The guards forced Bashir to his knees, shouting at him to get his hands behind his head and his face on the floor, shouts to surrender his weapon, a rifle butt to the cheek—Harwood watched it all with paralysis stretching through her limbs, under Mora’s beneficent smile. He winked at her. Zofia’s look of relief and euphoria was crumpling into despair.
Mora waved a hand. “Take him apart.”
Bashir’s body jerked and thrashed under the guard’s boots.
Mora sauntered over to Harwood and tapped a knuckle on the glass as if taunting a goldfish. “So good of you to join us, sweet Johanna, I’ve missed your cold heart. Don’t let me down now—those aren’t tears I see in your eyes, are they? If you had just done as you were told, little girl, then your lover would be tucked up in your bed right now. Maybe even both of them. Tell me, did James and Sid ever enjoy you that way? Or each other? I’d love to know—”
A crack of bone interrupted him. The guards had all recoiled, a human reflex perhaps at what had just happened. Bashir’s ankle flopped. Mora grinned at Harwood through the glass, his head perfectly framed by its circle.
Harwood raised her gun and fired between his eyes. The bullet lodged in the material.
Mora clicked his tongue. “Touchy.” He swung away, ruffling Zofia’s hair. Zofia shrieked.
Harwood kicked the glass—nothing. Of course, nothing. She inspected the rock around the casing. She doubted a bullet could crack it or the new iron bolts. She fired another bullet in the exact position of the last—a crack veined through the surface, but it did not give. Mora clicked his fingers and another guard grabbed Zofia by the neck and stuck his gun in her face. Harwood cursed under her breath. Inched around. She chucked a loose stone at the lasers—it crisped and shattered before falling to the ground. Harwood patted her pockets, and then her watch. She yanked it from her wrist, turning it inside out to reveal the gold-plating underside of the face. She just needed Sid to distract them. Mora might do it for her. He was enjoying the sound of his own voice once again.
“That looks like a nasty break, son. You should really have a doctor look at it.” Mora laughed, touching the tip of his boot to the lurid gash. “Do you call it probability or fate, Sid, that circumstances would lead you both back here, and once again Johanna would be imprisoned, and you would face me alone, this time the lives of not one but two lovely ladies hanging in the balance? I suppose you tossed for which tunnel you would take. Let’s call that my good luck. I had hoped it would end this way. Last time, Johanna broke free a little earlier than she was supposed to. A willful girl. I never got to finish my kiss goodnight.”
“Wait.” Bashir heard his own voice as if from miles away. “What happened to fair play?”
“I thought you skipped civics,” said Mora.
Bashir got to one elbow, then another, then gripped the wall behind him and pulled, feeling all of the blood drain from his face and his stomach rise into his throat.
Mora watched with eyebrows raised, and then clapped slowly. “Would you like a medal?”
“A rematch.”
“You want to fight me for the women? How very patriarchal.”
“Whoever saves one life saves all of humanity.”
Mora sneered. “Quaint.”
The waterfall thundered around them. Bashir blinked the sting of sweat from his eyes. The chamber was round, with the waterfall crashing from above into a sheer drop below, its spray kept from the quantum computer by a long chute of glass. The computer hung, suspended, beneath where Dr. Nowak sat tied to a chair. His efforts had been futile. But if he could just buy Johanna some time, he knew she’d think of something.
“Scared?” said Bashir.
Mora laughed. He floated back. A distance of twelve feet between them, and Mora between Bashir and Dr. Nowak. He beckoned with one finger.
Bashir had to stay out of his deadly reach, avoid Mora’s lethal jabs and pokes, and avoid putting all of his weight on his broken ankle—every time he did he felt as though he was going to faint. Bashir raised his fists, limping in a half-circle as Mora prowled from side to side. Mora swiped. Bashir veered, trying to get in a blow as Mora retreated, but the giant moved in a blur. Mora came again. This time Bashir was too slow, and Mora’s index finger jammed into his solar plexus. He lashed out with his good leg, catching a blow to Mora’s hip, but his other leg buckled and Bashir was off-balance when Mora came for his throat, his arms, his chest.
It was happening again, he was being dismantled, and he’d only managed to land one hit. Mora had him in a bind—there was no best play left to him, no blockade, no Boden’s Mate. Mora pincered Bashir’s torso between his knees and Bashir’s neck between his fingers, contorting and breaking him. His mouth came for Bashir’s, the moth’s wings groping and flapping from Mora’s steaming neck, and Bashir was paralyzed, could not move, could not breathe. A demon was squatting on his chest and he was crying out for help but no one would come and the demon’s mouth was swallowing his last breath.
He is in his hurricane room. Only the room has changed. It is not white or empty anymore. It is a room in the community center where his parents met. He spent hours in this room as a boy. The walls are faded salmon, a color he will later associate with rooms set aside for waiting in hospitals, but he does not know that pain yet. The window is stained glass, a project his mother organized, and his father watched from the side, pride pouring from him. Bashir is elated, his mother has arranged all this, and hangs by the artist’s elbow all day, wanting to be in the thick of it. He’s not learned reserve yet, either. The stained glass window shows a moon in the top left corner, silver rays rippling a midnight sky. In the top right corner, a sun burns, gold shimmering in summer noon. The moon and the sun pour onto the famous multicolored Victorian terraces that peer down on Bristol from the hillside. On the hill itself, the children have designed emblems of what matters to them in the city. The artist let Bashir include something that didn’t belong to the city, but belonged to him. A chess piece. A knight. Bashir touches its rippling solder outline, and then turns to embrace the rest of the room. The usual boxes of craft supplies are missing. But the rug is still there. Bashir sits down. He remembers this fabric with a sigh. The red-and-orange border, the blue-and-green inlays, the deep-purple curves, and the tree at the center, alive with fruit and birds. Bashir strokes the branches. He breathes. He learned to play chess lying on this rug with his father. And when he reaches out, a set carved in sandstone is waiting for him. Your move—a voice tells him. Johanna’s voice.
Mora’s mouth remained over his, sniffing at his last breath. Bashir bit down on Mora’s tongue, raised his throbbing hands to Mora’s neck, and twisted. It was like trying to wring the body of a boa constrictor. He spat out the tip of Mora’s tongue and all the blood that came with it and kept twisting. His vision was spotting—he could just see Mora’s eye, Mora’s cheek, turning purple. Shouts, screams. He couldn’t make Mora’s neck break. But it didn’t matter. Mora wasn’t breathing.
“I’ll shoot Nowak! I’ll shoot her!”
In the tunnel, Johanna Harwood edged the back of her watch into the path of the laser. The beam bounced. She adjusted the angle, the metal already melting, a bounce burning her arm—and then it lined up, the light searing the damage she’d already caused to the bulletproof glass, which shattered. Harwood dropped to the floor and fired, killing first the guard standing over Zofia, then the two hauling Mora’s body off Bashir. Two by the door got shots off—one missed, one hit—Harwood took out the shooter on the left in the first numb moment of the bullet finding her shoulder. She was empty, no time to reload.
Harwood strode to Zofia’s side and tipped up the medical table, hurling the vials and needles along with the table itself at the guard, who ducked. He was still in a crouch as Harwood followed the path of destruction, stabbing him in the neck with the first needle she could find. He grabbed her arm for a long moment, light-blue eyes fixed on her, and then convulsed, smacking the ground. Harwood yanked the needle out and hurled it, catching the final shooter in the thorax. He collapsed as his finger squeezed the trigger, a wild arc. Dust and rock rained down.
Harwood turned to Bashir. “Are you OK?”
“I’ll live.”
Harwood grinned. “Check he won’t.”
Bashir nodded, pulling himself up to Mora’s massive form. He checked his pulse, hating the slime of his neck beneath his fingers. No movement. He checked his wrist—the same. Then put his palm in front of Mora’s ruin of a mouth—only the still heat of death.
Bashir dragged himself across the rock to the waterfall, drinking in the shocking cold, spitting out the taste of blood.
Harwood found secateurs among Mora’s tools and cut Zofia’s binds, quickly holding her before she collapsed, squatting at Zofia’s feet. She held the scientist, feeling Zofia’s tears in her hair, trickling through her scalp.
“I’m going to put your arm back into place. I’m a doctor. Count to three with me, OK? One, two, three.” A snap, a shriek. Zofia panted into Harwood’s neck. “We’re with the British government. You’re safe. He can’t hurt you again. You protected your work.” Harwood straightened Zofia. “Can you show me where it hurts?” Zofia’s hands moved slowly. Harwood followed their path, keeping up a kind chatter as she checked the marks of Mora’s torture. “You’re going to be just fine. We’ll take care of you. Rattenfänger wanted you to give them access to the computer. I know you were trying to blow the whistle on Paradise. I know what Robert Bull did. He’s dead now. But Paradise has disappeared. We can’t find him because Paradise is using his satellites to shield his ship. I need you to access the computer and shut those satellites down so we can bring Paradise to justice, OK?”
Zofia stiffened, tried to pull away.
“Hey, hey—look at me.” Harwood found Zofia’s green eyes and smiled into them. “I’m not with Mora, I’m not with Rattenfänger. Don’t look at Mora. Just look at us. We’re on your side.”
Zofia swallowed. When her voice emerged it was reedy, strangled. “How can I trust you? How do I know you won’t take me into your custody?”
Harwood bounced on her heels, still squatting before Zofia, her hands opened peacefully. “When we take you out of here, Felix Leiter is going to be waiting for you. He’s going to make sure you get your life back.”
“Mora said he was dead.”
“He underestimates my surgical powers. We don’t have time to debate this, Dr. Nowak. You’ve got to make a choice. We’ve come a long way to find you. All we want to do now is bring Paradise to justice and secure your safety. Please, believe me.”
Zofia rubbed her wrists, then the marks on her arm. Her gaze stayed steady on Harwood’s face. She nodded.
Harwood smiled. “Thank you.” She drew the table with the computer console closer. “Can you do it from here?”
Zofia moved her hair from her face with a shaking hand. She nodded. Harwood stood at Zofia’s shoulder, watching her type. A satellite map took up the screen. Bashir was sitting at the edge of the waterfall, his attention shifting between Zofia and Mora’s body.
“Either Tanner wasn’t the leak,” he said, “or he wasn’t acting alone.”
“I know,” said Harwood softly. She laid an encouraging hand on Zofia’s shoulder when the doctor looked up. “Don’t worry. Carry on. Do you want a drink of water?”
“I’ve got it,” said Zofia. She didn’t seem to have heard the question. “I’m disabling the satellites. The ship is in the Sea of Okhotsk. I can see a plume of smoke.”
“Can you zoom in at all?”
“I can process the image . . .”
“Let me look at your ankle,” said Harwood, lifting her face to Bashir.
A sharp breath drew Harwood’s attention. Mora was moving. There was a rifle on the ground. Harwood hugged herself around Zofia. A shot exploded into the chamber. For a long and infinitesimal second, Harwood waited for her body to report its damage. But the throbbing in her shoulder and the scorch to her arm and the hundred small cuts did not bloom or shrink. She moved an inch, asking Zofia if she was OK—she nodded—and then another shot answered. They were both OK because Bashir had returned fire—returned fire as he put himself in the path of the bullet.