King frowned again, thinking of the shriveled, hideous creatures that were once normal men.
“But I also take care of them now. I protect them. They are directionless, and if left to their own devices, they might just die, Jack. I would hope that caretaking alone might count for something with you, to show I’m not a monster. I’ve aided you against Richard Ridley. Hell, I believe we saved the world together. And I have helped you to keep your daughter, Fiona, alive, along with several other last speakers of languages all around the world. The Herculean Society has a membership of thousands — many of whom are being helped more by the Society than they help me. So when I tell you what I’ve been working on for hundreds of years, I hope that you will see I am being sincere.”
“Okay,” King said. “Surprise me. What’s your motivation?”
“Love,” Alexander said, his face completely serious.
King was flabbergasted. It was the last response he ever would have expected.
“What?”
“Listen, Jack. I’m not trying to rip open a portal to another dimension. You can relax. I’ve retooled this machinery, so it works properly now. But I need your help to make the machine work…and get me home. That’s really all I’ve ever wanted. The machine is perfectly safe now.”
King shifted the strap of the AK-47 across his chest and stared at the man.
“The machine is ready. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting you for weeks yet, but I finished work on the device early. It will open a portal to another place. A dangerous place. And… I will need your help there.” Alexander raised his hand and flipped a switch on the terminal behind him. The arch of metal and electrical cables hummed, and a field of blue light crackled to life in the circular center of the arch. King felt the hair on his arm stand up, as the electrical field tugged at him. He realized the arch was just large enough to be a man-sized portal, but the last time he had seen a portal like this, he’d seen creatures just larger than a man come through. And even larger creatures waited on the other side.
“Turn it off.” King said, hand on the grip of his gun. “I haven’t said whether I’m helping you yet.”
The chime of a phone drowned out the hum of the machine. Alexander drew the small device from his pocket and looked at the screen. He held his index finger up, indicating that King should wait, and then he took the call.
King almost shot Alexander out of sheer annoyance, but controlled himself and decided to listen to the one-sided conversation instead, hoping to glean a hint of what was going on.
“She’s on?” Alexander asked whoever was on the other end. “Connect us.” He gave King a slight grin. “Hello? Yes, please hold.”
Alexander took the phone away from his ear and held it out to King. “For you.”
King squinted, but took the phone. “Hello?”
“Dad?”
“Fiona?” His eyes went from confused to enraged. If Alexander had taken her again, he would kill the man or die trying.
“Why did you call?”
“I called you?”
“Umm, that’s what they told me.” She sounded more confused than afraid. In fact, there wasn’t a trace of fear in her voice. She’s still at school, he realized.
“I just…wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. He knew how she was doing. She had armed guards keeping tabs on her, guards who reported in every night, even if she didn’t.
She laughed, and the sound of it made him miss her more than usual. “I’m fine. A little bored, but I think that’s normal for someone who’s done the things we do.”
The things we do.
King smiled, nearly forgetting about Alexander. Fiona had survived Richard Ridley’s attack on the Siletz reservation that killed her family — her people. She’d been taken by Alexander and subsequently kidnapped and held hostage by Richard Ridley. She’d used the mother tongue to defeat a towering stone golem, saved the entire team and finally, had nearly been sucked inside a black hole, once again proving instrumental in saving his life…and the world. She would one day make a fine addition to the team. She might even be the best of them. But right now…right now she was still a kid.
His kid.
Then he remembered. “Actually, I have some news, but I want to tell you in person.”
“So you just called to torture me then?” she said. “Tell me, now. Or I’ll flunk out on purpose.”
King turned away from Alexander. This was a private moment. He squinted against the glow of the activated machine. I’ll deal with you in a moment, he thought, and then said. “How would you feel about having a mom?”
“Oh my God…” Fiona was quiet for a moment. “Oh my God! You asked her!”
“I did.”
“She said yes?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Well, you know. All the bullets and explosions and monsters and—”
“We talked about that.”
“So, who’s retiring?”
“What?” King felt rattled. Even his teenage daughter could see that marriage for him would be tricky. Perhaps trickier than having a daughter.
“We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”
“And that will be?”
That was always the question. When. He’d been on the road so much, searching for his parents, that he’d seen Fiona far less than he should. She was at a boarding school, sure, but she was just twenty minutes from the base. He should see her more often. He considered telling her that he’d found his parents, but that would bring up a lot of questions he didn’t have answers for yet. And he needed to get them. Now. “I’ll see you in a few days. I promise.”
“You better, ’cause, you know, Knight taught me how to track. I could hunt you down.”
King smiled. “I’ll be there.”
“Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too.”
King hung up the phone. His smile faded. Turned into a frown. He turned slowly toward Alexander. “Why?”
“Because I’m merciful,” Alexander said. “It was a gift.”
“A gift?”
“The chance to say goodbye.”
King glanced at the field of energy just a foot away from him. “I’m not going anywhere.” He turned back to look at Alexander. The big man was rushing him.. There was no time to get the pistol up. No time to react.
* * *
Asya opened the door to the cavernous lab just in time to see Alexander tackle King, and just in time to hear King shout out “No!”
Both men were instantly locked in a grappling embrace as their bodies slammed into a circular wall of crackling blue energy. When they hit the blue light, the wall pulsed outward into a broad sphere of power, stuttering streaming bolts of lightning shooting out across the room in all directions.
Then the machine, and the blue ball of light that had engulfed the men shrank down to two thirds its normal size, before exploding outward in a tremendous blast that sent Asya flying back through the doorway and across the lounge. Her body crashed into one of the small sofas with such force that she toppled the piece of furniture, her body rolling to the far side of it and coming to rest against a coffee table. The impact of her body on the table was enough to overturn a cup of tea that had gone cold. The liquid spread off the end of the table and poured onto her head.
Peter and Lynn stood from their seats and rushed to their injured daughter as smoke and flame billowed out of the doorway to the cavern. A huge cloud slid across the ceiling of the lounge.
“What happened?” Peter asked Asya, cradling her bleeding head.
“I…” Asya started. She sat up and her mother helped her. Asya looked back at the dark gray smoke coming out of the doorway.
She started to stand up, and Peter stopped her. “Are you okay?”
“I am fine,” she said and struggled to her feet, with her parents helping her on both sides. She had knocked her head slightly, but otherwise she was alright.
“It was Alexander,” she told them. “He and King…they fo
ught again. They crashed into the machine.”
“Jack’s in there?” Peter was about to turn and run into the cavern. Asya grabbed him by his sleeve.
“You don’t understand. The machine exploded…with them inside.” Asya turned to look at her mother’s already tearing eyes. Then she turned back to her father. His face was suddenly drawn, and long. His eyes filled with shock and understanding.
“Jack is dead.”
INFINITE
TWENTY-THREE
Security Cell, Omega Facility, Carthage, Tunisia
The thing before them could barely be called human.
Richard Ridley’s cell was a 20x20 room, and humidity was almost completely absent from the space. It was baking hot, as if they had all crawled inside an oven set to 400 degrees. In the center of the room, two cages were suspended by chains. The top cage was a rusted metal box formed from crisscrossing bars, like some kind of oversized death metal Christmas ornament. Attached to the outside of the cage was a device that looked like a gerbil’s water dispenser, but larger and connected to a hose that ran into the ceiling. Hung a few inches under the top cage was a larger rectangular cage suspended vertically, and made from the same rusted iron bars as the first.
Inside the top cage was Richard Ridley’s head.
Inside the bottom cage was the man’s limbless torso.
But it was what was in the four-inch space between the two suspended cages that had prompted Queen’s disgust and Rook’s admiration.
Ridley’s skin was cracked and gray, all over what remained of his body. The places where his limbs should have been were darkened stumps. But the places at the bottom of his head, and the top of his torso, where his neck should have been, were alive with pink flesh. Tendrils of nerves and blood vessels dangled down from the severed head or stretched up from the headless torso. The tendrils wavered slightly in the air, each struggling and reaching to meet their counterparts on the opposite side of the deadly gap. Only three tendrils had been successful so far, but Queen could see that they were struggling to maintain contact with each other. The spinal cord was a grayish orange stump.
The man was in a constant state of failed regeneration.
As Queen stepped closer, she could see that the eyes were gray and lifeless, sunken back into the sockets, like ill-fitting rubber balls that had been placed into their holders, like toys on a shelf. The mouth hung open, and the tongue was shriveled and black.
“It is worse than I had feared,” Seth spoke from behind the group.
“Ridley or not, this is inhuman. Get him down.” Queen ordered.
Rook and Bishop moved to the cages and began opening them. They were not locked. There was no need. Knight stepped into the room with the three duplicates, keeping an eye on them, his submachine gun raised.
Seth turned to Knight and Queen. “May we assist in removing Him? I suggest we lay him on the floor and allow the head to rejoin with the torso. Water might also be good.”
Queen hesitated, but nodded. Ridley wouldn’t be speaking any time soon.
The three clones moved over to help. Rook gently pulled Richard Ridley’s head up and away from the cage. The tendrils that had managed to grasp those reaching from the torso snapped. Rook winced.
“It’s okay,” Seth told them. “Just get the torso out quickly, so He may heal.” Seth took the head reverently and laid it on the floor, holding it with his hand, so it would not roll to the side. Bishop pulled the torso out of its cage, swung it around and laid it on the floor below the head. Jared and Enos gently slid the torso up, until the tendrils reaching from the head touched with those of the torso. They moved the chest up further until the parts of the neck touched. Instantly the skin began to repair itself.
Bishop pulled a plastic tube from his armored shoulder, and offered it to Seth. The clone lowered the tube over Ridley’s mouth and squeezed the plastic bite valve with his fingers. A stream of water from the reservoir hidden under the armor plates on Bishop’s massive back dripped into the open mouth. Immediately, the blackened shriveled tongue began to thrash from side to side in the mouth, and color returned to it. Then it swelled closer to the size of a normal tongue.
“That’s enough,” Queen said. “Everybody step back and give him some room.”
Bishop stood up and leaned on the far wall, next to Rook. The duplicates stood and backed away, toward the door where Knight remained.
Already, the damaged body’s odd gray pallor was slipping away to a mottled yellow and white. Queen watched as the veins on Ridley’s forehead inflated, pressing away from the skin. Nubs pressed out from the man’s blackened shoulders, no larger than a peanut at first, but they quickly grew to the size of a pear.
His arms, she thought. I’m actually watching a man grow arms.
She had, of course, seen Bishop regenerate from grave wounds, back when he had his Manifold-inflicted abilities, but she had never seen anything like this.
She knelt down by Ridley’s side, watching the amazing transformation. Femur bones were extending out of the gaping openings under his hips. Then a trail of blood vessels and nerves swirled down the length of the bone, and muscles began to form in patches. Queen looked back up to the man’s head, and saw his mouth was healed entirely. Where the nose had been little more than two vertical slits, more resembling a skull than a human face, the full nose had regrown.
His eyelids moved and jittered, his eyes under the flesh darting all around, as if the man were in REM sleep.
Then he took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled.
The breath took Queen by surprise, as if up until now she had been watching a strange science video about the body, but now she was forcefully reminded that she was kneeling next to her worst enemy. And he was coming back from the dead.
His eyelids flicked open. Richard Ridley’s pale blue eyes stared at Queen. He spoke in a whisper. “Ms. Baker. Not the first face I thought I’d see upon waking, but a pleasant one, nonetheless.” Sweat had popped out on his forehead, from the strain the regenerating was taking on him.
“Hey asshole. You can speak again,” she said. “Does that mean you can use the mother tongue to finish healing yourself?”
“I could, but why—”
Queen stabbed his chest with the injector she had slipped out of a pocket on the outside of her armored leg. The serum pumped into Ridley’s heart and spread to the rest of his still-regenerating body in a flash. The growth ceased.
“What are you doing?” Seth screamed.
“Shaddap,” Rook threatened, raising his MP-5 at Seth and the other two duplicates. Knight, who was still standing near them, pushed Seth back against the wall with his free hand.
“Relax, Ridley,” Queen said to the panicked eyes below her. “Just removing your chemical regenerative abilities. The serum alters your DNA, stripping the bits that you got from the Hydra. You don’t need them to get back into shape. Once you’re healed, if you cross me, I shoot your damn mouth off, and your ability to regenerate is lost forever, without a tongue to use your magic language. Are we clear?”
“Hmm,” Ridley said. “I’d nod, but I don’t have the musculature back yet. What exactly is it that you want, Queen?”
“I want you to help me kill Alexander Diotrephes.”
Richard Ridley laid on the floor, his extremities suddenly stopped from returning. He smiled broadly, showing sparkling white teeth. “That…would be my pleasure.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Security Cell, Omega Facility, Carthage, Tunisia
Queen stood and moved toward the three duplicates. She pulled out another auto injector.
Seth’s eyes grew wide. “What is in that?”
“Same thing he got,” Queen answered, motioning to Ridley.
Seth looked confused, but the attention turned away from him when Ridley chuckled. “They’re golems. Earthen men. They cannot regenerate flesh they do not have.”
Seth looked a little disappointed to hear this, but tried to hide it.
K
night held Seth with one hand and pointed his MP-5 at the man’s temple. “I’m sure you won’t blame us for not taking your word on that.”
Queen jabbed Seth with the injector and moved to the other two clones. Jared looked as if he might fight.
Rook spoke up from across the room. “Don’t even dream it, Captain Kangaroo. I got you covered from here, and she could kill you thirty ways with that injector and another eighty with her bare hands if she wanted you gone.”
Jared offered his arm up, pushing up the sleeve of his linen suit jacket, but the fire never left his light blue eyes. Enos offered his arm meekly. Queen wondered at the differences she saw in personalities between the dupes, but she recalled what Seth had said about each of them gaining new experiences. They really are becoming different people. She wondered if any of them had a chance at redemption. Could they change from what the original Ridley was — or would she need to kill all three of them?
The serum injected into all four Ridleys, Queen moved back to the man regenerating on the gray concrete floor. A thought occurred to her. “Do you know how you were being imprisoned?”
Richard Ridley moved his head, while mumbling a chant in the mother tongue that was completing his regeneration. His eyes fell on the cages. Queen could see him working it out in his mind. When a dark frown fell on his face, she knew he understood.
“Look at me,” she said.
He turned his head toward her, with far less effort than it had taken for him to look over at the cages, still swaying on their chains. His face was neutral now, all signs of the frown gone.
“If you try to screw us, Rook and I will think up something worse than this hideous shit. Do you believe me?” Queen slid the bandana off her forehead, revealing a nasty brand she had received at the hands of an enemy in the past. “I’m no stranger to torture.”
Ridley nodded slightly. He paused his chant. “I believe you.”
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