Brain Plague

you doing here?' His eyes sputtered blue fire.

'The blue angels,' called Jonquil. 'What's wrong?'

'We've done nothing wrong,' assured Aster.

Zircon watched curiously. 'How do you guys do that with your eyes?'

Chrys lifted her chin at Daeren. 'What are you doing here?'

'It's my job,' Daeren snapped. 'Chrys, with all that arsenic in your veins, how much do you think your life's worth?'

Zircon put his arm around her. 'It's okay, Day, she's with me.'

'Just get home,' insisted Daeren. 'I'll see you to the tube.'

Her jaw tensed, and she clenched her fists. 'Zirc, you go in,' she muttered. 'I'll join you in a minute.' She headed for the door, Daeren following. Outside, she turned on him. 'You listen to me, Lord Vampire. You have no business bothering me and my friends.'

'Chrys, the black market's tight right now. They're starving for—'

'Then what in hell are you doing? I know a slave when I see one. I'm turning you in.' She looked him up and down, figuring, she could drag him to the tube herself.

'I'm trained. I rescue them.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'You rescue slaves?'

'If they have enough will left to turn themselves in, they have a chance.'

From behind the nightclub emerged a worm-faced medic. Chrys remembered Andra in the hospital, hauling some half-crazed victim to the clinic. 'But I saw you share a transfer.'

He hesitated. 'I save a few 'people,' too.'

She blinked. 'Excuse me?'

'Defectors from the masters. They want a better life.'

'Microbial defectors? Like, tuberculosis that says it's sorry?' She rolled her eyes. 'Saints and angels.'

'Day!' A hoarse voice called from the door. It was the other customer. His eyes were wide, his face lined with pain.

Daeren exchanged a look with the medic. Then he took a step. 'Is that you, Ahd?' He spoke in a low, casual tone. 'You coming with us?'

The man tried to speak, but it turned into a gasp. His head rolled in a circle, as if trying to look, but he could not face Daeren's eyes. His sick brain must be crowded with half-starved micros.

'The masters of Endless Light,' Aster called them. 'The blue angels never let even Fern speak to them.' Chrys watched as if frozen.

Daeren took another step toward the slave. 'Can you recall the rest of your name, Ahd? Another syllable?'

'Ahd-Adam—' His eyes turned in circles. Then he gasped all at once, 'Adamantine.'

'Very good, Adamantine.' Daeren had moved to just within arm's reach. 'Now you just give me that transfer, and I'll give you something to calm down the rest.'

Adamantine put a patch at his neck, then tried to offer it, but something went wrong. His arm shot out, losing the patch, and his fist caught Daeren full in the face. It all happened so fast, then the tortured man had turned half around, his head in his hands. Daeren stood and wiped the blood from his lip. 'It's all right, Adamantine. Try again.'

The man raised himself slowly, though his eyes still circled wide.

'The transfer patch,' flashed Aster. 'It's there on the ground.'

'All those people—'

Chrys closed her eyes. 'Stay dark.' She reopened her eyes slowly.

Adamantine was still standing, his face contorted with pain. Daeren held out to him a wafer of green, different from the usual blue ones. 'This will put them to sleep.'

Breathing heavily, the man put out his hand and at last took the wafer. He swallowed it. For a minute or two, he stood there. Then he straightened, and his eyes met Daeren's for the first time.

'It won't last,' Daeren quickly warned. 'And if you go back, it won't work again. You have about five minutes to accept treatment. In treatment you'll go through hell, then spend the rest of your life recovering.'

'I accept. . . treatment.'

The worm-face moved in. 'He's pretty far gone, Daeren. He can't reach the clinic too soon.' The tendrils lengthened to insinuate themselves around the slave. The three of them hurried off toward the tube, leaving Chrys alone.

'The transfer,' reminded Aster. 'It's still there.'

'Forsaken by the gods,' added Jonquil. 'They can't last long.'

Chrys shook herself and turned toward the door, her mind still reeling.

'The people! They are dying!'

'Someone do something. Someone has to pick them up.'

Chrys blinked hard at the frantic messages. 'They're masters. Let them die.' Stray cats were one thing, stray plague was quite another.

'They're defectors,' pleaded Aster. 'They tried to escape.'

'They begged for rescue,' added Jonquil. 'They brought all their children.'

'Their children can't last long.'

'You are the God of Mercy. You will rescue them.'

At the door Chrys stopped. 'You're raving. I'd end up a slave.'

'We'll bind them with dendrimers, like the viruses and parasites we purge from your blood. We'll keep our world safe.'

'Nonsense,' Chrys insisted. 'When I'm tested, the gods will find out and exterminate you all.'

'The Lord of Light himself saves defectors.'

'He left those,' said Chrys.

'That's why you must save them.'

'God of Mercy.'

'Don't let them die in agony. Don't make us mourn their horrible deaths.'

Chrys felt her heart pounding so fast it would burst. She felt trapped. If she left all those 'people,' how could she command the respect of her own?

If anything went wrong, she told herself, the nanos would detect it and call Plan Ten. If they didn't, she could hit the purple button and face Chief Andra with her foolishness. Slowly she turned and her eye found the patch lying still in the street. She bent at the knees and picked up the patch, warily as if it were a snake, thinking, this was certainly the stupidest thing she had ever done.

TEN

The rescued defectors were thin, their skin puckered in with dehydration. Their colors were pale, barely distinguishable from white, their filaments sparse, deficient in vitamins, and they tasted as if they never bathed.

'Let us go,' they pleaded, ensnared by the dendrimers. 'We mean no harm. We'll work hard. We escaped to live in freedom.'

Aster could barely make out what they flashed, their language was so foreign. But she sent for food and medicines and built secure housing, the dendrimers twining around the columns of arachnoid. 'What do you think of them, Jonquil?' The blue angels had never let masters speak to Eleutherians, but there were ancient