cigarette, I promise to forget to mention all that parts of the story that would get you suspended from the Academy, alright?”
“Sure,” Katya said hurriedly, tossing a pack of cigarettes to Rebecca, a book of matches tucked in the cellophane.
“Wait,” Alex said slowly, poking at his elbow, where the needle had been, “what did you do?”
“You won’t tell him, right?” Katya pleaded. “I brought you cigarettes.”
“Promise,” Rebecca said, lighting up and then, finally, smiling and looking a little bit like the woman he knew; if still skinny and wrapped in a wet hospital gown. “We are going to have a chat, later, though.”
Katya whitened, but she nodded. Alex looked at her questioningly, but Katya stolidly ignored him, and he was afraid to ask Rebecca at that particular moment.
“Okay, kids, here is the plan,” she begin enthusiastically, taking two steps in an attempt to pace and then stopping because of the splashing. “Katya, I need you to go find me some clothes — the stuff I was wearing should be down with the admission’s nurse station at the end of the hall. Alex, come on over. You and me, we are going to achieve an understanding, and then we are going to do some crazy shit that will save everybody. Those who aren't dead already. Mostly. Are we clear?”
“No way,” Alex said firmly, rolling off the soaking trundle bed and onto the flooded floor. “First off, the deal was that I would get here and get you up again, that’s it. Now, I am going to go find Eerie. Secondly, while I am really, really happy to see you up and around again, I and everybody else here is pretty pissed off at you right now. Fair warning.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rebecca said sheepishly. “Which is why saving everybody is a key part of my overall plan. You see, Alistair didn’t put me to sleep, he trapped me in my body and somehow cut off access to my protocol. I stopped telepathically screaming for help after a couple of days, and all I’ve been doing since then is thinking. I have a plan to make up for it, to you and everybody else. But I need your help.”
“Well, I’m not pissed at you, if that helps,” Katya offered, splashing her way out the door and into the hall.
“Sorry, Rebecca, but I am done being ordered around today,” Alex said, pausing to try to wring some of the water out of his t-shirt. “I’m going to find Eerie.”
“If you help me, I will find her for you,” Rebecca offered, “and I won’t tell her about what happened with Emily, over break.”
“Are you and Anastasia in some kind of extortion club that I don’t know about?” Alex complained. “That’s low, Rebecca.”
“I don’t have time to be nice,” Rebecca snapped. “Now. Yes or no?”
“Okay,” Alex said, sighing. “Alright. What do we do?”
Leigh was still faster than she was, but now that Mitsuru understood how the Ecofage Protocol worked, that wasn’t really a problem anymore. It didn’t really matter if Leigh managed to dodge all of Mitsuru’s attacks, because all Mitsuru had to do was bleed on her. Leigh had to be cautious about touching her, as much of Mitsuru glistened with the slick, caustic black blood that flowed like motor oil over her skin, thick and warm. Leigh had ducked and bobbed and weaved her way around Mitsuru’s strikes, but her arms, chest and neck were already splattered with sizzling black sores, and they were expanding.
Mitsuru threw a lazy kick at her head, and Leigh dodged it easily, moving inside automatically, just as Mitsuru thought she would. Leigh knew she couldn’t do much, up close, but it is hard to think clearly in combat, and like most fighters, she depended on a routine she had practiced until it was instinctual. She wouldn’t change her fighting style, not while she was under pressure. Mitsuru didn’t bother to dodge the punch that Leigh aimed at her head, because she was too busy tossing a handful of blood she had collected in her palm at the center of the vampire’s chest. Leigh’s punch hit with the force of jackhammer, and Mitsuru thought that she had probably broken her jaw.
It was worth it.
Leigh went stumbling back, brushing at the steaming liquid splashed across her chest in a panic, which was the worst thing she could have done. Wherever it touched her hands and arms, it clung, and then it started to eat away at the vampire, converting everything into more of itself, more of the crawling black nanite dissemblers. Even her long blond hair had small flecks of the black blood in it. The vampire may not have felt pain as her synthetic body dissolved, but Mitsuru saw the fear and impotent rage in her eyes clearly, and she took a guilty satisfaction in it.
Mitsuru reached for her knife, and without any conscious thought, the blood ran in rivulets up it, coating the length of the metal, a flowing, ruby tint that dripped slowly from the fine edge of the blade. She smiled at it, almost involuntarily, then she saw Leigh take another hesitant step back, and that was all she needed. She was like a bull seeing red, assuming bulls could actually see color. She charged Leigh and Leigh tried to defend herself.
Anyone could see that it was losing battle. Leigh had to put all of her energies into avoiding the constantly shifting sanguine blade in Mitsuru’s right hand, and that meant she had no time for achieving position, or avoiding the black blood that splashed her every time they closed. Better, Mitsuru could see that she was slowing down, whether due to accumulated damage or just fear and distraction, she couldn’t say. She watched Leigh’s eyes move, locked on to the crimson blade, and decided to try a left knee to the body, which landed solidly, staggering Leigh backwards. She checked the low kick that Mitsuru followed with, but it brought them close. Mitsuru feinted high with the blade and then hit Leigh with a left cross instead, landing solidly on the orbital just below the eye. That must have made the vampire angry, because she threw a punch for Mitsuru’s body. Mitsuru let it connect, wincing as it struck, but again, it paid off. The streamers of black blood on her stomach were quite adhesive. Leigh stared at her arm in horror as the boiling, black liquid sheathed her fist. She struggled helplessly and Mitsuru laughed as she advanced, leading with her knife, aiming for the vampire’s neck.
She heard Gaul in her head, trying to tell her something, but the bloodlust was too much.
“There is a lesson to be learned here, Leigh,” Alistair said contemptuously, from right behind her. “No matter how powerful you may are, you are never too powerful to bring a gun.”
She tried to dive and roll, she tried to turn and strike, but it was too late for any of that. Alistair had used his telepathy to mask his presence until he was close, and she could feel him in her head now, slowing her reaction time. She didn’t hear the shots, but she thought she felt the impacts. She closed her eyes automatically. She opened them, reeling backwards, to find herself uninjured, and facing a surprising tableau.
She wasn’t sure when Margot had managed to make her way back to her feet, or how she was even still moving after the beating she had absorbed, but she was there, one hand on Alistair’s wrist, bent at the waist as if she was coughing. Across the chest of her grey shirt, blood blossomed like chrysanthemums. Bone and bits of flesh burst from her back like shrapnel. The explosive lead azide rounds had torn such a huge hole in her head that it made almost no sound at all, when her body hit the ground and the contents of her skull spilled out across the stone in front of Alistair’s shiny, patent leather shoes. He stepped neatly aside.
“You bastard,” Mitsuru hissed, clenching her fists while black blood oozed across her body, adhering to her skin like hot oil, thick and viscous, coating her from head to toe. “Alistair, this ends here.”
Alistair leveled the gun, a small smile playing about his face.
“I couldn’t agree more, Mitzi,” he said softly. “I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time.”
Alice’s specialty was, to put it simply, creating bad days. Bad days for other people.
But as she picked herself up off the ground for the third time, nursing a bruised elbow, burns on her shoulder and back, and a wrist that was so badly swollen she couldn’t really use it, she was starting to wonder if maybe she hadn’t gotten too old for this stuff. The only reason she was still alive, she knew, though she never would have admitted it, was that Korean woman was unfamiliar with Xia’s protocol. If Xia had been himself, he would have cooked her already.
The problem was twofold — she was getting tired, for one, and for another, she couldn’t get close enough. Michelle’s telekinetic strikes were invisible, and they sent her sprawling back on her ass every time she tried to get close. She’d gotten lucky, once, and sidestepped it based on where the bitch was looking, but all that had done for her was get her close enough that Xia could set her on fire, which he promptly did. She had been through a lot, and she was feeling drained, M-Class or not. She could port until her body collapsed under the strain without ever running out of power, but that very well might happen in the near future, given her exhaustion and battered body.
