Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

Arklight. The Mothers of the Fallen come for justice. Of a kind.

The battle below became a bloodbath.

I turned away and ran after Khalid, the Upierczi, and Grigor.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:37 a.m.

The corridor ran straight for a hundred feet and then jagged right, and I could hear shouts and gunfire. A Upier lay dead in the hall, his face shot away. A second limped toward the fight. I put a bullet in the back of his head and leapt over him as he fell. At the corner I skidded to a stop and whipped my gun around.

Four of the Upierczi surrounded Grigor in a defensive circle. They had muscled past Khalid somehow. They were bleeding. Grigor looked bad, but not as bad as I’d hoped. Maybe Ghost hadn’t done as much damage as I thought, or maybe drinking John Smith’s life had given his system a boost. Goddamn it.

Khalid had his gun on them, but he was seated on the floor in a lake of blood. He tried to fire his pistol, but the weapon toppled from his hand. He was alive, but they’d torn him to rags.

“Cap…” he tried to say, but blood dribbled from between his lips. His eyes were unfocused as he slumped against the wall.

I ran past him and emptied the Beretta into the crowd. The Upierczi huddled up to protect Grigor and my bullets tore pieces out of them. One went down, two, and then the slide locked back on my pistol. I don’t remember firing that many shots, but I was badly hurt and my brain was full of broken glass.

I tried to swap out the mags, but Grigor shoved one of the monsters at me. The Upier staggered in surprise, but he corrected his motion and dove at me. I drove the unloaded gun into his throat and heard the cartilage snap. His momentum carried me back, but I turned to shrug him off. I was clumsy with pain and my gun slipped from my bloody fingers.

There were two Upierczi left on their feet, but both were wounded. We all were. Bleeding and panting. They looked at me, at my empty hands, and smiled, showing me the jagged weapons that would tear the life out of me.

I whipped out the rapid-release knife and showed them my fang.

They rushed me.

In my mind was the image of Violin with her two knives, moving like a ballet dancer, elegant and balanced and wickedly fast. It was nice, but that wasn’t something I was capable of. Not at that moment.

When I rushed them it was awkward and dirty; it was rage with no finesse. But my blade was coated with garlic and that gave me my first real advantage. I slashed and chopped at them, cutting tendons, taking their eyes, punching holes in their throats. I used my elbows to knock their teeth out. I kicked their kneecaps off and stamped on their faces when they fell.

Not pretty, but it would do.

Grigor backed away from me. He was missing the pinky and ring finger from his left hand, and there were long gashes on his arms and chest and face. Ghost had tried his best.

He flicked a look over his shoulder. The exit door was fifteen feet behind him. If he made it into the refinery I had no chance to catch him. He had backup there, I didn’t. Even hurt, he could outrun me.

He should have run.

Instead he pointed at me.

“I saw you pick up the code scrambler,” he said. “Thank you for bringing it to me.”

“You want it, asshole,” I said, shifting my weight to run or fight, “come and take it.”

He really should have run. He would have won. Vox was still out there. Vox could give him another trigger device.

But Grigor’s hate was too intense. In that one way, we were alike. In that way, in that moment, hate mattered more to us than anything.

He rushed at me, once more swatting the knife from my hand with shocking speed. He punched me in the face. I tried to duck under it but the blow caught me on the forehead. The shock ruptured something in my neck and broke a bomb inside my skull. The air was filled with red fireworks that burst and did not fade.

I staggered backward, suddenly blind in one eye. Blood poured from my nose and I could feel it in my ears. Grigor came at me again, clamping his mangled hands around my throat. Even with fingers missing he was immensely powerful.

And yet… it was the wrong thing to do.

I dropped my chin as hard as I could, pinning his thumbs against my sternum. It wasn’t enough to stop him-he was way too strong for that-but it was enough to slow him down, to buy me maybe ten seconds more life. My heart was banging around all wrong, so I figured ten seconds was probably all I had left.

I only needed five.

I whipped both arms over his and boxed his ears with full-power blows of cupped palms. The sudden inward pressure burst his eardrums, and he screamed and let go, reflexively grabbing his pounding head. I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could, channeling everything I could muster into the blow. I thought of Lilith and the Mothers and every wretched thing they had endured. I thought of the threats he made against my sister-in-law, Jenny. I thought of all the women the Upierczi had tormented. I took all of that and kicked him with the tip of my steel-toe shoe. Over and over again. Without mercy. Without stopping. The impact shattered the underside of his pelvis, pulping any tissue that was in the way. His shriek went ultrasonic and he froze, eyes goggling in their sockets.

Nice targets.

I used my thumbs on those.

He fell screaming to the floor. I stood swaying over him. He was blind, broken. But as deeply as I looked inside myself I could not find a single splinter of mercy. Inside, a black voice howled from the cold furnace of my soul. The sounds of gunfire and screams echoed down the hall.

I bent close to Grigor and whispered in his ear. “A bunch of women are chopping your master race to pieces. Bet that really fucking stings.”

I straightened.

“This is for the Mothers of the Fallen.”

And I stomped him to death.

Somewhere along the way I went crazy. Broken things inside me shifted and there were bursts of color and walls of darkness. I could hear myself laughing every time a bone shattered under my heel. While I was in that bad, bad place, the damage in my chest and the damage in my head caught up to me. I coughed and spat blood on the wall.

I reeled away from Grigor and went toward the sound of the battle, but I kept hitting the walls.

I heard a woman’s voice. Familiar.

“Grace!” I yelled.

That’s what I thought I said, what I tried to say. But my words came out slurred as I wandered sideways on feet that no longer understood their purpose. I made it as far as the metal stairs, but when I tried to step down I forgot how my feet worked. I fell. Rolling, tumbling, hitting the metal, spilling and sprawling as the cavern swirled around me.

I don’t remember landing.

I thought I heard voices. More knights? No… was it the cold voice of Mr. Church speaking in the meaningless language of the knights?

My dead mother smiled at me from behind the stacked crates, her eyes weeping blood.

Rudy whispered in my ear, “I was so sorry to hear that you died, Joe.”

I said, “No!”

But the darkness said, “Yes.”

I fell forward into its embrace.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:43 a.m.

I heard someone calling from the other side of a wall. The wall was a million miles high and made of darkness.

I thought I heard a woman speaking. She was close, kneeling beside me, whispering in my ear, but her words made no sense.

Then silence.

A moment later…

“Cap’n? Jesus, Cap’n… are you dead?”

I knew that voice. Male, gruff. Filled with emotion. But I had no label to hang on it.