“Too late,” said the Armourer. “I’ve started, so I’ll finish. And stop whining, you. Be a big brave mercenary. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Yes, it was! I’m dying, remember?”
“Not anymore,” said the Armourer. “Those tubes I’ve just introduced to various parts of your anatomy are now feeding you a whole series of things that are good for you, and working hard to neutralise the last traces of the Acceleration Drug in your system. Have you stable before you know it.”
“For how long?” said the mercenary.
“For as long as I choose to keep you alive. So, feeling chatty, are you? Splendid. Tell me things I need to know.”
“My name is Dom Langford,” said the ancient man in the chair, with what dignity he had left. “The Drug isn’t in my head anymore. I can think clearly. I’m me again.”
“The chair can only do so much,” said the Armourer. “You’re still dying. The human body was never meant to handle such superhuman stresses. So earn yourself some good karma in the time you’ve got left, by telling us what we need to know.”
“You’ve got a really lousy bedside manner,” said Dom.
“There isn’t time for politeness and false hopes,” said the Armourer. “Talk.”
“I don’t remember much of what I did, when the Drug had me,”
Dom said slowly. “Just . . . horrible, nightmare images. I know I did . . . unforgivable things, and would have done worse if I’d got inside the Hall. But I swear, that wasn’t me. That was the Drug.”
“You killed a lot of good people out there,” I said. A part of me still wanted to be harsh with him, but he looked so small now, so pathetic.
Dom tried to smile. “I’m a mercenary, soldier for hire. Killing’s what I do. But before this, I was always a professional. The Drug changed all that. We were lied to, all of us. No one said the Drug would turn us into monsters. I don’t owe those bastards loyalty anymore. Not after what they did. Ask me anything.”
“Where did Doctor Delirium get so many people to dose with the Acceleration Drug?” said the Armourer. He didn’t sound so harsh, anymore. I think he had been ready to coerce the dying man, if he had to, but Dom Langford was so clearly bitter and betrayed, and so clearly at death’s door, that the Armourer just didn’t have the heart. He fussed over the chair’s controls, trying to make the mercenary as comfortable as possible, for what time he had left. I watched the information on the display screens steady some more, as the tubes delivered painkillers and sedatives. The mercenary seemed to settle a little more easily in the chair.
“Doctor Delirium’s been raising a new mercenary army for years,” said Dom. “Had us set up in several different bases dotted around the world, just waiting, so we’d be ready for the big score when it came. Some of us had been waiting so long we’d begun to wonder if the call would ever come. Or if he just liked having us around, as a status symbol. You’re no one in the mad scientist game, if you haven’t got your own private army. We’d taken his money, so we just lounged around, treated it like a vacation . . . But when the call finally came, it wasn’t like anything we’d expected. We’d be fighting Droods, they said, so we’d need a little extra. Something to make us as good as Droods, maybe even better. That was the first time we heard about the Acceleration Drug. The Doctor made it sound wonderful. We were ˚ all going to be superhuman, and live lifetimes. Should have known it was too good to be true.”
“Who was giving the orders?” I said. “Was it just Doctor Delirium?”
“No. He had his partner with him, by then. A rogue Drood, called Tiger Tim. So full of himself you wouldn’t believe it. But it was the Doctor who betrayed us. None of us ever trusted Tiger Tim; we’d all heard the stories. But the Doctor had always done right by us, till then—good pay, and the best of everything. That all changed . . . He changed, after he acquired that bloody Door.”
“The Apocalypse Door,” I said.
“Yeah. He brought it back from Los Angeles, and within a few hours he was a different man. He abandoned his old base in the rain forest without warning, and suddenly our base was the new centre of operations. And don’t ask me where we were; I haven’t a clue. We were brought in on planes with no windows, and put up in underground barracks. Could have been anywhere; we were never allowed outside. Most of us were glad when the Doctor arrived; extra security meant something to do, at last. But right from the beginning, it felt wrong . . . The Doctor locked himself away in his private office, and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Just sat there, with the Apocalypse Door, talking to it, and listening to what he thought it said to him.”
I looked at the Armourer. “Could the Doctor really be talking to it?”
“We don’t know enough about the Door,” said the Armourer, frowning. “Given what’s supposed to be on the other side of it . . . Who knows?”
“William was supposed to be digging up some more information on the Door,” I said.
“Haven’t heard anything from him . . . Arthur! Front and centre!”
A long gangling type in a messy lab coat nowhere near big enough for him lurched forward out of the crowd, and swayed to a halt in front of the Armourer. He had a broad open face, wide owlish eyes, and a general air of bruised innocence that had no place in the Armoury.
“What have I done now?” he said, in a tone of voice that suggested he’d said that many times before.
“For once, nothing obvious. Arthur, contact the Librarian, in the Old Library, and ask him what he’s turned up about the Apocalypse Door.”
“I already tried, sir, just before the incursion. There was no reply. But that’s not unusual, for the Librarian. Do you want me to try again?”
“Rafe’s probably convinced William to take some rest at last,” I said. “I’ll pop down and have a word with him later.”
The Armourer dismissed Arthur, and we turned back to Dom Langford. He started talking immediately, as though he needed to talk to someone.
“I saw the Apocalypse Door, once. I’d been sent to the Doctor’s private office, with an urgent message. He wasn’t answering his phones again. When I got to the office the door was open, but he wasn’t there. I thought I’d better wait. They wanted an answer to the message. So I went in, and waited. The Apocalypse Door was there, standing upright on its own, right next to the desk. I walked around it; it looked like just an ordinary, everyday wooden door. But . . . the office was hot. Unbearably, unnaturally hot. I could hardly breathe. And it felt like the Door knew I was there. That it was looking at me, watching me with bad intent. I didn’t want to look at it, but I didn’t dare turn my back on it. I started shaking. I was in a cold sweat all over, despite the heat. I edged closer to the Door, and listened. Put my ear right next to the wood. I couldn’t hear anything, but suddenly I was terrified. There was something there in the office with me, some huge awful presence . . .
“I panicked. Turned and ran out of the office, dropping the message on the floor. I’d never panicked on a battlefield, never turned and run in any firefight; but I ran then. I never went back. No one ever said anything. But the Doctor was in there with that Door all the time! No wonder he changed. Being around that Door would change anyone.”
“What about the rogue Drood, Tiger Tim?” I said. “Did you ever see him with the Door?”
“Tiger Tim gave everyone their orders, on the Doctor’s behalf,” said Dom. “Because the Doctor couldn’t be bothered with everyday matters anymore. Tiger Tim more or less took over operations, and we all went along, because he seemed to know what he was doing.”
“And he put together the army that attacked us today?” said the Armourer.
“Took every man the Doctor had, and more,” said Dom. “Word had got out on the circuit, in all the recruiting markets: good pay, and I mean really good pay, and a chance to try out a new drug that would make you superhuman. New men kept turning up all the time. And a lot of them didn’t answer to Doctor Delirium or Tiger Tim. They represented someone else. Someone with really big pocket
s, to foot the bill for so many mercenaries.
“They didn’t tell us we’d be attacking Drood Hall until the very last moment. And by then we’d taken the Drug, and we didn’t care anymore. We’d fight anyone, kill anyone, do anything . . .
“The things I did, the things we all did . . . That wasn’t us! We were soldiers, professionals, not butchers! Not monsters . . . The Drug turned us into monsters. I don’t remember most of what I did; just enough to make me glad I can’t remember the rest. I’m not like that. I’m not. They poisoned our souls . . .”
His head slammed back against the chair suddenly, and his whole body convulsed, straining against the straps. The display screens were going wild. Dom Langford aged horribly, years gone by in seconds, collapsing in on himself before our eyes, looking desperately at us all the time for help we couldn’t give. The last of his strength had run out. The Armourer rushed back and forth, injecting drugs into the tubes, working the controls of the diagnostic chair, doing everything he could think of to try and save the man who’d been his enemy only minutes before. But there was nothing he could do. Dom Langford died with the face of a man hundreds of years old, his body little more than a hollow shell. He looked at me pleadingly, right up to the moment when the light went out of his eyes. He thought I could save him, because I was a Drood, and Droods can do anything.
I held his hand, at the end, but I don’t know if he could feel it. “We should have taken him to the hospital wards,” the Armourer said finally. “He might have lasted longer there . . .”
“They didn’t have the room, and we didn’t have the time,” I said. “We needed his information. And we didn’t kill him; they did, when they introduced him to the Acceleration Drug. So, are you going to make a scarecrow out of him, like the others?”
“Of course,” said the Armourer. “Waste not, want not.”
But I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. The Armourer gestured for some of his people to take away the chair, with the withered body hanging loosely in the straps.
“I need to ask you something,” I said. “How did the Accelerated Men get their hands on strange matter guns? You told me you only ever made the one, for Uncle James, and you had that destroyed.”
“There was only ever one,” insisted the Armourer. “And I gave it to one of my lab assistants to destroy. Very capable young man. Raphael. Went on to be Librarian, you know. Before William came back, and took over.”
I had a sudden terrible suspicion.
I called up the Merlin Glass, made it form a doorway into the Old Library, and hurled myself through it. I looked around, and there was Rafe, packing ancient and important-looking books into a travelling bag. As though he was preparing to leave, in a hurry. He froze where he was when I appeared through the Glass, and his eyes shot to one side. I followed his gaze, and there was William, ly ing unconscious on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Someone had cracked his head open, from behind. I looked back at Rafe. He hadn’t moved. He watched me silently as I went over to kneel beside William. The old man was still breathing, though his pulse was faint and thready. I straightened up and looked at Rafe, who flinched back despite himself.
“What have you done, Rafe?” I said.
He didn’t move a muscle, studying me carefully. “He shouldn’t have tried to stop me leaving.”
“He was your colleague. He was your friend. He trusted you!”
“He trusted Rafe. And I’m not Rafe. He never mattered to me. He’s not one of us.”
“One of you,” I said, sick to my stomach. “An Immortal.”
“Exactly. If you’re wise, you won’t try to stop me leaving. My work here is done.”
“Over my dead body; traitor.”
“My plan exactly,” said Rafe.
There was a gun in his hand. A large bulky pistol of a kind that sent a chill through me.
“Yes,” said Rafe. “The gun that fires strange matter bullets. This is the actual original, that the Armourer made for the Grey Fox. The one he trusted me to destroy. Of course, I couldn’t do that. Far too useful. And I have a sentimental attachment, to anything that can kill Droods. I got this to my people, and they used it as a template, to make more. Though it took our scientists years to work out its secrets. The Armourer does good work. He really does have a first-class mind, for someone who isn’t an Immortal. Step aside, Eddie. You don’t have to die here. Just disappear back through your useful little toy, and you can come back again for poor William when I’m gone. And you’ll never see me again.”
“I’ve faced a far better man than you, with that gun,” I said. “And I’m still here.”
“Oh, Eddie,” said Rafe. “You never met a man like me. I’m an Immortal.”
“And I’m a Drood. Anything, for the family. Remember?”
I was ready to jump him. I knew the odds weren’t good, knew that even if I could get my armour up in time, the strange matter bullets would punch right through it, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let Rafe get away with it. I just couldn’t. I was bracing myself for the jump when Ethel suddenly materialised in the Old Library. A fierce red glare filled the air—a heavy overwhelming presence, like a never-ending clap of thunder. Rafe cowered away from it, and then cried out and threw his gun away, steam rising from his hand where the gun had burned it. The red glare concentrated around the gun, and it faded away to nothing.
How dare you! said Ethel, her voice so large it roared inside my head. It must have been worse for Rafe; he clapped both hands to his ears, as though he could keep it out. You stole my substance from me, my very existence in this world! You took it by force!
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Rafe.
Sorry isn’t enough! Give back your torc. You are not worthy of it. There was a pause, and then Ethel spoke again, in her usual tone of voice. Eddie, this is rather odd. I can’t take his torc, because he doesn’t have one. That thing around his neck is a fake.
“He’s not a real Drood,” I said. “He just looks like one.”
Rafe turned to run, and immediately I was upon him. I clubbed him to the ground with a single blow, and he hit the floor hard. I kicked him in the ribs, and all the breath went out of him. I kicked him again, just because it felt so good. Rafe cried out, and curled around his pain. I reached down, grabbed his shirt front, and pulled him up so I could stick my face right into his.
“Where’s Rafe? What happened to the real Rafe?”
“You’ll never know,” said Rafe. His voice was sharp and defiant, but he couldn’t meet my gaze.
“Search the Hall, Ethel,” I said. “See if you can find any more of these bastards with the false torcs. If you do, tell the Sarjeant; let him deal with them. Go.”
The harsh red glare shut off in a second, and the usual calm golden glow of the Old Library returned. I let go of Rafe, and he slumped back onto the floor.
“You’re too late,” he said. “They’re all gone.”
“Well,” I said. “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
Rafe suddenly stopped being all beaten and broken, and lunged forward across the Library floor. He knelt over William’s unconscious form, pulled the head back and pressed a knife against the Librarian’s throat. I’d started after him, but stopped abruptly as I saw a thin trail of blood trickle down William’s throat, as the knife’s edge just parted the skin.
“Get out of here, Eddie,” said Rafe, smiling again. “And tell everyone else to stay out, until I’m safely gone. Or you’ll have no Librarians left at all.”
“I can’t let you go, Rafe,” I said steadily. “Or whoever you really are. You’re a clear and present danger to the whole family.”
“I’ll kill him!”
“He’d understand. Anything, for the family.”
We looked at each other, both of us ready to do what we had to; and then Rafe looked round sharply. He saw something, and shrank back horrified, the knife falling away from William’s throat. Rafe’s face was horribly pale, his eyes focused on something s
o terrible, something so bad he had no thought for anything else. He scrambled backwards away from William, making low whimpering noises.
I looked where Rafe was looking, and couldn’t see a damned thing. Just the books on the shelves, and the steady golden glow of Library light. Rafe’s back slammed up against a stack, and he cried out miserably when he realised he couldn’t retreat any farther. His wide eyes were locked on something, and he was making a high whining noise now. I moved forward, to put myself between Rafe and William, but Rafe no longer cared about either of us. He threw his knife away, and made pitiful, childish go-away motions with his hands. I raised my Sight and looked hard, but I still couldn’t See anything.
“Can’t you see?” said Rafe, in a harsh, strained voice. “Can’t you see
that? It’s coming for me! Do something! Don’t let it get me!” I could feel all the hackles rising on the back of my neck, in response to the stark terror in Rafe’s voice. He was definitely seeing something, and given what the sight of it was doing to him, I was glad I couldn’t see what he was seeing. I moved cautiously forward, grabbed up the knife from the floor, and Rafe scrabbled quickly behind me, putting me between him and whatever he saw coming for him. William had been convinced there was Something living down here in the Old Library with him; Something that watched him, or watched over him. Rafe clutched at me like a frightened, desperate child.
“Don’t let it get me,” he said, in a small broken voice. “Please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll get you out of here. But you give me any trouble, and I’ll just walk away and leave you here.”
“Yes. Anything. Please; I can’t stand it . . .”
I stood up straight, and addressed the space before us. “I am Edwin Drood. I speak for the family. Who’s there?” There was no response. The light didn’t flicker, and the shadows were just shadows. I still couldn’t See anything. Rafe stopped whimpering suddenly, the sound cut off in his throat. I looked back, and saw him turn his head slowly, as though watching Something move across the Library and then disappear behind the stacks. He collapsed, shuddering with relief.
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