Dead Man's Trigger

Chapter 7: A Human Trail

Seven burst through the smoking doorway of Room 412. The ceiling had come down across the bed, small fires crawled along the vinyl floor, and somewhere under the wreckage a machine was screaming its alarm into the dark.

Then he saw a small pale hand moving in the dust.

"Megan!"

He shoved his pistols into their holsters and tore the drywall off the bed with both hands. She lay there with the ventilator line snapped loose at her throat, her mouth open, her chest hitching in short, useless pulls. Her eyes found him anyway.

"I've got you," he said. "I've got you, baby."

He lifted her out of the debris. She weighed almost nothing, and she was warm.

He held her against his chest and felt it, the small, frantic rise and fall against his vest, and for a moment he forgot the fire and the alarm and the footsteps pounding up the corridor.

He'd spent so many nights staring at that chest waiting for it to move. It was moving now.

"Daddy's here," he whispered into her hair. "I'm not going anywhere."

Shouting rose from the far end of the hall. Police, and behind them, hospital staff. He was standing in a burning ICU room in a tactical vest and a face mask with a child in his arms, and in about ten seconds that would be a very hard thing to explain.

He tapped his wrist. "Soul Watch. Civilian clothes. Now."

COMMAND ACCEPTED. VISUAL CLOAKING ENGAGED.

Static rippled over his body. The vest, the gloves, the mask and the long coat blurred and faded, and his old worn jacket and jeans settled in their place.

It was only an illusion, but the officers rounding the corner saw a frightened father, and that was all they needed to see.

"Over here! She needs a doctor!" His voice cracked, and it wasn't an act. "Two men ran down the back stairs!"

A nurse got to them first, already squeezing a hand pump over Megan's face. Others swarmed in behind her, lifted Megan from his arms, and rushed her down the hall to an unaffected wing.

Seven followed as far as they'd let him, and stood at the door while they reconnected her to a ventilator and the monitor steadied into a slow, even rhythm. Her breathing calmed. Her eyes drifted shut.

He didn't move until a nurse touched his arm and told him she was stable. Then he stepped out into the quiet corridor, put his back against the wall, and let his legs give out.

He sat on the floor with his hands hanging between his knees and shook.

"Sentimental. I was told you might be."

He looked up. The Watcher stood at the end of the hallway in her red uniform, tablet under her arm, her footsteps making no sound on the linoleum. He realized he'd never actually seen her blink.

"You," he said, getting to his feet. "You had me running around like a dog."

"The Council is displeased." She said it flatly, like she was reading a weather report. "You had Mephisto in front of you and you lowered your weapon."

Seven crossed the space between them in three strides and put her against the wall. "My daughter was in a burning building."

"And your condition remains the same." She didn't flinch. "Mephisto's soul, for your daughter's life. If you fail again, your contract ends, and the bullet in your head finishes what it started."

She lifted a hand and touched his Soul Watch. The red overheat warning on the display faded to a dull amber, though the cooldown timer stayed locked.

"You have until the watch recovers," she said. "Make it count."

She stepped back into the stairwell and the door swung shut behind her. Seven stood there breathing hard until the anger had somewhere to go, and then he shoved it down where he kept everything else.

No fast reflexes for now. No weapons. Just a man in a hospital corridor with a name on a kill list and nothing else to go on.

He went back to Megan's door and stood there a moment. Through the glass he could see her small chest rising under the blanket, the monitor lighting her face green.

He wanted to go in, to sit beside her, to never leave. But sitting beside her wouldn't save her, and he knew it.

He told the nurse at the desk that if anyone came asking for her, anyone at all, she was to call security first, then him. Then he walked out.

The old wing was cordoned off with yellow tape. It took him under a minute to get around the officers and into what was left of Room 412's neighbor, the room Mephisto had been in.

Someone had already torn it apart. Syringes were scattered across the floor and the mattress was half burned.

He knelt by the bedside table and swept away a layer of plaster dust, and his hand touched something heavy, bound in leather.

A textbook. Advanced criminal law. Stamped inside the cover was the seal of the X City College of Law, and on the title page, in careful fountain-pen ink: To my most brilliant student. — Professor Marcus Vance.

Seven stared at the name. For a being he'd been told was a threat to the universe, she'd left a very human trail. He closed the book and tucked it inside his jacket.

He had a name.