Or Ally.
Or perhaps even himself.
He bristled in mute terror as he loped through the chamber. This was a technology he could never understand. Every action in this creche was completed with rote perfection by synthetic and flawless molecular programming. What took place within those cocoons was so incredibly complex, to Matt’s knowledge, no human had ever been able to successfully duplicate it. The Wraith’s never-ending desire to replicate human biology was also something Matt struggled to rationalize. And of course, like everything he did, Cromwell had taken these counterfeiting procedures and perverted them to benefit his deranged plans.
There was a row of furnace-like boilers suspended from the ceiling, humming with strange energy as Matt brushed under them. Each one was the size of a house. From there, he descended another stone staircase, moving deeper into the gloomy lower levels where it opened out into a narrow, ill-lit chamber. Running off it was a serpentine honeycomb of additional chambers and tunnels. The dripping, womb-like walls down here were also stained with something dark.
Matt spotted several metallic cylinders mounted along a wall. On closer examination, he thought these might have been large oxygen canisters, but as he drew closer, each one housed the narrow viewport slit between its gauges. Matt couldn’t help but breathe harder as he gingerly peered inside the first cylinder, holding his flaming torch up higher to cast some light behind him.
Inside, a pulsing glow radiated from a sickly-looking humanoid figure. It was not a Wraith Infiltrator or a human being. It was an Afflicted creature.
However, something was wrong. This one appeared to be severely malformed, more so than what Matt had witnessed in the future. Its guts and innards had been turned outward like some ghoulish anatomical cross-section, all knotted with tendrils of wiring. It was as if this creature had been in the process of becoming something else until it was abruptly halted.
Matt recoiled, swallowing hard to suppress the bile that now threatened to erupt into his throat. He moved onto the next cylinder and peered in, eyes narrowing like he was at a museum exhibit studying some macabre relic from the ancient world.
This one was even worse than the last. It had been reduced to a tortured, disgusting humanoid hybrid, with withered pale skin that clung to a tangle of collapsed bones. Diseased tissue bubbled around its hideous maw, fixed in a glazing of black, honey-like liquid that Matt could not discern.
Matt’s eyes went saucer-shaped as he stepped away and took in the rest of the room, noting the stone-carved tables filled with terrible wonders; the specimen jars of human organs - some full, some dissected. There were stacks of medical devices and strange equipment, placed neatly alongside piles of notes that had been scrawled in charcoal on frayed strips of parchment. Everything in here was meticulously curated and ordered.
This room was a lab of some kind. But to Matt, it looked more like the frenzied fever dream of a demented zoologist. That’s when he realized what he was actually standing in. This was more than just a laboratory of horrors filled with discarded experiments, these were Rossiter’s early attempts at mutating the Scourge. These infected abominations were once human and were the early attempts at creating Cromwell’s army. Matt knew Cromwell was close to unleashing his mutated replication of the virus, he just had no idea exactly how close he was. Based on what he was looking at here, he was closer than originally thought.
Matt spun around and raised his torch when he heard something behind him. It was a dry rustling noise, like a whispered breath. He caught a vague glimpse of motion at the far end of the room and gripped his flaming torch, ready to use it as a weapon.
As he drew closer, a row of rusted bars came into focus. It was a small prison cell, and something was moving inside it.
Matt approached cautiously, now holding his flaming torch with both hands like a sword, ready to plunge it into some hideous dungeon monster at any moment. He would not hesitate for a second to burn this entire place down.
“You’ve aged since I last saw you,” said the frail voice of a man behind the cell bars. “Time travel’s a bitch, huh.”
Matt froze. “Who’s there?” he replied, eyes narrowing as he peered into the cell. He could only see the glint of two beady eyes staring back at him - still and fixed in the light of his flame until a skeletal form began to seep out of the darkness.
Dr. Michael Rossiter appeared in the flicker of torchlight. Despite being only a few years older since Matt last saw him, he now looked like a reanimated corpse; gaunt and pallid, with stringy grey hair and eyes that were sunken deep into his skull. They no longer bristled with the fierce intelligence and mischievous curiosity Matt remembered. They had been dulled by the hardship and soul-crushing monotony Cromwell had no doubt subjected him to. He was still wearing the same clothes Matt last saw him in, but they were now filthy and tattered. This was a broken man. A mere shadow of his former self. “It seems this war has taken a toll on the both of us,” he said with a wan smile.
“My god…” Matt uttered, staring in awe.
Rossiter gave a raspy cackle at Matt’s reaction to his appearance. “God won’t hear you through these walls.” He reached for a small pot which was filled to the brim with an assortment of insects, all glistening in the liquid of some mucky stew. From what Matt could see, there were beetles, roaches, caterpillars, and even some fly larvae. “Have you finally come to rescue me?”
To Matt’s utter revulsion, Rossiter scooped out a clump of the squirming filth and began gorging on it like he was eating a bowl of rice with his fingers.
“Oh… what has he done to you?”
Rossiter finished his stew then shoved the pot away. It clattered loudly across the stone floor of his cell. A few insects that had survived fled to the sanctuary of the cell’s shadowy corners, scurrying limply across the stone floor like a wounded army retreating from battle. “You best be leaving now, Matt.”
Matt stepped forward, annoyed at what Cromwell had rendered this brilliant young man into. “Michael, listen to me. I came here to get you out. I’m not going to leave you here to die.”
Rossiter looked at him curiously, his expression insinuating that Matt’s statement was all bluster and nothing else. “Whatever your plan is, it won’t work. You can’t win this, Matt. If you’ve found me down here, it’s only because Cromwell wanted you to.”
“I don’t care what he wants. We’re getting out of this place.”
Rossiter’s smile revealed a gob-full of rotten teeth. Matt had to recoil from the fetid stench of his being. “That’s cute. I appreciate the sentiment, but you’re a few years too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve already created a primer for the virus. It’s a subtle genetic change. Took me a long time to get it right. All Cromwell has to do now is insert it into the genome. He will have his mutated strain of the Scourge, and the mortality rate will be nothing short of devastating. No antibody tests, no vaccine. No one will survive. Not even you.”
“I’ve seen the future. Decades from now. People do survive.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already played my part. I’m done being a pawn.”
“You’re not a pawn. You’re still a vital component of this mission.”
“This mission? Now that is funny.” Rossiter glared at Matt unflinchingly, a cynical smirk etched into the right corner of his sunken cheek. “Your late colleague, Dr. Gibbons, once said to me that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Well, he was right. As you can see, I’ve been a busy boy. The pathogen has taken many forms since Cromwell first got a hold of it. It’s extremely mutable. Every day it manages to surprise me. Cromwell has also been fiendishly inventive, having me test many variables on his subjects until the primer fit.”
A fresh wave of shock rippled over Matt upon realizing this place wasn’t just a laboratory or an Infiltrator creche, it was also a manufacturing plant - a place where the virus primer could be scaled to mass. “It’s not too late to undo all of this.
All of the work he’s made you do...” Matt held up the flaming torch as if to punctuate his point. “We burn it down. Right now.”
“I never pegged you to be someone with such giddy optimism. But I’m afraid the primer has already been replicated. It’s over, Matt. You’ve lost. The fate of this planet has already been sealed.”
“Not while I’m still breathing.”
Rossiter exhaled with frustration. “Oh, that’s right. The mission. I forgot. And how exactly do you plan on stopping Cromwell?”
Matt held up his arm to reveal the time band, its jet-black surface gleaming in the flame’s light. “By bending time to our will.”
“Time won’t save you. Not unless you can go back centuries and visit the Moon.”
“Why, what’s on the Moon?”
“Cromwell built something up there. On the far side. Some type of hidden base where he’s been stockpiling warheads filled with the original strain of the virus. Billions of doses in each one. It’s taken him a long time to compile them, but now that he has the primers, he can send his monks there to insert them into each warhead. Once the mutation is complete, he can launch his attack and unleash the Scourge onto the world. The warheads will simultaneously detonate in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and the viral particles will rain down across the globe. Panspermia, Matt. He’s going to do exactly what the USC was planning for Epsilon. Once all of humanity has been infected, and the dust eventually settles, he can begin creating his army.”
“How is he sending the monks up there?”
“Same way he’s been sending them up there for centuries. He has a ship hidden somewhere down here in a hangar. Plus, he still has the quantum displacement device he stole from that mansion. He’s also been traveling off-world, bringing Wraith operatives and resources back with him. Most of them were part of a military unit he commanded on Epsilon. He now uses them as spies. They’re all over this entire region.”
“Jesus…” Matt whispered. “He had it all planned from the very beginning.”
“Yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, he’s very resourceful.”
“So am I, in case you haven’t noticed.” Suddenly, Matt paused when hearing violent bursts of an alien language. It was quickly followed by the sharp clack of footsteps marching along a stone corridor, heralding the arrival of something bad.
Rossiter retreated into his cell, away from the torchlight, cowering in the corner of his cell like a scolded child. “Too late. They’re here.”
As Matt swung around, two Wraith guards, both armed and wearing dark fatigues, burst into the room. For a split-second, they all simply stared at each other.
Matt was the first to act. He engaged the closest guard by belting him across the side of the head with the end of his torch, the force of the blow snapping it in two. The top half plummeted to the ground in a ball of flame, and the lower half Matt was still gripping became a crude spear. The guard was rocked to the floor, disorientated, and blinded. His partially scorched face was coated in oily soot and blood.
As the other guard raised his Reaper-rifle to fire, Matt lunged forward and snapped his palm up to break the guard’s nose, driving it into his skull. As the guard staggered back, a shot rattled out. Matt winced from the scorching-hot plasma bolt that sailed over his right shoulder and cracked into the adjacent wall. With a grunt, he then plowed forward and stabbed the guard’s throat, pushing the stick in as far he could with both hands. A fountain of black viscera erupted as the guard slammed against the wall and began to gag, his pale-grey eyes wide with shock before collapsing into a heap.
Matt dislodged the spear and twirled around, throwing it like a pickaxe at the other guard, who was back on his feet ready to fire. The stick whizzed through the air and skewered the guard’s left eye, piercing the brain. The Wraith did not even manage to exhale a scream. Slack-jawed, he simply fell forward and crashed to the ground, the Reaper-rifle skittering over to Matt’s feet.
Rossiter stared at the brutal aftermath of Matt’s handy work, awestruck. “I’ve never seen anyone move like that before.”
Matt caught his look and shrugged. “Dial-A-Thug, remember?” He bent down and picked up the Reaper-rifle, his fingers curling around the unusually designed magazine-well that also doubled as the rifle’s grip. “Stay back and watch your eyes.” He fired a single hip-shot that blew a gaping hole through the cell bars.
The byproduct of jacketed plasma rounds penetrating steel was an explosion that was loud enough to wake the dead. The bolt eviscerated the cell bars into tiny puddles of molten slag.
Matt slung the Reaper-rifle over his shoulder and helped Rossiter jump across from his cell.
Rossiter hesitated at first, clearly in shock and even a little scared of Matt. Years of abuse had made everyone seem predatory.
Matt gently took him by the arm and led him forward. He could feel Rossiter’s frail bones. “Easy. I got you.”
“More will come,” Rossiter said.
Matt looked at him. “Counting on it.”
Rossiter smiled at the absurdity of Matt’s hubris. “What now?”
“We find Cromwell’s time displacement device and destroy it.”
“What about the primers?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll also be incinerated by the time we leave here.” Matt swung the rifle back into his arms and fired a shot at the nearest table.
A maelstrom of steel, tissue, and glass exploded into flame. Jets in the ceiling hissed as they blasted the room with a freezing gas cloud, extinguishing any potential spread. But the heart of the plasma firestorm was already raging out of control.
Satisfied, Matt steered Rossiter through the door the guards had entered from, seconds before the entire room erupted into a huge fireball.
Twenty-Four
Now carrying a frayed canvas sack filled with dynamite sticks, Ally clamored through the abandoned mining tunnel until she came to a partially collapsed brick wall. She managed to kick a hole through the wall large enough to crawl through, entering a serpentine network of tunnels that shot off in various directions.
A stunning underground cavern had suddenly unfolded before her. Some of these tunnels were rough and natural, riddled with stalactites and stalagmites that looked like broken teeth. They were impossible to penetrate let alone navigate. Other tunnels appeared open and smooth as if bored by some enormous drill. These were unnatural, awe-inspiring tubes of rock. Embedded in the rocks above these tunnels were massive foundations; towering pillars of iron that appeared to have been grown out of the limestone itself.
Ally moved closer to the largest of these manmade-looking structures and peered into the darkness high above her. When her eyes finally adjusted, the ceiling became a latticed cathedral of huge support girders. Some of them appeared to be three or four times thicker than the average I-beam. She pushed on, working her way through the mouth of another, much smaller tunnel. This one was essentially a set of winding stairs that had been cut straight from the rock. It ascended sharply to the remains of a closed iron door that hung slightly lopsided.
Ally stood motionless before the stairs, considering the steep and treacherous climb ahead. She bravely steeled herself to keep going. She had come so far. Now was not the time to be scared. She began climbing, each step meticulously placed. Halfway up, she paused to catch her breath, assessing the walls that seemed to be rising higher and higher, like a majestic canyon.
Several minutes later, she reached the iron door at the top. Although creased and buckled, it appeared newer than the other structures around it, hanging limply from its hinges. Ally wrenched it open enough for her to shimmy through, entering a degraded archway that led to a slender bridge that was also shaped from stone. The bridge was without curb or rail, and for all she knew, the drop on either side could have been a bottomless chasm. It was hard to tell. There was a soft glow of light emanating from underneath it, throbbing dimly.
Looming on the opposite side of the bridge was another set of stairs that rose through
an arched-shaped fissure. A crude stone relief of two Gargoyles sat perched on each side, placed there as a warning. It seemed the deeper Ally pushed through this underground system, the more these structures took on a Gothic, temple-like appearance. She had no idea where all this would ultimately lead to, but she was confident her location was now somewhere underneath the monastery.
She carefully inched her way over the bridge, but a low rolling boom from somewhere below forced her to pause. The air around her was vibrating with a strange whooshing sound. When she stole a quick glance over the edge, what she saw caused her gasp.
There were massive machines down there. Towering slabs. Sweating and industrial - surrounded by a maze of enormous pipes and conduits - like the circulatory system of a disease-stricken body that had somehow twisted in on itself. And teeming amongst it all were hundreds of Zograf monks, hooded in their black robes. Nightmare figures of a Bosch painting, they labored among those hellish machines, slowly turning great wheels, and pulling enormous bellows and levers. It was a mechanized Dante’s Inferno of iron and steam.
Running alongside all this was a deep canyon of high-tech cables and wires where other monks toiled, isolated in what looked to be individual plexiglass cubicles. There must have been dozens of them. These monks wore garb akin to vestmental lab coats and were hunched over small terminals filled with a blue gel. Some tinkered with delicate machinery, to which Ally had never seen the likes of before. In front of these monks were holographic wraparound screens, each one divided into three sections. Waterfalls of complex data tumbled down each screen. From Ally’s overhead position, these monks looked to be testing something.
She yanked open her canvas sack and fished out a handful of dynamite, pondering whether it would be premature to simply light a few sticks and drop them on top of the unsuspecting monks. She had no idea how innocent they were in the grand scheme of things, and she had not traveled back through time to kill fellow humans. For all she knew, these men might have been operating under some type a sinister spell cast by Cromwell himself. The more she thought about that, the more she suspected they were not acting under their own control.
The Revered (The Earth Epsilon Wars, Book 3) Page 17
