Finn stepped out from behind the partially open door, the twin fabric patches from a HeartGo defibrillator raised like a weapon. He pushed them against the Evil Queen’s left arm and fired an electric shock. She literally flew across the small room and rammed into the counter. The device hummed, regaining its charge. Finn came forward; remarkably, the Evil Queen wasn’t down, only stunned.
What is this creature? he thought. The beeping defibrillator’s main box dragged on the floor behind him. He willed it to reach full power—one more shock, and the Evil Queen was going down. They could lock her up; it would be a big setback for the OTs!
Struggling to hold herself up, she hooked her elbow on the countertop and turned to face Finn. Her eyes were either bloodshot or glowing. She looked like she was in pain.
Finn took in her beauty, and his breath caught. He tried to look away, but couldn’t. His hold on the patches loosened. He wanted to touch her face, to kiss her ruby lips. He felt himself drawn into her eyes; iron shavings to a magnet. Who could harm a woman so lovely? So…perfect?
He pulled closer to her, easing the wired patches lower. The battery box continued its low-toned beeping, not yet charged.
The Queen’s lips moved.
Finn thought himself privileged that one so precious would bother to speak to him at all. It never occurred to him that she was attempting to cast a spell.
The box emitted a single piercing beep. Fully charged.
The Evil Queen knocked the patches to the floor.
Finn suddenly saw her for what she was. A witch, drunk, or sick, half asleep.
She reached with long fingers for Finn’s throat and locked her hands around his neck. He wrestled to break free, throwing her against the near wall as he managed to turn his back to her.
She pushed him into the cabinets, smashing his face into the safety glass. It cracked into a spiderweb but did not break.
Through the glass, Finn spotted the syringe on the metal tray.
Finn pushed her back, stunned as she threw him forward, his head smacking the glass for a second time. He managed to pull open the drawer, fingers groping for the key card to the cabinet. Only then did he realize he’d watched the nurse in a reflection, a mirrored image. Wrong drawer. He knew what it meant: he had to endure yet another blow to the head.
He heaved back.
The Queen shoved forward.
Finn cracked the cabinet’s safety glass for a third time. He pulled open the drawer to the left, and there was the key card! Seizing hold of the key card, still wrestling with the Queen as she managed to get his neck fully in her grip again, he swiped the card next to the cabinet. It unlocked.
After the three collisions with the glass, Finn’s head was beginning to go spongy. Colors floated before his eyes, blinding him. He felt his knees give out. He sank lower as his left hand found its way into the cabinet.
“I came for the other, but you are the prize! You will do nicely for our little sacrifice, my friend!”
“I don’t like to be overlooked.” Maybeck’s voice. A hand appeared on the Queen’s shoulder and spun her around.
The sound of Maybeck’s voice gave Finn strength, a strength so unfamiliar, he was still learning how to use it. He stood, broke her grip, and looked Maybeck in the eye. He’d come out of the coma; Philby had returned him!
The Evil Queen looked as if she’d seen a ghost. She tried to speak, but her eyes rolled back in her head, flickering open just long enough to see the syringe still inserted in her arm. She spoke, but her words came out at half speed.
Maybeck sagged, losing strength.
The Evil Queen fell to the floor, weakened but still conscious. He would not be able to capture her.
What is this creature? Finn thought for a second time. The dose was meant for Maybeck, who weighed a good deal more than this slight woman, and yet she remained partially awake. She’d said, I came for the other. Had she meant Maybeck, or had Finn, by using Charlene’s ID tag, led the Queen here?
His plan to kidnap her foiled, Finn took Maybeck’s arm around his shoulder and helped him out of the exam room and into the companionway, leaving the Evil Queen groaning and cursing in some strange language while a plastic doctor’s model of a human head, its brains missing, stared back at her.
CLAYTON FREEMAN’S IPAQ signaled that the radio frequency tag in the unaccounted-for laundry had left the lounge. He was back on the trail.
A minute later he was following a wide-shouldered boy with buzz-cut red hair.
The level of sophistication of the boy’s violations suggested more organization than a high school kid was capable of. More sinister as well. It would be pretty stupid to step on a single ant only to realize too late he’d missed the colony. Freeman intended to stay with him.