great waves of energy coruscating around my armoured form, while small stabbing lightnings crawled all over it, searching for a weak spot and a way in. The air shimmered like heat haze, and the dirt at my feet was scorched black by discharging energies. But powerful as the field was, it was no match for my armour. It couldn't touch me.
I flexed my golden arms slowly, testing the strength of the field holding me in place. There was a definite tension, a solid resistance, like pulling against chains, but nothing the armour couldn't handle. I leaned forward, into the field, and set my strength against it. The lightnings jumped furiously, and great sparks detonated on the air, but I moved forward, step by step, chest stuck out as though breasting a tide, and the field could not stop me. I walked right through it, and suddenly it fell away, defeated. The crawling energies were gone, the air was clear again, and there was nothing left to stop me walking into Doctor Delirium's secret base.
I looked around me, braced for an attack from any direction, ready for shouting guards with big guns, or mercenaries with super-science weapons… but there was nothing. Just the silence and the stillness and the empty dirt streets. Except, when I looked carefully, there was something. The slow buzzing of flies, not far away.
Inside the huge earth clearing, the sun shone harshly on blunt and ugly steel and glass structures, presumably the science labs, surrounded by blocks of simple wooden terraces, low-ceiling huts mostly, the size of a village. It had clearly all been built for function, not style; thrown up quickly by people who had been on the move before, and were prepared to move again at a moment's notice. Doctor Delirium's little kingdom was a shabby state of affairs. The main building dominated the centre of the village, a steel and glass monument to the Doctor's ego. His main science lab, where he let his genius run riot.
I started down the narrow street, heading for the main lab. I was still tense, my skin crawling in anticipation of the attack I'd never see coming. From some hidden gun position, or some automated defence system like the perimeter force field. The sound of my heavy feet crashing on the ground carried clearly in the hush, and my golden armour blazed brightly under the hot sun, but still nothing moved in the streets between the low buildings. Nothing but me.
The sound of buzzing flies was getting louder.
I rounded a corner, and there on the street ahead were a series of vague black shapes. I couldn't work out what they were until I got close enough to disturb the black blanket of flies, and they sprang up into the air, leaving the bodies behind. There were dozens of them, stretching the whole length of the street. I looked back and forth, checking the side streets, and the bodies were everywhere. Dark huddled shapes, buried under flies. The dead men and women lay alone, in twos and threes, and in great piled-up heaps. I made myself walk on, flies buzzing angrily all around me now, harsh and strident. I stepped around and over bodies, some dressed in black and gold, others clearly scientists and workmen. Their ragged clothes were soaked in blood and their wounds were terrible. Flies crawled all over them, jumping up when I came close, and settling again after I'd passed.
The whole place was a Jonestown-everyone was dead. Only here, the people hadn't killed themselves; they'd killed each other. I moved out of one street and onto another, and the dead lay everywhere, broken and butchered. I knelt down to examine some of the bodies, waving the flies away with my golden hand. They hung on the air nearby, buzzing angrily but unwilling to approach my armour. I checked out the extent and origins of the wounds with my golden fingers. I didn't have to bother about infection, as long as I didn't armour down. The stench, of spilled blood and exposed guts, of so many dead people, suddenly became too much for me and I shut down the mask's? scent detectors. I daren't armour down long enough to throw up. I straightened up, and stepped back from the bodies.
I felt sick, in my stomach and in my soul. I had no place here, in this village of the dead. I wanted to turn and run and get the hell away, leave this madness behind. People aren't supposed to see things like this, do things like this. But I was a field agent, and I had work to do. I'd be weak later, when I had time. And if I had nightmares later, well, that came with the job, sometimes. Something terrible had happened here, and I had to find out how and why, to make sure it could never happen again. Duty and responsibility have their uses-they keep us going when courage might not be enough.
I made myself let the stench back in. It wasn't so bad, knowing it was coming. And bad as it undoubtedly was, there wasn't much actual decomp. Blood and guts, yes, but not much rot or decay. Given the blazing heat of the overhead sun, this wholesale slaughter couldn't have happened that long ago. This… was a recent massacre. Whoever or whatever had done this, I hadn't missed it by much.
So many dead. Dozens, maybe hundreds. I hardened my heart, and concentrated on the evidence. It was the only way to stay sane. I moved slowly, steadily forward, and the flies leapt on the air around me, buzzing hungrily. From the nature of the wounds, these people had shot each other until they'd run out of bullets, used the guns as clubs until they broke, and then they went at each other with machetes and axes, all kinds of improvised weapons, and finally, their bare hands. Empty guns with shattered butts lay discarded to every side, and bullet casings glistened in the bright sunlight. There was bullet damage all around, riddling the wooden walls of the surrounding huts. The sheer savagery of the wounds suggested… an overwhelming rage, a desperate vicious need to kill.
For a moment I was back in the Hall, as the mob killed my Molly, stabbing her over and over again.
These people had shot and stabbed? and hacked at each other, gouging great wounds in unprotected flesh. Hands cut off, bodies decapitated. Some had died with their hands locked around each other's throats, a grip so fierce it had not relaxed even in death. Others had died with their arms buried deep in opened-up guts. One man had yanked out his opponent's intestines, while his enemy had thrust his thumbs into his attacker's eyes. There were never any signs of defensive wounds. These people had been so intent on killing they hadn't even tried to protect themselves. Many of them looked as though they'd been attacked by wild animals, rather than anything human. But the real clue, as to what had happened here, lay in the faces of the dead. They were all the same: withered and ancient, burned out by the terrible forces that had raged within them. I knew what this was. I'd seen it before.
Everyone in Doctor Delirium's secret base had been given the Acceleration Drug. It could make you superhuman, for a while; incredibly fast and strong, inhumanly resistant to pain and punishment. But the Drug burned up all the years of your life, to fuel the superhuman abilities. A lifetime's energies, to make a man superhuman for a few days, or even just a few hours. They started out as Manifest Destiny's shock troops, created to be thrown against the Droods in armour. They fought well, and died quickly, like so many superpowered mayflies.
But they were fanatics; they knew what they were getting into. They paid the price willingly, the fools. This… was different.
I straightened up from examining a body that had been torn open from throat to crotch, and flicked the blood from my golden hands. The flies settled happily on the body again as I turned away. On the wall before me was a huge bloody stain, splattered across the whitewashed wood from top to bottom, spattered here and there with bloody bits and pieces. It took me a while to figure out what it was, until I looked down, and saw the deep footprints in the dirt, leading straight to the great stain. An Accelerated Man had run into the wall at superhuman speed, and exploded across it when he hit. Larger pieces had slid slowly down the wall, leaving dark trails behind them. There was nothing left on the ground to identify, even after I'd waved the flies away. It had all just… shattered, under the impact.
I wondered if he'd even tried to stop.
I walked on down the street, still heading for the main science lab. Halfway down, a house had collapsed in on itself, as though a bomb had gone off inside. I took a moment to peer through the empty window frame. In the gloom, I could make out several bodies, and bits of bodies. They'd destroyed the house, and brought it down upon themselves, because they couldn't break off from killing each other.
I hurried down the street, and turned into another, feeling like the only living thing in this place of the dead. I'd stopped trying to count the bodies, or even estimate their numbers. There were just too many. The closer I got to the main lab, the more there were. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of once rational men and women, driven to slaughter every living thing they saw by some insane rage. I wondered if they laughed, or cried. Or whether they'd been driven beyond such limited emotions.
Someone would pay for this. I would not stand for this. I would see someone paid, in blood and suffering.
I stopped abruptly, and looked quickly back and forth. I'd heard something. The first real sounds I'd heard in this place, apart from the constant maddening buzzing of the flies. I turned around and around, trying to pin down the sound. A rapid, repetitive noise, moving incredibly fast. My head snapped from left to right, following the
