“This vessel caaaaaaaaaannnnnot. The other mussssssst.”
“The batling?”
“Yesssssssssssssss. Waaaaaaait heeeeeeeere.”
The demon dropped Chandelling’s ear on his chest, then sprung to its feet and fled the room.
For a moment, Chandelling was in shock and unable to move. Then he finally pushed past the fear and pain and sat up, his ear falling to the floor. He picked it up, unsure of what to do with it, and caught sight of his aquarium in his peripheral vision.
Cool water. I can keep it in cool water until Bub can fix it
.
Chandelling sprang to his feet, scurrying to the aquarium. His goldfish, Satchmo, eyed him passively. With no further thought, Chandelling opened the feeder panel on the tank and dropped his ear inside. It sank slowly, billows of blood staining the water around it, and finally came to rest on the multicolored gravel at the bottom.
There. That will keep it cold. Now I just need to stop the bleeding and—
Satchmo, normally docile, raced up to the ear and began to nip at it with the ferocity of a piranha.
“Satchmo! No!”
Chandelling banged on the glass, but the goldfish was in a feeding frenzy, attacking the ear in rapid nips, eventually getting the lobe into its tiny mouth and swimming for its little underwater castle.
Chandelling tore off the top of the tank and spent the next two minutes trying to grab Satchmo and get his ear back.
He failed.
Dr. Gornman watched her computer monitor while chewing on a wart she had on the knuckle of her thumb. The camera she’d selected was outside of Dr. Chandelling’s room, which she’d selected after Sun had broken in. There were no security cameras in private rooms—a silly privacy issue Gornman had never understood—so she had no idea what was happening inside.
Had the demon killed him?
Gornman had given it every opportunity to. She’d showed the Bub batling personnel files on all the staff members, holding them up to its cell glass, assuming a creature of such high intelligence could read quickly. The demon knew everything she did about every employee in the Spiral. Then she’d diluted the knock-out gas and tampered with the moving crate, weakening the lock before they attempted to transfer the demon. Her goal was for Bub to escape, and the goal was a selfish one.
Everyone knew that if you made a deal with the devil, you got whatever you wanted.
When Bub had bitten Sun, Gornman had given her shots of saline, saying it was broad spectrum antibiotics. If Bub had infected her, as Gornman hoped, she didn’t want to accidentally halt the process.
Sun had become infected, in a big way, and Gornman had given her an amphetamine shot, saying it was a tranquilizer.
Now she had to wait and see if Bub was as smart as the Samhain debacle showed he was.
If he was, then Sun would soon free him, and Gornman could make her demands.
She had a few doozies.
No doubt Bub would take over the world. Gornman had studied the Samhain event like it was her graduate thesis, and was convinced the demon was destined to rule mankind.
It would need a second-in-command. How did the old saying go?
I’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Gornman had been serving in hell—the Spiral—for far too long. Working with military idiots and ambitious bureaucrats and short-sighted scientists who cared more about useless research than practicality. Gornman’s vision, and her leadership skills, had been ignored. She’d been predicting Bub’s arrival for years, and now nothing would stop her from attaining the power she deserved.
Chandelling’s door swung open, and the Sun-demon hurried through. It was too fast to make out any major details, but Gornman clearly saw a key card in its claw.
It had gotten Chandelling’s access card. And no doubt his code as well.
She leaned back in her chair, smiling, and then switched cameras, following the demon as it headed for the elevator.
As expected, it chose subbasement 5.
Going to free its master.
Dr. Thandi Gornman smiled.
Let the games begin.
Rimmer led Jerry down a hallway, past a cell containing a long, shiny log with hundreds of legs.
Jerry squinted through the window. The log began to twist and undulate.
A tree that could move?
No, make that a giant centipede. One with mandibles large enough to grab a lamb, and black, beady eyes the size of baseballs.
Bloody terrifying.
I’m already terrified enough. Rimmer is probably leading me to my death.
Will he shoot me?
Or worse—stick me in one of these cells with some monster, or the unicorn like he promised?
“So what now?” Jerry said, barely able to keep his knees from knocking together as he marched toward uncertainty. “You make me kneel down, put two in the back of my head?”
Rimmer didn’t respond. Not a good sign. Jerry had been partly kidding, but now he wondered if he was, indeed, marked for execution.
Jerry turned to look at him while he walked. He forced bravado. “So, do you kill innocent people a lot in your line of work? Or is this a special treat? Most people just get their kicks on
Call of Duty
.”
Rimmer kept his stare forward. “You’re not innocent, Mr. Preston. You committed an attack against one of this nation’s secure, top-secret facilities.”
“I was playing fetch with an over-sized dog. That’s my only crime. You saw it yourself.”
“It’s not my place to say.”
“No, you just take orders. You’re as much a dog as Wolfie was.”
“Keep moving.” Rimmer’s pager on his belt went off. He checked the number. “Faster. I’ve got to go.”
So this is it. I’m dead. This goose-stepping lackey is going to murder me in cold blood.
Jerry’s thoughts turned to his mother, and how an embrace from her would hold value above all else at that moment. He thought about Ben, about stealing from his estranged father. He thought about fighting back when Rimmer pulled his trigger and dying like a man.
“Why don’t you just do it here?” Jerry said, stopping, forcing himself not to cry. “In the hallway, for the cameras to see? Or does Kane want this kept off the record?”
Rimmer placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a firm push, getting him walking again. “No one is going to kill you, Jerry.”
“Kane said to take care of me.”
“I’m going to put you in a cell.”
“With what? The Loch Ness monster?”
“No.”
“A Medusa, with snakes for hair? Medusas freak me out. They’re like my nightmare fuel.”
“Your own cell. Jerry.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Jerry considered it. The relief he felt was short lived. Being locked up down here, possibly forever, would be even worse than death. Just one more exhibit in Hell’s zoo. He wondered how often they’d change the hay in his cage.
“What’s going to happen to Wolfie’s body?” he asked, mostly to take his mind off of his own situation.
“The werewolf?”
“He’s not a werewolf. If he was, he would have turned back into a man when that fascist, Kane, killed him.”
“Not all werewolves are shapechangers. That’s a legend. You know that vampire sucker thing on level 5? The Nosferatu? That’s probably where part of the werewolf legend came from. Men who turned into monsters with sharp teeth who acted like animals and ate babies. Wolfie, as you call him, probably got mixed up in the legend. I was surprised he died so easily. He may not have been a man who changed when the moon was full, but he was more than just a big dog. Incredibly strong and resilient. Resistant to aging and injury. The only thing he reacted negatively to was silver. Classic werewolf traits. He was…” Rimmer’s eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment. “Well, he was one helluva animal.”
Jerry raised an eyebrow. “It almost sounds as if you liked him.”
“You were playing ball with Wolfie?”
“You know I was.”
“Who do you think gave him that ball?” Rimmer asked.
“Nessie did.”
“Nessie liked him. But the ball—that was mine.”
Jerry considered it. Maybe Rimmer wasn’t as big of a tool as he’d thought. “So where is he?”
“He’s in the morgue now. I’ll make sure his body is properly disposed of.”
“He won’t be fed to the spiders?”
“No. He’ll be studied and preserved. He was one of a kind.”
“So, aren’t you pissed off? Your commanding officer killed Wolfie for no reason at all.”
“Being pissed off doesn’t keep me from following orders, Jerry.”
“That’s a total cop-out.”
“Whatever. We’re here.”
They were in front of a seemingly empty cell.
“You sure it’s empty?” Jerry asked, dubious.
“Do you see anything inside?”
“Could be filled with invisible, man-eating pythons.”
“It’s not.” Rimmer used his fob to access the LED panel and opened the steel door.
“Well, bugger it, what am I supposed to do in here? Is there a television?”
Rimmer shoved him in and began to shut the door.
“C’mon, mate! At least give me a magazine or something!”
Rimmer paused. Then he reached into his pocket—
—and took out a rubber ball.
Wolfie’s.
He tossed it to Jerry, and then a siren began to wail, the overhead lights starting to blink.
“What the fuck is that?” Jerry asked, pocketing the ball.
Rimmer’s eyes narrowed. “Security breach. We’re in lockdown.”
The idea of a security breach in the Spiral scared the piss out of Jerry.
“Shit. Did something get out? Are we trapped down here?”
Rimmer didn’t answer. If there were monsters running around, the last place Jerry wanted to be was locked in a cell, unable to run. If it was Bub—and Jerry had a hunch it was—that demon was smart enough to get out of his cell, which meant it was smart enough to get inside the cells. If Jerry stayed locked up, he would basically be the equivalent of convenience food.
Out of all the terrible ways to die, being eaten was probably the worst.
Jerry made his eyes go wide as he looked beyond Rimmer. Then he raised his hand and pointed. “Oh, shite! Behind you!”
Rimmer swung around, reaching for his sidearm, and Jerry bumped him hard as he could, sending the man sideways, and then went running down the hallway in the opposite direction, heading for the elevator. He pressed the button and the doors opened immediately. Jerry popped inside and watched as Rimmer snarled at him. Jerry frantically looked for some button to press, but there were none.
Voice activated. It’s voice activated.
“Level one,” Jerry said.
The doors remained open.
“Doors close.”
They didn’t close.
Rimmer began to charge toward the elevator.
“Come on, you bloody lift, move!” Jerry remembered he no longer had that fob thing. The elevator likely wouldn’t work without it. Rimmer was only a few meters away, and he didn’t look happy. Jerry winced at what he assumed would be a punch in the face at the minimum.
Then, magically, the doors began to close. They finished closing right before Rimmer reached them, and Jerry blew out a big breath of relief. The elevator began to rise, and Jerry wondered if maybe he didn’t need a fob after all.
It stopped on subbasement 1. Not the surface, but a definite improvement.
At least, it seemed like an improvement until the lift doors opened and Jerry found himself tackled by imps.
They leapt on him en masse, clinging to his limbs. Small, green, somewhat clammy Smurf-like creatures that freaked Jerry out so bad he began to scream as he tried to shake them off. They screamed in response, shrill like monkeys, but the family of four clung to his arms and legs like they were tied on; the world’s ugliest fashion accessories. Several of them were pointing back into the hall.
Jerry controlled his hysteria long enough to glance upward—
—seeing Sun Dennison-Jones in front of a cell, opening it up and releasing…
It’s the unicorn.
The cell opened and the magnificent equine trotted out, then let out a nicker. The nicker became a scream when Sun stuck it in the nose. But it wasn’t a simple slap. Jerry took a closer look and noticed that Sun’s hands had become claws.
She wasn’t Sun anymore. She was a monster.
A monster who was releasing all the other monsters.
The unicorn reared up on its hand legs, pawing the air, and then charged past Sun, toward the elevator, horn lowered like a rhino.
“Close!” Jerry commanded the elevator doors, the imps clinging to him momentarily forgotten.
The doors stayed open, but his shouting got Sun’s attention. She smiled at him, her mouth crammed with fangs.
“Close, goddammit!”
The unicorn picked up speed. It’s eyes were wide with terror, and Jerry imagined getting impaled on its horn. It truly would be one of the most painful ways to die, while also being one of the gayest.
“No no no no no no…”
The imps clutching Jerry began to repeat “no no no” as well, but higher-pitched and faster. It would have been kind of cute if Jerry wasn’t seconds away from wetting his pants in fear.
When the unicorn was less than a meter away from the lift, the doors finally began to shut—
—and the horn wedged itself between the doors. Jerry backed away, bumping into the rear of the lift, his jaw hanging in horror as the creature forced the doors back open.
And that’s when the imps dropped off Jerry and attacked, flinging themselves at the unicorn going straight for its eyes with their tiny hands. The beast grunted, retreating a few meters back, and the imps jumped back into the elevator just as the doors shut.
“Yes!” Jerry shouted, pumping a fist into the air.
“Yes yes yes yes,” they said in their preternatural helium voices, also repeating his fist gesture.
Cool.
“You guys are little gangsters. Cheers.”
The imps began to chitter at one another. The elevator continued to rise, coming up to the Nucleus.
“Get behind me,” Jerry said. “We don’t know what’s on this floor.”