Chapter 30
Shit!
Simone dug through the unhelpful contents of Mark’s desk, scattering the tidy, still-life style composition of notepads, paperclips, and pencils that no one had ever used. Driven by the button-cam feed that showed the Ratcatcher’s hideous face. That wild-eyed, slavering thing had the power of life or death over Zade.
A wrong move could get him killed.
She fought to stay calm and focused on finding something that would help. Like a bullet to the Ratcatcher’s head. But with no training, she’d be just as likely to shoot Zade as Braxton.
Colors from the random slideshow flickered over the white walls. The constant movement on the split-screen display had her almost hypnotized. A jaguar, a lava pit, a long sharp claw. The rapid flicker made her feel sick.
Her mind raced for something to work with, anything at all besides just watching that damned monitor. A doomed ship clutched in giant tentacles, a big insect, a dagger.
She forced her attention back to the button-cam feed. The visual was shaky but she could hear Zade’s voice.
So where’s Luke?
I’m getting to that. Braxton’s voice again. Olund disappeared two months ago. I monitored this place to see when he would come back. Bloody spit dotted the clear cage wall. Braxton’s spew.
The audio faded out, then came back. She strained to hear.
D-14 had his uses. And now I have you. My fucking dream come true.
Yeah, you have me. Zade, again. What about Luke? You gave him back to Obsidian?
The audio faded once again and so did the cam feed. Leaving her with nothing to do but look at the split-screen slideshow on the monitor.
She focused on the pictures, if only to keep from screaming.
The colorful images repeated. A long claw. Then a merry-go-round pipe organ. A narrow flag unfurled against a blue sky. Then a deer in high grass with long, twisted horns …
Cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
Not a deer. An ibex. She’d watched that video of Mark abducting Luke.
Calliope. Banner. Ibex. That pipe organ was a calliope, the narrow flag was a banner, and that deer was a fucking ibex.
It was Luke’s stun code.
Unless she was imagining things. The other side of the screen kept flashing, too. Those images had to be Zade’s codes. Stun code, release code, kill code. She didn’t know which was which. The price for getting it wrong was Zade’s death.
She studied the images feverishly, racking her brain for the best word for each one. Braxton’s diseased mouth stretched in a ghastly smile as he plunged an air bubble out of the syringe he was holding, tapping out a glittering drop of fluid.
Zade’s button cam vibrated with his body’s tension.
Nothing for it. Go. She ducked into the stairway, feeling her way into the darkness. Leaping down the steps, four at a time. She stumbled, hit her head against the wall. Shoved the pain down. The codes, the codes, the fucking codes. She struggled to remember the sequences of images as she hurtled toward the light spilling out the door at the bottom of the stairs.
She burst into the death chamber, screaming out the first code that came into her head. “Monster! Scarab! Dagger!”
Zade exploded into movement with a bellow of rage, knocking the syringe out of Braxton’s hand. Zade lunged for it and snagged it out of mid-air.
“No!” Braxton shrieked as Zade stabbed the syringe down into his thigh.
In that endless split instant that followed, as Braxton dragged in air to scream out Zade’s kill code, Simone looked for a weapon. A length of rebar on the floor caught her eye.
She grabbed it up. Sprinted toward them. Braxton was already shouting but she screamed at the top of her lungs to drown out the sound he made.
She swung the rebar down onto Braxton’s head.
A wet, crunching thud. Blood, bits of bone, brain flew everywhere. On the floor, on Zade, on her.
She staggered backwards and fell. Landed on her ass, bouncing and rolling.
Zade lay on the ground, chest heaving, looking from Braxton to Simone and back again. “Holy … fucking … shit,” he finally gasped out.
She couldn’t speak, just gasped for breath. The blood-smeared length of rebar fell from her numb fingers, rattling on the tile floor.
Zade dragged himself up onto his knees, then got to his feet. He supported himself against the wall and gingerly nudged at Braxton’s head with his boot.
It rolled to the side, revealing the bloody caved in hole. Braxton’s eyes were wide and staring. His mouth was still open, forming that last fateful word.
“Nice swing,” Zade said hoarsely. “Bad-ass.”
Simone couldn’t have replied, even if there had been anything relevant to say. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry.
Zade held out his hand. “You saved me,” he said. “Fucking wow.”
She reached up, feeling heat and strength pour into her at the contact with his hand. He pulled her up into the circle of his arms, tight and shaking.
“Enough,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
A name left unspoken: Luke.
They staggered up the cramped dark stairway, emerging like ghosts blundering out of the underworld, blinking at the fading light of day.
The air outside was cold. It smelled sweet and pure after the stench of decay under Mark’s house. They gulped it in gratefully.
Zade stopped on the near side of the riverbank, pulling out his phone and tapping it. He lifted it to his ear. “Asa? Yeah, we found it … No, Luke was definitely here for some time, but now he’s gone. There was a shithead Midlands researcher here … Yeah, trapped me. Wanted to eat my brains … Simone took him down, whanged him with fucking rebar, for real … Yeah, you’re telling me. Fucked him up but good … Uh huh. You got a fix on us? We can make it out of here, but we’re in crap shape, so if you have anybody in range … Yeah, good. Thanks. Later, then.”
He slid the phone in his pocket and took her hand with a fleeting, exhausted smile. “Let’s get out of here.”
Water swirled and bubbled over their feet as they made their way over the slick planks and through the torrent. The shock of icy water made her shiver uncontrollably. One foot in front of the other. Almost there—
“Simone Brightman and D-13!” blared a disembodied, amplified voice. “Stop right where you are!”