“Always,” Mormont said, and reached down with the hand that held the taser to fetch something off his belt: heavy duty handcuffs I recognized from when he had placed them on me came up in his hand, two pairs, and he tossed them at me. I caught them easily and held them up. “Put them on your mother, then put the other pair on yourself. Slowly. Any sudden moves and you’ll be picking lead out of holes in your body for the next two weeks.”
I sauntered forward, trying to convey defiance with my posture as I came up to my mom but kept my glare firmly rooted on Mormont. “I hope you’re at least getting a big fat cash bonus for this.”
Mormont smiled tightly. “You have no idea.”
“Oh?” I leaned down to where my mother lay, her face pressed against the mat. “I’m worth a lot to Omega?”
“An inconceivable amount,” he replied. “About ten million.”
I paused and looked up at him, letting out a low whistle. “Dollars?” When he nodded, I arched my eyebrows in surprise. “Wow. Wonder how much they’ll pay you for two succubi?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “This one has some miles on her.”
“And yet still,” my mother said from all fours, “I’ll find it in me to run you over, you pr—” There was a hissing noise as Mormont pulled the taser’s trigger again and Mom collapsed onto her face, writhing.
“Even if it’s not double,” Mormont said, as casual as if he hadn’t just run voltage through a living, breathing human being, “it’ll be enough to live comfortably for a nice long time, far from whatever petty disputes you’ve got going on here.”
“You can’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from this,” came a voice from the broken door. I saw a hand reach in as a figure followed. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief but I caught myself. Dr. Quinton Zollers stepped onto the broken glass, feet crunching with every step, a pistol aimed at Michael Mormont. “Unless you think you can outrun a bullet?”
“Doc,” Mormont said with a grim look that never left him, even as the gun still pointed at me, “don’t make me kill this girl. If she comes with me, she’ll at least be alive – that’s how Omega wants her.” He thumbed the hammer again, for emphasis, and I heard it click as he decocked and recocked it. “But if you push me, I’ll put her brains all over that wall before you can—”
“Then you’ll have Omega after you and pissed off as well as the Directorate.” Zollers didn’t flinch. “I’m a counselor, and as such I’d advise you not to get yourself killed here, because if you harm that girl, you’re a dead man, even if I don’t kill you, and you know it.” Zollers raised his pistol, looking down the sights at Mormont. “So…do you want to die today? Because if you shoot her, you’re signing your own death warrant. Put the gun down.”
Mormont pursed his lips. “I’m not gonna just disappear into the Arizona desert.”
Zollers didn’t blink. “You’re either going to the prison under the ground or you’re going under the ground. Your choice. Make it quick. My finger is starting to itch.”
Mormont was still, for just a moment. “In that case—”
I didn’t hear his last words, blotted out as they were by gunshots, as Zollers emptied his gun into Mormont, every shot echoing through the room as loudly as if it were fired with the barrel right by my ear. I dodged out of the way, pulling my mother back to the ground with me. Mormont’s gun fired twice as his muscles contracted one last time.
There was a heavy smell of gunpowder in the air as the smoke began to swirl. I lay on the ground next to Mother, and I watched Mormont collapse onto his back, unmoving. I rolled to him and yanked the gun and taser out of his grasp. There was no sign of movement on his face and he had already stopped breathing. There were a series of red circles spreading out of holes in his torso. I was reminded of Andromeda again as I watched one of the wounds bleed, blinking as his white shirt turned red beneath his suit coat.
I looked up at Zollers, his calm eyes looking at the dead man next to me, his pistol still pointed at Mormont, and by extension of my proximity to the body, me. “Doc?” I asked, jarring him back to himself. He stared down the sights at me, and I caught a flicker of something in his eyes that scared me. “Doc? You can put the gun down now.”
He stared hard down the sights at me for another long few seconds before his arm started working again and the pistol ratcheted down, slowly, a little at a time until it was by his side. He then seemed to take a breath, finally. “Never did trust that son of a bitch,” he said with a nod at Mormont.
“Have you ever killed anyone before?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“No,” he said, staring at the body. “No, I haven’t. Counseled a lot of people about it, though.” He laughed, a little rueful. “You’d think that would have prepared me for how it’d feel, hearing them talk about it, but…” He wore a smile that wavered, then disappeared. “…it really doesn’t.”
I felt a little pity for him, though I didn’t know where from. I had killed before, and I hated it. I cast a look at the two dead vampires on the mats, and realized I didn’t really feel that bad for them because they were beyond subhuman, but I had regretted it when I had to kill Gavrikov. I even felt bad about killing Wolfe, though I could barely admit it to myself, let alone fathom where the hell that infinitesimally small remorse came from. “It’s okay,” I said to him for the first time, and meant it, almost as repayment for all the times he’d told me the same. “You might want to put the gun down,” I told him as I watched his hand shake. He looked down at it and his fingers unclenched. The pistol fell from his grasp and to the mat as he stared at it. I watched him, saw his eyes widen and his head jerk up a moment before a taser swung around and hit him in the side of the head as he tried to dodge.
I whirled and saw Mother holding the taser by the prongs that had been lodged in her skin. She dropped it to the ground. “I didn’t really want to knock him out like that,” she said, and I looked – Zollers was facedown on the mat, eyes closed – “but I need Directorate complications right now like I need another hundred thousand volts.” She centered her gaze on me. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not going with you,” I said, already down and checking on Dr. Zollers. I touched him briefly with my ungloved hands, long enough to establish he had a strong pulse and was still breathing, but no more than a couple seconds. “Are you insane? He just saved us from being kidnapped by Omega.”
“And that’s all well and good,” she said, and I felt her come up to my shoulder, “except that the next logical step would be for us to be confined in our own private cells by the Directorate instead.” I looked up and saw her blue eyes flash cold. “And I personally am not looking to be a prisoner of Erich Winter. Not now, not ever.” She reached down and I felt the pressure of her hand on me, on the shoulder, squeezing my arm, tugging me to my feet. I came up and threw it off.
I watched her eyes blaze in reaction when I did it, and I planted my feet as she stared at me. “I’m not going with you.”
“I guess you’ve forgotten what happens—”
“When I break the rules?” I asked. “When I don’t follow your commands?” I circled her and she circled me, keeping our distance in a staredown unlike anything I’d done with her before.
“Everything I do, I do for your own good,” she said, and it poured a little more gasoline on the fire inside me. “The things I do for you, even now, with Andromeda, are for your future—”
“You still treat me like a child,” I said and stopped circling, causing her to do the same. “Feed me a line about rules, or how it’s all for my own good, and stop short of trusting me with the truth.” I smiled, and tried to make it devastating. “All these years and you’re still trying to keep me in a little box in the dark.”
She took a step forward and caught me flatfooted. It was stupid for me to be so smug that I didn’t expect her to come at me, but I didn’t, and she landed a slap on my cheek that sent me into a turn and a fall that I rolled out of when I hit the mat. I came to one knee near the wall and looked down at something next to me, and realized it was the katana. I looked at her, then at the sword, and picked it up and pointed the blade toward her, staring down the sleek metal surface, at my reflection in it, distorted and rounded. Then I looked up at her, at the shock on her face.