What Happened to Lori

by J. A. Konrath

 

  Rather than retreat from fire, the terror birds lunged through it, snapping at Fabler with the sounds of beartraps springing. He thrust the weapon’s muzzle into one screeching beak, kicked at another, and almost toppled over because the weight on his back and screwed-up physics annihilated his balance. Fabler managed to avoid a faceplant by dropping to one knee, and one of the birds chomped down on his shoulder.

  Fabler felt tremendous, crushing pressure, and then sprayed the bird in the neck, squeezing the trigger until they both became enveloped by fire.

  The terror bird backed up and retreated with his buddies, and Fabler fell onto his ass, dropping the gun to slap at his hair, making sure it wasn’t ablaze.

  “Minotaur.”

 

  Fabler searched for movement, and found the beast charging toward them.

  A giant covered in red fur, with the body of a man, and the head and legs of a bull.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  “Is Lori even real?”

  The minotaur kicked the front of the Jeep with a cloven hoof, the front bumper flying off into the light.

  Jake screamed.

  Fabler closed his eyes.

 
 
 
 

  KADIR ○ 2:20+pm

 

  Kadir had so many voices in his head he couldn’t tell which belonged to him. To make it even more unbearable, one of the voices came from that Watcher asshole, ordering him to go into the void to fight.

  Part of Kadir wanted to follow that order. Many parts. At least three heads, seven arms, and nine legs all moved to obey.

  But the greater part of Kadir, the Kadir part of Kadir, controlled more limbs, and he fought himself to stay put.

 
 
 
 

  He heard moaning. Felt moaning.

 
 

  On the other side of his body, Doruk flailed around one arm and whimpered. His face still had that mixed-up Picasso vibe, an eye on the tip of his nose.

 
 

  “If my own eye offends me, pluck it out.”

  Kadir forced a hand that wasn’t his but was his to reach up and squeeze Doruk’s exposed eyeball.

  As he tugged, Kadir felt the pain. But pain is necessary for improvement. Kadir’s father taught him that, beating the boy with a belt for spilling honey on the floor.

  When the eye came off, the sight through it, and pain from it, ceased.

  Doruk continued to moan, and Kadir felt a few of his arms reach toward his face.

 
 

  Kadir began to punch and slap at Doruk’s head, each blow agony, each blow beautiful. He watched, through some old redhead’s eyes, as Doruk’s face became blackened and swollen.

 
 
 
 

  Kadir giggled through the pain.

  “Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself.”

  Eventually Doruk stopped fighting it, his head hanging limp.

  Kadir used nine hands to tear at Doruk’s neck, pinching at the skin, digging in fingernails.

  Another of his heads cried out.

  “You want to be next?”

  The head shut up, and the slow, exquisite, manual decapitation of Doruk continued.

  PRESLEY ○ 2:21+pm

  After her third attempt, Presley accidentally splashed the morphing toilet/sink and discovered water would activate the freeze spray in the same way as urine.

  This sped up the process. So she cupped her remaining hand and scooped water out of the bowl, managing to douse her floor with about a liter before the temperature dropped.

  By Presley’s ninth attempt, a crack as long as her arm zig-zagged through the plastiform cell door.

  When the ice got sucked away, Presley checked her pulse.

 
 
 
 
 

  She examined the crack, gave it a push.

  Really solid at room temperature. A shoulder bump did nothing.

  Presley considered taking a break to warm up.

 
 

  She resumed the splashing.

  The agonizing free spray coated her with ice.

  Presley threw herself at the crack, giggling as she did.

 
 

  SLAM!

 
 
 

  SLAM!

 
 
 

  SLAM!

 

  The wall shattered, and Presley fell through, to the floor outside of her cell.

  For a moment, the surprise stunned her and Presley forgot where she was. Then a bit of lucidity returned and she curled up fetal and hugged her knees and listened for any sort of alarm or approaching guards.

 

  She held her breath, didn’t hear the sound again, and then took in her surroundings.

 
 

  “Presley?”

  Presley crawled to the voice, staring into the cell at Holly.

 
 
 
 
 

  “Hey, Holly. Good to meet you, finally.”

  “You’re real.”

  “Did you think I was in your head?”

  “When I first got here, there was a woman in the cell next to mine. She called herself Ally. I told her everything about me. Intimate stuff. About my brother, Jake. About our parents. Our childhood. My first kiss. Real BFF, preteen sleepover, sisters-in-arms bullshit. When I told her about wanting to escape, I found out Ally was one of them. One of the guards, imitating one of us. They took my arms and legs for a month. I had to crawl like an inchworm to eat and drink. Slept on the floor. Every time I pissed and shit myself, I got sprayed.”

  “I’m sorry, Holly.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me, Presley. I just talked about escaping. You’ve actually done it. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do to you.”

  Presley inadvertently glanced at her wrist stump. “I’m going to get us out of here, Holly.”

  Holly snorted. “You’ve only got one arm and one leg.”

  “So you’re saying I should turn myself in?”

  Holly didn’t answer.

  hile here. Grasping for sanity like a starving person seeing a sandwich.>

  “Holly… have you met a woman here named Lori?”

  “I’ve met a lot of people here. They move us around.”

  “My friends and I came here for Lori.”

  Holly rubbed her nose on her shoulder. “Itches are the worst. I miss being able to scratch my nose.”

  “Do you know Lori?”

  A small nod. “I know Lori.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I heard her yelling the other day. Unless it was a guard mimicking her.”

  “I need to find her. Do you know which direction she’s in?”

  Holly snorted again. “You going to hop over there, help her break out?”

  Presley’s turn not to answer.

  “Lori won’t want to go with you.”

  “Why not?”

  Holly hooded her eyes. “I think she’s Vichy.”

  “You mean like Vichy France in WWII? The ones who obeyed the Nazis instead of resisted?”

  “Your friend Lori is hooked on the Elixir.”

  Presley remembered the guard mentioning Elixir. Something about dopamine receptors. “It’s a drug?”

  “It’s the best drug ever. The guards reward you with it if you’re compliant. Imagine the happiest moment of your life, times a million.”

  Presley’s mind snapped back to holding Brooklyn, moments after childbirth. The full-body awe that took over. Love unlike Presley had ever known.

 
 

  “You’ve tried it?”

  “Yeah. It’s incredible. Indescribable. It makes you want to obey them, so you can get more.”

  “If it’s so amazing, why aren’t you on it?”

  “Because it makes you want to obey them, so you can get more.”

  Presley didn’t understand. “You’re worried about getting addicted?”

  “I’m worried about giving up. When you’re on the Elixir, you don’t care that you’re here. You don’t care about anything. You’re overwhelmed with joy. When you’re like that, you forget how much you hate the Watcher and the guards. You forget you’ve been taken. You forget who you are, and everyone you care about.” Holly shook her head. “I don’t want to forget. I want to nurse the hurt. I want to be me.”

  “And Lori?”

  “I’ve seen prisoners betray each other with the promise of Elixir. They even made up lies in order to get a dose.”

  “Did Lori do that?”

  Holly turned away.

  “Holly, did Lori rat you out? Lie to get the drug?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her…”

  GRIM ○ 2:22+pm

  A smell of hot, wet dog overtook Grim as claws the size of sickles lashed out—

  —ripping the lower jaw off the charging dire wolf.

  “Holy shit. Sinatra.”

  The sloth stared down at Grim, its huge blue eyes crinkling, like a smile.

  “Sinatra!” Grim pointed, and Sinatra whipped around, spearing the Titanoboa through the top of its skull. The snake reared up, pulling the sloth away from Grim, and Sinatra latched onto its head with his hind claws, twisting his body, flipping the boa upside-down.

  Grim chanced a look around, scoping for other predators, eventually resting on Dimetrodon, still being munched on by…

  “YEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

  Sinatra disengaged himself from the dead snake and opened his mouth again.

  “YEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

  Low and bassy, like a cow mooing, but a clear yeah pronunciation.

 
 
 

  After another threat check, Grim gave Sinatra his attention and reached out a tentative hand. “Thanks for saving my ass, buddy. I need another favor.”

  “YEEEEAAAAAAHHH.”

  Sinatra’s pink tongue, flopping out over horse-like teeth, was as long as a rattlesnake, and flicked lazily at Grim. Grim backed up, and the sloth pressed forward until the tongue slapped against his cheek, warm and wet.

  “Jesus, dude. You been munching on dinosaur turds?”

  “YEEAAAH.”

  “Is that the only word you know?”

  “YEEEAAAHHHH.”

 

  “Okay, buddy. I need you to take one of your giant claws and punch a hole in this wall here.” Grim tapped the organoplastic. “Just give it a whack.”

  Sinatra stared.

  “Like this.” Grim slapped it hard. “Poke through it. Should be easy for you.”

  Sinatra’s tongue lolled out again, and he reared up—

  —and licked himself between the legs. And then farted. So loud it sounded like a car backfiring.

  Grim covered his nose and mouth with Presley’s hand.

 
 
 

  Grim knew the answer, and dividing attention between Sinatra and the thing eating the Dimetrodon, he cautiously walked around the dead Titanoboa and into the jungle, heading for where he threw the grey’s arm.

  JAKE ○ 2:23+pm

 
 
 
 
  Jake had the tangential awareness of someone screaming, subconsciously knew it came from him, but couldn’t stop.

 
 

  Jake hated irrationality, and the supernatural topped the irrationality scale. Ghosts and monsters and gods and alien abductions were fodder for cheap tabloids, not the beliefs of a dedicated scientist and skeptic.

  But the empirical evidence stood in front of him on cloven hooves, nine feet tall with red eyes and a mouthful of triangular shark teeth.

  “Heeeeelllllllooooo, Jaaaaaaaaaaake…”

 

  Then the eternal hellfire of the soul-sucking inferno engulfed Jake and the demon as it burst into flames.

  Blackness followed.

  THE WATCHER ○ 2:23+pm

  “BREACH! THERE IS A CONTAINMENT BREACH! LIFEFORMS HAVE ENTERED THE FACILITY!”

  A moment after the words left the Watcher’s mouth, he hurried to the monitor bank, wondering what had snuck into the void. Occasionally birds, or a racoon, would sneak into the light with a volunteer. One time a very confused camel-deer had leapt inside, which provided deerburgers for the greeting party.

  This was something else.

 
 

  The Watcher sees two Ophiacodon, a pack of Canus dirus, a Carnotaurus, and that goddamn eternal demon creature, Omega 1, rampaging through the void, tearing up his guards.

 

  “This is an interesting development. Didn’t you say you had the demons contained?”

  The Watcher ignores Mu, and watches as Fabler fires a flamethrower at the demon. Omega 1 backs away, and Fabler takes a moment to yank a shotgun away from the screeching Redhead Number 64.

 
 
 

  The demon burns. But the Watcher knows it can heal preternaturally fast.

 
 
 
 

&
nbsp; He casts a sideways glance at Mu.

 

  The Watcher rubs his exocrine gland. “WHERE IS THE LOCATION OF THE BREACH? WHERE IS… AAAAHHHH! ARGHAAAAA!”

 

  The Watcher head-hops, remote viewing his guards, unable to find several.

 

  He finally finds someone running down Corridor Deka.

  “TURN AROUND SO I CAN SEE THE THREAT.”

  The guard turns, and is quickly pounced on by a Smilodon. It’s a disconcerting moment when the creature tears off the head of the guard, and for a few seconds the Watcher sees through his decapitated eyes.

 

  The Watcher quickly finds someone who is not dead or dying, and asks for a report.

  “BREACH CLOSED.

  “DAMAGE REPORT.

  “FOUR DEAD, SEVEN WOUNDED.

  “ASSEMBLE IN THE VOID. OMEGA 1 IS IN THE FACILTY. DEPLOY A CONTAINMENT UNIT.”

 

  “You can send in the Experiment.”

  “The Experiment is… still adapting.”

  “It’s that psychopath. Kadir. He took command of the collective body.”

  “As I expected.”

  “Strong will. But stubborn. Resistant.”

  “I expected that as well. This is not the time for the Experiment.”

 
 
 

  “What is your grand plan then, Watcher?”

  The Watcher does not answer. Inside, he seethes.

  “You’re blaming me for this.”

  The Watcher peers at the red eye. “Am I wrong?”

  “Are we to judge one another on what we did in years past?”

 

  The Watcher turns his attention to Lori, still high on Elixir. Then he returns to the monitors.

  Mr. Fabler is faring pretty well, considering. Standing toe-to-toe with the devil is not a simple task. A futile task, but not a simple one.

  More guards have entered the void. They have the device.