Monster Republic (3 page)

Rora raced to the door, so light on her feet that Cameron barely heard her footsteps. It made him envious and even more impatient.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped forward. He was just out of practice, that was all. He’d probably been lying still for too long, and his legs had gone to sleep. Or maybe the doctor had given him a sedative and he just had to wait for the effects to wear off. If he could get the blood pumping, he would be as right as rain. At least as athletic as this Rora girl. Sports Day Champion again.

Stumbling a bit, but feeling more confident with every stride, Cameron covered the distance – step by step – to the bed. As he arrived, though, a fresh dizzy spell ambushed him. He thrust out an arm to steady himself on the edge of the bed.

His hand touched something soft through the sheet. Reaching down, Cameron took hold of the sheet and lifted it gingerly aside.

There, burned and tattered, lay a human arm – with no body attached.

Cameron let out a yell and staggered
backwards. He threw out a hand, flailing for something to hold onto, but instead his knuckles crashed into a nearby machine, sending a tray of equipment clattering to the floor.

But there was no time to worry about what he’d knocked over.

After a split-second of silence, alarms rang out loud enough to wake the dead.

Sirens blared in Cameron’s ears as he ran. It was as if a noise had drilled its way into his head and now it was stuck, screaming for a way out. Rora raced down the corridor just ahead of him. She seemed to know where she was going. All Cameron could do was follow at a sort of stumbling sprint.

His head reeled. Wherever he was, he was seeing it for the first time – and it was all shooting by in fast-forward: white-tiled floors, coloured numbers on the walls, closed doors with windows offering glimpses into different laboratories. And no time to stop for a look.

Letters jumped out at him from a sign mounted on the wall:
DIVINITY PROJECT – NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

What about unauthorized exits?

Cameron fired a glance over his shoulder, but couldn’t hear any sounds of pursuit. Then again, he couldn’t hear Rora’s footfalls or even his own above the constant din. He barely heard her yell as she skidded to a stop at a corner, nearly crashing into her.

Two white-suited technicians barred their path, one of them wielding some sort of needle-gun.

‘Back up!’ Rora shouted, tugging him in the other direction. Now they were running again, back the way they’d come.

And something strange was happening. Somehow Cameron knew the alarms were screaming out as loud as ever, but they
seemed
to be getting quieter. As if his ears were filtering out the blare and tuning in to the more important sounds. Like the rapid beat of footsteps behind them – the technicians giving chase.

Rora sped on, leading them back towards the very room where they’d started. She ducked inside and pulled Cameron in after her.

‘What are you doing?’ he protested. ‘This is a dead end. If they find us—’

Rora clapped a hand over his mouth as a pair of white suits flashed past the door way and on down the corridor.

‘Right,’ whispered Rora breathlessly. ‘Let’s try that again.’

With a quick glance to ensure the technicians were continuing in the other direction, she led Cameron back out into the corridor and raced along, following their original escape route. ‘Figured they’d never look in the lab we broke out of!’ she explained.

Cameron nodded. That was smart, but it had been one heck of a gamble. If the technicians had seen them, they would both have been cornered in there.

But this wasn’t the time to be thinking of ‘ifs’. Too many of those lay ahead. And although Cameron was grateful for whatever was
dimming the alarms and allowing him to pick out other sounds, it wasn’t doing anything for his dizziness. Nor were the hundreds of questions reeling around inside his head.

There was only time to ask one as Rora skidded to a halt to heave open a heavy door.

‘Where are we going?’

Before Rora could answer, a bloodcurdling howl – like the cry of some mad, starved animal – echoed through the building. Suddenly Cameron wished he could go back to hearing nothing but alarms.

Rora stared, terrified. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘He’s set the Bloodhounds on us.’

‘Bloodhounds? What?’

‘No time! Just run!’

She was through the door. Cameron had to grab it to stop it from swinging closed, then he was slipping after her and half charging, half tripping down a staircase. Rora had summoned an extra burst of speed from somewhere and was already way ahead of him. There was no catching up with her.
Cameron ground his teeth with frustration. What was wrong with him? He’d never been outrun by a girl …

Three flights below, Rora crashed through another pair of doors – and straight into trouble.

Cameron heard the girl cry out but, more than that, he just
knew
. It was as though every one of his instincts had kicked up a gear. Before he could even think, something inside him took over, and he was vaulting over the banister and out into space.

He’d never done
that
on Sports Day.

Dropping down half the height of the stair well, watching the floor rushing up at him – Cameron braced himself for the landing, fully expecting to break his legs. Then he hit the ground.

He felt the shock of the impact vibrating up his calves, but there was no pain. What was more, he was poised in a sort of judo stance, ready for action. Cameron shook his head – he didn’t even know judo. Something really
had
taken over.

He powered through the doors. What stood beyond was like nothing he’d ever seen.

The three figures seemed to be some hideous hybrid of man, machine and animal. Canine muzzles snarled out of human faces, fleshy lips peeling back from metallic jaws that dripped crimson-flecked drool.

Bloodhounds.

One of the growling beasts had pinned a choking Rora to the wall by the throat; her feet kicked uselessly a metre off the ground. The other pair eyed Cameron, snarling hungrily, their gleaming fangs bared and ready, like cybernetic werewolves defying him to make any kind of move.

Cameron sprang forward. It should have been hopeless – suicidal. He should have been scared out of his wits by the mere sight of these impossible creatures. And maybe, somewhere at the back of his mind, part of him was. But most of him just saw red. A furious, frenzied red in which his arms lashed out with a will of their own. Where he whirled to face one attacker and sent it reeling with a
power-driven kick; flattened another with a tooth-crunching punch to the chin.

It was as if someone had stepped into Cameron’s head and taken control of his body; as if he was a character in a computer game. Everything was in razor-sharp focus: the snarling, snapping jaws; the claws slashing in at him; his own arms shooting out to block the attacks. And yet somehow it all rushed by in a blur of continuous motion. It wasn’t even like fighting by instinct; it was like fighting in a dream – or a nightmare.

Two of the Bloodhounds were already slumped unconscious on the floor, shaggy piles of fur and metal. The final one had dropped Rora and was now being driven relentlessly backwards by Cameron’s swinging fists. Desperately he fought to regain control of them, but it was like swimming against the tide. His limbs seemed to have a mind of their own.

Sweeping the Bloodhound’s feet from under it with a low, raking kick, Cameron felt his arm swing back to unleash a final punch. Mustering
every ounce of concentration, he tried to hold the blow back. For an instant his arm wavered, hesitant.

And in that moment the Bloodhound struck.

Horrified, Cameron saw the monster leap forward. Saw it sink its steel teeth into his right forearm and the fangs tear his skin. He waited for the dream to end. For the burning pain, the gush of blood. But instead, he felt something revolving
inside
his arm, clicking into place like a key in a lock. Then there was a sharp bang – and suddenly Cameron was wide awake. Brought right back down to earth by the acrid smoke drifting up past his eyes.

The Bloodhound staggered away, whining and clutching at its belly, its doggy eyes screwed up in pain. Then it keeled over and collapsed in a heap.

Cameron looked down at his arm. He could see metal. Mechanical components exposed through tears in his skin. The emotionless O of the mouth of a gun barrel.

There was no pain.

There was no blood.

His head swam as he watched strange mechanisms snick neatly back into place like the blades on a Swiss Army knife. He felt sick. Maybe it was the smell of gunsmoke, but he didn’t think so.

What had been done to him?

Then, like the precise components revolving in his arm, Cameron’s memories fell neatly into place: the severed arm in the lab; his strange, disorienting night vision; the alarms he’d filtered out; that insane leap down the stair well. And now this.

Suddenly he was aware of Rora watching him, massaging her throat.

‘What’s happened to me, Rora?’

She opened her mouth, but she appeared lost for words, or breath.

Cameron glanced around, his gaze falling on the reflective window of a nearby laboratory. Slowly he started walking towards it.

‘Cameron, don’t. Not yet.’

Rora’s voice seemed to come from a long way behind him. Maybe he had filtered it out,
like the alarms. She reached for him, but he shook her off.

Cameron fixed his eyes on the window. He stepped forward. And there, in the glass, he found his reflection waiting for him.

The face that stared back at Cameron was not his own.

He had thought the Bloodhounds gruesome enough. This face possessed no canine jaws, but that was the smallest of mercies. Scars, scabs and livid bruises stained the skin an ugly mess of colours – red, brown, blue, black, purple. The whole top right quarter of the face had no skin at all, just an expanse of dull, grey steel. The eye that gazed out from this metal plating looked more like a camera. Its cold, glassy lens stared back at him from alongside a living, human eye, daring Cameron to keep looking. Sending him the clear and brutal truth:
This is you
.

‘No,’ he whispered to the monster in the
glass. And he watched it shaking its hideous head. ‘That’s not me.
You’re
not me.’

Almost acting of their own accord again, Cameron’s fingers reached out to touch the window, as if testing to see if it was broken or warped. Or maybe to make certain that the glass was really there, that he wasn’t looking at some grotesquely distorted projection.

No. The glass was real and smooth.

He brought his hand back towards the ragged, crudely stitched patchwork of flesh and metal that was his face. Maybe it was only a mask – something he could take off, somebody’s sick joke. But his fingers hovered centimetres from his cheek, too terrified to touch.

Suddenly he was dragged away from the hideous reflection and became aware of Rora’s firm grasp on his arm.

‘This is no time to be admiring yourself.’

Turning to face her, Cameron got his first proper close-up look at Rora too. She was smaller than he had realized, tiny and lithe, with dark, elfin features. The darkness didn’t
come from her skin, though, but from the wash of deep auburn hair that seemed to be growing from her face and hands as well as her head.

Rora met his gaze challengingly.

‘Don’t think about what you saw in that reflection. Nobody looks their best when they’ve just woken up.’

Cameron’s fists clenched. ‘This isn’t funny!’

‘No, I know – it’s anything but. You’re just going to have to trust me. Because we’re not out of the woods yet!’

Dazed and numbed, Cameron didn’t resist as Rora grabbed his hand and yanked him back into a run. They raced down the corridor, through another pair of doors and into another stair well. This time, she propelled Cameron ahead of her and he lurched down the steps, three or four at a time. She grabbed the banister and swung herself round each bend. They were at the bottom in a matter of seconds.

Above, Cameron could hear pursuers charging through the doors, followed by
pounding footsteps coming down the stairs. Another unearthly howl sliced through the air, sending shivers down his spine.

Without looking back, Rora ushered Cameron into what looked like a basement passage. Bare cinder-block walls replaced the clinical white of upstairs, and low-hanging pipes and cables forced them to duck as they ran. Cameron didn’t imagine there could be many ways to escape from a basement.

‘What are we meant to do? Dig our way out?’

Ignoring him, Rora raced forward and swerved round a corner. Behind them, the thump-thump of footfalls. Cameron glanced back to see a fresh mob of Bloodhounds racing down the last few stairs, flashing their steel fangs. Spotting him, the monsters dropped onto all fours and loped hungrily towards him, their eager breaths and snarls sounding loud and dangerously close in the confines of the passage.

Cameron careered round the corner and found himself facing a massive metal door.
Just in the process of swinging ponderously open, it was a solid metre thick, like the door of a bank vault. Behind them, the Bloodhounds rounded the final corner, slavering heads down as they pounded along, their four limbs eating up the last few precious metres between them and their prey.

‘Down here!’ howled one triumphantly. ‘Waste disposal!’

Rora was already on the other side of the door, tapping frantically at a keypad on the wall. Cameron leaped through to join her as the door started swinging shut.

But it wasn’t going to be fast enough. The Bloodhounds were too close.

Seizing the large wheel in the centre of the door, Cameron braced his feet against the frame. The massive door was so huge that his strength couldn’t possibly speed it up, but he had to try. Taking a deep breath, he heaved.

To his surprise, pulling the massive metal barrier inwards was no more difficult than closing his bedroom door. With a screech of
protest, the door swung towards him, fast. Staggering backwards, Cameron just had time to catch a last glimpse of the Bloodhounds, rocketing along the passage like fanged missiles, before the door slammed shut.