Click, click, click-click-click-click.
Cell doors started to open throughout the medium- and high-security wings of the facility.
“What the—” The security tech immediately slammed the switches back. Zenobia reflipped them from her vantage inside the console, and then trashed the wiring.
“Shit, shit, shit.” The tech punched the alarm panel, drew his fléchette pistol, then bolted down the corridor.
Warbling sirens sounded throughout the facility at ear-shattering volume. Drake fumbled the cotton into his ears. “Happy now?” he shouted.
Niobe filled her own ears as best she could. It helped, but not much. But the cotton wasn’t intended for cutting down on the alarm noise.
As soon as the security tech left, Zoë joined her sister at the console. Niobe watched the monitors through her daughters’ eyes. Just as Zoë had predicted, the guards stationed outside the exit up top hurried down to help contain the escapees. Meaning they helpfully brought the elevator down for Drake and Niobe.
The corridors throughout the complex echoed with screams and gunfire. The corridors between Drake’s cell in Q Sector and the elevator, however, were empty.
Niobe squeezed Drake’s hand. It trembled. “Time to go, kiddo. Ready?”
“I guess so.” He nodded, though he looked scared.
“Stay close. Follow me.”
They slipped out of Drake’s cell. As they scooted down the corridor, a voice echoed from the far end of the wing.
“Chomp they tail, chomp they kiddies . . . ”
Oh, no, said Zenobia. Mom, I think I opened some of the other cells by accident.
Flames erupted out of another cell. The heat was so intense that liquid salt dripped from the ceiling.
“Run!” Niobe took off at a dead run, but Drake couldn’t keep up. Soon he fell behind, hunched over and panting. Niobe grabbed his hand and dragged him away from the burning salt caverns. The floor was slick with gallons of spilled glycerin.
“Outta my way, kike!” The Racist blurred past. The wind bowled them over, fanning the flames higher. Niobe shoved Drake toward the exit from Q Sector. Shouting and gunfire echoed through the facility.
Zoë! You know what to do, honey.
Zoë reset the alarm panel. The sirens stopped. She pressed the “general call” button on the PA system. “I’d like to dedicate this first number to my mother.”
Zoë, it turned out, had a lovely singing voice. It echoed throughout the complex both by virtue of electronic amplification and her own deuce. Security techs and inmates forgot what they were doing. After a few verses they started wandering aimlessly.
The cotton didn’t help much. Staying focused was a chore. Niobe chanted a mantra—elevator, elevator, elevator—as she half dragged Drake past scenes that could have been culled from some of the major riots of the 1960s. Her eyes watered, her nose ran freely, and her throat burned; somewhere, the techs had resorted to using tear gas. The HVAC system was circulating it through the complex faster than the filters could cleanse the air.
They hurried past one corridor where a pair of security techs grappled listlessly with an inmate. They had pepper spray and a Taser, but as long as Zoë sang, they couldn’t concentrate long enough to use them.
They rounded another corner. Niobe tripped over a body sprawled on the foor. Smitty lay faceup, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Unblinking. Blood trickled from his eyes and nose.
“Don’t look, Drake.” Niobe covered his eyes as she pulled him along.
They were halfway across the cafeteria when Christian appeared in the doorway. His lips moved soundlessly, as though he was struggling to form a coherent thought—Zoë’s deuce at work again. He gave up, holding out his hand palm out. Stop, it said.
“Christian . . .”
Screams echoed from farther up the corridor. Christian frowned, turned, then frantically scrabbled at his holster for his fléchette pistol. Niobe and Drake scrambled backward, away from a surge of heat. Torrents of fire swept down the corridor. They swirled around Christian, and then he was gone.
Dad . . .
Niobe concentrated on finding a detour, on getting Drake to the elevator. Later. I’ll think about it later.
Drake jumped when a section of the cinder blocks next to the gleaming steel elevator doors pulled away from the wall. Niobe tickled her son under the chin.
“I’m so proud of you, Zane.”
He nuzzled her hand with his tentacles, using one to push a key into the slot next to the elevator doors. They slid open without a sound.
“Going up.” Niobe ushered Drake into the elevator.
C’mon, kiddos. She beckoned to Zane, and mentally waved a finger at Zoë and Zenobia. All aboard.
Zane climbed her shoulder; Zenobia drifted through the walls toward the elevator; Zoë didn’t move.
I have to stay behind, Mom, she thought. Zane and Zen can help you on the road. But the longer I sing, the better your chances of getting away.
But—
Zenobia thought, You know we’re right, Mom.
Niobe cried. “No . . . ”
A tiny frown touched the corners of Drake’s mouth as he watched Niobe.
No! That’s not what we agreed on.
Zane laughed, ripples of marigold orange limned with hints of sorrowful cobalt.
“We agreed to this. I love you, Mom.” Mom-mom-mom . . .
Zenobia rematerialized halfway down the corridor from the elevator. “Almost there, Mom!”
“. . . Chomp, chomp, chomp . . . ” Sharky turned the corner. “. . . Chew, chew, ch—” He paused when he saw little Zenobia running toward Niobe and Drake in the elevator. “Love to eat them kiddies.” His grin was a flash of serrated enamel as he set off at a loping run. “Yes, yes, yes. Fat boys what I love to eat.”
“Zen! Run!” Niobe punched the button to close the door, but didn’t send the elevator up yet. The doors moved with agonizing slowness. She shielded Drake with her tail. “Drake, get behind me.” Sharky reached for Zenobia, but his fingers passed ineffectually through her mist. He swiped at her, hissing and spitting, as she wafted through the doors.
The doors stopped with just an inch between them. Sharky had wedged three claws into the gap. He slid the rest of his long, pallid digits into the space and pried the doors apart. “Bite they fat-boy heads off . . .”
Niobe used her tail to push Drake as far away from Sharky as the tight space allowed. “Stay away from him!”
Sharky stepped inside. The doors closed. The elevator started moving up. He took another step, shoved Niobe aside, and grabbed Drake—whose eyes had begun to glow—by the collar. “Nibble, nibble, nibble on his fat-boy face.”
Zane flashed the truest black Niobe had ever seen. Drake disappeared.
“What—” Sharky faltered.
Niobe reached for Drake, managed to get a handful of shirt, and yanked him out of the cannibal’s grasp.
Sharky lunged toward the corner where he’d thrown Niobe. But Zenobia leapt onto his back, and the pair dissolved into clouds of mist. The clouds passed harmlessly through Niobe.
Drake reappeared. Niobe shoved him to the opposite corner of the elevator. Zenobia released Sharky. One of his forearms was stuck inside the wall, up to the elbow. He flailed, tugging viciously at his encased limb. It didn’t budge.
“Let me go! Let me go, you bitch!” Niobe pulled Drake near the door, out of Sharky’s reach.
Zane, Zoë, Zenobia, I love you more than I can say. You’re good kids. And I’m proud to be your mom.
We love you, too, Mom. Somewhere down below, Zoë sang an old Vera Lynn song.
Niobe put an arm around Drake. “I’m gonna look out for you, Drake. I promise.” Tears made it sound unconvincing.
The elevator sped up, up, up, until it spat them into a cold, dark desert, big as the world but somehow smaller than her promise.
Mortality’s
Strong Hand
John Jos. Miller
RAY REACHE
D OUT TO grab the kid, saying, “You’re under arrest,” and Bugsy dissolved like smoke in his hands, green, razor-laced smoke that stung him a hundred times. He grimaced at the pain and the shrill whine of the telephone ringing by his bed stand.
Telephone. Shit. He’d been dreaming again, this time about that asshole Hive. How can you arrest a swarm of wasps? Ray opened his eyes and reached out in the darkness and grabbed the phone. “Yeah.”
“Mr. Ray.” He hated being called mister, but as Attorney General Rodham had explained to him numerous times, his status required it. He’d been director of SCARE—the Special Committee for Ace Resources and Endeavors—for a bewildering half year now. He still wasn’t sure it had been a good idea to take the job, but he hadn’t been able to resist President Kennedy’s request.
“Yeah.”
“Trouble.” Finally free of the cobwebs of nightmare, he recognized Dolan’s voice. Dolan was agent in charge of the night shift. Ray knew it had to be pretty serious to wake him—he squinted at the clock by his bedside—at 3:00 A.M.
“What.”
“There’s been an incident at BICC.”
Ray hated bureaucrateese, something which didn’t endear him to the agency lifers. “Incident?”
He could hear Dolan swallow. “Yes, sir. A riot. Actually, a riot and breakout. We’re still assembling data—”
“Christ. I’ll be right there. Call in everyone. This is going to be a bitch and a half.” Ray hung up the phone and sat up in bed. Why did shit like this always happen at 3:00 A.M.? He’d had just three hours of sleep, but it was the first time in two days he’d managed any at all. He was having trouble sleeping and when he did, he dreamed, and the dreams were worse than the sleeplessness. An arm snaked out from the other side of the bed and went around his flat, corded stomach.
“What is it, sugar—hey!”
He flicked on the overhead light and glanced at the girl. She was lean, blond, and naked with one well-tanned arm thrown up over her eyes, blocking the light. Jenny, from the secretarial pool. He’d been sleeping with blondes lately. Especially lean ones, with long legs and small breasts. The one time he’d taken a busty brunette to his bed had been a disaster. He rubbed his face with his hands. Can’t dwell on this shit, he thought. Don’t have time for it now.
“Sorry, Jen. Emergency. Got to get down to the office.”
She sat up in bed, short blond hair tousled, looking like a sleepy pixie. Ray didn’t notice.
“Oh.”
“Going to take a quick shower. Call you soon.”
“Oh.”
Ray went into the bathroom, jumped under the shower for perhaps twenty seconds, and gingerly patted himself dry. His hide was still peppered with angry red marks. They were slow to heal. Maybe he was allergic to that goddamn slacker Hive. He momentarily pictured his hands wrapped around Hive’s throat, but that was minor solace to his physical and mental pain. He had more worries now. There seemed an endless supply of them in this job. He dressed quickly in the walk-in closet off the bathroom. Jenny was gone by the time he returned. He took a moment to make the bed, then went out into the Washington night. In a way, he was thankful for the phone call. It saved him from that unpleasant morning awkwardness of shuffling off his latest one-night stand. He didn’t need that crap. Lately there was a lot of crap that he didn’t need. And some that wasn’t, he thought, that maybe he did.
The CIA had Langley, the FBI Quantico. SCARE had a suite of rooms in a Justice Department building on a floor that was partly outsourced to Fish and Game. Damned lousy budget, Ray thought.
Lights were already shining in the office windows as he alighted from the taxi. The place was hopping. He signed in at the security desk in the lobby and rode up to the seventh floor, turned right down the corridor (Fish and Game was to the left), and came to a reception area where half a dozen clerks and agents were hustling around pretending they knew what they were doing. Ray suspected they were just trying to get noticed.
At least Juliet Summers, his secretary, was on the ball. She had a pot of coffee ready as Ray strode through reception to Summers’s tiny private domain, and his office beyond. Summers, adopted out of Korea as an infant, had parlayed a job as a production assistant on American Hero into a SCARE position. A holdover from Callendar’s regime, she was efficient, hardworking, and quite reliable. Cute, in a waifish way, only five feet tall and petite all over, with short bobbed hair and dark, intent eyes. She wore expensive business suits and always looked immaculate, even at four in the morning. If she’d been a man Ray would have asked her the name of her tailor. The tattoos flashing over her skin sometimes repelled, sometimes intrigued him. He often wondered what she looked like naked, but that was not an uncommon thought for Ray to have about an attractive woman. He was pretty sure she was hot for him, but he wasn’t about to mess around with that. Good secretaries were harder to find than one-night stands. She followed him into his office and closed the door on the chaos behind. Inside, it was quiet and neat, just like Ray liked.
“Talk to me, Ink,” he said. She handed him a steaming mug of coffee as he perched on the edge of his desk. Its spotless surface was marred only by a basket with a neatly stacked pile of memoranda that Ray was supposed to have read.
“We’re still trying to sort out exactly what happened. The reports from BICC have been confusing. We know there was a riot. Casualties. We know some of the detainees escaped.”
“Shit. Names?”
“Sharky. The Racist. Genetrix—”
“She was a trusty,” Ray said, outraged.
“Now she’s an escapee.” Ink paused. Ray sensed more bad news coming. “Drake Thomas.”
“Son of a bitch.” As SCARE director he’d been privy to the memo on the kid they’d dubbed Little Fat Boy, and he had read it. Drake’s escape was about the worst news imaginable. Chumps like Sharky and the Racist were small change in the wild card world. Sure, they were murderous thugs, but murderous thugs were a penny a dozen. Kids who caused nuclear explosions were rather more unique. In fact, there was already a signed termination order in case the kid ever did slip his leash. Ray didn’t like the thought of taking down kids, but Drake had already accounted for Pyote, Texas. What if he’d let loose in El Paso or, say, a city that someone would actually miss? They had to find him, fast.
Ray rubbed his face, thinking. “Do they know up the chain yet?”
“AG Rodham’s waiting for your report.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ray said again. Knowing his boss, she’d blame him for the fuckup even though he’d been thousands of miles away and it was probably all that asshole Justice’s fault. Rodham was a treacherous bitch, and ambitious as hell. To her, AG was just a springboard to a higher position. She hadn’t been in favor of Ray’s appointment as SCARE director, and Ray knew why. She was jealous of his press, which, of course, was ironic. He’d never in his life sought out the media. It just found him. He couldn’t help it if he was colorful. Rodham, on the other hand, lived for publicity. Lusted for it. Probably why she’d never married. She couldn’t stand to share the spotlight with anyone, and she’d be very happy to get rid of Ray and replace him with another bland asshole like Callendar.
Yeah, he thought, and what’s your excuse? For a second he didn’t know what he was thinking about, and then it hit him. She’d never been far from his mind since she’d left, but thoughts of the Angel intruding on business time were unproductive. Even dangerous. It didn’t help that he had no real answer for that son of a bitch in his head asking these stupid questions. She’s gone, asshole, he told him. Deal with it. I’ve got Rodham to deal with. She’d use this sorry mess as another excuse to chew on his ass. She was already on him to fly to Hollywood to recruit promising contestants from the second season of American Hero. Promising. Yeah. He’d seen their dossiers. Buffalo Gal. Eight feet tall, horny, hairy, and humped. Fucking great. Or maybe Professor Polka and his frigging accordion. One bullet in the bellows and the dancing would stop, wouldn’t it? Christ. Well, he wasn�
�t inclined to put up with errands like that. Important shit had to be done, and he needed to do it. Trips to Hollywood, endless meetings talking budgets, hiring quotas, mission statements for the twenty-first century, blah, blah, blah. Only one solution to this problem.
Road trip.
Ray looked at Ink, his gaze narrowed. “Whistle me up a Lear. I’m headed for BICC. When Hillary calls tell her I’ll report on conditions as I observe them personally.”
Ink cleared her throat. “Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”
The “sir” irritated him. He didn’t like hearing it, especially since most of the time it was insincere blather covering up the speaker’s real feelings. He wished he had someone he trusted to discuss problems with. Someone who would tell him the truth. Someone to make up for what he realized was sometimes his own hardheadedness and, let’s face it, recklessness. He saw where this train of thought was heading and consciously derailed it. He almost sighed, but stopped. It was all over when you started sighing to yourself.
“Hell, no,” Ray said. “But that’s what I’m doing. Who’s on the EDR?”
That was another thing about this fucking job. He’d been talking in acronyms ever since taking it. Ray watched a Chinese-style dragon fly through a bank of puffy clouds and glide across Ink’s left cheek as she leafed through the memoranda in the in-tray, eventually finding the Emergency Duty Roster. “It’s a light night,” she reported. “Just Crypto and Stuntman.”
Ray nodded. Crypto was a longtime SCARE man. He was good at figuring out codes and shit, but not much in a fight. Stuntman was another hire out of that American Hero crap. In fact, he’d won the damn thing, but apparently his hoped-for movie career had never developed, so he’d gone into government service. Ray had never worked with him, but had read his file. He was supposed to be pretty much indestructible. That was something, at least.
“All right,” he said. “Crypto can stay home and work his crossword puzzles. Tell Stuntman to meet me at the airport.” Ray’s face was looking fairly normal, though his smile was still crooked. It was almost endearing. “What can I bring you back from New Mexico?” he asked. “How about a piñata?”
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