Caligula looked at him with amused disbelief. “New kid, huh? Well, new kid, you don’t question the man who’s saving your life.” Caligula knelt in front of Vincent. “What’s with you?”
“Two in her head.” He indicated Anya Violet. “Ambush. I’m in trouble. Renfield …”
“Renfield won’t be helping,” Caligula said. He stood up, turned now to Plath, looked at the crotch-shot man, still moaning in terrible pain. “Never aim for the balls. Aim for the center of mass. Unless you ever get good enough for head shots.”
“I didn’t … I didn’t mean to, to aim there, I just …”
“Well, you might as well finish him off.”
Plath shook her head violently. She held the gun away from her as if she would drop it on the floor. But she didn’t drop it. Instead her gaze was drawn to it, she held it up and looked at it.
Caligula laughed. “They are seductive, aren’t they?” Without needing to look he pointed his gun at the injured man and fired once. “See? There you go. You can tell yourself it wasn’t you that killed him.”
Caligula went around the smoky room picking up loose firearms. He checked each one, popped an empty clip and found a replacement inside blood-soaked clothing.
He handed one handgun to Keats and the other to Vincent.
“We’re probably going to have a bit of a fighting withdrawal here,” Caligula said, kneeling now to look at Anya. “Now, listen to me, whoever the hell you are. Vincent over there doesn’t want me to kill you. But if I have the slightest trouble with you—any trouble at all—I will ignore young Vincent and shoot you. I don’t know if you’ve been wired or not. If so, it’s going to take all your focus and concentration. Try. Try very hard.”
He stood up, wiped his bloody axe on a body, and said, “All right then. Follow me.”
The elevator was playing a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”
The buttons were bright. The walls were mirrored. Sadie saw herself. Pale. Freckles on the bridge of her nose. Hair matted with sweat.
It was Keats and her. Caligula had summoned the first elevator and boarded with Vincent and Anya. “You two come out ready for a fight,” he’d advised them. “And listen: don’t accidentally shoot me. Right? I will resent it.”
It had taken a while for a second elevator to come. Plath and Keats, waiting, staring at the call button, both self-conscious with their pistols, both with heads swirling with images of tumbling monsters.
“Oh shit!” Keats cried at one point. “I just saw color. The thing. Just like a flash of color.”
“Still gray scale here,” Plath said.
Keats looked at the crèche still in his hand, shook his head, irritated at his own stupidity, and slid the thing into the back of his jeans, where it should be safe so long as he didn’t sit down. Or get shot in the rear.
The elevator had come, and Plath had punched the button for the lobby.
“What do we do when the door opens?” Keats wondered aloud.
Plath had no answer. Or rather, she had one, but she didn’t want to say it. The gun weighed a hundred pounds. The grip was slick with sweat.
They passed the tenth floor.
The seventh.
“I take this side, you take that side,” Keats said. “I’ll go first. As soon as the door is wide enough.”
Plath nodded curtly, not trusting herself to speak, and not minding, for once in her life, that someone had basically told her what to do.
Third floor.
The elevator slowed.
Took a slight bounce.
Through the doors came the sound of a gunshot.
Plath wondered if she had wet herself. Wondered why it mattered, and the door opened and Keats shoved through and BAM!
And she stumbled after him.
Caligula stood there; Vincent and Anya leaned against a massive marble pillar.
“What the hell are you shooting at?” Caligula asked. Not angry, just curious.
“I …” Keats said.
The lobby lights were low, but still plenty of light to see two McLure security guards dead. Someone had shot them and dragged them out of the line of sight from the sidewalk outside. They were behind a stand-up billboard for an event at the Museum of Modern Art, sponsored by McLure Industries.
As Plath emerged all the way from the elevator, she saw two other bodies in the one Caligula had taken.
“Cops are on the way. Bad guys are on the street outside.”
“Is that them?” Plath nodded at an SUV and a compact car steaming exhaust out at the curb.
“Yes. We’re going to go and take the little car.” With a fluid motion Caligula grabbed Vincent, held him at arm’s length, and put a gun to his head. “Let’s go.”
Caligula marched Vincent like a prisoner through the glass doors, out onto the sidewalk, leaving Plath and Keats behind with a panting, shattered-looking Anya glancing around wildly, wondering if there was an escape, any escape.
Anya was, Plath realized, almost old enough to be her mother. And Plath, and a boy she’d never known before, were suddenly in the position of having to shoot the woman if she tried to run.
Vincent’s biots dragged themselves away.
Bug Man’s nanobots were in pursuit.
The chase was long, but now it was reaching a desperate point. Now V1 and V2 were stepping onto the eye. He had stayed on muscle fiber as long as he could because there he was at par in terms of speed.
But the time was up. Now he had no choice but to back onto the orb itself, and when the nanobots followed they’d be beyond the macrophages, out onto a slick, smooth surface—as slick as anything in the human body. They would drop to their wheels and trail their legs and outrun Vincent in a matter of seconds.