Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (20 page)

Then I look down at my sister's wreck and weep.

W
HEN MINUTES
? H
OURS
? L
ATER
I
COME TO MYSELF IN THE
Comp-C, Dr. Aldrich is nowhere to be seen. The door to the corridor is slightly open and I hear shouting. Immediately, I set about unbuckling and unwiring myself from the chair.

I've never done this myself before without help and soon I am in a frustrated tangle. I finally work myself free at the expense of some skin and a twisted left pinkie.

I am scooping up Betwixt and Between and heading for the door when I notice that Eleanora is still in her chair. Hesitantly, I tiptoe over and almost choke at what I see.

That she is dead there is no doubt, but what horrifies me are the vivid red lines that trace in a bloody network about her limp body. They look like the scores of a wire whip, fresh and angry evidence of her mind struggling to dismember a body it believed was ripping apart.

I back away from her corpse, out the door, and would have fled if I had known where to go. Instead, I stand foolishly in the middle of the corridor, at a loss without a guard or nurse to direct me.

A repetition of the shouting gives me a sense of direction and, sending Athena ahead to scout, I sneak toward the sounds. Arriving at a bend in the corridor, I bring Athena back to me.

Her once vague noises are beginning to take the form of words—perhaps because of enforced intimacy in the interchange—but the overwhelming sense she brings to me is confusion to the point of speechlessness.

“No one ahead until the box,” she says, “there…churr-whoo?”

The box, I know, is how she sees the elevator. Taking her word that the next stretch of corridor is clear, I advance, unable to find words to ask her what has so baffled her. But as I round a corridor, I begin to understand.

What I had taken for shouting is a voice over the station's intercom system. A chorus of voices old and young, melodic and cracked, are yipping and howling—a cacophony that should have chilled me but instead warms me with noisy promise. What I hear is the cry of the full Pack and that means that they have come for me.

Near the elevator doors, Holly is shaking her comlink as if that will clear the channels. Angrily, she switches it off.

“Jammed, damn it, jammed and useless.” She gestures to the wall speakers. “I wish someone would turn that racket off—they've got to have figured that it's no help to us.”

“What do you figure is going on?” her companion asks, a young fellow with a red five o'clock shadow.

“Don't know,” she shrugs. “I was having coffee and waiting word to bring Sarah back from Comp-C when the shift boss races in and tells me to get up here, pronto.”

“Good,” Rusty says. “I thought I was missing something. I'd been off shift asleep when I got called.”

Crouched behind an ornamental plant, I wish they knew more. All they've done is confirm my suspicion that the Pack has come. However, since the only stairwell that I know of runs beside the elevator, the guards are effectively holding both.

This doesn't seem the time to go and try doors at random. I'm in as much danger from my Pack as from anyone else if I open a door unexpectedly. With my shaved head and patient's clothing, I'll too quickly seem a stranger.

Not wanting to be spotted by the guards, I move back along the corridor to Comp-C. The door is still ajar when I get there and, driven by some impulse, I return inside.

Nothing has changed. In the annex, Eleanora still sprawls, stiffening now, in her restraints. The computer banks twinkle, grunting slightly as some demand is made of them. I stare at them, stretching my hearing and catching little fragments of Jersey's joy as he built them, echoes of Dylan's fear as he saw himself being enslaved.

With sudden insight, I realize that Eleanora had been wrong when she believed that Dylan's growing addiction to the interchange had been mainly a result of the drug overdose she had been giving him. Certainly, that had played its
part, but the real addiction had been to speech—to communication that would let him bridge the gap that he had created. He could refuse to write, but when given the chance to speak, the temptation was too great.

Wondering, I study the thing. Opening the hall door, I set Betwixt and Between in the corridor where they can see both ways. Then I set Athena on a high doorway, where she can see farther down the corridor and warn the dragon.

“Why let the stricken deer go weep, the hart ungalled play,” I tell them. “For some must watch, while some must sleep: so runs the world away.”

“We'll watch, Sarah,” Between promises. “But how can you sleep now?”

I don't waste time hunting for an answer, but duck back inside Jersey's office before either my resolve fades or I am discovered. In what I plan to do, I suspect that my allies and my enemies would unite to stop me. Indeed, I realize that what I am doing is crazy by most standards, but at least I am comfortable with that thought. Being crazy is not new to me.

Too much time would be wasted if I were to seek out specific codes and processes, so I decide to be direct. First, I search along the walls for power cables—I have a few bad moments when I realize that they run straight into the walls and so cannot be easily unplugged. Then I check where they connect to the computer itself. After a few experimental jiggles, I decide that I can loosen them at this point. When I do so, with a groan that is almost like a person, the computer whirs and most of the lights on its panels go off.

But some of the lights tell me the thing still lives and I
search for a quick way to ruin it for good. Knowing only the vaguest details of how such machines work limits me some, but I start by blocking up various drives with any card or slip that fits—or better—that almost fits. Any exposed wire gets jerked loose. After a severe shock that leaves my arm tingling, I put on a pair of oversized gloves and appropriate a set of wire cutters from a tool kit in Jersey's office.

Rapidly, the remaining lights go off and as they do, I smash the little eyes of sparkling glass or plastic with the head of my wire cutters. I am rooting through a panel that has fallen open, strewing chips on the floor and grinding them under my foot, when I hear Betwixt calling.

“Athena says that someone is coming, Sarah. Wake up!”

I want to reply, “I am awake, as you must know from the noise in here” but I settle for “Yes.”

Feet come pounding down the hall, heavy and hurried upon the carpet. Voices reach me. “There's her dragon! She must be in there!”

The door is flung open, just as I am moving to open it and as I reel back to avoid it, I am temporarily blocked from the sight of my rescuers.

“Shit! Someone's trashed the place real good,” Grey Brother curses.

“Sarah?” Abalone begins to call.

Her voice breaks off suddenly as she sees the limp figure on the other couch. The lights are dim around Eleanora's body, masking the brighter gold of her hair and for a moment as though through Abalone's eyes I see myself sprawled there dead. The vision chokes me, but I manage to swing the door back and step forward.

“We be of one blood, ye and I,” I whisper and when Abalone turns, the smile that lights her face seems to burn away the tears that streak her painted cheeks.

“Sarah!” she cries, leaping past Grey Brother to squeeze me. “I thought we were too late. The message only came a few hours ago and it took us time to find the place.”

“Whose hand the message writ?” I ask, squeezing her in return.

“I don't know,” she admits. “It was weird, so weird that I almost missed it. It just said, ‘I've found the Brighton Rock girl!'”

Grey Brother cuts in, “We've got to move now. Midline and the rest won't hold the guards for long and there may be reinforcements coming in.”

The guards. I remember Margarita, Jersey, my only friends in this place. Questions claw my throat. Scooping up Betwixt and Between and summoning Athena to my shoulder, I follow my rescuers out. Abalone, however, will not be turned from the question of the message sender so easily.

“Sarah, you couldn't have sent that. Who did?”

Puzzling for a way to answer, I see as we pass through Jersey's office a series of framed documents on the wall. Guessing, I point to one.

“Jersey R. Kravis, Ph.D. and all the rest. Enough degrees to make a thermometer break.” Abalone grins. “This Dr. Kravis is the one?”

I nod, feeling odd that I never considered Jersey by any other name than the one. With a sweeping motion of my hand, I mimic cutting my throat. Grey Brother sees the gesture and halts.

“You think he'll be in trouble for doing it?”

I nod, biting hard on my upper lip, remembering that Dr. Aldrich is still missing, wondering where he is.

Outside of the elevator, Abalone links her tappety-tap to a wall unit and starts sketching commands. With a triumphant chortle, she reads off a line of data.

“Jersey Kravis, Floor Three, Rooms 323–324.” She glances up at the elevator, then at a wall sign. “That's this floor, just down there a ways. C'mon.”

We pelt down the hallway, Abalone in front muttering off room numbers as we pass. She brakes in front of a closed door.

“This is it”—she looks uncertain—“Sarah, you'd better knock. If he has a scan, he'll know you.”

I step forward and rap my knuckles on the hard white plastic. Then I notice a buzzer and thumb that too. There is no answer and a blazing tension makes my stomach begin to roil. After I bang repeatedly, Grey Brother pulls me back.

“Little Sister, he won't answer. I need to check with the Four. Perhaps one of the guards we've captured has a pass.”

I reluctantly agree to follow, my fears for Margarita returning in an icy wave. My Pack can be brutal if they feel the need and these were the people who had kidnapped both me and Head Wolf, who had chased us from the Jungle. Would they see them as any better than Mowgli's wolves had seen the Red Dogs of the dekkan?

My feet cease to drag and I hurry after. Grey Brother and Abalone lead the way down the stairs to the ground floor, the recorded cry of the Pack beating at us from an open intercom we pass. I have never been here before and yet I
hurry along without a glance as we pass various offices. The air smells of artificial scent and is without any trace of humidity. The corridor ends in a set of heavy fire doors, and when Grey Brother opens them, I hear many voices.

I hardly know whom to greet first and stand frozen with a stupid grin on my face. They are here—my people—Peep, seeming a foot taller since last time I saw him, a new grimness etched about his dark eyes; Midline, lean and arrogant, allowing himself the faintest smile. But two tear my heart: Professor Isabella, strangely militant in camouflage fatigues, and Head Wolf, paler, thinner still than he should be, but his dark eyes as mad as ever.

Unable to do anything, I pause, seeing them assess me, the shaved head, the strained, wild expression that I know remains for hours after any interchange session.

Abalone breaks the awkward reunion by being briskly businesslike.

“Sarah says the fellow who got us the message is a Dr. Kravis. She's afraid he's in trouble for doing it. We checked his rooms, but there wasn't an answer, so we need to find if the guards have a key.”

Professor Isabella nods. “Are you sure we don't have him here? Chocolate and Edelweiss scared up a few people who weren't in uniform.”

My pulse leaps hopefully. Professor Isabella squeezes my shoulder.

“We've got them this way, Sarah. Come along.”

I take her hand and we go to another set of double doors, which are opened from within when Professor Isabella
rhythmically knocks. The air in this room is even drier than without and smells heavily of herbs and spices.

From her seat on a stool by the door, Edelweiss grins tightly at me. “We put 'em in the larder—nice and tidy. Wonder whether they'll take the seasoning?”

I try to smile back, but my eyes are busy searching the cluster of guards. I see neither Jersey nor Margarita and as my anticipation is turning into dread, a sharp voice calls out.

“Sarah,
amiga
, what is all this? These people your friends?”

I almost laugh in my relief, but cannot find an answer for all her questions. Settling for a nod, I look at Abalone.

“Yes,” she says. “We've come for her. You're calling Sarah ‘friend,' lady. You friend enough to give us some help?”

Several of the guards glower at her, but Margarita ignores them and nods. “You get what you want, anyway. I see that, Blue Mouth. If I can get it, she can have it.”

“We want the key to Dr. Kravis's rooms.”

“Dr. Kravis?” Margarita looks genuinely puzzled. “I don't know what you asking.”

“Don't screw around…” Abalone growls, but I grasp her arm and put my finger to her lips.

Looking at Margarita, I rub a hand over my bald scalp, then motion a taller, overweight figure, ending by holding my nose and grimacing.

Margarita watches my mime anxiously, her expression shifting from confusion to relief.

“Oh, Jersey—why didn't you say so? I don't have the key, but I can show you where one should be.”

Abalone studies her closely. “Okay, but no funny stuff.”

Margarita nods and only squares her shoulders when there is a rumble of anger from the prisoners behind her. Edelweiss shuts them up by examining the clip in the tranq pistol she holds.

“Full. And I got another. Understand?”

Once we're out of the larder, Margarita turns to Abalone.

“Look, Boca Blue, you gotta get outta here fast. When they not get an answer, they be here pronto. We keep near hundred-percent communications silence, but there are checks. When they not get an answer, they be here faster than a cheetah with a bee on his butt,
comprende
?”

“Got you,” Abalone replies, letting Margarita through to a room that smells of men's socks and is decorated with video monitors and a computer terminal. “Why do you care?”