“Why?” Silver tries to stem the bleeding from her arm, but achieves very little. “Did you miss me?”
“I actually get to pull the trigger on the most infamous Hunter ever to betray the city.” He laughs. “I get to destroy the prodigy.”
At the mention of her old Academy nickname, a sudden wave of anger trembles through her and she forgets all about her pain. “Nobody’s called me that in at least fifteen years.”
“That’s because you fell short of their expectations. You know what they call you now? Traitor.”
“I was innocent.”
“No-one cares.”
“Wait, what’s that on your nose?” she provokes him. “Oh, never mind, it’s just Phaeden’s shit. Why is it that every time I see you, you’re either sucking his cock or your head’s buried so far up his ass you can taste his dinner?”
He hits her across the face with the butt of his gun and sends her back to the floor.
“Tell me”—she fights back against her body’s reflex to black out—“what exactly did you get in return for selling me and Alex out?”
“I got your unit. Back in the hands of a man, where it belongs.”
He doesn’t get much of a chance to enjoy his moment of pride. Out of nowhere, he’s struck across the side of his head with an old chair leg and he tumbles to the floor, unconscious.
Behind him, Alex.
Silver’s savior.
Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, Arcadian finally gets his face time with Phaeden. They shake hands awkwardly through the open car window, and Arcadian prolongs their interaction with false compliments, buying his men in the warehouse enough time to reposition.
And they do.
If only the untrained Fusion sniper had thought to remove the laser sight from his rifle.
Too late.
A tiny red dot leaps onto Phaeden’s forehead, and Hunter General Jenkins reflexively exhibits one of the finer instincts of his training.
“Fucking shit bag!” He punches Arcadian to the ground and steps in front of the window.
The sound of the impact is almost imperceptible.
With a silencer fitted to the rifle, the shot itself makes no noise. As the bullet rips into the General’s chest, it makes only the very quietest thud.
Perhaps, when he took that step in front of the window, it was his intention to give his life for the Governor. Or, more likely, he thought his Kevlar vest would protect him from what he assumed was a black market bullet, made from a weaker metal and no match for the Kevlar.
He had no way of knowing the bullet came from the Omega Armory. He had no way of knowing it was copper-coated, and capable of piercing body armor.
Until he felt it enter his chest.
Then, he knew.
Leaking life, he slides down the side of the car as the window rolls up and the vehicle slams into reverse.
Finding himself on the ground beside a disoriented Arcadian, he laughs. “My turn, asshole.”
Papers still clutched in his hand, he pulls a remote detonator out of his pocket and presses the button before Arcadian even knows what it is.
Inside the warehouse, Alex tosses aside the chair leg.
He’s angry as hell. “Bandages? Really?”
No time to answer.
Heat.
Fire.
Explosion.
A series of C-4 bombs are detonated along each side of the building.
The Hunter Division trucks.
Vehicle bombs.
Eight explosions, one right after another.
The trucks are flipped into the air like children’s toys, and blown to smithereens. Much of the lower floor of the warehouse is decimated, leaving the upper levels seriously unstable and in danger of collapsing.
The fuel tanks in the trucks ignite, causing secondary explosions left and right. The Hunter General’s vehicle, not equipped with a bomb, is thrown through the air with the force of the explosions around it.
Becoming a lethal projectile, the car smacks into the Governor’s vehicle, impeding the driver’s best attempts to get to safety. The collision tips the Omega car, and sends it spinning over the ground like a bouncing ball.
In the chaos, dust and debris fill the air, obscuring vision. Some of the Hunters take cover, while others are blown to pieces. Some, finding themselves caught off-guard by the explosions, struggle to respond to the brute force of Arcadian’s men, who took advantage of the uncontrolled panic and launched themselves into battle almost immediately.
Inside the warehouse, the external wall facing the parking lot is blown inward. The building loses half of its frontage, and Silver, Alex and McKean become living debris. Silver is spun into the door to Alice’s room, the impact of her weight against the Old World wood snapping it straight off its hinges.
She rides the wooden missile across the room, until the top of it shatters against the far wall. As the wood splinters and cracks behind her, she rolls off it onto the floor, just about managing to land on her feet.
Alice, knocked out by the blast, is lying in the corner of the room. Her shirt’s ripped, her underwear is on, but her jeans are off. The table she was forced upon is upended, pinning her attacker to the floor. His pants are down, his limp dick awkwardly exposed. Fully awake, he looks up at Silver, seeking her help.
It’s her absolute pleasure to offer him none of that whatsoever. Instead, she draws her gun and shoots him in the face, without saying a word.
Crouching beside Alice, Silver taps her on the cheek until she begins to stir into wakefulness. Upon first rousing, Alice is fearful, not knowing precisely where she is, or what just happened. She looks up at Silver, a barrage of complicated emotions passing between them through the smoky air.
Realizing her assailant is no longer a threat, his features completely obliterated, Alice falls into Silver’s arms. Noticing something wet against her fingertips, she pulls back to investigate and finds herself already covered in Silver’s blood.
“You’re bleeding …”
Alice tears off a piece of her already tattered shirt and presses it against Silver’s arm, tying it tightly around her. Adrenalin pumping, Silver barely feels any pain from the gunshot. She gives it no more than a cursory glance, satisfying herself that no major artery is broken.
“I’m okay.” She forces a small smile of comfort. “We just need get you someplace safe.”
“What happened? It was loud.”
Silver shakes her head. “I don’t know. I think someone improvised.” Silver hauls Alice up off the floor and retrieves her jeans from beneath a pile of rubble, handing them to her without making further eye contact. “Hurry, Dylan’s waiting.”
Alice stalls at the mention of his name. “You know … ?”
Silver doesn’t need to answer that. “Are you okay?” she redirects. “Did they hurt you?”
Alice nods her head, to either one or both, straining to see through the tears in her eyes.
A rumble.
An adult male Chimera postures at them from what remains of the doorway. The noise of the explosions and the ruckus of the melee has drawn them out, enticed by the possibility of an easy meal. Behind the creature, the inside has become the outside. The warehouse walls have crumbled into nothing and there’s a direct view of the street, a battle now in full swing.
A shot is fired and the Chimera hits the dirt.
Oz lowers his weapon and steps in from the street, soon catching sight of another Chimera mauling and pawing at something concealed beneath a tarp, bundled up at the side of the hallway: a motionless heap on the floor.
He shoots at the Chimera, hitting it once in the side. It snarls at him, rumbling and baring its teeth. He fires again, this time knocking it to the floor.
Another shot.
A miss.
The Chimera limps away at an astonishing speed.
Approaching the crumpled mess on the floor, Oz stops to kick at it. It doesn’t move. He kneels down beside it and pulls back the tarp.<
br />
Alex.
As Oz disturbs him, he regains consciousness.
“Silver?” Hopeful.
“Not even close, mate.”
Oz takes his jacket off and uses it to apply pressure to a fresh wound on Alex’s side. The stitches on his other wound are broken, and he’s bleeding profusely.
“Where is she?” Alex rasps.
“I’m here.” Silver steps into what was once an inside hallway and drops to her knees beside him, taking his hand in hers, all emotional complications forgotten in an instant. “I’m right here.”
“What the hell happened to you?” Oz asks, looking around for anything that might be of help to Alex. “You were supposed to stay in the back, in case things went to shit.”
Alex tries to sit up, gritting his teeth through the pain. He struggles to breathe in the thick, dusty air and winces against the pain shooting through his dry eyes. “I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I don’t think it went particularly well.”
Silver and Oz help to get Alex to his feet. Now, for the first time, Alex notices Silver’s injured arm and he reaches out to touch it.
“What the fuck did you do?”
She knocks his hand away. “Don’t deflect.” She looks around them, mentally assessing their options. “We need the doctor.”
She props Alex up against a portion of an internal wall not completely destroyed by the C-4, and shelters him from the blast as a grenade bounces nearby and explodes, the reverberations from it nearly knocking her off her feet.
“We have to get out of here!” Oz states the obvious.
Silver looks around for Alice, but she’s gone. “Fuck!” She turns back to Oz. “You get Alex out of here. Red’s waiting with Dylan in the building across the street—go there. I’m going to find Trieste.”
She disappears before anyone could argue, and Oz does as he’s told. Seconds later, Silver’s caught off-guard as she rounds a corner into another part of the warehouse. A hand reaches out for her ankle and trips her up, making her to topple to the floor like human Jenga.
She turns behind her and discovers a wounded McKean reaching for his weapon. Badly hurt from the explosion, he can’t get to his feet.
While he struggles to get his gun free, Silver breaks his elbow and disarms him, kicking him back down into the dirt and debris that’s spread over the floor like carpet.
“I spent six years in hell because of you,” she barks at him.
Her mouth is dry and filled with dirt. She bites on the edge of her tongue to make herself salivate so that she can spit, and she spits on McKean, only narrowly missing his face. Her bleeding arm now battling complete numbness, she reaches for her gun and pulls it from the holster.
“You know, a gunshot wound to the stomach can be one of the slowest and most painful ways to die.” She raises the gun on him. “It’s not even half of what I’ve lived through, but I guess it’ll have to do.”
One shot.
In his gut.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Truth Be Told
Silver pushes the doctor, Trieste, into the back room of an old massage parlor at gun point, his medical kit in hand.
Barely conscious, Alex is lying on an old massage table, slowly bleeding to death under the careful watch of Oz and Jax.
“You took your sweet fucking time.” Jax lights up a cigarette. “We could all have died waiting here for you.”
Silver nudges Trieste toward the table, running her eyes over the blood on Jax’s clothes. “What are you doing here? Bored of the fight already?”
“I’ve done my bit.”
Silver doesn’t bother to push her for more, and assumes a rare smattering of conscience is responsible for the sour look on her face. Killing a Hunter or two obviously didn’t provide the vengeful satisfaction she was hoping for.
Trieste lifts the fabric pressed against Alex’s side and lets it all fall to the floor, soaked through with blood.
“I can stop the bleeding,” he surmises, examining the wound. “But I tend to work better when there’s not a gun thrust against my head.”
Silver hesitates, then lowers her weapon. Finding her within arm’s reach of the table, Alex grabs Silver by the wrist and pulls her close to him, using up all of the energy he has left.
“Hey, stranger.” He tries to force a smile. “You’re going to marry me, right?”
His question vaults at her out of left field.
“Are you hallucinating?”
He tries to laugh, but his injured body won’t let him. “If I were hallucinating, I’d be imagining something far more romantic than this. I’d be down on one knee and everything, and I probably wouldn’t be bleeding.”
Trieste begins to poke about inside his open wound and he winces, his grip tightening reflexively around Silver’s wrist.
Behind them, Red and Dylan burst into the room—a welcome distraction.
A Chimera, skulking in the halls, catches the scent of Alex’s blood and seizes the opportunity to try and force its way inside with them. Dylan pushes on the door, trapping the Chimera halfway, but he hasn’t got enough strength to hold it.
Red takes out her gun and tries to fire at the Chimera’s head, but her weapon is jammed. Finally overpowering Dylan, the Chimera barges its way through and knocks him to the floor. Oz grabs his HK P46 and pumps lead into the beast, shooting it down mid-air as it leaps toward them.
Eventually, it hits the floor.
Dylan kicks the door closed just in time to knock back another hungry Chimera, and he locks it quickly. Not that Chimera know how to use door handles anyway. The Chimera on the floor twitches, and Oz fires two more shots into its head.
Adeptly fixing the jam in her gun, Red keeps an ear out for approaching Chimeran vocalizations. “This place is crawling with Chimera.”
Duh, Silver thinks. “They’re opportunistic hunters, intrigued by the noise. As long as there’s a commotion here, the temptation of food will keep on drawing them in.”
Oz looks outside the window, where a small pack of Chimera have nearly stripped a human corpse bare.
Dylan sees it and huddles nervously in the corner. “Where’s Alice?”
Silence.
Although it pains her to admit it, Silver tells him the truth. “I don’t know.”
Outside, the Chimera finish with the corpse, leaving nothing but bare bones behind. Able to whiff the strong allure of Alex’s bodily fluids through a broken pane of glass in the window, they shrill to one another.
Oz reloads in anticipation.
Preparing themselves for an attack, one of the Chimera launches itself at the window and the weak glass cracks against the weight of its body. Another Chimera soon follows in the footsteps of its more dominant counterpart, managing to break through into the room.
Oz unloads on the Chimera outside, while Red delivers a death blow to the one that landed practically at her feet. Jax, a cigarette in her mouth, arms herself with a PP-2000 in each hand and begins shooting alongside Oz.
Disaster averted, and almost out of ammo, they don’t get even a second to relax. The door to the room flings open, the lock broken with one swift Fusion kick, and in storms Arcadian—wielding a severed human head.
He tosses the head at Silver.
She drops Alex’s hand to catch the head, and orients its pale dead face and glassy eyes toward herself, trying to understand. “What’s this?”
“It’s your birthday present. What do you think?”
Silver shrugs. “I dunno. It’s some dude’s head. If you’re trying to seduce me, flowers usually work best.”
Alex smiles, barely holding onto the last dregs of consciousness. “That’s not what you said eighteen years ago.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a long time since you’ve killed anything for me, Romeo,” she teases him, and turns her attention back to Arcadian. “So where’s Phaeden Rist?”
Arcadian frowns. “His body, you mean?”
“I guess. You did kill him, di
dn’t you?”
“Well, decapitation isn’t something you can normally recover from.”
“I don’t understand.” Silver turns the severed head to face Arcadian. “This isn’t Phaeden Rist.”
All traces of pleasure drop from Arcadian’s suddenly stony expression. “What do you mean?”
“You think I don’t know the Governor of my own city when I see his ugly mug?” Silver tosses the head back at him. “Trust me, this isn’t Phaeden Rist.”
Arcadian’s hands shake ever so slightly at the reality threatening to set in before him. “This is the face of the man I met with during the Second Reclamation. This is the face of the man I’ve been dealing with for over a decade!”
He slams the head down against the floor, the sudden force of the fall popping out an eyeball and some brain juice. As the eyeball rolls toward her boot, Silver clues in to the levity of the situation.
“Oh, my god. He sent a decoy.” Her chest has never felt so tight. “I’ll bet he’s never even set foot in the Out District.”
Arcadian, angry and at the end of his tether, strides up to Silver and tears her away from Alex, throwing her to the floor like a paper doll.
“Do you see what he’s done here?!” He bears down upon her. “He knows that I’ve double-crossed him. He will retaliate, and we’ve expended almost all of our resources on this false victory!”
Silver picks herself up off the floor. “We can mend this.”
Arcadian grabs her by the throat and pushes her up against the wall. “This is all your fault!”
“I can fix this,” she insists. “There’s still a way.”
“I think you’ve already done enough.” He squeezes her neck harder. “Killing you now might be the only meager satisfaction I’m able to glean from this whole miserable fucking experience.”
She forces him away from her and launches a powerful right hook at him, but she’s way too slow. He blocks, grabs her fist in his hand, and crunches her knuckles. With a gentle shove, he sends her back to the floor, kneeling in front of him.
“I’m a lot faster, and a lot stronger. So don’t bother wasting any of your precious last moments on a futile counter attack. Instead, have you any last words?”
The Lost & Damned 1 Page 22
