Seth turned to Knight and Queen. “May we assist in removing Him? I suggest we lay him on the floor and allow the head to rejoin with the torso. Water might also be good.”
Queen hesitated, but nodded. Ridley wouldn’t be speaking any time soon.
The three clones moved over to help. Rook gently pulled Richard Ridley’s head up and away from the cage. The tendrils that had managed to grasp those reaching from the torso snapped. Rook winced.
“It’s okay,” Seth told them. “Just get the torso out quickly, so He may heal.” Seth took the head reverently and laid it on the floor, holding it with his hand, so it would not roll to the side. Bishop pulled the torso out of its cage, swung it around and laid it on the floor below the head. Jared and Enos gently slid the torso up, until the tendrils reaching from the head touched with those of the torso. They moved the chest up further until the parts of the neck touched. Instantly the skin began to repair itself.
Bishop pulled a plastic tube from his armored shoulder, and offered it to Seth. The clone lowered the tube over Ridley’s mouth and squeezed the plastic bite valve with his fingers. A stream of water from the reservoir hidden under the armor plates on Bishop’s massive back dripped into the open mouth. Immediately, the blackened shriveled tongue began to thrash from side to side in the mouth, and color returned to it. Then it swelled closer to the size of a normal tongue.
“That’s enough,” Queen said. “Everybody step back and give him some room.”
Bishop stood up and leaned on the far wall, next to Rook. The duplicates stood and backed away, toward the door where Knight remained.
Already, the damaged body’s odd gray pallor was slipping away to a mottled yellow and white. Queen watched as the veins on Ridley’s forehead inflated, pressing away from the skin. Nubs pressed out from the man’s blackened shoulders, no larger than a peanut at first, but they quickly grew to the size of a pear.
His arms, she thought. I’m actually watching a man grow arms.
She had, of course, seen Bishop regenerate from grave wounds, back when he had his Manifold-inflicted abilities, but she had never seen anything like this.
She knelt down by Ridley’s side, watching the amazing transformation. Femur bones were extending out of the gaping openings under his hips. Then a trail of blood vessels and nerves swirled down the length of the bone, and muscles began to form in patches. Queen looked back up to the man’s head, and saw his mouth was healed entirely. Where the nose had been little more than two vertical slits, more resembling a skull than a human face, the full nose had regrown.
His eyelids moved and jittered, his eyes under the flesh darting all around, as if the man were in REM sleep.
Then he took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled.
The breath took Queen by surprise, as if up until now she had been watching a strange science video about the body, but now she was forcefully reminded that she was kneeling next to her worst enemy. And he was coming back from the dead.
His eyelids flicked open. Richard Ridley’s pale blue eyes stared at Queen. He spoke in a whisper. “Ms. Baker. Not the first face I thought I’d see upon waking, but a pleasant one, nonetheless.” Sweat had popped out on his forehead, from the strain the regenerating was taking on him.
“Hey asshole. You can speak again,” she said. “Does that mean you can use the mother tongue to finish healing yourself?”
“I could, but why—”
Queen stabbed his chest with the injector she had slipped out of a pocket on the outside of her armored leg. The serum pumped into Ridley’s heart and spread to the rest of his still-regenerating body in a flash. The growth ceased.
“What are you doing?” Seth screamed.
“Shaddap,” Rook threatened, raising his MP-5 at Seth and the other two duplicates. Knight, who was still standing near them, pushed Seth back against the wall with his free hand.
“Relax, Ridley,” Queen said to the panicked eyes below her. “Just removing your chemical regenerative abilities. The serum alters your DNA, stripping the bits that you got from the Hydra. You don’t need them to get back into shape. Once you’re healed, if you cross me, I shoot your damn mouth off, and your ability to regenerate is lost forever, without a tongue to use your magic language. Are we clear?”
“Hmm,” Ridley said. “I’d nod, but I don’t have the musculature back yet. What exactly is it that you want, Queen?”
“I want you to help me kill Alexander Diotrephes.”
Richard Ridley laid on the floor, his extremities suddenly stopped from returning. He smiled broadly, showing sparkling white teeth. “That…would be my pleasure.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Queen stood and moved toward the three duplicates. She pulled out another auto injector.
Seth’s eyes grew wide. “What is in that?”
“Same thing he got,” Queen answered, motioning to Ridley.
Seth looked confused, but the attention turned away from him when Ridley chuckled. “They’re golems. Earthen men. They cannot regenerate flesh they do not have.”
Seth looked a little disappointed to hear this, but tried to hide it.
Knight held Seth with one hand and pointed his MP-5 at the man’s temple. “I’m sure you won’t blame us for not taking your word on that.”
Queen jabbed Seth with the injector and moved to the other two clones. Jared looked as if he might fight.
Rook spoke up from across the room. “Don’t even dream it, Captain Kangaroo. I got you covered from here, and she could kill you thirty ways with that injector and another eighty with her bare hands if she wanted you gone.”
Jared offered his arm up, pushing up the sleeve of his linen suit jacket, but the fire never left his light blue eyes. Enos offered his arm meekly. Queen wondered at the differences she saw in personalities between the dupes, but she recalled what Seth had said about each of them gaining new experiences. They really are becoming different people. She wondered if any of them had a chance at redemption. Could they change from what the original Ridley was — or would she need to kill all three of them?
The serum injected into all four Ridleys, Queen moved back to the man regenerating on the gray concrete floor. A thought occurred to her. “Do you know how you were being imprisoned?”
Richard Ridley moved his head, while mumbling a chant in the mother tongue that was completing his regeneration. His eyes fell on the cages. Queen could see him working it out in his mind. When a dark frown fell on his face, she knew he understood.
“Look at me,” she said.
He turned his head toward her, with far less effort than it had taken for him to look over at the cages, still swaying on their chains. His face was neutral now, all signs of the frown gone.
“If you try to screw us, Rook and I will think up something worse than this hideous shit. Do you believe me?” Queen slid the bandana off her forehead, revealing a nasty brand she had received at the hands of an enemy in the past. “I’m no stranger to torture.”
Ridley nodded slightly. He paused his chant. “I believe you.”
“Good,” she said. “I want intel. Describe this facility. Tell me what its purpose was. I want to know every secret fucking panel in this place, and I want to know where Alexander is likely to be held up.” She glanced down at the legs Ridley was growing. The feet looked like deformed baby’s feet attached to the ends of withered adult legs. “We’ve got a little time before you’re ready to walk.”