Fast (73 page)

            She hit the enter button and watched the final product rotating as a 3-D model on the screen. There was a slight hiss off to her left as the synthesizer started processing her pheromone. It would only take seconds before she had enough pheromone to fill the Complex ten times over.

            Vanessa smiled. Because Vanessa loved biology.

            Now came the show-stopper.

            How on earth can I disperse the pheromone to all the creatures in time?

            Nature dispersed pheromones via air currents, but the Complex had lost all its ventilation fans. There were no air currents. It could take a full day before the pheromone showed up everywhere in the Complex by passive dispersal.

            She needed the pheromone to disperse through the entire Complex and the Quarantine Center in the next sixty seconds.

            Just then, something small and beautiful floated down from the top of the room and landed softly on her computer. Its beauty reminded her she was a novice in a discipline that took millennia to master.

            It also provided her answer.

#

Gas.

            Coleman stood right in the middle of it.

            I should have heard it. If I pull this trigger I could ignite the gas. The explosion will rip this place apart.

            Now that he wasn’t solely focused on Cairns, Coleman heard the quiet hiss of escaping gas from the canisters spread around the lab.

            He recognized the bottles. These were the canisters from the engineering level. They had been on the forklift moved from the engineering level’s destructive testing facilities. The same place the surfactant came from. Coleman had assumed the forklift was entirely part of the ruse to trap Third Unit on the engineering level, but now it seemed that Cairns had been putting this part of his plan into motion even then.

            But this didn’t smell like the surfactant that killed Marlin in the ventilation shafts. This had a much sharper smell.

            ‘Titriole gas,’ confirmed Cairns.

            Coleman saw Cairns’s plan. He was filling the labs with gas and then leaving a timer to detonate the explosives and ignite the gas.

           
Destroying these labs was part of Cairns’s operation. He wasn’t just here to steal the templates. He was also ensuring this research facility wouldn’t be an obstacle in the future. As if murdering all the staff wasn’t going to be enough….

            It was the perfect Cameron Cairns solution.

            Cairns left the templates beside the explosives and walked slowly and deliberately towards Coleman. The eerie light reflecting off the lab pool made Cairns appear ghastly. He looked like some kind of approaching supernatural apparition.

           
He’s just another man
, thought Coleman.
If I pulled this trigger, he’ll die. But he knows I can’t do that.

            Coleman gripped the colt in both hands and yelled, ‘Stop where you are or I will shut…you…down! I don’t care if I kill us both. I’ll do it in a heartbeat.’

            Coleman hoped he sounded genuine. Apparently he didn’t sound genuine enough.

            ‘You won’t shoot me,’ predicted Cairns, still approaching. ‘You want to. You desperately want to. But you can’t. From where I’m standing, you’re in no condition to do anything. You can hardly keep that pistol sight from shaking.’

            It wasn’t true. Coleman’s pistol held dead steady, but Cairns could obviously see he was near exhausted. He had been running the hard-yards all day, and his body showed the effects. He wasn’t a superhero. He was made of flesh and blood like everyone else.

            Coleman slipped the colt back down into his leg holster. ‘You’ve failed, Cairns. You’re never going to get out of here. Whatever pick-up you arranged must be well and truly cleared out by now. My government will destroy this place before they let you take those templates.’

            Cairns cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you trying to negotiate with me?’

            ‘The U.S. Military doesn’t negotiate with terrorists or assholes. And you fit both categories. I just wanted you to know that your operation has failed. You don’t even have Gould anymore.’

            Cairns’s tone became suddenly conversational. ‘Killing him was the most satisfying thing I’ve done all day. I opened up his heart like a bottle of wine. I felt his sternum cleave, and then his ribs spreading as I twisted the blade. You should have seen the look on his face.’

            Cairns stopped three paces short of Coleman. The last time Cairns had stood face-to-face with Coleman, a piece of plexiglass separated them. Now there was just thin air.

            Air rapidly filling with titriole gas.

            Cairns stood squarely in front of Coleman. He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. ‘So, you really need to take these templates off me, right? Okay. But you’re going to have to use your hands, like a man.’

            Cairns held his palms upwards, inviting Coleman to attack. ‘In your own time, Marine. But keep in mind that the timer on those explosives is counting dow -’

            Coleman exploded into action.

            His right fist connected solidly with Cairns’s cheek. The force of the impact travelled right up Coleman’s arm. As Cairns recoiled backwards, Coleman charged forward, choosing his targets and pounding his fists over and over into Cairns.

            From six punches, two more solid hits and a then glancing blow ploughed through Cairns’s guard. The glancing blow slid across Cairns’s face. Coleman felt his watch face gauging out skin.

            The glancing blow gave Cairns a chance to react. When he struck back, it was so perfectly executed that Coleman wondered who was beating the crap out of whom.

            Cairns elbow circled up and under Coleman’s defenses. Cairns twisted his entire body into the attack, straightening with his legs, rotating with his shoulders; the incoming elbow was the focus of all Cairns’s strength.

            Coleman copped the elbow right under the chin.

            The stunningly unexpected blow sliced right through Coleman’s guard. He felt his teeth smack together like someone had set off a mousetrap in his brain. Fragments of his front teeth fractured into his mouth. His back teeth bit deeply into the left side of his cheek. The electric jolt of pain preceded the impact shock.

            Cairns didn’t stop. Coleman had just enough time to notice his watch-face had torn away Cairns’s left eyelid. The eyelid was hanging from Cairns’s face by a wisp of skin. It didn’t slow Cairns even slightly.

            He followed through with a vicious combination of blows that Coleman could hardly see, let alone intercept. It felt like more than one person was hitting him. Both Coleman’s lips were split open and then his nose cartilage crunched under Cairns’s fist. Punches seemed to be raining down from everywhere. As soon as Coleman recovered from one hit, another powerful blow would punish another part of his anatomy. It felt like Cairns had kicked him once or twice, but Coleman wasn’t sure in the frenzied confusion of blows what was happening.

            He twisted and curled his body with the attacks, absorbing as many as he could with his shoulders or his body as his senses came back into focus. The elbow to the face had been shocking, and Coleman knew that if he didn’t unbalance the fight soon, Cairns would land another devastating blow.

            Another big hit like that and Coleman’s brain would shut up shop and call it a day.

            Here comes another kick!

            Coleman ducked under the kick, seeing the heavy combat boot cut through the air where his chest had been just a split second ago. If the kick had landed, Coleman wouldn’t have gotten up.

            Cairns had thought he was delivering the end-move.

            But now Cairns became a slave to the momentum of a kick that was swinging through thin air. He had devoted his entire body-weight to the attack, and that momentum kept his body spinning.

            Coleman stood up halfway through the rotation of Cairns’s body and slung his right arm around Cairns’s neck. Both men finished Cairns’s move, except Coleman now had Cairns in a choke hold.

            Cairns realized in an instant and started smashing his elbow backwards into Coleman’s sides.

            But Coleman wasn’t letting go. In seconds Cairns’s brain would be starved of the oxygen that was pouring into his muscles.

            I just have to hold on and ride this bastard to his grave.

            Cairns tried everything, bucking like a wild grunting animal, gouging Coleman’s eyes, working his chin under Coleman’s forearm.

            Coleman wasn’t having any of it, and after twenty seconds Cairns started winding down like his batteries were expiring.
How does it feel to be choking to death?
Coleman remembered the suffocating panic that he felt on the end of the claw tether when Cairns had strung him up.

            Suddenly Cairns stopped fighting. His body tensed rigidly. He still had energy to fight, but he channeled that energy elsewhere.

            He was pointing at something with his right hand.

            Coleman followed the line of Cairns’s arm.

            The explosives.

            Cairns pointed at the explosives. When he knew he had Coleman’s attention, he pointed at his own wristwatch.

            You must be joking. He’s not bluffing. That timer is about to run down.

           
Coleman must have unconsciously loosened his grip on Cairns, because Cairns croaked out, ‘Eight seconds left.’

            Coleman dropped Cairns and sprinted at the explosives. He couldn’t possibly get the explosives out of the gas cloud in eight seconds.

            He scooped up the charge, planted one foot and hurled it across the lab.

            He had a big target.

            The explosives landed right in the middle of the round underlab pool. The pool exploded with a dull floor-shaking
thump
. Water fountained into the air like Coleman had dropped a depth charge. The body of a long-dead terrorist washed out of the pool ahead of a circular wave that swept through the lab in every direction. The wave reached less than knee high when it hit Coleman, but it swept the templates right across the lab towards where Cairns lay recovering.

            Or where Cairns
should
have been recovering.

            Cairns was up and pulling something from the wrecked bench the creature had ploughed into when Third Unit first entered the labs. It was a steel bar. The bar looked about the length of a golf club and twice as heavy.

            At the same time, the alarm on Coleman’s watch started beeping.

            The alarm meant the containment door to the Quarantine Center was opening.

            I hope Vanessa knows what she’s doing,
thought Coleman as Cairns approached with the steel bar
. Because I think things in here are about to get very nasty.

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