Immortal Twilight (20 page)

“Oh, Algie,” Cecily chastised, “you’ve ruined my composition.”

“The woman was too thin anyway,” Algernon justified as he took a seat next to Cecily and Antonia.

A look of disdain colored his face as Hugh Danner paced the pleasure garden with his arms behind his back. His shoulder felt sore where Grant had struck him with the pot, and a dull pink bruise showed across the right side of his face, but already both were healing thanks to the miraculous genetic manipulation that his body had been subjected to before his birth in a glass tube.

Cecily, Antonia and Algernon knew his look, had seen Hugh pace like this before, like a tiger caged but still ready to pounce if given the narrowest of openings to do so. He was bridling at something, and little wonder—Antonia was still nursing the most ghastly headache after what the woman with the red hair had thrust at her during their mental contretemps.

“Our glorious festival is unraveling,” Hugh announced, gesturing flamboyantly to the ripe forms posed all about them. “Your art looks positively ill, dear Cecily, while Antonia’s magnificent effort was so short-lived as to be an irrelevance.”

“Oh, Hugh, dear,” Antonia chirped, “all art is an irrelevance. That’s its appeal.”

The handsome, dark-haired Dorian inclined his head in acceptance of her point. “Too true. And yet, our grand design seems destined to fall like a lame horse ready for pasture.

“I propose that we step things up,” Hugh continued, “and bring to this gauche world the most glorious art it has ever borne witness to. Something that will ‘pop.’ Any suggestions?”

“Oh, Hugh,” Cecily trilled, “you have always been the great innovator. You decide and we shall play along in whatever capacity you direct.”

Hugh looked from one of his colleagues to the next, his fierce blue eyes searing into them as he decided what he might make his grand artistic gesture to the world.

“Something that pops, didn’t you say, old man?” Algernon added with a grin. “I have been preparing just the thing.”

Hugh nodded. “Then to work, my friends. We have art to create and the world is our canvas. Find me people. Lots and lots of people.”

Chapter 21

Reba DeFore waited nervously in one of the laboratories of the Cerberus redoubt, tapping her pen against the side of the clipboard to which she had attached a ream of paperwork relating to the captured Dorian solider, Harold. Lab assistant Gus Wilson was poised on a high stool beside her, checking his own papers, and he peered up when he saw how DeFore was fidgeting.

“Nervous?” he asked in his unassuming way.

The Cerberus medic nodded, watching as almost two dozen experts came shuffling into the room to hear her speak, lining up along the back wall and taking seats at the workbenches among the test tubes and Bunsen burners. “I didn’t expect to be giving my findings to so many people,” she said.

Cerberus had become a haven for scientific experts since its reestablishment several years ago, many of them gravitating here from the Manitius Moon Base project, where they had been held in cryogenic stasis since the start of the twenty-first century. Kane had once joked that he couldn’t swing a cat in the redoubt without hitting someone who would calculate said cat’s velocity and angle of impact to ten decimal places.

DeFore felt relief followed by a tiny pang of guilt when she saw Kane and Brigid stride into the room. Brigid was knowledgeable but she was book smart, an archivist rather than an expert in a given field. And as for Kane, well, Kane was Kane. At least DeFore could be normal around those two. She was surprised that Grant, the third member of their usually inseparable trio, was not with them.

Kane held the door for Brigid before checking the corridor beyond for stragglers. Finding none, he pulled the door closed and stepped over to where Brigid stood by the fire extinguisher. “Woo-ee.” He whistled quietly. “I didn’t realize this show would be so popular.”

Brigid flashed him a smile. “Standing room only,” she whispered back.

“Next time we catch the matinee and leave the main show to the smart folks, Baptiste,” Kane teased.

“Aw, but then we wouldn’t get to dress up,” Brigid shot back, keeping her voice low.

Up at the front of the room, DeFore was welcoming everyone and thanking them all for attending. “Our CAT Alpha field team brought the subject in after one of our people suffered in an encounter with four of his companions,” Reba summarized.

Those familiar with the members of CAT Alpha turned to Kane and Brigid, and several asked if Grant was okay. “Grant’s fine, but Shizuka took a nasty hit,” Kane said quickly, glossing over her condition so that DeFore could hold the floor.

“A further encounter along with archival investigation informed us that Harold is part of a group of three-hundred-year-old supersoldiers known as Dorians,” the medic explained. “The Dorians exhibit increased endurance along with powerful intellectual capacity, mind control and astonishing reactions. Harold theoretically shares these abilities, though some past trauma has left him unable to function at anything approaching standard human behavior, let alone superhuman. However, we may assume that he is physically similar to his broodmares, which means that the results of these tests should give an insight into what our field personnel are dealing with.”

One of the scientists, a man called Perry, whose blond hair was prematurely streaked with white, raised his hand to ask a question. “Where did you say these Dorians came from?”

Briefly, DeFore outlined the background data with some assistance from Donald Bry before taking up where she had left off regarding the test results themselves. “It’s been my job to catalog his physical attributes and test their limits,” she explained. “I began by taking a number of genetic samples from the subject—skin, hair and blood—along with some minor invasive work regarding his bones and muscle makeup. I’ve also conducted an X-ray and CAT scan along with an internal probe to take samples of his digestive tract and lung capacity. We’re still studying the results now, but we do have some initial feedback on the early tests.”

DeFore turned the pages on her clipboard, searching for the data she had highlighted before the meeting began.

“Though the subject’s skin appears human enough, testing shows that it’s actually some chitinous material,” she explained, “akin to the shell of a beetle. The skin is superhard and acts like armor, enabling the subject to deflect blows of significant force including—anecdotally, at least—bullets. I’d speculate that the skin is close to impenetrable, except to the sharpest of blades. I actually went through three scalpels trying to get a sample. As such, the subject may be considered invulnerable for all practical purposes, much as a bug can survive a drop from many stories above the ground and nonchalantly walk away.”

“Great,” Kane muttered, “we’re fighting human beetles.”

Brigid shot him a look to silence him.

“The subject is different from humans in other ways, too,” DeFore continued. “Early tests show that his metabolism is far slower than a normal man’s—and that’s important because the documents relating to these Dorians refer to them as being immortal. The slowness of the metabolism means any possible wounds would take far longer to register. It also has the added advantage of placing less demands on Harold’s digestive system—I’d estimate that any one of these Dorians could go two months without food or water.

“Having said this, the subject’s ability to process and adapt to stimuli is remarkable. Once we finally did take our skin sample, I watched it heal completely in a matter of hours,” DeFore said, thumbing through her clipboard to the correct page. “To be precise, 118 minutes and 12 seconds.”

Several of the audience questioned this, and DeFore went through the figures carefully along with handing out a spectral analyses of the process.

“And there’s another point about Harold that bears consideration,” DeFore continued with a quaver in her voice. “Our field team have already encountered this facet of the Dorians’ abilities—that they appear to have a form of mind control over other people which they can exert seemingly at will. This is not hypnosis, let me clarify—this is a full-blown psychic attack that leaves the victim traumatized and, in several cases, dead.

“Our subject’s brain function is damaged, so I’ve had to make certain allowances with regards to that in my analysis,” the Cerberus medic explained, “but it’s clear that his neural pathways—that is, the things that facilitate thought transfer—are linked with infinitely more connective ports, in a far more elaborate web than we would see in a normal human being. In very simple terms, our subject thinks far more quickly than a man. Equating his thought process to ours would be like comparing our speed of thought to that of a pineapple.”

The audience in the room laughed at this lighthearted comparison, despite its serious implications.

Once the laughter died down, DeFore continued. “The Dorians’ ability to think faster may explain their facility for mind control. CAT Alpha’s field report states that the mind control seemed to affect a number of people at once, up to twenty or so at any one moment....”

“At least,” Brigid chimed in when she realized DeFore was looking to her for confirmation. “Plus, its echoes seemed to continue long after the Dorian we faced had passed. Kane and I were also subject to the same attack at the same time.”

“Which means it isn’t focused simply on one person,” DeFore clarified. “The speed with which these people can think may be allowing them to switch minds and control more than one at once. In essence, I see this as controlling each individual in turn, perhaps twenty people one after another before rapidly turning their attention back to the first and reinforcing their influence there, a little like a man spinning plates.”

With that, the meeting was adjourned and the room began to empty. Kane and Brigid remained behind, along with a few of the other scientists who had more questions to ask or who merely wished to help with the study.

Finally, Kane managed to corner Reba DeFore as she took a sip from a much-needed glass of water.

“You said something there about spinning plates,” he said, “to explain how the Dorians control multiple minds at once.”

DeFore nodded. “Yes, I can’t see any capacity to divide their thoughts in such a way as to control more than one person otherwise, and you assured me that they managed to get whole families dancing on the waterfront.”

“Yeah. So, if we could split their attention wide enough,” Kane mused, “we might have an inroad to breaking that influence?”

“It’s possible, Kane,” DeFore agreed, “but I wouldn’t choose to be the one to test the theory.”

Kane gave a slow nod of his head in deadly earnest. Already he was considering new ways to stop these lunatics, trying to find a new angle with which to bring them to a standstill.

“While this may all sound outlandish,” DeFore told Kane and Brigid, “we must remember that medical science has improved to such a degree that even the weakest human can thrive under reasonable conditions. In essence, our subject is a conglomeration of all that research up to the end of the nineteenth century employed on just one specimen, infinitely superior to any one of us in this room. They may be three hundred years old, but whoever designed these supersoldiers knew what they were doing.”

“They built things to last in those days,” Kane said bitterly. “Bully for them. Sucks for us.”

Chapter 22

While his colleagues endlessly debated strategy, Grant took time to visit Shizuka in the Cerberus infirmary. He found the infirmary empty apart from the four Tigers of Heaven guards on silent watch. DeFore was presumably busy with performing further tests on the skin samples she had obtained from the prisoner, Harold. The lights in the observation room had been dimmed, creating a kind of nighttime feel.

Grant paced through the consultation room, his dark eyes fixed on the observation window where he could see Shizuka’s silhouette, feeling his heart break with every step.

He passed through the consultation room and into the tiny ward itself, four beds arranged two for two against the walls in mirrored opposition to each other. Shizuka lay in one bed, a low light glowing beside her, bedclothes folded down to keep her legs and midsection covered, leaving the top of her chest, her head and arms free. The other beds were empty, leaving the room with that sterile smell of disinfectant masked with flowers from an aerosol. Two more Tigers of Heaven guards waited in silence, standing at the door in full armor, swords at their waists.

Shizuka lay statue-still beneath the bedclothes, her face bruised, her expression serene. She looked for all the world as though she were sleeping; a beautiful dreamer.

Grant pulled a chair over and took up a position at the head of the bed, barely able to turn away from Shizuka for even a second. She had to be all right, just had to be. What was it Reba had said?
She’s a survivor, Grant. She’ll triumph over this the same way she’s triumphed against every other foe she’s ever faced.

But those other foes had been living. They had been physical things, with faces and strategies and weak spots. But this thing she was locked in the grip of now, this coma—that was different. That was like a foe that had already dealt the killing blow; it was just a case of waiting for it to strike.

Grant shook his head, trying to dislodge the negativity from his thoughts. Brigid Baptiste had explained the mental attack she had suffered, describing it as a violent incursion into her mind. From the description, it was the same thing that had happened to Shizuka, he’d guess. Grant was no doctor. He couldn’t perform brain surgery or track neurological pathways in a human body, but he knew what could happen when a person suffered a brain trauma. Sometimes they were vegetables when they woke up, unable to feed or clothe themselves, unable to speak. Sometimes they didn’t wake up at all.

“She’ll hear you,” Grant muttered under his breath. It was a silly thing to say, but he felt somehow that by thinking the bad things that it would make them happen, encourage them to settle here, to change the course of Shizuka’s life for the worse. He had thought he was above superstition until he was faced with Shizuka lying comatose, like a corpse waiting for embalming. It seemed that, when you came down to it, no one was really immune to superstition. Not even an ex-magistrate who prided himself on his practical approach and realism in the face of danger.

He reached out then and stroked her bangs back from her forehead, looking at her closed eyelids. “You’ll get through this,” Grant told her in a gentle whisper. “You’ll be all right and we’ll do something, go somewhere. We’ll find the time and we’ll go to the places you always wanted to see, do the things you always wanted to do. We’ll do that, Shizuka. I promise.”

Reba DeFore found Grant sitting in the semidarkness of the observation room an hour later. She had returned from the labs where the meeting had been held, and had left her colleagues busily running a whole gamut of tests on the genetic material she had harvested from the Dorian prisoner, Harold. The Dorian remained heavily sedated on her instruction. Given all she had seen and been told of his brethren, DeFore was not about to take any risks.

She entered her office and switched on the computer terminal, preparing to compare the lab results with her previous findings. But as she took her seat, she became aware of another figure, sitting hunched over Shizuka’s bed in the observation ward. DeFore started, recalling for a moment the way that the redoubt had once been infiltrated by the demented legions of Ullikummis, the stone god. She had suffered badly in that altercation, and while her physical scars had healed she still carried mental scars: the night terrors came to visit time and again, and sometimes her heart would race faster because of a shadow on the wall.

Clutching her chest, DeFore stared through the observation window and steadied herself. “Grant,” she said quietly. “It’s just Grant.”

The buxom medic made her way into the ward and caught Grant’s attention with a soft plea. “Do you need anything, Grant? I can turn the lights up if you like.” Already she was reaching for the light switch.

Grant shook his head heavily as the overhead lights came stronger. “It’s all right, Reba. Shizuka’s not in much of a reading mood.” He tried to make it sound lighthearted, but it still came out like a diagnosis, the kind where the doctor tells you you only have six weeks to live.

“How is she?” DeFore asked as she dimmed the lights back down.

Grant’s attention was drawn to something as the lights faded, a shining streak propped up by the edge of Shizuka’s bed: her
katana
sword in its sheath, the weapon of the samurai.

“Grant?”

“No change,” Grant answered. “I spoke to her a little but...” He left the sentence hanging—what was there he could say? How many ways are there to say someone is dead while still alive?

DeFore checked the computer chart where it had updated in her absence. The monitoring system would alert her to any change here, and even in the labs she was no more than two minutes from her office and the ward. “She’s fighting it, Grant,” DeFore confirmed as she scanned the chart. “It will just take time.”

Grant stood, bringing himself up to his full height, and strode across to where Shizuka’s sword had been propped. “She’ll be mad at me if she finds I’ve taken this,” he told the medic as he reached for the ornate sheath. It was a deep shade of emerald so dark that it was almost black, tied with leather strips and patterned with beautiful gold filigree that ran down both sides and across its lip. Inside, the
katana
itself was twenty-five inches of sharpened steel, razor-keen and polished to mirror-perfect. The weapon had been the official weapon of the samurai class for hundreds of years, often referred to as a samurai’s soul, and it was as much a part of Shizuka as her own right hand. Grant hefted it in its sheath, judging the weight.

DeFore looked from Grant to Shizuka and back again. “I won’t tell,” she said. “And I’m sure you’ll keep it safe.”

Grant nodded. “I will. It’s time this blade took some revenge where its mistress can’t.”

With that, Grant snatched up the sheathed
katana
and made his way to the door. The clock was ticking. It was past time they found these immortal lunatics and dealt with them once and for all.

* * *

K
ANE
AND
B
RIGID
were in the subbasement armory searching for something that might have an effect on their superhuman nemeses.

The armory was a vast storeroom featuring row upon row of weaponry from antitank dragon launchers to simple hunting knives. The well-stocked armory had been a feature of the redoubt back when it had been built and subsequently closed down in the twentieth century, and much of the stock here was renovated from that original source. A further chunk of it had been acquired from other stashes, barony hauls and through plundering other redoubts that had been forgotten by history.

The cool, filtered air of the room and the shelves of goods made it feel a little like walking through a refrigerator. The walls still showed scorch marks where Kane had launched an antitank missile in the midst of the armory while fighting the invading forces of Ullikummis.

“What about a bazooka?” Kane suggested, hefting one of the dragon launchers in two hands.

Brigid shook her head. “Too much collateral-damage potential,” she warned, “and we don’t know if these Dorian soldiers could survive it anyway.”

Kane’s brow furrowed. “You reckon they can?”

“I know they’re tough,” she replied without hesitation. “And I know they can slip into our minds given half a chance. I don’t much fancy the results if one of them gets ahold of our thoughts while we’re wielding that thing.”

“Point,” Kane agreed, replacing the dragon launcher next to two identical units. “What we need then is something hard and fast, something that’ll put these soldiers down without undue risk to the general populace.”

“That’s the sum of it,” Brigid said, pawing through a few light submachine guns to see what they had in stock.

“Sounds like every other mag mission I ever went on,” Kane grumbled as he looked around the brightly lit room for inspiration. It struck him a moment later, but it suggested an unlikely weapon. “I’ve got an idea,” Kane called as he hurried away from Brigid through the neat shelving units.

“Care to share it?” Brigid asked as Kane disappeared between the shelves.

“No, it wouldn’t work for you,” Kane said. “It’s too crazy.”

Brigid rolled her eyes. “Oh, great—what did I expect?” she muttered as she watched Kane stride purposefully from the store.

Kane walked through the live-ammo room beyond without slowing, barely acknowledging the sentry on watch there as he left the rooms. The thing he had in mind was not to be found in the armory here, nor on this level of the redoubt. Instead, he made his way through the well-lit corridors and caught the elevator as one of the facility’s cleaning staff stepped out of it, pushing a mop and bucket on wheels before him.

Inside the elevator, Kane punched the button for another level of the subbasement. He watched as the indicator showed his descent through the mountain. He could only hope that the tech boys would let him try his audacious idea, and that maybe they could help him work it the way he wanted to.

* * *

A
N
HOUR
LATER
,
Kane, Brigid and Grant regrouped in the operations center, where Lakesh and his team continued to scour hours of satellite footage for any sign of the unique airship. It was a tiny object in terms of global footage, and the Cerberus staff concentrated their efforts on North America. If the Dorians had gone farther afield, then the net would have to be widened, but for now Lakesh was happy—well, relatively—to play the odds.

“Once we find them we’ll transport them back here,” Brigid explained, “using the interphaser to dump them in the mat-trans.”

“That safe?” Grant asked. He held Shizuka’s sheathed
katana
tightly in his left hand, nervously running his thumbnail along the gold patterning.

“The receiving chamber is a sealed box designed to withstand the pressures of matter transference,” Brigid reasoned. “Until the door’s been unlocked, there’s no possible way to get out. Not even for a supersoldier.”

“What if they break the glass?” Grant wondered.

“Impossible,” Lakesh said confidently. “That’s armaglass. It’s thick enough to withstand a bullet.”

Kane looked uncertain. “They could arrive armed with something more than a bullet,” he pointed out.

Lakesh looked over to the tinted brown armaglass chamber that dominated the far corner of the room. “If they show any signs of breaking through, then we can activate the mat-trans and send them elsewhere, effectively dumping the problem.”

“And setting them free again,” Grant rumbled.

“There are redoubts that have been locked under water,” Lakesh reminded the three of them, “and others that have been crushed under innumerable tons of soil, thanks to earth tremors. If it comes to it—which it won’t—we’ll find somewhere. Better still, if you can disarm them before you shunt them to us then this should not be an issue.”

Kane scratched his chin thoughtfully, feeling the start of a new beard beginning to form there. “I have an idea about that,” he told the group. “I think I can get them here without too much difficulty....”

“Kane, you—” Brigid began, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

“I’m not going to tell you, Baptiste,” Kane said, “nor you, Grant. That Dorian bitch has already had her claws in your skull once and you managed to repel her. I figure odds are good she’ll want some payback, and I don’t want her seeing my idea sitting front and center in your mind when she decides to take a peek.”

“I can fight her off,” Brigid reasoned. “I’ve already proved that.”

“All the more reason to suspect she’ll come for you,” Kane said, and that was as much as he would say, no matter what Brigid or Grant asked. “Just put your faith in the ole Kane magic and I’ll make sure we get our man, as it were.”

Brigid was clearly less than happy about that situation, but she let it go. She had known Kane long enough to trust his instincts, and they were
anam-charas
—soul friends. While she didn’t always like the way he played things, she knew that he had good reasons for his decisions. Furthermore, she had to admit that Kane was likely on the money when it came to assuming that the Dorian called Antonia would be seeking revenge for what had happened out in Hope during their mental battle.

“What about long-term?” Grant wondered, his thumb working the groove at the top of the sword’s sheath. “Where do we send them then?”

“The mat-trans can hold them,” Lakesh reasoned, “and we can use another facility to teleport in food and so on. Longer term, however, we may be able to return them to their bunker and reseal it in such a way that they can never escape. I have a team looking into this option even as we speak.”

“Any other ideas?” Kane asked. He could see that Grant was fidgety, uncomfortable with letting these people live after what they had done both in Hope and to his love, Shizuka.

Lakesh looked solemn, his eyes two haunted blue orbs in his dusky face. “We shall find a way,” he confirmed. “We always do.”

Before he could say anything further, an alarm tone went off at one of the computer desks and Brewster Philboyd leaped up with a cry of “Eureka!”