FSE

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DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

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THE GRYPHON COMPLEX. Chapter 6: From adversity we came.

On Saturday, everything changed.

We'd been complacent too long, and clearly drawn too much attention to our activities.

I should have known it would never be this easy. Life had never been this easy.

When I woke against Pyre, the gryphon had been studying me silently, gently stroking a claw through my hair as I slept. The soft inner edges of his beak curled into a smile as I woke, and I leaned back into him, enjoying the caress.

However, life's priorities clearly beckoned, and we could ill afford the luxury of such simple pleasures. Groaning mightily, I rose from the bed with a stretch, before looking down at the gryphon lying on his side with a smirk.

"Umm, you might need to do something about that" I said, pointing to the matted fur covering his stomach, gummed up with the excesses of the previous evening.

He looked down with surprise, running fingers through the feathers and fur, before wincing as they hit the matted mess.

"Urk!" he retorted glibly, rising to his feet and stepping from the bed to examine the mess in the dresser mirror. "Shower time then, I guess"

I looked up at him in surprise, to where he was inspecting himself minutely.

"Hang on. I thought you hated showers?"

He shook his head, before the muscles in his neck and back suddenly followed, ending in a full body shake. His feathers ruffled back into place, I grinned as stray bits of down drifted slowly throughout the room in a miniature snowstorm of fluff.

"Showers are perfectly fine." He said primly, "Just not here! It's a lot easier taking one if you have the means to dry yourself off properly. Wet feathers smell bad!"

I grinned, wrapping an arm around him, careful to avoid his grimier parts.

"Well, dry gryphon smells pretty darn good to me, so how about I give you a hand?"

Looking down at me with an eyebrow raised, he asked "How is that?"

"Well, we use towels to dry you. Lots and lots of towels" I chuckled at him.

He returned his gaze to the mirror, studying his dirty fur morosely. "lots and lots and lots and lots...."

Laughing, I guided him into the room's huge bathroom, pushing him ahead of me into the walk in shower.

Pyre was right.

Lots and lots and lots of towels!

By the time I had finished helping him dry his fur and feathers sufficiently not to leave water pooled on the timber floors and rugs, K had not only raided every cupboard and bathroom in the house, but we'd resorted to using heavy blankets, and even trying to blow him dry with the nozzle of the air compressor in the shed.

Dry, he looked magnificent.

Wet, he looked like a drowned rat.

A freaky rat-thing half covered in feathers, anyway, which was certainly a comparison he didn't overly appreciate.

Two hours later, with the place covered in half dried fluff from his inner coats forming tumble-weeds around the room with every stray breath of air, at least he looked presentable enough to meet the professor for the day's work.

The mountain of towels in the laundry reeking of "au d'wet dog" we chose to ignore for the present. It was decided the filter in the laundry dryer was a little too fragile for that sort of load.

Surprisingly, The Professor was very late. The man was as anal retentive with his time management as he was with his professional life, so it was atypical of him to miss his morning schedule. K and I sat at the dining table in the kitchen playing poker, while the gryphon had retreated to the lounge room, splayed out on the rug in front of the fireplace attempting to dry himself further.

K looked at the clock for a third time, musing "Hmmm, must be some serious traffic. He should have been here by ten. Wonder what's keeping him?"

I looked up at the clock from my work on Pyre's feather, which I'd been attaching to my baseball cap with some fine gold wire I'd flinched from the workshop downstairs. Initially, I'd considered simply gluing it on, but decided against it. The quill, while light, had a tendency to catch on things unexpectedly, and it became pretty clear I'd have lost it shortly had the glue failed.

Instead, tongue-in-cheek in concentration, I'd begun wrapping the fine wire tightly about the hollow shaft, until it bit lightly into the keratin without damaging the tube. It was a surprisingly difficult process, since the thing had to be held firmly without damaging it as the coil was wound around it. My perseverance paid off as, with a flourish, I put the cap back on, the feather literally hanging past my right ear to run down my back. Giving my head a shake, I briefly cocked my head at K, an eye raised for his opinion.

He gave a guffaw, stating "OK, you look like Peter Pan went off and fucked Michael Jordan!" before returning to his coffee with a snort.

Giving him a fake scowl, I began to reply, breaking off my response as we heard the professor's car racing up the driveway.

Too fast! Way too fast!

Springing to our feet, we heard the horrific sound of shattering glass and metal over the roar of the engine. After sharing a shocked glance, we raced down the hallway to the front door, shooting past the gryphon whose head was hanging out the lounge room doorway in confusion.

Once out the front entry, we gaped at the carnage that greeted us. The professor's car had clipped a tree on the way up the driveway, before swerving into the closed garage doors, taking out a large chunk of the side sheeting in the process. We found him prone behind the wheel, head down on the deflated air bag which had activated during the crash, and engine still idling roughly. The front of the car had crumpled backwards, buckling the chassis and door frames, so even as K and I tugged frantically at the handles, they wouldn't budge.

After cutting the ignition, Pyre sidled past us, grabbing the window frame of the driver's door in one front claw, while bracing his other on the roof support above it. With rear feet dug deep into the driveway gravel beneath him, he tensed his muscles, straining at the vehicles framework. Gritting his beak as the metal began to shift, he redoubled his efforts until, with a shriek of torn steel, the door departed its hinges, and was tossed to lie discarded on the driveway.

Giving the puffing gryphon a grateful look, I leaned across to check the Professor's vitals, being careful not to disturb his neck, which I feared might have been injured during the crash. Reaching across his waist to release the seatbelt, I stifled a gasp as my arm quickly became drenched in his blood.

K had turned white as a sheet at the sight, before staggering back to support himself on the side of the car, ready to vomit. With the risk of fire from the smoking wreckage increasing by the moment, we had no choice on leaving him in the vehicle. Taking particular care for his injuries, Pyre and I gently removed him from the wreckage, before laying him out on the driveway to assess his injuries.

The truth was shocking; He hadn't received his wounds from the accident. It was clear he'd been shot in the right shoulder, blood still leaking slowly to further saturate the hole in his shirt.

"Fuck" I grunted, as we lifted him again, this time with K's squeamish assistance. Not exactly built for carrying such a load, Pyre walked closely behind us as we took him through the front door and down the hallway, to stretch him out on the sofa in the living room.

I grabbed one of the spare clean towel's we'd been using earlier to dry off the gryphon, pressing it firmly into the wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Pyre helpfully shredded another, which was used to bind the towel tightly to his chest. Triage completed for the moment, I turned to the two concerned onlookers, who'd been eyeing my ministrations nervously.

"Fuck" I said again helpfully with a sigh, receiving no response in reply. "OK, this isn't good. I can see only one reason why anyone would shoot the guy, and that's if we've been found out".

Pyre nodded, while K turned pale again.

"So, we have a choice. Do we fire this thing up, on the off chance we can retrace your original flight path from the other side, or do we do a runner and forget it?"

"Then what?" Pyre said with a sigh, scratching a claw through his mane in defeat. "I'm stuck here permanently, and we're all three of us on the run forever? I'd rather risk the transporter! It's tested fine so far. We only needed the Professor to confirm the trace back to my world, before we proceeded with the actual trials. If we could only ask him if he...."

Pyre cut himself off, hearing weak coughing from behind as the professor brought his hand to his lips, smearing blood across his fingers.

I raced to kneel at his side, passing him a handkerchief, which he took gratefully before trying to sit upright. His groan at the attempt was painful to hear, so we carefully propped him up with a pillow, easing his breathing further.

Opening a bloodshot eye, he stared in recognition at each of us, before returning to the gryphon, who was nervously watching the human. Giving him a tremulous smile, he began to explain the events of the morning.

"This morning, I managed to get back to the lab earlier than planned, which in hindsight was what likely saved me. I'd used the tracker we'd built yesterday to map Pyre's original path through subspace, and was all set to leave when the fire alarm was activated. I tried calling you, but the phone lines were dead."

He coughed further, gasping for air as his frames shook with the pain.

"When I went through the fire exit, I saw figures racing up the stairs. Dozens of them in riot gear, all carrying machine guns. While they were busy checking each level in turn, they failed to see me standing in the stairwell several flights above. I slipped upstairs to the next level, crossing the chemistry department floor to the second exit. I'd made it to the first floor before they began bashing their way into the stairwell. I found a window outside, dropped from the ledge into the gardens, and had thought I'd escaped until one saw me, calling to his colleagues before they opened fire on my hiding spot."

He reached gingerly towards his shoulder, shaking hands unable to make the effort before collapsing limply on his chest.

"I was thrown to the ground when I was hit, but managed to make it to my car. They were still setting up their road blocks on the campus drive, so couldn't stop my running through. More of them began shooting, but thankfully, I wasn't struck a second time. My mobile phone was lost somewhere, so all I could do was to just drive here directly. Nearly made it, huh!" he said with a wan grin.

I gave his sweating forehead a gentle wipe, before saying "Yeah, Prof. You did really well."

Reaching his hand up, he grabbed my lapels, hissing "They're coming, David. They obviously know about all this! It'll only be a matter of time before they find us here. Take this!" he gasped, thrusting a small steel box into my hands "Go! Go while you can!"

With that, he collapsed unconscious on the couch!

Frantically checking his vitals, I sat back in relief, realising he was still alive, if barely.

"Gents!" I said to the other two, who'd been taking in the story with growing agitation, "I think we have our key".

With that, I held out to Pyre the box in my hands.

The loaded subspace tracker, ready to retrace the path to his home.

We rang for an ambulance first. I mean, it was clear the professor was in no shape to go anywhere, and we couldn't just leave him there to suffer his fate. I had K ring them up, tell them there was a shooting, and someone had been badly injured. After giving the address, ignoring the frantic reply, he hung up the phone with a scowl.

Time was ticking, and we were quickly running out of it.

K stayed with the professor, as I helped Pyre link the tracker into the main transport grid. Crossing fingers, and claws, Pyre activated the main console, which quickly purred into life.

For a brief moment, nothing occurred, and I was about to open my mouth to ask, when the entire structure erupted into sparks, the subsonic noise grating harshly through my body. The arch coalesced into silver light, before shifting into a mirror-like surface. I stared at the gryphon in amazement, seeing a surge of glee cross his features.

"We don't have much time" he hissed at me, pointing to the archway. "I won't be able to hold this for long! Grab K, and whatever you want to take. We have less than 10 minutes! Let's get the fuck out of here!"

However, as I left the room, a massive explosion rocked the front of the house, and I was thrown to the floor in a shower of debris. Looking up in disbelief, I made out the entire entry foyer collapse into rubble, a huge gaping hole remaining where the door had once stood.

Stunned, I could only gape as dim forms entered through the haze, resolving themselves into masked, armed soldiers, before I was roughly grasped from behind by K, who dragged me back into the lounge.

Pyre screeched harshly from the panel controls, charging forward to grab me protectively, before retreating back to the transporter platform. As we made it to cover behind the large steel structure, the commando's reached the lounge room door, and he ducked low as a hail of bullets ricocheting off the structure above. Hunching over us protectively, the gryphon released K, who had been sitting numbly with his hand to his stomach. When he looked down at his fingers, he revealed a holed shirt through which deep red blood had begun to pour. K groaned and collapsed between us, as I stared at him stricken. Pyre reacted first, catching my eyes in the brilliant blue blaze of his own. Reaching out tentatively, he grasped my shoulder in support, before caressing my cheek.

"COME ON!!" I screamed at him, desperate to get him to move! "Let's pick him up and GO!!"

"We can't" he said, almost sadly, "We don't have the time. It needs another five, maybe ten minutes for the event horizon to reach enough of a capacity to let our combined mass pass through. Until then, all three of us won't make it! We'll be torn apart in the wormhole."

I simply stared up at him hopelessly. He smiled, a glint of the happy gryphon briefly lighting his face, before reaching down and putting K in my arms.

"I love you, David." He said simply.

"I love you too, Pyre" I cried out at him, tears streaming down my cheeks.

He chirped, smiling down at me.

"Goodbye", he whispered, before grabbing me by the arms roughly, K still pressed against me, and hurling us through the archway.

My last image of him was of his turning to the intruders, all four legs braced, hackles raised and wings outstretched, screaming his defiance at the enemy closing on him.

I screamed his name until my lungs were on fire, even after the silvery light blocked my view.

Then the forces ripping at us shattered my senses, and I knew only blackness.

Continued in Chapter 7: Through the looking glass.