The Road to Bedlam

by Mike Shevdon

  In the darkness beyond the door, a man crossed the corridor, trying to gain a clear shot where I was pinned against the wall. I watched in slow motion as he raised the pistol and aimed at my head.

  Instinct saved me as I slid behind the curtain of reality, emerging in the corridor behind them. The shot was still ringing in the corridor as I emerged.

  "Shit!" The man said. "He vanished."

  As I drew my sword, they realised at once that the danger was among them. There were three men. The first, the security guard who had aimed at me, turned to point his weapon. My sword arced down, blade flashing in the dark, severing the arm at the wrist. The weapon fell and bounced off the carpet, the hand still grasping it. The second guard raised his gun and my sword swept under his chin. He stopped and shuddered, and his head snapped back as a fountain of blood erupted from his neck. The third stepped back clear of his comrades, trying for a shot. I closed the distance in a single long thrust. The sword thudded under his breastbone. He jerked, the hand with the gun flailing, colliding with the wall. The gun clattered heavily to the floor. He gave a wet cough and slid backwards off the blade on to the floor, red blooming across the front of his white coat. He looked down at the spreading blood, his chin unshaven, his eyes wide with surprise. Then his head fell back and his eyes glazed.

  Looking down at him while he died, I could see that he looked like a medic. I had just killed a doctor. What kind of doctor carried a pistol?

  The fight was over so quickly. All those months of training, long hours of step and parry, turn and slice, and the real fight was over in seconds. It was unreal.

  I was standing over him, trying to stop my hand from shaking, when Raffmir appeared beside me. I still held the sword in my hand, watching the blood drip from the end of the blade on to the medic's coat. I could feel my heart thumping now that the adrenalin had nowhere to go.

  "That was nicely done," he said. It was the first compliment he had ever paid me.

  He shrugged out of his coat and let it fall on the ground. Underneath, the blood was soaking into the shirt around the gory hole in his arm. He glanced down.

  "Careless," he said, shaking his head gently. "More haste, less speed."

  He went back to where the guard whose hand I'd severed was sitting, leaning against the wall, cradling the stump in his lap and rocking back and forth. Even in the faint light of the glow around Raffmir I could see the sweat beaded on the man's skin, the way his eyes were wide and staring at nothing.

  Raffmir picked him up by the front of his uniform and held him one-handed against the wall.

  "Does it hurt?"

  The man's eyes were staring but seeing nothing. Raffmir smiled. "Not for long."

  Dappled moonlight spilled out into the corridor.

  "Raffmir, don't…" But it was already too late.

  Black tendrils of power extended from Raffmir's outstretched hand into the guard's skin. His flesh sank against his bones and his eyes bulged as Raffmir consumed his life essence in front of me. For once I understood what Blackbird had meant when she said that such a thing was obscene. What was left of the guard fell through Raffmir's hand.

  He glanced sideways at me. "Squeamish, cousin?"

  "Was that necessary?"

  In answer, he drew back the shirt from his arm where the blood caked the cloth, revealing a newly puckered scar where the gunshot wound had been.

  He prodded it gently, checking for tenderness. "I do believe it was," he said.

  He reached down and retrieved his coat, putting a finger through the hole that the bullet had made. He shrugged back into it, covering the blood-soaked shirt. His glamour shifted slightly and the hole in his coat also vanished.

  He squared his shoulders. "Come," he said. "We are almost there."

  Beyond the iron doors was different. Where before there had been offices and computers, carpets and corridors, this was more like a hospital than an office building. The floors were dark vinyl, the walls painted white without pictures or pattern, and the air smelled of antiseptic.

  The beds in the wards were mostly empty. The few patients lay comatose, immune to gunfire and violence. Beyond them I could see where people hid in the wards, concealing themselves behind curtains or beds, trying not to be noticed. When we came near, they scurried away into the dark and I could see that most of them were medical staff. Raffmir ignored them, though he was more cautious after the encounter with the guards.

  As we continued, the wards gave way to rooms, each with a single occupant. The wall facing the corridors was glass, as were the doors, but the glass had a peculiarly solid quality. The locks on the doors stood out dark and cold, a simple key lock in each, but made of iron.

  I halted. "What are these?" I asked Raffmir.

  "We have reached the inmates' accommodation," he

  replied, walking on without pause. "This is where your daughter has been kept. I did try and use my influence to get her moved, but the staff here are a law unto themselves."

  "These people are gifted?"

  In the nimbus glow, flickering light illuminated the dark room. A young boy was curled in the centre of the room, arms wrapped around his knees. He appeared to be mumbling something to himself, again and again. I moved to the next. An old woman sat on the bed platform, staring at us through the glass. In the room opposite, a large man stood leaning against the glass, hands cupped over his eyes, trying to see out.

  "Do not be distracted by trivia, Dogstar. We do not have time."

  "But they're like me."

  "After tonight, I doubt this facility will continue."

  "What will happen to them, then?"

  "Do you want your daughter or not?"

  "What will happen to them?" I repeated.

  "I don't know." His voice held a lie.

  "Get me a key."

  "We do not have time, Dogstar. Your daughter is this way." He gestured with his sword down the corridor.

  As if in answer, there was a dull boom from the way we had come.

  "What was that?" I asked him.

  "They are rallying their defences. Because we have disabled the power, sealing the door locks, they are having to force their way into the building.

  "Get me the key to these doors," I said.

  "There's no time."

  "If we let them out, anyone coming after us will be delayed, while they deal with the escapees," I pointed out.

  He paused for a second and then strode back to the wards. Disappearing for a moment he returned with a young nurse, her arm twisted painfully behind her.

  "Get me the key to these cells," he said, pushing her into the corridor.

  "I don't know where it is," she lied.

  His sword flashed once in the dark. There was the beginning of a startled shriek which fell abruptly silent. Her headless body fell to the floor. He kicked the head ahead of him, back into the ward. Marching after it, he re-entered the ward. There was a hail of protests before he dragged an older woman out into the corridor. She swatted at him with her hands, but he ignored her, propelling her forward. She stopped in front of the headless corpse, breathing hard.

  "Your colleague said she didn't know where the key to the cells was." He nodded at the corpse, speaking calmly.

  Without hesitating the woman pointed to where we had come in. "The guard station," she said, her voice quavering.

  "Bring it to me," he said quietly.

  She ran down the corridor towards the guard station.

  "If you do not come back," he called after her, "I will come after you."

  We waited in the dim light.

  "Maybe she can't find it in the dark," I said.

  "If your daughter is dead by the time we reach her, remember it is you who wanted a delay."

  The nurse advanced towards us, holding the key out gingerly.

  Raffmir's hand shot out and took her wrist, holding the key up. "Take it from her," he said.

  "It's iron," I pointed out.

  "I know that. You wanted the
key, there it is."

  She tried to pull away, but he held her easily, tightening his grip so she gasped.

  "Take the key." I knelt down and drew the coat of the headless corpse towards me. The woman watched me, eyes wide. I ripped the pocket off the coat with one clean swipe, then used it to take the key from the woman's hand, wrapping the scrap around the key, so I didn't have to touch it. Even so, I could feel the iron through the material, a curious ache from having it so close.

  Raffmir twisted the wrist, so that the woman lifted her chin in pain. The sword arced brightly and another head arced away into the dark to bounce wetly along the corridor. The body spurted blood as it fell, dribbling red down the glass wall of the nearest cell in sticky dribbles.

  "Another corpse to your tally?" I asked him.

  "If you had not wanted the key she would still be alive."

  "Don't blame me for your actions."

  "I do not blame you, but she knew how many we are, and that we are sensitive to iron. That is too much knowledge to fall into the hands of our enemies. Now hurry. We are late."

  I went to the cell with the boy and used the key wrapped in the scrap of cloth to unlock the door. Close up, I could see that in the glass there was a fine mesh of iron layered into the glass. I pushed the door open.

  "You're free to go." He did not move, but simply sat on the floor.

  I went to the next cell. The woman watched me while I unlocked and opened the door, but did not move.

  "Come on. You have a chance to escape. Get out while you can."

  She stood calmly, brushing down her grey overall. Then came to the door. As she reached the door I stepped back, but she came close and pressed her hand to my cheek.

  Her eyes glowed lilac, momentarily.

  She shook her head. "So much brightness…" Then she jerked as if in spasm, her eyes opening wide so that the whites were exposed in a ring around the dark of the pupil. I tried to thrust her hand away, but it was as if it were welded to the skin.

  She leaned close, whispering into my ear. "The sun will rise, and they shall fall."

  "The what?"

  She snatched her hand back and cradled it as if it had been burned. Then she slipped past me and ran into the dark.

  "What did she say?" asked Raffmir?

  "I'm not sure…"

  The sun shall rise – I had heard that before somewhere. Where was it? Shaking my head, I went to the cell opposite and unlocked the door. I didn't open it, but moved to the next, unlocking each of them along one side and then back along the other so that they could all escape if they wished. When they were all unlocked, I dropped the key on the sticky headless corpses in the centre of the corridor.

  "We've done what we can. Let's go."

  Raffmir shook his head and strode away, illuminating each cell as he passed. As I followed after, people began hesitantly to leave their cells, slipping away into the dark, unsure of whether our intentions were friendly or not.

  I wasn't sure of that myself.

  As we passed further along the corridor, there was another block of cells, empty this time apart from two. In one a young woman sat staring at the blank wall opposite, while in the other the inmate, an old man, raged against the glass, hammering and banging, screaming incoherently. I watched for a moment as we passed. There were smears on the glass where the man's hands bled. I couldn't tell whether he was raging at us, at his imprisonment, or at something else. Either way, it was too late to return for the key.

  "What will happen to the ones that do not escape?" I asked Raffmir. "Honestly?"

  He continued walking.

  "Raffmir?"

  He didn't stop but continued to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor.

  "There is a purge mechanism," he said. "It is a gas, a combination of nerve agents, iron… other things."

  "Can they trigger it remotely?"

  "I believe so, but it will only affect the cells that are occupied and locked. The gas affects fey and human alike. It is quick."

  "And painless?"

  "I did not ask about the pain," said Raffmir.

  "It seems to me," I said, "that there are a lot of things you didn't ask about."

  We passed through a further set of doors, not locked and freely swinging, into an open area. As we entered, a man retreated into one of the rooms leading off the open area. Each room had heavy glass walls facing the corridor so that what transpired there could be observed from outside the room. The glass did not have the reinforcement of iron used for containment. To our left and right were large rooms with complex overhead lighting and a central raised table. They looked like operating theatres. In the dim light, I could see three men conversing urgently in the theatre to our left. In the centre was a room fitted out as a laboratory, with fridges, shelves of chemicals, racks of test tubes, microscopes and other scientific apparatus. I turned back to the room that was occupied. I could hear urgent words being spoken. As one of the men moved aside, I could see there was a figure lying on the central table.

  It was Alex.

  Tightening my grip on the hilt of my sword, I made for the door. Raffmir slipped quickly in ahead of me. He swung open the door and entered slowly, relaxed and calm.

  "Dr Watkins. So nice to see you again," he said.

  There was uproar from the other two men as they questioned the gaunt figure between them. "You know him? But he's one of them! How could you know him?"

  Dr Watkins held up his delicately thin-boned hand to quell the clamour, but it was Raffmir who spoke.

  "To answer your questions, yes, I know him and he knows me. No, I'm not one of them, I am something else, and he knows me because I am a trustee of the foundation."

  "A trustee?" The two men spoke together.

  "Yes." Raffmir wandered around the room, picking up objects and examining them. "I must say that it is most interesting to see all this first-hand, after reading so many dull reports." He affected a yawn, raising his hand to his mouth airily.

  Impatient with his games, I raised my sword and stepped forward into the room. The men retreated, and in the confusion there was the briefest of struggles around Raffmir. When it resolved, Raffmir held high the wrist of a pale bald man, showing a hypodermic syringe, the needle bright in the white glow of his aura.

  "What have we here?" He twisted the man's arm, eliciting a gasp of pain, his cheeks flushing harsh red against the pale skin.

  "It's only a sedative," said the man, the curl of a lie in his voice.

  "Ah, well. Nothing to worry about then, Mr…" said Raffmir.

  "Todren. I'm the consultant anaesthetist."

  Raffmir spun easily, lifting the man under the chin against the wall, pinning him there while he seized the hand with the syringe. The other man began to step forward, but Raffmir glanced sideways, halting him.

  Without effort, Raffmir twisted the hand holding the needle down so that it was over his thigh, while the man tried to jerk free.

  "You may feel a prick," said Raffmir, and slowly pushed the needle into his thigh. The man struggled and yelled, but Raffmir steadily emptied the syringe into his leg. When it was done, he jerked it out and tossed it on to the floor, leaving the man standing, breathless.

  "Fuck," said the man. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell forward on to the floor. He jerked once, twice and then lay still.

  "It appears that Mr Todren is having a nap," said Raffmir. "Any other bright ideas?"

  The other two shook their heads and backed away, eyes wide. I raised the sword again and they reversed into the wall, their eyes focusing on the red smears down the blade. I reached Alex's side and placed my hand on her forehead. It was dry and warm. She was alive.

  "What's wrong with her?" I asked Watkins.

  He wrung his hands, "She has a rare genetic disorder, instability in the…"

  "No, you fool, why isn't she awake?" I tried to keep the anger from my voice.

  "Oh, she was given a pre-med by the nurses. We didn't want her to
be distressed throughout the procedure."

  I was tempted to kill him right then. He talked about the procedure as if he was removing an ingrowing toenail. Instead they had been planning to try an experimental drug that would end my daughter's life.

  "Alex? Can you hear me, sweetheart?" I stroked back the dark curls from her face. There was no reaction. "How long until she wakes?"

  "It was only a small dose. She is physically quite well, I assure you."

  That left an open question. "And mentally?"