by Alex Archer
“Why?”
“I had to make it that way. What if others like him found out they could be transformed back? They would attempt to do it themselves and the entire project would fail. No, they must realize that there is no going back. Only then will they learn to accept the new reality of their situation.”
“You really are sick,” Annja said.
Dzerchenko sighed. “My genius will be recognized at a later date. I have no problem with posthumous glory.”
“How did you get him out of the hotel so quietly?”
“It wasn’t hard. He was drunk.”
Annja nodded. “Yeah, but you’re not exactly a physical specimen. And Gregor weighs a fair amount. I should know—I hefted him upstairs.”
“Did you, now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he proved pretty easy to move when I got to him.”
“Was that you I heard moving about in the corridor?”
“You heard me? Why didn’t you come to investigate?”
“I did. Eventually.”
Dzerchenko grinned. “Waited too long, did you? And now your friend is here. All because you failed to act quickly. Just think, if you’d interrupted me, you could have stopped me from doing this. You might have been able to save Gregor.”
Annja gritted her teeth. “You’re evil.”
“Of course,” Dzerchenko continued, “there’d be no homecoming for you and Bob. You had no idea I had him. And then I would have simply transformed Bob into one of my new soldiers.”
“Why didn’t you?” Annja asked.
“Gregor is more physically gifted than your friend Bob. He is bigger and will probably endure punishment more.”
“He won’t get the chance,” Annja said.
“Oh? And how will you stop it? You’re going to kill him. Put him out of his misery. Is that it?”
“I was thinking about it,” Annja admitted, terrified at the thought.
Dzerchenko leaned against the gurney by Gregor’s feet. “No. I doubt you will. You don’t have it in you to strike down an unarmed person. And you especially won’t kill someone you were friends with.”
“You don’t know that,” Annja said.
“You kept me alive, didn’t you?”
“Because you’re going to transform him back into a normal human being.”
“I told you that is impossible.”
Annja sliced open his other cheek. “Do it. I won’t ask again. And if you tell me it can’t be done, then I will kill you. Bet on it.”
Dzerchenko sighed. “You really mean to go through with this?”
“Yes.”
“All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He pointed at a closet. “I need a gown and mask. Is it okay?”
“Fine.”
She moved with Dzerchenko to the closet and watched as he pulled on a set of scrubs. He placed a face mask over his mouth and then walked to the sink.
“Would you mind turning on the water? I need to scrub up before I crack him open again.”
Annja leaned in and turned on the tap. Dzerchenko scrubbed his hands, lathering them up and rinsing several times before he nodded that Annja could shut off the water. As he toweled off, he kept staring at her.
“He could die, you know.”
“Make sure he doesn’t,” she said.
“It’s not up to me, Annja. It’s up to him. It’s how his body reacts to getting cut into for the second time in several hours. The sheer shock of the procedure could send him over the edge.”
“You saved Bob from a gunshot wound that would have killed anyone else. You can make sure Gregor doesn’t die.”
“Those are two different things. Bob’s gunshot wound was bad, yes, but the repair was easy. For me, it was a piece of cake, as you might say. But this procedure is long and involved. And there’s no guarantee that he will survive it.”
“You’re stalling because you want him to wake up and attack me,” Annja said. “Now get to work.”
“I’m not hoping he wakes up,” Dzerchenko said. “In fact, it would be better for all of us if he stayed asleep.”
“Just get working. Tell me what you have to do.”
Dzerchenko sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“I’ve injected liquid metal into his hands, feet and jaw. It has already cooled and hardened. To undo it, I must superheat the metal to make it pliable again. Only then would I be able to remove it.”
“That sounds difficult and dangerous.”
Dzerchenko nodded. “I told you that it would be. It’s incredibly dangerous.”
“How hot do you have to get the metal?”
“Much too hot for humans to endure. There’s a chance his system could go into shock from that alone.”
Annja looked at Gregor’s naked body. He was a mess of stitch marks from where Dzerchenko had cracked him open. Blood had splattered the edges of the gurney. The procedure didn’t look as if it had gone easily.
Was Dzerchenko telling the truth? Would she be killing him if she ordered Dzerchenko to proceed? And could she live with herself if he did die?
“Annja?”
She looked at Dzerchenko. “What?”
“I’m going to start now. Are you sure this is what you want me to do? Are you absolutely sure you want me to do this?”
Annja bit her lip. Gregor. Poor Gregor. Look at him. A shell of the man he used to be only hours before. And now he’s some freak of nature waiting to wake up.
And eat.
“Do it,” she said firmly.
Dzerchenko nodded. “Very well. Just so you know—you have officially signed his death certificate.”
“Make sure he doesn’t die. Or you will.”
Dzerchenko pointed at a tray of surgical instruments. “I need a scalpel to cut into him. Is that okay?”
Annja backed up. “Go ahead. But don’t try anything funny or I’ll cut you in half before you get two steps closer to me.”
Dzerchenko nodded. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Annja frowned. Why is he so cooperative?
Dzerchenko lifted a scalpel from the tray and held it up to the light. “Isn’t this a marvel? The way it can be so brittle and yet so lethal? Amazing tools, these scalpels.”
Annja looked at Gregor again. This is it, she thought. Was this the right thing to do?
Dzerchenko brought the scalpel down. “Here we go.”
“Do it,” Annja said.
Dzerchenko looked up. “Yes. Do it.”
Annja felt something pierce her skin from behind. She dropped the sword and slumped to the floor.
She heard Dzerchenko’s laughter echo in the shadows of her mind.
32
Annja heard voices rattle through her head as she came around. Unlike any of the other times she’d been knocked out lately, there was no throbbing in her skull as she opened her eyes.
“Welcome back.”
Bright light made her wince, but then she adjusted.
Dzerchenko leaned over her. “How are you feeling?”
“Why do you care?”
“Just checking for any aftereffects of the drug.”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded. “Probably better than all those knocks you’ve been taking on your head, eh?”
“How did you know about them?”
Dzerchenko waved her off. “I took an X-ray of your skull when I knocked you out to make sure there was no serious damage. I could see the contusions you’d gotten before. You’ve been taking some good knocks recently. You want to tell me about them?”
“I nearly got run off the road biking into this dump of a village. Then I fell in the cave and banged my head against the rocks.”
“Ouch. You ought to be more careful.”
Annja frowned. “Tell you what—from now on I’ll make sure to ask that all my head injuries be done with a pillow.”
“Or a drug like my good friend gave you,” the doctor said.
Annja turned. Beyond Dzerchenko, a face she recognized smiled back at her. He didn’t look as demure and submissive as he had back at the hotel, though.
“So, it’s you,” she said.
The innkeeper smiled and took a bow. He seemed distinctly pleased with himself. Annja found it nauseating.
“This,” Dzerchenko said, “is my good friend and assistant Tupolov. I believe you’ve met him before, under very different circumstances.”
“We’ve met,” Annja said. “And now that I know who he really is, I’ll be sure to kill him after I kill you.”
Dzerchenko and Tupolov laughed. Dzerchenko shook his head. “I told him you were a funny one. He didn’t believe me.”
Annja sat up on the gurney. “Why didn’t you restrain me?”
Dzerchenko shrugged. “Why bother? Since you proved so capable of ruining one set of restraints, I saw no need in sacrificing any more. Besides, take it as a measure of my good faith.”
“Good faith? Are you insane?”
Dzerchenko shrugged. “Hardly. I’d like to offer a truce.”
“Why?”
“I can use someone like you,” he said.
“For this? Forget it.”
Dzerchenko leaned closer. “But you’ve got skills and abilities I would love to study. Together, we could really do some pioneering work in the field of psychic-spiritual research.”
“There’s no way I would ever work with you. Not after what you’ve done to my friends and to innocent people alike,” Annja said.
“But don’t you understand the importance of this research? It can help people. Isn’t that what you want? You could help people, Annja.”
“I can barely help myself most of the time,” Annja said. “And the people I help are the ones I choose to help.”
Dzerchenko frowned. “Tupolov didn’t think you’d go for it, but I insisted on trying.”
“Maybe he’s the smarter of the two of you.”
“He suggested I just kill you and get it over with.”
Annja shrugged. “Whatever.”
“The concept of your own death doesn’t seem to faze you much,” the doctor said.
“I’m comfortable with the thought of dying.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
Dzerchenko laughed. “More bravado, I’m afraid. You might claim such, but I don’t buy it. You’ve got too much loneliness in your eyes to be so nonchalant about death. You still long to find someone you can share your heart with. You want love, like everyone else in this world. And until you have that, you’ll always wonder.”
“What about you? Are you ready to die?” she asked angrily.
“I’ve been ready to die for years,” Dzerchenko said. “Both of us have. But we’re not allowed to die until our work is successful.”
“What in the world does that mean?”
Dzerchenko sat down in a plastic chair. “How old do you think I am?”
“Sixty?”
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Is this where you tell me you’re actually five hundred years old?” Annja asked.
Dzerchenko shrugged. “No, don’t be ridiculous. But Tupolov and I are both ninety-five years old.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I kid you not. We were hired by Stalin to work on this project. And we’ve been working on it ever since. Oh sure, they move us from time to time—thirty years ago to this place. And they’ll probably do it again, but we’ve always kept going. The last thing he said to us—Stalin, that is—was that we could not die until we successfully completed the project.”
“And how did you manage that?”
Tupolov held up a vial of serum. Dzerchenko gestured at it. “Our fountain of youth. It’s a genetic mixture of stem cells combined with supernutrients. We inject ourselves with it once a week, and that keeps us going.”
“And you won’t ever die?” Annja asked.
“Well, not from old age. At least not yet as far as we can tell. We only developed the serum about twenty years ago. When we started faltering because of old age, we knew we had to take steps to ensure our survival. We had to keep our promise to Stalin.”
Annja shook her head. “It’s not possible.”
Dzerchenko laughed again. “You’re one to talk about impossibilities, Annja. After all, you seem to have the ability to summon some kind of sword at will. Now really, is it fair to say we’re an impossibility?”
He had a point, but Annja kept glancing around. The gurney that held Gregor had vanished.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Gregor.”
Tupolov grinned. “I would have thought she’d ask about Bob first. I guess we were wrong about who she cares about more.”
Annja looked toward the door she’d come through originally. It was closed. Was Bob still in there? “Where’s Bob?” she said.
Dzerchenko shook his head. “No fair. You asked about Gregor first.”
“Just tell me where they are.”
“Gregor is fine. He’s awake.”
“You fixed him?”
“Of course not. I left him just the way he was. He’d be dead otherwise—I told you that.”
Annja frowned. “And what about Bob?”
“Ah well, Bob is also awake. Although I suspect at the moment he is quite anxious.”
“Why?”
“I told you what would be happening, Annja.” Dzerchenko shrugged. “It’s not like it was a surprise or anything.”
Annja hopped off the table. Tupolov leveled a gun on her. Dzerchenko held up his hand. “Now, now, is this really necessary? Tupolov there has a trigger finger that is unrivaled for a ninety-five-year-old man, I assure you. If you make a move that looks even vaguely suspicious, you’ll be dead in short order.”
“Tell me where they are,” Annja demanded.
Dzerchenko pointed at a window at the end of the room. “You’ll find them over there.”
Annja walked to the window. It looked down upon a wide area roughly thirty feet in diameter. In the center of the room Bob lay in his hospital bed.
Across from him, Gregor stood.
But he didn’t look like Gregor anymore.
His hands hung by his sides. Annja could see the sharpened metal claws. She could see his pointed toes. And she could hear the clacking of his metallic teeth.
Gregor was gone. A monster had replaced him.
“I’ll bet he’s hungry,” the doctor said.
She turned and saw Dzerchenko and Tupolov coming toward her. She turned back. Bob’s face was a mask of terror.
“It’s all in the name of research, my dear. All we have to do is switch off the force field and Gregor there will be all over Bob.”
“So why haven’t you done it already?” Annja asked.
“We wanted to give you a choice.”
“What choice? You’ve created a monster and you’ve placed one of my oldest friends in harm’s way. What choice is there in that?”
“Plenty,” Dzerchenko said. “You can still save Bob.”
Annja looked at him. “How?”
“Fight Gregor. We need field data to surmise how well he will adapt to a skilled foe. You fit the bill quite well. Much better than any of the locals we could hope to kidnap thanks to Tupolov’s inn.”
“And if I fight him?”
Dzerchenko shrugged. “No guarantees. He should kill you. But you might also kill Gregor. And if that happens, then obviously, Bob doesn’t get eaten.”
“And we go free?”
Dzerchenko smiled. “Well, now, I suppose that would be something we’d need to discuss when the time came. Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, after all.”
“I’m not giving you what you ask unless I’ve got some sort of guarantee,” Annja said.
“Then you’ll stand here and watch Bob die.”
“Horribly,” Tupolov added. “It truly is a grisly sight watching them devour another huma
n. Cannibalism is a terrible thing.”
Annja looked down on the horrible scene. Bob’s face had paled. She could see him trying to flex against his restraints. But he was held fast. He might tear out his sutures if he keeps doing that, she thought.
“What’s it going to be, my dear?”
Annja looked at the two old men. She’d never known such hatred before. They looked evil and wicked, and the thought of what they’d done to so many people sickened her. But she was trapped.
She noticed that Tupolov held a remote control in his other hand. “Is that for the force field?” she asked.
He nodded. “Just in case you had any bad ideas about drawing your sword and cutting us down. My last act would be to release Gregor. And I’m willing to bet he can eat Bob before you can break the window.”
Dzerchenko’s voice was quiet in her ear. “It’s decision time, Annja. We can’t wait any longer.”
“Too much to do,” Tupolov said.
Annja looked back into the improvised arena. Gregor was already straining at the edge of the force field. Twice he tried to punch through it, but he was forced back as the electricity jolted him.
Bob was yelling. But Annja could hear nothing through the window.
“What’s it going to be?” Dzerchenko said.
Annja looked at him. “You’re asking me to kill one of my friends to save the other.”
Dzerchenko nodded. “The power over life and death is never easy, is it?”
Annja looked back at the arena. “You’ll bring Bob out of there if I go in?”
“Immediately.”
“And you’ll take care of him?”
“Of course.”
Annja looked at Dzerchenko. “If I die inside there, Bob goes free.”
Dzerchenko smiled. “Whatever you say.”
Annja knew he’d never keep his word. But she had no choice.
“Show me how to get inside.”
33
Dzerchenko led her down a set of metal stairs that Annja hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room. In front of her, she could see a metal door that looked as if they’d stolen it from a submarine.
“It’s a security procedure for us,” Dzerchenko said.
“We find that the new creatures are somewhat likely to have temper tantrums. They stay down here until they get acclimated.”
