We helped each other down into the steel chamber. It was big enough to hold maybe half a dozen people, if they were all on really friendly terms. It was the lack of details that made it so claustrophobic; this wasn’t a place people were supposed to be in, unless they absolutely had to. I pressed the red button firmly, and the heavy steel door lifted back up into place, revolved a few times, and was still. For a worryingly long moment nothing happened, and then the chamber descended slowly into the depths. There was no sound of any motor, no sense of speed, only the sense of falling into an unknowable pit.
The descent went on for rather longer than was comfortable, and I had to wonder just how deep they’d buried Area 52, under the concealing snow and ice of the Antarctic. Just what were they hiding here, that needed to be imprisoned so deep in the earth? Were they worried about something getting in, or something getting out?
“They built this place deep,” said Molly, echoing my thoughts.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” I said reasonably. “Given some of the truly dangerous things they’re supposed to have stored away here?”
“Like what?” Molly said immediately. “Come on; you’re the one who’s read all your family’s files on this place; what exactly are they sitting on here?”
“Ah,” I said. “Nothing too important or frightening, of course, because we always get to those first. But they are supposed to have squirreled away a fair collection of very interesting pieces . . .”
“You don’t know!” said Molly. “You haven’t got a clue what’s down here, have you?”
“Be fair,” I said. “No one in my family has even been to Area 52 before. Never felt the need, until now. We’ve always relied on reports from people on the inside. But don’t worry, sweetie, I’m sure we’ll find something nice you can take home as a souvenir.”
The steel chamber finally came to a halt deep underground, and a door opened that I would have sworn wasn’t there a moment before. I stepped quickly out and looked around, ready for any response. Molly was right there with me; but the shining steel corridor was completely empty. The door slid shut behind us, and then the corridor was utterly still and silent. Fierce electric light meant there were no shadows, and there wasn’t even a whisper of air-conditioning. Nothing moved. The steel corridor stretched away in both directions, empty and deserted.
“You know, I thought for sure someone would be expecting us,” said Molly. “I had some really unpleasant transformation spells lined up, just waiting to be unleashed on the wicked and deserving.”
“I thought those took a lot out of you,” I said.
Molly smiled. “The look on people’s faces makes it all worthwhile. Your trouble is, you just don’t know how to have fun.”
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” I said.
“You always have a really bad feeling,” said Molly.
“And I’m usually right.”
Molly looked up and down the long steel corridor. “So, which way do we go?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Your guess is as good as mine. I told you—no one in my family has ever seen the inside of this place. Even the floor plans in our files are years out of date. And the regular reports we get usually just consist of Everything’s fine, nobody panic. I have to say, I’m not entirely sure we’re getting value for money there.”
“And there’s no one here to ask,” said Molly. “Funny, that. There ought to be somebody around. Especially as we’ve just arrived out of nowhere, riding an emergency exit in reverse. You’d have thought someone would have noticed that.”
“Yes,” I said. “Spooky, isn’t it?”
I armoured down. There was always the chance Doctor Delirium, Tiger Tim, Methuselah, or any of the base’s security people might be able to detect the presence of strange matter. I turned to look at Molly, and she actually gasped, her hands rising to her mouth.
“Oh Eddie, what have they done to you?”
I looked at my blurred reflection in the steel wall. Even in that distorting surface, I looked pretty bad. I raised a hand to my face, and winced as I touched swollen eyes and nose, and a pulped mouth. When I took my hand away, there was blood on my fingers. As though seeing made it suddenly real, my whole face pulsed with pain. Those dark shapes really had done a number on me, even inside my armour. Suddenly it was all I could do to stand up straight, as the pain kicked in; all the damage, from torn muscles to cracked ribs, the sharp aches flaring up from a hundred injuries, inside and out. Molly must have seen something of it in my bloodied face, because she stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on my chest.
“My hero,” she said. “My knight in shining armour. Sometimes I forget how brave you are, Eddie. Because you try so hard to seem as strong and invulnerable as your armour. Look at what they’ve done to you . . .”
“Don’t fuss,” I said. “I’ve had worse. Comes with the job, and the territory.”
“Not while I’m around,” said Molly. “Hush. Hush, my darling.”
She pressed her hand hard against my chest, and a subtle thrilling energy ran through me. I cried out despite myself as the pain blazed up, and then was suddenly gone. I could move without wincing, breathe without hurting, and when I put my hands to my face all the damage was gone.
“There,” said Molly. “All better now.”
She produced a clean handkerchief and dabbed at the blood on my face. But her voice hadn’t been entirely steady, and neither was her hand, and there was a grey cast to her face that hadn’t been there before. The healing had taken a lot out of her.
“I know,” she said, before I could say anything. “But it’s my choice to pay the price, instead of you. If I’d told you what it would cost me, you wouldn’t have let me do it, so I didn’t ask. You can be too bloody noble for your own good, sometimes.”
I just nodded, kissed her briefly, chose a direction at random and set off down it. Molly bounced along beside me, smiling hap pily, quite ready to lash out at someone she didn’t know and do terrible things to them. After a while the corridor branched out into junctions and side turnings, and I just kept changing directions at random. But even as we penetrated deeper and deeper into Area 52, we never saw another living soul. The whole base gave every indication of being deserted, abandoned. No sign of any struggle, or violence, nothing to suggest any sudden emergency. It was as though everyone had just . . . walked out. Except there was nowhere to walk out to—just the bitter and unforgiving cold of the Antarctic above. So where had everybody gone?
I remembered Tiger Tim boasting that all the Base personnel were dead; but where were Doctor Delirium’s people?
We found a canteen. The door was wide open, and when we looked in the long tables had all been set out for a meal. Plates and cutlery, jugs and glasses of water; but no food. And no one there to eat it. We kept on walking, pushing open doors along the way that led to offices and living quarters, and there was every sign of life except people.
“This whole base has gone Marie Celeste,” said Molly. “Spooky . . .”
“Déjà vu all over again,” I said. “And not in a good way.” I filled her in quickly on what I’d found at Doctor Delirium’s Amazon base. On what Tiger Tim had done there. Molly shook her head in slow disbelief.
“What a bastard. All right, no way are we taking him in alive.”
“No,” I said immediately. “You have to leave him to me, Molly. He’s family. That makes him my responsibility.”
“Okay, I’ll take the Doctor and the Immortal.”
I had to smile. “Self-confidence has never been a problem for you, has it?”
Some time later, we came to the Area 52 Armoury. Carefully sign-marked, with a whole bunch of not at all veiled warnings and threats, about not opening the Armoury door without all the proper instructions and authorisations, and a whole army of heavily armed security to back you up. The massive door was the kind you usually only find in banks, in maximum security vaults.
“Just a quick look,” pleaded Molly. “Come on, Eddie; you
know you want to. We can get in there, no problem.”
“Yes,” I said. “We probably could. But . . . later. We’ve work to do first, and we can’t let ourselves be distracted.”
But just down from the Armoury we stopped again, at a door labelled simply RED ROOM. The signs surrounding the door were just as ominous, just as self-important; but here the heavy bank vault door was hanging half open. And since I had never even heard of a Red Room in Area 52, I thought I had a duty to at least take a quick peek inside. So Molly and I squeezed through the gap, and went in. Into the Red Room.
At first, I couldn’t figure out what the place was for. White-tiled walls, bright electric lights, clean as clean could be. And then I noticed the runnels in the floor, to carry away liquids to the drains at the side, and the sharp astringent smell of antiseptic. There were long steel tables, bolted to the floor, with trays bearing surgical instruments. Some of the tables had heavy restraining straps.
“It’s a dissecting room,” I said, and my voice came out cold and flat in the white-tiled room. “They cut things up here. And I don’t think everything that came in here was dead to begin with.”
“But . . . why, for God’s sake?” said Molly. “What did Area 52 want with a dissecting room?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can guess. Area 52 was all about getting at secrets. Whatever it took. I didn’t know about this, Molly. I swear no one in my family knew; or we would have come here in force and put a stop to it. There wasn’t supposed to be anything here like this.”
“You’re right,” said Molly. “Look . . .”
She was looking around a corner at the end of the room. I went forward to join her, so I could see what she was seeing.
The long hall stretched away before us, lined with rows and rows of tall transparent tubes, lit from within. Display cases. Inside the tubes: aliens. A hundred different species of aliens, cut open and investigated in the Red Room, and then brought here as specimens to be studied. There were other, smaller containers, holding alien organs, limbs, other items of interest. I walked slowly down the hall, between the illuminated display cases, Molly moving quietly along beside me.
“I know most of these species,” I said. “None of them are threats to the Earth! None of them were any danger! Some are our allies, with pacts and treaties going back generations. And those . . . they’re just tourists! None of them did anything to deserve being cut up like this . . . Some of them, if their worlds ever find out what happened here . . . No. That can’t be allowed to happen, for all our sakes. We’re going to have to burn this whole place out, destroy the evidence, and then bury the ashes deep. Make the whole thing never happened.”
“The people who did this must be punished,” said Molly.
“I’m pretty sure that’s already happened,” I said. “Oh no . . . Oh Molly, look at this.”
In a tall refrigerated tube, lit with a merciless light that allowed for no shadows, hung the gutted corpse of an elf.
“If the Fae Court ever hears about this,” I said.
“They’d probably find it funny,” said Molly.
“True. The Fae are seriously weird. But we don’t want to start giving them ideas.”
I made myself turn around and walk back through the rows of the dissected dead. Molly had to hurry to keep up with me.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted,” I said. “We’re here for the Door.”
I called up the Merlin Glass, and ordered it to show me where Doctor Delirium, Tiger Tim and Methuselah were, right then. An image formed immediately in the hand mirror, showing all three standing together in the same room; all of them careful to main tain a respectful distance from each other. I opened a door with the Glass, and Molly and I stepped through into the room, to face the three men we’d come so far to stop. And, if need be, kill.
They were arguing heatedly when Molly and I arrived, but they all broke off instantly to stare at us with varying degrees of surprise. Doctor Delirium was so wide-eyed and startled he actually fell back a few steps, so he could stand protectively beside the Apocalypse Door. The Door stood still and upright and absolutely unsupported in one corner of the room. Tiger Tim nodded easily to me, one professional to another, but he did a definite double take as his gaze fell on Molly Metcalf. And Methuselah, the oldest of the Immortals, just folded his arms across his chest and looked at me with typical arrogance and disdain.
I took a moment to look around. We were all standing in a comfortable lounge, with easy furniture and a deep pile carpet, potted plants and relatively tasteful prints on the walls. It could have been anywhere. The only thing out of place was the Apocalypse Door. Even on the far side of the room, tucked away in one corner, I could still feel its presence. It was as though there was another person in the room with us, watching and waiting. The carpet at the base of the Door was blackened and charred, and there was a definite smell on the air, of blood and sour milk and sulphur. The stench of Hell. An unbroken chain of gold links circled the base of the Door, augmented here and there with delicate crystal technology. A teleport ring. No wonder Doctor Delirium was able to move the Door around so easily.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded hotly. “You shouldn’t be here! You’ll spoil everything! Get out! Get out!”
“What’s up, doc?” Molly said easily. “Visiting hours over?”
“Don’t tease the good Doctor,” said Tiger Tim. “He’s just crazy. So, Eddie . . . how goes it, cousin?”
“Your father sends his regards,” I said.
Tiger Tim smiled broadly. “I very much doubt it. But then, he always was a better Armourer than a father.”
“Hold everything,” said Molly. “Your father is the Armourer? That sweet old man produced a turd like you?”
Tiger Tim looked at her coldly. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“I got over it,” said Molly.
I gave my full attention to the former Leader of the Immortals, Methuselah. He was looking far too calm and collected for my liking.
“I’m pretty sure I already know the answer,” I said, “but how did you get here ahead of us?”
“A teleport circle, back in Castle Frankenstein,” said Methuselah. “The moment I realised my home’s integrity had been compromised, I went straight to the circle and came here. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with what I have planned for the Door, and myself.”
“You ran out on your family?” said Molly.
“The strong will survive,” said Methuselah. “The rest don’t matter.”
“You came here alone?” I said. “You didn’t even wait for the rest of the Elders? The ones who believed in you?”
“They know where the teleport circle is. It’s up to them to use it.”
“So that’s what immortality does,” said Molly. “It makes you a selfish little prick.”
“Let me fill you in on what happened, after you ran away,” I said. “I brought my family into your Castle, and the Droods went head to head with the Immortals. Your family is dead and gone.”
“All of them?” said Methuselah. “Not one of them got away?”
I shrugged. “Maybe half a dozen. They ran, like you. And I’m sure there are still a few out in the world, somewhere, pretending to be other people. It doesn’t matter. We’ll hunt them down and kill them.”
“Don’t,” said Molly. “Don’t smile like that, Eddie. Don’t gloat. It doesn’t become you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Methuselah, and his voice and his face were as calm as ever. “I’m moving on. I would have left them behind anyway.”
“I gave you that teleport ring,” said Doctor Delirium. “I created it. I’ve always been a lot smarter than anyone ever gave me credit for. I put it together originally so I could get into the Magnificat. And then I gave it to Tiger Tim, so he could attack Drood Hall with his new Accelerated Men. It kept him quiet, so I could concentrate on the Door. It’s given me so many good ideas . . .”
“It had to be you,”
I said, looking at Tiger Tim. “Only you knew the secret codes and passwords that would shut down most of our defences, to make the attack possible. Have you any idea how many good men and women died in that attack, fighting your Accelerated Men?”
“Not enough, clearly,” he said. “You’re still here.”
I looked at Doctor Delirium, and he paled at what he saw in my eyes. “It serves you Droods right,” he said defiantly. “For all your interference. Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”
“There will be judgement,” I said. “There will be justice.”
“You can’t touch me!” said the Doctor. But he didn’t sound very sure about it.
“You are a lot smarter than we ever thought,” I said. “As a scientist. Otherwise, you’re really a bit dim, aren’t you? Or you’d never have put your trust in a rogue Drood and a selfish Immortal.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” said Doctor Delirium.
“What about the Apocalypse Door?” said Molly. “Do you trust the voices you hear, talking to you from beyond the Door? Do you believe the promises they make, and the lies they tell you?”
“You think I don’t know whose voice I’m listening to?” said the Doctor. “Of course I know. The voices tell me everything they think I want to hear; but in the end I’m the only one who can open the Door from this side. I’m the only one who can give them what they want, and I won’t, until I can be sure I’m going to get everything I want.” He glared at Tiger Tim. “I’m not crazy. I know what I’m doing. You’re just jealous because the voices only speak to me.”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” murmured Tiger Tim. “The defence rests. Now hush, there’s a good Doctor. The big boys are talking.” He turned his back on the Doctor, so he could smile at me. “I have to say I’m impressed, Eddie. Still here, still hot on my trail, even after all the things I’ve thrown at you to slow you down. Tell me, how many of our family died at the hands of my glorious Accelerated Men? I want numbers, I want names, I want details. Was my father among the dead, by any chance?”
“You betrayed your family,” I said. “You put at risk the one real power that stands between Humanity and the darkness!”