And suddenly it, too, was gone, leaving a tremendous hole in the side of Portcullis Building’s lower corner. Missing the struc-tural support the corner of the building provided, the rest crumbled in a heap of stone, sending a plume of dust up into the rain. The billowing cloud looked like a miniature nuclear detonation.
“Black One, this is Bishop. I’m in the river, north of the bridge. Come get me before I drown.” Bishop spat into the water. The remains of the Ferris wheel were still sinking slightly as water filled the capsule with the dead girls. Bishop smashed the helmet onto the glass of the capsule, his normal calm demeanor gone, along with his friend and half of London. The impact lined the glass, but the helmet bounced away into the brown swirling water and sank.
“On my way. The door or the rope?” The hovering ship banked sharply and raced back over the bridge and above Bishop’s head before slowly beginning to lower.
“Rope will do.” Bishop said.
The black nylon rope dangling from the still open door of the craft came within his reach. Bishop didn’t bother with the belay device-he just wrapped the rope around his arm a few times and shouted, “Go!”
“Where to Bishop?” Came the reply from the co-pilot, Black Two.
“To the next nearest portal. I’m going after him.” Bishop grunted as the Crescent’s engines blasted, increasing altitude until he was nearly as high as he had been on top of the Eye. The plane accelerated, swinging him on the rope, banking away from the river and over the top of Big Ben.
“But the device the MOD is bringing…” Black Two’s voice was hesitant, but he was right. The mission was to get the nuke inside the portal.
“If those lame dicks ever get here, tell them to throw the thing in after me.”
Bishop could see the next portal on the edge of the duck pond in St. James’s Park up ahead, filling the green clearing set aside in the middle of the gray city. He took a deep breath of the rainy air and made up his mind.
“Lower. Then do a flyover.”
“Roger,” came Black One’s reply.
The Crescent dipped a bit and the rope swung Bishop directly at the globe of crackling and spitting yellow fire. As the rain pelted it, the portal spit miniature lightning bolts, making this one look like it had electric hair. Bishop could smell the singed air as he got close. The rope swung right through the curvature of the wall of bright light, taking Bishop’s body with it.
A second later, as the Crescent sped past the globe, the rope swung out the other side of the sphere of light.
Bishop wasn’t on it.
FORTY-ONE
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
Queen tensed in the dark. As the door rattled from the other side, she prepared to lunge.
The door swung open easily and a woman in a lab coat with short spiky blonde hair stepped into the room, without any hint of caution. The woman simply stood in the darkened room as if she couldn’t remember why she had come in. Light streamed in from the outside with a pulsing electrical quality that made Queen certain that it came from something large, like a spotlight.
She had been in the room for what felt like hours. She was wedged between two walls of the room, in the corner up by the ceiling. Her feet were braced in the open air vent and her hands rested on the frame over the door. Between her hands, like a garrote, she clutched the wire from the lightbulb she had pulled down. The cord’s coarse black insulating rubber dug into her fingers. She was ready to kill, but she stayed her attack, even in the awkward position. The woman hadn’t noticed her, and she didn’t display any alarm at finding the light out or at finding the room empty.
She just stood there, looking into the empty space.
Then the woman casually turned and walked out of the doorway. The door began to swing shut after her, but Queen quickly allowed one end of her weapon to unravel from the hand that had been braced on the doorframe, balancing herself on one arm, over the door closer. Once the thick insulation was in the crack of the door, she let the door swing nearly shut, where the wire stopped it from closing entirely. She dropped to the floor, landing in a silent crouch.
She paused, straining to hear anything from outside the door, but heard nothing. She stood and cautiously peered around the door, and out the crack. The woman walked away along the high metal catwalk near the roof of the huge room where Queen had come in with Rook and Asya. But that had been hours ago. Only one of the overhead Klieg lights lit the giant room, leaving the huge space shadowed and dim. Whatever brightness had been making the gigantic space crackle before was gone now. As Queen watched, the woman in the lab coat continued along the metal of the catwalk, her footsteps clanging in the silence as she went. Her posture was weird. The woman looked like she didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. When she reached the top of the metal stairs leading down to the floor of the room and the intricate metal finger-like shape that filled it, she just stopped.
Queen ducked back into the room briefly, but when she heard no noise, she once again looked out the crack. The woman was simply standing and looking out across the massive room.
She’s acting like a robot.
Queen took a halting step out onto the catwalk. The woman remained inert. Queen took another soft step out of the room and fully onto the metal of the catwalk. At this section of the walkway, a solid plate sat on top of the grill that formed the catwalk around the room. She had noticed that there was a solid plate to stand on in front of every door around the walkway, when she explored earlier. The spiky-haired, frozen woman stood on a similar plate at the top of the stairs. Queen checked her surroundings and made sure she was alone with the woman. She couldn’t see the stairwell below, because of the plate’s placement, but she could see the rest of the room, down to the machinery at the bottom of the cavernous space and back along the walkway behind her. She noted the door that led to the tunnel through which they had entered the facility.
It was when she took a step off the metal plate and onto the see-through metal grating of the catwalk, that she sensed something was wrong. The small wispy white-blonde hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up. She tightened her hold on her makeshift garrote and froze in place, just like the lab-coated woman ahead of her. But nothing happened. Nothing in her line of sight was moving. The robot-like woman stood statue still.
What the hell?
Every sense she had told her to run, but she couldn’t detect danger from any direction. She turned and looked behind her again.
Nothing.
As her eyes scanned back toward her own position, she looked down at the grating. She could see through the grill and under the metal slab behind her.
The creature hung in a crouch, upside down, like a bat, from the underside of the catwalk, just under the metal plate. It was larger than the one she had killed, and its translucent domed head was bigger than her chest. Muscles bulged under its ghost-like skin. Its bulbous eyes, the size of grapefruits, regarded her. She could sense a silent countdown happening. Soon it would strike.
But Queen showed no fear. Instead, she returned the creature’s stare, imagining a hundred different ways she might be able to kill it. Size was an advantage, but as the only woman in Special Forces, she was accustomed to fighting larger adversaries and used her lower center of gravity, surprising strength and ruthless techniques to overcome them all. Of course, most of them didn’t have teeth and claws. Then again, some did.
The thing scrambled to the side rail of the catwalk and began to climb up over it. Queen rushed it with her homemade weapon, and as its head cleared the rail, she rammed the insulated cord across the beast’s throat and shoved hard. The monster’s white body was in an awkward position, its claws only barely holding on as it had tried to vault over the rail to attack her. The clear claws slid on the slick metal. She could hear a screeching noise as the last two nails lost traction. Then the creature shot away from her and down to the floor. The lack of resistance was so sudden that she nearly lost her own balance and went over after the thing.