Melni’s foot brushed against something solid. She knelt and found the tip of a shoe. The woman had hid below the desk. Melni reached for her but her fingers only found the walls of the empty space below. She felt for the shoe again and found it, and another, empty and resting on the floor.
A brilliant beam of a light swept frantically about the room. Melni pushed back from the desk and came up to a half crouch, then pretended to fling her knife toward the guard wielding the lamp. He flinched, dodged to one side. She used the distraction, vaulting the desk. Landing before him Melni kicked the man hard between the legs, followed by a punch to his throat, her fingers a flat, hard wedge. The combination sent him to the floor, desperate to cry out yet unable to get a breath. His light fell and rolled across the carpet, splaying long ugly shadows along the bookshelves.
Melni whirled back to the first guard. He’d dropped his pistol while trying to get a bulky handheld radio out of a holder on his belt. Trapped between gathering his weapon or defending himself, he could do neither effectively. She moved in and kicked him so hard in the face he fell again, his head smacking on the corner of a glass table. The surface shattered. The man screamed, writhed onto his side. Blood streamed from the back of his head.
On the far wall, opposite the door, a section of bookshelf had rotated aside, revealing a dark space behind. The concealed door was rotating back to its original position. On the other side of that wall, according to the house plans, the mysterious Think Tank waited. Melni vaulted the mess of glass. Three steps to cross the room, then she dove and tucked into a roll through the door a split second before it hissed shut.
Just inside she collided into the back wall of a narrow hallway. The door clicked as it closed, plunging her into absolute darkness. Faint footsteps came from somewhere to her right. Melni could see nothing at all. She rested a hand against one wall and began to walk slowly forward at a crouch, knife held in front of her at a right angle, edge instead of tip in case she ran into something solid.
A faint lamp winked on somewhere around a corner fifteen feet ahead. The light jerked about, cycled in intensity. Melni rushed to the corner and darted around, coming in low, blade held just below eye level.
She found herself in a huge cylinder-shaped room, thirty feet wide and just as tall. The air inside smelled of fresh flowers. Every surface was flawless white, meticulously clean, and almost luminous in the weak light from the lamp.
Alia did not hold the electric torch. She stood silhouetted, just two meters away, her back to Melni. She seemed paralyzed, frozen in the brilliant white beam of an electric torch held, Melni now realized, by someone else.
A third person inside the impenetrable Think Tank.
Melni leaned to one side. In the center of the room was a perfect circular column of softly glowing blue water. Fish of every size and color darted about within, circling a massive chunk of reef encrusted with gently swaying plants and tendrils. Pyramid fish clung to a rock near the base. A cloud of small silvery specks swarmed around near the very top, where a soft light lit the caps of waves on the surface of the installation. The whole thing seemed more sculpture than aquarium to Melni. She’d never seen anything like it.
In front of this spectacle stood a man. Melni could barely see him in the flaring gleam of his torch, but the shape of his profile gave the gender away. He held the beam rock steady just in front of his face.
If he’d noticed Melni, or cared, he gave no indication.
“Alia Valix,” he said in a strangely accented voice. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
A long, stark silence followed. Alia swallowed loudly enough for Melni to hear. She shifted in her stance. Finally she spoke, her voice a terrified whisper. “How did you get in here?”
“Trivial,” he replied. “Three, four, twenty thirty-nine. Using your birthday for the entry code? Very sloppy. Who’s your friend?” He flicked the beam ever so slightly toward Melni. “Come out where I can see you,” the man ordered.
Melni complied, keeping her gaze at his feet and concealing the knife behind her leg. Her mind churned on the scenario unfolding before her. Who was this man? Stranger still, how did he know Alia’s day of birth? Nobody knew the date of their own birth, much less someone else’s. Firstwords, sure. Alia’s firstwords was well known, given the lavish parties she’d thrown to celebrate the anniversary in recent years. She famously held the status of “all zeros.” Zero minutes, zero hour, zero month, zero year if one abbreviated the latter.
The more important bit of intelligence in his comment became suddenly clear. If he knew the date of her birth, he must know specific details of her life before she’d stumbled out of the Desolation all those years ago. Despite herself, a tingle of excitement danced up the skin of Melni’s arms and along her neck.
“That’s far enough,” the man said.
She’d only taken a step, putting her in plain sight but still close enough to Alia that he could keep them simultaneously illuminated in the beam. A tactically wise choice. He had, she now saw, a pistol held oddly in his right hand, not the normal left. Instead he used the left, which held the thin tube of the electric torch, as a means to steady his aim. Melni shifted her grip on the knife. She suddenly felt like third bird in the nest. A background player in something larger. Here she stood next to the wealthiest and most famous person alive, cowering in the bright beam of an armed…what, assassin? Burglar? Jilted lover?
A faint ticking sound rippled across the ceiling high above, followed by a dim but growing white light. In the huge cylindrical aquarium a stream of bubbles began to rise from the pebbles that filled the bottom. Somewhere behind the walls came the whir of fans moving air and pumps moving water.
The man turned off his light. Without wavering the aim of his gun he lowered the torch and slipped it into a loop on his belt.
Unable to resist, Melni took a quick glance about the room. She’d expected something like a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowing with volumes new, old, and perhaps even forgotten to time and the Desolation. A place to read, to contemplate. She’d expected giant blackboards filled with chalk lettering—equations, bubble maps, and the random scribbled insight. She’d expected beakers and glass spheres filled with strange chemicals bubbling over lit burners. Instead there was only the aquarium, and, off to one side, a simple desk with another of the beige computer systems resting atop its otherwise clean surface. Oddly the desk and its chair sat on a low circular dais.
The notion that Alia could generate all her amazing ideas from this simple, serene place made her all the more fascinating.
Training kicked in. Exits? None obvious, save where she’d come in, and that had closed behind her. Had it locked? Given its concealed nature, probably. And given Alia’s obsessive secrecy around this chamber it seemed to Melni unlikely that anyone on her staff would be entering on their own.
She shifted her attention to the man. He wore plain, ill-fitting Northern garb. Versatile, simple stuff favored out in the forests near the ice sheet. A rare sort of outfit to see in the city, except maybe down by the docks or near the roller platforms of the industrial zones where lumber or other goods were unloaded. His boots did not match the rest of the getup. They looked like standard chin-up patroller issue, in fact.
His face surprised Melni most of all. That slightly beige skin, the narrow eyes, and thick black hair. He was a Southerner, a native rather than a crater-band refugee like herself. There were hardly any such people north of the Desolation, and they usually kept well away from the cities.
Peculiarities began to register the more she looked at him. Narrow eyes, yes, but not the usual Southern blue. His were a dark brown, almost black. And his hair, while black, was cut shorter even than Melni’s, leaving his ears uncovered. Not a man’s style at all.
How had he come to be here? Parachuted in to do the job she had presumably failed at? If so, why dress like this?
Did he have an escape plan? Or was he just some loner, driven mad by a life live
d on the wrong side of the Desolation, his misfortunate ancestors trapped above the centerline? Was he here to take some kind of twisted vengeance? None of that explained how he would know the date of Alia Valix’s actual birth, though. He must be from Riverswidth.
“You,” Alia rasped.
The word stiffened him. For the first time his aim wavered, if only for an instant.
“You,” she said again. A whisper now, full of venom. When she spoke again her words were measured. “I’m surprised they’d send you, considering the mess you made. Atoning for past mistakes, are we? It took you long enough to figure out you’d missed one.”
The man’s brow furrowed. The gun lowered several inches as he stared, dumbstruck, into Alia’s face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it.
“Are you here to take me back?” Alia asked.
Now the gun snapped back to its original position, dead set on the middle of her chest. “Where’s the data you took? In there?” He nodded toward the desk, or perhaps the computer sitting upon it.
“Even if you torture me I won’t tell you where I’ve hidden it.”
The assassin shrugged. “Then I’ll search for it on my own. Thanks for saving me the headache.” He leaned his head in, sighting down the length of the pistol.
Alia held out her hands, surrendering to fate.
“Wait.” The word came from Melni’s own mouth before she knew she’d decided to speak.
The man kept his weapon trained on Alia, but his eyes slid between the thin slits to look at Melni. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Melni Tavan. Station N. I have authority in regards to this asset.” She moved in front of Alia, into the line of fire.
Again he shrugged. “No idea what you’re talking about. Stand aside.”
“This woman is my objective,” she went on, letting her knife show, “and I need her alive. There are questions that must be answered.”
“Yes, questions,” Alia said to the man. “You must want to know why.”
For the briefest moment Melni saw something in his face. He did indeed have questions. Refraining from asking them came from something more powerful than curiosity. It was training, and orders. “We already know why. It’s obvious,” the man replied.
“You’re wrong. You’ll ruin everything—”
“We’ll take our time. Do it right. Or we would have,” he added, suddenly thoughtful. “It’s probably not even an option anymore. You’ve poisoned the well—”
“I’m defending the well, you son of a bitch. You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into here,” Alia said. “But that’s you, isn’t it? The unwavering assassin. Cold-blooded murderer. Say any more, by the way, and you’ll have to kill this woman, too.”
He gave a casual shrug of his shoulders and renewed his aim.
“Wait,” Melni said. What in all of Garta’s light were they talking about? “Just…please—”
“Lights off!” Alia shouted, very loud and carefully clear.
Incredibly the lights obeyed her voice. Darkness swept back into the room, absolute save for the dimly glowing disk of the aquarium’s surface, high above.
Four gunshots barked in rapid succession. The rounds zipped past Melni’s ear and gave little thawps as they burrowed into the wall somewhere behind. She dropped to the ground, heard footsteps where Alia had been and a muttered curse from the assassin.
“Intrusion scenario!” Alia shouted.
A vibration coursed through the floor. The sound of grating metal mixed with snapping electrically activated locks. Another whipcrack from the gun. Sparks erupted from the wall to Melni’s left, where Alia’s voice had been. There was a heavy ringing thud from the direction of the small desk. Somewhere on the far side of the room she heard an almost imperceptible hydraulic hiss and then a deeper, heavier metallic clang.
The man had his flashlight back on and was frantically swinging it about the room. Melni rolled to her stomach and came up in a crouch, her knife held out despite the lack of opponent. The weapon felt suddenly pitiful.
Alia had vanished. Where the desk and chair had been there was now a metallic dome studded with rivets. Before Melni could ponder the reason for this she heard a series of thin mechanical whirs from all around. The man heard it, too, and swung his beam across the circular wall of the chamber. At every compass point, up close to the ceiling, a panel had opened, each perhaps one foot on a side. Concealed within were circular openings: pipes, like cannons lurking behind their gun ports.
A queer noise filled the room. Behind the walls, above the ceiling, came the rattling of pipework and the gurgling, uneven sounds of rushing water.
Above this came Alia’s voice, amplified and made tinny by a concealed sound system. “I’m sorry it has to end like this, but I cannot let you ruin what I’ve started here.”
The pipes coughed, each spraying a fine mist of water.
“This way!” Melni shouted. Without looking she turned and ran for the secret hallway she and Alia had entered through. All around her the hidden pipes began to belch little blasts of water. Then the deluge came. Six massive streams poured into the room and began to pool on the floor. Before Melni could even reach the opening there was an inch of water on the floor. She slipped as she tried to take the corner, slammed into the hallway wall, and began to slide along it on the torrent of frigid liquid pouring into the Think Tank. The impact ripped her backpurse from her shoulder. It splashed into the water and sank, gone. Without the benefit of the stranger’s torch she found herself in near-total darkness, carried by the flood of water.
Panic filled her as the current slammed her bodily into the far end of the narrow passage. In the impact she lost her grip on the knife and it splashed near her feet. She imagined the razor-sharp blade swirling around violently in the vortex of current around her legs. Forget it! her mind screamed. Get out, get away!
Somewhere to her right would be the concealed bookshelf door she’d entered through. She came to a shaky stand, groped around in the inky blackness for any kind of handle. Nothing. The water came to her waist now. She took a gulp of air and dove, fumbling along the base of the door for a foot latch. Again, nothing. Melni stood again and heaved against the surface with her shoulder, to no avail. She pressed her back against the opposite wall and kicked. The door did not so much as budge. The water, now at her chest, gave no indication of slowing. No drainage. A perfect seal. In the chamber behind her, the dome over Alia’s desk made a sudden and terrible sense. That tiny table and its computer were the only things in the room worth protecting.
The hallway turned from possible exit to virtually certain death trap. She kicked hard, cupped her hands, and pulled toward the vast chamber of the Think Tank, but against the torrent she made no progress. The water came on too fast, grinding in a violent maelstrom where the narrow hallway ended.
Less than a foot of air remained. Without an exit the water pressure would soon equalize, so she shifted focus to breathing, craning her neck out of the sloshing surface until her lips met the ceiling. One last swallow of air, then Melni pushed off and down. The pressure against her vanished as the hallway filled to capacity. She kicked off and kept kicking. Her arms were almost useless in the narrow passage so she pressed one to her side and held the other out to feel her way through the pitch black. She thrashed her feet, kicking hard. The frigid water bit into her skin. Her lungs burned for air.
A light swung through the darkness. There, the end of the tunnel. Melni kicked harder and reached out. Her fingertips brushed the end of the hallway and she turned, pressed her feet against the wall, and thrust her body back into the Think Tank. She kicked upward, pulled with her hands and arms. Her lungs demanded air, burned for it. Any second now her body would disobey the force of will.
With a splash her head broke the surface. Melni gulped fresh air and treaded water. Around her the pipes near the ceiling still spewed water at a colossal pace, the deafening streams churning the surface. Already half the room lay submerged.
The cool blue column of the aquarium jutted from the center of the pool. Below, in the murky depth, she saw the beam of the stranger’s electric torch swinging about. He was frantic. Drowning. Perhaps he didn’t know how to swim.
Despite the pain in her lungs and the tremors running through her cold body, Melni paddled toward the light and, once over it, dove and kicked downward. Near the bottom she spotted the blurred shape of the man. He was near the dome that had covered Alia’s desk. She reached for him, grabbed him tight by the neck of his shirt. Feet against the bottom she thrust upward, letting bubbles stream from her mouth to guide the way. He struggled against her. A slap at her arm, then his fingers wrapped around her wrist and he pulled. Melni held on, fighting him, wanting to slap sense into the blixxing idiot.
Her face broke the turgid surface. The ceiling was only a few feet above now.
The man came up next to her. He gulped air and then whirled, mouth twisted into a snarl. He shouted over the crashing water. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“You were drowning. I saved your life!”
“Save yourself, Melanie, or whatever your name is. I’ve got a job to do.”
One foot of air space remained. The pipes had submerged, leaving only the sound of water lapping against the walls and the giant glass cylinder.
“We need to work together,” Melni said. “Find a drainage point and force it open.”
“Do as you like. I’m getting into that dome.”
“Drain the water first! Think about it. You will only get one more chance to swim down there before we have no air left. Drain the water and you can hack at that steel ball all you like.” The tumultuous water had them bobbing like toy boats. Melni’s head bumped the ceiling. “Please, there is no time to argue.”
The water reached his chin. They both pressed one hand against the ceiling now to keep their heads from smacking into it with each churning wave. He stared at her, weighing options, gauging her wisdom and, she sensed, her authority. “The fish tank,” he said. “Any flesh eaters in there? Anything poisonous?”
Zero World Page 9
