Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 (23 page)

I came upon two more figures, huddled behind the security desk. They were emerging as they coughed, and I mercilessly hit the first in the neck with a knifehand strike that sent him to his knees, choking even worse than he already was. The next caught a perfectly aimed kick to the knee that caused him to scream in pain as he fell toward me, head thumping against the Kevlar on my chest. I saw him fumbling for his gun and knew I couldn’t chance it. I grabbed him around the neck just like you see in the movies, and I wrenched it so hard it broke his vertebrae. It was instinctual, it was thoughtless, and he fell from my grip like the dead weight he now was. I shoved aside the thought of what I’d done, pushing it off to the back of my mind for later.

I was in my groove now, and the tear gas was starting to clear, dispersing in the massive atrium of the dormitory building. As it thinned, I caught glimpse of another cluster of three, just catching their collective breath, hands still on their guns. They were carrying European assault rifles, bullpup design, which I didn’t recognize right off because of the fog of tear gas in the room. My face was starting to sweat inside my mask, making it more difficult to see.

I charged the three of them and swatted away the barrel the first pointed at me as he fired. I heard glass breaking as the rounds shattered the windows out front and then a sound of clanging metal as the round met the shutters outside. I jerked the barrel down even as I felt the hot metal in my hand and pulled my weapon around, firing a three-shot burst under his visor, which looked like an oversized motorcycle helmet. Crimson splattered the clear mask, and blood pumped down his neck as he fell limp to the floor.

I didn’t spare any mercy for the next either, booting him in the groin with a kick that would have scored a fifty-yard field goal if it had been aimed at a football. The man on the receiving team screamed and dropped to his knees, all thoughts of keeping a grip on his rifle forgotten. I raised a knee to knock his helmet off and then finished him with a backhand to the face that shattered any semblance of a nose that he might have started out with.

The last of the triad caught a shot in the gut, and when he doubled over I knocked his helmet off and planted a palm on his forehead, then shoved as hard as I could. From a normal human, it probably would have staggered him. Because it was me, the back of his neck cracked, his feet flew out from underneath him, and his skull hit the floor hard enough that it made a wet spot on my shoes that probably wouldn’t ever come off.

I grabbed his gun as he fell and braced the stock against my shoulder. Seeing action heroes fire two guns in movies always made me cringe because normal humans can’t really do it effectively. The aim goes all to hell because the recoil throws it off with every shot and their reflexes aren’t good enough to bring it back to center in a time-efficient manner. Rapid fire is an even worse idea because accuracy progressively deteriorates every time the gun fires and the barrel rocks back.

I had meta strength, however, and the recoil didn’t affect me at all. I kept the submachine gun and the rifle fairly steady as I fired them both at two clusters of targets, men in black who were emerging from the fog. Six of them came out firing or ready to, and I pegged the first with enough bullets to send him to the ground with a pain in the chest. The next two on each side took rounds to the chest and neck respectively, ending at least one of their breathing careers. I adjusted my aim upward for the third on my left, and he took three bullets to the helmet, shattering the visor and splattering it with gore. The other guy got hit in the chest and staggered back, landing hard. I surged forward and kicked one of the survivors in the guts, taking all the wind out of him, sending him flipping in a roll straight into a wall. Another was starting to get up, gun in hand, so I raised the rifle and fired into him only a few feet away. I could see the bullets penetrate his Kevlar and red begin to run down the black vest he wore. I shot the next two who were also moving, scoring a hit to the side of the helmet that penetrated through and one to the other guy’s legs that hit his femoral artery. His leg started to gush blood, and I knew he had only a minute or two of life left in him before he bled to death.

“Looks like you guys are the Expendables,” I said, “but without the benefit of having Sly Stallone as the brains of your operation.”

The tear gas was almost clear, and I knocked my mask off my head with an offhand flick of my wrist. The once-stale air now caused a sharp tingle when I breathed it, like I’d bitten into a jalapeno. I could see five more guys ahead, toward the hallway opposite where I’d entered, and I fired at the first with the rifle because they were far enough away I didn’t want to chance it with the submachine gun. I veered right and ducked behind the corner of the wall before peering out and firing again, using my precision to blast one of the guys in the head. I didn’t see him for more than a second before I had to duck behind the corner of the wall as it started to absorb a hail of bullets, but I knew he wasn’t getting back up.

I took a few steps back from the corner as the drywall continued to break down from the gunfire of my adversaries. The entire corner was just about chipped off now, with a half-foot indentation from where they’d tried to shoot through the wall to get to me. It wasn’t a bad idea, actually, but I’d backed about six feet away from the corner, anticipating that exact strategy. The further away I got, the less likely they were going to hit me on a blind shot.

My shoe squeaked on the tile and I was thankful yet again that I always stuck with flats instead of heels. I was also wearing pants instead of a skirt because I knew what kind of job I was really in. Paperwork and desk bullshit aside, this was my office, in the thick of the fight. My purpose was to save metakind, and wearing heels and a skirt while sitting behind a desk was never in the job description.

I dropped the submachine gun and took off at a run for the corner. Just as I reached it I slid like a baseball player, letting the seat of my pants slide on the tile. My momentum carried me forward across the unresistant surface and I went sliding across the mouth of the hallway, rifle at the ready. As I went past, I heard the remaining three open fire, but they were too slow and I was too fast. I opened up with the rifle and caught the first one under the chin. He sagged, all the starch taken out of him. The next I caught lower, just under his vest, bullets tearing into his belly, and he groaned in pain and started to drop.

I couldn’t get a bead on the last of them before I disappeared behind the corner of the other side of the hallway. I pulled the rifle sling off my shoulders because I knew I was just about out of ammo. I reached to my hip and pulled my Glock and sprang to my feet. I ran at the corner again, but this time instead of sliding I jumped into the air, starting to execute a flip.

In the movies, they show this sort of thing in slow motion, two guns firing simultaneously. It was utterly ludicrous for a normal person to even think about trying, but again, I was not normal. Even with my dexterity and reflexes, though, it was a hard shot with just the one gun I was holding. I managed to land two out of the five shots I fired, one hitting the last mercenary in the torso, the other knocking his helmet off without breaking through it. I could see him trying to shake off the shock of what had just happened, even as he staggered under the pain and bruising from the gunshot to the chest. He bounced off the wall, trying to catch his balance, and took aim at me just as I landed, flat on my back.

I absorbed the shock well, spreading it out over my back, my buttocks, my legs where possible, and one arm. The other I tried to keep focused on him, my gun hand still extended, but the impact sent my aim wide, and I’d pulled my finger off the trigger just before I landed in order to keep from accidentally firing. It took me a moment to readjust myself, to bring my gun up after the landing, and I knew as I brought it into alignment that I was too slow, that my gamble with the last blitz hadn’t paid off. I kept on, trying to get my gun up in time, but when the shots rang out, I was aiming at his leg at best, and I knew I was done.

It came as a surprise when he was the one who slumped, a cloud of red mist around his head as if someone had blown a puff of blood into the air. He hit his knees, then pitched forward on his face, dead. I still had my gun up, aiming at him now, in case somehow I had missed something.

“Sienna, is that you?” I heard Scott’s voice from somewhere ahead, beyond the barricades of furniture and tables that were blocking the hallway.

I took a breath then another, as the adrenaline started to fade. “Yeah. It’s me. Who else would it be?”

There was no response for a moment. “Did you get them all?” Scott asked finally.

I looked back into the foyer of the dormitories, into the mass of dead, dying and wounded. “I think so. Just a minute.” I got to my feet, which were a little unsteady, and worked my way back into the foyer. There were a few men moaning, still bleeding, and I kicked their guns away as I made my way through, disarming them and punching a few in the jaw to put their lights out as needed. When I reached the security desk, I swiped my card and hit the button that started to retract the shutters. There was an incredible clatter as the building began to exit lockdown, and I saw men in tactical vests—familiar faces from our security detail—come pouring in through the main doors. I waved them in, and said, “Secure the area, sweep the building floor by floor to make sure it’s clear.”

I heard someone acknowledge me but I paid little attention. I was already on my way back down the corridor where I’d heard Scott’s voice only a minute earlier. I pushed aside the first barricade, a desk turned on its side, and started picking my way around the obstacles in the way. “You okay in there?” I asked as I vaulted over an upturned table, its four legs jutting into the air. Bodies of mercenaries were littered through the debris, as if they’d gotten turned back on at least one advance down the hall. I took a breath. That defeat had made my job easier.

Then I came to the first body that wasn’t a mercenary. Men from our security detail had died back in the foyer, I’d seen their corpses, but here, lying against an overturned chair, was one of the clerks from Omega whom I’d brought over from England. I remembered his face but not his name, recalled that he’d stood with me in the last fight against Weissman and Raymond over in London. His eyes stared straight ahead now, whatever had been behind them long gone. I knelt down and closed them for him, and saw another familiar body just past him.

This one was another from the battle in London. She was older, in her late fifties by human years, and I thought her name was Rochelle. I remembered it because it was so distinctive. Her neck was covered in blood and her body was still, head pitched to the side at an awkward angle. I reached out to touch her; she was still lukewarm but far colder than a living human being would have been.

“Scott?” I called out again as I stood, my legs feeling like they were going to buckle under me.

“Yeah,” came the weary voice from ahead. Why wasn’t he coming to me? Why wasn’t he leading them out, whoever was left? I started toward him, climbing over a couch that had been ripped apart by bullets, and on the other side I found three more bodies of our own—a security man who’d died with a gun in his hand, a meta from England whose name I couldn’t recall, and another, a girl, whose name was Athena.

I sagged next to Athena and let my fingers touch my face as I dropped my weapon. The smell of gunpowder and spent rounds was heavy in the hallway, and as my face sunk into my hands I smelled it on me, like the scent of death, strong in my nose. I reached over and touched Athena’s face, the black powder smudges on my fingers rubbing off on her skin. I’d recruited her to join Omega, and now her lifeless brown eyes stared back at me from the floor. She’d been shot in the back while trying to run away, here in this place where I couldn’t protect her. Even though I’d told her and all the others to come here, told them to leave London and come here to die, so far from home—

I felt a little noise of horror escape me and clamped a hand over my mouth as I settled back on my haunches, sitting down in a pool of wet blood. I didn’t even know whose it was. I didn’t care. I stared at Athena’s lifeless body and tried to process it all, tried to fight back the horror.

“Sienna?” Scott’s voice came from down the hall in the direction I had been heading only a moment earlier. “Sienna, are you all right?”

I pulled myself together in an instant, pushing aside the shock, the horror, pretending there was a hole somewhere deep in my soul and I could dump everything down into it. This was no time for tears; there were others waiting for me on the other side of the barricade, the last barricade from the sound of Scott’s voice. “I’m coming,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

I stood on unsteady legs, shuffling with as careful a balance as I could, dodging around the last overturned desk. I could see the recreation room behind it, full of metas, the survivors of our little band. There were far more of them than there were of the dead, I knew that much, and I felt a rush of gratitude. I let out a weary sigh, mixed with more than a little relief to see so many still standing, peering out into the hallway, looking at the spot behind the desk—

I came around the desk to find Scott just sitting there, his back against it, his face red and shot through with emotion. I started to say something but stopped myself just in time. There were little sobs coming from the recreation room, the sounds of mourning and fear, and as much as I wanted to reassure them, I couldn’t when I saw what they were weeping about.

There was another body next to Scott, a man whose face was at peace in spite of the angry red wound in the middle of his forehead. He wore a slightly upturned smile—just a hint—under his waxed mustache. His once-lively eyes were now staring off into the distance, and his distinctive cologne had been overcome by the heavy odor of gunpowder that still lingered in the air. The sobs of the survivors drowned out any other noises, and my knees gave out and I fell to his side. He did not respond even as I shook him, Breandan’s head lolling around with the motion of his body as I tried desperately, desperately, to shake back to life a man whose luck had finally run out.