“Then there can be only one reason she’s disappeared,” the hoarse voice said, drawing a nod from the duke.
“An even greater power was at work,” Van Doren stated. “But I know of only one individual capable of such a feat.”
“Then that bastard must’ve come,” the hoarse voice said. It had a bold ring to it in such tense times.
That bastard, indeed. D, the image of the duke, and even the android soldiers seemed frozen.
“I’ll go look for her,” said D. He added the fact that he owed her a debt.
“Oh, would you do that for me? Many thanks! Give the order to everyone there. From this point on, they’re to consider D’s word as my own.”
Just as the Hunter was about to exit the castle gates, a figure in azure chased after him.
“Please, allow me to accompany you,” said the pursuer, who turned out to be Shyna. Though she’d vanished when General Kiniski rebelled, apparently she’d survived the attack.
“You’ll only be in the way,” D stated plainly from atop his cyborg steed.
“I believe I’m not as bad as a human being.”
“You were imprinted with a human personality. And as it was that of a woman, there’s no denying that you’re a woman. That’s what I meant when I said you’ll only be in the way.”
After that, D passed through the castle gates without another look back.
“What’s this?” the hoarse voice cried out in surprise on seeing Shyna standing in the road ahead of them. Not that she’d chased after them. Either she’d raced up a staircase within the castle gates, or else she’d bounded clear over the same to land there. Whichever the case, her speed was unbelievable.
“That’s right, she’s an android,” the hoarse voice remarked.
Shyna raised her right hand. It seemed to snatch something from her hair, and then a golden gleam shot right at D’s face. He caught it effortlessly in his right hand.
It was a long pin for holding her hair in place.
“That’d kill someone if it hit them,” D said. Probably nobody but him could’ve stopped it.
“My ‘original’ was the greatest warrior woman in the region,” Shyna told him with a modest bow.
“The duke gave you no orders to do this.”
“Correct. I am permitted full discretion in my actions until his grace the duke says otherwise. Please allow me to accompany you. I’m certain to be of use,” Shyna said, her expression the very picture of earnestness.
“Why?”
“I can’t—” Shyna began, hanging her head.
“Until you’re ready to share your reasons, you’re not worthy of my trust. Your request is denied.”
Shyna gnawed at her lip. But she quickly raised her head and said, “In that case, I’ll just follow along after you.”
“Do as you like. But if you get in my way—you’ll get removed.”
Android though she was, that was a cruel pronouncement for a pretty girl who said she wanted to help. Still, Shyna smiled. Did even the angels have such grins? Hers glowed with joy at being with D.
“Very well,” she said, “you’re free to do that if you wish. I’ll follow you anywhere.”
III
When D reached the camp at the ruins excavation site, it was silence that greeted him. The eastern sky was beginning to gleam like ice.
“There’s the stench of blood,” the hoarse voice said.
Though there was no trace of the blood spilled by Vulcan several hours earlier when he saved Valerie from the five archeologists, it seemed the source of that hoarse voice could smell it distinctly.
“Yes,” Shyna agreed from off to the left of the cyborg horse. She hadn’t fallen so much as a step behind the galloping steed in coming there. “The ground’s been turned over in an attempt to conceal the bloodshed. And no report has been filed on Dr. Valerie’s disappearance. I believe they might be afraid any trouble could get their permission to excavate revoked.”
“Exactly,” D said with a nod, and Shyna’s face was suffused with joy.
“Your body might have a hundred thousand horsepower, but you’ve got the heart of a seventeen-year-old sweetie, don’t you? Simpleton,” said the hoarse voice.
“I don’t have to take that from a parasite.”
“Wh-wh-what did you call me?!”
“I’ll have no more quarrelling,” D commanded sternly.
Both of them fell silent.
D paid a call on the closest tent. A middle-aged man appeared and gave his name as Deed.
“Where’s Dr. Valerie?” the Hunter inquired, knowing there was no point in asking the man anything.
As if intoxicated, the enraptured man replied, “Oh—a little while ago, she was headed toward the hole.”
His answer came as a great surprise to D.
“Was she alone?”
“Yes.”
“No, she wasn’t!” said another member who’d appeared from the tent—a young man. “I’m Chidol. I’m a student. I saw her coming in from the road, and she had a big guy right beside her!”
“That’s a lie!” Deed countered, his eyes wide.
“It is not. But then I blinked my eyes and he was gone. Maybe it was a mirage, but I know what I saw.”
“When was this?”
“About forty minutes ago,” the two answered in unison.
D turned toward the excavation site. There was no sign of Valerie anywhere. Only the crane and giant drill crouched there like bizarre monstrosities.
D quickly found the hole leading underground.
“She went in here, no doubt about it,” the hoarse voice said.
But after going underground once and coming back again, why had the woman ventured once more into the pitch black depths of the earth? And who was the giant of a man young Chidol had seen?
Shyna gazed at D.
Not saying a word, D threw himself from the brink of the hole. Plummeting a hundred yards, he landed on the stone floor without a sound.
Undoubtedly this was the first floor of a devastated shrine. There were tilted, broken columns and a fallen ceiling. In the darkness scarcely touched by dawn’s early light, it truly looked like the sprawling land of the dead.
“Oh, my, there are a bunch of subterranean spider legs lying over there. The ends of ’em look like they were taken off by a gravity field. Seems the rebel army’s boss man—Gilshark, or whatever he said it was—has been down here, too.”
Still looking down at the spider legs, D was silent, but he soon turned to the left and started walking. Apparently he’d been searching for a path.
Just then, a dull thud reverberated behind him.
“Oops. I slipped,” Shyna said, holding the seat of her dress as she got to her feet.
“You clumsy oaf,” the hoarse voice chortled until D squeezed his fist to end it.
Not even turning in Shyna’s direction, D was swallowed up by the darkness ahead of him.
He came to a cramped space. Apparently it was a small room of some sort. There was a little table, and only three spots on it weren’t covered in dust.
In a hushed tone, the left hand said, “That’d be the idol and the bracelet. But it seems there was one thing more, so where’d that get to? Think the girl ran off with just that one?”
“The one you’re looking for came down here again,” said Shyna. “Her scent, her heat, remnants of her very presence hang in the air. And she hasn’t left yet.”
“Ain’t you the little smart aleck,” the left hand said loathingly. Shyna had said all the things it should’ve. “So, where would you say she went?”
Shyna pointed to the right—and a wall that faced north. On seeing D go over to it, she got a look of excitement in her eyes. The Hunter had accepted her opinion without question.
He put his left hand against the wall.
“There ain’t a door,” the left hand said. “No choice but to bust it down!”
“In that case, allow me.”
Giving Shyna a long, h
ard look, D asked, “Think you can handle it?”
Shyna wanted to shout, YES! YES! YES! but settled on simply “Yes.”
“Then I leave it to you.”
“Very well,” she said. “Stand back, please.”
“What’s it gonna be, missile or particle cannon? This is so trite.”
Having to listen to hoarsely voiced insults all the while, Shyna kicked off the floor. Her lithe form became a steely hammer as she raced forward. The part of the wall she crashed into buckled, and cracks shot out in all directions. It’d been a ferocious impact.
Quickly returning to her starting position, Shyna gave no particular consideration to the timing, slamming shoulder-first into the wall once again. The stone wall collapsed as if it were a cheap prop.
“Wow,” Shyna said appreciatively.
The left hand groaned, “Oh my.”
Beyond the wall lay the sprawling interior of a large shrine. The giant idol that loomed on the left-hand side was easily over a hundred yards high, its face hidden in the darkness by the ceiling.
“I’ve never seen such a large statue before,” Shyna murmured, dumbfounded. To her right was a row of buildings two or three stories tall, but seen from more than five hundred yards they looked more like toys. “Not even the castle has anything like this,” she continued. “Who on earth made it?”
“Some Noble from a long, long time ago,” the hoarse voice replied. “But forget that, it’s—huh?!”
Even before he heard the words It’s her! D was racing to the foot of the idol.
Valerie lay there, stark naked.
Checking for a pulse and examining her pupils, D said, “She’s alive.”
“But why is she nude?” Shyna asked after running over, stripping off her own dress in the blink of an eye and using it to cover Valerie’s form.
“Hey, don’t go and spoil this,” the hoarse voice groused.
“What’s someone like you doing with Mister D anyway?” Shyna countered.
“Hmph!”
Though D shook the woman, there was no reaction. Even with his left hand resting on her brow, Valerie still didn’t move a muscle.
“This is a surprise. Sort of reaction you’d expect from a corpse!” said the hoarse voice.
“Apparently that was no illusion,” remarked the Hunter, referring to the gigantic figure Chidol had seen up on the surface.
“This some of his work?”
Not replying to the question from his left hand, D turned and looked at Shyna.
“What is it?”
“Stay here with the woman until I get back.”
“That’s ridiculous. I came here with you—I mean, I followed you here on my own. Kindly refrain from giving me orders.”
“I owe a debt to her,” D said, giving Shyna a cold look, “and my word is the duke’s. Wait here.”
“Very well,” Shyna replied, turning his eyes toward the floor.
“One thing more. You probably already know this, but if the woman should undergo any dangerous change, run her through the heart on the spot.”
“Understood.”
D started walking toward the stairs at the far end of the shrine.
Focusing a look invested with a certain emotion on his back as he went, Shyna murmured, “The duke’s word? No, it’s your word.”
Halfway down, the stairs had collapsed. Unbothered by that, D leapt off them. He landed two hundred yards below.
He was in a corridor where the ceiling and walls had collapsed. A doorway could be seen up ahead.
On passing through it, the left hand said, “You’ve noticed already, haven’t you?”
D’s gaze dropped down by his feet. Footprints had been left in the dust.
“They’re recent,” the hoarse voice said. “So, who’d have come down this close to Hell before us? And by a different route, too.”
The room was every bit as large as the chamber that housed the idol. There was a faint light, though where it came from was unclear. In the darkness, rooms large and small were arrayed in the almost ghostly light. Unlike the idol chamber, this place had apparently taken a direct blast of some prodigious energy, leaving all the rooms twisted and broken, and reducing their occupants to corpses robbed of their true shapes. There were bodies of every shape and color, enormous pods with tentacles hanging out one end, dried and shriveled claws, rows of fangs exposed by gargantuan cruciform mouths, compound eyes reflecting only gloom, and so on, and so forth.
“A storehouse for biological weapons, eh?” the left hand said. Nearly a groan, its tone showed just how terrifying a place this had been.
Either to prove their own bravery or simply to intimidate humans out of resisting, Nobles had captured dangerous creatures with destructive abilities on planets under their control, transported them to Earth, and performed further operations on them so they might be used as weapons of war. Scattered here were the lifeless husks of their fearsome biological weapons.
“This just makes me all the more curious who came down here,” the left hand said with something approaching amusement. “There’s something funny about this, though. These weren’t the kind of critters to sit around all peaceful-like when their cages were trashed. Some of these things could pretty much live forever. Yet in ten or twenty millennia, every one of ’em has kicked the bucket. For example, the remains in that pod over there are from a living fireball. They can burn the nuclei of their own cells to produce the energy that keeps them alive. If the cooling cage broke, one of these things would’ve melted everything within a thousand yards and made its way to the surface. But I’ve never heard that anything like that happened.”
“Because they were disposed of before everything collapsed. Probably by whoever owned the place.”
When D said that, his eyes were invested with a strange light. From somewhere in the pale darkness, a terribly deep and impossibly vast darkness had spread.
“The female scientist saw him. She saw the giant in black. I was hoping to meet him, too,” D asserted softly to the new darkness that filled his surroundings.
The Great Shadowy Figure
Chapter 7
A voice came to the Hunter. But whose voice, and from where? Actually, it wasn’t clear that it even was a voice. Though D heard it distinctly, it was impossible to decide whether it came to him through his ears or crept directly into his brain.
How good of you to come.
“What are you scheming at?” D asked, his voice swallowed up by the darkness.
My thoughts are all played out. And they have been for a long, long time.
“What are you doing here?”
Nothing.
“What did you do to the woman who was up there?”
Nothing. If anything happened to her, it is because she desired it.
“You’re the one who brought her here.”
I didn’t bring her here. She accompanied me.
“Is this where you dwell?”
I’m not anywhere. And at the same time, I’m everywhere.
“Why did you come here?”
I just told you. I am not here. And at the same time, I’m everywhere.
D’s right hand flashed out. A number of stark wooden needles flew off to all points of the compass. A heartbeat later, D’s blade streaked out. Sliced in two, a needle that’d been hurled back fell to the ground.
Is that it? the voice inquired, the epitome of tranquility.
D grabbed another needle in his left hand.
What will you do next?
Suddenly, the voice changed. To a cry of surprise.
You’ve learned that much, have you? Then perhaps you may actually make it out of here alive.
D felt the darkness rapidly receding. At the same time, he sensed numerous presences spring into being around him.
“So, that bastard can even manipulate life?” the hoarse voice groaned. From a position over D’s heart. “Think you can take ’em?” it continued.
Not answering, D pulled his left f
ist away from his chest. With it came the bloody needle. He’d actually driven that last needle through his own heart, and had now pulled it out again. But toward what end? Though he was a dhampir—actually, precisely because he was a dhampir—there was no blow more certain to be fatal than a wooden stake through the heart.
Moving as if nothing had changed, D advanced three paces. The footing was better there.
The withered tentacles that’d spilled from the tilted pod to his right were now like a nest of serpents, twisting and writhing hypnotically. Hairy legs slid from the end of one of the pods lined up to his left. Overhead, there was the sound of flapping wings.
“Here they come,” the hoarse voice said in the barest whisper.
There were countless gleams in the darkness. Eyes. From this side and that, growls and the sound of gnashing teeth pressed closer. Even the sound of something licking its chops could be heard distinctly. All of them were famished. They had hungered ever since their deaths.
Tentacles whistled forward on the attack. The tips split open in a cruciform manner, exposing the tiny mouths within. If even one of them latched onto its prey, it would suck up the flesh and organs in an instant. Only the empty skin would be left behind.
Not even looking, D swung his blade. At some point, he’d shifted the sword to his left hand. One blow—just a single swipe―left hundreds of those deadly mouths scattered across the floor.
D pivoted to the right. A pinwheel of light spun around.
The arachnoid creatures pouncing on him were decapitated with ease, spilling a disturbingly colored ichor. It quickly corroded the floor where it landed, sending up white smoke as the stone evaporated. Untouched by the spraying ichor, D moved with the grace of a dancer. A stark flash described an elegant arc, with the spiders it touched being cut in two as if by a machine. D’s blade had seized control of the airspace. Anything that entered that area was certain to be cut down.
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