Here Be Monsters

LUX



Anabel Portillo

© 2011

All rights reserved.

Edited by Ian Sharmon

It always rained on nights like this. The girl’s hair hung like ribbons from her ponytail and her clothes were clinging to her like the hands of dead men.

It had been a long game of hide-and-seek through the maze of rubbish-strewn alleys. The monster was fast, faster than his bulk should have allowed, and he could smell her. Even in the rain, and more so now that it had stopped.

The girl was getting tired. Monsters don’t get tired. They shake droplets off their rough fur and they keep going.

Without the relentless curtain of water, the chase moved to higher ground.

Up a rusty ladder bolted to a crumbling red-brick wall.

She was a fast climber, and nearly silent in her soft running shoes, but the monster could jump, powerful leaps from impossible muscles and the flesh-rending grip of dirty claws.

He smelled like a wet dog. He always did.

She found a place to rest, upwind from a smoking chimney to mask her scent. Her fingers worked fast, blind, from memory, while he searched for her, panting with bloodlust and anxiety.

The Beast stomped past her, performing what passed for stealth in his mind.

“I can smell you, little girl. All your juicy sweetness,” he smacked his lips. “Come on, what do you say? Just a taste, huh? You’ve been thinking about it too, you dirty cherry pie.”

He was provoking her now, in his clumsy way, baiting her to take a false step. She had no doubt that he had caught her scent, but it was diffused by the wind and the smoke, or his fingers would have been around her throat already. One hand would suffice to encircle her delicate neck, the pressure of his thumb crushing her larynx.

He was moving again, unable to stay still, pumped high on adrenaline. He moved away from her hiding place.

She stripped off her shirt, stood up without a sound and threw it across the roof.

It fell, with barely a wet thud, as far from him as it was from her, but he spun around, quicker than a creature of his size had a right to be, called not by the noise, but by the scent hitting his fine-tuned senses. He could taste her on every breath.

With a hungry growl, he leapt towards his prey, cornering it. The little mound of cloth had fallen in the shadows and it took him a few minutes to locate the focal point. The slates cracked like eggshells under his enormous boots.

Her trick was short-lived. The Beast picked up the shirt with a low growl, jagged claws tearing the thin fabric.

Behind, the girl made a noise, a calculated high whistle, and he spun around, ready to pounce.

She stood on a low wall, the crossbow in her hands aimed at him. As he remained in the shadows of the roof, she occupied the light, her clear blue eye following the straight line of the arrow to her prey at the end of it, as if an invisible thread was tied already between her arrow and his heart.

The sight of her naked torso was enough to give him pause, a breathless second, a gasp of surprise that forfeited his life.

The arrow whistled through air and smoke, a semitone higher than the hunter’s call.

*****

The Beast had been a dead man for years.

Or he should have been. His agonizing body was stolen away, bought and sold like a horse for dog food. He woke up in a regeneration tank covered in runes and pigeon blood. No peace and no grave, his flesh changed forever, pumped and stitched, a beast of skin.

Spooked by the malevolent intelligence in his yellow eyes, the investors demanded termination. The Doctor, in a rage, packed up his creatures and went underground.

*****

Everything is sound. The twang of the string, the whistle of the bolt, the dull thump as it hits his chest, fur, skin, bone, flesh. It doesn’t stop until its silver-laced point is buried in his monstrous heart. That final sound has a deeper, crimson tone, nerve-jangling to the primeval instincts. It is intimate.

He tried to take a breath, frowned at the sudden flash of pain and went down slowly, like a felled tree.

The impact reverberated through the entire roof. The girl lowered her weapon and approached, reloading as she went, her finger on the trigger.

The Beast looked down at the black shaft protruding from his bloody shirt.

“You missed,” he croaked, with a raspy laugh.

“I hit your heart.”

The girl stood above him, crossbow aimed at his eyes. His gaze ignored the arrow and lingered on her breasts, with a little smile.

“Ah, yes. The heart. It’s all about…the heart… He…wouldn’t shut up about it,” he gurgled, coughed. “Do me a favour, will you, cherry pie?” he whispered, with the last of his breath. “Break his f*cking heart…”

His chest spasmed in a convulsive attempt to breathe, and then the monster’s body was still.

With the tip of her loaded weapon pressed firmly against his throat, the girl untangled her slashed shirt from his fingers. But he was done.

She took a picture on her phone, added the coordinates and sent the message.

By the time the recovery team arrived, she was far from the building, a girl with a black backpack and a retro-fashionable t-shirt artfully slashed to expose her young skin. One more on the streets.

*****

The house was cleaned by little robots, buzzing and zapping around the furniture. They always had a busy couple of hours after she got back from her trips, bringing a myriad of exciting new particles of dirt and germs.

Lux shed her clothes on her way up the stairs, knowing that they would be burnt anyway.

The sound of mechanical vacuums and brushes sang a comforting symphony while she bathed.

There weren’t many bruises this time. The girl examined herself, recounting old scars. They were small, but strategically dangerous, most of them caused by sharp objects, drawing a map of her mission. Many of her prey had been close enough to draw blood. Too close, it was true, but death requires closeness.

Only those such as the Beast and his well-armoured heart required other means of extermination.

She had a sandwich in the kitchen, her bare toes perched on the bar of a high stool at the breakfast counter which had never seen a breakfast.

Lux looked like anyone’s daughter. Dark honey blonde hair, clear blue eyes, slight frame. She was stronger and heavier than she appeared, but she moved like a dancer (or a trained assassin) and it made her seem weightless.

*****

Alchemic Genetics, he called it.

The Doctor’s science was a mix of alchemy, chemistry, anatomy and superstition. All these elements combined had produced his monsters, and all of the elements were necessary to destroy them.

As the body count rose, he trusted Lux more and more, to the point where he didn’t even inquire about her strategies. He simply waited for her call.

The Doctor was absorbed in a new project, and his faith in his own control over her was absolute.

As if all that she contained, all that she was, was what he had put in there—his own witch’s brew of cruel, cold potions. He allowed her to read. He was oblivious to the pathways growing through her mind, the connections being made that had turned her many pockets of knowledge into a powerful network of resources.

From herself and the others, Lux had learned that their mutations continued to evolve, just like their minds. He had archived their files too soon.

He collected hearts. Framed pages from old medical books, plastic anatomical models, the drawings of DaVinci, the speculations of the ancients…

But the heart had no secrets. Muscle and blood, entrances and exits, chambers, electric impulses, systole and diastole. No mystery.

Brains were a mystery, minds even more so. He even spoke about the aetheric spirit sometimes. And yet, there were hearts everywhere.

A memento of his old obsessions, surpassed now and forgotten. Mere decoration.

Lux’s favourite was a marble heart, an antique paperweight. It was carved from blue-veined white marble with exquisite detail, and perfectly proportioned.

Her own heartbeat was faster than it should be, faster than any human’s. Maybe she would die young, or live forever. It had worked without falter till now but, if she was ever examined by a regular doctor, it would cause some alarm.

*****

She always disliked breathing in the complex. That’s what they called the underground extension of the house, the lab, the cells, the other rooms.

The air down here was filtered, processed, fabricated gas that made her lungs cringe.

It didn’t matter that she had grown up in the complex, with precious little outdoors time. There was no nostalgia there. Who would be homesick for a plastic cell and the hum of machines keeping you alive?

But she took deep breaths and measured steps, a good little monster doing her chores. No feelings, no wishes, no superfluous thoughts.

The steel doors swooshed open, her biometric scan a flawless match.

*****

The Witch was next.

She was one of the most dangerous, not just because of her abilities but because she’d want to keep Lux alive, keep her for herself. The Witch was one of the smartest minds to escape the Doctor’s nursery.

Lux had prepared herself for a long time, studying the files, adamant about not flinching at the most brutal tests. She had read many of those reports before, all of them in fact, even the ones from the dead. Each one was a one-way mirror into a bubble of pain and isolation. She was familiar with the bubble. She had one of her own. The Doctor had never allowed her to read her own file, but she suspected that he was still writing it. His last monster.

The Witch was hiding in plain sight.

No shady alleys or trailer parks for her. The apartment was beautiful, a welcoming space designed for comfort. It wasn’t even bobby-trapped, but of course, an empa-telepath has her own in-built alarm system. Not to mention weapons.

It wasn’t a pristine abode. Lux found it pleasantly dishevelled, a textured chaos of life being lived. She walked into every room, the methodical exploration of a well-trained killer, getting the feel of the place.

But hiding places are useless when facing a telepath.

According to the file, the Witch could detect her emotions, and possibly hear her thoughts, from at least two rooms away. Who knew how much bigger her range might have become since the break-out.

She examined the clothes carelessly flung everywhere. They were soft, colourful fabrics. Not garments to fight in. Exotic images adorned the walls, far away lands captured into frames. The bathroom was a special place, with shelves full of jars and bottles. Modern potions of beauty. Fragile bowls held aromatic salts, bars of soap carved into flowers and powdery spheres of bubble bath.

A luxury of scents to overpower the senses. A fragrant hiding place. She recognized a safe-room when she saw it.

Lux was coming out of the bathroom when a flicker of movement startled her. A cat was looking at her from the sofa. It was a slick creature with misty-grey fur and golden green eyes on its heart-shaped face. It waved its long tail, like an undulating question mark.

The Witch’s primary power was a biological self-defence. Her skin produced a mutated pheromone combined with a mild hallucinogenic to aid her psychic suggestions. Simple chemistry. Lux raised her hand and inhaled deeply on her sleeve, soaked with a mixture of essential oils to neutralize the Witch’s subtle scent.

“I can see you,” she said, even though it wasn’t true yet.

The cat blinked twice and a woman took its place. Like her feline illusion, she continued to study Lux with the calm eyes of a predator that isn’t hungry at the moment.

“Come closer, girl,” a smile bowed her perfect red lips. “Sit down with me. Be welcome to my home.”

She wore a lovely summer dress, and her hair had been meticulously braided.

“That was a good trick, with the perfume. You’ve done your homework. But it’s quite unnecessary. I only use my tricks on paying customers.”

Lux gave in to the telepathic pull, but not completely. She resisted enough to take a chair, instead of joining her host on the sofa. The mental fingers probed her mind lightly, as delicate as a cat licking blood.

Meanwhile, she kept talking, talking.

“And how is the Doc these days? Still strapping girls to tables? You grew up pretty. He must be all over you…”

Lux flinched at the salacious images filling her head.

“Oh, I see. It’s not like that with you, is it? You’re just a sweet obedient killing machine. I suppose I was your prototype. Or maybe all of us were. He enjoyed my services a few times, before he decided that I’d be an ideal subject. He paid well, until then.” She watched the girl shift, uncomfortably. “He’s just a man, cherie. He bleeds and he comes and he can be…distracted.”

Lux, concentrating on keeping the woman out of her mind, thought of a wall of spikes.

“No need for that, sweetness. I am only skimming the surface. Although I don’t suppose he allows you to have depths. No. Thinking creatures make bad slaves,” she paused. “You are here to kill me. But…you don’t want to. What is it that you want, Lux?” She had picked up her name, like snatching a fish off the water. “What’s your heart’s desire?”

The Witch’s skin was flawless, creamy caramel. Her skin was her armour. No one would ever touch her again. Were their powers determined by their wishes? And, if so, what did a terrified five-year-old wish for?

“For a while, I thought you were his child, but he must have stolen you from somewhere. Do you even remember?”

Lux flinched again, and the probing stopped.

“No, of course not. You are not his, Lux,” her voice sprouted hard edges. The honeyed charm had no place here. “None of us are.”

The girl stood up. It was the Witch’s turn to flinch.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“What will you tell him?”

“That you’re dead.”

*****

The Witch dropped her clothes on the floor and walked naked into the bathroom. Everything was in its place. The girl had felt longing here, but she had resisted temptation. Clever girl. She wondered how well-trained Lux really was, how long before she tried to break free. Her mind was full of bolted doors, repressed horrors going back to a tender age. How long before he sent her back, better prepared this time, a true menace?

Her scents enveloped her in a comfort cocoon, perfumes and soaps blending in the steam. She inhaled deeply, waiting for the water to reach the perfect temperature. The Witch stepped under the high-pressure shower and let it wash the darkness from her mind. After the initial relief, she felt an uncomfortable tension creeping through her body. She was rooted to the spot. Gasping, she looked around for the source of the pressure choking her. In the thickening steam, a pattern on the ceiling revealed itself. Chalk lines of an iridescent glow. A practiced hand had drawn a circle above the shower, complete with cabalistic symbols that made her insides burn. The runes hurt the roots of her eyes.

The Witch stood under the high-pressure cascade, screaming without sound, while the soluble contents of a muslin pouch stuffed inside the showerhead mixed with the water. Alchemy-chemistry, magic and science poured down in burning droplets, rising into the fine mist, dissolving every inch of her perfectly bewitching creamy caramel skin.

*****

Lux could almost taste the bone-dust chalk on the smell of her hands. She rubbed them against her jeans but the hairspray (a spur of the moment inspiration) had fixed it to her skin as well as to the ceiling.

From a park bench two blocks away, she closed her mind to the telepathic howls and sent the text message. In the buildings around her, babies woke up screaming, dogs whimpered, cats’ fur bristled.

Her mind was exhausted from the strain of allowing herself to be read while keeping the little corners hidden under everything else.

Her own perception was perhaps stronger than the Witch’s but it was triggered by emotion, rather than will, and her instinct had been to hide it from the beautiful woman she had to kill.

Her list was nearing completion. She didn’t want to count, just move on to the next target, research and execute, but she was very aware of the refrigerated chamber where the Doctor kept the remains of his subjects.

For future examination. For secrecy. For Lux to never forget. Each one of them had possessed a weakness; each had to die in the right way. Some methods were cleaner than others. Eyes of the seer, skin of the witch, spine of the wall-crawler, heart of the beast, voice of the enchanter… A long list.

*****

The Machine was a nest of glass tubing. Pipettes, alembics, distillation chambers, retorts, cooling domes and refining filters, like something out of a museum. At the end that connected to the subject, the technology became high end medical equipment, all polished steel, pure porcelain and sterile needles.

It was a mind-boggling contraption of science spanning five centuries. No need to wait for a lightning bolt, though. The Doctor had devised a less capricious catalyst.

But Lux had been its last subject. Or, rather, the last surviving one.

The labyrinthine instrument slept in a long-abandoned room, gathering what little dust made its way though the air filters down here. In the beginning, building it in the farthest corner had been a necessary inconvenience, so the screams would not be heard. Lux remembered the screams.

The others, the ones that stopped so abruptly.

And her own. Over and over.

She didn’t tell him about her nightmares anymore, so he assumed they were gone. Forgotten. He thought she was transparent to him, a simple lab rat. However, she had thoughts, when he wasn’t looking, and she kept secrets. Truths. Memories.

She had never been fully awake inside the machine. There was hypnosis, those bright oscillating trinkets, and the bitter juices poured into her mouth.

Her memories were in her dreams. For years, she fought to shut them out, but now Lux listened to them, dove into the remembered agony and examined every detail her five-year-old subconscious had retained by binding it to horrors.

Her examination of the machine, aided by research of science old and new, had reached an intriguing conclusion. The contraption was quite whole, if slightly disassembled, but the linchpin was missing. There was a hollow space in the glassy entrails, where a key component had been removed. All she could guess about it was its size (not big) and that it was equipped with at least four connection points, where four now sadly gaping rubber tubes linked it to the system. It was the catalyst.

*****

No colour on his craggy cheeks, no feeling to his stony fingers. Dead hair, faded blond, clinging to his cracked scalp. Fingernails turned into glass.

Dead, he would give away too many secrets. This body could not be recovered. He must be allowed to live long years, until every part of him had petrified, and no tests were possible.

In the meantime, he had free reign of the dream world.

He lay on a bed, covered by sheets he couldn’t feel. Tubes went in and out of his shell, keeping his insides alive. Acute scleroderma, it said on his chart.

The bed was reinforced, and double sized. His body had gained weight and density with petrification. The nurses needed a mechanical crane to move him.

They opened the curtains every day. Perhaps sun was not such a good idea.

Brain activity was inexplicable, off the charts, an unpredictable flurry of thought and emotion in a perennial electrical storm inside his skull.

They didn’t know what was going on inside his head, but Lux did. He was living a hundred lives.

She wore skirts and pretty shoes, put on pink lipstick, became the sweetest of volunteers at the hospital where his family had stored him. They had stopped visiting, because life goes on and why spend time caring for an unresponsive rock?

It wasn’t too long before she became his regular companion. Nobody else wanted to. When she fell asleep in the room, the nurses laughed it off.

“You are not the first one,” they said, “he must give off sleepy vibes.”

He did. It was one of his abilities, and now he wanted company. (Come play with me). There were many books in the room, old super hero comics brought from his bedroom at home, from his old life when he was a real boy and not a thing to be found under a bridge.

Lux read them to him, then went out and bought new ones. Superpowers and saving the world. Secret identities. Endless violence. Some made her laugh, probably for the wrong reasons. She wondered where her character would fit in, if she was one of those paper girls in sex-fantasy clothes.

The Dreamer’s file was far from specific. He had been a wild card, developed in unpredictable ways and, when his condition deteriorated, the Doctor lost all contact. He seemed to have been an out-patient, which she didn’t understand, but he was only sixteen then, and in his family’s care. Somehow, all of the Doctor’s subjects had found a way to escape the project before his results were conclusive. Except for the Beast, but he, the first one, had remained stable after a few weeks. He was different. Older than the others. Also, dead before his first treatment.

The dead remain static, the living adapt and grow. Even more so if they are children, like the Dreamer. Like her.

Lux had been reading for a while, a dimpled smile dancing on her lips for the nurses when they came and went, like clockwork, to refill his supplies and check his vitals.

They were reading a new comic today. It was about the king of dreams and his little sister, a young girl who was Death. The ward fell silent, a temple of comatose sleep punctuated by the mechanical bleeps monitoring beating hearts.

Lux walked across a dilapidated manor house, long abandoned, the gold leaf peeling from the rotting wall paper, intricate mouldings on the ceiling slowly turning to dust and beautiful tiled floors covered in dirt.

The white marble chimney was open like a door, gaping in a phantasmagorical green glow, the passageway into the bowels of the house.

She descended iron winding stairs until she began to feel dizzy.

Someone turned on the lights.

She was in the white sterile corridors of the complex. As she walked under the glaring lights there were sounds, voices, cries from the innumerable doors, but she walked straight ahead, never slowing down. She knew how it worked.

The machine was waiting for her, a beautiful beast of polished glass and mirrored steel. It pulsated, it breathed heavily, rubber tubing extended like yellow tendrils to pull her towards the chair. She closed her eyes, willing the dripping tentacles away from her skin.

“So, this is where you hide.”

The boy was sitting on the chair, his face young and clear of disease.

“Why are you hiding in my dream, girl?”

“I’m not. This is my dream.”

He began to stand up and she took two quick steps back. His body was covered in bandages, right to the tip of each finger. He looked around, thoughtfully.

“Perhaps it is.”

He opened the door, the one behind the machine that shouldn’t be there, and left, his red cape billowing in the wind.

Lux followed him, anxious to leave the throbbing glass thing behind. The Dreamer’s world reminded her of the comic books she had become so fond of lately.

It was built in bold colours, sharp corners and deep, contrasting shadows.

Every sound made an echo.

The boy had pulled up the hood of his purple cloak, a new costume, but his fingers were still bandaged when he motioned for her to follow.

They walked a fantastic cityscape of vertiginous angles until she stopped.

“No. Here.”

He didn’t seem put off by her boldness.

“As you wish.”

They were sitting at a long dinner table, a fairytale banquet between them.

“Shall we talk, little sister?”

“I am not your sister.”

He played with a silver napkin holder, two snakes biting each other’s tails.

“We are all brothers and sisters, all we who lay inside the machine. One house, one heart, one soul? No, no souls,” he seemed to be thinking out loud now. “We have no souls. He took them. He made us…more, and we pay the price.”

He nibbled on a delicate cake, sugar flowers on marzipan stems. They were too bright and colourful, uncomfortable to look at.

“Why are you here, little sister?”

“I came to see you. There aren’t many of us left.”

“Did you kill them?”

She looked up, startled. The scope of his power was unpredictable too. He might be connected to all of them, feeling them go out like candles, one by one. But he changed the subject.

“I see your dreams. I see his dreams too. You have ideas, and he doesn’t know,” he smiled a wicked, sugary smile. “What will he do when he finds out?”

“He won’t.”

“No, I suppose he won’t. Because you are very good at hiding. He made you that way.” He offered her a blue biscuit butterfly. “He doesn’t know that either.” She didn’t reply, so he went on. “ Show me what’s in your heart, sister. Your heart’s desires. Are they dark and pure?”

“Yes” she looked at him, and wondered how much he really knew, and if he could be saved, “but you know that. You’ve seen my dreams.”

He changed gears again.

“You used to cry every night in your cage. I listened.”

“I don’t cry.”

“No,” he crumbled a sugar daisy into sticky dust. “You don’t need to anymore. You kill,” his smile was desperately wide. “But you are not going to kill me. I am dead to the world, a thing in a dream.”

“You are alive.”

“Only in here. If you were going to kill me, I’d be dead already,” he blew up his floppy fringe, feigned indifference.

“That’s true. You will die of your illness.”

“It’s not an illness. It’s my power. Did you know that I volunteered? He didn’t take me, like the others. I wanted it, I wanted to be….”

A super hero.

He wanted to be a super hero.

The walls melted into dark branches and their dinner table was in a forest clearing. Every tree was twisted and every shadow had yellow malevolent eyes.

He looked around, surprised.

“You dream of this?”

“Sometimes.”

“Where are we?”

“Outside the house.”

“I see. The world. Yes, I suppose it is like this. I don’t miss it, you know?”

She just looked at him.

“I don’t,” for the first time, a defensive chink on his voice. “I don’t miss it,” he murmured into a teacup.

“What’s there?” he pointed behind her. A path had opened and a merry light could be seen through the branches. Lux knew there would be a house at the end of the path.

“Nothing,”

“Is this it?” he was up and moving already. She tried to grab him but the beautifully inked cloak slipped like rain through her fingers.

“No! Don’t go there!”

She was running after him now, but it was like fighting thick mud. She couldn’t catch up, “NO!”

The golden glow flickering in the window was a Sleeping Beauty nightlight. The bedroom had white and blue wall paper and it smelled of plasticine and baby shampoo.

Lux stopped fighting thin air.

Helpless, she watched the Dreamer peeping into her long-ago bedroom. His previous giddiness had turned into clenched teeth and frozen limbs. A familiar voice, faint echoes through the walls, was reading her a story.

“No,” she sobbed, her voice breaking into a croak, her throat suddenly dry.

So much pity and horror in the dreamer’s eyes.

“He is your father.”

“No.”

“He did this to his own child.”

“NO!” her voice grew into a howl that ripped through his mind. He fell to his knees, useless hands cupping useless ears.

Up was down and unbearable pressure choked them before an implosion released the emptiness.

It was white. Not a white room. Just white.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“A blank page.”

“I don’t like this,” he took her hand. “Let’s go back to mine. I haven’t shown you everything yet. And I can make so much, whatever you want.”

She pulled at the edge of his bandage. The finger underneath was pink and healthy.

“I have to go now.”

His hands were shaking in hers.

“And me?”

“You live here.”

He looked up for a moment, confusion, then horror spreading through his features.

“I can’t. I can’t make anything…I can’t leave,” he turned to her, “please….please, not this.”

“It’s the only way.”

“Plea—”

A nurse picked up the comic that had fallen from her lap. Lux blinked in the half light of predawn and smiled at her.

*****

She found the answer in his old books, the ones yellowing in the attic. Cryptozoology was just something to keep herself entertained until she noticed the little annotations scattered throughout the text.

Dates and places, nothing more. The dates spanned the years before he began experimenting, and the locations were random towns, sometimes addresses, all over the world.

Lux knew that he had travelled; the house was full of mementoes. Now, it seemed his wanderings had been a quest. The Doctor had brought something home, something he could use.

It was all around her. The machine was missing a heart.

The blood had to go through a delicate process of temperatures and speeds, while being enriched with minerals and metals, to a perfect balance, until the immortal heart could beat again. Then the heart would pulse this blood into the subject strapped to the table. It burned, it screamed inside the soft human veins, and it came with terrifying images and wild feelings.

When it was over, the heart would turn to cold hard marble once more.

Lux used to admire the detailed work, where the arteries were broken in irregular patterns. She knew now it wasn’t the product of tiny chisels, but of tearing it from someone’s chest. An immortal that could turn to stone.

*****

Just as with the books and files, he had left her alone at the computer for too long. It was easy, her fingers knew how. The Complex had an Emergency Clean-Up program in place. It only required a few minor adjustments.

As she walked out, resetting every door, the system went into lockdown, irreversible until the procedure had been completed. The robots began as soon as she left. Computer hard drives were wiped clean, every surface disinfected, every machine turned off in an orderly sequence. The Doctor could hear it all, step by step, from his plastic cell. Just for insurance, in case he had devised secret escape routes, she took his biometrics. Eyes, vocal cords, fingerprints. Easy to burn.

Locked cell, knots and straps to keep him in the chair, broken fingers. Magic that out, Houdini.

He wouldn’t die of these injuries, and hunger and thirst took longer than three days. After three days, the robots would fire up the furnace and incinerate every piece of organic matter, dead, alive or frozen.

*****

Lux had flown many times, but this was the first plane she had wanted to take.

The marble heart was a cold reassuring weight in her handbag. It knew her; she could feel it coursing through her veins at inhuman speed. There were several creatures of legend that came from stone, but all her evidence pointed in one direction.

And Paris seemed like the right place to start.

Lux dozed happily in her first class seat and wondered how hard it would be to climb the façade of Notre Dame in the dark.