Severance Package

quick sweep of the rug to make sure he had left no traces.

Two days later, a vacuum cleaner from housekeeping had scooped it up.

It was now at the bottom of a floating landfill somewhere near South America.

Piece that together.

Vincent’s two-way beeped, snapping him out of his daydreams. If there were any terrorists hiding up here, that would have completely given away the game. Gotten his ass killed.

“What’s up?”

“You’d better come down to sixteen, Vincent.” It was Rickards, who’d been checking the lower half of the building.

“What’s going on?”

“Got a guy down here you should see.”

“Let me guess. He has cuts all over his hands from pushing through a window.”

“No,” Rickards said. “He’s unconscious and he’s got a pen sticking out of his throat.”

Nichole wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that Molly had dropped her on her ass with one punch. Or that a drone like Jamie DeBroux had to revive her.

People in the world were divided into a few simple categories. The large majority were drones, buzzing about their daily lives, completely unaware how their contributions fit into the larger hive. They could be frightened into collective action quite easily—a terrorist threat or environmental disaster or flu epidemic. Some of these were even real. But most were engineered by the queens, or put into action by the workers.

Nichole and Molly were the workers.

People like David Murphy were the queens.

Nichole liked to believe that she was on an equal playing field with other workers. Sure, there were workers more powerful or gifted in some ways, but they were all still workers.

Molly, however, had been an extraordinarily tough worker.

Nichole was stunned by her ability to take a severe beating and still remain standing. She almost felt bad that she had to cheat at the end. But it was the only scenario available to her. Nichole knew she was mortally injured. And she knew Molly must be stopped.

“Where is she?” Nichole asked now. She sat up and felt incredibly dizzy.

“Who? Molly? She’s gone.”

“What?”

Nichole tried to get to her feet faster than she should have. The floor spun. But she had to look, see for herself.

The office where Molly had fallen was empty. Shattered glass was all over the floor, along with chunks of drywall and dust. Nichole counted bullet holes. Two in the window. One in the metal radiator. Another two in the desk. And one on the right wall, a wild shot (probably her last, Nichole thought) that probably sailed three feet over Molly’s head. Six shots fired. Six shots accounted for.

None of them had struck the Russian farm girl.

Nichole cursed and pounded her fist into the nearest available wall. Which happened to be the outer wall of the empty office.

A jagged shard of glass that had been hanging for its life at the top of the frame now fell, bursting against the frame below, and sending pieces over Jamie’s legs.

“Hey,” he said.

Nichole looked down and saw that she was missing a shoe. She carefully stepped over to it, shook out the glass, and replaced it on her foot. Then she recovered the HK P7 from the floor and tucked it in the back of her pants again.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where?”

“Off this floor.”

Nichole was lying, though. She needed to go to David’s office to recover any intel she could. Only then could she think about escape. If it came to it, she could pry open the elevator doors and make their escape down the shaft. Unless David had rigged those, too.

“Can you give me a hand?”

Nichole sighed. Drones. She held out her hand, then felt a panel of her shirt open wide, giving Jamie a clear view of her bra. Her bloodied bra. She withdrew her hand. Jamie had reached out by then, and when Nichole withdrew, his hand grabbed air. He slammed back against the cubicle wall.

“Ouch,” he said.

Nichole didn’t pay him any mind. She was looking down at her ruined shirt.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I had to rip open your shirt to give you CPR.”

“You couldn’t do it over my shirt? What, were you hoping for a cheap feel?”

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” Jamie said. “I was trying to save your life.”

Nichole looked up the hall. “I guess I should be grateful my bra is still on.”

“Hey, it wasn’t like that.”

“Sure. I remember it from my CPR classes. Step one: If the victim is female, rip open her shirt.”

Nichole looked to see if there was a single button left standing. There wasn’t.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

Jamie slowly pulled himself to his feet.

“Where’s everybody else? Do you think Molly’s going after them, too?”

Nichole considered this carefully. How much to tell him? After all, Roxanne’s dead body was just a few feet away, around the other end of the cubicles. She would have to lead him around to David’s office the long way—and hope they didn’t encounter Molly.

At least she had two rounds left in the HK P7. If she was given another opportunity, she’d do it point-blank style.

Press the barrel right up against Molly’s forehead and squeeze.

Nichole looked at Jamie—disheveled, bloodied, battered, but still a drone.

Silence, for now, was the best policy.

“Follow me,” she said.

They found the three essentials in David’s office: bandages, booze, and a battery. AA, even. Just what the Talkabout T900 needed.

Unfortunately, the T900 had been crushed.

On their way back, Jamie had scooped it up from the floor of the office where Molly had tried to filet him. The plastic screen was gone. Now the unit refused to turn on, even with the new battery, which Nichole had found in one of David’s desk drawers.

“Let me see it,” Nichole said.

Jamie didn’t argue. He handed it over and sat down on the floor with the first aid kit Nichole had found in David’s desk. Standard company issue, purchased at OfficeMax. Six hundred sixteen pieces, with the ability to serve up to a hundred people. Handy for mornings like these, when your boss and coworker go bananas and try to shoot, slice, and poison you.

Meanwhile, Nichole was replacing the battery door on the back of the T900. She had opened it up and reinserted the batteries, just in case. She pushed a few buttons. Nothing happened.

“This thing is shot,” Nichole said.

“Told you.”

“Did you land on it, or something? Damn it.”

Okay. Jamie couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to do what he could to patch up his hand. At least something to make the bleeding stop until they made it off this floor. If he had his way, he’d wrap the fingers in gauze and slip a black leather glove over the whole thing, like Luke Skywalker wore in