July 3rd, 2021
2300 hours
The streets were still, so quiet that Quinn could hear his footsteps as he walked briskly down the sidewalk. He would have preferred a more leisurely, hesitant pace, as he wasn't eager to arrive at his destination; however, the meeting was long overdue, and he couldn't procrastinate any longer. As the residence emerged out of the darkness, Quinn ran a steady hand through his wavy hair. It was shaggier than he would have preferred, but the investigation had cut into his personal time, and he was unable to cut it between his stints from the main land to the rig. His long fingers tangled briefly in the locks, and he frowned agitatedly, emitting a sigh.
Sneaking out of Robyn's house had been easy. She was in deep sleep after their rendezvous, but he felt guilty for leaving. He knew it wasn't easy for her to open up, and the fact that she even allowed him to enter her thoughts, much less her heart, caused him to feel a ping of unworthiness. However, his feelings for her were just as strong, and he fully intended to make good with his promise. He would love her the way she needed to be loved, unconditionally. It was natural, with her, and he imagined it was because they were so similar. Really, as he thought about it, she was worth it, and that's what mattered.
He gazed upon the small house before him. It was well-kept, though the paint was fading, and the plants needed trimming, but it gave off a quaint, inconspicuous ambiance. He only hoped that what he found inside was the same, but that was highly doubtful. A nagging discontent gnawed at his insides, creating a mild acid reflux in his stomach. He belched uncharacteristically and murmured a quiet "excuse me" to himself.
He didn't feel the wooden steps under his feet as he strode toward the front door; his mind was preoccupied, already whirring with possibilities of what he might hear when he set foot in the house.
He had barley grazed the door with his knuckles when it opened inwardly, and his eyes were met with a pair of dark, wrinkled ones. The man was ancient, hunched, and looked as if he'd seen one too many bad days. Those brown, murky eyes held such a pain that it almost took Quinn aback.
"Mr. Ellis," he began, not missing a beat, though his heart was now in his throat. This case was making him edgy and uncollected, something he surely was not, "you're not dead."
"No," Mr. Ellis replied, a hint of amusement in his voice that contradicted the deep sadness in his eyes "it sure took you fools long enough."
"I'm not sure I follow." Quinn frowned, leaning toward the aged man, peering at him suspiciously through the crack.
"It's that look right there," Ellis continued, opening the door fully "and that ridiculous suit that gave you away. You're a fed, right?"
"Yes sir, that's correct. Special Agent Quinn Jones." He reached into his suit pocket for his badge, but Ellis held up a withered hand.
"I don't need to see it." He sighed, gesturing for Quinn to enter. "I always knew you'd show up. I just didn't count on it taking so damn long."
"Thank you, sir." Quinn stepped into the house, noting a lack of décor. There were a few simple living room pieces and farmhouse style furnishings, but it seemed Mr. Ellis lived a rather minimalistic life. "Might I ask why?"
"Why I let you in?"
"Why you were expecting to be visited by law enforcement." Quinn spoke lowly, but clearly, lingering in the hallway until he was offered a seat.
"Go sit, son, you look like you're exhausted." Ellis grunted, pushing Quinn toward the sitting room. He caught a frightful glimpse of himself in the hall mirror: he indeed looked worse for wear, with dark circles framing his eyes, his skin dull and dry. What frightened him the most was the defeated look in his stormy eyes. He shrugged and followed Ellis, sinking his limbs gratefully into a soft chair. The upholstery was lightly stained and smelled faintly of tobacco.
"It was a matter of time. I've been waiting years to tell someone my story. Well, what I think happened, anyway. I'm not completely sure it wasn't a horrible dream; nightmare, really."
Quinn rubbed a hand over his face and breathed in deeply, gathering the iota of energy he needed to sit forward attentively.
"What was your nightmare, Mr. Ellis?"
"If you humor me by telling me how you found me," Ellis countered, fluffing a pillow behind the small of his back, "I'll tell you what I know."
Quinn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I don't see why not."
"Boy, you don't have much to lose. Might as well."
Quinn thought quickly: if the Ellis' were both involved in the plot, it might be to his disadvantage to divulge any of the investigation's progress to Mr. Ellis. However, there was no hidden agenda in his eyes, no mask upon his demeanor that suggested he was a threat. He looked like a broken man with nothing left to lose.
"Obviously, we both know why I'm here. How I found you, however, wasn't difficult, but time consuming."
"It has been years." Ellis nodded in agreement. "I was starting to think you'd never show up."
Quinn continued as though he hadn't heard him. "Upon receiving a list of those employed by your daughter, I cross referenced them to the names of employees admitted to Saint Agnus. Most of the names had nothing to do with what I was looking for, but then I stumbled upon one Silas Smith, who had a suspiciously short history with ElI-X. During his background investigation, I found that most of his personal information was fabricated, but was able to determine his address: a location that happened to list John Ellis' ex wife as the registered owner, under her maiden name. I then knew Silas Smith to be an alias, and he had only existed since the date that John Ellis supposedly died."
"I guess they don't make them all as smart as you. Pity, could have saved a lot of lives had you been here sooner."
Quinn's heart squeezed tightly, the guilt of Stan's death heavy on his soul. "I know." He bit out harshly, face tightening with effort to keep his composure. "If you wanted us to find you, why did you go off the grid?"
Lynne's father sighed, looking Quinn evenly in the eye. "I was ashamed, but mostly afraid. I set it loose." He croaked; voice hoarse with emotion.
Quinn shivered, despite the warmth of the air in the house, ineloquently replying with "What?"
"That god awful beast. I set it loose. Everything is my fault."
"What do you mean?" Quinn's eyes narrowed, his whole perspective on the case crumbling with each sentence Ellis uttered.
Ellis held up a hand. "I'll start at the beginning."
"The beginning of what?" Quinn prompted, eager to start the story, but wary all the same. Whatever Mr. Ellis was about to tell him would undoubtedly affect the outcome of the entire investigation.
"Can I start, or are you doing to keep interrupting?" Ellis glared at him, and Quinn instantly recognized where Lynne got her fierce personality.
"Continue, please." Quinn asked, tone softer this time.
"It was April, nineteen ninety-six." Ellis continued, sipping from a cracked mug. "I don't remember the date. You'd think I would, with everything that happened," he shook his head remorsefully "everything I let happen."
"We had drilled deeper than usual that night. I remember, because I had the crew work doubles to get it done. The payout for that overhaul was a bitch. We had a quota, you see, and had hit a stale pocket. I needed to find more oil, and going deeper was the only way."
Quinn nodded: he could understand that logic. Often, he felt the same way when he was immersed in a case.
"I don't know where it came from," Ellis shivered, as if recalling a particularly unpleasant memory "but it showed up, out of nowhere. Perhaps we dug too deep, or maybe it was always hiding out in that great abyss, biding its time. I don't know, none of us did."
"What happened?" Quinn prompted, leaning forward with anticipation. "What was it?"
"I never seen anything like it." Ellis' eyes glazed over: Quinn recognized it as the look of one who was digging deep into ghostly images that were better left forgotten. It made him shiver, something he didn't do often.
"It was scaly and huge and looked like a damn dinosaur." Ellis trailed off, still lost in his memories.
Quinn sat for an agonizingly long time waiting for him to continue. Those moments were the longest of his life.
"The men didn't know what to do. It climbed up onto the platform, started tearing them apart, ripped their insides out. Somehow, I got away. I didn't even stay to help." Tear streamed down the old man's eyes. "I regret every moment of that day. Those men were friends of mine, and I let them die."
Quinn recalled not seeing evidence of that instance in his reports: Ellis must have done a hell of a job covering it up, but he must have had help. For that many men to lose their lives, someone would surely have questions. He placed that line of inquiry on the backburner, for now. He didn't want to divert Ellis from the questions he desperately needed answered.
"How did it get away?" Quinn queried, eager to get to the point. He didn't want to linger there longer than necessary.
"It didn't," Ellis shot a haunted look at the agent, his eyes still wet and trembling "my security trapped the damn thing in a net. Then I-" he shook uncontrollably, his drink slopping out of his cup as he broke down "I kept the damn thing."
"What?" Quinn whispered, eyes widening in shock: he hadn't expected this monstrosity went back quite that far. Of course, he had the files from his supposed serial killer, but then, he'd never put it together until Stan's murder. He mentally filtered through the dates in his mind, chest growing cold with the closest thing to fear he'd ever felt. All the deaths he'd investigated had occurred after the date Ellis mentioned, which meant that Lynne, and her father, were both responsible. Deep down he'd known, but to hear it verbalized, to have it confirmed first hand, cemented the atrocity of it deep in his core.
"I kept it." Ellis' voice wavered: he was freely crying now, fat tears dropping onto his lap. He placed a hand over his eyes, shaking with sobs. "I hired a zoologist to study it. I wanted to get my name in the science books. Now, I know that was stupid. I should have let the damn feds have that freak of nature."
"Why didn't you?"
"Oh, my daughter, she was studying science and took a real interest in that thing. She convinced me to keep it. You'd do anything for your kids, you know?"
Quinn nodded, though he really didn't, as he didn't have kids.
"She continued after...after I went insane for a bit. I have those deaths on my conscience, you know? It ate me up, and I came out in pieces."
"The one that got loose, it had been laying eggs inside the victims." Quinn frowned. The details still weren't coming together. "How did it even reproduce? If you only had one, where did the second one come from?"
Ellis' eyes shot up, squinting in confusion. "What? That's impossible."
"How so?" Quinn urged, desperate to leave. He had to get back to the rig immediately.
"I don't follow." Ellis frowned, leaning forward in his seat, cheeks wet with tears. "I only had the one, after I killed it's mate."
Quinn choked on his own saliva, coughing obscenely into his handkerchief. "Excuse me? It's mate?"
"Well, we had the one for awhile," Ellis continued, still eyeing the agent oddly, his greying brows knitted as he recalled the events "but after a time, it kept making these god awful screeching, crying sounds. You could hear the noises, throughout the rig, they were so loud. After a week or so, another one of them damn things showed up. This time, we had a net ready, so we caught it quick. That one, though, was meaner, almost evil." He shuddered, his frail, thin shoulders quaking. "I put that one down."
"So," Quinn began, frantically trying to wrap his brain around it "they shouldn't be breeding?"
"Not unless you got more of 'em hiding somewhere." Ellis shook his head. "God, that'd be horrible."
Quinn thought back to his files, desperately filtering through all the data. "There were eggs found on the first victim, though." He scowled at Ellis, sure he had to be withholding information.
The old man's eyes sparkled with fresh tears. "That little boy? Yeah, I figured that one was cause of me." He hung his head. Quinn saw how broken, how burdened, he was with guilt. "That happened before I killed the other one."
"So, if there are eggs in the victims now, how did they get there?" Quinn asked, more to himself than Ellis. He deduced, in the short span of time, that Ellis had no idea what was going on with the rig, or the creatures, now.
"You'd have to ask my daughter. She did a lot of research with cloning, I think, though I'm not to sure on the details. That's something I wasn't a part of." Ellis laughed. "Oh, it wouldn't surprise me if my daughter and that scientist freak figured out how to breed them, after that." Ellis offered, wiping his eyes on his plaid shirt. "She's really smart, that crazy bitch, and she's pretty, too. Could probably slut her way into getting that weirdo to do whatever she wanted."
Quinn was thrown for a loop by Ellis cursing his daughter so. But then, she was rather unhinged, in his professionally trained opinion. That realization greatly disturbed him, from the moment he'd stepped foot in her office.
"Are they trying to reproductively clone it?" Quinn's breath rushed out in a burst of understanding: now it all made sense. "They can't contain it! It's been escaping for years!" He shouted, rising from his chair and beginning to pace nervously around the room.
"I know they can't. I hoped the deaths would stop, but every time I saw one like that on the news, I knew she still kept it." Ellis began tearing up again. "I caused more deaths than you can imagine. Like I said, though, I'm just speculating. I really don't know what all she's up to out there."
"Why is she still keeping it?" Quinn asked incredulously.
"I don't know." Ellis admitted, and Quinn could see the truth in his eyes. "You'd have to ask her. Can't understand why she'd want more of those damn things."
Quinn ran a trembling hand through his already disturbed coif: there had to be a way to end this. Suddenly, his gray eyes lit up with an idea: however crudely formed, it was the best option at this juncture.
"You said you killed one of them?"
"I-I did, once, take that one down. It wasn't easy, though." Ellis admitted, gazing off again. Quinn knew he was going to lose the old man in a moment: he'd been through too much to stay out of his head for long. Had he not been fortified with a steely reserve, after everything he'd seen and done in his career, Quinn would be right where Ellis was.
"How?" He prodded gently, knowing that if he pushed too hard, Ellis wouldn't say anything else.
"Fire." The aged, lined face turned to his and he struggled to keep his composure. Ellis' eyes were an inferno, burning with decades of unserved justice..
"You burn those sons of bitches."
Quinn stood so abruptly that Ellis startled. "Thank you for your time. I need to go."
"I bet you do." Ellis nodded, frowning slightly. He opened his mouth to call out to Quinn, as the agent hastened out the door. "What if those eggs hatched? What are you going to do, then?"
Quinn had absolutely no idea, but the idea was too frightening to contemplate. He had to stop this, before it was too late.