The Immortality Virus (27 page)

She barely heard him. Her ears were ringing and she did not trust herself to say anything quietly enough that the monitors wouldn’t pick it up. For all she knew, they’d heard Alex’s comment.

They’d be back in ten minutes and then they would get really nasty. She wanted to know why Alex had bothered, but couldn’t bring herself to ask lest they heard her and their ten minutes became two.

“Did you feel the building shake?” Alex said so softly he practically mouthed the words. Grace found herself reading lips more than listening.

She nodded.

“There are more forces at play here than just one. I think it was an attack. They just need time to make it work.”

“Who?”

“We’ll see.”

That was the last he said on the subject. They sat there in silence for a while, Grace’s mind reeling through the possibilities. Ethan hadn’t left her in here as long as she’d expected. She had no idea how long, but definitely not long enough to wear her mind down the way he should have done. He had come in shortly after the shaking began–coincidence?

No, it couldn’t be coincidence. Ethan didn’t have as much time as he thought he would have to break her. He had to do it more quickly, more clumsily, and he might have to kill her before the enemy got to her.

“We won’t live long enough,” Grace mouthed.

Alex nodded once to show he understood. Then he did something strange–he began to make himself gag. Grace backed up, waiting for an explosion of vomit like the one she’d created, but it didn’t come. There was some bile and a little liquid, but mostly there was just a coded electronic key, protected from the bile by a small plastic cover.

Grace’s eyes widened in shock.

“I still have friends here,” Alex whispered. He slumped to the ground at her feet and turned to lean his head against her legs. He tried to make it look like the act of a weary man taking comfort in a friend–or even a lover. Grace shuffled her knees to knock the key to the floor where he scooped it up in his hands, tied behind his back, and began working on her ankle cuffs.

When she felt them open, she did not move her feet immediately. “Alex, will you scratch my back?”

Alex nodded and moved behind her, again using the key to unfasten her wrist cuffs and torso binding. Then he handed her the key and turned, asking, “Will you get mine?”

She did exactly that. Then they stayed there, frozen in place, waiting for their opportunity. They both knew without saying there would be only once chance, and it would be risky.

The building shook again. Whoever was trying to get in was being more persistent. Would it be enough, though? They had to stay alive long enough for whoever it was to get inside here.

And then they had to hope whatever was out there was better than what was in here.

All she knew was it couldn’t be any worse and the idea of taking some action made her feel alive again.

The minutes seemed to span a lifetime. Grace flexed her fingers and toes, trying to work blood back into those parts of her body, but she did not reveal her freedom to the camera or to her captors.

The door slid open. Ethan came in, his face livid, flanked by two guards with holstered disruptors, wheeling a cart with some sharp, uncomfortable looking implements.

Good. They didn’t know their prisoners were free.

“You lied,” Ethan said. “And now we move on to nastier tactics.”

The building shook again. Grace took it as her cue. She stood and lunged, throwing off the useless cuffs as she reached for the nearest guard. Briefly, she saw Alex lunging at the other, but she blanked their struggle from her mind as she grabbed one of the sharp implements from the table and thrust it into the hand that was going for the disruptor.

The guard screamed. Grace took his disruptor from his holster and turned towards the other guard, ready to fire if Alex needed assistance. He didn’t. He, too, seemed to have caught his target by surprise and had his weapon.

Grace wheeled to face Ethan, who was backing out of the room. Not bothering to check the settings on the disruptor, she aimed and fired at the retreating figure. A gold stun light hit him squarely in the chest, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

Perfect. She turned and fired at the now defenseless guards, sending them both unconscious to the floor.

“They were surrendering,” Alex said.

“We couldn’t exactly take them with us. They’re just stunned.”

Alex didn’t argue further. He peered out into the corridor and looked both ways. “Sub-basement. Not too many people allowed down here.”

“Is that good?” Grace asked.

“That part is. Less people to fight to get out of here. Trouble is, there’s only one way in or out and by now the alarm will have been raised.”

Sure enough, from off to their left, a door banged open and half a dozen men poured out, some wearing the black uniform of Ethan’s guards, some wearing the red and brown uniforms of the farmers.

Grace and Alex didn’t hesitate. They started firing. Unfortunately, their attackers didn’t hesitate either.

They each got off one good shot before they found themselves back in their prison, using the open doorway as a safe haven.

Disruptor charges flew by–red, not gold. Grace waited. Patience would save her here, not brute force. They needed to come to her, to be the first to expose themselves.

“You then me,” Alex whispered.

Grace switched to kill and shot at the first appendage that came into view–a weapon arm. She heard a scream and the arm disintegrated as the weapon fell to the floor.

A second later, Alex fired a stunning charge at a farmer, but it just bounced off his body armor. Grace fired again, taking the man’s leg out from under him. “Stuns won’t do any good!” she called.

Alex didn’t seem to hear her because after another moment he fired another stunner into the chest of a black-clad guard. This one did go down. Apparently, only the farmers were wearing the armor.

Things got quiet after that. No more came into view.

“That wasn’t all of them,” Alex whispered.

“They’re waiting for us to leave,” Grace whispered back. If they did, they would have the same disadvantage as the men they’d shot down. But staying here was suicide, too. Those outside had less to lose by waiting.

“There were six,” Grace whispered. Three were down, which left three. If they waited any longer, there might be more.

“All right,” Alex said, not keeping his voice low. “On three.” He held up a fist and said, “One.” He held up one finger and said, “Two.” He held up a second finger and said, “Three.”

Several disruptor shots fell where their chests would have been had they actually moved then. They didn’t even wait a second after that to jump out and begin firing.

They each got off a shot, Grace downing a black-clad guard and Alex blasting the arm off a farmer.

The last man standing got a shot off before either of them had a chance to re-aim. Grace dove towards the shelter of their prison, but too late.

She felt something heavy hit her weapon hand. She heard the clang of metal as her disruptor hit the ground and bounced. It wasn’t until she reached for the disruptor that she saw what had happened.

Her hand was gone. She stared at the charred stump of her arm in numb disbelief.

Dimly, she registered Alex picking off the final attacker, but she could not tear her eyes away from her ruined arm.

“Grace.” Alex sucked in his breath. “It’s okay. There’s no blood. The disruptor cauterized it.”

That made it okay?

“Grace, we have to move.”

His words seemed to come from far away and she couldn’t quite make sense of them.

“Grace!”

“Uh huh.” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was agreeing to, but she followed, her eyes on her injury. Her mind couldn’t quite accept it, yet.

The building shook again.

Move!
Grace forced herself forward, stepping over some of the farmers they had injured. A couple were also nursing injured stumps and seemed not to notice their captors fleeing the scene.

She saw the stairs up ahead and expected to find herself flying at another dozen armed men she would never be able to fight her way past. She looked left and right for another place to use as a barricade when they came shooting

No one came.

They flew up the stairs much faster and with much less prudence than Grace would have preferred, but no one came.

The basement level lay still and quiet, as if holding its breath. Grace didn’t like it, but she followed Alex through the maze of corridors and to his secret room, her mind buzzing with pain she could barely register. It was as if the trauma had turned off all her nerve endings. Or maybe adrenaline did that. She wasn’t sure, but she knew she’d feel it soon and she wondered if she’d black out when she did. Part of her would welcome the blackness but another part, the part that still held onto tiny tendrils of rational thought, knew she couldn’t give in to the pain or the blackness. Not if she wanted to live.

Somehow, they made it to the entrance of the secret room. Alex opened the door and they collapsed onto the queen-size bed.

They lay like that for a while. Grace’s heart stilled and her body throbbed. Her eyes burned as if on fire.

“Water,” Grace panted.

Alex was already there, pulling a bottle of water from the stash he’d saved. He twisted the cap off one and handed it to her before gulping down his own.

Grace did the same, groaning indecently when she finished. Alex took out two more bottles, but didn’t offer one to her right away.

“Let me see that arm.”

It was better when she didn’t think about the hand. Now that she focused her attention on it, it felt as if it were on fire. Ridiculous, since she didn’t have a hand anymore. It couldn’t have felt like anything.

“There’s not much I can do for it,” Alex said. “We should probably keep it moist to prevent the charred skin from cracking. You need to see a doctor, but under the circumstances, I don’t think heading to the infirmary would be a good idea.”

“I’ll be okay,” Grace muttered. “We just need to get out of here.”

“You can’t fight. You can barely move. And I’m not in much better shape.” He went back to the desk and pulled two nutri-bars from a drawer. He handed one to Grace. “Eat this slowly.”

That was easier said than done. She tried to slow herself, but for the first time in memory, the nutri-bar tasted like heaven to her.

“I really thought I would die in that room,” Grace said. She remembered thinking that this room, the one she had shared with Alex, had looked like a prison, but now it felt almost like home. A big part of her didn’t want to leave. They were safe here–until the food and water ran out. Or until the burnt flesh of her arm got the better of her and she died from an infection of some sort.

“Uncle Ethan is good at what he does,” Alex said. “He got sloppy today. I can only assume the attack threw him off. I can also only assume the attack is what kept other farmers from responding to our escape.”

“Attempted escape,” Grace corrected. “We’re not out yet. We’re back where we were. How long were we held captive?”

“Two days, I think, based on what I overheard one of the guards say. I wish I’d thought to keep my spare portable in here so I could look up the date and time.”

For a moment, Grace wondered what they had done to Alex. Had they tried the same tactics on him? Or had Ethan used what he knew of his nephew to try something else?

She stared at him for a moment–his sunken cheeks and sallow eyes. He hadn’t been fed or watered, that much was clear.

She shut it out of her mind. It was over. Over. Over. She never had to think of it again, except possibly in the middle of the night. Or when she looked at her right arm.

Grace shuddered.

To her surprise, she found an arm around her shoulder. More surprisingly still, she didn’t push it away. She rested her head on a warm, welcoming shoulder and let strong, calloused hands stroke her hair as if she were a child. For a minute, she let her mind blank out and she lost herself in the warmth of his touch.

The smell of vomit returned Grace to reality. It was hers–not his. Apparently, Ethan had skipped the whole fancy dinner ruse with him.

Grace drew away. Wordlessly, Alex released his hold and moved to the chair across from the mattress.

“Our best chance to get out is under cover of this attack,” Alex said.

“Do you know who’s out there?” Grace asked.

Alex shook his head.

“But you have an idea?”

“There was a rumor that William Edgers was taking an interest in this matter. I think he and Mr. Cooper–the one who just died–were good friends. Mr. Cooper might have told Mr. Edgers what he knew.”

“And what did he know?” She should have asked before. Why hadn’t she asked if Alex had told anyone?

“I told him you had a lead on the secrets of aging. We spent a lot of time philosophizing. I think owning a farm–owning people–gave him a unique perspective into the problems with long life.”