"I'll be thinking of little else," Crest muttered, his head lolling on his narrow chest.
The Technician left the room, and Thribble scurried out from under the table. "Master Crest; it is I, Thribble!"
"Oh. Hello, demon," the half-elf mumbled through cracked, swollen lips. "It's good to see a friendly face."
Thribble inspected Crest's bonds. Whereas the staff had taken the utmost precautions to restrain the mighty Tordun as best they could, Crest's arms and legs were merely tied to his chair with thin white strips that went around the chair uprights and legs. "Can you break your way clear of those white things, Master Crest?"
The thief shook his head. "They're thin, demon, but very strong. If you pull them, they just get tighter."
Thribble inspected the bonds closely, and he closed his tiny, sharp teeth over the white strips. The material was soft and pliable, and Thribble managed to bite off a small piece of the strange substance. It was tasteless and odourless, for which Thribble was grateful; it made the task easier.
"I should have you out of those things in a few minutes, elf friend," Thribble carolled as he got to work.
****
"We are through at last," Grimm gasped. There had been nine layers of material in all, five of them made of thick metal, and the young mage felt proud that his strength had held up. He wanted to keep some in reserve for Armitage.
"Let us depart," Xylox said. "A reckoning is at hand, I assure you. Remember: if anybody should see us, we must kill or incapacitate them. We do not want word of our escape getting back to Armitage."
The two mages strode back into the corridor through the gaping hole in the metal cell's wall, with renewed urgency in their step.
****
"How are we going, Terrence?" Armitage's amplified voice crackled from the speaker.
"We're nearly there, Administrator. The last cylinder had a blocked hose, and we're bringing a fresh one up from the containment stores. Ah, here it is."
"Okay, Administrator," Terrence called. "We'll have the gas on in a couple more minutes."
"Very well, Terrence. It looks like there's nothing to worry about; they're as quiet as the grave in there. A very apt simile, don't you think?"
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter 10: Outbreak
Armitage glanced once more at the monitor linked to the mages' improvised death cell; they were still motionless, sitting cross-legged in deep meditation. He felt sorry to be losing them, but he had decided that they were just too dangerous to keep alive. At least, when their bodies had been fully decontaminated, he would have a pair of dissection specimens. It would be interesting to see how the neural configuration, vascular organisation and gross structure of the Questor brain differed from that of an ordinary mage, and from the normal human encephalon.
The Administrator of Haven marvelled at the mages' powers of concentration; they had been sitting in the same uncomfortable position for at least ten minutes now. A faint warning bell sounded at the back of his mind. He remembered how, perhaps twenty minutes before, the younger specimen had seemed distinctly ill at ease in this pose after only a few minutes. Yet, now, he sat poised, calm and relaxed.
Armitage moved his face nearer to the screen.
Are the subjects even breathing?
He wondered if some small trace of the VX nerve agent had leaked through into the cell, but he was unfamiliar with the properties of the poison. He thumbed the comm stud.
"Terrence? Are you there?"
The senior Technician's masked face appeared on the monitor.
"Yes, Administrator; what is it this time? I'm busy." An unmistakeable note of irritation had crept into the tech's tone.
Armitage flicked his eyes back to the monitor. Nothing had changed. "I was wondering, Terrence, about the effects of this Victor X-ray stuff. What happens to the subject when he is exposed?"
"You'll see, soon enough, Sir," the Technician growled. "Just be patient, won't you?"
"Just tell me, Terrence; would he be frozen into impassivity?"
Terrence snorted. "Not likely, Sir: within a few seconds at most, he would be thrashing on the ground, with bloody foam around his nose and mouth, in an uncontrollable fit. Have you ever seen an insect after it's been sprayed with a pyrethroid aerosol? VX has much the same effect on a mammaclass="underline" complete loss of autonomous central nervous system function."
Armitage's fears began to coalesce into full-blown suspicion. The stone-like immobility of the two mages bothered him.
"Thank you, Terrence," he said. "I'll get back to you."
"I can't wait, Sir," the disgruntled Senior Tech muttered. "Listening. Out."
Armitage reached for the camera's zoom control, but he jumped at the sound of the Control Room door opening behind him. Wheeling around, he saw a white-coated Technician enter the room. He did not recognise the burly, stubble-faced man.
"Yes, Tech; what do you want? Can't you see I'm at work?"
"You called me, Administrator," the heavy-set individual replied, his tone sullen and resentful. "Don't you remember?"
"What are you blathering about?" Armitage snapped, distracted. "I called nobody. I don't even recognise you."
The Technician, whose name-tag read 'Muller', rolled his eyes. "Oh, so I'm losing my mind, am I? 'Report to the Control Room, immediately', you said, and you summoned me by name.
"I had a full psych workout not six weeks ago, and I checked out as sane. I can show you the report if you like. If anyone's losing his marbles around here, it's not me."
He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the Administrator.
"Just you remember who you're talking to!" Armitage warned. "Show a little more respect, or it'll be full Pacification for you, my friend. You should be doing your job, not bothering me with some ridiculous fantasy."
"That's what I was doing when…"
A second white-garbed figure entered the room, breathless and flustered. Armitage recognised her, and he knew she was not one to barge into a room unannounced. "Santini; what is it?" Armitage demanded.
"I was hoping you could tell me that, Sir," the white-haired woman gasped, her spectacles askew on her nose. "I came as soon as you called me."
"I called nobody!" the Administrator insisted, frowning. "What's the matter with everyone today?"
With a convulsive jerk, Armitage grabbed the zoom control on the camera and focused on the image of the younger mage, Grimm. The youth sat with his eyes closed, his face a picture of peaceful composure.
Armitage closed in on Grimm's eyelids. Where he would have expected to see traces of eye movements beneath them, he saw nothing. Grimm's face resembled that of a statue, without the least hint of animation.
Manipulating the camera controls with sweaty fingers, Armitage focused on the boy's chest, watching every fold of his silk robes for an indication of movement. Breathing hard, the Administrator zoomed in on a single ripple in the sheer fabric, until he could almost see the individual threads of the cloth. Nothing moved.
Is the video playback corrupted?
Armitage switched to the camera in the Control Room, and the scene appeared normal. He waved his right hand, and his image responded at once, without a trace of stutter or image corruption.
"If the Administrator has quite finished with me, can I get back to that big, pink-eyed bastard I was conditioning before you called me?"
Armitage ignored the male tech, stabbing the comm stud with a vicious gesture.
"For heaven's sake, Armitage, I'm working as fast as I can!" Terrence yelled. The senior Technician's patience seemed to have been stretched to the limit. "You have no idea…"