The Green Lama: Crimson Circle (43 page)

She held out her hand and in a smooth motion, Tsarong dropped something cold and heavy into her palm. She curled her fingers around it, not wanting to risk looking at it, though she didn’t know why.

“I had hoped he would have told you before now,” Tsarong said, staring at his hands. “Something happened to Jethro in R’lyeh, something none of the prophecies had anticipated… Whether it was from his exposure to Cthulhu or from the combined power of the Jade Tablets, I do not know, but when the Tulku came back to life, he came back more powerful than ever. But with that power came an… infection, a cancerous growth that has slowly spread through his body. It is why he no longer needs the radioactive salts. For a time we looked for a cure, but we soon realized that there was no turning that tide… The human body is not made to hold that kind of power for so long.”

Jean blinked twice before she was able to process Tsarong’s statement. She felt the others look to her in shock. “Excuse me?” she breathed. She found her nails were biting into her palm. “And what does this infection mean…” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “For him?”

Tsarong met her gaze. “It means he’s dying. I believe he only wanted to protect you, Miss Farrell—to protect all of you—from the truth.”

“All right. Forget the rescue plan,” Jean said, almost to herself. “I’m gonna kill him myself.” She looked down at her hand, the green light spilling through her fingers. “But this… What is this for?”

“The unforeseen, Miss Farrell,” Tsarong said after a moment.

“I don’t understand.”

Tsarong licked his lips before he proceeded. “Ever since your confrontation with the Old Ones, I have been… experimenting, trying to find a way the radioactive salts could help us defend against the impossible. If the people who captured Jethro are indeed behind this black liquid, and they expose him to it, we have no way of knowing how he will react. He will do all he can to fight it, but if he can’t… He would want to be stopped.”

• • •

VALCO RUSHED down the stairs two steps at a time, a stolen fire axe in hand, until he reached the riveted steel door beneath the Facility. Without missing a step, Valco ran up to the keypad and slammed down the axe. Small fingers of electricity jumped out, clawing at the frozen air. Valco swung down again and again until he heard the magnetic locks clap open. Keeping the axe in one hand, Valco pulled open the massive hatchway, the skin of his palm briefly sticking to the frozen metal.

“Tulku!” he shouted as he entered the holding area. “Tulku, are you in here?!”

His footsteps crinkled against the frost, sounding elephantine to his panicked ear. He fought the urge to rush through the chamber, instead looking through the murk for the cell with the most recently disturbed ice. He looked to the floor, finding footsteps leading toward the far end of the chamber, and another trail leading back toward the entrance. Following the tracks, Valco came to a cell in the middle of the third row, its door lacking the ice cover prevalent on its neighbors. He took the axe into both hands and peered in through the grill. Inside he could he could the watery, bubbling sound of phlegm-filled lungs struggling for breath.

“Hello?” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure why he did. “Tulku? Are you in here? It’s Harrison. Dr. Valco…”

Something rustled within, shifting in the shadows. Valco’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as he waited for a response. He was too late, he was certain. The Green Lama, just like Gary Brown before him, had fallen victim to the Collective and Valco had done nothing to—

“Valco…?” the shadows hissed. “Dr. Harrison Valco…?”

Elation erupted behind Valco’s eyes. Without hesitating, he brought the axe down on the cell’s lock, metal squealing in protest, the screech echoing through the cavernous space. All around him he could hear shuffling and grunting from within the surrounding cells. They were locked away, he reminded himself. He was safe, for the moment, at least. He gritted his teeth and swung once more, his arms jangling at the impact. He was about to swing again when the door drifted open on its own. Peeking his head in, Valco could just see the Green Lama’s wounded form hunched over, facing the corner of the cell. Thick veins ran across the Green Lama’s body, pulsating a sickly—and impossibly luminescent—greenish-black.

“D
R.
H
ARRISON
V
ALCO
…” the Green Lama wheezed without looking back. “W
HAT ARE YOU DOING HERE
?”

“My God… Tulku… What have they done to you? Oh, Tulku, I’m so sorry,” Valco said with a shuddered, chattering breath. “I had no idea. I didn’t know they had brought you—brought Gary—here. I never would have come here—never would have worked with them”

The Green Lama cocked his head to the side, but still wouldn’t turn around. “D
R.
H
ARRISON
V
ALCO….
C
OME CLOSER
.”

Valco took a tentative step forward. He found his grip on the axe handle had tightened. His knuckles were bone white. He could just see the outline of the Green Lama’s face. No longer hidden beneath greasepaint and a hood, Valco recognized the man instantly. “You’re—You’re Jethro Dumont.”

In an impossible motion, the Green Lama jumped up, wrapped his hand around Valco’s neck and lifted the doctor off the ground. His skin was an unearthly grey and white. The drill wound sat in the center of his forehead, crimson and black. Thick obsidian tears poured from his black eyes, down his cheeks, pooling in the crook of his neck before spilling down over his body. And his mouth… His mouth was so
red
.

“Tul—Tulk…” Valco choked as he struggled to pry himself free. His axe clanged to the ground. His lungs ached and his vertebrae—it felt like the Green Lama’s fingers were crushing his windpipe. “What are you—?”

“D
R.
H
ARRISON
V
ALCO
,” the Green Lama hissed with the voice of a snake. “H
OW TERRIFYING THIS MUST BE FOR YOU
.”

“Tulku! Please! No!” Valco screamed, clawing at the Green Lama’s hand. “Please! It’s me! Don’t—You—Can’t!”

The Green Lama’s grip began to tighten when he let out two violent coughs, black liquid flecking his lips. His eyes faded from obsidian back to a familiar, deep blue-grey subtly glowing green. Air rushed back into Valco’s lungs as the Green Lama’s grip loosened and dropped him to the ground. Valco scrambled to his feet and back toward the door.

“Valco!” the Green Lama cried in the voice of Jethro Dumont. He fell back a step in shock. “
Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!
Harrison, it’s inside me. The Substance. I don’t—know—how long I can control—”

“Let me—!”

The Green Lama held up his hand and shook his head. He fell back against the wall. “The Epsilon Mist, Doctor. You have to find—Use it. The Epsilon—Need it to— The only thing that can—” He gritted his teeth and let out a scream. He looked back to Valco, liquid black spots forming over his eyes. “You have to—run, Harrison! You have to run!”

Valco took a tentative step forward. “Je—Jethro?”

The Green Lama’s eyes clouded over and he gave Valco a black Cheshire grin. “R
UN BEFORE
I
KILL YOU
!”

Chapter 19
: Beneath The Mountain

GAMMA WINCED as he pressed his handkerchief to his ear and wiped away the blood pooling inside the auricle. His head stung, feeling as though a bee had crawled its way inside his skull and failed to make its way out again. He leaned back in his desk chair and massaged his temples. He tried to process the last few hours, piece together the events that had led them here and found his equation lacking a solution. He had failed to take into account Pelham’s mania. Emotions were not a variable Gamma knew how to measure, and even if he could, Pelham’s were not stable enough to find any constant with which to quantify. It was an oversight he would be sure to rectify.

“Have you spoken to them?”

“No, I have not,” Gamma curtly replied. He folded up his bloodstained kerchief and did his best to ignore Omega’s self-satisfied grin.

As with most things in his life, Gamma’s office, besides two chairs and a desk, was Spartan, bereft of any comforts, or mementos. A large chalkboard wrapped around the room, filled with coded facts and figures stretching back to the mid-1800s.

“There’s no point in trying to keep it secret.” Omega kicked his feet up onto Gamma’s desk. He took out his dented silver case and lit himself a cigarette. “They will know.”

“Of course they will know. They already know. That is how they—How we work.”

“Oh, so you anticipated this, did you?”

“Don’t be glib, Omega,” Gamma bristled. “It doesn’t suit you.”

The operative chuckled. “Missing the days of Chi?”

“Chi was a fool.”

“
Is
a fool,” Omega corrected as he slipped the case away. “You and I both know he’s still out there, continuing his own private mission.”

Gamma opened his mouth to respond when the small red light atop his desk silently flashed three times. His back stiffened while he waited for the light to flash again, hoping it wouldn’t.

“What is it?” Omega asked.

Several seconds passed in silence while Gamma watched the light. His hand clenched down on his handkerchief when the red light finally flashed twice more. When Gamma finally spoke it was little more than a whisper. “Someone’s broken open the storage.”

“What do you mean?”

The light flashed twice again. And again. And again.

“The test subjects.” Gamma tried to stand out of his chair but his body refused to move. He felt the ground rumble beneath his feet. His face fell into a sickly rigor, the flashing light painting his face in coral. Through the rock walls he could hear explosions and screams. He looked to Omega, who had extinguished his cigarette and was drawing his pistol. The rumbling grew worse along with the screams. A crack appeared in the left chalkboard, running up the wall into the rock ceiling. Beneath the doorway Gamma could see a faint green hue spill across the floor, moving back and forth as if someone were swinging a lantern. There were pops of electricity, the snap of bone, and the tearing of flesh. And whispering, a constant foreign chanting that sounded just like—But no, it couldn’t be… Omega gestured for Gamma to hide. Gamma silently moved to his knees and began to duck under his desk as Omega slowly approached the door, gun raised.

Gamma realized he had been holding his breath and forced himself to take a slow, stuttering breath. He heard Omega ease open the door and he forced his eyes closed.

This had not been anticipated.

• • •

“THIS IS the entrance?” Ken asked incredulously as they walked into the cabin. He skeptically knocked his knuckles against the false wood. “Looks like where yokels come to smoke Mary Warner.”

Caraway rolled his eyes but found he was smiling, despite himself. There was a part of him that had missed this, even though he knew that was insane. Maybe he had just missed these people. Together they made a difference—or at the very least tried to.

Evangl stood over by the door. Caraway walked up next to her and looked toward the small town below, the car they had driven up parked a few feet away. “That Black Rock?” he asked.

Evangl nodded. “Over there’s Cody Square. Named after a solider is some war. You can just see his statue from here.” She pointed to the faint copper blob in the distance. “It’s a nice town. We’d go there for walks every so often.”

Caraway placed a hesitant hand on Evangl’s shoulder. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. He knew all about the running and the shooting, how to face off against criminals and monsters, but raw human emotion, that was something entirely different. He looked to Jean, who was counting out the panels on the cabin walls, tapping her fingers against the faux-wood as she paced the room.

“…Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty—” Jean stopped short. “Four. You kids ready for this?” No one answered. Jean glanced back at them and frowned. “Yeah, me neither.”

She pressed down on the panel and the floor vibrated to life. A loud whine of machinery echoed up beneath them. The four of them stepped toward the center of the floor, guns ready, as a seam of white light appeared around the base of the cabin and grew outward.

“Well,” Jean sighed, drawing her pistols. “Here goes nothing.”

• • •

GUNFIRE AND SCREAMS resounded through the Facility, accompanied by the occasional wordless moan of the test subjects shuffling through the halls. Gamma watched small pops of light and the occasional explosion of blood through the cracked doorway. The blackboard lining the room was littered with burned out craters, bullet holes, and body shaped cracks. And there was blood, so much blood. He needed to make some calculations, incorporate all the recent variables into the equation. He absently collected his innards into his arms. He didn’t want them getting dirty.