Thinking fast, Harry kicked off his shoes, hopped over the rail and checked the underside of the elevator. Sure enough, it had a thick metal cable that led to the ground. “Climb onto my back,” he whispered to Istvan. “I’ll take you down.”
Doubt painted Istvan’s face, but there seemed to be no choice. “Hurry,” Harry urged, and his friend clambered over the rail and latched onto his neck. Grabbing the cable, Harry shinnied down, his breathing even and his muscles hardly straining. As he descended, he made out the misshapen forms of five guards directly below and halted. Istvan whimpered, but Harry hushed him. “The guards are below us. Quiet!”
Istvan shut his mouth, they waited, and once the guards had passed, Harry spotted an empty space behind some machines that looked to be generators, and let go. The air rushed by and the pig-man let out another whimper as they fell. Controlled falling, Harry thought, and like his feline counterparts, he landed on his feet. “We’re here. You can let go now.”
Immediately, Istvan got off his shoulders and scampered over to a corner in order to hide behind one of the machines. Peeking out from behind the machines—his guess had been right, they were generators—he saw Allenby emerge from the side of the rock. His genius had managed to carve out rooms deep within the earth. He gestured to three of his minions, cockroach-bodied things with vaguely human faces, and they immediately scuttled off.
He then strode forward, and his legs, more like tree trunks than anything else, caused the ground to tremble. As he approached, Harry’s heart began to hammer. Allenby had mutated even more, grown taller and heavier. The calcifications around his eyes had solidified into what looked like solid bone.
As for his body, the extra arms on his torso had indeed lengthened and thickened as well. Cords of muscle stood out from his torso and rippled with each stride he took, and menace seemed to ooze from every pore. His eyes, still a demonic red, glowed with an almost supernatural intensity, and seemed to swallow up every object they rested on. It was like watching a mutated super-villain check out his domain.
God, what am I supposed to do now? And where’s Anastasia? Harry’s mind whirled. Taking on a mutant like Szabo was one thing, but taking on some almost otherworldly... thing like this... doubt swept through him like a tidal wave.
A second later, though, determination shone through and replaced the fear. His wife was being held captive by this maniac. She was carrying their child. I made a promise. I’m taking my wife and friends out of here. This thing won’t stop me.
“Goldman,” Allenby whispered. He’d uttered that one word quietly. Nevertheless, it rang out along the walls, a deep, sepulchral sound guaranteed to send a shiver down the spine of the bravest individual. “I know you’re here. I can smell you. It’s the smell of fear. Step out into the light where I can see you.”
Knowing it would have eventually come to this, Harry did as requested, keeping a fair distance away and taking note of his surroundings. Allenby, though, stayed put and waved his arm at the array of machinery. “I suppose it’s a cliché to ask if you like what I’ve done to this place.”
“It’s impressive. Where’s my wife?”
A smirk briefly passed over Allenby’s ugly, mottled features. “To answer your statement, so it is. As to your question, she’s safe... for now. You’ll see her soon enough. You and I, we have business to attend to first.”
While Harry raged inwardly, outwardly he attempted to keep calm. There was nothing he could do and nowhere to go. Allenby, seemingly unconcerned, began to walk around, explaining how he’d set everything up over a number of years. “As was the case with my little house in France, I started my rise to power a number of years back. I had a dream of being a leader in medicine and science, planning things accordingly. When I saw the chance at finding a place where I’d be undisturbed—here—I took it.”
“You bought this land and made this cavern?”
“I did.” Allenby swept his hand around. “I admit it isn’t the most beautiful place around, but it serves me well enough. The power comes from the dynamos at the nearby dam. I’ve developed a system to siphon it off. The authorities haven’t figured it out.”
“I managed to,” Harry answered. “That is, the FBI did.”
“So they did,” glowered Allenby. “Well, they can try to come here. They’ll find it more difficult to enter, I can assure you.”
Harry should have been shocked, but wasn’t. A number of curses ran through his head at light speed, all of them essentially saying he’d been an utter idiot for having simply walked in. Of course there had been no cameras, no motion sensors, no tripwires... or they’d been temporarily disabled in order to allow access.
“Yes, I turned my alarm systems off,” Allenby said as if reading his mind. “They’re on again, and if anyone tries to breach that door, they’ll either be blown up by hidden bombs or cut down by lasers. If that doesn’t work, my loyal subjects will emerge and destroy them.”
As Harry digested this, Allenby continued to talk, this time discussing the function of each machine he’d set up, the pride evident in his voice. He knew the details of each and every device and rattled off scientific data.
His mood, though, turned dark when he beheld his visage in some reflective glass on one of the Genesis Chambers. “I could have become a god instead of this.” He swept his hands—they also had a number of bony protrusions on the knuckles—up and down his body. “You made me this.”
“No, you did.” It was time to shove the truth in this monster’s face. “I left you the memory stick. You didn’t check the calculations. Whose fault was that? You wanted too much, too fast. And I can’t give you what I don’t have. I don’t know why the devolution occurs, but you won’t get the answers from Istvan’s blood. If I can’t find out why, how are you going to?”
An evil smile crept across Allenby’s face. He snapped his fingers. One of his men, another goat-like patch job, came forward and held up a squealing Istvan. “Take a good look at my latest prisoner. I’m going to find out how to solve the breakdown in immune response if I have to drain every bit of blood from this little pig. If I have to dissect his body while he’s still alive, that’s what I’ll do as well. Science marches on.”
Snapping his fingers, his minion took the still-protesting Istvan away. In a quick movement, Allenby turned and walked over to the upgraded Genesis Chamber.
“Don’t worry about your pig friend,” he said. “He won’t be harmed, at least for now. I want you to take a look at this vessel I’ve constructed,” he instructed. “This is what the next step in evolution will be. Even though I’m currently a freak, this is what will turn me into a god.”
It looked much more detailed than the other chambers. Harry cautiously approached it, and after checking out the upgrades, he had an inkling of what it could do. Allenby obliged him by going over to one of the desktop computers and tapping out a series of commands. “Take a look for yourself.”
Doing so, Harry looked at what seemed to be an extremely long and ultra-complicated DNA chain. Shock flowed through him when he realized what the endgame in all of this was. The coding was all wrong and it contained too many...
“Your power input is higher and the DNA you’re using...” Glancing at Allenby, who by now was nodding his head, his worst thoughts were confirmed. “You’re going to combine all of the genotypes?”
“Every single one,” Allenby beamed. His grin, though, looked anything but merry. It made a gargoyle look positively GQ-ish. “Not only will I have the intelligence of a superior man, I’ll have the looks as well. This misshapen vessel is what you’ve given me, Goldman.” He swept his hands up and down his torso.
“However, I can now reshape my body as well as those of my followers to anything I desire. I’ll have all of the strength, speed, and regenerative abilities anyone could want, but I’ll look human and at the same time, become something more than human.”
Simultaneously thunderstruck and scared by the prospect of this device actually wor
king, Harry attempted to find out more. “And what about the cloning experiments?”
“What of them? I’ll continue to do what I wish to do and refine the process. First, though, I’m going to make myself something to worship.”
An all too familiar gleam in his eyes indicated fanaticism combined with delusion. Allenby then offered a smile, this one not so horrid looking. “If you think I’m crazy, I’m not. I’m determined, more so than I’ve ever been. You have given me that incentive.”
He clapped his hands twice, and this time, two more goat-men appeared, dragging Anastasia between them. She resisted, but they were strong and held her fast. “What is your will, master?” asked one of them.
Allenby practically gloated. “See how well I’ve trained them? Each of them has the intelligence of a persimmon, but they have the strength of three ordinary men. These are my guards. I’ll have an army of clones soon enough, and then I’ll take my place upon the legends of this planet.”
Insane, this thing had to be insane, thought Harry as he looked at his wife. Worry shone from her eyes, but she gave no sign of pain and said nothing. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about her,” said Allenby as he quickly strode over and stood in front of Harry, towering over him. “I’d worry more about what I’m going to do to you. I’d also worry more about what I’m going to do to that bitch you call a mate.”
This monster outsized him by ten inches and over a hundred and fifty pounds, Harry estimated. Fighting down dread, he stared his opponent in the eye. “Call my wife a bitch again, and I’ll end you.”
Allenby put his hands on his hips and leaned back to offer a laugh. “You are nothing! And you will regret not helping me.”
He clapped his hands again, and two more underlings appeared. Both of them were large, dull-eyed, and brutish, with the heavy torsos of oversized pit bulls and heads like snakes. They even had snakes’ tongues, flicking them out lazily. One of them asked, “Yes, what is it, master?”
“Escort these prisoners to their cell. Once you arrive, hold the female, but don’t harm her. Hold this male,” he indicated Harry with a wave of his hand, “as well. I’ll be down shortly.”
“Yes, master.”
The snake-men took them down the passageway to the spot where Allenby had first emerged. One of the guards pressed a button on the wall and the rock façade slid aside. “Move,” he said.
Down the hard earthen passageway they went until they reached a jail cell at the end of the hallway. It was large enough to house two people and had two cots in it. “How thoughtful,” Harry remarked as he gazed at the interior. “It’s our honeymoon suite.”
Anastasia let out a harsh laugh. “They probably don’t understand.”
“No, they don’t,” Allenby’s voice said. For something so large, he moved quietly and quickly. “But it doesn’t matter. They follow orders very well.” He nodded at the guards and one of them immediately yanked Harry’s arms behind him and held him fast.
“I want you to see this,” Allenby said to Anastasia. “Watch and learn.”
Anastasia stood rigid, her face a mask. Harry also stood tall and waited for the monster to begin the beating. When it came two seconds later, at least it wasn’t a surprise, although he was surprised at how much punishment he could take. Blows rained upon his face and his torso. Allenby beat him all over, but spirit unbowed, he didn’t make a sound until after he’d been smashed for perhaps the twentieth time.
Number twenty-one made him groan, but he fought off the pain, sequestering it in the back of his mind. Anastasia broke down first, though, crying, “Stop it,” over and over.
“I’ll stop when I feel like it,” the monster replied with satisfaction oozing from every word. He continued his assault. “I want him to feel pain, to know agony.”
Agony had now become Harry’s constant, unwelcome companion. He felt himself going away, and hoped his wife would somehow manage to escape.
Chapter Fourteen: Showdown
Waking up in a world of hurt, Harry felt a cool cloth on his face. “Am I dead yet?” he asked.
“If you open your eyes, you’ll find out.”
He knew that voice. Opening his eyes as requested, he found himself back in the cell, lying on a filthy cot. Anastasia sat next to him, squeezing the blood out of a rag. “There’s a bucket of water next to the cot. I got this rag from that monster,” she said, the distaste heavy in her voice. “He wants you alive. He knows you’ll heal.”
Harry wasn’t sure about the last part. Every part of him ached, especially his ribs. Allenby hit like a sledgehammer, and his fists felt like concrete mixed with steel. As he took in shallow breath after shallow breath, he heard his bones begin to grate, reform, and the pain of regeneration was almost as bad as the beating. It took all he had in him not to scream. Concentrating, he blocked out the agony and forced himself to sit up. “I’ll heal, but I won’t enjoy it.”
Taking in a few more breaths, he gazed at the lock on the cell door, noted its solid construction, and decided they’d have to get out another way. “So, how are we going to get out of here? Have we got a plan?”
“I wish I knew.”
They waited, and sure enough, the sound of footsteps came. Two snake-men opened the door. Armed with machine guns, one of them opened up the cell door and motioned Harry out. “Our master wishes to speak with you again.”
“Can’t you think of anything original to say?” he asked.
“No.”
Well, chalk up that response as being somewhat original. Harry painfully got to his feet and went to the door. “See you later.”
They escorted him to the chamber room where Allenby was sitting on a specially constructed steel chair, bent over a laptop and gently pecking away at the keys. “Glad you’re here, Goldman. You’re just in time to witness a first in upgraded cloning.”
“You mean, another mistake, don’t you?”
A grunt, perhaps signifying disagreement, came from the giant. “You really don’t think I have the intelligence to pull this off?”
“No.”
In spite of his antipathy toward this monster, Harry found his curiosity aroused. It wasn’t every day that a breakthrough in science was achieved. At the same time, he knew of the dangers. Combining one kind of animal DNA with human DNA proved effective most of the time. He’d seen how perverted it had become when two or more types were used, especially when some of them came from invertebrates. This time, Allenby was proposing to use all of them.
In a way, though, it made sense. The old phrase of ontogeny repeats phylogeny flashed through his mind. It meant modern man contained every single genotype of his ancestors, from fish to ape. This maniac, though, wanted to rewrite the entire genetic code and do it within the period of less than five minutes, assuming his machine worked.
“We’ll see,” Allenby grated as he finished typing in some commands. Task over, he clapped his hands and one of his goat-men followers came over, clad only in a loincloth.
“I am here, Master,” he said with a certain amount of reverence and bowed.
This whole master-servant thing was nothing short of disgusting. Groveling before this thing was not on Harry’s to-do list, but he bit his lip in order to stifle a response. Allenby didn’t seem to notice. If he did, then he didn’t care, and he nodded at the oversized chamber. “You are the next generation,” he said to his minion. “Step inside, and be forever transformed.”
Obediently, the goat-man walked inside and the door closed behind him. Allenby murmured that his man had already received the necessary DNA cocktail. “Now, the machine will accelerate the process.”
He threw the switch. In a flash, the chamber lit up and Harry moved back a step as the screaming started. “You’d better kill the power, or else what’s inside might kill you,” he warned.
“It has to continue,” said Allenby, his voice oozing confidence. He quickly typed in some other commands. “He’s got to stay in another two minutes.”
This was evolution at its fastest, but not necessarily at its finest. Millennia of change, discarding unneeded genes while enhancing others, cross-channeling... all of those things and more were occurring in the test subject. He continued to scream as changes which shouldn’t have happened in the first place were thrust upon his being and his essence was being transformed into... what?
“Ready,” said Allenby, and tapped a button. The power to the chamber abruptly shut off, and he arose from his seat, a smile on his hideous visage. “In this demonstration, I used only half the necessary genes. Science shall march on.”
The door to the chamber opened, and the goat-man stepped out. At least... part of him did—literally. His body had been halved. The part that stepped out was goat in nature, a goat’s head and left leg. The torso flopped around, as if it had no spine. The arm looked mostly human.
An eye, large, protruding, and full of terror, swiveled around madly in an effort to understand the horror that had been wreaked upon it. Its half-mouth quivered in a silent scream. A second later, the remaining part of its brain flowed out onto the floor and it collapsed.
As for the other half, it appeared to be a mixture of goat, bovine, horse and something else that Harry couldn’t figure out even if he had the time or inclination to. It stayed behind, and both halves subsequently dissolved into a puddle of organic goo. Allenby let out a bellow of what had to be supreme frustration.
“Science marches on,” observed Harry with just the right amount of irony.
“Have a care, Goldman,” Allenby roared as he stared at the puddles of organic slime. His hands quivered as well with barely suppressed rage. “You’re still my prisoner, and your life hangs in the balance. Yours, your wife’s... they belong to me, as does that thing inside her.”
At the mention of the baby, Harry almost lost it, but knew he didn’t stand a chance against this creature. In addition, his men were armed and they’d shoot upon command. “So where do you go from here?”
Separation Page 20
