Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

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       CHAPTER 31

      A NINETEENTH-CENTURY stonemason had chiseled HANDS OF MERCY into a limestone block above the hospital entrance. A weathered image of the Virgin Mary overlooked the front steps.

      The hospital had closed long ago, and after the building had been sold to a shell corporation controlled by Victor Helios, the windows had been bricked shut. Steel doors had been installed at every entrance, equipped with both mechanical and electronic locks.

      A tall wrought-iron fence surrounded the oak-shaded property, like a stockpile of spears from a full Roman legion. To the rolling electric gate was affixed a sign: PRIVATE WAREHOUSE / NO ADMITTANCE.

      Hidden cameras surveyed the grounds, the perimeter. No nuclear weapons storage depot had a larger or more dedicated security force, or one more discreet.

      The forbidding structure stood silent. No beam of light escaped it, though here the new rulers of the Earth were designed and made.

      A staff of eighty lived and worked within these walls, assisting in experiments in a maze of laboratories. In rooms that had once held hospital patients, newly minted men and women were housed and rapidly educated until they could be infiltrated into the population of the city.

      The armored doors of certain other rooms were locked. The creations within them needed to be restrained while being studied.

      Victor conducted his most important work in the main laboratory. This vast space had a techno sensibility with some Art Deco style and a dash of Wagnerian grandeur. Glass, stainless steel, white ceramic: All were easy to sterilize if things got … messy.

      Sleek and arcane equipment, much of which he himself designed and built, lined the chamber, rose out of the floor, depended from the ceiling. Some of the machines hummed, some bubbled, some stood silent and menacing.

      In this windowless lab, if he put his wristwatch in a drawer, he could labor long hours, days, without a break. Having improved his physiology and metabolism to the point that he needed little or no sleep, he was able to give himself passionately to his work.

      Tonight, as he arrived at his desk, his phone rang. The call came on line five. Of eight lines, the last four – rollovers that served a single number – were reserved for messages and inquiries from those creations with which he had been gradually populating the city.

      He picked up the handset. “Yes?”

      The caller, a man, was struggling to repress the emotion in his voice, more emotion than Victor ever expected to hear from one of the New Race: “Something is happening to me, Father. Something strange. Maybe something wonderful.”

      Victor’s creations understood that they must contact him only in a crisis. “Which one are you?”

      “Help me, Father.”

      Victor felt diminished by the word father. “I’m not your father. Tell me your name.”

      “I’m confused … and sometimes scared.”

      “I asked for your name.”

      His creations had not been designed to have the capability to deny him, but this one refused to identify himself: “I’ve begun to change.”

      “You must tell me your name.”

      “Murder,” said the caller. “Murder … excites me.”

      Victor kept the growing concern out of his voice. “No, your mind is fine. I don’t make mistakes.”

      “I’m changing. There’s so much to learn from murder.”

      “Come to me at the Hands of Mercy.”

      “I don’t think so. I’ve killed three men … without remorse.”

      “Come to me,” Victor insisted.

      “Your mercy won’t extend to one of us who has … fallen so far.”

      A rare queasiness overcame Victor. He wondered if this might be the serial killer who enchanted the media. One of his own creations, breaking programming to commit murder for no authorized reason?

      “Come to me, and I’ll provide whatever guidance you need. There is only compassion for you here.”

      The electronically disguised voice denied him again. “The most recent one I killed … was one of yours.”

      Victor’s alarm grew. One of his creations killing another by its own decision. Never had this happened before. A programmed injunction against suicide was knit tightly into their psyches, as was a stern commandment that permitted murder for just two reasons: in self-defense or when instructed by their maker to kill.

      “The victim,” Victor said. “His name?”

      “Allwine. They found his corpse inside the city library this morning.”

      Victor caught his breath as he considered the implications.

      The caller said, “There was nothing to learn from Allwine. He was like me inside. I’ve got to find it elsewhere, in others.”

      “Find what?” Victor asked.

      “What I need,” said the caller, and then hung up.

      Victor keyed in *69 – and discovered that the caller’s phone was blocked for automatic call-back.

      Furious, he slammed down the handset.

      He sensed a setback.