The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (30 page)

Sara almost couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. The Pentagon had invented a weapon that could kill pretenders. She was stunned.

“Why does Rakev need a gun that can destroy pretenders?” Glen asked. “Can’t he do that himself?”

“He’s tearing a hole in the universe,” Cortez said. “What do you want to bet he’s going to use the gun to kill whatever is on the other side?”

“Good theory,” Glen said.

“Yeah, now all we have to do is find him.”

“What about the cannon?” Glen said. “It’s the third clue from Alex. It must mean something.”

“Rakev is going to blow up something with cannons?” Cortez asked. “Like what, a Civil War battlefield? Doesn’t make a ton of sense.”

There was another rustle of papers, and a brief moment of silence.

“Wait, wait, look at this,” Glen said. “The National Symphony Orchestra is playing tonight at the Kennedy Center. It’s the Pops. The first part is orchestral renditions of hits from the 1980s.”

“Rakev is obsessed with ’80s music,” Cortez said, sounding excited. “He told me so himself.”

“Look at the second half of the program,” Glen said.

There was a pause.

“Son of a bitch,” Cortez said.

“It’s selections from the
1812 Overture
by Tchaikovsky,” Glen said.

“Which is famous for featuring actual cannons as instruments.”

“Exactly. I don’t think they really fire off a cannon inside the building, but symbolically—”

“What’s the seating capacity?”

There was a pause. Sara figured Glen was looking it up on his phone or computer.

“It seats about twenty-five hundred,” Glen said finally.

“That’s the target,” Cortez said. There was more rustling, like he was gathering belongings. “No question. Friday and I will head out there now. You should call in an anonymous tip to the police. I also need you to tell Sara—”

Sara pulled away from the door, sneaking past it. There was no way Soren was getting away from her this time. She hobbled back to Alex’s room to find the cop still standing guard and Ken waiting for her.

“Where were you?” Ken asked, a worried look on his face.

“What’s the password?” she replied.

Sara was no longer taking chances. As soon as she realized that another pretender was imitating Ken Sharpe, she’d made him create a password for her. Since it was a memory created after he was attacked, the pretender wouldn’t have access to it.

“Cheese whiz,” Ken responded.

Sara nodded.

“Listen, Ken, you need to take Doctor Cortez into custody right now.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he’s probably Soren,” she said. “You’ve seen what he can do. I just caught him talking to Glen down the hall. I know what he’s after. He’s trying to get some kind of weapon, something that can kill pretenders. I kept quiet about him being a pretender because I didn’t know how to stop him. Now I do. And we need to finish him.”

“Jesus,” Ken said.

At that moment, Doctor Cortez rounded the corner and walked down the hallway toward Alex’s room. Ken drew his gun out of his holster and pointed it at the doctor.

“Put your hands on your head!” Ken shouted.

The other cop outside the room also drew his weapon and pointed it at Cortez, who raised his hands and looked at them in total confusion.

“What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes panicked.

“Drop the act, Soren,” Sara said. “We know it’s you.”

The confusion on the doctor’s face only deepened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got hit on the head with something a while ago, and I just found myself in a broom closet. I haven’t done anything.”

Sara wanted to scream in frustration. It was possible this was still Soren, but she couldn’t tell anymore. From the confused look on his face, she guessed this could be the real Doctor Cortez.

“Lower your gun,” she said to Ken, who did so.

Sara grabbed Ken’s arm. She noticed she was shaking. The other cop, Sloan, was looking from the doctor to them in confusion.

“We need to search this place now,” she said. “Glen was in Cortez’s office.”

“Officer Sloan, find the doctor’s office, see if anybody’s there,” Ken barked.

The other cop disappeared down the hallway. When he came back a moment later, he shook his head.

“There’s nobody there,” he said.

“They’ve already left,” Sara said. “Let’s go.”

“What are you talking about?” Ken asked. “Alex is right here. We can’t leave him.”

“Don’t you understand?” Sara said. “We’re the only ones left who can stop this. Soren wants the gun, but he doesn’t care about people. And if we can get to that gun before Soren does—we can kill him, Ken. We can kill both Rakev and Soren. We can end this.”

“Sara, no,” Ken said. “Alex needs us. You’re not thinking straight.”

Sara pulled away from him.

“No,” she said. “We can’t help Alex anymore, and I won’t stay here and wait for all of us to die. We need to get moving—”

She cut herself off. Her thoughts were racing too fast, moving like a blur through her mind. But she didn’t have time to think things through more clearly.

“If we don’t stop Rakev, there’s nobody else. And if Soren gets that gun, they’ll be no way to stop him, either. We have to move, Ken.”

She gave one last look at the hospital room, some part of her mind screaming at her not to abandon Alex, and then turned away. Ken followed her, directing Sloan to resume his post by Alex’s door. He started to say something and Sara cut him off.

“Your next question had better be, ‘Where are we going?’” she asked. “Because we’re going to stop Rakev, and then I get to finally kill Soren Chase.”

There was a long pause as they kept walking.

“Where are we going?” Ken asked.

Silas Rakev strolled down the red carpet, admiring the decor and architecture of the Kennedy Center. He couldn’t think of why he’d never been here before—until he noticed all the people milling about. They were like dung beetles, always moving slowly from place to place, their lives a pointless attempt to roll shit uphill before it came crashing down upon them.

But the building itself was nice. The lush red carpet dominated the floor, but it was surrounded by high, white walls. On one side were paneled mirrors, while on the other was glass that gave concertgoers a commanding view of the Potomac River. It was a real shame Rakev was going to blow the entire place up when he went home.

He ignored the giant bust of John F. Kennedy as he strolled down the wide hallway to the concert hall. He ascended the stairs, and let the usher scan his ticket and welcome him. Rakev didn’t want to go in yet, but looked around the crowd of other attendees and spotted the faces of the men he’d planted there. This was why he needed several human employees. Shirkens and gaunts would have stood out in the crowd, but these guys blended right in. One by one, he nodded at each of them, and they filed into the concert hall while he waited outside.

Rakev patted his left vest pocket, reassuring himself that the knife was still there. Even he had last minute jitters just before a big event. He was enormously grateful that despite the general paranoia that had gripped this city following the September 11 terrorist attacks, they hadn’t yet installed metal detectors here. It would have made arriving with a large knife in his pocket difficult. Not to mention his newest toy, the gun, which sat easily in a concealed holster under his dinner jacket.

An usher approached him as he waited outside the main doors to the hall.

“Sir, you need to go in now if you want to be seated before it starts,” the usher said.

The other concertgoers had gone inside, including Rakev’s men, but he wasn’t ready yet.

“I’m just waiting for some friends,” Rakev said as politely as he could, even managing to smile. “They should be arriving any minute.”

“Very well, but you’ll have to wait until a piece finishes before we allow you all to sit,” the usher said.

“I understand completely,” Rakev said. “We certainly wouldn’t want to cause a stir.”

Rakev tried to say it sincerely, but something in his tone must have been off, because the usher gave him a strange look, as if he couldn’t quite tell if he was kidding. The usher stood outside the doors.

He heard some applause as a conductor took the stage, and then a swell of music began. It took Rakev no time at all to identify it: “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson. Solid choice.

He glanced at his watch, and then turned to look down the steps. He was surprised to see some police officers arrive. It was just a half dozen of them, likely ones who were already on site, and they were scanning the area. The usher rushed to meet them, and he began talking to one of the cops in hushed tones. Rakev didn’t like their presence, but he forced himself to look calm and collected.

An officer spotted him and headed his way.

“Everything okay, Officer?” he asked, his tone polite and deferential.

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” the officer said.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“It’s for your protection, sir,” he said. “We’re evacuating the area.”

Rakev nodded his head, sagely.

“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen, Officer,” he said.

Rakev had to give the cop this: as soon as the words left Rakev’s mouth, the officer started to react, stepping back and beginning to draw his weapon. But in that fraction of a second, Rakev moved forward and plunged his hand directly through the cop’s ribcage and into his chest, watching as blood spurted from his mouth.

“You’re too late, Officer,” Rakev said as he pulled his hand out, and the cop fell to the ground. Rakev looked at the bright-red stains on his own tuxedo jacket. It was going to be hell to get out later.

The other cops began pulling out guns and yelling to one another, some reaching for radios and demanding backup. Rakev didn’t need to bother killing them. His small army of shirkens, stoneskins, and gaunts showed up exactly when he’d told them to, after having been hidden away in the parking garage until the performance started.

The first two cops were still facing Rakev when the gaunts rounded the corner behind them. They went down before they could even scream. The others turned and began firing, but there were more than two dozen monsters attacking.

Rakev watched as a shirken pulled an officer into him, his screams cut off as he was sucked inside. A female officer managed to kill a shirken, shooting it directly in the eyes, before a stoneskin smashed her to the ground.

Rakev caught movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up at the white wall to see an amorphous, black mass sliding forward. He was particularly excited about what the Reeker could do in there. He didn’t know how far its fog could spread, but this was as good a test as any.

“Anybody want to go hear some music?” Rakev asked no one in particular.

He turned and opened the double doors in front of him and walked inside, right down one of the main aisles to the orchestra section. The ushers who tried to stop him were thrown into the air with the flick of his fingers, with one sent crashing down upon the musicians onstage. The music stopped, and some started to stand in their seats. But it was already too late.

The humans Rakev had sent in earlier were opening all of the doors to allow Rakev’s minions inside, dispatching anyone who got in their way. After the monsters entered, the men shut the exits behind them and stood guard, weapons pulled out of concealed holsters and held at the ready. Rakev had placed his human servants at every entrance and exit, both in the orchestra sections and in the tiers of seats above them.

Rakev jumped into the air and hovered there for a moment, smiling as the crowd gasped. He lifted himself onto the stage, the musicians standing and backing away. Rakev’s men had blocked their exits as well, moving into position behind the stage before anyone even thought of escape.

Rakev turned to face the crowd and opened his arms.

“This is a great day of celebration,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly throughout the massive room. “After a hundred years stuck on this lifeless, dull, maggot-strewn corpse of a planet, I’m going home. It’s a remarkable day, an amazing day. Not for you, of course. It’s pretty much going to suck ass for you.”

There was a gunshot from the upper balcony, where Rakev assumed one of his men had just shot somebody trying to flee. He noticed a few people had gotten out their phones and were starting to record. Good. This was a day for the history books.

“So listen up, you putrid pimples of the earth,” Rakev said. “Here’s how it’s going to go. I’ve rigged up explosives throughout this theater. If anybody tries to leave, the place will explode. So any of you thinking about escaping, think again.”

This was a lie. Rakev hadn’t bothered to rig up explosives anywhere; he didn’t need to. But it would give the crowd some doubt and add to their fear.

“We’re going to be here for a little while,” Rakev said, removing the knife from his jacket pocket. “This thing needs a little time to do the voodoo that it does so well. So we’re all going to sit here. If anybody gets out of his seat without permission, I will blow this place up. If anyone stands up without me telling him to, I will blow this place up. If somebody sneezes without me giving the go ahead, I will . . . probably do nothing. I think expecting people not to sneeze just isn’t realistic. But you get the general idea, right? You all just sit here like the good, mangy dogs you are. If you are good, little puppies, a few of you will live. I’m not sure how much juice this thing needs, so if you’re lucky, maybe just a couple hundred.”

There were mutterings and crying from the crowd. He didn’t mention that those who did survive would be ripped to shreds in the resulting explosion the dagger set off.

He looked into the crowd to see his creatures spreading throughout the theater. A few people noticed them, but they stared like they were costumed extras rather than monsters. His threat for them to stay seated would only work for so long. Eventually some would get up, and he wanted those who did to be noisily ripped apart. He had given strict instructions for his crew, and he knew they would follow them to the letter.