Adrian's brain tried.
It genuinely, diligently tried to file what it was seeing in real time the footage arriving faster than the processing speed, frames stacking up behind comprehension like a pile-up on a motorway, each one worse than the last.
Her hands.
The guard's face.
The sound wet and structural and final, the sound of something that was supposed to be one thing becoming irrevocably another thing in under two seconds. The kind of sound that didn't have a category in Adrian's brain yet and was in the process of violently making one.
The upper jaw.
The way it—
The way she—
The way it was no longer where it was supposed to be and the way that was entirely because of her hands, the cold inhuman structural strength of hands that had been carrying bed frames and catching falling objects without looking and now—
The tongue.
That was the thing Adrian's brain kept returning to, kept flinching away from and coming back to anyway visible suddenly, horribly, grotesquely, in a way tongues were not supposed to be visible outside of an anatomy textbook nobody had asked to read. Lolling loose against the side of the guard's face, disconnected from the architecture that was supposed to hold it in place, a wet useless thing that had lost its context entirely. The man's own blood filling his mouth and running down his chin in dark rivulets and his eyes—
His eyes were still going.
Still doing the blinking processing thing, the screens still lit in a building that had already lost power, neurons firing their last signals into a system that had already made its final decision and wasn't accepting new input. Confused. The specific confusion of something that hadn't gotten the message yet and was still waiting for instructions that weren't coming.
His tongue is moving, some distant nauseated clinical part of Adrian's brain noted with the detached clarity of extreme shock. He's tasting his own blood. He doesn't know yet. He's tasting it and he doesn't know yet and his eyes are still
They're still—
The eyes stopped.
All at once. The specific stillness of a screen going dark.
Blood hit the floor. Hit the wall. Hit Aveline's hands and her suit in dark specific spatters that the fluorescent lighting rendered in complete merciless unhelpful detail. The lightning detailing on her gloves caught the blood differently than the rest the white silver branching lines dark now where the blood had reached them, like something conducting that had been interrupted.
Aveline stood.
Composed. Neutral. Calibrated. The mask back in perfect position like it had never moved.
Already looking at the door. Already in the next problem. Already somewhere three moves ahead of this room and everything in it and everyone who was no longer in it.
She looked at Adrian.
He hadn't moved.
Was aware, in the abstract clinical way of someone whose brain had briefly disconnected from his body, that his feet had made an executive decision to stay exactly where they were and had not run it by him first. His brain was somewhere slightly behind his eyes producing a sound that wasn't a thought yet and wasn't going to be a thought for a while.
Something moved across her face.
Brief. Contained. The small precise acknowledgment of something she'd been waiting for him to arrive at.
She said nothing.
Turned toward the door.
She's not fully human.
The thought arrived complete and flat and final, the way facts arrive when you've been circling them for two days and they've finally decided to stop waiting for you to catch up and have simply sat down in the middle of your brain and made themselves comfortable.
She's not fully human.
Cold to the touch. Enhanced strength. Reflexes that don't process reaction time normally. Never winded. Never hesitating. Oil burns she wipes off like weather. Bed frames she carries like cardboard. And now—
And now this.
Semi-mutant. Brain intact. Enhanced. Cold like a corpse.
Elias said it like a line in a report. She carries it like a Tuesday. Like it's the least interesting thing about her morning.
She knew I was going to work it out.
She's known this whole time.
And she let it happen anyway.
Adrian's legs remembered what they were for.
He followed her out of the room.
What else was he going to do? Scream and whine?
Floor 7 | 7:03 AM
The stairwell door opened onto a wall of them.
Six guards, fanned across the corridor with the organised patience of people who had been briefed and positioned and were not going to be surprised by anything. The combined result of a building that had been on alert for thirty minutes and had used the time productively.
Hello, Adrian thought. We're here about the samples. Won't take long. Very sorry about the alarms and everything.
Aveline assessed this for two seconds.
Then she reached into her jacket, pulled the gun, checked the chamber—
The mechanical clank of it was very loud in the stairwell.
Three rounds.
He saw her see it. Saw the calculation happen fast, clean, the arithmetic of someone already at the answer before he'd finished understanding the question.
Her eyes moved left. To the shelf unit against the far wall industrial shelving, supply storage, second shelf, large plastic jug with a warning label legible from here.
Ethanol.
Oh no, Adrian thought.
Oh absolutely categorically comprehensively devastatingly no—
She shot the jug.
It ruptured with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for an excuse, ethanol hitting the floor in a spreading transparent flood, guards at the far end scattering, guards closer hesitating with the reasonable hesitation of people who had just realised they were standing in something extremely flammable—
Aveline threw the jug. The remainder of it, arcing through the air. Shot it mid-flight with the second round. Pivoted immediately and used the third on the electrical panel on the wall—
The spark was immediate.
The spark was enormous.
The spark was, Adrian would reflect later from the safety of somewhere that was not currently on fire, extremely efficient use of three bullets, and he was already moving because her hand was already on his arm—
"DOWN—"
They hit the floor together.
Her body came over his one motion, controlled, the cape sweeping across them both like a curtain coming down her forearm braced against the floor beside his head, the lightning suit pressed against his jacket, and Adrian's brain, which had already been having quite a day and had not been consulted about any of it, took a moment that he absolutely did not have to register that Aveline was on top of him.
Specifically.
Right there.
Close enough to catch the smell of gun oil and metal and the copper of her blood from the hand wound, close enough to feel the cold radiating off her even through the suit, close enough that when she exhaled he felt it—
His breath caught.
Involuntary. Completely involuntary. Entirely the adrenaline and the proximity of the impending detonation and nothing else, nothing whatsoever else, he was going to maintain this position and not examine it further—
She didn't blink.
Didn't register it. Didn't register him registering it. Her eyes were forward, jaw set, body completely still over his with the focused calm of someone waiting out a pressure wave like it was mildly inconvenient weather. The cape pooled around them both. The lightning detailing caught the red of the emergency lighting and did something that Adrian was not going to think about.
She's on top of me, some part of his brain said, with absolutely catastrophic timing.
She's on top of me and she doesn't even—
She hasn't even looked at me—
She's not even—
The explosion happened.
The corridor became a different place with considerable conviction a wall of pressure, heat rolling over them both, a ceiling fixture coming down twenty feet away trailing sparks and debris, the sustained breathing roar of fire deciding it lived here now. Something hot passed close enough that Adrian felt it against his arm. The floor shook. Somewhere down the corridor something secondary ignited with a sound like the building clearing its throat.
Aveline didn't move until it was done.
Then she was on her feet one clean motion, the cape settling back around her like it had never been disturbed and she was brushing plaster dust off her shoulder with the expression of someone who had stepped briefly into light rain and found it manageable.
She glanced down at Adrian.
Who was still on the floor.
Staring at the ceiling.
Processing an indeterminate number of things simultaneously and making slow progress on all of them.
"Up," she said.
"Give me a second," Adrian said, to the ceiling. "I'm having a moment."
"You can have it while moving."
"The moment requires—"
"Adrian."
"Yeah." He got up. "Yeah. Moving. I'm fine."
She was on top of me, he thought, falling into step behind her. The cape was on both of us. I could feel the cold of her. I heard her breathe. I was right there and she didn't even blink. She didn't even—
Ducks, he told himself, with some desperation. Garden. Pond. Ducks. Retirement. Uncomplicated animals with uncomplicated lives. Focus.
The ducks didn't help as much as usual.
They really didn't help at all.
Floor 7 ,Control Room | 7:08 AM
She shot the lock. Shouldered the door. The control room was small and dense with screens building management, security feeds, access systems, all of it running and all of it suddenly available to the woman who had just walked through a corridor on fire.
Aveline found the master switch in four seconds.
The building went dark.
Emergency lighting came up red, low, the specific ambience of a building that had locked itself down and was serious about it and every screen showed the same thing:
LOCKDOWN ACTIVE.
ACCESS RESTRICTED.
"Good," Aveline said, and looked at the window and said, "Problem."
Adrian looked.
Bulletproof glass. Every window. The lockdown had sealed every door below them. The route they'd come up was fire and blast doors and not an option.
"We're locked in," Adrian said.
"Temporarily." She studied the window frame with the focused attention of someone who had already solved this and was confirming the solution. "The glass is rated. The frame isn't."
She raised the gun reloaded, he still didn't know when, at what point in the last fifteen minutes she had found the time to reload, he had stopped asking these questions — and shot the frame. Four shots, precise angles, placed with the specific intention of someone who had thought about this before pulling the trigger. The frame buckled. The glass held rated, exactly as advertised but shifted, the whole panel moving on the ruin of its housing.
She pushed it.
The window swung outward.
Cold air came through. Clean. Sharp. The specific relief of air that hadn't been on fire recently.
"Close the door," she said. "Chair against it."
Adrian did.
Floor 8 | 7:14 AM
The grappling hook came from somewhere in the suit Adrian had made his peace with not knowing where the suit kept things, had filed this under questions that don't have useful answers and moved on and she fired it upward toward a structural pillar near the floor 8 beam.
The hook caught.
She tested it. Once. Twice. Gripped the line.
And then her injured hand closed on the rope.
She made a sound.
Short. Involuntary. The sound of something that genuinely hurt despite the best efforts of whatever pain tolerance she was operating on the sound of something breaking through whatever wall she kept between herself and the experience of her own body. Here and gone in under a second, swallowed before it could become anything, but Adrian had heard it.
For a moment she was just hanging there the makeshift wrap dark with blood, the wound open and working against her, the cold structural hands that could rip a jaw from a skull struggling with a rope because the palm had a knife through it forty minutes ago and that was apparently still a fact.
Her jaw set.
The way it always set.
She climbed anyway.
Of course she does, Adrian thought, watching her go up hand over hand, the cape folded against her body, the lightning catching the emergency lighting as she moved. Why would anything stop her. Why would a knife wound through the palm stop her. Why would anything stop her. That's the whole problem. That's been the whole problem.
She reached the floor 8 opening.
Looked down.
"Your turn," she said. Voice steady. Of course it was.
He climbed.
Floor 8 smelled like dust and insulation and the staleness of a space that served mechanical purposes and didn't have visitors. Aveline was already moving pulling curtains from a supply closet, heavy institutional fabric and knotting them with quick practiced efficiency into something that would hold a person's weight.
"Second last room," she said, not looking up from the knots. "Sub-access electricals. If the lift loses power mid-floor we lose the route out entirely." She tested a knot. Tested it again. Pulled it hard. "Guard that door. Nothing gets through."
"Got it."
"If something gets through," she said, already moving, "shoot it first and tell me after."
"Also got it."
She disappeared down the corridor.
Adrian took his position at the door and held it.
The building made its burning locked-down sounds around him the distant creak of something structural settling, the sustained hum of emergency systems doing their jobs, the specific silence of floors that had been cleared by fire and violence. Somewhere below them the ethanol was still doing what ethanol did.
He stood in the dark and held the door and thought about floor five and the guard's eyes and the tongue and the cold hands and semi-mutant and brain intact and Elias's voice on the phone and Yuki at home making dinner and Garrick in the helicopter who had proposed to a lesbian before an apocalypse mission and was currently waiting and didn't know what was coming back to him—
He held all of it.
Held the door.
Electricals back on. Aveline's voice in his earpiece, even and composed as if she were reading from a memo. Lift active. Doors still locked above floor nine.
"Copy," Adrian said.
Meet me at the lift. Walk — you'll hear them before they see you.
He walked.
Floor 15 | 7:31 AM
The scientist was in the third lab on the left.
Small. Grey-haired. White coat with the specific rumpled quality of someone who had been here since yesterday and had stopped noticing. He was at a workstation with his back to the door when Aveline came through it, and he turned with the automatic reflex of someone expecting a colleague—
The gun was up before he'd finished turning.
He went very still.
"Access card," Aveline said. "Finalization lab. Now."
He gave it to her.
Both hands. No hesitation. The specific compliance of someone who had made a rapid and entirely correct assessment of the situation and had no further opinions about it.
She scanned it.
The door to the finalization lab opened onto cold air and blue-white laboratory lighting and the particular sterile quiet of a room that took itself very seriously. Temperature controlled. Sealed. The kind of room that had opinions about contamination and enforced them.
The central rack stood in the middle of it.
Exactly where the manifest said.
Aveline moved to it with the focused efficiency of someone completing the last item on a list, the wounded hand held carefully away, the gloved hand doing the work. She scanned the rack. Scanned it again. Found what she was looking for.
She picked up the vial.
Held it up.
Green.
Not amber. Not the amber of every briefing document and every manifest and every NexoPharm advertisement that had been used to put this mission together. Green vivid, specific, distinct, the green of something that had been changed from what it was supposed to be and hadn't bothered concealing the change.
Aveline looked at it.
Held it up to the laboratory light. Turned it once. Slowly. The expression on her face moved through something that Adrian had he been in the room would have filed in the folder. The expression of someone who had suspected something and had come here anyway, all this way, through all of this, hoping to be wrong.
She wasn't wrong.
A breath.
Short. Quiet. The sound of something being confirmed that she'd hoped wouldn't be.
"Why am I not surprised," she said.
To the vial. To the laboratory. To no one in particular.
She pocketed it.
Turned away from the rack without looking at it again. Turned away from the scientist without looking at him again. Walked back to the lift with the calm unhurried pace of someone who had what they came for and was ready to leave.
Adrian. Her voice in his earpiece. Even. Controlled. The professional mask, fully deployed, giving nothing. I have the sample. Coming down. Status?
Static.
A breath of it one second, two and then:
"They're — they're breaking through—" Adrian's voice, tight, the specific tightness of someone doing two things at once and losing ground on one of them. "The chair's not — Aveline, the door's—"
A sound through the earpiece. Wood under pressure. Something giving.
"They're through—"
The lift doors began to close.
Aveline's hand came up pressed flat against the closing door, holding it and she looked at the numbers above the lift. Fifteen floors. The distance between her and the sound of the door giving way and Adrian's voice cutting to static.
"Adrian."
Her voice was still flat. Still controlled.
Underneath it, in the frequency she didn't use, the one she kept for nothing, the one that had no name because she'd never needed to name it before something that had been very quiet for a very long time said something it hadn't said in a while.
"I'm coming."
She stepped back.
The doors closed.
The lift descended.
The earpiece filled with the sound of the door giving way completely and then—
Silence.