Xenofreak Nation (29 page)

Chapter Fifty-one

The moment Bryn and Dundee rounded a corner that put them out of sight of the others, he grabbed her arm again, but instead of steering her down the hall, he pushed her through the nearest set of double-doors. It was dark in the room, except for the light from the corridor shining through the rectangular windows in the doors. He shoved her up against a wall and his body followed. Crushed up against him, she cringed away in disgust.

“I think we’ve got enough time to get to know one another.” His hips grinding against hers made his meaning clear. She tried to push him away, but even injured, he was significantly stronger.

His breath was moist and foul, but thankfully, the quills kept him from getting any closer. “Get those quills out of my face,” he said.

Cooperation had gotten her out of a lot of scrapes lately. “I can’t,” she said, trying to sound reasonable. “They do that when I’m scared, and you’re hurting me.”

“The Dundee won’t hurt you…much.” He pulled away, but only to fumble at his belt with his good hand.

To hell with cooperation. Bryn made a break for the door, but his hand shot out and grasped her wrist. When he pulled her back towards him, she used the only weapon available to her: she head-butted him in the face with all her might. He screamed and released her wrist so suddenly she stumbled and fell to the floor. The top of her head was ringing from the blow, but she scrambled to all fours and crawled to door. She expected him to fall on her any second, but he was still screaming and a quick glimpse showed at least a dozen quills protruding from his face, several of which had penetrated his eyes.

“Oh, my God.” She surged to her feet and shot through the door, hand over her mouth because she was afraid she would vomit, not sure if she was more horrified at what he’d almost done to her or what she’d done to him. Nearly hysterical, she ran down the corridor back in Scott’s direction, but he was nowhere in sight. She heard gunfire in the direction of the elevator, which spurred her to run the opposite way. After a few turns, she was hopelessly lost.

She kept moving, expecting at any moment to round a corner that would bring her back to a bloody-eyed, homicidal Dundee. Instead, she ran into Lupus.

“What the..?” he said. “Where’s Dundee?”

“I—I…”

He grabbed her poor arm and hauled her after him with a frustrated grunt. She jogged next to him as he strode through a big room filled with animals. “Cutty!” he hollered.

A thin woman in a lab coat poked her head out of the door. “What’s going on?”

“Get the panda in a portable with wheels and do it now! Meet by the main tunnel in five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” the woman protested.

Lupus didn’t stick around to hear her complaints. He dragged Bryn out, around another corner and stopped in front of a heavy white door. He slammed his hand on a button. “Padme!”

A buzz sounded and he opened the door. Inside was a room jam-packed with equipment and monitors. Padme was multi-tasking, rushing from place to place, tossing things into a black gym bag, tapping holokeys, and talking to someone. She held a hand up to stop Lupus from interrupting her and gave Bryn the briefest of glances. From the sound of the conversation, Padme was giving Fournier advice on how to destroy evidence.

Bryn looked at a holoscreen monitor with split views of the Warehouse, the parking garage and inside the facility. Padme hadn’t expressed surprise at seeing Bryn because she would have noted her arrival, seen her run into Lupus and Scott. Had she seen what Bryn had done to Dundee? Bryn didn’t see the Australian anywhere on the monitor and all the corridors looked the same. She kept her eyes glued to the holoscreen as Padme wound up her conversation and began making plans with Lupus.

“Turn off the alarm,” Lupus said, and Padme hit a holokey. The constant ringing ceased. “Now unseal the main tunnel.”

Padme tapped more keys. She paused to look around her, shaking her head. “I hate to see it all go up in flames,” she said. “But we have ten minutes.”

Bryn saw several things happening on the holoscreen. In the Warehouse, police had engaged the ARA soldiers. One corridor showed the woman from the animal room pushing what appeared to be a cage on wheels with the help of another white-coated figure. Scott and a young woman were running down another corridor. With a flash of trepidation, Bryn saw Dundee appear, feeling his way along the wall with his hands. From a view of the elevator from the clinic side, a battle had ensued. She said, “Um, we got incoming.”

Lupus looked at the holoscreen, which now showed one of his men down and the other trying to hold off Kareem and three of his soldiers who’d managed to cross over the void in the elevator floor. One of the ARA guys tossed a grenade, and Lupus’ man ran out of view to escape it. Bryn heard a dull boom and the walls shook. Lupus swore and grasped the rifle slung from his good shoulder. “Get out. Get everyone out.”

He left, and without further ado, Bryn said to Padme, “I know what you did, and it backfired.”

Padme stuffed one final item into the gym bag and zipped it up. “Not really. My goal was to get you out of the picture, and look where you are.” She hefted the gym bag.

“I’m in the same place as you.”

“Not for long.” Without warning, Padme hurled the gym bag at Bryn. She caught it, but it was heavy and knocked her back, giving Padme enough time to slip out and slam the door. Bryn dropped the bag and tried to turn the handle, but it was a security door and Padme had done something to lock it from the inside.

Padme had said they had ten minutes before the place went up in flames.

Bryn was trapped.

Chapter Fifty-two

Nicola’s bird was not happy and wanted everyone to know it. The alarm had shut off, but that only made the sound of gunfire and explosions more prominent—and the bird’s piercing chirps no longer had competition. As they ran down the corridor, Scott hoped they wouldn’t have to hide from the invaders; if so, the bird would quickly give their location away. On the heels of that thought, they came to a cross section that was filled with smoke. From the sound of it, the ARA had gotten through and were taking, and returning, fire.

Scott stopped in his tracks and asked Nicola, “Is there another way?”

She shook her head. “The tunnel is near the control room.”

Footsteps coming from the direction of the gunfire alerted him. He pushed open one of the hospital double-doors and said, “This way!”

Nicola preceded him into the dark room, bird screeching madly.

“Can’t you shut it up?” Through the narrow windows in the doors, Scott saw Kareem appear out of the smoke, headed in their direction.

“She’s scared!” Nicola said.

“Shh! Hide!” Scott grabbed the cage and pulled it from her grasp, setting it on a counter near the doors before pushing Nicola into the corner behind a cupboard. He squatted in front of her, looking around for something he could use as a weapon. He had a choice between the books in the knapsack on his back, or one of the glass bottles on a shelf directly across from them. The bottles were filled with a clear liquid, and might just be heavy enough to take someone down if he threw it accurately. He leaned over and snatched one off the shelf before ducking back. The bird shrieked.

The light in the room brightened briefly and then went dark again. Scott risked a look and saw no one. Presumably, Kareem had glanced in, identified the source of the squawk and moved on.

“Let’s go. Lupus said we’d better be at the tunnel when the power goes out.” Scott wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but Lupus wasn’t one to issue warnings without merit. He stood and moved out of the way for Nicola. She crawled out from behind the cupboard and then exclaimed, “Gross!”

Scott shushed her again as she got up and held her hand out. “Is this…blood?”

It was too dark to tell for certain, but the smudge on her palm did look like blood. He saw something on the floor and with a sudden apprehension bent to pick it up. It was thin and about six inches long. He held it in the light coming through the window. He’d seen Bryn’s quills enough to know which end was the root and which the point. Blood covered the point end, which didn’t mean it wasn’t Bryn’s, but at least the quill hadn’t been yanked from her head.

He’d had no choice but to let her go with Dundee, but that didn’t ease his guilt. If that reptilian bastard had hurt her…but Scott didn’t have time to imagine payback.

The bird had gone silent, but as soon as Nicola picked up its cage again, it produced another round of skull-splitting shrieks. She set the cage back down and removed her sweater. Once she’d tied it around the cage, the bird quieted down. Scott gave her a thumbs-up, and they cautiously went back into the corridor. In his left hand, he still held the bottle of liquid, just in case.

The way was clear in both directions. Scott took Nicola’s hand and they began to run. A glance down the corridor where the smoke had cleared showed two bodies lying prone on the floor. They rounded a bend and up ahead, a man in a sling was walking slowly, dragging his hand along the wall.

“Who’s there?” Dundee called. “Help me!”

Scott grinned at the sight of his blood-smeared face. Unfortunately, Nicola didn’t find it as amusing. She screamed. Scott started to pull her past him, but Dundee threw his good arm out and attempted to grab her. Scott wanted to punch him in the face, but it was obvious Dundee couldn’t see, and he’d never been one to hit a man when he was down. He got between Dundee and Nicola and took hold of Dundee’s arm.

“Where’s Bryn?” he asked. “I mean, Porky?”

“That bitch!” Dundee spat. “Look what she did to me! I’m going to kill her!”

It was obvious from Dundee’s comment that he didn’t know where Bryn was and the last time he’d seen her, she’d been alive. Whatever he’d done to get a face full of quills, leaving an injured man behind went against everything Scott had been trained for in the Marines. He tugged on Dundee’s arm and said, “Come on. We’ll get you to the tunnel.”

It was much slower going after that, but eventually they reached the door to the control room. Nicola said, “It’s not far from here.”

He stopped in front of the camera over the door. “Padme? Are you still in there?”

No response. All he heard was a kind of banging noise, a muted, rhythmic sound that he dismissed as distant gunfire. They didn’t have time to linger. He guided Dundee down the corridor. Nicola led the way.

Chapter Fifty-three

When Scott turned and followed the pretty blonde girl away from the control room door, Bryn stopped banging and screamed at the holomonitor, “No! Scott! I’m here!” It was bad enough he’d been five feet away and couldn’t hear her through the security door, but he was helping her would-be rapist, Dundee.

Bryn sat in the office chair and pulled it up to Padme’s holo computer, but found the computer locked and password protected. She yanked open the top drawer of the desk and began tossing things out. Pencils, pens, ruler, batteries—no password on a sticky note. She opened the next drawer down and found books and notepads with writing—in Arabic script. The bottom drawer had coffee mugs, dishes, boxes of tea and snack bars. She slammed it shut and looked frantically around the room. Padme was an uncommonly neat person, and the room didn’t have any other cupboards or shelves.

Her eyes fell on the black gym bag Padme had thrown at her. Padme had been packing to take it with her; it stood to reason that the items in the bag were of value to her, but she’d sacrificed them to get away. Bryn unzipped it and dug through the contents. These were Padme’s personal items, a scarf, sunglasses, books and, “Aha!” It was a holoreader, an older version, but still Internet capable. She turned it on and found that Padme had password protected it, too. Bryn started to throw it across the room, but the screensaver stopped her. It was a holograph of Scott.

What had Padme said? That she’d wanted Bryn out of the picture. It hadn’t made sense at the time, and it still didn’t. Even if Padme was madly in love with Scott, Bryn found it hard to believe she would kill for him. But then again, Bryn had met an awful lot of people lately who had contempt for life, especially if that life was not their own.

Padme also said they had only ten minutes before the place went up in flames. Bryn didn’t know how much time had passed, but it couldn’t be long now before whatever was going to happen…happened. She made another pass around the room. There were no hinges on the door to remove. There was only one vent in the ceiling, but it was way too small. Bryn squinted at the ceiling itself. The rest of the facility had those drop-panel ceilings common in office-buildings, but this room appeared solid all around. The walls were painted cinderblock, but she could see nail pops all in a row down the middle of the ceiling where the sheetrock or drywall had come away from the stud. From the dust on the desk, it must have been recent; maybe due to all the explosions.

She knew about nail pops because three years ago a strong earthquake out of Quebec surprised New York residents unused to feeling the earth tremble under their feet. At the Vega household, several items had fallen from the mantel and a crack appeared in the drywall of the dining room. Bryn had helped her dad tear it down and put up a new wall. She’d had a sledge hammer and a pry bar then, but there were plenty of objects in the control room suitable for the job.