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By Root 1187 0

’s resilience went beyond her wildest imagination. Without regular maintenance, he’ll be dead within a year. Those had been Vinson Duran’s exact words. But the years went by, and the Lord of Dreamers had refused to die. An omen? His breakout had been a blow, but it was nothing compared to the sober realization that someone powerful, resourceful, and clever was after her ass. Not many people could pull off such a stunt, and she would flush him or her out eventually. But there was a possibility, however remote, that Russo would get away. That’s why she’d resolved to use her FY box. At her direction, a Chinese artisan had covered two minuscule gelatin balls with coats of red lacquer until they shone like small pearls. Lacquer was hard but brittle; a sharp blow or a determined bite would shatter it and release the gelatin pouch in its core: two milligrams of ricin, enough to kill a horse in ten seconds.

She sighed and fingered one of her new studs absently, her mind racing, weighing alternatives and courses of action. Then her concentration wavered, and she closed her eyes as her thoughts dissolved to coalesce in an image—the same face that haunted her dreams. Pet.

When the technicians had installed the voice-activated system, they asked for a word to precede any command. It had to be a special word. A word she would never utter other than within the walls of her office in any context. It had been easy. She had never called Araceli by her name, even when angry.

chapter 17

01:23

Three hours after their descent into the sewers, Laurel stopped on a dry platform before another main branch, larger and older than the first. She peered at the Metapad screen and gauged the width of the brown lane depicted on the map. Where a red line—the path they were supposed to follow—crossed the brown, there should have been a narrow opening. She glanced up, but she could barely make it out on the opposite wall. Eyeing the volume of effluent moving through the center of the tunnel and its speed, Laurel guessed this was the main trunk line. She suppressed a shudder. Engorged by rain, flash floods would roar down the tunnel.

“Let’s take a short break.” She wedged her back against the curved wall and slid to sit down on the concrete, thinking that someone on the surface would be dancing for the gods of rain to deliver. A flash flood would carry their bodies all the way to the Potomac.

Floyd squatted. After checking Russo’s pulse, he reached into his bag, pushed the pad of a pressure sensor into Russo’s neck, and shook his head. “I don’t know how, but he’s hanging in there. His resilience is incredible.” After digging in his bag again, Floyd produced a syrette, ripped a section of the bag open, and rammed it onto Russo’s thigh.

Laurel blinked. An intramuscular shot would spread through Russo’s metabolism at a much slower rate. That meant Russo was stable. For months she had pored over the scant literature Shepherd could find dealing with hibernation and its aftereffects, but nothing in the books she’d read could account for Russo’s ravaged state.

His ministrations complete, Floyd stood and looked around. He stepped over to sit close to her. “Do we have much farther to go?”

She cocked her head, wincing at the strain of her neck wrap. “Half a mile.”

“And then?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We wait, I suppose.”

“That man won’t take much more of this. He needs blood.”

“You mentioned blood back at Nyx, and I saw scores of red lines on the machine’s printout. What do you people poison them with that they need a change of blood?”

“Ask Hypnos.”

“I’m asking you.”

“That man,” he pointed his chin toward the stretcher, “has had no maintenance. I’ve examined people who’d served a few years in Hypnos’s tanks. With a little fine-tuning, they were as good as new. Most of them walked away from sugar cubes after a week of convalescence, but I’ve never seen anybody like him. He shouldn’t be alive with what is coursing through his veins.”

She bit her chapped lower lip. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t do anything to him, but you are an expert and