It crossed his mind as they crashed into another section of wall that Brogan’s old-man shoulder didn’t have as much muscle on it as his but it seemed to be just as strong, and damn, this wall was so thick with bones, they were tunneling through it with their bodies.
Some kind of barrier broke apart behind him and then all the bones and shelves were gone, everything was gone, even the dust. Suddenly they were hurtling out and down through dark empty air and before he could even wonder what was waiting below them, they plunged into water, momentum still driving them downward.
Son of a bitch—they were in the goddam cistern.
Now the old guy was flailing with all his might, his movements desperate and panicky. Right—that would be Brogan’s special problem with water; it scared the shit out of him. Junior grinned triumphantly. This was such a lucky break—it was like Fate itself wanted Henry Brogan dead.
Crashing through a wall of bones into thin air took Henry completely by surprise. He had barely had any time to look up information about the catacombs and most of what had come up on his phone had been in Hungarian.
He had no idea how long the fall would last or what might be waiting for them at the bottom but he did his best to keep Junior Hitman under him. Landing on him would give him a better chance of surviving the impact—better than Junior Hitman’s, at least.
Unless there was no impact and they fell forever.
The thought was fleeting, there and gone in a tiny fraction of a second, and it should have been ridiculous, utter nonsense. On the other hand, he had just crashed through a wall of bones in the middle of the night going mano-a-mano with his clone. The bar for strange and farfetched was higher than it had ever been. But the possibility of landing in water had never occurred to him.
All thought ceased as he thrashed madly with his arms and legs, trying to get to the surface. But this time, the weights on his legs weren’t just impossibly heavy, they were alive and actively fighting him, trying to drag him down into the dark. This wasn’t how the dream went—the weights were always inanimate objects.
Which meant this was no dream. It wasn’t Hell, either—otherwise his father would have been there laughing at him and telling him to concentrate, dammit, this was easy. No, he was awake and alive, and if he wanted to stay that way he had to get the hell out of the goddam water NOW.
Henry finally kicked free of the hands pulling at him and propelled himself upward. When he finally broke the surface, he caught a glimpse of Danny high overhead, holding a flare as she peered down at them from the hole he and Junior had punched in the Quartz Chamber. He was about to call out to her when the kid surged up out of the water and threw himself on top of him, trying to push him under.
Instead of resisting, he let the clone push him down with a force that actually pushed him away. Henry slipped around him and broke the surface again, looking for some way to get out of the water. Off to his left, he spotted a jagged ledge, the remains of a floor or platform. As he started to swim for it, Junior Hitman’s hands clutched his shoulders hard from behind.
Henry jerked his head back sharply, hitting the clone in the face, grinning when the kid yelped in surprised pain. Treading water, he turned to see the clone coming at him with his nose bleeding profusely and a broken femur in one hand.
How the hell had he managed to hold onto that, he wondered as the clone jabbed it at him. Henry put his hands up as if he were going to try to push him away, then let the clone get just close enough for another, harder head-butt before he swam for the ledge.
No yelp this time but Henry knew that one must have hurt him a lot more. His clothes dragged heavily on him as he pulled himself out of the water onto the ledge and rolled over onto his back, out of breath. Something on his neck was stinging. Henry touched the spot and his fingers came away bloody. Then all at once the kid was there with him, leaping up out of the water and onto the ledge seemingly with no effort at all.
Henry threw one arm across his face. The clone knocked it away easily and pounced on him. His nose was still bleeding copiously but he seemed oblivious to it as he put both hands around Henry’s neck and squeezed.
Henry tried to pull his hands away, fighting to breathe, but his air was already cut off. Dark patches appeared in his vision and the light from Danny’s flare above him began to fade out. Henry tugged on the clone’s wrists and forearms but it was like pulling at steel bars. Dammit, instead of drowning, he was going to suffocate out of water like a goddam fish. Henry was vaguely aware of a splash as something else fell into the water but he was too busy losing consciousness to wonder about it.
“Get your hands off him!” Danny yelled from somewhere off to Henry’s right. He felt Junior’s hands loosen but only for a moment before he started to squeeze again.
And then impossibly, there was a gunshot. Even more impossibly, Junior fell back from Henry.
Air rushed into Henry’s lungs in a noisy, torturous wheeze. He could hear the clone panting with shock and pain, as if he had never been shot before. Henry managed to prop himself up on one elbow and saw Danny treading water and aiming a Glock at the clone.
The woman could tread water and shoot a Glock, Henry marveled. If this was the DIA agent of the future, he was retiring just in time.
The clone was staring at her, too, astonished and indignant. Henry half-expected him to yell something like, No fair, that’s cheating! And then fling himself at her. Except he couldn’t. His nose wasn’t bleeding as much any more but now Henry saw a lot more blood on the front of his shirt.
Danny had maneuvered herself so that she was right beside Henry. With her free hand, she used the ledge to steady herself and took aim at the kid again. It was a tremendous physical effort but Henry reached over and somehow found the strength to push her gun hand down.
Danny stared at him wide-eyed and he knew she was wondering why he was stopping her after she had finally managed to shoot him.
Junior Hitman seemed even more astonished. “I’m not you!” he shouted suddenly, his face contorting with rage and pain. “You hear me, old man? I’m not you!” He rolled off the ledge into the water.
Danny quickly boosted herself up out of the water next to Henry while he peered through the gloom, listening for the sound of the kid coming up for air. For a long time, he heard nothing and he wondered if the gunshot had weakened Junior so much that he had drowned. There was something terribly perverse about that.
Finally he heard the small splash of someone breaking the surface somewhere far away. He looked at Danny, who nodded; she’d heard it, too. This pool, or whatever it was, was a hell of a lot larger than he’d thought. And it wasn’t stagnant, which meant it had to let out somewhere.
“You think he’s gone?” Henry said after a bit. His chest was tight and every muscle in his neck felt sore; it hurt even just to swallow.
“I think so,” Danny replied.
“Where did you hit him?”
“In the shoulder.” Danny’s voice was calm and even.
“Then he’ll recover,” Henry said, staring at the water. He half-expected some new menace to suddenly surge up out of it. Just when you thought you were safe from your clone in the catacombs. Damn, he really was loopy from lack of oxygen.
Danny moved his hand to his neck. “Keep pressure on that and wait here,” she said as she got to her feet. “I’m going to see if we can get out of the cistern without having to climb back up to the catacombs.”