Only his eyes were evident of his human countenance, perfectly shaped, but lonely in their normality. The old man did not suffer himself the indignity of his own reflection’s mockery, where his cheekbones flanked a featureless face. Hardly any hole formed between his nearly absent lips and above his meager mouth, and only two tiny fissures served as nostrils. The last piece of his clever disguise would be the surgical mask, elegantly finishing off his ruse.
Shoving his suit into the farthest cabinet on the east wall and just pushing the narrow door shut, he corrected his posture.
“Abend,” he muttered.
He shook his head. No, his dialect was wrong. He cleared his throat and took a moment to collect his thoughts. “Abend.” No. Again. “Ah-bent,” he enunciated more clearly and listened to his hoarse voice. The accent was almost there; only one or two more tries.
“Abend,” he spoke clearly and loudly as the door to the locker room swung open. Too late. He held his breath to break the word.
“Abend, Herr Doctor,” the entering male nurse smiled as he proceeded to the adjacent room to hit the urinals. “Wie geht’s?”
“Gut, gut,” the old man replied hastily, relieved at the nurse’s oblivion. He cleared his throat and headed for the door. It was growing late in the hour and he still had unfinished business to attend to regarding the smoking hot new arrival.
Feeling almost ashamed of the animal method he used to track down the young man he had followed to the emergency room, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air. That familiar odor compelled him to trail it like a shark would relentlessly follow blood through miles of water. He paid little attention to the courteous greetings of staff, janitors and night doctors. Without a sound, his covered feet trod step after step as he obeyed the acute scent of burning flesh and disinfectant where it was strongest in his nostrils.
“Zimmer 4,” he mumbled as his nose led him left at a t-junction of hallways. He would have smiled – if he could. His thin body crept down the burn unit hallway to where the young man was being treated. From the inside of the room he could hear the voices of the doctor and nurses declare the patient’s chances of survival.
“He will live, although,” the male doctor sighed sympathetically, “I don’t think he will be able to retain his facial functions – features, yes, but his sense of smell and taste will be permanently severely impaired.”
“He still has a face under all that, doctor?” a nurse asked softly.
“Yes, but barely, as the skin damage will cause his features to…well…dissolve into the face a bit more. His nose will not be prominent and his lips,” he hesitated, feeling truly sorry for the attractive young man on the barely intact driver’s license in the charred wallet, “are gone. Poor child. Barely twenty-seven and this happens to him.”
The doctor shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Administer some IV analgesics and start urgent fluid replacement please, Sabine.”
“Yes, doctor.” She sighed and helped her colleague collect the dressing. “He will have to wear a mask for the rest of his life,” she said to no one in particular. She pulled the trolley closer, carrying the sterile bandages and saline solution. They did not see the alien presence of the intruder peering in from the hallway, finding his target through the slowly closing slit in the door. Only one word escaped him silently.
“Mask.”
2
Stealing Purdue
Feeling somewhat concerned, Sam strolled casually through the vast garden of the private institution just outside Dundee under a roaring Scottish sky. After all, was there any other kind? He felt good, though, inside himself. Empty. So much had befallen him and his friends of late that it felt amazing to think of nothing, for a change. Sam had returned from Kazakhstan a week before and had not laid eyes on either Nina or Purdue since he had returned to Edinburgh.
He had been informed that Nina had suffered serious injuries due to radiation exposure and had been admitted to a hospital in Germany. After he had sent new acquaintance Detlef Holtzer to find her, he had remained in Kazakhstan for a few days and had not been able to obtain any updates on Nina’s condition. Apparently Dave Purdue had also been discovered at the same site as Nina, only to be subdued by Detlef for his strangely aggressive behavior. But that also was speculative at best, thus far.
Purdue had contacted Sam himself the day before to notify him of his own confinement in the Sinclair Medical Research Facility. Funded and managed by the Brigade Apostate, the Sinclair Medical Research Facility was a clandestine ally of Purdue’s in a past battle against the Order of the Black Sun. The association happened to be ex-members of the Black Sun; apostates of the faith, so to speak, that Sam had also become a member of a few years earlier. His operations for them were few and far between, as their need for intelligence would surface only every now and then. Being a sharp and efficient investigative journalist, Sam Cleave was invaluable to the Brigade in this regard.
Other than the latter, he was free to operate in his own capacity and do his own freelance work whenever he felt like it. Weary of doing anything as intense as his last mission any time soon, Sam had elected to take the time to visit Purdue in whatever madhouse the eccentric explorer had checked into this time.
There was very little information on the Sinclair Facility, but Sam had a nose for smelling the meat under the lid. As he approached the place, he noticed that there were bars on the windows all across the third floor of the four stories the building boasted.
“I bet you are in one of those rooms, hey, Purdue?” Sam chuckled to himself as he proceeded toward the grand entrance to the creepy building with its overly white walls. A chill ran through Sam as he entered the lobby. “Geez, Hotel California posing as the Stanley much?”
“Good morning,” the petite, blond receptionist greeted Sam. Her smile was genuine. His rugged, dark looks instantly intrigued her, even if he were old enough to be her much older brother or almost too old uncle.
“Aye, that it is, young lady,” Sam agreed flamboyantly. “I am here to see David Purdue.”
She frowned, “Then who is the bouquet for, sir?”
Sam just winked and tilted his right hand downward to hide the flower arrangement under the counter. “Shh, don’t tell him. He hates carnations.”
“Um,” she stuttered in abject uncertainty, “he is in Ward 3, up two floors, Room 309.”
“Ta,” Sam grinned and whistled as he walked toward the staircase that was marked in white and green – ‘Ward 2, Ward 3, Ward 4,’ swinging his bouquet lazily as he ascended. In the mirror he was greatly amused by the trailing stare of the bewildered young woman who was still trying to figure out what the flowers were for.
“Aye, just as I thought,” Sam mumbled as he found the hallway to the right of the landing where ‘Ward 3’ was marked on a similarly uniform green and white sign. “The loony floor with the bars and Purdue is the mayor.”
In no way did the place resemble a hospital, really. It looked more like a conglomerate of medical offices and practices in a large mall, but Sam had to admit that he found the lack of expected lunacy just a tad unsettling. Nowhere did he see people in white hospital gowns, or wheelchairs transporting the half-dead and dangerous. Even the medical staff, which he could only tell apart by the white coats, looked remarkably serene and casual.
They would nod and greet him cordially as he passed them, not making a single inquiry into the flowers he had in his hand. Such acceptance just took the fun out of Sam’s intended humor and he dumped the bouquet into a nearby trash bin just before he reached the allocated room. The door was closed, of course, being on the barred floor, yet Sam was dumbstruck when he found that it was unlocked. Even more astonishing was the interior of the room.
Apart from one well-draped window and two posh luxury seats, there was little else but a carpet. His dark eyes scrutinized the strange room. It was missing a bed and the privacy of an en suite bathroom. Staring out the window, Purdue sat with his back to Sam.
“
So glad you came, old boy,” he said in the same cheerful, richer-than-God tone he usually used to address his guests at his mansion.
“Pleasure,” Sam replied, still trying to solve the conundrum of the furniture. Purdue turned to face him, looking healthy and relaxed.
“Sit down,” he invited the stumped journalist, who seemed to be investigating the room for bugs or hidden explosives, by the look on his face. Sam sat down. “So,” Purdue started, “where are my flowers?”
Sam gawked at Purdue. “I thought I was the one with the mind control thing?”
Purdue looked unperturbed by Sam’s declaration, something they both knew but neither supported. “No, I saw you saunter up the drive with it in your hand, no doubt bought just to embarrass me in some way or another.”
“God, you are getting to know me too well,” Sam sighed. “But how can you see anything past the maximum security bars here? I noticed that the inmates’ cells are left unlocked. What is the point of barring you in if they keep your doors open?”
Purdue, amused, smiled and shook his head. “Oh, it is not to keep us from escaping, Sam. It is to keep us from jumping.” It was the first time a bitter and snide tone had haunted Purdue’s voice. Sam picked up on his friend’s unease, coming to the fore in the ebb and flow of his self-control. It appeared that Purdue’s apparent tranquility was just a mask over this uncharacteristic discontent.
“Are you prone to such a thing?” asked Sam.
Purdue shrugged. “I don’t know, Master Cleave. One moment all is well and the next I am back in that bloody exaggerated fish tank, wishing I could drown faster than that ink fish swallowing my brain.”
At once Purdue’s expression had gone from a sunny silliness to an alarmingly pallid depression, brimming with guilt and worry. Sam dared to lay his hand on Purdue’s shoulder, having no idea how the billionaire was going to react. But Purdue did nothing as Sam’s hand comforted his turmoil.
“Is that what you are doing here? Trying to reverse the brainwashing that fuckwit Nazi subjected you to?” Sam asked him blatantly. “But that is good, Purdue. How are you progressing with the treatment? You seem your old self in most ways.”
“Do I?” Purdue sneered. “Sam, do you know what it is like to not know? It is worse than knowing, I can assure you. But I have found that knowing breeds a different demon than being oblivious to one’s actions.”
“How do you mean?” Sam frowned. “I take it some actual memories have returned; things you could not recall before?”
Purdue’s pale blue eyes stared through the clean lenses of his glasses, straight ahead into space as he considered Sam’s opinion before explaining. He looked almost maniacal in the darkening light of the cloudy weather that spilled through the window. His long, slender fingers fiddled with the carvings on the chair’s wooden armrest as he dazed away. Sam thought it well to change the subject for the moment.
“So what the hell is with there being no bed?” he exclaimed, looking back at the mostly empty room.
“I never sleep.”
That was all.
That was all Purdue had to say on the matter. His lack of elaboration unnerved Sam, because it was the antithesis of the man’s trademark behavior. Usually he would cast aside all propriety or inhibition and spew out a grand tale filled with what and why and who. Now he was content with just the fact, so Sam pried, not only to force Purdue to explain, but because he genuinely wanted to know. “You know that is biologically impossible, unless you want to die in a fit of psychosis.”
The look Purdue gave him made Sam’s skin crawl. It was halfway between insane and perfectly happy; the look on a feral animal being fed, if Sam had to guess. His gray-soiled blond hair was painfully neat as always, combed back in long strands away from his grey sideburns. Sam imagined Purdue with unkempt hair in the communal showers, those pale blues piercing the guards’ as they discovered him chewing at someone’s ear. What bothered him most was how unremarkable such a scenario suddenly seemed for the state his friend was in. Purdue’s words snapped Sam out of his hideous pondering.
“And what do you think is sitting right here in front of you, old cock?” Purdue sniggered, looking rather ashamed of his condition under the drooping grin he had tried to keep upbeat with. “This is what psychosis looks like, not that Hollywood overacting bollocks where people tear their hair out and write their names in shit on the walls. It is a silent thing, a silent creeping cancer that make you not care about the things you have to do to stay alive anymore. You are left alone with your thoughts and your deeds without a thought for eating…” He looked back at the bare patch of carpet where the bed was supposed to be, “…sleeping. At first my body caved under the robbery of rest. Sam, you should have seen me. Frantic and exhausted I would pass out on the floor.” He shifted closer to Sam. Alarmingly the journalist could smell medical spirits and old cigarettes on Purdue’s breath.
“Purdue…”
“No, no, you asked. Now you l-listen, al-alright?” Purdue insisted in a whisper. “I have not slept in over four days straight now and you know what? I feel great! I mean, look at me. Don’t I look the picture of health?”
“That is what concerns me, pal,” Sam winced, scratching his head. Purdue laughed. It was not a crazy cackle by any means, but a civilized, gentle chuckle. Purdue swallowed his amusement to whisper, “You know what I think?”
“That I’m not really here?” Sam guessed. “God knows this bland and boring place would make me question reality in a big way.”
“No. No. I think when I was brainwashed by the Black Sun they somehow removed my need for sleep. They must have reprogrammed my brain…un-unlocked…that primitive power they used on super soldiers back in World War II to make animals of men. They did not fall when shot, Sam. They kept walking, on and on and on…”
“Fuck this. I’m getting you out of here,” Sam decided.
“I have not reached my full term reversal, Sam. Let me stay and let them erase all the atrocious behaviorisms,” Purdue insisted, trying to sound reasonable and mentally sound, when all he wanted to do was to break out of the facility and run back to his home at Wrichtishousis.
“You say that,” Sam dismissed in a clever tone, “but you don’t mean it.”
He pulled Purdue out of his chair. The billionaire smiled at his rescuer, looking decidedly elated. “You definitely still have the mind control thing.”
3
The Shape with Bad Words
Nina woke up, feeling poorly yet perceiving her surroundings vividly. It was the first time she had awoken without being roused by the sound of a nurse’s voice or a doctor feeling the urge to administer a dosage at ungodly hours of the morning. It had always fascinated her how nurses always woke patients to give them ‘something to sleep’ at ridiculous hours, often between two and five in the morning. The logic of such practices eluded her completely, and she made no secret of her vexation for such idiocy, regardless of the explanations offered for it. Her body ached under the sadistic thrall of the radiation poisoning, but she tried to bear it for as long as she could.
To her relief, she’d learned from the on-duty physician that the sporadic burn wounds to her skin would heal in time, and that the exposure she had suffered under ground zero at Chernobyl was remarkably minor for such a hazardous area. Nausea would trouble her daily until the antibiotics had run their course, at least, but her hematopoietic presentation was still of great concern to him.
Nina understood his concern for the damage to her autoimmune system, but for her there were worse scars – both emotional and physical. She could not focus very well since she’d been liberated from the tunnels. It was unclear if it was caused by prolonged visual inactivity from the hours spent in practically pitch darkness, or if it was also the work of her exposure to high concentrations of old nuclear waves. Regardless, her emotional injury manifested in worse ways than the physical pain and skin blisters.
Nightmares plagued her about the way Purdue hunted her in the dark. Rel
iving small shards of recollection, her dreams would remind her of the groans he’d uttered after he laughed wickedly somewhere in the hellish blackness of the Ukrainian netherworld they’d been trapped in together. Through the other IV tube, sedatives kept her mind locked in the dreams, unable to fully awake to escape them. It was a subliminal torment she could not communicate to the scientifically-minded people who were only concerned with alleviating her physical ailments. They had no time to waste on her impending insanity.
Outside her window the pale threat of dawn winked, although the whole world was still sleeping around her. Faintly she could hear the low tones and whispers exchanged between medical staff, interspersed with the odd clink of teacups and coffee furnaces. It reminded Nina of very early mornings during school holidays when she was a wee girl in Oban. Her parents and mum’s dad would whisper just like that as they gathered up the camping gear for the trip to the Hebrides. They would try not to wake little Nina while they packed the cars and only at the very end would her dad steal into her room, gather her up in her blankets like a hotdog roll, and carry her into the freezing morning air to put her into the backseat.
It was a fond memory she now briefly revisited in much the same way. Two nurses entered her room to check her drip and change the linen on the empty bed opposite hers. Even though they were talking in hushed tones, Nina was able to employ her knowledge of German to eavesdrop, just like those mornings when her family thought she was sound asleep. Keeping still and breathing deeply through her nose, Nina managed to fool the shift sister into believing she was fast asleep.
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