It was another cold room, but it didn’t contain boxes marked with pictures of fish, and nor was it lined with racks of shelving. I peered through the barely opened door, and felt my insides turn to ice.
“Well, fuck me,” I whispered, and closed the door, very gently, once more.
I looked around for something to bar it with, but there was nothing.
Like I said, whoever was operating here, felt very, very safe.
Moving quickly to the door at the end of the corridor, I cracked it just a little, and then hastily closed it. There was movement at the building adjacent, and I couldn’t be sure if the movement had been human, arach, vespis, or weaver. I decided not to take any chances, and was glad to find a sliding bolt on my side of the door. I slid it across, making sure nothing could come in behind me.
Turning back to go the other way, I discovered I was not alone.
A tall, well-built figure in arach grey stood at the intersection of the corridors, his head cocked to one side as he studied me.
“You’re new,” he said. “Any connection to our visitors?”
I swallowed.
“Visitors?” I asked, and prayed that neither of the two doors on the other side of the corridor opened, because they didn’t look like they belonged to cool rooms.
He must have caught my nervous glance at the door, because he gave me a many-fanged smile.
“There’s nothing in there for you to worry about,” he said, “… at least, not yet.”
I didn’t wait to hear more.
“Going loud,” I said, using my mind rather than my voice.
T’Kit didn’t respond, and I hoped the vespis outside were okay, given that the arach inside didn’t seem too worried by their presence. I didn’t give him time to become worried, either. I aimed the Blazer at his center of mass—what my instructors liked to call the target’s chest—and I pulled the trigger. As I did, he leapt.
If he’d leapt forward, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but he leapt up—and he was fast. His body blurred even as he hit the ceiling, becoming a multi-legged nightmare that scampered towards me. I backed up along the corridor, adjusting my aim for the ceiling, and firing as he came.
“Dumb ass,” I muttered as his body dropped to the floor, with a sickening series of cracks.
I took a breath, watching it, but nothing came out of it, and it didn’t move.
Behind me, the door rattled.
I didn’t think, I just moved. I reached over and opened the closest door, sliding through and into the darkened confines of the room beyond. Again, the room lit as I entered, but not with the white light I was expecting. This time, the lighting was a soft, yellow-edged glow. I flattened myself against a wall, and looked around.
Oh, this was so not good.
Nothing lived in here… At least, nothing that could harm me. The walls were lined with cocoons, and I couldn’t make out what lay wrapped within. I wanted to check for a window, anything that would allow me to slip out of the building without having to return to the corridor, but I couldn’t make myself go a step further inside.
I leant on the wall, and listened for the sound of the rear door being opened, and then I decided that wasn’t my biggest problem.
I hadn’t bolted the door I’d come in by. Anything could come through it, and I wouldn’t have a clue.
I was also sure the cross-corridor, had a door at both ends—the one I’d used, and one at the opposite end. If I didn’t move, and very quickly, I’d be facing opponents from three directions.
“Your doorways are clear, Cutter, but stay inside. The humans are hostile, and I do not want you mistaken.” T’Kit’s words were clipped, and precise.
Okay, then. If I didn’t have to worry about anything coming in through the doors, then I could search the rest of this place. I was going to let T’Kit know what I’d found, but I figured she could pull it from my head, if she needed it.
“Relay it to Odyssey,” T’Kit said, and was gone, again.
Man, if she was monitoring me and directing the fight, she was one hell of a lead.
“Focus.”
Damn.
I got out of the room, with its silent batteries of cocoons, and wondered if those trapped inside had even half a chance of surviving. When T’Kit didn’t answer, I knew things outside had gotten busy, and headed for the next door down, sending a call to Delight as I did so.
She’d be able to link direct to the implant, so I didn’t need to stay on the line. I flagged the memory files of the building I was in for when she did, and stopped beside the next room I had to investigate. It wasn’t locked, either—at least, not where I could see.
This door was also the right size for humans, but I didn’t let that fool me. Arach could take human form, and there was nothing that said they had to stay in it. I figured the doors must be for show, and wondered exactly what kind of operation they were running. The face I found, in the luxuriously appointed room beyond, was not one I was expecting.
“You,” he said, looking up from the polished timber desk he was sitting at. “And I thought the guards could take care of anything.”
“Lord Corovan,” I replied, not bothering to hide my distaste. “I wondered where you’d run off to.”
He stood, and I noticed he still wore his sword and dagger, but also carried a sidearm at each hip. The Glazer didn’t bother me too much, but the other? I shuddered. If he pulled that, I was going to have a hard time not killing him. I didn’t like tanglers.
Every instinct was screaming at me to put
