The Friday Society

by Adrienne Kress

  “I go first,” said Michiko, pulling the elegant sword from its sheath on her back and holding it before her.

  “I’ve got no problem with that,” replied Cora. Nellie laughed, and they followed Michiko carefully down the hall.

  It was exhausting, anticipating something terrible around every corner, and constantly looking over one’s shoulder. Cora was grateful that her adrenaline was surging, otherwise she’d probably collapse from the anticipation.

  She glanced over her shoulder again, to see if whoever had called the lift was upon them yet. Nothing. She turned and walked right into Nellie.

  “Watch it, Hyde,” said Nellie, stumbling forward.

  “Sorry, you just . . . stopped.”

  “I stopped because Silver Heart stopped.”

  “I stop because light stop.”

  And it was true. They had come to the end of the trail of lights, and a vast blackness opened out before them.

  Cora flipped down the green lenses, pushed the button at her temple, and in a moment she was staring out into a wide, low-ceilinged cavern.

  “Interesting.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A door at the other end.”

  “Good!”

  “And trip wires between us and it.”

  Fine wires crisscrossed the space from top to bottom, and as Cora followed them up to the walls of the cavern, she saw that they were attached to devices that resembled small crossbows.

  “Darts maybe, likely poisoned. Clearly he was expecting visitors.”

  “What do we do?” asked Nellie.

  “You do what I tell you. You two should be fine; I’m more concerned about my lack of flexibility with all these metal pieces covering me.”

  “I go first,” Michiko insisted yet again.

  “No,” replied Cora.

  “Why no?”

  “Because I need to practice giving instructions so that when it’s your turn I will be easy to understand.”

  She said it a few times, adding gestures, until Michiko understood, giving a sharp nod. “Yes.”

  “You ready . . . Lady Sparkle?”

  Nellie gave her a smile and nodded. She tied her cape tightly around her waist, then she turned toward the blackness and took a deep slow breath, focusing on the task ahead.

  “The first wire is low to the ground, so lift your foot up perpendicular to your knee . . .”

  “Are all the instructions going to be this detailed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord, this is gonna take forever . . .”

  And so it began. Nellie was a very good listener and followed Cora’s instructions to the letter. Well, except for the few times when she offered her own suggestions, like doing a roll over some wire instead of flattening herself under it. She was remarkably bendy, the way she could twist and turn and lift her legs just so. And when she made it to the end, she did a little cartwheel, just for fun.

  “Your turn, Silver Heart.”

  Michiko didn’t move. There was a pause. Then: “Me?”

  “Yes. You’re Silver Heart.”

  There was silence from behind the mask and then Michiko took a step toward the blackness.

  This was going to be harder. But now that Cora had directed someone through the wires once, she felt more confident in her ability to tell Michiko what to do. For her part, Michiko proved to be a wizard at interpreting her meaning, and, like Nellie, came up with her own solutions. There was a series of wires she could pass under, snakelike, simply because she was so slender. When she got to the other side, she didn’t cartwheel. But she was attacked in a ferocious hug by Nellie.

  “My turn,” said Cora to herself. She had been fearing this moment. It was one thing to have a sense of the full scope of the situation, and to guide others across the wires, but to be in it herself . . .

  Plus, with all the pieces of the Chekhov tucked around her body, she wasn’t nearly as agile as the other two.

  “Just take your time,” called out Nellie into the dark. Cora wondered what it was like for the other two to be standing in the blackness on the other side. Though they weren’t completely blind, she realized; they could see her body silhouetted by the lamps that stood behind her in the tunnel.

  “Can you see the wires?” Cora called out, maybe they could help her.

  “A bit, but they disappear in and out of the light,” replied Nellie. “I’ll help you when I can.”

  Every step Cora took, she made sure to examine everything around her, up, down, side to side. She made herself lie on her back instead of her front so that she could keep an eye on the wires. She hopped over one and nearly lost her balance, and she heard Nellie gasp as Cora tried to stay upright. Once in a while Nellie offered a few suggestions, and at one crucial moment stopped Cora just before she tripped a wire. It seemed to take forever, but eventually she made it to the other two.

  “That wasn’t fun,” she said, panting slightly.

  “I thought it kind of was—”

  “Move.”

  Cora pushed Nellie to the side so she could examine the door they were now standing before. It was a thick, solid metal, no handle, no obvious lock.

  “Can you do anything with this?” she asked.

  “Let me borrow your goggles,” replied Nellie.

  Cora passed them over, and after Nellie let out a laugh of appreciation and a “This is amazin’!” she started to examine the door.

  “No . . . it opens mechanically, I think. From the other side.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  Nellie passed back the goggles.

  “I wonder . . . if we break the seal, if it would then slide open,” said Cora, again studying the door closely. “The bullets in my pistol are filled with acid.”

  “They are?”

  “Let me try. Both of you stand back.” Cora knew that she could probably use the Chekhov to blow a giant hole in the door, but she didn’t want to activate the weapon if she didn’t have to. She didn’t know what kind of collateral damage shooting it off might cause, and then, of course, there was the fact that once the gun was assembled, she’d have to carry the thing around for the rest of the mission. Sure it could quickly fall apart at the push of a button, but putting the pieces back all over her person? Not so easy. So it made sense to try the pistol first.

  She aimed for the stone frame around the door, not the door itself. She wasn’t sure what kind of metal it was made out of, and definitely wasn’t interested in having acid-filled bullets ricocheting off its surface and back at her.

  “If they didn’t know we were coming before . . .” she said, and then . . . fired.

  She discharged her entire supply of bullets, and when silence fell, she examined her handiwork. The stone around the door had melted away, and she could even glimpse into the room behind it.

  “Come on, ladies, let’s see if we can pull this thing open.” She directed Michiko and Nellie to grab the exposed side of the door. “One, two, three . . .” They pulled. They kept pulling. They pulled some more.

  There was a click, and suddenly the whole door just slid to the side.

  Standing before them, silhouetted by the blue-green light of the room, was Mr. Staunch. His glowing eyes narrowed when he recognized his visitors. The gears inside spun. He produced a familiar looking gun and aimed it.

  Michiko was standing directly opposite him. She took one look at the eyes and punched him across the face. Then she punched him in the solar plexus, and, as he keeled over, she ducked down and tossed him over her shoulder. He rolled past Nellie and Cora, into the trip wires where he flailed about as hundreds of poison darts flew at him, sticking into his flesh. For a few moments he writhed in the wires like a fly caught in a spiderweb. Then his gun fell to the ground. He stopped twitching.

  Michiko was lying flat on her stomach. Nellie came over and helped her to stand.

  “Good job,” she said.

  It was impossible to read Michiko’s expression, what wit
h the mask and all, but a muffled voice from behind it said, “Machine eyes?”

  “Yes, Dr. Mantis has a strange obsession. Shall we carry on?” asked Cora, passing into the room. The other girls followed.

  47

  More Fun Times . . .

  “KEEP YOUR WITS about you. They know we’re here.”

  “I know this place,” said Nellie as they walked to the center of the room.

  “You do?”

  “It’s a lot like Dr. Mantis’s office at the Medical and Scientific Institute, with jars of body parts everywhere. But there was no table . . .” They all looked at the white-padded table with leather straps attached to it. Nellie felt a shiver run up her spine. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  They crossed to the other side of the room, where they were met with two doors. Both seemed easy enough to open.

  “You take one, I’ll take the other. One of them has to be an exit,” said Cora, placing herself in front of the door on the left.

  Nellie nodded, but after meeting Mr. Staunch so unexpectedly, she found the idea of just opening a door a rather daunting prospect.

  “One,” counted Cora. “Two . . .” She heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed behind her as Michiko stood prepared. “Three.”

  Nellie opened her door wide and . . . found herself facing an empty hallway, much like the one they’d been in before. Well, that was anticlimactic.

  There was a scream, and Nellie looked to the side just in time to see a monstrous arm reach for and then grab Cora by the throat. The screaming stopped instantly as the hand squeezed, and Nellie watched as Michiko sliced the arm off at the elbow. Cora fell back and threw the arm to one side. Nellie sprang into action, and pushed against Cora’s door to slam it closed. Something came up against it, though, and pushed back.

  “Help, please!” Nellie called out. Her breath froze in the air, and she realized that whatever was beyond that door was freezing cold.

  Cora and Michiko were at her side in a flash, and all three girls pushed hard. But the thing on the other side pushed harder. For a while it was a standoff, a stalemate, with the door neither closing nor opening. “Can you hold it much longer?” asked Nellie.

  Cora didn’t say anything, just shook her head.

  “I’m thinkin’ we’ve got to just let go and run out the door I opened. Just make a run for it.”

  “I think you’re right. Ready?” asked Cora, her voice straining with effort.

  “When we let go, head to the door. Got that, Silver Heart?” instructed Nellie. But she had no idea if Michiko got it or not. She just had to hope.

  “NOW!”

  They released the door then flew out the other door into the hall. Once Michiko joined them, Nellie reached back into the room to close the door behind them. But something got there first and tore the door right off its hinges.

  Nellie backed away quickly to join the other girls, who were standing, staring in shock.

  Looming in the now-wide doorway was . . . something. For all the world, it looked like a human, but something about it was off, something wasn’t quite right. This man-creature was bigger, taller, and wider than a human being, and the bits of him didn’t seem to match.

  That’s because, Nellie realized, they didn’t match. The arm was a bit larger than the shoulder socket it was thrust into, and the torso and neck held up a strangely smaller head. The eyes were too close together, the mouth too wide. Strange, too, was the fact that despite the creature’s forearm having been severed clear off his body, and the black blood seeping from the wound onto the ground, it, or he, seemed to feel no pain, nor even to be aware that he, or it, was missing a part.

  “He’s made up of bits,” said Nellie.

  “He’s not the only one,” Cora replied.

  As the creature stumbled into the hall, Nellie noticed what Cora already had already observed: The man-creature wasn’t alone. There were more of his kind stumbling their way toward the door, making strange groaning sounds as they lumbered along.

  “It’s as if they were being stored in a freezer box,” said Cora.

  “Yes.”

  “They don’t seem to feel pain.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it’s likely we’re going to have to destroy them all.”

  “Yes.”

  Without a word, Michiko charged the creatures. The speed with which she attacked was impressive. She cut and thrust, and spun and jumped, and in the end she cut the first three creatures into pieces.

  “She’s going to exhaust herself. Can we do anything . . . ?” said Nellie in a strange sort of awe.

  “Look,” said Cora, pointing to the ground at one of the severed arms.

  The arm had started to pull itself forward on its own volition and, at the same time, the legs of the creature found its torso and reconnected with it.

  “It’s puttin’ itself back together. What kind of black magic—”

  “Silver Heart, Lady Sparkle, get behind me, now,” ordered Cora.

  Nellie looked at Cora, who had a very serious expression on her face, and did what she was told, grabbing Michiko.

  “There’s only one thing for this. You two go on. I’m not sure how powerful this thing will turn out to be.”

  Cora pulled out a small cylindrical brass object from its holster on her right hip and pushed a button on its underside. There was a moment during which nothing happened. And then . . .

  It looked like her costume had suddenly sprung to life. The pieces of metal and gears that decorated it began to move. They turned and then started to travel across her body in a pattern that seemed very deliberate, all heading toward the cylinder Cora was holding. They collected and joined with one another, and, as they slid off her torso toward the growing cylinder, the plain leather corset and white shirt she was wearing were revealed.

  Then there was stillness. Even the lumbering creatures had stopped to watch the show. And then, in Cora’s hand, supported at her hip, was a large rather intimidating gun.

  She looked over her shoulder and, seeing that both Nellie and Michiko were still there, yelled, “Go!”

  Nellie took a step back and watched as a light started to glow at the back of the cylinder. She took another step back, then another, and another.

  Cora fired the weapon at the closest creature. The weapon made almost no sound except for a high-pitched whoosh as its projectile—whatever it was—since there was nothing to see—traveled toward the creature.

  The creature evaporated before their very eyes. It made a slight pop sound, and then all that was left was a fine black mist.

  “Oh my God.”

  “I said go,” ordered Cora again, not turning around this time. Just firing shot after shot as the creatures realized they had a new enemy to conquer.

  Nellie felt Michiko pull on her arm, and she finally started running down the hall. They were running without any idea where they were going, and their desperation probably explained why neither of them noticed the trip wire, brightly lit, crossing the hall.

  Within seconds, a heavy net had fallen on top of them, and they were flattened to the ground. Instantly, Michiko had one of her daggers out and was cutting through it. A shadow appeared above them, and then another and another.

  * * *

  CORA DISINTEGRATED THE last of the creatures and turned around to join Nellie and Michiko only to find them standing directly behind her. They were each being held firmly by two large men in lab coats. The girls’ masks dangled around their necks. So much for secret identities. A third man, whom she recognized as Dr. Mantis, stood staring at her in disbelief.

  “You destroyed my babies,” he said softly.

  “I’m . . . sorry.” Cora pushed her goggles up onto her forehead.

  “You certainly will be. Give me that,” he said, extending his hand toward the Chekhov.

  Cora laughed. “No, I don’t think I will.”

  “Give it to me, or I’ll take it.”

/>   “Or maybe I’ll have to disintegrate you, too. How about that?”

  Dr. Mantis took a step toward her. “Do you know the difference between you and me?” he asked in that quiet voice of his.

  “Aside from the fact that I have hair?”

  “The difference between us is that I have no compunction about killing people.” He walked toward her until he had pressed his body against the Chekhov. “I don’t think it’s the same for you.”

  Cora stared into his bloodshot eyes. She could do it. Couldn’t she?

  Damn.

  She gave him the weapon.

  48

  And Now . . . the Fog

  THE THREE GIRLS were marched into a giant, cavernous space carefully buttressed against collapse by thick iron beams and struts. It had an almost cathedral-like appearance, the lancet arches flying up into the shadows above. Along the walls, there were several large round holes that looked to be tunnels leading . . . who knew where. All sorts of contraptions ticked and hissed away on tables and even on the floor, and as the girls made their way into the room, a dozen or so men, all properly dressed in lab coats, stopped running their various experiments and looked at them.

  The girls were ushered down a set of stairs to the main level and toward the rear of a room where a raised platform had been constructed and an ornate wooden desk sat.

  And in the chair behind the desk, fingers drumming impatiently on the hilt of a cavalry saber, was sitting . . .

  “Who the hell are you?” asked Cora, flabbergasted that the Fog should be a total stranger. After all the novels she’d read, she’d sort of assumed that he would be someone she knew.

  Then again, she also assumed he would be . . . well . . . a he.

  The woman sitting behind the desk looked mildly insulted by the question.