Escape (56 page)

Brathus grinned wickedly and quickly retreated inside his cell. Caught in a blind rage (as he had been a moment ago), the doctor was fixated on his prey, paying no attention to his surroundings, so there had been no sign on his wrinkly face that he'd noticed Brathus.

The door was now unlocked. Brathus had the element of surprise, and the time for his revenge had finally arrived. He waited, listening carefully to the sounds of the doctor's approach
—
rapidly pounding footfalls, snarling and grunting
—
the doctor was taking no pains to conceal his pursuit, and why should he?

When the sounds were almost upon him, Brathus turned the door handle and body-checked the door. It flew open and Brathus stepped quickly into the hall
—
straight into the path of the onrushing doctor. Brathus had the satisfaction of seeing the doctor's red eyes widen in the brief instant before he reached out with both hands and grabbed the doctor's head. Brathus twisted and yanked. The combination of the doctor's momentum and Brathus's application of shearing force tore the wrinkled gray head from its wrinkled gray body. The body slammed into the open door, tearing it from its hinges and sending both door and body flying and clattering down the corridor, leaving Brathus to hold his trophy at arms' length and admire the fading red glow in its eyes, the expression of shock and rage frozen on its face.

Brathus grinned. There was no blood pattering to the floor, but he already knew better than to expect blood. Their veins
—
if they still had them
—
had long ago dried up. What passed for bodily fluid now was likely a flow of electrons through conductive fibers.

Slowly, Brathus turned to see if Kieran and Ferrel had been watching his performance, but they were no longer in sight. Brathus's grin faded a few degrees. That was unfortunate, but he would catch up to them soon enough. First, he had to dispose of the doctor's remains before they reassembled. Due to multiple redundancies, he couldn't simply destroy the head, so he walked up to the body, lying twisted and crumpled against one side of the corridor. He laid the head beside the feet (better not to show the little defalitas where to reconnect), and then he placed a hand on the body and a hand on the head. Now he concentrated
.
 
.
 
.

The doctor's remains began to glow orange and acrid smoke began rising into the corridor
—
yet one of the many tricks he'd learned while the so-called doctors, scientists, and military men had run experiments on him, provoked him, and pushed him to the limits of his newfound abilities. The lab coat burst into flames, burning up in seconds, while the less combustible materials of the corpse merely glowed more brightly, and then gradually began to lose their shape. Liquid alloy pooled to the tiles in glittering gray puddles, and less than a minute later, all that remained of the doctor was a misshapen lump of alloy, the orange glow gradually fading as it cooled.

Brathus stood and rubbed his hands self-consciously on the thin fabric of his drafty blue medical gown. He still couldn't understand how he was able to excite particles to the point of combustion or phase shift without burning or melting his own hands, but there it was.

Remarkable.

He turned and gazed down to the end of the corrdior where Kieran and Ferrel had been running, then he closed his eyes and concentrated again, trying to pick out the telltale whispers of their minds
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Kieran:
I don't see either of them.

Ferrel:
They must have given up.

Girl:
Or
 
.
 
.
 
.
maybe Brathus distracted that other thing long enough for it to lose our trail.

Kieran:
Maybe.

Brathus opened his eyes and grinned. Then he concentrated once more, and his features dissolved into an amorphous gray cloud
—
drafty blue gown and all. Yet another mystery: how could he disassociate his particles and coalesce again, inanimate matter and all?

Crafty little assemblers those nano machines are,
he thought, his mind and consciousness now spread across billions of tiny, self-contained entities, which scientists had dubbed
nanocules
. The cloud of nanocules that was Brathus flew down the corridor at incredible speed
—
silent, and nearly invisible.

All the better to catch Kieran unawares.

Today would be a day of revenge: First the doctor. Then Kieran. Ferrel for good measure. And someday
 
.
 
.
 
.
Dimmi.

* * *

Kieran glanced behind him.

Nothing.

I don't see either of them,
Kieran thought to the others.

They kept running. None of them was about to slow down this time, just because their were no signs of pursuit, but Kieran could feel a slight lift in the veil of tension which seemed to hang over them.

They must have given up,
Ferrel thought back.

Or,
Jilly added,
maybe Brathus distracted that other thing long enough for it to lose our trail.

Maybe,
Kieran mused.

They came to another bend in the corridor, turned left, and this time the scene changed remarkably. There, in the near distance, the corridor was joined by two others, and the three emerged together in what appeared to be a lobby of some kind. They passed by a set of doors hanging open on bent hinges, and crossed the threshold into the lobby.

The front of the lobby was made up entirely of large bay windows, several of which were broken, permitting a cold draft to whistle in. There was a big, circular desk in the middle of the room. They slowed to check their surroundings as they passed the desk, their heads turning up, left, right, and back. The lobby floor was tiled with green and orange tiles, and the ceiling was painted blue. There were cracked and broken crystal columns gleaming weakly in the nonexsistent light, each rising several stories to support a high ceiling. An arrangement of brown masser-hide seating lay around the edges of the room, some of the banks overturned, others bent and broken, their masser-hide upholstery ripped and bleeding yellow stuffing.

All of which hinted to a former splendor of the lobby that was now diminished by a dust and rubble-strewn floor, the cracked and broken tiles, and the giant glittering chunks of the columns that lay cracked and splintered on the floor.

“Seems like they went to a lot of trouble to make this place look good,” Ferrel commented, stopping to stand in front of the circular desk in the middle of the yawning space.

“Window dressing,” Jilly replied. “No one wants to commit a loved one to a facility that looks bleak and oppressive, no matter how grevious their condition or crime.”

“Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
something tells me they didn't get to see the holding cells,” Ferrel said.

“Maybe not,” Jilly conceded.

Kieran was standing in front of the bay windows at the front of the lobby, his jaw slack and hanging open. Jilly sensed his shock first and began picking her way across the rubble-strewn floor to reach him.

“What's wrong?” she asked. He gave no reply, but she saw it the instant she stopped beside him, and her jaw dropped open, too. “Oh, Deus
 
.
 
.
 
.
” she whispered.

Ferrel frowned and crunched through the rubble to stand beside them, and there they stood looking for minutes on end, heedless of whatever might be pursuing them.

The bay windows led out to a short balcony that connected to a network of catwalks, which were what passed for the streets at this level. But without even having to step out on that balcony, they could see the gravity of their situation. As far as the eye could see were buildings, some rising to just a few levels below the one they were on, others considerably shorter, and still others that rose high into the artificial sky, to a height of several hundred stories at least. That much they expected to see, but the shocking part was that none of the buildings were lit. Tiny flickering pinpoints of orange light hinted to fires within the buildings, but nothing that could be considered the result of an active power grid.

Most of the buildings appeared defaced in some way, with broken windows and missing pieces from the walls. A few were in a more grevious state, with giant gaping chunks missing, revealing several crumbling floors, as might be the case if a bomb had been detonated within. One of the buildings even appeared to be leaning dangerously toward them, looking as though its foundation might crumble at any moment and the massive bulk of the structure come crashing toward the med center.

“I knew it had to be bad,” Jilly whispered, “but this
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Kieran nodded slowly. “This is worse.”

“Now what the kefick are we going to do?” Ferrel asked. His hand flew out in an emphatic gesture to the scene beyond the windows. “There's no power for milé-astroms! It's like a warzone out there! No lights, no people, just milé-astroms and milé-astroms of abandoned buildings.”

“There has to be something
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Kieran said.

“Like what?!” Ferrel all but spat, his head turning to meet Kieran's optimism with blazing anger.

“Like a ship. Someone, somewhere must have left a ship that we can use to get off of this rock.”

“Are you on glit? What's the first thing people would do under dire circumstances? Whatever disaster led to this
—
” Ferrel gestured beyond the windows again. “
—
and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess what that disaster might be, the
first
thing people would have done is pack up their belongings and leave. Assuming they had a ship, or access to one which could transport them off-world.”

Kieran shook his head. “I don't think they were allowed. The minute the Union or the Corporate Guild learned about the situation here, they would have instituted a quarantine, assuming the planetary authorities didn't administer one themselves. Anyone trying to bust out of quarantine would have been shot down or turned away.”

Ferrel snorted, but Jilly cut off his objection before it began with a sharp look. “Kieran's right. There should be a ship or two left for us to salvage.”

“Believe that if it makes you feel better, but you just admitted that I'm right. A ship or
two
? There should be hundreds
—
thousands
—
if Kieran's quarantine theory is correct. No, the truth is that the planetary authorities didn't have the means to enforce a quarantine after the battle, and something tells me the Union didn't either.”

Kieran turned to look at Ferrel, his eyes narrowed to slits. “What do you mean?”

“Put the pieces together. You remember when we first pulled that job to get our corvette? Captain creepy knew Brathus's name without ever being introduced.”

Kieran frowned. “Maybe Brathus had met him somewhere before.”

Ferrel raised an eyebrow. “Then why didn't Brathus show some sign of knowing the captain?” Ferrel shook his head. “And what about that Union fleet that came through the gate after we disabled the lockdown? Like twenty leviathans coming out of an uncharted gate. And then, out of the vacuum we start hearing reports on the newsnet of those cruisers popping up all over the maledicted frontier and leaving garrison behind. I mean what the
kefick?
And you saw what happened when we followed captain creepy and his crew. They went around the
Corollary
shaking hands. What's
that
about? Now we find that all of us are infected with a nano virus, including Brathus, and before long your girlfriend here
—
” Ferrel jerked a thumb at Jilly. “
—
starts showing the same symptoms, ever since meeting up with us. Now we wake up from stasis to find that the whole damn city
—
kefick, the whole planet, probably
—
is a spook town, and so far everyone we've met has been in an advanced state of mutation, or infection, whatever you want to call it.”

Kieran shook his head. “So? What are you getting at, Ferrel?”

“It's not all a coincidence, man. Those leviathans were infected. All of them. They were dropping garrisons as part of a nano-warfare campaign. And captain creepy goin' around shakin' hands
—
that was what all those damn garrisons were doing, too. They were spreading the virus. If we've been in stasis long enough, the entire Union could be infected by now. There's no way they had the resources to maintain some frontier planet's quarantine when they probably had hundreds of their own quarantines to police.”