Eleven: The Sequel of AlterMyth

The Keeper of Nature's Daydream

Prologue

One night ago, before the assault on the grounds of the St. Katharine's Docks began, Dr. Fauna Ceres arrived and was brought out of the back of a delivery van in shackles. Her captor, Clover Gosling, marched her through the labyrinth of wooden crates piled high and brick walls of the supposedly abandoned warehouse. Then, Clover bound Fauna to a chair in the central storehouse under the light of a lone hanging lamp.

Fauna was weak from the hours of her ordeal. She could barely lift up her head and look up at her captor. Her lips were dry. Her stomach ached and grumbled for food. Rings formed beneath her eyes and her green hair was disheveled like the overgrowth of a forest ripe for a wildfire. Moreover, the strange, wooden kirin horns that she had been keeping hidden under her many hats were exposed under Clover Gosling's light.

Clover marched around the bound Fauna like a vulture circling her prey. In one hand, Clover held a bright red apple that she munched on with gusto. The juicy crunch echoed in the inner storehouse - torturing Fauna's stomach and making her lick her drying lips. Then, in the other, Clover had a clipboard with papers that she thumbed through with her apple-stained fingers.

Papers that were heavily redacted and stamped with the word "Classified".

Helpless in that humbled position, Fauna could do little but listen to Clover's proud, theatrical oration.

"Let's see what we have here, shall we? Dr. Fauna Ceres, Senior Medical Officer of the Monsanto Company. American expatriate." Clover started reading from the papers in between bites of her apple, "You were drafted to fight in the Vietnam War in 1962, but you got around it by moving to London and enrolling in the Occidental College. You poured yourself into your studies and completed a four year course in two years - graduating as Salutatorian of the Class of 1964. Again, Uncle Sam tried to draft you and repatriate you back Stateside." Clover munched on her apple again and gave Fauna a sidelong glance, "This was when you caught the eye of Lady Ophelia Lowry who offered you a job in the Monsanto Corporation, a subsidiary of the Lowry Group. You impressed Lady Lowry so much that you were made a professor of the Occidental College and were chosen to lead the Agent Rainbow Pesticide Project - which ironically brought you to Vietnam anyways just this year. Fate has a way of playing you, doesn't it?"

Fauna lowered her head. Having someone, much less her own student, read out the past that she had buried beneath her work made her feel uncomfortable.

Clover watched Fauna squirm under her gaze. It brought a sadistic smile to the maniacal student's lips. She flipped through the pages and continued unraveling Fauna's life under the hanging light.

"In Vietnam, you were tasked with testing the effects and side-effects of Agent Orange or 'AO' and its heavily modified variant - the untested Agent Gold or 'AG' - in the Vietnamese DMZ around Sector Hotel-11. But then, in July 1969, your camp was attacked and captured by a North Vietnamese armoured column." Clover took a huge bite of her apple and savored chewing it down before she continued, "You sent a distress signal to Da Nang Air Base, of course, but the commander - a Major Omega - was a cautious woman. She refused to commit forces to the DMZ. So instead, her superior - Major General Sparrowhawk - took direct command of the Da Nang garrison. That hawk sent the 110th Airborne Combat Brigade under Lieutenant Nanashi, along with other MACV elements to rescue you - though Sparrowhawk kept Nanashi and everyone else in the dark about your... 'research'."

Lieutenant Nanashi...!?

Fauna furrowed her brow. She remembered Sparrowhawk talking briefly about a highly capable subordinate who retrieved and protected the intel with her life.

Now, that intel was in the hands of a maniacal student looming over her.

To think that Mumei managed to get me out of that hellhole. Would she be able to save me again?