Sunchild

by James Axler

  She was planning to depose her husband, and although she hadn't planned to make her move yet, Harvey was sure that this would have to change.

  He approached the corridor at the end of which stood the metal door. It was as he turned the corner that he found Jenna locking Dean in the lab.

  "Listen, we've got trouble," he began in a low, tense voice, too worried to bother with preliminaries.

  "You think I don't know that?" she replied as she turned to face him. "I've just had an immense psychic wave throw me off balance. What have you done, Harv?"

  The sec chief looked puzzled. "I've just chilled Sunchild before he could say anything about you. How the fuck he knew, and how you know—"

  "My bastard mutie taint," she muttered savagely, halting him. "Feelie like him. I always knew that bad blood would bring trouble on me."

  "Well, it's gonna fall like a hard rain now. We need to do something."

  "Then the time has come," she said decisively. "Did you get the nuke?"

  "Yeah. Alien's got it stored away, doin' that while I dealt with that mutie scum."

  "Then we need it. If we have that, then we have the power. Order your men to seize it and await further orders from me."

  "Whoa there, babe," Harvey said hurriedly. "I don't know if they'll all go for it. Yeah, they're loyal to me, but only because we're under Alien. I can guarantee a few, but others…" he shrugged, thinking of the attitude he had seen in Blake and Downey.

  "Then we need reinforcements. Ryan Cawdor and his people. They're good fighters, and he's a strong leader."

  Harvey narrowed his eyes. "Yeah? Just you remember who's gonna be at your right hand, woman."

  "Oh, I know that very well." She smiled. "But we need help to get there, sweetie. Now all you've got to do is get Ryan Cawdor—alone—to me, and let me do the rest."

  She pulled Harvey to her and kissed him. It never failed, and once more the sec chief was a pliable tool for her games. However, her thoughts as they kissed were far from him, far from any desire other than power.

  RYAN HAD GATHERED his troops in the unit they had been allocated. Jak had sped through the twisting tunnels of the ville to find J.B. and take him away from the party that had secured the nuke in its new port of storage. Alien had been in conference with Jake about mounting a sentry on the storeroom, and then Downey and Blake had arrived to report to their baron, so it had been easy for Jak to whisper in the Armorer's ear, and for J.B. to melt away from the crowd.

  Doc had gathered Mildred and Krysty from the medical unit, a task made easier by the fact that the majority of wounded had now been dealt with. He alluded to Ryan's urgency in a way that had confused them, but convinced them that something was wrong.

  And now they were together. Ryan outlined the situation he, Jak and Doc had witnessed. When he finished, Mildred shook her head slowly.

  "We've got big trouble now. How the hell are we going to find Dean and still keep our backs covered for when the shit hits it?"

  "The only thing to do is play it as it rolls," Ryan replied. "We can't plan anything at this stage, as we don't know how Alien will play things. It also depends on Harvey's next move."

  "Funny say that," Jak murmured from his position by the curtain that kept them private from the tunnel outside. He was keeping watch, and had caught the sound of a familiar footstep echoing through the tunnel.

  Harvey entered the unit without any invitation or apology. "Cyclops, Alien wants to see you right now. His chamber. Come on."

  "Do not say please," Doc muttered as Ryan left with the sec chief, leaving his friends with a warning glance.

  "Dark night, I think you'd better trail them, Jak," J.B. said to the albino, who seemed to understand immediately.

  Mildred, however, wasn't as clear. "What's the matter, John?" she asked the Armorer.

  "Well, Millie, it's like this. Alien's gone to his chambers and been briefed by Harvey damned quick for someone who was overseeing the nuke just a little while back."

  Krysty was checking her blaster, making sure it was fully loaded. Her hair was coiled tightly. "The shit's already hit," she said, almost to herself.

  DEAN ACHED in every muscle, but he savored every last drop of the pain, because it was the pain that came from freedom.

  As soon as Jenna had left the room, he had freed his hand and started to work on the restraint securing his other arm. It had been simple to untie, and he had massaged life back into the dead limb. It tingled and ached, and the bites and scratches began to sting.

  But the problem came when Dean tried to sit up and untie his ankles. His abs were strong, and a sit-up of that kind would normally have presented no problem. However, in order to secure him, his legs and arms had been stretched, and the muscles along his ribs and across his stomach had been tensed to an abnormal degree, then held rigid.

  For the first two attempts, Dean found he was unable to raise himself, the only answer his musculature could give him being a sharp and repeated attack of cramps, like fire across his stomach and chest.

  He sank back, breathing heavily and trying to quell the panic that rose within him. He had no idea how much time he may have, and to be floundering right now was something that filled him with fear.

  No. Fighting it back, Dean tried for the third time, rising slowly and supporting himself with his elbows and forearms on the table. Pain shot through his arms, but it was more than compensated for by the decreased pain in his torso. As he freed his ankles and massaged pained life back into them, the sharp pains in his body reduced to a dull throb.

  Then he tried to stand. Learning from his previous experience, he took his time, supporting as much weight as possible through his arms as he placed his feet on the floor, feeling the pins and needles in the soles of his feet, and gradually increased the weight his legs bore.

  Eventually, he was standing. In pain, but unsupported.

  He took only a few seconds to relish this freedom, and to adjust to being mobile again. He could afford no more. He had to move as quickly as possible. His clothes were still in a heap in the corner of the room, where they had been discarded before he was trussed. He dressed as quickly as possible, wincing at the pain of the scratches and bites, the agony of cloth touching skin still sensitive after the severe cramp engendered by his restraint. When he put on his boots, his feet felt as if they were encased in lead that tightened around his ankles, forcing the blood out.

  Dean ignored it as best as he could, knowing that he couldn't afford the indulgence. He had to move as fast as possible.

  He tried the door, but knew even as he did that it was pointless. It locked from the outside, and he had heard Jenna secure it. It was still fast.

  Dean leaned with his back against the door and surveyed the lab. He knew the layout, and knew that it was used for experiments where fumes could be a problem in an enclosed space. So there had to be an air vent of some sort in the lab. It was no point just hammering on the door. The lab was secluded, and the only people likely to hear were Jenna or Harvey as they approached.

  So the air vent was his best bet.

  Stiffly, Dean moved around the walls of the room in which he had been kept restrained. It was the best place to start, as it was where the majority of experiments took place. Besides, he didn't want to face the results of Jenna's experiments unless he really had to.

  Floor to ceiling he scanned the walls, moving anything that could hide a vent. The wall by the door was clear, and it was pointless to look at the wall housing the doorway into where she kept her hideous mutated children, as this was only a dividing wall.

  That left the wall opposite the door to the tunnel, and the wall against which the restraining bench and operating table stood. He began with the far wall.

  Nothing. So the vent had to be somewhere along the wall where he had been restrained. Dean set to searching with a renewed purpose, ignoring the small voice in his head that asked if the vent was too small to get through.

  A metal cupboard and filing cabine
t stood at the angle of the two walls. A drab olive green, they looked as though they were military salvage, possibly from the redoubt. They were standing free of the wall, very deliberately pulled away from the concrete.

  Dean knelt, ignoring his protesting thigh muscles, and pressed his face to the gap. There was a faint draft of cold air.

  Dean stood slowly, his energy renewed and increased by the knowledge that he may have found his escape route. This gave him the strength to fight against his protesting body as he struggled with the cabinet and cupboard. They were full and heavy to move, screeching on the concrete floor with every inch gained. The boy's muscles, sore and strained, filled with lactic acid at every exertion, betraying the urgent effort he put into his work. He gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts, sweat pouring into his eyes, his heart racing with every screech in case it attracted Jenna or Harvey if they should be approaching.

  He stood back, panting. They were far enough away for him to get behind them. He dropped to his knees and crawled into the space between the metal and the concrete. The light was dimmed by shadow and enclosure, but he could see that a metal grille covered the opening of the air vent. Groping blindly, he couldn't believe his luck when he found that the screws had rusted in their plugs, and it took only a little maneuvering for him to pry the grille loose.

  Snaking around, tearing his already sore flesh on the corner of the opening, feeling the metal of the cabinet scrape on his already bruised ribs, Dean was head and shoulders into the vent.

  It crossed his mind that he had no idea if the vent would narrow suddenly or take a steep upward curve that would be impossible to follow. Perhaps he would be so tightly enclosed that his already protesting body would cramp and spasm, refusing to move.

  He put such notions out of his head. Instead, he focused on a single-minded determination to get away.

  He had no other choice.

  RYAN WALKED across the main hall with echoing footsteps. He wondered what Harvey had waiting for him. The sec chief had excused himself and hadn't accompanied the one-eyed warrior. J.B. and Jak had both wanted to accompany Ryan, but he had refused, instead ordering that his friends hurry to the baron's chambers after a ten-minute gap. Ryan figured he could keep it together that long, if necessary, until reinforcements showed. It was deathly quiet in the main hall. The inhabitants of Raw were still too busy putting their own affairs in order after their return from the battle to yhink about celebrating another victory. That would come later.

  It did seem ominous to Ryan that he could hear nothing from the baron's chamber. Not a sound, almost as though whoever was behind the heavy drapes was consciously keeping silent.

  Every nerve ending in his body sang with the tension. The empty socket of his left eye ached beneath its patch, the scar tingling, a reaction he always had when trouble was imminent, and it was the time of tension before action.

  Ryan reached for the drapes and pulled them back.

  "Alien?" he said in a level tone. "You wanted me?"

  "That fool may well do, but I want you even more," came a sibilant female tone from the shadows.

  The dimmed lamp increased in brightness, illuminating the chamber.

  "Well, well, I am surprised," Ryan murmured.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "You must have guessed," Jenna purred, her voice still carrying a harsh edge. She knelt upright on the fur-covered bed. She was naked, and licked the tip of a finger before running the nail down her body, between her breasts and down to her pubis.

  "You must have guessed it was me who wanted to see you…and why," she added, fixing Ryan with her raven-black and infinitely deep eyes.

  Despite himself, Ryan could feel her mind start to encroach on him, tendrils wisping around the edges of his consciousness.

  "No, I came to see Alien. Mebbe find out something about Dean," he said, trying to block his mind and stop her seeing that he was lying. He had suspected a setup of some kind. But why Jenna? He had a notion, but what exactly was it that she wanted?

  The small and exquisitely shaped woman licked her lips and smiled, taking a step toward him.

  "You're not very good at hiding your thoughts, sweetie. More of a man of action, I would have said. You know damned well why I want you, and that's why I've got your son. He has potential, but I think you would be better."

  She was now standing in front of the one-eyed man, who felt as though his limbs had become blobs of mercury, unable to move and infinitely heavy. She trailed the fingers of one hand delicately over his face, running a nail edge down his puckered scar with a tenderness that belied all he knew of her.

  "You must have gathered that I have my own plans. You and your people could be a part of that. You and your son can be my concubines and you my right hand. And that old man seems to know much of the predark ways. He could be very useful, very interesting."

  She now stood on tiptoe so that her face was against Ryan's. He could feel her mind snaking and coiling around his own, trying to bend his will to hers. Was this how she snared Harvey? Ryan wanted her, could feel the stirrings of lust despite his revulsion at all he knew or surmised about her. And she had Dean—she had admitted this. What had she done with his son?

  Ryan used this spark to fight back against her. She brushed her lips against his, and he could smell the musky sexual odor of her body. It filled his lungs and seemed to spread around his body in the same way that her mind spread around his consciousness.

  She began to kiss him, her tongue probing and licking, nibbling at his mouth. He felt her hands start to rove across his body, fingers searching for openings in his clothing. She was using every sensual trick she knew to break down his defenses.

  To a casual onlooker, it wouldn't have seemed so, but Ryan was fighting one of the most important battles of his life. He knew that if he gave in to her, then he would be enslaved and his friends doomed. He had been here before. Countess Katya Beausoleil, the sadistic baron who had wanted to keep him as her personal stud, and who had perished when they plunged into a raging river. Her enchantments had been subtler, and he had resisted those.

  Ryan pulled his head away from hers, a jerky, hesitant movement slowed by the lack of control he now seemed to have over his own body.

  "No. You won't—"

  He didn't get a chance to finish. While he had been struggling mentally, he had been unable to hear the approach from behind…

  "SOMETIMES I WISH I'd stayed at Brody's," Dean muttered as he bit into his lip. His mouth ran salty with his own blood, but the distraction of the pain was working. Muscles that screamed for freedom of movement or rest were once again blanked out enough to allow him to carry on.

  The air duct had run for what seemed like miles, but in all probability was only a few hundred feet, in a straight line before turning sharply to the left. The concrete inside the duct was rough and unfinished, snaring Dean's clothes and scratching at the area of exposed skin on his shins between his boots and the hem of his pants. Under his shirt, his back became raw and bruised from rubbing on the concrete ceiling of the narrow duct.

  The sharp corner was a problem, and for all the sinuousness that he could muster, he still wasn't sure that he could twist his protesting body and get the push from his legs that would take him around and onto the next stretch.

  There was no light at all now. The last vestiges from the lab, bleeding into the duct, were now just a memory.

  The cold draft of air had become stronger, colder as he entered the straight section, moving on. His elbows were rubbed free of skin, but he focused on the pain, using it to drive him on. He refused to think about the possibility of the duct narrowing. There was no way he could crawl backward, and the terror of being trapped was actually too great for him to even contemplate.

  The air was freezing now, and his body shuddered with involuntary shivers, making progress even harder. But through the intense cold, Dean realized that he had reached a junction in the air ducts. The cold seemed to bear down on him from above, and h
is shoulders were like blocks of ice…blocks of ice that were no longer being rubbed raw by concrete.

  It was too dark to see, but he could only surmise that he had reached a point where a larger central duct had been sunk as a shaft from the surface, which meant that there was more than this one duct. Logically, then, there had to be other exits.

  It was something of which he couldn't have been sure before now, but knowing that there was another way out cheered him, and gave purpose to his determination. Testing the distance around him by extending his arms, he found that the central shaft was wide. Experimentally, he raised his head and shoulders, slowly lest he crack his skull.

  There was no ceiling here. With great care not to cramp his protesting muscles, Dean found that he was able to stand in this part of the shaft, and stretch his aching and confined limbs.

  He tilted his head and looked up. There was no sign of light, no indication of where the shaft eventually surfaced.

  After pausing for a few moments to savor the lack of confinement, and to breathe deeply of the cold air, Dean began to grope blindly around the parameters of the shaft. It seemed to him that it was like the axle of a wheel, with the duct leading from the lab being one of the spokes that connected centrally to this point. Being sure to note where he began—not wanting to accidentally return the way he had come—he turned in a circle, feeling for the openings to the ducts.

  There were eight in all, seven for him to make his choice. Picking one diametric to the duct from the lab, he dropped to his knees again.

  "Just got to keep going now," he whispered to himself, striking out across the floor of the shaft and into the duct.

  "WELL, CYCLOPS, this is a nice little surprise."

  Ryan would have started at the sound of Harvey's voice behind him, but he found that he was still unable to move freely.

  Jenna, on the other hand, had no such trouble. Squealing with faked fright, she jumped back from the one-eyed man, grabbing a fur from the bed and using it to cover herself. Her eyes took on an accusatory cast, and Ryan felt the heaviness lift from his mind, independence return to his limbs.