by Joseph Evans
“This is over, Kan!” Sanfarrow said with defiance. “We’re finishing what we’ve come to do, and you’re not going to stop us.”
Darklight sighed dramatically and stepped further into the chamber, eyeing each one of them individually.
“I see you’ve brought a few friends. Including our very own Mr Worm Thief, Seckraman Sevenstars. And . . . is this . . . Esertgate’s head of science? Vance, is it? I suppose I should have assumed I would run into you one day. You’ve been teetering on the brink of topping my hit list for a long time. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“I’d like to see you try to take me out, you corrupt piece of dirt,” said Vance, confidently.
“How did you know we were here?” Sanfarrow said. “Do you sleep here now? Is that how much this sick project means to you?”
“No, no Ropart. Only tonight. I knew you were coming, you see.”
Sanfarrow shook his head slowly. “How?”
“Because I’ve been watching your movements on a map via a tracking device.”
“Tracking device?” Sanfarrow said incredulously.
“Yes, Ropart. In that beloved locket of yours.”
Sanfarrow was silent for a moment, before falling to his knees.
“No . . . not Jenniver,” he said softly.
Darklight turned and flicked his two fingers at somebody, beckoning them to enter the chamber also. Jenniver Layne strolled in and pressed a button which closed and locked the door behind her.
“Jenniver,” Sanfarrow whispered, pained.
Darklight chuckled.
“Did you really think she still loved you? I mean, Ropart, come on, look at you. She never loved you. How could anybody love you? Your own mother didn’t even love you.”
“Jenniver, you didn’t . . . how could you do this?” Sanfarrow said to her.
“It was ingenious really,” said Darklight. “All this time I’ve been searching for you, I should have realised that all I had to do was get somebody else to do the searching for me. This Sevenstars brat was perfect. We knew he’d stop at nothing to find out what was going on here, and if we told him that you had all the answers, we knew he’d do everything he could to find you. And here you are. You’ve walked right into my little trap.”
“And what are you going to do with us, now that you have us trapped?” Sanfarrow said angrily.
“I’m going to kill you, Ropart. I wasn’t intending to bloody my hands to this extent tonight, but I didn’t realise you had invited so many guests. I’m afraid I will have to kill your friends too.”
“Just like you did to Kevan,” Sanfarrow said disgustedly.
“Yes, Ropart. Just like I did to Kevan.”
“Just tell me one thing, Kan. Did you murder Elenya too? Did you murder his wife?”
Darklight smiled. “Of course I did. That was the best thing about it. I killed Elenya first. And Kevan had to watch. He had to watch as I stuffed this very gun into her mouth, and he had to watch as saliva drooled down her cheeks because she couldn’t swallow, and then he had to watch as her brains cascaded over the wall behind her.”
Sanfarrow roared in agony, his beard speckling with spit.
“She was everything to him! Everything, you Gedin forasaken son of the Antiseck.”
Sanfarrow quickly pulled his gun out of his pocket, but before he could even aim, the gun blasted out of his hand and flew across the room.
Seckry hadn’t even seen the movement happen, but Darklight had beat Sanfarrow to it, and had fired a single bullet straight at Sanfarrow’s gun.
“Ropart, you were never very quick, were you? Just another one of the things that makes you an inferior human being. This is why I’m the president of Endrin and you’re living in some underground cave in exile. I’m going to kill you now, Ropart, but before I do, there’s something I want you to see.”
Darklight grabbed Jenniver and pulled her into him, kissing her violently.
“She’s mine now,” he said when he’d finished, and aimed the gun at Sanfarrow’s head.
“Wait,” Jenniver said. It was the first word she had spoken since she had joined them. “Let me do it. I want to kill him. I want to be the one to do it. It’ll hurt him even more if it’s me that pulls the trigger.”
Darklight hesitated for a moment and then a big grin spread across his face.
“That’s my girl,” he said, and handed her the gun.
Seckry’s mind was moving so rapidly he couldn’t even keep up with it. He had to think of something to stop this. Something right now.
But as soon as Jenniver got a grip on the pistol, she flung it up in front of her, pointing directly at Darklight’s forehead.
Darklight’s expression changed from one of smugness to confusion, then doubt, then anger.
“Are you mad?” he said.
Jenniver wiped her mouth with her free arm and shook it.
“Don’t you ever kiss me again, you filthy pig,” she said vehemently.
“Jenniver,” Darklight said calmly, through gritted teeth. “What. Are. You. Doing?”
“I’m doing exactly what I’ve been planning to do all along,” she said. “I’ve never been working with you. Everything I’ve done here has been in an attempt to remove you from this company, and abolish these horrific experiments of yours. You think getting Ropart and Seckry and the others here was part of your plan? Well it wasn’t. It was part of mine. It was the only way I’d ever be brought inside the Divinita chamber, and it was the only way I’d ever get you in a situation where you’d be outnumbered by your enemies, away from all your bodyguards, and free to be handcuffed and arrested for crimes against humanity. Something that should have happened years ago.”
Darklight breathed in deeply and said, “Jenniver, Jenniver, Jenniver. So I was wrong about you.” He clapped slowly. “This was your plan all along? I’m disappointed, Jenniver, I really am. I thought you had more sense. I mean, do you think I wouldn’t be prepared for something like this?”
Jenniver shuffled uncomfortably on the spot, still aiming the gun at Darklight’s head.
Darklight pulled something out of his pocket. It was some kind of remote control.
“What’s that?” Jenniver demanded. “Drop it now or I shoot you.”
Darklight laughed. “Come on, Jenniver, we all know you’re not going to shoot me.”
“What does that thing control?” Jenniver demanded.
“Even my closest staff have to be kept in the dark about some things,” Darklight said.
“Drop it now!” Jenniver shouted, but as she did, Darklight pressed a button.
A square partition of flooring underneath Jenniver flashed a blinding blue light and she seized up, dropping the gun, which fired a stray bullet into the ceiling. She dropped to the floor herself, lifeless.
“Jenniver!” screamed Sanfarrow.
“I really overestimated her intelligence,” Darklight said, musingly. “Did she really think I wouldn’t be prepared for revolts from my own staff?”
Seckry looked down. He hadn’t noticed it before now, but the floor they were standing on was divided into a grid by very faint lines.
“I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed the grid,” Darklight said to Sanfarrow. “Especially since I designed it from prototypes I found in your own files when I raided your office.”
Sanfarrow began to march forward but Darklight pressed a button again and Sanfarrow’s square lit up, almost propelling him into the air with a loud crack. He hit the floor, motionless, just like Jenniver.
“I wanted to kill him while he was awake,” Darklight said, irritated. “I wanted him to see that gun pointing at his head. I’m not going to do it while he’s unconscious. It’d be a waste. I’ll have to wait until he comes around. In the meantime, I’ve got an important procedure to attend to.”
He stepped up to the podium, next to the machine in which all the wires eventually ended.
“If what you’re saying is true,” Vance said, “and you
’ve worked out how to travel back to the year zero, and you’ve actually managed to put Hindglubber’s theories into use, then you’ll be altering history. Do you even understand the consequences of that? You won’t just be murdering these innocent innoya, you’ll be putting the fate of the whole planet in your hands.”
Darklight smiled. “It’s a lot of responsibility, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Mr Vance, I have no intention of returning here to a barren wasteland. I am going to steal Seckraman after he has destroyed the meteor, not before.”
Vance shook his head. “You’re going to steal the messiah, bring him back to the present and drain him of his divine powers? Do you understand what you’re saying? I’m not a religious man, but if Seckraman was truly the son of Gedin, do you think the Almighty is just going to sit back and let you do this to his son?”
“Do you know what, Vance? If Gedin disapproved of my work, don’t you think he would have stopped me already?”
Vance said nothing in reply.
“Now if you’ll all excuse me–”
“No!” shouted Seckry. “If the innoya die, Eiya dies, and I’m not going to let that happen! How can you be okay with murdering the innoya?”
“Twelve years of hard research. Twelve years. Do you think I’m going to throw it all away just for the sake of saving a few creatures’ lives?”
“Creatures?” Seckry said. “They’re human beings, you heartless pig.”
“Human beings?” Darklight mused. “No, no. I’ve never seen a human being with this much power. No, these are something else. Something beastly. Some abomination of nature that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Everything has been put on this earth for a reason, Sevenstars, and finally we have the technology to put the innoya’s power to use.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Seckry yelled. “You’re going to murder them. You’re going to pay for this. And you’re going to pay for what you did to Danney Plum. How could you do that to a child?”
“I assume you’re talking about our very own Project Suffer, or the ‘Rabbit Man’ as the press so amusingly like to call him.”
“You tortured a child,” Seckry spat. “Don’t you care? Don’t you have any kind of remorse for that?”
“Remorse?” Darklight chuckled. “Why should I have any remorse? The project was a success. A great success. Have you seen what a powerful tool that weak little boy has become?” He shook his head. “Anyway, you’re distracting me from my duties. See you all in a few moments, I’ll be returning with a special guest.”
Darklight gripped the central lever of the device and pulled it down.
“Extraction initiated,” said an electronic voice.
“No!” Seckry screamed.
Everyone charged towards Darklight, but he quickly tapped a line of buttons on his remote control and a blinding sequence of light flashed underneath them, sending each and every one of them crashing to the ground.
Seckry had never felt anything like it. All movement had disappeared from his limbs. It was like he was paralysed from the neck down. He groaned in agony as he saw that inside the tanks, each and every one of the innoya was squirming, their life blood being drawn out of them.
Next to him, Eiya was laying on the floor, streaming silent tears, and clutching the gimmypug’s blood in her small hand, refusing to let it drop.
Seckry couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t let Eiya just dissipate. He knew he’d rather die than live without Eiya now. He used all the strength he could muster to lift his arm and reach out to Eiya. She carefully let the test tube slip into Seckry’s open palm.
Seckry tried to heave himself up off the ground, but as he did so, Darklight jumped down from his podium, gripped Seckry’s wrist, and ripped the test tube from him.
Darklight lifted the lid and sniffed its contents.
“Gimmypug blood,” he said, smirking. “You thought that this would save the innoya?” He gave a deep sigh before throwing the blood into his mouth, dropping the empty test tube to the floor and then crushing the frail glass under his boot.
Seckry roared like a wounded animal. It was a noise that seemed to come not from his voice box, but from somewhere deeper inside of him, a primal cry of pain.
Darklight wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and a smear of blood streaked across his cheek as he grinned wildly.
“Twelve years of research and hard work. Do you think I’m going to let a bunch of misfits like you lot sabotage everything?”
Seckry sobbed and tried to pull himself to his feet. As he did so, he saw that across the room, Jenniver was raising her hand weakly and pulling her own remote control from her pocket.
“It’s time you were judged by your own creation,” she called to Darklight, and pressed a button.
Suddenly sirens began blazing and a red light flashed all around them. An electronic voice drowned out the noise of the Divinita machine.
“Warning. Project Suffer vault has been opened. Warning, Project Suffer vault has been opened.”
After a few moments there was a huge crash against the chamber door. Everyone went silent. Then it came again, a humongous weight was hitting the door, denting and buckling it.
“It’s titanium, you oaf!” yelled Darklight triumphantly.
But Darklight obviously hadn’t been keeping an eye on Jenniver, who had crawled over to Sanfarrow’s unmanned gun and was aiming it at the door’s opening button. She fired a single shot and it fizzed and sparked before the door began to slide open erratically.
Danney Plum looked even more ominous than he had in Seckry’s bedroom. His face was contorted into an animal like insanity, and the veins on his muscular arms looked as though they were going to burst out of his scarred skin.
For the first time, Seckry thought he saw genuine fear in Darklight’s eyes.
“Stay back!” Darklight yelled, as if talking to a dog.
But Danney walked forward, his eyes locked on the man who had tortured him.
“Danney,” called Eiya weakly. “You’ll be electrocuted!”
But Danney Plum didn’t seem to be aware of anything that was going on around him. It seemed like the only thing in the room that he could see was Darklight, and he wasn’t going to stop until he reached him.
Darklight quickly pressed a button on his remote and the square underneath Danney lit up.
But Danney didn’t fall down. His body seized up, and his skin seemed to ripple for a moment, but when the light dimmed, he carried on walking.
“What in Gedin’s name?” said Darklight angrily.
“You should have thought twice about using the same technology on your flooring as you did on the inside of Danney’s body,” Jenniver shouted. “You’ve been doing this to him for years, at much higher voltages. He’s practically immune to it now.”
Darklight pressed another button frantically and the square Danney was now on lit up, stopping him again momentarily, as his body writhed in pain. But as soon as the light faded, he wrenched himself forward.
“You can’t endure this forever!” Darklight yelled. “Too many shocks will kill you!”
As Danney moved closer, Darklight pressed the button again and this time Danney fell to his knees, spreading his arms out wide as the power of the grid surged through him.
“Stop it!” screamed Eiya, through tears. “Haven’t you tortured him enough?”
But Danney still wasn’t done. He began to crawl forward, his face set in agony, and his eyes still locked on Darklight’s.
Darklight’s expression changed. Danney was almost upon him. He looked around frantically and made to run, but in his haste he dropped the remote control. Danney got to his feet and launched himself after Darklight, ripping the man off the ground and swinging him backwards like a ragdoll. With a roar he squeezed Darklight, his cracked, dirty, uncut nails piercing the flesh through his uniform.
Danney’s roars were deafening as he pressed Darklight’s terrified face against his own, but even through the howling, Sec
kry could hear the bones of Darklight’s ribcage snap. Seckry was sure he saw a small glimmer of shame in Darklight’s face, just before his eyes closed.
Seckry wasted no time now that Darklight was unable to hinder them. He used all of his might to give movement back to his limbs and pelted towards the Divinita machine, punching it with his fist until he started bleeding.
“We have to stop this thing!” he shouted.
Loca got to her feet and ran to help him, hammering her heel with full force into its side. Tenk managed to get to his feet also, and ran to their aid, picking up Sanfarrow’s gun on the way.
“Watch out,” he said, and began to fire bullet after bullet after bullet into the machine. Metal shards were flying everywhere and circuitry was snapping, but the machine continued to run.
Seckry looked around rapidly and saw Tippian struggling to his feet. There was only one thing left that they could try.
“Tipps, throw me the glove!” Seckry shouted.
Tippian didn’t hesitate. He threw the glove through the air and Seckry caught it, slipping it on.
“Quick, everyone stand back,” he said. “This thing could explode.”
“But Seck, you’ll–”
“Stand back!” Seckry screamed.
He grabbed a bunch of frayed wires that were dangling in front of him and thrust them into the power input socket of the glove before holding his thumb on the charge button located inside.
Seckry’s hand seized up as power surged around his fingers. He tried to take his thumb off the button, but he couldn’t. His hand was frozen into a state of seizure. He roared in agony as more and more power fed itself into the glove.
Seckry could do nothing but rip his arm away, snapping the wires and severing the connection.
He had to look at his hand to see if it was still there, as he could no longer feel it. All he could feel was white hot pain.
This has to do it, he thought. If this doesn’t destroy it then nothing will.
He raised his hand up into the air, ready to slam it down onto the metal, but as he did so, the same electronic voice they had heard earlier said, “Extraction complete.”
With that, the circular gateway beside Seckry fired into life. Streams of blue and green helitonium flooded into the giant circle.
Seckry turned and saw Eiya running to him, reaching out to him, screaming. And the last thing he saw was a single tear fly from Eiya’s large, beautiful brown eyes, before he was sucked into the gateway and everything went black.
Chapter Thirty Four
The Coming of Seckraman