The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [33]
“Weak signals.”
Masek snapped from his reverie. “You got them?”
“Of course.”
Years before, cajoling the folks at Hypnos had taken deft footwork, but Nikola had managed to have them hide a microchip in the neck sensors of the inmates, broadcasting a unique signature. Afraid the inmates will thaw and take a powder? When pigs fly. That had been what Vinson Duran, Hypnos’s head honcho, had said. Well, pigs were definitely airborne, but not for long.
“Where?” Nikola slouched forward and examined the map spreading over Dennis’s plasma screen.
“Almost four miles away. Here.” He pointed to a tiny group of flashing dots. He touched the spot and the image zoomed.
“What’s there?” Nikola asked.
“Commercial tanks. Nyx Corporation.”
Nikola nodded. It made sense. Nyx had the equipment and knowledge to revive Russo. His respect for whoever had planned the escape increased a notch.
“Stationary?”
Dennis poked at the screen again. Three dots flashed intermittently over the same spot. “Yup.”
So, the three pigs were holed up at Nyx. Lukas Hurley, the controller, would be trying to flee the country. Nikola had no way of tracking him. He carried no sensor, but Dennis had wired Lukas’s holograph and biometric data to every police station and border crossing. Good luck.
“They got there through the sewers?”
The image on the screen zoomed back, and a network of colored lines superimposed themselves. “There’s a main line running under their building. The folks from Nyx manage their own effluents. No need for their own spur.” There was a hint of criticism in Dennis’s tone, and Nikola had to agree. Hypnos’s design to manage their sewage in a remote treatment plant was a weak link. A flaw that someone had used with remarkable success.
Nikola sighed. When it is obvious the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. Regardless of the millennia, Confucius’s words held true. Worrying didn’t return bolted horses, or pigs, back to the stables. Action did.
“Close shop and let’s drive over to Nyx. Call the DHS and have them send muscle to meet us there in fifteen minutes.”
chapter 14
21:45
Her skin felt defiled beyond recovery, and no amount of scrubbing altered the feeling. After a long time under the shower’s high-pressure jets, rubbing handfuls of bactericidal gel into every inch of her body Laurel could reach, it still felt the same. She reamed her ears, blew her nose, inserted soapy fingers into her anus and vagina, and rubbed between her toes, but the sensation persisted. The surface muck had run away in gushes of brown liquid, eddying around the shower’s drain, but the tank’s fluid had leached into her skin, clogging her pores. Lanolin and nutrients should have felt like body lotion, but they didn’t. Laurel took a deep breath. At least the steam had the gel’s piney tang. In her nose and ears, membranes clung to memories of cold jelly. And to think she’d been in the fluid only a few minutes. … How would skin feel after marinating for years? She leaned a hand on the polymer wall of the shower cubicle, doubled over, and retched for the umpteenth time. Then she wrapped her arms around her waist, turned her face to the full blast of the shower, and rocked.
Dr. Carpenter—Floyd—seemed nice. No, he was gorgeous; tanned and with unruly blond hair that screamed for a woman’s fingers to comb through it. Despite her queasy stomach, she felt giddy. It must be all that rocking. After they dropped Russo at the surgical theater, he’d herded them into the showers, making a face as they discarded waders and oilskins. She’d glanced across at him, and her eyes locked on his raw gaze. He was ogling her, the soft weight of his smile pressing against her breasts, belly, and thighs.
A loud bang outside jolted Laurel from her reverie, hands flying to clear