by Devin Hanson
“Why, you want me to?” Min asked.
“I think that’s enough, Min,” Ruu said quietly. To the intruders she said, “If you’re done fighting back, I’d like my question answered.”
“I’m not telling you shit!” the leg-shot marshal snarled.
Min stepped over to him and put his boot on the man’s knee. The marshal shrieked and clawed at Min’s leg ineffectually. Min leaned his weight on the ruined joint for a moment before taking the pressure off. “I think you will tell,” he said. “I don’t think you have the cajones to stay silent. Answer the lieutenant’s question. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“No! I’d rather–”
“We came to collect any chips there were in the safe.”
“Shut up! Don’t say anything else!” The marshal cried out.
Min pointed his gun at the marshal’s head, then moved the barrel a few inches to the side and fired a round in the floor next to the man’s ear. “Next time you speak out of turn, it goes in your head,” he informed the marshal.
“We’d like those chips,” Ruu said. She had flinched at the gunshot, but looked down on the woman levelly.
“Right front pocket,” the woman said, nodding her head at the prone marshal.
Min kicked away the marshal’s arm and jerked the bundle out of the indicated pocket, then tossed it to Ruu.
Ruu pocketed the bundle, ignoring the weak curses of the marshal. “Thank you. And my other question? Who are you?”
“Nobody. A local. I’m only returning a favor. I have no interest in the contents of the chips or whatever vendetta your partner is carrying.” The woman met Ruu’s eyes squarely. “In my defense, I was acting on the orders of a marshal.”
“You’re not a marshal?” Min asked.
“I’m a locksmith. I was asked to open the safe, nothing more.”
Ruu glanced at Min, who shrugged. “The chips have to do with a child kidnapping and harvesting operation. You understand what I’m talking about?”
The woman’s face twisted in disgust and for the first time, fear tightened her brows. “I didn’t know. I would never have agreed to help with the safe.”
Ruu nodded. “I believe you.”
“I swear, I will leave peacefully. I am unarmed and will say nothing of this to anyone.”
Min twitched the barrel of his gun toward the door and the locksmith got up unsteadily. “Thank you.” She glared down at the wounded marshal and spat with commendable aim into his face. “I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”
“Get out of here,” Ruu said.
The locksmith snatched up a tool satchel and hurried out, with one last contemptuous look for the marshal bleeding on the ground.
“So,” Min said, kneeling down next to the marshal. “What are we going to do with you?”
“You’re a traitor,” he hissed at Ruu. “You think you’re going to go away with anything? You turn us in and they’ll still kill you for what you’ve done.”
“Maybe.” Ruu tapped her chin, frowning down on the marshal. “I recognize you. You’re in the Transportation division. Adain, wasn’t it?”
“Fuck you, Ruu.”
“Well, Adain, make a case for yourself. Why should I allow you to live?”
“Because I’m a marshal? You’re adding manslaughter to corruption charges.” He sneered. “You’re going down anyway, but maybe they’ll just sentence you to a lifetime in the ice mines. Of course, that’ll be less than a month, won’t it? When was your last treatment, Lieutenant?”
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Min said. “This piece of shit is fucking with my qi.”
Ruu shrugged. “Time’s up, Adain. Unless you have some vital piece of information…?”
Adain laughed. Min pulled the trigger and the monomol round punched Adain backward to the ground. Blood clotted with rubbery lumps of grey matter fanned outward across the floor. Adain’s corpse twitched a few times then lay still.
Ruu nudged the dead man’s boot out of the way distastefully and went to examine Jiahao’s terminal. The display had been smashed in and the terminal’s innards had been ripped out and crushed with a heavy glass paperweight.
“We’re not getting anything from this,” Ruu observed.
“We wanted to destroy the data anyway. Mission accomplished.”
“I suppose.” Ruu patted the packet of chips in her pocket absently. “I’m very curious to discover what is on these.”
“The usual, I suppose.” Min shrugged, suddenly disinterested in the whole matter. He wanted to leave Olympus and return to Acheron. Getting back to Angeline and Adora was more important than saving the reputation of his lieutenant. Even if she didn’t truly deserve to go down with the kidnappers, she had to have some pretty messy crimes behind her in order for Jiahao to keep her silent. Enough to ruin her life.
The chips probably had names, locations and evidence on dozens of marshals and other officials, enough to keep the criminal organization out of official view. How many of those marshals were actually corrupt, and how many were like Ruu, coerced into cooperation? Min felt only exhaustion contemplating that. There would be thousands of hours of work tracking down all the people mentioned in the chips and determining if the blackmail contained within was worth taking action on or not.
“You alright, Min?”
Min shook his head, forcing his attention back to the present moment. He would deal with the chips later. “Yeah. Just getting a little existential in my old age.” He sighed. “Got everything you need?”
Ruu looked around the office. “This is a Charlie Foxtrot, isn’t it?”
“It’s just beginning. We need to get to Acheron Cluster.”
“Where the girls are being held?”
Min nodded.
Ruu made one last turn about the office then shrugged. “Sure. Let’s get out of here before people show up and start asking questions.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
War, it is said, accelerates the technology of a society. At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth was plunged into war. Not a war fought by armies, with tanks and fighter planes, or with nanomachines and biological agents, but war, nonetheless. There were no sides, no clear enemy to attack, no propaganda or fear-mongering typically associated with human conflicts.
Yet, there was no doubt that the entire population of Earth was plunged into war. With the December Protocol, there was suddenly a clear enemy to strike at. The war spontaneously developed sides, and while he battles grew no less confused, each side began claiming victories.
One of the early victories of the proponents of the immortality treatments was the establishment of a lunar city. Plans had been in the works for years, but lacked funding. Suddenly, all the wealthiest people on Earth desperately wanted to get into space. Luna was built almost overnight, as hundreds of millions of tons of materials and supplies were launched in less than a year.
As a long-term home, Luna had flaws. The moon, for all its proximity, had almost no available resources. Still, it served as a launching point for Mars and Venus flights, and in time grew to be a stable and valuable trading point. The Matriarch Manifesto forbade any contact with those who had received the Womack Process, and Luna was the obvious middle ground where goods and raw materials could be exchanged through intermediaries.
Angeline stared down the hallway at Anton and the gun in his hand. He was breathing hard from his run and his arm wasn’t steady, but the distance was only twenty yards. She was paralyzed with fear. He hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, but there was nowhere to run. The only way out was past Anton.
A movement to her left caught Angeline’s attention. A door was opening. She turned her head and saw it was the examination room, E12.
Dr. Lenbroke stuck her head out into the hallway and gasped when she saw them. “What are you doing out?! Anton! What the fuck are you doing with that gun?”
Angeline saw the momentary hesitation cross Anton’s face and the
muzzle of the pistol drop. Without thinking it through or considering the consequences, Angeline acted. She flung herself at Dr. Lenbroke. The doctor’s arms spread wide, as if to catch her or embrace her and Angeline rammed into her, leading with the blunt end of the stunrod.
With the wind knocked from her, Dr. Kim Lenbroke fell back into the examination room, surprise etched onto her features. Angeline tripped on the doctor’s legs and tumbled. There was the crack of a gunshot outside, and then Adora dived into the room. She kicked the door shut and leaped up to flip the lock closed.
The doctor was struggling to sit up and catch her breath when Adora swung her stunrod with all the strength in her body, catching Dr. Lenbroke across the temple. Angeline flinched as the doctor’s head snapped sideways and she collapsed, limp, to the ground.
“Did you kill her?” Angeline asked, shocked by the ferocity of the blow. Then the door banged and shook against the lock, as Anton crashed into it. Her concern over the doctor vanished and she shrieked, cowering behind one of the gurneys.
“Don’t shoot!” Adora screamed. “The doctor is against the door! If you shoot, she dies!”
Blood was running from the long gash along Dr. Lenbroke’s temple. Angeline knew next to nothing about medicine or doctoring, but she knew that a heavy blow to the skull could be fatal if not treated correctly, and soon.
Angeline realized she didn’t care. Dr. Lenbroke was one of the people responsible for her capture and the deaths of Eva, Jasmine and God only knew how many others.
“Open the door, Adora!” Anton cried. “Let us in and we won’t kill you.”
“Angeline!” Adora hissed. “Knock that shit off and help me think! What do we do?”
Angeline forced herself to take deep breaths until her mindless panic faded. She turned slowly, examining the room. Half of it was a lab, where Dr. Lenbroke did her work. A row of gurneys was against the wall adjacent to the door. On the opposite wall was a long counter, with cabinets above and below. The counter was cluttered with medical equipment, most of it unfamiliar to Angeline.
The other half of the partitioned room was an operating theater, with a stainless steel surgery table and an enormous light array on an articulated arm hanging over it. One of the walls in the theater was dominated by a cryogenic condenser, the others by racks and shelves of more equipment.
There had to be something in this room that could help them, if only she had the wit to figure it out.
In Angeline’s school, lab safety had been etched into her mind forever. She vividly remembered a demonstration the teacher had done with a human eyeball taken from a cadaver. A single drop of acid onto the eye and, in a flash, the clear surface had milked over completely. Had it been a living eye, the person would have been instantly blinded.
Now, Angeline had to deliberately figure out how to do something dangerous. It was hard to force herself to think of ways to cause harm to a body. Acid would do it, but required direct application to be successful. An explosion would be nice, but she couldn’t think of any common lab chemicals that could rapidly be mixed up to create a significant blast. And, anyway, an explosion would pose as much danger to Adora and herself as it would to Anton.
The door shuddered as something crashed into it. Again and again, the heavy blows drove into the door. The doorframe by the hinges started to crack and splinter.
“We’re running out of time!” Adora cried.
Angeline tried to focus, ignoring the pounding on the door and Adora’s cries. What did she want to accomplish? She wanted Anton dead. Not maimed, not blinded, not driven off, but dead. None of the medical equipment on the counter looked lethal. She opened the cabinets above. Blankets. Towels.
She yanked open the door under the sink in the center of the counter. There was a large glass bottle of industrial-strength disinfectant. She saw a warning label and emergency procedures should any get on your skin or in your eyes. She unscrewed the plastic cap and lifted the container to smell. The strong, almost overpowering scent of chlorine burned her nose. Bleach. Thank you. Thank you.
One of the very first things she had been taught about chemistry as a small child was to never mix and match cleaning supplies. An acid-based cleanser, mixed with bleach or a related product, would produce chlorine gas. She knew it would burn your lungs or irritate your eyes in even small amounts.
The door was beginning to sag under the blows. Adora was braced against it, her teeth bared, but she was fighting a losing battle. Angeline didn’t have much time left. Thirty seconds, definitely not more than a minute.
She needed acid. She found a rack of brown glass bottles with hand-lettered labels and she pawed through them until she found a bottle labeled simply HCl. She was still learning chemistry in school and didn’t know many acids or what they were good for, but hydrochloric acid was one of the staples of a school lab.
She took a deep breath and unscrewed the caps from both bottles. Holding her breath, she poured the acid straight into the cleanser bottle. The cleanser was perhaps two-thirds full and started to foam. She got about half the acid in before she saw the foam climbing toward the mouth of the cleanser bottle. She screwed the lid on quickly, and, turning her head, finally took a breath.
Through the glass, Angeline could see the cleanser roiling as the acid reacted with it. “Adora!” she cried, “Get away from the door!”
Without waiting for the other girl to move, she shoved the glass bottle. It slid across the tiled floor and bumped against the door. Nothing else happened. The crashing on the door paused as someone outside shouted for quiet.
Angeline realized the flaw in her plan, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Soon, any second now, the pressure within the bottle would grow to the point where the plastic lid wouldn’t hold it back. A geyser of acid and cleanser would shoot from the bottle, propelled by the buildup of gas inside. If she had judged correctly the gas would be mostly chlorine, and deadly.
But she and Adora were still stuck in the room. They would be swimming in poison gas any second, and the only escape was through the door where Anton waited for them.
Desperately, Angeline scanned the room and spotted an air vent above the counter cabinets. It might be large enough for Angeline to crawl through and perhaps Adora, though it would be a tighter fit for the older girl.
“The vent!” Angeline hissed, pointing.
Adora turned from the door and leapt up onto the counter, kicking equipment to the floor to make room to stand. The vent cover was hinged for easy cleaning and Adora popped the latches and propped it open. “You first,” she said.
Angeline climbed up onto the counter and Adora made a basket from her hands, giving Angeline a boost up to the vent. Angeline climbed in, but it was too tight to turn around. She could crawl on her elbows, but that was it. Ahead of her, the duct lead upward at a shallow angle.
Behind her, the door crashed open and she heard the pop-whoosh of the bottle finally blowing its lid. A man cried out in shock and someone screamed. Angeline wanted to turn around to see what was happening, but all she could see was a section of the wall. A man cursed, followed by the crack of a pistol shot.
Adora cried out, a wordless challenge and Angeline heard the thwack of a stunrod against bone. “Run, Angeline!” she yelled.
“No!” Angeline shouted, “Don’t stay there! Don’t breathe the gas!”
“There were more screams, mingled with choking rasps. Adora’s cries turned to pain and panic, then gurgling screams. Then, less than thirty seconds later, the room was silent.
“Adora?” Angeline called. She couldn’t turn around. Didn’t dare back up. A slight breeze was against her face, the ever-present cluster air circulation pushing fresh air past her and into the room. She was safe from the gas.
Silence met her cry. Distantly, she heard the drip-drip of some liquid falling. “Adora?” she called again, her voice hoarse. Tears ran down her face. She knew there would be no response. Adora was dead, by her hand. With her, Dr. Lenbroke and an
unknown number of men had also died.
Numbly, Angeline crawled deeper into the air vent. If only she had thought of the vents first, rather than the gas bomb. If only Adora hadn’t stayed to fight. After slowly crawling into the vent ten or fifteen feet, she broke down completely and sobbed into her arms.
It wasn’t fair. What had she done to deserve this? Was this all punishment for playing hooky? She had always tried hard to be a good student and helpful at home. She had never known anyone who had died before. The list was long now. Everyone she knew in the cluster was dead or trying to kill her. Even the marshal, Min Yang, was probably dead now.
Gradually, Angeline’s tears dried up and she realized she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since her early dinner the night before. Her family wasn’t wealthy by any means, but she had never gone hungry before.
Now, she didn’t know when her next meal would be. In theory she could work her way through the vents and reach other parts of the level or even make her way to a different floor entirely. The thought gave her some hope. She could still escape!
She crawled forward some more, and the vent gradually grew pitch black. Suddenly, the vent duct opened to the sides and she cautiously felt about. The duct had opened up into a service tunnel. She crawled out and thankfully sat with her back against the wall. The breeze was stronger here, cooling the sweat on her skin and blowing her hair about, tangling it.
She still had her stunrod. The looped strap at the butt end made it easy to carry around her wrist. She held it up and turned it on. Blue arcs of electricity leaped and popped between the contacts, giving her a dim view of her surroundings.
The air passages were low tunnels roughly four feet on a side and ran through the layer, providing fresh air to the inhabitants. In the old days on Earth, clever architects had learned how to use natural convection to get fresh air to the deepest mines and innermost dungeons. None of that was in evidence here. The cluster air tunnels embodied a brute-force approach to getting air where it was needed. Rather than trying to train a populace in aerodynamics, the vents just shoved air into individual rooms. Hallways provided the outlet, which were designed to funnel the airflow back to the enormous circulation fans. These directed the used air back to the surface filters where the carbon dioxide could be precipitated out of it and the clean air returned for new use.
