Chasing The Cure: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 5)

by Daniel Willcocks

  Helena tried to lace her hands behind her head, but her restraints held fast. She smacked her gums together to clear the aftertaste of the vile concoction she had been drinking for the best part of a month. Her cocktail was doing its work, but she knew she wouldn’t have long left before they’d have to follow through, and the boy would discover what it meant to commit to his word.

  “Sweet dreams are made of these,” Helena crooned to the ceiling, thinking over the last few weeks of research.

  She had found some microscopes in a nearby city. Cracked, but useable. She’d managed to get some samples of the Mad blood onto the petri dishes and spent some time looking at the components. Her goal was to try to establish what exactly was going on at a molecular level. Something she hadn’t been able to do in years.

  All because the boy had fetched it for her.

  The boy with his strange demeanor and his brooding face. The boy with the gift who had sneaked to the nearby city and raided the only university building, knowing as well as she did how important it was to find the cure. Knowing that it was incredibly possible that they might be the only two remaining on Earth who wanted this over as badly as this.

  Well, soon to be one.

  It wasn’t a morbid thought for Helena. Did she want to find the cure? Sure. Particularly now that she was suffering from the very infection she had spent nearly a century trying to fix. But did she think that she had enough time left to complete her task?

  Honestly?

  No.

  Even if, by some miracle, they could find the answer, would they be able to develop the remedy and cure her before the Madness took hold? She doubted it. She could feel it inside of her, threatening to overtake her every day. It had been her idea to create the restraining table for occasions when the boy would go off on his ventures. She feared that he would come back and she would be feral. Would have destroyed all she had worked so hard to build and then taken him with her.

  She chuckled. Not that he wouldn’t do a grand job protecting himself with those gifts.

  The Mad cried again. A call she was still trying to discover whether it was a beacon for others, or merely just its own instinctive reaction to capture. To being experimented on and studied under various liquids and samples extracted.

  The nanocytes. It’s all in the nanocytes.

  She had seen them. The tiny machines, alien technology which had spread to every being on this planet. The Kurtherian intervention that had created the Weres, the vampires, and the Mad who roamed the lands. Tiny little things in the blood, untouchable by anyone without the right technology.

  What had happened to them? The things which were so powerful and yet so misunderstood? She had her theories—many theories, in fact. Some were more likely than the others and, while she lay down with nothing left to do but think until he arrived home, she thought about them a lot.

  The first, and least likely of her theories was that the alien technology had expired. Every machine had its shelf life, and the technology had simply failed collectively around the world. Perhaps when the technology had become corrupted, the Madness had come. That was one theory, that the expiry date of the Kurtherian tech just bombed out, like an old hand-held gaming console reaching the end of its life.

  Which might mean there was a way to recharge the batteries. To find a universal kickstart to get the tech back to its usual capacity and “fix” those who had been affected by the Madness. Fix the sixty to seventy percent of the population who had been taken down by the faulty wiring.

  Helena shook her head. If that was the case, then why wouldn’t everyone have turned Mad at the same time? Surely if the technology was already inside everyone and, as far as she was aware, it was. No Kurtherians had come to Earth to recharge anyone in particular, so everyone should have fallen simultaneously. Surely what affects one would affect everyone?

  No.

  The theory Helena was riding on was the notion of a shockwave. Some kind of pulse that must have occurred and jammed the wiring, affected the hardware, and scrambled the circuits. There would be some unaffected by this, depending on their location at the time of the blast, or the circumstances of their race.

  For example, she already knew that Weres and vampires were the most susceptible. As the original owners of the different variations of the Kurtherian technology, the alien hardware was abundant in their blood. That would mean they were the most likely to be affected by the pulse, and therefore, the most at risk of turning feral.

  Vampires would go nuts—check.

  Weres would struggle to control their nanocytes and get stuck in either human or animal form—check.

  Helena wasn’t entirely sure of the science behind the human behavior, yet, but she figured that each human would have varying levels of the Kurtherian technology in their blood, meaning some would be immune to the change in the machines.

  …check?

  Helena kicked her foot in frustration. There had been a time when she had a lab. When she’d had assistants, and equipment, and theorists who she could work with. Now here she was, strapped to a table in the middle of a forest, awaiting a twenty-something old kid to come back and unstrap her—unless she had turned feral in his absence.

  And the time will be coming soon, she thought. All too soon. I’ll finally know what it’s like to be on the other side of the Madness and to understand truly the feeling of it within me.

  I’ve already had a few instances, sure. Guided by the assistance of the boy and his gifts, I was able to maintain control. The concoction is working beyond my wildest dreams, but I cannot extract or cure the darkness inside me. Like a pregnant mother, I can feel it growing somewhere deep inside myself. It’s asleep now, but soon it’ll wake.

  And it’ll all be over.

  Helena smiled. It had been a hell of a ride. She’d seen some miracles in her time, seen some things she thought she’d never see. Weres and vampires still existed, even though she knew their time would soon end. She had even made a few extra vampires, in a desperate bid to keep the population alive and continue her legacy.

  She wondered after them now. Rosie, Teegan, Shaun, and Felicia. Were they fulfilling their purpose as protectors? As vampire kin out to save the world? Or had they succumbed to the Madness, and been lost?

  Her time was short.

  More than seventy years hadn’t been enough to find a cure. Maybe these next few days of her life would yield something. Anything.

  She took a deep breath and felt the Madness like heartburn down her central nervous system. Her eyes throbbed a dull red.

  At least when I’m gone, the boy will not be alone, she thought. At least when I’m gone, the boy will have Her. He thinks I do not know, but I hear him sometimes, late at night when he’s in one of his trances and believes he is alone.

  Someone speaks to him.

  And every time, the boy answers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Unknown

  For the first time in as long as she could remember, Caitlin was alone.

  It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. If anything, there was something to be said about taking a moment in solitude. She had lost Mary-Anne, what seemed like, miles ago, and she had lost Kain shortly after. But that didn’t mean she was ready to stop searching.

  A break in the night sky had come, and the morning was now crowning. Birds saluted the dawn with their song, and streaks of orange and purple stained the sky. The ground was damp, but that didn’t slow her down. She merely continued walking through the forest, following the trail the Unknowns had left in their wake.

  Footprints pressed deep into the soft ground were her guide. Jaxon’s were undiscernible, and Kain’s were easier to follow than Mary-Anne’s, given that his tracks were at least double the size of hers in his Were form.

  His Were form. Is that what it had come to? Kain having to risk a permanent change of his form in order to wrangle a vampire turning Mad? What was it about this stupid disease that took the hearts of the best of them and turned them
to mush? Would it take everyone Caitlin loved before the end?

  Not if I have anything to do with it.

  She had been surprised at the lack of Mad while traversing the forest but made the assumption that any nearby Mad would have been drawn close to the site of the ship, summoned by primal instincts to kill and gather in a horde.

  And they had destroyed them. Since then, Caitlin had only had to fight the odd loner—a Mad with a missing leg or crawling on the floor with one arm—but they had been easy enough to dispose of. Otherwise, she was all but alone. A ranger, alone, and on the track of some great beasts, trying to find her friends and keep the group together.

  But you’re not alone, are you?

  She couldn’t explain it, but Caitlin could feel eyes on her. Somewhere in the nearby brush, someone was watching her. Always out of reach. Every time she turned to try and catch a glimpse, they were gone.

  She could hear them occasionally, light footsteps crackling the fallen leaves, but whoever they were, they certainly had managed to perfect the art of camouflage.

  Or maybe you’re going Mad?

  She had considered it a few times. She’d even examined her body for wounds but could find none. Was she going crazy? Was this whole experience messing with her head and finally breaking her down from the inside?

  Time will tell.

  Caitlin broke through the tree line and came to a lake. Smaller than the one she had crossed from The Broken City. More of a pond, of sorts. Maybe something someone may once have sat by and tossed bread to ducks in years gone by.

  The water was almost still. A slight breeze caused minuscule waves to patter across its surface. Caitlin moved to the water’s edge and stared down into her reflection.

  “You’ve come a long way, Caitlin Harrison,” she said to a mirror-image she didn’t quite recognize. Her stare had hardened, yet she had somehow kept her good looks. Her hair was damp and heavy, but her eyes were still bright. “You’re not the girl you once were, you know? Remember all those days sitting inside with mother, dreaming of being out in the big wide world with the big boys? Roaming the forests of Silver Creek and helping protect your little town from danger?

  “Well, it turns out the world is wider than we ever imagined. Those creatures from your storybooks? Yeah. They’re real, too. Vampires, Werewolves—hell, for all we know, soon we’ll meet goblins and ghouls. Wizards and mummies. Witches and Frankensteins.”

  “Technically, Doctor Frankenstein was the scientist. His creation was actually called Frankenstein’s monster.”

  Caitlin whirled around, her hand finding Moxie’s hilt without conscious thought. She rose to her feet in one swift movement and held the sword before her, the blade millimeters from the man’s throat.

  He was young. Maybe not much older than twenty summers. His hair was dark and short, and his eyes were keen. He wore a brown tunic under a traveling cape with the hood down, and despite the imminent threat of a sword at his neck, he gave her a crooked smile and tilted his head slightly.

  He raised two fingers and gently nudged the sword away, his eyes locked onto Caitlin’s.

  “So, the creep who’s been following me can read?”

  “Shouldn’t be surprising, really,” the man replied. “Many survivors of the Madness can read. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “You’ve seen other survivors?” Caitlin asked. “A boy your age? Shouldn’t your mommy be with you, making sure you’re not talking to strange women?”

  The man chuckled, the sound of it reminding Caitlin of her father. A warm, homely sound.

  “You raise two questions there. Number one: are you calling yourself a strange woman?”

  Caitlin arched an eyebrow. “No. Not at all.”

  “Secondly, you don’t appear to be much older than me. You must be approaching, what? Thirty summers?”

  Caitlin huffed. He was close, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Why have you been following me? Do you just like following women in the woods? I’ll warn you, I’ve grown up around men like you, and those men don’t have their goody bags between their legs anymore. You so much as touch me, and I’ll—”

  The man started laughing, the sound pleasant against the dull silence of the forest.

  Caitlin lowered her sword, sensing no imminent threat from this man. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s just my damn luck,” the man chuckled. “Alone for all these years and somehow every woman I stumble into seems to have a stick up her ass and a confidence that doesn’t quit. You know my father once told me that the old world used to run as a patriarchy? Yeah. Presidents, business leaders, the storekeepers, they were all men once. A time when your genitalia predicted your outcome in life.

  “Now I’m surrounded by ball-busting women everywhere I turn.”

  “That’s a problem?” Caitlin demanded.

  The man shook his head. “Of course, not. I just find it entertaining, is all.”

  Caitlin tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Somewhere behind her, the birds were still calling, a musical number. “Where I grew up, it was all men. Men who ran the guards, men who ruled the town, men who felt they could take what they want and discard it all as though it were nothing more than trash. Those worlds still exist out there.”

  A sudden sadness came over the man. “I don’t doubt that they do. You escaped, though, didn’t you? You broke free, and now you’re here. Alone in the Mad-infested woods with nothing more than a sword to protect you.” His eyes scanned her body. “Yet you remain unscathed. Even after your ship crashed into our woods.”

  Caitlin’s alertness returned, her fingers flexed near Moxie’s hilt. “You saw that?”

  “Come on, you don’t think everybody in a ten-mile radius didn’t see that? You crashed into these woods in a giant floating ship. It’s hardly the mark of secrecy, is it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “The Mad were driven into a frenzy.”

  “You saw the horde?”

  “Of course.”

  Caitlin stood taller. “We dispatched them easy enough.”

  “Yet, you abandoned the ship. Why is that?”

  Caitlin looked back to the line of trees, then over across the pond. There were still tracks in the mud from Mary-Anne and Kain, but she had been unable to hear their clattering through the woods for some time. “My friends. They passed this way some time ago.”

  “Ah, the wolf and the vampire?” The man said it knowingly, but without a flicker of fear.

  “You saw them?”

  “I saw them.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  The man pointed across the pond toward where a small ribbon of smoke was curling into the dawn sky. “Toward the house. It’s really rather coincidental, really. All of this forest and there’s only one house for miles around—well, only one functioning house, that is. The rest have long since been abandoned and destroyed since the World’s Worst Day Ever.” He sighed. “Some messes are remarkably difficult to repair.”

  The man’s eyes grew distant as he laced his hands behind his back and stared at the sky, lost in thought.

  Caitlin couldn’t understand it, how someone so young seemed to understand so much about a world she was only just beginning to discover.

  She waited for him to say something else, then, when it became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen, she nudged him. “Can you show me to this house? Is this where you live?”

  The man broke from his reverie and looked at Caitlin as if seeing her for the first time. There was a sadness in his eyes that she couldn’t discern the reason for.

  “Of course, this way.” They skirted the lake. At the far side of the water, several Mad could be seen stumbling in the distance, unaware of the two living humans walking quietly across from them. “Though I must say in advance, it’s only a temporary lodging, and somewhere where we didn’t expect to accommodate guests.”

  Caitlin’s ears pricked up. “You said ‘we?�
�”

  The man nodded. “That’s right. I couldn’t live alone in the woods, you know. Much too isolating. Being alone isn’t conducive to emotional and intellectual development. Can turn a person mad—the regular kind. Not the, you know.” He lifted his hands and bared his teeth in a parody of the Mad. “Though we have been living here for some time.”

  Caitlin gave the man a curious look, glad to see that he was also following Kain’s footprints—even if it didn’t appear as if he was consciously doing so.

  “Who are you?” Caitlin asked.

  The man laughed. “All in good time. Why don’t we save our introductions until we’ve got a roof over our heads and locks on the door?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Potato Creek State Park, Illinois

  They could hear the sounds of a man in pain before the house had even come into sight.

  It sounded awful. A man caught in the throes of a beating. Howls turned to shouts, turned to expletives, and immediately Caitlin knew who it was.

  She broke ahead of the young man who had guided her and sprinted straight toward the sounds of distress. She imagined Mad surrounding the Were, somehow overpowering him until he was torn limb from limb, but when she finally saw him, it was a different picture altogether.

  Kain hung from the thick branches of a yew tree, the ropes knotted all around him, cinching tighter with every flail of his limbs. He was mostly human now, though there were still some small signs of Were on him.

  His fingers were taking their sweet time shrinking back to human size, and his nails were still claws. His back was hunched, although the hair was visibly receding. Several clumps covered his otherwise naked body, and his eyes had almost lost their amber glow and returned to normal.

  Jaxon leapt at the trap, his jaws snapping as he tried to make himself useful and chew the Were free.

  “Are you just going to stand there staring at me all day, or are you going to let me down?” Kain growled at Caitlin. “If you like what you see, just let me know, and we can arrange a playdate at a later time.”