by Tim Waggoner
I turned to Devona. "Remind me how much we're getting paid for this job."
"Nothing," she said.
I sighed. "Right."
We headed slowly down the foyer and toward the lounge, gas guns held at the ready. Devona and me in front, Darius behind us, covering our rear. We did our best to move silently, though given how much noise was coming from the lounge, we really didn't need to bother. We could've skipped down the hallway singing "We're Off to See the Wizard," at the top of our lungs, and I doubt anyone would've heard us. When we reached the end of the hallway, we flattened our backs against the wall and peered into the lounge.
This lounge – just like its counterpart back in my Nekropolis – was decorated like a tasteful upscale Earth tavern with black lacquer tables and chairs, and Mind's Eye sets mounted on the walls. The centerpiece of the lounge was a large circular bar in the middle of the room where the bartenders on duty – witches and warlocks who specialize in potion-making – mix any aphrodisiac or performance-enhancing drink you desire. Normally the lounge is pretty lively, but in the wake of the plague that had swept through this Nekropolis, it had become a scene of absolute and utter depravity that would've made Caligula himself blush like the most cloistered of nuns. The lounge was packed wall-towall with the same savage creatures that infested the street outside, and the Hydes were doing their best to cause just as much havoc: fighting and screwing – often at the same time – and roaring with dark laughter whenever one of them received an especially nasty injury. The Hydes were so numerous and they shared so many common physical traits that it was almost impossible to tell them apart, but I recognized a few. Two of the creatures had holo implants where their eyes should've been, and I guessed they were the vampires Halima and Resham, a brother and sister who often came to the lounge merely to find a place where they could sit and play holoshards for hours on end without being interrupted. They were playing games of an entirely different sort now, but not with each other, at least. One of the creatures possessed somewhat feline features, and I guessed she was Lourdes, a werecat waitress employed by Bennie, and the particularly monstrous creature who was, ah, servicing her appeared to be Lyra, a woman's spirit who'd taken up residence in the body of the genetically altered mixblood lyke who'd killed her. A male lyke. I thought I recognized some others, but I forced myself to ignore them. We hadn't come here to help them, at least not directly. We'd come to help the Hyde sitting atop the bar and surveying the bacchanalia taking placing place with the self-satisfied air of a proud ruler.
This Hyde was larger and more massive than the others, nearly twice their size, and the chair that had been placed on the bar barely supported its weight. It was wearing the torn remnants of a black tuxedo, and while its profusion of body hair was just as wild and shaggy as that of the other creatures, where theirs was brown, this Hyde's was a bright reddish-orange. Given the creature's bestial features, it was difficult to tell its gender, but after a moment its facial features softened a bit and its chest swelled, and I knew that, while it had been male when we first got here, it had now become female. No doubt about it, then. It was Bennie. Sometimes Master Benedict, sometimes Madame Bendetta, but always owner and operator of the House of Dark Delights.
Darius leaned close and spoke in my ear, more so that I could hear him over the din than to avoid being overheard by the Hydes. "How do you want to play this? Direct assault? Sneak attack?"
"How about a little of both?" I said.
I checked the readout on my gas gun and saw that I had a little less than half my ammunition left. I popped a couple fresh ampoules into the chamber to reload, and Devona and Darius did the same. We then stepped into the lounge and started firing.
The guns had a range of about six feet; after that, the gas dissipated too much to be effective. But there were so many Hydes packed into the lounge that for every burst of gas we fired, a half dozen or so began to change back to their normal selves. We kept firing around us as we moved farther into the lounge, rapidly depleting our supply of gas, but we only made it halfway to the bar before the Hydes realized what was happening, abandoned their orgy of sex and violence, and attacked. A crowd of the creatures came toward us, shoving aside or in more than a few cases stomping on those caught in the throes of transformation in order to reach us. I knew that even if we managed to dose our attackers with antidote gas, at least some of them would reach us before the antidote could take hold. Time to switch tactics.
"You two keep hitting them with the antidote!" I said, and then flicked the selector switch on my gun. I picked out the fastest, meanest-looking Hydes coming toward us – the ones I judged had the best chance of reaching us before the antidote could affect them – took aim, and fired.
Our guns weren't loaded only with antidote to the Hyde plague. They also fired chemical weapons of an entirely different sort. A tiny dart shot out of my gun's muzzle and streaked through the air toward a particularly grotesque Hyde that appeared to be part reptilian. I guessed his true form was that of a demon, but luckily his flesh was only partially covered by green scales, and the dart struck him on a soft part of his neck. He took two more steps before his eyes went wide with shock, then he doubled over, howling with pain as he grabbed his crotch.
I couldn't help grinning. A cocktail of instant syphilis, herpes, and gonorrhea was a potent weapon indeed.
So we continued fighting our way across the lounge toward the bar, Devona and Darius dosing Hydes with antidote, me making life extremely uncomfortable for any of the creatures who came too near. I kept glancing at Bennie as we drew closer to him/her, but instead of seeming concerned at our approach, Bennie looked amused, as if we were no more of a threat than a trio of actors in a Mind's Eye program.
Lyra broke off from her enthusiastic coupling with Lourdes to attack us, and I had no choice but to hit her with a VD dart, and when that didn't do much more than slow her down a little, I hit her with a second and third. She collapsed to the floor and writhed in agony, and while I knew she wasn't exactly the same Lyra as the one who lived in my Nekropolis, she was close enough, and I felt awful for having to put her through so much pain. But as least she was still alive, and hopefully she'd stay that way – if we could reach Bennie and put a stop to this plague.
By the time we were within ten feet of the bar, Darius' forehead dripped with sweat, and he looked exhausted. Despite his ability to traverse dimensions, he was only human, but since Devona and I were more than that (or perhaps in my case, less) we didn't tire, and the two of us were still in fine fighting shape when we reached the bar. Now that we were in firing range of Bennie, I flipped the selector switch on my weapon back to antidote, and the three of us hit Bennie with a triple blast of gas. Bennie – who'd continued to switch between genders the entire time we fought to reach him/her – merely sat smiling as the yellow cloud enveloped him.
The rest of the Hydes in the lounge stopped what they were doing, and all of us watched and waited to see what would happen.
When the cloud dissipated, Bennie was still a he, but he was also still very much a Hyde.
"Nice try," he said in a bestial rumble. "But my ancestor invented the Hyde formula, and I take regular doses of it – or rather, a variation of the original recipe – to maintain my dual gender nature. Imbibing the potion over so many years has had a permanent effect on my physiology. Your pathetic antidote won't work on me."
It was strange to hear such intelligent words coming out of a Hyde's mouth. Not because of the way Bennie looked – I'd been in Nekropolis too long to judge any being's intelligence based on appearance – but because of the violently chaotic nature displayed by the Hydes we'd seen up to this point. I was impressed that Bennie was able to focus past his lust for mayhem long enough to form, let alone express, coherent thoughts.
I thought about hitting Bennie with a few dozen VD darts, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. The pain might lay him/her low, but the other Hydes would still tear us to pieces. Since at the moment the other creatures wer
e watching and waiting to see what would happen next, I decided our best bet was to keep Bennie talking.
"Not our antidote," I said. "You made it. Or rather, another you made it, one who lives in a different dimension."
Bennie's features softened slightly as she became female again. She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she inspected us more closely. "I recognized Darius right away," she said. "When I saw you use your weapons, I guessed that he'd enlisted the help of another Bennie to try to stop me." She nodded at the weapons in our hands. "Those are just the sort of thing I'd design – especially the VD darts!" She grinned nastily. "But I didn't recognize you at first, Matt. Nor you, Devona. You both look quite a bit different than your counterparts in this world."
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers. At her command a pair of Hydes rose from behind the bar, each of them lifting a prisoner into view, a man and a woman, both bound in coils of red velvet rope. The rope was no doubt normally used for bondage games around here, but no one was playing right now.
The two prisoners were familiar, so much so that looking at them was like looking into a mirror, albeit a funhouse mirror. The male was dressed in gray suit and tie similar to mine, but his skin was ivory white, and he had overlong incisors which protruded down over his lower lip. The woman wore a scuffed and torn black leather outfit, and her flaking skin was greenish-gray.
"It's us!" Devona said. Then she frowned. "Sort of." I looked closely at our other selves. "We're reversed. You're a zombie, while I… I don't look half-vampire, do I?"
"That's because you're not," the other me said. "You're the whole undead enchilada."
"Interesting. Do you like it?"
He gave me a sour look. "Do you like being a zombie?"
"Good point."
"Took you long enough to get here," Vampire Matt said. He looked at Darius. "I was beginning to think you didn't get my message."
"I got it," the Sideways Man said, "and I did as you asked."
"For all the good it did," Zombie Devona muttered. "Our Bennie is still a Hyde, and you three are in just as much trouble as Matt and I are."
"Speaking of Hydes," my Devona said, "I understand why you haven't changed, but from what we've seen, the Hyde plague affects vampires. Why didn't your Matt change?"
Bennie was a woman again, and she answered before Zombie Devona could. "Because your Bennie isn't the only one who was able to whip up an antidote to the plague. I gave my Matt a dose – one a good deal stronger than what your guns can deliver – so he'd remain unchanged. He and his Devona tried to stop me, and I wanted them both to witness the results of their failure."
"Stop you from doing what?" I asked. "I'm not exactly sure what your master plan is." I wanted to keep Bennie talking as long as I could. I'd been watching him/her closely, observing the gender change and trying to mark the exact moment when he/she was perfectly poised between male and female. I thought I had a good feel for it, but I needed to be absolutely sure.
Bennie Hyde looked at me as if I'd just asked the stupidest question imaginable. "Why, having fun, of course! I had a client who asked for a very special potion: one that would split him into two separate beings, one male, one female, so that he – or rather they – could…" Bennie trailed off and grinned. "I'm sure your imaginations can fill in the rest. No one on my staff had the skill necessary to create such an elixir, so I decided to give it a go. Since I already used a variation of my ancestor's original formula to shift gender, I figured all I'd have to do was tinker with the recipe a bit. Initial tests on lab animals were encouraging, and so I decided to try it on myself." Bennie – male again – smiled. "What can I say? I was curious to see what it would be like to truly become two genders instead of simply switching back and forth between them. But instead of splitting me into two separate beings, the formula turned me into a Hyde. But not just any Hyde – a super Hyde who could spread the transformation to others. Inside me, the formula mutated into an extremely contagious airborne virus, and all I had to do in order to make more Hydes was keep breathing. And once a new Hyde was created, it could spread the virus as well. By now every living – or semi-living – creature in my Nekropolis has been transformed. Only the dead are immune, but that's no great loss. The dead aren't much fun anyway. Now the city has become a non-stop party, and I get to have the fun of watching my Hydes run rampant, indulging their every dark whim until none of them are left."
"What then?" my Devona asked. "You'll be left to rule over a dead city. That doesn't sound like much fun."
Bennie shifted from male to female, and this time I was sure I saw the point where he/she hovered precisely between genders. I held my gas gun at my side, and while Bennie's gaze was focused on Devona, I flicked the selector switch on my weapon to its third setting.
"When I've squeezed every last drop of fun out of this city, I'll make Darius take me to another Nekropolis, and I'll start all over again there." Bennie grinned. "And when that one's used up, I'll move on to the next. How many different dimensions do you think there are that have Nekropolises? Hundreds? Thousands? I'm going to have so much fun playing with them all!"
Time to draw Bennie's attention back to me. "That's why your Matt had Darius get Devona and me. He knew that we'd go to our Bennie for help. There's no one else who understands more about your ancestor's formula and how to counter it."
"A smart move," Bennie Hyde said, "except it seems that your Bennie isn't quite the chemist I am. The antidote that Bennie gave you doesn't do more than temporarily change my Hydes back to their normal selves, and they're easily re-infected." She gestured, but I didn't take my eyes off her. I knew that all the Hydes we'd dosed with antidote gas had changed back to their bestial aspects again. But Bennie began to shift genders again, and I raised my weapon.
"My Bennie's a lot sharper than you think. For instance, Bennie made a special antidote just for you. And Bennie told us that shifting genders always places a strain on your system, weakening it, if only for a few seconds. But that should be long enough for this to do its job."
I aimed the gun at Bennie's neck and squeezed the trigger. My Bennie had only had time to make enough of the special antidote to fill a single dart, and I had to make this shot count. The dart whistled through the air and struck Bennie Hyde at the base of the throat.
Male again, Bennie Hyde roared with anger and tore the dart out of his neck. He threw the dart aside, rose to his feet, and glared at me. "I'm going to order my Hydes to tear the three of you into bitesized pieces, and then I'm going to have you for an afternoon snack!"
"Why would they listen to you?" I said. "You're not one of them anymore."
Bennie Hyde frowned. "What are you–" He grimaced, convulsed violently, then slumped down onto the bar and lay on his side. A moment later he sat up shakily, face pale, skin slick with sweat, but fully human once more.
"What… happened?" he said, rubbing his temples as if he had a terrible headache.
"I'll tell you in a minute," I said. "But first do me a favor: take a deep breath and let it out."
Bennie frowned at me. "What are you talking about?" Then she – for the gender switch had occurred again – noted the lounge full of Hydes surrounding us, all of whom began to snarl and step forward. "Oh, right."
A couple exhalations was all it took to begin spreading the Hyde antidote – which like the Hyde plague had become an airborne virus inside Bennie's body – and all around us Hydes began returning to normal, and in turn passed the cure on to any Hydes standing near them.
As waves of transformation rippled through the lounge, Vampire Matt grinned at me. It was more than a little disconcerting to see my mouth stretch into a wide smile and display a pair of very sharplooking fangs.
"Not bad," he said. "Almost as good as I could've done."
"I'm not the one who managed to get himself caught and tied up in bondage rope," I pointed out.
Zombie Devona looked at both of us. "Play nice, you two."
The two Hydes who'd been g
uarding our counterparts had changed back to themselves – a pair of Bennie's Arcane bartenders – and they quickly began untying their former prisoners. A couple moments later, our others selves were free and had come around from behind the bar to join us.
Everyone on the lounge had been returned to normal by that point. Quite a few people had been wounded during their time as Hydes, and those who weren't wounded saw to their care. A number of the cured headed outside to begin spreading the anti-Hyde virus to the rest of the city. I had no idea how long it would take before this Nekropolis was entirely free of the Hyde plague, but given how rapidly the virus had spread, I figured it wouldn't take more than a day or two.
Bennie climbed down from the bar and joined the five of us – Darius, both Devonas, myself and my vampiric doppelgänger.
"Thank Mother Kali that Darius was able to reach you!" Bennie said before giving both Devona and me a hug. "And when you get home, tell my other self that they're every bit the chemist our ancestor was!"
"We'll do that," I said. "And speaking of your other self…" I reached into my jacket pocket, took out a flash drive, and handed it to Bennie. "This contains the formula for the antidote that my Bennie designed to work on you. Just in case you ever need it again."
