by Terry Reid
She followed his gaze. “It can’t be much further.” Turning, she led the way.
Rufus threw himself behind the drill, a hail of bullets ricocheting off the machine behind him. The cold air stabbed at his lungs as he drew a ragged breath, grateful he was still alive. Faye shivered next to him. “Are you ok? She gave a nervous nod. “Did they hit you?”
“No, no, I’m fine.” She insisted, her voice brittle. “I didn’t know that there would be so many of them.”
He looked about desperately. “We need to move.” His eyes darted back to her. “You need to turn to water and get out of here. I’ll catch up.”
She shook her head. “No, there’s nowhere for you to go.”
“Faye, I’m grateful for you coming to find me but I’m not worth your life...” Further conversation was cut off by a piercing scream and the ring of gunshots. Tucking her head into her knees, Faye covered her ears. Rufus froze, too scared to move.
Then as suddenly as it had started it ended. It was so silent Rufus’s heartbeat sounded like a jackhammer in his ears. Did he hear footsteps? He wasn’t sure. He listened, trying to ignore his racing pulse. Yes, he could definitely hear them...and they were coming their way. He gripped Faye’s arm and was about to tell her to run when Terry stepped around the corner, her armour and face splattered in blood.
“There you are.” She said, sounding somewhat irked. Faye flung her arms around her, catching Terry off guard. Unsure how to react, she stood there for a few seconds before slowly putting her arms around her crying friend.
Rufus nodded at her, his eyes wet with relief. But it was to be a fleeting sensation, for a moment later his gaze met Lyle’s as the old general and Connor appeared from amid the carnage. He stiffened, his fear returning.
“Are you ok?” Terry asked, looking at Faye. She gave a meek nod. “It’s alright we’re getting out of here.”
“I’m sorry, they took us by surprise.” The water elemental apologised, covering her mouth. “I thought I was going to...” Her face sank into her hands as warm tears began to stream uncontrollably down her cheeks.
Terry hugged her again. “It’s ok.”
“It’s good to see you again.” Connor said to Rufus. The two exchanged a firm handshake and Rufus smiled, patting the young man hard on the shoulder.
“Likewise, it has been far too long.”
Connor looked surprised. “You seem to be in very good spirits for someone who’s been locked up for so long.”
Rufus’s grin broadened but there was a glint of sadness in his eyes. “I’m just relieved...that’s all...” A sheen appeared in his eyes and he wiped them, and then said no more.
Connor gave his old friend a slight nod and then turned to Faye, who had pulled away from Terry. The two of them embraced.
Terry looked at Rufus, making no effort to conceal her anxiety. “I was starting to get worried about you.”
Rufus forced a meek smile. “We might not have been ok if you had not arrived when you did.” He extended his arms to her then stopped, hesitating. “Is it ok?” he asked.
Terry sighed. “Oh for goodness sake.” And she threw her arms around him.
Rufus laughed as they parted. “I’m sorry, but last time you did almost skewer me.”
Terry shrugged. “What? I was upset and you were trying to hug me! Other children might just hit you but you know I’m a little more dangerous.”
“That is true...”
“If we are all quite finished.” Lyle interrupted, raising his voice. Terry turned to his uncle, who stood with his arms folded impatiently. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to be off.
The general shot a dark look at Rufus, something that nearly made him flinch. “You said they were experimenting down here, where’s this lab you talked about?”
Taking a deep breath he led on. “This way.”
******
A guard screamed as a spinning metal blade caught him in the shoulder. He screamed again as his comrades trampled over him, desperate to get away from their assailants. Only fifteen of them made it to the safety of the lab and another six of them fell trying to seal the reinforced perplex door which jammed when it was two thirds of the way across. Finally though, with much force and desperation, they managed to get it shut.
James Crombie came to rest against a wall, clutching his chest and gasping for breath as a trickle of sweat ran down his neck. The six remaining guards ran around the lab, taking up strategic positions and training their weapons on the door. The two lab assistants who were with them hid at the far end of the research centre, desperate to get as far away from the entrance as possible.
James felt like his head was going to explode from the din; a combination of the guards shouting at one another and the creatures in the lab screeching and snarling in their tanks. The monsters had gone wild with all the commotion, shrieking at the top of their lungs and throwing themselves about their glass prisons. His chest tightened as he glanced around the menagerie of horrors; glinting metallic monstrosities with countless teeth – they had ran out of a warzone and straight into the jaws of hell.
Bang. He jumped as something hit the lab door. A metal chair fell to the floor on the other side of the door. The noise ended the arguing amongst the security team and even the monsters in their boxes fell quiet. The silence was deafening. James stared at the door to the lab, terrified of what would come from them. But something caught the corner of his eye. He slowly looked in the direction of the tank nearest to him. The dull brown serpent-like creature within had been throwing itself at the glass moments before, desperate to get at his flesh, all the while flashing row after row of serrated teeth. Now it had closed its mouth and slinked away, retreating to the farthest end of the glass cage. He could have sworn it was trembling. The sight did not comfort him.
Hearing the click of drawn triggers he tore his gaze back to the door. His eyes widened. A young, armour-clad woman strode down the long, narrow corridor. Terror gripped James’ heart as her footsteps grew louder and louder as she made her way down the metal hallway.
Reaching the glass door she stopped. She peered around them all, indifferently. Then her eyes found him. His heart pounded like a jackhammer against his ribs, so fast and hard he feared he would have a heart attack.
Glancing away, she reached for the intercom and held down the button. “Hello.” She said her focus squarely on him.
A couple of the guards stared at him but James Crombie failed to answer. It was one of the security team who finally spoke to her. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Answers.” Her eyes still on Mr Crombie.
James swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I want.”
James pushed himself away the wall, his body trembling. “What are you?”
Terry’s eye narrowed. “You stole something from my people. You took our metal and you created these monsters.”
He slowly shook his head. “No...no...they were only experiments...”
“You don’t have any idea what you’ve done! What you could have unleashed!” she shouted, her colour rising. She leant closer to the door. “Now you’re all going to die.” Letting go of the button, she gazed upward.
The guards looked at one another, confused. A low rumble, like thunder striking far away, sounded through the rock. It was enough to send the experiments berserk. The security guards stood, pointing their weapons toward the ceiling. With a thunderous crash it caved in, hundreds of tonnes of rock burying them alive. The force of the rock fall smashed the lab door, carrying Terry away on a tide of dust and rubble.
As the last of the rock fell, Lyle in his primeval form appeared through the veil of dust, crawling down the rock face of the new cavity he had just excavated. He growled as he reached the bottom, shale crunching beneath his many feet. A few moments later he felt a movement in the rubble and stepped back.
Stones clattered as Terry’s large head and arms appeared from between the rock fal
l, the rest of her tightly packed framed slinking free as easily as if she had just emerged from a pool of water. She growled in response, her plates flexing slightly as she shook off the dust that clung to her exoskeleton.
Grunting, she twisted her head and looked back; one of her six feet clutched something. Throwing it to the ground, she turned to examine what remained of Mr Crombie. The man lay still with a bloody gash across his temple. His right leg twisted the wrong direction below the knee, yet he still lived.
Terry’s antennae twitched and she looked at Lyle, who had also come across to examine the fallen man. The two of them communed briefly. Then, reaching a decision, one of Lyle’s tentacles wrapped around the man and lifted him as the two Alchemists clambered up the cave wall - Terry creating another cave in as they ascended the vertical shaft.
******
He jerked awake, the air stabbing at his lungs as he gasped for breath. Blurry shapes swam across his field of vision. James had to blink it several times to clear it. The first thing he saw was a young woman. She stepped back, dropping the bucket she had just used to the floor with no more care than a child discarding an unwanted sweet wrapper. Red dots danced across his sight when he blinked and for the first time he became aware of a constant pain in the right side of his head.
For a moment he forgot that pain, along with all the others that riddled his body when he suddenly recognised Terry. His eyes widened in recognition. He broke down in tears, sinking to the floor helplessly. “Please...please...”
Terry pulled a chair over. “I take it you remember me then?” she asked, sitting herself down a few feet from him.
James wept uncontrollably into his cut and aching hands. They were caked in blood and dirt. One of his wrists was swollen, likely broken, but he did not seem to notice. Finally, he gave a weak nod. Looking upon her only sent a renewed chill through every inch of his broken body. “Wha...what...”
“What am I?” she asked, finishing the question for him. Again, he could only nod.
She stared at him. “It doesn’t matter. But what you do need to know is that I am a member of one of the oldest races in my homeland and the metal you have been experimenting with belongs to us.”
He began to shake his head, in a feeble display of disagreement.
“You might have mined it here, but it is still ours none the less. You know from your experiments that it isn’t like any other type of metal in the world. It’s alive and that makes it extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.” She crossed her legs and straightened in her seat. “I was told you were trying to create some sort of bio-weapon with it to sell to the British army or possibly the US. A lot of people would have died if that had happened. But the thing you would have created probably would have escaped long before then in one shape or form, killing you, everyone in that mine and a whole lot of other people.” A part of her wondered why she even cared. She pushed the thought away.
He shook his head again and she noticed he had finally stopped crying. “We weren’t...we weren’t...we were just trying to find out what it was capable of...”
“You were trying to exploit it and make money.”
“Please...I swear that was all we were trying to do, I swear!”
She shook her head. “You would never have been able to control it. Everything the metal touches turns into a killing machine.”
He stared at her in open fear, sitting awkwardly on his broken leg. “How could you possibly know that?”
Terry stood, causing him to shrink away. She rolled up her right sleeve.
Transfixed, he watched as Terry’s skin swelled and reformed to give way to her dark metallic armour, which ran from the elbow to the tips of her fingers. The two large plates on the top and underside of her lower arm gave way to smaller, segmented ones that ran across the back of her hand and fingers. Her palm was only flesh, but he could tell by the lack of blood vessels and blemishes that it was much thicker skin than that on his own. He jumped when she clenched her fist and a dark blade shot out of her wrist - seemingly from nowhere. Then it withdrew, her skin sealing behind it. Relaxing, her arm resumed its former appearance.
He stared at her, his jaw hanging open. “It’s alive in you, isn’t it?”
She nodded as she sat down.
“I don’t understand. Did it take over you? Is it some sort of parasite?”
Terry stared at him for a long minute. “I suppose you’d call it that, but it didn’t take me over. I was born with the metal in my blood. It’s been part of my people for millions of years.”
“But you’re nothing like those creatures...”
“In your lab?” she asked, angrily and he winced away. “No. The metal grabs any living things it touches and uses it as a host. It then grows inside it, before ripping it to pieces and escaping when it is large enough too.” She shook her head. “But not my race. It’s a part of us and we part of it.”
“So it’s a symbiosis?”
Terry shrugged. “No. I control every aspect of my body.” Most of the time.
“How do you know it won’t burst out of you one day?”
Terry stared at him wearily. “It won’t.”
His fear suddenly returned. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“So you can understand how dangerous what you were doing was. Also I need to ask you a couple of things.”
He swallowed hard. “If I tell you what you want, will you let me go?”
Terry nodded. “Yes.”
He blinked, fighting back fresh tears. The relief was evident even through his pained expression and battered features.
Folding her arms, she leant forward. “That mine where you were digging up the metal, was that the only one you have been digging in?”
He nodded vigorously, his desperation evident.
“Do you know of any others?”
His eyes widened and he shook his head. “No.” He touched his forehead and crossed his chest. “I swear.”
Terry nodded. “Alright.” She said, mulling over what she had heard. Standing, her gaze fell on him once more. “Was any of the metal taken out of the mine? It wasn’t tested somewhere else or given to anyone who could have taken it away?”
He shook his head again. “No, we kept it all there. We’ve only been experimenting with it for a few weeks. It would have been moved to other laboratories eventually but not yet, it was too early on in our research.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” In a swift, fluid motion, she stepped forward and broke his neck. The middle-aged man slumped to the cave floor, the glazed whites of his eyes staring blankly into the gloom.
“Sorry.” She muttered, turning away.
Connor was the first to enquire about Mr Crombie when Terry emerged into the kitchen door. She didn’t answer. Her gaze instead found his wife. Then it returned to Connor. “I think it would be best if we discussed this in private.” She suggested.
Connor was about to reply when Jo cut in. “No! I’m fed up of all this bull shit!” she protested, storming across the kitchen. “First he disappears for several hours and can’t tell me where he’s been and I get locked in a room! And now you’re all running around whispering and avoiding me like something terrible has happened!”
“I’m sorry Jo, but it’s only because we’re trying to protect you.” Rufus replied.
“From what, exactly?” she demanded, wheeling round to face him.
Ignoring the question, Terry looked to Lyle and Rufus. “They haven’t found the metal anywhere else and none of it was taken from the mine. Everything should be ok.”
“That’s good to know.” Rufus replied, obviously relieved. “I’m very sorry for this whole mess.”
“You’ve already said sorry, doing so again will not change anything.” Lyle replied bluntly.
“I know, but still...”
“We’ve wasted enough time on this as it is.” Terry decided. “You should get home and out of that body so we
can get to work on finding Edward. Do you still have that old scanner of yours?”
Rufus nodded. “Yes but I’ve not used it in years, I don’t know if it still works.”
The Alchemist shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of so that we might as well dig it out and give it a shot.”
Jo glared at her husband, her expression a mixture of anger and confusion.
“It can find Phantoms.” Connor whispered. But his answer only left her even more bewildered.
Still ignoring the two lovers, Terry looked to Rufus. “I had a look for it the other day but I couldn’t find it.”
“It’s not something I leave lying about.” He thought for a moment. “In fact, there are a lot of things I don’t leave lying about just in case. Brick and glass houses are pretty easy to break into if you want too.”
“That is very true.” Terry agreed. She checked the clock on the wall. It was almost 9pm. Her father and his entourage would be arriving in the morning, something she was still keen to avoid. “We better go.” She said, the others bar Lyle aware of the weight of why.
Rufus nodded. Terry looked at Connor and he knew the question. “We’re going to stay.”
“There’s no way you’re going anywhere!” Jo barked at him, grabbing his arm. Connor stayed put but Terry could see the upset and reluctance in her eyes.
Terry nodded to Rufus, who responded in kind and followed her from the kitchen. Lyle looked to Connor as he made his way to the door. “Can you check on Faye please?”
“Yeah...” Connor muttered, looking away.
******
Terry came to glance over Rufus’s shoulder as he poured over one of the many razor-thin computer monitors in his basement. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. This is just taking a little longer than usual, that’s all.” He replied without taking his eyes from the screens.
“What’s wrong?”
“One of the brakes holding the tank has jammed, so I need to disengage the rest so the weight of the tank will break that one so it can move.”