Alfred shifted into the persona of harried cinema exec. "You have your cached videos, do you not? You forwarded the earlier contexts back home, did you not?"
"Yes, but " They wanted to rush out from the trees, to help the injured down by the library. That was for the best; in moments, Vaz would be one of the group again. Perhaps the DHS analysts were still in chaos. It would be amusing (and amazing, too) if this cover got him past the USMC cordon and out of California. As he followed his cinema crew out into the open space around the library, he had only one remaining link to his mil-net. It was past time to drop that bit of incrimination.
But there was still intelligence streaming in. Terrible, chilling words that Alfred would never have been burdened with if he hadn't still been linked.
"Please. Please don't do this to her. She's just a little girl."
Gu . Alfred searched wildly in his only remaining view. Back in his physical person, he stumbled.
The video tech grabbed his elbow, steadying him. "Mr. Ramachandran! Are you quite well? Were you blinded in the attack?"
Alfred had the presence of mind not to shake her off. "I'm sorry, it's just all this destruction. We must help these poor people."
"Yes! But you must stay safe yourself." The tech guided him down to where the rest of the Bollywood crew was already helping the emergency workers. Her aid gave him cover to look carefully out from his underground viewpoint. The damage to the camera had partially healed; some of the stuck pixels were flickering, and now he could see a little beyond the left of the fallen cabinet The elder Gu was pinned beneath. Lord, where was the other one?
I didn't mean for this . He should say nothing, but his body betrayed him:
Anonymous > Robert Gu: <sm>Where is your little girl?</sm>
"Who is this?" the voice screamed in his ear, then continued more quietly, more desperately. "She's right here. Unconscious. And I can't move her out of the way"
Anonymous > Robert Gu: <sm>I'm sorry.</sm> Alfred couldn't think of anything more to say. Dead, these two might marginally improve his own prospects. He looked angrily away from the viewpoint. Damn me . He had accomplished nothing this night except destroy good people. But how could he safely save them?
"Please. Just tell the police. Don't let her burn."
More spikes of overpressure, the sound of a thousand fragile things breaking, of heavy plastic tearing, bones being crushed. Robert didn't really hear it all. The bones getting crushed, that was distracting. Even the follow-up explosions and the heat went more or less unnoticed.
Robert surfaced from introspection that might as well have been unconsciousness, except that it hurt a lot more. Miri was on her hands and knees. She was wailing. "Grandpa! Grandpa! Say something, please . Grandpa!"
He twitched a hand, and she grabbed it. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to knock things over. Are you hurt?"
It was one of those questions that had an easy answer. Agony the size of an elephant was sitting on his right leg. "Yes," but the rest of a clever answer was lost in the pain.
Miri was crying, choking, very un-Miri-like. She turned and pushed at the cabinet that had him pinned.
Robert took a deep breath, but that mainly made him dizzy. "The cabinet's too heavy, Miri. Stay back from it." Why was the air so hot? The steady light was gone. Something like an open furnace glowed beyond the fallen equipment, where the sounds were all of popping and hissing.
"Cara Miri ! come back from there!"
The little girl hesitated. Under the cabinet were the crushed remains of the mouse array that had been about to load. It wasn't going anywhere now. Miri reached down into the broken glass. Robert cricked his neck and saw a tiny face peering back into his, a mouse loose from its suction trap in the array.
"Oo," Miri's voice squeaked. "Hi, little guy." A laugh mixed with a sob. "And you, too. You each get a free pass." Robert saw more tiny faces as she freed other mice. The heads bobbed this way and that. They didn't seem to see him, and after a moment, they found something that was much more important in the mousely order of things: freedom. They ran around the girl's hands and away from the heat.
Now Robert could see what caused the heat. A glowing white gob of syrup dripped over the wreckage, hissed into redness as it oozed down the side of the fallen cabinet.
Cara gave a panicked cry and came back to him. "What is that?"
The hissing and spattering. If it could make it over that barrier, it must be dammed up several feet deep. "I don't know, but you've got to get away."
"Yes! Come on!" The girl pulled at his shoulders. He pushed with her, ignoring the tearing pain in his leg. That moved him four or five inches; then he was stuck more solidly than before. And now the heat was even more distracting than the crushed leg. Robert's mind hopped from one horror to the other, trying to keep its sanity.
He looked across at his crying sister. "I'm sorry I made you cry, Cara." She just cried harder. "You've got to run now."
She didn't reply, but the crying stopped. She looked at him, uncomprehending, then slid back from the furnace heat. Go! Go ! But then she said, "I don't feel good," and lay down just beyond his reach.
Robert looked back at the oozing rock. It had swamped the bottom of the cabinet. Another inch or two and it would slop onto his little sister. He reached out, snagged a long shard of ceramic? and wedged it against the glowing tide.
There were more explosions, but not so loud. Up close there was just the smell and sound of things cooking. He tried to remember how he had come to be here. Someone had done this to him and Cara, and surely they must be listening now.
"Please," he said into the glowing dark. "Please don't do this to her. She's just a little girl."
No reply, just the terrible sounds, and the pain. And then the strangest thing, letters scrolling across his gaze:
Anonymous > Robert Gu: <sm>Where is your little girl?</sm>
"Who is this? She's right here. Unconscious. And I can't move her out of the way ."
Anonymous > Robert Gu: <sm>I'm sorry.</sm>
He waited, saw nothing more.
"Please. Just tell the police. Don't let her burn."
But the silent watcher was gone. Cara lay unmoving. Can't she feel the heat ? It took everything he had to hold the shard in place.
Then: "Professor Gu? Is that you?"
It was some pestering student! There were so many afterimages, he couldn't be sure, but someone was there, partly submerged in the molten ooze.
"It's me, Zulfi Sharif, sir."
That name was familiar, a weaselly arrogant student. But now his skin wasn't green. That meant something, didn't it?
"I've been trying for some hours to call you, sir. It's never been this bad before. I I fear I may have been truly hijacked. I'm so sorry." He was mostly submerged in the glowing rock. A ghost.
"You're injured!" said the ghost.
"Call the police," said Robert.
"Yes, sir! But where are you? Never mind, I see! I'll get help straight "
The glowing rock dribbled over Robert's makeshift dam, onto his arm. He descended into a pit of mindless pain.
33
Freedom on a Very Long Leash
The New Annex to Crick's Clinic was less than five years old, but the spirit of the place was straight out of the last century, when hospitals were great imposing places where people had to go for a chance at survival. There was still some need for such places: the most extreme intensive-care units were not something you could pack into a first-aid box and sell to home users. And of course, there were always tragic cases of incurable, debilitating diseases; some small portion of humanity might always end up in extended-care nursing homes.