They navigated past a few more shops, the crowd thinning as they reached the back of the mall, and spotted the elevators. Alisa was relieved when Durant’s hoverboard fit in, even though it left her squished against a side wall. Alejandro held the door, and Gutteridge caught up, though he did not jog or hustle in any way. He didn’t look like a man who hustled often.
His gaze raked indifferently over Alisa as he stepped in and the doors slid shut behind them. Even though he had helped them, Alisa couldn’t help but think that she was now cut off from Leonidas and Abelardus, and that more police could be waiting for them when they stepped out of the elevator. She jumped when Gutteridge hit the stop button on the elevator.
“May I?” He pointed to Durant’s tarp.
“We should go directly to the hospital,” Alejandro said, but waved to the tarp in invitation.
Gutteridge peeled it back to look at Durant’s face. Despite the various tubes Alejandro had used to keep him hydrated and fed, the man appeared gaunter than he had a week ago when they had started the journey from Cleon Moon to Arkadius. Gaunt and pale, especially given that he had dark skin naturally.
“You said a Starseer attacked him?” Gutteridge asked.
“Yes.”
As Gutteridge examined Durant and asked Alejandro professional questions, it occurred to Alisa that Durant could die if the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him and how to bring him out of the coma. And then where would she be? Stuck on a planet where she was now considered a criminal with no leads as to where her daughter was.
Gutteridge draped the tarp back over Durant and tapped his gold, diamond-encrusted earstar. “I’ll comm ahead and have Scan Room Twelve prepared and emptied of personnel. Everything you should need is in there.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Alejandro said.
“Please, Greg.” The man smiled faintly, and Alisa allowed herself to hope that perhaps her suspicions had been wrong, that the man liked Alejandro enough to risk his career to help them.
“Greg,” Alejandro said.
At a touch, the elevator began moving again, and the doors soon opened, back on the street level where women with children were waiting for it. As Alejandro navigated the hoverboard out, a familiar voice spoke into Alisa’s mind.
A small problem, Abelardus said.
What?
Your cyborg has attracted the attention of the police.
Gutteridge stepped up to the curb and waved down an autocab with a cargo area large enough for the hoverboard.
They recognized him? Alisa asked. Can you get away?
Of course we can get away. But it may delay us. We’ll have to catch up with you at the hospital.
The doors on the side of the cab opened, and Alejandro and Gutteridge slid the hoverboard inside, then entered and found seats for themselves.
Alisa hesitated. Do you want me to come down and help?
Alejandro frowned at her and waved for her to get in.
What help could you be? Abelardus asked. Go on to the hospital. We’ll catch up. His tone grew dry. Just stay out of trouble until we do. And take care of my brother.
All right.
Though she had her doubts, Alisa slid into the cab next to Gutteridge. She tried not to think about how she would not have anyone to rely on, at least for however long it took her men to evade the police, except for a stranger and an imperial loyalist who had never liked her.
• • • • •
Gutteridge had the autocab pass the main hospital entrance and take them to a less busy west-tower entrance. That met with Alisa’s approval, but she couldn’t help but feel nervous—and out of place—as they strode up the walkway with Durant on his hoverboard.
Many of the visitors and patients coming and going rode in personal hover chairs or carts, and wore elaborate hairstyles and clothes that seemed more appropriate for a night at a fancy play or opera than a day at the hospital. Nobody slouched along in baggy clothes and sandals. Gutteridge and his ostentatious diamonds did not look out of place, not here. Alisa, on the other hand, drew disapproving frowns.
“Nice part of town, eh?” Alisa muttered to Alejandro as they neared the entrance.
“Yes, and also, most of the surgeries that take place in this end of the hospital are elective.”
Alisa took that to mean body mods and implants, upgrades that insurance wouldn’t cover and which had to be paid for with one’s copious funds. Maybe there would be a cybernetics floor. When Leonidas caught up with them, he could browse the latest and greatest options. Not that he seemed to care about such things. What he wanted involved things being taken away, not added.
A security sensor beeped when Alisa walked through the door, and a uniformed security guard left a booth and walked toward her. Alejandro and Gutteridge continued on, not bothering to see if she needed help. Logically, she applauded the sentiment—better to get Durant into a scanner than get caught with him—but emotionally, she bristled at being abandoned. It was her own fault, though. She shouldn’t have tried to bring weapons into a hospital, even if walking around unarmed had seemed unhealthy. A foolish thought, because now, she had another authority figure perusing her, perhaps remembering that she matched a bulletin that had gone out recently. She hoped hospital security wasn’t on the same loop as the police and military.
“You have a cartridge gun and a stun gun?” the guard asked, eyebrows raised.
Her jacket hid both, but whatever scanner was built into the doorway must have identified them.
“Yes. I came straight from my ship.” Alisa touched her flight jacket, just in case he might be predisposed to be lenient to someone who had fought to topple the empire and put the Alliance in charge. “And my ship came straight from a moon run by the mafia,” she added, putting some dryness into her tone.
“Do you have a permit to carry personal weapons?” the guard asked, not noticeably impressed by her flight jacket. His gaze did linger on her chest.
“No. Is that allowed now?” she asked, curious if civilians could carry weapons in Alliance territories. It certainly hadn’t been legal in the empire.
“With the proper permit. You’ll have to take yours back to your ship if you don’t have one.” The way he stood, blocking her way as other people streamed past, people who hadn’t set off the scanner alarm, made it clear she wouldn’t be going into the hospital with them.
Gutteridge was talking to someone behind the check-in desk. As far as Alisa could tell, he and Alejandro weren’t having any problems thus far. Maybe she should go outside and wait for them to finish or try to meet up with Abelardus and Leonidas. It wasn’t as if she could help read a brain scan, nor did they seem to need a “nurse.” She wondered why Alejandro had even wanted her along. Still, she found herself reluctant to leave Durant, her only link to Jelena. And she didn’t trust Gutteridge. He just didn’t add up. Unless he thought himself too important to get in trouble for assisting fugitives, he shouldn’t be so blasé about smuggling an imperial loyalist into his workplace.
“Are you here for an appointment?” the guard asked. “You can leave them here and pick them up on the way out.”
Alisa hadn’t expected the man to be reasonable and found herself nodding. An appointment, yup. That was what she had. She pulled out the weapons and handed them to the guard, drawing a few startled gazes from visitors walking past. Weapons might be legal now, but they apparently weren’t common. Maybe those permits weren’t easy to come by.
“You’ll have to be searched too,” the guard said, directing her toward his booth.
She walked after him, hiding impatience and irritation—hadn’t his scanner told him precisely what weapons she carried?
Gutteridge was holding a scanpad close for a retina-scan signature while Alejandro frowned over at Alisa and mouthed, “What?”
She shrugged at him.
The guard took her into his booth and proceeded to give her a very familiar pat-down. A lingering one. After the third time he touched her chest,
she couldn’t keep from saying something.
“You grope my boob again, and I’ll show you what I did to imperial pilots during the war,” she growled.
He grunted. “Just checking for weapons, lady.” Then he winked and gave her a blatant squeeze.
Alisa planted her palm against his chest and shoved with enough force that one might have called it a strike. Had Leonidas done it, the man would have gone through the window, but he at least stumbled over a chair behind him.
His eyes narrowed, and he reached for a baton at his waist. Three suns, was she truly starting a fight with hospital security?
“Is there a problem?” Gutteridge asked, leaning into the booth. Alejandro was waiting next to a bank of elevators, tapping his foot impatiently.
The guard’s hands snapped down to his sides. “No, Doctor.”
“I’m ready for my appointment, Doctor,” Alisa told Gutteridge, even though it irked her that he’d had to come over to get her out of trouble. She should have let the idiot grope her. It might have been the highlight of his day.
“Good.”
Gutteridge looked at the desk where the guard had set her weapons and picked both of them up. The guard opened his mouth, but at a stern look, he closed it again.
Alisa hurried to join Alejandro before she got herself into more trouble. As they waited for the elevator, Gutteridge handed her the guns.
“We wouldn’t want you to run around naked,” he said.
As the doors opened, and they walked into an empty car, Alisa tried to decide if that had been some kind of innuendo. She supposed not—just because the guard had liked her chest didn’t mean everyone would—but she found herself wondering why Gutteridge wanted her to have her weapons. If anything, he should be worried by the idea of guns in his hospital.
They rode to the eighteenth floor and walked into a corridor without a desk or foyer. It was much quieter than the ground level, for which Alisa was thankful. She let the men get ahead of her and pulled out her comm unit.
“Mica? Are you home?”
After a moment, the familiar grumpy voice responded, “Where else would I be?”
Jail. A police car. An Alliance brig. A dungeon.
“Are those search drones still combing the city?” Alisa asked. “Has there been any trouble?”
“Beck is forcing the kid and me to help bottle his sauces by candlelight,” Mica said.
“That wasn’t an answer to my questions.”
“No? I thought it answered both perfectly, for the perceptive captain.”
“Who told you I was perceptive? We pilots like things blunt.”
“Maybe that’s why you get along so well with Leonidas.”
“Because he also likes things blunt?”
“Because he makes things blunt. Or dead.”
“That wasn’t that clever of a joke. You might want to work on your cyborg material before we get back.”
“It’s hard to come up with clever material when your fingers are covered with sticky goo.”
“That’s my apple cider barbecue sauce,” Beck said in the background. “And it’s supposed to be in the bottle, not on your fingers. I thought an engineer would be good at this.”
“Is an advanced degree supposed to help with pouring things?” Mica asked.
“Aren’t there some math equations you can do to calculate volume and flow rate?”
“I can calculate how far your head will spin when I smack you. Oh, have to go, Captain. Someone else is comming.”
“I had no idea you were so popular,” Alisa said. She had been about to bow out of that conversation anyway. “Let me know if anything important happens.”
“Like me throttling Beck?” Mica asked.
“Like a search ship landing next to the Nomad. You can wait until I get back to tell me about throttlings.”
“Uh huh.” The comm clicked off as Mica closed the channel, or switched to another one. Who was calling her? Nobody ought to know she was on the planet.
Alisa lowered her comm unit as she followed Alejandro and Gutteridge around a corner. They had passed two nurses, and a woman in a gray janitor’s uniform dumping laundry into a chute, but so far, nobody had stopped the group.
Alisa kept expecting the men to turn into a room, but they came to the end of a corridor and entered a stairwell, heading down. The hoverboard clanked against the railings as Alejandro struggled to maneuver it in the tight space. They descended four levels, then headed into a corridor that led away from the tower and into the main hospital. Alisa began to suspect that Gutteridge had chosen the entrance that would be easiest for him to get visitors in through rather than the one closest to their exam room. She looked for exit signs as they walked, starting to get uneasy about how far they were from where they had come in. If they had to leave in a hurry, she did not want to have to navigate that hoverboard through miles of passages.
They passed a yellow and red band on the walls and ceiling, along with a sign marked, Authorized Personnel Only, and Alisa decided it would be a good time to comm Leonidas. She hadn’t heard from Abelardus since leaving the mall and assumed she was outside of his telepathic range now.
A few long seconds passed without Leonidas answering, and Alisa frowned at her comm. He and Abelardus weren’t on the run from the law, were they?
After a few more seconds, he finally answered. “Leonidas.”
“Did you get out of trouble?” Alisa asked quietly. A security guard had turned a corner and was walking toward them.
“Trouble?”
“Abelardus said you’d attracted attention.”
“He said I had? He was the one being obnoxious to a policewoman who asked to see a permit for his staff.”
“Ah. So you haven’t been recognized?”
Leonidas hesitated. “She gave me a suspicious look and started running a scan. Abelardus did something, and we were able to walk away without anyone chasing after us, but it’s possible the police know I’m in the city now. Because of Abelardus’s staff.”
“I can’t help how remarkable my staff is,” Abelardus said.
“You could have left it in the ship, as I did my armor.”
“That would have been very uncomfortable,” Abelardus said, that grating smirk coming through in his voice.
“We’re at the hospital now,” Leonidas said. “I looked up the public blueprints for the building, and am mulling over an entrance and exit strategy. I told Mica I may need her advice eventually.”
“Ah, are you the one who commed her?”
“A couple of minutes ago? Yes. Where are you now or where will you be?”
Alisa thought to ask Gutteridge, but the security guard had slowed him with a hand out and was pointing at the hoverboard. They ought to replace that with one of the ubiquitous hover gurneys in the hospital. Durant looked like cargo on the move, rather than a patient.
“Scan Room Twelve.” That had been what Gutteridge had said, hadn’t it been? “Do you think you can find a way in? Discreetly?” Alisa kept her voice low—the security guard was looking in her direction.
“It’ll depend on Abelardus’s staff,” Leonidas grumbled. “If my idea doesn’t pan out, we’ll wait outside, and you can comm if you need help.”
“And you’ll charge the compound?”
“If needed.”
“I’ll let you know.” Alisa closed the comm, hoping that charging wouldn’t be necessary.
The security guard was frowning, but he eventually nodded and continued past Gutteridge and Alejandro. His frown deepened as he considered her. She had returned her weapons to their holsters, so they shouldn’t be blatant, but an attentive observer might notice the bulges. The guard did not speak to her. After his frown, he strode past, eventually disappearing around a corridor.
Gutteridge waved a hand at a security pad, and an unremarkable door unlocked and opened. The hoverboard clunked against the jamb, too wide to get through.
“Captain,” Alejandro said, waving her over.
>
“Oh, this is the reason you brought me? To help lift things?” More specifically, to help lift Durant. They could have tilted the hoverboard, but she didn’t think Durant was strapped that securely to it.
“You are the nurse,” he said.
Gutteridge walked inside, and lights came on. Apparently, he wasn’t going to help with the lifting. Alisa glimpsed a room full of daunting equipment as she and Alejandro removed the tarp and maneuvered Durant off the hoverboard. He wasn’t as heavily muscled as Abelardus, but he was tall enough that he made an awkward load. She grabbed his legs while Alejandro gripped him under the armpits, and they carried him to a contoured table in the center of the room. Probes and scanners and equipment Alisa could not name loomed all around the headrest, making it look like a high-tech torture chamber to her eye.
“Hide the hoverboard,” Alejandro said, moving to the equipment on one side of the table as soon as they had laid Durant down.
Gutteridge stepped up to a computer near the wall and pulled up a holo interface.
Alisa deactivated the hoverboard, tipped it on its side, and brought it into the room. She felt more like a lackey than a nurse. After a glance into the corridor, she started to close the door, but paused, the plaque on the wall next to it catching her eye. It read: Observation and Scanning Room 3.
Uh, that wasn’t what Gutteridge had called it when he had been on the comm. Did the hospital staff have another set of names for the various rooms? Or had he changed his mind about which one to take them to?
His back was to her as he murmured commands to the computer, occasionally swiping or pushing a holo button.
The room dimmed, and two red beams shot out of the machinery to scan either side of Durant’s head. Or rather, inside of his head, Alisa supposed. A large three-dimensional display appeared above him, an image of his brain projected into the air. At first, it was merely gray matter, but then colors came into play, highlighting different areas of the brain. Or perhaps the injured or anomalous areas of the brain.
“Interesting,” Alejandro said.