Thought became action as he feinted a slip, then wrapped his leg behind the guard’s when he tried to adjust. Using the guard’s motion against him, Nathan slammed him to the floor. Leaping back, he aimed and fired two more shots. The guard convulsed and went slack. Nathan dripped with sweat, chest heaving, legs shuddering.
“The head.” Stein’s face was plastered against the small window in the door. His voice emitted from an intercom box beside the door. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
“What?”
“Don’t want their systems rerouted. Do it, quickly. No point being squeamish now.”
Nathan saw his father’s head lurch back, exploding in a spray of red. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Can’t. They’re dead, anyway. They can’t bother us.”
“They’re not human, Nathan. Not anymore. If you don’t finish them, they’ll finish us.”
“You do it, then.”
“I can’t step out this room. It will have control of me, then. You’re wasting time as it is. Contingencies are already being activated. Victor will be here soon. Do it. Finish them!”
Nathan’s muscles stiffened. He fired a shot into the guard’s head. It snapped back in response, without the gruesome spatter Nathan expected. Only a smoking cavity was visible.
“I told you. Now, the other one.”
Nathan turned to Stein after finishing them. “What the hell is going on? Why can’t you come out of there?”
Stein’s eyes flicked back and forth. “I… can’t. The Gestalt can sense my presence. Get into my head. Make me do… things.”
“The Gestalt? You’ve made contact with something from the Other side? Who?”
“It’s not an individual. It’s a collective consciousness, the hive mind of the dying universe from the Other side. I call it the Gestalt.”
“Gestalt.” Nathan felt a conflicting mixture of fascination and terror. “As in an organized whole operating as more than a sum of parts.”
Stein nodded. “The totality of the cognizant fragments of the Neuroverse compressed into a singular actuality. The Gestalt formed itself for the collective to operate in unison. It’s taken over the facility and its personnel to complete the repair of the Threshold. One it’s finished, it will reopen and allow the intact psionic energy of the Neuroverse to pass through uninhibited. That energy will look for hosts to inhabit in order to survive.”
Nathan wiped sweat from his face. “You mean us. Our minds overran and assimilated by theirs.”
“Two opposing forces can’t inhabit the same space. It’s simple physics. Theirs is the more powerful force, allowing them to force us out. Complete and systematic appropriation. Humanity will become extinct, replaced by some hybrid form of being.”
“What do I have to do?”
A thin drawer slid from the doorway. Inside was one of the two-way radios.
“Run. When the guards went down, contingency plans went into action. Victor is being awakened. You have to stop him, or he’ll kill us.”
Nathan clipped the radio to his side and slipped the accompanying earpiece in his ear. “Where? How do I stop him?”
Stein’s voice buzzed from the earphone. “Just run. To the right, down the hall, last door to the left.”
Nathan ran. The wide stretch of brightly lit hallway was mocking with its emptiness. The only sounds were his harsh breathing and the squeak of his soles across the polished tiles. At any second something could emerge from one of the doors, something terrible and twisted…
He slid to the last door and shoved his way inside.
The laboratory was designed in streamlined fashion: clean lines, minimalist glass and chrome furniture. As with the rest of the building, it was lit to the maximum luminosity. That only made the specimens on display more macabre.
Several cadavers were under glass in various stages of dissection. Nathan recognized a smaller version of the giant spider creatures. The body was the size of a large dog, and was even more repulsive up close, like some alien experiment in fusing insect and human parts. Other grotesqueries and anatomical samples were encased in jars and coffers, spread across several counters and tabletops.
Several chambers the size of bathtubs were built into the nearest wall, sealed off by frosted glass. Silhouettes of indistinct figures were barely visible inside.
Nathan’s heart leaped in his throat when Dr. Stein’s voice broke the silence.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“You have to keep talking to me, Nathan. I can’t see what you see.”
“Okay.”
“The last stasis pod to your left. Is it open?”
Nathan looked that direction. The pod in question was larger than the others.
“No. It’s closed.”
“Thank God.” The relief was evident in Stein’s shaky exhalation. “Listen — you have to shut it down. Shut them all down, it’ll be faster.”
Nathan felt as crushing sense of dread. “Won’t that… kill whoever’s inside?”
“Remember the guards you took out?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what those chambers are for. My co-workers and the security team — they didn’t have a choice. I was a part of it. Part of the deception. The Gestalt… you don’t understand what it is. What it can make you do. Just… look — we don’t have the time. They’re gone, get it? No longer human. Shutting this down is a mercy. But the last chamber is holding Victor. He’s a monstrosity. He’s the hand of the Gestalt. He made me do things, understand? You have to take him out or we’re dead.”
Nathan exhaled a trembling breath. “Okay. What do I do?”
“Manual override. The lever right beside Victor’s pod. Quickly.”
Nathan approached the chamber with his heart hammering against his chest. Dead things watched with sightless eyes when he placed his hand on the lever emerging from the wall.
Nathan’s breath caught in his throat when light bloomed in Victor’s chamber.
The creature inside blinked, slowly turning to look at Nathan. His dull, watery eyes gazed with brute dispassion, inhuman intelligence sparking in his stare. Nathan felt the rising panic in a rush of frantic palpitations and shortness of breath, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the gruesome thing.
Long, lank strands of black hair fell lifelessly to Victor’s bony shoulders. His face was painfully gaunt, looking more a corpse than a living thing. Thin, nearly transparent skin riddled with blue veins stretched over emaciated, sinewy muscle. It opened its mouth and a rattling sound escaped, like bones in a meat grinder. The malformed, blackened lips worked, trying to form words as if language were a thing just realized.
Nathan’s words tripped over his tongue, which suddenly felt dry and swollen. “He’s… he’s awake.”
“Pull the override. Now!”
Nathan yanked the lever down. The light in the chamber winked off. Victor’s shadowy outline was barely visible. His eyes were pale, glowing orbs that stared at Nathan through the glass. The chamber rocked from the creature’s movements.
“He’s moving. Like he’s trying to get out.”
“Gas him. Blue button on the chamber console.”
Nathan slammed his hand on the button. Jets hissed as gas flooded the chamber, shrouding the creature in a cloud of billowing white. His muted howls quickly faded, along with his frantic efforts at escaping the pod.
“Did it work?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Good. Good. All right, that was close. No time to rest, though. Blackwell brought a portable nuclear device with him.”