Rachel Caine - Terminated

But Jane hadn’t found the cure.

Bryn took in a deep breath, let it out, and unsnapped her coveralls, stepped out of them, and sat down against the wall, naked.

This was going to hurt.

She pressed the sharpened edge of the brass knife to the trembling flesh of her stomach, prayed that the nanites were still strong enough to keep her going.

Then she began to cut.

Bryn passed out three times before she managed to dig the bottle out of her upper intestines. Packing her guts back in was horrifying, and she had to hold the wound closed, lying on her side, until the flesh began to knit together enough to ensure it all held together properly. She passed out with the bottle—still sealed, amazingly, though the seal showed signs of pitting from her stomach acids—clutched tight in her other hand.

Cleaning up was a challenge she decided to skip, for the most part; after the blood was dry, she put the coverall back on to disguise the worst, and spit-bathed her hands and the splashes on her visible skin. That was harder than she’d thought, simply because she’d been a long time without water, and her saliva was starting to dry up. She emptied her bladder and used the contents to scrub the blood from the floor. It was still stained, but not recognizably. If Jane asked—which she doubted—she’d tell her she’d lost control of her bowels.

Jane would find that funny.

It took another three days before her nemesis came for another gloat. Bryn had chosen her spot carefully—a corner, angled so that she could push off from the wall and reach Jane with the shortest possible path.

Jane came in with two guards—uniformed, wearing surplus military fatigues. Bryn hadn’t expected that, and felt a cold chill; she didn’t think she could take both armed men and still do to Jane what she’d planned. It would be too chaotic, and give Jane too much time.

But Jane had decided to up the stakes, and behind the two men came Patrick. Pale, unshaven, bruised, he walked with his gaze focused on the floor, and the curve of his shoulders . . . He looked utterly different in the way he carried himself.

He looked . . . broken.

“I brought you a friend,” Jane said. “Patrick said he’d like to see you through this time of . . . challenge.”

She pushed him forward, into the center of the cell. Bryn couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t look away from him. His hair had grown about half an inch, and it looked lank and unwashed.

He didn’t meet her eyes. He just . . . stood there.

“You should be starting to feel it by now—tingles in your arms and legs. Loss of feeling in toes and fingers.”

Bryn ignored her. So did Patrick, but he seemed to be walled off from the world now, as well as Jane.

Jane had expected something, she knew—some reaction from Patrick, or from her. When the silence stretched on, Jane frowned and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted, shall I? See you in a few days. We’ll come and remove any bits that fall off. Oh, and Patrick’s body, since you’ll definitely end up eating most of him.”

She waved her guards out first, clearly sure there was no threat now.

Patrick looked up and met Bryn’s eyes, and in that moment, she saw that he’d never been broken at all.

She launched herself out of the corner. Jane was right, she felt clumsy—arms and legs growing weaker, fingers unsure around the sharpened brass weapon. But that didn’t matter. Jane saw her coming and stepped back, pulling the door shut.

Patrick got there first and shot his arm out. She slammed it in the door, and Bryn heard bone crack, but he shoved it open, grabbed Jane, and dragged her inside. He flung her toward Bryn, and as Jane skidded to a stop and pulled her sidearm, Bryn’s right hand moved in a precise arc, as beautifully timed as anything she had ever done in her life.

And she cut Jane’s throat, laying it open through the trachea. Blood sprayed, and Jane jerked back, but Patrick had her arms, and he stripped the gun away, turned, and fired at the two guards, who had only just now realized something had gone wrong. He dropped them both.

Jane sank to her knees, both hands clutching her fountaining throat. Bryn crouched down, too, not caring about the blood hitting her, only about meeting Jane’s surprised, furious eyes.

“Yeah, that won’t kill you,” she said. “I know. You were looking for the cure, though.”

Jane bared her teeth, a cornered animal ready to bite.

“Well,” Bryn said, and stripped the seal off the vial she held. “Congratulations. You found it.”

She had time to savor Jane’s look of incomprehension, and horror, just for a second before she forced Jane’s head back with a grip on her hair and poured the serum straight down Jane’s severed throat.

Then she kicked her into the corner, bleeding out, and turned to Patrick.

He was watching Jane with the coldest eyes she’d ever seen. Colder even than Jane’s. But when he looked at her, the ice broke, just a little.

He held his hand out to her, and she took it. They watched for long enough to see Jane start to convulse as the cure took hold, shutting down her nanites.

Ending her.

And then they walked out. The door shut fast behind them on a peculiar whispering sound, and it took Bryn a moment to realize what it was.

Jane was trying to scream.

She supposed she ought to have felt guilty about it but in truth, she just felt relieved.

Patrick paused to strip weapons from the guards and tossed her one; she checked the clip, nodded, and fell in behind him. The paper slippers were annoying, so she kicked them off in favor of bare feet as they went down a narrow concrete hall lined with cinder-block walls. More doors, all shut. Patrick rapidly entered a code into one of the locks and opened it, and Bryn saw, over his shoulder, that Riley was lying on the floor with her arm over her eyes. She sat up quickly to stare at them. The paper jumpsuit didn’t look any better on her, Bryn thought, and despite what Riley had done, what she’d cost them . . . the joy that ignited in Bryn on seeing her was undeniable.

Riley threw herself to her feet and stumbled toward them. Bryn buried her in a hug that lasted only a few seconds, then gave her a sidearm. “Good to go?” she asked.

“God, yes,” Riley said, and double-checked the gun. “Where’s that evil bitch?”

“Dying,” Bryn said.

Riley looked up and smiled, with teeth. “Good.”

Patrick had already moved off to the next cell. It was empty. So was the third.

The fourth held Joe.

“Oh Jesus,” Bryn whispered, appalled. The big man was lying on his back, like Riley, but that was the only real similarity. He was black and blue, and very bloody; he was still breathing, but the sound was labored and disturbingly wet. Patrick knelt down next to him. Riley, after that first horrified glance, watched the hall, ready to shoot. “Patrick . . .”

Patrick was unsnapping Joe’s paper jumpsuit, which was wet with blood, and he uncovered a gaping gut wound. A wide pool of red soaked the concrete beneath Joe’s body, and a wide stream ran toward the drain in the center of the room.

He’d been bleeding for a while—steadily, fatally bleeding. Hours. Maybe days.

His skin, beneath the bruising, was a shocking blue-white. The fact that he was still alive, still breathing was nothing short of a miracle, but . . . but it was a battle he couldn’t win.

That was obvious to all of them.

“Joe,” Patrick said, and put his hand on the man’s forehead. “Joe, can you hear me?”

Joe’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused, and he said, “Jesus, took you long enough. Bitch got me. Sorry. Kinda lost my temper.”

“You? Never.”