The More Mundane Adventures of Blue Stahli – Episode V

It’s long past midnight when the cop car pulls us over. I’ve started shooting small art pieces so I can experiment with brutalizing video the way I do audio, and tonight I’ve chosen a particularly decrepit part of Detroit’s asshole in hopes that the urban blight would make a nice, lonely background.

Wrong.

As usual.

She catches me between headlight beams, lights spinning for effect I assume. For her part she’s the spitting image of Detroit’s finest: haggard, probably a meth head, skin like bleached leather.

I’m glad I hadn’t gotten to the part with the fake blood or having my actress tied up in the trunk yet.

“Evening officer,” I pipe up first. Psychologically speaking, police officers are trained to use mild intimidation tactics to maintain command of each situation they enter.

This includes conversation.

I know this, so I’m driven to not let them.

“Evening. This is private property, sir. May I ask what you’re doing here?”

I glance in the rearview knowing Jamal is somewhere behind me in a van operating a second camera.

At least if I get beat to death it’ll make a great video for my album.

Might even go viral.

“Filming. I’m an amateur filmmaker.”

“Uh huh.” She seems unconvinced, eying my feminine passengers.

“See?” I say, holding up my iPhone for her to see the app I’ve been editing video in.

“And do you have the owner’s permission to be filming on his property?”

Answer nicely Bret… answer nicely, “You mean to tell me someone OWNS this piece of garbage?”

Dammit.

She frowns at me.

At least, I think she does; Its difficult to make out her mouth from the other creases on her face. “Pack up your things and go home, Mister Stahli. And call Injin. He wants to talk to you.”

Injin. The only name I know associated with the group of rogue scientists and rich people who like to play gods and monsters.

Sometimes they play with real people.

“Ok. I’ll call him as soon as I’m done here.”

“That would be now,” she says with finality, flicking off her flashlight. “Have a nice night.”

The cop climbs back into her police cruiser and waits, watching me as I start my car and pull back into the night. I find out later Jamal recorded the whole thing, but couldn’t hear what she said to me.

I make a joke when one of the girls riding with me asks who Injin is.

Probably best not to involve them in this.

Do I call Injin?

Nope.

I conveniently forget about that.

I even get away with it for a few weeks.

He finally catches me right after The Celldweller and I have finished doing a live video feed and announcing my album is available for download.

“Mister Stahli. Officer Peterson assured me she delivered my message.”

I look at the phone. Different number again. I’m gonna have to make a point of not answering it period. “Oh hey Injin. Kinda busy right now.”

He was silent for a bit. “No, I don’t think you are anymore.”

I hear The Celldweller curse from the next room. He pokes he head into Studio B where I’m working.

“We just lost the server. They’re gonna try a reboot. Let people know.”

I nod.

“See? Now you’re free to talk,” Injin says.

See why I like this guy? He’s such a blast. “I’m listening.”

“One of our facilities has gone dark. We’d like you to go take a look around.”

“Why don’t you have Officer Happy Sauce do it?”

“We did. That night, after she spoke with you. At the time I’d wanted to speak with you since you were near the area. You could have taken care of it then. But since you didn’t bother we eventually had to send her. She hasn’t been seen since.”

“So I’m the next batch of cannon fodder.”

“You’re on a very short list of people I feel are…qualified, yes.”

Time to go fishing. “And do the rest of your cronies feel the same way?” I still have yet to figure out why they haven’t just killed me already.

He doesn’t bite. “I’m authorizing this reconnaissance. No need to bring the others into it. All you’ll be doing is looking around. If something dangerous happens… try to avoid it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“The servers for your record label will remain offline until you do as I ask.”

That wouldn’t just affect me; it’d hit Klay and everyone else who makes their living through FiXT.

Not a lot of options.

“Fine.”

“Excellent. Try to do it tonight.” Injin says, and hangs up.

“Server’s back up. Reboot did the trick.” Klay yells from Studio A.

Awesome.

I survey my arsenal and begin to wonder if I should skip eating a month or two and buy a gun. I’ve got my trusty aluminum baseball bat, my pocketknife with thumb-flick switch, my lighter, and a small flashlight. Hardly the kevlar-and-submachine-gun setup I SHOULD be going into this with, but it will have to do. I clip the knife in my pocket, throw the bat onto the passenger seat of the Stahlimobile, and off I go.

The warehouse Injin sends me to looks the same as every other warehouse around this part of the city: lousy. Dilapidated at best, the paint has mostly peeled to dust. Any windows it had at one time have been broken, boarded up, tagged, and re-tagged. There’s a faded collection of letters where a sign used to be that looks like it says “Brooker’s,” but its hard to tell in the fading daylight. I call Injin back.

“I’m here. Looks like a warehouse.”

“You haven’t even gone inside yet, Mister Stahli. I’d hardly call that  thorough.”

So he’s got eyes on me. Perfect. I look around but don’t see… wait… there it is. A silent disc like a fat frisbee hovers just above the roof of the building behind me.

I flip it the bird to make it clear I’ve noticed it.

“If you’ve got fancy robot drones, why am I here? I ask Injin.

“Birds and stones, Mister Stahli, birds and stones. Our facilities wouldn’t be very useful if you could surveil them electronically.”

So no backup from the robot. Peachy. “At least tell me what you guys were doing here so I know what I’m walking into.”

He waits a bit before answering. Probably deliberating whether its more fun to him for me to die not knowing, or to be scared shitless before I even start.

“Hold on a moment,” Injin says. My phone squelches out a burst of static that rakes my eardrum, and then he’s back.

“Our phone call is now encrypted from prying ears. The facility you are at was one of our cloning facilities. They were approaching success with a viable full-grown specimen when they stopped communicating.”

“Don’t suppose they got tired of your sparkling personality and stopped talking to you?” I ask.

If I’m gonna die tonight I want to get in as many jabs as I can.

It takes him thirty seconds to say, “No,” and hang up.

So that’s that.

I’m on my own.

I tap my pocket to make sure the knife is still clipped in its spot and the lighter is in with my cellphone, then heft my bat and start looking for a way in. The doors are all chained with padlocks, keeping up the “abandoned” look this group prizes so highly. I find a window with a busted board around the side of the building I can reach if I climb on a dumpster.

Toss the bat in before me, and in I go.

Saying its dark would be an understatement. My flashlight is like holding a match in a black hole. I can tell from the echoes when I land on some scaffolding that the building is cavernous; one big empty warehouse.

I know I’m not going to get any help from Injin so I don’t bother calling; the cloning facilities have to be in here somewhere. The flashlight shows me enough of the scaffolding to find the ladder to the floor so I take that route, unintentionally making enough noise to alert anything that might be in here of my presence.

But, well, fuck it.

The scaffolding sways something awful as I clamber down. Might be temporary for remodeling, might just be shitty Detroit construction; I can’t tell in the dim light.

With my feet on the ground I put my mind to coming up with a brilliant plan for systematically searching the warehouse.

I’m still doing this when I’m tasered at the base of my spine into unconsciousness.

I can’t say how long I’m out. I CAN say that the blazing fluorescent lights scalding my eyes when I regain consciousness can go fuck themselves.

My back hurts like I’ve got a eight-pound kidney stone. I’ve been electrocuted enough in the past to guess what happened; doesn’t make it feel any better.

What really freaks me out when I get my eyes open is that I’m not alone. There are two or three other shmucks chained here with me.

Oh yeah, I’m handcuffed, by the way. To a pole.

We’re in a handicapped bathroom stall, all chained to the rails that surround the toilet. There’s not a lot of room between me and the other people in here and I imagine that if I end up having to pee before I get out of here we’re all going to know each other a lot better than we’d like.

I jerk against the handcuffs a few times, knowing full well I wouldn’t be locked here if the rails came loose that easily. But hey, I gotta try right?

Only one of my three new roomies even glances in my direction.

“Don’t bother,” the guy says in a hushed voice. “They’ll just taser you again.” He’s probably in his mid-forties with what I’m guessing used to be a wicked-sweet combover that’s standing straight up now. He’s got a lab coat-type thing on so I’m guessing he used to be one of the scientists who worked here. There’s also a post-sixty broad with smeared mascara in an all-tweed business suit she probably thought was slimming, and a twenty-something brunette who’s eyes tell me she’s not at home anymore.

“And who is ‘they?’” I ask.

“Doctor Burkender and the others,” he says, his voice hushed with fear.

Burkender, huh? I knew a German girl that tired to give me one of those once.

“Listen, I’m kinda new around here. Would you mind telling me just what the flying fuck is going on?” I ask him.

“D…Doctor Burkender went crazy,” the tweed chick pipes up. “Kept saying the clones were perfect vessels. That they didn’t have souls but they didn’t need them…” she goes back to sobbing.

“Ssshhhh!” Combover hisses at her.

Too late. The restroom door squeaks open and I hear footsteps approach our stall. The locking knob twists open and there’s a knockout redhead in a lab coat standing there.

“Well hello,” I say to her.

She doesn’t say anything, but the taser she sticks in my face makes it pretty clear she’s not in the mood to be hit on… right now. She keeps the raygun on me while she undoes my cuffs, ignoring the others and motioning me out the door.

“Looks like I’ve got a date. Good meeting you. I’ll see you later,” I tell the other prisoners.

The tweed broad cries a little louder. Combover just looks away.

The redhead keeps the taser at my back and walks me into a brightly lit hallway. She stays far enough behind me that there’s no chance of me turning or running before she can fry me again.

Not that I’m planning either since I still have no clue where I am.

“I’m glad you wanted a little alone time too. That crew in there were real downers.”

“Just… shut up. In there.” She motions to the door we’ve stopped in front of.

I grab the door handle and try one more. “I don’t suppose you’re the one who tasered me? Because I like to play rough too.”

She rolls her eyes and takes aim at my chest.

I go through the door.

Now I’m no expert, but I’m guessing she’s taken me to the facility’s main cloning room. There are a whole bunch of plexigalss coffins on complicated gurneys ringing the walls. Some of these are shifted haphazardly, as though they were pushed there in a hurry. There’s a lot of other medical looking junk filling up the spaces in between the coffins. The room itself, which is sizable, is all white-tiled and sterile; very fancy and clean-looking.

You know,  if there wasn’t a fifteen foot pentagram painted in blood taking up the center of the floor.

I’m guessing they rearranged everything to make room for that.

Each point of the star has a thick waxy candle burning at its tip, and I’m getting the feeling that life has gotten very very perilous when someone speaks up.

“Who are you?”

The voice scatters echoes off the walls in an awesome way. Man I’d love to record here.

You know, if I’m not dead.

“Who are you?” the voice repeats, and I see now we’re being approached by a stocky man with sandy hair and freckles. His face has a youthful appearance but I’m guessing he’s early fifties.

Strangely enough, I get very calm when I’m in situations where I’m about to die. You always wonder, you know, how you’ll respond when that moment comes.

It’s come so often for me now I think I’m getting used to it.

“Hi,” I say to the guy. “I’m Bret. Are you Doctor Burkender?”

“How does he know my name?” he asks the redhead.

“I don’t know,” her reply comes from over my shoulder. Her voice sounds like satin. Why do the attractive women in my life always wind up being evil?

“I didn’t actually know, until just now, so… thanks for that”

From the look his face takes on I get the impression he doesn’t appreciate my sense of humor.

“What are you doing here, Bret?”

What to tell, what to tell? Truth or the lie, or something in between?

Gambling time.

“Injin sent me.” I answer.

His face grows even darker at that.

Wrong answer.

…Or is it? Seeing a potential way out of this where I don’t end up as fresh coat of pentagram paint  I add, “…hoping you’d kill me.”

THAT gets his attention. His eyebrows arch ever so slightly.

“DID he now? And how do you know that?”

“He’s been pretty clear he doesn’t like me. Which is weird, because I think I’m hilarious.”

Burkender harrumphs at this.

“I can’t imagine why.”

I nod. “Yeah, me either. Listen, if you’re gonna kill me, could you at least make it quick? Like a knife or something? Injin keeps trying to feed me to weird stuff and its getting old.”

That gets a smirk out of him. “Yes, that does sound like Injin. And what did he ask you to do while you’re here?”

“Just look around the building, find out why you’re not answering his calls anymore. He sounded pretty broken up about it. Were you guys a couple?”

Burkender frowns.

That was probably too much, Bret.

“No, we were not a couple. Our agendas no longer coincide.”

“Ah, I can see how that would make talking awkward.”

Burkender continues to stare at me for another minute. He seems to decide something because he instructs Brenda (the redhead) to cable tie me to a piece of equipment.

“I am not going to kill you, Bret.” He tell me.

Finally. Some good news.

“Instead, I’d like you to see what we’re doing here, and relay it back to Injin. Is he secure, Brenda?”

Brenda says “Yes, doctor.”

“Is that something you can do, Bret?”

I look over at Brenda and give her a wink.

“Yes, doctor,” I answer.

Burkender pulls a walkie-talkie from his lab coat pocket and holds it to his mouth.”

“Daysie, Brenda and I are ready. Bring in the clones, please.”

A set of double doors on one of the walls opens and a guy in blue coveralls brings in a gurney with a prone body on it. He wheels it to the center of the pentagram and goes back for another. And another. And another. He goes back eight times in all, lining the gurneys up abreast of each other. By the looks he gives their edges its pretty clear he’s making sure none of them stick out beyond the confines of the floor art.

“You see, Bret, I agreed to help Injin and his organization because they bring both a financial ability to accomplish things as well as a certain amount of… discretion… when it comes to scientific discovery.”

“Uh huh.”

Burkender makes a disgusted noise. “Ethics has no place in science. Its a shoddy dam to a flood of accomplishments the human race is wasting. This nation first and foremost.”

“So Injin helps you make clones.”

“He paid for the research and equipment to make them possible. One of his investors wanted immortality, or a bottomless army, or some other pathetic limited ideal. I knew Injin and his people could provide me with what I needed; they even arranged my ‘death’ in Sweden. Brenda, you may prepare yourself.”

Brenda drops her lab coat to the floor and begins undoing the buttons on her blouse.

First they’re not gonna kill me and now a show? Tonight’s getting better and better.

“What Injin didn’t know, could never know,” Burkender continued, “was that you cannot copy a man. You can recreate his body, yes; but you cannot recreate the soul.” He takes his walkie and calls someone else. I hear Daysie’s walkie echo Burkender’s words back. “Kellis, Falso, please join us. We are ready to begin.”

Oops. There went Brenda’s bra.

“I used Injin’s money, and his equipment. I even used the people he provided. In… different ways.” He motions to the pentagram on the floor.

Brenda is working on her pants now. “Brickhouse” begins playing unconsciously in my head.

“I brought my own people aboard the project as well. Quietly, so as not to arouse suspicion that anything was amiss. People I could trust. People who knew, as I did, what we were destined to do.”

Uh oh. He just brought ‘destiny’ into it. He’s getting freakily close to supervillian monologu…. there went Brenda’s pants.

“And… what was that?” I ask him, not really looking.

“To break the barrier. To bring entities from beyond into containers they could interact with us in. To usher mankind into a new era. To open our race to entire new planes of Knowledge and existence.”

The double doors open and a woman and a man, Kellis and Falso I assume, enter and stand with the guy Burkender called Daysie. They take a moment to crack open a book the woman brought in.

And then all start chanting.

Annnnnnnnd… I know where this is headed.

I don’t want to think about it, because Brenda just lost everything else; but my gut is telling me I need to get out right the fuck now.

And I know it’s right.

“Well it looks like you’re about to get busy with things here so if you’d cut me loose I’ll go give Injin a call and rub it in his face.”

Burkender frowns at me.

“I think not. I will release you after the ceremony so that you may tell Injin of my triumphant success.”

It was worth a try.

Burkender follows the now extremely nude Brenda to the center of the pentagram where she rests her outstretched hands on the chests of the first two clones. Brenda tilts her head back and Burkender produces a knife from somewhere.

My knife.

Hey, things are going to shit much quicker than I thought they would!

I can’t mess with the cable ties themselves because they’ll only pull tighter and cut into my wrists, so I opt for pulling on the piece of equipment I’m tied to.

Burkender and Brenda have added their voices to the chant that sounds batshit insane in this big reverberating room. He’s got a fancy chalice of some kind now and he’s pouring something thick and red into her mouth while she remains still with her hands on the clones.

I tug at my makeshift prison, scanning around the room for anything useful, when I spot my bat sitting on top of one of the coffins. I don’t know how I’ll use it but at the least I’ll have some sort of defense when things start going bad.

Now how to get to it?

I squat and pull the entire equipment rack I’m tied to as far as I can, (which is only about eight inches,) before I stop.

Burkender is still chanting but he’s glanced over this way.

I wait for him to turn again, and then pull a little more.

And again.

Once I’m in range I kick the coffin my bat is resting on.

Burkender is too busy cutting on Brenda to be interrupted by the noise. My bat falls to the floor, bringing something else along for the ride:

My lighter.

Leaving the bat where it lies I stretch out my leg as far as it can go, catching the lighter with the toe of my shoe and pushing it in the wrong direction.

Awesome.

Brenda is moaning now but I’m too busy to look and see if they’re at the gross part yet. I squat and pull the rack I’m tied to another few inches so I can reach my lighter with my foot now and kick it back to myself.

Bingo.

Now for the undignified part.

I push off my shoe and stomp on my sock to get it off as well, then grab the lighter with my toes and lift it to my hands.

Sometimes, it pays to be wiry and limber.

I shove my foot back into my shoe (sans sock; no time for that action) and flick my lighter open. Luscious fire begins to eat away at the cable tie. Tugging with my hands I exert what pressure I can on the melting tie to help expedite the process.

Then Brenda stops making noise, and I know I’m out of time.

Keeping the lighter steady I glance over at Burkender’s little party. Brenda is dripping red from the symbols he’s carved in her arms and chest. Her arms are hanging at her sides and her eyes are as big as trashcan lids.

Burkender has taken a few steps back from her and their cronies have all stopped chanting.

Oh, and the two clones she had her hands on are sitting up on their gurneys.

Everything happens at once. Burkender drops the knife and falls to his knees before Brenda and the two clones. Probably not the best choice of action, because both clones spring to their feet and start shouting something, probably in latin. (Isn’t that what all evil spirits speak?)

One grabs Brenda’s head and gives it a good spin, leaving it looking the opposite way it was designed to. The other straddles the gurney of another clone and goes mouth-to-mouth with it, causing it to sit up as well and attack Daysie, Kellis, and Falso. The first has man-kissed a fourth which sits up and throws a haymaker into Burkender who is just beginning to rise.

And then starts to run at me.

Daysie, Kellis, and Falso are all shouting in confusion while the clone tears into them with whatever he can; teeth, nails, fists. Their screams draw the attention of the second clone who joins the third in it’s attack. The first clone is moving through his remaining prone brethren giving them each a good firm lip lock.

I ignore the drips of plastic that burn my hands (chicks dig scars)  and jerk my hands free of the melted cable tie. The fourth clone is almost to me, screeching how I’d expect a rabid monkey to, but I find my bat first and give him a kiss of my own.

Ping!

Batter up, motherfucker.

He goes down but I don’t stick around to see if he stays that way. I hightail my ass for the door even as the screams from Daysie, Kellis, and Falso turn to wet gurgling.

Sprinting as quickly as I can (which is pretty quick. Remember: wiry) I beat it down the hall to the bathroom where Burkender kept me and the other prisoners.

They all jump when I kick the door to the stall open.

“Pull on that shit!” I yell at them, pointing at the wall bar they’re still locked to. I raise my bat over my head and don’t bother to wait for questions before I start going to town. It takes three swings to pop the first bar loose but only one each for the other two.

I chalk the ease up to adrenaline and fine Detroit craftsmanship.

“We need to get out of here. NOW,” I tell the newly-freed scared people.

“There… there’s an elevator at the end of the hall. Around the corner,” combover-mowhawk says.

I nod and we run.

I don’t know what the newly-possessed clones are up to, but they don’t come down the hallway after us. We make it to the elevator safely.

“We need to burn this place down,” I tell them as we wait for the elevator to crawl down to us.

“There’s a fail-safe device,” the brunette pipes up, eyes actually looking at me. “Magnesium charges, built into the walls. I heard Doctor Burkender talk about it once.”

“Perfect. Thats great. Do any of you know how to use it?”

They all shake their head.

No.

Ding! Elevator’s here.

“No time to worry about that now. Let’s get out of here.”

And we do.

My phone is ringing as soon as Injin’s little robot spots us leaving the building.

“Are those my employees with you Mister Stahli?” he asks.

“Little busy here Injin. Bad things and all,” I reply.

“What did you find?”

I think about what happened. And then I think about him, sitting somewhere in a cushy chair watching all of us through his little robot, offering no help, throwing me into this shit again and again.

“I think Doctor Burkender quit,” I answer.

And then I hang up on him.

A white van has pulls up from the darkness and guys in suits scoop up the other survivors, leaving me alone in front of the derelict building, heart threatening to pop my sternum xenomorph style.

I hear a board clatter to the street and catch a glimpse of the naked ass of one of the clones disappearing around the corner.

And I know, against all odds, Detroit has actually gotten worse tonight.

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Original Image by dirty black chucks – used with permission