It didn’t last.
“I mean it when I say it’s over.” Krisoijn waved over the other man in the room. Nohar recognized the scent before he saw the man.
“Too bad about Ortega, but we all have to make sacrifices when the species is at stake.” With every word Gilbertez spoke, Nohar felt his gut sink. Gilbertez held up a ramcard that shimmered like a rainbow in the spotlight. “You saved us a lot of trouble tracking this down. The session was logged, so we knew you copied the databases. They’d been tearing the Pasadena building apart looking for where you stashed it.” Gilbertez placed the card on a cart on top of its twin.
They both lay next to a makeshift electronic device covered with silver-gray duct tape. It took Nohar a moment to realize that it was Elijah’s voicebox. Gilbertez noticed Nohar looking. “Too bad we had to deal with them like that, but you had to let slip about Tangier, didn’t you? That’s one of the keys to the whole project, you know, engineer a virus that twigs on just the few proteins that are common to all moreaus, on the genes you inherited from the first few dogs. Had to start with them. If that tidbit got out, it could unravel everything. The rumors about the Drips are bad enough.”
Krisoijn reached out and pulled Nohar’s head to face him. “I am leaving you in Gilbertez’s capable hands. I know you’re thinking that you’re strong enough to stay quiet—or maybe you’re hoping that you’ll die before you tell us anything more. It’s a vain hope.”
Krisoijn let go of Nohar’s head and walked out of the room. Nohar heard a door shutting him in with Gilbertez. Nohar turned to face Gilbertez and said, “You?”
“Surprised? I find that gratifying.” Gilbertez walked over to another cart and rolled it near Nohar’s chair. Nohar saw the spotlight glint off the metal of surgical knives and a set of needles. “It’s nice that we’re not going to be pressed for time here, like we were with Royd. You’ve been a pain in the ass, and I’m going to enjoy this.”
Gilbertez looked at the cart and looked at Nohar. Somehow his tense movements, and constant chattering were taking on a whole new sinister cast.
“It was all a setup.” Nohar’s voice came out in a groan.
“That’s what you first suspected, wasn’t it? I had to bring all my talents to bear to get you over that first impression. That was work. Trying to sympathize with a moreau, that was effort. My first hope was to talk out of you what we wanted. You were a little too cagey, so we absconded with you. When you led us to a dead end, Ortega pulled his trump. Between us we were supposed to overpower him, and do it a bit too late. The dogs were a bit of a wildcard that almost screwed everything up.”
“You wanted me to tell you where Manuel is,” Nohar said. “I’m not going to.”
“Yes, that was the idea. But that’s sort of moot now.” Gilbertez picked up an air hypo and checked the charge in it. “You see, we managed to piece it together, once we knew that we didn’t have the real Necron Avenger. You told us our quarry was still at large, and with Manuel and the data. We just had to press on Oswald Samson a little to get him to talk about his adopted son—”
Nohar stared at Gilbertez.
“Oh, you think less of Oswald now,” he smiled.
“Don’t. No one can hold up under a professional interrogation.” Gilbertez turned to face Nohar, his expression telling him that he was enjoying the process of revelation. “We got enough from him before he died to get a picture of The Necron Avenger. From there it was just a short step to double-check the Government net and find old INS sites that’ve seen recent net activity. Krisoijn’s on his way to clean that up now.”
No . . .
He had screwed up. Failed in the worst possible way.
Gilbertez pushed up Nohar’s right sleeve and pressed the hypo into the exposed part of his uninjured arm. Nohar started to struggle. It seemed useless. The chair was steel and anchored to the concrete floor. He was held down to the chair by straps across his chest and upper arms. His forearms were strapped to the arms of the chair. Even his thighs were held down by a belt strapping him down to the seat. Only his lower legs had any freedom of movement.
Pain flared in his left arm and Nohar stopped struggling.
Gilbertez smiled. “I’ve just injected you with a synthetic drug. It doesn’t even have a street name yet. It’s a cousin to flush, it has hallucinogenic and stimulant qualities. The important thing for you is to realize that its main effect is to sharpen perceptions.”
Nohar felt as if the world were suddenly trying to tear open his brain. Gilbertez’s voice was painfully loud. The spotlight seared his eyes, even through closed lids. Worst was the pain in his arm, magnified a hundredfold.
“Most important for you,” Gilbertez’s booming voice said, “is the perception of pain.”
Nohar clenched his jaw and whispered, “Why?”
“‘Why’ what, my friend? Why the project? Or why are you strapped to that chair?” Nohar didn’t answer. His jaw was clenched tight enough for his own fangs to bite into his gums. That pain, even amplified, was nothing compared to the feeling as Gilbertez unstrapped his wounded arm. “The project,” Gilbertez continued, “is the ultimate solution to a problem the government saw during the last riots here. The riots, and the nonhuman population, were becoming a threat to national security. This antiterrorist unit here—it never even had a proper name—was formed to meet that threat, and it recruited men who saw the threat. The operation grew to a point that, when our government arbitrarily decided to ignore the threat, we didn’t abandon the fight. The threat is still here, in this country, and there is only one way to eliminate it.”
Gilbertez bent his arm upward and Nohar roared. The sound tore at him as if it were ripping the skin out of his throat. “I’m afraid it’s broken. That’ll do for a start.” Gilbertez held Nohar’s arm, and Nohar could feel the adrenaline surge of combat. He could feel the chemical rush as it flowed through his system. His nerves screamed.
“As to why you’re strapped here—You were very cagey with your information. Even though we have that ramcard you copied, the ramcard stolen from Compton, and the location of Manuel Limón, we can’t be sure what else you might be hiding. So I’m going to go over it with you a few times.” Gilbertez turned Nohar’s wrist, and the broken bones in the forearm grated against each other.
Nohar roared again. The conscious part of his mind wanted to start talking, give Gilbertez what he wanted to gain some respite from the pain. But the adrenaline was in control now. The thinking part of his brain was already pushed aside by the Beast created by the gene-techs.
His good arm balled his hand into a fist, and the tension in his own muscles felt as if it could break the bones in that arm. He opened his eyes, and the world stood out in a relief so sharp that the edges of every object were painful to see. He could smell Gilbertez, smell the fleeting traces of Krisoijn and the three other men who must have strapped him here. He could hear Gilbertez’s heartbeat, and the breathing of the guard outside the door. He could feel the grain on the leather strap on his wrist, and he could feel the slight change in tension as the bolts holding the arm in place began giving way.
Gilbertez was still talking, but the part of Nohar’s brain that listened was shut off, drowned in the tide of chemicals. The Beast had always been there, but Gilbertez’s injection actually seemed to strengthen it. . . .
Gilbertez moved Nohar’s arm again. Pain shot through Nohar. He arched his back and roared again. His arm strained against the chair and the room echoed with shearing metal. Nohar’s right arm came free with a ten-kilo piece of the chair strapped to his wrist. The belt holding down his chest and forearms was anchored to that part of the chair, and it fell away as he raised his arm.
Gilbertez turned, letting go of his other arm. He was backing away, but the world had slowed for Nohar. Gilbertez barely took a step before Nohar’s arm connected.
Nohar’s fist, with ten kilos of extra w
eight attached to it, slammed into the side of Gilbertez’s head. Gilbertez’s head snapped back, and he flew out of the spotlight. Nohar could hear him thud limply against one of the concrete walls.
He was still strapped to the chair, but now half the chair was dangling off his right arm. His left arm didn’t want to move, but he brought the buckle on his right wrist in reach of his hand so he could peel it off.
He’d just gotten it when he heard the door begin to open. He grabbed the arm of the chair with his newly freed right hand. When the guard stepped into the room, Nohar threw the jagged wreckage of the chair at about where the man’s head should be. Nohar still couldn’t see past the spotlight, but he heard the sound of a sickeningly soft impact, and of a body striking the floor.
He tore away the remaining restraints on his legs and sprang out of the chair, clutching his broken arm to his chest. Once he stood, he punched the spotlight, Glass fell into the suddenly darkened room and Nohar could smell burned fur and blood. He paid little mind; adrenaline and Gilbertez’s drug still raced through his blood, coating everything with a razored immediacy.
The room shot into monochrome focus when the light died. Gilbertez was crumpled on the ground, his neck bent at better than a forty-five-degree angle. He didn’t breathe. Nohar marked him as dead the moment he saw him.
The guard lay in the doorway, still alive, making choking noises as he clutched his throat. Arterial blood was collecting in a pool under him.
Nohar stepped up to the cart where Elijah’s voicebox sat. Next to it were the ramcards, gray in the darkness. Nohar grabbed them and slipped them into a pocket.
On the way out, he bent and took the choking guard’s sidearm.
Chapter 25
The door led out into a hallway with the same cinder-block walls, and the same concrete floor. Naked fluorescent tubes lit the hall with a vibrating white glare. Overhead pipes hugged the ceiling, low enough that Nohar had to duck as he ran down the corridor. He passed security cameras, and he could hear an alarm going off somewhere.
He made it to one end of the corridor and had to stuff the guard’s automatic in his pocket so that he could open the door to the stairway. He still clutched his broken arm to his chest.
As soon as the door opened, he could catch the scent of at least three humans coming down. Their steps echoed in the stairwell. Nohar slipped inside before the door was open fully and pulled out the gun. The first man turned the corner a flight above him, just as Nohar flicked off the safety.
Nohar saw him, a kid dressed in a Marine uniform. Nohar was running on screaming instinct, and it didn’t register that the pink facing him was a kid, or a Marine. What Nohar saw at the top of the stairs was an enemy with a rifle.
The kid’s posture stood out in relief, like a neon sign advertising his intent. Nohar didn’t hesitate.
Nohar’s stolen sidearm was a submachine gun disguised as a pistol. One pull of the trigger sent five shots into the rifle-wielding Marine. Every shot hit, and the kid never had time to react. He hit the wall behind him, splattering blood, then he fell face first down into the stairs, rolling toward Nohar.
Nohar started up the stairs before the Marine had fallen halfway. He had to jump over the body, and he managed it without thinking of anything but the two enemies that were still up there.
Nohar was moving faster than he had a right to go, and his nervous system was screaming at twice the speed his body was moving. The world seemed suspended in gelatin around him. As he dove around the corner of the landing, he ducked low, almost to the ground. The two other Marines had heard the gunfire, and had barely enough time to bear their weapons. Their aim was a meter off.
The bullets from their machine rifles tore parts of the cinder block away from the wall above Nohar, showering him in a cloud of dust and concrete shrapnel. He had already had his gun pointed where he wanted the bullets to go. The automatic emptied itself of the remainder of its ammunition as the shots tore up the stairway, through both Marines. The gun was empty before Nohar’s dive hit the ground.
Neither Marine got up from the crumpled heap they formed in the stairwell.
He had landed on his broken arm, and he pushed himself upright with an inarticulate roar. The pain was intense enough for his vision to black out and for his stomach to heave. But it didn’t stop him moving. The pain seemed to sharpen his perceptions even further. All of the thinking part of his brain was now devoted to tactics, getting him out of here alive.
Nohar tossed the empty automatic down the stairs.
The enemy was converging on this point. He had to get out of here before they blocked off his escape. He ran up the stairs and grabbed one of the machine rifles. It was awkward, and probably dangerous one-handed, but he didn’t have time to fiddle with a holster.
Nohar ran up the stairwell. He had to keep moving, keep the enemy reactive. The moment they had the chance to think, to plan, he would be crushed by sheer numbers.
He needed to know where he was, find a point of escape.
He passed two more doors as he ascended. They were marked with numbers that decreased as he went upward. Nohar didn’t stop until he reached the next door. It was marked with a zero.
He had to put down the rifle to open the door, and every nerve in his body primed itself for an attack while he was vulnerable. He managed to get through the door without being ambushed.
The door led to a massive, dark chamber broiling with dry heat, and filled with the deafening resonance of dozens of giant fans. Under the high ceiling, ranks of massive metal boxes led away from the door. Above the humming machinery, massive fans fed huge vents in the ceiling.
Air-conditioning for an immense underground complex. The units were probably here to hide the heat signature from a spy satellite, the fans above dispersing the heat to dozens of widely separated points on the surface. It meant that he was a floor or two away from the surface himself.
As the door shut, he could sense the closing noose of troops behind him. He could hear movement above and below, even over the resonance of the air-conditioning units.
Nohar looked up to the massive vents in the ceiling. They were being fed by slow-moving fans about three meters across. The vents had to lead to the surface.
Nohar tossed his rifle on top of one of the huge air-conditioning units. He grabbed as high as he could reach with his good arm and pulled himself up, pushing on the sides of the unit with his feet. He managed to lever himself up on top of it. Beneath him, under a wire mesh screen that dented inward with his weight, a ferociously spinning blower shot near-searing hot air into him. It was like lying on top of an oven. He rolled off and stood. As huge as the unit was, there was still enough clearance between it and the ceiling for him to stand upright under the vent above.
The vent, and the fan feeding it, was protected by a set of metal bars. Nohar reached up and grabbed the center bar, putting all of his weight into pulling it free. It came loose so easily that he almost tumbled from his perch.
The fan in the vent moved slowly, but not slowly enough for him to climb into the vent while it was still moving. The fan was mounted above a metal strut, and beneath that, the motor was exposed. Nohar could see the metal sheath that fed the power cables into the fan. He grabbed it and yanked. After the second try the cables came free with a shower of blue sparks.
The fan slowed to a stop and Nohar pushed the rifle up into a horizontal pipe that fed into the side of the vent above. Then he grabbed the strut bracing the dormant fan and hooked his feet through the grating that he had pulled off the vent.
Pulling himself up was agonizing, especially with the extra weight on his feet. One-handed he managed to chin himself up to the strut. Even then, he had to raise the elbow of his broken arm up on top of the strut to give him the leverage to pull himself the rest of the way up.
Pain clouding his vision, doubled up across the strut under the fan, he managed to
reach down for the grate. He managed to keep hold of it with his feet, and he got hold of the center bar so he could pull it shut behind him. He was even able to wedge back into place the way he had found it.
He wished he could start the fan again, but there was no way to do it safely from above, even if he could reattach the wires he had yanked free.
He couldn’t stay where he was. He stood, precariously balanced on the strut between two fan blades. The side vent where he had pushed the rifle was too small for him. So he had only one direction to go.
Nohar looked up, but the vent above was shrouded in gloom that even his good night vision couldn’t penetrate. The rifle had a shoulder strap, and he slung it on his back. The strap was too short, and it hung wrong, but he couldn’t afford to leave his only weapon.
He turned around until he found a ladder set into the wall of the vent.
Slowly he began the painful ascent.
• • •
To his telescoped sense of time it seemed it took hours for him to reach a horizontal vent he could fit through. The ladder was designed for pinks and his feet could barely find purchase on it. He also had to use the elbow of his broken arm to keep his balance every time he reached for a higher rung. Once he twisted the broken arm, blacked out from the pain, and nearly fell.
His ears were numb from the echo of the blowers beneath him, and even with the fan disabled, the heat was burning and almost unbearable. His eyes watered, and his fur itched, and all he could smell was the dry scent of heated sheet metal.
He might have missed the passage if the ladder he was climbing didn’t end there. He reached for another rung, and his arm met empty space. He managed to pull himself into a horizontal vent about half the diameter of the vertical one. He crawled forward, his digitigrade legs slipping into a horizontal gait, limping on one foreleg.
Twice, now that he wasn’t in immediately physical danger, the adrenaline-fueled Beast left him in a state of collapse in the vent, blacking out from pain and exhaustion. Each time it took a severe effort of will to keep going.