Lazarus 6 - FOURTEEN: Belly of the Cult

The entry floor had been cool and sterile—the public face of a ghastly company, trying to seem less monstrous than it really was. In a lot of ways, that entry level was like receptionist Kristi, pre-transformation: smiling, professional, clinical. The second level did away with all pretense. It was receptionist Kristi, post-transformation: tubes and tentacles, teeth and buzz saws. The floors were still white linoleum, but the Cult’s symbol was emblazoned every few feet. The walls on this level were pale-green metal, the color of swamp moss, and covered in pipes, gauges, interlocking plates, and blinking lights.

On instinct, I reached out and ran a hand over the walls. The green material was soft, almost spongy to the touch. Definitely not metal. Like nothing I had ever seen before.

Lines of purple neon tubbing ran along the ceiling and baseboards, casting everything in a ghostly haze. Stranger still, snaking vines—all tangled green, black flowers, and purple leaves—worked their way through the pipes, winding along the valves, and entwining pressure releases. Levi trailed his fingers along the walls, crouching for a moment to inspect one of the odd flowers. A worried looked briefly flashed over his face, here than gone. He stood and absently scrubbed one hand across his thigh, lips turned down into a frown. Whatever he was thinking, though, he kept to himself.

We padded our way down the center hallway, following the hospital-like signs hanging overhead, which helped us navigate through the sprawl of rooms and labyrinth of forking hallways. From the options listed on those signs, it was clear that this was where the bulk of the action happened. Bio-Engineering. Weapons Augmentations. Mobility Development. Genetic Sequencing and Integrations. Something simply labeled as the Splicer. We paused at a four-way junction, scanning our available options. Operations Wing and Lower Level Staff Quarters, left, Anesthesia andMachine Shop, right, Prep, R&D and Radiology, straight ahead.

“As much as I’d love to see what goes on in their R&D department,” Sullivan said drily, “I think Operations Hall and Staff Quarters is where we’re mostly likely to find out man.”

“Seems like a safe beat to me,” I said with a nod.

We hooked a left and headed into a section of the building that was worse than everything else I’d seen so far, and that included the receptionist would almost decapitated me. There were open operating suites, only partially obscured by hanging curtains. Those curtains didn’t do much to stop us from seeing what was going on behind the scenes. Scads of harsh lighting illuminated everything, casting away every shadow. The operating rooms were definitely something out a horror flick—chains and pulleys hung down from the ceiling, hulking test tubs filled with limbs or whole bodies lined some walls, while tables covered with mechanical parts and bionic augmentations lined others.

Not all the rooms were occupied, but at least a third of them were.

Inhuman surgeons in long white smocks worked tirelessly on passed out patients, all strapped down to hulking chrome gurneys. They hacked and slashed, using tools that were better fit for a garage than a doctor’s office, while nurses in their white orderly uniforms bustled about the room. Suctioning away gore, fetching tools, or whisking away amputated bits of body. We moved quickly, not wanting to dwell too long. More than one surgeon or nurse glanced up at our passing, tracking our movements with haunted, vacant eyes. A third mechanical eye, red as an ember, regarded us from their foreheads.

They made no move to stop us, though, instead carrying on with their grisly work with a gusto.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Chris asked in a hushed voice, licking his lips nervously as he did a quick turn to make sure something nasty wasn’t sneaking up on us from behind.

Honestly, I had the same question.

“No idea,” Sullivan relied. “But that makes me even more nervous.” He pressed his lips into a thin line, hand tightening around his sword cane. “My guess is they aren’t attacking us because they think whatever is down below is so bad that we don’t stand a chance of surviving it.”

“They might not be wrong,” Levi muttered up ahead as we rounded a corner and left the Operations Wing behind—thank God Almighty for small miracles. “I’ve seen this before. Or something close to it,” he said, trailing his fingers over the spongy walls. “Deep in the Sprawl. I can’t imagine how or why this is here, but if it’s what I’m thinking, we could be in trouble.”

It took us another handful of minutes to locate another steel blast door, this one leading to another descending stairwell that connected to the Lower Level Staff Quarters. Molly’s card key granted us access to the door, though who knew how long that would work for. Sooner or later, someone would get wise and deactivate the credentials on the key. Unless, of course, James’s suspicions were right and they didn’t really give two shits about us trespassing.

Guess we would find out soon enough.

Since this was a Cult, I half expected the Staff Quarters to be laid out like a Marine Corps squad bay. Bunks, lockers, open spaces with very little privacy—that kind of thing. Instead, though, their crash pad remined me of an oversized beehive. The floors were made from a loamy black earth that squelched underfoot with each step—the exactly opposite of sterile and high tech. The walls were that same spongy green metal, though laid out in a series of interconnecting hexagonal rooms.

Those had to be the communal living spaces and sleeping quarters.

The walls of each room were covered in more of the flowery vines and riddled with a series of honeycombed nooks and crannies, which reminded me of coffin racks onboard some of the smaller naval ships I’d seen. Sleeping quarters. Most were vacant, but a few of the pods were occupied with enormous cocoons, studded with wires and tubing. In the center of each room was a burbling pit of sludgy black goop, part tar pit part hot-tub. I had no idea what they were for and I was perfectly happy in my bliss. Everything about this place was just frggin’ awful and I hated all of it.

The sooner we could get gone, the better.

We met no resistance on this level either, which only amped up the tension another notch, and after about fifteen minutes of wandering we finally stumbled into the exit. Another steel blast door barred our way, though this one had a warning splashed across the front in bright red letters: Restricted Area, Third Order Magister Templi or Higher Only! James took a deep breath, crossed his fingers, and flashed the card over the scanner. We were met with a blaring beep and a flashing red light. Access denied. Looked like out luck had finally run its course.

Honestly, I was surprised we’d made it this far.

“I should be able to—” James started.

“It’s okay,” Levi said, cracking his knuckles. “Let me see if I can’t pry it open.” He stomped forward on heavy feet, hands flattening and elongating, forming into a pair of hardened gray pry bars. He wedged the edge of his flat fingers into the crease of the door and heaved. Muscles straining, arms trembling from the effort. The door groaned and squealed, but ultimately didn’t budge. He let out a disgruntled humph, and back away, shaking his head. “No good, we’ll have to find another way through—”

He fell silent as James padded forward, smug and satisfied, and pulled the Hand of Glory from his pocket. He waved the emaciated hand across the door lock and the light blinked green, the door popping open.

“I thought it was a fake,” Levi said with a shrug.

“What is it, exactly?” Chris asked, eyeing the gnarled hand askew.

“Dark magic, is what it is,” I replied. “Hand of Glory. Incredibly hard to find. Most of the ones you see floating around in the wild are just cheap fleemarket knockoffs, purchased by suckers too dumb to know any better over at the Brokers of Isdarla Shopping Emporium.”

Thing was, Hands of Glory were like urban legends: everyone knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew another guy who’d seen one. Or maybe owned one. But it was always bullshit, as urban legends so often are.

“But what does it do?” he pressed.

“A real Hand of Glory,” James said, tucking the Hand away, “will only shed light for the person holding it, but they are most valued because they can open any lock or door. Or, at least, so the stories go.” He offered us a lopsided smile. “I’ve never used one. I’m as surprised as the rest of you that it worked at all. Now, best if we don’t dawdle. We have other places to be, after all.” He stood aside, holding the door open, and ushered us through with a wave of his cane.

Instead of a staircase, we headed down a slopping tunnel, the air growing warmer and more humid with every step. The walls here were more jungle vine than anything else, but that only served to highlight the metallic service panels and neon lighting fixtures that lit up the space. We must’ve descended a good, fifty or sixty feet before the tunnel eventually deposited us in an earthen cavern with a domed ceiling and rough stone walls pockmarked with more of the honeycomb cells. Hundreds of them, all full to bursting with wriggling shapes, obscured in shadow.

Sleek chrome spires of varying sizes dotted the floor like a techno forest.

Those spires were covered in arcane glyphs, power cables snaking away, connecting to the ground in places, or flying off to form a complex web of lines above the ground. Straight across from us, on the far side of the forest of metal, was some sort of control room with yet another of the strange reinforced doors barring our path. Every instinct I had told me that was where we would find Wayland the Smith. The problem was, standing between us and that doorway were the things already starting to skitter and stir within their honeycombed shelters.

My hair stood at attention along the back of my neck, the breath caught in my throat, and chills raced along my arms and down my spine.

“Holy mother of god,” Chris whispered. He made a quick sign of the cross, which reminded me of Ferraro.

“You can say that again,” Sullivan offered, sounding far from his usual unflappable self.

“What is this place?” Winona asked, scooting closer to Chris, as though the small-town cop could somehow protect her from the horrors we were seeing. Or, more likely, as though he needed protecting and she intended to see him through this hellhole safely.

“This is a friggin’ hatchery is what it is,” I said, staring at the half-seen forms filling the insectile cells.

“A hatchery for what?” Chris asked.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” I said quietly. “Though, I have a bad feeling whatever lives here isn’t gonna give us a pass. Best if we move quickly.” I paused, staring at each of them. “Quick but quiet, huh? Under the radar if we can. Maybe whatever is in here won’t notice us.”

With grim faces and silent nodes, we stole across the room.

We made it all of fifteen feet when the first crooning shriek pierced the air. Others followed in short order, some gravelly and deep, others high pitched and keening. The cacophony of sound all communicated one very important truth, Intruders! Kill them! The floor trembled beneath me as shapes and figures emerged from the honeycombed walls. My stomach sank and suddenly I was missing dear sweet Kristi from the lobby. Was she a monstrous warning against the merging of humanity and technology, which would surely haunt my memories like a drunk, angry poltergeist?

Yes. Obviously. But there was also only one of her.

A tsunami of monstrous flesh and inhuman form was rushing toward us from all sides, scampering down the walls with the grace and speed only an insect can manage. But these things were worse than any bug I’d ever seen, and I’d once fought a shapeshifting Metus disguised as a giant centipede version of myself. They scuttled forward on arachnoid appendages built from woven vines, cruel black thorns, and undulating purple blossoms. Those legs protruded from bulbous, sac like bodies, and jutting up from the insect like thorax were human torsos.

Or humanoid, at any rate.

Many were halfies with horns or wings or hooked fangs, made for rending meat. And, like the friendly receptionist from above, those bodies were riddled with mechanical upgrades. Snaking tubes, metal plates welded into place, blipping lights, and mechanical, augmented eyes and snaking limbs jutting from their backs. Worse, were the weapons. More buzz saws grafted into the ends of wrists, murder machetes, glowing sci-fi looking plasma cannons, and burning arc welders—so bright, they were painful to look at. And embedded into the center of each forehead was a malevolent red orb set against a tattooed, inverted triangle.

A third eye, one of technology and magic, that perfectly resembled the Cult’s logo.

Say what you would about Wayland, but the guy understood branding.

“Circle it up. Backs to the center,” I shouted, spinning on a heel so I faced the entryway we’d just come through. “Chris, I want you in the middle. You’re gonna be our eyes. Tell us when to move. Get us to that doorway out of here! Everyone else, keep us alive.”

Levi was on my right, Winona on my left, and I couldn’t see Sullivan at all, which meant he was at my six. As much as I was still pissed at Sullivan for everything that had happened, there was honestly no one I’d rather have guarding my back. He and I had seen some shit, let me tell you, and with both Iron Stan and Black Jack Engelbrecht dead and gone, he probably had more supernatural combat experience than any other Mage alive. At this point, I was probably a close second. And I knew we would need every ounce of that ass-kicking power and experience, because holy shit were there a lot of these things.

I pushed every thought to the side—every fear, worry, and anxiety. Those emotions were powerful things, but they couldn’t help me here. Wouldn’t serve me or save me. So instead I focused on the here and now, on the beating of my heart, and the blood rushing through my veins. I inhaled and tapped into my full power, allowing it to sweep through me like an artic blizzard and a flow of red-hot magma all at once. Vis and Nox, deliciously intoxicating in equal parts, swirled and churned inside me like a destructive tornado, and I soaked it in. Drawing more and more and more, until my body thrummed with energy and it seemed like I might just rip apart at the seams.

When it felt like surely, I couldn’t hold another drop, I rolled up my metaphorical sleeves and got my ass in gear.

The plant-halfie centaurs—somehow both more and less than the sum of their grotesque parts—were closing the distance at record speed. If they hit us all at once, pouring in from every angle, no amount of power on the planet would save us. We’d be overwhelmed, crushed beneath the sheer weight of their bodies. There’s a saying that applied here: All the ants weigh more than all the elephants. Sometimes superior numbers were more important than superior firepower. But not today. Not if I could rearrange the game board in our favor.

I took a single step forward and thrust my hands out in a flourish.