Quake by Andy Remic Read Free Book Online

that it could be undetectably concealed and so astonishingly deadly that it could cut through steel, and with a flick of his wrist sliced through one of the attacker’s arms. A burning hiss of slashed flesh and bone was barely audible.
    The attacker screamed, a high shrill sound, releasing Carter who landed in a crouch beside the severed blood-pumping arm, limp-fingered and twitching and spilling gore across the carpet. The attacker spun, fleeing into the darkness without any further sound as Carter rubbed at his bruised windpipe and focused on regaining his breath and his vision. With his sight returned, he deactivated the MercG, located his Browning and crawled to the cabin door, peering out into the snow. But the attacker had vanished.
    ‘What is that fucking smell?’
    Natasha, bleary-eyed and naked, hair tousled, nose wrinkled, stood in the doorway to the bedroom, looking confused.
    ‘Yeah, thanks for your help,’ croaked Carter, reaching up to flick on the light. An ambient cosy warm radiance contrasted with the stark images and thoughts that crashed through Carter’s brain.
    Natasha frowned, then stared down. ‘Carter, there’s a fucking arm on the carpet.’
    ‘Really? You don’t say. I wonder how that got there -could it have been something to do with the noise that roused you from your wine-induced slumber?’
    ‘What was he after?’ Natasha pulled a blanket around her shoulders and moved to him, crouching. ‘Are you all right?’
    Carter laughed, sliding the MercG back into its tiny hidden sheath at his waist and rising to lock the door of the cabin. ‘Nice to see my health is third on your list of priorities.’
    ‘Did he take anything?’
    Carter prodded the severed arm with the toe of his boot. ‘I don’t know; I disturbed him before he found whatever he was looking for. Maybe he wanted Jam’s GridMap.’ Carter rubbed at his bruised throat again, noting Jam’s map which had been covered by Carter’s scattered wedding notes. The simplest hiding place was sometimes no hiding place at all!
    ‘Can you get me a glass of water? The bastard nearly crushed my windpipe.’
    ‘Hence the arm on the floor.’
    ‘Yeah. And get onto Spiral, comm a genetic sample, see if the CDb can find us a match.’ He coughed painfully as Natasha passed him some water. He checked first the door, then the carpet, then his Browning. ‘The fucker took a bullet.’
    ‘It didn’t wake me.’
    ‘That’s because the gun was silenced and you were drunk. I never knew I’d curse the damn thing! I could have done with some help, even from somebody who was pissed.’
    ‘You’re bleeding ... God, Carter, you’ve really been in the wars.’
    ‘Yeah, you’ll have fun picking the glass out of my flesh later’
    ‘Was this guy strong? A Nex?’
    Carter stared with a frown at Natasha. ‘Too strong,’ he croaked, prodding at his windpipe. ‘So much for the Utopia I dreamed about. Had to be a fucking Nex - and a big one at that. I was hoping the SAD teams had wiped them all out by now ...’
    ‘They’ll never kill them all.’ Natasha stroked Carter’s cheek. ‘And it looks like they still want you dead, my lover.’
    ‘Yeah,’ he grimaced, ‘I’m a regular fucking hunted man.’
    Music thundered, as if the Gates of Hell had been thrown wide open. Carter frowned, perched at the bottom of the stairs, smoke stinging his eyes, gazing out from this slight vantage point at the hundreds of people filling the hotel function room. After the previous night he was a touch on edge despite Spiral’s reassurances that there was no Nex activity in the area. The results of the gene-coding sample had been returned negative: the attacker had not been a Nex. Just a real tough human son of a bitch.
    Carter grinned nastily and searched the crowd for a large one-armed man. The Browning in his belt would sort things out if Carter happened across the intruder again ... and the next time he wouldn’t take just an arm as a