Bad Seeds

by Jassy Mackenzie

  And then the strut gave. It loosened with a hideous ripping sound, and still grabbing it one-handed, Jade felt herself fall downward with it, as the wires it carried bent and stretched.

  But the neighboring struts stopped it, leaving her dangling in midair, bouncing gently as she clutched the metal, the wires just a few inches from her upturned face.

  Jade let go of the strut and allowed herself to fall.

  An endless, whirling second, and then the paving hit her. She buckled at the ankles, rolling forward to break the fall, trying to protect the gun holstered at her back while the bricks scoured her knees and shoulders. She thought suddenly of Botha and his catlike grace. She wasn’t Botha. A sharp pain in her foot told her that she hadn’t come out of her climb unscathed, but when she tested it, she could at least bear weight on it.

  Above her, with a piercing click and a blue flash, the fence began to short out. The power was back on. But she had made it; she was inside.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Jade limped back to the turnstile where Sbusiso was waiting anxiously.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. How do I get to the main buildings?”

  “Follow that walkway and turn right after the first warehouse.” Sbusiso pointed. “You will need to be careful, because they do not patrol on foot at night, but in carts. If they see you, even from far away, they will know something is wrong.”

  “It’s good if they know something’s wrong,” Jade said, but Sbusiso shook his head.

  “If they catch you, they will lock you in a secure compound and call Mr. Gillespie. Then they will call the police. They will not listen to you if you ask them to sound the alarm. Guards can get into big trouble for sounding the alarm unless there is a real emergency. Locking down the red zone means work gets delayed for up to eight hours.”

  “Has it always been that way?” Jade asked.

  Sbusiso shook his head. “New rules. In the old days, when Miss Lisa worked here, every single employee was allowed to sound the alarm and lock down the red zone. You would never get into trouble for it. Miss Lisa said that we should all be aware of threats, and it was better to be safe. But Mr. Gillespie changed things.”

  Jade nodded. She could see why he’d done that. Disempowering the guards would have been a necessary step for him to achieve his ends. It didn’t help her now, though.

  “Okay. I’ll be careful. Dial this number, Sbusiso.” Jade read out David’s cell phone number. “Please keep on calling him. If you get through, tell him he needs to send the flying squad here as soon as he can. And call emergency services. The fire department and the ambulance. Tell them someone’s badly injured, and there’s a threat of fire. We need them here if the worst happens.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Jade turned. Walking gingerly on her injured foot, she opened the guardhouse gate and pressed the red button. Getting through the second turnstile was as easy as pushing it open. She set off, limping slowly up the walkway. She was the intruder now, alone in this concrete-paved conglomeration of buildings housing a noiseless reactor and its deadly fuel.

  She needed to orient herself and make a quick decision about which way to go. She struggled to place herself in a mental map of Inkomfe and wasn’t sure how to find somewhere she could sound the alarm, or at least alert somebody higher up the chain of command who was authorized to sound it.

  And luck was not on her side. There was nowhere to hide in this paved wasteland, with bright spotlights set at intervals. She could only pray that she didn’t bump into anyone patrolling until she reached cover, even if it was only the wall of the warehouse in the distance. However, she was still limping far from the buildings when she heard the buzz of an approaching cart. As its headlights grew larger, Jade felt like prey. She knew the game was over.

  Unless she could use this to her advantage.

  Her heart lifted slightly as she saw there was only one guard inside. He’d seen her. The cart accelerated, driving straight toward her. She raised a hand to shield her eyes against its blinding lights.

  “Abel?” she said hopefully as it reached her and slowed.

  Nope. No response. Whoever this guard was, he wasn’t Abel.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where is your security card?”

  He was tall, grim-faced, dark-haired. His own card swung on a lanyard around his neck, and his gun was holstered at his hip. Her absence of a card marked her as a stranger. Too late, she realized she should have asked Sbusiso to borrow his.

  “I lost my card,” she said. “I ran down to the gate to check that fence there. You see, the wires are broken. See how it’s shorting out? I took my jacket off while I was running, and my card must have come with it. Now I’m looking for it.”

  Reluctantly the guard climbed out of the cart. He stared at her suspiciously.

  “My name’s Scarlett Sykes,” Jade said, holding out her hand in greeting. The pepper spray was concealed inside her palm. She already felt guilty for what she was about to do, but it would potentially save lives.

  The guard held out his hand, and as he did so, Jade raised hers and sprayed him full in the face.

  With an agonized yell, the guard twisted away and fell to his knees, his eyes tight shut and his hands clutching at his face.

  Jade ran to the golf cart, climbed in and floored the accelerator. Her ankle screamed at her, but she ignored the pain, swinging the car in a tight semicircle. The cart rocked as she sped in the direction of the complex. The guard’s cries followed her for a while before she drove out of earshot.

  She had bought herself a few minutes, at least. The guard’s walkie-talkie was in the cart, crackling softly, so he couldn’t use it to alert anyone. She needed to trigger the alarm as quickly as she could.

  She had no idea how much time she had. She might already be too late, or there might be a few hours left, if she were lucky. She wasn’t hopeful, especially after reading Lisa’s clear, concise notes. Lisa had discovered everything. Her only downfall was that she’d underestimated Gillespie’s cunning.

  Gillespie was likely on-site. She guessed he must be in Inqaba, the top-security strong room where the ingots were stored. She triangulated her possible routes to avoid the area altogether. She couldn’t risk running into him now; he had proven to be incredibly dangerous.

  She decided to head for the only place familiar to her—the one where she’d gone on her guided tour. There had been passages that led to the reactor room, and the glass-walled control room. She had a gun on her. The admin staff and technicians hadn’t been armed with anything more than Geiger counters, and she was sure they would be empowered to shut down the red zone, especially if motivated to do so by a furious woman with untidy hair brandishing a Desert Eagle.

  In the cart with its conveniently bright headlights, she’d be anonymous until she pulled into the big building.

  Minutes felt like hours, even though she was going as fast as she could.

  She finally reached the big doors to the main building. She remembered how the guard had opened them on her guided tour, with a simple press of the dashboard button on the golf cart. She tried the same maneuver and they swung open for her as well. Another loophole in the security system, likely another “innovation” introduced by Gillespie. No wonder Lisa Marais had been driven mad with frustration.

  She stopped the cart inside the warehouse. Would pressing the button again close the doors? She tried it, and to her relief, they swung shut. At least nobody could follow her in now—unless, of course, they were riding in another of the conveniently programmed security carts.

  There was nobody on duty at the reception desk, so Jade hurried over to the elevator and rode it to the bottommost floor.

  It opened onto the underground passage she remembered from last time. White walls, eerie silence, freezing air and the feeling of being entomb
ed in concrete. Where the hell was everyone?

  She suspected that Gillespie was a step ahead of her. He must have cleared the area with a well-timed fire drill or evacuation rehearsal. And she couldn’t go much farther before reaching the locked door where he had punched in the code the last time. There might be someone beyond there, but she wouldn’t be able to reach them—unless there was some sort of communication system in place, a way of calling the technicians inside. She hadn’t noticed a receiver by the door, but it would be worth taking another look.

  She half-jogged, half-limped down the passageway, passing a side door which was locked. Then she was at the coded door. The place was deserted, and she couldn’t get past this point. And there was no phone receiver nearby. No way of reaching anyone inside, and no button that could be pressed to alert them. Seething with frustration, she punched in a random code, then another.

  The door didn’t open, but nor did any alarm sound. Jade made several more attempts before realizing it was pointless.

  She was trapped inside Inkomfe’s concrete heart, so close and yet unable to do what she needed to. Frustrated, Jade punched the door. The solid metal absorbed the blow without as much as a shudder.

  She turned away, rubbing her knuckles. She was wasting time. She’d have to retrace her steps and try another path in. Perhaps she could use the walkie-talkie on the golf cart to communicate with the control room and convince them to shut the plant down.

  The elevator had returned to the top floor, and she pressed the button to summon it again. On her way up, she’d take out her gun, she decided. She wanted to have it ready when she stepped back out into the hall upstairs.

  But the elevator wasn’t empty on its return. There were two people inside, and as Jade froze in her tracks, staring into the muzzle of the Sig Sauer pointed directly at her, she realized that her decision to unholster her own gun had been a sensible one, but she had made it too late.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Jade raised her hands and backed away as the two men stepped out of the elevator.

  “What are you doing here?” Gillespie, standing on the right, almost shouted the words out. He was twisting his fingers nervously, and his face looked drawn with tension. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses that hid his blackened eye from view, which meant she couldn’t see his expression or make eye contact. Golden stubble frosted his cheeks, camouflaging the graze he’d received during his earlier attack.

  “I told you she’d be here.” That was the other man speaking, his voice calm.

  Jade couldn’t believe who she was seeing beside Gillespie, aiming the pistol at her chest with a steady hand. Her mind could not encompass the scale of this treachery, the extent of betrayal. The impossibility of seeing him here made her dizzy. Was this reality or a terrible living nightmare?

  “Turn around,” he told her. “Keep your hands in the air.”

  A voice she knew all too well. She turned and felt his left hand pull her shirt up. Expertly he unholstered her Desert Eagle. Frustration boiled inside her as she realized she’d never even had the chance to fire that damned gun at a criminal before it had been taken away from her.

  “Down the passage. Keep your hands up.”

  She walked steadily, listening to the twin sounds of the footsteps behind her. Nowhere to hide now, nowhere to run.

  “Face the wall,” he told her when she was a few paces away from the door.

  Jade pressed her palms against the cold metal and listened to the beep of the keyboard as Gillespie typed in the code.

  “Walk on now.”

  She saw Gillespie use a doorstop to keep the door open. If she remembered correctly, that meant the alarm would go off within a short time. Perhaps that didn’t matter now. It might all be part of the plan. She was still light-headed from shock. Her legs didn’t seem to belong to her at all.

  Her mind was racing. Could she negotiate? Could she somehow bargain with the man holding the guns to save her own life, or was it too late? She should have foreseen this. There had been enough clues, but she had missed them all.

  They reached the second door, and again, Gillespie left it open. The windowed control room was up ahead. He opened that door, and they walked inside.

  Nobody in the control room, confirming her earlier suspicion of an evacuation drill.

  “Stand with your back to the wall over there. Keep your hands in the air.”

  Her arms were beginning to ache, but she had to comply.

  The gunman stepped forward between her and Gillespie.

  His dreadlocks were partially covered by a plain black beanie; he was wearing the same uniform as the Inkomfe guards, with what looked to be a functioning ID tag on a lanyard around his neck. All supplied by Gillespie, no doubt, so that he could do his work more easily.

  Not Botha, but a man whose history with Jade went back even further. A hit man for hire . . . With his reputation, it was no surprise that Gillespie had ended up sourcing him when he’d looked for a paid killer.

  “Robbie,” she blurted out.

  “You know each other?” Gillespie’s voice was tight and high. He checked his watch. Even with her heart banging in her chest and the gun’s black muzzle drawing her gaze in, Jade thought that was an odd thing to do. But then, the whole evening had become surreal. If her life was going to end now, at least she’d be in too much shock to worry about it.

  “Old business acquaintances,” Robbie said. His voice was flat and hard. He stuck his left hand into the pocket of his uniform pants.

  From ally to adversary. He was looking at her now as if they’d never done a job together. She stared back pleadingly, but his stony gaze met hers without any concession of their past.

  Behind her was a soft hum from the banks of computers. The tiny sounds of fans cooling, of microprocessors crunching away at incoming figures, turning them into streams of data that somehow helped to contain the processor’s phenomenal power. But she knew now that the reactor wasn’t Gillespie’s main target. He’d used the threat of nuclear catastrophe and the vulnerability of the reactor to distract from his own plan, which was to steal Inkomfe’s enriched uranium ingots.

  Once she was dead, he’d have all the time in the world to do it.

  She wondered what kind of nuclear terrorism attack the ingots would be used for. How many would be destroyed instantly by the explosion’s fiery blast, and how many would suffer for days or weeks as the radiation destroyed their body’s cells, triggering the unstoppable, untreatable sickness?

  Jade decided right then to go down fighting.

  Gillespie turned as if in response to her resolve. He checked his watch again. “All right,” he said. “Kill her.”

  He turned his gaze to the door. A coward to the last, she thought, who would order somebody’s death but didn’t have the guts to watch.

  She knew Robbie well, but her knowledge only helped her understand how fast she would die. He wouldn’t hesitate, he wouldn’t miss. He would fire a double tap to be sure of the kill. At this range, it would take her full in the chest. He would only risk a head shot from very close, although once she was down, he might execute a final shot in the head to be sure she died quickly.

  The gun’s muzzle would follow her. He would be ready for her to try to avoid him, to break left or right, to drop to the floor. Nothing would allow her to escape the twelve bullets that were waiting in that fully loaded magazine.

  Unless . . . unless she could plead with him. Would talking work?

  She drew a deep breath, ready to find out, but before the words came, Robbie spoke.

  “You can’t say you don’t deserve this,” he said in a low voice. His gaze drilled into hers. “It’s not like you haven’t killed before.”

  “Robbie, I . . .” she began, tension turning her voice to a cracked whisper.

  “This bullet’s had your name on for a long time now,
even if you didn’t know it. Word gets around.”

  Her hands went numb, her face cold. She could only listen and wait. Every second that Robbie kept talking meant another second of life for her. Miracles happened, right? Perhaps Gillespie would reconsider her fate as he listened to Robbie’s weird diatribe.

  “You knew it was going to catch up with you one day, didn’t you?” A dark humor laced his next words, and she could only nod, because all actions had consequences, and now hers were staring her in the face. The nightmares she’d had. The times she’d woken up filled with guilt and fear, unable to fall back asleep, wondering what important details she’d forgotten, and who was going to come after her wanting retribution or revenge.

  The good she’d tried to do and the people she’d tried to help—a vain attempt to compensate for the fact that she had stolen the lives of others. And even if she’d believed they deserved to die, who gave her the right to judge?

  “You should have known it would come to this. There was plenty of time to do things differently.” Robbie’s words sliced into her like steel shards.

  “Get on with it!” Gillespie snapped.

  Robbie drew in a deep breath, seeming to ignore the man standing behind him. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Jade.

  “There was plenty of time to do things differently,” he repeated, speaking slowly. “But you didn’t. You never did. You thought you were untouchable for so long, but now you’ve finally pissed off the wrong person. Maybe you should pay the people you hire in full, instead of blowing half their fee at the fucking blackjack tables, you lying, cheating, short-paying bastard.”

  With that, he turned around and drilled two bullets into Gillespie’s chest.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The explosions filled the room, crashing in Jade’s ears as she dove for the only cover the room had to offer, the nearby chair. She crouched behind it, watching the expression of terminal surprise in the tall sociopath’s eyes as he slumped to the floor. Blood welled from the wound, darkening the cream fabric of his shirt and staining the white tiles below. The fingers of one hand briefly twitched, and then he was gone.