She raised her head. There were no tears, but her eyes were bright and glassy, her face flushed with all the emotion I knew she would not release. Not here, not on the job. Maybe not at all. Like me, she was a warrior on the battlefield.
“God,” she murmured, “it’s never going to stop, is it? Are we going to go on and on fighting this sodding war until we kill everyone and everything? We’re a race of madmen!”
I squeezed her hand.
Church turned back to face us. His tinted glasses hid his eyes, but his mouth was a tight line and muscles bulged and flexed in the corners of his jaw. Just for a moment, and then his control fell back into place with a steel clang.
“Spencer said that he also discovered how the other team escaped. He followed the blood trail from the Haeckel unit. He said that there were two sets of spatters, one that fell from at least five feet, which is probably the one you stabbed in the mouth, Captain, and the other showed heavy blood loss that fell with less velocity from a lower point. Spencer figures it for a leg wound. They took an elevator up to the surface. Spencer figures in Haeckel’s bin you’d have been too far away to hear the hydraulics. Then they climbed up through the air vents to the roof and dropped down the side opposite where Brick was positioned. Spencer was able to follow the blood trail for half a mile to a side road, and from there tire tracks led away. He found two sets of footprints. Size twelve and size fourteen shoes. He’s doing the math on the impressions, but he estimates that the men were well in excess of two hundred pounds… probably closer to three.”
I said, “That’s pretty nimble for big guys, even if they weren’t hurt.”
Grace nodded. “If they left a blood trail that long, then they must have been bleeding badly… so you have heavy men who, even if they are very muscular and fit, had to climb up air shafts, scale walls, and run into the hills while injured. And this
“Maybe not,” said Church. “I’m leaning toward Captain Ledger’s exoskeleton idea. Some kind of enhanced combat rig that gives them strength and supports their weight.”
“We’re not living in a science-fiction novel,” said Hu. “We’re years away from that sort of thing.”
Bug stared at him. “Um, Doc… you’re defending scientists who can make unicorns and you call an exoskeleton sci-fi?”
Hu conceded the point with a shrug.
“I can’t believe Hack’s gone…,” said Grace hollowly. “For what? For nothing!”
“That’s not true, Grace,” I said. “We may not know the full shape of this thing yet, but we will… and that means that their deaths will matter, because they are part of the process of stopping and punishing whoever did this.”
“Why? To clear the way for some other bloody maniac to do even more harm?”
“No,” I said, “because what we do matters. We take the hits so the public doesn’t. We save lives, Grace. You know that. It’s what soldiers do, and Hack Petersen knew that better than anyone. So did everyone on Jigsaw Team.”
Grace turned away and I knew that she was struggling to control her emotions. “All we ever see is the war,” she said bitterly. “All we ever do is bury our friends.”
I said nothing. The others in the room held their tongues.
There was a knock on the door and the deputy head of our communications division leaned into the room. “Mr. Church… we have another video!”
Chapter Sixty-Six
The Dragon Factory
Sunday, August 29, 5:38 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 22 minutes E.S.T.
Hecate was both amused and disgusted by her brother’s weakness. He should be stronger and wasn’t. They were both aware of it, though they never openly spoke of it. By ordinary human standards Paris was a monster of superior skill: smart, careful, vicious, inventive, and cruel. By the standards of their family, he was the weak sister while Hecate was the true predator. Paris had directly murdered six people and had shared in the murders of several women during sex play. Hecate had personally murdered fifty-seven people, not counting the sex partners. Paris knew of nine of her kills. The others were not his concern, though she did nothing outrageous to hide them. Paris knew only as much as he had a stomach to know.
The playtime with the two operatives sent by Alpha and Otto had shown Hecate how weak her brother had become. He hadn’t participated at all. For a while she thought he was going to disgrace himself by throwing up. Even that muscle-brain Tonton had seen it. He asked Hecate about it later, in bed.
“What’s with Mr. Paris?”
Tonton lay under her, his massive frame covered with scratches and red pinpoint bruises. She had used teeth and nails on him. He liked the intensity, and when she could coax a yelp of real pain from him it made Hecate come. She’d come over and over again.
Sitting astride the big man, Hecate shrugged. “Paris has other tastes.”
Tonton ran his rough hands over her small breasts. Her white skin was still flushed to a scalding pink from her last orgasm. He was on the edge of exhaustion, but she still had that fire in her eyes.
“He’s not like you,” murmured Tonton. “No one’s like you.”
Hecate smiled, thinking about how right he was. There was no one on the earth quite like her. Not anymore.
Tonton was only semi-erect, but Hecate moved her hips in a way that had three times changed that. It was taking longer this time. She smiled to herself, thinking,
She decided to throw Tonton a bone. “No one’s quite like you, either, my pet.”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m just another grunt.” It was feeble humility. Though it was true that there were hundreds of Berserkers now, it was equally true that he was physically far stronger than the others. The gene therapy Hecate had given him had brought him to a different level. His muscle mass was 46 percent denser than an ordinary man’s. He was six feet, eight inches tall and carried his 362 pounds of mass as easily as an Olympic athlete. He could do one-arm chin-ups in sets of fifty and he could do those for hours. He could bench-press a thousand pounds without straining. He could climb a redwood tree and snap a baseball bat in half in his bare hands.
Tonton loved his strength. So did Hecate. He was the only one of the Berserkers she allowed into her bedroom, and over the last few weeks he’d gotten that call from her at least four times a week.
“How come Mr. Paris isn’t like you?” he asked as she moved slowly up and down on him. He was hoping to distract her long enough for her to switch off. She may not have limits, but he did.
Hecate had her eyes closed, concentrating on what she was doing, and Tonton thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she murmured, “We’re like lions, my pet.”
“I don’t get it…”
“The males are dumb and lazy and they lay around while the females do all the wet work. We hunt; we kill. We’re the real pride leaders.”
Tonton said nothing.
Hecate opened her eyes and the blue irises were flecked with spots of hot gold. She smiled-at least Tonton thought it was a smile-and in the uncertain glow from the candles her teeth looked strangely sharp. More like a cat’s teeth than he remembered them being.
Hecate said, “All the males do is look pretty and fuck.”
She ran her sharp fingernails over Tonton’s throat and increased the rhythm of her hips.
Tonton understood the message, and tired or not, he did his best to serve the needs of the leader of his pride.
