The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist

by Darren Humphries

  There wasn’t anyone to fire at. The door on the far side of the room, the one that led out into the huge subterranean reservoir, was swinging shut and I caught a fleeting glimpse of red hair, so fast that it was more of an impression than an actual sight. I didn’t need it to know who was making a quick getaway, though. There was a strong, unmistakeable odour in the room. If I’d ever slept rough in the hold of a herring trawler then I might have been familiar with it, but I have mercifully been spared that experience. Inhaling that smell, though, I could imagine it.

  “That way!” Miranda yelled, having seen it too as she burst into the lab, a lot more breathless than I was.

  “Stop!” I shouted as she bolted across the room, the broken glass crunching under her shoes. “Wait!”

  Since I was on the floor and she was still on her feet and moving thanks to arriving late and missing the hail of deadly blades (OK, two doesn’t technically constitute a ‘hail’, but it had felt like that), she would have reached the door before I could reach her and there was a good possibility that the same welcome lay beyond that door that I had received on entering the lab. I needn’t have worried, though, because she was brought up short by something that she spotted on the floor halfway across the room. I was pretty sure that I could guess what it was that had stopped her and I was right. Down by one of the lab benches there was a body, sprawled across the linoleum with the arms and legs laid out in unnatural poses. It was dressed in a lab coat that was now much more red than it was white. I knelt down beside it and felt for a pulse. There was none. The look on the dead man’s face was enough to convince me that death had not come peacefully to him.

  “Who is it?” Miranda asked from behind me, still rooted to the same spot where she had spotted the body.

  “Helliman,” I told her.

  “Is he…?”

  “Oh yeah,” I confirmed. There was no doubting that. His throat had been sliced open from one side to the other, probably courtesy of a blade very much like those that had nearly punctured me. The glassy eyes stared unseeingly into the fluorescent lights above and the growing pool of blood under the body was well beyond the point where it could be replaced. “They’re erasing all their tracks. Permanently. You need to stay here.”

  “I can help,” she countered and I didn’t have the time to debate with her. I could have just punched her one, putting her out, but there was a chance that she was right.

  “All right, but you stay behind me and do what I say without question.”

  Emerging from the lab into the underground cavern was an astonishing sensation despite the situation that necessitated it. I was moving more slowly in case there were any more flying daggers, but there was such a sudden feeling of wide open space that I suffered momentary agoraphobia and nearly fell over.

  “Wow!” Miranda was equally affected, but recovered herself quickly. “Down there.”

  Over by the water’s edge at the foot of the rocks, a red-haired figure slipped off her lab coat and stood for a moment, naked. The physical differences between the Sirens and humans can usually be disguised by clothing and makeup, but there was no mistaking them despite the fact that the figure was some way distant from us. The dark line of the dorsal fin running down her spine to split into two that ran down the back of each leg was especially obvious, but the gills on either side of the thorax were also visible like open wounds, pulsating as she breathed more normally. She seemed to revel in being free of the human trappings for a moment before she dived into the lake with a splash that barely marked the surface of the water, but the sound of which echoed around the inside of the cavern.

  “Come on,” I said and ran down some steps that had been fashioned into the rock of the cave to the point where she had dived in. I wasn’t stupid enough to go into the water after her. Nobody takes on a Siren in their own element without the aid of at least a pod of attack dolphins and a couple of killer whales on standby. The laboratory, though, was at a level well above the bottom of the flooded cavern and the rocky steps led down to a couple of skiffs powered by outboard motors that were moored at the water’s edge. I jumped into the first and nearly fell out the other side under my own momentum and the sudden rocking of the boat, which looked a lot smaller once you were on the inside. Steadying myself, I helped Miranda into it and started up the small engine, which caught first time. I pushed the prow away from the rock and gunned the engine. The little boat jerked forward with surprising speed and surged out across the calm water, leaving a wake of churned up water behind it.

  The Siren wasn’t thinking straight at all. She could have dived down into water that was so deep that the bottom was very quickly lost to the illumination provided by the powerful arc lights above us. She could have hidden out in the depths, making her way to the exit as soon as we lost her, but she was spooked and was heading in a straight line across the surface as fast as she could. Being a Siren, that was pretty fast. Her undulating body sped through the water with almost no drag at all. I opened up the boat’s throttle as far as it would go and got a bit more speed out of it, but the slight wake that the siren left behind her was getting further away rather than closer.

  “Can’t we go any faster?” Miranda shouted and then moderated her voice as her outburst echoed around the cavern, seemingly magnified a dozen times. “At all?”

  “No,” was the short answer. I scanned the rock walls that lay along the path of the siren’s course and spotted what I presumed was her target destination. There was a small cave mouth in the far wall from which water poured in a constant stream into the main basin. After a storm in the world above, that would probably be a very impressive waterfall. I thought of the brewing storm above and hoped that the clouds kept their rain to themselves for a while longer. The inlet was above the water level, but I had seen enough film of salmon making their way upstream to know that she could just leap straight up and inside if she reached it. To get to the cave, though, the Siren was having to detour around an outcropping of rock that projected low out into the water quite a long way. She might have chanced coming out of the water to run across it, but that would have presented me with a clearly visible target and that was something that she thought was a risk not worth taking. She had a good lead and we were going to have to make the same detour after all.

  “This thing got seatbelts?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the pale shape in the water ahead.

  “No,” Miranda informed me.

  “Hold on tight then.”

  I’d seen this done is any number of action movies, but the fact was that I had no idea whether it was going to work in reality or not. If I got it wrong then the best thing that was going to happen was that we were going to be thrown quite a distance by the boat’s impact with the unyielding rock. The worst was that the bottom of the boat would be ripped out from under us. If I didn’t try it, though, then there was no chance at all of catching the Siren before she made her escape. I needed to capture her and this was the only way that was going to happen, so it was worth the risk. I turned the outboard and the skiff swerved off towards the rocks.

  “What are you doing?” Miranda enquired, her eyes widening in shock. I had no doubt that fear would be coming along right behind. “She went that way.”

  “And we’re going this way,” I said, far more calmly than I felt. “When I say, lean back as hard as you can … Now!”

  Miranda didn’t have time to object. We threw ourselves backwards and it was just enough to raise the bow of the boat out of the water. There was a terrible grating, tearing noise as the keel scraped on the rock and a harsh grinding as I failed to raise the outboard motor quickly enough to prevent the propeller blades chewing into the surface.

  It worked, though.

  For a few seconds we were sickeningly airborne, the boat moving along an arc that was very flat, but descending faster than our bodies were, making us hold onto the frame for all that we were worth This was the second vehicle in short order that I’d forced Miranda to cling onto. The Sire
n turned her head at the noise to see what was going on and her mouth dropped open in surprise. Miranda yelled, but that then turned into a scream as a huge grey shape heaved itself out of the water in front of us. There was absolutely nothing that I could do. I had no control over anything. There was just time for me to recognise a small head with large, round, surprised eyes before the prow of the boat crunched into the bulk of the creature, splintering instantly, and I was tossed into the water. The force with which I hit surface was enough to wind and disorient me, but one thing flashed through my mind in big flashing red letters

  I’m in the water! Bloody hell I’m in the water!

  And so was the Siren.

  I had to get out and I had to get out fast. If the Siren managed to get hold of me she would drag me down to the bottom and roll me over and over so that I was unable to fight back right up until the point that I drowned. This was her element and it would be easy for her. Panicking wasn’t going to get me to land with any speed, so I called up my training and discipline and calmed my mind, looking for the light through the water. Precious seconds had already been lost and I wasn’t about to lose any more. The light was the way up and I followed it until my head broke the surface and I was able to breathe again in great, heaving gasps. The rocks that the boat had successfully jumped over were to my left and I was relieved to see Miranda crawling onto them, water streaming from her hair and clothes. I struck out in that direction with strong, regular strokes. Thrashing about would just entice the Siren in faster. She was certainly more confident of herself now. I think that she was playing with me because I managed to get both hands on the water-slicked surface of the rocks before she grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me back into the water. Miranda reached for me, but her desperate fingers were out of my reach and I was pulled under.

  Now, though, I was calm enough to react properly to the crisis. I jammed my heel down onto the Siren’s fingers hard and she let go, probably more through surprise at the pain than the pain itself. The drag of water against my foot ensured that I couldn’t do any significant damage. I kicked out for the surface and almost made it. There was a flash of red in the water in front of me as the Siren went past and her trailing foot kicked me in the side of the head, hard. I didn’t let the stars I was seeing distract me, but she was moving fast now and came in again, this time from behind, her fist punching me squarely where she thought my kidneys ought to be located. Fortunately, her grasp of the finer points of human anatomy was worse than what little I knew of Siren physiology and though the blow bloody hurt I wasn’t incapacitated. Then fingers grabbed my head, but instead of pulling me down, hauled me above the surface, coughing and spluttering.

  “Grab on,” Miranda shouted, not caring how much the sound echoed around us now. “Get a grip and get out of the bloody water.”

  I scrambled backwards, not caring how much the rocks’ slick surface scraped me, and was most of the way out of the water when the Siren grabbed my ankle again. Miranda screamed and it was easy to see why. The creature’s face was twisted into an animalistic snarl of hatred that bore no resemblance to the pretty girl in the CCTV footage. The face was framed with red hair that the water had turned to the slimy consistency of rank seaweed. Miranda jerked backwards and I reacted just as instinctively, kicking out with my free foot. I felt the heel connect with the Siren’s face and the pressure on my leg was gone. I scrambled up onto the rocks and shielded Miranda from any follow up attack, but none came. The Siren floated just out of reach, watching us, her eyes just above the surface, her hair spreading out like a red slick across the surface. I reached for the security of my gun, but it wasn’t there. The Siren raised her face out of the water and laughed, a deep gurgle of water in her throat.

  “Looking for this?” she asked and her voice was as smooth as syrup and just as likely to make you sick. Her hand came up out of the water and it was holding my gun. I hadn’t felt her remove it during the struggle, but then I had been distracted by other concerns.

  Like staying alive.

  “Back up now,” I whispered to Miranda, “and then run like crazy at the first opportunity.”

  “Stop!” the Siren ordered, using all the frequencies of her remarkable voice to the limit of her skill. Miranda froze and I backed right into her. “Come to me,” the Siren crooned sweetly. The insidiously slick tones slipped inside my ears and tried to compel me, but I was able to force them away. Miranda, though, was lost. She took a step forward. I didn’t hesitate this time, but punched her once in the face and caught her before she collapsed onto the unforgiving surface.

  “That wasn’t very chivalrous,” the Siren commented with another gurgling laugh. “Now bring her to me.”

  “No,” I refused, fighting off all the reasons that occurred to me as to why it would be a really, really good idea to do just as she asked. It was such a reasonable request after all. What possible reason was there to refuse it?

  “No?” the surprise gave a slight, but noticeable discordancy to her voice.

  “No,” I repeated. It’s hard to look impressive when you are dripping water from every single part of your body and your clothes are hanging like wet sacks around you, but I tried. “You can’t compel me.”

  “Bring her to me,” the Siren tried again, the silkiness of her voice reinstated. I almost moved. I really wanted to move, but I resisted for all I was worth (and a bit more since Grayson would probably have said that I wasn’t worth that much). I felt the muscles in my legs prepare to move, but fought against them.

  The Siren screamed with fury, a sound that had no semblance of humanity in it at all and inflicted real pain. Rising up in the water until she was waist high, she pointed the gun at me. I was unable to move, hands clapped to my ears trying to block out the sound of her scream as she pulled the trigger.

  I would have ducked instinctively had the Siren’s scream not already had me on my knees. I had an idea of what was going to happen next, but there was nothing to be gained in playing the odds. The weapon in her hand was not made of metal for the simple reason that metal conducts electricity and a gun that shoots its holder is only useful in a very limited number of circumstances. This gun had been in the water for a while, though, and that water had coated every inch of its inner workings as well as the outer surface, so when the electric charge was released, it arced in every direction at once rather than just the one in which it was meant to arc. The upshot of which was that it also arced to all the other charges inside. Four other non-lethal hits were set off in a chain reaction, following the path of least resistance, which was directly through the Siren’s body and down into the water. The scream of fury was cut off abruptly as all her muscles were locked by the electrical discharge, blue sparks shooting obscenely between the teeth inside her silently screaming mouth. Then, she sank abruptly into the water and was lost to sight in the darkness beyond the reach of the lights.

  Tired and wet, I twisted from kneeling to sitting on the slippery surface of the rocks far enough away from the edge so that she could not lunge out and grab me in the unlikely event that she had just been stunned rather than actually killed. In my line of work you sometimes couldn’t even be sure that something was dead after it had been cremated and the ashes scattered at sea.

  “You can move now,” I said to Miranda, noticing that she was still caught in the position that she had been in when the Siren ordered her to stop.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, uncertainly, even her lips barely moving.

  “She’s dead, so I’m pretty sure it’s OK,” I assured her. A Siren’s ability worked directly through the human nervous system, affecting the brain by the shortest possible route, but it was the brain that was affected, not the muscles or nerves themselves. The effect wore off naturally over time without regular exposure, but convincing the brain that the instructions it had been given were incorrect or no longer necessary shortened the process considerably. Miranda had only been exposed for a second and so it only took her a short time to overcome
the effects and convince herself that she was able to move again. She joined me in sitting on the uncomfortable, but nonetheless welcome rocks.

  “That didn’t quite go as you expected then?” she commented, looking out across the now still surface of the subterranean lake.

  “Putting it mildly,” I agreed. The armoury weren’t going to be too pleased that I had lost my gun. They were custom built and very expensive considering that you couldn’t use them in anything wetter than a light shower.

  “Um, did we just kill the Loch Ness Monster?”

  I looked across at the huge grey bulk of the creature that had surfaced directly in front of us and which now lay half in, half out of the water on the same stretch of low rocks. There was slight movement around the closed eyes and the long neck dilated slightly, but rhythmically.

  “It’s still breathing,” I told her, relieved. Being the man who killed the Loch Ness Monster wouldn’t have been good for my career. That kind of publicity would have ensured that I could never work undercover again and I’d be as globally reviled as the trappers who had shot the last of the giant pandas into extinction for the supposedly aphrodisiac properties of their testicles. Considering how difficult it had been for the conservationists to get the last few pandas in captivity to unsuccessfully mate with each other those properties had to be questionable at best, but there was no mistaking the outcry that had turned the hunters into the hunted and caused the Chinese government to offer them new names and jobs, none of which stopped them turning up dead in a Shanghai back alley painted black and white and missing their reproductive organs. The animal welfare activists could be pretty serious when roused.

  “That’s good,” she agreed. “It’s an odd feeling, you know, being controlled like that. It was like some sort of out of body experience, except that I never left. I could see, hear, feel everything, but I couldn’t actually do anything. Even now I can feel a sort of tingling all over, like my body doesn’t really want to be doing what it’s doing.”