A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (37 page)

“I am a Planner!” Marette shouted. “I carry in my mind the presence of Second Lailenthi Alyshur of the
Sillisinuriri
! If we die, so does he!”

The alarms outside continued as Suuthrien seemed to pause for thought. It lasted but a moment. “Your statement was made with intentional disregard of fact.”

Suuthrien’s screen winked out. The consoles before them shut down.

Michael seized Holes from the shelf and turned to Taylor. “Can you get us to the auditorium?”

He nodded, already moving for the door. “Watch how fast I go.”

“The auditorium may be a trap,” Marette warned. “For us and everyone.”

“I know,” Michael said. “And if it is, then we go there and get everyone out with us.”

A distant scream sliced through the air before it broke apart on a sickening gurgle.

Taylor seized them both by the arms and tugged them out the door. “Time to run!”

THE ALARM BLARED
in the corridor. With Michael beside her, Marette followed David Taylor back toward the elevator and the guard station.

I have begun to form a hypothesis on why Suuthrien valued Agent Flynn
, Alyshur “thought” in her mind. It was a sensation to which Marette had yet to grow accustomed.
I will adjust the scanner to try to verify.

Even as they ran, Marette felt her hand move as if of its own accord, guided by Alyshur’s will. It was an impulse she could override if she needed to—she had tested that soon after their joining—but for now there was no reason to argue. Warmth spiraled down her arm from Alyshur’s adjustments to the orb-shaped scanner, though the changes he effected were below the surface consciousness they shared, and so, beyond her comprehension.

What do you suspect?
she asked in her mind.

A scion.

Although thought exchange proceeded far quicker than spoken word, they were upon the guard station before Alyshur could elaborate. The horror unfolding before them stopped their entire group cold: A silvery pool spread across the floor—an undulating, crepe-thin miasma that quivered and grasped at the air as if alive. While the way it writhed across itself like tiny, tumbling cilia was disquieting enough, it was the guard Sam’s empty uniform—mixed with a swirling trail of blood and the remnants of what could only be Sam’s arm—that threatened to spill her stomach.

Before Taylor’s cry of “Oh
god!
” could even fade, the liquid poured itself over the arm, split it into wet chunks of flesh, and then oozed forth more of itself from within like tiny silver maggots eating their way out of a corpse. In another moment, the swirls of blood vanished, transformed completely into more of the silver goo.

Taylor, Michael, and Marette had all frozen at the sight of what Marette now assumed was the result of Project Quicksilver. Across the silvery mass from them stood another New Eden employee. His mouth hung open, and one hand grasped frantically at his stringy brown hair as he stared, wild-eyed, through augmented eyeglasses. The writhing pool covered half of the area between the security desk and the elevator, the doors of which now opened with a chime.

The man's eyes blazed with the frantic glow of a cornered animal’s as they darted to the open elevator, back to the quicksilver goo, and then to the open floor space between the two. The goo twitched like a tiger ready to pounce.

“McKay! Wait!” Taylor tried.

“Go no further!” Marette heard Alyshur’s command, spoken in her own voice. Her own feet rooted to the floor.

McKay ignored them and made a wild vault toward the open elevator—yet not quickly enough. The goo spilled over itself to stretch half its mass in a thick, slug-like protuberance that caught the man’s leg. He stumbled and crashed screaming to the floor with his chest half in, half out of the elevator.

Michael started toward the man and Marette lunged after, unsure of her intent as she did so. Alyshur reached her arm out and grabbed Michael by the back of his jacket, then planted her feet again to hold them both back. “It is too late!” Alyshur called in her mind and from her mouth at once.

For a moment she thought to override Alyshur. Yet he was right. The goo had already engulfed McKay up to his waist. He grabbed for the elevator doors in a screaming attempt to pull himself away from the stuff that now seemed to move even faster.

Even so, Michael fought against Marette’s grip. He broke free a moment later, took another step, and then froze, at a loss. The closest end of the pool swirled toward them as the rest continued to devour McKay. The doomed man’s screams disintegrated into silence.

His was yet another life she couldn’t save.

It is not your fault
, thought Alyshur.

“Shit,” whispered Taylor. “Shit!” He grabbed both her and Michael anew. “This way!”

The last thing Marette saw before she and Michael turned back to follow Taylor was McKay’s clothing floating free as the pool swelled in size accordingly.

It is my fault.
Marette directed the thought at Alyshur.
Suuthrien got out because of me, created this all because of me!

You are not solely responsible for the actions of your entire group.

But I am involved
, she argued.
And everyone else suffers the consequences while I can react and play damage control. I have rectified nothing!

They ran the length of the corridor, past the room in which they’d just confronted Suuthrien. Michael cast a glance behind them. “It’s following us!”

He was right. The goo pushed its way after them, a broad, flat, glistening snake of silver that spilled up along the walls as it thrashed down the corridor. And it was gaining.

Taylor led them through a door into a darkened meeting room and guided them through its tables and chairs in the dim light. Another exit lay on the far end of the room, toward which they fled.

When I first woke from the long-sleep
, Alyshur spoke in her mind,
I was horrified. So much was lost while I slept. So many Thuur had perished around me, the
Sillisinuriri
and its mission had failed, and the first lailenthi before me had sacrificed himself and others to contain the disaster from spreading. Yet I survived, to react and play ‘damage control,’ as you say. We are both here because we seek the path to effect a greater change. We must endure until then.

I know this, Alyshur. I am not a child.

They scrambled through the far door into another corridor lit only by emergency lighting and flashing alarm beacons. Michael slammed the meeting room door as they left, but while the beacons and dim lighting played havoc with Marette’s vision, she could still see the gap between the door and the corridor’s red and gray carpet.

“That’s not going to stop it,” she told him.

Taylor was already twenty paces away down the hall. “Will you two get
moving
?”

“Maybe it’ll slow it down,” said Michael.

“Maybe.”

I am aware you know such things
, Alyshur thought.
Yet I sensed your frustration, and sought to support you.

Humans call it “survivor’s guilt.” It’s a normal response, but knowing it’s normal doesn’t keep me from feeling it.
She remembered the way it was, now so long ago, when her focus was on achieving the goals of the AoA, seeking the means to fulfill the Exodus Project. Now it seemed all she did was to try to contain what it was they had unleashed.

She and Michael rushed after Taylor, catching up with him at the end of the corridor as he heaved his entire weight against a stairwell’s fire door. Before he even got halfway through, someone shrieked from just above. Another patch of silver goo spilled down the stairs onto the landing above them. It carried along the thrashing form of an already half-dissolved woman.

Taylor froze at the sight, and Marette and Michael along with him—but only for a moment. Still transmuting the woman into more of itself, the goo sloshed down the stairs toward them. Taylor sprang back into Marette, who managed to grab him by the shoulders and spin to pull them both away from the stairwell door as Michael dodged back further. As the goo reached it, the door slammed shut, splattering a spoonful at their feet.

The tiny blob drizzled languidly after them as they scurried back from the stairwell. Marette took her eyes off of it and cursed: back from where they had come, the first patch of quicksilver had pushed beneath the meeting room door and into the corridor. The second patch now bled beneath the stairwell door, growing larger by the moment. Between the two there were no doors, no windows—only them and the open corridor.

“Shit!” Taylor yelled.

Michael put himself between them and the first patch. It was further away but beginning to move toward them. “Ideas? Alyshur?”

Any more tricks in your pockets?
Marette thought.

Only one, but it would put us both at great risk.

We are already at great risk!

Greater.

“Shit!” It was Taylor again. “Oh! Oh, shit yes!”

Bewildered by the sudden delight in the man’s voice, Marette turned to find him pulling out another grenade-disk like the one he’d used when they’d first met. Rather than red, this one was yellow with black stripes. “They came in a set. Thank God for paranoia. Stand back!”

With no further explanation, he jammed a thumb at the center of the disk, turned it upside-down, and pitched it down the hall toward the first patch.

It fell short. Far short.

“What did you—”

The disk exploded. Marette ducked away, using her arms as a shield from the blast. The bit of goo from the stairs crept closer, only ten paces away, while its larger fellow pooled around the door behind it and began to reach for them.

“Now!” Taylor yelled. “Run!”

Alyshur pushed Marette to her feet. Where the disk had exploded, between them and the first quicksilver patch, now lay a gaping hole in the corridor floor. The first patch hurried toward it, toward them. Taylor did the same. Michael and Marette rushed after him, eager for their new escape.

They leapt through the hole, passing between bent metal, frayed wires, and singed mineral fibers, to land amid the rubble on the floor below. Michael gasped on the way down. Marette landed beside him, grabbing his shoulder to steady herself. Michael gasped again, and when she pulled her hand away, his blood covered her palm.

“Money well-spent!” Taylor laughed, staring wide-eyed at the hole above them. “
Now
the stairs! Hurry!”

They bolted after him. “Are you all right?” She called to Michael, showing her hand.

“Caught something on the way down!” he said. “It’s not bad; I’ll live!”

They reached the door to the same stairwell in which they’d encountered the second patch one floor above. Taylor flung the door open in front of them. Mercifully, it was clear. With Taylor in the lead, followed by Michael, then Marette, they bounded down three more flights to the ground floor and burst into a black-tiled hallway.

“Nearly there!” Taylor shouted.

Alyshur pressed Marette’s blood-covered hand into her jacket pocket and grasped the scanning orb. Again, she felt its warm tingle along her arm.

What are you doing?
she asked him and shifted her balance to run with the hand in her pocket.

Seizing opportunity. Scanning Michael’s blood for traces of the syr.

What?

The syr may be lost, but Michael may himself be a vestigial concentration of its remnants.

That’s what you meant by a scion.

Oui.

But what does that—

There is not time to explain. I must concentrate on the scan. You must concentrate on our flight.

They fled down the hallway, feet clapping on the tile, alarm strobes blinking around them. They turned a corner into the New Eden lobby where they’d first entered. Tall windows looking onto the exterior grounds made up three of the six walls in the wide, high-ceilinged, hexagonal chamber. The security attendants that had staffed the entry desk earlier were now nowhere to be seen.

Taylor ran straight for the exit.

“Wait!” shouted Michael, stopping. “We need to get to the auditorium!”

“We are!” Taylor called back. “From the outside! You want to get trapped aga—”

A new siren drowned him out. Red alarm beacons spun as white security shutters fell from the ceiling to cover the doors and windows.

“E
XTERIOR
EXITS
NOW
BEING
SECURED
FOR
QUARANTINE
. P
LEASE
STAND
CLEAR
.”

Taylor gave a shout and scrambled for the doors. Marette and Michael followed. Taylor reached the door, the shutter still descending, and froze, waiting for them.

“Go!” Marette ordered. Taylor could make it out in time, but they never would.

He refused. The shutter plunged to the floor with an audible seal as she and Michael caught up. Out of breath, Taylor met their eyes a moment. “Not leaving without you two,” he said.

Before Marette could respond, Taylor spun with a wordless shout and banged his fists against the shutters, kicking and yelling. “Let us out you fucking stupid deathtrap!”

Alyshur?
Marette thought to him.
If you can spare it?

Michael set a hand on Taylor’s shoulder with a glance at Marette that seemed to mirror her thoughts.

Agreed
, answered the Thuur. Marette’s palms raised. She felt warmth pulse along her arms like a second, comforting heartbeat. In another moment, Taylor ceased the kicking. His hands settled against the shutters.

“Sorry.” He turned. “I’m okay.”

Marette put a hand on his shoulder both to steady him and to add authority to her tone. “Can we still reach the auditorium from here?”

Taylor nodded, turning to face them. “If the building lets us? We can try.”