Wake nodded.
“And just how do you know this?”
Wake laughed again. “Because they’re the ones funding this project.”
With that, Wake tapped a pad next to the elevator door, which immediately hissed open. “Welcome, Doctor Pakow, to the Terminus Experiment.”
The first thing Pakow noticed was the drop in temperature. The air from the room beyond was chill and damp. The next thing he noticed was the graveyard silence.
Peering around the door, he saw a cavernous room, stretching back into blackness, the ceiling shrouded in shadow.
“After you,” said Wake.
Pakow took a cautious step forward onto the bare cement flooring, and the room instantly flared into light. Brown acoustic tiling on the walls diffused the harsh light somewhat, but Pakow barely noticed.
To his left, a bank of plexiglass windows sloped upward to the ceiling, and a garish blue light filtered from somewhere below.
“This way,” said Wake, directing him to the windows. “I have plans to make this room a bit more comfortable, seeing as we’ll be spending a lot of time down here, but that will take a few weeks. Still, the facility is up and running.”
Wake stepped up to the plexiglass barrier overlooking a room roughly thirty meters in diameter. Like Wake’s lab upstairs, this one also had a pentagram carved into the flooring. Only the colors were different. Instead of black on red, this was green on white. Directly in the center, where the star formed a hexagon, rested a massive tank with plexiglass sides. The tank was filled with a glowing blue fluid, and it was from here the garish light originated. Pakow could make out the form of a naked man floating lightly in the fluid. The face was covered with a breathing mask, and wires attached at various places to his bare flesh.
“What is this place?” Pakow’s voice was a whisper, though it sounded loud in the quiet room.
“This, my good Doctor Pakow, is the culmination of all the work you have done in the last month.”
Pakow turned slowly to find Wake’s emaciated features looking at him thoughtfully. “You know,” said Wake, “its kind of ironic. When the people funding this project decided to give it the name Terminus, they were thinking of a terminus line, the line that separates day from night. Of course, terminus also means the end of something.”
Pakow looked down at the tank, at the man floating there.
“I don’t understand. What’s going on here? Who is that man, and what are you doing to him?”
Wake laughed. “What’s going on here is the biggest double-cross ever pulled off in the name of metahumanity. As far as that ‘man’ down there is concerned, his name is Marco D’imato, and he is a vampire. He was infected with the HMHVV virus about six or seven years ago, and he’s been leading a double life ever since. And with regard to what I’m doing to him, the answer is nothing. However, what we’re about to do to him is something that goes beyond anything this world has ever seen.”
Wake’s words hit Pakow like a bullet train. “You can’t be serious. You’re not going to-”
Wake smiled. “Oh, but I am. When you came on board, I promised that you would see applications of your research faster than you ever dreamed possible. Well, here it is-instant gratification.”
Pakow put up a hand. “You can’t. That virus is totally untested. It would take months of work to make sure I had all the bugs out.”
Wake shrugged. “Then think of this as the first phase of testing. The process has already begun. Look.”
Pakow turned back to the window, and looked at the man in the fluid. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he looked strong, virile, his pale skin ghosting through the fluid. As Pakow watched, a familiar trail of amber began to cloud the blue and turn it green.
Pakow couldn’t tear his eyes away from what was happening, even though Wake had started talking again. “The solution in the tank is actually a fairly simple DMSO-based liquid with a few other things thrown into the mix. Things not of a strictly scientific nature.”
What was going on before his eyes was the antithesis of everything Raul Pakow believed in. Products were to be tested first, extensively. Still, he felt a small thrill run through him. Every other product whose development he’d been part of had been beaten to death before it could ever be actually tested on people. And by the time that happened, all the thrill had gone out of it. Right here, right now, Pakow’s skill and knowledge were being put on the line, the ultimate high-wire act without a net.
Filled with apprehension and anticipation, he watched as the tank turned fully green. For the longest moment, nothing happened, then Pakow’s worst nightmares came to life.
The figure in the tank convulsed, in an undulating, rippling movement that no normal human should have been able to accomplish. Even through the green of the liquid, Pakow could tell that the man’s skin was darkening, as if he were being slowly roasted alive.
“What’s happening to him?”
Wake sounded almost disconnected as he answered. “The pigmentation of his skin is changing. That’s to be expected. After all, the virus you tailor-made for him is designed to allow a vampire to survive in the sunlight. One of the basest defenses against ultraviolet burns is darker skin.”
Suddenly, the form convulsed again, and this time it didn’t stop. The thrashing seemed to roll through the body at such a fast rate that for a moment, Pakow couldn’t believe what he was Seeing.
“Well,” said Wake lightly, “that certainly wasn’t part of the game plan.”
The form in the tank twisted, its spine shrinking and corkscrewing until the man’s right hip bone jutted forward at a ninety-degree angle.
As the shuddering stopped, Pakow finally managed to tear his eyes away from the utterly deformed thing that had been a perfectly formed man just moments before. “I told you,” he said. “I told you it needed further testing, that it wasn’t ready.”
Wake smiled, and put two skeletal hands on Pakow’s shoulders. “Relax, Doctor. Nobody is blaming you for anything.”
Pakow felt a rage building in his gut. “Blaming me? Are you out of your mind? We’ve just killed a man!”
Wake shook his head softly. “No, my friend. We haven’t killed anyone. Mr. D’imato is still very much alive. The anger you feel right now is completely misdirected.” Turning Pakow’s head back to the tank, back to the blackened, twisted form floating there, Wake said, “That thing down there is a vampire. I know that’s hard for you to understand at this moment, but you’ve got to trust me, because I can prove it to you. Even if were true that Mr. D’imato had died, we’d merely have rid the world of one more bloodsucking leech.”
Pakow turned back and looked Wake in the eye. The man was completely serious, and the tic in his cheek had become much more pronounced.
“What have I gotten myself into?” Pakow said, the words coming like a kind of moan.
Wake laughed, and drew Pakow away from the window, back toward the elevator. “What you’re involved in is a plan to save the world. Come back upstairs, Dr. Pakow, and I’ll explain everything to you.”
1
Vampires are stronger and faster than metahumans. and driven to kill by a combination of hunger and homicidal rage. Yet, most exist as solitary monsters or small bands of outcasts. Be warned, my friends. One faction of vampires, hiding behind an innocent facade, is even now working to release all vampires from their dark hiding places and let them walk free as masters of metahumanity. This group extends its web of treachery and deceit through many nations and countless organizations, but its roots lie in England’s Ordo Maximus.
–
Martin de Vries, Shadows at Noon, posted to Shadowland BBS, 24 May 2057
I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I have nowhere else to turn. Some people say you’re not even real, yet you may be the only person in the world who can help. I’ve read the Shadows at Noon posting from hack in ‘57. That’s why I’m trying to contact you. There something going on here in Seattle, something you should know about.
–
Dr. Raul Pakow, message posted to “Stalker,” Shadowland BBS, 02 May 2060
Hot July sweat, cool bay breezes, and the sounds of far-off laughter. Twilight, a dangerous time, second only to the wee hours. A time when joy girls are made to swallow industrial solvents, when gogangers beat the homeless to death for sport.
With the coming of night, the humid smell of the Seattle sprawl grew overpowering, and down by the dockside the sick essence took on a dangerous feel. In the deepening gloom, the scent of industrial garbage was like the rot of an open, malignant tumor, the sour brine odor… gangrenous.
Shadows congealed in the alleyways, feeding off, growing from the stench. It was always this way, because something gets loose in those fleeting moments between day and night. Something travels on the foul breeze. Like nerve gas on the wind.
The dim alley faded to darkness. Even the bright bulbs from the loading docks-the ones designed to burn during the long night hours-were black. Smashed into thousands of twinkling crystals that reflected the aching red skyline.