Mysterious Cairo

by Edited By Ed Stark

  "Well, here I am, Mangler," he taunted. In the blink of an eye he had drawn his Luger and fired it into the throat of the nearest thug. The man dropped dead on the spot. The other assassins leered menacingly, and Yishara forced them back with the crack of her whip.

  Mangler screamed at the assassins. "What are you waiting for you over-priced, bumbling fools! Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!" He turned and ran for a control panel near the rear of the room.

  The Shroud knew that the doctor was probably releasing some horrible creature, but had no way of stopping him short of charging through the gaggle of assassins. So he did. His sudden charge caught them off guard, and Yishara helped by engaging their flanks, but there were just too many. As he hit the bulk of the hired killers, they overpowered him and threw him to the ground.

  "Take his cape!" one of them yelled and he could feel it being tugged from his neck. He was in too close for them to use their scimitars, but his pistol worked just fine and he fired it into several of the thugs at point-blank range. This scattered them a bit, and he was able to leap free of the struggle.

  When he emerged, four more of the killers lie dead or wounded on the floor, but two were already loping towards the exit with the death shroud. He started after them, throwing a casual glance towards Mangler to check his progress, and froze in his tracks.

  The mad scientist had thrown up two large red levers, leaving eight more in the downward position, and two of the coffin-like cylinders raised their metal doors. Inside the first was a beautiful woman, instantly recognizable as Janya Paterski, one of the Pharaoh's personal Overlords. In the next was none other than the insidious Wu Han! Gunner was terribly confused — he had heard Wu Han had abandoned Mobius for parts unknown, and Paterski seldom came to Cairo anymore.

  And then the storm cloud hovering over his brain parted, and he realized just what Dr. Mangler was up to. The blood hadn't been collected for some dark religious ritual after all; it was for a strange weird science experiment! He wasn't trying to control the heroes (and villains, it seemed) of the New Nile — he was re-creating them! "Cloning" was the term he remembered. If Mangler could create duplicates of these people and brainwash them in the safety of his lab, he would control a significant portion of the Nile Empire! Eventually, his dopplegangers might even help him assume the throne of Egypt!

  Wu Han and Janya Paterski climbed from their tubes, fully clothed in their usual styles. They seemed disoriented by their recent awakening. Mangler was shouting at them to kill the Shroud and then Gunner realized that Mangler must be desperate to risk his newest creations; clones of a man and a woman who had no real skill in combat (at least that he knew of).

  His train of thought was broken by the screams of the two thugs carrying the death shroud. Yishara had broken off her melee and tackled them before they had cleared the door. All three were tangled up in the evil mesh, but it seemed as if Raven had managed to keep her eyes shut while the assassins hadn't. Tell-tale screams issued from the velvet and leather bundle. Wu Han and Paterski seemed too confused to worry about, and Gunner quickly spun to deal with the remaining thirteen assassins still hovering about the center of the room. A wave of his Luger, now with only two shots remaining, intimidated the horde of killers and they dove for the first available cover.

  Yishara had not avoided the malevolent power of the cloak despite her silence. It had bitten into her soul like a dog will a meaty scrap, relentless and without even taking time to savor its rich taste. She had not screamed, but there were other ways to react to fear. Raven wept.

  * * *

  She was sitting at home, having dinner with her father again. Hasim al-Haffah smiled at her and told her of his day. And then he asked her how her day at school had been. Yishara embarrassedly forked a piece of pork into her mouth, and shrugged him off.

  "What is wrong, Yish. Were you fighting again?"

  "No, father."

  "You're lying to me, Yishara. You're always lying to me. Now tell me what happened."

  In her imagination, Yishara saw her father's face as kind and benevolent. Every crease and wrinkle told her that, if she would only be good, stop fighting with the boys, then she and he could be so happy together. Her face, on the other hand, was fixed in a perpetual sneer, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't smooth out the exaggerated lines and sneering lips. She couldn't even control her own words.

  "Yes! I fought with the boys again! But they started it. Rashid told me that the proper place for a girl was behind a veil, cooking dinner for her husband. So I... "

  "You what, Yishara?" he asked with all the patience and benevolence of the human race.

  "Ibroke his nose."

  There was a knock at the door. Yishara began to slide down into her seat for she knew who it would be. It was the principal. And he was going to speak with Al-Haffah. Again.

  Her father exited from view and she could hear him quietly 'yessing' and 'noing' in the other room. She gobbled down the greasy pork, and he returned.

  "Why are you such a bad girl, Yishara?" There was a gun in his hand. Yishara hated guns.

  "What are you going to do, daddy?" Her voice had become six years younger.

  "Why are you such a bad girl, Yishara?" He put the gun to his head. "I've tried so hard to make you a proper young lady, but you've always betrayed me."

  "Daddy! No!" she screamed.

  "It's all your fault, Yish. It's all your fault."

  Raven awoke shaking. She knew that it had been all her fault, for that was the power of the death shroud. It could turn one's deepest suspicions and fears into vivid nightmares, exploiting every facet of the human mind to turn it against itself. A part of her still knew it wasn't true, but the dream had been so vivid, so real .

  The two men beside her had turned pale, and she no longer had any interest in fighting them.

  Suddenly, there was a loud crack and Gunner Hayes felt as if someone had poked him in the left shoulder with a hard, pointed finger. He looked down and saw a vertical lake of crimson staining his black velvet shirt. The Shroud turned back towards Mangler, and saw the villain trying to work the slide of a Luger identical to the one carried by himself.

  It gave him an idea. Mangler had taken blood samples of himself and Yishara, and the Luger he carried (but obviously did not know how to use) was most likely intended for Gunner's clone. But if Mangler had a clone of the Shroud and Yishara, why had he not released them? Wu Han and Paterski had been clothed, so why was his clone not armed? There could be only two explanations. Either Mangler hadn't created their doubles yet, or he hadn't had time to brainwash them.

  He could afford to take the chance. He leapt upon the stage, ignoring the bullet wound in his shoulder and the gash in his leg, just as several of the assassins managed to circle around and converge upon his new position. Mangler stood beside him, still fighting with the jammed pistol. Janya and Wu Han's clones scampered away, losing themselves in the tangle of tables and shelves.

  "No! What are you doing?" he ranted.

  The Shroud placed his hands on the next two levers, and shot an evil smile at the mad scientist. The assassins paused at the edge of the platform, unsure of his actions. Then he threw the switches. Two figures fell from the tube. One was wearing the clothing of Raven, minus the cloak which she had only recently added. The other was a carbon copy of the Shroud. Only the cloak was missing, no doubt to be added after the hired killers of the Crescent Blade had taken it from his stiffening corpse.

  The clones stumbled hesitantly out of the tubes, finding themselves adjacent to the circling assassins. Both the killers and the newborn heroes leapt into action. The Shroud grinned with satisfaction as his clone sent several of the thugs flying into laboratory tables, impaling themselves on the heavy glass which shattered under their weight. Raven's clone did have the metal talons, and Gunner thought that they looked a little sharper, and a little longer, than the genuine pair, and she began to battle her way through the thickest part of the reforming assassins.
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br />   "No, no, no, no, no!" Mangler moaned.

  Gunner's maniacal laugh returned. His gamble had paid off. The clones were wading through the discouraged assassins like a knife through butter. But then, disaster struck.

  The Raven's clone was deep into the remaining six assassins, Gunner's clone just behind her. One of the killers swung his sword at the Shroud-clone's exposed neck and he ducked. The blade sailed over his head and bit deep into Yishara-clone's neck. A second blow from her front, which her sudden pain prevented her from parrying, sliced off the top part of her skull. Gunner knew she was dead, and fired his remaining two shots into the melee in frustration. He and his clone screamed simultaneously with rage.

  He turned back to face Mangler, to choke the very life from his frail old neck, but he was gone. Gunner saw him running towards the door where the real Yishara stood, watching the developments of the battle with a strange detachment and holding the tattered cloak in her limp and apparently lifeless hands. Mangler shot her a worried glance, saw that she was no threat, and began to run past her.

  And that was when she struck. Raven wrapped the cloak over Mangler's bald head, catching him by the throat. She pulled hard on the ends and slammed his frail frame into the unforgiving tiled floor. She could hear the dull crunch of his glasses as they broke under the strain of her attack. Mangler landed hard, his breath knocked from his already wheezing lungs. When he opened his eyes, he saw his deepest fear.

  * * *

  There were lab animals everywhere. From countless cages, boxes, and bars came timid squeaks and fearful yelps. He was injecting various animals with a hormone designed to give them human intelligence. The applications would be limitless!!!

  Rat spies could crawl into the official research centers and steal much needed supplies and information! Dogs with incredible cunning could guard the estates of the rich! All at a price set by him, of course. There was no end to the uses of such a serum.

  But this particular version didn't seem to be working quite right. After even a small injection the animal would begin to convulse and look at him with an intelligence that told him he was on the right track. A few minutes later the animal's eyes would begin to bulge and blood would leak from their sockets. Precisely six minutes and forty-seven seconds later, the animal's convulsions had turned so violent that the its heart would burst in a quick and bloody demonstration of the formula's failure.

  He sat at his desk, and thought the process through. Adding one final ingredient, he took a screaming monkey from its cage and smiled. He spoke sarcastically to the animal as he injected it with the new serum. "This won't hurt a bit, little fella."

  Nothing happened. There were no convulsions and no tremors. He placed the creature back in its cage. In only a few minutes, the monkey looked at him with an intelligence which Mangler thought could only have been human. He cackled to himself and began to inject the other specimens. His needle sunk deep into the flesh of rabbits, monkeys, dogs, and even ravens ...

  Ravens? What is so special about Ravens? No, not Ravens — ravens.

  The monkey's hand slid out of its cage and opened the lock, snapping him back into his morbid fantasy. "What are you doing?" he asked the monkey.

  To his surprise, the monkey answered, "Why, we're coming to get you, Ignatius."

  Ignatius "Mangler" Edward's mouth dropped open, and a long strand of drool fell from his lip. The other animals were emerging from their cages. There was a sharp pain in his ankle and he looked down, horrified to see several white rabbits gnawing viciously at his blood soaked pants. He kicked at them, sending one spinning across the room to slam with a wet splat against the wall.

  The ravens (Ravens?) landed on his shoulder and began to peck at his eyes, shattering his spectacles and sending the shards deep into the ocular flesh. Mangler screamed and fell to the floor in pain. There was a weight on his chest, and the monkey screamed "Hold still, Doctor, this will hurt... a lot!" There was the feel of a needle, and the hiss of an injection.

  "No!" he screamed. "I created you! I created you!"

  "Yes, you pitiful fool," the monkey whispered, its breath hot on his bleeding, blinded face, "and in your own image."

  Mangler began to convulse, and his already bleeding eyes hemorrhaged, sending ropes of crimson fluid shooting high into the hair.

  From afar he watched his screaming, kicking, dying form beat at the floor from amid the broken glass, dead animals, and blood.

  He jumped up with a start, and Yishara stood aside and watched as he raced wildly away. Mangler's face was still covered by the death shroud, and he was careening blindly towards the Shroud.

  "I'm blind! I'm blind!" he yelled as he stumbled onto the platform.

  The last assassin had gained the upper hand on the Shroud's clone, and was about to finish him. Wu Han and Paterski emerged from the debris of the lab and watched as their creator ran madly towards the master control panel. The two assassins caught with Yishara had regained their senses and were advancing on her from behind.

  Gunner Hayes saw blood pooled about his feet—his blood. The bullet wound and the gash in his leg had kept him from doing little more than hanging on the switches that had released his clone and watching the mad ravings of the doctor buried deep within his cloak of fear. He tried to stand upright, bracing himself for the attack of the mad scientist headed straight for him.

  But Mangler wasn't heading for him. He had no idea where he was; he was running blind in a maze of blood and darkness, and there didn't seem to be any cheese at the other end. He struck the control panel with his head, sending the glass of countless dials and gauges cascading to the floor and leaving crimson stains on the remaining shards. His frenzied hands flailed out, striking several buttons, levers and dials. Gunner noticed with horror that one of them read, "SELF-DESTRUCT."

  "Everybody out! The lab's gonna. "

  But it was too late. Explosives wired to every corner of the lab sent shards of glass, metal and bone flying in every direction.

  Yishara felt the bite of a steel fragment and a fiery blast of heat throw her to the ground, and mercifully fell unconscious.

  Gunner was standing nearer to one of the charges, and would have been vaporized had it not been for the cover offered by Doctor Mangler. As it was, steaming splinters of the evil genius' skeleton slammed into Gunner, throwing him to the floor and into an enveloping blackness not unlike that of the death shroud.

  Yishara awoke. She wasn't sure how long she had lain unconscious in the rubble of the lab, but no shocktroop-ers had arrived yet, so it must have been less than ten or fifteen minutes. The shard embedded in her leg had been so hot it cauterized the wound. It was painful, but not serious. Her side had finally ripped open again, but the scab tissue kept it from bleeding too badly.

  She found the clones of Wu Han and Janya Paterski lying near the door, as if they had been trying to escape. Paterski was plainly dead, her spine severed by flying debris. But Han still breathed. Raven thought for a moment and decided that the fewer Wu Hans in the world, the better. Quickly and painlessly she ended the clone's short life.

  Mangler was nowhere to be seen, and neither were the Shroud or his clone. A large section of roof had caved in over the spot and it took her several minutes of digging before she came across a startling sight. Some of Mangler's bloody remains were caught up in a singed, but otherwise undamaged, cloak of shimmering blackness. Fortunately for her, the hungry side was folded up inside itself as if it were nibbling on the pulpy meat it covered. She picked it up with her talons as one would carry a leaking bag of garbage.

  Gunner's hand was sticking out from behind a laboratory table. She kicked it over, and saw that he was terribly hurt. She knelt down beside him, the cloak touching his bare face.

  This seemed to rouse him from his unconsciousness, and he opened his eyes.

  "Mangler?" he moaned.

  "Dead." she answered.

  "My cloak," he croaked.

  Raven shook out the bloody remains and handed t
he cloak to Gunner. He rapped it around his body and turned away. He looked like he was preparing to die.

  "Gunner —?"

  Then Gunner rubbed his aching head, strapped on his cloak, and sat up. He looked disheveled, but otherwise unhurt. The cloak is covering his wounds, she thought. He looked at the lab with hollow eyes.

  Yishara got up and looked around. Underneath a pile of plaster and glass, she found her nearly beheaded clone. Several assassins lie dead beside it.

  Without a word, Hayes stood and began to poke around the cluttered floor. Yishara thought privately that he should lie still, but said nothing. Not far from Mangler's steaming corpse was a gnarled hand protruding from a pile of heavy stone rubble. He kicked it away and looked with apathy at his dead clone buried beneath.

  "That was convenient," he muttered to Yishara.

  "Hmm. Yes. A shame though. We could have used the help." She looked away, at the gaping hole which revealed the dark Cairo night and the drizzling North African rain. "And the company."

  Gunner stared at the figure before him, saddened in an inexplicable way. "Let's go," he said to Yishara softly, "the shocktroopers will be here soon."

  She nodded her approval, and the two staggered tiredly down the fire escape of the building.

  On the way down, Raven noticed with growing horror the wounds in Gunner's shoulder and leg. Her mouth and eyes opened wide and she looked with shock at the man named Gunner Hayes. She wasn't shocked because his wounds were bleeding profusely and coating the cloak with thick slime. And it wasn't that Hayes was slowly dying from the loss of his life fluid.

  No, the truly terrifying thing was that the wounds were closing!

  Yishara shuddered and looked away from the tortured face of Gunner Hayes, the Shroud.