Simon Green - From Hell with love

He died. I left him lying on the ground, as the flies descended. There was nothing I could do for him. My armour can do many wonderful things, but it can't heal.

I stood up and glared at the main science lab, my hands clenched into impotent fists at my sides. I could understand Doctor Delirium dosing his own people with the Acceleration Drug as a last line of defence, if he thought he was under attack… but no one knew I was coming. I hadn't known I'd be coming here, only a few hours earlier. And why add something to the Drug, to make them kill each other? Was this a Jonestown after all-had the Doctor killed his own people, and then killed himself? Unlikely. It wasn't in character for the Doctor, he was never that ruthless. He looked after his people, paid better than most, and anyway, Doctor Delirium should be on top of the world, right now. He'd finally found a way to blackmail the world and make it stick. He had no reason to give up.

And, the dying man had said They handed out the Drug. Doctor Delirium and… Tiger Tim? What the hell had happened here, when those two finally got together?

I strode on through the village of the dead, ignoring the bodies, all my attention concentrated on the science lab before me. The impeccably clean steel and glass structure shone brightly in the fierce sunlight, dominating the massive clearing made to hold it. When I finally came to the main entrance, the first thing I noticed was that the sliding doors were standing half open. I forced them all the way open, and the metal crumpled like paper in my grasp. I pulled the doors out of their frames, and threw them aside. I was past caring about the noise. I walked into the lobby, and there were no sirens, no alarms. No people anywhere. But the massive reception desk had been smashed and overturned, and all the furnishings were broken and scattered in pieces. The madness had found its way here.

The overhead lights were flickering fitfully, on the brink of giving up and going out. I couldn't hear any air-conditioning working. Main power had to be going down, on its last legs. The lobby gave onto a series of bland, featureless corridors that led deeper into the building. Gaudy coloured lines had been set down on the floor as a guide, but I had no idea what they stood for, so I just picked a corridor and started walking, threading my way through the maze. As I made my way inwards, the first bloodstains and bullet holes began to appear. And the first flies.

Someone had gone crazy with an axe; I found it embedded in a grey wall, the blade still smeared with dried blood and matted hair. Someone had shot out the windows, leaving broken glass all over the floor. It crunched loudly under my golden feet. Bodies lay here and there, in ones and twos, each one a bloody mess and a feast for the flies. More and more, I saw men and women dead at their desks, in offices and cubicles, still? at their posts. From the look of them, they never took the Acceleration Drug. Maybe they never got the memo. Maybe… the Accelerated Men needed something simple to start on…

Blood-spattered white lab coats, cut throats and smashed-in heads, people thrown around like discarded toys. A few had been smashed through glass partitions, some had been battered to death with broken chairs. Half a dozen were still sitting in their chairs, their heads torn off and piled up in the corner. When superhumans go bad, it's bound to be messy.

Scattered papers were everywhere, littering the floor. Probably important once, crumpled and torn now, all of them soaked in blood. Smashed windows, doors torn off their hinges, holes punched in walls, spattered with blood from broken hands. Fire damage here and there, put out by automatic systems. Smoke and water damage, from putting out the fires. And dead men and women, mostly scientists and office staff, who probably never even understood why they were being butchered.

I strode quickly on through the corridors, increasing my pace till finally I was running, doubling back and forth through twisting corridors whose pattern made no sense. I started to find corpses who had taken the Drug. Two young secretaries, little more than teenagers, had gone at each other with office scissors as their only weapons. They'd cut and slashed and gouged great chunks out of each other, stabbing and hacking with superhuman strength, giving and taking awful damage while the Drug kept them on their feet and fighting, long after they should have lain down and died. I didn't stop to mourn them. I couldn't. I had to find who was responsible. I needed to get my hands on them.

Why would Doctor Delirium have allowed this? To cover his tracks after he left? So no one would be left alive to speak of his future plans? Why kill all the soldiers? The Doctor had always relied on his mercenaries to do the heavy lifting. He was the boss, he never got his hands dirty. I'd been surprised to see him present at the Magnificat. Now this… Could it be, that just ownership of the Apocalypse Door was affecting him? Changing him, corrupting him… to the point where he would willingly open the Door and let loose all the hordes of Hell?

I made myself stop, and think. I found an office whose computer systems seemed undamaged. One machine was still running; someone had turned it on but hadn't lived to turn it off. I worked quickly, while the power still lasted. I pressed one fingertip against the computer, and willed golden filaments to worm their way into the guts of the machine. Luther was right; all I had to do was concentrate on what I wanted, and the armour did the rest for me. (I was going to have to think about the implications of that, when I had the time.) I persuaded the computer to throw up a map of the main lab, and put it on the screen. Doctor Delirium's private office was only a short distance away. I couldn't believe he'd still be here, after all that had happened, but even if he wasn't I should be able to find some answers. After all I'd seen, I needed some answers.

The office actually had a big brass plaque on the door saying DOCTOR DELIRIUM: STRICTLY PRIVATE. With green and red lights set in place above the door, to inform lesser mortals whether he was In or Out. Both lights were dead, and the door stood ajar. I stopped just short of the door. The Doctor might be gone, but in his present mood he might well have left all kinds of booby traps behind. Hidden guns or energy weapons, explosives triggered by an unwary footstep, deadfalls under the carpet. None of this would have had any effect on my armour, but I didn't want important evidence destroyed by a convenient fire or explosion. The office seemed quiet, and I couldn't see anything suspicious, so in the end I just pushed the door all the way open with a single golden finger. Nothing happened. I looked inside. The office was deserted. No bodies, no blood, no destruction-and no Doctor Delirium.

I strolled into the office and had a good look around. It wasn't much of an office, for a mad super-science villain. No frills or fancies, no super-science executive toys, not even a Tomorrow The World! poster on the wall, or a potted plant. Just a plain office desk, with the usual computer equipment, neat piles of paper in the IN AND OUT trays, and two chairs, on either side of the desk. No photos anywhere, of family or friends. He gave all that up, to become Doctor Delirium. I had to wonder… if he thought it had all been worth it.

I used my armour again to break into his computer, and ran quickly through his files. And almost the first thing I found was a connection between Doctor Delirium and the rogue Drood, Tiger Tim. It went back almost a year. Tiger Tim brought the Acceleration Drug to Doctor Delirium, as a peace offering and a payment, to ensure a face-to-face meeting. Even Doctor Delirium had enough sense to be wary of a rogue Drood. Tiger Tim had acquired a large batch of the Drug from Truman, back when he was head of Manifest Destiny. And that… was a connection I hadn't expected to find.