Dues of Mortality (57 page)

Gabriel
kept up his advance, but his impaired vision now factored heavily in
his attempts at murder. Glenda kicked straight out, dealing a
scrumptious blow to his abdomen. She was pretty sure she heard a rib
crack and there were no words
to
describe her satisfaction
.
Gabriel then fell forward
against the hermetic chamber, teetering on his feet. When Glenda saw
how close he was to the chamber door she stepped around Gabriel and
laid into his side with her right shoulder. Gabriel tumbled forth,
almost into the center of the chamber, and fell flat on his face. As
he tried to blink the blood out of his eyes, he could swear he was
looking at a rabbit.

Not
wasting a second, Glenda switched to the chamber's control panel and
pressed the icon resembling a closing door. The chamber door eased
shut, locking Gabriel inside. She even pushed against the door itself
to make certain he was truly imprisoned. When she was certain the
door was sealed, she leaned her back against it and sucked in an
invigorating dose of air.

Seconds
into her reprieve, a ringing thud from the chamber put Glenda back on
her heels. Gabriel had kicked hard its transparent wall. There was an
override panel inside, but it had been secured for safety purposes
and he had no inkling as to its code. In all the hours spent in this
fucking death factory, it had never occurred to him that he'd need
the override codes for...
What was this thing used for again?
At that moment, the black cylinder in the center of the chamber
parted in two and birthed an amber-filled sphere from its top. The
sphere then fell to the floor and shattered on impact, inches from
the rabbit’s cage.

Abject
panic radiated through Gabriel's body like a million volts of raw
electricity.
The Saffron toxin!
Damn it, he hadn’t even
noticed where the bitch had led him. Why did all these goddamn labs
have to look the same? Gabriel beat his fists against the
ballistic-grade glass. “Let me out!” he shouted.

Glenda's
only response was a look of “are you kidding?”

Gabriel
looked back at her as if trying to decide whether or not to play to
her sympathies. He then heard a frail clink from inside the chamber.

The
poor unwitting rabbit was slamming itself against the sides of its
cage. Its nervous system was in full scale meltdown. The rabbit's
frail little bones were breaking beneath the pull of its own muscles.
Blood soaked its fur as its skin began to rupture. It violently
released both bowels and bladder in acute streams across the floor of
the cage. The little innocent was dying a horrible death. If she had
had the strength, Glenda would have wept openly for the animal.

When
she looked back at Gabriel, though, Glenda had no such sentiment. The
purity of horror in the man's eyes had to be from seeing the gates of
hell opening beneath him. When Gabriel hit the floor, foaming at the
mouth and contorting his body into shapes that no human form was ever
meant to make,
You killed
Xavier, you bastard,
was all Glenda could think. When so
many of his vertebrae herniated from the convulsions and his skin
erupted with bloody fissures,
You
killed Xavier, you bastard,
was all she could think. When
the respiratory paralysis finally silenced Gabriel for good,
You
killed Xavier, you bastard
,
was all she could think.
You...killed...Xavier.

****

Whatever disaster was unfolding
around him, Richard was able to block out. He continued his work
entirely uninhibited. He was right about Wallace not having time to
overhaul the entire system. The UFO's redundant data-core was
identical to the one at Millenitech HQ. The code had been recently
changed, but Richard had still broken it in record time. As he
finished downloading the data, the door to the secured room slid
open.

Kelmer
ran to his partner. “D...did you get it?” he asked.

“
Yes,
I got it all,” Richard answered.

Kelmer
felt that funny sense of incredulity again. He realized he was a
little jealous. He actually had a regal sounding voice without the
stutter. “Do I...I really sound that way?”

“
What
way?”

“
N...never
mind. Let’s go.”

The
two men raced for the doorway.

“
W...we
have to find the others.” Kelmer said.

“
What
about the contamination? We don’t know what’s been let
loose out there.”

“
We’ll
have t...to take that risk! I...I’m not leaving without them.”
The alarm had been thrown on sublevel three, the lowest level.
Undoubtedly, it would be sealed off. Kelmer and Richard would have to
go to sublevel two and try to gain access from there. They jumped
into the four-seated transport Kelmer had acquired on the way and
sped off down the corridor. In no time they were on the floor of
sublevel two and had routed a corner where traces of white foam
streaked over the floor in a broken line.

Glenda
came stumbling out of the lab, nauseated to no end. Gabriel’s
face full of bloody ruptures would be burned into her brain for all
time. She immediately heard the whine of the transport racing in her
direction.

“
Glenda!”
Kelmer screamed. He sped up and the transport soon skidded along the
floor before braking at her side.

“
Are
you hurt badly?” he asked her.

“
Richard?
What the...” She saw Kelmer's double and nearly fell over.
“What? How?”

“
I'll
explain later,” Kelmer said. “Get in!”

Glenda
took a seat in the transport and Kelmer accelerated to the closest
ramp.

“
Do
you know what happened?” Kelmer asked. “What triggered
the alarm?”

“
We
needed a distraction,” she answered. “We thought it was a
fire alarm.”

“
Where's
your friend?”

“
He...”
Glenda couldn't get the words out. “He’s...”

“
Look,”
Richard said, his finger pointing out from the front of the
transport. The handle of the stairwell door at the end of the
corridor had turned downward, being manipulated from the other side.

The
transport sped up and then screeched to a halt just short of the
door. Glenda decided she couldn't reach it fast enough. It started to
open just as she jumped out of the transport. She rammed a shoulder
into the door's heavy metal.

An
inch closer and the damn door would have knocked Xavier cold. How
poetic for him to have made it this far with a thumb-sized hole in
his thigh only to be undone by such a thing. The near-miss put him
off balance and he practically fell on top of Glenda.

“
Xavier,”
she shouted in his ear. “You’re alive!”

“
Despite
my best efforts,” he said sardonically.

Glenda
pelted his face with kisses.

“
Thank
God,” Kelmer exhaled. “A...a...all right, everybody
on...on...”

The
clone took over. “Everybody on the transport!”

Xavier
gawked openly at the two Kelmers. “Good god! What? How?”

“
Later,”
Glenda said. “Come on!”

“
She's
right,” Richard said. “We have to get you people to a
hospital!”

“
A
hospital won’t help if that bomb goes off with us in here,”
Xavier said.

Kelmer’s
eyes bulged. “B...b...b...b...”

“
Never
mind. Let’s go!”

Glenda
and Xavier crammed themselves into the back seats and the transport
sped off down the corridor.

Kelmer
negotiated every transport ramp to ground level like a champion drag
racer. Once there, he visually targeted the open double doors leading
to the outside. He then leaned against the wheel as if it would make
a difference in speed. The transport rocketed down the lobby and
straight out of the building.

The
explosion happened exactly as Ross had planned. Planting the bomb
directly over the natural gas inlet—thanks to Gabriel's partial
blueprint—birthed a series of explosions that took out level
after level of the UFO. Deafening waves of destruction split the air.
Tons of burning debris and concrete sailed through the sky in a
bright orange display. One of the waves caught the tail end of the
transport, sending it airborne. Its passengers scattered like
billiard balls across the acres of grassy knoll.

Xavier
came to lay flat on his back and barely moving. As he hedged in and
out of consciousness, he could just make out Glenda pulling herself
to her knees. Several feet away, was what looked like Richard Kelmer
draped over a fence line like a wet rug, no doubt impaled on its
arrowhead shafts. Xavier felt sick inside. He tried desperately to
stay conscious, but it was a no-go. His head listed onto the soft,
cool grass and he gazed skyward at the big bird with massive wings
that hovered above him—a big
heavenly
bird.

Xavier's
eyes began to flutter after the third shout of his name. On the
fourth shout he snapped awake. His leg was on fire and his head was
drumming. “Oof.”

“
Don’t
move,” an unfamiliar voice said. “We’re pretty sure
there are no broken bones or internal injuries, but we won’t
know until we get you to a hospital.”

Xavier’s
fog cleared a little and he could see the voice belonged to a
youthful-looking man in a jacket and tie. He also recognized
where
they were; he’d flown in them serving overseas—a
Blackwing helicopter. Xavier was on a stretcher in the copter's
cabin.
But where is
...He
breathed a sigh of relief as Glenda's face floated into view. It was
like seeing the sun after a thousand years of darkness.

“
Hi,”
she said tenderly.

“
Hey
there,” Xavier answered.

“
How
do feel?”

“
I’d
tell you, but I know how empathetic you are. I wouldn’t want to
bring you down.”

Glenda
caressed his aching head.

Xavier
didn’t have the heart to tell her that even his hair hurt. He
sat up a notch and regarded the young man.

“
Special
Agent Nathan Brisby,” the young man said. “You’ve
got a lot of people waiting to talk to you, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Yeah
,
I...” Xavier gasped. “My brother; they know who I am! You
have to get to my brother!”

“
It’s
all right,” said an older man in the same conservative dress as
the young one. He moved in from the other end of the cabin. “We’ve
had your brother and his wife under protective watch for the past two
days. They had a bit of a scare, but they’re fine.”

“
Who
are you?” Xavier asked.

“
Assistant
Special Agent in Charge, Marcel McCutcheon, FBI.”

Xavier
looked worried again. “Look, Glenda Jameson is innocent! She
didn’t murder anyone! I was there! I’ll testify! In fact,
I was the one who...”

“
Whoa,
whoa, no need to fall on your sword there, Lancelot! We know she’s
innocent. We know all about the cloning operation.”

Xavier
took assessment of the faces in the cabin. Nobody seemed villainous
or primed to shoot him. And Glenda looked more relieved than he’d
ever thought he’d see.

“
Gabriel,”
Xavier said. “He was the one who set it all up. He...”

“
We
know. Ms. Jameson has been filling us in. Plus, we got a little help
from CPD. By the way, there’s a certain Cleveland police
detective who’d love to talk to you two.”

“
Roberts,”
Glenda stated.

“
We
got in touch with him after we suspected our cases might be linked.
He’s a good man. You’re lucky he was on your side. We’d
planned to pick you two up from the trailer after you returned from
Seattle, but you never showed up. Then we received a call about
thirty minutes ago from Richard Kelmer. He told us where you were and
what was going on. We couldn’t stop him from rushing in ahead
of us.” McCutcheon held up a series of loaded lightdrives
between his fingers. “It looks like he got what he came for
though.”

“
Kelmer?”
Xavier said. “Is he...”

“
I’m
sorry. There was nothing we could do.”

Glenda
wiped her hand over her fresh tears.

“
That's
why he gave us the implant,” Xavier said. “He wanted to
follow us. He used us as bait.”

“
No,”
Glenda said. “He wanted to come with us, remember? He felt
guilty for everything we'd been through even though it wasn't really
his fault. He was going to make a deal with Wallace to let us go. But
we told him to stay put, so he had to come up with something else.”

Richard
sat silent in the darkest part of the cabin, caught helplessly in the
path of unwieldy stares. He assumed either no one was aware of their
rudeness, or they just weren’t concerned for the alleged
feelings of a clone.

Cleveland, Ohio, September 4,
2:18 p.m.

The
steaks melted like butter as they hit the tongue. Xavier couldn't
remember the last time he'd eaten so good. On top of all her other
talents, Cassandra was an excellent cook. Potato salad, grilled corn
on the cob, turnip greens and two kinds of macaroni & cheese made
for a palate’s nirvana that she seemed to conjure up like so
much magic. Benny, of course, would have preferred Cassandra sit this
one out and let him do the cooking, but the arguing would exhaust
them more than the scant hours she'd be in the kitchen whipping up
dishes she could prepare in her sleep. Cassandra did, however, do her
best to cut her husband some slack, God bless her. He was
understandably protective. It chilled him to the bone to think how
close they came to real tragedy, and it took every bit of Cassandra’s
feminine persuasions to keep him from wringing Xavier's neck. She had
made it clear that everyone had acted with nothing but the best of
intentions, and there was no room for a new chapter of hatred within
the family.