Cost of a Secret

A/N: I know, terrible terrible author here, but here is the second of three promised new chapters.

Chapter 22

Into the Den

Ed clapped his hands, transmuting his arm into a long spear so that he could fight the Drachmans at the end of the hall. Al had mentioned a complex gas he could use if it came to it, but he said there could be unknown health risks if someone as young as Liam was exposed to it. The couldn't really know if Liam would be nearby and affected by the gas, so all Al could do was create a weapon for himself.

Ed was not pleased that his younger brother had chosen a staff rather than any of the countless other weapons that they were both trained in. While he might be able to use the staff to properly protect himself, Ed would have preferred something more effective than just a wooden staff.

The lighting inside the cellar was dim, but he could make out the figures of Drachman soldiers and a few officials staring at what looked like cages lining the walls. Havoc and Elliott held up their guns and began firing. They had opted for tranquilizer guns if they could get away with it, since the military's tranq weapons were considerably quieter. The alchemists cleared the way so that Hawkeye could get a few shots in as well before the Drachmans noticed their falling comrades and turned to find the attackers. As quickly as they could, the four alchemists ran in while the three sharpshooters fired their weapons at the remaining Drachmans.

Too busy fighting the soldiers and officials, Ed couldn't watch to make sure his little brother didn't get hurt. Now that Al was no longer a suit of armor, he was far more concerned about Al's well-being than he'd been before when they'd fought side-by-side.

There had been six in this room, now all taken down one way or another, and Ed was left to question one who hadn't been knocked unconscious or killed.

“How many of you are there?” he asked, receiving no answer. “How many of you are there and how many of these chimeras?”

The man muttered something in Drachman.

“Listen to me, we will hurt you if you don't talk.” He held his blade to the man's throat. “We will treat your wounds if you cooperate. Do you understand me?”

The man looked at Ed's blade passively, then back at him, muttering what sounded like the same thing in Drachman. There was no fear in his eyes even as he was facing death, so Ed gathered the soldier was not giving him the answer he wanted.

“Does he not speak Amestrian?” Ed asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Riza said as she scanned the room in horror, taking in the sights of the half-human creatures inside of the cells that lined the walls. “He's giving you name, rank, serial number. I think that's all he's going to give you.”

Ed tossed the man to the ground for Lawson to deal with. He turned his head away as the man began using some more “persuasive” methods to get the man to talk. Ed was a soldier, but sometimes, his stomach forgot that.

“Boss, you might want to have a look at this,” Havoc said as he looked around the cells. In one corner was a tiny body. “It's small. Looks like it might be part cat. Wasn't there a tiger on the list of strange animals, one that was able to function in colder climates.”

“A tiger and its cub,” Elliot added from across the room.

The thing approached the bars of the cell and looked up at them. “Hurts,” it said in a voice that no longer sounded human. It was all Ed could do to fight back the memories of Nina Tucker. “Want mommy.”

“Where is your mommy?” Havoc asked.

“Dunno...” The half-tiger furrowed a furry brown and let out a pained wail. “Hurts.”

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Want my mommy,” it repeated.

“Brother,” Al said, looking frozen in his place, “do you think it could be—”

“I don't know,” Ed said. “I can't tell.” He knelt down in front of the chimera's cage. “Do you have a name?” All he received in return was another moan of pain.

“It won't tell you,” a voice came from behind one of the bars. “It can't tell you. All it remembers is pain and wanting its mother.”

Ed turned to find something that looked more monkey than man hanging from the bars of his cage. White fur stuck up at odd angles on its head. Its mouth was somewhere between animal and man, allowing it to form the words, but making it a trouble to do so. It wore no clothes, leaving no doubt it was male, and it obviously inherited the prehensile tail and the ability to move its feet like a second set of hands. “It just got transformed two days ago. It hurts bad at first.”

“You talk very well,” Al said.

“Mistress left my brain more human. I don't think it hurt that monkeys are very close to humans anyway,” the monkey said. “I used to be called Shane.” He reached up to itch at his head, picking off a flea and eating it. Ed winced. “I am part monkey. It's easier not to fight the instincts.”

“Do you know who it was before?” Armstrong asked, pointing to the cell.

“Nope. Mistress brought it in and locked it in a cage. Told it that it should prove to her she didn't waste a good animal on it.”

“Are there a lot of soldiers here, Shane?” Al asked.

“Thank you for calling me Shane,” the chimera said. “I have not been in a very long time. There are many soldiers right now. Mistress has a big project planned. Said it would give the soldiers what they wanted, what they'd asked for in the beginning.”

“Brother, I bet Shane knows this place better than the rest of us,” Al said.

“Oh, yes,” Shane said. “Yes. I know it very well.”

“I don't know,” Ed said. While a guide would be very useful, something in his gut didn't feel right about this thing. It struck him that he had turned cold somewhere along the line that he was referring to this chimera as a thing. Just a few years ago, he defended a snake chimera and his armor-bodied brother as being entirely human. Now, he was referring to this chimera as a thing.

While he remained unsettled about Shane, Ed's own inner thoughts on the man being a creature and nothing more drove him to ignore the unsettled feeling. “Will you help us find our way through here?”

“Of course,” Shane said. “Are you all alchemists like Mistress?”

“Some of us,” Al answered with a smile. He was very good at getting others to trust him. He was also very trusting himself.

“Are you the only one who can talk?” Ed asked.

“Me and the kid,” Shane said. “But he doesn't say much. The others here are mostly animal.”

“I'm going to dismantle your cage,” Ed said. “Stand back. And remember not to try anything funny with us.”

“Of course not. I can show you around here. Show you the others.” Shane backed away from the bars as Ed dismantled the metal. Once there was a hole in the cage, the monkey-man eagerly stepped through.

“Thank you,” he said as he moved out of the cage. “This way. The next room is a good way off, but the other soldiers might have heard the gunfire in here. Be careful.” He moved slowly, crouched down and occasionally using his knuckles to swing himself along the cement-like floor.

It was fairly obvious that Elliot didn't trust the chimera, as his gun was not at the ready for outside attack, but rather to send a bullet straight into Shane's head should he turn on them.

Walking along the corridors with Shane leading them, Ed still had the spike on his arm ready, not entirely sure what he would be faced with. They hadn't really anticipated a contingent of the Drachman army. The hallway opened up to another room, this one unoccupied by full-humans, but its octagonal shape held three cages on either wall. One looked to contain a partial wolf, snarling at them as they passed, another looked to be part bat, its arms gone and replaced with peach-colored webbed wings, a snout and upturned nose. Hooked feet were attached to still-human legs as it tried to gain flight within the cage.

Ed remained haunted by the tiger chimera, begging for its mother. He tried to pretend that it couldn't be Liam, that the boy wouldn't cry for his mother after doing that to him. After all, the cub had been brought in with an adult tiger, it could just as well have been crying for its mother, but using a human voice to do so. Ed wanted to believe that Karen had no intention of using her boy for materials in a chimera. He had to believe that, because otherwise, it was unthinkable. It was better for this to be an elaborate trap for Roy than for the boy to be in one of these cages.

Not far away, Al nearly let out a startled cry as the chameleon-thing in the left cage near the exit of the room turned its face toward them. Its face had remained largely human, save for the enormous bulging eyes at either side of its head. They retained the human iris and pupil, but rotated like the animal's would have. A long tail curled as reptile-like feet shuffled along the floor. Its color changed from an odd brown-gray to green as it saw them.

Ed would have called the look one of hope, but he knew there was nothing he could do for the former human. There was no restoring them to their human form.

“This way,” Shane said, still sounding surprisingly upbeat. Admittedly, as part wild animal, he would probably enjoy the ability to move about, but the niggling feeling in the back of Ed's mind continued to trouble him. Did he fully trust Shane to direct them as they came to a fork in the road? “To the right, not the left.”

“What is at the left?”

“More animals,” Shane said. “You want to see Mistress, don't you?”

“Lawson, Armstrong, can you handle yourselves if you go left?”

“Going left wastes your time,” Shane said. “Come right with us.”

“Can you handle yourselves if you go right?” Lawson asked. It was fairly obvious by the Granite Alchemist’s tone that he didn’t trust the chimera. Ed wanted to, hoping that Shane was like Martel, a bit changed for the whole thing, but not intending any ill will toward them. However, the nagging voice in the back of his head was back at full force. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not Shane was still human. Even humans could be untrustworthy, regardless of what they had been put through in their past. He knew that even as a chimera, Shou Tucker had been evil.

“This way to Mistress,” Shane said as he walked ahead.

“This way to a trap, more like,” Lawson said quietly.

“Maybe it is best if we stay with you, Edward,” Armstrong said.

Ed gave a short nod. If he suspected that in trying to get Roy here, that had been a trap, then why wouldn’t Shane be one as well? Ed knew he’d have to be quick to fight against someone with the physical abilities of a monkey, but he knew that he could manage it. He had fought his brother and his teacher. Sometimes at once. He could withstand a fight against Shane.

********

“Wakey, wakey,” Karen said with a lilt in her voice. “Come on, Roy. I’d hate for you to be asleep during this.”

Roy cracked an eye open and saw Karen as he’d once remembered her. There was no groveling, no begging as there had been in their last conversations. Back again was the confident woman he’d gone to bed with and had a child with. He would have been happy for that fact if he didn’t know what it meant.

Her freckled cheeks were flushed with excitement as she looked down at him, tucking a piece of brown hair behind her ear.

“What did you do to Liam?” he growled at her as he tried to move, but finding that in his weakened state, he was not able to fight the pull of whatever she’d done to him.

“Liam? He’s upstairs in his room. He’s not happy to be there because he’s scared of me right now,” Karen began removing the white gloves she had been wearing to transform the air into water vapor and then water to defeat Roy.

“I can’t imagine why he would be scared of you,” Roy said with a sarcastic tone.

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor,” Karen said, looking down at him. “Do you think I wanted to have to hurt him? He’s my son, and one day he’ll realize I did this for both of us. You weren’t helping me with the Amestrian government, so I had to seek funding elsewhere. I gave you countless opportunities to help me, but you never did.”

“And where are you getting your funding?” Roy asked.

“Drachma,” she said as she walked around the circular room, as though checking for any signs of problems with the floor. Looking down below him, he saw a large transmutation circle. His foggy mind vaguely remembered it as the one Ed had shown him. “They are interested in a state alchemist who is willing to obey orders without question. The problem is that they just don’t have the people with the talent to do it, and Amestrian livestyles are so different from Drachman they can’t manage to keep our guys and girls for long.”

She quietly whistled and snapped her fingers, drawing a dog out from one of the distant corners of the room. “Come on, boy.” The dog, a shepherd of some kind, but not one Roy was familiar with slowly stepped out into the room and stopped at Karen’s side, where she stood atop the circle. “Sit.” The dog immediately listened to her command and sat. “Good boy.”

“Are you going to try to make me an official dog of the military?” Roy asked.

“Something like that,” she said. “Now that I know you have the tattoos on your body.”

Roy struggled again, making it only up so far as his hands and knees. “Why would you say that?”

“You have an ex in Central who informed me of it,” she said. “You really should treat your former girlfriends better than you do, Roy.”

Could she have meant Melissa? Melissa was the only one aside from Ed who knew, but… why would she do this to him?v

“This won’t work,” Roy said. He didn’t want to tell her he didn’t have the whole circle, but he saw another flaw in her “brilliant” plan. “If you make me an obedient dog, I won’t be capable of performing alchemy any longer.”

Karen tutted as she walked outside of the circle, the dog obliviously panting a few feet from Roy. “Roy, do you think I’d waste a perfectly good dog and flame alchemist if I wasn’t sure it would work? You and I both know that Shou Tucker still managed his alchemy. And I’ve had remarkable success myself. Once I’m done with you, I’ll have to introduce you to Shane. He is my greatest achievement yet. Odd man, though. Actually had a fetish for being turned into an animal.”

With a smile, she pressed her fingers down on the circle and it began to glow. “All the better for me.”

********

Heading into another of the octagonal-shaped rooms, Ed saw this one had only four places and four doorways into other halls. If Ed was going to set up a trap, this was where he’d do it. He looked at the snarling animals in the four cages and tried to see back into the hallways.

“You should have listened to the Major,” Shane said with a smile as he slammed his monkey-like feet to the ground and Ed could feel the alchemy happening as all four of the cages exploded open. “The Crimson Alchemist was always a hero of mine.” He flipped back onto his front paws and Ed could finally see the transmutation circles tattooed onto his feet, done the same way that Liam’s tattoos had been.

“Shit!” Ed yelled out as he tried to go after the monkey-man, noticing that more Drachman troops were flooding the room as animals that looked to be part wolf, tiger, bear and bird immediately set upon the four alchemists and three soldiers.