chair.
Stan crawled closer, moving around the protruding wall housing the hot water heater. Jess rolled swiftly into position, each move already mapped out in his head. His arm slipped around Stan’s throat and clamped down hard in a half nelson. Stan thrashed wildly. He was a big man and his feet drummed on the concrete as he tried desperately to break the stranglehold Jess had on him.
“Stan! What the hell? Get a light, Ben. We need a light,” Bob shouted.
There was an audible crack and Stan’s feet went still. Silence settled into the room. There was only the sound of heavy breathing as the two intruders fought for air, adrenaline rushing through their veins.
“Stan?” Bob said again, this time his voice low, a conspirator’s whisper. “Answer me.”
“Get over there and check it out,” Ben said in an undertone.
“Screw that. We need a light.”
“Yeah, you find one. I dropped mine when your little earthquake took out the staircase.” Ben’s voice dripped sarcasm.
There was another silence. Bob sank down onto the floor, his back to the wall. His eyes were beginning to adjust again to the dark as dawn crept over the horizon. He could just make out the shadow of Stan’s body lying on the floor beside the wheelchair and another body slumped in the chair. “I think they’re both dead.”
“Check.”
“You want me to check?”
“Damn straight. Check so we can figure out how to get the hell out of here.”
Bob lifted his gun and fired a round into the head of the man in the wheelchair. “I’m not taking any chances. If he was faking, he’s dead now. Cover me, Ben, just in case.” Bob began to crawl toward Stan, keeping a careful eye on the motionless man in the wheelchair.
Jess concentrated on the lightbulb Saber had unscrewed. The moment Bob was beside Stan, where he could have reached out and touched Jess, the bulb spun back into place, flooding the room with blinding light. Jess kept his eyes closed until the bulb reversed direction and the light went out after one flash. He was on Bob instantly, catching his head in his hands and twisting violently. Again there was a satisfying crack and Jess was back in the shadows.
Silence reigned. Ben sighed and pushed with his heels, sliding his body into the rubble left from the staircase. He crouched underneath what was left of the landing.
“So it’s true. You are one of them.” He shoved his gun into a shoulder harness and reached for a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t kill me until I have a last smoke.” He lifted his hands into the air, showing the pack and lighter.
“Go ahead.” Jess’s disembodied voice bounced off the walls coming from every direction.
“You’re pissed about your sister.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
The lighter flared and Ben bent his head toward the flame. “I can’t blame you. It’s a job, you know, nothing personal.” The lighter snapped off and the end of the cigarette glowed red.
“You tell yourself that.”
“You gonna kill me?”
“What do you think? You tortured her. You were going to rape and kill her. You’re a dead man.”
“I figured as much.”
Jess watched Ben take a strong pull of the cigarette. He wasn’t going down easy. He was trying to buy himself time to think his way out of the mess he was in. If he could locate Jess’s actual position, the man thought he’d have a chance. “Are you going to tell me who sent you after me?” He’d help the man buy time while he bought information.
“I don’t think so.” Ben took another drag of the cigarette, pulled it from his mouth and stared at the red tip. “Sooner or later they’re going to get you, and there’s some satisfaction in that.” He toed open the door to the gas water heater and flicked his cigarette toward it.
Jess had been waiting for a move and he stopped the cigarette in midair, let it drop, tip down, and mash itself on the concrete.
“That was no earthquake.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You’re the real fucking thing.”
Ben’s gun swept up and he sprayed the basement with bullets in an up-and-down pattern going across the room. His finger remained steady on the trigger even when the gun began to shake in his hand, began to put pressure on his wrist, turning slowly, inevitably, inch by slow inch toward his own body. He broke out in a sweat, his heart thundering in his ears, fighting with every bit of strength he had, but he couldn’t stop the turn or remove his finger from the trigger. He heard himself scream as the bullets tore into his body, one after the other, ripping through him.
“Yeah. I’m the fucking real thing and that’s for what you did to my sister, you son of a bitch. It might not have been personal to you, but it was very personal to me.”
The words were low, whispered in Ben’s left ear as he fell back. He turned his head and stared into cold, merciless eyes. Jess lay stretched out on the floor beside him, only inches away, his face set in implacable lines. Everything blurred. He heard the gun clatter against the cement, and his hand flopped onto his chest. He couldn’t feel it and his vision grew dark. He coughed. Gurgled. Spat. Ben tried to lift his hand, but he couldn’t tell where it was. He died, staring at Jess’s uncompromising and very unsympathetic gaze.
Jess shifted into a sitting position. “You didn’t suffer nearly enough for what you did to Patsy,” he told the dead man. “And I’m going to find out who sent you and rip his heart out. But meanwhile…”
He trailed off and looked around him. He was going to have a hell of time getting out of the basement now. Cursing, he made his way to the wheelchair, using his hands to walk. Dumping the body, he wiped the blood from the seat and back as best he could. Flicking a quick glance toward the light fixture, he waited until the bulb screwed itself back in, and light flooded the basement once again.
It looked like a war zone, with bodies strewn everywhere and blood splashed from one end of the room to the other. He folded the chair and locked it in a closed position. This was going to be tricky. Using the bionics always was. They could fail at any time and leave him in a vulnerable heap on the floor. He hit his leg in frustration. He’d suffered pain and the threat of bleeding out, countless hours of physical therapy, and he still couldn’t use them.
He looked up at the door, allowing it to swing open. His strength was becoming a problem. Like all GhostWalkers, even those who trained as he did, mental psychic challenges drained his strength faster than anything else. Slow tremors invaded his body. He had no intention of letting the other GhostWalkers-or worse, Saber-find him lying on the floor in what amounted to a slaughterhouse. Nor was anyone carrying him out. No one.
He forced himself to stand, using his mind to command his legs. Pain sliced through his head, and his body shuddered with the effort. He broke out into a sweat. He could move objects with semi-ease now. The more he practiced, the better he got at it, but moving his legs, making them respond, was both painful and difficult. And now he was fatigued, not a good thing when he was trying to make the bionics work. He should have let them try an external power pack, but he’d been stubborn, wanting his legs to be part of his body, not some externally powered robotic limbs.
He dragged the chair to him and placed it under his arm. He had to jump into the doorway, taking the wheelchair with him. And he had to land on his feet or he’d fall backward onto the basement floor-and Ben’s dead body.
Stiffening his back, he blocked out everything around him. Sight. Smell. Danger. He visualized his legs with veins and arteries and flashing nerves firing like sparkplugs in a car. He sent the signal from his brain to the nerves as he crouched low and leapt. He felt the power rush through him, the coiled readiness of the genetic enhancements springing into action. Though he hated what Whitney had turned the Ghostwalker program into, Jesse loved the rush using his physical enhancements always gave him. Loved it. Before he’d lost his legs, he’d lived for it.
He landed in the doorway and took a step forward, then a second. Exhilaration swept through him. He was doing it! He was walking again. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to stand, to feel his legs under him, to walk
