Harte had invoked protocols, but she’d specified only that they were supposed to protect her. With Harte dead, they had no real direction to follow. Nothing to work for. Nothing to achieve.
Nobody paid attention to Bryn until she gasped out, “Evacuate the building. Get everybody outside. If they resist, knock them out. No killing. Go.”
Five security personnel dashed out to do her bidding, and she hadn’t even tried to invoke protocols. Her ability to get up wavered when she achieved a kneeling position, so she stayed there for a long few moments, wondering how much time was left, wondering whether she had the strength to make it to McCallister. She wanted to. She wanted to get him and Joe safely away, before it was too late. The FBI would allow them to go. They weren’t … infected. They were still alive.
Harte was safely and permanently dead. Bryn checked. There was no sign of any nanites trying to heal her wound. Her eyes remained open, fixed, with uneven pupils. Like Mareen, she hadn’t taken the shot; she’d wanted to be the puppet master, not the puppet.
Thank God.
It took five long minutes before Bryn could make it to her feet, and another three before she could manage to crawl up the stairs. She left a bright trail of blood behind. The hallways were chaotic now, Pharmadene people with conflicting orders, all trying to carry them out.
Gunfire was still coming from the area where McCallister was pinned down. Someone had given this batch of security personnel orders to take down the intruders, and somehow, even the bomb threat hadn’t altered that order.
Bryn made it to the doorway, leaned against the jamb, and methodically put rounds into the backs of six guards who were firing at McCallister’s barricade. The last one turned and tried to shoot her, but then he hesitated. She knew him. It was the man who’d escorted her through Pharmadene on her first day.
“Get out,” she told him. “Just go. Go now, before it’s too late.”
He thought about it, raised his gun, and then lowered it again. There was confusion in his eyes, and fear.
Then he ran.
Bryn collapsed.
McCallister lunged forward as he came around the barricade and caught her on the way down.
“She’s dead,” Bryn said. “Harte’s dead. You have to go now. Get out before it’s too late; the government’s cleaning all this up. Please go. You have to go while you still can….”
“Fuck,” McCallister spat. He picked her up, turned, and said, “Joe! We are leaving!”
“About fucking time,” Joe said. “Harte?” He slid around the barricade, carrying a shotgun.
“Bryn says she’s down. Move your ass.”
“Hey, you’re the one who just gained weight, not me.”
McCallister gave him a wild-man grin, and Bryn relaxed against him, thinking, If we go now, it’s all right. Everything’s all right.
They made it to a fire exit. The alarms went off screaming. Bryn had a confused impression of the buses in the parking lot, still full of silent Pharmadene revivals, waiting for the end. I should save them, she thought. As many as I can.
But before she could, a black limousine pulled up to block McCallister’s path, and Riley Block stared at them. She had a semiautomatic pistol aimed right at McCallister’s head, and held it there for a long few seconds before she sighed and said, “Oh, fuck it. Just get in.”
McCallister threw Bryn inside and dived in after, with Fideli close behind. The limo sped away without even waiting for the door to close.
Bryn turned her head away just as there was a screaming sound from overhead, and a tremendous shove at the back of the limousine, and the world exploded into fire around them.
“… worst explosion in the city’s history,” a tinny voice was saying when Bryn swam up out of the dark. “Gas company officials continue to say that the incident is under review, but according to recent information from government sources, gas officials were warned about the dangerous state of the pipes under the Civic Theatre as long as a year ago. Clearly, this could have been much worse had the rupture occurred during a major event….”
Bryn cracked her eyes, widened them, and blinked to try to get things clear again. She was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, and a television was playing. The thin flat-screen was sitting on top of a rolling cabinet across the room. She blinked and fixed on the picture, which was of a rolling ball of fire rising up into a cloudless blue sky. Burning buses. A wrecked limousine.
Her wrecked limousine.
She felt surprisingly good, but then she would, wouldn’t she? Goddamn nanites. She could have been shredded by the blast and might have come back together again.
Maybe.
An alarm went off on her monitor, and she squinted at it, trying to see what emergency it was sensing. Before she could, the door opened, and a doctor looked in.
No, not a doctor. A woman in a lab coat.
Riley Block, with a livid bruise on half of her face, and a patch over one eye.
Riley turned the alarm off and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” She poured Bryn a glass of water and handed it over. “Drink.”
She did, almost choking at first, then draining it eagerly. “More.” She coughed. Riley poured. “McCallister?”
“He’s all right. You got the worst of it—shrapnel through the door. He had cuts and bruises, and Fideli got a broken leg, which he hasn’t stopped griping about.” Riley touched the patch with one fingertip. “I got this. Glass. It’s just scratched, though.”
“Sorry.”
“Better than losing my life.” She regarded Bryn in silence for a second, then sat down on the bed beside her. “Some of the Pharmadene people were caught in the blast, but some got out. You warned them, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I had to.”
Riley nodded slowly. “I can understand that, but now we’re stuck. The government doesn’t want to officially acknowledge what happened. Pharmadene’s executives have been detained. Their threat is done. The people who made it out were seen and captured on film; their names were recorded. If they disappear now, it looks bad.”
“Public relations. What a bitch.”
“Right now, they’re quarantined for exposure to hazardous chemicals. Just like you.” Her smile was crooked, and a little sad. “You’ve complicated everything, Bryn. But I don’t blame you. You were trying to do right. Hell, we were all trying to do right. Even Harte, in her own megalomaniacal way.”
“So what are you going to do with them? With me?”
“We seized the supplies and the production line for Returné, and quite frankly, we’re debating about whether to destroy the lot and let the whole thing die. For now, I would imagine that most of the survivors will be kept on at what used to be Pharmadene, with the story that there was a takeover … not too far from the truth. If they talk, their supply of Returné disappears forever. That’ll hold almost everyone, and the few it doesn’t will just … disappear.” Riley cocked her head a little. “And a few are going to be released on other conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“That they work for us,” she said. “We still have a rogue producer of the drug to contend with. Mr. Mercer doesn’t seem like the type to just go away.”
“He still has Annie,” she said. “I have to get her back. You understand? She’s my sister, and I have to—”
“I know. Luckily, what I’m authorized to offer you helps us both,” Riley said. “You go back to Fairview Mortuary, and find a way to make contact with Mercer again. You get your sister back, and give Mercer to us.”
“Not good enough,” McCallister said. He was standing in the doorway—leaning, really. Riley had underplayed his cuts and bruises; he looked as if he’d been in a spectacular prizefight, and been thrown through a window. “She gets a written guarantee of a permanent supply of the drug from the highest levels. She and her sister.”
“I’m not going to bullshit you. There’s no such thing as permanent. Theoretically, the nanites could sustain her life indefinitely, after all. We need some natural end to this arrangement.”
McCallister looked at Bryn and raised his eyebrows, silently asking. She nodded. “A fifty-year guarantee,” she said. “Unless I revoke it first. I always have the right to opt out.”
“You mean, commit suicide.”
“Something like that. But I control it. Not you.” Bryn took in a deep breath. “And the government doesn’t own my mortuary, by the way. I own it.”
Riley smiled. “How exactly are you going to manage that? Pharmadene was bankrolling you. I’ve seen your assets, Bryn. You don’t exactly have the capital to invest.”
Bryn felt a hot burn of anger, and a little bit of shame. Of course she didn’t have the capital. There wasn’t any need to rub it in. “You can buy it and give it to me. My tax dollars at work.”
“She doesn’t need to,” McCallister said. “I’ve been informed that the McCallister trust has acquired Fairview as part of its very large and varied investment portfolio.”
“You bought the funeral home,” Riley said, frowning.
“Not me. The estate administrator controls the trust’s investments. You’ll have to talk to him about why he made that decision.” McCallister said it straight-faced, but Bryn knew exactly who the estate administrator was. Liam.
Riley’s frown intensified, and now she looked very serious. “What the hell are you up to, McCallister? I’m warning you …”
“Easy, Riley. I’m not up to much right now, and neither are you.” He sighed. “It’s been a tough few weeks for all of us. I’m not going to war with the government over any of this, I promise. I just want some peace—for me, for Bryn. Even for you.”
Riley clearly wasn’t convinced. “You’re trying to give Bryn a safety net so she doesn’t remain dependent on us.”
