Origin in Death (In Death 21)

He grabbed her, shoved her back, and threw his body over hers.

The blast punched at her eardrums. She heard, dimly, shards of tile raining down. Then only her own labored breaths.

"Get off, get off!" If there was panic now, it was for him, so she pushed, shoved, rolled him away, then snatched at him again. He was breathing hard now, and he was bleeding.

A gash at the temple, a slice that had gone through the leather of his coat just above the elbow.

"How bad? How bad?"

"Don't know." He shook his head to clear it. "You? Aw, fuck them," he said, viciously, when he saw the blood running down her arm, seep­ing through her pants at the hip.

"Dings mostly. Mostly dings. Backup's coming. Help's coming."

He looked her dead in the eyes, and he smiled. "And we're just go­ing to sit here and wait for the cavalry, are we?"

The smile loosened the sweaty fist around her heart. "Hell, no."

She pushed herself up, offered him her hand. What she saw around them made her stomach pitch and her heart shrivel. They'd been flesh, blood, bone. They'd been boys. Now they were pieces of meat.

She shut herself down, began to gather weapons. "We don't know what else we've got coming. Take all you can carry."

"Bred for war, that's what they were," Roarke said softly. "They had no choice. They gave us no choice."

"I know that." She shouldered on two combat rifles. "And we're go­ing to exterminate, destroy, decimate what bred them."

Roarke hefted one of the weapons. "Urban War era. If they'd been better equipped and more experienced, we'd be dead."

"You had boomers. You had illegal explosives."

"Well, be prepared, I say." He aimed the rifle at one of the cameras, blasted it. "You've only used one of these a couple of times in sims down in the target gallery."

"I can handle it." She aimed, took out a second camera.

"No doubt."

F

rom their position, Diana looked over her shoulder. "It sounds like a war."

"Whatever it is, it's keeping it off our backs." For now, she thought. She'd estimated she'd had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of tonight alive. Now she had to survive. She had to get it done and get Diana to safety.

But her palms were sweating, and that only lowered the odds. Avril had been the only person she'd ever loved. Now even that strong current was tame beside the tidal wave of emotion that swept her. Diana was hers.

Nothing was ever going to touch her child again.

So she prayed that the data she and Avril had accessed was still valid. Prayed that whatever was behind them would wait until she got through the doors marked GESTATION.

Prayed that her courage wouldn't fail.

At last the light glowed green. She heard the swish of air as the doors opened into an airlock. What she saw through it, through the glass, drained the heart out of her.

She made herself go in, made herself look.

While her vision blurred with tears, the monster, dead for a decade, stepped into the white stream of light.

Jonah Delecourt Wilson was fit and handsome and no more than thirty. In his arms he carried a sleeping infant. One hand held a stun­ner and was pressed to the child's throat.

At his feet was the body of a young Wilfred Icove.