“There’s no reason for you and me to go any further,” Duran said to her, clutching her arm. “You wanted to stop Children of Earth, but we’re too late for that. There’s nothing up there now but Redmen, according to Knile’s friends.”
“He’s right,” Knile said. “You two should get out of here.”
“No. I’m going to follow this through,” Zoe said, taking out her .38 and casually checking the rounds. “Right to the end.”
“That’s not necessary,” Knile said. “Really.”
“Listen,” she said to Knile, “you saved my life down there. I told you I’d help you in return. So far, I’ve only taken an elevator ride with you. I wouldn’t call it even just yet.”
Knile opened his mouth, intending to dissuade her, but then he considered. If they made it to the roof and had to take on the Redmen, two more guns wouldn’t go astray. On the other hand, Duran was still a loose cannon that would be better off left behind. Who knew when he might snap and try to put a bullet in Knile’s head?
If Knile could choose, he would rather that the two of them simply fled while they had the chance.
Suddenly, two of the nearby elevators lit up, heralding the imminent arrival of more passengers.
“We have to go,” Knile said, responding quickly. He climbed into the RECS. “If those are Redmen on their way, they’re not going to waste time asking questions.” He swung the door shut and looked out at Zoe and Duran. “You two need to make a decision.”
Duran pulled Zoe back toward the open elevator. “Zoe, come on–”
“No!” she said, wrenching herself free of his grip. “You can run if you want to, Alec, but I’m not backing out of this.”
Knile got the RECS moving again, lurching across the smoking ruin of the Atrium, his thoughts moving from Alec Duran to the blackened elevator doors that lay waiting in the central column not far away.
35
Ursie placed the last wedge of toast in her mouth, then slid off the cot and got to her feet. She stepped over to the door and grabbed the handle.
She had to get out of here. As much as the very thought of it made her feel sick to the stomach, she had to leave this cramped apartment and make her way out into the habitat.
The time for sitting around had passed.
“Where you goin’, Missy?” Tobias said behind her.
She turned to regard him as he sat watching her from the corner of the room, a steaming mug of tea clasped in his withered hands.
“I have to go out,” she said, her words slurring slightly as she talked around the mouthful of toast.
“Out?” Tobias said. He sounded disappointed. “Out where?”
Ursie considered how to phrase her response. Even though she didn’t want to lie to the old man, she was also reluctant to give away too much about her true intentions.
She decided upon replying with a watered down version of the truth.
“I’m going to have a look around. A friend down on Earth wants to know all about what goes on in the habitat.”
“Is that why you wanted those ol’ floorplans I got for you? So you could find your way around?”
She shrugged and swallowed the last of her toast. “Yeah, I guess.”
Tobias glanced down at the bench next to him. “Your tea is still awaitin’, if you have a mind to drink it.”
“Sure, when I get back.”
Tobias beamed at her. “All right, then.”
She smiled back, hoping that the sadness she felt inside was somehow concealed by the gesture.
She had a very strong feeling, bordering on premonition, that she would never see Tobias again.
The old man watched her over the rim of his cup of tea as she closed the door, and then she turned up the corridor, hugging her borrowed coat tighter to her chest.
Ahead, the concourse awaited, and the insanity of what she was about to do suddenly hit her with full force.
She was going to try entering the mind of one of the Redmen.
Van Asch had warned her against doing this. He’d told her that Redmen were trained in protecting themselves, that if she tried to reach out with her abilities they would discover her secret. On the other hand, practically every word that had tumbled from van Asch’s mouth had been a lie. Perhaps this was, too.
Or perhaps it wasn’t.
In any case, this was something she needed to do. So far, she’d provided Knile with almost nothing. The floorplans were a start, but they were hardly an earth-shattering revelation. She could tell that he was still sceptical about her, that in a way he was humouring her, waiting for her to prove her worth.
If she could get inside the head of one of the Redmen, find out something significant about the security here in Habitat Thirty-One, that might be enough to convince him that she was the real deal.
Perhaps it was the only thing that might convince him.
She’d been putting this moment off for days, hoping to figure out a safer way to glean more information about the habitat, but she couldn’t come up with any other answer.
This was the only way. If she didn’t build up the courage to go ahead with it, she might as well resign herself to the idea of living out the rest of her days stuffed in the tiny closet that passed for Tobias’ apartment, eating toast and sipping mugs of tea and staring at the ceiling while she whittled away the endless hours of nothingness.
That just would not do. She would rather die now than be consigned to that fate.
She moved up the stairs, then proceeded along the narrow hallway beyond. She felt stronger physically than she had the last time she had been outside the apartment, when she had obtained the longwave from Heck. That was a plus, at least, but if things went bad out there, she didn’t see herself sprinting anywhere to elude capture.
Just keep going, she thought. You can do this.
She exited the hallway and stepped into the concourse, then looked around.
Out here, everything seemed like business as usual. There were people bustling around, chatting and browsing the goods offered by stores that lined the edges of the thoroughfare. Couriers hauled pallets of cargo this way and that, and passengers bore suitcases and bags as they headed to and from the departure area.
That was the place where she had discovered van Asch’s true nature as they had tried to flee the habitat.
She shivered at the thought of the encounter.
Beyond that, she could dimly see the dark, circular doorway that led to the Skywalk, beside which she had first met Tobias.
Through the windows in the ceiling high above she could see Earth half in shadow. She briefly wondered what Knile and his collaborators might be up to right now. She hadn’t heard back from him in a day or so.
Forget about that. Just do your job.
Not far away she saw one of the Redmen silently surveying the crowd. He had his back to her as he looked out across the concourse. On the other side of the thoroughfare was a second Redman, a man in his early twenties with a dark complexion.
Neither were paying any attention to Ursie. So far so good.
She strode over to the nearest retail outlet, which looked to be a travel agency of sorts, and tried to remain inconspicuous. Images of strange and beautiful worlds, orbs of dazzling white and radiant blue, scrolled across the display screens – moons that contained habitats in the Outworlds, Ursie decided – although she knew none of them by name. She remembered seeing the same images upon arriving in the habitat with van Asch and speculating about which of them she might see with her own eyes one day.
It all seemed like such folly now.
“Good afternoon,” the attendant said from behind the counter. Ursie turned to look at her. She wore a spotless maroon uniform with matching pillbox hat, which somehow made her look oddly old-fashioned. “If you’re interested, we have plenty of amazing destinations across the Outworlds waiting for you. Where can I take you today?”
Ursie gave her what she hoped looked like an easy smile. “Just looking around,
thanks.”
The woman nodded and returned her attention to the terminal before her, where she seemed to be browsing idly through online apparel.
Urise glanced back at the nearest Redman. He was still paying her no attention whatsoever.
She braced herself. This was as good a chance as she was going to get.
C’mon, c’mon, she urged herself. Get it over with.
She took a deep breath, then opened her mind as she had alway done when reading the thoughts of others. The tendrils of her mind swam toward the Redman. That now familiar pain returned, the throbbing behind her eyeballs that she had experienced when she’d reached out to Heck in order to convince him to give her the longwave. She tried to ignore the discomfort, concentrate on the task at hand. There could not be any slip-ups. Not here. Not with the Redmen.
One careless move would have dire consequences.
She searched, pushing gently with her mind against the Redman, but she found nothing in response. She shifted her feet uncomfortably, took another deep breath, and tried again. A few moments later she relented, the pain in her head reaching unbearable levels. She gasped inadvertently and squeezed her eyes shut.
Not a thing. Not a goddamn thing. This guy’s head is locked up tighter than a fish’s asshole.
She snapped her eyes open again, wary of making a scene. Inside the travel agency, the woman was still staring at the terminal, oblivious to what Ursie was doing.
Don’t panic. Try the next Redman.
Ursie edged to the side in order to get a clearer view of the young Redman on the other side of the concourse. He was further away than she would have liked, but certainly not outside her range. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her head, she reached out again.
And once again, she came up empty. No matter how hard she tried, she could not break into the Redman’s head. Not a single image, a single thought filtered through.
She’d never encountered anything remotely like this before. She might as well have been trying to read the mind of a slab of concrete for all the progress she was making.
These Redmen were evidently too well trained to let even the slightest fragment of their thoughts slip out.
Well, this is a bust.
Ursie sighed, defeated, and wondered what to do next. If all of the Redmen proved to be so impenetrable, she wasn’t going to get a single iota of information out of them. That meant she would have find some other target.
But who?
As she pondered that thought, something else occurred to her, a thought that chilled her to the bone.
When she’d opened her mind to the Redmen, she should have been confronted by thoughts from all of those others around her as well. There should have been dozens of thought streams wafting toward her, emanating from all of those shop attendants, couriers and citizens making their way across the concourse.
Yet, she had felt nothing. Not a single impression or image.
A terrifying thought entered her mind.
You’ve lost your power. You’ve lost your abilities.
She thought back to the fight with van Asch, to that brutal encounter that had left her debilitated and in excruciating pain for an entire week. Had something broken inside her head during their battle? In defeating van Asch, had she somehow destroyed the part of her mind that allowed her to read others’ thoughts?
That can’t be. What about Heck? I connected to him. I influenced him to give me the longwave.
Panicked, she whipped her head back to the woman in the pillbox hat, opened her mind up again.
Nothing.
There was no way every single person spread out across the concourse was trained to block out psychers. No way. Who would have wasted their time training the goddamn travel girl, for fuck’s sake?
There was only one explanation. Ursie’s powers were gone. That moment with Heck, when she had thought she’d influenced his mind, had been a simple misinterpretation on her part. When she’d almost passed out, Heck must simply have taken pity on her.
Heck had made the decision to give her the longwave of his own volition, and Ursie had mistakenly taken credit for it.
Her powers were gone. No question about that now.
She felt as though she were about to throw up. Weakly, she pushed herself away from the counter and prepared to walk away.
The nearest Redman had turned, and now he was staring at her.
Ursie felt her heart skip a beat. She recognised this man, his angular nose and square jaw. It was the Redman who had been arguing with the technician at the departure gate when she and van Asch had attempted to make their way through a week ago.
Worse still, she saw that the Redman recognised her as well.
“You,” he said, lifting a gloved hand in her direction. “Stop right there.”
“I’m sorry,” Ursie croaked as she backed away, “but I’m late for uh… an appointment. I have to leave.”
The Redman closed the distance between them in only three or four strides, then reached out and gripped her coat with powerful fingers.
“No,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
36
The Consortium technicians, Keller and Harald, were growing more agitated by the second. They had quickly progressed from a state of mild irritation to something bordering on panic, snapping at each other with shrill voices that easily cut above the howl of the wind.
Nearby, Talia could relate to how they were feeling. Her own misgivings were beginning to gnaw at her insides, causing a faint sense of nausea that was gradually growing stronger as the minutes passed.
Things were happening too fast, and their backup hadn’t arrived yet. There was no sign of Team Omega, nor Knile and Roman, and that made her feel exposed and alone on the roof. She and Silvestri had stalled the techs for as long as they could, but there was only so long that they could tread water. Sooner or later the technicians would figure out that they were up to something, and then the Redmen would become involved.
And that moment was drawing close.
“This is bullshit,” Keller said, hammering away at the dead terminal before him with little effect. “Something’s not right.”
“Was it the explosion, Mr. Keller?” Harald said, hovering at his elbow nervously.
“The explosion? What are you, an idiot? For a start, the terminal died before the explosion. Second, why is it only the comms box that went offline? The railcar monitoring systems are still functional.”
Keller glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, as he kept a watchful eye on Talia and the others. After a moment he turned back to the terminal.
Talia looked around at her companions. She wasn’t sure if the others were aware of the technician’s demeanour, having been clustered together in a deep discussion for the last several minutes. Deciding that she needed to take action, she sidled over to Silvestri, where he and Holger were speaking in muted tones.
“Silvestri,” she whispered, grabbing him by the arm. “These guys are onto us. We need to do something.”
“I know that,” Silvestri said, “but our plan never involved taking on the Redmen by ourselves.” He looked across at where the men in crimson were continuing their own heated discussion. “Even though they’re down to three, we still need Iris and the rest of Team Omega to give ourselves a fighting chance against them.”
“So where is she? Has she been in contact since the explosion?”
Silvestri shook his head glumly and touched his hand to his earpiece.
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Then we have to assume they’re not going to make it at all. If Knile and Roman can’t get through, we’ll be on our own.”
“And those two probably aren’t going to significantly increase our likelihood of overpowering the Redmen, even if they make it,” Silvestri mused. “They’re not exactly seasoned warriors.”
There was another angry shout from Keller, and then he threw his hands in the air in disgust.
“We’re not gett
ing anywhere. Get the longwave,” Keller said to Harald. “We’ll call it in and see what they want us to do.”
Harald nodded and began to move across toward a storage unit nearby, but suddenly Holger materialised to block his way.
“Say,” the brawler said, grinning, “where can I buy food around here?”
Harald scowled at him. “Huh?”
“A friend of mine told me there were some kick-ass roasted peanuts you could buy up here. I could really go some of those right now.”
“Uh, no,” Harald said, stepping around him. “Excuse me, I need to–”
“Don’t hold out on me,” Holger said, moving to block his path. “Share the goodness, man.”
Harald glanced back at his colleague. “Mr. Keller? Can you talk to this guy?”
Keller had been busily ripping open a panel on the comms terminal, and now he straightened, his frustration evident.
“Get the hell out of the way, pal,” Keller said.
“Roast-ed… pea-nuts,” Holger said, enunciating each syllable with great exaggeration, as if he were talking to a simpleton. He glared at each of the technicians in turn. “Where are they?”
Keller turned to the Redmen not far away. “Hey! Little help, here? This guy is being a jerk.”
However, the Redmen paid no attention to Keller, remaining in a tight group as they continued their discussion. Harald started forward again, and this time Holger planted a large hand in his chest and pushed him backward, sending him sprawling.
“Hey!” Keller screamed. “You can’t do that! Get away from him!”
Now the Redmen did turn their heads. The one with gold strips on his shoulders moved first, heading toward them with a surly expression on his face. He was the one who had led the reinforcements down the elevator and then returned again a short time later, and from Lazarus’ description, Talia assumed this was the captain.
“Time’s up,” Talia said to Silvestri. She reached down and tightened the leather strap around her forearm instinctively. “You better–”
A voice suddenly came through her earpiece. “Talia?”
Skybreach (The Reach #3) Page 26