I didn’t know and didn’t care. He turned toward me, and I shot him in the face. The Sandman dart caught him beside the nose, and he staggered. Like the Fixers at the processing plant, it affected him but didn’t knock him out. So, as he reeled against the door, I used the knife. Yeah, that did the trick.

I leaped over his body and crashed through the doorway.

The hall was empty except for a dead security guard. Poor bastard.

I slowed from a fast run to a cautious walk as I approached the corner, then ducked low to take a quick look around the edge.

Had I done that while standing, I would have died right there. A meat cleaver chunked into the wall at the level of where my throat had been, and I looked up into the sparkling blue and thoroughly insane eyes of Eve.

She simultaneously tried to tear the cleaver free and kick me in the face. Bad moves, both of them. What she should have done was not be between me and Rafael Santoro. And I had no damned time to waste on junior-grade psychopaths. As I shot to my feet, I gutted her from navel to breastbone, gave the knife a big push and twist at the top, and sent the tip of the blade into her black heart.

Eve looked at me with such profound confusion that it was as if she were trying to understand how this—her life, her ambitions, her goals—could simply end this quickly. Maybe she’d planned a drama for us, a big battle in which she would emerge victorious. Or perhaps she thought her mentor—her daddy—would step in to save her.

I tore my knife free and let her fall.

Maybe I should have pity for the damage that drove her to become what she was. That’s something for philosophers, and I’m not one of that brotherhood. I doubted I’d even mention her to Rudy. Why give her even that much? There was too much innocent blood on her hands for me to care.

Santoro was twenty feet away, and he was grinning at me.

I grinned, too.

And I think my smile was a great deal darker than his.

CHAPTER 174

THE PAVILION

BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

Mia saw the blast through a gap in the trees. She heard Top’s warning, and then a fireball enveloped his fighting machine. Then she was too busy to keep watching because the semi rounded the curve. It was packed with the remaining Fixers and the K-110s.