by Peter Liney
He turned to Nora Jagger. She glared daggers at me one last time, then reluctantly nodded, giving her assent.
“Tie her up,” I told him.
You could see how scared he was—the whole time he was doing it he was visibly shaking. I got him to help her up and sit her in a chair, then secure her with bandages from his bag, covering him with my laser to make sure he did a good job. She cursed evilly and endlessly, most of it directed at me, but also at the doc and the Specials outside, leaving no doubt what she’d do to all of us if she ever got the chance. I gotta say, the range and venom of it, it was pretty hard to ignore. She got herself into a real crazy frothing frenzy, cursing and spitting, until eventually I decided I’d had enough and stuck a couple of plasters over her mouth.
I didn’t want to hear that, and I didn’t think the doc did either. She should’ve been locked away long ago, or maybe put to sleep; anything other than having someone like her at large in the community.
I wouldn’t’ve admitted it, but I gotta say, her ranting did rattle me a bit, so much so, in fact, that I decided to hang onto that arm of hers, ignoring the fact that it was still dripping gray sludge, figuring that in terms of trying to escape, it would put her at one helluva disadvantage.
“Let’s go,” I said to Dr. Simon. “And you try anything, I’m really gonna enjoy blowing your brains out all over that expensive shirt.”
He led me to this door hidden behind a screen. It was only as I was about to follow him through that I glanced back and noticed a further door in the corner. I hesitated for a moment, then went to take a quick look, just in case. It was a games room, with full-wall screens, but there was no one in there and I left without giving it another thought.
The doc took me down what I guessed was a VIP emergency escape route, constantly turning around and glancing back like he expected to see Nora Jagger coming after us at any moment.
“She’s not gonna find her way outta that any time soon,” I reassured him.
“I hope not,” he muttered, unable to stop himself taking yet another glance back. “I’ve never seen her that angry. You caught her the one time she has her prosthetics off. That’s why there were guards on the door. Normally she wouldn’t remove them for any reason.”
I don’t know if it was ’cuz I was distracted or what, but we turned a blind corner and suddenly came face to face with a couple of Specials—someone had obviously remembered the escape route and sent them in the other way.
I didn’t give them time to draw their weapons—nor me mine—I just swung at them with the only thing available, which was Nora Jagger’s arm. Jeez, I didn’t know what that thing was made of, but it sure packed a punch; both of them ended up on the ground, laid out cold by the arm of a woman who was tied up a couple of corridors back.
I turned around, half-expecting to see Dr. Simon making a run for it, but he was cowering in the corner, his main concern apparently whether he’d messed up his fancy clothes or not.
“Come on,” I ordered.
For a while we kinda half-walked, half-jogged, in silence; he was still occasionally glancing back, but I could also sense him turning things over, weighing up the situation.
“Lena’s fine,” he told me, plainly trying to ingratiate himself. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Pardon me if I don’t believe a word you say.”
“Listen! For God’s sake—! You saw her!” he cried, obviously referring to Nora Jagger. “She frightens the hell out of me!”
I was tempted to concede the point, but however much I agreed about how scary that woman was, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let him off that easily. “A pregnant woman?” I sneered, like he should be ashamed of himself, being a doctor and all.
He went quiet for a moment and I thought maybe he was feeling guilty, reciting that Hippocratic Oath to himself, but I was wrong; he had a much bigger surprise for me.
“It’s not just that, is it?” he said.
“What d’ya mean?”
He paused midstride and stared into my face. “You do know, don’t you?” he asked.
“I know everything,” I told him, dragging him on. “I know about the satellites, people being poisoned, Infinity trying to hush it up. And probably, ’cuz Lena lived in the tunnels all those years, that her and the baby’s organs are worth a fortune.”
He never commented, just looked as if he was waiting for me to say more, and I began to feel uneasy. “What?”
“And?”
“What d’ya mean, ‘and’?”
“You don’t know, do you?” he asked.
Jeez, why were people always saying stuff like that to me? I couldn’t help being a dumb old big guy. Did I ever pretend to be anything else? I turned and gave him a real hostile flash of the look.
“Living underground hasn’t just kept her healthy, Clancy, it’s kept her uncompromised.”
“I know that!” I replied impatiently. He still wasn’t telling me anything new.
“She’s a healthy, young, pregnant woman,” he said, emphasizing each and every word.
“Thank God for that,” I commented.
“. . . The only one.”
Now it was my turn to pause midstride. “What d’you mean?”
“There are no others.”
I stared into his face, searching for an angle, a way he was trying to trick me. “You’re lying.”
“No! I promise you, as far as we know—in the City anyway—there hasn’t been a successful pregnancy for several years.”
I dragged him on again, resuming our hurried progress, trying to pretend I was unimpressed when in fact I was utterly overwhelmed. Jesus! Gigi had mentioned something about seeing no babies—that was the reason: there were none.
“So what were you planning on doing?” I asked.
He shrugged, like there was only one rational course of action. “Deliver the baby—all those healthy genes, stem cells—and sperm! Think of all that wonderful fertile sperm—”
“Jesus Christ!” I protested.
“It’s a boy,” he told me.
“I guessed that,” I said, knowing that at some point that might be a cause for celebration.
“You can’t take her, Clancy! You owe it to humankind—”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said, not believing I’d once had so much respect for that man.
“Please!” he begged, but I just shoved him on.
He lapsed into silence, leading me down yet another corridor, plainly still deep in thought. I was just starting to get that bit impatient, to wonder if he was up to something, when he stopped at a door much like the one that had led off Nora Jagger’s quarters. And ya wanna know something? This time I could actually feel Lena, I could smell her, the second the door slid open.
I started to shake, telling myself I had to be careful, that it was everything I maintained my concentration: now would be the worst time of my life to make a mistake. I entered as cautiously as I could, checking the room for any suspicion of an ambush, completely ignoring the figure I could feel lying on the bed ’til finally I simply couldn’t do it anymore.
She was just lying there, unquestionably tranquilized, staring at me as if she was unable to take it in, her wrists electronically clamped at her side.
“Clancy?” she whispered, like she couldn’t believe it, that it was just another dream.
I switched off the locks, allowing myself to give her just the briefest of hugs. As much as I wanted to live that moment, to kiss her, hold her, even cry a tear or two, I knew it was everything that we got away.
“Come on,” I said, helping her out of bed, relieved to find her dressed.
“What’s that?” she asked dazedly, frowning at Nora Jagger’s arm.
I just shook my head; explanations would have to wait for later. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
I turned and glared at Dr. Simon. “He’ll show us.”
The doc took us out a different door, down another of those interminable long
corridors and through some heavy double-doors into a ward I instantly had a bad reaction to. My first thought, with the line of beds in front of me, was that it was a recovery room, but then I noticed other things: bars on the windows, equipment and apparatus that looked in no way beneficial to anyone’s health. People had been tortured there—in fact, if I listened real closely, I swear I could hear them still screaming.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked, but the doc ignored me, heading toward the door at the far end of the room.
I don’t know if it was the place that distracted me, or maybe ’cuz Lena was still a little groggy and leaning her warm body against mine, but I must’ve had a momentary lapse of concentration, ’cuz the doc saw his opportunity and suddenly, instead of being a couple of paces in front of us, was a dozen or more.
At first it didn’t seem like a disaster, just a pathetic attempt to escape, but I’d underestimated the guy. The reason he’d been so deep in thought was ’cuz he’d been planning how to lure us into a trap.
He started shouting at the top of his voice, so excited that at first I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and nor could the voice recognition system either, not until he slowed down and his words became that bit clearer.
“Lockdown! Lockdown!” he screamed, and heavy bars descended from the ceiling, creating various different compartments in the room, with us in the central one and him in the one with the door.
I dropped Nora Jagger’s prosthetic arm, fumbling for my laser, intending to force him to free us, but he was out of that room surprisingly quickly.
“I’m sorry!” he called back, once he was outside. “You can’t take her! You don’t have the right!”
“Come back here!” I shouted, but already I could hear his running footsteps fading up the corridor.
“Shit!” I cursed.
“No!” Lena wailed, “I should’ve remembered this wasn’t the way out!”
“You been here before?”
“They brought me here after I tried escaping. Don’t worry,” she said, seeing the reaction on my face, “they didn’t do much. Too scared of harming the baby.”
I paused for a moment. “You know?”
“Yeah . . . Sorry,” she said, as if even amongst all that was happening, it should’ve been acknowledged.
And there, trapped in a torture chamber in the Infinity building, with God knows who on their way, we actually took a moment to briefly unite in celebration over what we’d created. I know that might sound a little crazy when we had far more pressing problems to deal with, but that was what we did.
“How do we get out of here?” I asked, as we reluctantly broke away from each other.
Lena just sighed and shook her head: it was hopeless, and I guess I’d known before I’d asked the question. Out of sheer frustration I picked up Nora Jagger’s artificial arm and swung it at the bars, and was amazed to see one buckle slightly. Jesus, what is that thing made of? I swung again, this time bending the bar substantially. I was about to try once more, to give it everything I had, when a group of Specials came running down the corridor and into the room.
I had no choice. Even though I’d drawn my laser, I knew there was no way I could get involved in a fire-fight, not with Lena and the baby right next to me.
“Let it go,” one of the Specials told me. “Nice and easy.”
With a sigh I dropped it, the laser clattering to the floor.
“Kick it under the bars.”
I kicked it with such frustration that it shot across the room and kinda lodged under an air-conditioning unit. Dr. Simon peered around the frame of the doorway, making sure it was safe before reentering. To be fair to the guy, he didn’t look that pleased with himself.
“This is much bigger than you two,” he muttered, seemingly more to himself than anyone.
I was about to tell that slimy bastard exactly what I thought of him, what I’d do if I ever got the chance, when I heard another sound approaching down the corridor. At first I couldn’t believe it—it couldn’t be, not here. And yet those familiar clanking pneumatic footsteps, the slurp-slurp of every stride, it couldn’t be anything else. There was a growler approaching.
I turned to Lena, noticing as I put my arm around her that her eyes were almost clear of whatever she’d been given. Or maybe it was just fear shining through . . .
And yet, as the footsteps drew closer, it occurred to me that there was something different about them—no less frightening, and in fact, when I looked around I could see the Specials were every bit as intimidated as we were. They sounded less busy, less repetitive somehow, and it soon struck me why; whatever it was wasn’t moving on four legs but two. It wasn’t a growler at all—but I reckon I might’ve preferred it if it had been.
I guess it’s a similar technology, maybe it was even where she got the idea: the way those things can instantly rend flesh and bone into nothing is probably something she admires. Nora Jagger came striding into the room and I gotta say, if she’d been unnerving before, naked and without prosthetics, she was utterly terrifying now. Those eyes damn near bored through me with their white heat, and her scowl would’ve sent the sun screaming back to the horizon.
She never said a word, just glared at me as she gestured to one of the Specials to release the lockdown. The bars rose and she walked over, snatching her artificial arm away.
I tell ya, it was the weirdest thing. She just pushed it up the empty sleeve of her coat, with no ceremony at all, and as it got close to the stump of her arm it almost seemed to come to life, like some kind of animal wriggling up there, going into its hole.
“You must be the biggest fool ever,” she told me. “Did you really think you were just going to come waltzing in here and take your little maid?”
“I’m the father of the child!” I blurted out, like it gave me the right to do whatever I wanted.
“Yeah, well, let’s hope it doesn’t inherit your brain,” she said, checking her arm, that it felt right. Apparently satisfied, she whirled around, scanning the room, as if, now that she was whole again, she had a little business to attend to. “Who was in charge of guarding my quarters?” she asked.
For the first time I noticed the older Special, the one I’d sneaked past while he’d been looking out the window. He wasn’t gonna answer her, you could see that. He was one of five lined up a little like they were on parade, that she began to circle around, glaring into their faces, waiting for one of them to crack.
When it happened, it was so swift, so brutal, it took your breath away. She suddenly lurched forward, grabbed the older guy and spun him around, getting him in a full nelson. The others panicked, scrambling outta the way, presumably ’cuz they’d seen similar scenes before. But I hadn’t.
Jesus! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. She just squeezed and squeezed, with those incredibly powerful arms of hers, and at first the guy was bewilderingly silent, almost compliant—then he began to scream, to squeal like a pig being butchered. You could hear the crack as both his arms came out of their sockets, as his body began to break apart, but she hadn’t finished with him yet. She just kept on applying pressure, those prosthetic arms locked at the back of his neck, pushing him down, doubling him over, ’til eventually—and God help me, I’ll never get the image outta my mind—the flesh and bone simply gave way. His head detached from his shoulders and plopped on down onto the floor, rolling a little ways then stopping, briefly rocking back and forth.
There were muffled cries and gasps and one of the Specials looked away, retching repeatedly, and Lena and me took refuge in each other’s arms.
“Clear it away!” Nora Jagger barked, then turned back to me, her sudden smile making her even more repulsive. “Get the picture?” she asked.
I never replied but I discreetly shuffled away from Lena. I was the one under threat and I didn’t want to put her at risk. Anyways, what could I say? All the things I’ve seen in my life, the bad old days, even the very worst atrocities, were as nothing compared
to this. This was violence of an order I could never have even imagined. And yet no matter how shocked I was, how concerned I’d be next, it still hadn’t distracted me from the question that had reared up in my mind the moment Nora Jagger had entered the room: how the hell had she got free so quickly? I’d checked those bandages myself; there was no way she was going anywhere, and the door to the outer corridor had been jammed shut. We should’ve been well away before anyone was able to release her. I just didn’t get it—and being the witch she was, she read it in my eyes.
“Yeah, like I said, none too bright,” she sneered. “You should’ve searched my quarters properly . . . I had a guest.”
I cursed to myself as my thoughts immediately went to that games room.
“A friend of mine,” she told me, “. . . and yours.” She waited for me to say something, but I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. “Come on in, my little stool pigeon!” she called to someone obviously out in the corridor, breaking into yet another wickedly self-satisfied smile. “Or should that be . . . ‘seagull’?”
It was one of those moments when you’re so shocked your brain simply refuses to handle it. I just gaped at the door, staring at who was standing there, desperate for everything to go on rewind. Gigi came shuffling in, not looking at me but still exuding a certain air of defiance.
“Oh, Jeez!” I groaned, collapsing inside as I instantly recognized that I should’ve known. She always had that slight air of mystery about her; always knew way too much for someone who’d only been off the Island the same amount of time we had. Her story about being recruited by one of the guys off the garbage boats had sounded plausible, and maybe it was true; the only thing was, at some point she’d obviously been recruited by Infinity as well. No wonder she wouldn’t tell us where she lived, and why she was so cagey about the organization she’d joined. She had friends on the inside, all right—right at the very top.
“Why?” I asked her.
It was the obvious question, but I should’ve known how she’d answer—with one of her all-too-typical shrugs.
“When times are tough,” Nora Jagger chipped in, “people’ll sell anything. Even their soul.”