“Spirit, we must prepare to meet with Caliban.”
-Prospero, The Tempest
“If I am not mistaken,” said Ralph as he pulled the stumbling Hendricks up a flight of stairs. “There ought to be an elevator not far from here. Assuming Captain Hogan and Ms. Marshall ran into each other in the silos, I would imagine they would be making for them.”
Hendricks briefly thought about asking why they were going up to the second level rather than just meeting them on the ground floor, but then he remembered the masked psychopath pursuing them.
Ralph was a fast runner, but Hank was keeping pace with them nonetheless, despite the fact that he appeared to be going at no more than a walking pace. It was uncanny.
“How does he…do that?” Hendricks gasped.
Ralph didn’t answer, but only darted through the door to the second level, slammed it shut, and jammed it with a nearby stool.
“What now?”
Ralph looked critically about the hall, then peered through the double doors across from them. It opened onto yet another hallway.
“This way!” he said cheerfully.
The stairwell door shook with a terrible blow.
“I don’t think that’s going to hold for long,” said Hendricks.
The door shuddered again.
“Right,” said Ralph, eyeing the denting metal. “You go on, I’ll keep him busy for a while.”
“What?” said Hendricks. “No!”
“Yes,” said Ralph. “You see, Hank will continue as long as he has a target. If I stay and deal with him, he’ll forget all about you and you can go find Ms. Marshall without leading him to her.”
“You can’t do that!” Hendricks exclaimed. “He’ll kill you!”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Ralph mildly, as though he were considering the likelihood of a change in the weather. “It’s you and Ms. Marshall that I’d be worried about.”
The door received another tremendous blow, denting it outwards.
“Time for you to leave,” Ralph said firmly.
“Ralph, this is insane!” Hendricks pleaded. “You can’t…!”
“I am a soldier,” said Ralph sternly. “It’s my job to protect people like you, and it’s your job to protect people like her.”
“What about you? Can’t you…”
“Once and for all,” said Ralph, raising his voice over the increasingly loud bangs against the door. “Are you a policeman or not?”
“No!” Hendricks exclaimed. “I’m not! I told you, I can’t handle it!”
“Very well, then,” said Ralph. “Are you a man or not?”
“I…what?”
“It is a very simple question: are you a man or not?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Then, Man, go to your duty!”
Before Hendricks could say another word, Ralph seized him by his shirt and threw him bodily through the double doors.
“Good luck, Mr. Hendricks!” he called cheerfully.
“Ralph, no!”
The doors slammed shut and locked.
Behind them, Ralph turned and smiled as the stairwell door gave way.
“Now,” he said cheerfully as Hank advanced towards him. “I don’t suppose that you have the slightest idea whom you are dealing with…”
Helen and Hogan hurried down corridor, panting. The ground shook again as something else exploded deep within the island’s bowels.
“We should be nearly there,” said Hogan.
Indeed, they only went a few more feet before coming to a junction. A sign for ‘elevator’ pointed left.
“Here!” Hogan said, nodding at the sign. “We can take the elevators down to ground level and make for the mansion. If we’re lucky, we might meet the others on the way.”
“Are they working?”
“I think so, I saw…”
Helen screamed. As Hogan reached the corner of the junction, a black blade swung out from behind it. Hogan’s head fell away and a great fountain of blood spurted from the stump of his neck, staining the ceiling. His body collapsed forward as Charles Simon strode around the corner, looking livid; his clothes hanging in tatters about his muscular frame. His left arm looked normal. His right was unfolded in a blade streaked with Hogan’s blood.
“You know, Helen,” he said, in a voice thick with fury. “You have been much more trouble than you are worth.”
Helen turned to run. She hadn’t gone more than a couple paces when Charles caught her. He hit her hard on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. White lights popped before Helen’s eyes and she fought to remain conscious.
“Do you have any idea what you have cost us?” he spat, advancing toward her. “Years and years of work, all ruined because of you!”
She tried to crawl backwards with no clear idea of where she would go or how she might escape; all she knew was that she wanted to put distance between herself and the monster in front of her.
“But more important, of course,” he went, his voice suddenly calm again. “Is the fact that you’ve threatened my professional reputation by your stubborn refusal to just. DIE!”
Charles took two strides and placed a heavy boot violently upon her stomach, knocking all the wind out of her. As she gasped for breath and clutched at his foot, Helen realized in a flash that this was really it; there was no way out and no one was coming to rescue her. After all that, she was actually about to die, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was over.
Helen didn’t have the air left to scream. All she could do was watch, as though in slow motion, as Charles pointed his blade at her chest, drew his arm back…
And Hendricks appeared from around the other corner and tackled him off her.
“Helen run!” he shouted as he tried to wrestle with Charles.
“Hendricks, no!” Helen gasped.
Charles gave a roar of fury and shook Hendricks off as though he were a child. He whipped around, slashing at him, but Hendricks ducked and the blade sliced against the wall. Immediately after his blade passed over Hendricks’s head, Charles’s other hand drove upwards into his gut, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the wall. He stabbed, but Hendricks, almost dazed with pain but acting on the instincts he had developed over the past two days, dodged aside and the blade slammed deep into the wall. Hendricks punched Charles as hard as he could twice in the stomach. It was like punching a side of beef and about as effective. Charles simply grabbed Hendricks by the scruff of his neck and threw him aside while he ripped his blade out of the wall.
Hendricks staggered, struggling to stay upright. Taking advantage of his few seconds of reprieve, he grabbed Helen and pulled her to her feet.
“Go!” he gasped. “Run for it!”
Helen ran a short way down the hall, but stopped and turned back. She couldn’t leave him. Not now…
Hendricks had turned back to face Charles the moment she had started to run. Charles stood quite still facing him. They glared at each other for a few seconds, each looking as though he were trying to kill the other with the pure hatred of his expression. Then Hendricks, yelling in his final battle fury, charged forward in one final, reckless attack.
Charles didn’t bother to fight or even to attack. He simply reached out the moment they met, caught Hendricks by the throat, and lifted him into the air.
“Mr. Hendricks,” he snarled, drawing back his blade as Hendricks gasped for breath. “I have had it with your constant interruptions!”
Hendricks looked straight down into his pitiless eyes, and suddenly found that, despite everything, he wasn’t afraid. It all seemed to be happening so slowly; the blade pointing at his stomach, being drawn back, starting forward…
Hendricks’s mind turned suddenly to Helen, to the moment he had first seen her in the rain, of her beautiful face and the feel of being cradled in her warm, soft hands…
All of a sudden, just before Charles stabbed him, another blade burst out of Charles’s own chest. The next thing Hendricks knew, both he and Charles were flying through the air and hitting the concrete floor hard. Struggling to restore air to his brain, willing himself not to pass out, Hendricks looked up in astonishment.
Hank Voyeur was standing in the middle of the hallway. His eyes, just visible through his mask, were blazing with fury…and they were focused on Charles.
“Ralph…” Hendricks muttered.
Hank strode forward swiftly, raising his blade as Charles picked himself up. Before Charles could rise to his feet, Hank brought his blade crashing down upon him. Charles blocked it with his own, deflected it, and stabbed Hank in the stomach. Hank didn’t seem to notice and countered with an upswing that sent Charles staggering back with a huge cut across his face that healed almost instantly. Hank pressed his attack, but Charles knocked his blade aside and swung at Hank’s neck. His blade embedded itself about halfway in and stuck. Hank responded by stabbing Charles in the chest. Charles tried to cut off Hank’s arm, but again his blade wouldn’t go through.
Hank pulled his blade out and did a powerful overhead swing. Charles, however, caught the attack, turned, and flipped Hank over his shoulder with so much force that he cracked the floor beneath him. Hank, however, didn’t miss a beat before chopping into Charles’s knee, sending him crashing to the floor as well.
While the two Slashers battled behind him, Hendricks crawled over to Helen as fast as he could.
“Hendricks,” she gasped. “You…”
“I know,” he said. “I broke my promise; you can be mad at me later. Now we need to get out of here.”
“Elevators,” she said as he helped her to her feet. “Around the corner. This way…”
But to get there, they would have to pass the Slashers.
Charles rose up off the floor, driving his blade into Hank and smashing him into one of the lights, which exploded in a shower of sparks. Hank took no notice, and punched downward with his own blade, slicing through Charles’s neck and nearly decapitating him. He might have succeeded in doing so, had Charles not released him and sprang back, pulling his own body off of the blade. The moment Hank hit the ground he charged forward and drove his blade through Charles’s chest, pinning him back against the wall.
Hendricks seized the chance. Pulling Helen along with him, he darted passed behind Hank, who was far too busy punching and pummeling Charles with his free hand to notice.
“No, you don’t!” Charles called furiously, trying to shove Hank off of himself to pursue them. But Hank, who cared nothing about Helen or Hendricks, only saw this as an opening to slam him into the wall even harder, cracking it with the impact. Bits of ceiling bounced off his helmet. Charles unfolded his other blade, stabbed Hank with both, and pushed him back until he had slammed him into the opposite wall even harder.
This turned out to be a mistake, as a large chunk of the ceiling fell out and cracked over Charles’s head. This wasn’t enough to harm him, of course, but it was enough to distract him enough for Hank to deliver a brutal haymaker to his face, knocking him to the floor.
“He remembers,” Helen muttered to herself, unable to help looking back as they ran. “He remembers who killed him…”
Charles rose to his knees and tried a scissor-like motion with both his blades, obviously hoping to cut Hank in half. As with his previous attempts, however, Charles’s blades simply stuck midway through as they ran up against Hank’s impenetrable armor. Hank responded by raising his blade high and bringing it crashing down straight onto Charles’s head, cleaving it in two and coming to rest somewhere in the middle of his chest…
Hendricks and Helen didn’t see any more. Then ran around the corner and spotted the elevators at the end of the hall. Both doors stood open: one looked upon an empty shaft, the other on a waiting car.
“Come on!” Helen gasped. “Ground level!”
“Wait a second,” Hendricks said, stopping short. “If we take the elevator, he’ll know where we’ve gone…”
“Well, we can’t help that, can we?” she pleaded. “Please, it’s our only chance…”
“Not quite,” he said, looking around. A door to their left led into another corridor. Hendricks opened it, looked down the other corridor, and left it ajar.
“Okay, now up on top of the car,” he said. “When he goes down that hall after us, then we take it down.”
Helen nodded. Hendricks pulled open the maintenance hatch, gave Helen a leg up, and hoisted himself in after her.
They weren’t a moment too soon. Hendricks had hardly replaced the hatch when Charles and Hank came battling around the corner. Charles’s head had already healed and he seemed to have given up trying to cut Hank to death and refolded his blades. Instead, he was wrestling with him, using his greater size and weight to his advantage. Hank, for his part, was still stabbing and cutting Charles at every opportunity. Hendricks, watching from behind the metal mesh above the elevator, suspected that Hank didn’t even have the mental capacity to understand that he couldn’t kill Charles; he would just keep trying until something stopped him.
Charles, though, clearly did understand. What’s more, he had devised a plan to rid himself of his troublesome opponent. With a bellow of rage, he unfolded one blade, stabbed Hank in the stomach, then seized his throat with his other hand and lifted Hank over his head like a wrestler. Hank managed to get one more brutal cut in before Charles threw him into the empty elevator shaft so hard that the far wall buckled with his impact. Hank fell straight down and out of sight, and a few seconds later the dull thud of his impact came echoing up the shaft.
With his opponent gone, Charles cracked his neck and wiped the blood off of his face, seething. He ran to the open door, looked through it, and then turned back, slamming it behind him.
Helen looked at Hendricks, who saw his own fear mirrored in her eyes. He wasn’t falling for it.
Charles made an indistinct noise of frustration then got into the elevator right below them. Helen bit her lip. Hendricks found her hand and squeezed it tightly. If Charles knew they were up there…Hendricks became acutely aware that they were both sweating and bleeding profusely.
The elevator began to ascend. Hendricks silently prayed that Charles would get off somewhere soon; somewhere he wouldn’t notice them taking the elevator down.
But it kept going, passing floor after floor. Hendricks had brief glimpses of more corridors as they climbed, some strewn with debris, others looking like they hadn’t been touched by the disaster at all. And still they rose: three floors, four floors…
Hendricks began to lose his fear that Charles was on to them, which was replaced by the fear of what might happen if he took the elevator as far up as it would go with them on top of it. And indeed, that is exactly what he seemed to be doing. Hendricks looked up to see that the top of the shaft was approaching rapidly. With nothing else to do, he gripped Helen’s hand tightly and they shut their eyes…
The elevator stopped. They opened their eyes again. There were about six inches of space between the top of their heads and the top of the shaft.
Relieved, Hendricks looked out of the grate. The elevator, he saw, opened out directly onto a helipad. It looked to be nearly dawn, and a large, silver chopper was already waiting. And waiting in front of it was Dr. Prosser himself.
“Well?” he said as Charles emerged from the elevator.
“They got away,” said Charles. “We have Dr. Nelson to thank for that.”
Prosser’s face remained impassive.
“No matter,” he said. “I doubt they will find a way off this island within the next…” he checked his watch. “Forty-three minutes.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, doctor?” Charles asked. “After all we put into this place?”
“I know a lost cause when I see one, Charles,” said Prosser. “Disappointing as it is, we must cut our losses and move on. That is the way of things. I’ve already activated the device, and the bomb will ensure no trace remains.”
Helen and Hendricks exchanged looks of horror at this new information.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Charles asked.
“I’ve made arrangements with El Jefe for temporary accommodations,” said Prosser. “I shall plan our next move from there.”
At that point, Helen clutched a hand to her own mouth to keep from crying out. Ulla Orlich had just walked onto the helipad, a little disheveled, but otherwise unharmed.
“Donald,” she said. “Why the hell did you ever make those cockroaches?”
“They don’t seem to have done you much harm, have they?” he replied.
Ulla held up her hand. Suspended about a foot over it was a single struggling roach.
“Of course not,” she said. “Untouchable, remember?”
The roach shot from her like a bullet and struck the wall about an inch from the grate, pelting Helen and Hendricks with its guts.
“Incidentally,” Ulla went on. “I’ll be billing you for my lost luggage.”
Prosser apparently ignored this. His attention was capture by several men, including Andrew Wainwright, who arrived carrying what looked like a large, white, metal coffin with several pieces of electronics stuck on in places.
“What’s that?” Ulla asked as the men loaded it into the helicopters cargo bay.
“Something much more valuable than your lost luggage, my dear,” said Prosser with just a hint of sarcasm.
Ulla made a noise as though she doubted that very much and climbed into the helicopter.
“Hello, Charles,” she said as she passed him. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you, Ulla,” he said. “So do you.”
Charles turned to Wainwright.
“Did you get everything?”
“Everything we could find,” Wainwright answered. “Most of the equipment’s trashed, but we salvaged the U.T. at least. The Calvanite formula’s gone though.”
“Of course it is,” Charles sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to steal it again, won’t I?”
“We can discuss that later,” said Prosser. “For now, I would like to be well on our way within the next…” he checked his watch again. “Thirty-six minutes.”
Charles jerked his head and Wainwright obediently climbed on board the helicopter, followed by his men. Before he went aboard himself, though, Charles took one more sweeping look about him, as though making one last attempt to find Helen before he left.
“’Now my charms are all o’erthrown, and what strength I have’s mine own,’” Charles sighed. “This just wasn’t our day, was it, Dr. Prosser?”
“You know,” said Prosser. “From now on, I would much prefer to be called by my new name.”
Charles shrugged.
“As you wish, Kobras.”
Helen gasped. Hendricks frantically covered her mouth, but fortunately the helicopter had started at almost that precise moment.
Charles, however, seemed to have heard something nonetheless. He cast a frowning look directly at the gate, looking as though he just realized where his quarry might have been hiding. Hendricks bit his lip hard.
After a few moments, Charles apparently decided that any suspicions he still had weren’t worth holding up the helicopter. He climbed in right after Kobras, and a few minutes later the chopper flew off and out of sight.
Next Week:
Chapter Twenty-Five: Late Departure
and
Epilogue
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