Point Apocalypse (26 page)

As we walked to the gasometer I
tried to estimate their battery inverter's capacity. If I wasn't wrong, it could power half of New Pang. They could bring electricity to half the city's homes plus light the streets with their battery reserves!

So what was it that
General Varlamov - or Neumann with his backing - had discovered in the City of the Forecomers? What had the general been up to all this time as he'd lain low off Pangean's authorities' radar? And why had the said authorities done nothing about it?

My head swam with questions,
each more important than the last. Watchful and alert, I walked down a dimly-lit passage trying to remember every ledge and turn, every apparently useless detail like a dented bucket in a niche by the wall, or an air vent twenty paces to the right from the gasometer's entrance, or the number of the steps leading underground.

The s
taircase seemed to last forever. I noted some three hundred-something steps until I finally lost count. Wladas walked in front of me. The passage narrowed as it descended so that the captain and the guard behind my back kept catching their weapons and gear on the stone ledge. The fat cables snaked along the wall to my right. Good. If the lights went out, it would be easy to feel our way back.

"What a place," Wladas whispered
. "Sheer Metropolis."

"
Sheer what?"

"
Metropolis. The city caught between heaven and hell."

"No talking!" the captain
ordered.

A gun barrel dug into my
spine. I cringed but didn't talk back. There'd be plenty of time. I followed Wladas through a doorway and found myself in a large hall crammed full of machinery. Humming transformer cabinets touched the low ceiling. Thick cable bundles snaked and looped over the floor and the walls so you would have a hard time sorting them out. In a far corner, in a cubicle staked out with console tables, an operator in officer's uniform watched several monitors, his strained face illuminated by the screens' glare.

The captain
walked past us, intent like an animal chasing his prey. Not the gait of a typical man: his body had to be cram full of implants. We walked past the cabinets and the cubicle and found ourselves between what they call "clean rooms": two glass cubes stuffed with expensive lab equipment.

Wladas glanced back
at me, and I nodded. He knew what these machines were for; I'd never had a chance to see anything like them. Apparently, Varlamov had orchestrated his Pangean exile scenario well in advance and arranged the delivery of all this special-purpose apparatus and their staff sworn to secrecy. Our analytics had misjudged him badly. They didn't have the slightest idea about all this shit.

I
remembered the hoist machine on top of the gasometer. That's how they must have brought the machines inside. The hallway was just about wide enough to get the cables in.

Disinfecting lamps
burned in one of the two glass cubes. There, two neurotechs in white "clean suits" stood over a cyber trooper sprawled in a hospital chair.

His chest was pried open. Ridged tubes
and catheters disappeared under his ribs. A drainage machine reverberated on a stand by the chair pumping lymph through the body. Blood dripped onto the floor under the chair. The neurotechs paid no attention to it. One spoke to the patient in the chair who answered calmly, his face relaxed. But of course - the cybers' complex nervous architecture allowed them to shut off certain body areas and stay insensitive to pain.

The other neurotech seemed to be tuning a portable mentoscope.
The machine differed a lot from the stationary one they used in the Fort for mind scans. This one looked like a small tomograph with an additional console and a few plugs on the side panel for power and auxiliary equipment.

"Are they torturing him?"
Kathy asked aloud.

The guards smirked.

"No," Wladas whispered with a cautious glance at them. "Just maintenance."

"Maintenance?" she winced.

"The tiger mauled him, remember?" I said. "It has to be serious if they've opened up his chest. They're changing his combat modules or even reinstalling the software."

"No talking," the guard snapped behind me.

I swayed. His gun barrel hit the air. The guard stumbled and nearly fell face down. "Halt!" he shouted regaining his footage.

"Hands on your head!" the other
one raised his gun.

I'd done it on purpose. I wanted the guards to stop us here
so I could have a good look at the lab. Hopefully, Wladas had done the same. Wong's observational skills didn't need to be questioned.

While the guards trained their guns
on us, I studied the lab equipment. How many cybers did Varlamov have? Two were out on patrol, and another one was lying here in intensive care. The captain had to be a cyber, too. That's already four, plus Varlamov himself - their mastermind and control center.

I glanced over my shoulder at the other glass cube. Two labs for five
cybers was a bit over the top. It meant there were others I hadn't yet seen.

"What's going on?" I heard the captain's voice from the hallway.

"This one," the guard pointed his gun at me. "He didn't obey orders."

'Liar," I gasped biding for time. "You nearly lost your gun."

"You fu-" he struck out with the butt of his rifle.

"As you were!"
the captain ordered. "Shut up, both of you!"

For a moment, the officer studied me and the o
thers, suspicion in his eyes. "Carry on,' he finally said. "I'll join you in a moment."

He walked past us. The guards to
ok us in the opposite direction into a wide stone hallway dimly lit by glowing wall lamps. I followed Wladas along more cables snaking along its walls. The guard's angry stare burned a hole in my skull.

The neurotech cried out and stopped. I nearly walked into him. All three of us froze next to an open-mouthed
Kathy.

Oh well. Wladas had to be right about Metropolis.

We stood on the doorstep of an enormous hall divided by a transparent sheet of either glass or plastic. The nearest half of the hall was packed with all sorts of machines I'd never seen before. Chart recorders ticked, cooler fans whirred inside server boxes; lights flickered on control panels; lidless casings exposed more lengths of cables.

An officer
at a console station in the center glanced up at us and went on tapping at his keyboard. This part of the hall reminded me of a combat control center. But the other half... I took in a lungful of air and let it out slowly as I gazed at the stuff dreams are made of.

Behind the partition lay a
fragment of an alien world.

The
sheer size of it defied human imagination. Spherical vaults of gray marble-like stone came together at an impossible height, too high to see. Their circumference was studded with long rods slanting downward, their ends almost meeting above the center of the hall forming a truncated cone narrow end down. About a meter below, on a pedestal, lay a black ribbed semisphere. It was covered in small black blisters as if the sphere had been made with bubbling hot tar and then refrigerated at just the right moment.

A group of people stood around the sphere: a tall broad-shouldered man in a military uniform and two civilians
: a submissive white-haired old man and a woman with her chin in the air. Both wore lab coats.

Above their heads,
weak bolts of lightning sparked from the lower ends of the rods reaching for the semisphere. Something prevented the lightning from touching the ribbed surface - some protective field or other - causing the lightning bolts to diffract and change direction. They climbed back up the rods like spiders and exploded high above sending a rain of sparks down onto the researchers' heads. They talked, indifferent to the phenomenon. Or rather, the man in the uniform spoke while the other two listened to him.

The captain reappeared next to us. He stepped towa
rd the partition and froze with his fingers to his temple. I was right, then: he too was a cyber, tuning his communications channel.

The woman habitually repeated
his gesture. This was getting interesting. Was she a cyber scientist? She turned her head toward us: a narrow face, a straight nose, thin lips and long fair hair. Her wide-open eyes sparkled with recognition when she saw me. She touched the old man's shoulder, her lips moving silently behind the soundproof partition.

The captain shook his head and pressed his fingers tighter to his head, his face strained. It could be that the partition was not just sound- but also radio-proof. I'd heard of those security shields b
efore although I didn't know much about their technical aspect.

The old man and the one in the uniform turned around
simultaneously. I nearly jumped as the Information identified the former as Boris Neumann. The voice in my head said a few words and stopped. The old man removed his glasses and wiped them squinting at me shortsightedly. Then he put them back onto his aquiline nose and vaguely waved his hand, open-mouthed.

Had
he recognized me?

The next moment my eyes met the
other man's. This time Information chose to remain silent, but judging by his chest chevron replete with two large black stars, I was looking at General Varlamov. A broad face, determined chin, the dented bridge of his nose - a souvenir of an old fight, - gray-tinged temples and a stiff dark mustache.

For a moment, h
is eyes glistened betraying the avalanche of emotion. Blood flushed his face. Then the general pulled himself together and walked to the partition, his hands behind his back.

What was going on here? How many times did I have to ask myself that question?
Why were they all staring at me as if I'd risen from the dead?

Varlamov stopped in front of the partition
and moved his lips. The captain turned to us and repeated his words aloud,

"So you're back,
son."

The captain's voice was devoid of emotion, his stare vacant.
He acted as a transmitter for the general's speech.

Varlamov turned away.
"Proceed," the captain repeated his last words. Gradually, the officer's eyes grew more cognizant as he recovered from his apparent stupor. He signed to someone behind our backs, and guards rushed in to apprehend Kathy, Wong and Wladas. Two more soldiers - the captain must have fetched them when he'd left the room - raised their guns. A neurotech in a mask and clean suit stepped up to me and buried a syringe in my shoulder.

"What's going on?" My legs grew weak.

"You'll soon find out." The captain nodded to his men. "Move it!"

The Information in my head screamed red alert. My knees gave. An agonizing pain pierced my templ
es and the back of my head. Information started a countdown. I couldn't care less.

'What did
the general say?" I shouted.

The soldiers
supported me underarm and dragged me along the hallway to the vacant clean room. The other neurotech was already busy in it hooking up the mentoscope.

"What
did
he say?"

They laid me
into a chair. Steel bracelets snapped shut on my wrists and ankles. A copper band pinned my head to the back rest.

"
Tell me!"

"He told you the truth," the captain
leaned over me. "Surely a traitor like yourself must remember something?"

The neurotech came over to the
chair and raised the syringe. A thin jet of fluid squirted into the air.

"What?
" I croaked shaking with pain, "Remember what?"

"He's your father."

Chapter Seven

The Tables Turn

T
he injection into my neck relieved the pain for a short while. The neurotech told his assistant to prepare the catheters and plasma containers when I started gasping for air. For an instant, everything darkened before my eyes. They gave me another shot and jerked the back of the chair down. Sharp cold steel pierced my ribs.

I struggled and wheezed
as I spat blood. The electronic clock on the mentoscope showed 5.07 a.m.

"
Too early," a voice spoke by my side. "Turn it off. We need to reset the system."

"He'll die if we do,"
a confident voice replied.

A blurred silhouette blocked out the bright lamps above me.
Latexed fingers touched my eyelids.

"
Dilation is still normal. We can carry on."

"
Too much risk. The general won't-"

"We'll proceed! The biocyne in his blood will pull him through."

The silhouette disappeared. The light seared my eyes bringing the pain back. The agony in every cell of my body seemed to cleave my heart. I didn't have the strength left to cry out. Tears gushed from my eyes. Next to me, a drainage pump turned on. Catheters stung my body piercing my lungs and reaching for my liver and kidneys, then entering my stomach. The semispherical module of the mentoscope loomed above me.