Cyberdrome (29 page)

Maya coughed
hard. “Well, I hope your winning streak continues, because I don’t want to burn
to death in here either.”

“I’m sorry,” he
whispered as he moved closer to her. “Sometimes I ramble when I’m—” He froze
when he saw a green woman with copper-colored hair standing against the far
wall. Actually, she seemed to be standing
inside
the wall.

“It’s her,” Maya
gasped.

Alek took a step
backward. “Do you know this—person?”

“It’s a long story,”
Maya said, bending down on one knee. “Don’t be afraid,” she said to the woman.

“She’s an
angel,” Herschel said, moving to stand beside Alek.

The green woman
stepped into the room and became solid. Alek and the others took a step
backward in unison. “What do you want?” Alek asked. He had enough to deal with,
without some sort of digital ghost haunting him.

The woman turned
her head and spoke to the empty space beside her, “I know my purpose,” she said
in a voice that sounded to Alek like flutes playing. Then she closed her eyes
and covered her ears. “Not all at once,” she cried. “You must not all speak at
once.”

“We are not
saying anything,” Maya said.

The woman looked
back up and pointed a delicate finger at Alek. “You carry the Gift,” she said.
“I am here to protect the Gift.” She swept her hands around the room, and then
added, “It will save us all.”

“That’s the same
thing she told me,” Maya said, and then coughed. “I met her back in the Survey
Vessel after I escaped from those carbon-eating nanobots. She told me that I
carried some sort of gift, but then changed her mind.” The room was now
beginning to fill with smoke.

“Can she get us
out of here?” Alek asked, and then realized that he was asking the wrong person.
He took a step toward the strange woman. “You said that you want to protect the
gift. Can you show us a way out of here?”

The woman
pointed toward the door. Smoke was now billowing in from all sides.

“No,” Alek said,
coughing. “We can’t go that way. We would burn to death.” She didn’t seem to understand
him, so he added. “We will die. The gift will be destroyed.”

“No,” she said.

“Yes, it will,”
Alek said, taking another step closer to the woman. Even through the building
smoke, he could see that she was beautiful. She was completely naked and her
skin was translucent with embedded patterns similar to Javid’s. She couldn’t be
real, he thought. Maybe she really was an angel.

She reached up
with both hands and grabbed his head, then kissed him. Startled, he tried to
pull away, but her grip on his head was unusually strong.

“Hey,” he heard
Maya yell.

Suddenly, the
woman was gone. Alek spun around but she was nowhere in the room.

“What the hell
was that all about?” Maya asked, and then began coughing uncontrollably.

Alek grabbed her
and pulled her down to the floor. “Everyone keep low. The smoke isn’t as thick
down here.”

“What are we
going to do?” Maya asked when she stopped coughing.

Then it came to
him. “She showed me the way out,” he said.

Maya lifted her
blouse up to cover her mouth. “What?”

“I can’t really
explain it, but during that kiss, she showed me how we can get out of here.”

Herschel coughed
loudly and leaned closer to Alek. “I had this room built especially for me.
There’s no way out, except through the door.”

“And that’s the
way we are leaving,” Alek said. “Right through that door.”

“You’re not
thinking straight, Alek,” Maya said. “We’ll be burned alive. We’ll all die.”

“We will be
burned, but we won’t die,” he said. “All we have to do is make it back to the
Watchport opening. The beam will restore us. Don’t you remember how it repaired
that cut on your face?”

“The opening’s
up in the sky—can’t reach it without some sort of aircraft—something like one
of our Dragons.”

“The green woman
showed me where one’s located—it’s here inside this fort. We can fly it up to
the opening and get out of here.”

“Even if you’re
right,” Maya said, “even if we could run through a burning building and make it
outside, we would have third-degree burns all over our bodies. Our clothing
would be on fire, our hair would be on fire, our skin would be boiling off of
us.” She coughed twice, and then continued. “The pain would be unbearable.
There’s no way we could fly a Dragon in that condition.”

“We’ll make it,”
Alek said. The smoke was so thick he could hardly see her anymore. “You have to
trust me.”

Maya’s head
dropped and he realized that she was on the verge of passing out from smoke inhalation.
He looked at Herschel who didn’t look much better. There was no time left to
explain any more of what the green woman had shown him in that brief moment.
They wouldn’t believe him anyway.

He crawled
across the floor and dug around through Herschel’s provisions until he found
three cloth shirts. He then crawled back, wrapped one of the shirts around
Maya’s face and head, and tied it snuggly around her neck. It wouldn’t last
long in the fire, but it would keep her face and eyes from burning too badly.
Herschel was nearly unconscious as well, so it wasn’t difficult to cover his
head as well.

Before he pulled
the final shirt over his own head, he closed his eyes to make sure the image
was still there. It was—a perfect 3-dimensional view of the inside of the
building. He had tried to memorize it as they were running from the Medari, but
now it was clearer than he could imagine—a gift from the green woman.

Keeping his eyes
closed, he pulled the shirt over his head and tied it around his neck. He then
stood and unlocked the metal door. He flinched when he felt the metal burning
his hands, but fought the fear building in him. The pain outside the door would
be much worse, he reminded himself, but it wasn’t real. He began chanting,
“This isn’t real. I’m not here. This isn’t real. I’m not here.”

He swung the
door open and felt a blast of heat against his body. He realized that his clothing
was already on fire. He heard Maya scream behind him, reached back, and grabbed
her arm as well as Herschel’s. They both fought back but he held on tight.
We
will all make it out
, he said to himself as he pulled them both close and
bolted through the door.

The pain was far
worse than he had imagined. His eyes were shut but he could almost see his own
flesh searing like a slab of steak on a barbeque grill. He wanted to scream but
knew that breathing would suck scalding hot smoke into his lungs and kill him
instantly.

He could feel
Maya and Herschel struggling in his hands, trying to break free from his grip,
which only made him hold on more tightly and push forward. Luckily, the image
in his head held firm and within a few agonizing seconds, they were outside.

He released his
grip on the others and dropped to the ground. He quickly rolled back and forth
in the dirt, hoping to put out whatever fire was still burning his body. Then
he clawed at the cloth shirt covering his head and sucked in a lung-full of
air. He looked down at his arms and saw that the sleeves of his tunic were gone
and his skin was blistered and red.

He looked around
for Maya, and found her curled up in a fetal position. Her arms looked worse
than his did, and her hair was singed and smoking—the shirt covering her head
had burned completely away. He crawled over to her but then realized that he
couldn’t touch her because her skin was peeling and falling off in patches.
Touching her would only increase the pain.

Someone ran past
him and he looked up and saw chaos all around him. There were dead bodies all
over the place. He saw men with long rifles shooting at the shadows, but heard
no gunshots. The view felt like a silent nightmare, until he realized that he
was deaf. He carefully put a hand to his ears but felt only charred stumps. Why
didn’t they hurt?

Then he realized
that all of the pain was beginning to leave his body. Endorphins, his mind told
him. His body was releasing natural painkillers, which meant that he was going
into shock. He was going to die here. More importantly, Maya was going to die
as well, and there was nothing he could do to help her.

He fought the
urge to just relax and let death take him. He had to get to the Dragon in order
to reach the Watchport beam. It would reformat them completely, but there was
no way to reach it in time.

He looked over
and saw Herschel staring back at him. His face was black from the smoke but his
eyes were as large and white as saucers. He reached out a charred finger toward
Alek and pointed over his head.

Alek tried to
turn around but his body refused to move. In a building haze, he saw a man run
past him and pick up Maya.
Must stop him
, his mind said.
She needs
help
. The man then returned and picked up Herschel and carried him off. He
was strong, whoever this person was. Where was he taking them?

Then he felt
himself being lifted off the ground. He tried to resist but his body felt like
dead weight. He was placed inside a small room next to Maya and Herschel. A
moment later, he saw the buildings outside the open door begin to move.

This is a Rover
, he thought.
How did they get back inside the Rover and who was driving? Was he dreaming all
of this?

When they
crashed through the front gate and headed out into the desert night, he realized
that he wasn’t dreaming. A while later, the Rover lurched to a halt and a man
leaned down and brushed Maya’s hair out of her disfigured face.

“Leave her
alone,” Alek called out, not sure if he was actually speaking. The man moved
closer and touched Alek’s chest. Alek looked up and saw a familiar face—it was
Roy Cloudhopper.

“We’ll die
here,” Alek tried to say. “We have to get to the Watchport.”

Cloudhopper
turned his head from side to side, signaling either that it couldn’t be done,
or that he didn’t understand. Alek was about to repeat himself when he saw
Cloudhopper’s face look up in surprise. He then jumped up and ran back into the
Rover’s cockpit.

The security
chief had obviously heard something that Alek couldn’t, and he guessed that
they were probably under attack. Unable to help in any way, he looked over at
Maya and for a heart-seizing moment, thought she was dead. Then her burnt lips
moved slightly and he realized that she was still alive, if just barely.

He felt the
Rover lurch forward. A moment later, he felt heavy and realized that they were
rising somehow. Whatever was going on, he knew that he was helpless to either
help or prevent it from happening. With a sigh, he closed his eyes, and drifted
into unconsciousness.

o     o     o

Sometime later,
he woke abruptly and saw Maya and Herschel sitting across from him on the familiar
curved Mole tunnel floor. Their faces and clothing showed no sign of burns, and
in fact, their desert clothing looked newly mended and cleaned.

On his left was
the glowing Watchport beam and on his right, sat the back end of some sort of
airplane wedged into one of the Mole tunnels. Its rear door was open and he
could see a Rover parked inside. They were back, he realized. They had made it.

“I suppose you
think we should thank you for nearly killing us,” Maya said. His hearing was
back, he realized. He looked down at his arms and hands. The Core rendering had
returned and there were no signs of burns. It had worked. His plan had actually
worked.

“Well, I for one
thank you,” Herschel said. “You saved our lives.”

“He tried to
kill us,” Maya corrected him.

Alek stood and
faced her. “We made it out, didn’t we?”

She crossed her
arms and scowled. “You pulled us into a burning building,” she said.

“I pulled you
out of a burning building,” he corrected. “If you had a better plan, you
should’ve said something.”

She stood and
took a step toward him. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I just can’t
forget the pain. The Watchport beam may have repaired our bodies, but it didn’t
remove the memory. I’ve never experienced anything as horrible as that.”

Herschel stood
and placed a comforting arm across her shoulders. “Imagine what Alek must have
felt,” he said. “He was burned more severely than either of us, but he still
managed to pull both of us to safety.”

When Maya looked
up, tears were streaming down her face. “Oh, Alek” she said, then stepped forward
and put her hands around his neck. They hugged for a long time.

He tried to wipe
the tears from her face, but his hand grazed something hard on her cheek and
she flinched. He took a step back and tried to get a better look at her in the
dim light.

“Your scar’s
back,” he said, gently caressing the reddened skin around it.

“I thought I
felt something,” she said, touching her face. “I guess I can’t complain, all
things considered”