The Hallowed Cure, page 36
I didn’t know what Jack’s new, gigantic Mute body was capable of. If he could slither about or raise hidden defenses, my one shot might be useless, and then he’d probably go all out with his attempts to seize control of our bodies. He’d always been a paranoid old fuck in life, so he also probably had a dozen ways to escape if we gave him any warning.
The human-looking portion of the monster smiled benignly at Doctor Sharpe. “Welcome back. I trust Mister Riven ... their Mister Riven ... was not too rough with you?”
“He only tried to kill me once.” Sharpe walked forward. “Why am I here?”
“Get ready,” Caitlyn whispered from almost directly behind me.
“It’s just as I said over the radio, doctor,” Jack said. “I wish to collaborate with you.”
A faint female cry sounded behind me. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but spin around and check. I took a moment to process the horror behind me.
Caitlyn, falling to the ground with a bloody wound in the back of her head. Doctor Sharpe, standing over her with gritted teeth and a bloodied wrench. And then, before I could do anything else, my arms, legs, and body seized up like I’d been hit with a stun stick.
I couldn’t move. I could barely even breathe.
“Oh,” Jack said. “Oh! Emilia, have you done what I think you’ve done?”
“Caitlyn Alexander is far more powerful than you believed,”
Doctor Sharpe said calmly. She tossed the bloody wrench and walked past Caitlyn’s now unmoving form. “And the man standing before you with the sword? That’s not Grant Riven.” She pointed at me. “He is.”
Invisible spikes invaded my body. I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted to raise Dismay and evaporate the traitorous bitch standing in front of me, but my body wasn’t mine to control any longer. The cells inside me weren’t mine to control.
Caitlyn hadn’t been kidding about how Jack Griffyn’s clone could seize control.
My arms trembled, then surged with searing pain as my hands rose of their own accord. My possessed hands snapped my helmet sideways and pulled it off. The stench hit me so hard I almost dropped to my knees, but I didn’t, since Jack controlled my legs right now.
His vault smelled like sweat and vomit and salt, with a good bit of dead body thrown into the mix. Even as I gagged, my legs marched me closer to the horror ahead. My new master.
Though I couldn’t actually turn my head to look at Dean and Hahna, I suspected both were trembling in place. They’d been paralyzed by Jack’s mental manipulation of the alien cells inside our bodies, just like me. And Caitlyn? If she was alive, she wasn’t conscious.
Reese also removed her helmet and tossed it aside. I suspected the utter terror in her eyes had less to do with what was happening to her than the sight of her big sister bloodied and unconscious on the floor. I should have just fired Dismay the moment we walked in here.
“I see,” Jack’s cloned body said. “Miss Alexander was clouding my perceptions. She never revealed she was capable of that, and I now understand why.”
“You aren’t actually omnipotent,” Sharpe agreed. “A good lesson for a would-be God.”
Jack leaned forward on his throne of flesh, but he couldn’t seem to detach from it. “You could have destroyed me, and yet you betrayed them all. May I ask why?”
“Everyone else still wants to kill me,” Sharpe said simply. “They also plan to destroy years of irreplaceable research, research for which I have sacrificed everything. You’ve offered me a better option.
If I work with you, can you truly make me immortal? Like you?”
“I can,” Jack said calmly. “But not with the limited permissions I possess now. I first need you to pass administrative access for all this facility’s functions to me. Do this, and I will share with you the secret of immortality. You, like me, will live forever, unburdened by time and age and disease. You will live long enough to see your research come to fruition.”
“I’m willing to make you the administrator,” Sharpe said.
I gurgled with paralyzed rage. She’d killed all of us. I should have killed her long ago.
“But not without something in return,” Sharpe continued. “Make me immortal first. Once you’ve done that, I’ll pass over fully control of this facility.”
“I just told you I can’t,” Jack said calmly. “Not until you give me administrative access.”
“Then we’re at an impasse,” Sharpe said. “The only leverage I have over you is that only I can control this facility. Once I make you its administrator, you have no reason to keep me alive and let me retain my free will. You claim you can’t make me immortal until I make you the administrator, but I know you’re lying. So how are we to solve this situation?”
“It’s quite simple, doctor,” Jack said. “I’ll force you to make me the administrator, and then I will elevate your brilliant mind so it is subservient to mine.”
Sharpe stepped backward. “Nine—”
She ulp ed as Dean snatched her from behind. One of his hands covered her mouth as he bent her arms behind her with the other.
Despite his furious expression, Dean’s green eyes glistened. He didn’t want to do this ... but Jack wasn’t giving a choice.
Dean, who was far stronger than anyone who wasn’t Hallowed, forced Doctor Sharpe toward Jack’s pile of flesh and vats. Now, at least, I saw real terror in Sharpe’s eyes. Yet I couldn’t take any pleasure in her getting betrayed after betraying us.
She’d left us all paralyzed and stuck. Even if she died in the next few moments, it didn’t change that she’d fucked us all over with her stupidity. There was no rescue coming.
Even if Saul was inside with my team and Amber was setting off charges somewhere, I doubted any of them would find us way down here. The best we could hope for now was that we’d all be disintegrated with the facility once our friends managed to destroy it.
The alternative, being a literal slave to Jack Griffyn’s insane clone, was far worse.
As Sharpe screamed against Dean’s hand, a limb that looked very similar to a Mute’s third arm rose from the pile of flesh that made up Jack Griffyn. Dean marched a completely helpless Sharpe toward it. The arm swayed as its four-fingered hand opened like a flower.
Dean gave Sharpe a shove. She stumbled forward, windmilling her arms. She got out a single scream before the alien limb wrapped all four fingers around her head.
Sharpe thrashed and battered the limb with both hands. Even without any visibility into what the alien limb was doing her, her audible gagging sounds suggested something inside that arm was now far down her throat. Was it injecting her with corrupted panacea cells?
After a few more disgusting, paralyzed moments, Sharpe’s body stop struggling. She hung limp in the grip of the third arm still holding her head. Then her legs and feet flailed madly on the floor before she found her balance once again and just ... stood there, totally calm, despite the fact that an alien hand still encompassed half of her goddamn head.
Beside me, one of my fists clenched in anger. It took me a moment to realize Jack hadn’t made me do that. He was utterly focused on whatever he was doing to Doctor Sharpe.
The painful tingles in my fingers eased. Then the tingles in my arm ended as well. I was able to control my arm again, but I didn’t glance behind me to check on Caitlyn. I assumed she remained slumped and bloodied on the floor, and dared not reveal that she was alive to anyone.
The mutant arm and hand released Doctor Sharpe’s body.
Sharpe wobbled a moment before straightening with the sound of popping vertebrate. When she spoke, I barely heard her.
“Nine,” Sharpe rasped, in a voice that sounded raw and bloodied.
“Your new administrator is now Jack Griffyn, authorization code Beta Two Four One—”
“Shoot,” Caitlyn whispered.
I unloaded an Inferno round on Jack, Sharpe, Dean, and everything else in my line of fire. A kick to the gut I hadn’t felt for some time sent me backward as a tiny glowing red crystal burst from Dismay’s muzzle. It expanded into a livid inferno that crackled through the lab.
As the flames leapt toward the pile of flesh and vaults that made up Jack Griffyn, Dean sprinted to the side. Caitlyn had cut him free somehow. The Inferno round impacted.
Sharpe—or whatever she was now—screamed shrilly as flames seared her flesh stark black. Behind her, flesh sizzled and popped as the Inferno round rolled over the flesh and tubes to superheat the vat just behind it. That vat sagged and steamed, but it didn’t explode, and more importantly, way too much flesh remained. I’d simply wounded it.
Yet the change in my body was immediate. I had control of myself again, though I felt like I’d just been kicked down ten flights of stairs.
One shaking hand pulled an Inferno round from the pouch at my chest as my other popped open Dismay’s cylinder. I reloaded.
The plastic window on a vat in the fleshy mass sloughed off with a loud pop. Green goop poured out all over the charred flesh pile that made up the bottom portion of Jack and the still smoking corpse
of Doctor Sharpe. The Jack flesh shape atop the vats shuddered and sagged.
“What,” it managed. “You.” Its once pristine flesh was badly burned.
My first Inferno round had thrown Jack off his mind control game.
I raised Dismay to finish the old bastard off, but my arm was shaking so badly I couldn’t be sure I’d get all of him. I didn’t know if I had a third shot in me. Not in this condition.
“I can cure you,” Jack rasped.
I steadied my arm and squeezed Dismay’s trigger. “Get fucked.”
As I fired my next Inferno round, the thing that had once been Doctor Sharpe exploded into action. Her body grew so rapidly she might as well have turned into a Class Three Mute. She threw herself toward me and Jack as my next Inferno round rocketed toward her.
Her mutated body was utterly consumed by the shot. It sent me back to my knees. Yet it didn’t take a genius to see Sharpe had absorbed enough of the flames that the rest wouldn’t eliminate all the Griffyn that remained. Yet the whole mass sizzled and burned, and the nauseatingly sweet smell of barbecued flesh told me I’d mostly accomplished my goal.
“Dammit,” Caitlyn whispered. “I don’t sense him. He’s fled into another clone.”
Had he seriously? I hated that old bastard. Still, I could move again, so there was no reason I couldn’t check on Caitlyn.
Yet Reese arrived before I did, gently scooping her big sister up in her arms. “Can you see me?” Reese demanded. “Who am I?”
“I’m fine, Reese,” Caitlyn said. “Just woozy. I’ve never been hit by a wrench before.”
Motion out of the corner of my eye caused me to involuntarily cover it with Dismay, and I only then remembered I hadn’t reloaded. I was out of practice. Yet I recognized the person walking toward me, carrying another person who was badly burned.
It was Hahna Sato—and Dean Riven. My stubborn, stupid clone.
He was still alive somehow.
Hahna stopped beside me and Caitlyn. “He’s not dead, simply regenerating. I see nothing moving in that mess, yet you believe Jack escaped?”
Caitlyn sat up holding the back of her bleeding head. “Something of him did. Nothing physical, but we already know he’s slipped into a new body at least once.”
I popped the third of four Inferno rounds into Dismay. “So why are we still here?”
“He doesn’t have my mother’s strength to rely upon any longer,”
Caitlyn said softly. “He has only his own body, yet he can still take control of those in close proximity until we find and eliminate the rest of his clones. We have to... ow.” Caitlyn winced.
I knelt beside her. “Don’t fall asleep. Not a good idea right now.”
She likely had a concussion.
And looking at Caitlyn like this, bloodied and in her little sister’s arms, I only now realized how close she’d come to dying. Since I hadn’t been in combat with her in months, I’d forgotten just how fragile Caitlyn was. How easy it would be to lose her forever.
As angry as I was with her about her manipulation a year ago in the Gray Church, I didn’t want her dead. Just how strongly I didn’t want Caitlyn dead reminded me why that was so.
I didn’t agree with every decision Caitlyn had ever made. She’d also made plenty of mistakes, just like me. But incredibly invasive mind control aside, I did still think she was a good person, someone who constantly placed others above themselves. I didn’t want to hate or distrust a person like that.
I didn’t want to hate a woman who’d become one of my best friends.
I decided to set aside the fact that Caitlyn had mentally manipulated me—for now—and focus on keeping her and everyone else alive. We still had to track down Jack’s remaining clones and incinerate them. Yet there was something else we needed to do first.
Caitlyn stared up at the faceless woman attached to Jack’s mutated corpse. Fresh tears glistening on her cheeks. I remembered who that body was. I remembered why it was here. Jack had been
using that body to control the drones and Hallowed, because it had that ability in life.
I rose and glanced at Hahna, then at the body in her arms. “My sword okay?”
Hahna drew Savagery from the sheath now physically fused to my somehow still alive clone. “It seems to be. Most of the blast hit Dean.”
“It’s not like I wanted to shoot him.” I took Savagery from her and walked toward the pile of charred flesh. “If he wakes up, tell him ...
well, just that I had no other choice.”
I still wasn’t thrilled about the idea of having a clone of me walking around. Dean was annoying as hell. Still, on balance, he’d proven to be a decent guy, and I had been kind of a dick when I was his age. I hoped he didn’t think I’d tried to incinerate him on purpose.
I couldn’t climb the slick charred pile of flesh, tubes, and vats ahead of me, so I braced myself and leapt instead. I landed on top of it, nearly slipped off, and caught myself by gripping one of the Jack’s limp, wet hands. I shuddered in revulsion as I straightened, then swung Savagery. My Hallowed blade glowed blue as I lopped the old bastard’s head off.
I knew the charred body that remained wasn’t Jack anymore.
That didn’t mean slicing his head off wasn’t viscerally satisfying.
Incinerating a giant pile of Mute flesh wasn’t nearly as satisfying as beheading him like I’d always dreamed.
I walked to the motionless, faceless pile of torso that had once been the corpse of Caitlyn’s mother. Before I cut, I looked down at Caitlyn. “What should I do?”
“Cut her down from there,” Caitlyn managed. “Bring her here.”
I cut through the space between the corpse’s torso and Jack in a single strike. Before all that remained of Eve Alexander could tip forward and slide unceremoniously down the pile of flesh and tubes, I knelt and wrapped an arm around its stomach from behind. I then slid down, having no real choice in the matter, and managed to avoid landing on my face.
I couldn’t imagine how disgusting I smelled right now. My own nostrils had pretty much passed out and died at this point. As I
walked over to Caitlyn and Reese, I remembered that the severed torso of the woman I carried in my arms had once been Reese’s mother too.
I tried to be respectful.
“Set her down by me,” Caitlyn whispered. “Please.”
I placed the severed torso of Eve Alexander by her daughters. I then rose, alarmed by the sound of a dull hammering from further back in the lab. It was coming from the sealed doors. Someone out there badly wanted inside, probably the entirety of Jack’s cloned Hallowed Corps.
Had his Hallowed clones gotten some last command from him?
Were they forming up outside the doors right now? Even with Dismay, I doubted we could cut through a whole army of cloned Hallowed. They had the same weapons we did, and they only had to get lucky once.
“It’s time to say goodbye,” Caitlyn whispered.
“I did that already.” Reese sniffled. “Your turn.”
Caitlyn reached out with one hand, the same hand now covered in the blood leaking from the wound in the back of her head. She placed that hand on the severed torso.
“Goodbye, Mom,” Caitlyn whispered.
Beneath her, the torso began to visibly liquefy. Flesh popped and oozed as it melted, and I looked away as the last of Eve Alexander literally fell apart before our eyes. Caitlyn must have given the living panacea cells floating around inside Eve’s corpse the order to self-destruct. That was probably the only way to ensure no one ever tried anything as sick as this again.
This wasn’t cremation, but I imagined it was just as efficient. It wasn’t something I’d ever want to do to someone I cared about, but it was infinitely better than letting them sit around as a faceless torso used to control a horde of zombified civilians.
I glanced at Hahna. “If there’s an army of clones out there, what do you make of our chances of getting out of here?”
“Sixty-forty,” Hahna said.
“Sixty percent chance we make it out of here alive?”
“If that will help you feel more optimistic, then yes.”
[ 32 ]
NO, I’M BEING UITE RATIONAL
I glanced at Caitlyn. “Any chance you can do the same trick you did to get us in here? Can you hide all of us while we slip out?”
Caitlyn closed her eyes, sucked in her breath, and winced. When her eyes opened again, they looked pained. “I don’t think so. The pain is ... it’s difficult to focus.”
“Don’t even try it,” Reese warned. “You just rest. We’ll find another way out.” She gave me a very firm look. “Won’t we, Grant?”
As I thought back on Doctor Sharpe’s betrayal, I suspected she hadn’t simply been trying to knock Caitlyn out when she clubbed her in the back of the head with that wrench. She’d been trying to kill her, so she’d probably swung that wrench as hard as she fucking could. I pushed down my worry for Caitlyn and focused on my worry for all of us.
