"Please be quick about it, Mrs. Culverthorpe. I don't have all night, you know. Miss Adams and I must leave here soon."
"Briana, no," Orchid shouted. "Don't do it. Look at me, Briana. Don't look at that stupid little elf. Look at me."
But Briana continued to gaze steadily at Gilbert, who smiled fondly back.
Dark psychic energy whirled and slammed through the prism, intensifying the hypnotic effect.
Briana raised the shears and aimed them at a point between her breasts.
"You bastard." Orchid stared at Gilbert. "Don't do this. I'll go with you. I'll help you conduct your experiments. But only if you stop this right now."
"You'll help me regardless, my dear. I have you in my power now."
Orchid saw a strange expression pass through Briana's eyes. It was as though some part of her understood what she was about to do and resisted. But her muscles tensed in preparation as she aimed the shears at her own heart.
Orchid no longer had the ability to dissolve the glittering ice-prism. But there was still the possibility that she could manipulate it.
There was no point struggling against the alien-tainted power. But meta-zen-syn taught that all power was dependent upon the endless struggle for balance.
She concentrated on the brilliant crystal facets of the prism. She would have only one chance to alter the synergistic balance. If she failed, Briana would die.
Gently she began to shift the focus. The raging power followed, realigning itself.
For an instant Gilbert did not realize what was happening. He was too busy concentrating on the results of his terrible experiment.
"Orchid?" Briana's eyes cleared slightly. She bunked and stared at the shears she had aimed at her own breast. "Orchid, what's going on?"
Orchid did not answer. She was wholly occupied with the task of altering the focus of the prism facets.
Gilbert suddenly realized that something was wrong. He was slamming more power than ever through the prism now, but Briana had begun to lower the shears. Rage screwed up his gnomelike face.
"What's this?" he screamed. "What's happening?"
Orchid continued to manipulate the focus. Mirrors, she reminded herself. The facets were tiny psychic mirrors fashioned to focus energy waves the way a laser focused light waves.
"Stop it," Gilbert shouted. "Stop this at once."
But he was too late. Orchid sensed the exact instant when he frantically tried to cut off the flow of talent. But nothing happened. Power slammed through the re-focused prism. Gilbert was as much a prisoner now as Orchid. The alien relic was out of control.
Slowly, inevitably, Gilbert turned the gun so that it no longer pointed at Briana. He aimed the barrel at his own chest.
His eyes no longer twinkled with evil glee. They widened in horror. More dark, raging hypno-talent surged through the refocused prism.
"No," Gilbert screamed. "No."
But it was too late. Overwhelmed by his own magnified hypno-talent turned back on himself, he squeezed the trigger of the pistol.
The blast echoed loudly in the cold, clean room. The gun clattered on the white tile floor. Gilbert toppled backward. Orchid watched, stunned, as blood welled in the center of his tailored lab coat.
On the psychic plane the flow of talent ceased with appalling suddenness. Orchid was free. She hastily dissolved the prism. There was no reason to think that the alien relic could function on its own without a talent to guide it, but there was no sense taking chances.
"Dear heaven," Briana stared at the fallen Bracewell. "He killed himself."
Orchid wrenched her attention away from the horrifying scene on the floor. "The shears. Give them to me so that I can cut off this restraint cuff."
Briana looked at her. "You made him do that, didn't you? Somehow you reversed the flow of his hypno-talent."
"Yes." Orchid pushed the gurney closer to Briana. "I'm an ice-prism." She reached for the shears.
Briana shook her head, dazed. "You saved my life."
"Least I could do under the circumstances." Orchid gently removed the shears from Briana's hand. "It's my fault you're here in the first place."
She snipped through the plastic restraint that bound her left wrist to the gurney rail. Then she freed Briana.
"What are we going to do now?" Briana slid off the gurney. She clung to Orchid to steady herself.
"Now we get out of here. Can you walk?"
"Yes." Briana made a visible effort to pull herself together. "Yes, I can walk if it means getting away from this place."
Orchid led the way to the door. She sensed the presence on the other side just as she opened it, but by then it was much too late.
A tall, ruggedly handsome man with sandy brown hair and sharp brown eyes smiled at her. He was dressed in a crisply pressed black uniform decorated with a great many epaulets, buttons, and snappy cargo pockets. His black boots gleamed.
He had a gun in his black-gloved hand.
"Hello, Orchid. It's been a while. I've missed you."
Orchid bit back a scream. It was not the gun in Calvin Hyde's hand that aroused the primal fear in her. It was the hunger in his voice.
"If I were you I'd get a new tailor, Calvin. That uniform makes you look like something out of a comic book."
He was unfazed. "You'll be happy to know that after tonight I'll be able to afford the best tailor in New Seattle."
"Now what?" Selby huddled in the shadows of the janitor's closet and struggled with the snaps of the blue uniform.
"Now we ask our friend here a few questions." Rafe smiled at the bound man on the floor.
The janitor, dressed only in his briefs and a T-shirt, stirred nervously. "Look, I just work here, okay? I don't know what you want, but I doubt if I can help you."
"Have you got the keys to the mechanical equipment room down the hall?"
"Well, yeah, sure. I've got the keys to all the rooms in the buildings except those inside the restricted zones."
"Then you can help me."
The janitor stared at him, bewildered. "But there's nothing in the mechanical room except a bunch of valves and switches. I don't even know what valve operates what kind of equipment."
"Don't worry," Rafe said. "That's not your problem." He glanced at Selby, who had just finished with the last snap on the blue uniform. "I've got a tech-talent with me."
Still smiling his feral smile, Calvin used the gleaming black steel pistol to wave Orchid and Briana back toward the gurneys. He caught sight of Gilbert's body on the floor.
"Well, well, well. You surprise me, Orchid. I thought you were much too meta-zen-syn for that kind of thing. How did you manage it?"
"Do you care?" Orchid asked.
"Not really." Calvin leaned negligently against the long lab bench. He kept the gun trained on Orchid and Briana. "I was going to have to get rid of old Two-Watt soon, anyway. He never was real stable, but he definitely went over the edge after Theo Willis told him about that damned artifact."
Briana looked from Calvin to Orchid and back again. "Who are you?"
"Allow me to introduce myself, Mrs. Culverthorpe." Calvin inclined his head with mocking formality. "Calvin Hyde. I'm the chief of security here at ParaSyn."
Orchid stared at him. "When did you get that job?"
"Shortly after you left. I convinced Bracewell that I could be of significant service to him. Made him see that he needed me."
"What did you get out of the deal besides a steady job?"
Calvin chuckled. "You know me so well, Orchid. The answer is that it was a very lucrative arrangement for me. I now own several thousand shares of ParaSyn stock, which I will, of course, sell first thing in the morning before anyone learns that the head of ParaSyn's research department is dead."
"Smart move," Orchid muttered.
"I'm a strat-talent, remember? We're good at making money."