The huge creature held its arms out to each side and then slapped its hands together as if to clap, but caught Jane right in the middle between its palms. The impact rattled her. Jane felt it in her bones as the hands smashed into her from both sides. How strong is this thing? She thought. She'd never been hit like this before, not by a living creature. She saw the thing on its chest glowing brighter and brighter with each attack.
The alien moved in for another swing, and Jane punched upward, a full body uppercut that hammered into the monster's jaw. Broken teeth flew from the monster's mouth as it slammed shut. The giant alien roared in pain and slapped downward at her with an open-palmed hand. Jane caught his hand with hers, a finger in each of her hands, and she tried to stop his attack. Her back arched when her legs pushed back, muscles on fire under the strain.
And then the monster was gone, knocked off his feet, almost taking Jane with him. Emily stood up, hunched over in pain, her hand extended and palm up, aimed at the alien.
"Wall of slam, you filthy animal," Emily said, before falling down onto one knee for balance.
Jane squared off with the monster again as it climbed back to its feet. The thing on its chest was bright red now. She readied herself for another attack.
"Kill it with fire!" Emily said.
"Now is not the time for meme jokes, Em!" Jane said, not realizing until now she was panting from exertion.
"No, the thing on its chest! I think it's powering the alien!" Emily yelled.
Jane smiled a fighter's smile and looked at the alien's one giant yellow eye. She threw her tattered cape aside and ran at the monster, dodging one smashing fist and then another, ducking underneath to grab hold of the thing attached to its chest. It felt almost plantlike under her hands, the texture of rose stems without the thorns, thick with almost no give.
Jane closed her eyes and poured on the fire, letting her hands burst into flames, engulfing her arms up to the elbow. She held on. The monster thrashed and howled, but did not let go, burning away at the strange thing until it blackened and the alien squealed in pain. The crab-thing hissed and popped like food cooking on a grill, and Jane pushed on the alien's abdomen, using its own body to yank the parasitic element away. The limbs or stalks holding tight to the alien crackled and snapped, and suddenly Jane was holding a dead, grotesque thing, some alien parasite corpse, and the bigger, host alien was wailing, smashing its fists into the ground, gasping and roaring.
Jane threw it away and looked for the smaller, purple alien. Emily was staggering back to her feet and pointing at the corridor toward the outside world.
They nodded to each other and started running as best they could, following a trail of bluish blood the monster had left behind.
"Thanks for trying to stop it from getting away," Jane said.
"Did I or did I not figure out how to stop the bigger one?" Emily said.
When they passed the kitchen at a run, the purple alien jumped out, smashing Jane with an entire table clutched in its many arms. She fell to the floor, half-stunned, as Emily tried to bubble of float the monster away. It used one of its remaining free hands to knock Emily into the wall and headed for the escape hatch, climbing the runs with nauseating speed.
Jane wobbled back to her feet and gave up running, flying down the tight corridor instead, up into the daylight, arms at her side to burst free of the underground tunnel. The sky had changed; the salmon-colored sunset gone, replaced by storm clouds, heavy, black, threatening clouds covered the sky. The purple creature was running, its gait uneven and mind-bendingly weird. Jane flew after it, tackling the being as it ran, but it seemed to understand that she knew its secret and batted her hands away with eerie precision as she tried to grab the parasitic attachment on its chest. It took hold of each of her wrists with vice-like strength and threw a barrage of punches, preventing Jane from getting her own attacks in.
"Emily, help!" she said, but it wasn't Emily who answered her. Instead, a bolt of lightning lanced out from the darkening sky, striking the purple alien with conscious precision. One bolt shocked the creature enough to cause it to release its grip, and as Jane fell back, she pointed at the creature's chest.
"Hit that thing!" she yelled, knowing exactly where help had come from. Another bolt of lightning struck, brightening up the sky in a flash of white. When Jane's vision cleared, the alien lay squirming in the sand, arms going in different directions, the parasite on its chest a burned and blackened mess.
Valerie Snow drifted out of the sky, her skin the color of the dark clouds above, eyes glowing the blue of lightning. Her long hair drifted on the wind like it had a mind of its own.
"Did we kill it?" Valerie said softly, watching with profound sadness as the alien suffered.
"I hope so," Emily said, staggering to catch up, a huge bruise growing on the side of her face.
Jane walked up to the ailing creature, pulled the parasite from its chest, and watched as it struggled and flailed. She looked at the half-formed creature in her hand and wondered how much of what just happened was controlled by the dead thing she held.
"It can't breathe," Jane said. She looked back at the hatch, positive the bigger alien was suffering the same fate. "The parasites let them breathe here. They're suffocating."
"What can we do to help?" Valerie said.
Help. It was a funny word, Jane thought, considering how hard both aliens had just tried to hurt them. But she knelt down in the sand, picked up the purple being and carried it back to the hatch. Jane was sure there was nothing she could find to save its life.
She knew she shouldn't care. But she was tired of death and had grown weary of seeing living creatures dying. It hurt her heart to have it happen in front of her yet again. She found herself singing the "Parting Glass" under her breath as she carried the alien back to the underground base, and fought back a wave of sadness as it stopped breathing in her arms.
"Emily, check the base to see what they were broadcasting their messages on," Jane said, remaining composed and steady. "We should try to figure out what they were telling the fleet."
"You okay?" Emily said, uncharacteristically gentle in her tone.
"Not at all," Jane said. "But we carry on."
Chapter 16:
What the Children knew
Doc Silence and Bedlam stepped out of a portal on the side of the mountain as if materializing from nothing. Doc watched the young cyborg in order to judge her reaction to the teleportation spell he'd cast, not out of cruelty, but because so many people react so poorly to this method of travel the first time.
A little pale around the edges, but otherwise fine, Bedlam looked back at him with a half-crazed smile.
"Compensators in my headgear," she said, tapping the metal on the side of her head. "Prevents motion sickness."
"Aren't you lucky," he said, smiling back at her.
"Yeah, Doc," she said as they started walking further up the mountain, a craggy, moss-covered expanse that felt so isolated as to be on another world. "Whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I think—that's a lucky person right there."
Perhaps a quarter mile on, they came across a huge set of doors, palatial in size but incredibly ordinary in design—nothing fancier than reinforced garage doors.
Doc closed his eyes and listened. The air was cool and damp, the wind whistling a quiet tune as it cascaded through the mountain. They felt very alone.
"Want me to break it down?" Bedlam said, approaching the set of doors.
"No need," Doc said. He spoke in the language of magic, uttering the name of the door, its true name, as all doors have. The gateway swung open with a low creak.
"Aren't you fancy," Bedlam said.
"Whenever I look in the mirror I think—that's a fancy person right there," Doc said.
Bedlam smirked.
"I see what you did there," she said, pulling the door open the rest of the way and stepping inside.
Inside smelled like a battle between disinfectant and swamp gas, a steadfas
t one-two punch of sterile and earthy. Bedlam grimaced and walked inside. Doc followed close behind, calling up a variety of spells to be ready at the back of his mind.
"Lights are on. Anyone home?" Bedlam said, gesturing to the huge halogen lights turning the guts of the mountain into a brightly lit chamber. The area in front of them was enormous, like an aircraft hanger, with high ceilings and smooth, paved floors.
On the far side, a small door stood closed, leading out of the hanger. Next to one of those doors was a body, a backpack on one side, a rifle on the other. Doc and Bedlam walked slowly across the hanger to the corpse, their feet clanking softly against the floor.
"What the hell happened to him?" Bedlam said.
The man had been grievously injured, burn marks scoring his face and arms. Where he wasn't burned, he'd been scratched, as if by claws. A thin sheen of sweat covered his undamaged skin.
Doc crouched down to get a better look. The head tilted back in his direction and the eyes opened.
"You," the body said.
Bedlam cursed.
Doc just waited.
"I was hoping it'd be you."
"You seem to know who I am," Doc said. "But I'm at a loss for who you are."
The body struggled to sit up more, clearly not as dead as they first thought. The man patted his pockets weakly until he found a pack of cigarettes. With relish and care, he placed a cigarette between his lips. Doc snapped his fingers and a small wick of flame appeared on the tip of his pointer finger. He held it out in front of the wounded man so he could light his smoke.
"All these years," the man said, coughing as he inhaled his cigarette. Doc felt Bedlam lean in close over his shoulder. "We knew all about you, Doc Silence. Whether it was with your collection of misfit toys or band of merry men, we've always known about you."
"What were you doing here?" Doc said.
The man leaned back, struggling to swallow.
"Can you believe some of us were actually serious?" the man said. "Most of us, most of us, we played the game, we picked the name to scare people, we pretended to be a cult. But we just wanted money. We wanted power. We wanted to rule through fear."
"The Children of the Elder Star?" Doc said.
The man nodded.
"That name," the man said. "We were a bunch of men in suits, Silence. The Children... it was marketing."
"But not for all of you," Doc said, suddenly piecing things together. The cave—he'd known this was a place the Children of the Elder Star used as a lab during their recent experiments. They'd owned the space for years, though left it mostly unused. Agent Black and Rose and their operatives used it briefly as a staging area, but not long. Doc could sense that his nemesis and friend, the Lady Natasha Grey, had been here as well—her spells still hung on the air like fading perfume. But what was here now?
The dying man laughed, a barking, scratchy huff.
"Maybe it was their idea all along," he said. "Recruit wealthy megalomaniacs and play the role of supernatural cultists. But they… some of these idiots meant it. They want this world consumed in fire. Something coming from the stars."
"What happened here," Doc said again.
"The experiments," the man said. "The board thought… the board thought they were exactly what we said they were. Weapons."
"We were weapons," Bedlam said. Doc heard her robotic hands hum as she clenched and unclenched her fists. "We still are, the ones you didn't kill."
"That's what we thought," the man said. "But these others… these others were trying to build a better host."
Before Doc could react, Bedlam grabbed the dying man by his shirt and slammed him against the wall.
"Host for what?" Bedlam said, powerful cybernetic arms holding the grown man's body aloft. A thin runner of blood trickled down his fingertip and splashed on the floor.
"I came here to…" the dying man started laughing again, almost hysterically. "I came here to fire them. Isn't that ridiculous? I came here to fire them… "
"A host for what?" Bedlam yelled again, slamming the man against the wall again.
He just laughed, though, choking on his own saliva, and Bedlam let him drop to the floor. She looked at Doc, and he saw in her eyes real fear for the first time.
"What the hell is going on?" Bedlam said.
Doc held out a hand to quiet her. Again, he tilted his head to listen. Breathing. Footsteps. Something was coming. Doc muttered another incantation, a summoning spell, and a long silver sword appeared in his left hand. He held it toward the floor, ready.
Bedlam's infuriated expression faded for a split second when she saw what he'd done.
"Did you just make a flippin' sword appear in your hand?" Bedlam asked. "Forget it. Forget it. What is this guy saying? They were building us to be hosts for something?"
The door creaked open, sending Doc and Bedlam into combat stances, Bedlam on the balls of her robotic feet like a boxer, Doc with one hand outstretched and glowing with magical energy, the other with sword at the ready.
The man who walked through the door had, at some point, been completely ordinary. Average height, medium build, a face you might walk by in a crowd. But now he was anything but ordinary. His skin had turned grayish green, cracked and split with scales. That bland face had become monstrous, with strange protrusions pushing out from his cheekbones and jawline. His hair had clearly been falling out, the remnants long and brittle.
Clinging to his chest was the worst of his transformation, though—some sort of parasite, as wide as the man's ribcage, claw-like appendages wrapped around his shoulders, chest, and neck to hold on. The parasite glowed red from within with a rhythm like a heartbeat.
"We wanted to be ready for when they arrive," the transformed man said. His gait was staggering and uneven, but his movements implied great strength. His arms, though sickly in pallor, twitched with bizarre power, the veins and musculature clearly defined.
Doc shook his head at Bedlam, asking her to wait. The cyborg's robotic limbs whined as she prepared to attack, but she held back.
"All this time we figured you were just power-hungry villains," Doc said. "I'm impressed, whoever you are. A cult pretending to be a business pretending to be a cult."
"Oh, our brothers in arms didn't know either," the man said, walking sideways to position himself better away from the door. Doc and Bedlam followed suit, trying to stay on either side of him. "Only a handful of us knew the truth. The others weren't ready for it. They couldn't handle looking into the face of eternity."
"And you could?" Doc said.
"We were chosen by the Elder Star," the man said. He smiled and outstretched his powerful arms.
"This guy is completely nuts, right?" Bedlam said.
Doc didn't answer. So many questions, he thought. So many questions I need answers to before we have to kill him.
"Why create new host bodies?" Doc said. "What were you doing with the experiments?"
"We told our blind colleagues we were building an army," the man said, a blissful smile on his face. The alien parasite on his chest glowed brighter. He placed a hand lovingly on the creature. "But our friends from the Elder Star, they not only grant powers to those they chose. They consume it. We wanted to give them more powerful bodies to consume. Bodies that would give them wondrous gifts."
"Didn't want all the toys for yourselves, then?" Bedlam said.
"You misunderstand," the man said. He looked sadly at his fallen colleague on the floor, who stared back up with exhausted, pained eyes. "You were supposed to be a gift, so that they might let us all live. We were trying to save the world."
"Oh you are so full of…" Bedlam said.
"You thought you could buy them off?" Doc said. "Give them gifts and they what, let you keep the world when they're done with it?"
"We wanted them to love us," the man said. "But you stole our gifts for them, Doctor Silence. You have always stood in our way. I wonder though. What might they do with the body of a magician? What gifts might you give them
when they arrive?"
Before Doc could answer, Bedlam charged in, her patience spent. She moved with blinding speed, a blur of metal arms punching the man in his face, the thudding of her fists like a drumbeat.
The man laughed and threw her aside. Doc heard her cursing even after she crashed into a nearby wall, more angry than hurt.
The man charged at Doc, that uneven gait disappearing as he launched into an attack. Doc sidestepped him, slashing upward with the sword he'd conjured. He felt the blade connect with flesh, tearing into the man's side below the elbow. Blood poured out, too dark to be human blood, and Doc watched in horror as the gash sealed itself back up in front of him. The man smiled as the wound healed.
"I told you, they grant us mighty gifts," the man said. Then the smile shrank on his face as Doc heard the heavy pounding of metal feet running. Doc ducked and Bedlam flew over him, her entire body built into a single haymaker, her fist slamming into the possessed man's mouth.
"A host?" she said, punching him so hard and so fast Doc saw teeth fly loose. "I was going to be a host? Do you know how long it took me to get over knowing I was just going to be a weapon and now I have to deal with this? I'm going to need so much therapy!"
She got in three or for more good punches before the man tossed her aside again. He shook off the blows, running a too-long tongue across bloodied lips.
Doc let his sword drop to the ground. Fine, he thought. If you heal that fast, let's see what happens if I cauterize your wounds…
He held his hands at his side and remembered the words to a spell as old as magic. The first one any young magician wants to learn, and the first one he's warned to be careful with. A simple spell, known to all, held dear by wizards since the first time a shaman brought light on a dark night to his tribe.
Doc Silence aimed his palm at the possessed man and a fireball shot forth from nothing, a gout of flame that splashed into the man's chest, burning the parasite there, cooking it with unnatural heat.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 9
