Bloodsong Ch. 05

She stepped through.

There were four captives, all women — no, wrong. The last one on the left was male. She hadn't been able to tell at first glance for reasons that brought her close to retching. None appeared aware of her presence, or conscious to begin with. She forced her eyes away before they moved to their faces, afraid that recognition would kick in and paralyze her.

The noise . . . she'd rather not have learned its origin.

Unlike the bright room that preceded it, this one was dipped in shadow, the sole light coming from a wall lamp, filtered through a piece of gauzy red cloth draped over it. Someone, or several someones, had taken the initiative to make it comfy. They'd hung an incredibly tasteless painting. Replaced the storage counters with a modular sofa in black leather, one so wide across that it was more accurately classified as a modular bed. Bolt holes marked the spots where if she took the other room as a template, the tables would have been.

It surprised her that no one had thought to add a rug or two, but they might have reasoned that those would stain too fast.

The machines were still working. Silent in themselves, but perpetuating that awful sound as they went in and out and in again. Battery operated, to not have been affected by the blackout, Valerie thought. Other than that, there wasn't much left in her head that was rational. Only formless rage, cutting and uneven as a storm of glass shards.

She neared the woman laid out where the arm of the couch met the wall. She didn't let herself look at the face as she turned off the machine pumping in and out of the prone body, and eased it back so that the steel shaft would slide out with the least amount of pain. The other machine she treated the same way, although the woman it ravaged felt ice cold to the touch. The man was dead too. She didn't need to look too closely at him to be sure.

"Ms. Redmont? You alright in there?"

"Darkness beyond, I told you to stay outside!" She skipped back and moved to the other side of the curtain, holding it in place to shield the bodies from prying eyes. Pembroke had entered the adjacent room, tailed by a contrite looking Gilmore. The others dripped in one after another, even Horton, although with everyone else inside, it would admittedly have been unconscionable to leave him elsewhere. "Follow only if I call, what part of that—"

"We called," Gilmore said. "You weren't answering."

She'd been so far away from the world that she hadn't heard them, Valerie supposed.

"Fine. Search the storage spaces, find medical supplies." Barrera's remark about how Kalidriapolos could have turned out useful tumbled through her skull like a haunting. "I'll need . . . you, Pierce, and Fulton, and you on the right if you have a strong stomach, to help me . . . see to them."

He on the right didn't possess a strong stomach. Webber replaced him while the man sat on the other side of the curtain with his head between his knees. Fulton checked the man's pulse, for the sake of being thorough. Valerie did the same with the woman she'd preemptively declared dead, finding herself correct. The third one in the alignment was still alive, however. Pierce, who unless Valerie misremembered had legitimate medical training, hovered over her with a look that suggested that something could be done there. The last . . .

Valerie took Maria's arm. Her own heart felt closer to her mouth than usual.

Beat. Pause. Beat. Longer pause — beat. Pause. Beat.

It went on at a steady enough rhythm that Valerie stopped fearing it would fade each time it stuttered. She carefully laid the arm back, aware that it was time, that she'd run out of excuses to avoid looking.

I spoke at your wedding, was the thought that rose from nowhere as she took in the new lines that, for once, were not the most disturbing part of reviewing a human acquaintance after years of no in-person contact. I can't remember what I said, or what anyone else said. Just Blakely, because his bit was short and because he asked why it had taken the two of you so long to get together. We'd been wondering that for years, so we laughed. You laughed too, the hardest out of everyone. You both looked so happy . . .

There were chains on her still, which Valerie broke in haste. Blood and detached tissue stuck under her nails, evidence that she had fought back, the first and only finding that triggered a somber smile. Bruises all over her shoulders and neck, abstract patterns in blue and black that climbed up calves and thighs at places where too strong hands had held on too hard.

Maria had, within the confines of what fortune was allowed to someone put through what she'd gone through, been lucky. There was bloating and bruising suggestive of internal bleeding, but nothing hung outside that should be tucked in her midsection. The dead man hadn't fared so well.

Her chest, however . . .

"Pierce, toss me that." A pack of gauze sponges sailed into Valerie's waiting hand. She had to push most of the blood off, as there was too much to absorb and she didn't want to risk causing further injury by moving Maria onto her side to let it run down. It was old, though. The gash didn't refill. She stuffed it with the gauze and was about to ask Pierce for a bandage roll when a distant rumble sounded.

Every man in the room jumped. Uncertain looks were traded.

"Was that—"

"Yes!" Valerie wouldn't have admitted aloud that she was glad to leave, but something in her chest came loose as she bolted off the leather deathbed. "Webber, finish bandaging her. Horton, with me!"

"Me?" The latter's voice sounded from somewhere behind the curtain. She tore past it before he could come through, pulling him a safe distance away from sights that would give him a lifetime of nightmares.

"I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to pick you up later, so yes, we're sticking together. Don't forget your blaster. Everyone else, stay here, keep these women alive, protect yourselves. I'll send someone back for you if I can." And if the worst had not come to pass. Those would make for poor parting words, however.

Valerie hauled Horton with her and broke into a run once they were in the corridor, forcing him to hurry to keep up. It had the advantage of not allowing for conversations more elaborate than 'This way!' and adjacent advice.

She let her nose be her guide, taking whichever direction the smell of burned flesh wafted from the strongest. She could tell when they reached a part of the floor they hadn't passed through before, because although the hallway was as nondescript as the rest, the body that Horton nearly broke his nose tripping over hadn't been left there by them.

"Human," she murmured, sending off a quick prayer before turning her attention to the others scattered ahead. Some Ki-laar. Two Caheans. Too many humans. No weapons left, so the survivors had ransacked the dead before moving on. That at least was encouraging.

Proceeding into the next hallway almost saw their heads blasted off.

"Blakely, what the hell! Hold fire!" It had been a close call, but she'd tackled Horton in time. Valerie rolled back to her feet and scowled at the man, who shrugged as he lowered the blaster. Looking past him, she saw more bodies and a pillage in progress. Looking past that . . . "You — are you kidding? You already blew up the—"

"It wasn't my idea! There was one of your lot inside, we didn't have a choice!"

Valerie stopped her eyes from continuing to bug out at the stellar job they'd done of wrecking the elevator beyond salvation. She narrowed them instead.

"Which one of them?"

"Not your boyfriend, if that's what you're worried about."

"Blakely."

"Fine, fine! The squinty one. If you want to lay into someone for this, go yell at Santos. He was the one who—"

Since nothing in the known worlds could have persuaded Valerie to lay into Santos when she'd left his wife in the state she had, she scowled at Blakely and walked off, dismissing Horton when he attempted to follow.

Santos stood by the smashed elevator, surveying the destruction. It was an impressive amount for the resources they'd had. Inconvenient, but impressive. The doors swung loosely from the frame. The car, which she'd counted on having chunks missing but still being in place, was a smoking ruin resting at the bottom of the shaft. The connecting cables swung gently back and forth, untethered.

"You found Maria, and she's not . . . doing great," Santos intoned, as Valerie came to a stop beside him. His face showcased a complicated medley of emotions. He sighed before answering the unspoken question, motioning at the elevator-that-had-been. "I can't think of any other reason you'd hold off on complaining about that. For the record, it was Blakely who did it."

"I don't think we should play blame tennis right now. She . . . she is alive."

"But how badly — no, never mind. Don't tell me. I'll see when I see her."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I am. Should be. I didn't know it'd happen like this. That we'd . . ." Santos let the sentence die. Valerie waited for him to suck in a breath, rake fingers through his hair, be done telling himself that they faced issues outweighing his personal concerns, and that those were what he ought to concentrate on. She'd witnessed him pulling off similar levels of self-abnegation in the past. It wasn't surprising that this time he failed, and she was glad of it. Had he succeeded, she'd have believed him a better leader, but a worse man. He continued to try even so, managing to sound slightly less scattered when he spoke again. "They took her last night. You're not completely out of it when they stick you inside those boxes, not the whole time. Sedated, but you can still catch snatches of what's happening around you. I heard her — I heard them. That was all I could do in there: listen."

"There was nothing you could have done." Valerie cringed as the words rolled off her tongue. She must be mad to say them as though they'd provide comfort. There hadn't been one occasion where someone had bleated equivalent platitudes at her that she hadn't wanted to sock the speaker in the mouth. And yet she couldn't help but add: "Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault, none of it."

"It is. I should have asked better questions. Doubted, done more."

"I don't agree, but I'm aware that there is no point in arguing." Attempting to do so with someone addicted to faulting himself for every fresh disaster stood a greater chance of seeing her pushed down the elevator shaft than of convincing Santos to stop self-loathing. Her remark made the man's jaw set tighter. Valerie suspected that he would rather have taken a dressing down over a concession.

"It's done now," he sighed, after another stretch of staring at the wrecked elevator. His gaze tracked the wisps of smoke rising from it as though he might divine the shape of the future in the patterns they formed. He shook his head and trained his eyes higher, the strain in his face easing as he found success where he'd failed before. Santos had boxes in his head, same as she did, in which less useful thoughts were kept to be broken up over later. Valerie imagined that, as he turned to her, he placed a lid on the box labeled Maria. "We should work on getting you up."

"So, what kind of alien are — wait, you are an alien, right?"

Different people reacted differently when thrust into hell. Some were consumed until nothing remained, some just barely bore the heat, some waltzed through the flames. Coping mechanisms varied along similar lines. One wore the masks one had to in order to retain a semblance of sanity. Valerie had no grounds on which to judge how Mike Horton made himself deal, and therefore she passed no judgment.

She did wish that trauma had done something other than regress the young man into an inquisitive five year old. That, and that he'd tone down the cheeriness. There were no reasons to be cheerful anywhere within a fifty mile radius. Which meant that he was faking it, and it disturbed her beyond measure that he faked so seamlessly.

Then again, Horton disturbed her in general. People who displayed a great willingness to die generally did. Valerie recognized the hypocrisy there, but refused to engage with it.

"Yes," she replied, hoping her tiredness came across and deterred him from pressing for more. It had been a barrage of questions since they'd emerged from the elevator shaft. Valerie might start yearning for them to get attacked if it were to continue. She didn't have Webber's patience. Or much of her own left at this stage. "What gave it away? Was it the teeth, the claws, or the kicking down solid metal doors?"

Reaching floor six minus had been no picnic. Four Front members had been enlisted in helping improvise a pulley system, using the marooned rope wire dangling inside the elevator shaft. Horton had been bound to her back with more cables and told to grab onto her shoulders, so that she wouldn't waste the single hand at her disposal holding him. Latching onto and scaling the guide rail would have been impossible using only her feet. The ropes, pulled and maneuvered by the men on the ground, did two thirds of the heavy lifting and provided a safety net in case her grip faltered, but it was up to her to steer both herself and her passenger as they bypassed every new floor, one sealed metal door at a time.

The whole time — and it had taken a horrendously long time, for what it was — Valerie had feared that doom would come from above. Below. Sideways, blue fire and tentacles coming through the walls when she had limited room to defend either herself or her tagalong human. The worst to happen, however, was that Horton turned out to be terrified of heights and came close to tearing himself loose from her in his panic. Which had come as a relief despite being the opposite of helpful, since it meant that there was still a will to live residing somewhere behind that lightbulb smile.

Valerie had been starting to wonder.

"Sorry, sorry, I was just asking in case . . ." Horton eyed her arm that still had a hand attached as if it were of greater interest than the one that didn't, which puzzled her until she realized what he was checking for. Sighing, Valerie splayed her fingers and turned her palm both ways, showing off its lack of webbing. "So is that a gender thing, or are you a different species from Jim?"

"Who? Oh, Webber. Yes. Different species." Hopefully that was as far as she'd need to get into the subject. She wouldn't have minded if the questions were relevant — no, lie. Even if they had been, she'd still rather have no questions of whatever nature diverting her mind from the matters it wanted to obsess over.

"So what are—" It was hard not to rejoice when turning the corner put them face to face with a Cahean squad, because it meant that Valerie didn't have to reply, and that she could unload the wealth of rage she'd been hoarding since leaving the training room behind.

She was less happy when they didn't all turn out to be Caheans. She heard Horton scream. Since he hadn't used words, releasing a warbled 'WHah-ah!' that wasn't readily comprehensible as the warning it meant to be, she turned to check on him rather than ducking like she ought to have.

The worst part wasn't getting a tentacle smack in the face. The worst part was the trail of slime left in its wake. Among the reasons why Enneads came second in Valerie's private ranking of species she'd rather not tangle with, their penchant for oozing everywhere during a fight was inconsequential in terms of risk, but did nothing to endear them to her. She stumbled back, thanking all those dead Ki-laar for the blaster in her hand. She'd hate to have to bite through squirming slime dispensers for the second time in as many days.

"So what's he?" Horton asked once the dust settled, gesturing at the dead Ennead whilst moving out of the corner where he'd been huddled while she went through their attackers. He's shot one of the Caheans with his own blaster while she was otherwise occupied, which Valerie had been pleasantly surprised by. Enough that she provided a more complete answer than she would have otherwise. Horton looked thoughtful. "Does that mean that some hentai is based on factual stories?"

"I'm not sharing my opinion on that subject." And that was her temporary tolerance exhausted. Valerie made to wipe her face before it got through to her that she didn't have a sleeve to wipe it with. She managed to get most of the slime with her hand and rubbed it off on the wall, but enough remained to make her skin itch. Whatever one might say about her own species, their extra limbs were dry unless they put in effort to make them otherwise.

Horton went a whole minute without saying anything. Valerie was less concerned that she'd been too short with him than she was grateful for the silence. Once it settled, her thoughts flew to where they'd been straining to head since she'd stood in the gloom of that red tinted light. Two dead, while the others . . . not to mention the uncertainty of how many bodies had been cleared from that room since the takeover.

She had Jack to blame. Once again, she couldn't believe she was thinking it, but what she'd witnessed wouldn't have happened with his aunt in charge. Marabeth profited off the ruin of living people. Under her, there had been a strictly enforced hands-off-the-merchandise policy. Staff members weren't allowed to use prisoners to the point where they lay with their guts out, and certainly not to leave them like that overnight. Waste of human resources, not to mention unsanitary. They'd have gotten the retail price docked off their wages for a stunt like that, if they weren't fired outright.

Jack didn't run as tight a ship, that much was clear from the fact that his men tried to kill her whenever he turned his back. She would not, refused to excuse him, but couldn't help but wonder about the why. Bog standard ineptitude? Not caring enough to do a competent job? He'd claimed not wanting to tank the company as his reason for refusing to let go of Westmont, so Valerie would appreciate the irony if it were the first option.

The second, however, would feel like a slap in the face.

"Can I, uh, can I ask you something?" Horton piped up. Valerie, startled both by having to pause her musings and by him for once asking if he was allowed a question, nodded before she could think better of it. "Okay. So. This isn't really a suicide mission, is it? Because you're too calm. If you were actually, for real, planning for us to blow up, you wouldn't be this calm."

Valerie thought that Horton must have a rather unconventional concept of what a calm person looked like.

"How calm I appear to be is an atrocious metric for measuring danger. This way." Floor minus six lacked the ubiquitous subdivisions into cell blocks and training rooms, making it difficult but possible to hold on to a sense of direction. There was a communal office space that resembled a primary school classroom with taller desks and chairs. A wall of drawers — Ki-laar sleeping compartments — that put Valerie in mind of a morgue. Horton, of course, asked about those, acting like he'd forgotten about the question she'd danced around answering.

"I sort of feel sorry for them," he admitted, as Valerie finished explaining and pulled a door open. It had to be the right one, since there weren't any others left. "The box they stuck me in was bigger than those are."

Valerie paused midway through ushering him in, so briefly that the stutter of movement went unnoticed. She stood back, having already determined the room to be empty, while Horton took in the jungle of plastic and circuitry. Valerie kept her eyes on his back as he skipped around, willing away the echoes of dead people and the ghosts that came to perch on the human's shoulders the longer she stared. He appeared dismayed as he stopped in front of a wall panel covered with switches, knobs and lights.