“—we’ll intercede,” Agravaine interjected.
My thermal beeped once. I was back down to 59 degrees.
“No matter what,” Ash said, “Knox can never be wakened. His actions convinced congress to close Mythcorp. It’s his fault our kind was hunted during the Purge. Once Crowley is awake, we’ll deal with Knox.”
“And what happens when Morgan and his friends try to stop you?” I took a swig of Nanex. It would be a shame to go ‘statue’ right outside the door to the room holding the one man on the planet capable of lifting my curse.
“Anyone who stands with Knox,” Ash said slowly, “will fall with Knox.”
That didn’t leave much room for argument, so I didn’t argue.
“Run back to Officer Graham and ask him to come to room—” Ash ordered Lamorak while crossing the hall to read the room number off the door opposite CRYONICS “—one-eleven. After that, go and find Nimrod. We’re going to need his skills shortly.”
I liked how he said ‘ask’, like it would be a request and not a Mes-frigging-mer.
Once Lamorak was out of sight, the three of us entered room 111 and closed the door behind us. There was a large window with blinds (coated with fifteen years worth of dust) through which we would peek across the hall. Another single beep from my thermal: 58.
I also noticed that Ash had left his key card in the lock.
A couple minutes later Officer Graham came shuffling around the corner. Ash beckoned him inside. Five or six minutes after that (in the interval I’d noticed Officer Grahams’ hands jittering worse than before, and his eyes were flicking side to side, so I’d situated myself between him and Ash) Morgan marched down the hall.
He looked banged up and generally in worse shape than Officer Graham. Flanking Morgan was a red-headed man who didn’t so much walk as saunter, like he knew something no one else did; on the other side of Morgan marched a short fierce-looking woman dressed in tattered clothes. Her long black hair waved as she bounced down the hall, shimmering every time it caught a stray moonbeam. Behind them, struggling to keep up was a familiar-looking dwarf.
“Whoa,” I whispered before I could stop myself. “Ash, that’s Izzy Macawber. I have Science with her. She has nothing to do with Knox. You can’t hurt her.”
“That’s up to her,” he murmured.
“What!”
Agravaine clamped a hand around my mouth and yanked me to the floor. I grabbed his hand and peeled the fingers back. He stepped off. Fragile indeed. Hmmm.
I gave Ash my best Evil Eye. Or at least, I thought I did. Either way he wasn’t paying attention to me, his focus was on the big CRYONICS door across the hall, where Morgan and his weird friends were lingering. “Where the hell is Malthus?” Ash hissed.
I smiled. Couldn’t help it. “Nimrod went after him, remember?”
The group babbled among themselves for a few seconds, and then Morgan pulled something that looked like a silver pen from his jeans front pocket. He fiddled with it, stepped up to the lock and, after wriggling his arms a bit, turned the handle. He then stepped back.
“He picked the lock,” Ash said, awe flavoring his voice.
The fierce-looking woman brushed everybody back and then shoulder-slammed the door. Under her strength it blew open. A hiss of air gushed out of the Cryonics lab. I caught a whiff of cloves and bleach.
The little Xena withdrew what looked like a machete from a sheath on her back and entered. The red-head and Izzy followed, Morgan taking up the rear. From the cool blue light inside the lab, we watched him pause, turn around to scan the hall, and then remove Ash’s hard won card key. Apparently satisfied, he closed the door behind him. The two red lights returned.
“F---!” spat Ash.
I followed him out into the hall. “Yeah. Didn’t count on that, did you?” I really should’ve controlled myself, but I was in a pissy mood; all my limbs were going rigid. If I injected another vial of nanites so soon after the last injection, I’d risk them making some of the old ones redundant—and nanites ain’t cheap. Ash looked at me, his clear white eyes boring into mine.
“Why are you smiling, Charlie? If they wake Knox—”
“Run!”
Lamorak was back, charging down the hall—and he was not alone.
He flew past us. We turned on our heels and started running after him, trying not to think about the thing barreling down the hall after us. Agravaine put it best when he said, “I guess he found Malthus.”
Chapter 36
After stumbling through the door out onto the twelfth floor, Faustus abruptly skidded to a halt. I slammed into him as he was setting Izzy down. He caught her, set her right-wise and twisted mid air, coming to an elegant stop near the wall.
“What’s the deal?” I asked, hand flying to my gut as something vile swirled around inside.
“I thought I heard something,” Faustus raised a hand and listened to the quiet nothing. “Come on, we better find the other stairwell, just in case the big galoot doesn’t fall for our diversion.”
Izzy adjusted her crutches, brushed hair out of her eyes, and then followed the gingersnap.
I chased them, clutching my gut with my right hand and leaning on the cane with the other. “Hold up. What do you mean ‘find’ it? Don’t you know where the other stairwell is?”
He sighed. It sounded a smidgen melodramatic. “For the hundredth time, when I was here last, I was being chased and shot at—and that was fifteen years ago!”
“Just asking. Eee.”
We were moving at a jog now, a clip too fast for me with my buggered leg, aching scabs and pulsating bruises; and downright impossible for Izzy. Sweat oozed and yet I was freezing. “Can we slow it down a smidge—for Izzy’s sake?”
“Sometimes you are such a girl,” Izzy said.
We rounded a corner in near pitch blackness, me in the rearguard.
“Oof. Watch where you’re going.”
“Sorry,” I told Izzy. “You okay?”
“No I’m not okay,” she snapped. I was glad I couldn’t see her face. She was probably giving me the stinky-peeper. “You mucked with my head—”
“Hey,” I defended, “that was just to wipe out the muckery Ash had done to you.”
“Don’t act like it wasn’t for your benefit,” she’d righted her crutches and resumed her trot after the gingersnap. “You dragged me away from my house, yanked me onto a bus that smelled like old man breath. Then you forced me to run through a brimstorm, break into a government-condemned building, and now you step on me in this god-forsaken dead-zone. So am I okay? What do you think?”
“No?”
“Ugh.”
Another six or seven minutes passed. We jogged and jostled, walked and cursed. Izzy did not speak to me, even when she said my name. She seemed to be using it as an expletive.
“Aha,” Faustus exclaimed. “I’ve found it. The luck of the Irish strikes again.”
“I didn’t know you were Irish,” I said.
“It’s an expression, genius,” Izzy chided, clearly not grasping my brand of humor. She followed Faustus up to the door to the emergency stairwell. Faustus shoved on the push-bar, revealing a hole even darker than the wider, public domain; no exit signs to light our way. The power had been turned on—we’d seen the warehouse lights flicker to life—but none of us had a clue where the switches were for the hall lights, so if it weren’t for the moonlight, we’d have been crawling around in pitch blackness.
“As I’m the best, I’ll go first,” Faustus stepped forward.
“No,” Izzy pressed a miniscule hand to his waist. “I’m tired of looking at your scrawny butt. I’ll go first.” And she did. Faustus held the door. He then proceeded in after her and I caught the door before following them into the darkness.
You couldn’t even hear the droning hum of wind in here. It was like a total blackout.
SLASH
“Man alive, Kana,” Faustus yelped. “You came this close to carving a smile into my neck. Good thin
g Izzy’s a dwarf or you would’ve decapitated her. You don’t even know.”
“Kana?” I said.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she sounded pooped. “Man, am I glad to see you kritbags.”
“Can you see us?” Faustus asked, while I posed my own, more important question: “How did you recover so quickly from that tranquilizer? How do you always recover so quickly?”
“It’s got something to do with rapid release of endorphins and concentrated adrenaline.”
“What?” Izzy and I asked.
“She means she’s basically like Wolverine, only she doesn’t heal quite as rapidly. No. Actually, she’s more like Hellboy, who heals quicker than humans but—”
“I think they get it,” Kana interrupted. “Mind if we get a move on? Nimrod is lurking somewhere nearby, and that kritbag scares even me. So let’s go.”
We all heartily agreed and felt our way up the stairs.
“Did he . . . did Nimrod kill Malthus?” I asked.
Faustus and Kana both laughed. Startling sounds in such a creepy place. “Kill Malthus? The big guy is a little buggered, but he knows how to take a beating. It’s not like he used his mouth much anyway,” Faustus quipped.
“Nimrod once dropped an elevator on the big guy,” Faustus whispered. “Remember that?”
“Yeah,” said Kana. “Remember how pissed off the Hunter was when he found out Malthus was still alive?” And then the two Mythicons broke into fits of laughter
At last we reached the door to the twelfth floor. Kana went first, dirk raised, as I could see when moonlight spilled in from the open door. “All clear,” she hollered and we followed her out into the hall. After rounding two corners, expecting Nimrod to jump out and yell ‘Gotcha!’ at any moment, I saw something worse than the Hunter.
“Sanson’s spooks.”
“What?” Izzy asked.
I restrained her before she could follow the Mythicons around the corner. “Sanson is close. I can see his spooks.”
They hadn’t noticed me yet; the two closest spooks were too busy milling about aimlessly, severed heads bouncing on raggedy shoulders. I was about to suggest going round another way, when Kana yelled from around the corner: “I found it.”
Peeking around and through the two milling spooks, I spotted Kana pointing at a large stainless steel door. She was staring at the metal card-reader. “The cryonics guy must’ve left his card when they stormed Mythcorp during the Purge.”
“No,” I said, bravely marching past the spooks and up to the door, scanning for trouble. “I’ll bet that’s Ash’s card. I mean, look, the door has two locks, right? He wasn’t counting on that. I’ll bet he’s gone to find the old brass key for this lock. Here,” I reached inside my jeans and pulled out the lock-pick set the bearded wonder had given me in Vera City. A little bit of wriggling and jiggling and the tiny-toothed tools slid into place.
“I did it,” surprising everyone, including myself. My gut grumbled again.
“Hallelujah,” Izzy retorted.
We all stood back as Kana executed her ninja stuff on the door. I tried to ignore the four specters trying their darnedest to pummel me while Marie and Castor fled. Light surrounded us as Kana opened the big stainless steel bugger. She entered first, naturally, followed by Faustus and Izzy. It may seem like I’m always taking up the rear, but there’s good reason for that—I need to make sure no one sneaks up on us. Yeah.
I stumbled in, clutching my gut and swallowing bile.
“Grab the key card,” Izzy ordered. I plucked the card out from its slot, stuffed it in my jeans pocket. Ahead of me, Izzy snapped, “Shut the door. Jeez.”
‘We made it,’ Marie floated through a row of white tanks arranged along the far wall below a bank of windows. ‘He’s here. I can feel him.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Castor said. ‘I can feel the asshole’s presence. It’s always a bit gloomier around Knox. How much you want to bet one of these poor fleshies here will die for Knox tonight?” He was once again trying to light his cig. He looked nervous, probably due to the malevolent spooks looming outside the room. For some reason, Sanson’s specters were not phasing through the wall or door. So, for the moment, we were safe.
“Look at all these machines,” Izzy chirped, “at this light. They must’ve been pumping juice into this one room since the Purge. You think there are jackets here anywhere? I’m freezing my bum off.”
“Gurggleplok,” I spluttered, falling to hands and knees. Yellow puke, mingled with bits of undigested peanut butter and cucumber sandwich, spurted onto the tile floor. Once it was all up and I was done making a complete fool of myself, I turned over and leaned against a clear spot on the eggshell white wall, head down between my knees. “Oh man.”
“It’s the drugs, isn’t it?” Izzy asked, leaning over me.
“Maybe,” I picked through my rather stuffed pockets, found a single glorious B-drop. I brought it up to my peepers and then to my sniffer. Izzy reached forward and snatched it from my grasp before I could pop it.
“Hey!” my voice sounded evil and unfamiliar.
“Really?” Izzy said. “You’re going to use, here, now? Are you really that much of a junkie?”
“Yes. Now give it. It’s mine. I need it.”
She stretched her hand forward as if to give it to me, but then jerked it back and handed the B-drop to Faustus, who deposited it in his pocket. He smirked. “That was just like the second season episode of Lost, when Charlie pretends he’s going to give the gun to Anna-Lucia, but then hands it back to Sayid.”
“Shut up!” I snapped. “Give it back. It’s mine and I—”
Izzy slapped me. In retrospect it was quite impressive—her arms being so short and all. But just then, I felt queasy and was in holy-moly pain and the slap acted as the straw in that camel parable. I shut up.
Castor couldn’t stop heehawing.
As I held my throbbing cheek, Izzy laid her hand on my shoulder. “Marie worked here when she was alive, right? Well then she should know how to wake Knox. We need Marie to tell us how, and we need you to tell us what she says. You told me you can’t hear her very well when you use. So I’m asking you, don’t use.” She looked back at the Mythicons, who were busy inspecting equipment, looking for my father. “You want to meet your father, and I want to go home. Let’s finish this.”
Trembling, I slowly nodded.
Faustus whistled from the other side of the lab.
Izzy helped me to my feet so we could head over to the gingersnap. Tanks and blinking lights and ticking machines hunkered along every wall, reflecting light from the fluorescent bulbs. We reached Faustus, who was standing beside an eight foot bathtub-shaped tank connected to a web of hoses. He looked at me and I looked at him. He nodded.
Kana took my arm from Izzy and led me up the three metal steps to the stage on which the tank sat. She held me steady as I leaned over and peered through the frosted glass into the cryonic tub. Encased within what looked like pink crystallized ice, lay a thin man with a mop of black hair, wearing nothing but a look of amused contentment.
“Dad.”
Chapter 37
“Thank you guys,” I whispered. “Thank you for helping me to get here.”
Faustus tapped my shoulder. “Just don’t forget what you owe me for coming along on your little let’s-wake-daddy tour: one Schwarzenegger Icon and one James Cameron Icon.”
“Right,” I said, and then, to change the subject from fantastical dreams to quasi-fantastical hopes, I added, “So ah, how do we wake him?”
Marie wasn’t paying attention. People and spooks do that a lot to me. It’s so rude.
“Marie!”
She drifted through a Malthus-sized tank labeled LN-2 Alcor LEF.
“What did she say?” Izzy asked. Thankfully she’d dropped the snarky tone.
“She’s being stubborn,” I said, getting down from the steps. “Maybe you guys should start looking for a manual or something while I work on Marie.” Instead of trying to wre
st her attention from the very interesting spider-web near the ceiling above the tank, I turned to Castor. “Help me out here.”
He huffed and puffed and no doubt wished smoke was involved, but in the end floated over to Marie. They conversed quietly while I stood back.
“What’s going on?” Kana asked. We were standing at the foot of my father’s . . . sleep tube.
I spoke out of the side of my mouth to keep the woman from noticing my puke breath.
“Castor’s trying to get her attention. Marie has a hard time focusing on real life stuff.”
Kana giggled; a kittenish sound that matched her facial features. “It’s freaky cool to hear you talk about her. Knox spoke of her the same way.”
“You knew her, right?” I asked, watching Castor chase Marie around the lab.
“Yeah,” Kana smiled. “Back before Crowley forged Faustus in the basement, Marie did a lot of the reconnaissance for us.”
Castor grabbed hold of Marie, but the slippery spook phased through his grasp and dropped into another Alcor tank. If we didn’t have the dread of Ash and Nimrod hanging over our heads, I might have laughed.
“What was Marie like in life?” I asked.
A wistful smile played across Kana’s face, and I noticed for the first time that she did not wear makeup. Her complexion was flawless; she didn’t have a single line. “Marie was crazy smart. But she always seemed sad. After she died—just a few floors below us, actually—Knox explained that her sadness was caused by her condition; synesthesia.”
I whispered: “Marie’s heading our way.”
‘Unhook the hoses and wheel him down to the med station on eleven,’ Marie ordered, before twirling back to Castor. After sticking her tongue out at him, she started leaping and generally pretending she was a ballerina. I sighed.
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