But even faster, they started falling back down as gunfire boomed nearby. I wheeled around, trying to return it, but a concussion grenade landed a few feet away and a second later I went sailing across the room into the wall. I landed on my bad arm and felt the bone come apart again, though fortunately my pain settings were back low enough that I wasn’t sent into shock.
I reached over where I thought the gun would be, but Martin had already picked it up and was shooting back, making the assailant dive for cover behind the sculptures outside in the ballroom. Behind Martin a number of the hostages were staggering around or collapsing on the floor, wounded. Icarus was down, too, but there weren’t any bullet holes—he was just limp, the lights in his eyes gone. And I figured someone must’ve gotten to Ethan up in the Medpad.
Another blast of gunfire spun Martin around in a half circle, clutching at himself and then almost falling on top of me as I rolled under a table. Then everything seemed like it was coming apart. The chairs. Wrapped people. Unwrapped people. All flying, disintegrating into chaos. I tried to plunge underneath it all, but there was only the carpet, which too was going up in shredded clumps around me.
The assault rifle was still in Martin’s hand, but the room, already huge, had seemed to triple in size. There was no way I’d make it across to him before getting swept up in the carnage. So I started slithering backwards farther under the table, closer to the entrance to the divan room. And then when the intruder stopped to reload, I got up and sprinted through the large, door-less archway that separated them, looking wildly around for cover.
Instead of the intruder reloading his own gun, though, I saw him pick up Icarus’ and barrel after me. I dove behind the divan just as the bullets started flying, knowing that there was nowhere to run, and that the rest of the intruders would be vaulting up the stairs any second. I realized as I made myself as thin as possible on the floor that it would probably be the position I’d die in.
There was another pause to reload and then it was the assault rifle again, turning the couch inside out, stuffing landing like dirty snowfall around me. I could feel him getting closer and closer to the point where he’d have a clear line of sight. Somehow amidst that, I willed myself to close my eyes and thought the guest password. A moment later, I was Icarus again, charging into a sprint as the guy circled around to line up a shot. He turned at the loud footsteps, but fired into the ground as Icarus lifted him up and form-tackled him into a glass coffee table, shattering it as they fell. I punched him in the face, then head-butted him when he leaned in to grab Icarus’ arm. Blood spouted from his nose but he held on, twisting, jerking, with inhuman strength. And then he had it off and was using it to block a glass fragment I’d picked up and swung at his neck with Icarus’ other hand.
Metal clanked as he wound back and slammed the arm into the side of my head, knocking me off the coffee table frame. Rolling after me onto his knees, he pummeled Icarus again and again, crushing his plating and tearing out the wiring to his legs. I tried to roll too, but I wasn’t used to driving Icarus on the ground, and felt that every move I made was a bit too weak and a moment too late. Just as sparks erupted from a large concavity forming on his forehead, I was back in my own body, picking up the gun he’d dropped.
The guys’ peripheral vision must’ve been excellent, like I’d feared, and he was instantly flying at me but only reached the gun in time to be blown back by it. A second and third burst in the chest sent him staggering across the room. A fourth had him slumped against a metal-covered window, his eyes settling on the destroyed couch in front of him.
I started back toward the hostages but stopped just as quickly when I heard footsteps sounding over the marble in the ballroom, and then a string of machine gun fire. I took the other way out of the divan room instead, past the coat room, a stock room, and into the kitchen. It appeared empty yet I moved across it like a wraith, my gun pointing everywhere at once. I went into a passage I thought was an offshoot into the garden room, but it turned out to be just a pantry. I backtracked, stopped, went one way, and then the other. And then stopped again when I heard Jaden’s voice.
“Probably a smart move to cut head count,” he called out as he padded into the kitchen, tailed by an accomplice. He was trying to maintain his cool persona, yet he was clearly furious. “But let’s go ahead and call it there.”
I glanced at the two of them, both with automatic weapons trained on me, and then set my own on the counter.
“Good, now just slide it over. And since the tunnel’s done, too, we can all be on our way.”
I looked at the floor and then at the clock on the oven before following the instruction.
“Fractal robots are quite the things to leave lying around. You know weapons are dangerous because they’ve got one purpose, but these things have too many to be branded as such.”
“Where are you drilling to?”
“That’s not your concern. You’ll just be sticking around to set the bomb off, letting us put some distance in while the rest of the hostages are released.”
It felt like I’d swallowed something that was now liquefying me from inside.
“There’s no way you could live with all the guilt after all the horrible things you’ve done to your friends and those police officers. So it works out for everyone! And just in case you get cold feet . . . Skills, bring him over.”
I heard more footsteps and the last remaining crony came into the kitchen, towing a hostage. “Say hi to Christopher. He’s going to be going down with us, but if you don’t trigger the bomb, he won’t be coming back up.”
I sneered, “It’s kind of hard to keep a hostage if you’re faking your own death, isn’t it?”
“Oh Dorian, we don’t need to stay dead. We just need to appear so for long enough to Revise our biometrics. And by that time, it won’t matter—the larger plan will already be in full swing.”
He leaned casually against the kitchen counter. “But you’re right, I won’t be able to let him loose right away. Though you have my word I will eventually.”
“Your fucking word?”
“It’s a lot better than yours as it turns out. I said I had a way for you to escape, and I do. Which’s good, because believe me, you don’t want them to take you,” he said, pointing in the direction of the front door. “I know you, brother, and prison life would not suit you very well. You’re too much of a free spirit. And probably don’t want to be getting ass pounded every night by some gangbanger. Trust me, I’ve put a lot of thought into this and considered your interests very carefully.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you!”
“No, you’re not. Not if I have Christopher. And don’t try to say that you don’t care about him because I know you do. He’s the person that you want to be, deep down.”
A ferocious sensation flowered in my temple and spread out through the rest of me, cutting through all the remaining terror and fear, almost calming in its intensity. I thought about the doorway to my left a few meters away, but—as though he were psychic—Jaden anticipated me and said, “You’ve already fucked him over once. It’d be a shame to do it again . . .”
I looked over at Chris, all his subtle dimensions sharpening into focus despite being wrapped up. Even now, he was still giving it everything he could—writhing and struggling like he actually had a chance to break free.
Beneath the counter I very slowly moved my right hand toward my right pocket, while just as slowly bringing my left hand up to my face, trying to look anguished, like I was coming to terms with my fate.
“It’s going to be alright,” said Jaden.
In one fluid motion, as Jaden started another sentence, I pulled the tractor beam out of my pocket, aimed at Jaden’s gun, and flicked it on. It pulled his weapon into my free, good hand just as he pulled another gun out of a holster.
I fired and he fired back an instant later, the kitchen spinning as I half fell, half dove under the counter. I was hidden from Jaden there, but not his accomplices
, who aimed their guns at me again just as I turned the tractor beam on the block full of knives and flung them across the room at them. I shot the one nearest me in the head as he ducked for cover. The other one started shooting back and I had to fling myself farther behind the kitchen island, bringing my knees up to my chest to make myself a smaller target. Fearing Jaden, now on the other side, I fired blindly around the corner, wondering how many bullets I had left.
“Dorian, stop! Stop! You got him! He’s down!”
“Who are you?”
“It’s Spencer!”
“You fucking asshole!
“Jaden’s down for the count. But Chris is hurt, too.”
“Chris?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s bleeding. An awful lot.”
Fearing a trap, I peeked around the corner and zoomed in 1.5x, 2x, 3x—until I saw a thin line of blood dripping from the counter Jaden had been standing behind, winding its way through the depressions in the stone tile. “Put down your gun!” I yelled.
“You hit an artery! We need to get him to the Medpad.”
“Put down your fucking gun!”
“You first!”
A moan sounded from across the kitchen and, in that second, I forgot about Spencer and Jaden and everything else. I slung the gun over my shoulder and sprang up from behind the island, tearing across the room and sliding over to Christopher. “Oh, fucking Jesus! Chris! Chris! Can you hear me?”
The blood was coming out of a little hole on his upper arm and I pressed my hand onto it. “Help me peel the tape off! Come on! Christopher, can you hear me? Look at me!” Dismay was blazoned across his face as I ripped the strips from it, his pupils twice their normal size. He was trying to talk, but all that was coming out was a soft, wheezing string of vowels.
As soon as all the tape was gone, I took my belt and fastened it above the wound. “Help me get him up, Spencer, goddammit! He’s going into shock.”
“We’re taking him to the Medpad, right? Because we can’t take him outside; they’ll just shoot us.”
“Yes, the Medpad, Jesus!”
I lifted him up until he was slumped over, leaning against me. Steadying myself against the refrigerator, I took a deep breath and then bent down, gathering him in a fireman’s carry, nearly stumbling over Skills’ body as I started making my way towards the hallway. My own arm and shoulder had been throbbing even though my pain threshold was at zero; a wire must’ve become crossed when I’d gotten smashed inside Icarus. But all that pain was nothing compared to seeing Lena’s hair sprouting from under one of the wraps.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” Spencer asked from behind me, his voice breaking through the modulator.
I ignored the question as I handed Chris off to him, managing to say, “Get him up to the Medpad. I’ll be there in a second.” And then turning to Chris, “You stay with me, okay?”
He nodded blankly.
The next moment I was running over to Lena on the floor, unwrapping her, wiping away the shards of ceramic and glass. Her expression stayed fixed, her eyes glazed, lips parted. Blood pooled in the little grooves and folds of the wrapping tape. Everything was collapsing in on itself, and I wanted to collapse with it. Go with her. For once just take things as they came and let myself be carried off. “I’m so sorry, Lena. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Is she dead?” asked Spencer, calling from the stairs.
“No, she’s not fucking dead!” I screamed, only half aware of what was happening as I picked her up and hoisted her over my good shoulder. Then I was following Spencer and Chris up the stairs and down the hall. I couldn’t even feel Lena’s weight, I just knew that we were moving, getting closer to help. I just had to keep going. It couldn’t stay like this. No matter what happened to me, this couldn’t get locked in.
I ran into Spencer and Chris, who’d stopped in the middle of the Medroom door. They were looking at something, and before I could see in I knew it was Ethan, lying there soaked in blood. And as Spencer moved forward and Ethan came into view, it was almost a carbon copy of the image that had been in my head.
Lena slipped a little, but then I caught her and steadied us against the doorframe. All her weight was on me suddenly, and I knew she was dead, too. I’d known it the second I’d seen her, but I just couldn’t leave her lying there. She deserved a rescue. Anyone that special deserved a rescue.
I heard a cabinet being opened behind me and Chris wincing as antiseptic was poured on him. I couldn’t turn around to look at him, but I couldn’t look at Lena, either. I couldn’t look anywhere. Everything smelled like blood. Pain in every molecule. In every atom. And no matter what I did, it was going to be there in some form, somewhere deep down, forever.
Not being able to take another second, I sprang up and raced back towards the door.
“What are you doing?” Spencer called from the Medpad as I bolted down the hall, but he didn’t matter. All that mattered was the one thing now I could still stop. The thing I should have never let get started. The steps flew by, along with the marble and the paintings on the wall in the entrance way.
As I entered the kitchen, I raised up the gun and fixed it on the farthest counter until I could see all the way behind it, where Jaden was sitting, propped up against a cabinet in the middle of a lake of blood. “Jaden! Jaden! Look at me, you little fucker!” I shouted, seeing the hole in his throat as I got closer. “Look at me!”
I knew he had to be dead but, nevertheless, his mask’s pursed mouth and sunken eyes looked like they were fixated on me, serene and menacing at once.
“I told you, you got him,” Spencer said as he came up behind me thirty seconds later. “Chris’ll be fine. Got him an IV and a compression bandage. But what the fuck are we going to do now? I mean . . . one of us is going to have to stay and key the detonation. The signal’s too weak to do it from Jesup Park.”
“I don’t care, man—it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“So you’ll do it?” he asked.
“What?” All I could think about was Lena and Michael and Chris, and how I’d gotten them into this. And how even after everything, Michael had lied for me and Chris had waited to call the cops so I’d have a better chance.
“You’ll let the rest of the hostages go and then detonate it?”
“Is that all you can think about? Getting out of here, saving yourself?” I screamed, half conscious that Chris had screamed the same thing at me just hours ago.
“I’m not surrendering to the fucking cops! I’m not going to jail!” Spencer raised his gun up even with me and then lowered it, not sure what to do. “But Jaden’s right, isn’t he? You feel guilty about all this and . . .”
I thought about tackling Spencer and smashing his face with an industrial mixer that had fallen on the floor next to me, but the thought of any more violence made me feel even sicker. I couldn’t think anymore, I just wanted to get out of there. Get away from everything. Go back to the beginning before any of this started and do everything right, do everything different.
“You’ll do it, won’t you?” Spencer said again, a little more desperate. “Or what about that robo? He still works, doesn’t he?”
I didn’t know. He was beat up, but he still had a working arm.
“Because I can take care of the rest. The bomb’s done, so is the tunnel. We just gotta get the fuck out of here, you know? The cops are probably about ready to storm the place. They had to have heard the gunfire. It’s only—”
“Shut up, Spencer! Shut the fuck up!” I yelled, grabbing him and throwing him against the range and then doubling over in pain from using my broken arm, the setting somehow on high again. Spencer’s gun had clanked to the floor, but neither of us made a move for it. He looked almost as distraught as I was.
“I didn’t want any of this to happen, just so you know. He made me do it. He made—”
“I said shut up, goddammit! Just . . . just shut up!” My voice softened, turning raspy as I slunk back down to the floor, barely cognizant of al
l the blood under me. “I just want to . . . I just want to . . .” But I didn’t finish. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. And so we both just sat there looking down, looking away, closing our eyes.
Finally, Spencer said, “I’m going to go check on the robo.” He sniffled and rubbed his mask where the tears would be on his cheek. “We gotta get out of here.”
Ten minutes later the house exploded.
Chapter 50
The words fell out involuntarily after we emerged from the tunnel into Jesup Park and set an unconscious Chris down on the nearest bench. “I’m not going.”
“But we’ve got a hookup in the city, and we’re gonna swap code. New prints. Everything.”
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. “You mean Jaden had a hookup.”
“What do you know about it?’
“Nothing,” I said. “And what do you know about what Jaden was going to do?”
It seemed like Spencer was about to say “nothing,” too, but instead he stopped and stared at me, trying to decide if he was going to level with me or not. He was ghost-looking—obviously still shaken up—and you could tell that a part of him desperately wanted to talk. I’d seen that same look from Ethan a lot in the past few weeks when he wanted to hear me say, “It’s going to be okay.”
“It sounds crazy to say out loud, but I think he was trying to take over the world,” Spencer admitted. “Not all at once. But one thing always led to another.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy,” I said flatly.
“He was just trying to Revise as fast as he could. It wasn’t personal.” He paused, sniffling and wiping his nose with a gloved hand. “Or maybe it was, I don’t fucking know. I never wanted anything to do with this. I tried to tell him, but he . . . he made me.”
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