Chapter Ten
The elevator door slides open on the floor below. Alibi, Piccolo and Kit press themselves against the wall, trying to stay out of sight inside of the elevator. Kit slides over towards the opening, alert to any activity in the corridor outside. Standing partially in the doorway so the elevator door won't slide shut, he nods over at Alibi to move out next. Alibi ducks around the cat man to press himself against the inside wall of the corridor on the left. He can see the airlock up ahead to the right, along the installation's outside back wall.
"Clear," Alibi says in a hoarse whisper. Kit nods to Piccolo to move out next. Piccolo slides out past the Dakhur and presses himself against the wall next to Alibi. Then Kit eases around the doorway and out of the elevator, letting the door slide shut behind him. Piccolo, Alibi and Kit slide down the wall to the left until the wall ends. They hold up. The first floor of the installation is open like a warehouse. The only fixed walls on the floor surround the elevator.
Looking out into the open space, Alibi notices that it's broken up into smaller islands of light and activity. Small blue aliens work among a sea of what look to be operating theaters, each with its own overhead lighting, a gurney, and surrounding medical equipment. The aliens are adjusting knobs and taking readings. Rows of glass tanks run along the building's walls, filled to varying levels with translucent, yellowish liquid. Indistinct, globular objects float within the tanks.
The machines at work in the enormous room hum and click, but the aliens work in silence, giving the entire installation an eerie quiet. As Alibi's eyes adjust to the light, he begins to notice that there are bodies on most of the gurneys in the room. Many of the bodies nearby look like Eldred.
"Ugh, the smell!" Kit grimaces. He pulls a cloth from his pack and ties a kerchief across his snout. Alibi hadn't noticed. He breathes in an unpleasant mix of raw meat and disinfectant. It is pretty offensive once it gets in past his senses.
"Whoa," Piccolo says. "This place smells like chemical death!"
"Seems an apt description," Kit agrees in a slightly muffled voice.
"Came prepared this time, huh?" Alibi jokes with Kit.
"This is not a solution. It is but a weak attempt to keep from throwing up," Kit says without humor.
"This place is pretty freaky," Piccolo says under his breath as he wanders over towards the nearest set-up. "It looks like he's dissecting dead Eldred bodies... AH!" Piccolo jumps, stumbles backwards. "That one's still alive!"
Alibi and Kit come up beside Piccolo to look at the Eldred body. The limbs of the creature are strapped down. The chest cavity is open, ribs held splayed apart by a surgical device. The organs visible inside the chest cavity twitch when a mister periodically sprays a fine film of liquid across them. Then Alibi notices something that will stay with him – the creature's mouth slowly opens and then closes, over and over, again and again, repeatedly.
"Shit," Alibi lets out in a small voice.
"Maybe this man has brought their race back to life," Kit offers quietly. Piccolo deliberately tries hard not to look.
"This shit is..."
DING!
Alibi pulls out his Wand. The "ding" was his search alert on the image of the man. He checks out the results.
"He's a criminal," Alibi tells the other two.
"What? That sound was your Wand?" Kit asks.
"Handy things," Piccolo says, ogling Alibi's Wand.
"Don't you have one?" Alibi asks him.
"Had one. Don't now," he says, offering no further explanation.
"What happened to it?" Alibi presses.
"I'd rather not say," Piccolo refuses. "So," he changes the subject. "Who is this 'criminal'?"
"A pirate and former merchant," Alibi reads aloud.
"What? A warlord?" Piccolo asks with a trace of panic.
"Huh. No. Strictly small time... or he was. He disappeared a while back."
"Guess we know where he went," Piccolo says, calming down.
"What is his name?" Kit asks.
"Dimitri Masakov," Alibi reads.
All three jump as the airlock's outer door begins cycling open.
"We've gotta get out of sight!" Alibi states the obvious.
"Guess Dimitri's home," Piccolo says as he scrambles to hide behind the nearby stack of medical equipment keeping the vivisected Eldred alive. Kit quietly blends into the shadows. Alibi puts his wand away and slides up to the gurney with the Eldred on it. He edges down next to it, getting into a position where he can watch the airlock door yet stay concealed.
The wheeled transport drives in through the airlock. A woman sits in the pressurized cabin next to "Dimitri Masakov". The airlock doors close as he parks the transport over by the elevator. The transport cabin opens. Masakov pushes the woman out. She's restrained, arms tied to her sides. She stumbles and falls to the ground.
He moves awkwardly getting out of the transport, staggering a little, as if he's recovering from a stroke. He doesn't seem to suffer any weakness, however. He reaches down and brutally yanks the bound woman up onto her feet. He pushes her ahead of him into the elevator and the two disappear.
When the elevator door closes, Kit reemerges from the shadows. Alibi and Piccolo join him soon after.
"That wasn't her," Piccolo tells the other two. "My sister. That wasn't her, either. She's gotta still be at the ship, right? We've gotta find the shipyard. It's gotta be where he's going, right?"
"You are probably lucky it was not her," Kit observes.
"We don't know for sure that her ship came here," Alibi cautions Piccolo, "so don't get your hopes up too high."
"I would argue that the chances are good that they are here," Kit says. "The Eldred? Human prisoners? All signs point to here." The cat man suddenly jerks his head to the side. "Elevator!" Kit warns, and then he disappears. Alibi and Piccolo scramble back under cover.
Alibi watches as Masakov comes out of the elevator and climbs back into the transport. He fires up the transport and turns it around. The airlock doors open. The transport rolls into the airlock, the inner doors close; they hear the outer doors cycle open, and then the transport heads back out across the surface of the planetoid.
As Alibi stands up, a figure nearby catches his eye. He edges past the splayed Eldred in front of him to get a better look at the more distant table.
"Oh shit," Alibi blurts out as he gets closer to the other gurney. The figure he sees isn't an Eldred. It's a human being. As Alibi approaches, he sees the man is, mercifully, dead. The dissection that's been done to the body nearly causes Alibi pain. It hurts to see the man's reproductive system sliced open and laid out on the gurney. Alibi's own pair shrink up tight when he sees the man's testicles are missing.
Oh. Not missing.
They're floating in a small jar of yellow liquid on a shelf a short distance away from the man's head. A jar next to it holds a small, rounded, pyramid-shaped chunk of... something, floating in a blue-tinged, translucent solution.
As Alibi nears the cadaver, he sees the top of the man's skull has been removed. An intricate network of filaments and wires lead directly into his head. It looks like angel-hair pasta has exploded from his brain. A dizzying number of thin wires run from inside the man out into an array of darkened equipment.
The chunk in the jar is probably a piece of this guy's brain. Maybe it was removed to make room for the wires?
"I don't know how much of this he did to you while you were alive, but I hope you didn't feel too much for too long," Alibi tells the corpse on the table.
He turns to look for Kit and Piccolo, then calls them over with a wave. As they approach, Alibi tells the others what he's found in a loud whisper.
"He's surgically taken apart the guy's brain and his balls," he finishes. "But there's nothing in Masakov's write up on the Wand that said anything about a medical background."
"Ew," Piccolo says as he sees the body. "Yeah, sure looks like the guy knows what he's doing. He shouldn't be doing it, but it looks like he definitely kn
ows what he's doing."
"Vivisecting humans and Eldred," Kit says. "Most gruesome. What exactly is he doing here?"
"Freaky things. Really fucking freaky things!" Piccolo says, a hint of fear in his voice.
"Thank you for that insight," Kit says with a measure of Dakhur sarcasm.
The sound of the opening outer airlock doors breaks up their chatter. The three dodge for the shadows as the inner doors open and Masakov walks in an EVA suit. He takes the suit off and hangs it next to the airlock.
Alibi watches from hiding as Masakov walks along the aisles between the gurneys, looking slowly from side to side, head cocked as if listening for some sign of intrusion.
Did he find our ship? Does he know we're here?
Did we give ourselves away?
Alibi feels pressure on the sides of his head, at the temples, as if his skull is caught in a vise! Closing his eyes, he tries to push back. He fights an onrushing headache. The effort pays off! He's able to still the pressure and ease the pain. He can still feel some kind of force pressing in on the edges of his sensation, but there's no longer any pain.
He opens his eyes and nearly lets out a yelp – Dimitri Masakov is right in front of his position! Masakov is staring into the dark toward him as if trying to see through the table Alibi is hiding behind. Alibi tries to think himself invisible.
I'm not here!
Alibi thinks as hard as he can.
Nothing to see here! Everything is as it should be! You don't see anything!
Masakov looks... confused. He shakes his head and then moves along away from where Alibi is hiding. Masakov walks his strange, staggering walk back to the elevator and disappears upstairs.
Alibi, Kit and Piccolo meet in the shadows.
"He definitely knows something is up!" Piccolo says in a harsh whisper.
"He almost saw you," Kit says to Alibi.
"That was weird," Alibi says.
A woman's muffled scream on the floor above them breaks up their conversation, but it's silenced in almost no time.
"That can't be good," Alibi observes.
"What is he doing here?" Kit wonders aloud again.
"I don't know. But we need to follow him the next time he heads off," Piccolo offers. "Find out where he's keeping the others. Find out where my sister is."
"How noble," Kit comments wryly. Piccolo pouts.
"I wish I knew something about medicine," Alibi says. "I'd like to know what he's trying to do. What he hopes to accomplish."
"He may have brought back the Eldred," Kit observes. "Hard to tell if there were Eldred survivors from twenty years ago," Kit looks around, "or if he grew his own new ones."
"I read through his bio on the Wand. There's no way that the guy he's supposed to be, this Dimitri Masakov, could have done all this," Alibi argues. "He's a petty crook! How did he learn genetic engineering?"
"This does not make sense," Kit agrees. "Are you sure the information you received is correct?"
Alibi looks at Kit with a hint of exasperation. "Yes. This is Dimitri Masakov. Or at least he looks like him. Maybe he's possessed by a demon or something. Or he had his identity stolen, his likeness appropriated by this guy, somehow..."
"Pretty fuckin' far-fetched," Piccolo sighs. "Maybe he went to med school?"
"Let us move away from the elevator," Kit says. "I do not want to be surprised by him again."
Another scream echoes through the building.
"I don't know, sounds like he's busy," Alibi cracks. The other two look at him.
"I thought you were supposed to be the sensitive one," Piccolo says to Alibi.
"Sorry," he says. They move away from the elevator.
"Jeesh! Look at this poor bastard!" Piccolo says as they walk past the bodies on the tables around them. He points over at a man pinned up against the wall. The man, though well-built, is now trapped, solid, wall-mounted metal cuffs holding him up in place, holding his arms by the biceps. Another cuff encircles his waist. Two wrap his thighs, keeping him pinned to the wall. The man looks like he's awake, but stares off into space, unaware. Drool loops down from his lower lip, sliming down his chest and dripping off in stringy remnants to pool on the floor. His eyes appear aimless and unfocused.
"Looks like his brain's been switched off," Piccolo comments. He holds up a hand before Alibi can insult him. "Don't say it!"
"If he even has a brain," Kit says.
"He's wired for something," Alibi notes, still smirking. A network of fiber optics attached to his head and body lead into the machinery and consoles next to him. Most of the leads are wired into the large man's skull. Monitors nearby don't show any activity. The hulking man hangs like an inanimate doll pinned to the wall, held in place by the metal bands.
As they look at the drooling man, the three hear another sound.
"Hello?"
A soft woman's voice calls out of the darkness.
"Is there somebody there? Someone? Anyone?"
Alibi feels something. The voice sounds familiar. He looks around, tries to find out where the voice is coming from. He sees a human figure close by and heads for it. The overhead lights illuminate a woman's body.
Familiar? It's hard to tell because of the surgical condition the body is in. As he gets closer, he sees her sightless eyes flitting around trying to focus. As Alibi looks at the face he realizes it is familiar. He wishes it wasn't. It's Miss Kay.
She lies on the table, the crown of her head sawed clean off. The top of her brain is exposed, fiber wire leads and probes sunk deep into the wrinkled gray pulp.
"Is someone there? Doctor? I can't see! Is anyone there?" she calls out. Her eyes seem to fix on Alibi for a moment. "It feels like someone is there!" Her sightless eyes dart back and forth."I can't hear anything! I'm not sure I'm making any sound. I think I hear my own voice. Can you touch me? Is anyone there? If someone's there, please..."
Alibi steps up and grabs the woman's hand.
"Oh thank God," she gasps. "You are there!" He reaches in past the tangle of wires to caress her cheek with the back of his hand. "Thank you!" she cries. A tear rolls down from the edge of her left eye. "Thank you," she says again, softly.
A short distance away, Piccolo lets out a cry of his own.
"Oh, man, this is just GROSS!"
I'm sorry.
Alibi pulls away from poor Miss Kay to go find out what's set off Piccolo. Piccolo is standing by a row of gurneys pushed over against a wall. The dead human women on these gurneys have had their midsections surgically opened by some form of rough, bloody surgery performed on them.
"That's a lot of blood," Piccolo says. "That means they were alive when he cut them open."
"How do you know that?" Alibi asks Piccolo uncomfortably.
"I don't know, I just, um, know," Piccolo says.
"You are saying these women were still living when he did this?" Kit asks for clarification.
"Yeah. This guy is some sick shit," Piccolo confirms.
The corpses now lie strapped to gurneys. A series of large jars of bluish liquid line shelves next to the last gurney. Some sort of excised internal organ floats in each of the jars.
"What are these?" Alibi asks Piccolo.
"All of a sudden I'm the expert?" he protests. Alibi just stares back at him. Piccolo shrugs. "My guess? They look like uteruses. Uteri? I don't know what the plural is," he says. "I'm not an expert."
"What is he after? Eggs? Embryos?" Alibi asks. Before anyone can respond, the elevator hums back to life.
"He's coming back!" Alibi says in a loud whisper. "I hope we haven't been too loud!"
"I think he was busy," Piccolo whispers back. They move back down the line, away from the elevator but back towards the Eldred bodies. They watch from a distance as the elevator opens and Masakov wheels out a woman in a wheelchair. He wheels her down toward the other women Piccolo had been examining.
Masakov adjusts a device on his wrist. It's a communications device of some kind. Two Eldred ap
pear at his side, awaiting his order. Masakov nods at one of the bodies, on the table at his side. The two Eldred remove the straps and awkwardly drag the woman's corpse off the flat surface. The body hits the ground with a sick thud as the two small creatures attempt to manhandle a weight greater than theirs. One Eldred on each arm, they drag the dead woman down to the airlock.
As the Eldred drag her away, Masakov manhandles the woman he's brought with him out of the wheelchair. He heaves her body up onto the gurney and straps her down, checking each strap for tightness.
Taking a syringe from a nearby shelf, he holds it up into the light and squirts air out of it. He examines it for a moment, and then plunges the needle into the woman's arm, draining the syringe. He pulls the empty needle out and casts it aside, his movements jerky and odd, slow and deliberate.
Masakov pauses in his efforts and looks around. It looks as if he's smelling the air, scenting the odor of an enemy, seeking prey. Alibi once again attempts to think himself invisible.
"Doctor?" Miss Kay calls out. "Are you there?"
Oh my God, don't give me away!
Alibi feels guilty for being selfish.
Masakov scowls. Something seems to have distracted him. He beats a path back to the elevator and upstairs. Alibi, Kit and Piccolo start to emerge from hiding, but the elevator hums back to life. They're forced to scurry back into the shadows as the elevator descends.
Masakov emerges from the elevator. He heads over to the airlock and pulls on his EVA suit. As Masakov lowers his helmet into place, Piccolo creeps up next to Alibi.
"We should seal up and follow him. Find out where he's keeping the other kidnap victims," Piccolo says in a loud whisper. He looks at Alibi for a sign of acknowledgment. Alibi nods, but puts his finger to his lips. As Masakov walks into the airlock, Kit makes his way over to the other two.
"We're going to follow him," Piccolo says to Kit.
"We are?" Kit asks Alibi. Alibi shrugs and gives in.
"We are," he tells Kit.
After waiting for Masakov to get a good head start, the three seal up their EVA suits and head back out the airlock. They bounce their way along the path left by Masakov's ground transport until they come to a small, nondescript, square building on the edge of a flat plain. A large airlock door dominates one wall of the building, where the transport tracks end.
"Where's the big Eldred ship?" Piccolo asks, looking out across the dusty blank plain. "Did they leave?"
"The ship is underground, I would imagine," Kit declares. "By the look of it. They would not keep it out on the surface, visible to prying eyes and passing strangers."
"Betchyourite," Piccolo agrees, running the words together in excitement. "Guess we're going underground!"