by J. Stone
“You’re supposed to be dead, Mr. Rourke!” Maynard shouted. “Three times over now.”
“I’m sure it’s more than that,” Vincent said.
“I don’t doubt that,” the Maynard continued. “But, you’re verging on quite rude behavior, frankly.”
“No one’s ever accused me of being too nice,” he replied.
“Well, don’t worry,” the councilor continued. “You’re not getting out of it this time. I’ve already sounded a silent alarm. An entire squadron of corpsmen are making their way here as we speak.”
“Not like it will make the difference for you,” Vincent shouted back. “You’ll die before they get here.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Maynard replied.
It was a good thing that the bounty hunter had restocked his supplies before making the trip to see Olivia. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a gas grenade. Popping the pin off its top, he tossed it into the room, where it quickly filled Maynard’s office with smoke. The councilor wildly fired off a few shots in response, but was indisposed from the coughing fit the gas had induced.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he told Cassie.
He slid his respirator into his mouth and flipped his eye patch’s sensors to pick up heat signatures. The councilor was still behind his desk, but had taken cover underneath it in an attempt to shield himself from the smoke. Vincent walked in and grabbed the desk with his metal hand, tossing it aside. Maynard raised his gun, hoping to find the bounty hunter, but Vincent was too quick. He brushed aside the pistol with one hand and punched the cowering man in the face with the other. With him disoriented, Vincent was able to grab him by the collar and drag him from the room.
“What do you want to do with him?” Vincent asked Cassie, when he made it out into the hallway.
“Take him to the window,” she answered with steely resolve.
Vincent complied, dragging the still sputtering councilor back down the hall where they had come from. He tried to move quickly, as he knew Maynard wasn’t bluffing about the corps. In fact, he was surprised that they weren’t already there. It didn’t take the councilor long to recover from his injury and to realize that the tables had turned.
“Please… I’ll do anything… I’ve got power… I can give you whatever you want…” Maynard pleaded, blood spilling down from his nose.
“You killed my husband,” Cassie replied.
“That was just business…” he said. “It didn’t mean anything…”
“Didn’t mean anything?” she demanded. “He was my husband! I loved him, and you took him from me! How dare you say it was nothing!”
“I’m sorry,” Maynard said. “That’s not what--”
“We’re here,” Vincent interrupted, dropping the man just a few feet from the shattered window.
The bounty hunter joined Cassie further into the building, while Maynard struggled to stand. He held his shaking hands up in surrender and looked out the window behind him, as the cold, winter wind roared past. Cassie pulled the rifle around and pointed it at the guilty councilor.
Maynard shook his head. “You can’t do this.”
Cassie ignored him. She pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced the councilor’s abdomen, causing him to stumble backward. His hands fell to cover the wound and the blood billowing forth. He looked down in disbelief. Continuing backward, his heel collided with the frame of the window, and Maynard tumbled out the building. Cassie walked forward to the edge of the floor and watched as he fell. She looked satisfied.
They’d actually done it. They’d killed a member of the Cultwick Council. Their victory was short lived, however, when they heard a commotion behind them. Dozens of footsteps echoed down the hall. There was no way through them to the stairs or the elevators, so they were going to have to think of something else in order to make it out of the tower, unlikely as that was. Vincent grabbed Cassie by the arm and pulled her into one of the offices just as the group of corpsmen turned the corner.
“Freeze!” one of them shouted.
When neither Vincent nor Cassie complied, the men opened fire on them. Inside the office, Vincent slammed the door and then pushed a desk over to bar the entry. The impromptu barricade wouldn’t hold them for long, so he grabbed anything and everything else that he thought would stall them and piled it up at the door. Everything of use in place, he leaned against the desk, hoping to hold it there. His eyes fell down to his midsection. The corpsmen hadn’t been such bad shots. Something had connected near his other injury. He put a hand to the wound. The blood was very dark red. He couldn’t imagine that was a good sign. Not wanting Cassie to see him injured, he wiped his finger clean on his pants and buttoned his duster, hiding the wound.
Cassie hadn’t paid him any attention, as she had just been standing in the middle of the room, staring out the window. Suddenly though, she moved into action. Cassie found a long cord that plugged into a wall socket from a lamp. Tying the end with the lamp around the leg of the desk, she stretched it out toward the window. There was a bit of excess by the time she reached it, and Vincent could tell she had a plan.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Out and down,” she replied. Not waiting for any response from Vincent, Cassie aimed her rifle at the glass. Firing, she shattered the glass and threw the cord out the window. She looked down, seeing how far it went, and she seemed satisfied with the results, but Cassie still looked back to Vincent for his confirmation.
“If it looks good, go,” he said. “I’ll make sure the desk stays put.”
Cassie nodded, and wrapped the cord a couple times around her hand. She slung the strap of the rifle over her shoulder, and took a heavy breath. Jumping out the window, she twisted in mid-air to face back toward him. She plummeted down, pulling the cord with her. The desk lurched toward the window, but he held it in place. The cord went taut from the leg of the desk toward the side of the building, resting on a sharp shard of glass still lining the window frame. As Cassie dangled outside the building, Vincent could see the cord moving slightly back and forth on the glass. The shards began to slice into the cord, fraying it into severed strands, and he wasn’t sure how much longer it would last.
He couldn’t risk losing Cassie to the fall, so Vincent lunged toward the window. Without his weight holding it in place, the desk began to slowly scrape toward the edge as well, further slicing the cord on the jagged glass. He moved quickly enough that he was able to grab the cord with his mechanical hand, but he was pulled into the glass as well. Using his other hand to stop himself, he cut up his palm on the various shards on the ground. His head hung out over the edge, and he could see Cassie dangling there, having fallen a floor more than she intended.
“Hurry and shoot a window!” he shouted down to her, the pain in his hand and gut growing to agonizing levels. The straps of the mechanical arm pressed into his back, threatening to slice open his skin, if he put much more weight on them.
The corpsmen in the hall banged on the door behind him. Cassie had to get inside before they got to him. She steadied the rifle, as she was swinging back and forth into the glass, and finally managed to situate herself in a good position. Cassie fired the shot, which launched her back a bit, pulling on Vincent and further digging the glass into his good hand. The mechanical limb hanging on the outside, however, held steady. The glass no longer in her way, Vincent swung Cassie away from the building and back in through the window. He felt Cassie let go of the cord, as she disappeared into the building two floors down. With relief, he let go and pulled his left palm away from the shattered glass. Gritting, he tried to dig the pieces out, but there was too much in there, and it had gone too deep.
The corpsmen banged against the door again, causing the wood to begin to splinter under their force. They would be through soon, and he didn’t see any other way out of there. There was nothing else that he could use to make his way down to the next floor either. Vincent stood and leaned out the window, to find Cassi
e doing the same and looking up at him.
“Just go,” he shouted down to her, uncertain she could even hear him from that distance with the roaring wind blasting by. Vincent placed his hand to his stomach, staining his fingers in the spilling blood. He then held his hand out the window to illustrate the situation to Cassie. She seemed to understand, so he leaned back inside the room, ready to accept his fate. He was starting to get lightheaded. He’d lost too much blood from the wound in his gut. Vincent moved against the wall and pulled a pre-rolled cigarette out from his pocket, lighting it. With one more blow, the corpsmen knocked the door from its hinges. The bounty hunter ignored them, as they moved into the room and surrounded him.
“Hands up!” one shouted.
Vincent didn’t comply with their orders. One of them approached him and kicked his boot, causing the lit cigarette to fall from his mouth, down to his lap, and then to the floor of the office.
Chapter 36. Alice’s Grudge
It was god’s will that she be there that night. Not only had he led Alice to finding Cullen and bringing Councilor Crowley and her together again, he had also granted her the opportunity she had been waiting for since her rebirth. Erynn Clover had evaded capture once before, but not this time. This time she would submit to Alice’s will, reveal how she was connected to Viola, and then finally, when she was done with her, the heretic would perish by her own hand.
Glee is the only sensation Alice felt upon her walk to the mansion. She had dreamed of the ways in which she would pay back Erynn for what had been done to her. Her first few steps into the heretic’s home had not gone as she had hoped. Her head lay on the floor, far removed from her body. Despite this setback, she found herself still capable of thought. Death simply seemed beyond her at this point. If she could survive a beheading, there was nothing that could stop her.
That was not to say that everything was normal, however. Her head was still unattached to the rest of her body, and therefore, she found it quite difficult to function. The Hart Serum still flowed through her though, so she knew that it was possible to regenerate. Focusing her efforts, Alice found herself capable of controlling her blood that was leaking to the floor. Everything the blood touched seemed to be within her power of influence. With every bit of strength she had, she forced the blood to reunite her body with her head. All she needed was a single connection, and she could rebuild herself.
You must put yourself back together, the voice urged.
After a great exertion of her will, Alice knew success. Upon reaching her body, she found that her arm that had also been severed was in the process of reattaching itself as well, having fallen into the pool of blood left from her decapitation. The line of blood between her head and her neck wound hardened, grew thicker, and became fibrous. With her head in contact, Alice’s body now stood to collect her skull. She could see as the heretic looked on in horror at her regeneration. There was nothing Erynn could possibly do that would prevent her from achieving her goals. Kneeling down, Alice picked up her head and placed it back upon her shoulders, reeling in the cord of blood as though it were retractable. She smiled wickedly at her quarry, adjusting her neck.
“Stop her!” Erynn desperately commanded her automaton.
Tern complied with his orders and swung the weapon one more time. Crackling with energy, the electrified blade dug deep into her abdomen but stopped short when it met the bone of her hip. The automaton pulled it out and stepped back, as Alice fell once more to the floor. Not only had Tern’s blade pierced her skin and bone, it had broken all the remaining vials of the Hart Serum that she had kept in her belt case. The liquid dripped out over her dress, seeping into the skin of her legs and the wound the blade had left behind. She had never before injected so much of the serum into herself all at one time. There was simply no telling what effect this overdose would cause.
Everything seemed to stop in absolute silence and tranquility, but then it happened. The flesh of her legs split agonizingly apart, and she howled out in pain. Bone cracked, muscles severed, and blood spurted wildly onto the inside of her dress. Her body crumbled forward to the floor of the mansion, as her legs deconstructed themselves at a microscopic level. Suddenly, the pain stopped, but her legs were completely absent.
Everything below Alice’s torso had vanished, and the torn skirt of the dress laid unoccupied on the floor. The emptiness wouldn’t last, however. The tiny, worm-sized tentacles oozed from her midsection, enlarging as they extended outward from the hem of her dress. Dozens of them piled out of her, sliding out and feeling their way across the floor like a blind person taking their first steps in an unfamiliar location. The tendrils began to elevate her torso up, holding her weight easily on their bending, undulating surface. She found herself standing upright on the new tentacled appendages. She hovered toward the automaton in front of her, leaving behind a slug-like trail of discarded blood and viscera, as she moved.
“What are you?” Erynn asked, appearing to be in shock.
“A child of god,” Alice answered.
The hand of god, the voice egged her on.
Alice smiled, feeling stronger than ever. The operative released dozens of tentacles to grab the nuisance of an automaton. She easily crumpled the electric sword, causing it to sputter and explode with a cloud of smoke. Tern fought to free himself from her grip, but Alice was too powerful. She picked him up from the floor and tossed him like a ragdoll through the wall of the entryway. He crashed into the adjacent room where he similarly sputtered, refusing to rise.
Alice turned her head back to Erynn who held her pistol pointed at the operative. “What can your little gun do to--”
She was cut off, as the chromesmith fired the weapon. The power was nothing that she would have expected to come from a simple pistol like that. A blue explosion erupted from the narrow barrel, but widened instantly. The light covered Alice and the whole of the entryway, and might have caused more damage, had her tentacles not risen to erect a flesh barrier between her and the blast. The skin of the instinctive limbs was scarred, bloodied and greatly seared, but with the increased dosage of the Hart Serum flowing through her veins, Alice could feel them already beginning to repair, reconstruct, and regrow. If even a blast like that could not do lasting damage, Alice truly was invincible.
The heretic, however, was not yet ready to admit defeat to Alice’s clear superiority. She pulled the trigger a second time, but the blast did not seem to be as powerful nor dangerous as the previous one. Her limbs were once again able to defend her from the attack, and Alice slowly began to move forward on the tentacles holding her upright.
“Why won’t you just die?” Erynn asked.
She fired a third time, and the effects were hardly even noticeable. The blue aura emitted from the shot was barely visible, and her tentacles had no problem blocking the attack.
“Ya’ve used it up,” Pearl shouted from the kitchen. “Switch the rune!”
Though Alice did not know what the woman could have possibly meant, Erynn seemed to understand her message. She twisted some cog at the base of her weapon before once again pointing the gun at the operative. She pulled the trigger again, taking more care to where she aimed the pistol. After the previous anticlimactic blast, Alice was not afraid of any subsequent attacks from the gun and didn’t bother to raise much of a defense. Rather than being a blast of blue energy, this one was orange in color. The width of the shot, too, was much smaller than the previous.
Alice hardly knew what had happened when the orange bullet ripped through her tentacle and into her eye, exiting out the back of her head. Her body failed her, and her limbs flailed in pain. She collapsed to the ground on the mass of tentacles. Screaming from the agony of the passing bullet, Alice realized that the Hart Serum was not only giving her the ability to regenerate, it was actually giving her greater control over her body. Every ripped patch of skin, every brain cell, every fragment of her eye shouted at her from the agony of the bullet, shredding through her. The pain was not enough
though, not to stop her.
Stand back up! The voice shouted the command in her head.
Looking up from the ground at Erynn with her one good eye, Alice forced her other to rebuild itself. Within seconds, it was reconstructed, and she could tell that the damage done to her brain and even the bone of her skull had been repaired. She raised herself up on the tentacles once more and continued forward.
Erynn exhaled loudly and aimed a bit lower. Realizing that the pistol of hers still had some kick to it, Alice raised a series of the tentacles to soften the incoming blow. The defense seemed to be utterly useless, when the heretic fired another orange bullet. Each limb she had put between her body and the gun was torn to shreds by the bullet. The blast seemed to know no limitation. The bullet passed through her tentacles and into her chest.
Alice could actually feel her heart explode inside her chest, as the bullet passed through. The muscles and tissue that composed it seemed to turn to soup behind her shattered ribs. She felt like everything began to leak down through her chest. For a moment, she had a sensation of extreme cold throughout her body. The sensation was like death, but she had already overcome that more than once.
Halting for but a moment, Alice retched up blood on the floor of the entryway. She struggled to breathe through all the fluid that had been released throughout her body. The blood seemed to be going everywhere it wasn’t supposed to. The operative focused all her efforts on rebuilding the heart, and after a considerable amount of pain and stress, Alice had placed a self-made pump much like a heart back in her chest. What she had constructed seemed to function similarly but this was encased in a bone-like material and dispersed her blood more effectively to where it was needed. The new organ set to work controlling and regulating the blood flow in her body, and she was back to her task.
