Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel (53 page)

From the evacuation plan, she recognized that she was on the middle level of three, somewhere in the northwest quadrant. The map laid out the shortest route up to the surface—but she dared not take that path. They would be expecting that; likely guards were already posted.

When she reached the next stairwell, they would expect her to go
up
. So, instead, she would go
down
. She noted that the red zone on the map did not extend to the third level. She saw a corridor that transected the facility, passing under the red zone. She could use that passageway to cross to the far side of the facility, where fewer eyes, if any, would be watching. There was a remote exit in a sliver of the lab that poked out from the bulk.

That was her goal.

She shifted a cramping leg toward the floor, wanting to check that map one more time, then begin her painful run for the exit. As her toe lowered toward the linoleum, the door to the bathroom creaked open. The light flicked on, blinding after her flight through the dim corridors and dark rooms.

A casual whistling accompanied the intruder.

Not likely a guard.

From the timbre of the whistling and heavy-footed gait, it was a man. She prayed he crossed to the urinal, but his whistling approached the bay of stalls. She clutched her knife more tightly, willing him away.

Not this one. Pick another
.

Her prayer was answered as he entered the neighboring stall, the one closest to the door. She had purposefully avoided that one for that very reason. She would wait until he finished, give it another minute, then continue.

It was at that moment, perhaps stirred by his whistling, that the boy in her arms began to rouse, stretching a pudgy, wrinkled fist, yawning silently. But she knew that wouldn’t last.

She had to get out of here before he made a noise and alerted her neighbor. She didn’t know how long the man would be here. Her ears picked out the clatter of an unbuckling belt, the rip of a zipper, and the soft whisper of pants falling—followed by a long sigh of relief.

It sounded like he would be here awhile.

The whistling began again.

Lisa couldn’t take the risk of being trapped inside here if the baby began to cry. She carefully lowered her good foot to the ground, pivoted to her bad leg, careful of her ankle. She mouthed the blade between her lips and balanced the baby under the crook of one arm. Luckily, she had spent many nights babysitting Kat’s children.

She had never locked her stall. What would be the use? So she used the coat hook on the inside of the door to slowly swing it open, allowing her to slip outside.

I can do this
.

Then the baby let out a small wail of complaint.

Lisa froze as the whistling stopped. The stall lock snapped open.

Her mind immediately flashed to her new mantra.

WWKD?

What would Kat do?

Lisa kicked the door as it started to swing open, catching the man in the face as he reached forward. He fell back—Lisa followed, her knife already in hand. As he looked up, she slashed hard at his exposed throat. The razor-sharp amputation blade, made to cut through hard cartilage and stiff tendons, performed as designed. The deep cut severed skin, muscle, and trachea, drowning any scream. The severed carotid spurted high, splashing. The man gurgled and slid off of the commode. His hands clutched at his neck, his eyes shining with shock, already dead but not knowing it.

That’s what Kat would do
.

Lisa swung away, careful of the blood pooling, so as not to leave tracks. She pulled the stall shut, crossed to the bathroom door, and turned off the lights. His absence would likely be missed. She had to be far away before that happened.

She peeked out and found the hall clear. But as she stepped out, her name was called, loudly, echoing throughout the facility.

She cringed.

But it was only the loudspeaker system. The voice was male, not the digitally masked speaker from earlier. It didn’t sound like Robert Gant’s Southern slant or Edward Blake’s British accent.

Someone new.

“DR. LISA CUMMINGS! THIS IS YOUR ONE AND ONLY WARNING! YOU WILL TURN YOURSELF AND THE CHILD OVER TO THE NEAREST PERSONNEL, OR YOU WILL SEND YOUR FRIEND INTO DEADLY PERIL.”

A monitor bloomed to light down the hall, others blinked elsewhere. Clearly he was making a general broadcast to the entire compound.

She shifted down the hall enough to see a stranger on the screen. He wore white laboratory coveralls with a hood pulled back and a surgical mask on top of his head. In the background, she spotted Dr. Blake. The view suddenly switched, revealing Kat standing at gunpoint beside a sealed metal door. It looked like she carried a length of pipe and a small shield of some sort.

“AS PUNISHMENT AND TO RECOGNIZE THE THREAT SHE FACES, WE WILL PERFORM A SMALL DEMONSTRATION SO YOU FULLY UNDERSTAND.”

The door swung open, sunlight blazed, blinding the camera. The view switched to the outside, looking down upon a grassy meadow, a line of oaks in the distant background. Kat was shoved outside, stumbling into view, shading her eyes with her small shield against the summer glare.

“TURN YOURSELF IN NOW, OR HER FATE WILL WORSEN OVER TIME. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.”

Lisa needed no time to decide.

WWKD?

She knew what Kat would want her to do.

She hurried down the hall—not to turn herself in but to make her escape while most eyes here were fixed on those screens, prepared to enjoy whatever blood sport was about to ensue. And Lisa knew from the shield and the club that some gladiatorial battle was about to start.

She caught fractured glimpses as she ran with the child, gone quiet again for now, likely jostled back to sleep by her running. In stuttered snatches, she saw Kat head out into that field, wading through the grasses.

Be careful
, she wished her friend.

Kat stalked across the thigh-high grass. She carried a hard steel shield, two feet square, strapped to her forearm. In her other hand, she wielded a three-foot length of hollow pipe. She breathed deeply, readying her body, flushing oxygen into her muscles. Her senses stretched out.

The tall grass was mostly green, redolent of summer, the scent growing stronger as she crushed through blades with her slippers. The edges of her gown snagged on bristled weeds. Her ears caught the twitter of birdsong, registering it but filtering it into the background, along with the distant sound of tumbling water to the northwest and the sweep of gentle wind through leaves.

She knew the hunters would be coming.

She’d overheard the two scientists talking—Fielding and Blake—preparing her, deciding which weapons to test.

The battlefield is the ultimate crucible of Darwinian natural selection
, Fielding had explained to the other researcher.
Survival is the main drive of evolution. And it’s no different for our pods. For our weapons to learn, they must be field-tested, battle-hardened. With each new challenge, new synapses of the cybernetic brains will grow and expand. But we must test the pods with ever-harder challenges
.

She had seen those
hexapods
, as she heard them called: crab-like titanium killing machines, equipped with razor-sharp legs, slashing daggers, and drilling burrs. Other variants lined the workbench. The worst looked like a large, bloated tick, its legs as skinny as ice picks.

Beyond the workbench, deeper in the lab, larger creatures, the size of small black bears, had lurked, in various stages of assembly.

Kat strode across the meadow, hefting the shield to test its weight and swinging the pipe to judge its balance.

We’ve pitted the hexapods against unarmed opponents in the past
, Fielding had finished.
Today we’ll test them against the next level of weaponry: blunt weapons and shields. We will send wave after wave, escalating the numbers each time, until they learn, adapt, and defeat their opponent
.

A rustle to her left alerted her. She swung around, dropping her shield low. The grasses stirred as something raced low through them, cutting across the meadow like the fin of a shark through water. She saw four other trails swinging wider, intending to outflank and circle her.

Clearly, they were capable of coordination.

Good to know.

Fast as greyhounds, the hexapods churned through the fields. She’d never make the tree line, so she didn’t bother trying. She would make her stand here, using this first wave—if she survived it—to learn and adapt.

Nothing said she couldn’t evolve as readily as her opponents.

First, she didn’t want to be in deep grass. She wanted a better field of view. With seconds to spare, she used her shield as a press and stamped a swath of grass around her, pushing the stalks outward, creating a thicker natural palisade. She left one section open, a gate into her little nest.

The first hexapod hit that palisade broadside, got wedged in the wall of compacted grasses. She identified the gleam of its titanium carapace and speared her pipe down at it, using all of her weight. Metal crunched under the battering ram. It didn’t kill the beast, but it incapacitated its sensory system, sending the pod zipping away in a spiraling blind curve.

The other four, perhaps wirelessly sharing the experience of the first, veered away from a direct attack. They swarmed in a circle. Then one cut away, shooting toward the opening, sensing the chink in her shield—not knowing it was a trap.

It cut into her nest, but she was ready. She used her pipe like a golf club and batted it square in the front sensors, crushing the electronics and sending it flying. It landed on its back and didn’t move.

A weak spot
.

The other three circled, clearly plotting something, then, once decided, the trio arrowed toward the opening together, plainly trying to overwhelm her.

Sorry, we’re closed for the day
.

She slammed her shield’s edge into the soft loam, sealing the opening to her nest. The lead pod hit the shield with a loud clank. She stabbed downward, again and again, like a piston. She shattered most of its legs, leaving it crippled.

The other two veered away, plotting their next move.

Kat wasn’t waiting. She found a fist-size rock and underhanded it into the grasses. The movement drew one of the creatures. It shot in that direction, but it was only fooled for a few seconds. Once the rock stopped moving, it stopped hunting.

It knew the rock wasn’t
alive
.

The test confirmed the hexapods had motion sensors, but they must be backed by infrared, reading body heat, a mark of living creatures. Since the pod chased the rock, she doubted its visual acuity was very sharp. They could be fooled.

What about sound and smell?

The two pods didn’t give her another chance to find out. They zoomed in from opposite directions. One headed toward the shield; the other, the natural grassy palisade.

Kat snatched her shield back up, opening her nest again, allowing the first one to shoot inside. The second got delayed trying to push itself through the grass, employing some buzzing blade to chop into her space.

The first spun on a dime and came at her. She shoulder-dropped, putting all her weight on the edge of her shield, turning it into a guillotine. She crushed the front end, driving it into the soft soil.

The second burst through the palisade, leading its charge with a spinning horizontal saw blade.

She leaped to the side as the second rammed the first, finishing the job for her with its diamond blade ripping open the underside of the other pod. The first retaliated in a defensive death reflex. Razor-sharp legs drilled into crevices, peeled open the carapace, and ripped out the glass-enclosed brain.

In seconds, they’d killed each other.

Kat crouched, examining their weaponry, peeking at the arsenal under their carapaces. She noted a small, dart-like apparatus, the side marked with the designation M99.

Etorphine hydrochloride.

A powerful game-animal tranquilizer.

Strong enough that one drop could immobilize a man.

Knowing her opponents better, she stood and stared over at the small bunker through which she’d exited the facility. She knew they were watching. She just glared.

Let’s see what else you’ve got
.

She turned and sprinted for the tree line.

“She’ll do well,” Emmet Fielding said, forming a temple of his fingers before his lips, studying the bank of monitors. “Very fit.”

Edward sat beside him at the curved bank of computer screens. He gently fingered his broken nose, taped up after Lisa’s surprise attack. He watched the woman flee out of the view of one camera and into another. She fled through a dark forest of oaks, pine, and spruce.

“Aren’t you upset that she dispatched your weapons so quickly?” Edward asked.

A flap of fingers waved away his concern. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Porsche destroys fleets of their sports cars in their testing lab and field trials. That’s how you build the best. And I won’t settle for anything less.”