Beyond These Walls (19 page)

His voice was weak and filled with pain when he answered, “What the fuck are you doing here? I told you to stay away.”

I gave a small laugh, using his voice like a GPS signal. “Since when do I listen to the likes of you?” The scent of blood grew stronger as I got closer. “How bad is it?” I asked, afraid at what I’d find. I may not love Quinn anymore but I needed him. Now more than ever.

“Nothing a bottle of whiskey and ten days in the hospital won’t cure.” He gave a desperate laugh. I ignored his attempt at humor and stepped closer to the sound of his voice. My toes smashed into the side of a steel cage. I yelped and so did Quinn.

“Watch out,” he said. My eyes shot up and through a small shaft of light, his face, covered in blood, came into focus. Before I could control my reaction I let out a screech. Shreds of battered skin and bits of bone dangled from his once handsome face. His nose and lips were fleshy oozing wounds without definition. Quinn no longer looked human, or mutant for that matter.

“Come on,” he said. “It isn’t that bad. A little thread and I’m as good as new.” Through pulverized lips he smiled showing an array of broken teeth. I winced and tried my best to contain the rush of bile sliding up my throat.

Instead of lying, I said, “Let’s get you out of here.” He shook his head sending droplets of blood arching over me. I wiped a smear from my cheek, tears welling in my eyes. How had it come to this?

“Forget it.” Quinn reached through the bars, his bloodied hand stroking mine like the lovers we’d once been. “Forget me, Indeara. Get out of here before it’s too late.”

“No.”

He closed his eyes. “Please. For once. Please listen to me. If Resden captures you…” His voice broke. “Go now.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“You can’t save me.” Bitter laughter bubbled from his bloody lips. “It’s sweet of you to try, but, if you remember, I nearly killed you. Not to mention, as you constantly remind me, I betrayed the whole mutant race.” Through a haze of pain, his grey eyes focused on mine. “I’m not worth dying for.”

“Damn right.” I pulled on the steel lock, considering. “But destroying the vaccine is.” Lifting the second nine-millimeter from my waistband, I passed it to him. “Help me stop them,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He closed his eyes.

“Isn’t that sweet.” From the blackness another man’s voice shattered the silence between us. The telltale click of weapons at ready sounded.

“Sorry Indeara.” Through the steel bars Quinn grabbed my arm, twisted me around so my back slammed into the bars, and pressed the nine-millimeter to my head. “It’s nothing personal.”

Chapter 40

Rat body dwelling bastard.

I clenched my jaw, refusing to give into my rage. It would only make things worse. But how much worse could things get? Here I stood, my own gun pointed at my head, and at least four other HOA agent weapons aimed in the same vicinity. Let’s not forget a bomb set to explode at any minute, and if I wasn’t mistaken, my underwear had slipped too far north.

“Unlock this damn cage.” Quinn slid the magazine back, chambering a round. I winced at the desperation in his tone. He’d kill me. No question about it. Everything he’d ever felt for me, if he’d ever felt anything for me, was dead. Buried by his lust for humanity. Laughter bubbled inside me. What the fuck had I been thinking? Quinn wouldn’t save mutantity. He wouldn’t save anyone except himself. I was a fool. No worse than a fool, I was stupid and blind. Hell, I deserved to be shot in the head.

My fists clenched, preparing to say fuck it, and take my chances at ducking bullets. But before I set my half-assed plan in motion fluorescent lights hummed to life.

Once my pupils dilated enough to see I wished they hadn’t. Agent Umber stood a few feet away, his black eyes seeming to look straight through me. I shivered at the coldness lurking there.

“Free me and give me the vaccine.” Quinn gestured to Agent Umber. “Or I’ll kill her.”

Umber smiled, shark-like, all teeth and violent promise. “Daniels, I’m surprise you garner enough affection from a
Stannum
to risk her life for yours. Especially a
Stannum
like her.” He paused, shaking his head. “What they say about body dwellers being excellent lovers must be true.”

I shrugged. “I’ve had better.”

Quinn’s forearm, currently wrapped around my throat, tightened. I winced, but refused to cry out. The physical pain didn’t compare with the humiliation of being betrayed, yet again, by the same damn body dweller.

The tension in the room grew with each passing second. A mutant standoff. One none of us would win. The rapid beat of Quinn’s heart against my spinal column and his heated breath on my neck suggested he knew it too. We would both die here.

Finally, after a long, terse silence, Agent Umber nodded to a smaller pudgier agent on his right. “Unlock the cage.” The agent did as requested, keeping a wide berth between him and us.

Once the cage door opened Umber pulled a six-inch hypodermic needle from his coat pocket. The orange cap flashed like a warning beacon:
Danger
.

“Is this what you want, Daniels?” Umber asked.

Quinn didn’t move, but I felt his lust for the needle and the freedom it offered. In that moment I felt nothing but sadness for him, for who he used to be, for every mutant trapped beyond a wall of concrete and altered genetics.

“Now give us the girl.” Umber nodded in my direction. “And your fondest wish will come true.”

Quinn whispered one word:

Run
.

Chapter 41

For once I didn’t argue with Quinn’s command. Instead I shoved away from him and ran past the row of heavily armed agents. My feet pounded the floor as I ran for freedom. I almost made it too, but almost only counts in Cyborg 8. In real life, almost meant a fresh fracture of my femur as Agent Umber’s bullet shattered my leg.

I screamed in pain and frustration. “No.” Quinn’s roar echoed my own, but for very different reasons. Clutching my broken leg I watched as Agent Umber threw the hypodermic needle on the ground, crushing it under the heel of his wing-tipped shoe.

Quinn paled, dropped my gun, and fell to his knees, fingering the blue liquid seeping into the floor. Umber laughed, a sound so freakishly happy my skin crawled. Quinn staggered to his feet, eyes blazing, but he made no move toward the agent. Umber laughed again, and reached down to pick up the nine-millimeter Quinn had dropped. “That’s what I thought. You’re weak. Like all mutants.”

Weak? Fuck that.

I leapt from the floor, my leg buckled but rage kept me on my feet. “Wanna give me a try? We’ll see who’s weak, human.” I refused to cower to Umber, or any other agent for that matter. I’d die with my pink boots on, unafraid and unashamed.

Quinn stepped in front of me, his broad back protecting me from the violence in Umber’s eyes. I hated his high handedness and would have made that clear, but his next words stopped me.

“This is between you and me.” He pointed at Umber. “Get her,” he sneered the last word, “out of here and let’s finish this.”

Umber grinned. “As you wish.” Gesturing to the agents surrounding him, he said, “Take Ms. Adair to the mutant chamber. We’ll deal with her later.”

Sooner than you think, asshole, I thought, glancing at the timer around my neck. The display ticked down to two minutes.

One hundred and twenty seconds.

Two agents reached for my arms and another two others for my legs. “No.” I kicked and screamed but they held tight. Fingers clawed into my flesh leaving red welts up and down my limbs. I fought with everything I had, kicking and biting, but in the end, they carried me toward the door like a sack of mutated potatoes.

As they dragged me away I caught Quinn’s eye. The emptiness inside the flecks of grey sent a shiver down my spine.

Chapter 42

I was drowning in a void of oxygen. No matter how hard I tried to catch my breath I couldn’t push air past the lump in my chest. Everything faded, the pain in my healing leg, the agents groping my body with evil intent, Agent Umber, Arthur Resden, the vaccine; it all faded under the finality in Quinn’s gaze.

I’d lost.

We all had.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” A sweaty agent with wide set eyes and fetid breath squeezed my breast. “We’ll take real good care of you.”

I gagged in response to his touch, which released me from the grips of my panic attack. Instead of overwhelming sadness and regret, rage flooded my blood. I wasn’t giving up. Not yet. Not while there was mutated blood left in my body.

But I first needed to escape these loser agents. That proved easier than expected. I simply went limp in their embrace. The agents in front, the ones holding my legs, loosened their grip and stopped. I took advantage of their surprise and smashed my knee into the closer of the two’s forehead. The agent dropped like a stone, which oddly enough had a ripple effect. The other three agents released my limbs, and I landed hard on my butt.

The sweaty agent grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back in a typical military maneuver. In typical mutant fashion I responded by biting him. My teeth digging into his skin until blood and nerves exploded in my mouth. He screamed, and released his grip on my arm. I returned the favor by spitting out a wad of greasy agent flesh in his face.

Trust me; it didn’t taste anything like chicken.

I jumped to my feet, ready to kick the stuffing out of the other two agents. As I prepared to attack the hollow pop, pop of gunfire stopped me. My heart leapt into my throat.

Quinn.

“Sir,” one of the remaining agents called to Umber. “Are you all right?”

I prayed he wouldn’t answer. That somehow Quinn had managed to kill Umber first, and together we’d save mutantity and ride off into the sunset. That for once everything would work out as I hoped.

But hope was for dreamers.

Not mutants like me.

Umber pushed through the battered steel doorway, his suit buttoned in perfect order. A cold grin lit his face and black sunglass lenses covered his eyes. My own eyes, reflected in the blackness of the lens, filled with hate.

Just another day on the job for him. Another day of murdering mutants in the name of human decency, but I swore today would be his last. I’d avenge Quinn, for Ivan’s sake, if nothing else. I owed him that much.

“I ordered you to take her to the cell.” His voice rose. “When I give an order I expect it to be followed.” The uninjured agents jumped to attention, wearily considering the best way to complete their mission without losing any chunks of flesh.

Agent Umber shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll do it mys—”

The rest of his words were lost to the sound of shattering metal and glass. Right on time, was my last conscious thought, as the world around us exploded.

Chapter 43

The sound of a very loud, very bad high school marching band pounded inside my aching brain. I struggled to open my eyes, to stop the chorus of rowdy musicians, but my eyelids refused to compile. Instead, they fluttered like a southern belle, finally springing open at the brush of callous fingertips across my cheek.

“Don’t cry,” said a soft feminine voice. I focused on the sound until my vision cleared, and I sat staring into the porcelain face of Caren’s mother, Mei. I struggled to sit up, to tell her about Caren’s death, but Mei put her hand on my chest.

“Shh,” she whispered gesturing to the barred doorway of a jail cell. A cell I was currently locked inside. Against the back wall of the concrete cell, a group of mutants huddled together, their eyes blank, faces covered in oozing sores. A few appeared almost human, a testament to the power of the vaccine. Much too soon it would be perfected, if it wasn’t already, then mutants would cease to exists, a genocide of biblical proportion. My stomach rolled threatening to send a barrage of bile up my esophagus.

“Mei.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away. “Where am I? What happened? How’d I get here?” My hands, flecked with Quinn’s dried blood, clenched. I tried to rub the rusty flakes away but the stains remained.

Mei tilted her head, her face and eyes vacant. “It is not our place to question.” Her words, like the look in her eyes, chilled me. Whatever had befallen these mutants wasn’t good or kind. Mei’s lips curved into a smile but the rest of her face remained impassive. “When He comes, you will see. He gives us life. Gives us our freedom.”

What was she talking about? Freedom? I grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake. “We’re in a cell. There is no freedom here. There never will be.”

It was as if an alien had invaded Mei’s tiny body. She looked like the woman I’d known, but she wasn’t. Not even close. Was this an effect of the vaccine? Or something much worse? I shivered, my battered body shaking from shock and fear. I didn’t want to be a Stepford Mutant. I’d die first.

“Do I know you?” Mei blinked, a sparkle of her former self in her eyes. But as soon as it appeared, it vanished, swept away by whatever blue chemicals London and her Resden team had created to fix us mutants.

“My daughter will be saved soon,” Mei said, tears filling her eyes. Wetness welled in my own eyes. How could I explain to Mei that Caren was dead? That I’d cost her child’s life? “I’m so sorry.” I gazed down at my blackened clothing and bloodstained jeans. “Caren, she’s…”

“Caren’s a good girl.” Mei grabbed my arm stabbing her fingers into my skin. “You have to help her. Don’t let them take her.” As if flicking a light switch the old Mei returned, her eyes burning. “Promise me you’ll protect my baby.”

Before I responded the cell door swung open. From the shadows, the outline of a man emerged, his dark hair swept straight back from his forehead, his wing-tipped loafers gleaming brightly.

Geeky Doug Preston. That son-of-a-bitch.

I shook my head. I should’ve killed him when I had the chance. He stepped toward me, his smile filled with satisfaction. “Welcome back, Ms. Adair.” He grabbed a fist full of my hair and yanked me to my feet. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”