As he slumped, the second guard kicked the pistol out of my hand. I let it go and hurled myself at him, punching my way up his body, hitting him in thigh, groin, stomach, floating ribs, and throat. He managed to smash me in the side of the face with a knee, but I rolled with it and then twisted and bit hard on the inside of his thigh.
His scream hit the ultrasonic, and he twisted so hard I nearly lost my teeth.
I let go, reached up, grabbed his tie, and yanked it as hard as I could, which peeled him off the floor so that he sat up. I threw my weight sideways, spun on my right hip, and kicked him in the face with my left foot. I held onto the tie as I kicked him four more times.
I think two were enough, though. There was no resistance at all after that. He slumped back, his head lolling way too loosely on his slack neck.
I cut a sharp look over my shoulder and saw Violin and the Knight in the last moment of their encounter. The Knight had his axe; Violin’s gun was gone, lost in the heat of the fight, but she’d drawn two slender knives from inside her clothes. I’d seen her use those knives twice before. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as fast, as horrible, or as combatively balletic. She moved with a kind of athletic grace that I knew I could never possess, dancing around the swings of the axe, flicking out with the blades, seeding the air with rubies that splatted against the floor and wall and ceiling. The Red Knight seemed to disintegrate within the whirlwind of her dance. Before Top and Bunny could cross the room to give her backup, there was no need for any assistance. The Knight crumpled into red madness on the floor. He hadn’t looked human before, and now it was hard to tell that he had ever been a living thing.
I caught movement to my left and scrambled to my knees just in time to see the Kings guy make a dive for my pistol. He snatched it up but didn’t try to shoot me. He tried to eat the barrel, but I made the long reach and swatted the gun out of his hand. He even tried to fight, but he wasn’t a fighter. I only had to dent him a little to quiet him down.
And then it was over.
Gun smoke hung in the air, tinged by red. The air smelled of cordite, copper, and pain.
I got to my feet as Bunny came over to grab and cuff the Kings guy. He patted him down for weapons and to make sure there were no suicide devices planted anywhere. There weren’t any, and that was going to seriously suck for him. Life was not going to be much fun from now on.
Top and Bunny were both dressed in full hazmat Hammer suits. Just like me.
“I feel overdressed for this party,” said Violin as she cleaned her knives.
“More like we’re overdressed. I don’t think there’s anything here.” I waved the BAMS around. Everything was in the green.
The Kings guy said, “There’s nothing here. No protocols, no samples. This facility has been thoroughly stripped of everything.”
He said it with an attempt at a grin. Bloody teeth spoiled the effect. Top and Bunny each had a hand under an armpit, holding the man on his feet. He was dwarfed by them. I got up in his face.
“This is what’s going to happen, Sparky,” I said. “You are about to disappear off the face of the earth. We know how long a reach the Kings have, so you’re not going to go into the system. No prison, no vacation at Gitmo. The Kings will never find you.”
“So what? You think I don’t know about ‘enhanced interrogation’? I’ve been conditioned against it. I don’t care what you try and do to me, I won’t say a fucking word.”
Violin said, “Let me have him. Let me take him to Arklight. I’ll bet my mother could open him up.”
The little guy tried to smile his way through that, tried to construct an expression that said that her threat meant nothing. We all knew different. The Red Knights feared Lilith, and they were fucking vampires.
I sucked my teeth.
“You’re not seriously considering this?” demanded the guy.
I turned to Violin.
“On one condition,” I said. “You share one hundred percent of what you learn. No holdbacks.”
She nodded. “I’ll film the interrogations if you want.”
“Christ,” murmured Bunny.
“No thanks,” I said. “A transcript would be fine.”
The guy looked from Bunny to Top to me. “You can’t do this. I’m an American citizen. Goddamn it, Ledger, I have rights.”
“Too bad.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Sure I can.”
“You’re bluffing,” he said as tears broke and ran down his face. All throughout history there are stories of what happened to enemy men when they fell into the hands of the women. Women, as a rule, don’t start wars, but anyone who thinks they’re the weaker and gentler sex is seriously misinformed. “You’re just saying this to make me talk.”
“We both know you’re going to talk, Sparky,” I said. “If I give you to Arklight, it shortcuts the process. And it means no blood on American hands. Nice solution.”
“You’re only saying that…you’re playing a game with me.”
“Look at me, look into my eyes,” I said softly. “Do I look like I’m lying to you?”
Hearing his own words was the trick. I think that’s what broke him. That, and the fact that he did take a look into my eyes. A good, deep look.
He began sobbing.
He swore on his life, his mother, his children that he would tell us — and only us — everything. Freely, without coercion. He’d crack the Kings apart for us. He’d tell us where we could find the real lab that was manufacturing the weaponized Ebola. He’d tell us where the Kings’ training camps were. Anything we wanted to know, he’d tell us — if we wouldn’t turn him over to Violin and the women of Arklight. Tears and snot ran down his face, and he pissed his pants.
I felt a wave of disgust — at him and at myself.
“Okay,” I said to Bunny, “take him out of here.”
Bunny looked relieved. He was almost gentle as he led the sobbing man away.
When they were gone, I turned to Violin. “You played that well.”
She gave me an enigmatic little smile and walked off to begin searching the facility.
It left Top and me standing there surrounded by dead people.
“Nice play, Cap’n,” he said. “He really thought you were going to hand him over.”
“Yeah.”
Top started to go, then paused, glancing back at me. “You…were joking, right? I mean, that was all bullshit. You’d never have let those women have him. You’re not that crazy…right?”
I smiled at him.
“Of course not,” I lied.
Artifact
Chap. 1
I hung upside-down inside the laser network of a bioweapons lab. Tripping the laser would trigger a hard containment, which would effectively turn the small subterranean lab on the picturesque little island in the south Pacific into my tomb.
I wish I could say this was the first time I’d been in this kind of situation.
Wish I could say — with real honesty — that it would be my last.
I was, as we say in the super-spy business, resource light.
All I had was a bug in my ear, a Snellig Model A19 gas dart pistol in a nylon shoulder rig, and the few prayers I still remembered from Sunday school. Sweat ran in vertical lines from chin to hairline, and one fat drop hung pendulously from the tip of my nose. The watch on my wrist told me that there was nineteen minutes left on the mission clock. I needed fifteen of those to do this job.