Two Weeks' Notice (36 page)

She was
afraid
.

“Damn. You spoiled the harvesting,” Jane said. “Someone’s going to be
very
upset with you, Bryn. You took nanites that weren’t meant for you, and we can’t get them back now until the new colony matures.” She stepped back behind a couple of the guards. “Concentrated fire on all of them, on my mark.”

Riley stood up, as she finally got her balance. So did Bryn, in an absolutely effortless motion like levitation.…She didn’t even feel her muscles working at all. Annie was staring at the two of them, then at Jane and the guards behind her, and she clearly had no idea what to do now.

But Bryn did. And as she exchanged a glance with Riley, she knew the agent knew it, too. “Is Chandra dead?” Bryn asked.

“No,” Riley said. “Just traumatized. She’ll be all right in about an hour.” It was an hour they didn’t have. “I’m sorry she infected you, but her nanites were ready to be harvested. It’s not a choice. It’s a compulsion, to pass them on. Like the hunger.”

Bryn’s feel-good wave crested and began to fall; it left her with a healed, finely calibrated body. She even felt that she could
think
faster. Possibly even react faster. It was her body, but…perfected.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Whatever she did to me, it feels great.”

“For now,” Riley said. “We’ll discuss downsides later. For now—” She shot a glance at Jane, and the armed
men who’d filled the rank behind her. “That’s the only exit.”

Bryn bared her teeth in a grin. “Then let’s take it.”

Jane said, “Mark,” and two of the guards started shooting.

Bryn didn’t even see Riley
move
, but suddenly she had closed the distance, and she was holding both of the guards’ necks in her hands and
squeezing
. Bones snapped with a gruesome popping sound, and the two men’s bodies jerked, danced, and went limp except for residual tremors.

Dead.

By that time, Bryn—without even consciously willing it—had crossed the room and grabbed another one. She was aware he was shooting into her, but it didn’t hurt, and it didn’t even figure into her calculations. She was razor-sharp aware of the terror in his face, though.

That made her happy, for the approximately five seconds he was alive to actually feel the fear. It didn’t occur to her then that she’d killed him with her bare hands, with
one blow
, until she was dropping the next one, and then the next. She was aware she was bleeding, but it was minor leaks, quickly closing up.

One of them fired straight into her face, and that stung; it took a second for the darkness to clear from her eyes, but then she was ripping his arm away at the elbow, and the blood, the
blood
was so red and clear and amazing that she involuntarily raised her fingers to her lips and tasted it.

Iron and fear.

Jane was gone. She’d run. And the guards were dead in pieces.

And Riley was
eating one
. She had an arm, raw and bloody, and she was chewing on it. That should have shocked Bryn, but it didn’t; it seemed…right.

And the blood in Bryn’s mouth, the blood she’d licked from her fingers, tasted
so good
. She reached down for one of the pieces of meat, not even thinking that it was part of a
person
, because the desire to refuel was so…so…

Someone was screaming.

Annie.

Bryn jolted back to herself with a shock. Annalie was huddled against the wall, hiding her face, still screaming like a little child. When Bryn touched her shoulder, Annie flinched and scuttled away, still screaming. The stark horror in her made Bryn freeze in place.

Riley dropped the arm she was holding. She didn’t look surprised, or particularly shocked. She walked to a tray that held towels and took one, which she used to wipe the blood from her hands and mouth, then brought a clean one over to Bryn. “Here,” she said, and pressed it in her hands. “Wipe your face. You’re scaring your sister.”

“What—” Bryn stared blankly at the towel, then raised it to her face and swiped it over her mouth. It came away red. Bloody. She felt a little surge of revulsion, and cleaned up in earnest, scrubbing her hands, her neck, her face, until the skin tingled.

There was a taste in her mouth, iron and fear, and it horrified her that she still liked it. Didn’t want to consider the consequences of that at all. “What happened?” she asked, and didn’t really want to know, she realized. “Riley,
what did she do to me
?”

“Put you one up on the food chain,” Riley said. “Let’s go.”

The hallway outside the lab was deserted except for the bodies of the agents Bryn had killed before…
before
. She felt as if someone had drawn a dividing line across
her life. Someone had, of course, the first time she’d died and been Revived, but this felt like an even bigger break. She didn’t know what was ahead, but she knew it was
different
. “What about Chandra?” she asked.

Riley shook her head. “We can’t carry her,” she said. “She’ll be too weak to move for a while. We have to leave her.”

The entire lab floor was locked down; every door was sealed shut. Riley finally recognized that she was naked, and stripped pants and a shirt from a fallen guard; she didn’t bother with shoes. She did, however, pick up a gun—another P90 like the one Jane had been wearing. Someone had used it, Bryn thought; she could see the heat rising from the barrel. Maybe it was one of the bullets that Jane had left littering the floor behind her.

Whatever Chandra’s invasive touch had done to her, injuries were processing much faster than before. She didn’t even bleed much.

“They’ll pump in gas,” Riley said. “Try to suffocate us and keep us down until they can move us to the incinerators.” She checked the clip in the gun. “It works. They managed to take down two others that way. We need to get off this level.”

“What did she do to me?”

Riley didn’t even glance her way. “I think our best bet is the elevator shaft. We can pry the doors and climb, but we need to start now. They’ll be pumping the inert gas in soon, if they haven’t already.”

She was right, Bryn realized; there was a breeze coming from the air vents, and a slightly sweet smell to it. Annalie seemed especially vulnerable to it, because she slowed down as they headed for the elevators; Bryn had to pull her along in a stumble, and then carry her.

As Riley pried open the doors, she said, “It wasn’t
Chandra’s fault. It was the nanites; they were ready for harvesting. Normally the docs come in and draw them off in a syringe when they mature, but they’re programmed for self-transfer if the host is awake and mobile. They transfer the excess supply to the nearest identified ally.” The elevator shaft was empty, the car somewhere up above and likely locked down. Riley took a breath and jumped. She grabbed the cables and looked up. “Let’s go,” she said. “Can you handle her weight?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. She wasn’t sure—Annie wasn’t exactly skin and bones—but Bryn 2.0 felt capable enough. Riley was climbing the steel cables bare-handed, which should have been impossible; since it wasn’t, Bryn jumped and grabbed on. Annie’s weight overbalanced her and almost sent her tumbling down the open shaft, but she clung to the cables with sudden, panicked strength, and began to inch her way up.

It wasn’t hard. It hurt, but it wasn’t hard at all.

Above her, Riley jumped like a cat and landed on the tiny metal ledge with her hands outstretched to either side to lock herself into the narrow space. She balanced herself and began to pry the doors apart.

They were waiting on the other side, and as the metal doors screeched apart, Bryn saw the hail of bullets hit Riley, punch through her body, and tear open bloody holes in their wake.…

But the holes didn’t bleed more than a few drops, and Riley lunged forward.

Bryn kept climbing, careful of her balance, and once she’d gotten to the opening, she swung around the cable, building momentum, and jumped as she held Annie tight against her shoulder.

She landed on bodies. It was a good thing Annie was still out, because it was gruesome. Riley was the only one still standing, and she looked…feral. There was a silvery,
reflective shine deep in her eyes, and as Bryn watched, she lifted a raggedly severed arm and…

And ate until the shine went away. Then she dropped the gnawed flesh, wiped her mouth on her shirtsleeve, and looked away. “It’s not a choice,” she said. It was the second time she’d mentioned that, Bryn thought. “The nanites need energy. They take it how they can get it, it’s part of the programming, and protein is what they crave.”

She was right, horribly and awfully right. Bryn should have found the heap of dismembered limbs sickening, but when her stomach complained, it was rumbling, not heaving.
Dear God, no, no, let me not be hungry.
…

She licked her lips and tasted blood. It was delicious.

“Keep moving,” Riley said.

This level was empty, too, but Bryn thought that there must have been personnel still alive and sealed up behind doors, because there was no attempt to gas them. Annalie woke up—groggy and confused, which was good because it meant maybe she wouldn’t remember what had happened before so clearly. The stairs that Riley headed for were locked up, but that didn’t seem to pose a problem anymore to Upgraded Riley. She just smashed the locks, picked out the pieces, and led the way up.

They met Jane halfway to the next level. She was standing on the landing. “You know I can’t let you leave,” she said. She must have been afraid, Bryn thought, but there was nothing of that on her face, or in her body language. She just looked…hard and uncompromising. “Sorry.”

“
You
did this,” Riley said. “We’re just the lab rats. You’re the ones who conducted the experiments. Can’t blame us if it goes wrong.”

“You’re not stupid, Riley, and you’re not vicious. You know what happens if you get outside the Pharmadene building; you know the risk of vector infection. The government
knows, too. If you make it even one floor closer to the world, they’ll vaporize this place with a nuclear strike, because that’s the
only way
. And I wouldn’t bet that you and Bryn can survive that. You’ll be taking most of San Diego with you in the process. Innocent lives.”

“Well, on the upside, we’d be taking
you
,” Bryn said. “What do you mean, vector infection?”

Jane actually smiled a little. “Those nanites inside you are self-replicating. That was what Fountain Group was tasked to create—self-replicating, self-powering nano-soldiers that don’t need injections, and can convert others as they go. The only thing they haven’t mastered yet is how to program them accurately for combat situations, but you know what? You’re doing just fine without it.”

“You called it
harvest
,” Bryn said. “You were using those people in the lab as incubators for the nanites, and harvesting the crops.”

“I told them that if they made them touch-transfer enabled, it would be a mistake,” Jane said. “But too late now. The rat’s out of the cage, and all that crap. You can’t leave here, Bryn, because you’re a walking colony that’s going to replicate, and when that happens, you’ll pass it on. Vector infection. It’s not even a choice.”

“It can only pass to someone without a live immune system,” Riley said. “Don’t let her spook you. You can’t infect the living, only someone already Revived.”

“You sure about that?” Jane asked. “Because I’m not. And the consequences are a global plague the likes of which only Revelations predicted. So you’re not leaving. Are you?”

Bryn was dizzy with the imagined horror of it. Riley hadn’t been able to control the impulse to transfer the nanites, and the
hunger
…“Self-powering,” Bryn whispered. “The hunger. We’ll eat anything, won’t we? Even other people.” She wanted to be sick, but her body refused
to allow it. No, the
nanites
refused. They were in charge now.

“Protein,” Jane said. “Think about it. In battle, there’s always a source of protein around. Living or dead. It’s just good strategy.”

Bryn leaned against the stairwell wall, suddenly faint. She collapsed to a sitting position on the stairs.

“Don’t give up,” Riley said. “Bryn,
don’t give up
.”

“Let Annie go,” Bryn said. “She’s not infected. Let her go, and I’ll stay. I swear.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Jane said softly. She had a remorseless look in her eyes. “It isn’t even vaguely a possibility that we’re negotiating here.” A door opened above her on the landing, and she glanced up, but not with any surprise; she was clearly expecting reinforcements. “See? You’ve got zero shot here, ladies. Absolutely ice-cold zero.”

“I’d recalculate that if I were you,” said Patrick McCallister, as he leaned over the railing and pointed a P90 directly at Jane’s forehead. “Hello, Jane.”

“Hello, Pat,” she said. Other than a flicker of her eyelids, and a slight tightening of muscles, her self-control was impressive. “How’d you get in?”

“I had help,” he said. “On your knees, Jane. Face the wall, hands up and flat—you know the drill.”

“You’re a fool if you think you can take them out of here. Oh, it
can
be done, but you have got to ask yourself, Pat—
should
it be done? Because what you’re taking out of here isn’t your sweet little not-quite-dead girlfriend. This thing inside her skin, it’s not really human anymore. And it’s weaponized.”

Patrick’s face tightened, and he failed to hide his fury; it shone in his eyes, impossible to miss. “Not going to say it again. Knees. Wall. Hands.”

Jane shrugged and followed his orders, and that was when Bryn realized that McCallister wasn’t alone. Joe
Fideli was at his back, and Liam, and—dear God—
Manny Glickman
, wearing body armor and carrying a truly badass machine pistol. Pansy Taylor was with him.

“Joe,” Patrick said. “Secure that bitch.”

“Securing the bitch, aye. Hey, how ya doing, Jane?” Joe jumped down onto the landing, pulled Jane’s right arm behind her, snapped on cuffs, and then the left. He made sure they were tight, then zip-tied her ankles. “I thought you were dead.”