Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (17 page)

That was it, wasn’t it? That was the trick. I wasn’t dead yet. He hadn’t walked up to me in my hibernation cell and just killed me. No, he’d woken me, torn me from whatever the hell Utopia was doing to me so he could gloat and monologue, and with every moment, I could feel my senses waking up, unused muscles coming back to life. I had to stall him.

“You killed Cool Hand, you destroyed Haha,” I said, whimpering with a renewed sense of purpose. “They were your friends.”

Zundergrub laughed. “I killed them, yes, and I’m only getting started. I’m going to end your world, Blackjack. I’m going to kill your beloved Apogee when I get my hands on her.”

His threats should have horrified me, but my heart jumped and raced upon hearing he hadn’t captured her yet. I wept unabashed, ashamed that I wouldn’t be there to help her against this monster.

“You know what’s interesting, Blackjack? My plans don’t involve you at all. In fact, this whole affair has slowed their progress considerably. I thought I would be content knowing you would be stuck down here, eventually to die of hunger when the power went out. You meant nothing to me. But my arm, this one,” he said, rolling back the sleeve, “the one you broke at Hashima serves as a reminder of you. The wound healed long ago, but every so often it will tickle. I didn’t understand it, how the villain must always gloat to the captured hero, monologue ad-infinatum about his plans and whatnot. I thought it wasteful. I thought myself above that, to be honest. Yet, as time went on, as my plan to end the world started coming into shape, it all felt empty. It felt incomplete. Mind you, the plan is well under way. Nothing can stop it now. But knowing you were down here, oblivious to it all, it just ate at me. It ruined my every waking moment. I couldn’t compromise with myself and no explanation would do. If the world ended and all came to ruin, it would mean nothing unless you knew, unless I got to see you like this, weeping for mercy. It’s strange. I consider myself an intelligent man. And I am, Blackjack, I am. I am possibly one of the most intelligent men on the planet. Yet I could not help myself. I couldn’t help myself. I had to come get you.”

He paused, studying me for a moment.

“I know, it’s insanity,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “I am aware of that. My grasp of reality fades and what’s humorous is that I’m fine with it. I don’t mind at all. I wonder if such self-awareness is normal, or if it is just my high intellect allowing me to see the fading patterns of my brain as I descend into madness.”

Zundergrub chuckled.

“You can thank me, though. It may not seem a kindness, but you will find it preferable to the phantom world Utopia created for you. What did you dream? I can’t imagine what your simple mind conjured. I could’ve left you gorging on your own fantasies, but at least this will be real. Oh, you will die a horrible death. I guarantee you that. But not yet. We will wait for when the moment is right, and yes, you will see your beloved Apogee again. I will grant you that. You will see her, long enough to rekindle the flame and long enough to watch her die. Then the world itself will die. Then we will die, you and I. Isn’t that apropos? The world will fall into flame and ruin, and have a chance at rebirth.”

He looked around, then closed his eyes with a sign of self-satisfaction.

“I feared the creeping madness was fooling me, driving me batty. Now I see how necessary this was. How satisfying ... perhaps more so than the grand affair.”

I shook my head, feeling a lot better every moment that passed, but still far too weak to do anything. Someone returned to the room and knelt beside me, struggling with my arm to slap on a wrist dampener. I had to delay it further, so I shifted my wrists, twisting them and making their grip on me almost impossible.

“Hurry,” Zundergrub said. “His faculties are returning quickly.”

“Damn, quit moving,” the other man said, fighting with me to close the dampener.

“No need to struggle, Blackjack. We are going to see your lovely Apogee shortly.

Then there was a loud crash outside, followed by a piercing scream.

“What is that?” Zundergrub said, moving toward the door as someone went flying by. “Dammit, hurry!” he said, closing the door.

“What’s going on?” asked the guy fighting to put the manacles on me.

Zundergrub knelt beside him, trying to pin my arm under his knee. “That fool Black Razor,” he said, using Razor’s other moniker.

“I told you not to bring him,” the second man said. I was close enough to him that I saw him turn away to respond to Zundergrub. He was close, and distracted.

I brought my knee up, slamming it hard against his coccyx, and heard a loud crack of bone followed by a howl of pain. He let go of my arm, reaching back to soothe his broken back, and I reached up, grabbing a handful of hair, pulling his head into the floor as hard as I could. He slammed forehead first into the hard floor, and I felt the frontal structure of his skull crumple back into the soft tissues of the brain, killing him instantly.

“Grab him,” shouted Zundergrub, moving away from me as others rushed to pin me.

One of his men fired raw plasma energy at me from his wrist launchers, but instead of burning me as the flaming gas rolled over my body, it felt good, warming my cold, aching muscles. Another of Zundergrub’s cronies grabbed one of my legs, but slipped on the goo. I kicked him in the balls and the fellow doubled over, clutching his damaged genitals. I only hoped that it had been the bastard who pulled my catheter out.

Madness swept over me like a wave in a tsunami. It was the rolling boulder that causes the avalanche that wipes the mountainside off the map. Memories flooded through my mind: fighting on Shard World, seeing an unconscious Apogee and thinking she’d died, the time I had fought Epic and broken him. It was unhinged lunacy bordering on hysteria, and nothing would stop me, nothing could slake my rage. I felt my teeth clench, almost to the point of collapsing upon themselves, and the thumping of my heart echoed through my body as the blood boiled across my veins. I wasn’t going to die like this, lying on the floor naked. I wasn’t going to let Zundergrub beat me. My wrecked body may not be a willing participant, but I was going to live. I was going to make it out of here to see another day, get my bearings, and come back at the doctor. All that mattered now was survival, and to achieve that, I was going to have to hurt someone.

I spun on the floor, the goo facilitating the maneuver, and slid toward the man I had kicked. Just then two others grabbed at me, but I was as slick as a greased pig, so I shrugged them off and grabbed the guy on the ground. He was in clear pain, but I reached for his face and dug my fingers into his eye sockets, pressing hard into his skull. The man screamed as my nails dug into his gelatinous eyes, like scooping an egg out of its shell. His hollering came to a quick end when I pressed his head back into the ground, collapsing his skull with an explosion of blood and brain spraying my face.

“Oh, my God,” said one of the two trying to grab me.

Guided by the sound, I hurled myself at his legs, grabbing one and biting the fleshy part of his calf. My teeth punctured the spandex costume and bit deep into his muscle; he rewarded my effort with a howling shriek. I felt the splash of blood in my mouth, and for a second, I couldn’t help but think that the salty, metal taste was the first genuine flavor my mouth had experienced since I had been put here. The man reached back at his damaged leg, kicking me with the other, but I slammed my forearm into the back of his knee, blowing out the joint and dropping the man beside me.

The woman was on my other side, the other figure trying to help me up, but she backed away and unleashed a torrent of electricity at me. The lashing power tore through my muscles, and I recoiled so powerfully that she swept me across the floor back toward Zundergrub. He dodged me as the girl fired again, the juice pouring through my quivering and shaking body, lancing up to my head and back down to die at my toes.

“We need more people,” Zundergrub shouted, running past me and out the door, calling for help.

In the brief respite the electricity girl gave me, among the smoky smell of burning and charred flesh, I could see Razor outside, doing battle with several figures, forcing Zundergrub to flee in a different direction down the hall.

The woman leaned forward, as if falling, held aloft by the torrent of power flowing from her outstretched arms, the voltaic energy rippling through her body, ready to be channeled at me. But her powers weren’t working as desired, and she knew this. Instead of just hurting me – which she was, of course – the electricity was waking my body, rousing my muscles from their slumber, and helping me shake off the rust that had seeped into my bones. I pressed down against the floor, using a railing affixed to the wall to help me stand.

“Oh, God,” she said, easing her cool stance, swallowing hard.

“Run,” I said, shambling away from the door, still using the railing, to give her a way out.

The girl nodded and walked past me, her eyes never moving from me. I just let her pass. Two others also chose that moment to come out from behind their hiding places, one of them falling to his knees as he struggled past the goo and water that dominated the center of the room. He looked up at me in fear, but I just smiled, happy that my faded vision was slowly returning, that my muscles were complying with my commands.

“Go on,” I told the fellow, and he got up and ran out.

Near me stood a rolling stand, like the ones they use to hang IV bags. It might work like a rolling walking stick. I reached for it and fell instantly, as another figure entered the room. The guy came in and drew an automatic pistol, spraying me with bullets. They were more than a nuisance, slapping into my bare skin, each as painful as a bee-sting. I lashed out for the man, but he backpedaled away, reloading and shooting. I looked down at the floor, at the growing pile of bullets around me as the man emptied magazine after magazine into me.

“Fucker,” I managed, scraping a handful of bullets and throwing them at the guy with all my strength.

It was like getting hit by a shotgun blast of 9mm bullets at close range. A dozen small pinpoints appeared over the shooter’s chest and legs, and though I couldn’t see the blood, I knew by the way his face drained of color that he was hemorrhaging. The guy faltered, his body shaking slightly as the scattershot of bullets pierced his body. He then doubled over, collapsing in a heap, and I could see the small blossoms of exit wounds stitched across his back.

“Stay down,” I threatened, crawling over to the rolling stand and using it to get back on my feet. It strained under my weight and kept wanting to roll away from me, but I got it under control. As I rolled toward the door, I noticed he was still, a few wisps of smoke rising from his bullet-riddled body.

“Razor!” I said, coming outside, but he was gone. A few bodies lay strewn about, like a child’s toys after a tantrum. Each of the corpses were torn to hell, with deep, puckered slashes crisscrossing the bodies. Severed limbs lay haphazardly around the narrow corridor, but not one of Razor’s victims lived. I shivered at the power contained in that loyal lunatic, but after taking a quick inventory of the bodies, I didn’t see Razor or Zundergrub.

Knowing I couldn’t be that lucky, I retreated back into the room and took stock. The first thing that occurred to me as I stood there was how cold it was. My nerves were finally processing data again, and the first burst of static came from my pelvis. My nakedness shocked me. Fighting naked was tough. I hadn’t noticed, partially, I think, because my body had become accustomed to being covered with goo. Regardless, I needed clothes. There was nothing in the room except the crèche I’d been plugged in to. It was mounted on a piece of metal, but looking closely at it, I could see slots that denoted drawers. There were no handles, probably controlled remotely, so I wedged my fingers in, bent the metal easily, and tugged. The drawer popped out, rolling along smooth ball bearings once free of the locking mechanism; inside was a white cotton robe.

Standing was easier, but still challenging, and I balanced on the crèche as I slid one arm, then the other through the sleeves, cinching the robe tight and tying the drawstrings. It was short for me but covered my genitals, which was good because I would need my legs free and clear. Looking out the open door of my prison, I never thought to wait for the authorities or climb back into my slimy bed. I walked out on shaky legs and never looked back.

Chapter Ten

My legs were failing me, but at least I was alive. The employees of Utopia weren’t so lucky. The halls were littered with corpses bearing blackened marks in their chests and horrible, cavernous wounds, as if a small grenade had exploded inside their bodies. Others were mangled beyond recognition, their body parts strewn about like rag dolls. The only way I could distinguish between them was by clothing: the blue-gray of the guard jumpers, the white lab coats of the sci-lab guys, the red-orange vests of the technical staff. With each step I had to avoid dismembered staff, moving on ground that was three inches deep in blood and viscera.

Zundergrub butchered these people to get to me, and now I ran for my life, trampling over their remains, slipping in their pooled blood. Surrounded by so much death, I couldn’t help but weep silently, knowing there wasn’t anything I could do. Nothing except run and live, and perhaps one day find the man who had caused this and make him pay.

I tried shaking off the dark pall that had come over me, using a railing to lean on and move past the carnage. I took as many random turns as I could, confident that in all the blood and gore, I wasn’t leaving a noticeable trail. I wanted to stop and cry; luckily I didn’t have anything left to vomit. I pressed on down the hall under flickering lights, hoping the distance I was creating wasn’t an illusion. This wasn’t a time to mourn, or to feel sorry for myself. I had to move. If Zundergrub found me, I was dead.

A thought was creeping in the back of my mind that I couldn’t ignore. Could I still be in the prison? Was this another dream, to throw me off, to send me on another mission and keep my mind active? My shaking legs felt real, and the wobbly give of my tendons and ligaments, made me feel they’d been unused for a long time as I lay in that gelatin bed. The cold, bloody floor beneath my feet and the tight grip of my fists on the metallic railing also felt genuine, but my head was a foggy haze and I couldn’t be certain of anything.

I heard a woman whimpering and a man’s loud grunting down an adjacent hallway and I shook my head, trying to make sure that my ears weren’t playing tricks on me. I abandoned the railing and shuffled down the hallway to follow the sound. Maybe someone was there that could help. Then again, Zundergrub could be waiting for me with his contingent of followers.

As I moved farther down the hall, I saw an open cell like the one that had housed me, with a costumed man bent over a young woman. He was facing away from me, fumbling with his trousers and she lay motionless at his feet.

Without even realizing it, I straightened up, ignored the numerous complaints from my muscles and tendons, and strode toward the man.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mumbled, dropping his pants and falling to his knees beside his prey. He turned her over and ripped off her bloomers, revealing her pale, white buttocks. He rubbed himself to get aroused, grasping her crotch with his free hand.

As I came to the big window that overlooked the hallway, I caught a glimpse of the woman. She was still alive, but sporting a brutal wound to her face that had broken her nose and swollen her left eye shut. A trickle of blood dripped from her damaged nose and mouth, and her one good eye bounced around the room. She was in shock, almost paralyzed.

I threw the door open, slamming the glass frame against the wall behind me, smashing it to fragments.

“Get the fuck off her,” I said, but my cottony mouth wasn’t cooperating, so it was more a series of confused vowels than any threat.

He turned to me and I instantly recognized him as the villain Dreadmaster. He was one, maybe two generations ahead of me, probably in his late fifties, with a bulging midsection and gray hair jutting out the sides of his black mask. His power was energy emission, which he could focus and fire into beams or use as timed grenades, which explained the corpses I had seen on the way here.

Zundergrub had recruited the mad and deranged for his plan, not caring who else was hurt, or died, and let them loose on the facility. Now dozens, maybe hundreds, were dead, and the day was young.

Dreadmaster was surprised that anyone would challenge a costume during the wave of madness that was sweeping the prison, and seeing me looking worse for wear, dressed in a robe that looked more like a miniskirt, his mouth curled into a cruel sneer. He was older and far removed from his heydays, but Dreadmaster wasn’t out of practice. Summoning his power, he swung his arm out at me and raw energy slammed me back into the glass wall. I smashed through, crashing into the hallway wall amid a cloud of shattered crystal. He stood and lifted his drawers, surrounding himself with more of the powerful stuff he had used to kill so many.

I grabbed a handful of glass, still reeling from the blow, and threw it at his face. He recoiled, unhurt, but that gave me time to get up and hurl myself at him, tackling him to the ground by the midsection.

It was a great idea, but a weak gesture. Old as he was, Dreadmaster managed to twist his body as we fell so that I was on the bottom. He charged his fists with energy and swung away, my hands feebly trying to block his blows. Punch after punch made it through my pathetic guard and slammed into my face. I gave up trying to defend myself and reached out, leaning forward to get a hold of him, but his charged punches pummeled me, my head slamming onto the floor. I could feel the concrete cracking beneath me and see the relish in his eyes. Emboldened by my failed resistance, he opened up on me, unleashing his full psychotic fury

Out of desperation, I slipped my hand up to his waist and grabbed flesh, feeling some of his stomach flab between my fingers. I squeezed my hand closed and a splash of blood sprayed across my wrist; his eyes widened in horror, mouth hung open in silent agony. He recoiled violently, arching his back away from me and looking down at his damaged midsection. Realizing that I had just ripped a handful of stomach off his body, and the full pain of the injury setting in, he doubled over, howling. He buried his head and chest on my shoulders, trying to peel himself from my grasp. I lifted him by the midsection, my other hand grabbing his chest, my fingers clawing around his soft pectorals to find a good hold. I pressed him off me and threw him out of the room. He hit the wall with a wet thud, his momentum enough to dent the metal and slid to the ground in a boneless heap.

I crawled over to the woman, who was in a shock-like delirium. She wore the same white robe I did, ripped apart by Dreadmaster to reveal her buttocks and small breasts. Her face was spider-webbed by bloody black hair, and her breathing was heavy, fighting a clump of hair matted to her mouth. Her pale skin was covered with tattoos, with a striking tiger in bright orange and black on her left thigh, a green dragon coiled around her right leg, and a large crimson rose at her right biceps. There were others, too, as if each section of her body carried some sort of adornment.

“You ok?” I asked, clearing her face of the blood-matted hair. Underneath it all, she was a pretty woman, but it would take a long time and a lot of surgery to fix her broken face.

She stirred, pushing me off with a weak hand. I let her shove me away, tried to give her some space, but her hand fell to her side, her eyes fluttering and she just shook her head.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I said, though I had no idea who she was or why she was here. I just couldn’t leave her to Zundergrub’s mob, or for Dreadmaster to finish if he came to.

I stood and looked around the room, which was much like mine. The only thing I saw that could cover her was Dread’s cape, which he had discarded to rape her. I covered her with it and lifted her off the ground. She was like a feather in my arms. I half-expected her to fight me, thinking I was her attacker, but she surprised me, digging her head into my shoulder like a sleepy child.

“You’re going to be ok,” I said, noticing that the cotton-mouth was starting to fade, and I was sounding more and more like myself.

I left the room, passing a groaning Dreadmaster, thinking I should finish him while I had the chance, but there was no time to waste. I left him, shambling down a dim-lit hallway with renewed purpose, looking for the way out.

At some point, the lights went out and someone started screaming from the direction I had come. It was terrible, like someone dying from a slow, agonizing pain. I could only think that Zundergrub had found Dreadmaster, unleashed his fury at the psychotic villain for diverging from the doctor’s plan.

I hurried, my body functions returning with each second, whether from use or from desperation, but running through the endless hallways of Utopia I realized I was totally lost. I tried to think, but images of the tiny corridors on Drovani’s flagship kept trying to interpose themselves with the larger, more modern ones within Utopia. I found myself unconsciously ducking to fit under a low ceiling that wasn’t there. Frustrated, I stopped and looked around. I was pretty sure I hadn’t circled back around myself, but my eyes were the one part of my body that weren’t cooperating. I had passed several cells, including one that had a patient inside, the machinery tending his autonomic needs while his mind wandered through whatever dreams they had planned for him.

I stopped to watch the man, maybe for longer than I should have. He was lit only by the readouts of the computer consoles that surrounded him, lying nude on the gelatin cradle as I had until just moments ago. His body twitched here and there as it tried to respond to the stimuli the machines presented him. His eyes opened several times, darting to and fro, but he saw only what they wanted him to, and he eventually closed them and settled.

That’s what I must have looked like, but how long had I been here? There were no clocks or calendars; in fact, nothing adorned the cell. Even the computer screen were reading out plain lines and graphs without any numeric identification. I shuddered at the time wasted, time Zundergrub had used to set plans in motion and amass an army of villains, while I lay there, fed the necessary nutrients through a nose tube, catheters removing impurities while the gel-bed formed a comfortable resting place. It was reminiscent of a return to the placenta.

The woman stirred, her good eye flashing open and closed, and her right arm pushed against me. This wasn’t a good place to stand still, down a long empty hallway. It’s not like infra-goggles were all that expensive or hard to find, and anyone wearing them would see me easily.

But she was coming to, and I didn’t want her to panic or scream and draw Zundergrub and his boys to us. I knew they had to be close. There was a stairwell nearby, so I made my way to the door and gently leaned against the armbar to open it.

The only light was from the blinking emergency sign a floor above us, and while it was bright, little illumination reached us.

“Hey,” I said, sitting her down against the wall. She moved gingerly, her whole body in pain, and each gesture was slow going.

“Qui êtes vous?” she whispered. She had to repeat twice before I could hear.

“Sorry, lady. I don’t speak French.”

She was delirious. Her one good eye wasn’t focusing, shifting from thing to thing, almost independent of her will. Her head bowed, and she almost lost consciousness, but her body shook, jolting her.

“I said, ‘who are you?’” she said with a heavy accent.

“My name is Dale,” I told her, not wanting to share more.

“Laisse-moi tranquille,” she said, reverting to French in what was barely a whisper.

“Who are you?” I asked, but her head lolled forward and I had to catch her. She pushed me away, showing she was more aware than I realized. She recoiled from me, but bumped her head on the wall.

“S’en aller,” she hissed, as a tear streamed down her face. “Allez vous faire foutre connard.”

I couldn’t understand it, not just from a lack of familiarity with the language; she spoke so fast, so softly, that even a French person would have been at a loss.

“Lady–”

“Seulement violer mois à cette époque-là,” she snapped, suddenly angry, even managing the strength to hurl a spray of bloody spittle in my direction.

“I don’t understand,” I managed.

“Fuck then go,” she said, garbling the English language, and added; “Font le et vont!” as she opened the top of her ripped gown to reveal one of her breasts. Her soft skin was red from Dreadmaster’s rough manipulation, but she was beautiful despite her condition. I could feel her eyes watching me as I got a good look at her body.

“Qui êtes vous?” she asked, jutting her pointed chin at me, demanding. “Qui?”

I put my hand on her ripped top, and gently closed it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

“Se que, vous non trouver le en haut?” she laughed, dribbling blood from her nose and wiping it.

I shook my head and moved away from her, sitting on the stairwell. The sound of the screaming had faded, but someone above us was firing a machine gun.

“Stuck with crazy French bitch on one hand, and a crazy Indian who wants to kill me on the other,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “I could use a beer.”

“Beer,” she said. “Hmmm.”

“You understand that, huh?”

The woman tried to smile, but the gesture caused her too much pain.

“So, you got a name?”

She regarded me with caution.

“Hey, I saved your life from that asshole back there.”

Shaking her head, she said, “Merde, je sais vous maintenant.”