Blood Pact

Chapter Thirteen

 

  "All right. Let's see if I understand what you're saying. " Vicki drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Screaming and throwing things would contribute nothing to the situation. "Your graduate student, Catherine, who is crazy, has murdered your other graduate student, Donald. When you went back to the lab, late this afternoon, you discovered she'd hidden Henry and you don't know where she is, they are. "

  Dr. Burke nodded. "Essentially. "

  So much for good intentions. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, ESSENTIALLY?"

  Alcohol-induced remoteness cracked as Vicki grabbed the lapels of Dr. Burke's lab coat and nearly dragged her over the desk. "If you could loosen your grip," she gasped, "I might find it easier. . . to answer your question. "

  Vicki merely snarled inarticulately.

  "Detec. . . tive!"

  Celluci shifted his gaze to a point about six inches over the doctor's head, expression aggressively neutral.

  Collar cutting into her windpipe, Dr. Burke realized further hesitation would only make things worse. "She's in the old Life Sciences building. Your vampiric friend is locked in a big metal box. Trying to maneuver that out the door and into her van would've attracted a bit of attention. Where in the building. . . " Considering her position, the shrug was credible. ". . . I have no idea. "

  Vicki didn't so much release her hold as shove the older woman back into the chair. "Your lab is in there? In the old building?"

  "Yes. " Rubbing the back of her neck where the fabric had dug in, Dr. Burke snapped, "And so is your mother. Somewhere. " She shot a superior look up over the edge of her glasses. "Your dead mother. Walking around. "

  My dead mother. Walking around. Anger couldn't stand under the weight of that pronouncement.

  "Vicki?"

  She fought free of the image of her mother flattened against the window and met Celluci's worried gaze.

  "We have a confession. We can call in Detective Fergusson now. You don't have to have anything more to do with this. "

  "Nice try, Mike. " She swallowed, trying to wet a throat gone dry. "But you're forgetting about Henry. "

  "Mustn't forget Henry. " Above the hand still rubbing at her throat, Dr. Burke almost grinned. "I'd love to hear you explain him to the local police. Until you find Henry, you've got to keep this quiet. And after? What about after?" She shook her head at their expressions and sighed, placing both hands flat on her desk. "Never mind, I'll tell you. There won't be an after. Until Catherine contacts me, you haven't a chance of finding your friend. There's a million stupid, useless cubbyholes in that building and she could've stuck him in any of them. You're just going to have to sit here with me and wait for her phone call. "

  "And then?"

  "Then I play along, she tells me where she's stashed him, you get him out, call the police, and she pays for Donald. "

  Vicki's eyes narrowed. "And you'll pay for my mother. "

  "Ms. Nelson, if it makes you happy, I'll even pay for dinner. "

  "What if she doesn't call?" Celluci demanded, cutting off Vicki's response.

  "She said she would. "

  "You said she's crazy. "

  "There is that. "

  "Mike, I can't wait. " Vicki took four steps toward the door, turned on one heel, and took three steps back. "I can't base everything on what a crazy woman may or may not do. I'm going to find him. She. . . " A toss of her head indicated the doctor. ". . . can take us to the lab. We'll work a search pattern from there. "

  "Not on your life. " She wasn't going near the lab. Bad enough she could still hear him calling her in spite of half a bottle of Scotch. "You'll have to drag me. Which might alert Security. There'll be a brouhaha. Your Henry Fitzroy ends up confiscated by the government. You want to go to the lab, you can find it on your own. "

  Vicki leaned forward, laying her hands on the desk, fingertips not quite touching the doctor's, her posture more of a threat than her earlier actions had been. "Then you'll give us very precise directions. "

  "Or you'll what? Try to pay attention, Ms. Nelson, you can't do anything until you rescue your friend. "

  "I can beat your fucking face in. "

  "And what will that accomplish? If you beat the directions out of me, I can guarantee they won't be accurate. Try to be realistic, Ms. Nelson, if you can. You and your flat-footed friend here can go and try to find Mr. Fitzroy, but you'll have to leave me out of it. " Not even in words would she trace the path to the lab again. "But just to show there's no hard feelings, I'll let you in on a nonsecret. There's a way into the old building from the north end of the underground parking lot. Security's supposed to have video cameras down there, but they ran out of money. Don't say I never gave you anything. Happy trails. "

  Celluci took hold of Vicki's shoulder and pulled her gently but inexorably away from the desk. "And what will you be doing while we're searching?"

  "The same thing I was doing when you showed up. " Dr. Burke bent and opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulling out an unopened bottle of Scotch. "Attempting to drink myself into a stupor. Thank God, I always keep a spare. " It took three tries before the paper seal tore. "I assure you, I'm not going anywhere. "

  "Why not, when at the very least you'll be facing a murder charge?" Vicki asked, shaking free of Celluci's hold.

  "You're still on about your mother, aren't you?" The doctor sighed and stared for a moment into the pale depths of the amber liquid before continuing. "I lost interest in the game when Donald died. " The bottle became a silver casket. She shuddered and raised her head, looking past Vicki's glasses, meeting her eyes. "Essentially, and I beg your pardon, Ms. Nelson, if the word offends you, but it's the only one that fits, essentially, I just don't care any more. "

  And she didn't. Even through her own grief and rage and confusion, Vicki could see that. "Come on. " Pulling her bag up onto her shoulder, she jerked her head toward the door. "She's not going anywhere right now. "

  "You believe her?"

  Vicki took another look into Dr. Burke's eyes and recognized what she saw there. "Yeah. I believe her. " She paused at the door. "One more thing; you may not care now but don't think you'll be able to use your knowledge of Henry as a bargaining chip later. . . "

  "Later," Dr. Burke interrupted, both hands around the bottle to keep from spilling any of the Scotch as she refilled her mug, "without an actual creature to run tests on, I can scream vampire until I'm blue in the face and no one will believe a word I say. Grave robbing does not help to maintain credibility in the scientific community. "

  "Not to mention murdering one of your grad students," Celluci pointed out dryly.

  Dr. Burke snorted and raised the mug in a sarcastic salute. "You'd be surprised. "

  "Jesus H. Christ. " Celluci slammed the flat of his hand against the wall in frustration. "This place is like a maze; hallways that don't go anywhere, classrooms that lead to hidden offices, labs that suddenly appear. . . "

  Vicki played the powerful beam of her flashlight down the hall. With the one in four emergency lighting on in the old building, she could see well enough to keep from crashing into things but not well enough to identify the things she wasn't crashing into. Only the area starkly illuminated by her flashlight held any definition. It was like she was moving through the slides of a bizarre vacation, stepping into a scene just as it was replaced by the next. Her nerves were stretched so tightly she could almost hear them twang with every movement.

  Her dead mother was walking around in this building.

  Every time she moved her circle of sight she wondered, Will this be the time I see her? And when all that showed was another empty room or bit of hall, she wondered, Is she standing in the darkness beside me? Under her jacket and sweater, her shirt clung to her sides, and she had to keep switching the flashlight from hand to hand to dry her palms.

  "This isn't going to work. " Her arm dropped to her side and the hall slid into darkness except for
the puddle of illumination now spilling over her feet. "The layout of this place defeats any kind of a systematic search. "We've got to use our heads. "

  "Granted," Celluci agreed. He tucked himself up against her left shoulder; close enough, he judged, for her to see his face. "But we've got a crazy woman who's run off with a vampire. That doesn't exactly lend itself to logical analysis. "

  "It has to. " Adjusting her glasses, more for the comfort of a familiar action than from necessity, she gave half her mind over to searching the scant information they had for clues. The other half of her mind filtered the noises of an old building at night, listening for the approach of shuffling footsteps. Suddenly, she turned to squint up at Celluci. "Dr. Burke said Henry was in a large metal box. "

  "So?"

  "And she implied it was heavy. "

  "Again, so?"

  Vicki almost smiled. "Look at the floor, Celluci. "

  Together, they bowed their heads and stared at the pale, institutional gray tile, dulled by the passage of thousands of feet. A number of nicks and impressions dimpled the surface with shadow and darker still were a half-dozen signatures of black rubber heels.

  "If the box is as massive as Dr. Burke implied," Vicki said, raising her head and looking Celluci in the eyes, "one way or another it'll have left its mark. Rubber wheels will scuff. Metal wheels will imprint. "

  Celluci nodded slowly. "So we look for the tracks she left moving the box. It's still a big building. . . . "

  "Yeah, but we know damn well she didn't take it up and down the stairs. " Vicki raised her arm and shone the flashlight down the hall. "The power's on, so the elevators must be working. We check just outside them on every floor for the marks and then backtrack from there. "

  An appreciative grin spread over Celluci's face. "You know, that's practically brilliant. "

  Vicki snorted. "Thanks. You needn't sound so surprised. "

  For no reason other than that they had to start somewhere, they began working their way down from the eighth, and highest, floor. On three, they found what they were looking for, pressed not only into the tile but into the metal lip leading onto the elevator, were the marks of two pairs of wheels about four feet apart. Silently, they stepped out into the hall and let the door wheeze closed behind them.

  No one appeared to investigate the noise.

  Unwilling to risk the flashlight and a premature discovery, Vicki grabbed Celluci's shoulder and allowed him to lead her down the hall. To her surprise, moving in what was to her total darkness was less stressful than the peep show the flashlight had offered. Although she still listened for approaching footsteps, the accompanying tension had lessened. Or maybe, she conceded, her grip tightening slightly, it's just that now I have an anchor.

  When they reached the first intersection, even she could see the way they had to go.

  The harsh white of the fluorescent lights spilled out through the open door and across the corridor.

  Vicki felt Celluci's shoulder rise as he reached beneath his jacket and she heard the unmistakable sound of metal sliding free of leather. Up until this moment, she hadn't realized he'd brought his gun. Considering the amount of trouble he could get into for using it, she couldn't believe he'd actually drawn it.

  "Isn't that just a tad American," she whispered, lips nearly touching his ear.

  He drew her back around the corner and bent his head to hers. "What Dr. Burke neglected to mention," he said in a voice pitched to carry to her alone, "was that there's something else wandering around in here besides a mad scientist and your uh. . . "

  "Mother," Vicki interjected flatly. "It's okay. " Her feelings were irrelevant to the situation. And I'll just keep telling myself that.

  "Yeah, well, something else killed that kid and we're not taking any more chances than we have to. "

  "Mike, if it's already dead, what good will shooting it do?"

  His voice was grim as he answered. "If it died once, it can die again. "

  "So what am I supposed to use, strong language?"

  "You can wait here. "

  "Fuck you. " And under the bravado, fear. Not alone. Not in the dark. Not here.

  They made their way to the open door. Vicki released her hold on Celluci's shoulder at the edge of the light. "Give it a five count. " His breath lapped warm against the side of her face, then he darted across the opening.

  The next five seconds were among the longest Vicki had ever spent as she closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the wall, and wondered if she'd have the courage to look. On five, she swallowed hard, opened her eyes, and peered around and into the room, conscious of Celluci across the doorway mirroring her movements.

  Even with lids slitted against the glare, it took a moment for her eyes to stop watering enough for her to focus. It was a lab. It had obviously been in use recently. It had just as obviously been abandoned. Eight years with the police had taught her to recognize the telltale mess left behind when suspects had cut and run.

  Cautiously, they moved away from the door, slowly turned, and simultaneously spotted the isolation box, humming in mechanical loneliness at the far end of the room.

  Vicki took two quick steps toward it, then stopped and forced her brain to function. "If this is the original lab, we know Catherine moved Henry away. . . "

  "So Henry's not in that box. "

  "Maybe it's empty. "

  "Maybe. "

  But neither of them believed it.

  "We have to know for sure. " Somehow, without her being aware of it, Vicki's feet had moved her to within an arm's length of the box. All she had to do was reach out and lift the lid.

  . . . and lift the lid. Oh, Momma, I'm sorry. I can't. She despised herself for being a coward, but she couldn't stop the sudden cold sweat nor the weakness in her knees that threatened to drop her flat on her face.

  "It's all right. " It wasn't all right, but those were the words to say, so Celluci said them as he came around her and put one hand on the latch. This, at least, he could do for her. "You don't have to stay. "

  "Yes. Yes, I do. " She could be a passive observer, if only that.

  Celluci searched her face, swore privately that someone would pay for the pain that kept forcing its way out through the cracks in the masks she wore, and lifted the lid.

  The release of tension was so great that Vicki swayed and would have fallen had Celluci not stepped back and grabbed her. She allowed herself a moment leaning on the strength of his arm, then shook herself free. From the beginning, she'd declared she was going to find her mother. Why am I so relieved that we didn't?

  Thick purple incisions, tacked closed with coarse black thread, marked the naked body of the young Oriental male in an ugly "y" pattern. A collar of purple and green bruises circled the slender column of the throat. Plastic tubes ran into both elbows and the inner thigh. Across the forehead, partially covered by a thick fall of ebony hair, another incision appeared to have been stapled closed.

  Over the years, both Vicki and Celluci had seen more corpses than they cared to remember. The young man in the box was dead.

  "Mike, his chest. . . it's. . . "

  "I know. "

  Two steps forward and she was close enough to reach over the side and gently touch her fingertips to the skin over the diaphragm. It was cold. And it rose and fell to the prompting of something that vibrated beneath it.

  "Jesus. . . There's a motor. " She withdrew her hand and scrubbed the fingers against her jacket. Raising her head, she caught Celluci making the sign of the cross. "Dr. Burke never mentioned this. "

  "No. Not quite. " He shifted his gun to his right hand and slipped it back into the shoulder holster. It didn't look like he'd be needing it right away. "But something tells me we've finally found Donald Li. "

  The young man's eyes snapped open.

  Vicki couldn't have moved had she wanted to. Nor could she look away when the dark eyes tracked from her to Cel
luci and back again.

  A muscle shifted behind the purple bruises on the throat.

  Gray-blue lips parted.

  "Kill. . . me. . . "

  "Holy Mary, Mother of God, he's alive. "

  In the box, the dark eyes slid slowly back to Celluci. "No. . . "

  "No? What the hell do you mean no?"

  "He means he's not alive, Mike. " Vicki could hear a part of herself screaming. She ignored it. "He's like my mother. " Hands splayed against the glass. Mouth moving soundlessly. "He's dead. But he's trapped in there. "

  "Kill. . . me. . . please. . . "

  Her fingers digging into the bend of Celluci's elbow, Vicki backed away, pulling him with her. She stopped when the high rim of stainless steel replaced Donald Li's face with her own. "We have to do something. "

  Celluci continued to stare in the direction of the box. "Do what?" he demanded harshly.

  Vicki fought the urge to turn and run, thankful Celluci seemed frozen to the spot because she didn't have the strength to stop them both. "What he asks. We have to kill him. "

  "If he's alive, killing him is murder. If he's dead. . . "

  "He's dead, Mike. He says himself he'd dead. Can you walk away and leave him like that?"

  She felt the shudder run down the length of his body and barely heard his answer.

  "Vicki, we're out of our depth here. " This was the stuff of nightmares. Not demons or werewolves or mummies or a four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old romance writer, this. He'd thought that thirteen years of police work had equipped him to deal with anything and that the events of the last year had covered everything else. He'd been wrong. "I can't. . . "

  "We have to. "

  "Why?" Weighed down by horror, his voice hardly rose above a whisper.

  "Because we found him. Because we're all he has. "

  There's a whole world out there. Let someone else deal with it. But when he turned and looked down into Vicki's face, he couldn't say it. He recognized the look of someone very nearly at the end of her resources, someone who'd been hit too hard and too often, but he also recognized the determined set to her jaw. She couldn't walk away leaving Donald Li trapped in his prison of dead meat. He couldn't walk away and leave her. Although he had to force his mouth to form the words, he asked, "How do we do it?"

  Speaking slowly, if she lost control even a little she'd lose it all-Vicki laid out what they knew. "He's dead. We know it. He says so. But his. . . " Twentieth-century attitudes added difficulty to expressing what was so terrifyingly clear. ". . . his soul is trapped. Why? The only difference between this corpse and any other. . . " Except my mother's. She felt herself begin to slide toward the edge. No! Don't think of that now. ". . . is that someone has given it an artificial resemblance to life. That has to be why he's trapped. "

  "So we unhook his life support?"

  "Yeah. I guess. "

  "Vicki. One of us has to be sure. "

  She lifted her head and met his gaze.

  After a moment, he nodded. "Let's do it. "

  It didn't take long for them to unhook the tubes and hoses, training and practice shoehorning distance in between what had to been done and feelings about doing it. Neither of them touched the body any more than was absolutely necessary. When they'd finished, although Donald Li said nothing, they saw him still staring up out of dead eyes and knew it hadn't been enough.

  "We should've known. The others are up and walking around. "

  Then Vicki found the input jack hidden under a thick fringe of hair and traced the cable back to the computer. She squinted at Catherine's message on the screen and tried to keep her hands from shaking just long enough to work the keyboard.

  "It seems to be loading programming into. . . " There was only one place it could be loading programming. "Okay. Odds are good that if programming can be loaded, it can also be erased. " Wiping her palms on her thighs, she dropped into the chair.

  "You sure you know what you're doing?" Celluci asked, grateful for an excuse to walk away from the horror in the box. "This setup's more complicated than the gear you've got at home. "

  "How complicated can it be?" Vicki muttered, making a note of the destination file. "It all comes down to ones and zeros. Besides," she added grimly, hitting the reset button, "how could I possibly make it any worse?"

  She scanned the main menu. "Mike, what does initialize mean to you?"

  "Something to do with starting up?"

  "That's what I thought. " Under the list of things that could be initialized was the destination code the program had been downloading into.

  "Well?"

  "I just told it to reinitialize Donald's brain. "

  "And?"

  "And that should wipe it clean. "

  "Are you sure?"

  "No, but I wiped my hard drive that way once. " Shoving the chair back from the desk, Vicki stood and pushed at her glasses. "Hopefully, it'll release him. "

  "And if it doesn't?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. " If it didn't work, they'd have to leave him there and hope that as the body slowly decayed so would whatever held him to it. To know you're dead. To watch your body rot. To have that be your only hope. . . . She clamped down hard on the hysteria she could feel rising. Later, she told it. Later, when Henry's safe and my mother's. . . my mother is. . .

  Celluci's voice cut through the thought. "No change. "

  "Give it a minute. " One step at a time, she managed to return to the box and to Celluci's side. If he hadn't gone back before her, she didn't think she could've made it. With her arm pressed up against the warm resilience of his, she looked down at Donald Li's face.

  Dark eyes caught her gaze and held it. Wrung dry, Vicki didn't even attempt to pull away. Suddenly, she realized that as all encompassing as her terror and revulsion might be it was nothing next to the terror that shrieked from behind the eyes of Donald Li.

  She had nothing to be afraid of in comparison.

  As the fear faded, anger rose to take its place.

  What sort of a person could do this to another human being?

  All at once, the dead man's eyes widened and just for an instant his expression changed to one of incredulous joy.

  Then his face held no expression at all.

  Vicki released a breath she didn't remember holding. "You see that?"

  "Yeah. "

  "Any doubts that we did the right thing?"

  "Not one. "

  Together they reached up and pulled the lid closed.

  Alone in the dark, Henry wondered how much of the night he had left. Surely he'd endured a dozen hours or more since sunset. Why can't I feel the dawn? With the Hunger clawing for freedom and steel wrapped about him like a shroud, he yearned for oblivion even as he dreaded it.

  He'd run through all the moments of Vicki he had. Unfair that a year slips through memory so fast. While some of what they'd shared had added to the Hunger, most had helped to force it back. Vicki had given him her life, not just her body and blood. Had forged friendship out of circumstance. Had helped him when he needed it. Had come to him for help. Had trusted him. Been trusted in return.

  Passion. Friendship. Need. Trust.

  Together, love. Considered in that light, he supposed it wasn't actually necessary for Vicki to say she loved him. Although it would have been good to hear. . . .

  He tried to remember how many times he had heard the words. A hundred voices cried out; women's voices, men's voices, he quieted them all, searching the past for the glint of gold among the dross. A thousand nights slipped by, a hundred thousand, and out of all the shared passion and friendship and need there were only four, three women and a man, with whom there had also been trust enough for love.

  "Ginevra. Gustav. Sidonie. Beth. " He murmured their names into the darkness. So many others he'd let go of, forgotten, but those he still held. "Only four in all those years. . . . "

  Two had been ta
ken from him by violence, one by accident, one by time.

  He could feel the melancholy gathering into a tangible presence, threatening to crush him under its weight.

  "Vicki. " A fifth name. A living name. "And as they say. . . " Although he knew it would do no good, Henry pressed his uninjured hand up against the lid as hard as exhaustion and pain allowed. ". . . where there's life, there's hope. "

  Muscles strained, the darkness developed a reddish hue, then the arm collapsed down across his chest and he was nearly deafened by the sound of his heart slamming up against his ribs. He had no idea what he'd been trying to prove.

  One last effort for the sake of love? He shifted slightly, changing his position as much as he could, the plastic padding beneath him tugging at the bare skin of his back. At least this time I won't be the one left behind to mourn.

  Melancholy turned to despair and closed icy fingers around him.

  It would be so easy to surrender.

  I am Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the son of a king.

  I am Vampire.

  He was too tired. It just wasn't enough anymore.

  Vicki wouldn't quit.

  Vicki won't quit. Not until she finds you. Find strength in that. Trust her.

  She will come.

  Christina had come. She had birthed him from the darkness, nourished him, guarded him, taught him, and finally let him go.

  "Listen to what your instincts tell you, Henry. Our nature says we hunt alone. This is your territory, I give it to you, and I will not stay to fight you for it. "

  "Then stay and share it with me!"

  She only smiled, a little sadly.

  He paced the length of the room and back to throw himself down on his knees at her feet. Even a short time before, he would have finished the motion by burying his head in her lap but now, in spite of the position, he was unable to close the distance.

  Her smile grew sadder still. "The bond of your creation is nearly broken. If I stay," she added softly, "one of us will very soon drive the other away and that will wipe out even the memory of what we shared. "

  The voice of the Hunter growing louder in his head told him she spoke the truth. "Then why," he cried, "did you change me, knowing this would happen? Knowing we would have so little time together?"

  Ebony brows drew down as she considered it. "I think," she said slowly, "I think I forgot for a while. "

  His voice rose, echoing off the damp, stone walls of the abandoned tower. "You forgot?"

  "Yes. Perhaps that is why we are able to continue as a race. "

  He bowed his head, eyes squeezed shut, but his nature no longer allowed tears. "It hurts. As though you cut my heart out and take it with you. "

  "Yes. " Her skirts whispered as she stood and he felt her fingers touch his hair in gentle benediction. "Perhaps that is why we are so few. "

  He never saw her again.

  "And that," he told the darkness as despair's grip tightened, "is not helping. " Surely there were pleasanter times to use as weapons against the knowledge that he was trapped, and alone. . . .

  "No. There have been prisons and prisoners before," he snarled. "I can survive it. "

  You can survive the nights, despair whispered, but what of the days? So much blood has been taken. How much more will they take? How much more can you lose and still have a night to return to? What else will they do that you will be unable to prevent?

  Lips drawn back from his teeth, Henry tried to twist away from the voice. It surrounded him, sounded within him, echoed against the metal that enclosed him. "Vicki. . . "

  She doesn't know where you are. What if she doesn't find you in time? What if she doesn't come?

  "NO!"

  He released his hold on the Hunger and let the Beast take him as it clawed its way free.

  It was all he had left to fight with.

  "As long as these are working, we have no guarantee that she's going to leave Henry in one place. " Vicki squinted in the brightly lit interior of the elevator and switched off her flashlight. "She can keep rolling him around this building with us two steps behind like some kind of bad Marx Brothers movie. "

  "So we jam them?" Celluci asked, stepping over the threshold and matching his companion's don't-fuck-with-me tone. That either of them was still functioning at all, he considered to be some sort of miracle. Let's hear it for the human animal's ability to cope.

  Vicki shook her head and hit the button for the subbasement with enough force to nearly crack the plastic cover. "Not good enough. The elevators are in opposite ends of the building. She can unjam them as fast as we can jam them. We're going to shut them off. "

  "How?"

  "By shutting off the power supply to the building. "

  "I repeat, how?"

  Vicki turned to stare at him through narrowed eyes. "How the hell should I know? Do I look like an electrician? We'll find the electrical room and pull the plug. "

  "Metaphorically speaking. "

  "Don't give me any of your fucking attitude, Celluci. "

  "My attitude? Nelson, you've got one hell of a nerve. "

  "Nerve!"

  "You want attitude?"

  Their voice overlapped, the sound slamming up against the confining walls and crashing back. Words got tangled in the noise and were stripped of meaning. Toe to toe, they stood and screamed invective at each other.

  The elevator reached the subbasement. Stopped. The door opened.

  ". . . patronizing asshole!"

  The echoes changed. The words shot into the darkness and didn't come back.

  They realized it together and together fell silent.

  Vicki was trembling so violently, she wasn't sure she could stand. Her legs felt like cooked pasta and there was a metal band wrapped so tightly around her throat that breathing hurt and swallowing was impossible. Her glasses had slid so far down her nose they were almost useless. She peered over them, through the tunnel the disease had pared her vision down to, and tried to focus on the face just inches from her own. Her hand came up to push them back into place but instead continued moving until it brushed the curl of hair off Celluci's forehead. She heard him sigh.

  Slowly, he raised his arm and, with one finger against the bridge, slid her glasses back into place. "We okay?"

  His breath was warm against her cheek. She nodded jerkily and stepped back, out of the range of that comfort.

  "What about the tracks?" he asked.

  She switched on her flashlight and walked out into the subbasement, a little amazed her legs would obey even such basic commands. "We look for tracks after we immobilize Catherine. "

  Celluci paused for a moment on the threshold of the elevator, his presence preventing the door from closing. "We turn off the power to the building," he said, "and we'll turn off any other experiments she might be running. "

  Vicki stopped and half turned to face him. "Yes. "

  He recognized the raw anger that spit the word out. Recognized it because he felt it himself. It had nothing to do with the contest in vitriol they'd held in the elevator, that had been nothing more than tension given voice, and everything to do with the horror they'd found in the lab. He wanted to find whoever had been responsible, take them by the throat and. . . Words didn't exist for what he wanted to do.

  Over the last week, layer after layer of Vicki's control, of her protection, had been stripped away. He was afraid there was nothing left to keep her anger from being acted on.

  He was afraid that if they found Henry the way they'd found Donald Li, she'd go right over the edge and he wouldn't be able to stop her.

  He was more afraid that he wouldn't even try.

  On the second floor, in a utility cupboard that shared a wall with the elevator shaft, Marjory Nelson worked the muscles of her face into the closest she could come to a frown. She heard voices.

  Voices.

  Voice.

  She kn
ew that voice.

  She had been told to stay. It was one of the commands enforced by the neural net. One of the commands that had worn a rutted passage into memory.

  Stay.

  Trembling, she stood. . .

  Stay!

  . . . shuffled toward the door. . .

  STAY!

  . . . opened it and lurched out into the hall.

  There was something she had to do.