enough to know it was a bad idea. I had no idea where
Dr. Marshall might be, and any attempt to locate him
would probably get me killed—either by the insane
doctor himself, or by one of his guards—before I could
ignite the spreading gases. That was a risk I wasn't will¬
ing to take.
Besides, it was pointless. If Dr. Marshall was still in
the building when the explosion went off—and I was
99 percent sure he was—he was going to get what was
coming to him, whether I was standing there to see it
happen or not. Sure, I'd have loved to see the look on
his face knowing I'd gotten the last laugh on the rich
psycho, but knowing without a doubt he was going to
die along with his cruel staff members and his unethi¬
cal medical secrets was good enough for me.
As soon as I opened the door leading into the front
stairwell I heard voices. Two people, their voices muf¬
fled, neither one sounding happy. They were clearly ar¬
guing, but I couldn't make out what about. I prepared
to duck back into the fourth-floor hallway, but no foot¬
steps were coming up the stairs and I figured I could
slip into the tower room before anyone spotted me.
Quiet as a mouse, I climbed the last staircase, and was
halfway around the corner when I realized the voices I
was hearing were getting louder, clearer.
Someone's in the tower room.
Andrew? Who else?
This wasn't good. Definitely not part of the plan. I
inched up the stairs, hearing the voices clear enough
now that I recognized one of them as Dr. Marshall's.
My heart shot into my throat, fear trying to strangle
me, but I fought it hard, swallowing the anxiety down
with the soothing realization that I'd be getting my
chance at personal revenge after all. The other voice
sounded familiar but I couldn't place it yet. My gun at
the ready, I took another few steps up and peered over
the riser to see who Dr. Marshall was arguing with.
It was Andrew, but not the Andrew Marshall I re¬
membered meeting. He was no longer a disembodied
man trapped in a glass tank, but like me, his body had
been made whole again. He sat upright, strapped into a
silver high-backed wheelchair equipped with a head
brace, near the skillfully restored stained glass window
I'd tried to take a header out of on my last visit to this
room.
Although Andrew was fully dressed, wearing a dark
blue wool sweater and baggy j e a n s , I knew he was trans¬
planted into Bill Smith's flesh suit, which accounted for
his familiar voice. It was Bill's voice I was hearing. An¬
drew had inherited his benefactor's vocal chords along
with the rest of his body. I hadn't known Bill for long,
but k was kind of creepy hearing his voice. Made me
wonder again whose voice I was speaking with.
Doesn't matter^ don't get sidetracked. Just run up there
with your gun blasting.
I was full of good ideas today, but that wasn't one of
them. I wasn't sold on the notion of shooting Dr. M a r
shall. A bullet was too clean of a way for him to go out. I
was also worried about the shot being heard all over the
building and Drake's guards coming on the run. Be¬
sides, I wanted to hear what they were shouting about,
so I stayed put, listening in on their argument.
"You're a fool," Dr. Marshall said to his son. "An un
grateful fool. I've spent my life trying to help you walk
and you want to quit on me now when we're this close
to success?"
"Success?" Andrew yelled back. "You call this suc
cess? Look at m e , father. You cut my real body away
piece by piece until there was nothin' left, then you try
sewing me up inside another man's dead body, but guess
what, Dad, I still can't walk."
"I know that, Andrew. And I transplanted you into
another man's living body, not dead. There's a big dfference."
"Not to m e , there isn't."
"The problem was you were in the submersion tank
for too long. The infection spread to your spine and
shut down a lot of your neuropathways, basically leav¬
ing you a quadriplegic in your new body. Don't worry,
though, we aren't out of options yet, son. All we have to
do is take a few steps back. We'll get another flesh suit
for you, only this time what we do is leave the spinal
column of the donor intact and j u s t transplant y o u r
head onto the healthy neck. I can do it, son, I swear I
can!"
"Oh Christ! W h a t ' s next after that, Dad? You gonna
j u s t scoop my brain out and dump it into another
stranger?"
"I won't have to, Andrew. This time it'll work. You
have to trust me."
"No way. Never again. I don't want to live like this
anymore, Dad. Please. I can't handle being cut apart
again. You have to stop this insanity."
"Never! I'm going to make you walk again, Andrew.
One day, you'll thank me."
"No, Dad. I won't. You treat me like a lab animal and
expect me to worship your genius like the other sheep
around here. I hate you for what you've done. You can't
make me go through that again. I'd rather die."
"Don't be so naive. Of course I can make you, and I
will. W h o ' s going to stop m e ? "
From my hiding place on the stairs, I knew that was my
cue. Ii" ever there was a time for me to play the action
hero, this was definitely it. In the movies, this was where
any good secret agent worth his salt steps out into the
open and confidently says, "I will." Unfortunately, this
wasn't the movies. I had no intention of being so civil
and—let's face it—stupid enough to give away the ele¬
ment of surprise I was going to need.
For all my big talk about finding Dr. Marshall and
getting my face-to-face revenge, I would have preferred
to have found this room empty and gone about my plan
of blowing up the castle quietly, without complications.
That obviously wasn't going to happen, but if I was
forced into confronting Marshall, I could at least do it
on my own terms, hopefully sneaking up and taking
him out before he knew I was there. I was too banged
up and exhausted for another fight.
Just shoot him, then, my conscience suggested again,
but I dismissed the notion a second time. It would be a
cowardly thing to do—which I had no problem with at
all—but I couldn't risk having Drake's security team
hearing the shot. N o , the gun was out, which left me
with only two options. Drake's knife was sticky, liter¬
ally painted red with his blood, but so too was Junie's
blade that I'd killed Jackson with. I really didn't have
any desire to touch either one again but I had to so I
went for Drake's. I'd have to push the blade release but¬
ton on Junie's and in this cramped stairwell I was fairly
sure Dr. Marshall would hear the sound of the blade
sliding out. Mayb
e not, but it wasn't worth the risk.
I laid the gun down on the top stair, grabbed the
buck knife in my right hand, and as quietly as I could,
started creeping toward Dr. Marshall's exposed back. I
only made it five feet before he turned and spotted me.
Noise hadn't given me away; it was Andrew. He'd been
facing me as I stepped clear of the stairwell and let's
j u s t say his poker face needed work. Andrew's eyes shot
wide open and damned if he didn't keep staring at me
until his father had turned around to see what was dis¬
tracting him.
Thanks, Andrew. Just the help I needed.
W h e n Dr. Marshall saw me, he didn't seem nearly as
shocked as his son. He actually looked happy, smiling a
big toothy out-of-his-freaking-mind grin that scared the
bejesus out of me. Fear wasn't an option right now, so I
threw caution to the wind and charged Dr. Marshall in a
wild offensive attack before he had a chance to defend
himself. I think my boldness surprised him, his smile
faltering as I rapidly closed the gap, bloody buck knife
held out in front of me like a medieval knight's jousting
lance.
Dr. Marshall spun around, searching for a weapon,
him right then, quick and easy, if my left knee had held
up for a few more strides. W i t h victory and revenge
literally five feet away, my knee gave out and I dropped
face-first to the carpet at Dr. Marshall's feet. I hit hard,
stars dancing in front of my eyes as my chin bounced
off the floor. My knee was t h r o b b i n g horribly, too, but
I had worse problems than pain. I had to shake it off
and get to my feet—fast.
Dr. Marshall had other ideas.
W h i l e I was sprawled on the floor, he stomped on my
hand, savagely grinding his heel down until I screamed
and released the knife. He kicked the blade under the
neatly made bed off to our left. Then he started kicking
me in the ribs, arms, and legs—anywhere he could get
a swing at—really laying the boots to me. I curled into
a ball and tried to protect my head.
K n o w i n g being defensive would only get me killed, I
uncurled and launched myself at his legs, grabbing
them and tugging him off balance. He tumbled to the
floor, landing with a satisfying thump, but he didn't
miss a beat and was back on top of me in seconds, flail¬
ing away at my head and chest with his fists. I landed a
few good licks of my own, but he was stronger than me
and had me pinned to the floor. My mind wasn't too
clear, what with the beating I was taking, but I was lu¬
cid enough to know I needed to get my hands on one of
my other weapons if I wanted to win this fight. Trouble
was, the gun was sitting on the top stair, out of the
equation. The switchblade was within reach, in my
right pant pocket, but with Dr. Marshall straddling my
lap, it was impossible for me to get at it.
Dr. Marshall smacked me once more in the face,
crushing my nose, nearly k n o c k i n g m e out cold. It didn't
hurt that much, but by the time I shook the cobwebs
from my head, he'd wrapped his long powerful fingers
around my neck and was trying to strangle me. The
surgeon's fingers were strong, digging into my flesh and
tightening like ten baby boa constrictors. I tried to
punch him in the face, but I didn't have much fight left
in my battered body and my punch barely fazed him.
He started smiling again, thinking he had me and there
was n o t h i n g I could do about it.
Wrong, asshole/
As my vision started to blur and my lungs screamed
for oxygen, I slipped my right hand inside my shirt and
grabbed hold of the last hope I had of surviving this
fight. My fingers tightened around the shaft of the
wooden cross, the marker that had been meant to adorn
my grave. Right sentiment—wrong body!
I pulled the cross free, my fist wrapped around the
top bar with the sharpened shaft p r o t r u d i n g out be¬
tween my second and third fingers, looking nasty, like
something Abraham Van Helsing might use on a vam¬
pire hunt. I drove the makeshift weapon up at Dr. Mar¬
shall's body with every ounce of strength I had left. He
saw it coming but couldn't get out of the way. The crude
wooden blade caught him in the throat, under his chin,
and all ten inches of the shaft slid up through the roof
of his mouth and into his brain, j a r r i n g to a stop when
the tip scraped the roof of his skull and my bloody
knuckles slammed into the bottom of his jaw.
Dr. Marshall went rigid for a moment, his fingers
clawing into my throat even tighter than before, but
then his body relaxed and his fingers went limp. I
tugged the cross out of his ruined throat and a torrent
of blood poured out of the wound down onto m e , a
crimson rain mixed with chunks of gray matter that
looked like oatmeal cookie dough. Dr. Marshall fell off
me, tipping over backward, dead long before he hit the
floor.
I should hare felt jubilant, whooping it up, celebrat¬
ing my grand victory over the man who'd ruined my
life, but I didn't. Emotionally, I didn't feel anything.
Spent, maybe. Empty. I lay on the bloody floor, covered
in gore, hurting like hell, and having a hard time catching
getting at it, but man, I was tired. All I could think of
was how nice it would be to close my eyes and take a
nap—a quick power nap to recharge the batteries and
forget about all my problems for fifteen minutes.
Yeah, right. Who are you trying to kid?
If I closed my eyes now I knew the game was over. I'd
never get up again. The next sight I'd see was the barrel
of one of the security guard's guns as he kicked me
awake before putting a bullet in my head. I hadn't come
this far to quit now. Mind you, maybe with Drake and
Dr. Marshall now both dead, I didn't really need to blow
up the castle. I'd killed the two men most responsible
for the crimes committed here, so maybe I could j u s t
crawl over to the stairs, pick up my gun, j a m it in my
mouth and call it a life. N o t a bad idea.
The easy road wasn't in the cards for m e , though.
There would be files, and lab reports, and j o u r n a l s , and
videotapes, and who knew what other proof around
here that would show that what N a t h a n Marshall had
been working on actually worked. He was out of his
mind, insane with his obsession to help his son, but
those things aside—he was a brilliant man. There was
no denying his crazy Frankenstein experiments were a
whopping success. I couldn't bite a bullet and leave all
that documentation lying around for some other scien¬
tist to discover. The police would turn it all over to
someone higher up the ladder, and e
ventually the gov¬
ernment scientists would swarm this place like ants to a
honey jar. That was unacceptable.
Sure, Dr. Marshall's work had the potential to help a
lot of people but it wouldn't work out that way. Some¬
one with power would corrupt things, maybe see the
potential to create soldiers that could be continually
re-fitted with new bodies after their current ones broke
down or were damaged. They wouldn't need to retrain
troops—all they had to do was take the experienced
soldier's head and give him a nice new strong body to
fight another day with. Maybe none of that would ever
happen and I was j u s t being paranoid, but the thought
of an army of super soldiers scared me, and the vision
of warehouses full of readily available flesh suits danc¬
ing in their watery tanks chilled me to the bone.
No way. Bring this place to the ground, Mike. Don't leave
nothin' but a big smoking hole.
My mind made up, I tried to sit up and get moving.
Bad idea. My k n e e , wrist, ribs, nose, and body hurt so
bad I didn't think there was any way I could ever get to
my feet. For a heartbeat, I seriously worried that I
might be too beaten and battered to carry out my plan,
but I pushed those negative thoughts aside. It was
crunch time.
Get up, man! If not for you, get your ass up and do this for
Junie and for all the other innocent people who've died here
while Marshall and Drake were playing God.
That got me moving, and although I felt like I'd
gone fifteen rounds with Lennox Lewis, I gritted my
teeth and stood up. My head spun again, and I nearly
went down, but I took several deep breaths and man-,
aged to stay on my feet.
I ignored Andrew for the moment. He'd been sitting
silently through everything that j u s t happened, staring
at me now like I was from outer space. I didn't know if
he was relieved I'd killed his father or in massive shock,
but before I dealt with him I had to crack open all the
gas valves in the room while I still had the strength to
do it.
Silently, I went back to work.
C H A P T E R F O R T Y
The tower room was t u r n i n g out to be a better place to
start the chain of explosions than I'd originally thought.
N o t only were there four oxygen gas valve stations in
the room, but there was also a row of six large stand-up
oxygen tanks strapped together against the far wall. It