by K. C. Finn
PROLOGUE
My name is Kendra Nai, and this is the story of my friend and ally, Caecilius Rex. As a woman who came to maturity on the frozen fields of the Lachrymosa Military Base, I was surrounded by stories of the devastation that war had caused our world. We live in air polluted by toxic smoke, clinging to life by the virtue of interior air filtration systems, relying on gasmasks to even step outside our own front doors.
Our world is a collaboration of technologies old and new, cobbled together from the remnants we could scavenge in the aftermath of nuclear desolation. Natural animals live only in science laboratories, trees and plant-life are the stuff of legend. Our food is synthesized and grown from test tubes and petri dishes, chemically forced to taste the way it should.
Caecilius doesn’t much care for any of that; his only interest is pursuing the criminals who use our dark and dangerous world to their advantage. He is a detective with a past he’d rather forget, a mind made far older than the twenty-five years he’d walked this Earth when his story began. But, unlike many of the aimless wanderers on our damaged planet, Caecilius Rex knows his purpose. He lives for it, and very little else.
This is a tale of past and present colliding, of the struggle for new hope against the prospect of a poisoned future.
This is the world of Caecilius Rex.
Previously in Caecilius Rex:
Cae and Kendra discovered and shut down a criminal marketplace formerly known as The Atomic Circus. Cae was led to its discovery deliberately by his chief of police and former mentor Damian Jobe, whom he discovered was trying to have him killed whilst working for a higher power than himself. Cae almost died at the hands of some very powerful state-altering chemicals, to which he discovered Kendra was mysteriously immune. When Cae caught up to Damian to challenge him about his crimes, the older man was shot by an unknown assailant. In his dying breath he offered one line of advice to Caecilius Rex: “She’s not what she seems.”
Three months later Kendra Nai took her place as Dartley’s new chief of police, only to be faced with a series of stranglings that turned out to be the work of a rogue clockwork robot that was destroying people connected to The Face, a criminal magnate who Cae discovered was responsible for the death of his mother six years ago.
In the process of destroying the bots Cae met with Doctor Howard Fowler, an employee of the Lachrymosa Military Base where Kendra was trained. There he discovered that Kendra was indeed not what she seemed, she was a memory-less eighteen year old into which android enhancements were placed to create a super-soldier, trained for ten years but never allowed to have her secret revealed to her. Fowler warned Cae that he should keep this knowledge to himself for Kendra’s own safety.
But Cae had problems of his own. After sampling the state altering drugs of the Atomic Circus months ago, he had grown dependent on the substances to fuel his strength, relying on them whilst he pursued the identity of The Face and the discovery of why his mother had to die. His investigation took him to the House of Cards casino where a conjuring catnapper distracted him from clues that were right under his nose.
By the end of the debacle at the casino Cae had weaned himself off the powerful drug powders and made an ally of prison liaison officer Angelica Lane, who helped him to the startling discovery that petty conman Redd Richmond is not the hapless thief that he appears to be…
Seeing Red
1.
He stands at a large metal door, the motion of waves beneath his feet making his stomach lurch this way and that. Sea legs are not something Caecilius Rex was prepared for obtaining, but travelling by boat is the only way to reach his destination. He’s trying not to think about the distance he has reached, about how far away his little house in Buchanan Street now sits, because the truth of his homesickness only serves to remind him of how sheltered his life has really been.
Twenty five years never leaving the district, let alone the country. Six years mourning a murdered mother with no clue as to her killer. Ten years believing that his father was no longer alive. Caecilius Rex has finally opened his bright blue eyes to the world around him, this toxic mess devastated by a war five decades past. Amid its fumes and darkness, secrets waited for him to uncover them. Now that he has, what the young detective knows cannot be altered; the questions left unanswered have to be resolved.
“You look pensive. Maybe I should come back later?”
Cae looks up to find Kendra watching him, her dark eyes filled with caution and the faintest hint of amusement. He sees her for a moment not as his trusted friend, but as she really is: the human soldier implanted with robot parts to make her strong. More secrets, more lies, because he can’t reveal to her the truth of who and what she is. Perhaps he’s no better than the rest of them, all things considered.
“I think I’m going to be pensive for a while,” Cae replies, “So if you need me for something, go ahead.”
He hopes that whatever plans the ex-sergeant has for him will be a welcome distraction from his own problems. Apart from the queasiness, Cae has hardly slept a wink since he set foot on the military boat set for the Lachrymosa Base. Thoughts of finding his father - Julius Cadinsky, the deserter, hiding under his assumed name - have put him in a state of constant agitation since he looked upon his picture in Kendra’s old files. Even when those twisted emotions subside, the vision of Redd Richmond and his wicked grin returns to haunt him, the man who claims gleeful responsibility for his mother’s death.
“I was gonna go outside,” Kendra says unsurely, pointing at the door behind Cae’s head.
The detective looks her over, a black eyebrow rising.
“Where’s your gasmask?” he asks.
Kendra just grins. Her dark brown skin looks almost black in the faint light of the boat’s interior.
“That’s what I wanted to show you,” she explains.
Without a word of warning she passes him, throwing out a masculine arm to grab the handle of the carefully sealed door. Cae turns in a panic, knowing better than to get in her way, but also fearful of the motion she’s about to put into action. Outside. Outside is where the poisonous smoke lives and Cae has no gasmask at hand. He tries to protest once more, his voice drowned by the creak of the door as it’s wrenched open with robotically enhanced strength.
He shields his mouth from the toxicity, but no tendrils of smoke attack his face. Kendra steps out into the night, a picture of casual gracelessness, clomping in her heavy boots onto the deck. Cae follows after a moment, his eyes widening to the sight that awaits.
“There’s no smog,” he whispers.
“A pollution-free pocket,” Kendra says, knowing of his need for explanations, “we’re smack bang in the middle of the Atlantic, one of the few places that wasn’t raging with weapons during the Greatest War. No weapons equals no poisoned air. It’s only going to last about twenty minutes before we hit the other continent’s airspace.”
Cae can hardly hear her explanation, his other senses are too overwhelmed by everything he can feel around him. He inhales outdoors for the very first time, amazed by the sharpness of sea-salt in his nose. His mouth and jaw feel the breeze of real air as it rushes past him, stinging his pale skin where the mask would usually be. All around him the dark night gives way to the sight of the crashing waves that have been driving him crazy the whole journey. Watching them at last makes his sickness ebb away.
Eventually he finds Kendra’s face, grinning in that lopsided way of hers, the wind wrestling with her black plaits.
“If you think this is something, look up,” she says with glee.
Cae does, a desperate need for oxygen causing him to suddenly gasp. As cold, pure air fills his lungs his eyes are dazzled by the sight of stars. He has read about them in books and seen them o
n projection screens inside great auditoriums, but nothing could prepare him for this moment. Stars are something that human eyes no longer see, one of many prices they have had to pay for the pollution they have caused the planet.
Yet here they are.
“Aren’t they something?” Kendra asks. She too has her gaze trained skywards.
“Incredible,” Cae breathes, fearful that the choke in his tone will show if he speaks any louder.
“It makes you wonder if we aren’t worth something more after all,” she adds.
When he can tear his eyes from the sky, Cae looks at her with the faintest smile. In her wonderment Kendra’s features are softer. When she isn’t gripped by the focus of the latest mission, he can almost forget that she isn’t what she seems.
“I thought you soldier types weren’t given to deep thinking?” he asks with a hint of play.
Kendra just laughs, still looking up.
“Oh I’ve been deep-thinking, don’t you worry about that,” she chuckles, “I’ve been thinking how to twist Redd Richmond into a whole new shape when we catch up to him. That guy’s practically a coat-hanger to me right now.”
How Cae could have ever suspected that she wasn’t still thinking about the mission, he doesn’t know, but in some ways he’s deeply pleased by Kendra’s commitment to his cause. Without her he’d be dead several times over by now. Without her he would never have found the way back to his father. And without her the vengeance for his family’s destruction could never be repaid.
2.
The town of Lachrymosa itself is a desolate affair. With the Kingdom’s military forces on land, sky and sea all around the area, it has become a noisy, barren place, its toxicity level doubled by the fumes that the various military buildings produce. The region is mountainous and freezing cold, a wasteland of icy lakes, dead grass and hard earth underfoot. To live in Lachrymosa you either have to be a solider, a masochist or completely insane.
Cae isn’t sure which category his father falls into, but he knows it has to be one of the above as he surveys the small area of forsaken terrain before the horizon turns to smoke. Though her gasmask is now securely fitted Cae can practically feel Kendra’s happiness radiating through her body despite the frosty air. She rubs her dark hands together excitedly as Cae flexes his fingers, still cold despite the black faux leather gloves that conceal his scarred skin.
“We’ve acquired a vehicle for you, Detective.”
One of the men who travelled with them on the boat gives Cae a nod as he approaches with the information. He salutes at Kendra, aware of her previous station as a Special Brigade sergeant as well as her new niche as Dartley’s chief of police. Her power and influence have brought them all the way to the next continent, the gift that keeps on giving as the young man offers them a set of keys.
Kendra takes them from him sharply. “Show me,” she orders.
Cae is not best pleased to see the buggy that awaits them on the nearby frozen patch of dirt. It means he will have to keep wearing his mask against the ugly brown tendrils of toxic smoke that surround him, the open-air arrangement of the two-seater craft making it clear that that same smog will soon be surrounding him at speed instead. Two searchlights are switched on at the front of the buggy, a feeble attempt to cut through the smog even in the daylight. Cae shakes his head as he boards at the passenger side, but Kendra waves a casual hand.
“I know this terrain by heart,” she boasts, “put your belt on and don’t start complaining.”
Cae had thought he was used to the way Kendra drives, but the populated streets of Dartley and the vast, deserted expanse of Lachrymosa are two very different things. Kendra speeds past remnants of old living quarters from the town that once was, structures appearing out of nowhere either side of the little buggy as Cae holds onto its thin frame for fear of being thrown out into the smog and never discovered again. His sense of direction is not excellent at the best of times and now doesn’t seem like an ideal time to have it put to the test.
“What’s the hurry?” Cae shouts over the rev of the buggy’s little engine. The poor contraption sounds as though Kendra is putting it in physical pain.
“Julius’s lab is way out the other side of town, right up next to the training base,” she answers loudly, “You want to see your dad, don’t you?”
Now that’s a question. The combination of anger and nerves Cae feels towards the prospect of reuniting with his father is rapidly being overtaken by absolute fear. If he thought Kendra wouldn’t admonish him so badly for it, he’d tell her to stop the buggy, to turn back, to give him a little more time. But with his pursuit of The Face still looming on the horizon, time is not something Cae can afford to waste. He keeps his jaw firmly shut under his mask, letting loose a silent prayer into the atmosphere for some distraction to come his way and delay things awhile.
Caecilius Rex is not a fan of serendipity, especially not when it arrives in the form of a hispeed buggy crash.
The wheels of the speedy little craft connect with something that feels like a road bump at great speed, sending the pair of them flying into the air as the vehicle takes flight. It lands upside down, the roll cage around their heads mercifully taking all the damage, leaving Cae and Kendra dangling from their seats, protected by their belts alone.
The pressure of the impact and the continued gravity tells Cae that the acid-scarred skin beneath his long dark coat has once again broken open. As he disentangles himself from his belt and carefully rotates out onto the ground, the young detective can feel the sickly sensation of his raw, bleeding skin sticking to his shirt at his stomach, chest and back. He thanks some unknown power that he has decided on dark colours and a thick jumper for the day’s outing, but also admonishes that same universal force for providing such a painful distraction for them both.
“Help me get this thing upright,” Kendra says immediately, pushing flat hands against the side of the buggy as it starts to gradually budge.
“Don’t you want to see what we hit back there?” Cae asks as he helps her.
Together they heave the little buggy back to a usable position, but in truth Cae knows that Kendra’s enhanced strength has done most of the work. He wonders if she ever ponders how inhumanly able she is, but perhaps she has been too well trained (or well programmed) to avoid such thoughts. She dusts off her dark hands and gives him a shrug.
“I guess so,” she replies, “If the road’s torn up I should call it in, save the others from the nasty shock we got.”
Cae lets her lead the way in the thick brown smog, sticking close by her as patches of daylight permeate the path. The obstruction is a fair way back from where the buggy eventually landed and Cae begins to wonder if Kendra really knows where she’s going, until she suddenly gives a sharp, guttural noise.
“Ugh!”
Cae crashes straight into the back of her, catching her shoulders to steady them both. Her foot has connected with the bump they ran over and as Cae looks over Kendra’s shoulder his eyes widen with shock.
“Tell me I’m not seeing this,” Kendra says with a hollow laugh, “This can’t be happening to us still, not here, not now.”
“It’s a body all right,” Cae confirms with a sigh, his gaze roving over the corpse on the floor.
The body belongs to a man of stocky build, his caramel-toned face is turned away from the pair as Kendra crouches down to inspect him. He is wearing army fatigues, a discarded rifle lies just where the smog starts to fade Cae’s vision. As Kendra pulls back his khaki collar, she finds his throat has been garrotted to the maxim of brutality.
“Well at least we know we didn’t kill him on impact,” she says darkly.
“Hmm,” Cae adds, “That’s not necessarily a good thing.”
A brutal murderer on the loose is not something he’d been expecting to find in the search for his father. Kendra turns the dead man’s neck to inspect his injuries further, suddenly gasping and leaping back from him, much to Cae’s surprise. She stumbles to h
er feet, her eyes so wide the whites are visible all the way around her hazel pupils.
“What the hell is that?” she exclaims.
Cae’s gaze falls upon the new portion of the man’s neck that Kendra has just uncovered. Here the gash made by whatever cut into his neck is much wider, revealing the organs and flesh within.
And part of his throat is made of metal.
3.
“What is he?” Kendra stammers.
It’s not often that the ex-sergeant is disturbed by the sight of carnage and Cae finds it painfully ironic that this scene should be one of those rare things that has set her off in a panic. Lachrymosa, he knows all too well, is the root of the BiAndro project: an experiment where human bodies have been implemented with robotic technology. Super soldiers, just like Kendra, not one of them aware that they aren’t totally human for fear that the information would drive them to the brink of insanity and beyond.
“Perhaps it’s a medical thing,” Cae offers, trying to find a suitable lie to cover the truth he’s already begun revealing.
Kendra shakes her head, transfixed by the sight of the body. Cae notes with suspicion that there is very little blood emanating from the wounds at the man’s throat, as though the metal running within his trachea is designed to stem its flow. Kendra crouches down again, fingertips reaching out to land gently on the dead man’s chest.
“It’s more than that,” she says. Cae feels his own panic level rising; the need to get Kendra out of this situation is becoming more critical by the moment.
“Let’s call it in from the buggy’s com system,” he suggests, taking her by the elbow and putting all his strength into lifting her away. “Kendra, come on.”
She doesn’t budge, but the feeling is short lived. This time when she leaps back, she lets out the first proper scream Cae has ever heard her unleash.
The corpse has opened its eyes.
The man with his neck half-destroyed sits up, eyes flickering around as he takes in the sight of Kendra, shocked and crouching on the floor defensively. They travel then to Cae, who holds out his hands as a barrier, uncertain of what the android man might make of his newfound life after garrotting.