Turned

by David Bussell

  ‘Here we go,’ I told myself as I took the leap of faith and stepped backwards into oblivion.

  I squeezed the trigger on the remote, the winch came to life, and off I went. The first few feet were pretty terrifying, even with the brand numbing my anxiety, but once I’d made peace with being horizontal, I began to get the knack of it.

  Look at me go!

  As I descended, I came to realise that the harder I pressed the trigger, the quicker the rope unspooled, and so the more confidence I gained, the more pressure I applied.

  The temperature dropped as I abseiled deeper into the shaft, sending a chill down my spine. Down below I could just about make out Gen, waiting for me at the bottom of the well. Wanting to impress her with my newfound climbing skills, I kicked out hard and bounced off the wall like a ninja. Big mistake.

  My cockiness caused the rope to shift position and find a rusty fragment of metal on the lip of the shaft. As the cord ground against the sharp edge I heard a horrific fraying noise and felt particles of hot nylon shower my face.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  I was going to come a cropper, I just knew it, and I still had a good fifty feet between me and the landing. I considered kicking out again and freeing the rope from the abrasive part of the opening, but worried that the act might further strain the cord and make my situation even worse. The best thing I could do, I decided, was get to the bottom of that shaft as fast as humanly possible. I squeezed the trigger tight and the winch hit top speed, unravelling like a kicked toilet roll.

  Whoosh.

  I was free-falling, picking up speed, racing to the base of the shaft at maximum velocity, then—

  Crunch.

  I hit the ground and my legs give way like dry kindling. I cried out in pain, but Gen clapped a hand over my mouth, silencing me.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she hissed.

  My ankles were in bits. It hurt. Holy shit, it hurt. A high-pitched squeal escaped from between Gen’s fingers like the whistle of a boiled kettle. Then, over the noise of my own tortured cry, I heard a new sound, the scraping and popping of busted bones as the brand did its job and repaired my injuries. Within moments, my ankles had knitted themselves back together and the pain had vanished.

  ‘Ahh, that’s better,’ I sighed, giving my feet a couple of rotations.

  ‘What the hell were you playing at up there?’ Gen insisted.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice, I had to get the rope down in one piece.’

  She scowled at me. ‘We’d better hope it’s strong enough to carry us back up again, or we’re stuck down here, fool.’

  I climbed to my feet, happy to discover that my legs were fit enough to support me. ‘Let’s just get what we came for, shall we?’

  I slipped on my night-vision goggles and took a look around. Carlo was right. The Crypt wasn’t some squalid, cobwebbed dungeon, it was a modern installation, a concrete fallout shelter with breeze block walls, fire-proof doors, and aluminium walkways. More like the inside of the Death Star than a place you’d stick dead bodies in. Of course it was. The Clan were a sophisticated operation, not crazed bloodsuckers from a Universal Horror.

  Okay, so we were in, but where was the server farm? We’d set down in a corridor heading off in either direction. Either side of us was a door, the portholes of which revealed another corridor running crosswise. We were at a literal crossroads.

  ‘Which way?’ asked Gen.

  Of course I didn’t want to admit that I had no idea, so I turned away and tried my best to look thoughtful while I waited on something to pop into my head. As I searched for inspiration, my eyes landed on a thick bundle of fibre optic cables running along the ceiling and heading through a hole in the wall above one of the doors.

  ‘Thataway,’ I said clicking my fingers and once again failing to do so.

  I went to press the button that released the door but Gen shot out an arm and stopped me. ‘First of all, we put these on.’ She reached inside her pack and produced what looked like a couple of tightly-folded outfits.

  ‘What are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Cool suits.’

  ‘Like… Vivienne Westwoods?’

  She gave me another of her patented black looks. ‘No, you imbecile, cool suits, as in suits that lower your body temperature.’

  I was starting to get a little ticked off with her attitude. ‘Hey, don't forget who you’re talking to here. I’m the Nightstalker, okay? You’re just the sidekick in this little dynamic duo.’

  ‘Sidekick?’

  ‘Yeah. So be thankful I don’t do what Batman does to Robin and dress you up like a big shiny target.’

  Choosing not to address that comment, she slapped one of the outfits against my chest, knocking the wind out of me. ‘Put it on.’

  I unfolded the outfit; a lumpy, one-piece boiler suit. ‘Why would I wear this?’

  ‘To avoid setting off a temperature-activated alarm.’ She drew my attention to a steel panel bolted to the door, stencilled on which was a symbol of a man standing next to an oversized thermometer. ‘I’ve seen this before. Beyond that door, the facility is set up so an alarm trips if a hot-blooded person enters. The suits are lined with a refrigerant gel that will lower our body temperatures and trick The Crypt's security system into thinking we’re cold-blooded vamps.’

  ‘And you just happened to bring these along?’

  ‘I believe in being prepared.’

  Of course she did, Girl Scout that she was. It’s a wonder she wasn’t wearing a sash covered in activity badges, the absolute boffin.

  I shook out the suit I’d been given and stepped into its leggings. The fabric was wadded with ice packs, the kind you’d use to reduce a swelling, or stick in the bottom of a picnic basket to keep your sarnies chilled. I pulled the suit up to my waist, fed my arms into the sleeves, and zipped up. I felt as though I’d stepped inside an igloo.

  ‘Brrrr,’ I shivered. ‘How long do we have to keep these on? My nips are like pygmies’ dicks in here.’

  ‘Not long. The suits will only do their job for a short while, so we'll have to operate quickly.’ Set your stopwatch for fifteen minutes.’

  I rolled up a sleeve and went for my timepiece.

  ‘Synchronise... now.’

  We stabbed our start buttons and set our timers running.

  ‘I can't believe how badass this is,’ I said, unable to hide my excitement. ‘Neil’s going to shit a brick when I tell him we broke into a top secret bunker wearing night-vision goggles and balaclavas.’

  ‘Will you please stop doting on your boyfriend and concentrate on the job at hand?’

  With less than fifteen minutes on the clock, I didn’t have time to get into a big argument with her, much less strangle her to death with her own halo, so I left it at this: ‘Neil is the job, Gen. He's why we're down here. Don't forget that.’

  I drew my dagger and pushed open the door, determined to get what we came for.

  22

  We pushed on into the vault, following the snake of overhead cables to what I really, really hoped would be the server room.

  The Crypt was big; a vast network of tunnels and chambers riddling the earth like a badger’s burrow. I hadn’t counted on the place being quite so large, but then I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Clan’s pockets were plenty deep.

  We crept along a corridor, chasing the cables, moving in long strides but doing our best to keep our noise to a minimum. We’d been tracking the breadcrumb trail for maybe five minutes when a thought occurred… why hadn’t we encountered any vampires? Yes, we were doing a decent job of staying under the radar—not counting my sloppy, smashed-ankles landing—but surely we should have run into someone by now, even if by chance. Unless the place was unmanned, and why would that be, considering the value of The Crypt’s contents?

  ‘Why don’t I use my x-rays?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we don’t have time,’ Gen replied. ‘We have to keep moving.’

  She was right. The c
lock was ticking, and switching to Nightstalker vision was still pretty time-consuming. Until I’d mastered that power, we were better off pushing on and dealing with things as we found them than bumming about like sitting ducks.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Gen whispered as we carried on down the corridor. ‘Too quiet.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll find someone for you to kill soon enough. Chill out.’

  Ha. “Chill out”, I said, with the pair of us dressed in cool suits. I really was a card.

  We rounded a corner and I caught sight of another unexpected security measure.

  Up ahead, a web of red lasers crisscrossed the corridor, forming a fine weave of electronic tripwires. Jesus. Our assignment had gone full-on Mission Impossible. How in the name of sweet Siouxsie Sioux was I meant to make it through that mess? I was the Nightstalker—a blunt instrument, a human battering ram—not a frigging cat burglar. All things considered, I’d rather we had run into some guards. At least I could have twatted my way through those. Getting past this tangle was a precision job, and precision was not my watchword.

  ‘Bollocks,’ I huffed.

  While I was busy cursing and wondering how in the hell we were going to bypass this cutting edge cat’s cradle, Gen got to work. Off she went like a ballet dancer, no mucking about, dancing into the complex jungle of lasers, supple as a fish. Her lithe body fell into impossible poses as she slipped into the web, her movements nimble, the lines of her frame long and clean as she cut through the spaces between the red beams with ease. When she emerged on the other side moments later I could see she hadn’t so much as broken a sweat.

  ‘You’re up,’ she announced. ‘Use your eyes, tread carefully, and remember to watch out for those mum hips of yours.’

  If I could have reached out and slapped her I would have, but she was safe on the other side of the lasers; a guard taunting a prisoner through the bars of her cell.

  I checked my stopwatch. The seconds were counting down. No time to waste.

  Without any further hesitation I cartwheeled into the web of lasers, perfectly balanced, free as water, a thing of absolute grace and beauty—

  Just kidding, my arse broke a laser beam and set the bells ringing in two seconds flat.

  AROOOOGA!

  Klaxons blared loud enough to wake the dead. Lights strobed and searched, burning out the images on the inside of my night-vision goggles. In a heartbeat, the facility had transformed from a static, lifeless place into a buzzing, angry hornet’s nest.

  I tore off my goggles and blinked until my eyesight returned. Red bulbs painted the bunker the colour of blood as the alarm continued to blare. I saw a flash of movement and whipped around to see a wall-mounted security monitor. The screen was divided into quadrants showing various sectors of the bunker, all of which had come alive and were bristling with burly soldiers, goose-stepping in our direction. The soldiers were huge—as big as any men I’d ever seen—and dressed kind of like Gestapo officers in black military outfits and knee-length boots. Nazi hulks? This I did not need.

  Gen looked at the monitor and checked her watch. ‘We were only in that spot five minutes ago,’ she shouted over the screaming alarm.

  ‘Let ‘em come,’ I called back, drawing my blade and feeling the brand flare hot in my palm.

  ‘No. Too many to fight.’

  ‘Too many? We’ve faced down more vamps than that.’

  Gen gritted her teeth, forming a hard white line. ‘Not like these we haven’t.’

  I looked closer at the monitor. She was right, these were different to the vamps I’d seen before, more muscular, more animal, less like city bankers than something you’d find in a late-night creature feature.

  ‘We have to pull out,’ said Gen. ‘Right now.’

  ‘No. We still have time. We stick to the mission and we find that server room.’

  Gen scowled. She obviously disagreed with me, but she’d been instructed by Viz to follow my orders to the tee. She was a stubborn, hot-headed cow, but she knew where to draw the line. Why she let the old man call the shots I didn’t know, but I was glad the pecking order was what it was. ‘Okay then,’ she seethed. ‘Lead the way, Batman.’

  We took off down the corridor, feet pounding the metal walkway as we ran. It wasn’t long before we reached the end of the cables and arrived at our destination; an air-conditioned data centre full of whirring, flashing machinery configured into aisles of rack-mounted towers. The only problem? It was sealed off by a row of steel bars, five inches thick.

  ‘Help me get through this thing,’ I said, wrapping my hands around a couple of bars and wrenching them as hard as I could.

  I strained until my eyes bugged from my skull, until my teeth hurt, but even with Gen’s help, the gate wouldn’t budge. I flicked the dagger, turning it into a sword, and hacked away at the steel bars. Try as I might, the blows I dealt only glanced off, showering the floor with electric blue sparks.

  Bugger, bugger, bugger.

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Gen. ‘The whole thing is sealed with maglocks.’

  I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it definitely didn’t sound good. ‘You got anything left in that bag?’ I asked. ‘A magic lockpick? Some hi-tech cutting tool?’

  Gen was at a loss. Even she hadn’t accounted for this degree of security. No Girl Scout badge for her, not this time.

  ‘We have to abort,’ she said, but I all but tuned her out.

  I hadn’t come this far to throw in the towel now. There had to be some way of opening that gate. Some release. A switch. There was always a switch, I’d watched Neil play his Xbox enough to know that much.

  Then I saw it. Through the bars, a control panel on the far wall of the server room.

  ‘That’s it,’ I cried. ‘That must open the gate; an emergency release in case someone gets locked inside.’

  ‘You don’t know that, and even if you’re right, how are you going to get to it?’

  I touched the tip of my sword to the ground and pressed down until it magically telescoped back into a dagger. ‘Like this.’

  I took a step back, pulled the knife alongside my ear, and lined up a shot between the bars. It was going to be a tough throw. I’d need pinpoint accuracy to slice the almost impossible angle required to get the blade between two walls of servers and across thirty feet of ground. Still, the clock was ticking, so I took a steadying breath, held it, and let the dagger fly—

  The blade went wide, ricocheted off a server stack, and embedded itself in a patch of wall to the left of the panel. The dagger’s pommel quivered with spent energy, taunting my futile effort like a tiny waggling butt.

  ‘Balls,’ I muttered.

  In any other scenario that would have been the end of that, but the dagger shared a bond with my brand that pisses in the shoe of physics.

  I willed the weapon to return to me and it obeyed my command, exploding from the wall and boomeranging back to my hand. Flakes of masonry trailed after the blade as it spun, turning over and over, singing a low, swift tune as the metal razored through the air. I snatched hold of the dagger as it returned through the bars, fingers closing instinctively around its leather hilt, gripping it tight.

  ‘You're wasting your time,’ said Gen. ‘Even if you could hit it, what are the chances of you activating a release button?’

  Not to be deterred, I lined up another shot and let the dagger loose for the second time. This throw went even further askew, burying the dagger up to its hilt in one of the servers and making it spit up a spray of sparks like it was dying of robot consumption. Christ, I really hoped that wasn’t the machine carrying the data I’d come for.

  ‘They’re almost on us,’ said Gen. ‘Come on, Abbey, it’s time to go!’

  ‘One more! Just give me one more try!’

  I pulled back the dagger, found my target, and gave it everything I had.

  The blade took off, threading the needle like it was borne aloft by the hand of God.

 
Prang.

  The metal pierced the control panel and the gate swung open.

  ‘Yes!’

  Gen stood there for a moment, aghast, then turned to me. ‘Maybe you’re not just a face after all.’

  ‘I think the expression is meant to be “pretty face”.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you looked in a mirror lately?’

  ‘Tell you what, how about you give your tongue a rest and get to work, eh?’

  Putting the sass on ice, Gen strode into the server room and went searching for the command console. Having located it, she plugged in a flash drive and furiously tapped away at the keyboard, trawling the system for the words to the scroll of undoing.

  My eyes flicked to the corridor behind us, then back to Gen, then back to the corridor, searching the semi-darkness for the first sign of our pursuers. My heart thundered beneath my rib cage. My nerves were wound tight as springs.

  ‘Got it,’ Gen yelled triumphantly.

  ‘Seriously? You found the cure? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  I snatched the stick off her and stuffed it into my pocket. ‘Then let’s get out of here while we still can.’

  We ran, doubling back to the shaft, praying that we didn’t collide with any of those lumbering hulks along the way.

  No one gets that lucky.

  We were hurtling down a corridor, maybe halfway to our destination, when an arm the size of a tree trunk shot out from around a corner and clotheslined Gen flat.

  Pow!

  I saw the glow of two amber eyes hovering eight feet off the ground. A two-tonne slab of muscle in a black military uniform and jackboots loomed over Gen’s prone body. The creature’s face was monstrous and strangely underdeveloped, foetal almost. It opened its huge mouth, revealing a pair of fangs the size of garden shears. I had no idea what I was looking at. I’d never seen anything like this thing, but whatever it was, it looked as though it could suck a ham through a drinking straw.