Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (4 page)

Ping glanced at the door and back to Mara. “We don’t have time to discuss it. You must decide.”

Sam held out the book bag. Mara reached inside and pulled out the Chronicle.

“Okay, let’s gather around the gurney and see if I can make this work,” she said.

Sam and Ping stood with their backs to the door, facing the gurney. Mara walked around to the other side. She extended her hand with the copper medallion sitting on her upraised palm. With an almost imperceptible squint, Mara concentrated, and the Chronicle floated in the air and spun. After a moment it gyrated both vertically and horizontally, increasing in speed until it became a blue blur. A bright blue light burst from it, and the blur melted into an undulating ball of glowing mercury. Mara twisted her wrist, and a sphere blossomed from the light, passing through them and filling the room.

Hammering continued from the door while the transparent blue bubble filled with lines and nodes along its periphery. Sam’s head craned in an arc as he watched the progression. When a node appeared above the center of Cam’s torso, Mara nodded at it and said, “There it is. Are you guys sure?”

Ping and Sam nodded.

“Put a hand on my shoulder,” she said.

As they complied, she placed her left hand on the gurney, reached out with her right and grabbed the node that levitated above it.

Electricity shot through Mara’s body, and, as if in slow motion, she saw the edge of the translucent bubble peel away from the lines and nodes, turning itself inside out and engulfing them. It collapsed on them in a burst of blue light. She felt herself in a free fall, her stomach turning, her chest compressed so that she could not breathe. She felt movement, velocity, but no wind. There was no sound either, as if she tumbled through the vacuum of Space. All she could see was blinding blue light, and all she could feel was the node in her hand and the hands on her shoulders.

The brilliant blue light winked out, and the sense of hurtling through space stopped so suddenly that Mara lurched forward over the gurney and banged her head into something thick and solid. Stars bloomed before her eyes—the only light she could discern in the utter blackness that surrounded her.

“Ouch, watch who you’re head-butting, genius,” Sam said from the darkness ahead.

Mara ran her hands over the top of the gurney and felt Cam’s arm under the sheet. “Ping, are you here somewhere?” she asked.

“Indeed. I believe I’m standing next to Sam across from you,” Ping said. “Do you have a sense of where you have transported us?”

“When I used the Chronicle to travel to Prado’s realm, I arrived at the same location in his realm as I had left in ours—in that case it was the shop where I encountered my counterpart almost immediately. It would probably be safe to guess that we are in the hospital storage room in Cam’s realm, assuming things work the same way on each trip,” Mara said. “If that’s true …” She turned and ran her hands along the wall she found behind her. It felt like a plain concrete wall. So far, so good. After taking a step to her left, she found the raised metal box mounted on the wall, searched for the switch at its center and flipped it with a knuckle.

Just a few feet above her head, fluorescent tubes illuminated. She turned around to find Ping and Sam, blinking their eyes, standing next to the gurney in the center of the gray storage room. The Chronicle lay on top of the sheet that covered Cam’s chest. Mara picked it up and slipped it into her front jeans pocket.

“Are you sure we actually went anywhere?” Sam asked.

Mara glanced over his shoulder and nodded toward the door. “Yeah, I’m sure. The doorknob isn’t melted. We went somewhere, all right. Let’s just hope we ended up in the right place to help Cam.”

“If this is a hospital in this realm, it might be the ideal place to have brought him,” Ping said. “Perhaps we should seek assistance for him outside.”

Mara raised a hand. “Let’s not jump the gun. I’m no expert on these things, but the one thing I learned from my trip to Prado’s realm was that things are not what they seem. Those people were using dead souls to illuminate their traffic lights, for heaven’s sake. Who knows what we will find outside that door.”

Ping nodded. “I think we understand how different things may be here. Remember, both Sam and I come from different realms than the one we just left.”

“That’s true. I suppose you guys might be more prepared than me.” She turned to Sam and said, “But let’s try to have more finesse while we’re here than stuffing an unpeeled banana into our mouths. Okay? And no surveys about the local cuisine—we don’t need to know where the best corn dogs are served. And whatever happens, if you run into your counterparts, don’t let them touch you. The two of you will end up blown back to your own realms, and I might not be able to figure out how to get you back.”

“That’s silly. Robots don’t eat corn dogs,” Sam said.

“That’s another thing. Cam hated being called a robot—don’t use that word.”

“Well, what are we supposed to call them?” Sam said.

Ping interjected, “We shouldn’t call them anything. They are just people. We shouldn’t refer to them as robots or synthetic any more than you and I refer to each other as human or homo sapiens. Understand?”

Sam nodded.

Mara walked around the end of the gurney and crossed the room to the door. She grabbed the doorknob and turned to the side, pressing her ear to the door. Stepping back, she slowly turned the knob, making as little noise as possible. After a soft
click
, she opened the door a crack and peeked out. Glancing back, she waved Ping over.

After taking a look, he stepped away and whispered, “It’s not a garage. It’s a hallway.”

Nodding, Mara said, “I don’t hear anyone. Hold the door. I’ll step out to see where we are.”

She slipped outside and didn’t release the edge of the door until she saw Ping nodding to her. Turning, she looked toward what had been an open garage with an asphalt surface and row after row of painted lines marking each parking space, broken up occasionally by rounded concrete columns. Instead, she faced a concrete wall containing a row of doors with entry keypads identical to the wall behind her. It seemed someone had enclosed the garage and added additional storage units into the basement of the hospital.
If this was a hospital
.

The only other point of reference she could remember was the elevator. Spinning to her left, she looked down the hall. She took several long measured steps—strides a tad longer and slower than was natural for her—and stopped. Off to the side of the hall, in a tiny alcove, stood a set of closed beige elevator doors below a single plastic arrow that pointed upward. To the left of the doors, mounted on the concrete wall, was a white institutional placard displaying S2 in bold black letters. Below that was a single silver button with an arrow pointing upward.

Mara glanced back to the storage room for a moment, then stepped into the alcove. Pressing the Up button, she self-consciously tried to center herself with the elevator doors as she waited. The button and the arrow above the door lit up, emitting a loud
bing
. The doors slid open. Holding the doors apart with her left hand, she leaned into the elevator. It looked ordinary enough. On one side were two vertical rows of numbered buttons. On the other was a floor directory. The title at the top of the directory read Cascadia Community Hospital. She stepped inside, let the doors close behind her and pressed the
L
button.

The elevator car rose and continued past the S1 level, slowing as it approached the lobby. Mara tensed as it came to a stop and the doors opened. A cacophony of chaotic sounds filled the elevator, screams of pain mixed with bellowed orders, the clattering of metal and plastic, the sounds of soft-soled shoes running, ripping cloth and slamming doors. Scrub-clad orderlies and nurses sped by the open elevator doors pushing a gurney and several pieces of equipment on wheels.

After they passed, Mara stepped out, accidently kicking something on the floor. She watched it slide across the hall into the wall opposite the elevator. It was a leg—a woman’s leg torn from mid-thigh with both its calf and red high-heeled foot still attached. The ragged top of the appendage sprouted white plastic fibers bunched around a gun-metal-colored femur and oozed a thick white liquid. Mara grimaced and stepped back, but the elevator doors had closed behind her.

A young man in scrubs and a white lab coat pushed her out of the way and dashed around the wall at the end of the hallway. Most of the noise came from that direction, which Mara recalled was the lobby—at least it was in her realm’s version of the hospital. She slowly walked in that direction, taking care to stay close to the wall. As she approached, another gurney pushed by a nurse swung into view and sped toward her. She stepped out of the way. As it passed, the patient—a man whose clothes and skin were burned away, revealing a singed metallic rib cage wrapped around a dense jumble of cables, fibers and mechanisms that blinked with cardiac regularity—sat up, babbling something incoherently and waving his left arm. The nurse grabbed his head and pushed him back down onto the gurney without breaking stride. His missing faceplate reminded Mara of her first glimpse of Cam.

Shaking off the scene, she turned and jogged the short distance toward what she thought was the lobby of the hospital. Rounding the wall blocking her view, she gasped.

It was the lobby, the floor of which was littered with bodies. Some burned, others with mangled or missing limbs, still others crushed or bent in unnatural angles. It was all bloodless, but it was still carnage. Doctors and nurses ran from person to person, yelling out commands, stopping to examine a particularly bad case and calling for a gurney, moving on to the next person.

The lobby furnishings, mostly armchairs and end tables along with some toppled potted plants, had been shoved into a pile along the periphery of the room. At the front of the building, the sliding glass doors were hinged open somehow, allowing more patients to enter unimpeded. At first Mara thought they staggered in aided or carried in by family or friends because they were unable to do so themselves, but she soon realized, the patients—though injured—were not laboring under the burdens of their injuries, but resisting the efforts of those trying to help them.

Less than ten feet ahead, four attendants held a man’s arms and legs to the ground as he struggled against them. Thrusting his midsection into the air, the man screamed and spat, shaking his head wildly. At one point, he snapped his head forward and bit the forearm of the attendant to his right. Wild-eyed with shock, the attendant reared back, yanking away his arm, leaving an eighteen-inch strip of his skin dangling from the patient’s mouth.

From somewhere behind Mara, a nurse ran toward them, carrying a silver disk. She slapped the disk onto the patient’s chest and then poked it with a finger, maybe pressing a button. The patient tensed, as if shocked, and then fainted, flopping to the ground motionless. When the nurse straightened and turned, Mara recognized her. It was Jazz, the emergency room nurse who’d taken Mara and Bohannon to Cam’s body.

Mara raised her hand to get the nurse’s attention and said, “Jazz!” She instantly pulled down her hand, realizing her mistake.

The nurse’s gaze locked on Mara, and she said, “Yes? Do I know you?”

Mara looked at the nurse’s uniform, hoping to see a name tag. There was not one. “Ah, not really. You helped me out in a pinch a few months ago.”

“Is there something you need? I’m kind of busy here,” Jazz said.

“My friend was in a traffic accident and needs some help. Could you take a look at him?” Mara asked.

Jazz spun around, looking on the floor for the patient. “Where is this friend? We’ll get our triage team to look at him to prioritize his care.”

“He’s in a storage unit in the basement of this building,” Mara said. When Jazz frowned, Mara raised her hand and added, “We rolled him in on a gurney and ended up on the elevator and got lost. I was afraid to bring him into all this pandemonium.”

Looking doubtful, Jazz said, “Are his injuries serious?”

“His head is missing, and it appears he’s sending out an automated signal about returning to a repository. Do you know what that is?”

“You’re getting an RTR alarm? That means he’s terminating.” Jazz looked past Mara’s shoulder and yelled, “Jack! I need one of those sustainment units!”

Mara turned to see a young orderly grab something from a cart next to the front desk. He jogged up to them and handed to Jazz a glass and metal rectangle that reminded Mara of a smartphone. The nurse raised her hand and said, “Okay, take me to this friend of yours.”

Barely nodding at Ping and Sam as Mara made the introductions, Jazz crossed the storage room directly to the side of the gurney and pulled the sheet off Cam’s headless torso. The nurse stiffened for a moment and cocked her head as if considering something. Her eye twitched slightly, then she seemed to reanimate and turned to glare at Mara.

“Why did you bring him here after receiving the Return to Repository alarm?” Jazz asked. “There’s nothing we can do for him without his receptacle.”

Mara looked back blankly. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do.”

Jazz leaned over the body and placed on the center of Cam’s chest the glass and chrome rectangle Jack, the orderly, had given her. It attached with a soft hiss, seemingly snapping in place by means of something akin to a magnetic seal. The device hummed lightly and went silent. Lit numbers scrolled across the screen of the attached mechanism.

“The sustainment unit will keep his processes active for twelve more hours. Since his repository is local, that should give you plenty of time to transport him,” Jazz said. “Where’s his head?”

“I don’t know. This is how we found him, on the side of the road,” Mara said. “Can you give us some idea of how we can locate this repository?”

Jazz looked askance at her. “You’ve got the repository number—97210—it’s across town. Take Cam to a transport on the loading dock out back and get to the repository. They might be able to track down his head if it’s still intact. If not, Cam will have to make do with a new head. Understand?”