“I knew the day would come.” Jane raised her hands. The shutters stopped snapping.
“Test subject hostile! Test subject hostile, release neurotoxin drones!” Dr. Lorraine crunched the microphone in his hand. Jane felt a presence she’d been calling out to for days.
“No, we won’t kill you. We actually have uses for you where we’re going. Oh, by the way, we’re headed straight for Hell so don’t get your hopes up.” Kingsley’s voice came bleeding over the intercom to Jane like medicine. He pressed a button. The walls dropped. The red glare let up and blue LED lights bathed the room.
Jane stood on a missile launch pad set up they’d constructed in what had once been Guantanamo Bay’s detention facility. She looked up at the concrete walls of her laboratory/dungeon and smiled. There in the crow’s nest stood the Pandora Man, outfitted like a Black Ops SWAT officer. He held Lorraine off the ground by his throat. Several of his doubles stood sentinel at the doors, all with Dragunov SVD sniper rifles posed on their shoulders.
Matthews huddled in the corner. Kiara Riveaulx had silently slid inside the torture unit and was standing over him, holding a katana to his throat.
“What about this one, babe?” Kiara flipped her hair out of her face and looked back at Kingsley. He grinned.
“If you want to reform, then you can’t very well assassinate the U.S. President, love. Even if he is Julius Caesar come back to haunt us all. We don’t need him either. Our war has gone to the streets of commerce. Let him go. Let him live. Let him call his dogs on us. We’ll be ready when the time comes. Matter of fact, this’ll be good for business.” Kingsley nodded and Kiara let the man go.
A host of strangely altered children came sliding down from the walls on zip-lines. One in particular smiled and Kingsley, and nodded.
“We’ve got the place clear of footage. There should be no inroads for Professor Lucia’s tech.” The boy had strange shark-like eyes and places where gills had partially developed on either side of his chin. Jane was transfixed by him wondering if all of this was a chemically induced hallucination created by her captors. Stranger things had happened.
“Good work, Jessop. This operation is right on schedule.” Kingsley tossed Jessop a device. He dropped to the floor and started moving around the room, disabling part of the tech that had Jane and the Andromeda confined.
“It’s okay. We’ve come to take you out of this.” Kingsley moved quietly across the room. Jane shook her head as he stooped to disable the metallic chandelier shaped gate that confined her to the test’s launch pad.
“You…can’t save me, Lucien. You know you can’t. Where’s Dexter? Oh, and those other people? The soldiers, Leaf and Derek…I’ve known them my whole life. There was a terrible accident when I was younger that made me forget. There’s so much to tell, so much to explain. You have to stop Leona before she burns the entire human race with her sickness…That little girl! Oh God! Riley…Riley is Leona’s daughter which makes her the heir to this twisted machine!” Jane’s head tossed as she talked. It had been too long since she’d been given a dose of Dexter’s blood. She was losing this vessel. Soon this small remnant of her consciousness would die and the Andromeda would be in full command again. That was a frightening thought.
Kingsley cupped Jane’s face in his palm. Jane could feel the prickling sensation of his altered biochemical state through his fingers. He’d made the ultimate sacrifice and used the serum. Now he was in the same ship as she was. It hadn’t fully hit home until now. Tears began to build in her eyes. They were lost.
“Listen to me…Things have changed in the world. More than you can imagine right now. You’ll have to trust me because where I’m taking you is black and scary. It’s a fight and bloody won’t come close to explaining what it’s like out there. But our friends are safe. Taylor Riveaulx helped me get them all out.” Kingsley smiled, thumbing the tears off of his former head nurse’s face. She smiled back and reached up, placing a hand on his chest. His heart echoed, forty times as powerful as it had once been. They weren’t the same people they had been all that time ago when they fought over the CCU at Caddo Vitality. Nothing would ever be the same again.
“Which means you’ve come to bury a ghost, right, Doctor?” Jane coughed. Black blood spilled over her bottom lip. She cringed. How did this new adaption of a body even function? Wasn’t she technically the definition of a specter now?
“Consider this a resurrection mission.” Kingsley nodded and lifted Jane up on his shoulder. His radiation warmth was enough to make her feel safe again, for however short a time.
A rush like rockets taking off drowned out their thoughts then. Kiara came running, waving the mutated children on behind her. Each one wore a glow-in-the-dark green wand on a chain around their neck. They were waving signals to each other, evacuating the lab.
Jane looked over Kingsley’s shoulder to see what was happening. Kingsley’s doubles were loading the Andromeda, now sealed in her cylinder, and a huge collapsing automotive chassis onto the back of what looked like a regular truck. She saw that the exhaust system, however, was different and resonated with bright blue lights that emanated a loud vibration rather than a regular engine’s idling. It had a golden seal printed on the door and read Fulton Divisions on the side of it. Jane’s heart leaped to her mouth when she saw Derek Matheson, wearing a strange Bluetooth set around his forehead, sitting in the driver’s seat.
She heard a sound like lightning splitting a tree and jumped, feeling Kingsley’s hand steadying her shoulders. What looked like a regular motorcycle had appeared in a bright flash of white light and steam. There was a prism effect of several different spectrum colors and then the bike’s front wheel moved down a sliding chamber track to the back of its chassis and the wheel that had been positioned at the back twisted down another gear and made the bike stand up like a unicycle momentarily. The rider snapped a button at the handle as the bike twisted midair for a long moment—then the original back wheel snapped into position at the front. The strange contraption now ran like a regular motorcycle would.
It came shredding up to them. The rider’s clothes were a strange red color, seeming to barely suppress flames. He reached up and ripped his helmet off, revealing the smoking hair and blazing eyes of Leaf Manson, Leona’s “Prometheus”.
“Hey, Kingsley! Harrison and Taylor need your grounding vessel for a debriefing back at the post. Let me take her!” Leaf held out a shaking, leather-gloved hand. Jane’s eyes went wide.
Kingsley eased Jane to her feet and looked down in her face.
“Are you officially psyched out by all of this? Don’t worry. Leaf’s going to take you to the base camp we’ve set up. We call it the Harbor. Dexter and the little girl Reilly, Kendra, your friend Lindsey and Dexter’s little sister are all there. So is my father. It would take ages to explain. I’ll let Leaf tell you on the way, huh?” Kingsley smoothed Jane’s hair out of her eyes. He smiled, like he knew a secret that she did not. Jane nodded.
“I-I trust you all. But you weren’t kidding. This is crazy!” Jane stumbled, feeling awkward in the black spandex uniform her captors had dressed her in. Kingsley guided her toward Leaf’s ultra-sonic bike. He smiled, holding out his hand still. Flames shot from his fingertips and he closed his eyes. He must have done something physically that she couldn’t see because the flames extinguished as soon as they appeared.
Jane took his hand and he hauled her up onto the bike.
“Here. You’re gonna need this more than I will, I think.” He handed her his helmet. She had barely gotten it on when he switched buttons on the handlebars that set the wheels revolving in strange sideways motions that spun them around like a carousel.
“What the heck?!” Jane clutched Leaf’s shoulders, frantic now.
“Take it easy! We’ll go slow to start. I just have to let the whole machine do its thing, you know, so it won’t run too hot. God, it’s good to see you, considering everything! There’s so much to clue you in on. Thankfully, we’ve got a lo
ng road ahead of us.” Leaf switched a gear that made the bike stand up in the traditional position. It shot forward.
“God! I thought you said we were going slow?!” Jane collapsed against Leaf’s shoulder. She was surprised to feel how cool it was. Had he gotten his blazes under control in the time between their capture, his escape and now?
“This is as slow as the thing goes. Sorry, Jane.”
*****
Chapter 2
“Are you…Are you okay? I can pull over if this thing is making you sick…” Leaf’s voice came bleeding back from a place dangerously far from earth. Jane coughed and sat up, wondering how long ago it was that she had blacked out.
“I’m…I’m good, I think. Leaf? What is going on?” She grabbed his shoulder again, to make sure he was still there. She wasn’t even sure if she was still on earth, but reality was a matter of perspective. In some sense, all of this was happening now, and she’d just have to roll with it.
“How much do you remember about waking up in their captivity? The first couple of weeks, that is, before we all escaped. Which, before we go into anything else, I just have to say…Jane…I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave you there. I was on the verge of exploding and half unconscious the day they took me out.”
Leaf tried to look back at her and cleared his throat. He was suddenly tense. She could anticipate his thoughts somehow, as much as this serum had changed the intra cortex of her mind. He felt terrible, near-suicidal guilt for things that had happened between the last time they’d met and now.
“Listen…Whatever happened, whatever’s happening now…Don’t lay it on yourself. Don’t do that, Leaf. You’re a good person. Probably one of the best that’s ever lived. I know that in my gut. I remember you now. I mean, from before. Back when I was a kid and you helped my dad…Before Leona’s drugs first entered our world and messed with our memories and everything else.” Jane cringed. Everything was coming back in crystal definition. The story of their life was stranger than any fiction she could have come up with.
Leaf coughed. He nodded slowly.
“I remember too. They…When I was in the chamber, they used some of the antidotes that Leona’s conspirators have helped her mix up. It didn’t heal my flaming problem, ha. But it did start “unlocking” these neurological “pauses” or whatever you want to call it in my hippocampus’ deep psychic energy chambers. I didn’t know that was even a thing until recently but…This technological revolution is metastasizing all over the World. It’s my fault, Jane. My brain held secrets of a Freak Einstein.” Leaf shuddered, his hands tightening around the handle bars.
Jane held her breath, trying to make sense of everything she was being told.
“This is on both of us, Leaf. Technology is only as lethal or handy as the people who use it. You know that.” Jane ran a hand through Leaf’s hair. She heard him huff back a soft laugh.
“Derek and I hacked into the network encryption for the Fulton factory. I programmed their highly-advanced assembly lines to produce the designs they’d tortured out of me. Apparently, the Fulton Empire has been funding a coup d’état against global powers for over ten years now. It’s more than I can explain by myself. Only Taylor Riveaulx fully understands what’s going on.” Leaf got quiet, taking a moment to look at the smoke-and-amber-riddled sky.
“I guess it gets worse too, though. I’ve been working for an inside job this whole time, Jane, and I didn’t realize it. Your dad didn’t know it. Hell, nobody could have guessed our commanding officers were working with the She-Hitler.” Leaf’s voice cracked.
Jane felt a shudder tear through her. “What?” asked Leaf, feeling Jane suddenly tense. They both grew quiet. The whir of the supersonic engine tingled up the back of their spines, making their hair static. Tension sent an ache through their skeletal makeup. Finally, Leaf couldn’t stand the silence.
“President Matthews, Dr. Lorraine, my dad, and the Fultons…They all have some kind of gentlemen’s agreement that they would allow Leona to get huge and become the think tank for their own black market enterprises. They played up the sissy groveling act to make it look like she’d squashed them under all her high-and-mighty Napoleon parade. The idea was to double cross her when she built them a massive trifecta to reign from.” Leaf held his breath. His head sagged and for a sickening moment, Jane was afraid he’d slide off the bike and be crushed by its chassis mechanism.
“They didn’t expect her to get big so quickly. They really underestimated her capabilities. Never would have dreamed she’d have the kinds of contacts she actually has, which is another story in and of itself. She got too volatile for them to exploit anymore—not that they ever really could.
“So, they decided to combine their powers and take aggressive offensive actions. Which is why they turned on us back in New Orleans and brought us in for ‘detainment and research’. Extradition was never part of the deal for us, Jane. They’ve always looked at us as pieces to their ‘megolo’-monetized puzzle.”
Leaf’s voice trailed off as he started working some of the weird gears, buttons and hand braces of the super-motorcycle.
“They must not have figured you could hold out that long,” said Jane. “I heard you down there. Heard what they were doing to you. You held up like a brick wall, man.” She knew trying to reassure him was probably futile, but she couldn’t let him go on like this. It just wasn’t her nature to not try and care for a person’s hurt.
“Well, your weird brain radio thing, Taylor, and the Geryon are actually to thank for all of that,” said Leaf. “They managed to get Kingsley to us in time to bust me and Derek out of containment. This is the part where it gets extremely weird, Jane. We escaped by some kind of osmosis technology Kingsley found at another one of Leona’s labs.
“All of this…Too much to explain on my own. He, for lack of a better term, translated us back onto the field. Where we found the world overrun by doubles. Of Kingsley, of Leona, of you even…. All manner of craziness is walking on the earth now.”
Jane felt her stomach swirling in weird cyclone motions. This whole situation had reached a new level of surreal. They fell silent. She drifted off to unconsciousness against Leaf’s shoulder, unable to cope with the thought of the days ahead.
*****
Chapter 3
She woke up on Leaf’s shoulders, in the middle of a firefight.
“Hang tough, girl! It’ll blow over soon. The earth has turned into a desert and this is just a regular heat wave.”
Jane was jarred wide awake. She felt her heart jump into her mouth, the beat keeping time on the tip of her tongue, echoing against her teeth. The air was hot with the battle’s fury, enough to singe the fine hair off her skin.
They were somewhere deep in the forests of Cuba. This place had been cleared out as a military base. It had once belonged to a cartel. Jane could see markings of Kelley Pharmaceutical printed on various doors and a few trucks parked around. It had once belonged to one of Leona’s cartels specifically.
Scattered like seeds on fire all throughout the camp, Jane saw doubles of Kingsley, Leona and herself facing off, fighting each other with magnetic and energy fields concentrated through their hands.
“Leaf! Good to see that you’re still alive!” A young voice cut through the static. A little girl soared over to them, operating what Jane would only be able to describe as a motorized wheelchair, but with a strange revolving wheel chassis like the supersonic bike had. Jane was so happy to see the child that she ignored the fact that technology had advanced at a frightening exponential rate since she’d been in prison.
“Reilly!” Jane reached out a shaking palm. Reilly reached up and clutched Jane’s hand in response, grinning from ear to ear.
“Hey, Jane. Here set her down, mate.” Reilly nodded to the wheelchair. Leaf slid Jane down from his shoulders, easing her into the chair and strapping her in.
“Reilly’s gonna take care of you. Whatever you see out here…Whatever has happened to the world…Jane, just s
tay strong. Your strength has been the lynchpin of everything so far. Keep fighting that good fight.” Leaf smiled, a shaking, trustful smile. Jane stared at him. For a moment she was transfixed by the candelabra that was overtaking his eyes and that was all that she could see.
A smoke bomb landed close to their feet. Reilly clapped a hand over Jane’s lips.
“Take it easy, sister! We’re going straight to Romeo!” Reilly spun the chair into the fray, jumping on a rail that had been made onto its back. Jane gasped, clutching at the handles. All this motion. If she hadn’t been motion sick before, she definitely was now.
“Oh, my God!” For a moment, nothing registered to Jane Lewis. She couldn’t breathe. Could scarcely think. What had happened to the World?!
Nothing would ever resume any fraction of normalcy. She had done this. Her sin had been her sacrifice. She had died to save them from the horrors of the She-Hitler. All of that had come of that was the twilight of humanity! How was this happening? Could anything at all stop it now that she’d turned the key and opened the door to the science highways of forevermore?
“Is that all you can say? Try to find some good in this, chica! You have no idea what you’re capable of. If Kingsley’s research has amounted to anything, then that means you hold the keys to saving or breaking humanity! No pressure or anything. It’s just because of genes you inherited from your dad, you’re the only person whose brain can pass through that many dimensions at one time.”
Reilly continued chattering but Jane didn’t hear another thing she was saying. Her thoughts were hung up on the mention of her dad. How could Reilly Riveaulx possibly know anything about him? Kingsley might have been able to dig classified information up on him, but his genetic anomaly had never been in his Federal profile officially. The professional community had always taken advantage of his Sherlockian abilities off the record; otherwise, it looked like a hokey magic trick. It was bad for their image.
The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series Page 35
