Note: Yes, it's late. I'm sorry. I stored a copy of it on my D: drive and didn't stop to think about how I'd actually get at it once my C: drive had been reformatted. Bright, eh? *g*

Chapter Four

The light from the portal died as abruptly as a candle going out. Renee waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness before she started walking.

The heat was as awful as she'd remembered it, warm wet air like a hot towel slapped against her face. At least this time she was prepared. She'd had it up to there with being sweaty and uncomfortable while the Atavus were cool and smug. To hell with that.

There was nobody in sight.

"Wait for a few more weeks, Renee... we need to do more tests. It's not safe yet! God, if you're going to do this, at least make sure you have a chance."

Renee walked carefully down the dark corridor. The bag slung across her back was heavy enough to pull the strap hard against her chest, making stealth difficult. It weighed exactly as much as she could lift without injuring herself, no more and no less, even though that had meant she had to leave out some things. Now that there was no going back, Renee felt a stab of something like panic at the thought of the things she'd left behind. Maybe she should have waited.

The first doorway was getting close. No sound from inside, but what did that mean? The aliens could move as quietly as cats when they wanted to. She flattened herself against the wall and stole a sideways look into the room. Four blank walls stared back at her.

So far, so good.

She hesitated at the second entrance she came to, finding it hard to match the reality of walls and doors and passages with the flat lines on her mental map. She thought that she'd come this way before, but she wasn't sure - the last time she'd been there she'd been a little too busy to stop and take in the scenery.

After a moment of thought she went through the entrance and found herself at a junction of corridors, six or more passages branching away in different direction. There was a rustle on the edge of her hearing, different from the creaks and air-sighs, tightening her muscles and raising her hairs as she recognized it as a person-sound, made by something with eyes to see and a voice to cry alarm.

Where the hell was it coming from? Renee turned slowly in place, closing her eyes and focusing on the sound. Sounds. More than one sound, more than one direction. Where? There?

No time!

Renee's eyes snapped open and she plunged forward into the corridor in front of her, gaining the corner in flying strides. She pressed her back against the rough wall and waited. Behind her the sounds were closer, recognizable now as footsteps soft as the padding of great cats. An Atavus, she thought. The footsteps stopped and she heard voices, distorted into nonsense by the echoes in the circular chamber. Two of them, she amended. At least.

Time passed.

She'd never thought of Atavus as chatty. She couldn't hear what they were saying but it was definitely a conversation, with the familiar-as-breathing rise and fall of statement and response punctuated by the occasional low growl of laughter. The idea bothered her. People had conversations. People laughed and joked and talked about their day.

The voices started to get fainter and Renee realized that they were moving away. She waited until the sounds had completely died down before she walked back to the place where the corridors met. Standing in the middle of the circular area, she frowned.

Consulting her mental map told her that she was supposed to take the third passage to her right when she came in. But which passage had she come in through? It was a pity, she thought darkly, that none of these advanced species had ever embraced the idea of street signs.

"And then you take the third corridor to the right. Whatever you do, make sure you don't go down the wrong passage. Some of them lead directly to the sleeping chambers. After that, it's simple."

Renee paced the circle like a caged beast, trying to remember what the area had looked like from where she'd first entered the junction. She had to be sure. The last thing she needed was to take a wrong turn and wind up playing a reluctant Prince Charming to Howlyn's Sleeping Beauty. Her lips quirked involuntarily at the mental image the thought invoked.

Three rotations later she was tired and frustrated and no closer to figuring out which way to go. If only she'd marked her path, left a trail of breadcrumbs, something, anything!

"Fairy tales again," she said under her breath. "I'm losing it."

She eventually found the way she'd come, but only by going down each corridor far enough to establish that it wasn't the one. When she finally found the right passage she marked it with a scratched x in an inconspicuous spot by the floor.

That done, she headed down the right corridor, the bag banging painfully against her back as she picked up speed. She didn't like how long this was taking.

Renee's heart was a heavy beat in her chest and she could see the details of her surroundings with painful clarity. There was a knot growing in her stomach. She realized that her body was preparing itself for a fight and would have laughed, except that there was nothing funny about the cold readiness spreading through her blood.

She forced herself to slow down to a walk and rolled her shoulders, feeling muscles tight against the bone. Breathe. Relax- nothing is going to happen. Breathe. Relax - no fighting today. Breathe. Relax - being too tense, too ready to attack, is not helping. Breathe. Relax - or you might get me killed. Breathe.

That seemed to be working. Nothing like a healthy fear of death to quiet the nerves.

Renee turned another corner, counting inside her head. That was three corners, so… she took the next right. The path was fairly straightforward from here on in. Every now and then she heard footsteps or voices but never as close as the first time.

She turned the last corner and it was right where it was supposed to be. The square screen was bigger than she'd pictured it, almost as tall as she was and set flush into the wall. It was dark and still, waiting. The labels and keypad were laid out completely differently from the screens on the consoles she was used to. She had no idea how to use it.

Good thing she didn't need to.

Renee slid the bag off her shoulders and knelt by it on the floor. She extracted a small cloth wrapped bundle from the outside pocket and unwrapped it cautiously, exposing a metal dome as big around as her fist with a shape like a circle cut in half. She held it gingerly by its sides, careful to keep her fingers away from the optical sensor glowing like a malevolent red eye on the bottom of it.

"You are not going to smash Charlotte! You must have picked her up wrong. I can get her off, but you'll have to hold still…Hold still! If you wriggle I might press the button by mistake...Ah, there we go."

The device made a soft snap when Renee set the flat bottom against the smooth black glass. She let go and Charlotte, as Street had insisted on naming the demonic machine, held on. Renee took a step back, rubbing her right arm absentmindedly.

Part of Charlotte's body fell away, thin metal strips tinkling like wind chimes as they hit the floor, leaving the smaller dome of Charlotte's back attached to the console with legs like metal toothpicks.

Innumerable tiny wheels rolled out from under the metal dome in all directions, each one trailing a thin white mono-filament wire. The wheels rolled until they reached the edge of the screen and then turned and continued in a new direction. In a matter of seconds, the entire screen shimmered with a criss-crossed web of thread-like wires.

Renee looked up and down the corridor, straining her ears to hear if someone was coming just beyond sight. This was one of the dangerous parts. No one nearby. No one coming. With any luck, no one within ten miles - this wasn't going to be subtle.

She reached forward and pressed the single button on Charlotte's back, covering her eyes with the other hand.

FLASH

The white light came like a lightning strike, and Renee could feel the heat all down the front of her body. The darkness behind her eyelids flamed into red and she realized that the light was glowing through her hand.

If she opened her eyes now she'd see the entire corridor blazing like the inside of a light bulb. If she opened her eyes now she might be able to see the smudged silhouette of the bones inside her hand. She pushed her palm against her eyes until bright spots dotted the red like stars. If she opened her eyes now, she'd be blind.

The light died away so fast that Renee thought she heard a sound like the rush of air being sucked away into space. For a moment the red lingered on behind her eyelids but darker now, patches of black spreading across it like storm clouds. Then the red was just a burning memory behind the black. Renee opened her dazzled eyes and thought that there were more shadows in the corridor than when she'd closed them.

Charlotte was already working. Alien text flashed past on the screen faster than any human eye could follow. A picture appeared on the screen and was gone. Another long batch of text followed, then another picture, then another, then another, flipping past like a deck of cards.

Renee found it hard not to watch the brilliant images as they darted past. It was better than watching and listening for footsteps. What would she do if someone came? Better to watch for some sign that the spider was almost done and hope that soon the screen would again be dark and still and innocent. And pray that nobody came.

It seemed like forever before Charlotte made a soft whirring noise almost like a satisfied purr. Renee's head jerked up in time to see the filaments retreating back inside the body of the spider. A familiar picture flashed on the screen for a moment and was gone. The screen went dark.

Renee wished that she could disappear as easily. But there was still work to do, even if it was a miracle that nobody had come across her already, even if all she wanted to do was be away from the screen and the shadows. She knelt and spread the wrapping cloth on the ground beneath the screen before pressing the button on Charlotte's back twice.

Charlotte crumbled like a handful of sand. Tiny pieces fell from her in showers, striking harsh metal chords where they hit the wall before falling into the muffling cloth. Thread-wires unspooled like waterfalls of silver ribbon.

Renee remembered the feel of those wires buried deep in the flesh of her arm. She watched carefully and when there was nothing left to fall she gathered up the bundle and buried it deeply inside the bag.

She was forgetting something.

Renee frowned. She'd removed every trace of the late Charlotte, so that wasn't what was nagging at her. She turned to look down the corridor and caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye. She turned back and it was gone. She turned away again. It hovered in her peripheral vision, a mirage-web of silver hovering over the screen.

Renee stepped forward and ran her fingers lightly over the screen, feeling the thin lines burned into the material by the wires. No sense taking chances. She retrieved a spray can from the bag and thoroughly sprayed the screen with the clear acrylic paint. Nobody would notice if the screen were a few millimeters thicker. She put away the can.

A few seconds later she was finally walking again, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders with every step. Which was crazy, because she had so much more to do and there was a fair chance that she was going to die, but still she felt ridiculously happy to be moving. And at least she hadn't run into Howlyn yet. His radar must be off.

She took the next corner a little fast and stopped inches from the Atavus. Black hair, black clothes, golden skin, dark eyes, not Howlyn. A frozen moment of inaction while in her mind's eye she was already on him, knife out, teeth bared.

The moment stretched, and then she nodded. He nodded back and walked on by.

She breathed.

Move, Renee's mind screamed at her legs. They responded and soon she was moving away down the corridor as it curved away. When she looked behind her, the Atavus was already gone. Renee moved to the window and looked out.

The sky was burning yellow, hot and wild and new, the setting sun like a bowl of molten gold. The dark forests stretched to the horizon and beyond, so densely packed with trees as to resemble a black sea. Dusk wind scoured her skin like hot sand and moved the treetops like waves upon the water.

The city spread out below her in a tangle of arched dark metal, the windows reflecting the last rays of the young sun. Shadows were welling from the depths of the twisted city, dark and liquid, spreading out of the city as the sun slipped away and merging with the darkness of the trees.

Renee blinked and clutched the windowsill, for a moment seeing the city as part of the black forest-sea, its lights those of a drowned ship far beneath the surface. She looked again and it was a city.

"Home sweet home," whispered Renee. The sound of her voice fell away into the rising night.

Comments always appreciated, not to say fawned over. *g*
aka_jay66@hotmail.com