by Adam Steel
11:28 p.m.
Lucian strapped the radio back into his belt and turned to Irish and Max.
‘Trouble,’ he said. ‘Something’s going on up there,’ Lucian informed them.
Max gritted his teeth. He was thinking that he couldn’t be everywhere at once and tried to speak up over the loud buzzing noise of the generator.
‘They’ll just have to deal with it. We have to be right on top of the target by now,’ he said, and gestured down the passageway.
Multiple pipes had joined together to form huge conduits which were running across the walls. Arcs of power were flowing across the pipe surfaces. They sparkled with the electrifying energy. The three men stuck to the centre of the path. None of them wanted to get too close to the killer power surges.
‘Bet they don’t have work insurance policies,’ Irish joked when he saw them.
‘I should go back. They might need help?’ Lucian announced, in a hesitant tone.
Max came up close on him and said, ‘You know we don’t have time for that. They have their mission, and we have ours…and ours is right through that archway.’
Max nodded in the direction of the huge conduits.
‘Don’t lose focus now. They are relying on us. Let them do their job,’ Max asserted.
Lucian nodded: he knew Max was right, but he didn’t like it. He’d disobeyed Drago by not going with Jon Li and that had been a first for him. Lucian recalled how Drago had been like a rough, but loving, father to him. They’d been twin guns back in Union City. They’d lost most of the other members of their gang through the years. Lucian and Drago were the last two left of their original crew, and Lucian trusted Drago with his life. The look of determination in Jon Li’s eyes, when they’d parted on the mission, had convinced Lucian to let him go on alone. Lucian also imagined the look on Abigail’s face if he didn’t return and it gave him an even more convincing argument to let Jon Li and Ellie go for the Coney Twins. He knew in his heart, that the assassination mission against the Coney Twins, was a suicide mission. Lucian knew that once the generator blew, they’d planned to escape from the plant in the confusion, but if things went wrong, then he couldn’t see how anyone could escape from the labs. He thought that the others were walking to their deaths. He would’ve been prepared to go to, if it had had to be that way. He would’ve died for Drago, there was no doubting that.
Lucian’s hand closed tightly on the barbed wire that he’d coiled around his fist. His blood ran down between his fingers and dripped onto the floor. He understood completely. After seeing the terrible suffering that the Coney Twins had inflicted, he wanted them dead as much as anyone. He wanted more than anything to see the Twin’s heads shot open and to dip his hands in their blood. Abigail’s sweet face appeared through his blood-lust and his heart felt as though it was being pulled apart.
Max butted Lucian with the handle of his shotgun.
‘Wake up man. No time for day dreaming,’ Max interrupted.
Lucian shook his head a little. The generator. It’s so close now, he thought. He could feel its presence in the air. He raised his shotgun and moved in line behind Max.
Max edged forwards.
The blue sparkling lights from the conduits played out a strobe effect across his face. He didn’t need any help from a map or blueprints because the air around him was charged and every hair on his arm stood on end. They looked like a line of soldiers on parade. The monotonous humming got louder as they had moved towards Genie. It was deafening but their ears had become numbed to the sound. Crackles of electricity played across the conduits when they moved past it. He thought that it would’ve been beautiful if the method to produce it hadn’t been so horrific. He could feel that Lucian and Irish were starting to lose it. He thought that they were struggling to contain the tempest of their emotions. They all knew that they were walking on the last ground that so many of their friends and loved ones had trodden on before.
Lucian had neglected to inform Ellie over the radio of the brutal dispatches of the unfortunate technicians that they’d encountered since the team had split up. Irish had hacked one of them into seventeen pieces.
Irish and Lucian were men on the edge and Max considered offering them the last hits of his Apexir. He needed them calm and under control. Not raging berserkers. He was aware that their intolerance to the drug might only make things worse.
Max was almost relieved when he peered into the next archway. The fear that ached in his guts extinguished it almost as soon as he felt it. He stared up. He was thunderstruck. He was gawping in amazement at the reactor itself.
Genie, he thought.
The three men sank back into the shadows.
Max looked out into the enormous chamber. Dominating the middle of the huge chamber was a tall cylinder with huge conduits running all around it. The giant metal creature, sat impassively. It was surrounded in arcing jolts of blue electricity. He’d expected the room to be hot. It was not. The temperature had dropped sharply and the bottom of the generator was encased in ice. A fine frost decorated the floor. He could see his breath in front of his face.
Cooling systems, his mind chipped in helpfully.
The entire chamber was bathed in the blue light and the ceiling, far above them, wasn’t visible. Above the generator, there was a series of walkways and balconies which extended upwards and disappeared into the never ending darkness. Great chains hung above the generator and ascended into the darkness.
Max’s eyes searched for the most important aspect...threat assessment…He counted at least fifteen technicians on the ground level, despite the late hour. They were tending and working at the huge generator.
Silver spires erupted from the ground around the generator and towered above their heads. They were topped with large silver globes which caught the arcing electricity. It formed lines of flowing power which were devoid of pipes and flowed effortlessly between the silver spheres.
Tesla. That’s what they’re like, Tesla coils, Max thought.
He remembered reading about the eccentric inventor when he’d been a boy. The spheres that he was looking at were like the faded pictures of his old comic books. They controlled the excess power that lapped off the generator’s chrome surface. The harnessed lightning played over the heads of the workers as they scurried around, tending to the huge generator. They seemed completely unnerved by the flowing current that surged above them. He leaned back behind the wall, and caught his breath to recover from the extraordinary sight. His heart sank at the sheer size of the generator, and the incomprehensible mission that lay in front of them. He felt as though they had been sent to bring down a leviathan with a harpoon. He gathered his thoughts together and turned to Lucian and Irish.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s in there. There are too many techs’ for us to take out quietly.’
Max cocked his shotgun up.
‘We gotta act fast. Just get them under control so we can plant the charges. We need to be in and out of there fast,’ he said.
Lucian and Irish readied their weapons and prepared to follow his lead. Max took one final deep breath. He hoped that Ellie and Jon Li were near the Coney Twins because he knew that the shit was about to hit the fan. He closed his eyes and raised his weapon. His baby girl Sophie laughed in his ears and he imagined his wife. He could picture her face perfectly.
‘Payback Time,’ he whispered, and charged around the corner.
Laboratory: Sub Level Four
11:31 p.m.
Jon Li stepped through the door after Ellie, into the Sub-Level Four laboratories. The laboratory was dark and deserted and all the lights were out. There was a faint bubbling sound filling the large room. Dark, bulky objects surrounded them and they could make out the outlines of desks and equipment.
Ellie fumbled for her torch, but before she could switch it on, a low rumbling noise caused her to freeze. The computer screens in the lab flickered on and began to pour reams of data across them. The fluorescent tubes overhead flickered in
to life and illuminated the room.
They all ducked behind the nearest desk.
Red and Jon Li’s had their pistols ready.
The laboratory came to life around them in a flurry of clicks and hisses.
‘What’s going on?’ Ellie whispered, to Jon Li.
Jon Li peeked around the desk, but he couldn’t see anyone.
‘It must be automatic – when we came in the door. It must start up the lab ready for work.’
Jon Li spat a silvery glob of blood and spit on the floor.
‘Great. They’ll be onto us now for sure,’ he added, standing up.
‘Nice positive attitude there Li, so let’s just get on with this,’ Red sniped aggressively.
Jon Li started to answer Red. Then he saw what was in the room with them and his mouth dropped open: his angry words banished from his mind. Ellie saw his expression and got up quickly. Her eyes widened into saucers.
The laboratory covered the whole floor of the sub-level. It was filled with long tables and bubbling vats of orange liquid. The table, which they had been hiding behind, had a body lying on it. It was enormous and covered in long, sporadic hairs. Its bloated limbs hung down from its deformed mass. It was headless and all that remained of its head was a tuft of black hair which protruded from the creature’s neck. Its chest rose and fell in staggering gasps. There were tubes plugged into crude rent-holes in the creature’s side which were filled with a reddish-blue liquid.
‘Holy shit!’ Jon Li blurted out.
Ellie was horrified. She could see that the other tables were also covered with similar monstrosities and she could also see what looked like half of a woman on one of the tables. The breasts and chest of the thing seemed normal, but it had five legs, of which three of them, were shrivelled and deformed.
On another table lay a severed human head. It looked back at them. Half of its scalp had been removed and a series of thin wires had been connected to the fleshy mass inside of its skull. Its mouth opened and closed in a slow rhythm. Its eyes rolled in their sockets. Ellie remembered seeing organic horrors once before when she had been in medical school. She’d read textbooks which had detailed the deformed births, cancerous tumours, and the genetic defects of humans. They’d been nothing compared to the vile and calculated rape of nature that she was now witnessing. She had not realised that the Coney Twins had been conducting the indescribable experiments on their energy source and was un-prepared for the awful reality of the Coney Twin’s pure and concentrated evil.
The entire wall opposite to them was occupied by an extensive, rectangular glass tank and there were a series of organs floated inside of it. They were suspended in a clear fluid and were linked together with winding, fleshy tubes. A blue liquid was being pumped into one end. It caused them to take on a bluish tint. Electrical connections sparked throughout the hideous tank and at the other end of the tank, short bolts of power were dissipated into a metal conductor.
‘Oh my God,’ Ellie moaned.
The organs pulsed with life and throbbed obscenely.
‘They’re…They’re…adapting it for living people.’
Ellie bent over and retched.
Jon Li stumbled: his mind reeling at the horrific images. He was looking at the ‘true’ work of the Coney Twins. His grip tightened on Mary’s handle and it took all of his resolve not to empty the gun chamber into the pulsing horrors around him.
Red twitched nervously.
A series of large tanks in the centre of the room were glowing. They were cylindrical and filled with a thick, orange liquid. Jon Li pulled Ellie up from the floor and approached one out morbid curiosity. The remains of a large female body were inside the tank. She floated lifelessly. What was left of her black hair was flowing in the liquid mucous and her face and body were badly burned. She had a CURE Prison tattoo on one shoulder and she was covered in dire injuries. One of her arms bore deep teeth marks. It looked as though she had been mauled by a bear or similar large animal. Her eyes had turned white in the fluid and she glared at them through the thick glass.
In two smaller tanks (which were situated either side of her) there were two smaller forms. They were floating in an orange liquid. Ellie clapped her hands over her mouth when she saw that they were two, partially formed baby girls. The dead babies had red tinted skin and tiny eyes and they bore more than a striking resemblance to the large female in the centre tank. The trio’s fascinated horror was interrupted by a mono-toned voice which came from behind them.
‘Welcome,’ it said. ‘I trust that you have an appointment?’
Ellie, Jon Li, and Red, whipped around and gaped in disbelief.
The Generator Chamber
11:36 p.m.
The sound of Max’s shotgun was deafening inside the huge chamber. The technician closest to Max caught the shot straight in the chest and was catapulted backwards against the surface of the generator. The arcing electrical power hit his blood splatter and sparkled across it making an electric-web pattern behind his body. He was pinned to the side of the generator.
‘NOBODY FUCKING MOVE!’ Max yelled.
Max aimed one of his pistols directly at the next technicians face while Lucian and Irish charged around the corner from behind him. They were both yelling blood-curdling war cries. Another unfortunate technician’s head exploded when Irish shot him with his hunting rifle. His body fell over with a ‘thump’. The remaining technicians in the room froze in panic. They were gawping at the three madmen who had just burst in. The technician who was pinned against the generator jiggled as the current coursed through him. Smoke began to rise from his clothes before he fell, face forward onto the icy floor. A hiss of steam, erupted from around his body as the frost sublimated.
‘EVERYBODY AGAINST THE WALL! MOVE!’ yelled Max as he herded them into the corner with his pistol.
Lucian pushed them further in with his shotgun while Max re-cocked his weapon. The terrified technicians filed up against the wall. They had their hands in the air and were cowering below the gun barrels.
‘So much for the subtle approach, huh?’ Irish quipped.
Irish was already unloading the dynamite from the rucksack when Max whipped his head around to address him. His adrenalin was fuelled and he was relishing the action. He was in charge. At last, he felt as though he was in control: truly alive for the first time in years.
‘Move it Irish. Set the charges. We’re on a short timer here,’ Max ordered.
Irish began to place the packs of explosives around the generator. He was carefully laying them out and wiring them back to the timer release. Max grinned at the cowering technicians who were standing in front of him with their hands on their heads.
‘This just might work,’ he said to himself through gritted teeth.
Laboratory: Sub Level Four
11:37p.m.
The man stood alone in the entrance to the lab. His steel grey eyes were fixed on them from behind his spectacles. He had no determinable expression on his face. Jon Li couldn’t tell if it was Alexis or Jonus Coney, but that hardly mattered to him any longer. His hand flew to the pistol which was tucked into his belt. A hard prod in his back stopped him. He knew what the small metal cylinder sticking in his back was.
Red reached forward from behind him and withdrew Mary from Jon Li’s belt. Then he tossed her across the floor of the laboratory. Jon Li looked back at Red and not quite understanding. Red grinned back at him. His pistol was firmly nested into Jon Li’s back. Reds missing teeth made his voice hiss when he spoke.
‘Sorry mate. But you know – shit happens,’ he mocked, through his grin.
Jon Li slowly raised his hands when he saw that Red was holding a knife to Ellie’s back. Red had hidden the knife from sight, but Jon Li recognised it as one of Max’s missing knives.
The twin at the door strode confidently into the room: followed by four, armed TALOS guards. The guard’s assault rifles were expertly trained on Jon Li and Ellie.
‘We have been expectin
g you,’ the twin announced. ‘Although - you should have waited. You could have got the train here. The service is excellent.’
Jon Li’s expression was one of despair and bewilderment.
He looked at Red and asked, ‘Why?’
Red grinned back at him and thought about how easy it had been to persuade Drago to let him join the mission.
The trusting fool, he thought. It was all too easy to pay a little visit to Sparks. Dead Sparks now, Red thought.
Red had strangled Sparks with one of his own computer cables and then he had used Abigail’s lap-top to contact TALOS. Red had told TALOS everything he knew about the mission. They’d been very co-operative in offering him a sweet deal. It was Red’s understanding that he would be getting Jon Li’s old penthouse and even a new limo to go with it.
Jon Li suddenly realised why it had been so easy to break into the Genie complex, and why they had been able to get so far.
It’s a Trap. They’ve known from the beginning. They were luring us inside, he thought and felt very sick.
Ellie hissed quietly to Red.
‘What about all your friends, the people at Union City?’
Red grinned across at her and spat a glob on the floor.
‘Fuck 'em,’ he retorted savagely.
The radio on Ellie’s belt crackled and Lucian’s voice came through in a weak, but legible tone.
‘Ellie, come in. We’re at the generator.’
Lucian’s voice cut out and was replaced by a blur of static, before coming back stronger than before.
‘…under control. The charges are going down. We’re getting ready to pull out. You there? Over.’
Red retrieved the radio from Ellie’s belt and smiled at her as he flicked the transmitter on. The red dots from the TALOS guard’s rifles played across the faces of Jon Li and Ellie. It held them in place just as surely as any iron chains.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Red mocked across the radio.
He used a high-pitched voice which was parody of Ellie’s voice.
