Red Knight Falling (22 page)

FORTY

Bobby loomed over us, his eyes wide and gleeful.

“My new friends here were certain that you people wouldn’t stop hounding me, and lo and behold, they were right. We had just enough time to rig up a suitable welcome. A hook with a lure you couldn’t possibly pass up.”

Jessie shrugged. Then she smashed the glass case with the butt of her gun, reached in, and plucked out the curse tablet, handing it over to me with a questioning look.

My fingers tingled against the lead tablet, static electricity tickling my palms as the relic leaked its banishing magic into the frigid laboratory air. It was the real thing, not a decoy. I gave Jessie a firm nod.

“Not much of a trap,” Jessie said. “You just handed us exactly what we came for.”

“Funny story.” Bobby held up a finger, grinning. “I wanted to destroy that thing the second I put my hands on it. That, or do it at tonight’s party before the king’s descent. A ritual denouncement of the wrongs done to my grandfather, and of the injustice heaped upon my family name by the ignorant and weak. But then I got an idea.”

“Let me guess,” Jessie replied. “A coffeemaker that interfaces with your alarm clock, so you always have a perfectly timed cup of hot coffee waiting when you wake up?”

“No, it was . . . huh. You know, that—that’s actually good. I like that.” He glanced behind him. “Write that one down.”

Roman didn’t look up from his tablet PC. “I’m not your secretary.”

“Okay, that’s fine, I’ll remember it. No, the idea was to kill a few birds with one stone. See, I know your little organization—what was it called again?”

Mikki ran her fingers through his hair, drawling into his ear. “They’re called Vigilant Lock.”

“Right, right. I know you people have been trying to infiltrate my company for quite some time, I’ve just never been able to pin down a culprit. So I made a short list of suspects in my inner circle. Five names. And those names were the
only
people on Earth—present company excluded—who knew where I’d placed the tablet for safekeeping. So if you showed up to get it—as you just did—I know that at least one of them is the traitor who told you where to look.”

My blood ran cold. Five names, and one of them was Agent Cooper’s.

“Then it was only a matter of luring you in,” Roman said, “while I held the door wide open for you. That easily cracked admin account? The creampuff protection on the security system? Taking thirty seconds to remotely crack a key-card door? Jesus, kid, the doors aren’t even on the external network. I opened it
for
you. I did everything but order the guards to stay out of your way and give you a clear shot to the finish line.”

“And we
did
do that, eventually,” Bobby said with a shrug. “I mean, tying them up is one thing, but after you shot a couple, it was time to evacuate the others. Good help is hard to find.”

The abandoned guard post. It all made sense now. Roman gave us a smug smile.

“While you thought you were hacking
us
,” he said, “I was dancing through your system, listening in on your comms, and pretty much steering you right to the prize. Are you addicted to losing, kid? Boston, Oregon, Orlando . . . I have
owned
your ass every step of the way, and you just don’t seem to learn your lesson.”

Mikki twirled a strand of her rainbow hair around an idle finger. “It’s me. He can’t get enough of me.”

Kevin didn’t say a word. Radio silence.

“It’s a shame, really,” Bobby said. “You folks aren’t half-bad. Could have found you a place in my new world order.”

Jessie snorted. “Your grandpa thought he was building a new world order, too. How’d that work out for him?”

The faintest flicker of anger crossed Bobby’s face, instantly banished behind his plastic smile.

“The stars just weren’t right. Besides, let’s face it: recruiting top talent was
not
Hitler’s most marketable skill. Not like me. I hire only the best.” He threw an arm around Mikki and yanked her close. “Seriously, this girl? Right here? Her ideas are
blowing
my
mind
. That’s the kind of creativity I look for in a Diehl Innovationeer.”

“Hands off my girlfriend,” Roman muttered, still not looking up from his tablet.

Mikki glanced back at Roman, a pout on her lips, then leaned close to flick the tip of her tongue against Bobby’s earlobe.

“Now,” Bobby said, “here’s the fun part. Remember what I said about killing a few birds with one stone? I’ve been working on this little project. It’s a hobby thing, in my spare time. And it’s just about ready for a field test.”

All around us, compressors chugged and hoses hissed. The coolant units rumbling. I shot a glance at Cody and Jessie. We went shoulder to shoulder, standing in a triangle to cover one another’s backs.

“First, let’s cut you off from the outside. Mr. Steranko, if you would do the honors?”

Roman tapped his pad. My ear flooded with an agonizingly loud screech, like someone sticking the nozzle of an air horn in my eardrum and pulling the trigger. Jessie and I both yanked out our earpieces, reeling. I snapped my fingers next to my ear. The sound was swimmy, and my eardrum still stung in the aftermath, but I didn’t think it had done permanent damage.

The refrigerator units jolted open, one by one. Clouds of white frost billowed out as doors cracked, hissing on pneumatic hinges.

“Now, then,” Bobby said, his voice echoing from the screen high above us, “it’s my pleasure to demonstrate my latest innovation, coming next year to an arms dealer or a regional warlord near you! Ladies, gentlemen, I give you . . . the Quiet Ones.”

I looked to my left. An ice-white hand clamped down on the edge of an opened freezer, the thing inside pulling its way free. It shambled toward us, emerging from a cloud of icy fog.

It had been a man, once. Before the translucent plastic mask was grafted over its black, frostbitten lips, feeding it luminous green mist from a hose that ran over its mottled shoulder to the air tanks on its hunched back. Before its eyes were scooped out and replaced with mechanical orbs, faceted like a fly’s and glowing baleful crimson. Before one of its arms was amputated at the elbow, replaced by a stainless-steel horror festooned with serrated blades engineered to pierce and rip flesh with surgical precision.

They emerged all around us, as silent as death, and more from the units lining the only way out. Blocking our escape.

“Do you get it?” Bobby asked. “Because you always have to watch out for the quiet ones! C’mon, you know that’s funny.”

Cody didn’t hesitate. He aimed his pistol, squinting down the sights at the closest creature, and pulled the trigger. Its head snapped back, a perfect kill shot . . . but it didn’t even slow down. A dented titanium plate gleamed behind its ruptured forehead.

Roman finally looked up from his pad. “Whoa. Cyberzombies? Now, that’s cool.”

“I know, right?” Bobby grinned. “You think Bill Gates ever built a cyberzombie? No. I can tell you for certain that he did not. Because I asked him.”

Jessie shouldered the MP5-N and let it rip, muzzle flashing white-hot in the mist as she unleashed burst after burst. Two of the creatures stumbled back, staggered, then shook off the impact and kept on coming.

“Nope,” Bobby said, “they’re pretty much impervious to small-arms fire. I mean, you could bring one down eventually, but I don’t think you folks brought enough bullets.”

Blades gleamed as the slow, relentless tide pressed in from all directions. “Break ranks,” I shouted. “Don’t let them pen us in!”

We scattered, dodging past them in three directions, making the creatures decide whom to chase. I ducked low as a knife hand scythed over my head. Diehl’s sick creations were slow on their feet, but we were outnumbered four to one—and the more frozen mist pumped into the laboratory, the harder it became to tell friend from foe.

“Cody,” Jessie shouted, “need to free up my fists. Catch!”

She tossed the submachine gun over a shambler’s head. Cody caught it, a weapon in each hand, and unleashed another burst at a creature almost close enough to grab him. He jumped out of reach, a blade slicing the air where he’d stood a second ago.

Two shadows in the fog closed in on me. I dodged, stumbling, almost running headlong into another coming from the opposite direction. Jessie hurled herself onto its back, hammering it with wild blows as it flailed and tried to shake her free.

“Uh-uh,” Bobby said, wagging a finger. “Titanium-plated endoskeleton. Good way to break your hand.”

As I wove my way through the crowd, heart pounding as blade after blade slashed through the mist, I struggled to call my magic.
Waste of time,
I thought.
Might bring one down with brute force, but the others will swamp me while I’m recovering. Have to find a way to do some real damage.

My hands brushed the stun grenade dangling on my belt. Flashbangs do exactly what they sound like, unleashing a blast of light and noise engineered to incapacitate a target without killing it. That doesn’t mean they
can’t
kill: they still burn white-hot at the instant of detonation, and if one goes off in your hand, you’ll be lucky to keep all your fingers. The creatures had electronic eyes. Maybe setting off a grenade would fry their optics.

Or maybe they’re shielded, and they’ll cut you apart while you’re recovering from the blast,
I thought. Moving backward, I bumped against the laboratory wall. My hand brushed slick steel plates and a coolant pipe.

Coolant. They’d need to be using antifreeze to keep the whole works from icing solid. And antifreeze is flammable.

“Cody,” I shouted, “can you hear me?”

My response was a crack of a bullet, and a flash of muzzle flare deep in the swirling mist. “Yeah,” he called back, breathless.

“Get to the wall! Shoot the coolant pipes!”

I couldn’t make out the screen in the fog, but Bobby Diehl’s voice echoed over the laboratory speakers. “Hey, what are you doing? Don’t break my stuff!”

I followed the sound of gunfire and the watery hiss of a ruptured pipe. Then another, and another. To my left I heard hoarse animal grunts. The Quiet Ones lived up to their name: they were phantoms in the fog, silent as death. That sound had to be—

Jessie. Eyes blazing like radioactive sapphires as she beat one of the creatures to a pulp using its own severed arm. Deeper in a killing fugue than I’ve ever seen her, with her inner beast wide-awake.

Then she spotted me. And charged.

FORTY-ONE

Whatever her father had done to her, this evil that pulsed through her veins, I knew Jessie’s life was a constant struggle to keep it under control. Normally she kept the beast on a short, tight leash. But it fed on violence and rage and bloodlust, and the more control it had, the more it could take.

I’d talked her down from her rages before. This time, I wasn’t sure if she’d give me the chance.

I ran, calling for Cody, darting around more shamblers in the mist. If I could steer Jessie toward the laboratory door, and get her to vent her killing steam on it—

A pale, mottled arm grabbed me with the force of a steel vise, squeezing the breath from my lungs and lifting me off my feet. I had one arm pinned against my side, the other struggling to hold off a knife hand as it slowly inched toward my cheek. My muscles burned, fingers trembling, but it wasn’t enough: the creature was a machine draped in human skin. A machine designed to slice meat.

Then I was falling, hitting the frost-slick tile under the weight of two bodies. Jessie straddled the creature, grabbing its head and twisting. It flailed as its vertebrae cracked, neck snapping, its head wrenched 180 degrees backward. I scrambled back on my hands, my shoulders bumping the door of an empty freezer.

Jessie lunged. She crouched over me, lips curled back to bare teeth flecked with frost and dead skin. She slammed one fist against the freezer door, right next to my head.

“Jessie,” I said, “it’s me. Listen. It’s
me
.”

She leaned in, her teeth inches from my throat. Her nose twitched.
Sniffing.

In the fog, shadows lumbered toward us. Five of them. I needed time to talk Jessie down, time Diehl’s creatures wouldn’t give us.

Wetness touched the side of my hand. Then my leg. Coolant, spreading across the tile in a growing pool from the ruptured pipes. If I set off the flashbang now, the creatures would burn—and we’d burn right along with them.

“Harmony,” Cody called out, lost in the fog, “where are you?”

Jessie’s nose twitched, her eyes narrowing. She recognized the sound of his voice, and didn’t like it. Not enough of a distraction to get her off me, though.

But I knew one that would.

“Hey, Mikki,” I shouted, “we’re all still standing. And Jessie’s killed at least two of these things. They’re cream puffs, just like you!”

Mikki’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers. “Only a matter of time. And once you’re dead, I’m going after your friends. Hey, Jessie? How does it feel to know that
I’m
the last thing your precious Kevin will ever see, because you were too weak to protect him? I’m going to give him a nice, long kiss good-bye, just before I turn him into a lump of charcoal.”

I could barely hear the end of that. The growling in Jessie’s throat, growing louder and harsher like gravel in a high-speed blender, drowned out Mikki’s words. I pointed in what I prayed was the direction of the exit.

“She’s on the other side of that door,” I said.

Jessie roared, a beast on two legs, leaping off me and tearing her way through the pack. In the distance I heard ferocious pounding and the groan of buckling steel.

“I’m serious.” Bobby’s voice rang out over the din. “
Stop breaking my stuff.
What are you people
doing
? Hold on, switching to thermals. For crying out loud . . .”

I scrambled to my feet and followed in Jessie’s wake, taking advantage of the gap she’d carved in the shambling horde. Slick coolant splashed under my feet, sending me staggering off balance, and a strong hand clamped onto mine and hauled me back.

My fist froze an inch away from Cody’s nose. “Whoa,” he said, “it’s me!”

I heard the laboratory door crash down, torn from its hinges. “That way,” I told him, pointing in the direction of the noise. We ran. Cody aimed back and fired off a few more bursts of gunfire as the horde followed on our heels. We made it to the hallway, fresh air and bright light at the end of the billowing fog, and I plucked the stun grenade from my belt. I yanked the pin, counted to two, and hurled it as hard as I could into the swirling white mist.

Cody pulled me against him, my head buried against his chest, just as the grenade went off. The blast of sound hit us like a fist, making my ears ring and throwing me off balance. Then came the wall of heat, roiling out through the door as the laboratory floor turned into a lake of fire. The Quiet Ones stumbled through the fog, lit up like bonfires, silent even as they crashed to their knees and burned alive. Flesh melting like candle wax, human bones charring black under scorched titanium husks.

Three seconds in Cody’s strong arms was all the rest I could afford. “Come on,” I said, breathless, “we have to get out of here,
now
.”

“Where’s Jessie?”

“Good question,” I said, taking out my phone as we ran for the security checkpoint. Our earpieces were worthless until Kevin could fix the encryption, but I could still reach out the old-fashioned way.

“What’s happening?” April said, picking up on the first ring. “We’ve been blind since Steranko killed communications.”

“I’ve got the tablet, but we’ve been split up. Jessie’s somewhere inside Spearhead, and she’s gone feral.”

“We’ll bring the SUV to the loading dock. Don’t worry about Jessie; the tablet takes top priority.”

I hung up. I knew that if Jessie was in her right mind, she’d say the same thing: getting that tablet to Vandenberg, and back into orbit, was more important than any one of our lives.

All the same, no way was I leaving without her.

We found her handiwork outside the R&D labs: two dead security guards, one with his throat torn out and the other with a face like raw hamburger meat. It didn’t look like they’d fired a single shot. I clutched the lead tablet in one hand and my Glock in the other, racing to follow smeared, bloody footprints on the ivory tile.

“Harmony, what—” Cody started to say.

“Just stay behind me when we find her. I don’t know why, but the thing inside her doesn’t seem to like you. Don’t worry. I can talk her down.”

Up ahead in one of the electronics labs, blood-spattered venetian blinds swung behind a fractured window. Light from a broken sconce flickered and buzzed behind the blinds, turning them from scarlet to black. I heard a wet, tearing sound from the other side of a half-closed door.

“Jessie?” I called out, my voice softer than I wanted it to be.

A growl. Low, warning, like a cornered cat.

“Jessie,” I said, “it’s me. Listen to me, okay? Come back to me.”

I edged toward the window. Then jumped back as a hand slammed against the glass, cracks spreading, leaving a bloody palm print in its wake.

“Jesus,” Cody whispered, “what is she—”

“Shh.” I shook my head at him. “Jessie? It’s Harmony. Listen to me. Your name is Jessie Temple. You’re an operative for Vigilant Lock. You’ve just gone into a—”

I heard her fist pound the wall between us. Then a wet torrent as she threw up, with a sound like someone splashing a bucket of congealed grease across the tile floor. She coughed, wetly.

“Don’t come in here,” she croaked. Then her stomach lurched, and she threw up again, heaving until nothing was left but a trickle of bile.

I crept closer to the doorway. “Jessie, we’re just—”

“Do
not
come in here.”

She staggered out, eyes glazed and faded, wiping her face with a bloody towel. Faded crimson splotches caked her hands and wrists, like henna tattoos.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Cody blinked. “You . . . don’t look fine.”

She yanked the door shut behind her.

“I’m
fine
. Tablet?”

I showed it to her. “Got it.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She leaned against me, shaky but getting her strength back. In the loading bay, headlights flashed through the open cargo door. Night had fallen, casting the black asphalt lot in cold shadows. Kevin jumped out of the SUV and waved frantically.

“C’mon, we gotta go! April’s listening on the police band, and they’re sending everything but tanks in this direction. Helicopters are inbound.”

I headed for the driver’s seat, but Jessie shook her head. “I’ve got this.”

“You sure?”

She sat down, slumped in the seat, and put one hand on the wheel.

“Who drives faster, you or me?”

I got in on the passenger side.

“
Thank
you,” she said, and threw the SUV into gear.

We hit the guard barrier at fifty miles an hour, splintering wood and sending the broken swing arm bouncing into the street outside the razor-wire fence. Jessie hauled the wheel hard to the left, momentum pressing me against the door, then slammed on the gas. I saw a helicopter’s blinking lights in the rearview mirror, a spotlight in its belly sweeping across the abandoned industrial park on its way to the plant, but we were already gone.

“How are we on time?” Jessie asked.

I checked the clock on the dash, white numbers glowing in the dark.

“Less than eight hours. And a hundred and sixty miles to Vandenberg.”

Jessie tightened her grip on the steering wheel.