Jane was floating. No, this was different—she was numb and suspended in the air. When she twisted to the side, the electrical impulses that held this refracted form together let her know quickly that a metal hook was forced through her shoulder blade, hooking her ribs on the underside. It formed an underwire cup for her left lung. She groaned and tried to swing her hands out, finding that they were still free.
There was a rustle of debris beneath her. She heard a rattling like bones being pushed across the floor and felt hands wrap around her shoulders.
She screamed only to find that she was gagged. There was an exhausted breath against her cheek and shaking fingers drew her hair out of her eyes. Tender hands pulled the gag free of her mouth.
“Shh! Shh, Jane. It’s okay. It’s me…” Dexter patted Jane’s shoulder as he cleaned her vein, lancing a needle into it and hooking a tube from her arm to his own.
“Yeah, I know. This is seriously against standard procedure.” Dexter fell quiet leaning against her, running shaking hands through her hair.
“Dex…where…?”
“You don’t remember? God, how could you? That thing almost took you back. If I hadn’t gotten to you…” He shuddered and swallowed. Jane twisted around on her chain. She could see now that they were suspended in a whole nest of chains over a pit that descended a mile into the ground or more, but was wreathed with sandy, bone-lined banks. It wriggled like the flesh around a puncture wound. Below it there was fire shooting in spouts the shape of bubbles.
From that pit, they could hear screams. Shrieks and murmurs that echoed along the concrete walls of this construction. They flinched, ears pricking, trying to understand the words.
Jane’s double-body was far more aware of its five senses than her original body had been. She could smell the paint, the grout and the plaster that had given this small, octagon-shaped edifice its dimensions. This building was new. Probably no more than a month old. Quite possibly only a week or two had passed since its completion.
“Matthews betrayed us…” Jane closed her eyes and felt the caustic tears of her chemically-poisoned new form. The screams, the broken sentences below them were becoming clearer.
“No matter what you do to me, I can’t-I can’t tell you about-ach! Something that didn’t happen!” It was Leaf down below.
“I guess killing him for his supposed crimes is just too easy.” Jane strained, gasping as the hook tore in deeper.
“Matthews has done worse than betray us, Jane.” Dexter’s face contorted in disgust as he heard Leaf shriek in an instance of greater pain.
“What do you mean?”
“The offer that those guys came and gave to Leaf and Derek?”
“Oh my God…”
“Yeah, you’d think that all of this was just an overnight scheme. That they appeared out of nowhere. Coincidence and everything. It wasn’t, Jane. Matthews is a coward and now the world will pay for it.”
“Can’t say for sure how he conspired with them yet?”
“Taylor’s got theories, but he’d have to be the one to explain. They make my head hurt.”
“Taylor, huh? So everybody’s all still alive?”
“Well, everybody is still safe. We can’t say ‘alive’ if we want to be technical.” Their soft laughter was like the soft conversation of birds in this dismal place.
“I may never have the chance to say it again…” Dexter’s voice dropped lower still. He reached and spun the chains like a swing set’s basket away from Andromeda’s leering gaze. Jane felt butterflies in her stomach that almost masked the pain. This was like a sweet dream trapped within a nightmare. She closed her eyes for a second, allowing herself to entertain what those words had meant.
“Say what?”
“I think you know.”
“Okay, but you announced that you were going to say it. So you need to be the one to say it…”
“Jane?”
“Mm.”
“I-ahem-I never thought it would be this hard.”
“Maybe some things don’t have to be said with words?”
He kissed her instead.
“Well, now you know. Or I hope you do.”
She smiled.
“I always knew, Dexter. You’re a terrible pretender.”
“You’re not supposed to tell me that now! I’m pretending to have it all together so we can bust out of here. Taylor’s got plans for tonight.”
“How awesomely ambitious of him. I like this guy already.”
There was silence. Dexter leaned closer and spoke softly in Italian.
“I know why all of Leona’s girl’s speak Italian now.”
“Oh, really?” Jane had answered him in English. He was overjoyed that she could still understand what he was saying.
“Yeah. The Fulton Family that owns her criminal enterprise. The Midas Cinema industry hails from Florence, Italy.”
“Get out of town!”
“I’d love to. Taylor’s still working on that.”
They leaned their skulls together, flinching as they heard whip-strokes falling against Leaf’s shoulders. Derek’s voice rose against the grain now and could be heard cursing in garbled bouts.
“Believe it or not, this could be a whole lot worse.” Jane grimaced, remembering Leona’s horror castle.
“I know. They told me what you did to save me. To save us. I didn’t see it myself. I would have watched. Would have been, with you if only visually, until your very last minute but…things were crazy and I couldn’t get there. Couldn’t be there.”
“You’re here now. Besides, in a way, I’m still alive. That thing might look like me, might be mule-stubborn like me, but she isn’t me.” Jane tossed her head with a confident smile. Silence pervaded for a moment. It was far worse than the screams, not knowing why the quiet had fallen.
“You haven’t heard from Lucien? I remember giving the message but it all feels really hazy now. Especially since I’m still trying to process how I escaped Andromeda and the other doubles and the car chase and the Prez snitching us out… Blah blah blah, right?” She rolled her eyes and pretended to fan her face.
“Nobody’s heard from Lucien, Jane. He and that assassin chick that busted him out of uhh—here, I guess, when this was still the old prison—they took their portion of the serum some place secret and safe. There’s only been one clue since then about whether they had better luck than we did in hiding out and searching for a cure.”
“Okay?”
“There’s been…Oh God…I can’t believe it myself…”
“What? Come on, tell me. I’m a big girl. I’ve already lived and died and waged war. You know, all that regular important adult crap.”
“You and I have very different ideas of what is regular adult crap.”
“Dex.”
“Right. Okay, so you know how you split?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re aware of what happened with Leona when Andromeda bit her, right? For some reason, she split up just like you did.”
“That’s a psychological cell-splitting nuclear thing,” said Jane. “I can’t explain it. Andromeda’s mind worked it out in my brain like I was watching math class. It was way more terrifying than calculus if you can believe that, and actually made more sense than kindergarten number lessons.”
“Okay, I’ll take your word for it. Um, well…Kingsley. I think he found a way to stabilize the serum while it’s in his bloodstream. He’s been being photographed on satellite imaging functions.”
“Yeah, that’s great. Well, it sounds great. Are you sure he’s not just road tripping, stopping at every Starbucks to smell the mocha?”
“The same satellite photographed him in over thirty different countries at the same time.”
“Well, he certainly gets around.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask how you know that?”
“He knows it because the Geryon told him.” Andromeda’s voice crackled through the glass cells, sending a sickly chill
through them both. “The Geryon is the Pandora’s jar of dirty secrets. He can read the thoughts of everything everyone is doing everywhere when linked into the chemical data looping. It’s a new glorious age of cyberpunk meets going green.” Andromeda beat her knuckles against the glass of her cage, sending electric fissures up and down the walls and starling a flock of nesting bats into flight.
“I swear, Dex, I’d answer her, but it would be too much like talking to myself. Which would be insane.” Jane closed her eyes, trying to deny that the thing even existed.
“She’s right. The Geryon is talking. That’s a problem. Nobody else is, though, so thankfully the Geryon can only spill what Leona and her close hands already know. Problem is, though, some of the people who have worked close to Leona have also worked close with us—and when their double-agency is hanging on the clothes line, so is ours.”
“Ah, so Matthews is a double agent now?”
“He more or less is a coward with a double agent in his employ.” Andromeda draped her body in a dramatic swoon pose over her chains.
“What?” Jane’s hair stood on ends.
“Ooh, and the plot just thickens!” The Andromeda began to chuckle as the lights in the already dim structure started to flicker and dim. There was a hissing sound and Reilly could be heard screaming from somewhere below them as a powder substance was ejected in the room.
“It’s coarse salt! Guys, if you can hear me, try to cover your noses and mouths!”
“What the hell?” Dexter scrambled for the chains, chewing his lip.
“Come on. I have to get you down from here. We’ve got to be in the right positions to bail from here.” He tossed his head skyward knowing something that Jane didn’t. She felt her holographic heart hammering in her throat. When would she ever know what was actually going on?
The room began to flicker with various colors of strobe lights that seemed to emit from the tightly-packed salt that was being sprayed on them. The electricity began to burn in the salt, and the shaft was catching fire that shone with all the colors of Vegas.
Dr. Lorraine’s voice—though they didn’t yet know that’s whose voice it was—could be heard speaking over an intercom.
“Dear little Jane. The Congress failed to tell you so many things when they gave you the green light. We should start over now, yeah? Get to know each other a little better. So here’s me starting: Hello. My name is Julius Quentin Lorraine and I’m a neuro-physicist, if I have to give my job a title. We’ll just cut the fancy terminology and make it simple like this: I’m a mad scientist, and you’re Frankenstein.”
The End (of Book 3)
Continue for Book 4…
THE GOOD DEATH
Book 4:
Parthenon Unleashed
By
Doug McGovern
Chapter 1
(Three months after the events of Pandora Man…)
Do you still think you have what it takes?
Jane Lewis heard a voice speaking to her from what felt like miles away. Her heart fluttered when she realized that it was the echo of her own. She opened her eyes wide but could see nothing in the glare of the smoke green lights.
Maybe you’re just dreaming.
Jane’s hands tightened around the seat handles. She knew what was coming next.
A volt of electricity passed through her, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Her teeth gnashed together and she could taste blood.
Oh, I’m sorry, honey. Did you cut yourself? That’s just too bad. But is it your blood, Frankenstein? How do you know for sure?
Jane tossed her head. She could feel her blood swelling, ready to burst from every pore. The monitors were buzzing, making whirring and grinding noises that made it seem like they would explode.
“I don’t know. We’re not getting any closer to finding a replica or a cure and we’ve been at this for weeks…” A researcher’s voice floated to her from somewhere along the cement walls of her torture chamber.
Jane’s eyes rolled back in her head. Even though they were putting her through the umpteenth test, they had no success. She was still this walking dead copy of herself, a makeshift hollow replica her DNA had managed to replicate in a photo-acoustic holographic way that was tangible.
Andromeda, the strange demigod nuclear-enhanced creature that had been created the day Jane was murdered and resurrected with the Andromeda serum, shrieked from the bulletproof glass cylinder she was being kept in. So far the only progress they’d made was finding a way to remove the armored suit that had once been the test chamber for the Andromeda project from the creature’s body.
She now stood defenseless in her cylinder, dressed in a hospital gown. She dug her ionized fingernails across the glass, roasting many razor scratches across it that didn’t manage to tear through. Screaming at the walls, she tried with all her strength to force her way through. They’d been draining her of energy once they’d discovered that her volition actually came through Jane and the part of her psyche that was still Jane Lewis.
Jane coughed. The smoke that was filling the air was swiftly mingled with tear gas. She felt the metallic screens of her cage sliding up again. This contraption was some kind of holographic projector. The purpose of the test was to see how the Andromeda had managed exactly to split her into many different persons of herself. Had it been substantial or was her lingering form just an ectoplasmic form of a person that was totally dead?
Jane shook herself, teeth chattering as the chair’s arm restraints unclasped and she could stand up again. She saw her reflection as the walls came up. She was astonished by how thin she’d gotten, by how lifeless. This couldn’t be the same person at all as Jane Lewis. This was a ghost. A vengeful one at that. Ready to break loose. To come after the people who had tried to alter the fabric of all that made up humankind and their collective DNA.
She could still hear all the voices of the people that Leona had killed, talking in her head at high frequency. She didn’t know how exactly that it worked. It was like some kind of collective consciousness, tuning in from the dimension in reality people’s spirits pass into when they die. She must belong there. They were calling her back. Back from this echo form, she was only maintaining because poor Dexter needed her to stay alive. Dexter who had been so close to her was no on the chopping block for giving her his blood. He was in the test chamber too, somewhere out of reach. Somewhere within the walls of this prison where they could butcher his humanity and make him like her. A puppet god drawn from their machine.
An intercom buzzed somewhere away above this machine. Jane cringed. Out of all the post-mortem torture she had experienced, this had to be the worst. President Matthews, the man that had signed her proposal into law, the man that she had offered her life up to, was lecturing her based on these acts of patriotism. This had become a daily habit. A grilling interrogation that was drawn from what the Andromeda Act had really meant and what all it covered.
“Hello again, Jane. I have to say, your patience is amiable.”
Silence for a long moment. They both knew that what he was doing was wrong.
Once Jane realized that her hands still worked, even after all the tests they’d done today, she reached and fiddled with the mic implant they’d put in her eardrum. She pressed a button hearing the white noise that told her she would be heard.
“The dead have nothing left to wait for.”
The room grew cold again. The camera hats came up and the flash photography commenced like a demonic paparazzi.
“Jane…You know that’s not the answer that I need. Remember this was your idea. Now you’ve left me holding the bag. I have to have something to give these people! What do you know about your symptoms? How does this collective consciousness work?” Matthews was silent again. Somewhere behind several walls of bulletproof glass that his teams had set up in case Andromeda was irritated to the point of escape.
“Now commencing third photographic test. Good job, Frankie.” Dr. Lorraine’s mocking voice
and the sadistic moniker he’d tagged Jane with could be heard wafting down from vents in the same room as Jane. She felt bile rising to her mouth. She didn’t owe these people anything else.
“Where is Dexter Owens?”
There was silence again. This had been the response to every question they’d thrown at her. No matter the torturous test, she always fired back with concern for her friends’ safety, especially Dexter’s.
“In a safe place…Caught away from all your pain and problems. Now we can focus on you, Jane and all the particular protections the Congress amended to the Andromeda Act within the last 30 days. We now have reasons to believe that this could work very well in stopping the onslaught of Duplicated Flying Personnel or DPFs. If you cooperate, then you will have atoned for all the bad press. All the mistakes you made could be forgiven.” Matthews tapped the mic. Jane could almost feel his sickly smile away in the darkness.
“Atonement…” Jane’s voice was changing in volume. She felt that sonar echo vibration feeling in the ball of her throat again.
“Test subject shows signs of agitation under photoacoustic spectrometer tech model 49.” Dr. Lorraine hit a button. A siren began to wail. Dark red lights spun around the room.
Jane walked up to the metal plates. She could see her reflection captured in billions of little metallic lenses as if she were standing in front of a giant fly’s eyes. She grimaced. The sick irony of this. She had sacrificed herself to protect her friends from dictatorial scientists and had inadvertently drug them down to Hell with her after death.
“Be careful when you point the finger, Mr. President. I might have suggested the law, I might have been the means to the end, but you are the one who signed it. You are the one that made deals with the enemy…Ultimately, you will be the one to pay for these sins.” Jane felt her bones vibrating again. The walls of the photoacoustic holographic “photo-booth” began to shake. There was a wail in the metal that sounded like legions of spirits shrieking from the gates of death. Jane knew that she was radio transmitting the collective consciousness of herself, the Geryon and Leona Kelley’s dead through her nervous system now. The collective voices worked together with high-frequency sound sonar, calling to each other across this haunting.
The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series Page 34
