Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA

  In the end, the doctors just backed off and let the Armourer get on with it. Molly stayed where she was. She wouldn’t let go of my hand. The assistants took one look at her and worked around her. I leaned back on the bed, ready to object if anything looked like it was getting invasive. But they just took it in turns to point things at me and then study the results on their laptops. I watched their faces closely, and the way Maxwell and Victoria muttered together as they considered the various readings. There was a growing tension in the air, as one by one the assistants were forced to admit there was nothing their marvellous new equipment could usefully do. Maxwell and Victoria ended up standing at the foot of my bed again.

  “I’m sorry, Eddie,” said Maxwell. “I really thought we had something to bring to the table.”

  “We brought exotic tech and alien tech,” said Victoria. “And a few things various field agents picked up in their travels.”

  “And Droods have been to some pretty strange places.”

  “We even brought a few things the assistants came up with specially, just for you.”

  “Too extreme to be tried, usually,” Maxwell admitted.

  “But none of it worked!” Victoria’s voice rose sharply.

  “Hush, dear, hush,” said Maxwell. “We’ve done all we can.”

  “It’s not enough!”

  “We can see the poison, Eddie,” Maxwell said steadily. “But not identify its components. Whatever it is, it’s outside our experience.”

  “Completely unknown.”

  “Not from around here.”

  One by one the lab assistants departed, taking their equipment with them. The doctors tried hard not to look like they were thinking, We told you so. The assistants looked to me like mourners filing out of a funeral. Maxwell and Victoria stood close together, too busy comforting each other to think about comforting me. Victoria was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue.

  “If anyone should be crying here,” I said, “I think it should be me. Stop trying to upstage me.”

  “He’s being so brave!” sniffed Victoria.

  “We’re the Armourer!” said Maxwell. “We’re supposed to come up with something amazing at the last moment, and save the day. But we didn’t. I can’t help thinking your uncle Jack would have succeeded.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Scraps.2 said firmly. “Trust me. The first thing you need to learn about your job is that not every problem has a solution. Come on; I’ll take you back to the Armoury. You can think better there.” He turned his heavy steel head to look at me. “Sorry to leave you, Eddie, but I can help them. I can’t help you.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  The Armourer went off with the robot dog, leaving me with the doctors. I looked at them steadily.

  “How long have I got?”

  They muttered together for quite a while, not wanting to commit themselves, but every time they glanced at me, I was still looking at them, so they went back to debating the matter. Finally, Dr Mary faced me squarely.

  “Best estimate, three months. And the last month will be . . . pretty bad.”

  It hit me hard to hear my death sentence announced so certainly.

  “So all that’s left,” I said after a while, “is to track down my murderer. And make him pay.” I looked at Molly. She was crying quietly. I squeezed her hand. “Don’t, love. I’m dying, and I’m not crying. It’s just another deadline. We can do deadlines.”

  Molly stopped her tears through an effort of will, and nodded her head firmly. “Who could have done this?”

  “I might know,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Everyone but Eddie and Molly, leave the area. This is a security matter.”

  No one argued. No one does, when the Sarjeant says that. The family trusts him to keep us safe. The doctors filed out quickly. I got the sense they were almost relieved to be getting away from the accusing gaze of the man they couldn’t save. I knew I was being hard on them. I didn’t care. The Sarjeant waited till he was sure everyone was gone, and then leaned in close.

  “There is a man most people believe to be just an urban legend of the hidden world. Dr DOA. Blamed for every death that has no obvious cause, he is the killer that other killers fear. The assassin who strikes from the shadows, who murders his victim without even being noticed. By the time the victim finds out he’s been poisoned, if he ever finds out, it’s too late. Dr DOA’s poison is always fatal. Always.”

  “No one has ever recovered?” said Molly. “No one’s ever beaten the poison?”

  “No,” said the Sarjeant. “And he’s supposed to have killed some people I would have said were unkillable. Whatever he’s using, there’s no defence against it and no cure.”

  “What do we know about this . . . Dr DOA?” I said.

  “Not much. No one knows who he really is, where he came from, or how he does what he does. Which is why most people prefer to believe he’s just an urban legend. But this fits his usual MO, and his usual arrogance. To get inside Drood Hall, past all our security, poison one particular Drood, and then get out again without ever being noticed . . . Before today, I would have said that was impossible!”

  “Calm down, Sarjeant,” I said. “A complexion that colour can’t be good for you.”

  I was genuinely amused to see him taking all of this as a personal affront.

  He sniffed loudly. “I will find out how he did it. And if any of my people have been lax, there will be blood on the walls.”

  “Any idea as to how he might have got in?” I said.

  “I’m working on it,” he said grimly. “In the meantime, I have questions for you, Eddie. Where you’ve been, who you’ve spoken to . . .”

  “Later,” I said. The Sarjeant started to say something, saw the look on my face, nodded abruptly, and left. I turned to Molly. “He must really be concerned. He was actually being considerate.”

  The Special Isolation Area seemed very quiet, with just the two of us in it. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got carefully to my feet. Molly was quickly there at my side, ready to catch me if I fell. But my legs held steady, and my head remained clear. I felt fine. Not at all like I was dying. I smiled reassuringly at Molly, and hoped the smile looked more convincing than it felt.

  “See? Not dead yet. Tell you what; let’s go for a walk. I need to be out among living things. See the world while I still can.”

  Molly started to say something, and found she couldn’t. She grabbed hold of me and crushed me tightly to her, hanging on like a drowning woman. I could feel her heart hammering next to mine, almost as fast as mine. Like trapped birds in cages who can see the cat approaching. I murmured comforting words in her ear and made myself be calm, to calm her down. It helped me, to be able to help her. It stopped me thinking about me. I gave her one last hug and pushed her gently away from me. She let go immediately and stood back. There were still patches of raised colour on her face, but her eyes were dry and her mouth was steady.

  “We find him, and we kill him,” she said. “Nothing else matters.”

  “Right,” I said.

  We stood and looked at each other for a while. She’d never seemed lovelier, or more determined. I wanted to look at her forever.

  “All the things I meant to do, for you and for me,” I said. “Places I meant to take you, sights I meant to show you . . . Special places I always meant to share with you. When I had the time. Things I put off because I always thought there would be more time. And now, suddenly, there isn’t.”

  “You can’t die,” said Molly. “What would I do without you?”

  “Typical,” I said. “Always thinking of yourself.”

  We both managed a small smile. Trying to be supportive of each other.

  “I refuse to believe your death is inevitable,” said Molly. “I mean, the first time we got together, you were dying! Poisoned by strange matter
, from where you’d been shot with an arrow by an elf lord. Ethel pulled you back from that, at the last moment. You need to talk to her, Eddie. Even if your family isn’t talking to her. Maybe especially because it isn’t. What’s going on there, anyway?”

  “Damned if I know,” I said. “I’ll have to find out before we leave the Hall.”

  Molly leaned in close, lowering her voice. “Your family might be listening to us.”

  “You think my family would bug a hospital ward?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Given that I haven’t a clue what’s going on with the new Matriarch . . . I’m not sure about anything, right now.”

  “Could her falling-out with Ethel . . . have something to do with Dr DOA’s getting into the Hall undetected?”

  “Good point,” I said. “Something else to look into.”

  “Then there was the time that Immortal almost killed you,” said Molly, reverting to her normal tone of voice. “And I had to go haul your arse back from Limbo. You’re really very hard to kill, Eddie. So, third time lucky.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  I didn’t believe that, but I could see Molly needed to, so I went along.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  * * *

  I walked back through the Hall, striding it out because I didn’t want to have to stop and talk to anyone. Molly hurried along at my side. Everywhere we went, people fell back to watch us pass. Some fell silent; others murmured urgently together. Word had got around. I could feel the pressure of their gazes. I wanted to turn suddenly and shout, Boo! at them, just to see what would happen. I increased my pace, and Molly stuck close, glaring at anyone who looked like they might even be thinking of getting in our way, or even getting too close. We left the Hall through the front door, and I felt a very real relief at putting the huge old building behind me. I’ve always associated the Hall with bad news, and the worst parts of my life.

  “You should never have come back, Eddie,” said Molly, echoing my thoughts. “Bad things are always happening to you here. Hell, they nearly killed me once. This whole place is just one big jinx.”

  I decided to go for a walk through the grounds. Across the wide-open lawns, under the iron grey sky. I set off at a steady pace, breathing deeply, savouring the familiar rich scents and the bracingly cold air. How could I be dying, when I felt so alive? How could I be murdered, when the world was still so full of life? I looked around me, and it was like seeing it all for the first time. The lawns and the flower beds, the copses of beech and ash and oak trees, the artificial lake . . . Molly moved along beside me, saying nothing, just being there.

  The peacocks scattered as I approached them, letting out their eerie cries in protest, but the gryphons ambled happily forward to greet me. Great lumpy creatures, with scaly grey bodies and long, morose faces. Just psychic enough to see the near future, and serve as an early-warning system against intruders. They were the only part of Drood defences that actually looked forward to an invasion; because they got to eat the invaders. They smelled appalling, because they ate carrion and loved to roll in dead things. Which is why they’re never allowed inside the Hall, even when it’s raining. Especially when it’s raining. They bumped against my legs and nuzzled my hands with their soft mouths.

  “I used to sneak scraps out to them when I was a kid,” I said.

  “I doubt they remember,” said Molly. “They can’t be the same ones.”

  “Gryphons live for centuries,” I said. “Lucky bastards . . .”

  A sudden surge of anger burst through me. I pushed the gryphons aside and strode on. Molly had to hurry to catch up. We passed a huge display of weird and unnatural flowers, with great heads bobbing at the top of long stalks. The heads blossomed, and turned to watch me as I passed.

  “Bad news really does travel fast,” I said.

  I circled round the ancient hedge maze, with its tall green walls. There was a time when the maze served as a prison for the living rogue armour, Moxton’s Mistake. I had to wear it once, to survive. My skin still crawled at the thought of its embrace. Everywhere I looked reminded me of some past adventure, some vital part of what was once my life, and now was history.

  I took Molly down to the artificial lake, to watch the swans sail elegantly by. They saw us and held well back. They’d learned to be wary of Molly, because she had a tendency to throw things at them. Hard, heavy things, not at all bready. The surface of the lake was still, the swans hardly moving. It all seemed so peaceful. Like nothing bad could be happening on such an ordinary day.

  “I did wonder if the undine might manifest for me,” I said. “But apparently not.”

  I felt obscurely upset about that. She’d made an appearance for Jack’s funeral.

  “She knew Jack,” said Molly, following my thoughts with the ease of long acquaintance. “I never did get to the bottom of that. You didn’t know her, did you?”

  “No,” I said. “I just thought she might . . . She’s another of the mysteries of this place I always took for granted. I knew there was a story, but I never pressed anyone . . . Don’t suppose I ever will now.”

  I moved on, and Molly came with me. It didn’t seem fair to me that the world should just keep on going when I wouldn’t.

  “You could always come back as a ghost!” Molly said brightly. “Like Jacob, in the old Chapel.”

  “The family doesn’t allow ghosts to hang around,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t be able to move in the corridors for ectoplasm and poltergeist phenomena. The family gets through a lot of soldiers in its never-ending war.”

  “Didn’t stop Jacob from occupying the Chapel,” said Molly.

  “He had a special dispensation,” I said. “And what would I do, anyway, as a ghost? Stick around to watch you grow old? Watch you start a new life with someone else? Move on, and forget me?”

  “I would never do that!” said Molly.

  “Of course you would. That’s what the living do. You had a life before me, and you’ll have a life after I’m gone.” I stopped and looked at her. “Molly, that’s what I want.”

  She looked into my face, searchingly. “Really?”

  “Well,” I said. “If truth be told, what I really want is for my passing to break hearts and ruin lives. I want mass weeping and a month of national mourning. But then, after that, everyone should just get on with their lives.” I looked around. “It wasn’t that long ago I was here for Jack’s funeral. And soon they’ll be holding mine. I hope the weather’s nice.”

  I looked back at the Hall, far behind me now. Just a great brooding presence on the horizon. Weighed down by history, and all the generations of Droods who’d lived and served in that hulking edifice to duty and responsibilities. So many stories, come and gone. And that’s all I would be now. Just another story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

  Which made me think of the Winter Hall, that cold empty place where I passed the time in Limbo, caught between Life and Death. A frost-covered shadow of my home, where I walked through empty corridors haunted by memories. Until Molly came and got me and brought me home. She wouldn’t be able to do that this time. She liked to boast she’d been to Heaven and Hell and everywhere in between, but she’d never brought anyone back from the dead. There are some limits even the wild witch of the woods has to respect.

  The Winter Hall reminded me of the Other Hall, which briefly took the place of my Hall, thanks to the dimensional engine Alpha Red Alpha. The Other Hall had been home to a whole different family of Droods, on a different earth. Someone killed them all and blew up their home, leaving only burned-out ruins and dead bodies. Some still wrapped in half-melted golden armour. I never did find out who was responsible for that. Another thing I’d always meant to get around to, but life kept getting in the way.

  For a while there, I thought I was the last Drood. So many people have died on my watch. Frie
nds and family, allies and enemies. Some I’d seen die; some I killed myself. For what seemed like good reasons at the time. More faces, more stories. So much death in my life.

  I wandered on through the grounds, just going where my feet led me. Visiting various places Molly and I had been before. On the edge of the grounds, I found a place of dead earth and dark trees. I stopped.

  “This was where we broke into the grounds, the first time I came here with you,” I said. “After my family had declared me rogue and wanted me dead.”

  “Yes,” said Molly. “I remember.”

  “This is where we met the scarecrows . . .”

  “I know. I still have nightmares about them sometimes.”

  “That’s my family for you.”

  The scarecrows are part of my family’s outer defences. Stuffed and preserved human figures that look like they’ve just come down off their crosses with bad intentions on their minds. Unstoppable, unfeeling things driven to fight all intruders. My family makes them out of the bodies of our most hated enemies, to guard the family they tried to harm. Eternal punishment, or for as long as they last. I remembered how they looked, lurching out of the shadows to face us. Their clothes rotting and falling apart, their faces stretched taut, brown as parchment and as brittle. Tufts of straw protruded from their ears and mouths. Their eyes were still alive, still suffering. I remembered names . . . Laura Lye, the water elemental assassin known as the Liquidator. Mad Frankie Phantasm. And the Blue Fairy, who had been my friend, my ally, and my enemy. Half Drood and half elf, and never sure which was his true nature. In the end, he guessed wrong. My relatives have always found it hard to forgive those who betray them.

  I led the way back across one of the biggest lawns, where once an army of Accelerated Men had come spilling onto the grounds to attack us, through a dimensional Gate opened by our worst enemies, the Immortals. It seemed to me I could still see the ghosts of dark figures, running straight at the Drood defenders, superhumanly fast and strong, burning themselves out just to get at us. Used by the Immortals as supercharged attack dogs. Hundreds of Accelerated Men died on this open ground, lied to and betrayed, sacrificed on the altar of our enemies’ hatred. We killed them all. We had to.