Chapter 15
Miranda Alvarez had never lost her cool in all of her ten years in the field, and she’d seen some godawful stuff.
Stepping behind the van to vomit up lunch had never, ever happened to her before, but she had to admit she did it with aplomb.
She straightened, took the towel Joey handed her and patted away all evidence without messing up her makeup, and then reached for a breath mint in her pocket as she turned back to the million-dollar moment of a lifetime.
“Mira, we’re live in three … two …”
“Good evening. This is Miranda Alvarez with the Investigative News Force. What you are seeing is a live broadcast of what we have been told is a secret facility of labs….”
“I always liked her,” Nick remarked as he and Amara walked up to the labs amid an army of news companies and, by the sound of the military helicopters on approach, their unwitting backup.
It was actually a simple sort of plan. All they had to do was broadcast everything live before the government could shut them down and try to hide it.
Nick and Amara had already given Alvarez a detailed private interview, played show-and-tell and everything, only with less shock value than what Amara had done for the Federated cops.
Nick knew he was intimidating as all hell, so he had let Amara make her public proposal.
It was dangerous and probably insanity, but it was a solution that just might work in this society of short-term thinkers.
They liked to close away trouble? Well, this time trouble would volunteer to help build the walls.
With a madman at the helm of the labs, thousands of things could have gone wrong.
They could have all been vaporized instantly by some hidden bomb the minute security cameras caught sight of them.
However, Nick knew a man who liked to play God wouldn’t blow himself up just when he was on the verge of perfecting how to become one.
Nick had seen it in the doctor’s face just before he’d shot him.
Paulson wanted immortality. Invincibility.
When he perfected it, he would make himself in his own image.
Dying would rather be contrary to that.
So would getting caught. So Nick and Amara had gambled that Paulson would run before he’d make a stand.
He’d abandon the whole of them in a heartbeat and run away so he could play Frankenstein another day.
Without his direction, Nick hoped the rest of the place would simply unravel.
Losing Paulson was a heavy price they might pay if he did indeed get away, but there really had been no better choice in so little time.
Nick just prayed there were still people left to save. The press van had hardwired into the security systems and they could see far more than was able to be processed.
Nick knew everyone had finally been separated, and realized this was a good thing.
It had prevented others from becoming Alpha and the resultant need for another challenge for Nick and Amara to reassert themselves.
At least in their building. Now he had to pray that Paulson had not repeated his lunacy six times over.
None of the other common rooms were in use.
There were signs of life here and there and guards clearly ignorant of what was coming. It wasn’t the same in every building.
If there were Alphas in every building, it was going to be a hell of a mess.
Nick wished he could leave Amara behind, but instinct said differently.
It said they needed to make a show together.
By the time Jamie and the Federation forces touched down, the news crews had been live for twenty minutes and they had been taping the interior activities for over an hour.
It was enough evidence to ensure very little about any of what happened next could ever be covered up.
His boss strolled up to him, armored and armed to the teeth. Nick wondered if it would do them any good if things went to shit.
“You disappeared on us, Agent Gregory,” he greeted.
“Who are the geeks, Agent Mulloy?” Nick countered, nodding to the men in suits and lab coats who were coming out of vans of their own.
“Just doctors who want to see everyone come out safe and healthy, just like we do.” Jamie flashed his “press smile” and Nick slid a glance to Miranda Alvarez. “Nick, back at the briefing you said you could lead the first group out safely?”
“Yeah.”
Nick prayed it was just that easy.