Bloodshot

by Cherie Priest

  I counted, dividing by two and guessing at which office would be the right one. My first pick was clearly wrong; I almost let myself down into an empty room that was in the process of being remodeled.

  So I went with my next hunch and elbowed my way out of the vent, then caught it before it could hit the ground with a clatter. I’d have to be quiet. The action in the hall was escalating. More people had been called in, and people were shooting again—though I couldn’t tell what or whom they were trying to hit.

  A set of burly, dark shadows went hustling past the office door with its frosted-glass window inset. No one even glanced inside. Everyone was focused on the maniac holed up in room 443.

  I wished that maniac well and dropped myself down quietly … onto a rolly-wheeled office chair that nearly sent me skating smack into a wall, but didn’t quite.

  Recovering with haste but precious little dignity, I took a look around.

  Room 451 didn’t have Bruner’s name affixed to it anyplace that I could see—even in the reverse letters on the other side of the glass—so I felt somewhat better about having missed it the first time around. Instead, upon the pane had been painted the legend OFFICE OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOENGINEERING RESEARCH, which I thought was tacky, if more or less correct. It took me a few precious seconds to parse it because hey, I don’t read backward very well, okay?

  But I knew I was in the right place.

  The office was nothing to write home about. In the center squatted a desk covered with two large phones, a beige desktop computer, and one of those big paper calendars that you treat like a place mat, and behind the desk was a wall of dull gray filing cabinets, two of which had their handles either broken off or rusted off. On the floor beside the desk was a wastepaper basket that had, alas, been freshly emptied. And stuck between the far right filing cabinet and the wall was a duffel bag that turned out to be full of clothes … the kind of clothes a man keeps around when he occasionally spends the night at the office—socks, underwear, a clean shirt, and a shoe-polishing kit. The polishing kit struck me as a little anal-retentive, but who am I to judge?

  Something kept me rooted to the spot, staring at the certificates of commendation that were framed on the walls and wondering what kind of man could do the kinds of things he’d done. Did he not understand that the undead were people, too? Or did he disagree? Had a vampire bitten someone he cared about? Was he just a psychotic fucker who would destroy anyone he fancied?

  Nothing gave me an answer. Not the cup full of mismatched pens and pencils, or the brown coffee mug without so much as a logo on it.

  I went to the wall of cabinets and started with the one farthest from the door. With one ear on the commotion in the hallway (certain that at any second someone would hear me and come busting in), I began to pull them open—locked, all of them, but they all came loose with a twist of my pick, which was quieter than the yank-and-break method—and I started to dig.

  Most of what I found, I didn’t understand. Code names, project names, and numbers … all of it swam together. I forced my eyes open and concentrated hard. In the fifth drawer I found a file labeled PBS. And as I knew, it probably didn’t stand for Public Broadcast Service.

  But it didn’t stand for Project Bloodshot, either. “Project Bandersnatch,” I whispered to myself. I poked through it anyway, and swiftly realized that even ex-military asshats are positively stupid for continuity. One fast glance down the first few sheets told me that I’d found the right project—or one frighteningly similar to it. And a second fast glance told me these weren’t all old records. Some of this paperwork was dated within the last year.

  “Officers.” I swallowed. “Subjects. Contacts …” All with Bruner on top of the letterhead. “Wait a second,” I said, momentarily forgetting that Adrian was several offices over, and not in immediate hearing range. I remembered flashing past a cabinet drawer labeled FUNDING, so I went back to my side of the cabinetry and located the folder corresponding to Bandersnatch.

  I pulled it out and opened it. “Millions,” I said, again wishing I had someone handy to exclaim to. And all of it was going to the same set of numbers, same set of contacts, as Bloodshot. I didn’t have time to get too hung up on the tiny details; I could steal all this stuff and read it later at my leisure. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  Same officers, same numbers, same contacts. Same program, just lacking government oversight this time.

  “Wait. Same contacts,” I mumbled, because once you’ve started talking to yourself, it’s hard to stop. I felt like an invisible pop-up ad had leaped off the page and was trying to flag me down.

  Harvey Feist, James Ellison, David Keene, Richard Wing.

  I singled out the name “David Keene.” I shook my head, feeling a flush creep up from the pit of my stomach. They were physicians, affiliated with Bloodshot previously, and Bandersnatch now. It looked like they might’ve been investors, too, or maybe researchers who did some of the work themselves.

  David Keene. Ian’s Canadian doctor.

  My throat was so pinched and dry that I almost reached for that awful little half pint of blood. “Goddamn,” I whispered, taking the papers and stuffing them into my Useful Things Bag.

  I reached for a cell phone as I began climbing for the vent again.

  We’d left Cal and Ian alone—and there was an excellent chance that Ian had been making some phone calls, asking about those records and trying to figure out if the doc was going to give him back his eyesight.

  The phone wasn’t getting me anywhere. It gave me nothing but unending rings. No one was picking up.

  “Shit,” I declared, slammed the cell phone shut, and popped myself back into the vent.

  About halfway back I reconsidered. I could leave Adrian. I could get along just fine without him, couldn’t I? Ian and Cal were likely in danger—real and serious danger, perhaps every bit as bad as what was going down over at room 443.

  I considered it. I really did, even knowing what a douchebag that would make me.

  Then something exploded over near my destination, and I was shocked out of my ambivalence and right into terror. I squeezed and shook, with hardly enough clearance to hold my head up off the dust-smeared interior of the nasty metal tunnel, and I clamored back the way I’d come.

  It felt like it took longer, coming back. It felt like I had more like miles to travel than mere yards, but that only made me shimmy faster.

  I smelled smoke. It wafted up and inside. I’d only just registered it when I heard gunshots responding from inside room 443. I knew the sound of my piddly .22, and it was up against the kind of firepower I should’ve brought along, but hadn’t.

  Something splintered and shattered. The window?

  Shouts and protests and bullets, and the prickly static of electronic signals, and I reached 443 with a vengeance—exploding out of the vent and landing smack on the back of the man closing in on Adrian, who was backed up against the far wall. Two bodies were collapsed at his feet, but he was wrestling with a third and now I was on top of the fourth.

  Shards of glass glittered on his clothes and yes, the window was completely blasted inward. That’s how they got in; I could’ve figured it out by noticing the filing cabinets were holding their ground (for the time being), but I wasn’t thinking that fast. I wasn’t thinking past break this fucker’s neck—which I did—and then a second explosion sent the heavily laden cabinets buckling and scooting into the interior of the room.

  One of them stopped right at my feet. My ears were ringing from the detonation but I was mad now, and I wasn’t going to stand there and rub my ears while the Men in Black swarmed inside like ants.

  Hell no.

  The cabinet had split in two. I picked up the smaller half, torn, smoking, burning-hot metal surface and all, and I swung it as hard as I could—releasing it at the doorway and probably killing the first two guys who were trying to spill inside. Or maybe it just made them a whole lot less pretty.

  Adrian was out of bullets. H
e used the gun to pistol-whip the last window-breaching attacker and then went to the empty hole in the wall to look outside.

  I’d moved on to the desk. I upended it and shoved it—hoping it’d work like a cork to buy us time—more time, any time!—and it mostly just succeeded in flattening another couple of black-clad dudes who were too fucking eager. It wasn’t going to plug the door. It wasn’t quite big enough.

  “More outside,” Adrian said. For the first time I heard real fear in his voice. Well, now was as good a time as any to be really afraid. We were cornered, outnumbered, and outgunned. “How many in the hall?”

  “A dozen?” I estimated. Most of them down toward the north end; only a scattered couple were coming in from the other angle. “How many out there?”

  “That many and change. Coming down from the roof and—” He ducked back inside as a spray of fire strafed up from the ground. “—and more waiting below.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I exaggerated. It was barely half an idea, but we were going to have to wing this, goddammit, and we couldn’t sit around all night with our thumbs up our asses.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I didn’t spell it out. I just acted, trusting him to play along.

  I seized the upended desk just as someone’s arm went reaching around it—and I shoved it hard enough to break the offending arm. I heard a shout of dismay and a groan of pain but I didn’t hang around to dwell on it. With a hearty shove I pushed the desk out the door; it squealed along the floor in jerky fits, and it was heavy as hell but I’m pretty damn strong and I kicked it around—using it as cover for the both of us.

  Adrian got the drift. I let go of the desk and let him hold it up with his shoulder, and I set to the fast, messy work of disposing of the guys standing between us and the stairwell. There were more than a couple (four by my vicious, bloody count) and they had guns.

  They opened fire. I leaped forward, taking down the first one so fast he probably never saw me coming at him. I broke his neck and used him to catch a few bullets from the remaining assholes, then I flung him aside and went after the other three.

  One slug caught me just under the collarbone and another went zipping through my side. They both burned like crazy but there was nothing I could do about it right that moment. I worked through the pain and I worked fast, bringing the other guys down one after another while Adrian used that carbon steel blade he’d adopted to hack, slash, and slice any body parts that came jabbing around the desk.

  In less time than it takes to write a paragraph about it, the path to the stairwell was clear … but probably not for long. I couldn’t hear much over the din of close-quarters fighting and gunfire, but when I took an instant to stretch my psychic sense—listening with it, for lack of a better way to put it—I detected people crashing around downstairs, maybe on the first floor. And outside there were cop cars, fire trucks, and other official sorts of vehicles wending their way toward us with the speed of the righteous.

  But we didn’t have to make it all the way back down. We only had to make it to our hole over the stairs, and then we’d pray that no one who’d rappelled down from the roof had noticed our point of entry. Or was hanging around waiting for us.

  I was back at Adrian’s side in a flash. He was busy acting like a tiger around the edges of the desk. I hissed into Adrian’s ear, “Can you hold it?”

  “Alone? Not for long.”

  “I don’t need long,” I said and I gave the desk’s underside a shove that concussed at least two skulls on the other side. We didn’t have the advantage of numbers, but the defensive position was ours and two were far more maneuverable than however many were on the other side.

  I was bleeding. Not bad. It was slowing to a trickle even as I trickled it all over Berber carpeting. Had to ignore it. Had to keep pushing. We were in deep shit. Ian and Cal might be in deep shit. First things first.

  Out.

  And that meant using whatever was at hand, up to and including whatever the dead guys behind us were toting. I rummaged through their clothes, pulled off two guns, stepped back, and began firing two-fisted badass-style—which chased a few of the more adventuresome bastards away from the corners.

  One corpse left, the farthest one. By the stairwell.

  He was carrying bulky loot; I could see it under his zipped-up sweater. And when I unzipped it with a one-handed rip, I saw that he was wearing a bandolier loaded with grenades.

  I have no doubt that a wide, manic smile spread across my pretty little face.

  I unbuckled the bandolier because the canvas was hard to tear and anyway, I wanted to bring the whole bunch, not just one or two goodies for chucking. I returned to Adrian’s side.

  His eyes bugged out when he saw the grenades. Then he made a smile just like the one I’d made when I first saw them. “On the count of three, okay?” I said, and I jutted my head toward the stairs.

  He got it. He nodded.

  And on the count of three we each grabbed a leg of the rocking, battered desk which was increasingly full of holes … and we withdrew with it. It scrabbled across the carpet with a nasty wail and whine, bumping unevenly behind us as we retreated to the stairwell.

  When we were as close to the stairwell as we could reasonably get without dropping the desk and running, we held them off a few seconds longer while he and I each took a fistful of boom and bit the pins, pulling them out with our teeth.

  Simultaneously we pitched them around the desk. I gave it a final shove, causing a tangle and a stumble on the other side—and then a whole lot of panic followed it once our small, bumpy offerings had been discovered.

  Together we turned and ran.

  The whole hallway went up behind us like a lode-bearing boss in a video game. Fire curled around the desk, which I saw out of the corner of my eye as I ran. The desk split into gold-veined fragments that went in every direction; the last I saw of it, huge slivers were wedged into the walls and up in the ceiling.

  But I didn’t dwell on it. I had Adrian in front of me and I pushed him—because I could run faster than he could, even with a couple of holes in me, though the stress and effort were starting to drag me down. I’d lost blood. That’s never helpful.

  Up we went anyway. We didn’t have a choice. People were coming up the stairwell below us, shouting and dodging and brandishing weapons. They were still a couple of floors down, but I didn’t like it and neither did Adrian.

  He reached around my arm and swiped another grenade out of the bandolier, then pulled the pin and aimed down. A fortuitous bounce and a good throw sent the thing down a full floor and some change. When it went off I heard small bits of metal whistling in every direction.

  Somewhere beneath us a fire had started. I suspected the fourth floor. I don’t know what they’d been stashing up there or what the Men in Black had been toting, but something smelled like chemicals and flame when the first grenades went off—and I didn’t think it was just the expected shrapnel.

  We reached the hole we’d cut above the stairs and boosted each other up, over, and inside it without even checking to make sure it was free and clear. If it wasn’t, we were screwed anyway—so we went for it and hoped for the best.

  The shaft was filling with smoke. I didn’t want to say anything or point it out as we fled on hands and knees in the dark, but I was pretty sure that the building was actually aflame. I wondered why I hadn’t heard any sprinkler systems right around the time I heard the fire alarm finally go off. Useless device. If their building was so hideously unprepared for invasion, firefights, and subsequent collateral damage, then it damn well deserved to burn to the ground.

  Adrian coughed and my eyes were watering, but the roof was blessedly close and the fresh air tasted great. No one was up there waiting for us, which was a relief, but the guys who’d broken into 443 through the window had left their rappelling gear and a pair of very convenient ropes still hanging over the side.

  We pulled them up slowly, because we didn’t need the attention fr
om the guys who were milling about on the ground, speaking into cell phones and waving new support troops into position. They were still concentrating on that window. As if we were still hanging out in that room or something.

  Eventually we were able to let ourselves down quietly on the far side of the building, where it almost smashed right up against another building in a very narrow alley. We dropped down into something wet and disgusting, but we had hit street level in almost perfect darkness and it was only a short, side-cramping run back to the car.

  I looked over my shoulder to see the fire spread and gnaw hungrily, and I would’ve smiled if I hadn’t suddenly been so afraid.

  We’d made it out, yes. But I was afraid for myself and Adrian; I was afraid for Ian and even Cal, a little bit, insomuch as Cal looked after Ian and that made him important whether I liked it or not. And I was afraid for a basement full of monsters like me, imprisoned and tortured, cut and sliced and prodded—wherever they were, if they were still alive or if they hadn’t been alive in years. I watched the fire and I wanted it to take everything—not just the paper goods and the horrible records, but everything. The project, the building. The crimes—mine and theirs. I wanted it all to go up in smoke.

  I let Adrian drive back to the hotel.

  I was shaking too badly to do it myself; I was too wound up and frenetic, and too flustered and wounded to be any use—not right then. He was driving fast and hard, but not running into anybody and not causing any wrecks in his wake, which was better than I would’ve done. For a flash I had a small worry about running the red lights, and about getting caught on one of those stupid traffic cameras, but I forgot it almost as soon as I thought of it.

  We had bigger problems. Worse problems. Real problems.

  Behind us, the Office of Experimental Bioengineering Research burned itself to ashes, and as we fled the scene fire trucks and cop cars barreled toward it.

  14

  Not for a minute did I believe we’d burned the whole building down. They’d catch it before it got that far, in a big old stone place like that. Best I could hope for, it’d take the whole office and maybe the whole hall, leaving it a graveyard of charcoal and bones.