PMOCT: Round 3.1- Transformed

Artemis looked just as she always did as she traversed the sidewalk, passing benches and Bradford pears.  Her shoes hit the ground with a measured, even pace.  Her silvery hair swayed back and forth with her movements, precise as always.  What could be seen of her face beneath the sleek sunglasses was composed.

But inside, Artemis was seething.

She had lost more agents since the breakout in Hades's prison than she had since she could remember.  The citizens of the Labyrinth were questioning whether she would be able to keep them safe from this new menace, and now even Minos didn't seem to believe in her abilities.  Seeing him forced to hire out some of his own captives as though they could fill her role better... it almost made her nauseous.  Had she really been doing such a substandard job?

Her gaze flicked to the sombre facade of the university, and her jaw tensed the slightest bit.  Of course the other G.O.D.s didn't seem to care much about this deplorable turn of events, and it wasn't just those morons Ares and Aphrodite.  All of them were holed up in their own little worlds, tending only to the jobs Minos had assigned to them without doing anything more to help.  Apollo still sulked among his books, Hephaestus still did... whatever it was he got up to in that lab of his, Demeter still grinned like an imbecile even as the world slowly went down in flames...

But none of them was as bad as Athene.  As far as Artemis was concerned, the other G.O.D. was every bit as responsible for rounding up the escaped specimens as she was.  Funny, wasn't it, how someone who had eyes all over their city could do such a poor job of finding a handful of freaks?  And as though that wasn't bad enough, the last time they'd spoken over her communications device, Athene had been whistling.  WHISTLING.  As though the usually surly security system had found her failure to bring in the escaped lab rats AMUSING!

Well it wasn't amusing, regardless of what Athene thought.  She could be unprofessional if she liked.  Artemis would just have to make up for it.  In the end, if Minos couldn't count on anyone else, he could count on her.  She'd just have to work harder to make him see.

With an almost silent sigh, she stopped in front of an apartment building.  Several men with cameras were already there, getting their equipment set up.

Artemis pulled out a card key.  Best to just get this stupid thing over with...
***

Ed had been trying to wake up for several minutes with little success.  He was teetering on the edge of a deep, comfortable oblivion, trying to stay balanced as sleep's tendrils tugged him slowly backwards.  They tempted him with promises of a contented world where there was no Minos, no Huxley, no G.O.D.s trying to smash him up in a train wreck...  Just warmth, and darkness.

But even as his mind drifted between fragmented thoughts and fuzzy blank spaces, he could tell something was wrong.  There was a subtle unfamiliarity in his sensations, an unsettling alien-ness...

And then someone switched on the lights.

A hoarse cry left his throat as he threw an arm over his lidless eyes.  "Turn it off," he croaked.

"No."  The speaker, whoever he was, forced the word out in a rough grunt.  "We're bringin' someone in to make sure you and the girl ain't more hurt than we can tell.  By all rights you should be dead."

"Stop talking, you're making my head hurt."  His voice sounded muffled and thick, as though he were listening to it through ears packed with cotton.

The man snorted.  "Yer head's gonna hurt whether or not I'm talkin'."

Ed paused, turning this over in his muddled brain.  "Point taken.  Where am I?"

"In a bed."

Ed rolled his eyes.  "Ha ha, you know what I--"  He cut himself off as he noticed how peculiar his arm felt against his face.  It wasn't like skin anymore.

"What?" the man asked.

He didn't answer, instead pulling his hand back so he could see it clearly.

It was as though someone had slipped a gauntlet from a suit of armor over his hand while he'd slept, but instead of metal it was made of a dull organic substance.  Some of the plates were varying shades of olive green, others brown.

"What the crap...?"

And then his fight with Sisca in the train car came flooding back into his mind.  It was followed by a vague, unfocused panic.

He tried to sit up a little too quickly and found his entire body throbbing.  He fell back with a slight groan.  It looked like his soreness and fatigue were going to win out for now.  

"Take it easy!" the man barked.  "We didn't drag you all the way up here just so you could kill yerself, gettin' all excited over nothin'!"

Ed's gaze flicked to the speaker.  It was a grungy looking middle-aged man with a scarred face.  His once white tee shirt was stained, and if Ed were closer he'd have expected him to smell horrible.  He was holding a yarn ball, which he tossed to Ed.  "Just settle down," the voice growled out of the device's speakers.

It fell neatly into Ed's lap, but he hardly noticed it.  "Sir," he asked, voice curt with urgency, "could you direct me to a bathroom?"

The man's scowl became more pronounced, distorting his scars.  "First off, you call me 'sir' again and I'll belt you in the mouth.  It's Phaex.  Second off, you ain't gettin' out of bed until you've been looked over right.  I don't wanna have to drag yer sorry corpse outta here after going through all that trouble gettin' you outta the subway tunnel in the first place."

Ed gritted his teeth-- hang on, that didn't feel right; had he chipped some of them?  Aagh, there were more important things to worry about at the moment.  With a deep breath he pushed himself up so he was leaning against the headboard, trying to ignore the screaming pains the movement caused.  "Look, it would make me feel a LOT better if you just let me go to the bathroom and check the mirror."

"What, worried yer little suicide jump messed up yer face?  I've met dung piles better lookin' than you."

Ed's frown became more pronounced.  "All the same, I'd really--"

But he was interrupted by two screams from the hall: one a scream of fright, the other a snarling war-cry.  Ed jumped.

Phaex spun around with a curse just as a blond girl in fishnet stockings burst through the door, slamming it behind her.  Something barreled into the door as soon as it was shut, almost knocking it open again.  Then there was a groan and the sound of something or someone hitting the floor in the hall.

"What the hell's going on?!" Phaex barked.

The girl turned wide frightened eyes to fix on his face.  "Oh Phaex, you've got to do something!  The other one, the girl, she jumped out of bed and--"

"Open up," came a pained wheeze that somehow managed to be a growl at the same time.  Ed immediately recognized the voice.

"Wait, Thar Sisca's here too?"  But the others were paying him no heed.

"Oh could you PLEASE get her back in her bed Phaex?  I can't go back out there, I..."  The girl sniffled and wiped her eyes.  She must not have been tearing up too badly yet; her heavy mascara didn't smudge at all.  "It's just you're so much better at handling bad stuff like this, and I'm so s-scared..."

Phaex rolled his eyes, but his scowl softened.  "All right Boa, just wait here.  I'll take care of it."

"Th-thanks."  Boa managed a small smile, though her eyes still darted toward the door fearfully.  "B-be careful, she's really scary."

"Please, she's half-dead most likely."

Ed didn't like being ignored.  "All the same," he said loudly, "you should be cautious around that one.  She's--"

"I can handle it," growled Phaex as he spared Ed a suspicious look over one shoulder.  "Stupid know-it-all, probably never seen a real fight in his life," he muttered, then sauntered into the hall.  The door was quickly shut behind him.

A few painstaking minutes passed before the panic ebbed slowly out of Boa's face; some of the fear still lingered.  She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, looking nervously from the door to Ed.  Her eyes were wide with what might have been innocence or stupidity, but there was something... he couldn't place it, but it was at odds with her expression.  Too dazed and distracted to think about it properly, Ed glanced down; Boa's midriff was bare, and down her front ran a large wicked-looking scar.  Wonder where that came from.

"Um..."  Boa watched him for a moment, chewing on her lip.  "W-what's your name, mister?"

It took Ed a moment to realize she was talking to him.  A bit silly, really, seeing as he was the only other person in the room, but then he had hit the ground pretty hard.  

"Ed," he supplied.  "And you're Boa... hang on."  He frowned as his foggy brain put two and two together.  "D'you work at a tattoo parlor by any chance?"

Boa offered him a quavering smile as she wiped her eyes again.  "How did you know?  We've been open for about two years now."  She tilted her head in an endearingly stupid way, though her eyes narrowed slightly.  "Why?"

Ed let out a dry croak of a laugh.  "Nothing, I'm just an idiot."

Boa's brow wrinkled very slightly in confusion. "But, um, I don't think you're stupid at all, Mr. Ed."

"PLEASE don't call me that."  Ed paused, eyes flitting down to his scaly hand again.  He hardly dared to imagine what his face must look like.  "Uh, is there any way I could go to the bathroom?"

Boa's lips, painted a dark shade somewhere between pink and purple, twisted in a slight frown.  "Oh... I dunno if you should be up and moving around just yet, Eddie."  She fidgeted, shifting her weight in a way that seemed both insecure and, well, very distracting.  

A flush crept up his cheeks.  Focus Ed.  "I just want to use the bathroom.  It can't be that far to walk."

"Well... oh... I still dunno," she said, shifting again.  Ed made a point to look away.  "We're bringing in a doctor soon.  Maybe if--"

"I could always just pee all over the bed," he cut in pointedly, already turning so his legs hung over the side.  He winced with every movement, but it didn't matter.

Boa wrinkled her nose.  "Ew!  Fine, fine, I'll see how Phaex and... and the other one are doing."  She cracked the door and poked her head out as Ed did his best to get to his feet.  "Ph-phaex?  Is she gone?" she asked breathlessly.  One hand played with the dangling chain of her necklace anxiously.

"We're in her room," the man's muffled voice grunted.  "Just--"  He was interrupted by the sound of a short struggle.  When Phaex spoke again, he sounded like he was panting.  "Don't come in here and you should be all right."

Boa sighed.  "Oh THANK you so much, Phaex!  I owe you big time."

"Yeah yeah..."  Muffled as it was, it was easy to detect the pleasure in the man's voice.

Boa turned to face Ed.  "Okay Mr. Ed, it's the first door on your left.  And, um..."  She rubbed the back of her neck and tilted her head to the side as though she were nervous to talk with him.  "Could you, erm, make sure to put the lid down when you're done?"

He nodded gratefully as he hobbled across the room.  "Yeah.  Thanks."

Ed made his excruciating way down the hall and to the door.  He didn't look down at his hand or his bare arm as he turned the knob and entered.  One chiton-plated finger flipped on the lights, illuminating his form in the mirror.

His shirt was gone, and the pasty skin of his chest was a mess of scrapes and bruises-- where there was any skin left.  Plates like the ones on his hands covered a good deal of his body, wrapping around his sides and coming toward his middle.  In places they were distinct yet fitted together like smaller versions of a giraffe's spots, pale mottled flesh peeking out from between them.  As his eyes roved further down his arms, he found the scales beginning to overlap each other like a lizard's.  

Ed swallowed, mouth suddenly quite dry.  Think positive, Ed, think positive: the plates could be hot-pink.  Somehow this didn't help him much, but that wasn't the part he'd been worried about anyways.  That was just his body.

Okay, brace yourself.  This won't be pleasant.  He forced himself to look up at his reflection's face.  His left eye was swollen along with his nose (though the blood had been wiped off, and if it was broken someone had reset it).  But he didn't need to be so worried; aside from his injuries, the only thing that he could see different about his countenance since the last time he'd checked was an odd little point forming on each ear.

Ed paused, then opened his mouth slightly to expose his teeth.  They hadn't been broken off as he'd suspected earlier.  Instead, each one was pointed and needle-like, once more making him resemble some deep-sea creature.  His heart sank.  Well that was perfect.  Now he was twice as creepy.  And how on earth was he supposed to eat with those in his mouth?

With a slight shudder, he turned around to see his back.  Just as he thought, more plates.  These ones were bigger and covered everything, even his shoulders and the back of his neck.  What worried Ed the most was the way he didn't seem able to straighten his back all the way, whether from a newly warped spine or just the weight and shape of his new armor he didn't know.

Ed examined himself for a few long moments in the mirror, then sank onto the toilet.  His eyes stared vacantly at the tiled floor as he held his head in his hands.  Ed had never felt this... empty before.  Not on the day Naomi had been transferred, not when the Authority agents had discovered his copied books, not during his first night at the PRC.  He wasn't even HUMAN anymore, not on the outside.  Heck, he wouldn't be surprised if little kids would run screaming the other direction when they saw him.  Minos and his virus had alienated him from every other living being in the world.  Huxley would have been impressed.

And yet somehow the shock wasn't hitting him as hard as he thought it would.  Maybe it was because his face was still more or less the same as it had been last time he'd seen a mirror.  Or perhaps it was just that he'd been anticipating some sort of drastic transformation for some time now, ever since Charybdis had scraped open his arm and exposed those plates.

Charybdis... his thoughts went back to Ilsa and Gina.  Had it really just been a few days ago that he'd left them at the arena?  He still felt a little guilty about that but... well, what else could he do?  It was the perfect chance to escape, and if he hadn't done so then who knew what Minos would have done to him for puking his-- for doing that.  

He looked up at his ghastly reflection, and something in him hardened slightly.  He was free now unless Labrys had seriously misled him, and for the moment in a position of relative comfort despite his mutations.  That meant he had responsibilities to everyone who wasn't free, like Apollo and the sisters from prison.  There was no time to dwell on his own misfortunes; it was time to start working.

Of course that'd be a lot easier without that horrible pain burning through him...  Ed winced and hobbled out of the bathroom, back down the hall and through the door to his room.

Boa looked up from examining her nails.  She'd recovered from the shock a bit while he was gone; whether this was a sign of resilience or a short attention span Ed could only guess.  

"You took a real long time.  I thought you'd passed out and drowned in the toilet or something."  She giggled.

"No, I'm fine," he said, words short from a combination of pain and mild irritation.  Drowned in the toilet, really...  He climbed back into bed and let himself lay back on the pillows.  "Thanks for taking me in."

She shrugged.  "Well, our friend-- whoops, shouldn't be talking about them, um, they tipped us off.  Don't worry about it or anything."

Phaex came back into the room, looking even more disheveled than when he'd left.  He wiped his brow on his forearm.  "Managed to get some tranquilizers in her system-- you know, those darts we recovered from the last police raid.  She'll be out for a few hours at least."

Ed, who was beginning to dislike Phaex, gave him a startled look.  "Is that legal?"

The man laughed harshly.  "Is ANYTHING we do legal?"

Ed realized the stupidity of his question and was quiet.  It didn't matter much because at that instant doorbell chimed.

Boa squealed and clapped her hands.  "Ooh, that's probably the doctor!  I'll be back up with him in a jiffy!"

As soon as she was out the door, Phaex sat down in a chair across from the bed.  "Well well well... I'm kinda curious about how you managed to survive that."

Ed gave him a blank look.  "Well we did.  It's not like it matters too much how it happened; I hardly think I'll be jumping out of a subway again anytime soon."  

But of course he was as curious as the other man was about how he'd survived.  His insides should have been turned to jelly from the force of the impact.  What sort of physics defying--

Physics defying.  The rock wall.  The train car spinning in the tunnel.  Ed's eyes widened slightly as the truth hit him.  Of course, Dionysus... perhaps calling him had helped after all, in a painful and roundabout way.  If the mad G.O.D. could detach the car from the middle of the train and send it careening toward certain death, then he certainly could have slowed his and Sisca's descent.  

But Ed didn't say anything to Phaex about it.  After all, he didn't want to go into an in-depth discussion on anything with his head pounding the way it was.  He only leaned back against his pillows and kept his face carefully blank.  "What does it matter anyways?"

The man watched him for a moment, brown eyes narrowed.  "I dunno," he said after a pause, shrugging and leaning back in his chair.  "It's just there was a lot of weird things about that crash, like the way that wall popped up outta nowhere, and you and the girl survivin's just the icing on the cake."

Ed shrugged.  "I can't help you much there," he said, more or less truthfully.  "I'm not sure why we're still alive."

"Well it was worth a shot anyhow."  Phaex frowned as he leaned back a little more, then let the front legs of the chair crash down to the floor again with a grimace of discomfort.  He began digging in the seat under him.  "What the... oh.  Almost forgot about that."

Phaex pulled out a grey mask with impassive rectangular slots for the eyes and mouth.  "You wouldn' happen to know where this came from, would you?"

Ed stiffened imperceptibly.  It was impossible to tell what he was thinking by looking at him.  "That's mine, actually," he said, holding out one scaly hand.  "Could I have it back?"

"Take it.  I'd have chucked it out if I didn' think it belonged to one of you guys."  Phaex handed it over, then gave Ed a look of genuine curiosity.  "Mind if I ask what it is?"

The unblinking blue eyes looked down at the plastic mask.  For one instant, a look of fright and disgust shot through Ed's gaze, but the next moment his face had hardened.

"It's just a piece of plastic.  Nothing more."

To be continued...