Mobius felt the suit collapse around him, saw the mist swirling before his visor-inside the helmet, sharing his air, entering his respiratory system and the pores of his skin and the corners of his eyes.
And he was dead.
He knew it.
A dead man.
But this was nothing new. He had died when he was eight years old, and although the first-aid squad and the doctors claimed to have brought him back to life, he knew better.
There had been no life for him since then. There had been only patient planning nursed by truculent hatred, a secret campaign against the living, a nocturnal war fought on many fronts, with murdered women as the markers of territory seized.
But not life. He’d always known that-and hadn’t cared.
But he did care now. Not about dying. About losing.
He squinted past the fog of his face mask and saw the knife in Tess’s gloved hand, his own knife, and he saw how to salvage victory, even at the end.
It was a knife sharpened on women’s throats.
Now let it cut one more.
He dropped the metal bar, twisted sideways, and grabbed her hand, clamping his gloved fingers on hers.
"You don’t win," he said.
He pushed her arm slowly backward, toward the seam joining her helmet to her suit.
One cut, one gouge or slice, and whether he opened her neck or not, she would be dead just the same. Dead from the same toxins that were speeding into his bloodstream with every pump of his heart.
She braced her left hand against his arm, fighting to hold him off. Valiant try, but he was stronger. Stronger than she imagined. Stronger than any of them had ever guessed. They had snickered at him, the company man, the supervisor, with his stiff, tidy formality and his spotless eyeglasses and crisp, measured words. He was a martinet and a toady, a politician, not a real agent at all. Capable enough when behind a desk, but helpless in the field.
That was how they’d seen him-while at night he was Mobius, the dark riddle their best brains couldn’t solve.
They had always underestimated him. He was not an ordinary man. He was a thing of will.
And with his last will, he would drive the blade into Tess McCallum’s neck and take her with him into the dark.
"You’re dead, Tess." He grunted, forcing the knife closer. "Dead like me."
Her body strained as she grappled with him. The blade touched the folds of neoprene rubber at the base of her helmet.
He pushed forward with the full weight of his upper body, forcing the knife closer…
His visor brushed hers. Tess’s face was inches from his own, separated from his by two layers of clear plastic. Her eyes were big with fear and desperation. She couldn’t hold him off, and she knew it.
He was almost there. Time for one last effort.
A killing thrust.
Now.
He rammed the knife home, hard enough to puncture the thick rubber and the throat behind it But nothing happened.
His hand, his arm, hadn’t moved.
Wouldn’t move.
Tess shoved him back. He couldn’t fight her. He was suddenly weak, his body useless.
He fell off her like a heap of bedding and lay helpless on the floor.
A shiver scurried through him, making his teeth clack loudly, and a spasm of pain roared up his lower back. Abruptly he twisted around, bent at an impossible angle by a muscular contraction that just as abruptly released, leaving him limp and dazed, until the muscles of his abdomen clutched tight, compressing him into a fetal ball of pain, a moaning thing inside the loose folds of his suit. New pain galvanized his rib cage, his thighs, his shoulders, whipsawing him from side to side. Something spattered his face mask as he shook his head-mucus, runnels of phlegm escaping from his nose, his mouth-he was leaking, his insides streaming out of him in a river of snot and drool. His glasses were grimed with the stuff, he couldn’t see, he was blind inside his helmet, and all he could hear was the idiot roar of the air blower and a series of guttural noises that seemed to be coming from him.
New waves of convulsions ravaged him. He was tossed by tides of pain, and then finally the tides receded and left him beached and winded, arms and legs too heavy to move, face coated with a wet, gluey caul, eyes clogged, ears deafened, alone in a void and sinking, sinking into the soapy water of the bathtub.
When he looked up, he saw his mother standing over him, the gun in her hand.
He opened his mouth to ask why she’d hurt him, but the question faded away, unasked.
Tess watched Andrus die.
He was Andrus again. Not Mobius. Not now.
He had nearly succeeded in knifing her when the muscle spasms and convulsions started. The VX, invading his system in massive quantities, had manhandled him with ruthless ferocity, and all she could do was drag herself safely away from his thrashing limbs, then watch.
She knew he was in pain, and part of her was almost sorry about it, but the greater part was sorry for Angie Callahan and Paul Voorhees and Scott Maple and William Hayde and all the others.
Finally he stopped moving. His faceplate was slimed with nasal secretions, but she could still see his face, pressed against the plastic, big-eyed and agape.
"Wipe out," Tess whispered, and then she struggled to her feet in the bloated orange suit and made her way out of the room.