I pull the trigger. The bullet flies through the crack and catches the Lurker square in the chest.
In the space of a breath, my world splits into choppy, broken frames. The Lurker howls, his bloodshot gaze snapping to me. He swings the rifle up, and Cole’s head snaps round, shouting for me to hide. But his voice is lost in a roar of static. There is only me and my target. I exhale and fire my final bullet.
The Lurker’s skull explodes. Blood splatters the walls. His body slumps into a crumpled heap on the floor.
I drop the gun, swaying on my feet.
‘Catarina!’ Cole roars.
‘I’m coming!’ I shout, scrambling through the gap in the rock. I fall to my knees beside him and grab the medkit from my backpack. I tear open a packet of gauze with my teeth and press it to the gaping wound in his stomach.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I whisper as his blood bubbles up between my fingers.
‘Th-the bullet,’ he gasps. ‘It’s nanite rigged. You need to get it out and cauterize the wound to stop the spread. It’s interfering with my healing tech.’
I lift the gauze. There’s nothing but torn flesh and oozing, pulsing blood. I don’t know how to get the bullet out or cauterize this without killing him. Nanite-rigged bullets are lethal if they’re not removed. Cole needs a surgeon, or he’ll die.
‘I can do better,’ I breathe. ‘You just need to hang on for a few minutes. There’s a doctor in town, a friend of Agnes’s – he can help you. Do you think you can get to the jeep?’
Cole nods stiffly, his eyes still black, then moans as he staggers to his feet. I throw the backpack on and duck under his arm to help him down the shaft. He drags his rifle through the sawdust with one shaking hand.
‘OK, you’re doing great,’ I whisper. We burst into the sunlight, stumbling down the trail and back to the jeep.
Cole falls into the passenger seat and tosses his gun into the back. ‘You’re going to have to drive. My tech is glitching out.’
I scramble in and grab the steering wheel. The seat is made for a body bigger than mine, and the dashboard is a smooth, curved LED screen. There are a thousand icons about weather and perimeter scans, but nothing to start the engine. Nothing to tell me how to drive.
Cole grunts, leaning forward to press his forearm to the dash. The display changes to a map of our surroundings, and the engine growls to life.
‘Thanks,’ I say, pulling the seat belt around me. If I had a better panel, I could just mentally picture where to go, and the autodriver would take us there. But I can’t even see an icon to load the GPS or enter a destination. I’m going to have to get us to the doctor’s on my own.
‘I haven’t really done this before.’ I shoot a nervous glance at Cole. ‘We’re going to make it, I promise, but you should probably still hang on.’
A hint of pressure on the accelerator is all I need to send the jeep surging forward, snapping a sapling in half as we plough into a copse of trees. The brakes kick in automatically, and I twist in the seat to reverse, then send us speeding back down the fire trail, racing towards the cabin.
An alert on the dash picks me up as an untrained driver, and the autodriver kicks in, following the curves of the fire trail for me. It seems to sense my urgency, and maybe it even knows Cole is hurt, because we take the turns at a terrifying speed. I keep turning the wheel and using the pedals, but the jeep is an alien beast, hauling itself round the bends as it attunes itself to my driving. Valves hiss on the floor and the seat shudders as it folds and shrinks, rising slowly until it hugs my body perfectly.
‘Where did you get that gun?’ Cole asks. His face is ashen and streaked with sweat. The pad of gauze on his stomach is already soaked with blood.
‘In the alcove, I’d forgotten about it.’
He grits his teeth. ‘I told you to let me handle the security.’
‘Seriously?’ I swing the jeep across a hill, cutting cross-country to the road at the edge of the property. ‘I just saved your life, as I recall.’
‘I had it under control.’
‘Didn’t look like it from where I was standing. That bastard was getting ready to shoot you with your own gun.’
‘That was the plan.’
I let out a choked laugh. ‘Getting shot? I think you’re losing too much blood.’
He lets out a grunt of pain. ‘The gun wouldn’t work for him. It’s coded to my panel.’
‘What do you mean, coded?’
Cole winces as we swerve round a boulder, flying at full speed towards the fence at the edge of the property. ‘It’s locked to my panel. I set it to defensive mode, which means if he tried to shoot me with it, it would have backfired and killed him instead.’
The jeep crashes through the fence and hurtles on to the road, its tyres screeching as we spin round to head south.
‘Oh,’ I murmur. ‘I didn’t realize.’
Cole lifts the gauze to peek at his wound and presses it back, closing his eyes. ‘I need you to stay in cover when I tell you to.’
‘I don’t take orders from you,’ I say, flooring the accelerator. ‘We’re in this together. That’s the only way this works.’
‘You staying alive is how this works, Catarina. I’m not giving you orders. I’m trying to protect you, like I’ve been trained to. You’re my responsibility.’
My responsibility. Who the hell does he think he is? I spin the jeep round a bend, rocks and dust flying into the trees. ‘You know, a simple thank-you would suffice.’
‘If you had stayed behind cover like I told you, then none of this would have happened.’
‘What do you mean? The only time I came out of cover was to shoot the Lurker, and you were already shot …’
My voice falls away as I realize that’s not true. I replay the scene in my mind. I was pressed against the wall when Cole killed the first three Lurkers, and then …
Then I crawled out of cover to grab the gun right as the Lurker started firing.
‘You took that bullet because it was going to hit me.’
Cole doesn’t reply. His face is white, his fingers tight on the gauze.
‘Cole, was that bullet going to hit me?’
He rolls his head away from me, his eyelashes beaded with sweat. ‘There was a forty-per-cent chance of it hitting you, according to my equipment.’
I choke, flooring the accelerator, my hands shaking on the wheel. ‘Forty per cent? Jesus, Cole. Why did you trade that for a hundred-per-cent chance of being shot?’
He swallows. ‘I didn’t. Black-out agent, remember? I’m not always in control.’
I glance over at his stomach, at the wash of blood across his shirt. He took a bullet for me. He saved my life, and here I was thinking I’d saved him.
‘This is my job, Catarina. This is what I’m trained to do.’
‘I know,’ I say, my eyes fixed on the road. I have no doubt of Cole’s need to protect me, not any more. I just don’t want to be the cause of his death.