by Alex Hughes
Kara knocked politely on my shields.
I opened up just enough. What?
Need to borrow your link.
I glared at her but allowed her to take what she needed. I thought of Cherabino, the way she smelled….
And there we were, the tail end of a connection through the disappearing spot in Mindspace—like a yellow rope to nowhere.
Kara warned me mentally, then grabbed me in a bear hug. She smelled like flowers.
The world blinked out, twisted, collapsed; between one blink and the next, we arrived.
CHAPTER 26
Kara let me go.
We were in a midsized college lecture hall, musty and old. Endless rows of seats rose up a hill to my right, while an ancient chalkboard took up the whole left wall. I had an overwhelming impression of abandoned space—and then I felt Cherabino.
I felt her take a punch—pain, broken rib, pain! And another.
I turned. She was ten feet away on the other side of the lectern. One brawny black guy held her while two more bruisers with shaved heads peppered her with blows.
“Stop that!” I yelled.
I ran toward them, after Kara, who was already moving fast in front of the chalkboard.
Cherabino kneed one of her attackers in the balls, but he twisted away and hit her across the face. He hit her again, so hard I saw stars.
Kara weaved around the old wooden lectern and reached the first of the bruisers. She ducked under his guard and grabbed him around the waist, hard. Blink, and the air whooshed as it filled in the hole. They were gone.
The second bruiser glared while the third struggled with a now-wildcat Cherabino. He pushed her against the chalkboard, harshly.
Then the other one rushed me, the scars on his face distorting.
I reached out and found a painful, impossible hold on his mind. I saw what he wanted to do to Cherabino—what he would have done, was about to do. Rape and worse. Much worse. In the moment, I had all the time in the world.
I could burn out a few spots on his brain, just a few little spots. Make it impossible for him to ever think about rape—or sex—again. Cripple his brain. It would be unethical as hell, illegal, dangerous. But I could do it. I should do it.
The world swam with wavy pain lines as Kara grabbed. She popped back into the room with a crack of displaced air.
I swallowed bile, the hold on the guy broken in the middle of pain. He rushed me—and I grabbed onto his mind again, freezing him in place.
No! Kara sent. No.
In front of me, Cherabino hit the other guy again, struggling.
Whatever I was going to do, I had to do now. Maybe Kara was right.
I adjusted my mental grip and wrenched—sending the guy to sleep. He’d wake up with the mother of all hangovers, since I wasn’t gentle, but no damage.
I stood swaying, green around the gills, in severe pain myself. But I stood up under it and turned my attention to the last guy. Maybe I could bluff this one.
He took one look at me, at his now-unconscious friend, and threw Cherabino at me, running away.
I caught her, barely kept us both from hitting the floor.
The last tough made it to the Exit door. He was projecting loudly. He was going to keep running until he ended up back at his dad’s junkyard fifty miles away. He’d ended up in the wrong crowd just like his dad had said, and he was going home. These freaks could take care of their own.
Kara and I looked at each other and let him go.
I stood over the pervert and regretted the decision intensely. He’d get away scot-free.
He’ll rape someone else, I told Kara.
She pulled away.
Cherabino moaned then, and I set her down on the old gray carpet. Half of her face was swollen with one bruise on top of another. She looked pitiful, and felt worse. I reached out to touch her cheek, carefully.
“Son of a bitch!” She jerked away. “Hurts.”
I smiled in relief. It was still her.
“Where are we, do you think?” Kara asked. She let me see she didn’t regret the decision. The ethics—our ethics—were more important than the decisions one man might make in the future. His decisions were his.
Oblivious to the side conversation, Cherabino pushed up to a sitting position—carefully. “That prick Jason Bradley popped everybody here. He kept screaming about getting the machines. That nurse kept telling him they couldn’t.”
“We got the machines already,” I said, and Kara gave me a quelling look.
“That’s—” Cherabino coughed hard, and I could feel the broken rib object. Kara and I both winced. But Cherabino waited a few seconds, and decided she really did want to stand up again. She tried, with painful results, and I couldn’t take it. I pulled her the rest of the way up, her leaning on the chalkboard, panting shallowly.
“Bradley teleported everybody?” Kara asked. “By himself?”
Cherabino coughed. “Yeah, everybody. In two trips—it was unreal.”
Kara frowned. She wasn’t sure that was possible, not with eight people or more. Or if it was—Bradley wasn’t rated high enough to do it. Not nearly; he was at her level.
I waved my hand to get her attention. “Where did you take that first bruiser?” I asked Kara.
“Maximum-security prison.”
I stared at her.
She shrugged. “No, really. It seemed appropriate.”
Cherabino laughed, hard. And stopped abruptly, both hands on the chalkboard as the broken ribs put fire through her side. “Don’t do that right now,” she told Kara.
“Do what?”
“Make me laugh.”
Cherabino was upright, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to take my hands from her shoulders. Half her face was swollen and her lip was split—her wrist wrenched badly, and her foot dangerously bruised so that it hurt even to stand—but she wasn’t complaining. Instead, she looked over at Kara, and I could feel her intention.
“Bradley said they’re only going to stay here a few hours. If we’re going to shut them down, we need to go ahead and do it. Do you think you could find your way back here with the teep stuff?”
Kara frowned. “Once, if at all. He’s not going to be able to give me more than one more good grab. He’s exhausted.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
I know, Kara interrupted. And added I probably wanted to shore up my shields. It’s cute and all, with your mooning over the lady cop, but it’s just luck Bradley hasn’t spotted us yet. Smarter not to be a target.
Cute? What the…
“If you can only make it once, go get a tracker and bring it back here,” Cherabino said. “That way we get the cavalry on its way.” She turned to me, a little too slowly. Her foot was holding her weight only with difficulty. “We need to find Bradley.”
“We don’t need a tracker.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a thick black disk, the little light on top blinking lazily. “We have one already. Paulsen made me take it.”
She closed her eyes, in relief. “Oh, good. Kara, you go tell them there’s a landing field to the northwest of the complex. They’re planning to fly an aircar out of here and into Canada. They’ve got a deal going with the Darkness, some kind of tech sell, and the deal is going down in Toronto. The department needs to know that in case we don’t make it. Make sure the local cops know.”
Kara paused. “Do you want me to take you—”
“No.” Cherabino took a deep breath. “No, you need to be able to ferry other people around if you can. Save your strength.”
“But—”
“Go, Kara. Now. We need backup.”
Kara stared for a long moment, then whooshed out.
Cherabino straightened as much as she could. “Now. Are you going to tell me about what this Link is? Or am I going to have to hurt you?”
Behind her, the rows of lecture hall seats looked on.
CHAPTER 27
My head throbbed, her broken rib hurt with every exhalation,
and I didn’t know what to say. Instead, on Kara’s advice, I gritted my teeth and strengthened my shields, hoping we wouldn’t attract any attention for a little while at least.
I also turned away so I couldn’t see the empty student desks staring at me.
“Well? The link?” Cherabino prompted. “I’d suggest you start talking, because we don’t have much time here.”
“We have enough,” I said. “The men thought they would have a little while undisturbed.”
She winced at that. Bruised face, eyes dull with pain, her uniform torn and her hair hopelessly messed up. She was still so beautiful, so her, it took my breath away, even leaning on a battered college lectern.
The Link went both ways; I saw her pick up on my thoughts and not understand. She got angry, pushed off, and limped into my personal space. “Now would be a good time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
She took a breath, her chest rising. “What happened exactly?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking I used you as my anchor one too many times. Maybe leaned on you too much at the station, to block out the others. I find you…calming.”
Cherabino laughed, a short huffaw, and then regretted it on her ribs. She found a desk on the first row and sat down. “Calming? Really? You find me calming? So you start a link with me?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.
She fought down instinctive nausea. “What exactly am I dealing with here?”
I took a breath. “I can find your mind anywhere in the world. In the Solar System, maybe. We can communicate over long distances. Share thoughts. In fact, it’s going to be hard not to share thoughts.” At her frightened look, I said, “It goes both ways, Cherabino.”
“How long will this go on?” she asked, feeling dirty. She ran her good hand over the lectern, the feel of the old wood solid under her hands.
“I don’t know. That’s honest. As much as we know about the mind, about telepathy, there’s limits. It could wear off in a couple weeks. It could take a year. I don’t know.”
I could feel her abhorrence. “You’re telling me I have to have you in my head for a year? Maybe more?” She’d leave the city. She’d move to Mars.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Moving won’t help. If we can get through today, I can teach you how to block me out better. Rummage through my head if it will make it feel more equal. I’m not a bad guy. I’m not trying to—I’m not going to hurt you, Cherabino. I’m not. But we have to get through today.”
Cherabino hobbled painfully forward, and I forced myself not to help her. “How bad are the odds?” she asked me.
She deserved the truth, no matter how painful, how awful, how humiliating. With the link, it was her danger too. “With just Bradley, I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. He’s powerful, and I’m out of it, but I used to be very, very good at this. With my life on the line, I’ll be good again. But with backup on his side? I don’t know. It’s your mind too. We can still wait, stay here until our own backup arrives. It’s your decision.”
“And let him get away?” Her eyes flashed. “Not a chance in hell. But don’t think you’re off the hook. This isn’t over.”
“I know.”
On the other side of the room’s door, there was a musty hallway, maybe ten feet long and floored in fake white tile. The air smelled of mold and damp concrete. A flickering red Exit sign pointed the way out.
When I pushed down on the cold metal bar that would open the heavy door, I held it open for Cherabino. She limped into the landing, looked up to endless flights of worn stairs, and made a small, disgusted sound.
“Great,” Cherabino said. She started climbing. She did not complain. In fact, she made a point of not complaining.
About the third step, I literally couldn’t stand it anymore.
“I’ll carry you.”
She paused, weighing her pain against the insult.
“Why else have I been lifting all these weights?” I asked reasonably. “Besides, if I have to feel your ankle bones grinding together one more time, I’m going to yell. Loud.”
She paused, halfway up a stair. “You can feel that?”
“Yes. Don’t freak out. I can’t shield from you right now. If you pay attention, you can probably feel how exhausted I am.”
She thought about that, and I could feel her testing out the link like someone feeling her way in a dark, unfamiliar room.
Hi, I said, tiredly.
She retreated. “I don’t like this.”
“Like it or not, it saved your life once already today.”
She closed her mouth and stood, undecided. “You’re exhausted—and I’m not light.”
Success. “It’s mental, not physical; my muscles are fine.”
She paused, looking up the long array of endless stairs and landings. “No taking liberties,” she said. Firmly.
“Hands and mind to myself?” I asked. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise. I’m too tired to guarantee anything.”
My muscles were fine, and she wasn’t all that heavy. But—damn cigarettes—I was huffing and puffing after the tenth stair. She complained about this loudly, and without meaning to, I bitched back over the link. I didn’t have the breath to respond and climb the stairs.
It took her a while to catch on that I wasn’t actually talking. And then she shut up.
We reached the landing, the door to the hallway closed. I stopped cold. The sign, that orange-gold sign on the door, faded but distinctive—I’d have known it anywhere. “We’re at Toppenguild,” I said, with shock.
“Where?”
I stepped past the heavy door, into the hallway. “Toppenguild. The Guild Institute Campus in north Tennessee. We’re two hours from Atlanta by aircar. No wonder Bradley came here—the campus is closed this time of year. Great place to be an evil scientist—lots of supplies and research files. Why didn’t somebody think of this earlier?”
“Everything seems obvious in retrospect,” Cherabino said, “but you were the only one in the department with the information.” She squirmed. “Are you going to put me down?”
“Did your ankle mysteriously heal in the last few minutes?” I asked.
“Did the bad guys suddenly start caring?” she returned. “There’s at least two more toughs out here, plus a nurse type, the woman Bradley kept arguing with, and the guy to load the aircar. I don’t imagine they’ll just let us wander around blindly—I need to be able to get to my gun.”
“You don’t have a gun,” I pointed out. “And I’m not putting you down just yet. We’re up against telepaths here, and your ankle pain is distracting.”
“Well, I have a knife,” she said, annoyed. “They never found it in my boot. It’s not a small knife. Do you really want me waving it around so close to your face?”
“If you had a knife, why didn’t you use it on those guys?”
“You try getting a concealed knife out of a tight boot in the middle of a fistfight. Go ahead, try. Then come back and criticize my decisions. Go ahead.”
“You’re getting cranky,” I told her. “Give me five minutes.” I showed her my old memory of this place, more than fifteen years old, from when I’d been a student trying to specialize in tuning. That hadn’t worked out so well—I’d hated the teachers, and the subject matter wasn’t nearly as interesting as it sounded—but I’d been here, at Toppenguild, for over a year. There should be labs on this floor, and one of them had a cut-through to the pyro training room.
The training room was two feet thick of concrete on all sides, with a door that could barricade from either inside or out. The pyros were terrifying while training; that room was reinforced enough to hold a rampaging elephant. From either side. It was exactly what we needed now.
“We’ll get you to that room,” I said, shifting her for a better hold. “You could hold it against an army in the physical world while I go after Bradley in Mindspace.”
Her head came up. �
�Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Someone’s coming,” she hissed. “Put me down.”
I ignored her and dropped into Mindspace. And pulled out just as quick, trying to cover my tracks, trying to minimize my own presence, shore up my own shields. There was a telepath coming, one frighteningly strong, and I’d bet anything it was Bradley. He made ripples in the very fabric of Mindspace just by moving—I wasn’t looking forward to facing him, not on terms we couldn’t control. We needed that practice room, and the gadgets they kept inside. Did they still use flamethrowers?
“Hang on,” I told Cherabino. I ran toward the lab I remembered, her weight nearly overbalancing me. She made little pain sounds every time my stride hit the floor, hard. I didn’t have time to be gentle, and I wasn’t very good at the running-while-carrying-the-girl thing yet. She hung on as best she could and complained in a steady, quiet stream.
I came to a stop at the beginning of the blue-painted science hall. A framed picture of Space Station Freedom shared space with a blueprint of a genetically engineered ferret from Thailand. We didn’t have far to go, maybe two hundred feet down the hall of doors. I kept the image of that flamethrower in my mind.
I set Cherabino down, settling her on the good foot. “You think you can climb up on my back? The balance would be better. If we can just get to the practice room…”
“I’m not an invalid.” She strode forward, every step a shooting pain. She’d taken the location of the lab from my mind.
I made a disgusted sound and hurried to catch up. Behind us, the huge presence that was Bradley came slowly closer. Even through my shields, I could feel the disturbance in Mindspace, like a huge ship’s prow pushing the water aside. I’d never felt anything like it.
Then it disappeared, and a chill ran up my back. Carefully, carefully I thinned my shields. He was still there, still huge, but he had stopped, cold, right next to a much smaller presence. Maybe he was talking. Closer to me, a few rooms away to my left, something felt wrong, disturbed, but I didn’t dare thin my shields any more to see what it was. Bradley was the threat. I don’t think he’d seen me. But I was out of time; the waves of his movement hit the edges of my shields.
