Anna unleashed the virus. She also let go of her anger. Every bit she'd been carrying around since her whole community had died. All of it was channelled into the virus. Every tiny microbe in the complex was alive with her rage.
Like a billion tiny teeth sinking into Sinnot and the other three, the microbes tore and rent their flesh. Sinnot held out his hands to stop her, imploring her. "N-no…" was as far as he got before he vomited his own spleen. It covered Bennet's back. Bennet hardly noticed. He was too busy bent double trying to stem the tears of blood running from his empty eye sockets.
Anna was intoxicated by it. Wave upon wave of pleasure shot through her body, running up her spine and down the inside of her thighs, leaving the front of her trousers wet.
What's happening to me?
Then like an adolescent waking from a wet dream she realised.
Oh my God, I'm having my first orgasm.
But it wasn't enough, the power she felt was incredible, undeniable. She couldn't stop herself. She had to use more. To punish every living thing in this vile, Godforsaken place. Like an angel of the Lord's wrath wielding a flaming sword.
She sent her anger out to find every human being in the place. She tore the life out of each one she found, working her way through every floor above and below her. Putting an end to the misery of the dying and the living alike.
Until finally she found the last four human organisms cowering behind a mound of furniture. These she recognised. They had helped her in what now seemed like a former life. These she spared.
It wasn't easy to reign-in the virus. It hurt. It took all her strength to do it. Like wrestling a prize bull to the ground by its horns. The virus was made primarily to kill and it didn't like being stopped.
Exhausted, Anna fell to the ground.
The bullets stopped. There was no more firing, just silence. Greaves wondered if this was some tactic, or whether they were going to finish the job hand to hand, but nothing happened.
"They're dead," said Colt, sticking his head out. "All of them, they just dropped dead."
Greaves looked up to see that he was right. The guards lay slumped on the ground.
"It's Anna. She's done it. She used the Doomsday Virus to kill them all and rescue us." He couldn't believe he was still alive. He stood up and went to examine the bodies of the dead guards.
"How do we know this is her?" said Colt. "And not some other thing that got loose?"
"Look how quickly it killed them all. We wouldn't be alive now if there wasn't some human intelligence behind it."
The other three came from around the barricade to see. Colt and Hiamovi retrieved some of the guards' weapons. Neither one of them taking their eye off the other.
"Time to leave I reckon," said Colt. "After you Hiamovi."
"What, and show you my back? I don't think so. No, we'll leave here shoulder to shoulder all the way."
And that's how they left, with Greaves and Cortez following.
Anna propped herself up on her elbows then got carefully to her feet. Her strength and vitality seemed to come back to her in a big wave. So did her remorse.
Her clarity returned and she realised what she had done. How she had sinned and trespassed upon everything she'd been raised to believe in. All those lives she had taken. All of them sacred, no matter how they'd been spent.
She was worse than all of them, scientist and soldier alike. She'd committed mass murder and she'd enjoyed it. It had given her more pleasure than anything she had ever done in her life. She was a monster.
Looking back over the last few months it was easy for Anna to see how she could have arrived at this point. The people she'd travelled with, and had come to see as her friends, all of them had killed without compunction, as a matter of course. She'd come to see it as necessary to survive, if not natural.
Then there was all the anger she had stored away inside herself. An anger she had never faced or acknowledged. An anger that had grown in strength exponentially until nothing could hold it in check. Anger that cut her off from the still quiet voice of God.
There was also the laboratory that triggered her response. All of the hideous secrets it kept. All the suffering it displayed. And the men who caused it, regretting only what it hadn't brought them.
This was the sort of place in which Anna was created, along with the virus that surged thorough her. Her origins lay in suffering and torture. In spite of what Greaves believed, nothing born in this way could ever bring a brighter future for mankind.
No matter how pure and bright the vision that might have inspired it, no new world could be created like this.
Anna discovered she had more knowledge at her disposal. It seemed the virus was able to digest and recall every bit of knowledge from its victims' brains. Every guilty secret, each childhood memory and all the disparate bits of information that her victims had hung on to was now at Anna's fingertips.
She picked through it all, like turning the pages of an encyclopaedia, until she had gathered the bits she needed.
The secret route to the surface.
The location of the micro-glider stationed in the hangar along with something called a sub-sonic bomb.
The whereabouts of the public address system that could be worn around the neck.
Where a working rocket launcher could be found.
And the exact spot on which the Neo-Clergy had built their metal bridge across the lava.
Then she went to find them all.