by Adam Steel
‘…but Doctor Prissy-Bitch cannot come to the phone right now. But…Good news! We have a back-up doctor on call,’ he continued to mock.
Red clicked the radio back to “receive” and handed it to the twin; who plucked it from him in a spidery grip. Lucian’s voice came back across the radio after a brief pause.
‘Red? What are you talking about? What’s going on?’ he questioned, sounding very anxious.
The twin flicked the transmitter up and spoke calmly into the speaker.
‘Good evening. Welcome to the Genie facility. I am afraid that your tour is due to be cut short. Thank you for coming.’
The twin handed the radio back to Red and looked impassively at Ellie. It chilled Ellie to the bone.
Lucian’s angry voice came back over the radio.
‘Who’s this? What the fuck…’
They all heard the gun-shot that came over the radio before it clicked off.
Generator Chamber
11:42 p.m.
Max moved his shotgun slowly over the technicians and they cowered in front of him.
Irish was finishing the setting of the final charge on the middle of the generator. He moved towards the detonator timer to start the countdown.
Lucian was on the radio. Max caught Lucian’s expression of confusion, but over the humming and crackling of the generator, he couldn’t make out the words that passed between them.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Max called.
Lucian looked up to answer, just as a gunshot rang out in the chamber. Irish’s head was split open when a bullet flew through it. Max caught Irish’s bewildered expression before the giant fell backwards. Irish’s tongue stuck out when he hit the ground. He went down like a toppled Atlas. A cloud of frost sprayed up from where he had fallen. The timer still blinked at 10:00 behind Irish. He’d been unable to start the countdown.
The first shot was followed by a deafening rattle of automatic fire into the chamber.
AMBUSH! Get down!’ Max yelled across to Lucian.
Max dived for cover behind one of the metal tanks that ran along the walls. A series of sparks shot off from where his head had been a second before as a rain of bullets pelted the metal tank. He slung the shotgun back across his back and drew his second pistol. The technicians were slipping and sliding across the room in a mad panic to escape. The chamber erupted with gunfire, and they were trying to cram their way out the door as fast as possible. Max looked across the chamber to see Lucian running for cover in the corner of the generator. A hail of bullets followed Lucian on the ground. They were bouncing off the floor and sending up small puffs of blasted ice. Lucian slipped and fell at the last moment: skidding across the icy surface.
Max caught a glimpse of their aggressors. Higher up in the chamber there was a line of TALOS guards. They’d taken positions on one of the gantries that run across the room. Two of them were firing in full automatic mode at Lucian. Max roared and fell out from the tank firing both his pistols at the TALOS guards. He was rewarded with a distant scream when one of them fell backwards off the gantry and crashed to the ground below. The felled guard’s assault rifle ricocheted off the generator and clattered to the ground near Irish’s body. The other TALOS guards quickly turned their fire on Max. A bullet zinged past his head. Another hit him square in the arm. He grunted and slid back behind the tank. His hand dangled at an impossible angle. The pistol had fallen from his hand a short distance from the tank. His wound was deep.
Fuck. That hurts like hell, he thought.
Max looked across the room through the agonising pain. Lucian had taken cover and was sitting tight. He was concealed by the generator. He had his shotgun ready. Lucian looked across to Max, grimly. The firing had stopped and for a moment the chamber was quiet. A brief crackle came from a set of loudspeakers that were hidden in the chamber. An amplified, (and almost electronic voice) rang out through the frost-clad system.
‘That is quite enough. Surrender yourselves.’
Max dared a peek out from behind the tank. He could see the soldiers above him and a white, spectacled figure who was standing on a higher gantry.
Out of range of the shotgun, Max thought.
He eyed the assault rifle that had fallen near Irish and had a pretty good idea who the figure was. The arrogance in the person’s voice had revealed his identity. He knew that all he had to do was reach the assault rifle.
Laboratory: Sub Level Four
11:44 p.m.
Red turned to the Twin in front of him.
‘Okay Doc. You got what you wanted. Now it’s time for your side of the deal,’ he prompted, with an audacity that surprised them all.
The twin stared into the orange tank, which contained the grotesque remains of the female body.
‘Yes indeed,’ the twin answered flatly and flicked his bony finger at Red.
Red barely had time to blink before a bullet roared through his treacherous brain.
Ellie grabbed onto Jon Li’s arm as the corpse of Red fell away from them. It had a confused expression etched into its face. Ellie and Jon Li stared at the newly-dug tunnel, in Red’s head. The TALOS guard who had shot Red retrieved Red’s pistol from the floor and then he ushered Ellie and Jon Li over to the tank, which the unconcerned twin was busy examining.
‘We have a most fascinating subject here,’ the twin announced, tapping the glass with his bony finger. ‘This material has been exposed to a most interesting compound. It was one of ours originally,’ the twin continued.
The twin was completely ignoring Jon Li and Ellie and seemed uninterested in the body of Red that was pooling blood across the laboratory floor.
‘It would seem that one of our formulae has been rather crudely altered to produce some very promising effects,’ the twin lectured. ‘This female was able to overpower several fully grown subjects and remain functioning for almost an hour, even after suffering fatal injuries. Most interesting.’
Jon Li shook his head.
‘What are you talking about? What are you planning now you sick freak?’ he spluttered.
The twin’s tone had set Jon Li completely off balance and he couldn’t believe the way in which the twin seemed to ignore the circumstances. The twin had lectured the pair of them as though they had been students attending a university lecture. He thought it was surreal.
Perhaps he isn’t even human after all, Jon Li thought.
‘The point!’ the twin said, looking at Jon Li for the first time, ‘is that we are always looking for a way to burn our resource faster, harder and longer. The compound in these materials…’ he said, and gestured to the remains of the woman in the tank, ‘could be very useful.’
‘Material. Resource,’ Jon Li spat, ‘These are people.’
The twin ignored him and looked back in the tank.
Ellie spoke up: blinking from the red laser gun-sights that were reflecting in her eyes.
‘Your work is over. Soon everyone will know what you’re doing. There are many others who know about this…this…evil you’re doing down here.’
The twin looked back at them.
‘Perhaps you are referring to our missing key?’ he said, fingering his own shining example. ‘I would like to thank you for taking it.’
Ellie frowned.
The twin spoke in a flat monotonous tone and his poker face was impossible to read.
‘Our keys have tracking. We know exactly where our female’s stolen key is. We are on our way to retrieve it as we speak.’
Jon Li’s eyes widened. He imagined the TALOS trucks closing in on the ‘un-suspecting’ Union City.
‘NO!’ he cried out, and lunged towards the twin.
The twin barely reacted as one of the TALOS guards struck Jon Li with his rifle butt and he collapsed to the ground in a motionless heap with a slight groan. Ellie fell to her knees to cradle him. Her eyes stung with the tears that were forming.
‘You have come to destroy us,’ the twin stated, ‘but now, we will destroy you. You have my gratitud
e.’
Ellie looked with red-rimmed eyes at the twin who was standing over her. He had drawn a small syringe. Inside it was a bright green liquid.
‘Please do not move,’ the twin said calmly, ‘I do not want any more mess in my laboratory.’
‘Which one are you?’ Ellie whispered, ‘Alexis or Jonus?’
‘I am both. We are one. Those names mean nothing to us. They are your creation,’ the twin replied.
He leaned towards her with needle.
Generator Chamber
11:53 p.m.
Lucian fired blind from behind the generator. The recoil from the shotgun almost broke his arm. It was hopelessly out of range.
‘FUCK YOU!’ Lucian screamed, ‘We’ll NEVER surrender! Come and get us you SICK, TWISTED FUCKS!’
To emphasize his point he let out another blast of the shotgun.
Max knew they weren’t coming out of the situation alive. Lucian was pinned down by the assault team on the gantry, and they’d no line of fire to their attackers. Max looked out at the assault rifle which was lying on the floor. He thought that if he could reach it, then he could get one, perhaps two seconds of fire at the twin on the high gantry before they took him out.
Might be enough.
Max bunched up. The pain from his arm gave him focus. He prepared to make his jump for the weapon. He didn’t see the red light on his chest until it was too late. The force of the shot threw him backwards just as he prepared to jump. He gasped and laid back against the cold steel of the tank. The bullet had gone straight through his stomach. Blood poured out over his fingers as he held the hole.
‘Bad luck soldier,’ his mind chipped in, ‘worst way to go.’
He thought he heard Hawkins’s laugh come back to taunt him on the irony. He closed his eyes and groaned: his pain excruciating.
Lights out Private Benson. The end, his combat voice told him and he gritted his teeth.
‘Not this time,’ he mumbled to himself.
He fumbled down into his trousers with his one good hand ‘flicking’ out the concealed red vial which he had kept hidden for so long. He struggled to break the top of the ampoule. The dark liquid sloshed around inside the vial. His vision was starting to go dark. He could just remember Jack’s words when he had seen the vial.
“Its…strong stuff.”
Max managed a grimace when the ampoule broke off and emptied the entire contents of Louis’s ‘new-and-improved’ Apexir formulae down his throat.
Across the room, Lucian saw Max die. The bullet had thrown Max against the wall in a splatter of blood. Lucian had seen him take the shot and was unloading the last of his shotgun rounds towards the gantry. He was in an uncontrolled rage.
The bullets rained down around Lucian. He screamed and fired another blind blast around the corner. He was down to his last four cartridges. He considered saving the final one for himself, when he realised that Max was not quite dead yet. He could see that Max was fumbling in his pocket for something. He thought about the detonator timer.
We were so close. Just one lousy push of a button. We’ll never make it to the timer now…I’d be chopped into pieces before I even got halfway.
Lucian eyed the stick of dynamite at his feet which was strapped neatly to the generator and an idea caught hold. He drew his silver Zippo while ripping the dynamite from the rigged wires. He began frantically sparking the Zippo, but it wouldn’t catch in the cold air. Tiny snowflakes drifted around him: kicked up from the bullets that were pelting the floor in front of him.
Max watched Lucian tear the dynamite from the generator. Something was happening deep inside his brain. The pain was drifting away and the darkness was leaving his vision. A deep humming was rising from behind his eyes, deeper than that of the generator, deeper than the deepest, blackest pit ever imagined. Max closed his eyes and smiled.
The lighter sparked and Lucian tore the end of the fuse off, giving it only a few seconds. He lit the end of the fuse which sparkled vigorously in his hand.
‘EAT THIS!’ Lucian cried.
He threw the dynamite around the side of the generator. It came to rest next to Irish in the same spot (where moments before) Irish had been preparing to start the final countdown. The explosion blew Irish apart, along with a sizeable chunk of the middle of the generator wall.
Irish mate. You went out with a bang, just like you wanted, Lucian thought, as he was thrown flat by the blast.
Two of the other charges went up with the blast and a column of flames shot up from the floor. The floor turned steel grey when the frost retreated rapidly from the glowing blaze. Two of the silver Tesla coils collapsed. They were engulfed in the flames. The silver globes on top of them, exploded into tiny fragments. The lightning which they channelled went out of control, climbed over the walls, and jumped to the metal surfaces. The rumble from the blast shook the gantries above, and small pieces of stone rained down from the distant ceiling. One of the conduits which had been wrapped around the huge generator, broke open. Huge, arcing bolts of power leapt out, and danced around the room with its smaller cousins. One of them struck one of the TALOS guards on the gantry. He screamed when the electricity fried him alive. His smoking corpse juddered and fell to the ground below.
The twin who was standing high above, held onto the gantry, and stared down impassively at the carnage below.
The lights in the chamber flickered and exploded into a shower of sparks.
Laboratory: Sub Level Four
11:57 p.m.
The twin leaned down to Ellie with the needle. A short burst of liquid erupted from the end of it when he tested it. Suddenly, the entire room shook and the building rocked slightly. The lights above them in the laboratory flickered and exploded. A rain of glass showered them. The TALOS guards covered their faces in surprise, and fell flat on the floor to shield them selves from the raining glass. Ellie didn’t fall flat down. Everything happened in slow motion for her. She could almost see the shards falling through the air. She could see the brief look of irritation flash across the twin’s asexual face when he looked upwards at the exploding lights. She grabbed the first thing that was on the desk next to her.
It was a binocular microscope.
The twin looked at her just in time to see the descending microscope. His eyes didn’t widen. He looked slightly confused. She swung the microscope hard into the side of his head. The twin’s glasses left his face and one of the lenses shattered. She could see the individual lenses fall from their metal, circular openings. The twin started to fall. There was a right-angle imprinted in the side of his elegant features. The needle dropped from his hand. Ellie spat at him angrily.
‘Fuck you.’
The twin’s head hit the floor with a small ‘crack’, when his head made contact with the hard surface. She raised the microscope to strike again.
Sparks rained down around them from the exploding lights in the ceiling.
Generator Chamber
11:58 p.m.
The smoke started to clear, and through it, the huge generator continued to run: outputting huge bolts of power across the room. They danced crazily across the walls, pipes and bodies. The TALOS guards on the gantry had been joined by others who searched for their targets amid the chaos below.
Lucian picked himself up from the ground.
Fuck. It’s still running, he thought, and checked his shotgun.
One cartridge left. The others must have fallen somewhere, he thought desperately.
He looked across to Max, who appeared to be shivering violently.
Poor bastard, Lucian thought. He’s gonna die slow an painful.
Max suddenly opened his eyes and Lucian stared at him: shocked. He could see no pain in Max’s eyes, instead, he thought that they looked demonic.
Max shouted at Lucian from across the room. His voice sounded strained and barely human.
‘RUN! it screamed.
Max began to rise to his feet. Lucian looked sickened at the sight of the red rivets
that were running down from the hole in Max’s stomach.
‘No way he should be able to stand…’ Lucian whispered.
Lucian couldn’t believe that Max was not being slowed down by the gaping hole in his stomach, and the dangling dead hand, that hung limply from his wrist.
The chemical explosions in Max’s brain were louder than the blast from the generator. He screamed his last coherent words to Lucian before his brain cells fizzed and fried under the massive overdose of Louise’s lethal, Apexir cocktail.
Step by step, the giant walked out from behind the tank.
One of the TALOS guards on the gantry pointed at him through the rising steam.
‘There! There! Drop him!’ the guard yelled to his comrades.
A smattering of automatic fire bounced around Max as he walked out step, by step. One of the bullets passed straight through his shoulder: taking a large piece of flesh with it. He did not slow down.
The bullets hammered around him.
Max stooped to pick up the assault rifle from the ground with his remaining good hand and turned on the guards who were pouring lead frantically at him. His eyes bulged. They were bright red, like those of a demon raised from the pits of hell. Three more bullets passed through him: punching holes in his leg, arm and chest. Explosions of red mist flew from his back.
‘FUCK YOU!’ he roared at the soldiers on the gantry, and opened fire with the assault rifle.
Lucian watched in disbelief at the hellish fire fight that had broken out. Max’s bullets rained across the gantry, and the men fell from it screaming. A blast from the assault rifle took off the side of another’s face off. The guards continued to fire on the demonic soldier below. Lucian watched Max’s dangling arm get blown off at the elbow. It flew across the room, but Max continued to scream and blast hot lead into the men above him. His gun barrel glowed red hot in the cold room.
The twin’s voice came across the loudspeaker. It sounded on the edge of being agitated.
‘He must be on our Ac-4 protocol! Shoot him in the head you fools!’ the twin ordered.