Harsh Lessons, page 28
She saw she was right.
'But look at your left wrist.'
She saw understanding dawn in his face even before he rotated his arm and look down. It must have been stinging.
Down his wrist, four very shallow, very sharp lines scored his skin. He looked up into her eyes.
'That's right, Doctor. I can't kill you, but I can hurt you.'
It felt kind of awful, but kind of satisfying, using his official "name." And she saw something change in him, too, when she spoke it.
And for a moment, then, she wanted to cry. Like she'd just killed a part of him. Maybe a part of them.
She forced the feeling down. She had planned to threaten him some more: something like "not wanting to find out just how much she could hurt him." But suddenly, she couldn't bring herself even to pretend she was happy about any of this any more.
Instead, she just said 'Sorry, Uncle,' and carefully slammed her fist into the side of his head again. He fell forward once more onto his desk. But instead of the satisfaction she'd expected to feel, she just felt worse.
It took a while before she realized she was hunching forward, clenching her hands together, wringing them. Like a baby.
She forced her hands apart, and straightened.
Pressing her lips close-shut, she considered her next steps. Now, she had to get them both out of the Department.
Maybe I should have planned this out, first. She shrugged. No time like the present. For a while she stood, chewing her lip, thinking.
Then nodded. Determined. She'd only need a few things.
Just so long as they were still allowing her to come and go as part of her studies into the Hunters Point Dumps…
Chapter 46
Dojo was in his room when the channel to Father opened.
'Dojo. We have a problem with Leeth. Take care of it. Nelson is currently tracking her – she's en route to the level seven exit, with the Doctor in a wheelchair. From the medical bay logs, we believe she has administered a sedative to him, and is attempting to flee.'
'Why?'
'Unclear. No doubt the Doctor will be able to tell us when he revives.'
'I am on my way.'
Dojo jogged to the lifts; then frowned, and took the stairs down to sub-basement seven. 'Can she exit the complex?' he asked Father.
'No. We assume she is unaware her permission has just been rescinded. Bring her to lock-down two. Avoid killing her.'
'Are you sure she cannot exit?'
'Quite sure. We'll be observing, on camera. Do you need assistance? Only Little Brother is available, but I can send him along with tasers or tranqs.'
'That will not be necessary.'
-
Leeth skidded around the last corner, almost tipping her uncle from the chair. She had to act fast – speed was her only chance, since she still hadn't worked out any way to bypass the Department's security. She just had to hope they hadn't noticed anything yet.
The exit raced toward them; at the last moment, she clamped hard on the wheelchair's brakes, bracing her uncle as the wheels locked, to leave two trails of rubber on the polished concrete floor.
Hauling him up from the chair, she shrugged him over one shoulder, put her eye to the scanner, and pressed the Open button.
She heard the ultrasonics of a camera focusing.
And the exit did not open.
No!
She eyed the door. The hinges. Solid. Strong. Steel.
In the distance, the sound of sure footfalls, rapidly approaching.
Dojo.
Briefly, she closed her eyes. Then dumped her uncle back in the chair and turned to face the end of the corridor. The camera chirped again, and she looked up, straight at where it lay concealed in the ceiling. At Nelson, no doubt, watching.
She smiled. One leap, one vicious stab of slicing fingers, and she punched through the covering, felt the crunch and crackle of the spycam's death, and landed lightly, anger rising.
Waiting.
'Miss Leeth.'
'Sensei.' She bowed.
'I have been instructed to bring you back.'
She shook her head. 'I need you to let me and the Doctor out.'
'Miss Leeth. Leeth. There is no need for you to escape. You are doing well. Return with me and explain your actions.' He stopped; puzzled by the surprised smile that had blossomed as he spoke.
'No.'
He inclined his head. 'Then I will bring you back.'
'No, sensei. You won't.'
If Dojo had found Leeth focused during training, today she had stepped beyond herself. And he saw: in her face, in every sure movement – not fear or desperation driving her, but certainty and determination. She does not escape, he realized. She runs toward something.
Then Dojo stepped forward and stopped thinking; forced, as a few times before by Leeth, to enter that state in which the fighter ceases to exist, and becomes the fight.
And as they flowed together, he realized his student had entered the same state, already.
He struck for her head: a hard, fast palm strike to end her challenge before it started. But her neck rolled to one side, her body sliding to his left, and a powerful tap to his elbow smoothly deflected the blow. She twisted in closer, avoiding his following knee strike while a slender arm blocked the elbow that would have broken her collarbone.
A series of one-two shots slammed in return at his chest, impossibly fast, but he'd read the tension in her arms and managed to interpose his forearms, though shocked anew by the forces he parried.
In staccato succession then, knee, elbow, palm, and wrist strikes followed, on both sides; the exchange of attacks and counters rising in a crescendo of violence. Each onslaught met in turn by impeccable defense.
Leeth fought with controlled ferocity, her lips peeled back in joy, delighting in the symphony they wove with their limbs. Close together now, bodies touching, each read the other's intent as it formed; each shifted instinctively to fit the answering move into their deadly contest.
Together, they soared. Spinning and striking in a duet danced on a cliff's edge, where one misstep would collapse the edifice to splinter and fall apart.
Martial art encounters follow a pattern: a cautious circling, a probing for openings, punctuated by flurries of blows that shift the balance this way or that. Each engagement lasting less than a second.
Leeth and Dojo's exchange had now stretched to twenty seconds without pause. She fought with a hunger for this confrontation that bordered on the psychotic. Time and again he hammered blows into her that rocked her. They pounded into one another, every time they dared trade defense for offense. But each blow only steeled her; intensified her answering blow.
Thirty seconds. And Paul Kawatsu sensed Leeth lose herself utterly as she soared higher, unleashing a whirlwind of attacks inhuman in their speed and force. From all directions, unrelenting. Accelerating.
He blocked, and blocked, and blocked, but the tornado rose higher; and his stamina, unlike hers, had its limits.
Seeing his vulnerability, she exploded in a torrent of attacks impossible to withstand.
Chest heaving, Leeth collapsed forward, hands braced on knees, gulping air. Yes!
And heard lighter footsteps approaching – Little Brother. But already, she was hauling her teacher to the scanner to peel back one eyelid.
Chapter 47
'What do you mean, Dojo is down?' Father demanded. 'Where is Leeth?'
Little Brother looked helplessly around the empty corridor, his weapons re-holstered, checking Dojo's pulse. 'Well… gone.'
Nelson interrupted. «I've got her, she's out on the street- Shit! The little bitch just prised open a drain cover. She's folding up the wheelchair… It's down. Huh! She just grabbed the Doc and jumped down with him. Hang on, let me shift to another cam….» There was a silence, then a breath that sounded somehow disbelieving. «She just frickin' reached up and dragged the steel grate back in place, one-handed! I've lost her.»
«Then get a drone down there stat, Nelson! She won't be able to travel fast, hauling the Doctor and that chair.»
Three minutes later, Mother, Father, and Nelson were treated to the sight of Leeth plucking the drone from the air to glare directly at them, before stabbing it with her fingers.
Father swore.
-
'You don't want to hurt us?'
In the dimly-lit tunnel, the man turned to his grubby cohorts, harsh laughter rolling and echoing around her. As if she'd said something hilarious.
'Think you got that backwards, sliv.'
She frowned, studying the rag-tag crew blocking her route. Thinking. I still have to get into the hospital, and I didn't bring a change of clothes….
Jugular, she decided, for the one in front. Spin him down to set me up to gut the ogre…
Yeah.
'Reckon me and-'
Blood arced as her fingers swept his throat. Her other hand grabbed his shoulder, shoving him aside, directing the arterial spray. But the ogre was already moving, faster than she'd expected. She had to angle her next strike diagonally up across his belly as she dived past, and barely avoided the spray of gore.
Crashing into the two drug-ruined human rats behind him, she broke the arm of one drawing a gun she hadn't seen. Plucking it from his hand, she hammered it into the head of the other.
Then stepped delicately back over the bodies to her uncle's body and the folded up wheelchair.
'Sorry,' she said, waving the gun at the remaining group. 'Look, maybe we should start again. Like I said, I don't want to hurt any of you, but we need to get past. It's real important.'
Properly introduced, they were much more polite.
-
From the bedside where she found Dr Ranatunga, Leeth left a trail of unconscious orderlies and security guards on her path to Marcie's room.
Slapping awake her uncle, she pushed his chair to the side of the bed, dragging Dr Ranatunga with her.
Marcie looked awful.
Leeth felt terrified. What if this didn't work? 'Where's her injury? Show me! Where's the scar tissue? Exactly.'
'Who are you? This girl is sick, she needs-'
Ranatunga stared at the girl, her face distorted by a stocking pulled down over her head. She ignored him, striding to the door as it slammed open, two guards with tasers appearing. The girl whirled between them, fists and feet flying, bouncing slightly as she turned.
He blinked. Somehow, both guards were falling to the ground behind her.
She continued speaking as if nothing had just happened. 'I need you to cut the scar tissue, so she can be magically healed.'
'You're insane.' He glanced at the older white male, face obscured by a large, floppy hat, struggling with his wrists bound to the wheelchair he'd been tied into. 'Insane.'
A small hand like a vise took him by the chin, and he found himself dragged to the girl in the bed. 'The spine goes up in the back of the head, right?' She released him, gently easing the girl over on her side, exposing the back of her neck.
He was half way to the door when something like steel grabbed him by the wrist, almost dislocating his shoulder as he was hauled back to the bed. She bent to the bound man, removing a case from a side pocket, and opened it one-handed to reveal a set of surgical implements. 'I need you to cut the scar tissue. I don't have much time!'
'No.'
The man in the wheelchair still struggled, dislodging the floppy hat that had been pulled down over his face. Ice ran down the surgeon's spine. The man was gagged with some kind of red ball. Some kind of fetish device. His features, too, were compressed by a nylon stocking.
'Quite, quite, insane,' he breathed.
Stunned, he watched the girl take a scalpel, squirt disinfectant on it, and thrust it at him. Behind her, the man made wild eyes at him.
'Cut. The scar. Tissue.' Her voice cracked, and he saw she was crying.
'No. Never. That would cripple her. Probably kill her.'
'She's already crippled!'
'No.'
'All right. Just show me. Point to the area where you'd have to make a cut, to re-injure her in the same place.'
'No.'
The scalpel pressed directly, exactly, over his heart.
'If you don't point for me, you're no use to me.' She thrust one hand out towards the wild-eyed bound man. 'That is an expert healer. And if you tell us where the withered nerve endings are, and if the injury is fresh, he can heal them.' I hope! 'We are going to do this, now. With or without your help. If you care about Marcie, you'll tell us where to cut. And if you don't care about Marcie, then you don't deserve to live. I'm doing this, one way or the other. So: where do I cut!'
She's terrified too, he saw. But utterly determined. And the expression on the man in the chair? Shocked, but resigned. Not denying her claims. Perhaps he was a mage?
Shakily, Ranatunga indicated the location, even as he shook his head. 'The area is small: a centimeter across, twenty three millimeters in. But you can't. You mustn't. You'll cripple her; more likely, kill her!'
A horrified expression on her face, she touched the spot he'd indicated, and a tiny slice appeared, somehow. A faint red seam.
'Down exactly there, right?' she asked, turning to him. Indicated a distance with her finger and thumb. 'About so deep?'
He nodded, jerkily.
She spun to the man in the wheelchair, and the scalpel flashed four times, freeing his arms and legs. She hauled him up by his shirt-front. 'This is Marcie Dunkirk. Guess what's going to happen to you if she doesn't walk out of here in the next few minutes?'
Releasing him to dart to the bed, she slowed, and carefully rolled the girl over. Then propped the pillow under Marcie's chest, arching the back of her exposed neck.
Leeth looked down at her best friend in the world, calling the tingle into her hands, terrified yet certain. And stabbed down with one fingertip, projecting the force down through the tiny surface incision she'd used to mark the spot. Held her finger dead still. Then twitched it, once.
Blood flowed, Marcie jerked, and she heard Dr Ranatunga gasp. She spun to her uncle, quailing at the horror she saw in his face even through the distortion of the stocking.
'Now heal her.'
'You're insane,' whispered Ranatunga.
The gagged man's eyes never left the young woman – who had to be the same intense young woman from this morning. The man gestured to his mouth; to the gag. His hooded eyes burning.
'Oh, no. I know you don't need to speak to do this spell. Now heal her. Heal her!'
Behind her, the door to the room thrust open.
And Marcie's father stormed into the room. With her younger sister, Amanda, behind him.
Chapter 48
The bunch of flowers fell from Marcie's father's hands, slapping down on the floor in a sudden silence.
'What the fook is going on here?' Fists curled, he took a step forward, trying to understand what he was seeing.
'I leave me daughter for ten fookin' minutes and the whole hospital goes mad? What's going on here?'
'Jane?' whispered Amanda. 'What are you doing?'
'I'm not Jane. But I am a friend. And we're healing her. Right now. Marcie will walk out of this hospital today, or we'll die, trying.'
'Jane?' Amanda still stared at her.
Marcie's father took another step forward, but his youngest daughter locked her two hands on his. 'Da, no. Wait.'
He stilled.
Harmon met the man's eyes; then his daughter's; then moved to Leeth's friend and cast the spell.
The room fell silent as he let the magic and his Imaginal sight study the damage. Both the extensive scar tissue left by the body's correct but wholly inadequate response to that damage, and Leeth's fresh injury.
He shook his head. Shifting his sight back to the physical world, he met Leeth's eyes, and indicated another place, higher on the neck. Made a cutting gesture. Held up two fingers. Then took Leeth's hand, holding her forefinger like a pen – or a scalpel blade. And his eyes burned into hers.
Her own eyes widened as she understood what he meant, and summoned her sharpness again. Then held up her other hand, thumb and finger moving together, then apart: how deep?
He indicated the required distance, and saw her nod her understanding. Shifting his senses back to the Imaginal, now seeing the invisible blade for the first time, he was stunned for a moment by its deadly beauty.
Then, guiding her unresisting finger, he began to cut.
Three more times he sliced; tiny incisions. Marveling each time at the perfection of the cuts. Finally, he pulled her hand back and released it, ignoring her as he sank his spell into the paralyzed girl on the bed.
Began coaxing the nerves to grow, to seek out their matching ends, and reconnect.
Chapter 49
'This is Nina Summers, Kroneco News, outside New Francisco's Sisters of Mercy hospital, where a drug-crazed young woman has taken control of an entire wing. We understand she has abducted the hospital's leading cerebra-spinal surgeon, forcing Dr Jay Ranatunga to operate…'
At that moment, a man, face covered by a large floppy hat and strapped into a wheelchair, was pushed out the side entrance by a young woman, her own face covered in camo-makeup and a stocking. Two police moved to intercept – and collapsed as the woman leapt the chair, slamming their heads together with a crack that drew the attention of the news cams.
The woman then wrenched open the back door of a waiting ambulance and threw the man and chair into the back. Thrusting the door shut, she slapped a sheet of paper to the back window and disappeared around the vehicle to slip inside. Moments later, the ambulance started, then the driver's door flew open and a man flew out.
Nina zoomed the drone news camera in on the hand-lettered sign.
"Take him if you want him," it read.
Chapter 50
Mother was livid. 'But she couldn't have known Nelson could hack in and take control of the ambulance!'
