Malcontent/Part 6

Part 6
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The thing behind the glass seemed to feel her gaze. It stirred, lifting up its misshapen head.

It was some kind of ape. Most of its hair had fallen out in patches leaving it looking eerily human. A massive growth covered its right eye, making it seem like a cystic cyclops. More tumors distorted its back; the thing looked more cancer than animal.

A sudden reflection in the glass. Mal spun, lifting her hand up in time to block Lucas’ attack – the pruning shears digging into Mal’s hand.

Lucas grabbed her pistol by the barrel, trying to pull it away. She fired. The bullet ripped his hand apart, detaching two fingers from his palm before tearing into his thigh.

He collapsed to the floor. He tried to push himself up but fell back down. He grabbed hold of his thigh to stop the bleeding, but the blood was pulsing out in rhythmic red spurts. She’d hit his femoral artery. He’d be dead within a minute.

She knelt beside him and turned his head to look at her.

"What are you people doing here?" she asked.

Lucas opened his mouth but said nothing. His eyes were unfocused. He was fading.

She slapped him hard across the face and forced his eyes open with her thumbs.

"Answer me!" she shouted.

He coughed up a string of sounds. It sounded like nonsense. All Mal could make out was a single word:

Survival.

A crash echoed behind her. Mal spun around as the ape-thing slammed its fist against the glass.

Mal locked eyes with the creature. It was intelligent.

It knew what had just happened. And it was angry.

The creature slammed the glass again. And then again and again. Every blow shook the lab, rattling glass lab equipment on counters. Would the habitat hold?

If it didn’t, would her rifle be enough to stop that thing?

A klaxon blared outside the grow room. Time to leave. She tucked the laptop under her arm and left Lucas bleeding on the floor.

She sprinted out into the central dome and the maze of corridors. At an intersection, two confused scientists approached with a pair of security guards.

"Hey! Stop!"

Mal bolted in the opposite direction. She turned a blind corner, running past several grow houses identical to the one she’d left Lucas in. Did each one of these contain a… a…Ramirez?

An exit ahead. With a pistol in one hand, and the laptop in the other, Mal shouldered open the door and stumbled out onto the plateau. The light outside blinded her.

Her eyes didn’t have time to adjust before the bullet hit her in the chest and knocked her off her feet.

Jonathan could tell from the way the bullet dropped her that Malholtra was wearing body armor. No penetration, no splatter. She took the hit and rolled behind a nearby cargo container.

He chambered another round and watched through his scope. She was nearly a third of a mile away. He couldn’t hear her – couldn’t hear anything but the shrill blare of the klaxon – but he felt her. Felt her wheezing, struggling to catch her breath from the impact. Felt her blood pumping in her veins. Her fear as she realized she was the prey.

And she was cornered.

The western side of the facility provided little cover. She would have to make a run to the laboratory the moment she caught her breath. He waited, patient, finger resting gentle on the trigger. He was proved right. She leapt from behind the container and made a mad dash for the lab.

Jonathan was ready. He fired.

She was faster than he expected and the bullet fell short, missing her neck and tearing through her calf instead. She fell in an acrobatic tumble, skidding across the white tile of the lab. She kept moving, pushing herself into a desperate limp as she fled further into the building.

The shot wasn’t fatal, but it would slow her. That would be enough.

Jonathan radioed to the security team. They spread out, forming a loose ring around the lab. All they had to do was tighten the circle and flush out the prey.

"No one moves without my order," Jonathan said into his headset.

The security team up here was armed and clearly well trained, but Jonathan didn’t trust them. What kind of talent would opt to spend their careers on this barren plateau guarding "lab coats" who were doing God-knows-what? Maybe they had a stake in whatever they were researching here – Jonathan didn’t know and didn’t care.

He only wanted to do his job. He wanted to hunt.

To Chatmanee, the woman who had so badly botched the Bangkok job, hunting was a chase. Alexander Lindh was the same. They selected their prey and they followed, sniffing out clues where they could. They were desperate bloodhounds, jaws open and fat tongues lolling out.

Jonathan was not a dog. He was a crocodile hidden up to his eyes in murky water. He did not chase. He lied in wait, letting his prey take a drink before grabbing them by their throats.

Jonathan knew that if any of the Sanhok 4 had tried to disappear – really tried to disappear – he might not have found them. Not for years. Had Julie Skels been content to pour drinks in some backwater town in Romania, what could he have done? If the man known as Lunchmeat had taken low-pay work on some fishing vessel at the edge of the North Sea, it would have taken months to rack him down. Maybe years.

But humans are bad at hiding. Sitting still is against their nature. Sooner or later, the Sanhok 4 would seek help. Jonathan figured that Slade would come up for air first. The former Marine had family in the States. No one could blame him for letting his ex-wife know that the news of his death by prison shiv was a lie.

But it hadn’t been Slade who came up first. It was Malholtra. She’d tried so very hard to be smart. She’d avoided the obvious contacts and names and safehouses, instead using someone she thought was invisible.

But the young man known as GremlinXL was not invisible. He had told Jonathan everything he needed to know. It had been quick; Jonathan only had to remove three fingers.

For days now, Jonathan had men staking out the road to the plateau. Checkpoints – one visible, two more hidden from sight. He had swept the entire mountain range every three hours by helicopter. Again and again he had been told not to underestimate Madison Malholtra.

He thought he hadn’t.

Yet even he had not expected her to risk a night climb up the side of Amancha.

No matter. Her story would end here.

Jonathan directed a trio of mercenaries to the eastern cargo bay. Another pair would cover the north hangar.

Jonathan shouldered his rifle, readied his sub-machine gun, and entered the lab.

Blood streaked across the floor. He stalked the trail through enclosed walkway. It smelled like fertilizer and buzzed with the hum of a far-off generator. She had taken cover in one of the grow houses, almost certainly hiding amongst the flowers.

"I have her," he whispered into his comm. "Alpha team on me."

His security team stomped in seconds later, weapons ready. There would be no escape for Malholtra. The only question left was whether Jonathan would have the honor of taking her down.

He entered the growhouse and took cover behind a set of water tanks.

A body. Blood. Not her.

It was one of the scientists. He’d been shot in the leg and tried to crawl for the door. He’d made it halfway before dying in a puddle of his own blood.

Jonathan stalked the grow house. She’d be holding her gun in sweaty shaking hands, her vision blurring from blood loss. Or maybe she was desperately trying to tie off her calf wound.

The thought made Jonathan’s teeth tingle.

A sudden movement caught his eye. Malholtra was on her feet, gun in hand, making a last desperate sprint away from him. He raised his weapon to end her life. She fired first.

But not at him.

Malholtra shot at the far wall. The glass of the habitat shattered and Jonathan heard a guttural roar as something huge and misshapen and angry came forth.

Mal watched the creature lurch from its habitat. It was something from a nightmare, but its movement was simian. Familiar. Almost mundane, like an angry animal charging forward on its knuckles. Launching out a fist.

Crushing the nearest gunman’s skull.

Mal had seen men get shot. Stabbed. Saw a man in Karachi have his knees inverted with a tire iron. But she’d never seen a man’s head explode like this. The jaw broke open impossibly wide as the skull narrowed, eyes popping out like a broken doll.

One of the surviving gunmen vomited on the spot, spitting up breakfast drink all over his flak jacket.

Another fired on the creature in a panic. That was a mistake. It unleashed another roar as the bullets tore through its misshapen flesh. The creature threw itself into the gunman, crushing his body against the laboratory wall. The vomit-streaked gunman tried to pull his ally to safety but the ape-thing knocked him to the floor and broke his back with a single blow.

Mal ran.

Gunfire echoed behind her as she stumbled into the adjoining corridor. She slammed into an approaching guard. He reached for his gun – too slow. Mal shot him dead and was gone before his body hit the ground.

More screams and thrashing behind her. Then another roar, higher pitched, followed by a sickening thud that could only be an enormous ape-thing collapsing to the ground.

Mal rushed out of the lab. The morning sun struggled to cut through the fog. She couldn’t see much but endless bushes. So many bushes.

There, the jeep! She felt in her pocket and found with relief that the keys were still there.

She bolted for the vehicle. The pain in her leg had faded to a more-alarming numbness. She couldn’t feel her foot at all. Only knew it was still there because of the sound of the wet sloshing of blood in her boot.

Gunfire rang out across the plateau. The earth around her popped and spat. There was no time to be clever. She skidded down an embankment, staying low as she reached the jeep. She struggled to get the keys in, hands shaking and slick with sweat. She keyed the ignition and-

The windshield shattered. Mal looked up to see a hunter on the roof of the lab taking aim with a rifle. She dove under the dashboard as another round hit the jeep.

Krack! One of the front tires exploded.

She reached over the dash and fired blind with the Beretta until it was empty. As she loaded her last magazine, the roar of engines approached.

She peered out a window and spotted dirt bikes. Two of them. Another security team racing up from the village below. They skidded to a stop and took aim with their rifles. She was pinched – the hunter on the roof of the lab and now these new men.

They opened fire.

She dove between the seats as the jeep was raked with gunfire. Most of the rounds failed to penetrate the up-armored vehicle – but she was showered in debris, shrapnel, and broken glass. A jolt in the side told her she’d been hit, but the adrenaline was pumping so hard and she was in so much pain already that she couldn’t even tell where. It was just registered somewhere in her panicked mind.

There was a brief quiet as assault rifles clicked empty. These men were highly trained. It would take them maybe ten seconds to reload. Ten seconds to get off her back, push through the pain, and do something.

A question formed in her mind. One she wasn’t ready to answer.

She kicked the door open and took aim. One of the mercenaries was already sliding a mag into his rifle. The other fumbled for ammo in his belt. Ten seconds had been generous. More like seven.

It was enough.

She shot the first gunman through his hand. He dropped his weapon and she shot him in the throat and sent him to the dirt. The other went for a pistol slung in a shoulder holster. He raised the gun just as Mal blew his brains out the back of his bike helmet.

Jonathan cursed. He had her trapped! But even the best hunter in the world couldn’t have prepared for whatever had come rampaging out of that cage. The animal had killed four of the security team and dislocated his shoulder before he had brought it down.

Now these clowns on motorbikes. He had told them, wait for his order. Yet still, they came racing up, trying to be heroes. Now Malholtra had a way out.

Jonathan watched as Malholtra leapt onto one of the dirt bikes. She floored it, kicking up a wave of earth as she rocketed away from the lab.

He pushed away the pain and limped across the roof for a better shot.

He popped open the bi-pod and inhaled deep to quiet his nerves. Anger wouldn’t help – it would cause him to miss. And he couldn’t miss. He had one shot at this.

Through the scope, he watched Malholtra ride away. It was foggy and she was moving fast, but he had brought down prey at greater distances more times than he could count.

He felt a tingle in his fingers. In his teeth. Like butterflies. Or desire. He wanted this. He had wanted it since he first read her file. A confusing blur of emotions hit him, like sex but stronger, more primal. He was in the water, up to his eyes now, jaws ready. And Malholtra was coming to drink.

Jonathan fired.

He missed.

At the exact moment he fired, she jerked the bike wildly, kicking up another dirt plume and rocketing toward the edge of the plateau.

Jonathan tried to get her back in his sights but she was moving too fast. All he could do was watch as this mad woman rode the dirt bike right off the cliff and into the fog.

It was suicide, no question. There was nothing out there but a deadly drop into a mess of broken earth and scrubland.

His heart sank. The tingling was gone. The job was done, yes, but not at his hands. She had stolen his prize.

He lowered his head and tried to slow his breathing.

Then he heard the distinctive thwump! of a parachute.

It had been stuffed in the trunk of the jeep. It looked like a backpack but Mal had recognized it for what it was. Likely stolen from one of the cargo helicopters. Now, she gripped the parachute tight, steering herself to safety.

The plateau, the laboratory, and the hunter disappeared from view above her. She dropped harmlessly through the fog, floating across endless highlands.

She touched down minutes later. A refreshing jolt of pain radiated from her injured leg. Pain was good. It would keep her moving.

She checked the dead scientist’s laptop to make sure it hadn’t been hit. Luckily, it was undamaged. She would need to pull whatever secrets it held for her later. The vehicle she had stashed on the highlands was miles away and she needed to move fast. She set to bandaging her calf. They would be looking for her. Men with guns. With trucks and helicopters. They would never stop.

And that was okay.

Because she was ready to answer that question. The question that had been playing on loop, like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. A memory of a man sitting across from her and asking:

Do you consider yourself a survivor?

She scanned the horizon. She was ready to keep running. To keep fighting. To answer that question.