He burst back into the corridors and ran to the next crossroads, gunning down another clone as he ran to his right. Two left turns later, having followed Shannon’s instructions to perfection, he found himself one door away from the final resting place of Nathaniel Pearce’s hallowed research.
McCormick jerked open the door to the data servers and found a thin chamber the length of a train carriage, filled from front to back with caged hard drives and enough flickering lights to fill a disco. The heat was intense; even the groaning fans that lined the ceiling were locked in a constant battle against the temperature of the computers.
Someone opened fire from down the path. McCormick sheltered behind the open door, and decided enough was enough. One of those bullets could have killed him stone dead, and wiped out any chance of him fulfilling his mission. He couldn’t afford to die, not when he was so close to destroying their fourth target out of five.
Are we really that close to surviving the night? I honestly thought we’d be dead before we got three .
McCormick shook his head and took a deep breath. The sooner he did this, the better.
He pulled the pin on the first hand warhead, and launched it to the far end of the chamber. He aimed the second at the halfway spot on the metal floor, and sent the final one a distance he thought he might just survive from. He took his rifle in both hands, leapt back into the open corridor, and killed a clone who had not thought an old man could jump so fast.
McCormick slammed the data server door shut with half a second to spare, as the hand warheads detonated. Like the sound of a sprinting giant, the thunderous explosions leapt closer and closer and sent the HPFC rocking with the force of an earthquake. McCormick was thrown against the back wall. He fell to the floor, double-checked that the impact had not broken his spine, and scrambled to his feet as Floor P began to steady itself.
He smiled as the gravity of his actions dawned on him. The AME files would be left to starve in cyberspace, never to be found again. And after a visit to Floor B, Pearce would be naked of knowledge altogether. All McCormick needed was to find a way out of the HPFC alive, before his adrenalin ran out and he remembered how afraid he was.
‘He’s down here!’ came a raging young voice. ‘Follow the explosions!’
It was a human’s voice, of course, but one which McCormick did not recognise. Whoever it was, he was coming along McCormick’s escape route, leaving him with a choice between running for his life or finding a good place to hide.
He would lose a running race. But he remembered Shannon’s words about a Central Power Generator. It was one door away, and the best hiding place he could hope to find.
McCormick stumbled through the entrance to the neighbouring room, and closed the door moments before the angry soldier could storm around the corner. He switched off the lights and ran to the generator, a cylindrical casing filled with a mess of turbines and loud noises, and positioned himself behind it for his last stand.
A set of loud footsteps came to a halt outside the door. McCormick’s sense of adventure began to falter, and he finally admitted that he was alone in the dark, trapped and terrified.
‘You’re finished, you sad coffin-dodger!’ came a scream. ‘Come out and get yourself a peaceful death before I come in there and make it slow!’
An all-or-nothing strike had felt like such a good idea at the time. But there was no way out for McCormick anymore. His rational mathematician’s mind kept him from panic for just long enough to reach for his radio. It was time to play his last, most desperate move.
‘Kate!’ he yelled. ‘The code to the detonator is one-nine-two, double-three-seven!’
He scrambled for the acid grenades in his pockets, lay them on the top of the generator, and began to pull pins. After he had finished, he ran to cower in the furthest corner of the room.
‘McCormick?’ came Kate’s quivering voice.
‘One-nine-two, double-three-seven! Set it off at exactly half past ten, no questions asked, and phone comms the moment you’ve done it! And if I don’t get out of this… I love all three of you. So, so much.’
‘No—’
The door was booted open to reveal the soldier’s silhouette, and he pointed his rifle straight at McCormick’s face. With tears falling from his eyes, McCormick spoke his final words into the radio.
‘They got me. But the data server’s gone. You know what you need to do. One-nine-two,double-three-seven, at half past ten. Win this war, my friends.’
The human switched on the light. He was younger than McCormick had imagined. He signalled for McCormick to drop his assault rifle and radio, an order which he obeyed. The assassin shot the radio to the sound of Kate’s screams, breathed in to bark a command, but his voice was lost in the following explosions. The three acid grenades spilled their fizzling payload over the hull of the generator. Before his captor knew what had happened, the room around them, the whole of Floor P, and the entire Citadel were plunged into darkness.
‘Bonus points…’ McCormick whispered to himself.
In the dark, it was easier for him to imagine the scene across the rest of New London. Everything from their munitions factories to their clone training facilities would have shut down in an instant. The vehicle port they had entered through would only have been lit by the dim sky outside. Clones in computer rooms might have watched their screens go blank a split-second before the lightbulbs followed. High-ranking human officers on Floor A would have felt under threat for the first time in a year.
The fizzling noises stopped at McCormick’s side. The acid had burned itself out.
‘You know,’ the boy hissed, coming into view again as he flicked the switch on his rifle torch. ‘I was going to kill you, doctor. I was going to spread the guts of the great Joseph McCormick all across this room, and stick your miserable head on the spike of an electric fence for all your pansy little friends to see.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get your chance.’
‘You’re damned right I will. Make no mistake, you old fart – the only reason you’re still breathing is that code I heard you mention. I want answers.’
Of course that’s why I’m alive. Why do you think I shouted it loud enough for you to hear?
An angry voice yelled through the soldier’s battery-powered radio.
‘Oliver! The whole of Floor A just lost its electricity! What the hell’s going on?’
‘Good news and bad news, Nick… the data servers and the power room have gone to hardware heaven. But I’ve got you a prize that’ll make it more than worth it.’
‘You killed McCormick.’
McCormick took the optimism in Nicholas Grant’s voice as a huge compliment.
‘Not yet. He was shouting a code into his radio for some kind of detonator. He doesn’t get to die until I know what it means.’
‘Outstanding. Bring him to me so I can extract the answers myself.’
The assassin gasped in fury, like a child denied a packet of sweets.
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy snarled. ‘Will be there in ten.’
Grant called him ‘ Oliver ’ . And while the lights were on, I noticed he wa s a young redhead.
T he others are in grave danger and they don’t even know it .
With the assassin’s rifle barrel pointed to his face, McCormick raised his arms and let out a surprised gasp.