by James Moore
This was going to hurt like hell.
They were trying to be quiet, but they were failing. The sounds that three people walking made might be missed by most people—especially in a crisis where there were sirens and alarm bells making enough noise to drive a person half mad—but Joe wasn’t like most people. He’d spent years listening, studying the sounds around him in almost every environment. He heard them as they carefully came toward him, and more importantly, he smelled them. He knew their scents from earlier. Gabby was among them. Not Gabby, but his Other. The strong one, who knew the right words to force him to sleep.
If he weren’t an Alpha, it was possible that Gabby’s Other would have been able to put him to sleep with only a thought. He could have projected the catchphrase into Joe’s mind and made him fall into the nothing that existed when Hunter was free. At least that was what he’d been told once by the man who’d told him all about the rest of the Failures before he’d been forced to kill him.
Even if Gabby had been able to force the command phrase into his mind under most circumstances, the idiots had taken care of that for him when they drugged him. He couldn’t hear his own people and they couldn’t hear him. That also meant that Gabby’s Hyde couldn’t hear his mental thoughts.
And that meant there was only one way to get the words into Joe’s mind. The old-fashioned way: by speaking.
With that in mind, Joe braced himself for the pain and shoved the darts into his ears, forcing himself to go against his own instincts for self-preservation until he felt the needle tips burst his eardrums. There was an explosion of pain (and he thought he might have screamed), then there was complete silence.
And then they were coming around the corner, charging him, furious at him for what he had already done to their friends.
Like he cared.
Joe grinned and charged them with the same fury. They’d taken from him too. They’d stolen his new friends from him, taken his voice and his power, and they’d beaten him down. He could have forgiven almost anything, but the last was a sin he could not let go unpunished.
It’s said that in times of extreme stress, the world seems to slow down: adrenaline drives the senses into overdrive and the sensory input is so intense that the mind can barely take it all in. There had been very few occasions in Subject Seven’s life where that was true; this moment was one of them. Despite being deafened, he was aware of everything around him.
They came toward him with bared teeth, flared nostrils and wide, dilated eyes that saw everything as well as he did. The weapons in their hands were designed to kill, not to stun.
Gabby’s Other was screaming, but the words were lost on Joe. Gabby’s mouth moved and he bellowed the words with harsh breaths, but to no avail.
The boy faltered for a moment, uncertain why his command phrase was failing.
Joe took aim as his “brother” hesitated. He fired at the subordinate male on the left of the leader. The one who was firing back at him.
Both of them were too close to make ducking even a remote possibility. Seven let out a yelp as the bullet caught him across his cheek, slashing his face. The boy was cocky. He went for a head shot.
Joe fired at the chest. He hit clean and watched the boy fly backward as the force of the bullet threw him into reverse. He only had a few choices. He could jump to one side, drop low, go high or charge straight ahead. He dropped low and let himself hit the ground as the bullets cut a path where he had been only a second before. From his angle on the ground, he fired at the pretty blonde girl looking at him. She bore a resemblance to Not-Kyrie, but that was hardly surprising. They were all from the same basic genetic stock, weren’t they?
Two bullets hit the girl. One in the ribs and one in the throat. She smashed into the closest wall and left a thick tide of blood dripping down the paint. Joe didn’t dare let himself think about her. There was still Gabby’s Other to consider.
The boy kicked him in the face hard enough to bust his nose and very possibly break a bone or two. It was hard to say for certain.
The gun dropped from Joe’s hand. He looked up just in time to see Gabby’s Hyde kicking at his face again. No time to block, so he lowered his head and felt the steel-toed boot bounce off the top of his skull. The pain was immediate and intense. He couldn’t let that stop him. The only reason he was alive was because Gabby was too angry to think. If he took two steps back, he could have shot Joe and there would have been nothing Joe could have done to stop him.
Instead he tried kicking a third time, and Joe launched himself from his prone position, driving into the other boy with all of his strength and screaming and snapping and clawing with his fingers.
Gabriel Hope was a well-trained combatant. His Doppelganger shared all of the combat knowledge and had the strength and reflexes to make him formidable indeed. He defended himself well, blocking with efficient blows that would have staggered a heavyweight boxer.
Subject Seven—Joe—had spent five years on the streets, on his own, making a living any way he could, and that often meant fighting men twice his size in street brawls for cash. He had also had to defend himself from literally hundreds of people over the years who wanted to take what was his from him and didn’t understand that his willingness to fight back was second only to his raw strength and savagery.
Rafael defended himself again and again, while Joe attacked relentlessly, pushing the other boy backward with repeated blows and sheer brute force.
Rafael smashed an elbow into Joe’s chin and throat and would have crushed his windpipe if Joe hadn’t turned his head in time. In response, Joe raked his fingers across Rafael’s face, his nails scratching both of the other boy’s eyes and leaving red welts across his face.
Rafael screamed, momentarily blinded, and Joe cut loose on him. He grabbed the other boy’s hair and shoved his head into the wall with a resounding thump. As the Other tried to recover, Joe did it again and again until finally Rafael sagged, stunned beyond his ability to regenerate.
There was no time to think. If he thought, there was a chance that Hunter would resurface and fight him and he could not allow that. Instead Joe ran back down the hallway and grabbed the gun he’d been carrying before.
“You could have stopped this, Evelyn!” He could barely hear himself, but by the scratch in his throat he knew he was yelling. “You could have worked something out with me! You did this! This is all your fault!” He meant the words, too. He’d wanted his freedom. He’d been naive to think she would forgive him, but he’d been willing to let the past go in exchange for simply getting rid of Hunter. He’d have been satisfied with that, despite his hatred for the woman who’d been his captor for most of his life. He’d have let go of his grudge against her if she’d been willing to help him. Now it had come to this. There were so many things he wanted, but he could have accepted a compromise.
His heart pounded and adrenaline sang through his body and made him shake. His body ached from repeated gunshot wounds and from the battering he’d received at Gabby’s hands.
“What happens to little Gabby when I blow this bastard’s head off, Mommy? You gonna bring him back? You miss Bobby? Say goodbye to the other one!”
His mouth was bared and spittle fell from his lips. He reached down and grabbed Gabby’s Other, smelling the scent of Evelyn Hope’s perfume past the smell of blood and violence and sweat. The boy was covered with her scent, and that notion fueled his anger as little else could have.
He shoved the gun against Gabby’s temple.
“Hey, Mommy! This one’s just for you!”
Joe pulled the trigger.
Chapter Fifty-One
Evelyn Hope
SHE WANTED TO BELIEVE it was a joke or a modified piece of footage. She wanted desperately to believe that she was dreaming, but the feeling of her hands dragging down her face and clutching at the chain that held a single tooth and a wedding ring convinced her that she was awake and that what she had seen was reality.
There was no two way
s about it. There was no chance of error. Rafael fell to the floor with a gaping wound in his skull. She was a doctor. She knew the signs. He wasn’t unconscious. He was dead.
Rafael was dead.
Gabriel was dead.
Gabby was dead.
Her little boy was dead.
She looked at the monitor and stared past the ruined body to look instead at the wild-eyed boy who stared back at the camera mounted to the wall at ceiling height. He screamed and he smiled, and he held out the gun that had killed her baby boy, and he let it drop to the ground.
And then Subject Seven turned away from the camera and ran down the corridor.
Leaving Evelyn to stare at the remains of her family, dead and cooling on the floor of the world she had helped create.
She wanted so much to scream, but she could not find the breath to make a noise.
And George, God above love him, was there, urging her away from the cameras that showed her the destruction of everything that mattered to her.
She couldn’t feel her face, couldn’t catch a breath.
Couldn’t think or feel anything at all, because the truth was too big for her to escape.
Gabby was dead.
Bobby had killed him.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Sam Hall
ONE SECOND HANK WAS deadweight, and the next he shook violently and struggled until Sam set him on his feet.
“We’re leaving. I have him. I can feel him.”
“Feel who?” Theresa frowned and rechecked the clip on her pistol. Like it had somehow unloaded itself in the last fifteen seconds since the last time she’d checked it.
“Joe. He’s out there and coming here, but he’s going somewhere else first.”
“We should meet him.” That was Theresa again.
Not-Kyrie nodded her agreement. “Let’s go.”
“No.” Hank shook his head. “We need to get this elevator shaft open.”
“Car’s stuck.” Theresa shrugged as if that was the end of the matter.
“Then we have to get past it. I don’t care if we punch through the bottom of the damned thing, we have to get out of here.”
Sam stared hard at him, a cold feeling growing in his stomach. “Why?”
“Because Joe did a bad thing, and they’re going to kill us if they can.” Hank had a strange, faraway look on his face as he spoke. Like he wasn’t really with them but was looking elsewhere and just happened to hear them and respond.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam felt his temper rising. He didn’t like the way Hank was acting, not one bit. It made him nervous, and that in turn made him irritable.
Not-Kyrie lifted her hands. “Whatever. Help me with the damn doors.”
Hank reached out and grabbed at the sliding doors. They fought and groaned as he pushed, but he pushed back all the harder and slowly forced the doors to separate. When he’d finally made enough room for her, Not-Kyrie slipped through the opening and Theresa followed suit, bracing the open doors with her body. The doors wanted to close, but the body blocking them prevented it. Maybe someone had been cut in half by closing elevators doors in the past. Sam wasn’t really sure. After almost a minute the elevator started ringing with an alarm of its own, which was easily drowned out by all of the other noises.
“Sam, block the door, please. I think they’re sending guards for us.” Hank sounded a little more like himself—which is to say more like he was in the room with the rest of them, because his new voice still didn’t quite sound right. There was still a little bit of Cody in that voice.
Sam checked his pistol—eat your heart out, Theresa—and headed for the door to the small room. He looked to his left and almost got his head blown off by a bullet for his trouble. Four men in body armor were standing a distance away, and one of them had taken a shot at him.
“Hey, Theresa?”
“Yeah?” Her voice was muffled by the elevator alarm, but he heard her clearly enough.
“Got any more of those grenades?”
“What, are you high? Those things cost money. I was lucky to get one.” He looked over his shoulder and saw her looking back at him.
“Yeah, well, armed guards with big guns over here. I could use a little help.”
She let out a rude noise and pointed to Hank. “Come here and hold the damn door.”
Hank looked at her for a second and finally nodded, moving over to replace her. He moved slowly, painfully—but he moved.
She watched his eyes looking her over and grinned. “You better watch what you think about me or I’ll castrate you.”
“What?” Hank sounded too defensive.
“Just get the hell over here,” Sam said. He wasn’t in the mood to watch the two of them flirt, if that was what they were doing. He couldn’t quite tell, with Theresa.
Theresa rolled her eyes in his direction and stuck her tongue out but came over just the same.
“Which side?”
“Left.”
“You go high. I go low.” He nodded. “One. Two. Three.” They both leaned out of the door to the office at the same time and began firing. The people in the hallway did the same thing. They were wearing armor, but Sam and Theresa were mostly shielded by a wall. The sound of gunfire dwarfed every other noise for a moment.
One bullet hit a guard in the visor, and the back of his helmet exploded. He fell dead to the floor. Another of them took a bullet to the knee, and he screamed as he fell. The other two retreated, looking extremely nervous.
“Almost out of bullets here.” Sam looked at Theresa expectantly.
“Yeah, well, don’t come crying to me. I only got one spare clip left and I’m keeping it.”
“I’m a better shot.” It seemed like good logic to him.
“Hell you say. You see me take out the guy’s head?”
“Okay, seriously? That was me, and you know it.”
“It was not!” She had a shrill edge to her voice that made him want to scream, but he resisted the urge. “I got him fair and square.”
“You said you were going low.” Logic. He would win the day with logic.
“Not as low as you’re going by trying to claim my kill.” She clicked her tongue when she was disapproving, and he was rapidly learning to hate that noise. And unsettling as it was, he knew at that exact second that he’d made the right choice in saving Hank. Hank was like Theresa: part of his family, however warped that might be.
“Okay. You can keep the fresh clip. Give me the bullets left in your clip now so we can get the losers before they get to us.”
“Not a chance.”
She reached into her little bag again, which was now mostly empty. Inside was indeed another clip. There was also another pistol. She handed him the other weapon.
“Seriously? What the hell were we arguing here?”
“You being a loser.”
He had no answer to that, so instead he leaned back out the door and fired at the remaining guards. Theresa joined in, calling out insults as she did.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Not-Kyrie
NOT-KYRIE KNEW NOTHING at all about elevators. She studied the bottom of the car for several seconds as she perched on the ladder running along the elevator shaft’s wall. She decided she’d listen to Hank’s earlier advice and braced her feet as best she could on the metal rung and then beat at the floor of the elevator. The bottom was made of metal. After a few failed attempts to cause any damage, she finally got inventive. It cost her two fingernails to unfasten the tightened bolts on the bottom of the car, but after that she was able to peel back the metal and punch her fist through the flooring.
And as she was beating the elevator into submission, she contemplated exactly what the hell they were doing. This was supposed to be a chance to get answers. Instead Hank had been poisoned somehow, Joe had disappeared, and Not-Tina—No, she corrected herself, Theresa—had come up with a name. She’d been trusting Joe to give them a way to be free of their Others, and instead eve
rything had gone wrong. Maybe it was time to seriously consider whether or not he was the right person to lead this group.
Kyrie wanted to go home. She knew that much about her Other without having to think. It was starting to sound like a damned fine idea. They could work out an arrangement of some kind. Anything would be better than going from one violent conflict to another. Yes, there was a part of her that wanted the violence—part of her that got off on beating the crap out of anyone who annoyed her—but not all of her. She wanted to choose who she fought and when, not answer to the whims of the people with her.
Since Joe had awakened her, she’d been involved in conflicts. She’d driven a tractor trailer across the country to deliver enough weapons for an army to Joe, and after that there had been shots fired, bodies beaten and broken, and little else.
Well, except for a few hellacious parties. That part she liked, because Kyrie was quite the little angel and didn’t much think partying was a good idea.
She looked down at Hank far below her. “Got it.”
Hank looked back up at her, and she studied his face for a moment. He was different now. The stressed expression was gone from his face, and the harsh features she’d come to associate with him had softened a bit. More importantly, he wasn’t burning up from the inside anymore.
“We’re just waiting on Joe. I can feel him. He’s coming.”
“You doing okay now, Hank?”
He looked up at her for a moment before he answered. “I think so. I think it’s done.”
“What’s done?”
“Whatever was happening to me. I think I’m getting better.” He looked away from her. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Better get up here. Just in case it isn’t done with you.”
“Someone’s got to hold the door.”
She shook her head. “Break the damn thing.”
He stared at her as if the idea had never occurred to him. A moment later, he slammed his body against the door in its frame, and she heard the sound of metal crumpling into a new shape. Maybe Hank wasn’t as big as he’d been before, but he was still insanely strong.