Betrayed (16 page)

But once again, the slightest bit of optimism had been too much. QR1 had obviously been protecting the vial for Loki this entire time, being the mindless thug that he was. He had simply been holding it for safekeeping until the Grand High Boss needed his medicine. Gaia was overcome by a wave of utter hopelessness and nausea as she stared at this pathetic excuse for a father-son team. The test-tube slave saving his master's ass. How thoroughly repellant.

Loki breathed out a desperate sigh of relief. “Excellent,” he said, holding his trembling arm out to QR1. “Give me the shot…quickly.”

Gaia did everything in her power to will that vial out of QR1's hand as he stepped forward. If she could just will that last vial to drop from his hand and crash to the floor.

But it was no use. The vial stayed firmly in his grip. He stepped toward Loki and looked down at him.

And then he turned away.

He turned to his right, crouched down next to Heather Gannis, and gave her the shot.

“WHAT…WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Loki cried.

Gaia was rather sure her jaw was still hanging open. As was her father's. As was QR2's. The entire room had been left dumbfounded and speechless. All of them with the same question. The same question Loki had just whimpered childishly from the floor. What was QR1 doing?
Why?
Why had he used the last vial on Heather and not Loki?

Gaia had never seen this look on Loki's face. Never. She had never seen his eyes without that veil of confidence and absolute power. She had never seen his brows arched in total shock, like a child who'd gotten lost in the woods or an old woman who'd just had her purse snatched. The epitome of helplessness.

All he could do was stare and watch it happen. Watch as QR1 injected Heather with the counteragent and then threw the empty vial down on the floor, breaking it into infinitesimal shards. Heather let out the remnants of a scream, but that was all. She was too weak to resist. And thank God for that. Her life had just been saved, and she probably didn't even know it.

“What are you doing?” Loki squawked again. “What the hell do you think you're
doing?
”

QR1 rose to his feet and walked slowly to Loki until he was towering over his gelatinous body on the floor. “I'll tell you what I'm doing,
sir.
I'm doing something you've never done in your entire life.” He knelt closer. “I'm honoring my brother.”

“What?”
Loki raised his eyes up to his. “What are you
talking
about?”

“I'm talking about Josh,” he spat. “My
brother.
My twin brother. The one you killed.”

“Oh, please, he wasn't even your—”

“Shut
up,
” QR1 shouted. “Yes, he
was.
He
was
my brother. We were all brothers, whether you ever understood it or not. And my brother wasn't an idiot. He knew his days were numbered. He could feel it. So he asked me. He made me promise that I would get Heather that counteragent if he couldn't to do it himself before he died—no, let me rephrase—before you
killed
him. And I promised. I swore to him that I'd get it done. And I did.”

QR1 suddenly turned to Gaia. “I was
trying
to give it to Heather in the hospital,” he explained, “but they were watching me, and she was so nervous, and then
you
came barging in, Gaia. I
told
you that you didn't understand what was going on in there.”

Gaia couldn't possibly have uttered a response at this moment. Nor did he seem to need one. He turned right back to Loki before she could have even opened her mouth.

“So that injection was for Josh,” he proclaimed. “Not for you. Never again for you.”

“That's enough,” Loki hissed, trying clumsily to climb to his knees. “Not another word, you little—”

“No, I've got another word,” he barked. “I've got plenty more words,
sir.
”

“You're an experiment!” Loki growled. “A goddamned test case for an experiment that
failed.
I should have terminated
all
of you years ago—”

“I am just
so glad
that it's done!” QR1 howled, ignoring Loki entirely. Finally his patented smile had returned. Only now it was in an entirely different context. “I'm
so glad
that was the last of the counteragent and that you'll probably rot right here in this crappy torn-down apartment like an old petrified fossil. That's what you deserve. Not just for Josh, but for every other one of my brothers that you've killed without even thinking twice. You think we're nothing but experiments? You think
we're
less than human? Us?
You're
the subhuman here. You're less human than we will ever be. And now you're
done.
I hope once that coma kicks in, you never wake up.”

Loki's eyes had glazed over by now. His expression had moved beyond rage or disbelief or spite into some strange blank netherworld. But Gaia knew exactly what his expression meant.

He had just had his final revelation. A revelation Gaia would have been happy to impart had she chosen to even dignify his pseudophilosophical psycho ranting with a response.

She knew next to nothing about fear, but she certainly knew this much: Yes, people fear death more than most things. And yes, they might fear loneliness even more. But the thing that people fear
most
…is the combination of the two. The thing that people fear most is dying alone. Which had always struck Gaia as extremely odd. Since everybody dies alone.

But of course, Loki had always placed himself above everybody else. He suffered from hubris to the
n
th degree. And he would never accept the notion of dying alone. Which must have been why he started shooting.

He thrust his convulsive arm forward and fired off his deafening gun again and again, waving it around wildly as he howled out a stream of indecipherable hatred. He clearly had no specific target in mind now. He just wanted to take them all down with him.

QR1 was the first to go. Gaia had barely had a chance to blink before his entire torso was covered in bullet holes. The sheer force of the shots forced him to shuffle backward three steps before collapsing to the ground. The chaos turned so ugly, Gaia almost wanted to shut her eyes. Not because she was afraid, but simply to avoid stocking up on more images for her nightmares. But chaos always moved too quickly to avoid.

QR2 swung his gun away from her dad and took his first step toward Loki to protect his brother, but it was already far too late to protect a corpse. He hadn't even finished the first step when Loki's wild bullet spray decimated his ankles, sending him to the ground as two more holes erupted in his head.

Move. Move now and move fast,
Gaia ordered herself.
You are in the line of fire, wherever the hell that is.

Gaia pushed off with her toe just to knock her chair over to the side. That was the only maneuver she had left. But as her chair tipped over, she saw him.

She saw her father covered in blood and falling to the floor headfirst.

TOM HAD TO MAKE A SPLIT SECOND
decision. Seeing Gaia's chair tip over had made his heart stop. If she'd been hit, then his ability to live with himself would have finally reached its limit. But the only way to be sure no one got hit again—the only way to put an end to this thing—was to get to the source. Loki's gun.

With the twins, or whatever they were, dead on the floor, Tom knew he'd be next if he kept his feet to the ground. He had to jump. But which way? Over to Gaia to pull her out of the line of fire, or over to Loki to disarm him?

You know the answer, Tom. Get that gun out of his hand or you'll all be dead in five more seconds.

So he jumped headfirst, covered in his dead captor's blood, and prayed he could dodge the bullets for just one more second….

“Aaagh!”
Loki let out a high-pitched wail.

Tom ripped the gun from his frail hand and plowed his shoulder into his chest, rolling his brother flat against the floor as he cried out again. The sound gurgling up from Loki's chest was so painful and pathetic, Tom almost regretted tackling him so hard. But that was just an irrational reflex. He quickly reminded himself of the amount of pain his brother deserved—so much more than one man could inflict. More than an army could inflict. In fact, Loki deserved much worse than pain. Tom knew for a fact that nearly every system of justice, from that of the most primitive tribe to the most civilized country, would agree….

Loki's crimes were punishable by death. It was more than justified.

Images were rapid-firing through Tom's head. Katia's dead body lying flat on the kitchen floor. Gaia lying on the floor right now, strapped to a chair like a prisoner of war.

Tom grabbed onto the front of his brother's shirt and hoisted his torso off the ground, pressing the barrel of the gun firmly to his forehead. If there had ever been a time to make an exception to his strict moral code, it was now. One simple gunshot to the head would finally ensure that this war was truly over—that Tom would never again have to look behind his back and wonder when the next murder attempt on his loved ones was coming.

He realized now that his tackle had put an end to Loki's convulsions. Loki had now given way completely to the paralysis, his neck frozen at a stiff thirty-degree angle, his right arm curled up against his side like an injured wing, and his left hand frozen in a clenched fist that clung to Tom's lapel. His eyes were no longer twitching, either. Now they were simply fixed on Tom's eyes in a hollow, impenetrable expression that bordered somewhere between pure hatred and animal desperation.

Neither of them uttered a word. Tom wasn't even sure Loki was capable of speech at this point. But it wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have mattered what either one of them said. It wouldn't have mattered what either one of them did next.

Tom wasn't going to pull the trigger, and he knew it. Despite their supposedly identical DNA, Tom simply didn't have a vengeful gene in his body. Maybe his brother had taken Tom's in the womb. Maybe that explained why Loki seemed to have twice the need for vengeance of any other human being and Tom simply had none. He had certainly been pushed hard enough to question his need for vengeance. But here, with a gun pointed directly to his brother's head, was the answer.
No.
No, he couldn't kill his brother in cold blood. Even though Loki had been more than ready to do just that to him. That was really the point, though, wasn't it? Tom
wasn't
his brother. He wasn't Loki. And he never would be.

Besides, Tom didn't really need to exact revenge. Loki had somehow managed to bring his own worst fate on himself.

Tom lowered the gun from Loki's head and dropped his paralyzed torso back down to the floor. He turned and stepped quickly to Gaia.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, crouching urgently by her chair as he removed the tight straps from her hands and feet.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Where are you hit? I can't see where you're hit.”

“I'm not hit,” he replied quickly. “This isn't my blood, Gaia. You get Heather.”

Gaia quickly undid Heather's straps as Tom stepped back down to Loki on the floor. A moment more and he felt Gaia right behind his shoulder.

Tom peered into his brother's cold and helpless eyes, which were just about the only things he seemed capable of moving now. Tom was at a complete loss for what to do or say.

But much to his surprise, in spite of what looked like complete paralysis, Loki managed to reach his crippled left arm up and grab onto Tom's lapel again, pulling him closer with whatever was left of his strength.

Tom could hear him straining to speak through his phlegm-ridden gurgles and his iced-over face. He was definitely trying to say something. Something was changing now…. He was giving up. The harshness fell away from his eyes, leaving only that unwatchable air of childlike desperation.

“I can't understand you,” Tom said, fighting off the sudden unwanted sympathy he was experiencing as he leaned closer. “Say it again.”

Loki tightened his fist around Tom's lapel and tugged him even closer. He was still the man that Tom had always known—still using his iron will to fight off the obvious lack of consciousness that was approaching. That's how important it was for him to say whatever it was he had to say. And finally Tom was close enough to hear the strained words falling from Loki's locked jaw.

“My daughter…,”he moaned. “I want to see her.”

Tom yanked back his head and stared into his brother's eyes.

Just a few minutes before he'd heard Oliver refer to Gaia as his own daughter. But this was the first time Tom could see it so clearly. It
wasn't
some kind of psychological ploy or tactic. It wasn't some kind of conniving means of manipulation.

His brother honestly still didn't know. After seventeen years, he'd still never learned the truth.

“Oliver,” Tom began, flashing his eyes to Gaia and then back to his brother. He could only think of him as Oliver now, lying on the floor in such a state. “Oliver, you still don't understand, do you? I just…assumed you had seen your tests at some point….”

“What tests?” Loki whispered, slurring to try and hold words together.

“Your fertility tests,” Tom said, once again struck by the irrational need to be gentle with the cruelest man he knew. “Oliver, you're completely sterile, don't you know that? You have been ever since that experimental treatment when you were thirteen. The tests…they're just sitting there in your Agency files, but I assumed…I assumed you knew by now.”

Oliver's eyes seemed to be receding into his head. It was as if he were progressively shrinking from pain. Although it didn't look so much like pain in his eyes now. It looked like sadness. “What…you talking about?” he muttered, saliva building up in his permanently open mouth.

“What are you saying?” Gaia demanded from behind.

“I'm saying he's not your father.” Tom locked eyes with his daughter. He was shocked to see some kind of dark, oppressive burden suddenly fall away from Gaia's eyes. He hadn't even wanted to have this conversation in front of her, but from her look it seemed she somehow knew more than he or Katia had ever chosen to tell her. She seemed quite aware that there had at one time been the potential for Oliver to be her father. Yet the simple fact of his sterility had somehow been omitted. Until now.

Tom turned back to Oliver. “Gaia is not your daughter,” he stated clearly and for the record. “You're incapable of having a daughter, Oliver. You never could have fathered a child, and you never will. You're incapable of—”

Tom stopped. He felt the need to stop. Because in spite of his brother's almost completely catatonic face, a tear was now falling from the corner of his eye and dripping down to the wooden floor.

And Tom felt so relieved. Oliver wasn't going to waste his time doubting what was obviously the truth. He knew Tom. He knew Tom wouldn't lie to him right now. He knew Tom had never once lied to him in their entire lives. Oliver had been told the truth, and he had accepted it.

His fist pulled tighter on Tom's lapel. It clenched down with such force that it turned bright white from the pressure as he pulled Tom even closer.

Tom could tell that Oliver had some version of last words to speak now. Something he urgently needed to say to his brother before he faded away. Most likely a plea for forgiveness for an infinite list of merciless crimes…and Tom was prepared to give it.

“What is it?” Tom replied. “I can still hear you.” He leaned his ear to his brother's lips.

Oliver breathed his words into Tom's ear. “I hope…that you die like this, Tom. I hope that you die paralyzed, and alone…and loved by no one. I know that's how you'll die. And you'll be scared. So pathetically scared. But I'm not scared, Tom. I'm not afraid to die alone….”

Tom stared into his brother's very unenlightened eyes. “Then why won't you let go of me, Oliver? Why have you been pulling me closer and closer?”

Oliver had no answer for this. But his sudden attack of speechlessness spoke volumes. Apparently he intended to carry his denial with him all the way to the other side. He looked at Tom one last time. He shifted his watery eyes to gaze at Gaia. And then, with nothing left to say, he simply closed them. He closed his eyes for good.

It was over. The war was finally over.

“Is he dead?” Gaia asked.

Tom cracked open Oliver's eyes and peered through the pupils. “Comatose,” he said. “Brain-dead. Vegetative state. He'll probably stay that way for years. Until his body finally rots away and his heart stops.”

“That sounds worse than being dead.”

“It is.”

“Good,” Gaia said, staring down at his nearly lifeless body. “He deserves something worse. What do we do with him?”

“I don't suppose it really matters now,” Tom said. “We'll wait here until the Agency picks him up. They'll lock him away in some medical facility. They'll probably want to run a lot of tests.”

“So…he'll just be a test subject from now on?” Gaia asked.

“I suppose so.”

Gaia shook her head and coughed out the remains of an ironic laugh.

“What?” Tom asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

Tom raised his head and gazed across the room at all the pointless destruction. Dr. Glenn was sprawled out on the floor, his head still propped up against the drying streak of blood on the wall. The twin brothers were lying next to each other in a puddle of blood. And Oliver's body was lying before him in a lifeless heap.

But Heather Gannis was alive. Curled up and still only half conscious in her chair, but alive. And Gaia was alive. And Tom was alive. And the Agency would be arriving shortly. To clean up the mess.