[A.U. Cavan] Grounded Raven The Rest of Chapter 5
Lynzie Austin
Grounded Raven The sound of hydraulics releasing echoed like a death knell through the derelict station. Frost plumed from the opening cryo-pods, swirling around figures that shouldn’t have been able to move—but were. Ellie’s phaser was in her hand before she’d fully processed the threat. "Fall back to the Flyer—now."
But it was too late.
The first vampire lunged, but it was all wrong. Its limbs jerked like a marionette with half its strings cut, its jaw unhinging too wide, black venom dripping from elongated fangs. It moved faster than anything that broken should have been able to move. As though it was disassembled and reassembled without a manual, yet somehow it was still ambling towards them at breakneck speed.
Fork met the creature mid-leap, his claws slashing through its chest. Rotten blood sprayed the walls, but the thing didn’t stop. It couldn’t. Its hands locked around Fork’s throat, its milky eyes unblinking.
"Fork!" Ellie fired, the phaser beam slicing through the vampire’s skull. It crumpled, but the damage was done as it lay twitching on the steel floor.
More pods hissed open.
Victor moved like liquid shadow, twisting past another’s grasp and driving his fist through its ribcage. He wrenched free a handful of withered organs, his lip curling in disgust. "They’re not alive. Someone is puppeting them."
Reynard backed toward Ellie, his own phaser sweeping the corridor. "Yeah, and I’ve got a real bad feeling about who’s holding the strings—"
The lights flickered.
A voice, smooth and venomous, oozed from the comm system:
"Victor. I wondered if you’d come back to me."
Victor went rigid.
Ellie didn’t need to ask who it was. The way his fists clenched—the way his fangs pressed into his own lip hard enough to draw blood told her everything.
Angelienia.
The revived froze mid-attack, their heads tilting in unison. Obedient. Waiting. A door slid open at the far end of the corridor, revealing a silhouette backlit by crimson emergency lights. A woman stepped forward, her heels clicking against the grating. She was beautiful in the way a knife was beautiful—all sharp edges and lethal purpose. Her white lab coat was pristine against her black satin dress, her blonde hair coiled into a flawless french twist. But her eyes...
Her eyes were black.
Not just the pupils. The whites.
"Hello, darling," Angelienia purred. "Did you miss me?"
Victor’s voice was gravel. "You’re dead."
She smiled, and it was the coldest thing Ellie had ever seen. "Not quite."
Then she raised a hand and Fork screamed.
His body arched, his bones cracking as his muscles twisted against his will. His claws scraped against the floor, his teeth bared in a snarl that wasn’t his own.
Angelienia’s smile widened. "Let’s have a proper reunion, shall we?"
Fork's scream tore through the corridor like a living thing. Ellie watched in horror as his spine arched unnaturally, tendons snapping and reforming beneath his skin. His fingers elongated into monstrous claws, his uniform shredding as tawny fur erupted across his body.
"Fork!" Ellie lunged forward, but Reynard yanked her back just as a massive paw swiped through the air where her head had been. Victor moved like lightning, slamming his shoulder into Fork's transformed side—but the werewolf barely staggered. Milky saliva dripped from jaws that could crush duranium.
"Don't!" Victor barked at Ellie, fangs bared. "That's not him anymore."
Angelienia's laugh was a musical razor down Ellie's spine. "Oh, it's absolutely him. Just... refined." She tapped a finger against her temple. "The Singer amplifies what already lives in their blood. His wolf always wanted out—I just gave it permission. He’s just a big puppy. Go on, Elinor, give him a pet. "
The revived formed a silent circle around them, their hollow eyes fixed on Angelienia like worshippers before an altar. Ellie's mind raced—Starfleet insignias still visible on their tattered uniforms, their decayed faces frozen in eternal snarls. These were not just experiments.
They were the failed recruits.
Reynard's phaser whined as he charged it to maximum. "So what's the play, Doc? Because 'shoot the lady' is sounding real good right now."
Angelienia sighed. "Must you types always be so predictable?" She snapped her fingers and Fork was tossed about like a ragdoll. One moment he was ten feet away. The next, his claws were at Reynard's throat, pinning him against the wall hard enough to dent the bulkhead.
"Reynie!" Ellie's phaser trembled in her grip. If she took her shot, she would inevitably hit one of them.
Victor stepped between Angelienia and Ellie, his voice low and deadly. "What do you want?"
Angelienia trailed a finger down Victor's chest, ignoring how he stiffened. "You know what I want. The Exchange needs its best hunter back." Her black eyes flicked to Ellie. "Or perhaps... a trade?"
Ellie's breath hitched. The way Angelienia looked at her, like a cherry atop of a pile of whipped cream, made all of her skin want to deglove off her body expeditiously.
Victor's growl shook the corridor. "Touch her and I'll—"
"You'll what?" Angelienia's smile vanished. Her tone grew deathly quiet. "Kill me? Again?" She grabbed Victor's wrist, forcing his palm against her chest where no heartbeat stirred.
Ellie's stomach dropped.
Angelienia was already dead.
And then the station's alarms blared to life, crimson lights painting the horror in bloody strokes. A robotic voice echoed:
"Containment breach in Sector 5. All personnel evacuate."
Angelienia's head snapped toward the sound. For the first time, her composure cracked. "No... that's impossible—"
And just luck would have it, that is when the wall exploded.
A thing of matted fur and too many limbs crawled through the wreckage, its maw distending to reveal rows of needle-like teeth the size of chef’s knives. It was not like anything they had seen before. This was entirely new.
And something entirely worse.
Fork's controlled snarl turned to a whimper. Even under Angelienia's command, his wolf recognized true danger.
Vic grabbed Ellie's arm. "Run."
Angelienia’s hand closed around Ellie's other wrist, her grip freezing. Ellie felt her stomach plummet as she found herself in the middle of a tug of war. "Oh no, Doctor," she whispered. "You're coming with me."
The last thing Ellie saw before the world went black was Reynard's horrified face—and the monster lunging for his throat.
Fifty Years Earlier - Starbase 227, Medical Research Wing
Victor Krieghoff had never believed in ghosts.
Then he met her.
The woman in the observation room stood with her back to him, her silhouette framed by the blue glow of stasis tanks. Even before she turned, Victor knew something was wrong. The way the junior scientists scurried from her presence. The too-perfect stillness of her hands. The scent, copper and frostbite, the perfume of something that had no business walking in daylight.
"Ah. The infamous Lieutenant Krieghoff." Her voice was a scalpel sliding between ribs. "I expected someone... taller."
Victor didn't smile. "Dr. Angelienia, I presume."
She turned, and Victor's instincts screamed.
Beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. The dead always were before they rotted.
Her dossier claimed she was Vulcan-trained—a prodigy in xenoneurology. But the woman before him moved with a predator's grace, her black satin dress whispering against legs that had no right being so alive for someone whose heartbeat Victor couldn't hear.
"You're staring," she murmured, stepping closer. "Is it the eyes?"
Victor forced himself to breathe. The rumors were true, her sclera were pitch black, the irises swimming with flecks of silver like stars in a void.
"I've seen stranger," he lied.
Angelienia's laugh was a shiver down his spine. "Oh, I doubt that."
She led him to the containment chamber, where a figure writhed against its restraints—a Klingon hybrid, his veins bulging black beneath his skin.
"Subject Rho-12," she said, pressing a hand to the glass. "His augmentation should have granted him immunity to the Phage. Instead..."
The Klingon's head snapped up. His eyes were identical to hers.
Victor's hand went to his phaser. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"We didn't do anything." Angelienia's nails tapped the glass. "His body did this itself. A fascinating evolutionary failsafe—when certain augments are pushed past their limits, their neural pathways rewrite themselves." She turned those void-black eyes on Victor. "Imagine an army that can't disobey. Not because of loyalty... but because their very biology compels them."
“So you infected them?” Victor looked at her skeptically. “Into compliance.”
Angelienia's laugh was liquid nitrogen down his spine. "Infection implies disease. This is evolution." She pressed a palm to the glass. "The Singer Protocol rewrites neural pathways at the quantum level. Once activated, an augment's biology becomes... suggestible to certain commands."
Victor's stomach turned. "That's not science. It's imprisonment."
"Is it?" Angelienia stepped closer, her breath chilling his lips. "Or is it simply... refinement?"
Victor's stomach turned as the implications unfolded. “Fancy way of justifying mind control—”
"It's not mind control," she continued, fingers dancing along the observation panel. "We're simply speaking to the body in its native tongue. Every species has harmonic resonances—Vulcan neuropressure, Betazoid empathy, even your kind's... predatory instincts." Her black eyes gleamed. "The Singer doesn't create obedience. It amplifies what's already there."
"You're weaponizing biology."
Her nail traced his jugular. "Imagine a soldier who can't disobey because his very cells crave compliance. No need for messy conditioning or unreliable loyalty."
Her fingers brushed his temple and the world shattered.
Victor was drowning in silver static, a thousand voices screaming inside his skull. He saw battlefields littered with augments moving in perfect sync. He saw Starfleet admirals smiling as creatures like him tore each other apart for scraps. He saw her—always her—standing at the center of it all like a spider in a web of corpses.
Then, worst of all, he saw himself kneeling at her feet.
Victor wrenched free with a gasp, his fangs bared. "Get out of my head."
Angelienia licked her lips. "Oh, darling. I'm already there."
Ellie's scream tore Victor back to the present.
Angelienia's lab hadn't changed—same sterile walls, same stasis tanks humming with tormented shapes. Only now, Ellie was strapped to the central table, her pupils dilated as the neural scanner descended toward her forehead.
"Stop!" Victor slammed against the forcefield separating them, his fists leaving smears of black blood on the shimmering barrier.
Angelienia didn't look up from her console. "You know how this works, Victor. First the scan... then the Singer's kiss." Her fingers danced across the controls. "Though I must say, I'm particularly interested in what we'll find in your little doctor's mind. Vulcan genes are so... resistant to coercion."
Ellie's voice was a rasp. "Victor—what is she—?"
The scanner activated with a low cold whine and Victor did the only thing he could.
He emitted a pitch that could shatter the bones of the living. The note that tore from his throat wasn't human. It was not even vampire. It was the sound a black hole makes when it swallows a star—a vibration that made the lights flicker and the revived clutch their skulls in dismal agony. Ellie wailed in pain.
Angelienia whirled, her braid lashing like a whip. "Victor!"
Victor's gums burned as his fangs elongated past their usual limits, his vision swimming with silver static. He hadn't done this since the day he'd ripped out her throat. Since the day he'd thought he'd killed her.
The forcefield shuddered with the pitch.
Ellie's eyes locked onto his, wide with realization. "You... you are one…"
Angelienia's laugh was madness given sound. "Oh, sweet girl. He's not just one." She pressed a hand to the forcefield, her black eyes gleaming.
"He's the failure." [OOC: Now I am out of back stock material, so yeah lol. I guess I have to write something more off this since I finished the chapter ]