Authors: J. D. Robb
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #New York (N.Y.), #Women Sleuths, #Mystery Fiction, #New York, #New York (State), #Police, #Suspense, #Mystery, #Science Fiction, #Political, #Policewomen, #American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Fiction - Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - Series, #Police - New York (State) - New York, #Eve (Fictitious character), #Eve (Fictitious charac, #Dallas, #Dallas; Eve (Fictitious Character)
Origin in Death (30 page)
"Are there any others, in this facility?"
"No. I pray no. Just care-droids this time of night. Wilson .. . Wilson must've shut them down. Killed Icove replicas. Son of a bitch. I'm going to die where I was born. I guess that's okay. Tell Diana. Well, she'll know. The little one ..."
"Darby. Her name's Darby."
"Darby." She smiled even as her eyes began to film over.
Her hand slid off Eve's arm.
Warning, warning, this facility will self-destruct in seven minutes. All personnel must evacuate immediately.
"Eve, the nurseries are cleared out. The response team's taking the children up. We have to move. Now."
Eve got to her feet, turned. She saw Roarke still had the infant. "The Gestation area. She said it couldn't be tampered with or they'd die. Prove her wrong."
"I can't." He gripped her arm, pulled her out. "The life support, the artificial wombs, are integral to the system. If it's disengaged, the oxygen's cut off."
"How can you-"
"I looked. I've already checked. If there was time, there might be a way to bypass. There isn't. We couldn't get them out, Eve, we couldn't get the chambers out and up in time, even if we could bypass. We can't save them."
She saw the horror of it in his eyes, the same cold horror that was balled in her gut. "We just leave them here?"
"We save her." He shifted the baby awkwardly, and with his hand gripping Eve's began to run. "We move now, or we're all buried here."
She ran, past the husks of what she'd killed, through the shattered bodies of boys who'd been created to kill. She smelled death, and her own blood, Roarke's blood.
They'd shed it, and still it hadn't been enough.
Nothing stops the vicious and the ugly, she remembered. She'd said it herself.
Warning, warning, red line for safe evacuation has been reached. All remaining personnel must evacuate immediately. This facility will terminate in four minutes.
"I wish she'd shut the fuck up."
She kept up the limping run. Her hip was now an insane symphony of pain. A glance at Roarke showed her his face was bone-white and clammy under the smears of blood.
She saw the elevator ahead, its doors shut.
"Can't leave them unsecured." Roarke's voice was labored, and Eve was nearly as horrified when he shoved the baby at her as she was with the countdown. "Wasn't time to augment the security and keep them open." Instead he swiped a card, once, twice.
"Buggering hell. Gotten sweaty, bloody, too. Won't read." He dug out a handkerchief and began to polish it off while under his breath he cursed in Gaelic.
Hooked in her arm, the baby screamed as if she were pounding it with a hammer.
Red line plus sixty seconds. This facility will terminate in three minutes.
He swiped the card a third time, and they leaped inside. "Street level," he shouted, then cursed again when Eve pushed the baby at him. "What? You've got her."
"No, you've got her. I'm in charge of this op."
"Screw that. I'm a bloody civilian."
Eve tapped a hand on her weapon. "You even try to give it back to me, I'm stunning you. Self-defense."
Red line plus ninety seconds. All personnel should be at maximum safe distance.
"Cutting it close," Eve mumbled as sweat rolled down her back.
"Is there any other way?"
"This thing could go faster. This son-of-a-bitching thing could really go faster." She gritted her teeth when the warning announced red line plus two minutes. "We're still in this when it blows, it'll take us out, too, right?"
"Likely."
She stared at the controls as if her wrath could speed things up. "We couldn't have gotten them out. No matter what we'd done."
"We couldn't, no." He rested his free hand on her shoulder.
"You brought that one so I'd have to leave the rest. So I'd have to go, get her out. So I'd have something tangible to make me move my ass."
"I also figured you'd be the one holding her on the way out, while she's screaming my eardrums ragged."
Terminate in thirty seconds.
"If we don't make it, I love you and blah, blah, blah."
He laughed, and shifted so his arm wrapped around her shoulders.
"I'll say the same. It's been a hell of a ride so far."
When the final countdown commenced, she reached up, gripped his hand.
Terminate in ten seconds, nine, eight, seven . . .
The doors opened. They flew through them together. She heard the count go down to three as the doors secured behind them.
She snatched her coat from where she'd tossed it, and bolted through the room with him.
There was a rumble under her feet, a wave of vibration. She thought of what was below her, in tanks, in hives. Then pushed it away, shoved it back. Her nightmares would begin soon enough to go back there
now.
She shrugged back into her coat. If her hands shook, he was the only one who knew it. "This is going to take me a while."
He glanced toward the line of cops.
"Take your time. I'll be outside."
"You can pass that one onto one of the uniforms. We'll have CP here shortly to deal with the minors."
"I'll be outside," he repeated.
"Go get treated," she called after him.
"In this place? I don't think so."
"Got a point," she replied, then moved forward to do the job.
Outside, Roarke went directly to his car. Only more relief washed over him when he saw Diana lying on the backseat with the younger girl curled against her.
He opened the door, crouched down when Diana's eyes opened. "You kept your word," he said.
"Deena's dead. I know."
"I'm very sorry. She died saving. .. saving your sister." He held out the baby when Diana opened her arms. "She helped save the children."
"Is Wilson dead?"
"Yes."
"All of him."
"All we found, yes. The facilities are gone. Destroyed. The equipment in them, the records, the technology."
Her eyes were clear, level. "What are you going to do with us now?"
"I'll take you to Avril."
"No, you can't. Then you'll know where we are. She won't stay if you know, and we need time before we go again."
She was a child, he thought, with two other children. Yet in some ways, she was older than he. All of them, older than he. "Can you get to her, with them, on your own?"
"Yes. Will you let us go?"
"It was all your mother asked, the last thing she asked. She thought of you, of what would be best for you." As his own mother had, he thought. His mother had died doing what she'd thought best for him. How could he not honor that?
She got out, her hand gripping the younger child's, the baby in the crook of her arm. "We won't forget you."
"Nor I you. Be safe."
He watched them until they were out of sight. "Well, Godspeed," he whispered, then took out his 'link and contacted Louise.
It was nearly two hours before Eve joined him. She took one look at the mobile clinic beside his car and hissed. "Look, I'm tired. I want to go home."
"Soon as I do a little triage, you're off." Louise pointed toward the mobile. "Unfortunately I don't have fumigation facilities on board. The pair of you reek."
It was coming onto dawn. Rather than waste more time, she sat in the mobile. "No tranqs, no blockers. It's bad enough without me getting goofy." She gave Roarke a hard look, but he merely smiled.
"I don't mind the tranq myself. Smooths out nasty edges."
"He zoned?" she asked Louise, and hissed as the wand rolled over her arm wound.
"A little bit. Mostly just exhausted. Lost considerable blood, too. Bad gash in his arm, and with that and the head wound, I don't know how he managed to stay upright this long. Same for you. I'd rather take you both into the clinic."
"I'd rather be in Paris drinking champagne."
"We'll go tomorrow." Roarke stirred himself enough to sit beside her.
"You've got a houseful of Irish relatives."
"Right you are. We'll stay home and get drunk instead. My Irish relatives should appreciate a good drunk. If not, well, they're no true relations of mine, are they?"
"Wonder what they're going to think when we get home, stinking, bloody, and beat to shit. God damn it, Louise!"
"Easier on you with a tranq. You called it."
Eve blew air out her nose, then sucked it in to brace for the next medical onslaught. "I'll tell you what they'll think. That we lead full and interesting lives."
"I love you, darling Eve." Roarke nuzzled a kiss at her throat. "And blah, blah, blah."
"More than a little zoned," was Eve's opinion.
"Go home and get some sleep." Louise sat back. "Charles and I will come early. I'll give you another treatment."
"The fun never ends." She hopped out, didn't quite disguise the wince at the jar on her injured hip.
"Thank you, Louise." Roarke took her hand, kissed it.
"All in a day's work. I live a full and interesting life, too."
Eve waited until the mobile pulled out. "Where's Diana, and the other two?"
He looked toward the sky, noted the stars were going out. "I couldn't say."
"You let them go."
His eyes were tired, but perfectly clear when they met hers. "Did you intend to do differently?"
She didn't speak for a moment. "I contacted Feeney to request he shut down the tracker. No need. When the place blew, the homers disengaged. Officially, Diana Rodriguez is dead. Lost in the explosion that took place in the Quiet Birth facilities. There's no record of the other two minors. There won't be."
"And no one exists, officially, without records."
"There's technology for you. Avril Icove is missing. I have a deathbed confession that clears her of all involvement with the homicides under my jurisdiction. Even without it, the PA doesn't intend to charge. It would be an inefficient use of departmental time and funds to attempt to locate her, at this time. Federal authorities may think different."
"But they won't find her."
"Unlikely."
"How much heat will you take over this?"
"Minimal. Nadine's going to blast this out of the water in a couple hours. What was in there, belowground?" She turned to study the center. "It's gone. Governmental authorities may be able to identify and track some of the clones, but most of them will blend into the mainstream. They're smart, after all. Far as I can see, it ends here."
"Then let's go home." He cupped her face, kissed her brow, her nose, her lips. "You and I, we've a lot to be thankful for."
"Yeah. Yeah, we do." She gripped his hand once, hard, as she had when death had been seconds behind them.
Then she let it go to walk around the car, slide in beside him.
The world wasn't a perfect place, and never would be. But just now, watching dawn come over her godforsaken city, it seemed like a damn good deal.
The End
