Upgrade(69)


I squirmed out from underneath the table, finally getting a grip on my pistol.

“Stop!”

Kara turned slowly around and froze in the pass-through to the living room, absolutely still. I searched her hands for a weapon. They were empty.

She looked at me with a sudden, startling intensity. “I love you, Logan. I’m giving you every chance. Don’t make me do this. I know it’s just sentiment, but I don’t want to have to lose you too.”

I aimed the Kimber at my sister’s left leg, expecting a glimmer of sadness or fear, but her face remained utterly impassive.

“Where are you purifying the virus?”

She said, “Ava is inheriting a dying world. I can see in your face that you—”

“Of course I hate it!” My voice echoed through the silent house.

“So why are you pointing a gun at me?”

“Because there has to be another way.”

“Great. What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, while you think about it, I’m actually going to do something.”

“Where are you purifying the virus?”

She just stared at me.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“I know.”

I aimed at her left rectus femoris, the muscle that flexes the hip and extends the lower leg at the knee. I would disable her without threatening her life.

The gunshot was deafening in the confines of the house.

My ears rang.

Kara was still there, upright. I looked for blood, but there was none. Looked for signs of impact, but there were none.

She stood just to the right of where I’d been aiming.

Unhit.

I—

She moved.

—fired again.

For a second, I wondered if she’d somehow slipped blanks into the magazine, if this had been some intricately orchestrated ruse. But then I saw the bullet hole in the floor behind her.

I took a step forward.

Just ten feet away now.

Again, she moved at the precise instant I pulled the trigger and vanished around the corner of the hearth.

What the fuck?

I rushed after her into the living room, trying to comprehend how my sister had dodged three bullets at point-blank range. Of course, she hadn’t dodged them. Most 9mm rounds move at a velocity of 1,200 fps. No human, upgraded or not, could move with anything approaching that speed.

She was anticipating, and moving, in that nanosecond between my intent and the trigger pull. But even with my upgraded perceptions, I couldn’t have pulled that off.

A floorboard creaked behind me.

I spun into the sole of a foot striking my chest and launched back, slamming through a glass coffee table, trying to bring my gun up, but Kara kicked the Kimber out of my hand and crashed down on top of me, holding the point of the knife she’d butterflied our chicken with to my throat.

She said, “Ever think maybe there was a reason Mom upgraded both of us?” I could feel the blade beginning to slide in. “Maybe she knew you weren’t capable of making the hard choice.”

“You upgraded yourself again, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer. I worked my hand down into my pocket, got a grip on the remote switch, pressed the button, and held it down. Inside the left pocket of my jacket, I felt a quiet vibration as the coupling motor and vacuum generator began to hum.

Kara glared down at me, her mask slipping—rageful and heartbroken.

“I need you to know—there is no part of me that wants to do this.”

But she was going to. She had allowed me to find her to make one last attempt at bringing me along. That had failed, and now she had to do a very hard thing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears glassing over her eyes.

“If you kill me, we both die.”

She examined my face, searching for the lie. She didn’t find it.

I said, “My thumb is holding down a button. If I release it, the disperser in my jacket will instantly blast out a continuous, aerosolized—”

“Of what?”

“Ricin.”

Her pupils dilated. Adrenaline hit.

Ricin is a ribosome-inactivating protein, which infects cells and blocks their ability to synthesize their own protein, shutting down key functions in the body. It comes from the seeds of the castor plant, which are used to make harmless castor oil. Readily available and fairly easy to produce, the average adult requires just 1.78 mg of ricin, injected or inhaled, to die—the quantity of a few grains of table salt.

“Know what happens when you inhale ricin?” I asked.

Kara had become perfectly still.

“Within several hours, you develop a hacking, bloody cough. Your lungs fill with fluid. You drown. And there’s no treatment. No antidote.”

“This is a good bluff.”

I raised my left arm. “See the tube just inside my sleeve?”

Her eyes cut to my sleeve, back to me.

I watched her, my hand on the button. She looked at the Kimber—eight feet away.

I said, “The disperser is custom-made. It will fill this room with aerosolized dry powdered nanoparticles before you even touch the gun.”

“Just happen to have one of those lying around?”

“Get your knife off my throat.”

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