Page 195 of King’s Ransom

Then, as I watched him in the elevator from above, Uri did what I hoped he’d do.

Searching hurriedly for a wound, he yanked open Vasha’s jacket . . .

. . . in doing so, triggering the small wad of C-4 plastic explosive I’d taken from the 28th floor—the Unperson’s backup trap—and positioned inside Vasha’s jacket with the detonator tied to one of her jacket’s buttons.

By opening her jacket, Uri had activated the small bomb.

He had a split second of horror to realise what was about to happen.

The plastic explosive detonated.

Uri was blown apart, his blood and body parts pasting the walls of the elevator.

I didn’t climb back down into the elevator.

Instead, I exited through the machinery space above it, stepping through a hatch onto the roof of 59West and into the cold night air.

I didn’t see the Unperson anywhere.

But I knew he couldn’t be far away.

I stepped around to peer into the blood-smeared elevator.

Which was when he pounced.

The Unperson was on me in a heartbeat, grabbing me around the throat from behind with one forearm while jabbing me in the neck with a syringe filled with Duramorph with his spare hand.

I sagged in his grip as he injected the anaesthetic into my bloodstream.

‘Oh, Samuel. You won’t wake up after this injection. This time, you have to die.’

He turned me around so he could look into my eyes.

‘Nighty-night,’ he said.

My head wobbled unsteadily, my eyes blinked.

He grinned meanly.

Which was when I headbutted him.

Hard.

He jolted backwards, stunned and shocked that I had all my faculties.

Then I grabbed the front of his jacket and held him close to me . . .

. . . as I withdrew my own hypodermic syringe from the pen pocket on my jacket’s left shoulder.

‘You gave this to me in that concrete box,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d give it back, motherfucker.’

I jammed my needle into his throat and thumbed the plunger, injecting its anaesthetic into his bloodstream.

A look of pure confusion spread across his face.

‘How . . .?’ he said.

How did I resist the Duramorph? That’s what he wanted to know.