Kane smiled at them like monkeys being taught how to smoke. He told them, “Our project was created by St Clement the first. In 94AD.”
Sun shook her head.
No way. It can’t be.
She scanned through her brain’s knowledge banks, fact checking her own thoughts. The man in the painting, St Clement, was the third Pope in history, consecrated by St Peter himself. Sun had taken a great interest in religious history since Samhain. Things she had once thought ancient and unimportant had become pressing concerns.
“What you are about to see,” said Kane, “was started by a group of devoted individuals coming together under the collective name of Deus Manus.”
Sun looked at her husband for an explanation.
He quickly gave one. “It means ‘God’s hand’.”
Kane nodded and smiled. “It does indeed. The reason this facility stands is to protect humanity from the worst evil to ever walk the earth. Allow me to introduce you to the guests.”
The corridor in which they were standing had clean magnolia walls. They curved slightly, as if the hallway was circular and joined back on itself like a snake consuming its own tail. Spaced apart every ten feet or so was a collection of doors. They were thick steel, maybe titanium, and had viewing hatches like you would find in a prison. There were no locks, nor any handles on the doors. Instead, each door had a small LED touchscreen built into the wall beside it.
“There are four main levels to the upper facility,” Kane explained, “such as the Nucleus on level 2 and the staff dormitories on level 4. Below those four levels are ten subbasements; with this being the first: subbasement 1. The deeper you go the more
colourful
the guests become. Of all the places to begin your tour, this level is probably the wisest place to begin. The lower levels may be a tad too much to take in without being properly acclimatised beforehand.”
Sun blew out a lungful of air and groaned. “What are you talking about? Just show us what you have here. Does it have anything to do with Samhain?”
Kane stopped and turned around. Sun almost bumped into the back of him, and Andy almost into the back of her. Jerry was dawdling several feet behind with an anxious look on his face.
“Okay, let’s start with cell number 9. As good a place as any.” Kane went up to the nearest door and pressed his thumb against the LED screen. It flashed green and let out a friendly beep. Kane then prodded at the panel several times with his index finger, navigating various menus.
The hatch at the top of the door slid open.
“Take a look,” said Kane.
Sun looked over at her husband. Andy had grown pale. He was staring at the hatch but making no move towards it. She could tell that memories of Samhain were flooding back to him.
Sun touched Andy’s hand with hers. “I’ll go,” she said.
She took a step towards the door. And then another.
Three steps later and she was standing in front of the hatch. Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward. Her eyes went wide.
“Jesus, what the hell is that?”
“That, Mrs Dennison, is an imp. Quite harmless in most instances, but can still give a nasty bite.”
Sun stared into the cell. The interior was almost like a habitat at a zoo. It was a vast oblong, stretching fifty feet backwards in a widening arc. Sun spotted a rock cave and a small pond amongst artificial reeds and rubbery plant life.
The creature inside was almost human, childlike in its stature. What made it decidedly
inhuman
was its pink, glistening skin which was more like that of an earthworm than a man. A ropey tail swished behind the creature and a pair of cranial bumps rose behind its ears like stunted horns.
The creature realised that it was being watched through the hatch and returned Sun’s gaze. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw its ears prick up and its tail begin to wag faster.
Is it pleased to see me?
Sun stood aside so that Andy could take a look. His reaction was equally as shocked. As soon as he had seen enough, Jerry took his turn.
“You’re winding me up,” he said. “That’s some kind of animatronic. Either that or you’ve been messing around with nature like that dickhead in
Jurassic Park.
”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t get the reference,” said Kane.
Jerry’s eyes widened. “You never saw
Jurassic Park
? You’re pulling my leg?”
“If you are referring to a movie then I’m afraid I have to admit to finding little time for such things. The living area of the Spiral has an extensive video library but I’m afraid I am more akin to a good book.”
Jerry huffed. “
Jurassic Park
was a book first, man.”
“Nevertheless, I’m afraid the reference is lost on me.”
“What about
The Avengers
? Did you catch that flick yet?”
“Excuse me,” said Andy, interrupting the exchange before it came even more banal. “Can you explain a little more about what you have in there?” You said it’s an imp? As in
a little demon
?”
Kane nodded his head slowly. His aging eyes had narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned downwards. “I’d have thought you’d be willing to believe in such things by now, Mr Dennison. As for it being a demon, I cannot comment. All I can say is that the dirty little thing is an organic life form and that it was captured several centuries ago. It was housed in Sarajevo until the hostilities there led to the facility becoming compromised.”
“A Sarajevo facility? What the hell were the US government doing there?”
“You misunderstand. The facility did not belong to the United States. It was under the control of the Bosnian government. The society of Deus Manus goes beyond boundaries. It is older even than many of the nations which exist today and has influence exceeding them all. It is a collective of societies, organisations, individuals, and governments, all unified in the quest to capture and contain evil.”
Sun scoffed. “Evil?”
Kane gestured to cell number 9. “I don’t mean the notion of evil—some philosophical debate about the inner nature of man. I mean evil as a living, breathing
being
like that thing in there. This facility—and hundred others like it—were built to contain the predators that have haunted men’s nightmares since the dawn of time. We are the jailors of nightmares. The Spiral is a giant underground prison; the most maximum-security prison ever built. And there are three hundred and thirty-three others just like it, all over the world. The cells are mostly automated. Food is released from shafts in the ceilings and water is piped in through several taps. Every now and then we have to sedate the inmates while my men…
clean up
any mess, for want of a better word.”
Jerry slouched against the wall, pulled his leather jacket tight around himself as if he were hoping it would hide him away. “This is heavy. What the frak did Batman sell to me?”
Kane frowned. “Batman? I know who Batman is, but I’m afraid I still do not get the reference.”
Sun sighed. “A guy dressed as Batman sold him drugs. It’s a long story.”
“One I have no time for,” said Kane.
“I want to see inside the other cells,” said Andy. “I want to know everything that you’re keeping down here.”
“How many
guests
do you have here exactly?” Sun asked, dreading what the answer might be.
“Each subbasement has eighteen cells. They are all mostly full.”
Sun did the math. “You have almost one hundred and eighty creatures held here?”
Kane shook his head. “You’re assuming that occupancy is one per cell.” He pointed back at cell number 9. “Take a closer look.”
Sun went back over to the hatch and peered inside. She waited a moment, but then she saw it.
“There’s more of them in there.”
Inside the habitat, several more imps appeared from amongst the foliage. They were of varying sizes, but all had the same pink skin and swishing tails. They gathered in front of the rock cave and faced the hatch. There were perhaps a dozen of them in total.”
“We let the dirty little things breed,” said Kane. “But we keep their numbers low. Once a year we cull any creatures that are over the thresholds we set. Either that or we use them for our research.”
Sun looked in at the group of childlike creatures and suddenly felt a tug of guilt. “They’re a family?”
Kane folded his bony arms. “You could call it that, I suppose. As much as you would call a dozen rats a family. I’m more inclined to think of them as a pack of vermin. Come on, I’ll show you the next cell.”
The group moved on like a tour group in the world’s most surreal museum. They stopped in front of cell 10 and Kane once again operated the LED panel beside the door.
The hatch opened.
Sun was again the first person to look inside. This time the interior was a blank canvass of grey bedrock. In several places the ground was puckered, rising up into small craters. The whole habitat reminded Sun of the surface of the moon.
I don’t see anything.
Then something caught her eye. It was about twenty feet inside. She adjusted her vision and focused on one of the craters. Something black was lurking inside. The only thing that distinguished it from the shadows was its brief fidgety movement.
Then something from the opposite side of the room scuttled towards the door and took Sun by surprise. She pulled back from the hatch and let out an involuntary yelp.
“You’re perfectly safe,” said Kane. “There are two males inside. The females fight when not kept alone. The main colony is in Moscow. These two were lent to us for scientific study.”
Sun leaned back up against the hatch and peered inside again. The creatures she saw inside were no different to pet shop tarantulas, except thirty times as big. The two jet-black arachnids were the height of a small cow with leg spans longer than a condor’s wings.
The hair on the back of Sun’s neck pricked up.
The two gigantic spiders reared up on their back legs and hissed. A cloud of bristles rose above them, a defensive irritant expelled from their abdomens. Venom dripped from their fangs.
Sun moved away from the hatch. “Why would you want to bring those things here for scientific studies?”
“For an all manner of things,” said Kane. “Anti-venom research is one example. The venom in their fangs is enough to drop an elephant. The females also make nests with silk stronger than any tensile material we know of. Some of our scientists also believe that these creatures may well be the progenitors to all other arachnids; the origin of the species, if you will.”
“You’re kidding me?” said Andy, taking a quick peep inside and then shivering in disgust. “You think these things were around in primordial times?”
“We know they were. Many of the species we have under lock and key have been around for millennia, but we believe some may be even more ancient. Some of the creatures in the lower levels of the Spiral even seem to be immortal. Attempts to euthanize them have failed, so instead we keep them secure; keep them away from the world. The less invasive species we allow some freedom, like the imps for instance, but the others are kept strictly confined. The imps and many of the less aggressive creatures we house here are kept, in many ways, like common zoo animals.”
Jerry tiptoed up against the open hatch and took a glance inside. He quickly moved away, looking extremely pale and feint.
Sun ignored him and kept her focus on Kane. “So why keep them a secret at all, if they’re not dangerous?
“I didn’t say there were not dangerous. I just said ‘less aggressive’. If we revealed a creature like an imp to the world, then questions would be asked about what else we have in secret. We can’t risk it. The original members of Deus Manus were devoted to God. They locked away anything they felt was hellspawn or intrinsically evil. I’m not about to second-guess them. They lived during a time where creatures like this walked the earth, so if they thought the imps were dangerous, then so do I.”
“But that can’t be possible,” said Sun. “There’s no records, no history.”
Kane shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, the society was created by the world’s most powerful elite; people who not only wrote the history books, but dictated the very direction of civilisation. Humanity matured knowing only what these men allowed it to.”
Sun bristled. “No one has that right. No one has the right to take ownership of history.”
“Yeah,” said Jerry. “Those Deus Anus blokes were bang out of order.”
Kane rolled his eyes at them all. “Like it or not, what we are tasked with here is more ancient and more important than anything else in existence. We are the keepers of humanity and it is our calling to prevent the evil kept inside this hole in the ground from corrupting the modern world. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that our secrets are kept buried.”
“Fine, whatever you say,” said Andy. “Still doesn’t explain why you brought us here. If you want us on your research team, then we politely decline. We’ve got lives to be getting on with.”
“This is not why you are here, Mr and Mrs Dennison. This is just a prelude to prepare you for what you are about to see. The reason you are here is buried deep in subbasement 10. We want you to meet our most recent guest. We think it’s someone you might recognise.”
Andy and Sun glanced at one another anxiously.
Kane motioned back towards the way they had come. Back towards the elevator. “Shall we head down?”
Subbasement 10 was darker than the floors above. Unlike the rest of the facility, this area had not been recently refurbished. The walls were bare and cracked, with seams of mud pushing through from the surrounding earth. There were armed guards beside every cell door. The uniforms they wore were not military, but more like black-ops, with pouches and utility belts in abundance. The insignia on their upper arm was a golden sword with clouds above it.
Andy rubbed at his temples as he headed down the corridor. He had a headache coming on. What he was seeing down here was not agreeing with him.
Kane glanced back over his shoulder. “What I want to show you is just down here. The cells up ahead are see-through. Six-inch bullet proof glass. It’s imperative that we can see what the guests are doing at all times. They have a tendency to try and escape.”