A Day Of Faces by Simon K Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

my squamata muscles serving me well as I jittered from side to side. A bullet whizzed overhead, where I would have been standing.
    I was at the far side of the junction, and sprang at the closest guy with a gun. He clearly hadn’t been expecting someone like me and had totally frozen. I was on him in a second, wrenching the gun out of his hand and flinging it back along the floor towards the elevator. As the guy toppled onto me his colleague fired, straight into him. He didn’t even get time to cry out. I always felt kinda bad about that, afterwards. It was a really shitty way to go out, especially if, you know, you were meant to be a security guard.
    But, hey, trying to kill me, and all.
    I rolled back out, ran halfway up the wall and propelled myself at the trigger-happy guard. He had pretty good armour on, head to toe and even with his neck covered. Thing is, they always made helmets so that they covered the top of your head but left your face open. Always seemed a bit weird to me - wouldn’t it just encourage people to shoot you in the face?
    Anyway, I didn’t have a gun, so I just bit him on the nose. That’s not a nice thing to experience under any circumstances, but being bitten by a squamata is definitely something to avoid. He dropped like a sack of potatoes about three seconds later.
    Marv already had the other guys at gunpoint, which was pretty badass.
    They cowered - actually cowered - as I approached.
    “Don’t kill us,” one of them whimpered, “please, I have a kid. A little boy.”
    “Aww, cute,” I said.
    Marv glanced over at me. “What now?”
    “Knock them out, I guess?”
    He nodded. “Right.” He swung the butt of the gun, smacking the guy closest across the forehead. He doubled over and swore. “Man, I’m sorry,” Marv said, genuinely apologetic, “that always works in movies.”
    “Listen,” the Guy With Kid said, “can’t you just tie us up somewhere? We’re not even guards, we just work up here.”
    “OK,” I said, “but if you try anything, I will find you. And your kid.” I flashed my fangs.
    It took a couple of minutes to find anything we could use to tie them up. Seems that your average office doesn’t have handcuffs or rope lying around. After that we moved quickly to the staircase, and continued making our way up the spire.
    “So, saying you’d go after his kid?”
    “Yeah, what?”
    “Kinda creepy,” Marv said. “Pretty cold.”
    “Hey, I was just trying to sound serious,” I said.
    “And the other guy? The one you bit?”
    My stomach crawled. For a moment I thought I was going to retch. “It was just a quick bite. Probably just knocked him out.”
    Marv nodded. “You don’t actually know, do you?”
    “I’ve not made a habit of trying to kill people, if that’s what you mean. And no, I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    I didn’t even want to think about it. 15
    “You’re going to have to at some point,” Marv said.
    We reached the next floor without incident. It was entirely deserted.
    “I totally thought you were going to get shot, you know?” I watched Marv as he gazed through the walls and the ceiling, looking for heat signatures.
    “Still might, you know?”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “Not everyday I do something this monumentally unwise, Kay.”
    “Fun, though, right?”
    “Hells yeah it’s fun,” he said. “I can see Cal. He’s on the next floor. And then it’s the Aviary.”
    “Answers or death.”
    “You know it.”

lineage
    ˈlɪnɪɪdʒ/
    noun
    BIOLOGY
    a sequence of species each of which is considered to have evolved from its predecessor.
     
    The good news is that they were wildly unprepared. The bad news is that we’re now holed up in the records office with every exit barricaded and a squad of particularly angry and armed people waiting just outside. Looking on the bright side, this is the room we wanted to be in.
    “Found anything yet?” Marv was stalking around the perimeter of the room, glaring