Won't Back Down: Won't Back Down

by Unknown

  Sometimes he had to remind himself why he had to keep living.

  *~*~*

  Liam hissed under his breath as he wrapped the bandages tight around the slash on his leg. "Shit, shit, shit." He had to stop himself from bleeding for medical reasons and because the blood would light him up like a beacon for a Dog's sense of smell.

  The Dog had been a messy fighter, as anticipated. It had little in the way of technique, though, so it should have been a simple takedown. But the handler Liam had knocked out had woken up in the middle of the fight and gotten off a few shots in the basement where Liam had cornered the Dog. Liam had been distracted enough to let the Dog claw up his calf before he'd managed to drop both Dog and handler.

  Now he'd have to loop back to where he'd stashed one of his first aid kits. At least he didn't have to clean up his knife, because he'd never gotten the chance to use it. The Dog hadn't cut him deep enough to hamstring him or cause any other semi-permanent damage, either, although it very well could have.

  None of the handler's shots had hit him. They all had guns, but they didn't seem to be trained well in combat. Liam had wondered sometimes when their superiors would start using former military personnel to accompany the Dogs. He would have selected his handlers by army or navy criteria, something that had only occurred to him after he'd fought for a year or two. Maybe that was the problem. If the individuals in charge had no combat experience of their own, they might not understand that their handlers should be as suited to the job as their Dogs.

  Liam tucked the gun he'd set down back into his belt and stood up, testing his leg. It would hold him long enough to reach the kit, where the high-tech equipment provided by his contact would heal the superficial slash within a few hours. It had to. He couldn't afford the time it would take to rest and let it heal on his own.

  *~*~*

  Universal Biotech's corporate headquarters matched investors' expectations. Sunlight gleamed off the multitude of windows, the building laid out as a semicircle, slate blue where it wasn't glass. The color was deliberate. Blue had a calming influence on nervous stockholders.

  The driveway also curved in a half circle, with an archway above the double doors. The word Universal stood out proudly in silver letters at the end of the awning.

  Inside, the company name and logo were also lettered above the reception desk. The beige tiles underfoot coordinated with the cool colors of the walls: more blue, as well as some green and wood paneling. The color scheme suggested an environmentalist outlook, and that too was deliberate. Universal boasted of its eco-friendly policies at every opportunity.

  A hallway to the left of the reception desk stood invitingly open. Some corporations required visitors to be buzzed into any secure areas, but Universal claimed it had nothing to hide. The hall led to several small PR offices, and then to a bank of elevators. These doors were also paneled in light maple wood; the tile continued inside of them. The walls were painted light blue from the floor to waist height, where the mirrors began.

  Riding up to the fourth floor would take a guest to the boardroom and executive offices. The second held Universal's HR department and a forest of cubicles that bloomed with motivational posters and family photographs. Half of the basement was taken up by the mailroom and file storage departments. The other half was an extension of the third floor Research and Development department.

  Cameron Doyle rode the elevator down from the fourth floor to the third. Most people, including many Universal employees, assumed the Research and Development teams kept their most secretive projects down in the basement labs. It suited Doyle that they went on believing it. He'd personally had the seeds of rumor planted here and there.

  The basement gave inspectors what they wanted to see. Biohazard signs in three different languages—English, Spanish, Chinese—had been placed on most of the doors down there. Genetically modified animals roamed in their pens, tanks, and cages, from the cancer-resistant mice to the pigs modified to grow human organs. Test animal fetuses grew, half-formed and grotesque to the untrained eye, in tanks that served as artificial wombs. The lighting in the basement was stark and fluorescent, illuminating plain white walls.

  On the other hand, the third floor had been built to be bright and open, with large windows to let the sun spill in. Doyle strolled through the maze of equipment and, of course, the computer terminals. They could each sequence a DNA strand within a day, and Universal had twenty-five of them in this office alone.

  He stopped by one computer station. "Sam, I hear your daughter's gotten engaged."

  The man glanced up from his work and smiled. "She did, just this weekend."

  "Congratulations," Doyle said and then added wryly, "Time to pay a hundred dollars a head for the reception dinner."

  The man laughed. "Oh, Doyle, don't remind me."

  Doyle made small talk with another engineer and a lab assistant who'd just made a down payment on a new apartment. Then he had a brief chat with the assistant head of the Canis Project and turned to walk down a hallway containing offices which, according to the more public records, belonged to the department's middle management.

  Some of the offices, set up for show rather than any real administrative work, actually contained faux-cherry wood desks, inspirational posters, and framed photos of spouses and kids. All of the rooms, including these, required six-digit passcodes and fingerprint verification to enter. It was standard procedure, so it wouldn't seem strange when those involved with the Canis Project had to scan their thumbs and tap at the keypads.

  Doyle pressed his thumb to the pad outside a door toward the end of the hall and typed in his override validation code. As the head of Canis, he had access to every part of the facility. This particular room, and all the others used to house the Dogs, had been furnished like a dormitory: it held a cabinet full of care supplies, a computer console, a simple bed, and a pair of metal chairs.

  A blonde woman looked up when the door opened. "Steady, boy," she soothed the Dog who sat cross-legged at her feet. He'd bared his teeth a little at Doyle and didn't seem to settle much when the woman carded her fingers through his long, black dreadlocks. His watchful hazel eyes remained on Doyle as he stepped inside and closed the door.

  "Good afternoon, Ms. Cabrera." Doyle tipped her a courteous nod.

  "Mr. Doyle," April Cabrera replied, returning the nod. She continued stroking the Dog's hair absently.

  "I'll get right down to it." Doyle took a seat on one of the chairs across from the bed where April perched. "I want to send Forty-Eight after one of the Slayers."

  April frowned and let the Dog's dark hair slip over her fingers. The Dog accepted her caresses without leaning either into it or away, his eyes turning away from Doyle to stare at the far wall. "I don't know, Mr. Doyle. He's still not bonding well."

  "But he did pass all of his examinations with flying colors," Doyle pointed out. "He performs cleanly, and he's exceptionally bright."

  "Sometimes too bright. Are you sure he'll be able to perform in the field?" April asked. She settled a hand on the Dog's shoulder, brushing a thumb against his arm. He glanced at it, then at Doyle again.

  "Of course he will. It's what he's made for," said Doyle. "No Dog is going to refuse an order to kill, Ms. Cabrera."

  *~*~*

  Liam knew they would send another Dog after him, or possibly more than one, though he hadn't called his contact again to verify. They usually sent three teams in a row and then seemed to take a hiatus to regroup. Occasionally they would send all three after him in a pack; Liam hoped that they wouldn't this time. He'd broken a rib the last time he'd tried fighting all three at once, and he'd only taken one down before bolting. On rainy days his side still ached.

  After he'd taken care of his leg, he'd gone to ground in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the river, right where it widened. This time he'd planned a trap to confuse the Dogs so he'd be able to pick them off one by one if they did set a pack on him. His contact had once recommended this warehouse as
a decent place to lie low and wait for a fight; Liam had investigated it and agreed.

  The building loomed like a crouching giant by the water. Out back, a receiving dock for loading and unloading cargo had been half-sunk and coated with dark green algae. Someone had tied a boat to one of the dock's remaining posts, a rowing boat, not one of the sleek, silver pleasure crafts that zipped down the river during the day. It had an outboard motor lashed to the back in case speed became more important than stealth.

  Ironically, the warehouse had once belonged to Universal, one of the three companies most likely to have taken Alex from him. Liam glanced up at the silver lettering above the huge truck doors. The letters had been tarnished to gray. The I, V, and S had fallen off or been stolen, leaving the word UNERAL with gaps between the remaining letters. Liam thought grimly that it fit: it almost spelled out the word FUNERAL.

  He opened the smaller door next to the shipping bays. Inside, two-story shelves stretched up to the bare beams of the ceiling. The electrical systems didn't work; wires hung loose and foreboding from the walls, from little, colorful cords to gray cables as wide around as Liam's wrist. All the dim light filtered in through the tiny windows that marched around the entire room, just below the ceiling. Besides the ones still on the shelves, huge metal boxes lay scattered at intervals on the floor. The entire building carried a strong smell of dust and mildew.

  Liam had already marked the best places to hide when he'd visited the first time, and he'd make use of one of them soon enough. He hauled himself up onto one of the boxes and pulled a metal box out of his pocket. He opened it, pulling out a second box, and then a small glass bottle.

  It had originally been used for perfume, but now the shell-shaped vial held a potent combination of skunk oil and a mix of several different undiluted spice oils. Liam grimaced. He could smell it even from the outside.

  Holding his breath, he twisted off the lid. He pulled a cloth from another of his utility vest's pockets and poured some of the oil onto it. Then he lifted his feet, one at a time, and wiped the cloth over the soles of his boots.

  He had to breathe. He gagged at the stench as he screwed the bottle shut, tucked it back into its pair of boxes, then shot a quick look around and jumped down from his crate. Carefully he dragged his feet as he walked to the far side of the warehouse. He'd lay plenty of other trails, too, around the perimeter and among the shelves. A Dog, which relied on its enhanced sense of smell, would have a hard time tracking him in here. With any luck he could catch it reeling at the scent. Even to him the place reeked of it, and his nose was only a tenth as powerful as a Dog's.

  When he'd finished, Liam kicked his boots into a blind corner surrounded by boxes seven or eight feet high. To a Dog's nose, that would read as the primary source of the smell. It would find the shoes and give Liam time to hunt down and kill its handler.

  With the trap in place, Liam stole into his hiding place, kneeling in the shadow of a towering shelf. He checked his latest temporary phone: quarter to nine. Sometimes the handlers brought the Dogs out during the day, but most of the time they waited until night had fallen. Liam had a strong feeling that tonight, they'd attack in the dark.

  He might have a long wait ahead of him. He licked his dry lips and pulled his Chapstick from one of his vest pockets. Before he'd come to the warehouse he'd eaten on the fly, an energy bar picked up from a nearby convenience store, plus a few gulps of Gatorade to keep him going. He'd most often fought Dogs between the hours of nine and three in the morning, but aside from that estimate, he had no clear idea when they would track him down.

  Forty-five minutes into his vigil, Liam's calf muscles started to cramp. Inch by silent, painful inch, he shifted position to a ready crouch that would stretch his aching legs.

  Even he wouldn't be able to hold that crouch for long, but the feeling had become a certainty, an insistent tingle at the back of his mind. When he heard the faint sound of a car engine outside, he knew he'd been right. His hand twitched toward his gun, but then he reached for the knife instead. With a soft shing of metal, he slid it out of the sheath at his hip.

  Not a minute later, the steel door Liam had used to get into the warehouse swung open with a creak. Liam held his breath as he heard the metal clank of a Dog's footstep on the concrete. He heard a quick inhalation as the Dog scented the air, and then a low, pained whine. The footsteps became uncertain, uneven: clank clank… clank as the Dog stepped forward and turned around. The oil had done its job and confused it.

  Waiting any longer would be foolhardy. Liam had a clear path to the nearest emergency exit, which he'd tested long before to make sure the alarm wouldn't sound. Still crouched down, Liam moved quickly through the shadows.

  From here he couldn't see the Dog, and more importantly, the shelves shielded Liam from its view. His grip on his knife tightened as he crossed the last few steps. He'd take out the handler, who'd be waiting in the car, and then he'd take care of the Dog itself. The creature would be disoriented with its handler gone; not easy to kill, but it would put up less of a fight.

  Liam reached for the door, and the Dog hit him like a wall of steel. All Liam saw was a blur of black and a glint of metal, a hint of pale human skin. Both of them went down, with the Dog on top.

  The wind knocked out of him, Liam could only lash out blindly. He drew his legs up to his chest and kicked out hard. The Dog jerked back with a growl but lunged immediately for him again. Liam had already grabbed for his gun. He slashed at the Dog with the knife while he pulled the gun out of his belt.

  The Dog recoiled from the swipe, and then hit Liam again, low. Liam got off a wild shot that ricocheted off the ceiling and then he was on the floor, trying to get the gun pointed at the Dog's head as he stabbed the knife brutally upward.

  A wave of fear washed through him, unexpected, and Liam froze before the blade made contact. One of the Dog's metal-clawed hands slammed down on his wrist. His gun went skittering across the floor with a clatter.

  "Fuck no," Liam spat.

  This Dog was stronger and faster than any he'd ever fought before. It almost seemed to anticipate Liam's movements. It had caught him on the way to the door even though he was sure no part of his clothing could have reflected the light and given him away. Even the blade of his knife had been low and concealed. It shouldn't have found him. Liam felt a surge of fury.

  He snarled and heaved the Dog off of him. He wouldn't let it end this way. Liam shoved himself up with a hand on the floor and ran. The Dog growled and came after him, its claws clacking on the floor.

  In mid-sprint, Liam caught hold of one of the shelves at head height and swung up to it, using his forward momentum to heave himself up. He shoved a smaller crate down and heard a yelp that made his breath hitch. That wouldn't have killed the Dog or even injured it seriously enough to incapacitate it. Liam turned and leaped, landing back on the floor on the other side of the shelf with a heavy grunt.

  He heard the Dog sniffing as he moved stealthily through the shadows. Quietly Liam slipped through the next shelf and circled around the other way, to the back of the warehouse. He hugged the wall and crept along it. Another door had been half hidden behind a crate here. Liam could fit through if he could just evade the Dog for long enough. He wanted to take out the handler so he wouldn't have to deal with another unexpected round of bullets.

  Electric sparks exploded from the wires in the wall. Liam shouted and jumped back just in time. The Dog bounded toward him from further along the back wall, snarling.

  Instead of defending and looking for an opportunity to run again, Liam launched an all-out attack. His knife rang against the steel of the Dog's claws as he met its blow like a cornered animal. The image of Alex's face stayed steady at the forefront of Liam's mind; he knew what he was fighting for. He couldn't give up.

  Liam forced the Dog toward the corner where he'd abandoned his boots. He hoped the stench would overwhelm its sensitive nose. Its movements did become jerkier as it stepped back, then it stopped and sho
ok its head hard. Long, dark hair flew, mingled with odd white strands that showed bright in the darkness.

  Without hesitation, Liam swept his leg hard at its calves. The Dog yipped and went down, and this time Liam tackled it with a grunt. It hit the floor in a loud clash of metal, but its lean muscles flexed hard and it rolled them. Liam found himself pinned underneath the Dog a second time with its claws driving right toward his eyes. "No," Liam choked. He couldn't let his twin down this way, not now, not again. "Alex!"

  The claws stopped. They glittered a centimeter away Liam's face.

  The Dog said "Liam."

  Dogs didn't speak. They didn't speak in his dead brother's—his dead lover's—voice. "Oh, no, no." Liam's grip went slack on the Dog's forearms, and the claws clanked as they hit the floor on either side of his head; they joined the clatter of Liam's knife as it fell from his nerveless fingers. For the first time, he got a look at the Dog's face. "No," Liam whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse.

  He stared up into the wide hazel eyes, green touched with brown flecks. His gaze traveled to the high arch of the cheekbones, to the line of the jaw, to the flared nostrils and the dark locks spilling over the familiar curve of the ears that poked out through the strands. He hadn't looked himself in the mirror for a long time, and it had been even longer since he'd seen Alex's face in person, but he would never, ever forget it.

  "Liam," the Dog whispered.

  Liam lifted a hand. It hadn't started to shake because none of this had sunk in yet. He reached up and touched the thin leather collar around the Dog's slim neck, which was emblazoned with silver numbers: 48-3. He carded through the pure black dreadlocks, set between loose falls of black hair. Alex would like those, Liam thought numbly. Dreadlocks, like the ones Liam had worn before he'd been caught up in his role as a Slayer.