by Ian Jarvis
‘Yes,’ croaked Rex. ‘I think killing me would be a bad idea.’
‘If you insist,’ lied Silva. As soon as this situation was under control and he had Amy in the penthouse, he would bite her and use hypnosis. Grant was superfluous, but the guards would be peckish and the young man was full of healthy blood. ‘He can help you set up a production base for the cream and droplets.’
Strand wrinkled his nose as one of the bodies burst open in a gush of intestines. ‘I assume we don’t have time for the traditional last cigarette?’
‘You assume wrong.’ The President signalled and Holland secured Fran’s wrists behind her back. The handcuffs were SSS Elite issue, the rims razor-sharp. ‘As you can doubtless sense, my dear, those manacles really are silver.’
Fran winced at the sizzling pain, watching as the guard cuffed Strand and yanked him upright. ‘You aren’t going to kill us?’
‘Of course I am, but not yet.’ Silva strolled to his private penthouse door and keyed in the combination. It opened onto a staircase. ‘You’ve probably realised by now that I’m no fool. If Doctor Clarkson encounters problems she may need your help. You’ll be held until she completes her work and until I form a new Committee from our more loyal people. The leisurely dissection of your living bodies will be their first warning against future thoughts of treachery.’
‘We’ll be happy to help out,’ snarled Strand.
Boam pulled Rex out of his chair, rammed an Uzi into the small of Strand’s back, and nodded to the corridor.
‘Come, Doctor Clarkson.’ Standing courteously aside, the President gestured to the stairs as Sarah dragged Amy from her seat. ‘To the penthouse, before you faint from the stench in here.’
Chapter 68
Kicking the car door wide, Quist wrenched Watson from the Ferrari and dived behind the closest of the gigantic statues that decorated the lobby. A second later and Galeen’s machine-gun fire would have cut them in half. Watson pressed his face into the marble, screaming as bullets ricocheted inches from his head. He opened a terrified eye and noticed the plaque by his nose.
SPANISH WOMAN IN BATH. HENRY MOORE
Another burst shattered the senorita’s head, or perhaps her elbow; it was difficult to tell with Moore’s artwork. Watson knew this was Sod’s Law, or some bastard’s law. A fortress filled with supernatural cats, the very last place he wanted to be, but the moment he saw it, he just knew he’d end up inside.
‘Stay down,’ snarled the wolf, shouldering his Uzi.
‘Don’t worry,’ gibbered Watson.
Quist jammed the silencer between the statue’s legs and fired. Costigan flew backwards over the reception desk, chest bursting open in a grisly explosion. Galeen was faster and dived behind a sculpture on the opposite side of the foyer to return the shots. Quist rolled left and fired again over the statue’s three breasts.
‘I killed the lobby guard.’ The wolf ducked as another volley smashed the bosom. He reached into the teenager’s jacket for a spare magazine. ‘The other guard is pinned down like us.’
‘So what do we do?’ moaned Watson. ‘There’s gonna be more here soon.’
‘I know.’ Pushing him flat to the floor, the wolf used his furry body as a shield. He aimed low on the Ferrari, turned his head and fired. ‘That’s why this is our only option.’
‘Shit!’ Watson’s profanity was masked by the explosion of the petrol tank.
Blazing fuel rushed across the lobby to the corner statue where Galeen had half-changed into cat form. Slapping at his flaming fur and screeching, he leapt out shooting wildly. Quist knew it must be difficult to hit anything when your crotch is on fire, and emptied his gun into the guard’s chest.
‘Look out!’ The wolf dragged Watson through the smoke to the nearest door as the burning torrent washed towards them. The lobby water sprinkler kicked in with negligible effect. ‘Move! You won’t be able to breathe soon.’
Quist slammed the door on the raging fire and peered around the vast room they’d entered. This had to be the workshop where the company produced their hardware. Technical equipment, computers, and machinery filled rows of tables. Grabbing the gun in his teeth, he bounded down the central aisle on all-fours to the loading doors.
‘Damn!’ he hissed. ‘I wanted to get you out of here before looking for Amy and Rex. This is the only other exit and you need an electronic combination.’
‘Ah!’ Watson sagged. ‘Can’t you bust it?’
‘These doors are solid steel. Come on, we have to go back. That sprinkler is holding the fire down, but it’s designed for waste-paper bins, not burning cars.’
‘What about the porch shutter that came down? Can we get it open somehow?’
‘Mmmh, this might work.’ Passing Watson the gun, the wolf trundled a trolley of welding cylinders up the aisle to the reception door. ‘I’ll go first. Hold your breath, keep your head low and follow me. Run by the desk to the door on the other side. Are you ready?’
Quist burst back into the blazing lobby pushing the gas tanks. Gasping at the intense heat blast, Watson darted out behind him through the smoke, kicking open the door into a wide stairwell.
‘That should do it.’ Quist joined him and handed him his smouldering coat. ‘I wedged the cylinders between the shutter and the car.’
‘Oh, lovely. You saved your coat,’ said Watson. ‘Those tanks won’t do the Ferrari any favours. Or us, if we hang around.’
‘I imagine it’s insured,’ said Quist.
Chapter 69
Boam pushed Strand and Fran out of the conference room. Holland followed, dragging their trembling human captive into the corridor and shutting the door on the decomposing Committee.
Rex silently groaned. Once Amy completed her work, there was more chance of Captain Ahab joining Greenpeace than him leaving this place alive.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Strand. ‘You can’t like these stifling rules any more than I do. If you release us and help...’
Rex flinched at the piercing crack. Holland’s headbutt spoke far more eloquently than any argument on loyalty.
‘I see.’ Strand spat blood, which turned to powder in the air. ‘I’ll take that as a polite refusal.’
Rex glanced back along the corridor as they reached the elevator. Boam and Holland were ignoring him, concentrating instead on their silver-manacled prisoners. Guarding a terrified, harmless mortal was evidently pointless. Locked in a cell, he was as good as dead, and if escape was at all possible, now would be the only time to try. Surely those months of training for the special forces could be put to some use? Holland was closest, and Rex summoned the miniscule dregs of courage that remained. Knowing he’d hesitate and fail if he considered the insanity of this, he prepared to sprint and slammed an elbow down into the guard’s groin, following with a vicious windpipe chop. He may as well have hit the wall. Not only did Holland look like an Easter Island statue, he felt like it. The green-eyed monster didn’t move, except to give a psychopathic glower of surprise.
‘Er, sorry about that.’ Rex grinned idiotically. ‘It was an accident. I have this nervous spasm.’
Holland’s backhand slap launched him fifteen feet down the passage.
Strand eyed Fran as the elevator opened. One guard was busy with Grant, his back turned, the other was watching the unexpected fracas.
‘No.’ Boam guessed his thoughts and pressed the gun to Strand’s ribs. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
Groaning and crawling to his knees, Rex saw two cigarette lighters had fallen from his jacket. He shook his head to clear the grogginess and double vision. He realised it was just one lighter, and it was silver.
‘Up!’ Shouldering the Uzi strap, the shapeshifter kicked him. ‘Get up now.’
Rex palmed the lighter as talons dragged him vertical.
‘I said up.’ Hol
land pushed him towards the waiting trio. ‘Get in that lift.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Squeezing the silver case, Rex mentally recited feverish prayers.
‘Try anything again and I’ll claw your ears off.’
Rex whimpered. If this lunacy failed, his days of wearing sunglasses were over. He hurled the lighter at Strand’s guard like a crazed bowler, smacking him hard in the face. The feline screech was deafening, the blinded cat creature dropping the gun, clasping an eye, and collapsing against the wall. Holland frantically unslung his weapon, but too late. Strand had already crouched to snatch Boam’s Uzi in his cuffed hands, and glaring over his shoulder, sprayed bullets down the passage.
Rex dived low as Holland’s torso exploded in the hail of silver. ‘Watch it,’ he gibbered. ‘You almost hit me.’
Strand blew Boam’s head apart. ‘Yes, almost.’ He ran close and jammed the gun to the cowering man’s head. ‘You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to aim with your hands behind your back.’ He pulled the trigger and tutted to find the clip was empty.
‘Come on,’ shouted Fran. ‘We’re helpless in these cuffs and the silver pain is unbearable.’ She shoulder-pushed Strand into the elevator as the fire alarm wailed. ‘Leave him and come on.’
Rex watched the door shut, and felt his sweat-soaked brow where the hot silencer had pressed. He juggled with the options of fainting or vomiting, and settled on the latter.
***
Silva climbed to the penthouse upper level as the klaxon screamed.
Sarah followed, dragging Amy up the steps. ‘What is it?’ she quizzed.
‘The fire alarm.’ The President checked the control panel and silenced it. ‘From the reception lobby.’
‘Trouble?’
He scanned the CCTV monitors and switched to the lobby cameras only to find static. ‘The security shutter is down,’ he murmured, noticing the indicator light. ‘According to this, the lobby sprinkler is operating.’
A dull boom jolted the building.
‘Lucius?’ whispered Sarah, gripping Amy tighter.
Descending the steps, Silva pressed a window control and the armoured glazing slid up, snowflakes drifting in as he leant out. The glass porch below had vanished and the mangled steel shutter lay across the street. Ruptured water mains gushed onto the lawns and flame spewed from the lobby.
‘Yes.’ He returned to the controls and activated the robo-sentries. ‘I believe you could refer to that as trouble.’
Chapter 70
Rex snatched the gun from Holland’s decomposing corpse, grateful that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Gagging, he searched the bubbling mess for magazines, found a spare, and stuffed it in his jacket with the silver lighter. Exhilaration briefly wrestled with terror and nausea as he weighed the Uzi in one hand. His choices were limited: follow Strand and probably meet more guards, or follow Silva and try to help Amy; an almost certain death versus an almost definite death. Swallowing hard and clutching the gun, he ran under a dormant robo-sentry and headed for the penthouse.
Returning to the conference room was pointless, as the exit Silva used was locked by a code. Fortunately the fourth passage door opened into a stairwell, and moving warily beneath another mechanical sentry, he bounded up. A thump shook the building, deeper and more juddering than the hi-fi bass in a teenager’s car. What the hell was happening below? Were the guards preventing Strand’s escape with heavy artillery?
Rex raced around a landing, reached the top of the steps, and threw open the door to a rooftop garden of potted shrubs and ancient Egyptian statues. Realising he’d climbed too far and descending a flight, he opened the corridor door.
‘Shit!’ He dived back into the stairwell as the robo-sentry rotated and, for the second time in two minutes, a volley of silver bullets narrowly missed.
Someone must have activated the damn things after the explosion he’d heard. The penthouse passage was covered, the sentry on the landing below meant he couldn’t go down the stairs and the only route was back up. Rex returned to the rooftop garden snowstorm, where the neighbouring warehouses in the empty business park had begun to reflect a flickering red glow.
‘Oh, wonderful!’ He peered over the parapet handrail at the fire raging through the lower floors. Even if he did manage to get by the cats and automated guns down to ground level, a nice cremation awaited. ‘Well that’s just fucking brilliant!’
He noticed the open penthouse window some ten feet below him and the coil of garden hose by his feet.
‘Are you crazy?’ he stammered, tugging at it and half-hoping it would snap so he could drop the insane idea that was forming. ‘You’re a sexy playboy, not a hero.’
The hose was the reinforced, heavy-duty type, and quickly knotting one end tightly around the handrail, he threw the remainder over the edge. This was madness, but apart from waiting here to burn or have his blood drained, it was the only option. Shaking and sweating, Rex secured the Uzi sling around his neck, climbed the parapet, and gingerly lowered himself backwards.
‘Oh, what are you doing?’ He scuffled down the wall until level with the window, kicked off into space, and swung towards the opening, whimpering at a sudden memory of tarot cards. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
***
Amy stared at the changing screens, praying for a glimpse of Rex, as Silva flicked through the CCTV controls. The burning technical lab appeared, smoke parting to reveal Fran clumsily using bolt croppers behind her back to free Strand from his manacles.
‘What happened to the guards?’ said Sarah. She watched Strand release Fran, key in the door combination and escape onto the wharf. An inrush of air nourished the flames, the inferno killing the camera. ‘And where’s the human?’
‘Matthew knew the exit code,’ hissed Silva. ‘I should have changed it more frequently.’
‘If you’d activated your robo-sentries earlier, they wouldn’t have got away.’
‘My dear girl...’ Silva began working through the cameras again. ‘You haven’t known me long enough to realise that only a suicide would speak to me in that manner.’ The conference room corridor appeared onscreen, red dust and dark suits covering the floor by the elevator. ‘Ah! Holland and Boam - I wonder how Matthew overpowered them? And where is Grant?’
Amy shuddered. The chances of him being alive were slimmer than an anorexic whippet, but so far there had been no sign of his corpse.
‘The ground floor is ablaze.’ Sarah eyed the changing monitors nervously. ‘Why aren’t the sprinklers working?’
‘The water main that supplies the system runs beneath the lobby. According to these pressure readings, it was destroyed by the blast. This place will burn like tinder.’ Silva adjusted controls. ‘The corridor robo-sentries are still operational, but I’ve now deactivated those on the stairs to allow you down. Costigan and Galeen should have been in reception. Go find them and bring them up here if they’re still alive. Don’t be long.’
‘What about Rex?’ said Amy, trembling.
Silva chuckled. ‘I really don’t think we need him.’
Amy watched Sarah leave. ‘Your guards are probably dead,’ she said. ‘The police and the fire brigade will be here soon and we’re trapped until then. It’s over. Your building, your plans–it’s all finished.’
‘Hardly.’ Dragging her around the snake pit, Silva stabbed a keypad to open the private elevator. ‘I have the disc, I have samples of the cream and droplets, I have you to work on them, and as you can see, I have an escape route past the fire.’
‘I won’t help if you leave Rex to burn.’
‘As you can imagine, Sarah was also frightened and uncooperative when she was abducted.’ He pulled the petrified girl close and gripped her upper arms, feline muzzle extending. ‘Allow me to show you how I remedied that.’
Furry lips brushed Amy’s thro
at; apparently the remedy wouldn’t involve balanced reasoning. A tongue caressed the flesh, locating the racing artery, and sharp fangs replaced the softness. Something large splashed into the pond in the lower section of the lounge, and Silva twisted away.
‘Ah, Mister Grant.’ The shapeshifter noticed the hose and realised that Rex had swung in through the open window. He laughed at the drenched figure. ‘We wondered where you were.’
‘Amy, get away from him.’ Rex swatted a lily pad from his head, moaned to see Silva’s cat features and pointed the dripping Uzi. ‘Get back!’
‘He’s wearing body armour,’ screamed Amy. Unable to break the taloned grip, she jerked away to arm’s length, offering a clear shot. ‘I just felt it.’
‘Put that gun down, you fool,’ said Silva. ‘We both know you don’t have the courage to fire. Put it down now and I may not open your torso and force you to eat your own intestines.’
‘Let Amy go,’ shouted Rex, shocked and astonished by his new-found courage. ‘Get your paws off her.’
‘I said put it down.’
Rex whimpered as he pulled the trigger, and Amy leapt from the penthouse control area into the lower level shrubbery. Staring incredulously at the smashed arm that had held her, the shapeshifter screeched and turned back to the pond, its green eyes glowing.
‘Oh no!’ Rex fired another two bursts and missed. ‘No, no, no!’
Silva descended the steps, head and neck changing to that of a white panther. The contorted features reminded Rex of a furious gargoyle, but if this face were ever to adorn a cathedral roof, no pigeon would dare crap on it. Silver bullets ricocheted off concealed armour and his frantic brain tried coordinating shaking hands to train the Uzi on the cat’s unprotected head.
Snack!
Rex croaked in horror. The sound told him the gun was empty. Releasing the clip and scrabbling in his jacket, he managed to ram in the spare, before a claw snatched the Uzi and flung it across the room. Now fully transformed, the wounded panther had burst from the Kevlar and leapt to the lily pond. Dragged from the water by his sweater, Rex punched the cat’s flank, almost shattering his hand on the ribs.
