weight of the other supervisory nurse quickening his fall.
Gerald yelled in pain as he landed on his elbow, only to be smothered below the bulk of the other nurse. When he raised his head the lounge door was five metres away. So close!
“Let me go,” he begged. “She’s my daughter. I have to save her.”
“Shut up you prize pillock,” Jansen grunted.
“Now that’s not nice.”
Jansen spun around to see the redheaded woman standing behind him. “Er . . . I. Yes.” Shame was making his face became uncomfortably warm. It also seemed to be enervating his neural nanonics display. “I’m sorry, it was unprofessional. He’s just so annoying.”
“You should try being married to him for twenty years.”
Jansen’s face registered polite incomprehension. The woman wasn’t an inmate. She was wearing a smart blue dress, civilian clothing. But he didn’t remember her on the staff.
She smiled briskly, grabbed hold of the front of his tunic, and threw him six metres clean through the air. Jansen’s scream was more of shock than of pain. Until he hit the ground. That impact was pure agony, and his neural nanonics had shut down, allowing every volt of pain to flow cleanly through his nerves.
The other nurse who was still wrapped around Gerald managed to get out one dull grunt of surprise before the woman hit him. Her fist shattered his jaw, sending a spurt of blood splashing across Gerald’s hair.
By that time one of the other sanatorium staff in the lounge had enough presence of mind to datavise an alarm code at the room’s net processor. Sirens started wailing. A grid of metal bars started to slide up out of the floor, sealing off the open balcony doors.
Three burly nurses were closing on the red-haired woman as Gerald blinked up at her in amazement. She winked at him and raised an arm high, finger pointing to the ceiling. A bracelet of white fire ignited around her wrist.
“It’s a fucking possessed.”
“Back! Get back!”
“Where the hell did she come from?”
“Go for it, babe,” one of the inmates roared jubilantly.
A rosette of white fire exploded from her hand, dissolving into a hundred tiny spheres almost as soon as it appeared. They smashed into the ceiling and walls and furniture. Sparks cascaded down as small plumes of black smoke squirted out. Flames began to take hold. Fire alarms added their clamour to the initial alert. Then the lights went out and the alarms were silenced.
“Come on, Gerald,” the woman said. She pulled him to his feet.
“No,” he squeaked in terror. “You’re one of them. Let me go, please. I can’t be one of you again. I can’t take that again. Please, my daughter.”
“Shut up, and get a move on. We’re going to find Marie.”
Gerald gaped at her. “What do you know of her?”
“That she needs you, very badly. Now come on!”
“You know?” he snivelled. “How can you know?”
“Come on.” She tugged at him as she started towards the lounge door. It was as if the grapple arm of a heavy-load cargo mechanoid had attached itself to him.
The steward raised his head above the bar to see what was happening. Various inmates and staff had dived for cover behind the furniture. The terrifying possessed woman was striding purposefully for the door, hauling a cowering Skibbow along. He datavised a codelock order at the door, then opened an emergency channel to the net processor. It didn’t respond. His hand curled around the nervejam stick, ready to—
“Hey you!” called the woman.
A streamer of white fire smacked straight into his forehead.
“Naughty,” she said grimly.
Gerald gibbered quietly as the steward slumped forwards, smoke rising from the shallow crater in his temple. “Oh, dear God, what are you?”
“Don’t blow it for me now, Gerald.” She stood in front of the door. The room’s air rushed past her, ruffling her long copper tresses. Then the air flow reversed, turning to a howling hurricane with a solid core. It smashed into the door, buckling the reinforced composite.
She stepped through the gap, pulling Gerald after her. “Now we run,” she told him happily.
As the sanatorium was operated by the Royal Navy the guards were armed. It didn’t make any difference, they weren’t front-line combat troops. Whenever one of them got near to Gerald and the woman she would use her white fire to devastating effect. The asteroid’s internal security centre could trace her position purely because of the wave of destruction she generated around herself. All electronics and power circuits were ruptured by flares of white fire, doors were simply ripped apart, environmental ducts were battered and split, mechanoids reduced to slag. She did it automatically, a defensive manoeuvre burning clean any conceivable threat in front of her. Crude but effective.
The asteroid went to an immediate status two defence alert. Royal Marines were rushed from their barracks to the sanatorium.
But as with all asteroid settlements, everything was packed close together, and made as compact as possible. It took the woman and Gerald ninety seconds to get from the lounge to the sanatorium’s nearest entrance. Sensors and cameras in the public hall caught her emerging from the splintered door. Terrified pedestrians sprinted from the vicious tendrils of white fire she unleashed; it was almost as though she were using them as whips to drive people away from her. Then the images vanished as she hammered at the net processors and sensors.
The Royal Marine commander coordinating the emergency at least had the presence of mind to shut down the lifts around the hall. If she wanted out, she’d have to walk. And when she did, she’d run smack into the marines now deploying in a pincer movement around her.
Both squads were edging cautiously down the public hall, hurrying civilians out of the way. They approached the sanatorium’s wrecked entrance from opposite directions, chemical projectile rifles held ready, electronic warfare blocks alert for any sign of the distortion pattern given off by a possessed. When they came into view of each other they froze, covering the length of the hall with their rifles. No one was left between them.
The squad captain of one side shouldered his weapon. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“I knew they’d stop the lifts,” the redhead said in satisfaction. “Standard tactics for dealing with the possessed is to block all nearby transport systems to prevent us from spreading. Bloody good job they were on the ball today.”
Gerald agreed, but didn’t say anything. He was concentrating on the rungs in front of his face, not daring to look down.
The possessed woman might have smashed open all the doors in the medical facility, but once they were out in the hall she had stood in front of the lift doors and made a parting motion with her hands. The lift doors had obeyed, sliding open silently. After that they had started to climb down the ladder set in the wall of the shaft. There wasn’t much light to see where he was putting his hands and feet, just some sort of bluish radiance coming from the woman above him. Gerald didn’t want to see how she was making it.
It was cold in the shaft, the air tasting both wet and metallic. And silent, too, the darkness above and below swallowing all sounds. Every minute or so he could just make out another door in the shaft wall; the buzz of conversation and tiny slivers of light oozing around the seals.
“Careful,” she said. “You’re near the bottom now. Ten more rungs.”
The light increased, and he risked a glance down. A metal grid slicked with condensation glinted dully at the foot of the ladder. Gerald stood on it, shivering slightly and rubbing his arms. Mechanical clunks started to rumble down from above.
The possessed woman jumped nimbly past the last two rungs and gave him an enthusiastic smile. “Stand still,” she said, and put her hands on either side of his head, spreading her fingers over his ears.
Gerald quivered at her touch. Her hands were starting to glow. This was it. The start of the pain. Soon he
