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“Yikes. That would be pretty gruesome, but I suppose it definitely comes in handy for your job.”
Sherwood looked at Viktor as he introduced himself.
“There's certainly an odd mix of people here. Hi everyone.” He glanced around the room at all the faces again.
So, we've got Dick - lizard man. Ermm, John, was it? Living thread guy; that'll certainly need further explaining. Viktor, a doctor and self-made superman. He pointed to each person as he named them in his head.
Amanda, student with no powers. Alex, organic bomb maker... He realised that the second woman in the room was the only one he didn't know anything about. He gave her a small wave.
“Hi there! Sorry, did you say who you were? There's been so much going on, I didn't hear if you did.” He smiled at Madeline and introduced himself to her, and the whole group. “I'm Sherwood Croft.”

"How horrible," Amanda said under her breath at hearing Alex's trade.

She then made a funny face as The Voice told her the names and powers of everyone in the room except the other woman. "Creepy Voice," she said in frustration.

Smiling still came quickly to Maddie; she just had to think about it first. Her face opened up into a friendly grin as she said, "Yeah, hi. Sorry about that, I guess I've been pretty quiet so far. My name's Madeline Song. Maddie for short. My, uh, thing is that I can... well, I can transfer heat into or out of my body. So basically I can raise or lower the temperature of things. It's not much, but maybe it can be useful," she added, casting her eyes downward. Her smile faltered. "Sometimes."

Sherwood nodded along as Madeline spoke of herself. "Wow, cool. Yeah, it does sound useful. Heat up that cold cup of tea; freeze those ice cubes fast for those party drinks!" He chuckled out loud. "And...Madeline Song. What a beautiful name! It certainly suits you."

Nyeheheh

"So, Miss director.. could you say that... i'm on a short fuse? Or that i'm a blast?" Jute joked. Having crossed his legs and staring right into the eyes of the director with a glassy evil gaze. "Because I want to know about the impact i'm gonna leave. I want to be sure i don't go Strange Love on you guys."

"Oh, thank you, that's so sweet of you!" said Maddie earnestly to Sherwood, beaming. "And yeah, that's pretty much what I use it for," she laughed.

"So, 'Sherwood Croft'," Maddie continued, brightly. "Well, that's a good name too. Very British," she added in jest. "So did you come all the way from the UK for this? Do you know what your SPIG is?"

"Ha, thanks, yeah -I've had my fair share of teasing with my name, I can safely say." Sherwood scratched his neck as he answered Maddie's question.
"Oh gosh no. I moved here...what...11 months ago now, so I'm kind of a 'local', I suppose! I like it here but, I do miss home." He paused for a moment, then continued talking.

"So, where are you from? Did you travel far to get here?"

Viktor frowned a little but only for a second. These never ending questions about the simplest topics are getting bothersome. Still, wouldn't want to get on the bad side of someone who could eat me alive. And if I can get him to trust me well, he could be useful. Viktor's expression quickly turned into a cold smile as he looked up. "It's nice to meet you too Dick. Your climbing ability is very impressive. Go on, ask away." said Viktor with a welcoming hand gesture.

"I thank you for your kind words." Dick said as he slowly stood up on the ceiling and extended his hand for the doctor to welcome him. "I would like to know the definition of psylogy, cogitive and biology if it is not offensive for me to ask them." He smiled at the doctor, which revealed his croc-like teeth. "I am able to do more then just climb but out of the most useful things, i think my ablility to climb or stand on walls or here will be very useful for us."

Viktor continued to smile as he explained the terms to Dick as one would a child. "Physiology is your body, cognitive is your mind. It means my serum made me stronger and smarter. And biology is the study of living things things like plants and animals, trying to find out how they work. I like trying to find out how SPIGs work, why people like you can do such amazing things." said Viktor in a calm and gentle tone. This is easier than I thought, I doubt anyone has said two kind words to him in his entire life. Viktor tried to win Dick over by invoking a level of kinship between them. His facial expression became a frown once more as he continued to try manipulating Dick. "Dick, I know what it's like to be alone. When I was a child the other children tended to avoid me, some of them picked on me and I never understood why that was. But I think it's because we were different than them, better than them. That's why we're here and they're not."

"Thank you for answering my question." Dick said as his tail slowly drifted from side to side whilst being fairly limp. "This is good news for me! I do apologise if that has came out wrong as that is not want i mean. I mean that i believe that having someone to speak to about being alone is a good thing and I have rather bad encounters with humans but i do agree that I am a rather good at being a lizard then i was, a man." He said to Viktor and let out a deep short chuckle at his own little joke. "But if i may ask, did the humans try to kill you for some kind of game? I apologise if i have stepped out of line."

Viktor smiled once more as he shook his head. "It's fine. People have tried to kill me, but it was never for fun." Viktor responded.

"I believe the humans viewed me as a thing to be killed for their enjoyment but i do not understand why killing something would be for fun." Dick replied. "But i think they were rather stupid as they didn't seem to understand what i meant by leave me alone and they seemed to beg for a thing called mercy when i had to kill them to protect myself. I will confess, i was curious to see what this mercy was but after a while, i think i lost all interest. i do apologise if i have bored you or told you something that should not have been told." He was literally a cold blooded killer but the humans always found out the killer part after he had attacked them.

"I'm from B.C.," said Maddie. "As in, 'British Columbia,' not 'Before Christ.' I don't have immortality as a power, unfortunately."

"And honestly," she continued, "I don't know how far away I am from home. When I agreed to let them bring me here, they never told me exactly where this place was. I don't know if I could've looked that up online or something, but I didn't try. Do you know?"

Sherwood laughed at Maddie's joke. "Now that definitely would be remarkable!"

A look of surprise came across his face when he learnt where she had travelled from. "Oh, you've come from Canada?"

Madeline's words of 'I agreed to let them bring me here' reminded Sherwood that they were all there for some mystery reason; some unknown purpose. As he'd been chatting and listening to people for a while, he had almost forgotten -feeling like he was just having a nice time meeting fellow SPIGS, which is what he had thought he was there for in the first place.

"Our location? Well, I live in New York, but I got a taxi up here; the fare wasn't cheap, I can tell you!. I don't know where this base is though. Are we even moving? I can't tell." He moved his head around, trying to tell if they were stationary or not.

"Now The Voice thinks something is easier than it thought, and nobody has said kind words," Amanda said.

Just then Sherwood felt his phone buzz, it seemed he got a response from Paul.

The director nodded. "Funny you should mention that." A small triangular device was produced and tossed at Vanadium, a little button was on it with one of the corners being a LED. "Point that at me, then point it at others in this room." Now for that other question. "Spigots like us do have a rather unique genetic sequence however what you have goes beyond that." She stated, her hands moving to bring up a big holographic image of 3 different DNA strands, the first looked how normal humans would imagine theirs to be, simple double-helix. The next strand of DNA was longer, edited, parts filled with something like a child coloring a page, like webs between the ladders. "And here.. we got your DNA, or the part the anomaly is focused on." Jess stated, pointing at the last model. This was like someone was drunk when they made it. An entire 5 rung sequence bulged out due to 3 or even four extra bases being added, not uniform at all. "As you can see even Spigots adhere to a pattern, your DNA doesn't for just this one sequence. Isn't that fascinating?"

Sherwood felt his phone buzz in his pocket. "Oh, excuse me." He said to Maddie. He took out his phone and tapped it to read the message.

It was a video message, Sherwood could play it in screen or have it projected, his choice.

Sherwood didn't want anyone to see Paul's video message, so he opted to play in on the screen. He got up off the couch and moved away from the others, so he could listen to it better and get some privacy.

Instantly the video started off dark, zoomed in on something. Slowly it panned out very slowly. A vague shape could be made out in the darkness before light was snapper on. It was Paul.

Sans head and clothes, carved into his body was a eye of horus with TDTD hidden in the pupil. Blood seeped into Paul's carpet from the stump of the neck before Paul's head was shoved into view, his lips moving a hand was shoved into the head, moving it like a sock puppet. "So hurtful this video will be, never will KIRIN catch me."

Then it stopped.

Sherwood watched as the video began. He looked puzzled as it started off, dark and blurry. As the scene zoomed out to reveal the decapitated body, he screwed up his face, his heart beginning to beat a little faster. What the hell is this? Why has Paul sent me this video? He recognised the mark on the body; he'd seen it on the news a number of times in the past year...but why was Paul sending him this news footage?

Then it appeared. His friend's severed head. Sherwood gasped loudly, the sickening sight making him cover his mouth with his left hand. His phone began to shake, as the hand that held it shook with shock. As Paul's mouth began to move like a puppet, Sherwood's eyes became horribly transfixed to the screen, forcing him to watch something that he wanted to tear his sight away from.

"Oh my God, oh my God..." He lost the ability to grasp his phone and dropped it on the ground. He heard a voice say something about KIRIN, as he shakily bent to pick it up.

"This is a joke...it's some sick joke." Sherwood poked at the phone's screen, attempting to call Paul, wanting to find out that his idiot of a friend was playing an inappropriate prank. He felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest as he waited for an answer at the other end.

Amanda watched the scene in shock as Sherwood's expressions changed horribly. When he dropped his phone, she flinched, a small gasp escaping her mouth.

Maddie, initially taken aback, became increasingly worried and confused. Whatever Sherwood had just seen on his phone... part of her wanted to know, but part of her decisively didn't. She said nothing, not wanting to blurt out something like "hey, it's okay" when, clearly, it wasn't. At least not right now.

Viktor pocketed the device that the director had given him, something like that could be useful. He was going to talk more with the director but instead his attention turned to Sherwood as he started to freak out.