Page 19 of Rage

The heavy steel door to the bunker is secured by a fingerprint scanner. AX2 yanks the dead soldier’s glove off and pushes his hand to the screen, waiting for the beep of the lock before he tosses the corpse aside.

There are eight men in the bunker, not fifty.

They are all armed, but they aren’t expecting a fight—and they certainly aren’t expecting him.

It takes AX2 seconds to kill the first six—one inside the corridor, and the other five when he moves into the first room, which looks to be the kitchen and common area. He shoots three more men dead before the remaining two are on their feet, guns drawn.

One of them manages to fire off a round, but AX2 twists out of the way before it impacts. He puts a bullet between his attacker’s eyes, ducks another shot, leaps across the room, and thrusts his knife into the remaining man’s chest, all the way to the hilt.

The soldier gurgles, his hand spasming around his gun, but he doesn’t have enough strength left to pull the trigger. When he slides to the floor, AX2 is already turning to the door, beyond which shouts and the sound of running feet echo.

He shoots the first man the second he hurdles through the door, but the second manages to jerk back before he takes a bullet to the temple.

This one is bigger than the other men—the only alpha present—yet he isn’t wearing the same kind of combat gear as the rest of the soldiers. He is wearing a thick sweater and jeans, but he’s holding the gun in his hand as if he knows how to use it.

AX2 doesn’t wait to find out. He leaps across the room again, back to the door, lifts his weapon, and fires it into the man’s chest.

The moment the first bullet bites into the other alpha, a scream rings from deeper in the bunker. It’s muted by concrete walls and steel doors, but the agony in it deafens him.

The enemy alpha only lets out a soft gasp, his eyes widening as if he can’t quite believe his own defeat. Then they turn glassy. He sinks to his knees, his hands falling limply to his sides, gun clattering to the floor.

By the time his head hits the concrete, he’s already gone.

Another scream rips through the bunker—a wail so primal and animalistic it doesn’t sound human. But it is.

Save her.

AX2 is moving before he has made the conscious connection between that wail and the doctor he’s here to rescue, his chip’s impulses impossible to resist.

There is only one door at the end of the dark hallway, made of thick steel.

Readying his gun, he tries the handle. Locked.

“Step away from the door,” he shouts, aiming his weapon at the lock.

The shot is deafening, but it works. The lock blows out of the steel door, clanking to the floor. AX2 moves swiftly, kicking open the door and scanning the room for enemies.

But there is only her.

Doctor Adelaide Thompson kneels on an unmade bed. Her dark hair is wild, her usually pale, impassive face red and blotchy and drawn in a silent scream, and those cold, gray eyes he loathes so much are wide and unfocused without her glasses, overflowing with tears.

During the years he’s spent in her lab, she has shown him nothing but blank indifference, an unfeeling facade—sparks of irritation at most. His tormentor calls him a machine, but in the privacy of his mind, that is how he thinks of her: a cold, mechanical entity. Impersonal.

Inhuman.

The woman in front of him now… The pain and terror on her face is the most human thing he has ever seen.

She is naked. It takes a moment to register.

In her lab, he has always awakened in the stasis chamber nude. She has always worn a white lab coat, the absence of his clothing and the presence of hers a stark reminder of his status as something less than a person.

There is no mistaking the monster who has tortured him for so many years. Yet the sight of her, like this, stripped of her dignity and that cold, impenetrable facade…

She finally seems to notice his presence and chokes out an awful, rasping sob. “Help… Help me…”

Save her.

AX2 enters the room, his intent to retrieve her and fulfill his mission. But before he reaches the bed, his gaze catches on the streaks of blood dripping from her ribcage. She’s clawing at it, tearing bloody strips in her own skin.

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