“I’m saying you don’t have time.”
I’m not entirely sure what he’s talking about. Security, in theory, could already be on their way, but how would he know that? I draw my handgun from behind my back and aim it at his head. “The remaining Tsuchi. Where are they?”
He points to the left, and I see them, lying on their backs inside a dome, legs curled up. “They look dead.”
“They’re pretending,” he says.
“Destroy them.”
His eyes widen a touch. “They’re priceless specimens.”
“Do it.”
“Do you have any idea how many people lost their lives to—”
I chamber a round. “It’s you or them.”
“You’re no killer,” Brice says.
“Not of men,” I say. “But I make exceptions for monsters, and I think you qualify.”
I mean what I’m saying, and I’m pretty sure he can see that, because he starts tapping keys, bringing up a diagram of the room. He taps the screen, highlighting the dome containing the Tsuchi and then taps a red icon. When a warning message pops up, he taps Continue. A moment later, the glass dome is awash in flames. The Tsuchi bound into the air, slamming against the glass and writhing until they fall back into their faux death poses, no longer acting.
A sound like distant gunshots tickles my ears, barely audible, but a constant stream. Somewhere, a battle is being fought. Sounds like a lot for one Tsuchi.
Brice glances toward the sound, but hides any concern it might give him. “What now?”
“Now,” Alessi says, “You can step back.”
She pulls a USB flashdrive from her pocket and plugs it into the laptop. The screen immediately fills with preprogrammed commands. Software opens and closes faster than I can see. Databases scroll past. Diagrams. Case files.
Brice looks horrified. “You’re with them, aren’t you?”
“Them, who?” I ask.
He looks at me, a wild look in his eyes. “Zoomb. They have been trying to infiltrate our operation for months. You should be careful who you get into bed with, Hudson.”
“What are you doing?” I ask Alessi.
“Erasing their database,” she says. “Everything they have ever researched, created or stolen is being erased. Including everything they have about the FC-P, and your friends.”
“No!” Brice says, and tries to grab the laptop. Collins holds him back. He struggles for a moment, but realizes Collins is more than a match for him and gives up. “Can’t you see? She’s not simply erasing the data, she is copying it! You are helping a corporation perform espionage on a government agency. This is treason!”
Despite the despicable nature of what they do here, he’s technically right, especially if Alessi is indeed copying their data with the intention of handing it over to her employers. The good news is that GOD could never publicly tell anyone what they really do here, and if I need him to, the President would have my back. The bad news is that data or no data, the FC-P will be dead center in GOD’s crosshairs. Not that we weren’t already, but they’re not going to simply come looking for Lilly. They’re going to come for vengeance.
That is, if they know we did this. Which brings me to the dilemma at hand.
Brice.
If I let the man walk, I’ll be starting a war. But the alternative... Could I really kill the man? No, I decide, but I suspect Alessi might, and I’m not sure if I’ll try to stop her.
A vibration shakes the floor beneath us.
“What was that?” Collins asks.
“Time’s up,” Brice says.
The laptop screen goes black, leaving only a blinking red cursor. I snap my hand out and pluck the flashdrive out before Alessi can. She glowers at me for a moment, but says nothing.
A second vibration rattles the building.
“What’s happening?” I ask Brice.
“The Tsuchi. It multiplied.” A grin spreads across his lips. “With Nemesis’s corpse.”
Well, fuck.
That’s horrible news. But Brice has missed the obvious. “The Tsuchi only implant living hosts.”
Brice is about to argue, but is cut off by irrefutable evidence in support of my claim. The building shakes, as a roar, so loud and familiar, tears through the air.
Nemesis is alive, and she’s pissed.
I turn toward the door and start to run—when Nemesis is waking up a few hundred feet away, it’s the only sensible action—but I spot Brice back at the keyboard. I raise my weapon, but he hits a final key, steps back and raises his hands. The asshole knows I won’t shoot him.
But he’s forgotten about Alessi. She fires twice, both shots striking the man’s chest and exiting through his back, spraying the white wall behind him with twin splotches of bright red. But the damage has already been done. From one side of the room to the other, the glass domes lift off the floor, unleashing their living weapons.
16