Immortal Twilight (15 page)

Chapter 16

“The symbol is a kind of
fnord,
” Brigid explained to the assembled throng in the Cerberus cafeteria.

Kane, Grant and she had returned to Cerberus fourteen hours earlier, over which time they had placed Harold in the facility’s holding pens and caught up on sleep before tackling the problem fresh.

Right now, the three allies, along with Lakesh, Donald Bry and Reba DeFore, had commandeered a table in the large cafeteria area of the Cerberus redoubt where they were discussing their findings over a late brunch of pastries, toast and fruit preserves. The cafeteria was a large room incorporating several long tables with wipe-down surfaces and fixed seats, along with a few smaller tables that might be considered a little more cozy. The redoubt had started life as a military base, and rooms like this were designed with the army in mind. As such they were more functional than homey.

The serving area dominated one wall of the room, behind which the huge kitchens were located, a line of hot drinks dispensers arranged in one corner. The walls had been painted in bright colors but that paintwork was chipped and scarred just now, evidence of the assault that the redoubt had suffered at the hands of Ullikummis and his troops. During that attack, the whole cafeteria had been smothered with a web of living rock that had adhered to the walls like creeping ivy. The rock had been removed, but the repaint had yet to be completed.

“A fnord is a piece of neural programming that can be hidden in the processing centers of the human brain,” Brigid continued, “to effectively hide something that the programmer doesn’t want to be seen.”

“And that’s the engraving we saw on the underside of the trapdoor?” Grant asked.

Brigid nodded. “I think so.”

“But we could see it,” Kane pointed out.

“We weren’t the subject,” Brigid said. “Presumably, it was meant for Harold and his friends.”

“Who got out,” Kane reminded her, and Grant nodded in agreement.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Brigid said. “A fnord is a theoretical word or sign that cannot be seen by the viewer but causes a subliminal reaction, usually revulsion. We saw that in our subject—Harold—and we may speculate that the other subjects from that underground facility would have a similar reaction, in essence unable to see that there was a trapdoor right above their noses.

“However, once it was opened by Ms. Blue’s associates—” Brigid shrugged.

“They broke the spell,” Lakesh finished with poetic license.

Kane took a swig from a glass of fruit juice before speaking. “The door was open when we got there,” he said, “but Harold was still inside. And he wouldn’t come out until we covered this...fnord thing.”

“My observation suggests that Harold’s one very disturbed man,” Brigid said. Beside her, Reba DeFore agreed, flicking through the sheaf of papers that she had already compiled in her medical assessment of the prisoner. “Once the door was shown to them, the others could see past their programming and exit their lair. But Harold—?”

“His mind’s not in a good place,” DeFore seconded. “From my initial assessment, I’d say he’s closer to a wild canine than a man at all.”

Kane looked pensive. “You think he was always like that?”

“If he was, then someone was taking good care of him until very recently,” Brigid surmised. “The clothes, the bathroom, the way in which everything had been kept—it speaks of a level of organization and cleanliness that Harold isn’t capable of.”

“It may be that someone did this to him,” DeFore said, “either by accident or on purpose. Tapped into his mind and left him...spaced-out.”

“Why do you say that?” Lakesh wanted to know.

The medic looked across to Grant guiltily before turning to her papers and finding the relevant page. “I’ve been examining Shizuka while she’s in my care,” she explained. “While she took some physical damage in the scuffle in the Panamint factory, there’s no specific evidence of trauma enough to put her into a coma. I think either something touched her mind in such a way as to make it shut down, or she received a specific order to do so.”

“Which amounts to the same thing,” Kane said, shaking his head regretfully.

Grant looked across the table, aware that all eyes were on him. “It’s okay, people,” he announced, “I’m an adult. You can discuss Shizuka’s condition around me.”

DeFore nodded gratefully. “It could be that the subject in our holding pen—Harold—has suffered the same basic psychic attack.”

Despite his outer calm, Grant felt his stomach sink. Harold was an imbecile, little more than a savage, a rabid animal. If the same should happen to Shizuka, if she should wake up in that state—well, Grant didn’t know what he would do, but he would have to do something.

Officiating the meeting, Lakesh turned to his second-in-command, the copper-curled, tousle-headed Donald Bry. “Donald?” he prompted. “Would you please share with everyone what you’ve found out?”

Bry nodded, referring to his own notes before he began. “Once you guys had confirmed the site as the correct location,” he said, flicking his gaze from Kane to Grant to Brigid, “we set up a database search on the area in question, deeds of ownership, planning applications, et cetera.

“We had to do some digging—” Bry laughed nervously at his unintended pun “—but it eventually became clear that the land was owned, through a series of dummy companies, by the British Crown.”

Kane looked surprised. “How is that possible?”

“The land was purchased in 1895 while Queen Victoria was on the throne,” Bry explained, “where it was immediately designated a site for scientific research. An American professor—one Edgar Howard—was involved with the setup, which he dubbed the ‘Gray Area’ as a kind of joke.”

Brigid nodded in understanding. “
Dorian Gray
rears his head once again,” she said.

“Professor Howard,” Bry continued, “was a pioneer in the field of early genetic research. Initially self-financed, he first turned to the U.S. government for funding in 1887. However, his experiments were ruled as too barbaric and that funding dried up, so he traveled to the British Isles, where he petitioned Her Majesty’s government, specifically the ministry of defense, for financing to continue his research. This was in the winter of 1893, at the peak of the British Empire, one of the most successful military machines the world has ever borne witness to.

“It seems that the M.O.D. saw potential in Howard’s research and commissioned him to explore the concept of a superior soldier, funding his research first in Britain before transferring to his native U.S.A.,” said Bry. “Harold and his colleagues appear to be the result of that research.”

“Supersoldiers,” Kane muttered, shaking his head.

“It tallies with what we found underground,” Brigid reminded him. “The WarCreche simulation was obviously designed to hone combat instincts as a practice room for warriors.”

“Howard breeds artificial humans,” Bry continued, consulting his notes, “who are designed to have superior intellect, stamina and endurance to the average man. In simple terms, his artificial people are immortals, the first of a line of unstoppable soldiers for the British Empire.

“But there’s a snag. Just before Howard is about to go into full production, he starts to see a disturbing rise in the aggression levels in his five subjects. They’re quick to anger and they often fly into what he describes in his notes as ‘insane rages.’ In March of 1897, one of his new men turns on him. He attacks Howard and has to be pulled off and shot by the on-site security. Of course, the Dorian, as Howard’s now dubbed his genetically engineered men, is too strong to be shot, and it takes a total of 418 rounds to put the man down.”

Kane cursed, while the others at the table looked horrified, all except Grant, who seemed placid.

“They tried to burn the corpse but it simply would not die,” Bry continued. “Net result—Professor Howard now has five unkillable, superintelligent would-be soldiers on his hands who could potentially turn on him at any moment.”

“And they couldn’t kill them,” Brigid checked.

“Exactly,” Bry confirmed. “They had been engineered to be immortal. But Howard’s smart—smart enough to have built a fail-safe into his creations, a command which they cannot counteract. According to Howard’s logs, he genetically placed a hidden piece of neuro-linguistic programming in their makeup, what he refers to as an ‘evolutionarily engineered blind spot’...”

“Catchy,” Kane muttered.

“The thing that Brigid calls a fnord,” Bry concluded. “Howard’s team lock the immortal soldiers in their research bunker, bury it, landscape the area and hide them away.”

“For three hundred years?” Kane asked. “How did they eat?
What
did they eat?”

“The Gray Area facility was designed to be self-sufficient, much as our redoubt is,” Bry explained. “It recycles air and water, while food is best not thought about. Keep in mind these soldiers, these Dorians as they’re called, are able to survive in extreme conditions with no physical decay. They can go for months without nutrition.”

“So they couldn’t even be starved away,” Grant growled.

“What’s more, they’re very intelligent,” Bry said. “I read through the reports Professor Howard left. He was very set on creating an intelligent army, one that would appreciate the arts and the sciences along with their designated role as upholders and enforcers of the law.” He sent a significant look to Kane and Grant.

“Supersmart magistrates,” Kane realized. “That’s what we’re looking at here. Isn’t it?”

Lakesh nodded once, sorrowfully. “From what Grant related of his encounter with them, I suspect that three hundred years locked up in that bunker has made them a little...eccentric.”

* * *

“Y
OUR
PLEASURE
GARDEN
is wilting, Cecily,” Algernon said as he peered up from his work with the bomb.

The four Dorian soldiers had discovered a little oasis of greenery at the edge of the Mojave Desert and acquired it for their own. The neat little garden ran in a long strip down one side of a tiny settlement of a dozen properties, which was secluded and unlikely to be noticed. The locals had tended small plants for cooking there and others simply for the joy of it. That was, until three days ago when the four strangers had arrived in their great flying vehicle and brought havoc to the village—havoc in the form of art.

It had been Cecily’s turn first and she had taken to the task with great aplomb, sending tendrils of thought into the curious locals before switching their minds off with a jerk, like an assassin breaking a man’s neck. The people had been left standing, seemingly untouched, and Cecily had carefully placed them around the pretty, well-kept oasis, stripped naked, taking hours over the angle of their arms, the inclination of their heads. One group—a youngish man with a woman of similar years, had been fixed into a lover’s embrace, with static children dotted around them as if playing a game of ring-a-rosy.

But now the “lovers” were starting to smell, their once bright flesh turning pallid, no longer able to capture the sun’s tanning smile.

Algernon was crouched on his haunches, working at his special project, building up its exterior shell into something fearsome and awe-inspiring as befit its content. He had discovered a graveyard nearby, its name plaques repeating the same last names over and over again, local families who never left the area. He had cracked open the coffins and assumed the rib cages of a half dozen of the more-rotted corpses, which he now placed like armor around the length of the gleaming metal shaft. But while Algernon could never be accused of being squeamish, even he drew the line at smelling three-day-old children moldering in the sun.

“It’s a part of the great experiment that is my art,” Cecily informed him as she flounced over from the bench where she had been sitting, feeding gulls. “A living thing, whose decay reflects the seasons.”

Algernon shot Cecily a look. “You’re bluffing.”

Cecily turned away as she began to blush, fanning at her rapidly reddening face with one hand. “Is it so obvious?” she asked.

Algernon nodded. “Hugh and Antonia suspected as much yesterday but they didn’t have the heart to tell you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have, either, but the pungency of dead people is rather interfering with my concentration.”

Cecily had the good grace to feign additional embarrassment. Thankfully, Hugh and Antonia had found somewhere else to be, doubtless frolicking behind the closed doors of one of the abandoned properties that made up the village.

Weaving through a group of statuelike people as if dancing, Cecily peered back over her shoulder and laughed. “My pleasure garden was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Algernon had his head down, back at work on the missile. “I appreciated it,” he said, “and I believe that the others did, also.”

With a flutter of her skirts, Cecily danced over to where Algernon was sitting. “And this is your contribution to our grand exhibit?” she asked.

Algernon glanced up at her as he tightened the screws that would hold one of the rib cages in place, like the segments of a caterpillar. “I cannot honestly take the credit,” he said. “It really came from Hugh’s suggestion. I’m no artist, but I like making things. Silly, as you know.”

Cecily shook her head. “Our own Hephaestus. But you’ve already done so much,” she said, peering over to the flying machine where it had been docked.

“Nonsense,” Algernon scoffed. “The devil finds work for idle hands. And you know how much I loathe that.”

“The devil?” Cecily chirped.

“Work, dear,” Algie corrected.

* * *

I
T
WAS
LATE
AFTERNOON
and Kane found himself wandering the redoubt’s subbasement level. Grant was holding a vigil over Shizuka’s comatose form while Brigid had buried herself in cataloging the tech they had recovered from Hope, which left Kane at loose ends. He had spent an hour in the facility gymnasium pumping weights, another forty-five minutes or so on the target range honing his skills with his favored handblaster, the Sin Eater. But Kane had been restless, unable to concentrate. He got like this when there was action looming, when he knew a threat was out there that needed to be dealt with. He was a man of action, schooled in it from a young age, poised like a coiled spring to face any danger. Waiting had never sat well with him; his body strove to be
doing,
a dog waiting for the stick to be thrown.