The attack had no subtlety or finesse. Deklan just made sure that he hit and hit hard. The impact swept both of them off their feet. The guard was groaning in a way that made Deklan think that the man might have broken a bone. Deklan didn’t have time for pity or compassion. Instead he reared up on his knees and straddled the guard, repeatedly slugging his opponent’s face.
Cheekbones snapped under Deklan’s blows, and teeth bit into his knuckles with each punch to the jaw. The man’s hands, now empty, reached up to stop him, but Deklan batted them aside and continued to punch until the body beneath him was limp and the face covered in a red spray.
“Deklan.” Calm’s voice trailed off again.
Concern for Calm made Deklan interrupt his assault on the guard. The pain in his hands demanded attention, and his shoulders burned from the beating he’d inflicted. Ignoring his own needs, Deklan dashed over to Calm and crouched in front of him.
A wan-looking Calm had pushed himself upright against a wall with his hands over a wound in his torso. Blood welled from between his fingers, and his face was twisted into a grimace. It was his eyes that captured Deklan’s attention. They were afraid. Deklan had never seen Calm look afraid.
“I don’t think. . . .” Calm swallowed in an effort to master the pain visible on his face. “I don’t think it’s too bad.”
Not sure that he agreed, Deklan did his best to nod encouragement. “You’re going to be fine,” he said, “but we need to go. They knew that we were coming.”
Calm’s face went white, and his nostrils flared. “I can’t stand on my own.” His voice was weak and imploring.
Deklan understood why Calm was so scared. It wasn’t just the fact of his having been shot and injured; it was the shock of it coupled with the possibility of losing his power. Deklan had been a Keystone for only days before Mutuari had deprived him of his power, and the loss had terrified him. Calm had been a Keystone for years and was accustomed to invincibility. The entire plan, reflected Deklan, had been ill conceived. They had put their trust in the elements of surprise and Calm’s ability, even though Deklan had firsthand experience with Keystones who could strip abilities from others. He’d assumed that Mutuari was unique and that with Calm along there would be no danger, but now Darya was dead and Calm shot.
Calm forced a smile. “Get the beacon.” He closed his eyes and mastered himself before continuing. “Then we can find Jamie and Jonny. After that you can stick me in a rejuvenation tank.” He smiled, and Deklan was glad to see that his mouth was free of blood. “Never thought I’d need one of those again.”
Deklan patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” So saying, he dashed over to the beacon. The setup for reading its stored data was more elaborate than he’d realized either time he’d been in the room. The beacon was a short cylinder, about twice the length of his palm, capped with two rounded ends that glowed green. It was held upright with both ends resting in a silver mesh. The silver mesh connected to a black box, and wires from the box ran to every computer in the room. The connections gave Deklan pause, but he didn’t have time to hesitate. He tore the silver caps from the beacon and shoved it into his pocket.
“Guns. Get the guns,” Calm called to him.
The guns, Deklan realized, would make them look more like guards and less like fugitives. The holsters were uncomplicated affairs made from a coarse black material and fastened to the leg with two adjustable straps. Deklan unstrapped the holsters from the two guards and appropriated their weapons.
Calm kept his hands pressed down on his wound and pointed his chin at the holsters Deklan held. “Quick,” he said, “strap those on us.”
“We don’t have time for that now,” replied Deklan. “We need to get out of here.”
Calm shook his head, his expression weary. “Have to. . . .” He stopped to wipe blood over his face. “I can’t get away on my own. Have to fake it.” He closed his eyes, fatigue washing over his features from the effort of speaking.
A flash of understanding suddenly came to Deklan. Calm didn’t want to run at all. Three of the guards were bloody pulps, and Darya was dead on the floor. If he and Calm pretended to be guards who had come out on top but needed medical attention, they might just be taken to whatever passed for a hospital. Calm had just taken the first step of making the improvised plan workable by smearing blood over his features.
Deklan meanwhile was busy at Calm’s thigh, trying to put a gun into the holster.
“No,” advised Calm. “Put the gun back by the man you killed. You need to explain the wound.”
He was right. In order for their story to hold up to quick scrutiny, they would need to look as though they’d been incompetent. The gun was covered in blood, but that shouldn’t be a problem because the room looked like hell, and Darya’s foot planted in her victim’s chest would probably dominate the first impressions of those who found them there. Deklan took the gun he’d stolen for Calm back to where he’d beaten the man to death and placed it on the ground nearby. Then he strapped the second holster to his leg and put his stolen gun in it.
“Go to the door and call for help,” said Calm. “That’ll make us look more innocent.”
Deklan was grateful for Calm’s clarity under the circumstances. He crossed the room and grasped the door’s handle, his fingers leaving a red smear on the metal. Calm had disguised himself with blood on his face, and Deklan copied his example.
“Remember to stretch out your vowels,” added Calm.
Right, Deklan realized. He had to imitate the local accent. Good thing that “Help!” was a short word. Deklan slumped down against the wall next to the door before opening it. From that angle all he could see was the far wall of the hall, but he could hear the sounds of boots running toward him. It wasn’t just one or two pairs but instead several. “Help!” he croaked, making his cry loud enough to be heard over the boots but quiet enough to suggest that he needed urgent medical attention.
Trampling feet stopped inches away from Deklan’s face. “What the hell?” said a voice above him at the sight of the room.
Deklan hoped that his heart sounded loud only to him. He and Calm were gambling a lot on the Tau Primans’ being confused.
There was a noise of someone else retching and then vomiting. Never before had Deklan felt a smile try to form after hearing that noise. If things looked that bad, they might just be okay.
A gruff female voice took control of the situation. “Get a medic. These two are still alive.” It was the voice of the type of woman that you pictured smoking cigars and drinking hard liquor neat.
Deklan suppressed the urge to see who was issuing these commands and kept his eyes at a bleary half focus.
“What happened here?” asked the woman in charge.
How elaborate an answer did he dare give, wondered Deklan, since each word could give him away? “Tainted,” he slurred, pointing in a way that encompassed Darya. He pretended that the effort had overwhelmed him and slumped further down against the wall.
Deklan heard the sound of new boots rushing to the scene, and four men entered the room. At least Deklan thought they were men. It was hard to see them when he couldn’t risk showing how alert he was. They stood out from the background because of their white clothes, like those of the man he’d stuffed into the morgue drawer. Beyond that he could vaguely discern that their heads were covered and their arms bare.
They knelt first by Calm and carried out a preliminary procedure before wheeling a pair of stretchers through the door and loading Calm onto the first one. “He needs to be hospitalized.” The male voice carried undertones of urgency that worried Deklan.
Seconds later a pair of faces hovered over him. Deklan deliberately kept his eyelids heavy and his vision fuzzy. He’d hit his head often enough over the years to know the effects.
Rough hands held Deklan’s jaw, and a light shone in his eyes. “This one might just be concussed,” said an attendant, “but we can’t be sure. Not all of this is his own blood.�
� Deklan had hoped that the medics would take longer to come to that conclusion. The less danger they thought he was in, the greater the risk that they’d discover his deception.
“Good,” said the gruff female voice. Her face swam into view as restraints were tightened around Deklan’s wrists.
Something cold and hard and metallic crunched into the side of his face, and a tooth came loose in his jaw. “Did you really think,” she crowed, “I wouldn’t recognize that you weren’t one of my men? Did you think that your abominable accent would fool us? Did you think that murderers could escape so easily?” Another blow snapped Deklan’s head to the side. “Get him to the infirmary,” the leader ordered. “We wouldn’t want him to miss his execution.”
Whatever hope Deklan had left withered. He strained against his cuffs, arching his back and pushing up with his feet. Another blow came, this time against his other cheek, and put him down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Infirmary
Deklan didn’t have to fake his blurred vision anymore. The repeated blows to his head had left him feeling genuinely dazed. He’d been taken to an infirmary in an elevator with two doctors and another unit of five men with guns. They’d had their weapons trained on him for the entire trip.
Now Deklan lay in a morgue-like white room, his hands and feet strapped to a bed’s frame. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision. For several seconds there was no improvement, but then his persistence paid off as the room’s features came into focus. Here, Deklan was glad to see, there were no drawers in the walls. Instead several beds were separated by glass or plastic. A tall and thin female doctor stood nearby, dressed all in white, but her head was turned away from him. He’d seen hospitals like this before in old movies. Their transparent walls could be darkened for use as screens to display patient information and vital signs.
The medical personnel hadn’t done much for him yet. His face was crusted with drying blood, some of which cracked like a layer of salt when he moved his jaw. “Are you going to give me some new clothes?” he asked the female doctor. After asking the question Deklan remembered the beacon in his pocket and the gift from Cheshire. He shouldn’t have said anything, he realized, to invite further scrutiny.
“No.” The doctor smiled maliciously and crinkled her forehead under her red hair. “There’s no point in wasting new clothes on dead men.” Deklan didn’t like the way her eyes shone at the word “dead.”
“And my concussion?”
She flared her nostrils before tapping the wall in his room. His bed made an odd noise that sounded like a ball’s being dropped into thick oil, and the transparent glass came alive with a meter-wide depiction of Deklan’s brain and another of his skull. Both his brain and skull were rendered in three-dimensional images that showed both the outer surfaces and the inner structure. The image of his brain meant almost nothing to him except that it didn’t have any flashing red warnings. The image of his skull did have such warnings. He could see trauma to his jaw, where a tooth had been dislodged, and cracks in both cheekbones as well as a hairline fracture down the side of his jaw. His doctor folded her arms and studied the graphics. “You’re face is going to swell,” she said, “but it’s not life-threatening.”
“I’d agree with that assessment.” It was Jamie’s voice coming from his right.
Deklan whipped his head around only to find Arkady dressed in the clothes of a man. The sound of flesh hitting flesh came from his left. Looking back, he saw Jamie standing over the doctor, who was sprawled on the floor. Gone were Jamie’s blond locks, replaced by red curls that tumbled over her ears. “You need a lot of rescuing, don’t you, Deklan?” Despite the gravity of their situation, the words held a playful note.
He opened his mouth and was surprised at his first question. “When did you dye your hair?”
A lone eyebrow arched up, and Jamie treated him to an amused smile. “Really, that’s your first question?”
When he’d first met her, she’d been a featureless terror, later a beautiful tanned woman with dark hair, and after that a beautiful blonde with no memories of their time together in Boa Vista. His question about her hair was important. “Actually yes.”
“It just happened,” she replied. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I’ve lost anything.”
A flush of relief swept through his system. “Good. Do you know where Calm is?”
Jamie stood next to Deklan, laid a finger on him, and teleported him out of his restraints. They reappeared together with Deklan still in a prone position but without anything underneath him. He fell a few handbreadths before she caught him. “Yes,” she answered, “I know where Calm is, but I came for you first.”
Her words lit a tingle of pleasure in Deklan.
Jamie wrinkled her nose at him. “We need to get that blood off your face.”
“How did you know to come find us?”
Jamie inclined her head toward Arkady. “She told us.”
That didn’t answer Deklan’s question. He turned toward Arkady with a puzzled expression.
Arkady met his look with a small frown that bespoke controlled inner turmoil. “It was Veronika,” she said. “When Darya killed those men at the elevator, she started screaming and showed us the images over and over.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Veronika was always the one to come to the surface. She spent the most time here. She must have snapped after we told her that she wouldn’t be able to come to the surface anymore. We think that she planned your entire ambush.”
“We were all supposed to die then? She knew they had a man who could annul Keystone abilities?” Deklan knew that he would always believe the answer to be “Yes.”
“We don’t know,” said Arkady. “She blinded us with illusions. Father sent me to find your friends and try to get you out.”
“Is Jonny with Calm?” asked Deklan.
“No, we left Jonny at the shipyard aboard The Bloody Fox.” The name obviously amused Jamie. “His ability isn’t exactly combative and we thought it would be good if he learned how to pilot the craft. Its controls are antique.”
If Jonny was okay, it occurred to Deklan, the rest of the details weren’t important. “We need to check on Calm,” urged Deklan. “He was shot.”
“Let’s go then. He’s a few beds up from you.” Jamie put a hand on Deklan’s shoulder and teleported them to different patient areas three times before stopping.
Calm lay on a bed. Like Deklan formerly, his hands and feet were restrained, with his hands down by his waist. Unlike the case with Deklan, he had been stripped of clothes, and his stomach wound was covered in a translucent gel.
“What’s that?” Deklan asked, pointing to the gel.
“It’s a healing method that was discontinued more than a century ago,” Jamie answered. She gripped the restraint on Calm’s right hand and snapped it open. “It was effective in its day, but we have better treatments now. From what I saw of their rejuvenation tanks this is probably the best medical care that they can offer.” Jamie then went to work on Calm’s left wrist.
Calm lifted his head and tilted his chin, scanning his abdomen. “This is their best treatment?” he asked skeptically.
“Yes,” replied Arkady.
“And just how bad was that gunshot?” inquired Calm.
Jamie rocked her head from side to side. “There’s really no such thing as a good gunshot to the gut.”
Deklan noted the evasion in her words.
“Do you think you can move?” asked Jamie, moving on to free Calm’s ankles.
Calm nodded, but without much enthusiasm. “What’s the plan?”
“Do you have the beacon?” Jamie asked Deklan.
He pulled it from his pocket. “I do, yes.”
“Good. In that case we run like hell.”
“That’s it?” replied Deklan, leery of plans that trusted to chance. “Nothing clever with Arkady, the giant crocodile?”
Arkady scowled. “I can’t shift shapes when I’m dry. In any c
ase we need to get going. It’s a miracle that we haven’t been caught yet.”
Just then the door opened, and AnnaLea walked in with a phalanx of ten guards. Each man had a gun, and two guards carried shoulder-slung weapons that looked capable of demolishing walls. “Leaving so soon?” said AnnaLea in a mocking voice. “I insist that you stay.” The men around her raised their weapons.
“Calm?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t think that my power is working,” he replied.
“It looks as though you’re out of options,” said AnnaLea, her smile intensifying and broadening.
A high-pitched beeping noise came from Deklan’s pocket, and a red light flashed through the fabric.
“What is that?” asked AnnaLea in a sharp tone, the smile disappearing from her face.
Deklan reached into his pocket and pulled out the black sphere that Cheshire had given him. Formerly featureless, it now was lit by concentric red rings that flashed in a sequence from the top to the bottom and back again.
“Throw that into the corner,” AnnaLea commanded.
Deklan was torn between throwing it at her and obeying her order. The two men with cannon-like guns swiveled to point their weapons at him. Deklan decided to trust Cheshire and do as he was told. A flick of his wrist sent the little sphere bounding through the air toward the corner. He watched with the same interest as everyone else in the room when the red lights stopped and a black shadow streamed from the ball.
The shadow quickly spread to the floor and ceiling, blanketing the room in darkness. The darkness spread further, engulfing everything it touched. Then came the laughter. Manic laughter, dark laughter, issued out of the shadows and filled the room.
Deklan’s eyes widened, and his shoulders tensed. It couldn’t be what he thought it was; it couldn’t be who he thought it was.
Without waiting for orders, AnnaLea’s men immediately opened fired and sprayed the shadow with their weapons. The bullets did nothing but tear into the walls, passing through the shadow without effect.
Keystones: Tau Prime Page 17
