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“I’m fine,” he said. “Is she down?”
“For now. I need to go put her down for longer. Are you sure—”
“Fine,” he said again, so flatly she wasn’t at all sure that he meant it in the least. “Check Reynolds. ”
Reynolds—and there was no reason for Jane to have lied about it being the real man, not a double—was cowering in the corner. Broken arm, she noted without any sympathy; as a Revived, he’d heal. He just wasn’t enjoying himself. He curled in on himself defensively when she approached him, but she struck aside his flailing keep-away hand and checked the pulse on his neck. “He’s fine,” she said, and grabbed the man by his collar. “Get up. ” She put the MP4 at his back to encourage it, and he practically sprang to his feet in a convulsive leap.
“You’re crazy,” he blurted. He looked scared, all right, scared and sweating and thoroughly convinced she’d shoot. “You’re all crazy. They’ll kill you. Don’t you get it? You’re surrounded. There’s no way out!”
He may have been right, but Bryn wasn’t convinced, not without some first-person recon. She pushed Reynolds back to Patrick, who took him in a hold that must have really hurt
that broken arm more than a little. Good. Without any words exchanged, Bryn took the lead on the way down. One good thing about an open-plan modern house—there were very few blind corners or places to hide.
Jane was still down and motionless on the floor, but they’d have very little time before the rest of her team descended. . . . Bryn could hear them outside, running feet on stone and grass. “Knife!” she said to Patrick and he tossed her his; she plucked it out of the air and, in the same motion, slammed it down and into Jane’s left eye. The corpse jerked just a little bit in reaction. Maybe she’d only been playing dead. That would have been typical.
This time, she pulled the knife out and started grimly sawing through the skin, muscle, gristle, and bone to separate Jane’s head from her body.
“No time,” Patrick snapped. “Leave it. ”
“I can’t. We have to finish her!”
“They’ll finish us first. ”
He took the knife away and slammed it back into Jane’s already-healing eye, and hauled Bryn up by the elbow. She regretted losing not one but two knives in rapid succession, but he was right—they couldn’t wait, not even another breath. Speed and ruthlessness were their only allies right now. Reynolds didn’t look as if he was inclined to give them trouble, but he wasn’t helping, either. Her brain clicked through plans, rejecting each one. . . . The front was obviously out, the side where Jane had come in would be covered, and the back of the house . . .
Bryn took a single breath to consider it—those giant plate glass windows showed off the house’s best feature: its view of a sharp drop to the valley, and the glittering ribbon of the river. She didn’t ask Patrick. There wasn’t time for debate.
Instead, she grabbed one of the end tables—a blocky, heavy, square affair, very new modern—and whirled, lifting as she put her momentum into it. Then she let go.
The table sailed through the air as if on wings, hit the glass with one of those sharp edges forward, and thick as it was, the glass frosted with cracks and then shattered in a mighty crash. The end table sailed out into the void and took a comet-trail of glass shards with it. But that didn’t clear the window fully; there were still jagged blades sticking out. Bryn grabbed the fireplace poker on the fly and held it like a sword as she leaped closer; she broke the worst of it out and turned as Patrick joined her.
“This is crazy,” he told her. “That’s a hell of a drop. One of us isn’t really up to it. By that I mean me. ”
Shit. In her rush, she’d somehow forgotten—forgotten!—that Patrick wasn’t capable of the same feats she was. Reynolds was Revived; he hardly mattered. But Patrick . . .
Bryn took hold of Reynolds and pulled him from Patrick’s grip. “How’s the arm?” she asked him. There would be flash-bangs deployed behind them in seconds, and then Jane’s shock troops would be inside, spraying the house with bullets and taking down anything that moved.
“Hurts,” he said.
“Good. ” She threw him out the window, just like the table.
Then she wrapped her arms around Patrick and pulled him out held tight to her body.
Chapter 14
She landed awkwardly and very painfully on her back. That was what she’d meant to do, and it served to take the brunt of the bare-rock impact away from Patrick, whom she held in a rock-hard grip against her chest all the way down. His body weight was solid and muscular, and it did the rest of the job that her own momentum hadn’t. She felt a lot of bones cracking, a few more shattering, and if she’d been normal and human, she’d have been concussed and probably dying from skull fractures. The concussion still occurred, but though she felt woozy and unfocused, her little nanite helpers kept her moving. That was the military upgrade. Damage was registered, but it mostly wouldn’t keep her down, or not for long.
God, she hated the busy little bastards. But she also had to admit that at moments like these, they were all that kept her alive. Her, and Patrick, too.
Patrick grunted in pain and rolled off of her. He shook his head to clear it, and then took a good look at her. “Bryn?” His expression went grim and furious. “What the hell was that?”
“Got you out, didn’t it?” she shot back breathlessly. It was hard to talk. Shattered ribs stabbed at her with every move. If she’d been standard human normal, she’d have been terrified that she’d have shredded her lungs and drowned in her own blood. Amazing how free you could feel when you just no longer worried about those kinds of considerations. “Come on, we’re clear targets. ” She got up—with his help—and tried a step. At least she hadn’t landed feetfirst; that would have resulted in disabling damage that would have taken time to heal. This was all heal-on-the-move stuff.
But . . . Reynolds hadn’t been so lucky. They found him off to the right, crawling for the trees. His right leg was folded the wrong way, and if his arm had been broken before, it was worse now. He was sobbing and babbling under his breath, and under most circumstances Bryn would have been stricken with guilt for what she’d done to him. But then, Reynolds would heal up, and a little pain, for what he’d done, for what he thought was right to do . . . that didn’t bother her much at all.
“Let me go,” he panted as she grabbed him by the unbroken arm and hauled him up. He hopped on his one good leg, and groaned and almost dropped from the pain. “Oh God, oh God . . . ”
“Suck it up, Doctor,” Bryn said. “Pat, can you—?” He took the doctor’s other side, and together they half pulled, half led Reynolds into the woods.
