Terminated

Chapter 2

The Batcave—Bryn presumed that wasn’t the actual name of the place, but she couldn’t be too certain of it—looked impressive even from the parking area. It was big enough to park several eighteen-wheelers in a pinch, with high ceilings, and used an impressive amount of steel and concrete. There were major industrial buildings that couldn’t boast this fine of an underground parking structure.

It had three exits she identified automatically—up the ramp, of course, but the ramp was blocked by a take-no-prisoners steel gate that wouldn’t have been out of place guarding the CIA headquarters in Langley. A red sign announced there was an exit at the back, but it was almost certainly locked, too, at least biometrically. She wouldn’t expect anything less from Manny Glickman. The man regularly elevated paranoia to an art form.

The third way out was the elevator, which Pansy had already summoned with the pressure of her hand on a palm scanner. It was a big industrial affair that they could have driven into in a pinch, and it held all of them without crowding. Patrick had the unconscious Manny over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Bryn expected the elevator to go up, but instead, it went down. Down for at least a minute. She sent Pansy a look, and Pansy nodded to reassure her. “This place was a Cold War missile base. One of the few Titan bases they ever built—only about a dozen in the whole country. Manny got it in a sweetheart deal the second it went up for public auction about ten years ago, and he spent years building it out. One of the most secure spots in the country, until you want to go to war against another Titan base.”

“I assume they took the missiles.”

“Sadly true,” she said. “But there’s a half mile of tunnels, and more than forty thousand feet of storage and living space. This is where the serious work gets done around here. And I think we’re serious now, right? Plus, if you need a secure base of operations, there isn’t a better spot. We have hardened communications, a deepwater well system, our own generators, protected airflow, and enough food, drinks, and entertainment stocked to weather a nuclear winter.”

The elevator lurched to a stop, and as the doors opened, Pansy gave them a warmer smile and led the way out. “Like I said, welcome to the Batcave. The guest rooms aren’t fancy, but we at least have plenty of them. Kitchen and main housing is here in the center. Communications room doubles as the entertainment room, because what’s the apocalypse without Xbox? Feel free to explore—oh, wait. Before you do, let me enter your data in the computer. Everything’s security controlled.”

They followed her to a small anteroom, which required another palm scan from Pansy to open; it had thick bullet-resistant windows and a view into hallways on two sides, with a second door at the other end. The curved console in it featured a state-of-the-art monitor and keyboard, and various equipment whose purpose wasn’t immediately obvious. Pansy slid into the operator’s seat, and fired up the computer.

It took a surprisingly small time to process each of them through the security system—a palm scan, an ocular scan, and reading a short phrase into a microphone. Pansy was efficient and calm about it, though she was obviously bone-tired; she handed them each ID cards with clips when the process was done. “We’ve got extra clothing, too,” she said, no doubt because Bryn’s were messily ruined. “There’s a wardrobe room on level two. Pretty much like a store, sorted by men’s, women’s, and children’s wear, into sizes. Plain stuff, but it ought to work. Raid it as you need it.”

She took a pair of wire cutters out of a drawer and snapped the plastic zip-ties securing Manny where he’d been deposited on a plastic chair, and then walked to the other door. Another palm scan to open it. “This way to the mansion,” she said. “Oh, and wear your ID cards at all times. You can open the doors with palm scans or eye scans, but you need the ID card on you or the facility goes into lockdown. You don’t want to be in the shower when that happens, by the way. I speak from experience. Um . . . Patrick, could you . . . ?” She gestured to Manny, and Patrick picked him up and carried him through the door. Bryn followed . . . and realized that Pansy had been dead-on descriptive in calling this the mansion.

Either Manny or Pansy or both had taken a forbidding room and turned it into a beautiful, soaring living space—the floors were treated, subtly colored concrete, covered with expensive rugs and groupings of lush sofas and chairs. It was modern but comfortable, and vast impressionist and abstract canvases—almost certainly all real, and all insanely expensive—were mounted on the walls. The plasma screen TV was a vast size, but it looked small in the space, comparatively.

And they had books. Lots of books, with shelves that stretched up two stories—a library with its own system of movable wooden ladders.

“Wow,” Riley said. “I guess being a mad scientist for hire pays pretty well. Because I guarantee you he didn’t earn this working at the FBI lab all those years.”

Pansy gave her a cool, unreadable look, and said, “Thanks, Patrick, you can put him down here on the couch. Maybe you should all go get yourselves some rooms, showers, whatever. Just take the hallways going either right or left. Guest rooms have signs. You can write your names on the boards on the doors.”

“Pansy—” Bryn wanted to hug her, but she knew it wasn’t the time, and besides, she felt sticky and filthy. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this for us.”

“You’re probably worth the risk,” Pansy said, and gave her a fleeting wink. “Manny’s going to be a grumpy, angry bear, and I mean grizzly angry, but he’ll come around eventually. Just . . . let me handle it. Oh, and guys? Weapons stay here in this room, with us. All of them. For our safety.”

They all exchanged looks, especially Joe and Patrick; they didn’t like disarming, but there was no threat here, especially nothing they could shoot their way out of. So with a shrug, Joe put down his converted AR-15, unholstered his handgun, and removed a couple of combat knives. Patrick added to the pile. Each of them did in turn. When the last person disarmed, Pansy nodded her thanks. “You’ll get it all back,” she promised. “We have an armory on level two. It takes a special code, which Manny and I have. Once he’s sure you’re all okay, he’ll probably share it with you, but it’s not for me to do. I’ve done enough already. Oh, I almost forgot, one more thing. Arm, Bryn. You too, Riley.”

She produced two syringes. Riley frowned and shook her head. “We don’t need that. The upgrade means no daily shots.”

“I know,” Pansy said. “The shot I gave you earlier canceled out the tracking frequencies for your nanites, but these will deactivate the tracking functionality altogether. Otherwise, they’ll be colonizing bones and making you a living GPS, and we can’t keep giving you the neutralizer shots. So be quiet and take your medicine, ladies.”

Bryn couldn’t object, and neither did Riley; they knew the risks, and also knew how big a gift they’d been given.

Although Manny might end up stuffing them back in the van and out the gate just as quickly. She supposed that she ought to get a shower, new clothes, and as much rest as possible before he woke up, so after the burn of the shot that Pansy administered had subsided, she joined Patrick as he left the main living area and took the door into the hallway to the right. “I can’t quite believe this,” Bryn said, and ran her fingers over the smooth, cool concrete of the walls as they walked. “How the hell does he afford all this?”

“You really want to know?” Patrick asked.

“Sure.”

“He holds the patent on at least three major lifestyle drugs developed in the past fifteen years, and he does independent consulting work for dozens of research labs—that’s his clean income. He gets much more from sources that aren’t quite as . . . aboveboard. Insanely rich people wanting a special drug developed for their own use, for instance—a safe, special, legal high. Private forensic work for corporations that don’t necessarily want to involve law enforcement. That sort of thing. He holds a lot of secrets, Manny does, and all that just feeds his native paranoid tendencies. Add to that a certain agoraphobia, and . . . you end up here, in a missile bunker.”

“But one with great amenities.”

“Exactly.” He smiled, but it was weary and small, and she took his hand in hers. “Ah. I guess this is one of the guest rooms.”

It was labeled that way, with a simple black nameplate, and a write-on/wipe-off board below that. Bryn wrote her name on the board and opened the door. She was expecting the basics—a plain bed, maybe a desk, a simple shower. But the room was lushly carpeted, with a broad king-sized bed, nightstand, work desk, art . . . and a modern full-sized bath. Suddenly, Bryn craved every single bit of that with an intensity that made her shake.

She looked wordlessly at Patrick, and he read it in her. He leaned in and kissed her gently. “Go catch a shower and rest,” he said. “We can talk later.”

What he wasn’t saying was that they needed to talk later, but she understood. It didn’t matter just now. She was far too sore, too exhausted, too dirty to care, and she closed and thumb-locked the door, stripped off her bloody clothes down to the skin, and was in the shower and shampooing her hair before she remembered she hadn’t thought to go to the wardrobe room. Damn.

That, she decided, was a problem she’d face later. Half an hour of hot water later, she toweled her hair dry and crawled naked between the sheets, and was asleep within seconds of hitting the dimmer switch by the bed.

She probably could have slept the clock round, but six hours later, a doorbell she didn’t know she had rang a soft chime, and the room’s lights automatically brightened themselves to a soft shimmer, enough to let her make her way to the door. She remembered she was naked about two seconds before opening it, and hunted in the closet to find—yes!—a fluffy white bathrobe that enveloped her in sandalwood-scented luxury.

She found Liam standing on the other side of the door when she opened it. He was holding a set of hangers, and bowed slightly as he handed them over. “I took the liberty,” he said. “Patrick thought you might need something, considering how damaged your clothing was. He didn’t think you had the energy to go shopping.”

Liam had also freshened up; the jeans and checked shirt he wore weren’t his usual dapper style, but he still looked starched, somehow. She took the clothes and smiled back at him. “Thanks, Liam. Um . . . I didn’t have time to ask, but . . . are the dogs okay . . . ?” Because one thing the two of them shared was a love of dogs. His were the various hounds that lived at the McCallister estate; hers was a bulldog that had gotten caught up in the recent chaos. And she’d missed him badly.

“I made sure we recovered them outside of Pharmadene, including Mr. French,” he said. “I had the opportunity to board them before we came for you. I’m afraid anything we left in the estate is probably going to be seized, at best, and I was afraid to leave the dogs to their tender mercies.”

It hurt her to think of her adorable bulldog, Mr. French, in some boarding cage, but she couldn’t do anything for him just now—and besides, knowing Liam, it would be the cushiest pet spa of all, and Mr. French wouldn’t want for a thing. Right now, she needed her dog’s unquestioning love more than he needed hers.

Her world had narrowed down into the single goal of kill or be killed, and her sweet pet didn’t have any place in that. And she wasn’t cruel enough to pretend he did.

Even if she wanted to.

“May I ask you something?” he said, and she blinked and focused back on Liam. “Your . . . new biological status. How dangerous are you, Bryn? Really?”

“Not dangerous to you or Patrick,” she said. “Maybe a little, to my sister, because she’s already got the nanites. These upgrades can’t infect regular people, only those brought back with Returné.”

His smile didn’t waver as he said, “You wouldn’t be lying to me about that, would you?”

“I wouldn’t, Liam.”

“I’d fully understand if you felt the need,” he said. “But it would be a rather massive mistake to give in to the temptation.”

She nodded, just a little, and didn’t break eye contact. “You’d kill to protect him,” she said. “I know that.”

“Specifically, I would kill you to protect him,” Liam said. “If you posed a clear and present danger. But I will take your word for it that you don’t.” The unspoken part of that was for now, and Bryn clearly understood it, and acknowledged it. “Dinner is being served. I thought you might be hungry.”

She was, she realized. Very. Which was upsetting and worrisome. Bryn clutched the clothes to her chest, closed the door and dressed very quickly; it all fit, more or less, and as she came out of the room she saw her sister waiting in the hallway.

Annie looked pale and drawn, and when she saw Bryn, her eyes filled with tears. She came over, and they hugged silently for a long, long moment. “I was so worried about you,” Annie whispered. “God, Bryn. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bryn said, and patted Annie’s back. “Not like we haven’t been through worse, right?”

“That is way too right to be funny anymore. Oh God, I guess we’re going to have to call the fam pretty soon and lie to them, aren’t we? Just so they don’t freak out and do something stupid like call the cops and file missing persons on us.”

That was an excellent point, and Bryn was a little startled that she hadn’t thought of it. “God, you’re right. We had to ditch the cell phones, after all. They might think we’ve been—”

“Abducted,” Annie said, and burst into strange, borderline-hysterical laughter. “Funny, isn’t it?”

The laughter was infectious, and Bryn felt it bubbling its way up out of her too—not humor, exactly, but a black kind of amusement liberally mixed with despair. She clung to Annie, and Annie held on to her, and they laughed it out until they finally got enough breath to separate.

Annie wiped her eyes and said, “I guess we really should eat something, right?”

“I hope they have steak,” Bryn said. “I really hope they have steak.”

In fact, they did. Evidently, Riley and Pansy had put their heads together, and dinner was mostly available self-serve in pots and pans . . . but there were steaks, big ones, and a small stack of them were left almost raw. When Bryn took a plate, Riley—who looked rested and fresh, too—pointed her toward the meat. “Specially made,” she said. “I think you’ll find it’s what you need. It helped me a lot.”

“You already ate?”

“Had to,” Riley said. That was a short answer, but it conveyed a lot, especially when she raised her eyebrows just a bit. “Pansy was kind enough to fix something.”

That must have been quite the culinary conversation, Bryn thought. “Is Manny awake?”

“Oh, yes,” Liam said, where he was spooning broccoli onto his plate beside a chicken breast. “Mr. Glickman woke very loudly. He is now barricaded in his room and says he will not come out until you and Riley vacate the premises and he has a chance to decontaminate the rooms.”

“He’ll come around,” Pansy said. “It was just the shock. He’ll be monitoring to make sure everything stays chill. If it does, he’ll come out in a few days. You’ll see.”

“We don’t have days,” Patrick said. He and Joe already had plates and were seated at the table, and Joe was halfway through what looked like some kind of stew. Bryn plated her steak and carried it over to sit next to them. “We have a day, maybe, but the people behind the Fountain Group’s research, whoever they are, however they intend to use all this sick technology. . . they clearly have more money than Gates. They’ll find us, and as good as this place is, it has vulnerabilities—principally, it’s a bunker, which means limited ways in and out. They can, and will, find a way to dig us out, and we’ll have a hard time slipping by them once they settle in. So here’s my thought: we let them lay siege, but some of us go on now and take the fight directly to their doorstep. We can’t win this by fighting a defensive war.”

“How exactly can we do that, when we have no idea where their doorstep might be?” Annie asked, as she put her food on the table and sat down beside Joe. “Other than Pharmadene, I mean. I’d rather not take the fight to them there again, please.”

“The FBI will take good care of Pharmadene; trust me, they’re probably not too happy that their people got subverted in the first place,” Bryn said. “But we do know something. We know who owned the old folks’ home that was our first introduction to the nanite harvesting.”

“The Fountain Group,” Patrick said. “Liam’s doing the research. Well, he was before we had to break off and run, but I suppose membership in this fortress comes with Wi-Fi access.”

“If you ask me nicely,” Pansy said sunnily. “The password is randomly generated, and it changes every day. I’ll let you know where to get the new codes.”

“Wow,” Bryn said. “Doesn’t it just make you tired? All the . . . security?”

“Sure,” Pansy answered, and spooned up soup. “But you end up surrendering things, little by little, when your partner needs more than you do. And Manny needs it. You get used to it. It’s not any different from living here when the Titan missile program was actually under way, only we have Blu-ray and surround sound.”

“That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. Liam?”

“I’ll continue the Fountain Group investigation immediately,” Liam nodded. “Of course, they will know we’re onto them once I begin to dig hard.”

“They can’t trace it here. We use a lot of anonymizers.”

“Of course you do, dear Pansy. But nevertheless, they will know someone is checking, and that will cause them to upgrade their alert status. I imagine that will make them move with a bit more speed. We should factor it in.”

Bryn controlled the sudden urge to tear into her steak with her bare hands, and forced herself to use the steak knife and fork she’d brought over with her. The first bloody, juicy bite of meat made her shiver in cell-deep relief, and she closed her eyes and let out a slow sigh of a breath.

When she opened her eyes, they were all looking at her.

“Good steak,” she said, and took another bite. They watched another few seconds, probably to be sure she wouldn’t turn ravenous zombie on them, and went back to their own meals.

Pansy, Bryn noticed, had strapped on a sidearm, and she’d been aiming the weapon at her under the table the whole time. Now Pansy slipped it back into its holster and gave Bryn a half-apologetic lift of her shoulders. Bryn didn’t really blame her. Being ready at all times to kill her, at least temporarily, was probably the bargain that Pansy had made with Manny to allow Bryn to stay—and it was good tactical sense. And for all her calm good humor, and seeming fragility, Pansy was perfectly capable of pulling the trigger when it counted. Much like Manny, although Manny was often a bit too eager on that score.

“Liam’s right,” she said, as she cut her third bite. “Once you start poking into the Fountain Group, they’ll react, and if we’re sending a team out of here, it needs to be away before they’re parked outside our front door. The point of having a fortress is to pin our enemies down in one place and leave a strike force mobile. I say we stay the night and head out in the morning—and then Liam starts his Internet stalking. He can send us info as he gets it.”

Nobody had any objections, except for Annie. She was glaring across the table at Bryn. “You’re going to leave me stuck here, aren’t you?” she asked. “Oh, come on, I know it’s coming. I’m the stupid kid sister liability.”

“No,” Riley Block said. She’d already finished half her steak, eating quickly and quietly, but she drew all their attention now. “You’re a liability for several reasons, Annie. You’re not combat trained, for one thing. For another, you still require the shot daily, and that means carrying supplies that can be destroyed or lost, putting you at risk.” She exchanged a glance with Bryn, and made a decision. “I didn’t say it earlier because I thought it might complicate matters, but . . . I don’t need the shots, either. I’m upgraded. Like Bryn.”

Silence around the table, and then Patrick said, tightly, “Why keep that from us?”

“Because when Manny found out one of us was upgraded, he shot Bryn in the head. I had good reason to think he’d take a more salt-the-earth approach if he thought it was some kind of epidemic.”

Joe thought it over, and he was the first to shrug. “Fine by me,” he said. “The way I see it, we’re going to need advantages if we intend to have any kind of a shot at winning.”

Annie licked her lips. “But—I could help, right? I could. I’m not helpless.”

“There is no but to it,” Riley said. “You’re a liability, and you stay here. Manny and Pansy have all the supplies necessary to make the serum for you, and you can help them defend this place if needed. Besides, I’m sure Bryn would feel better not having to worry about losing you, again. If you were my sister, I’d want you kept as much out of danger as possible, Annie, because you’re family. I’m pretty sure Bryn feels the same.”

Annalie fell silent, studying Riley; it was exactly what Bryn would have said, but somehow, it was going down much better coming from an impartial third party. And incredibly, Annie nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I admit, that makes sense. But I hate being the one who isn’t, you know, up to it.”

“The best people are the broken ones,” Pansy said, “because we heal stronger. Look at Manny and me. We’ve been shattered and glued back together, just like you. You’re not fragile, Annie. You’re still healing. There’s a difference.”

Annie took a deep breath, and nodded. She even ate some broccoli, which Bryn knew she loathed. Seemed like a good first step.

“So we rest,” said Joe Fideli, “and hit the road tomorrow. Pat, me, Riley, Bryn. Liam and Annie stay here with you, Pansy. Sound right?”

“It sounds perfect. Make me a list of what you want to take with you in terms of supplies and weapons, and I’ll get it together. How’s the chow?”

“You should open an underground fortress restaurant and day spa,” Joe said. “Maybe put in a massage therapy room, an aromatherapy pool . . .”

“You’re assuming we don’t already have one?”

“I’d never assume a damn thing about you, Pansy. Because I’d always be wrong.”

“You say the sweetest things, Mr. Fideli. Just for that, I’ll give you the half-off special on hot stone massage.”

“Before you two start making small talk about rolfing, let’s get serious for a moment,” Patrick said. “We’re going to need more than just the four of us. Does Manny have any contacts he can touch?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yes. But I’m almost certain they’ll all be tagged by now. Manny’s friends, on the other hand, will be much harder to identify, locate, and hopefully to sideline.”

“His friends like to be paid. They’re kind of, you know, mercenary.”

“We can do that,” Liam said. “For a short time, anyway. I’m presuming that this is not a long-term struggle.”

“If it is, we’ll lose,” Patrick said. “The Fountain Group is a very clear threat; they stepped in when Pharmadene folded, and they had enough influence and forward planning to infiltrate the FBI and take control of the research program—and make the upgrades. We don’t know what they’re planning, only that they have gone too far to stop, and they clearly don’t have any kind of moral limit. We’ll have the government backing us, at least the honest parts of it, for some of what we do. But if we can get to the people who run the Fountain Group, do it fast and surgically, we can break this down in a matter of days. That’s our goal. Days, not weeks.”

“Good, because I don’t want to have my wife and kids in hiding forever,” Joe said. Bryn felt a twinge of guilt for that, because it was her fault that his family had been drawn into all this, even tangentially; they were great kids, and Kylie was a lovely woman. Joe didn’t deserve to have his life destroyed, but now that they were all marked for destruction, there wasn’t any choice. It was fight and win, or lose everything.

Patrick caught Bryn’s eye, and held it, as he said, “We’re not giving up. Nobody here is giving up. It’s not in our natures.”

After that, it seemed as if a dark shadow had passed. Bryn and Riley finished their steaks; everybody else ate their dinners; Joe and Annie and Pansy traded friendly, snarky banter. Liam added in the occasional dry bon mot. It was . . . comfortable.

Bryn glanced up in the corner, and realized that there was a small camera installed there. She’d subconsciously been aware of it, she realized—and aware that Manny was almost certainly watching them.

She picked up her plate and silverware, walked to the sink, and washed everything before loading it in the dishwasher. Let him observe that the ravening, unpredictable zombie was being domestic. Maybe he’d change his mind, a little, if she didn’t do anything to freak him out again. Pansy often referred to “talking Manny off the ledge,” and sometimes she meant it literally—but his mood was more focused on homicide than suicide, Bryn thought.

She got herself a glass of wine from the common bottle, and touched Patrick on the shoulder as she passed him. “I’m going to my room,” she said. “We need to talk. Come see me.”

He shot her a glance, clearly assessing, and then nodded. In all the chaos and fury of their escape from Pharmadene, she hadn’t had time to address the big five-hundred-pound gorilla standing between them, but tonight . . . tonight that had to change.

Tonight, they had to talk about her new status as what amounted to a full-on zombie, if mercifully free of the rotting flesh . . . and, although it might be something selfish, they also had to talk about something Patrick had chosen to hide from her.

One way or another, whatever else the conversation brought . . . they were going to talk about Jane.

Bryn waited in her room sitting at the table; she’d found a stack of books on a small shelf in the corner, and was thumbing through a pretty interesting account of an Amazon explorer when the knock came at the door.

Deep breath.

She opened it, nodded to Patrick, who nodded back, and shut the door behind him. She took the edge of the bed, and he didn’t try to sit beside her; one thing about Patrick, he’d never been colorblind to nuances. He took the office chair and rolled it close, sat, and put his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. She didn’t think she’d seen him looking quite so lumberjack-casual before; the jeans and hiking boots suited him. So did the gray tee under the checked shirt. It made his late-day beard growth look comfortable and appropriate.

She had to admit it: she liked him scruffy. But she had to put that aside, in a mental closet, and lock the door on it, because this discussion wasn’t going there.

At all.

“So,” he said. “You’re . . . the new, improved model.”

“I’m still me, Pat. You know that I am. I’m just . . . tougher to hurt. Comes in handy, believe me.”

“I do,” he said. “But we didn’t even fully understand the fallout from the original version of the drug, Bryn. And now . . . now you’re carrying around something that’s first-trial experimental. You have to promise me that you’ll tell me if you feel something is . . . different. Anything.”

“Well,” she said, “I have this totally unsettling need to overeat. You know how when you’re pregnant, they say you’re eating for two? Well, I’m eating for about a hundred billion of these little bastards.” She tried to make it sound flippant, but it scared her, and she knew he saw it.

But it was okay. It was okay to be scared, with him.

“Don’t keep it from me if anything changes,” he said. “Promise me.”

“Yeah, speaking of that, you should have told me that your ex-wife was a psychopathic sadist killer for hire,” she said. “Or, failing that, you could have at least told me you’d been married before.”

“It was—” He stopped and shook his head, looking down at his boots for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “It was not something I want to look back on very much, Bryn. I was hoping you’d get that.”

“You must have loved her.”

“I did,” he said softly. “We were young and we shared the same ideals, the same goals. I met her in the military. It’s a hothouse environment, and it breeds obsessions . . . and we obsessed on each other. I admit that. But I truly thought we could make it work once we’d shipped home, and we did, for a while. But she had a dark side, darker than mine, and it just kept . . . growing. By the time she volunteered for the Pharmadene trial, when they were first testing the nanites . . . she was already a little unstable. I tried to stop her from signing up, but she just wouldn’t let me.”

“Jane was one of the first, then. One of the first Returné experiments.”

“Yes. And she was a success. A brilliant success. She adapted so well, so quickly to the nanites that it seemed to prove everything that they’d been hoping . . . until she turned violent. It was the dark side, the one I’d been worried about. She started . . . hurting people—small stuff, at first. Then, the second mission they sent her on, she killed someone. Not just . . . killed. She killed him unnecessarily hard.” He looked away. “You know what she’s like now—she wasn’t quite that bad then. They asked me to—to try to reach her. Bring her back from the edge. But she tried to kill me, too, Bryn. And I had to . . . I had to try to stop her. I thought she was dead—I really did. They told me she was dead. And the worst part of that was that I was really glad, because I knew she’d have only gotten worse.”

“And she did,” Bryn said. “A hell of a lot worse. I should know, Patrick. She had me strapped down at her mercy for hours. And she liked to hurt me. She enjoyed it as much as any serial killer ever did.”

He flinched, then. “I’m sorry.” He reached out for her hand, but she kept both in her lap, and he finally sat back. “You’re right. I should have told you about her, but—I really thought that she was dead. I thought she was the past. I was hoping—”

“When you met me, and I was newly Revived, you thought you’d try to keep me from becoming Jane. I get that. You transferred what you felt for her to me.” God, this hurt; it boiled in her guts like liquid nitrogen, achingly cold. “I can’t be Jane for you, Patrick.”

“You’re not. God, Bryn, you are not. I don’t know how to make you believe that, but—”

“You can’t,” she said. “Not right now. You should have told me. Maybe with that in the open between us, we could have found a way around it, but right now . . . right now I believe in my heart that I was a replacement, and I don’t want to be a replacement. Not for her. She tortured me, Pat, but finding out she was your wife . . . that really cut me, in ways I can’t even explain.”

He took in a sharp breath, and almost spoke, but then he stood up and rolled the office chair back to the desk. He held on to it with both hands, facing away from her, as he said, “Can you trust me enough to have your back when we leave here? Because right now, that’s the most important thing. Trust. Everything else . . . everything else will take time, but we need trust now.”

“I know you will do the right thing,” she said. “I’ve always trusted you for that. You’re my ally and my friend and my colleague. But that’s all right now. That’s all I can handle. There’s too much—too much chaos. Because the upgrade I was given—it’s what Jane had, too. It might take me down, just like it destroyed her from the inside.”

“Not you,” he said, and turned to face her. “I told you, Jane had a dark streak, something that the nanites just enhanced. You . . . you’re different, Bryn. You’re not cruel. And it won’t change you, not like it changed her. I believe that.”

Bryn wished she could believe it herself; she wished that with a passion that seemed all out of balance. But she understood the madness and malice in Jane in a way that she feared she’d see in herself, in the mirror; there was something about being so capable of violence that made it almost inevitable. When violence was such an easy answer, so effortless . . . it quickly became the only answer.

“Thank you,” she said, and meant it. “I’m sorry. I wish I could—I wish I could be what you want right now. But I can’t.”

“You said you could still be yourself,” he said. “Prove it.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s killing me, Bryn. Because I love you, and I get that you believe I’m using you as some . . . stand-in for my ex. I’m not. You’re not her, and I’ve never for one moment confused the two of you. But I have to ask it straight out—do you still feel something for me? Anything?”

His directness took her breath away for a moment, and so did the steady, calm way he studied her. “I really hated you when I found out about Jane,” she said. “Apart from everything else, even the horrible things that have happened to me, it felt like the only person I could trust stuck the knife in.”

A shadow moved over him, and she saw his face tense, ready for the blow.

“But I still do love you,” she said then, quietly. “I almost wish I didn’t. I’d rather keep you at arm’s length, because . . . because I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, like Jane. Or lose you. And that would destroy me, too.”

He looked down for a moment, and without making eye contact again, said, “Would you let me kiss you? Because I need to do that right now.”

She was afraid to—not because she thought she’d hate it, but because she was afraid that it would unleash a torrent of feelings she couldn’t control. Things that might sweep them both again. Of the two of them, it was Patrick who had a bit of darkness in him, and she couldn’t let that carry him away, either.

But she came into his arms.

His lips met hers with exquisite slowness.

The warmth came first—the feeling of his skin glowing on hers before the touch, whisper-soft and then firmer, hotter, damp and smooth and rough where his beard rubbed her chin. It was a long kiss, and it tasted like dark things to her, sweet and disturbing. And it made all of her body warm and tingle and respond, and she broke free with a gasp.

“Go,” she whispered, and sank down on the bed. “Please just leave. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t speak, and he didn’t delay for more than a few seconds; she saw him in the periphery of her vision as he moved away, walked to the door, and she heard the click of the catch as he pulled it shut behind him.

Only then did she raise her hand to her lips.

Whatever magnetism Patrick held for her, it was still there, still stronger than logic and reason. Stronger than pain and disappointment. She wanted him. Every part of her body needed him.

And she couldn’t possibly deal with that, and the complications it represented. Not now.

She undressed, wrapped herself in sheets and blankets, and surrendered herself to the darkness, for a few precious hours of restless, nightmare-driven sleep.

It was hard to tell night from day, but evidently the lights were programmed to help—at dawn, the room lights slowly increased in intensity, and Bryn woke up feeling as if she were bathed in morning sunlight. It was a nice feeling. Calm.

And then she remembered that she was essentially buried deep, deep underground, she was essentially dead, and people really were trying to destroy everyone she loved. So that good feeling passed quickly.

She still treasured the shower; common sense told her it might be the last luxury she experienced for a while, so she made the most of the hot water, foaming soap, and floral shampoo. The fluffy robe came in handy again, and then she put on the same clothes she’d worn the night before. They felt cool and comfortable against her flushed skin. She brushed her teeth and hair, and looked in the mirror for a long, silent moment.

I should look different, she thought. When someone made you a monster—more of a monster than before—you ought to stop looking like yourself. It was confusing, and probably heartbreaking for everyone around her, that her new flesh-craving self looked so . . . normal. Zombies should announce themselves with mindless ambling and snarling, at the very least. It was only decent.

A knock at the door startled her out of useless contemplation, and she opened it to find Joe Fideli standing there, fully kitted out in street clothes, with a bulky black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He rubbed his shaved head and gave her an impartial smile. “Morning,” he said. “Time to pack up, Bryn.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said, and shut the door behind her as she stepped out in the hall with him. “You’re already geared up?”

“I like to shop before the stores get busy,” he said. “Plus, I admit it, I wanted my pick of the good stuff. Don’t worry, I don’t wear your size.”

She gave him an eye roll and an air kiss, and he nudged her with an elbow in reply. She and Joe were comfortable together—had been almost from the start. He was just . . . a real guy. A good man. No sparks between them, but genuine comfort. “How heavy are we packing?”

“Can’t afford to get caught with anything technically illegal, so I kept it to the legal carry weapons, plus a couple of bonuses we’ll have to not show unless we mean to use them. Easiest way for our enemies to take us out is to trap us and call the cops on us. We end up in cells, easy pickings. So we do everything legal and aboveboard, until we don’t. Right?”

“Right,” she agreed. “But I actually meant, how many days of clothes did you bring?”

“I’m a guy, Bryn. It ain’t like I’m going to need a lot of variety.”

They had reached the end of the hall, and he led her down a set of metal spiral steps to the next level down. A door with a biometric lock on it was labeled ARMORY, but they bypassed that for the moment, and went into one called WARDROBE.

It was like a mini-mall. There were even signs on the walls calling out sections for men, women, and children. At the back, there was a mini–shoe store. Bryn checked the racks, and found more practical outfits for herself—shirts, pants, nothing fancy and nothing that would get her noticed in a crowd. She added a light jacket and a thick coat, because she wasn’t sure where they’d end up, and a pair of boots in addition to the athletic shoes she was already wearing. Underwear. The bras were all stretchy sports models, which were practical to cut down on the sizing choices.

She finished in fifteen minutes, and loaded everything into another duffel (suitcases and bags were in the far corner). Hers was navy blue, and once she’d packed it, she hefted it over her shoulder and nodded. “Next,” she said. Joe took her out of the wardrobe room, and to the armory.

She wasn’t surprised, by that point, that the armory was the size of a small-town gun show, ranked neatly from revolvers to semiautomatic handguns to shotguns, and all the varying types of rifles (sniper, hunting, military assault). Manny showed a little bit of a predisposition toward American made, but it was a veritable U.N. of killing power—Israeli, Russian, German, Swiss, Belgian, Chinese. Bryn whistled. “Gives new meaning to the term stockpile,” she said. “Does the ATF know about this?”

“Hell, those guys probably helped him get half this stuff. The feds love Manny,” Joe said.

Bryn picked her favorite handgun from the rack—a Glock 23, with the standard thirteen round clip. The extended clips added more rounds but jutted from the butt of the gun and threw off the weight, at least in her opinion. It was a solid weapon, favored by various US agencies, including the FBI, and it had the reputation of being one of the most reliable, even in rapid-fire situations.

Shotguns were heavy weight, but they were decisive in close quarters, and after consulting with Joe about his choices, she added a Winchester of her own, and then chose an FN PS90, the civilian version of the selective-fire P90. She’d always felt comfortable with them, and from her army experience, they were sturdy and accurate.

Ammunition took up the rest of the space in her bag, and when she hefted it, it was about as much weight as she felt comfortable carrying. “Where’s the checkout?” she asked, and Joe grinned.

“I’m guessing that the scanners in here tote it all up, and Manny will bill us later,” he said. “He’s not a giver, really.”

That was very true. Manny had, from the beginning, made it very clear that his help came with a price, and a hefty one. Bryn respected that. She also knew he’d never bargained for this much trouble, either, and she wondered if Patrick had thought about what to do if Manny ever decided to switch teams on them. He could, any time. Pansy would try to stop him, that was certain, but Manny didn’t always listen to her, especially when it came to personal security issues.

Bryn knew she’d tested the limits of his tolerance, and probably shattered them, and he was certainly not happy with the current situation. The only thing stopping him from selling them out would be the certainty that if he did, the Fountain Group would never let him live with as much as he knew about their business.

Self-interest would keep him on their side, at least.

They met Riley and Patrick upstairs again, near the elevators. Riley handed Bryn a backpack, which she found upon inspection to be full of high-protein bars, stacks of cash, and airplane-style toiletry kits. “The essentials,” Riley said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck hungry or broke in our current situation . . . and I hate not having a toothbrush.”

“Amen, sister,” Joe said, and accepted his own backpack. “Sweet. Now all we need is a deck of cards.”

“I thought you’d be more of a chess man, somehow.”

“Hard to bet on chess,” he said. “Harder to bluff. Okay, then, let’s hit it.”

“I need to say good-bye to my—” Bryn began, but before she could finish, Annalie stepped out of her room, still dressed in a fluffy robe and slippers, and hurried toward them. She breathlessly threw her arms around Bryn, and Bryn hugged her back, hard. “—sister. Hey, Annie.”

“Hey, stupid,” Annie said. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me behind.”

“I can’t believe I’m going. Crazy, huh?”

“Pretty crazy.” Annie pushed back to arm’s length, but held on to Bryn’s hands. “You be careful, okay? I mean it. Careful.”

“I will. And you, stay out of trouble. Do what Manny and Pansy tell you.” Bryn kissed her cheek and hugged her again. “I love you, brat.”

“Love you, too.” Annie forced a smile, though tears shone in her eyes. “Some reunion we’ve had, huh?”

“I don’t know. We’ve had worse. Remember that time at Cousin Bernard’s, and the stories about the aunt with four thumbs?”

“And the roadkill stew,” Annie said. “Oh yeah, I remember. You’re right. This doesn’t really even make the top five.”

Patrick tapped Bryn on the shoulder, and it was definitely time to go. Like it or not. One more hug, and Annie stepped back, crossing her arms across her chest. Not defensively, but in a way that suggested she wanted to hold that last hug very, very close.

The elevator doors opened, and Bryn stepped in, followed by the others. They arranged themselves at equal distances, the way people did in elevators, and so Bryn had a clear view of Annie standing there in her disheveled, just-out-of-bed glory one more time.

Annie raised her hand and waved.

Bryn waved back, and then the doors shut, and they left the security of what might have passed for normal life.

“Before we hit the surface, let’s make sure we all understand procedure,” Patrick said. “Pansy’s given us a hardened SUV from the motor pool; it’s registered to a shell company out of Belize, so it shouldn’t trip any alerts. We get on the road, and Pansy’s going to feed us intel as we drive. Within a few hours, she says she will break down the firewalls on their servers and start feeding us names and locations of people in the top ranks of the Fountain Group, or near it. We take out as many as we can, as fast as we can. If we run into trouble while we’re out of the vehicle, we run and stay in contact. Burner phones are in your packs. Do not engage in a firefight unless you’ve got no choice, understand?”

“Yep,” Bryn said. “And stay off the police radar.”

“They’ll probably have some kind of alerts out for us, and we can’t always avoid facial recognition; too many street cameras. But we should try to stay out of metro areas as much as possible. Anything else?”

Riley said, “I’ve got a friend who can help us. His name is Jonas. He’s retired Bureau—honest as they come. And he runs his own show now, mostly doing contract work in war zones.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Joe said. “Good man, by all accounts.”

“No,” Patrick said. “Nobody else unless we get in over our heads. We’ve dragged down enough good people.”

He wasn’t wrong, Bryn thought, but neither was Riley; it was good to have options, and there would inevitably come a time when they’d need someone to help who wasn’t already flagged. Maybe Patrick was thinking it, too, but the expression on his face said that there wouldn’t be any discussion on the subject.

Riley shrugged and let it go as the doors opened on the ground floor level. This exit had four security stops, and they passed through them all. As they entered the last room, a light flashed red and Manny’s voice came over an invisible intercom.

“As of now, your security creds are burned here,” he said. “Try to get in, and you’ll trigger the countermeasures. Trust me—you won’t like the countermeasures, and you won’t survive them. From this point on, it’s one way only: straight out the door. Understand me?”

“Manny—”

“Don’t, Patrick. You screwed me, you and your little girlfriend. I want the Zombie Apocalypse outside, not in here. Get it? So don’t come back. Ever.”

“What about my sister?” Bryn asked. “What about Liam?”

Silence, and then finally Manny said, “I’ll look out for them, because they had no choice. But not for you. As of right now, the store’s closed.”

The thick blast-proof outer door buzzed and winched itself open, and strobe lights flashed yellow. A recorded voice came on, advising them that they had thirty seconds to exit the room before countermeasures were employed.

They got out, and watched the blast door swing shut. Then, with a heavy crunch of gears, it locked.

“Right,” Patrick said. He sounded resigned, and a little bit bleak. “Let’s get moving.”