ElyriasEcstasy (11 page)

“Feel better, baby?” Pride in his tone, like he’d
doubtlessly cured anything that could be ailing her.

“Oh yes.” She gazed at him, the familiar snarky twist
returning to her lips. “Like a million sunlit days.”

“The least I could do, really.” He gave sarcasm as good as
he got. It was one of the things she liked best about him, though she’d never
admit it aloud.

“Your services were adequate, as always.” She smiled
sweetly. “Now get out, please.” She held his eyes just long enough for him to
think she was serious.

“I can’t leave now,” he protested. “I could get arrested.”

“You’d deserve it. But I suppose you can stay until the
curfew clear bell.” The standard curfew in the Safe was midnight to sunrise.

“Good enough.” Bongo rolled over onto his other side, lifted
onto an elbow and blew out the candle. Darkness took the loft. Virge remained
staring until the low, bare ceiling was murkily visible, her limbs buzzing with
adrenaline as the events of the night started to catch up with her again. She
thought about a final swallow of Fire but the bottle was on the other side of
the bed. Eventually her thoughts strayed back to Urna, the escaped Weapon.

She wondered what he was thinking right now. How far had he
gotten, or had they already caught him? What would the first bell bring for
him, and would it be more bearable or less so than her own life?

It didn’t matter. He was just a tool of the Lux, in the end,
although a temporarily disobedient one.

She didn’t need any more men in her life. Between Aphael
Chav and Nick Daphral and this revolutionary here with the mad green eyes
already dozing beside her, she had three more than she cared to have. Still.

Urna
, she thought with sudden clarity just before
sleep grabbed her,
what are you looking for?

* * * * *

It had gotten bad in the space of mere minutes. Urna had to
halt the vehicle. Hand shaking, heart racing, he reached into his pocket for
one of the pills stashed there. Swallowing one did nothing. He took a second
pill. Anything to relieve the dreadful craving and panic that was so suddenly
coursing through him.

Years of taking these drugs. Never knowing quite what they
were or why the doctors wanted him to take them. So they were some kind of
narcotic after all. He’d more than half suspected as much. Whatever else the
drugs did to him, they had evidently turned him into an addict. He
needed
these pills, and he hated himself for that weakness even as he swallowed a
third. That finally started to bring the panicky reaction under control. But it
left him with only two of the capsules. He’d better save those, mete them out
very judiciously.

Twenty minutes later, though, the urge came back, much worse
than before. It felt like death was coming for him, grinning, sinister, eager
to collect his worthless life.

Again he stopped the vehicle, this time swerving it
unsteadily and nosing it into a ditch lining one side of the unlit, unpaved
rural road he was following. With his whole body trembling almost
uncontrollably now, he clawed the last two pills from his pocket and swallowed
them desperately.

The terror eased. Death, shrugging, retreated, probably
figuring on returning at some more convenient time.

Urna slowly blinked his way back to sensibility. He felt a
consuming shame at his own lack of will. He wouldn’t have guessed that anything
in this world had such a powerful hold on him. Not even Rune.

“Goddamn dope,” he muttered, not sure if he was cursing the
drugs or himself.

Everything was at a sharp angle. The ditch he’d driven into
was a lot deeper than he had thought. The car’s engine had died. Working the
controls, he started it humming anew, but the wheels, no matter how hard he
revved the electric motor, wouldn’t grab. Frustrated, he wrenched open the
hatch and stepped out.

The night was still, the sky swept with stars. No sign of
dawn or even first light yet, but the new day couldn’t be far away. He felt the
velvet weight of loneliness.

Here he was, on foot, on some half forgotten road that
led—well, he didn’t know where it went. To some lesser town of the Safe, no
doubt. He had passed a few old barns on the way, the structures in disrepair.
This whole area seemed unpopulated to him. Maybe the land had been overworked
and no longer produced crops. Maybe the Lux, for whatever arcane reasons, had
decided that this small region should be evacuated. There was no way to fully
know the plans of the Lux unless you
were
Lux, and even they didn’t know
everything. Only the Toplux knew all the secrets, all the schemes and
machinations. Only Aphael Chav.

Too bad Urna couldn’t nab the old son of a bitch, lock him
in a room and make him spill all those secrets. Perhaps not all of them. Just
those that pertained to the Weapon himself. And to the Weapon’s Shadowflash,
Rune. Whatever the mystery was that surrounded him, it involved Rune as well,
Urna was certain of that.

There was nothing he could do about the vehicle. Just leave
it, he decided. This road didn’t look like it got much, if any, traffic. But
the Guard would be out searching for him and eventually they would discover the
car. He had to get away from here.

Gathering himself, he set off down the road. His steps
crunched quietly on the rough surface. He wondered how long it would be before
the drug craving returned. His system, he knew, must be all out of whack. He’d
done that to himself by withholding his nightly dose, thinking he could
sensibly ration those pills.

Well, that plan had gone to shit. And now he had no stash
from which to draw. He was on his own, dangling over an abyss of impending
narcotic need. He
had
to find some more. A substitute, at least. He
didn’t figure the designer drugs they’d been giving him in the
Shadowflash/Weapon division all these years would be available to the general
population of the Safe. Still, he knew he would be needing
some
thing,
and needing it soon.

Alone, a Weapon bereft of his Shadowflash, Urna walked the
road.

Chapter Seven

Virge Temple quirked an eyebrow at Bongo and said, “You can’t
mean that.”

“But I do.”

They were downstairs. Virge was dressed and about to don her
coat for the walk to the lab. Last night had faded to a blunt but pleasant
memory—one more good fuck she’d enjoyed with this male. Nothing extraordinary
about sharing her bed with him, except perhaps that it wasn’t the first time
and probably wouldn’t be the last, no matter how good an idea it would be to
cut him out of her life for good. They’d shared a weak pot of tea this morning.
It was about an hour and a half after sunrise and she wanted to get to work.
Yesterday had been a total waste as far as accomplishing anything at the
laboratory.

“You want to walk me to my lab?” she asked, hoping her tone
sounded as skeptical as she meant it to. Her head, even after the tea, remained
a trifle fuzzy. All in all, she’d had a lot to drink yesterday.

“Actually, what I said was, I insist you let me walk you
there.” Bongo was buttoning up his own coat. The night’s chill had seeped into
the small house and the streets this early were liable to be rather chilly.

“That’s what I thought I heard.
Insist
.” Virge
regarded him with a flat stare. “You want to recant that term?”

“For something more apologetic?” Bongo shrugged. “Fine. I
fervently desire to accompany you to your place of employment this morning. Is
that better?”

“A bit flouncy but fine. Still, why?” It wasn’t like he’d
ever made this offer before on mornings after the nights he had spent here.
“You think I don’t know the way? Or are we going to hold hands and make gooey
eyes at each other on the way there, like we were teenagers?”

There was an odd solemnity about him this morning. “When I
was a teen, I was fighting off bullies at the work farm who wanted to get into
my sweet ass without asking pretty please first.” Bongo shook his head as if to
clear the memory. “If I tell you why I want to go with you, you’ll laugh. It’ll
be a scornful laugh. I can hear it now…”

“Well, if you can hear it already you might as well tell
me.” She slid her arms into her coat. Its pockets were stuffed with papers that
were covered with formulas and the like, equations she would need at the
laboratory. Bantering with Bongo had been amusing for a moment or two but now
she was curious, and just a little ill at ease, about what actually lay behind
his words. “Please, Bongo, tell me what’s going on?”

He beheld her with his green eyes. No devilry danced in them
this early morning. “I’ve had a dream. A premonition.”

“Have you now?”

“Indeed. Don’t believe it. I don’t have the energy to
convince you and you don’t have the time. The easiest thing all around is to
shrug your shoulders, roll your eyes and walk out of here with me at your side.
We’ll go to your lab, I’ll make sure everything’s safe, then when it turns out
I’ve been completely wrong about this portent I’ve received, you can call me
some clever name and I’ll go on my way. How’s that sound?”

The flippancy didn’t quite work. Again she saw just how
serious he was. And she did feel the urge to argue it with him. Every time he
spoke of this sort of magical gibberish she wanted to call him out on it, force
him to acknowledge the primitive, pointless beliefs for what they were. But
this time she deliberately restrained herself.

“Bongo,” she said, pausing to draw and release a breath. “Is
this because I was picked up yesterday? Do you think it’s going to happen two
days in a row? Even Aphael Chav has better things to do than to go that far out
of his way to piss me off. I’ll be fine.”

Of course there was no ironclad guarantee that a squad of
Guard jawbreakers
wouldn’t
be there waiting at her lab, set to take her
into custody once more—though it was highly unlikely. The Lux methods were
terror and coercion and repression, yes. But there was a certain undeniable
elegance about how they operated. Repeating a tactic the very next day would be
tawdry.

“I would’ve thought you’d try saying you didn’t want me in
your sight,” Bongo murmured, trying to give the words a casual lilt. It didn’t
quite work either. A ghost of vulnerability passed somewhere behind his eyes.

Succumbing to an urge to soothe that vague hurt, Virge said,
“Well, I’m not saying that.” Which was about as comforting as she could be this
early in the day. She turned and exited the house, locking it behind. Then,
with Bongo at her side just like he’d said, they set off toward the lab.

The town wasn’t large. The laboratory was only a half mile
away. Everything looked sleepy. There were only a few other people out,
plodding along toward their own jobs. The sunlight was weak, strained through
pale cloud cover. But
any
hint of the sun was a boon, she knew. It
helped to charge the few solar collectors in town. Most of the Safe’s
electricity was gathered and meted out by the Lux. They had the best equipment
for accumulation and they distributed it as they saw fit.

Virge’s town wasn’t particularly prosperous. But it
possessed a certain charm, a kind of quaintness. Some of its structures were
quite old, maybe even pre-Black Ship, though they had been repaired and
refitted several times during such a long span. It was a familiar environment
for her. Here she had her home and work. There was always something threatening
the well-being of the general populace—dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis.

The lab was a long single-story building, brick sides, with
grills over the windows. The materials she used were expensive. Were it not for
the Lux’s funding she’d be out of luck. But she cooked up what their military
programs needed, and that kept her supplied.

“Hold it,” Bongo said, putting a hand to her arm.

Despite herself, Virge felt a twinge of alarm. “What?” She
looked around the vicinity of the lab. No one was around, certainly no sign of
waiting Guard. “Do you see something?” The thought of being taken in for
interrogation again wasn’t a pleasant one.

“No.” Bongo was staring at the building, still on the other
side of the street. “Do you?”

Annoyance pushed out her fear. “Damn it, Bongo, this is no
time for games.” She shook off his hand and strode purposefully forward. Her
two assistants weren’t scheduled to arrive until late morning. She preferred
the first part of her day to herself, indulging in research and
experimentation. In the afternoon she would open up to the public for
distribution of medical supplies.

Bongo lunged in front of her, which irritated her all the
more. “Just take a walk around the building first,” he said in a placating,
almost pleading, tone. “Check it out. Make sure.”

His sincerity was still evident. Virge had only ever seen
him in such a single-minded state when he spoke about the evils of the Lux and
the necessity of resistance and revolution by the common people.

Virge pressed her lips together, then, relenting, she said,
“That must’ve been a hell of a dream you had.”

“More than a dream. But, yes.” He had a hand in his pocket.
Virge had the sudden distinct impression that he was fingering one of his
“magical” baubles.

Together they made a circuit of the lab. Nobody was around.
She even looked at the grills over the windows. Everything appeared secure.
Until—

“Wait. What’s that?” She squinted. A vent was slightly out
of its frame high up the brick wall. No one could’ve scaled it, though. There
were no handholds and the brick was too smooth. A ladder? Well, maybe. But if
so, the culprit or culprits had taken the ladder with them when they’d gone.
Which meant that the lab would be empty.

Or else she’d just never noticed before that that vent was
out of alignment. She gave Bongo a glower. He was making her paranoid.

“I’m going inside,” she said tightly, taking out her keys.

“I’m going with you,” Bongo said, which—though she wouldn’t
admit it—was very comforting.

The metal door’s lock hadn’t been tampered with. The door
opened and Virge snapped on the lights. Cluttered worktables were revealed.
Stacks of equipment, crates, sheaves of paper. The instruments on the tables
didn’t appear to have been disturbed. She peered down the length of the
building. Still, there were places where an intruder could hide.

Bongo touched a finger to his lips and crept forward on
soundless feet. His muscled body was taut with readiness, his eyes alert. Virge
had never seen him like this—so serious, so obviously ready for action.

Two main aisles led to the rear of the lab. Bongo was moving
silently down one. Virge, summoning courage from she knew not where, took the
other aisle. The tabletops were a mess, scattered with notes, beakers, dormant
gear. She could never get things so that they
looked
organized, yet even
so, she knew where everything was, where things belonged. There was, actually,
order here.

That sense allowed her to quickly spot the opened cabinet
far down her aisle, where she stored some of the basic compounds that went into
making the drugs for the Weapon/Shadowflash division. She gave the military
whatever it demanded. If they wanted to shoot up their soldiers to go fight the
Passengers in the Unsafe, that was their damn business.

She made a soft hiss through her teeth. One aisle over,
Bongo stopped and looked at her, his features rigid. She pointed to the far end
of the building. He nodded. She saw he had picked up a long metal instrument
from one of her tables and was holding it like a truncheon. A good idea. Virge
took up a smaller implement meant to calibrate some of the balance beams she
had. The object had a solid weight to it. Whether she could use it effectively against
anyone, she didn’t know.

She and Bongo, in their respective aisles, resumed their
stalking.

By now she’d accepted the notion that someone was here, or
had been here, somebody unauthorized. Neither of her two assistants had keys to
the lab. Neither did she think that the cabinet had been carelessly left open.
If a burglar was after powerful drugs, he or she would want what was on those
shelves.

Tension stiffened Virge’s muscles. She felt a tingle of cool
perspiration at the small of her back. She had already dismissed entirely the
thought of calling the local Guard contingent in. She didn’t want anything to
do with those fuckers and wouldn’t abide them tramping around her lab, no
matter what the circumstances.

She was near enough to the opened cabinet now to see that it
had been rummaged through. Mixtures, some still in need of further tinkering,
waited in vials. Some of these were lying on their sides, and some were on the
floor. She crept up slowly, keeping alert.

When she saw the foot she halted sharply and hissed again to
Bongo. His blond-haired head popped up. Virge pointed just a few feet further
along and mouthed the words,
There’s someone under the table.

He nodded gravely and advanced, brandishing his improvised
cudgel. Virge eased up slowly on her side. The foot, she saw, was—no surprise
there—attached to a leg. The body under the table didn’t move. As more of it
came into her view, she noted that it was breathing, that it was male. He
appeared to be…sleeping? Probably passed out from whatever reckless combination
of dope he’d ingested, Virge judged. She felt her fear ebb a little, replaced
by contempt.

Damned dopers. What the hell was wrong with just getting
drunk?

The other end of the body was apparently visible in Bongo’s
aisle. Virge saw him looking down, making a careful study. He didn’t lower his
metal instrument but his grip on it grew lax. His eyes flicked her way.

In a whisper he said, “I’m almost sure he’s out.”

Virge was tempted to step forward and prod the man’s foot.
Whoever he was she wanted him out of here. She still didn’t intend to bring the
Guard in on this incident, but if necessary she would dump this dumb son of a
bitch in the street and let fate take its course. This man was a criminal. He
had broken in here, though how he’d gotten up into that vent she couldn’t
guess, and
stolen
from her. Those drugs were valuable, the products of
costly materials and the many hours she’d spent cooking them up.

This junkie scumbag deserved whatever happened to him.

Bongo was looking at her again across the heaped worktable.
His expression had changed. Gone was the wariness, replaced by stunned
incredulity and a dawning look of wonder. “Virge.”

She frowned. “What is it?”

“This guy…” He bent down as if to shift the head or brush
aside strands of hair for a better look at the face. “He’s—” He shook his head
then stopped abruptly. Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite make himself believe
it.

“What
is
it?” Virge repeated.

Bongo’s green eyes were wide. “It’s Urna. It’s the Lux’s
star Weapon. I swear it’s him.”

* * * * *

She looked down into the hooded scope of the blood analyzer
for several minutes, her right hand jotting down notations without her even
looking. When she was satisfied she knew exactly what Urna had in his system,
she went to put together the necessary injection.

It
was
Urna. No doubt at all about it. His face was
inescapably familiar from the Lux broadcasts, even though Virge had hardly ever
watched them. This town had only the two screens, but people gathered at them
whenever they could. Urna’s thin handsome face had splashed across often enough
that Virge felt she almost knew him in a personal way. It was illusion,
however.

The Weapon was very unconscious and would likely stay so for
a while. She and Bongo had hauled him out from under the table and laid him on
a cot where Virge sometimes grabbed a quick nap during her workday. Urna’s
pulse was fast but steady. His pupils were reactive. He had doped himself good
but he hadn’t done anything too hazardous.