Hellraisers (22 page)

“This way,” said Pan, leading them down the corridor, trying to ignore the unpleasant tickling in her skull, the half-whispers that danced against her eardrums. Insignias decorated the walls, recognizable even though somebody had tried to scratch them away. A swastika, an outstretched eagle. They made her stomach churn just as much as the vibes that blasted up from below.

After thirty yards or so the passageway ended at an elevator. The doors stood open, the mouth of a predator waiting for her to walk right in. She did. Truck and Marlow followed, making the elevator wobble, and she tried not to think about how deep the shaft stretched beneath them, the thousands of feet of empty space between her and the pit below.

“Here we go again,” Herc said as he strolled inside.

The elevator rumbled, then started to clatter down. The first time she'd used it Pan had felt like she was on some kind of reverse rocket, one that was blasting down into the earth rather than up into space. Even now, after so many trips, her stomach did loop-the-loops as they picked up speed. She ignored the need to hold on to something, her hands balled into fists, closing her eyes for the forty-eight seconds it took the elevator to slow.

She heard the noise of the bullpen before they'd come to a halt, a clamor of voices and machinery that tripled in volume when Herc wrenched open the gates. He ushered them out into the first level of the complex, a room easily as big as a couple of basketball courts. It had been carved out of the rock, the gray walls and ceiling rough-hewn and uneven—all except for a section above the elevator, which displayed a huge swastika. It had been covered up with a dozen tarps but it still seemed to burn up there, scorching a hole right into the past. Under it, somebody—an Engineer from the eighties, apparently—had painted the words
Nazis Suck, Hellraisers Rule!

Everything else in the space was brand-new. Banks of hard drives lined the far wall, humming. There were more than a hundred of them, each the size of a fridge, cased in three layers of transparent plastic so the damp and the cold wouldn't get to them. Their lights blinked warily, making her think of caged animals at the zoo.

Next to them was a whole wall of monitors, the two outer ones as big as cinema screens, the other sixteen mounted in between. Each one showed the usual display of numbers and countdowns and infograms, like a NASA control center. One of the big ones, though, was playing a Harry Potter movie. Four women and three men sat on swivel chairs in front of it, rapt, scoffing popcorn from a couple of saucepans. Herc strolled halfway across the room, almost on his tiptoes, waiting until he was close enough before clapping his hands together. The noise was like a rifle shot, echoing off the walls, and the Lawyers just about fell out of their chairs.

“Jesus
Christ
!” yelled Seth in his heavy Austrian accent. Nobody really knew how old he was—sometimes he looked sixty, sometimes eighty. Right now he looked about a hundred as he clapped a liver-spotted hand to his chest. “You would really do this to me, an old man who has had four heart attacks already in his life? You are a bad guy, Herman Cole. You will be the death of me.”

“I could never be so lucky,” Herc said, walking the rest of the way and embracing the man fondly. They looked like a couple of old crusties meeting in the park, Pan thought, smiling.

“Good to see your mind's on the job,” said Truck. “Nice to know you're working hard on cracking our contracts.”

Seth waved a hand like he was wafting away a bad smell.

“Oh please, you know I could crack yours as easily as I could crack a fart. You insult me, Gregory, with your pathetic deals. When will you be brave and go for something
really
fun?”

One of the other Lawyers had paused the film and they were all milling around now like they were actually working. Pan ignored them. She knew a little about each of them, but other than Seth she did her best to avoid them. There was something about knowing the person who had to break your contract that made the whole thing scarier, made it more real. It was better to pretend that some nameless, faceless superhero was trying to save your life, not an old guy with a triple bypass, or some geeky mathematicians from MIT who were still young enough to think that ironic T-shirts were cool.

“It's good to see you, Amelia,” Seth said, using the name that Pan hated. “We almost lost you then. That was a tough cookie to break. See, Gregory, you should be more like this young lady here, actually giving me some work to do!”

Seth wiggled his huge, bushy eyebrows at her and smiled and she couldn't help but smile back. Until she thought of Forrest, that was.

“You should have broken his contract,” she said. “We didn't have to lose another one.”

“Cody.” Seth sighed. “Yes. We should have. I am sorry, Amelia. Ostheim commanded us to keep your contracts active until your mission was complete. And by that time it was too late. We only just managed to break yours in time.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” she said, scratching her chest, her ruined heart. Seth walked to her, placed a warm, leathery hand on her shoulder.

“I truly am sorry, my girl. It was not my choice, but it is my responsibility. I should have said no to Ostheim.”

Yeah, right.
Nobody said no to Ostheim. Pan shrugged him away.

“I will write his name in the book,” Seth said.

“Don't,” she replied. She steeled herself, walking to the corner of the room. There was a desk there, an old, leather-bound ledger the only thing on it. It was open now, and she ran her hand down the list of names written there in black ink.
Lucy White (Simmer), Beki Smith (Bluebeard), Sophie Hicks (T-Rex), Wesley Adams (Marathon Man), Tyra Jynn (Spitfire), Ryan Hodapp (Hammer), Hannah Wilkinson (Berserker), Leticia Gallardo (Bookworm), Courtney Webb (Captain Obvious).
All the Engineers and their war names. All of them dead. Some of them rotting in the ground, most of them somewhere far, far worse. She did what she always did, flicking back through the book. How many names? A thousand? Those at the front were faded almost beyond recognition, centuries old. And how many more would there be, before it all ended?

Picking up the pen, she wrote
Cody
, then stopped, racking her brains. What the hell had his surname been? The pen hovered and she felt the shame wrap her up, smothering her. How could she forget it? He was dead, and she couldn't even remember his name.

It's better this way, better to forget he ever existed, better to—

Baranowski.
It was suddenly vomited back into her head and she scribbled it down, adding
(Forrest)
afterward. Herc had given him that name because he'd always been going on about how life was a box of chocolates. She ran her finger softly over the name, then closed the book with deliberate slowness.

Job done. Time to move on. I will not think of him again.

“And who is this?” said Seth, getting out of his chair and shuffling over to Marlow. “A new recruit? Oh goody!”

“Seth, meet Marlow,” said Pan. Seth took Marlow's head in both of his and studied him like a scientist might study a rat. He nodded approvingly.

“Oh, Marlow, how fitting,” he said, putting his head to Marlow's chest. “Bit of asthma there, I see. Nothing we can't take care of. A good specimen, Herman, we will have a lot of fun with this one. Have you thought about what you might like, Marlow? Have they filled you in on the possibilities, the endless, wonderful possibilities?”

“Um…” said Marlow.

“He can wait,” said Herc. “It's been a long day. A long few days. We should rest.”

“Balderdash!” said Seth. “You need no such thing. Please, let's work up a contract for him. You don't know how bored I get here. They make me do terrible things,
terrible things
, when you are gone. These films they make me watch, about wizards and dragons and … and strange elves with socks. I cannot think with such nonsense in my head.”

“He put it on!” said one of the Lawyers, a young woman called Trix. “He's made us watch it four times this week.”

“Lies,” said Seth, holding up his hands. “See how they slander me. Come, come.”

He took Marlow's elbow and walked with him toward the elevator. Pan looked at Herc and the big guy shrugged.

“It's too late and I'm too tired to argue with Seth,” he said. “I'm going to bed. You make sure he doesn't deal for something unbreakable, all right?”

“Come on, Herc,” she said, wanting nothing more than to crash down on a soft mattress, bury herself in the warmth of her duvet. “I'm—”

“Good night, Pan,” Herc said, flashing her a smile. She looked at Truck and he shook his head.

“Bed for me. Good night, kiddo.”

“
Buenas noches,
Pan,” said Night before she'd even asked her.

She groaned in frustration then spun around on her heels, following the old man and the kid. Already she could feel that maddening itch, the call of the Engine. She pictured it beneath her—its sprawling insanity, an ocean of moving parts powered by unspeakable evil—and her heart began drumming. The truth was she wasn't tired. The reason she didn't want to babysit Marlow was because if she went downstairs, if she saw the Engine, then the desire to forge a new contract would be almost overwhelming. It always wanted her, and she no longer knew how to say no.

“Do not dally, Amelia,” said Seth from inside the elevator. “I don't want to be another hundred years older by the time you join us.”

She shook her head in resignation, then jogged over to them. Marlow smiled nervously at her and she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. The truth was he didn't know how lucky he was. Right now he was a wheezing, trembling sack of flesh and bone and worry.

And in a few minutes he'd be a god.

 

THE ENGINE

Marlow wasn't sure how it was possible that they could go any deeper, but the elevator rattled downward at full speed for another minute before it began to slow. He could feel the vast pressure of the earth above him, a billion tons of rock and soil bearing down, ready to crush him to jelly. The panic was like a cold fire inside his chest and he had to fight the urge to scream, to beg for them to take him back to the surface. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself down but there was no air here. He panted, fumbling for his inhaler, until the old man put his hand on his arm.

“You no longer need it,” he said, patting the back of Marlow's hand like a father taking his son to the first day of school. “It can be a bit much, I know. The moment that everything you thought you knew about the world is proven to be wrong. But it gets better. Come.”

The elevator shuddered to a halt and Pan opened the doors. Marlow focused on her in an attempt to blot out everything else—the way she walked, like she owned the place; the way her hips moved, it was almost hypnotic. He kept his eyes on her, so engrossed that it took him a moment to notice there was something in his head, something scuttling around the circumference of his skull, buzzing like a fly. He put his hand to his temple, scratching furiously, but the itch was inside him, unbearable. If he'd had a hammer he'd have gladly used it to get at whatever crawled and feasted in there.

“What is that?” he grunted, using both hands now, feeling like his brain was full of insect eggs, all hatching into needled feet and bulging eyes. “Get it out.”

He felt hands on his, looked to see Pan right in front of him, close enough that he could feel her breath on his lips. Even with his head erupting he felt himself melt, like the bones had been pulled right out of his legs.

“The Engine will do its best to mess with you,” she said. “You'll feel its touch in your head, in your soul. It's trying to understand you, probe you. It's unlike anything you've ever experienced, and believe me, it will make you feel like you want to die. Ignore it.”

“Ignore the creepy magic Engine that's probing my soul with evil stalker fingers,” he said, trying to smile and offering what was probably a grimace. “Okay, cool.”

Pan studied him for a moment more and he had the almost overwhelming desire to lean forward and plant his mouth on hers. It would be so easy, she was six inches away, and those lips were so full, slightly open …

“Do it and you die,” she said, reading his mind. She prodded him hard in the forehead and backed away. “Believe me, the Engine is a mean piece of work but I'm worse.”

“Do what?” he said as innocently as he could. “I wasn't…”

“Sure.”

They were in a small room, just the elevator on one side and what looked like a vault door on the other. The walls were made of concrete, and the same Nazi decoration covered two of them. Somebody had painted over the swastikas but it was almost as if the poisonous symbol had eroded the paint, causing it to bubble up like diseased skin.

“What's with all the Hitler crap?” Marlow asked. “There something you're not telling me? Because I'm really not into all that white supremacy stuff.”

“Us neither, Marlow,” said Seth, gesturing at himself. “Obviously. No, the Nazis found this place when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. We don't know why, exactly, but the Engines had been lost for a long time before this, almost forgotten. Fortunately for us, the Nazis didn't work out how to use the machine before the end of the war. Things could have turned out very, very different.”

“It's why we call it the Pigeon's Nest,” Pan said as she typed a code into a pad by the vault door. “Like the führer's mountain hideout they called Eagle's Nest, but this place was full of pigeons when the Hellraisers found it. Dead ones.”

The door bleeped and she turned to Marlow.

“Nothing I can say, nothing anyone can say, will prepare you for what you're about to see. There's no training you can do, no way of readying yourself. You could have a thousand years to gear up for your first encounter with the Engine and it would still hit you just as hard. So we're gonna throw you right in. The most important thing to remember is that it cannot hurt you. It will mess with your head, make you feel worse than you've ever felt, make you think things you never thought yourself capable of, make you feel like you're evil, but it cannot hurt you. Okay?”