Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee

by Douglas A. Taylor

Chapter 29

 

  We materialized in a large, dimly-lit room, but that was all I noticed at first, because I was focused on getting to Bat-ears. I knew I had to take this guy out as soon as possible.

  See, I hadn't been keeping track of how long I had been in this speeded-up state, but I figured it had to have been more than just a few minutes. I knew that I had ten minutes tops before I ran out of juice, and once it was gone, my force shield would be useless once more, completely drained of power. And, as I recalled from the last time I had visited an Enclave base, it would never recharge, not until I could make my way out of here. Therefore, I had to eliminate Bat-ears as a threat before my speed faded and I became not much more than an ordinary human.

  It was pretty tough, making my way past all the Zoinks he had packed in around himself. I wasted a couple of minutes trying to get around one tightly-knit group until I finally lost patience and started smacking them out of the way with my vajra. Unfortunately, even smacked-around Zoinks didn't move very fast in my frame of reference, but I was at least able to get the group to open up enough for me to slip between them.

  And then, when I actually started getting close, I realized I had to be extra careful. In the few seconds of real-time since I had appeared, Lily had gone from a fighting stance to applying one of her devastating roundhouse kicks to the side of Bat-ears' head. If I simply went directly at him from the angle I was at, I would likely have shoved him right into her at super-speed, possibly injuring her.

  I cautiously circled around through the few feet that still separated us, aware that my speed might give out at any moment. And then, as I came to a stop directly in front of him, I discovered that I was wrong-footed for any kind of attack with my vajra. So instead, I balled up my left fist and, trusting to the protection of my sap glove, I punched him in the face as hard as I could.

  I would probably have been okay if my force shield had lasted a second or two longer. Apparently, moving in an accelerated timeframe carries its own sort of protection from collision injuries. As it happened, though, my super-speed actually fizzled out in mid-punch, and by the time my knuckles actually made contact, my fist had probably slowed down to something less than the speed of sound. Still, it was enough to make his head literally explode.

  It also made my fist explode, or at least, that's what it seemed like to me. I felt the bones in my hand and wrist shatter from the impact. Moments later, a sort of red mist seemed to rise up before my eyes as the pain overwhelmed me. I vaguely heard myself give some sort of strangled cry as I sank to the floor.

  Now, I'm no stranger to pain. In the course of my Tae Kwon Do training, I have broken dozens of boards with kicks, punches, elbows, and knife-hand chops, and I've even broken a brick or two in my time, and that can hurt if it's not done just right. (Or even if it is.)

  And I have gotten myself injured a lot as a Prime -- concussions, broken bones, cracked ribs, and once, even a bullet through the gut. But I have never -- never -- experienced anything like what I felt that day, not even the time Toby had to yank a dislocated shoulder back into place. My hand hurt! And it wasn't even like there was any one part of it I could point to and say, "That's where the problem is." No, the entire end of my arm from the wrist forward was just one giant lump of red-hot, seething agony.

  I don't know how long I lay there, overcome by the pain, and I don't know how long I would have continued to lie there. I do know, however, who brought me out of it. It was Lily; she saved me. I felt her hand shake my shoulder, and I looked up at her. Her face was all concern.

  "Blue?" Her voice was low and urgent. "Blue, please get up! We have to get out of here." At least she called me Blue and not Trevor, I thought; Bill must have shared that bit of protocol with her before they had teleported out.

  "We have to go -- quickly." Lily took my hand -- my right hand, thankfully -- and pulled me to my feet with a strength that belied her small frame. "They'll send someone to investigate. This way. Follow me. Please!"

  I stumbled along beside her, cradling my mangled left hand against my stomach. I can't afford to fall apart now, I told myself sternly. There's too much to do, too much at stake. I have to save Lily.

  With an effort, I forced the pain as far back in my mind as I could. I straightened up and looked around. "Why did you deactivate?" I asked her, because there was no longer a white glow surrounding her. And because, aside from Bat-ears' feebly-sparking corpse, we were completely alone, I also asked, "And where are all the Zoinks?"

  "Zoinks?" she repeated, cocking her head to one side as if she hadn't heard me correctly. "I'm sorry, but what are Zoinks?"

  It took me a couple of seconds to understand her question; the pain was making my brain fuzzy. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Sorry, drones. We call them Zoinks. Where did all the drones go?"

  "Oh, those. I ordered them back to their recharging stations. I still have some influence over them, it appears." She looked over at me anxiously. "That was all right, wasn't it?"

  "Of course it was, Lily," I said. "It was very clever of you."

  She smiled at me, the mixture of relief and fear on her face giving it a sickly cast. "And I didn't deactivate the Unity field; I simply turned off the disguise because they had to see who I was before they would obey me. And because Wizzit never gave me back my visual display; I couldn't see anything."

  She glanced at me. "Why are you . . . how did you come to be here?" she asked me apprehensively. "You weren't anywhere near me when Lars showed up, I'm sure of that. But then you suddenly appeared, and he was . . . killed. Did you use some sort of weapon on him?" Then she added, "I'm sorry to be asking so many questions. Please don't be angry with me!"

  "It's all right," I assured her. "I'm not angry." Lars, I realized, was undoubtedly Bat-ears' real name. "Wizzit saw you were in trouble and I was handy," I explained. "He teleported me over to you. And no, I didn't use a weapon; I just punched him. Really hard.

  Her eyes flicked down to where I was holding my left fist against my body. "Is your hand broken?"

  "Oh yeah. It hurts pretty bad."

  She bit her lip. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I shook my head. "I'm sorry," she murmured after a few seconds.

  As we approached the door, I stopped. "Give me a second," I said. "I just thought of something I should take care of."

  Lily looked as if she wanted to protest, but then she nodded. "All right."

  I turned away from her and activated my Junior Prime bracelet. Then I deactivated my now-useless Prime belt. It made me feel a little better, knowing that if we were discovered and had to face down an army of Enclave monsters, I could at least shoot my blaster at them.

  We exited the large room and found ourselves in a yellow-lighted hallway that curved away from us in a smooth arc in either direction. Lily unhesitatingly turned left, and I followed. I wasn't as if I had a whole lot of choice; she knew this place much better than I. "Where is the nearest teleporter?" I asked.

  She waved a hand vaguely ahead of her. "There's only one main one, and it's clear on the other side," she said. "We'll have to walk there." She turned to look at me. "Can you walk far?"

  "If I have to," I replied. I tried to recall the last Enclave complex I had been in, the time I'd had to rescue Padma. "It's at the end of an indigo-colored hallway?" I guessed.

  She stopped, surprise showing on her lovely features. "How did you know . . .?" Then she shook her head. "Never mind. My sister-self remembers seeing you at the old base. Yes, the layout is the same."

  "Why is it so far away?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. I just know that we always teleport out of the teleport room and we always arrive in the reception room."

  She began leading me down the hallway once more while I looked around at my surroundings and tried to remember how everything had been arranged at the other base.

&nb
sp; The halls had all spiraled out from one central point, I recalled, half of them circling clockwise and the other half circling counterclockwise, and they crossed and recrossed each other all throughout the base. There were seven curving each way, and each of them was lighted with a different color of the rainbow. Thus, there were two red passageways, one going clockwise and the other going counterclockwise, two orange passageways, two yellows, and so on.

  Assuming that the indigo hall in question curved the same as our current one, then we could get to it in one of two ways. We could follow our current path all the way to the middle of the complex and then follow the indigo path outward, or we could turn onto the next hallway we came across and follow it around to Indigo Highway, avoiding the center. I was all for the second option, because the center of the complex had been a beehive of activity, and I was fairly certain that the two of us would not be able to walk through it unnoticed.

  Lily must have been thinking the same thing, because she turned right at the next hallway, a green-hued one. But then, after we had been walking for just a short way, she slowed to a stop in front one of the many doors set into the wall.

  "What is it?" I asked. "Is something wrong?"

  She didn't answer right away. Instead, she glanced uneasily at me, then at the door, then back at me, biting her lip the entire time. Her face appeared troubled, as if she were trying to make a difficult decision. Then she seemed to steel herself, pushed the door open, and beckoned me inside.

  I looked around as she first closed and then locked the door behind her. "What are we doing in here?" I asked. "Why aren't we heading for the teleporter?"

  She had led me into what appeared to be a storeroom of some sort, and an idea occurred to me. Maybe . . . I scanned it eagerly for a teleport trap. If there had been one stored here, then we could have used it to make our escape immediately. That would have been a good thing; despite my brave words earlier, I was starting to feel more than a little wobbly.

  "We'll get there soon," she assured me, "but -- but there's something I have to do first." She seemed unaccountably nervous, and there was something else in her manner as well. Was it fear? Guilt? I couldn't tell.

  She wouldn't meet my eyes, staring instead at the floor. She half-turned away and her lips were moving faintly, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. Then, as I watched, she seemed to enforce a kind of discipline upon herself. She relaxed her shoulders, her face smoothed out, and a faint smile touched her lips.

  "I wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue," she said, now looking up at me through lowered lashes. Her voice was vibrant and full of all kinds of promises. "I could not have fought free of Lars by myself; you saved me from him, from a fate literally worse than death. I would rather die than go back to them." She shuddered elaborately. "That's why I brought you in here, where we're not likely to be disturbed," she went on, "so I could show you my . . ." Her eyebrows rose suggestively. ". . . appreciation."

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was she seriously wanting to make out with me? Here, in an Enclave base, surrounded by enemies? "Uh, thanks," I stammered, "but I think I'm going to have to take a raincheck. I mean, this really isn't the time --"

  "It's the perfect time," she purred, "and this is the perfect place." Lily had been toying with the zipper at the neck of her jumpsuit; now she drew it down in one smooth motion nearly to her waist. "I have to do this now, before I lose my nerve." She shrugged slightly, not enough slip the jumpsuit off her shoulders, but enough to give me a tantalizing glimpse of the flesh still concealed beneath it. She sauntered toward me, hips swaying sensuously. "You're my knight in shining armor, Blue, and I want to say thank you." One of her hands rested against my waist. Her eyes fluttered closed as she tilted her face toward mine, wanting to be kissed . . .

  And then her hand was flat against my chest, shoving me hard. I stumbled backward, falling against a pile of chairs. My injured hand banged against something, and I fell to my knees, crying out with pain.

  I didn't pass out, but it was a near thing. When I could see again, Lily was standing with her back against the door. Her jumpsuit was zipped up to the neck again and she was clutching my blaster in her two fists; it was pointed straight at my chest. "Stay right where you are," she ordered. Her chest was heaving; she seemed to be fighting not to panic. "Don't come any closer or I'll shoot!"

  I stared at her, dumbfounded. "What are you doing?" I demanded.

  "I'm sorry, Blue, but I have to do this!"

  "You have to do what?"

  "I -- I have to kill you!"