Denton paced back and forth. He opened his mouth to say something, but paused. All Sophia could hear was her own breathing and the faithful hum of the BlueGene nodes. Then she heard the nearby chatter of muted gunfire. Subsonic rounds flying almost whisper-quiet through the corridors outside, striking metal and flesh. And then silence again.
Denton grunted. He turned to Sophia. ‘Your mistresses don’t put up much of a fight, do they?’
Grace led her five shocktroopers, armed and uninjured, into the BlueGene lab. Sophia didn’t want to know how many of her own were dead.
Denton strode to Cecilia, ripped off her earpiece and radio, gave them to the nearest shocktrooper.
Without being told, Damien approached Sophia. He took her radio and removed her earpiece. She gave him no resistance, just glared at him. Damien avoided eye contact. Coward.
As if the six shocktroopers weren’t enough, the Berets arrived. Only sixteen of them, Sophia noted. She took a small amount of satisfaction in knowing her team had laid waste to almost the entire Blue Beret regiment stationed at the facility.
Denton snatched Cecilia’s com from her breast pocket. ‘I’d use it, but I’m sure you’ve had it re-encrypted,’ he said, and handed it to the Blue Beret sergeant. ‘Not a problem, of course, thanks to the virus I embedded in the second encryption layer.’ He grinned. ‘Pipe your output through that, bitch.’
Sophia realized immediately what Denton had done. The moment Cecilia pricked his finger and unwrapped both encryption layers, the virus had launched into action. Probably sent the damned Chimera vector codes right into his back pocket.
Denton moved to the lab entrance. The shocktroopers parted to let him through.
‘Renée,’ he said, ‘Sophia is to remain alive until I give the order.’
‘Colonel.’ Renée nodded and marched straight for Sophia.
Denton hesitated at the entrance, his gaze still on Renée. ‘The good doctors here are to be transported alive from the facility for rendition.’ He smiled at Sophia. ‘Betrayal, disappointment, misery. My work here is done.’
Chapter 36
Anger burning a hole through her, Sophia watched Grace and her shocktroopers escort Denton from the lab. She and Cecilia were the prisoners of sixteen Berets, double agent Renée and triple agents Damien and Jay. All while Cecilia’s Elohim had been dispatched on a wild goose chase and Sophia’s team were either dead, dying or in retreat. Neither they nor the Elohim were aware of what had just happened here.
A surge of pain bloomed from Sophia’s stomach. She dropped. Renée was standing over her. Sophia squeezed her eyes shut, focused on breathing the way Sergey had taught her, dispersing the energy from Renée’s blow.
Two loud synchronized blasts filled the lab. It felt like she was underwater. Everything sounded dull. She opened her eyes. There was a flash of white light. She shut her eyes, then tried again, this time slowly. It was as though someone had paused her vision. She was seeing the same freeze-frame for a few moments. Then the freeze-frame slowly decayed to reveal what was happening beneath.
On her left, she saw Damien’s hand slam down on the scope of the Blue Beret sergeant’s MP5, pointing the barrel to the floor. Damien cut his other hand into the sergeant’s neck, pulled the MP5 sharply to one side and twisted it out of the sergeant’s weakened grip. The man fell in an awkward cross-legged position.
Now was the time to move.
Sophia rolled towards Renée, who was recovering from what must’ve been a couple of flashbangs. Lying on her back, Sophia raised her legs from the floor, ensnared Renée’s firing arm in her boots, one on the inside of the forearm, the other on the back of the upper arm. She clamped her legs together like a pair of scissors; the ringing in her ears drowned out the sound of snapping bone. Renée reeled back and her P90 dropped onto Sophia’s stomach.
Sophia instantly seized it and rolled onto one knee, the stock pressed between her shoulder and chest. She should’ve dropped Renée first, but keeping Cecilia safe was more important.
She found Cecilia crawling for cover on her hands and knees. One of the Berets was leveling his barrel at her. Sophia exhaled, snapped her holographic weapons sight up, the circle covering the Beret’s face. The dot in the center of the circle came to rest under the Beret’s helmet. She squeezed the trigger halfway. A single round tore the Beret’s head apart.
Sophia shifted her aim back to Renée.
Renée was missing.
Keeping low, Sophia made for Cecilia. Rounds buzzed around her. She took Cecilia by the arm and pulled her behind a node cabinet. From the edge of the cabinet, she took aim at the cluster of Berets. Circle and dot over the blur of movement. She exhaled. Then stopped. Damien was right in the middle of them.
She cursed, took her finger from the trigger and peered over her sights to watch the Berets—too close to Damien to open fire—draw stun batons instead. Damien darted swiftly into the right flank, using their numbers to his advantage.
She scanned for another target. Left flank. Lucia and Nasira were hauling Benito out of harm’s way. They needed covering fire. She was about to take aim, but someone was already putting rounds down there.
Jay. He dropped into a crouch at the adjacent cabinet and winked at her.
She ignored him, lined up a Beret and depressed her trigger.
***
Damien gripped the stolen MP5 by its scope. A Beret lunged towards him, a stun baton going for his neck. Sidestepping, Damien held the MP5’s shoulder strap taut. The baton bounced off the strap, almost striking the soldier back in his own face. Damien stepped in beside him and pulled the strap around the man’s neck, quick and tight, cutting off the blood flow to his brain.
Two other Berets thrust their batons into him, at the same time. Damien disengaged the scope from the top rail of the MP5 and used it to deflect the first baton, sending it into the chest of the second baton holder, who shuddered from the voltage. Using the MP5 scope as a staff, Damien drove it end-first into the first baton holder’s neck, then, with a flick of the wrist, thrust the other end down low, deep into his stomach.
With his right hand, he released the shoulder strap from around the neck of the first Beret. His helmet came off and he slumped to the floor. Damien snagged the helmet with three fingers and used it to knock away a fourth baton, his movements efficient and soft. You didn’t learn that in Karate or Kung Fu.
Scope in left hand, helmet in right, Damien dug the scope behind the fourth Beret’s neck, pulled him forward while tripping him. The man fell onto the other bodies.
Damien dropped the helmet and drew his own pistol on the highest threat adversary. Two rounds into the fourth Beret. Then two into the third, two into the second. Two into the first. He snapped his aim to the Berets on his left flank. They should just about be within striking range. But they weren’t. In fact, the left flank was extinct. Jay and Sophia had seen to that.
***
Before Sophia had a chance to ask, Lucia said, ‘We planned it outside with Damien and Jay. They were never on Denton’s side.’
Sophia checked Benito for injuries. He was unscathed.
‘You had me convinced,’ she said. ‘Nice work. Where’s Cassandra?’
Lucia looked away. ‘Dead. Shocktroopers took her out before we could pull back.’
Sophia closed her eyes. ‘Fuck.’
Cecilia brushed down her trench coat. ‘And where’s Renée?’
Sophia turned quickly to where she’d last seen her. ‘No one got her?’
Jay checked the chamber on his stolen MP5. ‘Nope.’
Cecilia said to Jay, ‘I suppose this makes you and Damien quadruple agents.’
‘Something like that,’ Jay said.
‘Thank you,’ Sophia said. She meant it.
Jay squinted. ‘We had to wait until the shocktroopers were gone. With those guys still here, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
‘Which also meant allowing Denton to escape.’ Sophia put her hands on her hips, did her trained breathing through bruised ribs.
‘Oh, I don’t think he escaped at all,’ Cecilia said, head down, com in gloved hands. ‘He’s destroyed all of the sequencing equipment in this facility. All except the equipment in the Vector labs. I know Denton. He’ll have sealed himself inside the Vector labs so no one can get to him while he prepares the Chimera vector codes on the sequencing equipment and gets them ready to inject.’
‘Into who?’ Jay asked.
‘Himself.’
Damien cleared his throat. ‘We’re running out of time.’
‘I’d give him ten minutes before they’re ready to inject,’ Cecilia said.
‘No, I don’t mean the codes,’ Damien said. His expression was dark, granite-like. ‘The Fifth Column launched a bunker-buster missile to take out the facility.’
‘In case Denton couldn’t clean up his own shit,’ Jay said.
‘That being us,’ Damien said.
‘And you shit for brains didn’t think to inform us earlier?’ Nasira said.
Jay turned to her. ‘Hey! Should I remind you who just saved your ass, sister?’
‘Sister?’ Nasira’s hands were on her hips. ‘Are you on crack?’
‘Look,’ Damien said, ‘we only found out ten minutes ago.’
‘How long do we have?’ Sophia asked.
Jay read from his watch. ‘Twenty-four minutes, sixteen seconds. We synchronized our countdown with Denton. It’s accurate to the—’ Jay sneezed extraordinarily loudly. ‘Second.’
‘What the hell was that?’ Nasira said, stepping away from his blast radius.
‘Eight on the Richter scale,’ Damien said.
‘Do you still have your com?’ Cecilia asked Sophia, her calm unyielding.
Sophia pulled it from her webbing belt and tossed it to her. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘Quite a lot, actually.’ Cecilia angled the com so Sophia could see the screen.
It was filled with code.
The Chimera vector codes.
She couldn’t believe it. ‘How did you do that?’
Cecilia smiled. ‘Denton wasn’t the only one who thought of slipping a virus into the mix.’
Sophia laughed, but the sound was sapped of energy. ‘Look, if you’re captured, we put the entire Akhana resistance at risk. Not to mention lose our only copy of the Chimera vector codes. The first thing we need to do is get you the hell out of here.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Cecilia said.
Sophia followed her gaze to the lab entrance. All eighteen of her Elohim walked inside, armed and unscathed. Their red visors glinted under the fluorescent light.
‘I didn’t simply order them to report,’ Cecilia said, ‘I ordered them to report
back
. A subtlety in language Denton managed to overlook.’
Sophia turned to Benito. ‘You can go with her.’
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m staying.’
‘That’s not negotiable,’ Sophia said.
‘Which is why I’m not negotiating.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s too dangerous for you to stay.’
‘It’s too dangerous for me to leave.’
Cecilia buried her com in her coat pocket. ‘How many explosives do you have?’
‘Three grenades,’ Sophia said. ‘Why?’
Cecilia shook her head. ‘That won’t be enough.’
Nasira started rifling through the dead Berets’ pouches. ‘Don’t they have plastic explosives?’
‘’Fraid not.’ Jay crossed his arms over his shoulder-slung MP5. ‘Facility regulations. No explosives. Just stun and smoke.’
Sophia turned to Cecilia. ‘You need to go. Now.’
‘First, listen to me,’ Cecilia said. ‘This facility has a nuclear reactor and an auxiliary power station. You need to knock out
both
to get inside the Vector labs. Once inside the labs, there’s an uninterruptable power supply you’ll also need to take offline. If you don’t, Denton will still have enough power to continue.’
She walked towards the BlueGene lab’s entrance, her Elohim arranging themselves in a diamond formation around her, allowing only just enough room for Sophia to fit inside.
Cecilia paused at the entrance and placed a gloved hand on Sophia’s shoulder. ‘If Denton gives the Chimera vector codes to the Fifth Column, it’s over.’
‘We’ll stop him,’ Sophia said. ‘We have to.’
Cecilia smiled. ‘I’ll see you soon then.’
***
Sophia turned to face what remained of her team: Damien, Jay, Benito, Nasira and Lucia. Her attention sharpened on the two men who’d just saved them. This wasn’t the time for pride.
‘We need your help,’ she said.
‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’ Damien asked.
‘About what?’
‘Do we look stupid to you?’ Jay said. ‘An anti-psychopath Chimera vector is about as useful to Denton as a third armpit. And the Axel Salamander whatever-it’s-called is not something you’d go to the trouble of encrypting, yeah?’ He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘I tell you what, you fill us in on the blanks and then we’ll think about helping your ass.’
Nasira crossed her arms. ‘You do look stupid.’
Sophia knew she’d have to tell them the full story if they were going to help her, and quickly. ‘If you’ve already been injected with the Axolotl Chimera vector and then you decide you want to inject yourself with the anti-psychopath Chimera vector as well, there’s a side effect. It switches on different pseudogenes that enhance DNA repair and boost hormones, antioxidant protection, a whole range of functions normally switched off in humans. It’s called the Methuselah effect.’
Jay rolled his eyes. ‘And in English that means what?’
‘It means indefinite lifespan. And if the Fifth Column get that, our anti-psychopath vector means shit.’
Jay shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘No point stopping psychopaths from reproducing if they live forever,’ Nasira said. ‘Now are you in or out?’
Jay turned to Damien. ‘This is all kinds of crazy.’
‘It is,’ Damien said. He turned to Sophia. ‘And we’re in.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Jay said.
‘Anyone who has grenades,’ Sophia said, ‘give them to Lucia. Damien and Lucia, you’ll disable the reactor with the grenades.’
‘With grenades?’ Damien said.
‘Yes.’ Sophia turned her attention to Nasira. ‘I need you and Jay to disable the auxiliary power station before Damien and Lucia have done their bit.’