Max rolled off them, leaving the two startled men on their backs; then she landed nimbly on her feet and pirouetted, facing them, a woman possessed. They scrambled up even as her fists and feet flew in all directions, and—despite their incredibly high pain threshold—the Familiars could not withstand the one-woman onslaught. Though there were two of them, the guards were no match for this whirling dervish of a pissed-off X5.
The vast living room—the meager furnishings that remained sheet-covered and pressed up against the walls, like mute spectators—gave the three combatants plenty of space to maneuver on the hardwood floor.
The scarred one went down first, a vicious kick catching him on the side of the knee, tearing ligaments audibly. He didn't cry out, of course, but any lack of pain couldn't make up for the physical facts of life, and the leg gave out underneath him when he tried to attack her. He made one more sweeping attempt with his good leg, which she jumped as if skipping rope, and the aftermath of the guard's attempt was to present his chin at a nice angle; and Max clipped him with a straight, swift, hard right that turned out his lights.
The other one cartwheeled toward her, delivered a fast one-two and cartwheeled away.
“That looked pretty,” she said. “Blow me another kiss, why don't you?”
And she waved for him to bring the shit again, and he did, this time cartwheeling in and kicking her first with his right, then his left foot, before cartwheeling away—she'd pulled back some, but he did catch her. She raised her gloved hand to her face, wiped a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and waved for him to come back one more time.
This time he backflipped into a cartwheel, apparently hoping to confuse her, but Max was ready, and when he was braced for that split second on just one hand, she hit the floor in a baseball slide, knocked the guard's palm out from under him and dumped him on his head.
He jumped to his feet, only to find Max cartwheeling this time, right toward him; then she dropped into a roll and launched at him, her fist burying to the wrist in his crotch. He said nothing, his eyes bulging and watering as he bent over, obviously surprised by the intensity of the sensation.
“See?” Max said, with a demented little grin. “Some kindsa pain you just can't completely breed out of a guy . . .”
And she came up, delivering a hard head butt that broke the guard's nose, twin streams of blood erupting from either nostril as he went pitching back into the wall.
He bounced back at her, consumed with rage, blood and spittle flying as he roared toward her. At a fraction of the last moment, she sidestepped and the guard blasted through the middle unopened window, breaking glass raining all around as he came to rest over the sill, half in the room, half outside. It was as if he were taking a breather.
Then he stood, turned, blood dripping from several cuts as he stepped through the shattered glass. Coughing, he frowned and reached up and felt a huge shard protruding from his neck. He coughed again as if that might dislodge the scratching in his throat.
“Got a tickle?” Max asked. “Let me help.”
She stepped forward, yanked the glass from the man's neck, and ducked, anticipating the arterial spray, which easily rose to the ceiling, where it painted a scarlet Jackson Pollock abstraction.
The Familiar's eyes went wide and his hands flew to his throat, but it was too late. Max drop-kicked him, sending him on through the window this time, to leave him outside to bleed to death. She knew it wouldn't take long.
Say what you will about Manticore, she thought, but science'll beat out pagan breeding rituals, any time.
She left the living room—and the drip-drip-drip of her opponent's blood off the ceiling—and went into the hall.
Joshua was emerging from the back of the house, in the midst of fighting another guard—obviously a Familiar (any human would be crushed by any one of Joshua's formidable blows)—backing the man slowly down the hall toward Max with a series of punches alternating between face and belly. The guard was putting up a good fight even though Joshua towered over him. Slowly, the battle neared her.
“Don't be cruel to animals,” she said.
The guard turned, and she delivered a right cross that spun the man back toward Joshua, who caught him with a left hook. The Familiar's eyes closed and the guard melted to the floor.
“Hard to hurt them,” Joshua said.
“They're like robots,” Max said. “But when you shut off their electricity, they go down.”
Joshua nodded, getting the concept.
“Check on Mole,” she said. “I'll look for Alec.”
They each took off in the direction from which they'd come, Joshua toward the back to find Mole in the kitchen, Max to the front to look for Alec, moving away from the living room. She ran into him at the bottom of the staircase, just as four Familiars opened fire with automatic weapons from above.
Both Max and Alec dove into the dining room, but they knew this sanctuary would last barely ten seconds. Already they could hear the guards thundering down the stairs. The room had a long table covered with two sheets and a dozen sheeted chairs, as if a banquet for ghosts was in sway. At the other end of the room, sharing the same wall as the door they'd used, another door led, presumably, to the kitchen.
Communicating with hand signals, they put a plan together—no time to decide whether it sucked or not, and anyway, it was a collaboration—then the X5s set it into action.
Alec took off for the back, while Max flattened herself against the wall, next to the near door.
When the first guard came in, Max jerked his gun out of his hand, and pulled him to her. As she did, a second guard fired at them, killing the guard Max held in front of her, a human shield.
Alec—having slipped out the door at the back of the dining room—came up the hall from the kitchen, Mole on one side of him and Joshua on the other, and the three of them waded into the remaining guards, just as Max discarded her dead shield and attacked the nearest opponent, using the butt of the commandeered weapon as a club, knocking him unconscious and to the floor in a pile.
Within seconds all the three guards were down, likely out for the rest of the day, if not dead. None of the three transgenics gave that a thought, not even the compassionate Joshua—these four were soldiers, bred by Manticore for combat, and soldiers did not linger over the casualties they'd created, shedding tears.
“You all right?” Alec asked Max.
“I feel good . . . You two?”
Mole said, “This is fun. If I had a frickin' smoke, my life would be a song.”
Joshua said, “I'm alive, too, Little Fella.”
“Stay that way, Big Fella,” she said. “Let's get upstairs then—I'll take the point . . . Mole, you ride drag.”
Nodding, they fell into line and paraded up the stairs, their eyes everywhere—another wave of guards, coming up behind them, would be a bad thing . . .
There were six bedrooms on the second floor and, Max supposed, probably an equal number on the third floor, though she had never been up there. Using hand signals, she sent Mole and Alec on upstairs, while she and Joshua checked the rooms on this floor, starting at the end farthest from Lyman Cale's bedroom.
They found nothing—no further guards, no guests, no Franklin Bostock—and had just arrived outside Lyman's door when the other two came down from the third floor and signaled that they had struck out up there as well.
They fanned out, Max in the lead again, Alec and Joshua on either side behind her, Mole off to one side, watching their backs.
Max opened the door. Stepped in.
Lyman Cale still lay in the bed; if possible, he seemed even smaller, as if he'd shrunk further, a withered rind lost in a white nightshirt, cables coming in and out of him, keeping Logan's uncle alive, technically at least—as the surrounding monitors and gizmos attested.
Franklin Bostock—again in a black blazer, white shirt with no tie, and gray slacks—stood on the far side of the bed near Cale's head. He appeared calm, and their entry into the room seemed to ba
rely register on him.
Alec and Joshua came in and spread out again behind Max.
“Thought you'd be back, Ms. Guevera,” Bostock said, his voice detached, even cold.
But Max's voice was frigid. “Ray White.”
Bostock looked up at her, unimpressed. “What of him?”
“He was an eleven-year old boy.”
Bostock shrugged. “You know what they say about omelets.”
“Is that what the boy is to you? Was to you? A bro-
ken egg?”
“You're a soldier, Ms. Guevera. All wars have their casualties. I imagine you've cut quite a swath through my men, coming this far.”
“Wars? Casualties?” She took a menacing step forward. “Those things I know about . . . I also know about atrocities. Why? Why an innocent child?”
She took another step, and a small caliber pistol revealed itself in Bostock's hand.
And it was pointed at the head of Lyman Cale, not that that comatose figure had any realization of it.
“Take another step,” he said, “and there will be another casualty in this war.” A smile spread, like a terrible rash, across his bland face. “You might make it before I blow Lyman's brains—what's left of them—all over this pillow. But I doubt it.”
She just stood there.
Bostock's eyes met hers. “You're still considering it, though, aren't you? Go ahead. Make your move—you may find me a more formidable adversary than you might imagine . . . And then you can explain to Logan Cale how you got his uncle killed.”
The thought of what had happened to Seth because of Logan flitted across her mind, and in that moment what this sadistic son of a bitch had just said triggered an epiphany in Max.
Logan wouldn't have intentionally put Seth in danger—not any more than Logan would have done with her, when she accepted missions. It was always her choice, and it would have been the same for her sib. And the truth was, Seth liked taking risks even more than Alec or Zack.
Max understood why Logan had lied now. That is, she understood his act of omission, not commission . . .
If this situation went sideways, as it very well might at any moment, there would be no way in hell she could ever explain to Logan, no way she could bear to tell him, if she were to cause him to lose his uncle, the last relative of his on the planet who had ever seemed to care about him . . .
Bostock's voice grew sharp. “Your two playmates—on their knees. Hands behind their necks.”
She could feel Alec and Joshua looking at her, and she turned to them, nodded once, and they complied, dropping as if in prayer, elbows winged as hands locked behind heads.
“You seem to think you're going somewhere,” Max said.
Bostock nodded. “Out of here, for a start.”
“How exactly?” Max crossed her arms. “You really think we're just going to let you through? Or are you gonna haul ol' Lyman out of bed and yank those tubes out of him and use him as a hostage? I'd pay to see that.”
Bostock turned a bit and trained the pistol on Max. “Ms. Guevera . . . you're my hostage. And I think you'll comply—after all, accompanying me will be your only chance, however faint, of rescuing Logan Cale.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I'll be taking you to where he's being held.”
Max froze. “Then . . . you knew White's plan all along! You were part of it.”
Bostock said, “Familiars do get . . . familiar. We share many things with each other—it's a brotherhood, after all.”
“Yeah, like Cain and Abel.” She shook her head. “If you knew what White was up to—that he planned to use me to get Ray back—why did you interfere with it? Why kill that boy?”
The man's eyes flared. “What, and allow Ames White to consolidate his power with the Conclave? I don't think so.”
Her head was spinning. “How could a kid like that consolidate White's power?”
Bostock sighed, as if he were dealing with a child. “Ames White had hopes and dreams for his son—and there is a small but powerful faction among the Conclave who took the youngster's potential seriously. Others of us considered that boy weak—his mother an ordinary who betrayed us, his father a failure, the whole family nothing but a negative influence to our goals . . . Let's just say I removed a small problem.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “So, for all your posing . . . you and this Conclave are really no better than the ordinaries, are you?”
Bostock looked baffled, and offended.
“Petty jealousy,” she said. “Nothing more than petty jealousy cost that boy his life.”
“Petty?” The word seemed to explode out of Bostock. Suddenly the calm bureaucrat was a seething demon. “It was White's family that burdened the Conclave with you transgenics in the first place! White's father—this Sandeman, you consider him your father don't you, all of you?—Sandeman lost his nerve, and now we have you mutated rabble to deal with. That family must be made to pay!”
Max frowned. “What is the Conclave's obsession with Sandeman and the transgenics? . . . What possible threat could we be to you and your twisted goals?”
In an instant, Bostock was the calm bureaucrat again. “You don't know?” He seemed amused—quietly so. “You really don't know?”
Max's hands went to her hips. “What don't I know?”
Bostock's upper lip curled, and his words dripped venomous contempt: “Anything. You . . . don't . . . know . . . anything.”
“I'm crushed, Franklin,” she said. “And here I thought you held me in such high regard.”
The gun still trained on her, he shook his head. “You have no idea how important you are . . .”
“Now I'm important?”
“. . . and you've just delivered yourself to me all tied up in a Christmas ribbon. But you are dangerous. Perhaps too dangerous to serve as a hostage . . .”
He pointed the gun at Max's head now, eyes tightening.
Alec and Joshua both started to rise, but Max patted the air, telling them to keep their position.
“If I'm so valuable, so important,” she said, easing a half a step toward him, “why kill me?”
“Your death is inevitable—it's just a question of where and when . . . though it must be soon.”
“I need to die . . . soon.”
“Yes. You see, killing you represents victory, Max. May I call you ‘Max'? ‘Ms. Guevera' is too formal for us now, don't you think? . . . Your death means we win.”
“You know, I always knew you snake-cult kids were a wacky bunch.” She edged another few inches. “But maybe you can explain why the death of a mutant like me could be so important to a movement that dates back thousands and thousands of years . . .”
His laugh had a hint of hysteria in it. “You've really never figured it out? . . . And Sandeman never told you?”
“Never met the guy. He was kind of a deadbeat dad, ya get right down to it.” With each exchange now, she was narrowing the distance between them.
“A pity,” Bostock said. “He might've had some fatherly advice for you. He might have told you to be more careful.”
She squinted at him. “Am I in the same conversation? 'Cause I am definitely not following you, Franklin.”
His arm straightened, the gun aimed squarely at her forehead. “You're going to die, that's a given . . . but considering all the grief you've given us, perhaps you do deserve to know just how badly you failed.”
She moved another half step.
“That's far enough,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a gesture of the pistol.
She halted. “How did I fail?”
He smiled, almost fondly. “Max, Max . . . you were the one . . . the one!”
“The . . . one.”
“The chosen one, the new messiah!”
“Me. I'm Jesus.”
“Yes. And how sad to die so close to one's birthday.”
The guy was raving; even for a snake-cult practitioner, Bostock was 'round the bend. Max wasn't sure h
ow much longer she could stall . . .
“Then maybe after you kill me,” she said, “I'll be back in seven days . . .”
“I don't think so. This is a Christmas tale, Max . . . not Easter. So here's a gift: your ‘father,' White's real father, the fabled Sandeman, he got Manticore pulled out from under him by a clandestine organization inside the government.”
“That much I know.”
Bostock went on as if she hadn't spoken. “But before he left, before Colonel Lydecker and the others took over, he made one special child. You, Max.”
“Well. Maybe my daddy did love me.”
“In his way I'm sure he did. He did something very special for you, Max—he spared you any junk DNA . . . You're the only person—ordinary or transgenic or even Familiar—on this entire planet who is like that. Even all the other Manticore freaks, like pretty boy here, and Jo Jo the dog-face boy . . . they have some flawed DNA. But not yours.”
“And this makes me the Messiah how?”
Bostock frowned at her, as if he was dealing with an imbecile. “You still don't see the bigger picture? A pity Sandeman didn't put a few more grains of IQ into that test tube.”
She just looked at him. With a Christmas fruitcake like this, what was there to say?
Bostock, his voice hushed, asked, “Do you know about the Coming?”
Oh boy.
“. . . The Coming?” she said. “Y'know, considering I'm the Messiah and all, you'd think I would . . . but why don't you fill me in.”
Bostock's eyes showed white all around. “The Coming is the end for most . . . but the beginning for our people. Thousands of years of breeding have gone into preparing us for survival from the Coming.”
“You still haven't told me what the Coming is.”
He raised his chin and the eyes had a wild cast. “When the comet comes, it will signify the end of the old . . . and the beginning of a brand new world.”
Ames White's words echoed in her mind: I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world.
“This comet,” Max said, “when . . .”
Bostock gestured to the ceiling . . . the sky . . . with his free hand. “It's visible once every 2021 years—that means this year. The last time was—”
After the Dark Page 16