Synthetic: Dark Beginning (29 page)

“You were a clever giant back then, Caleb. After you kill me, remove the drive and put it in a blue Tiffany's box, and place it here.”  Mud pressed a hand against his heart and then crossed his arms over his chest.  “Maybe with your help, Kora will find it.  My final gift to her will be my death.”

“Why a Tiffany box?” growled Caleb.  “You are my good friend, but that will be difficult for me to find. Ruby's jewelry was all crafted down here.”

“I may not have recalled my own name, all these years, but I remember my beautiful wife and the jewels I once gave her from that shop on Rodeo Drive. This is my last request, Caleb. Kora knows these stories and the box will assure her that it's from me.”

“Very well.” Caleb grabbed the knife handle. “I will find this Tiffany box and hide it as you ask.”

“Just be sure that Ruby never finds it.”

“I will be careful,” said Caleb, stripping off his ragged shirt to reveal a broad muscular chest, crisscrossed in thick scars.  “Shall I cover your eye before I kill you, my brother?”

“Thank you, Caleb.  You are as merciful as you are helpful.”

T
he giant paused, his ragged shirt in his hands. “I bring only misery and death to those I love.”

“Things will be different with your son.  You will bring each other great joy.”  Mud placed a hand on Caleb's massive shoulder and Kora felt a deep longing for her old friend. If only she could have said goodbye to him. If only she'd known all this before so she could have plotted Randall's agonizing death.

Caleb smiled revealing gruesome yellow teeth. “I will never forget today, my brother, and everything we have talked about. Someday, when all of my work is done, I will join you here in the darkness.”  He
leaned forward, holding up the rag, and the camera went dark. 

Tears streamed down Kora's face as she turned to face the stunned audience. The old woman, who was presumably Mud's widow, stood on a chair wailing and beside her, in the center of the brewing storm, stood Alex, her arm still raised with the projection streaming from her wrist device.  She had the drive that Kora lost.  The disk of secrets. 

Alex walked onstage, straight up to Kora.  “I wanted to use this drive for selfish reasons, Doctor, but there are things I saw on here that changed my mind. I know I'll regret this later, but here.”  She snapped the hard drive off of her wrist device and pressed it into Kora's hands.

Kora pocketed the drive as guards rushed toward them.
“You've doomed yourself by coming up here. You should go, Alex.”

Alex took Kora's hand. “They will find me and dismantle me for what I've done, but that was bound to happen eventually. I am ready.”   Randall's human guards tackled Alex and dragged her across the stage. 

“Let her go!” Kora ran after Alex, who didn't bother fighting against the arms that bound her.

 Ivan jumped out of his wheelchair to help, but Randall scooped him up and dangled him in the air.  “We don't need anymore of your comments, sir.”

“Mirafield is the enemy!” Ivan screeched right before Randall punched him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. 

“
You're one of Ruby's pitiful monsters,
”
said Randall.
“
I would have recognized you, but the lights were in my eyes.
”
He squeezed Ivan's neck until the tiny man's face turned a greenish color.
Kora jumped on Randall's back to stop him, but his human guards grabbed her by the arms and easily pulled her off.

“That’s enough, Randall,” said Vaughn, climbing onstage. “Let Ivan go.”

“God I hate vampires,” said Randall, dropping Ivan so he could punch Vaughn in the jaw.

Kora struggled against the arms that bound her as Vaughn tumbled to the stage floor, his face dazed and eyes unfocused.

“You let that bastard hit you,” wheezed Ivan, laboring to breathe.

Randall waited as Vaughn staggered to his feet. “I know Ruby pampered you like a precious poodle, but it’s time you got used to how things are around here for synthetics.” He plunged his fist into Vaughn’s stomach and he fell helplessly onto his back where he lay writhing in pain. 

Ivan, still a sickly shade of green, crawled toward Vaughn.  “What's happening? Why aren't you fighting back?”

“Synthetics can't fight humans,” said Alex, grabbing Ivan and drawing him back into her arms. “Don't even try to interfere. They're too strong.”

Vaughn dragged himself up once again and stumbled, nearly falling back to the floor as blood streamed down his face.

“Why are you letting him do this to you?” cried Ivan.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Randall, delicately rolling up his sleeve. “Because Kora, bless her heart, made sure that her synthetics couldn’t hurt humans. Good for me—bad for you.  I'm sorry that I'll have to dismantle Alex because I enjoyed beating the shit out of her, especially during the early days when she tried to fight back.”

Ivan shook himself free of Alex and raised his tiny fists. “Get ready to die, you slime ball.”

Randall buckled with laughter. “Why Alex! You have a knight in shining armor.”

Ivan streaked across the stage and Randall drew back his arm. He swung as hard as he could at Ivan’s head, but it never made contact. Vaughn grabbed Randall’s fist a mere inch from Ivan’s jaw, and Randall screamed as he watched Vaughn crush the bones.  The human guards, still holding Kora, huddled in confusion as Vaughn rose up from the floor, dangling Randall upside down by one ankle.

“I’ll tear his arms and legs off if any of you make a single mistake,” said Vaughn in a loud voice as the audience cheered. “First, I want you to let go of Kora, then I want my friends released from prison and escorted to Kora's lab.  When we're done there, I want transportation back to Malibu for all of us, including the squid.”

“In a copter,” said Ivan, a huge grin on his bruised face. “And we get to keep it.”

The guards released Kora and she ran to Vaughn, careful to avoid Randall who was struggling like a caught salmon in Vaughn's grasp.
“
I totally forgot that you're unchipped,
”
she whispered, kissing him on the cheek.

“How can you do this?” asked the lead guard, staring at Vaughn in wonder. “You are synthetic and Randall is human.”

“Vaughn beats up humans all the time,” said Ivan with his hands on his hips.
He gave Vaughn a little shove.
“
I knew you were faking it
.”

Several shots rang out and Vaughn jerked forward with each hit. Everyone in the audience gasped and Kora tried to shield him, but she wasn't fast enough. He'd been hit by at least three lasers from a dismantling gun and in a matter of seconds, Vaughn's blood would boil and his heart would burst in his chest. She threw her arms around him, expecting him to fall at any moment but to her amazement, he stayed up.

“Throw down your guns,” hollered Vaughn, “or I'll do this, but much harder.” He bonked Randall's head on the floor.

Randall, upside down and cradling his mangled hand, screamed at his guards. “Do everything he says. Everything!”

The crowd burst into applause.
“
Oh my god,
”
said Kora, jumping up and down.
“
It just came back to me! I built you like Ishmael. You don't need to breathe and you can't be dismantled!
”

Vaughn bent down and kissed Kora on the lips, careful to hold Randall as far from her as he could.
“That's because he and I are brothers, remember? He wasn't kidding when he told us that back in your lab the day you fixed my stomach. I just wish I had six other arms right now.”
He wagged his eyebrows up and down and shot her a devilish smile.
“
Just imagine the things I could do.
”

The guards opened the door to Kora’s lab and they all filed into the massive, meticulous white room with Joshua on a gurney.  Machines hummed and whirred, performing their mysterious tasks. Jars containing beating hearts and breathing lungs lined the counters and a large water tank dominated the center of the room where Ishmael peered at them through the glass.  Several guards, holding dismantling guns, were covered in bleeding lashes and sucker-shaped bruises. They seemed relieved when they were told to stand down from the squid.
 Ishmael tumbled over the side of his tank and plopped onto the floor.  He squiggled over to Kora and entwined her in his arms, lifting her high into the air.  Kora pressed her cheek against the wet arm that held her.  “I understand why you never told me about my past, Ishmael.  I would have never believed you—not in a thousand years.”  She gazed into his huge eyes, her face reflected in the massive pupils.  “I remember everything now.”

Chapter 34

Kora had explored every room in the vast network of caves but one. She avoided the small entrance. The idea of having to duck down bothered her and once inside, she felt certain the ceilings would be low and the air stale. But something about this last, mysterious room attracted her. She lingered in the doorway holding up the lantern, her only light in the heavy darkness. Caleb had given her enough oil to last five days but she’d already burned through most of it because she kept it lit at all times. The idea of sitting alone in pitch black terrified her and, with oil running low, she tried to keep her mind occupied through constant movement.

The room was surprisingly large and lined with metal shelves stacked to the ceiling with crates. She set the lantern down and slid out a large box. It was full of surgical instruments, many of them sharp. She struggled to grab one caked with blood and hair, but her hands had deteriorated over the week and it took her several minutes just to lift the instrument so she could examine it in the light.

As she gazed at the blade, Kora recalled lying on a hard bed below a glowing ball of fire. Her eyes were closed but someone had roughly pulled back her eyelids, and for a moment Kora had focused on a woman’s cruel face.
Ruby, her maker, who deserved death more than any of these poor creatures condemned to her table.

She moved the scalpel until it hovered over one of the many thick scars that covered her arms. It trembled wildly in her unsteady hands until it dropped to the floor with a loud clang, and was swallowed into the shadows.

Still curious about the boxes, Kora pulled down a stack of books and clumsily flipped through pages illustrating the muscle structure of creatures from both land and sea. Ruby herself wrote one of the books called
Principals of Biological Synthetics
. Kora gazed at the photo on the back cover where an extremely young, ponderous Ruby posed in a jet-black lab coat with her cleavage showing. Kora crouched down close to the lantern and read until the flame burned low and the pages dimmed.

In the far corner, a fleshy arm reached out from under a dark canvas covering a vast shape. Kora whipped the tarp away to reveal a long body with eight arms and two slender tentacles. A pair of huge, green-flecked eyes stared up at her, the lifelike pupils eerily still. She noticed a cabinet of computers against the wall and fumbled with the knobs until the machine switched on and hummed to life. The room was wired for electricity. Kora searched behind the computer and followed the cords up the wall to where they disappeared through a crack in the ceiling. The only one down here besides her was Caleb. She knew he had an appetite for electronic gadgets, and imagined that he must have smuggled the robot down and hooked it up to electricity so he could dissect it.

It occurred to Kora that if she found some wire and something to use as a bulb, she’d no longer be dependent on Caleb for lantern oil. Her heart raced as she searched for wire. She noticed an old book sitting on top of the cabinet with wires sticking out from between the pages. She opened it and lifted out a pair of mesh gloves, her eyes brushing over the first line of the first chapter:
Call me Ishmael.
 Curious, she pulled the gloves over her hands and flexed her stiff fingers, making the robot lurch forward. Kora froze, relieved to see that the creature froze along with her. Slowly, she arched her index finger and one of the long arms curled slightly. She moved it toward the knife she’d dropped earlier on the floor and lifted it up with ease and held it before her. While her gloved hands trembled violently, the scalpel, in the grip of the robotic creature, remained perfectly steady. Perfectly controlled.
“You could be a great help to me, Ishmael,” she said aloud to her new mechanical friend.

“Kora,” a deep voice echoed through the caves. Kora dropped the knife into her pocket and stripped off the gloves. The robotic squid sank to the floor like a deflated balloon. Caleb had returned and she was filled with both relief and dread. She grabbed her dim lantern and walked through the maze of caves until she reached the largest room where a huge pile of twisted corpses lay in the center of the floor. Kora covered her face with her arm to avoid the stench, but it didn’t help. Caleb stood before the stairs that led up to Ruby’s lab, his arms piled with more of her murderous creator’s work. He tossed the bodies onto the heap that was now as tall as Kora.

“You have made no effort,” said Caleb. “Not a single one has moved onto the shelves since I brought you down here.” He strode around the pile like a grim general. “These bodies are your responsibility.”

Kora raised her chin. “And why? I had nothing to do with this madness. Let Ruby clean up her own mess.”

Caleb peered at her from under his massive brow. “Ruby made us. We do as we are told. I am trying to help you by teaching you your place among us.”

“You imprison me down here, alone in this hell, and expect me to just give in?”

Caleb clenched his huge hands into fists. “This is your life now, Kora, down here with the dead, and when I come for a visit I expect your work to be done.” He took a step forward. “And I expect you to be kind to me. I am tired of fighting with you.”

“What do you want? Dinner? Soft music and dancing?”

Caleb’s voice rumbled through the caves. “I am your mate. Your purpose is to please me.”

Kora gazed up at her colossal husband. She knew the danger of pushing him too far. “I never asked for this. I don’t want to be your wife.”

“You have no choice.” He pounded one of his fists against his chest. “Your flesh was made from my own. You are as much a part of me as this hand.”
He clenched his massive fingers.

Kora knew what that fist felt like, but tonight she didn’t care. “I don’t want your stinking flesh. Did you think that would be romantic? Making your wife out of the extra skin off your ass? I'll remake myself.”

“Do not be stupid. You are what we have made you. Have you seen your refection?”

Kora had seen herself in the shards of a mirror left in one of the caves. The sight had unnerved her and she hadn’t returned to look again. Now she suspected Caleb had planted the mirror there to prove a point.

“No one will ever have you but me,” he continued, drawing himself up to his full height so his head nearly touched the top of the cave. “You are more hideous than I am.”

“I suppose I would be since Ruby pieced me together from your scraps.”

“You either accept me, or live down here alone.”

Kora rubbed her chin and narrowed her eyes. “I won’t accept you and I won’t be down here alone. You can count on that.”

Caleb frowned in confusion. “You will do as you are told.”

“That’s your role, Caleb, not mine.”

The giant looked calm, but she could feel his anger swelling and worried that he might try to force himself on her like he did the last time he was down. She couldn’t stand the feel of his rough fingers against her skin. To her relief, he pulled a container of lantern oil from the pack on his back. Kora lifted her arms, eager to grab hold of the precious fluid, but Caleb held it high. “I see your lamp died out. I brought more oil for this next load, but since you have not completed your old work, I see no reason to hand it over.” He shoved the bottle back into his bag and Kora’s hands remained in the air, grasping at emptiness.

“I’ll start working right now, I swear, but I’ll need light,” Kora pleaded.

“You already burned the oil needed for the previous batch. Now you must do twice the work without it.”

Kora’s throat closed and she gasped for breath. “Please Caleb.”

“I will return in three days with another load. If the bodies are on their shelves, I will give you oil. If not, you will have three times the work to complete in darkness.”

“That’s impossible. There’s no way I can get anything done without light. You know that.”

“You will learn to respect me.” He strode through the door and turned sideways so she could see his face in profile against the torches burning bright on the stairway. “And love me.”

“You're a fucking idiot if you think that'll happen,” she screamed.

The door slammed closed and Kora collapsed against the wall, her fingernails scratching against the stones. She hollered Caleb’s name until her voice grew hoarse. She stopped calling when she noticed the stench from the bodies, piled only a few feet away, had suddenly grown stronger as if they were crawling toward her. In a panic, she fled from the wall and staggered blindly through the room, hoping to find her way back to the storage area. She raised her arms in front of her, but instead of the wall, her hands touched something cold and moist that turned out to be the death pile. She stumbled in the opposite direction only to find herself surrounded by bodies. Drunk with terror, she tripped and fell to the ground where she writhed in a net of twisted limbs that grabbed at her as she struggled to wrench free.

Kora reached up and grabbed a hand that seemed to hold her as she pulled herself to her feet. Once standing, she realized the hand she was holding onto was warm. She explored the smooth fingers and knew whatever creature the hand belonged to was still alive. She heaped away the bodies until she found the owner and ran her fingers over its face. The head was pierced by one large, empty eye socket, and every inch of skin was covered in thick gnarled tissue that devoured every feature except for the hands. “I bet you look like a pile of mud,” she said aloud.  She wasn't sure if the creature heard her, because he had no ears, but he squeezed her hand.  She was no longer alone.