He moved nearest the thickest piece of furniture he could find away from the bodies, reached with both hands into his belt and with the speed of his enhanced meta skills, instinctively fired at the metahumans. He had no time to think about the moral lines he was crossing during his flight to Texas. All he knew was he needed to protect Meg.
This is the only way, he thought as he squeezed the triggers in both hands in opposite directions. With each body that hit the ground, he watched the remaining soldiers scramble to arm themselves, uselessly. The semiautomatic Para 9 spewed bullets with deadly accuracy in Creed’s hands. Not one of the soldiers returned fire during the twenty seconds it took Creed to end their nine lives.
As was the plan, Creed marched directly out the door Gavil had just exited to be sure he accomplished his task as smoothly.
Looking around in the midmorning sunlight, Creed sensed something was wrong. It was too quiet.
Fighting his instinct to yell for his brother, he crouched low and tried to assess the situation. Five bodies were on the ground, none of them Gavil. One soldier was unaccounted for. Creed crept around the side of the house and scanned the area. Just then he heard gunfire and ducked behind the wall in time to see mortar fly in front of him.
“Gavil!” Creed yelled.
“What the hell? Whose side are you on?” The voice yelled back.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Here,” Creed heard Gavil’s voice choke
“Drop your weapon, asshole or I’ll finish Gavil,” the voice barked.
“What’s your name?” Creed called back.
“Are you out of your damn mind?” The voice screamed back.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Just tell me your name.”
“Slider Reznikov”
“Slider, how long have you been at the Facility?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Gavil and I have been there our whole lives. I don’t remember life before it. Williams has controlled us our whole lives. We want out. That’s what we’re doing. Are you with us or against us?”
“Why the hell are you giving me a choice? You didn’t give the others a choice.”
“The others didn’t have a gun to my brother’s head,” Creed growled.
Slider was silent as he contemplated what was happening.
“How do I know you’re not going to just off me the second I drop my weapon?”
“You have my word.”
“Your word is shit.”
“My word is all I have left to give.” Creed had been slowly walking around the wall he’d ducked behind moments before, empty hands held out in the universal sign of peace. He locked eyes with the metasoldier called Slider and stood still giving him time to think. Gavil was thrown to the ground, face down. Slider’s knee was in his back, gun held to the back of his head.
Slider seemed to be weighing his options. Creed could read the intelligence behind his light-brown eyes and respected it. He just hoped he could turn this worthy adversary into an ally.
“Don’t mind me,” Gavil glared from his face-plant position at his brother. “I enjoy having a gun pinned to my head.”
Ignoring is former leader, Slider’s eyes never left Creed. “What’s your plan?”
“The people in there,” Creed jerked his head back toward the room in which the Winter family lay incapacitated. “They are good people. They only wanted to be left alone, but Williams had a personal score he wanted to settle with the female scientist. How much of the story do you already know?”
“Just what I read in the dossier.”
“Yeah, I read that too, and I can tell you it’s shit. What it didn’t tell you is the most important part. Yes, Margo took the units from the Institute in California all those years ago. But what it didn’t tell you is why. She saved them, Slider. The metas in that room were the first to survive the testing. Don’t you get it? Williams killed dozens of babies—using them as human guinea pigs before perfecting his Infinite serum. He performed experiments on these helpless kids, toyed with their lives and when their frail bodies gave up and he broke them to the point of death, he just threw them away like garbage only to start his fun on a fresh human child.
“Dr. Winter in there saw what he was doing to those children and risked everything to save them. It was shitty growing up at the Facility. We’ve always been treated like expendables. We’re given orders and beaten into submission. We’re pitted against one another to keep from forming attachments. We’re brain-washed into thinking there is no other way to live, that no one in the real world gives a shit about us or worse, Williams tells us the humans want to destroy us because we’re different—advanced. Slider, dude, none of that shit is true.
“I lived with the people in that room over there and even after they knew who I was—a meta assassin sent by Williams—they gave me the chance for a new life. They’re good people, Slider. They are my family, and I will not hand them over to that sick son-of-a-bitch back in Germany so he can torture and kill them. I’d rather die.