We would get no better chance to make our move.
We stuck to the shadows, which Gallagher’s fear dearg heritage let him fade into almost seamlessly, and we were nearly to the main building when we saw the first handler on patrol. He carried a flashlight and an automatic rifle, as well as the usual stun gun and remote control, and while he peered into every shadow, he only walked on the well-lit sidewalk. He didn’t expect to find trouble, because he never had before.
“Stay here,” Gallagher whispered, and before I could argue, he disappeared into the shadows entirely.
A second later, he reached into the light. The guard grunted as he was pulled off his feet and into the dark. His grunt of surprise became a wet gurgle, followed by the gristly sound of ripping flesh. I flinched as something thumped to the ground. An empty, bloodstained shoe tumbled onto the sidewalk.
Then Gallagher was suddenly beside me, holding the dead guard’s remote control and his employee ID, which had a bar code across the bottom. “Will this be of any use?”
“With any luck, it’ll open the door to the control room.”
He huffed. “No door lock has ever kept me out.”
“But plenty of broken door locks have set off alarms. We’ll use the card.”
We headed for the main building, skirting pools of light along the sidewalk to tread in darkness. Gallagher faded into it so well that at times I couldn’t even tell if he was still next to me. The grass beneath my feet was dry and crisp, and sharp in places, with fall in full swing. The night was cold and clear. Every breath seemed to invigorate me, and the fact that I couldn’t be paralyzed or shocked into compliance gave me more confidence in our mission than I probably should have had.
At the back of the building, I used the dead guard’s ID to unlock the door, and we stepped inside, traversing the marble silently on bare feet. “Where’s the control room?” Gallagher whispered.
I led the way down one dark hallway and into another, avoiding cameras as much as possible, until we stood outside the locked control room door. “You can’t kill whoever’s in here,” I whispered, as I held up the stolen ID card. “We need him to disarm all the other collars.”
“You mean I can’t kill him until he’s disarmed the other collars.”
I nodded because that was as much of a compromise as I was going to get out of Gallagher. We’d taken over the menagerie with minimal blood spilled, but that wouldn’t be possible at the Spectacle, in part because we weren’t merely taking it over.
We were putting it out of business.
“I need you to get ahold of the guard before he can raise an alert. Ready?”
Gallagher nodded.
I held the ID badge beneath the scanner built into the wall. The door beeped softly, and there was a metallic scraping sound as the bolt slid back. I opened the door just as the guard swiveled toward us in his chair.
Gallagher rushed past me. The guard’s eyes widened. He tried to stand, but Gallagher grabbed him by the neck and lifted him six inches off the floor. “Delilah, confiscate his devices.”
While the guard clawed at Gallagher’s hand, trying in vain to breathe, I plucked the pistol, stun gun and remote control from his belt, then pulled the communication headset from his head and turned it off.
Gallagher set the guard down, and as the man bent over, coughing and gasping I saw that his name tag read Petit.
“Petit,” I said, as Gallagher pushed the door closed behind us. “If you want to live, sit down at your desk and disable the collars.” No need to tell him that cooperating wouldn’t actually save his life.
“How did you get in here?” he gasped, rubbing his throat.
“Disable the collars,” Gallagher growled. “Now.”
Petit took a step back and bumped his chair, which rolled toward the console. “Which ones?”
“All of them.” I glanced at the wall full of live camera feeds, watching for any sign that Pagano’s body had been discovered. “Turn them all off.”
The guard glanced nervously from me to Gallagher, then back. “I can’t.”
“Bullshit,” Gallagher growled.
“No, seriously. It doesn’t work that way, for this very reason. It’s a fail-safe. I can turn them off one at a time, but not all at once. And turning off more than three in a five-minute period sets off an alarm.”
“We don’t have time for that.” Gallagher glanced around at the equipment. “I’m just going to smash it all.”
“Wait,” I said, when Petit made no objection. “That’ll set off an alarm too, won’t it?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“Okay, we can’t turn off all the collars at once, and we don’t have time to do them individually.” I paced the length of the small room, while Gallagher stood over Petit. “And we can’t smash the system. So...” I turned and looked up at the guard. “Can you shut the system down? Just...turn it off?”
Petit shrugged, but the brief, slight dip in his brows was telling. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s lying,” I said.
Gallagher picked him up by the throat again. “Turn it off,” he demanded, while Petit clawed at his hand again, feet kicking ineffectually. “And if you trigger an alarm, I will make sure that you die very slowly.”
He let Petit down, and the guard sank into his chair, coughing and gasping again.
I stood over him while he worked, watching every keystroke, unsure that I’d recognize an alarm if he raised one. Gallagher watched the video monitors.
After a couple of minutes and several open windows on the screen in front of him, Petit found a software menu with a shutdown option. But he hesitated to click it.
“Do it.” I laid one hand on his shoulder—a silent threat—and he flinched. Then he clicked the command.
A box popped up, demanding an administrator password.
“Damn it.”
“What?” Gallagher glanced down at the screen. “Are you an administrator?” he asked.
Petit shook his head. “I’m just the night guard.”
“So, what, you have to wake someone up every time there’s a glitch or an update?” I demanded.
Petit’s brows dipped again, and his gaze flicked to the left for a second before dropping to the ground. He was a terrible liar.
I looked to the left, searching for whatever he’d automatically glanced at.
A row of shelves full of technical manuals. Those would take forever to search. A pod-based coffee system. A folding metal chair, with a jacket draped over the seat.
Bingo. I grabbed the jacket—clearly his—and searched the pockets. They were all empty. Then I noticed the employee ID clipped to the front. I flipped it over. Written on the back in block letters was an eight-digit code comprised of four letters, two numbers and two other symbols.
“Got it.” I unclipped the badge and rolled Petit out of the way, then typed the password into the box.
“Don’t do this,” Petit begged. “You’re going to get a lot of people hurt.”
“No,” Gallagher growled. “We’re going to get a lot of people killed.”
I clicked Enter. The window disappeared, and another one popped up, asking if I was sure I wanted to shut down the system. I clicked Yes, and a third window popped up, informing me that I had just shut down the system.
Relief flooded me. “We did it.” Every cryptid on the property would be able to fight back, walk through any unlocked door, and use any and all natural abilities.
The odds had been evened.
I looked up at Gallagher with a triumphant smile.
Then the remote controls I’d stolen from Pagano and Petit began to flash red. They made a single high-pitched beeping sound. Then they powered down automatically.
Petit laughed, and I realized that every r
emote control on the grounds would be doing the very same thing.
We hadn’t merely shut down the system. We’d announced that we’d shut down the system.
We’d just raised the alarm ourselves.
“It’s just not possible. We will never be able to trust these creatures, no matter what they’re wearing. No matter how much control we think we have over them. You don’t see us slapping collars on tigers and letting them play in our backyards—with our children—do you?”
—from the transcript of Senate Subcommittee Hearing into Cryptid Placement, October 19, 2013
Delilah
“Gallagher. Smash the equipment.”
“But you said—”
I held up the dead remote. “Everyone who’s carrying one of these knows what we just did. If they restart the system, we’re screwed. Smash it.”
Gallagher grabbed the folding metal chair and slammed it into three of the wall-mounted monitors at once.
“No, those just show what’s happening.” He had no experience with electronics, because as fear dearg, every electronic device he picked up shorted-circuited. The collar had only worked on him because it was hardwired into his nervous system. “You have to smash the machines themselves.” I pointed out the row of computers beneath the operating console. “There.”
Gallagher jerked the first from its shelf, wires dangling, and threw it at the floor. Electronic shrapnel flew all over the room, peppering us with harmless scratches. While he smashed the others, I used a police-style baton hanging from Petit’s chair to further decimate the machines he’d already broken open.
A door squealed open behind me, and I looked up as Petit ran into the hallway.
Gallagher took off after him. I caught up with them around the corner just in time to see him break Petit’s neck. One-handed.
The corpse crumpled to the floor, and I flinched.
“He was a threat,” Gallagher whispered.
“Fine. But let’s try to limit the bloodshed to those who’ve actually done harm or are threatening to. Okay?”
“They’ve all done harm.”
“If we slaughter the entire staff, people won’t just think we’re animals that have to be caged or put down—they’ll believe it. Promise me you won’t kill anyone who doesn’t have to die.”
“Delilah...” He glanced at my stomach, and I knew what he was thinking. What he wanted to do to everyone associated with the Savage Spectacle.
“Promise me.”
“Those I’ve already sworn to kill must die. As for the rest...are concussions okay?”
“Yes. Unconsciousness is preferred. Let them wake up later with a huge headache and the knowledge that we could have killed them, but didn’t. I’m planning to use this.” I held up the confiscated stun gun.
Gallagher frowned. “You’d have to be within arm’s reach to use that. Let’s get you something bigger.” He headed down the hall toward the back door and I followed, bewildered until he stopped next to a door marked Armory.
The ID scanner next to the door still glowed a soft green, even though we’d taken out the main security system. Either Vandekamp had a backup or the door locks were on a different system than the collars.
Gallagher held the stolen employee ID beneath the wall scanner, and when the door unlocked, he pulled it open.
Inside the small room, we found rack after rack of automatic rifles, pistols, stun guns and...
He pulled an eighteen-inch baton from a bin full of others, and the cord plugged into it fell away. “Here.” Gallagher handed me the baton, and my thumb found a switch on the side, near the grip. When I turned it on, the stick hummed to life.
“A stun baton. I’ve never seen one of these.”
“They use them behind the scenes at the arena. The current runs down the outside of the stick as well as the end, so no one can take it from you. Don’t hold it anywhere but the rubber grip.”
I nodded. “Um...grab the rest of those, will you?”
He unplugged the other dozen or so batons and handed them to me. I clutched them in a bundle beneath one arm, and as we left the room, I had an idea.
“Can you destroy that?” I pointed at the card reader. “Without it, they may not be able to get to the rest of the weapons.” The door’s hinges were on the inside, so Vandekamp’s men couldn’t just remove them.
Gallagher gripped the scanner in both hands and wrenched it from the wall. Then he crushed it in both fists.
“Perfect. Okay, I’m going to pass these out to everyone who doesn’t have a natural defense. I need you to destroy all the other computers, starting with Vandekamp’s. He’ll have a backup of the collar software. He probably wrote it himself. And he might have a backup security system. His office is the last one on that left-hand hallway.”
Gallagher glanced down the hall, then turned back to me. “We’re not splitting up.”
“We don’t have time not to. Don’t worry, I’ll stick to the shadows. And I’m armed now.” I held up my activated baton for emphasis. “Meet me in the dormitory when you’re done here. Okay?”
He nodded reluctantly, then headed toward the other hallway.
“And Gallagher?”
“Yes?” He turned back to me.
“The computers are the boxes containing the hardware, not the screens.”
He gave me another gruff nod, then I took off out the back door.
Gallagher
The door at the end of the hall slammed shut as Gallagher turned the corner. But not before he saw Willem Vandekamp disappear into his office, his hand clutching the grip of a pistol. His eyes wide with fear—an emotion thus far unseen from the Spectacle’s owner.
Gallagher smiled, an expression no man in his right mind would have mistaken for joy. He inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of fear on the air as he let his hunger build.
He hadn’t been hunting in ages.
The redcap strode down the hall silently and kicked the door in with his bare foot. Ripped from its hinges, it flew into the room and smashed into the chairs lined up along the opposite wall. The splinter of wood was merely a taste of violence he planned to consume, but it was enough to whet his appetite.
The blood he spilled in the arena every week kept Gallagher alive, but that exploitative carnage didn’t fulfill his purpose.
It didn’t feed his soul.
“What the fuck?” The woman behind the desk stood, eyes wide, right hand clutching her phone. “Please. Don’t hurt me.”
“Run,” Gallagher growled, veins swollen with rage and adrenaline. Muscles aching to rend flesh from bone.
She raced past him into the hall, tripping over her high heels.
The inner office door slammed, and metal scraped wood as Vandekamp locked himself in. “The police are on the way,” he shouted from inside.
“Tell them to send the coroner instead.” Gallagher sucked in a deep, invigorating breath, then kicked the next door in. The force of the blow shattered not just the door, but the chair wedged in front of it.
He shoved the tangle of wood and upholstery aside and pushed his way into the office. Vandekamp stood behind his desk, aiming the pistol at the redcap’s chest. “I should have realized the first time I saw you. There was something about you. I thought it was your size, but it was more than that.”
“Humans should put more faith in their instinct. And less in weapons.” Gallagher took a step forward, and Vandekamp fired. The redcap dived to the ground and smacked the light switch on his way down. More wood splintered beneath him. The room descended into shadows.
The gun thundered again, and Vandekamp stood exposed in the muzzle flash.
Gallagher slid into the shadows as if he were made of them. He stepped over obstacles no human could have seen in the
dark, and his feet made no sound.
Vandekamp fired again, scanning the room during the flash, wide-eyed. The redcap stood two feet away. Towering over him.
Gallagher ripped an arm from the darkness. The gun clattered to the floor. His victim screamed as blood arched into the air, splattering shadowy files and furniture. Painting the ceiling in artful splashes of dark red.
He fell upon the owner of the Savage Spectacle with a brutal enthusiasm that would have brought thunderous applause from the crowd, had it taken place in the arena. Hands flew across the room. Legs thunked onto the floor. Vandekamp’s spinal column was severed with a single vicious snap, breaking his head from his body like a cork from a bottle of champagne.
When the violence was over—when his bloodlust was sated—Gallagher knelt and dropped his cap into the fragrant red puddle.
As blood rolled across the ceiling and down the walls one drop at a time, soaking into the fear dearg’s traditional cap with a speed that spoke of true hunger, Gallagher glanced around the room, taking note of the computer on a shelf under the desk. When the blood had been consumed, he stood, hat in hand, ready to demolish the technology that had brought pain to so many. Then something else caught his eye.
On Vandekamp’s desk lay a single white envelope with Greenlake Diagnostic and Laboratory Services printed on the top left corner. Handwritten on the envelope were two words that somehow seemed to carry the weight of his entire world.
Marlow, Delilah.
Delilah
I stuck close to the building for as long as I could, then raced across the well-lit garden into the deepest patch of shade I could find—the shadow cast by the minotaur topiary.
I’d made it halfway across the courtyard using that method when a door slammed somewhere across the grounds. Seconds later, I heard a stampede of boots headed my way.
I pressed myself against a bush shaped like a griffin, careful not to drop any of the batons, and let a dozen armed guards jog past me, fifty feet away. Headed for the main building.
Spectacle--A Novel Page 29
