Intercepts: a horror novel Page 18

  As he finished cinching the mask around his face — making sure it was tight after what had happened with his orderly only two days ago — he stopped to peer through the window at Bishop.

  She lay on the floor, swaying and kicking in sudden furious bursts. Her eyes had been wrapped with gauze and bandages. Every now and then, her hand — covered in its protective mitt — swatted at her eyes, seemingly in an attempt to remove the bandages. Her mouth moved, and she mumbled some indiscernible words out loud.

  Joe watched her for only a moment.

  He swiped his keycard at the console. The door clicked open. He stepped into the airlock chamber. He closed the outer door and stepped to the inner door.

  The room air equalized.

  The red lights turned green.

  Joe twisted the latch, yanked open the stainless-steel door, and stepped into Bishop’s chamber.

  He stayed by the door, keeping his distance from the lolling, swatting creature in front of him. For a moment, he silently watched her. Could this wretched, frail thing really cause so much pain?

  His mouth suddenly felt dry. He gulped and licked his lips.

  “Do you know I’m here?” he called out.

  She made no motion that she was aware of anything. Her head lolled to the side and some words burbled out of her mouth in an incoherent stream.

  “I imagine you’re watching this all through my eyes,” he said out loud. “I’m sorry for your pain. But I was just doing a job. If you had come to me, if you had communicated with me, I coulda helped. You didn’t have to do what you did to Riley. Or Kate.”

  He waited for a response from her, an acknowledgement, a signal, a wave of her hand or a smile on her face. Anything. But she babbled on and kicked her legs and swatted at the air. Her head rolled around to the other direction and she burped out some spit toward the wall, like a baby.

  “I get it,” Joe said, resigned to holding this conversation with himself. “You used Kate as a test, and then you used Riley as a threat. I suppose if you had fucked with my head, I might’ve figured it out. I might’ve told someone or locked myself out of the loop. You just… ya just didn’t have to do all that to Riley. She’s innocent. She didn’t deserve that.”

  Again, Bishop betrayed no semblance of a reaction.

  Joe paused for a moment. Then he took a step toward her. He held his hands up, approaching cautiously as if he were sneaking up on a sleeping bear.

  “I’m gonna set you free now,” he said. “We’re gonna get outta here. Together. We’ll get you back up above. We’ll figure out who you really are. We’ll get you home. You just gotta trust me.”

  He crept forward, one cautious step at a time.

  Then he knelt at her side. Her arm suddenly swung out, seemingly aiming for his oxygen mask. It was the exact same motion that Joe had watched a hundred times on the video of the day she killed Carson.

  But he was ready.

  He caught her arm by her mitt and held it in his firm grip.

  And then, he undid the strap on her mitt.

  “See? Just lettin’ you free. You can trust me.”

  He pulled the mitt off her hand, exposing her outstretched fingers. They grasped and flexed in random jerky motions.

  Then, he unclasped the strap on her other mitt.

  She waved her arm and that mitt fell off too.

  “I need to get something real quick,” Joe said as he cautiously stood. “You’re getting out of here. I swear it.”

  Keeping his eyes on Bishop, he stepped away from her and toward the door.

  “I’ll be back in a moment. It’s okay. Don’t worry.”

  When he reached the door, he swiped his ID and stepped out of the room.

  Joe quickly passed through the airlock chamber and into the main hallway. It took a conscious effort to prevent his eyes from looking at exactly where he was going and what he was doing. Bishop was probably in his eyes.

  As he walked down the hallway, he kept his gaze on the window to Bishop’s cell. Meanwhile, his hands blindly swiped his ID at the keypad for the small unmarked door beside the stairwell — a door that he had made every attempt to not look at before. She could probably feel his hands fumbling around, trying to cleanly fit his badge through the scanner.

  The door finally beeped. Joe swung it open.

  He had to move quickly. He’d need his eyes for this.

  Keeping his oxygen mask on, he took off through the door. It opened into a narrow utility hallway that curved around behind the chambers, providing a rear access to each of them. Tubing and gas tanks filled the hallway. Ducts hung from the ceilings and pipes were mounted to the walls. The gas tanks were connected to regulators — large ventilating machines that mixed and distributed the gases to the cells.

  Each regulator had a name written in marker on masking tape. Joe stepped toward the “Bishop” unit. He grabbed one of the rubber hoses. Taking his keys out of his pocket, he dug its metal point into the rubber of the hose.

  Hssssssssss

  Gas leaked from the small puncture hole. Taking the hose in his hands, he bent it, flexed it, and stretched it. Anything to tear the hole ever so slightly larger.

  The sound of leaking gas grew louder.

  HSSSSSSSS

  Satisfied, Joe turned and walked out of the utility corridor.

  He stepped back out into the main Level Two corridor, walking over and pausing to stare through the window of Bishop’s cell.

  At first, she didn’t appear to notice any change in the air and gas levels of her room. She rolled from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, swatting and kicking, as she babbled on, oblivious as ever.

  For a moment, Joe worried that he had punctured the wrong hose. But suddenly, something changed in Bishop’s movements. Her jaw hung open, but her mumbling stream of words had stopped. A low moan rolled out of her mouth. Her flailing limbs went rigid. It was as if her entire body had locked up in confusion as to what it was feeling. That confusion transformed into pain.

  Her moan became a wail, high and pulsing. She screamed in frantic bursts. Her hands shot out, gripping at her face, at her legs, at her body. They were helpless to stop the pain searing through her and, if anything, made it worse.

  She tried curling into a fetal position — hugging her legs in close with her arms — but the touch of her own hands seemed to send shocks of pain rippling up and down her nervous system. She released herself, arched her back, and unleashed a howl of a scream.

  Joe watched it all through the glass.

  Bishop’s arms and legs began to spasm in furious swimming motions, like a rat when pinned beneath the metal jaws of a spring-loaded trap. It was a pain so deep that she seemed to be trying to run away from it.

  Upon realizing that she couldn’t escape the pain, she tried to dig it out. Her fingers — for the first time unrestrained by straps or mitts — clawed at her skin. She tore the gown from her body as she attempted to get to the source of her pain. To get to the nerves. To remove them and send her body back to its peaceful oblivion.

  Perhaps through luck, she managed to twist her body into an upright kneeling position. The random flurry of her fingers scratching at her body had hooked themselves into the gauze that covered her eyes. She tore it free.

  For Joe, time seemed to stop for a moment.

  There she sat. Still and quiet, if only for a fraction of a second.

  The gown hung from her bare body in tatters. Her skin clung tightly to her bones. Joe could plainly see her ribs and her pelvis protruding from her pale flesh. Her eyes — empty cavities, filled only with the remnants of her eye tissue — seemed to look at him. Her mouth opened. It hung there, giving her a look not of pain or anger, but of shock.

  And then she screamed.

  Things sped up quickly.

  She leaned back and bashed her head into the glass window. Completely unrestrained, her fingers clawed at her bare breasts, scraping out large chunks of flesh. She seemed to be trying to dig deep. Trying to get to the s
ource of her pain.

  Below the flesh.

  Below the muscle.

  Below the ribs.

  It were as if she wanted to scrape out her own heart because she somehow blamed it pumping the pain throughout her body. As she clawed and screamed, she leaned back and again slammed her face into the glass. Her nose exploded in a wave a blood.

  The entire time, Joe watched her.

  He watched her scrape.

  He watched her claw.

  He watched her howl.

  He watched that frantic, spasming creature.

  “Goodbye, Bishop,” he said.

  Then he turned and hurried toward the stairs.

  The hallway had seemingly gone silent except for the painful shrieks of Bishop accented by the pounding sound of her face striking the glass.

  ***

  A long table stood along the back wall of the Control Room. When special guests or V.I.P.s would stop in to observe the tuning sessions, the most junior member of the operations staff had the unenviable task of filling that table with snacks and beverages. Never knowing what some high-ranking general might want to snack on at any given time, the table was big and sturdy enough to hold a little bit of everything.

  Today, though, that table stood completely cleared.

  Except for a sheet of paper, folded into a triangle, that Chuck and Tariq used for a game of table-top football.

  Tariq flicked at the paper triangle. It scooted along the table toward Chuck’s end but didn’t travel far enough. Chuck clapped his hands, “Woo! Fourth down! Let’s make some noise!”

  He cupped his hands to his mouth and made a loud booing sound toward Tariq who did his best to block out the distraction.

  On the big black screen behind them, a status-bar flashed with the reboot progress. 97 percent... 98 percent... 99 percent...

  It hung on 99 percent. A little pinwheel on the screen kept spinning, trying to power through that final percent to completion.

  The boys didn’t mind though.

  Tariq crouched over his little paper triangle. He flexed his fingers as he tried to gauge what it would take to flick it those extra few inches into the table’s end-zone.

  Chuck began chanting and stomping his feet, “De-fense!” Stomp, stomp. “De-fense!” Stomp-stomp.

  At this point, Tariq stroked his chin and continued to examine the situation, looking like a professional pool player trying to work out all the angles before taking his shot. It was an obvious attempt to take as much time as possible for the sole purpose of annoying Chuck.

  “The play clock’s running, junior,” Chuck said.

  Tariq grinned. He crouched down, steadying his hand to flick at the little paper triangle.

  99 percent... 99 percent... 99 percent... 100 percent.

  The system reset was complete.

  The screen turned on.

  An alarm blared out in the room. ERRR! ERRR! ERRR!

  Startled, Tariq’s fingers slipped, completely whiffing at the little paper football.

  “That counts as a down. My ball,” Chuck said as he raced across the room to his station. Without even sitting at his desk, he hunched over and typed in a few commands. “It’s a gas leak,” he announced.

  Tariq wasn’t far behind. He jumped into his seat and logged into his system. “It’s Bishop’s chamber,” he said. “You got eyes and ears?”

  “Cameras coming online in three… two...”

  A horrendous scream cut through the speakers.

  Both men froze. Their eyes darted up to the screen as the camera feeds from all over the Facility created a collage. But one feed in particular stood out from the other images of pristine, white cells.

  Chuck clicked a button. That one camera feed from the one vivid crimson room enlarged and filled the screen. It was so intense that its red glow cast a darkened tint over the entire Control Room.

  Their mouths hung open at the sight.

  “Oh god,” Chuck said.

  On the screen, a howling Bishop flopped around the room, like a freshly-caught fish on the bottom of a row boat. She was naked, but there wasn’t an inch of flesh coloring on her. She had peeled off most of her skin, which hung from her flailing body in large shredded chunks. And she wasn’t done. Her hands continued digging deeper and deeper into her flesh, searching for that source of her pain, and pulling out anything that got in her way.

  ***

  Joe set his oxygen mask and tank back in the file cabinet and slid the drawer closed.

  Beep! His walkie-talkie, propped in its charging cradle on his desk, sounded. He looked at it but didn’t make a move to pick it up. Beep! It sounded again.

  Finally, he took a few slow steps to his desk and — Beep! — answered.

  “Go for Gerhard,” he said, keeping his voice slow and calm.

  The voice on the other end sounded frantic. “Joe, it’s Chuck! Bishop’s tearing herself apart!”

  “When did we come back online?”

  “Just a few seconds ago!”

  “Hold on. Let me turn on my computer,” Joe said. But he made no movement toward his computer. He stood by his desk, counting out a few seconds to himself, killing as much time as possible.

  One-Mississippi…

  Two-Mississippi…

  Three-Mississippi…

  Four-Mississippi…

  “Jesus Christ,” he finally said. “I’m sending in a security team immediately. Gerhard out.”

  He switched channels, cutting off Chuck.

  Again, he waited.

  After a few more “Mississippis” had passed, he held the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Tyler, this is Gerhard. Send a team to Bishop’s cell immediately. Something’s wrong. And there may be a gas leak. Make sure your men suit up first.”

  Joe sat on his desk and waited.

  ***

  Ding! — The elevator doors opened on Level Two.

  Tyler and six other guards — all wearing oxygen masks — hurried out. They sprinted down the hall, passing window after window of docile Antennas. Tyler glanced in on them all as he jogged. Everything seemed fine.

  But even by the time he was less than halfway down the hall, he could see the red smears on the window at the end.

  When he got there and was able to look inside, he stopped.

  So did his men.

  Everything that had happened on the other side of that wall of glass Bishop had done to herself.

  “Fuck,” one of his men simply said.

  CHAPTER 25

  Mr. Aguirre sat perched in the guest chair across from Joe’s desk. His glasses hung low on his long, buzzard-like nose as he watched the security footage on his tablet.

  Joe tried not to stare intently, but he kept his gaze focused on Mr. Aguirre’s face, trying to glimpse through the reflection on the man’s glasses what he was seeing. Even in the dim lighting of the office, and the relative distance between the two of them, Joe could see the reflected image go from pure white to pure red. There didn’t appear to be anything in between. The cameras hadn’t recorded a single frame between “normal day in Bishop’s cell” and “bloodbath.”

  Aguirre’s finger moved along the screen, scrolling the video back and letting it play. He did it again and again.

  White room.

  Red room.

  White room.

  Red room.

  He let out a sigh. Joe gauged that sigh as not one of anger or suspicion, but of annoyance that an Antenna — an expensive, highly-tuned piece of equipment — had been lost.

  Joe cleared his throat and leaned forward on his desk, folding his hands together. “I got no clue why the sensors weren’t detecting the gas leak,” he said. “But we’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ve ordered a full diagnostic. If we gotta take it apart piece-by-piece, component-by-component. We’ll find whatever faulty wire or motherboard it is and we’ll fix it. Because this is obviously unacceptable. I’m going to oversee this project personally. You have my word.”

  Having made his
little speech with as much outrage as he felt suited his personality, he watched Mr. Aguirre’s reaction. The man scrolled back the video and let it play again. A resigned frown settled onto his features.

  Joe continued, “Fortunately, the system reset seems to have remedied the problem. Sometimes computers just lock up, I guess. Gremlin in the machine, or what-not.” He stared off and shook his head, as frustrated by technology as anyone else.

  After a long pause, Mr. Aguirre took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the tip of his tie. He seemed to be taking his time, deeply contemplating the situation as he breathed onto the glasses then polished them again. He finally returned them to their perch on his nose. He looked at Joe.

  Joe tried not to give any appearance of being uncomfortable with the prolonged silence in the room. He kept his eyes focused on Mr. Aguirre, and he maintained a furrow in his brow to show his deep concern over these mishaps.

  “How long would you say it was leaking?” Mr. Aguirre asked.

  “Hard to say. Gotta look into it. And believe me, we’ll be leaving no stone unturned,” Joe said, although he knew that he and he alone could determine how deep the investigation ran. None of his underlings even had access to a chain of communication to complain about a less-than-thorough diagnostic. All reports went to HQ by passing directly through Joe.

  “And you think this gas leak is what caused these accidents?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly. No question. Antenna 201 just hasn’t been getting enough gas. She probably built up a bit of tolerance to the pain. I think it gave her just enough awareness of her surroundings to attack that orderly. And then she also had just enough awareness to pull free from her bindings and damage her eyes.”

  “So, these were conscious decisions on the Antenna’s part?”

  “However you wanna define it. But there ain’t too much to ponder here. The most logical explanation is also the simplest. Antenna 201 had a slow gas leak in her cell. It caused her chronic pain and just enough awareness to be violent. Eventually the leak got too big and the pain became unbearable. It’s too bad we caught it so late in the game.”

  Mr. Aguirre scrunched his face up, quietly considering that possibility. “Quite a coincidence that she reached her breaking point while the cameras were off.”