Immortal Twilight (14 page)

She needed to get to the control panel, dial herself out of this simulation, shut down whatever the hell it was she had powered up. Brigid’s head flicked back and forth, her hair drawing over her face as she searched for the bronze plate in the wall. The jungle appeared dense, greenery in all directions and as far as the eye could see. It was an illusion, though—it simply had to be. There had been no rush of the teleport, no momentary physical uncertainty as her body was discorporated before rematerializing here in this jungle, and there was surely no jungle under the ground like this—not here. No, she was sure of it—she was still in the room that the recorded voice had referred to as the WarCreche.

“Find a wall,” Brigid muttered to herself, “and follow it.” A simple and elegant solution.

Grasping the thick branch that loomed ahead of her, Brigid swung herself once, twice, three times over it like a gymnast on the bars, picking up speed before launching herself down toward the waiting samurai. She struck the foremost samurai high in the chest with both feet, slamming into him with the impact of a runaway freight train.

Without a word of complaint, the samurai-thing went down, crashing into three of his colleagues as he plummeted backward to the ground.

Brigid landed in a crouch beside the fallen samurai warriors and sped away, legs pumping, arms stretched out before her to feel her way. Low-hanging tree branches and tall ferns blocked her path, causing her to think quickly, weaving a new pattern even as the remaining samurai hurried after her. Up ahead there was a solid wall of foliage, more like a hedge than something that would naturally occur in a jungle. That had to be the wall, she realized, that or something just behind it.

The samurai were catching up, cutting through the plant life as though it were weightless. Perhaps it is, Brigid realized. Perhaps only I see it.

Then she was at the hedge and instead of turning away from it, she leaped, powering her body in a two-step spring that took her to the top of the towering green eight feet above the ground. Her hands slapped against the sky that waited behind it with the sound of flesh slapping brick. It was the wall, disguised as the sky, hidden within the projection.

From her position atop the hedge, Brigid scanned left and right, narrowing her eyes to try to filter out the flicker that seemed to be generating the unreal environment. It was there when she blinked, a momentary afterimage of the unlit gymnasium, shadow figures moving within it. The image was too momentary to fully process, but Brigid realized right away that she was in some kind of interactive virtual environment, as she had guessed, one that required props to function. Despite the conviction and speed with which the illusions were cast, the whole thing was little more than a funfair ride, shadow and light used to cast images in the viewer’s mind.

Brigid’s eidetic memory granted her an incredible spatial awareness, enough that she might locate the brass panel within those split seconds before her blinks resolved back into the illusion.

Blink
.
Look left.

Blink. Look right.

Blink. Left again.

Blink.

There.
She spied the panel gleaming against the wall, just as she had left it, and she fixed it in her mind as the illusion took precedence, filling her eyes with the fluttering image of the jungle like a flip-book animation.

Knowing what she was looking for now, Brigid saw the way the hedge became a knot of branches, a wide tree trunk, a thick clump of bushes. She saw the way that the illusion projected over the walls, disguising the true proportions of the room. Knowing was half the battle.

It took a minute, ducking and weaving, slipping under drooping branches, vaulting over others, always keeping just three steps ahead of the relentless samurai warriors with their fixed expressions.

When she reached it, Brigid still could not see the door-size panel. It existed only in her eidetic memory, its position fixed in place, each dial and knob and lever crystal clear in her mind’s eye. She reached forward, clawing for the black knob she had clicked around a quarter turn to set the simulation in motion. She couldn’t see it—all that appeared before Brigid’s eyes was a wall of leaves, their thin veins drawn sharp by the sun’s rays. But she felt it, forced herself to feel it as she held the dial. Behind her, two samurai had broken through the curtain of vegetation and were bringing their swords to bear, held high in preparation to behead her.

“Please work,” Brigid muttered as she twisted the dial back in the reverse direction, resetting it to how she had found it.

From the speaker in the wall panel before her, that same crackling recorded voice burst out.

“Simulation concluded,” it said, structuring the words into syllables, each one shouted. It sounded like an old-fashioned sergeant major, the type Brigid had seen in ancient entertainment vids, the type Bill S. Preston Esquire had so desperately fought to avoid when his dad threatened to send him to military school.

Behind and all around her, the simulation flickered and died, the vines turning back into ropes, the thick tree branches becoming just a pommel horse and a punching bag once more. The samurai warriors waited immobile, only they were no longer samurai—just blank-faced automatons holding pipelike staves in their clumsy hands.

It had felt so real.

Brigid studied the control panel before her, the lights dimming to nothingness. She bent down, retrieving the discarded flashlight she had dropped earlier, playing its beam across the shiny metal plate. It looked ancient, the design all elaboration and hand-crafted workmanship. A tiny plaque at the bottom read Made in Colchester, England, 1895.

The words, embossed on a brass tag, had been buffed almost flat, and beneath them lay the royal crest indicating the builders of the machine served the British Royal Family.

“WarCreche,” Brigid repeated, running the strange word around in her mind. “Some kind of virtual training environment for elite soldiers, maybe?” What was it the machine voice had called her? “Dorian. As in Dorian Gray perhaps?” Well, that made as much sense as anything else she could come up with.

Brigid backed out of the silent gymnasium and headed for the staircase. It was time to share her findings with Kane and Grant.

* * *

K
ANE
AND
G
RANT
had troubles of their own.

The mysterious Harold was still crouched at the rear of the stage, warily eyeing Grant as the hulking ex-magistrate reloaded his Copperhead. Kane was only now pulling himself up from the floor, and it took him several goes to get the words out to speak to Grant as he aimed his Sin Eater—albeit somewhat haphazardly—in the direction of his attacker.

“Wh-what...kept y-eugh?” Kane croaked.

“Didn’t realize you had trouble out here,” Grant said as he slid the new ammo clip home. “You should have said something.”

“Little...difficult,” Kane admitted in his strained voice. “Bastard had my...windpipe shut.”

“You okay now?” Grant asked without taking his attention from Kane’s attacker.

“Getting there,” Kane said after a moment’s hesitation. “Sore as hell, though.”

“There’s water back in the Mantas,” Grant reminded him. “You want to go back?”

“In a bit.”

The unclothed figure remained in place, watching Grant’s blaster with obvious concern.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Grant said, motioning slightly with the Copperhead, “I got no bones about shooting you. None at all.”

On his feet now, Kane looked swiftly about the little stage area for something to bind his attacker. His eyes fixed on the curtain pull, a thick rope colored a dull gold, and he drew his knife from his boot and hacked through it in three quick strokes. A moment later, Kane was standing next to the man who had attacked him, making it very clear what he was going to do and warning him not to try anything.

“You don’t want my partner to shoot you again,” Kane said, his voice still hoarse. “Not while you’re naked anyway. He’s liable to shoot you in the crotch, something I don’t think even you’re going to recover from quickly.”

Without replying, the naked man held his hands ready to be bound, and Kane looped the rope over him to make sure his ankles were bound, too.

“So what are we going to do with him?” Grant asked. “Can’t shoot him. Not easily anyhow—I got an empty ammo clip that proves that.”

Kane cleared his throat to answer, but before he could, Brigid Baptiste reappeared in the doorway at the rear of the theatre.

“Hey, guys,” she said.

Kane looked at her, irritated. “Where the hell did you get to, Baptiste?” he croaked. “This ass almost punched my ticket down here while you were—”

“Kane, I’ve found something,” Brigid said, stopping him midflow. “I think it’s important.”

With their prisoner tied in one of the chairs, Kane and Grant followed Brigid up the staircase, past the dead bodies.

Chapter 15

“It’s called a WarCreche,” Brigid explained. The three Cerberus warriors were standing together in the gymlike room, huddled around the brass instrument panel that was sunk into one wall. The eerie, faceless mannequins had disappeared back behind the cabinet doors that lay flush against one wall. “It’s some kind of ancient training facility designed to test soldiers.”

“How old?” Grant asked.

“Over three centuries,” Brigid said, pointing to the worn plaque. “Says it was built in 1895.”

“How does it work?” Kane asked.

“It employs the principles of theater to generate a virtual environment, using an advanced form of hypnotic suggestion.”

Grant shook his head. “Boy, you sure said a mouthful....”

“I experienced it firsthand when I accidentally switched it on,” Brigid explained.

“‘Accidentally’?” Kane repeated, his dubious tone clear even with his newly gravelly voice.

Brigid raised an eyebrow as she smiled. “It was pretty obvious how it operated,” she said. “I wanted to see what it did.”

“And what did it do?” Grant asked.

“It uses flickering light to fool the brain,” Brigid explained, “similar to the kind of strobe effect that has been known to set off seizures in epileptics. That effect, coupled with some rather dazzling automatons—”

“Robots,” Kane translated.

“—creates a kind of training field where combat prowess can be honed and tested.”

Kane whistled incredulously. “And it’s been down here all this time,” he said.

Brigid nodded. “We’ve no reason to think otherwise.”

“Then who’s it for...?” Grant began. “Or do I already know?”

Brigid nodded again. “Yeah, I suspect it’s your ambushers from the factory. There are clothes in the bedrooms that match the styles you described.”

“But they’re—what?—soldiers?” Kane asked.

“The brain of the WarCreche called me Dorian,” Brigid explained. “I suspect that’s a general name for the people that Grant met, like a designation or rank.”

“Dorian...? Dorian...?” Kane rattled the word around thoughtfully.

“Dorian Gray was a character from a story by Oscar Wilde, an Irish playwright best known for his exceptional wit,” Brigid filled in. “In the story—
The Picture of Dorian Gray
—the lead character has a supernatural portrait of himself which ages in his place, allowing him to remain a young man. He uses this incredible gift to enjoy a rather excessive lifestyle until the picture is discovered and the spell lifted.”

“How does this relate to this WarCreche and the people who attacked me?” Grant asked.

“For all intents and purposes, Dorian Gray was an immortal,” Brigid said. “I suspect that someone—maybe the British government—was experimenting with immortality around the same time as the story appeared, and that this facility contained the results of those experiments.”

Kane looked unsure. “That’s a lot of speculation based on not very much,” he said warningly.

“The connection to Dorian Gray is obvious,” Brigid said. “How many famous Dorians can you think of?”

Kane nodded reluctantly while Grant grumbled an agreement beside him.

“To achieve genuine immortality would require incredible medical advances,” Brigid said. “The only other way to do it—and perhaps a more realistic one—would be to engineer something at the fetal stage, while it was still developing in the womb. Either option requires huge amounts of money, money that, historically, is only available for military purposes.”

“But if you combine the two...” Kane said, seeing where the distaff member of the group was going.

“Exactly.” Brigid beamed. “Supersoldiers. Immortal, impervious to attack, stronger and faster than an ordinary man.” She turned to Grant. “Is all of this starting to sound familiar?”

“Yeah,” Grant growled. “A lot like what me and Shizuka... What put her in the infirmary.”

Kane looked around the dark WarCreche, light trickling through the open doorway. “So what now, Baptiste?”

“We have some names,” Brigid said. “We may be able to track down more information through the Cerberus database.”

“One thing confuses me,” Kane admitted. “You said this looked like a British project—what’s it doing here, buried under a mound in Luilekkerville?”

“That’s a good question,” Brigid agreed, “and one I don’t have an answer to.”

“Here’s another,” Grant groused as the trio left the room. “How come they didn’t show up before now? If they’ve been here since eighteen-ninety-whatever, what made them come up for air?”

“Our late grave robbers disturbed them,” Brigid suggested, “but that doesn’t explain why they didn’t emerge before then. From what you’ve told us, these Dorians are naturally inquisitive.”

“Yeah,” Grant said.

“So how do you keep inquisitive supersoldiers from turning on their own troops?” Kane asked. “You have to have a way to contain them. Bunkie on stage back there is one of them. I’d lay money on it. The way he came at me and shrugged off Grant’s bullets, there’s no question that he’s something more than human.”

“And nuts as a jackalope on jolt,” Grant muttered.

“Why didn’t he leave, too?” Kane wondered. “The door’s open, so what kept him down here?”

The group were back at the staircase now, and Grant led the way down with his subgun poised ready, stepping carefully over the pale corpse that littered the winding steps.

“If the evidence is to be believed,” Brigid said, “then they’ve been down here a long time. While it began as a training facility, this place may have become a prison, either accidentally or on purpose.”

Kane was shaking his head. “People don’t get imprisoned accidentally. Not like this anyway. Someone’s thrown a lot of money at setting this hole up for them. A
lot
of money.”

“They may have been forgotten,” Brigid mused. “It’s been a long time.”

Grant turned back to the others as they reached the foot of the stairs. “Trapped down here all that time—what do you figure that would do to someone?”

“Make them mad.” Brigid said it almost flippantly, but the resonance of her words struck her.

“Yeah,” Grant said, emerging from the stairwell with his blaster pointed at the stage. “That’s what I thought.”

The naked figure whose wrist tag called him Harold remained where they had left him, tied to one of the seats in the little auditorium. He seemed to be crying again, head ducked down in shame.

“Mad immortal soldiers,” Kane muttered, looking over to the broken figure sitting where the audience should be. “Inbred and insane, with three hundred years of crazy rattling around in their immortal fucking heads. Yeah, this is going to end well.”

Together, the group approached the remaining immortal where he sat rocking in his seat. He had calmed significantly since he had attacked Kane. He seemed almost to have become entirely reclusive once more.

* * *

T
HEY
DID
ONE
MORE
SWEEP
of the underground facility before leaving, finding clothes for the naked man before escorting him up the tunnels that led to the surface. The corpses could stay down there, since there was no way for either Manta to carry the extra weight and frankly they were too long dead to go through the hassle of burying them. Once they were out, Kane reasoned, they could seal this place up and that would be the end of it, at least until they found the so-called Dorians and figured out what to do with them.

But as it happened, getting out with their mentally altered prisoner proved a lot more difficult than they expected. Harold made it along the final tunnel with ease, clearly intrigued by where he was going, almost as though he had never seen it before.

It was still light up there, the last of the afternoon sun painting the sky a peach-skin pink through the manhole opening. The effect created an almost luminous circle in the roof of the tunnel.

“I’ll go first,” Grant said, while Kane held his Sin Eater locked on Harold’s hairless head. “More chance he’ll rabbit once we’re out in the open, so I’d rather have the Copperhead trained on him once we’re outside.”

Grant climbed swiftly up the ladder rungs, swinging himself over the lip of the manhole and out into the grassy area beyond.

But despite their urging, Harold refused to move. He just stared at the ladder rungs in bewilderment.

“What is it, Baptiste?” Kane asked. “What is he having trouble with?”

“I don’t know,” Brigid said, looking all around. “It’s almost like the way a rodent reacts to a sonic repellent. It doesn’t know why it feels compelled to turn away, yet it does so anyway.”

“But what’s he turning away from?” Kane asked.

“Something...” Brigid said, looking all around for a speaker, some device that might emit a sonic prompt.

As Brigid searched, Grant peered down through the entryway, swinging the muzzle of the Copperhead down below the circular opening. “Hey, what’s keeping you guys? Rough-’n’-tumble there giving you some trouble?”

As if triggered, Harold suddenly reached for the ladder and began clambering up its rungs, a broad smile stretched on his docile face. It was as though he was seeing the hole for the first time.

“Something I said?” Grant asked, pulling himself back out of the way.

Harold stopped, and the confusion reappeared on his face. Grant was looking down at him, and he had the distinct impression that Harold quite literally could not see him. He seemed to be focused on something right in front of him, as if the door was still sealed an inch from his nose.

“Grant?” Brigid called up. “What did you touch?”

“I didn’t touch nothing,” Grant objected.

“You did something, buddy,” Kane rasped, his voice still a little raw. “Big man there isn’t moving, and he was a moment ago.”

“It’s something you did, Grant,” Brigid reasoned. “Repeat your actions... No, forget that.” She closed her eyes, replaying in her mind’s eye the exact movements that Grant had performed just moments ago. He had leaned in, dangling the barrel of the Copperhead over the lip of the entryway. Dangling it over...
there.

Brigid saw it, an innocuous symbol drawn on the base of the opened door cover. No, it wasn’t drawn—it was engraved in the metal. Once she had spotted it, she saw another one, this time engraved on the complex workings that hinged the door open, the weight and counterweight system of cogs and pulleys that must have made opening the door possible despite its weight and bulk.

“Use your coat to cover the door,” Brigid said.

Grant was bemused but he didn’t argue; he simply removed his long duster and hung it over the open manhole round where it stood upright within the depression. His coat acted as a curtain over the strange engraving, and almost as soon as he had masked it, prisoner Harold seemed to be happy to climb out of the subterranean lair and out into the open.

Keeping his distance, Grant framed the strange figure in the sights of his Copperhead while Brigid and Kane climbed to the surface before closing the cantilevered trapdoor in the earth. It was not hidden as such, but surrounded by trees and sunk in the ground so it would pass a casual inspection. No one would come here unless they knew what they were looking for.

“You think you can cope with fun boy here in the back of your rig?” Kane asked as Grant slipped his arms back into his coat sleeves.

Grant eyed the strange figure of Harold shambling around in a circle, staring at his own feet. “Maybe we should sedate him,” Grant concluded, “just to be safe.”

Agreed, the three Cerberus warriors escorted Harold to the Mantas, reporting their initial findings before taking off and heading back to home base. Behind them, the eternal sun continued its lazy descent toward the horizon, eking out the last of its rays.