Sorrow Space

by James Axler

  Kane gave the door a brutal shove as he barged inside while Grant and Brigid waited, weapons at the ready. Within, Kane found himself in a small pharmacy storeroom, ten-by-eight feet, the shelves stocked with bottles of pills and serums, all of it covered with plaster dust. Here, too, the ceiling bowed, causing several of the shelves to tip. Their contents had spilled to the floor long ago. Kane kicked his way through the mess, searching for the room’s window. It had to have one; he felt sure of it.

  Outside the storeroom, Grant and Brigid waited in the semidarkness of the ward, watching for any sign of their wraithlike pursuers.

  Suddenly Grant flinched and Brigid followed, both of them spying the shadow moving through the darkness at the same time. It was a Magistrate—no, two of them, moving stealthily into the waiting area at the far end of the room.

  Grant began to say something but Brigid stopped him with a raise of her hand.

  “I see them,” she said quietly. “Two.”

  “Make that four,” Grant whispered, his eyes fixing on the other side of the room where an open doorway led into some kind of playroom.

  Without saying a word, Brigid and Grant stepped back, merging into the shadows amid the upturned furniture.

  * * *

  INSIDE THE STORAGE ROOM, Kane was staring at the farthest wall. He could make out a window there, or at least a sliver of one, light streaming in from outside, but it was obscured by a high shelving unit laden with bottles. Kane reached forward, pressing his hand to the window, feeling the coolness of the glass. It was an outside window, he was certain of it—the light could be artificial, but that feeling of a draft snaking around the window’s edge was something you couldn’t fake.

  Kane worked his hand around, reaching behind the shelves as far as he was able until he found a catch. He manipulated it, feeling for how loose it was. He could work it—maybe not from this angle, but if he got the shelf out of the way, then maybe.

  Kane drew his hand back and rested it against the side of the shelves. Then, using both hands, he shunted the shelving unit, gritting his teeth as he pushed it across the floor. The unit’s metal feet whined as they scraped against the floor tiles, tearing chunks out of them as it moved two inches. It was enough for Kane to reach behind. He pulled at the back of the shelving unit and clambered up it to add his full body weight. It began to rock unsteadily.

  Kane leaped free as the shelving unit tumbled from the wall, its contents spilling across the floor, bottles shattering as they smashed against the blackened tiles. Midway through its tumble, the shelving unit slammed into the next closest unit and stopped with a crunch, poised at a thirty-degree angle. The jarred contents of the second unit went toppling from those shelves, too, further littering the floor in a carpet of pills and serums.

  * * *

  THE DARK MAGISTRATES all turned at the cacophony that emanated from the storeroom as Kane yanked the shelving unit free from the wall. They descended from opposite ends of the ward, their blasters raised as they sought their prey.

  “What the hell is he doing in there?” Grant muttered from his hiding place just outside the storeroom’s door. He was watching both sets of Magistrates as they came closer, their eerie squawks and hums cutting through the air like a poorly tuned radio.

  Across the door from him, Brigid held her shotgun ready, watching those dark silhouettes get closer. “Come on, Kane, get it together.”

  * * *

  INSIDE THE STOREROOM, Kane stood before the window, staring in frustration at the twin vertical bars that had been placed on the outside—presumably to stop anyone breaking in to steal drugs. “Trust the luck,” he muttered to himself. Even if he did get this window open, there was no way that any of them could squeeze through that gap between the bars, not even Brigid.

  He was trapped; they all were. Trapped like rats.

  Chapter 13

  The Magistrates moved through the wreckage of the waiting room like sharks scenting blood, running toward the open door of the storeroom. Grant and Brigid watched as they came from two different directions, leaping the upturned furniture as they searched for the Cerberus warriors hiding in the darkness.

  They had maybe five seconds before they arrived, Grant guessed—that was all. He analyzed the situation in a heartbeat. There was a wide archway at the far end of the room, precisely between the two sets of Magistrates, leading to an adjoining room. If he could head toward that, through it, the Dark Magistrates would be caught in a crossfire, unable to shoot at him for fear that a rogue bullet would strike one of their colleagues.

  Thrusting one arm in front of Brigid, Grant pushed her back into the open doorway of the storeroom. “Help Kane,” he directed. “I’ll distract them.”

  Brigid was about to argue, but Grant was already in motion, pelting across the children’s waiting area, shouting at the top of his voice. “Come on, you psychopathic fuck-wits. I’m right here.”

  As one, the Dark Magistrates turned toward the sound, their eerie weapons blasting. The bullets screamed as they left the gun muzzles, caroming through the air with strained shrieks.

  Grant ran as fast as he could, head ducked low as he weaved through the smattering of blackened tables and charred chairs. The screaming bullets cut chunks from the furniture all about him, drilling into the scarred plasterwork of the walls behind him. As he reached the wide arch, Grant felt something strike his arm just below his right shoulder and swerved his body automatically away from the pain. Then he was through the arch, dropping almost to his knees as shots blasted overhead.

  Behind him, the Magistrates had realized their mistake, twittering to one another in those abbreviated shrieks and hums as they stopped firing. Grant hurried through the next room in a semicrouch, teeth gritted against the pain throbbing through his arm. He had taken a glancing blow, he realized, not a bullet but a hunk of ruined masonry or furniture that had been caught by the crossfire. His shadow suit had taken most of the impact, redistributing it to lessen the blow. It still hurt like the devil, though.

  He was in a room filled with weighing scales and height charts, the torn remains of graphs on the walls showing growth patterns. Grant glanced behind him, checking that the shadowy Magistrates were still following, and picked up his pace as he saw them warily approach the archway.

  * * *

  BEHIND THEM, WHERE GRANT had started his desperate run, Brigid was watching from the doorway of the storeroom, urging Grant to escape. “He’s through the arch,” she whispered, “but I think he got hit.”

  “Grant can take a hit,” Kane dismissed her concern. If he was worried about his partner, he didn’t show it. “But we’re all dead if we don’t find some way out of this rabbit hole.”

  Brigid skipped backward across the wet floor of the storeroom, joining Kane at the barred window. The sunlight seemed fierce after the gloom of the hospital, and Brigid could see a grass verge out there leading down to a decorative, manmade lake. From here, the lake’s waters looked dark. The vertical bars that masked the window were secured on both the inside and the outside; even if they broke the glass, there was no way they would be able to get out.

  “Any ideas?” Kane asked, fixing Brigid with his laser-sharp stare.

  Brigid eyed the metal bars a moment longer, then turned her head, rapidly assessing the contents of the room.

  “Medicines,” Kane told her helpfully.

  “Good,” Brigid said. “Find me anything combustible. Lots of it, if you can.” As she spoke she was already on her knees, sifting through the fallen bottles, checking those that remained intact. The floor was wet with spilled liquids and it reeked of medical spirits, rubbing alcohol and cleaning product.

  “What are you planning to do?” Kane asked as he searched the remaining shelves. “Blow up the wall?”

  Brigid looked up for a moment and smiled mischievously. “Why? Yo
u got a better idea?”

  * * *

  GRANT DUCKED AND RAN, weaving through the discarded furniture of a small waiting area, the four diseased Magistrates in hot pursuit. As they spotted him, the lead Magistrate shot, blasting another of those howling bullets from his Soul Eater. The weapon glowed for a moment with the discharge, a belch of smoke exuding from its muzzle as the screeching bullet was launched.

  Grant kept running, diving through the glass panel of a doorway as the bullet struck the wall behind him. The panel shattered on impact, and Grant ducked his head as he went crashing through, shards of glass skittering all about him.

  He was in an even smaller room now. This one was dominated by a wide desk whose wooden top was blackened with fire damage. The walls, too, were tar-black, a lopsided metal filing cabinet crouched against one wall, genuflecting where it had been melted by incredible heat. More importantly, there was no obvious way out.

  Grant turned, surveying the whole room in a heartbeat, scanning the walls. There were no windows, no doors, no way out of the consultation room except the way he had come in. The Russian-doll rooms had come to their end. Outside, Grant could hear the Magistrates screeching at one another in those sharp, abbreviated cuts of noise, following his trail.

  “No way out, no way back,” Grant muttered.

  He stepped behind the desk, where the melted filing cabinet sagged, and rapped his knuckles against the wall. It was board, a partition wall that had been added to create the office space from a bigger room. Whatever had hit this place, it had generated incredible heat, enough to turn metal to liquid. Grant guessed it must have been something brief and sudden, the effect short-lived. But it was possibly enough to weaken the back wall of the office. He just had to move quickly.

  The Sin Eater was in his hand with just a thought, reappearing from the hidden holster he had attached beneath his coat sleeve. Grant squeezed the trigger, blasting a line of bullets across the back wall, sweeping the gun left to right in a tight arc. The bullets pierced the wall, kicking back chunks of plasterboard with drumbeat precision. When he stopped firing, a neat line of bullet holes was visible across the walls—enough, he hoped, to weaken it.

  As the four Magistrates appeared at the door, Grant ran for the wall, shoulder down, striking it with all his might. The wall crumbled, dropping away with the impact, and then Grant was running through. He turned, bringing the Sin Eater around and stroking the trigger, laying down cover fire to force the hostile Magistrates back. As he did so, he heard—and felt—the shudder of an explosion vibrate through the building.

  “That had better be Kane,” he told himself as he ran through the next room and out into a corridor, sending the Sin Eater back into its hidden rig. Already he was working out a map in his head, figuring which direction he needed to take to get back to his partners.

  * * *

  IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE explosion, Brigid was doubled over, coughing as the dust caught in her throat. Before her, the window and a small chunk of the wall that surrounded it had been obliterated, leaving a hole that was roughly fourteen inches square.

  “Come on, Baptiste,” Kane urged, placing an arm around her midriff.

  Brigid had caught the worst of the explosion when she lit the flammable liquids she had doused the wall in, but Kane had caught a lungful of plaster dust, too. He spluttered as he sucked in breath, trying to clear it from the back of his throat as he guided Brigid and himself through the debris. They were covered in white plaster, as if they had been frosted.

  Brigid clambered through the windowlike cavity, spitting out dust as she pulled herself through the hole she had made. Kane followed, narrowing his eyes against the particles of dust that swirled in the air.

  Once outside, they were immediately buffeted by those howling winds once more, playing all around them and rippling across the surface of the lake. Kane and Brigid stood beneath the overcast sky on a grass verge that rolled down to the decorative lake. The grass was overgrown in great clumps that brushed the tops of Kane’s boots, scraping and bowing with each billow of the gusting wind.

  “Kane, they must have heard that,” Brigid rasped. “They’ll come back to check.”

  “Then we’d better keep moving,” Kane said.

  “But Grant’s still...”

  Kane silenced her with a look. “He’s still out there,” Kane finished. They had no Commtacts, no way to speak to Grant or track him. For now, their partner was on his own.

  * * *

  GRANT WAS THROUGH THE office wall but they were still chasing, following him down the corridor. It was another smoke-damaged tunnel, its ceiling and walls exuding the unmistakable stench of fire. There were doors all along it, consultation rooms and offices and who knew what else.

  Behind him, two of the Dark Magistrates came striding through the hole he had made in the wall, stepping into the corridor like twin visions of Death. They stopped there, searching left and right with their weapons before them as if those guns were sniffer dogs. Spotting Grant running away, they began to follow while their colleagues turned back to check on the explosion that had rocked the children’s ward.

  The Dark Mags raised their blasters, firing another burst of those dreadful, screaming bullets that zipped down the corridor. Hearing the weapons’ discharge, Grant turned, ducking into the next doorway and through to the room beyond.

  Grant slammed the door behind him, wincing as the screaming bullets drummed against the walls outside. They were close...damn, but they were close. His breath was coming faster now, yearning for more oxygen to drive his muscles. He was in a small office much like the one he had left moments earlier. This one had two desks face-to-face so that their occupants could talk across them to each other. The room was fire damaged, dark curling streaks running up the walls and across the ceiling, the paint blistered where it had not melted away. There was a sash window on the wall opposite the door, and Grant ran to it, wrenching it up with both hands, knowing it was the only place left to run.

  When he looked, he saw a tiny square courtyard out there, surrounded on all sides by offices. The courtyard was designed solely to give air and light. Nowhere to run once more, and no false walls to demolish.

  Chapter 14

  Grant turned back as he heard the Magistrates reach the office door. His only option was to wound them. He commanded the Sin Eater back into his hand, brought it up to target the door as it swung open, aiming low. He would shoot their legs out from under them—painful, but survivable, at least.

  The Sin Eater bucked in Grant’s hand, firing almost without conscious thought, sending three quick bursts of lead at the bottom panel of the door as it swung toward him. The Magistrates had played it safe, opening the door from the side, keeping themselves out of any potential line of fire. Grant cursed, knowing it was just the thing he would have done. Like him, his pursuers had gone through that same Magistrate training.

  “All right, fellas,” Grant called out as his Sin Eater stopped firing. “We’ve got us a Mexican stand-off here. We all need to back off, talk about it, or someone’s going to end up shot to hell.”

  He waited, but the only response he heard were the strange screeches and burps that he had heard before. It was like interference bursting through on a radio, cutting into the signal; snatches of it popped in and out without any discernible beginning or end.

  Then, without warning, one of the Magistrates appeared in the doorway, his own weapon raised. This one had a flaw running across his tinted visor beneath which his skin seemed to rupture. His lidless eyes drilled mercilessly into Grant’s gaze. Grant fired without thinking, blasting a 9 mm bullet straight into the figure’s lower leg. There was a hiss like escaping steam, and the Magistrate spun on his heel, his own weapon discharging as he toppled toward the wall. Something was pouring out of his leg, Grant saw, a stream of greenish-gray gas spurting out into the air.
>
  The Magistrate continued to fire as he fell, a trio of those screaming bullets exploding from the barrel of his blaster in a straight line toward Grant. The first bullet whipped past Grant’s flank, driving into the wall behind him with a strained screech. The second came closer, whizzing past his ear like a whisper before meeting with the topmost windowpane and shattering it. The third bullet came lower, and its scream stopped as it slapped against Grant’s sternum, pushing him backward with a pained, outburst of breath.

  Grant stumbled back against the exterior wall, his limbs suddenly heavy, a terrible coldness radiating outward from where the bullet had struck. After that, it was just black, absolute darkness replacing any thoughts or actions. Replacing any notion of escape.

  * * *

  TOGETHER, KANE AND BRIGID had hurried down to the edge of the lake, and they crouched there, watching the abandoned hospital. The grass here was tall enough that, if they lay down, it would hide them from prying eyes.

  “You see any sign of him?” Brigid asked quietly.

  “No,” Kane answered slowly.

  The hospital had been quiet for a few minutes now, but the wailing banshee winds continued to howl all about the lifeless building. From outside, parts of the building were ruined, as if some cancer had attacked the masonry. There was a great strip of wall facade missing from the far left edge, stretching around the corner. The upper windows were shattered. Hints of decorative coving budded along the stonework, but most of it had been blasted away by some powerful force, leaving a gravellike surface.

  “You want to go back in?” Brigid asked.

  Kane’s eyes flicked to the opening they had made in the wall, something catching his gaze. A shadow moved within. Kane held his breath, watching it move. Then the shadow came to the hole, poking its head out, and Kane saw it was one of the mysterious Magistrates, blistered skin oozing black pus over his chin.