Prime, p.4
Prime, page 4
part #13 of Nathan K Series
“Don’t be like that. I’m sorry if I’m causing you trouble by not cooperating, but you can’t blame me for not wanting to commit murder. Besides, I’m sure you’ve got orders not to speak to us — to preserve the integrity of the experiment or some kind of crap like that, right?”
The corner of her mouth twitched upward, but she got control of her amusement fast.
“Yeah. I get it. I don’t like bosses, either.” He sat forward and gestured to Anton. “What about you? I imagine you’re pretty sick of the people running things around here, too.”
“W-What?” Anton managed, his confusion matched by a clear awareness that the energy had shifted in the room.
The woman noticed it, too. She wrote faster while also peeking at the mirror.
Nathan tossed a thumb in that direction. “Did they even bother to tell you who I am? What I am? I can see that both of you are normal people. I get why Anton is regular. This all wouldn’t really work if he were like me. But you, ma’am. I have to say I’m surprised they hired you.”
None of this talking came naturally, but Nathan did his best to channel Robin, let a stream of consciousness flow. It must have worked. Anton’s efforts to understand what was going on had superseded his raw nerves, and the woman taking notes lowered the tablet to stare directly at Nathan.
Speaking with a lilt to her words, she said, “I am not a mere hired hand. I have been educated in some of the finest institutions in the world including Yale and Oxford. I have two PhDs, and I chose to join this team. I applied, was offered the position, and chose.”
The music cut out. “That’s enough,” a stern voice said over the speakers.
The woman dropped her head and returned to her work. Despite the distortion caused by speaking too close to a microphone, Nathan knew the voice well.
A clump of nerves lodged in his throat. He watched as the opaque mirror become translucent. The lighting shifted behind the mirror to silhouette a bank of computers with several hunched operators. One figure commanded the center, and though Nathan could only see a shadowed form, he had no trouble connecting that stiff, harsh outline with the voice he had heard — Dr. Kempo.
“Mr. K,” the voice on the speaker said, “please do not communicate directly with my assistants. You will only cause them trouble, and I think you are well aware of the kind of punishment I can dole out.”
Anton’s face flushed and his chin quivered. Nathan patted the table and gave a slight shake of the head. Looking straight into the mirror, seeing that arrogant woman staring back from her assumed safety, his chest heated up. He knew what her small mouth looked like when she watched him endure pain. He knew the way her eyes glinted with excitement. If he had a pistol, he would have shot that mirror apart and lunged for her throat.
Instead, he leveled his threatening glare upon her. “You’re being awfully rude.”
“This is an observation, not a tea party. I do not require polite manners here.”
“I’m sure you’re aware that I lost myself a little bit recently. Well, I’m feeling much better now. Why don’t you come in here, and we can get reacquainted.”
“Eager to return to the operating room? Once you complete this task, then I will be happy to conduct more personal experiments.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got to produce results for your boss. I’m assuming you’re an Immortal, too, yet you choose to bow down to another. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. It’s one thing to be stuck working for a tyrannical boss when you know that, eventually, the job ends. Either you retire, the boss dies, or you do. But for us — how can you want to work under Larkin forever?”
“You work for him, too.”
Nathan hesitated. Did he? Another memory itched from the recesses of his mind. But before he could call it up, Dr. Kempo said something crucial.
“Save us all a lot of trouble and take the soul. When you see Larkin today, he’ll want you whole.”
Hoping he did not betray what those words meant to him, Nathan said, “Come on, be honest. You want me whole so you can impress your boss. Bucking for a promotion?”
“Oh, I’m not so simple-minded to be goaded into whatever ridiculous plan you have in your burned-out brain. If you had enough neurons still firing, I’d suggest —”
The lights cut out and emergency lighting clicked on. The mirror went opaque while Dr. Kempo’s voice became a static buzz. Even as Nathan made his first move, he heard Robin in his ear.
“Get going,” she said. “I’ll keep up with you.”
If she spoke more in the next moment, he never heard a word. He stood. Both Anton and the assistant edged away from him.
“Sorry,” he said. “But I’m going to need a soul.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The assistant tried to melt into the wall. “Please, I’m just a hired hand. I don’t know anything that’s going on.”
“I thought you chose to be here,” Nathan said.
She opened her mouth — whether to speak or scream, Nathan would never know. He snatched her tablet, flipped it up between them, pressed one end under her chin against her throat, and slammed the other end with the palm of his hand. As she died, Anton dropped to the floor, scooting away with his mouth agape, his eyes shivering wide.
Nathan seized her convulsing body as he brought his face close to the assistant. “I’m sure you’ve always wondered what it would be like to be an Immortal. You’re about to get a small taste.”
The life drifted from her eyes. A gray mist leaked around her pupils and into the air. Nathan pushed his head into this mist, this soul, and in a method as involuntary as the beating of his heart, he took that soul into his own eyes, into his own body.
— Is this real?
Sorry, but we won’t be having a conversation.
Feeling more whole, more like himself every moment, he shoved his new second soul down, blocked her away from his consciousness so that he could focus.
Urgent banging on the door. Still locked. That meant he had time to handle Anton. No telling how much, but figuring that Robin worked on the lock, Nathan assumed it would be short. He walked over to Anton, and the man cowered back.
“Don’t hurt me. I just serve the food. Nothing about any of this. Just serve the food and that’s all.”
Nathan crouched before the man. “Take a breath. Start thinking. If I wanted you dead, I could’ve done it long before this. The people behind that mirror — Dr. Kempo and the rest — they wanted me to kill you. You understand?”
Anton’s eyes fixated on the dead body against the far wall. “You killed her.”
“I’m going to kill a lot more people in the next few minutes. But if you want to live, if you want to be free of this place, then you’re going to be by my side.”
He shook his head. “I can’t kill anyone.”
“I’m not asking you to. You follow me and you do what I say. No questions.” Nathan didn’t think for a moment it would go that smoothly. “We both were brought here against our will. I happen to have the skills to get us free.” With a toss of his head toward the exit, he said, “Any second, that door is going to unlock. When that happens, I’m leaving. Join me, and I’ll do everything possible to get you out of here safely. Stay here, and you’ll find yourself in this room once again sitting opposite another person like me. Except, chances are, that person won’t have any problem killing you.”
Nathan walked over to the assistant’s corpse. Anton needed a little space to digest these tectonic shifts in his world. Also, Nathan wanted the woman’s stylus. With the small stem of plastic in hand, he positioned flat on the wall at the end of the doorway’s opening arc.
“Robin?”
“Almost there. In fact, opening in three … two … one …”
The door slammed open. First in, a guard wearing black combat garb including bulletproof vest, a string of grenades, a Sig Sauer P365 sidearm, and a Hellion 5.56 bullpup rifle locked in the shoulder leading the way. Though bullpups were made shorter than regular rifles, Nathan still grabbed the top of it and yanked the man forward. As he tumbled off-balance, Nathan kicked the door closed. He used the momentum to spin back on the guard. With the stylus, he jabbed the guard in the neck.
The first two jabs must have hurt — the guard yelled out — but the rounded end of the small plastic piece did not penetrate the skin. Nathan’s determination, however, won out. The third strike snapped the end off, leaving a jagged edge that sliced the neck. Screaming, the guard dropped all pretense of professionalism and flopped to the floor. He clasped his blood-spurting neck, trying to stop the inevitable.
The door banged open, and the guard’s partner entered, sweeping from left to right. Seeing Anton in the back corner, he blurted out an indecipherable command. He never saw Nathan.
The Immortal barreled the guard against the wall. Using the splintered stylus like a blade, Nathan cut into the guard three times, working up the body. None of the hits would cause serious damage, but they served to distract long enough for Nathan to take better aim.
With a roar, he plunged the stylus into the guard’s eye. The stub of plastic couldn’t reach far enough back to damage the brain, to kill, but like his partner, this guard folded to the floor, screaming at the destruction to his body. Moving with confident patience, Nathan snatched the man’s sidearm. Two shots. When the echoes died away, all the cries had ceased.
Except for Anton.
Nathan caught a peek into the hall. Empty. That wouldn’t last long. He stepped back to the dead guards and swiped their magazines for both the P365 and the Hellion. Sticking the pistol at the back in his waistband, he slung the rifle strap over his shoulder. He then removed the two bulletproof vests and tossed one to Anton.
“Put it on,” he said. “Might save your life.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
Nathan stormed across the room and slapped Anton. Hard. “Listen up. You have a choice to make. Come with me and live, or stay here and die. Simple as that. You choose me, then put that vest on and follow my orders. Otherwise, you’re on your own.” He turned his attention to relieving the dead guards of their grenades.
In his ear, Robin said, “If you’re done trying to motivate Anton through force, there are better ways.”
“I’d love to give him a massage, but I don’t really have the time.”
“For all your good qualities, and don’t let that go to your head, you certainly can be stupid. Anton is the one who brought in the ear-comm with your meal. Remember? He’s working with me which means I have found a way to already motivate him.”
Nathan looked across at the terrified man fumbling his way through putting on a vest. He looked at his stash of grenades — one flash-bang and four of the lethal variety. Probably all the guards were armed just as heavily as these two. And why not? Even if their prisoner had been a normal Immortal, they would need serious firepower to take him or her down. In this case, Nathan was far from normal. All of which meant that poor Anton’s odds were getting worse by the second.
“I’m listening,” Nathan said.
Robin paused her keyboard clacking but refrained from further comment. “Remind him you’re working with me, and then tell him that I did as promised. Danuta is safe, and she’s waiting for him.”
“Tell him yourself.” He pulled out his ear-comm and handed it to Anton. “Put that in and listen.”
As Robin talked Anton back to his senses, Nathan secured his gear and went to the door. Another peek into the hallway. Still empty but he could hear the drumroll of running feet approaching.
“That’s it. Time’s up.” He put out his hand and was pleased to see Anton not only standing, but looking less battle shocked.
“I’m sorry,” Anton said, returning the ear-comm. “I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my life, but never anything like that.”
Nathan didn’t want to know if Anton referred to the death of the assistant, the death of the guards, or Nathan himself. Instead, he put the ear-comm back in, snapped his fingers for Anton to follow, and leaned toward the doorway.
“Am I going left or right?” he asked.
Robin said, “I’ll spare you how brilliant I am that I was even able to get a floor plan for where you are while battling all three computer security systems and coaxing Anton and tell you this much — you’re going left. Two junctions, make another left, you’ll see a stairwell entrance on the right side, take that down to the main floor, and you’ll be close to a service exit. Got it?”
“Left, left, stairwell on the right, I’ll see my way out.”
“Close enough. I’ll be here watching if you need me. Now concentrate on what you’ve got to do. I didn’t go through all this trouble to sit back and listen to you permanently die.”
Opening the door once more, Nathan put his ear to the hallway. Too many men to count based on the footsteps. But without a doubt, they were approaching from both sides. Nathan pulled up two grenades.
To Anton: “In a moment, it’s going to be tough to see. You grab the back of my vest, and you hold on. Keep your head down and don’t stop moving unless I do. Got it?”
Anton stepped behind Nathan and set one hand on the neck of the vest. “Where you go, I go.”
“Well, then, here we go.” He pulled the pins on both grenades and tossed them into the hallway — one to the left, one to the right.
Nathan peeled off a third grenade, a flash-bang, and tossed it right with more heft than the first. Covering his ears and closing his eyes, he waited for it to pop. After, he glanced at Anton — the man had the brains to also cover up. He might be starting to think, after all.
Leading with his rifle, Nathan infiltrated the hall, heading left through the smoke and confusion. The hall was wide enough for a gurney, covered with hard-tiled floors, and endless doors. Looked like a fully-functioning hospital. But then, the dungeon had looked complete, too, until he busted through a door into a modern corridor.
Moving as fast as possible while taking short, careful steps, Nathan had a slight crouch and a sharp eye. Anything moving, he shot. Using as few rounds as possible, he took down one guard after another.
The first two lay on the floor, bleeding from shrapnel injuries, and offered no resistance. Easy headshots. Clearing the thickest smoke from the grenade, he passed the first junction with Anton doing a good job of staying close. As they hustled towards the next section, they still benefited from the emergency lighting and the leftover haze from the dissipating smoke.
From a doorway, another combatant held steady on one knee. But he remained too exposed. Nathan downed him with two squeezes of the trigger. A single shot reported from the next junction. Nathan missed where the bullet hit, but it didn’t hit him. Since Anton neither halted nor screamed, the shot must have been intended to suppress but one round would not suffice — especially against an Immortal. Nathan continued.
He aimed his weapon on that edge of the corner. If the shooter had shown brains, Nathan wouldn’t expect him to fire from the same position again. With halls that mazed back on themselves, it would have been easy to relocate for an ambush or simply a better angle. But the pointless single round suggested his enemy had more combat fear than combat knowledge.
Sure enough, the man poked his head out to see where his target might be. Nathan fired three successive shots. The first hit the corner, startling the man onto his backside. The two follow-ups fractured the knee and penetrated the head.
When Nathan reached the junction, a quick scan showed no other threats ahead. He yanked the last grenade free and tossed it back down the hallway. Though he hadn’t heard anybody daring to follow them, it didn’t hurt to make sure. He knew there were armed guards out there. Somewhere. Plus, the noise might cause others in the area some concern.
“Entering the stairwell,” he said for Robin’s benefit and hoped he had thrown that grenade in the right direction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
This would be dangerous. While Nathan had plenty of experience clearing stairs, they never got easier. Too many corners, too many blind spots, too many snipe spots. Of course, those same difficulties went both ways. Those who wanted to shoot him faced equal challenges. Still, as Nathan rushed down level after level, he couldn’t wait to reach the bottom floor and kick open that exit.
“Okay, Robin, we’re almost there. You know what I’m facing outside?”
“Of course, I do. You think I would plan an escape without the full escape plan planned? Haven’t you noticed the lack of resistance on your way out? Who do you think did that? While you’ve been strolling through hallways and hopping down flights of stairs, I’ve had the entire facility running in circles. A little appreciation would be, well, you know, appreciated.”
Nathan smirked. “My apologies. You are greatly appreciated.”
“That’s more like it. Now, when you get to the bottom, there’s a standard security door that leads out the back of the building to a small parking lot and then the perimeter fence. You’ll find that the door alarms have been deactivated. You’re welcome. When you get outside, the parking lot lighting system will have been mysteriously taken down for a short period. Security cameras will also be on the fritz. You should have no trouble running across that parking lot straight from the doorway. At the fence, you’ll find a section that has already been cut open.”
“You have somebody out there working for us?”
“Don’t be daft. I cut it myself.”
Nathan halted so fast that Anton collided into his back. “You’re here?”
“Where did you think I was?”
“Your apartment in California. What’re you doing in Norway?”
“After everything we’ve been through, do you really need to ask that? You know, when I was little, I was taught the importance of standing up for those you love and being by their side when they’re in need. In fact, this one time —”
