by K. C. Finn
Cae understands the game well enough. The bottle will contain some sort of memory drug to put them back on a level playing field. He will have to find Angelica and her father all over again. But if there’s anything Caecilius Rex can trust, it’s his own merits. He raises the half-full bottle and pops its cap, looking Angelica in the eye once more.
“Cheers then.”
He smiles and puts the container to his lips.
20.
Two Days Ago.
Redd Richmond lies on a small cot looking up at a ceiling made of steel. People who think that prison is suffocating have clearly never spent time on board a submarine. The conman pulls at the neckline of his undershirt, his proper shirt and jacket discarded in a haze of humid sweat, certain that he’s not going to be able to breathe for much longer under these conditions. The faint echo of pressure outside reminds him how deep underwater he has been for so many days now.
The submarine is rising again to the surface, but not quick enough for his liking.
How did he get so involved in such an ugly mess? It’s not Redd’s style to stick with the same players for a whole game; he’s much more used to switching sides until he finds a winner. Angelica Forsyth is looking more and more like a winner with every passing day, yet he doesn’t want to play her game anymore. But throwing in the towel isn’t an option when you’re trapped undersea heading for the complete unknown.
The door to his chamber opens with a heavy creak and Angelica’s slight form slips inside. She stands and leans against a wall, crossing her arms at him with a vague look of disapproval. Redd doesn’t care about his image anymore; he continues to lie with one arm over his forehead to combat his dizzying stress.
“You get used to it the more you do it,” Angelica says, her voice level and oddly sad, “Daddy and I had to spend long periods down here when things were hot on the surface.”
“Surely these kinds of boats are banned nowadays?” Redd queries, his mouth damp and bitter, “It’s hard enough to keep track of ships on the surface.”
“I’m not even sure how many still exist,” Angelica admits, “but it sure is handy for getting around.”
“So did we go east or west from Europa?” Redd asks, desperate to know his destination after so long undersea.
“You’re about to find out,” Angelica replies, “Bring your things and come up top. We’re almost ready to surface.”
Whether he is terrified of his fate or not, the promise of air and outside and dry land is too much for Redd Richmond to handle. He is already throwing his clothes back on and searching for his shoes before Angelica has even left the room. It takes him minutes on unsteady feet to navigate his way back to the little hole in the celling he had climbed down what seemed like forever ago.
He can tell now that the pressure in the sub has changed as he stands waiting. The rocking of waves outside is unmistakeable; it makes him tap his toes inside his shoes and curl his fingers in anticipation. Someone hands him a gasmask and he straps it on eagerly, the thought of air, however smoggy, filling him with joy. When the hatch is finally opened he’s the first one up the ladder.
There is no sky to greet him, only faint tendrils of smoke that have crept into the cavern from places unknown. He has stepped out of one claustrophobic nightmare into another, a huge underground cave sporting a gargantuan lake in its centre. He walks out onto the deck of the submarine and notices a patch of land near enough to leap onto. It’s illuminated by torchlight and leads to a narrow, black tunnel. Redd gulps dryly. More walls to keep him in.
A hand on his shoulder makes him jump and Angelica laughs at him, sweeping her other arm out in a mockingly grand gesture.
“Welcome to your new home Redd,” she chuckles, “this is Lachrymosa.”
Redd grimaces under his mask, his brows drooping.
“The military base?” he asks, looking up at the hollowed out mountain above him.
“No, no,” Angelica corrects with a wagging finger like a schoolmistress, “this is the real base. Daddy’s base inside the rock.”
Though Redd had been invited to Lachrymosa once some years ago, his dealings with Lucien had always taken place at remote locations on the surface or in places where he’d had to wear a blindfold to take the journey. He understands now why The Face had always been so untraceable, so able to hide from the countless masses he’d terrorised for so long. But now Angelica has let Redd in on one of Lucien’s biggest secrets.
Perhaps that means she trusts him.
Redd shakes his head inwardly at the thought, his heart thumping hard against his ribcage.
It means that he’s not getting out of Lachrymosa alive.
Best Laid Plans
21.
“Tell me about the soldiers,” Kendra demands.
Cae turns to her, desperate to hide any signs that he might already know a fair chunk of the information she’s demanding from Julius. He wonders for a moment if the professor will even deign to give her the story; he looks pretty spent from regaling Cae with the tale of The Face and his newer, prettier protege.
Kendra, it would seem, has been able to flip Angelica from the victim category into the sinister murderous category with ease. Now she’s moving onto the next piece of the puzzle and threatening to leave Cae behind as his thoughts swirl about the petite figure with the perfect grin, the grin that’s been hiding a dark truth for so long. He doesn’t have time to wonder how she could sit beside him, counsel him, guide him, all the while running him in circles and trying to lead him to his death.
“Which soldiers?” Julius asks, helping Cae snap back to reality as he gives his father a disbelieving look.
“Don’t make me slap you around Julius,” Kendra replies, a smile creeping into her lip despite the thunder in her brown eyes, “I’ll do it, you know.”
“I have no doubt,” the professor adds, matching her held-back amusement like they’re having some little joke that Cae isn’t in on.
“We met a soldier out in the grounds who’d had his throat garrotted pretty badly,” he says, killing their jovial mood in an instant, “but the fellow was walking around like he was completely fine.”
“Even after we’d run him down with a buggy,” Kendra adds.
Julius blanches at her casual tone for a moment, but then he puts his fingers together like he’s praying. He’s about to speak again when a rattling noise forces the three of them to look up, across to the clean air barrier some seven feet away. The noise is coming from a gasmask in a pair of chubby hands. Howard Fowler looks up at them from above it with an apologetic grin.
“Sorry,” he stammers, “I thought I’d nip back and get some more of the beta samples from the old lab. I dropped some on the way here, so…”
His words hang in the air like a question; his usually small eyes are wider, more strained than Cae has ever seen them. Perhaps the clandestine life isn’t agreeing with him. Julius waves a hand at him impatiently.
“Of course,” he says, “I can tell them what they need to know. You go. And bring magnesium if you can find any.”
The chubby doctor nods and few times, one more cracked smile flashing before he secures his mask and carries himself away faster than his little legs should allow. Julius watches him go, blue eyes narrowed for a moment before he refocuses on Kendra and his son.
“I assume since you said he was garrotted that means you saw something in his throat that bothered you?”
“Boy did we,” Kendra says, wrapping her arms across her chest.
“He had a metal trachea or something similar,” Cae expands, “it was affecting his voice. He sounded like…”
He hopes that his look is telling Julius all he needs to know, that the word left unsaid is there for a reason. Not famed for her lack of tact, Kendra chooses that moment to leap in.
“Like a robot,” she adds, “I mean, I know Howard’s worked with bots, but you’re not actually putting metal parts into soldiers are you?”
The silence that follows is thick enough to cut i
nto slices and serve as cake.
“I’m afraid we are,” Julius replies eventually.
“The BiAndro Project,” Cae adds, “I read about it in the bank statement that Lady Locke gave me.” Kendra watches him speak with an expression of horror. “It’s personally funded by The Face, or at least it was up until recently.”
“Something else The Face made you and Howard do?” Kendra prods.
It’s clear she’s still looking for some way to vindicate Julius from all this. Cae wonders how forgiving she’d be if she knew how much metal was in her own system right now. He remains sickened by the things his father has done, forced or not, even more so when Julius speaks again.
“Actually the very first one was our idea.” The professor holds up a hand to stop Kendra’s outrage from interrupting him. “We were given a girl.”
Cae tenses at the way Julius’s eyes flash between him and Kendra on the word “girl”. He balls his gloved hands into fists, gripping the edge of his stool with just the pressure of his wrists.
“The girl had been abducted from the Wildlands out west from here,” Julius continues, “but her kidnappers were shot down by the soldiers and I sort of inherited her body.”
“Was she dead?” Kendra asks, her voice taking on an unfamiliar softness.
“Almost,” Julius replies.
“So you saved her,” Kendra sighs, starting to smile again.
“No,” Cae spits, shaking his head, his rage rising again like it had the first time he’d laid eyes on his father. “That might be what you tell yourself now, but you condemned her. You ripped her open and filled her up with plates and wires and all sorts of fun additions. She was a playground for a mind like yours, I’ll bet.”
Julius stands sharply, looking genuinely angry for the first time. Cae rises to meet him and Kendra is suddenly putting a hand to his chest, holding him in place so he has no opportunity to advance on Julius again.
“What would you have had me do?” the professor demands, “Leave her to die?”
But Cae can’t say what he really wants to say. He is too afraid to mention the way Kendra’s memories before that operation were erased, too fearful to reveal that information lest the soldier beside him puts two and two together. Right now she’s feeling sorry for some unknown girl, some poor wretch who’s been doomed to live out her days as less than human. He can’t, at any cost, let her find out that poor soul is her.
“So The Face saw what you’d done and gave you a pat on the head for good work, I suppose?” Cae asks, switching topic and pacing back away from the benches, putting distance between his physical fury and the cause of it.
“You could say that,” Julius replies, at least having the decency to hang his head whilst he speaks. “He had Howard and I build more of them.”
“How many?” Cae says.
Julius swallows dryly. “Fifty two are still in operation.”
“Holy hell,” Kendra adds, “Fifty wicked strong robot people who hardly feel pain?”
“It gets worse,” Julius says in less than a whisper.
“Of course it does,” Cae sighs, throwing his head back to look up at the mountain rock above him.
“They can be controlled,” the professor explains, “One push of a button and every super solider does the bidding of The Face.”
Kendra has her head in her hands and she misses the look that Cae and Julius are both giving her.
“All of them?” Cae asks, nodding at her.
“Every single one,” Julius replies.
22.
“One push of a button,” Kendra says.
A long silence has passed between the three until the ex-sergeant speaks. She looks at Cae keenly, recovered from the revelation and expecting him to be able to do the same.
“Well, it’s obvious what we have to do,” she shrugs, “Find the damn button.”
Cae nods determinedly. “Destroy the console that controls them, I agree.”
“You can’t do that,” Julius says, shaking his head, “For one thing, it’s deep in the other mountain where Lucien used to live. For another, destroying the console would allow the androids to become self-aware again.”
Cae’s eyes widen.
“You mean they’d know what they were?” he asks.
The professor gives a shuffle of his shoulders.
“Well they’d know something was wrong,” he admits, “Most people would be aware if they had all that tech shoved inside their flesh and blood: there’s a low level programming that prevents that kind of awareness. In most of the advanced soldiers it’s turned up to such an extent that they feel no pain whatsoever. The earlier ones were…a little more human, I suppose.”
“So if we break up the console, we basically condemn them to suffering,” Cae says, nodding, “You’re right. That plan’s out.”
“What?” Kendra asks, raging, “They deserve to know! If they know what they are then they’re less likely to turn on us.”
Cae finally snaps, the rage he has been saving for his father spilling out towards Kendra instead. He grabs her hard by the shoulders, looking straight into eyes that are as furious as his.
“Would you want to know?” he demands, “If it was you? If you were full of cogs and dials and your mind wasn’t really your own, would you want to know what he did to you?”
Julius stands, a picture of tension, one hand bent out of shape where he’s gripping the edge of one of the lab counters. In the false fluorescent lights he is pale and fearful as he watches the detective and the soldier’s exchange.
Kendra steels herself, her jaw set proudly.
“Yes I would,” she says calmly, “I could handle it.”
Cae shakes his head, sucking back the tear that wants to burn its way out of his eye.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snaps, letting her go.
“Perhaps she does,” Julius says quietly.
And Cae knows that the way ahead is clear enough. There’s no chance of Cae reaching Angelica to have this out if she has a private army at the touch of a button. Cae already knows that Kendra could out-match him solo, he can’t imagine with the addition of fifty one more of her would be able to achieve. They could certainly take over Dartley, or any town or that size, if that became their mistress’s will. They have to be set free from control, whatever the cost.
“All right,” the detective says, biting back his reservations, “we’ll smash the console up. How do we get into this other mountain?”
He turns to look at Julius to grab his attention, resisting every urge to have to call him Dad. But Julius isn’t looking up. He has seated himself on a stool again and pulled up his trouser leg, studying the garish wounds around the torture device on his calf, the one that keeps him trapped in his subterranean prison. Cae doesn’t want to call him by name, he can’t bear it, so he walks over to him slowly until his dark form is in the professor’s peripheral vision. Only then does Julius let out a sharp little sigh.
“Where’s the entrance to The Face’s base?” he asks again.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been there,” Julius says, still staring at his leg, “Nobody’s been around to change the settings of this thing since Lucien died. I’ve been stuck in this cavern since then.”
“I suppose we’ll just search for a cave entrance then,” Cae decides.
Before he can turn to discuss the plan with Kendra, his father reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. Cae flinches at the initial touch, but soon the contact sets a strange longing for family aflame in his chest. He can’t quite manage to put his hand on his father’s shoulder in response. But he wants to, that’s something at least.
“I want to come with you,” Julius says.
Kendra approaches the two men slowly.
“How’re you planning to achieve that without getting blown up?” she asks bluntly.
Julius gives her a chuckle. He recovers his leg and finally looks up at them both, his gaze settling on Cae.
“They aren’t all bad things that have come out of studying bio-andronics,” he says with a sad sort of smile, “it did allow me to build something else. Something I’ve been a little reluctant to use. But I think it’s time now.”
Cae watches him in silence as the professor moves from one bench to another, reaching into a large cupboard and pulling out a metal contraption that looks surprisingly light for its size. When he has it right side up, Cae can see the plastic shape of a foot and calf caged within a metal shell bearing wires in all sizes and colours.
A robot leg.
Cae’s glance shifts back to Julius’s own leg where he thinks of the gadget again. The professor has a sickly expression on his pale face.
“I suppose it’s a question of how badly I want to get out of here now,” he muses. Cae shakes his head, but cannot speak. “There wasn’t anything out in that world for me before. I felt like I couldn’t come back to you, son. But I want to help you. In all the ways that I can.”
“Isn’t there a solution that doesn’t involve you mutilating yourself?” Kendra demands, her voice broken.
Julius just smiles at her, taking in a sharp breath as he clutches the robotic limb tightly.
“As soon as Howard gets back we can begin,” he says, “Two of you should be enough to assist him.”
23.
Being a detective who specialises in unusual deaths requires a certain kind of stomach. Cae had thought he would have no problem witnessing a medical amputation after all the disgusting sights his career has brought to him. He is wrong.
The sawing of bone is the worst part, the part where his father’s calf is cleaved in two under Howard’s careful hand. For all his bumbling and strange nervousness of late, the doctor is just as determined and focused on his work as Cae has ever seen him. It wouldn’t be absurd to say that he seems to be enjoying the challenge of it all.
Julius, on the other hand, is not in the best of moods. Though he has numbed every ounce of pain out of his body with a special blend of powdered drugs from his stores, the professor is very much alert to the procedure that is happening. Kendra stands on his right, clutching his hand and arm tightly as he keeps reminding Howard of all things he should be considering whilst the op is taking place.
