Monster Hunter Nemesis - eARC

  “So you prefer facilitator to overseer then?”

  “I’ve read your file and your psych evaluations, and those have made me predisposed to like you. Don’t screw that up already. You can look at it however you want. You were a police officer, dear. Think of this as mandatory community service and I’m your parole officer. I’ll be happy as can be when your sentence is served and you can go home. Believe it or not, I like seeing our special people brought through the system, and then go on to live productive, happy lives with their exemptions. I can believe in the mission, and not like the people currently running it. So any personal problems you have with our employer, I don’t want that baggage on my team. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”

  “Wow… Okay.” Heather really didn’t know what to think. It would be really nice to not be lied to for a little bit. “That’s refreshing.”

  “Come on. My husband’s parked out front with the rest of the team.”

  Heather followed her. “What’s the job?”

  “Let’s not talk about that here.” They went through the spinning doors of the front entrance. Beth shivered inside her sweater. The locals thought it was cold. Heather was from northern Michigan. This was t-shirt weather. And now that she was a werewolf with a hyperactive metabolism the cold mattered even less. Beth seemed satisfied with the amount of ambient noise from traffic to brief her. “Have you heard of Agent Franks?”

  “Mr. tall, dark, and terrifying. My boyfriend told me a few stories about that freak of nature.” While he had hated what Franks stood for, Earl had admitted a grudging respect for him because he was just that much of a badass. For Earl, that was saying something. “Everybody has heard of him.”

  “Good. Then I can skip the part of the briefing about how scary he is. A few hours ago Franks murdered a bunch of innocent people.”

  “Isn’t that like his job?”

  “Not like this. These were MCB employees. The numbers are still coming in, but there’s at least forty dead. He tried to assassinate the MCB Director, shot the place up, and then left a bomb for the responders. I’m afraid Franks has finally snapped. Our job is to catch him.”

  I never should have answered the phone…

  A black Suburban with tinted windows and government plates pulled up. The way it sat heavy made her guess it was armored. It was obvious from the powerful engine noise that this was not a stock vehicle. “Well, that’s low key.”

  “Actually, in this town it is. We borrowed it specifically for this assignment.” Beth opened the back door for her to get in. “It belonged to Franks. You’re going to use it to pick up his scent for us. Hop in.”

  * * *

  Archer’s cubicle was a mess. The other agents enjoyed teasing him about being borderline OCD, but Archer really did appreciate a tidy, organized life. Now his office was a crime scene and a bomb had gone off down hall. It was the opposite of tidy. The crime scene unit was examining everything, searching for evidence, taking pictures, and bagging anything that looked suspicious. Then there were agents tasked with the manhunt trying to do their jobs, and the inevitable clashes between the two groups. It was really loud, and there were bullet holes in his workstation and a blood stain on the carpet. Taken all together it was making it really hard to concentrate, especially since they weren’t supposed to be here.

  “Come on, man. What’ve you got?” Grant whispered as he snuck into the cubicle.

  His partner wasn’t making it any easier either. “Quit bugging me for a minute and I might be able to answer that.”

  “Hurry up. We’re not supposed to be here.” Since their official assignment had been Franks Sitting, they’d had been pulled from the investigation for being too close. Of the agents that Myers had put on the detail, Radabaugh was dead, and Strayhorn was in critical condition. The two of them were supposed to be on the Potomac checkpoint with the local cops, pulling over boats and coming up with reasons to search them, like Franks would be dumb enough to get caught like that. “The SAC catches us here, we’re screwed.”

  The Special Agent in Charge who was leading the manhunt for Franks was Leigh “the Butcher” Fargo. There were several different rumors about how she’d earned that nickname, but none of them hinted at anything pleasant happening if it was found out some of her subordinates were disobeying orders.

  “You hear anything out there?” Archer asked absently as he navigated through the folders. They’d not cut his access yet, so he had do move quickly.

  “They found some green slime in the elevator. They’ve taken it to the lab for analysis. Someone was saying that maybe Franks had help.”

  “Or maybe the slime is from our real perp.” Archer scrolled through the menu of security camera logs. They’d been turned over to the manhunt in the hope that they’d somehow help. At minimum, they would be a great motivator to catch Franks, because there was nothing like watching your friends and coworkers get executed in cold blood. Archer had already watched several portions of the video and they seemed pretty conclusive. “Something’s not right here.”

  “Like Franks suddenly shooting a bunch of people?” Grant muttered. “Tell me about it.”

  Franks shooting a bunch of people wasn’t really farfetched, but that wasn’t his problem. “The SAC thinks Franks’ motive was to kill Director Stark, only Stark’s in the hospital, injured, but he’ll probably live, and then Franks went and shot everybody else because what? He was upset? He was having a bad day? Does that sound like the Franks we know?”

  “Like anybody really knows Franks,” Grant said. He poked his head over the top of the cube and looked around for anyone who might know they weren’t supposed to be there.

  “Bullshit. We might not know what he does for fun, but we know how he takes care of business. We know how he conducts violence. This is too unfocused. If Franks wanted to kill the director for personal reasons and then mess up headquarters, he would’ve found a way to blow the whole place to kingdom come.”

  “Maybe Franks wanted to minimize casualties?” Grant thought about that for a second. “Okay never mind. Minimize and Franks don’t go together. What’re you looking at?”

  “Something weird is going on. I feel like there are gaps in the security camera footage but there’s not.” Archer had already pulled every file showing Franks, and there was video of him for nearly the whole event. “This is too clean.”

  Grant looked down at the blood on the carpet. “I don’t—”

  “All the visual evidence fits too well. This is what I do. My background was communications. My first job at MCB was dicking around with records, doctoring videos, altering logs, all to hide monster events. I know what the video from chaotic events looks likes. This is too smooth. This is like a movie about crazy shit, not how crazy shit really looks.”

  “It fits the forensics and eye witness reports we’ve got so far. Doctoring this much evidence takes way too much time. It would take all of Media Control days to make something like this.”

  “I don’t know how, but my gut tells me this has been screwed with. It’s too much. If this was tweaked, it was by somebody who had full access to our system and who could change the time stamps on the fly.” That was an ominous thought. The MCB’s system was supposedly as secure as anything out there. “Video shows Franks leaves here, goes down, kills the guys at the entrance, grabs his guns from the locker, then kills his way back up to get Stark, then comes back here to where he’s got a perfectly good machinegun hidden?”

  Grant was chewing on his lip. “They ran the serial numbers on those guns. Those were MCB property, but one was listed as lost in 1969 and the other one in 1980.” Other agents were running a metal detector down the wall looking to see what else Franks had stashed. They’d not seen what had been found, but there had been a few excited shouts of eureka and loaded evidence bags going out.

  “Why risk tipping off his target by killing the guys downstairs? If I was Franks—”

  “You’re going to need a lot of protein
powder and steroids.”

  “If I was Franks, I would have taken that old Commando out of the wall, walked right up to Stark and put a few in his head. Hell, this is Franks we’re talking about. He could have killed Stark with an unsharpened pencil first, and then gone after everyone else. All this other stuff is too weird, Grant.”

  “In addition to the video, which you’ve got to admit there’s no way even our best guys could doctor it that quick, we’ve got a bunch of people who saw Franks in action.” The way Grant was speaking, Archer wasn’t sure if he was actually that stupid or if it was some devil’s advocate lawyer trick to help him think it through. “What about that?”

  “Doppelgangers, magic cultists, Fey, hell if I know, but I make my living hiding the truth, Grant, and I’m really good at it. This feels too much like something I would do if I had to make a bunch of evidence fit a narrative. This is good, really good, and it’s only working because we’re not used to being the ones getting lied to, but it isn’t good enough.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed. “Just say it.”

  “I think Franks has been set up.”

  “Hell…” Grant sighed. “Yeah, I’ve got to admit I do too… This doesn’t feel like Franks. There are too many survivors. Look at this place. There was too much effort. You know what this means?”

  Archer nodded slowly. “It means we need to prove Franks is innocent.”

  “No. It means we’re royally fucked. It means all of Myers’ worst case scenario conspiracy theory stuff is happening now.” He leaned in close and whispered. “It means unicorn!”

  “Well, yeah, that too… I wish Myers was here. Should we tell the SAC?”

  “Bring in the Butcher? For all we know she’s in league with Stricken… Crap. I just thought of something.” Grant stood up. “Strayhorn’s in surgery. He saw whatever happened. His prints were all over that Colt. There’s no way he took it from Franks, so Franks must have gave it to him. If they think he’s going to say something that goes against the official story when he wakes up…”

  When the MCB needed to stop a witness from talking, first they would try intimidation, which usually did the trick. When it did not then they would try ruining or discrediting them. In extremely rare circumstances other measures had to be taken, drugs, blackmail, up to and including permanently silencing them. But if this was STFU, they would go ugly, early. “We go to the hospital, we’re going to get busted.”

  Grant was thinking about it. “I was ready to throw my career away to do the right thing yesterday. Might as well throw my life on the pile too.”

  “You know what? Screw those black ops assholes.” Archer stood up, and patted his side to make sure his Sig was in place. “No more badges in the fountain.”

  Grant gave him a look of grim determination. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 7

  When this body was complete, I struck.

  It had been placed on a slab, wired into several arcane machines. The awakening took a terrible amount of energy, both natural and paranormal. The later fictions based upon my creation are more accurate than the first in that respect.

  Yes. There was lightning.

  …

  That’s a stupid question…No. The book is not very accurate. She wasn’t there. She hadn’t even been born yet. I met her while I was on a mission in London once. I think she had a thing for me…Yes… I have at times had groupies. Sensitive? Shelley’s romanticized account has been a pain in my ass ever since. Bring it up again and you’ll be digesting teeth.

  With the Elixir of Life being pumped through the veins and the arcane animation of the tissues, the body returned to life. This would have only been a temporary victory—the creation of an empty shell—if I hadn’t been there to take advantage of it.

  I do not like to admit it, but Cursed was stronger than I was. But like most demons, he was proud, and his pride made him stupid. I rushed in and cut him off. I possessed Dippel’s new body before he could. He was furious. He tried to follow me in. But I was there first, and I’d observed how humans withstood possession, so I pushed him out.

  It turns out he has held a grudge ever since.

  What was getting a body like? Hmmm…

  Like putting on a glove made of fire.

  8 Days Ago

  Franks had been spending time in Washington DC since they’d drained the marsh to build the place. He would have preferred the swamp. However, because of his history with the city Franks knew the well and he especially knew its secrets. For two days after the attack, he had hid in a chamber beneath the Rammage building. It was a historical landmark now, but Franks had been there when engineers had dug the secret bunker beneath it to stockpile gunpowder in case the Confederates had laid siege to the city. It had been forgotten after that war. Now it was a moist hole in the earth and his only company was the rats and spiders.

  That suited him just fine.

  Franks spent the time plotting and digging bullet fragments out of his body. There had been a field surgery kit inside the cache he’d left with the gnomes, so he had forceps and scalpels, but the angle made it extremely awkward to get everything out. Once the wound was clean, he had taken another hit of the Elixir of Life and it had burned his flesh pure. In the privacy of the hidden passage, Franks was free to scream as it ate through him, but he still didn’t, just on principle.

  The Elixir was really Dippel’s greatest work. Franks’ existence was at best second place. The Elixir could heal any wound. It could seamlessly meld transplanted organs, even limbs, to a new host. It was really too bad that the mixture instantly killed most mortals who tried to use it. Even if they were anesthetized or in a coma, it still caused an agony so excruciating that it would snuff their lives out. The spirit’s hold on the flesh was tenuous at best. Something about Franks’ physical makeup enabled him to use the Elixir and live. Government scientists had never been able to figure it out. Perhaps he was too stubborn to let go, because he really knew what it was like to not have a body, and he would not go back to Hell willingly.

  MCB R&D had recreated Dippel’s Elixir of Life in order to keep Franks supplied and combat effective. He’d given the recipe to them but only after warning them of its effects, but of course they hadn’t listened. Many test subjects had died before they’d finally given up. To them, it was a chemical curiosity, a mystery. To Franks, it was the key to his continued existence. The best chemists in the world could not figure out why it worked the way it did, as its odd ingredients should not have such a miraculous effect, but none of them were as brilliant as Father had been.

  The Elixir didn’t just heal the flesh and bone. When a welder put two pieces of metal together, they weren’t just stuck or glued, they were melted through extreme heat with a third molten binding metal introduced between them, and when that heat was gone, the three pieces had become one. That’s what the Elixir did to his body. Some thought of Franks’ physical form as a collection of parts, but thanks to the Elixir, he was an aggregate whole. He features and his genetic makeup changed over time based upon an ever adjusting rolling average as new parts were introduced and assimilated. The Elixir was an alchemical miracle. It made him stronger, faster, and better than any mortal man. The more he took, the more physically powerful he became, but as the fire intensified, so did the pain, and Franks was not sure exactly how far he could push before it finally consumed him.

  So he’d continue using it as he always had, small amounts to repair his body, and a bit more for when he needed to do something particularly difficult.

  But he was running low, so he’d better not do anything stupid.

  After the physical repairs were done, Franks concentrated on plotting his dispassionate revenge. His stash had a radio. Of course the MCB had already flipped all their encrypted channels, but coasting through the local police bands and the unencrypted Fed channels gave him some clues as to the current situation. He also had tablet that let him access the internet, though he’d had to steal an extension cord from the historica
l society and run it down into his secret chamber so he could charge it. He was all over the news. Franks was a suspect in multiple homicides—they had no idea—was armed and extremely dangerous—yes—and should not be approached… That last bit was actually very good advice.

  It was remarkable what could be learned from the internet. The Founders would have killed to have such knowledge at their fingertips, but most humans used it to watch videos of kittens or to launch birds at pigs, or other strange things. Franks really didn’t get it. The coverage of the attack helped him decide his next move.

  First and foremost, Kurst had to be dispatched back to hell where he belonged. Stricken might be a ruthless manipulative bastard, but there was no way he’d knowingly let something like Kurst into the mortal world. Project Nemesis had to be stopped.

  They had underestimated Stricken. Over the centuries Franks had seen men like him come and go. They were always looking to control the uncontrollable, and they were always too clever for their own good. Such men inevitably ended up in positions of authority and their only goal in life was always to amass more. Franks had seen it happen in a dozen countries and he’d even seen glimmers of it here.

  Myers had seen it too. He’d thought of Stricken as a threat, but a political one, rather than a physical one. Stricken’s power grabbing tactics in Las Vegas had put civilians and MCB personnel in needless danger, and Myers, despite being cold and calculating was still a moral man, who would not tolerate such behavior. Myers had set out to prove Stricken was breaking the law, all the time unaware of how far Stricken had already gone. Myers had not seen this coming, but Franks should have.

  With no one to assign him mission parameters, Franks set his own. His primary target was Kurst and any others like him. If they were allowed to establish themselves here, he knew they would find a way for demons to descend on the world like a plague of locusts. Franks had entered a solemn pact to protect the mortal world from things like Kurst. Franks had broken one oath in his entire existence. He would never break another.