Eighteen twenty-eight and fifty-five seconds, Sheila says in my head. Blue Corp inner security has been breached.
“Molly,” I say again. But she never slows. She never falters. She sees right through me like I am nothing to her. A fist comes crashing down on my jaw and Case sends a few more rounds off. One skims her arm. She stops for a moment, giving me a fraction to look at Case.
He’s doubled over, clutching his stomach as Molly sends that gold rope hurtling towards me. It wraps around my forearm, and she pulls.
Razor-sharp barbs penetrate the leather of my jacket, right through to my skin, scraping along the steel plate where my poison grenades are mounted. A barb digs into a canister and gas starts spewing out in an ugly red cloud.
A smoke screen, Lincoln, Sheila says in my head. Use it!
But I can’t use it. Pain floods my body. Pain like I have never felt before. The little barbs on Molly’s lariat are tipped with something. My vision goes blurry and I begin to lose consciousness.
“Take him alive, Omega!” Boar yells as he jumps down into the cloud of red smoke. “Take him alive and I will make him my slave!”
Case is shooting again, but his bullets are wild. Window glass shatters and the rotors of the helicopter become louder.
I reach for the gun from the port on my thigh, but Molly is there, kicking it from my grip. It goes sliding across the black tile floor and comes to rest a few feet away.
I push the pain down. Tuck it away. My whole arm is burning, but I’m used to the burning. The energy inside me builds and builds until I’m nothing but a living crescendo that ends in a climactic explosion of red heat from my palms. The light escapes in waves, split by the mesh cover, and blasts past Molly’s face. She squeezes her eyes shut and screams as she drops to her knees.
I roll over, instantaneously sick. So fucking sick. Bile churns in my stomach and I don’t know what is worse—the fact that I hurt Molly so badly or the inhibition consequences. “I’m sorry,” I whisper through the pain. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, Molly. I swear.”
Eighteen thirty and three seconds, Sheila says in my head. Disable her, Lincoln! Or you will lose everything in three minutes!
Molly is still on the floor, her face a bright pink from the burn I caused. Her eyes are flashing, angry, and filled with hate. She holds her fists together and slams them down onto my chest, knocking the breath right out of me. But that pain is nothing compared to the writhing pain in my gut. I try to roll over to see her face, but she pounds me with her fists again.
“Get up, Lincoln!” Case yells from across the office. Bullets spray on either side of Molly’s body and she turns to him, the rage still there.
Cackling from the Blue Boar fills the room, even as he dances to the tune of the helicopter rotors through the cloud of red smoke.
Molly’s lithe body parts the mist of scarlet vapor, and I have just enough resolve to send a small arm-mounted rocket off in that general direction. Case is the one who goes flying and the inhibition sickness hits me again, reminding me that no one in this room is susceptible to my new powers.
Molly stops, and then the Blue Boar is dancing on a table. He’s got a swine mask on now, playing his part perfectly. “Collar him, Omega! Collar him now!”
The barbs from the lariat are still embedded into my skin when she pulls it. My flesh tears and more pain sends me right back to the place I was just climbing out of. Once the length is free, Molly snaps the rope, and it slaps against Case’s neck and—
Gunfire erupts. I force myself up onto my knees and see Thomas in the open office door. He shoots the lariat and snaps the tension before Molly can behead Case.
The Blue Boar is screaming. Case is screaming. Thomas is roaring insults and bullets. Glass is shattering everywhere I look. Falling down on me. Shards inches long embed into my legs, my chest, my arms—forcing me back down to the floor.
Eighteen thirty-two and ten seconds, Sheila says in my head. Get out of there, you’re out of time.
Three grappling hooks shoot into the office from the ’copter hovering above and land on the floor in the middle of the room.
I spy my gun a few feet away from my outstretched right hand, just waiting for me to pick it up. And then Case takes a bullet to his shoulder and goes down. It came from Molly’s gun and she moves on to Thomas. She shoots him too, his body spinning as his chest takes the brunt of the force.
Eighteen thirty-two and forty-five seconds.
Molly comes after me next but I’m still recovering from the burns I inflicted on her. The Blue Boar jumps down from the table and walks over towards me for the final show.
Molly hovers over my prone body, each of her legs on either side of my hips. She points her weapon at me and then sits down, her ass on my thighs. The barrel of her gun moves closer and closer to the center of my forehead and then stops, pressing against my skin so hard it cuts.