The Gates of Hell

by Chris Kennedy

The monitor blinked and reset. The display showed an image of four figures, two Besquith and two Zuul. Alarmed, Karilisan exclaimed, “It’s in the command center!”

  The alpha jumped and turned to the corner of the room, looking for the device. “What’s the meaning of this?” she barked out angrily. She took two steps toward a blocky brace at the corner of the roof, but there was a pop, and the display went dark.

  Karilisan looked down at his slate. “We have a problem.”

  “What is it?” Jesalic asked, turning toward him.

  “The camera was switched off, and the command came from outside the camp.”

  Both Jesalic and the alpha started, then bolted toward the door as one. As they passed through, Karilisan could hear them speaking into their comms. The alpha’s speech was low and growling, but he could clearly understand Jesalic. “All hands! Full alert! Now! I don’t care where you are, get back to camp, full armor, heavy loadout. We’re about to get it stuck in…” His voice faded as he ran toward the Zuul encampment.

  Karilisan headed after him. As he exited the command center, Jesalic turned back.

  “No! You have to stay on the sensors! Find him, whoever’s doing this! If we’re about to get hit, I need you in there to tell us where it’s coming from!”

  Karilisan stopped at Jesalic’s command, and Srentaal ran into him from behind, staggering him. He recovered and said, “But, sir!”

  “No! We need eyes, Karil. Get in there and tell me what I need to know.”

  The alpha faced Srentaal. “You as well; protect the pup.” Srentaal started to protest, but was interrupted. “Pack before wolf. Protect him. This is your task.”

  Srentaal grunted, “Pack before wolf. Yes, Mother.” It took Karilisan’s arm, herding him back into the command center. Inside, Srentaal released the Zuul.

  He looked up. “What now? What do we do? Wait…Mother?”

  Srentaal shrugged. “You have your orders, find the intruder.”

  Karilisan turned toward the workstation. There was a tremendous flash, and the floor struck him.

  * * *

  Karilisan woke on a hard, smooth surface.

  “What? Where…”

  He stopped as the pain came flooding in. He raised his hand to his head, but it felt wrong—numb and painful all at once. He squinted down at his hand, forcing himself to focus. It was wrong somehow. He couldn’t get the focus right. It was…it was gone. His right hand, gone. His arm ended in a bandaged stump. He wiggled his fingers and could feel them moving, but…nothing. There was no hand there.

  He passed out.

  When he woke again, he found himself on a rough pallet. The pain in his head seemed less, and his hand…He jerked upright and looked. It was still gone.

  “Ah! You’re back with us. Good.”

  Karilisan jumped. The voice had come from above him. Looking around, he realized he was in a small cell separated by bars from the rest of the room. Along the ceiling, he saw a maze of pipes, with several extending down the wall. Among them a deep shadow lurked.

  It moved slowly, sliding easily among the pipes. “Yes. You were beginning to bore me and,” the voice paused, “we can’t have that.”

  As the shape slid toward him, Karilisan saw what seemed like several ropes trailing behind it, and several that seemed to reach before it. Finally, it emerged.

  Wrogul.

  Karilisan, his fur standing up, scrambled back into a corner of the small cell. The Wrogul appeared boneless, a dark-colored mass with several manipulating tentacles. Beyond their appearance, no one knew much about them, certainly not more than the Wrogul wanted them to know. They were extraordinary surgeons and scientists, but there were rumors of a more unsavory aspect to their pursuits of knowledge, a lack of morals. The thought of being captive to one, especially one who had placed him in a cell, didn’t comfort him.

  The Wrogul regarded him thoughtfully. “Relax, my little Zuul,” he said. “If I wanted you dead, you would certainly be dead, just like the rest of your little Zuul friends.”

  Shocked, he tried to push back the fog in his head. All dead? His last memory was of Jesalic, very much alive, telling him to return to the command center. What had happened?

  “You look confused. You took a blow to the head, so I’m not surprised. They’re dead. All the Zuul, all the Besquith. Once you discovered my camera, I couldn’t have them running around looking for me, now could I? They might disrupt the things I’m doing here. So, no, they had to go.” The Wrogul gave a lurching sort of shrug and continued, “So I triggered the bombs. I’d placed them in and around the camp. Very thoroughly, I might add. Honestly, their security was a bad joke. Your Zuul friends were less cooperative, making a separate camp, but a couple of armed drones, and that problem went away. Yes, I thought you were all dead until I found you and the gamma.” The Wrogul gestured with a tentacle, and Karilisan saw the mound of matted fur in the next cell.

  “Srentaal?” he asked.

  “Is that its name?” Chromatophores rippled the length of the Wrogul’s body, lightening and darkening his skin. “Not really important, I suppose. It was more damaged than you were. You lost a hand and acquired a kind of interesting puncture through your back, very close to the spine.” The Wrogul’s tone was impersonal, as if he were describing a challenging hunt or a meal. It was an exercise to relieve boredom, or just to see if it could be done—nothing more. “But this one,” he gestured toward Srentaal, “it took a chunk of ferro-plas to the skull. Damage to the temporal and parietal lobes, and a bit to the brain stem as well. Just getting it stable enough to move up here was a challenge. That was real fun.” Excitement crept into his voice. “And now I have a Besquith to work on!” The Wrogul returned his attention to Karilisan. “Oh, I’m happy to have you, of course. Zuul are interesting in their own way. Pack evolution, large olfactory processing, and yet you still dedicate a good part of the brain to visual processing. That’s not always the case in a predator species, you know. Interesting oxygenation index, as well. But Besquith?” The Wrogul actually quivered with delight. “The spinal structure, the muscle and bone density, the resilience of the heart chambers. Amazing! This is going to be so much fun! Oh, and Besquith are trioecious.”

  Karilisan looked blank.

  The Wrogul saw it. “Really? Trioecy? Three sexes? You didn’t know this?” His tone became that of a lecturer. “Zuul have two sexes, but Besquith? Females, males and,” he gestured toward Srentaal, “gammas, who are neuter, but can become either male or female.” The Wrogul pointed a tentacle at the Zuul. “You are male, of course, and functional. It might be interesting to see how a female works out. I’ll think about it.” He turned away and started to move toward an assortment of lab equipment.

  In his befuddled state, Karilisan hadn’t noticed much beyond his own cell. He now realized he was being held in a well-equipped laboratory. “Wait. You can’t hold us! You must contact the Guild and either release or ransom us.”

  The Wrogul stopped and turned enough to look back. “Release you? Why would I want to do that? Sleep now.”

  Something inside Karilisan’s neck clicked, there was a stinging pain, and the room faded away.

  * * *

  Once again, Karilisan woke on the pallet.

  “Good! You’re back. You need to see this.”

  Karilisan slowly sat up. It was like moving through mud, and it was hard to think.

  “Wh-what? What have you done to me? I feel…wrong.” He struggled to a seated position.

  The Wrogul swung into view, glancing from the far cell back to Karilisan. “What? Oh, that. You’re fine, you’ve just been unconscious for a bit. About twenty days, in fact. It’s just the drugs and the nanites, you’ll be fine. But look over here!”

  “Wait, what? Twenty days?” He struggled to understand, his brain sluggish and stupid.

  “Well, yes, but that isn’t important. Look over here!” The Wrogul was focused on the other cell and sounded extremely unconcerned about the Zuul’s confusio
n. “Look at her…” Pride colored the Wrogul’s voice.

  Karilisan looked through the bars between the two cells. Srentaal was there, but different. The Besquith was changed, recognizable, but larger, much larger than before. Its fur was darker and glossier, and where before it had outweighed him by possibly one hundred pounds, now it would outweigh him easily by at least a two hundred pounds or more. “What have you done to it?”

  “Her,” the Wrogul corrected. “As a gamma, she was supremely uninteresting. But as an alpha?” Once again, the Wrogul sounded proudly possessive. He turned to the Zuul. “You need to understand what I’ve done here. When I found you two, you were bleeding out. This one was as good as clinically dead. With the damage to her brain stem, her heart was just a spasming muscle. I stabilized that. I stopped your bleeding. I stopped her aneurism. I got you both up here alive. That is amazing! You need to be more appreciative!”

  Looking back at the Besquith, he continued, “But now, instead of the simple gamma, we have an alpha. Bigger. Stronger. I triggered the transformation with tailored nanites and some hormones. Once I recovered the body of the previous alpha, it was relatively simple. Not easy, you understand, but straightforward. So now we have an alpha to play with. This is so much better.”

  The Wrogul paused for a moment and then added, “I’m thinking of growing my own pack. First Besquith show up, and then Zuul. If I’m going to continue my work, I need privacy. I’ll have to think about it.” He looked at Karilisan. “What do you think? A group of cloned Besquith for guards?” The Wrogul continued without waiting for a response, “I’d have to adapt them a bit. And of course, there would be some behavioral issues. The rage.” He muttered to himself as he swung back to his equipment. “Besquith have pack loyalty. I may need to try to tweak that. I need them to be loyal to me. There’s the size to consider as well…maybe a bit smaller? Smaller would be easier to control.”

  Karilisan, stunned, scanned the room. He needed to escape…somehow. The Wrogul was insane. He and Srentaal weren’t sapients to this mad scientist, only lab animals. He watched the Wrogul settle in at his computer and spotted a familiar shape on the table. His slate sat next to a pile of electronics from the Besquith camp. If he could access the slate, he might be able to break out, or at least send out a distress call. He tried to use his pinplants to access it.

  “Ah-ah-ah! I see what you’re doing,” The Wrogul turned to look back at the Zuul. “I’m in your pinplants, of course, and I see you trying to get out. I’ve put some of my own programming in there, so don’t make me do something you’ll regret…like this, for instance!”

  Karilisan screamed as the stump of his arm erupted in pain. He clutched it to his chest, frantic for the sensation to stop.

  “I patched you up,” the Wrogul said flatly. “I had a good look at all those exposed nerves in your arm, as well as access to your ‘plants. Don’t screw around. In fact, I’m going to be busy for a bit, so why don’t you go to sleep?”

  Once again he heard a click and felt a sting in his neck, and the room went blessedly dark.

  * * *

  Karilisan woke up back on the pallet. He hissed with the effort of trying to sit up. Everything hurt. It wasn’t like before, when he was just sluggish and groggy. It wasn’t general pain, either, but sharp and specific. Coin-sized spots burned on both biceps, both forearms, several spots on both sides of his ribcage, and both thighs. Finally, his head ached with pressure that felt like it was going to split his skull.

  “You may be feeling some discomfort,” the Wrogul said, drawn by the hiss. “I imagine at the very least, you have a headache.”

  Karilisan growled a threat under his breath, just audible to the Wrogul.

  “Fair enough,” he said, raising two tentacles in acknowledgement. “I did some work while you were out, and I wanted to thank you.”

  “What?” Karilisan was confused. What had the Wrogul done?

  “If you remember, we were talking about growing some Besquith for my security forces.”

  “We weren’t talking,” the Zuul ground out. It hurt to breathe. “You were babbling. You’re insane, and when I get out, I’m going to tear you apart.”

  The Wrogul stopped what he was doing and moved over to the cell. He looked down at his captive. “You need to understand something, Zuul.” The Wrogul’s cold voice was full of malice. “Your continued existence is a courtesy. I enjoy having someone to talk to, and, based on your actions in the security hut, you seem smart enough to appreciate what I’m doing here.”

  Karilisan glared up at him. “And what,” he asked through gritted teeth, “have you been doing in these ruins that’s so important?”

  Colors rippled through the Wrogul’s skin. “What, the ruins?” Surprise tinged his response. “Oh, no. That’s just messing with Great War stuff.” He waved a tentacle dismissively. “Boring. Lucrative, but boring. No. What I’m doing now is much more interesting. Remember how we were talking about breeding some Besquith?” The Wrogul paused, almost like he expected an answer. “This is so much better than that. She’s pregnant, and you are going to be the daddy!”

  “What?” Karilisan sputtered. “What are you talking about? We aren’t even the same species!”

  The Wrogul waved away his protest. “That’s not a problem. See, the Besquith have some traits I wasn’t interested in. Too big, too psychotic, and entirely too likely to turn on me. After I looked her over genetically, I saw where I could make some improvements, and that’s where you come in.”

  “No, still not following,” Karilisan shook his head. “We are not genetically compatible. Not the same species. We can’t.”

  Excited, the Wrogul started flashing along his tentacles. “You can’t under normal circumstances,” he agreed. “And that’s where I come in.” The Wrogul was actually twitching with pleasure. “While you were out, I took the liberty of getting some samples from you—muscle tissue, lung tissue, heart tissue. I even got a few fresh brain and spinal cells. Nothing you’d miss!” he added hastily. “From that material, I could see where you, as a species, had some characteristics that could really improve the basic genome, if we could get it to take. Your nerve tissue, for example, actually has a more efficient chemical matrix than the Besquith, and you have better fast-twitch muscles. As a species, Zuul intellect isn’t all that much better, but your brain is above average, and we can use that. Obviously we couldn’t do straight fertilization, so I obtained some gamete cells from some of the Besquith betas I recovered.”

  “You took the bodies?” Karilisan asked, horror in his voice.

  “Well, yes…how do you think I got the alpha hormones? I’ve kept several in cryo, Besquith and Zuul both. No cellular decay at all, practically pristine! And in you,” the Wrogul continued happily, “I have a live donor, which is even better!” He paused, waiting for acknowledgement. When he got none, he continued, “Anyway, after I completed DNA mapping the samples I got from you, I stripped out some of the corresponding material from the Besquith gametes and put yours in. Easy! After that, it was a matter of getting some zygotes to take. There were a lot of fails, but I only needed a few, and once I had them, I implanted them into our dear, sweet Srentaal. Congratulations! You’re going to be a dad!”

  * * *

  Srentaal had been returned to her cell. For the first time since their capture, Karilisan saw her conscious.

  “Srentaal,” he hissed across from his cell. “Are you alright?”

  “Who calls?” came the low growl. Karilisan backed up a little. There was an unmistakable note of hostility in her voice.

  “It’s me, Karilisan,” he replied.

  “You are Zuul. I know no Zuul,” Srentaal growled.

  “I should probably warn you,” came the voice of the Wrogul, “she has some damage to the brain from before, remember? It’s apparently interfering with her recall.”

  Karilisan moved toward the bars separating him from Srentaal. Suddenly the Besquith lunged, and a great clawed hand shot through
the bars, barely missing him as he jumped back.

  “Oh, and anger issues,” the Wrogul added. “Lots and lots of anger issues. I think I mentioned there was damage to the temporal and parietal lobes, or the Besquith equivalent. That interferes with the memory and with emotional processing. I wouldn’t sleep too close to her cell.”

  “Why is it still a problem? Why didn’t you fix it?”

  “Fix it?” The Wrogul hesitated, and lights trickled across his body. “Well, I suppose I could have, but it didn’t really occur to me.” He paused to consider the idea and dismissed it. “But really, brain reconstruction? Not interested and a waste of nanites.”

  “What? You could’ve healed it, and you didn’t?” Karilisan was stunned by the Wrogul’s admission.

  “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” Now the Wrogul sounded annoyed. “Why should I? That isn’t what I’m working on, and it would have been a waste of my resources.” With that, he reached into the pipes and started toward the exit. “Remember what I said. Don’t get too relaxed if you’re in her reach.” And he was gone.

  “Zuul.” The growl interrupted his thoughts. Karilisan turned to Srentaal.

  “Zuul,” came the growl again. “Who? Are you?” The speech was broken, slurred. Like someone drunk or coming out of anesthesia. “I should…know you. Your smell. I…know it.”

  “I’m Karilisan. You know me. You and I worked together to defend your pack. Do you remember the Command Center? The camp?”

  “Camp. Yes. Old dig. Old tech.” Srentaal rumbled to herself. “Scent…I know it.”

  “Try to remember,” Karilisan said. “Your alpha assigned you to protect me.”

  “Alpha? Alpha…Mother.” There was a low, sad rumbling from Srentaal’s chest, and in that note, everything came crashing into Karilisan. His hand, the loss of his friends, his unit…and how much worse for Srentaal? The Besquith pack they’d been hired to help was a family unit, beings she’d known her entire life. A quiet keening joined the rumble, and he realized it came from him.