She snorted to herself. Consent, as if anyone one would agree to what was being done to her. In the back of her mind, she realized that she was losing her grip on her sanity if she could find something close to humor in her situation.
Earlier in her imprisonment she wondered if Leader was behind all the physical abuse. She soon discounted the possibility. Leader had no need to resort to physical punishment. She could easily lock her up in her mind and subject her to unspeakable horrors without touching her, as Charlie knew from bitter experience.
It had to be someone testing the limit of her ability to heal. There had to be a reason for her suffering, hadn’t there?
The other confusing part was that nothing had attacked her on the mental plane —the psychological trauma she was experiencing due to the vivisection notwithstanding. If an initiate, one of the Quickened, had her there they would have been trying to breach her mental shields. As far as she could tell her shields had not been breached, even while she was unconscious. This was worrying, as their biggest taboo was to avoid detection by the Herd, and all signs indicated that this was exactly what was happening.
The device around her head started to hum and she felt pinpricks against her scalp and spine. The smell of her burning flesh hit her nostrils before she felt the excruciating pain.
She jerked her body and tried to move her head from side to side. She could hear the strain on the metal band across her forehead. One of the links in the chain across her chest popped and shot across the room like a bullet.
She heard a sound behind her.
Her captor was in the room with her!
If she could just get free, she would pummel him into a paste with her feet-hands and hand-feet.
She snarled and redoubled her efforts. She was going to get free. The room went black as she sucked in every available photon to power her struggle. Ambient heat dropped as she stole energy from the air.
She could hear her captor struggle towards the door. Light briefly flooded the room as he managed to slip out and slam the door behind him.
An electric current flowed through the chair and the smell of burning flesh intensified. She fought the urge to lose consciousness and redirected some of the energy into expanding her frame. Her form started to swell as she converted the electricity, heat and light into mass. She was in danger of incinerating herself by pulling in the energy so quickly, but she was past caring. She needed to get out of this hell.
The needles hummed louder and then the humming stopped.
Abruptly, she lost the battle to stay awake and found herself back in her refuge.
She was on the beach, on her beach. Her rage was an inferno inside her, manifesting as an erupting volcano, looming over the tree-lined edge of her beach.
She thought of how she would pay him back. Perhaps she could convince Leader to Turn him so she could make him pay with centuries of agony. She smiled as she reveled in fantasies of revenge.
He slammed the door and hit the panic button that electrified the chair. Thank goodness he had taken precautions.
He placed his hand on the clunky lever located beside the door that would initiate the sterilization sequence. Below the lever was a large red button. Above the door was a blank maroon screen that would light up with red digital numerals if he pulled the lever. The full sterilization sequence took thirty seconds; however, if it looked like she was going to get through the door before the sequence was complete, he could hit the big red button to trigger a partial sterilization. There was no guarantee that a partial sterilization would work, but it should at least slow her down and give him an opportunity to escape into the tunnels under the city, into the buried streets of past generations.
Looking at the monitor on the other side of the door, he saw that she resisted the compulsion to go to sleep for a few more seconds.
“Scrotal sack,” he muttered.
She blacked out.
He sighed and slowly removed his hand from the lever.
He went back into the room and checked the control apparatus. He fist pumped the air.
His calculations had been perfect. Iin spite of her struggles, he had successfully implanted the sensors on her cerebral cortex and on the medulla oblongata the top of her spine, without damaging the brain matter itself.
His investigations into how she healed so quickly would accelerate now that he could monitor her brain activity as she healed. He would also be able to switch her off without resorting to using the rather crude electrocution method he was relying on.
Worst case scenario: he would be able to switch her off for good if he needed to.
He was exhausted but too excited to sleep.
He needed to take a short walk. He checked the weather on his phone; it was raining, beautiful. He would go out, but only after he fixed his Taser.
Oh, well, no rest for the righteous.
The rain was steady and light. He would not stay out long. He was a little nervous about being out after the Festival fiasco, but he would not be made a prisoner in his own house any more than he would be a prisoner of his broken body.
As he passed the building housing the Camera Obscura he got a chill and looked around furtively. It felt like someone was watching him. The feeling stayed with him as he approached the courtyard in front of the castle. He was so engaged in concentrating on the feeling of being observed that he did not pay enough attention to where he was putting his feet. He ended up tripping on a misaligned cobble. He did not get his arm up quickly enough and fell painfully on his nose, bringing tears to his eyes. He rolled onto his back and brought his hand to his throbbing nose. His hand came away bloody.
“Testicular tumor,” he muttered as he struggled to his feet.
He looked around to see if anyone had seen his fall. He knew it was silly but he was more concerned about someone seeing his fall than he was about being hurt. His arm and face were throbbing, but he did not seem to be seriously damaged.
He hurried back to his home.
***
Baby’s eyes popped open.
It couldn’t be.
She and Little Eve had not found anything in two weeks of searching, other than the tingle that Little Eve had discounted and the feeling she had after broadcasting in the pub. Her mental shout in the pub did not appear to have attracted too much undue attention. She had detected a few rivals in their territory, individuals though, no full packs or covens. It was usual for competitors to be in town for Festival time. The Festival not only attracted large amounts of the Herd, but also hunters, bogeymen and the other types of Quickened who fed on the Herd.
Just prior to slamming her consciousness back to her body, she had noticed a figure outside the castle wall. He appeared to be injured or damaged in some way. His bright aura had attracted her attention — he must have been a very strong latent or one of the Quickened. She was just about to move on with her search when he had fallen on his face. If she had been in her body she would have laughed; in her astral form she had settled for radiating amusement. As he sat up and rubbed at his bloodied face, he said something.
All amusement had dropped away from her and she had become deadly serious.
As she rocketed back along the silver umbilicus that linked her to her body, she replayed what she had seen and heard in her mind to make sure she had not made a mistake. She was sure.
She jumped up and pushed past Eve.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said.
“Huh? Did you find her?”
“No, just need to check on something. I’ll be right back.”
“Attendre, wait, you can’t just leave, what if Leader checks in?”
“Make something up, you’ll be fine.”
As she closed the door behind her, Baby said to herself, “Finn Alexander, how are you not dead?”
She ran down the hallway to the stairs.
St. Andrews, Scotland, 1994
It was Raisin Sunday and there were about forty people in their flat.
Finn
had let slip to Jonni that he had managed to get some freshers to ask him to be their academic father. Jonni had not said anything at first, but Finn could tell by the expression on his toad-like visage that he had made a mistake.
Neither of them mentioned it again and Finn hoped that Jonni had forgotten the whole incident.
Finn’s hopes were dashed when he answered the door at three in the afternoon on Raisin Sunday and found a strange girl in glasses holding a bottle of wine on their doorstep. Not to say that she looked strange or weird, he just didn’t know who she was.
“Is my dad here?” She handed him the bottle of wine and started to push past him. The traditional Raisin Sunday gift from academic child to parent had morphed from a pound of raisins into a bottle of cheap wine sometime in the 1970s.
He did not move out of the way. She tried to wriggle past him without coming into contact with him. “Who?” he said.
“My academic dad, you know the funny-looking little bloke with a goatee or a mustache? I can’t remember his name but he said this was where I was supposed to meet him.”
“Jonni?”
“Is that his name? That’s funny, like a jonni. Are you going to let me in or what?”
He stepped aside.
Over the course of the next hour Finn let in twenty-five more of Jonni’s academic daughters, as well as his own meager brood.
When Bex arrived she didn’t say anything; she just shook her head sadly and walked past him into the party. Inside he could hear Jonni lecturing his academic daughters about the benefits of academic incest, to giggles aplenty.
Over the course of the night various other people wandered in, drawn by the music and laugher.
Finn and Bex decided to take their parental responsibilities seriously and walked both their and Jonni’s academic children home once the party wound down.
Most the academic children lived in halls of residence in the town center, so it was not much of a chore to drop them off. His and Bex’s two academic sons lived in Hepburn Hall, which was not far from Old Hall, where Bex lived, so at the end of the night Finn found himself walking home on his own after seeing everyone else home.
As he rounded a corner a few streets away from his flat, he could see two figures on the sidewalk ahead. One was sitting with its back against a wall of a shop with its legs stretched out into the sidewalk. The other figure crouched beside the sitting figure.
As Finn approached, the crouching figure stood and faced him. She was a striking blond with a crew cut. He could not tell the exact color of her eyes under the orange street lamps, but they appeared to be light.
“This one does not look so good,” she said.
He had trouble looking away from her eyes.
He forced himself to look down. The sitting figure turned out to be a drunk red-headed boy or, as Jonni would say, a “ginger,” where he pronounced the g’s in the hard fashion such as in “girl” rather the soft manner such as in “giraffe.”
The woman was right. He did not look good; there was a trail of vomit down his shirt front and pooled between his legs.
Finn looked around. “There should be a puke mobile around here somewhere.”
“A what?” she said.
“Not from around here, are you?” She did not reply. “During Raisin Sunday the Student’s Union sends around a minivan to pick up poor buggers like this and take them to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped.”
“And you call this minivan a puke mobile. Very droll.” She quickly stepped up to him and breathed deeply. He stepped back. He thought he heard her murmur, “Strong,” but he was not sure.
He looked around and saw a van turn the corner he waved at it. The van pulled up to the sidewalk.
He turned back to her, but she was gone. He must have been more tired than he realized, or drunker.
He opened his eyes. His head hurt. He must have drunk more than usual. He had thought that he had inoculated himself against hangovers earlier that year through daily visits to the Union.
He tried to sit up but was unsuccessful.
His vision was not complete, like something was covering his left eye. He swiveled his right eye around the room. He saw a TV suspended from the ceiling. To his right he could hear intermittent beeping. He swiveled his eye down and saw a bandaged arm with an IV sticking out of it. Where the IV was inserted the bandages had separated slightly. He could see red, blistered skin.
A nurse entered the room and she looked tired.
“Where am I?” he croaked out.
“No need to worry; we are taking good care of you.”
“What happened?”
She did not answer. She leaned over to tuck in his blanket. As her hand passed near his bandaged mitt, he managed to grab her hand. She looked up at him and he saw his reflection in her eyes.
He could feel his heartbeat accelerate, until his pulse was pounding through his body like the bass line at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. The beeping accelerated with his heart, until it went to a continuous extended beeeeeep as the pounding stopped.
The nurse extracted her hand from his and ran for help.
Finn sat up, sweating.
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself as he felt the rapid beating of his heart in his chest.
This was the worst nightmare to date. He had changed from the observer to the victim.
He curled into a fetal position and tried in vain to get back to sleep.
The town was a surreal purgatorial vision the next morning.
From his doorway he could see a faint glow of the sun through the thick fog.
A Viking loomed out of the fog, groaning as he labored down the foggy road carrying a tractor tire.
He saw a cowboy retch as he pulled along a small wooden horse on wheels.
He saw a fairy princess gently carrying a condom that may have been full of porridge. Finn hoped it was porridge.
Raisin Monday had arrived.
All the academic children who could get out of bed had been dressed in costumes made or bought by their academic mothers. They then went to their academic father’s house, where, if they could get him out of bed, they were presented with a raisin receipt.
The raisin receipt could be anything, as long as it was inscribed with a specific Latin phrase, hence the tractor tire, the wheeled horse and the porridge condom. Many items “disappeared” from the town during the weeks running up to Raisin Monday as diligent academic fathers obtained memorable raisin receipts for their academic sons and daughters.
Finn had chosen not to steal anything, but instead he had bought stuffed bears for his girls and wooden ships for his boys. Jonni had selected nothing; he was not going to provide raisin receipts to any of his academic daughters. He was sulking, as none of them had engaged in academic incest with him.
At about nine thirty, Finn saw his academic children materialize out of the fog. Bex had outdone herself. They too were Vikings; however, she had also created a cardboard longship for them to carry along with them. They all looked pretty shitty — pale and tired.
He presented them their raisin receipts and watched them disappear into the fog on their way to the Quad, where eggs, flour and shaving foam awaited them. He went back inside and back to bed. He could use some sleep. No actual academic work happened on Raisin Monday.
Later, he would give Bex a call and see if she wanted to meet for dinner.
The City, Year 7874 in the Reign of Enki II
“I can’t take it anymore,” said Bral, “I am dying in here, I need to leave.”
Hael’s little brother was upset, again. He hated to append the “again” but it was true. He kept telling Bral he just needed to thicken his skin and not react to the other boys teasing him. He had been a target for the other boys ever since Samael had moved on, and moved on again. Hael had told Bral he needed to socialize with the other boys, but Bral had closed himself off from everyone. Really, a year should have been enough time for him to find himself a new friend, or a new
companion.
“Bral, we’ve had this conversation before,” Hael started.
Bral interrupted him. “No, this is different; it is unbearable, truly unbearable.” Bral sat on the edge of Hael’s cot and winced.
Hael was in his final year in the Academy and it looked like he would remain One until he graduated. He knew all his peers intimately, every strength and weakness, every quirk and preference and he knew he surpassed them all. More importantly, they knew him just as well as he knew them. None would be challenging his position this year.
As One, he was entitled to his own room and some meager possessions. After six years in a communal barracks it was an unbelievable luxury. It was also incredibly lonely. So lonely, in fact, that he had been happy to see Bral even though he knew the visit would include multiple complaints and hand wringing aplenty.
“What’s wrong, did you get in a fight?” Hael asked.
Bral put his face in his hands and started sobbing.
“Oh, Bral, what’s wrong, it can’t be as bad as all that, can it?” Hael was worried now. He knew Bral was being teased. Hael had tried to provide him some protection and he had hoped things would have improved once Lucan had graduated. Lucan had actively encouraged the teasing and had occasionally led it. “Did someone beat you?”
“Someone, someone! All of them! They held me down and …” he trailed off and started sobbing again, pulling in huge gasps of air as he tried to breathe.
Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) Page 16
