The Nightmare Unleashed

by J. J. Carlson

  Ford reached the bottom step and took in the grotesque scene. “Holy shit.”

  At least fifteen bodies covered the space between the walls. Coagulated blood lined the cracks in the stone floor, making the corpses appear trapped in a scarlet spider web. The three individuals still standing bore the stricken expressions of academics that had been thrust into a war zone.

  Janson regarded the scientists for a moment. “Just…keep your hands where I can see them. What happened here?”

  One of the men started speaking Russian. Janson glanced at the woman and said, “What’s he saying?”

  “When the alarms went off, we hid in one of the laboratories,” the woman explained. “We didn’t know what was happening, but we heard screaming. When everything was quiet again, we came out to look for survivors. But when we got here…”

  “Koshmar,” the second man mumbled.

  The woman nodded. “All we found was a nightmare.”

  Janson glanced at Ford. “You have any zipties?”

  Ford reached into his back pocket and stepped forward. “Put your hands out in front of you. We aren’t going to hurt you, but we can’t trust you, either.”

  The scientists exchanged worried glances, then held out their arms. Ford took a thick plastic cable and wrapped it around the first man’s wrists. He cinched it tight, then moved to the woman. She flinched before Ford touched her.

  “It’s alright,” Ford said, “I won’t—”

  The woman quivered on her feet, and her eyes rolled back in her head. She toppled toward Ford, and he stepped back, thinking she was trying to attack. Her body continued through a shallow arc, and she landed face-first on the stone floor.

  Moments later, the men dropped, landing beside her.

  “What the hell was that?” Ford murmured.

  Janson nodded at the scientists’ disheveled bodies. “Check them.”

  Ford knelt and removed the glove from his right hand, then checked the woman for a pulse. He checked the man on the left, then the man on the right. “Dead. All of them.”

  Borya exhaled and cast a hateful glance at Jarrod. “It is done.”

  Jarrod leaned forward and placed his hands on Borya’s shoulders. “Not just the agents in the Palace. All of them.”

  Borya looked away. “I...I did.”

  Jarrod set his palm on Borya’s forehead, and twin silver streams flowed from his hand into Borya’s nose. “You know you can’t lie to me. Do it. Shut them all down.”

  Wincing, Borya said, “But…that’s thirty-thousand, six hundred and four agents.”

  Eugene leaned forward in his chair. “What’s he talking about? Jarrod, what are you doing?”

  Jarrod placed his other hand on Borya’s cheek, and more of the silvery substance pooled in Borya’s eyes.

  Borya inhaled sharply, then let out an ear-splitting shriek.

  “Stop it!” Emily shouted.

  Eugene watched for a moment, then reluctantly sided with the Empress of Katharos. “Let him go, Jarrod. There are other ways to do this!”

  Borya’s arms swatted at the air above his head, as if fending off a swarm of bats. He stopped screaming long enough to sputter, “It’s done! It’s finished!”

  Jarrod didn’t remove his hands. He continued funneling more of the microscopic robots into Borya’s brain, eliciting renewed screams from his captive.

  Emily took a step forward. “Let him go, you son of a bitch! He did what you asked!”

  Borya clawed at his own ears and mouth. “They’re eating me!” he shrieked. “They’re eating me inside!”

  “Jarrod, stop!” Eugene shouted.

  Jarrod ignored their pleas and covered Borya’s ears with his palms. Borya convulsed and screamed as the nanobots ate away at his spinal column like a swarm of locusts. Shimmering liquid poured from his nose and entered through his mouth, coating his larynx and garbling his shrieks. The skin on his face and hands darkened, then leaked oily blood through every pore. His violent tremors became pulsing, then wave-like, then they ceased altogether.

  Borya’s hands dropped into his lap, and his shoulders fell limp. Jarrod kept his hands in place for several seconds, draining the machines from Borya’s body.

  “What did you do?” Eugene bucked in his chair. “Jarrod, what did you do?”

  “He has killed the man I love,” Emily said, her expression blank. “And an entire army of Katharos agents. More than thirty thousand men and women.”

  Eugene’s eyes widened. “It...it can’t be. Jarrod, tell me she’s lying.”

  Jarrod didn’t answer, he leapt from the platform and landed in the center of the room. He glanced at Emily, then said, “We have to go.”

  Emily took a tiny step forward, then glanced at the swirling black globe. She lurched toward it, twisted two valves shut, then lifted it from its pedestal. She held it close to her breast and said, “I’m not leaving without this.”

  “What is it?” Jarrod asked, his tone dispassionate.

  “It’s hope,” Emily said. “And my life isn’t worth living without it.”

  Eugene shook his head. “It’s some sort of mind-eraser. You can’t let her take it.”

  “Leave it,” Jarrod commanded.

  Emily took a few shallow breaths, and insanity bloomed in her eyes. She dug the folding knife out of her pocket, opened it, and held the tip against her lower abdomen. “It comes with me, or I’ll cut this thing out of me.” The knife edge pierced the skin below her shirt, and blood trickled from the wound.

  “Fine,” Jarrod said, turning toward the door. “Bring it.”

  Emily cast a longing glance at Eugene, then trotted after Jarrod, still gripping the knife. She followed him to the massive Throne Room doors, then stopped when he held up his hand.

  “Wait here.”

  Emily nodded and placed her back against the wall, hugging the globe like a stuffed bear.

  Jarrod stepped into the stairwell and stood in the path of Janson and Ford. The operatives aimed their weapons at his head and froze.

  After a few seconds, Ford lowered his weapon and grunted, “SITREP.”

  Jarrod glared at Janson until she lowered her rifle, then spoke. “The man known as “Emperor” is dead. Eugene is alive and bound to a chair in this room. I am leaving with Emily Roberts in my custody.”

  “Leaving?” Janson gaffed. “Where are you taking her?”

  “Somewhere safe.” Jarrod formed black talons at the ends of his fingers and covered his head with armor. “She is under my protection.”

  “We can’t let you do that,” Janson growled. “Roberts isn’t getting out of here alive. Not after what she’s done.”

  “I am taking her with me. If you try to stop me, you might be injured. Badly.”

  Ford unslung his weapon and dropped it on the floor. He stood back, clearing a path for Jarrod.

  Janson sighed. She lowered her weapon an inch, then raised it and pulled the trigger. The round ricocheted off Jarrod’s head and impacted the stone wall.

  Jarrod pulsed forward, too fast for Janson’s eyes to follow. He ripped the rifle from her hands, crushed the barrel, and tossed it aside, then he shoved her with an open hand. Her feet left the floor, and she bounced against the wall before landing on the stairs. She got to her feet and crouched low.

  “Enough,” Jarrod growled. “Don’t—”

  Janson lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Jarrod’s chest. Then, somehow, Jarrod slipped from her grasp and redirected her momentum. She was airborne again, flying down the stone stairway. She tucked into a ball an instant before impact, then tumbled down the remaining steps. She slid to a stop at the bottom, winced, and jumped to her feet. She sprinted back up the steps and was nearly at the top when Ford stepped in front of her.

  “Dammit Janson, we can’t win this fight. Let him go.”

  “Get out of my way,” she snapped.

  Ford ripped his metamaterial hood off and grasped her shoulders. “I can’t let him do to you what he did
to the others. I can’t—” He took a deep breath. “I can’t lose you. Not again.”

  She glanced past Ford at Jarrod’s hulking silhouette. As she watched, Jarrod disappeared. Thick smoke formed in the air where his arms and legs had been, and his body returned to jet-black, this time covered in menacing spikes.

  Janson lowered her head. “Alright.”

  Jarrod took two steps back and nodded at someone inside the Throne Room. Emily Roberts stepped out, hunching over the black sphere. Keeping close to Jarrod’s side, she left the landing and shuffled down the stairs.

  “Get Eugene out,” Jarrod said. “Take him to the bunker and wait for my signal. I’ll make sure it’s safe outside.”

  Janson and Ford watched, helplessly, as the woman who had killed so many of their friends disappeared into the Palace labyrinth.

  42

  The air churned in loose vortexes around the Palace helipad. Emily squinted and leaned against Jarrod’s chest as the civilian rescue helicopter set down. A pair of medics rushed out to greet them and glanced nervously at Jarrod. He had clothed himself with a lab coat, but his face still looked like carved iron. Skirting past him, the medics began leading Janson and the others to the helicopter.

  Janson held Nicole in her arms, while Ford and Kacen carried Trent’s body in a makeshift litter. Yuri gave a limp wave to summon the medics, and they helped Eli and Eugene walk across the helipad. Once everyone was seated or strapped down, Jarrod led Emily to the helicopter and helped her in.

  Less than a minute later, the door slid shut, drowning out the noise of the whirling blades.

  As one of the medics rinsed out Nicole’s wounds with saline, he looked up and spoke in Russian. “What the hell happened out here?”

  “Training accident,” Emily replied. “These people are Spetsnaz.”

  The medic raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t have your own helicopters?”

  “They left already,” Emily lied, “full of wounded soldiers.”

  The medic swore and shook his head. “I used to dream about becoming Spetsnaz when I was a child. But I’m glad I never did.”

  Emily leaned back in her seat and stared down at her hands, ignoring the glares from every living member of Janson’s team. She pretended to fumble with her watch and entered a code into the wrist-computer. Rubbing her palms on her thighs, she stared out the window. The helipad they had just left cracked like a broken windshield. The ground covering the Palace heaved upward, then crashed back down, spewing a cloud of dust.

  “Goodbye, my children,” Emily whispered.

  The helicopter arrived at the Krasnoyarsk Regional Clinical Hospital and set down on the newly finished helipad. As the rotors spun down, a crew of nurses arrived with gurneys and wheelchairs. They loaded up the patients and wheeled them toward a service elevator.

  The short hair on the back of Janson’s neck stood on end. She felt exposed, as if Katharos snipers were watching her from the adjacent rooftops. She expected the nurses to draw pistols concealed beneath their scrubs or hear an approaching swarm of drones. But nothing happened. There were no ambushes, no traps waiting for them. Katharos had been defeated, wiped out with a single blow. The few hundred remaining agents were foot soldiers that hadn’t required a kill-switch implant. Without leadership or the vast resources of the Palace, the last flames of Katharos would flicker and die.

  Unless someone takes the reins, Janson thought. She glanced at Jarrod and Roberts—the face of an old enemy and, perhaps, a new one. Emily had found an unlikely ally—The Nightmare himself. Janson didn’t know why Jarrod had switched sides, and she didn’t care. He had chosen to stand in the way of her mission and rescue a treasonous psychopath.

  Clenching her teeth, Janson swore to bring them both down.

  The elevator doors closed, shutting out the world beyond, and Janson’s thoughts returned to her team. Her heart ached for Trent, but she was thankful that the others had survived. There had been so many close calls…so many mistakes…

  “Janson, are you okay?” Ford asked.

  She blinked and forced a weak smile. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  Ford took a deep breath. “Ask anyone on the team, and they’ll tell you they’re fine, too. But you and I know it’s bullshit. None of us are fine; none of us are the same as we were yesterday.” He reached out and took her hand. “But we’re going to get through this. Together.”

  The elevator door opened, and the nurses wheeled their patients out. Janson and Ford stayed in the elevator and waited for the door to slide shut.

  Tears welled up in Janson’s eyes, then spilled onto her cheeks. “It’s my fault,” she gasped. “It’s my fault he’s dead. I wasn’t smart enough, or fast enough or…”

  Ford pulled her in and hugged her tight. His ribs flared with pain, but he only held her tighter. “Trent’s death is on Roberts, and no one else. You know what is your fault? The rest of the team surviving. Even I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you.”

  He pressed his cheek against the top of her head. “No one else could have pulled this off. If I had been in charge, we wouldn’t have made it to the forest. You’re the best kind of leader, Janson. You led by example, and you put your people’s safety above your own. You have nothing to be ashamed of, do you hear me?”

  Janson drew a deep, shuddering breath, then nodded. She laid her head on Ford’s shoulder and whispered, “We had her, Clint. We had her and we let her go.”

  Ford’s spine tingled at the sound of his real name. A few days ago, the breach in protocol would have made him furious, but now…he welcomed the familiarity. He planted a soft kiss on her forehead and said, “She won’t get off easy. Not while I’m alive.”

  Despite the temperate evening air, Emily shivered. She hugged the globe tight and glanced up at Jarrod. “So…what’s next?”

  “Now, we disappear,” Jarrod said. “Both of us. The world has changed, and it’s not a place meant for people like you, or…creatures like me.” He turned toward her, and a fire burned in his eyes. “But remember, I’ll be in the shadows, watching. If you do anything to try and reestablish Katharos, I will tie you down until your child is born, then tear out your heart.”

  Emily fought the urge to cower. “I—I won’t. I promise. That’s not what I want. Not anymore.”

  “Good.” Jarrod left her side and paused at the edge of the rooftop. He unbuttoned the lab coat and tossed it aside. The black armor crawled up his scalp until it covered his head. He said, “I’ll be seeing you, Doctor Roberts,” then jumped into thin air.

  43

  Hillcrest Trauma and Rehabilitation Center

  Baltimore, Maryland

  The cognac burned along its well-worn path and came to rest in Daron Keeler’s stomach. He exhaled, feeling the fire in his lungs, then took another long pull from the bottle. The booze hit him hard, dulling his thoughts.

  Over the past several months, he had abstained from alcohol entirely. Stimulants had become his drug of choice, as they helped him stay sharp during the hunt for Emily Roberts.

  It had started with the sound of hellish gunfire as Emily Roberts killed his best friend, Marcus. Daron had been thrown into a world of cyber warfare and deep-cover assassins. Then, all at once, that world had come to an end. Katharos had fallen, taking its resources and best agents down with it. The news channels had been running the stories non-stop, though they could only speculate as to why thousands of people around the world had died in the same instant. Soon, the autopsies would reveal the implanted kill-switches, but their existence would only raise more questions. Questions that would never be answered. The human race would never fully understand the true nature of Katharos, or how close the shadowy organization had come to toppling a global house of cards.

  And while everyone else in Hillcrest celebrated, Daron had cut away from the crowd and locked himself in his room. His sense of purpose and will to live had been erased along with Katharos. Now, with no one to fight, the pain of his losses came flooding
in. Marcus. Aaron. Trent. Keefer. Stark. The list went on, and the voices called out to him from the dark. He could see their faces as if they were in the room with him, and it made him want to claw out his eyes.

  Instead, he took another mouthful of cognac and swallowed. He didn’t expect the liquor to ease his suffering. It was simply liquid courage for what he planned to do next. Glancing to his right, he studied the contents of his nightstand. Next to a plain, hotel-style lamp lay his pistol, a round in the chamber. Its companion, an over-the-counter bottle of sleeping pills, stood ready to ease Daron into his final rest. He had a plan; he would take the entire bottle of pills, put the gun under his chin, and pull the trigger. If something went wrong, and the bullet didn’t kill him, the pills would keep him from ever waking up. By the time anyone found him, he would be long gone.

  He took a deep breath and blew it out. Not that anyone would come looking for him. He had betrayed all but one of his friends, and then Audrey Stokes had killed him, too.

  CJ was the last nail in the coffin of guilt. If Daron hadn’t tried to appease Audrey, or if he’d watched her more carefully, CJ would still be alive. It was yet another fatal mistake Daron had made that someone else paid the price for.

  Taking a smaller sip of the cognac, he considered one of the benefits of being utterly alone. He couldn’t hurt anyone close to him, and there would be no one to grieve over his suicide. If anything, the people that knew him would probably throw a party. San sure would, and he had every right to, as did Eugene and Janson.

  Daron took another gulp and imagined men and women dancing around his corpse. Killing himself would probably be the nicest thing he had done in years. Setting the cognac down, he picked up the bottle of pills and read its warning label. It was mostly full—more than enough to get the job done. He twisted off the cap and looked inside, then set it next to his pistol. He crossed the room to grab a bottle of water and was halfway back when the phone rang.