sounded uncertain.
“They have emergency back-ups. And there’s redundancy built in—” My eyes widened, and I turned to look back at the controls. “Someone’s shut down the water condensers.”
“But it’s not a nuclear reactor. They don’t need anything cooled.”
“No, but that will build up a surplus of steam. Rather like an old style water heater blowing. Surprisingly destructive. But that wouldn’t be much more than an inconvenience, would it?”
“Has the lava venting been shut down? Because if enough pressure builds up...”
“Meaning?”
“Keepers’ Island Hospital is located on the side of Terra’s most active volcano.”
“What are you thinking? That Zaladin is trying to make the volcano erupt? That would never—” I paused. “Huh.”
“Told you.”
“He’ll need to place more explosives than this. Can you pull up a schematic for the lower levels?”
“Of course.”
“Volcanoes,” I muttered to myself. It was like a bad joke.
The main lava chamber was deep underground, and truth be told, I didn’t really know exactly how the Sarcodinay had managed to build the tunnels so the lava wouldn’t harden and stick to the sides like too much hair down a shower drain. The large channel emptied into a giant chamber that had big horizontal blast doors that could open and close to control the heat, and big empty areas where the lava could overflow in safety if it felt like doing that. Overhanging all that were a thousand pipes full of water heated to boiling and then carried back to where the steam generators were waiting. Over that was a lattice of catwalks for maintenance, and also because some Sarcodinay architect had clearly been unable to resist to sentimental allure of making all that lava extra-easy to fall into. A matter of conservation, I suppose: any repairs in here would be done by remote drone, and robots are not notoriously prone to clumsy spills. If humans or Sarcodinay were the ones expected to make these repairs, there would be safety railings.
I spent a few minutes studying the room, not moving and barely breathing. The air stank fetid of sulfur, and was likely laced with a lot of nastiness human lungs—or hybrid half-Sarcodinay/half-human lungs—were never meant to process. It was hard not to cough. The temperature was cooler than I expected, and I couldn’t see any lava: the blast doors were closed, leaving the overflow chamber warm, rather than scalding. Still, the hairline crack where the blast doors joined was beginning to glow red: lava was coming into the chamber below but not being allowed to leave. It was just a matter of time before physics forced the issue.
“I don’t believe it will cause a cataclysmic eruption,” Medusa said. “It will destroy this section of the island, but unless there’s some factor I am not considering, there would be time to evacuate everyone.”
“And if Maia-Leia Shana won’t leave?”
“Perhaps, but do you really think he’s going to let her decide herself whether she lives or dies?”
I frowned. “Good point.”
I found the next set of explosives on one of the ladders leading down to the blast door level, where the heat from lava overflow would do a better job of setting it off than any timer. Probably rigged to set all of them off at that point. I deactivated the bomb, added it to my growing collection, and began climbing back up to the catwalk.
I was halfway there when I paused.
Medusa said nothing, but her link vibrated. The vibration was a signal we’d worked out years ago, any time she needed to tell me something where someone might overhear.
But I didn’t need Medusa to tell me I wasn’t alone: I could feel him, up on the catwalk. I could hear his soft steps on the metal grating.
I tried to still my breathing, my heartbeat, and my mind, to give him nothing with which to locate me if, by some miracle, he was unaware of my presence. I climbed slowly.
The footsteps on the catwalk, which had paused, resumed. They echoed slightly, but still recognizably came from the side, then above me, then walking past me.
I reached out, grabbed an ankle, pulled hard.
The High Guard managed to grab on to the edge of the catwalk as he fell, but it was an ungainly recovery. He hurt his arm grabbing for the edge.
It wasn’t Zaladin. This man was too tall and heavy to ever pass for human. This was the High Guard who had been assigned to Maia-Leia Shana. I could guess well enough what he was doing here: an explosive charge fell from the large satchel on his arm as he swung crazily. Unfortunately, I could hardly pat him on the shoulder and explain it was all a misunderstanding since I was more than a little certain he wasn’t supposed to be blowing up Keepers’ Hospital and he wasn’t supposed to leave any witnesses that would contradict his alibi.
He was in no good position to use either his height or strength advantages. I lashed him in the head with double snap kicks that almost made him let go of the bars. He grunted in pain and tried to train a vambrace on me.
I think I could have taken him, High Guard or not. He was fighting from too large a disadvantage. I was ready for it. He wasn’t. That’s usually enough to decide the issue.
But I’ll never know. As I laced a leg through the ladder bars so I could free my web gloves to block the maser shot, the High Guard spasmed and his head whipped backwards in a spray of gore. The bullet wound to the head was well placed, and fatal.
His hands let go of the steel catwalk, giving me just enough time to reach out and grab the satchel before he plummeted to the metal blast doors below us. I could hear the sizzle as the Sarcodinay’s flesh hit the red hot metal that was already starting to deform. Soon lava would be entering this room too.
“Three o’clock. End of the catwalk.”
I looked, and saw a man standing there, using the wall of the entrance for a brace. He looked human enough, dressed in the drab gray of a maintenance worker. His skin was tan and his hair shiny black and his eyes were not blue this time but brown. He looked slightly different from the man who had trained me at Kaimer, but only slightly.
He hadn’t changed so much I couldn’t recognize him by the sound of his breathing.
The sniper rifle he had trained on me looked as human-built as he did, but I had plenty of reason to suspect otherwise on both counts.
“Climb on up, Lory,” Zaladin shouted. “You don’t have anywhere you can run.” His voice echoed off the sides of the room, giving it depth and vibrato.
The voice confirmed my conviction. “Hey Zach. Long time, no see.”
“Ten years,” he agreed. I couldn’t see most of his face, hidden behind the sight of the rifle. “Climb up to the catwalk.”
“If I do, will you promise not to shoot me? Otherwise I might as well stay here. It will be quick when the explosives open up a hole in the rift.”
The end of the rifle rose, for just a second. “Explosives?”
“You don’t know?” I glanced down at the dead High Guard. “Who was this one working for? I thought he was working with you, but you wouldn’t have topped him if that was the case. Or have you just missed me that much?”
“Climb up to the catwalk, Lory. I’m not going to shoot you.”
I sighed, and did as he ordered. If Szabo’s files were right, Zach wasn’t going to miss me just because I was tucked a little ways down a ladder, and his rifle wouldn’t use ammunition I could block with the web gloves.
Zach still had the rifle trained on me when stood up on the catwalk. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes, as he looked me up and down, held an expression I’d never seen before—uncertainty. The corner of his mouth twitched up in a half-smile. Then he raised the rifle from across the room and said, “That’s quite an outfit. You look all grown up.”
“Yes, it happens to half-human hybrids.” I couldn’t quite keep the snap from my voice.
He winced. “Maia-Leia Shana told you.”
“I figured it out on my own first, although I didn’t want to believe it. She just confirmed some information... Zaladin. It is Zaladin, isn’t it??
?? I took a step towards him. Just one. No threat there, right? There was a breeze on that catwalk—from all the heated air whipped around in the cavernous room. It made me a little uncomfortable, standing all alone on the grating with no handholds and that ugly drop under my feet.
His expression was resigned and weary. “It is.”
“You lied to me.”
“And I am sorry for that. It was not my decision.”
“It wasn’t? You told me that the Kaimer School was going to make me fight Paul. But I think they had plenty of reasons to want to keep Paul with me, and alive.” I walked a little closer.
“Oh. That.” The High Guard chewed on his lower lip. All of his gestures and mannerisms were so very human. I had to keep reminding myself of just who and what he was. “That wasn’t a lie.”
“How do you figure?”
He shrugged. “Sooner or later, Tirris Vahn would have decided that you were too unpredictable and uncontrollable. When that happened, she would have ordered Paul to kill you, and he would have tried. I know that you don’t want to believe that, but—”
“I know about the sleepers, Zach.”
“Do you?” His voice was as taut as his expression.
“You did train me, you know. Damn it, you should have told me—”
“I had my reasons.”
“And what about Gabriel? When were you going to tell me I have a brother?”
He shrugged. “Never. It was safer for both of you. I don’t recommend you go looking for him.”
“Why not? Is he involved in this?”
Zach smiled.