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That was, of course, the most likely explanation. And one that was going to stick.
Blade glanced at his phone and thought about what was going to happen next. Ah, the satisfaction of ruining these bastards’ toy boxes of pain. And it was always a big time. Unfortunately, theaftermath was always rather anti-climactic, although certainly climate-tic. Invariably, the human news ascribed whatever damage there was to natural causes. Forest fires set by “lightning”? Sure, most of them were Mother Nature. But not all. And then there were other explanations the press came up with: Plane crashes in the mountains, UFO sightings, space junk crashing to earth? Sure, most of them were mechanical failure, weather balloons, and meteors.
But not all.
As he called up the detonation app, and started entering the code, he resolved that it was possible he’d accomplished his goal, eradicating the torture chambers that were established to further the dominance of the human race.
Curiously, the idea his work was done was deflating.
He just had that one up on Deer Mountain left to deal with.
And then he was finishedahvenginghis kin.
In the split second before he dematerialized, he detonated his chain of explosives—and courtesy of his boom-booms, he was escorted out by a violent push of air and a toxic chemical stink.
He rather felt like his life’s work was ending.
And couldn’t decide how he felt about that.
ELEVEN
IT WAS ALLa blur.
As Xhex ran down the training center’s corridor, the gray cement walls, ceiling, and floor were like the interior of a gun’s muzzle, and her body was the bullet. And like any slug of lead, she felt nothing of the experience of propulsion, neither the acceleration nor its origins in her legs nor the slamming of her heart or burning in her lungs.
But she was aware of one thing.
She smelled the blood of her mate.
With panic her fuel and dread her tailwind, she followed the scent of disaster to the clinic’s operating room—and when she arrived at the closed door, she tripped and fell, scattering her limbs on the hard floor. Before anyone could help her up, she dragged herself back to her feet and pushed her way into the—
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Just as she entered, the unforgettable sound rang out, and her eyes flipped to the monitor behindJohn Matthew, who lay on the operating table covered with blood. The flat line was inching across the black rectangle at the bottom, taking over from the uneven peaks and valleys that represented his cardiac rhythm—
“Code!”
Xhex reached forward, as if she could do anything, but somebody held her back as Doc Jane jumped up on the table, straddled John’s hips, and began chest compressions. At his head, Ehlena slapped a mask on his face and started bagging him.
“Pushing epinephrine,” Manny announced at the IV site.
“What happened,” Xhex mumbled. “What’s happening…”
Without warning, her knees went loose under her and she went down onto the tile—and that was when everything came into heartbreaking focus. All of John’s clothes had been cut off, and there appeared to be nothing wrong on the bottom half of him. But what did that matter when he’d been shot in the heart.
“Thirty,” Ehlena said briskly.
“John?” Xhex called out as she watched his blood stain Doc Jane’s knees. “John, stay here. Don’t go…”
She looked at the monitor again. The numbers that represented his blood pressure were shockingly low, and that line remained flat.
“Sixty,” Ehlena announced.
Is time passing?Xhex thought dimly as she clasped her hands together and brought them up to the front of her throat.
Sweat beaded Doc Jane’s forehead as she continued with the chest compressions, her straight-arm, palm-over-palm pumping, replacing by force that which should have run by electrical impulse—
“Let’s go outside.”
