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"Yes, your duplex. I can buzz you as soon as I know something." She closed the gate behind him and reactivated the electricity. "I promise," she said, then turned and rushed back into the building.

Aubrey knocked on Sabin's office door, knowing he was in there. His office was survallienced, though Aubrey wasn't sure if he really knew for sure if it was or not. Aubrey's and Moreau's were the only offices she knew that were free of camera use.

Sabin was going over a stack of papers, eyes tearing over the lines of text quickly, a quirked smile on his lips. They were reports of some of the 'highlights' of some of the recent events on the Island. Some much more interesting than the happenings in a long time... at least not counting the times that he had control.

He lifted his head quickly at the knock, his hands instinctively going to cover the papers even though there was nothing terribly incriminating on their pages.

"Yes? Who is it? Come in."

Aubrey stepped in. "Its me, Dr. Duvert." Aubrey looked..overworked. She had bags under her eyes, her hair was more frizzy than usual, and the scarf she usually wore to hide the healing wounds on her neck had long since fallen out of tie and was now just hanging limply around her shoulders. She had a thick file on her clipbaord and, without asking, saw down heavily in his chair opposit his desk. "I have some questions."

Sabin slid the papers aside and scooted his chair over, waving her towards the unoccupied plush chair that sat opposite the desk. Perhaps it was a carryover from his university days where students would come in and visit with him - the only people who came to see him now were the labtechs he oversaw - and he didn't usually extend such hospitality to them. They had things to be working on!

Aubrey had been through a lot recently... the lognotes had ensured that - between Jamal's attack on her and Billy's recent attempted molestation on Aubrey's 'pet' project, Colche... and then the whole mess with the serum that didn't seem to be working right.

"For me?" Sabin asked, a bit surprised as he lifted an eyebrow. With all that had been going on, Aubrey had been rather busy. Sabin had been shuffled to doing a lot of camera duty recently, being rather unskilled with any actual medical or genetic aptitude.

She leaned back in the chair and pulled open her file. There were several sheets of printed camera footage and a lot of lognotes. "You took Billy's drugs, didn't you? Why?"

Sabin looked down at the logsheets with an innoculous shrug. "Yeah, I didn't think there was a problem with that. He was in a damn haze throughout most of his first few days. Hardly seemed to even notice that half the islanders are covered in fur."

Sabin let an eyeroll as he thought that her look of disapproval was due to his lack of good reasoning. "If you want technical answers, we dont' know how the drugs will interfere with the process... might threaten his health... and he seemed to be not too conducive to the health of other islanders while tripping. Got into several fights right off the bat with people who are honestly usually pretty slow to stir."

"Besides." Sabin interjected. "I was requested by one of hte other islanders. Think that she felt threatened."

Aubrey lifted an eyebrow. "Quite defensive there, Mr. Duvert. I was just asking."

Sabin rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "All I know is that you've been under a lot of stress recently, and the last time things went bad you came to me." He rested his chin on his fist.

"Well because you WERE responsible."

"Eeeh. Details. But not nearly as.... maliciously so as you feared, I would say." He said without much concern.

Aubrey's eye twitched, which caused her to blink. "Anyway," she said deadpan. "Though I have to ask - and be honest - did you administer any other drugs to Billy? Either slipped in his food or... some other way he wouldn't be privy to. I found chemicals in his blood very similar as to agents you used when Moreau and I were off-island." She passed over Billy's tox report to him.

Sabin's eyebrows raised. "Administered drugs to Billy? Didn't we just cover that I took them away from him?" He shook his head. "Are you sure they werent' just residuals in his system? But... no, no I didn't give him anything else. I wanted to see what he would do sober - when he realized what was going on."

"I thought that at first too, Mr. Duvert, but look at the concentrations. Those aren't drugs that had been in his system for days." SHe leaned forward and pointed on the file. "Lysergic acid diethylamide and sildenafil citrate." She looked in his eyes for recognition. "Thats LSD and Viagra. Two chemicals you used before."

Sabin took the papers from her and pored over them, looking for his defense genuinely confused and ponderous.

He tapped his fingers on the scientific names. "Yes... I recall... and I studied how long they remained in the systems when I used them before. LSD will be out of your system in five days at most... viagra even less. But no, To my knowledge he didn't bring either of those with him - and the drugs he did bring I relenquished him of - I watched the tapes to see where he stored things. And only people of my clearance or higher should have had access to those storage cabinets..." He leaned back, took off his hat and scratched his head.

Aubrey sighed and dropped her head to his desk in frustration. "I'm sure you've probably heard what happened to him and Colche, and how I repsonded. But he swears he was drugged. Sure enough, I can't find any video evidence of him taking these!"

Sabin subconsciously shifted in his seat as Aubrey's... 'punishment' was brought up, hand going to his lap. Being male, he had a certain innate sympathy, despite the individual in question, when the issue of removing ones manhood (or even parts thereof) was brought into question.

He cleared his throat. "I.... heard. A bit.... severe, you think? I know that that probably sounds laughable coming from me.... but as you are not a part of the Y-chromosome club... I don't know if you quite realize the... ah... severity of your actions?"

Aubrey shot her head up and glanced at him. "You have a daughter, yes? What would you have done to a man who tried to rape her while she slept peacefully at night?"

Sabin opened and closed his mouth. His mind had been so far removed from that life. He sat straighter and shrugged. If Alexandria was as young as Colche was in the mind and someone like Billy had done that to her... well... Sabin if he had his way would have been fingerpainting with his innards.

"Point."

Aubrey nodded. "Anyway, I figured it was appropiate. Poignent, yes, but his life on a day-to-day basis won't be changed. As long as he has his other it will compensate. His hormone levels and sperm production will be almost identical as they were with two in a matter of weeks. No behavoir or physical side effects. Just a very hard lessoned learned."

Despite his lessened chastizement, Sabin still seemed markedly uncomfortable with discussing the finer details of the side effects of losing a testicle. "Yes... well... hopefully case is indeed in point.... But... still... drugs you say? I have little sympathies for the man, and I don't know whether or not victimizing Colche is beneath the sleaze or not... but I don't know where he could have gotten access to those. No one else on the Island has anything harder than Marajuana."

"I know," she sighed. "Thats why I wanted to talk to you. Seems like... something you would do."

Sabin scoffed. "No one was seriously hurt by my.... toying." Sabin admitted the term. "And while I might be cruel... and devious... and perhaps some might even say 'evil'.... I draw a line with kids."

"Really?" She looked skeptical. "You would have know the cameraman would have stopped him from actually raping her. And Colche's...unique mental development just seems like it might be a temptation too sweet for you to pass up."

Sabin frowned darkly at the implications, and the shine in his eyes said that he was not playing games with the curly-haired woman.
"I may do many things, Dr. Lockheart. But I have not lied to you."

He pushed away from his desk, going to a computer at the wall, bringing up the scene, begining with Billy's peaceful sleeping in his bedroom to where he sits up starkly and begins to walk towards the direction of Colche's room.

He shook his head, stopping it before the scene with the terrified Cheetah girl came up. He shook his head and turned back to Aubrey.

"Though his reaction seemed to be quite spontaneous." He tapped the video moniter for emphasis.
Sabin paused. "Although... if I were you... and I were concerned... I'd take a look at his vital moniters for the night in question. His sleep is surprisingly peaceful for someone strung out on LSD and viagra before the .... incident."

Aubrey blinked. "What are you... implying?"

Sabin shrugged. "Welll... I'm not sure. But like you said -you didn't see anywhere on the tapes he could have got the drugs. No one else on the island has the drugs except the cabinets in the labs with high security clearance... and he gets out of bed all of a sudden and makes an unwavering bee-line for Colche's duplex. It does sound strange to me, too."

Something sparked in Sabin's eyes. Here was certainly an intriguing mystery - even more so than most of those of the islands. Strings being pulled of the puppeteers themselves...?

Aubrey rubbed her temples. "I'm not in the right mind to be listening to this," she groaned. "I'm not one for conspiracy theories, Mr. Duvert."

"Ah, tis a pity, Dr. Lockheart. They appear more frequently than many would like to admit." He rolled his shoulders. He knew the seed was planted. Doubt! How delicious!

"But regardless, believe me or not, but I had nothing to do ... with this." Sabin tapped on the glass where Bili was frozen mid-step towards Coche's duplex.

"The most I did was change her when her time came up... and we have seen what happens when changes are delayed." Sabin's eyes went back to Aubrey. "If I did anything on my time in control, it was to make sure people got their regular injections... except for Jamal, who we intentionally used as the necessary human test on the maximum time."

"Ugh, don't remind me. Something is seriously wrong with Ms. Swanson and I have no idea what to do."

Sabin frowned. "Jamal became ill when he reached the four month mark. I observed it for a few days and then gave him his injection. It took, but I don't know if it would have if I had waited much longer. I was closely watching his vitals. It seems that at the very least we've narrowed down the window... at least for the first injection. Before three weeks and the transformation is particularly painful... too late and ...." He gestured back to Aubrey, who very well knew the complications with the young brunette.

He sighed overdramatically. "And to think... all the efforts I went through to be nice and give her a decent serum. What with the whole issue of being pulled away from her lover and all that."

Aubrey pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "She's stabalized, but I'm worried where to go from here. The testing on animals has yeilded... mixed results. Far too risky for human testing!"

"Well, whoever was supposed to be keeping an eye on the progression tables should be fired." Sabin growled. "Or... wait, maybe they'll just join Lilly in the duplexes." He gave her a toothy grin, the exact implications difficult to read.

"But regardless... all I'm saying is I have the subjects' health in mind. And I don't take risks like apparently have been happening since I stepped back down."

"Or you've set everything up for failure." Aubrey growled. "Angelina wasn't much more late on her injection than Mr. Reedy!"

Sabin scowled. "Mr. Reedy was also a large, healthy man in the prime of his life, not a small girl that probably barely weighs more than a hundred twenty pounds soaking wet. Look. I didn't set this up." As admittedly convenient it seems, and how much disarray and chaos has occurred since the doors opened again...

"All I'm trying to say is that before you accuse me of That" Sabin hooked a thumb in the direction of the cameras. "Maybe you should be paying a little more attention to what is goign on around you." He finished with another, surprisingly feral, growl.

Aubrey stood up, enraged...definately NOT in the mood to be told she wasn't doing her job. "Perhaps if I wasn't so busy cleaning up YOUR ******** mess, this wouldn't have been a problem. After all, Dr. Duvert, you're the technition signed off in her file!" To illustrate, she literally through Angelina's file towards his head, sending papers flying everywhere. She turned on her heels and stormed out, slamming it behind her.

Sabin stood up with a glare at the offending door, snatching up papers that had been strewn across the office, muttering under his breath.

"It isn't my mess that you're cleaning up, Ms. Lockheart." He said, not caring that she wasn't there any longer.
"The ship I ran was quite tidy."

The first thing she did was cough. The second was to open her eyes. After that, all of Emelyn's actions blurred in that steady whine called consciousness. She realized a small handful of things: she had woken up in a hospital room- likely the labs... there was a dull ache in her back, but nowhere near the amount of pain there had been before... and she was alive.

It was a very nice handful of things.

Emelyn coughed again, clearing her throat of the dry mass that had lodged there in the hours since the attack. Her mind, strangely enough, was free of all the dizzying thoughts that had plagued her in those last few minutes before she'd lost consciousness- she was alive, and that was truly all that mattered.

Emelyn sat up on the narrow bed, wincing as she did, and eyeing the juncture of the IV that was linked to her arm. She was reminded of all the hundreds of IV's that she had seen in her life- most of which were attached to her sister... and she sighed, in the same instant... grateful for the breath it took to make it.

By the time Aubrey came into the room, Emelyn had been sitting and thinking... for quite a while. She wasn't surprised to see the woman- she'd been expecting one or another member of the staff sometime. If anything, she was grateful that it was Aubrey. Even in her 'grateful to be alive' state, she didn't think there was any way she'd be happy to see the mad doctor himself.

"Hello, Dr." She said, her voice raspy from long lack of use. She didn't bother to clear her throat. She eyed the sandwich warily, then lifted her eyes, if not her head- to Aubrey.

"I don't think I can eat that," she rasped. "And by the way... I've been here a very long time. ...The island, I mean." Her voice, in this soft montone so likened to her current state, held no malice. "I think you can call me Emelyn."

Of all the things Emelyn thought she might respond with... 'well, that's what you get when you infuse violent DNA with that of a normal person'... or 'these are the ramifications of what you've done... it's on your conscience', or the like- instead, what came from the woman's lips were infinitely more... kind.

"Things happen." She couldn't bear to say anything crueler- not to the face of this woman. Emelyn hardly recognized her. When she first met Aubrey, she'd seemed excited, confident- and that night in the mansion, sitting in all her splendor next to Moreau, she was radiant, a woman on top of the world. Though her happiness was tantamount to the happiness of Moreau- or so it seemed to Emelyn- she felt sorry for the haggard Dr.

"You look tired. ...Are you alright?" The words were soft, and gentle, and she was surprised to hear that the concern in her voice was genuine.

Emelyn didn't let the mention of Dr. Duvert's 'unauthorized experimentation' go unnoticed- rather, she red-flagged it in her mind for later consideration. She didn't accept anything Aubrey said as utter truth... but found that she wasn't doubting it, either. She seemed too tired, too busy to fabricate stories for the benefit of an ailing islander.

At the sight of Aubrey's bruised neck, and more so at the mention of Colche being attacked, Emelyn bit her lower lip.

"I don't know who Mr. Woodrow is- but that's awful. ...Poor Colche, the girl must be so confused. ...And I hope that," she gestured with her IV-less hand to the marks on the Dr's neck, "...well, I hope you're alright." ..And that whoever gave it to you is still living, she thought- but wisely didn't add.

Em's eyes narrowed- not in anger, but rather, almost sadly, resolutely. She shook her head, just once, from one side to the other, her eyes not leaving the downcast woman's face.

"That sounds a little self-damning," Emelyn said. Her voice was beginning to regain its normal tone, the hoarseness falling almost gracefully to the wayside as she became accustomed with speaking again. "And if it's not... well... I don't believe in a vengeant world. ...It would mean I deserve to be here." It was a soft sting- the only one she'd allowed slip into their quasi-conversation.