TWENTY-FOUR
BACK at the lab—you know, the one with that big overstuffed
containment tank—Al’s leaning against the only thing in the place
that looks like what it is, a water cooler, as I fill her in. She’s full of questions, questions I wished I’d asked myself, starting with:
“You just let him go? What the hell, Wade?”
I try to explain, but I don’t really understand myself. “There was just…something about him that made me think he was telling the truth.”
Balancing her hand atop the five-gallon bottle, she leans my way. “A twinkle in his eyes? His winning smile?”
Ignoring the sarcasm, I walk toward a terminal. I keep my voice low as I pass.
“I wouldn’t know. He was wearing a mask.”
She pulls a paper cup from the dispenser and fills it, careful to keep a finger over the rim so she knows when to stop the tap. Then she takes a big swig of water and does a spit take in my direction.
“A MASK? Didn’t you at least take it off when you had him pinned against the wall?”
“I want to say yes, but…no.”
“I’m really starting to worry about you. First you’re rolling around with those flea-bitten mutts, and now this. Lord knows you’ve screwed up before, but…”
I toss my hands in the air. “I didn’t think of it, okay? I got all confused.” I plop into the seat and pound the keys, hoping to restore some of my dignity. “It’s not like I’m a complete basket case. I may not have mentioned it to our readers, but I did slip a tracer on him.”
“Well, don’t get cocky about it. Even broken watches tell the right time twice a day.”
I try to wow her with fancy tech-talk. “It wasn’t any old dime-store tracer, Al. It was a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued doohickey, a trillion circuits on the head of a pin, with a range of over umpteen billion miles. I’m telling you, that sucker can sense signals right through the core of the Earth—through the natural magnetic shielding and the mole people. Not only that, I can access the signal on scores of popular digital-media devices.”
She harrumphs. “You even paid for the coffee, didn’t you?”
Ignoring the question, I puff up my chest. “I’m telling you, I can find Dick whenever I want.”
After an awkward silence, Al starts cackling. Her cup is still half-full, but spilling from her spasms of hysterical laughter.
“Ohhh! Thanks for that. So, Lame Bond, where is he?”
“Grr. Gimme a sec.” I hit a few keys.
“So?”
I hit a few more keys.
“Yeah?”
I hit all the keys.
Then I hit this one key over and over again. Finally, I plug in the keyboard and hit a few keys again. The tracer interface comes up.
“Huh. That’s funny. It’s dead.”
“Not as funny as you being able to find Dick any time you want—but, really, how can you follow that up?”
I rub my chin thoughtfully. “He must have found it. He’s good. Real good.”
A bony elbow nudges me. “Wade?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you turn it on?”
I close my eyes. She starts laughing again. At least this time, her cup is empty.
“Fine! So maybe he’s not that good. That only means it’ll be easier to catch him.”
At first I think she’s patting my back, but she’s only supporting herself so she can keep standing while she howls. “Right. Great news! Man, Wade, sometimes I just don’t know how you’ve managed to keep me a prisoner for so long.”
“Comes down to one thing, Al. I can’t die, so I always win eventually, as long as I don’t give up.”
“Think so? Got a little logic gap there, right where your brain should be.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“What if somebody else dies, and you want them alive? Then you lose, don’t you? What was the name you gave that dog? Spit-spot?”
I take Dick’s flash drive and plug it into the USB slot. “Pop-pop. I only lose if I care, Al. Only if I care.” As soon as it loads, the screen flashes. “See? There is a video file on this thing. So far so good.”
The image is nearly all white. There’s an electronic rush, a steady pulsing. A sultry voice drifts from the speakers.
“They all want me,” it says. “They can’t have me.”
Al wrinkles her nose. “That your girlfriend?”
I shush her. “Not sure. Sounds like Jane, but younger.”
The pulsing continues. It grows. “Move with me. Chant with me.”
I slap my hands. “It’s an arcane ritual! Jane must serve some demonic netherworld entity!”
As if made manifest by unleashed eldritch energies, two wizened figures appear on the screen and speak in a foreign tongue. The words, the cadence… it all sounds so familiar, like the ghost of a memory haunting the edges of my consciousness.
As if in a trance, Al starts moving. Her right arm goes straight out in front of her, palm down, then her left. She flips her right palm over, then her left, all the while gently bouncing her hips. Right hand to left shoulder, left hand to right.
And then, at last, I remember. “That’s not Jane! This is the “Macarena” video! That son of a bitch!”
Al keeps dancing. “Look at the bright side. At least you thought he was telling the truth. That’s got to count for something, right? You idiot.”
“Geez. The voices in my head never call me an idiot.”
Sure we do.
And worse.
I yank the drive out, but Al keeps up the steps even as the thumping disco beat fades into silence. “Oh, come on, lighten up! Put it back on! It’s my new jam!”
Before I can refuse, we get a whole new soundtrack: flashing alarms and wailing klaxons.
“You got a disco ball in here? I can’t tell, so I wouldn’t mind if you lied to me about it. Wade, tell me there’s a disco ball.”
I look around. Control panels light up. Devices crackle to life. A massive thud shakes the lab. I catch Al before she falls.
“Wade, tell me that was the disco ball falling.”
I look at the screen. “That video wasn’t the only thing on the drive.”
“You didn’t scan it for viruses? Can you tell what it’s doing?”
“It’s not like there’s a button on this thing that says, ‘Tell me what the virus is doing’!” My eyes dance across the screen. “No wait, there is. You know, this is one helluva great operating system.” I click it. “It’s rerouting all the power, trying to cause some kind of overload. But where?” I bring up an energy-management floor plan and breathe a sigh of relief. “Whew. The kennel’s okay.”
Another clattering thud puts Al in my lap. “Then what’s making all the ruckus?”
“Can’t tell. The surges are headed toward a blind spot, like it’s something hidden, or…”
“What?”
“Something installed too recently for the system to recognize.” I shoot to my feet, dumping Al on the floor. “Like that containment tank!”
Yep. As I watch, the three-ton thing shakes like a big-ass metal baby trying to take its first steps. The pressure monitors are so far past the red, they’re into some new color that indicates a level of imminent danger so high it hasn’t even been named yet.
“I knew that thing was a bad idea.”
This isn’t steampunk, so no popping bolts or rending seams—just a shimmy-shimmy shake-shake warning me it’s about to blow. Not like I can do anything about it, other than watch.
A bump—a kind of blister—rises on its smooth, sleek form.
I look at the screen, hoping there’s a button that reads, “Stop virus.”
There isn’t.
“Al, we’ve got to move!”
She tries to get up, but she has trouble, what with all the quaking going on. Right before the tank ruptures, I jump on her, shielding her with my body. I’m expecting a huge explosion, a major blast, a kaboom that’ll take us all out. Instead, there’s a sound more akin to Galactus, Eater of Worlds, having a bad case of explosive diarrhea.
The pink goo of five (five, right?) giant monsters squirts out in a single stream, drenching the place with a thick coat of gross, writhing, liquidy fleshness.
Remember way back when I said I wasn’t killing anything, since all that stuff is technically still alive? Don’t know how, or why, or what could possibly be producing the sound, but an undeniable voice rises out of the icky puddle. It’s angry, aching, and hollow all at once—as if simply being is causing it indescribable pain, and speaking only makes it worse. At the same time, it has no choice—it has to be, it must make itself known, and it says: