Resurrection (24 page)

In a surprise move, she struck out and cut into his upper arm. Blood welled up, and Adaiz stumbled back. She pushed him to the floor and lifted her right arm for the final blow.

But Adaiz was enraged now. The pain of this new injury achieved what he could not achieve with mental control alone—it had pushed everything else aside. He rolled back and kicked out. Both legs connected with Pruit’s stomach, and she flew away from him.

Pruit landed hard on her back, and Adaiz was on top of her. His knife came down at her heart. She blocked his knife arm, and he screamed and rained down blows on her face and neck.

He lifted the knife again. Behind Adaiz, she saw Jean-Claude, now on his feet and finally aware of the fight. Adaiz struck down at her, and at the same moment, Jean-Claude pushed him, sending him off of Pruit. She lunged up to standing. Jean-Claude made a move for Adaiz, but he slashed out, cutting Jean-Claude’s forearm.

Adaiz came at Pruit with full fury now. His mind had taken up its idiotic narrative again:
She is you, and you are she, and I must kill her, and I am not a traitor. I am not a traitor. I am an adopted brother and have never been given anything but love!

He pounded blows at her. Pruit fought him back, but she could feel her body losing strength. The shock of the shoulder wound was upon her. She was getting cold. Her head was pounding, from Jean-Claude’s original blow and from the beating Adaiz had given her. He was backing her toward a wall. He was cornering her. Jean-Claude, not a trained fighter, was gripping his wrist where blood was freely flowing out and onto the floor.

Adaiz had only one knife, but he was wielding it like a madman. It was all she could do to block the blows. She felt something hard and cool against her back. The window. She was cornered.

No!
she yelled in her mind.
You will not win!

She drew on her last remaining strength, blocked him weakly with her left arm, and struck forward with her right. She felt the knife go in. She could see a bloom of red on his side, just below his ribs. Adaiz cried out and fell back a step. Pruit lifted her arm for another strike.

Before she could bring her knife down, Adaiz felt his mind fill with the knowledge of his leg and foot and her body beyond them. He saw his muscles. There was pain, but it did not matter. He saw the path to follow. He would kill her. He would kill her now and worry about the technology later. He lifted his leg and felt the energy running through it. He kicked out with the foot. It connected with Pruit’s chest.

Pruit felt the impact, and then there was another impact of her body with glass. She was falling. The evening air was cool, and the dark shapes of buildings were moving past her. He had kicked her out the widow. She would die. There was a shock-wave of pain as she landed.

Up in the room, Adaiz fell back. It felt, for a moment, as though he were the one outside, falling through the air. He reached out a hand to steady himself, but there was nothing to grab. He felt his body hit the floor. He was losing blood. He was losing consciousness. He grabbed the rug with his hand, and then he passed out.

Jean-Claude saw Pruit fly out the window, then Adaiz hit the floor unconscious. Jean-Claude had finally managed to stop his own bleeding just as the fight ended. She had saved him. She had freed him. And he had only sat there, huddled over his own wound, as the other prisoner killed her.

For a few moments, he watched a pool of blood forming under Adaiz; then he stood, scrambled for the guns and other weapons that he saw beneath the shelf, and tucked them into a small bag. He ran from the room and down the stairs. He took a dim, squalid hallway to the back of the tenement and found his way out into the narrow alley behind.

There were no lights here, but there was a bright moon above thin clouds and much reflected light from the city. A cool breeze managed to penetrate the space between the buildings, bringing some slight relief from the smell of urine and decay.

He saw her. She lay sprawled half on top of refuse, half on the dirt of the alley itself. Her eyes were closed. Jean-Claude looked up the building to the second-story window of his rooms. Her fall had been broken by the garbage. It was possible she was still alive.

He moved over to her and felt at her neck. He thought he could feel a faint pulse.

“I am so sorry,” he mumbled to her in French. “I am so sorry.”

Her knives were still in her hands, and he put them into the bag with the guns. Carefully then, he picked her up and slung her body over one shoulder. She made no voluntary motions, but hung from him like a deadweight.

Jean-Claude whisked her from the alley. He could not take a taxi. He was a foreigner with a knife wound carrying a badly injured young woman. The police would become involved. He did not want police. He wanted time to think, time to find out who he was again.

Instead, he made his way through alleys for two miles, carrying her through the dark corners he had haunted for three years, past the brothels and the heroine and hashish dealers who infested the back streets of Cairo.

It was midnight when he reached the Sisters of Jude charity hospital. Pruit was moaning now, starting to wake. Carefully, he set her down, propping her body against a wall outside the emergency admittance room, among dozens of other people huddled together, waiting for assistance. In the light coming through the hospital doors, he could see that she was looking at him.

Jean-Claude knelt down to eye level. He could not tell how lucid she was. “He will soon strike a deal,” he told her.

Pruit’s head fell to one side, and Jean-Claude put his hand under her chin and gently turned her face toward him. Her eyes were still open.

“He will soon make his deal,” he repeated. “I believe he keeps only one copy of what you seek, and only he knows its location. When he makes his deal, he will give that copy in person.” Could she hear him? It was difficult to tell.

After several moments, Pruit managed a slight nod. “Understand…” she whispered.

Jean-Claude released her chin, and her head fell back against the wall.

“Thank you for my life,” he said. “I am sorry I did not deserve it more.” He put the bag of weapons in her hands, then left her, slipping back into the shadows.

There were glaring lights and the smell of rubbing alcohol. There were sounds of pain and motion and feet and machines, and the feel of many bodies in close spaces.

Several men and women were gathered around her, and there were bright lights shining in her eyes. Two of the people wore white cotton hats and small masks over their faces.

Pruit had just returned to consciousness and a world of pain. Her shoulder was aching and burning and throbbing, and her head pounded with slow violence. She was conscious of intense thirst. These people were trying to hold her down, and she found herself struggling. They were trying to inject her; they were trying to hook her up to an IV.

“Hold still!” someone shouted. “Hold her still!”

“No!” she said, trying to push them away. “No…” It was terribly important that she stop them. Why? She could not at first remember. Then it came to her—her skinsuit, they would not understand her skinsuit. They would discover it, and they would know that she did not belong.

“No!” she pushed their hands away.

“Hold still!” a doctor yelled.

She had been yelling in Soulene, and they were speaking Arabic. “No!” she yelled, remembering Arabic and using it. “I don’t need your help!”

“Yes, you do, I’m afraid,” said the young Egyptian doctor with strained patience. They were pinning down her arms. She felt the IV going into the vein in her hand.

“Doctor, there’s something wrong here,” one of the nurses said.

It was her skinsuit, Pruit knew. It would be isolating the IV tube in a layer of cells.

“Inject her now! She is hysterical!”

She felt a needle at her inner elbow and then the painful tingling of a syringe being emptied into her artery. It was a painkiller, and she was thankful for it immediately. Her shoulder calmed. She knew she must get up off the table, but her eyes were closing.

“What is it?” the doctor asked, examining the tube.

“Look, sir, it’s coming from her skin.”

“No,” she said again. “No…”

“It’s some kind of tissue…”

“Look how fast it’s growing…”

“Have you ever seen anything…?”

“Quick, call in Doctor Faruk…!”

“No…” she whispered.

Then, above the other noises issuing from the surrounding rooms, there were running footsteps and a bang as a door flew open.

“Pruit? Pruit?”

She knew that voice.

“Pruit!”

“Eddie…” She was only whispering. “Eddie!” It was all she could manage, but he had heard her. Through half-closed eyes, she saw Eddie shove the doctor aside.

“What are you doing?” the doctor asked in Arabic. “Get him out of here!”

“This is my wife!” Eddie yelled in Arabic. “This is my wife, and I have a doctor for her at home!”

The doctor and one of the male nurses tried to grab him, but he executed a neat open-handed punch to each, giving the blows just enough force to push the men out of the way without actually hurting them. “I’m taking her. Let me go!”

“Yes,” she mumbled in Arabic, so they would understand him. “He is my husband.” Even in her half-conscious state, she saw the intelligence behind Eddie’s claim. The husband ruled in Muslim cultures. He could even deny his wife medical treatment.

The men moved toward Eddie again, but uncertainly. His frantic words were perfectly delivered and held them at bay. “Let me go! I’m taking her home!”

He yanked the IV from Pruit’s hand and scooped her up from the table. They did not try to stop him. Pruit put her arms around his shoulders, and he held her to his chest and helped her wrap her legs around his waist.

“Wait,” she mumbled, gesturing toward the gurney desperately, her arm barely responding to her command. Eddie grabbed the small bag she was reaching for, and Pruit clutched it.

“We’re going,” he said. “We’re going!”

He backed out of the room’s swinging double doors as the medical team stared at him. Then he was jogging down a narrow hallway with Pruit in his arms. There were people waiting in the hall, sitting on benches and the floor, with everything from minor wounds to serious injuries. There was a smell of disease and death. This was a hospital for the indigent, and many had made temporary homes in the passage.

Eddie picked his way over them, clutching Pruit, who felt insubstantial in his arms. Her skin was cold and damp. He reached the end of the hall and passed into a large reception area. Children were crying here, and it was a swarm of unwashed humanity. He pushed his way between, and then they passed through the outer doors, and Pruit could feel the night breeze on her skin. She was still in her underwear, and a shiver ran up her back.

A car was waiting. Eddie bundled her into the back seat, then slid in next to her. There was a blanket on the floor, and he wrapped it around her.

“Back to the hotel,” he told the driver. He looked back toward the hospital. It was unlikely that anyone would follow them, but his eyes lingered at the door. The driver was staring back at his passengers. “Now!” Eddie yelled.

The car lurched into the street.

“Eddie…” she breathed.

He leaned over her and examined her.

“What happened?”

“How did you find me, Eddie?” she asked, still in the pleasant grip of the painkiller.

“When you didn’t come back and you didn’t answer your phone, I started checking hospitals…You’re hard to describe, you know. Not exactly white, not exactly anything else. Why is the thing you’re searching for always in the last place you look? Thank god I found you when I did…Your shoulder!”

“I can fix it…I can fix it…”

He pulled the blanket more tightly around her, holding her upright. Her face and neck were covered with deep bruises. “Pruit, who did this to you?”

Her eyes were falling closed, but she knew she could not sleep. There was something wrong…She remembered now. The human Lucien had been following her. She forced her eyes open. “Eddie, there’s a tracer on me. They tagged me…”

“Who tagged you?”

“I’ll explain later.” It was difficult to speak. It was difficult to stay awake. “Check my back…” With her right arm, she began to pull off her undershirt.

“Check for what?”

“Something by the spine, something small and hard.” The spine would be the usual location for a Lucien tag. That was one piece of Lucien procedure she had learned in training. Over generations of blockade, more than a few humans had been tagged by Lucien.

He did not understand, but he did as she said, helping her get the undershirt off and pulling the blanket up over her chest so she was not exposed to the other cars. Female nudity was frowned upon in Egypt. The hired driver was turning back to look at them.

“Mind your business!” Eddie snapped at him. The man brought his eyes back to the road.

Eddie studied her spine. “I don’t see anything.”

“Feel with your hands, next to the vertebrae.”

He ran his fingers up and down her spine, carefully feeling each bone. There was something at her mid-back, something that felt wrong. “There’s something here. But I can’t see it.”

“Get light,” she said weakly.

“Stop the car!” The car pulled over beneath a streetlight, and Eddie examined the spot on her back. There was something there, an almost imperceptible lump. “I think I found it.”

She reached around, and he put her hand on the spot. “Yes, that’s it. Cut it out.”

“What?”

“Cut it out, Eddie! They’ll use it to find me.”

“Who will?”

“Just cut it out! My knife…” She gestured to the bag she had made him take from the hospital.

“I can’t cut you!”

“You can. Just do it. Don’t think. No…wait.” She activated her skinsuit control panel and turned the suit off so it would not interfere with his operation. “Now do it.”

Eddie took her white knife in his hand. He did not allow himself to hesitate. Instead, he cut into her back, making a small incision just on top of the lump. Pruit gripped her knees. The painkiller was fading. Eddie touched the cut, and he could feel something hard inside. Pruit gasped as he prodded the wound.

“I’m sorry…”

“Pry it out!”

He took the tip of the knife and dug it beneath the lump. With a downward flick of his wrist, he pushed the tracer to the surface. It was small and oval, the size of a tiny ball bearing, covered in her blood. He pulled it out of her, then grabbed her undershirt and pressed it against the wound.

“I got it.” He held out the tracer for her to examine. She glanced at it, hardly able to focus her eyes. “Throw it out.”

Eddie rolled down the window and jettisoned it.

“Good,” she breathed, leaning back against the seat, long past exhaustion. “Good…” Her eyes closed.

Gently, Eddie pulled her onto his lap, holding the shirt against her back to stop the blood, holding her body to his chest. He had been searching the city’s dozen or so hospitals since the late afternoon, his panic level steadily rising. Even so, he had not realized how much he cared for her until this moment. He held her to him and knew suddenly that she was precious to him. “There’s never a dull moment with you, is there, Pruit Pax of Senetian?” he whispered into her hair, kissing her head.

She let her head fall onto his shoulder, feeling his strength and grateful for it. Then she was asleep in Eddie’s arms as the car took to the road again.