Santiago smeared the condensing moisture off his forehead.
Gillian said, “I didn’t know there was rain scheduled for today.”
“No rain. In the big cylinders, it’s always wet at the poles.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Something to do with air currents, I suppose.”
About three miles up the face of the giant wall, near the center, a wreath of hazy yellow lights ringed a series of bulging spires. It looked like an ancient circus tent seen from high above.
Santiago followed his gaze. “That’s Irrya’s main freefaller hotel. I was there once, a long time ago. I had a silky, but it wasn’t all that great. I like to feel some weight when I’m fucking. You can’t feel anything in zero G.”
Gillian activated his neck transmitter. “Aaron? Grace?”
Aaron’s voice sounded clear in Gillian’s earclip. “We’re in position—about a block and a half east of the address.”
“Good. Pasha?”
Haddad spoke calmly. “My people are ready. We have forty units within a twelve-block radius of you. The nearest public shuttle ports are covered. The point teams still have nothing to report.”
E-Tech Security had placed the building under distant surveillance. For the past two hours there had been no outside activity—no one had been seen entering or leaving.
We hunt Reemul and he hunts us, Gillian mused. He sets the trap and we walk into it, knowing it to be a trap. In theory, that gives us the advantage.
He motioned to Santiago. “Let’s do it.”
“Good luck,” said the Pasha, in a tone of complete indifference.
Santiago poked a hand under his vest and gripped his thruster. They began walking down the street toward the southern wall, toward the address.
“I hope this is it,” Santiago muttered. “I don’t think I can take another false alarm.”
Gillian shrugged. Tonight was the third time that Nick had ordered the team out. It almost seemed like an eternity since he and Nick had sat together in the training gym, discussing the nature of his periodic imagery attacks. That discussion had taken place only yesterday.
Gillian’s attacks—intense memories juxtaposed with lost feelings—still slammed through his awareness every four hours. Each attack still culminated in the familiar flash of golden light.
And I’m getting too used to them. The imagery has created some sort of dialectic within me. I am becoming morbidly fascinated by the attacks, looking forward to these brief plunges through my own dissipated dream world.
After this is over—after Reemul has been dealt with—I’ll have to see a doctor. I can’t spend the rest of my life being mentally blasted six times a day.
A harsh whisper sounded in his earclip. “Gillian of E-Tech,” mocked Aaron. “Reassure us. Tell us again that this beast is not simply waiting to blow us into the vacuum.”
Santiago laughed, Gillian allowed himself a smile.
“Reemul will want to kill me face to face. I’m sure of it. He won’t use explosives, at least not while we’re alive.
“Now—no more talk. He may have planted audio bugs outside the building. He may be listening for us.” Remote sensors were unlikely, but it was best to be on the safe side.
Two false alarms. This morning they had entered a deserted shipper’s terminal and this afternoon, a rundown restaurant catering to Irryan smugglers.
Twice we have gone into buildings expecting to find Reemul waiting for us. Twice we have found nothing.
Scores of reported Paratwa sightings had been pouring into E-Tech every day. The Guardians, no doubt, had also received their fair share. All were investigated. Most reports originated with good citizens who mistook their new neighbors for the Paratwa assassin. A few sightings were the work of cranks.
Nick was now coordinating all reports through E-Tech. He was operating under the assumption that among the sightings that had come in since Wednesday’s Council meeting, when Rome Franco had revealed Gillian’s presence, one would be a trap set by the Jeek. Nick’s screening process had produced the two sightings they had investigated thus far. The less likely prospects had all been turned over to Haddad for regular investigation.
He and Santiago rounded a corner and stopped. The address was halfway down the block, nestled between two other decrepit buildings. The Skeibalis Inn: four stories tall; craggy white exterior reflecting the pale light from a pair of streetlamps. A warm glow came from behind a panelshade on the third floor. All the other windows were dark.
Aaron and Grace came into view at the far end of the block.
Gillian and Santiago activated their crescent webs, accelerated to a trot. Aaron and Grace, approaching from the opposite direction, also picked up speed.
Gillian registered the empty street, allowing details to saturate awareness, subconsciously searching for any datum that looked out of place. The block whispered no obvious clues. Before them, the southern wall, closer and more gargantuan than ever, seemed to breathe the cool mist down onto the area, washing dark buildings under a spray of fine blue particles.
I have thirty-five minutes, Gillian thought. Plenty of time until my next imagery attack.
He drew his thruster. Santiago drew his. Down the block, the siblings followed suit.
Gillian felt a sudden excitement—a sense of boyish wonder at the fine blue mist, the monstrous wall, at the brother and sister now only thirty paces away, coming on fast, in step, Aaron’s face a mask of determination, Grace stone cold.
Excitement peaked. She looks like Catharine ... the way she strides, the soft flush beneath her cheeks, the flared eyebrows, the furrowed brow...
This is it!
He snapped his wrist, felt the Cohe splat against his open palm, needle projecting.
This is it! There were no outright clues but he knew—certainty shot through his body like a scream. Senses, hyperalert, transmuted a rich gelatin of information into a clear profile.
Reemul! It’s his kind of place, his medium. He’s here!
“This is it!” Gillian hissed. “I’m sure of it!”
The four of them came together outside the entrance. Red lightning flashed as their crescent webs struggled, repelled. They moved forward as one, slammed against the thick door, Gillian nicking the Cohe, black energy shearing off the hinges, feeling it crush inward with a groaning of metal. They burst into the lobby of the Skeibalis Inn.
Three men. One behind the counter—a desk clerk. The second—a tall freefaller in black adjuster suit with tight gray helmet, sun visor hiding his eyes, seated on a bench to the right of the clerk, motionless. The third—an older man, on the floor of the small rectangular lobby, on his back, grunting with the exertion of sit-ups.
“Thirty-four,” panted the older man, ignoring their intrusion, raising his chest, palms locked behind his balding head, slamming elbows into kneecaps. “Thirty-five,” he groaned.
“What the hell’s this!” screeched the bearded desk clerk, coming out from behind the wooden counter. His right hand clutched a sandram.
Aaron pointed his thruster at the clerk’s head; Grace and Santiago aimed their weapons up the dark stairwell off to the left; Gillian kept his eyes on the silent freefaller and on the doorway behind the counter.
“What the hell do you think you’re doin’!” screamed the clerk, raising his sandram.
“Put it down,” warned Aaron quietly, “or I’ll vacuum your brains.”
The clerk came up on the balls of his feet, hesitated. He lowered his arm, dropped the weapon. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.
“Thirty-six,” huffed the old man, obviously nearing his limit. He lay on his back for a moment, struggling for breath.
Gillian pointed the Cohe toward the old man. We crash into a building and this crazy keeps doing exercises!
“Get up.”
The old man jerked his chest off the floor. “Thirty-seven,” he wheezed.
Grace, eyes on the stairway, risked a quick glance over her shoulder
. “He’s an ignor—look at his eyes. He’s out of touch.”
“Yeah,” said the clerk arrogantly. “He’s just an old ignor. So take what you want and get the hell out and leave us alone.”
“We’re here for the Paratwa,” said Gillian.
The clerk froze, eyes riveted to the Cohe needle protruding from Gillian’s fist.
“Someone called E-Tech,” Gillian barked. “This person reported that a Paratwa was living in this building. Was it you?”
The clerk licked his lips. “Hey, there were these two guys. I reported ’em, sure. They were weird, all right. Never sayin’ nothing to each other but always looking like they know what the other one’s thinkin’. It was spooky. Sure, I reported ’em.” He held up his hand. “Hey, look—no trouble, all right? I don’t know anything about this, you know? If they come back...”
“When did they leave?” demanded Gillian.
“Hey, I don’t know. Early this afternoon, I think. They’re never here much anyway. Always in, then right out again.”
Aaron pointed his thruster at the tall freefaller who sat calmly against the wall. “Is that right?”
The freefaller twisted his head to face Aaron. The heavy shield cloaked his eyes, but the faint outline of a nose and mouth were just visible above the breathing vents, where the translucent plastic came closest to his flesh.
Another ignor? Gillian wondered.
The semimechanical suit, dull black rubber on the outside, with an inner layer of sensors to translate body motion into amplified energy, rustled in the chair. Gillian recalled Nick telling him about freefallers—men born and raised in zero G, shuttle gypsies, nearly helpless in the full gravity of the Colonies. The adjustor suits provided some compensation for their complex physical, and psychological, weaknesses.
“Is he an ignor?” Gillian snapped at the clerk.
“Hey, he’s my brother, all right? He ain’t no ignor! He just don’t like to talk to strangers, all right? So let him alone.”
An ignor. The clerk’s too ashamed to admit it. Gillian motioned to Aaron. “Do it.”
The pirate leaned over, rammed a tiny needle into the free-faller’s neck, at a spot where the material of the adjuster suit was extremely thin. Gillian kept his thruster aimed at the worried clerk.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing?”
The freefaller’s head dipped forward as the drug took effect. Aaron crossed the lobby, stabbed a second needle into the old man’s arm.
“Thirty-eight,” puffed the old man. His eyes glazed over. He collapsed into slumber.
“Just a stasis needle,” Gillian assured the clerk. “They’ll be asleep for a few hours.”
The clerk raised his hand. “Hey, you can’t give me one of those! I get a reaction to stasis drugs. It might kill me, I swear! I mean, tie me up or somethin’, but don’t give me no...”
“Relax,” said Gillian. “You’re coming with us. We want to see the room where the two men have been living.”
The clerk licked his lips, stared at the unhinged lobby door. “Hey, what if they come back?”
“Don’t worry,” said Aaron. “We have people watching this building.”
Gillian grabbed the clerk’s arm, pulled him to the stairwell. “You have the key?”
The clerk nodded. “Yeah, I got it. Christ, stop pushing me!”
They moved up the steps as a group, the clerk out in front, Santiago marching backward covering their rear, protective webs humming loudly in the dark firewell, red sparks dancing as crescents occasionally touched. They passed the second-floor firedoor, headed up the next flight. The clerk led them out into the third-floor corridor, a dank graffiti-splattered shaft terminating forty feet away against a supporting I-beam. The hallway fronted four rooms, two doors on either side.
The clerk pointed to the first door on the left, whispered, “That’s it.”
Gillian nudged his thruster into the man’s back. “You first.”
The clerk hesitated, then pulled a tiny keypad chain from around his neck, typed 3A-open, moved to the door, smacked the keypad onto the modem plate. There was a sharp click as the door slid back.
Gillian leaped through the portal, twisting, shifting his crescents from side to side, making himself a difficult target, weapons ready to fire at the slightest motion.
Nothing.
Aaron and Grace tumbled in behind him. Santiago pushed the clerk into the room, keeping his thruster aimed at the bearded face.
The room was twenty-foot square, lit by drop ceiling panels. A solitary window fronted the street. The bathroom-kitchen cubicle was as tiny as the one Gillian had on Sirak-Brath. The cubicle was open. Empty.
A lump on the bed, under the covers.
A pair of hot pink shuttle pants lay over the back of the room’s only chair. A dresser, steel-gray, scratched and dirty, huddled in the far corner. Next to the king-sized airbed, a large plastic shipping crate, its top missing, spouted a series of thin tubes that trailed under the white sheets, into the lump.
Grace pointed to the bed. “A body?”
Gillian frowned, crossed the room. Inside the shipping crate, the thin tubes coiled together, shafted into a gray box with display monitor and indicator lights. He recognized the machine—a portable life-support system.
Carefully, he drew back the white sheets, exposed the pale elfin face of a young girl, maybe five years old. Her eyes were shut and her face looked pained. The tubes of the life-support system ran into a discolored patch of skin beneath her left armpit. Gillian pulled the covers the rest of the way down, already knowing what he was going to find.
As he exposed the monstrosity, Grace let out a tiny cry. Aaron cursed.
Directly beneath the sternum, the tiny girl began to grow wider, began to divide in half. Her torso split into two sets of hips, two discrete crotches, four tiny dangling legs. Three of the legs looked broken. Both vaginas were torn and bloody. She was barely alive.
“This Paratwa beast!” Grace spluttered. “It deserves a fate worse than death!”
Gillian reached into the crate, switched off the mutated girl’s life-support functions, allowed the pathetic creature to die quickly.
He had seen such perversion before. In the rampant madness of the final days, both Paratwa and humans had practiced this particular degradation. The sickness had even acquired a name—pedobiparauterophilia, an appetite for freak children with twin vaginas.
“My,” said the clerk. “I guess he likes them between one and two.”
Gillian registered the slight change in the clerk’s tone, knew—in one horrible instant—that they had been tricked.
“It’s a trap!” he cried, turning, raising his Cohe, seeking a target, knowing that he was too late.
The drop ceiling exploded in a blinding shower of light, dust, and splintered tiles. The second tway plunged from above—a spread-eagled demon—thruster screeching, black light whittling the air. The tway crashed onto the bed beside the freak girl, somersaulted violently across the room, legs extended, slamming into Aaron’s chest at the same instant black light bit through the pirate’s shoulder. Aaron’s face recorded a moment of utter shock. Then he flew backward through the window and vanished into darkness.
Gillian hit the floor, whipped his Cohe up at the clerk. The beam dissolved harmlessly into the tway’s front crescent. The clerk, grinning madly, snatched the thruster from Santiago’s hand and shot the startled black pirate in the side of the head. Santiago’s face caved in. He crumbled to the floor.
Grace fired at the clerk, missed. Gillian leaped to his feet, moved toward the shattered window, thruster whining, trying to get out from between the two tways. Grace spun, dodged a blast from the clerk, twisted her body directly into the path of the other tway’s deadly beam.
Her face registered surprise as the beam lanced through her midsection.
She looked at Gillian—death shock tempered by the faint beginnings of a sardonic smile. She closed her eyes, acquiescing. She became a shower
of golden light.
The room exploded, transformed itself into a nether land of distorted images. Gillian moved through a haze, through a mélange of inner and outer worlds, a floor, a bed, a shattered ceiling, intense memories—jagged reflections, like the light from a madly gyrating prism, spinning too fast. He glimpsed a chair—it flashed gold. Black streaks whipped around him. He jerked his body, automatically dodging the beams. He heard the whining of thrusters and he heard a man, screaming with pain. He wondered who it was, then realized the scream was coming from his own mouth.
The window!
He dove out into the mist, plunged toward the street, ever so slowly, seeing a car, a building, Aaron’s body crumpled on the sidewalk three stones below. He jerked his head up, belly-flopped hard onto the pavement, front crescent absorbing most of the shock, but not enough. Ribs cracked.
He gasped for breath. Move! Move!
Up—onto his feet—staggering—running. A beam of black death shot past his head, gouged through the sidewalk two feet to his left. Thrusters crackled. He twisted, dove into an alleyway, away from the torrent of destruction pouring from the window. A beam spiraled around the corner, nailed him in the back, its energy harmlessly absorbed by his rear crescent.
Another alleyway came into view, at right angles. Guts aching, he ran into it. No beams followed.
He continued running, through other alleys, past desolate buildings, and onto an unpaved street drowning in rain puddles.
The maniacal screams stayed with him. He tried to shut his mouth, make them stop, but he knew he had no control.
He wished Reemul would catch him and end the screams.
O}o{O
The Lion of Alexander reminded Rome of death. His withered frame, shaped by a gray cloak, hung over the arm of the chair like one of those nutrient sacks drooping from the shoulder of an ancient farmer. His eyes were half-closed and his breathing sounded labored. Rome had been assured by the Lion’s helpers that the old man was in fine physical condition.
Irrya’s morning light suffused Rome’s office. He avoided the old man’s gaze, scattered his attentions to a potted juniper shrub, an uncluttered bookshelf, the comconsole beside his desk that seemed to draw more light to its casing than any other object in the room. Avoiding the rhythms of the old man’s voice proved more difficult. The Lion possessed a youthful tone and his words, ripened with clarity, seemed to draw Rome toward a vortex of emotion.
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