I spun to see who it was.
'We will hold the line.'
It was Grant. He was walking down the hall toward me, five yards away. His arms were held wide and he had his phone in one hand. 'What the hell are you doing to that door?'
My. 45 appeared in my hand and I punched it toward him. 'Don't move! Don't you fucking move!'
'Whoa! Whoa! Calm down!' Grant cried. He was wearing his armored suit so I aimed at the junction of his nose and eyes.
'What are you doing down here?' I shouted.
'Somebody said you were looking for me,' he said calmly. 'Now put the gun down. You're acting nuts.'
'I'm nuts? I'm not the traitor, you son of a bitch.'
Grant paused, a painful look crossing his handsome features. 'I don't know what you're talking about.' Earl's voice was just background noise now.
My gun didn't waver. If he so much as twitched I was going to blow his brains out. 'Don't you lie to me,' I hissed. 'I know all about your messages.' I nodded at the phone. 'Why'd you do it?'
His eyes flicked unconsciously to the device in his hand. 'Just calm down, Owen.' He slowly put the phone back into his pocket, then put his hands back up.
'Why, Grant? Do you hate me that much? Do you hate Julie that much? Are we talking jealousy, or is it something worse? Do you actually believe what the Condition stands for? Tell me, because I really want to understand before I kill you.'
He was blinking rapidly, knowing that I wasn't bluffing. 'It isn't what you think.'
That sealed his fate. I tightened my grip. The safety was off. My finger was on the trigger.
'Wait!' someone ordered from the direction I had come.
I kept the gun on Grant, but turned my head slightly to see. It was MCB Agent Herzog. Directly behind her was Agent Torres. They must have followed me downstairs. 'Get Franks. I found your spy.' I turned my attention back to Grant. 'And tell him to hurry, because if he wants to interrogate him, he'll need his own necromancer.'
'Listen to me,' Grant pleaded. 'Yeah, I've been spying on MHI, but for a good reason. Let me explain. I'm trying to help.'
'I've heard that line before, you sack of-' Then I thought of something. Nobody had answered the door to the security room, even after all the noise I had made. I lowered my gun slightly, and threw a brutal side kick into the steel. This time the bolt tore through the frame. 'Don't try to run or do anything stupid. You know I don't miss,' I ordered.
I risked a quick glance into the security room.
There was blood everywhere.
'Son of a bitch…' I covered the distance to Grant quickly, my gun on him the whole time.
'Wait. What's going on?' he asked. 'I don't-'
I struck him in the face with the butt of my compact STI. He stumbled back into the wall. I hit him again, slamming his head into the concrete. He raised his hands to protect his face, but I swatted them down and smashed my gun into his temple. Then I rammed my knee into his ribs repeatedly with savage fury. He slid to the ground. I jerked his pistol from its holster and tossed it down the hallway. I grabbed him by the boot and dragged his semiconscious weight back to the security room.
The agents were still standing there. Herzog was shocked. Torres had drawn his sidearm and was pulling something out of another pocket, probably his radio. 'Sound the alarm,' I ordered as I dragged Grant through the door. Herzog glanced inside, saw the carnage, turned a ghastly shade of green, and stumbled back.
I turned my attention to the security room. Blood was splattered all over the bank of monitors. There was a single Hunter on the floor, facedown in a giant red puddle. Adrenaline and fury were pounding through my veins. I rolled him over. It was one of the Newbies. The taxi driver. I couldn't even remember his name. His throat had been cut.
Flat on his back, Grant groaned.
I kicked him in the side. 'Why? What'd he do to you?'
'Wasn't me!' he cried.
I squatted down. It was time to end it. 'You want to worship the Old Ones? Well, tell them hi for me.' I placed my gun against his temple.
Grant sputtered something. It took me a second to realize he was laughing at me. His teeth were red with blood. 'Old Ones? God, you're a moron… Sure, I'm a spy, but not for the Condition.'
What?
'He's working for the Monster Control Bureau,' Agent Anthony Torres said from the doorway. 'Myers recruited him after he left MHI.'
'Are you serious?'
Grant gasped as he looked over my shoulder. 'It's you!'
Torres was standing over me, collapsible baton extended above his head. 'Yes.' Then he cracked me hard, lights exploded in my skull, snapping my head around. The floor came up and hit me.
'Anthony! What are you doing?' Herzog screeched. I couldn't see what happened next, but there was a sudden whump.
Sitting up, I raised my gun but another quick strike of the baton knocked it from my hand. Torres kicked me in the chest, sending me back to the ground.
'Stop right there,' he stated as he raised his HK in his other hand. A fat sound suppressor had been screwed onto the muzzle.
My head hurt. That baton had nailed me good. The spinning room lurched to a stop. 'What are you doing?' I grunted.
'I'm completing my mission,' Torres said calmly. His normally cheerful disposition had been replaced with something cold. He stepped completely into the room and closed the damaged door behind him. Back against the wall, he kept the gun pointed at me. I realized with a start that Herzog was also down, a gaping hole in the side of her head, brains dripping down the wall behind, eyes like glass, open and staring at nothing. 'I never did like her,' Torres said. 'Too bossy.' Then he lowered his gun and shot her twice more, each round from the suppressed pistol sounding like the slamming of a thick book. It was back on me before I could do anything.
Grant struggled to sit up, but began coughing. I had really hit him good.
'Hunters, as you enter the world, your greatest weapon is the trust you have in your team,' Earl said over the intercom. The intercom speaker was next to Torres and he turned it off.
'I've listened to enough blowhards for one night,' Torres said. His demeanor had changed. The friendly act was cast aside, and now I could see the crazy in his eyes. Damn, he'd been a good actor. 'You know, you look confused, Owen. Let me try to help you out here. I'm an acolyte in the Exalted Order of the Shadows, that's who I really work for. Jefferson here is pretending to work for MHI, when he's really working for Myers. His assignment was to help Franks catch which of your detail was the spy.'
'Traitors,' I muttered. 'Both of you.'
'I was trying to serve my country…' Grant said, spitting a gob of blood on the floor. 'Unlike this piece of shit.'
Undeterred, Torres' HK kept floating between Grant and me. If either of us moved, we were dead. 'Well, you did find me finally, Agent Jefferson. I'll give you that.' Torres smiled. 'Maybe you'll get a posthumous promotion for catching me…'
'Squid lover,' Grant spat.
'Don't knock it until you try it.' He turned his attention back to the door, and peeked through the crack down the hallway. The gun was still pointed in our direction. Torres was a pro. 'Don't try anything stupid, Pitt.'
'Grant, what the hell's going on?' I hissed.
'I was trying to help you, moron.' Grant moaned as he sat up. 'Myers knew the MCB had been infiltrated. I was supposed to watch out for you and back up Franks. When one of Myers' people, Patterson, was killed trying to infiltrate the cult, there were only a few agents who knew about her cover.'
My head was spinning, and not just from Torres' baton. Myers had shown me pictures of Agent Patterson. She had been the one chopped into pieces-Franks' friend. Torres was still listening and turned his attention back to us, grinning.
