The Supernaturalist (20 page)

Cosmo struggled against sleep. The rest of the group
had already succumbed to the cellophane’s sedative; he could only guess that his own system was building a resistance to the chemical because he had been wrapped three times now.

Think,
he told himself.
It’s up to you. There must be a good idea in your head somewhere. There must be something in that patched-up head…
Wait a minute. Something in his head.

A memory flashed across Cosmo’s vision. In the warehouse, after his accident. Mona had said something to him:
Lucky for you Ditto had a couple of robotix plates lying around; he used one to patch your fractured skull. Those robotix plates are made of the same material used to armour assault tanks; when your skin heals up, Ditto says you’ll be able to headbutt your way through a brick wall.

The robotix plate.

Cosmo wiggled his way across to the vat wall, drawing his head back as far as possible. Struggling against sleep, breathlessness and thick liquid, he butted the plasti-glass with all his strength. The tank wall flexed slightly and a bolt of pain shot through Cosmo’s forehead.

The vat man wandered over curiously.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ he said, grinning. ‘Are you trying to escape? I’m afraid skin and bone is not going to do it.’ He rapped on the tank. ‘Plasti-glass. Nothing short of an assault tank is going to get you out of here.’

Of course Cosmo didn’t hear any of that. All he could hear was the shrill whine of his own headache. There was
no option but to try once more. Gritting his teeth, he butted the plasti-glass again. When the pain receded, he noticed a tiny crack in the tank.

‘Stop that,’ said the vat man, rubbing the crack with his thumb. ‘I have to clean this thing.’

One more,
thought Cosmo.
I have breath for one more.

Cosmo pulled back his head and with all the strength in his head, neck, chest and spine, butted the plasti-glass in precisely the same spot. A clang reverberated around the vat walls.

The crack widened, spreading to the outside of the tank.

One drop. Just one drop.

‘Give it up, kiddo,’ chortled the vat man. ‘Just go to sleep. Make it easy on yourself.’

The crack spread some more, like the web of a silver-weaving spider. A single drop of yellow acid wormed through the gap, eating into the untreated interior of the plasti-glass pane.

The vat man frowned. ‘How did you…’

The plate blew. It probably took the cracks a few seconds to destroy the front of the tank, but it seemed instantaneous. The vat man’s jaw had just enough time to drop open in disbelief before his mouth was filled to overflowing with acidic compound. Several thousand gallons of acid followed the first spurt, careering across the facility floor into various corners. The Supernaturalists and their harnesses were borne along with
the deluge, dashed on to the tiles like fish in a fish box.

The vat man fared worst. He met the liquid hammer blow head-on, not to mention several sections of plastiglass that battered him halfway up an adjacent wall. He slid back down to the submerged floor, a lump already rising on his head.

I may as well go to sleep now,
thought Cosmo.
Everybody else is.

Minutes passed slowly, ticking by to the tune of yellow gunge dripping from the shattered vat. As time moved on, the acid did its work, slowly eating through the cellophane wraps. It took forty minutes, but finally Stefan was free. As untainted air flushed the sedative from his lungs, consciousness returned. He punched his way free of the final cellophane strands, like a butterfly shaking off its cocoon. He struggled to his knees, coughing up an acrid mixture of cellophane and acid fumes. Slowly his dreams were replaced by recent memories.

‘Faustino,’ he breathed, gingerly releasing the vacuum cup on his head.

Ditto was next to wake.

‘What did I tell you? Who’s the traitor now?’

Stefan ripped the remaining cellophane from the Bartoli Baby’s frame.

‘Seems like all my friends are lying to me these days.’

Ditto cleared his lungs loudly. ‘The ambulance that picked you up. You have to believe me. I didn’t know.’

Stefan patted his shoulder. ‘Of course you didn’t. She used all of us.’

Bashkir pulled Mona from beneath a plasti-glass plate.

‘How did we get out of there anyway?’ he asked. ‘I thought we were dead for sure.’

Ditto turned Cosmo over. A sliver of metal was visible through the torn skin of his forehead.

‘Believe it or not, I think the rookie saved us again. He used his head.’

Ditto placed a hand on Cosmo’s forehead. A slight silver shimmering played around the contact.

‘I can take some of his pain, for a while. The healing he’ll have to do on his own.’

Stefan sat Mona up. ‘You should have told me, Ditto.’

‘You’re right, I should. But now that you know, what are you going to do about it?’

Stefan pulled a capsule of smelling salts from the medi-kit on his belt. He snapped it under Mona’s nostrils.
‘I’m going to find out why Ellen Faustino is collecting Parasites.’

Mona woke up shouting. ‘No way, Moma,’ she cried. ‘No way am I going to wear that dress.’

Stefan picked her up, laying her on a low surgical table. ‘OK, Mona. It’s OK. You’re with friends.’

Mona squinted suspiciously. ‘No dresses?’

‘No. No dresses. Just relax. Try not to move.’

Mona’s face was decidedly green. ‘OK if I throw up?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Stefan, taking two steps back.

Cosmo flapped on the floor like a fish, fighting off a nightmare enemy.

‘The kid has been through a lot in the past few weeks,’ said Ditto.

Stefan hoisted Cosmo on to another surgical table. ‘After tonight, it’s over. Normal lives all around.’

Ditto shook ropes of acidic compound from his hands.

‘Really? Where have I heard that before?’

‘I don’t even work here full-time. Sometimes I do some special work for President Faustino. Off the books, you understand.’

‘I understand,’ said Stefan. ‘We were very nearly off the books ourselves.’

‘Nothing personal, just doing my job.’

‘Yeah, yeah, nothing personal. Anything for a little something extra in the pay cheque.’

The vat man was lying in a pool of acidic compound. The yellow liquid was beginning to burn the folds in his flesh.

‘Two questions,’ said Stefan. ‘And you better answer me straight away, because if you do not, the consequences will be dire.’

The vat man nodded so fast his chin was a blur. ‘OK, ask away.’

‘One, where’s our gear?’

‘Gear? You mean equipment, rods and computers?’

‘Rods are the priority right now. Where are they?’

The vat man raised a finger. ‘Is that the second question?’

Stefan closed one eye; the other bulged dangerously. The scar stretching his lips twitched. ‘No, idiot. That is still the first question. Tell me where our stuff is. Now!’

‘OK, OK. Over there, in the blue bins. I was supposed to incinerate it after I had flushed your molecules down the drain. No offence.’

Stefan nodded at his team mates. They rifled through the blue bins, selecting rods, clips, holsters and phones.

‘Better take the fuzz plates too,’ said Mona. ‘We don’t want to be caught by surveillance cameras.’

They hosed each other down and strapped on their gear, feeling very much like foxes in a bolthole, surrounded by baying hounds. Well-armed foxes.

‘Second question,’ said Stefan, hoisting the vat man upright by the collar. ‘Where’s Faustino?’

The anguish in the vat man’s eyes showed that he didn’t really want to answer the question.

‘I wish I could tell you, I really do. But…’

‘This better be a really good
but
,’ warned Stefan. ‘Your immediate future depends on it.’

The vat man’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a tiny alien trying to get out. ‘It’s a big facility. President Faustino could be in her office, or the conference room, or on her rounds. I don’t know.’

‘At this time of night? Rubbish.’

The vat man checked the wall clock. ‘When President Faustino comes in this late, it’s usually for off-the-books work, a bit like my own. Usually, she concentrates on the Un-Spec 4 project, whatever that is.’

‘That’s the one. Where?’

The vat man sighed. This was going to cost him his job.

‘Lab One. At the end of the corridor, turn right. You’ll know it by the two guards on the door. They’re the only security on at night.’

Stefan dropped the man back into a pool of acidic compound.

‘Good. Now look into my eyes and promise me you won’t sound the alarm the second we’re out the door.’

‘Me?’ said the vat man. ‘Sound the alarm? Absolutely not. You have my word.’

‘Hands up who believes him,’ said Stefan.

No hands went up.

That’s what I thought,’ said Stefan, checking his lightning rod for cellophane slugs.

The two guards outside Lab One couldn’t help but notice.

‘Hey look,’ said Guard A, a strapping female with muscle implants all over her upper body and night-vision eyeballs. ‘A kid. How did a kid get in here?’

‘Search me,’ said Guard B, an equally strapping male, with a thick beard that grew almost to his eyes. ‘But you know the rules. He’s gotta be wrapped.’

Guard A punched him on the shoulder. The punch would have shattered most people’s collarbones. ‘Hey, have a heart. You’re not afraid of a little kid are you?’

Ditto was beside them now, wiping the tears from his eyes.

‘Of course not,’ said Guard B. ‘I’m not afraid of some kid.’

The kid grinned a grin, nasty beyond his apparent years.

‘You should be,’ he said, pulling a lightning rod from inside his shirt.

Guards A and B were wrapped before they had a chance to say
Where’s your Mummy?

‘I hate being a kid,’ sniffled Ditto.

‘Focus,’ said Stefan. ‘This is a dangerous situation.’

‘A couple of midnight scientists? Very dangerous. The security people are already wrapped.’

‘Don’t forget Ellen. I never met anyone who could hit harder or shoot straighter. She was one of the head combat coaches in the academy.’

‘Point taken. The usual plan?’

Stefan put his hand on the door handle. ‘No. Cosmo and Mona stay at the door. There may be more security in the building. Ditto, you come with me into the lab. We take a quick look around, without wrapping anyone if possible, shoot a few seconds of video, then back to Abracadabra Street to plan our next move. We will have to take care of this situation, but not today. We’re not ready.’

‘But Stefan!’ complained Mona.

‘Another day,’ said Stefan firmly. ‘Today we look around only.’

Cosmo felt that it wouldn’t be that simple. Something unexpected would happen, and before he knew where he was the Supernaturalists would be up to their necks in trouble once more.

‘You never know,’ she whispered to Cosmo. ‘They might need us.’

The door opened to an elevated walkway, overlooking a huge laboratory. The walls were painted sterile white, and twenty-metre strip lights lined the ceiling. Lab technicians scurried across the white tiles like albino ants, and in the middle of it all was a giant sunken construction which resembled nothing more than an enormous spirit level. Solid machinery on both ends, with a transparent blue section in the middle.

‘So just to confirm, we’re going to take a few frames of video, then hightail it back to Abracadabra Street?’ said Ditto.

‘That was for the benefit of the other two,’ said Stefan. ‘You and I both know we’ll never get a chance like this again. As soon as Ellen finds out we’ve escaped, this place will be sealed up tighter than a camel’s nostrils in a sandstorm. We have to find out what’s going on now.’

Ditto nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. What do you make of that thing down there?’

‘A generator of some kind. Nuclear, I’d say.’

‘But nuclear power is banned on every continent.’

Stefan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe, but not in space.’

Ditto and Stefan drew their weapons and proceeded
slowly down the stairs. Ditto opened his phone and shot some video of the lab.

‘In case Mona is watching,’ he whispered.

A sudden crack splintered the air. A flat noise like a bamboo striking wood. Ditto recognized it immediately. A gunshot. A real gunpowder slug being fired. Booshka gangs often modified lightning rods to accommodate actual projectiles. The bullets were subsonic, but coated with Teflon to make up for their slowness. Stefan clutched his chest, stumbling backwards against the wall. Then he bounced forward again, toppling over the railing. His tall frame plummeted twenty feet, straight down.

‘Stefan,’ screamed Ditto, his juvenile voice rent with anguish. Bashkir lay face down on the tiling, a pool of blood spreading from beneath his torso. He wasn’t moving.

Below, on the laboratory main level, Ellen Faustino looked up from the readout panel she had been inspecting.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ she muttered, shaking her head.

Ditto pulled his lightning rod. ‘Faustino!’ he shouted.

‘Take a moment, Mr Bonn, or should I say Ditto, to study your chest.’

Ditto looked down. There was a bright red laser dot jittering across the material of his shirt.

Faustino approached the steps. ‘My little voice told me to take precautions. You Supernaturalists have proved
slippery in the past. So I left a
just in case
man covering the door. Seems like I made the right decision. He
will
shoot you too, Ditto. There are no cameras in this room. Nothing to incriminate us later. Now drop your weapon.’

Ditto did so, watching it clatter through the bars on to the floor.

Faustino raised her voice. ‘Now tell the other two to join us, or my man in the shadows will be forced to pull his trigger one more time.’

Ditto tensed. ‘Go ahead and give the order. At least two of us will live to talk.’

Cosmo and Mona tumbled through the access door.

‘No!’ said Cosmo. ‘We’re here. Don’t shoot.’

‘Morons,’ hissed Ditto. ‘Now we’re all dead.’

Mona raised her hands. ‘Just trying to buy us some time.’

Ditto descended the stairwell slowly. The laser dot stayed on his chest. ‘What are you doing here, Faustino? What is this madness?’

Faustino pointed to Stefan. ‘Check your leader first. If I must explain this machine, I don’t want to have to go through it all twice. You two children, get down here where I can see you. Remember, at the teeniest sign of heroics, you inherit the laser dot from Mr Ditto.’

Ditto hurried to Stefan’s aid. With considerable effort, he flipped the Russian and checked his heartbeat. It was faint, but there.

Stefan clasped Ditto’s hand, placing it on the chest wound.

‘I see now,’ he whispered, his voice ragged. ‘I see it all. Things are different here.’

Ditto supported his head. ‘No, Stefan. Not yet. We have things to do.’

‘Take the pain away,’ grunted Stefan through blood bubbles. ‘It’s holding me down.’

Ditto concentrated, seeking the pain out with his sixth sense, pulling the energy into himself. He felt the buzz of electricity pulse through his small frame.

‘Better?’

Stefan’s eyes were clear. ‘Better. Much.’

The wound was bad. Very bad.

‘You’re not healed, Stefan. I can’t heal you.’

‘I know, Ditto,’ said Stefan, after a coughing fit. ‘I know.’

Several scientists scuttled off to other parts of the facility. They had no desire to witness whatever happened next. Faustino was left with a single bodyguard and the hidden sniper.

‘Down here, you two,’ she said to Cosmo and Mona. ‘I want you all together.’

Stefan lifted himself on to one elbow. ‘Tell me this isn’t what I think it is, Faustino? Not even you could be this heartless.’

Faustino laughed her delighted little-girl laugh. ‘Oh, Stefan, still a spark of decency left in you. I remember
you in the academy, always so naive. You actually joined the police to
help
people, and you’re still doing it.’

‘But a nuclear reactor? After all the disasters the world has seen? There isn’t a government alive that would buy into nuclear power. How could Myishi do this?’

Speaking was not easy for Stefan now. Even staying conscious took concentration.

Faustino drummed her fingers on her chin. ‘My work here is officially unofficial. Oh, Ray Shine knows what I’m doing well enough, but he pretends not to. That way if anything goes wrong, I’ll be the only one taking the fall. That’s what business is all about: finding someone to take the blame. Except this time, there will be no blame, only profits.’

Stefan stumbled towards the generator. Both ends were traditional enough, but the centre was a double-glazed, plasti-glass cuboid, insulated with hydro-gel. The surface plate was the size of a football field. Inside the cuboid, at least a million Parasites jerked and bucked as radiation passed through their biological filters.

‘We collected the Un-Spec 4, that you so kindly knocked out for us, with an electromagnet, and keep them imprisoned with hydro-gel. This entire lab has hydro-gel in the cavity walls. That’s why there’s not a Parasite on your chest right now.’

The reactor was a vision of torment. The creatures that should be fulfilling their natural role as painkillers were writhing in the bowels of a nuclear reactor.

Faustino was unaffected by her cruelty. ‘It’s quite clever really. The reactor itself is a water model, but we have replaced the water with living creatures: Un-Spec 4.’

Stefan locked his knees, to keep them from folding.

‘You’re deranged, Faustino. Completely insane.’

Ellen Faustino wiggled both eyebrows at her bodyguard, as if this was the daftest statement she had ever heard.

‘Insane? Do you have any idea what I have accomplished here?’

‘No,’ said Ditto, eager to buy time. ‘Do tell us.’

‘Ah yes, Mr Lucien Bonn, the Bartoli Baby. People called Bartoli insane too, you know.’ Faustino walked on to the floor-level plasti-glass pane sealing the reactor’s central section. Below her feet, hundreds of thousands of Parasites shuddered. ‘The problem with the Boiling Water Reactor was that it contaminated the water, and eventually the turbine blades. Un-Spec 4 take care of that problem. Not only that, but they are much more effective at slowing down neutrons and sending them back into the uranium core. They keep the reactor completely clean, one hundred per cent efficient, and use one tenth the amount of uranium. Un-Spec 4 are a natural miracle.’

‘But people are suffering without them,’ gasped Stefan.

‘Oh, grow up, Stefan,’ snapped Faustino, her true savage nature flashing through the sophisticated image.
‘People suffer all the time. I don’t cause suffering. With the Faustino NuSun, I may actually help people. I might even initiate some of those fictitious welfare projects I told you about. Though the helping thing would be incidental, I’m mainly doing this for the money.’

‘The Faustino NuSun,’ said Stefan bitterly. He staggered to the edge of the generator. Giant turbines whirred beneath Faustino’s feet, sparks of pure energy playing around their layered blades.

‘Why, Professor? All those
accidents?
Risking all those lives. My mother is one of the dead.’

The last vestiges of civility dropped from Faustino’s eyes like scales.

‘The Satellite is falling, you idiot!’ she yelled. ‘Falling out of the sky, because it is too heavy and too low. There are too many commercial units for the original structure to support. To keep it in its present orbit, its commercially viable orbit, Myishi need a new generator, a lighter more efficient generator. If they don’t get one, Myishi lose all their advertising contracts. Billions of dinars. Billions. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Myishi are contracted for ten more satellites. Ten! It’s the biggest deal the world has ever seen. And the Faustino NuSun will power every one.’

Stefan waved his hands at Cosmo and Mona. They rushed to his aid, propping him up, one under each arm.

‘Lift me,’ he whispered, his tones laden with agony. The pain was coming back. The young Supernaturalists
did as they were told, helping Stefan on to the platform.

Faustino’s bodyguard took a step nearer. ‘Close enough, boy. Don’t make me dislocate a few things.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Manuel,’ said Faustino, rising on to the balls of her sandalled feet. ‘Stefan never could beat me on the practice mat. Now I have a couple of quarts more blood than him and no hole in my chest.’

Stefan knelt on the plasti-glass. Below him was a blue hell. A hell he’d created. An ocean of Parasites undulated beneath him, their eyes dull and glazed.

Faustino knelt. ‘Is this how it ends, Stefan? A whimper on the floor? You should have stayed in the vat.’

The bodyguard took off his sunglasses. ‘President Faustino, I’m nervous now. I gotta tell you. And I don’t get nervous easy.’

‘Relax, Manuel. Cover the kids. Do you think you can manage that?’

Manuel rested the glasses on the bridge of a nose that had been broken so often it was almost flat. ‘Yes, Madam President. I got the kids.’

Faustino kicked off her sandals, bouncing like a boxer.

‘Well, Stefan, do you have one more round left in you?’

Spasms wracked Stefan’s chest. ‘I’m not going to fight you, Professor.’

‘Really? Oh come on. I’m the one responsible for your mother’s death, remember?’

Stefan did not rise to the bait. There’s a better way to get you.’

Faustino stopped bouncing, her smug grin faltered. ‘And what’s that?’

‘Fight from the inside,’ said Stefan, his voice barely audible. ‘Attack from the rear. Remember?’

Stefan’s hands were moving, hidden in the folds of his coat.

‘What are you doing? What have you got there?’

‘Nothing dangerous. Just my phone. Nothing to worry President Ellen Faustino.’

‘A phone? Who can you ask for help?’

‘Nobody. I’m not asking anybody for help. Just sending some mail.’

Faustino stepped closer. ‘Mail?’

‘I got a friend with
V News
who would sell a couple of limbs to see the video I’m shooting right now. He’s going to owe me big time.’

It took Faustino a moment to realize what was happening, but when she did her face twisted into a Hallowe’ en version of itself.

‘He’s sending video! If the press get hold of footage of our reactor before we’re ready, it’s over.’ She dived at the injured Russian, claw-like hands digging beneath his torso. She pulled Stefan’s hands out. They were empty.

‘Surprise,’ he said, wrapping his arms around Faustino in a bear hug. She beat his chest with her fists. With no result.

‘Dead man’s grip,’ grunted Stefan, sweat collecting in his eyebrows. ‘The last thing I’ll ever do.’

Anyone with police training knew about the dead man’s grip. If a suspect was dying, and knew it, stay well out of reach, because the last thing they caught on to often went to the grave with them. It was amazing how someone with only seconds to live could find the strength to bend metal and snap bones.

The sniper in the rafters transferred the laser dot to Stefan’s head.

Manuel spoke into a mike hidden in his sleeve. ‘No. Hold your fire. Repeat. Hold your fire. I’ll handle this.’

‘I’m not the one shooting video,’ Stefan whispered. ‘It’s Ditto.’

‘Get the kid!’ screeched Faustino. ‘The blond one.’

Manuel pointed his lightning rod at Ditto. ‘You got a phone, kid? Hand it over.’

‘Sure, I have a phone. Take it easy, Manuel. I’m just going to reach into my pocket and get it.’

Manuel nodded. ‘OK. You do that. Real slow. Don’t make me wrap you.’

Ditto kept one hand in the air, reaching into his pocket with the other. He took the phone out with two fingers.

‘Look, here it is. No problem. I’m bringing it over.’

‘No. Stay where you are. Toss the phone.’

Ditto nodded almost imperceptibly at Cosmo. ‘You want me to toss it?’

‘That’s what I said. What are you? Short and stupid?’

‘OK, Manuel, don’t panic. Here it comes.’

Ditto tossed the phone high. Much higher than necessary. One set of eyes followed its arc. Manuel’s. Cosmo and Mona pulled lightning rods out of their belts and hit the bodyguard with at least four cellophane slugs. The virus spread across his frame, wrapping him completely in seconds.

Ditto smiled. ‘A thing of beauty,’ he said, retrieving the phone.

‘Idiot,’ screamed Faustino, her voice muffled by Stefan’s bulk. ‘Halfwit.’

‘You’re running out of options, Professor,’ said Stefan weakly.

Faustino squirmed to face him. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Stefan. I still have my sniper. He can keep your Supernaturalists off the plasti-glass until you die. That shouldn’t be long now.’

The sniper’s laser dot hopped from target to target. The man in the rafters was uncertain who to cover.

‘Give it up, Stefan. There’s no way to win.’

The red dot strayed on to the plasti-glass. Cosmo, Mona and Ditto ducked behind a string of monorail coaches.