Beyond These Walls (21 page)

Surprisingly Agent Umber reacted much differently. He grabbed the lapels of Arthur’s lab coat. “Bastard.” He shook Arthur’s body with great violence, sending the dark sunglasses obscuring his agent eyes flying. They landed in a sticky puddle of blood, black lens mirroring the blackness in Arthur Resden’s dead eyes. “Where’s the damn vaccine?” Umber shook the body again.

For some reason, shock most likely, I found his reaction hilarious. Laughter bubbled inside me spewing into the silent lab in choked peels. Umber released Arthur’s corpse, and stalked his way toward me. My laughter stopped and my eyes darted around the room for some kind of weapon.

“I guess that,” I nodded at Arthur’s corpse, “puts a dent in your plans. No Arthur. No vaccine.” I laughed. “No mass mutant murder.”

Umber gazed down at poor old granddad. “No Arthur. No vaccine.” Grey eyes, Quinn’s grey eyes, met mine. “No cure. The old bastard finally won.”

Chapter 46

Pleasure flooded my body making me dizzy with its intensity. I ran to Quinn, thankful he was still alive. He opened his arms, a smile hovering on the borrowed lips of Agent Umber. When I reached him I raised my hand and smacked him across the cheek. “Damn you, Quinn Daniels. I thought you were dead.”

“Ow,” he complained, rubbing Umber’s face and the perfectly round imprint of my palm outlined on it. “I can see you were all broken up about it too,” he winked, “but you might want to try and control yourself. This emotional display, it’s embarrassing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I poked him in the chest. “Give me a signal or something?”

“Before or after you blew the shit out of us?” Quinn grabbed my finger holding it against his heart like a lover. “Damn it, Indeara, I had everything under control until you showed up.”

“Really?” Lurching away from him, I gave a sharp laugh. “It seems to me, when I arrived, you were locked inside a cage.” I tapped the tip of my finger to my lips. “Wanna explain in what universe that is considered ‘under control’?”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me against his chest. Pressing his lips to my forehead, he whispered, “Want to explain what the hell you’re doing here? I remember telling you to stay away from Resden. From me.” All tenderness vanished from his face. “Jesus Indeara. You could’ve died, or worse…”

Like he cared. I was a means to Quinn’s mutant end. We both knew it, but he had saved my mutant self. If not for him I’d be as dead as poor old gramps. The beep of the timer around my neck drew my attention. Shit. Five minutes until detonation.

“When I think of what could’ve happened, I—,” Quinn was saying. I jerked away from him and raised my hand for quiet. “We still might have a small problem,” I said. A pound of C-4 small.

“Oh God, what’d you do now?” Quinn shook his head looking equal parts wary and resigned. I shrugged, trying for casual but my heart pounded in my ears. Time was running out. “Remember that C-4 in your apartment…”

Quinn rolled his eyes, grabbed my hand, and ran through the lab door, dragging me in his wake. As we ran he muttered certain insulting assessments about the size of my brain, my ability to reason, and a few charming descriptions of his plans for me after we escaped.

If we escaped.

In the hallway outside the lab, I pulled to a stop and nearly yanked Quinn off Agent Umber’s feet. Quinn glared at me, but I held up a hand. “The mutants. The ones in the cell.” I spun around, heading in the opposite direction. “We can’t just leave them.”

Instead of arguing like I’d expected Quinn nodded. “Save them.” He smiled, a dark grin that sent a chill up my spine. “It’s what you do.” This Quinn wasn’t the same man I’d loved nor was he the man I’d plotted to destroy. This Quinn was far more deadly. “I have something I need to take care of as well.” He licked his lips. “I’ll meet you outside.”

I grabbed his sleeve. “Forget the vaccine. It’s not worth dying for.”

“It’s not that simple, sweetheart.”

I knew that better than anyone did. A vision of Quinn and a needle full of vaccine flashed through my head. Even after all this, he still wanted to be human. He wanted the vaccine, perhaps more now than ever. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Go.”

Nodding he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. His lips felt both foreign and like home. “I love you, Indeara. Never forget that.” And with that eerily familiar and frightening statement he was gone.

Chapter 47

“Hurry.” I waved my hands at the open cell door and the lump of unconscious agent on the floor next to it. “Save yourselves.” The mutant-experiments just stared at me much like the mice in the lab. Fear kept them caged. Rage at my grandfather and the human race churned inside me. Until the wall came down mutants would never be free. We’d always hide in our cages, waiting, longing for what we were too afraid to take. If I survived this day I’d spend the rest of what little life I had left breaking down the wall. Brick by fucking brick if need be.

I glanced at the timer, flashing two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and back at the crowd of mutants. Only one thing left to do. Reaching down, I grabbed a Glock from the holster of the agent I’d knocked out and fired into the air. Bits of concrete and tile rained from overhead but still the mutants refused to run.

Maybe they were too stupid to live.

I fired again with the same result. Damn. “What is wrong with you?” I reached for the closest mutant, a young boy with very blue eyes. Freshly healed scars covered his body. I aimed the weapon at the kid. “If you don’t save yourselves, I’m going to shoot every last one of you.”

As a bluff it sucked, but I had little choice. Time was running out and I’d be dammed if I’d suffered through eighteen bullet wounds, a fractured femur, and two dislocated shoulder sockets just so I could die in an explosion I created. As irony went death by my own hand held all the appeal of a Fey bite.

Much to my dismay not one of the mutants headed for the unlocked door. I shook my head, cocked the gun, and fired. The bullet hit the kid in the upper chest, ripping a hole the size of a fist a few inches to the right of his heart. His face turned white, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

What a drama queen, I thought, jumping out of the way, as twenty terrified mutants ran past me. As the last mutant, a gnome with a scar of an imprint of a pink combat boot on his forehead, hurried from the cell I jerked the boy mutant upright.

“Sorry about that,” I said, motioning to his bleeding chest. The blood had slowed to a trickle. “I didn’t see another way.”

The
Stannum
kid frowned rubbing at his healing flesh. “Next time, try saying please.” Ducking around me, he ran out of the cell and down the hallway to freedom.

I followed but at a more sedate pace. Somewhere inside Resden agents still lurked, waiting in the shadows to destroy me. To destroy all of us. I held the Glock at ready and pushed my way through the glass doors in the front of the building.

What I saw on the street wasn’t anything like I had expected. Instead of HOA tanks and hovercrafts firing down on me, a line of mutants waited, their arms full of high-caliber weapons and grenades. A few of them carried bottles, rakes, rocks, and sticks.

I grinned.

My eyes scanned the crowd searching for Quinn. For a brief second I thought I saw his grey eyes, but it was just a trick of the light. Where was he? Had he made it out? Was he human? My heart gave a small squeeze at the thought.

A mutant on the frontline caught my eye. His large and single, brown eye winked at me. I lifted my hand and waved, a small smile hovering on my lips.

The timer around my neck clicked to zero.

Chapter 48

The next night I awoke to the overly sweet smell of rose-igolds filling my nostrils. A sneeze escaped my mouth, spraying me in my own snot. I blinked, taking in the bright colored blooms. I sneezed again. As the middle of the night went, this one wasn’t quite living up to my expectations. My head ached. My muscles hurt. And a light rain fell across the wall shrouded in a blanket of darkness.

“Hey, you’re up.” Nobody opened my bedroom door and strolled inside. In his large hand he held a cup of tea and that mornings Mutant Times. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I fought an army of agents, killed my granddad, and blew myself up a total of three times.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Nobody grinned. “The first explosion didn’t really count.”

“It did so and you damn well know it.” I struggled to sit up and take the tea from Nobody’s outstretched hand. I avoided the paper though. Why read about yesterday’s events when they appeared in my nightmares? “Any word on Quinn?” I nodded to the paper. As far as anyone knew he’d failed to escape the explosion or the rush of HOA agents sent to crush our mutant uprising.

Nobody shook his head. “London swears he hasn’t contacted her.” Again, I wondered about her relationship with Quinn, and with my obviously lovesick cyclops friend. Did they know she was some kind of Resden spawn? Did they care?

“And you believe her?”

“I do.” He grinned, narrowing his eye. “Don’t look at me like that. London isn’t our enemy. And neither was Quinn.”

“Are you sure about that?” Since when had Nobody joined the Quinn Daniels bandwagon? I understood his desire to protect London, but Quinn? It didn’t make sense.

“This afternoon, while you were sleeping, Ivan stopped by.” Nobody changed the subject by motioning to the Rose-igolds scattered around my bedroom. “He’s worried about you.”

I laughed. “More like he’s worried I won’t be collecting any bad gnome debts, or mucking out the fairy cages anytime soon.”

“That too.” Nobody grinned, but quickly sobered. “There’s someone else here to see you.”

My fingers tightened on the thin cotton of my sheet. From the seriousness of Nobody’s tone, a thousand scenarios flashed through my brain, everything from Arthur’s magical return from the dead to a line of chorus transvestite Fey-suckers singing
On the Good Ship Lollipop
.

“Well?” I motioned to the open bedroom door. “Are you going to tell me or let me drive myself crazy?”

He bent down to kiss my forehead. “You’re already crazy.” He straightened and headed to the door. “Come in,” he called to someone hovering just outside my line of sight. A small girl squeezed past the giant cyclops and ran to my bed. Her pale face and luminous eyes shone with tears.

“Indeara.” Caren threw her arms around my neck and squeezed, cutting off the oxygen supply to my brain. But it didn’t matter to me. I clutched the child like a lifeline, a line to a life I’d thought I’d lost.

Over the child’s shoulder, my eyes locked on Nobody’s. “How?” Instead of Nobody answering, Caren released my neck and explained as only a four-year-old kid could do. “The bad men came. Jake made us hide. I was scared, but I didn’t cry. Just like you told me.”

It took me a full minute to realize the ramification of Caren’s words. Jake hadn’t betrayed the Resistance. He’d saved them. I closed my eyes, tears leaked from the corners. And he had died doing it. The ache around my heart grew. I’d lost Quinn, my first mutant love to his desire to be free, and I’d lost Jake, to his desire to free us.

Never again.

I was done watching the mutant I loved die.

“I’m so happy you’re alive.” I kissed the child’s forehead, wiping her tears away with the edge of my thumb. “You must promise me something.”

She nodded, looking so painfully young. I stroked my fingers through her hair, hair the same dark color as her mother’s. “Whatever happens, you won’t be afraid. Never again. I won’t let anything hurt you.” I closed my eyes and pictured Mei’s dying face. “I promise.”

Chapter 49

Later that day, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, naked. My body bore healed scars and fading bruises from yesterday’s adventure. I ran a comb through my blonde curls, wincing as the teeth dug into my tender scalp. Digging harder, I yanked at the coiled locks. Helpless anger swirled inside me. I’d sworn to protect Caren; yet, I couldn’t even protect my own heart. Thoughts of Quinn slipped past the calcified barriers that once hardened my heart. I didn’t want to love him, to care, but I did. Grief at losing him, for the second time, welled in my chest. Choking me.

Idiot.

I yanked harder on the brush until the physical pain matched the pain in my heart. A knock sounded on the bathroom door. I wrapped a towel around my body and opened the door. Nobody stuck his head in. We stared at each other, not saying a word.

His eye fell to the inside of my elbow and the tiny red welt bubbling from the surface of my skin. It looked insignificant, like a bug-bee bite. But we both knew what it meant. My cells were breaking down, sinking under the weight of Arthur’s plague. I crossed my arms over my chest hiding the telltale bump. Nobody’s eye met mine in the mirror. Sadness and desperation burst from the large brown iris.

I picked up my hairbrush and ran my fingers across the bristles before chucking it at the mirror. The glass shattered, falling in jagged puzzle pieces around us.

“Promise me,” I said.

He nodded.

A vow had been given, a promise of a death with dignity, an end without needless suffering. I wouldn’t wait to die as Calvin had.

“We can find a cure.” Nobody swallowed. “London, she can find a way—”

I pressed my finger to his lips and shook my head. A single tear slid down my best friend’s cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. Grasping my shoulders, Nobody held me against his chest as I cried like a child. All the fear, pain, and rage inside me spilled out, drenching the giant. But he never uttered a word, just tucked my body into his, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like everything would be all right.

I guess ignorance was bliss.

But than again so was a loaded nine-millimeter and a box of explosives.

******

A few hours later, I sat in the Lair drinking a semi-warm shot of vodka. The lights around us flickered as HOA vehicles roamed the mutant streets. Since my misadventure at Resden the HOA had swarmed behind the mutant wall. I smelled their fear. It swept through the air, seeping into our mutant psyche. Without Resden and the vaccine the HOA faced a new mutated world. One that wouldn’t hide quietly in the shadows. We were here, we were queer-looking freaks, and we sure as hell planned to stay that way.