Jonathan Bond - The Terminus experiment

“You can’t?”

Rachel gestured toward the stone demon. “You know, when you first started working on this, I remember thinking it was ugly. It frightened me. Now, I can’t imagine why I ever felt that way. It’s beautiful. Look at the strength in the torso, the grace in the wings. And it’s not even finished yet.”

She finally turned to look Warren in the face. His hair had been cut, the long pony-tail replaced by the buzzed, functional cut favored by so many corp types. Somewhere he’d found the time to catch a tan, and it suited him. Still, it only emphasized that the man she’d loved seemed to have vanished.

“How come you don’t get all of this stuff and take it to your new place? I know you’re busy, but aren’t you ever going to finish any of these?”

For a moment, Warren looked angry. Then he turned away. “I don’t have time for this anymore. Nor the desire. You’ve got to understand. I have an entire corporation to run, and even if! did have the time to waste with this… hobby, I’d be too tired to try.”

Rachel nodded to his back. “I thought you might say something like that. But somehow it’s not quite right. When was the last time you ate, Warren, or maybe I should say, when was the last time you fed?”

Warren turned in a smooth motion, but found himself looking down the barrel of the sawed off double-barrel shotgun that de Vries had found for her. “Rachel, have you flipped?”

“When was the last time you fed?”

Warren smiled, and reached a finger up to his right eye. With a grin, he popped the brown contact out, leaving only white, with a pinhole of night at the center. “You mean when was the last time I killed someone and sucked their life out of them?”

Rachel shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it.”

Warren put the contact back in, and laughed. “I thought you might have guessed. That’s why I’ve avoided you. If anybody would know, it would be you. Still, to answer your question… the one you asked, not the one you implied, I had chicken primavera this afternoon in my office.”

Rachel pulled back the double-cocking mechanism on the antique weapon.

Warren smiled. “It’s true. I eat, I drink coffee, wine, whatever. I sleep during the night and am awake during the day.”

Rachel laughed. “Your uncle could pull that off, too.”

Warren stepped toward her slowly. “I promise I’m not going to try anything. But I want you to do something. Touch my skin.”

Rachel thought about it for a second, figuring the angles he might use, thinking about his speed, about what tricks he might still have up the sleeve of his Armante jacket. Using her free hand, she reached out and touched his face. “Damn.”

Warren smiled. “No makeup. Except for my eyes, I seem to be completely normal. Well, not completely normal. Better than that, better than I’ve ever been before. I can hear things, see things, do things I would never have believed possible before.”

Rachel stepped back from him, the twin barrels of the shotgun still centered just below his nose. “You’re telling me you got all this with no drawbacks, no side effects?”

For the first time, Warren looked sad. He turned and gazed around at the sculptures. “You know that’s not true. There are… side effects. I can’t do my art anymore.”

“Thought so.”

He turned back to her. “I tried. I came here right after I got out of the clinic.” He shrugged. “Nothing. There was just nothing there.”

Rachel continued backing toward the door. “And that’s it. You lost your art, and that’s the only thing wrong with what happened to you?”

Warren looked puzzled. “What am you getting at? Yes, that’s the only thing. I haven’t gone out and eaten anybody, nor have I had the desire to do so. What’s wrong with you?”

Rachel smiled sadly. “If you don’t know what else you’ve lost, then I guess my telling you won’t make that much difference. Still, I suppose I should at least say goodbye. I’m headed for Austria with de Vries and Sinunu. It won’t matter to you anyway.”

Warren still looked confused. “Rachel, you’re not making any sense. I didn’t lose anything else, I swear.” Then he seemed to catch the look in her eye.

Warren smiled. “My dear Rachel, don’t be foolish. Even if I can’t manage to dodge all of the shotgun pellets, you don’t honestly think a few little pieces of brass will hurt, do you?”

It was Rachel’s turn to smile. “The real Warren would have known me better than that. Have you grown so cocky, so foolish as to think I would come here unprepared to take you down? Believe me, I’ve refined the art of vampire-killing in the last two weeks. I’ve spent every waking moment preparing for this.”

Her smile faded. “Goodbye, Warren.”

Warren moved, a tanned blur in a thousand-nuyen suit, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough.

Rachel pulled the first of the triggers on the shotgun, and it jumped in her hand like a live thing. Instead of a roar, the gun made a truncated whoof as a hundred real-wood flechettes cut through Warren and buried themselves into the wall at his back.

Warren’s momentum carried him to the floor, curled into a ball, a scream of pain echoing in the room. “You slitch! I’ll kill you for that!” Warren’s voice was a strangled snarl, and Rachel could see the already festering wounds where the wood flechettes had done their work.

Rachel took another step backward, and by now she was almost to the doorway. Warren was struggling to get to his feel, but some of his motor control seemed to be slipping away.

“When you get to hell, tell the real Warren that I love him and that I always will.”

Warren staggered toward her, his face distended in agony and rage.

Almost casually, Rachel triggered the second round in the shotgun. Instead of wood flechettes, a solid-core slug slammed into Warren’s chest.

As the white phosphorous round erupted and began to burn him from the inside out, Warren threw back his head, as if to scream for the last time. Instead of sound, the only thing that came out of his mouth was a gout of green flame.

With that, Rachel turned and walked out of the doss and into the sunshine. She walked quickly, but casually, across the street to the waiting stepvan, which Sinunu had kept running.

Sinunu turned to face her, her pale albino skin showing newly healed, pink scars. “Did it go like you thought?”

Rachel nodded, but felt a tear track down her cheek. “Yeah.” Then she turned and smiled through her tears. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the entire block goes tip in flames.”

Sinunu pulled away from the street corner, and in the mid-September sunshine, the two of them headed for the airport.

His new offices at Zulu BioGen reeked of bleach and disinfectants. He had the top four floors of an ancient hospital, made of naked and pockmarked gray concrete. Ugly, if functional. The security was tight and he had plenty of room to set up his operation.

Oslo Wake stood up from his desk and walked to the window. Green mountains capped with snow loomed around the narrow valley. And in the distance, Old Salzburg sat like a time-preserved miniature city in a snow bubble. Only it wasn’t snowing now; the sky let forth an agonizing slow drizzle of rain.

It’s fitting that Mozart once lived here, thought Wake. The city understands genius. Understands it and accepts it.

He ran a hand over the burns covering the left side of his face and neck. He knew he was lucky to still be alive. And he wouldn’t be if his fire elemental hadn’t protected him from the blast. The escape from Hell’s Kitchen had been too close. The losses too high.