Denton checked the cartridge and fired it into Sophia’s neck. She felt the dart-like probes break her skin. She waited for the electric current but it never came.
‘Compliance purposes,’ Denton said. ‘I’m sure you understand.’ He looked down at the plasticuffed hands in her lap. ‘We both know you can break your restraints in seconds. This is just a little stimulation.’
He squeezed the trigger and the charge whipped through her. She fell on her side, legs frozen and arms pulling into her chest. She almost punched herself in the face. Then the current stopped.
Denton frowned, but only for a moment. ‘You’re not alone,’ he said. ‘Who is with you?’
‘No one,’ she whispered, lying on the floor. ‘Unfortunately.’
She hoped somewhere nearby DC was preparing some sort of distraction, or destruction. Either would be good. As long as she wasn’t caught in the crossfire. Or blast radius, depending on what he had in mind.
Denton handed the electroshock pistol off to Czarina, keeping the wires connected to her. He stepped closer, but not close enough. The problem with being captured by Denton and his operatives was they were too smart to get within range. Once she was their captive, it was over. And the longer she remained their captive the more her chance of escape evaporated.
But she had DC.
Or did she? She couldn’t trust him completely.
Denton stood as close as he would dare. He feigned confidence, but she could feel a ripple of anxiety underneath. He had a lot on his plate today, she could tell.
Denton’s face was cold for a moment, then a slight smile emerged.
‘DC,’ he said. ‘Now that’s interesting.’
Sophia felt her insides chill. She hadn’t let anything slip. How did he know?
‘What makes you think that?’ she said.
Denton didn’t answer. He retreated to a moss-coated table scattered with equipment his scientists had piled on top. It looked like the sort of apparatus he could use to isolate and extract the Phoenix virus. She felt a growing certainty build inside her — she was too late.
‘You can sit back up now,’ Denton said.
‘You’re too kind,’ Sophia said.
‘He’s not working alone, you know,’ Denton said. ‘He has other friends. Friends you might not like.’
Sophia tried to shrug. ‘That’s life,’ she said. ‘If you don’t like them, you—’
‘Kill them,’ Denton said. Then he smiled. ‘Or at least use them. And then kill them.’
‘I see you haven’t changed,’ she said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be entirely sure of that,’ he said. ‘There are some remarkable wonders of this world — and not of this world — and they change you.’
Sophia wet her lips. She was tired, dehydrated. But she had to keep focus. She was still lying on her side. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
She knew quite well what he was doing — or at least part of it — but she was curious what he might say. More so how he would say it. And it might buy DC some time. Assuming he was even thinking of helping her. She tried not to think about that too much.
‘See, I don’t need you in the capacity I once did,’ Denton said, removing his suit jacket. ‘Gifts from the heavens.’
‘You don’t strike me as the religious type,’ she said.
‘When I’m God I’ll get back to you on that,’ he said, searching for somewhere to hang his jacket. ‘Do you recall your most recent social engagement with Dr Cecilia McLoughlin?’
‘Vividly.’
Denton settled for hanging his jacket on the back of a steel chair. But he wiped moss from the chair first.
‘Well, add to the fact I essentially saved your life in the OpCenter — and it wouldn’t be the first time — McLoughlin was, as you might have noticed, desperate,’ he said. The thought seemed to bring a glow to his face. ‘For all her wiles and calculation, she didn’t understand the scope.’
‘She had some ambitious plans,’ Sophia said. ‘I’ll give her that.’
Denton’s hands knotted into fists. Sophia noticed that. He relaxed them, breathing deeply through his nose.
‘She had pieces,’ he said. ‘One piece. Almost, anyway. Even that slipped through her fingers.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Sophia said, eyeing off the equipment on the moss table.
Denton licked his lips. ‘Do you recall the code McLoughlin was so desperate to extract from you? The one you didn’t even have.’
The one she’d just been discussing with DC. Owen Freeman had entrusted her with it instead of him. She’d memorized the code for the chromosomal location of the Phoenix virus. In her own DNA, it seemed.
‘That’s really quite amazing,’ Denton said.
He turned on his heel and plucked a thick permanent marker from the clutter of equipment. Wiping the seat of his chair clean again, he started to write on the surface.
‘It just … popped in there,’ Denton said, smiling. ‘Like a giant image.’
She watched him write.
X Q 1 2
He shook his head. ‘My God, can you imagine what all three Phoenix viruses will be like?’
Sophia realized what he was writing. His hand trembled with excitement.
X Q 1 2 X P 3 1 2
‘Was there a dot in there somewhere?’ Denton seemed to gaze through her. ‘Right, yes.’
He plunged the marker onto the table, putting a dot between the number 1 and the number 2.
Denton knew the code.
He knew the chromosomal location of the Phoenix virus in her DNA.
How did he know?
Denton turned to the others in the room, ignoring Czarina. They appeared to be his personal traveling Phoenix virus development team.
‘This, ladies and gentlemen, is your chromosomal location.’
Denton reached into his own pocket and grasped a small hard container, the same type of container she kept her escape and evasion items inside. Only Denton’s was for keeping several plastic vials. Each filled with blood.
She realized it was her blood. Samples from the Fifth Column, taken long ago.
What had she done?
Denton finally had what Dr Cecilia McLoughlin could not acquire. He had her blood and he had the Phoenix virus in her blood. She’d just walked right in and handed it to him.
He’d already injected one of the Phoenix viruses, and now he had the second. She just hoped he hadn’t caught Damien and Jay.
The gift of tongue; to hear the words unspoken.
Denton had read the code right out of her mind. All he had to do was make her think of it and then pinch the image from her mind. All because of a goddamned electrical signal firing in her brain. Until today she hadn’t even known something or someone could receive that signal.
‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this,’ Denton said. ‘A long time.’
He handed one of the vials to his team so they could begin.
She was too late.
‘I honestly don’t have the time to interrogate — well, torture — you,’ Denton said. ‘Which is really quite wonderful because that would take an awful long time on someone as damaged as yourself. Now we can synthesize the virus anew. Prepare a vector and give it a spin.’
If you’re out there, DC, now might be a good time.
STAGE 3
BREACH
Chapter 29