Odd Girl Out

me with polyp colonies and turn us into two more of his puppets. It was a possibility that held a special horror for Bayta, one she would gladly and unhesitatingly give up her life to avoid.

When Braithewick had threatened torture, I'd hoped that the far more terrifying scenario had somehow passed him by. But I saw now that the torture gambit had been merely a game, a psychological ploy to progressively raise the stakes of noncooperation.

And with a supply of coral already aboard the train, this new threat was anything but idle. If I didn't give him the Abomination, Bayta could be part of the Modhri within the hour. Probably we both would.

There was just one small problem. The Abomination really wasn't aboard the Quadrail.

I was searching desperately for something else to do or say when, behind the line of walkers directing their cold Modhran stares at me, I saw something that made my breath catch in my throat. A shadowy figure was flitting between the stacks of crates, moving in the direction of the forward door.

Rebekah was out of her crate, and making a break for it.

'Turning her into a walker won't do you any good,' I warned Braithewick, raising my voice a bit to try to cover up any noise Rebekah might make. 'I already told you the Abomination's not here.'

'Then where is it?' Braithewick demanded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the lump of coral the Halka in the other baggage car had tried to throw at me. 'Tell me. Now.'

I braced myself. If the Modhri had been angry before, this was going to make him furious. 'The fact of the matter is—'

'Bayta!' Rebekah's voice called from somewhere behind the walkers. 'Bayta— catch!'

The Modhri sprang into instant action, half the walkers turning toward the sound of Rebekah's voice, the other half surging toward Bayta, their eyes angled upward to spot and intercept whatever it was Rebekah was preparing to throw. At my sides, my two Jurian guards each put a hand on my shoulder, pressing me to the floor to prevent me from leaping to my feet and taking advantage of whatever the situation was that was about to unfold.

And as everyone looked and moved in all the wrong directions, an object came sliding across the floor, neatly passing through the gauntlet of shuffling feet, and came to a halt right in front of me.

It was my kwi.

The walkers jerked to a halt as one of their number spotted it, the whole bunch swiveling back toward me as my two guards dived simultaneously for the weapon.

But they were already too late. I scooped up the kwi, feeling the familiar activation tingle against my hand as I turned it upward and fired at the guard on my right.

I hadn't had time to check what setting the kwi was on, but from the violent shudder that arced through the walker's body as he tumbled uncontrollably to the floor across my leg it was clear that Rebekah had put the weapon on its highest pain setting. I fired twice more as I got the kwi into proper position on my hand, peripherally aware that all the walkers were shaking and twitching with the shared pain I was pumping into the group mind.

I fired a fourth time as I shoved the Juri off my leg and surged to my feet. I was barely vertical before I had to duck to the side to avoid a Halka who had managed to keep enough control of his body to throw himself at me. He slammed face-first into the stack of crates I'd been seated against, sending another ripple of pain through the mind. I fired one last jolt on the pain setting, then switched the kwi to its full knockout setting.

It was, to use the old phrase, like shooting ducks on the water. The walkers tried desperately to scatter, but the pain throbbing through their individual nervous systems had reduced their muscles to twitching jelly and their escape efforts into something halfway between laughable and pathetic. I strode among them, sending them one by one off to dreamland, occasionally shifting back to pain setting just to make sure those still conscious wouldn't recover enough to mount some kind of counterattack.

Three minutes later, it was all over.

Bayta was still standing by the crate stack where I'd left her, her face tight, her right wrist cradled in her left hand. 'You all right?' I asked her, nudging back her fingers so I could get a look at her wrist.

'Mostly,' she said, wincing. 'I think it might be broken.'

'Looks more like just a sprain,' I said, gently touching the swelling skin. 'We'll try to find someone to look at it in the next few hours.'

Abruptly, she stiffened. 'Frank, there are more first-class passengers coming this way,' she said tightly.

'Interesting,' I said, handing her wrist back into her care again. 'I think that's the first time the Modhri's bothered to keep any of his walkers in reserve. I guess he can learn.'

'Never mind whether or not he can learn,' Bayta bit out. 'What are we going to do?'

'Don't worry, we're covered,' I assured her, hefting the kwi. 'Speaking of which.' I turned around. 'Rebekah? You can come out now.'

There was a pause, followed by a slight shuffling noise as Rebekah peered cautiously from around one of the stacks. 'He's down?'

'Down and out, and going to stay that way for quite a while,' I confirmed.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she came over to us. 'Thank you,' she murmured.

'Thank you,' I countered. 'How'd you find our kwi, anyway?'

'It was in his pocket,' she said, pointing to the first Juri I'd clobbered in the Modhri's initial surge through the vestibule.

'How did you know he had it?' Bayta asked.

'I didn't,' Rebekah said. 'I'd already searched the ones you knocked out just before they caught you.' She shivered. 'I'm just glad it wasn't on one of the ones still standing.'

'That would have been a little tricky,' I agreed. 'Meanwhile, Bayta says there are more walkers on the way, which means it's time to think about blowing this pop stand. Any word on when that might be?'

'Five minutes,' Rebekah said. 'There's a crosshatch just ahead.'

'A crosshatch?' Bayta echoed, frowning.

'A section of spiral-laid tracks that allow a Quadrail to quickly switch from one track to another,' I explained.

'Yes, I know what it is,' Bayta said, a little tartly. 'What do they have to do with anything?'

'Because we need the tender that's currently on Track Fifteen to come over to our track so it can pick us up,' I told her. 'The tender that's been paralleling us for the past two days, by the way.'

Bayta's eyes flicked back toward the rear of the train with sudden understanding. 'You put Rebekah's coral aboard a tender?'

'Specifically, the tender the Spiders had on tap when you got snatched at Jurskala,' I said. 'This way we could keep it close enough for the Modhri to sense it and think it was aboard the train, but at the same time keep it completely and permanently out of his reach.'

'Yes,' Bayta murmured, staring off into space. 'Yes, I can sense the Spiders aboard now.' She focused on me again. 'There is still one problem, though.'

'Actually, it's covered,' I said. 'Three stacks back from the front along the left-hand wall is a crate with three oxygen masks and tanks in it.'

'That'll only solve the first part of the problem,' Bayta cautioned.

'Trust me,' I soothed. 'You and Rebekah head to the rear door while I get the oxygen masks. As soon as I've done that—whoa,' I interrupted myself. 'What have we here?'

One of the Jurian walkers, the first one I'd stunned a few minutes ago, was moving. Not very much, more like a person shifting around in a dream than someone clearing the decks for action.

But with a six-hour kwi jolt in him, he shouldn't have been moving at all.

'Something's wrong,' Bayta murmured.

'Agreed,' I said. I double-checked the setting and shot the walker again, and the dream-like movements stopped.

But for how long? 'Maybe it's losing its effectiveness,' I said, peering at the kwi. 'It