Dead Waters - Anton Strout [105]
Out of the darkness stepped Thaddeus Wesker. He looked down at the body, and then up at me. He seemed disappointed. “I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends,” he said.
I couldn’t stop staring at myself lying there, unmoving. “Holy Hell!” I shouted over the dying sounds of combat all around us. Jane and the Inspectre held Elyse at bay at cane point and Connor had Darryl by the scruff of his hoodie. Most of the birds and rats had been dealt with or were already dissolving on their own. I walked over to Wesker, mindful not to step on prone, dead me. Wesker looked at me with an evil grin.
“That,” he said, taking the time to relish each word, “felt good.”
“That’s disturbing,” I said, freaking out at the dead look in my double’s eyes. “You did know that was a doppelganger of me, didn’t you?”
Wesker shrugged.
“What if that had been the real me?” I asked.
He walked past me. “I guess we’ll never know,” he said, heading up the aisle. “I was going to the café to see what they had for fresh pastry. Getting to kill you was just the bonus cherry in my Danish.”
Elyse, Darryl, and Heavy Mike—still pinned through his hand to the wall—all started yelling at one another while various members of the Department fought to contain them.
“Everybody, shut up!” a voice called out. The room went silent. Trent had come out of hiding from behind his seat. When Elyse saw him, her eyes bugged out.
“Hey, pal,” she said, turning on her charm. “How are you? Glad to see you made it out of that fracas at the university alive.”
Trent came out of his row, walked down the aisle toward Elyse, and shoved her. “No thanks to you.”
“Hey!” Darryl called out from between the two Shadowers who were holding him. “Keep your hands off her.”
“Or what?” Trent exploded. “She’ll tie me up again? She’ll bleed me out to power your messed-up little project? You might want to listen to these people. They’ve got some news, and as far as I can tell, it’s true. The professor’s not dead. He’s alive and wandering this city.”
Elyse’s eyes widened, but there was too long a hesitation before it. “It worked?” Elyse said. “The professor’s alive?”
Despite the look on her face, I wasn’t buying it. “You’re going to need more acting training if you want your surprise to sound more convincing. Knock it off.”
“What is that?” Darryl said, puffing up. “A threat?”
“My boy,” the Inspectre said, walking up to him. Darryl backed away from him as best he could, but the agents holding him didn’t give him much room to move. The Inspectre looked winded from the fight, but there was anger in his voice. “There is a threat, but it is the one that Mason Redfield himself proposes. His pact for his youth, yes, but I fear it is a debt that will need constant repayment.”
Elyse’s face finally went serious. “More blood,” she said.
“Ours,” Trent said.
“Precisely,” the Inspectre said. He pulled his sword from its cane once again and started toward her. “I’m sorry, but I believe we are past the point of all civility. Now, why don’t you tell me all about this woman in green?”
Elyse stared at him. Her cocky toughness was gone. The girl was scared. Not only was she scared; her eyes were blank.
“What woman?” she asked.
The Inspectre searched her face for a moment before lowering his sword. “Bloody hell,” he said. “She doesn’t know.”
27
Given our need to avoid questions from Thaddeus Wesker, Connor and I dragged our four captives out of the theater on the basis that interrogation always went better when there was less slime to slip around in. Cramped for space and coverage, the two of us were forced to bring the professor’s students up to Allorah Daniels’s office, with Jane and the Inspectre bringing up the rear, barring any chance of their escaping. When Elyse saw our offices behind the theater, she