Josh whinnied in terror.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Each time the noise was stunning. Each time fire flashed from the barrel of the pistol, lighting Drake’s blank, cold eyes.
Then Drake broke into a run. Straight for the door, pistol held level, firing carefully, precisely even as he ran.
Josh fired back, but again the bullets went wild into the night, missing even the parked cars, doing nothing to stop Drake.
Bang. Bang.
Click.
Caine stayed on the ground, staring, rapt, at Drake as he calmly ejected his ammunition clip. The clip clattered on the concrete.
Drake held the pistol with the delicate end of his tentacle and fished a second clip out of the hunting vest he was wearing. Using his hand he slammed the clip into place.
Josh fired again. More careful, this time.
Bullets sparked the pavement near Drake’s feet.
Drake raised the gun carefully, fired and moved, fired and moved, fired and now Josh was gone, running back inside the building, screaming for help, screaming that someone better help him.
Caine stood up, feeling shamed by Drake’s cold-blooded performance. He hurried now to catch up to Drake, who was through the doorway and inside the building.
Another loud bang, the sound different this time, muffled. The doorway was a bright rectangle from the muzzle flash.
A cry of pain.
“I give up! I give up!”
Caine reached the doorway and entered the turbine room. There, on the floor between massive, howling machines, pitilessly lit by eerie fluorescent light, lay Josh. He sat, stunned, in a black pool of his own blood. One leg was twisted at an impossible angle.
Caine felt a flash of anger. Josh was a kid, no more than ten. What was Sam thinking, putting kids in this position?
“Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me!” Josh begged.
Drake raised high his whip hand and brought it down with sound-barrier-shattering speed on Josh’s upraised hands.
Josh screamed and writhed in agony. The screaming didn’t stop.
“Leave him,” Caine snapped. “Get to the control room.”
Drake turned a feral snarl on Caine, teeth bared, eyes wild. Contempt and fury were in those eyes. Caine raised his hands, ready, waiting for his lieutenant to turn his whip against him.
Instead Drake kicked the prostrate boy in his damaged leg and plowed ahead. Josh crawled sobbing toward the door to the outside.
It all seemed unnatural, nightmarish. Drake stalking ahead, his gun smoking, his whip twitching. Caine heard Drake’s soldiers coming up behind, and Diana and Jack bringing up the rear.
“Door’s locked,” Drake called back.
Caine caught up to him and tried the doorknob himself. It was heavy steel set into a heavy steel frame, obviously a door meant to withstand explosion or attack. If he hit it with a direct shock-wave of telekinetic power, it might bust open. But in the confined area of the hallway it might also reverb and knock him on his butt. “It won’t be locked for long.”
Caine glanced around, searching for something heavy enough for his purposes. Back in the turbine room he found a rolling steel tool chest, four feet tall, strongly built.
Caine raised the chest off the floor and hurled it through the air, down the hall. It slammed into the locked door.
He was immensely gratified by the spectacle of Drake flattened to the wall to avoid getting hit by the wrenches and sockets and screwdrivers that flew like shrapnel from the chest.