#larocque

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades aesthetics: Dr. Henri Larocque

“Hippocrates”

The years since I had last seen him had done him no favors. The hollows beneath his eyes had deepened, making his already-sharp cheekbones stand out like knives. Like scalpels. The skin on his person-suit was stretched tighter than usual, but he smiled when he saw me.

“John.” His lips twitched, like a snake unhinging its jaw before particularly appetizing prey, and he said my name in a longing sigh. “I knew you would come back to me. Out of all of them, I always knew that you -- you were special.”

My chest tightened, and I could feel his fingers under my ribs, searching, probing, clawing, squeezing the air from my lungs and wrapping around the frantic pulse of my heart. If I blinked, I could still see myself in the mirror, strapped to a table, breathing around a gag, clawing at the stainless steel with the world misting from pain. But I didn’t blink. I couldn’t, or I might fall apart. I might already be falling.

“Aren’t you glad to see me, too, John?”

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades aesthetics: Harding in ... high fever

There was the slightest wrinkle in his labcoat, a little fold near his right shoulder. Harding focused his eyes on it, with difficulty. Ever since the fever his vision had been slightly blurred, and it seemed like his eyes wanted nothing more than to gaze into some distant point, or better yet close and go back to sleep. But that wrinkle, that little shadow, the only sign of irritation that Larocque wore in his otherwise impeccable humansuit. It made Harding afraid, made him feel like he was being doused into the ice bath all over again. Goosebumps prickled along his arms. His mouth clotted with cotton.

"You are dehydrated," Larocque said at last. "A not unusual side effect of the treatment. We will bring your body temperature back to normal, and fit you to intravenous liquids before we do the second round."

"Second round?"

The doctor smoothed down his papers, and set the clipboard back on the end of the bed. Not a wrinkle in the sheets, nothing but that crease on his shoulder. It darkened in Harding's vision, and starbursts of color swirled away from it. It was an oracle, a siren, a banshee, a black dog on a moonless night, fog settling on a dark lake. Larocque stuck a thermometer into his mouth again, and held it in place, leaning close to peer into Harding's eyes.

"I do believe your fever has returned," he remarked coolly.

Ice hit Harding's limbs, tingling and burning, and Larocque's fingers prodding at the thin skin around his eyes were needles, daggers, swords, guillotines. He sucked in a breath through his nose. Larocque plucked the thermometer free. The wrinkle on his labcoat winked a thousand purple stars.

"I expected better from you." Larocque's voice dripped disappointment so thick that Harding could see it drip from the corners of his mouths like wet, inky blobs. They suspended just below his thin lips, dappling like scales on his chin. His fingers began to shake. "With the healing power you possess, I had hoped we could push past this part of the treatment faster," he went on, then lifted one hand and snapped his fingers. The sound was like a gunshot.

"Nurse! A dose of lorazepam, please. He is about to seize."

When the human genome project finished in 2003, the CIA made genetic testing mandatory, and one head scientist discovered something incredible. Genetic anomalies could be markers for...unusual powers. And with the right treatment, those powers could be brought to the surface.

Agent John Harding never intended to be a field agent. Hired as a translator and settling into life in America with his wife and children, he was perfectly content to a life of desk work and phone calls. Until his blood came up with the genetic marker for a rare and very useful possibility.

Threatened into working with Dr. Henri Larocque, Harding undergoes a series of painful tests and treatments to unleash what has been affectionately dubbed the “cockroach gene,” and thrusting him into field work. Turns out, he’s pretty good at it. Things could work out. He could survive this, scars and all.

That is, until Larocque’s project is abruptly shut down, and he’s fired after the project is not only under-performing, but causing a string of particularly gruesome deaths. Without funding, humiliated and enraged, Larocque returns to France and finds friends in organized crime, who are very interested in superpowered thugs. Especially considering the doctor has some impressive powers of his own.

Everything comes crashing down for Harding when he’s assigned to catch and bring in Larocque, and discovers the doctor’s grotesque influence has dug its claws deep into the CIA and elsewhere. Again and again, Harding comes close to catching him, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and someone has to pay the price.

As I’m finally getting some actual words done on the project, here’s a fun sneak peak into the early chapter, and Harding’s first interaction with Larocque. I feel like I’m finally finding the narrative voice, and I may be having too much fun with descriptions.

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"Agent John Harding, Sr.?"

The use of his full name startled Harding out of his focus, and he jerked up so suddenly he sent half a dozen papers fluttering to the ground. They hadn't been in much order to begin with, emptied from the file box and strewn across his desk and the floor with a few of his own notes scribbled on post-its on top of them, still trying to make sense of the flood of information. He had expected some other lackey suit to be standing in the door to his office, perhaps holding another full box or checking in on his progress as they had been doing for the past couple days, but instead was someone he had never seen before. And he didn't look like a paper pusher, or a field agent. Instead of a suit, he wore a long white lab coat, immaculately pressed and clean. He had the long, narrow look of someone who had at one point been a normal proportion, but then had been squeezed and pulled too tightly through some sort of unforgiving machine. His high cheekbones angled too sharply against the line of his jaw, leaving hollows that might have been called dimples if they didn't look so severely cut. Dark blond hair curled loosely across his temples, and seemed the only thing about him not pressed and stretched into a cultivated, regimented perfection. Harding got the distinct impression that he was some sort of lizard that had decided to wear a human-suit, but had no idea how to make it properly fitted. If he saw a forked tongue, Harding was going to carve a window into the wall behind him and jump through it.

"Yes, sir," he answered instead. "That's me. Can I help you?"

The reptile in the doorway smiled, at least much in the same way a snake smiled while sizing up a cornered mouse. It was less of a gesture of goodwill, and more a yawn of fangs in preparation to swallow someone whole. "My name is Dr. Henri Larocque. I have the results of your bloodwork."

"Ah." When Larocque didn't continue right away, Harding felt compelled to speak. "Is this like looking up symptoms on the Internet? Do I have brain cancer?"

The doctor's smile widened marginally, enough to finally wrinkle the hollows of his pitted cheeks. "Quite the contrary. Won't you follow me?"

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades aesthetics: Dr. Henri Larocque, “Hippocrates”

"You are very reactive," Larocque commented, making a note on his clipboard. "You must be feeling well."

Harding gritted his teeth as his arm went rigid from shoulder to wrist. He put his opposite hand on his elbow, trying to bend it, but the muscles refused to budge, too tight and quivering. "Is this a new side effect?" he asked, the words hissing past his clenched jaw.

"No, of course not," Larocque tsked. "As I told you, I have run these improvement protocols before. They helped my own power considerably." He smiled. Harding waited for the jaw to unhinge. "Had I had such an ability to heal when I was a student, I could have halved my time of study. Now I only need to touch someone once, and I can influence their body within a certain radius."

"This doesn't feel like healing."

Larocque chuckled. "What is poison and what is medicine is often dependent on the dose."

[Me: I need a color for Larocque’s new moodboard

@rrrawrf-writes : Death

Me: What color is death??

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades Aesthetics: Dr. Henri Larocque: “Hippocrates”

|| Doctor || Scientist || Supervillain ||

“Agent Harding, this is Dr. Larocque. He’ll be guiding you through the process from here.”

Harding had felt exposed enough after being stripped down to nothing more than a hospital robe, after countless tests and blood samples, after three days in sterile, windowless rooms, enough that he was sure nothing could make him feel more like a lab rat. Dr. Larocque proved him wrong. The doctor studied him with the same calm gaze he imagined was used on rodents just before a scalpel split them open.

“A pleasure to finally meet you, John,” Larocque said at long last, each word a smooth caress still laced with a pronounced accent. “I’ve been studying your lab results, and I must say that I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a genetic reaction this strong.”

“Thanks. My mother gave them to me.”