Ann Marie asked him, “Do you really think Bernard could have gotten away from a DeathStalker? He couldn’t be fast enough? Could he?”
“If anyone could, it would be that bastard,” said Dade. Then, nearly growling, he added, “I pity Bernard if anything happened to my DeathStalker.”
When they arrived to the factory entrance, the moment the truck door opened, Dade disappeared. Ann Marie ran as quickly as she could to keep up with him, but his short teleporting bursts turned him into a nearly complete blur. When she made it through the various corridors, Dade had already found the DeathStalker. He was starting to sob as he pulled the top off of the hydrofluoric acid tank. Ann Marie had never seen him like that.
“Are you OK?” She asked him.
Without answering, Dade reached his entire arm into the tank of acid and pulled out the corpse of the DeathStalker. The acid immediately started turning Dade’s arm fire engine red but he didn’t even notice. He grabbed some tools from one of the benches and started to do surgery on his machine.
Ann Marie ran over shouting, “What are you doing! That’s HF! You’ll die!”
Dade opened one of the panels on the DeathStalker’s smoking metal underside and took out the battery. It was corroding and leaking red liquid. His hands started to shake. Then his entire body looked like it was going to spasm from the hydrofluoric acid exposure.
“You’re dying!” she yelled in a panic. “The acid is pulling all the calcium out of your body. You’re heart is going to stop!” She looked around and noticed the glass cabinet near the tank with the antidote.
Ann Marie broke the glass and removed the long, heavy gauge syringe from inside. “It’s calcium gluconate,” she said before jamming the needle into his shoulder.
At that point, Dade already looked pale and was starting to lose consciousness. Still, he wasn’t giving up on his machine.
“Thank you,” he said, realizing that he had just been stabbed with the antidote. His hands began to move more quickly with the tools. The normally shiny chassis of the DeathStalker had taken on a grey patina from the acid. Most of the inner components were badly damaged. It looked like a prehistoric insect, pulled dead out of some amber swamp. Its legs sprawled awkwardly on the table, the DeathStalker was still smoking from acid burns. Dade’s hands sped into a blur while he worked on the thing. Ann Marie stood by him, barely breathing.
For a moment, the DeathStalker’s red eyes flashed and Ann Marie got excited.
“I shielded the microprocessor for nuclear radiation,” Dade said, looking optimistic. “I think it could have stood up to the acid.” He connected a portable power supply to main onboard computer in the thing’s belly.
Suddenly, the DeathStalker’s eyes flared back to life and its legs started to kick in the air. With Dade’s help, it managed to flip itself upright. Its eyes flashed and its head whipped around as it calibrated to its environment. It scanned Dade and Ann Marie, making a pleasant chirping sound like a raccoon. Then it entered the final stage of its reboot. It remembered its mission and its target, Bernard Mengel. Still somewhat rusty and not fully reassembled, the DeathStalker leaped onto the floor. It looked like it intended to carry on with its mission right away.
“I don’t think so,” Dade told it. “You’re still in sick bay.”
“Bernard is unguarded,” said Ann Marie.
“I know.”
“He isn’t that dangerous, is he?”
Dade didn’t even answer her right away. His expression told her that not only was he worried but she had perhaps asked the silliest of questions.
...
The beams from Asylum One’s headlights barely cut through the thick nighttime fog as it broke away from the main beach drag and started up the private road to the laboratory. In the back passenger compartment, Dade and Ann Marie were discussing a new way to genetically engineer bacteria to synthesize the Red Formula. The evening was silent outside, as though the fog was somehow gobbling up every vibration. The night air seemed so opaque and viscous that it was more like spun up river sediment.
For a moment, as she looked out the armored window, she thought she saw something running alongside the truck. It was merely a black blur in the grey soup before it disappeared. She considered mentioning it to Dade but he was focused on their discussion and seemed too excited for distractions. Dismissing it as a bird or a figment of her imagination, she went back to their conversation.
“The red formula,” Dade told her, “may be dangerous but we need more. The information it’s giving me is very valuable.”
“You almost died the last time.”
“Yeah, but I’m getting closer to figuring out Bernard’s plan. I need to go deeper.”
“But why?”
“There is something about Ivy. Bernard chose her for a reason. It has something to do with me.”
“I think the new process will work,” Ann Marie said, turning the subject back to chemistry. “The bacteria will do the synthesis steps for us.”
Dade Harkenrider smiled at her like she had just thrown a no-hitter. “Your magic technique,” he said. “One hundred percent yield.”
“And complexity of the molecule isn’t an issue at all,” she said, looking proud of her work. “The bacteria can build any chemical we want, from simple sugars to proteins.”
“To the Red Formula.”
“Exactly.”
She tried to slip in, “And you’re going to let me go under.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Why not?” She argued.
“Maybe in twenty years,” said Dade. “In my opinion, that’s about how long it would take you to be ready.”
The comment annoyed Ann Marie and just as she was about to offer a rebuttal, the brakes on Asylum One suddenly locked. The short stop threw them both to the front of the compartment. The truck tires shrieked to a halt in the middle of the foggy road.
“What happened?” Ann Marie asked as she picked herself up from the truck floor.
“We’ve stopped.”
“Duh. Why?”
By the time Ann Marie saw Ivy Cavatica standing in the road in front of them, Dade answered her. “Remind me to remove the automatic braking sequence,” he said.
Behind Ivy, the hooded coven members were joined by dozens of the homeless teenage recruits. They were all holding hands and mumbling some kind of chant together.
“It’s time, Harkenrider!” Ivy shouted. “We’re ready for you! We’re strong enough now!”
One of the young homeless men in front had a spiderweb tattoo covering his entire face and ears. He was pointing a shotgun at the windshield. He fired and the blast ran off the armored glass like a sprinkling of rainwater.
Ann Marie jerked back in her seat and started hyperventilating. “What’s happening, Dade? What are they doing?”
“They’re in big trouble,” said Dade. “The only thing they’re gonna do is get out of our way. Call The Sheriff,” he told her. Suddenly, he stepped out of the truck, saying, “Asylum One, president inside, lockdown, airtight, watertight, only my command.” All around her, Ann Marie could hear the mechanical solenoids locking the vehicle down and sealing her inside. The truck was now more impenetrable than a bank vault.
Dade Harkenrider walked straight toward the spiderwebbed man with the shotgun. Even with both barrels aligned perfectly with his head, Dade seemed quite unconcerned. “Come on, human,” he said to the rather frightening looking young man. “What do you think is going to happen?”
The spiderweb man turned back toward Ivy as though looking for her approval. She responded with a strange sort of yelp mixed with, “Yes, yes, yes!” Then her voice suddenly went an octave deeper. She said, “Show me. I want to see.”
The spiderweb man nodded. Then, from only perhaps six feet away, he fired straight for Dade’s head.
The gun roared as Ann Marie called out, “No! Don’t hurt him!” She tried for the locks on the doors b
ut Asylum One was totally sealed.
She realized that Dade had not been hit. He was now standing right behind the man with the gun. By the time the spiderweb man realized that Dade was somehow behind him, the shotgun was already in the air and on its way over the cliff into the ocean. The young man’s tattooed face, once completely terrifying, suddenly looked crestfallen. Dade Harkenrider had him from behind the neck.
From where Ann Marie was sitting, all she could see was the spiderweb man’s body flying over the cliff. His screaming was snuffed out by a large splash when he hit the black water.
Ivy and the rest of the group started to applaud.
“You assholes are going to regret this!” Dade shouted to them.
Ivy signaled to another one of the young men in black. This one looked like he could have been class president of his prep school. The only thing that would have made the blonde boy stand out from the rest of the rich kids was the hawkish look on his face. He looked prepared to fight to the death. The boy lifted up a compound bow and pointed the razor tip of the hunting arrow straight for Dade Harkenrider’s heart.
“The last guy had a gun,” said Dade. “I don’t think you guys understand how escalation works.”
The rather handsome and well-groomed young man started some kind of chanting, something in an unrecognizable language. The rest of the group, including Ivy, started to chant along. Harkenrider laughed at them. Then he started making up a gibberish fake chant to mock them.
“Ooogy Boogey, Woooly Boooly!” He shouted. “Why don’t you little jackasses get back to your Ouija board and your drum circle before you get hurt! You’re on my private road. I’m getting seriously annoyed here.”
The guy smiled in a spooky, detached way and drew back the arrow. In a sharp swish accompanied by a rush of wind, the arrow hurtled forward and struck the windshield of the truck before shattering. Before Ann Marie knew what had happened, Dade had somehow relocated himself behind the man. He grabbed the compound bow and tossed it over the cliff.
This young man wasn’t scared at all. He started laughing while the rest of the group began another string of applause.
“Feel his power!” cried out Ivy to her crowd. She told them, “All that power can be ours!”
Ivy commanded the two strongest and largest men to attack Dade at the same time. With glazed-over, intoxicated looks and a disturbing absence of fear, the men charged at Dade with the intent of ripping him up with their bare hands. In a blur, he got one of the men above his head. Dade hurled the screaming man straight up into the air. He went up so high that his yelling nearly faded to silence. While that man descended back to Earth, Dade grabbed the other one and chucked him straight up like he was launching a missile.
The two bodies collided in the air like out-of-control jetliners. A fine mist of blood fell over the entire area from the impact. It coated the road, the palm trees and everyone’s faces. Everything in the entire scene looked like black crayon wax.
“Didn’t I say he is amazing,” Ivy told her group.
She commanded the coven members and runaways to form a circle around Dade and Asylum One. The hooded coven girls and the runaways filed around them, locked hands and lowered their heads to pray. Ivy presented a challenging look to her adversary on the other side of the circle.
“We’re going to hurt each other,” she told Dade, sounding both delirious and flirtatious. “Don’t you want to hurt me?” she asked him.
“Where’s your boyfriend, Bernard? My beef is with him.”
“He sent us.”
“That figures. He’s a coward.”
“Is your apprentice in the truck?” Ivy asked him. “Can our little Ann Marie come out and play?”
“Don’t make me kill all of you. I would prefer not to.”
“I’m ready for you!” Ivy shouted. “I’m not afraid of Dade Harkenrider! Bernard’s trained me. I’m ready.” She looked around at her army of ragamuffin young runaways. “And I’m not all alone. Poor little Dade.”
“Your group won’t help you against me. Bernard knows this. That’s why he isn’t here.” He addressed the whole group, saying, “The old man has sent you all into certain death! Turn around and go home.” He told Ivy, “You too. Nobody’s fighting tonight.”
“You’re going to hurt me,” said Ivy. “And I’m going to hurt you.”
Suddenly, dozens of runaway teenagers charged and started to swarm Dade and Asylum One. The coven stayed back, forming a tight prayer circle around only Ivy. She closed her eyes as though something was about to happen.
The charging herd of young adults proved only a slight obstacle for Dade. As they charged at him, trying to grab and pull at his hair and clothing, he started casting them high into the air.
From inside the truck, Ann Marie watched the mass of people like she had a first row seat to a full-blown riot. A few of them got by Dade and started to shake the truck’s suspension. One of the attackers, she noticed, had his tongue split down the middle to resemble a snake’s. That young man, who looked very intoxicated, took a bite out of his own arm and licked the blood all over the truck window with his forked tongue. At that moment, she cried out.
Dade was fighting to make his way over to her. He was a teleporting blur, cutting the crowd down and tossing them away like he was a lawnmower.
Suddenly, Dade Harkenrider appeared right behind the forked-tongue man. Then, all Ann Marie could see was blood covering the glass the way suds do in a carwash. She couldn’t tell what was happening outside.
When the sheet of blood had run down the truck window and she regained some visibility, Ann Marie saw that the snake man had lost both of his arms. Dade had one of them and he was holding it like a baseball bat. He cracked the man across the face with the dismembered arm before tossing it over the cliff. He lifted the struggling and bleeding man above his head and hurled the man away like he was a heavy bag of trash.
Ivy began to applaud, followed by the rest of the coven. Then, eventually, what was left of the runaways joined in the applause as well. Above the sizzle of clapping, she addressed the group, shouting, “Do you see what he is? Do you see what he can do? With all your help, all his power will be ours!”
“The hell it will,” said the Sheriff with the laser sight of his gun on Ivy. He was all by himself and looked scared. “You all are trespassing on our grounds.” He swept the laser beam from his gun sight over the others to let them all know he was serious. “Whatever it is you’re doing here, it’s going to stop right this second. Now clear on out!”
Ivy grinned at the Sheriff, telling her group, “Looks like the law has arrived. Please show our friend, the Sheriff, that he has no authority here.” Perhaps twenty runaways surrounded him and took turns threatening to attack. All he could do was try to hold the invading halo of people back with his gun.
The coven members all got down on their knees to pray to Ivy. Ten of the female runaways linked hands behind them for extra encouragement. Looking like a heavyweight champion defending her title, Ivy headed straight for Dade.
The mass of young people behind her seemed to be providing Ivy some kind of power. Each slow step toward him filled her with greater fury.
Shrieking and howling in rage, she teleported and appeared six inches in front of him. Trying to rip away a hand-full of his windpipe, she fumbled to find only empty, tropical air. He had already reappeared a few yards away and was calmly looking at her.
“Bernard wants us to injure each other,” he said to her. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Oh,” Ivy growled. “It’s going to happen.”
“Any minute, an army of corporate security is going to get here.”
Ivy giggled at him like he was the target of a practical joke. “Your little cavalry,” she told him, “won’t be able to make it. Apparently there is someone new in charge of the corporation. Your new CEO, me, instructed them to ignore your little request.” The Sheriff was still trying to hold back the
mob of runaway teenagers. Ivy told him, “All by yourself, poor Sheriff.”
“I don’t need them anyway,” said Dade.
“I’m going to taste your blood, Harkenrider!” Ivy screamed even louder and charged him like an angry bull.
This time, she managed to grab him before he could teleport away. The coven was still praying to her and the ritual seemed to be increasing Ivy’s strength. She was able to lock her hands onto his ears. Then she squeezed his head like she intended for it to burst. The act put Dade in a great deal of pain. He fell to the ground with Ivy standing over him.
“Bernard taught me how to get inside people,” she told him. “To hurt them. Now I’m gonna hurt you real bad. We’re going to hurt each other real bad.”
Dade was in pain and disoriented. He tried to regain his strength before Ivy could resume her attack, but teleporting was out of the question. She had rattled him and it looked like he was in trouble.
“Uh, oh,” she said, standing over him like she intended to crush him with her delicate bare foot. “It’s been a long time since anyone got the better of Dade Harkenrider. I bet you’re so sad and scared right now. Poor little Dade.”
Just before Ivy could restart her vicious attack, something very strange happened. It started as a bright flash, like a nearby lightning strike. The burst of light was so brilliant that it seemed to white everything out. It surprised Ivy so much that she stopped her assault.
Right in front and all around her, copies of Dade Harkenrider began to line the entire area. Not only were a dozen or so copies of him laying right on the ground in front of her, they appeared to be standing nearly everywhere.
The runaways and the members of the coven suddenly discovered versions of Dade around them too. They saw him down the road, sitting in the grass, standing beside trees, sitting up in the trees and even sitting on the roof of Asylum One. The multiplicity was apparently too much for them and they started to scatter into the woods. A few tried to attack the clones. However, when they did, they found only empty space and something like a hologram.
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 23
