Bloodshot (39 page)

“You can. You have to. Give me your gun, and go for it.”

“What?” Damn. I was getting good at asking stupid, timestalling questions when I already knew the answers. “You want to stay holed up in here alone?” I whispered it fiercely, despite the ruckus of the men trying to force aside the cabinets. Lucky for us, the barriers had almost interlocked in their falling—and it’d take something pretty significant to move them … at least it’d take real work to move them quickly. Still, we didn’t have long. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes for them to figure out they could get at us from another angle. Or, God help us, it wouldn’t be much trouble to phone someone for explosives. They could take out half the floor if they wanted us that badly, and I had a feeling we were pretty badly wanted.

“I’ll hold them off. You go over to four fifty-one and take everything you can.”

“And then what?” I demanded. “
I
can jump out a window. As far as I know, you can’t!”

“I’ll figure out something. Go! We don’t have all night.”

I jammed a hand into my Useful Things Bag and pulled out the .22, which was all I had on me since I tend not to rely on these things. He looked at it like I’d handed him a straw and a spitball, rolled his eyes, and shooed me over to the vent while he took up a defensive position to the left of the door.

Wasting more time wouldn’t get us anywhere. I crammed myself between the big office desk and the wall, and used my weight
to shove it under the larger of the two vents. It was only larger by a marginal value, but it’d have to be larger enough to hold my big ass, so that’s what I went for. Forget the screwdriver; we were well past discretion here. I punched my hand through the slim metal grille and ripped the whole thing out of the wall, then without even looking—without even hanging out, calculating my width of ass versus the opening now before me, or anything that might await inside that filthy space—I lunged up and over and squeezed myself up into the metal chute.

I did some quick, thoughtful fiddling and realized with relief that I’d entered facing the right direction, because there was no fucking way I was turning around.

Down in 443, things were hot in a bad way. Behind me as I wriggled I heard all the commotion as the men in the hall rallied, smashed, and shoved. I could also hear someone squawking into a mouthpiece or a walkie-talkie. I caught the words “exterior window” and “demo team” and I didn’t like any of it. Backup never bodes well.

There was nothing I could do but squirm faster and try to trust Adrian, who was surely one of the most competent mere mortals I’d met in years. He had a (small, girlie) gun, he had his wits, and he had … I don’t know. Maybe a silver bikini under his commando-wear, for all I knew.

I counted, dividing by two and guessing at which office would be the right one. My first pick was clearly wrong; I almost let myself down into an empty room that was in the process of being remodeled.

So I went with my next hunch and elbowed my way out of the vent, then caught it before it could hit the ground with a clatter. I’d have to be quiet. The action in the hall was escalating. More people had been called in, and people were shooting again—though I couldn’t tell what or whom they were trying to hit.

A set of burly, dark shadows went hustling past the office door with its frosted-glass window inset. No one even glanced inside. Everyone was focused on the maniac holed up in room 443.

I wished that maniac well and dropped myself down quietly … onto a rolly-wheeled office chair that nearly sent me skating smack into a wall, but didn’t quite.

Recovering with haste but precious little dignity, I took a look around.

Room 451 didn’t have Bruner’s name affixed to it anyplace that I could see—even in the reverse letters on the other side of the glass—so I felt somewhat better about having missed it the first time around. Instead, upon the pane had been painted the legend
OFFICE OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOENGINEERING RESEARCH
, which I thought was tacky, if more or less correct. It took me a few precious seconds to parse it because hey, I don’t read backward very well, okay?

But I knew I was in the right place.

The office was nothing to write home about. In the center squatted a desk covered with two large phones, a beige desktop computer, and one of those big paper calendars that you treat like a place mat, and behind the desk was a wall of dull gray filing cabinets, two of which had their handles either broken off or rusted off. On the floor beside the desk was a wastepaper basket that had, alas, been freshly emptied. And stuck between the far right filing cabinet and the wall was a duffel bag that turned out to be full of clothes … the kind of clothes a man keeps around when he occasionally spends the night at the office—socks, underwear, a clean shirt, and a shoe-polishing kit. The polishing kit struck me as a little anal-retentive, but who am I to judge?

Something kept me rooted to the spot, staring at the certificates of commendation that were framed on the walls and wondering what kind of man could do the kinds of things he’d done.
Did he not understand that the undead were people, too? Or did he disagree? Had a vampire bitten someone he cared about? Was he just a psychotic fucker who would destroy anyone he fancied?

Nothing gave me an answer. Not the cup full of mismatched pens and pencils, or the brown coffee mug without so much as a logo on it.

I went to the wall of cabinets and started with the one farthest from the door. With one ear on the commotion in the hallway (certain that at any second someone would hear me and come busting in), I began to pull them open—locked, all of them, but they all came loose with a twist of my pick, which was quieter than the yank-and-break method—and I started to dig.

Most of what I found, I didn’t understand. Code names, project names, and numbers … all of it swam together. I forced my eyes open and concentrated hard. In the fifth drawer I found a file labeled
PBS
. And as I knew, it probably didn’t stand for Public Broadcast Service.

But it didn’t stand for Project Bloodshot, either. “Project Bandersnatch,” I whispered to myself. I poked through it anyway, and swiftly realized that even
ex
-military asshats are positively stupid for continuity. One fast glance down the first few sheets told me that I’d found the right project—or one frighteningly similar to it. And a second fast glance told me these weren’t all old records. Some of this paperwork was dated within the last year.

“Officers.” I swallowed. “Subjects. Contacts …” All with Bruner on top of the letterhead. “Wait a second,” I said, momentarily forgetting that Adrian was several offices over, and not in immediate hearing range. I remembered flashing past a cabinet drawer labeled
FUNDING
, so I went back to my side of the cabinetry and located the folder corresponding to Bandersnatch.

I pulled it out and opened it. “Millions,” I said, again wishing
I had someone handy to exclaim to. And all of it was going to the same set of numbers, same set of contacts, as Bloodshot. I didn’t have time to get too hung up on the tiny details; I could steal all this stuff and read it later at my leisure. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Same officers, same numbers, same contacts. Same program, just lacking government oversight this time.

“Wait. Same contacts,” I mumbled, because once you’ve started talking to yourself, it’s hard to stop. I felt like an invisible pop-up ad had leaped off the page and was trying to flag me down.

Harvey Feist, James Ellison, David Keene, Richard Wing.

I singled out the name “David Keene.” I shook my head, feeling a flush creep up from the pit of my stomach. They were physicians, affiliated with Bloodshot previously, and Bandersnatch now. It looked like they might’ve been investors, too, or maybe researchers who did some of the work themselves.

David Keene. Ian’s Canadian doctor.

My throat was so pinched and dry that I almost reached for that awful little half pint of blood. “Goddamn,” I whispered, taking the papers and stuffing them into my Useful Things Bag.

I reached for a cell phone as I began climbing for the vent again.

We’d left Cal and Ian alone—and there was an excellent chance that Ian had been making some phone calls, asking about those records and trying to figure out if the doc was going to give him back his eyesight.

The phone wasn’t getting me anywhere. It gave me nothing but unending rings. No one was picking up.

“Shit,” I declared, slammed the cell phone shut, and popped myself back into the vent.

About halfway back I reconsidered. I could leave Adrian. I
could get along just fine without him, couldn’t I? Ian and Cal were likely in danger—real and serious danger, perhaps every bit as bad as what was going down over at room 443.

I considered it. I really did, even knowing what a douchebag that would make me.

Then something exploded over near my destination, and I was shocked out of my ambivalence and right into terror. I squeezed and shook, with hardly enough clearance to hold my head up off the dust-smeared interior of the nasty metal tunnel, and I clamored back the way I’d come.

It felt like it took longer, coming back. It felt like I had more like miles to travel than mere yards, but that only made me shimmy faster.

I smelled smoke. It wafted up and inside. I’d only just registered it when I heard gunshots responding from inside room 443. I knew the sound of my piddly .22, and it was up against the kind of firepower I should’ve brought along, but hadn’t.

Something splintered and shattered. The window?

Shouts and protests and bullets, and the prickly static of electronic signals, and I reached 443 with a vengeance—exploding out of the vent and landing smack on the back of the man closing in on Adrian, who was backed up against the far wall. Two bodies were collapsed at his feet, but he was wrestling with a third and now I was on top of the fourth.

Shards of glass glittered on his clothes and yes, the window was completely blasted inward. That’s how they got in; I could’ve figured it out by noticing the filing cabinets were holding their ground (for the time being), but I wasn’t thinking that fast. I wasn’t thinking past
break this fucker’s neck
—which I did—and then a second explosion sent the heavily laden cabinets buckling and scooting into the interior of the room.

One of them stopped right at my feet. My ears were ringing
from the detonation but I was mad now, and I wasn’t going to stand there and rub my ears while the Men in Black swarmed inside like ants.

Hell
no.

The cabinet had split in two. I picked up the smaller half, torn, smoking, burning-hot metal surface and all, and I swung it as hard as I could—releasing it at the doorway and probably killing the first two guys who were trying to spill inside. Or maybe it just made them a whole lot less pretty.

Adrian was out of bullets. He used the gun to pistol-whip the last window-breaching attacker and then went to the empty hole in the wall to look outside.

I’d moved on to the desk. I upended it and shoved it—hoping it’d work like a cork to buy us time—more time, any time!—and it mostly just succeeded in flattening another couple of black-clad dudes who were too fucking eager. It wasn’t going to plug the door. It wasn’t quite big enough.

“More outside,” Adrian said. For the first time I heard real fear in his voice. Well, now was as good a time as any to be really afraid. We were cornered, outnumbered, and outgunned. “How many in the hall?”

“A dozen?” I estimated. Most of them down toward the north end; only a scattered couple were coming in from the other angle. “How many out there?”

“That many and change. Coming down from the roof and—” He ducked back inside as a spray of fire strafed up from the ground. “—and more waiting below.”

“I’ve got an idea,” I exaggerated. It was barely half an idea, but we were going to have to wing this, goddammit, and we couldn’t sit around all night with our thumbs up our asses.

“Let’s hear it.”

I didn’t spell it out. I just acted, trusting him to play along.

I seized the upended desk just as someone’s arm went reaching around it—and I shoved it hard enough to break the offending arm. I heard a shout of dismay and a groan of pain but I didn’t hang around to dwell on it. With a hearty shove I pushed the desk out the door; it squealed along the floor in jerky fits, and it was heavy as hell but I’m pretty damn strong and I kicked it around—using it as cover for the both of us.

Adrian got the drift. I let go of the desk and let him hold it up with his shoulder, and I set to the fast, messy work of disposing of the guys standing between us and the stairwell. There were more than a couple (four by my vicious, bloody count) and they had guns.

They opened fire. I leaped forward, taking down the first one so fast he probably never saw me coming at him. I broke his neck and used him to catch a few bullets from the remaining assholes, then I flung him aside and went after the other three.

One slug caught me just under the collarbone and another went zipping through my side. They both burned like crazy but there was nothing I could do about it right that moment. I worked through the pain and I worked fast, bringing the other guys down one after another while Adrian used that carbon steel blade he’d adopted to hack, slash, and slice any body parts that came jabbing around the desk.

In less time than it takes to write a paragraph about it, the path to the stairwell was clear … but probably not for long. I couldn’t hear much over the din of close-quarters fighting and gunfire, but when I took an instant to stretch my psychic sense—listening with it, for lack of a better way to put it—I detected people crashing around downstairs, maybe on the first floor. And outside there were cop cars, fire trucks, and other official sorts of vehicles wending their way toward us with the speed of the righteous.

But we didn’t have to make it all the way back down. We only
had to make it to our hole over the stairs, and then we’d pray that no one who’d rappelled down from the roof had noticed our point of entry. Or was hanging around waiting for us.