9. Typhoid Mary.
"I am concerned."
"Oh?" Director Karpuchin looked up at Tchéky. "What about, Agent Romatsev?"
He took a deep breath. "Svetlana is now two days late reporting in, and we've been unable to raise Agent Ibramhov. Examination of his activities shows several serious breaches of normal protocol."
The Director didn't responded straight away, looking over a sheet of paper on the desk in front of her. "Yes, Agent Romatsev. I am fully aware of these facts."
Tchéky hesitated, somewhat taken aback by the tone of her response. "Might I ask what we intend doing about it?"
She fixed him with a beady eye, leaving a long silence for him to fill. When he failed to do so, she simply said: "For the moment? Nothing."
"Nothing?" He sounded aghast. "You know as well as I do that she's likely been compromised, and that Agent Ibramhov may have turned traitor. We should be drawing up plans to extract her and . . ."
"What is your interest in this, if I might ask, Agent Romatsev?"
He was flustered. His mouth worked a second or so before it managed to produce coherent speech. "I have been assigned to act as her handler. I was under the impression that she was of paramount importance to us. Absolutely our top priority – and I have this from the highest authority. I would have thought, therefore, that we would be more concerned when it seems she may have been betrayed and is in danger."
Director Karpuchin simply regarded him calmly. "Worried that your ass is on the line if we lose her, Agent Romatsev?"
"No!" It was slightly disconcerting to find that was absolutely the case. It wasn't himself he was worried about. "I'm . . . concerned about the fate of a valuable asset."
She raised an eyebrow. "Interesting." Then she smiled. It was a chilly expression. "But you need not concern yourself. Everything is in hand. I can assure you that Agent Ibramhov has not turned, and is indeed carrying out his instructions to the letter."
He gaped at her. "I'm sorry, but I beg to differ . . ."
"You were only given the details of the plan that were necessary for you to carry out your function, Agent Romatsev. It was thought that you had developed a level of emotional attachment to Agent . . . Borushka that might have made carrying out our orders in this matter difficult for you. It seems we were correct, hmm? Do not concern yourself. Everything that has happened in Kyrgyzstan has – up to this point – gone exactly according to plan."
"To plan?" Tchéky sounded incredulous. Suddenly he felt a fear he would have been hard pressed to explain. "How the hell can this be to plan?"
She gave another chilly little smile. "It may not be your plan, Agent Romatsev. But it is the plan."
* * *
Dazzlingly bright white light.
Svetlana flinched, twisting her head to one side and closing her eyes against the harsh glare. Her head was pounding – a viciously incessant hammering that wouldn't stop. She was lying on something hard and uncomfortable, and as she became more acquainted with the pain in her head a plethora of other aches made themselves known.
She remembered how she'd acquired the bruise to her left hip, but the sharp pain from her ribcage was something she couldn't recall getting. She hissed involuntarily as she inadvertently stretched the area.
She tried to lift a hand to her face, but found she couldn't. Her arms were tightly pinned to her side. Alarmed she shifted – or tried to – but found that her legs were constrained too. There was also a thick leather harness around her waist, holding her tightly in place.
Something moved over her – a shadow blocking out a portion of the bright light. Her eyes opened again, squinting.
The man standing over her was dressed in a surgeon's scrubs. The lower portion of his face was covered by a sterile mask and all she could really see of him were his eyes – dingy green, deep set, surrounded by a web of fine lines. He wasn't looking at her directly, and in his hand he held a stainless steel syringe-gun filled with a dark red liquid that looked like blood.
He took hold of her upper arm and swabbed it with something she couldn't see. Svetlana tried to struggle, but the restraints made that almost impossible. "Wait," she started to say, but her throat was parched and her voice came out as little more than a weak croaking noise.
"She's conscious," the doctor commented to somebody outside her field of vision. Then, addressing her: "It will be less painful if you try to relax."
She didn't comply, but he didn't seem much bothered by that, pressing the syringe gun against the patch of skin he'd just swabbed and pulling the trigger. Svetlana flinched at the brief stinging sensation.
"What did you do to me?" Svetlana asked, her voice slightly more human sounding this time.
The doctor ignored her, turning away and placing the now empty syringe on a tray. Then he stripped off the latex gloves he was wearing and stepped out of range of her vision. A couple of seconds later she heard the sound of a tap running.
"What did you just inject me with?" Svetlana insisted, though she received no greater response than before. She could feel her heart pounding, though whether that was down to the injection or simply her own state of borderline panic it was difficult to tell.
The tap stopped. She heard the doctor speak again. "Now we just wait and see if you were right. We should have her moved into the isolation ward in the meantime."
* * *
"It was my decision to mislead you, yes." The distorted voice crackled out of Tchéky's cell phone.
"Why?" Tchéky managed after a moment's pause.
"To ensure that you wouldn't be tempted to let something slip to her, or that you wouldn't accidentally give something away with your body language."
"That was not what I meant," he said tightly. "I mean why turn her over into the Vissarion's hands after all this. I think I deserve to know."
There was a distorted chuckle. "Deserve to know? Now that is an interesting concept. Let me see, its eight years since you came to work for us, isn't it Tchéky? I find it interesting that you have managed to maintain a level of naivety such that you still believe in the concept of 'deserve to know.'"
Tchéky managed to bite back on the anger he felt – didn't say anything.
"Very well, I'll humour you," the voice continued, sounding amused. "Did you ever pause to wonder about Rambaldi designing a killer virus? Something with the sole purpose of bringing misery and death to the world?"
"After what I've seen over the years I've ceased to wonder at anything about Rambaldi." Tchéky's voice was flat. "There doesn't seem much point."
"Oh, I don't mean the technical plausibility of it Tchéky. I mean morally and philosophically. Rambaldi wasn't a man who was interested in death. Quite the reverse in fact. He revelled in life and always sought means to improve and extend it through his work. To bring us closer to god through science."
Tchéky made a noncommittal noise. "So you're saying what? The bio-weapon you sent her after is nothing of the sort?"
"Some might mistake it as such. Those who haven't read the contents of the page Svetlana helped us uncover for instance. It will kill most people granted, and kill them quite horribly, so it is a natural enough mistake I suppose. But that is to overlook several key facts – most notably that, as a virus, it simply isn't very contagious or hardy. Short of having it injected into your bloodstream – or ingesting large quantities of it – it is quite difficult to become infected."
"What is it for then?" Tchéky asked, unable to keep the edge of impatience out of his voice.
"Rambaldi writes that it is meant to transform and unlock – to elevate to a higher level. Not just anybody, mind. According to him it will only work as intended on somebody of a particular genetic disposition." There was a pause. "Are you getting there yet, Tchéky, or do you need me to spell it all out?"
"It will only work as intended on someone with the same genetic characteristics as the person whose blood revealed the page." Tchéky sounded numb. His grip on the phone slackened to the point where it almost slipped from his grasp.
"Indeed, indeed. Very good," the voice was saying, though he was only half listening. "I knew there was a reason I employed you, though lately I've been minded to forget."
"You sent her to become infected," Tchéky accused.
* * *
She was a giant.
She gazed down at the giant red sphere – the battery, she knew – and reached out. Her hand was enormous; easily as big as the sphere itself, which floated hypnotically above the black horseshoe device. As she watched her hand moved, seemingly of its own volition, unhooking the device from its moorings.
The ball exploded. She drew back, startled, as water showered everywhere.
* * *
She was in hell. Purgatory. Some such.
She could hear moaning. Ghastly sounds of pain and suffering. Some of those sounds might have come from her.
Her skinned burned, fever hot. Hot as the sun. Her throat was parched, and she craved water. Water. She would have almost been tempted to sell her soul for a glass of water.
She tried to move, but she couldn't. She was too weak to lift her hands. They remained pinned at her sides in any case. The pain was awful. Intolerable, vicious red needles of it, stabbing through her legs and hands. Even the texture of her clothing against her body was an agony, abrading sensitised skin like sandpaper.
She drifted, coherent thought lost amid ebbing tides of delirium that threatened to sweep her away. Even the most fundamental of details became difficult to grasp.
Who was she? For a startling, terrifying moment she had no idea. Then a name surfaced. Svetlana? No, that wasn't right. People had been calling her Svetlana lately, but she was really called something different . . .
Consciousness faded before she could follow the thought through.
* * *
The red sphere was there again, looming in front of her, spinning slowly between the arms of the giant black horseshoe. Only this time she wasn't a giant anymore. This time she was tiny.
Alice through the looking glass. Big, then small. The thought made her giggle for a moment, except . . . except it wasn't really funny. In fact it was scary.
"Vaughn, it's bigger than I thought," she heard herself saying in English. Her earpiece crackled. She couldn't make out the voice on the other end. "If I turn this thing off I'm going to have to swim out."
* * *
"She's just like all the others. The same symptoms exactly. Face it, you were wrong. She's going to die a miserable, lingering death just the same as everyone else we've infected."
Not-Svetlana blinked, staring up at the speaker. It was the doctor from before – the one who'd injected her. He was no longer wearing a mask and was separated from her by clear plastic. His lips looked prissy, surrounded by lines and pressed tightly together like sphincter.
"She's conscious," another person said. She recognised that voice. Ramazan. The one who'd betrayed her. It was too much effort to muster any anger.
"So are half the others. It means nothing. Her insides are still turning slowly into mush."
She tried to speak, but she struggled to make her voice work. In the end it all seemed like too much effort and she gave up. The pain wasn't quite as bad before – dull, distant throbbing, but she had no energy whatsoever.
"The tests show nothing different at all?" This was a third voice – one she couldn't place.
"Look for yourself," the doctor answered. "Antibodies at roughly a thousand percent normal levels. Her immune system is trying to fight back, but it's being overwhelmed. She's being eaten alive from the inside out. Exactly the same as everyone else here."
"It's acting quicker with her, isn't it?" Ramazan said. "Normally it takes, what, several days for the precursor symptoms to manifest. With some of them I've seen it lies dormant for weeks. Look at her though – this is fifty two hours."
"So we have expended all this effort just to find someone who dies more quickly." The doctor sounded dismissive. "I hardly think this is what Rambaldi had in mind. I feel quite confident in saying we were mistaken. She isn't the one we were looking for."
Close by somebody screamed. It was a horrible, wrenching sound that trailed away into wet gurgling coughing.
"But, nevertheless, it is different, even if only slightly." The third voice again.
She saw the doctor nod grudgingly. From close by came anguished, sobbing moans.
"Why isn't she screaming? Like all the rest?"
As if on cue another hopeless cry of agony sundered the air.
"We're giving her the full morphine dosage. The others are on minimal rations – our supplies are hardly limitless. We thought she was important though, so we're trying to keep her relatively comfortable."
"And do the texts say anything about morphine?" the third voice asked sharply.
"No, of course not."
"Then take her off it. If it wasn't in Rambaldi's writing it might be inadvertently interfering with some process or other. Interfering with her ability to fight the virus off."
No. No don't do that, she mouthed, but no one was looking at her anymore.
"I hardly think that's going to make any difference . . ." the doctor started.
"Don't think. Do as you're told. Even if you're right it's not going to make things worse."
She heard two sets of footsteps walking away. The doctor sighed, bending down and fiddling with something out of her range of vision. Then he walked away from her too.
After a time her surroundings faded again.
* * *
She ran. Her heart pounded, adrenaline flooding her veins as her legs pumped. Behind her she could here a roaring, rushing noise getting louder by the second. By the fraction of a second. She was running for her life.
Ahead of her was stark white hallway. She gritted her teeth and strained to extract the last bit of extra pace from her limbs, but she was already going flat out. She rounded a corner. There was someone ahead of her, stopping and staring wide-eyed at her. At what was following behind her.
Vaughn. She now remembered him well enough that she recognised him immediately, though he looked different to the other times she'd seen him in her dreams – hair spiked; long leather trench coat flapping up behind him.
She motioned for him to run, but he just stood gaping. As she got near him she grabbed his chest, yanking him round and yelling at him. The roaring was so loud that she didn't dare stop, and she careened past him. She could here his footsteps pounding behind her though, so kept on sprinting as hard as she could.
Ahead of them was a door. It was sliding remorselessly shut.
She made it through, but it was already two-thirds closed. Desperately she tried to hang on – to keep it open – but the machinery driving it was too powerful for her to hold
It slid to inches in front of Vaughn. She stared at his face through the glass insert as the wall of water slammed into him, filling up the hallway behind the door from floor to ceiling.
Frantically she grabbed hold of a fire-extinguisher mounted on the wall, using the base of it to slam into the glass time and time again. It was useless though. She might as well have been hitting reinforced steel
Then he was gone, the window empty.
* * *
"Vaughn," she cried, though her voice was so distorted that anyone listening would have had a hard time telling that.
She surfaced briefly from the delirium, groaning. The pain was monstrous again – all pervasive. It hammered through her skull in red-hot iron spikes. She moaned. Her skin glistened with sweat, running in rivulets. Bloodshot eyeballs twitched and rolled, pupils dilated, focusing on nothing. Little tremors and twitches passed through her body continuously
Burning. Burning. She thought she could see the flames in the corner of her vision – hear them roaring and crackling.
She tried to pull away, but the restraints held her fast, unable to move. After several seconds she subsided back, head twisting from side to side.
Who am I?
* * *
Her hand closed around the handgun hidden beneath her mattress.
"I just remembered. Francie doesn't like coffee ice cream."
She looked up, heart in mouth. Francie – fake, cuckoo Francie; the interloper who had stepped into her best friend's life and stolen it – stood framed in the bedroom doorway, a gun pointed at her.
No. She doesn't," she answered flatly. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away, her muscles coiling like springs in readiness for what was to come.
"Drop the gun. Drop it!"
She was already moving though, diving forward even as Francie started shooting . . .
* * *
Her breath wheezed and gurgled like a broken bellows. Someone had filled her lungs with molten lead and she slowly was drowning in it. That was what it felt like anyway.
She thought she saw something moving near her and strained to see. Her vision distorted and swam, like oil spilled in a puddle of water, then it went completely black.
* * *
"You think you can steal from us, you little bitch?!"
She crouched behind the red sofa, using it for cover. Her breath was coming quickly, her ears straining to pinpoint the position of her assailant as he moved towards her. Her gaze travelled along the windows across the other side of the plane's fuselage, alighting on the door opposite her.
She wrapped one hand in a length of seatbelt and lifted her pistol, aiming carefully.
"No! No, no, no, no, No!" Vaughn's voice, frantic over her earpiece.
Ignoring it she fired. Once. Twice.
The window in the door cracked, then shattered. There was a horrendous creaking, buckling sound. Then the door blew out entirely and everything was a howling maelstrom of wind and fury.
* * *
Hot needles jabbed along the backs of her limbs, then for good measure decided to play up and down the length of her spine a few times. She tried to move – to escape the torment. Either she was too weak or something was holding her down though.
All she could manage was to twist feebly from side to side.
Even that effort proved too much. Everything faded, first to red then black.
* * *
Her keys fell from her hand, tumbling to the floor. She dropped the bags she was carrying, heedless of where they fell.
The bathroom door was slightly ajar and she moved towards it as if drawn by invisible strings. Part of her – a terrified little-girl part, curled up in a ball in a corner of her mind – wanted to turn and flee; knew that opening the door the rest of the way would be like opening Pandora's Box. She went on regardless – peered inside.
Danny was in the bathtub. There was blood everywhere. It was splattered over the formerly pristine white porcelain; running in garish red streaks.
She dimly heard herself gasp – was running across to the bathtub without consciously making any decision. Her legs buckled and her hand came up to her mouth as she leant over him, seeing the bullet holes in his head and chest.
Everything spilled out. She screamed – a primal howl of disbelieving grief.
* * *
Light.
It stung her eyes, but it was oddly calming. She could hear her breath rasping, but the painful raw emotions left over from her vision bled slowly away.
There was a face above hers, looking down, bearded and serene. It was surrounded by a glowing halo. Eyes seemed to shine, filled with compassion as they gazed down at her. She saw his lips move, though no sound managed to reach her.
Calm, my child, she thought they said through lip reading. You will be well again soon.
She appreciated the sentiment but decided to herself that he was a liar.
* * *
Pain.
Everything seemed to hurt and her eyes wouldn't focus properly. There seemed to be at least three separate Francie's walking towards her, and there was a rushing noise in her ears that drowned everything else out transforming the scene into a strange silent movie.
She tried to move – knew she had to move – but she couldn't make her body respond. Cuckoo-Francie was leaning over her now. One hand snaked towards the gun that had fallen beside her amid the fragments of broken glass.
Go on, move you bitch. Move or you're going to die!
Operating more on instinct than conscious will she managed to grab hold of one of the glass shards, ignoring the fact that it bit into her hand as she picked it up. One more hurt amid all the rest scarcely made a difference. Then she lashed out, laying Francie's cheek open.
Francie drew back, stung, one hand coming up to touch her face.
In the space she'd bought herself she grabbed the gun. She tried to aim it, though her vision was blurring and the floor seemed to tilt and slide beneath her.
She pulled the trigger once – blew a chunk from Francie's left biceps. Again. A dark red flower blossomed on the left side of Francie's chest near her shoulder. Third time the charm. The right side of the chest this time, neatly pairing off the second shot.
Cuckoo-Francie toppled backwards.
The roaring in her ears became louder, drowning out her own ragged breathing. She was vaguely aware of the gun sliding between her fingers as she subsided backwards, then consciousness slowly bled away.
* * *
She screamed.
Her throat was so raw and dry that it felt like the effort made it crack open, the pain excruciating. The fever burned more fiercely than ever, her skin drenched in sweat that was somehow both hot and icy at the same time. Thoughts slid and slipped away like quicksilver every time she tried to grasp them.
The noise she made seemed to waken those occupying the beds around her. Someone else screamed in answer to her and very soon there was a cacophony of moans and wails and agonised gasps.
Serenaded by a choir of the damned, she drifted back into oblivion.
* * *
"I've waited almost thirty years for this."
She stared at the woman's silhouette framed in the light from the doorway. Her heart was thudding. Suddenly her injuries – the pain in her head; the bruising – were distant, trivial things. It had become almost impossible to think straight through the conflicting tides of emotion. "Mom?"
The woman stepped forward slowly, into the light – revealing herself to her gaze.
"You must have known this day would come." Her mother smiled fractionally, her voice soft. "I could have prevented all this of course. You were so small when you were born. It would have been so easy."
Her gaze travelled slowly down and she saw that the woman – her mother – held a pistol down by her side.
"Tell me . . . Sydney . . ." The voice was still soft, but now it was insistent too. "Who sent you here? You must tell me."
* * *
Sydney.
Blobs of colour swirled and danced, floating just above her.
Pretty colours. She smiled, fascinated by them. Oh so pretty . . .
* * *
"Syd?"
As she turned back from the drugs cabinet, she stopped briefly and stared down at Vaughn. Stripped to the waist and lit by sickly yellow light as he lay on the gurney he looked so vulnerable – ill. Some of the initial joy she'd felt on first seeing him was replaced by a jittery kind of fear.
"I'm so sorry. I'm going to shoot you with adrenaline. We've got to run."
She plunged the syringe into the small bottle of clear liquid, filling it up. Her gaze darted quickly – nervously – to the stairs leading up from the basement, then back to Vaughn. She stepped closer to him, syringe in hand, knowing she had to hurry.
"Uh, don't do that . . ." he started to protest.
Too late. She pounded the needle into his chest.
* * *
Syd.
Twitch. Flicker. Then gone again, reclaimed almost instantly by the darkness.
* * *
The light snapped back on. Consciousness snapped back with it.
Flinching against the brightness she tried to move but the restraints securing her to the chair held her just as securely as before.
She wasn't alone. Awake or dream. It was all so confusing.
Sloane.
Rage surged and she had to fight the urge to thrash against the restraints; to try to break free and get her hands on him and . . ..
No he would not have that pleasure. Instead she stared directly forwards into space, not even glancing at him.
"Sydney, tell him what he wants to hear . . . or this will not end well." She was aware of him moving closer, crouching down beside the chair. She could smell his aftershave; feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep staring straight ahead.
"You know, in many ways, I will always consider you my proudest achievement, Sydney. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about this"
* * *
Sydney.
She coughed weakly, barely stirring back to consciousness.
Who was called Sydney? No Sydney here. That's a silly name. Silly, silly name. She giggled, though the sound that emerged from her lips was scarcely recognisable as such.
* * *
Her mother stood only inches away, separated from her by nothing more than a layer of glass.
Conflicted emotions struggled within her, but she kept them buried behind the facade of ice-cold determination and tightly controlled anger she had constructed around herself as armour.
"Look at me!" Her voice held a snap, and she paused until her mother did indeed meet her gaze.
"We will interact only when necessary. You will address me as 'Agent Bristow' and only answer the questions I ask. There will be no personal anecdotes, no comments about my job performance, no condolences or congratulations. Do you understand?"
No emotion showed on her mother's face. She stood there, calm and watchful, as if she was the once outside the cage – in control.
"Do you understand?" she repeated, cold and firm. No ground would be ceded this time. Not an inch.
Her mother's expression altered fractionally; something was yielded. An acknowledgement of equals. "Yes . . . Agent Bristow."
* * *
Floating and serene.
The fierce burning, hellish heat was finally gone and now it felt almost as she were drifting in a pool, calm and completely content. Lethargy weighed on her where before there had been fever and delirium. Time ceased to have meaning or direction.
Agent Bristow. Agent Sydney Bristow. That is who I am.
Gradually she faded once more. After a short while her eyelids started to flicker rapidly.
* * *
"Sydney, understand something – "
* * *
"Good luck, Sydney."
* * *
"No, no, no! This is crazy! Sydney! Do you hear yourself?!"
* * *
"Sydney Bristow. I'm an intelligence officer for the United States government."
* * *
"Syd? You okay?"
* * *
Syd. Sydney. Sydney Bristow.
Her name was Sydney Bristow.
Not Svetlana Borushka. It wasn't a sudden bolt of light in which all her memories came rushing back, but she knew with absolute certainty she was not Svetlana Borushka. An overwhelming jumble of images span out of control inside her head, making it impossible to focus on any one thing.
A small part of her still capable of coherent thought wondered briefly if she hadn't gone completely mad. Questioned whether it wasn't just one of her aliases rising out of the delirium, to try and take over and fill the void.
There was a soft, distinctive phfft sound from somewhere.
It cut through the spiralling insanity and snapped her back to consciousness. She listened hard. It seemed quieter than usual. No laboured breathing; no bedlam of moans or cries. Suddenly she felt very much alone.
She tried to twist her head to one side to see, but it was useless. The way her restraints held her prone left her with only the most limited field of vision.
There was a squeak of a rubber-soled shoe on the vinyl floor very close by. Abruptly she lay still, closing her eyes and trying to regulate her breathing and heart rate so as to appear to be unconscious still.
"That's the last of the poor bastards."
The voice spoke in Russian. It took a second or so for her to translate it into English and understand what was being said.
Something inside her lurched. She was thinking in English. Her heart thudded. Sydney. Definitely not Svetlana.
A shadow passed over her, blocking out a portion of the light. She knew that someone was standing just outside the clear plastic isolation tent that covered her, looking in.
"Sleeping peacefully," the voice said, again in Russian. This time the translation in her head came rather more quickly. "Amazing. I really thought she was a goner, like the others. Yet here she still is, and all but recovered it seems."
A second individual grunted. "Doesn't look any different." Ramazan.
There was a soft chuckle. "No. Of course not. I don't really think it was ever going to be that sort of transformation. Are the explosives set?"
"Yeah, everything's ready."
"And the Vissarion?"
Ramazan sounded slightly impatient. "His flight's been delayed as planned. He won't get accidently caught up in it."
"Good."
Sydney heard the isolation tent being unzipped and pulled back. She concentrated on keeping calm. "Give me a hand," the first voice said, much closer now. Still she could hear no sound from the rest of the isolation ward, and belatedly her brain filled in what the phfft sound from earlier had been – a silenced handgun.
Everyone else had been murdered. Suddenly she was struggling to contain white-hot rage.
"Her heart rate has just picked up," Ramazan observed.
"Dreaming. Look at the eye movement there. She's still feverish. It will be a while before she's fully recovered according to Dr. Markov." She could hear the shrug in the tone of voice.
"You're sure its okay to move her?" Ramazan sounded doubtful.
"Best do it now while she's still so weak, eh? Less chance of her giving us any trouble that way."
Ramazan made a noncommittal sound.
Weak? Sydney let her mind reach out to the rest of her body. Curious, she didn't feel particularly weak, or indeed when it came down to it, feverish. In fact, physically she felt almost rested, as if she had just had a nap rather spent the last several days on the edge of death.
"We can hardly leave her until the Vissarion returns, can we?" She felt the speaker leaning over her, disconnecting the drip. Then she felt the restraints around her waist being unbuckled. "Give me a hand here."
Ramazan was now leaning over her too, unbuckling her ankle restraints as the other man freed her wrists. She would only get one chance at this she knew.
"Get her legs. Help me shift her into the chair." The speaker leant close again. She could smell his sweat and cheap, unpleasantly artificial smelling aftershave with an almost preternatural sharpness.
Abruptly she snapped her head forward, catching the man full in the face with her forehead. His nose crunched and she heard him cry out.
Simultaneously she kicked out with both feet, catching Ramazan in the chest. He went over onto his backside with a surprised wail. Not pausing she snapped an open-handed punch up at the man she'd just head-butted, then swung around, off the gurney she lay on. Her knees caught him hard in the chest.
He fell onto his back, and she dropped her full weight into his midriff, then grabbed him by the hair and slammed the back of his head twice against the floor to render him unconscious.
She looked back at Ramazan, who was fumbling to free his pistol from his belt. As he tried to aim it at her she ran forward and kicked his wrist as if she was punting a football.
There was a sharp crack as ulna and radius bones snapped from the impact, and Ramazan screamed. Sydney chased after the gun as it went flying.
As she snatched it up the pistol she stopped short, staring at the contents of one of the other beds in horror. The man's face was swollen and black – a single gigantic bruise. A crust of dried blood and mucus surrounded a mouth stretched in a perpetual silent scream, and the bed sheets were befouled by more blood and fluids she didn't care to think about too hard. The pair of bullet holes in the man's chest looked like they had come as a relief.
She looked back at Ramazan. Barely contained fury simmered inside her.
He'd propped himself up and was cradling what appeared to be a radio remote control unit in his good hand. She pointed the gun at his chest.
"Don't do anything hasty Svetlana. I was only following orders. There's a lot you don't understand." A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face.
"Svetlana?" She spoke the next words in clearly enunciated American-accented English. "Are you sure about that?"
He stared at her – swallowed heavily as he caught the look in her eyes. "Nevertheless . . .." His tongue flicked out briefly to moisten his lips. "This remote will detonate approximately two hundred pounds of C4 explosive located at various key points around this facility. You, me, and about fifty others will be either blown up or buried alive. All I have to do is touch this button here and . . . boom."
"I don't think you're going to blow yourself up." She kept the gun trained on him.
"No? If it comes down to a choice of being shot by you or this . . .."
"I also don't think your bosses will be too pleased if you kill me either. I doubt they've gone to all this trouble for the good of their health."
"If I'm dead I don't care, do I?" He made a sharp gesture. "Now place the gun gently on the floor and slide it . . .."
While he was still talking she shot him in the wrist. The remote detonator fell from his grasp and bounced away across the hard tiled floor.
She moved carefully to retrieve it, not taking her eyes of Ramazan for even a second. He just blinked stupidly, gaping at the blood pumping from the new hole in his wrist. After a moment he tried clumsily to struggle back to his feet.
"Give me an excuse. Please." Her voice was cold. Hard.
He stopped, staring at her. "Look, I know you're angry, Svetlana. I don't know your real name, so I'll call you that okay? I'd be angry too if they did this to me. But think about this for moment. There's nowhere you can run to that they can't find you – you really think they'd let you out if there were any chance of you getting away from them?"
She thought about the tracking device implanted in her side and shrugged. "Probably not."
He tried to use his broken arm to apply pressure to the bullet hole in his other wrist, face twisting as he gasped in agony. "And you're right of course, absolutely. They don't want to kill you. In fact they've got a lot invested in seeing you safe and sound. They're not monsters. They'll help you – treat you well. It's in their best interests. You have to realise that."
She nodded.
He started to smile through the pain.
Her next words made the smile freeze. "You know what Ramazan? I think I'll try running anyway. It'll be good exercise if nothing else."
With that she turned and started to walk away, past the rows of corpses lying dead on their beds inside their respective isolation tents. She counted forty-six of them in all.
"Wait."
Despite her better judgment Sydney paused, looking back at him over her shoulder. "What?"
"You feel better, don't you? Well again, I mean."
"What do you care?" she asked suspiciously.
"For you? I'll be honest. Nothing really. I'm just trying to avert a disaster." His face looked grey and greasy as he continued to struggle to apply enough pressure to his wrist to staunch the bleeding. "The virus is still active inside you. You're not going to die from it, but you're a carrier. Know what that means?"
"Enlighten me."
"It means that if you walk out of that door, you risk infecting everyone you meet with the same thing that just killed all these poor bastards."
"You killed them. You shot them." The anger leaked out into her voice.
He grimaced, gasping in pain. Blood continued to ooze from the hole in his wrist. "They were dead anyway. It was mercy. You step out that door and thousands more will suffer because of you. Hundreds of thousands. You'll be a regular Typhoid Mary. You want that on your head?"
"If that's true," she said. "You and you're friend seem curiously unconcerned about getting infected yourself. No gloves or masks."
He nodded down towards to a gasmask hanging from his belt. His unconscious partner had one too.
"But you're not wearing it!"
He blinked at her. His mouth worked for a couple of seconds before he managed to produce a response. She could almost see his brain ticking over. "That's because we've received the counteragent."
"Right. The counteragent." Her voice was flat. "In which case killing all these people wasn't necessary, was it? You could have given them the counteragent too."
"We . . . we didn't have enough."
Sydney watched him. He was blinking rapidly. "For someone in this line of work you're not very good at lying, are you?"
"I'm not . . .."
The anger flared again, white hot. There were forty-eight beds in the ward, and all of them except two were occupied by corpses. How many others had occupied them before these latest unfortunates? All for what? She could feel a vein in her temple throbbing. Her finger squeezed down on the pistol's trigger. Ramazan obviously saw this because he choked off on what he was saying, his eyes becoming huge saucers. She could see him hyperventilating, flinching back in anticipation of the bullet.
No. No. I don't have to this. He finger remained tight on the trigger, knuckle white. Finally she let out a breath.
No. I am not Anna.
Abruptly she turned away, back towards the door. It was an air lock type mechanism. She hit the control to open it.
"W-Wait!" Ramazan started again, voice shaky. "I-I'm telling the truth . . .."
No, you're not. She told herself that, but something still nagged at her and she hesitated mid stride. What if . . .? With a small shake of her head, she pushed the thought away. No, he's lying. I know he's lying.
Everyone had lied to her.
With a deep breath she stepped outside, into the unknown.
* * *
Sydney stopped the jeep and looked back down the road at the mountain.
Escaping from the bunker had been surprisingly easy. Once outside the isolation ward the reason Ramazan and his partner had had gas masks was clear. There were uniformed bodies sprawled in the corridors, and a faintly unpleasant odour hanging on the air, slightly reminiscent of a chlorinated swimming pool.
Several of the bodies lay in puddles of bloody vomit. Others who'd managed to don gasmasks themselves before succumbing had been shot. If anyone in the facility had been left alive they'd obviously had other things on their minds than stopping her from leaving.
She'd found a uniform that was about the right size – though the boots were a bit too big – and exchanged it for the sterile blue hospital gown she'd been wearing up to then. What she could have really done with was a shower and a meal, but stopping hadn't seemed like such a good idea.
A storage shed had been easily broken into and she turned up a Kalashnikov assault rife, several spare clips and even a couple of grenades, as well as some more mundane supplies. Always be prepared. She could hear herself saying that, somewhere far back in her memories.
Briefly she wondered were she would go. She knew she was American. She suspected she was CIA, or had been once. Beyond that everything was still a thorny tangle, details lost or jumbled up with each other.
Away from here. Out of Kyrgyzstan. Out of Russia. Find herself. Find Vaughn.
It sounded simple, and she half smiled, knowing that it would be anything but. She picked up the detonator from the seat beside her and sighed softly, thumb straying to the trigger.
There might be people who were still alive in there. People she risked burying alive. Then she remembered the lines of tortured bodies in the isolation ward and her thoughts hardened. The Vissarion wasn't just going to stop. If she didn't press the trigger those beds would soon be occupied again. And again. And again. Until he finally found whatever the hell it was that he was looking for.
She closed her eyes, seeing the red sphere turning over slowly in her minds eye. The battery, breeding the infection. Where that knowledge came from she didn't know. It was just there. She saw it shattering, the water inside it spilling through the great cavern that contained it.
Opening her eyes again she pressed the trigger on the remote detonator. There was a low rumbling noise, like distant thunder.