The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

relay from the security camera showed two male aides dragging a young girl out of the women's dorm. He recognized her: it was Annica, the not-so-telekinetic blonde with the smeared makeup. She was fighting their grip, but it was no use. Together they dragged her across the hall and into the women's washroom. A third aide sauntered behind them casually, and then stood in the open doorway, arms crossed, on guard.

'Goddammit.' Matt dragged Darak over to the closet. Darak's eyes rolled his way, and he made a feeble attempt to claw Matt's face. Matt rewarded his efforts with a brief but meaningful head butt, then said, 'Pay attention, Darak: I'm about to demonstrate the Flying Foot, which goes a little like this.' He buried his steel-toed Carhartt in Darak's crotch and shoved him into the closet.

'Namaste,' he said, 'you fuckhead.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

'About time,' Dindren hissed as Matt came barreling out of Admin. 'What'd you do in there, take a nap? I think I may have caught hypothermia standing out here in the— Hey, where are you going?'

'Module One,' Matt said. 'Girl needs help.'

'Well, this girl isn't going into any modules,' Dindren panted, struggling to keep up. 'The night shift is here. I'm making for the meditation path. It leads into the amphitheater in the woods, and away from this hellhole. If you have any sense, you'll do the same.'

'Meet you there in three minutes,' Matt said, running up the steps to Module One.

'I doubt it,' Dindren said, his voice rising with a wild elation as he ran for the foggy shadows at the end of the quad, his pink, daisy-print scrubs flapping behind him, 'but thanks anyway. And remember: ask the question, or forever hold your peace!'

# # # # # #

Matt let himself into Module One, forced himself to slow down, and cautiously crossed the entryway to the common room. No aides. The TV was blaring a nasty Adult Swim cartoon, which was being watched by two slack- jawed male residents that Matt had never seen before. The guy who had drawn a maze on the wall earlier was still there, only now he was kneeling in front of it, banging his forehead into the center of the design again and again, making a mewing sound. No sign of the huge Ojibwe with the flame tattoos. On the table he'd been standing on were an empty pizza box and a spilled bottle of meds.

Nice.

Over the blare of the TV Matt heard a muffled shriek, and then another. They came from the hall leading to the women's dorm. He crossed the common room quickly, unnoticed, grabbing the mop Maloria had left behind that afternoon.

A few seconds later he was walking down the dimly lit linoleum corridor he'd seen on the Control Room monitor. As he got closer, he saw that the third aide was still standing in the washroom entryway, but instead of watching the hallway, he had turned inward to check out the action.

'That's it,' he laughed as the girl's shrieks rose in pitch, 'take that shit off.'

Matt came behind him, moving fast. He knew he couldn't waste much time with the lookout, so he restricted himself to kicking him as hard as he could in the side of his knee. The guy went down like a bag of sand. A loud bag of sand.

His yell of pain was lost in the TV's blare as Matt entered the women's bathroom. It had a tiled shower area and five open stalls, one of which had a toilet with a nasty overflow problem. The other two aides had dragged Annica into the communal shower area, under a sputtering spigot. Her torn-off T-shirt lay on the floor. The only things she still had on were a pink sports bra and flannel pajama bottoms, and those were half off. An aide who looked like a plus-size Captain Morgan—complete with piratical goatee and gold earring—had her wrists pinned to the tile wall, while his weaselly pal gripped her raised ankle with one hand while the other pried her pajama pants down to midthigh, revealing star-spangled boy shorts beneath.

She was hysterical. Captain Morgan was alternately shushing her and laughing, and Weasel was saying, 'It's all good, girl, it's all good.' Matt saw that if he took them both on at once, she might get hurt—and he might not do so great, either.

So he didn't attack.

Instead, on impulse, he walked over to the stall with the backed-up toilet and began mopping up floaters. Whistling as he did.

'What . . .' The commotion let up a little. 'Who the—who the fuck is that? See who the fuck that is!'

Matt kept mopping.

'Hey! Hey!'

Matt looked up. Weasel was standing in the stall entryway, his hands on either wall, glaring. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?'

'This.' Matt swung the mop so that a brown arc of crap splattered Weasel square in the face. After a split second of shocked silence, Weasel let out a strangled wail of disbelief and flattened his palms against his eyes. Which was a huge mistake, because it let Matt ram almost the entire mop head into his mouth and drive him across the room and into the hard tile wall with a satisfying ka-thunk.

'Oh, you fucker, it is so on,' yelled Captain Morgan behind him. Matt knew Captain Morgan was shoving the girl aside to charge him. He knew Captain was much bigger than Weasel, and that being wacked with a mop wouldn't mean much to him. So when he jerked the mop head out of Weasel's mouth, Matt made sure to shift his grip, raise the other end high, and bring it down on Weasel's head twice as hard as he really needed to.

With a great crack, the blow KO'd Weasel.

But more important, it split the mop handle.

Hearing Captain's roar behind him, Matt again adjusted his grip, pivoted, and gave a fast thrust—just as Captain crashed into him. The two hit the floor hard; Captain crushed the breath out of Matt, flattening him like a steamroller. Matt's ribs creaked; he groaned, twisted, and rolled the big man off him.

Matt staggered to his feet, gasping for breath, shaky, his chest aching. Whatever he's gonna do next, Matt thought, struggling to stay upright, I'm not ready for it.

But as it turned out, he was. Because Captain's next move was to stare stupidly at the jagged end of the mop handle that pinned his right hand to his chest like a 4-H blue ribbon.

The guy let out an astonished whoop, and then an even louder one, and on and on until pretty soon he sounded like a love-struck gibbon.

'I coulda handled that myself, you know.'

Brushing himself off, Matt turned to face the blonde. She'd pulled her pajama bottoms up and had retrieved the torn wet top, which she clutched to her chest. Her kohl-smeared eyes were wide with fear and defiance.

'Right. Well, I appreciate you letting me have a piece of the action.'

Annica bit her lip. 'I do have psionic powers, you know. I do. I was just about to unleash them.'

Sure, he thought, if by 'psionic power' you mean bladder. But he didn't say it.

'Look,' he said. 'This is no place for you, okay? So I want you to follow me, real close.' And with that, he stepped around the shish kebab that had been the Captain and walked past the flattened Weasel.

'Oh my God, he's got a knife!' the blonde cried.

In the entryway, Matt saw that the lookout was upright again, kneeling on his one good leg, dragging the damaged one behind him. He clutched a butterfly knife in his hand. His face was a mask of pain and fury.

'Stay behind me,' he said to the girl. 'C'mon. Here we go.'

He walked to the entryway. He didn't even slow down when the lookout took a wild swipe: just raised his right boot, and when the knife stuck in the sole, he pinned it and the guy's hand to the floor. Pivoted, and drove the steel toe of his left boot into the lookout's good knee.

The guy's ACL, when it tore, sounded like stomped-on bubble wrap. He immediately flung himself to the floor, wailing and flipping like a holy roller.