Orphan of Mythcorp (33 page)

Studying me, Faustus said, “It was a lie,
wasn’t it? You didn’t bring your little girlfriend along as some
kind of safeguard. You brought her because you’re as flaky as Knox
and you didn’t know how else to ask Izzy out.”

“
What? No. It’s not like she’s my
girlfriend,” I said without thinking.

“
Oh?” Izzy said, hobbling into a tent
of light in front of me. “What, I’m not good enough for you? Too
short too chubby too strong a personality? Well, which one? Or is
it all of the above?”

I kneeled so we’d be the same height.

“
Oh don’t even,” Izzy turned her back
on me.

I sneered at the gingersnap while Izzy spoke
up, her back still to me. “About the lights. Isn’t it obvious? You
said Ash was coming here. He can Mesmerize people. Maybe he—”

“
Yeah,” Faustus interjected. “Maybe he
pulled the old Jedi Mind Trick on the guys down at the power
station. Made them turn the juice back on.” He clapped once and
then seemed to deflate. “Well, one mystery solved. Now all we need
to do is find your old man the Knoxicle.”

“
So where is this cryonics lab?” I
asked him. Looking around, I noticed that Malthus was gone, having
either melded into the shadows or run off somewhere.

Faustus shrugged. “No idea.”

I walked up to him through the creepy light
cast by one of the dusty fluorescents flickering high overhead.
“What do you mean ‘no idea’? You’ve been here before. Twice.”

He was hovering over Kana again,
checking her pulse and stuff. “Yeah, we’ve been here, but at the
time we were being shot at and chased and we didn’t get a chance to
stop and take a tour of the place—especially since we were
fugitives back then. It was like in
District Nine
when Wikus and Christopher Johnson
have to get back inside MNU to—”

“
He doesn’t not know what you’re
talking about, Red,” Kana said in a weak voice.

“
Tiny! You’re awake.” He hugged her on
the floor before helping her up. “You don’t waste any time
recovering, do you? This is great.” An awkward pause. “So, now
what?”

Meanwhile I glanced back at Izzy and caught
her looking over at us. She quickly averted her gaze. I stood there
next to Kana and Faustus, realizing for the first time that this
was my show and that I had no clue how to find my father in this
huge building. I’d spent so much time dreaming about entering
Mythcorp but not even a few seconds on how I’d manage to do the
very thing that was the whole point of entering.

First things first: I wandered over to the
emergency door and tried to lift it. “Well, Gabriel’s gang isn’t
coming through this bad boy. We should be safe—from them,
anyway.”

“
Yeah, until it’s time to leave and we
open it and find a dozen dart guns trained on our faces,” said
Izzy. I hated this new sarcastic tone she’d adopted. What had I
done to deserve it? “It’s clear you three are not the brains of
this idiotic operation. So I guess I’ll have to be.” She walked
past me, shuffling close enough to stomp my foot with one of her
crutches. “Every public building has a directory on its main floor,
usually near the atrium. So I say we go there, find the directory,
and follow its directions to the cryonics lab.” Izzy turned on me.
“I don’t suppose you researched how to wake the cryogenically
frozen?”

“
Um,” was my offer.

“
I figured as much.” Her beautiful
wine-colored hair swung around to accentuate her distaste with me.
“We’ll have to either find some instructions—maybe they have a
manual or maybe the computer in the lab will tell us—or we’ll have
to risk taking Knox outside and transporting him to a
hospital.”

“
That’s not an option, actually,” said
Kana. “Knox was the most wanted man in Philicity for eighteen
months before they finally froze him. His face was all over the
news and on Wanted posters all across the city. The only reason
he’s still here is because no one—besides Agent Cotes—knew what
happened to him after Alexander was killed by the Time Traveler the
day of the Purge.”

“
Yeah,” Faustus agreed. “Even we didn’t
know where he was for a few years.”

Kana continued: “If we take him out of here,
doctors might still recognize him and then they’ll call the police
who will contact the FBI and then it’ll be raining feds and that’ll
just be a big ole mess.” Kana punctuated her statement by rubbing
her back where the darts had struck.

I sighed. “So we thaw him out here.”

“
Which ought to be a blast,” Faustus
mumbled.

Izzy marched away from us, towards the wall
furthest from the bay doors. “One problem at a time. Let’s just get
to the atrium and locate the cryonics lab.”

I rushed towards her, relying heavily on the
cane (the nausea was getting progressively worse). “Hey listen, I’m
sorry if I said something wrong. I don’t have much of a filter on
my mouth, you know. Okay? Izzy?”

She twisted around and bore her peepers up
into mine. If she wasn’t so short, it might have been intimidating.
“You don’t talk to me the rest of the time we’re here. Got it,
mister?”

It wasn’t really a question.

“
Ooh,” Faustus whispered behind me.
“Someone’s in the doghouse.” He had his arm around Kana while she
inspected one of her dirks for damage.

The warehouse reminded me of what I’d always
imagined the Mines of Moria would look like. Shadows lay dark over
half the space, like spilled black paint, and every few feet we had
to stop to feel our way around a pallet loaded with old
goodies.

“
Hey, this one’s got Hostess Twinkies!”
Faustus bleated, startling us. He whipped out his switchblade and
started slicing through the plastic wrap. “They haven’t made these
in ages.”

“
Those were delivered fifteen years
ago,” Izzy said. “They’re probably nothing but sugary goo by
now.”

“
I hope so.”

The girls did a lot of rolling of the eyes
while Faustus dug out a box of Twinkies. He tore it open,
practically drooling. “Ha! You see? These are the sealed plastic
wrap kind. No air can get in.” Observing Kana’s gestures to put it
down, he added, “Relax, they’re fine.” Faustus pulled the plastic
apart at the seams and stuffed half a Twinkie into his mouth.

I cringed as he chomped on the old yellow
cake. He made a bunch of nasty groaning and moaning noises before
swallowing. Every disgusting sound was amplified and creepified by
the echoes here in this modern-day Moria. Blessed silence as we
waited to see if he would die. Instead of dropping dead, Faustus
stuffed the rest of the Twinkie into his mouth and motioned for us
to continue on our way. “Oh God, that’s good!”

Izzy turned first and I followed her to the
door. Behind me Kana said to the gingersnap, “Go ahead and keep on
stuffing your face, Red, but if you start puking your guts up all
over the place, don’t come crying to me.”

Another minute or so passed in silence; and
then we reached a metal door sporting a faint green light at its
top. Izzy tried the handle. “It’s locked.”

“
Of course it is,” I whined. “I’ll bet
my cane every door we come to in this tomb is going to be
locked.”

“
Thanks,” Izzy said, “that’s helpful.
Anyone got any ideas other than to piss and moan?”

Kana marched straight up to the door, gently
prodded Izzy out of harm’s way, and then gripped the doorknob. She
twisted. Grinding and crunching. Tumblers and metal bolts being
ground to uselessness. Kana finished her little knob-abuse show and
shoved on the door. It opened with a squeak.

She smirked at Izzy and stepped out into a
bright white hallway.

It was brilliant calm for about three ticks
before all hell battered into us. At first I thought someone had
switched on a war epic with the sound blaring. But that hope
quickly faded when I noticed dozens of divots materializing in the
plaster wall around us, the white canvas turning from a flat wall
into a colander. Within ten ticks the place took on the look of a
war torn city.

In between flashes I saw that Kana had
both dirks out. She was walking
towards
the source of the gunfire, whizzing her
blades around with such whiz-bang gusto that they were blurs, great
circles of impenetrable metal. I’d never seen anything like
it.

Behind us booming footsteps sounded. Out of
the darkness Malthus charged, barreling right through us as we
rushed to make a path. He unleashed a kooky guttural sound that I
could feel in my chest; it was almost like the rumbling of a
rocket.

‘—
ing to stand . . . like . . . brain
dead . . . on?’ Castor screamed at me.

I could barely understand him, and when I
looked around all I found was a billowing cloud of faint light. The
last of the doojee was wearing off.

Izzy stood frozen against the wall beside the
open doorway. I rushed up to her. “You okay?” She didn’t respond. I
grabbed her shoulders and shook. “Izzy! Are you okay?” I could
barely hear my own voice over the clamor of gunfire and ricocheting
bullets.

“
Yes,” Izzy answered at last. “I’m
okay. Help them.”

“
How?” I said, raising my cane as I
shrugged. And then it dawned on me: my cane. Aha. I peaked around
the doorway just as Faustus was rushing through it, yelling after
Kana.

Every few ticks a blurb of light flashed from
the other end of the hallway and then a blink later a bullet would
ping off of one of Kana’s dirks or plunk Malthus’ hide and drop to
the floor. I was way out of my depth here. But there was a lovely
girl who wanted me to man up. So how could I not?

Then again, there was gunfire and shouting
and it was generally a most dire situation. A pisser, as Galahad
would say. I hesitated, twiddled the crow-head around in my
hands.

How could anyone expect me to go out
into
that
, especially while
suffering comedown?

‘
What are you doing?’ Castor demanded,
now a semi-transparent spook. ‘Get your ass out there and help your
friends!’

The jittering had returned with a vengeance.
I looked over at Izzy. She was cowering. Is that what I looked
like? At least she had a reason to be cowering; me, on the other
hand? No reason, only lame excuses. I had a weapon, after all. I
summoned all my (very limited amount of) courage, dug deep for a
set of stones and . . . Backed up against the wall.

“
I can’t do this. Castor, take
over.”

The spook morphed into distinction. ‘With
pleasure.’ He grinned and then merged with me. Ice seemed to surge
through my blood, and vision grew dim. But I was still aware of
everything.

Castor/I plunged into the melee, cane raised,
pumper pumping whiz-bang like.

Everything started moving in fast forward:
Bullets whizzing by my ears, puffs of smoke puffing into existence
and being snuffed out slam-bang; Kana leaping around, dirks
blazing; Malthus charging. A part of me was pissed off. Whoever was
shooting was keeping me from meeting my father.

Sanson

“
The cryonics lab is on the twelfth
floor,” Ash said, already sauntering across the atrium over to the
bank of elevators.

“
How do you know?” Officer Graham
asked. He seemed remarkably in control of his mouth, considering he
was under the spell of a Mesmer. Apparently some people are more
resilient. He watched as Ash removed the helmet from his head and
dropped it on the floor.

The little yahoo stared up at Officer Graham.
“I just do. NO MORE QUESTIONS. Let’s go.”

We’d all crossed the floor, the flip-flop
sounds of our footsteps echoing up to the ceiling high overhead,
when an explosion from the back of the building sent one of the
numerous marble busts tumbling down. We jumped and Nimrod whipped
an automatic out from the depths of his cloak, taking aim at the
jagged pieces littering the floor.

Ash sighed. “That would be Morgan.”

“
And it sounds like the zipperdick’s
brought help,” Agravaine added. “We better keep our peepers open.
This could turn into one nasty obamafest.” He seemed to relish this
idea.

“
Agreed,” Ash pushed the UP button on
the wall beside the elevator. “Nimrod?”

The Mighty Hunter jogged over to the entrance
desk and switched on a batch of security screens. We all sort of
gravitated towards him, even Ash—once he saw that the elevator
wasn’t working.

Some of the screens were still flickering on
when I reached them, while others were already snow-free. Clearly
not of today’s crystal clarity line. These were all pre Liquid
Vision screens, back when TV’s were made with circuit boards and
wires.

I could hear Nimrod’s augmetic eye turning as
it scanned the screens. “There,” Agravaine declared, pointing at
one in the lower left hand corner.

Nimrod shoved the chubby Morai out of the
way. You could almost see a little drool slithering out of his lips
as he curled them into an ugly sneer. “Malthus.” He looked up and
pummeled me aside, charging across the floor and plunging into the
hallway situated between the dual curling staircases. In seconds he
was out of sight, though you could still hear the echoes of his
clomping foot-stomps.

So now Ash was the most dangerous yahoo in
the group.

“
He’ll keep them out of our hair,” he
said. “Come on. Crowley’s waiting.” He headed for the stairs,
adding, “It seems the elevators are frozen. So we have a bit of a
climb ahead of us.”