The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [55]
Lisa dared to think that she might make it after all if she resumed her stealthy flight toward the exit door—and the distinction between deep and light shadow was becoming a little clearer now. She couldn’t see, exactly, but she wasn’t blind either. She began to move once more—but then the dart gun went off yet again, and this time she did feel an impact.
The strike was in the upper part of her left arm, and it didn’t feel like a prick or a stab. It was as if some mildly boisterous acquaintance had struck her lightly with his fist, in a perfectly friendly fashion—but that was an illusion. Lisa knew immediately that the glancing nature of the blow wasn’t good news. The muscle relaxant with which the dart was tipped had to be powerful if it had felled a man of Peter Grimmett Smith’s mass within seconds. Although it might take as much as a minute for her veins to carry the less than full dose far enough to immobilize her, and a further two minutes for enough of it to reach her brain to render her unconscious, she was finished—and with two searchers to evade, Chan Kwai Keung’s chances of getting away would be minimal.
Then she heard an almighty crash, far louder than the gunshots that had preceded it.
Startled, she turned and lifted her head. The movement made her dizzy, but she was still conscious, and true sight was abruptly returned to her.
The plastic doors closing off the entrance to the parking area had imploded. A black van, somewhat larger than the Daf that had rear-ended Chan’s Fiat, was hurtling through them, its headlights ablaze. A voice was already blaring from an invisible loudspeaker: “Put down your weapons now\”
It wasn’t a cityplex police van. Cityplex police vans were white. It could be Special Branch, Lisa thought, or even more spooks from the MOD. Whoever it was, though, they had to be on her side, not the side of the black-clad assassins.
As she began to feel faint, the first retaliatory shot rang out. She saw the black van’s windshield respond to the impact; it was crazed, but not shattered. The result of the shot became irrelevant in any case when the new arrival cannoned into the back of the Daf, whose forward lurch sent Chan’s yellow Fiat spinning. The noise was appalling.
The Fiat’s windows weren’t as resilient as the big van’s. Shards of plastic seemed to fly everywhere. The shooter with the dart gun was briefly silhouetted against the glare of the headlights, running but seemingly going nowhere.
Lisa just had time to think “Wow!” before the dizziness blurred her vision irrevocably. Even then, she didn’t lose consciousness. She tried with all her might to stand up, but her body wouldn’t obey, and the only result of her determination was that she stumbled sideways. The concrete rose up to smash itself into her shoulder, but she was hardly aware of the fact of the pain, let alone the intensity of the feeling.
Hey! she thought. This stuff has its advantages. I could get used to this state of mind, if only …
It seemed, somehow, to be terribly unfair that she never got the chance to finish the sentence. Her pain had disappeared. Her fear had disappeared. Even the burden of her years seemed to have disappeared, but she didn’t have time to savor her immunity from all harm. She finally fell, precipitously, into unconsciousness.
ELEVEN
The first thing Lisa remembered after waking up was that the last time she had awakened, she had had been unable to remember where she was, because she had been forced to check into the Renaissance Hotel instead of going home. For a moment or two, therefore, she assumed that because the bed on which she was lying was definitely not her own, she was back in the hotel. This conviction lent moral support to her reluctance to open her eyes, but her attention was soon claimed by the awkward awareness that her mouth was very dry. That seemed odd—she couldn’t remember drinking any alcohol. What on earth could have happened to render her so thirsty?
When she finally remembered the circumstances