Infinity Drake 3
Page 22
Kaparis twitched back from the blind boy.
It’s working, thought Finn, wedged tight against the bones of Kaparis’s inner ear. He had crawled back along the narrow blood vessels, still determined to mess with his head as originally planned, only to arrive in time to overhear everything, including Grandma’s voice. He felt like he was almost home.
But this was no moment to celebrate. He had to save the Primo.
“He’s your own flesh and blood …” he continued, taunting Kaparis.
“NO!” Kaparis threw down the Primo, then smashed his hand against the side of his own head.
The shockwave boomed through Finn.
The Primo lay, winded, on the cold stone. Who was the Master shouting at? Was he possessed?
Kaparis stared at the Primo’s face. Was there something familiar about it? The angle of the cheekbones? The resolute jaw? No no no …
“He’s yours!” shouted Finn. He had no idea whether this was actually true, but as the Primo was from a local orphanage, he knew it could be. And that was enough to stall Kaparis until he could come up with something better.
“Impossible!” barked Kaparis. The knife twitched in his hand. Do it now, he told himself. Stop this nonsense. From the Forum he could hear fighting:
DRTRRTRTRTR! DTDRTRT! BANG BANG BANG!
Kaparis sheathed the knife and grabbed the Primo – that sack of skin and bones that he was suddenly freaked by, frightened by – and drove him through the catacombs towards the caverns. He must talk to Heywood immediately.
“Ask him!” Finn yelled as they fled. “He was brought here from a local orphanage – no doubt where your wife abandoned him.”
“They are all orphans!” said Kaparis as they reached the stone steps and he tossed him down.
“He is fourteen years of age, he is dark like his mother …”
“NONSENSE!” said Kaparis, kicking the Primo down ahead of him as he descended. The Primo tumbled madly, trying to cling to whatever he could.
At the bottom, Kaparis hauled him up and held the dagger to his throat again.
“Where were you born, Carrier boy?”
“I do not know.”
“Born to a mother – or just found on the streets and handed in?”
“I do not know.”
Kaparis drove the Primo against the wall, as if trying to bash the answer out of his body. From above, he could hear automatic fire and the sound of heavy feet approaching.
DRTRRTRTRTR! DTDRTRTRTRTRT!
The enemy were closing in.
He pulled the Primo along the stone passage and forced him into a monorail cart.
DRTRRTRT! – DRTRRTRT!
Not far behind, coming fast down the stone steps, the lead elements of the assault force – Kelly and Delta among them – gave chase …
FEBRUARY 22 08:31 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
The cart hurtled down the crystal flume into the belly of the earth, sucking Kaparis towards a moment of truth.
“He’s yours, he must be yours …” Finn pressed on, trying to appeal to Kaparis’s monstrous ego. “Look at him and look at what he’s done …”
In the bottom of the cart, the Primo struggled to understand the white-knuckle ride, tried to figure out the forces at play.
“He’s fourteen years old, he runs everything in this place – blind. His natural intelligence must be staggering.”
Kaparis stared at the Primo’s scarred eyes.
“What a brain! What determination! You think that just happens?” Finn asked.
Kaparis computed the probability of such an outrageous claim, just as the cart turned the final curve and dropped to level out.
“You have to be born with that kind of leadership. He’s yours,” Finn insisted as they pulled into the Great Cavern.
It was a mess. Fuel still burnt in the shaft and more debris had fallen from the dome. Technicians and Siguri were rigging explosives around the rings of particle accelerators and banks of computers, ready to destroy it all and take out as many invaders as possible. In the remains of the operating theatre, the medics fought to save Heywood.
They were shocked to see their Master swing his semi-animated body out of the cart, dragging the Primo after him.
“He is you, and you made him blind by sticking those spikes in his eyes. Butcher!”
“He is nothing!” cried Kaparis, dragging along the blind Carrier boy. “He cared for the wretched Carriers! No Kaparis would ever do that. The primacy of the few is ingrained within us – the few who survive and prosper because they are the embodiment of self-interest, creatively selfish to the core of their being. This boy is a communist, a ragged revolutionary. This boy is the antithesis of everything I believe in!”
“Only because you made him that way though. You blinded him and made him a slave. And he became king of the slaves. Like father, like son!”
“Like father, like son – HA! And like your father, you shall die!”
“My father is not dead! You can’t kill him and you can’t kill me! You’ve met my grandma, you’ve heard her. You can’t kill love, no matter what you do. It’s just a matter of time and place. ‘Time equals place’, you said it yourself.”
Kaparis shoved the Primo up against one of the explosive-laden particle accelerators, and, like it was an ancient stone in an ancient place of sacrifice, he drew his dagger for the third and final time. He must do it, now. He must end this.
“Look into your heart!” cried Finn, growing desperate.
Kaparis drew the dagger back and …
THUD. Arrrrggggh! Somehow, he had missed. His half-recovered nervous system must have misdirected the blow, or – it made him sick to think it – could his subconscious have intervened and somehow willed the blade to miss?
Finn did not know the Primo was still alive until he spoke.
“Let me live, and I swear I will kill you,” he told Kaparis with all the bitter authority he had left.
The words chilled Kaparis to the bone. What arrogance, what sang-froid …
“Ha! A chip off the old block,” said Finn.
With a grunt of rage and emotional confusion, Kaparis threw the blind boy to the ground.
“Don’t let him move!” Kaparis ordered a technician, who was watching in awe, and he staggered off towards the operating theatre, where Leopold and the other medics were still fighting to save Heywood’s life. The boy’s words kept spinning round his overheated mind. “No, no, no, no …” He must kill him, destroy the runt. His line on earth could not continue through a slave. But first he must know.
“Heywood! HEYWOOD!” he cried.
From the mangled wreck of a body came a weak groan. “Master …”
He was still alive.
“They say Ondine bore me a child. This is not true!”
“It is not true …”
“HA! I knew it!”
Relief exploded through him, blooming out from his heart, a heart which had grown tight with dread, with guilt, with emotion he could not begin to understand, so disturbed had he allowed himself to become. Oh, what a fool! What a—
“She bore you a jackal …”
“… WHAT?” demanded Kaparis, the euphoria popped.
“I wanted to spare you, Master … When we found out how she’d escaped from the cavern, I retraced her steps … She’d been found by a woodcutter, who realised she was pregnant. His wife nursed her and she stayed with them until she had the child. Then she ran from it. It was a runt – deformed by the panther cells she’d injected … I killed the woodcutter and his wife, but not the child. It was part of you, Master, a holy wretch – I could not … so I left it in the snow for the wolves …” finished Heywood, his eyes slowly closing.
Kaparis felt a sense of horror overwhelm him as he realised who that child might be.
“Never! Not that thing … NEVER! Wake up, man! WAKE!”
But Heywood would never wake again.
From the far end of the G
reat Cavern came a flash and the noise – BANG! – BANG! – BANG! – of stun grenades. The enemy was at the gates.
In Kaparis’s inner ear, Finn’s head was thrown back by the ear-splitting force of it.
Kaparis barely cared any more. He was scrambling out, running away, from the truth, from his past, from the word echoing through his mind. “Santiago …!” Running away from his son.
NO! IMPOSSIBLE. A plot. Torment. He knew nothing, he told himself, nothing.
Yet he knew everything.
He knew what to do.
THIRTY-FIVE
FEBRUARY 22 08:46 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
DRTRRTRTRTR! DRTRRTRTRTR!
“I can hear gunfire!” Finn reported back to the Vitalis. “They’re closing in!”
“We can’t risk letting him escape, Finn. We’ve got to do this and get out before it’s too late!” said Carla from the bridge.
“Hit it!” cried Finn. “Reel me in!” Immediately, the tether line tightened at his belt and – this time more gently – he was dragged back down the narrow blood vessel and away from the bone cluster of the inner ear, back towards the Vitalis.
FEBRUARY 22 08:47 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Heart thumping, Al slid after the troops down the monorail tunnel on his backside, the flashes and bangs of the battle ahead echoing up, turning the descent into a ride down hell’s own helter-skelter.
DRTRRTRTRTR! DRTRRTRTRTR!
The Great Cavern was a sound-and-light show too, the crack of gunfire echoing off the walls, muzzle flash shimmering through the stalactites as the invaders fought their way along the end of the tunnel.
It was time for the final showdown. It was time to get Finn back. And Al was ready.
“Do it now, buddy,” he prayed to Finn. “Whatever it is, do it now …”
In the centre of the henge, Kaparis was bent over the Primo, dribbling with furious anger.
The Primo had been lashed to one of the great stones. By killing the Primo, he would take revenge. He would kill the very idea that he might have ever had a child.
“Pretender! Vilest scourge! SLAVE!” he ranted. “You will die!”
DRTRRTRTRTR! DRTRRTRTRTR!
The barbarians were at the gates. It was time to blow the house down.
“Set the final charge!” he ordered the last of the Siguri, as he staggered out of the henge.
The Siguri switched on laser sensors. The accelerators would remain intact until the moment anyone stepped into the circle, then the sensors would trip and the whole thing would blow, Primo and all.
The voice in Kaparis’s head seemed to have stopped. He should never have listened. If Infinity Drake had not already drowned in his blood, he would soon meet some grimly fitting end. He would eventually run out of air, or they would retrieve the craft first. One way or another, Infinity Drake was finished.
Kaparis stumbled towards the last remaining exit. To the river.
Ondine had escaped all those years ago by leaping into the underground torrent. She was carried along through the mountain until she emerged a few minutes later in a spring in the valley below. She had relied on her supernatural lung capacity, on a knowledge of flow dynamics, and on stupendous luck. After Kaparis had finally worked out what she’d done, he’d taken the precaution of having a grenade-sized scuba device planted just below the waterline. Much more civilised.
Now it was his turn to take the same leap. He reached the precipice and looked down into the thrashing waters – DRTRTRT! – then he looked back. An enemy soldier had almost managed to reach the henge before being cut down. The Siguri were about to execute him. Then Kaparis realised who it was.
“STOP!” Kaparis boomed over the sound of battle. “Bring him to me.”
The Siguri dutifully grabbed a limb each, and carried Kelly, groaning, to Kaparis at the river.
FEBRUARY 22 08:48 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
Deep inside Kaparis’s head, in the network of blood vessels that fed the ear, Infinity Drake had re-entered the Vitalis.
The great submarine was already powering down the external carotid artery, impeller arms thrust forward, drawing itself up the flow of blood towards the neck.
Finn tore off his tanks and helmet and ran up to the bridge. Nico was calling the shots at the arterial map while Carla drove.
“Get ready to hit the brakes and twist hard right when we reach the junction!” ordered Nico.
Carla sent the craft surging forward, ready to curl back into the flow of the internal carotid artery back up into the brain.
“How far down are we?” said Finn.
“We should get there any moment now,” said Nico.
WOOOOSHH – the Vitalis hit the wide-open, red blizzard of the carotid artery and took the internal branch back into the deep brain. Carla swivelled the impellers to break their ride.
“Keep her steady in the flow and drift right across! Find the opposite wall!” called Nico over the noise of the engines.
“Find the wall, Carla!” Finn added helpfully as – THUMP – they hit the other side of the artery and bounced back.
“That’s it! Now keep her steady … keep her steady …” called Nico as she traced their progress up to the back of the eye.
“There!” shouted Nico, at a fast-approaching tributary. “Hit it!”
Carla fired the anchor lines – Tzoot!–Tzoot!–Tzoot!–Tzoot!
The Vitalis had taken them as far as she could go.
If Nico’s reading of the anatomy was correct, they had wedged the submarine into the internal carotid artery at the back of the eye, just off the ophthalmic artery. A big enough explosion here would, with any luck, cause a frontal lobotomy23, but more importantly it offered them their quickest way out of the bone cage of the skull.
“The eyes have it,” Finn had concluded earlier. “If they find him with a brain injury, and assume we’ve caused it, the first place they’re going to look in is the eyes.”
Carla turned the power sliders to the max and the impeller arms went crazy trying to drag the anchors from the flesh, but the anchors held and the blood and plasma were whisked into a frothy goo. The heat indicators from the nuclear reactor began to rise.
“GO!” shouted Finn above the screaming of the engines, and they descended to the open airlocks where Nico was waiting with their subaqua gear.
They had full tanks, they had a laser scalpel, they had their scoots – and who knew how much or how little time. Clinging to each other, they swam out of the open hold and scooted clear of the chaos the mighty Vitalis was leaving in its wake.
Nico led them shooting down the ophthalmic artery, then they turned to surf into the retinal supply. Before they joined the new flow, she touched them to explain: “This is the main artery to the retina. It will take us straight along the optic nerve. If we just stick to the main branch and follow it all the way to the end, we’ll hit the back of the eye.”
“Great, let’s do it!” said Carla.
“Go!” said Finn.
All three powered forward on the scoots.
Dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu-dhu, dhu.
The flow caught them and they surfed its turbulence, staying as close to the centre of the current as they could as they were carried upwards in a twist to join the darker mass of the optic nerve just beyond the artery wall – then arrow straight along it.
If they could reach the retina and cut their way through the back of the eyeball, they’d arrive at the conjunctiva, which would be lubricated by the saltwater sea of Kaparis’s tears. And from there they could swim all the way round to the front of his eye, where surely Al would want to look …
All they could do was swim, and hope.
FEBRUARY 22 08:51 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
“Well, well, well … Captain Kelly, you can be my messenger. Wake him!”
A bucket was dipped into the rushing water and the ice-cold contents empti
ed over Kelly’s head. His eyes briefly snapped open. Instantly he wished they hadn’t. His body was shot up along one side and bleeding hard. Before he could pass out again, Kaparis grabbed his jaw to insist he hear him out.
FEBRUARY 22 08:52 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
On the empty bridge of the Vitalis, the engines screamed and the reactor alarm sounded – NEEW-eu- NEEW-eu- NEEW-eu- NEEW-eu- NEEW-eu.
The yellow radiation hazard symbol flashed and flashed – WARNING MELTDOWN! CORE HEAT CRITICAL! WARNING MELTDOWN!
In the retina at the back of Kaparis’s eye, forward momentum had been lost, but for Finn at least, the spectacle was dazzling.
The main artery had split into dozens of smaller blood vessels at the retina, and Finn, Carla and Nico found themselves having to squeeze their way along a narrow arterial tube.
Lights – reds, yellows, blues – were rippling through the layers of light-receptor cells all around them, like the aurora borealis.
“How far?” Finn demanded of Nico.
Nico knew they couldn’t go much further and that anywhere at the back of the eye would do.
“Go for it!” said Nico.
Finn took the laser scalpel off his back and pulled the trigger. A lightsaber shaft of perfect blue light burst from its end and immediately divided the artery wall and the flesh of the retina above it. The gap cleaved open and they were able to push through a thick duvet of nerve cells and on into the light, into the infinite pool of clear gel beyond …
And there, to Finn’s utter astonishment, the light resolved itself to became a coherent image, a face …
He gasped and his own eyes filled with tears. “KELLY!”
“Listen to me,” said Kaparis, eyeballing Kelly. “I want you to take a message back to the G&T. Tell Allenby he’s finished, that he’ll never catch me. But be sure to thank him: I’ve learned so much. It is a great pity we never got to work together, but then the strong must always defeat the weak. Tell the world I am ready to parlay, ready to receive their offers and trade my forgiveness in return. But there’s only one Master now, and there always only will be while I have breath left in my body.”