Coren Lanra pulled out a handgun. Ariel suppressed a shudder at the sight-the weapon looked compact and heavy, with an ominous green light on the frame just above the trigger guard. She was guessing, but it seemed lethal.
He leaned out into the hall, looked left and right, then took her arm. He guided her in the direction of the stairs and gave her a slight push.
Ariel stepped onto the stairwell landing and waited for Coren. When he emerged into the dusty gloom of the shaft, she asked quietly, "Do I get one of those?"
He studied her intently. "You know how to use one?"
"It's been known to happen."
He reached within the voluminous overcoat. A second later he pressed a fatal shape into her hand.
Ariel held it gingerly for a few seconds, studying it. A modified stunner with an extra powerpack and an amplifier along the generator coils. At close range, it would probably kill. She thumbed it on, felt the energy as a faint, numbing surge against her palm. She sited along the barrel a couple of times to get the feel of it, then nodded to Coren.
Coren led the way down the stairs. They had not seemed so dark on the way up, but now the shadows oppressed, the turns threatened. Ariel's pulse was racing by the time they reached the bottom.
"Stay here," Coren said, and stepped quickly out the door. A few seconds later he came back in. "This way."
Beneath the stairs he turned on a handflash. Ariel saw a heavy metal door with a keypad upon which Coren deftly entered a command. Old bolts lurched back and the door swung away from them.
In the light of Coren's flash Ariel made out another landing and a flight of skeletal stairs leading down to a sublevel. Coren closed the door behind them and shined the light above and around. A few cobwebs had gathered in high comers but not so many as might be expected.
Their feet clattered loudly on the bare metal steps. At the bottom, reddish-orange light pooled. Coren switched off his flash.
"That way," he said, pointing down one corridor, "leads to the garage. This way-" he indicated the passage leading straight from the stairs "-runs under the next several buildings in this block. There's access to lower levels."
"Do you own transport?"
"No."
"Then…"
He headed toward the garage.
Halfway down the passage a sound stopped Ariel. She glanced back, trying to comprehend what she had heard-a rasping noise, like rough cloth over gravel, or the hissing of water against a hot surface-yet fearing to see what could make it. But the narrow corridor was empty. She hurried to catch up to Coren.
They entered a storeroom. In the light of Coren's flash, she saw bins stacked high to the ceiling, filled with packages and angular shapes, and clusters of components and discarded parts. A workbench held a complicated mechanism that had been thoroughly dismantled.
Through another door they emerged into one of the garage levels. Bright lights imbedded in the ceiling painted sharp highlights upon the sleeping transports sitting in rows. Coren strode quickly along them, head swiveling, until he came to the end of one row. He dug in his jacket for something, then inserted a card into the reader on the transport door. He tapped a code into the lock. A moment later the door slid open.
"Get in. "
Ariel went around to the passenger door.
Coren powered up the transport and eased it out of the slot.
Ariel glimpsed movement off to the right. Before she could speak, a large shape shot out in front of them, bounced off the hood, and landed heavily on the roof.
"What-?" Coren began.
His window burst in, spraying bits of shattered plastic across them. Ariel clutched the pistol while her free hand came up to protect her face.
The transport lurched to a halt.
Coren was half out the window when she looked again. He hooked his left leg awkwardly under the steering column and his right hand clutched at the frame separating the front and rear sections. An ugly hacking sound came from where she imagined his head must be.
Ariel opened her door. She gave the line of nearby transports a quick survey, then rolled out. She came up facing the vehicle and brought her weapon to bear.
The shape on the roof of the transport looked human. It was large, mostly covered in a long, colorless overcoat, one leg thrust back for balance along the front screen, foot sheathed in a heavy black boot.
She aimed.
A head appeared over the hunched shoulder. Eyes fixed her, unblinking and sharp. The face…the skin looked rough, disfigured…the hair was a ragged growth of oily brown and red.
It grinned at her.
It moved with alarming speed, turning toward her, crouching to spring
Ariel fired.
The weapon felt warmer in her hand. The bolt of energy, nearly invisible, slammed into the assailant and tossed him from the roof of the transport like a mass of compressed air buffeting a rag.
He hit the pavement with a solid, meaty impact and a puff of air.
He sat up, shook his head, and looked at her.
Terrified, Ariel fired again.
The head snapped back, so savagely that it must have broken the neck. A few moments later, though, he began to stand.
Ariel watched, seized by amazement and fear, as he rose, to his full height.
Shoot it again, she thought, but her finger did not flex against the stud.
He took a step toward her.
A brilliant splash of crimson-white burst against him. She glanced back toward the bolt's source: Coren had managed to get off a shot. The attacker screamed, a sound like a million sheets of paper ripping at once, and staggered back.
Ariel fired a third time. A pungent burnt odor filled the air.
The attacker fell to his knees, rose, then ran away.
All at once the stillness engulfed her.
Coren coughed.
Ariel came around the transport and found him lying on the pavement, holding his throat in one hand and his pistol in the other. She set her weapon down and helped him sit up with his back to the transport. He coughed and hacked for a minute, spit out a gob of phlegm, and sucked air in huge gasps.
"I know that hand," he said finally. "Son of a…"
He got to his feet shakily and looked around.
"Get your weapon," he rasped.
Ariel snatched up the stunner.
Coren accessed a different transport. He drove fast now, taking the turns recklessly until they made the avenue. Ariel waited till he slowed down to a normal speed before saying anything.
Before she could speak, though, Coren made an ugly throat-clearing noise and said, "He should've died. Only thing I can think of that could resist a shot like that is a robot. So tell me, Ambassador Burgess of the goddamned Calvin Institute, when did you people start making humanoid robots?"
"It wasn't a robot."
"No? Then what the hell was it?"
"Something we stopped playing with a very long time ago," she said. "A cyborg." Ariel's hands trembled.
Figures, she thought wryly, now that we're safe.
Relatively safe, anyway, she added. Her eyes ached from trying to see all around her and into the darkness of third shift faux night. Coren drove them out of D.C., southwest, past industrial enclaves and private neighborhoods, through abandoned sections, and into an area Ariel had never been to. She recognized the main building from the subetheric-dimly, an old memory-as the headquarters for DyNan Manual Industries.
Coren got through all the security checks, sent the transport back where it belonged, and took her through unpopulated corridors to a suite of offices.
She watched him work a desk that was similar to the one in his private office, though, from the attention he gave to each command, it was far less sophisticated, not even close to an AI. Her pulse slowed, adrenalin drained away, and her fears took over in the form of the shakes.
Coren glanced her way and stopped what he was doing long enough to pour her a drink. Gratefully she sipped at the dark liquid. She had never been sure why alcohol helped at times like this-perhaps it was the care with which one had to take it in that distracted the mind from its own terrors-but she finished the tumbler of whiskey at the same time Coren sat down across from her.