“Get out of my head,” she said in a panic, scanning for the thing responsible for this nightmare she’d been living since Michael’s return.
A warm, calming sensation washed over her, overpowering the fear and anxiety. And she felt like a young child enveloped in a mother’s comforting embrace.
Don’t be afraid, Josie, the voice said. Everything is going to be okay.
A spherical, shimmering, almost pearlescent glow materialized several yards in front of her. Was that it? Was that the thing that had stolen her husband from her? Was that the thing that had turned Jeremy Wayne into a mindless slave and worked him nonstop until he died from dehydration hunched over a computer?
Don’t fight me. It’s so much better if you just let it happen.
“No,” Josie said, taking a step backward. She meant to flee, but a wave of intense pleasure stopped her. She gasped, overwhelmed with euphoria the likes of which she’d never felt before. This was better than any chemical high, better than any orgasm, better than any joy she’d ever experienced.
It’s flooding my brain with neurotransmitters, trying to drug me with pleasure, Josie told herself. I’ve got to get away.
In perfect unison, every person in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Josie.
“You’re not going anywhere,” they said en masse. “You’re one of us now.”
“Never,” Josie snarled as a surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins, reigniting her fight-or-flight reflex and overpowering the pleasure centers of her brain. She whirled on a heel to run, but before she could take her first step, a hand clutched her upper arm. She turned to see her female escort robotically gripping her around the bicep; the woman’s eyes were hollow pools now, devoid of any and all humanity. Then a hand grabbed her other arm. She looked right to see a man she didn’t recognize with an equally blank and chilling gaze. She tried to pull herself free, but they held her fast like a pair of iron shackles.
“Noooo,” she screamed, struggling to free herself as they dragged her toward the floating orb.
She heard a loud, sharp crack and then the sound of shattering glass as a window on the left-hand wall imploded, sending thousands of shards of glass flying. A millisecond later, a gunshot echoed in the room; the head of the woman with the red eyeglasses exploded, showering Josie with blood and brains and other bits. A second sniper round followed, this time dispatching the man clutching her right arm. Both bodies collapsed to the floor with sequential thuds.
Ninemeyer.
Josie didn’t look for him; she dropped the toolbox, ducked, and ran back to the exit. Controlled bursts of gunfire echoed in the room, and human drones started dropping one after another after another. Unscathed after several volleys, she realized she was not the target, but she stayed crouched nonetheless. She grabbed the lever handle of the door leading to the lobby and tried to operate it, but the mechanism wouldn’t engage. She tugged on the handle, but the door refused to budge.
“Open, damn it,” she shouted, jerking repeatedly against the lever with all her might.
Then she remembered the magnetic key card the woman who had greeted her had been wearing around her neck. She turned around and looked at the battle raging behind her. She saw the corpse of the woman, half her head missing, sprawled lifeless on the ground twenty feet away. She looked for the floating orb, but she couldn’t see it. She did see Ninemeyer now, darting from one covered position to another as he engaged the orb’s army of human drones. He was using shoot-and-move tactics—something her husband had explained to her. Trigger pull after trigger pull, the human drones fell, and the carnage around her grew. The plan was working; they were actually winning. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she saw a red-bearded man in uniform sneaking around behind Ninemeyer to flank him.
“Behind you!” Josie shouted. “Look out behind you.”
The radio clipped to her waistband must have transmitted her warning because Ninemeyer spun around an instant before the soldier lunged at him. Fire spat from the end of Ninemeyer’s sniper rifle, but the soldier was too fast and took Ninemeyer down with what looked like a football tackle, knocking the sniper rifle out of the assassin’s grip. Despite being armed with both a sidearm and a bowie knife, the soldier was not intent on killing his quarry. Instead, he punched Ninemeyer hard in the gut.
It wants him alive. It wants to know what he knows, Josie realized.
She watched Ninemeyer try to fight off his attacker, but the red-bearded soldier had at least a thirty-pound advantage. The two men grappled for several seconds, but the soldier deftly and efficiently worked Ninemeyer into a choke hold. She saw Ninemeyer’s eyes go wide as a shimmering smudge in the air floated toward him. Something clicked inside Josie’s brain, and the next thing she knew, she was running. Without breaking stride, she pulled the Walther P22 from the small of her back and fired two shots at the orb. Either the bullets missed, or they had no effect because the smudge in the air did not react. She stopped a mere yard from the redheaded soldier, who still had Ninemeyer in a stranglehold. Ninemeyer’s mouth hung open while he stared fish-eyed at the floating alien orb. She leveled the iron sight of the pistol at the soldier’s forehead, which was tucked tight up against Ninemeyer’s left ear. Killing the soldier would require her to make a perfect shot; the margin of error was effectively one inch. She was no marksman; she was no killer.
“Do it,” the red-bearded soldier said, smiling at her. “Take the shot. It matters not; he means nothing.”
This was the orb talking, Josie knew, not the soldier.
“Help me,” Ninemeyer croaked, his gaze shifting with what looked like great effort to meet hers. In his eyes, she saw desperation and fear—and for the first time, maybe—his humanity.
She looked back at the red-bearded soldier. Whoever this man had once been, that man was gone—his mind now parsed and dismantled beyond reconstruction, like a diary run through a paper shredder. To have one’s essence erased and then be turned into a mindless drone was a fate worse than death. What she was about to do wasn’t murder . . . It was mercy. She stepped forward, pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the center of the zombie soldier’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger. The soldier’s head jerked as the small-caliber round tumbled through his gray matter. After a beat, his arms went slack, and his body slowly slumped to the floor, but the ironic smile on his face never faded.
Josie shifted her gaze from the nonhuman thing she’d just killed back to Ninemeyer. If she wanted to get out of here alive, she was going to need his help, but at the moment he wasn’t in a condition to help anyone. Drool dripped from the corner of his lips, and his gaze was again fixated on the orb. She turned her pistol on the orb and fired two more rounds. This time, one of the bullets hit because she heard a metallic ping and saw a ripple in its translucent camouflage.
“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing Ninemeyer by his limp and lifeless hand. She tried jerking him to his feet, but his body was like a lump of clay. “C’mon, snap out of it!” she shouted, the desperation in her voice taking her by surprise. But instead of getting to his feet, the assassin jerked his hand free from her grip and began convulsing.
“Leave him,” a familiar voice said behind her, causing her heart to skip a beat. “He doesn’t care about you . . . but I do.”
Josie whirled and came face-to-face with her husband.
“Michael?” she gasped. “Is it really you?”
He smiled at her. “Of course it’s me, baby.”
“Who am I talking to?” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “The real Michael or the possessed one?”
The corner of his mouth curled into a wry grin. “I’m so glad you came, Josie. When I left, I did it to protect you, but now that I’m here, I realize that this is the safest place for us. This is where we belong, all of us together.”
Fear gripped her, and she began to backpedal. “Michael, no,” she cried. “Please no.”
“I know you’re scared, Joz,”
he said, walking toward her. “But it doesn’t hurt.”
“I don’t want to be a zombie,” she cried. “I don’t want to lose my mind and my free will. Michael, please. I’m begging you.”
“We don’t have to end up like them,” he said, pointing to the bodies littering the Biogentrix floor, some of which were beginning to get up now. “They fought. They resisted, and she had no choice but to punish them. I’m not like them. I embraced her love. I accepted her baptism, and I am reborn. I’m still me, just a better version of me.”
She raised the pistol and pointed it at her husband’s forehead. “You’re scaring me, Michael. Please stop. I’m serious, stop right there or I’ll shoot.”
He stepped up and pressed his forehead into the muzzle of the Walther. “I would never hurt you, and you would never hurt me. That’s what true love is. Trust. True love is trust. Now I need you to trust me, Josie.”
Above his head, a brilliant light settled—a halo for her angel Michael. “Let him go,” she screamed and shifted her aim from his forehead to the light. But when she tried to squeeze the trigger, her finger would not move. She tried to turn and flee, but her entire body was rigid and unresponsive. Then a voice spoke in her head.
I offered my love freely, but you have rejected the gift of pleasure and chosen the path of pain.
Instead of rapture, this time the orb hit her with a tidal wave of agony—every nerve ending in her body ablaze with pain. She let out a shriek of anguish and joined Ninemeyer writhing on the floor. The pain was so overwhelming, she couldn’t think of anything else, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to die.
Please make it stop.
Please . . .
I’ll do anything.
Anything!
CHAPTER 45
Willie’s return to consciousness felt like he’d been woken up by lightning strike. He sat bolt upright in the worn leather chaise, feeling young, clearheaded, and body electric.
“How do you feel?” the hypnotist asked, sitting hunched on a short three-legged stool beside him.
“Like a million dollars,” he said, flashing her a schoolboy grin. “I don’t know how or what you do, but you’re a miracle worker.”
She responded with a gracious but weary smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, swinging his legs off the side of the lounger and planting his soles squarely and loudly on the checkered tile floor.
“William fought back like I’ve never seen before,” she said, her voice raw with exhaustion. “For a while, I wasn’t sure who would prevail.”
“Did I . . . try to hurt you?” he asked, angst ripe in his voice.
“No, I kept your body paralyzed,” she said, placing her aged and arthritic hand upon his shoulder. “But the rage . . . the terrible things he said . . . it was good you came when you did. I’m not sure how much time you had left, Willie.”
“What about now?” he asked.
“I buried him deep. Deep, deep, deep.”
“Good,” he said, exhaling with relief. “And my secret, did you hide it?”
She nodded. “Can you remember it now?”
He tried to recall what he’d told her when he arrived, but there was nothing left in that part of his memory but a gaping void. “I cannot.”
“Have no fear. It will come to you when you face the demon orb, but only when the conditions you provided me are met,” she said.
“Do you think I’m ready? Do you think I’m strong enough to face her?” he asked, meeting the old woman’s cloudy gaze.
“You’re ready, Captain Barnes,” she said. “Now go—atone for your sins, fulfill your destiny, and save the world from this scourge bent on our destruction.”
He gently took her fragile fingers in his, raised her hand to his lips, and kissed the paper-thin skin on the back of her wrist. “Thank you, Margaret. I would be lost and broken without you.”
When he got back to his Cherokee, he checked the time and was pleased to see that the session had taken less than twenty minutes. As he piloted the SUV out of Saratoga Springs and back onto I-87 south, he was relieved to find his grip on the steering wheel was strong and steady. In addition to everything else she’d done while he was under, Lady Margaret had apparently also worked her mojo on his nerves. He knew the effect would be only temporary, but right now he was happy to relish his iron courage. The rational part of his brain knew that this was a suicide mission and he should be terrified, but it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, Willie Barnes was wholly and categorically unafraid.
When he arrived at Biogentrix, the first thing he heard was gunfire.
“Shit. Am I too late?” he muttered, scanning the parking lot for signs of a SWAT or military tactical team that might have beaten him there, but the parking lot was empty. Sending a tactical team against EVE wasn’t a prudent strategic option. All that did was give her a tactical team to add to her army of drones. The only way to confront EVE was with the correct hardware—hardware designed to keep her out of your head.
Anybody who ever wondered why conspiracy theorists wear tinfoil hats . . . well, this is why.
He climbed out of his Cherokee, walked around to the back, and opened the tailgate. Time to put on his “tinfoil hat”—a meticulously crafted Faraday cage suit that had taken him a decade to perfect. The bulky suit and hood-style helmet was constructed with multiple layers of metallic mesh and dielectric material, necessary to shield his brain from the orb’s powerful magnetic fields. After donning the suit, he armed himself with a .357 magnum and a nine-shot Mossberg FLEX 590 Tactical shotgun. The shotgun was the only weapon potentially effective against EVE, but he felt better having a backup for whatever zombie jobs he would undoubtedly encounter inside.
As he walked toward the vaccine facility’s front door, a wave of guilt washed over him. Biogentrix was his doing, or rather William’s doing. There had been a long period where his alter ego often had gained the upper hand on him, working with long-dormant instructions from EVE 1 in preparation for her sister orb’s return. The hypnotist had helped him regain control and given him the tools he needed to cage his malevolent other self. But he’d never been able to shutter the facility, not completely anyway. Half a dozen times he’d made the drive down to Rensselaer intent on burning the building to the ground in the middle of the night, but he’d never been able to do it. William stayed his hand every time. He hadn’t been back in over a year. Would he have the mettle this time to finally do what must be done?
Whoever had been doing the shooting had stopped now, and he wondered what kind of nightmare he was walking into. He tried the front door. It was locked, and in his haste he’d forgotten to bring his key.
That’s okay. I have a spare . . .
He aimed the Mossberg at the glass entry door and pulled the trigger. The tactical shotgun roared spitfire and lead, and the door blew into a thousand pieces. He stepped through the empty metal frame, glass shards crunching underfoot, and walked into the lobby. He tried the door to the production facility, but that door was locked too. He pumped the shotgun, blasted the latch mechanism to smithereens, and kicked the door in. Then, with a deep breath, Willie Barnes walked back into the nightmare he’d tried his entire life to escape.
At least a half dozen bodies lay sprawled on the floor, most partially decapitated by headshots from a high-powered rifle. Twenty feet away, a man in a black suit and a blonde woman were writhing on the floor. Three other people, a muscular young man in civilian clothes; a tall, athletic woman dressed in an Army uniform; and a middle-aged man wearing a white laboratory coat looked on with bemused, compassionless stares.
Presiding above it all floated the orb.
He jerked the pump, chambering his third shell. As he raised the shotgun to take aim, the blonde woman on the floor stopped twitching and abruptly sat up.
“It’s good to see you, Will,” she said, distracting him and drawing his gaze away from the orb.
His heart skipped a beat. “Josie?” he
said, dumbfounded. “What are you doing here?”
“Fate works in mysterious ways.” She laughed, getting to her feet. The words were not her own, but he had faith that the real Josie was still in there. The Josie he’d met was tough, brazen, and fearless, and his gut told him she was fighting a silent internal war for control of her mind.
No time for this now, he told himself and shifted his focus back to the target at the other end of the shotgun barrel. Say goodbye, EVE, he thought as he dialed in his aim on the glowing orb and pulled the trigger . . . except he didn’t pull the trigger. He tried again, but his index finger wouldn’t respond.
Little pig, little pig, let me in . . .
A chill snaked down Willie’s spine.
No! It’s not possible. We locked you up. We buried you, Willie yelled at his doppelgänger.
Well, here’s the thing, Willie boy. Turns out, I’m a damn good actor. I screamed, I shouted, I begged, and then I just shut my mouth. It was easier to fool the old bitch than I thought. Too bad I didn’t figure it out years ago.
Panic erupted in his chest. This was not how the final confrontation was supposed to happen. He was supposed to face EVE alone. Alone! It wouldn’t be long now. He had to act before William took control.
The man in the lab coat took a step toward him. “Put the shotgun down, Will. Nobody else needs to get hurt.”
Willie angled toward Josie, shifting the shotgun from the orb to the man in the lab coat. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he shouted. “Stay back.”
The man took another step, his hands up, palms open and facing. “Put the gun down, Will. There’s been enough bloodshed for one day.”
In the distance, he heard a siren wailing.
“Josie,” he said, turning to her. “If you’re in there, give me a sign. Any sign.”
She smiled sweetly at him.
That’s not it. That’s EVE.
Then a tear ran down her cheek.
There you are . . . That’s my girl.
After that, everything happened in a blur. The man in the lab coat rushed Willie. This time, he was able to pull the trigger. The shotgun roared and put a hole in the center of the other man’s chest. Willie dropped the shotgun, lifted off his shielded helmet with both hands, and put it over Josie’s head.
Reset Page 27