Read Online Spawn of Man by Terry Farricker - Free Book Online Page A

from the skeletal extremity jammed into the horizontal bar running across its vertical counterparts. The hand belonged to a skeleton that, unlike the others, was located at the front of the cell, its skull tilted up and looking at Robert from two empty, lifeless cavities. Robert then saw that the shin bone of this poor soul was cut short, matching the dismembered foot that was still held in the wall restraint.
    ‘What the hell happened here?’ whispered Robert.
    Robert crouched to the level of the skeleton. He followed the cable that entered that cell with his fingers, up from the floor outside the bars and through a square purposely cut into the bars. Where the trunk of the cable ended, spider legs of wires flourished and then spliced into slightly thinner versions and these entered small holes bored into the side of the skull. Robert grimaced and removed his fingers from the cable, turning to view the jumble of conduits that wove across the stone floor into the small room.
    ‘What is this place?’
    Standing, but still looking at the pitiful remains in the last cell, Robert pressed his thumb to his wrist again. A holographic menu, five inches by five inches, flashed into life before Robert’s right eye, projected from his CCI. Robert poked the air where the “record” icon flashed. The menu disappeared and a slender red line, similar to an infrared target beam, emanated from his eye and swept across the mutilated skull leaning against the bars of the cell. Robert then turned, filming the intertwining mass of cables as he picked his way amongst them and into the next room. There was no light in this room but the ceiling fittings in the cell chamber lit it adequately enough.
    The ray from Robert’s eye felt its way around the room like a lighthouse beam cutting through fog. In the centre of the room stood a single chair. It was heavily embellished with gratuitous scenes of debauchery and butchery of every type and the wood seemed to squirm in the ecstasy and agony of the acts wrought upon its surface. Years of dust layered it and it was stained with a substance in blotches that covered a large portion of its surface. Connected to the chair through a series of crude receivers, thick wires entered a small but sturdy looking generator, which stood four feet away from the chair.
    As Robert moved towards the chair he realized that the cables that left each cell, like the one he witnessed entering the skeleton’s skull, all meshed together into the generator. His foot kicked against a length of glass, obviously fragmented from the flakes in the chamber outside the last cell, and he knelt to examine the lethal looking sliver. It was covered with the same covering of dust as the chair and generator but when Robert blew some of this film away he saw a skin of darker matter that had dried onto the smooth surface and jagged edges. Robert placed the glass back into its own imprint in the dirt and stood to face the chair. Robert noticed the chair oddly faced a blank wall. He ran the red beam of his CCI over the design of the chair, puzzled as to why such a grotesque piece of furniture would have been produced.
    Cautiously, although he could not understand why he should show caution, he touched the chair. Nothing happened. He put his other hand on the opposite armrest so that he stood bent forward and holding the armrests like he was restricting its movement. At first the sensation in his palms was almost imperceptible, a prickling, scratching feeling as though he held something with spines that pressed into his skin lightly, even pleasurably. Robert turned his head sideways and looked through the open door into the chamber. He thought he heard a laugh, hollow and cold. It was more of an echo of the past than an event from the present. Then there was a click and the faint emission of fumes as the generator’s motor rumbled into life.
    Robert’s head clicked back to the generator, he still held the armrests as he watched a light