A Few Good Men (37 page)

So, I continued very carefully indeed, down the somewhat less wide tunnel, where I had to bend down a little further. I also tried to slosh less. I’d like to say that helped, but I’m not sure. I’m almost sure the only thing that helped was my super-fast mode, my being attuned to noises that might be human, and my frankly disturbing—even to myself—tendency to shoot before thinking.

We met three more two-guard teams along the way. None of them took much effort to dispose of, and I got all of their burners, though I gave three of those to Abigail because my pockets couldn’t hold any more. And if she thought my habit of letting no burner go to waste was odd, she didn’t say anything. Her posture had lost that odd dragging-sullen-teenager look it had shown at first, and she was walking as stealthily as she could, too.

The tunnel bifurcated again, after we killed the last team of two, and Abigail signaled, her hands only visible because she was wearing grey, instead of black gloves, to the third tunnel on the left. “It’s a dead end. The fresher at the end is the one that opens.”

I nodded, and hoped she could see it. If she could it was only because I was light-haired.

But she followed me quietly. There were no guards there. Which could be good or bad. On the good side, it could mean that there were more guards along the corridor, which continued on. On the bad side, it could mean that they too knew exactly which fresher slid off its moorings and allowed people out. And in our case, in. Or maybe there were more than one, and they weren’t sure, but what kind of prison didn’t have cameras? I balked, and stood, breathing hard, while Abigail bumped into me from behind.

Her fingers moved in the dark, signing, “Are you okay? Heart attack?”

I shook my head, and I signaled back “Trap. Sure of it. Trap.”

Then I realized she couldn’t see my fingers, which were in black gloves, and I repeated the signaling against her arm. Her hands flashed fast. “You’re crazy.”

It was hard thinking through how to explain things in sign language, and clearly enough that she could get it by touch, but I did my best. “No. Cameras. Prison. Know which. Will watch that.”

She tilted her head, and shrugged her shoulders in an eloquent show of “What then?”

I had no idea, but my body did. I grabbed her arm, went back, and took a random tunnel. She made a sound of protest, which I ignored completely. I walked on and, after a moment, she followed. I thought that for better effect I should go all the way back to the beginning and take completely different tunnels, but that was never going to happen. If I did, I would end up completely lost. I had to assume in her study of the prison, Abigail had figured out what the areas of higher security were, the areas in which Nat was most likely to be. I didn’t want to disorient her further.

I had the growing feeling at the back of my head that this was a quixotic enterprise and more than a little crazy; that I would never have engaged in it if I’d been in my right mind; that Abigail and I were going to die here. It didn’t matter. Sometimes, when you’ve already made the mistake, it was just as good to keep forward as to back out. As Shakespeare said, if you’re in the middle of the river, it’s just as good to wade forward as back. At a guess, if we left now, they’d find the dead guards and they’d move Nat. Or reinforce security. Right now we had a shot at freeing him. It wouldn’t last forever.

I waded down the tunnel, relieved to find no one there, but still a little wary. Hopefully we hadn’t managed, by sheer coincidence, to find ourselves in the one tunnel where there was another loose fresher. The tunnel dead ended, and Abigail pointed upwards. “That’s a drain valve,” she gestured, “now what?”

Now, I took one of my plentiful borrowed burners and put them on cut. The good ones, the police issue ones, were a marvel of the art, and could cut through anything, even ceramite. They had a little trouble with dimatough, though held in place long enough and hard enough, they would shatter it. But the valve above us was mounted on ceramite. I cut it off by cutting a neat circle around it.

Don’t ask me how prison freshers work or what the valve contained. All I knew is that it was round, and massive, about the same general mass and bulk as my trunk. I pushed Abigail against the wall, to be out of the way of it when it fell. Unlike household freshers, which are a distinct unit, mostly meaning a shower and a vibro-cleaner, prison cell freshers were an integrated all-in-one vibro and toilet and several other functions, including a unit that pared your nails when you put hand or foot in. This one seemed to be arranged for water also, because there was a lot of clean water released when the valve fell into the sewer. Presumably, I’d somehow cut a water pipe. I didn’t mind it, since it felt and looked, in the light from above, as clean water. I crawled right into the opening, with the water sloshing around me, grateful the valve was large enough to give me a way to crawl through.

The cell was empty and the lights were off, though the filtered light that came from the hallway through the open door was enough to seem dazzling after the darkness. It’s possible the camera was off. I don’t know. I know alarm wasn’t given immediately. Still I located where the camera was on the wall—it was visible, unlike whatever had watched my prison cell, even if far enough above that floor and the cot and table, and anything that could be climbed, that it would be unreachable. It was not unreachable to a burner and the burner took care of it, just as Abigail came in behind me.

She was a sensible girl, and no more had she climbed up, than she took a burner in each hand. Then she seemed to realize I’d have no idea where I was going. Again, presumably she knew, because after a quick look around, she returned a burner to her pocket, and gesture-spoke, rapidly, “To the right out of here. End of corridor. Take grav well down. Then down again. Then corridor. May God be with us.”

I can honestly say that in my entire life with the broomers, I’d never found a need to do the sign for God, but I somehow knew it and recognized it when it was made.

We followed her plan, and there was no problem until we got to the last corridor, by which point alarms had started sounding, loud and clear.

We should have been dead. We would have been dead. Guards poured ahead and behind us, burners drawn. We had only two advantages. One was my odd speed trick. The other was Abigail’s ability to know exactly what part of the hallway I couldn’t see or hadn’t covered. No, I don’t understand it, and I wouldn’t know how to do it myself.

We went two steps, three. I burned and she burned. Ahead and behind. And behind and ahead, we proceeded, back to back, killing numbers of enemies that should have overwhelmed us.

And then suddenly Abigail whimpered and fell. I thought she had stumbled. I reached for her. I didn’t know what to do. “Abigail,” I said, even as I burned in a circle, to left and right and in front, to keep the enemy at bay. “Abigail, for the love of God, stop fooling around.”

I don’t know when I realized she was dead. I should have realized it earlier. The corridor was well lit, and there was a hole the size of my fist between and below her breasts, where her heart should be. Someone had used the cutting function of the burner, on wide dispersion.

I burned around me with blind abandon, setting both burners to flame and setting fire to the bastards. If it started an inferno in the prison, I no longer cared. I was a dead man walking, and Nat would die with me, which would undoubtedly be a better fate than whatever they’d planned for him.

And Death is at My Side

Steady, Luce, steady,
Ben’s voice, clear as day, and for the first time in all the time I’d been alone and desperate, in all the time I’d dreamed of just a glimpse of him, I could see him. Not just in my mind’s eye, but in reality with my eyes. He looked a little odd in a way I can’t describe, besides the fact that he was obviously still twenty-one, as he’d been when he’d died, and that, well, he was there, while he was dead. But other than that, he looked much like he’d looked before they’d arrested him. He stepped through the attackers—most of whom were on fire, and bumping into each other, and came to me.
Steady, Luce, steady,
he said again, his voice sounding in my ears and in my head, all at once.
Don’t you dare waste her sacrifice or let the boy die. Take the burners. Take her burners from her pocket. Throw out the one you expended cutting the valve. Take the rest of them. All of them. Put them in your waistband. There.

I obeyed, blindly, even while burning with my free hand. At the bottom of Abigail’s pocket was a small round, marble-like thing. I realized it was Fuse’s bomb, and I took it. I wondered how it could be used, but it didn’t matter. If all else failed, I could use it to blow myself and everyone around me to the kingdom that would never come for the likes of us. Then I remembered something else, and on impulse, looked inside her tunic, and found a pocket, and in it a box much like the one they’d given me with the fragment of flag. I took that, and slipped it into my pocket. Then I took the other gadgets in the pocket, too, two of them being the ones that she’d used to break into the flyer. No, I didn’t expect to need them, but how was I to know what I’d need? Truth was I
expected
to be dead in minutes.

All this was done at fast, very fast mode, and I burned around me every few seconds. I’d like to say my attackers were getting fewer, but they weren’t.

That’s it. Good boy. Now, burn your way that way. Yeah, watch your back too, but burn forward in that direction, as fast you can. That’s where the boy is.

I did as he told me. No, I don’t believe in ghosts. Don’t ask me how he knew which way to go. Perhaps I did. Perhaps my subconscious guessed that the path more carefully defended was the one I should take. Who knows? Stranger things, Heaven and Earth and all that. I was not in shape to think. I was barely in shape to breathe.

All I could think was that I’d let Abigail die, and I’d have to answer to Sam for it. Losing his son had almost killed him. I knew the horror behind his stern facade. Losing his daughter—

Steady, Luce. Burn. Faster.

It was easy for him to say. He was just floating along with me. He didn’t even seem to walk, and he could go through guards, and the least he could do was lend a hand and burn some of them.

I would if I could, Luce, come on.
And he was beside me, and he was . . . There was a feeling he was pulling me along. No, I couldn’t feel anything. There was no physical sensation of any kind, but it felt like he was willing me to move forward. Which was good, because I felt exhausted, suddenly, and that was weird, since I hadn’t been all that tired till Abigail fell. Of course, the fast mode takes it out of you.

Eventually there were no more guards ahead, but there was a secure door, and Ben told me to blast it and I did, giving it both burners set on cut, at high speed, till it fell. It fell outward, because in this prison, I guess, they didn’t want the prisoners to burn in case of a fire, unlike in Never-Never. This was normally a minimal security prison. I jumped out of the way, then into the opening.

And the cell we entered was normally a minimal security prison cell. Now it was—

I surprised myself by vomiting, suddenly and violently. Nat was strapped to one of those tables they use in hospitals. He was naked. There were implements . . .

I’m not going to describe what they’d done to him. Suffice it to say it seemed they were going a long way to replicate what he’d done to Max’s body as he killed the bastard who’d called himself my father.

For a moment, for a heart-stopping minute that felt like forever, I thought he was dead, and I felt that I would just collapse on top of him. Beyond the nausea, something must be very wrong with me, because my vision was swimming in and out of focus and I just wanted to sleep.

Behind you, Luce, burn.
I turned and I burned, without thinking. Three guards fell.

Now, get the boy out of here,
Ben said.
Out, both of you.

I obeyed. Even though I thought Nat was dead, I obeyed. I set one of the burners on low range and cut through the straps that held him to the table, careful not to cut into Nat. Part of me wanted to cry and part of me wanted to vomit, and though the entire memory is hazy and confused, I think I did quite a bit of both before I had him free. And then he opened his eyes—those dark, brooding eyes—and looked at me. For just a moment, he looked terrified—a look I’d never thought to see in Nat’s eyes—and then he smiled, a big smile with just a hint of tiredness. “Max,” he said. His voice was the sort of croak people get when they can’t scream anymore. “I knew you’d come for me.” Then a flicker of regret crossed his face and he said, “I’m sorry. They took your ring.” I looked, instinctively, to his ring finger. The ring was indeed gone. So was his finger. All of his fingers.

I choked, and wasn’t sure if it was tears or vomit, or just the extreme tiredness I had to ignore.

Yes, you do have to ignore it. Forget it. Get the boy out. Now. You’re at a lull while they get more guards in, but there will be more guards.

I tried to pick Nat up in a way that wouldn’t hurt him further, decided there was no way to do that and threw him over my shoulder, in a fireman’s carry. I’d like to say he weighed almost nothing, but that wasn’t true. Instead, it felt like I was carrying all the sins of humanity, all the unredeemed evil of the world on my shoulder.

But Ben was calling me, and I had to run back, after him, keep up with him. Use all my speed, use all my strength.

Only it was hard. The floor was slick with blood. There was blood all over me. My clothes were soaked in blood, and I didn’t know whose—Nat’s or that of the people I’d killed. I kept stumbling because I was so tired, and having to drag myself up, and stumbling again, and sliding, and managing to just keep from falling with Nat on me, and Nat was heavy and felt cold and I was afraid he was dead. And I had to keep going. I had to.

And Ben had started cursing, in a way he rarely did, unless he was really upset or scared, and he was calling me names which he’d never, ever done before.