“Why is he calling you?”
“He couldn’t reach you.”
“If he’s calling from his implant, there’s no reception in the bunker,” explained Marco. “It’s lead-lined, hardened against nukes.”
Nicole gave him a life-sapping glare. To Elise: “Tell him what we rehearsed, you idiot. We’re tracking a potential Ender attack uptown.”
“He doesn’t believe me! He’s demanding we get up there now.”
Nicole swore. “Hold for a minute.” Marco paused the feed. Elise could be seen talking on the phone again.
The titanium door to the bunker hissed open and McDermott strode to her side. “I told you she was a lousy liar,” he said.
Nicole flicked a dark nail at Marco to restore the feed. “Transfer the call here,” she said to Elise.
Marco said, “We’d lose reception in the bunker. Same as if she physically brings the phone to us.”
“Then have Adam call me here directly from a land line!” she snapped.
Before he could reply, Elise put the call on her cell’s speakerphone. You could hear Adam’s fury all the way into the bunker. “Nicole!” he thundered. “I want to talk to you NOW or this ceremony is OVER!”
Elise clicked off the speaker and covered the phone with her hand. “He wants to know something about the security wasps,” she whispered up at them.
“Jesus Christ.” She clenched her fists. To McDermott: “You have a man in the house?”
McDermott looked to Marco, who checked his data. “He’s offline,” said the tech.
“What?”
“It’s probably a glitch. The AI’s running a diagnostic as we speak.”
McDermott scowled. “Bring up the kitchen feed.”
Marco’s fingers flew across the board. Display Three lit. McDermott’s offline guard was shoving a sandwich into his face, his mouth smeared with mayonnaise.
“Jennings! Get your ass on post!”
Jennings looked to the camera drone, cheeks and eyes bulging. He nodded, swallowing something far bigger than his esophagus could handle. Several gulps of milk later, he was able to choke out, “Roger that.”
“Ms. Struldbrug is coming out to talk to Elise.”
“Roger.”
McDermott spoke into his own uplink. “All posts, check in.”
The men out front and upstairs all confirmed that everything was quiet.
“Alright,” said Nicole.
McDermott laid a hand on her forearm. “Maybe you should leave it here,” he said. His eyes drifted to the pocket where she’d tucked the remote control device. “Just to be safe.”
She shook off his hand like he was leprous. “‘Just to be safe’ is the reason I had it made.” She went to a cabinet and opened it, revealing a mounted row of pneumatic syringes, glowing with orange liquid. She stuffed a syringe into her pocket. “If that bitch is lying to me, I’m going to youthe her back to diapers.”
“I thought you trusted her,” said McDermott.
She looked at him like he was a small child. “You’re so cute sometimes.”
62
STRULDBRUG
“She’s coming,” Adam told him. Into the phone: “You did a convincing job, young lady.” He listened, then turned to his father. “Why is she laughing that I called her young lady?”
Adam hadn’t protested, hadn’t demanded further proof or claimed that the recording must be fake. He hadn’t bombarded Struldbrug with any of the millions of questions or objections one might raise when told that their twin sister was about to murder millions of people, themselves and the President of the United States included.
He had simply turned off the recorder and gazed down at his father. His father who suddenly looked so old and tired.
“I have an environmentally-sealed suite in this building,” Adam now said. “You can wait there until this is over.”
Struldbrug shook his head. “The inhabitants of this city don’t have protection, do they? I’m needed out here.”
Adam snorted. “When did you become such a concerned citizen? You’d risk eternity for them?”
Struldbrug’s large eyes flicked downward. Adam couldn’t place the look on his father’s face—he’d never seen it before. Then he realized what it was. Shame. “Donner,” Struldbrug said. “The way he looked at me. With pity. He didn’t think me a monster for all that I’ve done, he just thought me pathetic. Me, pathetic, a king of kings. And I realized that was exactly what I had become.” He looked up at his son. “I was a great man once. A warrior. An empire-builder. Once, the thought of hiding from the world in a make-believe castle would never have entered my mind. But somewhere along those centuries…” The chandeliers made his irises deepen to the color of rich, dark loam. “Maybe it’s not power that corrupts. Maybe it’s time. Too much time to grow afraid.” He stood and shrugged. “I cannot live that way.”
Adam looked thoughtful. “Donner and his friends. You trust them?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. I’ve already seen to the President’s safety.” He pointed at the phone. “I will finish this little ruse, and then we shall wait. When we know that the threat has passed, I’ll take you to the main Blister Control Center and we’ll end this fucking nightmare together.”
63
NICOLE
The guard had removed all traces of his meal. Wise. He snapped to attention as she entered the kitchen. “You’re with me,” she said, not slowing.
She pushed at the pocket doors. Heavy as they were, they slid effortlessly into the walls. Elise was sitting in a high-backed chair. She held the cell phone like it was a inscrutable alien artifact.
Nicole took two steps toward it and stopped dead as the cold metal of a pistol was pressed against her skull.
“Not a muscle, Miss Nicole,” said the voice.
Oh man.
She had to smile. She couldn’t help herself.
One in a million, this fucking guy.
“Donner! Baby!” she said. “If I had a soft spot, it’d be for you.”
She tensed as he patted her down for weapons. But his reborn inexperience betrayed him. His fingers were probing for the weapons of his day, so he missed the wafer-thin nanoblades through her thick sleeves. Her smile broadened.
Then she felt him take the Retrozine-C and the remote from her skirt pocket, and that was it for smiling.
“You can turn around now,” he said.
When she turned, she expected to see the kitchen guard sneaking up behind Donner. The guard was behind him alright, but he was undulating, becoming amorphous. Then his edges blurred and he turned into something else. Something horrifying.
“Thanks,” said Donner to the thing.
It bled away into the floor.
So. Doubly betrayed. “Daddy’s little helper. You’ve made some new friends since we last talked,” she said.
Donner leveled the antique pistol at her. “On the couch. Hands in your lap.”
She complied. Jesus, it was uncomfortable. She smiled reproachfully over at Elise, just to watch the color bleed from her cheeks.
“E tu, Elise?”
Two more people resolved out of the fruity wallpaper. Their smartskin camouflage cycled off. Little Maggie Mannequin was unarmed, but a fireplug of a man she didn’t recognize held a plasma rifle.
She curled her hands in her lap, letting her thumbs drift toward tiny tattoos, the ones below the first joints of her forefingers.
The ones that would trigger her blades.
Donner jammed his pistol into a holster and examined the remote.
“I’d be careful with that, if I were you,” she said. “If its power source is interrupted, it triggers a default response in the mainframe that launches the wasps.”
“So I can’t destroy it,” Donner said. He flicked the top off the tube and stared at the simple red trigger. “We make destruction so easy.” His voice was marinated in disgust. “It always comes down to a red button.”
Donner pulled a silv
er box from a pocket in his smartskin. He slipped the remote into the box and tapped a code on the side of the rectangle, then angled it so Nicole could see. Clear morphinium flowed around the device like molasses, encasing it completely, filling the box.
“No back-ups, right?” he said.
Her stomach lurched in a premonition of disaster.
He keyed another sequence and the morphinium solidified. The remote now looked like a dragonfly trapped in amber. Donner turned the box upside down and the square clattered out onto the ground, functional as a paperweight. “The signal’s still going out. But that button will never get pushed,” Donner said.
Nicole held back a howl that would’ve split the Earth in two. A muscle popped in her neck.
“Simple as that,” said Donner.
“Getting out of here won’t be,” she replied hoarsely.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said sadly. “Got what I came for.”
She arched an eyebrow at Elise. “Guess so.”
Maggie’s resolution wavered.
How interesting.
“You’ve been a naughty little sociopath,” he said
“Poo.” She looked up at the camera drone, batting around the ceiling like a confused fly. “McDermott, in case you didn’t figure it out, kill these motherfuckers!”
64
MCDERMOTT
McDermott had problems of his own. Currently he was watching his men being decimated by a six-foot-long grease stain.
Three minutes before, Marco lost the feed to the house. McDermott paced the cement floor while the tech and his pet AI nailed down the problem. When the screen finally flared back to life, his blood ran cold. A man he thought he’d killed several times was in the process of turning Nicole’s all-important remote control into a doorstop.
“Intruder alert! Carriage house!” he screamed in his link, but there was no response. Then the lights flickered. He hauled Marco out of his chair. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I-I don’t know!” Marco stammered. “My systems are going haywire! I think the AI just crashed!”
McDermott pulled his pistol and turned the incompetent technician into two hundred pounds of rare roast beef. The other techs, a man and a woman, screamed in unison. He kicked at the man-shaped charcoal briquette, cursing, then realized something. The flesh stunk worse than it should have. Which meant the oxygen scrubbers were offline. He’d have to evacuate the bunker before the air ran out.
God damn it! Things were going to shit fast.
Somewhere on the news feed in the background, Maya and Kinner were explaining that the President had cut short his address and left the platform. An explanation was apparently to be forthcoming.
McDermott’s breath stopped short upon hearing that. “I’m going to the carriage house. I want these systems up in five minutes. And I want another way to activate the wasps.”
The male tech paled behind his Coke bottle glasses. “There is no other way! That was the whole point!”
McDermott pressed his weapon under the man’s chin. The tech screamed as his goatee was singed by the hot muzzle.
“If I can’t control those wasps in ten minutes, you’re dead. Is that clear enough?”
Then his two guards started firing at the door, and he whirled to confront a sight that made his mind hiccup and his insides turn to liquid.
65
NICOLE
“You really think there’s only one way to launch the attack?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“You’re a control freak, Nicole,” said Donner. “It finally bit you in the ass.”
“Such language,” she purred. She coughed to cover the click as she flicked open the metal clasps on the harnesses under her blouse. If she triggered the knives now, they’d fire as projectiles.
Donner turned to Max. “Sit rep?”
“The Lifetaker has engaged McDermott in the bunker. I’m hearing weapons fire.”
“That’ll do them a lot of good,” said Maggie.
Elise said, “What now?”
Elise, the traitor. She’d been an idiot to let her live.
“Yeah,” Maggie repeated, looking between Elise and Donner. “What now?” The question carried multiple meanings, deeper inquiries.
Donner’s features were an unreadable mask. “Now we get the hell out of here.”
“W-we?” Elise’s eyes were saucers.
He reddened, like she’d misinterpreted him. “This isn’t charity, Elise. You were part of this. We’ll do what we can, but it’ll be up to the authorities what happens to you.”
“Damn, that’s cold,” said Nicole. “This is what you left me for?”
Elise slowly nodded at Donner.
“Oh, don’t look so stricken,” said Nicole. “Prison’s so much more fun when you’re young.”
Elise stared at the carpet as though inertia was the only thing keeping her on her feet. Nicole could read her mind. How’d I get here? she was thinking. How’d I get to this place?
Max to Donner: “You’re not planning to leave this witch alive, are you?” Meaning her.
“That was the deal with Struldbrug.”
“What deal?”
“In exchange for his help, I said I wouldn’t kill her. Unless I had to.”
“Dear old dad,” sighed Nicole. “Makes me all misty.” She blinked twice in rapid succession to bring the targeting system in her veil online.
“She killed you! Twice! She’ll kill us all if she gets the chance.”
“Her squad and her comm systems are down. By the time she gets back to her people in Necropolis, we’ll be safely ensconced at Arg-é Bam and the Conch and the President both will have the story. There’s a big world out there that ain’t gonna be thrilled she played it for a sucker.”
Then, out of the blue, Donner’s smile dropped from his face like he’d been sucker-punched. For a moment, she thought he’d decided to break his promise to Daddy and kill her. Then he rocked on his feet and raised his hand against his forehead, looking gray. “Whoa,” he stammered.
“What’s wrong?” said Maggie.
“The Workahol,” he said. “It just cut out.”
“Shit,” said the smarty, grabbing his arm. “Your reborn system metabolized it faster than normal.”
“Poor angel,” said Nicole. “That’s gotta hurt.”
And fired.
66
MCDERMOTT
T>he Lifetaker reacted before the eye could blink, dematerializing enough to let the energy pulses pass right through it. It wrapped one of McDermott’s men into itself like a shroud, suffocating him while it continued to fight the other two.
McDermott and the techs backed up against the dead environmental controls.
They all heard the second guard’s spine snap. The female tech fainted, unable to stomach another serving of reality. She was lucky; she got to miss the Lifetaker thrust an appendage into the third guard and squeeze his lungs until they burst. Gray cottage cheese spilled from the dead man’s lips. The Lifetaker dropped the bodies and swung around to them.
“Fucking demon from hell!” McDermott shrieked.
It cocked its head protrusion. “Nothing supernatural about me, boss. I’m just your garden-variety smarty.” It started forward, issuing a screeching metal-on-metal laugh that threatened McDermott’s shaky composure.
Wait a minute—
The male tech howled, his sanity deserting him, and tried to scramble up the wall.
A smarty—a machine! That was it!
He pulled the EMP grenade from his belt. It was the last thing he ever thought he’d need. But it paid to be prepared.
Thank you, God, he thought, as he pulled the pin.
67
DONNER
It happened all at once and very slowly.
My adrenals failed beneath an avalanche of lactic acid, muscles swamped by a kind of pain and fatigue I’d never known before. There was fur in my throat, cotton in my head.
Maggie strode to me in alarm. E
lise took a step back, confusion in her eyes, a clementine blush on her cheeks.
“Poor angel,” said Nicole. “That must hurt.”
She flung her arms out at us, palms upturned. Two blades fired from her sleeves, shooting across the room, quicksilver flashes too fast for me to react to.
Max leapt sideways, but even jazzed he wasn’t fast enough. The projectile caught him across the right triceps, severing muscles and tendons, turning his arm into dead weight. Blood drenched his side in arterial paroxysms.
Elise stumbled back into me. In that instant, there were a million things I wanted to cry out. But all I could do was watch. I tried to lift my arms, but they were underwater, wrapped in chains. She was at my side just as the blade arrived. It sliced through my Beretta. Then it passed through her midsection as if she was made of gossamer and not flesh and I had time to register her puff of air across my cheek, her familiar scent filling my nostrils, her look of shock and satisfaction burning into my mind.
Then she fell, hair flowing. She seemed to meet the ground lightly, like petals strewn from a careless hand. I screamed, dropping down beside her, watching her blood flowing too fast and too thick into the carpet beneath, clamping my hands to the top of my head in horror.
She grasped my elbow, patting it, and then she closed her eyes and let herself slide down to the place she’d hidden from all these years.
Before I could even moan out a denial, a concussion boomed from somewhere outside.
Maggie cried out. I looked up to see her sizzle and jerk like she’d stepped on a live wire. She burned nova bright for an instant and flashed out of existence with a pop, like an old flashcube. Her orb dropped to the carpet, smoking.
Darkness claimed all.
68
DONNER
Somewhere a generator cleared its throat. Emergency lights snapped on, bathing us in white shafts.
I looked around.
Nicole had fled, taking one of the blades with her.
Max struggled over to Elise, but I knew she was dead. I was violently sea-sick. My jinxed equilibrium sent me reeling sideways, arms flailing. Somehow I managed to stay on my feet.
Necropolis Page 33
