by Elle E. Ire
“Aw, dammit,” I whisper, moisture gathering in my artificial eyes. Not for the first time, I wish for a little less realism there. No point in checking her body. She’s got multiple stab wounds in addition to her neck being half twisted backward on her shoulders. Dead without a doubt.
A little farther down the hall I spot Robert, seated propped up against the wall, legs sticking out in front of him. The bone of one leg protrudes through the upper thigh as if VC2 used an adrenaline burst to literally break him. A swash of blood hides half his face. His one visible eye… blinks.
I dash to his side, crouching down, keeping my other senses on high alert in case this is a lure. “Robert?”
“Sorry,” he breathes, more blood bubbling from his lips. “She has Kelly. Took us by surprise. Killed everyone else.”
“Okay, okay. Stop talking.” I tear off a piece of his shirt and wrap it around his forehead to stem the blood from a nasty cut there, then take another, larger strip, the entire other sleeve, and tie off his broken leg above the wound. Using his belt, I make the tourniquet even tighter. Robert groans, teeth clenched, sweating with the effort not to scream, but we don’t know where VC2 is now, and we don’t want to draw her here. I rock back on my heels and survey my handiwork. Not bad for makeshift medical care. He should be able to hold on until I can find help. “I’m going to drag you into the stairwell. Not much of a hiding place, and the blood trail will give you away, but it’s better than nothing. Then I’ll get a doctor.”
He nods, more of a loll than a conscious gesture, and I take him under his arms and haul him through the stairwell door. I have to push Dr. Nuzzi’s body aside with my boot, and I send up a quiet apology to whichever deities she favored in life. Robert is unconscious before I get him all the way to the stairs, which is probably a relief. I tuck him in the space under the first flight, double-check my bandages, and hope for the best.
Then I’m in the corridor again, keeping to the walls, peeping through the small windows in each door and grimacing at what I find: furnishings and belongings strewn everywhere, blood and bodies. So many bodies, so much blood. Robert was correct. VC2 seems to have killed every patient, every orderly, every doctor on this hall. And not quick kills. Many show signs of torture: burns, bones broken, shallow cuts, but in large numbers not deep enough for the victim to bleed out, just to suffer before the final blow.
The flashing yellow-orange wreaks havoc on my vision, casting everything in alternating bursts of light and semidarkness. As I make my way toward the nurses’ station near the juncture of this wing to the main building, I try a few exit doors—all locked beyond VC1’s ability to open them. “Is VC2 better than you?” I whisper, more to hear a voice, any human voice even if it’s my own, than to communicate with her.
She is not. Different, yes. Better, no. She is not an AI, and I WILL determine a pathway around her blocks. I have access to some of the security cameras now.
That perks me up a little. “Anything to report?”
A short pause, then, You are not alone. Movement behind the nurses’ station desk.
So, VC2? Or a survivor?
I hurry faster, stepping carefully for silence, though my combat boots squeak a couple of times on the polished tile. Good for most terrain. Not good for health facilities.
I reach the hub where the nurses’ station sits, no visible movement, no sign of life. But it’s a little brighter here, the two-story hub topped with skylights that let in the fading evening sun. “Where—?” Then I hear it, a soft rattling followed by a muffled curse coming from behind the large, multiperson desk where the nurses greet visitors.
I wish I had a weapon, any kind of weapon. Robert had been stripped of his when I found him, and I hadn’t passed any of my other security team members’ bodies. I’m hoping they weren’t in this wing when VC2 struck.
I’m hoping she hasn’t wiped out the entire facility.
Unlikely. Someone sounded the alarms and turned on the emergency lights.
“Could be automated,” I suggest, “triggered by her opening the exterior door.”
The lights, perhaps, but the alarms are coming from a different portion of the facility.
I round the edge of the desk, prepared to lash out at whomever I find, but only discover the corpses of both nurses sprawled across the floor. So what was making that— The rattle comes again, and the handle on one of the cabinets beneath the desk shifts up and down. I judge it to be a fairly large storage space, big enough to hold a child or small person if it was otherwise mostly empty.
“Come on out,” I say, low enough for the hidden individual to hear me, but not loud enough for my voice to carry beyond this space.
“You’re going to kill me,” a high-pitched voice responds. A familiar high-pitched voice.
“Cynthia?”
The Secretary of the Treasury’s daughter rattles the knob again.
“You can’t get out, can you? It’s me, Vick.”
“Go away! Don’t hurt me.”
I frown as I crouch beside the cabinet. “Why would you think I’d—” Oh, right, of course. If she saw VC2 in action before she found her hiding place, she’d assume it was me. “That wasn’t me,” I say, keeping my voice calm and soft. I’m no good at this. I need Kelly. She’d know what to do and say. “That was someone pretending to be me. She’s why I’m really here, to lure her out and catch her, only things went… really, really wrong.”
“That sounds like something a crazy person would say. I asked where your room was. I thought I could visit. They said you were in the highest security section. Where they put the psychotic killers.”
I let out a sigh. “Look, I don’t have time to argue with you. The real psycho has Kelly, and my friend Robert needs a doctor, and you can stay in there and hope she doesn’t come back, or you can come with me to get help. And just a reminder, if I am a psycho killer, then I could have killed you back in the slaver base. It also means I have weapons and I could have driven a blade or fired a pistol through that flimsy little cabinet door. I haven’t, because I’m unarmed, tired, and almost as freaked-out as you are.”
A small sniffle. “You’re really not crazy?”
Yes. “No.”
“Can you let me out?”
I study the handle and the keypad lock that must have sealed her in. “Scrunch yourself back as far from the door as you can get.” There’s some shuffling from inside the cabinet. When it ceases, I launch a full-force kick into the cabinet door, breaking the lock and shoving the door inward a foot and a half.
“Ow!” Cynthia squeaks, louder than I’d prefer.
“Shh.” I reach around the splintered wood and peel the door back, grimacing at the squeak/crunch of the material. Cynthia scrambles out and stands beside me, keeping as far from the nurses’ bodies as possible while remaining partially hidden by their desk.
“You’re shushing me? You just smashed a cabinet,” she says, voice low.
Oh yeah, right. I did.
I give her a visual once-over, checking for injuries. She’s unharmed except for a bruise forming on her upper left arm, probably from where I hit her with the door. Given all she’s been through, she’s holding it together well. The doctors here have helped her a lot. Shame this new clusterfuck will likely undo all their hard work.
“Now what?” she asks, shifting from foot to foot in soft white tennis shoes.
Great question. I glance around the nurses’ station hub. Nothing will work as a weapon, at least nothing more sophisticated than broken shards of the cabinet door. I grab one anyway. Better than nothing. “Come on.” Skirting around the desk, I head for the double doors connecting this wing with the main building. Soft footsteps behind me tell me Cynthia is following.
There’s motion outside the two small windows in the doors. People. Living, breathing people. So VC2 kept to this area. I rap on the glass to get their attention. One is a guard I recognize from the OWLS. Another wears coveralls and appears to be working on detaching the entir
e door from the frame, though it’s hard to see from my angle.
The guard lifts a comm unit to his mouth, and a buzz in my head indicates an incoming transmission. I open the channel.
“You secure?” he asks. “We’re working on removing the doors. Your counterpart has locked the entire wing down.”
“I’m secure for the moment, and I have the secretary’s daughter with me, unharmed. How did you know I’m the good… version?”
The guard smiles. “You answered your comm code.”
Ah, right. I roll my eyes at my own stupidity. “How long on the doors?” It’s weird watching his mouth move through the window but hearing the sound in my head.
He glances down and to the right, consulting with the maintenance guy, then looks back at me. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
I nod just before another voice, my voice, interrupts from behind me.
“Too long for the two of you.”
Cynthia screams. VC2 has returned.
Chapter 46: Kelly—To the Rescue
Vick is locked in.
“WHAT’S THE situation?” I ask, channeling my inner Vick. All heads turn away from the locked exterior door, eyes narrowing as I hobble up to the gathered medical personnel and the maintenance guy working on the lock. I swipe away more blood from my split lip, place my hands on my hips, and glare right back at them.
One of the doctors approaches. I don’t recognize him, but he holds out his hands in a placating gesture. “We’re locked out, some kind of system failure, but we’ll get you inside as soon as we can. Why don’t you have a seat and let me look at your injuries. Who’s your therapist?”
I stifle a semi-hysterical laugh that won’t help my situation. They think I’m a patient here. “I’m Kelly LaSalle, with the Fighting Storm group.”
The doctor lowers his hands but doesn’t stop his approach. From a pocket of his coat, he removes a small first aid kit and passes me a sealed packet of gauze and a disinfectant wipe for my lip. “These should help. We’ve got techs working on both the exterior and interior access doors to this wing, but so far, we haven’t gotten inside.”
“Don’t go in without a security backup, preferably some of my team.” I pause. “Did any of them make it outside before the lockdown?”
“A few of us were having a late lunch in the central cafeteria,” comes a familiar voice from behind me. I turn to find Carl and two of our people, a man and a woman in orderly uniforms. One is an OWL. The other I recognize from the Storm. “I’ve got two more guards outside the entrance to the nurses’ hub in Vick’s section, waiting for the doors to be removed from the frame.”
The technician looks over his shoulder again. “That’s what I’m thinking here too. I haven’t been able to find another way. I even tried shutting down the entire system, but it came back online almost instantly with the scramblers still in place.”
“What about cutting off access to the wireless?” I venture. I know nothing about tech, but I do know that’s how Vick makes her connections to external systems.
Carl shakes his head and lowers his voice so only I can hear him. “This is Earth. We’re literally blanketed in wireless access systems, as are most of the heavily settled worlds. Even if they are locked down, the implants are programmed to hack into them and make use of whatever they can access. And they can connect one system to another, route information between them. One World has no idea what VC1 and VC2 are really capable of, and we have no intention of telling them. If they knew, they’d shut both clones down, not just the crazy one. I don’t even think Vick fully comprehends it herself.” He pauses, then raises his voice. “Get on the door removal.”
The maintenance tech waits for a confirmation nod from the doctor and then pulls a drill from his kit, going to work on the hinges themselves.
Moving closer to me, Carl leans close to my ear. “Where are they?”
I’m assuming he means VC2 and Vick. “Inside,” I say, equally quietly. I give him a quick rundown of what happened to me, ending with “VC2 can lock and unlock the doors at will, trapping anyone anywhere in the facility, at least in this section. And she’s killed Robert and Dr. Nuzzi.” My voice catches on that last bit.
His face clouds when I mention the losses, but he hides the emotion quickly. He lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I suspect it’s a lot more than two fatalities. We can’t reach anyone inside this wing. My only contacts are my people outside the hub doors. Most of the cameras are on a feedback loop, and the ones we can access show a lot of unmoving bodies. We thought we saw movement at the nurses’ station but lost control of that camera a few seconds later. Central comms are shut down, but private ones should work. So far no one is respon—” He breaks off, pressing one hand to his ear where his own comm pickup is inserted. A small smile curls at the corners of his lips. “Scratch that,” Carl adds after a moment. “Vick is at the interior doors. She’s got Cynthia with her. The Klenar staff are working to get them out, with my guys ready to go in when they do.”
Relief floods through me. I knew she was alive but had no idea of her condition. If she’s talking, she isn’t terribly hurt. I’m about to head around to the front of the main building when our tech announces, “Got it!”
Everyone jumps as the side door swings out, unlocked.
Carl frowns. “You found a workaround?”
“Actually, no,” the technician admits, sliding tools back into their carry case. “The signal scrambling the entry code just stopped. I had my reader sending the code on repeat just in case.” He holds up a small box with numbers scrolling across a tiny screen. “This time it worked.” He shrugs massive shoulders.
“That… might not be a good thing,” I whisper. A trickle of apprehension works its way through my shields, followed by a sudden increase in anxiety and an involuntary tension in my muscles. My gaze snaps to Carl’s. “The door unlocked because VC2 has her mind elsewhere. Vick’s under attack.”
“Or we’re being lured in. Or both. Dammit.” Carl gestures to the OWL guard to follow him, draws his weapon, and heads inside, ordering everyone else to stay out. I ignore the command, trailing them a few steps behind. He shoots me a brief glare over his shoulder, opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and nods. “You’re with us. We might need your skills to deal with VC2, but stay behind Kenneth here.”
I nod back, willing to agree to that order, for now. Unlike Vick, I’m not under any sort of compulsion to obey his commands to the letter. I step behind the burly redheaded OWL and follow them both into the short hallway containing the stairs to the second floor.
“Blood trail,” Carl says, having produced a flashlight from a cargo pants pocket. He shines the beam along the brownish smear to where it disappears under the stairs. Kenneth moves forward to check it out.
“I’ve got Robert, not dead. Close, though,” he calls to us.
“Get the doctors outside to help. Make sure he’s secure, then follow us.” Carl pushes open the interior door to the central hallway. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to do that instead,” he says to me.
I fold my arms over my chest. “No chance in hell.”
Carl mutters something rude-sounding under his breath and moves forward. His light finds Dr. Nuzzi, also moved from where I last saw her, but he doesn’t pause. She’s clearly dead. We proceed along the hall, Carl stopping at intervals to peer into patient windows, then shaking his head and moving on. When I step up to one of the panes myself, he catches my arm and pulls me away. “Don’t. VC2 is thorough. And… enthusiastic… with her victims. You don’t need to see the evidence.”
I tug my arm from his grasp but step from the window without looking through it. This experience is going to give me enough nightmares without adding additional fuel to them.
Lowering my empathic walls a little farther, I focus on the blue line that connects me to Vick, thicker and brighter than what I saw in the storage building and leading deeper into the facility. My heart pounds and my breathing pi
cks up. “They’re fighting,” I say.
Carl doesn’t question my pronouncement but increases his pace.
We pass more bodies of staff, some dragged into side corridors, one half in and half out of a maintenance closet, one beneath an overturned cart bearing food trays, their contents splattered across the tile and mixed with the victim’s draining blood. I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow hard.
Sounds of battle carry to our ears: dull thuds, shouts of pain and anger, shattering glass, a gunshot. “You realize if you stay with me, you’re going to be onsite for at least one and possibly more deaths,” Carl says as the arch into the nurses’ station hub comes into view. Something flies past the opening—a potted plant, maybe—and crashes against an unseen wall. My guide stops a dozen feet away. “In a battle between VC1 and VC2, only one of them is coming out alive.”
I meet his eyes while I strengthen the walls around my empathic abilities. “I’m well aware of that. And her name isn’t VC-anything. It’s Vick.”
Chapter 47: Vick—One on One
I am outmatched.
“FUCK.” THE heavy ceramic pot containing a three-foot ficus tree slams into my torso and carries me halfway across the empty space in front of the nurses’ desk. I land on my tailbone, skidding another three feet on the slick tile before coming to a stop. The brown pottery shatters into a million sharp pieces, adding to the dozen other hazards in the room: a broken lamp, tablets and styluses, medicine vials, loose syringes, and other equipment. It’s all scattered across the floor, making footing precarious.
No time to worry about it. I press both palms to the floor and flip to my feet, slicing open my left hand on a piece of glass in the process. Not deep, but it will make gripping any sort of makeshift weapon difficult, not that I have one. I lost my piece of cabinet door a while ago, when I embedded it in VC2’s thigh. A flash of movement tells me VC2 is behind the nurses’ desk, keeping her covered and me out in the open.