Chapter 7

Shalimar's eyes narrowed to catlike slits of smoldering amber.

"Yeah – through you."

She was on him before he could even process the move, nearly outracing the flash of lighting that struck the mutant on his left. Her punch bloodied his nose and probably would have broken it had her swing not been somewhat impaired by the cloying lab coat. Her back kick at a second attacker, a Naxcon guard, was equally hampered, just slowing him down briefly. Frustrated, she twirled out of the coat and flung it into the second man's face, her fist following by a millisecond before he could clear the obstruction. Ducking a blow from behind on pure instinct, she pivoted past the greasy-haired man's striking arm and snapped an elbow into his jaw with such force that teeth spit from his mouth. He dropped like a sack of grain.

His lab coat straining across his shoulders, Brennan followed his quick shot by charging the blue-shirted pair nearest to the man he felled. An iron forearm blocked the swinging club of one guard; almost simultaneously he lashed out to the side with his foot, tagging the guard's partner with a solid shot to the solar plexus. This man fell back, affording Brennan the opportunity to spin back to the first and connect with a back hammer blow. He evaded a weak return swing, then dropped into a leg sweep. The impetus against his lower calves kicked the man nearly horizontal, and while still in a crouch Brennan took advantage of the vacated space to shoot a fistful of lightning over the guard's stomach, nearly singeing the man's shirt before striking the guard he had kicked.

Jaryl had scuttled a little way to one side, a frightened look on her face. A towering brute of a man who had the bearlike countenance of an ursine feral saw her fear and singled her out. Grinning evilly, he lumbered forward. Jaryl's expression became one of terror, her emerald green eyes nearly glowing with it. She pressed herself flat against a tall metal cabinet. Brennan and Shalimar were far too busy to help. His grin widening, the ursine reached for her with a hand the size of a dinner plate.

In that instant two things happened. The mammoth halted, bewildered by the fact that he suddenly was receiving no input from his optic nerves, as if his vision had been blocked somehow. At the same time Jaryl's demeanor changed dramatically from prey to predator. The empath lashed out as she had earlier, her heel connecting violently with the side of the giant feral's knee. Blind and swearing in agony, he crashed ingloriously onto his uninjured knee to something more her size, one arm sweeping out to try to engulf her. She ducked easily beneath his flailing grasp and rammed a foot into his exposed gut, driving the breath from his body with a loud wuff. She then finished the job by ripping a fire extinguisher from its wall brackets and swinging it in a nearly 300 degree arc with all the force she could muster. It struck the side of his head with a mushy crunch like the sound of a squashed melon. Groaning, he flopped over onto his side with a floor-jarring thud and did not move again. "Sucker!" Jaryl muttered, and moved to on to her next opponent.

"Son of a ….!"

In the server room Jesse bit off an expletive as he saw Shalimar leap into action and sent his fingers flying over the keyboard. Lexa immediately abandoned her post at the door.

"What's wrong?" she demanded, looking over his shoulder at the computer monitor. Seeing the battle exploding on the screen she really didn't require an answer, but Jesse gave her one anyway.

"They've been made!" he said, his reply only briefly interrupting a string of muttered invective. That was the short story, but the truth was that he was cursing himself far more than the forces now attacking Brennan and Shalimar. This was his monumental screwup. He had no business allowing his fixation with the empath to distract him from doing his job. What difference did it make that he met her two years ago under another name? So what if she had found him bleeding to death with a bullet in his chest, that she had healed him and then vanished from his life like smoke on a breeze despite all his efforts to find her? He should have been watching his teammates' backs; should have seen the bad guys approaching and warned them before they got to the lab. Now their lives and the mission were in danger, and all hell was breaking loose.

"Then what are you doing?" Lexa demanded, "Shouldn't we go help them?"

Jesse shook his head. There were already five down by his count; at that rate they'd never get to them in time. "We'll help them more if we can slow down the reinforcements." He could see on the cameras that word was spreading to the other roaming teams about the altercation in Dr. Harrison's lab. Unfortunately, as he was finding out now, this place wasn't nearly as wired as Sanctuary, which limited his options significantly. He had already cut off the alarms; about all he could do now was to shut down the phones and disconnect their satellite link -- for all the good that would do. This system wasn't sophisticated enough to block walkie-talkies, which several of both the security guards and their altered counterparts had and were now using to coordinate their movements. It also didn't block cell phones, which added the possibility of outside backup to an already volatile mix. What else could he do? He stripped off his lab coat – there would be action soon, and he couldn't afford to have it hinder him at a crucial moment. Its value as camouflage was over. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lexa do the same.

He watched two groups of what were likely gene-spliced mutants spill from the security office and split up, one headed toward the doors leading to the central staircase, the other taking the back way toward the northeast stairwell. If this had been Sanctuary's system he could slow down the first group by electronically locking the double doors connecting the east wing with the building center. But it wasn't. Nor was there any way he could he beat them to the doors and lock or block them manually. Short of morphing into Luke Skywalker and using the Force there wasn't anything he could do to delay them.

No sooner did that fruitless thought enter his head when he had the oddest sensation; a sort of awareness making the short hair on the back of his neck stand up, as if someone was looking over his shoulder – someone who wasn't Lexa. He looked around, but there was no one there.

"What?" Lexa asked.

Jesse shook his head. "Nothing," he said, and turned back to the screen. The odd feeling persisted. He dismissed it in favor of the more important priority – what to do about the gang of mutants about to come through the set of double doors. Would they head down the center steps? Probably. That was the quickest way to get to Harrison's lab. The odds facing Shal and Brennan were about to get worse, much worse. He and Lexa had to get down there on the double. He would wait just long enough to verify their direction.

Then on the screen he saw a length of cord rip itself off a nearby machine and wrap itself securely around the door handles just as the group tried to push them open from the other side. The group leader bounced off the right door with an angry exclamation, rubbing his forehead. Jesse released a breath that he didn't realize he'd been holding. That must be Matt's doing; for a moment Jesse had completely forgotten about him. Now he remembered Matt saying that he would back up both teams from a central location. He surmised that the telekinetic had probably stationed himself near the circular stairway in the middle of the building since he would have to be able to see the doors to tie them off telekinetically. Jesse didn't know a whole lot about telekinesis, but the research he had done in the past suggested that it needed visual contact to be effective, at least most of the time. That made sense.

Flicking the screen to view the camera on the other side of the doors, he watched the group of spliced mutants begin pounding on them, trying to force them open. A couple of the blows were impressive enough to bend the hinges. The doors held, but from the way they creaked with each blow they wouldn't hold for long. Truthfully, Jesse was surprised they hadn't already given way. He guessed that Matt might be reinforcing them telekinetically, but he couldn't be sure.

Shalimar used an arm drag to hurl the guard lunging at her over a desk, sweeping it clean and dragging the contents with him in an avalanche of crashing plastic and flying debris. He wasn't done yet, but he was slowed down, so her senses dropped his immediate threat level a notch even as they automatically marked the positions of their remaining foes. She was both pleased and slightly piqued at what they told her. On the one hand, the odds weren't nearly as bad as they were a moment ago. By striking together hard and fast they had already managed to take out half of the attacking force. This was where their experience and teamwork had stood them in good stead; she and Brennan had worked together for so long that he had known nearly to the instant when she was going to attack Greasy-Hair. By the same token she had known instinctively that he would zap the mutant to the left of her target because this would effectively divide the group between them, allowing them to more or less protect each other's backs. Even Jaryl had taken one out, and the largest one to boot. She may not be the skilled fighter the other two were, but she was obviously capable of taking care of herself in most situations; witness the kidnapper that she disabled. He was still out like a light behind the counter where she had dumped him.

By prior agreement they had targeted the manufactured mutants first, believing them to be more dangerous than the Naxcon guards even with their electrically-charged weapons. They were at least a relatively known quantity. Now three of the enhanced fighters were down. The remaining group consisted of a woman in a green leather miniskirt with spiky green hair and pale Gothic makeup, a short, solidly built man with sandy hair and three uniformed guards.

Make that two, she thought to herself as her back-flip kick caught one right in the chin. She risked a quick glance around. Brennan was going toe-to-toe with a burly guard who was every bit as tall as he. He had dropped his club, but his fighting style bespoke advanced military training. Jaryl had her hands full with the sandy-haired man. He appeared to be a teleporter, popping in and out all around her in rapid sequence, striking and disappearing before she could respond. She was, however, keeping him busy.

On the other hand Shalimar felt a slight pang of regret because she was running out of opponents. There was no sport, no challenge in fighting most ordinary people because with her powers the outcome was clear from the start. Only with other mutants or disparate numbers could she let loose a little. A part of her reveled in the violence, felt it sing through her veins, ignited by the rush of battle and the scent of an enemy's blood. She could hear that part now, speaking to her in silky, seductive whispers. You have your prey. Rend it. Tear it. Feast on it. She was used to the whispers. She had long ago accepted that aspect of her nature, this jungle cat that endlessly prowled the cage in her soul. It was a part of her, the wild, untamed part that for the most part she kept well restrained.

She ducked a swing and replied with a left that sent a guard spinning but not out of the fight. The beast clawed at the mental lock, baring its fangs, snarling its demand for release. It was always like this in the heat of battle, but lately the growls had been getting more insistent. She knew why. They had been getting louder since that night a few weeks ago, the night she had for just a few seconds flung wide the cage door and allowed the beast to roar free. It had been right after Adam and Emma died; when Eckhart's people had kidnapped and tortured Brennan. One of the gene-spliced mutants had been on the point of killing him when Shalimar intervened. Seeing his peril and outraged at what they had done to him, she had allowed the beast to burst forth and exact its terrible retribution. Eckhart hadn't been the only one to die that day.

Sometimes in the small hours of the night a tiny thread of fear would creep into the recesses of her mind, a fear that one day the creature would claw free from its cage and that she wouldn't be able to force it back inside. She had seen it happen to another feral several months ago. His name was Michael.

The local press had been having a field day over reports of a 'creature' loose in the woods several miles north of the city. Over a six week period several hikers had been found mauled to death. Mutant X had quietly joined the throngs of monster hunters to investigate. The 'creature' had turned out to be Michael, who before he escaped had been an unwilling test subject in a secret government project designed to create an astronaut able to survive in a variety of harsh environments. By now, though, he was no longer recognizable as a human being. The reckless, multiple manipulations of his DNA by the government scientists had accelerated his mutation wildly out of control, turning him into a sick, ravening beast. Tragically, when Mutant X caught up with him he was too far gone, too far regressed and too ill for them to help. In the end, Shalimar had been forced to shoot him. Though with his last breath he thanked her for releasing him from his nightmare existence, Michael and what he had become – what she might have become and might yet come to be -- still haunted her dreams.

No, that was only partly true. The real fear came when she recalled the incredible euphoria, the almost orgasmic feeling that filled her when she'd driven her hand into living flesh and had felt the hot blood spurting through her fingers. It was that lust that she was most afraid of, that reversion back to the primeval; the loss of mind and soul into an addiction for blood. If she ever succumbed to it …!

But it was only that one time, she told herself. She had struck only under the most extreme provocation – to save Brennan. It wasn't bloodlust; she was protecting her pack, her family. She would do so again under the same circumstances. It wasn't the same thing at all. She had the beast firmly under control.

Didn't she?

Brennan reeled back from a bruising kick to the side of his chest. The guard he was battling was good, very good, and though both were getting in telling strikes, neither could gain a lasting advantage against the other. He ducked in and tattooed a fast right-left-right combination to the other's ribs, the seams of his lab coat erupting under the strain. The burly man staggered back, one arm folding in reflexive protection against his body, but he was far from done. Brennan swore under his breath. This was taking too much time. The part of his mind that kept tabs on such things recognized that some of the guards they had taken out before they rescued Jaryl were staggering to their feet to rejoin the fray. Jaryl herself was grappling with a teleporter, and Shalimar was working her way with ferocious grace through the remnants of the security force, but he knew that others were probably on their way. He needed to do something to end this fast, but his opponent was pressing him too hard to allow him the second or two he needed to generate an electrical charge.

Wait a second. Jaryl. Seeing her made him think of Matt and the earlier skirmish behind the coffee shop. The bodyguard he fought had displayed a fighting style unique to anything he had seen, yet it was simplistic in design, easy to break down into component parts if one knew how, which Brennan did. It had intrigued him enough to make him consider adding a couple of those moves to his repertoire. Well, there was no time like the present.

Brennan feinted high, then twisted left and brought his heel around to connect with the back of his opponent's right thigh just above the knee. It was an unorthodox kick and he felt awkward launching it without any actual practice, but it caught the man flat-footed. He lurched forward with a moan of pain, and in that unguarded instant fell prey to a monster left that jarred Brennan's arm clear to the shoulder. To the floor the blue-shirt crashed, down and out.

Shalimar felt rather than saw a shadow looming behind, and she whirled to deal with the threat. Her slashing arm, however, met only the billowing folds of her recently abandoned lab coat. Decoy! She flung it away, but in that nanosecond of clearing she left herself open. Icy hands seized her shoulders. A torrent of incredible cold like a blast of liquid nitrogen flooded through her body. Desperately she tried to wrench free, but the frigid waves were hardening her muscles to so much lead, deadening her reflexes. Her turn was aborted half way.

It was the remaining mutant, the woman with the spiky green hair. Shalimar could almost feel her heart slowing, the blood congealing in her veins. She tried to struggle, to break free, but the searing cold numbed her brain and penetrated her bones, making them feel brittle. Her body stiffened, becoming rigid in mid-motion. Her breath came in frosty gasps. Ice crystals formed in her hair and clothes. Her knees gave way under her. She was dying, and she knew it. In a handful of seconds she would literally freeze to death.

Brennan spun at the sound of a choking gasp that he knew came from Shalimar, and saw that she was in serious trouble. The woman in the Gothic makeup had her hands digging in the feral's shoulders, forcing her nearly to the floor, and Shal looked helpless to resist. Before he could even think of going to her aid two men smashed into him from his blind side in a bull's rush. He grunted in pain at the impact as he was slammed to the floor, the three men crashing down together in a tangle of arms and legs. One of his attackers flung himself on the downed elemental, trying to pin him while he cocked his fist.

Brennan saw it coming and managed to twist his head enough that the blow was a glancing one, but still enough to rattle his teeth. He brought his knee up sharply, ramming it into the man's kidney, stunning him enough that Brennan was able to throw a short but solid left hook, knocking the guard off him.

The other guard, though, had taken advantage of his partner's shielding body. Even as Brennan threw his punch he was already swinging his club victoriously down in what would surely be the finishing stroke. It didn't matter that his victim was reacting with surprising speed, twisting his open hand back toward the descending club. The angle was all wrong to block the blow, and even if he did manage to deflect it the electricity would still get him. His grin didn't fade when Brennan caught the crackling club head in his bare hand, stopping the blow with a grip of steel. The guard smirked. Like that would save him. It was over, and he had won. No matter where he took the hit there was enough voltage in the weapon to put down a horse. Electricity sizzled as the weapon contacts pumped its deadly charge into his enemy's skin, bathing both club and hand in white-blue sparks.

Triumph turned to incredulity an instant later when he realized that not only was his erstwhile victim still holding onto the club, he actually appeared to be absorbing the charge. Tiny bolts of lightning flashed in the man's pupils, and remarkably he seemed to be getting stronger. Dumbfounded, the guard released his grip on the now-drained club, at a loss as to what to do next. He wasn't in suspense for long. Something grabbed his arm, and every nerve ending in his body seemed to catch fire. He knew nothing more.

The only flaw in Brennan's plan was that the zapped man fell forward across his left arm and chest, pinning him pretty effectively. Before he could haul him off the side of his head abruptly exploded in pain. Through a shower of multicolored spots Brennan saw a booted foot drawing back to kick him again.

The blow never landed. Blearily Brennan tried to push through the fog in his brain to understand why. He thought he heard the unique crackle of an electrical discharge, maybe more than one, but he knew that couldn't be right. He hadn't felt a charge leave his hand, and anyway that kick to the head left him momentarily too addled to concentrate sufficiently to generate one. Then the fog began to part, and he could see the man who had been about to kick him spasm violently and collapse senseless to the floor. That was weird. At first he thought that he had unconsciously caused it after all in some instinctive, last-ditch survival reflex. Then his head cleared a little more and he could see one of the charged clubs hovering in mid-air like some giant black dragonfly right where his attacker had been. Another one floated near Shalimar's half-collapsed form, standing guard over the still twitching Gothic ice princess in the green leather miniskirt. Realization hit. Telekinesis! Matt was covering them, just as he promised.

Silence fell.

Panting a little from the exertion, Brennan pushed the unconscious man off him and rolled to his knees. He shook his head, grimacing at the aches now beginning to report in. Oh man – there was certainly going to be ice in his plans tonight – ice and ibuprofen and maybe a stiff double Scotch. Or two. He glanced over at Shalimar and saw that she also had made it to her hands and knees. The floor around her was littered with unconscious bodies.

Jesse's worried voice came over the comlink.

"Are you guys all right?"

Shalimar's head lifted slowly. Her rueful sideways glance at Brennan through a tangle of blond hair held a world of meaning, a communication between them which needed no words. We did it again, her look seemed to say, acknowledging both their penchant for getting themselves into this kind of trouble and the fact that, although a bit worse for wear and albeit with some help, they were once again victorious. Her gaze took in his split lip, the beginning of a lovely purple and yellow lump on the point of his jaw, and the careful, stilted movement which suggested a cracked rib as he climbed to his feet. He could see that she was shivering violently, her body whitened in places by a thin glaze of hoarfrost. He canted his head sheepishly. Yeah, but look at the other guys, his return look replied. She winked at him, her mouth curved wryly. Then she took a breath to help steady her trembling and lifted her ring to her mouth to respond to Jesse.

"We'll live."

Watching them on the monitor, Jesse heaved a sign of relief as the empath, having finally caught up with her teleporting adversary, went over and knelt at Shalimar's side, slipping her arm around the feral's back. Whatever injuries they sustained, Jaryl would take care of them. That was good for its own sake, but also because they still had a long way to go, and would need both Shalimar and Brennan in peak fighting trim if they were all going to make it out of Naxcon in one piece. He saw her go next to Brennan and lightly touch his face. A wave of remembered warmth flowed over him as he recalled being the recipient of a similar touch, but this time he didn't let his memories distract him. He flicked through the camera screens to check on the other bad guys. The team that had gone down the back stairs were making their way stealthily toward Harrison's lab. One of them had a walkie-talkie out, and appeared to be communicating with a group on the top floor. Though he couldn't pull audio from this system, Jesse had a pretty good hunch what their plans were.

"Guys, you've got more company on the way!" he shouted, "One team is heading across the floor to Harrison's lab; another is going to try to come down the southwest stairs and catch you between them. You need to beat them to it. Get out of there now!"

They needed no further urging. Brennan stuck his head out the doorway for a quick look, then waved the ladies on in front of him. They darted toward the corner stairs, the two airborne clubs following them like a pair of faithful hounds. Shalimar flung open the door, gestured for Jaryl to precede her, and nodded toward them.

"Your husband is a handy guy to have around."

Jaryl grinned.

"Yeah, I guess I'll keep him a while longer." She flicked a glance over her shoulder as they went through the opening at the oncoming Brennan.

"They do have their uses, don't they?" she said with a knowing little woman-to-woman smile.

Before Shalimar could even consider what prompted that comment, they heard a shout and some sort of green pseudo-energy nearly gave Brennan a shave before splattering against the door. A half dozen men in street clothes were hurtling down the corridor straight for them. Shalimar moved to come back through, but Brennan pushed her on.

"Go!" he urged.

She started to object that she wasn't about to leave him by himself when she saw the two clubs wheel in midair and fling themselves at their pursuers like a pair of angry, spitting hornets. Using the door for cover from a volley of energy fire, Brennan waited until they were upon the group before loosing a bolt of lighting. He hit both of them with one shot, causing them to explode in a blinding, spitting flare of light, halting the charging mutants amid cries of pain and dismay. Pausing briefly to generate a three-second weld of the door mechanism which he knew wouldn't hold for long, he then stripped off his ruined lab coat as he pounded up the stairs after the two women.

Trying to measure distances on two cameras at once as his teammates exited the lab, Jesse's blood turned to ice. They weren't going to make it. The group coming at them from the second floor was moving too fast; they were nearly there. Brennan, Shalimar and Jaryl were going to be trapped in the stairwell. Their only chance was if he could get to that landing and mass out, hopefully shielding them enough to allow them to escape to the first floor. He swiveled in his chair, his feet under him as he prepared to launch himself from the chair.

No, stay. Look at the screen. Quickly.

He turned back, thinking that something had developed, but nothing was different.

"What am I looking at!?" he snapped to the woman standing next to him.

Lexa gave him a startled look.

"I didn't say anything."

Jesse shot her a disbelieving look, but it didn't matter now anyway. It was too late. The bad guys had reached the door. The man in front, sporting an array of tattoos, a scraggly red beard and a Harley Davidson shirt, grabbed the handle and pulled it open, the others crowding close behind him. Below, Shalimar and Jaryl had just gotten through the basement door. Jesse felt despair yawning in the pit of his stomach. Damn! They were trapped! He should have gone to help them when he had the chance.

Suddenly the shoulders of Red Beard's shirt bunched, as if the wings of the Harley eagle on his back had drawn together to seize him in their feathered grip. In the next instant he was jerked off his feet and thrown into his fellows, knocking them sprawling like tenpins. The whole thing hadn't taken five seconds from start to finish. Unaware of the reprieve they'd just been given, the good guys vaulted up the stairs to the main floor.

It suddenly dawned on Jesse what had just happened. What he thought was Lexa speaking had actually been a telepathic communication from Matt. Now something in the back of his head was leading him to think that when Matt told him to turn back to the screen, it was because he needed to use the molecular's eyes to focus his telekinetic power to delay the gang on the second floor. No doubt he'd done the same thing with Jaryl to guide the two electro-clubs. He might even have done the same thing earlier when he used that machine cord to tie off the double doors; that would account for that odd, someone-looking-over-his-shoulder feeling. Was this notion, this strange sense of knowledge gained without any recognizable words spoken or experiencing any of the usual forms of external input, a facet of Matt's telepathy? Or was he just imagining the whole thing? Jesse didn't know.

Never mind, he told himself sternly. Focus, Jesse! Matt's stratagem had bought them some time, but not nearly enough to get them all out of Naxcon. Through the security cameras Jesse could see Red Beard and his friends getting to their feet. The group that had been stopped by the tied double doors had taken unwitting advantage of Matt's distraction to head for the similar set on the other side of the floor. The bunch Brennan dazzled had backtracked and was now coming up to the main floor via both the central stairs and the elevator. The obvious aim was to reclaim their prize, plus a bonus, by confronting Brennan, Shalimar and Jaryl from three different directions.

Of course, the bad guys didn't know that their quarry was not alone, and the element of surprise could be a tremendous, although short-lived, advantage. His thoughts racing, Jesse quickly formed a battle plan. If Matt could slow down the forces coming up from the basement but let the other group through, he and Lexa could set up an ambush once they crossed the center and entered their pair of the double doors. That would leave Brennan, Shalimar and Jaryl to handle the group now regrouping on the second floor. They were dealing with a lot of unknowns here in the form of the powers they would be facing, but tactically it was their best play.

He needed to convey this to Matt. If it had been one of the others he would have just used their ring comlink, but Matt didn't have one. Telepathy was the obvious answer, but Jesse's only practical experience with a psionic was with Emma. The few times there had been any mental communication between them it had been one way – her receiving what he was unconsciously sending, or her sending to him . Could a non-esper initiate real-time, conscious, two-way mental contact with a psionic? He had no idea. Then again, Matt had telepathically answered what he was thinking by giving him instructions to look at the camera screen. Could he be listening to his thoughts even now?

Just your surface thoughts, came the immediate reply. Jesse couldn't help starting a little at the unfamiliar, and unsettling, sensation of realizing that someone else was actually inside his head, but to his credit he didn't freak out. Good idea, except Jaryl joins me. She's updating the others now.

This whole exchange happened with the speed of thought. Jesse marveled that the group he and Lexa would tackle had only just gotten to the first floor northeast side doors. For instant communication this telepathy thing had their comlinks beat all hollow. So swift was the exchange that he estimated he had as much as 20 seconds with which to set up an ambush. He leaped from his chair, seizing Lexa's hand.

"Come on!" he urged. Before she could hardly blink he had phased them both and was pulling her through the server room wall at a run.

Dillon Carter, the greasy-haired man that Shalimar had laid out in her opening strike, pushed slowly up from the floor, drops of blood pooling beneath him from multiple lacerations to his lip and the inside of his mouth. He sat back on his heels, one hand going to the side of his face, as if by this action he could somehow ease the pain of two dislodged teeth and a busted jaw.

That bitch, that little bitch. He spit out another tooth and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaving a bloody smear. He never would have thought that a broad would have been able to do this to him. She had taken him by surprise with her speed, that was all. He hadn't had the chance to use his own power. But he would now. A lust for revenge swelled in his heart, filling his brain with a curtain of red. In all his years on the street no one, no one, ever did that to him and got away with it. He didn't care about the others; her tall partner or Target Alpha. That blond bitch was going to pay for this. He would take her apart, piece by bloody piece, would enjoy her screams and revel in her pain as his rage burned her to a cinder. He would gut her like a fish with a knife of fire, and have her golden mane hanging as a trophy from his belt.

He reached over to snatch a walkie-talkie from the shirt of the guard lying unconscious nearest to him. He listened carefully to the reports of the other teams. The intruders and the woman they freed were believed to be on the first floor, west wing, probably the south side. Two teams were even now maneuvering to trap them between their two forces, one from above, one from below. A third team had run into a snag at the southeast doors, leading to the suspicion that there may be more intruders than they originally thought. Carter climbed to his feet. It didn't matter how many of them there were. That little bitch was his. And he would kill anyone, friend or foe, who got in his way.

A few of his fellow graftees and some of the security guards were moving now, groaning in pain or staggering to their feet. A few went to check on those still unconscious or offer aid to the wounded. Carter ignored them all. Disdainfully tossing the radio onto its owner's stomach, he stepped purposefully over their recumbent bodies and exited the lab, his mind focused on just one thing. He didn't know who the intruders were, and he didn't care. They thought he was down, neutralized, done. They were about to learn differently.

The stairway door appeared to be locked, but a savage kick broke the weld with contemptuous ease. On the floor above he could hear the sounds of battle raging. As he climbed the stairs with an even tread which belied his building rage, his hands reddened with the generation of his power, quick little licks of hard fire leaking from his fingers.