He smiled, showing off a split lip and dark bruising above his right eye. A result of my second bomb I hoped. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” he said, his voice gruff. “Do as you’re told, and it will be over before you know it.”
“Grin and bear it, huh?” I gave a bitter laugh. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“But you soon will be.”
In the reflection of his dark glasses, I saw my future. Once the vaccine entered my bloodstream, my mutated cells would shift, and I’d become human. And soon after that, thanks again to Resden’s research and development, I’d be a corpse. The plague inside my body would morph and I’d wither and die. Just like my parents had.
Served Arthur right.
In a way it was almost funny. My impending death was a highlight to this debacle. I pictured Arthur’s face as I lay dying on the floor of his lab and grinned.
So be it.
I only hoped I survived long enough to see time expire on my third and final bomb. The same bomb set to detonate in less than twenty-five minutes. It was guaranteed to take out all of Resden. None of us could stop it. Not London or the deadly Agent Umber. Not even me.
“Indeara?” Arthur walked into the lab, his white hair emphasized by the paleness of his skin. He looked older than he had a mere week ago as if his life force was slowly leeching from his body. He came toward me, but stopped a few feet away. Was it fear I saw in his eyes or something less definable? Regret? Hate?
“Hello Grandfather.” I shrugged my shoulders. My handcuffs rattled against the back pocket of my ruined jeans. “I’d offer you a hug, but…”
Arthur stepped closer, a frown pulling at his lips. “Uncuff her. Indeara’s not a threat. She’s family, my flesh and blood.” Like London, I wanted to ask, but for once remained silent.
“I don’t think that’s wise.” Agent Umber laughed, deep and harsh, as if the sound had been ripped from his soul. He shook his head at Arthur. “She’s already killed at least two agents, not to mention destroying a fourth of your building.” His tone held a grudging respect.
“And it’s still early yet.” I batted my eyelashes. “Give me another half-hour and you’ll be wearing your intestines as a necktie.”
“How quaint,” Umber said, shaking his head. “Let’s get on with it, Resden. We have other more important mutants to,” his lips curved into a grin, “fix.” If it was possible I hated him even more after that statement. I wasn’t some bit of mutant fluff to be discounted. I’d made better men shake in their wing-tips, damn it.
“Indeara, my love.” Arthur smiled at me. “We’re only trying to help you. Save you from your altered fate. Once you’re fixed, you can have a real life. A real family. Let me help you.” From the look in his eyes, he honestly believed every word. To him I was an abomination, a disease in need of a cure.
Just like Calvin.
Hate bubbled up inside me, spewing from my lips without thought. “Help me? Help me?” I shrieked. Arthur stepped back, his face paling. But Agent Umber didn’t move, he just stood there with a smirk on his smug face.
Anger gave me added strength, enough to ignore the intense pain ripping across my shoulder as I dislocated it from its socket for a second time and jumped backward through my cuffed hands. A trick Quinn had taught me in the privacy of my bedroom. An ache grew inside my chest, a mix of grief, betrayal, and rage.
With my hands now in front of me, I smashed my palm into the closer of the two agents’ nose. He dropped to the ground, blood leaking from the busted cartilage. The second agent, this one wider than his cohort, tried to tackle me using his large frame to overpower the helpless girl. I responded with a well-placed kick to his knee, which shattered on impact. He barked, and before he hit the floor, his black eyes had rolled up into his head.
I stepped toward Agent Umber, ready to extract some much satisfying vengeance. But the smack of hand against hand stopped me. “Bravo, Ms. Adair.” Agent Umber stood a few feet from me clapping his hands together. The slow measured beat sent a shiver down my spine. “But you’re wasting my time.” Pulling my nine-millimeter from the waistband of his pants, he aimed it at my heart.
I laughed. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
He raised his eyebrow.
“You know you want to,” I taunted.
“No,” Arthur said jumping between us. Agent Umber lowered his weapon, but he didn’t return it to its holster. My grandfather nodded; apparently satisfied that everything was back in order. How wrong poor old gramps was, I thought, considering the best way to snap his neck with only one working arm. I shrugged. He was old, it probably wouldn’t take much.
Before I could crush his windpipe with my chained writs, Arthur grabbed my arm and plunged a hypodermic needle into my flesh. “Trust me, Indeara. It’s for the best.”
Chapter 45
“Ow!” I shoved Arthur Resden away from me. He rocked back, teetering on some sort of invisible string, and then crashed to the floor. The needle in my arm quivered, blood spurting from the puncture wound like a fountain, but none of the vaccine entered my vein.
Not yet.
In a panic, I reached for the offending instrument, but Agent Umber wrapped his arms around me, trapping me against his body. “Stop struggling,” he said, flexing his forearm against my neck and yanking the needle from my vein.
Yeah right.
I kicked him in the shin, but he sidestepped, almost as if he’d known my next move before I had. Bastard. The needle fell to the floor, and before Umber stopped me, I flattened it under my boot.
Arthur staggered to his feet gasping for breath. A part of me might’ve felt bad, if he hadn’t just tried to ‘cure’ me. My leg lashed out missing Arthur’s head by inches.
Umber pulled me back, mashing my breasts against his chest, and whispered quietly in my ear, “The more you fight me, the more mutants that will die.” His hot breath caressed the back of my neck. “Think of your friends. Your family.” Grasping a lock of curly hair, he tugged. “Of Nobody, Ivan, and dear little Mikey. How much will they suffer for your sins?”
I ceased struggling, keeping still in his rough embrace. I’d lost too many mutants I loved already. I wouldn’t risk anymore. “These aren’t my sins.” I swallowed, turning to face Arthur and thrusting a finger in his direction. “They’re his. Founded in greed and fear.”
Arthur shook his head. “No, no, Indeara. I want to help you mutants. To make you whole.”
“You mean make us human.”
“Yes.” Arthur took a step toward me, but Umber held up his hand. “I wanted you to be perfect like my dear Emily. To have the life she should’ve had.” His lips thinned. “If it wasn’t for that mutant, your father. He destroyed her life.”
“No,” I gave a bitter laugh. “You did. She died because of you, and your hate.”
The crack of Arthur’s palm against my cheek ripped through the room. My face burned with the imprint of his hand, but I refused to flinch. Agent Umber, on the other hand, grabbed Arthur’s fist and flung the older man backward. He stumbled but stayed on his feet.
“Control yourself, Resden,” Umber ordered, the blackness of his sunglasses adding to the overall menace in his tone. Arthur seemed to shrink under Umber’s gaze, growing smaller and smaller until I thought he’d disappear.
“I loved Emily.” Arthur wheezed. “I gave her anything she wanted. Everything she asked for.”
I couldn’t argue with that. He’d given her life, and death. What more could a father offer? I started to respond, but Agent Umber shoved his hand over my mouth. “We don’t have time for this. The vaccine needs to be administered to all the mutants now.”
Arthur nodded, his eyes cold as a mutant morning. Umber smiled. His arms tightened around my body, shifting my weight against him. My stomach clenched, tendrils of fear tickling my senses. The heat of Umber’s body pressed against mine terrified me in so many ways. If he touched me, he would bleed. No doubt it. I wouldn’t beg or plead for my virtue. I’d fig
ht. To the death.
“Don’t do this, Arthur.” My eyes caught his. “Please. We’re not a disease to be eradicated. We’re people just like you. Like Emily.” Using my mother’s name left a bad taste in my throat, like kissing a toad-prince. Sure, the end result looked fine in a pair of leotards, but you usually ended up with warts. The genital kind at the very least.
Arthur shook his head. “I realize now that it can never be.” From the pocket of his lab coat, he pulled a surgeon’s scalpel. It shone like fire in the overhead lights. Umber backed up a half step, taking me with him, almost as if shielding me from the crazed older man.
“I’m sorry, Indeara. I hoped things could be different. That you could take your rightful place. Emily’s rightful place.” Arthur raised the instrument to strike. “But you’ll never be like Emily.”
“I’m more like her than you think.” I pushed from Agent Umber and stood staring into the eyes of my grandfather, eyes like replicas of my own. “You see, Emily and I share more than genetic material.” I nodded in his direction. “We share a disease. A plague of sorts.”
He frowned, slowly lowering his weapon. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do.” I pulled back the sleeve of my shirt, exposing the telltale rash of Resden’s plague. Agent Umber flinched in disgust, which gave me a small measure of satisfaction. “Emily died by your hand. London told me all about it. How Calvin tried to save her, to beg you for help, but you refused to talk to him. And she died. Died from a plague you created. A plague you administered to kill Calvin. She died because of you.”
“No,” he moaned.
“At the end, she didn’t even recognize me.” I swallowed the bitter memories, focusing on inflicting as much suffering on him as he had hundreds of mutants. I wanted him to cry, to beg, to bargain with the devil as I’d done time and time again while watching the plague destroy my family.
“I didn’t know.” Arthur shook his head as tears streamed down his cheeks. “I wanted him to die. All mutants to die. Not my baby. Not like that.”
The scalpel in his hand clattered to the floor. My eyes darted to it, debating the wisdom of sending it spiraling through Agent Umber’s jugular vein. But my moment of opportunity faded quickly as Arthur sank to the ground next to the knife curling into a fetal position.
“You can make it right.” I slid to my knees but avoided touching him. I couldn’t bare the thought of any contact between us. It was as if his evil was the catchy kind. “Help me stop the vaccine from destroying what’s left of Emily, and the mutant race.”
“Yes.” Arthur lifted his head from the floor and stared into my eyes. “I’ll make it right.” He reached for the scalpel. “For Emily. For her daughters’ sake”
Agent Umber lunged for the weapon, but he was too late. Arthur plunged the steel blade into his own throat, ripping through the muscles, tendons, and veins. Blood splashed over me like a wave. Arthur’s body went limp, blood staining the floor around us red.
I watched my grandfather die, and felt nothing. No satisfaction or regret.
Surprisingly Agent Umber reacted much differently. He grabbed the lapels of Arthur’s lab coat. “Bastard.” He shook Arthur’s body with great violence, sending the dark sunglasses obscuring his agent eyes flying. They landed in a sticky puddle of blood, black lens mirroring the blackness in Arthur Resden’s dead eyes. “Where’s the damn vaccine?” Umber shook the body again.
For some reason, shock most likely, I found his reaction hilarious. Laughter bubbled inside me spewing into the silent lab in choked peels. Umber released Arthur’s corpse, and stalked his way toward me. My laughter stopped and my eyes darted around the room for some kind of weapon.
“I guess that,” I nodded at Arthur’s corpse, “puts a dent in your plans. No Arthur. No vaccine.” I laughed. “No mass mutant murder.”
Umber gazed down at poor old granddad. “No Arthur. No vaccine.” Grey eyes, Quinn’s grey eyes, met mine. “No cure. The old bastard finally won.”
Chapter 46
Pleasure flooded my body making me dizzy with its intensity. I ran to Quinn, thankful he was still alive. He opened his arms, a smile hovering on the borrowed lips of Agent Umber. When I reached him I raised my hand and smacked him across the cheek. “Damn you, Quinn Daniels. I thought you were dead.”
“Ow,” he complained, rubbing Umber’s face and the perfectly round imprint of my palm outlined on it. “I can see you were all broken up about it too,” he winked, “but you might want to try and control yourself. This emotional display, it’s embarrassing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I poked him in the chest. “Give me a signal or something?”
“Before or after you blew the shit out of us?” Quinn grabbed my finger holding it against his heart like a lover. “Damn it, Indeara, I had everything under control until you showed up.”
“Really?” Lurching away from him, I gave a sharp laugh. “It seems to me, when I arrived, you were locked inside a cage.” I tapped the tip of my finger to my lips. “Wanna explain in what universe that is considered ‘under control’?”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me against his chest. Pressing his lips to my forehead, he whispered, “Want to explain what the hell you’re doing here? I remember telling you to stay away from Resden. From me.” All tenderness vanished from his face. “Jesus Indeara. You could’ve died, or worse…”
Like he cared. I was a means to Quinn’s mutant end. We both knew it, but he had saved my mutant self. If not for him I’d be as dead as poor old gramps. The beep of the timer around my neck drew my attention. Shit. Five minutes until detonation.
“When I think of what could’ve happened, I—,” Quinn was saying. I jerked away from him and raised my hand for quiet. “We still might have a small problem,” I said. A pound of C-4 small.
“Oh God, what’d you do now?” Quinn shook his head looking equal parts wary and resigned. I shrugged, trying for casual but my heart pounded in my ears. Time was running out. “Remember that C-4 in your apartment…”
Quinn rolled his eyes, grabbed my hand, and ran through the lab door, dragging me in his wake. As we ran he muttered certain insulting assessments about the size of my brain, my ability to reason, and a few charming descriptions of his plans for me after we escaped.
If we escaped.
In the hallway outside the lab, I pulled to a stop and nearly yanked Quinn off Agent Umber’s feet. Quinn glared at me, but I held up a hand. “The mutants. The ones in the cell.” I spun around, heading in the opposite direction. “We can’t just leave them.”
Instead of arguing like I’d expected Quinn nodded. “Save them.” He smiled, a dark grin that sent a chill up my spine. “It’s what you do.” This Quinn wasn’t the same man I’d loved nor was he the man I’d plotted to destroy. This Quinn was far more deadly. “I have something I need to take care of as well.” He licked his lips. “I’ll meet you outside.”
I grabbed his sleeve. “Forget the vaccine. It’s not worth dying for.”
“It’s not that simple, sweetheart.”
I knew that better than anyone did. A vision of Quinn and a needle full of vaccine flashed through my head. Even after all this, he still wanted to be human. He wanted the vaccine, perhaps more now than ever. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Go.”
Nodding he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. His lips felt both foreign and like home. “I love you, Indeara. Never forget that.” And with that eerily familiar and frightening statement he was gone.
Chapter 47
“Hurry.” I waved my hands at the open cell door and the lump of unconscious agent on the floor next to it. “Save yourselves.” The mutant-experiments just stared at me much like the mice in the lab. Fear kept them caged. Rage at my grandfather and the human race churned inside me. Until the wall came down mutants would never be free. We’d always hide in our cages, waiting, longing for what we were too afraid to take. If I survived this day I’d spend the rest of what little life I
had left breaking down the wall. Brick by fucking brick if need be.
I glanced at the timer, flashing two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and back at the crowd of mutants. Only one thing left to do. Reaching down, I grabbed a Glock from the holster of the agent I’d knocked out and fired into the air. Bits of concrete and tile rained from overhead but still the mutants refused to run.
Maybe they were too stupid to live.
I fired again with the same result. Damn. “What is wrong with you?” I reached for the closest mutant, a young boy with very blue eyes. Freshly healed scars covered his body. I aimed the weapon at the kid. “If you don’t save yourselves, I’m going to shoot every last one of you.”
As a bluff it sucked, but I had little choice. Time was running out and I’d be dammed if I’d suffered through eighteen bullet wounds, a fractured femur, and two dislocated shoulder sockets just so I could die in an explosion I created. As irony went death by my own hand held all the appeal of a Fey bite.
Much to my dismay not one of the mutants headed for the unlocked door. I shook my head, cocked the gun, and fired. The bullet hit the kid in the upper chest, ripping a hole the size of a fist a few inches to the right of his heart. His face turned white, and his eyes rolled back into his head.
What a drama queen, I thought, jumping out of the way, as twenty terrified mutants ran past me. As the last mutant, a gnome with a scar of an imprint of a pink combat boot on his forehead, hurried from the cell I jerked the boy mutant upright.
“Sorry about that,” I said, motioning to his bleeding chest. The blood had slowed to a trickle. “I didn’t see another way.”
The Stannum kid frowned rubbing at his healing flesh. “Next time, try saying please.” Ducking around me, he ran out of the cell and down the hallway to freedom.
I followed but at a more sedate pace. Somewhere inside Resden agents still lurked, waiting in the shadows to destroy me. To destroy all of us. I held the Glock at ready and pushed my way through the glass doors in the front of the building.
The Body Dwellers Page 16
