Fantasmagoria (31 page)

He stood in a steel-lined cell, the first in a row of six that ran along the far wall, across from the main entry. He wondered what they had kept locked inside. The floor beneath him was stained in dark reds and browns. The walls were gouged in long streaks. Something had wanted to get out. The door was solid except for a single, steel-barred window, and Jack glanced through it at the narrow access tunnel that opened at the end of the row. That would be the best hope of escape.

The main room was filled with complicated lab equipment, complete with lightning coil and restraining table. The colonel stood in the center and took a report from a subordinate.

“If your friends had let you die, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Where’s here?” Jack and Gilbert had been blindfolded. Then they bounced around the back of a truck—meaning the road they traveled was unpaved—for the better part of an hour.

“The place you call Midwitch, at the base of the Serrated Hills, under the old lookout tower. In our language, this is Middle Watch Base underneath the ruins of Middle Watch Tower. It’s something of a legend among the Amazons. During the Great War, the tower at Middle Watch guarded the long peninsula of the island. I think it confounded my people that the island floats, and so nothing could be named with cardinal directions. We’re naturally precise.”

The colonel turned as if she’d just remembered something important. “Do you know why it floats?” She didn’t wait for a response. “This underground complex was originally dug to study the enormous cavern, like a cocoon, on the other side of that access tunnel. It’s so massive, it creates enough buoyancy to keep the island a few meters off the ocean floor.

“Of course, after the war broke out, the subterranean location made this the perfect place to train our commandos. The name Middle Watch became synonymous with intelligence gathering, sabotage, code-breaking, and the rest. It was the control center for all our black operations around the Western Sea.”

She pointed to the high-tech consoles and large view screen at the end of the room to Jack’s left. It was encased in metal and glass and elevated off the old brick floor. “As you can see, we’ve made some upgrades.”

Jack looked at the screen. It flashed between various images, some from news footage, some from stationary cameras, all showing conflict. Under the cover of night, the Aminals had landed a large force on the island and were engaging the Imperial troops at key strategic locations like power plants and bridges. The rest of the city was rocked with demonstrations and riots. The Kraxus-worshipers brandished signs advertising the end of the world while they hurled flaming cocktails at Imperial tanks. His home, his city, was in chaos.

Jack turned his head. Gilbert sulked at the back of the cell, still wearing the Amazons’ metal hood.

The colonel removed a pair of small vials from a rack of floor-to-ceiling glass shelving, full of numbered pairs, across from the control center. She held the vials up to the light, one in each hand.

“New toy?”

The colonel smiled. “This is what it’s all about, Mr. Fulcrum.” She set the vials in a padded case and removed another pair. “During the war, we had entire troops of Furies, and with them before us, we marched on the Imperial capital. But as the fighting dragged on, the Allied rapists were killed, and as they fell, so fell the Furies created by their seed. You see, a Fury exists only for retribution. That is her sole purpose. And therein lies the fundamental flaw.”

The colonel turned to a nearby redhead. “Lieutenant, please call them in.”

The lieutenant nodded and disappeared down the main hall only to return moments later with the Furies marching in single file. They were all clad in black body suits blazoned with the red and white sigil of the Master Race. It stretched a foot wide across their chests. Their hair was pulled taut to their scalps. They formed a line under the control room. The lieutenant ordered them to attention, and they saluted and snapped their arms to their sides.

Jack looked at Lette. She glanced back.

The colonel walked over to inspect the troupe. “After so much slaughter, the Allied soldiers learned to stop raping. I’m sure it was a difficult lesson.” As she walked down the line, she ran her fingertips across the Furies’ breasts. “And slowly, bit by bit, their sheer numbers turned the tide against us.”

“You’re making super-soldiers.”

“Very good, Mr. Fulcrum. Creating a Fury is not difficult. The semen of any man will do.” She turned to the lieutenant. “Begin packing the Mark Six.”

The lieutenant saluted.

“But there are two problems: how to keep her from disintegrating once the donor has expired, and tenure. Once you divorce a Fury from her natural life cycle, theoretically she is immortal.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Control,” Gilbert scoffed from under the hood. “They don’t want to create these things just to have them turn around and take over.”

“The first cell that contacts semen infects the body with a virus that induces the metamorphosis. Entire chromosomes that lie dormant in a typical Amazon are now expressed. In fact, inside the chrysalis, complete genetic resequencing takes place.” The colonel pointed to a vat filled with a clear viscous fluid. “Furies emerge highly sensitive to a particular kind of lipid released at death. Every cell of her body is like an antenna, constantly scanning the world for her rapist’s demise. According to my studies, this mechanism is so sensitive and so specific, contact with a single molecule is enough to trigger complete cellular apoptosis.”

The colonel stood in front of the vat. “She turns into a proteinaceous goo right in front of your eyes.” Colonel Sryn nodded to the vials of semen serum now being collected by the soldiers. They were placing them in thick, shock-proof boxes. “Each vial contains recombinant markers from dozens of separate donors.”

Gilbert stood and walked next to Jack. “You tune her to the genetic fingerprint of a man who doesn’t exist.”

“And since he doesn’t exist, he can never die, and so no lipids are ever produced. Except what we make.”

Gilbert looked at the vials. Each was part of a pair. One was the genetic soup for making a Fury, distilled from the semen of a hundred different men. The second was an artificial pheromone, derived from the first, that triggered her death. Creation and control.

“The soldiers before you came from the Mark Six serum, the first psychologically stable prototype. And with the last batch of semen we harvested, we have enough to begin design and testing of the Mark Seven. Soon, we’ll have an indestructible army.”

The colonel looked at Gilbert, then at the floor. “Gilbert’s mother was a Mark Two. Her transformation aborted spontaneously. There was a problem with the matrix. The serum wasn’t ready. But once triggered, an Amazon cannot change again. That’s how your mother could get pregnant.”

“What happened to her?” Gilbert asked.

The colonel was stoic. “She was sacrificed. For the greater good.”

Gilbert was silent.

“Gilbert, I wasn’t lying when I said you were my grandson. Your mother was my daughter, my only child. She was so convinced the formula would work, she used it on herself. After her infection, she became deranged, nymphoid, obsessed with sperm. When we wouldn’t attempt any more tests on her, she escaped to the city, where she mated with the first man she found.

“She was well trained, and highly intelligent. It took us almost a year to find her. By then you had been born.”

“Why not kill us both?”

“Curiosity. You are the only man-child ever born of Amazonia. It’s quite an honor. We saw it as a gift to science. We observed your maturation from a distance. But, over the years, as this program became more promising, you became a loose end. We engineered your accident. It never occurred to us that you would survive, that you had inherited a Fury’s regenerative powers. It was a mistake. Your father seems to have been one large recessive gene. Perhaps that’s what my daughter, in her insanity, found so appealing.”

“Don’t talk about my father,” Gilbert chided. “He was a good man.”

Jack squinted. “You’ve been at this a long time.”

“Since the end of the war, one and a half centuries ago. In that time, Amazonian science has become the most advanced on the planet.” The colonel pressed a button. “Control room, begin the destruct sequence. Set the clock to one hour.” She walked toward the prisoners. “So you see, Gilbert, I was able to share the truth with you after all. Despite what you think, we’re not evil. We’re simply doing what we must to ensure the survival of our race.”

“Whatever,” Gilbert breathed. He was crying inside his hood.

The colonel looked at Jack through the bars. “When the building explodes, Gilbert will go with it, and all evidence of our presence—and yours—will be gone. Lette made a great mistake in sleeping with you. She revealed too much.”

Jack looked at her. She didn’t flinch.

“Oh yes,” the colonel smirked. “We know about that. But we couldn’t risk shooting you at Hoosegow. There was always some small chance that someone could piece that mechanical mind of yours back together, and we would be discovered. You do have a number of people looking for you. But this way, you’ll be vaporized, and the Empire will assume the explosion was part of the Aminal attack.”

“Clever.”

“We are very thorough, Mr. Fulcrum. Very thorough.”

The cage rattled as the complex shook. Everyone stopped and looked at the cavernous ceiling. It dropped dust.

“Ma’m Colonel,” one of the soldiers called from the large view screen, which ran live video from a security camera monitoring the approach to Middle Watch.

Everyone’s jaw went slack.

Over the hills that bordered the floating island, something fell through the clouds of the night sky. It was massive, a sloping metal disc, like an inverted saucer, ringed in pulsating light. It crept over the ruins of Middle Watch Tower and flew over the cross-hatched farms of the valley. As it slowed, a circle opened underneath. The floating saucer yawned to the ground like a hungry hatchling. Then it came to a halt, and for a moment all was still. No one moved. They didn’t know what to do.

Light erupted from the opening and struck the valley. There was a distant rumble. The disc started toward the city, dragging the beam across the ground and leaving nothing but a flat, white scar behind.

Noise erupted from the control room as soldiers turned to their now-blinking consoles. The radio operator clutched her headset to her ears and scowled.

“What is it?” The colonel asked.

“Communiqué from Central Command. Reports are coming in from all over. The Empire. The Aminal Kingdom. Even Futuria. They’re all reporting identical events.”

“We must get home,” the colonel breathed. “Leave everything but the serum. Move quickly!”

The Amazons began stacking the boxes of twin vials in the center of the main hall. Everything else was kicked or thrown out of the way.

“Quickly!” The colonel yelled. “We must get to the queen.”

In the distance, the rumbling continued.

Gilbert lifted his jacket and nodded to the withering sprite, who had been hiding inside. In the end, it was indeed most valuable thing in the world—a means of escape. It bared its rows of serrated teeth, slid between the bars in the window, and opened the latch on the other side of the door.

Jack and Gilbert wasted no time. They ran for the access tunnel. Guards yelled, but everyone was busy with preparations and no rifles were at the ready.

“Leave them!” The colonel yelled. She turned to Lette. “Wait for us to get clear, then lead the squad. Kill them.” She held up a finger. “No mistakes this time.”

Lette saluted.

The lieutenant squinted and leaned close to the colonel. She spoke in a whisper. “If they kill the sick one, won’t they all die?”

The colonel looked at the big screen and then at the line of super-soldiers. “Only the serum matters. With that, we can always make more.”

(THIRTY-FOUR) The Terror from Beyond

The cavern was enormous. Lights affixed to the carved rock wall cast their beams into a vast expanse and disappeared. Both Jack and Gilbert stopped and stared at a mountain within a mountain, crested in strange spikes.

“Whoah . . .”

Gilbert was still staring, mouth agape, when Jack noticed the door.

“This way!” He grabbed Gilbert by the scruff and pulled him through another artificial tunnel. It emerged into a larger causeway, and the pair took cover at the corner.

“We’ll never make it.” Gilbert spoke between deep, huffing breaths. “They’re too fast. They’ll catch us.”

Jack ripped the helmet off Gilbert. “We’ll make it. If they cared about us now, we’d be dead already.” Jack grabbed his arm. “Come on.” He could see a motor pool at the end of the tunnel, and inside, a line of troop carriers and all-terrain jeeps. They were unguarded as the Amazons hurried to pack their precious cargo.

“No!” Gilbert pulled back and collapsed on the ground. “If they catch us, you’ll die too. Just like she said.”

“Gil--”

“I kill people.”

Jack stopped. “What?”

Gilbert’s face was drenched in tears. “The sick and the dying. Homeless, mostly. Those with Marsten’s plague or a venom-wasp infection.”