“Get out of the building!” he ordered. “Get out!”
The boy blinked at him, helplessly. “Move! Run!” Bruno roared. He backhanded the kid, hating himself for it. But it worked; the kid spun around, set off down the corridor.
Some of the others came to their senses more quickly. Some opened their eyes screaming and fighting. He paused at one cot where Lily stood, hands clamped over her mouth, tears running down her face. The girl lay still, spine contorted, her head at a strange angle. Lily had taken off the goggles, and the girl’s large dark eyes were empty.
Bruno touched her carotid artery. No pulse.
He pushed past Lily without comment. Went on to the next bed.
It only took a few minutes to get the kids unfastened. The last girl was a goner, too. Eight out of ten. Six out the door. He was shoving the last two forward when that deep voice made ice crystallize in his blood.
“Well, now. Look at this. You bad boy.”
Bruno shoved the kids behind him. Lily dragged in a sharp gulp of air and flattened herself against the wall.
King stepped into the room, aiming a gun at Bruno’s chest.
Too good to be true. Lily had known it since she got out of her cell. She hadn’t been proposing a rescue mission when she showed Bruno this place, but she might have known how he’d react when he saw those kids. It was just the kind of person he was.
And now they were screwed.
King gave her a smile. “Thank you, my dear, for bringing him to me. Your powers are as great as you claimed. You convinced him to trust you again, in spite of everything!” He turned to Bruno, gesturing with the gun. “We had a bet, you see. She was sure you would fall prey to her powers of seduction. Whereas I bet on your intelligence and cynicism. Since you are my son. I lost, but I’ll enjoy the penalty I must pay to her. Tonight.” He winked, mischievously. “In private.”
Lily looked from King to Bruno, back to King, bewildered. “I . . . what bet? But I . . . but he . . .” She turned to Bruno. “You’re his
son?
”
Bruno’s stiff, bleak face told the truth. And she started putting it together.
The game’s up. No need to pretend anymore.
He thought that she . . . oh, God, no. That she’d
betrayed
him?
King was still chatting at Bruno. “Thursdays is our day for Combat DeepWeave 43.5. It’s much more sophisticated than the one I used on you, twenty-four yearsago. They complement the program with intense physical training. Your brother Julian is their master on the practice floor. Very talented, like you. I suspect the martial arts training from that McCloud fellow you lived with complemented your DeepWeave combat programming like a key to a lock. Happy coincidence. Not that it will do you any good now.” His mouth twisted. “Such a waste.”
“Bruno, he’s lying!” Lily blurted out. “You can’t believe him, about me! It’s not true, about me bringing you here on purpose—”
“Lily, stop.” King’s voice was testy. “You’ve proved your point. You need to learn when to quit.” He turned back to Bruno. “I do hope you haven’t permanently damaged my trainees, young man,” he chided. “Ripping them out of the middle of a DeepWeave combat session, without any decompression, that’s unprecedented! And dangerous!”
“You’re a fine one to talk about dangerous.” Bruno’s eyes darted toward the two dead girls. “They deserved a chance.”
“Oh? And did you think they would just run away from me?” He laughed, waving his gun in the air. “Fly away, little birds, be free!” he mocked. “No, they belong to me! They love me! Like you should have!”
“That’s not love.” Bruno gestured behind him at the bodies, so still on their cots. “Those girls are dead,” he said. “That’s love?”
“No, that’s natural selection.” King’s voice took on a lecturing tone. “They culled themselves, you see. DeepWeave is psychologically demanding, as you well know. Only the strongest survive.”
“You sick fuck,” Bruno said. “You really need to die.”
“It’s your day for that, son.” King’s voice was cheerful. “Thanks to your lady friend. She’s a bit confused right now. It’s been a stressful assignment for her. To say nothing of sexually stressful. The tales of your torrid affair make an old man blush.”
“I never said anything about us! Don’t listen!” she yelled, but Bruno would not even meet her eyes. It was a stab in the back she could never have imagined. “Bruno, you can’t believe that I—”
“I said, be still!” King thundered. “Get out of the way, Lily. I’ve had enough. This is a failed experiment, and it ends, now.” He aimed.
Bam.
The bullet hit a metal bed frame. Bruno dove, hit the floor, started to crawl. One of the kids screamed, clutching her arm.
King clucked his tongue. “Now look what you made me do!”
Bruno sprang up and upended one of the cots.
Bam,
the bullet punched through the mattress. Chunks of the latex foam flew. A window shattered. The girl who’d been hit was screaming, a thin, piercing sound. The other kid was yelling, too.
Bam,
the bullet tore the wall next to Lily’s head, gouging a hole. She dropped to the ground, crawling between metal posts, the clawed feet of metal IV stands, the rolling carts that held medical equipment.
Bam.
She poked her head out. Bruno was swinging an IV rack at King, who darted back. The glass bottle of fluid smashed against the wall, liquid splashing, glass tinkling.
Bam.
Bruno upended another bed frame, pinning King against the wall. He darted out the door while the older man struggled to extricate himself. The bed frame teetered, fell on its side with a clang and a crunch. King took off after Bruno.
The room was silent now but for the keening of the girl with the grazed arm, which bled but not profusely. Cold wind whined through the broken window. The gun went off outside—again. And again. Lily flinched each time, hoping the shots hadn’t found their mark.
She felt deafened. Numbed. Her legs shook and wobbled as she clambered her way over the snarl of wires, cables, overturned beds, and IV racks jutting out at crazy angles to get to the wounded girl and the boy with her, a freckled kid of about sixteen. Both of them huddled by the wall, looking confused and stoned out of their minds. Exactly why she’d hesitated to mess with them in the first place.
Slowly, relentlessly, her mind wrapped all the way around this stark new reality without snapping. Bruno had abandoned her.
To be perfectly fair, he was currently being pursued by a madman with a gun. But he believed that she’d set him up. That she’d betrayed him, his family and friends, and deliberately lured him to his death. A bubbly gurgling sound came out of her. The room swirled, wavered, and blurred. Snot, everywhere. So. She was on her own again. To the ends of the universe. So what the fuck else was new.
Onward. She proceeded with grim purpose, grabbing the arm of the first kid, shoving him in the direction of the door, kicking his leg to encourage him to move. Slowly, clumsily, she got the two young people out of the door, into the corridor. Onward. To the grand staircase, the main entrance. She nudged the young people into a stumbling lope. The huge sky-lit great hall ahead of them glowed, beckoning—
A big hand clamped onto her upper arm, twisting until a shriek of pain jerked out of her throat. Swinging her around, slamming her against the wall.
Crack.
Oh, God . . . her head . . . oh,
ouch . . .
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Hobart snarled.
Zoe struggled, kicking and thrashing. They’d left her trussed in the SUV and run when they heard gunshots. Running to show King how brave, how loyal they were. But she knew the truth. Pigs. Demons.
They thought she was finished, but she would destroy them and save King. She thought of the day they’d dined together. When he’d said the words that made the universe explode in song.
The memory strengthened her. She had so much love to give him. But first she had to show him her true worth and destroy his enemies.
She kicked free of the tarp and maneuvered herself backward until she found the door release. It opened, dumping her bound body out onto the concrete floor. The contact hurt every ripped muscle fiber, every inflamed tendon. A chorus of agony. But pain was nothing to her.
She slithered through the huge garage, worming past several cans of gasoline piled against the wall to the workshop, the circular table saw. She pushed herself up against the edge of the blade, rubbing and scraping at the plastic cuff until it yielded.
The rush of circulation into her hands almost made her scream. She’d scraped her wrists raw. Blood dripped from her fingertips. But she was on a holy mission. Blood had to be spilled. To purify her, to show King her utter commitment to him. Body and soul.
She groped for a handsaw, and as soon as her slippery fingers closed around it, used it to release her ankles.
Her first act of freedom was to grope for the patches in the pocket of her pants. One of the cards was gone. She counted again. How . . . ?
Whatever. She’d figure it out later. She peeled off three, put them on. A large dose but she had a very big job to do. Three of them would make her impervious to pain, to fear. To anything.
Two more gunshots in the distance jolted her into action. She grabbed two of the heavy cans of gasoline and ran into the house.
35
Z
wangggh,
the bullet slashed through the top of Bruno’s ear, stinging. It plowed into the woodwork, sending splinters and chunks flying. Bruno kept going, blood trickling in front of his ear.
King had a revolver. Bruno had heard six shots. Th
e guy would have to reload, unless he had another gun. He burst out into what had once been the great hall of the turn-of-the-century country mansion, and a towering vaulted ceiling with domes, cupolas, and innumerable windows opened up above him. It had been painted white and gold a long time ago, but now the paint was cracked, browned, and flaking.
Two symmetrical curving staircases led down to the first floor. He bolted for the nearest one. Julian was at the door, shoving the last of the teenagers out the main entrance. Julian swung around with a shout, pulling out his gun. Bruno lurched to the side—
bam.
He slammed into the banister, bounced off, somersaulted, found his feet. Leaped off, straight at the younger guy. Their bodies slammed together.
Bam.
The gun discharged, bounced, and spun as Julian hit the floor, squashed beneath Bruno’s weight, but the boy was only stunned for an instant. He punched, Bruno blocked. Julian snagged his wrist, twisted until the torque flipped Bruno over. He jabbed a finger under Julian’s jaw. Julian twisted away. Strange to be so close to a face so like his own, but contorted with killing rage. He flinched back to evade a finger jab to the eye, and it gouged his cheekbone, snagged his eyelid. Blood, filling his eye. His body moved instinctively. Jab, block, kick and punch, chop and stab. Bruno had a slight advantage in height and bulk, but Julian was a decade younger, and Bruno was trashed on every level. His combat buzz bore him up, but he gained no ground.
They maneuvered for the gun. Julian lunged for it, jerked back to let Bruno’s flash kick swoosh by his face. He dropped, trying to sweep Bruno’s leg from under him. Bruno danced back, rolled, flipped, dove—
Oof,
the kid landed on top of him, but he got his arm around Julian’s head from below and jabbed the gun under his chin.
And could not shoot. He simply could not pull the trigger.
Terror exploded inside him. Frantic gabbling voices, his blocked survival instincts telling him not to be a fucking idiot,
kill
him already—
No. He just couldn’t. Not his brother. His mamma’s son.
Julian was braced to die. Bruno slammed the younger man’s face to the floor and sat on him, keeping the gun jabbed.
“Before you kill him, Bruno, consider this.”
King’s voice jerked Bruno’s gaze up. King held Lily in front of him at the top of the stairs, head jerked back, arms twisted behind her.
The guy they’d called Hobart descended the stairs, holding a gun on Bruno. He was herding the last two teenagers in front of him, shoving them on. The two young people gave him and Julian a wide berth as they fled out the main door.
“Look what’s around her neck,” King said. “Remember the fight at the cabin? The operatives’ cell phones, wird to their vital signs?”
“The ones that exploded when they croaked,” Bruno said.
“Only my own personal operatives carried them. Those who serve me directly. A small amount of explosives to destroy the mechanism after the information is erased. But enough to kill at close range.”
“Yeah, I know,” Bruno said. “I was there.”
“I learned from that experience,” King mused. “Very painful. Humbling, even. You see, before you, I considered my own operatives invulnerable. But pride goeth before a fall. Or an explosion, if you will.” A strange, shrill giggle burst out of him. “Today, I reactivated Julian’s and Hobart’s old cell phones, with the explosives wired to their vital signs again. On impulse.” He indicated Lily’s neck, where the phones dangled on duct tape. “And here they are! If you should kill either one of them, the explosion would blow her head . . . well, if not off, then almost off. It would hang by a thread. Picture it.”
Bruno stared at the guy, his mind blank. What the
fuck?
Lily stared down, unbending dignity radiating from her body. Her face, her eyes, had that hard, glassy look he had seen in the video. Now he sensed, in a rush, what that look actually was.
It was endurance.
“Go down, Hobart,” King ordered. “Have no fear. He’s neutralized.” He studied Bruno’s face, his gaze fixed on Lily. “You may well ask, eh? Is she, or isn’t she? Is she the Lily you know and love? Or is she
my
Lily?” His voice dropped to an oily croon. “My lovely, perfect, dirty Lily.” He let go of her neck, slid his hand down, grabbed her breast.
Lily jerked. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed.
King cackled. The sound bounced off the walls, blurring like spooky canned laughter. “You know what’s funny, Bruno?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.” He didn’t take his eyes off Lily.
“Yes, I will. The funny thing is, this dilemma of yours . . . it doesn’t even matter! You’re still bound, either way! Even if she were holding a gun to your head, you wouldn’t be able to hurt her.”
Bruno stared into Lily’s eyes. “Lily?” he asked, quietly.
Her face was like marble. “If you have to ask, then there’s no point in answering you.”
King guffawed. “Oh, so it’s like that? Oh, Lily, that’s harsh. No mercy, eh? Let him dangle and twist, you heartless bitch.”
Lily did not respond in look or word. She just stood there, proud and cold. And pure. Like nothing could touch her.
And Julian vibrated underneath him, like a volcano about to explode. It was like standing on the pin of a grenade.
Had King been fucking with him all along? Hope made him almost giddy.
But hope was a luxury he could not afford. Hobart was moving cautiously down the stairs, his face wary in spite of King’s assurances. King shoved Lily, forcing her ahead of him.
There was a pattering sound. A pungent smell. Gasoline.
They looked up. Zoe hung over the railing. If she’d been a death’s head before, she was a full-out horror show now. Blood flooded from both ears, streaming down her neck. Her face was grayish, shiny. Veins pulsed in her forehead. Her bloodied teeth showed in a mad grin.
“I’ll save you, sir!” she yelled in the unnaturally loud tones of a person wearing headphs. “Don’t trust them! They’ll betray you!”
“Zoe!” King howled. “Whatever you are doing, stop it!” He thundered out one of those phrases, but Zoe did not turn her head.
She sloshed more gasoline and lurched toward the staircase.
Julian’s muscles constricted in a bid for freedom, and Bruno jabbed the gun under the guy’s jaw more deeply, staring at Zoe. At the blood flowing from her ears. “She’s deaf,” he commented. “She can’t hear your commands. You’ve got a rogue robot on your hands. And no off switch. Congratulations. Asshole.”
“Shut up!” King pulled Lily back against himself. “Zoe!” He let loose with the gobbledygook again. Zoe ignored him. Gasoline pattered the dusty floor with shiny, oily drops. The fumes were sickening.
“Hobart!” King bellowed. “Stop her!”
Bam.
Hobart tried to obey. Zoe shrieked as the bullet hit her shoulder and spun her around. The gas can dropped, nozzle side down, glugging, cascading down the stairs.
Bam,
this time the thigh, but Zoe got up like a zombie ghoul and still came on, bleeding.
She hit the gas can with her foot. It bounced to the foot of the stairs, liquid still glugging out, spreading in a pool. Zoe tumbled to the foot of the stairs and lay still. Hobart walked over to her—
Her knife flashed up, stabbing into his hamstring. Hobart screamed. His gun went off, the bullet thudding into the stairs. He fell backward—and Zoe was on top, slamming her fist into his face.
A rapid movement caught his eye. Lily jerked to the side, and the movement caught King off guard, pulled him off balance. The two of them hit the aged, cracked wooden banister, which had born Bruno’s weight when he fell against it but could not bear the combined mass of Lily and King together. It cracked, sagged. Gave way.
“No!” Bruno yelled as King and Lily toppled out into empty air.
They took flight. Part of her hoping maybe it was all over. She might break her neck, please God. But the fall wasn’t far enough. They toppled in a sickening three-sixty flop, everything spinning—
Thud.
The sudden stop stunned her. King was beneath her, his face empurpled, gasping for air. Horribly close. He’d landed on his back. Her on top. She’d knocked out his wind. She scrambled away and crab-walked through a puddle of gasoline, groping for the duct-tape necklace with the cell phones. Jerked them off, threw. One ended up in a pool of gas. The other fetched up against a tasseled velvet curtain.
Zoe and Hobart had paused in their combat to watch their idol fall, horrified. Lily looked frantically around for a weapon. A banister slat lay on the floor, a chunk of the handrail still attached, jagged and sharp. She seized it, hauled it back, loading a vicious swing at King.
Zoe and Hobart forgot each other and lunged to stop her.
Bruno jerked the pistol up.
Bam. Bam.
Hobart’s head disintegrated. Julian exploded into action, flipping him onto his back, slamming his gun hand to the ground.
The gun flew from Bruno’s fingers, spinning across the floor. A pinkish arc of Hobart’s blood and brain tissue had spattered across the room.
Boom.
One of the cell phones exploded. The sound hit him, like a blow to the center of the chest. The puddle of gas burst into dancing flames with a
whump.
Flames licked, leaped, spread. Fast.
Bruno tried to regroup, but Julian drove him hard, and he could only catch what was happening in jagged flashes out of the corner of his eye, like stop-motion animation amid a desperate dance to avoid the blows crunching into his ribs, the boot heels flying toward his chin. Julian fought like a demon, but the stench of burning hair dragged a split second of attention Bruno could ill afford to see Zoe lurching to her feet—on fire. Hair, clothes, face. Her back was aflame, her hair a torch, her face blistering. She’d fallen in a puddle of gas.
She didn’t seem to feel it. She just shambled toward King, arms outstretched. Smiling, as her skin crackled, melted. Come to mamma. Lily backed away from the flaming apparition. King staggered back, screaming desperately. Words her ruptured eardrums could not hear.
She came on. King’s back hit the base of the curving wooden staircase.
Thwack,
Bruno’s distraction earned him an elbow to the jaw that sent him spinning way too close to a pool of dancing flame. He twisted and skittered to keep from falling into it, which opened him up to a devastating
whap-bam
double punch to his kidneys. Down he went,
oof. Fuck.
Julian came at him, boots flying. Bruno jerked an arm to block a kick and saw Lily, swinging her strange, jagged-edged club—
Whack,
right between Julian’s shoulder blades. The kid stumbled forward with a startled grunt, turned—and witnessed King, clasped in Zoe’s fiery embrace. Clothes aflame, mouth wide, issuing a rasping, inhuman sound. King fell, Zoe on top of him. Flames roared around them, closing until only their legs emerged, jerking. Shiny, blistered hands poked out of the blaze, groping for the bottom of the tasseled velvet curtains, which were also on fire.
Julian bolted toward his master. Dove in, heedless of the flames, trying to pry King loose. The blazing curtain gave way and billowed down onto the struggling knot of people,
thawhump
. Crackling.
Bruno and Lily were alone in a roaring inferno. The heavy folds of burning cloth writhed, flopped. Bruno pushed himself up to a sitting position. Lily straightened and tossed the makeshift club to the ground.
Bruno got to his feet and gestured toward the door. “Let’s go!”
Amazingly, she shook her head and backed toward the staircase that was not yet in flames. “No! The kids are still in there!”
Her voice sounded like it was coming through thousands of miles of phone wire. He shook his head. The movement made everything hurt.
“They got out!” he yelled. “Julian chased them onto the grounds!”
“Not them! The babies!” She headed back up the stairs.
Babies?
What in the flying fuck . . . ?
Boom,
the other cell phone exploded. Bruno barely heard it, he was so deafened by gunshots. A new pool of flames whooshed into existence, threatening to engulf the second staircase, where Lily had gone. The other was already a solid wall of flames.
The air was hot, the smoke thick and greasy. He heard himself, from faraway, screaming obscenities as he leaped the flames to the foot of the stairs, practically barbecuing his testicles in the process.