But this garage Fejak had led her to? Mechanisms, artifacts or humans suspected of chaos infection were usually taken directly to the analysis and decontamination chamber via the garages, but a secret door would enable Jools’s complement to take contraband directly to an undisclosed lab or storage.
In fact, Jools’s group were probably sent out of the garage before the wagons’ large boxes of chaos mechanisms were moved through the tunnel. Whatever mindlocking had been used on Jools was far more powerful than Terese’s solution. Her spray lasted only three hours per dose, but Jools had been mindlocked by something lasting at least five days on her complement’s excursions. She’d not heard of any artifact or concoction that lasted so long, though her imagination supplied endless, terrifying possibilities.
Terese handed Fejak gloves from her satchel. It always paid to beware of leaving prints. He crept to the row of lockers against the back wall. He struggled with a release lever; as if he’d not used it before. Curious. If the GarageMaster wasn’t permitted to open this passage when he wanted, who could? After a click, the lockers swung out. A corridor and stairs descended to a depth just above Swallowing level, the point at which Polis Sumad would detect human activity; below that level He’d Swallow whatever He found.
Fejak led her down the stairway, pulling the secret access closed behind them. She would have liked to speak with the older man, if only to create some semblance of normalcy, but unnecessary conversation could rouse the subject from her control. Also, he might recall flickers of their exchanges upon waking.
The green, infrared sight that had illuminated their journey suddenly dimmed and shuddered. Terese banged her palm against the helmet. Her lenses darkened even more. She suppressed a curse. All the effort of laying a fake paper trail to ‘steal’ a full new set of Sumadan Head plate, and the helmet broke in its first hour of use! Of course. At least, all the paperwork she had filed in other Heads’ names couldn’t be traced to her. She removed the helmet.
From the corridor’s distance and direction, she guessed they were beneath the central admin building. They reached a thick door of worked iron, with keyholes like those in the garage door. Fejak paused, pursing his lips in concentration. After some moments, he entered the access code and pushed a hidden latch near the door’s hinge. Once through, Terese noticed copper wires leading from the doorframe into the baked earthen walls. That wiring would have sounded an alarm, had Fejak not pushed the hidden latch.
A shudder rippled through her. Had she not told Fejak to avoid detection, he’d have likely deliberately tripped the alarm so their intrusion was discovered. Two and a half hours remained before Fejak was due his next dose of memory and behavior solution. She prayed they’d be long gone by then. If she delivered it now, he’d become sick and disoriented. No more than three doses could be administered in succession, lest the subject be brought to the verge of a stroke or heart attack.
The texture of the walls below the fortress was familiar. Baked clay and earth, somehow hardened into angular contours, supporting the chapterhouse above. The walls of the Immersion Chamber had looked just like this.
They were in a corridor with an internal door leading further inward. The large metal boxes, used to transport the mechanisms, had been taken from the wagons and lay to the side, next to a shelf of shockpoles.
A dark tingle drew Terese toward the metal boxes, which were wider and taller than a man. These boxes had transported the dark mechanisms from the wastes. She ran her fingers over the lids’ surfaces. A tremor of chaos energy lingered on them, chilling her fingers.
A squeaking hinge pulled her back. The internal door swung open revealing Keeper Makkdarm in a soiled white scientific apron, a cleaver in his hand. When he saw Fejak, his dark, jowly face turned from confusion to anger.
“Arl, what are you doing here? There’s no—” Then he saw Terese. Makkdarm charged, the cleaver raised.
Years of training and combat kicked in. Terese leapt into a backward roll, reaching for the dagger at her waist.
“Fejak!” she screamed. “Secure the premises!”
Fejak rushed around Makkdarm and through the door.
There was no time to think. The Keeper came at her, the cleaver aimed at her neck.
She rolled, fumbling, and threw her dagger, hitting Makkdarm in the throat. The wound made a wet sound around the blade’s hilt. She felt a great bite at her side and tried ducking back, but Makkdarm collapsed on her. Hot blood sprayed on her face, thick and bitter.
She screamed in pain, rolling the man off her and crawling away, one hand at her side.
Makkdarm tried to rise then fell, the blade pointed at her, wavering. Blood flowed down Makkdarm’s ruined throat to his chest. He took minutes to stop moving, never taking his eyes from her, his face twisted in a rictus of rage.
So fast. It had happened so fast! Gods, she’d killed a man!
Plenty of cadvers and infected had died by her hand, or in concert with other Seekers. The Gods and Polis demanded it. But never had she killed an uninfected human.
Oh Gods! Between the pain in her side and the panic in her mind, she could barely function.
Makkdarm hadn’t even given her time to explain. He’d just come at her, angry as a wounded bear! Why hadn’t he just held still long enough for Fejak to restrain him while she sprayed his face? Why?
Hurt. Yes, she was injured. But she’d been wearing plate. That wound, just above her left hip. No man should have been strong enough to pierce Seeker plate with a cleaver, and he’d not stopped attacking her even as he died. Had not noticed her knife in his throat. The knife she’d thrown.
Armer forgive me, I
