by AD Starrling
Rapid footsteps rose at our backs. More Crovirs appeared along the empty passage behind us. Anatole glanced at me. ‘We’ll take the front!’ he said jovially.
I frowned and turned to face the approaching wave, my swords in hand. A heartbeat later, the blades arched and danced through the air. A couple of bullets thudded into my body vest. Another skimmed past my right eye and grazed the top of my ear. Throughout it all, I breathed steadily, the daisho carving into flesh again and again.
Moments later, we had secured the principal entrance to the underground facility. ‘Keep going! We’ll cover you!’ Victor shouted behind me as a fresh surge of Crovirs arrived at the steel doors. I nodded briskly and started to run, Reid and Anatole close on my heels.
More guards appeared in our path the deeper we ventured inside the island. They fell rapidly beneath our bullets and my blades. Endless white corridors soon merged into each other, the walls blindingly bright under the harsh fluorescent strips on the ceiling. All the while, alarms clamoured loudly through the complex.
Biohazard signs started to appear overhead. Minutes later, we turned a corner and skidded to a stop in front of a pair of high containment doors. ‘The labs must be through here,’ I panted. I stared at the control panel at the side with a frown: I had never seen one like it before.
Footsteps pounded the tiles behind us. Several Crovir Hunters came into view at the other end of the passage. Reid scowled. ‘Hurry and do your stuff! We haven’t got much cover here!’
I unscrewed the metal panel covering the unit while Reid and Anatole laid down cover fire. I grabbed a powerful pen torch from the backpack and shone it on the microcircuits inside, a sliver of sweat rolling down my face. I blinked, stuck the torch between my teeth, lifted the wakizashi and sliced through two wires. I rapidly twisted the ends together.
A light turned green above the lintel. The containment doors opened with a hiss of escaping air. ‘Let’s go!’ I shouted over my shoulder.
We crossed the threshold into a wide, glass-walled hallway. I counted at least twenty figures in white biohazard suits working at complex machines and moving between crowded worktops behind the sterile partitions on both sides of the passage. They looked up at the sound of the gunfire, their eyes widening behind their visors.
I turned and stabbed the wakizashi into the access panel in the wall behind me. Sparks erupted from the unit. The containment doors closed on the approaching Crovir Hunters, their bullets thudding uselessly into the reinforced metal.
Reid’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well, that should buy us what, a minute or two?’
I nodded and headed swiftly down the hall. At the second intersection, I paused and turned left. ‘Down here.’
From what I recalled of the map of the facility, Anna was being held in a room somewhere along that passage.
Doors opened as I strode down the corridor. I paid no heed to the scientists fleeing past me.
A containment door finally appeared at the far end. Ten feet from it, four Crovir Hunters came out of an opening on the right. They barely had time to raise their guns before they fell under the blades. Without pausing for breath, I lifted a card from one of the dead men and moved it over the control panel of the door. It glided open with a soft pneumatic noise.
A couple of men in sterile suits looked up from a monitor sitting on a desk in the room beyond. I ignored them and glanced around wildly, my eyes searching and finally finding the figure I was yearning to see behind a glass window on the left.
‘Open that door!’ I commanded harshly, indicating the sealed entrance in the containment wall.
One of the scientists reached for a phone next to him. He froze as the barrel of a gun touched the back of his head. ‘I would do as he says if I were you,’ said Reid silkily.
The second man gulped and stood up slowly. He crossed the floor and typed in a security code in the wall with a shaking hand. As soon as the door slid open, I moved past him and entered the sterile room.
Anna’s eyes opened when I reached the side of the bed. Dark pupils dilated in a sea of green. ‘Lucas?’ she whispered.
‘I’m here,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice steady as a wave of emotions surged through me.
A smile tugged at her dry lips. ‘I knew you’d come for me,’ she said softly.
I took in the dark circles under her eyes and the fresh bruises on her arms. Rage replaced the joy inside my chest. I carefully avoided her gaze while I undid the leather belts holding her down on the metal gurney, my hands trembling imperceptibly.
‘Are you okay?’ I said, lifting her gently and cradling her against my body. She felt thin under the hospital gown. The sun cross pendant gleamed at the base of her throat.
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘I’m a little tired. They’ve taken a lot of blood from me.’ She laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. ‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she murmured huskily. A tear slid down her cheek. ‘I never got to tell how much I—’ Her voice trailed into silence.
‘I know,’ I murmured. I was intensely aware of her heartbeat against my chest.
It felt like coming home.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There was a sound from the doorway.
‘I hate to rain on your touching parade here folks, but I think we should get moving,’ said Anatole. He gave us a quick, awkward grin over his shoulder, the Steyr AUG rifle in his hands aimed at the main door.
Anna suddenly stiffened in my arms. Her eyes snapped open. ‘Grandfather!’ she cried out.
‘We haven’t found him yet,’ I said.
‘I know where he is,’ Anna murmured breathlessly. I turned and carried her briskly across the floor towards the exit. ‘Wait!’ she said when we entered the outer room. I froze in my tracks and stared at her. ‘Put me down,’ she commanded in a firm tone. I hesitated before slowly lowering her to the ground. Anna took a few steps towards the scientist cowering behind the desk. ‘Give me your gun,’ she said steadily, her eyes never leaving the man’s face while she extended a hand towards me.
I glanced at Reid. He shrugged with an ‘I’d-do-as-she-said-if-I-was-you’ expression. I slipped the Glock 17 from the holster on my hip and slowly placed it in her grasp.
The scientist’s eyes widened behind the visor. A mumble of incoherent words left his lips when Anna raised the gun and levelled it at his chest. A second later, her arm moved and she fired the Glock.
The bullet shattered the computer terminal next to the man. He cried out in shock and collapsed to the floor. Anna frowned, turned to the second scientist and hit him on the jaw with the butt of the gun.
Anatole’s mouth sagged open.
‘They’re lucky I didn’t shoot them,’ Anna muttered with a dark scowl as she stormed past us towards the exit. I looked at Reid. He was grinning. We headed back along the passage and paused at the intersection with the glass hall. ‘This way,’ said Anna briskly, indicating the corridor to the left.
Under her direction, we moved deeper inside the island. The labs had emptied in our absence, the scattered paperwork and overturned chairs testimony to the haste of the scientists’ departure. Moments later, we reached an exit. It opened onto an empty stairwell. ‘Up or down?’ I said to Anna as we paused on the stone landing.
‘Down. Definitely down,’ she replied with a frown. ‘They brought us here by boat.’
The stairs ended in front of a metal door three floors below. The corridor beyond was carved out of rock and lit eerily by flickering flame torches sitting in metal brackets on the walls. This far down, the alarms were barely audible.
Several minutes passed, during which we crossed a series of deserted passages.
‘You know, not that I’m complaining or anything, but we haven’t seen anyone for a while now,’ Reid said quietly. ‘I’m not sure whether to take that as a good sign or a bad one.’
Anatole and I glanced warily at one another. ‘It’s bad,’ said the immortal with a firm nod.
‘The Crovirs m
ust be regrouping,’ I added steadily. Though I was elated to have found Anna, nervous anxiety built inside my chest once more. Our battle was far from over.
Anna frowned. ‘Yes, but where?’ she murmured.
We found out thirty seconds later, when the corridor we were in suddenly ended on a narrow metal gangway near the stone ceiling of an enormous atrium. We stopped in the shadows along the walls and stared over the edge of the opening.
There were four floors below us, arranged in identical, expanding, smooth circular terraces not dissimilar to those of an ancient Roman arena. Crovir Hunters occupied the balconies of the upper three levels, guns and swords in hand as they guarded the doors to the vast chamber.
‘I think the room where they took Grandfather is somewhere down there,’ Anna murmured at my side.
On the ground floor of the atrium, in the exact epicenter of a cream marble expanse, stood a round steel and glass cage on metal castors. A crowd of Crovir nobles dressed in formal evening wear milled around it, their voices raised in muted conversation. There was a feeling of palpable tension in the air.
A cold premonition rose in my mind as my gaze shifted once more to the cage in the middle of the room. It was large enough to hold a man.
‘No,’ Anna whispered shakily. I glanced at her and saw my own horror reflected in her eyes.
‘What?’ Anatole muttered with a puzzled frown. Reid remained silent, his expression grim.
A hush fell below us, drawing our stares. The voices of the Crovir nobles dwindled to a stop; as one, they turned towards a doorway on the left. The sound of footsteps emerged in the distance and grew closer. Several figures appeared over the threshold and slowly crossed the polished floor. I felt Anna stiffen beside me and gripped her hand tightly. My eyes never left the man in the middle of the small procession.
It was Tomas Godard.
Surrounded by a guard of Crovir Hunters, the former Bastian leader was led into the room in chains. Although he looked gaunt and pale, Godard walked with stiff pride, his head held high and his limp more evident without the ivory headed cane. He stopped when he spotted a familiar face in the crowd. ‘Grigoriye.’ The old man looked more sad than angry. ‘I never imagined that you of all people would betray us so,’ he said softly.
The Bastian noble held Godard’s gaze and shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I’m afraid we need to move with the times, Tomas,’ he said. ‘What Vellacrus is offering is the future. I would’ve been a fool to refuse her.’
‘Still, I fear you have made a grave mistake,’ said Godard. ‘Vellacrus is not to be trusted.’
Grigoriye frowned. A storm of murmurs broke across the chamber as more guards filed into the room and fanned around the walls: it rose to fever pitch when Agatha Vellacrus and Felix Thorne came through next. Although a good proportion of the Crovir nobles still bore anxious expressions, scattered applause erupted in the crowd. I felt my pulse start to race as a wave of fury rose inside me.
Vellacrus raised her hand. ‘My friends,’ she said once the clapping had died down. ‘I am pleased to see you in such good spirits.’ It was the second time I had heard my grandmother’s voice. It still sounded cold to my ears. ‘Today is a special day for us Crovirs, for it’s the start of a new adventure for our race,’ she continued, a zealous expression dawning on her pale face. ‘And what could be a more befitting beginning to this chapter in our immortal history than the death of one of our oldest and most hated enemies? I present to you the former leader of the Bastian Hunters, Tomas Godard.’
Applause rose again at her words. Some of the nobles glanced around the room, their expressions troubled.
‘For such an esteemed adversary, one must reserve a truly unique death,’ Vellacrus said loudly above the sound of clapping hands. A hush fell once more at her words. She smiled and waited until the silence was complete. ‘Today, my friends, we shall watch the first of many Bastians die from the Red Death.’
Among the roar of approving voices that followed, one spoke up. ‘Really Agatha, is now the time to be engaging in such dreadful theatrics? We hear that the Bastian army is on their way to this fortress. Shouldn’t we be making plans to evacuate instead?’ The speaker was an elderly woman. She stood her ground defiantly in the face of the critical stares around her.
‘Sylviana is right,’ said someone else. It was a middle-aged man who spoke next. Mutters rose through the crowd. Several nobles nodded in agreement.
‘My dear Sylviana, to not wish to see the death of a Bastian could be interpreted as an act of treason against the Crovirs,’ Vellacrus said coolly. She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Should I interpret it as such?’
The Crovir noblewoman frowned heavily. ‘I will not have you question my allegiance to my race so readily, Agatha,’ she said sharply.
Vellacrus stared at her with an unreadable expression. ‘Good,’ she finally murmured. ‘Then we shall proceed as planned. Felix.’ She turned to Thorne.
At the latter’s command, Tomas Godard’s chains were removed and he was escorted inside the glass cage. He did not put up a fight. The door closed on him with a final, sombre toll. One of the hovering Hunters handed Thorne a silver flask. He walked to the side of the cage, opened a compartment built in the steel construct and placed the container inside.
‘With this, I hope to finally see the end of the Godard line,’ said Thorne, staring at the old man inside the glass prison. A cold smile dawned on his face and twisted the scar on his cheek. ‘Of course, I still need to take care of your delightful granddaughter and that bastard half-breed grandson of yours. Rest assured, I shall take the greatest pleasure in personally killing them both.’
At this, Tomas Godard finally showed some emotion. He took a step towards the glass wall, a dark scowl clouding his face. ‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on them, you monster!’ he shouted. He turned to Vellacrus. ‘If you have any feeling at all left in that cold heart of yours Agatha, then let Anna and Lucas live!’
Vellacrus raised her eyebrows and studied the old man for silent seconds. ‘My dear Tomas, why ever should I do that?’ she finally murmured and nodded slightly at Thorne. He pressed a button on the side of the cage.
The silver flask moved up into an airlock. A needle came down and perforated the rubber top of the container. There was a faint electronic hum as the clear liquid inside was aspirated into a piece of glass tubing and started to move along a narrow pipe.
My heart pounded dully in my chest as my gaze followed the course of the conduit to a box in the roof of the cage. I slipped my bag off my back.
‘What’re you doing?’ said Reid. He was watching me with a suspicious frown.
I removed a climbing rope and harness from the pack and fastened them to my waist. ‘I’m going in.’
Anatole’s jaw sagged open. ‘Are you mad?!’ hissed the immortal. ‘Victor’ll have a heart attack if we let you—’
‘Victor will understand!’ I interrupted harshly. I tied the other end of the line to a carabiner and turned to Anna. I took a step towards her, cradled the back of her head with one hand and kissed her fiercely. ‘I have to do this,’ I whispered against her lips. I pulled back and stared into her eyes.
Anna nodded tremulously. She wiped a tear away with an angry frown and slipped the Glock into my hand. ‘Live,’ she said in a hard voice.
‘Look after her,’ I said, glancing at Reid. ‘And get off the island if you can.’
‘Will do,’ Reid muttered with a lopsided grin.
I walked to the middle of the gangway, locked the carabiner onto the handrail and climbed over. I paused on the edge, took a deep breath and gripped the guns tightly in my hands before jumping. As I plummeted head down towards the floor of the atrium, I dropped both arms and started to fire.
The bullets smashed into the glass ceiling of the cage just as the liquid reached the box in the roof. A fine mist rained down on Tomas Godard. I squeezed the triggers rapidly, shooting round after round into the cracking glass.
It shattered seconds befo
re I reached it.
I pulled up sharply, hurtled through the jagged opening and landed heavily on my feet in the middle of the shard strewn floor. Beyond the glass walls, the shocked faces of the Crovir nobles transformed into expressions of panic. Terrified cries rose from the crowd.
The Hunters raised their guns and started to shoot at the cage. ‘Stop!’ Thorne shouted furiously. ‘The virus is still inside!’
‘Lucas?’ Godard whispered in disbelief behind me.
I fired a bullet through the lock on the door, grabbed my grandfather’s arm and pulled him out of the broken prison. Chaos reigned inside the arena while the nobles ran for the exits: it was obvious from the fear thrumming the air that not all of them had received the vaccine. I holstered the guns and drew the daisho from my waist as a group of Crovir Hunters surrounded us.
‘Stay behind me!’ I shouted harshly at my grandfather. He nodded reluctantly. My feet moved into the starting stance of kendo. I breathed deeply and raised the swords.
The blades flashed under the lights, blocking bullets and carving through flesh. Three Hunters fell, then five and ten. A bullet slipped past my defence and thudded into my vest. Another grazed my thigh. I took out four more Hunters. As the third wave raised their weapons, gunfire erupted on the upper floors of the atrium. I glanced up. The Bastians had arrived.
Seconds later, Victor entered the lower arena. He was closely followed by Bruno and Costas. They fought their way across the packed floor towards us.
‘Glad to see you’re still alive, old man,’ Victor said to Godard with a grim smile once they were within earshot. The latter nodded weakly. Victor frowned and looked around the chamber. ‘Where’s Vellacrus?’
‘She disappeared through that door with Thorne.’ I indicated an opening on the left.
Victor stared at me. ‘Anna?’
‘She’s safe,’ I murmured. ‘She’s with Reid and Anatole.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Godard whispered hoarsely.
