Out of the Black (44 page)

His geometry had always been spot-on- it was a gift.

He advanced on the demons with the sword positioned before him to gauge distance and angled to maintain a minimum distance from each of the defensive positions the creature's more likely attacks would require. He advanced steadily as the demons tried to shoot him with their disabled weapons. When they realized that shooting wasn't their path to victory, they exploded from the elevator in perfect synchronization.

To his right, Anne took the brunt of the attack, weighing in against three attackers. Ping got two. They tried to rush around his blade from both sides at once, forcing him to attack one and be killed by the other... he chose option C. He faded backwards, moving the blade fractionally to lop the left hand off of the demon coming in on his left. The backwards lunge bought him enough time to dodge left and cut the right leg out from under the attacker on his right.

He realigned his geometry and drove his left elbow into the face of the left-handless but unwavering demon. The demon on his right went down with one missing and one horribly wounded leg. The one on his left stumbled back with Ping's elbow still in its face. Ping moved forward to maintain the same close distance with the handless demon as he dropped the tip of his blade downward and came across with his right elbow. The demon's toothy grin diverged somewhat as the jaw broke.

The thing was fast! Without missing the normal hand-chopped-off-double-elbow-to-the-head-broken-jaw beat, it jerked back enough to club at him with the gun in its remaining hand. The demon was faster, but Ping had better geometry. Ping's left elbow was already in position to guard against most attacks coming from that side, so he only had to change the positioning of his arm slightly to deflect the attack. Ping used the opportunity to move back, just enough to reenter sword range. The blade moved through a tight arc, cutting through the demon's neck. He pivoted back to put the blade through the legless demon as it grabbed at him from the floor.

"Nice... moves." Anne said, taking a fist in the face between the words.

Rae had moved into position guarding Alex's motionless form and was engaging two of the demons. Two more of the demons were trying to move around Ping to get to Alex. Feeling a little slighted, Ping moved to intercept them.

Somewhere behind them, someone yelled "Freeze!" in the Law Enforcement Voice. Yeah, right.

Though the demon dodged quite effectively, Ping's first slash was mostly intended to get it to compromise its geometry. His second attack bisected it from right shoulder to left hip.

"When you gonna start flying around on wires?" Anne said around the sound of three quick impacts. She'd hit a demon with her right fist, its head slammed into the wall, then she'd hit it with her left fist so hard that she drove its head through the wall. She finished with a knee that drove the thing all the way through the wall, leaving only its feet in the hallway.

"I left my wires at home. That fancy spinning high kick stuff only works in the movies anyway." He said, keeping his weapon trained on the demon still trying to get around him. "The secret's to move as little as possible."

"Really?" He could hear the smile in her voice. The demon rushed right. He moved the blade perhaps twenty centimeters and removed its arm.

He was about to get all told-you-so when Anne leapt over a meter into the air, crouching so that her head didn't go through the ceiling. Her spinning thrust kick hit the Demon in the head so hard that its feet left the floor. It flipped backwards, landing on its shattered head. Its feet hit the floor behind it.

"
Mostly
doesn't work." He snorted.

"Yeah..." Anne grabbed a handful of another demon's romance-novel-stud hair. She used it to twist the thing's head sideways and down. The thing used the opportunity to hit her with a fist that hooked around her arms. Anne shrugged off the hit and threw a cut-kick that knocked the thing's legs out from under it. Using the demon's long hair, she controlled the fall then broke its neck. "It wouldn't have worked for me before yesterday, either."

Ping nodded. Before them were only corpses and a broken elevator. They turned to see how many demons had made it past them. To their surprise, there were two women using assault guns like clubs to help Rae fight off two remaining demons. One of the newcomers was almost painfully utiful, with lustrous red hair. The other was a Latina with a determined look on her face.

As they watched, Rae slammed her fletcher into a demon's head. The redhead took a painful-looking straight fist to the face from the other demon. Its other hand now held the woman's gun, which it flipped around so that it now held the barrel. It raised the gun high in preparation to bludgeon her with the butt. The Latina brought her gun down on the demon's head from behind. There was a crunch. The thing hit the floor.

The Latina spared a look for her fallen companion who was already struggling to regain her feet. Satisfied that the redhead wasn't on death's door, she turned quickly and hit the demon fighting with Rae in the back of the head like a baseball pro.

The redhead had regained her feet and her high-tech club. She joined her companion, holding the club somewhat shakily before her. A meter away, Rae hadn't lowered her club. Perhaps three meters away, Ping and Anne stood. For a time, nobody moved.

Finally, Ping retracted his sword and stowed it in his jacked pocket. The ringing blade caught the two newcomers by surprise, but they didn't jump much. He gave them a reassuring smile.

Elena spoke first. "Ok, I'm assuming we're not fighting, then."

Rae didn't immediately lower her guard. "For the moment anyway... today's been full of surprises."

"You guys do that?" Miranda used her club to indicate the matching two-meter holes in the walls from OR to hall and from hall to bathroom.

"That was him." The Asian guy inclined his head toward a little silver-haired kid lying unconscious beneath another body-sized impact crater in the wall.

"So he ran through both walls, but that last one was too hard eh?" Miranda was skeptical. "He looks kinda small for all that damage."

"Long story." Ping said, "He's big on the inside."

Rae dropped her broken and bloody fletcher. She knelt by Alex on the floor.

"Now the kissing and slapping starts." Ping whispered with a sidelong glance at Anne.

"I heard that!" Rae said, checking the slap, but not the kiss. "Baby... Alex baby." She smoothed his hair, kissed his head.

Elena lowered her weapon and moved toward Kyle's bed.

Suddenly the flebotomist was before her, close enough that Elena could feel her breath. She was unsuccessful at restraining the cry of alarm.

"Hold it right there, sweetie..." Anne said, "These folks've had a long day and visiting hours ended at eleven."

"That's my husband." Elena said with an uncomfortable amount of emotion.

The flebotomist's face touched surprise lightly on its way to sympathy. "Sorry." She said, stepping out of Elena's way. That's when Elena had a revelation: the flebotomist wasn't an alien from the larger and more frenetic planet of flebotoma. She was just a rather large woman, covered in blood and gypsum dust. Her even features were partially obscured by the layered coats of blood, but there was symmetry there, natural beauty. Her gaze was direct and uncomfortably bright, yet she broke eye contact when Elena matched her stare.

She struck Elena as two people. Heavy yet starving, bright yet hamed, beautiful but filled with doubt... determined but unsure. Elena was afraid this woman was going to rip her limb from limb, but the flebotomist looked like she was afraid she wasn't cool enough to be Elena's friend.

Her torn and stained clothes were those of a nurse. The cracked nametag that still hung on her chest said "Lab" on top and "Kelley" in a different font at the bottom.

"He saved us, Hawthorne and me." Anne said, looking at Mendez, "He was already down, but he saved us both."

Elena had so many questions. But instead of asking them, she took the final steps to her husband's bed. He lay swaddled in plastic and cloth with only his face visible. He looked funny, like the centerpiece in an elaborate practical joke. These light thoughts didn't help. They only served to free the sob she'd kept bottled in her throat.

Alex's eyes fluttered open. "Gotta..." he croaked, struggling against Rae.

"Shhh now baby... we won."

"Gotta get...out." He continued to struggle as he spoke. "Kaspari... stairwell!"

"Stairwell, my butt." The cop said hopelessly.

"Wha?" Alex shook his head as if to clear it then stopped, wincing in pain. "He's on ten... coming down."

Miranda was surprised how quickly everyone moved.

***

Issak Kaspari walked down the empty hall, the sound of his footsteps his only companion. His pace was deliberate, measured. Haste was for the careless.

The entrance to the stairwell was about ten meters distant when the door burst open.

Though the Simulacra he'd constructed appeared now to be on the ninth floor, Issak could only see the first three floors of the hospital clearly. He'd seen the four fleeing hospital workers long before they burst from the stairwell and into the hall. They shouted for him to get out, that there was danger here, but they didn't slow down as they passed him on their way to the exit.

Yes, danger here.

About four meters ahead, behind a closed door, Issak's Vision showed him two security guards. One was unconscious; the other clutched a stunner with fervor you could only call desperation.

It wasn't in Issak's nature to allow this kind of unquantified threat to complicate the coming confrontation. The easiest thing to do would be to simply inform the guards that it was safe to leave, and let them scramble away. He checked his shield again, feeling a little more obsessive-compulsive than cautious. Even if this frightened guard were clutching a small nuclear weapon, he wouldn't be a serious threat to Issak.

Issak grabbed the knob and pulled the door outward.

There was a strangled cry and a shot in the darkness of the supply closet. The stunner shot didn't surprise Issak... the guard had looked pretty jumpy. What did surprise him was the target. The guard had obviously panicked when the door opened and shot himself in the neck.

Poor guy. All indications were that it had been a spooky night at the hospital.

With a small shake of his head, Issak closed the door. He'd let them sleep it off in peace. He turned to the first-floor stairwell. This was as good a pr s to wait as any.

Issak struggled upward through the static, through the pain. He struggled for consciousness through a shadowland of inky black and phantom light. He struggled to regain the Loom. That kid was full of surprises.

Care
less... stupid. Maybe it wasn't too late. He struggled harder. Then there it was... warmth at first, then light- light that burned his left hand. The Loom resolved from the static that coursed over him. He slipped around it, engaged himself in its mesh of creation. As he did so, what remained of his left hand felt like it was being eaten by a flaming tiger.

Full of surprises. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe he wasn't completely alone, not yet damned beyond all redemption. Maybe the Outsider had caught him... maybe his plan had worked. Maybe it hadn't had time to hurt Dek before...

He spent a few seconds staunching the blood that flowed from his ruined hand then a few more to put the pieces back together again.

Head throbbing, he rose to his feet, flexing his reconstructed hand. Ouch.

On the floor by the refrigerator were two dead puppets. Both had been killed with the sword Issak had made with his own hands over seventy years ago. The table had been turned over and the chairs were strewn across the floor. There were several large dents in the stainless steel door of the refrigerator. He didn't see any trace of Dek... perhaps he got away... full of surprises, that kid.

His smile was banished by the breeze that moved through the room from the hallway that led from the kitchen to the bedrooms. It was refreshing, damp, scented of rain. A peal of thunder followed on the heels of a brilliant flash. Though the hallway was filled with light and sound, the living room windows reduced the effects through the other archway to a flicker and a rumble. The lightning cast stark shadows in the hallway. He could make out the silhouettes of at least three figures standing by the window at the other end of the hallway.

He began to accumulate power. As his consciousness expanded out through the Underworld, he felt the deformities that the puppets caused. A cluster of seven puppets stood around that corner near the shattered window. He struggled with all his might to see through the distortions. After a few seconds he was sure Dek wasn't at the end of the hall with them.

The implications broke over him. They had lived, Dek had not. Thanks to him, Dek no longer had the ability to survive a fall from this height. The destruction around him took on new significance. Here his boy had met his final challenge, made his final moves. He'd done so alone, betrayed by the only person he had left to trust.

The grief crashed in, so loud he couldn't hear it. The rage burnt inward, so hot he couldn't feel it. Alone. The world seemed to slip past him, like it would until he eventually died... a slipstream of minutes and seconds, eons and millennia. He would remain; burning, untouched, alone.

He stumbled toward the elevator. Inside, he hit the button for the lobby. He had an umbrella in his hand... raining outside, but he didn't remember picking it up. The feeling of sinking inevitability filled the elevator as it dropped slowly though the surrounding building.

It would be a relief if somehow he missed his floor and the elevator continued downward until the doors finally opened onto a flaming hellscape. There amongst the cavorting demons, under the distraction of their loving torture, perhaps he could forget who he was, what he'd done.

He'd been prepared. But sometimes preparation isn't enough. He'd had a plan, but plans fail. He had to make this right. For this empty world of ashes, he had to make it right.