But that meant—
A gunshot roared across the top of Stone Mountain, drowning out the blaring music that came from below. Chapel spun around and saw Malcolm looking down between his feet.
“Can’t see very well in the dark, can you, Funt?” the chimera asked. “I can.”
“Wait,” Chapel said. “Just wait.” He held his hands up, outstretched, toward the chimera. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You’ve been manipulated, Malcolm. You were sent here like a heat-seeking missile.”
“I don’t know what that is,” the chimera told him.
“Just — just take my word for it. They made you come here. You’re doing somebody else’s bidding.”
“You’re talking about the Voice,” Malcolm said, nodding.
“Sure — the — the voice. What voice?”
“The Voice on the telephone. The one that told us we would be free, and then the fence came down. The one that told us where to find the ones we wanted to kill. The Voice doesn’t make us do things,” the chimera said, smiling. “It helps us. It helps us do the things we want to do.”
Like killing Funt. Malcolm had a very good reason to want him dead. Just like the chimera in New York had good reason to want to kill Helen Bryant, the woman who made him, the woman who locked him away in an armed camp for twenty-five years.
Malcolm wasn’t being manipulated. Used, yes. But he was only being used to do a thing he wanted anyway.
Revenge was a powerful motivator. In Special Forces training they’d taught Chapel it could break through almost any disincentive — you could torture a man, you could take away everything he loved, but in the end you were only making him more resolved. They’d taught him that the way to fight terrorists wasn’t to punish them, but to convince them you were really on their side.
“They’ll kill you when you’re done,” Chapel told the chimera. “You do understand that, don’t you? They’ve already sent men to kill you. But I can keep you alive. I can protect you.”
“I’m going to kill Jeremy Funt, now, mister. It was nice talking,” Malcolm sneered, “but maybe you’ll shut up until I’m done.”
“No!” Funt screamed, and he fired again. The bullet ricocheted off the rock not three feet from where Chapel stood. He ducked reflexively. “No — you don’t want me. I never hurt you, Malcolm. But he”—Funt stabbed one finger in Chapel’s direction—“he killed one of your brothers! Kill him!”
“Wow. You think you know me so well, don’t you, Jeremy Funt?” Malcolm said, stalking toward the ex-FBI agent. “You don’t know me at all. He killed Brody, yeah. The Voice told me as much. But you know what? Where I come from, if somebody’s strong enough to kill a chimera, that’s something to respect. Killing us is hard. Apparently fooling us is a lot easier. That’s the weakling’s way.”
Funt raised his pistol again, but before he could pull the trigger Malcolm was running — leaping toward him. Chapel reached for his own sidearm and only then realized he didn’t have it. It was in Funt’s pocket.
“No!” he shouted, as the chimera collided with Funt. The pistol fired, and a moment later fired again — Chapel could see the muzzle flares as explosions of light between Funt and the chimera — and then Funt’s arm flew up, bending in all the wrong places. The chimera stomped on Funt’s foot and the man screamed.
“No,” Chapel shouted again, as he closed the distance between himself and the chimera. “No!” He locked his fingers together and swung both of his fists down, hard, into Malcolm’s left kidney.
The pain of getting punched there was usually enough to incapacitate a grown man. It could cause massive internal bleeding and even death and was an illegal move in boxing and every martial arts competition for good reason. It was a nasty, low blow, and Chapel had been trained to deliver it with devastating precision.
It made Malcolm stop what he was doing for a fraction of a second.
Chapel figured that would have to be enough.
Funt was down on the ground, scrambling away from the chimera like a crab, pushing with his heels and his good arm just to escape. His pistol was gone, probably knocked out of his hand when Malcolm broke his arm.
Chapel decided to stop worrying about Funt, as just then Malcolm was turning around to face him — and smiling wickedly.
“You really want some of this?” Malcolm asked.
Chapel dropped into a defensive posture, his fists raised like they were going to have a nice, friendly boxing match.
“Show me what you’ve got,” he said.
The chimera came at him like a runaway train.
STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:12
There was no way Chapel could stop Malcolm, or even slow him down. The chimera was just too strong, and he outweighed Chapel by a good fifty pounds. So he didn’t try to stand his ground. There was no way he could move out of the way of Malcolm’s charge, either — he was just too fast.
So he twisted on the ball of one foot and let Malcolm hit him, but he rolled with the bull rush, twisting around to slide over the chimera’s back as he went past. Chapel landed on his feet, though not as firmly as he would have liked — the ground was too uneven to stick the landing.
Still, he was suddenly behind Malcolm where Malcolm couldn’t see him.
If he’d been fighting a human opponent, Chapel could have ended things then and there. He could have wrapped his good arm around his opponent’s neck and put him in a sleeper hold. Block the blood flow to the carotid artery, even for a few seconds, and a human body will simply shut down.
He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. But he was out of other ideas.
He brought his right knee up, hard, into the small of Malcolm’s back. The chimera didn’t even grunt in pain — maybe it felt like Chapel was tickling him — but he was ninety-nine percent human, which meant he had the same reflexes as a human being. He arched his back away from the blow, throwing his head back toward Chapel.
Chapel threw his artificial arm around Malcolm’s throat and squeezed.
The prosthetic arm was designed to respond to subconscious commands. Normally Chapel didn’t have to think about how the arm should move, it just acted like a real arm. He could override it, though. He could give it conscious commands and it would obey them, even in ways a real arm wouldn’t.
He told his arm to squeeze, and it acted like a metal noose around the chimera’s neck. It tightened like a vise and stayed locked shut. A living arm could get fatigued. Its muscles were elastic enough to give way as Malcolm bucked and tried to break loose. Chapel’s prosthetic arm didn’t have those weaknesses.
The chimera gasped and spat in rage as he tried to get free. He tried to reach around behind him, to grab Chapel and hurt him enough to make him let go. His fingers found the side of Chapel’s shirt and he tore through the fabric, maybe intending to gouge into the flesh beneath.
Chapel responded by using his good right arm to deliver punch after punch to the side of Malcolm’s head.
The chimera screamed in frustration and ducked forward, bending at the waist until he lifted Chapel right off the ground. With his arm locked around Malcolm’s throat Chapel had no option but to go along for the ride.
For a second he was airborne and flopping back and forth, like a rider holding on to a bucking horse. Malcolm twisted from side to side, trying to shake him free, but the only way that would happen was if Chapel’s prosthetic arm gave out. Chapel forgot all about hitting Malcolm and just tried to hold on, tried to get his legs around Malcolm’s waist, tried to grab the chimera with his free hand.
Then Malcolm started to run — straight toward the side of the mountain. Straight toward the laser show still playing out below.