She still had five steps between her and them.
Normally, taking a guy like this would be no biggie: he had his back to her and all his attention was focused on those in front of him...
Four steps.
The fly in this ointment, though, was Logan. If, in tearing the attacker from him, she somehow accidentally touched Logan, even just brushed her flesh against his in the smallest way, the virus — which Manticore had infected her with, to make her touch deadly to Logan — would kick in, and instead of getting his throat cut, Logan would die at her own fingertips.
Three steps.
The timing had to be perfect, and nothing could go wrong.
Two steps.
One shot, that’s all she’d have. Her hand snaked toward the right elbow of the attacker. Just as she was about to grab him, a bright light — a flashbulb — went off in there.
The attacker yowled, and his right hand — the one with the knife — drew away from Logan’s neck as the attacker tried to turn away from the strobe. The action of turning had tipped the pair off balance — captor and hostage alike — and they teetered on the brink of tumbling down the stairs on top of Max.
In less than a second she visualized the whole thing: the three of them tumbling down the stairs, all tangled together, piling up at the bottom, her lying in the one place she longed to be more than any other — in Logan’s arms — Logan locked in her deadly embrace, any hope of a life together obliterated by a silly flash of light.
Then — just as Max clutched the attacker’s arm, his skin hot against hers — Alec launched himself at the pair and wrenched Logan from the grasp of the attacker. As Logan and Alec fell back into the apartment, she jerked the attacker’s knife arm...
... and the two of them rolled ass-over-teakettle down the stairs into the black tunnel!
They were both on their feet instantly, he still holding the knife, she circling, looking for an opening. In the apartment, someone hit the switch and the lights in the tunnel came on. The attacker winced at the brightness and gave Max the moment she needed.
She kicked the blade from his grasp, then swiveled and in one fluid motion kicked again, hitting him in the stomach, sending him flying into the stairs, hitting hard.
Max moved in, ready for her opponent to respond; and she got her first good look at him...
He looked almost exactly like Logan!
But an alarming change was in effect: the Logan look-alike was sweating profusely, red sores breaking out on his arms and on his face in a terrible sick blossoming, and he looked at her with shock and confusion in his blue eyes.
“Max,” he rasped, slumped against the stairs, a pitiful pile of hive-ridden flesh. “What’s happening to me?”
Her hand went to her mouth.
She knew she was witnessing the virus taking full-blown effect — whoever this would-be Logan was, he had taken on much more than just Logan Cale’s appearance.
Chapter twelve
Streaming freedom video
Soon everyone was standing around the table in Logan’s new quarters, the would-be killer splayed across the table like a ghastly meal. Original Cindy, Otto, and Asha — unbound now — were joined by a revived Thompson, Joshua, and Sketchy, who held an ice pack to his chest where the stun rod had bruised him.
“Fill the bathtub with cold water and ice,” Max said, directing the order to no one specifically.
It was Alec and Logan who took off to comply with her command.
“Who is he?” Otto Gottlieb asked.
On the table, shivering, flesh bursting with red sores, this was no longer a fearsome figure — eerily, the resemblance to Logan made this seem like a long-lost Cale brother, in the throes of infirmity.
Joshua said, “Kelpy is his name. He’s one of us.”
Alec emerged from the bathroom with a plastic bucket in hand, heading to the refrigerator.
Gottlieb eyed Joshua’s canine features suspiciously. “You mean... transgenic.”
“Yes.”
Max was wrapping a blanket around the shivering creature, who gazed at her with a sickly, frankly adoring smile.
“Well, his being ‘one of us’ is not good news,” Alec said, at the fridge freezer, filling the bucket with ice. “Bobby or Kelpy or whoever he is, he’s our serial killer... So nobody get too teary-eyed.”
Then Alec went off toward the bathroom with his load of ice.
“The skinner?” Thompson asked, his eyes wide above the dark beard. “This is the son of a bitch who killed my partner?”
Max stepped between Thompson and the prone, blanket-wrapped Kelpy. “And now he’s going to die — isn’t that enough for you?”
“No.”
Turning back to her patient, Max tucked the blanket tighter around Kelpy and, in the process, something fell out of his pocket, rolled off the table, and clunked to the floor, lid popping off, pills bouncing crazily for a second.
“His Tryptophan,” Original Cindy said.
Max bent down, picked up a few of the pills. “I don’t think so...”
“No, Boo, that’s his meds! I saw him at Jam Pony.”
Max rose. “Maybe so, but these are the wrong color for Tryptophan.” She held one up to her nose. “They don’t smell right either.” She called: “Logan!”
He emerged from the bathroom, from which the rush of water filling the tub could be heard; Alec trailed after, the empty bucket in hand.
“We’re about there,” Logan said, jerking a thumb toward the bathroom. Frowning at the sight of her grave expression, he asked, “Something else you need, Max?”
She held up one of the pills. “Do you have the equipment to do a chemical breakdown on these?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have that gear in yet — soon.”
“Soon won’t cut it.”
At the freezer, Alec paused in filling his bucket and turned to say, “Dix has got his Frankenstein lab going — unless he’s just brewing moonshine.”
Joshua corrected his friend: “Dix is doing chemical breakdowns on the biohazard materials in Terminal City, Max. Looking for antigens.”
“That could be a break,” she said. “I need somebody to take Dix these pills — and tell him we need to know what’s in ’em, ASAP.”
Stepping forward, Alec handed Logan the ice bucket and took the bottle of meds from Max. “Back in a flash.”
Max turned to Joshua. “Put Kelpy in the tub, Big Fella. We need to get his body temperature down.”
“Let him fucking suffer,” Thompson said.
Stepping over to him, Max said, “Thompson, isn’t it? Sage Thompson?”
“I know who you are too,” he said, his face edged with contempt.
“Since you love us so much, why exactly are you here?”
Logan said, “He just happens to hate Ames White more than he does transgenics — every alliance starts with a common enemy, Max.”
While Joshua lifted his old friend Kelpy into his arms, gentle as a baby, and conveyed the diseased transgenic into the tub of ice and water, Logan gave Max a quick but thorough rundown on Thompson’s situation, from his fear of White wanting him dead to the family he’d sent underground.
“Mr. Thompson,” Max said, “here’s what I want from you, right now — sit down, and shut up. Can you handle that?”
He started to say something but Max’s glare silenced him.
“Asha,” she said to the blonde freedom fighter, “didn’t some members of your S1W group wind up in British Columbia?”
“That’s so.”