Under the Knife(114)

Wu had pulled the goddamn tube from her own throat! Jesus, was there nothing that slowed this woman down? Now, slippery with her own blood, she was grappling like a demon with Finney, trying to wrest the gun from him, her jaw clamped onto his hand. It was clear she didn’t know the first thing about fighting, but he’d be goddamned if she wasn’t wrestling him to a draw, and he had at least fifty pounds on her.

Neither one spotted him as he crept around the corner of the crate and raised the conduction gun.

Dammit.

Wu was too close. He couldn’t get off a clean shot. The damn gun was like a crossbow—it could be fired only once before it required tedious reloading. He couldn’t risk hitting her and wasting his one good shot.

So he tiptoed closer …





RITA


… I’m not going to win.

The thought came to her with remarkable clarity.

She hadn’t been in a fight since high school, but she remembered what it felt like to lose. He was bigger and stronger. And, pumped as she was with fury and adrenaline, she knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer: Weakened by the drugs, her lungs and limbs were starting to fail her. She wasn’t scared: At least she would go down fighting. But she was sad, so sad, that she would fail Darcy.

Her teeth were still in his right hand. He tried to transfer the gun to his left as he reached with it to gouge at her eyes.

And then …

… the gun clattered to the floor!

She saw her chance and let go of him to grab it. He tried to push her away. She flailed out, and felt a thrashing of arms and legs. The gun slid away. He kicked her in the belly. Stunned, she coiled herself around his foot, and dropped to her knees. He drew back his foot and kicked her belly again, viciously. She gagged and coughed and fell on outstretched hands.

Then he was facing her, grinning with triumph, as he stooped for the gun.

So that’s it, then.

She lay panting on the floor, waiting for it to end …





SEBASTIAN


… there.

Perfect.

Smile and say cheese, asshole.

Sebastian pulled the trigger.

The four electrodes of the conduction gun fired, like harpoons from the prow of a whaling ship, and embedded themselves into Finney’s perfectly exposed ass …





RITA


… and she saw Finney suddenly jerk up, his hands on his butt, a ridiculous expression of surprise on his face.

Surprise collapsed into a bizarre grimace. His limbs launched into a violent dance, flailing this way and that, and he collapsed—no, hurtled—onto the cement floor. His arms and legs twitched for several seconds before becoming motionless.

Now, sprawled out on his belly, she saw four metal prongs sticking out of his butt, each attached to a wire. Her eyes traced the wires back to a black, gun-shaped device held by the man called Sebastian.

Sebastian strode over, grabbed Finney’s gun, flicked a small lever above the trigger, and stuffed it into his belt.

“Didn’t he shoot you?” Rita asked, hacking and coughing.

“Yes.”

He offered no explanation but extended his hand. She took it, with some reluctance, and he helped her to her feet. He was wearing a dark windbreaker and a thin black vest underneath it. Wincing (in pain?), he removed first the windbreaker, which he draped across her shoulders, then the vest, which he dropped on the floor.

He gestured toward the wooden pallet. It was covered in flames. These were fast approaching the red gas canisters she’d spotted earlier. She now saw they had white lettering on the side that read:





ACETYLENE


NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAMES!

“We have to go,” he said, raising his left hand toward the red canisters.

“Maybe there’s still time to put out the fire—”

“No! We have to go right now, Doc.”





SEBASTIAN


Slipping her arms through the sleeves of the windbreaker, and zipping it up to cover her bare torso, Wu rushed to Cameron’s side and knelt beside him. She put her hand on his face. He moaned, but didn’t move.

“Not without him,” she said.

Sebastian looked at the acetylene tanks and the flames inches from their surface.

Fuck this.

“Suit yourself.” He made for the doorway on the other side of the burning pallet, but the intense heat from the fire drove him back. The flames were voracious, consuming the flammable building materials, which in this section of the structure had remained dry. The sprinkler systems were either not installed or inactive.

Shit.

He wished her luck and spun toward the exit on the opposite side of the room, intending to loop back toward the bridge through one of the adjacent hallways.

“I can’t move him by myself!” she called after him. “And what about my sister? Goddamn you! What about Darcy?”

He stopped in the entryway without turning around.

“Help me, goddamn you! You bastard. You can’t leave him here. Help me get him out of here. Goddamn you. Please. Goddamn you…”

Is this what Alfonso would have wanted?

Shit.

When did I become one of the bad guys?

“Please…”

Shit, shit, shit, shit!