"How?" asked Peri. "What do I have to imprison it?"
"Grey areas again," replied Guanyin. "Think about it, Peri. You will have what you need nearby."
"Bloody marvellous!" said Peri, bitterly. "I have no idea how to fight it, but even if I do, I can't kill it, I just have to imprison it, and I have no clue how to do that. Is that supposed to help? Really?"
"Energy is depleting," said Guanyin. "This interaction must end soon. You have all the clues you need, save one. There is a question you have not yet asked."
"There are many questions I want to ask," said Peri. "Which one - ah, wait, it's obvious. I need to know about these enhanced capabilities you're going to all this trouble for me to develop. What will I be able to do that I can't do already?"
"Very little," said Guanyin, infuriatingly. But before Peri could snap at her, she continued. "But your strength will be greater, and you will have better control. You already have remarkable capabilities for a human. You have exceptional powers of recall. Most human scientists believe that 'eidetic memory' or 'photographic memory' does not really exist, though some people have remarkable memories. You, uniquely, have a genuine photographic memory, though you may not have realised how exceptional you are. You also have exceptional proprioception, a trait sometimes referred to as kinaesthesia. Have you come across these terms?"
"Yes," said Peri, thoughtfully. "Some teachers at school said I seemed to be kinaesthetic, and I would make either a brilliant gymnast or a dancer. My grandmother wanted me to take ballet classes, but I - er, let's just say I declined. I wasn't very nice about it, as I recall."
"We both know that you recall it perfectly," replied Guanyin. "You know how rude and hurtful you were."
"Ah, yes, I should have guessed that you've been keeping an eye on me."
"You have a perfect sense of movement and positioning of your entire body. This is important."
"Well, if I wanted to dance with a Devourer, I suppose," Peri said sourly.
"Think back. Your military companions commented on your accuracy when using a pistol instinctively rather than consciously. Your proprioceptive abilities go far beyond that. Next. The key to unlocking a huge number of scientific achievements is an understanding of the time dimensions. Humanity lacks the necessary understanding."
"So do I," Peri interjected.
"Yes. But you have some control over the time dimension of conventional spacetime. You can manipulate the flow of time to some extent. You have already done so more than once."
"I can? Really? I have?"
"Yes," said Guanyin. "Hongfeng Road, Shanghai. Instinctively, you used two aspects of time manipulation. How did you know the young boy was in danger? And how did you reach him so quickly? There have been more recent examples of short-term precognition."
"Precognition?" said Peri. "I guess I have some kind of heightened sense of danger. But isn't time unidirectional? How can anyone experience the future and then come back to make use of the knowledge?"
"How is unimportant. You may as well ask, 'How do I control my digestive system?' It is enough that it works. Your precognitive sense operates over a very short interval. You can see the possible futures a second or so ahead, and identify high threats, in time to take action."
"I can't get my head round that," said Peri. "If I see the future, but then act so as to change it, that's meddling with the law of cause and effect. Isn't it?"
"I repeat..."
"How is unimportant."
"Yes," said Guanyin. "Now, the other aspect is the ability to slow down or speed up the rate at which time flows relative to yourself. Do you see how useful this would be?"
"I think so," said Peri. "Since time and motion are related..."
"Good," Guanyin interrupted. "We have only moments left."
"But how do I make it work?"
"Use a metaphor. Picture something that represents time passing, something you can manipulate, and will it to be manipulated. Your capability will do the rest."
The white light began to grow dim, and Guanyin sighed. "Energy depletion is upon us. I am sorry, but this is going to be exceptionally painful."
The slender figure of the Servator faded away, as did the armchair Peri was sitting in. The white fog and white light faded to black and she felt growing pressure round her abdomen and her limbs. Black tentacles edged with sharp bladed spines began to materialise, and Peri began to scream as the returning agony blazed through her.
Chapter 25
Beneath Anifail Island, North Wales May 29 Last Year.
The pain that ripped through Peri was excruciating, all but indescribable. The creature's black tentacles were wrapped around her neck, her abdomen and her leg. The knife-blade spines were digging deeper into her flesh as its muscles contracted and wrenched at her. She could feel air leaking from punctured lungs, blood flooding from ruptured arteries and her own screams fade into nothing as her larynx collapsed. There was a snapping sound and she could no longer feel the agony below her waist. Another snap and for a fraction of a second she glimpsed her torso being carried away into the darkness towards the creature's mouth before, mercifully, blackness took her.
The others watched, horrified, as Peri came apart and the monster pulled the pieces back behind the iron doors.
"Ooh!" Tash was audible in each of their heads. "Another one down! Wonder who's going to be next, eh, Gus? So come on, opposable thumbs isn't much to ask for, now, is it?"
The big dog sat with its head cocked to one side, and Troy could have sworn it was smiling. With a yell of outrage, he levelled his assault rifle at it and squeezed the trigger. The bullets passed through leaving the dog unharmed. "Now that might have made you feel a little better," said Tash inside his mind, "But it really didn't do anything for me. And the door's about to open really wide. What should we do, eh, Gus?"
Gus fiddled with the ring on his finger, and bowed his head.
"That's it!" yelled the dog into their heads. "I can feel it working!"
All around the dog, tiny spheres of energy hovered, sparked, repelled and attracted each other in a random dance. The randomness of the dance rapidly diminished. Tiny energy packets, attracting each other, were forming larger parcels, and these in turn were overcoming repulsive forces to grow, dance more slowly, and merge into something greater. The pungent smell of ozone filled the cave. A low rumble became audible and the ground trembled. There was a sudden sharp rise in pitch, culminating in an unnatural scream, and the luminescent blobs of energy abruptly coalesced into a large glowing sphere, which blew outwards with a loud crack. The dog was gone. In the centre of a blackened patch staining the cave floor, there stood a human figure.
"Gus! This is fantastic!" Tash's voice was audible now, as well as inside their heads, and the four humans blinked, disoriented and astonished. "Wow! Look at me! I'm a girl!"
Steve, Troy and Amanda gaped. The figure was a woman, naked but for a dog collar, skin the colour of olives, her small breasts tipped by brown areolae and nipples, dark-eyed, her black hair standing out from her head and crackling with static.
Amanda hesitantly whispered, "Peri? You changed Tash into Peri?"
Gus was shocked. He muttered, "It wasn't me - really, it wasn't."
"Yah!" the figure replied excitedly. "It's me! Tash! Hey Gus, look what I can do!"
The woman reached up to grasp the dog collar, which she unclipped and dramatically tossed onto the ground at Gus's feet.
"See? Opposable thumbs, Gus, opposable thumbs! Fuck you and fuck your magic collar! Now you know why nobody else was ever dumb enough to give me opposable thumbs! I'll be going soon, Gus, but before I do, just let me..." She ran her hands over the skin of her new body, and gave a whimper as they brushed over her nipples.
"Ooh, Amanda, how do you manage to leave your tits alone? Boys, you don't know what you're missing! This is amazing! I could do this all day. In fact, I think I will!" She tugged on her nipples, giving them a squeeze and rolling them in her fingers. "Ooh, yes, yes,
yes! What other erogenous zones do we have...?"
Suddenly a voice crashed like thunder into each of their minds: "TAKE YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF ME, YOU DAMNED DIRTY DOG!"
Tash guiltily dropped her hands to her sides, and looked even more dumbfounded than the others. "Peri?" she said, aloud, hesitantly.
"Yes, Peri," she replied to herself. Or more correctly, Peri replied to Tash. She looked around. "If anyone's confused right now, let me just say, me too!"
Her eye fell on the dog collar at Gus's feet, and she realised that she knew what the Servator's hints had meant. She really did have what she needed.
The iron door creaked as something pushed from the other side. "Okay," said Peri. "I guess it's finished eating me, and it's looking for dessert, so I vote we take care of business. I want a flash-bang in that door to distract it, Troy. Stand by with another one, just in case. Gus - you've got the controller for the collar, right? Get ready to shape something small and helpless."
"But how..." began Amanda.
Peri smiled an enigmatic smile, and replied, "How is unimportant. Stand by the door, we go on a three count, right?"
Peri closed her eyes, and synchronised herself with her own heartbeat. She reached out, feeling with her mind for the faint ribbon of time streaming by. Ah! There it was. She gently closed her mind around it, like a fist, letting it slip through her fingers.
"Three," she said.
She tightened her mind's grip on the ribbon, slowing it just a little, becoming accustomed to the force it exerted, before squeezing a little harder, slowing time a little more relative to her pulse.
"Two."
She picked up the dog collar. From the way Gus's eyes tried to follow her movement - slowly - she realised her motion had been a blur to him. She grabbed time's ribbon and clamped down with her mind, hard.
"One."
It seemed to take a very long time for the iron door to start moving, and Troy's flash-bang to float slowly through the gap. She closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears, and waited for the detonation. When she felt the rumble, she launched herself in through the door, and opened her eyes.
Peri realised that she could see in the dark this time. A large shape was retreating into the depths of the cave, and she threw herself into the middle of the mass of tentacles with the dog collar in one hand. The creature was moving absurdly slowly, or rather, she corrected herself, it was moving quickly but she was moving unbelievably fast. She saw movement in her peripheral vision, and ducked under one swinging tentacle and hurdled over another. She seized a third in one hand, and deftly slipped the collar over its end and tried to push it along its length. The collar snagged on the first spine it came to, and as Peri tried to force it over, something - yet another tentacle - crashed into her back and sent her flying across the cave and into the rusty iron wall. She cried out with pain as spines punctured her back and then was silenced as all the air whooshed out of her with the impact against the cave wall. She distinctly heard several ribs break. She sagged, gasping for breath, and felt blood running across her skin from multiple lacerations. Another dark shape was flying towards her face - another tentacle. She tucked her limbs in, wincing with the pain, and rolled across the cave floor out of the way. She felt the spines whip through her hair and scratch the top of her head as she scrambled past the creature's groping tentacles. She looked up, in time to see something catch the light as it flew towards the back of the cave - the collar had flown off.
"Fuck this," she muttered aloud. "It's got too many bloody tentacles. How the hell do I dodge them all?"
The answer came to her and she slapped the cave floor in fury. "Fucking stupid bitch! Idiot!" she snarled at herself. She forced herself to calm down, and reached out with her mind to take a firm grip on the ribbon of time. A pair of tentacles were closing in from the sides, and were about to slap together and crush her. She yanked on time, as hard as she could, dragging it to a halt, and visualised tying off the ribbon so it could not move. She glanced around herself to see if it had worked.
Dust motes hung in the air, unmoving. The creature was still. The tentacles were close, but coming no closer. She could see the thing's huge eye, focused on her, and its gaping circular maw ringed with pointed teeth. Carefully she stepped through the tentacles and past the beast's head. As she bent to pick up the dog collar, her vision swam and it dawned on her that her body's energy was all but drained by the effort of controlling time. She needed to get a move on.
Peri picked up the collar and unsnapped it. She wrapped it around a tentacle near its junction with the hideous head, and fastened it. Immediately, the collar tightened and clung to the beast.
Her heart pounding and her pulse racing, Peri moved to the cave entrance and stepped through into the outer chamber. It should not have surprised her, but nevertheless there was a moment of shock as she caught sight of her companions, stock still, with various expressions of horror or disbelief on their faces. She moved close to Gus, her limbs burning with the effort, and knew she could hold on to time no longer. Her vision went dark around the edges and time tore free from her mental grasp, as she collapsed onto the floor. Abruptly, her surroundings picked up speed and noises crashed back into her ears.
She called out, "Now, Gus! Now! Trap the fucker!"
Gus' eyes went wide and he looked down in disbelief at Peri, lying in a bloody heap at his feet. But he obediently squeezed and turned the ring on his finger. There was a hissing sound and a flare of white light from the inner cave.
"Did it work?" demanded Peri. "Let me see!"
Troy looked round the door and laughed. He and Gus dragged the door wide, as Amanda helped Peri to stand. Amanda looked up at the cave, and she, too, started to laugh. Peri finally got her eyes to focus, and they narrowed as her sight landed on a small, surprised-looking sheep, wearing a dog collar.
"Right," said Peri. "Now get me a flame-thrower, and a big fucking bucket of mint sauce. Stat!"
Gus quickly laid a hand on her arm. "Peri," he said urgently. "I fear the containment of the collar would be destroyed..."
She laughed. "Relax, Gus. I just felt the circumstances called for a memorably badass line. I don't really intend to barbecue it."
"If that's all your blood..." Troy started to say, before Amanda cut in.
"She's healing already. Peri, you were cut up very badly, and you're covered in bruises, but the wounds aren't bleeding, in fact they have mostly closed up. What on earth happened ... It killed you, but you came back!"
"Let's just say I'm tougher than I look and leave it at that," Peri said firmly.
Steve reappeared. "Okay, is it secure...?" he started to ask. But then he stopped dead, and stared at the improbable scene in the Mithraeum. The open doors, the sheep, the naked bloody woman. "What the hell? I only stepped out for five minutes! What happened? Why is there a sheep in there? And why is Peri covered in blood?"
"She's also stark naked," said Amanda, unbuttoning her top and stripping it off. "Take this. It's opaque at least, even if it is a bit short. Gentlemen? Can any of you contribute towards preserving Peri's modesty?"
***
They all needed to get out of that cave.
As soon as she reached ground level once more, Peri had to borrow a mobile phone. Her personal phone and her Sectera phone had both been in the pockets of her cargo pants, and goodness only knew where they were now. She called Tommy in London to provide an update - in guarded terms given the unencrypted channel - and to make sure the military had stopped whatever planning they had started for a big bang on Anifail. She was insistent on the latter point, telling Tommy in no uncertain terms that if she was accidentally nuked, she'd hold him personally responsible and make him suffer, even if it meant coming back to London as a zombie to eat his brains. He took the opportunity to let her know that she should be wary of Victoria Bandra, because his team thought it was likely to be a false name. To this, Peri's response had been typically terse: "No shit."
Steve had used his
personal role radio to report in to Captain Mike on the mainland, stressing that the threat had been contained, but - at Peri's insistence - providing no details by radio. Mike had sent more troops over to comb the island for chain snakes, and the scientific teams were following them to pick up any interesting samples they might come across. Commando Engineers were also on their way to repair the iron defences of the cave system.
The team sat or lay under the stars, outside the little chapel, to wait for helicopter transport back to the mainland.
Peri moved beside Amanda. "Hey," she said. "Remember earlier, when you asked who you needed to sleep with? And I said that would be me?"
Amanda gave her a quizzical look. "I remember."
Peri laughed. "Well, I know you haven't got a room for the night. So, I'm not propositioning you or anything, but you're welcome to sleep in mine. Unless you want to be propositioned, of course?"
Amanda gave her an appreciative smile. "Maybe another night. The propositioning, I mean, not the sleeping. I'll take the sleeping now, thanks. And I'm babbling a bit, aren't I?"
"Yes, you are," Peri confirmed. "But relax, I got the gist." She gave Amanda's shoulder a squeeze, and leaned to her other side where Gus was lying on his back looking tired.
"Lost without your dog?" she asked softly.
He propped himself on elbow and gave Peri a tight smile. "A little," he admitted. "I have been looking after Tash for a very long time. When I think back, it is a surprisingly long time."
Peri nodded. "You're the Gustav Adolph, aren't you? Gustavus the Second Adolphus, King of Sweden, Lion of the North, champion of the Protestant Reformation."
Gus simply shrugged by way of reply.
"And that would mean you've been looking after Tash for about four hundred years."
Gus nodded. "About."
"Now what?" asked Peri.
Gus looked into her eyes, as if searching for something. "He's in there, somewhere, isn't he?"
She nodded. "I can feel him," she said. "That isn't the right word. I can - sense - him inside me. When I came back, he fled. It's like he found a corner and curled up in it, and pulled a barrier round himself to cut himself off from me. He isn't talking, he's just there."
Island of Fog and Death: A sci-fi horror adventure Page 22
