Sun scoffed. “Evil?”
Kane gestured to cell number 9. “I don’t mean the notion of evil—some philosophical debate about the inner nature of man. I mean evil as a living, breathing being like that thing in there. This facility—and hundred others like it—were built to contain the predators that have haunted men’s nightmares since the dawn of time. We are the jailors of nightmares. The Spiral is a giant underground prison; the most maximum-security prison ever built. And there are three hundred and thirty-three others just like it, all over the world. The cells are mostly automated. Food is released from shafts in the ceilings and water is piped in through several taps. Every now and then we have to sedate the inmates while my men…clean up any mess, for want of a better word.”
Jerry slouched against the wall, pulled his leather jacket tight around himself as if he were hoping it would hide him away. “This is heavy. What the frak did Batman sell to me?”
Kane frowned. “Batman? I know who Batman is, but I’m afraid I still do not get the reference.”
Sun sighed. “A guy dressed as Batman sold him drugs. It’s a long story.”
“One I have no time for,” said Kane.
“I want to see inside the other cells,” said Andy. “I want to know everything that you’re keeping down here.”
“How many guests do you have here exactly?” Sun asked, dreading what the answer might be.
“Each subbasement has eighteen cells. They are all mostly full.”
Sun did the math. “You have almost one hundred and eighty creatures held here?”
Kane shook his head. “You’re assuming that occupancy is one per cell.” He pointed back at cell number 9. “Take a closer look.”
Sun went back over to the hatch and peered inside. She waited a moment, but then she saw it.
“There’s more of them in there.”
Inside the habitat, several more imps appeared from amongst the foliage. They were of varying sizes, but all had the same pink skin and swishing tails. They gathered in front of the rock cave and faced the hatch. There were perhaps a dozen of them in total.”
“We let the dirty little things breed,” said Kane. “But we keep their numbers low. Once a year we cull any creatures that are over the thresholds we set. Either that or we use them for our research.”
Sun looked in at the group of childlike creatures and suddenly felt a tug of guilt. “They’re a family?”
Kane folded his bony arms. “You could call it that, I suppose. As much as you would call a dozen rats a family. I’m more inclined to think of them as a pack of vermin. Come on, I’ll show you the next cell.”
The group moved on like a tour group in the world’s most surreal museum. They stopped in front of cell 10 and Kane once again operated the LED panel beside the door.
The hatch opened.
Sun was again the first person to look inside. This time the interior was a blank canvass of grey bedrock. In several places the ground was puckered, rising up into small craters. The whole habitat reminded Sun of the surface of the moon.
I don’t see anything.
Then something caught her eye. It was about twenty feet inside. She adjusted her vision and focused on one of the craters. Something black was lurking inside. The only thing that distinguished it from the shadows was its brief fidgety movement.
Then something from the opposite side of the room scuttled towards the door and took Sun by surprise. She pulled back from the hatch and let out an involuntary yelp.
“You’re perfectly safe,” said Kane. “There are two males inside. The females fight when not kept alone. The main colony is in Moscow. These two were lent to us for scientific study.”
Sun leaned back up against the hatch and peered inside again. The creatures she saw inside were no different to pet shop tarantulas, except thirty times as big. The two jet-black arachnids were the height of a small cow with leg spans longer than a condor’s wings.
The hair on the back of Sun’s neck pricked up.
The two gigantic spiders reared up on their back legs and hissed. A cloud of bristles rose above them, a defensive irritant expelled from their abdomens. Venom dripped from their fangs.
Sun moved away from the hatch. “Why would you want to bring those things here for scientific studies?”
“For an all manner of things,” said Kane. “Anti-venom research is one example. The venom in their fangs is enough to drop an elephant. The females also make nests with silk stronger than any tensile material we know of. Some of our scientists also believe that these creatures may well be the progenitors to all other arachnids; the origin of the species, if you will.”
“You’re kidding me?” said Andy, taking a quick peep inside and then shivering in disgust. “You think these things were around in primordial times?”
“We know they were. Many of the species we have under lock and key have been around for millennia, but we believe some may be even more ancient. Some of the creatures in the lower levels of the Spiral even seem to be immortal. Attempts to euthanize them have failed, so instead we keep them secure; keep them away from the world. The less invasive species we allow some freedom, like the imps for instance, but the others are kept strictly confined. The imps and many of the less aggressive creatures we house here are kept, in many ways, like common zoo animals.”
Jerry tiptoed up against the open hatch and took a glance inside. He quickly moved away, looking extremely pale and feint.
Sun ignored him and kept her focus on Kane. “So why keep them a secret at all, if they’re not dangerous?
“I didn’t say there were not dangerous. I just said ‘less aggressive’. If we revealed a creature like an imp to the world, then questions would be asked about what else we have in secret. We can’t risk it. The original members of Deus Manus were devoted to God. They locked away anything they felt was hellspawn or intrinsically evil. I’m not about to second-guess them. They lived during a time where creatures like this walked the earth, so if they thought the imps were dangerous, then so do I.”
“But that can’t be possible,” said Sun. “There’s no records, no history.”
Kane shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, the society was created by the world’s most powerful elite; people who not only wrote the history books, but dictated the very direction of civilisation. Humanity matured knowing only what these men allowed it to.”
Sun bristled. “No one has that right. No one has the right to take ownership of history.”
“Yeah,” said Jerry. “Those Deus Anus blokes were bang out of order.”
Kane rolled his eyes at them all. “Like it or not, what we are tasked with here is more ancient and more important than anything else in existence. We are the keepers of humanity and it is our calling to prevent the evil kept inside this hole in the ground from corrupting the modern world. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that our secrets are kept buried.”
“Fine, whatever you say,” said Andy. “Still doesn’t explain why you brought us here. If you want us on your research team, then we politely decline. We’ve got lives to be getting on with.”
“This is not why you are here, Mr and Mrs Dennison. This is just a prelude to prepare you for what you are about to see. The reason you are here is buried deep in subbasement 10. We want you to meet our most recent guest. We think it’s someone you might recognise.”
Andy and Sun glanced at one another anxiously.
Kane motioned back towards the way they had come. Back towards the elevator. “Shall we head down?”
Chapter Six
Subbasement 10 was darker than the floors above. Unlike the rest of the facility, this area had not been recently refurbished. The walls were bare and cracked, with seams of mud pushing through from the surrounding earth. There were armed guards beside every cell door. The uniforms they wore were not military, but more like black-ops, with pouches and utility belts in abundance. The insignia on their upper arm was a golden sword with clouds above it.
&nbs
p; Andy rubbed at his temples as he headed down the corridor. He had a headache coming on. What he was seeing down here was not agreeing with him.
Kane glanced back over his shoulder. “What I want to show you is just down here. The cells up ahead are see-through. Six-inch bullet proof glass. It’s imperative that we can see what the guests are doing at all times. They have a tendency to try and escape.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Sun. “You have them locked away hundreds of feet below the ground.”
Kane said nothing. He marched ahead and stopped beside a pair of armed guards. He exchanged pleasantries with the two men while the rest of the group caught up.
“In here,” said Kane. “Take a look.”
Here goes, thought Andy. Time to see what all the fuss is about.
Andy peered through the glass. The cell was nothing but a large white room with a bench.
“I don’t see anything. Did you bring me here just to see a bench?”
Kane cleared his throat. “Look up, Mr Dennison.”
Andy craned his neck and glanced towards the room’s ceiling.
Behind him, Sun gasped. “Oh God.”
Jerry whistled in awe. “It’s a flappy little demon thing. Cute.”
Andy glared at the batling in the cell. It was a mini version of the abomination he and Sun had faced off against three years ago; the thing that had almost killed them both—and had succeeded in killing most of their colleagues. Its flesh was a muddy red colour, matted with course fur. Its arm bore talons while its feet ended in goat-like hoofs.
Andy’s eyes narrowed at the creature. “Bub…”
“I understand that you have met before,” said Kane.
Andy nodded, not taking his eyes of the object of his hatred for a split-second. “After Samhain was blown up, Bub exploded into dozens of these things which flew off in all directions.”
“All perfect replicas of Bub,” Sun added. “Such a thing should be impossible for any living thing, but we discovered that Bub was able to manipulate his own DNA.”
“As well as that of other living things,” Andy added.
The batling hovered eight feet above the ground. It had the same malevolent, sideways-blinking eyes as its creator and gave off the same barnyard smell, even through the thick glass.
Andy cleared his throat and gnashed his teeth. Then he turned to face Kane. “You have to destroy this thing.”
“That would be premature.”
“Why? This thing is pure evil. Keeping it alive is just inviting disaster.”
Kane fiddled with his shirt cuffs momentarily and then folded his arms across his narrow chest. “As I understand it, there are many more of these things running around out there. Better that we learn what we can from this one so that we may have a better chance of destroying them all.”
Andy returned his gaze to the batling. The batling glared right back at him. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No. No, he’s not.” It was Sun speaking. Andy was surprised she did not agree with him. “We need to be smart about this,” she said. “We don’t know what Bub was planning when he turned into these things and flew away. Killing one would achieve nothing with so many more out there. What’s more important is finding out what these things are up to, and where to find the others.”
Andy closed his eyes and wished to be somewhere else, anyplace else but there. But it would be burying his head in the sand to not admit that his wife was right. He had no choice but to be there.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked Kane. “What are you going to do with this thing?”
Kane shrugged. “Find out all we can. Sun can tackle the situation from a biological standpoint; study the creature’s physiology et cetera. We need you to try and communicate with it. Use your knowledge of Bub to try and find out as much as possible about what these ‘batlings’ are planning.”
“What about me?” Jerry asked.
Kane glared at him. “You stay out of the way and try not to give me any reason to shoot you.”
Andy glanced at Jerry and smiled. The kid was here whether anybody liked it or not. It would be wise to make the best of it. “You can be here for moral support,” he said.
Jerry smiled. “I can do that. I can, like, hold the test tubes and stuff for you.”
“Yeah, whatever works for you.”
“So when do we get started?” asked Sun.
“As soon as you meet the other members of the team,” Kane replied.
Sun started heading towards the elevator. “Let’s do that now. Sooner we get started the better.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” said Kane. “The people working on subbasement 10 are housed on the same level rather than level 4 with the rest of the facility. They need to be able to work closely and efficiently with their subjects.”
Andy smiled. “It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? Level 10 is separate so that you can blow it if anything escapes, along with any staff that may have been compromised.”
“I’m afraid we learned some difficult lessons after Samhain, Mr Dennison. You are, of course, correct. In case of an uncontainable security breach, the entire level is rigged to fill with concrete, as are all the over levels above—but level 10 is self-contained to make a full-quarantine easier to achieve. Anything alive down here will be fossilised within minutes of the concrete setting, while the floors above would remain unaffected. The elevator shaft would also be filled in and sealed. Of course, there’s also the good old option to self-destruct the entire facility.”
Andy winced.
“Can I take it that both of you are staying then?” Kane asked.
Andy shrugged. “Like either of us have a choice. We’re here, so let’s get to work.”
“Very good.” Kane led them further down the corridor. They passed by a whole host of monstrosities along the way. There was a hairy, snarling beast that looked a lot like the classical description of a werewolf, and a vile creature that was equal parts snake and eagle. The body was like a large bird of prey but its neck and head were serpentine, stretching out at least three feet into the air.
There was also a humanoid creature that could have easily passed for a man if not for its dislocated lower jaw and dagger-like teeth sticking out through the torn flesh of its cheeks. Its eyes were jet-black, with pupils so large that the whites were not at all visible. Its fingertips were barbed like fish hooks. And it glared at them with malice and utter hatred as they walked by its cell.
Really don’t want to be trapped in a room with that thing.
Up ahead, the transparent cells were coming to an end. A heavy steel door—like a bank vault—punctuated the conclusion of the corridor. As Andy passed by the final cell he glanced hesitantly inside, wondering what horror he would see next, but he was surprised to find a perfectly normal-looking, middle-aged man. The handsome male was dressed in jeans and a long grey overcoat and nodded to Andy as he passed by.
“How’s it hanging there, Governor?”
Andy stopped and studied the prisoner. The man had messy brown hair that fell down to his shoulders and a carpet of jet-black stubble clung to his face.
“Nay seen your face around here before, fella. You a newbie?”
As competent with languages as Andy was, he struggled to keep up with the stranger’s rapid-fire Irish accent. “I, erm, just got here,” Andy said. “Who are you?”
“My friends call me Lucas. Thrilled to make your acquaintance, so I am.”
The way the man said ‘thrilled’ sounded like ‘trilled’.
“A pleasure,” said Andy. “So, what are you…in for?”
“We’re not sure,” Kane interrupted. “Lucas here has the distinction of being unlike any of the other residents housed here.”
“Why’s that?” Sun asked.
“He’s here voluntarily. We never captured him. About a week ago he just appeared inside this cell and has been here ever since. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep. He’s not even organic as far as
our tests can find.”
Sun cleared her throat and took a second look at the man inside the cell. “Not organic. What do you mean?”
“I mean his blood tests give no DNA, his flesh samples are inconclusive, and his hair follicles contain no proteins. It’s almost like he doesn’t exist. Except here he is.”
Andy stared at Lucas. Lucas stared back with an amiable smile on his face. There was nothing to suggest the man was anything more than a forty-year old human.
“We brought you here because of the batling,” said Kane. “But this man right here…well, of all the mysteries the Spiral contains, he’s the biggest.”
Chapter Seven
While Sun and Andy went to meet their new colleagues, Jerry was escorted to his room by a dick with a gun, who practically frogmarched him to the room in which he now stood. The whole experience had left Jerry feeling abused and upset.
Goddamn bullies. Story of my life.
At least the new digs were pretty sweet. The living quarters they’d provided him were almost as big as the two-bedroom flat he used to share with his mother back at home, back before she’d…
Got to stop thinking about the past, dude. Dwelling has got me in enough trouble already. I can’t even go back home because of what I did.
Still, I landed on my feet with this place. I came to America for Comic Con and ended up in a real life episode of the X-Files. I’m like a cooler Fox Mulder.
And that Italian chick would make a pretty good Scully.
Except that she’s married. And way out of my league.
And old.
Jerry decided to take a load off. The come-down from the drugs he’d taken had left him feeling groggy and sick. It was an experience he wasn’t in a hurry to repeat. Taking drugs had been a stupid idea in the first place, but if his life was soon to be over he had thought, what the hell, might as well try it.
He lay down on the room’s plush double bed and stared up at the ceiling, his vision spinning slightly and adding to his nausea.
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