Free Immortal by Dean Crawford

Saffron pushed the door to the
laboratory open, striding in as a handful of scientists looked up from their test tubes and petri dishes and froze. Saffron raised the shotgun in her hand.
    ‘Anybody moves, I’ll give them an enema they won’t forget!’
    Nobody moved.
    Saffron turned toward the sound of animals, and her heart wrenched as she saw cages lining one wall of the laboratories, where half a dozen chimpanzees sat watching her with interest. Their
cages were small, matted with straw and hopelessly inadequate for either comfort or movement. Two were hooked up to machines nearby, one of which was clearly for some kind of brain-manipulation of
mechanical or robotic arms, coils of wiring traveling from computers directly into the animal’s brain stem in a complex tangle.
    Saffron’s throat pinched tight, and tears blurred her vision.
    ‘We’ll let them all go, if you want.’
    The voice of her captive standing beside her sent a surge of fury through Saffron. She whirled, driving the butt of the Beretta into his face like a sledgehammer. The scientist crashed backwards
into a desk, smashing beakers and vials as he went before slamming onto the tiled floor.
    Saffron pointed at the nearest person, a thin-looking man in a white lab coat.
    ‘You. Where’s the main database?’
    He stared at her for a moment. ‘The what?’
    Saffron stormed across to him, kicking a chair out of her way and pushing the Beretta up under his chin with enough force to drive him backwards over a table, his legs flailing wildly.
    ‘The fucking database , the computer records, everything you’ve done. Where is it?’
    The man, terrorized to the point where he could no longer speak, pointed across the room to a large pair of computer terminals. Saffron took in the tall servers with their flashing lights and
humming fans, and strode over to them. She reached into her pocket and called over her shoulder to the stricken scientists watching her.
    ‘You’ve got about sixty seconds to get every one of those animals out of here.’
    Saffron didn’t look back at them. She listened to a moment of silent disbelief followed by a sudden manic scrambling as they began grabbing cages and rushing them out of the laboratory.
She studied the computer servers as she produced from her pocket two dirty-looking devices the size of large pears. MK 2 fused grenades, bought from an antique dealer near Cedar City, Utah, and
refurbished to operational standard by a retired US army sergeant of questionable motives out of El Paso, Texas.
    Saffron waited until the laboratory behind her fell silent. She looked down at the grenades in her hands, gripping them tightly, and took a deep breath.
    ‘We can’t free this one.’
    The voice behind her made her whirl around in surprise. A young woman was standing beside the chimpanzee wired to the robotic arms.
    ‘What?’ Saffron stammered.
    ‘He’s hard-wired right now,’ the scientist said. ‘We can’t just unplug him like a toy.’
    Saffron’s eyes welled with tears as she shook her head.
    ‘You bastards, you just don’t know when to stop, do you.’
    The woman stood her ground.
    ‘His name’s Eric,’ she said simply. ‘He’s helping us learn how to help disabled people walk again.’
    ‘He’s a victim of your Nazi experiments!’ Saffron shouted.
    The woman closed her eyes for a second before speaking.
    ‘He broke his back in a fall in Phoenix Zoo, Arizona. When we learn how he can control these robot arms, we can fix him too.’
    Saffron choked on her tears and pointed at Eric, who watched her with intense curiosity.
    ‘How long?’
    ‘Ten minutes,’ the woman said.
    Saffron cursed mentally, but could not tear her eyes away from Eric.
    ‘Do it, now!’
    Saffron turned as the woman began unplugging Eric from the machines, and she reached into her pocket and produced a slim black portable hard drive. She plugged the drive into the servers and
tapped a few keys before dashing out of the