The Chimera Secret

63

Lopez ran across the control center even as Klein whirled at the sound of her approach. His rifle snapped across to aim at her. Too slow.

Lopez smashed into the soldier with all of her weight as she drove her shoulder into his chest and battered his rifle aside. The weapon fired at the ceiling as they crashed onto the floor, Lopez’s grip on the barrel failing as it was seared by the passage of the bullets. Klein threw her off of him, twisting the weapon as she grasped it. Lopez felt herself flip over him and onto her back on the hard tiles, the M-16 pinned between them.

‘Let it go,’ Klein hissed. ‘We’re not the enemy!’

Lopez didn’t respond as she yanked her knee up into Klein’s groin and simultaneously jerked her head up toward his. Her forehead smacked into his nose with a dull crunch, the soldier’s face folding upon itself in pain as her knee thumped into his testicles and crushed them.

Klein gagged, his eyes streaming as blood spilled in globules from his nose and down across Lopez’s face. She let go of the M-16’s barrel and smashed her upper forearm across Klein’s throat, driving her elbow deep into his thorax. Klein tumbled off of her and she rolled and leapt to her feet.

Klein whipped the M-16 around toward her, but Lopez blocked the barrel with one hand as she lifted her boot and smashed it down across Klein’s head. The soldier shuddered as she reached down and yanked the weapon from his grasp.

‘Lopez is free!’

Jenkins’s shout was audible even above the din of the rifle fire, but Lopez ignored it as she turned, lifted the M-16 and fired a salvo of rounds across the control room. Kurt and Jenkins hurled themselves clear of the hastily sealed doors as her wild shots clattered against the metal walls and rattled down the tunnel.

In an instant the M-16’s clip emptied, and Lopez turned and sprinted down the corridor toward the laboratory. She burst into the chamber and ducked to her right just as a hail of bullets zipped through the corridor and smashed into the dissection tables in a shower of sparks. She rushed across to the computer server and grabbed Kurt’s hard drive before sprinting down the adjoining corridor toward the crematorium.

The sound of running boots was amplified by the narrow passage as Kurt Agry raced after her, the thundering footfalls rushing ever closer.

Lopez ran across the chamber and plunged into the eastern corridor. She leapt over the gruesome remains of Cletus MacCarthy’s body and reached the locked door, the mechanism glowing with a tiny, bright red light.

Lopez reached into her jacket and yanked out the access card she’d palmed hours before from the fallen soldier. She slammed into the steel door and slid it through the magnetic strip. The bright little light changed to green and the three-pin locking mechanism snapped out of place. Lopez heaved the door open and hurled herself inside.

‘Lopez!’

Kurt appeared behind her in the corridor, his rifle raised and pointing at her. She turned and slammed the door shut, then punched the access card through the slot on the inside. The mechanism clicked shut just as she heard Kurt slam against the door outside.

‘Lopez! Open the goddamned door, right now!’

She stood back from the door, breathing hard as she swiped one sleeve across her face and wiped some of Klein’s blood off. Kurt pounded on the metal from the other side, but there was no way he could break through such a heavy door.

‘And you can’t break out,’ she murmured to herself.

Not, at least, until Kurt and his men were dead, torn apart by the creatures now invading the facility. She was about to formulate some kind of plan when something caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end, as though a bitter wind had blown across her skin. She smelled the dank, stale odor of sweat and rotting meat.

Her stomach twisted upon itself as she felt a presence nearby, something watching her from the impenetrable blackness.