Then the other heartbeat stopped.

  Kira felt the blood drain from her cheeks. And in that instant, she knew who she had been missing for her whole life. Kamenev could read it on her face.

  “You were better off without her,” he said. “Tantum est fortis superesse. Only the strong survive.”

  CHAPTER 98

  KIRA LUNGED AND grabbed Kamenev’s jacket with both hands. She winced as the pain from her right shoulder shot down her arm. Kamenev twisted away and turned toward the wall. Kira saw his hand go to his chest. The binder fell to the floor. When he turned back, she saw a flash of metal in his hand. Kamenev fired as he turned, without aiming. The blast echoed through the corridor as the bullet struck the stone arch behind Kira’s head. And now, the gun was in her face.

  “You froze,” said Kamenev. “That night. You couldn’t do it. That’s what Irina reported. You can imagine how disappointed I was. I thought we’d trained you better than that.”

  Kamenev brought his fist down hard on Kira’s right shoulder. She grimaced in agony and fell to her knees.

  “I can sense your weak spots, Meed,” said Kamenev. “I have a gift for it.”

  Kira felt the cold barrel of the gun pressing through her curls onto the crown of her head. She closed her eyes. Then she drew a deep breath and let it out. She had one more question to ask before she died.

  “Tell me,” she said numbly. “Did you kill her? Was it you? Did you kill my sister?”

  Kamenev pressed the barrel harder against her skull.

  His voice was almost soothing. “Let’s just call it natural selection,” he said.

  Kira went blind with rage. She reached into her belt and brought her hand up hard. Kamenev rocked back against the wall and slid to the floor, his eyes glazed and still. Kira’s knife protruded from his chest, between his third and fourth ribs. The gun dropped from his hand.

  Kira knelt on the cold stone floor, breathing hard, cradling her aching arm across her torso. She stared at Kamenev’s still body as blood oozed from around the edge of the knife blade. Kira knew it wasn’t just his blood. It was family blood. The same blood that ran in her. After generations of good and evil, she was now the last of her line.

  She had only herself.

  Kira rose to her feet, leaned over, and picked up the tattered binder. She tucked it under her right arm. Suddenly, the tunnel was pierced by thin, distant cries. In the eerie echoes created by the tunnels, it sounded like cats howling.

  Kira grabbed the pistol and gripped it in her left hand. She walked in the direction of the sound. The corridor curved for about twenty yards until it ended at a stone staircase. The sound was coming from behind a door at the top of the stairs.

  Kira raised the pistol. She inched her way up the steps and eyed the door. Above the handle was a clasp sealed with a simple padlock. Kira blasted it apart with one shot. She pressed herself against the frame and pushed the door open. She stepped into the room and swept the pistol from side to side. There were no threats.

  The room was huge. Maybe fifty yards long. Both sides were lined with bassinets—filled with crying babies.

  CHAPTER 99

  THE HEADMASTER’S BODY was lying on a plastic sheet at the edge of the schoolyard. Kira and I watched as a couple of soldiers loaded him into a body bag. She had told me about the fight in the tunnel, but I knew she wasn’t telling me everything. She was quiet and numb, off in her own world.

  Another Red Cross helicopter set down in the center of the compound. The first had arrived twenty minutes earlier. Medics and volunteers were already setting up white tents and tables. Nurses in blue scrubs were wheeling bassinets from the underground nursery and carrying wailing infants toward the tents.

  In the past half hour, the place had turned into a refugee camp. Kira had finally gotten some medical attention, too. Her right arm was in a sling, but she’d turned down the pain meds. I’d started to ask one of the medics to check the gash in my forehead, but then I realized that it had totally healed. That brought up a question I was dying to get answered. It had been stuck in my head for a long time. Maybe it was a way to get Kira talking.

  I looked over at her. “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded.

  “What can I do?”

  She stayed quiet for a moment, then looked at me with an annoyed expression. “What can you do?? There’s plenty to do,” she said, looking at the chaos across the compound. “For one thing, we need to figure out where all these babies belong.”

  She wasn’t understanding my question.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, what can I do? What are my powers?”

  “Your powers?”

  “I mean, obviously, I can survive plane crashes. I can learn languages overnight, swim for miles in freezing water, repair my body, lift an ATV with my bare hands. What else??”

  “This is really what’s on your mind right now?” Kira asked.

  “Just curious.”

  Kira got quiet again and looked away. She was giving me nothing. I’d obviously picked the wrong time. And the wrong topic.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Forget it.”

  She let out a slow breath and turned back toward me.

  “Okay,” she said, “if you really need to know, start with this: your reaction time is three times faster than normal. Your muscle strength and endurance have quadrupled. You can run a quarter mile in under forty seconds. Your vision is 20/10 in both eyes. Your skin is thicker, more resilient…”

  “Like Superman??”

  She grabbed my arm.

  “Look at me,” she said. “You’re not Superman. You’re just the best version of yourself. New and improved. We’ve maxed out your natural potential. That’s what the original Doc Savage experiment was all about—seeing how far native ability could be pushed. Not by coming from another planet. Just by starting with what you already have.”

  “And how did you know what I already had?” I asked.

  “I studied your ancestors,” she said. “I knew the techniques. I lived the techniques. I gambled that you were a diamond in the rough. And I was right.”

  She went back to staring into the distance. I couldn’t leave it alone.

  “So could I stop a bullet with my body?” I asked.

  “Don’t push your luck, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER 100

  LATER THAT MORNING, another INTERPOL chopper settled down in the main yard and a dozen more commandos poured out. Kira had wandered off. I had no idea where to. I knew I’d pissed her off with my questions about superpowers. Probably good to give her some space, I thought. As the chopper blades wound down, a new squad leader walked up to me, goggles on his face, rifle across his chest. I must have looked like somebody who knew something.

  “What the hell is this place?” he asked.

  “It’s a school,” I said.

  The commando looked around at the crowd of kids sitting on the grass, sullen and quiet. Some of them were picking at the ground or mumbling to themselves.

  “So where are the shooters?” he asked.

  “You’re looking at them,” I said.

  “Jesus!” the soldier said, lifting his goggles. “They’re kids!”

  “Do yourself a favor,” I said. “Don’t turn your back.”

  We’d already sorted through the students from the main attack force, separating them by age. The oldest were about nineteen, and some looked as young as fifteen. They were divided into groups of ten, with one or two commandos watching over each bunch. Other commandos had set up a perimeter outside the compound to snare ATV riders as they returned.

  Confiscated weapons were being collected in a huge bin. Rifles and clubs were just the start. A lot of the kids had pistols strapped to their ankles or tucked into their waistbands. Some of the older kids had grenades and stun guns clipped to their belts. They all had knives up their sleeves.

  As I walked across the yard looking for Kira, I spotted a slight girl with braids inching backward on the grass at the edge of her group. The next second, she jumped up and started sprinting toward the outside wall. One of the soldiers who’d been minding the group turned and started after her.

  “Stay there!” I shouted. “I got her.”

  The girl was fast. She was almost at the wall when I caught up. When she realized she had no way out, she whipped around to face me. There was a razor blade in her hand. She held the blade across her wrist. I inched closer. Her lips curled into an eerie smile. She slid the blade across her skin, drawing blood.

  “Stay back,” she said.

  “You must’ve skipped a class,” I said, tracing a line up my forearm. “Vertical cuts work much better.” She blinked. That’s all the time I needed. I snapped my arm forward, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it until the blade dropped into the dirt. Then I scooped her up sideways with my hand wrapped tight around her waist. She started kicking and clawing like a wildcat in a trap. Then she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Run, you assholes!” she shouted at her schoolmates. “Fight back! They’re going to kill us all!”

  I’d had enough. I flipped her right side up and sat her down hard on the dirt. “Knock it off!” I yelled, right into her face. She was so stunned that she quieted down. I did, too. “Nobody’s killing anybody,” I said softly. “Not anymore. That’s done. You’re all going home.”

  She stared back at me, eyes blazing.

  “Fuck you, Paul Bunyan!” she said. “This is home!”

  Two soldiers ran over with a set of zip cuffs and hauled her away.

  “Careful,” I said. “She’s stronger than she looks. And get a medic to check her wrist.”

  I realized I didn’t have any answers for the girl. For any of them. They’d never known any life but this. These kids had been raised here since they were babies, the same as Kira. No wonder they were out of their minds. In the last hour, their whole world had exploded.

  I saw a group of soldiers heading into the main building and jogged over to join them. The first team through the door stopped to check for booby traps. When they gave us the all clear, we moved in. As we swept through the first floor, we found young kids hiding in closets and under desks. One by one, the commandos dragged them out.

  Some of the instructors and security guards tried to make a run for it, but we rounded them up pretty easily. They were all worn down and scared. From the looks on their faces, I think they all expected to be executed, too.

  While the soldiers marched the students and teachers outside, I walked up a curved staircase to the second floor by myself. One of the commandos was on his way down, guiding a line of toddlers—Sesame Street age. Some of the kids looked terrified. Others just looked stunned.

  When I got upstairs, everything was quiet. I walked down the long empty corridor. It was littered with clothes and other belongings. Some of the rooms had been barricaded with chairs and desks. When I got to the end of the hall, I stopped and looked into the last room.

  And there she was.

  She didn’t even look up when I walked in. The room was filled with metal cots arranged in neat rows. There was a sink against one wall. Kira was staring out a window. It was blocked with heavy metal bars. As I got closer, I could see scorch marks on the sill, like old cigarette burns.

  “Is this where you slept?” I asked.

  “Tried to,” she said softly.

  She ran her fingers over the windowsill.

  “This was my way out,” she said. “This is where I jumped. I was eighteen.”

  I looked at the bars. Not even a skinny teenager could have slipped through. “How?” I asked.

  “I burned through the bars and bent them,” she said. “These bars are new. Stronger. They made sure nobody else escaped.”

  “You burned through a set of metal bars?” I asked. “With what?”

  “Acid,” she said.

  Kira pulled up her left sleeve. I bent forward to look. The scars on her forearm matched the scorch marks on the stone. “Nothing was going to stop me,” she said. “Nothing.”

  I could see tears brimming in her eyes. I didn’t know how to react, or what to say.

  All I knew was that I was sad for her. Angry for her. Angry for me. After all, one of my ancestors had helped build this place. My family. My blood. In a twisted way, I felt partly responsible. I wrapped my hands tight around the bars and ripped them out of the stone one by one.

  When I was done, the view was clear all the way to the mountains.

  “You’re okay now,” I said. “It’s over.”

  Kira stared off into the distance.

  “I wish,” she said softly. “I wish.”

  CHAPTER 101

  THAT AFTERNOON, I asked the commando in charge to gather all the kids together in the gym. It was bigger than any class I’d ever taught. I stood in front of a massive wooden table and looked out over the crowd. Some of the students looked back at me with cold, dull eyes. But most of them just stared at the floor.

  The older kids were in orange jumpsuits and cuffs. A lot of them were still bandaged up from the battle. The younger students were in oversized Red Cross T-shirts, like kids at a sleepaway camp.

  A sturdy sergeant stood at my right side, legs apart, rifle at the ready. My personal bodyguard. Kira was standing on the other side. She’d found a microphone and connected it to the gym’s PA system. When I brought the mic up to my face, there was a short whistle of feedback. The noise got everybody’s attention.

  “I want to read you all something,” I said. My voice boomed across the gym, loud and clear.

  It was a tough audience. Zero interest. Zero expression. Even the creepy smiles were gone. I unfolded the sheet of paper I’d torn out of my great-grandfather’s journal back in the Fortress. I cleared my throat.

  “An ancestor of mine wrote this a long time ago,” I said. “It was hidden away for almost a hundred years. But I believe somehow he meant for me to find it. It’s something I think you should hear. Maybe these words will help you as you move on and start over. Believe me, there is a better world than this place. There is a better life than the one you’ve all been living.”

  I realized that my hands were shaking a bit. I looked over at Kira. She gave me a little nod. I started reading what my great-grandfather had written to inspire himself. Doc Savage’s personal code.

  Let me strive, every moment of my life, to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, so that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right, and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong to no man.

  When I finished, the room was silent, except for some awkward coughs. I held the paper over my head. Like Moses with the Ten Commandments.

  “Bullshit!” a female voice called out.

  I heard a loud crack. A bullet punched a hole in the paper.

  Everybody in the audience ducked or scattered, except for one person. A woman in an orange jumpsuit stepped forward from the middle of the crowd. Her dark hair was matted, and her face was swollen on one side. She had a pistol—and it was pointed at Kira.

  “My God,” Kira gasped. “Irina!”

  “Did you think I’d go that easily, Meed?” Irina shouted. “Do you think you’re the only one who knows how to survive?? How to come back??”

  The sergeant had his rifle up.

  “Drop the weapon!” he shouted.

  Irina flicked her aim left and shot him through the forehead. He spun backward and landed with a heavy thud, his rifle underneath him. I crouched down, my heart racing. I felt Kira beside me. Irina stepped forward, picking her way through the students hugging the floor. She fired again. The bullet splintered the desk leg right over Kira’s head. There was nowhere to go, no way to move.

  I glanced to my left. I saw the butt of a Glock in the dead soldier’s holster. I reached out and grabbed it. With my other hand, I shoved Kira down behind me. I heard another crack and felt the impact—like I’d been punched in the chest by a prizefighter. I whipped the gun up and squeezed the trigger. Irina flew backward and landed hard on the wood floor. There was a neat purple hole in her chest.

  A squad of commandos burst in from outside, rifles raised. Two of them rushed forward to the dead sergeant. One of them stopped and checked for Irina’s pulse. I knew he wouldn’t find one. He looked up at me and saw the pistol.

  “Dead, sir,” he said. “Perfect shot.”

  I dropped the gun onto the floor. I winced and put a hand over my sore chest. Kira reached over and yanked my shirt open. I looked down. There was a circular red welt above my left pec, with a flattened piece of metal in the center. I pried the bullet out of my skin and dropped it onto the floor. Kira didn’t say anything. She just held my arm and stared at me. I pushed her away and stood up. I walked past Irina’s body and headed for the door.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea.

  CHAPTER 102

  I SHOVED THE door open and walked outside, past the huge Black Hawks and all the men with guns. I felt sick. I felt angry. I felt relieved. I felt guilty. What the hell are you supposed to feel when you end somebody’s life—even if it’s somebody who was trying to end yours?

  I walked across the yard to the stone wall that surrounded the compound. I stretched out and leaned both arms against it. I felt burning in my chest, but it wasn’t from the bullet. It was from somewhere a lot deeper. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt tears streaming out. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” said Kira.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I pushed off the wall and turned on her.

  “Thanks??” I said. “I don’t want to be thanked. Do you want me to be proud of that??”

  “I’m not asking you to be proud,” said Kira. “Would you rather see me dead? And you? Because that was the choice. Her or us.”