The Operator
Page 33

Allen took her hand off his arm, eyes pained, but from below came Bill’s harsh demand, “Get up there before she’s gone!”
Heart pounding, Peri gripped the Glock tighter, focus narrowed on the small patch of light from the kitchen, but not a single head showed. Apparently no one wanted to be first, and Peri’s breath slipped out as the call for a high-Q drone rose. She scanned the dusky open area as her eyes adjusted. If they were calling for an eye in the sky, she had a precious few moments.
“Sedation darts only. You hear me?” Bill demanded. “I want her down, not dead or drafting. The accelerator has to be given intravenously within twenty-four hours, or this entire exercise means nothing!”
“Go,” Allen slurred, head hanging. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Bullshit. Tucking the Glock away, Peri grabbed his arm. “Get up.” But something Bill had said niggled at her. Why was he talking about accelerator? He knew she didn’t have any Evocane in her system to buffer her sanity. Twenty-four hours?
She felt her expresson go slack as she remembered the discarded dart. That hadn’t been a sedation dart, and it was looking less likely that it had been Amneoset, either. It had been Evocane.
Shit. Peri jerked at the hum of a drone, dropping Allen’s arm in order to take a bead on it. She fired a single shot, and the drone fell back through the hole amid cries. “Well, at least we know one of them is still up there,” Bill said sourly. “Peri?”
Wire-tight, she backed away from the hole in the ceiling as the calls to position the ladder filtered in. Bill had always had more than one option to get his way. He’d gotten her hooked, and Silas had only a week’s supply. Less, maybe, because of what he’d been using to reconstruct it.
“Peri, you’re fine!” Allen said, his complexion sallow as he swung his head up. Clearly the dosage had been set for her. He wasn’t going down, but he couldn’t move.
“Bill darted me, didn’t he.” She couldn’t get enough air, and her finger shook as she pointed down. “Didn’t he!”
“You’re okay,” he said breathily. “You can still . . . draft safely. Nothing’s changed.”
She jumped at the metallic clunks of a ladder being set up. Nothing changed? Bill said it was addictive!
“Go,” he said, pushing weakly at her. “Get to Silas. Stay on the Evocane. He’ll make more.”
“I can’t leave you.” It wasn’t just that he was her anchor, her partner, her friend. It was that leaving him behind went against everything she believed.
Allen’s hand slipped from her cheek, his fingers fumbling to take his watch off and press it into her hand. “I thought you’d say that. Don’t trust Bill. Silas will figure it out in time.”
“Allen, what— No!” she exclaimed as he rolled across the ceiling and down the same hole he’d pulled her into. “Allen!” She jerked back as men called out and the ladder fell. “Allen, you crazy bastard! What are you doing?”
“Go!” he shouted from below, and then he cried out when someone dragged him clear.
“This is unnecessary, Peri, even for you,” Bill said, and then, louder, “Get up there.”
Eyes wide, Peri grabbed the handgun and watch Allen had left behind, backing up until she found the oven’s vent. Breath held, she checked her hoppers, then pointed. She’d take whomever she could for as long as she could.
“Reed!” came behind her, and she spun, almost shooting Harmony. She was dirty and disheveled, hunched from pain or the cold—hardly recognizable in the dark. “Let’s go!”
“They have Allen,” she blurted, her adrenaline burning. “If we drop down together—”
“Then we die together. Let’s go. I called in air support but it won’t wait.”
Peri jerked her attention from the ragged circle of light and the masculine shouts filtering up. “Not without Allen.”
Harmony crab-walked back. “You’re the only one left, Reed. You were right. It was a trap. Michael is a sadist. We leave now, or I’ll shoot you on sight next time I see you as one of Bill’s brainwashed dolls.”
“But . . .”
“Now!” The whites of Harmony’s eyes were vivid, her determined anger held just in check. “We’ll come back for Allen.”
“Peri?” came Bill’s oily voice in the sudden silence below them. “I’ve got Allen. If you want him dead, you just go ahead and shoot who I send up there for you. You want him alive, you drop your weapons down through the hole. I’m not mad at you, but it’s time to come home. I won’t let you need. I promise.”
For three seconds she stared at Harmony. With a groan, Peri turned away, hunched as she darted around supports and sudden vents. Harmony was a dark shadow beside her, moving remarkably fast. Suddenly Peri realized there was blood splattered on her. I don’t even know whose it is. “Are you okay?”
“I doubt it.” Harmony halted at the shifted ceiling tile she’d probably gained access at. Behind them, the light was eclipsed as men cautiously poked their heads up through the ceiling. “It’s a back office. Out the window. It’s too hot for the airlift. We have to get at least three buildings over. You can run?”
Peri nodded. Her chest hurt. If she hadn’t left, they would’ve killed him. They might kill him anyway, but there was the chance they’d keep him alive. Most drafters were sentimental about their anchors, and therefore they made good leverage. I am a fool.
“You first,” Harmony said, looking at Allen’s watch between Peri’s palm and the butt of his weapon. There were men up here now. A dark shadow shifted where the light from the kitchen stabbed upward, and it jerked when Peri took a shot at it.
“Don’t piss me off, Bill!” Peri shouted, and Harmony smacked her shoulder to be quiet and get through the opening. “If you hurt Allen, I’ll kill you myself!” she added.
“Out. Go!” Harmony said, and Peri dropped through the ceiling and into the shadowed office below. Harmony was right behind her. Blinds fluttered before a broken window like a bird’s shattered wing, and Harmony levered herself through it, not waiting for Peri as she ran across the icy lot and through the solar array to the adjacent building. Grim, Peri followed, not knowing how she could still move.