“They’re no friends of mine. Times may change, and men come and go, but there will always be opportunistic wastrels like the Stricken, attached like leeches to a project like Mark Thirteen. The more secretive and expensive the project, the more leeches.”
“Great.” Mosh was surprised to discover how out of breath he was from the short run. He had used to work out religiously but had let that slide along with everything else. He picked a nearby heavy metal shelf stacked with plastic elephant heads, and struggled to drag it in front of the door. “We’re on the same page. We only want to stop this monster.”
“Nonetheless, I refuse to share any classified data with you.”
Mosh stopped to study the scientist for the first time. He was a tiny, shriveled man. His skin was thin and blotchy, with purple veins right below the surface. He had a blanket over his shrunken legs, but was wearing a white shirt, neat red tie, Mr. Rogers sweater, and a gray tweed sport coat. “Please?”
“What’re you supposed to be anyway?” The doctor squinted to glare back at Mosh. “Some sort of gypsy?”
By Mosh’s standards he was dressed rather conservatively. “I’m a guitarist.”
“Devil music, I bet.” The doctor snorted. “In my day the only men that had tattoos on their necks were queers and convicts. I’m not telling you anything. Disrespectful youth have no understanding of what it means to keep an oath.”
Not having a good answer for that and expecting a bunch of angry Hunters to kick down the door any minute, Mosh went back to stacking heavy boxes of paper onto his freshly moved shelf. “Don’t expend too much energy,” Holly warned. “When they find us, if they can’t get through the door easily, they’ll blow a hole in the wall. Okay, Dr. Blish—”
“Don’t say my name!” the old man shrieked. “Are you trying to get us all killed? If he realizes I’m here, he’ll destroy us all. He hates me, and for good reason. I warned Stricken not to bring me this close, but he said that he wanted my visual confirmation. The manipulative swine. He had me dragged from the rest home and brought here despite my protests. I think Stricken merely wanted to see if my presence would provoke him into revealing himself. I am the worm on the end of the hook.”
Truthfully, the idea that they might draw the monster’s attention freaked Mosh out. A bunch of scary, six-armed, snaggle-toothed monster costumes stared back at him. Holly looked around cautiously, but didn’t seem convinced. “Fine. No names then. But I really need to know how to kill this thing.”
The old scientist’s cranium seemed way too big as he shook his head in the negative. It reminded Mosh of a pinkish-purple lollipop sticking out of a sweater. “Foolish girl, it is incapable of dying. We killed his body once, but he simply willed himself back into existence. If we could simply kill it then we wouldn’t have needed to bury the host. By every calculation it should still be lying dormant. If you could totally destroy its host, it will simply find a new one and the nightmare will continue.”
“Whatever. I only want to get my friends back. They’re trapped inside the Last Dragon.”
“Then you have my condolences, because they’re already dead. I will not help you. I am sworn to secrecy, and I am a man of principles.”
Holly swore under her breath as she paced back and forth. It was obvious she was thinking hard. Her expression changed subtly before she gave Mosh a malicious look. “Is that how it’s going to be, then?”
“I am afraid so, my dear.”
“Well, that’s too bad…Dr. Blish, scientist from Decision Week, who worked on the Mark Thirteen project at Los Alamos and who knows our monster personally. You would’ve been a young man back then. I should probably point that out in case he doesn’t recognize you, Dr. Blish.”
“Stop! Are you mad? If he hears, he’ll kill you as well!”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Holly raised her voice. “Did you get that? Blish. It’s spelled B-l-i-s-h.” Suddenly she reached down, grasped the arms of his chair, and jerked him around. She bent over and stared him square in the eye. “Man of principles, my ass. Quit wasting my time. Tell me what you know or I swear that I will get on the intercom and call this son of a bitch down on top of us. Talk!”
“Please, stop.” The doctor quavered. “I’ll tell you everything.”
The ancient scientist seemed like he might begin crying. Mosh had never helped abuse a senior citizen before. “Damn, Holly. You don’t screw around.”
“Sure I do, just not when my people are in danger. Spill it, Doc.”
Blish’s lower lip was quivering so badly that for a second Mosh thought the old man was having a seizure. “We never intended for the project to end this way. We were the best and brightest, the superior scientific minds of our day. I was the youngest member of the team, but my theories on disembodied entities were considered revolutionary. Our goals were noble. We were trying to end the war with the smallest loss of life possible. The host subjects were all volunteers. They knew the risks going in. We simply never could have imagined this outcome. We would never have sacrificed those men. Only he doesn’t know that. He thought that I lied to him. I swear that I didn’t.”
Mosh was confused. “Host subjects?”
Blish wiped his nose with his sleeve. “You don’t even know about them?”
“Enlighten us. Back up a little.”
“The being that is terrorizing your friends is only half the issue. The destruction is merely the manifestation of one man’s anger over his betrayal. However hopelessly they are entwined, we are facing two separate foes, a human test subject and the disembodied creature which was bonded to him. The creature that is farming nightmares is merely an alp.”
“Bull,” Holly said. “There’s no way. Alps are pathetic.”
The only thing Mosh knew with that name was a mountain range. The skiing was awesome, and the nights were cold, but the women were beautiful…But he was fairly certain that wasn’t what they were talking about. “What’s an alp?” Mosh asked.
“They’re parasites. Little floaty ghost bastards. We only spend like thirty minutes on them in Newbie training. They’re the monster under the bed that gives little kids nightmares and then feeds on their terror. A really strong one can give an adult bad dreams, maybe. That’s it. Ignore them long enough and they get hungry and go away. They’re not even PUFF applicable because they don’t have a corpse to turn in. You’re telling me this thing that’s killing professional Hunters and sucking giant buildings into other dimensions is an alp?”
“Yes, in part. It is the driver, but it is not the engine. The goal of my original experiment was to capture one of these nightmare feeders and find a way to magnify its strength.”
“Your goal was to make the boogieman stronger?” Mosh was incredulous. “Are you nuts?”
“Shhh.” Holly put her hand on his arm. “The boogieman is different.”
The doctor sighed. “I will try to keep it simple for our sideshow freak.”
“Now that’s just unnecessary—”
“The alp, or nightmare feeder as it is colloquially known, hails from another…plane. It is a sort of nightmare world that only rarely connects with our own, and when it does, it barely registers in the human subconscious. My doctoral research documented the creatures, and we even succeeded in capturing one for study. Though fascinating, it was relatively weak, hardly dangerous at all. Our worst side effects were discomforting dreams and headaches. After the war began, we were invited to continue our work at Los Alamos, where we succeed in capturing several more alps. One of the other projects came up with a way to magnify the alp’s strength through exposure to…Never mind. I could talk for days about the details. What matters is we made the alps far more capable. Now the test targets were overwhelmed with nightmare stimuli, even while awake. It was astounding. Imagine, ending a war simply because the enemy populace was too terrified and distressed to continue fighting…”
“You tried to enslave otherworldy creatures to use as a weapon.” Holly spat. “Gee whiz, I’m shocked that didn’t work out.”
That offended him. “I was trying to save lives, young lady. My project was considered a psychological weapon rather than a destructive one. You have no idea how desperate we were. Nothing was off the table. My compatriots were a diverse group, ranging from the keenest scientific minds to the strangest masters of the occult. Compared to the other projects that were being contemplated at the time, mine was one of the least lethal. We were trying to use imaginary horrors to prevent real horrors. We had no choice. The things that the other side were dabbling in were just as terrible or worse. The alp itself, even after being augmented, is an unfocused, erratic—”
“Evil,” Holly supplied.
“Misunderstood being. Alps are not intelligent enough to be capable of esoteric concepts like good or evil. They are little more than cunning animals that feed on psychic distress. Ours were more capable, but still a far more pleasant alternative than dropping an Elder Thing on Berlin. We had a weapon, but no way to control it, no way to aim it. We needed a delivery system. But what if we could give the alp a controller? My research suggested that we could bond the creature to a human controller, sort of like how they bonded to a dreamer naturally while they fed, but a more complete, synergistic bonding. We found volunteers, young soldiers who fit certain psychological and intellectual criteria, and who were also physically and culturally capable of blending into the target populations. The first bonding procedures worked fine. Early testing demonstrated we would be able to break the connections and release the alps from their human hosts when the war was over. It seemed to be a smashing success, only we didn’t realize what would happen when Project Thirteen went off the rails.”
“No kidding.”
Mosh heard a noise. Someone was trying the door. “They’ve found us.”
“They won’t do anything too fast. They’re worried about hurting their charge. I’m assuming PT’s pay will get docked if they kill him on accident. Keep going, Doc. How do we stop this super alp of yours?”
“The creature isn’t the problem. It is merely following its instincts, creating nightmares and feeding upon the resultant terror. The danger comes from its human host. One of our volunteers turned out to be something…special. He was our most promising subject, so we picked him to receive what seemed to be our most capable alp. When a creature was bonded to him, it unleashed some surprising side effects. What had previously been figments of the mind were given actual form. Nightmares became real. Physically real. They were small at first, but this sort of phenomenon was unprecedented. My team was delighted. The energy necessary to accomplish this feat was simply inconceivable. Our experiments had unleashed the unexpected.”
The rattling of the doorknob stopped. Mosh picked up one of the rifles. It was an unfamiliar, bulky, plastic thing, heavier than it looked, but the controls made sense. It had a safety, a trigger, charging handle, and mag release where expected. Auhangamea Pitt had taught him well, so Mosh knew he could fire it if he needed to, but it wasn’t the technical part of shooting someone that was troubling him. Somebody kicked the door hard, but it barely moved the shelf.
Holly raised her voice and shouted through the door. “If you use an explosive to breach…the shock’s liable to kill the old guy!” Then she went back to normal. “Let them chew on that for a minute. Please continue, Doc.”
Dr. Blish didn’t seem to notice the noise. It was as if telling the story he’d kept bottled up for so long was consuming all of his attention. “The sudden increase in the alp’s abilities was all due to the volunteer. He seemed like a normal enough young man, rather brave considering what he was willing to do for his country. However, as time went on, things became worse. The nightmare creations became far stronger and unexpectedly aggressive. Members of my team died. We tried to break the bond, but it wouldn’t work. This particular alp had either gained sentience, or some dark aspect of the human host’s personality had become imprinted on it. The immaterial being didn’t want to give up its new source of power, so it began to manipulate him, first physically, then mentally. He tried to keep it in check, but it eventually turned him against us. It was a hard decision, but we had no choice but to terminate the project.”
That’s a nice way to say they decided to murder the dude. “I thought you said you couldn’t kill him?”
“That was the problem. Anything capable of destroying the host would merely free the now intelligent, hyper-evolved alp. Though certainly no longer as powerful, freed from a physical anchor, it would be able to roam the world doing harm. The range of the nightmare effect was limited to within a few hundred meters of the host’s body. The unexpected physical changes caused by the bonding had rendered the host unaging, theoretically immortal, with many of the mutations that we see in advanced types of undead. Unmolested, there was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t live forever. So we did the next best thing we could. We rendered the host catatonic.”
“You couldn’t risk killing him, so you made him a vegetable, and buried him in a chemical weapons dump…” Holly whistled. “But now he’s back, and he’s pissed.”
“The idea was to leave him in stasis until we could find a cure,” Dr. Blish said, but then he looked away evasively. “You must understand, after Decision Week, almost all of the supernatural projects were scrapped, and the evidence was placed in storage. We were not allowed to look for a cure. The survivors of the research team had no choice but to move on with our lives. The decision was out of our hands.”
“I’m sure it was…” Holly muttered.
“I petitioned to reopen the study, but was denied. I am not the guilty party here.”
Mosh didn’t think they had time to debate the moral implications of mad science. “If we’re not supposed to kill him, what can we do?”
“Our safest solution is to convince him to go back to sleep, but good luck with that,” The doctor answered. “The behaviors being exhibited this time are different than before. It would seem that its physical form is capable of moving between planes now, Earth and the nightmare realm. Which is why the host body has seemingly been able to move so rapidly about in this world. I would assume that is where your casino has gone as well. It seems that the evolution of the symbiote has continued during their long stasis. There is no telling what their capabilities are now.”
“You keep talking about this host.” Holly picked up another one of the rifles and chamber-checked it. The door-kicking was making her nervous. “What’s his deal?”