Chapter 18: Siren

 

“Jarod? Listen to me. We need to get out of here.”

Sure. That would be the right thing to do at this point. But this isn’t how this ends, not with Robbie being ripped apart, and not with leaving Hargrove to orchestrate whatever he has in store for Paragon. He places his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, squeezing reassuringly before pushing his way past.

“Where are you going?” The others echo Gabriel’s concerns. From behind him there’s a stuttered utterance of disgust, from Tyler peering into the room where Robbie’s being held, from Daniel doing the same.

“Leave if you want,” Jarod says, his hands balled into fists. “I need to talk to her. I need to sort this out.”

He’s done this before, hasn’t he? Months ago, back before everything fell apart, and at the time he did it for Robbie’s sake as well, going to confront Nessa over his death. Is it really any different this time? Robbie can’t die. Not anymore. But it still doesn’t make what she’s doing right. And what was it that Robbie said, about those plans?

Gabriel seizes at Jarod’s shirt, his teeth clenched as he speaks. “You know as well as I do that we’re in danger if we stay here. That thing – Robbie – if he breaks loose then we’re as good as dead. There aren’t enough warm bodies between him and us to stop him from eating us alive this time.”

“He won’t hurt us,” Jarod growls. “And I have to make sure no one is hurt by all this, ever again.”

He slips out of Gabriel’s grasp, his strides full and long as he stalks for Nessa’s office. He stops just briefly in front of the door, glancing at the others huddled behind him, all in various states of distress and confusion. Gabriel looks to be the angriest of all.

“You should all go,” Jarod says quietly.

“Not leaving without you,” Gabriel says. “Don’t be stupid.”

Tyler sighs. “We’re in this together, I hate to admit.” The others look on and shrug in silence. Magpie, however, stares daggers through his skull.

“Last chance,” Jarod says, with all the conviction of someone who means to do this. He realizes he’s saying it because he wants them to stay. Silence is his only response.

He reaches for the door knob, but hesitates when he detects a faint heat rising from the metal. A fire, in Nessa’s office? Can’t be. The knob isn’t hot. Just warm, buzzing at a steady, almost tolerable temperature. He takes the knob and turns it.

Hot air rushes out of the room as the door swings open, and as one they back away, holding their hands up to their faces. Jarod squints at the heat, as if that might help him resist it, and he steps into a room he can’t even recognize.

Nessa’s office has been stripped bare of any furniture, all the cubicles she once shared with her colleagues ripped out of the floor. All the desks and chairs are gone, leaving just the floor and the walls – and the dozens upon dozens of slithering tentacles that cover every surface of the room.

Jarod’s lips peel back in instinctive disgust. There’s something almost alive, almost organic about these things, how they move with the bizarre, lifelike wriggling of snakes, or the tendrils of some massive carnivorous plant. Seeing so many of them at once puts him in mind of being inside of something living. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling are covered in masses of the things, writhing, pulsating with a rhythm reminiscent of cells, organs, life.

It’s like being in something’s heart, or, more unsettlingly, its stomach. Jarod’s nails dig into the palm of his hand. Maybe the colossus wasn’t just some fancy nickname they had for the facility. This technology’s been here all along, and being here now in the center of it all is a terrible reminder of how Vertex has always operated: taking and exploiting human life for the sake of progress.

That life stands on a platform, dozens of wires, probes, and smaller tentacles branching out from the harness on her back, reaching up to the ceiling, as if physically connecting her to the facility itself. They spread out from each of her shoulder blades, giving her even more of that same angelic appearance Jarod imagined when he first saw her, this seraph made of chrome and flesh.

Some of the wires seem to protrude from the back of her head, plugged into her through some means Jarod can’t clearly discern. The silvery gleam of her shell matches the slither and shimmer of every appendage in the room. She stands in the midst of it all motionless and serene, a statue in this iron cathedral, perhaps even its patron saint.

“Nessa.”

Her eyes flicker open, immediately settling on Jarod’s face, like she somehow knew precisely where he was standing. Of course. The cameras. There should be several of them in here. And she doesn’t need screens to observe what’s happening anywhere. Those wires in her skull and her harness, they’re there for a reason.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, the evenness in her tone hardly soothing.

“What are you doing to Robbie? What are your plans for Paragon?”

“This again.” Nessa’s demeanor seems to relax, the tentacles wavering out of her back settling into a sort of calm, less frenetic in their movement than they were a moment ago.

“We should go.” Gabriel’s back is tense, his hand clasping tightly around Jarod’s wrist.

“You should listen to him, Jarod. Everything is going to be fine. Just leave it to me.”

“Bullshit,” Magpie hisses. “You’ve been playing us for idiots this whole time. You can’t pretend this has all been forward. You’re just taking advantage of Jarod, because you used to be friends.”

Something in Nessa’s face tightens. “Interruptions.” Behind them, the door splinters in half as a reinforced barrier slams into the ground.

“Fuck,” Magpie growls. She bangs her fist once on the barrier, then curses again when Gabriel pulls her away from it. They can barely hear the confused shouts of the other three outside.

“Nessa?” Jarod whirls around in a panic. Daniel, Tyler, Esther, they’re outside. “What are you doing?”

“It’s nothing. They won’t be harmed, I assure you. It’s just easier for us to talk when it’s something more private like this. Less people in the room, less interruptions.”

The coldness in her expression melts away. Some of the tentacles clink as they rush towards her legs, forming a loose platform, then something that resembles a stool underneath her. No, a throne. She relaxes, then lowers herself onto her seat. She smiles.

“So what did you want to talk about?”

This is wrong. She doesn’t need to rest, or sit, or sleep. Jarod knows that. She’s doing this to communicate on their level, to earn their trust somehow. He narrows his eyes.

“Robbie said you were planning something, with Paragon.”

She blinks. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jarod says, his ears filling with the volume of his voice, the hardness in his tone. “He says you’ve been keeping him here, torturing him to learn more about the formula. Is that true?”

The corner of Nessa’s eye twitches. “I wouldn’t call it torture, precisely. That would be an exaggeration.”

“All of this is an exaggeration,” Jarod says, slicing his hand across the room. “Why do you need all this? What have you become?”

Nessa’s mouth tightens. “I’ve become what I am because of him, Jarod. He did this to me. And you’d do well to remember that.” She runs fingers over her metal shell, grimacing. “It’s why I even have to wear this thing.”

“No. There’s a different purpose for all this. There has to be.”

“Jarod,” Gabriel whispers. “Don’t agitate her. If things get violent, we’re fucked.”

Jarod nods, imperceptibly, he thinks, except that Nessa’s gaze hardens when she notices the gesture.

“I know he’s here,” Jarod says.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Nessa’s nose raises higher, as does her chin. The smallest change in her posture makes her look more imperious. Dangerous. Her tentacles waver in arcs over her back, like so many scorpion stingers.

“Don’t lie to me,” Jarod shouts.

The impact of the words slams hard against Nessa, so much that she flinches, enough that her hands flutter over her chest. Is she acting? What’s happening? She has nothing to fear from them. A single thought and she could crush them all. That possibility certainly hasn’t escaped Jarod’s mind.

“He told me that we were helping,” Nessa says. “I’m helping. He told me so.” She sniffles. The appendages hovering above her recede, as if they’re wilting away, drooping even as her posture loosens in sadness.

If he gives in now, he’ll never have his answers. Jarod steels himself. “I know you’re in here,” he roars. “I know you had something to do with this. You started all this. Come out and end it.”

The room tints with gray, just subtly, like a cloud has drifted against the sun that can’t penetrate this room, like a shadow has been cast over everything. Only it hasn’t. The presence here isn’t new. The blackness has always been there, lingering in the corners, in the crevices between the masses of tentacles. The shadow was only waiting.

From all ends of the room wisps of black smoke swirl into a formless mass. Jarod steps away unsteadily, bumping against both Gabriel and Magpie who, understandably, have closed ranks with him, one clutching to his wrist, the other wringing defensive fingers into his shirt. The smoke, this oily cloud of particles coalesces, first into a pillar, then into the loose shape of a man.

The little specks fuse together, fading in color in certain places, remaining black in others, and turning a pale, ice blue in the holes where the man’s eyes would be. The dust settles, and in its place is the thing that calls itself Jonathan Hargrove. He smooths down the creases in his suit, this black puzzle of clothing culled from opposite corners of decades and centuries, a mishmash of styles from across history. Then Hargrove lifts his head, regards his audience, and smiles.

“Such cruelty,” he says, “for you to accuse Ms. Wong. If you want to blame anyone, it should be me.”

“Fuck,” Gabriel mutters.

Fuck indeed. The last time Jarod saw this man he orchestrated a massive attack upon the Hive. Things won’t end well this time, either. Hargrove takes a step forward, his footfall making a metallic click against the tentacles that lay themselves flat under his feet, obediently setting out a carpet, a path directly for the three of them. Jarod clenches his fists, angry that he finds himself backing away regardless.

“But blame is a terrible word,” Hargrove says. “It implies accountability for doing something horrible. Something wrong.” He grins, that smile of his that’s formed by far, far too many teeth, and he spreads his hands. “There is nothing wrong with Paragon. It has been nothing but beneficial for humanity. For the betterment of mankind.”

“That’s insane,” Jarod says.

Hargrove shrugs. “Is it? Mankind needs to be prepared for everything it has coming to it. And what better way for that to happen than by ensuring that only the strongest survive, by selecting the very best humanity has to offer?”

“I’m only helping,” Nessa says quietly. She looks at her hands, eyes questioning, confused.

“Yes, you are, Ms. Wong.”

Jarod always knew Nessa had an idolatrous admiration for Hargrove, and for him to take advantage of that – and to go as far as to put her in this shell, this iron maiden? This is all his doing.

“Helping,” she mutters.

Hargrove nods. “Begin the sequence.”

The room dims. A hideous whirring and creaking issues from the ceiling. Nessa looks about herself hurriedly, hugging her arms to herself, like this is something she didn’t expect to happen.

“Nessa,” Jarod says. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her words strained, and faint. “I can’t stop it.” When their eyes connect, that’s when Jarod knows. She’s under Hargrove’s control, or she was, until this moment. She truly has no idea what’s happening. The worst is that he doesn’t, either.

A massive screen built out of interconnected panels descends from the ceiling, rimmed by so many tentacles that it almost appears as if they’re lowering it on Hargrove’s command.

Nessa looks up at the screen, her eyes widening, her mouth falling open as understanding dawns.

“No. You can’t.”

The screen projects a map of the world, continents and nations glowing green against a dark background. Tiny red dots are sprinkled across the map, dispersed almost evenly, as if arranged to cover the maximum possible area. Each dot is rimmed in a larger, thin red circle. Some of the circles overlap. Jarod’s heart freezes in his chest.

“What are you doing?” Jarod turns to Hargrove, demanding an explanation. “What’s going on? Nessa, you have to stop this.”

“He’s going to nuke the planet,” Gabriel says, his eyes reflecting the harsh red pinpoints on the map, his voice distant, strange.

“No, he isn’t.” Magpie glances at the panel and understands in an instant. “What have you done?”

Hargrove chuckles. “Destroy the planet? How crude. How would that help anyone? Those are targets, for sure, but they won’t be destroyed. The missiles don’t carry an explosive payload. They’re simply – delivering something. A gift.” Hargrove folds his hands behind his back and smiles up at the panel. “The gift of perfection.”