Memetic Drift - J.N. Chaney Page 0,68

a fingernail. That meant the round had fractured inside of her and only a single piece had left her body. There was likely serious internal damage I couldn’t do anything about. She needed immediate help, or she was going to die.

I messaged Andrea.

19

Katerina escaped from holding, currently armed, whereabouts unknown. She shot Dr. Markov. I’ve done what I can, but she has internal bleeding and bullet fragmentation. I need medical assistance here ASAP.

I paused for a few seconds, then sent another message.

I’m sorry, Andrea.

How had Katerina escaped the interrogation room? Could she have hacked it somehow without Thomas knowing? Or was Thomas too busy trying to stay alive to have even noticed? How was that even possible when she had no dataspike and there was no access terminal?

There was every possibility she had already succeeded in getting out of the building. If that was the case, the special forces soldiers attacking our building had already achieved one of their probable objectives.

I wanted to do something. I sat cradling Samara’s head, clearing her mouth when the blood choked her. She’d fallen unconscious, her breathing no longer panicked and ragged, but slow and, worryingly, shallow. I’d heard nothing from Raven or Vincenzo, and I thought of them lying on their backs in a growing pool of blood, staring up with vacant eyes at the ghostly off-worlders that killed them.

At last, a message came in. Understood, Tycho. Pursue Katerina. Capture or kill.

So there it was, I had my orders. Despite how little sense it made, my task was now to hunt down Katerina. I gently lowered Samara’s head, propping up the first aid kit as a kind of pillow for her. I stood and walked through the door into the corridor, entrusting Dr. Markov to whatever help Andrea might be able to arrange for her.

The Jovian soldiers had entered the complex from two directions, the east and west elevators. If Katerina wanted to rendezvous with them, she’d pick one of those two entrances. Then again, doing so would mean she’d run into Section 9 or our android proxies long before her own allies. If she wanted to avoid that, was there any other way to get out of the building? The south elevator and stairwell didn’t have ground level access, but the north elevator—

“Of course.”

The Swan Rooms, our suite within the hotel itself. She could use the north stairwell to enter the Hotel du Lac through the Swan Rooms and then make her way down to the street from there.

I took off running, ignoring any concerns about hostile proxies or Jovian soldiers. If she was moving cautiously to avoid recapture, I could only catch up by being reckless. If I was lucky, there was even a chance that something could have delayed her along the way, and that she might not have made it into the hotel yet.

As I approached the north elevator, I saw the car was already in operation. I repeatedly punched the call button anyway, knowing it would make no difference. I ran further down the corridor to the stairwell, preparing for the long climb, when an uneasy thought stopped me at the door.

What if Katerina expected me to come this way?

It was a paranoid thought, barely rational, but I was never one to ignore my instincts. Katerina could have set an ambush at any number of points, but she could have easily sent the elevator up knowing I would follow via the stairs. She’d then have a single point of entry to monitor, a guaranteed fatal funnel, and the high ground.

I stepped back from the door and looked around for anything useful. I was entering a narrow space, possibly into a trap, and I was unarmed. I had my augments, sure, but I wasn’t confident I could control my prosthetics with enough precision to avoid lethal force in combat. My orders were capture or kill; the priority was to bring Katerina back alive.

The standing water at my feet gave me the idea to look up. The fire suppression piping ran exposed along the ceiling. Now that the system had discharged, there wouldn’t be any internal pressure. I bent deep and jumped, then I grabbed hold of the piping fifteen feet overhead. It didn’t immediately come free under my weight, so I placed a hand against the ceiling, took a breath, and pushed. The pipe groaned, strained, and finally broke. I landed on my feet in a splash of water, holding a three-foot-long section of metal in my hand.

It would