“Coming here was the mistake of your life.”
-Dr. Destiny, Justice League:
Only a Dream
“I don’t
suppose you could take a quick nap before we go?” Hendricks said. “You know;
scout out the land a little.”
“I can’t
control it like that,” she said. “I can’t, you know, choose what I see.”
“Well, I
think it might be a good idea to at least try,” he said. “I mean, worst case
scenario, you don’t see anything, but you get a little shut-eye, best case we
go in somewhat prepared.”
Helen
couldn’t argue with this, and though there was no obvious sleeping place in the
shop, she was so tired that that hardly mattered.
“Okay,” she
said. “Just give me ten minutes then wake me up; I don’t think we should wait
around in a room with a giant window.”
So saying,
she stretched out on the floor, laid her head on her arm, and tried to put
everything out of her mind. Within a few minutes, she was asleep.
“We’ve got
all the men we could around the central lab,” said Charles’s voice over the
radio. “It’s not very many.”
Dr. Prosser
was pacing the control room. His eyes were lined with tiredness, but otherwise
he maintained his stoic profile remarkably well, all things considered.
“Where is
Ulla?” he asked.
“No idea,”
sighed Charles. “I can’t reach her. She probably threw her radio away because
it clashed with her outfit.”
Prosser grunted as though he thought this as
like as not.
“Doctor,
are you sure you don’t want me up there? We really can’t afford to lose you,
you know.”
“No,” said
Prosser. “Mr. Wainwright and three men are guarding the approach to the control
room; that should be sufficient. In any case, it is all I am willing to spare.
I should let you know, Charles, that if the situation deteriorates any further
I will begin to consider evacuation.”
“Do you
really think it’s that bad, doctor?”
“Python is
loose, Anansi is loose, and as Boa has eliminated most of my forces, we have
little hope of ever killing or recapturing them. Dr. Kipling and Dr. Nelson
have vanished, and the facility is growing more damaged by the hour. Unless
things begin to drastically improve, I shall endeavor to have the island
evacuated by morning.”
“What is
your plan for improving them?” Charles asked.
“That depends…”
Prosser began, but before he could finish the door to the control room opened
and Ulla Orlich came striding in.
“Hello,
Donny,” she said in a voice dripping with false sweetness.
“Pardon me
a moment, Charles,” Prosser set the radio down and faced her, his hands clasped
behind his back. “What is it?”
“You know,
I was just thinking,” she said. “You threaten to reveal my identity to…whoever
unless I keep funding you, correct?”
“That is
the essential nature of our present arrangement, yes,” he said dryly.
“And, even
if they can’t capture me, they can
freeze my assets, thereby eliminating my fortune, correct?”
“I believe
so, yes,” said Prosser.
“But if
they do,” she said, smiling broadly. “Where will you get your money, Donny?”
“I have
other donors,” he said simply. “El Jefe, for instance. Why do you ask?”
Ulla’s
sickly smile vanished in an instant, replaced by a very ugly look.
“You mean,”
she said. “That you have been extorting money from me all these years when you
could have gotten it from anyone!?”
“No,” he
answered. “In the first place, my other donors have only become such recently.
Furthermore, I have been steadily relying on them more than you, precisely
because I knew you would react this way when you found out. I had anticipated
being able to dissolve our arrangement entirely by the end of the year. That
may not be possible anymore, with this disaster. The point is, however, that
while I do not relish the thought of exposing you, if I were to do so the
results would fall much more heavily on you
than on me.”
Ulla scowled at him.
“I am not
giving you another penny,” she
snapped, taking a step forward. “And if you do
plan to make good on that threat…”
“I will
make a bargain with you,” said Prosser, holding up a hand. “I am willing to end
our current arrangement and rely entirely upon the, ah, charity of my other
donors, on one condition.”
“Oh? And
what makes you think I’ll accept it?”
“Only that
it’s a very minor condition with a very desirable result,” he said. “My
condition is simply that, for the duration we remain on this island, you
will…let’s say, honor my requests.”
“You mean
obey you.”
“If you
must put it in such terms,” he sighed. “I would not ask such a thing, except
that we in a very precarious situation and I wouldn’t have your prior
expenditures go to waste. In any case, it will likely not last long; less than
twenty-four hours, I should think. A single day of obedience (and in very
simple tasks that I doubt you will object to) and you will be rid of me
forever.”
Ulla
considered.
“What if I
refuse?”
“Then, we
will continue our present arrangement,” he said.
“And what
if I just kill you?”
“Charles
has the necessary information to alert Interpol,” said Prosser. “You would have
to kill him as well, and even you, my dear, might find that difficult.”
Ulla’s face
twitched unpleasantly.
“Fine,” she
said. “But only until we’re off the island.”
“Very
good,” said Prosser with a smile. “Now please go down to the central lab and
relieve Charles. I need him elsewhere…”
Helen woke suddenly when someone
slapped her face.
“Sorry,”
said Hendricks. “But you said to wake you after ten minutes. Did you see
anything?”
“Yeah,”
said Helen groggily. “Uh…it sounds like Prosser’s personal lab is only being
guarded by Wainwright and three other guards.”
“Only?” Hendricks repeated.
“It could
be worse,” she said. “Charles is guarding the ‘central lab’ (whatever that is)
along with all the other guards, and Ulla’s about to go down and take over for
him while Prosser sends him out to do something else.
“What?”
“I don’t
know! That’s when you woke me up!”
“Oh. So
what do you think?”
Helen
shrugged.
“Do we have
any weapons?”
“Crowbar,
and I still have one grenade.”
“That’s
something…” she said, thoughtfully. “We might be able to make use of that. Maybe
we should grab something from here too…”
Helen
looked around the shop for a while before selecting a stout hand-saw.
“Okay,” she
said. “I just want to point out one more time that this is really stupid.”
“I know,”
he said.
“Good, just
wanted to be clear. Now, I think it
should be this way...”
They left
the shop, went back to the four-way junction, and turned left. They followed
the hall all the way down, passing a few more passages and some other shops and
labs; all empty by the look of things, and they didn’t stay long to look.
Eventually
they found a stairwell and started to climb, until…
“Woah!”
Helen and
Hendricks stopped dead. Lying on one of the landings, blood flowing down the
stairs below it, was the dead body of a guard. The body had been so horribly
mutilated that they could form no idea whatsoever what the man may have looked
like.
“What do
you think…?” Helen asked.
“With this
place? Who knows,” said Hendricks.
The man was
gripping a revolver in his hands. Hendricks bent down and, trying to avoid
touching too much blood, wrenched his hand open (which took a little while, as
he could only use his left hand since his right was glued to the crowbar) and
picked up the weapon.
“What are
you doing?”
“We really
could use a gun,” he said.
He checked
the chamber; it was empty.
“Hold
this,” he said with a grimace. Helen took the pistol gingerly (it still had
quite a lot of blood on it) while Hendricks, taking a deep breath to steady
himself, bent over the dead man, and checked his belt. There were still a
goodly number of cartridges in it, so Hendricks extracted some of the least
blood-soaked and handed them to Helen, who inserted them into the revolver.
Then, as carefully as he could, he undid the buckle one-handed and pulled off
the man’s belt.
“Do you mind?”
he asked.
“Of course
I mind,” Helen answered, eying the blood-soaked belt. “Why would I not mind?”
“Well, will
you help anyway?”
She sighed,
handed him back the revolver, and buckled the belt around his waist.
“There,” he
said, tucking the gun into the holster. “Now we at least have something.”
Helen
merely shuddered and wiped her bloody hands off on her pants.
“I hope we
don’t run into whatever did this,” she said, stepping gingerly around the body
and continuing up the stairs. When they reached the top and opened the door,
however, her hopes were immediately dashed as they stood dumbfounded at the
grotesque scene that met their eyes.
The
corridor was coated with blood and strewn with remains even more brutally
savaged than the man on the stairs, though from how many people they couldn’t
tell. Bits of bone, heaped chunks of flesh, shredded clothing, all lying about
before them. And in the midst of this, so covered in blood that they didn’t see
her at first, Daisy the baboon lay sleeping.
Even after
all they had soon so far on Matoul, Helen and Hendricks were stricken and
nauseated at the sight of this carnage. For a few moments they couldn’t move or
even look away, so gruesome was the image. Then, very carefully, they began to
move forward, picking their way carefully over the remains. The blood lay an
inch thick upon the floor, and it was very slippery. They hardly dared to
breathe as they approached the sleeping ape.
Daisy,
however, gave no sign of wakefulness. Indeed, she was breathing so deeply and
steadily that Hendricks had the impression it would take a lot to wake her. Not
that he wanted to test his theory. Neither of them breathed freely until they
had reached the end of this nightmare corridor, where it ran up a short flight
of steps to a pair of double-doors.
Helen and
Hendricks looked at each other, nodded, and went through them.
There was
nothing very special about this corridor; it was much the same as any of the
others they had been down, made of the same pale concrete and lit by the same
covered lights. Yet, somehow, perhaps because of what they had just passed,
they could sense the danger, the power that they, fools that they were, were
now attempting to challenge. Hendricks had the image of mice trying to rob from
a dragon’s lair.
There was
an alcove mid-way down the corridor and as they approached it they could see
the bronze plaque stuck on the wall beside it, conspicuous due its being the
only decoration in the hallway:
DR. DONALD
PROSSER:
DIRECTOR
This was
it. And yet…
“So where
are the guards?” Helen whispered.
Hendricks
shook his head, trying to think; they ought to be stationed outside the lab, to
make sure nothing gets in. But clearly they weren’t, unless they were…
“Get back!”
he snapped, pulling Helen away from the alcove, which they had almost reached,
just as Andrew Wainwright emerged from it.
“You’re
smarter than you look,” he sneered. He was wearing full riot gear and shield,
but instead of a club he carried a long, straight knife with a side-handle.
Hendricks raised his crowbar; a gun would do no good.
“Stand
back,” Hendricks shouted to Helen, pushing her back. “I’ll handle him!”
Wainwright
laughed.
“Aw,
someone wants to be the big hero,” he said. And he swung at Hendricks with his
knife. Hendricks parried it with the crowbar and struck Wainwright on his
helmet, but Wainwright took no notice. He stabbed, and Hendricks parried again,
looking for an opening that might at least do some temporary damage, while
Wainwright pushed him steadily back down the hallway.
Meanwhile, Helen,
hanging back from Hendricks, had reached the double-doors. She hesitated for a
moment, watching the battle, not sure how to help. But as she wavered, the
decision was suddenly taken out of her hands.
The doors
burst open. One of them slammed into her and knocked her back against the wall.
This, it turned out, was very fortunate, because Daisy the baboon, awakened by
the sound of the battle, came tearing through the doorway a second later,
howling at the top of her voice.
Hendricks
heard her coming and tried to get out of her way. She sprang at him, missed,
and landed on Wainwright instead. She didn’t care; she knocked the knife out of
his grip with one hand, swept his shield aside with the other, and sank her
teeth deep into his flesh.
Helen,
trying to restore the breath to her lungs, hurried to Hendricks, who was
watching the battle as though he wasn’t sure whether he should intervene. She
seized him by the arm and pulled him along behind her as she raced passed the
struggling monsters to the now-unguarded lab door.
Helen’s
biggest fear had been that it would be locked but, amazingly enough, it wasn’t.
On the other side was a large, circular room, much like the control room above
it. Tables, bookshelves, cabinets, and instrument panels lined the walls, while
a handsome wooden desk stood in the center. To their immediate right going in
was a small, but very strong-looking cage. It stood empty; whatever had been
kept in there must have escaped along with everything else. The room was
surprisingly bright; light from the setting sun was streaming in from the large
windows opposite the door, and a lamp in the middle of the ceiling was blazing.
“Hurry,”
Helen gasped. “Find anything that looks important and destroy it.”
But before
they could begin, Daisy and Wainwright crashed through the door behind them.
Wainwright’s face was almost bitten away, so that you could see his skull in
places, but he had a good grip on the raging baboon, and though she was flaying
his arms with her teeth, he still held on.
Helen and
Hendricks fled to the far end of the room as Wainwright wrestled the baboon
over to the cage, threw her in, and slammed the door shut. The lock clicked,
but he lost a few fingers before he could get his hand away. Daisy howled and
scrabbled from between the bars, but she couldn’t get out.
Now
Wainwright turned his blood-soaked, mutilated face on Helen and Hendricks.
“You…” he
snarled, and he ran straight at them.
Neither
Helen nor Hendricks remember concocting the plan, and they certainly had never
agreed on it. But, as Wainwright charged them, murder in his one remaining eye,
they suddenly sprang into action as though this had been their idea all along.
Helen threw the latch on the window and dove aside. Hendricks dodged a second
later, hooked Wainwright’s ankle with his crowbar, and flipped him, neat as you
please, out the window. His yell of rage echoed up to them until it was cut off
by a distant splash.
They
glanced out; the window, it turned out, looked directly over a sheer precipice leading
straight down to the ocean.
“Well that
works,” said Hendricks after a few moments stunned silence.
They both
burst out laughing. Sheer relief more than anything made the whole thing seem
quite hysterical.
“Okay,”
Helen gasped, pulling herself back into seriousness. “Now come on; let’s get to
work.”
Hendricks
nodded and the two of them began to go around the room seizing any that looked
important or useful and tossing it all out the window; books, papers,
note-pads, test-tubes, sample-boxes, pieces of equipment, anything that they
could lift went out the window. Anything they couldn’t, Hendricks smashed with
his crowbar. They took care not to venture too close to Daisy, who was still
howling and jabbering without cease, but within a couple minutes they had
managed to turn most of the neat, orderly lab into a disaster zone.
It wasn’t
until they had overturned Prosser’s desk and Hendricks had started to hack it
open that they discovered a hidden compartment, and inside it a heavy binder
with one word on the cover; ‘Calvanite.’
Hendricks
looked up at Helen, who looked excited.
“This is
it,” he said. “Let’s, ah, let’s make extra sure of this one.”
They found
some cords, a microscope, and a heavy bronze paperweight, and Helen tied all of
these around the binder with the tightest knots she knew.
“Got that
one,” Helen said when she had hurled the weighted binder out as far as she
could. “Now let’s see if we can find that transmitter thing.”
“Helen,
honestly I think we’re pushing our luck as it is,” said Hendricks. “We should
go now.”
“This was
you’re idea!” she protested. “Anyway, if we get rid of that thing, they won’t
be able to make any more monsters, remember? We should get rid of it if we get
rid of anything!”
“But we
don’t even know what it looks like,
or where it is, and meanwhile, I’m sure Prosser’s going to learn that we’re
here any second and…”
“Well, this
is a surprise.”
Helen and
Hendricks whipped around, their hearts pounding, Hendricks reaching for his
gun. Standing in the doorway, looking extremely bemused, was Charles Simon.
“I would
never have guessed,” said Charles, stepping into the room. “That you would
still be alive. I really must congratulate you. Of all the people I’ve killed,
you’ve been the most…frustrating.”
“Stay
back,” Hendricks said as firmly as he could, drawing his gun and moving in
front of Helen.
“Or what?”
Charles said contemptuously. “You’ll shoot me?”
Hendricks
forced a smile.
“Not
quite,” he said and fired. But he didn’t aim for Charles. Instead, he aimed straight
for the lock on Daisy’s cage. To his slight surprise and vast relief, he hit
it. The lock shattered and the baboon, which had been slamming on the door this
whole time, burst out with a howling shriek and leapt straight at Charles, her
mouth open wide revealing her long yellow fangs.
What
happened next was so fast that Hendricks hardly knew what he was seeing.
Charles turned to face the ape, and as he did so he stretched out his arm down
and to the side, as though holding it out for a vaccine. His arm stiffened and
it was as though a pair of tongs unfolded themselves from his forearm and
snapped shut over his hand. Meanwhile, all along his arm what looked like little
panels were turning over, so that what had looked like dark, muscular flesh
suddenly flipped upside down to reveal gleaming black metal.
All this
took less than a second, so that before Daisy had reached Charles his left
forearm had completely transformed into a huge, wicked-looking blade. He swung
it up in a wide circle, caught the baboon in midflight, and smashed her to the
ground. Blood spattered in every direction. There was a horrible moaning noise,
then, as Charles held the crazed ape to the ground with one arm, he ‘unfolded’
the other into a duplicate blade and stabbed straight down. The moaning noise
ceased immediately.
Charles, spattered
with Daisy’s blood, straightened up and gave Hendricks a pitying smile.
“Was that
your plan?” he asked.
Hendricks
gulped.
“Kind of,”
he admitted.
“Not a very
good one,” said Charles. He held up his blades. “Do you like them?” he asked.
“I lost an arm a few years back, so when the time came for my transformation
Dr. Prosser decided to turn my weakness into a strength. They’re mostly Calvanite,
of course. Here, let me show you…”
He moved
faster than anyone Hendricks had ever seen. Hendricks just had time to dive
sideways, pushing Helen out of the way, before Charles reached them, slicing in
half the table she had been standing in front of a second before.
Hendricks
rolled out of the way as Charles stabbed downwards, his blade piercing the
concrete floor as though it were made of dirt. They stumbled to their feet, and
Hendricks struck his crowbar across Charles’s face as hard as he could. Charles
took one moment to give him an amused look, then cut across his chest.
Hendricks tried to block it, but the blade sliced right through the crowbar as
if it were made of wax. Hendricks screamed as a searing pain spread across his
chest, and looking down he saw a thin line of red begin to spread outwards
across his shirt.
He staggered
backwards, gasping and clutching at his bleeding chest. Helen caught him, and
together they backed against the window. Charles moved forward, smiling, his
blade stained with Hendricks’s blood, and they knew they couldn’t escape.
At that
moment, just when the realization of their own hopelessness dawned upon her,
Helen heard, as though he were standing right next to her, the Dog’s voice:
Jump! He said. Out the window! Quick!
Helen
didn’t even stop to think. She didn’t pause to consider that the window looked
out over a sheer cliff. She simply leaned back and fell backwards out of the window,
dragging Hendricks after her.
“What are youAAHH!”
he screamed as they fell blindly. Then…
FWUMP!
Helen
landed hard on level ground, her head snapping back painfully over a precipice
that looked straight down to the water hundreds of feet below. She nearly
slipped right off it, but a couple pairs of strong hands seized her and
Hendricks and pulled them up into the shadow of the building. Helen would have
laughed in spite of her pain if she had the breath to do so; there was a very
small alcove underneath the overhanging building, so small that the only way
they would have known it was there was if they had stood on the window ledge
and looked straight down.
Her
jubilation vanished very quickly as Charles, who evidently knew about this,
leapt down after them, landing hard on the cliff’s edge, murder in his eyes.
But she only saw him for a second before one of their rescuers turned around
and delivered a thunderous uppercut to Charles’s chin, which lifted him off his
feet and back over the cliff’s edge. They heard his cry of fury reverberating
up the cliff-face until he landed in the crashing, rock-filled sea.
Ralph Zanator turned back to face
them, beaming.
“My
friends!” he boomed. “I am delighted to see you alive!”
Next Week:
Chapter Nineteen: The Blue Room
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