Zero World (12 page)

Melni pushed the door open and slipped into the long hallway beyond. Small doorless rooms lined either side, stocked with foodstuffs and other supplies. At the far end was the kitchen door. She sprinted for it, carpet softening her already catlike footfalls. Caswell followed just a step behind. Halfway there the handle on the far door lifted from the other side. The girl ran faster, raising her bar.

Caswell grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hauled her to
one side, into a pantry piled with linens. He held his index finger up and pressed it to his lips. Her eyebrows slowly rose, just as they had above the Think Tank, but she said nothing.

He positioned himself in front of her. By the sound of it he estimated two people had entered the hall. They rushed along toward the stairs. He saw familiar black uniforms, just like the men he’d killed in that house in the North. He pounced, shoulder first, slamming the trailing officer off his feet. The surprised man tumbled into the storeroom opposite with a crash of flour crates. Puffs of white powder filled the air. Caswell did not pursue; instead he went after the lead man and hoped the girl would get the hint.

The man before him slowed, started to turn. Caswell swung with all the strength his implant could gift him. Iron met hard skull with a vicious crack and went on into the spongy matter below. The guard collapsed without so much as a grunt, lifeless.

Caswell whirled, blood pounding in his temples.

The girl stood over the limp body of the other guard. Already she rummaged through the dead man’s belt for the still-holstered gun.

“Take their uniforms,” he said.

“Their what?”

“Clothes. Outfits. Whatever.”

“Outfits. And no, there is no time. We must hurry.”

Caswell turned back to his victim, panting. Blood dripped from the iron bar in his own hand. He dropped it on the carpet beside the body. Eleven kills, now. He decided she could keep the other one on her own tally.

He snuck a glance at his watch, counting seconds, waiting for his gland to bring calm back to his world.

“We must hurry, Caswell,” she said, with a reasonable pronunciation.

“Let’s go then.”

Two of the mansion staff huddled together in one corner of the kitchen. They stared wide-eyed at the pair of soaking wet strangers,
too surprised to cry out an alarm. Peter ignored them, as did his companion. She burst through the far door and on through a small coatroom that linked kitchen to stable.

Luxury versions of their three-wheeled “cruisers” crowded the long room, pointed outward toward six rolling doors. The woman darted around the first vehicle and followed the back wall to the very end of the room, where a single narrow door led out the rear of the building and to the gardens beyond.

Caswell moved up right behind her, breathing hard. She turned to him. “Just so we have clarity, this,” she said, holding a flattened hand perpendicular across her lips, “means ‘be silent.’ This,” she said, holding her index finger up to her lips as he had, “means ‘I have something to say.’ ”

“It’s Melanie, right?”

“Melni.” She exaggerated the pronunciation for his benefit.

“Duly noted, Melni. Now, what’s beyond this door?”

“Something called the Zen Garden,” Melni said. “I am not sure what that means.”

Caswell nodded. “Rocks and gravel. Not much in the way of cover. And then what, the perimeter wall?”

She squinted at him. “How did you gain entry to the Think Tank if you do not know the basic layout of the mansion?”

“Stay focused. The garden, then the wall?”

“The perimeter wall is still distant. There is an artificial lake between. We could swim that and climb over. Or the hedge maze a bit farther on.”

“I’ve had enough swimming for one day. The hedge maze, then, provided we don’t get lost.”

“That is no concern. I memorized it.”

He grinned at her. “Of course you did. Lead on then, Melni.”

Her knowledge of the grounds proved perfect. Beyond the door a rock garden waited, with even rows of manicured stones in varying shades of gray. In places the rows curved elegantly around large chunks of polished volcanic glass. A narrow path surrounded the
space, with benches on three sides. The back of the stable formed the fourth edge, its entire height covered in climbing vines.

They stood in the open doorway, allowing their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Frantic voices could be heard in the distance, all from inside the house. The whole estate had drawn inward, toward the catastrophe. Out here the grounds were whisper quiet.

Melni darted out and raced along a narrow walkway lit by tiny footlights beside the neat gravel rows of the garden. She took the corner at speed and bolted straight into a gap in the long hedgerow beyond. Caswell raced to keep up. She moved like an apparition through the maze, so quiet that he almost lost her.

Eventually an exit presented itself. They emerged at a colorful pavilion that had an almost ceremonial look, wholly out of place in the modern Earth-styled gardens. A few white floodlights had been turned on, casting the tent in pools of blinding brightness and long shadows. The place seemed deserted, though Caswell noted the trampled grass all around, dotted with the occasional used napkin or dropped plate.

A shrill alarm began to wail. And below that, more distant, came the rhythmic bleating of what could only be police sirens.

“This way,” Melni said, running low along the inner edge of the maze to the next gap. She sprinted now, the way lit in the reflected glow of the floodlights. Her route led to a long, narrow lawn and the gravel drive beyond. Melni pulled to a stop. Caswell, distracted by new sounds behind them, bumped into her.

“What—” she started.

He threw a hand around her shoulder and pulled her to the right. Six, maybe seven people jogged toward them from the gravel drive. Gate security, maybe. They were still far off and, unless they knew intruders were on the premises, might simply be rushing to help with the flooded central chamber and their trapped employer within.

Caswell rushed Melni to a grove of trees that served to obscure the view of the high perimeter wall. He ducked behind a trunk as the security detail came into view. Four went around the maze altogether,
but two broke off and headed straight into the gap Melni had just led him through. The trailing guard pulled up at the edge, his gaze scanning the ground. He studied the trail of fresh footprints. Then he was staring directly at Caswell. He opened his mouth to shout.

A thunderclap shattered the air. The startled guard staggered backward, hands at his chest, and toppled to the grass. Caswell held the alien pistol at arm’s length, studying it. Most of the guns he’d encountered on this world used compressed air to propel the bullets. This one used gunpowder, or something like it. Another “invention” of Alice’s?

The guard’s companion reemerged from the maze a second later and Caswell shot him in the gut.

“Time to go,” he growled, and dashed off without waiting for the woman.

She followed him through the darkness. Weaving between the fragrant trees, legs burning, wet clothes like ice on his skin, Caswell ran and ran. He found a portion of wall where a tree had grown carelessly close and shimmied up using the bony branches for support. At the top he hauled himself over without care for what lay on the other side. His feet slapped against their rocky luminescent concrete, sending splintering pain up his shins. He staggered a few steps away, making room for the girl.

Melni mimicked his climb and crested the wall right where he had. She landed with far more grace than he’d managed, and stood facing him. Her posture, her expression, betrayed surprise that he’d waited for her.

“Which way?” he asked.

In answer she took his hand and started to run again, down the faintly glowing lane toward the sleeping city.

THE SAFE HOUSE
on Bandury Lane was the only place Melni could think to take the stranger, despite her orders not to return there. So she ran that way, the man at her side. At first he matched her pace, but gradually he began to lag and she had to tug at his hand. His narrow Southern eyes were now thin slits, and the color had drained from his face and lips.

Garta, still half-concealed behind the eastern horizon, lit the upper floors of the city in a weak golden light that crept down the walls at a glacial pace. Frost clung to the lower windows where the light had yet to reach. Along the narrow streets shopkeepers swept the sidewalks, their breaths coming in little clouds with each push of the broom. The smell of brewing cham came and went on
the wind, beckoning the citizens to rise and begin seventhday work before the final three days of the week—the days of rest—arrived.

Melni bustled along with her head down, shivering against the chill wind on her still-damp clothing. The man fell a pace behind her. He looked near collapse but refused her hand now. In a half hour the streets and alleys would be packed with people. Given his rural clothing, his strong Southern looks, and perhaps most of all his womanish short hair, she doubted anyone would fail to mark him. The pair of them together would be remembered.

“You’re sure this is the right way?” he asked in a hushed, ragged voice.

He had a peculiar way of speaking, joining words together as if it took too much effort to sound them properly. Melni knew only one other person who did that: Alia Valix. She filed that knowledge and forced her mind to focus on the moment.

“Somewhere safe. I hope.”

“Not exactly confidence inspiring.”

She glanced at him. “You are the one who came here with this”—she eyed him head to toe—“outfit. Honestly it is the trifecta of stupid disguises.”

“It’s got me this far.”

With every word he spoke, every odd bit of body language, doubt grew in her that he was from Riverswidth. So where, then? Some Valix Corp. rival? An insurgent faction within the North? Or perhaps…

A buzz of dread and excitement flickered through her at the thought he might be one of the Hollow. She knew of the elite force only in the vaguest terms. Gossip and legend, really. Their existence would never be expressly admitted to or denied by the top tier of Riverswidth. They were shadows. Men and women trained far away in total secrecy, rumored to infiltrate friendly places as a matter of training. It made sense they’d have their own mannerisms, their own peculiar way of speaking. But then they should be able to mask that, too, and expertly so. If blending in was a skill they valued, Caswell seemed entirely inept in its practice. Everything else, however…

Melni turned into an alley barely wide enough to walk single file. A dozen paces in she whirled on him. “Time to explain yourself.”

He pulled up a few feet away and glared at her. “Not going to happen,” he said.

She folded her arms.

The man studied her. Above, Garta’s light had reached the third-floor windows. Soon the streets would be bright and bustling. If he sensed this, or felt the urgency of their situation, he gave no sign. “I can’t tell you—”

“Are you a Hollow Man?”

“I…” He trailed off, his eyes searching hers. Then he nodded, once.

A lie. He was lying. She couldn’t see it in his face and it terrified her because she could not imagine what sort of creature would attempt to use the ultra-secretive Hollow as a cover. They may have been after the same target, but she felt certain now he did not get his orders from Riverswidth. Yet for now she must let him pretend so.

“Can we keep moving?” he asked. He looked haggard now, as if descending into sudden illness.

Melni swallowed her doubts and the fear that lay just beyond. They were adrift and being hunted. Get to the safe house, then somehow force answers from him, that was what she must do. Because whatever else he was or claimed to be, this man knew, and was known to, Alia Valix. Melni may have lost her cover, everything she’d been working toward might have collapsed like bonfire kindling, but she did have
him
.

She turned and started walking again. Whenever circumstances allowed, she ran. Twice she slipped back into an alley to wait for patrolling chin-ups to pass by. The officers strolled in their usual lazy fashion, a very good sign. Perhaps Alia had yet to alert anyone beyond her house staff of what had transpired in the Think Tank. Her fame and stature might hinder such a move, in fact. If investors heard someone had penetrated the house and entered the Think Tank they
might panic. Her ideas were of incalculable value, and if rumors started that they’d been stolen…

Freshly paved angular streets gave way to the cobbles of Old Center, with its dense clusters of weathered buildings, creeping tendrils of mold worming up gray stone walls and around the edges of wooden doors so old they looked painted black. Gaslamps, ornate iron things that craned out over the bumpy, winding lanes, dotted the sidewalks with little pools of golden light. Small piles of snow were everywhere, telling the story of where Garta’s light fell and where it did not.

People began to emerge from those black doors. Melni slowed to a casual walk. She took her strange companion by the arm and tilted her head to rest on his shoulder. Just two lovers walking each other to work. Both pale and shivering, underdressed. One with an arm and leg bandaged with the bloody shreds of a funeral shawl. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not worth a second glance, surely.

It seemed an eternity before she stepped up to the BANDURY LANE marker brick on the sidewalk. “Not far now,” she said through clattering teeth.

Every passerby gave them a sidelong glance, if not a wide berth. One old woman even crossed the street while still fifty feet away. Melni abandoned the lover’s pose. She almost jogged the last block and absolutely did jog up the front steps to the building.

At the door she knelt and hiked up her skirt to pull the lockright implements from their concealed strap.

The lock sprang in seconds and she toed the door open without bothering to put away her tools. Three flights up she came to the safe house door and repeated the exercise. This lock took much longer. There were perhaps only three or four lockrights in all of Combra who could coax a mechanism such as this one open. And none of them would be able to guess why it proved so difficult, for they could not see the insides: six very delicate teeth instead of the usual three. It had in fact been smuggled in. She took great pride that she could spring it at all, and even more so that it took her less than a minute.

The stranger watched her with mild curiosity. If her ability impressed him he again kept it professionally concealed.

One step inside, Melni froze, a gasp escaping her lips. Broken furniture littered the great room. Shattered glass and porcelain covered the kitchen floor. Every cabinet open, every drawer pulled out and lying on the ground, smashed. Great knife-carved lines ran vertically along the walls every foot or so.

She started to say something. His hand on her shoulder, very firm, silenced the words.

Sounds from the bedroom. A tearing of fabric. The rustling of papers.

Melni kept her gaze fixed on the open door to the bedroom. She reached back and pressed her hand flat on the man’s leg, urging him out into the hallway. She stepped back after he did, and winced as the floorboard creaked. Outside she pressed herself against the wall and stared at her companion, who’d taken a similar position on the opposite side of the doorframe.

“Friends of yours?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

“What do we do?”

Melni wished she knew. Where else could she go? Valix knew about her flat, about Croag & Daughters. And here, too. Nothing was safe. All those photoprints Valix had splayed before her, like a catalog of everywhere she’d gone since arriving.

Except…there was one place not covered in that stack of images. “I have an alternative plan.”

He looked dubious.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why are you helping me?”

“We are on the same side.”

“I doubt that.”

“You said you were a Hollow Man.”

The corners of his mouth tightened. “Yeah, well, I may have lied about that particular detail.”

“I know.”

“Then the question remains.”

She leaned into the open doorway and took in the scene inside once more. Whoever was in the bedroom remained there. She heard low voices. Someone laughed. Melni leaned back behind the wall and took a long look at the man. “Same side or not, we have the same target. I want to know how you got into the Think Tank. And I want to know why Alia Valix recognized you.”

“And if—”

She held up a hand. Footsteps came from within. “Later,” Melni said. Then she turned and jogged back the way they’d come. The stranger followed.

Outside she tucked him in a dark alley two corners away and went back to the street. The first pedicab to dawdle by was occupied. She waited, arms folded and teeth chattering, for another two minutes before the next came bouncing down the cobblestones. A young woman rode at the tiller. She seemed a bit dubious at the promise of payment upon arrival, but given the lack of other fares she finally relented. Melni offered gratitude and ran to fetch the stranger. He’d pulled his jacket up to cover his hair and kept his head down, as she’d instructed.

“Wild night,” Melni said to the driver. “He tried to dance on the offering pool and fell right through the ice! Like an idiot I tried to pull him out only to slip and go in myself. Can you believe the luck?”

The cabdriver scrunched her face at this but said nothing.

Beside her, Caswell pulled his jacket tight and closed his eyes. He rested his chin on his chest. His whole body shook, but not from cold, she thought. The beads of sweat on his brow, those pale lips—something else ailed him. Had he been shot? She wanted to ask, to search his clothes for stains of blood, but the tiller would probably force them from the cab if Melni started fussing about injuries and illness.

If felt good to ride, despite the jarring vibration from the old roads. As Bandury Lane fell away behind them Melni began to think about what lay ahead. Right now Valix agents or NRD goons were probably all over her flat. Would her hidden supplies still be there? Perhaps, but that would have to wait. She had a different destination in mind, one from a part of her life not documented in the photo-prints Alia had shown her.

The cab rattled its way out of the city center and across the bridge into Loweast. Cobbles gave way to smooth pavement again, and with the rhythmic whir and grind of the cab, Melni found herself drifting on the edge of sleep. She needed rest, but then she needed a lot of things just then. Rest would have to wait.

“Stop here,” she instructed the driver when they were still a block away.

The cab drifted halfway onto a sidewalk and Melni hopped out. She left her companion to wait with the driver until she could return with money.

A dingy alley served as cast and crew entrance to the theater, but it was early and nobody was around. Melni ran straight to the back door and set to work with her tools again. The lock was a good one, but she’d sprung it many times in the last year and could have done it blind. In seconds it clicked and she was in. She headed down the stairs to the prop room. She listened briefly at the door, then peered inside. Darkness and dust waited within, as always. Long wooden tables were heaped with half-finished costumes and props in various states of assembly. No one was there but her. At the back of the room she opened a drawer that held fake money in various currencies. Nothing that would fool a shopkeeper, but good enough for stage. However she’d always kept an envelope in the back with real currency inside. She plucked an eightcoin out and dashed back to the cab, half-expecting it to be gone or surrounded by chin-ups. But the cab was right where she’d left it, the stranger still sitting in back. He appeared to be asleep, but his eyes opened slightly as Melni paid the fare.

“Come with me,” Melni said to him.

He nodded gravely and climbed out.

A minute later she led him into the prop room.