Counterpart (5 page)

“Here.” I point to a triangular space between the elevator and the wall, trying to ignore the panic invading my chest. One crisis at a time. The machines and their machinations will have to wait. “If you wedge your ax underneath that panel, I think we can use it to get some leverage. I can squeeze past.”

“Then what?” Zelda's voice is muffled by her shirt, tugged all the way up over her nose. “Doesn't sound to me like they're having any more luck on the other side.”

I worry my bottom lip. I want to get to Camus, and the only way lies beyond the elevator, unless we backtrack all the way through Military—with machines and God knows what else lurking.

“We still need to try and free the others,” I say. “So help me with this.”

Zelda gets the ax in the right spot, and I get down on hands and knees. Exposed electrical wiring snaps at me, biting into my arm like the fangs of a snake. I draw back, swearing, then try again, this time giving the wires a wider berth. I'm short of breath, but manage to call out to those on the other side.

I see feet stamping back and forth, then a bald man's head pops into view.
Oh, no.

“Rankin?” I blurt out.

“Rhona?” The Texan manages a smile. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

“What are you doing over there? Is Camus with you?”

“I was trying to lead people away from the disaster on Command—”

“What disaster?”

“Some kind of bomb. Took out half the level. The Tea Room's gone. The War Room's not much better. Tried getting these folks to Dormitory, but when the power surged, some of the doors locked automatically. Figured we'd have better luck on Bio, but no dice.” He uses the back of his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow. His eyebrows look drawn on, stenciled in by soot. They smear against his bald head. “Hey, you mind getting us out? It's getting mighty toasty over here.”

My throat feels tight and scratchy, even beyond the effects of the smoke. This is a lot of information to take in at once. I don't have time to process it—or worry about it. I shove all my concerns to the back of my mind, where they can ping harmlessly around my skull for the time being. First things first.

“Yeah,” I say, swallowing and coughing. “How many people are with you?”

“Five, not including myself. Were more, but they, uh…”

His gaze slices toward the well in the middle of the stairs.

They jumped.

“I know. We saw them.”

“We?”

“Zelda's with me.”

“Well, hot damn.” His mouth frames a whistle, but his lips are too dry to carry through. “There's some good news. Howdy, Amazon,” he calls through the gap.

“Hey, yourself, cowboy,” Zelda replies over my shoulder.

“All right,” I say. “Zelda's going to get this lifted a bit higher. You think you and the others can squeeze through? The way should still be clear to Medical. I don't think there's any fire on that level.”

Rankin nods. “Can do. Real quick, though, Commander. Hanna's with me—”

“What?” My voice pitches up like a ship in a high swell. So much for remaining calm. “Why didn't you say something sooner? Is she all right?”

“She slipped unconscious just before you got here,” Rankin explains, his normally jocular tone plagued with worry. “She's in a bad way, Rhona.”

I'm trying to digest this news when the elevator pops loudly beside me, the steel warping from the heat. I jerk back, hitting the wire again, which sizzles against my elbow. “Shit!”

“You okay?” Rankin asks.

“Oh, yeah. Best day ever.” This much I'm certain of: the machines will have to pry sarcasm from my cold, dead fingers. Or, in this case, extra-crispy fingers. I cling to my gallows humor like a drowning man holds on to a piece of driftwood. “Tell the others to start coming through, one at a time. We'll tell them when. They'll need to move quick. Not sure how long we can hold this thing up.”

“You got it, boss.”

I pull my sleeves down around my hands. As far as protection goes, it's not much.
My kingdom for an oven mitt.
Still, better than nothing. When Zelda's ready, she nods. We heave on my count, and the first person slips through. I lose my grip almost immediately after they've passed, shaking the heat from my hands and trying not to swear like a sailor. Touching that panel is like grasping a hot flatiron.

Before I can ask our first rescuee to help, he flees down the stairs with his hands over his mouth. Doesn't look back once. I can't really blame him. And I can't tell whether I resent his obvious cowardice, or envy his ability to express it.

“Tell the next person who comes through they need to stay and help,” I tell Rankin.

He nods, and we perform the whole dance over again.

With more people helping to lift the panel, it becomes easier to squeeze the rest through. When it's Hanna's turn, Rankin turns her headfirst toward the opening. I wriggle in and grab her beneath the arms, pulling her toward me. Her platinum braid hangs limply over one shoulder, burnt at the end. As I drag her out, her head flops back against my clavicle, eyes closed, face smooth and expressionless.

“I've got you, Hanna,” I tell her, even though she's lost to the world, and wouldn't be able to hear me even if she were conscious. “I've got you.”

I collapse backward with Hanna still in my arms, and brush some of her hair from her face. There are no obvious signs of physical trauma, so it must be smoke inhalation. I'm hoping we can get her to Medical in time. Actually, hoping is too tame a word for the aggressive, barbed feeling coiled around my heart. We damn well better get her there in time.

“You got her?” Rankin hunches over the hole, blinking rapidly and wheezing. Not sure how much longer he's got amidst all this smoke. He runs a finger between his skin and the collar of his McKinley uniform.

“We're good,” I reply. “You're up, buddy.” My ears prick at a noise foreign to the surrounding destruction. “Wait.”

Up to this point, I thought the sound was something electric malfunctioning nearby, maybe the elevator itself. A hushed, grating sound, like a fan hacking dust, or a clogged hairdryer. Almost a kind of—

Whirring.

“Move!” I scream, seconds too late.

The machine comes around the turn in the stairwell, red optics click, click, clicking, adjusting its sight. It lifts its head, the shiny metal gleaming like a smile. My heart lodges in my throat.
Predator class.
Its face reminds me of something prehistoric and carnivorous, modeled after the avian features of a velociraptor. I can only assume the designers envisioned creating something whose appearance would strike primeval fear in their enemies.

That, or they were big
Jurassic Park
fans.

Whatever the case, they couldn't have imagined the reality of watching this
thing
creep around the corner. All sharp angles, promising death.

Whir-whir-whir.

I hear it over the strained breathing of my companions, over the fire devouring plaster and anything else remotely combustible, including flesh and bone.
Whir-whir-whir.
I hear it above Rankin yelling—something unintelligible. A question.

Whir-WHIR-WHIR.

I freeze. The memory of copper floods my mouth like the pain of a toothache.
Anchorage,
I think, my mind swimming, foundering in blind panic.
Anchorage and Churchill and Juneau and Anchorage and—

The woman between me and Zelda drops the panel and tries to run. Tries. Her head jerks back, blood and brain splattering the elevator behind her. She falls away from me, boneless, with a gaze no more alive than a Renaissance painting, and suddenly there's a gun in my hand.

Thank God for muscle memory.

I lean across Hanna's prone form, firing at the machine. The first shots miss, leaving enough time for the machine to return fire, catching one of our other survivors in the lower back. He stumbles forward, sprawling against the stair railing, and pitches over before I can grab him. A cry stalls in my throat, my fingers just grazing his pants, fumbling at air. His scream carries like the fading wail of an ambulance, until I no longer hear it.

Even as my stomach rolls with nausea, I take aim and pull the trigger. Direct hit. The electromagnetic pulse shuts down the machine, and it collapses.

“Zelda!” I shout, mentally counting backward from ten. Ten seconds. The amount of time it takes for a machine to reboot itself.

Except this time, it does it in five.

Zelda's nearly on top of it with her ax when it rears up, all its joints snapping back into place like a damn action figure. Its bladed arm flashes up toward her throat. Sheer luck separates Zelda from a gory demise, as her ax bounces harmlessly off the machine's skeleton and enters the arc of its arm. Instead of puncturing her esophagus, the blade slices a clean line up Zelda's arm, narrowly missing her wrist, but putting her off balance.

I fire again, grounding the machine a second time. Zelda sinks the ax into its chest cavity, destroying its core processor, rendering the machine little more than an impressive paperweight.

Zelda hobbles back toward Hanna and me, panting. “Two more incoming.” Of course. I should've expected as much. For reasons unclear even to the original programmers, the machines hunt in packs of three.

“Long, we need to go.” Pain grates Zelda's voice into short, brusque syllables.

I nod, getting to my feet. It's only as I bend down to retrieve Hanna that I notice someone's missing.

“Where's Rankin?”

At that moment, a second machine rounds the corner, larger than the first. Another predator model, built for close combat. It looks identical to the one that attacked me in a training room last year: more bipedal than the other predator, though still far from human. Rather than firing—presumably because it already spent all its ammunition on the way here—the machine charges Zelda. She dodges toward the stairwell, and I hold my breath, fearing a repeat of what happened minutes before.

Her hands smack against the metal railing, jerking her torso over—but her grip holds, and she's able to pull herself back at the last second.

The machine has no such luck. Its momentum delivers it squarely into the elevator with all the force of a professional linebacker. Already weakened by the fire, the steel buckles, the elevator partially collapsing in on its attacker. Outside, the car lurches against the wall, leaving jagged gouges like claw marks. At this new angle, the gap the other survivors slipped through disappears almost entirely, replaced by wrinkled, scorched metal and the machine's sparking corpse.

“Take this.” I shove the EMP-G into Zelda's hands and dive to my knees, flattening my cheek against the ground in order to see to the other side. “Rankin!”

He doesn't answer immediately, and when his voice finally reaches me, it's faint and defeated. “Hey, Commander.”

“Hey, yourself. We're going to figure out a way to get you out. Just…hang tight. Okay?” No answer. All I can see is the side of his thigh, both legs extended. He's sitting down. He wasn't sitting down before. “Rankin?”

He coughs for a long moment. Sounds like he's hacking up half a lung. “You got machines over there, don't you?” he finally manages to ask.

“We're handling it. Don't worry about us. Hey, think you can lift the car from your side any?”

“Hanna—is Hanna all right?”

It's like he didn't even hear the question. “Yeah. Yeah, she'll be fine, just as soon as we get her down to Medical. I'm going to need your help lifting this though…”

Whir-whir-whir.
The third machine appears on the landing, carefully picking its way over its fallen comrade, but otherwise giving no sign it cares about the death of one of its own. Why would it? For the higher echelon, losing a machine is like losing a fingernail. There's always another to replace it.

“Long,” Zelda says in a warning voice.

“Deal with it,” I snap at her. Then, to Rankin, “On my count, we're going to lift this car. I think I can shift some of the weight onto my back, while you crawl through.” In reality, I know that's not going to work. Even working together, it's doubtful we can lift the car more than an inch. But I have to try something. The machines might be a dime a dozen, but people aren't. Rankin isn't replaceable to Hanna—or to me.

“Y'all need to get out of here,” Rankin says, slurring his words. “Take Hanna with you.”

“Don't you do that.” My throat aches. I'm clenching my teeth so hard I can barely get the words out. “Don't you give up.”

“S'all right, Rhona.” I swear I hear a smile in his voice. “You tried. Appreciate that.”

“Rankin—”

“Long!” Zelda again. She's dispatched the machine, but no telling if or when more will arrive.

“Tell my wife I love her. And I'm, I'm—I'm sorry. Never did tell her…end of that joke about…” He chuckles softly to himself. “Schwarzenegger and the composers. You ever hear that one?”

“No. I don't think I have. You'll have to tell it to me later. Rankin?”

He's silent. Doesn't stir, even when I begin shouting his name.

“Zelda!” I screech. “The ax. Give me your ax.”

But she's not holding the ax anymore. Instead, Zelda has Hanna wedged beneath her arm, and is barely sustaining the other woman's weight. Amazon is right. At this moment, Zelda Lefevre is practically Wonder Woman.

“We can't stay here,” I hear her say.

But I'm already turning back around. All that matters is the feel of the haft in my hand. I'm getting Rankin out of there.
Now.

I swing the ax at the elevator, crunching into the elevator's frame. Pain shrieks up my back at the contact. My hands burn. Blood and sweat dribble into my eyes, down the sides of my face, like tears. No, not
like
tears. Alongside tears. I'm an oozing mess, but I'm the oozing mess that is going to save Rankin Moore's life.