At last Kay leapt up at thebutton on the wall. But nothing happened – he’d either missed ortouched it too gently to activate. The ceiling panel startedopening and Deck and Con pressed up against the bars to buy a fewmore precious seconds of life. “Again, Kay,” Naiche shouted. “Touchagain!” She closed her eyes as the smaller rocks started peltingthem and couldn’t tell if the dog repeated his effort or not. Justas she’d decided death was inevitable, the bars opened with a hissand she and Con tumbled out together. Not stopping to catch theirbreath, they scrambled away from the onslaught ofkiatilium.
“We gotta get out ofhere,” Kennedy yelled, as the computer panel on the wall screechedout an alarm. They dashed out into corridor and hesitated aboutwhich way to run. He pointed towards the entrance. “They’ll becoming from that direction – we gotta go the other way.” The loadof kiatilium burst out of the room, overflowing into the hallway.“Looks like we don’t have a choice anyway.”
The three of them dodgedthe wave of rock and ran up the steps to the next floor. Decklooked back at the surge of kiatilium filling the ground floor. “Atleast that will slow the Intabet down.”
They ran up to the topfloor and ducked into the first empty room they found. Crouchingdown in the dark, Con and Naiche huddled over his hand scanner andstudied a schematic of the building.
Deck pointed to the roof.“Look, there’s a ship up there. It must be the one used totransport the kiatilium off-world. No Intabet life-signs. I say wehead up there and I fly us off this mountain.”
“You don’t know anythingabout the ship – it might be locked down, it might have biometriccontrols. A better bet would be to find us someweapons.”
“Good point. Are youreading anything like that?”
“No, but it’s hard to geta fix with so much interference.” He stared at the scanner. “What’swith the weird energy signals in this room?”
Deck activated her wristlight and shone it around the space. She stared in surprise at thehundreds of small glass tanks on a counter near them. “Cloningvessels,” she whispered.
“What?” Con turned on hisown wrist light and examined the scene. Leaning closer to thetanks, he said, “Veil-worms. Of course! Aqila told us somethinglike that isn’t usually found in nature. The Intabetcreated those worms tokeep the other Tolutay away from their treasure.”
Only half listening as shestudied the rest of the room, Decker walked over to check out morecloning tanks on a bench against the wall. Her heart thudded in herchest upon recognizing the wriggling embryos. She swallowed to wether mouth enough to say, “That isn’t all they created – look!” Consilently stared in shock equal to her own, apparently speechlesswith disbelief. “Peerazu,” Deck said. “That’s how they went frompeaceful to killer animals. It wasn’t the gamma ray – it was theIntabet. Those bastards unleashed that horror upontheir own people.”
Kennedy stood up. “We can’tlet this go. We gotta find a way to destroy this lab. We’re gonnaput a stop to this shit – once and for all.”
“How? We don’t have anyweapons – and we don’t have time to smash all thesetanks.”
“Smashing them isn’tenough, anyway. I want to level this place.” Studying the nearestcloning set-up, Con said, “The tanks are all powered off the samesource. If I rig this one to over-energize – the whole series willoverload. It will light up the source and take this place out likea bomb.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “But thenhow do we escape?”
“The roof!”
“We cannot count on that ship,Deck.”
“I’m not thinking aboutthe ship. I mean we should jump off this roof onto the roof of thebuilding next to us. It wasn’t too far away – was it?”
“Nothing in this town isvery far apart. Good idea, that’s our best bet.”
“You sure you can make itwith your leg?”
“Yeah, I should be okay.Even if I have to aim for the ground, a three-story fall issurvivable.” He shrugged. “More than staying in a collapsingbuilding, anyway.”
“You arenot gonna hit the ground– we’ll jump together, if we need to.”
Con smiled and noddeddecisively. “That’s a plan – let’s do this.” It didn’t take himmore than a few minutes to engineer the overload. They knew it hadworked when the tank’s controller blinked furiously and blared outan alarm. “Okay, we gotta bail – now!”
Deck took the lead, huntingfor the exit to the roof. A minute into the search, the buildingwas rocked by an enormous blast. “That worked,” she yelled over theroar. “But how the hell do we get out?” She was flooded with reliefupon spotting the ladder that appeared to be their escape route. Aquick ascent confirmed her hunch; she dangled off of the ladder,looking down at Kennedy. “This is it – come on.”
“Do you wanta hoist Kay upfirst?”
Despite their present stateof danger, she flashed a quick grin. “Don’t have to – Kay can climbladders.” Deck sped up the rungs and ran out onto the roof,Kayatennae following and Con close behind. She and Con dodgedaround the Intabet ship and raced to the edge. They startedcontemplating their best chance of making a safe landing on one ofthe nearby roofs.
“Jump, tuck, and roll ontothat one.” Kennedy pointed to the building on theirright.
When Kayatennae startedbarking ferociously from the other side of the ship, Naiche lookedover her shoulder, shouting, “No, Kay. That’s not how we’re gettingout of—” She was arrested mid-sentence by the sight of two peerazubearing down on them at a furious pace. “Holy fucking shit! Getback in the building!” she screamed.
The three of them rushedover to the roof access hatch; Con slid down first and Deckfollowed clutching Kayatennae in one arm since the dog couldn’tclimb down aladder – not quickly, anyway. Veritable seconds later they heardthe thump-thump of the peerazu landing on the roof. “What’re wegonna do?”
“I don’t know – I’m out ofideas,” Kennedy admitted. “You?”
Plaster was falling onto tothem in great clumps as the ancient building rattled and shook,making it difficult to remain upright. Despair closed in on
