Abrams went down on the floor, plucking at his maimed leg and howling in agony. He gaped up at Kane in incredulous horror.
Kane planted the steel-reinforced toe of his boot against the point of Abrams’s chin, snapping his head back and down. His skull struck the concrete with a crack.
Kane pivoted on one heel and drove a roundhouse kick into Ojaka’s lower belly. The man folded over Kane’s leg, and while he was suspended there, Kane brought his left fist in a snapping arc against the bridge of Ojaka’s nose. The man uttered a grunt, then flopped down on the floor.
Guende was paralyzed, merely staring, and breathing wetly through his open mouth. He gaped at Kane and didn’t move. Kane’s right leg arced upward and around in a spinning crescent kick. The sole of his boot caught Guende on the left side of his head. Consciousness went out of his eyes with the suddenness of a candle being extinguished. He went down heavily on his face and made no movement afterward.
All three men lay helpless, and Kane walked over to the sarcophagus. The baron hadn’t been aware of the brief struggle. He was still luxuriating in his bath, eyes closed as if in serene meditation.
Kane rapped on the transparent cover. Baron Cobalt’s eyelids twitched. Kane knocked again. The eyelids fluttered, then lifted. The annoyance in them changed instantly when they took in the black helmet, the red visor and the cold, bare-toothed grin beneath it.
The baron’s body convulsed, sloshing the fluid around, splashing it up onto his face. He opened his mouth to call for help, but only a shriek of fear and frustration emerged. Kane was a little surprised that he was able to hear it so clearly through the walls of the sarcophagus.
Baron Cobalt was still screaming when Kane flipped open the latches and heaved the lid aside. A torrent of liquid cascaded out. Kane smelled peroxide, alcohol and the faint coppery stink of diluted blood.
The sudden release of pent-up pressures washed the baron out. His feet scrabbled on the slick floor, trying to gain some sort of purchase. He sat down heavily with an undignified whoof of forcefully expelled air.
Setting his feet firmly as the liquid swirled around them, Kane bent down, closed his left hand around the short, delicate column of Baron Cobalt’s neck and hauled him upright. He was remarkably light. Kane swung him around, slamming his back against the filtration tank, pinning him there with his hand around his throat. He raised the Sin Eater until its bore was on a direct line to a spot between the baron’s eyes. His struggles ceased.
Despite the residue of the noxious fluid still clinging to his body, Kane saw the baron was completely hairless; even his pubic area was smooth. His sex organ was a tiny bud, no larger or thicker than the tip of Kane’s little finger.
“So, Kane,” said Baron Cobalt in a sibilant hiss. “Traitor, criminal. Murderer. You will surrender yourself to me and confess your crimes.”
“That doesn’t work anymore, Baron. You’re not a god-king, you’re not divine. You’re not even a good employer. You’re a laboratory monstrosity with an attitudea vampire living off the genetic material of human beings. You have to take baths in chemicals and gore. You’re disgusting is what you are.”
Baron Cobalt’s eyes blazed in golden rage, a golden haughtiness. “How dare you presume to pass judgment, you filthy apeling. Are you truly so deluded that you believe you can defy the baronies and the Directorate?”
“You’re a puppet whose strings are pulled by a bunch of little gray bastards, and you think I’m deluded?”
A cruel smile lifted the corners of Baron Cobalt’s mouth. “You think the Archons are responsible for what happened to the world? We did it to ourselves.”
” We ?” Kane said mockingly. “Don’t put yourself on the same footing as humans.”
“I stand corrected. I occupy a much higher position. Yes, I am a hybrid of human and Archon, and I am ashamed of the human element within me. I take a bit of solace in the fact that at least my human genes spring from the very best, carefully selected stock.”