"I got tired of listening to it," said Delilah. "We're short on time. Do you have time to listen to a creature pretend to be human and try to rationalize why we shouldn't kill it when we're going to do it anyway? I don't."
Everyone reluctantly nodded and we searched the room. Paulie found a computer off in the corner, his own kind of pay dirt. He expertly opened it and extracted the hard drive in less than a minute. Mikkel and I examined the glass coffin, Ace padding behind me. There definitely was a body in there.
Before we could do anything else, the doors burst open. David Kelvin was not done with us. But rather than a stream of angry Kelvins or Spiders with heads, he had decided to attack us with something else. What stood in the doorway was another half-man, half-Spider hybrid. In this case, those percentages were not metaphorical. Half a torso of a man, including head and arms, sprouted from the body of a Spider. He was like an insect centaur. That would have been frightening enough, but he carried in each of his hands two assault rifles which he lifted with ease. The face was once again David Kelvin's, but twisted into an insane fury. There was no hair, just veins that bulged over his scalp, around his face, and over all the human limbs. This Kelvin started firing immediately, the guns roaring as bullets sprayed from them.
Paulie was still at the computer desk, so he crawled behind it for cover. Delilah dove behind one of the hives, shouting with disgust as the clay was soft and sticky beneath her. Meat was the main target of this new threat and had been out in the open. He ran for the hives too. As bullets sprayed around him, he was lucky that David Kelvin was not a firearm enthusiast. Two automatic assault rifles seems pretty badass, as you can fire an incredible amount of bullets at once. But it's all spray and pray, because that much kick is hard to aim. The Kelvin fired wildly, its monstrous strength still not enough to steady the rifles for the precision it needed to hit Meat. As Meat dove into the hives he grabbed at his shoulder, hit by one of the bullets. He suffered no more as he disappeared behind the hives.
"Oh shit," I said as the Kelvin turned toward us.
Mikkel and I were still out in the open at the coffin. When the new Kelvin had burst into room, I had looked for cover, but there was nothing near us other than cables. The hives were near us, but they were clustered close here and we would have to climb up and over them. Once bullets were flying around the room, I wasn't enthusiastic about running across it. So instead we crouched lamely in front of the coffin, hoping that the new Kelvin would not notice us. Ace pulled himself up near us, realizing that automatic weapons were beyond his pay grade.
In this, we were lucky. Spending only a moment to glance at us, the Kelvin then looked left and right, searching for an enemy. It sprayed some bullets at the desk Paulie hid behind, but after a moment, it stopped, clearly dissatisfied with the bullets' lack of success against the cover. I don't know where Kelvin bought his desks from, but it was made from some sturdy stuff. The Kelvin's eyes scanned the room, looking toward the hives Meat and Delilah hid behind. The rifles roared back into life as bullets were fired at the hives, but it seemed halfhearted. Either Kelvin didn't want to hurt the hives or didn't think he'd have enough ammo to shoot through them.
"It's not trying to shoot us," said Mikkel.
I nodded, then looked behind us and realized why. We were standing in front of the coffin and the equipment that connected it. This was probably the most integral part of the setup. The Kelvin wasn't going to try to shoot us and risk harming this. Which meant I was going to do my damnedest to destroy the coffin.
First step: yank out the wires and cables. This may sound dumb - forcibly pulling out cables and wires that probably carried some sort of electric charge - because it was. I shocked myself pulling out the first wire. Not enough to harm me, but it hurt like hell. I pulled a glove out of my jacket for insulation. With that on, the wires were less troublesome.
"Mikkel, help me!" I said.
My brother looked at what I was doing and got the idea immediately. While I was lacking weapons, he still had his katana, so he put gloves on and used the sword to hack some of the bigger cables. It turns out that while some of those were electrical, there were also tubes that carried the yellow fluid. Those tubes broken, they spilled fluid on the floor. It smelled awful, a sour scent mixed with acid.
This is the part where the Kelvin would have said something like, "No, stop!" or "I'm sorry I can't let you do that, Dave." I looked to the centaur Kelvin, but this one was not equipped for speech, only for mayhem. Its mouth opened and that same screeching sound I had heard on the phone came out of its mouth. It pointed the assault rifles at Mikkel and I, but seemed at odds with itself. It kept moving its arms like it expected to fire, but something was holding it back. For thirty seconds it watched us attack the cables and just kept pointing its guns at us. It's arms would jerk, but it never pulled the trigger. Finally it returned its attention to our friends who were starting to lean out from behind their cover to aim. A spray of bullets from the Kelvin put them back in hiding.
There was one cable left and it was a thick one. Mikkel had swung the katana at it a few times, but the blade seemed not able to do anything meaningful to it. I stood up and with both hands started pulling at it. I couldn't yank it out in one go, but I felt that there was some give. It seemed like I could rip the cord out if I was stronger.
"Brother, help me!" I said. "We can do this if we both pull!"
Mikkel nodded and stood up. He grabbed the cable a foot farther back from me and started pulling. Ace wanted to help but lacked the needed hands, so instead he just jumped in excitement and let out a little bark. With both my brother and I pulling at the cable, we were making progress. We had to lean back, as if we were engaging in game of tug of war, but I soon started to feel something tear. We both sensed this and pulled even harder. A few seconds later, the cable ripped free and Mikkel and I fell backward onto the ground.
Behind us, the Kelvin screeched in pain. The guns were dropped, clattering to the floor and firing two rounds wildly. The Kelvin gripped its head, writhing in pain. It was this moment of weakness that was my friends' moment of opportunity. Leaning out of cover, Delilah and Paulie shot this monster until it fell to the floor bleeding.
Meat came out of cover. His shoulder had been grazed. It bled pretty well, but he shrugged it off as "not a real wound". Despite that, he let Delilah bandage it up. Paulie looked over our work on the cables and wires, nodding as if he thought that seemed appropriate. Then we all looked at the coffin.
The lack of the cable and tubes meant that the yellow fluid was now draining rapidly, allowing us to see inside. What we saw was clearly the body of David Kelvin. Pale and wet, I had every expectation that this was the real David Kelvin, put in here as the principle source for a photocopier or 3D maker. As we looked down at the man who had caused this all, he gasped and started moving jerkily.
Paulie pressed the buttons to open the lock on the coffin, and David Kelvin himself pushed it open, gasping for air.
"Hook me back up!" he gasped. "I need to be back inside!"
"No can do," I said, but he ignored me as he continued to gasp as if he couldn't breathe.
"Fascinating," said Paulie, lighting a cigarette.
"Put me back..." wheezed Kelvin, his condition not improving. A bluish tint was coming to his features.
"Is... is he dying?" I said.
"It looks that way," said Mikkel.
"We don't know what he did to himself," said Paulie. "He may not be able to survive without it anymore."
I watched for another few moments, but had to stop looking. I had seen Kelvin's face many times and was responsible for its death quite a few of those times, but I couldn't watch this. I had no desire to see a man die from asphyxiation in front of me. It seemed cruel and undignified. He couldn't even fight for his survival, he was just dying. Mikkel also turned away, but Paulie, Meat, and Delilah watched, as if needing to make sure it was over.
"What now?" said Mikkel when the choked noises finally ended.<
br />
"We burn it," I said.
"Burn it?" said Paulie.
"Yeah, we treat it like a Spider infestation, we burn it," I said. "His body, the hybrid Spider bodies, and this whole entire place."
"We might be able to salvage something," said Meat, but his voice said he wasn't sure.
"I know MT wanted this guy," I said. "Even in his death they might get something. They might not know about this place yet, but I have a feeling they will eventually. I want to make sure they get nothing."
"If it screws over MT, I'm in," said Mikkel.
"Yeah, let's torch the place and be done," said Delilah.
We found some gas cans the Kelvins must have been using to gas up the working lot cars. Those worked quite well to prepare the dealership for the fire which soon burned. We watched to make sure it would continue to spread, knowing that a cleansing fire was comforting when dealing with a monster infestation. We then all squeezed in Meat's SUV. I had to convince them to make extra space for Ace, since I wasn't going to just leave him there. "No man left behind," I said to Meat, and he understood that well.
The flames were blazing behind us as we pulled out of the lot onto the street. I didn't hear police sirens, but I would soon. We hadn't even gotten a block away before a fleet of three black, unmarked SWAT vehicles drove past us toward the dealership. Not cops, I knew this was Minerva Technics. I was very glad we decided to burn the place to the ground.
They would get nothing and David Kelvin would be finally dead.
Here's Looking at You Kid
In the aftermath of Kelvin Automotive, there were more questions than answers. We had dealt with the threat, but we never quite learned what was really going on. I knew from Jessica that David Kelvin had been experimented on by Minerva Technics because he had some sort of affinity for Spider DNA. He had stolen their tech and he appeared to have collected Spider hives. Some of his clones were partly mutated into Spiders, so he was somehow using the Spiders or their hives. But what really was his goal? How did the cloning actually work?
Paulie had been searching through Kelvin's hard drive. Most of the files were schematics and excel spreadsheets of budgets - it seems that feeding and clothing a criminal clone army takes planning, even if you're willing to steal. The spreadsheets didn't have full counts for clones, but my guess of over a hundred seemed accurate. The schematics were for building the glass coffin and how it linked up to the hives. Paulie understood those less than the spreadsheets, but he kept them to examine later.
There was less information about Kelvin personally. Paulie had found a few journal entries, but they were rambling tirades about biological imperative and genetic destiny. There were a few entries ranting about Minerva Technics and what they had done to him, but that seemed typical - everyone who had come into contact with that company hated them. Paulie was still going through the hard drive, but he wasn't convinced he was going to find anything else. He suggested that if you run your own clone army, you really didn't need to be hiding porn and secrets deep in your hard drive; you'd be fairly confident you could just put information where it was convenient.
This left a lot of loose ends. A fair amount of the Kelvins simply ran once my friends started firing guns. That made sense, they couldn't compete with guns and took off. But if they were all some kind of collective, why didn't they come back when the real David Kelvin in the coffin was in danger? I knew that they recognized me from Kelvins that had exploded, so I assumed there was some kind of shared mental link. Was there only so much attention to go around? Or were they dealing with a backup plan? Was the man in the coffin actually the real David Kelvin? If so, what happened to all the other Kelvins without him?
When we were at Kelvin Automotive, there were two truck trailers missing. I assumed one was the trailer destroyed with the gas station, but what about the other? Was it simply missing from the start, or was that elsewhere carrying a special payload? I had a seen a Spider hive in the one that had been destroyed, so I wondered about all the things that could be in the missing trailer.
With so much unknown, I focused on what we did know. We had beaten them and destroyed Kelvin automotive. Though many Kelvins escaped, none watched the subway stations for me. I didn't see them in crowds when I was out either. I wasn't exactly looking for them, but I kept my eyes open when I was in public. For now, they were either dead or missing. Would that last? I don't know. I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea that we might see them again.
My finances were one of my other great villains. The day after Kelvin automotive, my landlord knocked on my door to ask about rent. He took one look at me and took a step back, asking what had happened to me. I told him I'd work on getting him rent, I just needed more time. I didn't plead nor beg, I just said it tiredly, letting my bruises prove my honestly. He gave me another two weeks.
Within an hour, I got a call from Lem. His aunt needed someone to help paint her apartment. I know she had been flirting with the idea for a while, I wondered if Lem had pushed so he had an excuse to pay me money. After that I got a call about working as an unofficial bar back again. Neither job was very much, but it was something. It was money to keep me as I started searching the web for a real job.
My FundstarterGoGo campaign was almost a bust. On the day before it ended, I had only three backers and a grand total of $30; it seemed one backer had even cancelled their pledge. In the last hours, I picked up only a single backer, but it ended up to be the most important backer. This anonymous backer pledged a few thousand dollars! This truly benevolent donation narrowly put me over my goal. That still didn't make the campaign the success I hoped it would be - I had hoped the campaign would exceed the goal, the extra money giving me some breathing room. Still, this meant I could pay back my medical bills and no longer receive calls from collections. A small victory, but I'd take it.
The sun shined on the waters of the river, making them glimmer in the midday sun. I stood on the center of the Houghton Bridge, looking down. I was standing in The Spot, where I had thrown the wine bottle from not even a week before. And yet so much had happened since then, that drunken night looking into the water seemed so long ago. But ultimately my path had brought me back here, to something I knew I had to do, even though part of me wanted to chicken out.
In between the roar of cars crossing the bridge behind me, I heard footsteps. I looked over to see Yasmin. I had invited her here, and I was pretty sure she knew why, so her usually cheery face was marred by uncertainty. I took her in - her cute walk, her dark hair, the curve of her cheek, the color of her lips - and thought about how beautiful she really was. I remembered all the reasons I first was attracted to her and how many times a look at her had brought a smile to my face. And I also knew that this would be my last time to enjoy it. A part of me rebelled against what was about to happen, about what I was about to do, but that impulse was squashed.
Yasmin came to a stop next to me and paused to look over the railing. "I'm hoping that neither of us is going over the side today." She tried to smile, but it was strained and unsure.
"That's not the plan," I said, and began steeling myself for everything I was about to say.
"I think I know what this is," she said, not looking at me and self consciously twisting the end of a lock of hair.
I nodded, answering the unasked followup. "Look, we need to talk. We've needed to talk for a while, because things have been bad for a while. I think we both know that."
She nodded and the hair twisting intensified.
"Yasmin, I do like you, and you're a gr -"
"If you say I'm a 'great girl', I'm going to hurl you over the side of this bridge," she said.
Mentally, I took a step back. "Okay, look, I like you. A lot. You're smart and pretty and better than I deserve. But we just don't work well together. And the sad truth is... well, that I don't love you. That's what it comes down to. I want to love you, I really do, but... I just don't. I don't know if it's us, or something wrong with me. It's probably me. But the
sad truth of it all is that I just don't love you and that's a problem."
"But I love you," she said, her wavering voice taking on a tone somewhere between pleading and convincing. "We've got that going for us, so we have something more than a lot of relationships."
I shook my head. "Sometimes love isn't enough. It just isn't. Relationships need more than that... And... well, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you actually love me. I think you love the person I could be."
There was a pause as that sunk into her. She didn't deny it.
"Is that so wrong?" she finally said. "Szandor, you sell yourself short all the time! There are some great qualities in you, some things that you could do to become a fantastic human being!"
I shook my head again and sighed sadly. She had just confirmed what I knew was true, what I dreaded was true, and it hurt. I tried to remember some of the words I had rehearsed, sticking to the script and not the hurt. "See, that's where you don't get it. I need you... or whoever I am with... to love me for who I am, not who I could be. Yes, I absolutely need to sort things out and be a better person, but you need to love me for me. You need to love me as I am and then be happy for the added bonus of who I may become. If you're with me and constantly waiting for me to become a better person, you're never going to be satisfied since you're sitting around waiting to love a person who doesn't exist yet."
"But..." she started, then frowned. I guess I had thrown more at her than she realized. Then came her last ditch effort to hold onto the sinking ship. "Maybe I love who you are too."
"You don't," I said, and something in my heart clenched for a moment when the words were said out loud. Why these two words in particular that were this deep into the conversation did that, I didn't know. "I think the intervention was a clear sign we shouldn't be together. You tried to turn all my friends against me because you thought what I did wasn't a worthwhile thing - danger wasn't even the main concern for you. You just wanted me to stop doing it because you thought it was immature, possibly even delusional. Sure you might think it was for my own good, but deciding that for me is exactly why we don't work."
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