by Amy Cross
And that's when it happens.
Everything floods back into my mind, and I remember myself strapped to some kind of operating table. A man was approaching with a syringe, and he was talking. I don't remember what he said, but I remember feeling absolutely terrified. I blink, and now the needle is sliding into my arm, and the man is turning and speaking to somebody else. I blink again, and a second figure appears above me, peering down at my face and smiling. The woman's features are blurry, but a moment later she leans close to my ear and whispers softly.
“It's okay, darling,” she says, “you'll be fine. We're just fine-tuning your abilities.”
Suddenly, in my mind, I scream. Everything changes and I find myself submerged in a giant cauldron of water, except I quickly realize that it's not water, it's some kind of cold slimy gel that sizzles against my bare skin. I swear I can feel something oozing through my pores, entering my body, and the pain is intense. Closing my eyes, I feel as if every atom of my body is being un-knotted and then twisted back together, and a loud pounding sound is ringing in my ears. I'm breathing the gel-like liquid in, but somehow I'm not drowning even as my lungs fill with the foul stuff. When I open my eyes again, everything is gray and opaque, and then I spot something dark and thin sliding down into the space in front of me. Whatever that device is, the sight of it fills me with terror, and a moment later a series of sparks fill the space all around, causing my body to shudder and jerk violently. I scream again, and no sound comes out, only more of the gel that has been filling my mouth.
I blink, and I'm back on the floor in some kind of cell. I'm shivering, but not because I'm cold; instead, it's as if the shivers are coming from inside, as if my bones are turning and moving, as if they've become liquid. Nearby, a voice is speaking in the darkness, but it takes me a moment to focus on what the voice is saying.
It's Lester.
“Don't let them break you,” he's saying urgently. “You can beat this, Annie. You've done it before. Just think about the future, about the day when we get out of here. It'll happen, you know. I promise. And when it does, all the pain and misery will be behind us.”
I scream, and for a moment it's as if the scream itself is being torn out of me, ripping my chest open and rising up into the dark air of the cell. I can't stop my body shaking, all I can do is roll onto my back and wait for the agony to end, but when I move I feel my bones slopping and running down into the depths of my body. I try to roll back onto my side, but I don't have the strength. I thought the pain would stop, but if anything it's getting worse.
“Annie.”
I scream louder than ever.
“Annie!”
I just want to die.
“Annie!!!”
Suddenly something bumps my arm, and I sit up with a gasp. I'm back in the laboratory, and I realize that memories of the experiments were flooding into my head. Panicking, I pull back against the wall, but then I feel an arm around my shoulder.
“It's okay,” Lester says, “you seemed to go into some kind of fit for a moment. Did you remember something?”
Breathless and startled, I stare over at the large metal cauldron as I try to make sense of the thoughts and emotions that are rushing through my mind. Finally they begin to settle, but at the same time more images fill my head. I see myself standing all alone on a patch of barren, scorched land. It's as if the world around me has been destroyed. Then I see myself being loaded into the back of some kind of vehicle, and then I see myself being led along a gloomy corridor. All these images, and more, flood into my mind, but I'm starting to get my breath back and finally the fear subsides a little.
“Annie,” Lester says firmly, “are you okay?”
“I'm more than okay,” I reply, as a shudder passes through my chest. “I remember, Lester. I remember everything.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
An invisible hand helps me to my feet. I'm still trembling slightly, but as I look out across the laboratory I realize that I've been here several times before.
“Everything?” Lester says cautiously. “Are you sure?”
I look at the large metal cauldron, and I remember being strapped to a kind of metal harness. The cauldron's top opened, revealing the pure Chaos Gear mix inside, and then I was lowered – screaming and sobbing – into the depths. That was when the electricity was used to activate the DNA changes, and I spent hours and hours in there as Randall Crawford worked on the changes that he believed would turn me into a perfect witch. Stepping forward, I remember the fear, but I also remember the determination that I felt.
“One day I'll get out of here,” I told myself. “One day I'll be free.”
“I'm free,” I whisper, as my scream still echoes somewhere in my thoughts. “We made it out. We have to get as far away from here as possible.”
“So you remember the plan, then?”
I turn and look over my shoulder, to the spot where Lester must be standing. I remember him now, too; I remember all the times he helped me, the times he helped me to stay strong. We made a good team back then, and he helped me get through the worst moments whenever I'd been subjected to more experiments. I don't know how I could ever forget the hours we spent planning our big escape, and I'm suddenly filled with a sense of astonishment as I realize that – improbably – all our plans seem to have finally paid off.
The cauldron.
The facility.
It's all ours.
“Welcome back,” Lester says cautiously. “Do you remember the next part? We're going to destroy this entire place. Sure, someone might be able to piece it back together again one day, but it'll take them fifty, maybe a hundred years without Crawford. Even his notes won't help them very much, he left out certain key elements. The best part is, we don't even have to kill the old bastard, because those idiots from the government already did that. I guess I underestimated them. They're even more stupid than I thought.”
“Is it really true?” I whisper, stepping toward the huge metal cauldron that towers twenty feet above us. I reach out and touch its side, and in an instant I once again remember all the times I was lowered into its depths.
“The pain is important,” I remember a woman saying, whispering into my ear. “If it doesn't hurt, it isn't really working.”
I turn and look to my side. There's no-one there now, of course, but I remember that woman so clearly. Except for her face, at least.
“Who was she?” I ask.
“Who was who?” Lester asks, his voice coming closer.
“It wasn't just Crawford,” I continue. “There was someone else. An assistant.”
“Oh, her,” he replies. “Doctor Majeski. You know what? Sometimes I think I hated her more than I hated Crawford. At least Crawford was pursuing some insane vision, at least he thought he was doing good things for the world. Majeski, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy causing all that pain and misery. Sometimes I think she was in it purely for the sadistic pleasure of making us all suffer.”
“Where is she now?” I ask, trying to remember her face. Everything else has come back to me, but I can't remember what this Doctor Majeski woman looked like. I only remember the way she always used to whisper directly into my ear.
“Long dead, I imagine,” Lester replies, “like the rest of the bastards from this place. Don't worry, Annie, she wasn't important, not really. We have to set this cauldron up to overload, so the Chaos Gear mixture is destroyed. Crawford was too paranoid to let any samples leave the site. We destroy this place, we destroy it all. Fortunately, it's so volatile, I know exactly what to do.”
I hear his footsteps heading over to one of the computer terminals. He starts tapping at the screen, and a moment later the cauldron's systems begin to hum.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I remember Crawford always banging on about the core temperature,” he explains. “That was critical. He kept telling the others what not to do, what to avoid, and in the process he gave me clues about how to turn this cauldron in
to a bomb.”
Stepping back, I realize that the cauldron has begun to shudder slightly, and a moment later a screen on the side starts flashing red. It's pretty clear that something's going wrong, and when I look over my shoulder I see that other computer terminals are showing warning signs.
“So what's going to happen?” I ask, hurrying over to the spot where I think he's working. “The whole thing will just implode?”
“Once the cauldron reaches a critical point,” he replies, and I turn as I realize that actually he's behind me, “the liquid's internal instabilities should kick in and set off a chain reaction. This stuff is potent, Annie, and when it goes, it's gonna go with a real big bang. Don't you remember what we discovered about Crawford's early work, back in the seventies and eighties? There were a lot of explosions, and a lot of casualties. From the conversations I overheard while we were being held here, there's enough Chaos Gear in this cauldron to disintegrate the Middlewych facility ten times over.”
“And then where do we go?” I ask.
“Anywhere. Everywhere.” He sounds a little breathless now, as he rushes from one terminal to another, and as the cauldron's humming sound gets louder. “First we have to make sure we get far enough away before the explosion, and then we need to be ready for what happens next. We'll probably be hunted down, Annie, but we're more than capable of fighting back. Once ordinary people get a taste of our powers, they'll bow down before us. You remember that part of the plan, don't you?”
“I think so,” I reply. “I know we were going to destroy the facility, but I'm a little foggy about what we were supposed to do next.”
“There's some kind of resistance circuit in place,” he mutters. “It's slowing the overload. Annie, can you go through to the secondary control room and see if there's an override switch?”
“What will it look like?”
“Just look for any kind of switch that's heavily protected, or with warning signs around it. If you find something like that, come back and let me know.”
Realizing that there's no point standing around and asking endless questions, I turn and make my way through to the next room. My memory's still a little hazy in places, but I figure that I'm able to remember the important things so as soon as I'm in the secondary control area, I start hunting for anything that could possibly be an override switch. My mind is racing, but I keep reminding myself that we're so close to destroying this place forever. And if we do that, then no-one else ever has to suffer as part of these experiments.
Spotting a panel on the far wall, I head over to take a closer look. As I do so, however, I hear a shuffling sound over my shoulder. I start to turn, but suddenly an arm reaches around my throat and pulls me back, and a second later I see a gun being aimed at my face.
“Hello there, Annie,” a familiar female voice whispers directly into my ear. “You wouldn't be planning on doing anything stupid, would you?”
I turn, and to my horror I finally see the woman's face.
“Larisa?” I stammer. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter Forty
“I don't think it's appropriate for you to use my first name when we're at the facility,” Larisa replies, keeping the gun aimed at my face as she forces me to turn away from the panel. “When we're here, I'd like you to call me Doctor Majeski.”
“Doctor...”
In an instant, I remember everything about her. She used to carry out Randall Crawford's instructions, but she always seemed to savor the moments when she was able to cause me maximum pain. And then, when I was out in the town, she kept showing up, almost as if she was checking on me. Now that I have my memory back, I realize that must be exactly what she was doing. It would only make sense for someone to keep close tabs on me during the tests, which explains why Larisa kept visiting me at the restaurant. I guess it also explains why Lester didn't seem to like her much.
“Careful,” she says, easing me back toward the door. “You and Mr. Graves did pretty well, didn't you? I'm impressed. Your takeover of the facility was almost perfect. You just got sloppy at the end.”
“I saw you drown!” I gasp.
“Oh, that was just a theatrical flourish,” she replies. “I never wanted to be your babysitter during the tests, so I insisted on having some fun. And it was fun, Annie, seeing your usual sour face replaced by that permanently gormless, lost expression.” She chuckles. “Yep, the same idiotic look that you've got right now, which means -”
“Did you find anything?” Lester calls out, suddenly sounding much closer.
Larisa instantly turns and fires at the open doorway. To my horror, I hear a grunt, and blood splatters against the door-frame, and then Larisa fires again. This time the bullet harmlessly hits the far wall beyond the door, but it's clear that the first shot definitely took Lester down.
“Now, isn't that useful?” Larisa hisses as she forces me toward the door. “His body might be invisible, but his blood sure isn't. Not once it's out of him, at least. Let's just hope I hit him somewhere vital.”
As soon as we reach the doorway, I see several large spots of blood leading away across the floor, heading around to the far side of the cauldron. There's a bloody hand-print, too, smeared against the cauldron's side, and it's pretty obvious that Lester's badly hurt. A moment later, hearing a pained grunt somewhere far off in the laboratory, I realize that he at least seems to still be conscious.
“I'd like to thank the pair of you for all your efforts, by the way,” Larisa calls out. “I admit, I'd often wondered what I'd do if I managed to take control of this project, but I was beginning to lose hope that Crawford would fall off his perch. Now you've cleared the way, and I'm going to sell the secrets of Chaos Gear to the highest bidder. Crawford told me pretty much every detail, so it won't be hard for me to make all the details nice and neat for the various prospective buyers. It's all fallen rather -”
Suddenly she turns and fires again, toward the other side of the cauldron this time. I hear another thud, and more drops of blood quickly spatter down against the floor.
“Don't think you can sneak up on me, Graves,” Larisa continues. “That's not how things work around here. Next time, it won't be you that I punish, it'll be your girlfriend. Then where will your brave new world be? It's time to put away all these childish thoughts of revolution, and accept that you still need the facility's help. We gave each of you a great gift, and this is how you repay us? The -”
Suddenly an agonized scream rings out.
“Sounds like your friend's in a real bad way,” Larisa laughs.
“We just want to be free!” I gasp.
“And how will causing mass earthquakes achieve that?” she asks. “Oh, did Graves not tell you that part of his plan? Destroying the cauldron won't just get rid of the facility. He knows full well that the resulting explosion will cause the Chaos Gear core to drop down into the crust as it detonates. There'll be earthquakes from coast to coast, destroying some of the country's biggest cities and killing millions of people. Your friend Mr. Graves doesn't just want to take revenge on the project, Annie. He wants to take revenge on the entire world, and then he thinks he can rise from the ashes and lead the entire human race.”
“That's not true!” I tell her.
She aims the gun around, clearly terrified that Graves could be approaching from any direction. I look for some hint of blood on the floor, but there's nothing. Either Graves isn't close, or he's found some way to stem the bleeding.
“You tortured us,” I continue, as Larisa pulls me back, away from the cauldron. “Hundreds of us. Thousands. And for what? Just to come up with some kind of formula that you could sell?”
She tightens her arm's grip around my throat, really pressing her elbow hard.
“Everything's for sale at the right price,” she sneers, aiming the gun toward the far side of the cauldron. “There's no -”
Before she can finish, my instincts kick in and I bite down hard on her arm. To my horror, sharp fangs slice down through my
gums, splitting two other teeth open before sinking deep into Larisa's flesh. She cries out, but she drops the gun and I instantly throw myself back, pushing her against the wall. I can feel her blood flowing into my body, coursing up into my teeth and filling me with an intense richness, and for a moment I feel as if I can't ever let go. Then, disgusted by my behavior, I pull out and step away, and then I turn to see her clutching her bloodied arm.
“You picked a fine time to develop a few of your other powers,” she sneers. “You know, when you figure those out properly, you might actually be dangerous.”
With that, she lunges for the gun, but suddenly she's held back. As she spins around as gets thrown against the side of a metal cage, it takes me a moment to realize that Graves has taken hold of her. He quickly attaches her to the cage, and finally I recognize the contraption. It's the same device that I was attached to, every time I was raised up and then lowered into the Chaos Gear cauldron.
“Time for a taste of your own medicine,” Graves says angrily, and then he bumps past me on his way to one of the terminals.
“Let me go!” Larisa screams, struggling violently. “You don't know what you're doing!”
As she finishes saying those words, the cage and the entire rig shudder before starting to rise up toward the ceiling. Larisa struggles harder than ever, but it's clear that Graves is in complete control and I watch helplessly as the cage is moved across the room until it's directly above the cauldron.
“What are you going to do to her?” I whisper, before turning to look over at the nearest terminal, where invisible hands are typing commands. “Lester, no! Don't hurt her!”
“After everything she helped with,” he replies, “it's time for her to feel just one thousandth of the pain she caused.”
“Don't do this,” I stammer, as the cage stops for a moment and then starts to move down, lowering Larisa toward the cauldron's open top. “You don't know how it works! You have no idea what this will do to her!”
