Page 98 of Static/Cling

“Better than stumbling around in the dark.” Kassian pushed himself off the wall, prepared to drag himself along on his own. He was useless in any kind of a fight right then. What good was super strength if he broke like a porcelain doll before he got asingle hit in? The chains still attached to the leg irons weren’t helping.

He’d taken a single step when the gunfire ceased.

“That’s probably not good.” He tried to hurry his pace as Rufus looked back over his shoulder. “Help me.” Kassian held out an arm and his brother returned to shove a shoulder under it and all but drag him after Leif.

“Don’t suppose you have a key for these?”

Rufus grunted in the negative.

“Shame.”

They found Leif standing in the middle of the hallway, bloody to his elbows, a soldier crumpled at his feet.

Approaching down the hall, another soldier in a smarter uniform than the rest, took one slow step after another, gun trained on Leif, a manic grin on his face.

“Caught you at last, did we?” he whispered.

“Laurier,” Rufus barked. “The hell is going on?”

Kassian recognized the grinning man then, from outside George’s office—had it been only earlier that day?—as the overzealous soldier George had sent for coffee. “Ruf?” he asked.

“Wait.”

Laurier glanced past Leif to Rufus. “The Xeno Project.” He motioned his chin at Leif. “Finally.”

“What are you talking about? That died with the last one of George’s victims.”

Laurier’s grin widened, showing more teeth and more madness. “That what you call them, then? Victims?”

“It’s what they were.”

“It tells me whose side you’re on.”

Rufus growled in disgust. “There’s only the right side. George was never going to get away with his insanity. The people he hurt are mercifully beyond his reach now, but his was never a ‘side.’ It was madness. I would never wish death on anyone, but what hedid to those men was evil, and dying was probably the best they could have hoped for, so I am glad they’re all dead.”

“He certainly wanted everyone to think they were dead. But the last one, the essence of it, never died. The trouble was recapturing it.”

“Recapturing? The man died, Laurier. Threw himself down how many flights of stairs? There was nothing left to capture.”

“I’ll grant it was difficult. Most of the vessels couldn’t hold it.”

“You are making no fucking sense.”

“Just because Experiment 41 tried to kill himself doesn’t mean the research was lost.”

“Experi—41.” Rufus snarled. “His name was Albert Lewis. He was a person.”

“Lewis?” Kassian asked. “As in Sal Lewis?”

Rufus didn’t answer.

“Whatever,” Laurier snapped. “He was an important power, and we almost managed to recreate it. It was unfortunate that the essence got away, but here we are, with it back.” He smiled, perhaps what he meant to be a kind smile, at Leif. “And we can help you now.” He reached out a hand.

From nowhere, a dark blur flashed across the hallway, resolving itself into a snarling, biting dog attaching itself to Laurier’s outstretched arm.

Laurier screamed.

Leif sprang, ignoring the dog who had dragged Laurier to the floor, and straddling the flailing man. He grabbed Laurier’s head in both hands and glared into his face.

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