Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  “Mopping up,” Scott said dispassionately. “Some of them resisted. You saw at the Jenner. The others? Waste not want not. I needed human cells anyway, to grow the hosts you see here. Just like the Sentinels were made from our human DNA mixed with GOs’, so are they.

  “You may not be aware,” I said. “But one of your human students isn’t human. She’s a Tribal. Unregistered.”

  “My daughter,” Kane said.

  Scott looked thoughtful. “Ah! That would explain it, why she didn’t simply die like the other students. I wondered what I had done wrong.” He shook his head as though berating himself for being silly. Coldwater’s hand was across her mouth. She hadn’t blinked in a while now. I wondered if she was having some kind of breakdown.

  “The others we brought here, well, they didn’t survive the exposure, and the cell harvesting,” Scott said conversationally out of the Datascreen, as though he were chatting about lab rats. “But that girl, she was different. She fought the process. I thought she was just strong, but this would explain it. A Tribal, eh? Daughter of the chieftain, or whatever ridiculous name you creatures give yourselves. Hiding amongst the humans, pretending to be one of us. You see, I am right, Director, they cannot be trusted. This is why we must be rid of them.” He looked to Kane. “You will find your pathetic cub, or what is left of her, in the next room,” he said coldly. “Unless she has died since I left. Not that it will do you much good. You will all be dead in a few minutes.”

  39.

  Kane did not wait to hear more. His face was white and tight. Beyond the tubes containing the faceless, diseased hosts, a smaller door led further into the building. He ran for it, barrelling through and into the darkness beyond.

  “Kane, wait! Goddamnit!” Cloves went after him.

  “So what was the plan, Scott?” Chase asked, as the door banged closed behind the two. “Once you had your Typhoid Marys here, fully formed? Release them into the city, and just hope that vampires would find and bite them, or a hungry Tribal chew on a leg? Hardly seems efficient.”

  “The hosts themselves, home-grown as they are, are not particularly…receptive to control,” Scott said, gazing down at Chase from the large Datascreen. “Rather unpredictable, loosed. Awfully fast, and quite as violent as the Pale.” I could feel the silent threat of the floating foetus-women behind me as I stared up at the screen. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Scott, but the hairs on the back of my neck were on end anyway.

  “They are the garden only,” Scott told us. “From them I harvest the fruit. The biological agent itself, which is now finally perfected. That is the end product in this depressingly grim production line.”

  “Your final solution disease,” Chase said with distaste. Scott nodded, proud and dignified.

  “Genetically tailored to target only GOs, all of them, and leave humans unharmed. I am not after all, a monster. New Oxford will find out all about it in…” He raised his arm and made a show of looking at his wristwatch, which was for our theatrical benefit only, hologram as he was. “…Let’s see, about thirty minutes, when it falls from the sky like judgement.”

  He smiled up at us all.

  “And blankets our whole city. Cleansing the world. We will be ground zero. A new garden of Eden.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, realising what he was saying. I stared at Coldwater. “He’s made this air-borne.”

  He nodded, looking proud. “And it will fall like the breath of God over our city soon. Even if you left now, even if you could get past every drone on this compound, which incidentally I have reactivated, and which stand amassed and fully armed outside the building in which you stand, ready to gun you all down if you leave. Even then…” he chuckled. “There is no way you can get back to the city in time to stop it. Your time has run out I’m afraid, and you cannot stop me.”

  My blood had run cold. Just as Knight’s diary had said. Death would rain from the sky.

  “Your filthy Tribal leader there and his daughter should feel honoured,” Scott insisted. “In less than half an hour, they will be the only GOs remaining alive. Every single Tribal, Bonewalker and vampire in this city will die tonight.” A hard gleam had come into his eyes. It was the light of the radical. “This is my legacy.”

  Every GO in the city would die. All of them. I thought of Allesandro. Less than half an hour. I would never see him again. It hit me like a knife in the chest. We hadn’t parted too well.

  I thought of the Tribal settlement at the Botanical Gardens, Men, women, and children. All to die, tonight. Scott was right. There was no way to get back in time. We couldn’t even warn them.

  A cry of anguish came from the room next door, a roar of animal despair which thudded through the thick walls. It was Kane.

  Scott must have heard it too, as a slow, satisfied smile spread across his green, hologramatic face. I’d never liked the man, but right now I’d never felt such hatred.

  “I bid a goodnight to you all,” he said. “I’d love to stay and watch your demise, but I have a party to attend. My calendar is always full, and this is, after all, a big night for me. I will however leave you something to keep you occupied in your final moments. Just this moment I have remotely ended the sedation of the ‘subjects’ around you. I don’t need them any longer. Director Coldwater, I thank you for your assistance, and am truly sorry to have misled you so wilfully, but I called you out here to die. I never leave a mess behind.” He looked at me and Chase. “King, Bishop and Knight taken. The rest of you? Pawns made to be sacrificed.”

  As the screen went black, I heard raised voices in the next room. Kane and Cloves.

  Around us, the Pale, strapped securely to their beds, had all awoken, as though synchronised. Scott hadn’t been bluffing: their sedation was over, the IV drip they were hooked to suddenly burbling dry, their limbs twitched and jaws snapped as they rolled their eyes frantically, straining at their bindings.

  “Oh, holy hell,” Coldwater said mildly, moving into the centre of the room. All around us, the Pale moved. “He’s mad. He can’t set these things loose! These are secure right? I mean, they are strapped down after all.”

  Chase, who had leapt up nimbly off the bed gave her a wry smile. “Sorry, but no,” he said. “The straps, I imagine, kept them just about secure, along with the sedation. Without it, they may as well be tied with shoelaces.”

  As if on cue, I heard elastic snapping and the Pale creature on the far right bed sat up, the remnants of its moorings flapping around it. Eyeballs rolling in fury, it tried to leap from the bed, but hadn’t noticed its legs were still bound at the ankle. It fell heavily to the floor, where it writhed furiously, hissing and pushing itself back up.

  “What do we do?” I was turning in a circle, trying to keep all of the creatures in view at once.

  Chase reached into his coat. “Honestly,” he said. “Are Vee and I really the only ones who thought to bring weapons with us tonight?” He shook his head reproachfully, pulling a small gun from an inner pocket. Smoothly, he levelled it at the head of the Pale currently struggling on the floor and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The creature’s head exploded in a wet mess, spraying the white tiled floor red. The report was deafening. I had been watching Chase’s face. Serene and unemotional, as though he was doing something as mundane as stapling office paperwork. Before either I or Coldwater could speak, he turned, arm held out straight, and fired three more times into various beds in quick succession, his head slightly cocked as he executed the hissing nightmares. Blood sprayed across the filthy windows and soaked the mattresses. Coldwater had covered her ears with her hands and was standing instinctively in a kind of shocked half-crouch. I stepped back as Chase walked toward me, casually planting bullets in the foreheads of the trapped and struggling creatures left and right with chilling precision as he strolled down the ward.

  “Doctor Harkness,” he said, glancing up. “Duck please.”

  I blinked in shock, then felt something close behind me, sudden and unexpected. I
nstinctively, as Chase raised the gun to point at my head, I fell into a crouch. He fired and there was a squeal behind me. I felt the Pale hit the floor with a wet thud. It had been right behind me. It must have broken its bonds while the gunshots were echoing around us. Its wasted, naked body lay sprawled on the floor inches behind me.

  Standing unsteadily, I stared down at it in shock. Chase had blown its jaw and half of its face off, and must have hit some nerve in the brain as the body before me shook and shuddered on the floor, the claws on its hands and feet beating a rapid, frantic tattoo on the tiles.

  “That one was fast,” he said lightly.

  Coldwater screamed in my ear. Another creature had lunged from a bed beside her and made a grasp for her coat. Chase whirled and fired, sending it sprawling back onto its bed sheets.

  Since he had pulled out the gun, roughly ten seconds had passed and seven of the twelve Pale were already dead. He hadn’t broken a sweat. I decided I really wouldn’t like to get on Chase Pargate’s bad side.

  Restraints snapped all around us as more of the nightmares managed to loose their bonds and free themselves, hissing and gnashing hungrily.

  “There isn’t time,” I said urgently. “We have to go, now.”

  He nodded in agreement, taking in the room and coming to the same conclusion. The remaining Pale would all be free in seconds. He grabbed Coldwater roughly by the arm. “Not that way,” he said, looking back to where we had entered the room. “There are drones in the corridor. Armed ones. Scott wasn’t lying about that. He’s got the stairs out there rigged to mow us down if we set foot outside the doors. I can see them from here.”

  “This way,” I said. We ran for the door to the adjacent room, where Kane and Cloves had disappeared.

  One of the Pale lunged for me, claws grasping at my legs from its bed as I passed it, and only missing by inches. I heard another two gunshots behind me and wondered how many bullets Chase had left in that gun. I didn’t know the first thing about firearms to be honest, but it had only looked like a long nosed revolver to me. The magazine surely didn’t hold many more rounds.

  We plunged through into the next room, and I saw a smaller ward, only four beds in here. It looked like it used to be a storage room, small and boxy. As the door slammed behind us, I stopped in my tracks. The scene was horrific. Two of the beds in the dark room contained the remains of people. Wasted cadavers, looking more like Egyptian mummies than anything recently alive. The students from the Jenner institute I realised. They were long beyond saving. God knows what Scott had done to them – harvesting them to make his incubating hosts – but they hadn’t survived the process. Collateral damage, I’m sure he would have reasoned. I dragged my eyes away from their corpses, my eyes feeling hot and dry. Kane and Cloves stood at the third bed, the huge man hunched over and cradling something in his arms. Cloves stared at the three of us wide-eyed as we barrelled into the room, Chase manhandling Director Coldwater through the door behind me and then holding it closed behind him.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” said Cloves. “I heard gunshots?”

  “The Pale,” I said, shaking my head. There really wasn’t any time to explain. “They’re awake, too many to kill them all. He took out a few.”

  “We really need to barricade this door,” Chase said, leaning against it. There was just the slightest edge of strain in his voice. “Quicker would be better. Recap later.”

  Something hit the other side, hard, making his braced feet squeak a few inches across the floor. From the other side of the wood came an enraged howl of pure fury. I ran back to the door and threw my weight against it beside him, managing to hold it shut.

  “The beds,” I gasped. “Drag them over!” I stared at Kane’s back. He hadn’t even looked up at us. He stood as still as a statue, as though all hell hadn’t just broken loose around us. “Kane!” I yelled, trying to snap him out of it. “We could use your help. The beds! We need to block the door.”

  Kane still didn’t move, Cloves didn’t wait for him, she crossed to one of the other beds and grabbed the metal frame. “Director Coldwater, help me move this,” she demanded. Of everyone in the room, she seemed the most together. I could imagine her and Pargate making a formidable team, back in the day.

  The Director gave no indication she had heard Cloves. She was staring between the door, listening to the urgent thuds and thumps of the Pale on the other side, the sound of angry, hungry death hammering to get it at us, and then at the beds containing the corpses of the dead students which surrounded us. I had never seen anyone so white, her eyes were a little glazed, and I saw that she was in shock.

  Her hands were clenching and unclenching nervously in their expensive fawn skin gloves. I guess she hadn’t imagined this when she’d been secretly signed his funding checks. Thinking she was patron to a cure for all mankind, a ray of hope for her son.

  Whatever delusions she had bought into had been utterly shattered. There was no benevolent work here, just abominations and dead teenagers. A regular house of horrors.

  “Kane!” I said again urgently.

  He finally looked up from the bed, slow and dreamlike, and the expression on his face was the most terrifying thing I had seen so far. He looked hollow and ashen. His yellow eyes haunted. He stared at me absently, as though he’d never seen me before.

  “My daughter…” he whispered. He had lifted her from the hospital bed, and cradled her in his arms, against his chest, like a limp doll. I hadn’t seen his daughter before, but she had beautiful long dark hair, which fell down her back in curls. One arm hung, pale and limp. The other trailed still on the bed in the dark and shadowy room, and looked oddly misshapen.

  “What has he done…to my daughter?” Kane’s voice was dry and toneless. He turned and the girl’s head lolled in his arms, it fell back, and I saw her face.

  It was a twisted nightmare, half human girl and half tortured snarl, a demonic parody of an animal, swollen and out of all proportion. Her skin was mottled, dark and shiny, with a mess of fangs and crumpled muzzle. It looked to me as though she had tried to turn into whatever animal she turned into, and had gotten stuck halfway, some horrific, painful midpoint between the two. Scott’s procedure had interfered with her, clearly. Through her one visible swollen eyelid I could only see a sliver of white eye. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead.

  “What has he done to my baby girl?” Kane whispered again to himself.

  The Pale slammed again at the door behind us, knocking the wind out of me. Jesus, they were strong. Chase grunted at my side and dug his heels in against the floor.

  “Are we…are we going to die?” Coldwater asked absently. A hand had fluttered to her chest where it tapped nervously. “I really would rather not die in this room. This is…this is completely unacceptable…”

  “Then help me with this fucking bed, Felicity!” Cloves snapped, ever the pragmatist. She was trying to drag it single-handedly across the floor. Its metal legs squealed torturously as it wobbled. The desiccated corpse of the student who occupied it, jostled by the motion, fell from the bed and landed gracelessly on the floor, a dead and obscene heap. This seemed to be the last straw for Coldwater, who followed the motion of the corpse with wide eyes. I could see her shut down completely. She blinked at the corpse, her chin trembling slightly and her jaw began to clench and unclench.

  The Pale howled and hissed through the wood at my back.

  “I cannot feel her breathing,” Kane said softly to himself, ignoring the rest of us completely. His large hand resting on the twisted, misshapen ribcage of his daughter. His fingers were shaking. With horror or rage I couldn’t tell.

  Our assailants on the other side of the door redoubled their efforts, almost throwing us off our feet. There were two of them now, throwing their weight against it, desperate to get inside. I could still hear shrieking and struggling beyond them. Others were still freeing themselves from their bonds. They were stronger than us. Just one more of them shouldering the door f
rom their side and they would be in here with us.

  I had a brief moment of pure calm clarity, where I imagined myself back at Blue Lab, living a relatively normal life developing toxicology research and worrying about quarterly reports. A life where I wasn’t put in situations where I was about to be torn apart by genetically engineered rage zombies, and my only companions were a catatonic were-man, a mentally unbalanced ghost-assassin and two dubious Cabal servants. My life had used to be much, much simpler. It had all gone wrong the night I’d met Allesandro. And he wasn’t even here to shout at.

  Goddamn GOs.

  Allesandro would in fact be dead in less than half an hour, along with countless others. All the others. And we would die here too, a broken band of misfits cowering in a storage room.

  This wasn’t the life I’d chosen, but goddammit I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. Not while I could still fight.

  “Everybody needs to get their shit together right now!” I yelled. “Or yes, we are going to die in this room, Director! And messily!”

  Coldwater flinched at me. I stared at Kane. “And those things out there will tear your daughter to pieces if they get in here, whether she’s alive or dead! Snap out of it! Get up! Move the beds, now!”

  Kane seemed to focus, looking up from his daughter like a man trying to shake off a nightmare. Gently he laid her back on the bed, seeming to notice the situation around him for the first time. He crossed swiftly to Cloves, wrenching the hospital bed out of her hands as though it were made of balsa wood. He tipped the mattress and blood-darkened sheets off and dragged the frame quickly toward us.

  “Move,” he said at the last second, and I rolled away, Chase ducking aside also. The doors opened slightly and a sinewy white arm snaked through the gap, long claws slashing the air, seeking purchase. Chase fired off two swift rounds into the gap and I heard a shriek of pain and fury as the Pale fell back, and then the bed frame slammed against the door. Kane shoved, slamming it shut, and shoring it up. He leaned his huge weight against it. “Another,” he growled.