Callsign: Queen - Book I (A Zelda Baker - Chess Team Novella) Read online

  A dark figure moved wraithlike through the dust and debris that hung in the air. Instinctively, Andrew pulled the trigger. The gun jerked wildly in his hands, and his shot blew out a light in the ceiling halfway down the hall. The figure moved closer and he recognized the woman they had seen on the security video. She didn’t bat an eye, but slowly leveled her own pistol at him. He cried out, half in challenge, half in fear, and pulled the trigger repeatedly, firing off a rapid barrage. When the last round was expended, he kept pulling the trigger, as if he could squeeze one more round from the empty clip.

  And then he heard a loud pop, and thought for a moment that he had, indeed, gotten off another shot, but he was already flying backward. He hit the ground and pain like he never dreamed possible burned through every inch of his body, radiating out from his gut. He screamed until he thought his vocal cords would tear in two.

  He sensed, rather than heard, the woman’s approach. He looked up to see her looming over him, her pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, its razor edge gleaming in the artificial light. She was beautiful, with golden hair and eyes of deep indigo. And then he saw the angry skull branded in her forehead. His lips moved, but he could not cry out. With a supreme effort of will, he raised his empty pistol, but she kicked it out of his hand.

  “You’re not Darius, are you?” She spoke through gritted teeth that, in his pain and stupor, looked to Andrew like fangs.

  He shook his head. “No, I’m Andrew. I just do computers and stuff like that.”

  “But you work here, don’t you?”

  He sensed he should lie, make up some sort of story that would paint him as an innocent victim, but he found he could not. Her eyes held him mesmerized and her terrible beauty compelled him to tell the truth. “Yes, I do.”

  “So you are partly responsible for these experiments on humans. You helped turn them into monsters.”

  He nodded. The woman, her expression unchanging, kicked him. Fire erupted between his legs but the pain of the gunshot rendered it negligible. He tried to draw his knees up to his chest but he lacked the strength.

  “That’s a nasty wound,” she said, motioning to the bullet hole in his stomach. “It will take about fifteen minutes, but it’s going to kill you. You don’t deserve the time, but if you believe in God, now’s your chance to make your peace.” The last thing he saw of her was her blonde hair swinging to and fro.

  Despair turned to bitterness as the inevitability of his death took hold in his mind. This couldn’t be happening! Their security force, Darius’s tricks and Darius himself, should have been enough to stop a solitary woman. What had happened to Darius, anyway? Why hadn’t he come to Andrew’s aid? Darius had left him to fend for himself, probably hiding or even running away to save his own neck. Well, they could all kiss his ass. Andrew wouldn’t be the only one to die this day.

  With strength borne of bitterness and despair, he rolled over onto his stomach and crawled to his desk, leaving a thick smear of blood on the white tile. Pain and loss of blood made him dizzy, but he managed to haul himself up far enough that he was able to reach his computer mouse and keyboard. A few clicks, a single command, and it was done.

  She’d be begging God for mercy long before he did.

  Andrew grinned at the thought of every remaining oborot running loose on a turning night, with hours left until dawn.

  Something clattered behind him and he looked back to see a dark object the size of a baseball bouncing toward him. Then the world erupted in a blinding flash and he was dead, torn apart by a grenade before his body could send pain signals to his mind.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye caused Queen to hit the ground and roll. The air above her was alive with a sound like hypersonic hornets, and the wall behind her was torn apart. A Metal Storm weapon! She’d had enough of these things to last a lifetime. She looked for a target but the shooter had already ducked around the far corner out of sight. She did the same, sliding back into the hallway.

  “You should have taken my offer.” The voice was the same one that had taunted her in the amusement park.

  “You must be Darius,” she replied

  “My reputation precedes me. I’m flattered.”

  Her mind raced for a solution. She was outgunned and had no cover to mask her approach. She could pitch a grenade down the hall, but he was likely to be expecting that, and would clear out long before it went off. She could follow the hall and see what lay in the direction away from the computer lab she had just blown up. She could continue her destruction and force him to pursue her. Of course, he knew this place better than she did, and she might just walk into yet another trap. She gritted her teeth. Caution of any kind was not her usual M.O., but she was determined to stay alive for two reasons: to get revenge for Armina and to find out what happened to Rook.

  “So, what brings you here? How did you find us?”

  Queen thought the question was odd. He had to know that Manifold Gamma, Beta and Alpha had been compromised and that Richard Ridley no longer ran the company. But if he didn’t, that information might be more powerful than any bullet. “You haven’t heard, have you?” she called down the hall.

  The man didn’t reply. He was no doubt trying to figure out her angle.

  “Manifold has been shut down,” she said. “Richard Ridley is dead.”

  “Bullshit,” the man said quickly.

  “When was the last time you heard from him?”

  No reply.

  “We found your location thanks to intel recovered from one of the Manifold facilities.”

  “Ridley would have destroyed the—”

  “Ridley fell out of a helicopter. Two hundred feet. Hit every branch on the way down. He was in pieces when we found his body.” This was only partly true. Ridley had actually jumped out of the helicopter and all they’d recovered was his arm. He reappeared again, more dangerous than before, but they’d taken him out for good—buried him under a mountain. But Darius didn’t need to know all that. All that mattered was that Ridley wouldn’t be coming back. “Think about it. How else could we have found you?”

  No retort answered her question. Darius might or might not believe her, but he wasn’t giving up the fight. Quick as a flash, he swung around the corner, aiming his Metal Storm weapon in her direction. Queen had been waiting for the attack though, and she managed to fire off a single round and duck back before another hail of projectiles shredded the wall a few feet above where she had lain. She’d had only the briefest glance at her enemy, but now she had a visual to go with the voice: a tall, barrel of a man with pale skin, a long toucan beak of a nose, and scars crisscrossing his shaved head.

  “Not a bad shot for a girl.” She took satisfaction at the note of pain underlying his forced bravado. “You winged me, but it’s just a scratch. Want to try again? You should be able to hit a big target like me.”

  She remained silent. He would be wondering if he’d gotten her. Perhaps, if she played dead, she could induce him to come her way. Get him halfway down the hall with nowhere to hide and he was hers.

  “Why so quiet? Did I hurt your feelings? Come now, I gave you free rides on my amusements, the least you can do is talk to me.” His laugh was deep and rich; it was a sound that, in another time and place and coming from another person, might have raised her spirits. Now, it only served to fuel her ire. “You’re playing possum, now, aren’t you?” he called. “I thought you were braver than that.”

  Still she kept her silence. She was about to go with plan B, and sneak back down the hall behind her, blowing shit up, when Darius cried out in surprise and another burst of fire echoed through the hallway. Wary of a trap, Queen crawled back to the corner, but then she heard an inhuman snarling sound, and she knew what was happening before she even saw it.

  Darius was rolling on the ground, locked in combat with an oborot almost as big as him. This was her chance. She charged full-bore at the two combatants, firing at them as she ran. The way she saw it, it did not matter which
of them she hit. Darius had to die for what he and the others had done here. The oborots, even after they returned to their fully human states, were doomed to lives of madness, interspersed with monthly transformations into mindless, violent monsters. Killing them would be a mercy.

  She was halfway down the hall when something crashed into her from behind. She went down under a heavy weight, and just managed to twist around so that she landed on her side instead of flat on her face. The sound of Darius’s fight with the oborot had masked the approach of another of the creatures, and it had chased her down from behind. Her gun hand was pinned beneath her body but her knife hand was free. She drove an elbow into its jaw and followed with a slash to the throat. It was a shallow cut, but the oborot drew back, roaring in surprise and pain. Now that she understood what the creature was, she could see the human being behind the monster. Its eyes, however, were pure beast, and it would not stop until it killed her. The creature swiped at her, its fingers held like claws, and its nails raked across her cheek. Queen slashed again, opening a gash across the oborot’s thickly muscled abdomen. The oborot rocked back and raised its head as it roared in pain. She reversed the knife and plunged it into the beast’s heart. The oborot rolled off her and her knife was yanked from her grip as the creature struggled to pull the blade free. Queen sat up, leveled her Mark 23, and took out the Oborot with a single shot to the temple.

  Before she could move, a shadow loomed over her and someone gave her gun hand a vicious kick, knocking her weapon from her grasp. She rolled underneath another kick and came to her feet facing Darius.

  His eyes, alive with malice, seemed to glow against his skin. The scars on his head lent to his sinister air. He stood tensed, ready to attack, his hands opening and closing as if eager to crush her.

  “Thanks for getting that thing off of me. If you’d been a better shot you might have killed it.” He circled to Queen’s left. Her gun was somewhere behind her, and doubtless he would love to get his hands on it. “The damn thing took off with my gun if you can believe it. A few of them are cleverer than the others. It didn’t know what the hell the gun was, I’m sure, but it carried it away all the same. I hope it wraps its mouth around the barrel.” He smiled as Queen moved in lock step with him, keeping herself between him and the gun she didn’t dare turn around to look for. “That just means I get to kill you with my bare hands. I’m going to like that.” His pearly white teeth glistened as he smiled.

  The man outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds, but Queen was not the least bit intimidated. She wasn’t the first woman in special ops for nothing, and she relished hand-to-hand combat. She especially loved the look in the eyes of a bigger opponent the moment he realized he was being beaten by a cute little girl. In fact, she’d made quite an impression on Chess Team leader Jack Sigler, call sign: King, when she sparred with him for ten brutal rounds. Afterward, he had invited her to join his squad.

  “A little less conversation, a little more action,” she said. With that, Queen sprang into motion, striking out with a quick jab that snapped his head back. Darius recovered instantly, and caught her wrist as she followed with a right cross. She yanked back, freeing herself from his powerful grip and ducked too late to evade his hook. The blow glanced off the top of her head and made her ears ring, but she’d been hit harder in her lifetime. Much harder.

  Darius waded in, throwing punches with sufficient force to cave in Queen’s skull should any of them find their mark. She evaded them and struck back with a leg kick to the inside of his front knee. A low grunt was the only indicator that he’d felt any kind of pain. For her part, Queen hoped she hadn’t fractured a bone in her foot. The man’s legs were like tree trunks.

  She slipped another of his punches, flattened her hand like the blade of a knife, and drove her fingertips into his eye. Darius roared and swung a wild back fist that she took in the shoulder, but it was still powerful enough to stagger her. Sensing an advantage, Darius charged.

  Queen spun out of the way and tripped Darius as he passed, sending him tumbling to the ground. She realized a split-second too late that this was what he had been counting on. He hadn’t been trying to take her down at all. He was going for her gun!

  She leaped onto his back just as he was rising up on all fours. Lightning fast, she locked her legs about his waist, clamped her arm around his neck, and squeezed. She felt him try to tuck his chin but he was too late. Her arm was over his windpipe, and she was putting all she had into the choke.

  She expected him to roll over and try to fight his way out of the chokehold, but instead he slowly, but surely, climbed to his feet. He was stronger than she would have believed. He took hold of her arm with both hands and pulled. Queen held on with everything she had, knowing it was now a race against time. If Darius managed to break her grip before he lost consciousness, she might be too spent to keep up the fight.

  Darius thrashed about, making Queen feel like she was riding a bucking bronco. Then, without warning, he hurled himself backward, slamming Queen into the wall. Her backpack lessened the impact slightly, but the air was forced from her lungs in a rush. I can’t catch a break, she thought as she gasped for breath. Darius dashed her against the wall again and her head struck, sending a torrent of pain shooting through her skull and down her spine.

  He’s got to be almost out by now, she thought, and tightened her grip on his thickly muscled neck. Her arms burned from exertion and her head felt like Humpty Dumpty after the great fall.

  Darius staggered forward and let go of her arm with his right hand, still working with his left to loosen her grip. For a moment, Queen thought he was losing consciousness, but then her eyes fell on what lay on the floor a few steps away. Her Mark 23. If Darius got hold of it, he’d kill her, and if she released her grip on him, there was no way she’d beat him to the weapon.

  “Oh hell no you don’t!” Nearly out of options, she bit down on his ear as hard as she could. Salty blood filled her mouth as her teeth bit through flesh and sank into gristle. Darius grabbed at her head, all thoughts of the gun forgotten. She shook her head back and forth like a pit bull. Darius’s fingers brushed her head, but his strength was ebbing fast. He made a low, wheezing sound and, at long last, sank to the ground unconscious.

  Queen rolled off the man, spat out a mouthful of blood and gristle, and lay gasping on the floor. Every muscle in her body felt like water. She was spent, but she had to go on. Still panting from exertion, she stood on trembling legs and recovered her weapon. She spotted the handle of her knife jutting from the chest of the oborot and she moved to retrieve it when she heard the most unwelcome sound imaginable.

  Oborots were coming.

  Lots of them.

  Chapter 13

  Spewing every curse she could think of, Queen took off running away from the sound of the pursuing beasts. She turned a corner, burst through the double-doors that barred her way, and found herself in a laboratory. Every metal surface was polished to a high sheen, and walls, ceiling and floor were all snow white. To think such evil could have been done here was beyond her ability to comprehend.

  Lining the shelves to her left were glass containers where brains and other body parts were preserved. Beside the shelf were industrial sized containers of formaldehyde. She knew what she had to do.

  Her eyes alit on an emergency exit on the opposite side of the room, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She made a beeline for it, reaching into her pack as she ran and fishing out another grenade. She broke through the door and found herself in a deep, narrow concrete shaft. A single security light glowed a sickly yellow, revealing iron rungs leading up to the trapdoor. Queen made some hasty calculations and, without allowing time for second thoughts, activated the grenade, pitched it back into the lab in the midst of the containers of formaldehyde, and started to climb.

  One…

  Her palms seemed to stick to the cold metal as she climbed.

  Two…

  Her arms, weakened by the fight with Darius, moved
robotically, driven more by her determination than by any remaining strength.

  Three…

  She had perhaps two seconds remaining before the grenade blew, and she was only halfway to the top. Roaring out a battle cry, she clambered up like a spider, recklessly hurling herself from rung-to-rung. If she lost her grip, she would die.

  Four…

  Her eyes locked on the trapdoor looming tantalizingly just out of reach. She thought of Rook, and wondered if he was alive and, if so, would he try to find out what happened to her. She reached for the latch to unlock the trapdoor.

  Five…

  She released the latch and pushed the door open just as the explosion ripped through the lab. The force hurled her out into the cool night air, and she fell hard to the ground.

  Queen stood and looked at the smoke that poured from the open trapdoor. She took no comfort in the sight. Armina was still dead, and those wretched souls upon whom Darius and Slifko had performed their sick experiments were doomed to lives as insane killing machines. She wondered if Deep Blue would find a way to notify the authorities of what lived in the underground lab or if he would take other measures. The oborots had to be put down for their own sakes and for those of the innocent people they might victimize.

  She took a few deep breaths and tried to collect herself. After a minute’s rest, she was ready to move on. That was when the first beastly head poked up out of the escape shaft.

  The oborots had braved the burning lab and, once again, they were coming for her.

  She turned and ran, dashing with reckless abandon through the darkened streets, her mind racing faster than her feet. The shortest path of escape would be east, directly to the port where she had arranged for a boat to meet her. She glanced back and saw more oborots joining the chase. She wondered if all the remaining beasts were on her trail. Probably. They had to smell the blood, her own and that of others, on her. She resigned herself to the fact that she now had to outwit an entire pack of crazed creatures that wanted her blood.