The blast door to the Vector labs was closed, Sophia and Benito nowhere to be seen. What they found instead was a shocktrooper with half a head missing. Which was how Jay preferred them, really.
‘The blast door should be open,’ Nasira said.
Jay lowered his pistol. ‘One of us failed.’
‘The power’s out.’ She looked at him. ‘
We
failed. There’s nothing we can do for Sophia now. She either stops Denton or she doesn’t.’
Jay checked his watch. It was sitting on zero, taunting him. ‘Or
didn’t
.’ His grip tightened over the pistol. ‘I don’t see Damien.’
Frustration curdled inside him, thinned by a splash of orange on the walls of the corridor they’d just walked down. Heat, reflected from a nearby heat source. Thank you, infrared.
‘Shocktrooper,’ Jay said. ‘On your nine. When I say . . . go!’
Her footsteps fell into line behind him. He turned into the men’s restroom. There was a second entrance at the other end, via a locked storeroom. He was sure he was the only operative who knew about it.
‘Single at thirty meters and closing,’ Nasira said.
They were here already. Shit.
He dashed towards the cubicles, weaved left along the mirrored walls and towards the storeroom door. The smell of ammonia burned his nostrils with each breath. He ripped a hair dryer from the wall and slammed it down on the door handle. The door handle fell off. He kept moving. Nasira was right on his heels, slamming the door behind her. Not that it would do much good, but whatever. He sprinted down the corridor.
If Nasira had seen the shocktrooper then the shocktrooper had likely seen her. All they could do, really, was lure the shocktroopers as far away from the Vector labs as possible. When Sophia and Benito finally emerged, the last thing they’d need was a shocktrooper waiting to blow their brains out.
With the power out, the corridor was in near-darkness. But as he ran, he made out a shift in color ahead. He slowed as they passed a bioweapons lab. He focused, and his vision twisted back into infrared. The charcoal-tinted walls cooled to indigo and revealed a vivid yellow, orange and red figure. Human-shaped. Even at fifty meters away, it burned intensely.
Jay drew to a halt. Nasira was beside him an instant later.
‘Another one,’ he said, and turned back to where they’d come from.
Two more of the fuckers. Side by side. Pistols in hands.
Jay shot out the glass from a nearby door. He reached in and opened it from the inside. Nasira bolted inside after him. Dodging benches and workstations, he ran through the bioweapons lab, everything raw and familiar. He went straight for a row of metal canisters, each one larger than him. He found the valve and cranked it, letting gas pour into the lab.
The shocktroopers were closing on them, their movements efficient. They must’ve realized what he was doing because they holstered their pistols. A single spark and the gas-filled lab would incinerate everyone.
A third shocktrooper approached, unarmed. He recognized her sharp jawline and expressionless face under the violet goggles. Jay could see two handsome reflections of himself in Grace’s goggles. ‘No need to be shy. I don’t bite.’
‘Why don’t you surrender?’ Grace said, lifting her goggles onto her forehead. ‘That would make it easier for everyone.’
‘I like to play hard to get.’
Grace launched towards him. He rolled over a bench, evading her with inches to spare. Another shocktrooper was already waiting for him. Grace had pushed him into a trap. A third shocktrooper joined the second.
Jay nodded. ‘Yeah. I see what you did there.’
Nasira cut the third shocktrooper off, standing between them. That left him to deal with just Grace and the second shocktrooper. But that was still one more than he could handle. Their blows were overwhelming. He shifted his weight, his limbs working reflexively. For every strike he deflected, another crunched into his ribs, his sternum, his face.
All right, so two more than he could handle.
They were glued to him, unrelenting. He seized Grace’s arm, stepped in beside it. But the other shocktrooper’s arm intervened and trapped his. Grace’s knee collided with his cheek. His head rattled. Light exploded across his vision. He hit the ground, rolled. Smashed into the side of a lab bench. A computer tower crashed over him. Grace and her counterpart loped towards him with long strides.
Crawling to one knee, he pushed the tower hard with one foot. It slid across the floor, catching the second shocktrooper and knocking him off balance. Jay got to his feet and leaped over the bench. He grabbed a keyboard, used it to deflect a kick from the second shocktrooper. Jammed the end of it into the shocktrooper’s neck.
He saw Grace coming. He clawed a fistful of keyboard keys and chucked them at her face. She raised a hand to protect herself.
He went in for the shocktrooper’s neck with the end of the keyboard again, then for the stomach. The shocktrooper trapped the keyboard, ripped it off him and slammed it back into his temple, the movement so quick he could barely understand how it had happened.
Both Grace and the other shocktrooper had him again, this time with blades out, whistling past his face
.
Well, at least it wasn’t a plasma torch. He dropped to his shoulder blades and rolled back onto his feet, picked up a metal chair.
‘One thing that I don’t understand,’ he said.
Grace advanced, knife in hand. ‘I’m sure there’s more than one.’
He gripped the chair in both hands. ‘Of all the operatives, you hooking up with Damien?’
Grace thrust her knife towards him, as did the other shocktrooper. Jay twisted the chair, skewing both knives away. He hooked Grace’s arm inside the chair legs and pulled the chair towards the ground, bringing her with it.
Grace twisted and rolled out, freeing herself. She gave him a wry smile. ‘It’s not easy finding a guy who can check all the boxes.’
‘Sounds like he ticked them all,’ the other shocktrooper said.
‘I’m not talking to you,’ Jay said, and drove his heel into the shocktrooper’s kneecap.
The shocktrooper buckled.
Jay retreated. ‘I’m a man of many qualities. I check more boxes than . . . there are boxes.’
Grace moved closer, blade gleaming. ‘You missed one.’
‘So did I,’ Nasira said.
A tunnel of water punched into Grace, lifting her into the air and throwing her sideways.
Jay looked over at Nasira. She was wielding a fire hose, face flushed, eyes glittering with rage. He ducked. The tunnel of water whipped over his head and collided with the shocktrooper behind him.
Then the water disappeared. The third shocktrooper had slashed the hose with his knife, disabling Nasira’s ad hoc weapon. He slashed into it again, severing the hose in two.
Nasira pivoted, drawing the severed end of the hose into her grasp. She whipped the metal nozzle at the shocktrooper’s head. He ducked and charged.
Nasira hurled the hose over her own arms, shortening the length and giving her more control. She swung again. The hose wrapped around the shocktrooper’s ankle. But before Nasira could pull him off his feet, he slashed the hose to free himself.
Nasira sidestepped around him. He slashed at her. She retracted her leg to avoid the slash, then kicked his front foot out. He almost fell over, his legs spread out into the splits. She stomped down on his knee and he crumpled, crying out in pain. She followed up with the metal nozzle into his face. It connected with a resounding clunk. He collapsed.
‘Not bad,’ Grace said. ‘Does she shake hands and roll over?’
Jay backed away, careful not to slip on the water underfoot. ‘That’s a laugh, coming from Frankenstein’s monster.’
Grace was on him in an instant. The blade cut deep, drawing blood from his hand. She closed viciously, hunting for his neck. Her faster, more accurate movements countered every attempt he made to intercept her knife-wielding arm. His arms were sliced to ribbons. Blood welled from a dozen gashes.
He looked up to see the other two shocktroopers on their feet, blades ready. They moved around him, blinding weaves of metal shredding towards him. They would start with his limbs and work past his guard. Then it would be his neck. End of the line.
‘Jay!’ Nasira yelled. ‘Use it!’
Grace looked at him dispassionately. Her eyes shone green as glacial ice. ‘That’s the problem with you and your buddy Damien. Both talented, but just too damned gullible.’
She drove her blade into his stomach. To the hilt. Fire exploded inside him, wrenched all focus from his mind. His strength wandered into the distance, with no promise of return. He dropped to his knees. The blade was in front of him again, the sharp point staring him in the face.
‘Do it!’ Nasira was closer now. Between Grace’s legs, he could see her climbing onto the bench. She wasn’t touching water.
Then, strangely, Grace twitched. Or at least it looked like she did. He thought she was hesitating, but a smile emerged instead.
‘I’m sorry for Damien,’ she said. ‘And for you. Things just didn’t work out, I guess.’
She moved to strike.
Pain overtook Jay. His body tensed up. He shut out everything else. Eyes closed, teeth clenched, all he could process was the wave of agony. And then, as quickly as it had come, it subsided. There were two splashes. He opened his eyes.
Before him, Grace was shuddering violently. She slumped onto him, her face inches from his. She stopped breathing.
Jay shivered, then exhaled slowly. ‘Yeah, well, Damien could do better anyway.’
Hands over the knife in his stomach, he crawled out from under Grace’s body. The water had conducted his electric current, carrying it through the shocktroopers. He withdrew the knife slowly. Blood gushed until he clamped both hands over the wound, fingers together. Wisps of scarlet curled in the water before him.
After a moment, he forced himself to stand. His stomach was on fire. He counted to ten before slowly removing his hand. Blood trickled but no longer poured. Right now, he fucking loved salamanders. But he returned his hand to his stomach just to be sure.
Dizziness almost sent him tumbling onto Grace’s lifeless body. Somehow, he remained on his feet. He looked over at Nasira. She lay over the bench, her knee touching the water. She wasn’t moving.
Chapter 44
Renée marched Sophia and Benito into the Vector labs, which were now blanketed in complete darkness. Or, through Sophia’s eyes, near-darkness. She scanned for anything that still had power. Nothing. She took a small crumb of satisfaction from knowing she’d pulled the plug just in time.
Renée’s arm had healed perfectly, thanks to the Axolotl Chimera vector Sophia had insisted be injected into her bloodstream. Not her best decision, that one.
She could make out Denton’s charming smile as he emerged from the oily shadows. He was still wearing his suit pants and bloodstained undershirt, but the wounds on his face had healed. Renée wasn’t the only one with a dose of Axolotl, by the looks of it.
‘Benito Montoya,’ Denton said, hands clasped behind his back. ‘I’m still trying to decide whether it’s masochism, forgiveness or just outright desperation that made you decide to team up with the woman who blew your family into tiny little pieces.’
Sophia didn’t turn to see Benito’s face. She didn’t want to. But his hatred burned through her anyway. Guilt mounted a defense inside her.
Denton smiled. ‘And Sophia, the little girl who kills families.’
Sophia swallowed.
Denton offered her a lopsided smile. ‘Small world, right?’
She glared at him. ‘I’m going to end you, Denton.’
His smile remained. ‘Your resourcefulness continues to astound me. But I’ve taken certain measures to prevent such interference. While your little insurgent friends were busy skittering around the facility like mice in a maze, I took it upon myself to re-route power to my own nest of flywheel generators. Enough to give me fifteen minutes of juice, which, as you’d suspect,’ his smile vanished, ‘was much, much more than I needed.’
The UPS unit was a decoy. Jesus, how could she have been so stupid? She’d accused Jay of fucking up Africa. She’d just fucked up the whole world. Now, no one would ever be free of the Fifth Column.
Denton let his arms hang by his sides. He was holding a hypodermic syringe. ‘And last but not least, the “anti-psychopath” Chimera vector, as you so affectionately call it.’ He chuckled as he tapped the syringe and expelled a brief squirt. ‘Or as I like to call it, the fountain of youth.’
He turned his arm over to expose milk skin and blue veins. It reminded her of the cheese Leoncjusz used to bring back from the Volterra market. She wished she could be there right now, back in time. Away from all of this.
‘If you knew what I know,’ Denton said, ‘you would understand, Sophia, that I am not the enemy.’
‘You think I don’t understand people like you?’ she yelled. ‘Your enemy
is
the human race! And yet, despite all your power, you live in constant fear that one day enough ordinary people will wake up to who you are—what you are.’ She allowed herself a tiny smile. ‘Because as soon as we do that, you know we won’t hesitate to lock you up and throw away the key.’
Denton shook his head. ‘I don’t fear the human race, Sophia. I don’t fear anything. And who’s to say they won’t wake up to what
you
really are and lock you up with me?’
‘Are you saying I’m a psychopath?’
‘No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Which makes you all the more interesting.’ He plunged the beveled needle into a thick vein. ‘You’re more valuable than you think.’
‘Suppose you need someone to rule over, right?’ Sophia said.
‘I’m not talking about the masses.’ Denton pushed the rubber piston down, the contents of the syringe surging into his vein. ‘I’m talking about you. You are of high tactical value. To me and to Cecilia.’
She couldn’t stand there and watch as any chance of saving herself, of saving everything, scattered from her. No. She wasn’t going to let this happen. She had to do something. Even if it was futile.
She launched herself towards Renée with a speed that surprised even herself. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d seized the barrel of Renée’s pistol. She twisted it, wrenched it towards the ceiling. Renée buckled onto one knee, her wrists unable to bend in that direction. As Renée moved to strike, Sophia snatched the pistol from her and smashed the end of the barrel into her face. Blood flowed over her ice pink lips.