Harding wasn’t there, but Julian Class was, at 8-1841. That looked like a phone number, rather than a room number.
Guessing, she rolled a pointer over to his name and clicked on it. That gave her 241, more useful. It was a two-story building.
A sudden loud rattling startled her. She spun around, pointing both weapons, but it was just an unattended washing machine that had been dormant while she was hidden.
She ignored the freight elevator and shouldered though a heavy FIRE EXIT door that opened on a dusty staircase. There didn’t seem to be any security cameras. She climbed quickly and quietly up to the second floor.
She thought for a moment and left one of the weapons by the door on the landing. She only needed one for the kill. Besides, she’d be retreating fast, and might want an element of surprise. They would know she had the guard’s assault rifle, but probably didn’t know about the M-31 yet.
Opening the door a crack, she could see that the odd-numbered rooms were across from her, numbers increasing to the right. She closed her eyes for a deep breath and a silent prayer, and then burst through the door in a dead run, assuming there were cameras and soldierboys in her near future.
There were neither. She stopped at 241, took a fraction of a second to note the CLASS nameplate, leveled the assault rifle, and fired a silenced burst at the lock.
The door didn’t open. She aimed six inches higher and this time blew out the dead bolt. The door opened a couple of inches and she kicked it the rest of the way.
Julian was standing there, in the shadow, holding the pistol straight out with both hands. She spun away instinctively as he fired, and the burst of razors that would have beheaded her instead just tore out a piece of her left shoulder. She fired two random blasts into the darkness—trusting God to guide them not to him, but to the white scientist she was there to punish—and leaped back out of the way of his second shot. Then she sprinted back to the stairwell and just got through the door as his third shot redecorated the hall.
There was a soldierboy waiting there, hulking huge at the top of the stairs. She knew from picking Jefferson’s mind that the mechanic controlling it probably had been brainwashed so it couldn’t kill her. She emptied the rest of the magazine into the thing’s eyes.
The black man was shouting for her to throw out her weapon and come out with her hands up. All right. He was probably the only thing between her and the scientist.
She toed the door open, ignoring the soldierboy groping blindly behind her, and threw out the useless assault rifle. “Now come out slowly,” the man said.
She took one moment to visualize her move while she eased back the arming lever of the M-31. Shoulder-roll across the corridor and then a continuous sweeping burst in his direction. She leaped.
It was all wrong. He got her before she hit the ground, an ungodly pain in her belly. She saw her own death happening, a thick spray of blood and entrails as her shoulder hit the floor and she tried to complete the roll but just slid. She managed to get up on her knees and elbows, and something slimy fell out of her body. She fell over facing him, and through a darkening haze raised the weapon toward him. He said something and the world ended.
* * *
i shouted “drop it!” but she ignored me, and the second shot disintegrated her head and shoulders. I fired again, reflexively, blowing apart the M-31 and the hand that was aiming it, and turning her chest into a bright red cavity. Behind me, Amelia made a choking sound and ran to the bathroom to vomit.
I had to stare. She didn’t even look human, from the waist up; just a messy montage of butchered meat and rags. The rest of her was unaffected. For some reason I held up my hand to block out the gore and was a little horrified to see that her lower body was in a relaxed, casually seductive pose.
A soldierboy slowly pushed the door open. The sensory apparatuses were a chewed-up mess. “Julian?” it said in Candi’s voice. “I can’t see. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Candi. I think it’s over. Backup coming?”
“Claude. He’s downstairs.”
“I’ll be in the room.” I walked back through the door on automatic pilot. I’d almost