Escape (53 page)

Kieran was hastily digesting the implications of what Jilly had said, but somehow his mind was unable to fully grasp the significance. “So, what does that mean?”

Jilly turned to him with fists planted on her hips. “It means the power grid that the med center is on, is down, and likely has been for some time. Whatever power backups were in place are completely spent.”

Kieran's eyes narrowed. “And
that
means
 
.
 
.
 
.
?”

Jilly jerked her chin at the ceiling. “It means something is seriously wrong up there.” She shrugged, and cast her gaze to the floor. “Or down there, depending where the generators are.”

Kieran took a moment to absorb the possibilities, then asked, “How long do you think we were in stasis for?”

Jilly shook her head, casting her eyes around the room. “No idea. Help me find something to pry Ferrel out of here before we ask any more unanswerable questions, okay?”

Wordlessly, Kieran stepped past her, got a firm, two-handed grip on the portal cover and pulled with all his might.

Alloy groaned, then snapped with a loud, high-pitched
plink!
and the portal cover popped free of its hinges. Ferrel's head turned and he blinked sleepily up at them, his eyes glowing like twin firestones.

“Welcome to the Infernal, princess,” Kieran said.

* * *

They explained the situation as quickly as possible to Ferrel, impressing upon him the necessity of killing Dimmi, but he wasn't convinced. He seemed to be visibly holding himself back from physically attacking Kieran, and exacting vengeance on Dimmi's behalf. It was only when Jilly told him that Dimmi would probably recover, just as each of them had, from her so-called
fatal
injury, that he calmed down.

Then they spent a few minutes sitting on the cold, hard tiles of the floor, exchanging accounts of how they'd been placed in stasis
—
Jilly and Ferrel by the head doctor of the ER, probably in an attempt to contain the virus, or to subdue them until a proper containment team could arrive. That made perfect sense to Kieran, but what made considerably less sense was how and why he and Dimmi had been placed in stasis with them
—
by the director of the med center, no less. No one knew they were infected, so why had they been contained? Jilly suggested that it might have been part of a cover-up for what had been done to her and Ferrel. They'd gone looking for two patients who'd mysteriously dissapeared and mysteriously dissapeared themselves.

“Either way, it's academic right now,” Jilly said. “Personally, I'm more interested in knowing how long we were in stasis. And in finding a way out of here without winding up in another stasis chamber somewhere else.”

Ferrel nodded. “We got lucky. If the power hadn't failed, we could have remained in metabolic suspension for decades
—
centuries even.”

Jilly looked directly at him. “There's no way of knowing that we haven't been. For all we know, we were in stasis for a thousand years.”

Ferrel gulped and looked away.

“Look, whatever we're going to do, let's not stand around here discussing it. Our first priority should be finding a way to disable the nano virus. You saw what it did to Dimmi.” Kieran's gaze slid sideways, coming to rest on Dimmi's unnaturally twisted neck and still-glowing eyes. “What's going to keep us from ending up same way?” Kieran looked back to Jilly, as if expecting that she would have an answer.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “I don't know
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
I'd need a fully functional lab to even begin to attack the problem.”

“So let's go find one.” Kieran stood up and offered Jilly a hand.

She took his hand, and he yanked her to her feet.

“What about Dimmi?” Ferrel asked.

“What about her?” Kieran shot back. “She'll either recover or she won't, either way we can't stick around.”

Ferrel's jaw muscles bunched, and his eyes narrowed. He looked ready to argue
—
or fight.

Jilly laid a hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. “Kieran's right. We can't
—
”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ferrel said, shrugging her hand off and starting for the door. “Let's shivvy.”

Jilly hesitated a moment before following. She exchanged glances with Kieran. They knew what Ferrel was thinking:
what if I'm the next one to snap? Are you going to leave me for dead, too?

Neither one of them were ready to contemplate the answer, they walked up to the door beside Ferrel, and found him tugging uselessly on the handle.
He let out a frustrated sigh and kicked the door. “It's bolted shut.”

“So?” Kieran said. He took hold of the door handle in both hands, braced himself, and looked to Ferrel. “You going to help, or what?” Ferrel placed his hands on handle beside Kieran's. “On three.”

“One. Two. Three!”

They yanked on the door handle, simultaneously throwing their weight against the door. There came the screech of alloy twisting, bending
 
.
 
.
 
.
and then suddenly the door popped open and Kieran and Ferrel fell backward, landing hard on the floor.

Kieran let loose a startled laugh and bounced to his feet.

Ferrel shook his head and grinned.

Jilly was already through the door, and walking down the hallway beyond.

“Come on,” Kieran said, taking long strides to catch up with her.

They found Jilly standing just one door down the hall, peering through the transpiranium upper half of the door, her face slack and eyes blinking in a way that told Kieran something was wrong. He stopped beside her and saw exactly what that was.

There were faces pressed to the transpiranium, hands banging on it, muffled crying, people screaming to be let out
—
sounds that barely escaped their prison. They were locked in. “They can't see us,” Jilly said, her voice dull. “They're just hoping someone, somewhere will hear them.”

“Can't they see our eyes glowing in the dark?”

“If they can, they havn't identified the light as coming from living beings.” She turned to him. “Would you?”

“I guess not.”

Jilly's gaze slid away, and she looked down the hall. Dozens more doors, hundreds more locked within.

Kieran could read the regret in her thoughts, and for a moment he didn't understand it. “So let's let them out,” he said. “Ferrel?” he called over his shoulder.

“Right here.”

“You want to do the honors, or shall I?”

“We can't," Jilly said. “We don't know why they were put in here. They could be contagious. And so could we. The best thing we can do for them is find a way to get the power back on.”

And with that, she started down the hall again. They followed, keeping their eyes dead ahead, trying hard not to meet the desperate, imploring faces pressed to the transpiranium door panes as they passed.

They reached the bank of lift tubes, and Jilly tried the control panel. She shook her head. “We're going to have to use the stairs,” she said.

Kieran opened a closed door to the left of the lift tubes, saw stairwell beyond, and said, “Found them!”

They started up the stairs, mercifully still able to see in the unrelenting blackness. After a few flights of stairs Ferrel asked, “How do we know we're going the right way to get to the generators?”

“At this point,” Jilly said. “We're just looking for someone who can explain what's going on. Up or down, it shouldn't matter which way we go.”

They climbed a few more flights, passing doors which led to the floors directly above the stasis level. They were about to pass another door, when Ferrel stopped and gestured to it. “Why don't we see what's on this level?”

Jilly turned to him from higher up the stairs and shook her head. “Read the sign,” she said, pointing to a plaque beside the door.

He did. “More stasis chambers?” Ferrel shook his head. “How many do they need?”

“Thousands,” she replied. “In the med centers where I've worked, the stasis levels are always the most extensive part of the facility. We devote more care to the dying and terminally-ill than to those whose ailments we can actually treat.”

Ferrel caught up to her and they continued climbing. “Why?” he asked.

“If you were rich, and you were dying, wouldn't you try to cheat death by outwaiting it in a stasis chamber?”

“What if waiting wouldn't help?”

They passed another stasis level and kept climbing.

“Medical science is advancing faster and faster every day. One day we might be able to transfer your consciousness to a new body, or at least an artificial one. You could wake up a 1000 years from now and live forever.”

“Well, I guess
—
”

A dull, gurgling scream interrupted Ferrel, and they all abruptly stopped walking.

“Kieran?” Jilly asked, her head turning to find him just behind her.

“Wasn't me.”

“So what was it?”

The sound came again, louder this time. It was a bloodcurdling screech, inhuman
—
like the sound of sharp knives being scraped across rusty alloy.

Jilly began climbing the stairs again, walking slowly, keeping her footsteps from echoing in the narrow stairwell. Kieran and Ferrel instinctively did the same.

“It sounds
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly whispered, trailing off as she came to a landing and another door. This time the placard beside the door didn't say stasis chambers.

“Like it's coming from the morgue?” Kieran said, completing her sentence and turning it into a question.

Jilly had her hand on the door handle and was just about to open the door. Ferrel stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You really think that's such a good idea? What if
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“Something is alive in there? I hope there is. We're on a search for the living.” Jilly opened the door, and stepped into the dark hallway beyond. Kieran shrugged and followed her.

Ferrel hesitated.
Who searches for the living among the dead?

Chapter 33

L
ike all of the other hallways in the medical center, this one was long and straight, with doors to either side. They tiptoed down the hall, listening for even the slightest noise.

But none came. What had made that screeching sound?

Kieran found his head turning from side to side, checking every door they passed, expecting something or someone to leap out at them just as they walked past. It was irrational, but somehow the combination of impenetrable darkness, the fact of where they were
—
the morgue
—
and how they had decided to investigate
—
strange, screaming sounds coming from somewhere on this floor
—
all gave rise to a sense of foreboding, of what or who they might find. Jilly's words echoed in his head:
“something is seriously wrong up there
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Finally they came to the end of the hallway. It formed a T with another one running crosswise. They hesitated briefly, wondering whether to go left or right. Then they heard it: a quiet rasp of rusty hinges, followed by a skittering sound.

“What was that?” Ferrel asked, spinning around.

Kieran and Jilly turned to look behind them, in the direction where the noise had come. There was nothing, at least, nothing they could separate from the fuzzy blackness.

Kieran shook his head. “I don't see anything.”

“I heard it,” Ferrel said.

“So did I,” Jilly put in.

“Probably just vermin,” Kieran said.

“In a med center?” Jilly asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

They peered down to the end of the corridor, trying at least to see the open door which would explain the sound of rusty hinges. An almost imperceptible draft met them, carrying with it a dank and musky smell laced with sharp, acrid chemical undertones, and another smell
—
rich, and sharp, and metallic
—
familiar, but somehow sharper and more
 
.
 
.
 
.
appealing
, than Kieran remembered. It was a smell like the taste of a split lip, unmistakable, and mouth-watering
.
 
.
 
.
 
.