by James Axler
Dr. Huth had allowed himself to be blinded by the paradigms of his own science, forcing the facts, the observations to fit erroneous assumptions and faulty theories. It struck him that probably he’d been wrong elsewhere as well. Perhaps the specters weren’t individual entities, after all. Perhaps they had no intelligence, no instincts of their own.
They didn’t need instincts—or DNA or RNA if their division wasn’t actually reproduction—if they were all part of the same macroorganism, like the fingers on a hand, or the tendrils of an anemone.
Tendrils that reached out through the reality corridor to harvest those who had been targeted. Severing the connection to the source would make the specters vanish or die, like the amputations of ghostly limbs.
Dr. Huth couldn’t actually confirm any of these conclusions. And even if they were correct, there remained lingering, tantalizing mysteries. He still didn’t know what the macroentity was, how it lived, why it killed, or what it harvested from those it slaughtered. Questions that could never be answered because the jump machinery couldn’t be repaired or replaced.
It was a realization that he found disappointing, but only marginally so. If a lifetime of whitecoat training had taught him anything, it was that tantalizing mysteries were a dime a dozen.
He watched on the monitor as the whitefaces and slaves gathered and carted their dead back into the mine. When the one-eyed man and his short friend with the fedora carried all the tribarrels into the entrance and returned empty-handed, Dr. Huth grinned toothlessly.
Cackling to himself, he unfastened and removed his battlesuit helmet. There was no longer any need for the damn thing, now. He breathed deeply and felt the humid air against his sweating face.
The cameras showed the whitefaces busily mining the entrance, about to blow it closed.
“A lot of good that will do,” Dr. Huth said aloud.
Repowering the depleted weapons with the mine’s generators was a piece of cake. And once that was done, he could laser his way out in no time. With the tech gear that remained in his lab, he could rekindle his own personal dream of conquest through science. Deathlands and it inhabitants would become his playthings.
The blast of the explosion at the entrance shook the floor of the lab and rained sparkling glass dust from the ceiling.
As the echoes dwindled, Dr. Huth heard a distinct noise behind him, from the cell’s doorless opening, a soft kissing sound that made his blood run cold. He had assumed that all the wild stickies were dead, that the specters had hunted them down and killed them. If one was alive, then…
From behind came a chorus of soft kisses.
Before he could recover his battlesuit helmet, the muties had him by the face and neck and they were dragging him, kicking and screaming into the darkness.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6624-1
DOOM HELIX
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