The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(36)

“The—the silent alarm at the reception desk,” he said. “Who are you? Are you a cop?”

“You wish you were that lucky. Question two. How do I deactivate the system?”

“I don’t know. Just go to the utility room and turn off the water main, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not the damn janitor. God, you f*cked up my hand—”

“Focus,” I said, giving his arm a tug. “What are Lauren and Roth up to? Why are you turning these people into monsters?”

“We’re not—” he started to say, then coughed. “We’re not turning these people into monsters, you *. That’s just a side effect. We are on the cutting edge of magical science, and you have no idea, no idea, what you just stepped in.”

I hauled him to his feet, keeping his arm pinned behind his back. On the other side of the room, I caught his expression in the glossy chrome fixtures. Despite the pain, he had a nasty little lizard smile on his puffy lips, and I didn’t like it.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “You’re going to be a good little hostage while I free those prisoners. Then you’re going to take me to Lauren Carmichael.”

“Sorry, champ,” he said, “but my backup just arrived.”

He stared into his reflection on the far side of the room, our images redoubling and bouncing back in the mirrors over his eyes. I glanced to the doorway. Nothing there but a dead man and a pool of stale blood. The fix was in. Nedry was too confident to be bluffing, but I couldn’t figure out his angle.

“What, you expecting a guard patrol?” I said. “I’m betting you’re the star of the show around here. They won’t shoot as long as I’ve got you.”

“Don’t look now, but there’s somebody behind you,” Nedry said.

There was nothing behind me but the polished chrome counter and a span of mirrored wall. I took a step back just to be safe. My hip bumped against the cold metal.

“Guess what,” Nedry said. His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s me.”

Hands burst from the mirror, six identical hands at the end of six identical white-sleeved arms, and grabbed me from behind. Nedry’s face flashed on every reflective surface in sight and every mouth tittered and leered as the real man slipped free of my grip. Hands clamped down on my arms, my wrists, my throat, hauling me back against the counter and pinning me fast.

I’d never seen a trick like that before, but I didn’t have time to admire the technique. Nedry didn’t stick around. He broke and ran, no doubt going to fetch more of Caine’s mercenaries and come back with some serious firepower.

Or trigger the alarm and kill every single hostage in that death cell.

I twisted my left arm hard, breaking loose, while the mad giggling of dozens of reflections echoed in my ears. I flailed wildly, trying to grab something I could use from the scattering of surgical tools Nedry had left behind. My fingers closed around a heavy steel shaft, and as my thumb pressed down on a toggle switch, a vicious circular blade on the end of the shaft whirred to life. Bone saw. That’d do. I wrenched my arm, leaning as far sideways as I could, and pressed the saw against the mirror.

The reflections screamed.

As the saw chewed into the glass, spitting glittering dust, the hands released me and yanked back into the mirror’s depths. The spell broke on a sudden gust of heat—there, then suddenly gone, leaving nothing in the room’s reflections but me as I dropped the saw and staggered away from the counter.

No time to rest. I ran for the door, pausing to crouch down and pry the sleek black rifle from the dead guard’s clenched fingers. I could turn cards into deadly weapons, but they were lacking when it came to the intimidation factor. An assault rifle wouldn’t have that problem. Then I patted the corpse down, dipping my fingers into his pockets, and came up with a heavy ring of keys.

I’d never beat Nedry to the front desk. I darted back toward the cell, keeping the rifle up with its butt braced against my shoulder, and tried the handle on a door marked Utility. The bare-bones and dusty room on the other side held the building’s main boiler, fuse box…and two steel vats, eight feet high and half as wide, hooked to a pair of metal mesh hoses that ran up into the ceiling.

Killing the power wouldn’t work. Any security setup worth its salt had the alarm system on an independent circuit, specifically so guys like me couldn’t shut it down by yanking a few fuses. I wasn’t dealing with amateurs here. That left the vats.

The machinery joining the vats was a nightmare jumble of pipes and flanges. Since you couldn’t really hire a professional plumber to set up your deathtraps, some clever techie on Angus Caine’s payroll must have done it himself with whatever parts he had on hand. The one thing that looked familiar was a valve jutting out at the bottom of the assembly, right under a pressure gauge.

It looked like a cutoff valve. Assuming I had any idea what I was looking at. Assuming it would work. Assuming the whole rig wasn’t an elaborate fail-safe, a trap that would start the killing rain as soon as I turned the wheel.

That was a hell of a lot of maybes.

No time to think. Nedry would be seconds away from the front desk, probably with a platoon of thugs on his heels. I had to decide, right then and there.

A drop of icy sweat slid down the side of my face as I took hold of the valve and gave it a twist.