Orphan of Mythcorp (36 page)

The little Xena withdrew what looked like a
machete from a sheath on her back and entered. The red-head and
Izzy followed, Morgan taking up the rear. From the cool blue light
inside the lab, we watched him pause, turn around to scan the hall,
and then remove Ash’s hard won card key. Apparently satisfied, he
closed the door behind him. The two red lights returned.

“
F---!” spat Ash.

I followed him out into the hall. “Yeah.
Didn’t count on that, did you?” I really should’ve controlled
myself, but I was in a pissy mood; all my limbs were going rigid.
If I injected another vial of nanites so soon after the last
injection, I’d risk them making some of the old ones redundant—and
nanites ain’t cheap. Ash looked at me, his clear white eyes boring
into mine.

“
Why are you smiling, Charlie? If they
wake Knox—”

“
Run!”

Lamorak was back, charging down the hall—and
he was not alone.

He flew past us. We turned on our heels and
started running after him, trying not to think about the thing
barreling down the hall after us. Agravaine put it best when he
said, “I guess he found Malthus.”

After stumbling through the door out onto the
twelfth floor, Faustus abruptly skidded to a halt. I slammed into
him as he was setting Izzy down. He caught her, set her right-wise
and twisted mid air, coming to an elegant stop near the wall.

“
What’s the deal?” I asked, hand flying
to my gut as something vile swirled around inside.

“
I thought I heard something,” Faustus
raised a hand and listened to the quiet nothing. “Come on, we
better find the other stairwell, just in case the big galoot
doesn’t fall for our diversion.”

Izzy adjusted her crutches, brushed hair out
of her eyes, and then followed the gingersnap.

I chased them, clutching my gut with my right
hand and leaning on the cane with the other. “Hold up. What do you
mean ‘find’ it? Don’t you know where the other stairwell is?”

He sighed. It sounded a smidgen melodramatic.
“For the hundredth time, when I was here last, I was being chased
and shot at—and that was fifteen years ago!”

“
Just asking. Eee.”

We were moving at a jog now, a clip too fast
for me with my buggered leg, aching scabs and pulsating bruises;
and downright impossible for Izzy. Sweat oozed and yet I was
freezing. “Can we slow it down a smidge—for Izzy’s sake?”

“
Sometimes you are such a girl,” Izzy
said.

We rounded a corner in near pitch blackness,
me in the rearguard.

“
Oof. Watch where you’re
going.”

“
Sorry,” I told Izzy. “You
okay?”

“
No I’m not okay,” she snapped. I was
glad I couldn’t see her face. She was probably giving me the
stinky-peeper. “You mucked with my head—”

“
Hey,” I defended, “that was just to
wipe out the muckery Ash had done to you.”

“
Don’t act like it wasn’t for your
benefit,” she’d righted her crutches and resumed her trot after the
gingersnap. “You dragged me away from my house, yanked me onto a
bus that smelled like old man breath. Then you forced me to run
through a brimstorm, break into a government-condemned building,
and now you step on me in this god-forsaken dead-zone. So am I
okay? What do you think?”

“
No?”

“
Ugh.”

Another six or seven minutes passed. We
jogged and jostled, walked and cursed. Izzy did not speak to me,
even when she said my name. She seemed to be using it as an
expletive.

“
Aha,” Faustus exclaimed. “I’ve found
it. The luck of the Irish strikes again.”

“
I didn’t know you were Irish,” I
said.

“
It’s an expression, genius,” Izzy
chided, clearly not grasping my brand of humor. She followed
Faustus up to the door to the emergency stairwell. Faustus shoved
on the push-bar, revealing a hole even darker than the wider,
public domain; no exit signs to light our way. The power had been
turned on—we’d seen the warehouse lights flicker to life—but none
of us had a clue where the switches were for the hall lights, so if
it weren’t for the moonlight, we’d have been crawling around in
pitch blackness.

“
As I’m the best, I’ll go first,”
Faustus stepped forward.

“
No,” Izzy pressed a miniscule hand to
his waist. “I’m tired of looking at your scrawny butt. I’ll go
first.” And she did. Faustus held the door. He then proceeded in
after her and I caught the door before following them into the
darkness.

You couldn’t even hear the droning hum of
wind in here. It was like a total blackout.

SLASH

“
Man alive, Kana,” Faustus yelped. “You
came this close to carving a smile into my neck. Good thing Izzy’s
a dwarf or you would’ve decapitated
her
. You don’t even know.”

“
Kana?” I said.

“
Yeah, it’s me,” she sounded pooped.
“Man, am I glad to see you kritbags.”

“
Can you see us?” Faustus asked, while
I posed my own, more important question: “How did you recover so
quickly from that tranquilizer? How do you always recover so
quickly?”

“
It’s got something to do with rapid
release of endorphins and concentrated adrenaline.”

“
What?” Izzy and I asked.

“
She means she’s basically like
Wolverine, only she doesn’t heal quite as rapidly. No. Actually,
she’s more like Hellboy, who heals quicker than humans
but—”

“
I think they get it,” Kana
interrupted. “Mind if we get a move on? Nimrod is lurking somewhere
nearby, and that kritbag scares even me. So let’s go.”

We all heartily agreed and felt our way up
the stairs.

“
Did he . . . did Nimrod kill Malthus?”
I asked.

Faustus and Kana both laughed. Startling
sounds in such a creepy place. “Kill Malthus? The big guy is a
little buggered, but he knows how to take a beating. It’s not like
he used his mouth much anyway,” Faustus quipped.

“
Nimrod once dropped an elevator on the
big guy,” Faustus whispered. “Remember that?”

“
Yeah,” said Kana. “Remember how pissed
off the Hunter was when he found out Malthus was still alive?” And
then the two Mythicons broke into fits of laughter

At last we reached the door to the twelfth
floor. Kana went first, dirk raised, as I could see when moonlight
spilled in from the open door. “All clear,” she hollered and we
followed her out into the hall. After rounding two corners,
expecting Nimrod to jump out and yell ‘Gotcha!’ at any moment, I
saw something worse than the Hunter.

“
Sanson’s spooks.”

“
What?” Izzy asked.

I restrained her before she could follow the
Mythicons around the corner. “Sanson is close. I can see his
spooks.”

They hadn’t noticed me yet; the two closest
spooks were too busy milling about aimlessly, severed heads
bouncing on raggedy shoulders. I was about to suggest going round
another way, when Kana yelled from around the corner: “I found
it.”

Peeking around and through the two milling
spooks, I spotted Kana pointing at a large stainless steel door.
She was staring at the metal card-reader. “The cryonics guy must’ve
left his card when they stormed Mythcorp during the Purge.”

“
No,” I said, bravely marching past the
spooks and up to the door, scanning for trouble. “I’ll bet that’s
Ash’s card. I mean, look, the door has two locks, right? He wasn’t
counting on that. I’ll bet he’s gone to find the old brass key for
this lock. Here,” I reached inside my jeans and pulled out the
lock-pick set the bearded wonder had given me in Vera City. A
little bit of wriggling and jiggling and the tiny-toothed tools
slid into place.

“
I did it,” surprising everyone,
including myself. My gut grumbled again.

“
Hallelujah,” Izzy retorted.

We all stood back as Kana executed her ninja
stuff on the door. I tried to ignore the four specters trying their
darnedest to pummel me while Marie and Castor fled. Light
surrounded us as Kana opened the big stainless steel bugger. She
entered first, naturally, followed by Faustus and Izzy. It may seem
like I’m always taking up the rear, but there’s good reason for
that—I need to make sure no one sneaks up on us. Yeah.

I stumbled in, clutching my gut and
swallowing bile.

“
Grab the key card,” Izzy ordered. I
plucked the card out from its slot, stuffed it in my jeans pocket.
Ahead of me, Izzy snapped, “Shut the door. Jeez.”

‘
We made it,’ Marie floated through a
row of white tanks arranged along the far wall below a bank of
windows. ‘He’s here. I can feel him.’

‘
Yeah, me too,’ Castor said. ‘I can
feel the asshole’s presence. It’s always a bit gloomier around
Knox. How much you want to bet one of these poor fleshies here will
die for Knox tonight?” He was once again trying to light his cig.
He looked nervous, probably due to the malevolent spooks looming
outside the room. For some reason, Sanson’s specters were not
phasing through the wall or door. So, for the moment, we were
safe.

“
Look at all these machines,” Izzy
chirped, “at this light. They must’ve been pumping juice into this
one room since the Purge. You think there are jackets here
anywhere? I’m freezing my bum off.”

“
Gurggleplok,” I spluttered, falling to
hands and knees. Yellow puke, mingled with bits of undigested
peanut butter and cucumber sandwich, spurted onto the tile floor.
Once it was all up and I was done making a complete fool of myself,
I turned over and leaned against a clear spot on the eggshell white
wall, head down between my knees. “Oh man.”

“
It’s the drugs, isn’t it?” Izzy asked,
leaning over me.

“
Maybe,” I picked through my rather
stuffed pockets, found a single glorious B-drop. I brought it up to
my peepers and then to my sniffer. Izzy reached forward and
snatched it from my grasp before I could pop it.

“
Hey!” my voice sounded evil and
unfamiliar.

“
Really?” Izzy said. “You’re going
to
use
, here, now? Are you
really that much of a junkie?”

“
Yes. Now give it. It’s mine. I need
it.”

She stretched her hand forward as if to
give it to me, but then jerked it back and handed the B-drop to
Faustus, who deposited it in his pocket. He smirked. “That was just
like the second season episode of
Lost,
when Charlie pretends he’s going to give
the gun to Anna-Lucia, but then hands it back to Sayid.”

“
Shut up!” I snapped. “Give it back.
It’s mine and I—”

Izzy slapped me. In retrospect it was quite
impressive—her arms being so short and all. But just then, I felt
queasy and was in holy-moly pain and the slap acted as the straw in
that camel parable. I shut up.

Castor couldn’t stop heehawing.

As I held my throbbing cheek, Izzy laid her
hand on my shoulder. “Marie worked here when she was alive, right?
Well then she should know how to wake Knox. We need Marie to tell
us how, and we need you to tell us what she says. You told me you
can’t hear her very well when you use. So I’m asking you, don’t
use.” She looked back at the Mythicons, who were busy inspecting
equipment, looking for my father. “You want to meet your father,
and I want to go home. Let’s finish this.”

Trembling, I slowly nodded.

Faustus whistled from the other side of the
lab.

Izzy helped me to my feet so we could head
over to the gingersnap. Tanks and blinking lights and ticking
machines hunkered along every wall, reflecting light from the
fluorescent bulbs. We reached Faustus, who was standing beside an
eight foot bathtub-shaped tank connected to a web of hoses. He
looked at me and I looked at him. He nodded.

Kana took my arm from Izzy and led me up the
three metal steps to the stage on which the tank sat. She held me
steady as I leaned over and peered through the frosted glass into
the cryonic tub. Encased within what looked like pink crystallized
ice, lay a thin man with a mop of black hair, wearing nothing but a
look of amused contentment.

“
Dad.”

“
Thank you guys,” I whispered. “Thank
you for helping me to get here.”

Faustus tapped my shoulder. “Just don’t
forget what you owe me for coming along on your little
let’s-wake-daddy tour: one Schwarzenegger Icon and one James
Cameron Icon.”

“
Right,” I said, and then, to change
the subject from fantastical dreams to quasi-fantastical hopes, I
added, “So ah, how do we wake him?”

Marie wasn’t paying attention. People and
spooks do that a lot to me. It’s so rude.

“
Marie!”

She drifted through a Malthus-sized tank
labeled LN-2 Alcor LEF.

“
What did she say?” Izzy asked.
Thankfully she’d dropped the snarky tone.

“
She’s being stubborn,” I said, getting
down from the steps. “Maybe you guys should start looking for a
manual or something while I work on Marie.” Instead of trying to
wrest her attention from the very interesting spider-web near the
ceiling above the tank, I turned to Castor. “Help me out
here.”

He huffed and puffed and no doubt wished
smoke was involved, but in the end floated over to Marie. They
conversed quietly while I stood back.