The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [48]
Neon flashed ahead, the shrill mosquito buzz of the holographic display getting louder. Behind, he heard the gushing hiss of the fire extinguisher. Madirakshi’s black bun had become partially unfastened in her flight, long black hair flapping behind her like a horse’s tail.
Eddie reached out, grabbed it, pulled. She shrieked, then spun.
The stolen pistol was in her hand—
He ducked as she fired, the bullet hitting a man behind him and showering his companions with blood.
Eddie sprang up before she could fire again, slamming his shoulder into her adbomen. She reeled. Metal clattered against paving as the gun was knocked from her hand.
He grabbed for the fallen weapon, missed, tripped as someone ran into him, and found himself amongst a forest of trampling legs. A man stumbled over him, stamping on his hand. Eddie yelled and struggled to stand, realising through the sharp pain that he had lost sight of Madirakshi. He looked from side to side. No sign of the police uniform—
Something lashed round his neck from behind.
Eddie’s hand flashed up reflexively just as the garrotte pulled tight, crushing his fingers against his Adam’s apple. Choking, he tried to push the wire away, but it cut painfully into his flesh, blood oozing out. A knee crunched into his back. He struggled for breath as the wire drew tighter, sawing at his throat—
Kit hurtled from the panicked crowd and tackled her. She lost her grip on one end of the garrotte as all three fell. He tried to pin her, but she elbowed him viciously in the face and jumped back up, about to run again—
Sirens howled all round the square, a voice booming orders through a megaphone. The Lyon police were sealing off the Place des Terreaux.
Eddie got up. ‘There’s no way out!’ he gasped. ‘If you give up now, I might not match your other eye up.’
To her other side, Kit was also recovering. Madirakshi glanced between the two men, eyeing up possible escape routes - and finding none, blocked by the towering neon display and the pedestal beneath the holographic dancer. ‘We can make a deal,’ said Kit. ‘Testify against your employer, and we—’
She was uninterested in deals. Instead, she ran to the neon sculpture - and started to climb it.
‘Get round the other side, cut her off!’ Eddie told Kit, but even as he spoke he realised she had no intention of jumping down. She kept climbing the ladder-like central frame, the spinning lighting effect seeming to sweep her aloft. What the hell was she doing?
The answer hit him as she reached the pinnacle, over thirty feet above. She wasn’t planning on coming down. Alive, at least.
‘No, wait!’ he shouted—
Too late.
She thrust her hands into the wiring.
The neon flickered, sparks sizzling from the sculpture’s summit as thousands of volts surged through her. People screamed at the sight. Smoke coiled from Madirakshi’s body as she shuddered uncontrollably, the vibrations shaking the whole tower . . .
Something broke loose. With the searing lightning-crack of an electrical short, the display went dark, and the woman fell away.
For a moment, it seemed as though the hollow man was trying to catch her . . . but he was just an illusion. High-powered lasers seared across her back as she dropped towards the holographic generator, uniform and hair bursting into flames before the blazing corpse smashed down spread-eagled on the pedestal. The operator hurriedly shut off the lasers, but the body continued to burn, rising smoke glowing in every colour imaginable as it passed through the beams of the giant projections.
8
New York City
‘What happened to her?’ Nina asked, wondering if she had misheard Eddie over the crackly international phone connection.
‘She electrocuted herself and fell on a hologram that set her on fire,’ he repeated. ‘Probably not what the local tourist board had in mind for their Festival of Light . . . Anyway, she was dead set - literally - on not being caught.’
‘I’ve heard of loyalty to your employer, but jeez,’ she said. ‘And Fernandez is dead?’ The thought was not exactly heartbreaking.