Out of the Black - Lee Doty [136]
Elena's brown eyes remained fixed on the display. A shadow passed through them. Her face softened, but the focus didn't leave her eyes. "How long to link into the security net?"
"Done." Miranda said as her fingers stopped moving again.
Elena opened her tablet, configured an alpha encrypter, and called Hawthorne. She got a failure buzz. She checked the crypto, then the tablet, then the connection. "Net's down."
"In a hospital?" Derry looked surprised.
She configured the tablet for a point-to-point connection, got another buzz. "I can't get RF through either."
"Nonsense!" Miranda's fingers flew over the console. "There she is right there... four floors up, in the observation room above the OR... you shouldn't have any trouble getting microband through to her. Hey! Who's that with her?"
They all leaned in for a better look just as the monitor filed with electric snow. The lights flickered- flickered again. Static filled the security screens.
"Wha?" Miranda began diagnostics, or tried to. The computer console accepted none of her commands. It was completely dead.
"That felt targeted." Elena said, "Lets get out of here. Derry, you've got point."
Three assault guns came up in unison. They moved to the doorway, hard and ready for anything- or so they thought.
***
The lights flickered, flickered again and the lights from the city outside blazed briefly through Ping's dark reflection. It was his turn to stare into the window's black glass and wait. Behind him in the semitransparent vista of reflection, Alex lay on the hospital bed, healing himself presumably. Rae paced around the far end of the room. From time to time, he could see her stealing glances at him.
His head was no longer bandaged. Alex had finished what work had been left undone by the medkit and surgeons. He felt strong, steady. Fortunately Rae had been wrong, and the only evidence of his head wound now was a terrible case of bed-head. He wore clothes packed before their flight from Roy's house on Lake Geneva. Apparently the same clothes that Rae had dressed him in for their trip to the hospital. This was definitely his week for being stripped and dressed by strangers. Of course, it was also the week of being beaten senseless and then healed miraculously. Was his glass half empty or half full?
Roy's sword was in his pocket, Roy's twin pistols slung beneath a hard composite jacket most people would probably use for riding motorcycles. He couldn't imagine what Roy had used it for... air skiing behind suborbital transports, perhaps.
He looked up from his borrowed and aliased tablet, his gaze shifted to Rae's nervous pacing, then back to his own reflection. He wore a dead man's clothes, carried a dead man's weapons. His face was expressionless, his eyes soft and dark. Through his reflection swam the shifting lights of the night city. He couldn't meet Rae's gaze, couldn't speak. He didn't deserve to be alive. Sure his little gambit had worked, but what kind of person would try something like that? Certainly a desperate one, but he didn't feel like letting himself off so easy.
Rae stopped pacing and took a deep breath. She walked toward Ping's window, her reflection growing behind him as she approached. She came to a halt behind him. Though he wanted to look down, wanted to just go away, he returned her reflected stare. Man of ashes poured into another's urn.
"How did you know?" She said.
"I didn't."
"Not good enough."
"No, it wasn't... I was playing God again."
"You know, I could just surf to guiltypleasure.org if all I wanted was self recrimination."
"Net's down, so you're lucky I'm here."
"Look..." she paused, "The net's down? Here?"
He gave her a grim nod, "Anyone having a library flashback?" he held the collapsed tablet over his shoulder for her to see. "It went down when the lights flickered off just now. They're getting close."
"I'm getting tired of being almost dead." she shrugged.
"Tell me 'bout