by K. C. Finn
Cae runs his fingers over the gun at his hip, inhaling a much-needed gulp of air through his mask. He prods Julius to set off after her and both men look up to the rocky ceiling to follow the shape of the lighting wires. They protrude in coils under a thick layer of the same gloss that coats the tunnel walls.
The farther the trio trek into the corridor, the more wires gather above their heads, until it is a thick, undulating cord of power that guides them on their way. The buzzing lights become brighter and less noisy after several minutes’ walking, a sure sign that the source of their power is getting nearer.
Cae keeps his eyes glued to the back of Kendra’s head, his concerns about disabling the console returning to haunt him once more. Will she react with anger when she feels the full weight of the metal grafted to her bones for the first time? How long will it take her to realise what those sensations mean? Will it hurt her? Cae winces at the thought that his actions could once again bring her pain. But more than that, he wonders if she will forgive him if he tells her how long he has known her secret.
“Back,” Kendra snaps, barely audible as she suddenly leaps towards Julius, pulling the professor into a crevice in the tunnel wall. At her word Cae dives for an offshoot tunnel opposite them and watches the bright space of the junction ahead. He waits for his senses to pick out what Kendra’s superior hearing has already caught.
Footsteps. Only enough for one person. Flat shoes, definitely not Angelica’s trademark heels. A shadow slowly grows on the tunnel wall to Cae’s left, followed by the faint, echoing sound of a lacklustre sigh. The shape forming from the shadows is one that Cae thinks he knows; a sour thickness settles at the back of his throat as the figure approaches.
His face looks older and thinner than it had a couple of weeks ago, but the quality fabric of the expensive, navy blue suit gives Redd Richmond away. His usually quaffed hair is scraped back flat against his skull and in dire need of a wash, his shimmering jacket and trousers are creased and bent out of shape. Several days’ worth of silver stubble collects on his unmasked jaw. Even the conman’s walk is not the confident swagger Cae remembers, but it doesn’t stop the detective from balling his fingers into fists so tight they crack his scarred skin.
Redd wanders listlessly past the exit tunnel and continues in a straight line ahead. Cae catches Kendra’s eye for a moment. She gives him a slow nod. Unveiling his gun, Cae listens carefully to ensure that no-one else is following Redd’s footsteps, then he pads out into the corridor, crouching low beneath the lights. The back of his long coat slides against the sticky wall of gloss. The detective takes only a few sideways strides before rage overtakes him and he makes his leap.
Grabbing Redd at the knees forces the conman to topple sideways into the wall, crashing down on his back in a twisted shape. Cae scrambles to kneel over him, his hips at Redd’s stomach, squaring up his handgun just as the older man’s olive green eyes focus on it. And then they see the man beyond the weapon. When he takes in Cae’s face Redd freezes in horror, raising his palms and opening his mouth several times before he can actually speak.
“Now listen Rex,” he stammers, “it’s not what you think.”
Cae takes one gloved hand to Redd’s throat to silence him.
“Oh I know who you’re working for Richmond,” he growls.
“Cae,” Kendra says in a warning tone behind him.
“Not now,” he barks back, “I am very, very busy.”
He squeezes Redd’s throat briefly, thoughts of all the smug jibes and mocking remarks that have escaped that throat filling him with a shameful satisfaction.
“Hey!” Kendra says more loudly.
Cae tries to resist as he feels her yanking his arm away, allowing the conman the chance to gasp and mutter something totally unfathomable as tears rise in his eyes. The detective turns his head to glare at Kendra for interrupting his moment but her seriousness curbs the words on his tongue.
“Look at his arm,” she demands, pointing down with her own injured limb, more blood coating the back of her hand.
Cae follows her pointing finger to where Redd’s sleeve has risen up during the scuffle. Around his tanned wrist is a gadget on a band, deep pins sticking into his flesh and causing it to bleed and swell. Cae stills, a tightness in his chest at the sight, his eyes travelling from Redd’s arm to his father’s new robotic leg.
“I tried to run away,” Redd whispers, one hand reaching up gently to push Cae’s gun out of his eyes.
The detective lets the gun fall away, unmoving.
27.
It takes some persuasion before Cae will fully agree to letting Redd stand up again. Julius has finally given in and ripped off his mask to gasp at the filtered air inside the corridor. The professor produces more of his healing drugs from his pocket and shovels them down his throat, spluttering at their dryness but not stopping even for breath. Redd and Cae watch his desperate display in silence for a moment.
“They say the apple never falls far from the tree,” Redd mutters, the tiniest upward quirk in one corner of his lip.
“What’s a tree?” Kendra says immediately.
The detective glares at Redd, eyes narrowed.
“You know who he is?” Cae demands.
“The resemblance is striking,” the conman replies, “if Angelica hasn’t already figured it out, she will when she sees you together.”
Cae doesn’t like the idea that he and his father could share any similarities after so long apart, but he bites his tongue. Kendra steps up to the dishevelled figure, gripping Redd’s biceps hard.
“She’s not gonna see them together,” she insists, “because you’re gonna lead us to the console we want to see, then get us out before she notices we’re here, all right?”
To Cae’s surprise, the conman takes only a moment to consider her words.
“Which console?” he offers.
After the scandalous amount of lies that have emerged from Redd Richmond’s lips in the last six months, Cae doesn’t see much point in asking him for the reasons behind his change of heart. All the detective can do is hold onto his gun and hope that Redd’s incarceration by way of the device on his wrist means that he might be willing to revert to his old side-switching self for a while. Of course that also means that, if Angelica suddenly appears in these caverns, Redd will most likely switch back to play for her team and leave them all in danger.
“Why aren’t there any guards?” Julius inquires, limping next to Redd as Kendra brings up the rear with her gun trained behind them. Cae finds it a little off-putting that her barrel is wavering between both the conman and the professor sometimes, but her gaze tells him not to ask until they can be alone.
“Guards are unreliable. Angelica prefers a more creative touch with her security,” Redd replies.
He taps the device on his wrist, chewing the edge of his lip. Cae meets his father’s eye past the conman’s head.
“You said they were primed explosives, right?” he asks, his throat dry under his mask.
“If anyone enters the vicinity and I don’t deal with them, we all go ka-boom,” Redd chips in with an empty chuckle.
He suddenly jumps as Kendra shoves him in the back with her gun.
“Then why are you helping us?” she asks.
“Because Angelica’s not here right now,” the conman replies.
The sigh of relief from all four people echoes down the corridor ahead, the shared fear of their own mortality bonding them for the briefest moment. Until Julius suddenly steps up his limp at the sight of a silver doorway in the space before them.
“I might have a solution for that,” he says, turning back with what can only be described as a wicked glint in his eyes.
Cae arrives at the door his father is hurrying towards, reading the words embossed into its metal facade with a lump in his throat. ACID STORE.
“Bring him in here,” Julius orders.
Kendra responds immediately, already grabbing Redd by the elbow and forcing him through t
he door before she can even ask why. The obedience seems to surprise her more than it has when people have given her orders before. Cae’s sharp mind takes another look at her injured arm, covered up by the thick fabric of her jumper. He wants to pull back the sleeve and find out if his growing suspicions are correct. But first thing’s first.
“Look I said I’d help you,” Redd stammers, struggling against Kendra’s grip, “I didn’t say I’d agree to be one of the professor’s experiments as well.”
“You’re a walking weapon right now,” Julius answers, “that’s not useful to us.”
He is standing with his back to the rest of them as Kendra flicks on the lights, revealing a small side cave that has been converted into a storage space. Just as Cae had expected, row upon row of acid jars line the floor and walls. Some of the acids are clear and remarkably dull considering how powerful their labels claim them to be, but Cae’s eyes are immediately drawn to the glowing substance he fears the most. And so, as it happens, are Julius’s hands.
“HCX,” Julius muses, “I was hoping there’d be more than just this little jar, but it’ll do.”
The jar is small enough to hold in one hand, the superacid giving off its own light in the dim space. When Julius turns back to them all with it, Redd is the first to react. He leaps back against Cae, grabbing at him as if to beg for protection.
“What do you think you’re doing with that?” Redd cries.
“I’m going to help you,” Julius answers simply.
Redd shakes his head, looking between father and son.
“No thank you!” he scoffs, “I don’t want to end up like him!”
He points almost wildly at Cae. Julius stops in his approach, looking at his son with a questioning look.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Redd breaks into a disbelieving grin. Kendra’s breathing hitches loudly in the small space.
“You don’t know?” Redd says, not waiting for an answer, “Rex hasn’t showed you what’s happened to his skin?”
28.
“If you could do that for Richmond’s device, why couldn’t you do it for your own?”
They are walking once again towards the console room, Kendra and Redd now leading the way. The conman has used his navy jacket to bandage his wrist, the smell of slightly burnt flesh filling Cae’s gasmask with a terrible remembrance. Julius shrugs, his robotic leg making a clonking sound as he keeps step with his son.
“That explosive has only been digging into his wrist a few days at most,” he explains, “Mine was ten years sinking in and reacting with the skin. I couldn’t have saved the limb. I was lucky to even survive with it this long.”
They had burned Redd’s explosive handcuff off with the jar of HCX then dropped the whole gadget into a pool of the stuff to dissolve it. Cae couldn’t even bring himself to watch the metal break apart under the corrosive power of the substance. It was too much to even see good things come from its burning touch. Of course Julius had caught Redd’s wrist with the acid a few times, though it was hard to tell by his stoic expression whether he’d done it on purpose or not.
“What happened to your skin?” Julius asks quietly.
It’s not something Cae wants to talk about; the story of his burns only leads to the story of his mother, a subject which he and his father are not likely to broach without one of them trying to attack the other again. The detective just shakes his head, watching from the corner of his eye as Julius downs another bottleful of drugs from one of his pockets. Redd may be right about the addictive personality being passed on between them, but that has to be where their similarities end. Julius needs to have an explanation for everything, but Cae would rather just keep his mouth shut for a change.
“This is it,” Redd says with a hoarse whimper.
Kendra yanks open a heavy red door in the rock at his command, revealing a dark room humming with electricity. Lamps flicker into life automatically as they enter, a series of large screens displaying number sequences, charts and changing patterns that Cae has no comprehension of. Julius squints at the screens and nods.
“Each console’s controlling a different set of robotics,” he explains, “without Howard I’ve no way to tell which one is for the soldiers here at Lachrymosa.”
A loud wrenching sound makes them all jump. Kendra is ripping the metal legs off a work stool, leaving its circular seat to clatter to the ground. She takes one long metal pole in her dark hands and smooths it over a few times with her palm.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, looking so deeply into the nearest screen that her eyes seem to travel beyond it, “they all need to go. Anything left in The Face’s control is a threat to somebody.”
And so the moment arrives where Kendra’s whole existence will change at her very own hand. Cae dips down to grab one of the other stool legs and slaps it against his gloved palm, nudging her in the shoulder.
“Don’t feel bad for the soldiers,” he says quietly, “it’s like you said. They have a right to know.”
Kendra just nods. A sudden swiftness sees her put her weapon straight through the first computer screen, shards of broken machine flying everywhere. Redd Richmond ducks out of the way, heading for the door, but Julius stands firmly in the exit path, watching him and the whole display with a look of worry. Cae joins the fray, smashing open the casings of some boxes under the monitors and ripping them apart wire by wire and board by board. A procession of sparks follow the detective and the ex-sergeant around the room as they exchange places, searching high and low for every piece of equipment they can find to smash.
“Kick those circuit boards over here,” Julius orders.
When Kendra obeys the professor crushes them under the heavy heel of his new foot, looking up at Cae with a serious level mouth.
“Just in case anyone was thinking of repairing it,” he explains.
Redd cradles his hand and watches, wincing at the small sparks and biting his lip. Cae can imagine how worried he must be for his own sorry existence; if Angelica discovers that he’s aided them to do this, then his next punishment will surely be worse than having a bomb strapped to his wrist. The detective finds himself giving in to pity for the briefest instance, deciding firmly that feeling sorry for Redd, after everything he’s done, is not an option.
He turns to Kendra instead to find her crushing the very last of the circuit boards with Julius. Her face is flushed, pained with the exhaustion of the exercise, her brow creased in what could either be a smile or a frown. Cae watches tensely, waiting for some moment of change in her looks, some semblance of realisation as the programming within her shuts down. Nothing happens. She looks tired, but serious and calm. She looks like an ordinary woman.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Redd stammers, approaching Julius again, “Please. You’ve done what you wanted to do. Let me through.”
“Not yet,” Julius says, raising a hand, “We don’t know that it worked.”
Redd makes a scoffing noise, his breath short.
“How do you expect to find out down here?” he demands.
The professor and his son exchange a look over the conman’s shoulder. Cae glances back at Kendra again, but her face is just the same as it was.
“He’s right,” she says simply, “we need to get up to the surface.” Julius gets a worried curl in his bottom lip. Kendra just folds her arms. “There’s no telling what kind of chaos it’s gonna cause when those soldiers start…feeling things.”
“Precisely.”
The word echoes through the room out of every lamp, the same cruel sound vibrating down all the corridors from hidden speakers. Julius is the only one wearing a look of confusion, for the others all recognise the pretty little voice laced with venom and the girlish giggle that follows the word. The voice belongs to Angelica.
29.
“Oh relax, I’m not actually in the building,” the voice continues, “You’re quite safe for now.”
Cae approaches one of the lamps and pulls
it aside, peering into the lens of a tiny camera and running his finger over a speaker outlet below it. He glares into the lens with one wide blue eye.
“Where are you Angelica?” he demands.
“Now that would be telling,” she answers darkly, “Come and find me. Track me down, oh great detective.”
Cae nods slowly.
“You fancy a game, do you?” he asks.
“I do,” Angelica replies, “And if you lose, you die.”
Kendra grabs Cae’s shoulder as though she wants to approach the camera but he holds her back, keeping only himself in view.
“It’s not fair to play a game where only you know the rules, Miss Forsyth,” Cae says, “Come on. Give me somewhere to start.”
“Oh, but you’ve started everything, Caecilius,” Angelica drawls, another giggle echoing through the caverns, “Breaking all my consoles like that. Those soldiers are going to be mightily angry.”
Cae shares a grim look with Kendra as Angelica speaks on.
“And who do you think they’re going to blame for their troubles?” she asks, “Who might they go looking for?”
“Howard,” Julius says immediately, “Howard and I.”
“Bravo professor,” Angelica mocks, “And you’ve left him all alone, tied up and defenceless.”
Kendra shakes her head. “He’s in a cavern. The soldiers wouldn’t know how to find him.”
“Why do you think I’m not with you right now?” Angelica chuckles.
Cae understands, gritting his teeth.
“You’ve told them where the secret lab is,” he suggests, “At least one of them will know how to find it.”
“And he’ll tell another, and another, and, well, you can guess the rest.”
The silence crackles on the speakers as the voice dies down. Four sets of ragged breathing fills Cae’s ears. His heart thumps harder in his chest.
“Well?” Angelica asks suddenly, “Hadn’t you better get a move on? Chop, chop, little detective, or Howard Fowler becomes the first piece to be removed from the board.”