Kitty Katt 11: Alien Separation (38 page)

“F
ANCY,
how well do you know the castle?”

“Not well enough to ensure escape, Shealla, but well enough that we may have hope.”

“Good enough for government work. Rahmi, please carry Ronnie there and be sure to knock him out again if he starts to wake up. Rhee, take the last position and keep Rahmi in front of you, so you can cover the rear and help keep Ronnie unconscious.”

“Yes, Kitty,” the princesses said in unison.

“James, carry Ginger—she's an attack cat and is trained to fly through the air, land on snakipedes, and do them serious bodily harm. I don't want us throwing Ginger unless we have to, but since we may have to, you get the honors.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want Fancy focused on tracking and leading us out, Wilbur focused on smelling for danger and sniffing for a way out, and, frankly, I don't think I can actually force myself to toss Ginger at a snakipede.”

Ginger purred at me, leaned out of Reader's arms, and gently head butted me. I snuggled her back.

Reader pulled her gently away. “Got it. I'll only toss her if it's life or death, or she has the best shot of killing one of those things.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what are you going to be doing? Tossing nukes?”

“No idea what you're talking about. Fancy, Wilbur, let's get going, because I could just be jumpy, but I'd swear the hissing and scaly slithering sounds are getting louder, and I also think I hear something that sounds like hundreds of horrible wings flapping at hummingbird speeds. In other words, we need to get moving.”

Fancy and Wilbur took the lead, him sniffing, her slinking cautiously. Next came me and Abigail, then Reader and Ginger, with the princesses at the end.

“How good is their hearing?” Abigail asked.

“No idea.”

“Not as good as ours,” Fancy replied quietly. “But if we choose to make noise and make it easy for them . . .”

We all took the hint and shut up. The long corridor that I'd followed 2.0 down to reach the metal door seemed clear, but Fancy didn't take us that way. There was another hallway that went to the right, if you were facing the door, and we went down that instead.

The reason for this became clear—the hallway led to a narrow staircase, a staircase too narrow for a full-grown snakipede to fit into. Of course, there were smaller snakipedes, too. However, I hadn't seen any of them hunting, and hopefully that mean that 2.0 hadn't called the youngsters over, too.

We could go up or down, and we went down. We'd been on ground level, at least I thought so, when we'd been at the snakipede pens. Meaning we were going underground again now.

But only for a short while. We reached another landing and, though the stairs continued down, we didn't. Down another dark corridor and into a room that looked a lot like a dungeon. The door wasn't locked, though, and there were no prisoners in evidence. Rhee stayed at the door, on guard, while the rest of us went in and did a thorough search.

“He may have been telling the truth,” Fancy said quietly as we finished perusing this room. “I felt it was best to verify that the others were not here.”

“No argument here.” Nothing in this area looked too old, meaning that it had probably been furnished once 2.0 was on the throne. “Where to from here, though?”

“Through the torturer's chambers.” She opened a small door that was behind something that looked very much like an iron maiden, though not the cool band, and trotted through.

Motioned to Rhee to join us, then we followed Fancy through into a rather cheery looking room that was set up for comfort. Nice to know that the torturers were treated well, presumably under the idea that everyone should be happy in their work. Hoped Ronnie would wake up so I could punch him and knock him out again, but then again, had to figure that the person who'd actually set this all up was LaRue.

The cozy torturer's chambers led to another corridor. This one had a lot of hallways crisscrossing each other. Wilbur sniffed a lot down here and took the lead. Once again we were in Maze Central but since I hoped to never have to come back this way, chose not to care.

After a few twists and turns, I realized we were in the underground working area of the castle. That no one was here was beyond strange. One didn't reign as a monarch with no servants, no workpeople, and no one hanging about trying to curry favor.

“How has this place been functioning if there are no people in it?”

Fancy shook her head. “There have always been many Lecanora working here when we have raided.”

“In the torture chambers, too?”

She shook her head. “I have only seen those used to hold prisoners, and not too many. He may not be a good king, but he hasn't stooped to that.”

“Then why are they there?” Abigail asked.

“Maybe because others planned to use them and never made it back or got around to it. At any rate, if Ronnie's had a full staff before, where are they now? I find it hard to believe that he sent them all away to protect them, and since there are no bodies or evidence of people being murdered, where are all those who work here? We had to avoid people when we came in.”

“They were all the ones you call Amazons,” Fancy said.

“Curiouser and curiouser. James, any thoughts?”

“Many, but the main one is that a lot of people appear to have disappeared. More than we were expecting and more than makes sense. If we think in straight lines.”

“You think Ronnie's staff were spirited away like our people were?”

“I think that if he's telling the truth and he didn't take Jeff and the others, then someone else did. And if that someone else is working against Beta Eight, they might have taken the king's staff with the idea of making said king more vulnerable to attack.”

“He wasn't joking about thinking we were assassins,” Abigail said. “When we appeared in front of him he freaked out, screamed for guards, and basically acted like the biggest baby in the galaxy. He put us into a cage in with the Horrors because he said he thought we could escape anything else.”

“So, our question is—is the enemy of our enemy our friend, or a worse enemy?”

“Figure we'll find out the hard way, girlfriend. You know, like we always do.”

“Ain't it the truth?”

We forged on. Wilbur found stairs up so up we went. We were much more quiet and cautious again, because we could hear things above us. They sounded slithery. And big.

Reached a landing and Fancy motioned us to stop while Wilbur backpedaled as quickly and softly as possible. Didn't take genius to guess that we'd come up around snakipedes.

“Do we go back down and try the other route?” I asked her as quietly as possible.

She shook her head. “We avoided the exterior walkway this way, which we want to continue to do. We need to reach the tunnels we used to enter. They will be our only safe passage out.”

“How many are out there?”

“Two. But the room is small.”

“Safe to take a peek?”

She nodded, so I slunk over and checked the situation out. There were indeed only two snakipedes in the room, but they weren't flying. Meaning they were blocking the door we clearly had to get to which was, naturally, on the opposite side of the room. Hadn't thought these things could be more horrifying but, strangely enough, being on the ground and looking the most snakelike that they had so far made them much, much worse.

We all backed down the stairs a ways. On the positive side, the stairway was too narrow for the snakipedes to get through. Shared the situation with the others.

“Go back and risk it or try to get through this and probably die?” Reader shook his head. “I pick going back and taking our chances.”

Heard a noise and realized 2.0 was coming around. Managed to stop Rhee before she could club him. “I have a plan,” I said to her surprised look.

We sat him upright and sort of gently slapped him awake. He glared at me. “I hate you.”

“Feeling is beyond mutual, Ronnie. But here's the thing—we're going to get out of your creepy abandoned castle full of snakipedes and—”

“Wait, what? What do you mean, ‘abandoned'? I have a large staff. They might be hiding because of the Horrors, but they're here.”

“There's no one here but us and the snakipedes, dude. We've checked, as have the Poofs. And before you suggest it, the Poofs didn't eat everyone else.” Looked in my purse. “Did you?” Harlie looked up and gave me a hurt mewl. Petted the Poof. “Sorry, just had to check.” Turned back. “No, the Poofs didn't eat anyone. And there was no one else here when they searched.”

2.0 went pale. “Could the Horrors have killed them all?” He sounded genuinely upset. “I didn't want that. My people who work here are good people.”

Reader and I exchanged a look. “I hate it when they show humanity,” he said.

“Dude, it's like you read my mind.” Wondered if that meant a katyhopper was nearby. Kind of hoped so, but on the other hand, didn't want any katyhoppers to become Snakipede Chow, so better that it was just us being on the same wavelength. “Ronnie, the people were gone before you called the Horrors from outside to come in and kill us.”

This didn't reassure—his face drained of more color. “You have to protect me.”

“E
XCUSE ME?”
Abigail asked, speaking for all of us.

“If they've taken my retainers, it's to get to me.”

“You're amazingly paranoid for a guy on a planet that appears to be pretty darned peaceful. Who is out to get you? Aside from us, I mean.”

He shook his head. “I don't know. I never see them. But over the past few months, I know I've been watched.”

“That's it? You think you've been watched? For this you're all freaked out? You, the guy speaking to snakipedes? Speaking of which, we'll deal with your paranoia along the way—we need to get past your pets. In an extremely unscathed manner. So you're going to call them off or put them into a stupor or whatever you did when James threatened your life before. And we are all going to walk out of here together. Or we'll kill
you
before they can kill us. You follow?”

He nodded. “I'll do that if . . .”

“You don't have a lot of bargaining power with us,” Reader pointed out.

“If you protect me from whoever's trying to kill me. Being deposed, okay, I suppose. But I don't want to die. Yes, I'm a clone, but . . . I'm still a person, I'm still real, still me. And I don't want to stop being me.”

“You aren't exactly someone worth keeping around,” Abigail snarled.

“Oh, let's not sell Mister Mind Control short, okay? He's not effective on any of us, for which he should be grateful because I'd have already broken his neck, but he's going to work some magic on our terrible predators out there. I'd call that a modicum of worth.”

“Promise me,” 2.0 said. “Promise me you'll protect me. Or else there's no reason for me to help you, if I'm just going to die anyway. How you'll kill me will be better.”

“Why would you say that, if you don't know who's actually trying to kill you?” Fancy asked.

“I don't know who they are—they're invisible to me. But . . . we hear things. Footsteps where none are, low laughter, quiet banging in an empty room, small things missing, things rearranged with no explanation, food gone, and not due to her raids.” He nodded toward Fancy.

“That sounds like a haunting,” Reader said. “And let me just share that I don't believe in ghosts.”

“Yes, but . . . it also sounds like something else.” During Operation Destruction Clarence Valentino had “hidden” like this in the Bahraini Embassy, freaking everyone out. He'd done so on purpose. “I think we may have a superfast being or beings around who are potentially up to no good.” And they'd have to be Surcenthumain-enhanced fast in order to not be seen by 2.0, who was an A-C clone, or the Free Women, who all had hyperspeed.

“It could be something else,” Rahmi said.

“Yeah? What?”

“A superconsciousness, like those who visited us on Earth.”

Let that sit on the air for a bit. “Okay,” I said slowly. “Could be. But that seems a little too . . . capricious for the ones we've met. Let's assume a corporeal being for now—versus a ghost or superconsciousness—and go back to focusing on getting out of this castle in one, living piece. So, yes, Ronnie, we'll do our best to protect you as long as you return the favor and do your best to protect us. Start with putting your snakipedes in the next room to sleep or sending them home. Your choice, but make it snappy.”

He nodded and closed his eyes for about a minute. “They're asleep,” he said as he opened his eyes. “It's simpler than sending them home. They came expecting to feed. If I can't send them to food source, then letting them sleep is better.”

“Who goes first?” Reader asked. “Putting him in the center doesn't protect us.”

“I will go first,” Rahmi said. “And Rhee will go last. Our staffs will keep the Horrors at bay better than any other weapon.”

“Bullets work really well, but it takes a lot of them, and it's noisy, so I'm okay with that plan. Ronnie, should anything hurt either one of the princesses, you, and you alone, will be directly responsible for whatever kind of horrible war thing happens. And while you might want that, trust me when I say that we'll make you pay for it in a really nasty way. Nastier than anything we've suggested so far, I might add.”

“I suggest we stay close together,” 2.0 said. “And move swiftly. I can't keep them asleep forever.”

Rahmi took the lead, Wilbur with her, then Reader and Ginger followed, with me and Fancy holding onto 2.0 tightly and Abigail right behind him, with Rhee at the rear. We were all close together and stayed that way as we entered the room.

There wasn't a lot of sneaking room in between the two giant snakipedes, but we managed it, in a slow and winding way. Couldn't speak for the others, but I had to control my screaming impulse the entire time. However, terrifying though it was, the snakipedes didn't wake up.

Resisted the urge to kill them where they slept. They were animals—horrible animals, created animals, but animals nonetheless. They were doing things that were in their nature. And while they'd have eaten us if they'd found us asleep, we weren't them.

Got out of the room and moved faster down the hallway, though there were a couple of snakipedes here, too. Also snoozing, for which I thanked anyone and everyone who might be paying attention.

Clustered together and staying very quiet we wended our way through the castle, past more sleeping snakipedes than I cared to count.

Maybe it was because 2.0 had mentioned it, but after a short while I truly felt like I was being watched. We reached a room miraculously devoid of giant flying snakes, and we all took a little breather. “I wish you hadn't said you felt like you were being watched,” Reader said to 2.0.

“You felt it, too?” Rhee asked.

“I'm sure we all did,” 2.0 said. “Because we are being watched.”

“Or else you can affect us and make us think so, power of suggestion assisted by mind influence and all that.”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, the concentration it takes to keep hungry animals asleep while we're trying to get out takes me to my limit. I don't have the energy to try to affect people I've already had no effect on. Some of us know when to stop banging our heads on a wooden door.”

“Blah, blah, blah. And some of us don't trust you at all. But anyway, we're all agreed we felt the creepy?”

All the heads nodded. “But I don't feel it here,” Fancy said.

Group consensus—no one felt like they were being watched in this room. Looked around. Just another room in the castle, a room whose purpose I couldn't figure out. “So, what's special about this room? As in, why couldn't someone see us or follow us or whatever in here?”

“It's an oratory,” Reader said. “The private chapel for the lord of the manor.”

“James, your hidden depths never cease to amaze me. Ronnie, are you the prayerful type?”

“Not really.”

“So, whoever's watching us either can't see into this room because it's protected, or they want us to think that they can't see us when we're here, so we'll get superstitiously freaked out.”

“Who would do that?” Rhee asked.

“Someone who's testing us.” Considered the options. Could be the Sandy and the Superconsciousness Seven, but I doubted it. They liked to show up, be all impressive, and boss beings around. Definitely wasn't ACE's style. Was Algar's, but I knew this wasn't him. Couldn't be Naomi, since she wasn't allowed to be near us, in the cosmic sense. This also wasn't the Z'porrah's style. Had no idea what style the other planets around here were fond of, nor if this could be an Ancient spy, but it didn't feel right. This
was
totally Siler's style, but he wasn't here.

Had to stop thinking in a straight line. The question wasn't who was watching us or not. The question was—who had something to gain by making Ronaldo 2.0, aka the King of Beta Eight, think he was being watched and turning him paranoid? And the corollary question was, who could do it all while being invisible?

The answer wasn't anyone native to this planet. We'd met all the sentient races, at least as far as anyone had mentioned. Siler wasn't here, and his blending ability seemed incredibly rare, and was probably due to experimentation more than natural genetics. And no one had been playing these games with me and my team here until 2.0 had mentioned being watched. Meaning whoever it was could hear us, too.

Glanced around the room again. It was by far the smallest room we'd been in so far. Thought about when we'd felt like we were being watched. It was never in an area where we were really cramped in with snakipedes. Every place we'd mentioned was one where we had a lot more space around us, snakipedes or no.

As Sherlock Holmes and my “uncle” the top assassin in the business both said, once you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, was the truth. We lived in a universe where impossible didn't seem to exist, however. Even so, there were a lot of improbables I could eliminate for a variety of reasons, such as ghosts and Siler. Meaning the obvious answer was, despite what logic would want to tell you, the right one.

Looked at Wilbur, bent down and gave him a pet. “I know there are a lot of smells here,” I said softly, as I ruffled his neck and head bristles. “But can Wilbur find someone who doesn't belong? Not a snakipede, and not those with Kitty, but someone who's hiding from us? He's probably moving very fast, too, but we might not feel him. His smell will be all over, because he's been here for some time. It could be in this room, too, but he's not in the room right now. Search quietly, though. Kitty's bet is that he's in the hall, but we need to be sure.”

Wilbur gave a very quiet honk and began to snuffle the air in a different way than he had before. Before he'd been looking for the safe way out, so his nose had been focused on finding our scents again and avoiding snakipede scent. The castle was loaded with smells, so he had to be selective.

Continued petting him and looked back to the others. “Let's take a few moments in here to relax and figure out what we're going to do next where there are no snakipedes or something creeping us out. I think we've earned the rest.”

The others stared at me. Reader recovered the quickest. “Ah, okay?”

Had to give a clue, at least to Reader, but not tip off the person I was sure was close by and definitely listening. “Yeah. It's kind of Old Home Week with Ronnie here. Always shocking to come face-to-face with someone you thought was dead, after all. Kind of haven't had time to collect from that. And doesn't this all kind of remind you of Operation Destruction? You know, when we met Mona, Khalid, Oren, and Jakob?”

Reader opened his mouth—to tell me he didn't see the connection I was pretty sure—then I saw him catch on. “Oh! Right. Yeah. Let's rest, you're right. We could make a mistake if we go rushing off like we're fighting ghosts.”

Mercifully, the girls had learned not to ask questions when we were being strange, and Fancy's expression told me she knew Reader and I were passing code. 2.0, on the other hand, wasn't as tuned in to the program.

“What are you blathering about? We need to get the hell out of here before I tire out and lose control.”

“Oh, we will, we will. Patience, Ronnie. Patience. It's a virtue, so I hear.”

2.0 opened his mouth, to be snide, I was sure, but before he could say anything else, Wilbur lunged at the doorway. Reader let go of Ginger at the same time, and she bounded over just in time to slam into the man's chest as Wilbur latched onto his leg.

The screams weren't all that I'd hoped for, seeing as I knew they were going to wake the snakipedes up, but we'd deal with that later.

Wilbur dragged the screaming man back into the room, Ginger still on his chest with her claws still
in
his chest, and I closed and locked the hallway door, while Fancy did the same with the other door that we'd originally been planning to go through.

Put my foot right on his throat. Wisely, he shut up.

Took a good look at him. Always nice to be right. “Clarence Valentino, how
do
you do?”