Carefully Annja paced the stark white cell. Four steps by four. Allowing for detours around the bed and the sink and the chrome-steel toilet, all seeming to sprout from the floor on gleaming metal pedestals.
The padding on the bed was just that, a pad, plush enough, with a pillow-like protrusion at the head end, but integral with the pedestal bed. It was covered with some soft, resilient material that resisted a tentative attempt to tear it with her fingernails. Certain that she was being constantly watched by hidden cameras, she tried nothing too extreme. The point was there was nothing, sheet or otherwise, that a captive might tear into strips to hang herself.
Not that much presented itself to hang oneself from. The light, which she had not seen dim and suspected never did, was inset in the ceiling, no doubt shielded with polycarbonate or some other unbreakable synthetic. The air vents were high up, covered with heavy grilles well bolted, and too small in any event to pass any body larger than a house cat. There would be no escape by crawling through the HVAC ducts.
Another broken promise of action movies,she thought. She was beginning to wonder if it had been such a hot idea to let herself get caught.
She sat on the floor with her back to the metal base of the bed facing the door. The white floor tiles gave slightly beneath her.
She was in total confusion over Cogswell. Was this all some bizarre setup on his part? He had to know that his role in feeding her information about the secret facility and its bizarre research – which, however elliptical, had proved all too accurate – would come out sooner or later once they subjected her to questioning under drugs.
It was my decision to blunder in and get captured, intending to bust loose at the first opportunity, find the Santo Niño and spring us both. Was it possible Cogswell – when he was acting as Cogswell, anyway – had somehow intended to put that thought in her mind all along?
She shook her head. It didn't make much practical difference at this point.
She wasn't hopelessly trapped in the cell. But if she somehow hacked her way out, the facility was swarming with heavily armed men, no doubt too many for her to fight off. Especially if she roused the whole place, while betraying the existence of the sword to those hidden cameras. She had little sensible choice but to bide her time and wait for some opening.
She closed her eyes. It was cool in the cell, even with her jacket still on. But not cold enough to be a distraction. Drawing in a deep abdominal breath, she blanked herself in meditation.
"Wakey-wakey."
Never asleep, Annja had returned to full awareness from her deep meditative state the instant the door of her cell hissed open. She opened her eyes.
The derisive voice, vaguely familiar, had sounded somehow wrong to Annja. Now she saw why.
Three men had entered her cell. They were young and lean and dressed in black security uniforms. They also looked as if they had wandered right out of the infirmary.
"Remember me, shweetie?" said the man who had spoken first. He had black hair and held himself so rigidly upright that Annja suspected he wore some kind of brace beneath his shirt. The distortion in his speech came from the obvious fact his jaw was wired shut.
He and his companions looked different from the last time she'd seen them. They were cleaned up considerably, if visibly the worse for wear.
"Yes," she said. "I do. I thought I broke your neck with that spin kick. Too bad I didn't."
"Yeah," the gangly blond guy on his right said. Like his leader's, his beard had been shaved clean. "Too bad for you." Aside from a certain puffiness to what would naturally have been somewhat craggy features, he looked the least damaged. Until he grinned. The whistle of excess air escaping when he spoke indicated that the gap in his top teeth was fully authentic this time.
"You should have made sure of us, sweet cheeks," the third member of the trio said. He was a wiry Latino with a flexible cast on his right wrist.
"I have a tendency to be merciful," she said. "I won't make the same mistake twice."
"Yeah, well, the shoe is on the other foot here," the gap-toothed blonde said.
"Won't Mad Jack have a thing or two to say if you damage the merchandise?" Annja said.
They passed a look around and laughed. "Shit, girly, he sent us here," the Latino said. "He told us to make sure you spill your guts."
The dark-haired leader's grin bared his wired teeth. It was a terrible expression.
Annja decided the time had come to act.
As the leader moved in, Annja reached out and grabbed him by the broken lower jaw. She squeezed. His dark eyes flew wide and he squealed with pain. He tried to slash at her with his fingernails.
She pushed him away from her. Hard. The back of his head struck the side of the stainless-steel sink with a crunch. His lanky body spasmed. His eyes rolled up and locked there. He slid to the floor. There was a blood-smeared dent in the side of the sink.
The blond man launched an overhand right at her face. She leaned her upper body back. His knuckles lanced off her left cheekbone.
The sword appeared in her hand. She heard the Latino cry a shrill, wordless warning.
It was too late for the blond man. Before he could recover from throwing himself off balance with his mostly missed punch, the sword came whistling down.
Its tip raked a bloody furrow down his cheek as the blade sliced his shoulder at an angle. He reeled back, spraying blood from his arm. Annja spun to her right, lashing out horizontally. The sword slashed the Latino across his screaming mouth. She stepped into him and cut him down. Then she turned back to the blond man. Clutching at his shoulder with blood spurting through his fingers, he had backed against the wall by the still open cell door. He sidled toward it, leaving a wide smear of blood, shockingly brilliant red. Then he went limp.
She looked around the cell at the fallen men.
"I told you," she said. "I wasn't going to make the mistake of sparing you twice."
Chapter 26
She sprang into the corridor with the sword ready in both hands. Her peripheral vision showed no sign of anyone to the left or right. She looked both ways quickly, confirming that she was alone. She began to walk forward.
Her nerves were jangled and her blood sang with fury. She felt as if she were about to burst with anger. And the horror of the fate she had narrowly escaped. There was something about having that hostility – that foul, purely evil intent – directed at her that was like a strange and violent drug.
She knew she had to control the rage, to keep herself from turning into a soulless killing machine, or worse, a monster who presumed to judge and execute any and all unlucky enough to cross her path. That was the burden she must bear as she carried the sword.
To her left was a small alcove. She stopped, frowning. For a moment she stood, breathing deeply. Then she plunged inside.
"You're a welcome sight," Dr. Nils Bergstrom said from the bed of his cell. It was identical to the one she had just escaped.
He had his coat off. He sat with his legs dangling over the side. His manner was mild.
He raised a dark brow at the sword she still held in her hand. "So our gangster friends were neither confabulating nor lying," he said. "You really do carry a medieval-style broadsword with you."
"Early Renaissance, actually," she said, wondering if it mattered.