by Becket
Several heads of this cybernetic thing swiveled together as one body, turning to glare at Wyn.
The cyborg spoke as one voice: “Invalid entry.”
By far, this was the most disgusting thing Wyn had ever seen. It was some sort of cybernetic entity. In his head, he gave it a name: The Cybent.
Wyn looked for a switch to flip, a button to press, a plug to pull – he searched for anything that he might use to turn off the power. But there was nothing, as far as he could see.
But the power came from the Cybent’s life. And the power would remain on as long as the Cybent lived. Wyn would have to kill this monstrous mangling of the human frame to turn off the power.
Mercy killing was not in Wyn’s vocabulary.
But being a Blood Vivicanti means living a life of constant learning and adapting.
It’s why I’m so good now at being who I am.
And that’s why I’m so happy now at being how I am.
Wyn would do what needed to be done for the sake of the plan.
But it was more than that. He felt sorry for all those people. And he asked himself what he would want if he were in their place.
He would want death. He knew that.
So he severed one head. But that did nothing since there were so many more.
He ripped the heart out of one spot, but that did nothing also. The Cybent had several more hearts in several more places.
Wyn had one last idea left. It had been a last resort measure until now, since the thought of it repulsed him. But he knew what he had to do: He had to pierce the Cybent. He had to drink its Blood Memories.
He shuddered at the thought.
But he chastised himself: He was a scientist: Squeamish wasn’t in his vocabulary either.
Reluctantly he opened his mouth.
It took a little prompting to get his Probiscus to stick out. It seemed to have a mind of its own and it apparently had no desire to pierce the Cybent.
He had to trick it. He imagined himself consuming the Blood Memories of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs.
That did the trick. His Probiscus lengthened.
There was no clear “sweet spot” where the Cybent might be pierced. Wyn just closed his eyes and thrust in the tip of his tongue.
He drank the Cybent’s blood. He feasted on the Blood Memories of over twenty people that had been painfully and gruesomely woven into one machine. They had all been individuals at one time. Now they were one. The din of their voices was a mockery of the Great Harmony on Khariton. It was a sadistic homage to the Noise.
Wyn pitied all those poor people. His venom flowed freely from his Probiscus. He let it flow and flow and flow. There seemed no end to it. Then it flowed some more.
His venom filled the Cybent and the Cybent was filled with pleasure in our poison.
In no time, each twisted face in this machine-thing smiled contentedly.
And still his venom flowed. It flowed until every fleshy part of the Cybent perished from pleasure.
The machine shut down.
All the lights went out. The AC and the computers turned off. Everything shut down.
Wyn’s Blood Vivicanti eyes could see perfectly well in the dark. He went to the service elevator, opened the doors, and peered up the shaft.
It seemed endless. He was over a hundred floors below ground. He had over another hundred floors to climb to get to Lowen.
He leaped up the floors along the elevator shaft, clinging to the walls with his powerful grip, the way a human might go up the stairs, two or three at a time.
Exercise usually isn’t a word in a scientist’s vocabulary either.
Elsewhere in the Black Building…
Ms. Crystobal stopped at the 99th floor.
Her unusual powers could detect something strange about that floor. It hadn’t felt this way the last time she was in the Black Building, when she and Theo failed to rescue the Red Man. But she now knew that, if she were to cross the threshold and enter the 100th floor without permission, a powerful gravitational force would pull her inside out.
So she left the stairwell and entered the 99th floor to think and to wait for Wyn.
But the sight of the floor astonished her. And she was astonished to have been so astonished.
You see: Completely unlike the other floors of Lowen’s Black Building, the 99th floor was an all-night diner that served nothing but breakfast from the American South.
A sign advertised their specialty: Grits and buttermilk biscuits.
Mmmm. Forbidden biscuits.
Ms. Crystobal had the distinct impression that the 99th floor was some sort of illusion, but she was not sure. It was a very good illusion.
It was either that or a fulcrum where two divergent universes connected.
She liked the idea of it being a fulcrum. She liked saying the word.
“Fulcrum,” she mouthed.
The 99th floor’s all-night diner had several customers. They looked like ordinary people – mechanics, fishermen, roustabouts and roughnecks. They were all sipping coffee and talking about taxes and reading the obituaries.
They did not look directly at Ms. Crystobal when she entered. They almost appeared to be minding their own business. Yet they were looking at her through the corners of their eyes.
Lowen’s Sleeper Devils were nowhere to be seen.
Ms. Crystobal sat at a table and looked at a menu. That night they were advertising “the best chicken and dumplings south of the bible belt.”
A slice of Mrs. Butterbee’s hot apple pie was included.
Mrs. Butterbee the owner came over. She had a pencil behind her ear and a notepad in her hand. She was short and portly, but spritely in her Sara-Lee-yellow dress and a red gingham apron.
“What can I get for you, Ma’am,” she said with her Georgian accent.
“Coffee,” Ms. Crystobal said.
“Nothin’ else? No apple pie?”
“Yes, there is one other thing,” Ms. Crystobal said.
Mrs. Butterbee’s eyes lighted up.
“A buttermilk biscuit?”
“You can give me the access code to the one hundredth floor.”
Mrs. Butterbee’s congenial smile melted away like wax.
The portly matron became solemn and serious. She had a fierce knowing look in her eye. She glared at Ms. Crystobal savagely.
But in the next second, she forced a smile.
“Now how could I have a thing like that?” she asked with feigned innocence.
Ms. Crystobal rubbed her fingers together. Violet energy sparked between them.
“Give me the access code for the one hundredth floor,” she growled, “or I’ll hurtle you, your diner, and your apple pie into a black hole.”
Mrs. Butterbee’s forced smile became a sneer.
“You should have ordered the grits. Husband-cook outdid himself tonight.”
Then the portly matron moved almost as fast as Ms. Crystobal. Mrs. Butterbee grabbed her by the throat and flung her into soda machine.
Root beer sprayed everywhere. The whole diner was suddenly slippery and sticky.
Elsewhere in the Black Building…
Wyn finished leaping up all those floors. Yet he could not get beyond the 99th. He felt his insides start to turn inside out whenever he tried to enter the 100th.
“Ms. Crystobal,” he said aloud.
There was no answer.
“Ms. Crystobal,” he said again in a louder voice.
Her voice spoke inside his mind. “Yes?”
This was followed by the sound of dishes and cups shattering.
His mysterious housekeeper seemed to have no end of talents. They were constantly surprising and delighting him.
She had only recently told him that she could speak telepathically. This news had quite surprised him.
But now he was much more surprised to hear through her telepathic link the sound of a gong – like a frying pan having been knocked upside someone’s head.
&nbs
p; Wyn cleared his throat. “Ms. Crystobal,” he said liltingly, “need any help?”
The din of a kitchen explosion rocked the telepathic link.
“Not at all,” Ms. Crystobal huffed as the peculiar Georgian twang of a matron shouted something about frying Ms. Crystobal like a country chicken.
Wyn tried again to get beyond the invisible barrier protecting the 100th floor. Doing this made his stomach feel a hundred times heavier.
“Have you gotten past the ninety-ninth floor?” he asked Ms. Crystobal.
“I’m trying to,” was her response.
This was immediately followed by a very large crash, the howl of a wild beast, the clucking of a few caged chickens, and the ding of an egg timer.
Ms. Crystobal did not speak for a moment.
Wyn listened to silence for another two.
Then her panting voice spoke through the telepathic link.
“Try it now.”
Wyn was now able to move through the invisible barrier. He cross the threshold and went into the 100th floor.
“Ms. Crystobal,” he said, “will you join me?”
“In a minute,” she said, panting. “I need to slow my dytholom.”
Wyn blinked.
“Dare I ask what a dytholom is?”
“It’s like a human heart,” she said, “only it beats faster than light and is omnicordial with other planes of reality.”
The 100th floor was a network of rooms, woven together like a maze. In each room were computer consoles and large monitors. And each workstation was dedicated to understanding a part of the Red Man’s physiology.
A woman scientist was in the room. She was not one of Lowen’s Sleeper Devils. She was still human. That surprised Wyn. And he was glad for her.
She was wearing black-rimmed glasses and a long white laboratory coat. Her brown hair was tied up in a bun.
Wyn studied the sinews on the back of her neck.
His Probiscus started lengthening naturally.
She was busy entering commands into a data pad. She did not notice Wyn enter. She could not hear his silent footfall as he snuck up behind her.
He seized her upper arms from behind. A look of fear and surprise lighted up her face. She gripped the data pad tighter.
It happened so fast.
Wyn pierced the back of her neck with the tip of his tongue. Her eyes flashed with shock. He drove his Probiscus deeper into her flesh. Her mouth widened to scream. His venom seeped from his bee stinger. Her eyes rolled up and back.
All her muscles relaxed as her blood flowed from her opening and into Wyn’s mouth. Her lips coiled into a smile as the venom flowed through her veins.
She dropped the data pad. It smashed at her feet.
Wyn lifted her off the ground. One of her shoes had come off. The other was just barely hanging on. Her toes were curling with delight.
Wyn rested her gently down on the ground. The euphoria of his venom rendered her almost unconscious. In some ways she reminded him of Aemilia. He liked her. He thought about visiting her again.
“Maybe for coffee next time,” he whispered to her.
Her reflection in his sunglasses was of a beautiful woman who was finally happy. That made him happy too.
He licked the blood from his lips.
Her Blood Memories were seething inside him. He now knew that her name was Beatrix, that she was an excellent ballet dancer, and that she had a penchant for crossword puzzles.
Through her Blood Memories, Wyn now also knew Pi to a thousand places.
He was smitten.
Also through Beatrix’s Blood Memories, Wyn now knew all about Lowen’s research on the Red Man. They informed him of Lowen’s plans. The Dark Man did not yet understand how to create Blood Vivicanti. But he was resourceful.
He had plans for Theo.
Elsewhere in the Black Building…
Lowen the Dark Man was vivisecting several Sleeper Devils to get the human body parts he needed for his experiment.
He did not use anesthetic. He listened to their cries of anguish. It was a new experience for him. He liked it.
Nell, his most cherished Sleeper Devil, helped him. Yet she wept a single tear for the others crying in pain. She knew a lot about crying. She knew a lot about pain.
Lowen told them to return to their posts in the Black Building when he had finished his merciless surgeries.
Some quickly hurried off.
Others left as fast as they could limp.
Out of the body parts he gathered from his Sleeper Devils, he MacGyvered a long Probiscus.
Then he stitched it to the end of his own tongue.
He did not use anesthetics on himself either. Lowen wanted his host body – a man who had been a priest in life – to suffer. But at the same time, the Dark Man also wanted to feel this new and exciting pain.
He relished the human experience in all its forms.
His finished work looked almost entirely unlike a Blood Vivicanti Probiscus. It bore a striking resemblance to the tongue of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, if his tongue dangled out of his mouth down onto his chest.
Nell commanded several Sleeper Devils to come inside. They obeyed her as readily as they would obey Lowen. She told them to lift up Theo’s head. They did this again without question.
Theo had been tortured and traumatized so much that he was too exhausted to resist.
Lowen stood behind him. His new monstrous tongue swayed back and forth like the pendulum of some cadaverous clock.
From out of the tip of Lowen’s tongue extended his makeshift Probiscus. It looked like the needle of a metal syringe. The Dark Man held up his stitch-together tongue and guided it toward the back of Theo’s neck.
Lowen’s tongue seemed to come alive once the tip brushed against the flesh. Theo gave a gasp of shock the instant before Lowen pierced him.
It happened in a second.
Blood poured from Theo.
Venom came from the Probiscus as Lowen drove his tongue deeper into Theo’s spine. The venom should have been euphoric. But the Dark Man had modified his to heighten not pleasure, but pain.
Theo’s eyes widened not with ecstasy, but with agony.
The last word that flowed with his last breath both surprised and disappointed me.
“Joshua.”
I’m still not sure who Joshua is. The man is a mystery.
But I must confess that I had hoped that Theo’s final words might have been Mary Paige.
Regardless, at least in his final moments, his mind was on someone whom he loved very much.
Elsewhere in the Black Building…
Wyn was exploring the 100th floor.
Scattered throughout the floor were several other scientists, all doing indepen-dent research. One had been studying the Red Man’s brain waves, another had been studying the Red Man’s Probiscus, a few more were studying the Red Man’s blood and they were coming closer to developing a method for making Blood Vivicanti through a blood stem cell transfusion.
Wyn drank a pint of blood from each one. He was as gorged as I had been when I drank the blood of Joe’s family. Yet we Blood Vivicanti have almost an endless capacity. Wyn could have filled himself utterly yet still had room for the science department at MIT.
He went to the main computer console. His fingers moved swiftly over the keys. The computer could not keep up as he entered the code for his own computer virus.
Seconds later, once the operating system had been irrevocably contaminated, he walked away.
Behind him computers started exploding like fireworks at a fanfare.
Wyn took the stairs up the rest of the way to the 120th floor.
The door to the floor opened for him automatically. It closed behind him the same way.
Then the doorway vanished like smoke.
From Ms. Crystobal’s report, Wyn knew that the 120th floor was large, but he had not quite believed her. Now that he saw it with his own eyes, it was indeed vaster than he could have ever imagin
ed. He could not see any walls or ceiling. He found himself standing in the middle of an empty space. The room seemed to stretch on beyond the horizon into infinity.
The low-hanging ceiling was a cluster of stars and nebulae and massive planets, each a different size and color. There were so many that it seemed as if a whole galaxy had been compacted together to frame a marvelous skyscape. Wyn could have easily reached up and brushed his fingers across the surface of an enchanting green planet with rings of golden dust.
The floor was made of tiles as large as his stride, each tile perfectly square, each black and blank, and each made of a metal that Wyn did not recognize.
Between the tiles was a golden light. Wyn could see no source for it.
His powerful Blood Vivicanti eyes peered far into the distance. He could see a metal coffin. It was far, far away. But he was close enough to the Origin Blood. He knew that inside was the Red Man.
Wyn ran to the coffin as fast as he could go. The run took him thirty minutes. It was a big room.
Ms. Crystobal spoke to him through their telepathic link. She explained to him that he was now on a duel-dimensional plane.
“Breathable air is not a reality in other dimensions,” she told him. “This room is a link connecting one dimension to another.”
