Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  The alarm klaxon blatted. It pounded eardrums with physical force, pressing around them with walls of sound.

  “It’s a fire drill.” Sam swept the work orders into a drawer, and locked it. “Only a fire drill, Captain.” He looked over at her. “Follow me—”

  Kilian sat rigid on the edge of the desk. Her eyes had gone black glass, her skin, dun clay.

  “Captain.” He stepped up to her, nudged her arm, then grabbed her shoulder and shook. “It’s just a drill!”

  “You have to get out.” Her breath smelled like sweet vinegar. “They’re coming—”

  “Duong! Move your ass!” Odergaard stuck his ever-red face in the door. “It took us three minutes to clear the floor last time. You know we need to break two!” His voice rang down the hallway. “Move! Move! Move!”

  Kilian had hidden behind the partition during Odergaard’s short tirade. Now, she jerked. Gasped. “Run.”

  “Captain—”

  “Run.” She looked him in the face, but whatever her eyes saw, he knew it had nothing to do with him, or anything else in the here and now. “Get out while you still have a chance. Neumann’s made a deal with the Laumrau. They’re going to perform tests on you. You’ll die. You have to go now!”

  “But they check for stragglers after everyone is outside—”

  “Let them.” She grabbed him by the elbow, dragged him out of the office, and pushed him down the hall toward the exit. Then she took off in the opposite direction and disappeared around the corner, her stride an odd skip-walk because of her stiff right leg.

  He stood in one spot, the siren blare squeezing him until he thought he’d scream. Run! Neumann’s coming! He pelted down the halls, his weak leg causing him to stumble, up the stairs, through the building entry, out the door, and collided with—

  He looked up into the face that stared down at him, saw white and death and eyes like ice. This time, he did scream.

  “Oh bravo, John.” Another man slipped an arm between Sam and certain doom and pushed them apart. His hair was light brown, his skin pale, but he looked like night next to the grey-suited thing beside him. “My name is Val Parini. This is John Shroud.” His voice held that clipped, professional calm that reminded Sam of flavored ice—sweet, cold, nothing. “We’re looking for Jani Kilian—do you know who she is?”

  “That lieutenant said she fled here from the party.” Shroud stalked to the SIB entry, his white skin glowing beneath the chemical discharge of the security lighting. “We need to get her out now. If what Pimentel says is true—”

  “What do you mean, if!” Pimentel of the surgery threats broke away from a nearby huddle and strode toward Shroud, his finger raised like a shooter, medwhites fluttering in the night breeze. “Are you doubting my veracity again, Doctor?”

  Parini stepped between Shroud and Pimentel. “If you two don’t shut the fuck up—!”

  A Spacer in black night fatigues ran past them. “The doors are all locked,” she said to a similarly garbed figure who’d been talking to Pimentel. Behind her came outlines. Many outlines.

  As Pimentel’s black garb drew closer, shadows resolved into a pushed-up hoodmask. Hair like corn-silk. “Did you try the emergency exits?” the young man asked as he pocketed a handcom.

  “They’re locked from the inside.”

  “Shit.” The handcom beeped, and he slapped it silent. “Is anyone left in there with her?”

  “Not according to the Fire Drill Teams. Everyone present and accounted for.” The young woman hesitated. “Sir, I think she’s gotten into central systems. That means she’s controlling all access and environmental.”

  “Override from South Central Facilities.”

  “I tried them. They can’t. She’s blocked them.”

  “How!”

  “She said one-finger locks were easy.” Sam floundered when he realized everyone had stilled to listen to him. “That—that’s what she said.”

  “Does she know that much about structures?” one of the fatigues piped.

  “She was a registrar and a smuggler,” another said. “She knows where to look and where to hide.”

  Glum silence fell. They turned as one to look at the building, as if to assure themselves it was still there.

  “Her ID chip’s rigged with a security lock,” someone mumbled. “Just blast her one and get it over with.”

  “Who said that!” Shroud’s voice boomed over their heads. “Captain Kilian is gravely ill. She requires immediate hospitalization. She is unarmed and a danger to no one but herself. If you spot her, mark her position and notify a med immediately.” He turned to the corn-silk blond, and his voice dropped. “She is unarmed, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Cornsilk said. Both men sagged in relief.

  Shroud’s ice stare sought out Sam. “Is she hallucinating?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Do you know who she sees?”

  “I think that’s rather obvious, John,” Parini said. “Considering the circumstances.”

  “You need to get in there.” A thin, dark-haired man broke away from another huddle that had gathered by an ambulance. “Carvalla said she was showing signs of respiratory distress.”

  “Her breathing isn’t right,” Sam said. Again, he hesitated as everyone quieted to listen to him. “She’s dragging her right leg.”

  “Did she seek you out?” Shroud asked, broad brow furrowing.

  “That’s Mr. Sam Duong,” Pimentel said. “I told you about him.”

  “Oh.” Shroud’s gimlet eyes narrowed.

  “Can we get back to the matter at hand?” Parini snapped. “We know her neuropathy’s progressing. Is paralysis ever complete?”

  “Rarely,” the dark-haired man said. “It’s not unheard of, however—”

  “Answer the goddamn question, Hugh!”

  “Could she stop breathing! Yes!”

  Shroud paced the sidewalk. “We need to get in there.”

  “We’re rousting someone from the JA with a spotter so we can pinpoint her location using her chip.” Cornsilk’s handcom squealed once more. This time he answered. Barked one-word questions. Signed off. “The cracker team is on their way with ramming equipment. They’ll be here in two minutes.”

  “We may not have two minutes,” dark-haired Hugh muttered. A ragged look passed between him and Parini.

  “What the hell?” A single voice lilted in wonder. “What is she doing?”

  Everyone turned, and watched as section by section, floor by floor, the lights went out all over the SIB.

  Chapter 31

  Jani flashed the stylus, flicking closed the last UV switch and shutting down the hospital’s interior lights as she had the entrance-exit controls and the ventilation. It would be difficult to see her way out of the central-utilities chase with only the sulfur glow of emergency illumins to light the narrow walkway, but it was safer that way. The Laumrau monitored the building systems using remotescan, and aimed shatterboxes at any area that showed signs of electrical life.

  “I should have thought of this before the first wave.” The barrage that followed her killing of Neumann and the subsequent fleeing of the Laumrau staff to the safety of the hill camps. The barrage in which Yolan died.

  “If fucking were thinking, you’d be a genius, Kilian.” Neumann’s voice sounded from a pitch-dark corner of the chase. “Otherwise, you’re boxed rocks.” He had followed her into the guts of the building as he had through the halls and offices, offering sarcasm and useless advice as she broke into desks and cabinets in her hunt for weapons and handy objects like the stylus.

  “You only started calling me stupid after I turned you down.” Jani closed the switch box and turned to walk to the door. Tried to walk to the door. Her right leg hung her up again. “I think your bias is showing.” She leaned against the wall and tried to shake the feeling back into the numb limb.

  “Still time to make up for any regrettable lapses in judgment.” Neumann stepped between her and the door and waggled his bushy
eyebrows. She would have maneuvered out of his reach if she could have seen him approach, but he seemed to follow quantum rules when it came to movement. First he’d be one place, then another, with no transition she could see.

  “I’d rather be found dead in this basement,” she said as she brushed past him, close enough to smell his cinnamon breath. His thick, grasping fingers closed around her arm, and she struck out. His cry of pain and rage as her fist connected with the point of his chin was worth the agonizing shock that rang from her knuckles to her shoulder.

  “You’re gonna get your wish, Kilian!” he called after her as she exited the chase. His voice sounded muffled, as though his mouth bled.

  The thought made her smile.

  “Borgie!” She sagged against a wall and struggled for breath, then grabbed for a door handle for support as her legs crumpled beneath her.

  “He ran.” Neumann leaned against the wall opposite and folded his arms. “Left you high and dry.” The right arm slipped, and he shoved it back into place with a muttered curse.

  “He’d never do that.”

  “Could, would, and did, Kilian.” Neumann fussed with his bloody sleeve. “You always put your faith in the wrong people.”

  In the distance, a dull thud echoed. Jani pushed away from the wall, and looked down the hall in the direction of the sound. “What was that?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Neumann ratcheted his leg, which had twisted out of position. “Maybe it’s company.”

  “Second wave?” Jani limped down the hall. The thud sounded again, this time with a higher pitch.

  “Shatterboxes don’t thump, you dumb bitch, they sing.” Neumann shambled toward her. “Sounds like a door ram to me.”

  “I set all the main doors to close before I deactivated the access controller.”

  “So whoever’s out there is going to have to ram through a whole lot of doors before they get to us. Great. That should make them good and pissed by the time they get down here.” He squinted. “What’s that stuff yorking out from the stairwell?”

  Jani looked to the end of the hall, where a thick stream of gaseous muck billowed under the sealed door. Gaseous, fuchsia-colored muck. “They’re lobbing pink.” Jani’s throat closed at the memory of the thick, cotton-candy smell. “Pink’s heavy—it drifts down.”

  “And we’re in the basement.” Neumann laughed. “Good job, Kilian. You’ve set yourself up to suffocate to death.”

  “Pink’s heavy—the cloud will settle around my knees.”

  “And what knees those are.” Neumann’s leer stripped her trousers away like paper. “Well, the real one, anyway. The fake one, however, could be in for a bit of malfunction. In fact, those animandroid limbs of yours might be just what those little beasties need to whet their appetites for the comports and workstations.”

  Jani tapped the fire-alarm touchbox inset in the wall by her head. “It washes out if you catch it fast. You can hose bright red air clean in seconds.” She removed the purloined UV stylus from her pocket, activated it, and pressed it to each corner of the alarm pad in turn. As she touched the last corner, the plastic shield disconnected and fell to the floor, revealing a host of fire safety contacts, all clearly marked. Elevators. Alarms. Extinguishers.

  Jani touched the stylus to the Extinguishers slot. With a series of hisses, reservoirs in the walls and ceiling opened. Liter after liter of fire-retardant foam spewed from inset sprayers, coating all surfaces in heavy white cream.

  “You idiot!” Neumann covered his face with his hands and dashed into the nearest clear space.

  Jani followed. Stopped in the entry. Looked around. What’s a vending alcove doing in an idomeni hospital? That disquiet made way for greater concerns when she saw that no foam streamed from any orifices in the alcove walls or ceiling. Any pink that wended down the hall would find refuge here, seeping into the air-handling system through the floor-level vents.

  “I don’t believe you did that!” Neumann spat foam, coughed foam, blew it from his nose and scooped it from his eyes and ears.

  “Anything that can push the pink out of the air and down will work long enough for me to think of what to do next.” Jani slapped foam from her arms and face as she opened the coolers, the cabinets, and dispensers, looking for anything she could use as a hammer. As Neumann muttered and sputtered, she yanked opened the last door.

  What the—! She reached out, picked up what her eyes saw and what her mind called impossible. The long handle, that seemed molded to fit her hands. The sensuous curve of blade. What a Sìah fighting ax was doing in a vending alcove janitor’s closet, she had no idea, but she wasn’t going to argue with providence. She swung it at the plastic cooler and dispenser connections—water geysered to the ceiling and rained to floor.

  “They’re coming, Kilian.” Neumann sloshed to the door and stuck his head as far as he dared into the jetting whiteness beyond. “Those bashes are sounding closer and closer.”

  Jani swung the ax through the private rainstorm, and heard another sound, a sound she knew Neumann couldn’t hear. A sound of her very own.

  Do that again, augie whispered as metal cut the air. I like it.

  “Hey, Kilian, stop making like the Ride of the Valkyries. We need to find the way to the subbasements. I think they’re in the stairwell.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Jani stilled the blade, held it up to her face, and caught sight of her bright eyes in the mirror metal.

  You owe me, you know. Augie whispered sternly in her ear.

  Jani nodded in agreement. She was never meant to escape. Never meant to be free. She was meant for steel and rainbow edges glistening in the light. “Didn’t you say something recently, sir, about me waiting for the chance to blow your head off?”

  “What?” Neumann turned to her, his eyes widening in gratifying horror as he watched her cut patterns in the air. “That was a joke, Kilian.”

  “Strange. I didn’t think it funny.”

  “We have to get out of here!”

  “Why do you care?” Jani contemplated the blade’s wispy Sìah tracework. “You’re dead.”

  “I’m not armed, Kilian.” Neumann pulled his right arm out of its sleeve and waved it at her. “I mean, I’m really not.”

  “Haven’t you figured out that among all my other sterling qualities, I’m also a dirty fighter when need be?” Jani slashed the ax through the rain—the very molecules screamed in agony.

  “Kilian!” Neumann backed too quickly, and slipped on the carpet of water. “We can work this out!” He fell backward with a loud splash, then scuttled cripple-crablike behind the shelter of a table.

  “No. No.” Jani’s voice reverbed inside her head. “I’ve had just about all I’m going to take from you.”

  Neumann shot upright from behind the table like a popup toy. “I’m ordering you to desist!” He tried to skirt to one side as Jani closed in from the other. His detached leg shot out from beneath, sending him sprawling across the tabletop. For a perfect moment, he lay on his stomach, arm spread out to the side, neck exposed.

  Jani sidestepped into position. Swung the ax up. “Declaration is made,” she said as she brought it down.

  Neumann’s head bounced off the table and across the alcove floor like a deflated soccer ball across a soggy field, leaving a red stream in its wake, finally rolling to rest against the bottom hatch of the beverage cooler. Jani limped over to it, nudging it with her foot until she could look into the staring eyes.

  “You’re gone. You’re dead. You lose. I got them all out.” She hesitated. “Except for Yolan.” But then, she hadn’t seen Yolan’s body, so maybe she got out, too. She grinned in long-delayed satisfaction. “They’re out of your reach forever. Yours and Acton’s and Evan’s.” She let the ax slip from her grasp and fall to the floor. From down the hall, voices, confused and angered, deadened by foam, resonated flatly. They didn’t sound like Laumrau, from what she could discern amid the slosh and shower of falling water. Sounds like English
. How silly. She turned slowly and walked to a chair to sit, and wait.

  “The patients are gone. Borgie and crew are gone. You stay behind. Think that’s an even trade, Kilian?”

  Jani wheeled. Her tietops shot out from beneath her, sending her careening into the wall. She cracked the back of her head against uncoated brick. Lights spangled before her eyes as she sagged to the floor.

  Neumann’s head rolled away from the wall. It spun to a stop in the middle of the floor and righted itself with a couple of wobbly loops.

  He blinked the water out of his eyes. “You can’t murder the already-murdered, Kilian.” A gurgle bubbled up from the throat he no longer had. “I’m going to stay with you forever and ever and ever. Till the day you die. Which from the looks of you just might be today.”

  Jani slumped farther down the wall as augie leached away. Her legs had numbed. The room had greyed. Breathing seemed too much trouble.

  “See you in hell, Kilian.” Neumann winked at her, and smiled.

  She fell to one side. Gradually became aware. Of the water. Soaking her hair. Running down the walls. Like tears. Puddling around her. Immersing her. Drowning her. Like in her dream. Drowning.

  Sinking. Deeper.

  Deeper.

  Deep—

  Chapter 32

  Sam huddled in the passenger seat of an abandoned scoot and watched the turmoil unfold around him.

  The fireskims arrived first, great scarlet brutes that spat out HazMat teams and equipment with startling efficiency. The teams entered the SIB through the ram-blown doors, fighting against the relentless stream of bodies in foam-covered night fatigues who struggled to get out through the same narrow openings. Startling descriptives in several languages cut through the still night, following the inevitable soggy collisions.

  Sam hid in his seat as the members of a spent HazMat team clustered beneath a nearby tree.

  “Foam.” An older woman’s voice, exhausted and disbelieving. “All four fuckin’ upper floors. And the basement. And the subs.”