Geist intermezzo, p.14
Geist Intermezzo, page 14
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It was a panopticon of padded cells stacked upon one another, looming over an operating table and medical machines. In a haze of greys and greens, the bloodstained tiles glimmered in the floodlights, hanging in the tangled ductworks. It was a union of surgery and asylum, and there, Ingrid was slumped on her knees. She listened to the murmurs of these faceless inmates, as if trapped in cages of traumatic memories. Victor and the others ran to her side.
“Ingrid,” Beatrice called. “Are you okay?”
Victor laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re all here now.”
“Don’t,” Ingrid snapped, “touch me!”
Victor jerked his hand away, burned by a sizzle of psychic flame.
The child soldier gave a broken chuckle. “I suppose it was only a matter of time. Before the rest of you descended here.” She nodded at Beatrice. “I am relieved that you are alive. Your pardon. I’ve forgotten. All this time, I’ve forgotten what it was like…to be a child.” She glanced at the emaciated figures in the cells. “My friends. My family. Their faces. Locked away. Purged. No matter. They are no longer part of me.”
“That’s not true.” Victor laid a hand over his toy rabbit. “Ingrid, we came to help.”
His fears were realized. The child soldier already stood face to face with her other self—a redheaded schoolgirl without a mask, dressed in a blue and white dress—the spirit of broken innocence. But its skin was like cracked china, eyes pits of blackness. And unlike the shadows hitherto, its expression was utterly hollow.
No joy, anger, or sorrow. Nothing.
Ingrid held back tears. “Why so quiet? Even if you are a piece of me, you are but a reflection of what happened then.”
Daemonic laughter echoed from the cells. Victor watched as the schoolgirl’s “eyes” cracked and splintered, a yawning abyss filling its skull.
“Because, I feel nothing anymore,” it replied.
“Oh shit.” Charles drew his dual daggers. “It’s about to get real, isn’t it?”
“You’ve heard what they all say.” Its voice was utterly emotionless. “You are a bastard and a freak. Jackboot or rebel. No one cares about you, just your powers.”
Ingrid said nothing.
“The only reason you are alive is a twist of fate,” her other self continued. “A laughing flaw in what should have happened—death by leprosy. If you were anything but a patient zero, you would have been shot long ago, just like Mom and Dad.”
Victor laid a hand over his sword cane, about to strike, until Beatrice laid a hand on his chest. “Dude,” she whispered. “I went through this too. If she doesn’t own up to herself—”
“I never asked for this.” Ingrid flexed her wrists, trying to conjure flames of wrath, but only mustered fleeting cinders. “I never wanted to be…nothing.”
Victor felt the lamplight intensify. Ingrid’s shadow only grew.
“But deep down, you take masochistic pride in it.” The schoolgirl did not lift its shattered gaze. “Besides, even if Ludwig dismantles the Imperium, what place is there for you after his revolution? You will be cast aside. Like a freak. Like a pariah.” It smiled. “A leper.”
“T-that’s a lie!” Ingrid snapped. “They need me. Even the Imperials…they kept me alive.” She was shaking. “There has to be a reason behind all this!”
Beatrice came to her side, eyes tender with understand. “Be strong.”
Ingrid shivered. Yet another dialogue blared through the loudspeakers. On the flickering screens, Victor saw Thaddeus and a man in a lab coat—one he didn’t quite recognize.
Doctor Murdoch, maybe?
“The leprosy is resistant to everything we throw at it,” Murdoch said, voice nasally and raspy. “The cardinals are beginning to ask questions, and the dead are piling up faster than we replace them. I need more subjects to test my tonics. How many must die before we find a cure?”
“This is troubling,” Thaddeus replied. “Even Ingrid’s blood samples have no effect.”
“Don’t call it by name. That just humanizes the subject.”
“She is but a child,” Thaddeus said. “A child deserving so much better.”
“And it will likely die after the final stage of our project. And you will have the blood of a named child on your hands. Gather the surgeons. We must begin.”
The broadcast ended as Ingrid held back sobbing sighs.
“No one needs you,” the schoolgirl stated. “After those ill-fated exorcisms, when your powers were implanted, you were locked away.” It let those words sink in. “And in the end, the extent of your life goals—or goal—is deceptively simple. Revenge.”
Ingrid slowly stood, shaking.
Beatrice lay a hand over her sword’s hilt. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Wait.” Victor came to a brutal realization. “Ingrid. Why did you come with me? I mean, it’s no secret you hate Thaddeus, but...” His stomach sank. “No, you don’t—”
“Dude,” Charles spat. “Not now! Do you want that daemon to go ape shit?”
Victor shoved all caution aside. “Do you plan on killing him?”
“And what do you know?!” Ingrid spun around. “If it is the truth you demand, then fine. It crossed my mind. I pondered. And….” She clawed at the straps of her mask. “He ruined my life! I want my justice. I…I just want it all back!”
Victor stared at her. “You can’t be serious.”
Ingrid was shaking. Fog began to churn and swirl, obscuring the way forward. Victor squinted against the stinging cinders, reaching out to her, only to grope at fistfuls of ash. Screams of torture filled the air—memories of the final experiment.
“Even after you kill that fascist pig,” the schoolgirl said, “what do you have to live for? You have nothing. You are nothing. And you…,” its voice deepened and droned, “are me.”
“No,” Ingrid screeched. “You’re not me. You’re nothing like me!”
Miasma roared all around them, engulfing the curved cells, even the inmates. When those clouds burst, the daemon’s true form landed with jackboots, its raven wings rotten and motley plumed. With a butcher’s apron over a black suit, it was impossibly gaunt, its proboscis mummified with bloody bandages. Those claws were long syringes, as the “Angel of Death” wielded a massive pair of spiked pliers—a memory of trauma and malpractice.
The Nosferatu.
“You are lost in the fog,” the daemon hissed. “And it will consume you, just as it should have done long ago.” It grabbed Ingrid by the neck, needle-fingers stabbing into her veins, some draining her blood, others pumping anesthetics down her throat. “Let my poison take away your pain.” It slammed Ingrid against the tables as iron cuffs bound her body, circular saws and drills descending from the wireframes.
“Now,” it said, “let us resume your lobotomy.”
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Victor and the others leapt back. The daemons of the laboratory writhed into corporeal forms, and the inmates screamed against the whirling machines.
The Nosferatu spread its fetid wings wide, looming over Ingrid and the operating table like a medical vulture. It stared her down with cruel judgment as a pair of nurse-like marionettes emerged from the shadows. Somewhere between fetish and fever dream, the orderlies on strings raised their oversized scalpels—puppets of the black surgeon.
“Oh.” The nurses leered over their bound patient. “Was your treatment scheduled today after all, Ingrid? We’ll make it quick. So sharp you won’t feel a thing.”
A nurse lifted a shrieking drill, about to impale Ingrid’s skull, when—
“Cesare!” Charles threw his dice on the ground. “We’ve done this before!”
The Slumbering Magician burst from the cobalt aether, gliding with inner power. Although bound to a chained coffin, its lids swung open wide, revealing a padded interior and the somunobolist in the straightjacket—jittery and writhing. Charles and Cesare’s eyes glowed with arcane power. The geist summoned bolts of psychedelic might.
The weird barrage blasted against the nurses. They shrieked and wailed, covering their tumorous faces, blinded by the fractals of tie-dyed light.
“I gotcha.” Victor rose past his terror. “Dante!”
His geist emerged from the flames, a glove over its mouthless mask, swinging its halberd like a wicked dancer. Victor outstretched his hand and Dante mirrored his every movement, launching a bolt of cobalt flame at the surgical machines. They were reduced to scrap with a thunderous boom. For a moment, a triumphant chord pierced the darkness.
Meanwhile, the nurses parried Cesare’s lashing chains and locks. A fiend slammed a spiked fist through the geist’s chest. Charles winced, feeling his summon’s pain. The magician knocked its foe back with the swipe of a coffin lid.
The Nosferatu hissed and took flight, blotting out the floodlights with its wings.
“How?” Ingrid choked past her numbness. “How could this happen to me?”
Beatrice ran to the table, undoing her bonds. “You’re not the only one who’s been through this. Everyone has a hidden side. Things they’d rather forget.”
The Nosferatu’s shadow fell over Ingrid, if only for a moment.
“No,” Ingrid whimpered. “Not like I do. How am I supposed to move on from what I faced? You heard what my daemon said. I have no future.
“I can’t fight your battles for you.” Beatrice clutched her keys. “At least you had parents who loved you, from what I hear.” She smiled sadly, hoisting Ingrid’s arm over her shoulder. “What we have doesn’t mean anything. It’s what we do with it that gives it…I don’t know, value? You get what I’m trying to say?”
One of the nurses strode towards her, raising its saw with a shriek.
“But enough of this inspirational shit!” Beatrice snapped. “Black wind, carry them far away, Futura!” The Mechanized Maiden burst forth in an explosion of freezing gas. Beatrice drew her broadsword. “You have your whole life ahead of you, and everyone in this room has been through a little slice of hell. Think about that!”
Ingrid trembled as the trio of geists fought on. Dante soared up and swung at the Nosferatu, but that fiend blocked its blow with deathly pliers.
Cesare and Futura fought the puppet nurses below, back to back.
“Your friends will die,” the Nosferatu called. “Just as those before them. Rebels and lepers. Mother and Father. All burned in the crematoria. Even your sparks will be snuffed out.”
The Nosferatu swooped down for the kill. With a swing of its blade, the daemon shattered Cesare into splinters and linen straps, leaving Charles dazed and helpless. The deranged doctor outstretched its claws, about to impale him with needle-fingers.
“No!” Victor screamed.
Dante soared between them, blocking that swipe with its halberd.
“I got you covered, dude.” Victor helped Charles to his feet. The erudite stoner cradled his head, eyes glazed with pain and delirium. Meanwhile, the nurses gained on Futura, slashing at her motorized body with zeal. Beatrice winced and gritted her teeth, enduring the pain.
“And when you kill Thaddeus,” the Nosferatu rambled on, “the hate that drives you will be quelled. You will have no purpose and will burn yourself to ash. After the Purgatorio Project, the Inquisition realized that you were useless to their cause.”
Ingrid stumbled forward. “Tossed away like a ragdoll. I remember.”
The Nosferatu fought on against the geists. “There is no hope for you. Try though you may, you will never find solace. Because you are less than human.”
Ingrid turned to Beatrice. “Everyone has this inside them? That is not comforting.”
“Even me,” Beatrice nodded. Futura whipped around, cracking a porcelain nurse apart with its biker chains. She glared at the Nosferatu. “But are you going to let that flying sack of shit tell you how to live? Or are you going to grow up and make your own mark?”
“I….” Ingrid mustered. “I will—”
“You’ll do what?” The Nosferatu buzzed with warping static. “Take control?”
“You are right.” She gave a defeated chuckle. “I am nothing.”
Wait…? What?!
“Hey! Slow down there, kiddo,” Charles managed, still leaning on Victor’s shoulder. “That’s not quite what we meant!”
“Silence!” Ingrid shrieked. “There is nothing left for me, but my future is what I decide it to be.” She pressed on, her sleeves igniting with newfound fire, burning brighter than ever. “And I decide to exact my revenge. You played your part well, forcing me to realize the truth. But now, it’s time to end this madness. Burn to ashes, by my resolve!”
Victor dashed forward. “Ingrid! That’s not how we—”
The child soldier spread her arms wide. She let loose a horrific roar of wrath, summoning a holocaust of soul-bound flame, immolating the nurses. The Nosferatu tried to flee, only to burn like dry kindling, shattering like a heap of chopped porcelain. The others stared in terror as the fire raged on, all pale green and black. Sure enough, the Nosferatu morphed back into the schoolgirl. Ingrid neither knelt nor flinched.
Victor dared not approach them.
“The truth is, I was weak.” Ingrid stared her shadow down. “I needed something to show me what I am, what I was, and what I always will be.” She removed her raven-beaked mask, revealing a thin, freckled face. “I am nothing. And yet, I am you. But we don’t have to be alone. Not anymore. Together, we will have our revenge.”
The other Ingrid bowed its head. It cracked and shattered into oblivion, its shards shimmering with hellish light. They flew into Ingrid, digging into her flesh and soul, piercing her with a dark victory, imbuing her with shadow and weird flame.
By this union, Ingrid was a living testament to despair.
That’s not a geist. She’s become one with her own daemon!
“This is a power of a different sort, I take it,” Ingrid laughed. “The power of determination? I understand now. This changes nothing that happened, only what direction I take from here.” She turned to Beatrice, a psychotic gleam in her eyes. “Thank you all. So much.”
“Dude,” Charles said. “That’s beyond wrong.”
“It is impossible for one event to remedy a lifetime of torture,” Ingrid spat. “Although, it is a step in the right direction. And Thaddeus’s death will be the next.”
“No!” Victor cried out. “You can’t—”
Ingrid raised her hand. A wall of warping fire erupted between her and the others. “Try though you may, you will not stop me.” She twitched. “I’ll give you all a choice, as a token of my thanks. Leave me and the Inferno, or die with your fascist friend.” The flames warped and raged around her. She floated through them, driven by single-minded hatred.
“Wait.” Victor tried to press past the swirling heat. “Ingrid. Stop!”
Ingrid launched a bolt of hellfire inches from Victor’s head, singeing his bangs and stubble. His eyes widened. That bolt slammed into a wall, exploding in flare of darkness.
“Screw that!” Beatrice spat. “You’re—”
“Do not tell me what I am! What I can and cannot do,” Ingrid said, wavering heat obscuring her body. She turned her back, moving into the prison depths. “Thaddeus,” she hissed. “I am coming for you.”
When the fires died at last, Ingrid was long gone. Victor stood there, knees shaking, as Charles and Beatrice came to his side. The air was still and silent, save for the rotating fans. Indeed, the Lazarlarger seemed even more evil now—a bottomless spiral of insanity.
“Ingrid,” Victor choked. “S-she’s really going to kill him?”
“Tin Man may be your mentor,” Charles said. “But that doesn’t change what he’s done.”
Victor lowered his head. “I know. Deep down, I always did.”
“Can’t say I blame Ingrid, but still….” Beatrice pressed on towards the next stairway down. “There has to be something we can do. If we don’t, someone will die this time.”
“Let’s get going,” Victor said. “Now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the blackest pit of the Lazarlarger, Thaddeus stood upon the brink, listening to the grinding gears and tearing flesh before a core of boilers and ducts. Like a faded photograph, it was distorted by time and memory. Smoke leaked through the pipes, flanked by dozens of conveyor belts, carrying mounds of faceless corpses into the roaring furnaces. Such grisly sights spiraled around its heart—a lamprey maw of rotating blades and wheels.
This was a tripery of heretics and lepers.
In the grimy windows and console screens, Thaddeus watched doll-masks ripple in and out of the steam—daemons, formless yet predatorial, bound to the eternal engine.
The reek of slaughter hung over the stagnant air.
“I remember it,” Thaddeus said. “I remember everything.”
Perhaps in reality this place was the interior of a cooling tower, modified by Murdoch into an altar of science and ritual sacrifice. The Inferno only warped its image through a mirror of nightmarish guilt, into the ultimate testament to Thaddeus’s sins.
To his compliance in the face of tyranny.
Thaddeus laid a shaky hand on a belt pouch, cradling the knucklebones of his dearest departed. He held back tears of anguish, remembering his wife.
“Would you even recognize me?” he asked.
After everything that had happened, despite his valor and piety, Thaddeus had proved capable of damnable evil, as proven by this circle of Hell. No amnesia could excuse it. When his memory was expunged of such deeds, he had served the Imperium as a blind zealot until they cast him to the wayside. And now, Thaddeus remembered the truth.
He was a torturer and a murderer.
“I am worse than any heretic,” Thaddeus’s voice carried on. “I deserve only—”
“Death,” someone said. “And I will give it to you.”
