Relentless (50 page)

He knew what it meant.

The Keeper was very near, and had been all along.

Grant turned before reaching the front door and entered the emergency stairwell. He descended to the basement, retracing his steps from the day he was first Shifted to the small mechanical room where he’d hid from Konrad.

The spartan room was exactly as he remembered it: musty, dim, and filled only with a pulsing hum, as if you could hear the building’s heartbeat. The narrow, emergency ‘‘fire escape’’ door that led to the subway was to his right in the back.

But the furnace was symmetrical in design, and a similar space was open amid the pipes on the left side of the room. But there was no door there.

At the room’s threshold, Grant’s eyes went dark as they settled on the furnace.

The massive heating device
ripped
itself free from its moorings and exploded out into the hall. Grant himself was unscathed and unmoved.

The subway door gave way from the blast, and a hole appeared in the opposite wall.

The hole was roughly the size of a man, and Grant went through, stalking down the dark corridor beyond.

Sweat poured off of him, his breathing fast and hard. He came upon a small set of double doors that slid apart as he approached. A stark, stainless steel elevator car waited on the other side.

He entered.

Grant never bothered with the buttons on the panel. He merely thought
down
.

And down he went.

Like a falling bomb.

Waiting to explode on impact.

Alex made it to her feet as the miniature storm in Grant’s apartment subsided.

Hannah’s broken body held her attention, outstretched as she was on the floor. The girl was already pale, the blood having drained from her neck wound. Alex blinked back the tears and tried to think straight, tried to decide what she should do next.

Morgan. I should find Morgan
.

A light from the broken picture window flashed in the corner of her eye.

Another tremor unbalanced her stance, but this one felt different.

It wasn’t localized around the building—she could see the entire city shaking outside, high-rises swaying back and forth ever-so-slightly.

Peering down at the streets far below, she gasped at the massive swell of the crowd. Every person in the entire city seemed to be fleeing in all directions, running for their lives.

She looked up.

It was a sight no human had ever before laid eyes on. The sky roiled and crashed like waves at sea in a turbulent storm. Clouds darker than any black she had ever seen collided, swirled, stirred, sparked, and detonated.

Fire was devouring the night sky, and it was spreading . . .

Spreading
downward
.

It was
here
.

But Grant had gone mad.

And Hannah was dead.

A wild notion rushed through her thoughts, from out of nowhere.

She decided it was the best idea she’d ever had.

Payton needed to see it for himself.

Using the stairs, which buckled wildly beneath him, he made a treacherous journey to the bottom floor of the Wagner Building where, like many of the other Loci, he had taken up residence in the last few days.

He met Morgan halfway down, flanked by Fletcher. Daniel and Lisa were already in the lobby on the ground floor when the three of them staggered out of the stairwell. Not escaping their notice was the door that led to the stairs, which had been ripped off of its hinges, but they had no time to consider it.

Payton coolly met the eyes of the others—all of which were filled with fear—and then gazed again through the empty window frames.

No words were exchanged.

As a group, they filed through the front door and took in the full scope of the event before them.

They’d no sooner regrouped outside than a monstrous tendril of flame leaped out of the sky and bored into the earth. All five of them were knocked off their feet as an office complex two blocks down was hit by the massive fire bomb; glass, steel, and everything within the building sparked to flame as if it had been superheated in a single moment.

They rose to their feet again and watched an enormous plume of smoke rise from where the office building had stood. They doubted anyone had been inside at this hour of the night, but it was still a fearsome sight.

Payton’s hand was instinctively on his sword. ‘‘We must do something before this gets worse,’’ he cried urgently.

Morgan turned to him, resigned. ‘‘What would you suggest?’’

Payton had no answer.

Lisa’s face was more stricken and terrified than Daniel had ever seen it. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she side-stepped into his grasp, until his entire arm was holding her.

‘‘What is it?’’ Lisa whispered.

‘‘Something bigger than anything that has ever been,’’ Daniel replied quietly, repeating words he had once spoken to Grant.

‘‘Alex was right,’’ Morgan spoke up.

They all turned to her.

‘‘It’s the end of everything,’’ she said.

Grant’s fists were clenched tight as the elevator door slid open after a long ride to the bottom.

‘‘Mr. Borrows. Right on time,’’ a voice to his right said. It sounded busy, occupied, impatient.

Grant stepped out and found a short, balding man holding a clipboard and watching him through round, wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a scientist’s white lab coat and a detached expression.

‘‘If you’ll just come with me, he’s eager to get underway . . .’’ the little man said, turning to walk away.

Grant barely gave the man a fleeting glance.

Instead, his eyes swiveled all about, taking in the sight before him, just as the bald man was suddenly jerked away to the side, crashing into a distant wall.

Grant was inside an immense hollow that looked as if the dirt and rock underground had been scooped away. It was like being within an enormous crater that was upside down. The vast, circular space was over half a mile in diameter.

Directly in its center stood a gleaming silver cube of solid steel, offset by metal girders thatched across its surface. It rose over ten stories above him, not quite touching the top of the hollow. A set of double doors lay straight ahead. The whole area smelled unnaturally clean, like a hospital.

A contingent of guards in black jumpsuits guarded the entrance. They already had weapons trained on him as he approached. But Grant was moving unstoppably forward, a force of nature. The guards were knocked hard to the ground on either side, as if the Red Sea had parted before him.

The double doors before him were labeled in big letters:

SUBSTATION LAMBDA-ALPHA

The doors never opened.

Grant glanced at them, and both doors exploded outward in a tremendous blast. He deflected them with an instinctive thought, and the two doors parted, falling to either side of him.

All the while, he never stopped moving forward.

He never slowed down.

Alex ran out into the ground floor lobby, scanning everything for Grant’s trail.

She caught sight of the stairwell door lying broken on the ground. She looked inside and pieced it together.

He hadn’t gone out into the city.

He’d gone under it.

She raced down to the destroyed mechanical room, surveying the damage, grim evidence of Grant’s outrage. A thin path led through the devastation, across the floor to the far wall.

Which meant there was no time to waste. Into the opening in the wall and to the waiting stainless steel elevator she ran . . .

Inside the tall underground structure, black-clad militia men advanced on Grant in droves as he continued his slow, steady progress through the building. Unarmed scientists in lab coats ran screaming from his presence.

Everyone who came within sight of him was lifted up off their feet and blown aside.

Walls, doors, windows, lights, even the floor tiles were all caught in the hurricane of Grant’s approach, and he showed no signs of tiring.

Blood in his eyes and death in his heart, he moved steadily toward the heart of the building through a tall, wide main corridor made from the same pristine steel as the outside.

But he was oblivious to it all, the image of Hannah’s bloodstained body consuming his vision.

He was equally oblivious to the shimmering glow coming from the ring on his finger. Brighter and brighter it glimmered, its radiance outshining the building’s own lighting.

Still he continued on, destroying, uprooting, tearing apart.

Searching.

Where.

Are.

You?

Alex jogged out of the underground elevator and took in the unconscious bodies and destruction in the gigantic cavern.

She had to find him . . .

She had to
stop
him . . .

There was no one else left, she couldn’t let him do this, not
now
, when he was so badly needed outside . . .

But she knew she was going to be too late.

‘‘
Grant!
’’ she bellowed.

Alex was answered by distant shrieks from within the tall subterranean structure ahead.

She followed the screams.

Down the main corridor, all was dark save a glimmering, hazy light in the distance.

‘‘
Show yourself
!’’ a thundering voice boomed.

It was Grant.

63

The small storm surged around Grant, whipping up a frenzy of wind, debris, and demolition.

The coals of hatred had taken hold of him and he was stoking them with every ounce of energy he had.

‘‘
Come out!!
’’ he raged, adrenaline surging through every vein in his body.

‘‘Stop him!’’ someone shouted from behind. He heard a large collection of footsteps approaching . . .

He lashed out with a swift, spinning backhand. He was too far away for the blow to connect, but three guards flew backward anyway, their heads cracking hard against the cold, steel walls. Weapons were unholstered, but a blink from Grant later, the guns were floating high in the air above the militiamen.

‘‘I am getting very’’—Grant said with a dangerous calm—‘‘
impatient
.’’

On his last word, a surge of energy released from him in a wave, and everything around him—the guards included—flew backward and crashed in a ferocious display.

‘‘You have truly exceeded all my hopes,’’ said a calm voice.

A very familiar voice.

The same voice he’d spoken to on the phone in his apartment.

Before Hannah had been . . .

Hannah . . .

Grant turned to see who stood before him.

A figure was there, cloaked in shadow, just over ten feet away. But it was clearly a man, wearing some kind of business suit.

‘‘And now you are ready to face your destiny,’’ the man said again, taking a step forward.

‘‘Grant,
don’t
!’’ someone shrieked from behind.

Grant turned to see Alex running to catch him.

‘‘The world’s gone mad, they need you—!’’ she was shouting.

Grant spun back around to face the man.

The light from Grant’s ring poured upon his face and at long last, Grant saw— All of the breath escaped from his body and he felt weak and sick.

The fury around him stopped cold.

Alex skidded to a stop next to him, facing the other man, but Grant ignored her.

‘‘No . . .’’ he whispered, shaking his head in disbelief.

Dressed in a crisp navy suit, the Keeper was an older gentleman.

His hands were clasped in front of him, a pristine gold watch at his wrist, barely concealing a tattoo, like the ones Grant’s parents had displayed in the old photograph he’d found. A neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache adorned his upper lip. He was stiff and emotionless, studying Grant’s every breath and gesture.

And he was utterly calm and unaffected by the chaos and destruction Grant had wrought.

‘‘Grant. . . ?’’ Alex asked loudly, turning toward him but keeping her eyes trained on the Keeper.

Grant was frozen, absolutely unmoving. He stared at the other man with a mixed expression of rejection, shock, and betrayal.

Grant took in unsteady gulps of air and stared sorrowfully into the face of this man who had destroyed his life. The pieces were falling into place in his mind, one by one. The snake in his mind had begun winding around and around again, and now he knew its identity.

‘‘You said he didn’t have a real name, Alex,’’ Grant said, anger rising. ‘‘You were wrong.’’

She looked at Grant. ‘‘What is it?’’

‘‘Maximilian,’’ Grant replied.

He never took his eyes off the Keeper as he extended his left arm out in front of her.

The old bracelet on Grant’s wrist peeked out from under his shirt sleeve. A sloppily-scrawled inscription was engraved by hand into the metal surface of the old shell casing. It read:

Grant’s arm fell to his side as he looked into the other man’s eyes.

‘‘He’s my grandfather,’’ Grant said.

Alex’s jaw dropped, and she glanced back and forth between them.

They plainly recognized each other, but they were also seeing each other for the first time in decades.

It was true, then.