Chimera (17 page)

Or one fired from a silencer.

No. Jesus no.
This
chimera had a gun.

Chapel looked up and saw there were no bars on the
windows of the second story of the building. There was a light fixture just
above the doorway that looked sturdy enough to hold his weight. He jumped up and
grabbed it with his good hand, then slowly pulled himself up until he could hook
one leg around it.

As a kid in Florida Chapel had climbed plenty of
trees. Then in the army he'd learned to climb walls and fences. He could do
this. He got a nasty twinge from his hurt leg when he put all his weight on that
foot, but he managed to launch himself upward and grab the ledge of the
second-story window. Desperation gave him strength as he pulled himself up so he
could stand on the ledge. It was only a few inches wide, but it was enough.

He tried the window and found it opened freely.
Chapel jumped through feetfirst and landed in a dark bedroom full of minimalist
furniture. Thankfully there was nobody asleep in the bed. He hurried to the
room's door and started to reach for the knob—then remembered his training and
pressed his ear up against the door instead.

For a moment he heard nothing. Then a soft creak,
as if someone had stepped on a loose stair riser. The chimera must have heard
him come through the window and was coming upstairs to investigate.

The sound wasn't repeated. Chapel had no idea where
the chimera was in the building. One wrong move now and he was likely to get
shot. He drew his weapon and held it low, down by his thigh.

Every shred of his training told him he was in a
lousy situation. There was an armed madman out there beyond the door, and Chapel
had no idea of his location or if he was even alone. Opening the door would
expose him to enemy fire. He glanced down at the bottom of the door and saw only
darkness there—there would be no lights in the hall outside. He would be running
blind, running right into what could be an ambush or a trap or who knew what.
Julia could already be dead, and he might be throwing away his life for
nothing—worse than that, he was jeopardizing his mission by acting like
this.

He reached down and turned the doorknob.

To hell with caution,
he told himself. And then he shoved the door open and threw himself into the
hallway beyond, keeping low and swinging his arm up to point his pistol first
one way, then the other, up and down the hall.

He saw no movement, no sign of any threat. He
started to move again—

—when he heard the same creaking sound as
before.

Chapel froze in place and gave his eyes a moment to
adjust to the darkness. A little light came in through the windows of the
bedroom behind him, enough to see that there were two other doors on the hall,
and that to his left it ended in a stairwell leading down. The doors were all
closed. He was certain the creaking had come from the stairs.

He strained his eyes to see anything. A silhouette.
A shadow. Just a few steps from the top of the stairs, something big moved in
the darkness, and he heard the creaking again.

The shape held something long and narrow—like a
silenced pistol.

Chapel did what you were never supposed to do in
such a situation. He improvised. Launching himself forward, he ran toward the
top of the stairs and then threw himself down them, aiming right for the center
of the shadow's mass.

A shot rang out, a dull roar muffled by the
silencer. The muzzle flash was only a dim flicker of light, but it was enough
for Chapel to see that his target was a man in a suit. In midair Chapel threw
out his arms to grab the man and pull them both rolling to the floor of the
stair landing. He took the fall with his shoulder and spun around, weapon up and
raised and ready to fire.

The long barrel of the silencer was already pointed
right at his face. He'd taken his target down, but the chimera had jumped back
to his feet before Chapel could even get his bearings.

“Ah, how sweet,” the chimera said. “You came back
for her.” The chimera seemed to find this uproariously funny. He couldn't seem
to stop laughing.

That was when Chapel realized he wasn't facing a
chimera at all.

BROOKLYN, NEW
YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:39

“I'm just—heh—I'm going to turn on
the—ha—lights,” Laughing Boy said. “Okay? Nobody needs to move, I just want to.
To. Heh heh heh. Get a look at you.”

“Try anything and I
will
shoot,” Chapel told him.

“Yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha.”

Laughing Boy reached up and flicked a light switch.
Chapel was ready for it, but still the sudden light dazzled him. He put his
artificial hand up to shield his eyes. Laughing Boy had plenty of time to shoot
him in the second or so it took his eyes to adjust, but the CIA freak didn't
take the opportunity.

Once Chapel could see, he understood the situation
a little better. The two of them were crammed into the narrow landing of the
stairs, Chapel in a tight firing crouch, Laughing Boy hunched over just a
little. Laughing Boy's silenced pistol was still pointed right at Chapel's
face.

Chapel's sidearm was pointed straight at Laughing
Boy's heart.

Laughing Boy couldn't stop giggling, perhaps at the
absurdity of this situation. His whole body shook with mirth—except the arm that
held his gun. The barrel of his pistol didn't so much as bob up and down.

“Where's Julia?” Chapel demanded. “Is she
alive?”

Laughing Boy shrugged.

“Answer me!”

The CIA man smiled. He'd been laughing the whole
time, but this was the first thing that made him smile. “Nobody gets to give
orders around here. Not when we've both drawn down on each other.”

Chapel gritted his teeth. He thought of something
that had occurred to him before. “Do me a favor, then. Blink your eyes a couple
of times.”

Laughing Boy's smile turned into a mischievous
grin. “Oh, clever. But no. I'm not one of
them
. I'm
just like you.”

“Bullshit,” Chapel said. “We've got nothing in
common.”

“You'll find out.”

“Enough of this. Put your weapon away or I'll
shoot,” Chapel demanded.

“I'm ready to die for my country,” Laughing Boy
said. He chuckled at the thought. “I do what I have to do.”

“You're going to tell me that's why you're here? In
the interest of national security?” Chapel could hardly believe it.

Laughing Boy nodded. “She was exposed to the virus.
I just need to bring her in for a couple tests.”

“Sure,” Chapel said. “That makes sense. That's why
you came with a silencer on your weapon. And why she called me to tell me you
were trying to kill her.”

“Oh, all right—you're cleverer than I gave you
credit for, aren't you? I was going to put a bullet in her and then burn her
body. But, you know, it's all details.” Laughing Boy chortled so hard his
concentration broke for a second.

Long enough.

Chapel shot out one leg and swept it across
Laughing Boy's ankles. As he'd expected, the CIA man was fast and managed to
jump back, avoiding the sweep, but that distracted him further and gave Chapel
plenty of time to grab the flash suppressor on the end of the silenced pistol
and shove it upward, toward the ceiling. The pistol discharged once, twice, and
the stink of gunpowder filled Chapel's nose and made him want to sneeze, but he
fought it back and wrestled the weapon out of Laughing Boy's hand. In a second
he had his own pistol jammed up under the CIA man's chin and the silenced pistol
went arcing backward, over his shoulder, to clatter on the stairs below.

“Now,” Chapel said, “we start talking about who
gets to give the orders.”

“Told you,” Laughing Boy said, his chest shaking
with a case of the giggles, “I'm ready to die.”

He flung himself forward before Chapel had a chance
to react, pushing them both down the stairs, flying head over feet. Chapel's
head spun as it struck the banister, then a riser on the way down. At the bottom
he struggled to regain his feet, to spin around and find the other man. He was
so disoriented it took him a second to realize he'd dropped his pistol.

Laughing Boy stood up from where he'd bent over to
retrieve his own weapon. Chapel braced himself, ready to take the shots. Ready
to die.

But Laughing Boy . . . laughed. Long and
hard and fully, from the bottom of his chest. “Hear that?” he said. “They're
never supposed to be around when you need them, right? Am I right?”

Chapel strained his ears and heard it—the sound of
police sirens, coming toward them. Someone must have seen him break into the
building.

“I'm going to go now,” Laughing Boy said,
holstering his weapon. “I hate cops, you know? So many questions, and they never
believe your answers.”

“It helps if you tell them the truth.”

Chapel had never in his life told a joke that got
such a big and heartfelt laugh.

BROOKLYN, NEW
YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:46

Laughing Boy disappeared into the darkness of
the building. Chapel didn't bother chasing him—he knew the man would shoot him
if he tried. He grabbed his own handgun off the floor and holstered it, then
searched for a door leading into the clinic. By the time he found it, red and
blue lights were already stabbing through the thin curtains that covered the
front windows. He heard police radios squawking, and he knew in any second they
would start demanding he come out with his hands visible.

Before then, he had to know what had happened here.
He had to know if Julia was still alive.

The clinic was dark, and the flashing lights made
it hard to see anything. He hurried forward into the reception area and nearly
slipped and fell. The floor was slick with something dark. He knew what that
meant instantly.

“Oh, no,” he said aloud. He crept forward until he
found the receptionist's desk. Blood had splattered all the files lying there,
and a woman's body lay slumped, motionless, in the chair.

Biting his lip, he used his artificial hand—it
didn't have any fingerprints—to gently lift her head.

It wasn't Julia. It was the receptionist, the one
he'd seen comforting Julia in her grief. There were two dark holes in her face,
one in her temple, one in her cheekbone just below her eye. Blood oozed from
both of them as he moved her. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “You had nothing to do
with this, you didn't deserve . . .”

“Chapel?” he heard someone shout, from behind
him.

It was muffled, distorted, but it was definitely
Julia's voice.

He made his way deeper into the clinic, past the
examination rooms, past a shelf loaded down with prescription dog food. “Julia?”
he called. “Where are you?”

“All the way at the back,” she called out. “Is he
still there?”

“He's gone,” Chapel called. In the dark he stumbled
forward until he found a door at the back of the clinic. A heavy, reinforced
steel door with a massive lock. Bending down he saw that the paint on the lock
plate had been scuffed. There were three long oval spots where the paint had
been blasted away.

Laughing Boy must have tried to shoot out the lock.
That almost never worked—Chapel had been taught that much when he was trained by
the Rangers—but it looked like Laughing Boy had failed to find any other way to
get the door open.

“I'm coming out,” Julia said. The lock mechanism
clicked, and the door swung open. Chapel got a look inside and realized why a
veterinary clinic needed such a heavy door—the closet beyond was lined with
shelves stocked with pill bottles of every type and size and description.

He only had time for a quick glance before Julia
rushed out at him, a scalpel in one hand. “Tell me you don't work with him! Tell
me you didn't set all this up!” she demanded.

“I swear it,” he said, holding up both hands.

She stared at his left hand, and he realized it
must be covered with blood.

“He killed Portia,” Julia said.

“I know. But he's gone now. The police frightened
him off.”

Julia shook her head. Then she dropped the scalpel
to clatter on the floor and rushed at him, wrapping her arms around him. “Make
this stop,” she pleaded. “Make it stop!”

But Chapel knew that was one thing he couldn't
promise.

Laughing Boy was hunting down everyone who had come
into contact with the chimeras. He was killing them and burning their bodies,
just in case they'd been exposed to the virus. Just because he'd been thwarted
once didn't mean he wouldn't try again. He would come back for Julia, track her
down wherever she went, no matter how much police protection Chapel might
arrange for her.

There was only one thing he could do.

“I have a plan to keep you safe,” he told her. She
pressed her face against his shoulder and sobbed noisily. “I can protect you
from him, and from the chimeras. But I need you to trust me.”

“Seriously? That's not going to happen, Chapel!”
she wailed, pounding on his good shoulder with her fist. “After everything that
happened today, you think I'm just going to put my utter faith in you?”

“I need you to—”

“I'll give you a chance,” she said. “Don't blow
it.”

BROOKLYN, NEW
YORK: APRIL 12, T+14:55

Dealing with the police took way too long.
For a while they had Chapel in handcuffs and were ready to take Julia into
protective custody. Eventually, though, a detective had come running over,
waving his cell phone in the air. He huddled up with the cops for a while.
Chapel had no idea what they said to one another, but when they were done they
took the cuffs off and let him go.