoke: "It's done. You can unlock the door now."

The Observer promptly triggered the door release. "Do you require treatment?"

"No."

Before Jun could prepare any other means to draw the swordsman out, Killing Dance lifted his head while shrugging the strain out of his shoulders. Moving calmly, as if his feet were not still bleeding, he walked out of the training room, turned leftward, and vanished in the direction of the showers.

"This has a very low overall rating for good results," Jun muttered to himself. He directed the machine to pull all of its data into a single file, flagged for the Director of Behavioral Design. "We have such a big problem right now...."