“Got it.”
Magnus slid the extra Beretta in the back of his pants, then walked into the hall.
“ARE YOU STILL there, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll connect you now, please hold.”
The phone sound changed a little, carried a touch of static, then a man’s voice answered.
“This is Colonel Paul Fischer.”
“This is Doctor Liu Jian Dan. Listen carefully.”
She heard a hiss of excitement just before he spoke. “Jian Dan… listen, we’ve been look—”
“Shut up!” Her patience was gone. Time was almost up. Too much stress. They would be there soon, the rats, the spiders, the mishmash monsters with the teeth and claws. “You shut up and you listen! They are too big.”
“What’s too big?”
“It is! The code is wrong, I don’t know why I made what I did, but it will kill us all.”
“Doctor, please calm down—”
Her door shook in its frame, five big slams. So loud! Jian screamed and stepped away from the computer. Her hands grabbed big tufts of her uneven black hair. The door rattled again, vibrating with each repetitive, powerful blow.
“Ma’am? Doctor?” Fischer’s voice came from the speakers, small and faraway, drowned out by the pounding and by Jian’s screams.
MAGNUS GAVE UP knocking and just punched the door, a straight right with all his weight behind it. The wood cracked with the sound of a gunshot. A white, jagged split appeared in the thick brown door. He reared back and hit it again, even harder, and his fist went through. Blood smears streaked the splintery hole. He took a quick look at his fist—the skin had split over his knuckles. A two-inch splinter jutted from between his index and middle finger. Blood ran down his hand.
Magnus pulled out the splinter, tossed it aside, then reached into the hole and tore free a thick, head-sized piece of door.
He stepped forward and looked into Jian’s room.
IT HAD BEEN too much for her strained mind. The violent pounding on the door eroded her sanity to the last pebble of rational thought. When Magnus looked in, Jian didn’t see a human face at all—she saw a wide black head with smiling, evil eyes and long teeth dripping with saliva.
The mishmash face of her dreams.
Doctor Liu Jian Dan screamed for the last time.
Magnus calmly aimed his Beretta through the hole and fired. The bullet smashed into Jian’s temple, just above the left eye. It punched through bone and tumbled through her brain, ripping out the back of her skull in a cloud of pink and red. Gelatinous globs splattered against the wall.
The shot knocked her back a step, froze that last scream in her throat. Chunks of bone and brain hanging from the back of her ravaged head, Liu Jian Dan managed to take one small step forward, regained her balance for just a second, then fell face-first onto the floor.
NOVEMBER 30: FAILURE
Implantation +21 Days
COLDING SAT UP in his bed, blinking away the sleep. Had he heard a gunshot, or dreamed it? An instinctive alarm rang somewhere in his subconscious.
“Jian.”
He threw the covers aside and sprinted into the hall, headed for her room.
COLDING FOUND HER door half open. He tried to push it open farther, but something blocked it. A dresser, he saw as he slid into the room… slid in, and saw the body.
He brushed past Magnus and Andy. Jian lay on the floor in a still-widening pool of blood. Her left hand was clenched into a fist, strands of her black hair still sticking out from between her fingers. Her right hand held a Beretta 96. He didn’t need to check for a pulse—the fist-sized hole in the back of her head said it all.
“She must have snuck into the security area,” Andy said. “Stupid Clayton and that code.”
“She was a smart woman,” Magnus said. “Even if we had a real code, she probably would have figured it out.”
Colding knelt next to the body of his friend. The woman he was supposed to protect. Not just because it was his job, but because Jian had needed someone to protect her, to help her cope with life.
And he’d failed her.
Just like he’d failed Clarissa.
He should have gotten Jian off the island days ago. She needed help, real help, she needed to be away from the stress that messed her up so bad even if the meds were perfect. But no, he’d ignored her needs, because of the fucking project. Because of hope for millions.
Colding looked up at Andy. “What happened?”
“I saw her on a routine video sweep,” Andy said. “She had the Beretta, she was babbling something in that ching-chang-chong talk.”
Magnus made a tsk-tsk-tsk sound, almost a bad impression of someone expressing sympathy. It made Colding want to rip out the man’s tongue.
“Andy called me and I rushed here, but the door was blocked,” Magnus said. “I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t speak English. I couldn’t get inside in time to stop her.” He held up a still-bleeding hand, as if his blood was inarguable evidence of his efforts to save Jian.
And yet even with the brains of his company’s prized genius dripping down the walls, Magnus Paglione didn’t show a shred of emotion. Colding remembered his suspicions about Erika Hoel, how Danté wouldn’t say anything about her.
He remembered how he’d left Erika with Magnus.
But Erika had tried to destroy everything, she’d been in collusion with Fischer. Jian hadn’t done anything like that. Unless… unless she’d made good on her desire to contact the outside world.
Colding looked around the room, searching for a phone, a walkie-talkie, even two tin cans connected with strings. But he saw nothing. There was no way to call out, Danté had made sure of that. No way except for the secure connection to Manitoba, and that was locked up tight.
Then his eyes settled on the computer. Somehow, Jian had figured out how to use the computer to call for help. He looked at the blood splatters on the back wall, some droplets still trickling slowly down. He then looked at the hole in the door. Jian had been facing that hole when she died.
She hadn’t killed herself at all.
“Such a tragedy,” Magnus said. “She tried suicide so many times, and finally pulled it off.”
Andy reached down and pulled the pistol from Jian’s hand. “So what do we do now?”
I kill you murdering fuckers, that’s what we do now. The thought roared in Colding’s head with million-decibel volume. He fought for control. Without a weapon he had no chance against either Magnus or Andy. Despite the rage, the hatred, the undeniable need to do something, he had to stay calm. Stay smart. Get Sara, Rhumkorrf and the others off the island. Once Sara was safe, then he could think about justice. He had to play along, buy some time.
“We can’t tell the others she’s dead,” Colding said. “They’ll lose confidence, and it could compromise the project.”
Magnus looked down at him. A small smile toyed at the edge of his mouth. “So what are you saying, Bubbah, that we tell them she’s just taking a nap?”
“Something like that. We tell them she’s had a nervous breakdown. Everyone knows how stress messes with her. We’ll tell them she needs a few days off. By then, hopefully, the ancestors will be delivered and we’ll have our live animals.”