Chapter 34

The hunter peered cautiously out of the restroom's doorway when his ears had stopped ringing. No bleeding, broken body lay on the stairs, though the grenade had left a gaping hole on one side and shrapnel chips in the walls. In fact, he detected far too little blood for any serious injury to have been inflicted. The Ghoul had probably caught a couple of chips of flying plaster, no more. It was even possible that he'd had the presence of mind to dive behind B2-09, whose body could absorb any number of tiny chips of flying debris without real harm.

Now, if auditory evidence was anything to go by, both of them were well away. The hunter swore silently to himself and began the slow, slow process of creeping up the stairs, his sensitive ears alert for the inevitable ambush.

---

The security doors swung open after only a few seconds at the keyboard. Xen ran through, waited for Changeling to pass her, and then turned to trigger them shut again. There was another flickering green terminal on this side, but that wouldn't really matter. Once unlocked, it would take a supervisor's code to lock it again, something that wouldn't be available through the usual cryptic procedure -

"Firing," said Changeling. Xen ducked away from the rain of plastic shards as Changeling's laser fried the box.

"Why'd you do that?" she croaked at the packbot. "Now Charon and Bell can't get in, either!"

"Highly unlikely," said Changeling. "I doubt it will even stop our pursuer. Accordingly, I strongly recommend you continue to search. Epinephrine is also advised at this - "

"I know," said Xen, and held out her hand for the epi. She didn't wait for the adrenaline to hit, and consequently almost fell down when her heart sped up in mid-step. Glowing green fungi grew up out of the ribcage of a prewar skeleton on the hallway floor. Xen barely avoided stumbling over it as she turned to the left and ran.

Boxlike emitters clung to the walls at about Xen's knee-level. From Changeling's silence, they were deactivated. Xen toyed momentarily with the thought of turning them on, but they were too low to be a real threat to a man with any ability to jump, and it would take too much time. She followed the hall to the right and up to another doorway. A tiled floor ended at a long catwalk of steel mesh. Another dead sentry bot hulked at the other end of the catwalk, slumped so that it blocked the way forward. Something that she couldn't see from the hall lit the room intermittently.

Xen staggered into the room, looking frantically around for inspiration. She stopped in blank astonishment for a moment as she saw the whole room. This was clearly another two-story space, the catwalk forming a large cross in the center between the corroded steel beams that held up the roof. The four spaces made by the catwalk were filled with enormous concrete cylinders. Above each great upward-facing container was another one facing down. More steel mesh lay across the mouth of each cylinder, and between the top and bottom openings pure blue energy crackled and hissed.

Find something to slow him down. Xen shook her head and looked around again. Filing cabinets lined the wall of the floor where she stood. There was another terminal beside the open door. She triggered the door shut. "Fry it," she snapped, and turned to run for the catwalk.

"Firing," said Changeling behind her. Static made Xen's hair stand up as she ran. At one point the room seemed to take on a crazy tilt, and she grabbed at a railing just in time to keep herself from going over. Xen righted herself, shook her head to clear it, and kept on until she reached the dead sentry bot. There was another one beyond it, this one blown in two.

"Changeling," Xen shouted over the noise of the cylinders. "Can you get around this?"

"Affirmative," replied the packbot from behind her. Xen dropped to her knees and crawled between the sentry's three wheel-supports. She dodged around the remains of the other one, though an upthrust spar of steel tore a hole in the calf of her jeans and scraped down her leg. The pain was sharp, though brief. She kept running. There was another door in the opposite wall.

---

The hunter paused in the upper hallway, getting his bearings again. Around the next corner would be a good place – the combat shotgun could probably shoot through the thin plaster of the dividing wall – but he heard no sound. Probably the other man had realized that went both ways. The hunter smiled slightly. He could almost like this Ghoul.

He crouched low and peered around the corner. There was a doorway with a dim room beyond it. He received an impression of open space beyond the narrow strip of tiled floor. He had no information on the interior of this building, but it was listed on his map as a power station. The noise he heard from the next room was probably a set of turbines. They would shield the quiet sounds of the Ghoul's movement from even the hunter's sensitive ears, and B2-09 would probably be aware of her own limitations in the area of stealth. Odds were good that the two of them were hiding in separate parts of the room. B2-09 would not want her presence to draw attention to the Ghoul and ruin his ambush. The swearing implicit in B2 error processing might provide a fine impression of belligerence, but it also meant the unit was probably far too bogged down in traumatic data inconsistencies for any physical aggression.

The hunter eased up to the other doorway. He risked a quick look out. There was no one on the landing or the stairs that led down. The combat shotgun was not a sniper's weapon, and – the hunter smiled again – his quarry now knew that the grenades were not a good idea. There was solid wall under the ledge and staircase. The Ghoul must therefore be enough away that the hunter could risk the balcony without being cut to doll rags.

So what, then, would he do? The hunter took another quick look, scanning the room as best he could in the poor light. Behind the turbine at the bottom of the stairs seemed the most logical choice. It would allow the Ghoul a good view of the stairs and an easy retreat back through the exit to the left. To shoot and run was his wisest choice, if he only knew it. If it came down to belt knives at close quarters, he would almost certainly lose.

Probably, the hunter amended silently. It had taken a very unusual set of reflexes for the Ghoul to have avoided death earlier.

His mind was made up. The hunter took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and did a rapid dive roll out onto the balcony.

---

Xen was working away at yet another terminal in front of yet another doorway, this one at the end of the catwalk, when she heard distant shots. She had heard the combat shotgun fired often enough now that she could recognize it. The sound of the other weapon was a little odd, not quite like a laser.

So Charon is still alive, at least, she thought, and felt a little weak with relief. But she couldn't afford that. If she relaxed for one second, she would lose consciousness, and Changeling probably could not carry her.

"What's the other gun, Changeling?" she asked.

"The noise profile is a match to a plasma rifle," said Changeling behind her. "I observe that the door is already open. Please hold still for stim."

"True," said Xen, entering one more code. "Ow. Thanks. - And this is a security terminal, not a lock." She chose the correct command to shut off the turrets, which must be waiting just out of sight around the corner. "Although I don't know why they're not showing any heat profile..."

Turrets deactivated, said the green screen. Xen looked cautiously around the corner. The hallway was lit with a warm sepia glow from the wall of lights and buttons, controlling who-knew-what. There was, indeed, a recess in the end of the hallway that was easily large enough for two Mark V turrets. She could not help observing a distinct lack of actual turrets, however. Instead there were scraps of twisted metal and scorch marks on the walls.

"Oh," she said.

Looks like they were taken out by whoever killed all the sentry bots. Belatedly, Xen looked at the floor of the new hallway. Large, booted footprints in the dust led off to the right. So he was here.

"Changeling, where's that xenoorganic signature now?" Xen asked.

"Less than six meters," said Changeling. "It probably originates from the recess."

"Not from the turrets," Xen said.

"Negative. Xen, we should not take time for this."

"Yes, we should," said Xen, and went to look inside the recess. There was a high shelf, barely in her reach, on each side. An ammunition box sat on each one. Xen stretched up to grab the first one and almost concussed herself as the heavy box came down. She dodged out of the way and winced at the noise as it spilled out on the floor.

Glowing blue cylinders rolled across the hallway. Xen snatched them up as quickly as she could, stuffing the pockets of her jeans. She managed to get down the second ammo box without dropping it. She set it down on the floor and popped the lid. There were more blaster rounds inside. Xen added them to the others.

"Hold still while I find it," said Xen, and dug frantically through the cargo net until she found the knapsack that held the blaster.

"This is probably futile, Xen," said Changeling, almost gently.

"If he gets past Charon, don't you want me to have the best possible weapon?" Xen asked.

"If he is able to kill Charon, I doubt seriously whether any weapon will be efficacious," said Changeling.

"You know, I never remember Tori being this pessimistic," said Xen.

"Tori was acting from a different experience base than I am," said Changeling.

"So am I," said Xen. "Let's see where this hallway goes."

---

The hunter lay behind the turbine, gritting his teeth as he jabbed a third stimpak into his left shoulder. He didn't like to set down the plasma rifle, but the Ghoul was at this point in no better shape than he was. Slightly worse, he hoped. He knew at least a couple of spatters of plasma had hit the man's face. Maybe the hunter would be lucky and he'd lose an eye before he managed to deploy his own stims. Or perhaps he would deploy them too late, and the plasma would burn his arm off.

It wasn't very likely. The Ghoul was proving a better strategist than the hunter had expected. He hadn't been hiding behind the turbine. He'd been back in the doorway of the exit, where he could easily shoot at someone who was shooting at the space in back of the turbine. The hunter had dodged and fired just in time to avoid having a large hole blown through the center of his body.

There was still no sign of B2-09. She might well be out of the building by now. The hunter didn't really think so, however. If she'd just been planning to run, she would not have waited for him beside the Ghoul. Probably what little stability she was able to retain was centered on these two organics. Well, that should make it easier to collar her once he'd killed them both.

But, in the words of a very ancient proverb the hunter had once heard a tech utter, one must not put the cart before the horse. The hunter rotated his shoulder joint to make sure it was working. Then he hefted the plasma rifle and got carefully to his feet. The Ghoul had run into the office space off to the right, from which there was no exit. Presumably he was there now, waiting. The hunter thought about this. He could walk into a hail of bullets, which concept he did not relish. He could go looking for B2-09 and ignore the other two, which was probably also not a good idea.

Or he could go and look for the small one, and possibly draw the big Ghoul after him for a change. The hunter liked that idea. He checked the office door one more time and leaped for the exit.

---

"That sounded like the plasma rifle again," said Xen, stopping suddenly to listen. The sound repeated twice more.

"I believe that was the first security door," said Changeling.

"Oh, no." Xen wrapped her fingers more tightly around the blaster's grip as she started to turn around. There were still too many walls in the way for her to read any heat signatures along their back trail.

"You must not go back for them," said Changeling. "You will only be killed. I am sure Charon would not wish that."

"Damn you," said Xen, but she turned and pushed on.

The room at the end of the hall had a great shaft in the center, its rim supported by steel beams. Red lights ringed the upper edge. Xen squinted as her eyes adjusted to the odd ambience. There were big metal knobs on the walls of the pit and in the rising shaft over it, but no hint as to their function. Perhaps they had something to do with the very empty pedestal in the middle of the pit's floor. The booted footprints led up to it and out again, back through another door to Xen's left. The rest of the room held no clue. There were more filing cabinets, more rows of incomprehensible lights and buttons, and a few steel tables and chairs covered with miscellaneous clutter. Someone had built what seemed to be a ring-shaped Van de Graaf generator, probably as a toy. Charges writhed around an upright steel ring connected to a power source in its base. The whole thing was not more than two feet high, sitting on a tabletop.

Xen heard two more shots from the plasma rifle. Then the combat shotgun roared in response. Something twisted in her gut, making her dizzy and sick. Which was worse? To know that Charon had been alive at the last shots she heard, or to wonder if he was dead now?

"That was closer," Xen said. "They've got to be almost to the second door. There's not much point in running away now, is there?" She looked around thoughtfully. "Eject one of the epi pens and give it to me."

"Further epinephrine will carry substantial risk of spontaneous cardiac arrest," said Changeling, but perforce obeyed the order. A plastic cylinder the size of an ink pen shot out of one arm joint and clattered to the floor. Xen picked it up.

"He'll be here soon," Xen said. "Maybe both of them. Maybe not." And oh, it was like pulling teeth to say it. She went to crawl under a steel table in the darkest part of the room, far from the door. Dust puffed up around her. "The best chance I have is to make it happen again."

She didn't have to explain what it was, not while she was carefully loading the alien blaster. She laid the epi pen in the dust of ages in front of her as she lay prone under the table.