Page 92 of I Dream of Danger
She wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t let her be.
Jon was herding the fugitives down the corridor to the right, and he looked back at Nick. What Jon was doing was a two-man job. It should have been one man taking point, the other watching everyone’s six. It was almost impossible for Jon to do it alone. Their eyes met and Nick couldn’t see any censure in Jon’s gaze. He was doing what he had to do so Nick could do what he had to do.
Teamwork.
That’s what he had with Elle, goddammit. They were a team, a couple. The two of them belonged together. Always had, always would. Nick’s vision blurred and he swiped at his eyes. Goddamned smoke.
He took off in the opposite direction.
“Nick!” Mac roared. He was watching their movements on his handheld and he saw Nick move in the opposite direction from Jon. “You head back right this second!”
Nick switched his comms off, which next to disobeying a direct order was one of the biggest offenses in soldiering. You don’t switch comms off because you don’t like orders. It was an offense that carried the death penalty.
He pelted down the corridor as fast as his legs could carry him. It wasn’t the thought of Mac waiting or Jon and the fugitives that drove him. It was the thought that maybe just maybe he could save Elle. Crazy as that sounded. There was a 99% chance it wouldn’t work, but that was better than 100%. Because 100% meant Elle was lost to him forever, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t accept that.
Lab 1, Lab 2, Lab 3, Lab 4. There it was! He was running so fast he skidded as he turned into the laboratory, frantically looking for a Farraday cage. He hadn’t paid much attention in high school physics, and though he’d caught up in the military, he knew he’d never seen one.
The lab was huge and filled with equipment. He raged his way to the end wall smashing equipment out of his way with his rifle butt without finding anything that even vaguely resembled a cage. He slid to a stop at the far wall, chest heaving, vision blurred looking around wildly.
He recognized one piece of equipment in ten. Everything here was Geekland stuff, hard metallic shells hiding mysterious workings inside, and oh shit oh shit oh shit, he didn’t know what he was looking for.
In a rage, Nick kicked over some free-standing pieces, watching them shatter, bits of plexiglass tinkling to the floor, dials rolling, and there it was. He stood, panting, looking at a metallic cage. A Faraday cage, it had to be. He stared at it like a dumb beast, tears and sweat dripping down his face, and he had to shake himself into action because every second counted.
Go go go! Pulling a grenade out of his combat vest, he tossed it at the metal cage then ducked down behind a big piece of equipment with two huge centrifuges on top and crouched. After a second that felt like a century, the grenade exploded, spewing metal shards everywhere, some embedding themselves into the wall behind him.
Nick rose out of his crouch to look at the smoking mess, ready to scrabble around in the debris looking for something that would lead him to Elle when he heard Catherine’s gasp in the ear bud.
“Oh my God! She’s just opened her eyes! Nick! Elle’s opened her eyes, now she’s closed them again, but the EKG is showing a heartbeat! Oh my God, she’s alive!”
“Get your ass out here NOW!” Mac screamed, and Nick shot out the door into the corridor. Oh yeah, he was getting out now. With Elle alive back in Haven, he was going to get back there as fast as humanly possible.
He leaped over the bodies in the corridor, taking the emergency stairs up to the ground floor in case the elevator wasn’t working due to the fire and, slamming the panic handle on the fire door, ran down the corridor that would take him to the side exit.
He had tunnel vision. Not good. They were trained to avoid it because it could spell death. Just seeing right what was ahead of you without opening the senses completely was bad. But his head was taken up with getting out to Mac, getting the hell out of San Francisco, and getting back to Haven, and as always when a soldier isn’t paying attention, shit happened.
A body slammed into him from the side. A nightmare, with sound effects. And, he saw in a second, a fucking woman. Makeup smeared all over her face, a bib of blood down her once white lab coat and snarling and growling, low terrifying animal noises. It took Nick one unforgiveable second to flash onto the fact that, yes this was a woman, but yes, she was fucking trying to kill him.
In that second, around 120 pounds of snarling female slammed him to the ground and she started trying her best to bite his face off. Before her mouth, tinted red by lipstick and blood, could reach his face he shot an elbow to her nose and shoved her off. Whatever it was she was on, it was a painkiller, because anyone else would have been doubled over in pain. Her nose was smashed flat against her face which was even more blood-spattered. But no, she scrabbled for purchase, lifted up and launched herself at him.
Jesus.
Nick sidestepped and did the only thing he could—he slid his stunner out of his holster, flipped it to a stun level just short of lethal and zapped her. She thudded to the floor.
“Nick!” Mac screamed.
“Coming, boss.” Nick tried to keep his voice steady, but he was unnerved. He shot through the big lobby, leaping over some dead bodies, and out the big glass doors. “Had some problems, but it’s—” He skidded to a stop and looked past the corner, out to Market Street.
Market was a scene of utter chaos. Two overturned cars just outside the new headquarters of the Bank of China lay crushed like beetles. Two bodies were sprawled in the street, but the injuries weren’t due to a car crash. One body had a missing arm which had been torn off, not sheared off, and lay two feet away. The other body—Jesus. Nick looked away. Half its face had been mauled, as if the man had encountered a bear.
No bears on Market in downtown San Francisco.
A fire was burning the Facebook building, flames distorting the plexiglass structure. People were exiting screaming from the building. Four men were tearing each other to pieces on a nearby corner.
Someone grabbed Nick’s arm, hard, and he was thrown into the van. Jon. The instant the door closed shut Mac took off.
Nick turned a blank face to Mac and Jon. “What the hell is going on?”
Mac didn’t answer. He was too busy slaloming between car wrecks and the few cars that were on the road. The traffic lights were out.
