Ultraviolet (7 page)
Her hand was shaking—she could feel it—but she would not let it show as she casually pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and slipped them on. Her breathing steadied as the glare of the fluorescent lights lessened from laser-beam quality to the not-so-average but bearable intensity of automobile high-beams.
The Combat Reserve Doctor stopped his code execution and looked at her strangely. “You’re quite certain everything is in order?” he finally asked. He sounded uncertain if he should proceed and that was the last thing she needed right now. Getting him to release that briefcase was an absolute
necessity.
She stared back at him, unmoving and outwardly cool, hiding behind the safety of her dark lenses. Her fingers were stiff and on the verge of spasming but she’d slipped them back into her pockets. “Positively.”
Again the doctor studied her, and it took every single ounce of determination she had not to move. At last he shrugged, then entered a final set of numbers into the last keypad. The titanium levers holding the briefcase in place released with a
snap!
but he made no move to pick up the case and hand it to her. Instead, he pulled a small, clipboard-mounted hemoglobin reader from one of his oversized pockets. He glanced first at it, then her; frowning slightly, he turned the clipboard around and held it out so she could touch it. “Enter your DNA to confirm receipt,” he said. Despite his uncertain expression, he sounded bored, as though this was just one more task in a series that he had to do to get him through to his waiting lunch hour.
She opened her mouth to reply, then had to lick her lips. Her mouth was dry as dust and her lips felt wrinkled and cracked. She found the rehearsed words and ground them out. “I can only confirm receipt of the container, not its contents.”
He nodded and his gaze sharpened, as though he was finally remembering the importance of this particular task. “That’s acceptable. Opening the case is strictly forbidden. You understand this?”
“Perfectly,” she said as she withdrew one hand from her pocket. She reached up and fussily brushed an invisible strand of hair off her forehead. His gaze tracked the movement and she could see him process and dismiss it as nothing more than vanity. By doing so, he completely missed the hand she casually rested on the edge of the podium to steady herself.
The Combat Reserve Doctor nodded slightly and turned his attention back to the white briefcase. “The contents are set to self-destruct in the event of nondelivery in . . .” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Exactly nine hours from now.” To punctuate his words, the doctor reached out and pressed a button on the podium. On the briefcase, a set of black LCD numbers on a nearly invisible side panel lit up and began counting down. Her pulse jumped as the man finally lifted the case from the podium and handed it to her. Her hand closed around the handle, then she looked up sharply when he didn’t release it. He was studying her, a frown deepening across his forehead as he focused on her too-pale skin. It would be a devastating error to underestimate this man, to assume that because he was less than enthusiastic about his job duties he was also less than competent. He was probably as highly trained as the deadly Commandos who were strategically placed around the room and whose gazes had never strayed from her back.
Giving credence to her thoughts, the doctor asked, “What is your condition, XPD-154? Are you functional?”
She forced back a wave of nausea and kept her face utterly blank of expression despite the anxiety burgeoning inside her. By her estimate, the real Classified Courier would be pulling up to the guardhouse any minute. A woman with long blond hair, she’d be driving the same model Ninja motorcycle, but hers would be black—the color of death. It was easy to mentally play out what would happen then—
She would cut the motor to the bike and lower the kickstand, then pull out her papers, papers that would identify her using the same words—“XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier.” At first it would be no big deal—no doubt there were plenty of classified couriers who came in and out of the L.L.D.D. every day. She would wait, hiding her impatience as any good little government employee was expected to, while the guard typed in the codes that were on her ID. The computer would take about two milliseconds to process the fact that this person was there to pick up something already assumed to have been given over to a different courier, then the monitor on his desk would go an obnoxious red with the blinking words
Security Violation! Duplicate Classified Courier! Code 99!
and all hell would break loose.
The guard’s eyes would widen, then he would yank his rifle off his shoulder and train it on the unsuspecting courier. There were four robotic machine guns at the gate, one at each corner of the square in which she waited, and all of them were IR-tied to the movement of his rifle, so they, too, would instantly rise into position and home in on her. The guard would scream,
“On the ground! On the ground!”
and she would comply instantly by dropping to her knees and raising her hands. She would be too smart to protest, and even if she did and was shot, it would all end up the same, anyway. Her eyes would narrow and she would demand to know what the hell was going on. The guard would approach her cautiously, watching for any offensive movement, and tell her “You came through this gate fifteen minutes ago!”
And the
real
XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier would sneer at him and say, “Then it wasn’t me you dumb son of a bitch. Check my ID—you’ve got a Mite!”
Any minute now . . .
Both she and the doctor each had a hand on the titanium briefcase, and neither was inclined to release it. Her nostrils flared slightly as she tried to take a calming breath without him noticing. She gave him an arch look and put a heavy note of impatience into her voice. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Comrade Doctor. I’m one hundred percent functional.”
But his grip only tightened—he’d gone beyond the vaguely concerned to the outright suspicious. Damn. “Then you won’t mind if I perform an examination.”
Her mouth tightened. “I’ve already submitted to every test required for entry,” she reminded him tersely. She could feel heavy lines of sweat gathering beneath her breasts, pooling beneath the layers of fabric. “Now, as you’ve made clear, I have a timetable. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just—”
Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah!
Across the small width of the white briefcase, the doctor’s body jerked in surprise at the scream of the alarms. His gaze snapped back to hers just in time to see the dark lenses on her reflective sunglasses clear. Her eyes blazed into his at the same time the color of her coat morphed into a deep, fiery red.
Showing more courage than she would have expected from a medical sector employee—most of the time, these private sector techno-nerds never paid a bit of attention to their tactical training—the Combat Reserve Doctor actually snarled at her and tried to jerk the briefcase free. She yanked it toward her with the hand still holding it at the same time that she slammed the knife edge of her other hand across his forearm. She—and everyone else in the room—clearly heard the radius bone in his arm fracture.
He let go of the case and careened backward, screaming like a baby as he cradled his arm, and before they could get hold of her, she spun to meet the instant reaction of the Armored Medical Techs. She punched the one closest to her with enough force to shatter his bullet-resistant glass chest plate; before the second one could reassess his approach, she put her fist completely through the face visor on his helmet. When she pulled it back and he collapsed at her feet, her gloved knuckles were covered with blood and bits of flesh. Another half dozen had leaped forward in unison, intending to box her inside the ring of their rifle barrels; she took care of their little circle with a double spinning crescent kick that turned her body into a blur of energy in their center. As the side of her boot struck the barrels, the rifles snapped to the right with enough force to yank them from the Med Techs’ hands and send them tumbling. She kept the kick going, twice more, then thrice, and let the black, metal-encased fighting boot do the dirty work of smashing cheekbones and jaws, crushing the delicate bones of the hands reaching for her.
It took all of fifteen seconds for her to decimate every single one of the other Armored Med Techs lining the walls, and never once did she let go of that white titanium briefcase.
Of course, its lovely, pearly white covering was a lot more red by the time Violet stood, the only upright person—no, the only
vampire—
in the center of the L.L.D.D. inner vault.
In contrast to the approaching thumps of the boots of the security force, the heels of the Chief of Research’s shoes made sharp, almost bulletlike sounds as he marched toward the main corridor. When he turned the corner, he nearly ran face first into the Security Commando who was leading the group; the soldier spun but didn’t slow down, and the Chief fell into step beside him, now moving at a slow jog.
“She’s a Hemophage, sir!”
The Chief couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind his visor, but he could hear the shock in his voice. It matched the level he’d felt when he’d first heard the alarm—a Hemophage,
inside
the L.L.D.D.! It was unthinkable, sacrilege . . .
filthy.
“How did she get past the screens?” he demanded. He was so furious that he wanted to stop, grab this soldier, and shake him as hard as he could. A foolish, immature reaction—this soldier had nothing to do with the problem. He was just within range, the closest target available on whom the Chief could vent his anger. And what was the Vice-Cardinal going to say? It wasn’t hard to guess. There would be repercussions here,
serious
repercussions. And here was this man, part of an elite security force that was supposed to be the best in the world, the
only
ones trained to deal with this. They alone were supposed to be trained to recognize this kind of threat, this
specific
kind of threat . . . and yet they had let her through, let her not only get all the way into their most sacred inner area, but had given her—
The Chief’s face was china-white and his gaze was fiercely accusing; he was positive he actually
heard
the sound of the Commando’s throat working as he swallowed.
“We don’t know, sir. Maybe meta-suppressants to subordinate her blood characteristics and healing capability . . . We just don’t know!” Panic made the guy’s voice overly loud and high, climbing toward the edge of strident.
But the Chief’s black glare was steady, with no patience or sympathy. What a stupid,
stupid
man—he had no idea how his ignorance and that of his peers was going to so terribly affect the entire project.
But there was no time for admonitions right now. He had a new goal: to not let this . . . setback actually
destroy
everything they’d worked so hard to accomplish. His face set, the Chief kept his silence and followed the Commando team in the direction of the inner vault.
Violet leaped across the juncture of one corridor with another, then skidded to a stop and paused where the wall jutted outward before turning again—the perfect spot to pause and try to catch her breath. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d felt this horrible, and when she looked down at her hands, the skin was the color of old ash, mottled with gray spots like a hundred-year-old cadaver. Just that simple movement—looking downward—made perspiration splash from her forehead onto her fingers. She saw the droplets—there were three of them—fall like they were on slow-motion film, saw them leave a pattern in the whitish-looking powder that had formed over her skin. Her LCD overcoat, so vibrant and colorful only minutes ago, had morphed into a swirl of oily-looking gray and brown.
Her hands were shaking so badly she almost couldn’t grasp the right button on her coat, and it took three precious seconds to get a good hold on it so she could retract the syringe from the flat-space receptacle just inside the seam. She had another heart-stuttering moment when she nearly dropped it to the ceramic tiled floor—she mustn’t contaminate the needle, and breaking it would be disastrous—then she managed to twist it around and get it into position so she could jam it into her thigh.
One knee buckled and she went down, thwacking her kneecap viciously on the floor. Then, without warning, she leaned over and vomited, her belly and lungs working in tandem to expel the contents of her stomach. There wasn’t much in her belly but bile and water, but her body’s reaction to the high dose of suppressants she’d ingested this morning made the small, black-looking puddle just putrid enough to make her retch all over again. Gasping, she twisted away, scuttling backward like an injured crab with one knee still down. Time was an extravagance she didn’t have here, and she could stay there and rest for only a few precious seconds; as the neutralizers did their work her breathing quickly slowed from panting to normal, her heart rate sped up to where it should be, and she could feel the ugly brown over-color on one of her irises—they felt like too-thick contact lenses—being eaten away as her natural clear blue temporarily reasserted itself. She didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that the unnatural violet and evanescent sheen of a vampire would just as quickly obliterate the blue.
By the time the doors at the far end of the hallway burst open and the security forces spilled through, the neutralizers had done their work and Violet was more than ready for action. She yanked the syringe out of her thigh and tossed it aside, not even registering the tinkle of shattering glass as she pressed a concealed button on her belt. What had looked like nothing more than one of a series of ornamental disks along the leather suddenly bulged outward as a small, four-dimensional gyroscope activated. The security forces realized she was right there at the same time she sprang to her feet and charged directly at them. By now her overcoat was a deep burnt orange and she looked like a ball of flame headed right for the group of Commandos. Their leader bellowed out an order and they raised their weapons on cue and opened fire. The roar of gunfire filled the corridor and Violet dove—
