The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (12 page)

              Quinn waved good-bye, and despite her evolving ability to tolerate the most piquant of piquant odors, Quinn headed away from the dump. She was deep inside the Sanctuary now, far beyond the reach of the bike patrols near the front entrance. Now all she had to do was locate Gabriel. That’s all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

              Gabriel awoke with a splitting headache. That was new. And horrible. Neo-Spartans didn’t get headaches. They didn’t come in contact with things that provided them. Not usually. Must have been something I collided with, he thought, as he recalled the ferocious fight he’d put up when he was grabbed.

              Feeling the ache in his side he tried to turn over and get more comfortable only to discover that he was being held in place by an elaborate series of plastic pipes and pads. He opened his mouth to speak but his jaw wouldn’t move for the swelling. He struggled to turn his head and focus. Slowly a picture began to form: he was lying on his back. A needle was jabbed into his arm. Overhead was a bag of fluids running into the needle. His other arm was held in place by a white plastic robo-arm. The room was glassed-in and stark white, but for the collection of stainless steel machinery, humming, beeping, and monitoring something. As he struggled to break loose from his bonds he heard the beeping go faster and realization dawned: he was what was being monitored, and his whole body was held in place by white plastic robot limbs. He pushed out a moan.

“Where am I?” he said, all gravel.
The sound of his voice triggered a light to go on overhead, so bright it blinded him.

              “Where am I?” he repeated. “Who are you? What do you want?” He slammed against his plastic captor, straining to turn his head to a window where he could make out silhouettes gathering.

              “Hold still,” said a disembodied voice.

              “What’s going on?”

              A door slid open electronically and in stepped a tall man in a white lab coat. He moved casually toward Gabriel. “How you doing, son? Sorry about the restraints. They’re for your own good.”

              Gabriel just looked at him. Yeah. Right.

              “Look, I don’t blame you for not trusting me. How could you? I’m Doctor Mallory.” Mallory went about releasing the robo-arms holding Gabriel in place. He helped Gabriel to sit up. “How you feeling? You dizzy?”

              “I’m okay.”

              Mallory checked a read-out on one of the many machines monitoring Gabriel. “Yep. I believe you are.” But Gabriel wasn’t listening, he was eyeing that sliding door the man had come through. “I wouldn’t waste my time if I were you. The door opens by reading my pupil. Cool, hunh?” said Mallory.

              “Yeah, really impressive. What am I doing here?”

              Mallory went about testing Gabriel’s reactions, his breathing, the effect of a light in his eye, all the elements of a cursory physical. “You hungry? We’ve got plenty, all organic of course. Must keep you in tip-top shape.” Mallory tested Gabriel’s strength and flexibility. He stood back in awe. “You really are in fine condition, aren’t you?”

              Mallory produced a tiny recorder: “Subject’s epicrisis: kidneys are smooth and even. Heart strong, but still in the process of developing. Liver: excellent stats, perfect capacity.” To Gabriel he said with a smile, “You should be extremely proud,” and with that he made a gesture and two guards started inside.

              Gabriel had no idea what he should be proud about, but the presence of this cloying doc and the oncoming guards had his instinct informing him that this place was distinctly bad for his health. As the guards entered Gabriel shot between them, but the guards were fast and big, and had anticipated this. Gabriel squirmed in their grasp.

              “What are you doing? What do you want out of me?” screamed Gabriel, growing ever more desperate.

              “Calm down, boy. Don’t stress yourself out, that’s not good for anyone,” cooed Mallory.

              But Gabriel didn’t calm down. He threw a back flip and was launched out of the grasp of the guards. He dashed for the door, which hissed shut. He turned as the guards reacquired him and Mallory shot him up with a sedative.

              “Relax, sonny Jim, it’s all going to be over soon.” Gabriel went limp as his muscles gave way, but the guards uprighted him and marched him off. Mallory supervised as Gabriel was guided into a hallway and past a row of glassed-in cells, all of them bearing other Neo-Spartan boys. Gabriel fought the waves of the sedative as he tried to lift himself off the gurney and get a better look at the other Neo-Spartan boys. Why were they here? What did his kidneys, liver, and heart have to do with anything?

              As the guards deposited Gabriel in his glassed-in cell he wished like hell he’d paid more attention in Kilbert’s endless classes, but his dazed consciousness couldn’t dig through the clues he’d glimpsed… he knew they were there, and knew he couldn’t put them together as the world spun… and he mercifully passed out.

* * *

              Quinn had become accustomed enough to the Sanctuary Stench, as she’d come to think of it, that she was able to don her game face at the few people that passed her. They paid her little attention as they scurried past like rodents, all on the run, most carrying something stolen or illicit. She could tell that she hadn’t yet penetrated the heart of the beast, which was fine with her. She needed time to focus herself and gather her courage, but slowly a low distant rumble transformed itself into a cacophony. Strangled electric guitar music, manic shouts, guttural engines, the kind of chaos she’d experienced only second hand in old vids about something called NASCAR, toothless loonies guzzling beer in skin-tight jump suits.

              As she rounded a corner she came upon a broad and vast village square… and realized her memory of the vids was nothing compared to the reality that was the madness of the Sanctuary. Eyes wide, she navigated something like a combination of a circus and a psycho ward. Quinn had read about something called Spring Break, held in warm places in the olden days, and guessed that people here were emulating what they thought that had been. But where Spring Break of the twenty-first century saw guys climbing flag poles and vaulting hotel balconies, activities in the Sanctuary had been magnified over these significantly. Bandage-wearing Bangers skied down flights of cement stairs only to smash into guys riding the same stairs on plastic garbage can lids. At sidewalk level, bruised Bangers taunted those up on the fourth floor of a building as a water-filled basketball plummeted to the earth and smashed a Banger into the pavement, crushing him like a pea. Overhead, a daring woman tight-rope walked across what had once been a telephone wire while her “friends” tried to rock loose the utility pole from which her wire was suspended.

              Nearby, an old convertible moved along the pothole strewn street surrounding the square. A human pyramid composed of thirty drunken Bangers perched precariously on the car from hood to trunk as it cruised along evading the potholes. She knew it wouldn’t be smart to reveal her identity by gawking, but Quinn just couldn’t help herself. Her staring was rewarded as the car caught a tire in a massive pothole and collapsed the entire pyramid. Bodies tumbled down like dolls; people screamed as bones broke and skin was lacerated, and they immediately broke out laughing. Quinn stopped in her tracks. She’d had her share of broken bones and bloody noses, and never had they produced laughter.

              Suddenly in the corner of her eye she saw what had to be the pièce de résistance—two Bangers in a hang-glider launched themselves from a ten-story building and dive-bombed almost directly downward, pulling up only just enough to veer out of control and careen into a crumbling gazebo in the square. Quinn’s jaw dropped. The Neo-Spartans had mastered a great many disciplines, but flying was not one of them. She’d heard all the Sanctuary stories, but nothing had prepared her for this astounding onslaught. She was, in that moment, not just a fish out of water, but the original tabula rasa upon which she was trying to redraw her understanding of the universe.

              As she was thinking, she backed into the street and directly into the oncoming flow of bicycle traffic, that is, three guys aboard a trail bike meant for one. Quinn saw them at the last instant and was able to sidestep the impact enough to stay upright, but the guys on the bike went ass over tea-kettle. Reverting to herself, Quinn tried to upright them and check for injuries.

              “I’m sorry, I just didn’t see you coming… that glider had just smashed… well…” she stammered. But the Bangers, bloody and broken, leapt to their feet and surrounded her.

              “– the hell? Why didn’t you look where you’re going?”

              “As I said, I’m sorry.”

              “Yeah, yeah, fine, you’re sorry,” said one of them.

              “You’re that sorry, you pay up,” said another.

              “Yeah, that’s right,” said the second, trying to make it look as if he’d thought of it too. “Pay up.”

              “I’m sorry, but I have no way to pay you,” admitted Quinn.

              “So how you gonna pay the toll?” said the first as his eyes roamed her body.

              “Yeah,” said his buddy. But he turned his back and asked, “What toll?”

              First guy elbowed him. Quinn eyed them all as they continued to circle her. She shifted her stance and made sure that she had good footing.

              “I’m with him,” she said. “What toll?”

              Number three joined the fray. “A doll like you can pay up another way.”

              “A what?” asked Quinn, wincing.

              “You heard the man,” said the first guy. All three were crowding her now. Moving in closer. Quinn clenched her fist and unkinked her neck. Second guy drooled, sucked it back, and grabbed for Quinn’s wrist.

              By sheer reflex Quinn flattened him with a jab to the gut and an elbow to the face. Boom, he went down. Second guy stepped into the breach and made a grab for her. Quinn casually slid out of his grasp, and discouraged him with a hard kick to the knee. He dropped like a sausage.

              Several Bangers turned to this new entertainment. “Look at the chick beatin’ on these jerks!” somebody shouted. Others turned to gawk. Quinn shot a look their way. It was the very last thing Quinn wanted. She dropped her fists and tried to back away, but there was third guy, ready to fight for his pride. “Come on, put ’em up.”

              “You don’t want this,” Quinn protested. Third guy ignored her admonition and threw a wild roundhouse, which Quinn ducked; his momentum lurched him forward and all Quinn needed to do was swipe his other leg and he fell flat on his face. The ever-growing crowd roared. The bike trio all rose to their feet, rubbing those parts that had become familiar with Quinn’s weaponry.

              “I’m asking, please—don’t do this to yourselves.”

              All three Bangers turned puce with rage and threw themselves at her in a morass of uncoordinated kicks, swings and misses. Quinn fended them off as if swatting mosquitoes, their slow, rootless punches missing the mark, and the ones connecting doing so with no impact. She backpedaled and studied her dilemma. Fighting them without inflicting serious injury ran counter to all the martial arts training she’d received from Kilbert since she could walk. Despite the difficulty factor, Quinn forced herself to be careful not to hit the trigger points she knew so well. The last thing she needed was a trio of Bangers going into shock as toxins shot through their bodies and they collapsed. Any chance of finding Gabriel would collapse too.

              It was a wild fracas. To the untrained eye it looked like a full-on slug-fest and the crowd grew larger and noisier. Quinn looked for a way out and something caught her eye; there, squirming to the front of the crowd was Marisol. Quinn was struck with a notion. She had decided enough was enough, so she whirled, spun and pounded until all three biker Bangers were dropped.

              Quinn tried to walk away from the bleeding, seething trio, but the crowd was enjoying it too much. They formed a wall and pushed her back, chanting for more. Quinn stared helplessly at them, and shared a second glance with Marisol. Marisol gestured a direction with her head. Quinn turned her head to follow the gesture, and in that moment, two of the Bangers leapt at her and knocked her off her feet, while the third ran down the street waving frantically at someone. Quinn’s eye followed the fleeing third Banger. Through the rising dust she could make him out, rushing to meet up with the chromo-freaks who’d first run her out of the Sanctuary gates. Quinn did the math and didn’t like it. She looked back at Marisol, who slithered away under the arms and through the legs of the wall of people.

              Quinn somersaulted backwards with tremendous force, sending the Bangers flying and herself into a standing position. She raced directly at the wall of onlookers, and in the last instant leapt and planted her feet onto the shoulder of one of them, and catapulted onto a balcony. Her parkouring wasn’t in Gabriel’s league, but it did offer a handy and clever escape. She rushed to the end of the balcony, reacquired her view of Marisol, then vaulted off the balcony, in the process putting the crowd between herself and Banger/biker boys who now cursed and kicked as they struggled to get through the masses and follow her. Naturally their charisma was met with equal charm, and a mammoth fight between the crowd and the biker Banger boys was left in Quinn’s wake.