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Be
“Shit,” Be
Be
“I got him. Now get me out of here,” Be
“Martin’s dead?”
“Yeah.” Be
“Good.” Graham nodded. “Go back to the ventilation shaft you came in by. Take it in towards the center of the building. It’ll open up into a large air shaft ru
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“Good luck then, and bon voyage.” said Graham.
Be
He quickly became lost in the building’s tangle of crawl spaces, access ways an air ducts. Eventually he found himself in an elevator shaft. Looking down he saw the top of an elevator rising towards him. He didn’t have time to get out of the way, so he jumped on top of it and rode it up several floors until it stopped and he could crawl off again. He found a small niche for himself beside a junction box. This was hopeless. He might as well just try to get to a stairway and hope the building’s security cameras would pass him over. He was ready to pry open the doors to the elevator shaft and take his chances when he heard the voices up above. “There used to be an exclusive men’s dining room up here, the Recess Club. My mother told a story-”
He knew that voice. It was Chango. She was up there. God knows why; screwing around again with stuff that was none of her business. Sudden rage blinded him. She was always harping on Ada’s death, trying to find out “what really happened.” He’d put up with it all these years, and all these years, she’d never let him forget, not even once, that he was to blame. Well, now she was to blame. If she hadn’t brought Helix to Vattown none of this would have happened, and he wouldn’t even be here now. Graham had betrayed him, and he’d never find his way out by crawling between the walls the way Chango did. If he was going to risk the maintenance stairs, he could do that any time, right now he had a chance to take care of that meddling sport once and for all.
oOo
Hector Martin ran down the corridor, punched the elevator button savagely and then changed his mind. He couldn’t wait for an elevator. He dashed to the stairway, glancing back the way he’d come. The corridor was still empty, but whoever had shot Slatermeyer had probably meant to get him instead. Once they discovered their mistake...
Hector ran down the stairs as fast as he could, the punctuation of his feet landing on the steps jumbling the thoughts in his mind.
It had to be Graham, or some agent of his — that young man he’d had with him when he took Helix, perhaps. How did the shooter get inside his apartment? Not through the door, unless he’d been there all along. No, Hector knew how he got in. Chango had come into his bathroom through the cold air return. If she could do it, so could somebody else. Hector couldn’t imagine Nathan Graham crawling through an air shaft on his belly. He would get his suit dirty. His lackey then, who was probably that vatdiver —
Be
And something was happening to the multi-processor brain network in the building. He needed to talk to Lilith, but in his panic he had left his transceiver behind. It didn’t matter, she wouldn’t answer his call, she never did.
He realized this was a terrible place to be, an empty stairwell. If this Be
He went to a desk in the middle of the office where a woman about his age was gazing absently at a cost-earnings chart. “Excuse me,” he told her and jumped on top of her desk. The holographic chart painted his pant legs with stripes of orange and blue. “Excuse me everybody,” he said to the surrounding hubbub. “Can I have your attention please?”
The office fell silent but for the continued bleepings of the transceivers, which went for the moment unanswered. Everyone was staring at him. A few bent their heads together to whisper questions. “Who is that?” “What’s going on?”
“I’m Dr. Hector Martin,” he said, getting blank looks from all around. “I invented the multi-processor brains,” he added, and saw some of them nod their heads in recognition. “I’ve been a researcher here at GeneSys for the past twenty years and-”
“Please,” said a balding man in a teal blue suit. “Don’t shoot anyone. Whatever they did to you, it wasn’t our fault. We’re just accountants.”
Hector shook his head and held his arms out at his sides. “I”m not going to shoot anyone. I’m not even armed. I realize this is unusual, but I had to get your attention, because soon, something even more unusual is going to happen.”