The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (55 page)

It did. The greedy guards put down their
tablets and headed for the cell door, weapons drawn. As I’d hoped,
they fought about who’d unlock the door and enter first to claim
the treasure I was using as bait.

I was ready. As soon as they neared, ordering
me to give up the gold, I aimed and fired a handful of poop at each
guard’s face. Bulls-eyes. The guards screamed and clutched at their
lids in agony, giving John the opportunity to overpower them and
knock them out, then grab their tasers. I crawled up out of the
hole, and helped John and Aliyah tie the men’s arms and legs with
their belts and stuff a piece of soiled shirt (and you know what)
in each guard’s mouth as a muffler.

“Let’s go,” I said, “They might have cameras
set up around here.”

John had already pulled off and donned one
guard’s pants and shoes, and offered Aliyah a long shirt from the
guard that had escaped my well-aimed fecal missiles. As for me,
well, I was coated in poop, so, although I smelled like you know
what, nothing private showed any longer. I did use the remaining
dirty shirt to wipe off my feet, however. No point in leaving poopy
footprints as a guide to where we were fleeing.

John pulled the Somalderis off the chair and
wrapped it around his hips, waving to us to follow him down an
adjacent unlit hall. With apologies to Caesar, “we conquered, we
locked, and we left”, trapping our guards in our erstwhile cell to
struggle with literal and figurative headaches after they’d wake
up.

* * *

The prison seemed to have been built after
the abandonment of what used to be an old hospital. We ran away
from the sounds of the angry guards’ voices towards a deserted wing
and found ourselves in what resembled a dilapidated intensive care
unit or surgical suite, complete with—yes!—a shower.

Which I did. Quickly, blessedly. We found a
stash of once-white scrubs in an adjacent closet, and used several
to fill in our wardrobe as needed, stuffing a few yellowed cloth
masks in our pockets that we could wear in case we wanted to hide
our identities. Now, how to get out of the building itself and find
Spud?

John hid beside a shattered window, whose
remaining glass shards were blanketed with fine dust, and peeked
out at the courtyard below. “One sentinel at every corner tower,
and the rovers are in pairs. About five minutes between patrols. If
we can create a distraction for the tower guards, we’d have a break
to make it to the east entrance.”

I pointed to several large dusty tanks,
topped by rusty dials. “I think that’s oxygen. Anybody got a
light?” If only Spud, who was always ready for a smoke, were here,
we could build an explosive device…

But John and Aliyah’s heads were buried in a
tall cabinet. Not again. “What’s so fascinating?” I chided, “You
realize every minute we waste here increases our chances of getting
caught.”

John turned to face us, his right hand
holding a large jar filled with a yellow liquid in which floated a
brown mass. “What does this look like to you?”

“I’m assuming you don’t want the obvious
answer,” I returned.

“It’s a heart. A small one,” interjected the
Professor, “in serum.”

John pulled open the cabinet door to reveal
several shelves of similar jars, each containing small lumps of
tissue in fluid. Some resembled identifiable organs. Livers, eyes,
hearts, a pancreas, kidneys. Others were amorphous balls.

Dr. Malamud pointed to one of the balls.
“This specimen is a more primitive form. Based on its length and
shape, it seems to be developing into a stomach.”

“Wow. What were these people doing in here?”
I scanned the room, noting a broken surgical table on the far wall.
“Besides waterboarding Persian spies, of course.”

The Professor’s voice was a whisper. “I would
hypothesize they were promoting organ regeneration for transplants.
My parents spoke of these myths, that such knowledge existed, but I
never believed them.”

“Myths?” John asked. Organ regeneration was
elementary medicine at Zyga’s universe-renowned Nejinsen Medical
Center. But then again, this was Earth. Ancient Earth.

“My parents served as doctors. My mother
worked with transplantation of donor and artificial hearts.” Dr.
Malamud paused, averting her eyes. Blinking, she added, “But no
moderns have ever successfully stimulated progenitor cells to
differentiate into new organs.”

“I’m afraid that knowledge gained can just as
easily be lost,” John said, replacing the jar with the heart back
on the shelf.

“History is full of such tragedies,” he
added, sighing. “Like the library at old Alexandria.” His frown
returned. “Well, no makeshift bombs, no fires, that’s for sure.
We’ll have to try to escape quietly. I don’t want to be responsible
for derailing this world’s medical progress.”

I nodded my agreement. “Besides, we’ll have
to limit any physical damage to the building so we can retrieve our
Ergals before we split.”

“
So
we can split,” corrected John.
“Which means we before we break out of these prison walls, we’ll
have to break
in
.”

Chapter 21

Babylon IV

John took the lead, gripping an IV pole like
his bat, as we snuck out of the surgical section. We made our way
down a dimly lit hall past darkened operating rooms towards an
abandoned central nurse’s station, which were brightly lit by the
setting sun’s rays through a row of cracked windows. I brought up
the rear, behind the Professor, my eyes peeled for any hidden
intruders that might try to surprise us again. All of the
operatories were also abandoned, their double doors rusted with
broken hinges. Except one. A light shone through the slit between
its double doors—I saw shadows within and gestured to John and
Aliyah to move past the room quickly and quietly. We all exhaled
onlh after we’d reached the nurse’s station. But something was
nagging at me. Something was off.

“What?” John whispered. “Let’s go—there seems
to be a door on the other side.”

“Wait.” I stood frowning, staring back down
the hall towards the operatory with the light. “It seemed like
there were people in there.”

“An even better reason to keep moving,
right?” said John.

“But when I walked past, it was just weird.
The only place I saw shadows was in the top half of the slit
between the doors, not the bottom. Like somebody was flying—“

“Or levving,” John nodded. “I’ll go
check.”

“Both of us,” I insisted. “Professor, you
stay here and hide bethind these counters. In case you need to run
and get us help.”

John tapped me on the shoulder and motioned
for us to tiptoe back to the lit operatory. We peeked through the
slit and confirmed that the shadows seemed to be close to the
ceiling, not the floor. John positioned his IV pole like a Geryon,
and counted down with his fingers—3-2-1. We burst through the door,
ready to fight off our unknown enemies, and stopped in
mid-tracks.

Hanging from an IV hook was a young man,
coughing and gagging, his feet bound and his arms tied behind his
back, his face tinged violet, a rope tugging at his bruised and
bleeding jaw.

“Spud!”

We raced to his side, and lifted him up and
over the rope that had been digging into his mandible. He collapsed
into our arms, taking deep, wheezy breaths, as we untied him and
watched his skin assume a healthier beige hue.

“Thank the Omega Archon…” escaped my
lips.

“Hardly,” a hoarse voice responded, “Twas my
anatomical investigations that allowed me to contract and relax my
sternocleidomastoids and manoeuvre the rope into my mandibular
notch.” Spud took another deep breath. “Thereby relieving the
pressure on my larynx.”

“We thought someone was levving,” said
John.

Spud shook his head and winced as his muscles
complained. “I did take the precaution of hiding my Ergal ring
someplace I never thought they would search. But, alas, they left
no cavity unturned.” He rubbed his neck with a dirt-caked hand.
“I’d been attempting to swing my legs up and over and release my
head from the noose completely, though I am most grateful that you
both were there to break what would very likely have been a painful
landing on this stone floor.”

“Well,” my voice radiated caring, “at least
they didn’t waterboard you.”

Spud’s expression seemed to indicate that my
attempt at empathy had been misguided. “But I told them nothing. I
shudder to think what these savages might do if they could
manipulate an Ergal.”

John interrupted, “We’d better go before they
come back for your—for you. I think I spotted a way out of here.
Can you walk?”

Spud stood up, albeit unsteadily, and nodded.
“Let us make haste.” He frowned for a moment. “Do I detect the
faint odor of--”

“Come on,” I urged. “We’ll explain
later.”

* * *

Aliyah and I spotted Spud as John led us to
yet another deserted wing that offered us entry to a spacious room.
The suite was barren except for several lopsided chairs and a
scratched wood conference table with glass place mats.

“Looks like they could use a new
housekeeper,” I offered, tracing a line in the dust on the glass
with my finger.

Spud leaned in close to the mats, sniffing
the edges, and feeling the rims with his hands. “I believe,” he
said, lifting one of them off the table to show us the wires
attached to the underside, “that these rectangles were a type of
primitive holo or tablet. A computer.”

“Wow. Way back in 1000 AD?” John exclaimed.
“Can you get it to work?”

Spud’s eyes panned around the room. “I see no
viable power source in here.” He ran his fingers down the length of
the wire, then shook his head.

“Guess we’d better keep moving. The soldiers
should’ve found our guilty guards by now.” I moved to the door,
peeking down the dark hall. “Clear.”

CRASH! The building shook violently, plaster
and dust showering us with a white coating. So much for my
bath.

“What was that?” whispered Dr. Malamud.

“Another bomb, I conjecture,” said Spud,
pointing out a broken window, through which we could hear the loud
beat of revolving blades. “And another aircraft.”

Dr. Malamud took a peek herself. “That’s an
autogyro! I’ve seen sketches in our historical files.”

“Looks like a helicopter to me,” said John.
“A big one. Military issue. Which side?”

“The Daedalus autogyros were critical to the
success of the Roman campaign to defend the East
Mediterranean.”

“You don’t have them any more?” asked
John.

“No,” Dr. Malamud said, “When the fossil
fuels ran out after the Crusades, we returned to wind-powered
airships for a few hundred years. The USA still uses them today.”
She brushed a piece of plaster from her cheek. “Ion propulsion has
only been functional in the past century for our supersonics, and
we hope it’ll take us back to the moon someday.”

“Back?” Spud’s ears perked up.

“Gaia and Selene were considered the sisters
of Isis. Historical records describe several ventures to the moon
before the Crusades, in the hopes of claiming our satellite for
Rome and Horus.” She snorted. “However, many of our modern
scientists believe that, judging by the period’s modest level of
technological development, such missions were spun from wool draped
over their citizens’ eyes.”

“I doubt they’d have the technology to get
through the Van Allen Belts,” John injected, “The radiation belts
around Earth.” Spud and I exchanged glances. John probably didn’t
know what we’d discovered--that Benedict’s dimension-traveling
experiments had actually created that radiation only a few years
before our own time.

“Granted, the nuclear winter that followed
the Crusades would have been a challenge to navigate through. But
the missions were reputed to have occurred much earlier than this
Holocaust. On the other hand, skeptics insist these ancestors, with
primitive computers, aluminum craft, and petroleum fuel could never
truly achieve extra-atmospheric travel.” She smiled at us.
“Nevertheless, I’ve always had faith that the reports were true,
and that humans like us will someday spread their wings in
space.”

Grinning, John put his hands together and
gave the Professor a slight bow. “Namaste”. Seeing her puzzled
expression, he added, “Maybe, after we’re done here, you’ll give me
the chance to take you for a ride.”

“He’s doing that right now,” I muttered,
shaking my head. Louder: “Hey, if we don’t get going we really are
going to be done here. We don’t want to fall into the clutches of
Officer Waterboard a second time.” To Spud: Any ideas? Can you get
any of these 2-D holos working?”

“There may be light,” nodded Spud, “if I were
able to pull your brother away from the Professor to lend a
hand.”

“On it,” I said, grabbing John’s arm and
tugging him towards the table.

* * *

“Dude!” I offered my fist to Spud for a fist
bump. Rigging the glass computer to a makeshift power source
would’ve been hard enough without the deafening alarms blaring from
a crackling speaker system hanging from the ceiling, and the shouts
from the guards making their way through the building in search of
their escaped prisoners—us. Connecting the computer to the speaker
wiring was a stroke of genius. But then again, that was our Spud.
No slouch in the rabbit-pulling arena himself.

The glass lit up, flickering several times
before displaying several menus in both Arabic and Cyrillic
letters. Without Ergals, we would have to try to decrypt the
writing manually. Professor Malamud was able to transliterate some
of the Arab-esque, no pun intended. John did surprisingly well with
the Cyrillic. I’d forgotten that he’d studied Russian journals to
bolster the research he’d been doing on high energy subatomic
particles at the University of Maryland synchrotron.