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I wondered if he'd even tried to stop.
I walked on down the street, still heading for the main science lab. Halfway down, a house had collapsed in on itself, as though a bomb had gone off inside. I took a moment to peer through the empty window frame. In the gloom, I could make out several bodies, and bits of bodies. They'd destroyed the house, and brought it down upon themselves, because they couldn't break off from killing each other.
I hurried down the street, and turned into another, feeling like the only living thing in this place of the dead. I'd stopped trying to count the bodies, or even estimate their numbers. There were just too many. The closer I got to the main lab, the more there were. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of once rational men and women, driven to slaughter every living thing they saw by some insane rage. I wondered if they laughed, or cried. Or whether they'd been driven beyond such limited emotions.
Someone would pay for this. I would not stand for this. I would see someone paid, in blood and suffering.
I stopped abruptly, and looked quickly back and forth. I'd heard something. The first real sounds I'd heard in this place, apart from the constant maddening buzzing of the flies. I turned around and around, trying to pin down the sound. A rapid, repetitive noise, moving incredibly fast. My head snapped from left to right, following the sound. And then it suddenly changed direction, growing louder and more urgent as it headed right for me. I looked down a side street, and there was an Accelerated Man, sprinting towards me so quickly he was little more than a blur. My armoured mask slowed the image down for me, so I could get a better look. He was ru
He covered the whole length of the street in just a few moments. Even with my armour speeding up my perceptions, I still had no time to react. I couldn't evade or stop him. All I could do was stand my ground, and brace myself. The Accelerated Man slammed right into me at incredible speed, but the impact didn't budge me back one inch. I felt nothing, even as I heard his bones crack and break and shatter as he slammed into me. He was thrown back, blood flying on the air, but somehow he still kept his feet. He regained his balance, and then bent forward sharply and threw up. There was blood in the vomit, and other things. He'd damaged himself seriously, inside. But still he wouldn't fall. The Acceleration Drug kept him on his feet, and the rage in his face kept him going.
He snatched up something from the ground. At first I thought it was a club, but as he waved it before me I realised it was a human thighbone, with blood and meat still on it. He flailed at me with the long bone, attacking me with superhuman strength and speed. But the bone just shattered against my armour, reducing itself to splinters in his hand. He finally made a sound-a high wailing scream of frustration, because he couldn't hurt me. I speeded up my armour's reflexes to match his Accelerated speed, slapped what was left of the bone out of his hand, and grabbed his forearms with my hands. He tried to break free, using all his strength, and his arm bones snapped.
And then suddenly his face grew older, sprouting thousands of wrinkles, years piling on in a moment. His eyes sank back into his skull, and the fierce light went out of his gaze. His strength and speed all ran out, and I was? holding a man so ancient it was a wonder he was still alive. I let go of him, and he fell to his knees. I knelt down beside him. His breathing was shallow and ragged, and blood drooled from his slack mouth. His skin was still aging. He looked desiccated, almost mummified. He forced his head up, just enough to look at me.
"A Drood," he said, his voice just a dry whisper. "Should have got here sooner, Drood."
"What happened here?" I said. I would have liked to lower my golden mask, so he could see a human face, but I couldn't do that. Too risky. "Where is Doctor Delirium? Did he do this? Can you… tell me your name?"
"The Drug," he said, and I had to lean forward to make out what he was saying. He was little more than skin and bone now, held together by a last few sputters of energy. "They gave us the Drug. It was our reward, for good service. Said it would make us stronger, faster. Superhuman. We'd feel like gods, they said… And we did, for a while. But we couldn't control it. I think… they added something to it. It drove us mad. Drove us all mad. They ran away and left us to each other. It's not fair. Not fair. I didn't come here to drink the Kool-Aid."
He died. I left him lying on the ground, as the flies descended. There was nothing I could do for him. My armour can do many wonderful things, but it can't heal.
I stood up and glared at the main science lab, my hands clenched into impotent fists at my sides. I could understand Doctor Delirium dosing his own people with the Acceleration Drug as a last line of defence, if he thought he was under attack… but no one knew I was coming. I hadn't known I'd be coming here, only a few hours earlier. And why add something to the Drug, to make them kill each other? Was this a Jonestown after all-had the Doctor killed his own people, and then killed himself? Unlikely. It wasn't in character for the Doctor, he was never that ruthless. He looked after his people, paid better than most, and anyway, Doctor Delirium should be on top of the world, right now. He'd finally found a way to blackmail the world and make it stick. He had no reason to give up.
And, the dying man had said They handed out the Drug. Doctor Delirium and… Tiger Tim? What the hell had happened here, when those two finally got together?
I strode on through the village of the dead, ignoring the bodies, all my attention concentrated on the science lab before me. The impeccably clean steel and glass structure shone brightly in the fierce sunlight, dominating the massive clearing made to hold it. When I finally came to the main entrance, the first thing I noticed was that the sliding doors were standing half open. I forced them all the way open, and the metal crumpled like paper in my grasp. I pulled the doors out of their frames, and threw them aside. I was past caring about the noise. I walked into the lobby, and there were no sirens, no alarms. No people anywhere. But the massive reception desk had been smashed and overturned, and all the furnishings were broken and scattered in pieces. The madness had found its way here.
The overhead lights were flickering fitfully, on the brink of giving up and going out. I couldn't hear any air-conditioning working. Main power had to be going down, on its last legs. The lobby gave onto a series of bland, featureless corridors that led deeper into the building. Gaudy coloured lines had been set down on the floor as a guide, but I had no idea what they stood for, so I just picked a corridor and started walking, threading my way through the maze. As I made my way inwards, the first bloodstains and bullet holes began to appear. And the first flies.
Someone had gone crazy with an axe; I found it embedded in a grey wall, the blade still smeared with dried blood and matted hair. Someone had shot out the windows, leaving broken glass all over the floor. It crunched loudly under my golden feet. Bodies lay here and there, in ones and twos, each one a bloody mess and a feast for the flies. More and more, I saw men and women dead at their desks, in offices and cubicles, still? at their posts. From the look of them, they never took the Acceleration Drug. Maybe they never got the memo. Maybe… the Accelerated Men needed something simple to start on…