They had been waved through the gate without being stopped, and Shane drove right up toward the administration building, stopping at the end of the paved path leading up to it, roughly fifty yards from the entrance. He was still shutting down the car while Merle was already climbing out and throwing his door closed. Hearing footsteps that came running up behind them, Merle turned around and was surprised to see Andrea rushing up to them. "Sugar mouse, thought you were on yer way home already?" he asked, vaguely concerned.
Andrea was just opening her mouth to speak when Merle's intercom started squawking.
.-.
Sandra could hear heavy panting, but the strange hopping noises she had heard earlier had stopped. All her senses were on alert as she softly tiptoed down the stairs, constantly attempting to peer around the inner curve of the circular stairwell as if that made it possible for her to see any sooner what she was up against.
And then she saw him, clinging to the banister with his right hand while leaning on a gray-haired woman, the same gray-haired woman she had taken to Guardian of the Peace Esnik that day. On closer inspection she noticed Daryl's left leg hanging limply behind him, and his bloody left arm was dangling uselessly across the woman's shoulders. And his face - his face and chest were covered with blood. What on earth had happened to him in the ten minutes since she had left him behind at the hydrogen tank?
And where had the woman come from? Hadn't he said that something had happened that had kept her away? Shocked, she made it the rest of the way down to him and slipped under his good arm, taking half his weight even as he flinched away from her touch again. "Quick!" she panted, helping the other woman more or less carry him up the stairs, so much dead weight, although he was still trying to help with his good leg. "We've only got a minute or so left to get out!"
.-.
"So", Glenn asked, helping Jim sink to the ground in the brush right next to the small plaza in front of the administration building, "you're a TE agent and they caught you eight months ago, and you've been here ever since?" From the corner of his eyes he saw three figures stepping out into the plaza from one of the accessways leading up to it and thanked his lucky stars that they hadn't come out of the building ten seconds later. With Jim hanging off his arm, there was no way they could have pretended to be anyone other than a terrorist helping a prisoner escape.
"Got snatched right off the street by accident", Jim panted, letting himself sink into Glenn. By now, the younger man was so emotionally invested in getting Jim out of this alive that any revulsion he might have felt at this went completely unnoticed. He had even gotten used to the horrible stink emanating from his companion. "Wasn't even doing much at the time", Jim went on. "But I was carrying an aerial photograph of their base, and they found it when they frisked me."
Glenn nodded in understanding. Humans were still getting picked up at random, questioned and searched, irrespective of whether or not they had actually done anything to raise suspicion. Often enough, this resulted in the accidental arrest of actual TE agents, but as long as they weren't carrying any incriminating evidence on their persons, they were usually able to walk away from it after the interrogation.
There were enough cases, however, in which the agents were carrying objects to or from a drop-off point that linked them to "terrorist" activities – and the Feina knew no mercy and no doubt. If anything suspicious at all was found on a human taken in for questioning they were detained forever, never to be heard of again. Jim was the first prisoner ever to escape them, as far as Glenn knew – and he was quite certain that TE would have published a huge announcement if this had happened before.
Looking at his companion, still huddled into him, he said softly: "The guide I was working with tonight lost his agent a little over half a year ago. He doesn't even know what became of him." Recalling the information he had received on Daryl just before going out with him as his guide, he added: "He needed a psychologist to get over it, and this is his first job since then. He took it really hard."
Jim raised his head, his eyes so huge they seemed to swallow his face. "What's his name?" he asked, his voice still husky and raw.
"His name's Daryl", Glenn said. "Actually, he's the one we're waiting for - he's in there right now, blowing the place up - took over this part of the mission when the lady I'm here with got assaulted by an asshole on the way here."
Jim started to cry.
.-.
Merle plucked his com from his belt and raised it to his mouth. "Dixon here", he said smartly, then waited for the scratchy reply. "Intruders?" he asked after a few moments, his tone of voice incredulous. "How would intruders get into …" He was interrupted and fell silent again, listening once more. Then, radiating disbelief: "In the hall of the administration building, heading out? Do we know what he wanted …" More listening. Finally, he signed off with a nod and put his comlink back in its place at his belt.
Turning around to Shane and Andrea, he frowned at them. "Strange things happenin' tonight", he announced. "'parently we've had at least one intruder in the admin building, don't know yet what he was doin' there. Got caught by an Enforcer happening along as he was tryin' to leave, and they took him down to 6." It occurred to him that he and Shane had to have missed the guy quite narrowly – after all, he had only been caught about ten minutes ago, right around the time they had delivered this Peletier to 8.
"Thing is, he's in a bad way – took a fall just before they caught him, seems to be injured. Naturally, they want to get as much information out of him as they can before …" He trailed off. They all knew the end for terrorists. One of them had been rotting in his cell in the basement for close to eight months, with barely enough food and water to survive, but not much else. Some device implanted behind his right ear had been detected in his scans and they had removed it, not even bothering to have the hole in his head looked at by a doctor. As far as Merle knew, the Enforcers were still trying to figure out what the thing had done in the guy's head.
Merle cleared his throat. "Anyway", he continued, "they want us to come back in and be there while they're questioning this new guy so they won't put him down accidentally – that's why Com called us back." When Shane and Andrea nodded, he turned to face the administration building, ready to go back in.
.-.
Shocked, Glenn just sat there, holding Jim and praying to all the gods that he would keep his crying quiet – the three figures on the far side of the plaza had just turned toward the administration building and seemed to be on the verge of entering it. Two of them seemed to be policemen, but with the dim light back there among the last of the trees and the distance between them he wasn't absolutely sure.
"Do you know the guy that Daryl –" He stopped in midsentence. Now that he was putting it into words, it made so much sense.
"You", he breathed. "Daryl lost you!" Absolutely thrilled, he grasped Jim's shoulders and gently held him so he could look at him. "Man, you have no idea what this will mean to him!" he whispered excitedly. "He'll be here any second now, the place will go in –" He peered back into the hall of the administration building, trying to catch a glimpse of the chrono on the wall hiding the elevator shafts, or, better yet, of Daryl running toward them.
When he saw the chrono, his eyes widened, his stomach seeming to drop to his knees.
There was still no sign of Daryl.
"Twenty seconds", he whispered, horrified.
.-.
Just as Merle was about to take his first step toward the administration building, it seemed to inhale.
.-.
"Glenn?" the woman on Daryl's other side gasped, her right arm tightening about Daryl's waist. When Sandra cast her a confused look, taking the last two steps nearly at a run, she added: "A young Asian, he was taking out another prisoner."
"Outside, both of them", Sandra panted.
Daryl stared at the carpet extending in front of him with dread, afraid he'd get stuck in it again, but he wasn't being dragged along this time. The two women whisked him across the carpet in no time, running now, even though they were still carrying most of his weight, and with a strange detachment he saw the smeared spray pattern of his own blood on the marble floor as they raced past it. Sandra was already holding out her hand with her key card in the direction of the reader. They were almost on the lush carpet welcoming visitors to the building, and Daryl was frantically trying to at least raise his injured leg so it wouldn't drag along the floor while hopping on his right.
Sandra's card was being scanned now, the reader glowing a dim green in the semi-darkness. As if from a great distance, Daryl heard the motors moving the glass doors humming to life.
Time stood still.
.-.
Hershel's eyes kept flicking to the chrono above his door. If Daryl had set the timers correctly …
