Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

“Huh?” The astrophysicist tugged at his earring, urging Cole to go on. “Him? You saw that man?”

Cole nodded. “Uh, I think so. In the mental hospital.”

“You were in a mental institution?” The slide disappeared in a blaze of light. Cole shielded his eyes as the microbiologist stepped in front of the screen. “You were sent to make very important observations!”

“You could have made a real contribution.” The astrophysicist shook his head, disappointed. “Helped to reclaim the planet.”

“As well as reducing your sentence,” one of the other scientists added darkly.

“The question is, Cole,” the microbiologist said, pulling up a chair beside him. “ Do you want another chance? ”

Behind him a jet engine shrieks, its wail nearly drowned by confused shouts, the sound of myriad footsteps running. When he raises his head, the boy sees the blond woman fleeing up the concourse, her bright hair flapping against her back. Someone bumps him and he opens his mouth to cry out.

“Who’s that?” a raspy voice demands.

Cole blinked awake.

“I said, who’s that? ” The same voice, petulant now, almost mocking. Cole rubbed his eyes, his fingers smeared with grit, and stared blearily into the dimness. A tiny cell, with the same bare cement walls, the same high ceiling as the isolation room at the county hospital. There was no one in it but himself.

“Hey, Bob — what’s your name?”

Cole dug his elbows into his pallet and raised himself, looking around in vain for the source of the voice. Was this part of the dream? He shook his head, trying to force himself into full wakefulness. His held felt numb, his mouth was raw and tasted of bile.

“Yo, Bob! Whatsamatta, cat got your—”

Suddenly Cole’s eyes focused on a vent no wider than his hand, high up on the wall. Could the voice be coming from there? “Where are you?” he croaked.

The voice laughed with a nasty jubilance. “You can talk! Whaddja do, Bobby Boy? Volunteer?”

Cole squinted at the vent. “My name’s not Bob,” he said at last.

“No prob, Bob. Where’d they send you?”

Cole licked his lips, tasted dried blood. “Where are you?” he asked.

A pause. Then, “Another cell — maybe.”

Cole winced and pulled himself upright, straining to see something behind the vent’s steel mesh — a face, a shadow, a hand, anything. “What do you mean, ‘maybe’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“‘Maybe’ means maybe I’m in the next cell, another volunteer like you. Or maybe I’m in the central office spying on you for all those science bozos. Or, hey—”

The voice took on a more ominous tone. “ Maybe I’m not even here. Maybe I’m just in your head. No way to confirm anything, right? Ha ha. Where’d they send you?”

Cole hunched silently on his pallet.

“Not talking, huh, Bob? That’s okay. I can handle that.”

“1990.”

“Ninety!” the voice exclaimed in exaggerated delight. “oooh! How was it? Good drugs? Lotsa pussy? Hey, Bob, you do the job? Didja find out the big info? Army of the Twelve Monkeys? Where the virus was prior to mutation?”

“It was supposed to be 1996.”

The voice cackled. “Science isn’t exactly an exact science with these clowns, but they’re getting better. Hey, you’re lucky you didn’t end up in ancient Egypt!”

A rattle of keys in the door behind Cole. He turned, painfully, as the voice whispered, “Shhh! They’re coming!”

The door creaked open and two guards stepped in, wheeling an ancient gurney. Cole let himself be strapped to it without protest. As they pushed him into the corridor, his eyes remained fixed on the vent in the wall, its steel grille a mouth drawn in a grimace.

It took them only minutes to reach their destination, a gloomy chamber lit by a single flickering fluorescent bulb. The room’s walls were of cracked concrete, pleached with mildew. Veins of water bled onto the floor. Cole could hear a soft slurping as the gurney’s wheels slid through puddles rank with mold.

“Well, Cole. No mistakes this time.” Several pairs of gloved hands tightened the restraints. “Stay alert. Keep your eyes open.”

Cole recognized the earnest tones of the silver-haired astrophysicist, but in the darkness all he saw were pale faces, a row of white-clad bodies moving efficiently through the murk.

“Good thinking about that spider, Cole.” The zoologist’s gentle voice sounded in his ear as the gurney creaked forward. She stroked his arm, let her hand rest for a moment on his forehead. “Try and do something like that again. Here, now—”

At the end of the room he could just make out a huge, rounded shape, an immense, faintly glowing tube made of some kind of transparent material. Cole’s heart began to pound. He had seen this before, where had he seen this? In his dream, at the airport? Or, no — a flash as he momentarily saw a room at the county hospital where he had fled before Billings tackled him. A technician’s stunned face, a sign on the door reading CAT SCAN AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. As he stared at it in growing horror, the tube began to darken, like a clear glass filled with cobalt liquid.

“Just relax now. Don’t fight it.” The zoologist slipped away. In her place stood the microbiologist, his dark glasses glinting in the bluish light. “We have to know what’s there so we can fix it.”

Then he was gone, too. Above Cole there was only the shadowy maw of the glowing tube, a blur of anxious faces. The gurney gave a last whining shriek as it was pushed into the opening. The door to the tube clanged shut.

Sudden, unexpected darkness. True darkness, the airless black night of a sealed casket. Cole closed his eyes, opened them: there was no difference. No flickering blue glow, not even those phantom colors that come between waking and dream. He began to move, desperately, shifting his weight from side to side so that the gurney rattled. He grunted with fear, opened his mouth to yell but then thought, Air! There’s no air! But before he could ever gasp a sound came to him — surrounded him — a low, mechanical hum like a swarm of electric bees. The hum grew louder, and louder still, until he could feel his bones vibrating. Lightning tore through the darkness — once, twice — resolved into a blinding strobe that pulsed in time with the deafening roar. Cole could no longer tell if he was hearing that horrific sound, or if he had been truly deafened and was merely sensing it in his battered body.

But then, miraculously, the sound diminished, so slowly that it was several moments before Cole registered that the thunder had softened to a growl, the growl to a hum, the hum to staccato crackling. His ears rang, and there was a tinny whine that somehow resolved into voices, though he could make out no words, only frenzied cries, a shout. As abruptly as it had begun, the strobing ceased. The restraints chafed at his arms, his chest felt as though it would burst as he strove to raise himself from the gurney. He cried out as a metal buckle pierced his flesh, his voice swallowed by a sudden explosion.

“AAAGHHH!”

All about him the darkness shattered, fell onto him in a rain of stones and earth. With a shout Cole fell backward, his hands flailing against something that thudded to the ground beside him. He looked up and saw gray sky. In front of him was an earthen wall studded with broken roots and bits of metal. A soft disconsolate rain pattered upon his upraised face. When he opened his mouth rain streamed inside, bringing with it the cold bite of dirt.

“Non! C’est mon bras—!”

Cold stared uncomprehendingly as first one figure shoved past him, then another. Their faces were covered with grotesque masks. Corrugated tubes fed into their mouths. Unthinking Cole groped at his own face, but found no mask there; only grime and blood. A sudden gust sent rain sluicing into the trench. Another explosion sent a spume of earth flying across the trench’s opening. There was an answering chatter of gunfire. Cole shivered and for the first time looked down.