I was killed. Down the hallway, away from the suite I shared with Chaz, my Babysitter. My protector.
I kept reminding myself why I was leaving. Every step got harder. I could feel my thoughts begin to scatter, voices on the nether wind. All of my lives seem to blend into a winding blacktop road that stretched out forever over unfamiliar hills.
The elevator snapped open up ahead.
I froze, suddenly afraid. I was too scared to get inside. Instead I slipped into a nearby shadowed doorway, clenched my knuckled fists to my chest, every muscle shaking. I forced myself to be still, to be calm. I was leaving my Babysitter. And it took all my strength to fight the need to go back. It was programmed so deep that I started to feel sick. I curled over.
I needed to get back to the City of the Dead. It’s there. I had to go back.
Then I heard voices as a second elevator opened; people were coming toward me.
One of them was Russ.
I turned my face away from the hallway, tried to imagine that I was invisible. One of my hands slid over the door handle and instinctively pushed. The door opened. A stairway stretched before me.
I quickly slipped inside and started running down, running away. Russ couldn’t find me, he just couldn’t. Because if he did, he would kill me.
Again.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Neville:
Silent as an empty midnight mass, the silver-and-black chopper thumped to a velvet halt, descended like light from heaven, landed on the roof of the Carrington Hotel. A ragtag team of misfits climbed out, the one thing that united them a gen-spike stench, an odor of skin that had been stretched and pumped so many times that it began to decay from within.
“Follows me, boys,” I said, leading the way toward the stairwell. “And makes sure yur darts is loaded. Like I says, ya might not needs them.” I grinned over my shoulder at Seth, a lanky nineteen-year-old who still couldn’t grow a beard. “But ya might wants to use them anyway.”
Seth returned the smile, exposing crooked teeth, yellow from years of jive-sweet. His skinny arms were pockmarked from street-grade gen-spikes, something that had changed after he hooked up with my gutter brothers. Now he only got the best stuff. Jive-sweet was yesterday’s candy. Today it was all about that euphoric high of genetic alteration.
A beam of sunlight glanced off the chopper, cascaded into a rainbow that turned everyone around me into faceless silhouettes. I felt an apprehensive shiver, crammed a handful of jive-sweet in my mouth. Something about the way the light sparked around us reminded me of that night in the bar, that ’sitter and his liquid light, the feeling I was being watched by something that transcended my understanding.
“Boss?” Seth hovered, uncertain, in the doorway, a shock of black hair falling across his forehead.
I lifted my chin and laughed. Pushed my way back to the front of the line, inside the door and down the stairs.
My laughter ricocheted and bounced throughout the narrow corridor. Like the fire of a machine gun. I pulled out a blowgun and slid it between my lips. Long and narrow, about the length of two cigarettes, it felt good as it rolled into place, a hollow slot between my first and second bicuspids.
I sucked in a deep breath through the tube, trembling slightly at the traces of bliss, the latest designer drug, that flowed into my lungs. Just enough to wipe away any lingering fear.
We all had our blowguns in place now; we all grinned as we jogged down the stairs.
I is light and freedom, I brings power to the people. Them that gots no hope.
I brings them what they needs.
Immortality.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Russell:
The world flowed past my window, like a river of color. The images smeared and blended. My eyes couldn’t focus on anything. Not even Marguerite, although she sat beside me in the company car. But I hadn’t been able to see her for years. She’d been a wisp of smoke, her emotions transparent and inconsequential. More of an irritant than an inspiration.
Ellen. Memories of Ellen clouded my vision.
I thought we had a chance together. Then she betrayed me. I glanced down at my lap, realized my hands were knotted in fists.
I had been a fool. But those days were over. I was tired of trying to fix the problems with the rest of the world. I only wanted to salvage what I could. The jet was ready. A villa hidden in the Andes waited.