Inferno (Talon #5)(88)

I ducked behind a thick metal pipe across the hall as Tristan and Matthews jerked back around the corner. “Ember, Mist!” I barked. “Take out the vessels. The rest of us will cover you.”

The two didn’t hesitate. As the vessels drew close, a bright red dragon and a silver-white dragon bounded into the hall with a roar and pounced on the clones. As the snarls and shrieks of angry dragons filled the air, the rest of us ducked out of cover and fired into the remaining guards. I felt a bullet graze my arm, taking a chunk of skin with it, but the three human vessels fell back and slumped lifelessly against the doorframe.

I looked to where the fight between dragons still raged in the middle of the hall and raised my weapon to help, but it wasn’t necessary. Mist had one vessel pinned and was finishing it off with her jaws around its throat, and a few yards away Ember stood over two lifeless, bleeding dragon bodies, panting and glaring down at them. Her wings shook, either with fury or adrenaline, and her front talons were covered in blood. Tristan whistled softly.

Carefully, I approached the red dragon. “Ember,” I said, making sure she heard me before touching her shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

Her head came up, green eyes wide and a little glassy, and my worry for her spiked. Losing Dante was hitting her hard, and she was taking out her rage and grief on whatever she could. I wished I could comfort her, but there was no time, and we both knew it.

“No,” she whispered, and Shifted to human form. Blood stained her fingers and was spattered across her face in ribbons, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I’m fine. Let’s keep moving.”

We turned to the heavy double doors. They were locked, but Ember slid the card she’d gotten from Dante into the slot below a touch screen, and the red window above it blinked from red to green. The doors groaned as they swung back, and a billow of warm, damp air hit us in the face as we stepped inside to gaze around in horrified awe.

“Son of a bitch,” Matthews commented, craning his neck up toward the ceiling.

The stasis chamber from the email video stretched away before us, massive and towering. The vats containing the Adult clones marched in neat rows into the dark, and the dragons inside seemed even larger up close and personal. I felt a shiver go through me as I stared at the sleeping army. So many. If they woke up, it would be hell on earth.

A shot rang out behind us, and a bullet ricocheted off the doorframe about an inch from where Tristan stood. The two of us turned and fired, and a pair of guards crumpled to the floor. But footsteps echoed through the hall, a moment before an entire squad of vessels rounded the corner and raised their guns in our direction.

“Close the doors!” I shouted, firing as I leaped back. The roar of assault rifles filled the hall, and we ducked behind the metal barriers, straining to push them shut. They closed with a moan and a loud clang, and the window above the touch screen on the inside flashed red, locking automatically. Raising my gun, I fired several rounds into the screen, until the touch pad was a smoking, sparking mess of wire and broken glass.

“That won’t stop them for long.” I shrugged off my pack, removed the case and yanked it open, revealing the deadly packages inside. Four each and, according to Mist, created with a special combination of explosives and dragonfire that would devastate everything around them. “Split up,” I told the group. “Try to cover as much of the room as you can. Pay special attention to structural features that could collapse the ceiling, but don’t spend too much time on any one thing. Regroup near that big central column when you’re done. We’ll have to do this fast.”

They nodded and melted into the room, vanishing between endless rows of vats. I followed, pausing only to attach a bomb to the first glass cylinder I passed. The device stuck easily to the glass, and when I pressed the button on the side, a row of numbers flashed to life on the screen.

Fifteen minutes, counting down.

A hiss behind me turned my attention to the entrance, where a thin line of blowtorch smoke was drifting up from the locked doors. Snatching the case from the cement, I slipped farther into the chamber.

“Stop!”

The shout came as I was planting the last explosive on a vat in the center of the floor. I whirled, raising my weapon, as a man stumbled out from behind a pillar and hurried forward, eyes wild. He wore a white lab coat and glasses, had thinning brown hair and looked like all the other scientists I’d seen in this room tonight. But instead of running from me, he rushed the vat where I’d just set the last charge, throwing out his hands as if to protect it.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, gazing up at the sleeping vessel, as if making sure it was all right. “You can’t be in here! Get out!” Suddenly catching sight of the bomb, counting down the seconds in ominous red, his face went pale. “Oh, God. What have you done?”

“You need to leave,” I told him. “This whole place is rigged to explode. If you tamper with the devices they’ll just go off sooner. There’s nothing you can do now.”

“Dr. Olsen!” Pounding footsteps rang out behind us, and a younger man came to a gasping halt at the bottom of the vat, his white coat fluttering wildly. “Sir, we have to go!” he cried. “The vessels are coming, and those people have set bombs through the whole chamber. We have to leave while we still can.”

“No,” rasped the other scientist as my heart skipped a beat with the realization. “I won’t leave. You can go, but this is my life’s work! I won’t abandon them.”