Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Forty-Five



It was three in the morning when Tommy opened the door to Esmeralda’s concrete cell. He left the lights off, though the camera in her ceiling probably had a night mode. He shook her by the shoulder. “Wake up. We’re going.”

“What?” Esmeralda sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Who...what are we doing?”

“I’m helping you escape,” he whispered. “Like you wanted. We have to go now. I brought you these.” He dropped a folded set of surgical scrubs onto her bed. “You don’t want to be wearing the orange jumpsuit.”

Esmeralda looked at the thin blue shirt and pants.

“We have to go now. You know they’re watching,” Tommy urged.

She nodded and got out of bed. He relished a moment of seeing her in the simple cotton bra and panties they’d issued her, the delicious curves of her warm, brown body...her long, glossy black hair, her deep, dark eyes. He’d missed her badly. He’d made a few more visits at Ward’s instruction, explaining why she needed to agree to work with ASTRIA. He knew her life would be in danger if she didn’t start acting happy to cooperate. The flickers of past-life memory he’d experienced since arriving Germany made that clear. When Ward, or Kranzler, was done with you, your life became disposable.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

“They’ll be coming for us.” Tommy led the way out into the cellblock corridor. He’d spent more than a week working out his plan, such as it was. He’d blasted a guard full of fear and taken his access card, then gone down to the cellblock and terrified the guards there, breaking their minds.

“We should get Jenny,” Esmeralda whispered as they hurried along the corridor.

“I thought of that,” Tommy said. “Look.”

Mariella and Seth emerged from Seth’s cell. Like Esmeralda, Seth had changed from his jumpsuit into surgical scrubs. Mariella had come down with Tommy, and she’d freed Seth from his cell with an access card taken from one of the cellblock guards.

Seth looked suspiciously at all three of them—Tommy, who’d always been his enemy in their past encounters; Esmeralda, who Seth had seen possessed by Ashleigh’s soul; and Mariella, who had been cooperating with Ward for months.

“If this is a trap, you’re all dead,” Seth told them. “I mean it.”

“It’s not a trap, Seth. The guards could be here any second.” Mariella took Seth’s arm, and her expression turned to one of horror. “They’ll be here in a minute, a response team with biohazard masks and automatic rifles. We have to run!” She pulled Seth behind her as she ran north along the wide corridor.

“Who is she?” Esmeralda whispered to Tommy as they started running.

“Mariella,” Tommy said. “She can see the future.”

Tommy had taken a huge risk asking Mariella to help him break Esmeralda free. Mariella saw Tommy as someone loyal to Ward, and he was supposed to see her the same way. He’d only approached her with the idea because he remembered that she had decided to escape in their last life. Tommy no longer cared what happened to himself—he was determined to help Esmeralda. So he’d taken the risk, suggesting they could free Jenny and Seth at the same time. He had gambled that Mariella wanted to help her friends.

It was paying off—once they freed Jenny, the five of them would be far more difficult for the guards to stop than Tommy and Esmeralda would have been on their own.

They passed the guards who’d been on duty at the cellblock desk, one of them now trying to hide behind a fake potted plant, the other waving his TASER and screaming at shadows on the ceiling.

From his previous life, Tommy knew every inch of the facility, the side corridors and maintenance tunnels. Anything might have changed since then, doors and hallways could have been sealed, but between Tommy’s memories and Mariella’s ability to see the future by keeping her hand on Seth’s arm, they found the safest course through to the lab corridor, avoiding the guards ahead and the heavily armed team pursuing them from behind.

Mariella predicted that two guards had been stationed in the lab corridor, dressed in biohazard armor but armed only with TASER guns, unlike the response team coming up behind them, who were armed with machine guns. They’d been ordered to stand in front of the door to Jenny’s lab.

“I’ll go first,” Seth said when they reached the door. The small guard station by the lab corridor was unmanned. Ward was clearly relying on digital surveillance to replace some of the roaming guard patrols and numerous small guard stations of the Nazi days. This also meant that someone was watching, telling the armed response team exactly where to find them.

Seth closed his eyes for a moment, and his skin slowly took on an unearthly white glow, making him look almost angelic. Even his hair gleamed like gold. He must have been summoning up his power, turning it up the way Tommy could turn up the fear if he really wanted to blast someone’s mind apart.

“Tommy, you have to help me,” Seth whispered. “Whatever they do to you, I’ll fix. Ready?”

Tommy nodded, and Seth charged through the door, shouting at the top of his lungs, Tommy running alongside him. Tommy was ready to lash out, breathe out fear as he’d done in Charleston, but he held it in for now. It wouldn’t do much good against the two guards’ biohazard armor, he thought.

As Seth and Tommy approached, the guards shouted at them to freeze and raised their yellow stun guns. Seth pulled ahead, guarding Tommy, and he took an electrified barb in the chest. It trailed wire back to the guard’s stun gun, like a sharp little harpoon.

Seth crashed to his knees, his spine snapping back and forth like a whip, foam spilling from his mouth. He flopped over onto the tiled floor and lay there like a fish choking on the air.

Tommy zigged and zagged toward the guards, making it more difficult for the second guard to get a good shot at him. While he did, the first guard pulled a long, steel flashlight from his belt, ready to bash Tommy.

Neither guard expected Seth to leap up from the floor, ripping the stun gun from the first guard’s hands. Seth threw himself directly at the second guard, not bothering to weave and duck like Tommy, and he caught the second TASER barb in his stomach. He tumbled again to the floor.

Tommy dodged behind Seth and attacked the first guard, grabbing for the blunt flashlight in his hand. He held it up while the guard tried to force it down on Tommy’s head. With his other hand, Tommy grabbed for the straps of the guard’s masked helmet, but the guard’s other arm rose to block him.

While Seth writhed on the floor, the second guard came after Tommy, cracking his steel flashlight down on Tommy’s head and back. Tommy held onto the first guard with the fixation of a rabid dog.

The blows stopped coming, and he heard the sound of girls screaming. Through the blood leaking down into one eye, he saw that Mariella and Esmeralda had attacked the second guard, Esmeralda trying to wrestle the steel flashlight from his hand, Mariella ripping at his mask. When she pulled it off his head, Tommy grabbed the man’s face and filled him with fear.

The guard crawled away, sobbing and screaming about “Mr. O’Grady’s dog.” The girls turned their attention to the first guard, still wrestling with Tommy. Mariella stripped his helmet off, while Esmeralda pulled his steel flashlight free and cracked him across the head. The guard sank to the floor, unconscious.

The girls helped Seth to his feet. His blue eyes were dazed, and he smelled like burnt hair.

“We have to keep moving,” Mariella said. “The real guards are coming.”

Tommy swiped his stolen access card through the slot next to the steel door to Jenny’s lab, but the little indicator light stayed red.

“This card doesn’t access her lab,” he told the others.

“Tommy, look at you!” Esmeralda touched his face. “You’re bleeding.”

“Maybe this guy can open it.” Seth took the ID card from the unconscious guard and swiped it through the notch in the reader. The light flicked from red to green, and he hauled open the heavy door and ran inside.

Jenny was locked inside a clear-walled cell with its own ventilation system. The lights were dim for the night, and the only sound was Jenny’s heart monitor. Seth ran to the clear cube and saw her asleep on a hospital bed inside. He pounded on the wall beside her.

She awoke slowly, and Seth wondered whether she was heavily medicated. She blinked at him while he spoke.

“Jenny, we’re getting out of here,” Seth said. “But we have to hurry.”

“Why’s Tommy here?” Jenny asked.

“He’s helping me escape,” Esmeralda said. “All of us, together.”

“The guards are on the way,” Mariella added. “We don’t have much time.”

“We have to get the baby.” Jenny hurried to the airlock door of her cell, and Seth ran to meet her.

“You had the baby?” Seth asked. “The baby is...”

“Alive, Seth,” Jenny said. Her eyes glistened. “She made it. She’s alive.”

“A girl. And she’s alive.” Seth slowly smiled at Jenny.

“They’re keeping her at the clinic,” Mariella said, pointing northwest. “I’ve been listening.”

“There’s nowhere to swipe the access card,” Seth said, studying the door’s control panel, which had a small numbered keypad. “It’s a combination lock.”

“I’ve been watching them do it every day,” Jenny told him. “It changes every week, but right now I’m pretty sure it’s 335598.”

Seth keyed in the code and pulled open the outer door. He ran into the airlock and opened the inner door, and Jenny jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tight.

“Seth, it’s been so awful without you,” she whispered. “Horrible.”

“I missed you so much,” he said. “But the baby’s really okay?”

“A healthy little girl.” Jenny smiled through her tears and kissed him.

“We really have to get going now,” Mariella said, touching Seth’s arm.

“Stay where you are!” a voice commanded over the intercom. This time, it sounded like Ward. “Guards are on the way.”

The five of them hurried out the door. Mariella again watched the ever-shifting future and picked out the safest route through the base.

They made it to the short corridor in front of the clinic’s closed double doors.

“We’re done!” Mariella shook her head. “The clinic is full of staff, and the armed guards are almost here...” Everyone could hear the sound of boots echoing on tile. “I don’t see what we can do.”

“Tommy, can you panic the medical staff?” Seth asked. “Send them out here to block the guards?”

“Maybe.” Tommy cast a worried look behind them.

“Let’s go!” Jenny opened the door and led the way in, Seth at her side, followed by Tommy, Esmeralda, and Mariella.

The medical staff were already in a panic, the doctors and lab techs running out to the front desk area, where the nurses at the desk were on their feet and shouting. It looked like everyone had just been warned that the escaped prisoners were on the way.

Several of them screamed at the sight of the five paranormals charging into the clinic. All eyes went to Jenny, but it was Tommy who attacked, unleashing a plume of dark red droplets from his mouth, which settled over the medical staff like a mist of blood.

“Where is my baby?” Jenny screamed at the terrified nurses, letting the pox blister her face. “Where?”

“Down that hall...” A nurse pointed to a door, her finger shaking. “Last exam room, very last on your left.”

“There are bombs all over this base!” Mariella shouted. “You have five minutes to get outside the walls, or you’re all dead! Run that way!” She pointed to the open doors through which they’d entered, and the fear-infected medical staff ran out screaming, a dozen people or more. Esmeralda slammed the doors behind them.

“That won’t block them for long,” Jenny said, looking anxiously toward the door that led to her baby.

“Do you see all of them wearing gas masks?” Tommy asked Mariella.

“More than half of them, rows of them,” Mariella said. “There are some extra guards near the back who aren’t wearing any...maybe they didn’t have time to suit up or they joined at the last minute...but...”

“That’s good enough,” Tommy said, approaching the doors. “You’ll want to barricade these doors after I leave.”

“You’ll get killed.” Esmeralda touched his face. “You can’t do that.”

“I just want you to get out safe,” he told her. He pressed the gold Indian-head coin into her hand, the one they’d traded back and forth all their life. “I’ll see you again. You know this isn’t the end. Maybe I won’t be such an a*shole next time around.”

“I doubt that.” Esmeralda smiled, but her eyes gleamed with tears. She kissed him, then held the coin against her heart.

“I love you, Esmeralda,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, and he couldn’t help smiling. At least he would die with those words in his ears.

Tommy steeled himself, then hurried out through one of the doors, closing it again behind him. He hoped they would take his advice about blocking the clinic from the inside. If his attack worked, the entire base would soon become chaotic and dangerous.

The response team already filled the corridor, but they were a little disorganized as they parted for the crazed doctors and nurses to pass through them. Tommy wished he’d had the foresight to dress himself in medical scrubs, too, instead of a t-shirt and jeans. It would have helped him blend with the escaping mob.

Instead, the guards in their biohazard masks shouted and raised their machine guns at him.

Tommy breathed deep and exhaled, pushing out the fear from deep inside of him, giving them both barrels, everything he had. He poured all his energy into it. There was no point in holding anything back now—he doubted he had more than a few seconds to live.

The mist of fear flooded the corridor, so dense and dark that the light in the hallway turned deep red, painting everyone and everything the color of fresh blood.

“General Kilpatrick’s orders!” Tommy shouted. “Everyone in a biohazard mask is the enemy! Shoot on sight!”

His shouting brought the attention of all the masked guards, who turned their guns on him. The support guards at the back, armed but without biohazard masks, shouting in fear and opened fire on the rows of guards ahead of them. The body armor and helmets shielded their torsos and heads, but the bullets sliced through their arms and legs. The masked guards began to fall, taken from the rear by surprise, flurries of machine-gun rounds hammering their backs hard enough to crack their ribs through their armor.

Most of the remaining masked guards dropped and swiveled, returning fire and escalating the battle. A couple of them near the front remained focused on Tommy, raising their guns at him.

“Do your worst,” Tommy challenged. He exhaled a last thick mist of red, and then the bullets tore through his arms, stomach, chest, throat, and face, cutting him apart. They kept firing even as the fear-giver rose and looked down on his bullet-riddled body, just a useless slab of meat now.

His life as Thomas White was ended, and he felt satisfied that he’d done his best to pay his debt to the dead-speaker, atoning for his failure to protect her in their last life. He struggled to remain focused on the dimming world of the living, determined to see her get out alive, though he now watched from beyond the grave, unable to give her any more help.


“What are you doing here?” Alise demanded, slamming open the door. Niklaus sat on his bed, drinking cheap Polish vodka and smoking cigarettes. Though the alarm had been clanging for a few minutes now, he remained where he was, in his undershirt and black uniform trousers, boots propped up on the bed’s flimsy footboard. “Are you deaf?”

“No,” he replied. He swigged vodka and smiled, offering no other explanation for his inaction.

“The supernormals are escaping!” Alise shouted. “We’re finding guards dead of Juliana’s plague. I checked Mia’s room, and it looks like she went with them. They cannot be allowed to escape, Niklaus!”

“Maybe someone will stop them.” He shrugged.

“We need your help! Get up!” She smacked his leg.

“I’m going, I’m going...” Niklaus reluctantly stood and took his time pulling on his belt, his jacket, checking that his pistol was fully loaded. He smirked at himself in the mirror as he put on his cap. It struck him as absurd, the black uniform, the silver skulls and lightning bolts, the twisted red cross on his arm. He thumped the swastika. “What is this thing, anyway? Does anyone know? Besides a big target that says, ‘Shoot me in the arm, snipers!’”

“We don’t have time for your drunken babbling.” Alise took his arm and steered him out into the hallway. “Take care of this, and I’ll give you a nice reward. Don’t you miss me in your bed?”

Niklaus pulled his arm free of her grasp. “We should hurry.”

“You’re right.” Alise began to run, and Niklaus watched her from behind, long golden hair sweeping her slender back in her black S.S. jacket. He thought of how callously she’d killed Evelina, and he forced himself to do the thing he’d been wanting to do for weeks.

Niklaus drew the Luger and aimed it at her back. If she looked him in the eyes, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. It had to be from behind.

He fired a shot into the center of her spine, and she fell and screamed, her legs twisting limply beneath her. He trudged toward her, in no hurry at all. Everyone else would be distracted by the alarms and the escaped prisoners. There was nobody else here on their dormitory level.

She turned her head to look up at him, and her gray eyes, the ones that matched his, were full of pain.

“Why?” she whispered. She lay on her stomach on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down, a pool of blood growing around her.

“You killed her.” Niklaus sat on the floor beside Alise and leaned against the wall. He kept the pistol pointed at his cousin.

“Who? Who did you love more than me?”

“I loved Evelina.”

“A Slav? You shot me over a...” She coughed, drooling foamy pink saliva. “...over a dirty goddamned Bosniak?”

“I told you I didn’t want to shoot her.”

“You could have...” Alise coughed up thicker blood. “You could have told me. I would have let you keep her. Because I love you, Niklaus. Remember I loved you, and you killed me. Remember it...my only love...” She coughed again, and her cheek rested flat on the floor, her eyes staring into nothingness.

Niklaus stared at her body. Maybe he’d been wrong to do it. With her dying words, she had given him only love, despite his betrayal. He wished she’d been hateful and angry, as he would have expected. He wished he felt triumphant, at least, for finally working up the courage to avenge Evelina. Instead, Alise’s death now struck him like a knife to the heart. Her final outpouring of affection was the worst thing she could have done to him. He knew it would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He looked at her dead body and wept. Her death had not brought Evelina back, nor did it bring him any peace. His cousin had been his guide through life, his trusted friend, his lover. He was alone now, forever.

Niklaus put the pistol into his own mouth. He couldn’t face his family again, after having a sinful relationship with his cousin and then murdering her. He wished with all of his being that he could bring her back to life and be with her again. Life without her would only be agony and guilt.

He pulled the trigger.