Deathstalker (64 page)

Like Wormboy.

She used to scream a lot, but all that got her was a sore throat, so she stopped. She used to talk to herself, but she ran out of things to say. She still sang occasionally, as a small sign of defiance, but she was starting not to like the way her voice sounded. She smelt bad. The stench in her cell rose and fell just enough to keep her from getting used to it. She suspected that was deliberate. It was the sort of thing Wormboy would do.

They caught her easily. It seemed to her there was a reason for that, but she’d forgotten it. As a low-level esper, it had been her job to mentally test and examine babies developing in the womb to discover whether they had any trace of esp in them. If they did, they were either aborted or taken away at birth to begin a lifetime of training and conditioning. Depending on whether it was a useful kind of esp, of course. It wasn’t a foolproof method, but it caught quite a
few. The mothers all looked at her with the same controlled desperation, and she gave them all the same brief meaningless smile. And for a long time she just did her job, doing as she was told, as she’d been trained, but constant exposure to so many bright, innocent unsullied minds was finally too much for her. She began using her talents to conceal the babies’ esp. It wasn’t difficult. The esper abilities would still appear in later life, but at least that way they had a chance at a safe, normal, free life. Security found out. She hadn’t tried that hard to conceal it. Defiance, perhaps, or maybe some last trace of her own conditioning. Or something else that she’d forgotten. Either way, they caught her.

And now here she was, alone in the dark with a worm in her head, down in Wormboy Hell.

Light began seeping into her cell from somewhere. A sickly yellow light that made her think of disease and decay. In it, she could see the sores and scabs on her blotched skin. The smell was suddenly thick and choking, and her stomach heaved painfully though there was nothing in it. And there in the cell with her, crawling out of the shadows in splashes of bloody amniotic fluid, came the babies. Bald and pudgy, with barely formed arms and legs, they crawled over and around her, a living carpet of unforgiving flesh. Unfinished fetuses squirmed spasmodically on the concrete floor, trying to squeeze in between her and the floor, as though trying to crawl back into the wombs from which they’d been prematurely torn.

She wanted to love them all, poor blameless innocents, but she knew what was coming next. They came from Wormboy. Teeth appeared in all the babies’ mouths, sharp, jagged teeth thrusting up through torn bloody gums, and slowly, deliberately, they began to eat her alive. Jenny always swore that this time she wouldn’t scream, but she always did in the end. Teeth ripped at her flesh as she screamed and screamed, and blood ran down to pool thickly on the floor. As the pain and the horror mounted, pudgy fingers began to pry at her squeezed-shut eyelids to get at the eyes beneath, and even though she knew none of it was real, Jenny Psycho screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.

Wormboy did so like his little games. And mindgames were the best fun of all.

*     *     *

Fat and wide and greasy like a slug, genetically-engineered to never sleep or waver in his duty, Wormboy filled an entire auditorium from wall to wall; vast acres of pale, faintly luminescent flesh that rippled and folded in upon itself. His bulk covered all the floor, and his huge distorted head pressed against the ceiling. Long tubes entered his body here and there, providing nourishment and removing wastes. He could never have eaten enough to satisfy his enormous appetite. His body’s needs were taken care of by the authorities so that his mind could roam free across the prison. Wormboy’s parents had been normal enough humans, but he had been designed and tampered with from the embryo onward to shape the mind and talents of the perfect jailer. He ran everything, from the computers that ran Silo Nine’s security, to the guards who enforced his edicts, to the little pets that gave him access to every prisoner’s mind.

Everytime someone was damned to Wormboy Hell, for whatever reason, a small genetically designed and Imperially patented parasite was surgically implanted in their brain. Wormboy’s worms. They blocked off the esper’s powers so they couldn’t use them offensively, and secreted various useful chemicals that helped to keep the espers and clones quiet and malleable. And if by some chance an esper or a clone did find the strength of will to fight off the chemicals and try to escape, the worm would fry their brain.

If his prisoners misbehaved, or held back information, Wormboy used his little pets to gain entrance to their recalcitrant minds and sent them nightmares that had all the hallmarks of reality except that you couldn’t die in them, no matter how much you wanted to. Wormboy sent his horrid dreams to instruct or persuade or punish, or just for the fun of it. There was no one to tell him he couldn’t, and after all, no one cared. They were going to die anyway. The worms gave him all the control he needed and were much cheaper and easier to run than hundreds of individual esp-blockers. Their designer won a major award, before he disappeared into Silo Nine to insure he never told anyone else his secrets.

Wormboy liked to go among the monsters, the malformed, horrid results of esper and clone experimentation. Too dangerous ever to be released, too useful to kill, they roared and spat in their cells, clawing at the stone walls. Human no longer, but more than beasts; wild and awful and beyond
pain or fear, they defied even Wormboy’s best efforts, but he never gave up on them. He swept back and forth among the specially reinforced cells, walking up and down in their minds, and they screamed and howled with a rage that shook the walls. To them, he was just one more monster among many. Wormboy laughed and laughed and laughed.

His mind roamed free among the prisoners of Silo Nine, present in every mind controlled by a worm; a slimy mental caress, a passing presence like a chill wind from a charnel house. Bringer of nightmares, vast and awful, horrid and merciless god of his own private hell.

Finlay Campbell lay curled in a ball on the floor of the abandoned workstation, shaking and shuddering. Evangeline knelt beside him, her hands cool on his feverish face, murmuring calm and soothing words. He felt sick, tainted and invaded on every level of his mind and body. Wormboy’s thoughts had ripped through his mind like poisoned barbed wire, brushing aside all his defenses as he shared everything that happened to Jenny Psycho. Neither of them had known he was there, but that just made him feel even more helpless, unable to help Jenny or any of the other victims of Wormboy’s rape. Finlay snarled his killer’s death’s-head grin, his hands clenched into fists. He would find the monster in its lair and kill it, and maybe then he’d feel clean again.

He ran through the calming chants he’d learned in the Arena, and gradually the shaking stopped. Control slipped over him again like a cool, familiar cloak, and he sat up. Evangeline hovered over him worriedly, but he managed a small smile for her.

“It’s all right, Evie. I’m back. I swear to you, I never knew any of this. I never heard of Silo Nine, or Wormboy, or the terrible things they’re doing there. If Parliament and the Company of Lords knew about this …”

“Many of them already do,” said Evangeline. “Unofficially. They don’t care, or if they do, they manage not to think about it. Clones and espers aren’t people, remember? We’re property. The Empire made us, so it can do whatever it wants with us.”

“But if the people knew; if we told them, made them understand …”

“You wouldn’t be allowed to tell them. The production of
clones and espers is too important to too many people. Stop the trade, and millionaires would become paupers overnight. And what would happen to the Empire, dependent on espers for its smooth running at all levels? The Empire has a vested interest in preserving the status quo at all costs. Why do you think they spend so much time and effort in portraying the underground as ruthless terrorists? I’m sorry, Finlay. This is all new to you, but we’ve lived with it all our lives.”

“I won’t allow this to continue,” said Finlay. “It’s wrong. It’s obscene. It’s against everything we’re taught to believe and honor. The Families are supposed to protect their people against such abuses, guard them against horrors like this.”

“Even clones and espers?” said Evangeline.

“You were right,” said Finlay. “They are people, too.”

Evangeline smiled. “Welcome to our rebellion, Finlay. The attack on Silo Nine will be starting soon; will you be joining us?”

Finlay smiled back at her, and his eyes were cold as death. “Try and stop me.”

Which was how he came to be padding down a narrow technician’s access tunnel, gun in one hand, sword in the other, leading a small army of rebels through the interconnecting guts of the undercity. Evangeline was there at his side, a large gun looking out of place in her small, delicate hand. He had no doubt she would use it, though. She’d been there in Jenny Psycho’s mind, too. Just the thought was enough to make Finlay’s hands tighten around his sword and gun. He had vowed upon his name and honor to find and free Jenny, or die trying. It amused him a little to think how outraged he would have been at such a thing only a few hours earlier. A death vow over clones and espers? Unthinkable. His father would have disowned him. Or maybe not, if he’d seen what his son had seen. The Campbell had been a hard, pragmatic man, but even he would have drawn the line at Wormboy Hell. The Campbell, for all his faults and intrigues, had been an honorable man.

Finlay glanced about him, but there were only the bare polished walls of the tunnel and a ceiling so low he had to walk hunched over to avoid banging his head. There was darkness before his party, and darkness behind them, as the fifty or so men and women moved in a blaze of sourceless light, a bright golden glow generated by the minds of the
espers. Finlay hadn’t known espers could do that, but he had a feeling there were lots of things he didn’t know about espers. He’d begun to suspect that when early on one of the esper leaders had looked at him, and suddenly Finlay had a map in his head of the long, convoluted way that would lead him into Silo Nine. The map was still there, clear and distinct, though he’d never been this way before. It also told him he wasn’t far from the first of the prison’s outer defenses.

The fifty or so men and women with him (he kept getting a different answer every time he counted, because some of them weren’t always there) seemed to be making a lot of noise, but Evangeline had assured him they were all telepathically shielded from detection, while cyberats were running interference on the tech security systems. The rebels were invisible, for all intents and purposes, until they began their attack. By which time they should be deep in the diseased heart of Wormboy Hell, and it would be far too late to try and stop them then.

Hood strode along on Finlay’s other side, calm and confident. There was still no trace of any face in his cowl, which frankly spooked the hell out of Finlay, but Evangeline trusted Hood, so Finlay went along with it. Certainly the man showed no sign of fear or hesitation, despite the odds they’d be facing. Finlay approved of that. Among all the things a warrior needed, a cool head in a dangerous situation was right at the top.

The three Stevie Blues were striding arrogantly together some way ahead at the edge of the light, on point, in perfect step with each other, fearsome sights in their leather and chains, like young savage furies on their way to demand vengeance. Finlay would have been a little more impressed by them if he hadn’t been so sure they were complete and utter psychopaths. Though that was probably just the kind of troops you needed on your side when you were playing follow the leader into hell.

There were other groups of rebels, following other routes, heading for openings in the prison’s security system that Hood’s people had arranged, but there was no way of knowing how they were getting on. All forms of communication, tech or telepathy, were too open to interception. Hood’s plan relied on a series of lightning strikes from a dozen different directions to get in, kill Wormboy, rescue the prisoners and
get the hell out before major security reinforcements could arrive to spoil the party. Publicly, Finlay approved of the plan. It had the virtue of being uncomplicated, at least. Privately, however, he couldn’t help remembering his tutors’ oft-repeated dictum that plans rarely survived contact with the enemy. Once the fighting started, everything tended to go to hell in a hurry. Hood seemed confident there wouldn’t be much actual conflict, given the rebels’ advantage of surprise. Finlay wished he felt that confident, too.

The three Stevie Blues came to a sudden simultaneous halt, lifting their guns and peering suspiciously into the gloom ahead. Stevie One looked back as the rest of the party came to a halt. At least, Finlay thought it was Stevie One.

“There’s a door here that isn’t on the map. It’s big and solid and very definitely locked. Should I blast it?”

“Not on your life,” said Finlay quickly. “We’re right on the edge of the prison itself, if the rest of the map can be trusted. A disrupter blast would set off every alarm in the place, and the cyberats can only cover so much. Hood, it’s your map and your plan. What do we do?”

“There’s no problem,” said Hood. “My people are waiting on the other side. They’ll open the door.”

He strode forward and rapped twice on the steel door. It slid upward, and lights blazed into the access tunnel, revealing an army of armed guards in the room beyond. Hood laughed and blinked out of existence.

“It’s a trap!” yelled Finlay. “Everyone back! Hood’s betrayed us!”

And as quickly as that, everything went to hell. There was a clamor of raised voices in the narrow corridor, with shouts and screams and a confused mess of orders and naked panic. Those at the rear turned to run, but a heavy steel door slammed down from the ceiling, cutting off their escape.
So much for telepathic invisibility
, thought Finlay. He grabbed Evangeline by the arm and pulled her behind him, putting his body between her and the armed guards ahead. He just had time to wonder why they weren’t firing yet, and why they were wearing masks, when thick clouds of evil-smelling gas burst out into the corridor from concealed vents in the floor. The first breath was enough to set unprotected rebels coughing and choking. Finlay tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go.