TWENTY-SIX
David Anderson’s return to consciousness was not pleasant.
It began with a sharp, stabbing pain in his left side that flared up intensely with every breath. His mind wasn’t thinking clearly yet; it couldn’t quite remember where he was or how he’d got here. But his soldier’s training allowed him to focus on the pain and try to make a self-diagnosis.
Broken ribs. Collapsed lung.
Neither condition was fatal, but either would definitely slow him down. He rolled gingerly onto his back and tried to assess the extent of the damage by reaching up to feel around with his right hand. The simple motion nearly caused him to black out.
Fractured collarbone. Possible dislocated shoulder.
He felt like he’d been hit by a high-speed monorail.
Or one hell of a biotic push.
Everything came back to him in a flash. He didn’t know how long he’d been out or why Grayson hadn’t finished him off, but he was still alive. And that counted for something.
Come on, soldier. On your feet.
Trying not to twist, which would aggravate his ribs, and careful not to jar his arm, which would set off his collarbone, he tried to get to his feet … only to fall back hard to the floor as the torn ligaments in his left ankle collapsed under his weight.
As he hit the ground, he was swallowed up in waves of pain so intense they made him vomit inside his helmet. The reflexive spasm of his stomach caused his broken ribs to scream out, which started a coughing fit that squeezed his collapsed lung even tighter, making it feel like he was being strangled by someone inside his chest.
Knowing that the only way to stop the chain of injuries from setting each other off like toppling dominoes was to lie still, Anderson somehow forced his body to quit writhing despite the throbbing pain in his ankle, chest, and shoulder.
He opened his lips and took several slow, shallow breaths, ignoring the foul taste of his last meal that coated his mouth. As bad as the taste was, however, the stench inside his helmet was worse.
When the excruciating pain finally subsided to a dull agony, he very slowly took his one good arm and unbuckled his helmet, letting it fall to the floor beside him. Fighting the urge to take deep, greedy gasps of the clean air, he very carefully maneuvered himself up into a sitting position.
Using the nearby wall for support, he managed to stand up, keeping all his weight on his right leg. He spotted his shotgun on the floor a few meters away.
The enviro-suit was releasing a steady trickle of medi-gel into his system. It was regulated to keep the doses small; too much of the wonder drug and he’d slip into unconsciousness. The limited doses weren’t enough to heal his injuries, but did make it easier for him to cope with the pain.
With slow, careful steps, he made his way over to pick up the shotgun, wincing each time he put weight on his injured foot. He was able to hold it with his injured arm. The weight of the weapon pulling down in his grasp caused jolts of pain to shoot through his broken collarbone, but he had no other way to carry it. Not when he needed his good hand to help support his weight against the wall.
Gritting his teeth, he hobbled down the hall in the direction of the landing port, hoping to catch up to Grayson before he escaped. The collapsed lung limited him to short, shallow breaths, making his creeping pace as exhausting as an all-out sprint.
It wasn’t long before the painkillers coursing through his body were going into overdrive, staving off shock and giving him a nice little buzz as well.
Stay focused, soldier. No R and R until the mission is done.
Kahlee was trying to think of a way to reach Grayson. When she’d tried to appeal to him directly, the Reapers had shut him down. But when she’d asked the Reapers to go slower, Grayson had been able to exert some kind of subtle influence over them. It almost seemed as if making the Reapers focus on something external loosened their hold on Grayson, allowing him some limited type of freedom.
“Why are you here?” Kahlee asked. “What do you want from us?”
She wasn’t sure if the Reapers would even reply. All she was hoping for was that she might be able to engage the Reapers enough to give Grayson a fighting chance. A fighting chance to do what, however, she couldn’t say.
“We seek salvation,” Grayson said, much to her surprise. “Ours and yours.”
“Salvation? Is that what the Collectors were doing? Saving those human colonists? Is that what you did to Grayson?”
“He has been repurposed. He has evolved into something greater than a random assortment of cells and organic refuse.”
“That randomness is what made him unique,” Kahlee countered. “It made him special.”
She noticed that their pace had become more measured and deliberate. If Grayson was still inside there, if he had any influence at all, he was using it to slow the Reapers down. He was trying to buy her time to escape. The best thing she could do was try to keep them talking.
“Why can’t you just leave us alone? Why can’t you just let us live our lives in peace?”
“We are the keepers of the cycle. The creators and the destroyers. Your existence is a flicker, a spark. We can extinguish it—or we can preserve it. Submit to us and we can make you immortal.”
“I don’t want to be immortal,” she said. “I just want to be me.”
They were barely moving at all now. Grayson had managed to bring their hurried escape from the Academy down to a crawl.
“Organic life lives, dies, and is forgotten. You cannot fully comprehend anything beyond this. Yet there is a realm of existence beyond your understanding.”
There was something odd about the things Grayson was saying. She knew he was speaking on behalf of the Reapers, but it seemed like he—or they—actually wanted her to understand their position. It was like they were trying to persuade her to agree with them, but they didn’t know how to frame their arguments in a way she could relate to. Or maybe there simply was no way for organic beings to relate to hyperintelligent machines.
“We are the pinnacle of evolution,” they continued. “Yet we see potential in your species. You can be elevated. The weakness of organic flesh can be cast aside. You can transcend yourselves.”
The words didn’t really make any kind of compelling argument, but she felt as if there was some deeper meaning to them.
“Your understanding is limited by genetics. You cannot see beyond the brief instant of your own existence. Yet our knowledge is infinite, as are we.”
The more Grayson spoke, the more his words seemed to make sense on a deep, almost subconscious level.
“The laws of this universe are inviolate. Immutable. Your resistance will only lead to your extinction. What are—what we do—is inevitable.”
Kahlee was so far under the Reapers’s spell, she wasn’t even aware she was nodding along in agreement.
Kai Leng heard the voices coming from down the hall. They were faint, still too distant to decipher what was being said, but he recognized the tone of Grayson’s voice.
He reached out and put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, signaling him to stop. The boy hadn’t noticed the voices, and he turned and looked back up at Kai Leng with an inquiring stare. To his credit, he knew enough to keep quiet.
The assassin continued to listen, focusing on the distant voices until he was certain they were drawing closer. Then he pointed in the direction of a nearby dark office with an open door. The two went inside, and Kai Leng promptly closed the door and flicked on the light.
In a careful whisper he said, “I heard something down the hall. The kidnappers are coming this way.”
“What are we going to do?” Nick asked, his adolescent voice cracking with a mixture of fear and excitement.
“I think they’re heading back to the docking bays. They’re going to go right past us.”
Nick nodded to show he was following along so far.
“I don’t have a weapon, but you do,” Kai Leng continued. “If we wait here for them to pass by, will that let you build up enough energy to hit them with a blast powerful enough to take them out?”
“You mean kill them?” Nick asked in wonder.
“These are dangerous men,” Kai Leng warned him. “If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.”
“I’ve … I’ve never killed anybody before.”
Kai Leng nodded sympathetically. “That’s okay. I understand. It’s a lot to ask from someone your age. Maybe we should just hide and let them go by.”
“No,” Nick answered hastily. “I don’t want to hide. I can do this.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it? It’s not going to be easy.”
“I can do it,” Nick swore.
“Good. Here’s the plan. We wait in here with the door closed and the lights off until they pass by. Then I hit the panel and you jump out into the hall and hit them with everything you’ve got before they can turn around.”
“Isn’t that like stabbing them in the back or something?”
“This isn’t a game, Nick. There’s no such thing as playing fair.”
“Yeah. Okay. Right.”
“I’m going to turn out the light now. You ready for this?”
Nick nodded, and Kai Leng cast the room into darkness. At first it seemed there was no light at all, but after a few seconds their eyes began to pick up on the subtle illuminations from various sources around the room: the blinking message light on the office’s extranet terminal; illuminated power buttons on the computer console and video display screen; the ghostly green glow of the wall panel that indicated the door was unlocked. It wasn’t much, but it gave them just enough light to make out their own silhouettes in the gloom.
Kai Leng pressed his ear to the door and listened carefully. He could hear Grayson speaking; occasionally Kahlee’s voice would interject. He wouldn’t tell Nick about Kahlee—it might make him reluctant to launch his attack, and Kai Leng was more than willing to sacrifice her if it meant they had a chance to eliminate Grayson.
He looked over at Nick, and was surprised to see a tiny spark run the length of the young man’s neck. As he watched the teenager gather his power, the sparks became more plentiful as his body began to discharge the dark energy in tiny bursts.
It took them a long time to finally reach the door; they were moving far slower than Kai Leng would have imagined. Once they were past, he waited a few more seconds to let them get a few meters down the hall, then he hit the panel and jumped back out of the way.
Nick sprang into action, rushing out into the hall with a shrill scream of youthful rage.
The buildup of stored biotic charge was causing Nick actual physical discomfort. His teeth felt like they were chewing on tinfoil, his eyes itched, and he could hear a high-pitched hum in his ears. But it was worth it if it meant he had a chance to help stop the kidnappers and impress Miss Sanders.
When the door to the office opened, he charged through, unleashing all his pent-up energy against his enemies. Too late he realized that Kahlee was one of the two people he was about to crush with the most powerful biotic display of his young life.
The barely contained power was already pouring out of him in an uncontrollable flood, and he didn’t have the mental discipline or control to simply shut it off. The best he could manage was to try to refocus it. Instead of a concentrated beam of deadly force, he pushed out with his mind, distorting it into a swooping wave so the impact would be dispersed across a much wider area.
His yell had caused both Kahlee and the man beside her to turn in his direction. He saw their faces clearly, their eyes going wide in surprise as they were lifted from their feet and thrown sideways against opposite walls before falling hard to the floor.
“Hit them again!” the tattooed man who called himself Steve shouted from inside the office door. “Finish them!”
Confused and overwhelmed, Nick could only stand there, staring in horror at the bizarre-looking half-man/half-machine rising to its feet and turning toward him.
Nick’s scream had given Kahlee just enough time to realize what was happening and brace herself for the impact. Nevertheless, the biotic wave hit her so hard, the pistol in her belt was jarred loose and sent skittering across the floor.
Fortunately, she hit the wall with her shoulder rather than her head, and she managed to keep her senses about her. She didn’t know how Nick had found them; she knew only that by attacking Grayson he had marked himself as a threat in the Reapers’s eyes.
Reacting rather than thinking, she got off the floor and threw herself across the hall toward Grayson, slamming into him as he raised his pistol and fired at his young assailant. She was able to knock him off balance, but as the pair tumbled to the ground, she heard the explosion of the gun and the sharp grunt of surprise from Nick.
Grayson sprang to his feet and grasped the back of her belt with his free hand. He hauled her up by the belt, holding her suspended horizontally like a sack of flour before heaving her aside.
The throw sent her helicoptering through the air, her arms and legs flailing wildly. Caught off guard by the sudden move, she didn’t have time to brace herself for impact this time, and slammed face-first into the floor.
The blow left her seeing stars. Dazed and stunned, she couldn’t even roll over to see what was happening behind her.
From inside the office Kai Leng saw Nick get shot, the bullet catching him in the stomach. As the young man gasped in pain and fell to his knees, Kai Leng was already in motion.
He’d seen the pistol fall from Kahlee’s belt; he knew he had to get to it if he had any hope of surviving the confrontation. Grayson tossed Sanders aside, his distraction buying Kai Leng a few precious fractions of a second. He slid across the floor and wrapped his hand around the pistol, rolling over onto his back so he could fire at Grayson.
But the Reapers were too quick. In the time it had taken him to secure the weapon, they’d crossed the hall to where he was lying on the floor. Grayson’s foot kicked the gun from his hand, striking with such force it shattered Kai Leng’s wrist.
The assassin knew it was over. He stared up at the monster looming over him, prepared to meet his end. He flinched at the thunderous echo of a shotgun, his mind taking a second to realize he had not been shot.
Grayson staggered away from him, revealing the source of the blast. Anderson stood halfway down the hall, the stock of his weapon wedged firmly into his stomach as he held it with one hand. His right arm hung limp and useless at his side.
He fired a second time, and Grayson’s body shuddered and collapsed to the floor.
As Grayson lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and gasping for air, he felt the Reapers abandoning his body. Their vessel broken, they directed their consciousness back into the void of dark space, leaving Grayson alone as the last sparks of life flickered away.
Finally free of their control, he turned his head as the world began to grow dim. He saw Kahlee gamely hauling herself back to her feet, and he smiled.
His head lolled back to its original position, leaving him staring up at the ceiling once again. The head and shoulders of a dark-haired man of Asian descent appeared in his field of view; it took Grayson a moment to recognize him as the one who had attacked him in the Cerberus holding cell.
Life seemed to slow down, and he heard the familiar pop-pop of a pistol, the standard double-tap taught to all Cerberus assassins. As the pair of bullets entered his skull, everything went dark for the last time.