All right, so two more than he could handle.
They were glued to him, unrelenting. He seized Grace’s arm, stepped in beside it. But the other shocktrooper’s arm intervened and trapped his. Grace’s knee collided with his cheek. His head rattled. Light exploded across his vision. He hit the ground, rolled. Smashed into the side of a lab bench. A computer tower crashed over him. Grace and her counterpart loped towards him with long strides.
Crawling to one knee, he pushed the tower hard with one foot. It slid across the floor, catching the second shocktrooper and knocking him off balance. Jay got to his feet and leaped over the bench. He grabbed a keyboard, used it to deflect a kick from the second shocktrooper. Jammed the end of it into the shocktrooper’s neck.
He saw Grace coming. He clawed a fistful of keyboard keys and chucked them at her face. She raised a hand to protect herself.
He went in for the shocktrooper’s neck with the end of the keyboard again, then for the stomach. The shocktrooper trapped the keyboard, ripped it off him and slammed it back into his temple, the movement so quick he could barely understand how it had happened.
Both Grace and the other shocktrooper had him again, this time with blades out, whistling past his face. Well, at least it wasn’t a plasma torch. He dropped to his shoulder blades and rolled back onto his feet, picked up a metal chair.
‘One thing that I don’t understand,’ he said.
Grace advanced, knife in hand. ‘I’m sure there’s more than one.’
He gripped the chair in both hands. ‘Of all the operatives, you hooking up with Damien?’
Grace thrust her knife towards him, as did the other shocktrooper. Jay twisted the chair, skewing both knives away. He hooked Grace’s arm inside the chair legs and pulled the chair towards the ground, bringing her with it.
Grace twisted and rolled out, freeing herself. She gave him a wry smile. ‘It’s not easy finding a guy who can check all the boxes.’
‘Sounds like he ticked them all,’ the other shocktrooper said.
‘I’m not talking to you,’ Jay said, and drove his heel into the shocktrooper’s kneecap.
The shocktrooper buckled.
Jay retreated. ‘I’m a man of many qualities. I check more boxes than… there are boxes.’
Grace moved closer, blade gleaming. ‘You missed one.’
‘So did I,’ Nasira said.
A tunnel of water punched into Grace, lifting her into the air and throwing her sideways.
Jay looked over at Nasira. She was wielding a fire hose, face flushed, eyes glittering with rage. He ducked. The tunnel of water whipped over his head and collided with the shocktrooper behind him.
Then the water disappeared. The third shocktrooper had slashed the hose with his knife, disabling Nasira’s ad hoc weapon. He slashed into it again, severing the hose in two.
Nasira pivoted, drawing the severed end of the hose into her grasp. She whipped the metal nozzle at the shocktrooper’s head. He ducked and charged.
Nasira hurled the hose over her own arms, shortening the length and giving her more control. She swung again. The hose wrapped around the shocktrooper’s ankle. But before Nasira could pull him off his feet, he slashed the hose to free himself.
Nasira sidestepped around him. He slashed at her. She retracted her leg to avoid the slash, then kicked his front foot out. He almost fell over, his legs spread out into the splits. She stomped down on his knee and he crumpled, crying out in pain. She followed up with the metal nozzle into his face. It connected with a resounding clunk. He collapsed.
‘Not bad,’ Grace said. ‘Does she shake hands and roll over?’
Jay backed away, careful not to slip on the water underfoot. ‘That’s a laugh, coming from Frankenstein’s monster.’
Grace was on him in an instant. The blade cut deep, drawing blood from his hand. She closed viciously, hunting for his neck. Her faster, more accurate movements countered every attempt he made to intercept her knife-wielding arm. His arms were sliced to ribbons. Blood welled from a dozen gashes.
He looked up to see the other two shocktroopers on their feet, blades ready. They moved around him, blinding weaves of metal shredding towards him. They would start with his limbs and work past his guard. Then it would be his neck. End of the line.
‘Jay!’ Nasira yelled. ‘Use it!’
Grace looked at him dispassionately. Her eyes shone green as glacial ice. ‘That’s the problem with you and your buddy Damien. Both talented, but just too damned gullible.’
She drove her blade into his stomach. To the hilt. Fire exploded inside him, wrenched all focus from his mind. His strength wandered into the distance, with no promise of return. He dropped to his knees. The blade was in front of him again, the sharp point staring him in the face.
‘Do it!’ Nasira was closer now. Between Grace’s legs, he could see her climbing onto the bench. She wasn’t touching water.
Then, strangely, Grace twitched. Or at least it looked like she did. He thought she was hesitating, but a smile emerged instead.
‘I’m sorry for Damien,’ she said. ‘And for you. Things just didn’t work out, I guess.’
She moved to strike.
Pain overtook Jay. His body tensed up. He shut out everything else. Eyes closed, teeth clenched, all he could process was the wave of agony. And then, as quickly as it had come, it subsided. There were two splashes. He opened his eyes.
Before him, Grace was shuddering violently. She slumped onto him, her face inches from his. She stopped breathing.
Jay shivered, then exhaled slowly. ‘Yeah, well, Damien could do better anyway.’
Hands over the knife in his stomach, he crawled out from under Grace’s body. The water had conducted his electric current, carrying it through the shocktroopers. He withdrew the knife slowly. Blood gushed until he clamped both hands over the wound, fingers together. Wisps of scarlet curled in the water before him.
After a moment, he forced himself to stand. His stomach was on fire. He counted to ten before slowly removing his hand. Blood trickled but no longer poured. Right now, he fucking loved salamanders. But he returned his hand to his stomach just to be sure.
Dizziness almost sent him tumbling onto Grace’s lifeless body. Somehow, he remained on his feet. He looked over at Nasira. She lay over the bench, her knee touching the water. She wasn’t moving.
Chapter Forty-Four
Renée marched Sophia and Benito into the Vector labs, which were now blanketed in complete darkness. Or, through Sophia’s eyes, near-darkness. She scanned for anything that still had power. Nothing. She took a small crumb of satisfaction from knowing she’d pulled the plug just in time.
Renée’s arm had healed perfectly, thanks to the Axolotl Chimera vector Sophia had insisted be injected into her bloodstream. Not her best decision, that one.
She could make out Denton’s charming smile as he emerged from the oily shadows. He was still wearing his suit pants and bloodstained singlet, but the wounds on his face had healed. Renée wasn’t the only one with a dose of Axolotl, by the looks of it.
‘Benito Montoya,’ Denton said, hands clasped behind his back. ‘I’m still trying to decide whether it’s masochism, forgiveness or just outright desperation that made you decide to team up with the woman who blew your family into tiny little pieces.’
Sophia didn’t turn to see Benito’s face. She didn’t want to. But his hatred burned through her anyway. Guilt mounted a defense inside her.
Denton smiled. ‘And Sophia, the little girl who kills families.’
Sophia swallowed.
Denton offered her a lopsided smile. ‘Small world, right?’
She glared at him. ‘I’m going to end you, Denton.’
His smile remained. ‘Your resourcefulness continues to astound me. But I’ve taken certain measures to prevent such interference. While your little insurgent friends were busy skittering around the facility like mice in a maze, I took it upon myself to re-route power to my own nest of flywh
eel generators. Enough to give me fifteen minutes of juice, which, as you’d suspect,’ his smile vanished, ‘was much, much more than I needed.’
The UPS unit was a decoy. Jesus, how could she have been so stupid? She’d accused Jay of fucking up Africa. She’d just fucked up the whole world. Now, no one would ever be free of the Fifth Column.
Denton let his arms hang by his sides. He was holding a hypodermic syringe. ‘And last but not least, the “anti-psychopath” Chimera vector, as you so affectionately call it.’ He chuckled as he tapped the syringe and expelled a brief squirt. ‘Or as I like to call it, the fountain of youth.’
He turned his arm over to expose milk skin and blue veins. It reminded her of the cheese Leoncjusz used to bring back from the Volterra market. She wished she could be there right now, back in time. Away from all of this.
‘If you knew what I know,’ Denton said, ‘you would understand, Sophia, that I am not the enemy.’
‘You think I don’t understand people like you?’ she yelled. ‘Your enemy is the human race! And yet, despite all your power, you live in constant fear that one day enough ordinary people will wake up to who you are — what you are.’ She allowed herself a tiny smile. ‘Because as soon as we do that, you know we won’t hesitate to lock you up and throw away the key.’
Denton shook his head. ‘I don’t fear the human race, Sophia. I don’t fear anything. And who’s to say they won’t wake up to what you really are and lock you up with me?’
‘Are you saying I’m a psychopath?’
‘No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Which makes you all the more interesting.’ He plunged the beveled needle into a thick vein. ‘You’re more valuable than you think.’
‘Suppose you need someone to rule over, right?’ Sophia said.
‘I’m not talking about the masses.’ Denton pushed the rubber piston down, the contents of the syringe surging into his vein. ‘I’m talking about you. You are of high tactical value. To me and to Cecilia.’
She couldn’t stand there and watch as any chance of saving herself, of saving everything, scattered from her. No. She wasn’t going to let this happen. She had to do something. Even if it was futile.
She launched herself towards Renée with a speed that surprised even herself. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d seized the barrel of Renée’s pistol. She twisted it, wrenched it towards the ceiling. Renée buckled onto one knee, her wrists unable to bend in that direction. As Renée moved to strike, Sophia snatched the pistol from her and smashed the end of the barrel into her face. Blood flowed over her ice pink lips.
Sophia holstered her pistol, reached for her second Gerber knife and unbuttoned the stud from the scabbard. Renée had made a mistake not confiscating both knives. Sophia brought the blade singing towards Renée’s neck. ‘Heal that, bitch.’
Renée collapsed, green eyes wide, hands over her gushing neck.
Sophia caught the pistol in her knife-wielding hand. She’d lived for this moment.
She squeezed the trigger. She shot Denton.
* * *
The moment Benito heard the shot, he ran. No one tried to stop him. Renée was dead.
His first stop was the blast door. He punched the green button on the wall. Once that was open, the rest of Sophia’s team could help, assuming they were still alive. Of course, it gave the shocktroopers access too, but it was a risk he was going to take.
He went back into the Vector labs, made his way to the Sequencing lab. There was no one inside. Denton didn’t need anyone to stand guard: the workstation was encrypted with a password. It would’ve taken Benito days to crack it. Instead, he pulled a memory stick from his wallet and inserted it into the USB port.
He wasn’t doing this for Sophia any more. He was doing it for everyone but her.
He hit the reboot button and waited as the stick loaded an operating system of its own. He typed in a single command, then the memory stick did the rest.
Found memdmp partition — drive: 0x80, num 0x2
Memdmp partition is marked unused
Copying memory…
Writing block of size 0x9f800: 100%
Writing block of size 0x3f5e0000: 100%
The Chimera files Denton had used were temporarily in the workstation’s random access memory. And while they were sitting there, they were unencrypted and just begging to be stolen. All Benito needed to do was a cold boot attack, then copy the code from the RAM to his memory stick. Two side-channel attacks in less than an hour. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all.
He unplugged the memory stick and inserted it into the Sequencing workstation. Foolishly, Denton hadn’t changed the encryption password on this one. That saved him a bit of time. He just logged in under his own name.
With the code in his possession, the next step was to prep it. In less than a minute, he’d inserted the anti-psychopath Chimera code into the Adeno-Associated Vectors. Made to order in three syringes. Ready to inject.
‘Stay where you are.’
Benito tried to smooth over his startled reaction.
He recognized the voice. Damien. He stood on the other side of the Sequencing lab. Benito could barely make out his face in the darkness.
‘The reactor,’ Damien said. ‘I’ve been irradiated.’
Benito swallowed. ‘I have something that might help with that.’
* * *
Jay checked the pulse on Nasira’s neck. Nothing. He tilted her head back so her mouth opened, then listened for breathing. Nothing.
He lifted her leg from the ground, rolled her onto her back. ‘Come on, wake up!’ He sealed her mouth with his, gave her two short breaths. ‘Please.’
He listened again.
Still nothing.
Fuck, this can’t be happening.
Palms, one over the other, in the center of her chest. Arms straight, elbows locked. Rapid, firm compressions. He gave it thirty, listened. Nothing. Two more breaths.
‘Nasira!’ he yelled, inches from her face.
He gave thirty more compressions, each one jolting her body.
‘Fuck!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do this!’
Two more breaths. He didn’t bother to check her breathing, continued with more compressions. She lay there, still. He couldn’t stop his lips from shaking. He forced himself to straighten up, try again. Tears welled in his eyes. He could barely even see her.
‘Wake up!’
More breaths. More compressions. He stopped after ten, his face hot and wet.
He squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed her pistol and aimed it at the shocktroopers on the floor. He blew their brains out, screaming, one after the other. By the time he got to Grace, the magazine was dry. He threw it aside. His mouth hung open in a silent scream. He didn’t bother closing it. His hands felt like they were burning.
He staggered back to Nasira, sank to his knees. He held Nasira’s arm and closed his eyes. Fuck Sophia. Fuck Denton. Fuck everyone.
Almost everyone.
He had to find Damien.
Chapter Forty-Five
Denton remained where he stood. The rounds from Sophia’s pistol smacked into the panel that divided the lab, leaving him unharmed.
Sophia had assumed the panel was just glass. Now she realized it must be aluminum oxynitride. She’d need something stronger than a pistol round to get to Denton.
‘And ever an ill death may they die,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m on this side of the barrier. Just in case you did that.’
‘You’re trapped,’ she said.
‘I know you’re lying. You’re not very good.’ He unsheathed a knife from his belt. ‘If you knew how this world operates, if you could even conceive of the forces dancing at the edges of your world, you’d understand what I’m doing.’
‘You’re absolutely insane,’ she said, more to calm herself than to affect him.
No amount of adrenaline could feed her the energy she required to keep going. She still held the pistol and her Gerber knife in one hand. She could see
her face reflected in the blade’s blood-slicked surface: half of it speckled with Renée’s blood. Some of the dots were beginning to drip, streaking her cheek and neck. She ignored them, focused on Denton. His gaze hadn’t shifted from her.
‘That depends on how you define insanity,’ he said. ‘The top of the food chain doesn’t end at the Fifth Column, Sophia. It goes a little higher.’ He regarded her with what looked like mild curiosity. ‘You would join me in a heartbeat if you really knew how much you needed me. I want to bring the Fifth Column to its knees just as much as you do.’
He used the tip of his own knife to cut the underside of his forearm, then removed his RFID, watching with seeming admiration as the blood seeping from the incision thickened and stopped flowing.
‘We’re not allies by any means,’ he said. ‘But right now, we have… complementary interests. I could use you. You could use me.’
She managed a weak smile, her gaze flickering briefly to Renée, lying in a pool of her own blood. It was just Denton now. Sophia tightened the grip on her pistol. She had to buy some time. Either until help came or she figured out a way to drop him.
‘You’ll have to try harder than that, Gabriel.’
‘Actually, that’s not my real name.’ There was a dark glint in his eyes. ‘Gabriel Denton died long ago.’
‘How?’
Denton shrugged. ‘I killed him. He was weak. Too human.’ He picked at the dried scab over his RFID incision. Underneath it was soft, pink skin. ‘This Chimera vector… this Methuselah effect, as Cecilia calls it… it’s really just a top-up. An upgrade to get rid of the wrinkles.’ He pulled the skin around his eyes. ‘Much better than what the Nazis could manage.’
Sophia realized she’d been holding her breath. She forced herself to breathe again. ‘How… how old are you?’
Denton flashed her a smile, all white teeth and glistening eyes. ‘Ninety-two.’ He stroked his trimmed bread. ‘Not bad for an old bastard.’
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