Light Shaper (19 page)

“Um, that I have to start looking for better life insurance?” Rigel said, looking around for his hand braces. He found them next to his shoes and slipped them on gratefully, securing them to his wrists. His stupid right hand was trembling again.

“No!” Misha said. “Aaron, remember when my dad got into trouble with the trade union?”

“Yeah, vaguely,” Rigel told her, struggling to put on his shoes without using his hands. “They wouldn’t give him back his post after a big downsizing, and then he got hurt during one of the protests.”

“Exactly! And my dad sued them for all they were worth and won! Now he’s got his own management post at CradleCorp and everything.”

“And how does that affect me?”

“Aaron, maybe you’re still a bit high from the painkillers, but in case you didn’t notice, you just got
shot
. At CradleCorp. By their own personnel!”

“So?” Rigel said.

“If you sue CradleCorp for this, you will be rolling around in so much money that—”

There was a loud thump on Misha’s side of the line, and the call died.

“Misha?” Rigel asked into his phone. When he realized the call had ended, he tried dialing again. The phone rang three times before he was abruptly sent to voice mail.

Rigel was about to call again, but he was distracted by angry voices coming from the hallway. They were getting closer, and Rigel was just looking about for his shirt when the voices turned to shouts.

“—can’t go in there! You don’t have authorization!” a female voice was yelling. “Orderly! Stop this woman!”

The door to Rigel’s room was thrown open, and a nurse stumbled backward through the threshold, having been pushed by a woman dressed in a skintight black suit. The nurse fell down hard, crying out as she did so, and Rigel’s eyes met those of the intruder immediately. He recognized her. She was the woman who had been in Richard Tanner’s office.

She raised a gun and pointed it straight at Rigel. He couldn’t react, couldn’t move. He was horrified at the cold look in the woman’s eyes, the complete lack of empathy in their dark depths. It felt as if the nightmare was resuming, and suddenly Atlas’s warnings rang in Rigel’s head, no longer silly but urgent. They wanted him dead.

“Aaron Blake,” the woman said, her voice incongruously melodious. “You’re a slippery bastard.”

“Who… who are you?” Rigel managed, backing away from her.

The woman entered the room and shut the door behind her. The nurse on the floor was trying to get up—

Bang
.

The nurse fell back to the floor, a neat bullet hole in her forehead.

Rigel stared at the nurse’s body, at the widening pool of red blood spreading across the polished white tiles of the floor. His brain refused to process what he was seeing.

The noise of the gunshot had awakened the elderly man, who opened his eyes, took in the scene, and gave out a scream of purest terror, trying madly to get out of his bed.

Bang
.

He dropped like a rock down to the floor, his legs still entangled in his sheets. The IV drip that had been connected to his arm was yanked free, and it kept on dripping clear fluid over the man’s head, the drops splattering over his still open, unseeing eyes.

Rigel tried to speak, to scream, but no sound came out.

“I am Diana Herrera,” she said calmly, as though she was introducing herself to Rigel over a business meeting. “And I have been sent here to kill you.”

She lifted her weapon again, took aim at Rigel with no emotion whatsoever in her eyes, and fired.

The door behind her burst open, knocking her in the shoulder, sending the shot wide.

Two big orderlies were standing in the hallway, looking angry, which quickly turned to terrified when they saw the blood and the gun. Herrera spun around with catlike reflexes and fired a shot that got the first orderly in the gut.

The lights went out.

An earsplitting alarm began to blare, and everything was plunged into darkness. There was a window at the back of the room, but the glass had gone dark, and no light was coming from there either. Rigel backed away from the sound of yet another gunshot, throwing himself to the ground and biting down the groan of pain from the impact on his wounded shoulder. He looked around frantically as he crawled away, trying to find a way out, anything—

An arrow, blinking bright green in the darkness, pointed him to the back of the room. Rigel followed, but another gunshot exploded next to him, and the arrow went out in a shower of sparks along with the monitor that had been projecting it. It didn’t matter, though. Rigel had stumbled upon a small door at the very back. He crashed through it, slammed it shut behind him, and covered his ears as three successive gunshots shattered the door’s glass pane above him. Shards from it fell everywhere. Shaking, afraid to stand up but not daring to stay put, Rigel looked up and saw a window.

The window swung open on its own, blinding him with sunlight from outside. Eyes watering, Rigel launched himself toward it, grabbed the windowsill, and pulled himself up and out. He ignored the pain in his shoulder, ignored the sharp jabs in his forearms, and forced his hands to take all his weight. Half-blind still, he looked down and saw the ground, two stories below him. From behind him came the sound of a door crashing open.

No time to think. Rigel jumped out the window into the street below, aiming for a dumpster.

He fell hard among the garbage, and the jarring impact to his injured shoulder nearly made him pass out from the pain. He cried out involuntarily but forced himself to stand up, kicking more garbage out of his way and pulling himself out of the dumpster. His right hand had no strength left in it, and he fumbled at the edge twice before finally getting a grip and swinging over. He was shaking. The noonday heat closed upon him like a suffocating cloud, and from above he saw glass shattering.

He ran. He turned a corner, finding himself in a narrow alley at the back of the hospital. If he could just get to the main street, then….

But a man came into view, running around the same corner and heading straight for Rigel. When the man saw him, he ran even faster. He carried a gun in one of his hands.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Blake!”

Rigel skidded to a stop, feeling trapped. He recognized that man. It was the same security guard who had shot him, and there was no way out—no way but back.

Rigel turned around and ran as fast as he could in the other direction, back to the dumpster. When he got there, though, he caught a glimpse of sudden movement and saw a second man waiting for him, half-hidden behind a broken window on the second floor of a building to the side of the alley. The man held what had to be a sniper rifle. He was dressed all in black, just like Herrera. When the sniper saw Rigel, he took aim immediately and fired.

Rigel dived behind the dumpster, and the shot exploded at his feet. No way out. His heart in his throat, Rigel looked back the way he had come just in time to see the burly security guard turn the corner, skid to a stop, and look quickly from the sniper and back to Rigel, who was still crouching behind the dumpster and completely exposed.

The big guard raised his gun without missing a beat, aimed, and fired. Rigel yelled. He couldn’t help it. But as the deafening noise became a dull ringing in his ears, the security guard ran straight for him, crashed behind the dumpster, reloaded, and poked his head out the side. He fired again, not at Rigel but at the sniper in the alley. This time there was a grunt, a wild shot that broke another window, and the sound of a body hitting the ground.

“Got him,” the guard said. He was panting, covered in sweat. “Those are professional assassins.
Fuck
. On three, we move out.”

Rigel just stared, dumbstruck. When the guard looked at him, Rigel shrunk away.

“Hey,” the guard told him, his face set in a menacing scowl. “I’m here to help you. Someone sent me.”

“S… someone? Who?”

The guard poked his head out from behind the dumpster again, scanning everywhere at once. He ignored the question.

“Okay. It’s clear. Ready? One… two… go!”

Rigel did not move.

“Dammit, man!” the guard said, still looking around everywhere, gun at the ready. “We have no time!”

But Rigel was frozen to the spot. He didn’t know what was happening, didn’t understand it, and was too terrified to speak.

“We have to go now!” the guard insisted. “If not, we’ll—”

The sound of screeching tires rent the air, and an armored vehicle suddenly came into view, heading their way from a perpendicular street.

“It’s them,” the guard said. He grabbed Rigel by the arm and pulled him up. “Let’s go!”

The car had skidded to a stop by then, and two more men were getting out. They pointed at them, shouting something.

Nowhere else to go. Nothing to lose. At least the guard had not tried to shoot him again.

Rigel gulped, stumbled when the guard pushed him ahead to try to get him to move, and nodded.

“I’m right behind you,” the guard said, firing a couple of shots randomly to scare the other men.

Then they both tore out of there, dodging bullets, running as fast as they could.

“STOP!” BARROW
yelled with what little breath he had, coming to a stop himself under a little patch of shade in the street. “Hey, Blake!”

The man he was trying to save—a kid, really—was either extremely stupid or extremely scared, because he kept right on running. Barrow cursed under his breath, looked back briefly to verify that they had indeed lost their pursuers, and took off after him, yelling for him to stop.

It was a full block before he caught up to Blake, forcing him to stand still with a hand on his shoulder and dragging him toward a side corner where they would be out of sight.

“I told you… to stop,” Barrow panted, glaring at the other man and wiping some sweat off his brow. “We keep running like madmen… the middle of the day… we’ll draw too much attention. We need to hide.”

“But… but…,” Aaron Blake stammered, his eyes darting every which way, clearly terrified. “They had guns!”

Barrow nodded. “I noticed.”

“They wanted to kill me!”

“And came damn close to it too. By the time… I made it to the hospital they were already there. Tanner must have sent them straight away. But how did he know…?”

“Tanner?” Blake repeated, a slight hysterical edge to his voice. “Richard Tanner?”

“Unless you know of any other millionaire son of a bitch who wants you dead, then yeah. Him.”

“Oh God. Oh God. So it’s true. Atlas was right warning me. I wasn’t imagining it, I—”

“Hold up,” Barrow cut in, raising a big hand. “Atlas contacted you too?”

Blake nodded jerkily, and a drop of sweat was flicked off the tip of his nose by the motion. That reminded Barrow they were still out in the open. In the middle of the day, no less. As much as Barrow wanted to interrogate the guy, and as angry as he felt at having been coerced into pulling off this crazy rescue mission, everything else would have to wait until they were safe.

“Come with me,” he said. “And no running, okay? I know a place nearby.”

Blake hesitated. He even took a hand up to his shoulder unconsciously, covering it with his palm. It was obvious he didn’t trust Barrow, and he couldn’t blame the kid. He had shot him right in that spot that same day, after all.

The seconds lengthened. Blake still couldn’t decide, and Barrow was beginning to feel the full blast of the sun’s heat. If they stayed outside for much longer after having run like they had, they could easily get a nice heatstroke and pass out or worse. Barrow’s patience was wearing thin. Finally, annoyed, he made as if to leave. If Blake didn’t want to follow, then fine.

“I don’t even know your name,” Blake said suddenly, and his voice cracked slightly on the last word. In spite of himself, Barrow softened at the sound coming from a guy who was clearly scared out of his wits. Barrow was used to dangerous situations, and he had even killed a man. This kid had probably had his world turned into an incomprehensible nightmare in just a few hours.

“I’m Barrow,” he said, not smiling but no longer glaring like before. “Steve Barrow.”

“I’m—”

“Aaron Blake. I know.”

“I was going to say Rigel,” the young man said. “That’s how I sign my paintings, and it’s the name I use with Atlas. Maybe you should call me that.”

Barrow nodded curtly, thinking maybe the kid wasn’t that stupid, after all. Using a code name would make it harder for Tanner to find them if he had somehow managed to break into any street drone patrols that used voice recognition.

“Okay, Rigel,” he said. “Let’s get going. We need shade. If we stay outside any longer, the heat is going to get us even faster than those men.”

Rigel didn’t say anything, but he followed quickly and quietly, and they made good progress through the streets. There weren’t many people out. Midday in Aurora usually saw the city deserted, everybody holed up indoors and, if they were rich enough, enjoying air-conditioned relief. Barrow was worried that the men in the car would catch up to them, but he led Rigel through small alleyways that were too narrow for larger vehicles, steadily working his way to the warehouse district, which he knew very well from his days in airship trading.

It took them ten long minutes to get to the dilapidated warehouse that had been the property of the owner of the
Titania
. Barrow broke a window on the ground floor, since the front was padlocked, and kicked away the jagged pieces of glass before climbing in. As soon as he landed inside, the temperature around him dropped by at least ten degrees. Indoors the place was in shambles, practically empty and probably infested with rats and other vermin. It was dirty, and there were a couple of gaping holes in the roof through which bright lances of sunlight penetrated easily, the beams clearly visible in the drifting dust that hung in the air. Still, it was quiet. It was cool and safe.

Barrow looked back over his shoulder. Rigel was trying to climb after him through the window hole set slightly above head level, but he was having trouble pulling himself up. Annoyed, Barrow walked back to see what was holding him up and saw that Rigel couldn’t really get a good grip with the weird metal things covering part of his hands like bionic gloves.