The Face Stealer

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Thadeus froze when he saw the girl in Max’s arms, then reacted by pulling a gun from the waistband of his trousers.

  “You fools. What the hell have you done?”

  Emma pushed her gun into Max’s back and ushered him into the room. “I found them trying to escape with the girl.” She sounded pleased with herself.

  “And you brought them to see me. How incredibly stupid of you.”

  Thadeus fired his gun and a beam of red light flashed across Max’s vision. He turned in time to see her fading out of existence. Her scream died into nothing. The woman across the room rounded on Thadeus. “You callous bastard.”

  The gun spun to face her and instinctively she stepped backwards, hands raised in placation before her.

  “She’s had enough chances.”

  The woman nodded. Her cheeks red.

  The gun turned back to Max.

  “How did you find her?” asked Thadeus.

  “Where you left her. In a box, only it didn’t look like you were treating her very nicely.” Max’s arms were aching under the strain of carrying her, so he placed her delicately on the boardroom table, making sure to support her head as he laid her down. “She needs a doctor,” said Max.

  Thadeus just laughed. “She’s fine.”

  “She’s not fine. Your men shot at her like she was a rabid dog.”

  Thadeus shook his head. “We’re taking her back to her cell. She was secured for a reason. She’s dangerous.”

  “You’re the one that’s just vaporised someone.”

  “You didn’t come down for the girl did you.” Thadeus scratched at the scar on his cheek absently.

  “I wanted to ask you why Heather had to die.”

  “Who the hell is Heather?”

  “The woman found dead under the pier yesterday.”

  Thadeus shrugged his shoulders. “You’d better ask Cindy, although she normally brings the bodies into the base, and they’re normally alive.”

  Max couldn’t bring himself to act surprised. It just hurt that little bit more when the words were said out loud. He’d known that Cindy had murdered Heather. So, why did his eyes suddenly feel hot? He blinked away the first few tears and promised himself he’d make the people responsible pay for what had happened—and that included Cindy.

  “Why?”

  But he didn’t get his answer from either of them.

  The girl on the table sat upright and crossed her legs, sitting like a pixie on a mushroom.

  Thadeus reacted the way a desperate man with a gun in his hand is primed to react. He fired.

  A beam of red light hit Irulal squarely on the shoulder, but she didn’t vanish or fall to the ground; she just smiled.

  He fired again and again; Max could see each impact on Irulal’s body but she didn’t react.

  Eventually he stopped. He lowered his weapon but didn’t let go of it.

  “Have you finished?” said Irulal in a bored voice, then she turned to face the other woman. “Hello Linwood, you’ve done an excellent job in training your team. They’ve all been most compliant.”

  Linwood tried to look nonchalant, and folded her arms as she addressed the girl. “Can’t say I’ve missed you Irulal. You were nothing but trouble thirty years ago, I’m sure you’re going to prove you’ve remained a pain in the arse.”

  “Such hostility. No wonder we never got on.”

  “You’ll find me pretty hostile when you murder most of my team, and coerce the others into working for you.”

  “I’ve three words for you. Imprisonment, torture, and experimentation.”

  Linwood glared back at the girl across the room, refusing to be riled.

  Cindy gripped onto Max’s arm. “What is she?” she hissed.

  “I think she’s the alien they’ve been hiding the last twenty years.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. I wish I was. It would make this a whole lot simpler.”

  “But, she looks like a girl.”

  “I don’t think that’s important. I think she can be whoever she wants to be.”

  Thadeus’s face turned pale. His gun never wavered. “I told you I would let you out. There was no need for this subterfuge.”

  “I got tired of waiting listening to your empty promises.”

  “You knew it was going to take time.” He looked at his gun, then tucked it into the holster he’d slung over his shoulder. “The code to your cell was supposed to be unbreakable.”

  “No such thing as unbreakable, and I happened to have a lot of spare time. I’ve known it for years.”

  “So, why wait?”

  “I wasn’t ready. The work was unfinished. It made sense to continue the arrangement until I was ready to leave.”

  Max’s mind raced, trying to put all this new information into some kind of sense. “You’ve been working together. Prisoner and gaoler? A natural partnership.”

  Thadeus threw him a look that could have shattered stone. “A compromise.”

  Irulal laughed and it set Max’s teeth on edge. “A compromise. I wonder how long you’d have survived in that box.”

  “What were you working on?” Max asked Irulal, supposing that she was not as secretive as Thadeus.

  “Shall I tell him Thadeus?” She grinned, trying to get some kind of reaction out of Thadeus. He shrugged his shoulders in a couldn’t-care-less kind of attitude. “OK. I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. I’ve been researching a cure for you.”

  “But I’m not sick.”

  “Well, not yet.”

  Max didn’t like her tone of voice.

  Thadeus scratched his head. “So, do you have the cure?”

  A pause.

  Irulal shook her head. “No. I haven’t got your cure for you.”

  “Right. OK. Because, that was kind of the deal.”

  “But, as you can see, I’m not dealing with you anymore. I’ve dissolved our partnership. Going solo.”

  “You two are just rubbish at explaining things,” said Max.

  “It’s your cancer isn’t it?” asked Linwood.

  Thadeus remained silent.

  Linwood continued. “It’s in your medical records.”

  “That’s private.”

  Max grinned. “Well, not it seems anymore.”

  “I thought you’d been treated,” Linwood continued. “You’ve had it for twenty years.”

  “I still have it.”

  “Oh.”

  Thadeus turned away, then seeming to come to a decision he turned back and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. Max saw a small circular mound of—something.

  “What is it?”

  Thadeus undid another button. Now Max could see the silvery blob of material stuck to Thadeus’s chest. Thadeus touched his finger to it and the silver moved. He held a drop of the silver from his finger and held it towards his audience. It didn’t stay hanging on the end of his finger for long; it started to trickle back up along his finger, then his hand, then under his sleeve and out of view.

  “It’s Irulal’s treatment. Something that’s been helping to keep the cancer at bay all these years. A stop gap whilst she develops a real cure.”

  “It moved by itself.” Max asked.

  “Something she brought with her. Artificial micro-organisms. Nanites.”

  “Nanites?” asked Cindy. Her question surprised Max.

  “Microscopic robots,” replied Max, then to Thadeus he said, “You’re being kept alive by an artificial life that your prisoner has given you. And at no point in this did you ever think that was a pretty stupid thing to do?

  “I didn’t have a lot of options.”

  “But why would she cure you? You’re her gaoler.”

  Thadeus shrugged his shoulders. “She told me she would. A reward for saving her.”

  “You disintegrated me,” said Irulal sardonically.

  “I could have left you to go down the drains,” he retaliated.

  Max ignored Irulal. “So, this stuff is keep
ing you alive. But it’s not getting rid of the cancer. That’s what you meant right?”

  “Yes. But with the right codes, Irulal can program them to solve cancer for everyone.”

  “And how was she going to get the right—” Max faced Irulal. Pieces were starting to drop into place in Max’s mind but the answers were sparking off new questions. “Your research—you’ve been stealing people to experiment on. That’s why you had all those people locked up.”

  “Cindy’s been a good collector for us,” Irulal said. “It would have been difficult for Thadeus to do what was required with all the surveillance his pitiful organisation have on him. Cindy was able to do what was needed without worrying about who was watching her.”

  Max stepped away from his wife. “You’re a part of this.”

  Cindy spoke softly. Her eyes staring off into the distance. “I remember,” she said softly. “I was by the lake, lost in a maze of boats.”

  Irulal nodded. “Yes. You were there. Sort of.”

  Cindy pointed at Thadeus. “I remember you as well. And someone else. A boy. You were going to shoot us with a—you haven’t changed. You look just the same.”

  “Thanks,” Irulal replied.

  Cindy stopped speaking.

  Max returned to his interrogation of Irulal. “What were you doing to all those people?”

  “I needed to test people to see how the nanites would affect them. I’ve had to learn how nanites interact with your physiology. You’re far too delicate a species.”

  “How many people have you killed?” Max spat his question at Thadeus. This whole operation has been guided by a desire by one man to save himself from cancer. But to have such callous disregard for one fellow’s man just beggared belief.

  “A few, yes. But remember the big picture. We’re talking about curing cancer in the whole human population. How much suffering can I end? It’s incalculable. Ever since Irulal suggested it, my mind’s been amazed by the potential. Don’t you see what we’re doing here? We’re saving lives.”

  Linwood snorted. “The end doesn’t justify the means.”

  “Don’t be so retarded. Of course it does. If our situations were reversed, would you have done any different?”

  “You really don’t know me at all do you?” Linwood said.

  Max addressed Irulal. “But you haven’t cured cancer have you? You said you didn’t have a cure for him.”

  “No. I’m afraid that I haven’t been entirely honest with you. There isn’t going to be a cure for you, or your people.”

  “But we’ve already deployed the nanites.”

  A lump of concrete sunk to the pit of Max’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “The nanites were always going to be part of the cure. We’ve been releasing them for years in readiness for the new codes.”

  “Releasing them. To whom?”

  “Everyone,” Thadeus said, his eyes searching for some reassurance from Irulal but she just sat there smiling.

  Then the room exploded.

  43

  Max woke up to darkness. The blast had been an incredible noise, a noise like he’d never experienced before; his ears were still buzzing from the explosion. There might have been screaming earlier but that could just as well have been a dream. He’d certainly been unconscious for some time; quite how long was impossible to ascertain.

  The air was thick. It coated Max’s mouth and he tried to spit out what he could but he was stuck on his back with a great weight across his chest like a giant’s finger pinning down a fly, and it was impossible to turn his body enough to clear his mouth completely. He’d kill for a cool glass of water.

  Not being dead was a surprise. After that tremendous blast, the only option should have been death. His whole body ached. It hurt to move; even moving his head around to spit had ached. He tried moving his fingers and after the joy of feeling them flick against each other, he moved on to his feet—but either he couldn’t move them, or the same something that was making it difficult to breath was also pressing on the lower half of his body. With a little bit of wriggling, he was able to pull his arms free and he started to feel his way around the weight on his chest.

  Water dripped somewhere in the dark. This worried him. He waited for the drip to get louder or more frequent—that would surely be the end—when the contents of the Marine Lake emptied into the Tombs and drowned them all. Then a disturbing thought entered his mind; with his new found resilience, would drowning be enough to kill him? What if he stayed alive, drowned but trapped in the dark for eternity? Max tried to imagine what that would be like. An eternity of drowning.

  “Can anyone hear me?” His voice sounded strange in the dark, then he realised the reason it was more quiet than normal was because the air conditioning wasn’t working. The dull hum that had been sitting in the background of his hearing for the entire time he’d been in the tombs, had gone. Now, all he could hear was his breathing—and the dripping of the water.

  The place isn’t going to flood. You’re being ridiculous. It would have done it by now. You’re not going to drown. Max had to close his mind to the thought. Such terrible thinking wasn’t going to get him out of this. He was alive. He didn’t think he was in any immediate danger of dying. He had to hang on to these positives whilst he figured a way out of this.

  Thadeus had had a gun. Emma had been holding one before she’d been vaporised. That meant they were still in the room, somewhere, and if they could vaporise people, could they do the same to whatever was weighing him down? He stretched out his arms, ignoring the pain from his limbs as he felt all around him. His left-hand found more dust and rubble but nothing that gave him any hope of being useful. But on his right, his hand brushed against a foot. The foot was still in its shoe and that ruled out Irulal who’d been barefoot. Linwood had been across the room from him, so it couldn’t have been her.

  “Cindy?”

  She didn’t react.

  “Cindy!” he said urgently. “We need to get out of here.”

  A man groaned from the other side of the room. Thadeus was still alive then.

  Lights clicked on. A line of small spotlights along the ceiling—emergency lighting. It was barely enough to break through the heavy atmosphere. As he looked around him, he started to feel a fear gnawing in his stomach. The walls had crumbled, destroying the banks of equipment that had lined the room; none of it looked to be working. There were no sparks or flickering lights like you might expect to see in the movies. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, exposing jagged rock face through the dark holes and shadows. It was fair to say the room was wrecked.

  But at least with the new light he could see the mystery weight across his chest was a supporting beam from the ceiling. But, that should have crushed him. He felt around under the beam with his hands, and found more blocks of rubble that must be sharing the load. If it wasn’t for that, the beam would have killed him. Rubble was all around, his hands were coated in grey powder and he could see small patches of crimson across his skin, although nothing seemed to be bleeding right now. He was suddenly immensely grateful for this healing ability.

  On his right, he could see Cindy. Chunks of rock from the ceiling were strewn over her body, with an especially large one close to her head. He suddenly feared the worst—if that had hit her head. “Cindy,” he shouted. “Can you hear me?” No answer.

  Ignoring the pain, he lifted his head and saw Thadeus about fifteen feet away. He wasn’t moving but at least—for his sake at least—he wasn’t trapped.

  He couldn’t see Irulal at all from his position and wondered how someone as powerful as she evidently was, would fair in such an explosion.

  “Can anyone hear me?” he shouted.

  A groan from Thadeus was his only response. Please don’t let him be the only one left alive.

  Max closed his eyes and tried to think. After a few minutes he realised that solely thinking wasn’t going to get him out of here. Only removing the obstacle on his chest was going to get
him out, so that was what he set out to do. Carefully, very carefully, he positioned his hands under the beam across his chest and tested the weight of it. He took a deep breath and shoved upwards as hard as he could manage, focusing all his energy into his arms, feeling the tendons stretching. Gritting his teeth, he tried to control his breathing, knowing that panicking wasn’t going to help. Just when he thought it wasn’t going to move, the beam shifted, but only by a couple of centimetres. Exhausted, he let it drop back down again with a crunch, hoping that whatever debris had shared the weight of the beam was still in the same place. It was, and thankfully he lay his head back into the dust and rubble. His arms were quivering from the effort and his breath came in short rapid bursts.

  Max tried wriggling his toes again and wanted to let out a whoop when they responded. Perhaps he wasn’t as badly trapped as he thought. Slowly, he placed his hands by his bottom and felt more rubble under him, small pieces and small pieces meant stuff that could easily be moved. With careful hands he started to scrape away at the debris under his bottom, moving it as far away from his body as he could reach.

  “Come on, you can do this,” he muttered. “You’re not stuck.”

  It was a slow process, and after a few minutes his fingers were tired and his arms were starting to ache from the tedious repetition. He rested his fingers, shouted at the room in the hope that someone would have woken who could help, but then resigned to the fact that he was on his own, he continued apace with his scrabbling. He wriggled his bottom and had to stifle a small yelp of surprise when he realised he could now move it. His plan was working. A few more scrapes and he felt it was time to see how much he’d achieved.

  The emergency lights flickered. It wasn’t as if he needed any more encouragement to free himself but the thought of being stuck back in blackness again was a great incentive to get moving.

  In the end, it only took a couple of minutes of wriggling and shuffling before he freed himself. He couldn’t quite believe it and as he hauled himself to his feet, he instinctively checked his limbs and extremities. Apart from the scratches to his hands, he didn’t think he’d done much damage to himself, or if he had, his healing ability had fixed him up already. He counted his blessings.