by Edward Cox
Clara stepped forwards and crouched to pick up Samuel’s knife from the broken ruins of the golem. Van Bam said nothing to her as she tucked it into her boot. Her hand was hot and clammy when she placed it in his. Together they picked their way between the dead bodies as best they could, but treading on the odd hand or leg was unavoidable. They exited the common area and rejoined the corridor. The blood on the soles of Van Bam’s bare feet left perfect prints on the carpet.
Up ahead, Samuel had resumed checking the locked doors that lined the corridor walls. As before, Van Bam ensured that he and Clara kept a suitable distance from him and his revolver. The corridor turned right and right again into the final stretch, where Samuel signalled a warning to his colleagues.
The corridor ended at another closed elevator. Beside it was the entrance to the stairwell that led down to sublevel two. Five bodies lying on the floor had been beaten and bitten, dead and no longer a threat. Samuel picked his way through them to the last door on the right hand wall. He stared at it for a long moment, his revolver hanging loose in his hand.
Finally he motioned for his colleagues to come forward. Van Bam saw light coming from the crack underneath the door.
‘This is it,’ Samuel whispered. ‘Whatever’s in here was attracting the infected. But I’m not getting any warning signals.’
‘Can you sense anything beyond the door?’ Van Bam whispered to Clara.
Clara listened for a moment. ‘I can hear someone breathing,’ she said. ‘There’re two of them.’
‘Are they infected?’
She sniffed the air and then shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say. The whole place stinks of rotten vegetables.’
At the Resident’s nod Samuel tried the door handle. Like all the other doors, it was locked. Samuel prepared to kick it open.
‘Wait,’ Van Bam said.
The crack of light under the door wavered, as if it was coming from a torch in someone’s hand. And then it extinguished.
‘Survivors?’ said Clara.
Van Bam knocked on the door. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he called. ‘We are here to help you.’
This was followed by agitated, argumentative whispers, and then silence. The door did not open.
Samuel thumped on it with the butt of his revolver. ‘We’re agents of the Resident,’ he shouted. ‘Now open up or I’ll blow this damned door off its hinges.’
Footsteps approached the door. Van Bam and Clara stepped back as Samuel aimed his revolver. The door opened, and the anxious face of a young woman peeked out. Clearly exhausted, she flinched at the gun aimed at her face, and then frowned at the three agents with hidden faces standing out in the corridor.
‘She’s clean,’ Clara said.
Samuel pushed past the woman and entered the room without a word. He smacked a wall switch, and the ceiling prism glowed with dull emergency light.
Van Bam, with more consideration, steered the woman back inside. Clara remained standing in the doorway.
There was no furniture in the room, and judging by the rectangular window set into the back wall, darkened and black, it seemed to be an observation chamber. The woman was accompanied by a man, portly and balding and somewhere around fifty. He held a torch in his hand. By their dress, he was an orderly and she a doctor.
‘The agents of the Resident?’ the man said, a sheen of sweat on his heavy face. ‘I haven’t heard that since I was a boy.’ He gave the woman a meaningful look.
‘Were either of you bitten?’ Samuel growled.
The man shook his head quickly, the woman more slowly. It looked as though she had been crying.
Samuel grunted, and then moved to the back of the room to inspect the rectangular window.
‘We are the Relic Guild,’ Van Bam said reassuringly.
The orderly looked to the floor as if shying away from the confirmation of his suspicions. The woman frowned into Van Bam’s blurred face. She seemed to know she had been told something important, but couldn’t tell what.
‘We are hunting a wild demon,’ Van Bam continued. ‘And you have encountered the virus it carries, yes?’
She nodded.
‘It started with the inmates,’ the orderly said, not looking up. ‘They started attacking each other, like animals, tearing and biting and … and then the doctors …’
The orderly trailed off, and the woman laid a hand on his arm. ‘It’s all right, Karl,’ she said, and turned to Van Bam. ‘I’m Doctor Reeve. Karl was assisting me with a patient when the trouble began. You say there’s a wild demon in the asylum?’
‘Yes, it escaped the Retrospective late last night,’ Van Bam lied.
Doctor Reeve nodded. ‘That makes sense. The patients on sublevel three were talking about a monster just before the trouble began.’
‘Did they speak with the demon? Does anyone know why it came to the asylum?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Reeve said. ‘Whatever virus it’s carrying spread so fast. We managed to lock ourselves in here, but my patient …’ Her lip trembled and fresh tears came to her eyes.
‘There’s something in here,’ Samuel interrupted. He was still standing by the rectangular window. He pressed a button on a wall mounted control panel, and the window’s blackness cleared to reveal the padded cell beyond. Inside the cell a golem stood, naked, the full grotesqueness of its stone body on show.
‘We put him in the cell for our own safety,’ Reeve said. ‘Thank the Timewatcher we did.’
‘He started to turn,’ Karl added. The orderly had found some composure, and his round face seemed angry. ‘He went mad at first, like the others. Then he became this thing.’
Van Bam stared at the golem behind the glass. Its toothless mouth hung slack, and its thin neck looked too weak to hold the misshapen boulder of its head. He could only imagine what it must have been like for the doctor and the orderly, trapped inside this room with bloodthirsty creatures clawing at the door, tearing each other apart, and all the while having to watch the virus take its full course upon the patient.
‘Can you help him?’ Reeve asked, a little breathlessly. ‘He was making such progress. Do you have a cure?’
No one replied.
Samuel moved to the door beside the window. ‘Give me the key,’ he ordered.
Karl took a bunch of keys from his belt, unclipped the correct one and passed it to Samuel.
‘Can you help him?’ Reeve said again, stronger this time. The question seemed to be aimed at all of the Relic Guild agents.
‘We will do all we can,’ Van Bam promised her. ‘Come.’
He escorted the doctor and the orderly from the room. Out in the corridor they both paused, disconcerted by the dead bodies lying on the floor.
‘Do not be frightened,’ Van Bam said. ‘The way behind us is clear. It is safe to use the stairs to the upper levels.’
‘You-You’re not escorting us out?’ said Karl.
‘No. We need to search for other survivors.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Doctor Reeves said. She pointed at the end of the corridor, at the elevator and stairwell door. ‘Going to the lower levels is madness.’
Even as she said this, Van Bam heard the telltale spitting sound of a revolver. It was followed by a pop and hiss, and then the dull sound of cracking stone that told Van Bam Samuel had put an end to the golem in the padded cell.
‘Please,’ he told Reeve. ‘Get yourselves to safety and let us do our jobs.’
‘But don’t you understand?’ she said urgently. ‘The demon was hiding all the way down in sublevel three.’
‘Nonetheless,’ Van Bam said, ‘you will leave now.’
Karl the orderly seemed eager to do just that, but when he took the doctor’s arm and tried to lead her away, she shook herself loose.
‘Listen to me,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘It found its w
ay up to sublevel two, and that’s where the patients sleep. Most of them were in their rooms when the virus spread. There could be up to fifty of those things down there. It’s madness—’
‘Doctor Reeve!’ To Van Bam’s surprise, the authoritative voice was Clara’s. ‘Get out. Right now.’
Reeve recoiled as if slapped. She stared at the young changeling for a moment, but when Samuel appeared from the room and she saw the revolver in his hand, she let Karl drag her away down the corridor. Soon they turned a corner and were gone.
Van Bam gave Clara an approving nod. Her shades and hues were alive with the wolf’s courage. Nevertheless, when he turned to face the door to sublevel two, the dire warnings of Doctor Reeve remained in his mind.
‘Samuel, if you would, please lead the way.’
Chapter Thirteen
Down the Spiral
Samuel’s world shifted when his magic activated. It was as if his consciousness and physical being switched places and his brain began following the orders his body gave it. He remained alert to his actions, but also detached from them. Surroundings became crystal clear, pressing on heightened instincts almost painfully. Every item of furniture, every locked or unlocked door, every twist and turn ahead and behind – he was acutely aware of them all; he felt even the tiniest shifts in the air. When danger approached Old Man Sam, his prescient awareness knew what to do, and his body knew how best to do it.
He felt each step of the stairs, firm beneath his feet, as he descended to the next floor of the asylum. The further and lower he went, the warmer his magic felt inside him. This time, when they reached the bottom of the stairs he led Van Bam and Clara into an isolated safe room where the atmosphere was eerily silent.
Samuel supposed that it was some kind of security station, where orderlies and security staff spent the bulk of their shifts and breaks. There were comfy chairs and a bookcase stuffed with novels. On one wall the door to a small toilet was open. On the opposite wall was a heavy security door that was closed and locked. Something about the security door made Samuel’s magic pulse.
Two padded desk chairs were situated before a metal table, which sat beneath the black rectangle of another darkened observation window. Upon the desk was a control panel for the window, and a log book that lay open. Van Bam moved to the table and began flipping through the last few pages in the log book. Clara stayed behind both men, close to the stairwell door. Her fidgeting scratched upon Samuel’s senses like nails down a blackboard.
‘The last entry in this book states the inmates were restless,’ Van Bam said. ‘But the details are incomplete.’
‘Probably didn’t get the chance write any more,’ Samuel said. ‘Let’s see what we’re dealing with.’
He pressed a button on the control panel, and the observation window cleared. He heard Clara catch her breath.
Outside the security station, sublevel two was revealed to be a huge hall around which two tiers of cells were cut into the walls. There, pandemonium reigned. The infected filled the hall, rushing around at frenetic speed, like savage animals. Doctor Reeves had said there could be up to fifty of them, and Samuel could well believe it. Staff and inmates alike – no one had been spared from Fabian Moor’s virus. At least a third of them were already dead, lying upon the slick floor, bodies mutilated. Those still alive fought tirelessly and with no regard to defence; biting, clawing and feeding upon each other’s flesh like addicts desperate for the drug of blood.
Samuel noted a fully-formed golem, impassive as it tried to keep its footing amidst the chaos that jostled and knocked it around. Made only of bloodless stone, it offered nothing for the hunger of the infected. Behind the golem, on the metal staircase that led to the upper level walkway, two victims bit at each other’s faces like frenzied lovers. The fighting continued on the walkway above them, and a body fell over the balcony and smashed to the floor, scattering a group who were feeding on the dead. The group quickly began attacking each other, grappling and sinking long teeth into black-veined skin, tearing down until gouts of thick red coated them all.
Not one sound came through the observation window, and the eerie silence in the security room endured. It somehow made the images even more horrific.
‘Well, I don’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all,’ Samuel said coldly.
‘Maybe we should wait,’ Clara said. She still stood by the door to the stairwell, and by the inflection in her voice, she was just about ready to flee back up to sublevel one. ‘They’ll kill each other eventually. Or turn into golems.’
‘There is no time to wait, Clara,’ Van Bam said. ‘Our inaction gives Fabian Moor time to move and plot unhindered. Our duty is to protect the denizens. We need an expedient method of clearing the asylum of the infected. The virus must be contained.’
Samuel looked at the Resident, and the satchel hanging from his shoulder. ‘I’m assuming you brought one of Hamir’s little toys with you.’
‘Indeed.’
Van Bam put his cane on the metal desk, and then placed the satchel alongside it. From the satchel he produced a wooden box. He opened the lid and exposed a spell sphere held securely by the padded interior. Inside the sphere was a viscous liquid the colour of death. With care, Van Bam pulled the glass orb out.
‘This should be handled with care,’ he said, and then turned his metallic eyes to the right and the heavy security door that led to the hall. ‘Your help, please, Samuel. I need only a second.’
Samuel followed the Resident over to the door. As they neared it, Clara said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t open it.’
‘Silence, Clara,’ Van Bam snapped.
Samuel placed his forehead against the security door and closed his eyes. Although his magic still pulsed with gentle warning, the infected did not detect their presence, and there was no immediate danger on the other side of the door. Even so, his prescient awareness was warning him not to go any further, that it was time to hide, not fight.
Ignoring the warning, he nodded to Van Bam, who then placed a hand against the door. As Samuel heard the locking bolts sliding free, he grabbed the door handle.
‘Ready?’ he whispered.
Van Bam dropped to one knee and held the sphere in both hands before him. Samuel opened the door, and the din of murder and rage filled the security station. Van Bam lobbed the sphere through the opening, and then silence returned as Samuel quickly closed the door.
Clara gasped, making both men wheel around. The young changeling held a hand to her mouth, staring fearfully through the observation window. Samuel moved to see what she stared at, Van Bam beside him.
One of the infected – a woman, her face a mask of lustful fury – had smashed the head of a man against the window. She bit into the back of his neck, tearing free a chunk of wet flesh, and together they slid down to the floor, leaving a smear of blood on glass.
As they disappeared from view, a column of grey mist could be seen drifting across the floor behind them. It spun slowly as it moved, like a lazy whirlwind. It reached the nearest pair of fighters and engulfed them. Almost instantly, the mist melted skin, flesh, bone – every inch of them – like the most powerful of acids. It reduced its victims to puddles of human matter. The misty column engulfed the golem next, devouring the magic that animated it, and crumbling it into a heap of broken stone.
As Hamir’s magic moved on, its spinning increased, and it had grown a little fatter. It reached the next group of the infected, liquefied them and continued on, spinning faster and more hungry with each victim it devoured.
‘Hamir is a master of death,’ Van Bam muttered disappointedly. He pressed a button on the control panel to deactivate the observation window. He continued to stare at it, however, and Samuel knew he could still see through the blackened glass.
Folding his arms across his chest Samuel leant back against the desk. Still his magic warned him to go no further. He saw
Clara glancing from one man to the other.
‘So what now?’ she asked.
‘We wait until the way is clear,’ Samuel replied, his tone suggesting the answer had been obvious.
Clara collapsed into one of the comfy chairs as if her legs had little strength left in them. She rubbed her shaking hands together as though doing so would take her mind off the events only Van Bam could see beyond the window.
‘This situation is making less and less sense,’ she blurted after a short while. ‘If Moor wanted to create chaos in the Labyrinth, why do it at the asylum? Why not out in the open, where the whole town could be infected?’
‘Clara,’ Van Bam said with his back turned to her. ‘You continue to presume Fabian Moor is a vindictive character whose actions are driven by spite and a desire for petty revenge. It is time you accepted that he is calculating, and does nothing without reason. Something drew him to the asylum.’
‘Perhaps he wants to warn us,’ Clara suggested. By the tone of her voice, Samuel knew she was talking more through a need to keep her mind occupied than any real desire to be helpful. ‘Maybe this is his way of telling us to back off – that he knows the Relic Guild is on to him.’
‘He doesn’t care if we’re on to him or not,’ Samuel said derisively. ‘That much should be obvious even to you by now.’
‘Samuel is correct, Clara,’ Van Bam said, though his tone was much more kindly. He turned from the window. ‘But Charlie Hemlock claims Moor is looking for something. That fits with his excursion to the antiques boutique. It could easily have been some relic or artefact he searched for. But what could he possibly hope to find in this asylum?’
‘Reeve said Moor first appeared on the third sublevel,’ Samuel mused. ‘Let’s hope he left something down there to steer us in the right direction.’
Van Bam nodded and faced the darkened window again. ‘Ah … it seems Hamir’s necromancy has served its purpose.’ He picked up his green glass cane. ‘We can venture on.’