Page 169 of You Only Love Twice
Chapter 31
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" Kincaid asked, kicking open the door to the medical bay.
Charlie slipped into the room after him, the arm cannon on his Cyclops’ arm tracking through the room. Stainless steel benches were covered with an array of instruments. There was a chair in the corner with leather straps hanging from it, and some bizarre sort of helmet that looked like it would lock into place over a man’s face….
Did it…? Did it have a needle attached to it? One as thick as the blade on an old-fashioned dirk?
Charlie felt sick. The arm cannon locked on the frantic man shoving files into a battered old travelling case.
"Here. You. Don’t move," Charlie snapped.
The man held both hands in the air, his lip quivering. "Don’t shoot me! I don’t have any weapons. I’m just the doctor."
"Dr. Richter, by any chance?" he asked.
The man glanced between them. "Aye."
Hell. This was the bastard who’d put that device in Obsidian’s head. Charlie glanced at the array of paper files strewn on every available bench. "What are you doing?"
Kincaid picked one of the files up, paper spewing from its interior.
"Don’t touch that!" The doctor snapped, grabbing for it.
Kincaid drew his pistol and put it directly to the doctor’s temples, not taking his eyes off the file. "You ain’t in a position to be making demands." He looked up at Charlie. "Look at this."
Pistons hissed in the mechanical legs of the Cyclops he wore as he took several steps closer. Charlie pressed a button and the helmet slid back, so he could see better. "Dido. Zero. Silas…." He paused on the next file. It was thicker than all the others. "Obsidian."
Flipping it open, he glanced at the top page. It looked like a family tree had been torn out of a prayer book of some description, a gilded crest embossed at the top. Charlie turned the paper, reading the last names that had been filled in.Dmitri Grigoriev. Nikolai Grigoriev. Yekaterina Grigoriev. Irina Grigoriev. Evgeni Grigoriev.
His gaze zeroed back in on the first name on the list.Dmitri.
"Don’t have time for this, Charlie," Kincaid warned. "Malloryn wants you to take out the power generator to the entire system. We’ve got to get moving."
Charlie yanked the doctor’s satchel off him, and upended it. He carefully placed the file inside. "I think this is important. Obsidian needs to know what they took from him." He met the doctor’s eyes. This wasn’t just a family tree. It was a nobleman’s bloodlines by the look of it. A Russian nobleman. "He has brothers and sisters he doesn’t even know exist."
"If you open that door, you will regret it," the doctor warned. "And they’re dead. They’re all dead."
"Aye," Kincaid snorted. "And I’d trust a word that comes out of your—"
A sudden scream tore through the stillness of the room.
Bullets started firing.
They’d left several Nighthawks out there in the hallway.
"What was that?" Charlie whispered.
Another Nighthawk screamed, and the dreadful sound of bones breaking echoed as someone was thrown against the steel door. An animalistic bellow sent a chill down his spine.
Dr. Richter sucked in a sharp breath. "We have to get out of here!"
"Why?" Kincaid had his pistol pointed at the door.
"Because X is loose."
Charlie felt the heat drain from his face, as he locked his arm cannon on the door. "Isn’t that the crazydhampirwe’re supposed to stay far, far away from?"
"Fuckin’ Jaysus," Kincaid said, shoving the enormous metal chair with its helmet apparatus toward the door to block it. "What are we going to do? We’re trapped like rats."
