"Chan – tell me where he is, and you live,"
Nicholai barked. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and touched the vaccine case, for luck. It had become something of a talisman for him, a re-minder of how good he was – and it was lucky, he knew it.
Franklin and now Chan, the only two Watchdogs with no assigned filing locale. Incredible. Franklin backed up a step, hands up. "Hey, take it easy…" "Where is he?" Franklin was sweating. "At the radio setup, okay? At the cemetery. Look, I don't know you, and I don't care what you're doing…" "Terrific," Nicholai said, and shot Franklin in the ab-domen, twice. "Uuh!" Franklin grunted heavily as blood splattered the wall behind him. The sergeant fell backwards and landed on his butt, arms still outspread, an expression of surprise on his dark features. Nicholai was a little surprised himself; he'd expected better from one of the soldier dogs. Nicholai raised the weapon, aiming it at Franklin's forehead…… when he heard the door open, boot steps jogging into the room. Handgun still pointed at the dying Franklin, Nicholai ducked down and peered through an opening in the shelf…… and saw Carlos Oliveira standing there, staring around wildly and hefting a.357 revolver, obviously trying to figure out where the shots had come from. It was a gift from the fates. Nicholai stepped into view, Carlos's stupid face targeted before the soldier even realized that there was somebody else in the room. "Gotcha," Nicholai whispered.
TWENTY-TWO
NICHOLAI HAD HIM, DEAD TO RIGHTS. CAR-los dropped the revolver and raised his hands. He had to buy some time.
Talk to him, get his attention. Jill needs you to comeback, with or without the vaccine."Hola, dickhead," Carlos said lightly. "I wondered ifI was going to see you again, after our ride out of towngot blown to shit. A monster did it, believe it or not. So,what's your story? Kill anything interesting lately?"
From behind the tall shelf unit jutting out from one wall, somebody groaned in pain. Nicholai didn't look away, and Carlos could see that he'd taken the right tact. Nicholai was smug, irritated… and intrigued.
"I'm about to kill you – so no, nothing interesting. Tell me, has Mikhail died yet? And how is your bitch friend, Ms. Valentine?" Carlos glared at him. "Both dead. Mikhail died on the trolley, and Jill contracted the virus. I… I had to put her down just a few hours ago." He probably wasn't going to walk away from this, and he didn't want Nicholai going after Jill; he quickly changed the sub-ject. "You shot Mikhail, didn't you?" "I did." Nicholai's eyes sparkled. He reached into his front pocket as he spoke, pulling out what looked like a metal cigar holder. "And as luck would have it, this is the cure to what killed your other friend. If only you'd come sooner… in a way, I suppose you could say I'm at least partly responsible in both deaths, couldn't you?"
The sample. The only thing that could save Jill now, and Carlos was being held at gunpoint by the madman who had it.
Think! Think of something!
There was another gruff wail of pain from behind the shelf. Carlos tilted his head and could see a man slumped in the back corner of the room, just visible be-tween two stacks of files. Carlos couldn't see his face, but the man's lower half was drenched with blood. "And that guy makes three," Carlos said, desperately trying to keep the conversation going, trying not to stare at the silver case that Nicholai held up. "Aren't you a go-getter? Tell me, is this a means to an end, or do you like killing people?" "I enjoy killing people who are as useless as you,"
Nicholai said, slipping the vaccine into an open pocket.
"Can you think of one reason you deserve to live?"
Another moan came from the dying man behind theshelf. Carlos glanced between the stacks again and sawan impact grenade clenched in shaking hands, the ringalready pulled; Carlos realized that the man must havegroaned to cover the sound, and some part of him ad-mired the clear thinking, all in the instant before hestarted to back up, hands still raised. The grenade wasan RG34, the same kind that Carlos had tucked in hisvest, and he wanted as much distance as he could get.
Make it look good…"I'm an excellent shot, I have a generous nature, andI floss every day," Carlos said, backing up another step,trying to appear that he was deeply afraid and coveringit up with bravado."Such a waste this will be," Nicholai said, smiling,extending his arm.
Throw the goddamn thing!
"Why?" Carlos asked quickly. "Why are you doing this?"
Nicholai's smile stretched into a grin, the same predatorial grin that Carlos had seen him wearing on the transport, what felt like a million years before. "I possess leadership qualities," Nicholai said, and for the first time, Carlos could see the insanity in his murky eyes. "That's all you need to know…" "Die!" the bleeding man screamed. Carlos caught a flicker of motion behind the shelf, and then Carlos was diving sideways, trying to get behind a table as a win-dow broke and…… BOOM, folders and books were airborne and ex-ploded materials rained down, wood and paper and chips of metal, the heavy shelf tipping over with a thundering creak. It slammed to the floor with a tremendous crash, and then everything was quiet, and shit was everywhere. Carlos sat up, one arm wrapped around his throbbing rib cage, tears of pain in his eyes. He blinked them away and got to his feet, grabbing the revolver he'd dropped as he stood up. Nicholai was gone. Carlos kicked his way through the debris to the corner, remembering that a window had shattered before the grenade exploded. Although it was dark and rainy outside, Carlos could see the roof of an adjacent building one floor below. Bam! Bam! Carlos jumped back as two rounds hit the outer wall, hardly a hand's width from his face. He silently berated himself for sticking his head out the window, like some half-witted baboso. He backed away from the window and turned, only to find himself staring at the burnt, bloody remains of the grenade thrower. "Gracias," Carlos said quietly. He wished he could think of something else to say, but then he decided it would only be useless symbolism; the guy was dead, he wasn't hearing shit. Carlos walked back across the room, thinking, won-dering how he was going to catch up with Nicholai. It wasn't going to be easy, but there was no other choice…… and he saw the glint of metal from the corner of his eye, and stopped. He blinked, feeling a kind of awe as he realized what he was looking at – and then scooped it up, a giant weight lifting from his shoulders and from around his heart. He was going to be able to save Jill. The crazy pen-dejo had dropped the vaccine.
Nicholai moved quickly through the rain toward the front of the hospital. Everything is fine, he's dead at the
push of a button and I control it, I can shut down the power and trap him…
He laughed out loud suddenly, thinking about the containment tubes in the basement where the Hunter Gammas were stored, each floating in its own see-through womb. Shut down the power and there was au-tomatic drainage so they wouldn't drown in the unaerated fluid. Die, or fight and die, Carlos. Nicholai had been smart, he'd thought ahead and now all he had to do was hit a few switches and Carlos would be in the dark and the amphibious Hunters would be squelching toward him, and maybe Carlos would actually be dead before the hos-pital was blown apart, but he was dead no matter what. Jill was sleeping again, and she was sick. Hot and achy, and her dreams were gone, pulsing, squirming shadows in their place. Shadows with textures, rough and wet. Nausea warred with an unfulfilled emptiness, with a dying thirst and a growing heat. She rolled to one side and then the other, trying to find relief from the crawling itch that had embedded it-self in every part of her, that made the ugly shadows get bigger as she slept on. Carlos found needles, syringes, and a half bottle of Betadine in a doctor's office on the third floor. He also found a cabinet full of drug company samples and was trying to decipher the labels, looking for a mild painkiller, when the lights when out. "Shit." He put down the sample, trying to get his bearings in the sudden dark. It took him about a sec-ond and a half to decide it was Nicholai, and a sec-ond longer to decide he needed to get out, and get out fast. Nicholai probably hadn't shut down the power just to make him stub his toe in the dark. Whatever Nicholai was planning, Carlos thought he'd take a rain check. He edged out of the room and into the hall, moving slowly, his hands out in front of him. Just as he reached the stairwell, the hospital's emergency backup lights hummed into soft red life. The effect was otherworldly, the light just bright enough to see by, casting every-thing in murky shadow. Carlos started down the stairs, taking them two at a time, thumb on the hammer of the Python. He ignored his aching side, deciding that he'd collapse later, when he wasn't in such a hurry. He only knew of two options for getting out of the hospital – the window Nicholai had jumped from and the front door. There were cer-tainly more, but he didn't want to waste time trying to find them; in his experience, most hospitals were mazes.