The Sweet Seduction of Madness
Prologue:
Sarah Mary leaned forward to pat her horse gently on the neck as they watched the enormous orange ball of the setting sun slip farther and farther below the horizon. A cool breeze rippled down the mountainside, stirring her long black hair about her shoulders. Her black horse pawed the ground as if impatient to be moving once more.
“Yes my friend, we will go soon enough,” she said to her familiar companion, but still she sat quietly as dusk crept across the land and the first tentative stars pierced the vault of the sky. Sighing, she finally urged her mount onto the slight path leading down the mountain. She shouldn’t have taken the time to come up here, she knew, but she had desperately needed a break from the constant grind of the research laboratory. She loved the work, had only dared imagine she would be given an opportunity like this when she graduated from P&ITT, but the safety precautions and unceasing vigilance required while she was working was exhausting. More than one lab assistant had been relieved when the lab cameras or the silent observers standing patient guard detected any hint of irregularity or lack of concentration. She tugged the wide-brimmed hat she wore lower in front as her mount picked up speed headed down the mountain. Grinning, Sarah gave the horse his head and a trot turned into a gallop as they raced the darkness back to the corral.
“Hola Sweet Sarah Mary!” called out the night lab tech as Sarah stepped through the last set of airlocks, slipping her badge into its special holder sewn into an inside pocket of her lab coat. He glanced up from the bank of video monitors and computer displays, but only for a second. “I wasn’t expecting to see you back until tomorrow” he continued as Sarah waved to him.
“Como estas Ernie? I was writing up some reports when I had an idea” she said as she walked around the operations console.
“Did you hurt yourself?” came the laughing reply.
“Be gentle Ernie, you wouldn’t like me when I’m mean” she said, frowning in mock threat. She smiled at the guards as she always did and was rewarded with a reserved nod. She had been working at this carefully hidden installation for almost a year before any of the guards would so much as nod. She also knew they were more than just guards. She had enough experience with the military to recognize soldiers and mercenaries when she saw them. There was something about men and women who had passed through the crucible of the battlefield that set them apart. Moving slowly, she removed two packs of cigarettes from a coat pocket and placed them on a table closest to the guards. Smoking was, of course, forbidden within the lab and even if it was not the guards were too professional to compromise their hands by smoking. However, she played poker with some of the guards at the barracks occasionally and packs of cigarettes were the preferred currency. She had grown up around military personnel; her mother had been a career soldier and commanding officer at a number of bases before her retirement. Sarah appreciated their commitment and professionalism as well as their company and stories. Turning back toward the operations console, she stood quietly behind Ernie as his long-fingered hands flickered back and forth over the touch-sensitive screens that controlled the technological marvel. As was her habit, she slowly surveyed the multiple displays showing environmental conditions, the status of the portal integrity fields, the last 4 hours of grid distortions and many other indicators and recorders.
“And what has the mighty intellect to share with us lowly mortals?” Ernie joked with her without taking his eyes from the monitors.
“From my lofty perch I have had a vision, oh puny and slow-witted one” Sarah replied ostentatiously “and if you were capable of appreciating it then I would share it!”
“You wound me deeply” Ernie replied, looking distinctly unwounded. “Please, enlighten me, for your vast knowledge is a beacon in my darkness.”
“Nice one Ernesto!” Sarah said, slapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Since you begged so nicely, I’ll let you in on my brainstorm.”
“That and the fact that you need my help” he replied with a laugh.
“Well, yes, there is that” she said as she slipped into the chair next to his. There was an uncomfortable moment as the chair read her identity and preferences from the microscopic chip embedded in her upper right arm and shifted its configuration to match its new occupant. Even after all this time, Sarah still wasn’t quite used to a chair that moved around her as she sat down, but since any of the lab personnel might be stuck in one of those chairs for hours at a time, she certainly appreciated it. “Anyway, here’s the thought process” she began. “We’ve never been able to determine what precisely makes this gunk, that’s my official technical term by the way but don’t worry, I’ll slow down if you need me to, that makes this gunk change the way it does.”
“True enough. The ‘gunk’, as you so eloquently expressed it, just doesn’t follow any conventional theories on the structure of matter or energy. We’ve hit it with every kind of test we can think of, even those that fell out of your brain, without much success. The fluctuations we observe don’t follow any predictable, or hell, even repeatable pattern. Lord knows we’ve tried everything the smartest people in this hemisphere could come up with.”
“No need to rub it in Ernie me boy, but that’s exactly where I think we’ve gone wrong.” Ernie glanced swiftly at her face, raising an eyebrow in inquiry before returning to his monitors. “We have the finest scientific minds here and technology that the rest of the world won’t even dream of for another decade” Sarah continued, “but I think that’s precisely why we aren’t getting anywhere.”
“Okay, I realize that I’m not in your league, but where the hell does that leave us?”
“Bear with me Ernie. I do need your help. I want you to set up a containment field in lab 6 and open the smallest portal you can manage. With what we’ve gotten so far, you can squeeze a small amount in there, can’t you?”
Ernie pulled his hands off the console controls and slowly cracked his knuckles. “Yes I can, but you’re going to have to give me more than that before I will. What do you have in mind, sweet Sarah Mary?”
“I want to read it poetry.”
The expression on Ernie’s face rendered any comment superfluous.
She shuffled slowly down the long corridor, her bare feet scuffing gently over the worn carpet. She looked neither right nor left but only down, as if to make sure the ground would not dissolve beneath her. The once-white lab coat draped over her was tattered and torn, ripped along one side and spotted with dark blotches. She paid no heed to the screams that echoed down the corridor. They were like background noise to her now; something that she never noticed, but that she was always aware of. Her face was hidden in the dark shadow cast by the wide-brimmed hat she wore pulled low in front. Dark hair streaked with red cascaded down to her shoulders, gleaming in the overhead lights. Soft murmurings escaped unnoticed from between her lips as she finally reached the thick doors of the first of three airlocks blocking the way into the laboratory beyond. The door beeped softly as she placed her hand over the recognition lock and the electronics hidden inside the thick door matched her palmprint to the data encoded in the chip embedded in her arm. Large bolts slid back almost silently and the airlock opened easily as she pushed forward. Twice more she went through the same process, adding a retinal and DNA scan at the final airlock.
As she stepped into the lab, thick, viscous black tentacles of something that moved of its own volition surrounded her. It caressed her face, touching her lips, her eyes and her sunken cheeks. Stray wisps of something more than smoke swirled about her tall body, urging her farther into the room. Pushing her gently when she strayed, the ebon tendrils slid around the skin-tight white bio-filtration suit she wore, always pulling her deeper and deeper into the room. Eventually she stood in the center of the room, surrounded by softly glowing display screens stacked almost floor to ceiling. Bare cables draped across equipment, broken monitor screens and shattered equipment containers were scattered across the floor. Tears streamed down her face as she reached trembling arms out and clutched at the floating ebony ball hovering there. A wide smile appeared on her lips as she pulled the sphere of blackness to her chest, her tears dripping downward and disappearing into the pulsing darkness. She stepped forward again and was enveloped in the black mass. Wild laughter burst from her raw throat. Her foot caught a book lying on the floor and sent it skidding over the polished surface to crash against a wall panel. Whirling toward the sound, her eyes blazed with maniacal intensity at the dim figure the book had bounced off. As the dark tendrils shifted, shadowy figures resolved themselves into heavily armed and armored men moving through the dark miasma toward her.
“Yesss” she whispered as they surrounded her, “we’ve waited so long. Come my pets, come to me! Come to your sweet, sweet madness!”
One by one, the men kneeled around her slender figure, each one stretching his arms upward toward her. From one she took a pair of black gloves laced with blood-red circuitry patterns and pulled them on. From another, a tactical belt complete with spare clips of ammunition and festooned with buttoned containers that he belted about her slim waist. A long scarf with alternating black and red bands went about her neck from the hands of a third and trailed down her back almost to the ground.
“Oooo, did you bring those just for me?” she cooed as she saw the black leather, thigh-high boots draped across the arms of one of the men. She grabbed the boots up, the circuitry embedded in them leaping to gleaming red life as she touched them. “Down!” she commanded imperiously and the soldier dropped to all fours. She sat down heavily on his spine and stretched out her long legs, lasciviously drawing the boots on. Jumping up she grabbed an assault rifle from another man; absent-absentmindedly wiping off the blood caked on the foregrip.
“Well, I think we’re done here” she said. “You!” she said, kicking over one of the kneeling men. “Make sure you and the others get my equipment loaded. And be careful!” She grabbed his flak jacket and with surprising strength jerked him to his feet. “You I can replace” she hissed mere inches from his face “but that equipment is priceless.” Throwing him aside contemptuously, she turned and cocked her head as if listening. “Yes, yes, I know, I know! But we have to get to a safe place where I can work. You aren’t cheap you know” she grinned happily. “We’re going to need money, lots of money.”
Snapping a new clip into her assault rifle, she spun and strode quickly over to a computer console. Her fingers flickered rapidly over the controls and an insistent bell began ringing. “30 minutes and this place is vaporized” she cackled.
“Get up you idiots!” she screamed at the blank-faced men still kneeling in a circle. “The things I have to do for you” she said. “You two” she said, pointing, “Go get the transport ready. The rest of you get the portal.” She watched as her minions left to carry out their tasks, then she stooped slightly and picked up a small stack of books. “Mustn’t forget these,” she cackled to herself. “After all, where would I be without them?” she said as she turned on her heel and strode toward the airlock. Her laughter trailed behind her, echoing through the halls far longer than should have been possible.
Author: D. D. Wolf | Category: D. D. Wolf, Horror, Sci-Fi | Comments(0) August 2010