"I want to speak to her myself," she said. "Make up my own mind. She doesn't look that dangerous."
"You don't know," Kissoon warned. "Appearances lie. I keep her at bay with the Lix out of fear of what she might do."
She contemplated asking what he could possibly fear about a woman so clearly in pain, then decided it was a question for a less desperate hour.
"I'll go back then," she said.
"You understand the urgency."
"You don't have to keep telling me," Tesla said. "Yes, I understand. But like I said you're asking a lot. People get attached to their bodies. Joke."
"If all goes well, and I can stop the Art being used, then the supplier gets his flesh back intact. If I fail it's the end of the world anyway, so what will it matter?"
"Nice," Tesla said.
"I try."
She turned back to the door.
"Go quickly," he said. "And don't get distracted—"
The door opened without her touching it.
"You're still a condescending fucker, Kissoon—" was Tesla's parting remark. Then she'd stepped out into the same early morning light.
Off to the left of the hut a cloud-shadow seemed to be moving over the desert floor. She studied it a moment, and saw that the sun-beaten ground was covered with Lix, a small sea of them. Sensing her gaze they stopped moving, and raised their heads towards her. Hadn't Kissoon said that he'd made these creatures?
"Go, will you?" she heard him say. "There isn't much time."
Had she acted upon his instructions immediately she'd have missed the sight of the woman appearing beyond the Lix. She didn't, so she didn't. And the sight of her, despite the warnings Kissoon had issued, held her on the step. If this was indeed one of the Iad Uroboros' agents, as Kissoon had claimed, it was a brilliant conceit to present herself in such a vulnerable guise. Try as she might she couldn't quite believe a villainy as vast or indeed as ambitious as the Iad would present itself in so wretched a manner. Wasn't evil too full of itself, even in its machinations, to come so undressed? She couldn't ignore her instinct, which told her unequivocally that in this at least Kissoon was wrong. The woman was no agent. She was a human being in pain. Tesla could turn her back on many appeals, but never on that.
Ignoring a further entreaty from the man in the hut behind her, she took a step towards the woman. The Lix were alive to her approach. They began to seethe as she stepped towards them, raising their heads like cobras. The sight quickened her approach rather than slowing it. If this was Kissoon's instruction, and it surely was, then their keeping her from the woman only further reinforced her suspicion that she was being misled. He was trying to keep them apart; why? Because this wretched, anguished woman was dangerous? No! Every fiber of Tesla's being refused that interpretation. He wanted to keep them apart because of something that might pass between them; something that might be said or done that would throw him into doubt.
The Lix had new instructions it seemed. To harm Tesla would be to keep the messenger from her purpose; so they instead turned their heads towards the woman. She saw their intention, and fear came over her face. It occurred to Tesla that she was familiar with their malice; that maybe she'd dared them before in an attempt to get to Kissoon, or one of his visitors. She certainly seemed versed in how best to confuse them, running back and forth quickly so that they tied their nest in knots trying to decide which way to lunge.
Tesla added her own contribution to the defense by yelling at them as she picked up her pace, suddenly certain that they dared not harm her as long as Kissoon was so desperate to be out of his prison, and she his only hope.
"Get away from her!" she yelled at them. "Leave her alone, fuckheads!"
But they had their target fixed, and weren't about to be deflected from it by shouts. As Tesla came within a few yards of them they started after their quarry.
"Run!" Tesla yelled.
The woman heeded the advice, but too late. The speediest from the nest was at her heels; then climbing her body to wind itself around her. There was a vile elegance to its motion, whipping around the woman's torso and pulling her to the ground. The Lix that followed were quickly upon her. By the time Tesla got within a few yards of the woman she was all but indistinguishable from her attackers. They'd virtually mummified her. Still she fought them, tearing at their bodies as they closed ranks around her.
Tesla didn't waste time with further words. She simply tore at the Lix with her bare hands, first attempting to free the woman's face for fear they smothered her, then, that done, pulling her arms free. Though they were many, they weren't particularly strong. Several simply broke apart as she hauled on them, yellow-white blood oozing from them over her hands, and spraying up in her face. She let disgust fuel her, fighting their every twisting trick, pulling and pulling at them until she was sticky with fluids. The woman they'd come so close to killing had taken fire from her rescuer, and was struggling free of her assassins' grip.
Sensing that victory was available, albeit snatched, Tesla readied herself for escape. She could not go alone, she knew. The woman had to come with her, back to the apartment in North Huntley Drive, or she'd be prey to further attacks, and after such an assault she'd have little power to resist them. Kissoon had taught her to imagine her way into the Loop. Could she now do the same in the opposite direction, not only for herself but on the woman's behalf? If not they'd both fall to the Lix, who seemed to be appearing from all sides now, as though an alarm call had been sent out from their maker. Putting their approach out of her mind as best she could, Tesla pictured herself and the woman in front of her out of this place and into another. Not any other. Into West Hollywood. North Huntley Drive. Her apartment. You do this, she told herself. If Kissoon can do it, you can.
She heard the woman cry out—the first sound she'd actually made. There was a disturbance in the scene around them, but not the instant transfer from Kissoon's Loop to West Hollywood she'd hoped for; and the Lix were massing around them in greater and yet greater numbers.
"Again," Tesla told herself. "Do it again."
She focused on the woman in front of her, who was still tearing pieces of the Lix from around her body, and pulling them from her hair. It was this mirage she had to focus on. The other passenger, herself, was easily imagined.
"Go!" she said. "Please God, go!"
This time the images in her head jelled; she not only saw herself and the woman clearly, she saw them in flight, the world around them dissolving and reconfiguring like a jigsaw blown to pieces and remade as another puzzle.
She knew the scene. It was the very spot she'd left from. The coffee was still spilled across the floor; the sun was pouring in through the window; Raul was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for her return. She knew by the look on his face that she'd succeeded in bringing the woman through with her. What she hadn't realized until she looked was that she'd brought the whole image, including the Lix that had been battening upon her. Though they were separated from Kissoon their unnatural life was no less fevered here than in the Loop. The woman dropped them to the floor of the apartment where they continued to writhe, their shit-smelling blood oozing on the floor. But they were only pieces: heads, tails, mid-sections. And already the violence of their motion was slowing. Rather than waste time stomping them out Tesla called Raul to her, and together they carried the woman through to the bedroom and laid her down.
She'd fought hard, and was the worst for it. The wounds on her body had reopened. But she seemed not so much in pain as simply exhausted.