Total Eclipse (25 page)

“I’ve got to talk to Director Miles.”

“If you want my advice, don’t,” I said. “Director Miles will have an apparently sensible solution that will mean a short-term gain for you here, and long-term disaster for the human race. Let me do this. I’m a Warden. I wouldn’t take this risk if there was any alternative, believe me.” I hesitated, then said, “I don’t plan on walking away from it, if that helps.”

“You’re not talking sense,” Reid said. “We can defend this place. That’s the whole point.”

“You can’t defend shit against the Djinn, not when they’re like this,” I said. “Trust me. I’ve been up against them, and it’s not a war you can win. It’s not even a
war.
It’s more like an extermination.”

He knew enough about Djinn to understand I wasn’t overselling it, and he shut up, watching me.

“Look,” I said, more gently. “Doc, I know you wouldn’t be working here if you didn’t have the highest ethical standards. If you weren’t completely trustworthy. But the thing is, I’m not some agent of another government or cause. The organization I’m part of transcends borders, and governments, and causes, and religions. We’re here to save the most lives we can, just like you. You
have
to help me. I know it seems wrong, but—”

With no warning at all, guards flooded into the room, boots and helmets and hard expressions. Oh, and large weapons, which all ended up aimed at me.

Director Miles walked in. Dr. Reid cast a guilty look around, then stepped away from my bedside as Miles advanced toward me.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t have you monitored?” he asked.

I smiled. “Actually,” I said, “I was pretty sure you would. That was the whole point. Now that I have your undivided attention, let’s talk about how this is going to go.”

“Oh, I already know how it’s going to go,” he said. “With you, handcuffed to your gurney, heading to the nearest FBI holding cell. Probably the medical wing, of course. We’re not lacking in compassion.”

“Only in sense,” I snapped back. “I could bring down this place around you, you know. And I will, if I have to. But I’m offering you the chance, one time only, to save your peoples’ lives. I suggest you take it, Miles.”

“Tell you what. The doctor here is going to trank you up six ways from Sunday, and you can tell the FBI all about it.” He nodded to Reid, who stepped up to my IV with another syringe.

I yanked the line out, clamped down on the immediate bleeding, and used a sudden, localized increase in air pressure around the syringe Dr. Reid was holding to crush it, spilling liquid sleep all over the floor. “Good luck with that,” I said. “You’re going to have to kill me.”

Miles hesitated, then nodded. Regretfully. “I suppose so,” he said, and addressed the guards surrounding me. “Shoot her if she moves a muscle. Or opens her mouth again. Lisa, get her handcuffed to the gurney, now.”

“Wait!” Reid said. “Let me bandage that first.” He meant the leaking hole in my arm where the IV had been. Miles didn’t like it, but he nodded. Reid was efficient with the pressure bandage and cloth tape, and stepped back as the guards moved in to slap the cuffs on. I winced as they closed around my still-swollen wrist, but they were fairly gentle about it. Didn’t matter, anyway. Clearly, Director Miles had never tried to jail an Earth Warden, even a relatively inexperienced one like me. Handcuffs were a nuisance, but a completely insignificant one.

Since the orders had been pretty clear to the guys with itchy trigger fingers, I kept still and quiet, and reached down deep into the ground for power. It came slowly; this wasn’t a place that was rooted deep in natural forces, but no matter how industrial it was, no man-made structure could keep out the flow of power to a Warden.

Instead of using it in an attack, I let it gather inside of me in a thick, still pool, filling me until I felt like an overflowing tub. Seductive and slow, that power; not like the energy I pulled for weather, or for fire. Instead of trying any dramatic gestures, I began to hum, very softly. It was Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and with the power imbuing every gentle note, it began to affect everyone in the room almost immediately. I was careful—I didn’t want them falling over, just drowsy and slow. I even got Director Miles, finally.

The only one I excluded was Dr. Reid.

I deepened the humming, and the power, and the guards one by one slid into a very gentle sleep. They didn’t fall, exactly—just folded up against whatever wall was closest and slid down to curl up in an utterly blissful rest.

I was kind of proud. That was subtle stuff, and not something I’d been able to do very often. But it almost emptied out my power reserve, and I didn’t have time to replenish it now. I expended a little more energy zapping the handcuffs, which fell away with a soft little
click
, and then swung my legs out of bed.

Dr. Reid was clearly trying to decide whether to tackle me, shoot me, or help me. He must have come down on the side of helping, because as my balance wavered dangerously, he moved to me and got me steady again. “This is crazy,” he said. “They’ll kill you.”

“Eventually,” I said. “Really not an issue right now, though. I didn’t hurt them. They’re just sleeping. What I need you to do is to declare a medical evacuation,
now.
Miles can’t stop you. I assume you’re pretty much the authority now?”

He nodded. His face was taking on new lines and stress, and I was sorry for that. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth, about what you’re going to do? What if you’re just here to steal warheads?”

“If I was going to steal warheads, I could get a Djinn to do it,” I said. “I’m not stealing anything, and I promise you, nothing is leaving here except your people. Deal?”

“Deal,” he agreed, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Only because I’m pretty sure that if I don’t agree, you’ll just put me out, too, and find some other way.”

“That’s true. But I’d rather not. Doing this kind of thing takes power, and I need to preserve mine right now. Understand?”

“No.” He checked my pulse, and frowned. “How’s your pain level?”

“Manageable. I’ll be okay.” Relatively speaking, anyway. “Do your thing, Doc. Get them out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Where I need to go.” I reached out and took Director Miles’s badge from his jacket, and replaced my bright red visitor’s ID with his. “This will get me in the doors?”

“No. Biometric scanners. You won’t match.”

I could handle those, but it would mean expending more power. “I’ll make it work,” I said. “Get moving. You haven’t got long before this place isn’t safe anymore.”

I left it deliberately vague as to whether I was going to make it unsafe, or the Djinn would. To be fair, it was probably going to be a team effort.

Reid didn’t like it, not at all, but I could see that he’d been doing some checking on who I was and what the situation out there in the rest of the world might be. He was convinced, but like all good humans, he was still in denial.

I didn’t really have time for his stages of grief. “One other thing,” I said. “I need your coat.”

“My coat?” He looked down at it. “Why?”

“Because people ignore other people in uniform in a place like this, and it’s easier to get on over my arm than one of their uniforms,” I said. “Coat, please. You can keep the badge.”

He stripped it off, no doubt rationalizing that if he didn’t, I’d just knock him out and take it anyway. Which I would have, probably. I took it and very carefully threaded my wounded arm through the sleeve, hissing a little as the not-very-flexible fabric scraped over sensitive, burning skin. Once I had it on, though, I felt better. I buttoned it up, grabbed a gun from one of the snoozing guards, stepped over another one, and went to the far door. When I swiped Miles’s card through the reader, the door buzzed open.

Reid was still watching me, and I could see the struggle in him—shoot me? Stop me? Wish me luck?

In the end, he didn’t say or do anything at all. And that was okay.

I slung the semiautomatic rifle over my neck and used Oversight to get a good look at where I was going. The good news was that given the relatively mild aetheric energy of this place, I could fairly easily spot approaching people and avoid them. Nothing special about the building—hallways, doors, offices, desks, filing cabinets. It was very clean. As Reid had said, there was only a skeleton crew here, so I made it from the infirmary to the door I’d identified as being closest to my goal in record time.

Outside, the wind was turning cool, rattling loose bits of gravel and sending an occasional tumbleweed rolling around. I hugged the exterior of the building for a second, looking for guards; there were several, and at least one had a high vantage point and a rifle. That wasn’t so great.

I’d have to have faith in the lab coat.

I set off across open ground, walking with a purpose and trying not to show off the fact that I had a giant
weapon
with me. I tried to walk like a doctor on her way to a patient. Calm, but focused.

It must have worked, because I made it across a hundred yards of open space, under the eyes of at least four heavily armed men, to the entrance to what was, at the aetheric level, a maelstrom of black energy.

Weapons, built for maximum damage. Even dormant, even stored, that energy swirled and eddied around them, restless and hungry. Disturbing. I swallowed hard, stood at the door, and swiped my card. There were all kinds of warning signs telling me that I had to follow strict security and safety protocols while inside this facility. Yeah, I was going to absolutely do that, first chance I got.

The biometric scanner lit up, requesting me to put my hand on the glass. I did, and while it was reading, I reached deep inside the works and blew it apart. Easier than it sounds, with high technology. When your security depends on soldered connections, you are screwed if an Earth Warden wants in.

The security designers were good, but not quite good enough. I managed to intercept the signal that zipped over to the door to tell it to lock down and sound the alarm, and converted the energy into the all-clear electronic pulse.

The door popped open, and I stepped into a sterile little anteroom, with another, identical scanning system at the far end. Protective gear was neatly stored, and I put on a suit, more for blending in than for what it would offer me. Second door, same verse, and then I was inside a hallway. There, a large, colorful map indicated that I was in a blue section. Blue section was the least dangerous, I gathered.

There were a few workers in this part of the plant, but a confident walk, a wave, and a badge seemed to do the job nicely. Nobody was doing much at the moment; operations were at an idle, and boredom had set in. I followed the color-coded maps to the elevators at the far end. More biometrics, which was a pain in the ass; I hoped they hadn’t security-locked the bathrooms, too.

Finally, after the third biometric I had to destroy, I decided to take an end run around the problem. Fire codes said that all security doors had to open in the event of a fire emergency.

I created one. Not a big one; I didn’t want to bake anybody, or even give them smoke inhalation, but I pulled some jittery power from the electronics and built myself an impressive-sized fire in a nest of empty boxes in a storeroom. Fire suppression kicked in, but with a little concentration, I was able to keep the fire blazing despite the countermeasures.

Thirty seconds later, the biometric scanners began flashing FIRE EMERGENCY, and I heard the clicks as secured doors began to unlock. The elevators stopped working, but I could get around that; it was a simple mechanism, and I needed to go all the way to the bottom anyway.

I stepped inside just as three people in protective gear—one with an automatic weapon slung over it—entered the corridor and looked straight at me. He had fast reactions, and I couldn’t jam his gun and keep the fire going at the same time. Too many balls in the air.

He got off five shots, aiming straight for my chest.

I don’t remember getting hit; my entire concentration was on slamming shut the elevator door, cutting the cables, overriding the friction brakes, and letting the car drop in a free fall. At first I felt sick and dizzy, and figured that was an effect of the falling, but then I smelled blood. I looked down and saw two separate wounds in my side, ragged holes puncturing my protective white suit. I unzipped it and stepped out. There wasn’t any pain yet, or a lot of bleeding, though red rings were steadily forming on my lab coat around the bullet holes.

“Fantastic,” I said. “That’s just great.”

Gravity was definitely a harsh mistress, and never more than at a time like this. I watched in Oversight, gauging how far I’d fallen, how much farther still remained, and trying to do complicated math in my head. I was approaching seriously terminal velocity, and I was going to have to start slowing my descent.

“Jo!” David’s voice, blasting unexpectedly from the speaker in the elevator. I jerked, and my concentration shattered. Pain began an insidious drumbeat in my side, dammit,
too soon. . . .
I pushed it, and David, aside and concentrated harder. I was sweating now. Shaking. And there was a growing pool of blood forming around my shoes, how had that happened? Didn’t seem right.

I dropped to my knees, then pitched forward flat on my stomach. I screamed at the impact, because
damn
that hurt, but it was important to try to distribute impact force over as wide an area as possible.

I reached out for power in the air around me, found it, and began building a thick, cold cushion of air beneath the falling elevator. I increased its density, and felt a significant decrease in the speed at which I was falling.

But I was still falling.

David was saying something, but I couldn’t pay attention, not anymore. I needed more power, more braking, and I needed it
now.