Imperium (Caulborn) (28 page)

“What do they say?”

Gears scrolled through the data. “It’s a personal journal, where she talks about the Mother, but there are notes here about Dr. Leevan, too.” Gears’ tone became serious, so I kept my mouth shut and let him read. “Looks like the Mother was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and Dr. Leevan offered to cure her. The Mother said that Leevan was doing some very intriguing work with repairing damaged neural tissue, and felt that she could actually do it. In exchange, though, the Mother had to tell her the secrets of how to make gremlins.”

Gears scrolled some more. “Ultimately, the Mother turned Leevan down.” Another ten minutes of silence, save for the adventures of the crew of the Serenity that played in the background. I used the time to answer some of my follower’s prayers and recharge my reserves a bit. Gears sighed. “Most of the rest of this is just personal reflections. It sounds like the Mother regretted using us the way she did.” His ears drooped slightly as he looked at his hands. “I guess you were right about her, Vinnie. The Mother really did change sides in the end.”

I patted him on the shoulder. He let out another sigh and scrolled through some more text.

“There’s some stuff here about Axle and the Mother’s relationship, it sounds like they had genuine affection for each other.” His voice was quiet, and I could hear regret in it. He gave himself a shake and turned his yellow eyes up to me. “Doesn’t look like there’s much more here, Vinnie.”

“Do the notes say anything about what Leevan was planning, any suspicions Millie might have had?”

“No, sorry, Vinnie.”

“Damn. So we’d need Leevan’s notes to know what she’s up to.”

“So you and Megan weren’t able to get to Leevan’s computer?”

I frowned. “We did, and I had your Gremlinux disk loaded, but I wasn’t able to break her password.”

“But the disk was loaded?”

“Yeah, but like I said, I couldn’t recover anything.”

Gears’ ears had perked up, and his grin was devilishly mischievous.

“Gears, what have you done?”

Gears rolled his eyes at me. “Come on, Vinnie. I’ve been working on computers almost since they were invented. I’ve learned a few tricks over the years.” He opened a new window and tapped away on his keyboard. A few moments later, another window popped open. The screen showed Da Vinci’s Virtuvian Man. I blinked. I was looking at Leevan’s computer.

“How are you doing that?” Gears opened his mouth and I held up a hand. “And keep in mind, I don’t have sixty or seventy years of computer experience.”

Gears grinned. “No problem, Vinnie, I’ll use small words. A Gremlinux disk leaves a few things behind. One of them is a backdoor program that lets me read anything that’s on that computer.”

“And this works even if the disk is removed?”

“Yep. The only people who’d load Gremlinux, besides me, are people we’re trying to procure information from. So I built that door just in case the data couldn’t be recovered during a mission.” He turned his full attention back to the monitor. “Wow. Leevan isn’t even encrypting her files. Back during the war, every doctor had their own special cipher. The Mother had five.” He skimmed through the files. “Jeez, she’s even got personal journals on here. Don’t people understand that work computers are meant for work?”

“Stay focused, Gears. What’s it say?”

“Looks like Leevan’s been working on a project named ‘Imperium.’ From what I see here, she was commissioned to cure a rare blood disease by someone named Robert Maxwell.” Gears paused. “Maxwell gave her money, helped procure the space for the Hope Clinic, helped her obtain equipment, yada yada yada...” He made a face. “Looks like Leevan really does have a way to recover information from neural tissue. She’s been using Keri Greene’s brain like a computer, using it to handle some complicated cryogenic scenarios. That’s gross.”

I snapped my fingers. “I bet that’s why they took Millie’s brain, too. They wanted to create more gremlins, she wasn’t going to share the recipe, so Leevan decided to take the information right from Millie’s brain.”

Gears continued skimming as if he hadn't heard me. “Oh, wow. Vinnie, you were right, Seamus McElery never left Leevan’s clinic. Her notes say that when she tried to perform an experiment on him, something mutated and he became a zombie. It looks like that happened to a bunch of regular people and several paranormals during the course of her experiments.”

“That explains why there are so many zombies in her basement,” I said.

Gears scrolled for a few more minutes. “Holy crap,” Gears whispered. He pointed at the screen. “Leevan was conducting these experiments to create a cure for a specific person. Maxwell wants Leevan to revive Gottfried Herrscher.” Gears’ hands trembled as he scrolled through the text on the screen. “Vinnie, you can’t let that happen.”

“The Dominator? He died back in the seventies.” I blinked at Gears. “Wait, you know him?”

Gears nodded. “Let’s just say we’ve met. According to this, he was cryogenically frozen. He made arrangements to have his death faked so that his allies could revive him later.”

Lights came on in my mind. “We need to tell Galahad about this,” I said. “Pipe all that info up to the conference room and meet me there.”

Gears nodded and I kissed Petra on the forehead before I left the room.

Ten minutes later, Megan, Galahad, Gears and I were seated at the conference room table. I quickly recounted what we’d discovered. “Everything that we’ve been dealing with for the last week has been about reviving Herrscher. Keri Greene was a cryogenic specialist. Leevan must’ve wanted her to help thaw Herrscher out. Let’s say she refused; Leevan needs her, and can’t leave her to her own devices, so they kill her, take her brain and put it to work on the unfreezing process. That tube we saw in the clinic was probably Herrscher’s cryo-pod.

“Herrscher suffered from a rare blood condition called thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura.” That disease was a mouthful; I had to say it slowly. “When Megan and I were in the clinic, we saw Leevan treating a patient with TTP by filtering his blood through a vampire. Since vampires are immune to disease, Lucille was acting like a living purification system. The other paranormals that were kidnapped all had supernatural healing powers, as well. Vampires, werewolves, fae, they all can recover from wounds that would be fatal to a human. Leevan must’ve been experimenting to see which one would be the most effective.”

Megan pursed her lips. “Okay, so how bad is this? We know that Leevan is close to healing Herrscher, but what happens if she revives him?”

“It’ll be bad,” Gears said with a shudder. “Herrscher can mentally dominate supernatural creatures. He used them as soldiers in his own little paranormal platoon. Didn’t matter if it was a lycanthrope, a vampire, or a fae.” Gears swallowed. “Even gremlins.”

“And this Robert Maxwell character wants him for something,” I said. “Maxwell’s been attacking the Urisk on the Bright Side under the name Treggen. Maybe he wants to use Herrscher to control the fae over there. This situation goes beyond just what’s happening in Boston; this is a dimension-spanning crisis waiting to happen.”

“But Herrscher will be, what, in his eighties or nineties?” Megan asked as she cocked her head to one side. “How effective could someone like that be?”

“Normally, I’d agree with you there,” I said. “But look at the creatures that Leevan is using in her experiments. They all have supernatural healing powers, which grants them longevity. Each one of those creatures could easily live to a hundred, or older.” I was still having a hard time with Gears being older than Galahad, but I’d get used to it. “So whatever treatment she has planned may regenerate his body, and essentially make him a young man again.”

“Add to that the golems that they’ve been building have the ability to detect paranormals, and these neo-gremlins can sneak up and knock people out so they can be abducted, and you’ve got your own built in soldier recruitment force,” Gears said.

“I know that look in your eyes, Vincent,” Galahad said, speaking for the first time. “What do you have in mind?”

“Quick strike,” I said. “Nothing fancy, nothing flashy. We go back to the clinic through the sewers and clean out the neo-gremlins. Then we rescue the patients. We make sure that Herrscher is still on ice and then retrieve him as well. If Leevan’s there, we deal with her with minimal force. If she’s not, we pick her up ASAP. On the way out, we use some low grade firebombs to destroy the zombies. ”

Galahad nodded. “Seems simple enough. Godspeed, then.”

We headed back downstairs. Megan went to talk to Jake, who would be in charge of transporting the rescued patients back to our office. I followed Gearstripper down to his workshop. Petra had fallen asleep. I walked over to her and planted a kiss on her forehead. I touched her hair and smiled down at her. We’d been very lucky. Once she was better, we’d need to do something special to celebrate.

Gears cleared his throat. When I looked up, he gestured me over to a worktable. “I have a present for you,” he said. He handed me a super soaker.

“Gears, it’s the middle of October. I don’t think a water fight is a great idea right now.”

Gears rolled his eyes. “It’s filled with one of the strongest herbicides I could find, Vinnie. It should take care of those vine golems for you.”

“Oh, cool,” I said. “Thanks, Gears.”

He smiled at me, then pulled out a small black box with straps attached to it and a cable that wound around to what looked like a nail gun.

“What’s that?” I asked as Gears slipped the straps over his shoulders. He looked up at me as he pulled a switch on the nail gun.

“Spent uranium bolt shooter,” Gears replied. “I’m going with you. I have a score to settle with Leevan and her neo-gremlins.”

“Gears, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Gears looked up at me then, his eyes glowing and his sharp teeth gleaming. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of him.

“Time to break stuff, Vinnie,” Gears whispered. “Let’s go.”

I followed him out with my super soaker slung over my shoulder. We met Megan and Jake in the lobby, where Jake handed me a special jumpsuit, complete with boots. The suit was bulletproof and would provide better protection against the nastiness in the sewers. I hastily pulled the outfit on over my regular clothes.

Megan raised her eyebrows when Gearstripper climbed into my backpack, but I shook my head. She nodded, understanding. Jake drove us near the clinic and we silently exited the van. Jake would wait in the van until we signaled all clear for him, then he’d come in and help us take the patients to safety. The three of us dropped back into the sewers through the same manhole cover Megan and I had exited from.

I’ve been spending way too much time in sewers lately. One of these days, I want to track down a bad guy who lives on a beach.

I quested out for rats to use as sentries, but none were there. Their population hadn’t had a chance to replenish after the barbeque earlier. We made our way back to the clinic’s basement. A piece of plywood had been placed over the hole I’d made. Gears and Megan looked at me and I telekinetically pushed against the makeshift barricade.

Let me tell you, plywood is a heck of a lot easier to push through than bricks.

The board fell inward and we stepped into the basement. Megan pressed a button on the shiny, new control panel and we took the elevator up to the neo-gremlins’ room. Gears hissed and shot off of the elevator like a rocket. Megan and I stood on the elevator platform, our eyes wide as we watched Gears work. He dashed from pod to pod, cutting wires with his teeth, his claws deftly tearing open panels that held delicate electronic equipment, which he then smashed. He giggled as he did it. The sound made my skin crawl.

In the dim blue light of the room, I could imagine how an Allied pilot must’ve felt when he realized a gremlin was aboard his plane. Gears was a blur of motion, and in his wake he left crackling circuits, smoking power cables, and dead neo-gremlins. He moved to the ones on the floor next, connected to the feeding tubes. I realized he was chanting in German as he moved.
Cut the wires, crash the planes.
I shivered. His head tipped to one side as he surveyed them. A heartbeat later, his wicked grin returned.

He rushed over to one of the neo-gremlins and severed its feeding tube with his teeth. Then he hauled his nail gun around, and fired three quick shots. The neo-gremlin shrieked as it sailed across the room and was nailed to the wall. The sound reverberated against the glass in the room.

I was frozen in place as I watched my little friend move to the pinned neo-gremlin. Gears’ eyes were bright yellow orbs in the dim light. He gestured at his chest with his thumb. “
Überlegen
,” he whispered. The neo-gremlin’s silver eyes barely had a chance to widen before Gears blew its head off. Gears’ giggling continued as he shot the rest of the neo-gremlins with the nail gun. They spasmed on the floor and the room was splattered in silver blood.

Gears’ eyes were bright as he looked at me. “
Vorwarts
, Vinnie,” he said.

“What?”

“He said ‘onward,’” Megan whispered. “It’s German.”

“Gears, pull yourself together, pal.”

Gears shook himself visibly. “Sorry, Vinnie,” he said. His voice still held a trace of the German accent. “I haven’t broken anything in a long time.” He looked almost wistful as he surveyed the damage he’d done.

The door to the room burst open. Four vine golems stood in the doorway. I brought my super soaker around and let the first golem have it. The herbicide dissolved the golem’s flesh on contact. The smell of harsh chemicals and rotting plant matter was stomach turning, but I kept pumping. The golem shrieked and tried to stagger away, steam rising from its body as I doused it. Megan’s alien blaster appeared and she blew a hole in the creature’s chest. Its bretheren shot into the room, their vines extending. I sprayed them across the face and their eyes dissolved. They screamed and Megan blasted them too.

On the final shot, her blaster began to whine. “Sugar, honey, iced tea,” she whispered. “They told me the batteries in this thing would last for a hundred and fifty years.” The ray gun disappeared and she brought back her 9mm.