Instead of responding, Alan Miller appeared to be listening for gunfire. But after a deafening barrage that had seemed to go on forever, everything was now utterly silent. This seemed to totally unnerve him, and he shoved the gurney near the wall, dragging his sister along with it. He pulled out a gun and crouched behind his two prisoners, his back to the wall, using their bodies as shields.
“What’s the matter?” taunted Desh. “Not so sure of your mercenary force anymore?”
Before Desh completed his sentence, Connelly and Metzger entered the room. Metzger moved with the elegance of a ballet dancer and took in the scene with superhuman acuity.
Alan peered around his sister. “Take one step closer and I’ll kill them both,” he threatened.
Metzger looked bored. “Thanks. It will spare me the trouble,” he said.
Alan’s eyes narrowed and it was clear the wheels were turning in his head. “Look, Major,” he said amicably, “we can team up, you and I. Surely in the state you’re in now you can see the logic of this. Why hitch yourself to my sister’s wagon? I already have more power and money than God. Once we begin to leverage the secret of extended life, you and I will be the most powerful people on the planet.”
“Ross, please,” pleaded Kira Miller. “Kill him! Don’t worry about hitting me. He took a gellcap and he’ll be enhanced any second. This is your chance!” she insisted emphatically. “Remember what Matt said: the vast majority of your life will be lived as you were, unenhanced. And that Ross Metzger couldn’t live with himself if he teamed up with this psychopath.”
“Shut the fuck up, you bitch!” thundered Metzger.
Kira flinched and drew back from the fury of his words.
Metzger pulled the trigger and put a bullet cleanly between Alan Miller’s eyes. He slammed back against the wall and then fell forward, face first.
Kira gasped in shock. The shot had missed her by the thickness of a piece of paper.
No one moved. No one even breathed. All eyes were on Ross Metzger.
The major calmly lowered his gun. “Sorry about that, Kira,” he said matter-of-factly. “You were in the way of a clean shot. I calculated that if I shouted a curse at you, your head would twist just enough for me to kill him.”
Kira stared at him in bewilderment, her eyes blinking rapidly. She glanced at her brother on the floor and then turned her head to take in as much of her surroundings as she could. All was quiet.
Could it be? After all this time, was it now really over? It had happened so fast. Metzger’s actions had been so decisive; so final. The immense pressure that had been bearing down on her psyche for so long was so crushing that its sudden removal was surreal; disorienting. She took a deep breath and let the reality seep into the deep recesses of her consciousness: her interminable waking nightmare had truly ended. It had ended with a venomous curse, and a single shot delivered with superhuman accuracy. Several tears escaped from the corners of her eyes and raced down her cheeks.
The major turned to Desh. “David, while I am more ruthless than I was, I’m not like Griffin or you. It isn’t testosterone related. I believe I’ve come through the transformation with more of my soul intact even than Kira did the first time. I have some theories but you wouldn’t understand.” He paused; or had his simulacrum pause at any rate. “Kira, I’m sorry about your brother.”
Kira Miller took a long, hard look at the body lying on the floor and then firmly turned away, as if determined to close the book on this part of her life forever. She turned to Metzger and shook her head resolutely; only her eyes betraying her deep pain. “That’s not my brother,” she said bitterly, drying her tears with the back of her hand. “My brother died in a fire a year ago.”
The grounds were still smoking from the carnage that had taken place there, and the outside world was now eerily silent, as if even birds and insects had been cowed into silence by the bloodshed they had witnessed.
“I’ve got to hand it to you David,” said Kira appreciatively. “You’re certainly full of surprises.”
“Sorry about that,” he replied guiltily.
“Don’t be. I understand why you made the choices you did, and your plan was flawless.” Her gaze shifted to Connelly and Metzger. “Gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough.”
The colonel smiled warmly. “No need for thanks, Kira. We’re a team now, after all.”
“Judging from the past twenty-four hours,” said Desh, “we’re about as formidable a team as you could want.”
“Hard to argue with that,” said Connelly cheerfully. “But it does help that your alter ego had it all figured out ahead of time,” he said to Desh.
As Metzger freed the two prisoners and tore a piece of Alan’s shirt to wrap around Kira’s arm where the letter-opener had entered, Desh reflected on the enormity of all that had happened.
The colonel was right—for the most part. Desh’s enhanced mind had solved the puzzle. He had correctly guessed what had happened in Iran and why. He had guessed Alan Miller was behind it all, and that he had chosen Desh because he was someone whose integrity his sister would respond to, and who she would therefore attempt to recruit.
But ironically, even after having realized the nature of his own feelings for Kira, his enhanced self had completely missed that those feelings were reciprocated. A warm glow came over him at the thought, along with a smile that refused to leave his face.
Desh wished he could freeze this moment forever. He had never felt this way about a woman before. And never in his life had he felt so relieved. Or triumphant. Or hopeful.
They had done it! Against incredible odds they had prevailed.
They had been charging ahead at a dizzying pace; so busy fighting for their lives and struggling to peel back the onion it had seemed as if this state of affairs would never end: or would end, inevitably, with their deaths. But they had battled their way to victory, and in the process they had earned themselves a future. A future in which Kira’s discoveries could be harnessed to better mankind, rather than being used by a psychopath to become the most powerful and dangerous man in history.
Desh could only imagine the elation Kira must be feeling now that her long ordeal was finally over. She had faced these powerful, shadowy forces for an eternity longer than he had, and utterly alone.
Desh pulled himself from his reverie. He was now standing beside the steel gurney to which he had been strapped, and Metzger had just finished wrapping Kira’s arm. “Is Matt okay?” he asked.
“He’s fine,” said Connelly. “I gave him the keys to the RV and told him we’d meet up with him later at a location I gave him. After the fireworks at Putnam’s house, when I took out the men who were holding him and the major hostage, he didn’t look so hot.” Connelly smiled. “Not that we would have brought him on this little raid anyway,” he admitted.
“How are you doing, Colonel?” asked Kira in concern.
“Great,” he said happily. “Your treatment is unbelievable. I was able to direct my body’s autonomous functions and greatly accelerate the healing process.”
“I hate to spoil the party,” said Metzger soberly, “but we need to go. As isolated as this place is, we have to assume we attracted some attention. We need to lay low for a while. As soon as Matt is up to it, we can give him a gellcap and let him clean up behind us.”
Desh raised his eyebrows. “Can I assume you have a strategy in mind?”