“Ada, what—“
Splash!
A giant burst out of the lake and slammed him off of his feet, knocking him back into the corridor. It happened so fast that he didn’t actually see it before he was flying through the air, his mind feeding him the picture as he hit the ground. He fell on his injured arm and cried out, as much from the shock of what he’d seen as from the stinging blast of pain.
• crocodile—
Leon was on his feet and stumbling away before he even knew he could get up—and the giant lizard, the croc that was thirty feet long if it was an inch, stepped into the corridor behind him with a mighty, bellowing roar. The cement trembled as the mammoth reptile crawled up from the waters of its home, gallons of black water streaming from its toothy, grinning jaws.
• jaws as big as me, bigger—
Leon ran, there was no pain, his heart hammering in a primal panic. It would eat him, it would shred him into a hundred screaming, bloody chunks—
• and the beast roared again, an impossibly low bellow that rattled his bones, that urged sweat to burst from every quaking pore—
• and Leon shot a look back, and saw that he was much, much faster than the grinning lizard. It was still climbing through the loading door, its tree-trunk legs short and squat, its incredible bulk too huge to maneuver so easily.
Leon swapped weapons in a daze of terror, his wound shrieking as he chambered a round into the Remington. He sidled backwards in an uneven gait, reaching a turn in the hall—
• and unloaded all five shells as quickly as he could pump them, the heavy rounds blasting the monster crocodile’s hideous snout.
It roared, swinging its head from side to side, blood erupting from its grinning face in buckets—but still it came, lumbering forward, dragging its armored tail from the pool of slime behind it.
Not enough, not enough power—
Leon turned and ran again, horrified at having to retreat, afraid of what would happen to Ada when he left the crocodile behind, but knowing that it would take another fifty rounds to stop it—that or a nuclear blast, and why was he still thinking, he needed to get away and then worry about what to do.
The booming steps of the giant filled his ears as he ran past the boxes, past the row of steel cylinders—
• and stopped running. His instincts cried out for sanity, but he had an idea—and as the terrible lizard took another twisting, thundering step, Leon turned and went back.
Let this work, it works in the movies, please God be listening—
The row of five gleaming canisters was inset on a thick shelf cut into the wall, held into place by a steel cable. There was a release button for the cable on the side of the shelf. Leon slapped it, and the heavy wire drooped, one looped end falling to the floor. Dropping the shotgun, he grabbed the closest of the cylinders, his muscles straining, blood pouring from his injured arm. He could feel thin, trickling trails of it sliding down his sweat-slick chest but didn’t stop, rocking back on his heels to free the can of com-pressed gas.
• there!
Leon jumped back as the silver can fell off the shelf, hitting the ground and rolling a few inches. He looked up and saw that the croc had covered another fifty feet—close enough for him to see the dull, dirty pits in its six-inch teeth as it roared again, close enough for him to smell the rotting-meat stench of its hot breath only a second later.
Leon raised one boot to the canister and shoved with all he had, the can lazily rolling back toward the gaining lizard. By some incredible stroke of fortune, the corridor floor had some slant to it; the two-hundred-plus pounds of cylinder seemed to pick up speed, spinning in the croc’s direction in a loose semicircle.
Backing away, he yanked the Magnum from his belt and pointed it at the shining can, forcing his fingers not to pull the trigger. The crocodile plodded forward, its tail slapping the walls so hard that stone dust rained down with each violent whip. Leon was in a state of total awe, in the grip of an instinctual terror so deep that it was all he could do not to turn and flee. Come on, you bastard—
Less than a hundred feet away, the crocodile and the canister met—and Leon pulled the trigger. The first shot pinged off the floor in front of the rocking can—and the grinning jaws opened, the massive beast lowering its head to catch at the obstacle, to push it aside.
• steady—
Leon fired again, and—
KA-BOOM!
• was thrown to the ground as the canister ex-ploded. In a blast of curled steel and igniting gases, the creature’s head was obliterated, disappearing like a popped balloon. Almost simultaneously, a wave of steaming gore hit Leon, bits of tooth and bone and shredded, smoking flesh clapping over him like a thick wet blanket.
Gagging, his ears ringing and arm bleeding, Leon sat up as the headless carcass settled to the floor, the legs crumpling beneath the brainless weight of the reptilian monster. He pressed his blood-covered hand against the wound, exhausted, sick, in pain—and as deeply satisfied as he’d felt in quite some time.
“Gotcha, you dumb shit,” he said, and smiled. When Ada came jogging up the corridor a moment later, that’s how she found him—staring at his handi-work in dazed and dizzy triumph, bloody and bleed-ing and grinning like a little kid.
TwEnfY-TnREE
LEON WAS WEARING A WHITE UNDERSHIRT
beneath his uniform; Ada tore it into strips and bandaged his arm with it, fashioning a kind of sling for him to wear once she’d slipped his ruined shirt back on. He’d lost enough blood to be dazed, almost helpless, and Ada used his mild shock to explain herself as she tended to him, feeling mildly shocked herself by the complex emotions that warred inside of her.
“... and I thought she looked familiar. I thought I’d met her through John, and I almost caught up to her—but she must have slipped past me. I got lost in the tunnels, trying to find my way back....” Nothing of truth, but Leon didn’t seem to notice—just as he didn’t seem to notice the gentle, careful way she touched him, or the very slight tremor in her voice as she apologized for a third time, for leaving him behind.
He saved my life. Again. And all I have to give him in return are lies, calculated deceit in exchange for his selflessness....
Something had changed for her when he’d taken the bullet in her stead, and she didn’t know how to change it back. Even worse, she didn’t know that she wanted to change it back. It was like the birth of a new feeling, some emotion that she couldn’t name but that seemed to fill her up; it was unsettling, uncomfort-able—and yet somehow, not altogether unpleasant. His clever solution to the problem of the nearly invincible crocodile—the creature that she’d only just been able to hold at bay, in spite of her best efforts—had made the unnamed feeling even stron-ger. The hole in his arm was only a flesh wound, but from the streaks of fresh blood across his smooth chest and stomach, she knew that it had been hurting bad—draining him, killing him as he’d worked to save her ass.
Get rid of him now, her mind hissed, leave him, don’t let this affect the job—the job, Ada, the mission. Your life.
She knew it was what she had to do, that it was the only thing to do—but when he was fixed up as best as she could manage, and her pathetic cover story had been told, she conveniently forgot to listen to herself. Ada helped him to his feet and led him away from the gut-splattered scene of the monster reptile’s demise, spouting off some nonsense about having found what looked like an exit when she’d been lost. Annette Birkin was gone; as soon as Leon had led the crocodile out of the dump, she’d scaled the ladder and checked—and seen that Annette had retained enough sense to start up the fans and lower the bridge before running, effectively blowing Ada’s other op-tions for escape. The woman was possibly psychotic, but not a moron—and although she’d been wrong about Ada’s source of purpose, she’d been dead on as to the purpose itself. To wrap the mission, Ada would have to get to the lab as quickly as she could, before Annette could do anything ... final—and Leon, si-lent and stumbling Leon, would add to her time by half.