Burnofsky laughed. “Hitler’s bunker. I’ve been trying to think what this reminds me of, and that’s it. With the Russians closing in, there was Hitler in his underground bunker still handing out orders. Like he had an army to command. Dead man rapping out orders.”
“You treacherous, degenerate—”
“Shut up,” Burnofsky said. He gave them a wave, a tolerant gesture. “It’s over for you boys. All over but the punishment phase.”
There was an awful groan of bending metal, a shriek that was felt as much as heard. A crack split one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The power went out. The monitor went dark.
Emergency lights came on, casting dark shadows softened only slightly by a full moon hovering just over a nearby apartment building. “Plath, now,” Wilkes pleaded. “You said it. We have to go. Keats will … we can’t help him.”
But still Plath couldn’t move.
“Call that number back! I’ll speak with Lear!” Benjamin cried, motioning for the phone. “I want to tell her what we’ve done! I want Lear to know!”
Wilkes grabbed Plath’s arm and began to physically pull her away.
“We? We?” Burnofsky demanded, erupting in fury. “We, you freak? We? No we. No we. Me. Me! I did it! They’re mine and they’re blue, the blue goo not the gray, and do you know why they’re blue?”
He was in Benjamin’s face now, gripping the remote in his hand, spit flying from his lips.
Charles and Benjamin took a step back.
“Because that was the color …” A sob stopped Burnofsky. “Because … her eyes …”
“Is this about your nasty little girl?” Benjamin demanded, sneering.
“Damn it, Plath. Sadie! Come on!” But now even Wilkes could not look away.
“Did you …?” Burnofsky asked. “Did … you …?” He got control of himself again, and laughed. “You make this easy. I have something for you.”
Burnofsky drew a small object from his pocket. He held out a glass vial. It looked empty but for a hint of blue.
Charles knew instantly. “Get that away from us, Karl.”
“These are special,” Burnofsky said. “A special project I’ve been working on, just for the two of you.”
“Someone stop him!”
“It’s easy to program the SRNs with time codes, kill switches.… Much harder to program them for a particular, um, diet. Yes, a particular diet. But it’s doable. I have them that can eat only steel. Others that consume only hemoglobin. Cool, huh?” Over his shoulder, he said, “Run away, Sadie. Run while you’re able. I loved your dad. He was a good man. A good man. So run away. Save yourself if you can. Get far from here. You may survive for a while, until my babies come for you.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Now! Now!” Wilkes yelled.
Plath rose from Noah’s blood. Her knees and shins and hands were soaked, red.
“Noah,” she whispered. She touched his face, still sweating, still gasping like a dying fish.
“Go,” he said. “For me. Go.”
Plath tore herself away. No way she could survive trying to carry Noah. They would both die. Someone had to live to ensure that Lear did not.
Plath and Wilkes fled the room they’d never expected to leave alive.
“What corner did he say was still clear?” Wilkes asked.
“Southwest,” Plath answered. “Southwest.”
“Which is …”
“This way.” Plath led the way, first from the cathedral vastness of the Twins’ lair and back out into the entryway they’d come through. She considered the elevators and rejected them. Even if they just used them to get down a few floors, there was no knowing what they’d open onto. Past the easy way out, into a stainless-steel kitchen area, through a gloomy and oppressive formal dining room that looked as if it had never been used.
They pushed out through a narrow door into a similarly narrow hallway, then followed red exit signs to what a push confirmed was a stairwell.
There was smoke in the stairwell.
“Not too bad, we can breathe,” Wilkes said. “At least up here.”
“No other way,” Plath said, and plunged unhesitatingly down the concrete stairs.
“Great, seventy floors,” Wilkes said. “Here’s where it would have been a good thing to work out.”
“It’s all downhill,” Plath said.
They ran and tumbled and occasionally tripped down the stairs, half a floor, a landing, a turn, down another flight. Over and over again.
The smoke grew thicker but not yet enough to choke them, just enough to make their throats raw and their eyes sting.
Plath was quicker, but she waited for Wilkes to catch up when she pulled too far ahead. Down and down. Then, on the fortieth floor, a woman banged back the door, took a wild-eyed look at them, and raced away as though they were trying to catch her.
Down and down and down, and by the twenty-first floor the smoke was wringing hacking coughs from their throats and watering their eyes.
A massive shock hit the building and knocked them both off their feet. Plath came up with a skinned knee and bruised forearms. Wilkes was worse off. She had twisted her ankle and could only hobble.
“You need to go on ahead,” Wilkes said. “Go, go, I’ll be fine.”
Plath took her arm. “I left Noah. I’m not leaving you. Come on. Run now, hurt later.”