The Dragon Factory

by Jonathan Maberry

  I was halfway up the stairs when I heard men shouting and screaming and firing. Flashlight beams cut back and forth and I risked a glance over the edge of the stairs. Two flights below, a group of Russians were fighting a losing battle against a pack of the scorpion-dogs.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered, and ran upward. If I’d had a grenade left I’d have sent it down as a “hello” from Uncle Sam. Pity.

  I took the steps two at a time and then came out onto the top level. My flash showed a much more elegant hallway, with brass fittings, expensive art on the walls, and a décor that tended toward style rather than function. Hecate’s office had to be here, but as I shone the light down the hall I could see at least twenty office doors.

  My flashlight also swept across the simian faces of a half dozen of the Berserkers.

  They saw me and grinned.

  And then they rushed me.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six

  The Jakobys

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:00 a.m.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 0 minutes E.S.T.

  The spiral staircase that rose from the Chamber of Myth to Hecate’s office was one of several bolt-holes she’d built into the architecture. Paris knew about most of them but not all. Paris had been unaware of this one and of one other that took Hecate down to a pneumatic tube in which she could take a capsule from the main building straight to the dock. There was a seaplane and a twenty-eight-foot ZT-280 Checkmate speedboat with 496-horsepower engine and a top speed of 74 miles per hour. A final private stairway led to a small lab she had ordered built during one of Paris’s trips to the South of France. It was in that private lab that Hecate had worked with panther and tiger genomes for some personal gene therapy.

  In lighter moods Hecate sometimes castigated herself for wasting the time and resources on the bolt-holes and for the paranoia that led her to create them. Now, as she followed Otto and Cyrus up through the dark, she felt a flush of vindication.

  “I can’t see a damn thing,” growled Cyrus from above her.

  “You don’t need to see,” she snapped. “Just climb.”

  “Wait . . . the ladder stopped. . . . I can feel a door.”

  “That’s it. It opens into a closet in my office.”

  One by one they emerged from the spiral staircase into a closet that was as dark as everything else. Hecate felt her way past Otto and Cyrus to the door and let herself into her office. The room felt alien now that there were no points of reference, but she finally located her desk and from there oriented herself to the whole room. A few brief diffused flashes of light backlit the blinds, and Hecate moved to the window and peeked out.

  “God! Look at this.”

  With the blind lifted even a bit, the flashes of automatic gunfire and explosions gave them enough light to cross the room to join her. They peered out. The lawn below was a battlefield. On one side were at least sixty of the remaining Russians. They had a very secure firing position among a tumble of decorative boulders. Well to their left were the guards from the Dragon Factory—normal humans and the genetically modified Berserkers. Neither of these two forces was firing at the other. Though there had been no opportunity for either Hecate or Cyrus to tell their forces to stand down, that the conflict between the two houses of Jakoby—the Deck and the Dragon Factory—was over, they had somehow worked out a temporary alliance against a common threat. The other side of the lawn was crammed with armed men. It was impossible to pick out any details from that distance, but the precision and tactics they observed told the tale. These were U.S. Special Forces. A lot of them.

  Between the two opposing sides lay the burning wreckage of a Black Hawk helicopter. Whether it had been shot down by their own men or had crashed because of systems failure following the EMP was anyone’s guess. The lawn was littered from end to end with bodies.

  “This isn’t a fight we can win,” said Hecate.

  “Where is the rest of your staff?” Otto asked.

  “If they followed procedure then they’re down in the caves below the maintenance level. They are instructed to remain there until they get an all-clear signal.” In the dim light she gave a rueful smile. “Of course, if they made it to the caves and locked themselves in before the EMP, then that could be a problem. The computers control all life support.”

  Cyrus turned to his daughter.

  “Listen to me, Hecate. . . . I cannot express how deeply your loyalty touches me. I would love to spend years and years working with you, side by side, to help reshape this world as the Extinction Wave cleanses it. But . . .” He nodded to the battle outside. “I can’t see how we can get away from here.”

  “I have a boat. And a seaplane.”

  “And we’ve had an EMP,” he reminded her.

  Hecate closed her eyes. “Shit.”

  “We’re not getting out of here,” said Cyrus. “I think we can all agree on that.”

  Otto opened his mouth to say something, then sighed and nodded.

  “We can try,” insisted Hecate. “We can’t just roll over and let them win.”

  “Win?” said Cyrus with a smile. “What makes you think they can win? The most they can do is kill us.”

  “But . . .”

  He fished into his shirt and brought out the trigger device.

  “In war people die,” he said. “All that matters is winning. Now, my pet, let’s get that laptop.”

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Seven

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:01 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 59 minutes

  I raised my pistol and fired.

  All of them were wearing body armor, and they were fast. It was head shots or I was dead. The Berserkers screamed like mountain gorillas—not a human sound at all.

  I hit the lead one in the forehead and he pitched back and dragged two others down. I fired three more shots and took down another. Another two shots for a third.

  Then they started shooting at me.

  I jumped sideways and crashed through an office door, hit the ground, rolled, and came up into a kneeling firing position as they tried to squeeze through the doorway. The window blinds were open, and rippling light from the pitched battle outside gave me enough illumination to see the Berserkers. Their bulk was against them as they fought one another to be the first to get to me. I fired and hit the lead one in the throat, but he opened up with a Škorpion vz. 61 machine pistol that chewed up half the room. He was still firing when he fell down dead.

  Another of the Berserkers reached over him and fired. I twisted out of the way of the first round, but the second and third slammed into me and sent me flying. I could actually feel my ribs break. The pain shot through me like lightning as I hit the wall and slid down.

  But I used the pain; I let it wipe my mind to clarity. The Berserker stepped into the room and I shot him through the upper lip. The bullet punched through the back of his head and tore the ear off the Berserker behind him. I grinned and fired again. The one with the torn ear raised an arm to fend off the shot, and though the Kevlar deflected the round, I could tell from his howl of pain that the impact broke his arm. I didn’t much care. I put two rounds into him. And fired my last at the remaining Berserker before the slide locked back.

  I dropped the magazine and pulled my last one. Just doing that sent daggers of pain through my side. Everything that had happened over the last hour had drained me, and the damaged ribs weren’t going to help. My head pounded from the noise of all the gunfire and I still hadn’t found Grace or the Jakobys.

  The last Berserker was wounded, but he was still growling as he hauled on the corpses that choked the doorway. He yelled threats in Afrikaans and English and promised to tear my head off. I think he meant it.

  I struggled to my feet and braced my butt against the desk to help steady my aim. The broken ribs were on my right side. My gun arm.

  “Come on, you ugly bastard!” I yelled.

 
; He grinned at me with bloody teeth and poked a rifle barrel into the room. I put four shots into him before he could squeeze the trigger. His head seemed to disintegrate as he flew backward.

  I headed for the door, but on the first step I realized that there was something wrong with my left leg. When I’d fallen I must have twisted something. Swell. I sucked it up as best I could and limped to the door. The Berserkers were slumped everywhere and I had to climb over them to get back to the hallway.

  My flashlight lay on the floor. Bending to pick it up was no fun at all with busted ribs.

  There were still a lot of offices to check. I had to find them.

  The first office was empty. So was the second. And the third.

  Just as I was reaching for the doorknob on the fourth office, the door opened and a Berserker punched me in the face.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Eight

  The Jakobys

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:02 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 58 minutes E.S.T.

  Hecate swore and punched the wall beside the safe.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Cyrus.

  “I can’t see the numbers on the dial. Look in my desk drawers . . . find a lighter, anything!”

  Otto and Cyrus began tearing apart her drawers, throwing papers and pens everywhere. “Matches!” cried Otto. “I found a pack of matches.”

  Hecate crossed the room, navigating by the light from the battle. There was a scrape and a hiss and a small fire blazed at the end of a paper match. Cyrus snatched up a sheaf of reports and rolled them into a tube. Otto held the match to the roll, and as it caught, the glow flooded the room, pushing back the shadows.

  Cyrus cried out in delight as if with all of the technology he and Otto had stolen or created, this simplest of man’s tools—fire—was the wonder of the ages. He and Otto hurried over to the wall and watched as Hecate attacked the dial once again. This time the tumblers clicked one-two-three and she jerked the door open.

  The safe was large and there were stacks of papers, bundles of currency, cases of jewelry, and several high-capacity flash drives banded together with oversized rubber bands. One whole side of the safe was taken up by a large briefcase with a corrugated metal cover. It was very heavy and Hecate grunted as she pulled it out and they carried it over to the desk. Otto swept the last of the papers onto the floor as Hecate set the case down and unlocked it. She punched the on button and they all held their breath.

  A tiny green light popped on and the screen flashed from black to blue.

  “Thank God!” said Cyrus.

  “Lead case in a lead-lined safe,” said Hecate. “My father taught me to be extra-careful.”

  Cyrus looked up at her and there was such a depth of love in his eyes that Hecate felt her own eyes growing moist. She said, “I want us to survive this.”

  “We can’t. . . .”

  “We can’t escape the island,” said Hecate. “But there are caves and tunnels all through this island. We may be able to find a place to hide until we can escape.”

  “What are the chances?” said Otto with a calculating coldness.

  “Slim. But that’s better than none.”

  Otto studied her and then nodded. “Your father and I have faced longer odds.”

  “Like when we faked my death in Brazil,” Cyrus said. “That was the first time one of the ‘Family’ had to be sacrificed for the cause.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We drowned a clone and let his body be found. By then we were in Cabo and reading about it in the papers.”

  The computer finished loading.

  There was a sudden racket from outside. Yells and gunfire.

  “They’re here!” Cyrus cried, but when Hecate ran to the door and looked out she shook her head.

  “No . . . it looks like a single soldier.” She turned back, smiling. “I have a dozen Berserkers on this floor at all times. They’ll tear him apart. We have time.”

  Cyrus dug the flash drive from under his shirt and lifted the lanyard over his head. He kissed it lovingly and handed it to Otto, who punched in the security code that activated the drive.

  “How will we transmit?” asked Otto as he handed the drive to Hecate. “The EMP will have taken out your router.”

  “Satellite uplink,” she said. She fitted the drive into a USB port and tapped a few keys. “The uplink’s built into the computer. We can hack three different Mexican satellites from here.” She turned the laptop around with the keys toward Cyrus.

  “Good,” said Cyrus. “The next steps are critical. I have to upload the release codes and then transmit. The signal also sends an automatic verification sequence. Unless I hand-enter a cancel sequence, then the release codes are unscrambled when the Extinction Clock reaches zero.”

  “When’s that?” asked Hecate, caught up in the sorcery of her father’s plan.

  “Noon tomorrow.”

  The gunfire in the hallway was punctuated by hoarse death screams. Hecate chewed her lip. The screams sounded more like Berserkers than ordinary men. More soldiers must have reached this floor.

  “What if those soldiers break in here and take the trigger device?”

  “Doubting the unstoppability of your transgenic toys?” Cyrus said with a smile.

  “I don’t want to fail when we’re this close.”

  “We won’t. Once this is sent, all we have to do is . . . nothing. Unless they know the cancel sequence it won’t matter.”

  “I don’t even know it,” said Otto. “Mr. Cyrus is the only one who can stop it, and . . . why would he?”

  “It’s all yours, Father,” she said. “Let’s change the world.”

  “Let’s not,” said a female voice.

  They whirled to see Grace Courtland standing in the doorway to the closet.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Nine

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:04 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 56 minutes E.S.T.

  I went down and I almost went out.

  The only thing that saved me was my injured leg. As soon as I saw the Berserker lunge at me I shifted backward and my bad leg buckled under me. He still nailed me, but it wasn’t full-power. It was enough, though, to knock me across the hallway and smash me into the far wall. My head felt like cracked church bells were ringing and fireworks burst in my eyes.

  I heard the Berserker laugh.

  He drew his sidearm as he came out of the office. I brought my gun up and fired over and over again, trying to aim through the haze and distortion filling my eyes. There’s an Army saying that if you put enough ordnance downrange you’re bound to hit something. I put half a magazine into the air where I thought his head should be.

  He never returned fire.

  I blinked my eyes clear and stared. The Berserker was leaning back against the door frame and he slowly . . . slowly sat down. His eyes were wide and filled with surprise, and there was a black dot above his right eyebrow.

  I’d fired eight shots and hit him once.

  Once was enough.

  A voice inside my head said, Tick-tock.

  I got to one knee. Then to my feet. My left leg felt like it was made from Silly Putty and a furnace had opened in my chest. My head was a bag of broken stones.

  “Grace . . . ,” I said.

  I kept going down the hall. There was just one door left, and as I reached for the handle I heard shouts and then gunshots. I tried kicking the door open, but my bad leg collapsed under me and I fell.

  “There!” someone yelled, and I turned to see more of the goddamn Berserkers pounding down the hallway toward me. I leaned against the office door, raised my pistol, and fired.

  And then from the other side of the door I heard Grace Courtland scream.

  Chapter One Hundred Thirty

  Grace

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:05 a.m.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 55 minutes E
.S.T.

  For Grace Courtland it had all come down to this. A single moment in time when what she did and who she was would matter most.

  She had climbed up through the long darkness of the access stairs and emerged into the darkness of the utility closet in Hecate’s office. She almost rushed straight out, but when she heard them talking about the trigger device she stopped to listen. She understood what had to be done.

  “It’s all yours, Father,” said Hecate. “Let’s change the world.”

  Grace stepped out and pointed her gun at Cyrus Jakoby’s face.

  “Let’s not,” she said.

  The three of them froze, in shock, but their eyes were filled with sudden and immeasurable hatred.

  “Mein Gott!” cried Cyrus.

  Grace fired.

  Not at Otto, or Cyrus, or Hecate. She fired at the laptop. But the lead-shielded computer was too tough and the bullet ricocheted off to punch a hole through Cyrus’s left biceps. He screamed and fell back, clapping a hand over the bloody wound.

  “No!” said Otto in a hoarse whisper.

  He lunged for the keyboard and Grace shot him. The first bullet took Otto Wirths in the shoulder and spun him, and her second punched a wet hole in his chest. Otto crashed to the desk and then rolled off onto the floor, dragging the laptop with him.

  And then Hecate threw herself at Grace. The albino woman leaped twelve feet across the office and drove Grace against the wall. With a snarl of inhuman rage Hecate bit down hard on Grace’s shoulder. Grace screamed and reeled back and she struck her already-injured head on the corner of the closet doorway. The pain was almost unbearable, but she clubbed Hecate with the butt of her pistol. The blow barely slowed the woman. Hecate snarled at Grace, her lips red with the blood that pumped from Grace’s torn shoulder. Grace hit her again and again, but Hecate backhanded her so hard that the world went white in the midst of all the blackness.