Monster Republic (7 page)

Marie smirked, tapping the side of her head. ‘Even if she was still in here, she wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole now, Reilly. What happened to Mr Good Looking? Do you know how many people Dr Fry had to use to stitch you together? You’re a walking school reunion.’

Cameron gritted his teeth, trying to force his one free arm up and lever her off.

‘Yeah?’ he gasped defiantly. ‘Well, at least I don’t have to use the girls’ toilets.’

That hit a nerve. With a roar, Marie – Carl?
– lashed out. Latching onto Cameron, she hurled him through the air again.

Cameron landed in a heap. He was getting fed up with being thrown around. Grimacing, he flipped himself back onto his feet, braced to fight back. His opponent came at him with renewed enthusiasm, wearing a corrupted version of Marie’s smile, as if relishing the prospect of a scrap.

She lashed out with a lightning-fast karate punch, then another. Like in his fight with the Bloodhounds, Cameron’s body seemed to respond automatically, throwing up his arms to block. But somehow Marie’s fists snuck in past his guard, as if she knew where his parries were going to come from before he did.

Cameron felt his fists clenching, all set to throw a punch of his own. But then he looked over at his enemy.

Marie’s face stared back at him. How could he possibly hit her?

Forcing his arms down, Cameron backed up, trying to get quicker with his parries instead, doing anything he could think of to
keep Marie at bay. She kept advancing, though, punishing him with another flurry of punches to the body, followed by a casual yet devastating spinning kick.

Cameron sailed backwards and landed in an untidy pile. Once more he hauled himself up off the grass as Marie came after him. Suddenly Rora appeared from nowhere and leaped between them, but Marie swatted her aside with a backhand blow that sent the fox-girl sprawling again. It was no good, Cameron was going to have to start getting creative or aggressive. Or both. Keeping his distance as best he could, he beat a fighting retreat across the park.

Scooping up a large rock from one of the flowerbeds, he hurled it in Marie’s direction. Without breaking stride, she deflected the missile with a casual flick of her wrist. An old log was dispatched the same way, exploding in a shower of rotten wood; she ducked swiftly under a swung branch. Soon Cameron was hurling park benches between them, even uprooting a lamp-post and trying to fend her
off with that. But Marie evaded or parried everything he threw her way.

And still she kept coming.

Cameron couldn’t believe that just a few minutes earlier he’d been comparing himself with a superhero. He wasn’t feeling much like one now. Or if he was, he had more than met his match. Marie, or Carl, or whatever the two of them had become, was a monster and a half, both quicker and stronger than him. The ease with which she evaded Cameron’s obstacles was crushing. Finally she swooped under another thrown park bench and it was back to hand-to-hand.

That was it. Cameron realized he wasn’t getting a choice in the matter: it was hit back or be pummelled into the ground.

Marie swept at Cameron’s legs with a kick, but he jumped just in time, and hit out with a tightly bunched fist. It smacked Marie on the chin, jerking her head backwards.

‘That’s more like it!’ she said with a laugh, before launching herself at Cameron to repay him in kind.

Cameron reversed, ducking, and driving up with his fist. But she chopped the blow down. Back on her feet again, Rora suddenly came at Marie from the side, forcing her to turn and buying Cameron a window of opportunity to land some solid blows of his own.

For a moment Cameron and Rora had Marie on the defensive. Until Marie seized one of Rora’s arms and flung her like a rag doll into one of the broken benches scattered around their battleground. Then she was back to facing Cameron solo, and dishing out bare-knuckle blows and roundhouse kicks.

Cameron didn’t know how much more he could take, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that Marie was just playing with him, delivering two good kicks or punches for every one of his that made it through her own defences.

Worse, every time he did land a blow, she just cracked an evil grin, while he winced inwardly at the thought of hitting a girl. When his knuckles slammed into her nose, it should have been a small victory. Instead, all he got was a queasy feeling as he watched the blood
trickling down over her lips. Marie just seemed to be spurred on.

Finally she jumped high in the air while Cameron was glancing around desperately for any sort of weapon to hold her back. She came down on top of him and slammed him to the ground, a hand at his throat. Slender fingers that Cameron had only known as gentle and tender dug into his neck like steel claws. Her other hand was raised, bunched into a fist.

Cameron threw up one arm to fend off the coming punch, while his other hand scrabbled to prise Marie’s fingers off his throat. He could feel himself beginning to black out. Sickeningly, he could also feel something in his right arm beginning to revolve. He knew right away it was the gun that had put a smoking hole in that Bloodhound.

No!

Last-ditch defence or not, he wasn’t having that weapon come out of him again. No matter what.

Above him, Marie seethed, pure hate gleaming in her eyes as she brought her fist
down. Cameron twisted his head aside as far as he could and something in his skull clicked. Not like an idea lighting up – an actual, audible click.

Marie’s body jerked. Sparks flashed and sizzled all over her as she was flung away. She landed not far from Cameron, twitching and convulsing on the grass. There was a faint whiff of ozone and singed hair, and Cameron glimpsed a tiny blue spark spitting from the end of the middle finger of his right hand.

Another weapon. Some kind of Taser, he guessed.

Relieved and disgusted in equal measure, he struggled to sit up. Marie’s body was still jerking sporadically, but her eyes remained fixed on Cameron, burning with helpless rage.

‘Finish it!’ urged Rora, limping over, an ugly, vengeful expression on her face.

Cameron crawled towards Marie, leaning over his paralysed enemy.

‘It’, Rora had said, but Cameron only saw
‘her’. The thing lying on the ground might have Carl’s personality, but Cameron could only see Marie’s face. Could he kill her? He imagined that he could feel the weight of the gun lurking inside his arm. That would do the trick, for sure.

But he’d already made up his mind. He was
not
, under any circumstances, letting that gun out again – not ever. He could still smell the smoke of it in his nostrils, and see the wound it had made. He couldn’t do that again, least of all to Marie. He could hardly believe he’d forced himself to hit her.

No more.

‘How did you find us?’ Cameron demanded.

The sneer that crept across those familiar features did not belong to Marie. ‘You’ve got a built-in tracking device, dumbo.’

Rora grabbed at Cameron’s arm. ‘Then we’ve got to get away. Now. Kill it! We don’t have a lot of time!’

‘Your new girlfriend’s right,’ said the thing that looked like Marie. ‘The Hounds will be
here any minute. Better kill me quick. If you’ve got the guts.’

Cameron stood and unclenched his fists, shaking his head.

Rora let out an exasperated yell. ‘All right then! Leave a job half done! It’ll come back and bite us all later. Let’s go! We need to get underground.’

Grabbing hold of his hand, she tugged Cameron into a run as they heard the howls of the Bloodhounds breaking out all over the park.

Sprinting back towards the scooter, Rora flipped the cover off a nearby manhole and dived inside.

Cameron had no choice but to follow her down into the darkness.

As Cameron and Rora waded through the sewers, the shadows darkened to fit Cameron’s mood. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake off the horror of his encounter with Marie/Carl. The person he had most longed to see and the person he would happily never have seen again, all rolled into one. The latest twist in the waking nightmare he had been trapped in ever since he woke up in Dr Fry’s laboratory.

The pair turned down yet another tunnel. There was no noise but the splash of their footsteps and the low, mechanical hiss of servos that now accompanied Cameron’s every move, like a soundtrack he couldn’t turn
off. He was freezing, and his body ached from the beating he had received. On top of that, he was having to contend with the stench of drains and the nagging sense of a cold shoulder from his guide. Rora hadn’t said a word since they’d got below ground.

Looked like it was up to him to start a conversation.

‘Wherever you’re taking me, I hope it doesn’t stink like this.’

‘Be glad you don’t have a fox’s sense of smell,’ Rora snapped.

She didn’t so much as glance round, and the anger in her voice was plain as a smack in the face.

‘Hey, what’s your problem?’ Cameron demanded, picking up his pace to bring himself level with her. ‘I’m the one who should be complaining. It’s me who’s had my whole life turned upside down. It’s me who’s been made into some sort of Frankenstein’s Terminator. And it’s my girlfriend back there who’s had I don’t know what done to her!’

His shouting voice echoed down the tunnel.
Rora stopped him with a shove to the chest and a shout of her own.

‘My problem is you’re still thinking of it as your girlfriend! It isn’t. It’s Dr Fry’s newest recruit. You could have killed that thing! You had your chance right there. We might not get another one. Next time, while you’re busy remembering what it was like to kiss her, that thing will kill you! And me, and any of my friends too, if it gets the chance!
That’s
my problem!’

Her words bounced around the walls accusingly before fading into the darkness. Silence descended again, and the look on Rora’s face suggested it couldn’t last long enough as far as she was concerned.

She turned and marched off again, leaving Cameron little option but to follow. So much for his attempt to break the ice. The atmosphere as they slogged along was even colder than before.

The enforced silence made the long journey seem longer still, but eventually Rora led them out of the sewers and into a storm drain, the
hint of a breeze reaching them from somewhere out of sight. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least the stench faded a bit. Cameron still felt damp and miserable, but he reckoned that last feeling would be with him for a long time.

Looking around cautiously, Rora crossed the storm drain and trotted a few metres further along, until she was standing in front of a rusty metal door. She tilted her face upwards and Cameron spotted a small black box discreetly mounted above the door. With a spinning sensation, his eye zoomed in, giving him a close-up view.

A camera.

Through the wave of dizziness that seemed to accompany every newly discovered feature of his souped-up body, Cameron felt an unexpected sense of relief. So this republic of hers operated some rudimentary level of security. He guessed he should find that encouraging.

With a dull clank, the door opened, allowing Cameron and Rora through into what might
have once been some sort of maintenance area, with electrical junction boxes and shelves along one wall. In the cramped space, a desk and chair had been set up. A handful of computer monitors showed different stretches of tunnel, including the one immediately outside. There was a single bed in the corner, with a shabby-looking blanket. A small boy, no more than eight years old, stood holding the door.

So, not the most sophisticated security setup in the world. But it probably did the job. After all, who on earth was going to be wandering casually down a storm drain to find this place by accident?

‘Rora.’ The kid gave her a brisk nod before returning to his seat. Cameron got a good look at him in the steady light from the monitor screens: he was pasty-faced, with freckles where his skin showed between a polished metal skull cap and a crude steel jaw.

Cameron tensed instinctively – the boy looked a little too much like a Bloodhound for his liking. Almost immediately, he felt bad.
After all, his own face was no longer exactly going to inspire trust. He gave a nod, but the boy’s eyes were already glued back on the empty screens. Whoever he was, he was dedicated to his job.

‘That’s Guard,’ said Rora quietly. ‘He’s our doorkeeper. And in case you’re wondering – yeah, he was part of the Bloodhound project. But he’s very much on our side. He likes to keep watch, so that suits everyone.’

And provides a measure of additional security, thought Cameron. If anyone did wander down here by chance, the sight of this boy would certainly send them running.

Rora headed straight for a ladder hanging down through a hole in the ceiling. Cameron climbed awkwardly after her.

‘So what’s his story? He’s always down here?’

‘No, he has a nap from time to time, and someone else takes a turn at the monitors. But really, he’s the best. No eyes in the back of his head, but a lot of other sensors packed in where half his brain used to be.’

Cameron shook his head, wondering how Rora could be so casual about something so out of the ordinary.

At the top of the ladder, Rora pushed back a grating and they both clambered up into a dimly lit, brick-walled passage. It led through into a low-ceilinged chamber with a slightly dank feel. It seemed to have been set up as some sort of common room. A mix of chairs and tables – from plastic garden seats and ragged-looking armchairs to large trestles and weighty, woodworm-riddled dining tables – occupied most of the central area, while a number of bunks were squeezed into narrow spaces up against the walls. Cameron couldn’t avoid the impression he’d escaped one cellar just to come and live in another.

‘Cosy,’ he remarked quietly.

‘There are more rooms,’ Rora told him brusquely.

Indeed, Cameron could already see several corridors and door ways leading off from this main room. Through one, he could make out a handful of kids clustered in front of a TV,
watching a movie with the sound turned down low.