The brink, p.19
The Brink, page 19
Cafferty nodded. “Looks like a routine guard rotation. Diego, any other way to get to that elevator?”
Munoz combed through the lair’s layout in his mind. He remembered smaller storage rooms to their left, with a secondary passage that led toward the dome on the other side. He nodded and silently crept in that direction, keeping plenty of distance between the team and the Foundation guards. Bowcut and Cafferty silently followed.
He led them to a door at the side of the warehouse and gently lowered the handle. It opened and Bowcut slipped inside first, weapon raised. A moment later, she ducked back out. “Clear.”
Cafferty followed her in.
Munoz entered last and quietly closed the entrance. The hairs on his arms prickled at the extreme drop in temperature. He turned to see the other two just standing there glued to the spot, staring straight ahead, mouths open.
This was no storage room.
On both sides of the room were ten floor-to-ceiling metal chambers with glass fronts covered in frost. Each let out a quiet hum and had thick cables running from them to steel trays on the ground.
Bowcut advanced to the nearest one. “What the hell?”
Cafferty walked to her side. He scraped a thin layer of ice off the glass window, revealing the face of what looked like a cross between a creature and a human, suspended in liquid animation. The deathly still face had one set of razor-sharp teeth, gray skin, and black eyes.
It looked just like the thing that had attacked them in the De Jong building.
Cafferty stumbled back. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At first, Bowcut couldn’t believe her eyes. But she regained her composure quickly, moving along to the next cryochamber and swiping away the frost. Inside, another creature-human hybrid floated inside thick fluid. Blacker than the previous one, but equally as repulsive. Its claws appeared more like fingers, and its chest muscles appeared more human in form.
“He’s crossbreeding human and creature,” Cafferty uttered. “He claims he wants to eradicate them, but then he does this. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”
“That sick motherfucker,” Munoz said. “They’ve taken it way past what we’ve already seen.”
Cafferty nodded, lost in thought.
Bowcut moved along to the sixth cryochamber and palmed away the frost. This seven-foot genetic freak appeared very much like the one she had lasered, and it had a black box screwed into the top of its head, which begged the question: Had the Foundation done more than just merge the two species? Had it advanced this new monster’s capabilities even further?
She moved along and cleared the next chamber’s glass.
This creature was six feet tall, had pale gray skin, and looked even more nightmarish. Almost human. It had rippling muscles and a shorter serrated tail. And wisps of hair on its head.
Cafferty and Munoz followed her to the next chamber. She cleared the glass and took a sharp intake of breath. More human, but with creature characteristics. The floating monstrosity had pale green skin and small male reproductive organs and was built like a heavyweight boxer.
Bowcut moved to the final cryochamber. Her hand trembled as she wiped away the frost. She dreaded seeing the next stage in the Foundation’s development, but the chamber was empty.
“What the hell?” Munoz asked. “Where is it?”
“I’m guessing this is the one that attacked us on the roof of the De Jong building,” Cafferty said. Bowcut wasn’t so sure, but she also knew that wondering about this empty chamber—or any of these grotesque experiments—wouldn’t save London or the world. She checked her watch. They still had a few hours before the detonation.
“Which way from here?” she asked impatiently.
Munoz motioned his head toward the far end of the room. “Straight out of there and take a right. That’s where we’ll find the elevator leading up to the dome.”
Bowcut headed past the rest of the cryochambers. She had no further desire to see the contents.
She reached the end and pushed down the door’s metal bar. It punched open a few inches and she peered into a brightly lit passage that rose into the distance. Steel support girders wrapped around the walls and ceiling.
No footsteps came from above or below.
Bowcut sprung out and swung her aim in either direction. No guards to be seen. That in itself didn’t feel right.
Where is everyone?
Munoz and Cafferty joined her in the passage. All three advanced toward the elevator, moving at pace, aiming in all directions, but knowing speed was more important than caution at this point.
A distant boom thundered from above, at the top of the cavern.
She instinctively ducked. The two men pressed themselves against the wall as dust dropped from the ceiling.
They stood frozen, glancing at each other.
No further explosions came.
“What the hell was that?” Munoz gasped.
“Sounds like the cavalry is trying to take the building above and aren’t just using guns anymore.”
“Or they’re getting blown up in the process,” Bowcut replied.
“Do you think they’ll be able to help?”
“They are helping,” Bowcut said. “They’re distracting Van Ness. Other than that, though . . . there’s no way they’ll be able to get down here in time.”
“We knew it would come down to us,” Cafferty said. “Let’s get this done.”
They briskly climbed a set of stairs that led into a huge room that was a cross between a hospital operating room and an IT research facility. White shiny walls. At least fifty work benches covered in medical equipment, computers, machines she didn’t recognize. Movement caught her eye on the right side. Various forms of lizards in glass cages.
But her focus was drawn to the central operating table. A pregnant woman lay unconscious, a mask over her face. Tubes extended from various parts of her naked body. She looked to be in her midtwenties. Blond hair. Perhaps of European origin. Bowcut had no idea, though the life support machine by the woman’s side showed her vital signs as consistent.
Two men in white coats stood over her, oblivious to the team’s incursion. This wasn’t worth negotiating. She zeroed in on one of them and fired. A puff of red mist shot from the back of his head. His colleague dropped his chart and turned. Before he could move, she pumped two rounds in his chest.
The thought of what the Foundation was putting this woman through made Bowcut shudder. Just like the creatures experimenting on those pregnant women underneath New York, Van Ness was doing the same exact thing in some twisted crossbreeding race against time.
Cafferty and Munoz followed her to the table, sweeping their aim in every direction. At the organs in metal dishes. The severed limbs of humans and creatures with electrodes attached, in traction. The specimens of baby hybrids in gallon-sized glass jars. Bowcut passed blood hanging from several IV stands. The whole place felt like a research facility from hell.
A sense of trepidation consumed Bowcut as she neared the operating table. Something prodded internally up from the woman’s stomach. It moved back and forth, like a mini shark fin.
Bowcut grabbed the ultrasound wand from a cart next to the table and placed it on the woman’s stomach. On the monitor, an image formed of the fetus inside the womb. It looked almost like a human baby, apart from the claws, one of which repeatedly scraped the edges of her womb from the inside.
“Just when you thought this can’t get any more fucked up . . .” Diego muttered.
“Leave it for now,” Cafferty said in a firm voice. “There’s only one way we can stop this madness.”
But Bowcut couldn’t bring herself to leave this innocent woman who had been subjected to this horror. She had seen some twisted stuff in her time, battling drug dealers in the Bronx, but the Foundation had consistently topped any of those experiences. Yet she wasn’t sure she could just end this woman’s life—if she had the right, let alone the strength.
It gnawed on her soul, as she saw the Foundation’s vision of the future for the nightmare it was.
“Sarah,” Cafferty said, snapping her out of her darkness. “We can only save her by ending Van Ness.”
She took a deep breath and turned away, disgusted. Tom was right.
The team approached the elevator, and Bowcut hit the button.
The doors instantly parted with a confident pneumatic hiss. The large industrial elevator was similar in size to one found in a hospital, big enough to fit several patients on gurneys, or several creatures . . .
They wasted no time entering.
Bowcut steeled herself, perhaps her last chance to take a moment before the fight. This elevator would take them straight up to Van Ness’ lair, inside the dome itself. Adrenaline pumped through her body. She gripped the laser tightly with her shaking hands. It wasn’t fear—she had passed that point with the Foundation a long time ago. It was the nervous anticipation she had always felt before heading into action.
And the idea of confronting Van Ness and his men.
The elevator closed and they began their short ascent.
Odd classical music started playing through a speaker on the wall.
Munoz frowned and mouthed, “What the f—”
Suddenly, the car jerked to an abrupt halt, cutting off his sentence.
Everyone tensed and aimed their lasers toward the door.
It didn’t open.
The music’s volume increased to the crescendo.
Any moment now.
Something creaked on the roof.
Before Bowcut had a chance to aim upward, a hybrid creature—similar to the one on that rooftop in London, but even more human in form—exploded through the elevator’s ceiling tiles and landed between them on its powerful gray legs. This nightmare creation had an electronic box screwed into its head, just like the previous one she had slain, which meant it was being controlled by Van Ness.
The three recoiled in shock, and she had no time to process this information.
The hybrid instantly batted the laser from Bowcut’s hand. Then it crashed a fist into her guts, knocking the wind out of her. She doubled over and took a rapid wheezing breath.
Munoz spun to aim.
The hybrid moved at lightning speed, faster than any of them could think. It ripped the weapon from his grip and smashed it against his head. Munoz’s back crashed against the side of the car and he slumped to the ground, unconscious. Blood oozed from the gash in his head.
Cafferty was the only one left standing, wide-eyed with panic etched across his face. He aimed to fire his weapon, but the hybrid lifted Bowcut in the air with terrifying ease and hurled her at him. They both hit the ground hard.
Bowcut ignored the wince-inducing pain from her right shoulder and grunted as she went for the laser on the floor.
As she lifted the weapon, the hybrid sliced its hand down faster than humanly possible, cutting the barrel of the laser gun right in half, rendering it useless.
It slammed its heavy foot on Bowcut’s back, and she couldn’t move from underneath the crushing weight.
Cafferty tried to crawl across the floor to reach his laser.
The hybrid kicked it clear and crashed its fist into his face. Speckles of blood sprayed the wall. Cafferty slumped back to a sitting position, dazed. It leaned toward him and pinned him against the wall by his throat.
Bowcut attempted to free herself with every ounce of strength in her body. It couldn’t end like this. Not when they had come so close. Every time she moved, though, the pressure on her back increased, until she feared this monster would snap her spine.
Munoz moaned, though he still appeared unconscious.
The hybrid stood in a crouching position, letting out quiet guttural breaths. It had beaten them in a matter of seconds. They were still alive, but she wondered for how long.
Cafferty tried to pry the hybrid’s fingers off his throat, to no effect.
Bowcut glanced up at her friend. His face reddened by the second and his eyes bulged. He had only moments left.
A heartbeat later, the elevator smoothly resumed its ascent, and the classical music continued, a sound track to their misery.
The elevator bumped to a gentle halt and a bell let out a polite chime.
The doors opened.
Flanked by four burly guards, Albert Van Ness sat in his electric wheelchair in a marble corridor, staring at the scene. He arched an eyebrow, amused. “Greetings, all. You’re right on time.”
“I’ll kill you, Van Ness,” Cafferty gasped.
“You must be the industrious Sarah Bowcut,” Van Ness replied smugly, ignoring Cafferty. He turned his attention to Diego, still unconscious on the floor. “And I’m assuming the sleeping one is former gang member Diego Munoz. I believe he’s the one who killed my employee Kevin Samuels, am I right? He and I will have to discuss that later.”
Van Ness gestured to the guards.
“I’m sure you won’t mind if my men assist your colleagues first, will you, Mr. Cafferty?” Van Ness said to the choking man.
Two guards strode over to Bowcut. The pressure of the hybrid’s foot on her back decreased when they bent down and grabbed her by the arms. They hauled her up and marched her out of the elevator and down the marble hallway.
As she passed Van Ness and his piercing gaze, she kept a straight face despite the agonizing pain in her ribs and back. She had planned on looking into his eyes today, though never like this. Not as his defeated opponent, ready to suffer whatever fate he had in store for them.
The other two guards dragged the unconscious Munoz by the legs toward the operations center.
“All right, I think that’s quite enough,” Van Ness said, hitting a button on his control pad.
The hybrid released its grip on Cafferty’s neck and he slumped back against the wall, gasping for air, coughing.
Van Ness leaned forward in his chair. “We’ve both been looking forward to this moment for quite some time, Thomas.”
Cafferty slowly raised his head and locked eyes with Van Ness, and the two of them glared at each other.
“So . . . shall we begin?” Van Ness asked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Let’s begin with this,” Cafferty said, standing up and rubbing his aching throat. “Where the hell is my wife?”
“Ellen, yes. Lovely to finally meet her,” Van Ness replied. “You shall see her soon, Thomas, don’t worry. And I must apologize for you getting caught in the middle of my mission in New York City. But rest assured, millions of creatures lost their lives that day, and humanity is safer for it.”
Anger welled up inside Cafferty, only exacerbating the throbbing in his temples. His eye had swollen half shut after the genetic monstrosity had punched him in the face. The hybrid now hovered behind Cafferty, hand firmly on his shoulder, poised to strike him down in the blink of an eye. He could feel the creature’s hot, acrid breath on his neck.
But the creature paled in comparison to the bigger monster he faced. The larger menace to the world, sitting before him in a wheelchair with a slight grin plastered across his bitter, wrinkled face. The man he had vowed to end, who now had him at his mercy. His wife at his mercy. His friends at his mercy.
The world at his mercy.
The desperateness and seriousness of the situation made him shudder. He couldn’t figure a way out.
“I must say, it does encourage me that after all you and Ellen have been through—infidelity, New York City, London—your marriage has not only survived, it seems to have thrived. Admirable,” Van Ness said. “Or foolish. I must confess, I’ve never been married. I always thought it a distraction from my true purpose. I used to believe most humans were the worst thing to have ever walked this planet . . . until my father discovered these creatures, that is.”
“Your true purpose? To hold the world hostage? To kill millions of innocent people?”
“Not the innocent. Those who need to be held accountable for the past.”
“The past?” Cafferty asked.
“How quickly you Americans and British forget leaving my homeland in ruins, countless families torn apart, raping us of our wealth, our very history.”
“Is that what this is about?” Cafferty asked incredulously. “Some twisted revenge for World War II?”
“Kindly don’t forget World War I as well,” Van Ness replied. “And butchering my mother, and countless other mothers, with the firestorm you created in Dresden. You seem to forget that history is written by the winners. Did you seriously think your war crimes would go unpunished in perpetuity? No, no . . . it’s time to start over.”
“So all that talk about saving humanity?”
“Is true. Just a certain part of humanity. The purest kind. Have you ever observed a butterfly in nature?” Van Ness asked. “People make the mistake of thinking they brainlessly fly from place to place. The truth is they have meticulously planned flight patterns. They follow the path needed to survive. The opposite behavior of you and your team and your egotistical regimes. The Allies’ direction of travel has always been, and will always be, aimless, blinded by greed and bloated self-worth. Allied to stupidity.”
“You’re fucking insane,” Cafferty said.
Irritated, Van Ness replied, “Language, Mr. Cafferty. Please. You are not an uncivilized opponent. Don’t pretend to be.”
“Uncivilized? You’re talking about ending civilization!”
“I’m talking about raising up the only civilization that can propel humanity forward.”
Cafferty couldn’t listen to this much more. Even now, he could not stop thinking about strangling Van Ness. Shoving his wheelchair back so it slammed against the ground, then locking his hands around the lunatic’s neck and delivering to him what Cafferty had suffered from the hybrid. Only with a more satisfying ending.
Right now, nothing would give him greater pleasure than to watch the life drain from this asshole’s face. It’s what he had dreamed about ever since he had walked away from the destroyed remains of the Z Train in one piece.
