"They attacked the camp?"
"Wiped it out,” Kayla said. “Killed everyone."
Connell's head fell back on the platinum grating. The metal burned his head, making him lift it up again. Pain, both physical and emotional, squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
"You're too late, Kayla."
"Why's that?"
"Because Dr. Reeves is blowing the whole place up.” the pain made Connell grunt his words out in short chunks. “I'd say you've got… about twenty-five minutes to live… but that's just a guess."
Kayla took a quick step forward and kicked Connell in his shattered shin. His hands still covered the wound — he felt one of the fingers in his right hand snap. Agonizing, shearing pain erupted from both wounds. He howled out in rage and protest.
"Shut the fuck up, Connell! don't have time for this melodramatic Hollywood bullshit! You can't think I'm that stupid, buddy boy, you just can't."
Connell didn't answer; he couldn't speak, he could barely hear her words through the tidal-wave of pain. Kayla pulled the Marco/Polo unit from her belt and stared at the screen. A shrilling beep faintly sifted from the unit.
Her face grew tight and wrinkled with rage. “Where are the others? Where are Lybrand and O'Doyle? I need all of you. How did you trick this machine?"
Connell stared at her through eyes slitted with hate. He said nothing. He had to buy time, give O'Doyle a chance to reach the surface.
"Oh I see,” Kayla said with a nod. Her eyes and teeth looked a devilish, glowing white in the half-darkness. “This toughness thing is going to your head, is it?” She set the Galil beside her, reached into a webbing pocket and removed a pair of pliers. She opened them and closed them slowly, letting Connell see every detail.
"I usually start with the knuckles, break every one on both hands, but I'm running out of time.” Kayla knelt down next to Connell's head. “So I'm going to start with your testicles. I'm going to crush the left one, unless you tell me what I want to know, and you do it quickly."
Connell's eyes jumped from slits to saucers.
"You don't like the sound of that, do you buddy boy? Well, although I don't actually have nuts myself, I've done it before and it looks pretty darn painful."
Connell lunged for her throat. She swatted his hand away as if he were a clumsy child, and with the same movement smashed his nose with her left fist. Spots swam behind Connell's closed eyelids. He again rolled to his back, hands moving from his leg to his nose, smearing his own blood across his face.
"Well, like my Daddy always used to say, soonest started, soonest done.” Kayla pulled a thin loop of copper wire from her webbing.
The countless spots of pain blaring through his body distracted him, but not enough to miss a sudden and repetitive click-click that echoed through the arched hallway. Kayla's head snapped around, her hands grabbing the Galil and pointing it toward the threat. Connell opened his eyes, knowing what he'd see.
A dense line of silverbugs bobbed and jerked with snappy movements. In the back of his mind he remembered that Veronica had the scrambler — he wondered if it was destroyed, and her along with it.
"What is this shit?” Kayla asked, a tremor of fear creeping into her voice.
"It means the monsters are coming,” Connell said as he quietly rolled to one side, reached behind his back and grabbed O'Doyle's knife. “They follow the lines of silverbugs… we've only got a few seconds before they attack."
"Attack? Do they have weapons?"
"They have knives,” Connell said. “A lot like this one."
He swung his body and drove the knife deep into Kayla's thigh. Even as the knife sank to the hilt, she turned her gun toward Connell, her face fused into an animalistic mask of fury. His mind swam with panicked disbelief as the barrel angled toward his face. He pushed himself closer and twisted the knife with all his strength.
Kayla threw her head back in a short grimace of pain, but it was all the time Connell needed. He smashed her face with a vicious, overhanded right, forgetting that she'd broken his index finger until her head rocked back from the blow and pain blasted through his hand. He ignored it.
Kayla fell to her ass, left hand scrambling behind her to slow her fall, right hand still trying to bring the Galil to bear. Connell dove on her, his battle cry a shout of agonizing pain that seemed to erupt from his leg, course up his body, and spill out of his mouth. He landed on her chest, the barrel of her weapon pointing up and past his side. The gun erupted on full automatic; spark-flashes of bullets briefly lit the hallway in a deadly strobe light. Connell knocked the gun away.
She reached for her belt. Connell grabbed at her hand in a panic, knowing she sought a knife. Now on top of her, he drew his head back and brought it forward with all his might, slamming it into her face. Kayla's nose burst in a gush of blood. Her head fell limply back and her body went slack.
Connell cocked back his left fist and blasted her in the face five more times for good measure, snarling and growling with each satisfying punch.
Veronica tried to breathe. Panic filled her soul like an inflating balloon. Her hands fumbled with the scrambler. Why wasn't it working? Its static-screech still filled the dome, but the knife-wielding silverbugs ignored it. They moved steadily toward her, stalking her, now only a few feet away.
Tears of terror filled her eyes. She twisted the volume knob, the frequency knob, anything she could find on the scrambler, fingers racing in a panic.
It made no difference.
The first silverbug sprang at her face. She brought her hands up instinctively. The leaping silverbug crashed into the hot-wired walkie-talkie, smashing it to pieces and scattering the now-useless components on the stone floor. The attacker fell to the ground, but before she could move the second silverbug sprang from her right, its sharp claws fixing fast on her hips and ribs.
The silverbug drove its jagged blade deep into her stomach.
Her throaty cry of agony seemed to awaken the countless maintenance silverbugs, now free of the scrambler's influence. Hundreds of them dove for the river and followed the current downstream, answering some unseen call.
She screamed in pain and terror, smashing down on the silverbug with fists that split open against the round, polished shell. It clutched tightly to her body. She couldn't shake it off. Its jagged blade pulled out and viciously plunged in again just as the last silverbug sprang for her head.
Veronica managed one last terrified, powerful scream before the silverbug's blade slashed through her throat, splattering her blood on its reflective shell, down her chest and on the floor. She fell back heavily against the console, still struggling against the slashing, cutting, stabbing silverbugs even as her life spilled away.
She turned with the last of her waning strength — as she fell to the ground under the weight of the attack, her fingers reached for the final button.
She clicked it home.
Above her prone body, ancient but well-cared-for machinery started to move. The dome trembled as mechanisms unused for eleven thousand years finally rumbled to life. Metallic groans, grinds, and squeaks filled the air. Gears turned in complaint, engines hummed to life.
Somewhere up in the ceiling, somewhere out of sight, the ancient machinery rotated. After the long wait, it finally turned. A massive spool started rolling out its miles-long cable. The orb lowered three feet and then stopped, bobbing ever so slightly from the sudden movement. There it dangled pendulously as the machinery's cries shrieked louder and more insistent.
And then it dropped.
Chapter Fifty