Spinneretta stepped back and watched as the hybrid struggled on the ground, splashing against the bladed bed. She could see it clearly now: humanoid with scaly skin, nubs along its spine where spider legs may have failed to form; a slender and hairless tail, like a rat’s, whipped about below her pelvis. Spinneretta lowered herself and, cautiously, drew closer to the creature. Ice-cold fluid sloshed about her ankles.
As the thing’s thrashing calmed, the chilling hiss of artificial breath flowing through the plastic tube became audible. Isabella’s atrophied hands groped at that tube and tried to pull it free from her throat.
“H-hey!” Spinneretta said, grabbing hold of the creature’s hands. “Take it easy. You don’t want to do that.” The thing recoiled at her touch, and Spinneretta forced her slick fingers off the tube. The wheezing grew louder as Isabella looked up at her. “Isabella,” Spinneretta said. “Isabella, you’re Isabella. Can you understand me? Can you understand what I’m saying?” She paused, realizing that even if the creature could have spoken with the breathing tube in place, it may never have done so before. “Okay, okay, look, just nod if you understand me. Nod, do you understand nod?”
The Leng-cat-hybrid gave her only a brief look before turning away and once against attacking the tube in her throat.
“Hey, no, no, don’t do that. You—you might die if you pull that out. Come on, knock it off, Isabella. Come on, look at me.” The thing’s clammy hands, however, continued to pry at the tube, though it would not budge. As Spinneretta again clasped her hands over Isabella’s, the thing flinched and looked up at her.
“Spins,” Kara said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I . . . We have to save her. We can’t just leave her here like this. I don’t know what they’re going to do with her, but we can save her, we can save her from . . . ”
“But,” Kara said in a gentle tone, “what can we do to help her? Didn’t you just say she could die if that tube comes out?”
She choked. “I . . . But . . . ”
Isabella’s numerous, bulbous eyes gazed at Spinneretta. Though the creature had nothing that resembled a face, Spinneretta felt a nauseous certainty coming from those eyes. She could now see that of the six orbs embedded in her face, all four of her Leng cat eyes were faded, unaware. But her human eyes shone with a sentient intelligence, with humanity. They were the eyes of a prisoner, forever suspended in a world of pointless existence. Spinneretta began to shake her head in a disbelieving stupor, and her shoulders started to quiver.
Isabella made a cautious movement—a desperate movement—and reached toward Spinneretta’s face. Spinneretta felt Kara shift uncomfortably behind her, but she neither started nor recoiled. Slowly, clearly afraid, the creature brought her hand closer and laid it upon Spinneretta’s cheek in a tentative caress. Tears welled in Spinneretta’s eyes, and she clapped her own hand over the creature’s cold and clammy claw.
Intelligent eyes gazed up at Spinneretta pleadingly, and on some unspoken level they connected. The adrenal trace of the Instinct that soaked into her was enough to read the creature. Her nerves and muscles rattled with a tenseness she had never been without; her heart was a wild, beating furnace through which only pain flowed. Every second of every day, that heart pumped life throughout a vessel that wanted only to end.
How lonely must her existence have been up until now? The way Isabella’s muscles quaked and vibrated was not just a result of atrophy; Spinneretta knew it was from the pain that had always been a part of her. That one of the creatures had split its own air tube to escape its own existence proved the despair and agony in the thing’s eyes. There was only one thing Spinneretta could do to help this pitiful creature, and helping it would be the worst thing she’d ever done.
Swallowing hard, Spinneretta placed her own hand on Isabella’s cheek. The harsh sound from the tube intensified as she made contact with the hybrid’s damp skin. Isabella blinked four times in quick succession, as though she were trying to communicate through the only medium available in her aquatic womb. Spinneretta’s mouth was dry, her heart throbbing. Her spider legs unfurled and reached out toward the creature, coming to rest upon her shoulders. Drawing pungent breaths that made the stinging in her eyes more distinct, Spinneretta shifted those legs until their tips pressed against the skin of Isabella’s neck.
She held her breath, waiting for a sign of confirmation from the creature that bade her continue. After a moment’s hesitation, the wheezing grew yet louder and Isabella blinked four times. No fear; just wide eyes awaiting release. Spinneretta choked again. She mouthed the word no and began to shake her head, though she knew she could not deny the creature its request. This was a living being, a prisoner to the sinful mechanism of NIDUS’s ambition. Isabella could never leave, and yet she was doomed even if she remained—doomed to die of malnutrition or asphyxiation. Though Spinneretta tried to rationalize the denial, to find some excuse to leave her own hands unblemished, the impatient rasping and blinking of the creature made her decision for her.
Spinneretta’s vision blurred. She wrapped her fingers around the wet hand still on her cheek. This was moral, perverse. This was mercy in a plague mask. “I’m sorry,” she said, the first tears beginning to streak down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
The tips of her legs thrust forward, piercing Isabella’s throat. She felt the brief give as they passed into her trachea, fed for years by artificial respiration. Vital blood vessels ruptured. The plastic tube, too, burst at the caress of her legs. The creature seized, a sick gurgle bubbling from her jawless mouth. Spinneretta felt Isabella’s fingers grasp at her cheek and hand; even if she had been fighting for life, the state of absolute atrophy would have rendered her fight useless. Shaking her head, sobs coming harder in her chest, Spinneretta squeezed the thing’s hand tighter. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, please. Blood ran unimpeded from Isabella’s severed throat, clouding the aquamarine pool beneath them with dark purple blossoms.
Kara was screaming, but Spinneretta blocked the sound from her ears. She ground her teeth together and pressed her eyes shut. Tears streaming, choking on despair, she thrust her tipped legs deeper. When she felt the tips scraping bone, it took all of her will not to stop right there and melt into a fetal puddle. The sound of Kara’s shrieks and her own sobs became the static on so many monitors, playing out scenes of innocence and happier episodes of life. As the thing’s struggling weakened, and the blood flow began to diminish, Spinneretta whispered a final apology before flexing her spider legs and tearing what remained of Isabella’s throat out.
The hybrid’s body gave a final, violent shuddered, and then slumped into the pool with a splash. Seconds stretched into decades. The look of horror on Kara’s face spoke louder than any words could have. The smell of the hybrid woman’s blood was sickening, unwholesome, and the pungent chemical bath that covered the whole floor did little to help. The fluid had been a pale teal before, but was now darkened by a deep purple cloud that reached almost all the way to the door. Spinneretta had never seen so much blood before, and never before had she felt so sickened by the sight of it. From somewhere there came the sound of liquid moving, slowly draining through unseen channels in the floor. It could never have drained soon enough for Spinneretta.
Lips quivering, Kara spoke. “W-why? Just because you couldn’t save her didn’t mean you had to kill her!”
Spinneretta slid away from the body and tried to stand. All she managed was a meager upward lunge before falling onto her side again. The icy liquid splashed her neck and arms, staining them with the creature’s blood. She was shaking, and tears ran down her face. A hot gasp for air collapsed into a sob. “Kara,” she choked out, “that could have been us. We could have been born into a life in a glass prison. We could have been born into endless pain and despair. There were twelve, he said. They drowned themselves. They called these spider beasts to end their pain. I . . . We were lucky. I’m sorry you had to see that, Kara, I’m so sorry.”
In Kara’
s arms, Cinnamon was writhing. After a moment, Kara carefully let the Leng cat down and walked over to Spinneretta. She put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”
Spinneretta took Kara’s hand. She put her head between her knees, taking deep and unsatisfying breaths that tasted like poison. “She was our sister,” she said. “I . . . Even if I hadn’t . . . She might have still become a problem later. If NIDUS. . . I mean, she was—she was suffering, I couldn’t just . . . God, why did this have to happen?”
Kara didn’t say anything. For a few long seconds, the only sounds were Spinneretta’s wrenching sobs and Cinnamon lapping at the receding pool of blood and brine. Then, that unwholesome, tenuous quiet was broken by a rushing sound distinct from the rumbling evacuation of the chemical spill.
“Here you are,” came a voice from behind them.
They both jumped in fright. Spinneretta spun about and saw a large yellow shape looming above them, blocking the door to the lab. Her whole body tensed, and the startled Cinnamon began to shake and clatter.
The monster’s face was covered in dark ridges, and eight eyes glared at them from amid the wreckage. “I finally found you,” the Vant’therax’s said with a menacing scowl. “And it looks like you’ve made quite a mess of things.”
Chapter 40
The Vault
The elevator halted its hitherto smooth descent. After an uncertain moment, the metal grate and doors slid open. A dim hallway greeted Annika and the others. The man known as Edgar gave her, Arthr, and Ralph a nervous glance before stepping off and beckoning Carl and Ronald to follow. Annika and Arthr exited next, with Ralph a few paces behind them. Though they walked on in silence, an audible tension buzzed between the six of them.That tension only grew louder and more strained as they approached the heavy door at the end of the hallway.
The men stopped before the door, and two of them removed the heavy rifles strapped to their backs. Edgar looked at his comrades and then at Annika. “This is the place. Before we go inside, I have to ask you: are you sure this is going to work?”
“Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.” Annika smirked and drew her Ruger. “If you boys put the bullets where they need to go, they will die. I can’t promise you any more than that.”
Seemingly satisfied, Edgar nodded and turned once more at the other yellow-coats. “Any regrets, Carl?”
“Just that I ever met you, you son of a bitch,” he said with a faint smile.
“The feeling’s mutual,” Edgar answered. “Had it been under better circumstances.”
“Under better circumstances, you’d still be a grade A piece of shit.”
Edgar chuckled and cast his gaze over to Ronald. “Good to go?”
Ronald gave a silent nod.
With that, Edgar pulled an ID card from one of his pockets and placed it against the reader. A symphony of blips rang out as his identity was verified. He punched a combination of keys on the pad, and a harsh buzzing sounded. A synthesized human voice addressed the group. “Stage three authorization,” it spoke. “Requesting voice confirmation.”
Edgar took a deep breath. “Cassilda.”
A moment of silence followed, and then came a pneumatic hiss. The metal door slid open to the Vault. A loud siren bleated thrice, and the robotic voice made some offhanded comment about unauthorized access. Edgar cocked his rifle, and the three Marauders moved in formation through the open door into the red-tinted chamber beyond.
Annika looked over her shoulder. “You stay here,” she said to Ralph. And as Ralph blinked after them in a confused stupor, Arthr and Annika followed the yellow-coats into the Vault.
A siren’s wail split the still and stagnant air of Nemo’s chamber. A mechanical voice droned overhead. The red lights blinking in time with the piercing noise confirmed his suspicion. The Vault. The intruders had pierced the Vault—that hollow most sacred to Dwyre and Griffith before him. Sacred, but only to those defilers of the sacrosanct.
“What is happening!?” came a thought to Nemo’s mind. It sounded like Silt.
“It’s the goddamn Vault!” Dirge answered.
“How have they slipped through? Has Nemo not killed them by now?”
“We must stop them, or we stand to lose everything!” said Unn.
Kaj hissed through the network. “Go! Now! I must leave it to you, for I’ve found Nexara and Arachne.”
“You’ve found them?”
“Of course. Worry not. I can handle these children myself. The rest of you, deal with the intruders, now!”
“Aye!” came three voices at once, and then came the distinct sensation of all those speaking nodules melting into spacetime to defend their precious Vault.
But Nemo cared only for the man he saw through the eyes of Nal and Rith and Dyn. Mark Warren, he seethed, the pain from his phantom bodies already taking a toll upon him. Sweat poured down his face. His nerves burned where magic had bitten. Bellowing a hateful cry from the core of his being, he pressed his attack without regard for what became of the damned False Ones.
The Vault was a wide metal room. A catwalk ran along the length of two sides of the room. Beyond it, the floor sank almost a foot. The lower floor was made up of a fine grate, below which the red light’s touch illuminated nothing other than emptiness. On the far wall, dominating the room, an imposing metal cylinder stood from floor to ceiling. On either side, tanks marked with chemical symbols and industrial glyphs fed into the steel cylinder along heavy tubes. A small alcove to the right of the entrance contained a dense collection of controls and viewing screens that showed enigmatic numerical data.
Mere moments passed after the small crowd entered the Vault. The red-stained shadows that fell along the contours of the great metal cylinder began to writhe and twist. At once, the skeleton crew of Marauders leapt down from the raised platform and sidled along the wall toward the corner, guns at the ready.
Annika watched, with some degree of amazement, as the shadows lashed out across the grated floor and began to coalesce into stark black shapes. She slipped Ralph’s backpack from her shoulder and set it down in the corner of the room, eyes locked on the swirling shadows. From the depths of those shadows, a series of pillars began to rise. The shapes hardened and twisted until the darkness melted away like motor oil. When the dark gathering concluded, seven men wrapped in yellow robes stood at the far side of the room.
“Now!” Annika yelled.
A single moment of silence, and then chaos. Edgar let out a war cry, and the Vault exploded into a cacophonous thunder. Carl and Ronald followed suit, and their own guns blared to life. For a fateful moment, the Vant’therax were so shocked by the display that they could do nothing other than stand in the rampaging tide of bullets. One of the creatures—a hunchback who was perhaps softer than the others—was thrown from its feet as streaks of metal drilled holes through its unplated arms. The cloaks of the creatures billowed from the impact of full metal jackets against their chitin armor. Streams of tainted blood spewed behind them where the bullets found exposed flesh. A bestial roar answered the report of machine gun fire, and the robes scattered in all directions.
Annika threw the cylinder of her Ruger open and pushed the speed loader of Karamel Specials into place. She spun it once and closed the cylinder, squinting through the red alarm light and muzzle flares. She only had five shots. She’d have to make each one count.
Blood was dripping from the metal-grated flooring. Two of the Vant’therax had already been wounded, one with the coveted head wound she needed. The others had taken cover behind machinery and now flowed between defensive positions, dodging bullets as best as they were able.
Annika smirked. Keep that up, boys, she thought. Buy us time.
Nemo had been in considerable pain before, but things took a turn for the hellish when he felt dozens of molten ice picks searing their way through his extremities. He shouted in agony. A half-dozen of those pains tore through his skull, and he felt his eyes being pierced by the ghost bullets. The blue f
lashing behind his eyes turned red with his elevated heartbeat, and the scene unfurled before him in putrid detail.
“No, no, no, no!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. He could only see fragmented images from the Vault, scattered continuities thrown into a blender and shredded into incomplete images of blood and yellow fragments of cloth. He clenched his teeth, hissing with each breath. He tried desperately not to crush another of his molars as the pain overtook his nervous system.
He sucked in a deliberate and uneven breath. The moment of weakness made the bodies of Nal and the others vulnerable, and he paid the price for it with another slash in his arm from the Warren. “I won’t. Let you,” he said aloud. “I won’t. Let you. Get away with this!” His consciousness wavered, flickering in and out of the vessels that lay shattered on the floor of the Vault. Even if he no longer gave a damn about the artifact contained within, he would not allow the Marauders to betray him. This pain they inflicted—it was directed at him, personally! And if by fighting back and tearing those men apart he aided the False Ones, then so be it. The anger swelled. His soul split off another piece, which entered the throbbing beyond and slithered toward the felled body of Unn. “I will kill you. I will kill all of you!”
As soon as the galloping fire in the Vault quieted, the six remaining Vant’therax emerged. They flowed like smoke billowing from a furnace, coursing around the great metal cylinder and the equipment surrounding it. They were devilishly fast and charged in two screaming groups toward the Marauders. The machine guns started again with a vengeance.
Annika took step lateral to the ongoing charge and lined up a shot on one of those pulling up the rear. She squeezed the trigger and sent the first bullet into a shallow grave in the creature’s underarm. A spray of blood confirmed the hit, and so she turned her attention to the next one. Finding an opportunistic shot, she put a bullet into another creature’s neck. The thing did not even glance up at her, for it was preoccupied with a far more pressing threat. Undeterred by the bullets tearing through its shoulders and arms, the second robe lunged forward and seized Carl by his throat just as the guns went silent.
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 48