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This is a work of fiction copyright Radical Gopher and may not be duplicated in whole or part without the author's permission. This story contains adult situations and should not be views by anyone under the age of 18.

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THIS WAY MADNESS LIES - part 5

Faulkner stood in the hall outside the interrogation room discussing the current situation with his two technicians. "If you are doing everything correctly, why isn't she responding? I've seen you work before. You've gotten Buddhist monks to cry within the first five minutes. You've been working on her for almost half an hour. What the hell's going on here?"

"Frankly... we don't know," the woman responded. "We've been piercing through some of the most sensitive nerve clusters the body has, working our way up the legs, but she doesn't seem to feel anything."

"It's almost like all the sensation in her legs is turned off," the short Russian male responded. "The EKG records the pain at its locus, but there's no corresponding registration along any point of her nervous system "

"Except for the first two piercings you made on her feet," Faulkner pointed out.

"That's right," the woman replied. "She did respond there. Perhaps we should apply additional stimuli there. It might break the logjam, so to speak."

"What about using sodium pentathol?" the short man asked.

"We can't," the female technician replied, "not for at least another three hours or it will react badly with the sedatives she was given on the trip out.

"Well, whatever you do, I want it done soon," the Colonel said. "We're on the clock with her and we used up half that window just in transport."

"Sounds like it's time for phase II," the male technician observed, grinning.

* * * *

Jillian lay shivering alone in the examination room. Over the past few minutes the sensory block that Bob placed in her mind had begun to fade and it felt like her feet and legs were on fire. She was propped up enough to see the long, thick steel pins that had been rammed through her feet, ankles calves and knees. As thankful as she was that she had barely felt their insertion, she now had to grit her teeth against the pain that was slowly building. The Kerachaw had promised he would return as quickly as possible... thirty-five or forty minutes, but there was no clock here and she was becoming worried.

The door opened and the two technicians re-entered the room. Walking over to Jillian, the female began removing the sensor leads taped to her body. She was not very careful removing the tape that held them in place. She then reached down and pulled the sensor from her vagina, replacing it with a much larger stainless steel cylinder that was rounded at one end and had two wires attached to its base. She roughly pushed it into Jillian then looked at her face. Seeing discomfort there, the technician reached down and wiggled the pin in her left foot. Jillian gasped in pain and ground her teeth together. She smiled in satisfaction.

"So... now it's beginning to hurt, isn't it? For a while I wondered whether or not your were human." She turned and took an instrument box from her partner that looked to be about the size of a car battery. Setting it on top of the first cart, she plugged it into an outlet on the second, attached the two wires from the rod and flipped a switch. There was a soft humming and the implant began to gently vibrate.

"Go ahead and relax for a few moments," she said, gently patting Jillian on the cheek. "Our toy works best if you're nice and wet down there." Her accent also marked her as Russian, or at least Eastern European, Jillian couldn't really tell

As intended, the vibrator gently warmed and massaged Jillian. She shuddered, fearful that she knew exactly what they intended to do with the device. Several minutes passed. Despite the pain in her legs she felt herself becoming excited. Moisture began to gently trickle past her nether lips. Seeing this, the technician looked up and nodded at one of the cameras positioned around the ceiling.

Colonel Faulkner's voice filled the room. "I would strongly recommend you start cooperating, Dr. Strathern. The next phase of our procedure is going to be a lot less pleasant than what you've experienced so far."

"Really?" panted Jillian, "and here I thought you didn't care."

"Where is the Outlanders base of operations? Where is he hiding?"

"Did you try using a Thomas Guide?" she mocked.

The woman next to her turned a small dial on the box and pressed a button. Several thousand volts of electricity tore through Jillian's body. Her back arched and she screamed. The technician held the button down for about three seconds before letting go. Jillian sank back onto the padded chair while the short male went around and tightened the straps holding her down even more.

Sweat beaded across Jillian's body and she fought to catch her breath. As bad as the needles were, this was a lot worse.

"If you continue resisting like this," Faulkner warned, "you may not leave here alive."

"Since when did you ever plan to let me leave?"

"I don't consider you a threat, doctor. Misguided perhaps, but nowhere as big a threat as your friend," he replied smoothly. "If you collaborate with us there's no reason you can't return to a normal life. In fact, I might even be able to talk my superiors into funding a new animal clinic for you. Imagine what you could do with a couple of million in start up capital."

"Let me guess..." Jillian replied. "The only condition would be I'd have to allow Boris and Natasha here to use my lab to entertain some of your clients... AAAAAAHHHHH!!"

The technician released the button once more, leaving Jillian gasping for breath

"You're only hurting yourself," Faulkner chided. "What loyalty do you owe that alien? He's a thing... a creature from another world who isn't even remotely human."

"He's more human than you could ever hope to be... NNNGGGAAAHHH!!!" Jillian's insides literally felt as if they were burning. She wept, crying out her pain... her fear; trying to draw strength from Bob's promise.

The Colonel shook his head. "I want to know where the Outlander hides," he repeated. "Sooner or later, whether you want to or not, you will tell me."

"F.. F.. Fu...ck... Fuck You... Bastard."

This time the technician held the button down for almost ten seconds, causing Jillian to jerk and writhe against her restraints. The pain was so intense she couldn't even scream. The electric shock stopped abruptly and Jillian slumped in the chair like a rag doll. The smell of burned flesh drifted faintly across the room. Blood trickled slowly from the corner of her mouth.

"What's wrong?" asked Faulkner.

The male technician leaned over the unconscious woman. "She's bitten partially through her tongue," he reported. He looked over at his partner. "You might want to turn the intensity down some. We don't want to risk her swallowing it and choking to death... at least not yet anyway."

"Agreed," the Colonel said. "Reset the levels a bit lower and give her a couple of minutes to anticipate the next series of jolts."

* * * *

The approach control director at Nellis Air Force Base stared intently at the radar screen in front of him. When he saw the object appear on his screen for the third time he called the duty officer over to have a look.

"What have you got, Kowalski?"

"I don't know. This thing just keeps popping up on my screen. It has a flight profile similar to a cruise missile but it's traveling much too fast for either a missile or an aircraft."

"Estimated speed?"

Kowalski adjusted the intensity some. "Six thousand, eight hundred miles per hour... almost mach ten. The radar track shows it's going to pass north of us."

"Sounds like the god-damned space shuttle. That speed can't possibly be right. What about secondary tracking?" The Major thumbed the transmit switch on his headset. "Davis, are you showing anything at all on your scope?"

"Not a thing, sir, except for a few training flights and routine commercial traffic coming out of McCarran in South Vegas."

The Major sighed. "Okay, Kowalski... Tag the console O.O.C. and call the tech guys over at the shop. Tell ‘em it's priority one and to get their asses up here ASAP!"

"Right away, sir!" Sergeant Kowalski did as instructed then stood and stretched before walking over to a nearby coffee pot. This was the fifth time in a month their new omni directional radar system had gone belly-up. He wondered if it was really worth all the trouble it brought. With it down again, he had nothing to do except watch the tech boys patch it together again. He sipped gingerly on his coffee. It was going to be a long, slow watch.

* * * *

"Wake up, Dr. Strathern. It's time to go back to work."

Jillian felt a hand slapping not so gently at her face, jiggling her head back and forth in an effort to bring her back to consciousness. She groaned softly, tears leaking from her eyes. Her world had become one of agony. Everything from her waist down felt as if it were burning. Her head pounded and her throat felt dry as autumn leaves.

She whimpered as her senses cleared. "Water... Please," she rasped.

"Give her some water," ordered Faulkner. "We want her able to talk when she decides to end this game."

The short male went over to a sink, filled a paper cup then brought it over to Jillian. He slowly poured its contents into her mouth, giving her time to swallow each mouthful. She thought it strange that the water had a coppery taste to it until she recognized the flavor of her own blood. It felt as if her tongue were swollen.

As she watched the woman attached several additional leads from the shock box to the pins in her ankles. She followed this up with a pair of small alligator clips, which she attached to each of Jillian's nipples. These too were attached to the shock box by a pair of wires. The serrated edges of the clips bit painfully into her flesh, but did not draw any blood.

"You can end this at anytime Dr. Strathern. All you have to do is give me the information I want." Faulkner said. "Then you can go home."

Jillian didn't answer. She closed her eyes, braced herself and focused instead on Bob's promise. He had to be close. He just had to... The technician pushed the button again. Ribbons of fire danced up and down Jillian's body. When they stopped, she waited for the next useless question. Instead, the woman threw the switch once more, giving Jillian three long jolts in a row. The rapidity of the shocks didn't allow her a chance to breathe, and by the end of the third one she was gasping raggedly for air and crying again, full out.

"Are you ready to talk?"

Faulkner's voice cut through Jillian's agony. How she was beginning to hate that voice with its supreme confidence and arrogance. She gritted her teeth, focusing on that small spark of anger that was still within her. It gave her one last burst of strength.

"GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU SON OF A BITCHHHAAAARRRRHHHHGG!"

The shock came to an abrupt end, leaving Jillian weak and panting desperately for breath. Her body was so drenched with sweat it had pooled underneath her in the chair cushions. She trembled from the cold, from shock and from fear. There was no anger left; no strength; nothing existed except the pain.

She braced herself for the next set of jolts... the ones she knew deep down would finally break her. They did not come. They were replaced instead by the sound of a man and woman yelling at each other in Russian. Jillian opened her eyes and looked around. The room was dark except for a bank of emergency lights above the one door. There was a rumbling crash as something distant collapsed or gave way. The vibrations from it rattled everything in the room, including the pins in Jillian's legs. She gritted her teeth. At least it wasn't as bad as the electric shocks.

Gunfire erupted somewhere along the outside hallway. It sounded like a pistol, perhaps a semi-auto from the number of rounds being expended. A second, then a third pistol joined it. Then abruptly, all three weapons were silent.

A wall phone that had escaped Jillian's earlier notice rang. Probably powered by some kind of internal back up battery system she thought. The woman quickly went over to it and snatched it up.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

"We have a class one security breech in progress," Faulkner replied. "Initiate the Omega Protocol. I can't get through to anyone on watch in any of the labs, so have Aries get down there and scrub everything."

"Right away, sir." She hung up the phone and looked over at her partner. "The Colonel wants everything in the labs scrubbed. Get down there now and see it's done."

"Including the samples?" he asked, aghast.

"He said everything, fool... Just get going!"

Nodding, the short man headed for the door while the female opened a drawer on one of the cabinets. From it she removed a syringe and a small vial containing a sulfurous-yellow liquid. "You got lucky," she said, stabbing the needle through the rubber stopper and transferring a portion of the liquid. "This will kill you much quicker than we would have."

Without warning the door suddenly exploded inward, knocking the male technician on his ass. Jillian looked up in relief. It was the Outlander. He ducked his head slightly as he floated through the ruined door and into the room. Stepping off his disc, he seemed to literally radiate power. A blue glow suffused his entire being. The male technician reached under his scrubs and pulled out a small, .38 cal., snub-nose revolver. He leveled it at the Kerachaw and fired. The bullet ricocheted off the energy field surrounding the alien. One of the spheres orbiting the Outlander suddenly broke away and slammed into the technician's hand, smashing both it and the gun. He howled in anguish then curled up into a ball on the floor, whimpering like a frightened animal.

Bob turned his attention now to the female technician. She was holding the syringe to Jillian's throat. "Don't move, or she dies!"

The Outlander froze where he was and locked eyes with the woman. She stiffened; the muscles in her arms went slack and the syringe dropped to the floor and shattered. The liquid inside began to hiss and bubble as it ate its way through the linoleum. Bob didn't waste time with any kind of subtly. He rammed his way through her mind, dragging out every scrap of information she had there. His countenance darkened as he saw what was in her deepest thoughts. She collapsed to the floor. When he left her mind, it was broken as completely as a mind could be; a genuine Tubule Rasa. If she were lucky, those who rebuilt her would make sure she was a better person for it.

Striding over to the male technician the Kerachaw picked him up off the floor by his shirt and carried him over to Jillian. "UNBIND HER!" he ordered in a voice thick with outrage. He set the man down and allowed him to get to work. The technician fumbled, one handed at the straps while Bob reached up and gently laid a hand against Jillian's forehead. The silver sheath encasing his body flowed away from his head and he removed his visor. His expression softened to one of sympathy and regret. Jillian could see he was on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry... I tried to get here as fast as I could..."

Jillian reached up with her now freed hand and pressed it gently to his lips, silencing him. "It's alright," she whispered through her own tears. "You came, just as you promised." She winced as the technician removed one of the needles from her calves. Bob focused briefly on her. The pain vanished completely.

Removing the shock rod from Jillian turned out to be the hardest part of releasing her. When it came out, it pulled free a fair amount of burned and scabbarous tissue, causing her to bleed profusely. The short, dark-haired man reached down and pulled a couple of small cloth towels from one of the cabinets. These were placed between Jillian's legs to help staunch the bleeding.

"Give me something to cover her with!" Bob ordered. Within moments, he was handed the light blue blanket that she had been wearing when she woke up. The Kerachaw carefully wrapped her in this, then took out of the vials from his pouch, opened the stopper and proffered it to Jillian. She drank it quickly, made a slight grimace at the taste then raised her eyebrows as a sensation of warmth began to wash across her.

"What was that?" she asked.

"A healing nanite solution... It will evaluate your genetic structure and make whatever repairs are necessary to your body." A noise drew their attention to the door. Bob looked over just in time to see the male technician dash into the hallway and around the corner. "Where does he think he's going?" the Kerachaw muttered angrily. He stiffened as he suddenly recalled a bit of data he'd taken from the female technician.

"The laboratory... He's going to destroy everything there!" Cradling Jillian in one arm, he remounted the flying disc. Silver metal flowed once more over his head covering even the smallest wisp of mane. As he moved toward the door a hail of gunfire erupted from several figures crouched there. Bullets bounced off the energy field that surrounded Jillian and himself.

"There's no time for this," the Kerachaw snapped. Gesturing with his staff, the remains of the shattered metal door fused themselves into a solid plate, which slammed against the opening and merged with the wall.

"How are we getting out?" asked Jillian, somewhat groggy from both the effects of the torture and the nanites flooding her body. "Is there another exit?"

"Yes," Bob replied. "We're making one of our own." Holding the staff over the edge of the disc, the Outlander rapped it once against the floor of the room. Energy flowed outward from the base of the staff, forming a circle ten feet across. Every inch of floor within that circle instantly dissolved into dust. The two figures floated down through the hole and into a storeroom immediately beneath them. Gesturing once more with the staff, the door at the far end of the room flew open and they exited into a corridor filled with confused Directory personnel.

A few of them, either security officers or field agents, moved to draw their weapons. The Kerachaw's eyes flashed once, and every person within view collapsed to the floor, sound asleep. The human girl and the alien drifted rapidly down the hallway until they came to a set of double doors marked ‘Restricted Access.' Though locked, they presented no more of a barrier than a puff of air. Within moments, they were inside. Bob fused the door shut after them to keep anyone else out.

The chamber looked as if it were an observation post of some kind. It was surrounded by a collection of both white rooms and examination labs, each with its own assortment of items contained within. The emergency lighting cast a series of deep shadows that seemed to add to the ominous feeling of this place. The largest room, about two stories high and the length of a basketball court, contained what looked to be the wreckage of some kind of aircraft, though no aircraft like this could have been built on Earth.

Looking around, they spotted the male technician standing over a small console. Bob's eyes flashed once more and the Russian dropped senseless to the ground. Stepping off the floating disc, the Kerachaw carried Jillian over to the now sleeping figure and inspected the console. "Do you understand what this does?" he asked her gruffly.

She studied the system for a moment or two. "If I were to take a wild guess, it looks like a manual purge control. Probably intended to fill each chamber with some kind of highly corrosive gas that would destroy whatever's inside; but that's just a guess, mind you."

"An accurate one, more than likely," Bob responded tightly. He looked around until he spotted a computer terminal. Like every other piece of electronic equipment, it was shut down. "Would the core computer for this complex have a auxiliary power system?"

"I don't know," Jillian replied, bothered by the increasingly brusque tone of his voice. "It sounds like a sensible precaution, though I doubt you can access it through a dead terminal."

Nodding to himself, the Kerachaw set her gently down in a nearby padded chair. He removed one of the two remaining spheres from his belt pouch, twisted it then set it down on top of the keyboard. Six spindly ‘legs' popped out from the side of the sphere and implanted themselves in the keyboard. Moments later, the screen came to life. Data began flashing across it at an incredible rate as the device tore through the computer's safeguards and began to download every scrap of information to be found.

Leaving the sphere to its work, the Kerachaw slowly worked his way around the observation room, examining each lab in turn. Something in the way he moved worried Jillian. There was an increasing heaviness she had not seen before. His free hand dragged along each observation window, occasionally banging in frustration against the thick plexiglas. He stopped in front of one particular room filled with autopsy equipment and placed the palm of his hand against it. He slumped, resting his forehead against the window. The silver armor that covered him vanished and she could see tears streaming down his cheeks.

Spying a rack of white lab coats, Jillian tried standing. She discovered that by leaning against the arms of the chair and pushing it ahead of her she could walk, after a fashion, though it was still difficult in spite of the repairs already done by the nanites. Reaching the coat rack, she quickly donned one of the long coats and buttoned it up, wrapping the blanket around her like a shawl for added warmth.

Jillian turned back toward the Kerachaw. "Bob? What is it? What's wrong?"

Almost as if on cue the Outlander lifted his head and let loose an undulating scream of both rage and loss, as inhuman as any sound he had ever made! He took a step back from the window, raised his staff and slammed the butt of it against the plexiglas. It disintegrated instantly

Shocked, Jillian tried to move toward the Kerachaw. Forgetting to hold onto the chair she fell heavily to the floor. Reaching up, she grabbed the edge of a console and pulled herself to her feet just in time to see the Outlander climb through the opening and into the autopsy lab. Staggering, she managed to grab a handrail that ran along the length of the observation room. She pulled herself toward the now open window, watching as the Kerachaw grabbed an autopsy table with both hands and wrenched it out of its mounting by brute strength alone. He hurled it against a computer terminal then heavily walked over to several sets of refrigerator doors set in one wall.

Feelings of dread suddenly overwhelmed Jillian and she tried calling to Bob several times, but he did not respond. She watched as he opened one of the doors. Reaching in, he pulled out what looked like a glass jar containing some kind of tissue sample. He carefully set it on the floor next to him, and then retrieved another. By the time she reached the open window he was surrounded by a dozen of these jars. Each contained what looked like different kinds of internal organs. Some looked familiar, yet others defied Jillian's ability to identify them.

"Bob...BOB!" she called frantically; but he continued to ignore her, opening yet another door. Triggered by gravity a large drawer slid out and locked into place in front of the Outlander. He stopped and stared at it unbelieving for a moment or two, then sank to his knees.

Jillian suddenly felt sick and turned away. There on the autopsy tray lay what remained of an adult Kerachaw.

... To Be Concluded