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“My cousin is the one who has invaded this facility. If I leave, he will be forced to follow. Then you may come out.”
Daniel cursed under his breath. Maybe the guy was right, maybe he was wrong.
Either way, they didn’t have many choices.
THIRTY-EIGHT
BEFORE BLADE DEPARTEDthe group, he focused on the wolven. She was standing by her male, supporting him in so many ways more than just the physical, his arm draped over her shoulders, her body strong enough to hold him on his feet.
Going over to her, Blade held out his hand. “This is for you. Do with her as you will.”
The female went still and glanced down at the glass container. For a moment, he thought she was not going to take his gift, but then she snatched the scorpion from his palm. As her fingers brushed his skin, his blood rushed through his veins, but he knew that he was the only one who felt anything—and a now-familiar sense of weary sadness made it easier for him to turn away and start running.
She did not thank him. Or if she did, he didn’t hear it.
“Wait,” the blond woman called out. “I need to spring the lock for you.”
The owner of the lab was mercifully light on her feet as she joined him, and when they reached the portal through which they had entered the tunnel, she was quick with the passcode. After a pause, during which he knew they both held their breath…
The lock released, and she looked up at him. “Fuck it. The master code is seven-nine-two-one-five-five-one. Use it on any keypad. Good luck—and thank you.”
Blade inhaled deeply through his nostrils, confirming, even through the smoke, that which had been readily apparent out on her terrace. Leaning in, he said softly, “It will work on you, too. Be well.”
He did not look back as he stepped out, but he made certain that the portal was re-secured before he faced off at the remarkably dangerous hallway: If Kurling or one of his machines happened to pass by the head of this offshoot, and utilize their super-keen eyesight, Blade would be a sitting duck, nothing but rooms with flimsy doors offering a momentary cover.
Dematerializing in this environment was not advisable, as it was too dangerous to re-form when one was not certain of obstacles. Besides, he was too amped up to concentrate.
Ditching his red robes, he was fleet of foot in his combat garb as he put his back against the wall and headed down past the room Daniel had beenin, zeroing in on where alarms were going off and fresh smoke was curling up. As the lights overhead flickered, the strobing effect made his vision dance, but he got to the end with alacrity. Stretching off to the left, the vast open area of equipment and workplaces had been hit with some lower-end explosives, the kind that were more noise than structurally damaging. They had certainly laid waste to the previous order, however, the blown-up equipment, shattered glass, and puffs of fire making it look like an action movie set after the final showdown.
There were moans, too, of injured staff members.
Unfortunately, this was only beginning—and at least one or more stairwells, somewhere, had been properly bombed. That was the only reason they could have felt such shock waves in that patient room.
Hurrying on his way, heading to the right, Blade’s nose stung from the chemical burn—
The robotic soldier came out of a boardroom made of sheets of glass, and Blade had the advantage of first sight. Raising the muzzle of his gun, he let off one round directly into the thing’s chest, the bullet entering the torso—but barely having any effect other than to announce Blade’s presence.
The return fire was instantaneous, and accurate to a rattling degree. As Blade ducked, a bullet went into the wall right where his head had been.
No torso, big-target aiming for these things.
As another bullet sizzled by him, Blade had to ration his counter-firing as he jumped behind a support column. He could spare only one trigger pull in response, and the humanoid ducked easily, the lead slug penetrating through one of the floor-to-ceiling glass panels, the entire wall shattering and crashing to the ground.
Which brought the other soldiers unto him in an efficient fashion.
The units came from every direction, and Blade broke cover and bobbed and weaved to avoid getting shot. Still, something went into his shoulder, but he ignored the blaze of pain—and given that he didn’t know the layout of the lab, there was no strategy to his route as he kept going.
All he wanted was to draw everything away from that hallway.
As he passed the elevator down which the blond woman in black had taken him, he thought his assailants’ strategy of trapping everybody underground was a good one. Bombs made noise and attracted attention, and the small town might not have had much on population, but there were people who would have noticed an aboveground altercation with this many pyrotechnics.
Down here, anything could happen. And with the elevators disabled and the stairwells compromised? And those cyborg soldiers having no pesky sense of self-preservation?
Kurling could wait anyone out.
On the far side of the elevators, he jumped over the dead body of one of the guards who had escorted him and the blonde down herein. And another who was gravely injured. Bullets continued to flash by Blade, pinging into the walls, skipping across the concrete floor with sparks, some more hitting him.
He kept going, and when he made a turn and an “EXIT” sign appeared over a steel door, he knew his instincts had been right. Clandestine labs needed fire escapes, not for building code purposes, but as a practical consideration, and every one he had ever been in over the last twenty years had had more than one satellite escape.
