Well, that wraps it up for Designated Survivor! I hope you enjoyed the story, if you’ve been reading along. If you’ve been waiting for the book to be compiled into a single eBook file, here are your download links for that:

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Now begins the process of deciding which of my many, many other most probably unsellable novels should be posted here on a weekly basis in 2023. Just typing that number terrifies me in a fundamental way, but we must soldier on with the free eBooks or esle what is even the point of me?

What I’ll probably do is post a list of possible titles without any context or plot information and take a little poll. Until then, thanks for reading!

I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

Epilogue

Thirty seconds before stepping into the room, Renicks heard the noise. He paused in the hall just out of sight. Holding the huge mass of flowers, damp and fragrant against his cheek. The sheer volume of voices was intimidating.

The two men standing guard outside the room looked at him and kept looking. They were both nice-looking men of indeterminate age in lackluster suits that did not hide shoulder holsters well. They were both big without being huge. Strong, athletic men in the prime of health. The one nearest to Renicks produced a small hand-held device and manipulated with his thumb in a familiar way.

“Name, sir?”

Renicks cleared his throat. “Jack Renicks.”

There was, he was certain, a ripple of recognition between the two men. He had not seen his name in any news item. Had not been contacted or recognized or in any way indicated. According to every newspaper, web site, TV channel, or radio program he’d seen or heard, he’d been nowhere near the Secure Facility when there had been a “malfunction” of some equipment that had put the country on high alert for twenty-four hours. He was impressed at the thoroughness of the clean-up mission, in fact.

The focus of the story was Grant’s suicide and the investigation into how long his mental illness had been covered up. Renicks had little doubt Mallory and her advisors were more than willing to withstand the humiliation of being accused of hiding a President’s competence issues in exchange for being in control of the story. The bombings were also in every story, painted as the crisis that had pushed Grant over the edge. Speculation was energetic and colorful, and investigatory committees were sprouting like mushrooms. Renicks had no doubt they would get nowhere near the truth unless all of their members held the highest clearances.

For proof of this theory, he looked to the Secure Facility — which he’d started thinking of in capital letters. The events he’d been part of there had been masterfully downgraded to a “systems failure” that had merely contributed to a paranoid President’s breakdown. He was impressed. Mallory and her people had taken three days to convince everyone that this was an isolated, if horrifying, breach of national security, and were working hard to pin much of the blame on an unbalanced President who had allowed “uncleared” elements access to his immediate surroundings against the sound advice of his Secret Service.

The man moved his thumb smoothly on the tiny screen, then nodded. Glanced at Renicks, then back to the screen. “Okay,” he said. “Go on in.”

He steeled himself. Glanced down at himself to make sure he was presentable. He’d worn an old pair of jeans, broken in but still serviceable, a white button-down shirt, and a blue blazer. Had struggled with the choice of clothes like a kid going on a first date. Ironically trying very hard to land on some vaguely defined level of casual.

Concealing his limp, he forced himself into motion and moved forward, turning to his left and stepping between the expressionless men into the room.

At first, no one noticed him. The room appeared to be filled with women and flowers. Renicks watched the scene for a moment, wondering if it would be possible to flee.

Begley lay in the bed, looking small and child-like. She had her arms folded peacefully over her belly. A monitor was clipped to one finger, and an IV line ran from her left elbow to a pair of clear plastic bags hung above her. Renicks winced at how tired and drawn she was. But beautiful. And unbroken: She was laughing, her whole body involved, quaking with good humor. He wondered how many people would be able to go through what she had and still laugh like that. Open, without hesitation. As if they hadn’t both just learned just how terrible the world was. Just how dark its secrets were.

Around her were four adult women and six small girls. The women were grouped loosely around the bed, finding floor space where they could amongst the dozens of huge floral arrangements. Renicks stared for a moment, struck by how much each of them resembled Begs. Her sisters were plumper than her, all older in small increments. They were rounder and less-defined, physically, but their faces had the same oval prettiness, the same clear intelligence. The same mocking eyes and glossy, dark hair, the same creamy tan skin. This was an entire family, he thought, that had never once gone to a dermatologist in high school, begging for an acne cure. He imagined if he used the word blemish they would frown at him and shake their heads, unfamiliar with the term.

The children were all tiny Begleys. They were playing an obscure game involving toilet paper and tunneling between their mothers’ ankles on a continuous basis, laughing so furiously Renicks thought it likely they were all hyperventilating. Their mothers were all talking with each other, a roundabout conversation that formed smaller sub-groups on the fly, mutating and shifting constantly.

He cleared his throat.

The conversation didn’t stop, but attention shifted as all the adults in the room turned their heads to look at him. The combined energy of their attention felt like a physical force beating against him. For a second they continued to talk, the kids continued to scream and run.

“Jack!” Begley shouted.

The sisters all shouted Jack! in concert, and he was enveloped in perfume and fuss. The flowers were lifted from his arms and exclaimed over, transported to a heretofore unnoticed spot of clear space on the window sill. For a minute and a half he was closely observed, each sister reporting her findings in a loud, happy voice.

He’s handsome!

So tall!

You’ll have to take this man shopping, Annie. He’s been single a long time, I can see.

These scratches! You poor thing.

As the reports were announced he was pushed through the crowd. He stepped over more than one child, all of whom grinned up at him mischievously, shyly. He finally found himself standing at the edge of the bed. Begley reached up her arm and placed her hand on his forearm. He leaned in awkwardly and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then stood there, grinning stupidly. For a few seconds he and Begs were the eye of a chatter hurricane as her sisters continued to discuss him loudly.

Begs squeezed his arm. “Hey, guys,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice. “Give Jack and me a few minutes, okay?”

To his amazement, her sisters all nodded amicably and began the complex process of gathering their children. This took some time. Through it all they chattered on, sometimes addressing him, sometimes acting as if he’d left the room. He stood there silently, throwing smiles around. Couldn’t believe that he felt awkward. Being awkward with Marianne Begley should have been impossible.

When they were alone in the room, one of the two men guarding the door peeked his head in. Begley raised her arm towards him.

“Give us a little privacy, okay?”

He hesitated, glanced at Renicks, then nodded, pulling the door shut.

Renicks stood for a moment, looking at the door.

“Thanks for coming, Jack.”

He looked down at her and smiled. “I would have come sooner. First I was arrested, then you were unconscious.”

“Wanna see my scar? It’s epic. They told me they had to remove most of my insides and put them back like a puzzle. I’m going to win every scar contest for the rest of my life.”

“But you’re going to be okay?” He eyed the tubes running in and out of her, the monitors crowded around. The thinned, tired look of her.

“I’ll be fine, in time. The leg … I’ll never run another marathon under five hours.”

He blinked. Realized he’d had no idea she ran. Wondered at this, that there were things — huge swaths of information — that he did not know about Marianne Begley. It felt wrong. It felt like something that should be corrected.

“You run marathons?”

“Three so far.” She sighed. “I had an idea about running one on every continent, some day.”

He nodded, impressed. Another silence swelled up between them. He cleared his throat, suddenly filled with emotion, suddenly aware that this person he’d just met, who’d saved his life, who had come to feel like a part of his existence had been very close to dying.

“They done debriefing you yet?” he said.

She laughed. “I get the feeling debriefing is going to be my new career. You?”

He took a deep breath. “They’re forming a group. Don’t call it a committee. Blackline funding, top-level clearance, reports directly to The President. Officially won’t exist. They asked me to be a part of it. Sort of an advisor.” He nodded. “You too. We’re first-hand witnesses. We interacted with them.”

She looked at him. Steady. Tired, but there. Committed.

“We’re still in trouble, huh, Jack?” she said.

He reached down and took her hand. Smiled. “Yep. I think we are.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

50.

Forty-five minutes after shooting Frank Darmity in the back of the head at close range, Jack Renicks sat in the back of an ambulance, handcuffed to a gurney.

He didn’t feel so bad, all things considered. There had been shouting and running when the EMTs had seen all the blood, but they’d quickly figured out the true extent of his injuries. His ankle was swollen to about three times its normal size. His shoe had to be cut off. They’d wrapped it tight in an athletic bandage, shoved IV fluids into his elbow, checked his pupils with a tiny flashlight. And left him there.

Begley had been another matter altogether. She’d been choppered off the mountain minutes after being brought up from below. Renicks hadn’t heard anything since, mainly because he’d been summarily arrested by some humorless military types, cuffed to the ambulance interior, and left there.

The mountain was swarming with people. And equipment. Helicopters touched down, disgorged more running people, and took off. Cars arrived by the minute. The crowd was a chaotic mix of civilians, blank-faced Intelligence types in suits, Army, Marines, and bureaucrats. Cell phones were everywhere, most of them failing to find a signal. Satellite phones sprouted in increasing numbers, some connected to mysterious square boxes that bristled with antennae. Troops arrived in neatly ordered squads and double-timed off into the surrounding wilderness.

Renicks sat in the ambulance, watching it all. Exhausted. He lifted his arm and stared down at the handcuffs. They looked formidable: Bright steel, a long chain of thick links that gave him a few feet of movement. Tried to remember anything his uncle Richie had told him about restraints. Couldn’t think of anything.

“Well, the Federal Government is here. It’ll all be sorted out some time before the next century.”

Renicks looked up at Stan Waters, who looked, if it was possible, more exhausted than before. “Stan,” he said. “I think you just saved our lives.”

Stan looked down at his muddy boots. Pushed his hands into his pockets. “I spoke to Emily. She’s fine, the kids are fine. Your parents got a scare when we flushed a goddamn rape van out of the shadows across the street from their house, but they’re okay too. Agent Begley’s in surgery,” he said. “Good people working on her. No prognosis yet. I’ll try to keep you updated.”

Renicks nodded, a sudden wave of emotion swelling inside him. “She saved my life, too,” he said thickly. “There was a point where it stopped being her protecting me, you know. Stopped being a Secret Service Agent and the Acting President, and it was just two people trying to survive something. And she stuck by me.”

Stan nodded but kept looking at his shoes. Then he looked up and nodded at the handcuffs. “Sorry about that.”

Renicks waited a beat, settling himself. “I guess you’re not here to take them off, then.”

Stan shrugged. “This is what the Intelligence Community calls in technical terms a fucking mess, Jack. You have to appreciate what just happened. Multiple members of the United States Secret Service were involved in a deep, long-term conspiracy to seize control of the government for the express purpose of launching nuclear arms against their own country.” He hesitated, shaking his head and looking away. “And it appears … it appears the President was … involved.” He firmed up again, looking at Renicks sideways. “And the fucking Attorney General, and who knows who else. We’re pulling prints from some of those bodies down there, and a couple are in the servers. Mercenaries, wetwork types.” He shrugged again. “We got a couple of suicides in D.C. on this. Shit, Jack, we’re fucking poleaxed here. Nobody saw this, and this is organized. This is deep inside the government. I’m afraid the password for today is trust fucking no one.”

Renicks nodded. Intellectually, he knew this made sense. But he burned with anger. He’d spent the last few hours abandoned by everyone who was supposed to be protecting the country, protecting him, and now he was under suspicion. He swallowed his emotions with difficulty. “So you’re here to question me.”

“I’m here to debrief you,” Stan said, stepping forward. “You melodramatic asshole.” He pulled out a small ring of keys and stepped in close to work the handcuffs. “I spent months having drinks with Melodramatic Jack during your divorce. I don’t need to relive it now.”

Renicks didn’t smile, but the anger ebbed. “I was kind of depressed, wasn’t I?”

“Depressed? To this day whenever I hear the name Emily I start crying, uncontrollably.” Stan inserted the key, nodding. Paused and looked at Jack. “You’re not going to, like, try to overpower me and steal a helicopter or something, right?”

Renicks tried to stay angry, but burst out laughing. “Jesus, Stan, no.”

Stan nodded. “I ask because you have displayed heretofore unsuspected levels of kickassery. You sure you weren’t recruited by the NSA or something under sealed orders?” He unlocked the handcuff from the gurney, slipped it onto his own wrist. He reached up and took the bag of IV fluids from the pole and held it up. “Come on.”

Renicks stood up, wobbled for a moment as he got dizzy. “Where?”

“I’m not debriefing you, kiddo. You moved past my pay grade sometime around three hours ago. Hell, we’ve been waiting for someone at the right paygrade to show up so we could hand you over.”

Renicks dropped from the ambulance to the muddy dirt with a little help. His legs felt weak and unreliable. The handcuffs seemed ridiculously heavy.

Stan led him through the maze of milling people and haphazardly parked vehicles, everything from domestic sedans with tinted windows to helicopters and army trucks painted in forest camouflage. People gave him plenty of second glances as he walked slowly, a bloody mess, handcuffed, with Stan holding his IV bag up over them. His ankle now seemed unbelievably tender. Every step hurt like hell, and he wondered how he he’d managed to run with it this bad. Adrenaline, he decided. He’d been living on adrenaline for hours.

Stan led him down the slope for a few hundred feet, to where the road curved up from down below. A black Town Car sat by itself. Three men in dark suits, white earbuds and sunglasses in place, watched them approach. When they were within ten feet, one of them stepped forward, holding out a hand.

“I’m sorry, sir, this area has been restricted.”

Stan nodded and fished in his pocket, pulling out what looked to Renicks like a passport. He flipped it open and handed it to the man.

The suit reached into his own pocket and produced a small black device that looked like a flash drive with a glowing red end. He swiped it across Stan’s ID and nodded, handing it back.

“All right, Mr. Waters. You’re expected.”

The three men stepped aside, suddenly interested in other things. Stan led Renicks towards the car and stopped just next to it. He handed the IV bag back and took out the keys.

“They’re jumpy, Jack,” he said conversationally as he unlocked the handcuffs. “So don’t do anything crazy.” He looked up at him from under his eyebrows. “Which is my way of saying, don’t do anything.” He slipped the cuffs off and pulled open the door. With a jerk of his head he indicated that Renicks should get in. “I’ll be right here unless they order me off, Jack.”

Renicks studied him for a second, then nodded and ducked into the back seat awkwardly, juggling the IV bag. Froze instantly.

Sitting there, jotting notes on a digital tablet with a stylus, was Vice President Mallory.

Renicks corrected himself. President Mallory.

“Dr. Jack Renicks,” she said without looking up. “Glad you’re alive.”

Renicks blinked stupidly. In person, she was even more striking. Her skin was dark and smooth, completely without blemish. She might have been forty or sixty. She was skinny, her hair was bigger than it looked on TV. She wore delicate half-glasses on the tip of her nose which were secured to her by a pretty little silver chain. She smelled expensive. Jasmine. Her suit, he noted without trying, was Versace, though when she was on TV she almost always wore something from a chain store.

A dozen things occurred to him simultaneously. Before he could concentrate on any of them, Mallory began verbalizing the most important one.

“You’re wondering if I was in league with Charley,” she said, still jotting on her tablet. “I was just as shocked as anyone, though, between you and me, Charley had been acting strangely for months and a crisis was beginning to form around it.” She finally looked up. “No, I was not, Dr. Renicks. I realize you may not believe me. Still, I’d like you to do your best to give me the benefit of the doubt.” She smiled. It was a powerful expression, and he smiled back without thinking.

“You had never met Martin Amesley before today?”

He shook his head. He felt dopey.

“Marianne Begley?”

He shook his head again.

She nodded and glanced down at her tablet again. “Dr. Renicks, I believe you are an honest man, and I believe you had nothing to do with this conspiracy. Because if you had been part of it, a backup Designated Survivor, we would all likely be dead right now. This has been planned for years, and its actors came from long histories of service.” She looked up again. Her gaze was unblinking. Intelligent. Renicks was reminded of some of the tougher professors he’d had as a kid.

“These people — like Gerry Flanagan, like Martin Amesley — were trusted. Long-term. No one would have ever suspected they were part of what is possibly the biggest conspiracy this country has ever witnessed. So you understand that there are still those who urge me to treat you as a hostile.”

Renicks nodded. He was falling asleep again.

The new President suddenly turned to face him, twisting herself around. “Mr. Renicks, have you ever heard the phrase La Flava Regxo?”

He nodded slowly. Remembered the tinny voices from the studio, Darmity taking command. “The Yellow King.”

The President nodded back, once. “So have I. And we don’t think it refers to President Grant.” She tapped her tablet one last, authoritative time and set it on the seat between them. Closed her eyes and leaned back, lacing her fingers across her belly. She was, Renicks thought, the best damn looking sixty-year old woman he’d ever seen.

“Start at the beginning,” she said. “And tell me everything.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

49.

Five minutes before discovering he had just two rounds left in the Kimber, Renicks was shaking as he stepped over Frank Darmity’s body. Darmity’s eyes were staring up at him, a surprised and somehow pathetic expression on his face. As he did so, the blinding light suddenly faded, in seconds, leaving him blind again wearing the woman’s dark goggles.

He tore them off and knelt next to Begley. He didn’t try to move her. He checked for a pulse and found it, thin and shaky. Panic. The taste of it in his mouth.

He knelt there, shaking, the Kimber, recovered form its hiding place, still in his hand. He spent a few seconds considering his options. He could try to drag her back up to Level Nine, to the medical office. Five ladders, carrying her. While she bled like a slaughtered hog. Stopping on every landing out of necessity, gasping for breath, rubbing at his aching ankle. He could try to pack the wound with his shirt, wrapped tight with something, then carry her up. Either scenario would have left the cavern undefended, and Begley had said it herself: They didn’t know how many there were. Another team could be making their way down. The whole complex could be blown.

If he didn’t do anything, she was going to die. Bleed to death in the bowels of this complex. He knew immediately that he couldn’t allow that.

He pushed the Kimber into his waistband. The move felt natural. No longer like pretending to be something. He gently rolled her onto her back. He purposefully didn’t examine her wound. Or note the way the blood seeped out of it. He tore the stinking, charred body armor off. Tore the buttons of his shirt ripping it off. Shivering in his undershirt, he folded his dirty shirt into a thick square and pushed it down onto the wound. He took off his belt and wrapped it around her midsection, cinching it tight to hold the shirt in place.

Then he turned to face away from her, took her by the feet, and began dragging her.

He moved as quickly as he could manage. Nothing to be gained by being gentle. He pulled her out of the cavern, past the unconscious woman in body armor, her leg snagged by his small game snare. He hesitated. Had a vision of her coming to, alone. Hunching over the black box, setting the charges.

He heard Begley in his head. Jack, we’re going to have to kill them.

He let her legs drop. Walked over to the woman. She’d taken a nasty bang to the head from a large rock with a sharp edge, and had bled fiercely. He walked back to the blast door and unhooked the snare from the outcropping he’d snagged it on. Working as quickly as he could, he hogtied the woman, tying the snare wire around her ankles, then tugging it cruelly tight and tying it off around her wrists so that she was bent backwards. The wire sank into his skin and blood welled up around it.

He picked up Begley’s legs again. Resumed dragging her.

The fourteenth level was quiet and still as he moved back through it. Breathing heavily and sweating freely, he continued to shiver. It was cold and damp.

Behind him, he heard Begley moan suddenly. Then fall silent again.

Just as he turned the corner, bringing the ladder into view. He stopped in his tracks.

First, because of the spectacularly dead man lying on the floor. The smell of the blood was heavy in the air. His face had been almost shaved off by his little trap. And Darmity and the others had just left him there. No, he squinted at the body. They’d shot him in the head.

A wave of nausea swept Renicks. The emergency, the desperation of just half an hour before was gone. Evaporated. Might have been a fever, a paranoid imagining. And he’d killed this man in the most painful way possible.

As he stood there, shocked, there was a soft noise in the distance. A bell-like sound. Cheerful and dainty.

The elevator arriving.

For two staggering heartbeats he stood in dull surprise. Anger flooded him. Now? After everything. After all this, there was more?

He wanted to scream and throw things. He stood there paralyzed with anger.

Sucking in air, he closed his eyes for one second. Move, he told himself. Now was not the time to let everything swamp him, pull him under, drown him.

He looked at the ladder. His fishing line had been removed, naturally enough. He could hear commotion from further down the hall. Muted voices. The on-off rasp of a radio. He didn’t think he would be able to pull Begley up the ladder quickly enough. They would be on them when he was still visible, grunting and struggling with her weight.

He pulled the Kimber from his pants and checked it. A round in the chamber. One in the magazine.

Two.

A numb sort of frustration settled onto him. He spun in place. Looked down at the corpse. The assault rifle the man had been carrying — unfamiliar and bizarre-looking to Renicks, was still trapped under him. Renicks looked up the corridor. Whoever was coming was close. He stopped and asked himself, are you really going to try to hold off whoever’s coming?

Better, he thought, to let them move past.

He left the rifle, and the corpse, where it was. Dragged Begley roughly to one side, leaving a clear path. Undid the belt around her waist and tore off the blood-soaked shirt. Put it back on. Reached down and touched Begley’s blood, smeared it on his hands. Then on his face and neck. Then he lay down in it, composed himself, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t try to stop breathing. It would just lead to a sudden choking gasp at exactly the wrong moment. And he didn’t think it would stop anyone from shooting them in the head just to make sure. But he doubted anyone would bother to check.

It was a very long time before they came. It had seemed like they were so close, so near. Just around the corner. But after he went still and closed his eyes, hoping to blend into the gore. He concentrated on breathing. Shallow. Through the nose. The coppery smell of blood like acid, making him want to sneeze.

Then they came.

Aside from the tap of their boots on the floor, they were disturbingly silent. He heard them moving around him. Breathing. Fabric moving. Another sudden burst of radio static, a distorted voice, suddenly cut off. He heard them stop. The scrape of a boot.

“Jesus.” A man’s voice. A hoarse whisper.

“Clusterfuck,” someone else said. A brisk, flat voice. Midwestern, Renicks thought. “Okay, we got another asshole here — holy fuck, what happened to this shithead? — and two civvies, it looks like.”

“She’s Secret Service,” a woman said.

“What?” A third man’s voice. Alarm pulsed through Renicks. He knew the voice. For a second its identity remained elusive, and he struggled to stay completely still. He heard someone moving rapidly towards him. Felt someone kneeling down next to him. Heard him breathing.

“It’s Jack Renicks.”

Renicks felt a hand on his throat as he opened his eyes. He realized he was smiling.

“Hello, Stan.”

Stan Waters stared down at him with tired, puffy eyes, dark circles making them look sunken. A thin, tall man with a round, shaved head. He had a boyish, soft face offset by dark, serious eyes.

It was Stan’s eyes that had always made people take him seriously.

For a second he smiled dumbly back at Renicks.

“For Christ sake’s Jack,” he said gently. “You were supposed to stay in the fucking Panic Room.”

Renicks laughed. It foamed out of him, easy, light. He nodded. Stan blinked dumbly, then surged back up to his feet.

“Captain — we need med evac!” he shouted. “Now!”

“Mr. Waters, our brief is — ”

“Your brief is under my fucking office for this operation, Captain, and I’ve had men with more troops under his command than you assassinated before, so send a runner up the fucking elevator shaft and get a fucking med evac done here now.”

Renicks closed his eyes again. Fell asleep almost instantly.

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

41.

Just before he heard Begley scream, the world seemed to tilt. Renicks felt like he was sliding off the deck of some huge ship. Going down. He was blind, but it was sensory overload instead of a lack of light: The light was everywhere, pushing into his brain. He threw his arm up over his eyes and that helped, but even then some of the intense white light burst through, painful.

In his left ear was just a high-pitched ringing noise and a dull throb. He could still hear — the incessant grinding of the blast door was still there, like any other weak force in the universe — but only in his right ear.

Panic gripped him. Reaching up to his ear, he felt warm, sticky blood. He’d heard of stun grenades, on the news. In video games. He knew what they were. This had been something beyond his experience. He was blind and disoriented, resisting the sick urge to run, to just run until he hit something or got hit by something. Clenching his teeth, he let himself drop, falling prone.

Being on the floor of the cavern helped. He knew where bottom was again. For a second he clung to the floor like a man floating on a piece of driftwood. He pictured the cavern in his memory, the fuzzy, dark details. He knew how stun grenades were used: Blind and confuse your enemies, then come in, hunt everyone down. Staying in one place was suicide. So he started to crawl.

After two seconds, he heard the snarl of automatic fire. Then he heard Begley scream.

He froze again. His heart staggered and skipped a beat, two, then slammed back into motion. With the screech of the blast door and one ear not functioning, he couldn’t tell where she was. But he knew it meant someone was in the cavern. And they would be looking for him next.

42.

Frank Darmity stepped into the cavern. Imagined he could feel the dividing line. As if the bright light of the stun was an oil suspended in the air. He paused just inside and swept his gaze around. He knew they would be blind, but he still felt exposed. Aside from the containment force left topside, he had no more pawns to work with. As it probably should have fucking been from the goddamn get-go, he was running the show. And about fucking time.

He moved carefully. The shades toned the light down to a manageable level, but left everything grayscale and his depth perception was for shit. He hadn’t spotted Renicks. He wasn’t too concerned; Renicks was a soft touch – smarter than expected, maybe, but he’d been a Desk Man and he remained a Desk Man – and he was probably on the ground in a panic, blind and confused. He could take his time.

He knew where Begley was. He had her position fixed and he was certain he’d nailed her. She might not be dead, and Darmity figured he had time to go check.

And then he would go find Renicks.

43.

Renicks started crawling.

In the noise and blinding light, he focused in on one thought: Do something. Do anything. His choices were to curl up and let the noise and light wash over him until Darmity or one of his people found him and put him out of his misery, or move. Just move.

He was blind, but he knew where the blast door was.

He had a vague sense of its position anyway, but it was the engine pumping all the noise into the space. It was easy to start pulling himself with his elbows in the damp, gritty soil of the cavern floor, pulling himself towards the roar.

44.

She was still alive. The Begley Bitch. She resolved in Darmity’s vision like a pixilated image on a screen. The M16 lay on the cavern floor next to her. He kicked it away, kept his rifle trained on her. She was curled up on her side, arms pushing against her belly. The blood looked black to him. Thick black rivers of it. Her hands were painted with it. She writhed and gasped.

He stood over her. Enjoying the moment.

And then he had an idea.

45.

When Renicks came across the body he stopped. Breathing was difficult. He was overheated and dehydrated. His head pounded. Every time he breathed in he inhaled a cloud of dust that made him want to cough and choke. When his arm slapped onto something fleshy, he froze for a second, cringing, waiting for the blow. The gunshot.

Nothing.

He reached forward and pulled himself forward using the body. Still breathing. Still warm. He slapped blindly at it, seeking anything that might give him an advantage. Anything.

He found her head. Felt the elastic band looped around, followed the straps. Found the goggles.

46.

Kneeling over her, Darmity made sure she didn’t have a weapon hidden. A handgun, a knife. Something clutched in a hidden hand, ready to make him look foolish. There was nothing. She’d been gutshot with high-velocity rounds and was in too much pain to be able to think straight.

Holding his rifle in one hand, aimed away from him, he reached down and pushed his hand roughly into her belly.

Made her scream.

Come on, he thought, bring ‘im over here.

47.

Everything ran through her mind all at once. The pain, yes, foremost and immediate. The smell of the motherfucker, stale sweat and something worse. A man you wouldn’t sit next to at a bar. Her father, shaking his head in amused exasperation, his usual emotion. The pain again, eating up every bit of her and leaving just lungs and vocal chords and taut, strained muscles. Her sisters, all so alike, looking back at her from eleven, nine, eight, seven years ahead. Jack Renicks, smiling that secret smile when he knew more than you did.

The pain again. Then, for a few blessed seconds, blackness.

48.

Darmity slapped her face with his bloody hand. Fucking hell. Passed out. He stood up, feeling his back twitch as his knees popped. Hefted the rifle.

Without warning, the noise stopped. The blast door finally open. The sudden silence seemed like noise itself, for a moment.

Then, behind him, someone pushed the muzzle of a gun into the back of his head. The soft spot where his neck met his skull. And he thought

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40.

Ten seconds after watching Hulk get gunned down, Frank Darmity smiled a little and looked at Red. “Well, they got assault rifles.”

Red was staring into the slowly widening window of shadow into the cavern. “Jesus.”

Darmity congratulated himself. He hadn’t expected Hulk to just run into the fucking space like an asshole, but now he knew what Renicks and Begley were up to, and it wasn’t even half smart. Although posing the corpses was slightly higher on the badass scale for Renicks than he would have expected. It was going to force a complete recalibration of his opinion of the man.

“All right, Red!” he shouted over the rumble of the door, fishing in his pocket. “Shades. We’ll hit ‘em with the Stun, you go in and scout it out, okay? Take your time and be careful. They’ll be blind and disoriented.”

She didn’t react right away. He watched her in his peripheral vision. Studying her body language. He could tell she was thinking about him. Questioning. She’d taken an oath, too, and she’d been vouched for, or she wouldn’t be there. But he didn’t know her. Amesley and his people had been patriots, too. Good people, sure. Fuckups all the same. As he fished in his big flap pocket, he let one hand fall idly on the butt of his sidearm.

He could almost see her walking through it. He’d ordered Hulkaburger to go in, but he hadn’t told him to run in a straight line like an asshole. Hulk had seen bodies over one of the access modules and he’d just gone for them. He could have been smarter about it. There’d been nothing wrong with the order.

Red nodded. “Okay!”

Darmity relaxed slightly. She’d decided she would be smarter about it. Good girl, he thought, admiring the shape he imagined under all that armor.

He pulled the grenade from his pocket. A modified issue. He stepped up to the slowly rolling blast door and glanced at her as she positioned herself just to the left of the widening entryway. Checked her weapon one last time. Pulled her goggles up over her head, strapping them over her eyes. Tiny dark ovals, like swimmer’s goggles, but with black lenses. Looked forward and nodded.

He pulled the ring. Counted to three. Tossed the grenade into the cavern. Counted to three while he slipped his own goggles on.

The bang was loud enough to hear over the noise. Loud enough to feel in his legs. Light poured out of the opening like someone had lit the space on fire, some fuel in the air that burned bright white.

Darmity watched Red sprint into the space. Moving fast, at an angle to her left, turning her head as she ran to scan the area — merely brightly lit to her due to her goggles — to spot Renicks and Begley.

He watched her left leg suddenly jerk behind her as if some invisible man had grabbed onto her ankle. Watched her sail forward, arms whipping outward with unspent momentum. Saw her slap down onto the cavern floor, hard. Saw her head bounce off a rock. Hard. Saw her lying there, unmoving.

Well, he thought, crouching down and stepping forward, scanning the area, they got traps, too.

Then he paused and smiled. Saw Begley plain as day, ducked down in what had been impenetrable shadow, blindly swinging her rifle in a shallow arc.

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