The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  Chips of tile flew, sliced at her exposed skin as she rolled. There was another jolt of pain, a pinch at her hip. She caught sight of Roarke battling two, hand to hand. And more were coming.

  She clamped her knife between her teeth, thumbed to maximum blast, and flipped her clutch piece out of its holster. She somersaulted back, took one of Roarke’s opponents out, cursed when she couldn’t get a clear shot of the other, then began to fire two-handed, like a mad thing, at what remained standing.

  Then Roarke was beside her, kneeling beside her. “Fire in the hole,” he said, dead calm, and heaved the miniboomer in his hand.

  He grabbed her, shoved her back, and threw his body over hers.

  The blast punched at her eardrums. She heard, dimly, shards of tile raining down. Then only her own labored breaths.

  “Get off, get off!” If there was panic now, it was for him, so she pushed, shoved, rolled him away, then snatched at him again. He was breathing hard now, and he was bleeding.

  A gash at the temple, a slice that had gone through the leather of his coat just above the elbow.

  “How bad? How bad?”

  “Don’t know.” He shook his head to clear it. “You? Aw, fuck them,” he said, viciously, when he saw the blood running down her arm, seeping through her pants at the hip.

  “Dings mostly. Mostly dings. Backup’s coming. Help’s coming.”

  He looked her dead in the eyes, and he smiled. “And we’re just going to sit here and wait for the cavalry, are we?”

  The smile loosened the sweaty fist around her heart. “Hell, no.”

  She pushed herself up, offered him her hand. What she saw around them made her stomach pitch and her heart shrivel. They’d been flesh, blood, bone. They’d been boys. Now they were pieces of meat.

  She shut herself down, began to gather weapons. “We don’t know what else we’ve got coming. Take all you can carry.”

  “Bred for war, that’s what they were,” Roarke said softly. “They had no choice. They gave us no choice.”

  “I know that.” She shouldered on two combat rifles. “And we’re going to exterminate, destroy, decimate what bred them.”

  Roarke hefted one of the weapons. “Urban War era. If they’d been better equipped and more experienced, we’d be dead.”

  “You had boomers. You had illegal explosives.”

  “Well, be prepared, I say.” He aimed the rifle at one of the cameras, blasted it. “You’ve only used one of these a couple of times in sims down in the target gallery.”

  “I can handle it.” She aimed, took out a second camera.

  “No doubt.”

  From their position, Diana looked over her shoulder. “It sounds like a war.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s keeping it off our backs.” For now, she thought. She’d estimated she’d had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of tonight alive. Now she had to survive. She had to get it done and get Diana to safety.

  But her palms were sweating, and that only lowered the odds. Avril had been the only person she’d ever loved. Now even that strong current was tame beside the tidal wave of emotion that swept her. Diana was hers.

  Nothing was ever going to touch her child again.

  So she prayed that the data she and Avril had accessed was still valid. Prayed that whatever was behind them would wait until she got through the doors marked GESTATION.

  Prayed that her courage wouldn’t fail.

  At last the light glowed green. She heard the swish of air as the doors opened into an airlock. What she saw through it, through the glass, drained the heart out of her.

  She made herself go in, made herself look.

  While her vision blurred with tears, the monster, dead for a decade, stepped into the white stream of light.

  Jonah Delecourt Wilson was fit and handsome and no more than thirty. In his arms he carried a sleeping infant. One hand held a stunner and was pressed to the child’s throat.

  At his feet was the body of a young Wilfred Icove.

  “Welcome home, Deena. It’s a testament to both of us that you got this far.”

  Instinctively Deena pushed Diana behind her.

  “Saving yourself?” He laughed, and turned the baby to the light. “Which one of yourself will you sacrifice? Infant, child, woman? Fascinating conundrum, isn’t it? I need you to come with me now. We don’t have much time.”

  “You killed your partner?”

  “Despite all the work, all the adjustment, all the improvement, he proved to be inherently flawed. He objected to some of our most recent advances.”

  “Let her go. Give the baby to Diana, and let them go. I’ll go with you.”

  “Deena, understand I’ve terminated my closest associate, the man—well, men, as there are two more of him equally dead—who shared my vision for decades. Do you think I’d hesitate to kill any of you?”

  “No. But it’s wasteful to kill the children. It’s wasteful to terminate me, when you can take me, use me. Study me.”

  “But you’re flawed, you see. As Wilfred proved to be in the end. And you’ve cost me beyond measure. All this, about to be destroyed. Two generations of progress. Fortunately, I have countless generations to rebuild it, improve it, then see it flourish. You’ll all come with us, and be a part of that. Or you’ll all die here.”

  Another stepped out of the opposite door, and had a sleepy toddler by the hand. “Keep your hands up,” he ordered her, and stepped forward.

  “Transportation’s waiting for those selected,” the first told her.

  “What of the rest?”

  “Once we’re clear? Fail-safe. A difficult sacrifice. But we understand difficult choices, don’t we? We have all the records we need, and the funds, the time to rebuild. Move forward.”

  As she did, Diana pulled the laser scalpel out of her pocket and aimed it at the eyes of the one holding the toddler.

  The little girl screamed, and began to wail when the man holding her hand convulsed and fell. Equipment exploded as Diana swung the beam. Even as Wilson returned fire, Deena shoved Diana to the ground, then dove toward the younger child. As she scooped the toddler up, spun, she saw Wilson, and the infant, were gone.

  “Take her.” She pushed the screaming child—her child—into Diana’s arms. “You’ve got to take her. I’ve got to go after him. Don’t argue! Just listen. Someone must be trying to get through—all the fire we heard.”

  “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing.” Deena dismissed the burn on her shoulder, and pushed past the pain. “You get her to safety. I know you can. I know you will.” She pulled Diana into her arms, kissed her, kissed the little girl. “I have to stop him. Now go!”

  She sprang up, ran out of the nightmare, and into hell. Diana struggled to her feet under the weight of the child. She had the laser still, she thought, and would use it again if she had to.

  21

  THEY SHOULD SPLIT UP. TIME-SAVING, MORE efficient, but the risks were too many. Her hip was a low, continual scream, but Eve kept moving, kept moving.

  At every fork, every turn, every doorway, she braced for the next assault.

  “There may be little else in direct defense. You’d assume with the level of security above, and the defense here, no one would get through.”

  Rather than finesse, he blasted the locks on a door marked EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES.

  “Mother of Christ,” he whispered as they saw what was in the room.

  Medical trays, preservation drawers, tanks filled with clear liquid. In them were fetuses at various stages of development. All were deformed.

  “Defects,” Eve managed while her blood ran cold. “Failures or defective results, stopped when defects were observed.” She studied the electronic charts. Something worse than sickness was clogged in her throat.

  “Or they were allowed to develop further, even created this way, so they could be studied. Experimented on,” she said, swallowing bile. “Kept viable until they were no longer useful.”

  T
here was nothing viable there now. No hearts beat in the room but hers and Roarke’s.

  “Someone’s turned off the life systems here, all of them.”

  “There have to be more.”

  “Eve.” Roarke kept his back turned to what couldn’t be changed, couldn’t be saved, and studied the equipment. “They haven’t just been turned off. It’s on a Yellow Alert.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Might be a level for the security breach, automated as you suggested. Or it could be a holding pattern before Red, and self-destruct.”

  She spun back. “Deena couldn’t have gotten that far ahead of us. She’s not that damn good. If . . . Someone else set it.”

  “Bury it,” Roarke said. “Bury all this and everything in it rather than have it taken.”

  “Can you abort?”

  He was working, manually, through his scanner. And shook his head. “Not from here at any rate. This isn’t the source.”

  “Then we find it, and whoever’s running this show, before it goes to Red.”

  She turned, pushed through the doors.

  In the white tunnel outside, she saw Diana standing with her hand gripped on a younger, smaller version of herself. In her other hand was a laser scalpel.

  “I know how to use it,” Diana said.

  “Bet.” And Eve knew exactly what it felt like to have the beam slice through flesh. “But that would be pretty damn stupid as we’ve come to get you the hell out of here. Where’s Deena? Has she set for self-destruct?”

  “He did. She went after him. He had a baby.” She glanced at the sniffling toddler. “Our baby sister.”

  “Who did she go after?”

  “Wilson. He had her.” She lifted the toddler’s hand a fraction. “Her name’s Darby. I killed him, one of him, with this. I set it on full and aimed at his eyes. I killed him.”

  “Good for you. Show me where they went.”

  “She’s tired.” Diana looked down at Darby. “I think they gave her something to make her sleepy. She can’t run.”

  “Here.” Roarke stepped forward. “I’ll take her. I won’t hurt her.”

  Diana studied his face. “I’ll have to kill you if you try.”

  “That’s a deal. More help’s coming.” He hoisted the child.

  “They better get here soon. This way. Hurry.”

  She went off in a sprint.

  Eve loped behind her, shoving her back at splits and turns until she’d checked for the all-clear.

  The Gestation area was still unsecured. Diana bounded right in, and for the second time Eve had shock slap her back.

  The room was full of chambers, interlocked and stacked like the inside of a hive. In each chamber a fetus floated, in thick, clear liquid. A tube—she supposed to replicate an umbilical cord—attached each one to a mass she assumed was artificial placenta. Each chamber held an electronic chart and monitor, recording respiration, heartbeat, brain waves, listing the date of conception, the donor, and the date listed for Quiet Birth.

  She jolted back when one of the occupants turned, like an alien fish swimming in strange waters.

  There was a record as well of stimuli. Music played, voices, languages, and the continual beat of a heart.

  There were dozens of them.

  “He killed Icove.” Diana gestured to the bodies on the floor. “This Icove anyway. He’s going to destroy it.”

  “What?”

  “He’s going to take what he wants, the ones he’s picked, and destroy everything else. Deena was going to destroy it, but she couldn’t.” Diana looked around. “We came in here, and we knew she couldn’t. She went that way, after him. One of them. There may be more than two.”

  “Get them out of here.” She swung to Roarke. “Get them up and out.”

  “Eve.”

  “I can’t do both. I need you to do this. I need you to get them to safety. Fast.”

  “Don’t ask me to leave you here.”

  “You’re the only one I can ask.” She gave him a long last look. Then she rushed in the direction Deena had taken.

  She passed into a lab, what she realized was a conception area. Life was being created in clear dishes in smaller chambers than the ones in Gestation. Electrodes hummed bloodlessly.

  Beyond that was a preservation area. Refrigeration units, every one labeled. Names, dates, codes. There were operating rooms, examination cubes.

  She came to a door, saw another corridor, another tunnel beyond. Stepping into it, she swept her weapon, and spun back inside as a laser stream blasted the wall.

  She swung the rifle off her shoulder—braced it so she could fire it with one hand—and gripped her blaster in the other. She sent out a stream of fire, right, left, right, then dove out, firing right again.

  She saw the man fall, white lab coat spreading up like wings. As she rolled, she caught a secondary movement and fired blindly left.

  There was a howl, more of rage than pain. She saw she’d winged him, that he was down, crawling, dragging his useless leg behind him.

  She let some of her fury free when she reached him, and kicked him hard over on his back.

  “Doctor fucking Wilson, I presume.”

  “You can’t stop it, it’s inevitable. Hyperevolution, man’s right to immortality.”

  “Save the hype, ’cause it’s done. And you’re getting mortal all over the place. Where’s Deena?”

  He grinned, young, handsome. And, Eve thought, completely mad. “Which one of her?”

  She heard the scream, desperate and terrified. “No!” To save time, she used the butt of her stunner and knocked him unconscious. She yanked off the security card he wore around his neck.

  She sprinted toward the sound and caught just a flicker of Deena rushing a doorway.

  It was marked STAGE ONE NURSERY, and through the glass Eve could see clear bins holding infants.

  When she saw Wilson inside, a weapon jammed under the soft jaw of an infant, she pulled up short. If she blasted inside, he’d kill. Deena possibly, the infant almost certainly.

  She scanned the corridor, looking for options. She saw doors marked STAGE TWO NURSERY, and beside them STAGE THREE, and felt her blood curdle.

  The kid was tireless, Roarke thought. She’d run, full out, down nearly a mile of corridor. He was only able to keep pace with sheer grit. Blood dripped into his eyes, seeped from his arm, and the little girl he carried weighed like lead by the time they’d reached the elevator.

  So did the fear at the base of his stomach.

  “I know how to get out. It’ll take too long for you to take us all the way, try to get back. Nobody tried to stop us. Nobody’s going to bother with us now.”

  He made his decision fast. “Straight up and out. I have a car outside, ER lot. It’s a black ZX-5000.”

  For an instant, she looked like what she was. A near-teenage girl. “Iced.”

  “Take her, take the code.” He pulled a key card out of his pocket. “Swear to me, Diana, on your mother’s life, that you’ll go to the car, get in the car, lock it. You’ll stay there, both of you, inside it until we come.”

  “You’re bleeding a lot. You’re bleeding because you tried to stop it, you tried to help. And she sent you with us, like Deena sent me with Darby.” She reached out for the child. “So I swear, on Deena’s life, my mother’s life, I’ll lock us in the car and wait.”

  “Take this.” He gave her the earpiece. “When you’re safely outside, you put this on, and tell the man on the other side where we are, how to get where we are.”

  He hesitated, then gave her a stunner. “Don’t use that unless you have no choice.”

  “Nobody’s trusted me before.” She jammed the stunner in her pocket. “Thank you.”

  When the door shut, he began to run.

  Eve bellied over to Stage Two, used the card she’d taken to open the doors.

  Inside were five cribs. The children in them—hell, what did she know? A few months, a year. Even in sleep they were monitored.
>
  As were the children she could see beyond—Stage Three—who slept on narrow cots in a kind of dormitory style. Fifteen, Eve counted.

  The doors connecting the sections required no card. At least not from the Stage Two area. She could see Deena inside One, her hands in the air. Her mouth was moving. Eve didn’t need to hear the words to know they were pleas. It was all over her face.

  Get him to put the kid down, Eve thought. Get him to lower the stunner, one damn inch for one damn instant. It’s all I need.

  She nearly took her chances, but saw the speaker system by the door. Engaging it, she listened.

  “There’s no point. There’s no point. Please, give her to me.”

  “There’s every point. Over forty years of work and progress, and hundreds of Superiors. You were a great hope, Deena. One of our finest accomplishments, and you threw it away. For what?”

  “For choice, of living, of dying. I’m not the only, I’m not the first. How many of us have self-terminated because we couldn’t go on existing, knowing what you’d made of us.”

  “Do you know what you were? Street garbage, a nit, nothing more. Already in pieces when they brought you to us. Even Wilfred couldn’t put you back together. We saved you. Again and again and again. We improved you. Perfected you. You exist because I permitted it. That can end now.”

  “No!” She jerked forward when he jammed the stunner harder under the baby’s jaw. “It won’t gain you anything. It’s over, you know it’s over. You can still get away. You can still live.”

  “Over?” His face was bright with excitement. A fever. “Barely begun. In another century what I’ve created will be existence for the human race. I’ll be there to see it. Death is no longer an obstacle for me. But for you . . .”

  He swung the stunner up, and Eve was through the door. Before she could fire, he swung the baby up like a shield, and dove with it.

  She hit the floor, rolled to avoid a stream that blasted the doors behind her. The air burst with the wails of infants, the shriek of alarms.

  “This is the police.” She shouted it over the din, and bellied to cover. “This facility is shut down. Throw out your weapon, put the kid down.”

  The comp unit just over her head shattered with another blast.