40.
I dipped into unconsciousness for a few seconds, and when I came to, I heard an argument out in the cubicle farm, echoing through the Sienna-sized hole the Terminator had made by shooting me through six inches of concrete block.
“She’s mine,” the Terminator said in that low rasp of his. Ominous. Foreboding. Totally a voice-over actor gone wrong.
“I must kill her,” Stepane, the Predator, said, sounding pretty firm in his conviction.
“Okay,” I said a little woozily, “you boys fight it out while I take a nap. I’ll battle the winner for the lifetime supply of dog food … or whatever crappy prize goes to the champion in this contest of fools.” I didn’t even have a dog anymore.
“You are not my mission,” the Terminator said, and I heard him crack his knuckles, kinda I like I did sometimes to intimidate people. “But you were involved in the Enterprise incident … some of my brothers in arms died there … which means I will have no compunction about getting knee deep in your ass. Stay out of my way, or I’ll make you my mission.”
“Yeah … you tell him, Terminator,” I muttered, still woozy, but still awake enough to trash talk. “You … stomp him a new ass. Superspeed style.”
“You seem strong,” Stepane said. “Perhaps I will simply fight you both tonight.”
“Oh, good,” I said, and fell down on my face once again, promptly passing out.
When I woke, the concrete wall in front of me was coming down, pieces of block shaking loose. I pushed myself to all fours, my body aching in places I didn’t even remember it could ache. I pushed to my feet and blinked as a fist shattered the wall in front of me. I gasped, jumping back in time to avoid a two-inch square piece of concrete that smashed into something behind me with resounding ring.
I moved laterally in the narrow room, which was probably only ten feet wide but ran a good forty or so feet long, with a door that led out into that hallway where I’d entered, and which was sandwiched between the cubicle farm and the server room. The Predator and the Terminator were having their 80’s movie dream face-off among the cubicles, and judging by the fact that I’d seen the Terminator’s hand come smashing through the wall a moment ago, it looked like there was no clear winner yet.
If somehow the Terminator came up aces in this little conflict, I was going to need to suss out a way to beat his ass to unconsciousness ASAP, which was well within my capabilities and kinda played to my strengths, given that my specialty was face-punching.
On the other, if Stepane the Predator came out ahead … well, I still had the marginally more difficult Plan B, which my heart was set on, and all I needed to do was access the server room behind me with as little damage to the wall as possible and then … do one other thing.
I looked around the room, recalling what it was for. It was the room with all the transformers and serious electrical wiring to support the server farm next door, as well as the rest of the building. One of the main power boxes lay just a few feet ahead of me, and I regarded it curiously for a moment—
That ended when Stepane and the Terminator came crashing through the wall. The Terminator had three big pieces of cubicle wall in his hands as a shield between him and Stepane’s flames, and as he came through he shoved Stepane forward, sending him into the back wall of the power room with sheer brute force and speed. Stepane impacted and bounced, flames sputtering a little as the Terminator roared and flexed his mighty frame.
Stepane burned through the cubicle pieces like they were nothing, and they stood just a few feet from each other, facing off like two bulls about to charge.
I sidled over to the electrical panel and casually ripped the conduit wire I’d been eyeing before, tearing it loose of the power box. I carefully gripped it by the insulated part, then I tossed it like a spear at the Terminator as he started to raise his fist to go after Stepane again.
The exposed wiring hit the Terminator just under the armpit and the reaction was immediate. He jerked and flailed, legs twitching as he did a dance that wouldn’t have looked much out of place on a headless chicken. Then the wire must have grounded out, because he stopped jerking after a few seconds and pitched over, landing in the rubble of the hole he’d made through the wall.
“Don’t think this will spare you from—” Stepane started to say, rising up again.
I hit him with a lightning-fast kick that sent him into the wall, and he crashed through the blocks just a little. A second hit—swift enough that his flickering fire didn’t burn me—sent him tumbling through, and I leapt after him, trying to keep light on my feet as I moved past him and into the server room.
Stepane rose again, hovering as I fished in my pockets and pulled out a handkerchief I’d borrowed from Harry (such a classic gentleman) and a lighter I’d picked up at a gas station on the way here. I casually lit the cloth on fire as he watched, probably wondering what the hell I was doing. “You know I control fire, yes?” I nodded, and he indicated the flaming handkerchief with one outstretched hand. “You think to battle me with … this?”
“Oh, this isn’t for you,” I said, waving it in front of him, then raising it up and wafting the black smoke pouring off of it into the dark ceiling of the server room.
A klaxon sounded, loud and furious, like a fire engine had been parked behind the dark servers behind us and now decided to turn its lights on and blare its horn.
Stepane’s black eyes blinked from beneath the flame shield. Dawning realization that he’d been had trickled in, but he didn’t quite see how. “You know I can control water, too—” he started to say.
Then the fire suppression system kicked in.
“And that’d be totally advantage: you … if this room used water to suppress fire.” And I grinned.
Halon 1301 flooded the server room, breaking the chain reaction that allowed combustion and fire. Tricky, interesting stuff, Halon—pretty much safe for humans to breathe, it still managed to defeat flames with ease. And preserve electronic equipment, which was why Deltan Data Systems had probably installed this kind of system. Sure, there were environmental concerns, which was why Halon 1301 systems were devilishly uncommon these days, but …
Hey. It put out fires as easily as breathing.
I smiled as the Halon descended, snuffing out Stepane’s flame shield and causing him to waver as he blinked, exposed at last.
Rushing in while he was still getting used to his shield being gone, I pummeled Stepane’s exposed flesh, beating him as hard as I had in my dreamwalk. The rage I’d been sitting on after Scotland, and now after watching my friends hounded and hunted by this clown, after being shellacked by both him and the Terminator, from being chased by the damned law for something I hadn’t even done … all that came out, channeled through the techniques learned in a thousand training sessions with my mother.
It all came rushing out through my fists, and I remembered as I shattered his orbital bone, as I broke his jaw, as I smashed his nose—
I remembered who Sienna Nealon was.
I brought up a knee and drove Stepane into a server, denting the metal. Then I hit him with a frenzy of punches, driving him into it over and over, watching his head rock back. He was woozy, bleeding, bones broken all over his face and body.
Ripping a server out of the ground next to me, I lifted it above my head and brought it down on him, mid-chest. It shattered ribs, rent open flesh, and buried itself halfway through him. I raised it again, brought it down as hard as I could—
And Stepane Abraam was split cleanly (well … not that cleanly …) in two just beneath his armpits.
Then, for good measure, I drove the server down again, splitting his arms off and raised it once more. This time, I was prepared to strike off his head.
I paused, the server raised high above me. I stared down at his eyes as he struggled for air with lungs that, uh … weren’t entirely there anymore.
For some reason, I cast my impromptu bludgeon aside and knelt next to the man I’d dubbed the Predator. There was panic in his eyes as he gasped to take a breath that would never come, as he tried to writhe and control a body that I’d completely shattered.
He couldn’t speak, so I brought my hand down to his face and touched his cheek, pressing my palm to him. I held my breath, staring down at this utterly destroyed human being …
Yeah. This was who Sienna Nealon was. Face-puncher was sugarcoating it. Sienna Nealon was a destroyer. An annihilator.
Death.
My fingers touched him, and my power started to work. I’d almost forgotten how this felt in the last months, burning through my skin like a pleasant flush, like I’d had a little too much to drink …
And then it went straight to my head.
I plunged into the darkness akin to the dreamwalk, and I found myself in Stepane’s mind. It was dark here, just as it had been before, but there he was, standing before me, pale as death, and clutching at himself.
He looked down, seeing his body whole once more, and breathed. “I am … dying?”
A vision of all the damage I’d done to his body flashed before my eyes. “Yes,” I said. Because what else was there to say?
He stood in silence a long moment, and then a resigned smile graced his lips. “Good.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Good?”
“He can’t reach me now,” Stepane said, smile turning to a grin. “Now … it doesn’t matter how strong I am, or how I weak I am … I move beyond his grasp.” He staggered, turning a whiter shade as death seemed to take hold of him. “But you …” he looked up at me, and his eyes were …
Haunted.
“I’m heading for a collision with ol’ Vlad, I know,” I said. I paused, trying to decide how best to say what was on my mind. “I could really use some help.”
“Your friends will be fine,” he said. “I did not hurt them badly enough that they will not recover. None of them angered me … as you did.” He seemed relaxed, almost as if this were a victory rather than a defeat that had led to his death.
“I could use some powers of my own,” I said, looking at him, keenly aware that out in the real world, my hands were firmly on his cheeks, and though time had more or less paused, within his mind … my powers were still working out there, establishing the connection between our souls that would harmonize, allowing me to draw him out completely.
He got it in that instant, and a change came over his face as he seemed to light up, though no flame appeared on him. “No.” His vehemence made me take a step back. “You cannot do this to me.”
I took a step forward. “I’m stronger. You’re weaker. Isn’t that how this goes? Didn’t you tell me that?”
“Please … do not do this to me,” he said, and his mouth fell open, desperation shaping his lips into a hideous, fearful look. “I … I was to be free. Free of him—and you—you would have me be your puppet into death as you throw yourself into his open jaws?”
I stared at him. “No. No, I wouldn’t do that to you.” He relaxed, just slightly. “Because I’ll tell you something, Stepane … strength is a nice thing if you want to live by the law of the jungle—and heaven knows more than a few people I deal with in the world want to. It’s a job and a calling for me, to greet them with force and make them realize the error of their ways, but …” I shook my head. “That’s not how we do things in this civilized society you seem to eschew. We’re supposed to persuade to get what we want. To win someone over to our way of thinking.”
“You will never win me over,” he said, shaking his head. “Not to face him. Not again.”
“I know,” I said, and the darkness started to swell around us as I began to withdraw my hand from his face, breaking the connection before my powers could drain his soul dry. “And I won’t make you.”
I stood, pulling my hand from his face, and taking up the server again as he lay there, looking up at me with glazed eyes. He knew what was going to come next, but there was no fear in them now.
Bringing the server high, I raised it above his head—
Then brought it down with lethal force, snuffing out his fire—his life—once and for all.