Sorrow Space (10 page)

Chapter 13

The Magistrates moved through the wreckage of the waiting room like sharks scenting blood, running toward the open door of the storeroom. Grant and Brigid watched as they came from two different directions, leaping the upturned furniture as they searched for the Cerberus warriors hiding in the darkness.

They had maybe five seconds before they arrived, Grant guessed—that was all. He analyzed the situation in a heartbeat. There was a wide archway at the far end of the room, precisely between the two sets of Magistrates, leading to an adjoining room. If he could head toward that, through it, the Dark Magistrates would be caught in a crossfire, unable to shoot at him for fear that a rogue bullet would strike one of their colleagues.

Thrusting one arm in front of Brigid, Grant pushed her back into the open doorway of the storeroom. “Help Kane,” he directed. “I’ll distract them.”

Brigid was about to argue, but Grant was already in motion, pelting across the children’s waiting area, shouting at the top of his voice. “Come on, you psychopathic fuck-wits. I’m right here.”

As one, the Dark Magistrates turned toward the sound, their eerie weapons blasting. The bullets screamed as they left the gun muzzles, caroming through the air with strained shrieks.

Grant ran as fast as he could, head ducked low as he weaved through the smattering of blackened tables and charred chairs. The screaming bullets cut chunks from the furniture all about him, drilling into the scarred plasterwork of the walls behind him. As he reached the wide arch, Grant felt something strike his arm just below his right shoulder and swerved his body automatically away from the pain. Then he was through the arch, dropping almost to his knees as shots blasted overhead.

Behind him, the Magistrates had realized their mistake, twittering to one another in those abbreviated shrieks and hums as they stopped firing. Grant hurried through the next room in a semicrouch, teeth gritted against the pain throbbing through his arm. He had taken a glancing blow, he realized, not a bullet but a hunk of ruined masonry or furniture that had been caught by the crossfire. His shadow suit had taken most of the impact, redistributing it to lessen the blow. It still hurt like the devil, though.

He was in a room filled with weighing scales and height charts, the torn remains of graphs on the walls showing growth patterns. Grant glanced behind him, checking that the shadowy Magistrates were still following, and picked up his pace as he saw them warily approach the archway.

* * *

B
EHIND
THEM
,
WHERE
G
RANT
had started his desperate run, Brigid was watching from the doorway of the storeroom, urging Grant to escape. “He’s through the arch,” she whispered, “but I think he got hit.”

“Grant can take a hit,” Kane dismissed her concern. If he was worried about his partner, he didn’t show it. “But we’re all dead if we don’t find some way out of this rabbit hole.”

Brigid skipped backward across the wet floor of the storeroom, joining Kane at the barred window. The sunlight seemed fierce after the gloom of the hospital, and Brigid could see a grass verge out there leading down to a decorative, manmade lake. From here, the lake’s waters looked dark. The vertical bars that masked the window were secured on both the inside and the outside; even if they broke the glass, there was no way they would be able to get out.

“Any ideas?” Kane asked, fixing Brigid with his laser-sharp stare.

Brigid eyed the metal bars a moment longer, then turned her head, rapidly assessing the contents of the room.

“Medicines,” Kane told her helpfully.

“Good,” Brigid said. “Find me anything combustible. Lots of it, if you can.” As she spoke she was already on her knees, sifting through the fallen bottles, checking those that remained intact. The floor was wet with spilled liquids and it reeked of medical spirits, rubbing alcohol and cleaning product.

“What are you planning to do?” Kane asked as he searched the remaining shelves. “Blow up the wall?”

Brigid looked up for a moment and smiled mischievously. “Why? You got a better idea?”

* * *

G
RANT
DUCKED
AND
RAN
,
weaving through the discarded furniture of a small waiting area, the four diseased Magistrates in hot pursuit. As they spotted him, the lead Magistrate shot, blasting another of those howling bullets from his Soul Eater. The weapon glowed for a moment with the discharge, a belch of smoke exuding from its muzzle as the screeching bullet was launched.

Grant kept running, diving through the glass panel of a doorway as the bullet struck the wall behind him. The panel shattered on impact, and Grant ducked his head as he went crashing through, shards of glass skittering all about him.

He was in an even smaller room now. This one was dominated by a wide desk whose wooden top was blackened with fire damage. The walls, too, were tar-black, a lopsided metal filing cabinet crouched against one wall, genuflecting where it had been melted by incredible heat. More importantly, there was no obvious way out.

Grant turned, surveying the whole room in a heartbeat, scanning the walls. There were no windows, no doors, no way out of the consultation room except the way he had come in. The Russian-doll rooms had come to their end. Outside, Grant could hear the Magistrates screeching at one another in those sharp, abbreviated cuts of noise, following his trail.

“No way out, no way back,” Grant muttered.

He stepped behind the desk, where the melted filing cabinet sagged, and rapped his knuckles against the wall. It was board, a partition wall that had been added to create the office space from a bigger room. Whatever had hit this place, it had generated incredible heat, enough to turn metal to liquid. Grant guessed it must have been something brief and sudden, the effect short-lived. But it was possibly enough to weaken the back wall of the office. He just had to move quickly.

The Sin Eater was in his hand with just a thought, reappearing from the hidden holster he had attached beneath his coat sleeve. Grant squeezed the trigger, blasting a line of bullets across the back wall, sweeping the gun left to right in a tight arc. The bullets pierced the wall, kicking back chunks of plasterboard with drumbeat precision. When he stopped firing, a neat line of bullet holes was visible across the walls—enough, he hoped, to weaken it.

As the four Magistrates appeared at the door, Grant ran for the wall, shoulder down, striking it with all his might. The wall crumbled, dropping away with the impact, and then Grant was running through. He turned, bringing the Sin Eater around and stroking the trigger, laying down cover fire to force the hostile Magistrates back. As he did so, he heard—and felt—the shudder of an explosion vibrate through the building.

“That had better be Kane,” he told himself as he ran through the next room and out into a corridor, sending the Sin Eater back into its hidden rig. Already he was working out a map in his head, figuring which direction he needed to take to get back to his partners.

* * *

I
N
THE
AFTERMATH
OF
THE
explosion, Brigid was doubled over, coughing as the dust caught in her throat. Before her, the window and a small chunk of the wall that surrounded it had been obliterated, leaving a hole that was roughly fourteen inches square.

“Come on, Baptiste,” Kane urged, placing an arm around her midriff.

Brigid had caught the worst of the explosion when she lit the flammable liquids she had doused the wall in, but Kane had caught a lungful of plaster dust, too. He spluttered as he sucked in breath, trying to clear it from the back of his throat as he guided Brigid and himself through the debris. They were covered in white plaster, as if they had been frosted.

Brigid clambered through the windowlike cavity, spitting out dust as she pulled herself through the hole she had made. Kane followed, narrowing his eyes against the particles of dust that swirled in the air.

Once outside, they were immediately buffeted by those howling winds once more, playing all around them and rippling across the surface of the lake. Kane and Brigid stood beneath the overcast sky on a grass verge that rolled down to the decorative lake. The grass was overgrown in great clumps that brushed the tops of Kane’s boots, scraping and bowing with each billow of the gusting wind.

“Kane, they must have heard that,” Brigid rasped. “They’ll come back to check.”

“Then we’d better keep moving,” Kane said.

“But Grant’s still...”

Kane silenced her with a look. “He’s still out there,” Kane finished. They had no Commtacts, no way to speak to Grant or track him. For now, their partner was on his own.

* * *

G
RANT
WAS
THROUGH
THE
office wall but they were still chasing, following him down the corridor. It was another smoke-damaged tunnel, its ceiling and walls exuding the unmistakable stench of fire. There were doors all along it, consultation rooms and offices and who knew what else.

Behind him, two of the Dark Magistrates came striding through the hole he had made in the wall, stepping into the corridor like twin visions of Death. They stopped there, searching left and right with their weapons before them as if those guns were sniffer dogs. Spotting Grant running away, they began to follow while their colleagues turned back to check on the explosion that had rocked the children’s ward.

The Dark Mags raised their blasters, firing another burst of those dreadful, screaming bullets that zipped down the corridor. Hearing the weapons’ discharge, Grant turned, ducking into the next doorway and through to the room beyond.

Grant slammed the door behind him, wincing as the screaming bullets drummed against the walls outside. They were close...damn, but they were close. His breath was coming faster now, yearning for more oxygen to drive his muscles. He was in a small office much like the one he had left moments earlier. This one had two desks face-to-face so that their occupants could talk across them to each other. The room was fire damaged, dark curling streaks running up the walls and across the ceiling, the paint blistered where it had not melted away. There was a sash window on the wall opposite the door, and Grant ran to it, wrenching it up with both hands, knowing it was the only place left to run.

When he looked, he saw a tiny square courtyard out there, surrounded on all sides by offices. The courtyard was designed solely to give air and light. Nowhere to run once more, and no false walls to demolish.

Chapter 14

Grant turned back as he heard the Magistrates reach the office door. His only option was to wound them. He commanded the Sin Eater back into his hand, brought it up to target the door as it swung open, aiming low. He would shoot their legs out from under them—painful, but survivable, at least.

The Sin Eater bucked in Grant’s hand, firing almost without conscious thought, sending three quick bursts of lead at the bottom panel of the door as it swung toward him. The Magistrates had played it safe, opening the door from the side, keeping themselves out of any potential line of fire. Grant cursed, knowing it was just the thing he would have done. Like him, his pursuers had gone through that same Magistrate training.

“All right, fellas,” Grant called out as his Sin Eater stopped firing. “We’ve got us a Mexican stand-off here. We all need to back off, talk about it, or someone’s going to end up shot to hell.”

He waited, but the only response he heard were the strange screeches and burps that he had heard before. It was like interference bursting through on a radio, cutting into the signal; snatches of it popped in and out without any discernible beginning or end.

Then, without warning, one of the Magistrates appeared in the doorway, his own weapon raised. This one had a flaw running across his tinted visor beneath which his skin seemed to rupture. His lidless eyes drilled mercilessly into Grant’s gaze. Grant fired without thinking, blasting a 9 mm bullet straight into the figure’s lower leg. There was a hiss like escaping steam, and the Magistrate spun on his heel, his own weapon discharging as he toppled toward the wall. Something was pouring out of his leg, Grant saw, a stream of greenish-gray gas spurting out into the air.

The Magistrate continued to fire as he fell, a trio of those screaming bullets exploding from the barrel of his blaster in a straight line toward Grant. The first bullet whipped past Grant’s flank, driving into the wall behind him with a strained screech. The second came closer, whizzing past his ear like a whisper before meeting with the topmost windowpane and shattering it. The third bullet came lower, and its scream stopped as it slapped against Grant’s sternum, pushing him backward with a pained, outburst of breath.

Grant stumbled back against the exterior wall, his limbs suddenly heavy, a terrible coldness radiating outward from where the bullet had struck. After that, it was just black, absolute darkness replacing any thoughts or actions. Replacing any notion of escape.

* * *

T
OGETHER
, K
ANE
AND
B
RIGID
had hurried down to the edge of the lake, and they crouched there, watching the abandoned hospital. The grass here was tall enough that, if they lay down, it would hide them from prying eyes.

“You see any sign of him?” Brigid asked quietly.

“No,” Kane answered slowly.

The hospital had been quiet for a few minutes now, but the wailing banshee winds continued to howl all about the lifeless building. From outside, parts of the building were ruined, as if some cancer had attacked the masonry. There was a great strip of wall facade missing from the far left edge, stretching around the corner. The upper windows were shattered. Hints of decorative coving budded along the stonework, but most of it had been blasted away by some powerful force, leaving a gravellike surface.

“You want to go back in?” Brigid asked.

Kane’s eyes flicked to the opening they had made in the wall, something catching his gaze. A shadow moved within. Kane held his breath, watching it move. Then the shadow came to the hole, poking its head out, and Kane saw it was one of the mysterious Magistrates, blistered skin oozing black pus over his chin.

“Down,” Kane ordered, reaching over to push Brigid into the dirt.

Kane and Brigid watched, their breaths held, as the dark figure sniffed about at the opening, poking at it with the stubby barrel of his blaster. They could hear nothing over the angry sound of the howling winds; if the Magistrate made any noise at all it would not carry this far. The dark-clad figure looked up, eyeing the verge that led down to the lake, searching the overgrown vegetation there. Kane waited, still holding his breath.

For thirty seconds, the Magistrate stood there, peering through the hole in the wall, scanning the communal area beyond. Then, satisfied, he turned away, and Kane and Brigid watched as his shadow flickered from the hole they had blasted in the wall and disappeared.

“That was close,” Brigid said with a sense of relief, breaking the tension they both felt.

Kane pulled himself up, his head peeking over the long grass once more.

“No sign of Grant,” Brigid stated, downcast.

Kane ignored her, surveying the building and its surrounds. “What happened here?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Brigid asked.

“The rooms, the furniture,” Kane said. “It was all melted. And the streets—like a bomb went off.”

“And where are all the people?” Brigid asked. “Other than the Magistrates, it’s as if the whole ville is dead. I didn’t see a single person out there, did you?”

Kane shook his head. “Not just that, there was something else. People have a feel to them. It’s subtle, but you know it by its absence. This ville, its buildings—they all feel like they were abandoned a long time ago. Years.”

Brigid considered this, nodding her head in agreement. “You’re right. It’s as if they all just up and left.”

“So what happened?” Kane asked, pulling himself up from the grass. “Where did they all go?” He offered Brigid his hand as she got up off the dirt.

“A bomb would make sense,” Brigid said, checking her shotgun. “Maybe a biological weapon. That would engender a mass evacuation.”

“You mean some kind of plague?” Kane queried.

“Anthrax, smallpox—the list of germ weapons is inexhaustible,” Brigid said solemnly. “Some of the old, lab-created weapons just have file numbers, they never got to the point of naming them.”

“What about the burning?” Kane said. “It’s hard to ignore the evidence on those walls.”

“Twin attack,” Brigid suggested, her bright hair catching in the wind. “Why kill ’em once when you can kill ’em twice over?”

“Hmm,” Kane growled. “Why didn’t we hear about it? This didn’t just happen, not damage like this. We stepped into the mat-trans to gate back to Cerberus, and suddenly we’re in an abandoned ville none of us had heard of, being chased by Magistrates. Something’s not right about that scenario.”

“Maybe we missed it,” Brigid reasoned as they walked away from the hospital, stepping up to the lake’s edge.

“Cerberus’s satellite feeds would have picked up some evidence of a bomb being set off,” Kane assured her.

“Even satellites can’t see everything, Kane,” Brigid told him. “Maybe Brewster or whoever looked away from the monitor screen at the crucial moment.”

“We’d still see the fallout,” Kane told her with a shake of his head. “Something like this, a whole city abandoned, we’d see repercussions. A change in the radiation levels, a mass exodus—
something
.”

Brigid was inclined to agree. What Kane said made sense; Cerberus should have picked up some evidence during one of its routine global scans. And yet the name of the settlement remained a mystery, too—Quocruft. There was no Baron Quocruft, that was for sure. Where exactly were they?

Standing at the edge of the lake, Brigid watched the surface ripple as the relentless wind played across it. She stared down at her feet, where her reflection shimmered beside Kane’s on the rippling surface, and for just a second she thought she saw something in Kane’s reflection. “Daryl?” she said, almost without thinking.

“What did you say?” Kane asked, staring at his red-haired partner.

“D— Kane, I’m sorry,” Brigid said. “I thought I saw...” She paused, uncertain, distracted.

“Thought you saw what?” Kane asked, his brow furrowing. “Baptiste?”

Brigid was staring at the water again, looking at Kane’s reflection. Only it wasn’t Kane—the man in the water was of average build, with brown hair and brown eyes. It was Daryl Morganstern, the Cerberus mathematician who had died defending Brigid during a devastating attack on the redoubt.

But he was dead—wasn’t he?