“Thought so.”
He turned back to her. “I tried. I came here right after I got out of the clinic.” He shrugged. “Nothing. There was just nothing there.”
Rachel continued backing toward the door. “And that’s it. You lost your art, and that’s the only thing wrong with what happened to you?”
Warren looked puzzled. “What am you getting at? Yes, that’s the only thing. I haven’t gone out and eaten anybody, nor have I had the desire to do so. What’s wrong with you?”
Rachel smiled sadly. “If you don’t know what else you’ve lost, then I guess my telling you won’t make that much difference. Still, I suppose I should at least say goodbye. I’m headed for Austria with de Vries and Sinunu. It won’t matter to you anyway.”
Warren still looked confused. “Rachel, you’re not making any sense. I didn’t lose anything else, I swear.” Then he seemed to catch the look in her eye.
Warren smiled. “My dear Rachel, don’t be foolish. Even if I can’t manage to dodge all of the shotgun pellets, you don’t honestly think a few little pieces of brass will hurt, do you?”
It was Rachel’s turn to smile. “The real Warren would have known me better than that. Have you grown so cocky, so foolish as to think I would come here unprepared to take you down? Believe me, I’ve refined the art of vampire-killing in the last two weeks. I’ve spent every waking moment preparing for this.”
Her smile faded. “Goodbye, Warren.”
Warren moved, a tanned blur in a thousand-nuyen suit, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough.
Rachel pulled the first of the triggers on the shotgun, and it jumped in her hand like a live thing. Instead of a roar, the gun made a truncated whoof as a hundred real-wood flechettes cut through Warren and buried themselves into the wall at his back.
Warren’s momentum carried him to the floor, curled into a ball, a scream of pain echoing in the room. “You slitch! I’ll kill you for that!” Warren’s voice was a strangled snarl, and Rachel could see the already festering wounds where the wood flechettes had done their work.
Rachel took another step backward, and by now she was almost to the doorway. Warren was struggling to get to his feel, but some of his motor control seemed to be slipping away.
“When you get to hell, tell the real Warren that I love him and that I always will.”
Warren staggered toward her, his face distended in agony and rage.
Almost casually, Rachel triggered the second round in the shotgun. Instead of wood flechettes, a solid-core slug slammed into Warren’s chest.
As the white phosphorous round erupted and began to burn him from the inside out, Warren threw back his head, as if to scream for the last time. Instead of sound, the only thing that came out of his mouth was a gout of green flame.
With that, Rachel turned and walked out of the doss and into the sunshine. She walked quickly, but casually, across the street to the waiting stepvan, which Sinunu had kept running.
Sinunu turned to face her, her pale albino skin showing newly healed, pink scars. “Did it go like you thought?”
Rachel nodded, but felt a tear track down her cheek. “Yeah.” Then she turned and smiled through her tears. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the entire block goes tip in flames.”
Sinunu pulled away from the street corner, and in the mid-September sunshine, the two of them headed for the airport.
EPILOGUE
His new offices at Zulu BioGen reeked of bleach and disinfectants. He had the top four floors of an ancient hospital, made of naked and pockmarked gray concrete. Ugly, if functional. The security was tight and he had plenty of room to set up his operation.
Oslo Wake stood up from his desk and walked to the window. Green mountains capped with snow loomed around the narrow valley. And in the distance, Old Salzburg sat like a time-preserved miniature city in a snow bubble. Only it wasn’t snowing now; the sky let forth an agonizing slow drizzle of rain.
It’s fitting that Mozart once lived here, thought Wake. The city understands genius. Understands it and accepts it.
He ran a hand over the burns covering the left side of his face and neck. He knew he was lucky to still be alive. And he wouldn’t be if his fire elemental hadn’t protected him from the blast. The escape from Hell’s Kitchen had been too close. The losses too high.
He had to replace Pakow-a man he’d groomed for greatness.
He had to replenish his forces.
He had to recover the data on the HMHVV strains. Pakows chip had contained data-viral RNA sequences and experimental results on all the strains of the virus. But that’s not all it had contained; it also held the datavault addresses and the decryption algorithms to access the backup host.
Everything had been backed up over the Matrix to a red host in the Netherlands Antilles.
I must get that data.
As Wake stared out at the birthplace of perhaps the most brilliant musical mind in history, he knew it was only a matter of time before his deckers would breach the hosts IC. Then the contents of the datavault would be restored to him.
Then he could create another like Warren D’imato. He could create an army of them.
Laughter rang out from Wake’s throat, echoing off the gray concrete walls. High-pitched laughter, edged with hysteria. With insanity.
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The Terminus experiment s-34 Page 25
