Prometheus Road (17 page)

“Nothing yet,” Dead Man called, “but we better hurry. It’s high tide.”

Tom looked at Helix, who just ran around in a circle like an excited dog—without saying anything. Had he dreamed the whole episode with Helix and Dead Man?

A vulture swooped in to land on the railing by Dead Man, giving Magnus a significant look.

Magnus shoved Tom toward Dead Man. “Go! Rocco spotted a guardian on the way!” Tom moved too slowly, so Magnus grabbed his arm again and ran toward Dead Man, their footsteps thumping on the metal deck, with Helix barking along behind them. Dead Man turned at their approach and reached for Tom.

A moment later, Tom felt himself hurled into midair. His stomach jumped into his throat as he fell toward the dark waters. On the way down, a giant hand pushed him away from the battleship, and he was stunned by a thundering roar as the sky burst into streaks of red and yellow. He hit the water with his back, and it knocked the wind out of him. Water filled his nose and mouth. When he looked up, he got a brief glimpse of flames rippling on the surface of the water, then he screamed when a ragged chunk of metal splashed into the water above his head.

TEMPEST sat in a crouch, doing her best to keep the sticky soles of her shoes and her palms flat against the steeply canted roof of the high tower. She knew she was over two hundred feet above the ground, and she didn’t like it one bit. She had already whizzed through the predawn darkness behind Rose on a spider line high above the city streets, flitting from one hotel roof to another while getting an exhilarating view of the bright lights below. And everywhere she flew, they were followed by four other shades dressed in black coveralls and traveling in pairs. Tempest also wore black coveralls, and she carried a backpack containing various supplies including high-heeled shoes and a formal black dress that fit her reasonably well when she tried it on in Rose’s Underworld apartment. It was the fanciest dress she had ever worn, and it would have been considered scandalous to be seen in such a low-cut garment in Marinwood. The dress was part of her disguise for their trip into the main casino inside the fantasy castle known as Excalibur, but it also helped her fit in among the formally attired shades of the Underworld. Now she sat there like one of the gargoyles atop the royal blue cone of the highest castle tower, adjusting part of the harness that bit into her upper thigh, wondering how she had ever gotten herself into such a bizarre situation. She felt that she had proven her worthiness to the shade community by flying from rooftop to rooftop with Rose, but she knew they wanted more.

Spotlights illuminated the blue and red tops of the castle towers, and Tempest quickly learned not to look down into the lights because they caused a temporary blindness that was disconcerting in her precarious position. The gusts of warm desert wind didn’t inspire confidence, either. She licked her dry lips and swallowed as she watched Rose tie the spider line to a cleat at the tip of the roof, then drop the line over the edge, where the coil lightly slapped against the floor of the balcony fifteen feet below.

Rose grabbed the line where it ran through the collar of Tempest’s harness, then placed a loop in the crouching woman’s hand. “Just remember, going down is easy. Getting back up here again will be harder. We’ll have to be careful with the painting.”

Tempest made a face. “That makes me feel much better.” She had somehow fallen in with fanatical art collectors, or so it seemed. Although she had speculated on many possible tests of courage or strength that the shades might put her through to demonstrate her loyalty to her new family in the Underworld, she never guessed that they would ask her to steal an old painting from one of the nearby casinos. During a brief tour of the Underworld art collection before they left, Tempest saw a wide variety of oils and watercolors hanging on the bare concrete walls of the sewers, each one carefully lit by tiny spotlights and sealed inside clear, climate-controlled cases to protect them from the high humidity in the tunnels.

When Tempest asked why they had stolen so many paintings, Rose explained that the Dominion AIs had no appreciation of art, and the shades considered these paintings to be purely unique expressions of human talents that the AIs could not understand. Each painting they rescued was a symbol of human superiority, liberated from Dominion control so that they could be housed in freedom among human art lovers. The paintings on display in the casino collections were monitored, but not carefully guarded, because the AIs placed such a low value on them. The old paintings were particularly valuable because no new art was being produced; artists were rare among the population, and those who appeared were quickly rehabilitated.

Long ago, Rose had worked out a way to keep any AI security observers in the casinos satisfied while they removed the paintings to safety. Most of the risk to the burglars came in the form of nanoborg security guards or in the possibility of being identified by one of the AIs monitoring the security cameras. Only a few shades had actually been arrested while trying to steal paintings, but Rose sadly pointed out that the prisoners had never been seen again, even though she had watched for them at the rehab facility.

Tempest’s target for the evening was Pablo Picasso’s oil painting, Don Quixote. Rose had shown her a holo of the painting, which depicted the Spanish knight on horseback beside the faithful Sancho Panza on his mule. Tempest thought it was a nice painting, but not nice enough to risk her life to steal it. However, offered a choice between stealing the Picasso and trying to find her own way back home to Marinwood, Tempest chose to become a burglar.

The other four shades thumped against the roof somewhere behind Tempest as she awkwardly dropped over the edge of the roof, clinging to the spider line, her eyes shut so tight that she saw popping lights behind her eyelids. Inching her way down the line, holding her breath, her toes finally touched the floor of the balcony, and she sighed with relief. When she opened her eyes, she was facing Rose’s back and a heavy blue door.

Rose gripped the doorknob. “It’s locked.”

Tempest gasped. “What? Why would anyone lock a door way up here?” She reached past Rose’s arm and rattled the doorknob herself.

“I don’t think it was meant to keep us out. They probably don’t want any tourists sneaking into the tower and falling off the balcony.”

“Now what?” Tempest looked toward the roof, already dreading the climb back up.

“Plan B,” said Rose. She pointed over the edge of the balcony.

Tempest’s eyes widened as she took the briefest glance over the balcony railing, then stared at Rose. “You’re insane. I’m not going that way.”

Rose chuckled as she coiled her spider line and leaned on the railing to look down. “There’s another balcony about fifty feet down and over a bit. All we have to do is climb down there and start swinging until we can reach the balcony.”

“Not me,” Tempest said, trying the doorknob again. The door was sealed so tight that it didn’t even rattle when she shook the knob. “I won’t do it. Until a few minutes ago, I’d never even been this high off the ground before. Now you’ve got me flying around over the city on threads I can hardly see on my way to steal an old painting that might get me captured. I could be sent back to the rehab facility.”

Rose smirked at her. “You want to climb up on the roof and head back on your own? It’s kind of tricky to do it all by yourself, but you’re clever; you’ve got a pretty good chance of surviving the trip.”

Tempest looked doubtful as she eyed the roof again. “Well . . .”

“Unless you have a key to this door, your only choice is down.”

“I could wait here for you.” Tempest said, nodding with an anxious smile. When she saw the look Rose gave her in return, she quietly checked the spider line’s connection to her harness, then tapped her finger on the friction brake that would slow her descent down the tower. “How do you use this thing again?”

It took three minutes for Tempest to make her way down the side of the tower, breathing hard despite the minimal effort required, trying not to look down. Sweat dripped into her eyes as she hung in her harness and glanced sideways at the lower balcony that was now at her level. About fifteen feet away, it refused to move any closer as Tempest tried to will it nearer with her mind. Failing that, she knew she’d have to start swinging the way that Rose had described. She looked up, and Rose waved at her from her safe vantage point on the upper balcony. Pushing off against the tower wall, she swayed back and forth until she got more momentum, then tried to walk the wall as Rose had shown her. After she took a few running steps along the wall, she lost her footing and hung like a deadweight in the harness again, but she continued to swing back and forth until the balcony was within reach. The wind whistled in her ears. The bright casino lights swirled around her, and she occasionally crossed the beam of a spotlight, reminding her how high she was on the tower and how exposed she was if any outside security guards bothered to look up.

On her first grab, Tempest missed the railing, scraping her arm against the tower wall as she swung backward in her wide arc, then stopped and rushed back toward her target. She grabbed at the railing again, missed, and thumped against it with her stomach, knocking the wind out of her, but she still managed to hook the railing with her armpits as she slid backward. She felt dizzy, her stomach hurt, and she wanted to go home. Grunting, she hauled herself up and over the railing, then dropped in a heap on the cold concrete floor of the balcony. She rolled over on her back, looked up, and saw a pair of booted feet falling toward her face. She twisted to her side and covered her head with her arms as the occupant of the boots thumped onto the balcony beside her.

“I wouldn’t call you a natural climber,” Rose said, coiling her spider line, “but you’re learning. Try to land on your feet instead of your stomach or your head.”

Groaning, Tempest rolled up to a sitting position and rubbed her aching ribs. She briefly considered pushing Rose over the railing, but the urge passed when Rose easily opened the balcony door.

Rose stepped through the doorway onto a spiral staircase that circled a vertical tube of white light that rose the entire length of the tower. She beckoned to Tempest. “Hurry. Degas and the others will be landing on you in a minute if you don’t get in here quick.”

Tempest anxiously looked up to see if more booted feet were coming her way, then stood and staggered onto the staircase. Rose pointed down the shaft. “Don’t worry if you see glowing faces on our way down; they’re part of the effects for the tourists. When you’re on the ground and you look up at the little windows in the tower, the floating heads are lit from behind by the light tube to make them look like ghosts.”

“Why?”

Rose shrugged. “This is Las Vegas. Nothing makes sense here.”

Tempest scampered down the spiral staircase behind Rose, trying not to let her get too far ahead. Behind her, she heard more booted feet following them, presumably Degas and his friends. Although her stomach hurt, she was happy to be indoors again. When they passed the base of the giant vertical light tube and continued their descent into the darker depths of the stairwell, Tempest began to wonder if they’d ever stop. “How far are we going?”

“Down two more levels in the subbasements. That’s why we came in through the tower.”

Tempest didn’t understand, but before she could ask another question they had reached the bottom of the stairwell. She stopped beside Rose, and the four men following them jogged past into the dimly lighted corridor, vanishing around a curve.

“They’ll create distractions, but we won’t have time to dally,” Rose said, slipping out of her black coveralls. “Take off your clothes.”

Tempest raised an eyebrow, then remembered the formal dress she’d brought along.

“You’re going to see some strange things in this casino,” Rose cautioned her as she wriggled into a short red dress that glowed from within. “This is one of the few nanotech buildings in town. The nanoforms were introduced for remodeling in Las Vegas just before The Uplift in the western wastelands. The AIs love to play with that stuff, so they added some enhancements. Reality looks a little different in this place. Things change in front of your eyes, and it might take some getting used to, okay?”

“Sure.” Tempest adjusted the snug dress on her body and stuffed her coveralls into the bag. She was familiar with the stories about the maintenance nanoforms that came at night in Marinwood, and what happened to the rare person who came in contact with them, so she felt wary of entering a building where they were so active. Rose didn’t seem concerned, and that made Tempest feel more confident. As she thought about it, Tempest realized she was more worried about the nanoborg security guards recognizing her. She didn’t want a return trip to the rehab facility.

Rose handed her a flat, palm-sized container that matched one she was holding. “This is the good stuff. Powder your nose.”

Tempest responded with a puzzled frown and watched as Rose demonstrated, opening the case to reveal a soft sponge resting on a powdery interior next to a small mirror inside the lid. Studying her face in the mirror, Rose applied the powder to her face. Almost instantly, Rose’s face narrowed—her lips thinned, her cheeks paled and drew in, her nose became slightly longer and more pointed. Rose smiled. “Nanopowder makeup. For that high-fashion look.”

“High fashion?”

“Never mind. Just use it. The smart powder analyzes your facial structure and reacts with your personal chemistry to make subtle alterations to your appearance. No pattern recognition scan is going to identify you for about four hours, then you’ll look like your old self again unless you use the powder again. If you don’t like the result, you can try a different powder.”

When she applied the powder, Tempest gasped as she felt the skin and muscles of her face shifting. Her lips became wider and redder, her skin tone darkened, and she felt as if her face was being pulled back and up toward her ears and scalp, widening her eyes and forehead. When her face stabilized, she didn’t even recognize herself in the little mirror. There was no pain, only a pleasant tingling in her face. Stunned, she followed Rose into a service elevator.