The Living End (33 page)

The minutes dragged on. 7:04. 7:07. We could linger a little bit longer, but we really didn’t have an excuse.

“All right,” I said, tossing some cash on the table. “Feel like fighting a goddess?”

“Goddess, nothin’,” Jennifer said. “Strictly a wannabe in my book.”

We took a taxi almost to the far end of the Strip, got off two casinos down, and walked the rest of the way. The chain-link construction fence still ringed the Enclave’s lot. Last time I was here, the Enclave had been a skeleton of drywall and steel bones. Now it was a black, mirrored monolith. It made me think of a giant basalt tombstone.

“Roth told me there’s normally about thirty mercenaries in there,” I said. “All Xerxes vets, trained and blooded. They’ve got assault rifles, flashbangs, and there’s usually a sniper with a fifty-caliber rifle perched on top of the foreman’s trailer to get a perfect view of the lot.”

“Sounds scary,” Jennifer said.

“Yeah,” I told her, “but they haven’t met us yet. Let’s go say hi.”

A gate blocked the entrance to the lot. Normally at night, once the construction crews had all gone home, it’d be sealed with a length of chain and a padlock. Not tonight, though. I swung open the gate. Jennifer and I walked in together, side by side.

T
he lot outside the Enclave was silent, strewn with construction equipment dozing in the dark. I’d gotten about ten feet from the gate when I saw the glowing dot blossom on my chest.

I held very still and kept my hands in full view. Jennifer paused, looking to see why I’d stopped walking, and froze right along with me.

The tower’s tinted glass doors took a slow spin. A burly man in fatigues, an assault rifle slung over one shoulder, emerged alone from the building. He stopped about five feet away and gave me the stink eye. I recognized him. He’d been one of the mercs guarding the New Life building. One of the ones who’d walked out alive.

He stood in stony silence, staring me down. I tried to keep my heart from pounding. Either my first gambit was about to pay off, or I’d guessed wrong and gotten me and Jennifer killed.

“Sir,” he spat, treating the word like venom on his tongue. He snapped a salute.

• • •

“Did I mishear you at the diner?” I had asked Roth earlier that day. I paced the hotel room carpet, drinking a bottled water courtesy of the minibar, and listened to him whine over the phone.

“I might have exaggerated—” he started to say. I didn’t let him finish.

“You said, and I quote, ‘Angus Caine is
my
man. I write the paychecks, I give the orders.’ That sound familiar to you?”

“I also said I wouldn’t send them against Lauren. They’ll be slaughtered!”

“Take the rocks out of your ears. I’m not asking you to.”

“You might as well be!” Roth said. “If Lauren gets wind of this, it’ll mean the same—”

“I talked to Calypso this morning,” I said.

That was a lie, but it shut Roth up.

“He thought I should remind you,” I said, “just how close you are to breaching the terms of your contract. Do you want to do that? Should I hang up and call him, right now, and tell him, ‘Hey, Senator Roth says to fuck off’?”

“
No
! Don’t do that. I’m cooperating!”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and rolled my neck, working out some tension.

“I realize you’re a politician, so this is a new concept for you. ‘Cooperating’ means actually doing what you’re supposed to, not just saying you will and then weaseling out.”

“I will
try
to contact Caine,” he said, “but I can’t guarantee—”

“That’s it, hanging up. See ya in hell, Alton.”

“
Wait
! Wait, wait,
wait
! I’ll do it. I’ll call Caine right now and give the order.” He fell silent for a moment, and I listened to his ragged breath. “You son of a bitch. If those soldiers die because of this, it’s on your head.”

My teeth clenched. I thought back to the New Life building, where Angus Caine and his men had stood guard while innocent captives were being tortured to death in the laboratory.

“They aren’t soldiers,” I seethed, my voice rising. “They’re thugs with guns. And I’m not a television camera, so save your crocodile tears and your sanctimony, shut the fuck up, and
do as you’re told
!”

• • •

From the naked hate in the mercenary’s eyes, I knew Roth had done his part. The merc waved his hand, and the laser light on my chest faded away.

“Orders came down from Major Caine this morning,” he said. “We’ve spent most of the day quietly moving our troops off-site, a few at a time. There’s just a skeleton crew left, working in areas that show up on Ms. Carmichael’s security cameras. She doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“And if she sets off an alarm?” I said.

“That’s the cue for the final evacuation. Xerxes is officially off-mission. She’s on her own. I’ve been instructed to escort you directly to the penthouse elevator. No further.”

He turned on his heel and marched toward the tower. Jennifer and I followed.

The Enclave’s lobby was beautiful, silent and cold, like a museum with all of the art taken away. The hotel itself was never real, but they’d had to build the ground floor to pass casual scrutiny for investors and the media. A span of black-and-white checkered tiles stretched out under a dangling crystal chandelier, all the way to a long cedar check-in desk where new computers sat sheathed in shrouds of protective plastic.

“Where are Nedry and Clark?” I asked the merc.

“Dr. Nedry’s upstairs with Ms. Carmichael. The other is down in the cellblock. They’ve been kept out of the loop.”

“Nedry’s the one with the thing for mirrors,” I told Jennifer. “If he gets loose, keep away from reflective surfaces.”

She pulled back her jacket and showed me her chromed .357. “How ’bout this one?”

The elevator doors were brushed steel coated in scarlet lacquer, like the skin of a candied apple. Our reflections were black, smoky blurs in the metal.

“You’re gonna die up there,” the merc told me.

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

“I wish I could be there to see it,” he said. “You killed a buddy of mine, back at the shelter.”

“Yeah? What about the other three guys I killed? You didn’t like them as much?”

That shut him up, at least.

The elevator door whispered open. Jennifer and I stepped into the cage, bathed in cherry light. The merc leaned in, swiped his keycard, and hit the button for the penthouse floor.

“Bon voyage, asshole,” he said with a wave as the door closed tight.

The elevator hummed as it slowly carried us to the top of the tower. Point of no return.

“You ready for this?” Jennifer asked me.

“Nope. You?”

“Nope. Figured we’d wing it.”

“Yeah.” I stretched my arms behind my back and cracked my knuckles. “Just another day at the office.”

The penthouse floor was a box of glass on three sides. No rooms, no doors, just support pillars set into a white marble floor. Mystic patterns chiseled into the marble glowed faintly in my second sight, like the wiring on a circuit board. Walls of glass looked out onto the world below, the flashing lights of the Vegas Strip on one side and the black desert night on the other.

In between, taking up one entire wall, were the plants.

Thick ropy vines choked the far end of the penthouse, pushing through floors and ceilings, winding through Amazonian bushes and big, leafy fronds. The foliage burst with color, sprouting blossoms in vivid purples and pinks. A lush aroma filled the air, the earthy scent of a greenhouse under hot lights.

What I didn’t see was any water or soil. The plants didn’t need any. The whole scene felt skewed, wrong, like finding a teapot on Mars.

We strode out of the elevator and onto the chiseled marble. It thrummed against the soles of my feet. Off to the left, a bank of security monitors showed the views from cameras all over the tower in grainy black and white. I saw a couple of Xerxes guards walking up and down between prison cells stuffed full of drugged hostages.

Nedry didn’t notice us at first. He stood behind a bank of computer terminals in the corner of the penthouse off to our right, next to the fire-exit door. Cables ran to a polished chrome vat about eight feet high, and transparent hoses snaked across the penthouse floor, disappearing into the greenery. Viscous, faintly glowing fluid, like radioactive lime juice, trickled through the hoses.

“Tolerances are fine. Variances are all holding in the expected range,” he said, talking to Clark on his monitor. A webcam clipped to the edge of the screen kept watch.

“Hey, buddy?” Clark said. His voice crackled out over a cheap pair of speakers. “Don’t mean to interrupt—”

“We’re ready for final integration,” Nedry said. “How are things looking down there?”

“Uhh, buddy?” Clark said. On the screen, he twirled his finger in a
look-behind-you
gesture.

Nedry turned around. His bushy eyebrows shot up behind his mirrored glasses. “Oh. Shit.”

“Those are some terrible last words.” Jennifer pulled her gun. “You wanna try again? I’ll give ya a do-over.”

“Lauren,” I said flatly. “Where is she? Cooperate and you might, emphasis on
might
, walk out of here alive.”

Nedry shook his head wildly. “You can’t interrupt her now! She’s so close. You’ll ruin everything!”

“That’s the general idea,” I said.

Then we heard Lauren’s voice. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A whisper carried on a plague wind.

“It’s all right, Doctor. I will deal with this personally.”

The vines twitched and began to unspool, taking on animated life. Bushes parted, brambles and fronds peeling back. In the midst of the wild growth, seated on a throne of stainless steel, sat the thing that used to be Lauren Carmichael.

She was the green. Roots burrowed into the necrotic flesh of her bare feet and withered hands, and brambles wrapped around her brow in a crown of thorns. Her flowing hair was a cascade of tangled grass, and flowers and thorns sprouted from her naked body. One of her eyes was inhumanly bright and blue. The other was gone, and a crimson rose bloomed inside the empty socket.

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “What did you do, Lauren? What did you
do
?”

The abundant growth that choked one entire wall of the penthouse quivered, expanding then contracting, as if taking a deep breath. It was
all
Lauren, all connected to her, growing from the soil of her body and blood. She slowly pulled away from her throne and stood. Behind her, hypodermic needles tipped in droplets of green fluid protruded from the back and seat of the chair. My eye followed the tubes on the floor. Nedry had been pumping Viridithol-2 straight into her body from the vat in the corner of the room.

Vines constricted, lifting up her arms in triumph, hoisting her into the air. She dangled there, looking down upon us.

“You want me to start shootin’?” Jennifer breathed.

“Not yet.”

“No,” the transformed woman said to us. She slowly shook her head. “I am not Lauren. Not anymore. That name is not grand enough to contain what I have become. It is time for something more fitting.”

The vines gently set her down. She walked toward us. Where her feet touched the floor, the marble buckled and broke open. Wildflowers in a riot of colors sprung up in her wake, sprouting from the stone and filling her footprints with spontaneous life.

She stopped halfway across the room, standing in the center of the penthouse floor.

“Lauren Carmichael is gone,” she said with a faint smile. “Call me…Eve.”

“I
t’s over,” I said. “Eve, Lauren, whatever the hell you want to call yourself. It’s over. All of this.”

Lauren stared into my eyes as she lolled her head to one side, too far for a human neck to bend without breaking.

“Bold words, but I can hear your heartbeat. I can taste your fear on every petal of my body. All this aggression, and for what? You should be welcoming me. Celebrating.”

“Call me crazy,” I said, “but I’m not seeing anything to celebrate here.”

“No? This world is choked with evil, Mr. Faust. Drowning in it. It’s everywhere you see. But where is the grace? Where is the touch of a loving creator?
I will be that creator
. I will begin with a purge. A small one, just enough to lower the planet’s population to more reasonable levels, room for my garden to grow.”

“You’re talkin’ about genocide,” Jennifer said.

“No, child. Genocides are targeted. They are actions of hate. My purge will be as indiscriminate as a plague, taking life without pattern or malice. Meanwhile, I will topple the institutions that helped drive this world into ruin. Every government, every church, and every bank, every dividing line that ever separated human from human will wither under my hand. Imagine it! No more wars, no hatred, no famine or fear. No child will ever go to bed with an empty stomach. No one will lack a roof over their heads.”

“Sweet deal,” I said flatly. “And it only costs a few billion lives and humanity’s freedom. Forever.”

“I am a merciful goddess,” Lauren said. “Let me prove it to you. Kneel down. Kneel down and worship me, and I will spare your lives. I will fill you with what I am, and send you forth as my first ambassadors to the world.”

I looked over at Jennifer, deadpan. “What do you think? Wanna go for it?”

“Sweetie, I like to think my taste in goddesses is a little more upscale. She ain’t a stitch on Bast or Hecate.”

“Yeah.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ve just never been much for going to church, myself. Sorry, Lauren, we’ll pass. We’re shutting this little freak show down, right here and now.”

Lauren giggled. An uneasy feeling crept up my spine.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. I forgot. Because you turned Alton Roth against me, and he’s been spending the better part of the day slowly pulling my soldiers out from under me.”

Now the uneasy feeling turned into a hand of ice.

The fire-escape door banged open, and mercenaries filled the room. Angus Caine strode out ahead of his men, eight or nine of them. Enough for a firing squad. The mercs leveled their rifles. I raised my open hands. Jennifer did the same, keeping the barrel of her revolver pointed toward the ceiling. The grizzled man curled his lips into a nasty smile.