Alchemist (31 page)

The general shot a
dark look at Rufus, something that nearly made him flinch. “You
said they were experimenting down here, where’s this lab you talked
about?”

Taking a deep
breath he led on. “This way.”

******

A guard screamed
as a spinning metal blade caught him in the shoulder. He screamed
again as his comrades trampled over him, desperate to get away from
their assailants. Only fifteen of them made it to the safety of the
lab and another six of them fell trying to seal the reinforced
perplex door which jammed when it was two thirds of the way across.
Finally though, with much force and desperation, they managed to
get it shut.

James Crombie came
to rest against a wall, clutching his chest and gasping for breath
as a trickle of sweat ran down his neck. The six remaining guards
ran around the lab, taking up strategic positions and training
their weapons on the door. The two lab assistants who were with
them hid at the far end of the research centre, desperate to get as
far away from the entrance as possible.

James felt like
his head was going to explode from the din; a combination of the
guards shouting at one another and the creatures in the lab
screeching and snarling in their tanks. The monsters had gone wild
with all the commotion, shrieking at the top of their lungs and
throwing themselves about their glass prisons. His chest tightened
as he glanced around the menagerie of horrors; glinting metallic
monstrosities with countless teeth – they had ran out of a warzone
and straight into the jaws of hell.

Bang
. He jumped as something hit the lab door. A
metal chair fell to the floor on the other side of the door. The
noise ended the arguing amongst the security team and even the
monsters in their boxes fell quiet. The silence was deafening.
James stared at the door to the lab, terrified of what would come
from them. But something caught the corner of his eye. He slowly
looked in the direction of the tank nearest to him. The dull brown
serpent-like creature within had been throwing itself at the glass
moments before, desperate to get at his flesh, all the while
flashing row after row of serrated teeth. Now it had closed its
mouth and slinked away, retreating to the farthest end of the glass
cage. He could have sworn it was trembling. The sight did not
comfort him.

Hearing
the
click
of drawn triggers he
tore his gaze back to the door. His eyes widened. A young,
armour-clad woman strode down the long, narrow corridor. Terror
gripped James’ heart as her footsteps grew louder and louder as she
made her way down the metal hallway.

Reaching the
glass door she stopped. She peered around them all, indifferently.
Then her eyes found
him
. His
heart pounded like a jackhammer against his ribs, so fast and hard
he feared he would have a heart attack.

Glancing away, she
reached for the intercom and held down the button. “Hello.” She
said her focus squarely on him.

A couple of the
guards stared at him but James Crombie failed to answer. It was one
of the security team who finally spoke to her. “Who are you? What
do you want?”

“Answers.” Her
eyes still on Mr Crombie.

James swallowed
hard. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I
want.”

James pushed
himself away the wall, his body trembling. “What are you?”

Terry’s eye
narrowed. “You stole something from my people. You took our metal
and you created these monsters.”

He slowly shook
his head. “No...no...they were only experiments...”

“You don’t have
any idea what you’ve done! What you could have unleashed!” she
shouted, her colour rising. She leant closer to the door. “Now
you’re all going to die.” Letting go of the button, she gazed
upward.

The guards looked
at one another, confused. A low rumble, like thunder striking far
away, sounded through the rock. It was enough to send the
experiments berserk. The security guards stood, pointing their
weapons toward the ceiling. With a thunderous crash it caved in,
hundreds of tonnes of rock burying them alive. The force of the
rock fall smashed the lab door, carrying Terry away on a tide of
dust and rubble.

As the last of the
rock fell, Lyle in his primeval form appeared through the veil of
dust, crawling down the rock face of the new cavity he had just
excavated. He growled as he reached the bottom, shale crunching
beneath his many feet. A few moments later he felt a movement in
the rubble and stepped back.

Stones clattered
as Terry’s large head and arms appeared from between the rock fall,
the rest of her tightly packed framed slinking free as easily as if
she had just emerged from a pool of water. She growled in response,
her plates flexing slightly as she shook off the dust that clung to
her exoskeleton.

Grunting, she
twisted her head and looked back; one of her six feet clutched
something. Throwing it to the ground, she turned to examine what
remained of Mr Crombie. The man lay still with a bloody gash across
his temple. His right leg twisted the wrong direction below the
knee, yet he still lived.

Terry’s antennae
twitched and she looked at Lyle, who had also come across to
examine the fallen man. The two of them communed briefly. Then,
reaching a decision, one of Lyle’s tentacles wrapped around the man
and lifted him as the two Alchemists clambered up the cave wall -
Terry creating another cave in as they ascended the vertical
shaft.

******

He jerked awake,
the air stabbing at his lungs as he gasped for breath. Blurry
shapes swam across his field of vision. James had to blink it
several times to clear it. The first thing he saw was a young
woman. She stepped back, dropping the bucket she had just used to
the floor with no more care than a child discarding an unwanted
sweet wrapper. Red dots danced across his sight when he blinked and
for the first time he became aware of a constant pain in the right
side of his head.

For a moment he
forgot that pain, along with all the others that riddled his body
when he suddenly recognised Terry. His eyes widened in recognition.
He broke down in tears, sinking to the floor helplessly.
“Please...please...”

Terry pulled a
chair over. “I take it you remember me then?” she asked, sitting
herself down a few feet from him.

James wept
uncontrollably into his cut and aching hands. They were caked in
blood and dirt. One of his wrists was swollen, likely broken, but
he did not seem to notice. Finally, he gave a weak nod. Looking
upon her only sent a renewed chill through every inch of his broken
body. “Wha...what...”

“What am I?” she
asked, finishing the question for him. Again, he could only
nod.

She stared at him.
“It doesn’t matter. But what you do need to know is that I am a
member of one of the oldest races in my homeland and the metal you
have been experimenting with belongs to us.”

He began to shake
his head, in a feeble display of disagreement.

“You might have
mined it here, but it is still ours none the less. You know from
your experiments that it isn’t like any other type of metal in the
world. It’s alive and that makes it extremely dangerous in the
wrong hands.” She crossed her legs and straightened in her seat. “I
was told you were trying to create some sort of bio-weapon with it
to sell to the British army or possibly the US. A lot of people
would have died if that had happened. But the thing you would have
created probably would have escaped long before then in one shape
or form, killing you, everyone in that mine and a whole lot of
other people.” A part of her wondered why she even cared. She
pushed the thought away.

He shook his head
again and she noticed he had finally stopped crying. “We
weren’t...we weren’t...we were just trying to find out what it was
capable of...”

“You were trying
to exploit it and make money.”

“Please...I swear
that was all we were trying to do, I swear!”

She shook her
head. “You would never have been able to control it. Everything the
metal touches turns into a killing machine.”

He stared at her
in open fear, sitting awkwardly on his broken leg. “How could you
possibly know that?”

Terry stood,
causing him to shrink away. She rolled up her right sleeve.

Transfixed, he
watched as Terry’s skin swelled and reformed to give way to her
dark metallic armour, which ran from the elbow to the tips of her
fingers. The two large plates on the top and underside of her lower
arm gave way to smaller, segmented ones that ran across the back of
her hand and fingers. Her palm was only flesh, but he could tell by
the lack of blood vessels and blemishes that it was much thicker
skin than that on his own. He jumped when she clenched her fist and
a dark blade shot out of her wrist - seemingly from nowhere. Then
it withdrew, her skin sealing behind it. Relaxing, her arm resumed
its former appearance.

He stared at her,
his jaw hanging open. “It’s alive in you, isn’t it?”

She nodded as she
sat down.

“I don’t
understand. Did it take over you? Is it some sort of parasite?”

Terry stared
at him for a long minute. “I suppose you’d call it that, but it
didn’t
take me over
. I was
born with the metal in my blood. It’s been part of my people for
millions of years.”

“But you’re
nothing like those creatures...”

“In your lab?” she
asked, angrily and he winced away. “No. The metal grabs any living
things it touches and uses it as a host. It then grows inside it,
before ripping it to pieces and escaping when it is large enough
too.” She shook her head. “But not my race. It’s a part of us and
we part of it.”

“So it’s a
symbiosis?”

Terry
shrugged. “No. I control every aspect of my body.”
Most of the time.

“How do you know
it won’t burst out of you one day?”

Terry stared at
him wearily. “It won’t.”

His fear suddenly
returned. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“So you can
understand how dangerous what you were doing was. Also I need to
ask you a couple of things.”

He swallowed hard.
“If I tell you what you want, will you let me go?”

Terry nodded.
“Yes.”

He blinked,
fighting back fresh tears. The relief was evident even through his
pained expression and battered features.

Folding her arms,
she leant forward. “That mine where you were digging up the metal,
was that the only one you have been digging in?”

He nodded
vigorously, his desperation evident.

“Do you know of
any others?”

His eyes widened
and he shook his head. “No.” He touched his forehead and crossed
his chest. “I swear.”

Terry nodded.
“Alright.” She said, mulling over what she had heard. Standing, her
gaze fell on him once more. “Was any of the metal taken out of the
mine? It wasn’t tested somewhere else or given to anyone who could
have taken it away?”

He shook his head
again. “No, we kept it all there. We’ve only been experimenting
with it for a few weeks. It would have been moved to other
laboratories eventually but not yet, it was too early on in our
research.”

“You’re certain of
this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” In a
swift, fluid motion, she stepped forward and broke his neck. The
middle-aged man slumped to the cave floor, the glazed whites of his
eyes staring blankly into the gloom.

“Sorry.” She
muttered, turning away.

Connor was the
first to enquire about Mr Crombie when Terry emerged into the
kitchen door. She didn’t answer. Her gaze instead found his wife.
Then it returned to Connor. “I think it would be best if we
discussed this in private.” She suggested.

Connor was
about to reply when Jo cut in. “No! I’m fed up of all this bull
shit!” she protested, storming across the kitchen. “First he
disappears for several hours and can’t tell me where he’s
been
and I get locked in a room! And
now you’re all running around whispering and avoiding me like
something terrible has happened!”

“I’m sorry Jo, but
it’s only because we’re trying to protect you.” Rufus replied.

“From
what
, exactly?” she demanded,
wheeling round to face him.

Ignoring the
question, Terry looked to Lyle and Rufus. “They haven’t found the
metal anywhere else and none of it was taken from the mine.
Everything should be ok.”

“That’s good to
know.” Rufus replied, obviously relieved. “I’m very sorry for this
whole mess.”

“You’ve already
said sorry, doing so again will not change anything.” Lyle replied
bluntly.

“I know, but
still...”

“We’ve wasted
enough time on this as it is.” Terry decided. “You should get home
and out of that body so we can get to work on finding Edward. Do
you still have that old scanner of yours?”

Rufus nodded. “Yes
but I’ve not used it in years, I don’t know if it still works.”

The Alchemist
shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of so that we might as
well dig it out and give it a shot.”

Jo glared at her
husband, her expression a mixture of anger and confusion.

“It can find
Phantoms.” Connor whispered. But his answer only left her even more
bewildered.

Still ignoring the
two lovers, Terry looked to Rufus. “I had a look for it the other
day but I couldn’t find it.”

“It’s not
something I leave lying about.” He thought for a moment. “In fact,
there are a lot of things I don’t leave lying about just in case.
Brick and glass houses are pretty easy to break into if you want
too.”