Two tall cell blocks were cut into the rock walls, ziggurats of steel and bulletproof glass, five levels in some places, four in others. Each level was a tier of cells, their doors made of glass that in some places was further strengthened by lattices of thick titanium straps.
The facility was obviously still under construction. At the far end of the yawning cavern, cranes and scaffolds festooned a third cell block. Sparks flew from welders’ torches, the engines of huge earthmovers roared, low-built trucks slowly hauled great loads of steel, while an overhead conveyor belt trailed cables carrying funnels full of wet concrete.
Dekka did not want to go down there. She did not want to go down there at all. But when she looked back she saw a startling sight: guards dressed head to toe in bulky flame-retardant suits were advancing, spraying liquid fire ahead of them.
Kill or run? And part of her mind thought, How many times have I faced that choice?
How many lives had she already taken, in the before and in the now? How many was the right number to die for Dekka’s freedom?
She ran down the stairs, her feet slippery on the steps so that she clattered, half sliding, down to the next landing. But her strange morphed body felt pain only distantly, and while this body might be low on endurance it was strong as hell and quick, and Dekka rose instantly. Guards from below rushed up the stairs toward her.
Flamethrowers behind, automatic weapons ahead.
Just how much punishment will this body take?
Dekka gathered herself up, sucked in a deep breath, muttered something that was either a prayer or a curse, and leaped over the railing into the void, fifty feet above the unforgiving packed-earth ground below. As she jumped she spun in midair, raised her hands, howled, and shredded the levels of stairs and catwalks and platforms as she fell, destroying everything below the flamers and everything above the gunmen, cutting each off. The shrapnel fell in a rain of steel, and it would cut and it would bruise, but—Dekka hoped—it would not kill.
She hit the ground. Her legs buckled, her spine was a single long, stabbing pain—yes, it seemed there were limits to her body’s pain tolerance—but she rolled with the impact and lay winded, facedown. She inventoried her body: Her legs could move. Her arms could move. And to her amazement, when she stood up her muscles lifted her effortlessly.
Okay then, that’s great. Now how the hell do I get outta here?
There was an exit door directly below the now-shaky platform, but if she shredded her way through that door she’d likely bring the rest of the catwalk down on her head and kill the men still clinging precariously above. She turned the other direction and ran, ran past parked earthmovers, threaded her way through piled construction supplies, and dodged a truck whose driver saw her and promptly ran his vehicle into the base of the nearest guard tower. Dekka emerged from the construction mess face-to-face with the lowest tier of cells.
She stopped, staring in disbelief. On the other side of the glass was not the narrow jail cell she expected to see, but a room the size of a
double-wide trailer. The sides of the room opened onto still more glass-and-steel barred cells. This facility was far larger than she’d imagined.
How many prisoners is Peaks holding?
But that question was quickly replaced by another one.
What in God’s name is he doing?
The room beyond the glass was dominated by a stainless-steel table bolted to a stainless-steel floor. Beneath that table hung a thicket of wires, blue, green, yellow, and red, and threaded through those wires was a maze of clear plastic tubes pulsing with fluids.
Atop the table were four glass bell jars.
And within each of the bell jars, a head. A human head.
B-r-r-r-r-r-r-t!
The bulletproof glass of the nearest cells starred from the rapid-fire machine gun coming from behind Dekka.
Dekka dropped, turned, and saw a drone flying on four horizontal propellers, zooming toward her, gun blazing.
She turned it to scrap metal in midair, but she could see the guns of the two nearest towers now pivoting toward her.
“Condition Red, Condition Red, this is not a drill,” the loudspeakers blasted.
Red. That’s more like it.
Dekka had begun to learn a valuable lesson: regular people thought of walls as walls, but to Dekka they could be doorways. So could bulletproof glass.
She raised her hands and shredded the glass that came flying off in a shower of crystal shards, whirling around to form a tornado of random-shaped diamonds behind her. She leaped through the hole she’d made and into the chamber beyond, meaning to cut her way right through the far wall and the earth beyond and up into the sunlight.
And then, one of the heads opened its eyes.
“Aaaah!” Dekka yelped.