Jen Air: Springheel Read online

  “Wait… I tell a lie,” Delainy said, video coming through Kaya’s phone. “There is something… looks like there are some numbers scratched in the floor over here.”

  9-9-0-3-6-2-0-6…

  Kaya read them out, then mused, “what is that? Some kind of code?”

  “Well, it’s not a phone number,” Delainy said, the eye of his camera lens spinning round the rest of the house. “Not an address or coordinates either.”

  Jen knew that of course. And she also agreed with Sergeant Delainy’s earlier assessment, that this man, at least in part, was doing it because he enjoyed the thrill. It was quite possible that he had left a clue or trail for them to follow. She opened her mouth to speak, while in her mind she rearranged the numbers, then grouped some of them together and came up with…

  “Dates!” Kaya suddenly exclaimed. Jen closed her mouth. “What? Other people can be smart sometimes too, you know. It’s allowed to happen.”

  “Yeah,” Delainy sighed from the other end of the phone signal. “But what do they mean?” Jen was about to offer a suggestion, but was interrupted again and so politely waited. “There’s something else…”

  *****

  Chance leaned closer to the floor, twisting his torso so that his ear was hovering just above the boards. There was some kind of hissing, bubbling… maybe pipes, but he didn’t think any should be there.

  “Is it me,” Daramy said, tugging a little at his collar, “or is it suddenly getting warmer in here?”

  Delainy gestured for another officer to come over and help him lift up the floorboard. There were pipes, but these pipes weren’t a part of the building’s plumbing. Someone had placed them here, side by side, probably quite some time ago. At intervals along their length were nozzles, and it was getting hotter... He suddenly realized why… “Out!” He yelled, leaping up and hurriedly shepherding his team toward the door. “Everyone out, now!”

  But the one who had laid this trap had other ideas. Shutters suddenly came down across all the doors and windows, and while of them tried futilely banging to be released, small geysers erupted from each of the nozzles as the pipes unleashed their toxin. The officers spluttered and stumbled, Chance attempting to cover his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, although he didn’t expect it to do much good. Through the haze of vapor and his rapidly deteriorating senses, he saw Jack. He didn’t see where he had come from, where he had been hiding, but now Jack strolled across his vision, wearing some kind of oxygen mask, flexing and stretching his metal claws.

  Chance tried to get up, aim his gun, but his body had become too lethargic and slow as he was being overcome by the gas. Jack glided forward, seizing the revolver from the sergeant’s hand while thrusting with his arm, knocking him back into the wall. Chance collapsed, his body finally giving in to the fumes as he blinked to sleep.

  *****

  “This… this is my fault,” Jen said on the verge of tears, staggering back with her head low, clenching her fist. “I-I was only focused on his suit,” she muttered to herself. “And him being a robotics engineer. I should have checked to see what else he’d been… t-the reports said he breathed fire. I should have guessed he knew his way around chemicals as well…”

  “Jen!” Kaya yelled to snap her friend out of it. “Don’t be so damn dumb. There was no way you could have known or predicted any of that. It’s not your fault.” The blonde wasn’t wholly convinced by her assurances, but she nodded and attempted to pull herself into a more determined and stoic stance. Kaya turned her attention to the screen again, still connected to Chauncey’s phone. “Look!” she called. Jack’s pale, black lipped face was hovering above the camera, mechanical irises behind his red lenses contracting to focus on it.

  “Hello…” his voice croaked behind his mask and he gently tapped the screen.

  The blonde stepped back, her body still tense as she grimaced, “Henry…”

  He hissed and recoiled, pounding on the ground as he twitched and screamed, “Do not say the name! Horrid… b-broken… thing…”

  “Henry?” Kaya repeated. Again he screamed, veins and muscles on his neck bulging as he hammered on the floor again. Jen quickly placed her hand over the microphone.

  “Chance and Daramy and the other officers might still be alive,” she said to Kaya. “Don’t make him angry.”

  “Alright,” the punk took a deep breath, steadying herself before she spoke again. “Jack?”

  “Yesss,” he hissed, again peering into camera. “Henry… Henry’s chubby… Henry’s slow. But now I am Jack. I am… Jack Springheel…”

  “You’re a crazy person,” Kay muttered. Jen shot her eyes at her and frowned, but fortunately Jack didn’t seem to hear as he just kept chuckling to himself.

  “Is that what this is all about, Jack? You get bullied in school so now you’re enacting some kind of revenge? Don’t you think that’s…” Kaya swallowed and closed her eyes, trying to pick her words carefully so as not to agitate him too much. “Kind of silly?”

  “Henry smells… Henry’s fat…”

  “It’s not an excuse,” Jennifer sighed. “You could have chosen to be a better person than all of them.”

  “Henry,” Jack spat, pulling off his mask, “could have taken all of that! But… now there is only Jack. And Jack be nimble… Jack be quick. Jack… you never catch.”

  “What do you want, Jack?”

  “Want?” His face ticked and his neck twisted. “W-want her… want…” he suddenly sounded somewhat forlorn as he sat back and started rocking himself, although still like a scratched record.

  “Who is… ‘her’?”

  Jack suddenly froze, his head rotating toward the camera lens. “Not you…” he rasped, and suddenly sprung to his feet and picked up the phone, spinning it around the room to show all the unconscious police officers. “You want? Come get. If you can catch me,” he laughed, “b-but you can’t. No one can catch Jack. But I let you try,” the camera spun back round to his pale face and dark lipped grin. Next to it, he held up a clock. “Time is a-a ticking…” he said, then crushed the phone in his hand and Kaya’s screen went black.

  “He’s giving us just one hour,” Jen sighed, “we’ve no choice but to play his game. Come on.”

  *****

  Tenley sat in the middle of a sofa kicking her legs as she popped corn into her mouth. The sofa seemed huge with just her sat alone in it, while in front of her the tyrannosaur stood and roared and then snapped its mighty jaws at the tiny mammals scurrying under its feet. She tilted her head, enthralled by the power of the beast and willing for it to crush the nasty little scavengers who were after her eggs.

  Kaya and Jen passed through the room behind her, fetching their coats as they passed the hangers. “Hey, kiddo,” the punk said, “we’re going out for a little while. Will you be okay?”

  “Hmm-hmmm,” was the girl’s response, as she never took her eyes off the screen.

  “Hull will get you anything you need,” Jen said as she was closing the door behind, although Ten was hardly listening. “Just ask. And, um… don’t open the door to any strange people.”

  Kaya quickly made sure to add the proviso, “apart from us. Let us back in.”

  “Got it,” Tenley gestured impatiently with her thumb. “Bye.”

  *****

  Before they could go anywhere, Kay and Jen stopped briefly in the workshop, the blonde biting her lips and shaking her head dolefully at metallic disk with four antennae sticking out of it.

  “What’s that?” Kaya asked.

  “It’s what Titania and her minions used to create the dampening fields before they attacked,” Jennifer sighed, “unfortunately, this one was broken…” she moved away from to a cupboard, unlocking it with her thumbprint and removing from the shelves what looked like two large rifles. “These are Tasers,” she said, handing one to Kaya. “Kind of… I souped them up a little. Be very careful not to put your fingers be
tween the electrodes after you turn it on, as the charge will most likely kill a human. Although with Jack, I’m hoping his suit will conduct most of it and overload the circuits and processors he must be using to control the thing.”

  Kaya just had to ask, “Why do you even have these?”

  “I…” Jen exhaled, her shoulders sagging, “I was trying to think of something in case we ever needed to incapacitate Ten. O-obviously I hope we never need to, but…”

  “Gotta be prepared, right?” Kaya sighed. It was sensible, but she felt like she should have been consulted a little. Jen was probably just too used to doing everything herself, and there wasn’t really any time to discuss it now. “Anything else I need to know about this thing?”

  “You’ll only get one shot. And it only has a range of about fifteen feet.”

  Springheel could cover that distance in an eye blink. “That’s pretty damn close.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do right now.”

  “All right… let’s go a-hunting. Any idea where to go?”

  *****

  The van ground and skidded to a halt, the side opened and Jen jumped out. Before her was a site ringed by eight foot wooden panels with signs plastered on warning people to keep out. The building beyond had been left abandoned for several years now. But there was a gate, and the tire tracks in the mud between the posts suggested it had been opened recently.

  Kaya climbed out after her friend, hefting her weapon. “What is this place?”

  “It’s what the dates meant,” Jen explained. “Those were the dates he went to this school, Nicolas Glover’s.”

  Of course they couldn’t see much with the dilapidated fence all around, but Kay observed, “Looks like schools out.”

  “It was closed just a few years ago because they were having some financial difficulty, from what I gather.”

  “So it was around when we were at school,” it was the opposite side of town from where they had been, but still Kaya was trying to place the name. “It does sound familiar…”

  “It’s most likely Jack has laid more traps inside,” Jen said as she rummaged through a footlocker in the back of the van. She pulled out, handing Kaya a heavy pair of goggles. “Wear these.”

  The punk didn’t see how these would help, as she couldn’t see anything through them. Then she realized there was a switch. “Hey, cool!” Kaya chuckled. She saw the world primarily in blue, although a little bit of green and yellow and a small amount of red around Jennifer. Another dial changed the spectrum even further, and now she could see the bones in her hand. “Freaky,” she noted, and then remembered when they’d been called in by Chance to answer some questions after the Stag Corp incident. “Hey, this isn’t why you were in the bathroom so long that time at the police station, is it?”

  “I don’t have a bone fetish,” Jen’s skull glowered at her. Kaya couldn’t help but laugh. “Now stop messing around. You do remember why we’re here, don’t you?”

  Weapons charged and ready, the pair made their way in, Jen saying to keep an eye out for even the smallest thing that was unusual, in particular any sudden spikes in temperature. They entered a lightless corridor, plaster and tools left lying around in it, like a renovation had been underway but like everything else here had been abandoned long ago. For a while that was all there was, until they rounded corner and there were spikes in temperature, at least in a dozen or so small, flickering points.

  Kaya turned her goggles to normal vision, and they were stood before a shrine. Candles, reefs, all set around a single photo of a young girl with dark hair and a kind smile. The punk had never believed anyone could actually have a ‘kind’ smile, but she did. There was warmth she felt from that face, and yet Kaya also felt a chill as there was only one reason a shrine like this would exist. And then she remembered that she had seen this girl before.

  “Alice Creber…” the punk whispered.

  “What?” Jen asked.

  “I remember now. She died here, in this school, just over ten years ago. I think some kids decided to play a prank on her but it all went wrong and… well, you can see how wrong it went.”

  “He said he wanted ‘her’,” Jen sighed, “he obviously thought she was special. The girls he’s attacked… m-maybe somewhere in his warped mind he’s actually just searching for Alice.”

  “Maybe… almost makes him sound sweet, in a way. I can’t decide if he’s a pervert, sick, or twisted.”

  “Broken,” Jen thought out loud, small wrinkles between her brows as she inhaled. “Whatever happened to this girl must have traumatized him. He’s been fixated on it his whole life, and now it’s driven him quite mad.”

  “Yeah, well… nothing we can do to change the past. He’s hurting innocent people and he’s got to stop.”

  “I don’t think he can be far away now. Someone has to have lit all these candles.”

  “Yeah. I was wondering if you’d notice that.”

  Doors behind them opened into the assembly hall, tables and chairs stacked to the sides and there were also dummies. Mannequins of various sizes, but all dressed in school clothes and propped up and articulated distantly echoing a scene from back when this was a living institution.

  “Well that’s kinda creepy,” Kaya remarked. They entered, treading very carefully across the floor, spinning when a light suddenly appeared. A projector had been set up at one of the hall, and Jack’s face covered the opposite wall, rotating and ticking as he seemed to regard the two women.

  “If you want to know a society’s true character,” he said through the speakers set high in each corner, and then stuttered in the manner of a damaged recording as he usually did, “l-lo-look… to the children. Cruel… selfish… spoilt,” and then he pointed and snapped, “m-m-murderers!”

  “I don’t know about that, Jack,” Kaya answered, “but I know what happened here, to Alice, it was an accident.”

  “Liar! She was taken… taken too soon. But Jack… Jack will take her back.”

  “Jack… she’s gone…”

  “No! She is hidden, from the others who would do her harm. But not Jack. Jack just needs to find her, now Jack can protect her.”

  “Yup,” the punk muttered through the corner of her mouth, “he’s totally crazy.”

  Jen agreed, but focused their attention on a storage room sealed by a chain. As they approached, Kaya believed she heard knocking and hurried ahead while Jen kept an eye on the hall.

  “You in there, dibbles?” The punk asked through the doors.

  Chance’s muffled voice answered back, “don’t be cute, Cade. Get this damn door open.”

  “Well not if you’re going to be like that.”

  “Cade…”

  “What are the magic words?”

  “You know there are a lot of unsolved thefts I could easily pin on you.”

  The punk shrugged nonchalantly. “Good enough,” she said, looking down at the lock and readying her picks, “should only take a minute.”

  Jack’s projection had shut itself off, leaving Jen shuffling uncomfortably while Kaya worked on the lock. “It’s too easy,” the blonde whispered. “There’s no way Jack’s going to let us just walk out of here.”

  The lock fell from the chain and Chance fell out of the doors, looking just a little more worn out and bedraggled than usual. Jen moved to help him up, but the officer suddenly pushed her back and screamed, “Look out!”

  She spun about, lifting her Taser rifle across her face to defend against a cleaning lady, or rather mannequin dressed as a cleaning lady, suddenly taking a swing at her head. Jen was knocked back, the eyes of the now animated creature following her. Francis Daramy suddenly rushed forward to defend her, attempting to wrestle it to the ground, but the automaton turned and with ease pushed and pinned him against the wall while its hands clasped around his throat. Two other officers tried to pull it off, but its grip was firm and unyielding. Kaya hit it with the butt of
her rifle, but all that did was scrape away some of the vinyl skin revealing the metal skeleton underneath. With no other options, the punk told the others to all stand back as she fired her rifle into the side of the automaton. The electrodes released the charge, a smell of burning wires and plastic as the creature smoked and convulsed violently, finally letting go collapsed. Kaya knew she was lucky not to have electrocuted Daramy as well. It was a move born of desperation, but had paid off. Might have been the rubber gloves, but there was no time for such considerations now as everyone continued to act instinctively.

  That emergency may have been over, but the respite was only a few seconds. In the rest of the hall, all the other mannequins began winding and turning themselves toward the humans. While individually they moved slowly and mechanically, they quickly joined up to become a horde, blocking the door that Kaya and Jen had used to enter the hall.

  There was another exit and so they all rushed to it, into a cafeteria. Chance, Kaya, and a couple other officers attempted to block the door behind them while the others sought a way out.