Explosive chemistry, p.17
Explosive Chemistry, page 17
Across a wide room filled with desks and people and shouting, was the detective’s desk. Detective Jackson was speaking to Pete and Sergeant Giovanni. Pete was just grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair. That was not good. Time was running out.
“Hey, Jackson!” Officer West shouted across the crowded room. “This lady needs to talk to you.”
Everyone in the room turned to stare at Liliana. She wanted desperately to crawl under a desk, or better yet, into the roof rafters behind the suspended ceiling. She hugged herself tightly, stared at her toes, and fiddled with her soggy sleeves. She wondered if this was how her eyes made Siobhan feel, like an amoeba under one of Doctor Nudd’s microscopes.
I must not shut down. I must not shut down.
But it was too much.
“Lilly, what’s going on? What are you doing here?” Pete’s voice spoke right beside her. He was on the other side of the room a moment ago. She had lost some time. Probably not very much. Hopefully, not too much.
Officer West had one of his heavy arms around her shoulders. She shivered away from him. She didn’t know him. People shouldn’t touch people they don’t know without permission.
She looked up and around quickly with just her human eyes, but it was still overwhelming. Too many people. A lot of them were still staring at her. Only Detective Jackson, Sergeant Giovanni, and Pete were familiar faces. The rest were strangers.
So many strangers.
“Hey, if it isn’t Anna Sees All,” Sergeant Giovanni said. “Seen anything interesting in your crystal ball lately?”
Liliana hid her face in Pete’s chest. “Get me out of here, Pete,” she whispered.
“Sure, Lilly.” His wiry arm replaced Officer West’s meaty arm. It helped. “I’ve got you.” Pete nodded thanks to the big man, and the officer stepped back. “I was just heading out anyway. We’re about done talking to Detective Jackson about the two missing corporals.”
“Not fast enough,” Liliana muttered into his chest, inhaling the familiar scent of canine and chemicals.
“Is she a friend of yours?” Officer West asked. His hands were surprisingly long fingered and slender with neatly trimmed nails. Liliana realized she had unintentionally opened her second eyes that she reflexively opened in combat situations to see enemies coming from any direction. She quickly shut them before they were spotted, making herself blind again.
Pete said, “Yeah, she’s a friend.”
“She said she had important life or death information for a case.” Officer West’s deep voice came from just above Pete’s shoulder. He must have moved around to the other side. “Is she all right?”
“She’s just a little lost, I think,” Pete said.
“Well, that seems like life or death information,” Sergeant Giovanni commented.
“Life or death,” Liliana mumbled into Pete’s chest. Her helplessness frustrated her. Doctor Nudd and Siobhan might die because she couldn’t handle crowds well or drive a car. She took a deep breath. “Life or death. Seconds count. We have to go now.” She pushed Pete, not sure if it was in the right direction, but at least it would get him moving.
Sergeant Giovanni chuckled. “You heard your new girlfriend, Pete. What are you waiting for?”
“We can swing by Lilly’s place on the way back to base and drop her off.”
“Hold on a second there, Mr. Teague.” Detective Jackson gently touched the back of Liliana’s hand, where it worried the edge of her sleeve. Her dark face at the same height as Liliana’s blocked most of the staring eyes in the room. “Was there something you needed to tell me?”
Liliana turned away from Pete’s chest for a moment. “My friends, Doctor Nudd and Siobhan, are going to die. On base. Very soon.”
Pete squeezed her tighter. “That’s what you were trying to tell us. Zoe and I will take care of it, Lilly.”
Liliana shook her head. “Pete won’t get there fast enough to save them. We need your help, Detective Jackson.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Can you tell me where exactly? Fort Liberty is damn near as big as Fayetteville.”
“A lab. With chemicals and machines and a cot on wheels, like a hospital but not.” She looked up at Pete. “Near where Siobhan got her new arm.”
“You’re not taking her seriously, are you?” Sergeant Giovanni said.
“Any reason why I shouldn’t?” Detective Jackson asked the soldier.
Pete didn’t give his friend a chance to answer. “If Lilly says something’s going to happen, you can believe her.”
Sergeant Giovanni’s dark brows went up, then her mouth twisted suspiciously. “If you think something’s up on base,” she asked Liliana, “why didn’t you go to the authorities at Liberty?”
Liliana opened her mouth to say that she had spoken to their colonel, but he wouldn’t allow her onto his base, and closed her mouth again. That information would not be helpful. She looked at the gun on Sergeant Giovanni’s belt. “You are a police officer for the Army base, aren’t you?”
Pete grinned at the MP. “She’s got a point.”
Detective Jackson asked, “Sergeant, do you have any idea how valuable it could be to know about a murder before the victim is a corpse?” Her face lit from within with a kind of wicked glee. “If it’s a wild goose chase, so what? If there’s any chance to stop two murders today, I’ll take it.”
“We have to go! NOW!” Liliana shouted, then cringed when all eyes turned to her again. “Seconds count,” she mumbled into Pete’s chest.
Detective Jackson nodded crisply. “West, I need a black and white unit with four-wheel drive. We’re going lights and sirens. Speed is important.”
When Detective Jackson snapped out the order, things moved fast.
The big officer disappeared with a crisp, “Yes, ma’am.”
Liliana let herself be swept along into the stairwell, the underground police parking garage, then the passenger seat of a squad car only a little smaller than the colonel’s car. Detective Jackson drove, and Sergeant Giovanni and Pete took the back seat.
The heater made the dash glow, and the seat warmed under Liliana, both trying valiantly to steam the cold water from her clothes.
Detective Jackson took the wheel to drive manually, just as Colonel Bennet had done. Her driving starkly contrasted with the colonel’s steady progress through the wet, windy streets.
The siren wailed while the rain beat a hard rock rhythm, accented by the deep base of thunder and strobe of lightning. The detective danced with her car to the manic rhythm, hydroplaning around curves. Her tires still grabbed enough pavement to squeal in protest as she avoided obstacles and traffic that didn’t get out of the way fast enough to suit her.
The auto-drive flashed yellow near-collision alerts almost as constant as the lightning. The polite disembodied female voice kept offering to take over until Detective Jackson put it on mute.
With the way the detective drove, hands moving controlled and fast on the wheel, they were highly likely to arrive in time to alter the outcome, assuming they didn’t die getting there. Future paths flashed and changed and changed again in the spider seer’s mind too rapidly to follow.
The future was in flux.
Liliana couldn’t tell if the detective’s help would accomplish her goal.
Sergeant Giovanni speed dialed her wrist phone. “I’ll get us emergency clearance through the nearest gate.”
Liliana shivered and huddled in the seat, knees pulled up and arms wrapped tightly around them, even though that made the seatbelt cut into her waist. She opened her fourth eyes.
Who is Sergeant Giovanni calling to get permission for them to enter the Army base?
Oh no.
“Do not tell him I am with you, Sergeant Giovanni!” Liliana said quickly.
“What the hell? You want me to lie to my commanding officer?”
“Trust her,” Pete said. “Do what she says.”
“Like Hell. The last time I saw this woman, she was a murder suspect. She’s not even human.” The line clicked open. A tiny hologram of Colonel Bennet’s head and shoulders appeared, hovering above Sergeant Giovanni’s wrist.
“Giovanni here, sir. Detective Jackson wants emergency access to one of the base buildings. She got a tip on two possible attempted murders: the goblin doctor and the cyborg fairy.”
“Is a woman named Liliana with you?” he asked, face stern and blank of expression.
Pete shook his head frantically at the sergeant, but she pursed her lips and ignored him. “Yes, sir.”
Detective Jackson swerved hard around a limb fallen in the middle of the road, throwing them all to the side for a moment.
Sergeant Giovanni braced her hand against the lowered barrier between the front and back seat, making it easy for Liliana to lean into the tiny camera’s range and speak to her wrist where the prince could see her.
“I am here, Colonel Bennet,” Liliana said. “But I will get out of the car at the gate.”
“I’ll accept your word on that.” The semi-transparent image of his face looked straight at her.
“Thank you.” She did not think there were many people whose word the prince would accept after such a short acquaintance. His miniature image gave her a tiny nod, a barely perceptible movement, but it felt as if he had bowed to her again in respect. Apparently, saving the prince from being hit by a car had earned her more than just a ride to the police station.
“Emergency access for the detective is granted. Where will it happen?”
Pete answered. “From Lilly’s description, it sounds like the cybernetics research lab in Womack med center.”
“I’ll inform the gate guards and meet you there.” The line clicked dead.
“Why did you tell him you’d get out of the car, Lilly?” Pete asked.
Liliana started to answer, but her teeth clacked together as Detective Jackson hit a curb. The entire car jolted to a slant with two wheels on the sidewalk. The street was clogged with traffic ahead, backed up behind an accident.
Detective Jackson drove around it. The detective’s face sparkled with delight. She honked the horn, adding to the noise of thunder and the already wailing siren and shouted, “Get out of the way!” for good measure, even though the windows were sealed.
The few people on the sidewalk, walking while huddled under their portable umbrella fields, leapt to the side.
“The Colonel does not trust me,” Liliana answered when she could get the words out. That was a balanced state. She did not trust him either.
“Which makes me wonder even more why the hell we should trust you,” Sergeant Giovanni commented.
“Because she saved your life, Zoe.” The soldier looked at her friend like Pete had sprouted flowers out of his ears. “She saved both our lives,” Pete added. “More than once.”
Detective Jackson took her eyes off the road for a quick glance at the spider-kin. “That true?”
Liliana shrugged and nodded. “We protected each other when we fought the widow spiders.”
Detective Jackson added, “She saved my life too.”
Sergeant Giovanni snorted in the back seat. “Did she tell you that?”
Pete sighed next to her. “Zoe, did you think the liver-eating stone giant just happened to trip when she was chasing you?”
There was no answer, but Liliana wasn’t really surprised. Sergeant Giovanni did not trust Others. And she knew Liliana was Other, while she did not know that Pete was.
Siren still blaring, the detective skidded to a stop at the entrance gate checkpoint for Fort Liberty.
The detective caught the spider-kin’s wrist for a moment before she was fully out of the car. “Sorry about this,” she shouted over the noise of the siren and storm.
The rain soaked the spider seer to the skin as soon as she opened the car door. The siren and thunder that built and rumbled competed to see which could assault Liliana’s eardrums the hardest. “Just save my friends,” she shouted back.
The detective’s jaw tightened with determination, and she stomped on the gas. The door slammed shut as she accelerated.
Pete looked back at Liliana apologetically through the rear window as they left her behind in the pouring rain.
Chapter 16
Soggy Spider, Bleary Badger, And Livid Lion
Liliana didn’t really care about the rain or the wind cutting through her soggy clothes. At least the hail had stopped. She turned away from the gate, putting her back to the cameras, then opened her fourth eyes. She kept her human eyes open as she started walking home so she could see the cold puddles even as she put her feet in them. She could not be any more wet if she had gone swimming in her clothes. Fortunately, she did not live far from this entrance into Fort Liberty.
She searched for the series of events leading to Doctor Nudd’s death. Some things came sharper and clearer now that it was closer in time and she already knew some of it.
Why would the pride-king kill Doctor Nudd?
Holding that question clear in her mind allowed her to see even more of the near future.
Her vision showed a large examination room as big as her entire house, with three complex microscopes and other unknown scientific-looking equipment on a long counter along one wall. Black office chairs with wheels sat in front of the equipment. Glass-doored cabinets above the bench held an odd combination of beakers, computer chips, test tubes, and electrical wire. Workbenches with granite tops held Bunsen burners and soldering irons, with bottles of chemicals on shelves above, and wooden cabinets that opened on both sides of the bench below. Several types of 3-D printers sat in the corners. Office doors lined the wall opposite the counter with the microscopes. Brass plaques indicated the owners of the offices.
It looked like a place where many doctors and scientists like Pete might all work together, but in Liliana’s vision, the place was nearly deserted, all the workers gone. The clock on the wall showed it was twenty-two minutes into the future. The people who worked there must have already gone home.
Near the center of the big open space waited a gurney. On it lay an American badger-kin in his brown and white-furred, pointy-nosed, demi-badger form, wearing a lieutenant’s uniform. Liliana looked at the name badge. As she’d suspected, Runningwolf was stitched on the front. An IV ran into the young beast-kin soldier’s arm.
She’d never seen a beast-kin asleep in his demi-beast form. Beast-kin normally shifted to human form when sleeping.
Doctor Nudd walked past the door and did a double take, as if also surprised to see the gurney with Lieutenant Runningwolf on it in demi-badger form. He walked over and checked the information printed on the IV bag. His brows wrinkled in puzzlement.
After knocking on the office door with the brass plaque that read “Dr. Andrew Periclum” and getting no answer, he went in. On the desk lay a folder labelled “Other Physical Enhancement Nanite Model 14.” The goblin picked it up, then stepped back out to the exam room. He pulled one sheet of paper from the folder and held it up beside the IV bag. The long scientific words on the paper in his hand matched the ones printed on the IV bag.
The goblin doctor mumbled softly, “Remove the needle from the badger. Right. It makes sense now.”
Liliana felt a wash of pleasure to know that her friend remembered her warning.
He removed the IV needle from the young badger’s arm carefully, holding a cotton ball over the hole to keep it from bleeding into Lieutenant Runningwolf’s fur. He waited expectantly for a few minutes, but removing the needle had no immediate effect. The badger-kin soldier remained deeply asleep. “Hmph. Or perhaps not.”
Liliana nodded to herself. It was all right. Doctor Nudd didn’t know it yet, but he had bought himself a few important moments of life.
He picked the folder back up and read through more of the information, mumbling things under his breath as he read like, “What was he thinking?” and “This is madness.”
Andrew Periclum entered the large room and saw the goblin holding the folder.
They argued, shouting a lot of scientific words Liliana did not understand. The words “side-effects,” “toxic,” “unethical,” and “human experimentation” from Doctor Nudd made the meaning reasonably clear. The essence of Andrew Periclum’s argument seemed to be “power.” Power for all Others, power for himself, and power that would impress Princess Aurore with his genius. He mentioned her again as a sponsor of his experiments, but the way he said her name made Liliana wonder if he wanted more than just power from the beautiful Fae princess.
Andrew Periclum seemed to think that ended the discussion and walked into his office.
Doctor Nudd followed. “Princess Aurore has no authority to give orders on this side of the ocean, and furthermore …”
Liliana skipped ahead in time to the end of the argument, perhaps a half hour in the future, when the fight would progress beyond words.
The argument ended with the honorable goblin drawing himself to the full height of his slim human form in Periclum’s office and swearing, “This could kill people. I’m surprised half your subjects aren’t already dead.”
“More than half of them are,” Periclum said with a wave of his hand as if that were unimportant.
Doctor Nudd’s face was a picture of shock. “I insist you put a stop to this outrage immediately.”
“I am the king of lions, and my word is law. Are you challenging me?”
“Absolutely I am. Your rank is no more an excuse than Aurore’s. This is wrong.”
“Do you know how the North Carolina pride chose me to be king?” Periclum asked calmly, as he opened a large, classified equipment locker behind his desk with his thumbprint and retinal scan.
Doctor Nudd spluttered, “Do you think you can simply change the subject and I will forget that you are poisoning …”
The locker door opened. Periclum swung it wide so Doctor Nudd could see that it was filled with ancient weapons: swords and shields, axes, maces and knives. Periclum picked up a mace and tossed it at the goblin doctor. In surprise, the goblin dropped the folder full of papers he was carrying and caught the weapon.
