Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  At the last minute, fortune for once smiled on her as the man seemed to catch his foot on something, and instead of a deliberate manoeuvre, they were now two uncontrolled falling people.

  She was now on top of the man and he was going to hit the ground first. She braced herself for the impact of the floor hitting them, but when they landed, instead of an abrupt stop, they just kept on falling.

  The trap door beneath the huge rug gave way under their combined weight, and they plummeted down into the darkness of the secret room under the building.

  They landed in a puff of dust from the unused room. Her senses were scrambled, but she was alive, albeit badly winded.

  The man under her lay still, and when she put a hand down on the floor to lever herself off him, her palm touched something sticky wet and warm. She was glad that she couldn’t see the damage done to the man’s head up this close.

  “JAMIE-LYN?” Link yelled from up above.

  Before she could answer, a body landed down beside her and she knew it was him.

  “I’m okay,” she gasped as he helped her up. “Or I’m in one piece at least.”

  “Yeah,” Link said as he viewed the hooded man on the ground. “Don’t look down. This guy landed on his head on a stone floor; it’s not pretty.”

  “She okay?” Jesus’ voice called from up above.

  “I’m fine,” Jamie-Lyn shouted back.

  “Get down here,” Link called out. “It’s some kind of basement level. Maybe there’s a way out, or at least out of sight, before our friend up there gets done playing with the locals.”

  “Looks like another lab,” Crimson mused from behind, making both Jamie-Lyn and Link jump as neither of them had heard him land beside them in the darkness.

  The basement was suddenly flooded with light as Crimson found a switch. The place did indeed resemble a lab, but down here there were multiple massive glass and metal canister tubes standing on end. There was a central control panel and a mass of multicoloured wiring running across the floor and covering the walls.

  Now that there was light, Jesus and CJ were able to find the staircase that led down from the ground level, and CJ helped Jesus down into the basement.

  “You don’t look so good,” Jamie-Lyn said to Jesus as he drew close.

  “None of us do,” he croaked in reply. “But I’ll live. I’ve got a wedding to go to.”

  “Is that really your priority?” Jamie-Lyn replied.

  “If you saw what the bloody thing is costing me, you’d agree,” he quipped back.

  “What is this place?” Link asked as he looked around.

  “Heaven sent,” Crimson responded as he quickly darted back up the stairs and inspected the broken trap door. “Well, this isn’t closing anytime soon,” he said as he pulled the rug back into place over the hole, at least hiding the lower level from first glances.

  Off in the distance above them, they could hear the dim sounds of screaming, the beast apparently able to elicit a verbal response that mere bullets could not.

  “Check for any exits,” Jesus ordered as he leaned against one of the canisters for support.

  “There’s a door back here,” Crimson called out of the shadows. “It’s… jammed, but give me a few minutes. I’ll get it open,” he grunted.

  Jamie-Lyn looked around the basement and saw that Link was pulling a dust sheet off another computer.

  “I’m not sure we have time for that,” she said as she stood over him.

  “Always time for a little recon,” he said softly as his fingers went to work on the keyboard .

  “What do you make of it?” Jesus asked CJ.

  “Of?”

  “This place.”

  “Obviously a laboratory of some kind,” CJ mused as he took in the place. “I have studied your scientific communities quite extensively, but I must admit, some of this equipment is a little outside of my knowledge base.”

  Jesus looked up in surprise at that. In the years that he’d known him, he’d yet to find anything that the alien didn’t know.

  CJ moved around the lab, checking over the various equipment. He stopped and checked things while muttering softly under his breath. Jesus only picked up the occasional word or phrase and none of them made any sense to him.

  “Anything?” Jesus finally asked again when CJ had stopped moving.

  “Perhaps,” the alien replied enigmatically.

  “Well care to share?” Jesus snapped irritably.

  “I think that… perhaps…”

  “Cloning!” Link suddenly yelled out from the computer. “Holy shit, this is… holy shit…”

  “We need to move,” Crimson pressed as he tried to lever the rear door open. “A little help might be nice!”

  “I need a flash drive. Jamie-Lyn, look around to see if you can find something.”

  She did as Link asked and started to root through desk drawers, yanking them out and upending them before she finally found a small USB black stick.

  “Here,” she said, passing it to him.

  “We’ve got to go!” Crimson yelled again.

  “We need this,” Link shouted back. “The answers must be here!”

  “Answers aren’t going to do any of us any good if we’re all dead,” Crimson retorted.

  “I just need to copy as much of this as I can; give me a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute,” Crimson replied as he stopped tugging at the door and looked upwards. “Our friend up there has finished with the locals, and I’m guessing he’s still hungry.”

  “Let me go up,” CJ offered.

  “Have you got your powers back?” Jamie-Lyn asked.

  “No. If anything, they are even weaker down here,” CJ said, looking over his hands that weren’t even glowing now.

  “Then that thing will cut you down,” Jesus said. “You won’t last two minutes.”

  “But it has to be me.”

  “Why?” Jamie-Lyn demanded. “Why you?”

  “Because it’s here for me.”

  “Not this bollocks again!” Crimson exclaimed. “Miners from sodding outer space!”

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. I know here,” CJ said, placing a hand under his left armpit. “It’s where my…, in your parlance, gut is,” he added when the rest of them stared quizzically at him.

  “CJ, you can’t go up there alone,” Jamie-Lyn stressed.

  “If my powers are weaker down here, then perhaps something in this basement is causing the interference. Maybe if I get further away from the building, then they will return?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” Jamie-Lyn replied.

  “I am just hoping,” CJ said with a smile.

  “You can’t do this,” she pressed again.

  “Mr Link, how much time do you need?” CJ asked.

  “Five, maybe eight minutes. I haven’t got time to read through much of this now, but the downloading is slow,” he answered without looking up from the screen. “But what’s on here is the answer, the answer to everything, I just know it.”

  “Then I shall buy you that time,” CJ answered primly as he drew himself up to his full height.

  “But you don’t have your powers?” Jesus responded. “That thing will cut you to pieces without breaking a sweat.”

  “It isn’t the powers that make a hero,” CJ replied as he looked over to Jamie-Lyn. “A good friend told me that.”

  “You’ll die out there,” Jesus stated, shaking his head.

  “Isn’t that what all heroes eventually do?” CJ asked. “It does not matter what any of you choose to believe. That thing out there is a Torvanian, and it is here for me. I shall not allow anyone else to die in my place. This is my problem to face, my people’s decisions to answer for. WE made them, we made him, and now he is here to hold me to account. This is what I must do; there is no other way, not anymore.”

  “No,” Jamie-Lyn said forcefully.

  “Yes,” CJ replied. “This whole problem lies at
my feet. The beast is here because of me, and I must face him alone.”

  “No,” Jesus agreed.

  “Yes,” CJ reiterated. “Look, I have always sought to help your planet, but all I have ever done is sown division here. Cynthia Arrow and her entire movement were created by me. She rose in direct opposition to my very existence. ME, not any of you. She and her people view me as an abomination, a slap in the face to their God. None of you would have lived this life if it wasn’t for me; none of you would have had to endure the losses you've all suffered, and it’s all because of me. I was so caught up in reading the colourful tales of heroes that I never stopped to count the cost of my actions. Now I need to do something right. I… I have to. It has to be me, and it has to be me alone.”

  “Well, shit.” Crimson sighed. “I suppose I’m saying no as well.”

  “I’m afraid so,” CJ confirmed. “My duty here is clear. I shall buy you all the time you need to escape and I shall finally face my judgement.”

  “He’s right,” Link said unexpectedly.

  “Link!” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed.

  Link looked up from the computer screen with a puzzled expression on his face. “Oh no, sorry. What I mean is he’s right about what’s out there: it is a Torvanian.”

  “I know this.” CJ nodded.

  “Well here’s something you don’t know,” Link continued. “That thing may well be a space miner, but he’s not from space; he was made right here.”

  “On Earth?” Jamie-Lyn asked.

  “In this lab. Look, I’ve only scanned through some of this stuff and there are reams and reams of it, but he was made right here by one Olaf Gustafson.”

  “Gustafson? How long ago? I mean, no one’s heard from the guy for 40-odd years!” Jesus exclaimed. “Are you telling me that this beast is that old?”

  “No,” Link said, shaking his head as his eyes stayed trained on the screen. “I’m telling you that he made that thing out there less than a month ago.”

  The room fell into a stunned silence.

  “Look, there’s tonnes of stuff on here,” Link said, tapping the computer. “There’s a whole section of what looks like journals from Gustafson, MS Word documents dated from just a few months back, and they go back decades. There’s stuff on here about cloning, embedded mind control, artificial life, gene mutating… man alive, it’s like something out of a bloody sci-fi movie! No offence,” he added quickly, looking at CJ.

  “What about SOUL?” Jesus asked pointedly. “Anything tying him and them together?”

  “I… I can’t see anything…,” Link answered as his eyes scanned through endless pages on the monitor. “But it’s going to take a lot of time and a hell of a bigger brain than mine to sort through all this stuff and make any sense out of it, especially the science non-fiction stuff. I’ve barely had time to scan the highlights on here. That’s why we need to download the data and take it with us so that we can properly decipher it.”

  “Time we don’t have right now,” Crimson added quickly.

  “I don’t see that this changes anything,” CJ said as he started to move towards the stairs.

  “What?” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed. “It changes everything. That beast out there isn’t your fault, it’s his, Gustafson’s. He made it in a lab, this lab to be exact. Quite how and why, I’ve got no bloody idea. We’re not going to find that out sitting here, but we can. If what Link says is right, then the answers are here. We take the data and we figure it out later when we’re far away from here, all of us.”

  “If what you’re saying is correct, and that remains to be seen, it may not be my fault, but it is still my responsibility,” CJ replied.

  “How would he know?” Link asked.

  “Who?” Jamie-Lyn responded.

  “Gustafson. I mean, how could he know so much about us? About CJ? About any of it?”

  “I’m guessing that he must be linked to Cynthia and her SOUL goons,” Jesus said thoughtfully. “Link is right: there may well be the answers to everything here, but we need time to go through it all, and Crimson is also correct… it’s time that we don’t have right now.”

  “Less than you think,” Crimson added in a hushed whisper as he held up a finger to his lips and pointed upwards with his other hand.

  No one had a chance to say anything in return as the floorboards above suddenly creaked as if under a tremendous weight. The beast had arrived.

  ----------

  Jimmy let out a long heavy sigh of relief as the chopper blades started to wind down with a loud wail.

  The crosswinds had been particularly brutal during their descent, but with Marcy at his side and destiny in his hands, he wasn’t about to crash into the North Sea when the light at the end of the tunnel was so close.

  The Chinook rested on the frozen shoreline and the ground groaned worryingly underneath for a few breath-held moments, but finally they were down and secure.

  “You did a great job.” Marcy beamed at him.

  “We did,” he corrected her.

  They bumped fists and held the contact for a moment as they shared a loving smile.

  “Well alright then,” she said finally as she unbuckled her security belt, and Jimmy followed suit.

  They left the cockpit and headed back into the belly of the huge chopper. The black-combat clad figures were all starting to move, checking over equipment and weaponry.

  “Last stop, folks; everybody out,” Marcy called out to their passengers as she hung off a luggage strap.

  Jimmy stood next to her while the squad busied themselves putting on arctic weather overcoats and hefting up backpacks, all without speaking.

  “Chatty bunch, aren’t they?” Jimmy whispered in her ear.

  “Their money does the only kind of talking that I’m interested in,” she replied with a wink.

  One of the figures started to make his way up towards them. He didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the military trained men and women, but he did carry himself with an air of authority that set him apart.

  “You will wait here until we return,” he said as he moved past them to look out through the cockpit window.

  “With the meter running.” Marcy grinned.

  “Until we return,” the man reiterated, without registering the attempt at levity.

  “You’re the boss,” Jimmy quickly added. “But you do need to be aware of the temperatures out there. If it drops much lower, we run the risk of the rotor blades freezing up, and then none of us are going anywhere.”

  “You will not move from this spot,” the man said, turning around with a creased forehead and an annoyance in his voice.

  “Wait a minute now…,” Marcy started.

  “Not… one… millimetre,” the man said again, in a tone that showed he was not used to having his words questioned.

  “Look, pal,” Jimmy said, stepping towards the man, “just because you’re paying the bill doesn’t mean that you bought the bird, clear? If we deem it necessary that we need to take off and circle to bring this girl back up to temperature, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “We’re not risking getting stuck here or worse,” Marcy added. “You’ve got to trust that we know what we’re doing here, okay?”

  “The rotors will not freeze. Your machine will not falter; it is on a mission from God,” the man replied.

  “What?” Marcy said, unable to keep the laughter from her voice. “Look, buddy, when it comes to blind faith or my gut, I’ll take my gut every time. And where the hell exactly do you get off trying to give us orders on our bird?”

  “Take it easy,” Jimmy whispered to her.

  “You will do exactly as you are instructed to do,” the man responded coldly.

  “The hell I will!” Marcy exclaimed as her temperature raised despite the freezing one outside.

  “She doesn’t mean that,” Jimmy said, trying to placate the situation.

  “THOMAS!” the man yelled back towards the rest of his squad.

  A brawny beard
ed man rushed forwards. “Sir,” he said when he reached them, snapping to attention.

  “You fly this thing?”

  “Oh, this is rich.” Marcy laughed bitterly.

  Thomas leaned past them and looked around the cockpit. “I think so,” he said thoughtfully. “Yeah. Wilson can co-pilot. She’s got enough experience to help.”

  “Oh, so now you’re threatening to replace us!” Marcy sneered.

  “He’s not saying that,” Jimmy said quickly. “He’s just making a point and now it’s made, right?”

  “Wrong,” the man replied.

  The pistol was up and had fired twice before either pilot could see it coming and react.

  Both Jimmy and Marcy were hit in the head at point-blank range and the inside of their cockpit was instantly showered with blood and brain fragments.

  “Clean that up,” the man said to Thomas as he lowered his still smoking pistol and tucked it back in its holster. “We’ve got work to do.”chapter 38

  A HERO RISES, A HERO FALLS

  Crimson crept around the basement not making a sound. His senses were now fully attuned to his surroundings and he could feel the beast above, feel its heartbeat, its breathing, its muscles tensing when it would change direction and move.

  He was linked to the prey as always, just this time he was smart enough to know which of them was the hunter and which was the hunted, and he had to admit, it wasn’t much fun being this side of the divide.

  A quick recon of the basement had shown him that there were enough explosive items to make a mess.

  There were multiple CO2 canisters, most of which seemed largely empty but piled together should be enough to get the party started. There were a couple of propane tanks stored down here for the kitchen equipment upstairs and a multitude of wiring that could be fashioned to form a deadly holding trap for someone or something to step upon.

  The others stood in hushed silence while he worked and he was thankful for once that they recognised a master at work and knew when to keep quiet.

  The beast above continued to move about slowly, pausing and sniffing every now and then to try and pinpoint their scents. He had already opened a couple of the air canisters to try and dispel their musk, but sooner or later, the beast was going to step on the large rug in the centre of the room and come tumbling down on top of them.