Andy screamed.
Everything hurt: muscles, bones, eyes, mouth, throat, heart, head, skin, insides. He felt like he’d just run a naked marathon in the blazing desert sun, then had the shit beaten out of him by a group of angry men with baseball bats.
He tried to move, but he was strapped to a table.
The x-ray machine table. An IV was hooked up to his arm.
Andy looked around and saw Lucas watching him. And sitting next to Lucas…
“Sun!”
“You’re back!” she said, smiling and reaching for his hand.
“Good to see you again, lad,” Lucas said. “Your idea worked. Radiation cooked the defiler’s mutagen right out of you and your lovely bride, here. Inside and out.”
“You know how to work an x-ray machine?” Andy said. Somehow he wasn’t surprised.
“Aye. And the cyclotron. That’s how I got the fludeoxyglucose to inject you with.”
“The what?”
“That’s the radioactive isotope used in PET scanning,” Sun said. “Lucas gave us an IV push of it, along with the x-rays.”
“Are you a doctor?” Andy asked.
“I’ve been around for a long time. You pick up a few things.”
Andy blinked. “The last thing I remember was walking in here and seeing the dinosaur.”
“You made quick work of that one, lad. Then turned on me.” Lucas winked. “But I fight dirty.”
Sun kissed Andy. “You okay, hubbie?”
“Better by the second. You?”
Sun nodded. “I don’t remember anything. Did I… hurt anybody?”
Andy shook his head. He’d never lied to Sun before, but he did so now. She’d had no control over her actions, no memory of them, so why let her blame herself?
Lucas unstrapped Andy and he sat up in pain. Sun helped him off the x-ray table and they hugged. He never wanted to let her go. But he had to, if they were to get the hell out of the Spiral.
“What happened to the Omega Protocol?” he asked Lucas.
“Called it off, apparently. But the elevators aren’t working, and the facility has been compromised. Take a look at the computer, but be mindful… ‘tisn’t pretty.
Andy and Sun made their way to the desk and stared at the monitor, which cycled through security cameras. He blinked slowly as he took in the carnage. Almost every new screen gave an image of a blood-soaked room or corridor, littered with mangled torsos and discarded human limbs. Many of the hallways were currently being stalked by abominations of all shapes and sizes. A dozen nightmares were being played out simultaneously. One floor was infested with rodent-like creatures gnawing feverishly on the dead. Another floor featured a huge snake with the head of a bear stalking a crawling, screaming guard. It was joined by a hooved beast that stood on its hind legs like a man but otherwise resembled an elk—with giant, twisted antlers. There were also some enormous caterpillar things on subbasement 4 that spit acid at anything that moved.
Andy rubbed at his cheeks and tried to make sense of the situation. “So, if we’re still in deep shit, why did Kane stop the countdown?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find him anywhere on the cameras. Perhaps the old fella didn’t have the bottle,” Lucas suggested.
“What do you mean?” Sun asked.
“Perhaps his time of reckoning was upon him and he decided that he wasn’t ready to give up the ghost yet. Maybe he felt he still had things to do.”
The intercom crackled, and a female voice spoke.
“This is Dr. Thandi Gornman. General Kane is dead. The Spiral has been overrun by creatures. I’m in my office on level 3. I want to talk to the batling, the demon known as Bub. I’d like to negotiate the terms of our surrender. Please meet with me.”
The trio all took it in.
“Gutsy,” Andy finally said.
Lucas furrowed his brow. “Perhaps. But quite often you’ll find that the shape of a person’s heart doesn’t match their smile.”
“You don’t trust her,” Sun said. “I don’t either. Something about that woman is off.”
“We could, perchance, talk to Dr. Gornman personally.” Lucas didn’t turn around but he said, “Hello, Mr. West. Good of you to join us.”
Andy glanced at the doorway and saw West, one of Rimmer’s security team leaders. He looked like he’d been dunked in blood.
“Are you hurt?” Sun asked.
West shrugged. “Nothing major. Most of this blood isn’t mine. I overheard you’re going to see Gornman. I think I’ll join you. She’s the one who shut off the elevators.”
“Why?” Sun asked.
“I mean to ask her that myself.”
That’s when they heard it. A collective, screaming wail, like a dozen sick people crying out.
West changed cameras until he found the source of the sound. Everyone gaped at the image.
“Holy shit,” Andy said. “Where is that coming from?”
“Level 4. Just outside of Gornman’s office.” West frowned. “Exactly where we have to go.”
General Kane opened his eyes in total agony.
He didn’t think it was possible to be in that much pain, and he had no idea how he could even still be alive.
But he
was
alive. Perhaps because God had one last mission for him.
On the floor, two meters away, was his computer keyboard.
He could restart Protocol Omega. He could still make sure that Satan never saw the light of day.
Whimpering, General Kane reached out a shaky hand and began to pull his mangled, broken, bleeding body across the floor.
Pain be damned. Death be damned. Kane was going to stop that unholy son of a bitch.
Sun tried to make sense of what she was seeing on the monitor. There were monsters. Dozens of them. Running around Level 4 and attacking the remaining survivors.
“What are those things?” she asked.
“Remember the explosion at Blessed Crucifixion a few years ago? Leveled the whole building, killing everyone?”
Andy nodded. “That hospital in Durango, Colorado? It was a gas leak or something.”
West nodded. “That was what Deus Manus spun to the press. The real reason they blew it up was because of those unholy things. Nosfertu hominic. They’re some kind of vampire. One bite, and you become one.”
“Is it me,” Lucas said, “or does it feel like the jailers have suddenly become the ones who are caged. Poetic in a way, no?”
Andy glared at Lucas. “Why are you even here? Are you a part of all this? Seems like you have a funny way of showing up right before a whole bunch of people get killed.”
“What are you talking about?” West tilted his rifle ever so slightly in Lucas’s direction.
Andy folded his arms. “Dr. Chandelling showed me a whole bunch of historical photographs featuring Lucas. Photographs taken with Hitler, among other delightful people.”
Lucas put his hands up. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here. I just saved you and the missus, remember?”
“Then why are you at the Monstrum?”
West chose to full-on point his rifle at Lucas now. “Answer the man, Lucky Charms.”
Lucas smirked. “Mr. West, you fire that weapon at me and all it’s going to do is spoil my flawless complexion and make me mad. And believe me, you wouldn’t like me without a flawless complexion.”
Andy pressed. “Come on, Lucas. Talk. What the hell were you doing alongside Hitler and African warlords?”
“Trying to talk some sense into them.”
Sun frowned. “What? Really?”
Lucas shrugged. “I knew what that knicker-wearing mommy’s boy, Adolf, was planning—saw it in his heart. I tried to change his mind, but it was no use. Same with those mad bastards in Africa, and countless others going back centuries.”
“If you were there to stop those men from committing atrocities, you did a really bad job.”
Lucas nodded. “Aye, can’t argue there. But you don’t know some of the men I did talk around. For every Hitler that failed to heed my words, there were others that did.”
West kept his gun at the ready. “So we’re supposed to believe that you’re some sort of guardian angel, fluttering around the earth trying to prevent evil?”
Lucas laughed. “You couldn’t be more wrong, or at the same time closer to the truth.”
“You said that you have tried to prevent evil happening in the past,” Andy said. “So what is your purpose here? Were you here to prevent the breakout?”
Lucas shook his head. “I can’t prevent the actions of the defiler. That flappy little blighter has its grandiose plans and there’s nothing I could say to change its mind.”
Andy raised an eyebrow. “The
defiler
? Bub?”
“Aye, that was one of the names you people gave him, long ago. He has existed as a force of destruction since the days this planet took its first breaths. For every thing of beauty that the Lord created, the defiler made an abomination to destroy it. His sole intention is to wipe out God’s creations and recreate the planet anew as his own domain.”
Sun frowned. She didn’t know whether to trust Lucas or not. “Are you saying that Bub created all of the monsters we have here?”
“Not all of them, but I can assure you that those bloodsucking monsters on Level 4 had nothing to do with God. He would not create such a vile thing.”
“Who are you?” Sun asked. “How do you know all this?”
“Let’s just say that me and the big man upstairs used to be drinking buddies. Back before we had a falling out. Tell you the truth, I’ve been seeking his forgiveness ever since, despite my earlier misguidedness.”
West huffed. “You know God?”
“No, Mr. West. No one
knows
God. But I was lucky enough to be in his presence for a millennia or two.”
“So what changed?” Sun asked. “Why did you fall out with God?”
“Because I resented his most recent creation. I refused to bow down before a lesser creature. My vanity saw me cast down from Heaven.”
Sun’s eyes went wide. “Wait a minute. Are you saying… you’re talking about the creation of man? Are you saying… are you saying that you are the devil?”
Lucas cast his glance downwards, a sadness creeping across his face. “Tis but a name that many a frightened man gave me, but for a long time it was a name I wore proudly and with gusto. I slaughtered your kin and corrupted your purest hearts with utmost glee.”
“Bub made similar claims,” Andy said. “Claims that held no proof at all.”
“I make no claims. You ask questions and I give answer.”
“But you don’t deny that you are the devil?”
“My name is Lucifer. The devil is a name I have long sought to shed.”
West laughed. “So you’re reformed?”
Lucas grinned back, almost confrontationally. “I’m saying that a long time ago my eyes were finally opened to what God created. I saw the beauty and compassion that I once thought absent and realized my misjudgement of man. I love you now as God meant me to from the very beginning.”
“So you’re here to save us?” Sun asked. She couldn’t keep the spark of hope out of her voice.
Lucas looked at her with pity. “If I could pluck your arse from the fire, then I would. But it’s not within my abilities. I cannot directly interfere with the actions of men.”
“Some devil you are,” said West. “Aren’t you supposed to have unlimited power—God’s immortal adversary?”
“I’m afraid you’re putting too much faith in your own press there, fella. I have no real power. Without God’s love and a connection to Heaven, I have little more influence over the world than you do. I can be anywhere I choose to be, can read a man’s heart, heal quickly, never age, but those are just parlor tricks—remnants of my nature as an angel. I cannot breathe fire or summon legions from hell. I don’t torment the souls of the dead or punish sinners. Those are just the fantasies of men and their fiction. I’m just a lost, hopeless being trying to get God to notice me; no different to anyone else.”
“So why the hell are you here, then?” Andy asked.
“Because if mankind is going to fall, I want to stand shoulder to shoulder and go down with it. I have lived on this earth since the days when you first crawled out of your own filth. If something is trying to destroy it all, then I’m as much involved as you. While I cannot act directly, I will do what I can to assist you. Bub and his little bastard offspring are the most deadly things on this earth, but they bleed like anything else. I’ve seen enough of mankind to know that it does not give in to extinction. I believe you will fight back. You in particular, Andy, and your wife, Sun. You have a destiny to stop Bub.”
Sun didn’t believe in destiny, or fate. She also wasn’t sure she believed Lucas’s revelation.
“You doubt me, Sunshine,” Lucas said, laughing wearily. “That thing out there, Bub. He looks like the devil in your history books. Acts like him, as well. Me, I look like a man. But I’m not.”
“Prove it,” she challenged.
“Proof is in the eye of the beholder. If the Lord wanted to, He could come down and prove He existed. He prefers faith.”
“Why doesn’t He come down here and stop this?” Andy said.
“As I said: no one knows God. He has His reasons.”
“And what are your reasons, Lucas?” Sun asked. “You’re going to go down with us, but we don’t have any way of knowing you aren’t full of shit.”
“It matters not to me whether I’m believed.”
“Yet you keep talking about our destiny. Why is it our job to stop Bub?”
“That’s simply what I know, Sunshine.”
“And yet you can’t prove it.”
Sun stared into Lucas’s eyes and saw a flicker of something. Guilt? Sympathy? Compassion.
“Mr. West, would you allow me to borrow your knife for a moment?”
“Hell, no.”
“I’m not going to hurt any of you. Place your gun against my head if you wish. Sun wants proof. La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.”
“The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you he doesn’t exist,” Andy said.
“Aye. But I’m willing to prove the writer of that quotation, Mr. Baudelaire, wrong. Your knife, Mr. West?”
West hesitated, then gave Lucas his tactical blade. He pressed the barrel of his machinegun up against Lucas’s temple. “Don’t try anything.”
Lucas smiled placidly, then brought the blade up to his own throat—
—and began to saw.
The blood was minimal, even when he severed his own spine. Everyone watched, aghast, and when he’d finally cut his own head off and held it up, it smiled and winked at Sun.