The guard turned, and she delivered a right cross that spun the man back toward Joshua, who caught him with a left hook. The Familiar’s eyes closed and the guard melted to the floor.
“Hard to hurt them,” Joshua said.
“They’re like robots,” Max said. “But when you shut off their electricity, they go down.”
Joshua nodded, getting the concept.
“Check on Mole,” she said. “I’ll look for Alec.”
They each took off in the direction from which they’d come, Joshua toward the back to find Mole in the kitchen, Max to the front to look for Alec, moving away from the living room. She ran into him at the bottom of the staircase, just as four Familiars opened fire with automatic weapons from above.
Both Max and Alec dove into the dining room, but they knew this sanctuary would last barely ten seconds. Already they could hear the guards thundering down the stairs. The room had a long table covered with two sheets and a dozen sheeted chairs, as if a banquet for ghosts was in sway. At the other end of the room, sharing the same wall as the door they’d used, another door led, presumably, to the kitchen.
Communicating with hand signals, they put a plan together — no time to decide whether it sucked or not, and anyway, it was a collaboration — then the X5s set it into action.
Alec took off for the back, while Max flattened herself against the wall, next to the near door.
When the first guard came in, Max jerked his gun out of his hand, and pulled him to her. As she did, a second guard fired at them, killing the guard Max held in front of her, a human shield.
Alec — having slipped out the door at the back of the dining room — came up the hall from the kitchen, Mole on one side of him and Joshua on the other, and the three of them waded into the remaining guards, just as Max discarded her dead shield and attacked the nearest opponent, using the butt of the commandeered weapon as a club, knocking him unconscious and to the floor in a pile.
Within seconds all the three guards were down, likely out for the rest of the day, if not dead. None of the three transgenics gave that a thought, not even the compassionate Joshua — these four were soldiers, bred by Manticore for combat, and soldiers did not linger over the casualties they’d created, shedding tears.
“You all right?” Alec asked Max.
“I feel good... You two?”
Mole said, “This is fun. If I had a frickin’ smoke, my life would be a song.”
Joshua said, “I’m alive, too, Little Fella.”
“Stay that way, Big Fella,” she said. “Let’s get upstairs then — I’ll take the point... Mole, you ride drag.”
Nodding, they fell into line and paraded up the stairs, their eyes everywhere — another wave of guards, coming up behind them, would be a bad thing...
There were six bedrooms on the second floor and, Max supposed, probably an equal number on the third floor, though she had never been up there. Using hand signals, she sent Mole and Alec on upstairs, while she and Joshua checked the rooms on this floor, starting at the end farthest from Lyman Cale’s bedroom.
They found nothing — no further guards, no guests, no Franklin Bostock — and had just arrived outside Lyman’s door when the other two came down from the third floor and signaled that they had struck out up there as well.
They fanned out, Max in the lead again, Alec and Joshua on either side behind her, Mole off to one side, watching their backs.
Max opened the door. Stepped in.
Lyman Cale still lay in the bed; if possible, he seemed even smaller, as if he’d shrunk further, a withered rind lost in a white nightshirt, cables coming in and out of him, keeping Logan’s uncle alive, technically at least — as the surrounding monitors and gizmos attested.
Franklin Bostock — again in a black blazer, white shirt with no tie, and gray slacks — stood on the far side of the bed near Cale’s head. He appeared calm, and their entry into the room seemed to barely register on him.
Alec and Joshua came in and spread out again behind Max.
“Thought you’d be back, Ms. Guevera,” Bostock said, his voice detached, even cold.
But Max’s voice was frigid. “Ray White.”
Bostock looked up at her, unimpressed. “What of him?”
“He was an eleven-year old boy.”
Bostock shrugged. “You know what they say about omelets.”
“Is that what the boy is to you? Was to you? A bro-
ken egg?”
“You’re a soldier, Ms. Guevera. All wars have their casualties. I imagine you’ve cut quite a swath through my men, coming this far.”
“Wars? Casualties?” She took a menacing step forward. “Those things I know about... I also know about atrocities. Why? Why an innocent child?”
She took another step, and a small caliber pistol revealed itself in Bostock’s hand.
And it was pointed at the head of Lyman Cale, not that that comatose figure had any realization of it.
“Take another step,” he said, “and there will be another casualty in this war.” A smile spread, like a terrible rash, across his bland face. “You might make it before I blow Lyman’s brains — what’s left of them — all over this pillow. But I doubt it.”
She just stood there.
Bostock’s eyes met hers. “You’re still considering it, though, aren’t you? Go ahead. Make your move — you may find me a more formidable adversary than you might imagine... And then you can explain to Logan Cale how you got his uncle killed.”
The thought of what had happened to Seth because of Logan flitted across her mind, and in that moment what this sadistic son of a bitch had just said triggered an epiphany in Max.
Logan wouldn’t have intentionally put Seth in danger — not any more than Logan would have done with her, when she accepted missions. It was always her choice, and it would have been the same for her sib. And the truth was, Seth liked taking risks even more than Alec or Zack.
Max understood why Logan had lied now. That is, she understood his act of omission, not commission...
If this situation went sideways, as it very well might at any moment, there would be no way in hell she could ever explain to Logan, no way she could bear to tell him, if she were to cause him to lose his uncle, the last relative of his on the planet who had ever seemed to care about him...
Bostock’s voice grew sharp. “Your two playmates — on their knees. Hands behind their necks.”
She could feel Alec and Joshua looking at her, and she turned to them, nodded once, and they complied, dropping as if in prayer, elbows winged as hands locked behind heads.
“You seem to think you’re going somewhere,” Max said.
Bostock nodded. “Out of here, for a start.”
“How exactly?” Max crossed her arms. “You really think we’re just going to let you through? Or are you gonna haul ol’ Lyman out of bed and yank those tubes out of him and use him as a hostage? I’d pay to see that.”
Bostock turned a bit and trained the pistol on Max. “Ms. Guevera... you’re my hostage. And I think you’ll comply — after all, accompanying me will be your only chance, however faint, of rescuing Logan Cale.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I’ll be taking you to where he’s being held.”
Max froze. “Then... you knew White’s plan all along! You were part of it.”
Bostock said, “Familiars do get... familiar. We share many things with each other — it’s a brotherhood, after all.”
“Yeah, like Cain and Abel.” She shook her head. “If you knew what White was up to — that he planned to use me to get Ray back — why did you interfere with it? Why kill that boy?”
The man’s eyes flared. “What, and allow Ames White to consolidate his power with the Conclave? I don’t think so.”