She set her audience to the beat of the fight music they were to dance to by straightening up, clapping her hands in the cadence, and stomping her flesh foot as the backbeat. The crowd quickly picked up the drum line of Freddie Mercury’s Mr. Bad Guy.
The Ukrainian righted himself and threw a couple wild crosses at Olivia, who danced back out of range easily, letting him nearly stagger into their audience from the overreach. She was about to finish him, about to put him into the purple sleep of a boxer’s dream when she heard the bartender, old Mr. Orlovsky, shout above the backbeat she’d put the bar into. Somehow his voice could carry about the fight like no other, cutting with clarity and strength to reach every ear.
“Get your head out of your work, Olivia, the jar girl’s awake,” he bellowed, holding his hand away from the receiver of the strange phone used among certain buildings in the city.
Olivia’s attention flickered to the news just long enough for the Ukrainian to land a violent strike to the side of her head. It hurt, sent little stars of pain across her skull, but didn’t rattle her. Before she could respond, the bar erupted around her in a dozen other brawls when the bowlers took offense to the top hat’s perceived bad form against one of their own. The Ukrainian in question swamped under in a pile of three cockneys that smelled easy prey in him after seeing Olivia quick dismantling of him.
Olivia did her best to extricate herself from the bar, taking a few more lumps and having to give quite a few more before she was able to push her way back out to the street.
Chapter 10:
Friends Nearby.
Olivia could no longer run. The gears and mechanisms of her leg simply wouldn’t function at anything above a brisk walk and any attempt at ramping them up only resulted in structural failure. It was a life changing factor. She’d run track at university. She’d jogged to clear her head. In boot camp, she’d finished first on most runs. But no longer. Unable to run, she lost her position as a soldier. She fought now to clear her head, only in bar fights anymore, and even then, being unable to run shaped how she fought, leaving her with no way out other than to win. She hobbled back to the tower in hopes of being there when the girl was extracted from the jar.
The sun was going down when she stepped back onto the surface. She could hear the Irradiated top dwellers scavenging among the ruins of the old city on their nightly errands. In the distance, to the south, the thunder of artillery sounded like concert drums. Even though it would fall woefully short of the wall, the Slark never quit firing the shells into no man’s land, possibly defending against expansion against them, possibly as an impotent display of their faded might. Regardless of which, it kept the field clear of the true mutants that had long since followed the example of the City of Broken Bridges, burying themselves in dug outs and caves when the shelling began.
Olivia could see by the trench coat clad men heading into the tower that she was too late. The inspectors would be by the bedside when the girl awoke, spoiling any chance Olivia had to talk with her first. As futile as the errand was now, Olivia still had the morbid curiosity of seeing what sort of state the girl would be in. Dr. Gatling said it was one of the severest cases of radiation poisoning he’d ever tried to treat, but hope arose as she’d taken well to the stasis chamber. Olivia wondered after the ultimate result.
If her slow walk was frustrating, the elevator ride up to the clinic was maddening. At least when she was walking she could feel like she was in control of the pace, at least as much control as she could exert, but in the elevator, all she could do was watch the numbers tick by. She emerged on the floor of the clinic to the expected chaos of jar extraction.
The girl was out already and the tank’s priming had begun anew. Dr. Gatling and the rest of his staff, which included Olivia as a volunteer from time to time, were already checking over the patient on a gurney. The three inspectors in their trench coats stood in the corner, watching with detachment. They were hard men, older men, with furrowed brows, longer graying hair, and cleanly shaven faces. There wasn’t anything remarkable about the inspectors aside from the possible need for three.
Olivia positioned herself close enough to the gurney to overhear the medical assessment without drawing too much attention. Dr. Gatling was reasonably satisfied by her recovery. A few more weeks in the jar would have done her good, but that was up to Claudia, not him. Each person had their own specific tolerance to the process that allowed them a unique amount of time before rejecting the stasis—apparently Claudia’s was about a month and no more. Dr. Gatling ran a specialized Geiger counter above Claudia. It crackled a little, more than normal, but not what Olivia believed would mark the girl as an Irradiate. This would matter for what Gatling would do, although not necessarily how the city would react to her. Olivia hadn’t noticed any physical deformities when the girl was in the jar, but that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any or some wouldn’t show up later.
“Keep her sedated, replace the compression bandages in a dark room, and run a blood panel to be safe,” Dr. Gatling instructed.
The gurney wheeled away with Claudia on board, attended by four nurses, one male, three female. Before Dr. Gatling was even fully turned, and long before Olivia could reach him, the three inspectors blocked his departure by standing in a half crescent across around the front of his wheelchair.
“When can we speak with her?” the largest inspector asked. He was American as evident by the accent. Olivia didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing though—it was tough to tell where the Yanks fell when it came to loyalty to Hastings or Marceau.
“When I’m sure that coming out of sedation won’t be agony for the girl,” Dr. Gatling said, clearly more irritated than cowed by the three men blocking his way. “I must warn you though, she may not be able to speak, and she may well have been blinded long before the incident on the bridge.”
“We’ll determine that,” one of the other inspectors said. This man was British, a Coventry man by the sound of his accent, and this worried Olivia.
Dr. Gatling seemed a little taken aback by the comment. Of the three statements he’d made, two of them were completely up to Claudia’s luck, good or ill, and the third was what Dr. Gatling considered to be his call to make. “You’ll not be getting the Narcan from me, nor will you compel me to administer it.”
“Maybe not,” the Coventry born inspector said, “but we can certainly prevent you from administering any more sedation.”
The three men parted around a stunned Dr. Gatling to walk down the same hall the gurney had vanished down. Olivia took her cue to step to Dr. Gatling’s side.
“Worthless bastards of…” Dr. Gatling stammered to Olivia, not really seeing her in the midst of his rage. “Those growling dogs better hope they don’t ever need a doctor because I’m likely to sew their heads up each other’s asses if this ends up costing my patient even a moment of pain.”
“I think there was a movie about that sort of surgery,” Olivia said.
Now Dr. Gatling saw her, his head of steam undiminished by the tirade to that point. “Who the hell would watch a movie like that?”
Olivia shrugged. “I guess we leave it in her hands now.”
“Like hell…” Dr. Gatling wheeled away with a determined slant to his shoulders.
†
Claudia couldn’t describe the truly bizarre sensations that greeted her. It was as though she’d awoken to find herself scuba diving in complete blackness. This was followed by the most wondrous drug high of floating, cushioned euphoria. This absolutely wonderful feeling evaporated like a puddle in the sun, so quickly and completely that Claudia, try as she might to hold it, found herself instead dropped into a new world of agony. More than simply being rid of the agony, she wished for a return of the euphoria. She became aware, reluctantly, that she was in a bed, in a room, with her eyes held shut, and machines beeping out her heartbeat. She must have moved or shifted to let someone know she was awake, because immediately following, she heard a growling vo
ice to the left of her bed.
“This is pointless. What the hell information could we even get from a burned up Irradiate anyway?” the growling man said.
“The doctor says he ran the DNA,” another man, this one with a British accent to go with his growling voice, said from the other side of her bed.
“So it’s Marceau’s daughter? So what?” the first man said, sounding increasingly frustrated. “Sounds to me like that’d make her more likely to lie.” She could feel the man’s breath as his face came closer to hers, blowing hotly against her cheek. “Wake the fuck up!”
“I’m awake, I’ve been awake,” Claudia said. “Watch how you speak to me. The code of law forbids…”
“Get a load of…code of fucking law?” the British man laughed. “We are the fucking law, girl.”
A horrible realization came over Claudia. Wherever she was, it wasn’t Raven territory. She was blind, felt weaker than if she’d spent six weeks battling a flu bug, and she believed, as all Ravens believed, that any society ruled by men would have very few, if any, laws to protect women.
“No need for all that,” a refined, softer voice said from behind the first speaker. He had a British accent, but none of the harshness to his tone or timber. “We are inspectors of the City of Broken Bridges. I am Cavanaugh, and these are my associates: Billings and Anders. Around the stationhouse, we’re called the ABC Detectives. If you can believe it, we were matched numerically, not alphabetically.”
“Stranger things have happened, I suppose,” Claudia said. She desperately wanted to remember how to placate men. The truth was, she hadn’t been in such a weak position in so long that she couldn’t even remember the last time it’d happened, let alone what she’d done. She knew to make her voice soft, to lull with her accent, but didn’t know what to say once she had.
“Stranger things indeed,” Cavanaugh said. “Like a young woman making it across the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of an extreme case of radiation poisoning.”
Claudia could hear chairs moving, clothing rustling on both sides of her, and then smelled a strangely warm cologne or aftershave reminiscent of spice and leather. “Was that what happened to me?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened to you?” Cavanaugh said.
Claudia knew to lie, and typically lied well under pressure. Training as a scout sniper included a few courses in counter intelligence to resist interrogation should the often lone operating sniper be captured; she excelled at this too, building on her natural urge to lie anyway. Still, she typically could see facial cues to tell her whether or not a lie landed and where to take it next from reactions of the listener, which was obviously out of the question. Omit the unimportant, seek verbal clarification where possible, and reveal weakness only with reason—these were the counter-terrorism techniques she could remember off the top of her addled head. She ached, felt nauseous, her sinuses were dried and uncomfortable, and her head felt tingly; what she really wanted was more of the euphoria drug and to be left alone to enjoy it.
“I crossed the bridge on the suspension wire, looking for my father,” Claudia said, waiting for a few moments after for verbal confirmation, hoping to force Cavanaugh to come to her for more information, possibly providing some of his own in the process.
“Go on,” Cavanaugh said, giving her nothing.
“And I found him. Where is he now?”
“Your father is busy at the moment,” Cavanaugh said. “Was he alone when you found him?”
Claudia wanted to smile. She’d gotten an answer that told far more than Cavanaugh probably wanted her to know. “No, there were five men with him, soldiers I would guess by the look of them.” Claudia waited until she was certain Cavanaugh was about to speak before she continued. “Can I have a glass of water?” Someone walked from the room after a few seconds and Claudia guessed one of the men had been unwillingly dismissed to fetch the water by Cavanaugh.
Cavanaugh waited until the footsteps returned. He touched her hand with one of his and gently guided the plastic cup into it. His hands were soft and his touch even softer, which surprised her as most men she knew in the new world order had long since lost any trappings of self-tending. Claudia took the cup and sipped a few times from it. There was a strange, malingering taste in her mouth that she hadn’t really wanted to swallow, but didn’t really think trying to spit it out would be a good plan while blindfolded. That was a distinction she was becoming increasingly aware of—she was blindfolded, not blinded.
“Now, what happened to these men with your father?” Cavanaugh asked, waiting long enough for Claudia to drink quite a bit of the water before he continued. He didn’t seem remotely concerned with giving her time to collect her thoughts—a worrisome trait.
She certainly couldn’t tell the truth now and she doubted a half answer would suffice. “I don’t know,” Claudia said. “I passed out in my father’s arms when I saw him. Is my father okay?”
“Your father is fine, for the moment,” Cavanaugh said.
This statement, Claudia accurately identified as a threat. She had misjudged Cavanaugh as simply playing the good cop, waiting for the time to hand off the interrogation to one of the other two to play the bad cop. He was both good and bad cops rolled up into one with the bad part likely being the truth of it.
“Are the men who were with my father okay?” Claudia asked, perhaps a little too slyly.
“Would that upset you if they weren’t?”
He was smart, probably smarter than her, and he had her at a ridiculous disadvantage. If their cat and mouse game continued, she knew he would find a way to slip her up eventually, and she guessed he had the patience of stone to get there no matter how long it took. With the fuzziness still floating around her head, she wasn’t going to be able to think fast enough to plan several moves ahead and she wasn’t sharp enough, especially not without visual cues and facial expressions, to wing it.
“Mind your toes boys,” a gruff voice echoed across the room, “my patient needs her bandages changed and her eyes checked.”
“Turn the lights back on. We’re in the middle of…” Cavanaugh began.
“You’re in the middle of blinding an innocent girl if you don’t let me do my work,” the gruff man said. Whirring and clicking of spoken wheels powered by a motor brought the gruff voice closer to Claudia. “I don’t know what nonsense information you’re after from her, but you can get it when her bandages are changed and her eyes are checked.” Something bumped the side of her bed with a metal on metal clink. “Mind the tray table, will you? I’m not exactly in a good position to bend over and pick things up if you spill them, Inspector.” Claudia felt something rattle her bed from beneath, but couldn’t be certain if she was simply being jostled from a different angle.
Cavanaugh apparently relinquished his position beside Claudia’s bed as the scent of aftershave lingered a moment before being replaced by the smell of adhesives and possibly gun oil. Careful hands made quick work of the bandages Claudia had mistaken for a blindfold. The room was dark and whoever was tending her did so by a faint light over his back shoulder, creating a shadowy silhouette with frizzy beard and some sort of headgear. She didn’t know who he was or what he was about and she didn’t care—her loudest thought was simply glad she hadn’t actually gone blind. The careful hands, which seemed so eager a moment ago, were slowing their inspection of her eyes and bandaging work intentionally. Claudia didn’t want to have her eyes covered again, but it was clear that was the task ahead. As the world vanished under the cotton and gauze of bandages, she heard a soft, insistent voice whispering in her ear opposite the side of the frizzy silhouette tending her eyes. The woman’s voice was husky with a pleasing British accent.
“You were chased across the bridge by mutants,” the voice whispered into Claudia’s ear. “Your father was the lone survivor of his patrol. The rest went over the side of the bridge. Take strength in these words and know you have friends nearby.” A strong, yet soft hand gripped Claudia’s
in a reassuring squeeze. “I will be under your bed should this interrogation turn violent.”
And just as quickly as the voice came, it was gone. Claudia was once again bathed in the darkness of bandages over her eyes and her hand was once again left alone. She felt someone shift the frame of the bed, presumably the owner of the voice keeping her word in hiding beneath the bed.
“We’ll have to keep the lights low in here,” the gruff voice said, probably to Cavanaugh. “I’ve given her drops to dilate her pupils and even with the bandages on she shouldn’t be exposed to light.”
Claudia knew this was a lie. She’d had such eye drops before during eye exams as a child and she’d only been given plastic goggles that didn’t block out even a fraction of the light the bandages did. More than that, she didn’t remember the gruff man giving her any eye drops. The gruff man knew about the whispering voice, knew she was hiding under the bed, had likely brought her in beneath the tray table he clanked against her bed, and wanted to make sure Cavanaugh didn’t discover her. Perhaps Claudia had two friends in this.
The scent of spicy cologne returned with an audible sigh as Cavanaugh sat back into the chair, pushed slightly out of position now. “Where were we?” he said.
“You were asking about the men with my father,” Claudia reminded him.
“Yes, of course, what happened to these men—you said there were four of them, correct?” Cavanaugh asked.
“No, I said five,” Claudia corrected him, knowing full well his game.
“Ah, yes, of course. Go back a moment if you would, what happened before you saw your father?”
“I was chased across the bridge.”
“There were people chasing you?”
The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2) Page 9