James Axler – Bitter Fruit

Ryan saw the sheen suddenly dilate inside the red-haired woman’s eyes. Without warning, Krysty brought the gun around toward him.

“I’m sorry, lover,” she said in a barely audible whisper.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Reacting instantly, Ryan slapped the woman with the back of his fist, catching her flush on the jawline.

Krysty dropped, unconscious.

“Take her, Doc.”

“Of course.” Doc knelt and took up the woman, struggling with her weight and dragging her to safety as much as carrying her.

“Fools,” the plant-thing said. “She will be mine. She has an affinity for me and my kind that you will never understand.” It approached but seemed leery, as if afraid of the burning flares that could possibly still strike it.

“Can’t stay here,” J.B. said.

“I know.” Ryan swiveled his head, looking for options.

The LED continued without falter despite the ruin scattered around the room220.

Ryan took Krysty by one arm, leaving Doc the other. “Fall back while it’s scared.” He started forward, heading farther back into the room.

The plant-thing gathered its strength, getting more confident.

Ryan concentrated on the cryo chambers. So far they seemed still operational. He didn’t much figure they would hold the plant-thing off, but they could give the group a more defensible position.

“No closer!” a voice roared.

Ryan froze in his tracks, barely able to make out Victor Boldt’s features in the shadows.

Blood traced the patrician looks, and his hair was plastered to his head. Madness gleamed in his eyes above the sights of the pistol he held. “You people have destroyed everything,” he snarled. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“I reckon we’ve stopped you from killing some folks,” Ryan said grimly.

“You haven’t stopped anything, you pathetic moron. As long as my father is alive, that plague is going to be released anyway. You’ve only succeeded in killing me along with you.”

“Somehow,” Ryan said, “I can’t rightly say I feel too bad about that. Mildred.”

“Say when,” the woman replied.

“Stop it!” Boldt roared. “Or I’ll shoot you right where”

“When,” Ryan said.

Boldt got off one round, which cut through the loose material of Doc’s frock coat. Then a single round from Mildred’s pistol punched a hole through the man’s forehead. Only a small amount of blood appeared as the slack body dropped into the foot-deep, swirling water.

“No!” The ululating cry echoed within the vault, cracking some of the speakers used to translate whatever means the plant-thing had to communicate. The emotion was raw, blistering in its intensity.

“Move,” Ryan ordered. There were no more rounds left in the flare gun to hold it at bay.

The water level in the room had stopped gaining, and now swirled around their legs just below the knees. Machinery and computer components continued shorting out, unleashing myriad bright sparks that soared like streaking comets.

“Door,” Jak said, indicating the steel door that almost blended into the wall at the side of the cryo chambers. It was partially open, water lapping at the dark interior.

“Check it out,” Ryan replied. He left Krysty in Doc’s care.

The clock read 153.

They were all running out of time. He glanced at the freezing reservoirs. “Those are full of liquid nitrogen.”

J.B. nodded.

“I’m figuring that bastard plant won’t like the cold any more than it liked fire.”

“Could be,” the Armorer said. “But we’re going to need a can opener to get into it.”

“Mebbe I can get one.”

“Ryan.”

He turned back to look at Jak.

The albino jerked a thumb upward. “Trapdoor. Goes to mat-trans above.”

Ryan worked the spatials in his head, discovering that the way the room turned put them under the room above. The tunnel had twisted and dipped down as it progressed. “Been there?”

“Been there. Door opens easy. Soldier boys there, though.”

“Can you get up inside without being seen?”

Jak looked at him reproachfully.

“Get it done, then. Lock those people out.”

Jak vanished.

“Somebody figured themselves a hidey-hole,” the Armorer said.

“This whole Byzantine complex with its secrets and the prejudicial nature of the society that was constructed clearly shows evidences of a paranoiac mind at the helm, dear Ryan,” Doc said. “A secondary route to the mat-trans unit, easily the most powerful of escape routes, should come as no shock at all.”