Terminus Experiment

by Jonathan E Bond

  Deep in his underground office, Oslo Wake watched Pakow on the touchscreen monitor. As the other man hurried from the operating theater, Wake smiled. With the stroke of his finger, Oslo changed the view to bring up the stasis wing. The display showed him Number Two, just then placing the body of a young man with infinite care into a vat identical to the one Pakow had just left behind.

  Oslo nodded to himself. Pakow, Pakow, Pakow. A valiant effort, but I just can allow your delicate sensibilities to jeopardize my plan.

  He spoke into the small microphone next to the monitor. “Number Two, begin the restart process.”

  With that, he touched the screen again, and the view faded to black.

  18

  This work brings me to the verge of a technological, magical breakthrough such as the world has never seen. The mating of magical creatures with cyberware is a feat most scientists don’t even dream of.

  –Oslo Wake, laboratory notes. test series OV13652, 02 November 2053

  Julius D’imato sat in the corner of the warehouse, fitting the boot straps of his heavy armor in place. He cinched the last strap, and pulled his helmet from the bench next to him.

  The activity in the warehouse had become quieter, but also more intense. His men knew that D-hour was fast approaching, and there was a crackle of nervous energy underlying their every action.

  Weapons were loaded, checked, broken down, then reassembled and loaded again. All the men were in heavy armor now, their bodies faintly resembling beetles scurrying about.

  Julius took a deep breath and let it out. It had been a long time since he’d seen real action. Fratellanza, inc. had been plenty busy providing security during the recent mob war, but Julius hadn’t taken any part in the street fighting. His role, for many years now, had been more that of general than foot soldier. Like any corp. Fratellanza did have its own combat section, though Julius knew those soldiers would be stretched to the limit by this operation.

  They were professional enough. That wasn’t the problem. Some had served in the Desert Wars, some in the Eurowar and almost all had been corporate military at one time other. But there were only fifty of them.

  Julius had thought about pulling up some of the reserves from different places, but had decided against it. Pulling employees like that would have caused a stir, and if they were going to get through this without alerting people like Knight Errant and Lone Star, they were going to have to move like cats until the actual moment to strike.

  He smiled to himself as he thought about the big two. His deckers had found no registered security provider on record in the compound’s files, which, of course, meant two things. One. Julius wouldn’t have to deal with interference from Lone Star or Knight Errant, because his people had simply changed the record to show Fratellanza, Inc. as the compound’s Sec provider. That way, when Julius started to roll the signal would automatically go out that Fratellanza was responding to a legitimate emergency. Unfortunately, the other, ramification of having no sec provider of record usually signified that the place must have internal defenses of a very high caliber.

  Julius hoped he was up to this. He would hate to let Warren down again. Just the thought of his son strengthened his resolve. If Warren could be saved, he would do it. If Warren was already gone, then whoever was responsible would pay big and hard. Julius would make certain of that.

  “Biggs!” he bellowed.

  Biggs snapped to at the telecom, where he’d been taking notes. His curly red hair and little boy freckles made the fangs in his mouth look completely out of place. “Boss?”

  “Status report? We can’t wait all night”

  The big ork ripped a sheet of paper off the pad on which he’d been writing, and disconnected from the telecom. lie strode over to Julius with the confident walk of one who knows himself, who knows exactly what he is capable of doing.

  “Things ain’t right and they ain’t normal,” Biggs said. “And if it weren’t for what you told us earlier, I’da thought every contact I had in Hell’s Kitchen had started chippin’.”

  Julius nodded. “Spill it.”

  Biggs looked down at the paper and scratched his head, as if he were having trouble deciphering his own writing. “Okay, but this is gonna sound a bit strange.”

  He cleared his throat. “First contact I talked to is a guy who’s usually reliable. He didn’t know that much, only that somebody bought up a former Fuchi processing plant in Hell’s Kitchen about three years ago. A month or so later, whoever bought it turned it into a soup kitchen. Free food, and no forced sermons like they have at the mission, So they was pretty popular.

  “My contact said he never went there, but he’d heard that anyone who was down and out could show up and get a hot meal and a blanket. In winter, the Hell’s Kitchen folk put up a little encampment out there. He says that’s about the time people started disappearin’.”

  Julius looked up. “Disappearing? Did he say why?”

  Biggs shook his head. “Naw, he just says that after that, everybody was afraid of the place. In fact, some of the folk won’t even go back there to get their stuff from the camp. And when yer talkin’ about people who got little or nothin’ to start with, they gotta be pretty damn scared to leave anything behind.”

  Julius nodded. “That it?”

  Biggs paused, and Julius could tell he was weighing his answer. “Well, no. That’s only the start of it.”

  Julius nodded again. “Go on.”

  “The next guy I talked to swore up and down it was a secret ghoul… enclave? Is that right? I think that means that a bunch of ghouls are holed up there. He says that’s why people are disappearing, ‘cause the ghouls are eating them. But I figure that’s just paranoia, ‘cause nobody’s seen any of the usual signs, and if ghouls are out there, they’ve been keepin’ to themselves for the last coupla months. I dealt with ghouls before. No matter how many people they mighta snagged a few months ago, they’d be getting pretty hungry by now.”

  Julius nodded. “It’s not ghouls, so skip the rest of that.”

  Biggs licked his lips and glanced again at his notes. “The next one’s somebody I used to trust, but she’s been known to go benders the last couple of years, so take this with a big rock of salt. She’s not sure, but her guess is that the place is a chop shop for body parts. She says that in the first month, before they opened the soup kitchen, there was lots of medical supplies delivered in unmarked vans, She knows, ‘cause she got the registration number off one of the trucks and decked into the DMV. The truck was registered to Zulu BioGen, a small, but very high-tech firm out of Atlanta, but with branches all over the world.”

  Something nagged at the back of Julius’ mind. That name rang a bell. Biggs started to go on, but Julius held up a hand. “Zulu BioGen, why do I know that name?”

  Riggs shrugged. “Dunno, but I can have the decker boys check it out for you.”

  Julius nodded slowly, feeling as if he was missing something, but couldn’t quite get it. Finally, he sighed. “Yes. Track it. If something goes wrong tonight, and we don’t get the bad guy, we’re going to want any shred of information that might help us. I want Zulu’s logs of what they sent here, and who bought it, and if you run into dummy corps, or anything like that, I want you to double your efforts.”

  “You wanna hear the rest of this?” For the first time, the big ork seemed unsure of himself.

  Julius nodded.

  Biggs shifted his weight from foot to foot, and Julius could tell he was uncomfortable. “Come on, Biggs. I haven’t laughed at you yet, so spill it.”

  “Well, the last part is so crazy I wouldn’t even waste your time with it, except the source I got it from has never let me down. Ever. She tells me she did an astral fly-by about two months ago. The place is protected up the yin-yang. but she managed to find a few cracks in its armor. She says they got monsters in there. Things she never saw before, things that shouldn’t exist. She also says everything inside that place is crazy, with this fragged-up. unnatura
l kinda aura like she’s never seen before.”

  Julius felt the muscles in his neck go tense. “Talk to me.”

  Biggs scratched his warty chin with one huge hand. “She told me somebody is doing very bad things to animals and people. That something or somebody was turning them into things that shouldn’t exist. She also said she mighta been able to tell me more if she hadn’t been astral, but that something… not sure exactly what she called it…” He stopped to think for a moment. “Oh yeah, I think she called it the background count, said it was too high and frizzing up her view.”

  Julius nodded slowly, and took a deep breath. “Anything else?”

  Biggs nodded. “Just one last thing. She said some of these things were wired to the hilt. They had more dead spaces on ‘em than half an army of street sams.”

  Julius stood and reached up to put one hand on Biggs’ shoulder. “Thanks. This has been a big help. At least now we know what we’re facing in there.”

  The look on Biggs’ face would have been comical at any other time. “You telling me this is what we’re up against?”

  Julius forced himself to smile. “Plan for the worst, and you’ll always be pleasantly surprised.”

  19

  We reckon there are three hermetic organizations that know cybermantic magic in enough depth to produce mages who can cheat death: the Ordo Maximus, Aztechnology, and the Azanian Heavenherds… We know the Azzies use sacrifice and blood spirits to cope with the drain. I’ve heard similar stories about Ordo Maximus, except for the part about blood spirits. The Azanians know the formulae and rituals for cybermantic magic, but they do not practice it. It’s anathema to them.

  –From encrypted telecom transcripts posted to Shadowland BBS by Captain Chaos, 11 December 2056. Identity of speakers not definitively verified.

  Following Sandman’s lead over the tacticom, the team had made it through the loading dock entrance, then down a number of levels to a large room, tiled in green and reeking of industrial disinfectant. Along one side of the room a long row of biohazard suits hung neatly from steel pegs. On the other side, a low-slung bench lined a series of lockers.

  At the far end was a round door that looked more like a portal on a submarine than anything Rachel had ever seen before.

  That was where she’d been looking a second before, when the door had suddenly swung open. Rachel stood frozen in her tracks, utterly paralyzed by fear.

  The infernal thing shambling through that doorway was something out of a nightmare. She’d seen enough orks on the street to know that this used to be one, but somebody had sheared its horns close to the skull. One side of its head was a simple metal plate. The entire left side of the ork’s body was gone, replaced by a steel cylinder with eight small appendages sprouting at various angles. The bottom of the cylinder, where the ork’s left leg should have been, was an articulated foot that looked impossibly thin to bear up under that much weight.

  The ork’s eyes were gone and in their place was a steel grid that completely encircled its shaved head, attaching to the metal plate for support.

  Rachel had seen something like this once. It was supposed to give the person a three-sixty view of the world. They hadn’t been very popular. because most people couldn’t adjust to having that much visual field. Just above the viewing bar, to the side of the metal plate, the ork had the words “NUMBER ONE” tattooed into the skin of its forehead.

  All these things she could have dealt with. She had seen body mods before, though these were clumsier and more obvious. No, the thing that made her body seize upon her was the ork’s mouth.

  The mouth was filled with needle teeth that didn’t quite mesh. They had broken off in places and some of the splinters jutted through the dead flesh of the ork’s lips.

  “Down! Now!”

  It was Sin, right behind Rachel. Then Sin’s hand was on her shoulder, gripping with a strength Rachel wouldn’t have dreamed, shoving her violently to the floor.

  Above her head, she heard two soft twangs, and watched as the ork developed dual feathered hafts in its throat.

  The thing let out a strangled cry, and turned a half-circle to stumble into the frame of the round door. It landed on its right side, mechanical leg peddling against empty air while its flesh leg twitched uncontrollably.

  More twangs followed the first, and as two more crossbow bolts buried themselves in the things body, the twitching of the flesh leg stilled. Even so, the chrome leg spasmed twice more before it finally jerked once and then dropped. As if someone had just cut the power.

  Sinunu’s hand was still on Rachel’s shoulder as Flak’s huge form did a low, curled vault over her, landed on one foot, and spun to the side of the doorway, the Vindicator going into its warm-up whine as he jammed it through the circular opening.

  “Twelve o’clock clear.” Flak voice was soft.

  “Six clear.” It was Truxa’s voice from somewhere behind Rachel.

  “You solid?” Sinunu touched the side of Rachel’s face, pulling her gaze from the downed monstrosity in front of her. “I said, ‘you solid?’ ”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Package secure,” said Sinunu.

  Rachel pushed Sinunu’s hand off her shoulder and stood. She wasn’t exactly proud of her reaction to the situation, but she wasn’t going to be called a “package” if she could help it.

  From just behind her, she could hear Truxa say, “I didn’t think it was possible. There’s no way that thing should be able to exist.” The wonder and fear in her voice made Rachel feel just a bit better about how she’d reacted.

  Over the headset they’d given her, she heard Flak say, “Talk to me, Sandman. What the hell was that all about?”

  There was a pause, then, “Whoever’s helping us out has gone to a lot of sweat pulling this particular room off-line. I didn’t notice, because they covered their tracks pretty well. It looks like they didn’t want anyone finding out that the decon tanks shut down just as your newly dead pal came through them. Sony. I’d just noticed myself when he surprised you.”

  Flak took a moment to look down at the dead ork. “That’s some seriously sad cyber. Looks like a wind-up toy.”

  It was Sandman who responded. “Actually, if that’s Number One, he’s got some SOTA cyber, but from what I can see, they had to make mods to his wetware. Actually, from the schematics I just pulled up. your dead boy is brainfry. They got a direct neural digitizer hooked up to his network. He only responds to specific verbal stimulation. In fact, my guess is that if you’d all just held real still, he would have walked right past you.”

  “All right, enough about our pal. Two questions, any more like him between here and our objective? And how we doing on time?”

  “Good news is you got nothing between you and our boy. Bad news is that I got some minor activity on the home front here. Everything just went on red alert. I think you got about eleven minutes until your position is completely compromised.”

  “All right, boys and girls,” Flak grunted. “Time to hump and earn our pay.” With one hand, he lifted the ork’s body and shoved it under the bench next to the lockers, then covered it with a biohazard suit. it wouldn’t fool anybody who actually entered the room, but it might keep from alerting someone merely walking past.

  The rest of the team were taking up their positions again. but Rachel felt Sinunu’s hand on her arm. She turned to face the pink eyes beaming out of her balaclava hood. “Next time, don’t move unless I tell you to,” Sinunu said. “Barging straight into a room like that might have gotten you killed, and I got a deal with a certain someone to try and bring you back alive. Got that?”

  Rachel swallowed her response and nodded.

  “Good. At my left shoulder, one pace back.” Sinunu held Rachel’s eyes for a moment. “You got a gun?”

  Rachel nodded again, then pulled out her Seco LD-120.

  Sinunu snorted, then reached down to her ankle. She drew a much larger, squared-off pistol from a velcroed holster. “Seco makes a g
ood weapon, but it tends to jam if it runs too hot, and the load is way too light for what we got going on here. Here, take my Manhunter, It’s got sixteen shots, and the safety is here. But I don’t want you firing it unless things get out of control, and then, I don’t want you firing it anywhere near me. Understand?”

  Rachel shook her head to show she didn’t. “Then why are you giving it to me?”

  Those pink eyes seemed to bore into her for a second. “’Cause if I’d just seen what you saw and didn’t have a real weapon, I think I’d have lost it. Just be careful with it.”

  Rachel nodded and pulled the weapon, popped the clip to check her rounds, and then reholstered it. She velcroed the pistol to the small of her back, where it would be out of the way, but within easy reach.

  Sinunu nodded in approval.

  “All right, ladies,” said Flak, who had finished stowing the body of Number One, “hate to bust this up, but we’re flying to beat the clock.” He handed the four crossbow quarrels back to Sinunu.

  “You might want to be careful of the blood on those.” He turned and looked at the covered body of Number One. “There’s no telling what kind of monster made that thing, or what nasty ingredients went into the soup, if you know what I mean.”

  Sinunu nodded at him, then turned and gave Rachel a wink. “Papa Flak, just looking out for me.”

  As they moved through the round door into an entirely white chamber, Rachel watched Sinunu wipe the black fluid from the ends of the bolts, then reload them into her crossbow. The room they came into was almost five meters in length by three meters wide, with a line of nozzles ringing it.

  At the far end was a small corrugated steel platform with handrails. Big enough to hold all of them, it ran on shiny plastic pulleys up into the ceiling.

  “This is it,” said Sandman over the tacticom. That platform should lead right to the money boy’s room. Be on the alert. Once you hit the room, it’s ringed with windows, so some dirty peeper could be watching you without my knowing It.”