Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (37 page)

What would the fundamental collapse of the universe entail?

Eddying hypnotically, the white fog swallowed up the young man in black and went on to lay claim to all of the now-empty room.

Emerging from the elevator and going to see Sue in her recovery room, D raised one slim eyebrow a bit.

Sue wasn’t there.

“Where’d she get off to?” the left hand asked in a wondering tone.

What had lured Sue away was Matthew’s voice. As long as she was in Valcua’s facility, her whereabouts would be all too clear. Realizing this, the Ultimate Noble had sent her brother’s voice and likeness into the recovery room. The computer that oversaw her room had originally belonged to Valcua, after all. The apparition had come after D had vanished underground. Hearing Matthew and having him there beckoning to her, there was no way Sue could resist. She still wasn’t free of his brainwashing.

Sue went outside. After she’d gone about a hundred yards, a number of red lights came toward her from across the plaza. It was one of Valcua’s patrols. He must’ve directed a group in the area to head there at the same time he sent her the illusion of Matthew. Their flexible tentacles reached for the girl. Once she went to Valcua, his revenge would be half accomplished.

The tentacled cylinders zipped along at 120 miles per hour. Exiting the valley two hours later, they began to pass through an area where other buildings towered. Fiery blasts flew from nowhere, causing one of the cylinders to explode as soon as it was hit. The dozen cylinders tried to get in formation to defend themselves from this unexpected attack and strike back, but it was too late.

The one that held Sue tilted wildly. Pale-blue sparks shot from a hole that had been blown through its head. Before the disabled machine could fall, Sue jumped down onto the road. The bottoms of her feet felt awfully cold. Out of the corner of her eye she saw flames well up, and then a red-hot piece of shrapnel whizzed past her cheek.

Sue ran like a woman possessed. Ahead, she saw a building, and she could make out a door. She leaped for it. The automatic door opened smoothly to admit her, then closed again.

This was no time to relax. She couldn’t be sure whoever was responsible for this ambush wouldn’t come after her. She knew their target wasn’t the android patrol unit.

Sue coughed violently in the thick dust that had been kicked up when she entered. Giving the place a better look, she found a seemingly endless hallway filled with that vague feeling unique to long-abandoned locales. Relying only on the light coming through the windows, Sue ran further inside.

The sprawling building that spread before her reminded her of the hospital she’d been in earlier.

The girl came to an intersection of two corridors. All of the electronic displays were drained of energy. As she vacillated, she heard footsteps behind her and knew someone was coming closer. She turned for a look.

Red points of light were headed toward her. Each was part of a pair, and they were also smaller than those of the cylinders. The shadowy figures to which they belonged were human in shape.

Could they be servants of Valcua? In that case, she’d be fine.

It was an instinctive fear that caused Sue to start running away— she didn’t know why she did so. And though she ran on and on in complete abandon, the footfalls were steadily closing on her. She began to get winded. Spying a door nearby, Sue practically threw herself against it to get it open.

The room was both spacious and cramped at the same time. Rows of transparent cases reminiscent of incubators were lined up in front of a dais that was several dozen yards wide. Sue ran between the cases. Although most of them remained intact, a number of the cases had been destroyed, their pieces scattered across the floor. Every time she felt the shards beneath the soles of her shoes, she wanted to thank Matthew for allowing her to put on footwear before they escaped from the hospital.

To her right, she saw a gargantuan glass cylinder. Filled with liquid, it had a humanoid figure floating in it. A faint blue light hung in the room—undoubtedly a power source remained functional somewhere in here. Though Sue was about to pass it by, a strange curiosity took hold of her, and she kept her gaze trained on the object. She halted. It was unbelievable. She stared so hard, her eyes seemed to bore into it. Several seconds later Sue’s terrific scream echoed through the room.

This was it. It was the same thing Matthew had showed her back in Count Braujou’s car. The thing he’d proudly described as part of Valcua’s plan. However, seeing it before her very eyes, she found it repulsive.

There was no mistaking that it was a combination of a human being and some other creature. Soaking in a liquid that was probably a nutrient solution, the figure’s upper body was human, while its lower half looked like a lump-covered arthropod, and though it was taller than a full-grown adult, the human portion resembled an enormous fetus. But that wasn’t what prompted Sue’s scream. The figure had suddenly twitched.

Her screams didn’t stop. Still crying out, Sue backed away. Something cold and clammy latched onto her wrist.

Could this thing be alive?

The fetus was roughly a foot and a half in length, its entire body covered with tumorlike bumps. It also had three eyes and six arms. Slowly, it was emerging from its cylinder.

Sue’s screams died away.

“Wh—what... are ... you ...” the girl murmured, but she made no attempt to extricate her wrist from its grip. There was no telling what it would do if she made a move. The teeth that protruded from those swollen lips were the fangs of a carnivore. Its lips moved slowly.

“Hungry . . . I’m ... so hungry ..

“What?”

The tension swiftly drained from Sue’s body. The voice was that of a human child. There was no mistaking it. And it complained because its belly was empty.

“You .. . you can talk?”

“Yes ... I can talk .. . But I’m ... so hungry!”

“This is unbelievable—what are you doing in a place like this?” “He said ... it was an experiment... Talked about making ... a new form of life ...”

“An experiment? Whose experiment? Who made you like this?” The infant shook its head weakly. Due to its disproportionate size, its head wobbled to one side and then the other.

Sue was on edge.

“I... don’t know ... It was a . .. big person.”

Footsteps could be heard from the same direction Sue had come. “Are you all alone?”

“Yes.”

Sue held the child to her chest.

The infant continued, mumbling, “All the others ... died ... All of them.”

As she ran, Sue shot glances to either side. The cases and cylinders held the products of bizarre experiments. Shriveled like mummies, melted into slime, rotted away to dust—each of them was a combination of a monster and a gigantic fetus.

Who on earth had done such a thing, and when? What had they hoped to ultimately produce with such experiments?

Dust rose around her feet—these were the remnants of demonic experiments undertaken many ages ago.

Suddenly, the infant’s arm wrapped around her neck.

“You’re warm. And soft.”

The second Sue heard that satisfied tone, tears welled in her eyes. The infant pulled its face closer to the nape of her neck. Its arms were unexpectedly strong.

Just then, the little body jerked to the right without warning.

Sue’s eyes bulged in their sockets. She hadn’t seen one of her pursuers running right alongside her.

“What are you
doing?”

As she tried to pull the infant close again, her left arm was jerked back. Was there another one of them? With both hands now pinned, the infant was wrested from her.

“Stop it!”

The one who’d taken it away halted, and then bit the tiny figure. A wail rose from it, but it soon became quiet again.

“Stop it!” the girl exclaimed, struggling madly, but a pair of cold hands on her shoulders pinned her in place.

“Give it up, already,” a man’s voice said. “There’s nothing else we can do. We’ll drive a stake through its heart right away.”

“You’ll
what!”

“Put your hand to the right side of your neck,” another said.

That was where the infant had nuzzled against her. She had a hunch now. A cold and black foreboding.

When Sue didn’t move her arms, someone grabbed her right wrist and pressed her index finger to her neck. A slight pain shot through her, and she found minor protuberances there. Two of them.

“That child was modified by the Nobility,” the first voice said.

“Modified?”

“This lab was used for experiments in combining Nobles and human beings. So was the rest of this facility.”

“Combining them?” Sue said, the man’s blunt delivery leaving her mind in a state of turbulence. What kind of new life form had they created? She hoped whoever had conceived of this would be cursed for all eternity.

Off in the distance, where they’d taken the infant, there was a loud thud. Sue closed her eyes. Several seconds later, she opened them. Her head hurt terribly. She felt as if she’d awakened from a dream.

Sue said, “Weren’t you guys.. .”

“You remember us? We hated you because you were with a Noble, and now we’re in with them too.” “We were with that survey party.”

As Sue turned in their direction, the keen fangs poking from their lips burned into the girl’s eyes.

Ill

“So, Lord Valcua ... He made you guys into . . .” Sue began in a hoarse voice, as she indeed recognized the men.

The men exchanged glances.

“No, we serve the great Miranda.”

Damn!
she thought, but she questioned the men no further, and it was decided that they would bring her back to Braujou and Miranda. That was a problem. Though Sue remained hesitant, the men considered Miranda’s instructions absolute. Before she could convince them otherwise, they brought her outside.

Without a sound, crimson streaks of light flowed toward them from all sides. One man’s head evaporated in a blast, and two others fell to the ground in rapid succession after the upper body of one and the right half of the other were destroyed.

“It’s a patrol!”

“Some of them were left?”

“No, these are reinforcements.”

As this tangle of shouts rang in Sue’s ears, powerful arms wrapped around her waist, and someone ran down the corridor carrying her. The rest remained behind. They intended to buy Sue some time.

Fiery blasts came after her. The edges of her field of view were tinged with crimson.

After following the corridor through several turns, the man’s body trembled a bit.

Sue felt herself sailing through the air. Landing on her shoulder but continuing to move forward, she felt an acute pain. She was knifing through the wind at an incredible speed on a moving sidewalk. It was rolling at sixty miles per hour.

Sue turned around.

The man had dropped just in front of the sidewalk. His head was missing.

Picking up speed, the sidewalk whisked the girl into the darkness.

A car raced by the light of the moon. The stench of blood filled the vehicle. It was as if each and every molecule of air was stained with gore, and just wringing your fist would cause blood to seep from between your fingers.