Working Stiff (36 page)

Joe laughed, but it sounded all wrong. He glanced at her, then quickly away, and she saw muscles jumping in his tight jawline. “I checked myself out once Pat told me you’d gone missing.” He moved his shoulder a little, and winced. “I’m not supposed to be getting in any wrestling matches. Doctor’s orders, so don’t go kicking my ass like you usually do.” He sounded like the old Joe, but his eyes were haunted and worried. Not for himself, Bryn realized. For her. God, how bad was she?

Worse than she’d thought. The blowtorch of pain was dialing down a little, but when she glanced down at her hands, she saw how discolored they were, how … inhuman.

“We have to move,” Pansy said. “We don’t have much time left.” She nodded to the two security men still in the room with them, and Bryn’s sluggish brain woke up enough to wonder why Joe wasn’t worried about their overhearing. Pansy said, “Gentlemen: this is a Condition Diamond situation, and I’m invoking your protocols. Protect our escape at all costs; do you understand? Acknowledge these orders. You first.”

“Yes, ma’am, acknowledging Condition Diamond. I will protect your escape at all costs,” said the first man. He was familiar, too; he was the one who’d taken Bryn to Harte’s office, and then to the white room. His partner echoed the same words; then they moved as a team out into the hallway as Pansy took Bryn’s arm and got her on her feet.

“Hold on to me,” she said. “I know it’s not easy for you to move fast. Do your best, okay?”

“Gun,” Bryn said, and licked her dry, desiccated lips. “I need a gun.” Her voice was hoarse and faint, but steady. Joe reached under his surgical gown and came out with two weapons. He chambered a round in one and handed it to her.

“Point and shoot,” he said. “Try not to get me or Pansy. We’re the ones around here now who don’t get up again so easy.”

The guards. Bryn’s brain kept chewing away at the question, and finally, she understood. The guards had been killed and revived, probably under Irene Harte’s new corporate loyalty program; that left them open to protocol orders, if you knew the keys.

Which Joe and Pansy did. Condition Sapphire made you follow orders, even to confessing to everything you knew. “What’s Condition Diamond?” she asked.

“Not really the time, Bryn.”

“I want to know.”

“All right.” Joe exchanged a quick glance with Pansy, who was now holding a gun of her own. “Condition Diamond is a lockout command. Once it’s triggered, it can’t be countermanded, and the revived will follow that last order to the end, no matter what happens. We programmed it into a few of the security guys along the way, just in case we needed a back door; it’s supposed to be reserved for military use only. You haven’t got it, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. That was a lie. She’d been worried.

Just then, a Pharmadene security man out in the hall noticed their little party, and the two guarding it. “Charlie, I thought you were supposed to keep her in the room—” he said.

That was as far as he got, because Charlie—one of their two guards—immediately fired point-blank into the man’s face, and not just once; Bryn counted three shots in quick succession, and then Charlie nodded to his partner and they began taking down anyone and everyone in the hallway with cool, cruel, methodical precision.

Condition Diamond. Whatever their past loyalties might have been, they were owned by Pansy now.

Joe took point, moving as fast as possible to sweep the area ahead of them. He took down three guards who came swarming out of a hallway, checked the corners, and motioned Bryn and Pansy forward. Behind them, gunfire continued to rattle as their rear guard held on. From the sound of it, they were getting shot to pieces.

Bryn said, “You … you used them … like weapons—”

“I know. I had to.” Pansy gasped, staggering under Bryn’s almost deadweight. “Believe me, I’d rather not have done it. Harte has the cancel protocols for everything except Condition Diamond; if we expected to get anywhere, we needed to cause some chaos any way we could, and that meant making them into suicide troops. Come on, Bryn—we have to keep moving!”

“Hurts,” Bryn whispered. That was an understatement. Her whole body felt as if she were being boiled alive.

“In here,” Joe called, and kicked in a door. It was some kind of laboratory, and there were two scientists inside; they both held up their hands and backed off to the walls as he pointed the gun at them. “Condition Sapphire! Down. Down on the ground and stay there!”

They hugged the floor. Joe edged past them to another door, one with a swipe card lock. He looked back at Pansy. “Did you get it?”

“Here.” She reached under her gown and handed over a Pharmadene ID, one with a gold stripe. Bryn got a blurred glimpse of it in passing, and she was almost sure it was Irene Harte’s. “Hurry. They’ll lock it down as soon as she realizes I lifted it.”

He dragged it through the reader. The light turned green, and Fideli slammed open the door.

Bullets rang on the metal next to his head, and he ducked.

Bryn pulled free of Pansy, braced both hands on her gun, and aimed over her body to put three rounds in the guard standing at the end of the room. All head shots.

He went down. So did Bryn, in a helpless gasping heap, from the agony of the recoil.

“Damn,” Fideli said, and helped her up again. “Nice shooting.”

“He’s moving,” Pansy said. She sounded like she was about to be sick. “His brain’s exposed, but he’s still moving.”

“It’ll take him a couple of hours to heal up. He’s out of the fight, for now.” Fideli kicked the man’s gun away, just to be sure, and rolled him out of the way of the door that he’d been guarding.

It was a small loading-dock door.

This time, when Fideli swiped his card, the light flashed red, and a siren began to sound. “She realized we had it,” Pansy said. “Unless we can get this door open, we’re stuck. We need out.
Now
.” She stripped off the surgical smock, cap, and mask, and pulled out a gun of her own. “Any ideas?”

Fideli shot the card reader into junk, but the door stayed firmly down. He tossed the ID back to Pansy, who stuck it in her pocket. “Not so much,” he said. “Retreat?”

“They’re coming,” Bryn said. She limped off to the side and braced her arms on a lab table. She’d need the support. The shooting she’d already done had taken a lot out of her, and she felt as weak as a little girl.
Water. I need water
.

No time for that now.

Her searching gaze fell on neatly ranked and labeled jars, beakers, and canisters against the wall on racks. “Pansy,” she said. “Acid.” There was a whole row of it, in a multitude of flavors and packaging. Pansy let out a surprised gasp and ran over to inspect the labels. She grabbed two large bottles, a safety face shield, and thick protective gloves that came up to her armpits.

“Back off,” she ordered Joe. “Don’t breathe it in.” She opened up the first bottle and splashed it in a golden arc over the corrugated metal door that refused to open for them, and kept splashing as it began to hiss and eat through the thick surface. The first bottle emptied. She used the second. A noxious, thick, burning fog filled the room, and Joe and Pansy were coughing and choking on it.

Bryn was, too, but it didn’t matter. Like the man she’d shot in the head, everything was temporary. She could burn black holes all over her lungs and it would all be okay in the morning.

She grabbed the gloves from Pansy, who had sunk to the floor to gasp in cleaner air, and began punching at the weakened metal. It sagged and melted, and her blows bent it outward.

Bryn made a hole, then dragged Pansy over and pushed her through it, then went back for Joe, who was staggering blindly through the corrosive air. “Don’t breathe it! Keep your eyes shut!” she yelled at him, and he nodded, eyes tightly shut. She shoved him through the narrow opening and dived through after.

There were guards swarming from both sides, but their little escape party was lucky in one small way…. A Pharmadene van sat at the dock, back doors open. The driver ran when she pointed the gun at him, and left the keys in the ignition. “Get in!” Bryn yelled. She climbed into the driver’s seat and heard the other two clamber aboard; she checked through the wire mesh to be sure as Joe swung the back doors shut and slapped his hand on the van’s side.

“Move it!” he yelled back.

She put it in drive and punched it.

Driving straight at the guards was the only way to go. Some got out of the way; two stood their ground, firing right through the windshield. She took two bullets, one in the shoulder, one in the throat, and the pain washed over her in a blinding, crippling wave.

She held on, kept her foot down, and hit the gates at full speed. The crash almost bounced her out of the seat, but the gates gave way first.

“Tire shredders!” Joe rasped, crawling past her into the passenger seat. “Go off-road; go around!”

She saw the pavement lifting up ahead in a line of black spikes. Automated defenses, designed to stop any cars that made it this far through the gates. Automatic weapons fire was peppering the back of the van, and in the cracked rearview mirror, Bryn saw that three Pharmadene sedans were headed out in pursuit.

She turned the wheel at the last minute and went off the road. There were low stone walls designed to keep her on the path, but she didn’t care about the damage to the van, and the walls hadn’t been reinforced; they smashed apart under the van’s momentum, and she squeezed by the tire shredders with about an inch to spare.

The first pursuing sedan hit them head-on. All four tires blew, and the driver lost control. The car flipped, shedding glass and one rag-doll passenger.

The others managed to avoid the wreckage, and crawled around the edges before accelerating again in pursuit.

“Still with us!” Joe said. “Punch it! Go right at the intersection!”

She took the turn, barely slowing, and fought to keep the top-heavy vehicle from tipping. In the back, Pansy threw open one of the back doors, opened a box marked with hazardous materials symbols, and began throwing the contents onto the closest pursuing sedan. It must have been more acid, because the hood began to smoke and melt, and the mist pitted and clouded the windshield.

The car veered off and smashed full-speed into a pole, which tilted and crashed, downing power lines in blue-white sparks.

The third car stopped, tangled in the high voltage.

Bryn didn’t slow down. Joe kept dictating turns, and finally Bryn eased off the gas as they reached a busier area. “God,” she whispered. “It actually worked.”

“No, it didn’t,” Joe said. “They’re tracking us.” He looked over at her with a strange kind of sadness. “They’re tracking
you
. And we’re going to have to take care of that right now.”

Bryn took in a deep breath. “It’s not going to be painless, is it?”

“No,” Joe said, and turned to look at the road. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be painless at all.”

The pain slowed its rush through Bryn’s system to a merely unbearable ache. She tried not to look at her hands, or catch any hint of a reflection, but even so, her eyes wouldn’t stay away from seeking out some sign of regeneration.

By the time they’d switched out of the Pharmadene van to another car, her fingers were starting to look human again. Sickly and bruised, but
living
.

She was so grateful that it was hard not to sob again, but she couldn‘t. Not now. Not when Pansy and Joe had risked so much, and they were all still in danger.

Joe Fideli had all kinds of unexpectedly criminal talents; he could boost cars (a cargo van from a rental-car lot, taken from the “fixed” part of the repair area, which would cause the most confusion and delay), he could circumvent alarm systems (like the one at the veterinary clinic, where he took surgical supplies and animal tranquilizers), and most important, he had an RFID scanner and blank credit cards.

He sent Pansy for a walk at the Westfield Horton mall with the scanner tucked into her small clutch purse, and taught her the fine art of butt scanning. “Men are the easiest,” he said, as Bryn rested in the passenger seat of the newly stolen van, downing bottle after bottle of water from a twelve-pack he’d taken from the vet’s. “Credit cards are in their back pockets. Just brush the scanner up against them and listen for the tone in the earpiece. A good scan will chime. Get as many as you can in fifteen minutes; then meet us back here.”

Pansy hesitated, looking at the two of them. “You’re sure? You don’t need me to help with this?”

“It’s not going to be pretty. Better leave it to me,” Joe said. “Go on. Get us some money; we need it.”

Pansy went out the back, and Joe watched as she walked across the parking lot and entered the multilevel jumble of the mall. “Bryn? You ready?”

“I guess.” She finished the bottle and set it aside. She felt better. Stronger. Almost herself again. “Where do you want me?”

“Here.” He flipped levers and laid down one of the rear seats, creating a long, flat space. She climbed over and sat on it. “Lie down.”

Bryn complied, trying not to wince, and looked into his eyes as he bent closer. “How bad’s it going to be?”

“Nothing like what you’ve already had,” he said. “How’s the throat?”

She cleared it experimentally. “Not too bad. I sound like a whiskey bum, though.”

“It’s a little bit sexy. All right, I’m going to give you a shot. I’m not sure how long it’ll last; from what Pat said, painkillers wear off quicker than normal, since the nanites clear them from your bloodstream, but we’ll give it a try. I’ll work fast.”

She nodded and tried not to think about it much. The shot was familiar by now, a bright pinpoint of pain, then a flood of warmth that quickly sank into a blissful warm numbness. “Oh,” she murmured. “Nice.” Then she couldn’t talk at all.