Escape (55 page)

But there was nothing there. It must have been his imagination. He kept watching for a full minute, just to be sure.

The analytical side of his mind turned to absently wondering how he could see at all. Eventually he came upon a plausible theory: somehow the minimal light emitted by his eyes was reflected and amplified enough to grant him sight in even the purest dark. Finally Ferrel looked away, and tuned into the argument raging around him. Kieran and Jilly were standing bare inches apart, their noses nearly touching as they whispered fiercely opposing viewpoints that made equally little sense to him.

“Are you a vacuous cretich?” Kieran demanded. “If we keep randomly searching this building, we're going to encounter more of those
things!
”

“You don't know that! That might have been the only one. Besides, we can't stay here and wait for them to find us. We stand a better chance taking the initiative.”

“I'm not suggesting we stay
here
,” Kieran said, throwing fisted hands up in exasperation. “I'm suggesting we get out of this building! Like you said, something is seriously wrong with the grid
—
if it was a normal blackout, the power backups would have at least kept the stasis chambers running. We need to get to a secure location, preferably one with power. I say we find the nearest exit to the streets and start searching the surrounding buildings. For a start, we could use some weapons.”

“Fine. Do you know where the nearest street level is?”

Kieran hesistated.

“I didn't think so. Sounds like random searching to me. So, while we're already randomly searching, let's just keep our eyes open for either a lab or a way out of here.” She spun on her heel and opened the door to the level on the landing where they'd stopped before Kieran could even formulate a response.

The door closed with a sigh behind her. Kieran shook his head and stormed after her. Ferrel's stomach growled loudly, and he was tempted to raise another concern, but upon noticing the furious tone of Kieran's thoughts, he kept his concerns to himself. Surely they were as hungry as he, and even if not, none of them would turn down a meal if they stumbled upon one. Ferrel followed Kieran through the door. It swished shut behind him, and he felt a hair-raising tickle accross the back of his neck.

Ferrel spun around. There was nothing there. It must have been the air displaced by the door's closing.

Calm down, Ferrel,
he thought at himself.
You're jumping at shadows.

With a sudden, involuntary shiver, Ferrel turned and jogged after Kieran, his feet slapping the tiled floor in a noisy rhythm. When he caught up, Kieran sent him an admonishing glance.
Shhh!

Ferrel grimaced.
Sorry.

The level they were on appeared to be some sort of high security area. All the doors were thick alloy with rivets protruding and elaborate locking mechanisms. All the locks were on the outside of the doors, however, leading to the conclusion that whatever lay beyond those doors was either incredibly valuable, or incredibly dangerous. Ferrel was still wondering which was the case when the door nearest to him vibrated with a dull
thump.
He stopped and stared at it. Kieran had likewise stopped beside him, and Jilly turned to see why her footsteps were now the only ones in the corridor.

“Well?”
she demanded, her voice raised enough to carry.

Kieran sent her a quick look.
Think it. Don't say it. We don't know who, or what might be listening.

He saw her frown across the distance between them, and she walked up to him, standing uncomfortably close again. “Well?” she whispered.

Kieran noted that she'd deliberately disobeyed his order, but at least she was being quiet now, so he decided to let it go.

Another
thump
resounded from the door, and Kieran nodded sideways to it. “That,” he said.

“It sounds like
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Thump.

“Something is trying to get out,” Ferrel finished for her.

Thump!

“That noise was louder. Whatever it is, it's getting frustrated.”

THUMP!

This time they saw the door shiver, and a barely perceptible dent appeared in the middle of the door. Jilly's eyes went wide, and she turned to Kieran with a glazed look. “Let's get out of here!” she said, forgetting to whisper.

Kieran frowned and looked back to the door. He waited, expecting to here another
thump
, but it never came. “There's a peephole,” he said, stepping up to the door and opening a hinged rectangular window.

The hinges groaned and squeaked. And Kieran found himself staring directly into a glowing red eye.

The eye narrowed appreciably, and a voice slithered into his head.
Hello
. Kieran took a quick, involuntary step back from the door, revealing the glaring eye to Jilly and Ferrel.
Would you mind letting me out?
A hint of malice simmered beneath the surface of that thought, warning against such an action. The eye flicked from side to side, then widened, and Kieran tried to read the creature's thoughts.

Nothing.

The eye narrowed quickly again.
Where's Dimmi?

Kieran did a doubletake, then sent a tremulous reply.
W-what do you mean?
Belatedly it occured to him that the creature might not be able to hear his thoughts, if he couldn't read its, but that concern was promptly quashed.

Dimmi. Dimmi Dothali?
Kieran shook his head numbly from side to side. It wasn't possible for this
thing
to know about Dimmi.

THUMP.
The dent in the door grew more pronounced.
Where is she!

Jilly took a slow step toward the door. “Brathus?”

The eye flicked sideways and narrowed upon her. Apparently it could hear them through the door. “Yes?” his voice was muffled by the door, but far deeper than Jilly remembered it.

Kieran's head spun. How could Brathus be here? He'd stolen their ship, abandoned them on Da Shon
 
.
 
.
 
.
he should have been trilinears away by now.

“Should have been. Dimmi stole the ship from Garlan and me. She jettisoned us in a pod and left us for dead.”

Ferrel stepped up to the rectangular window. “That's not possible. She was with us the entire time; she woke up, the same as we did, on the surface. She said you turned on her and took the ship for yourself.”

The eye narrowed again. “What are you talking about? Are you on glit, boy? We arrived in-system looking for Dimmi and
our
ship, took a hit in the battle, and put out a distress signal that
you
answered. Except that it wasn't you, it was just Dimmi. She emerged from the airlock with a welcome kiss, but she must have drugged me somehow, because the next thing I woke up here, in this maledicted med center, being interrogated by patrollers. They said they picked us up in a pod. A
Union
pod, so we were automatically assumed to be a part of the assault force.

Kieran shook his head, trying to make sense of that version of events. He couldn't. All he could remember was Dimmi and Brathus appearing in the cockpit and then
 
.
 
.
 
.
he woke up here.

The eye turned on Kieran.
Your thoughts aren't making any sense, kefick face.

Neither is what you're saying,
Kieran shot back. He frowned, taking a deep breath to clear his head, then asked,
You can read my mind?

What was your first clue?

Kieran shook his head. Brathus was obviously also infected, and there was no way to know how far along he was
 
.
 
.
 
.
not without opening the door.

THUMP.

Kieran jumped with the sudden noise.

LET ME OUT!

Jilly sent Kieran a quick look, her thoughts mirroring his. They couldn't let Brathus out. Even if he weren't infected, they couldn't trust him. Not after
 
.
 
.
 
.

After what kefick face? I don't know what you've been smoking, but that never happened. As I recall, you were the ones who betrayed me. You never made it to the rendezvous. You decided to take my girlfriend hostage and run off with my share of the ship instead!

THUMP.
The dent was so pronounced now that it had a clearly definable shape. The shape of a fist.

That's not how it happened, Brathus, and you know it,
Kieran thought back.
You sent Dimmi with us to steal the ship, not guard your interest in it. We barely managed to subdue her before she stunned
—
or killed
—
us. If we hadn't gotten lucky then,
we'd
probably have been the ones drifting in a pod.

Whatever. LET.

THUMP.

ME
.
 
.
 
.

THUMP.

OUT!!

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP!

Brathus's fist emerged from the dent on the final blow, tearing a ragged hole in the thick alloy. Kieran blinked, seeing a flash of Bathus's hand. It was gray, and wrinkled like old masser-hide. The fist dissapeared, and a second later both of brathus's wrinkled gray hands appeared, gripping the sides of the hole. His fingers ended in long, glistening black claws. Kieran took a quick step back, a gasp escaping his lips. He sent Jilly a quick look to see if she'd noticed the resemblance.

She was backing slowly away from the door. The hole was beginning to widen, the alloy crumpling under the strain, and they heard Brathus groaning with the exertion
—
a deep, ominous croaking sound, that could as easily have been coming from a beast.

A beast such as him.

“We need to get out of here!” Ferrel said. He turned to run back toward the stairwell. Who knew how many other creatures like Brathus were contained within the high-security holding cells on this level? And what was a med center doing with holding cells? A prison level? To treat the criminally insane? A mental hospital?

The answers were academic at this point, so Ferrel ran and pushed the questions from his mind. Brathus's croaking groans quickly faded into the distance, but Ferrel could hear Kieran and Jilly pounding down the corridor after him. He didn't bother to look, but he could tell from their thoughts that it was them. Then the dark, featureless scene ahead of Ferrel appeared to shift and swirl; the darkness seemed to convulse and take shape. Ferrel's brow furrowed and he slowed down, trying to understand what he was seeing. Then the shape became recognizable and Ferrel skidded to a sudden stop.

“Did you miss me?” the gravelly voice asked from a grinning, lipless horror of wrinkled gray flesh and long, glistening teeth.

Ferrel held out his club in a defensive posture, and the creature threw its head back and laughed
—
a sound like a rockslide.

THUMP!

Jilly whispered: “Oh Deus, we're cornered.”

The creature before them took a step forward, and Ferrel retreated one. Another step. Ferrel glanced behind him.

THUMP!

At the least the monster behind them wasn't free yet. Kieran and Jilly didn't need to read Ferrel's mind to know what he was thinking. They just turned and ran.

And he wasn't far behind.

Chapter 35

B
rathus saw them run past his cell at an impossible speed just as he was poking his head through the jagged furrow he'd torn in the door. He reached through the hole in the door to unlock it
—
musing as he did so that if he'd been thinking more rationally at the time, he could have slipped out through the smallest hole in the hermetically sealed door, but now of course, he'd already gone to so much trouble to do things the old-fashioned way, he may as well continue. As he unlocked the door, he turned his head and saw another familiar shape approaching
—
this one in a blur of wrinkled gray flesh and tattered and bloodied white lab coat.

With eyes now a hundred times sharper than he'd been born with, Brathus caught a glimpse of the name tag on the coat, confirming his supicions. The creature chasing Kieran, Ferrel, and the girl with them, was none other than the doctor in charge of the psych ward. One of the few who had survived the plague, and the very same one who had abandoned him here rather than let him out when the emergency power had failed. That had been scarcely an hour ago, if his chronometer was still functioning.