From Hell with love

Somebody immediately thrust a file into the Armourer's hand, and he leafed through it slowly. "Two thousand, seven hundred and eighteen dead Accelerated Men. We're having to open up the extra-dimensional arms of the hospital ward, just to hold them all. I've ordered every single one of them brought down here, under full security. Who knows what kind of chemical or bacterial agents they might have buried inside them, for one last assault on the unwary? We'll have no Trojan horses here. I want those bodies rendered down to their smallest parts, and made to give up every secret they have. We need an answer to the Accelerated Men, before they come again."

I looked up sharply from? my tea. "You think there'll be another attack? Another invasion?"

"Why do you think I've been yelling at everyone to get all the defences back on line? Until they are, we're vulnerable. The whole family is vulnerable."

"How many did we lose?" I said. "How many Droods died out there?"

"Two hundred and thirty-eight, so far. Over four hundred more critically injured, and as many again seriously. More figures are coming in all the time. They're up in the main hospital wards. The living and the dead. I didn't want our honourable fallen lying beside scum."

"Accelerated Men," I said. "I never thought to see their like again."

"Given the way these new Accelerated Men acted, with almost insane levels of rage and ferocity, it would seem Doctor Delirium has been experimenting with the formula. Improving it… Oh yes, I recognised the black and gold uniforms…"

I told him what I'd found and what I'd learned, at Doctor Delirium's last base, and he sat quietly for a while, considering. "Every answer leads to more questions. If Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim killed off all the people they left behind, presumably as a trial run for the new augmented Drug, where did they find the thousands of new subjects they used to attack us? Doctor Delirium couldn't have raised an army that size without our noticing. Unless the traitor has been interfering with our records… I hate this, Eddie. I really hate it. I look around, at all these familiar faces, and I feel like I don't know them at all. Any one of them could be the traitor. In an ever-changing world, the only thing everyone could trust, and count on, was the family. And now even that's been taken away from us.

"I have an answer, as to where this new army might have come from," I said. "But you're really not going to like it. What if Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim have made an alliance with the Immortals?"

"You're right," said the Armourer. "It is an answer, and I really don't like it. As if things weren't bad enough. I thought you said you saw the Immortals fighting with Doctor Delirium, to get their hands on the Apocalypse Door in Los Angeles?"

"That was then," I said. "They could have teamed up since, to handle something they couldn't control on their own. Doctor Delirium provides the genius, the Immortals provide the warm bodies, and Tiger Tim acts as go-between. Maybe the Door was just… too scary?"

We were interrupted before we could follow that thought any further, by two young lab assistants bearing a limp form on a stretcher. The man in the black and gold uniform was still alive, and carefully strapped down. He looked about a hundred years old, but there was enough fight left in him to glare viciously in all directions. He cursed us all, impartially, in a dry cracked voice. The two lab assistants smiled cheerfully at the Armourer, and dropped the stretcher on the floor before us. The impact shut off the swearing, for a while.

"Maxwell and Victoria," the Armourer said heavily. "It would have to be you. My two most successful and irritating students. All right, where did you find him, and why isn't he dead like all the others?"

"We found him under a gryphon," Maxwell said proudly. "It was sitting on him. Apparently it had already eaten its full of intruders, and was just keeping this one around for when it got hungry again."

"Max got him out from under the gryphon," said Victoria. "He was very brave."

"Oh hush, Vicky."

"You were! You never take enough credit, Max. You're always talking yourself down, and I won't have it. You should have seen him in battle…"

They were both young, little more than teenagers, and they looked on each other with wide, loving eyes. The Armourer sighed, and stood up.

"Get back to the gryphon. Explain. How did you…"

"Oh, it was really terribly easy," said Maxwell. "We just bribed the gryphon with a good back rub and a few friendly words, and then Vicky distracted him with an awfully sweet dance, while I dragged the Accelerated Man out from under. He wasn't much to look at, and he smelled really bad, from being under the gryphon, but I could tell he was still alive from the vile things he was saying, so…"

"So we knew you'd want to talk to him!" said Victoria. "You're quite right, Max, he does smell. But then, gryphons do love to roll in dead things, and they're positively spoilt for choice at the moment."

"We did think about pushing him into a shower first, before presenting him to you," said Maxwell. "But we weren't actually sure how long he'd last…"

"So we just tied him down and brought him here!" said Victoria. "Do we win a prize?"

"You should get the prize, Vicky, it was all your idea…"

"Oh hush, Max, you're talking yourself down again! You're as entitled to a prize as I am!"

"Young love among the lab assistants," said the Armourer. "The horror, the horror… All right the two of you, very well done. There will be gold stars and extra ticks on your next reports. Now go back out and look under some more gryphons. You never know your luck."

Maxwell and Victoria departed quickly, holding hands. The Armourer glared after them. "I think it's time we started putting that white powder in their tea again."

"Given that they clearly only have eyes for each other, it's a wonder they found anyone," I said solemnly.

"Probably tripped over him," sniffed the Armourer.

I levered myself up out of my chair, found a handy surface to put my cup on, and the Armourer and I glared down at the Accelerated Man on his stretcher.

"So," I said. "Why aren't you dead?"

"Let me up," he said. "I've got cramps. You can't keep me tied up like this. I've got rights."

"No you bloody haven't," I said briskly. "We are not the law, we are not the government. We are Droods, and you are in deep shit. A lot of good people died this morning, at the hands of you and your kind, so if you like having your organs on the inside, this would be a really good time to start answering questions."

Give the man his due. In his position, he had to be scared out of his wits, but with the Acceleration Drug already killing him by inches, he must have realised we were his best hope for keeping him going. So he just sniffed loudly, and addressed the air as though we weren't there.

"All right, all right… I was one of the last men through the dimensional door. Last wave in, before the suicide bombers. And I just want to say right now, that no one told the rest of us about that particular addition to the plan. We are mercenary soldiers, not martyrs. Anyway, I got sideswiped by a Drood, had the wind knocked out of me, and hit the ground hard. Next thing I know, I'm under a bloody gryphon. Great big smelly beast. And of course, that was when the Drug ran its course, and the side effects kicked in. All the extra strength ran out of me, and I could feel myself aging. Felt my muscles shrivelling up, my heart slowing down, my lungs straining… really bad experience."

"Of course," said the Armourer, tapping his chin thoughtfully with one fingertip. "Trapped under the gryphon he couldn't move, so he couldn't use up the last of his energies. Basically, he's just ru