“Jesus Christ, it feels like there are bugs under my skin.” He started scratching again, and this time, he tore into his skin, beneath it.
Elizabeth didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see. But she couldn’t turn away, she had to help him. He’d saved her.
And if she didn’t do something, he might be the one to end her. The whites of his eyes were tinged with red. It wouldn’t be long now.
“I’m changing, aren’t I?” He shook his head. “Goddamn it.” Barton couldn’t stop scratching and tearing at himself. “Take my sidearm.”
“I can’t.”
“Take the goddamn sidearm.”
She pulled the gun from the holster. It was heavy in her hands, foreign. She’d never shot a gun before, and she didn’t want to have to start, but unless she was hatcheting her way out of this place, she was going to have to.
“The safety mechanism, push it to the right. Right is right and left is dead. Go on, now.” He said this as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant child.
But they both knew how this was going to end. She wasn’t a little girl who wanted to stay up past her bedtime. She was a grown woman, a doctor and scientist who had given an oath to help people, not… Though she supposed that she would be helping him now.
A bullet to the head was the only thing that could.
Chapter Four
When the Bureau 7 installation came into view, urgency surged and with it, adrenaline. Adam could feel the chemical changes in his flesh as the body prepared for war.
A visible change came over him. The network of veins under his skin expanded, giving the appearance of some vine-like infection spreading across his body. This allowed for increased blood flow to all of his muscles that in turn increased in size. He could feel his bones expanding, hardening.
It was sheer agony.
But it was pleasure, too. It had been so long since he’d felt this primal strength, a sense of purpose. He hated that part of it, that he didn’t feel whole, or real, without it. He was a shadow, a spirit, drifting in the ether until the Bloodline called him. Then he became corporeal, the only real thing in a pit of shadows.
Electricity crackled around his fingertips, which only happened in cases of immediate threat to life.
Adam docked quickly and, as soon as the boat was secure, he ran for fence. He didn’t hesitate to grab hold of it, the electric charge in his hands stronger than the voltage of the fence. The gate slid open for him, but if it had slid open for him, it was open for anything that wanted in.
Or out.
Fuck it. Containing the infection was not his circus or his monkey. He was there for Elizabeth, and he was pretty sure even if humanity wiped themselves out, he could keep her safe.
Images of a man—a genetically modified man—burned in his brain. He was with Elizabeth now. He’d tried to help her, but he’d been infected. He’d demanded she take his gun.
The woman who’d once been that sweet child raised the weapon with shaking hands.
He could feel her fear, her sorrow, and her guilt.
Adam was torn between wanting to change that for her, to take that weight from her, and wanting her to feel every second of it. What had she been thinking agreeing to come to work for Bureau 7?
It kept coming back to that, and he supposed, if he was able to get her out alive, he could ask her.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t be too stubborn. The Wollstonecraft women were a breed apart, and getting any of them to do anything he wanted took more effort than he had the time or inclination to expend.
Surrendering to the instinct he knew would guide him to her, he ran. He ran hard and fast through the once sterile intuitional halls that had once been pristine, but were now covered in the gore of what used to be men.
Decidedly unsanitary.
When he finally saw the architects of the carnage, they were like one snarling mass of teeth. Some wore lab coats, security uniforms, others wore jumpsuits. But there was nothing left of what had once made them human.
The current flowing through his hands seemed to have little effect on them. It would move them, but only enough to draw their attention. He had to pop their heads off like so many undead dandelions to get any real results.
Several sets of those stiletto-like teeth tore into his arms, but they barely broke the skin. Adam wasn’t worried about infection. Only the living had that concern, he was sure. Of course if he was wrong—well, if he was wrong, he’d be past caring.
And those who meddled where only gods should trespass would get their just desserts.
He fought his way into the lab, eliminating the revenants that stood between him and Elizabeth just in time to see the genetically modified unit turn.
And the bullet that exploded out of the weapon in Elizabeth’s hand.
Her aim was true and the force of the specially modified ammo knocked the newly turned revenant back ten feet. What was left of his brain exploded against the wall in an artistic spray that reminded Adam very much of a flower.
She focused all of her attention on him, determination in her eyes.