Her father glared down at her, eyes glinting with hatred. Moths fluttered around his head, alighting on his hair and crawling across his face. “You are not my blood. You are the enemy, just like the rest of them.” His other hand wrapped around her neck and squeezed, fingers digging into her neck.
She yelled and plunged the sharp end of the tactical pen deep into his side.
The pressure released from her throat when he screamed and fell back, clutching his ribs. The entire sky flashed, brighter than daylight. It flared over everything, disintegrating the scene of destruction into glimmering motes. She shielded her eyes from the intensity of the blinding glare as she fell in a weightless sea of shimmering light…
Screams rang in her ears.
The world slowly took focus again. It was still bright, but the violent flare had vanished. She was on her back in a white hallway. Several figures surrounded her, writhing as if in agony. They were monstrosities, man-sized moth creatures that thrashed on the floor, screaming and clutching their heads. The facility trembled, rumbling as if in the midst of a massive earthquake. The lights flickered, bulbs popping in showers of sparks.
The mothmen scrambled away, retreating down the hallway on all fours, wounded wings limp like battered sails. They crawled around the corner and vanished, trailed by their injured cries. Elena slowly picked herself up, staring after them in shock.
It took a moment to notice Nathan. He sat against the wall a few feet away, leaned over and drenched with sweat. His hand was pressed against his side. Blood trickled from his fingers and pooled onto the floor.
Elena looked at the crimson-stained tactical pen in her hand. Realization dawned.
“Oh my God. Nathan… I’m so sorry. I was seeing things. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyelids fluttered. Startled confusion flashed across his face when he recognized her. He looked afraid. She didn’t know what the mothmen had forced him to experience, but she understood how he felt.
He tried to rise, wincing in pain. “You’re… sorry? I’m the one who needs to… apologize. I attacked you thinking you were… someone else.”
“That was you?” She raised a hand to her bruised neck. “I thought…” Shaking her head, she knelt beside him. “Those things, they were playing with our minds. Deceiving us. Can you move?”
“Can’t.” His teeth gritted. “It hurts. Think it punctured something. Get out of here, Elena. Find a way to catch up with Blackwell. I’ll only slow you down.” He glanced around when the hallway rattled again, reverberating like a subway rolled past them. “Wherever Guy and Michael are at, they’ve set something off. That’s why those creatures ran away. There’s no time. You have to get as far away as possible.”
“Fine.” She quickly got up, dashed to the doorway, and struck the glass with the tactical pen’s window punch. It shattered into tiny cubed pieces. Reaching inside, she slid the bar back, unlocking the door.
“But not without you.”
She jogged over and seized him by the jacket. He groaned in pain when she pulled him up, slipping his arm around her shoulder. They limped toward the door.
Nathan shook his head. “You should have listened. Blackwell will take off without us.”
“No he won’t.”
“How can you know that?”
A grim smile touched her lips. “I have something he needs.”
Chapter 25: Ozymandias
Michael followed in Guy’s footsteps. They crept down the hall with weapons ready, checking every corner before turning. There was little mist the direction they went, indicating that the thick of the infiltration was behind them. The direction Nathan’s squad went. Michael tried not to think about it. There was nothing he could do for them, not until the main task was completed. Everything depended on the Aberration being shut down.
Guy had his hand firmly on Stein’s collar, dragging him along. Stein was skittish, whining every chance he got about ‘the Gestalt’ and what it forced him to do. Hayes was close behind Michael, muttering under his breath.
Guy glanced at Stein. “Where to next?”
Stein pointed. “Just down the hall. Door at the end.”
There were no footsteps, no sound to alert of the incoming threat. Shadows were the only indication of the black-outfitted guards that rounded the corner, sentient ink stains against the bright white of the hallway.
It made targeting them all the easier. Michael didn’t even have to lift his rifle. Hayes and Guy’s swift response was a hail of gunfire, dropping the trio of guards. They fell without a sound, silent in death as they were in life.
Hayes knelt down to check their vitals, snatching the tight fabric mask from one the guard’s heads.
“Aw, man.”
“What is it?”
“I knew this dude. Jeremy Dunlap. Did a few details with him a while back. Chimera contractor. I guess he was on the security detail.” Hayes’ face twisted in revulsion. “He looks like he’s been dead for weeks. What are these?” He indicated the metallic contraptions fitted to Jeremy’s head and face in ways painful to look at. He had been altered into a blend of man and machine.
“Bioroid,” Guy said. “Crude and outdated.”
“What, like some kind of cyborg?” Hayes scrambled back as if the bioroid was contagious. “Where the hell did it come from?”
“Must have been the work of a brilliant bioengineer. Or a mad scientist.” Michael looked at Stein. “Want to enlighten us?”
Dr. Stein’s face turned surly. “The Gestalt forced my hand. They didn’t give me a choice.”
“You built these things? Turned your own coworkers into robots?”
“Bioroids,” Stein said. “Synthetic upgrades of our own biology. And of course they’re crude. The technology isn’t here yet. They were… training. Preparation for the pinnacle of my work.”
“You mean the monster. Victor. The one that had you so scared that you locked yourself up to avoid him. Yeah, great work.”
“The Gestalt turned him against me.” Stein’s face flushed with anger. “My own creation. I found it, you understand? The secret to immortality, the seed of life itself. Victor is proof. Proof of my mastery of the human genome. And the Gestalt took it from me.”
“It wasn’t yours in the first place. Don’t tell me you could have accomplished your work without the aberrant source code. You were used, Stein. Blinded by ambition and ego, you didn’t see it coming. You turned on your staff, sacrificed them for nothing.”
“I had no choice. They knew the risks…”
“They were people, you sick bastard. People you knew. I don’t think you were ever coerced. You’re already corrupted. The Gestalt didn’t even have to force you to do anything.”
Stein’s face flushed dark red. “You don’t understand. Your kind never does. You’re brutes whose world consists of following orders. You don’t originate your own ideas or conceive of a world greater than yourself. You can’t imagine the drive, the persistent need to answer the questions that elude the greatest minds.”
“And just look at the great things that drive has compelled you to do.” Michael gestured to the fallen bioroids. “Look at them, for God’s sake.”
Guy gestured impatiently. “We’re wasting time. Stein won’t grow a conscience in the next few minutes, and we have work to do.”
They followed him down the hallway. Michael was sure it was his imagination, but the passage seemed to stretch for eternity. The door never appeared any closer, no matter how many steps they took. Their footsteps squeaked and echoed as they walked on and on, an invisible treadmill under their feet.