The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [13]
When Raul paused, Laurel lowered her head and tried to breathe life into Bastien’s inert body. Raul continued pushing and heaving. Her mind raced. The machine would pluck Eliot Russo from the tank any minute now. Then they would have ten minutes to grab him and run before the alarms went off. They would never make it.
“What went wrong?”
“The program or his heart. Does it matter?”
She scowled at his bleak look, and his eyes lowered, disappearing into shadow.
Bastien’s muscled body rippled under Raul’s onslaught. She’d read of people reviving after lengthy revival maneuvers, but not under such conditions. Laurel eyed Raul, his face grim, determined, slamming down onto Bastien’s chest like a battering ram, twenty-nine, and thirty. She leaned over, fastened her lips to Bastien’s cold mouth, and blew. Pause. Another breath and Raul resumed his pounding. She ran a hand over Bastien’s shaved head, following the ridges of his left temporal bone, cold and slimy.
Throughout her life, Laurel had attached herself only to cherished scenes, hoarding them like amulets against disaster. An image flashed through her mind now: Trees burned in the autumn sunlight, ablaze in a riot of red leaves, and the three of them—Bastien, Raul, and her—lounged on the grass, drinking Sonoma Riesling straight from the bottle. Bastien had a serious expression. “At a monastery, the prior asks a novice to replace an almost exhausted candle in the chapel. The young man forgets. After prayers, the prior sends for the novice and confronts him with a spluttering wick in a pool of molten wax. ‘Where’s the candle?’ he demands, and the young monk replies, ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’” Raul had shot a confused look at Bastien. Then the penny dropped—“Wears the candle?”—and they all roared with laughter. Thirty. She leaned over one more time and blew anger into Bastien’s lungs. Breathe, my friend, breathe. Laurel peered into Bastien’s face. His eyes had dulled. She closed his eyelids.
Raul looked up, as though to speak, but his mouth froze. Laurel followed his gaze and saw a shadow shifting overhead.
A whine and clicks. Laurel closed her eyes, grief welling in her chest. Bastien’s candle had worn down and guttered into darkness. Now it was time for the man they had come to spring from this hell.
It was time for Russo.
chapter 7
17:59
Mocking the immutable laws of science, time became softer—stretching into a distorted reality, viscous like molasses. Liquid air transformed unconscious breathing into strenuous labor. Lukas stared at the red digits framed high over the control panels: 17:59. They hadn’t moved in hours. With glazed eyes, he queried the frozen numerals, his tongue pressed against his teeth. Hard lumps dug into his belly. Under his belt, the envelopes seemed to have lost their padding, and his usually tame bladder screamed for release.
Lukas lowered his gaze to the angry red line blazing on his screen. Once more, the program supplied by Donald Duck had done its job. No alarm had triggered, and it was obvious nothing had shown on the screens of the operators outside his office. As the drama unfolded at tank 913, he’d watched, transfixed—not with anxiety but with detached calm. The man … what was his name? Bastien. Lukas had spotted his metabolism flatline as it happened. The man had died of heart failure. To the pair battling to revive their friend’s corpse, it was an inexplicable piece of bad luck, but Lukas knew better. Cardiac arrest was a common event when undergoing reanimation. Naturally Hypnos had kept the plethora of side effects hidden. Full return from torpor, unlike partial periodic arousals, needed supervision by expert medical personnel with an awesome array of revival equipment at their disposal. Technical wizardry and human intervention ensured that the casualties remained at a reasonable two percent. But outside a surgical theater and in the dreary conditions of the platform