This Mortal Coil (8 page)

“I’ll say.”

“I said,
Take us where you came from, asshole
!” Theresa bellowed from the cockpit. “And stay off that radio!”

The helicopter lurched beneath them as the pilot pulled back on the stick. Soon they were airborne, the stadium and its blood-soaked field shrinking beneath them. The higher they climbed, the farther out they could see, the landscape thrown into stark relief by the hazy onset of dawn. All around them stretched a tableau of utter devastation. Battered and buckled structures stood row after unending row like lines of broken teeth. The bird’s-eye view was so arresting they could hardly tear themselves away; even Theresa found herself momentarily transfixed.

Sensing an opportunity—perhaps his only opportunity—the pilot yanked hard on the stick. The sudden movement threw the interior of the helicopter into chaos as the deck pitched sharply beneath them. Bodies tumbled over bodies like the inside of a washing machine. Some of the company were lucky enough to get a handful of the hanging straps designed for just such turbulence; others slammed headlong into the interior fuselage, dazed but otherwise cradled against a fatal fall.

Grace and Arlo proved less than lucky on both counts.

Grasping desperately for one of the straps, kicking and fighting for purchase against the slide-like tilt of the deck, Willem saw it all. He locked eyes with Grace, her face stricken—
I want to live
, he heard echo in his ears—as she was pulled into the open air. She seemed to hover for all of a moment, defying gravity, then fell away with a last grasping flex of her fingers.
 

“
NO
!” he roared against the whipping wind.

The wind roared back, wordless and without pity.

Theresa pulled herself upright using the pilot’s chair for leverage. Even over the rush of the wind, Willem could hear her screaming like a banshee. Whatever she said, it convinced the pilot to right the helicopter.

Scarcely more than a minute later, the pilot eased the helicopter down in the shadow of a large, featureless structure. His hand was barely off the stick before Theresa plunged her blade hilt-deep into his sternum, twisting the knife violently. A tortured growl escaped his lips, along with a bright red skein of blood. She twisted harder, undeterred. With no voice left to cry out, the pilot could only grimace. His face was ashen, a twisted mask of pain and betrayal.

“If ever you were going to shoot me, Will,” Theresa mused, “now would be the time, don’t you think?”
 

Willem just shook his head, watching as she carved up the pilot like a side of beef.

“So, you’re back on my side, then?”

“I’ve always been on your side. Things just got… complicated.”

“Complicated,” she sniffed, looking back to the ailing pilot. “You got that right.”

“What did you tell him?” Joss asked. “To make him land?”

“That I’d make it quick.” She yanked the knife free of the pilot’s torso, watching as he bled out. Her eyes practically glittered at the sight. Cleaning the blade on the leg of his uniform, she stood and shoved it into her belt. A delightfully mad smile tugged at her lips. “I lied.”

A wet, expectorating rattle announced the pilot’s expiration. Pinkish foam clung to his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. A thin stream of arterial blood dangled listlessly from his lower lip. His eyes, cold and empty, reflected everything, projected nothing.

Maybe it was the weight of what had just transpired—the transactional nature of life and death—but suddenly the air inside the cockpit felt heavier. Willem could feel it on his skin, taste it in his mouth like a fine gray grit. He started to swallow, then thought better of it.

“Guys,” Lucas said in a low voice from behind. “I think this is it. I think we’re here.”

Willem and Theresa pushed their way to the front, peering out over Lucas’s shoulders. “How can you tell?”

“Well, for starters, just look at it.”

He had a point. The edifice rising before them was so utterly nondescript—featureless, windowless, lifeless—as to be almost invisible despite its monolithic size. It was only as they disembarked the helicopter one after another that Lucas’s suspicions were confirmed by the presence of a twenty-foot wall topped with razor wire ringing the perimeter. Someone very much wanted to keep them out…
 

Or the occupants in.

Either way, the site merited further investigation.

“Rifles up,” Willem ordered. “Keep low. Move in teams, like the hunters.”

Theresa nodded. “We’ve got your back, Will.”

Willem hopped out of the helicopter and hustled forward, followed by Joss and Lucas. Theresa, Elam, and Marcus brought up the rear, swiveling their rifles this way and that despite the lack of targets to fix on. Indeed, the building appeared to be completely undefended. There were no towers or guards, nothing at all to indicate it was of any importance whatsoever.
 

“What now?” Theresa mouthed as they piled up on either side of the double doors that appeared to be its only point of entry.

Willem shrugged, reaching for one of the doors.
 
“On three,” he mouthed back.

Theresa reached for the other door. “On three.”

“One… two…”

“
Three
!”

Together, they yanked open the doors.

Just inside the space revealed, a man stood stiffly before them. He was middle aged and thickset with salt-and-pepper hair trimmed neatly against his temples and a powerful, jutting chin. Whatever he thought of the bedraggled, rifle-toting posse that greeted his beryl blue gaze, it was lost in the flatness of his features. It was as if the whole of his existence had been dedicated to awaiting their arrival. “Welcome,” he intoned mirthlessly, his accent unplaceable. “Dr. Valda will see you now. Please, follow me.”

If their escort was at all concerned by the fact they had been prepared to violently storm the building just moments earlier, he concealed it well. Instead, he turned his back on them, stepping with precise, measured movements down the length of the hall. Not once did he look back to confirm they followed in his wake. Their curiosity, he knew, would propel them forward soon enough.

Willem and Theresa exchanged glances. “After you,” she said. He nodded, starting after the man. The halls he led them through were bare and unadorned, marked by an institutional sameness threatening to rob them of time and direction. Intersecting corridors branched off every few meters, all distinctly indistinct, yet still their path remained straight as an arrow. He was leading them to the very nerve center of the facility.

At last, their escort brought them to a halt before a massive set of frosted glass doors. Pushing them open, he clicked his heels sharply and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Eugenie Valda.”
 

Eugenie Valda sat behind a desk of polished obsidian as cold and black as her eyes. The rest of her features proved no less striking. Even seated she was statuesque and willowy, with a straight, narrow face and sharply accented cheekbones set around an aquiline nose. She made a clucking sound behind pursed, bloodless lips, standing to inspect them more closely. For several moments, she and the disheveled, confused members of the company stood staring at one another like mismatched reflections before she fixed her iron-hewn gaze upon Willem. “Amazing.” She smiled coolly. “I had always imagined you to be quite dashing in your youth, Dr. Morgenstern, and here before me stands the proof.”

Willem narrowed his eyes, swallowing uncomfortably. She had a peculiar way of directing her voice to the side while she addressed him, as if in fact she wasn’t at all. “My name is Willem.”

“As you say,” Dr. Valda replied. “Though I imagine that will likely be the cause of some consternation, will it not, Dr. Morgenstern?”

Willem eyed her warily when into the room stepped a man who was unmistakably himself, though a great many years advanced. White hair, whited eyes, withered complexion—yet beyond the mask of age the man was Willem down to the quick. “Oh, how you flatter me, Dr. Valda. My goodness, but he is a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” Willem the Elder said with a rattling chortle as he came to stand before his younger self in the flesh.

“Quite,” agreed Dr. Valda, smirking tweely.

“What the absolute fuck?” Theresa asked. Apparently the resemblance was as uncanny to her as it was to him.

“And you would be Theresa, of course.” Willem—
Dr. Morgenstern
—eyed her lecherously, reaching out as if to stroke her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Try it, you wrinkly old fuck,” she snapped, stepping back and swinging her rifle up in place of her scowling face, “and I guarantee it’ll be the last happy memory you have.”

Dr. Morgenstern sighed, shaking his head sadly. “I fear we shall find them quite uncooperative in their current state,” he lamented, turning away with the slowness of such advanced age. “Best to sedate them now and be done with it. Do please initiate the pulse, Dr. Valda, and see them transported to Ward C for further evaluation.”

Before any of them could react—before they could say so much as a single word—Dr. Valda tripped the device that sent them all into the most violent, mind-bending seizures. Dropped were their rifles and their bodies, the latter thrashing about on the floor in a most undignified, uncontrollable fashion. A host of masked figures filed into the room a moment later, stripping the company of their ill-gotten arms and uniforms in preparation for the journey to Ward C and beyond.

Willem was center stage beneath the spotlight when at last the curtain rose anew.

At least, that’s how it felt beneath the array of surgical lamps arranged overhead, their lights beaming down upon him theatrically. Technically he hadn’t even opened his eyes. The good doctor had done that for him, peeling apart his lids and granting him a fleeting glimpse of the man in his mask and gloves. Checking each of Willem’s eyes, Dr. Morgenstern nodded. “Subject is catatonic and without response,” he noted with antiseptic detachment. He pulled his fingers away. Even in their absence, Willem’s eyelids remained open. “Per protocol, I shall now begin the antemortem examination.”

Willem was far from catatonic. He was aware, and he was terrified of what Dr. Morgenstern had in store for him. Yet in spite of that he couldn’t find it within himself to move his limbs or even cry out, not after the disabling pulse he and the others had been subjected to.

“It is really quite the shame,” Dr. Morgenstern narrated from above, speaking blithely to Willem as he inspected his instruments. “I had hoped to examine you as-is to determine just how much of my consciousness withstood the cloning process.” Willem watched as he wrapped his gloved hands around a bone saw, its notched blade reflecting a shard of light down into his unfocused eyes. As instinctive as the urge to blink was, he simply couldn’t manage it. “Judging from that little scene back in Dr. Valda’s office, though, I would say it was a rousing success.

“Just imagine the precipice upon which we stand. To possess the capability to duplicate and reconstitute the entirety of a person’s being, the very essence of an individual’s consciousness, into a cultured, scientifically pure body. Why, I dare say it shall rank as the greatest medical discovery in the history of mankind. The notion is obvious, quite frankly. Why cure each and every disease piecemeal, one at a time, when you can eliminate the fragility of the human condition entirely? When you can literally cheat death itself?

“Pity, though, that so many who began the journey with us are no longer present to witness the fruits of their labor come to pass. Oh, they were helpful enough in the early stages, but as the project advanced their small-mindedness got the better of them.
Ethics
,” he huffed. “
Morals.
Is there anything ethical about the way a cancer devours the cells of its host? Where is the morality in watching helplessly as a loved one succumbs to the ravages of dementia?” Dr. Morgenstern shook his head with a mixture of disgust and regret. “Alas, by the latter stages, subjects were in such short supply we had no choice but to submit to the procedure ourselves. True, some proved less… stable than others, though they knew the risks. The grand tradition of countless generations of scientists before us demanded nothing less, after all.

“As for the final stage, that was all Dr. Valda’s doing. Brilliant woman, really. It was she who first posited the need for a powerful external stimulus to jumpstart the test bodies’ newly installed consciousnesses, something so profoundly traumatizing the brain would have no alternative but to link the body and mind together via the basest of human instincts—survival, fight or flight, and what have you—while simultaneously providing a foundation to build higher cognitive functions upon—fine motor skills, learned behavior, personal traits and emotions, et cetera. Admittedly, I found the prospect a bit ghoulish at first blush, though I cannot deny a certain fascination with the results. At best, we expected no more than a handful of you to survive the project’s terminus. Imagine our pleasant surprise when you appeared half a dozen strong, having sought us out after staging an
armed coup
of Dr. Valda’s mercenaries!” He sounded so flushed with pride as to be on the verge of weeping. Somehow he pulled himself together long enough to compose his closing ode. “Ah, the power of the human brain to adapt, to overcome. Such a magnificent, marvelous instrument; I simply cannot wait to behold what is essentially a carbon copy of mine own.” Dr. Morgenstern allowed himself a moment to savor the prospect, breathing reverently. Then he fired up the bone saw. “Well, no time like the present!”