Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 055

London, 2013.

"Dr. Hawke, are you all right?"

Consciousness returned in pieces. The overhead lights came first, harsh and white. Then the smell of antiseptic. Then the room itself, assembling around him like a photograph developing in real time. Fluorescent fixtures, white coats, pale linoleum floors that reflected everything in dull, washed-out doubles.

A young nurse was watching him with an expression of careful concern, her dark hair pinned back beneath her cap. She was pretty in the uncomplicated way of someone who hadn't yet learned to hide it.

"You don't look well," she said. "Should I call another doctor?"

So. A doctor. He was a doctor.

Soren kept his face neutral and shook his head. "I'm fine. Just tired." He glanced at the name badge pinned to her chest. "Thank you for asking, Nora."

Nora Weston didn't look entirely convinced. "Let me get you some water, at least."

She didn't wait for an answer. She was already moving toward the water cooler at the far end of the corridor, her shoes making soft, efficient sounds against the floor.

Soren used the moment to think.

First problem: I'm supposed to be a doctor. A doctor's job is to treat patients. And I have no idea how to treat patients.

He knew basic first aid. Pressure on a wound, airway management, the rough mechanics of keeping someone alive long enough to hand them off to someone qualified. That was the ceiling of his medical knowledge, and it was a low ceiling. If this Career Instance expected him to perform surgery, he was going to have a very short and embarrassing run as Dr. Hawke.

He was still working through the implications when Nora returned with a paper cup, steam curling off the surface.

"Don't push yourself so hard," she said, holding it out. "You really do need to rest."

"Thanks." He took the cup and drank it in one go. Then, testing the waters: "Nora, what's on the surgical schedule today?"

Her smile widened, warm and easy. "Rest. That's what's on your schedule today."

"The hospital gave me the day off?"

He said it lightly, half a joke, but something in her expression snagged his attention, some small wrongness he couldn't immediately name.

Then the pain hit.

It started in his abdomen, a burning so sudden and so total that it erased every other thought in his head. His legs buckled. He grabbed for the edge of the nearest table and missed, and the whole thing went over with a crash, instruments and paperwork scattering across the floor. He went down with it, and when he hit the linoleum he tasted blood, thick and copper, flooding up from somewhere deep in his chest.

The water.

She poisoned the water.

He looked up at her from the floor. The warmth was gone from her face. Every trace of it. She stood over him with the blank, calibrated stillness of a machine that had completed its function, and she reached into her pocket and produced a small earpiece, which she fitted into place with practiced ease.

"Nighthawk is neutralized," she said, her voice flat and professional. "Mission complete."

Then she reached into her uniform and drew a Glock 17 fitted with a suppressor, and she aimed it at his head, and she pulled the trigger.

Everything went black.

"Dr. Hawke, are you all right?"

The same voice. The same corridor. The same white lights.

Soren's eyes snapped open.

Nora was standing beside him, her face arranged in the same expression of mild concern, her hand half-extended as though she'd been about to touch his arm. For a single suspended moment, neither of them moved.

Then he saw it. The shift in her eyes, quick and cold, there and gone in less than a second. Recognition, and then calculation. Her right hand began moving toward her uniform.

Soren didn't think. He threw a punch at her head.

She slipped it. Fast, faster than he'd expected, her head tilting just enough to let his fist pass within an inch of her ear, and her hand was already inside her jacket.

He closed the distance before she could clear the weapon, driving his left palm down onto the slide of the Glock as it cleared the holster. He forced it back in a single sharp motion. The chambered round ejected and pinged off the floor. His thumb found the magazine release and pressed. The magazine dropped free.

She answered with her leg.

A long, fast kick came up at his right temple, and it had real force behind it, the kind that comes from training rather than anger. He caught her thigh with both hands, absorbed the momentum, and used it, twisting hard and driving her backward. She hit the floor with a sound that knocked the air out of her.

Down the corridor, two doctors had stopped walking and were staring.

"Hawk! Nora! What are you doing?!"

Soren ignored them. He scooped the magazine off the floor and kept his eyes on Nora as she pushed herself upright, the disarmed Glock still in her grip.

"Nighthawk," he said.

It wasn't a question. He needed to understand what he was, and fast. The mission parameters depended on it.

Nora's expression didn't change. "You shouldn't have turned on us. Ten years, and you actually thought we wouldn't find you?"

"Who is 'we'?"

A flicker of something crossed her face. Not quite confusion. "Did you lose your memory?"

"It's been ten years," Soren said, easing sideways, one slow step at a time, angling toward the instrument table against the wall. "You can't expect me to remember every detail. Give me something. Maybe it'll come back to me."

Nora's gaze tracked to the table. To the surgical tray on top of it. Her eyes came back to his face, and there was something almost like contempt in them.

"Your instincts are still showing. You've been away from MI6 a long time, Nighthawk. It shows."

The words landed, and the system responded instantly.

A chime sounded in the back of his mind, clean and precise.

[Mission Objective: Escape London!]

[Mission Achievements: Agent Slayer (eliminate thirty MI6 operatives or assassins); King of Spies (defeat fifteen operatives or assassins simultaneously); Intelligence Secured (ensure the safety of Asset X-017).]

MI6. He'd defected from MI6. And Nora was an operative sent to close the account.

He didn't have time to process the full implications. Nora's left hand was already moving, pulling a spare magazine from her pocket.

Soren hurled the one in his hand at her face. It wasn't meant to connect. It was meant to buy a half second, and it did. While she flinched back, he lunged for the instrument tray and closed his fingers around a scalpel, the handle cold and slim against his palm.

By the time he turned, she had the fresh magazine seated and was bringing the Glock up.

He crossed the distance in two steps. His left hand slammed down on her g*n arm, pinning it, redirecting the muzzle toward the floor. His right hand drew the scalpel across the side of her neck in a single controlled motion.

The cut was clean. The result was not.

She made no sound. She dropped, and Soren put a foot into her midsection as she fell, driving her back and down, and the Glock came free into his hand.

He stood over her and fired twice.

He searched her quickly after that. No extra magazines, no secondary weapon, nothing useful beyond what she'd already shown him. He straightened up, turned, and raised the Glock toward the two doctors who were still standing frozen at the end of the corridor, hands coming up before he'd said a word.

"Tell me my full name," he said.

One of them just stared. The other, to his credit, found his voice.

"Hawk Hollis. Your name is Hawk Hollis."

"Where do I live?"

"We don't know that—"

Soren moved his finger to the trigger guard. Both doctors spoke at once.

"Your file! Your personnel file is in the records room, fourth floor!"

"Thanks."

He was already moving toward the stairwell when he stopped and looked back.

"One more thing," he said. "Either of you want to lend me your car?"