Sophia leaned against the wall in a dark, disused sub-level. The anxious breaths of her comrades circled her in symphony. She checked the countdown on her watch. Cecilia would be arriving at the facility in nine minutes, with the expectation that Sophia had captured Denton.

And she hadn’t.

It wasn’t Denton’s fault. He’d just done what any good-for-nothing psychopath did best. Screw everyone else over. But the least she could do was not make it easy for him. She was responsible for Leoncjusz’s death, and now she would be responsible for the deaths of every single person on the planet that she cared about. Her team. Cecilia. Benito. Even those knuckleheads Damien and Jay, who’d proved that she wasn’t the only operative who could break her programming without intervention.

‘Well, this is fucking great,’ Nasira said.

Lucia looked more optimistic than the others. ‘What’s our next move?’

Sophia rubbed her temples with her thumb and index finger. Her mind reeled with half-formed plans to grab Denton and meet Cecilia, but they all came crashing down.

She shook her head. ‘It can’t be done. We don’t have enough time.’

‘We should cut our losses and get the hell out while we’re still in one piece,’ Nasira said.

Sophia pulled out her com and, using an encrypted signal, called Cecilia. White noise hissed into her ear. She pulled the com away. The hiss was still there. It was in her earpiece as well. She pulled it out, as did everyone else—except Benito, who wasn’t wearing one.

‘Shit.’

Frantically, she double-checked her encryption key. It was working.

‘We’re in way over our motherfucking heads,’ Nasira said.

Sophia checked the jamming system interface. She couldn’t connect to it. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who’d thought of electronic countermeasures.

‘Denton’s blocked us, hasn’t he?’ Lucia said.

Sophia lowered her now useless com. ‘It didn’t take him long.’

Nasira said, ‘So not only are we heavily outnumbered—’

‘But we’re blind and deaf as well,’ Sophia said.

Nasira ran a hand over her cropped hair. ‘That’s one hell of a handicap.’

‘That’s not the worst of it,’ Sophia said. ‘Cecilia’s about to walk into a trap.’

‘Then Denton gets the Chimera vectors,’ Benito said. ‘You don’t want that. Trust me.’

‘Oh, we know,’ Nasira said.

Sophia pocketed her com, then checked the mag on her P90. ‘We have to warn her off.’

‘I’m guessing we can’t do that by email,’ Nasira said.

‘We have to go to the rendezvous point,’ Lucia said. ‘To warn her away.’

Sophia didn’t want to admit it, but that was the only way. ‘Denton will have all entries to the BlueGene lab covered.’

‘And how do we get in?’ Nasira said.

Sophia met Nasira’s doubtful gaze. ‘We just walk right through.’

***

Wearing a new para-aramid vest, Damien walked alongside Jay through the facility’s aircraft hangar. Four menacing-looking Speedhawk helicopters were perched in a row. Denton stepped out from the cockpit of the far left Speedhawk, which he appeared to be using as some sort of temporary base of operations. His Toughbook was open on the cockpit floor, an open suitcase beside it. From the suitcase sprouted four large antennae. A multi-band jammer. Damien hoped Sophia had some sort of electronic counter-countermeasure.

‘We tried to contact you before Sophia got to the Vector labs,’ Jay said as they approached Denton. ‘The communications were jammed.’

‘Sophia hijacked the facility’s jamming system. We had to destroy it and use our own instead,’ Denton said, removing his suit jacket and slipping on a para-aramid vest. ‘Not as much wattage, but it does the job. As of now, you can communicate, they can’t.’

He studied Damien and Jay carefully, then said, ‘Feel free to give me your sitrep.’

‘We rolled with Sophia and her insurgents, like you wanted,’ Jay said. ‘We were on the railcar and Sophia tried to go all Jedi mind trick on us. There wasn’t much time so we played along, listened to her bullshit. Found out she’s meant to RV with McLoughlin in the BlueGene lab. Five minutes from now. She’s also meant to have captured you.’

The light from the Toughbook made Denton’s smile appear to be cut deeper than usual. ‘Naturally,’ he said.

Damien felt sick. Anxious. He didn’t want to be here any more. Sophia and her friends weren’t going to make it out alive. And there was nothing he could do to change that. They were going to die because he betrayed them.

‘She knows this isn’t possible,’ Jay said. ‘Not with the heavy Blue Beret and shocktrooper presence. One of her own is badly wounded.’

Denton zipped his vest up. ‘Combat ready?’

‘Negative,’ Jay said. ‘I bet she’ll try to warn McLoughlin off before the RV can be made.’

Damien clasped his hands behind his back so Denton couldn’t see him fidget. He didn’t even know why he cared about Sophia’s team. He barely knew them and half of them didn’t like him. Sophia was supposed to be the enemy and here he was trying to save her. It was ridiculous. This was ridiculous.

Denton closed his Toughbook and cast his gaze to the portable multi-band jammer. ‘She may try to warn McLoughlin, but she won’t succeed. Her only option is to make the rendezvous.’

From the corner of his vision, Damien could see Jay’s hands also fidgeting behind his back. Jay never fidgeted.

‘Without you,’ Jay said, ‘she has no choice but to forfeit the Chimera vector.’

‘I already know that,’ Denton said. ‘A more pertinent question would be: can she trust you?’

Jay nodded. ‘She thinks she can.’

‘She thinks she can?’ Denton rolled the words in his mouth as if they were a fine wine. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to capture me for the last half-hour. Clearly, I’ve overestimated her.’

He sniffed, nostrils flaring slightly. ‘We have a bunker-buster bomb on its way to this facility as we speak.’ He checked his watch. ‘Due to arrive in twenty-six minutes.’

Damien also checked his watch, made note of the time.

Denton ran a hand over his shaved head. ‘So if Sophia isn’t capable of taking what she wants, then I’ll have to give it to her, won’t I? Before it’s too late.’