I flicked the Colt’s selector to lethal and sighted on his chest. Fuck taking him alive. He charged the moment I fired, two three-round bursts to the central mass, enough to blow the lungs and spine out of a human body. Corvin, of course, wasn’t human just now and didn’t even slow down. The distance between us vanished in a heart-beat, his claws closing on my face as I sought vainly to bring the Colt to bear on his throat.
A dark blur in the corner of my vision followed by the hard thud of bodies colliding and Corvin disappeared from my eye-line. My gaze snapped to the left, finding Joe and Corvin locked in a furious embrace, raising a cloud of fragmented plaster and tile as they rebounded from every hard surface in a ten metre radius, moving almost too fast to follow. Joe had his arm around Corvin’s neck, hands clamped together and teeth bared as he held on. The clamp of death they called it back in his old fighter days, one of his signature moves. Once Tyger Joe had an opponent in the clamp it was all over. But Joe had been fully spliced back then, and, however strong he might be now, his fighter days were over.
Corvin crouched and launched himself back and up, slamming Joe into the edge of the first floor walkway with enough force to lessen his grip. Joe hung on, smashing his fist repeatedly into the side of Corvin’s head. I heard bone break under the assault, but Corvin didn’t seem to notice, going into a whirling pirouette.
“McLeod to Perimeter Team,” I said into the comms, raising the Colt and setting it to full-auto. “Lethal force authorised. Load AP.”
Corvin screamed in triumph as Joe came free of his neck, flying backwards to impact on a supporting pillar with enough force to bend it. He crumpled at the base of the pillar, trying unsuccessfully to push himself upright as Corvin charged in for the kill.
I sighted on his legs and fired off a full magazine. Anyone else and it would have meant a messy double amputation but this time produced just a cloud of blood and part-denuded muscle mass. But it did succeed in pissing Corvin off enough for him to turn away from Joe and fix on me.
He snarled, crouched, then flinched as more bullets struck him from the right. Leyla and Timor following my example, pistols whooping as they emptied their guns at the monster in the space of one and a half seconds. I slammed in another mag and sighted on Corvin’s face, firing shorter bursts now and being rewarded by the sight of his left eye exploding in a blossom of gore.
He howled again and charged for me, uncaring of the renewed barrage from Timor and Leyla.
The first burst of armour piercing caught him ten feet short of where I stood, shredding his spine above the waist and sending him sprawling. Still he tried to get to me, claws digging into the tiles as he dragged himself closer, snarling all the while. The entire Perimeter Team, understandably pissed at their commander’s fate, fired at once and Khristopher Corvin, fraudster turned spliced-up murderer, underwent another rapid transformation, from wolfman to vaguely humanoid shaped mound of churned up flesh.
“Suspect down,” I said into the comms, running to Joe’s side. “Medical assistance required. Priority One.”
Joe groaned as I rolled him over, not without difficulty. “Lousy, low-rent bum,” he murmured, eyes dimming with the onset of unconsciousness. “Wouldn’t have lasted one round with me in the old days…” He drifted off then jerked, eyes widening and fixing me with stern resolve. “You got a date tonight, remember? Don’t you be late on my account.”
Chapter 5
“The basic genetic template is the same as the standard werewolf splice mods,” Ricci said, the holo above the autopsy table displaying a close-up of Corvin’s DNA, double helix glowing red where the mods had been grafted on. “But heavily modified. Greatly increased muscle mass and bone density, as you can probably tell.” He gestured at Corvin’s corpse, or what was left of it, arranged on the table like a grisly jigsaw puzzle. Despite the damage the basic shape of the rib cage was still discernible, the ribs thick and flat with no gaps in-between. “Like he had a sub-dermal suit of armour,” Ricci went on. “Pretty interesting hormone results. Hugely boosted levels of adrenaline and endorphins. He would have been high as a kite the moment the change kicked in, resulting in reduced cognitive ability but I guess that’s the trade off if you want to be a genuine lycanthrope.”
“A real live shifter,” Sherry said, then grimaced at Corvin’s remains. “Some myths turn out to be true after all.”
“Who could do this?” I asked Ricci. “The cost must be astronomical.”
“There is no lab I can find doing anything like it. Or if they are, they aren’t publishing their results, which would be nuts because our friend here represents the next stage in splice evolution. I did find a few papers on Rapid Morphological Change, to use the technical term, but they were mostly theoretical. The only actual experiments were a few animal studies and the results were hardly encouraging.”
“Seems somebody had the time and money to figure it out.”
The silence strung out for a few seconds until Sherry stated the obvious. “Fed Sec. Who else has got the funds, or the motive?”
“Vargold was right,” I said. Payback for Ceres. But Rybak still bugged me, his listless acceptance of his own death didn’t gel with the notion of a Fed Sec assassination. From light we are born to light we return.
“What about Corvin’s place?” Sherry said. “Any pointers?”
“Disgustingly clean,” I said. “Like a hotel room. Would’ve taken it for unoccupied if the building’s security net hadn’t confirmed he’d been living there since his release. Kept a rigid routine, only ate ready-meals, hardly any interaction with his neighbours, no attempts to contact former associates, and kept every appointment with his parole officer.”
“Sleeper,” Sherry said. “Awaiting activation.”
“And if there’s one…”
“I’ll speak to the mayor. Recommend an increase in alert status. And the security for Astravista’s top executives will have to be tightened.”
“We need to work up a full breakdown of Corvin’s activity since his release from the pen. This was done to him sometime in the last six months. The building log has a few extended absences early on. Just a matter of hours but it may have been enough.” I raised a questioning eyebrow at Ricci.
He shrugged. “If the process has been perfected, yeah. Splicing in general is a lot more sophisticated these days. A basic makeover won’t take up more than an afternoon.”
“I also want to take a closer look at Rybak,” I told Sherry. “I can’t believe he was targeted just because he’s Vargold’s number two. And the way he just sat there and took it was seriously weird.”
She shook her head. “Once I ring the alarm about Fed Sec Arnaud will want this kicked up to CAOS Defence.”
“I still have a homicide to investigate here. Not to mention the deaths of five SWAT operators on my watch.”
“You caught the killer, Alex. In record time, I might add. It’s a security matter now, let Defence run with it. Besides,” she held up her smart to display an approval code for a new operation. “I just got authority to sign off on the Mr Mac investigation. Congratulations.”
I found Janet waiting at the hospital. “He’ll be fine,” she said, meeting me at the door to Joe’s room. I could see him inside, flat out on the bed with trodes on his chest and head. “Obs only. He’s sedated just now. They’re going to release him tomorrow.”
“Nice of you to come,” I said.
“We got close whilst you were off doing whatever you were doing.” She reached for my hand and I realised it had retained a slight tremble ever since Dunelm Court. Well, that’s new. “Pretty bad, huh?” Janet asked, thumb tracing over the back of my hand until the tremble faded.
“Not as bad as the Axis, but bad enough.” I looked at Joe again. “Mind if we skip tonight? I don’t want to leave him alone. He doesn’t have anyone else.”
“I’ll stay too.”
I looked at her hand on mine, thinking about Rapid Morphological Change and the flesh dangling from Corvin?
??s claws. “Promise you won’t get pissed if I ask you something?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve a list of prior relationships, ‘cause I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”
I sighed as she laughed. “What you did, that time with those bots,” I said. “And at the Axis.” I took hold of her other hand. “What you did with these. I need to know how.”
The laugh faded and her face closed up into a neutral alabaster mask. “Like I said,” she said, disentangling her hands from mine. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
“It’s important. You’re the only other Splice I know of who could do anything remotely like what Corvin could do.”
“Curses,” she said in an utterly flat tone. “You’ve uncovered the secret splice conspiracy to take over the Slab and now I must destroy you. Mwahaha.”
“A very rich man and, more importantly, five Demons died today, on my orders. I need to account for that. And I need your help to do it.”
Her mask softened, but only a little. “It’s a long story,” she said. “And that’s just the edited highlights.”
I inclined my head at Joe’s unconscious bulk. “We’ve got all night.”
We sat at Joe’s bedside, Janet leaning forward in the uncomfortable plastic seats that hospitals seem to specialise in, as if they’re worried you’re going to hang around the sick people for too long. I couldn’t remember seeing her so lacking in humour before, even in the most stressed situations it always seemed her lips were perpetually on the verge of a smile. Now there was only a tense reluctance as she rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together.
“You asked about this once,” she said, angling her wrist to display a faint mark in the marble white skin. “Remember?”
“Sure. Eye of Horus.”
“Yes. The Eye of Horus, tattooed onto my skin before I could form the memory of it happening. We all had them, the symbols of our intended purpose, our great crusade.”
“Crusade?”
“Oh yes. The holy mission that would see the vampire race ascend to its rightful place as overlords of humanity.” She met my gaze, her lips forming a barely perceptible grin. “And if you think that all sounds like the rantings of a lunatic, you’re absolutely right.”
She paused to touch a finger to the mark on her wrist, tracing out the shape. “According to the most common reading of the Egyptian pantheon Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris, a falcon-headed warrior with dominion over war and hunting. And, until the age of sixteen, I believed he was as real as you or me. Vampires, we were told, were the inheritors of the old gods’ legacy, heirs to an ancient and long prophesied destiny. Long ago, when the first pyramids rose from the sands, the gods had created vampires to be their vassals on earth, a new, perfected race of people freed from the shackles of death and blessed with great strength and speed. But war soon raged amongst the gods, begun by an alliance between Set, jealous of the newly risen vampire, and Aten, the sun god who hungered to be the only light in the heavens. And so Set and Aten cursed the vampire. Set ordained all food would be denied them and they could feed only on the blood of lesser races, ensuring they were hated and feared for all the ages. But Aten’s curse was far worse, for he ordained that the light of the sun would be the curse of the vampire, for he could not abide his light to fall upon creatures so wretched. And so the vampire race passed into shadow. For millennia we remained hidden, reduced to mere legend and fable, but now, in this new age of technology and wonder, we could finally take what had long been denied us. For now a new breed had been born, a breed that could walk in daylight thanks to the blessing of Horus.”
She fell silent, lowering her gaze, hands clasped even tighter. “Wondering who told me all this crap, right?”
“I’m guessing whoever they were, they’d been off their meds for a while.”
No laugh, just a slight bob of her head. “Father Ra, he called himself. And the hab where I was raised was called Amun-Ra, a celestial vessel gifted by the gods where we would be prepared for our role as holy warriors. When I say ‘raised’, I should really say ‘matured.’ Or more accurately, ‘conditioned.’” She paused again, glancing up at me. “Objective guess, Alex. How old would you say I am?”
“Nineteen.”
She rolled her eyes. “Nice try. I happen to know I appear to be a twenty-five year old woman of Caucasian ethnicity. Which is, in fact, seven years less than my actual age. I have always looked this way and, since all the specialists I’ve wasted money on over the years tell me a desplicing procedure would probably kill me, I always will. I was made, just like your old friend from the Axis I guess, just a more aesthetically pleasing package. But a freak is still a freak, right?”
I didn’t say anything and watched her sorting through memories she’d rather leave buried. “Father Ra told us we were the children of Horus, brought forth by the power of his heka to reclaim the vampire birthright. Heka is the old Egyptian term for magic, and Father Ra was a great magician. You should have seen this place, Alex. It was like something from an old Cecil B. DeMille epic, monoliths and sphinxes everywhere you looked. Labyrinths full of tricks and traps where we would be schooled in the arts of cunning and stealth. I remember being pretty happy for the first few years, for what child doesn’t love to play? I had six sisters, all children of Horus’s blessing. We fought and squabbled, as children do, jockeying for status, all desperate for Father Ra’s favour. But I always knew he loved me the most, and in time I found out it wasn’t a paternal love. But why would I object? He carried the blessing of Horus after all.” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “I was honoured by his holy touch.”
I gritted my teeth and clamped down on the burgeoning rage. “I hope you’re gonna tell me he’s dead now.”
“Very. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For years we trained, immersion based accelerated language skills, combat, all unarmed of course since no true vampire would defile themselves with human weapons. Then, after what I know now was the better part of a decade, Father Ra made his big mistake. He started teaching us about the world we were created to destroy.
“The world below, he told us, was a festering pit of war, vice and endless misery. And he had plenty of evidence to prove it. Hundreds of hours of vids and immersion sims, giving us a grandstand view of humanity’s greatest crimes, all the way from the Roman conquest of Jerusalem to the genocides of the twentieth century and the CAOS war. I have to say it would have been a pretty convincing argument, and it might have worked if Father Ra hadn’t made us so smart. I began to notice inconsistencies in the narrative, factual omissions and simplistic explanations. For civilisations to go to war they first had to rise. There were plenty of villains in this story, plenty of destroyers, but where were the heroes, the builders? I knew on some instinctive level that no history could be this dark. You can’t have shadow without light, so where was it?
“Naturally, when I voiced my concerns to Father Ra he was less than pleased. Heretic, he called me. Ingrate, malcontent. I needed to be punished. And so my sisters punished me, with the claws and the teeth gifted to us by Horus. I didn’t fight them, for I had been commanded not to, and when they were done I was a bleeding, broken wreck. I healed quickly, as vampires do, but I no longer had Father Ra’s favour, his attentions now shared equally amongst my sisters. I understand now that he was a man of many delusions, belief in his own infallibility being perhaps the most grievous. Having taught us much of the world below, particularly how to infiltrate it, he couldn’t imagine one of us might use those skills against him.
“Hacking into the hab’s mainframe wasn’t particularly difficult, Father Ra being somewhat lazy when it came to changing pass-codes or updating his security software. A few days work and I had it all. Our home was not a celestial barge crafted by the gods but a converted luxury hab purchased fifteen years before by one Gary Muskovitz, heir to the Muskovitz Industrial Lubricants fortune. Seems he’d fallen in with the spliced vampire crowd in his youth and taken to it wit
h religious zeal, one of the first to embrace full conversion which turned out to be more of a handicap in daily life than he imagined. Being a creature of the night might have some romantic appeal but the reality of never being able to go outside in daylight starts to grind after a while, especially when the world’s media is camped outside your mansion and you’re a joke in every chat-show host’s monologue. A penniless vampire might be able to slip into the shadows, but not a rich one.
“So Gary cashed in the family fortune and came up the well, conceiving a plan that would achieve his grand design of vampire dominion. A sealed hab where he could create whatever reality he chose, and he had enough money to clone himself some acolytes.”
She unclasped her hands, flexing the fingers, nails extending and receding. “These were the result of a speculative but substantial investment in a small gene lab in Korea. The UV resistance came from another lab in Mexico. All in all, you could say I’m a billion dollar amalgam.”
She straightened, eyes distant with memory, a sad, reflective grimace on her face. “Faith is a very curious thing. Even when confronted with contradictory evidence, the truly faithful, those for whom the indoctrination goes so deep you can never dig it out, will cling to the lies they’ve been told with fierce devotion. So it proved with my sisters. I laid it all out for them, all the lies, the deceits, the fact that the man who raised us wasn’t the High Priest of Amun-Ra but just some delusional rich guy who’d cloned his own harem. Suffice to say, they didn’t take it well.
“Punishment would not be enough this time. This time I must be purged from the sight of Father Ra, lest my heresy cause mighty Horus to turn his gaze from us. They wept as they came at me, for they were my sisters after all, and they loved me. I knew I couldn’t fight them all, and I knew I couldn’t save them. I sometimes think there must have been a mistake in my gestation procedure, some small variation in the genes, within acceptable variables but just enough to make me capable of seeing through Father’s lies where my sisters couldn’t. So, although they wept, they were still going to rip me into very small pieces. Fortunately, my first experience of Father’s wrath had taught me a lesson in the value of contingency.