Blood Pact

strong.”

    "It's only a difference of degree," Henry told her abruptly, not turning. He could see the outline of the door at the end of the hall.
    "I might as well go into the lab because I can't smell anything else even here.” Then he reached back and brushed his fingers over the warmth of her hand, softening his tone. "We've all moved past the time for running. Now it's time to face those last few fears and . . .”

    "And get the hell out of here," Celluci finished. "Which we won't do if we continue to stand here flapping our lips. Come on." He caught hold of Vicki again and dragged her forward, forcing Henry to move ahead or be run down. If they lost momentum, they'd never get this finished. He hadn't wanted to see anything finished quite so much in a very long time. "It can't possibly be worse than the last visit, for any of us.”

    Vicki tightened her hand around the barrel of the flashlight, giving thanks the grip was heavy ridged rubber. Her palm was so wet that a slicker surface would've squirted right out of her grasp. Face our last few fears. Oh, God, I hope not.

    The lab, possibly because it was such a large room, possibly because after a century of renovation the building just generally defied logic, rated an emergency light of its own.

    "Well, thank God for small favors," Celluci muttered as they entered. "I didn't much want to be in the dark with that .”

    Vicki let her light lick over that, the stainless steel blazing momentarily then sliding into shadow again. All the horror lay in memory now for the body the isolation box contained was merely dead, and they'd all dealt with death before. He's really most sincerely dead. She bit back a giggle and stomped down hard on the thought. It would be frighteningly easy to lose control.

    Henry ignored the box and strode quickly down the length of the room to the one remaining computer, trench coat flapping back from his naked torso. With the power off, he had no way to tell if it contained the files concerning him, but he had to assume that if Catherine did the tests in this lab then she entered the data into this machine.

    "Fitzroy.”

    He turned, fingers already wrapped around a fistful of cables.

    "You might want to clear this out of here as well." Celluci offered him the wallet he'd picked up off the floor, various pieces of ID stuffed loosely inside. "Let's not give Detective Fergusson a chance to cash in on the obvious.”

    "Thank you." A quick check, and Henry shoved it all into his coat pocket. "If the police managed to connect me to all of this, I'd have had to disappear." One corner of his mouth twisted in the detective's direction. "Maybe you should have left the wallet on the floor.”

    Celluci mirrored both expression and tone. "Maybe I should have.”

    Setting cables and monitor keyboard carefully to one side, Henry lifted the actual computer over his head and threw it into the corner as hard as he could.

    Catherine jerked back at the sound of plastic shattering, eyes snapping open impossibly wide. "It's her. She's wrecking things."
    Her fingers wrapped around number nine's arm, molding imprints into the increasingly malleable flesh. "We've got to stop her!"
    Number nine stopped moving, obedient to the pressure. He would do what she wanted.

    From the lab up ahead came the sound of further destruction, small pieces being made smaller still until they were beyond all hope of repair.

    "All right." Catherine rose on her toes and rested her forehead on number nine's skull just below where the staples held the cap of bone in place. "This is my plan. I'll distract her, get her to chase me and lose her in the halls. You go in and get Donald. He should be viable outside the box by now. Don't let anything stop you.”

    He couldn't feel her breath, warm against his ear and neck, the nerves in the skin had never regenerated, but he could feel her closeness and that was enough. He reached up and awkwardly patted her arm.

    "I knew I could count on you!" She squeezed his hand in return, never feeling the tiny bones shifting out of their moorings, tendons and ligaments beginning to let go. "Come on!”

    While Henry smashed hardware into progressively smaller pieces and Celluci snapped disks, Vicki, flashlight tucked under her chin, flipped through reams and reams of printout.

    "Finding anything?" Celluci asked, reaching for yet another plastic square.

    Vicki shook her head. "Mostly EEG records.”

    He craned his neck and peered down at