Two Weeks' Notice

Chapter 13

The car had traveled only a few miles down the road before Jane said, “Time for lights out for our guest. Mr. Smith, if you please.”

For a heart-wrenching second, Bryn thought he was going to cut her head off, but instead, the wire noose’s threat kept her pinned in place while he slipped a blinding bag over her head. It was suffocatingly heavy, but by keeping calm she could draw in slow, thickened breaths.

The problem was keeping calm. She had this terror ingrained in her cells; she still woke up every night from a cold sweat, feeling that wet plastic bag molded to her skin like a cheap, oily shroud.

It’s not the same; they’re not trying to kill you, just keep you disoriented. She had to keep repeating that like a mantra and, when it failed, forcing herself to count seconds for each slow breath. The inside of the bag started out dry and dusty but quickly became hot and moist, and that added to the mounting tide of fear inside her. Please not again, not like this again…not suffocating.

They seemed to drive for hours after that, but Bryn had lost any sense of time. All she could do was…endure. Try to count her breaths.

Try to survive, one minute to the next.

“Out,” said a muffled voice, finally. The SUV had stopped, and her door had come open; she hadn’t even noticed, immersed in fighting off her own demons. She pushed the seat belt release, stepped down out of the vehicle, and stumbled as her captor yanked her arm in a bruising grip. The noose tightened around her neck from behind. “Remember your pretty diamond necklace. Don’t go losing your head.”

Bad enough she was wearing her own personal guillotine, but stumbling along blind wasn’t helping her feel more secure. One misstep, and even if it didn’t actually cut her head off, the wire was thin and sharp enough to slice deep into veins and arteries. She was as careful as she could be, given his impatient shoving hand at her back.

Bryn could tell that they’d entered some kind of building by the blast of cool, dry air that washed over her skin, though her face remained hot and damp under the bag. The place was quiet, but over the harsh rush of her own breath she heard what sounded like someone crying weakly. Then the slow creak of wheels…a distant, sharp, angry cry…an old woman’s voice saying, viciously, “No, you can’t have it. It’s mine!”

There was carpet under her feet, thin and industrial. She heard a phone ringing shrilly off to her right, but it dopplered away as they moved on. More wheels passing them by—gurneys? Wheelchairs? And then the creak of a door. She and her leash-holder continued into what sounded like a small room, and the door slammed behind them.

The bag on her head suddenly tugged free, and she pulled in a deep, explosive breath, then coughed. Her tongue and lips tasted like dust and lint, and as she blinked and her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that she was standing in a lifeless little room about twice the size of a prison cell, with a barred window up near the top of the far wall that let in a weak amount of light. The walls were a plain though dingy white, and marked with scuffs and scratches. One heavy gurney-style bed that looked at least two decades out-of-date. A cheap thrift-store dresser with two drawers and a chipped corner. A metal prison-appropriate mirror bolted to the wall, over a stained porcelain sink. There was a toilet cubicle with no door.

Bryn swallowed hard and didn’t move; there wasn’t any point in trying anything, not yet.

Jane walked around from behind her and said, “The door’s locked, and if you don’t do what I say, when I say it, little Jeff’s going to have a very unpleasant assault and battery life experience. Do we understand each other?”

Bryn nodded as much as she could without damaging herself on the wire loop. Jane gave her a cool, evaluating look, then nodded at Mr. Smith behind her. He loosened the wire and slipped it over her head, and Bryn shuddered under the wave of relief that cascaded through her like glacier melt, but didn’t try to run. She didn’t doubt that Jane was capable of anything. “What do you want?” she asked. Her voice sounded even and calm, which was something of a triumph.

“For now? Your unquestioning obedience,” Jane said. “Here. Put this on.” She reached into a drawer, pulled out a hospital gown, the kind that tied in back, and tossed it to Bryn. There was nowhere to go for privacy. Bryn turned her back to a wall, draped the gown over her clothes, and undressed beneath it. Even though they hadn’t been her own clothes, and had fitted badly enough, they’d still been something connecting her to normal life. A hospital gown dehumanized her one step further. She tied the straps behind her as best she could, then waited.

“Good girl,” Jane said. “Kick the clothes and shoes over. Then sit on the bed.”

Bryn followed every instruction to the letter. Feet up. Lie down. Hands at your sides. She wasn’t surprised when they fastened the restraints on, and had a moment of flashback.…These were the same restraints as Liam had used for Annalie, oddly enough. Ankles, wrists, chest, waist, thighs. She didn’t resist. Houdini himself wouldn’t have been able to wriggle out of this configuration, not without hidden tools and time.

Jane tested the straps, then nodded to Mr. Smith. “Good,” she said. “Go on and make sure that idiot Carl’s squared away. He’s likely to throw some unfortunate fit.” He left. Like Jane, he was nondescript—an average-looking man, a little too heavy in the jaw, a little too small in the eyes to be considered handsome. Strong and well built, like Jane herself.

A cold, absolute professional.

Jane was watching her assess her opposition, with an amused smile lurking around her lips. “You’re not like Carl,” she said. “You pick your shots, don’t you?”

“Are we going to have girl talk now?” Bryn asked. “Because I can’t really braid your hair with my hands tied up like this.”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Well, comparatively speaking, I’m probably the funniest in the room.”

“I think you’ll find I’m a laugh riot when you get to know me. And you will, Bryn. Very well.” Jane met her eyes, and dialed a cell phone without looking at it. A preprogrammed number. “The kid’s served his purpose. Dump him.” Bryn gasped and lunged against the restraints as Jane hung up and gave her a slow, icy smile. “Oh, relax. He’s being left where he’ll be found. You did a good job, so I don’t feel the need to be…punitive. Unless the mouthy brat wanders out into traffic, he’ll be home inside of an hour with a fun story to tell his friends at school.”

Bryn’s heart was racing madly, her veins singing with the desire to hurt this bitch, but she forced a smile that probably held more than a trace of that black fury. “I can’t wait for you to meet his daddy, Jane.”

“Oh, I already have,” Jane said. “Tall guy, six feet, bullet head? Wicked fast reflexes and charming as all get-out. He’ll remember me. He’s got the scars.”

“Liar.” But Jane had shaken her confidence, because that did sound like Joe Fideli.

“Let’s not start the name-calling. We’ve got loads of time before things get that catty. I’ll tell you how this is going to go. This place”—Jane made a vague gesture at the room, the building in general—“is a black hole. People go in, they don’t come out, and nobody bats an eye. Pretty genius, really. So you can forget about attracting someone’s attention.”

“Not a prison, then,” Bryn said. “A hospital. A mental hospital.”

“Oooh, close, but no. It’s a locked facility. It’s where they dump the severely impaired Alzheimer’s patients, the ones without families, the ones who never get visited. No witnesses. And no one cares who comes in, since nobody ever leaves except in a body bag. Fucking creepy, if you ask me.” Jane sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “My point is this: you can scream and yell and curse as much as you want to. Doesn’t matter. Somebody’s always screaming in this ice-cold corner of hell. You won’t sound any more delusional than the rest of the loonies.”

Bryn kept her mouth shut, grimly wishing she had a hand free so she could punch the bitch out. Just once. Less than twenty-four hours, she told herself. You only have to make it less than a day. They’ll find you. Find her, too. And when they do…

That was a nice moment of warm, bloody fantasy, the idea of what Joe Fideli would do to the woman who’d kidnapped his son. If Patrick didn’t take her apart first, of course.

“You’re still wondering what I want from you,” Jane said. “I can see it in your eyes, Bryn. The fact is, I’m going to ask you some questions. Now, you’re probably thinking you won’t answer. Word is, you used to be a soldier. Maybe you think that makes you a badass, but baby, recruitment standards are so low they drag the ditches for volunteers these days; hell, half the gang members out there served their four years for free Uncle Sam–sponsored murder training. I wouldn’t count on whatever backbone your cuddly little drill sergeant managed to beat into you lasting more than thirty minutes once we get down to it.”

She cocked her head, watching Bryn’s face. “Oh, and I also know all about your…what do you call it? Healing? That seems like an advantage until you begin to think it through and realize that all it really means is I don’t have to hold back with you. I don’t have to do some pansy flower waterboarding technique; I can actually drown you as many times as it takes. Or skin you. Or…wow, so many choices. I don’t think I’ve ever really considered the possibilities.”

She shoved the chair back suddenly, and the noise of it made Bryn flinch, just a little. Jane stood up.

“So,” she said, looking down now, with a warm, genuine smile on her face. “You just close your eyes and get some sleep, because when I come back, we’re going to get things done, Bryn. Just see if we don’t.”

She walked to the door, and Bryn didn’t watch her go. She kept her gaze rigidly focused upward on the cracked ceiling. A spider had made a dusty web near the light fixture, and the silk billowed in the cold, dry breeze of the air-conditioning. The spider itself was sitting right in the middle of the web, waiting. Just…waiting.

When she saw Jane leave in her peripheral vision, and heard the door slam and lock, Bryn finally closed her eyes.

Less than a day.

She could do this. She had to.

Jane was gone a long time, but there was no way to accurately gauge the clock. Bryn tried counting pulsebeats for a while, but her attention wandered, drawn by distant querulous talking, or banging, or—shockingly loud—screaming. If there were nurses in this place, they didn’t check on her, and Bryn wished rather pathetically that she’d taken the opportunity to use the toilet before letting them strap her down. Boredom was a strain, because there was nothing to stare at other than the single, fluttering spider’s web, and the motionless arachnid. Why there? Bryn wondered. It didn’t seem like a great hunting spot. But then, spiders were surprisingly smart for their size. The little creature probably knew something Bryn didn’t.

She tried working the restraints, because it seemed like the prudent thing to do. After all, in any decent action movie, she’d find some weakness in the old bed, or a protruding screw, or something…but all she managed to do was chafe her skin raw and introduce an annoying creak into the metal bed frame.

The light had faded outside, and the world beyond the high glass slice of view seemed black—so black she couldn’t even make out the entirely superfluous bars.

Nothing to do. Nothing to think. Nothing to plan.

Bryn wasn’t good at waiting. The last time she’d been confined like this, she’d been in the white room, with that ominous drain in the middle of the floor and its easy-wash surfaces. Shambling from corner to corner, touching walls, counting steps, while the nanites in her bloodstream degraded and turned toxic and her body began to turn on itself.

This was better, she told herself. A nice, comfy bed. And so far, she didn’t need a shot.

That’ll change, the cold, cynical part of her brain declared. She’ll hurt you, maybe kill you. You’ll need that booster. And you won’t get it. And we’ll be right back in the white room, rotting, falling to pieces.

No. She’d been in the white room for days, long days without treatment. Here, it would be over—one way or another—in less than twenty-four hours. She’d survive. Whatever Jane brought to the party, she’d survive. And Bryn was going to make it her personal mission from God to see that Jane got paid back, in full.

The spider moved suddenly, skimming over the soft, strong field of its web and leaping on some tiny creature with the bad sense to tangle itself up. Bryn was too far to see the details, but she could well imagine. Here she was, thinking she was the spider, when in fact she was the fucking fly, trussed up in a tight cocoon for draining.

Jane was the spider.

And right on cue, Jane opened the door.

She was preceded by a metallic rattle of wheels, and a cheery, “How you doing, Bryn? Hungry? I thought you might be. I brought you a little something.”

She was expecting, well, instruments of pain. Steel cutting tools, that kind of thing. But as Jane whipped the covering sheet off the tray, she saw…green Jell-O and a spoon.

“Wow,” she said. “You’re serious about your torture. Green Jell-O.”

“You’re going to need your strength,” Jane said. She pulled up a chair and sat down, spooned up a bit of the gelatin, and guided it to Bryn’s mouth. “Here’s the mama bird, feeding the baby bird.…Open wide.…”

There was utterly no point in resisting; cooperating would at least get her a little something in her stomach, and it would be humiliating to spend the rest of her captivity smeared with fragments of the stuff. So Bryn opened her mouth, and Jane tipped the spoon. It went on like that, with Jane trying out bits of probably half-remembered cooing from her own mother. Choo-choo trains. Airplanes and airports. The glee Jane took in it was unholy, really, but as soon as the spoon clinked against an empty bowl, the fun was over. Jane put the bowl aside and shoved the cart out of the way with her foot, then sat back and crossed her legs.

She still had the spoon, and Bryn watched her turn it over and over nimbly in her fingers. “So,” Jane said. “Do you have any idea the damage a spoon can really do? Scoop things, obviously. It’s best for eyes, but that’s so obvious that it hardly even needs a remark. But it’s also great for damage to the soft palate inside the mouth. If you’re energetic, you can drive it all the way up into the brain and start scooping out things there, too.”

Bryn’s mouth had suddenly gone very dry, but she forced herself to respond with a tight, sarcastic, “Tease.”

Jane laughed. “Oh, I like you. You really do think you’re a hard-ass, don’t you? Been there, done that? Well, you haven’t. Not like I have.” There was a flush in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes. Jane, Bryn realized with a cold little devastation, was a true sadist—and not the kind with a convenient safe word. She was a sociopath in the truest sense. “I get paid for answers, and most people don’t have the…resilience you do. So this is pretty interesting work for me. No taboos.”

“Just tell me what you want to know and we can get this over with,” Bryn said.

“What, now? I hope you’re not going to let me down, Bryn, and get all girlie on me. C’mon, woman up.” She gave Bryn’s arm a friendly shake. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a sample question, and you can decide whether or not to answer it.” She paused—a dramatic pause—and then said, “Boxers, briefs, or boxer briefs?”

“I don’t wear any of them,” Bryn said.

“No, no, no, the question is, what does Patrick McCallister wear? Come on, Bryn. I know this is an easy one for you.”

Bryn smiled back at her, and it felt wild and fierce. “Ask him yourself, bitch.”

“You think I have to ask?” Jane said. The smile disappeared, and what was left in her eyes was dark and endless. “It’s just a simple question, Bryn. C’mon, you can tell me. It’s just us girls.” There was something behind all that, a trap Bryn didn’t understand and didn’t want to even try to guess. Something to do with Patrick.

And she wasn’t going to go there.

“Fuck you,” Bryn said. “Ask your question.”

Jane tapped her lips with the rounded end of the spoon, then said, “What did you find at Graydon when you went into the building?”

“Dead people,” she said. “Wrapped in plastic. And a bomb.”

“Oh, Bryn, I really was giving you a softball. Come on, now. We already know the answer. You’re just being stubborn.”

Poor little fly, wrapped in your cocoon.

“A thumb drive,” Bryn said, because it was obvious by now that Jane did know. “With encrypted data. We broke the encryption. It was three video files showing executions of Revived people.”

“Huh.” Jane’s eyebrows rose, just a little. “Truth. Interesting tactic. I’d appreciate you telling me just who helpfully decrypted that information for you—I always like to know who out there has special expertise, and I know my employers would really want to have a chat with them to find out the extent of what they know about all this. Trouble is, your friends who were in that warehouse seem to be a little difficult to find. Moved, left no forwarding address, that kind of thing. So how about parting with their names, for a start?”

Bryn shut her mouth. Time to stop talking. She’d wasted as much of the hour as she could, with the Jell-O and playing to Jane’s catlike instincts, but she wouldn’t give up Manny and Pansy. Not by name. These people might be able to find them, but she wasn’t going to help. Sorry, Manny. This is your worst nightmare, and I’m sorry I dragged you into it.

Manny’s extreme paranoia, in retrospect, didn’t seem all that unreasonable after all. Not after meeting this woman.

“Oh,” Jane said happily, as Bryn turned her head and focused on the fluttering spiderweb on the ceiling, pressing her lips together. “You really don’t know how much this means to me. Thank you, Bryn. Thank you.”

The spoon touched her cheek and slid upward in a cool, sticky, damp trail, and Bryn shut her eyes.

It didn’t help.

There were points where Bryn talked. Babbled, in fact, once her body had healed enough to allow words to come out. She confessed a few things—the fact that she had already figured out how many of the Revived were missing, the fact that she knew someone was experimenting on them. She gave the names of those whom she’d identified. She even mentioned Fast Freddy Watson and Jonathan Mercer, just for the hell of it, but she didn’t mention Annalie’s name.

Jane probably knew it anyway.

Bryn didn’t, out of sheer bloody fury, give up Manny’s and Pansy’s names, though that was the most persistent question that was being asked of her. She didn’t know anything but their names, and a couple of other locations where they’d been, but she wasn’t about to let Jane have even that much of a chance at either of them. I can take it, she told herself. It’s just pain. Wounds heal. I can take it. Jane couldn’t scare her with permanent scarring, or even death; she needed her talking, so Mr. Smith and his diamond-saw necklace weren’t in the picture, either.

In the end, she made up names for Manny and Pansy, cribbed from two of her least favored fellow soldiers back in basic training. Steve Hyatt and Terry Mueller. Steve and Terry were bullies. They deserved it, if Jane came looking. Steve…Steve had grabbed her ass, threatened her, stolen from her. Terry, his girlfriend, had helped lure her into a dark room where Steve was waiting to get the drop on her. It hadn’t happened, because Lieutenant…Lieutenant…Bardley—his name was Bardley—had walked in on them. Terry had sworn on the Bible that Bryn had come on to the two of them and it was all just some sick consensual game.…

They deserved Jane, deserved it, oh God can’t think oh God oh God…

Jane finally took a break; apparently, working with only a spoon was hard work. She left it lying bloody on the tray, with the dried bowl still sticky with Jell-O, and promised to come back with something sharper. Bryn lay trembling in the blood-soaked bed as gouged tissue healed, and thought, I can’t. I can’t hold out for another— How long would it be? Twelve hours? Eighteen? God. Jane wasn’t even really interested in the answers to the questions yet. She hadn’t, Bryn realized, really come down to business; she was still pleasuring herself.

The mattress under her body was cold with her blood, saturated and stinking of it. Her eyes were still shut, because she was afraid to open them, afraid she’d see darkness; Jane hadn’t been kind to her there.

But she couldn’t let the fear rule her, because once that started, it would never, ever stop. So Bryn forced herself to look.

Jane had turned on the lights at some point, and the harsh fluorescents were dizzying, throwing back red splashes on the walls, red beads and smears on her pale flesh. Overhead, the spiderweb still fluttered like a tattered flag.

I’m the spider. I’m the goddamn fucking spider. This is my web. See if it isn’t.

She pulled at her restraints. The left wrist, the one that Jane had leaned over for hours, was looser than it had been because its Velcro closure had been rolled back a little from the friction—not much, but a little. Bryn grimly worked her hand back and forth, back and forth, and then steeled herself once she had braced at an awkward angle.

Then she threw her weight against it, violently, and snapped bones. She didn’t try to smother the cry; as Jane had mentioned, no one cared. The bones compressed along the back of her hand now, shifting and grating as she pulled, and finally deformed enough that, in a white-hot burst of agony, she pulled free.

“Fuck,” she whispered, and took a few seconds to just breathe before she raised her hand to her mouth, gripped her fingers one by one in her teeth, and pulled to put the bones back in line. She couldn’t wait on the healing; it would take too long. She used her undamaged pinkie finger to reach out and hook under the edge of the rolling steel cart that held the Jell-O bowl…

And the spoon.

It was an Olympic-level effort to reach for it, grasp it, and slip it under her hip, concealed in case Jane returned unexpectedly. Once Bryn had a weapon—and she’d never underestimate a spoon again—she began clumsily working on her other wrist restraint. It came loose after a torturous amount of effort. Her undamaged right hand was more than willing to take charge of releasing the chest, waist, thigh, and ankle straps.

As she felt the icy-hot snap of the nanites knitting bones together, Bryn sat up. In the dull metal mirror she looked like something out of a horror movie—matted and soaked in gore, with drying blood running like terrifying clown makeup from her eyes. She bared her teeth. Scary. She didn’t feel scary, though; she felt fragile, wounded, desperate, and yet, at the same time, angry. A kind of fury she’d never felt before in her life.

In the drawer she found the bundled-up clothes she’d had on when she arrived, and she wiped most of the blood off her with the ruined hospital gown before pulling the pants and shirt on. Then she retrieved the spoon, used a wadded-up old, thin pillow under the discarded bloody gown to at least hint at a body lying in the bed, refastened the restraints, and turned off the overhead lights. Before she did, though, she looked up at the spider’s web, at the little hunter sitting in the center with infinite patience.

At the lumpy mass of the insect she’d caught, hanging trembling in the corner. It was bigger than the spider. Good for you, Bryn thought. Good for you. Wish me luck.

She wedged herself into the narrow bathroom cubicle next to the door, and waited.

Jane didn’t come back for so long that Bryn started to shiver; the chill was, she knew, a sign that the nanites were struggling to compensate for all the damage done. She needed a booster shot. The tiny machines were repairing tissue, organs, generating blood, but their power supplies were burning up fast. Doesn’t matter, she thought. You can wear Jane’s skin as a coat if you get cold. It was a macabre joke, but it made her feel better.

And she wasn’t so sure she did mean it as a joke, after all. Something savage had been let loose in her, and she wasn’t ready to cage it just yet.

It wasn’t Jane who came back. It was Mr. Smith, with his diamond saw looped casually in one hand. Whether Jane had tired of the game, or she’d just sent him to check, Bryn didn’t know; it didn’t matter. As the door swung shut behind him, Bryn lunged out of the dark, knocked him against the wall, and buried the spoon with brutal precision in his neck. It was blunt, but one thing Jane had taught her: apply enough force, and even a spoon could cut through flesh, and slice deep enough to cut through the thick rubbery surface of the carotid artery.

It was the second time today she’d been bathed in hot blood, but this time, at least it wasn’t her own.

As his blood jetted out in panicked, high-pressure spurts, Bryn grabbed the commando saw, shoved him down, and knelt on his chest as she searched his pockets. He had a gun, too. She took it, checked the clip—full—and waited until the bleeding had faded to weak, barely perceptible wellings from his neck.

Then she got up and washed off in the bathroom as best she could. His leather jacket was bloody, but that sponged off; she put it on over her stained shirt, used a torn piece of his shirt to tie her hair back in a ponytail, and slipped out into the hallway.

It was never quiet here, and she tried to filter out the talking, arguing, crying, or banging from other cells on the corridor. No sign of nurses or—if they existed—doctors. No sign of Jane, either. Bryn made sure her shoes were clean on the bottom and left no perceptible gory footprints, then put the gun in her pocket. She held it ready to fire through the leather, if necessary.

She walked as confidently as she could toward the exit.

The clock in the hallway read three a.m. Had it been that long? She’d been brought here around sunset. Her shot had been at noon, so fifteen hours had already passed. Nine to go before her tracking nanites came online. Screw that. She’d find a phone, or steal a car, walk into traffic—anything but stay here.

The door at the end of the hall claimed to be an exit, but it was keypad locked and alarmed. Opening that would draw instant attention, unless…

She heard a thin squeak of wheels behind her, and looked back to see a wheelchair slowly rounding the corner. The man in it was ancient, withered, and had a blank, vague terror in his eyes that struck a chord with her. She knew how that felt now. At least hers could end, but his kind of torment wouldn’t.

He came creaking down the hall very slowly. No one was with him. No one was following him. He headed straight for Bryn like a tortoise-speed heat-seeking missile, a desperate kind of hunger in his face. When he reached her, he stretched his hand out to her and tried to speak.

She took his hand, very gently, and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. But you can help me.”

He made a sound she didn’t understand, and his clawlike fingers gripped hers with desperate strength. She managed to pull free, and pushed him to the door.

Then she opened it, ducked outside as the alarm began to sound its shrill noise, and left him with the wheelchair propped in the opening, as if he’d stuck trying to get out.

Then she ran.

Her hope was that they’d assume he’d somehow opened the door and not check further. Jane wouldn’t be fooled long, but it might be a few minutes’ grace before Mr. Smith’s body was discovered, and Bryn needed every second of distraction she could get.

Outside, she found a plain expanse of grass that really didn’t qualify as a lawn; it was choked with weeds, its green color deceptively healthy. The exterior of the building was plain painted cinder block, functionally ugly. This particular building was cut off from the other, larger, more gracious facility; that part had an ornate garden behind it, with an ornamental gazebo and fountains. The more functional inmates of this prison stayed there, Bryn assumed: the ones who had family to visit them, and who for public relations purposes couldn’t be penned up like convicts for the convenience of the staff. She had no idea if there was safety in that more graciously styled structure; could be that they had no idea what went on out here in the internment camp, but she couldn’t rely on that. On anyone.

The entire property—and it was large—was ringed by a high fence. There was a drive-through gate, but it, too, was locked up tight, and there were surveillance cameras watching. A few staff cars sat in the parking lot, but Bryn was fresh out of hot-wiring skills.

Phone. She needed a damn phone.

And the best place to find one would be inside the central building.

Bryn raced over the open area, trying to keep to the shadows as much as she could; the moonlight was traitorously bright out, but she made it to the garden and hid in the dark overhang of a still-blooming rosebush for a moment. Lights were on in the secured-facility building, and she saw into the windows at the front; there were at least three or four burly, sour-looking nurses who were off to check the rooms. Someone would find the “body” soon.

The patio doors off the garden were locked tight. No way inside. She followed the curve of the building around, testing windows, and finally found one that was open to admit a cool night breeze. She slid it up, careful of the noise, and cast a quick look inside to scout the footing. It was clear beneath, and she slithered over the sill and down to the carpet without much noise.

The old woman sleeping on the gurney—unrestrained, except for the metal railings—didn’t stir. She looked as frail as a dandelion, but someone cared about her—there was a thick, hand-knitted afghan tucked around her, and a pillow nicer than anything available in the facility. Bryn scanned her bedside table, but found no trace of a cell phone or landline. She eased the door open. This facility had wider hallways, nicer carpet, big windows, and—unfortunately—more nurses. These were going door-to-door, methodically checking beds; when one went into a room, another came out, as if they’d planned it that way to cover any eventuality.

Bryn closed the door with a faint click and looked around. The bathroom wasn’t big, and she had the distinct feeling they’d be looking inside it anyway as they searched. Likewise the narrow closet. She went back to the window and closed it, and heard footsteps approaching.

Time to decide.

She dropped to the carpet and rolled into the shadows cast by the dangling afghan on the far side of the gurney/bed. There was no way to get all the way underneath, so it was the best she could do. Her heart hammered as the attendant stepped inside, opened the bathroom, the closet, and came over to check the window.

He never glanced her way. The woman on the bed, as Bryn had guessed, would be of no real interest to him, and he’d be focused instead on the concealed places, not the open ones.

Bryn let out a slow breath as he finished his search, exited the room, and shut the door behind him. She stood up and followed him, peeping out the narrow crack of wood to check the hallway. She waited until the staff had completely finished their search of the hall. One went back to the round nurses’ station desks; the others moved on, presumably to the next set of rooms.

“Thanks,” Bryn whispered to the sleeping lady, and slipped out. She hugged the wall, watching the nurse at the station. This one was a woman, and she had her back turned as she spoke on the phone.

“No sign of anyone,” the nurse was saying. “We’re clear in here. Blanton’s checking the parking lot out front. The gates haven’t opened, and we haven’t had any motion detectors go off. Nothing on surveillance in the front. I think she must still be on your side.” That, at least, answered the question of whether the nurses in this building of the facility would be sympathetic. “I’m telling you, we already checked the rooms. Every room. Either she’s in your building or she’s out on the grounds. Yeah, we’re searching the garden. Keep your knickers on. She won’t get far.”

The nurse hung up the phone, and Bryn backed up and into another room. This one held a sleeping man with an oxygen mask and an IV drip. Colorful, angular drawings were taped all over the walls—grandkids’ or great-grandkids’ projects, Bryn assumed. It was still a sterile, grim room, but it was trying to be cheerful.

There was a cell phone plugged in on the nightstand.

Bryn’s heart leaped. She eased over to it and unplugged it, trying to move as quietly as possible. The thing was shut off, but once she’d touched the power button, it gave out a nice, loud, musical tone she couldn’t muffle.

The old man opened his eyes, removed his oxygen mask, and gazed at her blankly for a moment—and then he began yelling, shockingly loudly, “Help! Help! Murder! She’s taking my phone! Help, help!”

Bryn cursed under her breath and headed toward the window, but it was latched tight, and the catch was stubborn. She finally racked it up with a shriek of metal just as the door opened, spilling light into the room. Even then, she would have kept going, except that Jane said, very softly, “I’ll kill the old man if you try it, Bryn.”

Bryn turned her head. Jane was standing by the old man’s bedside; he’d stopped yelling, and was staring at her with mute terror, because she was holding a silenced semiautomatic pistol to his temple. Jane’s face was pale and hard as bone, and the dark shadows pooled in her eyes. She looked…inhuman.

“I mean it,” she said. “Try anything, and he dies. Then I put a bullet in your brain. You can wake up. He won’t. Either way, I shoot the holy fuck out of you before you can use that phone or make it off the grounds, so there’s nothing to gain here. But by all means, go ahead. I’m sure it’s a mercy killing, shooting this old fart.”

There wasn’t any doubt at all that she meant every word of what she said.

Bryn shut her eyes for a second, then opened her fingers and let the cell phone drop to the floor. Damn it, damn it, damn it…

“Good choice,” Jane said. “I’m really pretty upset about losing Mr. Smith, but then again, nice use of the spoon. You’re learning. Now, just hold still.…If I do this right, it shouldn’t really hurt much at all.”

Oh hell no. Bryn let her knees go loose, dropped, rolled, and put the phone in her left pocket as she did. Her movement startled Jane into firing, but she missed, and Bryn shoved her right hand into her pocket, rose to her knees right in front of Jane, and fired, point-blank, through the leather of her jacket.

Three times.

Jane fired back, which was an impressive feat considering Bryn had scored three direct chest hits, but her bullet hit Bryn in the shoulder—not enough to slow her down. She felt it, but pushed the pain aside. Jane had taught her that, too—how to push the pain away.

Jane stumbled back against the wall, and the fury in her dark eyes was unmistakable. Her black shirt showed the bullet holes, and beneath, Bryn saw the flash of blood. Jane caught her balance and aimed, not for Bryn, but at the old man on the bed. She was going to kill him out of sheer spite.

Bryn took the gun out of her pocket, advanced, and fired twice into Jane’s face.

The woman’s trigger finger still convulsed, but the shot went wild, into the floor on the other side of the bed, and Jane went down hard.

Dead for sure.

Bryn wanted to keep on shooting her, just for the hell of it, but there wasn’t time. She flipped open the cell—one of those easy-to-use kinds for older people—and quickly dialed Patrick’s number.

She was talking as soon as she heard the connection click in, even before his voice made it over the distance. “It’s Bryn. Don’t ask any questions right now, just trace this phone and come heavy; I’m leaving it on and hiding it. I’ll be around here somewhere. I have to find Carl and Chandra.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, just opened a drawer and dropped the phone in. She couldn’t talk to Pat just now; he’d infect her with his worry, make her less focused on sheer survival. It had hurt to even hear his voice begin to say hello; the idea of having him say anything else, anything to comfort her, made her think she might break apart into tiny pieces.

The old man was still staring at her with blank terror. He was gasping for air. She reached over and fitted his oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and said, “Sorry for all that, sir. You’ll be okay.”

Then she pushed herself up, opened the window, and headed into the darkness. There was nothing here now for her except the certainty of being caught by the staff of the regular, presentable side of the business; rescue was coming, and they’d find Jane’s body soon enough. Bryn didn’t have a whole lot of time, and although hiding out was a good option, she knew Carl, at least, was still being held on the lockdown side of the complex where she’d been kept.

If it had been secure enough for the two of them, it was a good bet that any other Revived individuals they’d taken might be kept there as well…and there were some more still missing. Chandra Patel, for one. And Bryn owed it to Chandra, too, to try to get her out of this horror.

The gunshots had drawn attention all over the nursing facility—lights blazing on, voices babbling—and as Bryn tried to make her way through the garden, she had to keep to the ever-sparser shadows. She’d just made it past the gazebo when someone thought to turn on the full security lighting in the garden, which lit it up like a football field; Bryn sprinted for the edge of the bushes and out into the darkness beyond.

She didn’t hear anyone yelling on her trail, so she headed straight for the cinder block building, slammed her back against the wall, and tried to think. She checked the clip, and controlled a burst of frustration—should have picked up that bitch’s gun, too—as she assembled a tactical plan. She’d have to go in through the front entrance, where two of the big male nurses were standing; either or both of them could be armed, and she didn’t know for certain if they were guilty parties or just innocent dupes. She’d rather have tried the rear exit, but the alarm had stopped sounding, which meant they’d closed the door. She didn’t have superstrength or anything. Being hard to kill didn’t qualify as much of a superpower.

If cockroaches were superheroes…

Someone spotted her shadow against the brick outside, and she heard a yell. A flashlight flared bright, and she moved for the reception area, fast, with the gun pointed at the two nurses. One raised his hands immediately. The other looked stunned.

“Open the door,” she ordered. No reactions. “Hit the button and open the door! You!” She pointed at the one who hadn’t raised his hands, and he reached beneath the counter.

She had just enough warning to dive out of the way as a shotgun blast tore through the cheap wood. The nurse yanked the gun free and fired again, nailing her left arm with pellets, but she shot back, two fast bullets to his chest, and he went over backward and took the shotgun with him.

She switched aim to the other nurse, still frozen with his hands in the air. “Open it!” she screamed.

He slammed his fist down on a button, and she heard the harsh metallic buzzing as the lock clicked free.

Bryn hit it hip-first, and cried out at the agony that zipped up her arm and across her body from the shotgun damage. Didn’t matter. She had to duck to avoid a volley of shots from the other side. Another armed caregiver. That just didn’t seem safe, somehow, having all these guns around the elderly. She didn’t want to shoot back—too much risk of hitting a patient—but she didn’t have much choice, and putting him down with a bullet in his side had the benefit of getting her a handful of room keys.

She found Carl in the third room, strapped to a gurney. He hadn’t been tortured, or at least there was no evidence of blood, which was a mercy. No time to extract him, though. She left him and tried the other doors, looking for Chandra, the other Revived she knew was in their hands.

She didn’t find her, which meant either she’d never been here or it was far too late.

She just barely had time to make it back to Carl’s room and strip away his restraints fast before more gunfire sprayed her way. He was staring at her uncomprehendingly, and for a few panic-stricken seconds she thought they’d drugged him so thoroughly he wouldn’t be able to move, but then he snapped out of it and said, “Bryn? Oh my God, are you here to rescue me?”

She laughed. It rang hollow in the room, and had a bitter, wild edge. “Sure,” she said. “Why not? Get up, you ass. We have to get out of here.”

“I’m sorry about…you know,” he said, as he slid off the bed. They hadn’t let him keep his own clothes, either; he was wearing—of all things—some dirty pair of denim overalls that sagged around him, and an equally dirty T-shirt.

“Selling me out?” she asked. “They used your Protocol. You didn’t have a choice. Never mind. Get down in that corner.” She shoved him toward it and backed to cover him, facing the door. She’d locked it, but she couldn’t have taken the only set of keys, and even if by some miracle she had, these weren’t the type to play a waiting game. “Did you see Chandra in here?”

“I didn’t see anybody,” he said, “except that woman. Jane.”

“Jane’s dead now.”

“Thank God.” His voice was trembling, on the edge of cracking. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I couldn’t—”

Bryn couldn’t really blame him; she’d been forced to cooperate, too. That didn’t mean she had to like it. She checked the clip in her gun. Only three shots left, and she had the strong feeling that wouldn’t go far. Damn, she was missing her riot baton. It made a great close-quarters weapon.…

She spotted the aluminum cane in the corner a few seconds later, and laughed. It was the adjustable model—press in the round button, and the bottom section slid up and down. She slid it all the way out, weighed it, and then decided the top part of the cane was better weighted—more momentum from the heavy plastic grip.

She was back to being the spider, waiting for the fly…until the fly arrived.

The door banged open, and two tear gas grenades rolled inside. Bryn tried to kick them out again, but doubled over, coughing and choking on the fog, and through her tears she saw someone stride forward with a gas mask covering half her face.

Jane. There was no mistaking those eyes. Of course. How could it have never occurred to Bryn to think she was one of the Revived?

“Surprise,” Jane said, but it wasn’t really. And then she kicked her in the head, several times, until Bryn went dark.