David ran left and sprinted along the side of the corridor. Jane followed him, along with Jens. Daniel took the right-hand wall. The four of them came off the corners of the junction, into the air and onto their feet behind the group in a whirr and whoosh of air. The Normals looked around, the breath of flying bodies passing by. They turned to face the direction of the fleeing group.
Helena had dropped back a small distance, waiting for just such a moment. Placing her palms flat on the ground in front of her, she flicked over in a twist. Her feet found a head each as they came over the vertical.
Sliding through the mass of panicked bodies, she smacked the butt of her pistol into as many pieces of skull as a single swing would allow. Then she crouched into a roll and tried to come up in a different tunnel to the others. Letting her eyes shift to infrared she could see their retreating forms in the distance. Safe. Breath held in her throat, she tried to decide on the best course of action. The lights went out followed a moment later by the emergency system kicking in with a harsh red glare. Her carefully hidden body was immediately visible as the hard lights cast shadows all around her. The Normals standing at the junction spotted her and, fanning out, approached cautiously. Helena brought up her pistol and fired into the group. The shot echoed through the tunnels, crashing like a sequence of cymbals as the sound rolled from wall to wall.
A body fell to the floor; the others drew back. Helena, seeing her only chance, put her head down and leapt through the gap. Shouts went up as she cleared the group. Helena did not look over her shoulder.
She had to hope she was buying enough time for the others to get free.
None of those following her was armed with anything more than blunt weapons, although her AI said at least one of them possessed cybernetic alterations which would pose a danger to her if they caught up. She was determined not to let that happen.
Easing ahead of her pursuers, she found herself coming up on yet another group of Normals chasing her friends. They were crying out, electronic sounds rising amidst their very human cries for blood. The emergency lighting persisted here as well, and her AI suggested that the Normals had deliberately cut power to the system of tunnels because the hard red light gave them shadows where the softer strip lighting hadn’t.
How do I get past them? asked Helena of her AI.
You will have to get to the doors, came the response.
Helena eased into a rhythmic stride, which kept pace at a safe distance behind the stragglers. None of them were interested in looking behind; the shouts coming from her pursuers were drowned in the cacophony of interference created by the tunnels.
As she came into the last branch before the exit to the Harbour Master’s office, Helena could see the opening over the heads of the crowd of Normals. The Normals ahead of her didn’t stop at the doors. Tumbling out through the doors herself Helena saw no sign of the others. She breathed a sigh of relief that David had led them safely out and hoped he’d taken them up the stairway. The lights on the other side of the door were running normally. Helena’s AI was working hard on her camouflage with the changing environment; it knew what was coming.
Helena crouched on the last step before exiting into the ruined warehouse. Behind her the second group reached the bottom of the stairway. Ahead three Normals were waiting beyond the doors in the open spaces of the warehouse. The rain had stopped and sunlight filtered feebly through the slimmest of breaks in cover. One of these rays illuminated the Normals where they stood; sunlight glinted brightly from water clinging to metallic plates and homespun alterations. The sound of Helena’s feet splashing in a puddle near the door was enough to catch their attention and one, whose eyes were blackened electronic holes, fixed on her immediately. Helena recognised him as a mechanical diligencer, someone who spent their life checking for hairline cracks, corrosion and wear in dark and difficult places. She would stand out to him like an explosion on a moonless night.
Helena let her skin slide back to its normal china white. There’s no point hiding anymore, she thought.
She listened to the sounds of her pursuers below and watched as the three Normals in front of her shifted to surround her as best they could. Helena’s adrenalin was maxed out; her heightened reactions made her twitch with nervous energy.
I can’t wait for that mob behind me, she thought. She plunged towards the diligencer, fingers straight out in front of her.
He was standing in the centre of the three and, as she closed on him, the other two jumped in from the sides. The diligencer was the frailest but also the most dangerous of the three. Smart where the other two were strong. They both had cybernetic arms whose embrace Helena dreaded. Their augmented spines and necks meant there would be no easy points for her to target and, without her bowie knives, she had no desire to fight them at all — but they had given her no choice.
Helena punched the nose of the diligencer with the base of her palm and tried to bring her fingers up to rip at his eyes. They failed to find purchase, but he went down under her. Helena ran over the top of him towards the remains of door through which she’d originally entered.
As the first of her pursuers reached the top of the stairs, a piece of stone whizzed past her ear, clattering off a burnt pillar. She was impressed despite herself; they were improvising weapons.
A face appeared through the doorway in front of her, its puzzled expression turning rapidly to alarm as Helena careened towards it. Helena fell forwards to better spring into the air, her body flying horizontally across the last three metres before cannoning into the panicked sentry. The Normal doubled up, sprawled away from her. He landed in a broken heap on his back. Helena stood to her feet, brushed herself down and ran for the exit from the harbour.
Run for the water, said her AI, but Helena declined the advice; she was already committed to her course.
You must run for the water, insisted her AI.
It is too late, thought Helena. I can make it.
A dozen Normals unfolded themselves from corners, from walls, out of the very road itself. There was no sign of David or the others. Can you find them? asked Helena.
David is out of range. They are not here, came the reply. Helena knew better than to ask it the impossible questions: had they escaped? Had she bought them enough time?
Among the group in front of her, she recognised some from the tunnel; behind her, she could hear the others. She hoped that they had failed to find David and Jane that they were focussing on her instead. If so then the others will be away free. Jens and Daniel will be alive. She thought it ironic that she would risk her own safety for members of another Company. It seemed inimical to her, against the profit motive. She frantically sought a weak spot in the ring the Normals had formed around her. She took in the three heavy lifters, with their arms as thick as their waists. She saw the pile drivers and the welders. She was running out of options and they knew it.
Only her reactions gave her the advantage now: she spun and whirled, finding debris enough at her feet to fling at them. Some threw their arms up to protect themselves; others simply did their best to keep her movements within their gaze. Without speaking, they began to move in together, closing the space in which she could move. Helena felt a sense of fear course through her stomach, like an arc of pain hitting her from her belly to the base of her breasts and heart.
It was then she knew she was done. Two of the Normals came forward, their movements following her tempo exactly. Whatever job they were augmented to perform required dexterity and reactions at the limit of human ability. All three of them held sharpened metal rods. Helena, with a pistol in one hand, was essentially unarmed in the face of such tactics. She fired off a round, which hit one of them in the shoulder; he stumbled backwards, but the ring was still closing.
On each side of Helena, the edge of the ring was no more than three metres away, but it was two people deep.
Jump,came the advice,it’s your only chance.
Helena tensed on one of her twists and launched herself
as hard as she could into the air. One of the three lifters plunged forwards and leapt after her, catching her left foot as he fell short of her height. Helena was pulled down with him and it took everything she had to land without breaking her arms and legs.
The first blow across her back landed from one of the metal rods, pressing her into the mud and water. Dazed, she tried rolling away only to find feet in every direction. She pulled hard on the first pair she saw. The body tumbled backwards, but another blow thumped across the back of her legs. To the sound of her whimpering her secondary AI blocked out the pain of the strike. Helena rolled onto her back, trying to see about her more clearly.
It was a mistake; the next blow caught her in the stomach. The one after that fell across her upraised arms and cracked her left forearm. Crying out in shock, she dropped the pistol.
Her reactions began to slow. What she had perceived as slow, ponderous blows sped up, blurring into one another. As strike after strike rained down, Helena saw nothing but legs, metal and mud. One of her ribs cracked, then another; Helena felt her femur rip through the skin on her left-hand side. She was finding it difficult to stay conscious.
I am frightened, said her AI faintly. The dam broke and Helena gave up struggling. A final blow came down on her face, crushing her nose, wiping out everything she knew.
Chapter 8
WE’RE ALIVE, said her AI. Her secondary AI advised her not to move as it began to relay injuries sustained and the length of time it was going to take to repair them. It was characteristically blunt. A ruptured appendix, spleen and one collapsed lung posed serious problems. The lung could be repaired, given a few days’ rest, but the appendix was causing havoc; poisons coursed through her system while her resources to deal with it were dwindling. Helena could taste dried bile in her mouth and blood on her lips; neither of her eyes wanted to open by themselves. She dreaded the thought she’d have to rebreak her jaw for it to set properly.
But she was alive.
SHE WOKE again sometime later; her AI said it was nine hours after her first return to consciousness. It couldn’t be sure how long had passed in total, as it too had been down for an undetermined amount of time. Her head lolled and, through the fuzz of her swollen eyes, she saw a face peering down over her. Mother? At least the others came back for me.
The next time she felt alert, her AI was pleased with her progress. Almost as an aside it informed her that her hand was healed. The joys of genetic enhancement. The damage done by the rupturing of her appendix had been minimised, but her spleen would have to be replaced. In the meantime, her nanomachines had devoured its wreckage and used the energy to encourage her body to heal the rest of her. For the time being they could provide the same functionality she was missing through her lost organ, but it was a short-term solution at best. When she closed her eyes, it was her choice to sleep. As she dropped off she wondered which bedroom they had put her in. She didn’t recognise the room.
FORTY-TWOhours have passed since I recovered my life, said her AI. Helena rolled over; her body was leaden and stiff. She groaned with the effort. Pulling her arm across her chest, she found a blanket had been draped over her.
Where am I? she asked her AI.
This room is a dead zone,came the response,I cannot determine our location.
Helena sighed heavily as reality sank in. Skagen.
Opening her eyes and lifting her head to look down at herself, she saw a grey sheet laid over her body, hiding her injuries and covering her nakedness. A closed door was to her left. Soft light illuminated the room via two strips of fluorescing panels in the ceiling.
The room felt like a bubble, the air still, the temperature constant. Helena tried swinging herself up into a sitting position but, feeling an intense pain in her side and tenderness in her left leg, she gave up. Lying back, she was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea and closed her eyes to rest.
EVENTUALLY she grew restless. This time she was determined to take in the shape of the room, to learn more about her prison. It was probably futile, but Helena wanted to know as much as she could about her situation. She was surprised to find an intravenous tube snaking away from her left arm down onto the floor beneath her. Her AI said a little smartly that she hadn’t asked for that kind of information. Someone had provided her with the nutrients and energy she needed to heal herself. Whoever they were, they hadn’t chosen to, or perhaps couldn’t, replace her spleen.
The drip is supplying you with energy, essential vitamins and proteins. Your body heals very rapidly by itself but needs energy and nutrients, said her AI. A small registration mark on the tubing caught her attention. Insel.
She set her tertiary AI to analysing the construction of the room, to taste the air, the walls and the surface she was lying on. She was almost certain that she was in the Spire, but wanted to be completely sure.
Shifting her body slowly, centimetre by centimetre, until she was at the edge of the table, she looked around the room more carefully. Even a cursory examination showed she was being nursed in an office. The lack of windows suggested it was below ground, but she would know more when her AI reported back on the composition of the atmosphere. She’d been laid on someone’s desk. A silent empty space in the wall next to the door, where a large monitor had once been, gave the room a forlorn feel. A slight scattering of earth in one of the corners showed where a pot plant used to live. She was distracted for a moment. Who stopped to save such a trivial item?
The door opened and Helena saw a Normal enter the room. Behind him followed two others, both of whom were so augmented it was difficult to believe they still had any human left in them. The first Normal stood just inside the doorway looking at Helena, his companion scuttling over to Helena and gently moving her back to the centre of the desk. It then removed the blanket and ran its hands over her. Helena’s body was too tired and broken to respond to their methodical examination; she had no choice but to lie there and take it.
The Normal by the door laughed, his almost human face widening in a self-satisfied grimace.
The two orderlies didn’t stop handling Helena, although she was happier when she realised they had no sexual intent.
‘Her eyes flash at you boys. She thinks you might be interested in sampling an Oligarch’s flesh,’ said the Normal. The two of them didn’t acknowledge his words. One of them lifted her up with his hands, metallic simulacra, under her back. The other extracted the drip from her arm and, bending down, looked closely at her torso, his hands rougher now, as he pulled her skin first one way then another.
It hurt. Helena bit her lip as she watched the Normal by the door to keep her mind from focussing on the pain. He was mainly human with only two visible cybernetic additions. The most prominent was the replacement of his lower jaw with a dull, vaguely mouth-shaped, chrome likeness. The second augmentation was his left arm. Helena could hear a soft humming emanating from underneath his clothing and realised he occupied that middle ground between the Oligarchs and the Normals. His family were not rich enough to join the ruling families, when high technology had become restricted, yet they had been too rich to simply accept their lot as Normals. He had descended from those the Families had permitted to serve them directly, to manage the Normals and run their factories, their businesses and their armies. If there were six million Family members globally, there was an order of magnitude more of these, the middle classes. Oliver, her Uncle’s manservant, had been one. Their loyalty was to specific companies, their families often serving the same few Oligarchs generation after generation.
Which of the Insel Family members did he serve before he was abandoned?
The fourth generation of Oligarchs had eschewed the services of these middle people. They were a dwindling class of Normals, as their position deteriorated in the eyes of both those they considered their inferiors; other Normals, and those whose coattails they had grasped hold of two and a half centuries previous.
The orderlies finished what they were doing and laid her carefully back on th
e table. The drip was not reconnected and, slithering across the floor, it retreated away from her, coiling itself into a corner before it stopped moving. One of the mechanics picked his way past the middle man and left the room; the other stood at the head of the desk in unmoving silence.
His presence felt threatening despite the care with which he had just attended her injuries.
The Normal moved into the room properly for the first time, the door closing behind him, shutting out the world beyond. He didn’t come close to Helena and, after three steps, he stopped still with his hands clasped behind his back. For a long moment, he said nothing, simply staring at Helena’s face.
‘Who are you?’ he asked eventually, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet.
Helena opened her mouth. Her throat was parched and her lips dry, on the verge of cracking. Pushing her tongue out of her mouth, she moistened her lips and tried to swallow.
‘Why are you here?’ asked the Normal.
Helena realised she couldn’t physically answer him and so just looked ahead as he stood waiting for her to speak.
‘You’re clearly not Edith, but you try to look like her. Why?’ He narrowed his eyes and continued to wait for her answer. ‘How long before you miss your spleen?’ he snarled when she said nothing. Helena closed her eyes and rolled her head away from him; something the others had done was sending her to sleep. Her AI confirmed the presence of a sedative and insisted it was powerless to arrest the effects. The last thing Helena heard was the Normal asking her why she’d been trying to enter the Spire.
HELENA came to with a start; the Normal was standing over her.
A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2) Page 18
