Broken People (23 page)

They passed through the last series of rooms
leading to the southwest tower. As the sculpted door appeared in
the distance, footsteps echoed in an adjacent corridor. Dale
stopped abruptly and pressed Aurore against the wall, moving in
front of her. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, making
sure her face was not hidden. Everyone knew her in the city so the
guards would definitely recognize her. Since they were both
panting, there was a good chance the guards would believe they had
walked away from the crowd in search of a quiet place to be alone
and couldn’t wait.

For realism, he pressed harder against her.
His hand slipped between them, holding a gun he was prepared to
use. Aurore’s quick breath brushed against his ear, her body rigid
in his arms. Either the shock or the trust in him had prevented her
from pushing him away. It was probably a combination of both.

Two guards appeared from around the corner
and came to an abrupt halt, seeing them in that intimate posture.
“Ahem,” one of the guards cleared his throat.

Aurore’s arm circled Dale’s neck and, in his
mind, he could picture her cold, gray eyes daring them to say
something.

“Excuse me, miss. You can’t be here …”

“We’ll be out in a minute,” Aurore said.

The guards hesitated and, even with Renard
and Cielo running down the corridor, it might have worked if it
hadn’t been for the loud thud coming from behind the vault room
door.

The guard on the left reached for his
gun.

With his raised, Dale turned in time to see
Cielo opening her mouth.

In an instant, Renard had one hand squeezing
Cielo’s throat. “Now is not the time.” His other hand pointed at
the guards.

Muffled explosions made them drop their guns
while smoke rose from their radios. They groaned, clutching their
heads, and collapsed to the ground, motionless.

“They’re not dead,” Renard said, releasing
Cielo, who glared at him and rubbed her throat. “They’ll be out for
a couple of hours then, hopefully, wake up with no recollection of
what had happened. It’s not an exact science.” He grimaced, and his
face took on a paler shade.

“Go ahead,” Dale told the girls. “We’ll hide
the guards and join you.”

The transporter was picking itself off the
floor on wobbly legs when Aurore opened the door. She arched an
eyebrow and stepped away to let Cielo enter, then asked, “What
happened?”

Cielo rushed inside and froze, confronted
with the sight of Cole’s bare arms. She kept her hands to herself
while she looked questioningly at Spinner.

“Just a glitch. Nothing to worry about,”
Spinner said, twisting around a handful of wires.

Aurore folded her arms. “That’s not
reassuring enough to convince me to lend you my arms.” Her fingers
twitched at the thought of parting with them.

“We don’t need your arms.” Rake got up from
in front of the vault door where he had been digging into the lock
with a long metallic tool. He tossed a tiny, ridged piece into the
drawer open on the side of the transporter. “We only need to have
control over them for a short while.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Aurore
asked.

Spinner held up the wires. “With these.”

“You want to connect my arms to his …”
Aurore frowned as she tried to think it through. To his arms? No,
that wouldn’t work since his nerves were shot. “Brain?”

“Not exactly.” Spinner shifted
uncomfortably. “We want to connect your
brain
to his. He
doesn’t know how to use your arms, so he’ll run the commands
through your brain first.”

“You want to turn me into a relay.”
Wonderful. First Dale’s hug and now this. This night couldn’t get
any weirder.

“Technically, yeah…” Spinner winced and
pulled so hard on the wires, one of them snapped. “But it’s not as
bad as it sounds,” he added quickly. “And it’s only for a few
seconds, under a minute …” He threw Rake a glance, but he was busy
signaling Cole to step back, turn around, and move closer to the
vault.

Rake held both hands out and lowered them,
guiding the transporter to do the same, and then he raised one palm
up. “That’s good. It seems to be the right height. Sit here,” he
told Aurore and patted the top front of the transporter.

“It will be fine,” Cielo said with an eerie
smile. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

Spinner sucked in a breath and stepped away
to make room for her.

The long, metallic legs got in the way, but
Aurore navigated around them and hopped onto the hood. She looked
over, imagining her legs being crushed against the door if the
transporter had another glitch, and pulled them up under her. Once
settled, she removed her gloves, then paused and looked at the
others. Why was she doing this? She didn’t want to relinquish the
control of her arms to them.

“Any metal in there?” Spinner pointed at her
hair. “It can disturb the signal.”

With precise moves, Aurore removed all of
the hairpins that held her hair back. She still didn’t want to do
this, but she couldn’t stop. Someone else controlled her moves.

“Right. Now, this is going to sting a
little.” Spinner approached her with a scalpel in one hand. “Don’t
worry. I’ll make two small incisions behind the hairline so there
won’t be any visible marks.”

Aurore glanced back over her shoulder. Rake
was already working on Cole’s head, attaching wires connected to
long needles to his scalp. Cielo’s encouraging smile was guiltier
than ever, and Dale and Nicholas had just entered the room. Too
late to pull out now. She turned around and looked toward the vault
door, determined not to move.

Her hair was parted, and Spinner’s scarred
fingers glided over her scalp. He sprayed a cold liquid that numbed
her enough to turn the cuts into faint pinches. More wire went in,
pushed with a force that could have cracked her skull instead of
just drilling a hole if Spinner hadn’t been careful.

“You good?” Spinner asked, but he wasn’t
talking to her.

Rake answered with a grunt.

Pieces of hardware or tools exchanged hands
outside her field of vision. She only saw the shadows of their arms
moving on the wall.

“Some tingling now,” Spinner murmured,
hovering over her.

Aurore’s teeth clenched together. That was
no tingle. It was lightning splitting her skull, and her arms were
on fire. How could that be? Her prosthetics didn’t have pain
sensors. It took her several seconds to figure out it wasn’t
her
pain. It was Cole’s. Somehow, it trickled through the
wires and, boy, he was in a lot of pain. But once it became clear
it wasn’t hers, she managed to shift her attention away from it
before it fried her brain.

“See if you can move her arms,” Spinner
murmured to Cole.

Nothing happened.

He adjusted the wire on the right side.
“Now?”

Still nothing, though something tugged at
the edge of her conscious mind.

“You have to let him through,” Rake said.
“It’s the only way. He’s too weak to take over.”

Of course he was with all that pain he was
in. Aurore gritted her teeth. If she let him through, the pain
would return.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Cielo whispered in that
sing-song voice of hers.

And it didn’t. The pain vanished like a veil
that had been taken away from her brain. Not only on her side, but
Cole’s, too. She felt him become alert and was ready to proceed, so
she drew in a deep breath and released control of her arms.

Cole fumbled around, obviously not knowing
what to do. He tried, but the signal got lost on the way and her
arms only flexed once. It wasn’t working. Then, she heard a splash.
Cole had let his real arms flop on the gel inside the recovery
cases. Using the metal arms of the transporter, he handed her a
complicated piece of machinery made of several mobile parts that
looked nothing like a key.

She took it. No, that hadn’t been her. She
had wanted to, but Cole had been the one who moved her arms. It was
a bad idea because her fingers squeezed the key too hard and came
close to bending it.
Easy.
She doubted he could hear her
thoughts, but her willingness to cooperate had to somehow translate
through the connection because his movements became more confident
and precise when he manipulated the key.

Aurore took a back seat and interfered only
when he was clearly doing something wrong. She strengthened an
impulse here and there, relaxed a grip, or rotated a wrist as she
looked for a more comfortable position, but nothing major.
Together, they used several tools on the key until Cole was happy
with it, and then they inserted it into the lock.

The hardest part had just begun. Turn, push,
press a tiny button her fingernails could barely grasp, turn again,
wait for the click … No, it wasn’t the right click, wait again …
There it was, turn, push, press, click. It felt like playing a
symphony she couldn’t hear, but she played along because the pain
was slowly returning, enveloping her mind like a haze, and she
wanted it to be over. And then there were no more clicks.

“I think it’s open,” Aurore said when the
transporter shakily retreated from the door. Her golden fingers
gripped onto the metal edge so she wouldn’t slip off, aware she was
still connected through the wires and couldn’t move away. The last
thing she needed was brain damage.

Dale pulled on the handle, and the door
silently opened in front of them. Bright lights went on inside the
vault, revealing a long series of metallic drawers and boxes on all
sides.

“Take those off.” Nicholas gestured towards
her head, and Spinner hurried to remove the wires.

He sprayed something cold on her scalp
again, which brought back the numb sensation.

“Are you all right?” Nicholas asked, his
dark eyes filled with concern. He offered her his gloved hand to
help her get down.

“Yes,” Aurore said, relieved not to have
that foreign presence inside her mind anymore. She touched her
head. Her fingertips came back smeared with just a bit of blood.
“I’m fine.”

Behind them, Spinner was locking Cole’s arms
in the regenerative cases. He must have also shot him with
something because the transporter rose to its regular height and
gestured with the metallic arms for them to go inside. Cole wanted
to see what was in the vault.

So did Aurore, albeit for different reasons.
She wanted to get her boxes, and she was also curious to see what
Dale was after.

Rake and Spinner were already checking the
drawers when Aurore stepped over the threshold. The path between
the piles of boxes left enough room for her to pass, but she heard
the transporter’s leg hitting the boxes behind her. It couldn’t get
too far inside.

“Take what you need.” Nicholas gestured
around like he owned the place. He grinned when their gazes met. He
didn’t own it, but it was close to impossible for anyone to stop
them at this point.

Shaking her head, Aurore slipped farther
into the room.

She found Dale in a corner, working on a
small safe encased in the wall. He had connected a device to the
keypad next to the lock, and he watched, concentrating on the
numbers on the screen. When they blinked, he frowned, put the
device back into his pocket, and pressed the keys.

It was Aurore’s turn to frown. From where
she stood, it looked like he was entering the digits corresponding
to her date of birth. Aurore stepped closer.

The door popped open with a click. Dale
pulled it wide and stared. With a sigh, he lowered his head then,
ever so slowly, turned to face her. “I’m sorry.”

His apology sounded genuine, but Aurore
didn’t understand what he was apologizing for. “What is it? Let me
see.” She moved around him and looked into the safe. Coldness
seeped into her bones.

Anya’s muscles were starting to cramp. That
alone told her they had been gone for too long. Although she
anxiously wanted to know what was going on, she didn’t move. The
statue act was second nature to her after playing it for so many
nights, but it didn’t mean she enjoyed it. She envied the
menzataxor for its freedom, even while being chased by a giggling
Rosie.

Unfortunately, people got bored when the
menzataxor wasn’t nearby. It wouldn’t take them long to come up
with silly ideas like asking the Nightingale for an encore. Anya
was a ballerina—a great one, according to the critics—but she
hadn’t been able to sing a single note her entire life. Better let
them think she was some kind of cyborg, like Robot Girl.

The minutes passed slowly, too slowly for
someone waiting. From time to time, she locked eyes with Serioja,
but he didn’t know any more than she did. And, unlike her, he
didn’t mind taking a backseat and letting life pass him by. Life
had broken him in more ways than that fall on the head had, and
there were no prosthetics for the brain.

She saw the guards first, the navy uniforms
moving at the periphery of her vision. Why were there suddenly more
guards around? Who had called them?
Something
must have
happened. Oddly enough, they didn’t hurry right to the grand
staircase. That gave her hope. Maybe they didn’t know exactly what
was going on. Whatever the case, they needed to be delayed. She had
to buy Nicholas more time.

Picking up on her inner turmoil, the silver
and obsidian of her mask swirled like crazy, making her face tingle
underneath. Anya cursed Big Dino’s order not to carry around
phones. If she had had one, she could have asked the Nightingale to
sing, and that would stop the navy coats’ invasion. The device
lodged in her throat had a limited range, but the Nightingale
couldn’t be too far away.

Serioja caught her eye and watched her
intently as if asking what was wrong.

Anya glanced repeatedly at the guards.
Do
something! Stop them!