The reactor groaned behind him. He sprinted down the corridor. The walls shuddered as the reactor burst open, starting to douse the chamber in lethal doses of radiation.
***
From the corner of her vision, Sophia saw the blast door lift slowly. She shouted to Benito, ‘Get inside!’
Fifty meters ahead, the shocktroopers moved through the graphite cloud dispersed by the Class D fire extinguisher. Sophia had no choice but to seal the blast door herself, from the inside. The rest of her team would be stuck outside. Which meant it would be up to Benito and herself to stop Denton.
Benito crawled under the opening blast door. Sophia retreated until her back hit the blast door. She didn’t want to reveal her location by shooting at the shocktroopers until she was certain she could drop them. And she needed a catastrophic head shot to do that.
Lying on her stomach would make her the smallest target, but was more difficult to shoot from. So she dropped into a sitting position, drew her legs up and stabilized her elbows on the inside of her knees.
The graphite flakes in the air masked her body heat and Benito’s. Not only did they obscure ordinary vision but, more importantly, the shocktroopers’ wider perception of near and mid-infrared. But the shocktroopers were approaching the edge of the cloud. They’d be able to see her soon.
They raised their pistols and separated, moving along the wide corridor walls as they approached the bottleneck. She kept her aim on the left shocktrooper’s head, or what she could see of it through the cloud. They weren’t aiming yet; they were waiting for their vision to clear. She had to take the shot now.
She exhaled slowly, closed one eye, held her breath, then squeezed off a double tap.
The left shocktrooper twitched, then dropped to his knees. Sophia opened her other eye and adjusted her aim to the right shocktrooper. She ignored the first as he slumped to the floor.
The right shocktrooper couldn’t see Sophia yet, but he fired anyway, aiming in her general direction. Rounds smashed into Sophia’s chest. She collapsed against the blast door.
The shocktrooper continued his approach, twenty meters and closing. Any moment now and his vision would clear completely.
She couldn’t inhale. She felt as though she’d been beaten with a concrete block. The rounds had struck the boron carbide plate in her vest. The blast door was lifting behind her head. Benito stared down at her, his face blurred in her vision. His hands moved around her, attempting to shift her. She tried to draw breath, force air into her lungs.
She held onto Benito’s arms as he dragged her inside. The blast door was closing again, right over her waist. Benito must’ve hit the button to close it.
She craned her neck. The shocktrooper was about ten meters away, his pace increasing, pistol aimed. They were almost clear for a shot.
Benito’s green eyes hovered over her for an instant. She moved her lips to say, ‘Shoot him,’ but couldn’t hear herself speak.
She couldn’t move her left hand. She turned her head to one side and discovered why. A round had missed the para-aramid vest by an inch, smashing through her shoulder and tearing scar tissue.
The blast door was a meter from her legs. Her P90 was in pieces around her. Her body was racked with pain.
The shocktrooper was a few paces from the fringe of the graphite cloud. He aimed his pistol at her.
Chapter 41
The shocktrooper’s forefinger curled over the pistol’s trigger. Somewhere in the back of Jay’s mind, a small voice told him it was all over.
He gripped the cable and held tight. His spine itched. Before he knew what was happening, his muscles contracted as though someone had shocked him with a mild current. He couldn’t have let go of the cable if he’d wanted to. A fiery tingle burst through him. Into the cable. Pain writhed through him.
Above, the shocktrooper’s grip on the cable tightened. Her body shuddered fiercely. Two rounds burst from her pistol. Her aim was off and they cracked past his shoulder. The pistol followed the rounds, falling down the shaft. The shocktrooper’s grip on the cable finally failed. She dropped too, knocking into him on the way down, sending him into a spin.
He shut his eyes and held tight until the pain trickled away.
There was an echo from far below as the shocktrooper hit the elevator roof. ‘We’re out of time!’ Nasira’s voice jolted him, bouncing off the shaft walls. ‘Are you going to just hang around or shall we get the hell out of here?’
Jay breathed hard. He peered around his cable and spotted her on the ladder.
‘Where’s the other shocktrooper?’ he called, annoyed that his voice came out a bit shaky.
Nasira pointed down. On the roof of the other elevator, he saw the second shocktrooper enshrouded in gloom, body still and limbs bent into unnatural angles.
‘How did you do that?’ he said, his voice less shaky this time.
‘Two rounds to the head. The simplest solutions are often the best. Although not as electrifying as yours.’
Jay sneezed. It sounded like a foghorn as it echoed down the shaft.
‘Pretty sure everyone in the entire facility heard that,’ Nasira said.
Jay cleared his throat. ‘I get that a lot.’
***
Jay didn’t quite know how, but somehow he managed to get himself over to the ladder where Nasira was waiting and follow her out the emergency access hatch. He looked down to find himself soaked in blood and sweat.
Nasira loaded a fresh mag into her P90. ‘That electrogenic shit you got going on there, not too different from mine. Electrical fields, magnetic fields. Suppose you’re handy to have around.’
‘Magnetic fields?’ Jay said.
Nasira tapped her head. ‘Magnetite. We all have it, only mine actually works. Comes in handy.’
‘Yeah, great,’ Jay said. ‘I always wanted a human compass.’
‘We need to move.’ Nasira started into a run.
Jay ran with her. ‘I need your pistol.’
Nasira checked her pistol, then handed it to him.
‘Where’s my radio?’ Jay said, stopping.
‘Oh.’ Nasira drew to a halt. ‘It came off me when I was on the elevator. Let’s just pray Lucia disabled the reactor then.’
‘Lucia and Damien.’ Jay fed a round into the chamber of the pistol. ‘Hell, you don’t seem like the praying type.’
She took the safety off her P90. ‘You mean I don’t seem like the type that wants to metaphorically eat the flesh of a zombie called Jesus so he can make me immortal and cleanse me of my sins that were put there because a talking snake told some naked tart to eat fruit from a magical tree?’ She smiled. ‘Shall I take that as a compliment?’
‘I think you’re better off injecting yourself for immortality.’
Nasira chuckled. ‘Just replace the talking snake with Denton.’
She was quiet for a moment and her thoughts seemed to restack.
‘The records,’ she said, feeding a round into the P90’s chamber. ‘Of your past. They won’t change anything. At least . . . they didn’t for me.’
‘Don’t you want to know everything?’ Jay said. ‘About your past.’
Nasira started walking again. ‘When I was a little girl, I did ballet and beat boys up. The records didn’t fill the void inside. Didn’t fuel it either. There was no closure.’
Jay licked his lips. ‘Then where’s the closure?’
She gestured to his pistol. ‘At the end of that barrel.’
Chapter 42
‘Shoot,’ Sophia rasped, her voice barely audible.
Benito was pressed flat against the wall, Browning pistol held in shaking hands.
It took great effort for Sophia to turn her head to see the shocktrooper. He was free of the graphite cloud, striding the final twenty meters. He slipped a new magazine into his pistol and dropped to both knees. Sophia waited for him to fire two rounds into her. To end it all.
Then she noticed something peculiar. Well, peculiar was an understatement. Half his face was missing. Benito had managed to kill him with one shot.
Benito dropped the pistol and wrenched her inside before the blast door could crush her legs. The last she saw of the shocktrooper was him collapsing face-first. His skull was ragged and cerise.
Sophia rolled onto her stomach, curling in to stave the pain. She held her position for a moment, breathed, forced her eyes open. Benito was sitting beside her, awkwardly still.
Between breaths, she managed to say, ‘Get up.’
He didn’t look at her.
Snatching up the Browning, she shifted onto her knees and then to her feet. Hunched over to minimize the pain, she checked their surroundings. They were standing in the entrance to the Vector labs. The area split into three corridors. She knew the center one would take them directly to Denton. She couldn’t quite remember from the facility blueprints where the emergency power was located.
‘Which way to the backup power?’ she asked Benito.
He hadn’t moved. He stared, unfocused, at the blast door.
Holstering the Browning, Sophia kneeled down before him. ‘Benito, we have to move.’
She looked into his green eyes. They blinked twice.
He pushed his glasses up. ‘I can’t.’
She used her working arm to grab his and struggled to help him up. ‘You have to.’
He shoved her arm away, pushed himself upright, his back sliding along the wall until he was on his feet.
‘I can’t do what you do!’ he yelled. ‘I can’t just shoot, and tear someone’s face to shreds, and—’
He hesitated, turned his head sharply. Liquid the color of mustard spewed from his mouth onto the floor.
Sophia shuffled back a few steps. She tried to move the fingers in her left hand. They shifted only slightly.
When he’d finished vomiting, she said, ‘If it makes you feel better, you saved my life.’
His eyes were bloodshot. ‘And took another.’
‘Would you rather him dead or me dead?’ she said. ‘Or all of us?’
He swallowed. ‘I don’t want any of it, OK?’
‘Please. Where’s the backup power?’
Benito pushed his glasses up again. ‘All right. I’ll show you.’ He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and started for the corridor on the left.
She followed him. With each stride, each breath, something smoldered inside her. It wasn’t pain and it wasn’t rage. It was her desire to paint the walls with Denton’s brain.
***
The uninterruptable power supply chamber hummed with the restrained ferocity of a beehive. With the main and emergency power out, this was the final power source remaining. Without it, Denton could do nothing.
Sophia stepped around Benito and headed straight for the UPS unit. Unassuming in appearance, it reminded her of a household fridge, only six times the size and painted black.
Ignoring the blood dripping from her fingers, she checked her watch: 00:00.
How long it had been sitting on zero she could only guess.
Screw it. She just had to find a way to do this and hope for the best. She had no explosives, but there must be another way to stop it quickly.
On the front of the UPS, a grille protected a fan the size of her head. It appeared to be taking air from the front and exhausting it out the rear somewhere. Without the air intake, she knew the unit would overheat and shut down. She peered around the back of the unit, found the exhaust. She cupped her right hand over it. The air felt warm.
Looking around, she searched for something—anything—that she could employ to sabotage the air intake. How long before the UPS finally overheated? It could be seconds. It could be minutes. Even hours. She didn’t have that much time. She had barely seconds to spare.
‘Remind me to switch to a low-stress career after this,’ she said to Benito, who was looking decidedly green.
There was a cabinet mounted on a wall. Inside was a fire extinguisher and fire hose. There would be no water, but she didn’t need any. Opening the cabinet, she unscrewed the hose from the valve, then unscrewed the hose from the other end—each task frustratingly slow with only one working arm. She didn’t bother asking for Benito’s help.
With the valve-less hose slung over her functional arm, she marched over to the UPS unit, unraveled the hose and dumped it at her feet. Using the tip of one of her Gerber knives, she unscrewed the intake grille, then did the same with the exhaust at the back. She inserted one end of the fire hose into the intake, just enough so it wouldn’t hit the fan, then called Benito over to help. She told him to do the same with the other end of the hose at the back of the unit. He did it without saying a word. Now the UPS was feeding its own exhaust back into itself.
Sophia stepped back, unfastened her webbing belt and pulled off the pouches. They were mostly empty anyway. She handed the belt to Benito. He knew what to do: he wound it tightly around her shoulder to staunch the blood flow. She gritted her teeth. Her arm was sticky with half-dried blood; it had collected and hardened like tree sap on her fingertips. The pain in her shoulder was electric, more unbearable than she’d remembered.
She removed the compromised plate from the front of her vest and swapped it with the fresh plate on her back. The vest itself was still compromised, but at least she had a good plate.
‘How long will this take?’ Benito asked.
Before she could take a guess, there was a small muffled thump from inside the unit. The green LED light on the front winked out and a moment later smoke plumed from the intake.
‘Does that answer your question?’ she said.
She heard him move for the doorway.
‘Wait,’ she said, turning to stop him, but he was still standing where he was before, only a meter away. She reached for her knife.
It was Renée in the doorway, her pistol aimed at Sophia. ‘Don't even think about it,’ she said.
Chapter 43
Jay led the way to the Vector labs. Without power, they had to manually open the glass doors. A fire extinguisher was sitting up against the wall, rigged to the doors with a length of det cord. Nothing came out of the extinguisher. Someone had already triggered it.
He continued through, taking the right-hand side. Nasira took the left.