Chapter 26 - THE DEVIL’S FREQUENCY
"Get away from the window, David."
Marcus’s voice through the transceiver was no longer smooth; it carried the thin, sharp edge of a man who had calculated his margins too closely.
"You think you’re holding your daughter," the radio crackled. "You’re holding an unexploded ordnance. The neural bridge Eleanor established isn't a passive link. It's a bio-synthetic feed. Every sixty seconds Subject Seven remains within five hundred yards of the biological core, the uplink synchronizes further."
I dropped the curtain.
On the bed, Emily suddenly arched her spine off the mattress.
A sharp, agonized scream tore from her throat—a sound that drove into my eardrums like cold steel. Her hands clawed at her own temples, her fingernails digging into the skin above her ears until bright red blood welled beneath them.
"Emily!" I lunged to the bedside, pinning her small wrists against the mattress. "Stop! Baby, stop!"
"It burns!" she shrieked, her voice pitching up into that terrifying, layered baritone I had heard on the pier. "Daddy, make it stop! She’s taking my thoughts! She’s taking Mommy’s face! I can’t remember Mommy’s face!"
Across the highway, the three black SUVs turned on their high beams simultaneously. Six blazing cones of halogen light tore through the sleet, illuminating the facade of Room 404 like a theatrical stage.
The engines roared to life, tires spitting gravel as they accelerated across the four-lane highway, heading directly for the motel breezeway.
There was no time to think. No time to plan.
I grabbed the heavy wool blanket, wrapped Emily entirely within it, and slung her over my uninjured shoulder. I didn't head for the barricaded front door.
I ran into the bathroom.
The bathroom was tiny, tiled in cracked, nicotine-stained yellow ceramic. At the back of the shower stall was a narrow, horizontal aluminum awning window meant for ventilation.
I slammed the butt of the stolen pistol through the glass. The frosted pane shattered outward into the alley behind the motel. Using the heavy plastic radio battery from the bedroom, I battered the aluminum frame until the rivets popped, creating a jagged opening barely eighteen inches wide.
The front door of Room 404 detonated inward with a deafening crash as a vehicle bumper rammed through the dresser barricade. Wood splinters and drywall exploded into the bedroom, accompanied by the immediate, deafening staccato of suppressed automatic gunfire chewing through the walls.
*Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip.*
Rounds ripped through the hollow bathroom door, showering us with plastic shards and plaster dust.
"Hold on to my neck, Emily!" I yelled over the gunfire. "Do not let go!"
I shoved her through the window first. She tumbled into the mud of the rear alley with a muffled cry.
I scrambled up after her, squeezing my broad shoulders through the jagged frame. Broken glass sliced through my tactical vest and bit deep into my ribs, but the cold mud of the drainage ditch caught me as I fell through.
I rolled onto my feet, snatched Emily back into my arms, and sprinted down the narrow concrete canal behind the motel complex.
Behind us, a figure vaulted through the broken window with unnatural agility.
Subject Seven.
She landed in the mud without a sound, her movements eerily stabilized, the yellow raincoat whipping around her tiny frame. She didn't have a firearm. She didn't need one. In her right hand, she dragged a four-foot length of galvanized steel pipe she had ripped from the motel plumbing.
"Subject Seven to Command," her voice echoed down the concrete canal, amplified and mechanical. "Target acquired. Termination protocol authorized."
She accelerated toward us at a dead sprint.
A normal seven-year-old child runs at eight miles per hour. Subject Seven was closing the distance between us at over twenty. Her boots slapped through the ankle-deep runoff with rhythmic, terrifying speed.
Fifty yards ahead, the drainage ditch terminated at a municipal maintenance depot—a fenced-in lot housing three diesel city salt trucks and a battered, county-owned ambulance with its rear doors swinging open in the wind.
I reached the rusted chain-link fence. The gate was secured with a heavy padlock.
I didn't have the pry-bar.
I turned around, setting Emily down behind an iron dumpster, and drew my pistol.
Subject Seven was twenty paces away. Ten paces.
Her silver eyes reflected the distant streetlights, completely cold, completely dead.
"I'm sorry, baby," I whispered—not to the thing charging at me, but to the girl crying behind the dumpster.
I leveled the front sight between the silver eyes and pulled the trigger.
*Click.*
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A stovepipe jam. A spent casing was wedged horizontally in the ejection port, fouling the slide.
Subject Seven lunged, the galvanized pipe whistling through the rain, aimed directly at my neck.
