Then she leaned forward, interlacing her fingers over the desktop. “If you do go that route though, take my advice, and be very careful whose skull you crawl around in, Schroder. I’ve met polymorphous blobs that think exactly like we do, and I’ve met certified humans with psyches that matched nothing on any file I could get my hands on; even the ones that came from off world. More dangerous still though,” she said quietly, looking down, “is the threat of spreading madness. Some ideas can be sticky… hard to get rid of. And others can be downright infectious,” she said before looking up. “So, evaluate whether you really want that person’s perspective before you go trying to see the world through their eyes, and adjusting your worldview to match theirs, Schroder; even just for a little while. That is all. As for this,” she said holding up the file, and handing it to Schroder, “This has gone on long enough. I’m authorizing direct intervention for the woman currently operating under the alias ‘Miranda Harrison.’ Bring her in. That is all,” the woman said before signaling Schroder to leave.
Out in the hallway Schroder felt like he could breathe normally again. ”Congratulations, man!” Joaquin said. “Ms. Caelum loves you!”
Schroder chuckled, “If that’s what love feels like—”
“Ok,” Joaquin said, rolling his eyes, love from “Alisa Caelum: American West Coast Director of the FBI’s ‘Other Cases’ department doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy, but it does feel like getting promoted from a ghost that collects and collates data for other agents while being told not to ask questions or form theories, to the kind of agent that gets directly involved with suspects, witnesses, and people of interest, am I right? This feels like actually solving cases, and getting answers now, right?”
“Yeah…” Schroder said, trying not to think too hard about the two missing agents he and Joaquin were replacing; even as he tried to rein in all his other thoughts, which were moving at full speed in every direction. “Let’s start with the suspect’s most recent known base of operations, and work backward from there.”
“Sounds good to me, man,” Joaquin said.
Schroder downed the last of his beer, and ordered another. “It was two years later.” He said, shaking his head. “I’m standing in mud, looking back at the log cabin we’ve gotten to know so very well over the last year and a half…” Schroder forced himself to swallow down his disgust. “After fifteen months of drought, the lake no longer held Harrison’s secrets. The bureau had known that Harrison’s lab bordered a lake, and I suspected there might be a body or two buried under the thick, gulping mud there; but I had no idea the sheer number of her… test subjects.
An agent shouted, “We got another—”
“Do not say, ‘Live one,’ Cortez,” I said without a trace of humor. I drew my pistol and walked in his direction. “I sincerely hope for their sake that none of these things survived what ‘Harrison’ put them through,” I said, raising my weapon.
“Wait!” Agent Nguyen called, running over, as I placed my gun to the creature’s head. “Schroder, wait!”
I paused, looking at the jerking abomination before me. The thing had a wolf’s body, but the cavity below the ribcage showed moving machinery inside. The wolf’s head was lolling from side to side, flapping the necrotic flesh in a way that made my stomach turn. Arms that looked to be made from straw and animal bones twitched, along with one of the two human legs below. “I don’t really give that much of a damn for what you can learn from this thing, doctor,” I said, turning my head to the side, and trying to prevent tears from empathy, or vomit from the sight and the stench.
Nguyen stopped in front of me, panting. “And let me remind you… that I’m not Dr. Keckler,” she said. “I agree with you, that this thing should be put down.” She began shining a flashlight into its body cavity, while reaching inside with one gloved hand.
“She’s a hell of a lot braver than I am,” Schroder said looking at his drink.
“But if this is a power core thing, rather than a biological function thing…” she said, feeling around for a moment, before stopping and giving a grim smile. “Got it.” She gave a tug, something came loose, and as she pulled her arm back, the thing’s movements slowed until it was finally still. “As I was saying,” she said, holding up four and a half volts of rune-inscribed battery covered in green slime, “shooting it in the enhanced, and vulnerable brain would be good if it were still alive; but I agree with your assessment: It’s dead. Defiling a corpse isn’t going to help, but getting to the root of the problem will.” She gently placed the battery at the thing’s feet before stripping the gloves off, putting them near the battery, and pulling out a fresh pair of gloves.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, as Richardson zipped up the body bag, Cortez went back to checking the mud, and Nguyen slid the new pair of gloves on.
“Don’t mention it.” Nguyen said, as Richardson began wheeling the gurney away. “Everyone stuck on this detail appreciates the fact that you’ve taken it on yourself to be the second executioner, if you will, for this nightmare.” she said, gravely as she slowly looked around. Then she shuddered. “I never thought I’d find myself in the middle of a scene to make the stories my grandmother told me seem tame.”
“Yeah,” I said, turning to look the area over. “Joaquin and I were here for two months going through the cabin, and trying to pull a strain of logic from this madness.” Nguyen and I began to walk back toward the cabin. “Meanwhile the crews we had dredging the lake kept having runs of bad luck that effectively equaled out to zero progress. We eventually opened the lake to a full investigation, while we kept working on dry land.”
“So, when did you find her, uh… disposal unit?” Nguyen asked.
“Oh, you mean the meat hook in the waterway under the floor that would launch her victims toward the other side of the lake?” I asked, looking at the newly-revealed hole in the bank below the cabin. “Around the same time Keckler’s team figured out the three girls Joaquin and I had been looking for were the ghosts haunting the lake they’d been drowned in. We finally put those girls’ souls to rest a week and a half ago. It’s sad. The water’s so low we can actually find their bodies now. Once we were able to speak with them, it turned out a burial was all they wanted.”
“And it was right after you got the girls settled that the not-quite-living creature grabbed Joaquin by the ankle?” Nguyen asked.
“It wasn’t the grabbing,” I said quietly. “It was the speaking. It spoke. Parrot parts and pieces grafted onto what remained of a human torso, with an assortment of integrated recording devices. I keep telling myself that there’s no way any of these things could be alive; but the fact that its playback was begging for death as it held Joaquin’s ankle bugs me. As for Joaquin, I honestly think he’s ok now, but someone really does need to be back at the base to take in, and sift through… all of this,” I said with a sigh. “So, if I’m wrong about him being ok, then this gives him more time to get ok again.”
Nguyen looked out at the lake bed, while three more gurneys were taken to the pulleys at the dock. “We’ve seen evidence down here of clay golems, genetic splicing, witchcraft, gene therapy, satanic ritual, guided evolution, animistic and shamanic practices, cybernetic modification, controlled breeding, runic and true name magic, advanced robotics and prosthesis creation, minor primal reality bending, surgical-grade medical procedures, reanimation; and even cross-species transplants and grafts that took before she killed the patients… But all of it mixed up in ways we didn’t know were possible. Every process down here is a bastardization from its original source and intention. I’m pretty sure even the Satan worshipers would be offended by this. But why would someone so skilled in this many disciplines commit such wanton carnage?” Nguyen asked.
“I used to wonder that myself,” I said. “Now I just wonder what she did with her successes, and how great their numbers may be, if these are the failures.”
“Got another one, boss!” Patil called, waving her hand from a hundred yards away.
>
“Would you mind accompanying me, doctor?” I asked, beginning to head in that direction.
“No, I wouldn’t.” she said, boots squelching in the mud. “But tell me this: What happens when we find her?”
“We follow procedure. We take her in if she goes quietly, so that someone else can determine her fate. But between you and I, Doctor Nguyen, I do hope she resists, so that lethal force will be authorized. ‘Mrs. Harrison’ has been arbitrarily alternating between dealing death and perverting it for long enough now. It’s time she dealt with the inevitable herself.”
Five years later I found myself thinking about that conversation with irony, and wondering why I wasn’t more careful about what I wished for. I’d discovered too late that Mrs. Harrison was too busy to die. What I wouldn’t have given to know that before emptying my weapon at her. “No one should take that many bullets and keep walking,” I said, backing away from my dropped gun, and mentally cycling through my options as I tried to force my half-shredded right arm to function. The shoulder and elbow didn’t seem to be working, but the fingers could clench if I tried hard enough. “Especially bullets like these.”
Mrs. Harrison smiled. “I’m not just anyone, dear, as you’ll soon find out.” She loaded more bullets into the sawed-off shotgun she’d pulled from her jacket.
“Oh, we already realized that,” I said, smiling through the pain, as she advanced. “We found three of your old operating theaters before following this shipment of human fetuses to you, but we figured out by the second theater that you were doing the most important operations on yourself.” I tried to discreetly look past her into the burning living room and check the condition of my team, while actively avoiding thoughts about the blood freely trickling from all the holes in my arm and shoulder. “I don’t care why you were going for immortality, lady, it still doesn’t change the fact that you’re under arrest. We were prepared for your pets outside. Even if you do manage to kill all of us, then our bodies will just help the next team prepare for you. Thing is, you don’t have to make this worse. You can live a pretty long time in prison…” then I noticed that she wasn’t listening.
Mrs. Harrison was smiling wider. “Unlike others chasing eternity, I’m skilled enough to get there,” she said. “And I actually have something to lose. So, I have no intention of dying, Mr. Agent. Honestly, whether you live or die, this last bit of carelessness marks the final time I ever plan to be found by you people. But for the record,” she said, snapping the weapon closed, “These are far beyond simple operations, I’ll have you know.” She indicated her body as I confirmed that between the shotgun rounds, and the propane tank that exploded behind Joaquin, I appeared to be the only member of my team both still living and conscious.
“The pentagram necklace I wrapped around my sternum two months ago seems to be doing its job nicely, giving me a few more years in exchange for chronic pain which is mostly manageable.” She motioned toward her chest. “The composite prostheses I’ve replaced most of my limbs with are working marvelously. The Atlantean plants growing in my lungs hyper-oxygenate my blood even as they slow my metabolism. Meanwhile, the aetheric battery I tucked into the space my appendix used to take up has had unforeseen side-effects for the positive, as it combines with several of the neural chips implanted in, spells worked into, and copper mesh wrapped around the majority of my nervous system, actually speeding my reaction times even as it pushes my stamina toward a measurement of ‘indefinite.’” She smiled even wider. “Or, dumbing it down for you, Mister Agent: taking bullets is hard, but letting them slide off my internal and external armor is quite simple when you’re able to see and move quickly enough. But I don’t have time to describe the rest of my glorious modifications. It’s time for you to die, and for me to go.” She pointed both barrels toward my head.
“Thank you for answering the one question I’ve asked,” I said quickly as I struggled to get the last pieces of my plan to fit, “but if I’m allowed one more, then I’ve got to know before you shoot me....” My mind raced as I saw an arm and a leg twitch respectively on two of my people. “Your rounds don’t act right. What did you load in those guns?”
“Custom rounds.” Harrison said. “Glass shards, metal and bone fragments, anything and everything left over from my medical procedures.” She smiled proudly before she turned to the side and shot my two stirring agents.
I leapt on her then, pulling both a vial and its detonator from behind my back. As she turned back to me, I said a prayer, ducking under the barrels of her gun. I jammed the vial into her belt on her left hip, and used my useless shoulder to push her aside.
Ignoring the flames, I pumped my legs for all I was worth, lowering the angle of my body as I ran and transferring the detonator into my right hand, then gripping it for all I was worth. I think I was screaming something, but I don’t know what I was saying. Much more importantly, I thought I heard Harrison curse as she hit the floor.
Catching Cortez’s pants leg in my left hand, I used all my strength to drag him as I ran. I caught Nguyen with the crook of my left arm, and tangled her in Cortez’s legs before landing in a heap on top of Joaquin on the other side of the single bedroom house. Giving a silent thanks for the curve built into riot shields, I flipped Joaquin’s shield up toward us with my foot, and hit the button on the detonator.
The blast was amazing, and though I guess the wall behind us must’ve given way; I still can’t properly explain how the four of us wound up in a tangled heap outside… but Harrison’s screams brought me back to consciousness. I remember raising my head, and seeing her on the ground some ways away. She was screaming and crawling with limbs that didn’t seem to bend right anymore, as the flames covering her body lit the night. As the house tumbled down, my mind flashed back to that cabin by the lake, and the fifty-seven corpses we’d removed. I remember thinking, Good. Maybe now she knows some of the pain she put them through. Then I don’t remember anything else.
Time passed. And one day I found myself in a very strange place. Sitting across a table from the last person I expected. “You know,” I said, “In the six years I spent tracking ‘Roger Hardy…’ My last remaining connection to the ongoing hobby that ‘Mrs. Harrison’ became for me that is. It never once occurred to me that Roger Hardy didn’t actually exist. Cases came and went over the course of those six years. So did partners, girlfriends, commendations, and promotions. But the fact that the retrieval team never found your body, ‘Mrs. Harrison,’ kept me up nights. And the only clue I had, after all the other trails ran cold, was Roger Hardy.” The creature I spoke to sat in a chair across the table from me. Long unused circuits and bits of servos hung from the socket of its right hip, while the cybernetic left leg was gone just below the knee. Its right arm was missing to the shoulder, but the sockets, plugs and jacks within it, and the left knee looked brand new, and well cared-for. More than enough of its techno-organic left hand and arm remained. It must have used its right hand to grab the vial off its belt before I pressed the button.
An assortment of plugs, hoses, IV lines, and jacks hung from underneath the creature’s t-shirt and shorts, clearly originating in the bulges from the hips, leg stump, shoulder socket, chest, back and head. There were metal pieces coming from the flesh as well, accompanied by several ornate tattoos. It stared with malice from the one working eye it had left, and alternated breathing through the holes where its nose had once been, and the exposed teeth of its partially lipless mouth. All the flesh which could be seen outside its clothing was a patchwork of burn scars. But it wasn’t the creature’s physical form which made it a monster to me.
“Hardy was seen in public,” I said, indicating the mechanical exoskeleton in the chair next to me. “He was well liked in his community. His income came from stock dealings, both for himself and for others, and those dealings were always above board. There was no reason for anyone to look twice at Roger Hardy. But he once mailed a package to you. And as if dealing with you wasn’t enough to make me dislike him, I�
��ve found that I don’t like people that clean anymore. Not after dealing with you. So yes, you’re still able to surprise me. Roger Hardy was your creation, Mrs. Harrison. An identity you created, and married, under yet another surname back in the eighties to continue living without question. That marriage even gave you the opportunity to legitimately change your name for the third time.”
I chuckled. Then I looked into her creation’s lifeless eyes. “And to think I was smiling over the notion of telling you that I’d caught you with a mistress.” I said, shaking my head, “I have to admit, the fire in the records office was pretty thorough; but if there’s one thing we can count on the government for, it’s redundancy.” I looked back to the creature in the chair across from me. “But there was nothing like the realization that I might’ve saved myself years of effort and frustration in tracking you if I’d realized sooner that the Nazi hunters wanted you.” The two men stood silently just behind each of my shoulders. “Imagine my surprise when our paths crossed in pursuit of you, Ms. Greta Goebel. And imagine my horror when they gave me the rest of your terrible story.”
The thing laughed, a haunting sound, like shovels being jammed into gravel. “Well if we’re dropping pretenses, Mr. Schroder,” it said in a light German accent, “Then I must ask why you have bothered to pursue me. You know full well that you ruined my body along with my best chance for survival. I wasn’t fighting it anymore.” Tears slid down its cheeks. “Why couldn’t you simply let me die in peace?”
“I started pursuing you out of a sense of curiosity, and a need for justice. For a while there, that comment about having something to lose nagged at me—”
It looked at me then, and gave the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I had a near death experience as the war was ending, Mr. Schroder. I hit my head on a rock, and received a vision of the afterlife. The Devil himself showed me the cell he had prepared for me, explaining that most every religion was offended by the actions of the Third Reich on some level, or for some reason. Yes, as it turns out, absolutely no one likes Nazis. And the fate I saw in that dream was so terrible that I would do anything to avoid it.” It cried in sorrow. “Eternal torment of a kind I would not wish on the wealthiest Jew is guaranteed me. And I’d finally found a process to put my mind at ease. Eternity was within my grasp…” it said, reaching out with its one withered limb, then it focused in on me again. “But you ruined everything!” it screamed.
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