He reached down and turned the doorknob.
To hell with caution, he told himself. And then he shoved the door open and threw himself into the hallway beyond, keeping low and swinging his arm up to point his pistol first one way, then the other, up and down the hall.
He saw no movement, no sign of any threat. He started to move again—
— when he heard the same creaking sound as before.
Chapel froze in place and gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. A little light came in through the windows of the bedroom behind him, enough to see that there were two other doors on the hall, and that to his left it ended in a stairwell leading down. The doors were all closed. He was certain the creaking had come from the stairs.
He strained his eyes to see anything. A silhouette. A shadow. Just a few steps from the top of the stairs, something big moved in the darkness, and he heard the creaking again.
The shape held something long and narrow — like a silenced pistol.
Chapel did what you were never supposed to do in such a situation. He improvised. Launching himself forward, he ran toward the top of the stairs and then threw himself down them, aiming right for the center of the shadow’s mass.
A shot rang out, a dull roar muffled by the silencer. The muzzle flash was only a dim flicker of light, but it was enough for Chapel to see that his target was a man in a suit. In midair Chapel threw out his arms to grab the man and pull them both rolling to the floor of the stair landing. He took the fall with his shoulder and spun around, weapon up and raised and ready to fire.
The long barrel of the silencer was already pointed right at his face. He’d taken his target down, but the chimera had jumped back to his feet before Chapel could even get his bearings.
“Ah, how sweet,” the chimera said. “You came back for her.” The chimera seemed to find this uproariously funny. He couldn’t seem to stop laughing.
That was when Chapel realized he wasn’t facing a chimera at all.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:39
“I’m just — heh — I’m going to turn on the — ha — lights,” Laughing Boy said. “Okay? Nobody needs to move, I just want to. To. Heh heh heh. Get a look at you.”
“Try anything and I will shoot,” Chapel told him.
“Yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha.”
Laughing Boy reached up and flicked a light switch. Chapel was ready for it, but still the sudden light dazzled him. He put his artificial hand up to shield his eyes. Laughing Boy had plenty of time to shoot him in the second or so it took his eyes to adjust, but the CIA freak didn’t take the opportunity.
Once Chapel could see, he understood the situation a little better. The two of them were crammed into the narrow landing of the stairs, Chapel in a tight firing crouch, Laughing Boy hunched over just a little. Laughing Boy’s silenced pistol was still pointed right at Chapel’s face.
Chapel’s sidearm was pointed straight at Laughing Boy’s heart.
Laughing Boy couldn’t stop giggling, perhaps at the absurdity of this situation. His whole body shook with mirth — except the arm that held his gun. The barrel of his pistol didn’t so much as bob up and down.
“Where’s Julia?” Chapel demanded. “Is she alive?”
Laughing Boy shrugged.
“Answer me!”
The CIA man smiled. He’d been laughing the whole time, but this was the first thing that made him smile. “Nobody gets to give orders around here. Not when we’ve both drawn down on each other.”
Chapel gritted his teeth. He thought of something that had occurred to him before. “Do me a favor, then. Blink your eyes a couple of times.”
Laughing Boy’s smile turned into a mischievous grin. “Oh, clever. But no. I’m not one of them. I’m just like you.”
“Bullshit,” Chapel said. “We’ve got nothing in common.”
“You’ll find out.”
“Enough of this. Put your weapon away or I’ll shoot,” Chapel demanded.
“I’m ready to die for my country,” Laughing Boy said. He chuckled at the thought. “I do what I have to do.”
“You’re going to tell me that’s why you’re here? In the interest of national security?” Chapel could hardly believe it.
Laughing Boy nodded. “She was exposed to the virus. I just need to bring her in for a couple tests.”
“Sure,” Chapel said. “That makes sense. That’s why you came with a silencer on your weapon. And why she called me to tell me you were trying to kill her.”
“Oh, all right — you’re cleverer than I gave you credit for, aren’t you? I was going to put a bullet in her and then burn her body. But, you know, it’s all details.” Laughing Boy chortled so hard his concentration broke for a second.
Long enough.
Chapel shot out one leg and swept it across Laughing Boy’s ankles. As he’d expected, the CIA man was fast and managed to jump back, avoiding the sweep, but that distracted him further and gave Chapel plenty of time to grab the flash suppressor on the end of the silenced pistol and shove it upward, toward the ceiling. The pistol discharged once, twice, and the stink of gunpowder filled Chapel’s nose and made him want to sneeze, but he fought it back and wrestled the weapon out of Laughing Boy’s hand. In a second he had his own pistol jammed up under the CIA man’s chin and the silenced pistol went arcing backward, over his shoulder, to clatter on the stairs below.
“Now,” Chapel said, “we start talking about who gets to give the orders.”
“Told you,” Laughing Boy said, his chest shaking with a case of the giggles, “I’m ready to die.”
He flung himself forward before Chapel had a chance to react, pushing them both down the stairs, flying head over feet. Chapel’s head spun as it struck the banister, then a riser on the way down. At the bottom he struggled to regain his feet, to spin around and find the other man. He was so disoriented it took him a second to realize he’d dropped his pistol.
Laughing Boy stood up from where he’d bent over to retrieve his own weapon. Chapel braced himself, ready to take the shots. Ready to die.
But Laughing Boy… laughed. Long and hard and fully, from the bottom of his chest. “Hear that?” he said. “They’re never supposed to be around when you need them, right? Am I right?”
Chapel strained his ears and heard it — the sound of police sirens, coming toward them. Someone must have seen him break into the building.
“I’m going to go now,” Laughing Boy said, holstering his weapon. “I hate cops, you know? So many questions, and they never believe your answers.”
“It helps if you tell them the truth.”
Chapel had never in his life told a joke that got such a big and heartfelt laugh.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+12:46
Laughing Boy disappeared into the darkness of the building. Chapel didn’t bother chasing him — he knew the man would shoot him if he tried. He grabbed his own handgun off the floor and holstered it, then searched for a door leading into the clinic. By the time he found it, red and blue lights were already stabbing through the thin curtains that covered the front windows. He heard police radios squawking, and he knew in any second they would start demanding he come out with his hands visible.