What were my other options, then? We had the injectors Convex Icosahedron had given us, but there was no way to get close enough to these guys without them seeing us. What we needed was some sort of distraction. If this were a video game, I could toss some rocks or something and the guards would blunder out to investigate, but I had a feeling that this technique didn’t work so well in real life. Besides, there were no rocks to throw, and no way to toss them except by revealing myself to these guys.
I hated to risk a frontal assault, but with every minute that passed, we had less of a chance of succeeding with this rescue. I was about to turn to Villainic to begin explaining this to him, but I realized he was already moving past me, PPB pistol out. He squeezed off two shots, both of them quite good. He hit the guards in their heads, and they went down.
I turned to him. “Why did you do that?” I demanded.
“I didn’t see that there was any other option,” he said, “and I thought you might be having difficulty making up your mind to proceed. I decided to take the burden on myself.”
“And if it set off an alarm?”
“Then it would be my fault,” he said, “and you wouldn’t have to feel bad about making the mistake.”
I took a deep breath. “That is very nice of you. I guess. But maybe we should discuss decisions of this magnitude.”
“I am trying to be more like Tamret,” he said. “She does not overthink things. She acts.”
“She thinks plenty,” I said. “That’s why the things she does tend to work out.”
He gestured toward the guards. “This worked out.”
I did not have the energy to argue with his success. “From now on, we discuss. But thanks.”
We went over to the door and used our bracelets to trigger the lock. It clicked open, and there were no guards waiting for us on the other side, so that was good. I crouched down to pull one of the sleeping guards into the other room when I saw that his eyes were open. I almost jumped back, thinking he was about to get up and go Phandic crazy on me. Then I saw that his eyes weren’t moving. They were still and blank, like dull marbles.
I turned to Villainic, and I had to force myself to choke out the words. “Did you kill these guys?”
“Of course. You can see they’re dead.”
I felt revulsion crawl through me, but at the dead body or what Villainic had done—or both—I couldn’t say. “But why?”
“They’re Phands,” he said simply.
“So is Adiul-ip.”
“These are enemy Phands. If we give them a chance, they will kill us.”
“That’s not the point,” I said, my voice hard. I couldn’t believe he had killed them. That wasn’t how I did things, how the beings with me did things. “They’re grunts,” I told him, trying to keep from sounding hysterical. “It’s not their fault they were born into this culture. They think they’re doing the right thing. You can’t just kill anyone who gets in your way. Not if you have another choice. Don’t you feel bad about doing this?”
“Of course not,” he said. “They’re aliens.”
“I’m an alien from your perspective.”
“This is a silly conversation, Zeke. I understand your objections, but we no longer need to worry about these two waking up. They are dealt with. Forever. Now, can we please move on?”
“No more killing,” I said to him. “You have to give me your weird Rarel deity word.”
“Very well,” he sighed. “If it will make you happy, I promise not to kill anyone unless I see no alternative.”
We dragged the dead Phands inside and closed the door again. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Villainic, realizing how little I knew and understood him. I’d thought he was just an idiotic bumbler, a guy fate had stuck me with because fate thought it was hilarious. It turned out he had a dark streak, or possibly an amoral one. Maybe it was Rarel culture, but I had never seen Tamret show this kind of disregard for life, and she was the least rule-bound person I’d ever met.
It was true enough that I’d played a part in events in which beings had died, but those had been space battles, when I’d been fighting to keep myself and my friends alive. You don’t really have the option of knocking an enemy ship on the head. There are huge weapons involved, and ships can explode or leak oxygen or do all sorts of things that you can’t control. The first time I’d used weapons on another ship, I’d gone after the enemy with everything I had, but I’d learned my lesson. In my second battle with the Phands, when I’d understood more about how the weapons worked, I’d done my best to keep the damage to a minimum.
More importantly, while I knew I’d acted justifiably, that I’d done the best I could each time to save my own ship, I still felt bad about the beings who died. They had been my enemies, and they had been doing their best to kill me and beings I cared about, but most of them had still just been doing their job. Maybe they knew the Phandic Empire was a bad place, but it was their culture. They had friends and relationships and children to go back to. They weren’t evil, cackling villains. That made a difference to me.
It didn’t seem to make a difference to Villainic.
• • •
There was a security station a little farther down, and given that we’d already started killing beings who worked in this compound, it seemed a bit late to go with the subtle approach. After I made sure that Villainic had put his PPB pistol on stun, we shot the two guards and dragged them away from their post, sticking them in an empty room. This station had an actual computer console, and using a hacking tool that Adiul-ip had provided for my data bracelet, I bypassed the password prompt and was able to pull up data on the prisoners. There were hundreds of prisoners being held in various parts of the facility, but only six in the building with the nanotech labs. Hopefully that meant everyone I was looking for was nearby and in one place. Unfortunately, the prisoners weren’t labeled, and if there were cameras monitoring them, I couldn’t figure how to access them. I was going to have to open each cell and look inside.
I’d been so intent on getting to this point that I hadn’t allowed myself to worry about what everyone might have been through. Had they been tortured, experimented on? Planet Pleasant was notorious for that sort of thing. I had known from the beginning that I might manage to make my way inside and not like what I found. If my friends had been truly hurt—if the Phands had done something to Tamret—I wasn’t sure I would be able to deal with it.
I told Villainic to keep watch. We needed to know if someone was coming, but I also didn’t want him around. I needed to do this on my own. I reached the first cell and keyed it open, my PPB pistol at the ready. Maybe it would be one of my friends. Maybe it would be a deranged lunatic, frothing at the mouth. I would face the worst if I had to, but I wouldn’t think about it until then.
The door clicked open and swung inward, revealing a small chamber with bare walls. There was a bathroom area in one corner and a cot against the wall, and little else. In the gloom of the unlit chamber I saw a figure lying still on the cot. I crept forward, using the light on my bracelet to illuminate the form.
It was Steve. He was on his side, wearing the tunic I’d last seen him in. There was a gentle rise and fall of his chest, indicating he was alive, but he did not stir.
I grabbed his shoulder and shook him gently.
Nothing.
Maybe they had sedated him. That was a possibility I hadn’t considered. I gave him another shove, this one much rougher.
Steve darted up, grabbing me under my armpits and lifting me into the air. Still seeming to be asleep, he slammed my back against the wall. Then he paused to blink at me through reptilian eyes. “Oi. It’s you. Took you bloody long enough.”
“Can you put me down?” I gasped. “You’re kind of crushing my rib cage.”
“Sorry, mate,” he said as he set me down. “You startled me.”
“Clearly, they didn’t hurt you,” I said breathlessly. “What about the others?”
“They did somethi
ng to us so our tech trees are shut down, but we’re fine otherwise.” He thought about it for a second. “Tamret’s pretty ticked off.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. But I’m glad she’s okay. She is okay, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, we’re all fine. They haven’t let us sit about and chat, but we’ve seen each other passing in the hall, and I would have been able to smell if there was anything seriously wrong. They left us alone—I mean, other than turning us into regular beings.”
I thought of the lab and what I’d found there. “The powder?”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, they just blew some of that yellow nonsense in my face. I inhaled it without meaning to and I was just switched off, yeah?”
So Villainic had been right. Ardov must have somehow exposed me to the powder when we were fighting, and that’s why my system shut down. The real question was if we could do anything to switch ourselves back on. I still had the blue powder on me, but I couldn’t believe that the answer would be as simple as that. Still, in an emergency, if all else was lost, it was good to have a crazy, last-ditch effort to give me hope.
“What about the others?” I asked.
He nodded. “Same with them. They’re all back to being ordinary.”
I nodded. This was bad news, but if everyone was healthy, then things weren’t as bad as I feared.
“So, what’s the plan, then?” Steve asked. “How do we get out of here?”
“One step at a time. Villainic and I snuck in, and we’re making the rest up as we go along.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t killed him.”
I looked at Steve. “He’s the one doing the killing. Two guards we could have just as easily stunned.”
Steve cocked his head. “That’s surprising.”
“No kidding. He’s darker than I thought.”
Steve let his tongue taste the air “Speaking of dark mammals, Ardov is still around here somewhere, and if he catches wind of you, he’s not going to play nice.”
“Yeah, good point. Let’s get the others and then improvise a way off this planet.”
This was easier said than done, and I knew it. The security apparatus on Planet Pleasant didn’t seem all that interested in keeping out intruders, since the reputation of this place meant no one ever wanted to come here in the first place. The security setup was designed to make sure none of the staff—a bunch of Phandic misfits and freethinkers—didn’t escape with their technology or research. That meant that even though we’d made it this far, there was still a pretty good chance it was going to be a one-way trip, and all I’d done was hand myself over to my enemies.
Steve had no idea who was in which cell, so I opened them in the order I came to them. In the first one I found Alice, who was in the process of sitting up as she heard her door open. She was still in her school uniform, which was now wrinkled, and she’d lost her tie. On the other hand, she was no longer in a coma.
“You’re okay!” I said, rushing into the room. I kept my voice quiet, but I don’t think she had any trouble mistaking my enthusiasm.
She nodded. “Yeah, they fixed me up when I got here. I guess they were able to undo whatever they’d done to me in the first place.” She rubbed at her eyes sleepily. “Zeke, what happened to you? Why did you leave the ship? Where did you go?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I never meant to ditch you guys, but I’ll tell you the rest later.”
She nodded, pushing herself off her cot.
“Alice,” I said. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I didn’t forget that you wanted to stay on Earth, but we couldn’t leave you. You were hurt, and you would have been captured.”
“I know,” she said. “No one thinks you’re running around just doing what you feel like.”
“That seems to be what everyone thinks,” I told her.
“That’s what they say,” she told me. “Not what they think. Look, we’re all frustrated and scared and angry. Everything we do puts us one step back. If Mi Sun or, I guess, someone else vents a little, you need to toughen up. They unload on you because you’re the leader.”
“I thought I was the leader,” Steve said.
“Of course you are.” She patted his arm and turned back to me. “If we were at home and things were normal, we’d be annoyed because our parents were telling us what to do, but we expect our parents to do exactly that, and if they stopped, we’d be terrified.”
“But we’re supposed to all be equal,” I said.
“And we are,” she said, “but when we get into a jam, you usually tell us what to do.”
“I make a suggestion,” I said. “I don’t want to be the leader. I just want to do what we need to do to make sure everyone is safe.”
“Then maybe we should do that instead of standing around and talking about it,” she said.
“Thinking too much just gets you into trouble,” Steve said. “I like to act first and think about it later.”
The next cell we came to contained Dr. Roop, who appeared mildly alarmed that I had broken into the Planet Pleasant facility, but somehow managed to keep himself from lecturing me on being foolish. After that we got Charles, who was just happy that there was a rescue underway.
I opened the next cell, and there was Tamret, sitting on her bunk, like she’d been awake and waiting for something like this to happen. She looked at me and her eyes went wide. I saw her twitch, like she was about to leap up, but then she held still. Her expression became dark. “What happened to you?” she demanded. “How did you get off the ship?”
“I slipped into the escape pod to avoid Ardov and to get a pistol,” I explained. “Once the power came back on, Villainic jettisoned the pod before I could get a clear shot. After that, things got weird. I’ll explain it later.”
“That was good thinking on his part,” Tamret said.
“No, it wasn’t. He panicked. That’s all.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But if he hadn’t, we’d all be locked up, and none of us would ever be getting out of here.”
That was probably true. Come to think of it, Villainic had stumbled into a number of fortunate blunders.
I shoved the notion to the back of my mind as we moved to the last cell, which I assumed held Mi Sun. Tamret, it seemed, was still angry with me. I thought about what Alice had said, but I wasn’t sure it made sense. Tamret was putting up walls, and I had no idea why. I also had no idea how I was going to find out if she would talk to me.
We opened Mi Sun’s cell, and she greeted me more warmly than Tamret had, which was maybe a new low for me. “I hate this place,” she said as she got off her cot and put on her school blazer. “Let’s get out of here.”
It seemed like a good idea to me. The major problem was that I had no idea how we could do that. I decided not to tell her that, because Alice’s words were weighing on me, and I didn’t want to disappoint everyone. On the other hand, I was suddenly struck by the stupidity of this plan. Convex Icosahedron had somehow encouraged me to try to break my way out of a facility specifically designed to prevent anyone from escaping, and I was now starting to feel like maybe I had walked into some kind of a trap.
I couldn’t begin to guess what the purpose of the trap might be. Had Convex Icosahedron been trying to get rid of me? I couldn’t see why. He could just as easily have ignored me. Could he have been working all along to deliver me into the hands of the Phandic Empire? If that were true, though, the Phands would know I was here and I would already be in custody.
I had to conclude that he believed I could get off this planet. That meant there had to be a way to do it. Now it was just a matter of figuring it out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
* * *
We only had two PPB pistols. I pointed mine toward one end of the corridor. Tamret grabbed the gun out of Villainic’s hand and covered the other end. She looked determined and ready for anything, but with limited weapons and no upgrades, we were firmly on last-stand territory here. They’d found us and they were coming for us,
and there was no way the top research facility in the Phandic Empire wasn’t going to be able to handle a few lightly armed runaways.
I tried firing my pistol at the wall. Who knows? I thought. Maybe it would open into a convenient garbage chute. No luck. The wall absorbed the blast harmlessly. I returned to standing ready. Maybe they were going to get us, but I vowed to make it as difficult for them as I could.
Then an orange gas began to waft up from the floor. It smelled like burned plastic and rotten meat. I turned to look at Tamret, but her eyes were already growing heavy. In an instant she slumped to the floor, along with everyone else except Villainic and me.
I didn’t feel anything at all from the gas. I had to assume that they’d treated the prisoners with something to make them react to it so they could deploy the gas without affecting their own people.
For a second I considered pretending to be affected, but I wasn’t sure what that would get me. Mostly it would be a form of passive surrender, and I wasn’t ready to go down that path yet. The guards began pouring in from both sides now, heavily armed, with big PPB weapons, like futuristic shotguns, aimed at us. Villainic’s hands shot up in surrender, but I wasn’t about to give up. I took aim at the first guard.
It turned out, a trained Phandic soldier is a quicker draw than I am.
• • •
Though it may be hard to believe, after all my adventures in space, this was my first experience with being stunned. I didn’t enjoy it. When I came to, I had no recollection of being hit by the blast that took me down, but now I felt stiff and nauseated. My head pounded and my fingers and toes tingled.
I found myself not in a cell, but in a lab. My wrists and ankles were bound with plasma restraints to the oversized chair, no doubt designed with Phands in mind. I could hear someone moving equipment around, rearranging things made out of metal or glass. The footsteps sounded light and graceful. I kept straining my neck to try to see behind me, but I couldn’t get a good look.