Coven

“Just another power hungry shithead, no different from the people here. He’s like anyone in a position of power—politician, corporate lawyer, industry mogul—”

“Meaning?” Jervis inquired.

“He’s a fucking liar!”

Jervis stared and blinked.

Wade continued: “He’s a user, Jervis. Any idiot can see that. He promised you immortality in exchange for service only because he needed you to do his shit work. When the shit work’s over, he won’t need you anymore. What can you do in the labyrinth that the sisters can’t do better?”

“I can think,” Jervis answered.

Wade laughed. “Thinking is the last thing this fucker wants. How does any monarch maintain power? By suppressing individuality—by suppressing thinking.”

Was Jervis stupid, or were Wade’s suggestions going somewhere?

“There’s no room in the Supremate’s system for individuals,” Wade kept talking. “As far as the master plan is concerned, you’re just a jury rig in the big machine. The Supremate lied to all of you to get what he wanted. Besser told me they were going to dump you after recharge. He said you were expendable.”

Jervis sunk further into self rumination. Wade realized that two forces were at work here: the Supremate versus Wade—not exactly a match. If Wade was going to make a move, now was the time.

“Think about it. Does the Supremate really need you?”

Jervis’ thinning hair easily revealed the knob of his transceptionrod. It was a terminal of some sort, Wade guessed, an uplink to The Boss. Whatever it was, it must be pretty important, considering that Jervis was dead but still walking and talking. Wade had no choice but to give it a shot.

He lurched forward. “What are you—” Jervis yelled, and Wade grabbed the black knob and pulled up with all his might.

The transceptionrod didn’t come out, but it slid up an inch. Jervis shuddered like a man who’d just stuck a screwdriver into a fuse box. “Nooooooo!” his voice thundered, shattering the office windows and shaking the room. He let go of Wade’s wrist bringing both hands to the rod, feeling at it ineptly as if examining a sudden, deep wound.

While Jervis convulsed, Wade ran.

««—»»

God it hurt, oh God oh God. Pain blazed like white hot light. He thought of being skinned alive and dumped in salt, of bamboo shoots driven up the fingernails, a blowtorch flame to the testicles, an enema with lye. That’s the kind of pain that assailed him. Indeed, the whole of his brain felt like a molar’s soft pulp invaded by a dentist’s drill.

He shuddered in place, eyes and face turned up. Footsteps tramped away and out. Wade. Goddamn Wade did this. He’d nearly jerked the transceptionrod completely out of his head.

Jervis clod-hopped around in his lake of pain. He couldn’t see anything but white. His feet felt like cement loafers. He felt around Besser’s desk until his hands fell upon a stone paperweight of J. S. Bach. He grabbed it, raised it, and—

CLACK!

—banged the transceptionrod fully back into his head.

The white hot pain blew away, his vision snapped back. He could feel his nerves reconnect. Jervis was whole again. He knew what would happen if the rod had been completely removed.

The interruption had consumed only moments, but in those moments, Wade had escaped.

Jervis ran so hard his feet cracked the tile floor. When he trampled down the stairs, the stairs collapsed behind him. Down the hall, the front doors beckoned. He sprinted for them.

He assumed Wade had fled for the Vette. But then there was always that old saying about assumption. Something didn’t feel right. Halfway to the doors, Jervis stopped.

He sniffed the air.

Fear.

Again, he could smell its tang, its giveaway fragrance.

He turned and headed back to the lab.

Why would Wade return there? Jervis noticed the cut down door to the storage closet but ignored it. Wade would have to be brainless to go back in there. What he didn’t notice, however, was that the beam hewer was no longer on the floor.

“Say your prayers,” Jervis advised.

Wade leapt from the closet. Jervis turned. There was a silver flash, a swoosh—

Thump!

Suddenly Jervis lay flat on his back. Fuddled, he looked up. Standing in front of him was Wade, holding the hewer.

And standing beside Wade was…a pair of pants.

Wait a minute, Jervis realized. Those are MY pants.

Indeed, they were. And they were Jervis’ legs that filled them.

“How do you like those cookies?” Wade spat.

Then it came to him. Jervis had been cut in half at the waist. His lower body stood before him. His upper body lay on the floor.

Wade threw his head back and laughed in triumph.

Jervis frowned. Talk about minor inconveniences. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand that you’re in two pieces,” Wade replied.

Jervis hopped up on his hands. His legs remained standing. “All you’ve done,” he said, “is make two of me.”

Wade shrieked. Jervis’ legs began to chase him around the lab. “You’ve gotta be shitting me!” Wade yelled.

Jervis’ living torso lit yet another Carlton. He walked around the lab tables—walked, that is, on his hands, an ambulatory trunk. This wasn’t so bad; it gave him a different perspective, at least. Now he knew how it felt to be short.

Wade was running mad circles around the tables. He’d been chased by pissed off girlfriends, irate fathers, and police—but never by…legs. This was not an easy situation to assess. He grappled at the window. Jervis’ legs kicked him in the ass. Jervis laughed, hobbling up before a trail of innards.

“Two against one. I know it’s not fair, but that’s life.”

“You prick!” Wade shouted, kicking at the legs. “I cut you in half and you’re still fucking with me!”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Wade was opposed by both sides. Jervis’ legs kicked at him from the front, while Jervis’ upper body grappled with him from behind, tried to drag him down. The hewer lay yards away.

Wade did what any man would do when being mauled by two halves of a resurrected corpse: He attacked the weaker twin. He tackled the legs. The legs kicked up. He crawled forward as Jervis’ torso held onto his belt, one hand slithering for his balls.

Wade grabbed the hewer and rolled. Suddenly Jervis was wrapped up in his own legs. This confusion gave Wade time to rise.

Jervis fumbled to untie himself. Finally his legs came untangled and stood back up.

The hewer blazed down. The first strike cut the legs in half. Without the foundation of unity, the legs now hopped about independent of each other, useless.

Jervis, the walking torso, looked up in horror. The hewer’s second strike took off Jervis’ right arm, the third his left.

“Now I’ve made five of you,” Wade pointed out. “What are you gonna do now?