“It will be a short drive,” Dentweiler informed her. “Then you can get some sleep. The program will get underway in the morning.”
Once they left the airport it was pitch black outside so Hannah had no way to know where they were going. The car followed a two-lane highway for what seemed like about five miles before turning off onto a gravel road which twisted and turned between rocky hillsides, and eventually arrived at a gate guarded by a squad of Army Rangers.
IDs were checked, the gate swung open, and the car drove through. The gate swung shut with a sharp clang.
Hannah Shepherd felt like a prisoner.
There was pain.
Not personal-pain, originating from the swollen body in which Daedalus was trapped, but other-pain being experienced by someone else. And Daedalus was an expert where pain was concerned. It had been a simple thing once, a signal that something had gone wrong with his body, and should be corrected.
But during the months they had experimented on him, Daedalus had learned there were different types of pain. Flavors really, like ice cream, each having its own individual taste, texture, and consistency.
Since his escape from the facility in Iceland, Daedalus had been free to deepen his understanding of pain by inflicting it on others, and vicariously experiencing what they felt, as both their real and telepathic screams echoed through the ether.
So as the first tendril of fear-laced emotion made contact with his mind, Daedalus sampled it in much the same way a wine connoisseur might try a new vintage, and wondered why this particular anguish was somehow associated with him. Especially since the world was so awash in pain that it constituted little more than emotional static.
Then he had it, because this particular cry of pain was not only “addressed” to him, but had originated from one of the shadow people who populated his previous existence. A time when he had been a part without a whole. A poor cast-off creature forever doomed to live alone, rather than within the comforting embrace of the vast virus-guided oneness that provided each and every Chimera with both a place and a purpose.
For the most part shadow people were to be ignored, and Daedalus would have ignored this searching tentacle of pain, had it not been for one thing: It was from Hannah. Something was causing her voice to be heard more loudly—and with greater intensity than all the other voices on the planet. Hannah was the one shadow person Daedalus still cared about, the woman he had promised to “cherish in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and forsaking all others.”
There were no orders as such. Just desires that originated with Daedalus and were immediately translated into concrete actions by lesser forms who, had they been asked, would have been unable to distinguish between his objectives and their own.
The initiative amounted to wasted energy, insofar as the Chimeran virus was concerned, but the virus didn’t have an individual persona, and was reliant on the overall success of its various forms to conquer Earth.
And that effort was going very well.
Dentweiler was expecting an attack, so when three Chimeran fighters swept in from the north followed by a shuttle loaded with Hybrids, only the officers around him were surprised. They had been openly cynical regarding the mechanics of the plan, especially the part related to mental telepathy, but were ready nevertheless. So everyone took cover as the fighters shot up the base, and even went so far as to fire back, although that was mostly for show. Because Dentweiler wanted the stinks to achieve their purpose, which was why Hannah Shepherd stood at the very center of a natural depression, where she had been tied to what had once been a telephone pole.
Hannah had been systematically tortured over the last thirty-six hours, and was only barely conscious as the Chimeran attack began. She stood facing the pole, her arms wrapped around it as in a lover’s embrace, supported by the eyebolt to which her wrists were tied. Her bare back was covered with red welts where she had been whipped, no matter how much she pleaded for mercy. There had been periods of unconsciousness—albeit brief ones, because each time the merciful darkness claimed her a bucket of cold water had been used to bring her back.
“I’m sorry about this, Hannah,” Dentweiler had said as the stinging water ran down her bare legs. “But Daedalus isn’t likely to respond to anything other than genuine pain.” Hannah told him to fuck himself, which produced an appreciative chuckle from the agent in charge of whipping her.
She didn’t know how long ago that had been—she had lost all sense of time. All she knew was that she was alone now, and there was a roaring—as if some sort of machine was approaching, greeted by light small-arms fire. Two sets of hands roughly cut her free, and there was a horrible smell that made her want to retch.
Moments later, she was aboard a strange aircraft, and felt it lurch off the ground.
Dentweiler witnessed the raid from the safety of an underground bunker, and watched the shuttle take off and bank toward the north. “We’re tracking it?”
It was a stupid question, since that was the whole point of the exercise, but the major who was standing next to Dentweiler understood.
“Yes, sir… The tracking device woven into her hair is working, a Sabre Jet is following the shuttle north, and we have it on radar.”
“Good,” Dentweiler said grimly. “Notify the recovery team. Let’s grab that bastard.”
Hannah was terrified and with good reason. The stench inside the shuttle was incredible; she was surrounded by heavily armed Hybrids, and they were even more hideous than they appeared in photographs. And the fact that most, if not all, of them would have been happy to eat her made the situation even worse.
But they didn’t, which left her to sit with arms crossed over her bare breasts, shivering from both fear and the cold air. Her badly lacerated back felt as if it was on fire, and if she survived, Hannah knew she would be forever scarred.
The flight was mercifully short, and if Dentweiler was correct, Jordan would be waiting for her. Hannah felt something like liquid lead trickle into the pit of her stomach as the shuttle put down, machinery whined, and a ramp slid down to touch the ground.
One of the ′brids growled menacingly, which Hannah took as a signal to deplane, so she rose to make her way down onto the landing pad. The motion opened some of her wounds, and caused her to wince as blood began to flow.
The landing pad was located at the center of an enormous cylinder and was large enough to handle at least three aircraft. The purpose of the surrounding facility wasn’t clear to Hannah, but as she looked up she could see circular galleries, free-floating drones, and the half-visible sun, which was split by the structure’s curving rim. She “heard” Jordan’s “voice” a fraction of a second before his considerable shadow fell over her. Hannah.
The single word flooded her mind. It was heavily freighted with love, sorrow, and anger. They hurt you.
As she continued to look up, an airborne grotesquerie appeared. Jordan, or the thing he had become, was about twenty times larger than she was. Its body consisted of overlapping lobes of translucent flesh, all bisected by spiny ridges that flared away from a tiny human head, to stream back and form a long whiplike tail.
Jordan.
Just below the head and a cluster of glowing yellow eyes were two tentaclelike tool-arms and, farther back, four spiderlike legs dangled, ready to support the monster’s weight should it decide to land. The creature was breathtakingly horrible, yet some aspect of the presence that had invaded her head was recognizably her husband, and Hannah reacted accordingly. “Yes,” she responded, too numb and too weary to feel the fear she knew she should have been experiencing. “They tortured me in order to get at you.” At that point she wondered who the real monsters were.