Cyteen

He felt the stiff material of a firesuit; felt a mask pressed to his face; felt himself dragged along while he inhaled cleaner air. Then he saw the emergency exit for himself, and tried to go under his own power—through the doors into clean air. The man yelled something at him, shoved him through—

Blank. Someone caught hold of him. There were people around him, in the stairwell.

"How far up is it?" someone shouted at him. "Where did you come from?"

He could not answer. He coughed and almost fell; but they helped him, and he walked.

x

"Kelly EK is dead," Catlin reported calmly, between listening to the net.

The rescue copters were still coming in at the pad outside Mary Stamford Hospital, and Ari angrily fended away the medtech who was trying to see if the lump on her head needed scan: "For God's sake, let me alone!Catlin, where,in the room?"

"In the hallway," Catlin said. "Alone. They identified him by his tags. —They're searching out on the far side of the building now, where the exit stairs let out: a lot of the guests went that way."

"God." Ari wiped a hand over her face—reflex: there was Neoskin on her hand and sweat stung.

The fire teams had it under control, the report ran. Explosions had gone off at several points on the floor, in the blue room and the white. The explosives were rigged in White,Florian had said, vastly chagrined. A periphery scan wouldn't pick them up, but we'd have found them if we'd run the check from the top. But Abban psyched us. He had the trigger: I saw the flash from the briefcase on the table; and that rig was state-of-the-art.

It had gone so fast, Justin's urgent shout through the co

Giraud's orders, Ari thought. Giraud ordered me killed. . . .

Rescue teams had gotten into Justin's charred room. They were searching through the wreckage; but from the time they had said that the heavy display cabinet had crashed down beside the co

"Damn!"Astringent stung the wound on her head. They had already pulled a finger-wide fragment of plastic out of her shoulder. Florian was in worse shape, having caught several, and having bled profusely, in no condition to be ru

Abban and the two with him were dead. I don't know if they were his,Catlin had said. There wasn't time to ask.

An arriving ambulance jumped a curb, and Justin reeled back, stumbled and recovered himself in the dark, in the chaos of lights and firefighting equipment, a

He was on the street then. He did not know how he had gotten there, or where the hotel was. He was wobbling on his feet and he found a bench to sit on, in the dark. He dropped his head into his hands and felt clammy sweat despite the night chill.

He was blank for a time more. He was walking again, confronted with a dead end in the space between two buildings, and a stairway down. Pedway,the sign said.

Find a phone,he thought. Get help. I'm lost.

And then he thought: I'm not thinking clearly. God, what if—

It was someone on staff. Security had checked it.

Abban—had checked it.

Was it aimed at me? Was I the only one?

Ari—

He stumbled on the steps, caught himself on the rail, and made it to the bottom, to security doors that gave way to his approach, to a lighted tu

"Uncle Denys," Ari said; and of a sudden the load seemed too much— Uncle Denys,the way she had said in the hospital when she had broken her arm, when they had handed her the phone and she had had to tell Denys she had been a fool. Not a fool this time, she told herself that; lucky to be alive. But the report was nothing to be proud of either. "Uncle Denys, I'm all right. So are Florian and Catlin."

"Thank God for that. They're saying you were killed, you understand that?"

"I'm pretty much alive. A few scratches and some burns. But Abban's dead. Five others. In the fire." There was a limit to what they could say on the net, via the remotes Florian had set up with the mobile system. "I'm taking command of Security here myself. I'm issuing orders through the net. Security is compromised as hell, understand me. Someone got inside." Her hand started to shake. She bit her lip and drew in a large breath. "There've been two other bombings tonight—Paxers blew up some track in center city, they're claiming the attack on the hotel, and they're threatening worse; I'm in contact with the Novgorod police and all our systems—"

"Understood,"Denys said, before she had to say more than she wanted. "I'm relieved. We've got that on the net. God, Ari, what a mess!"

"Don't be surprised by much of anything. It's all right, understand. Bureau Enforcement is moving on the hotel situation. Watch the net."

"Understood. Absolutely. We'd better cut this off. I'll up your priorities, effective immediately. Thank God you're safe."

"I plan to stay that way," she said. "Take care of yourself. All right?"

"You take care,"Denys said. "Please."

She broke the contact, passed the handset back to Florian.

"We have confirmation," he said. "The plane has left the ground at Planys. They expect touchdown about 1450 tomorrow."

"Good," she said. "Good." From the fragile amount of control she had.

"Councillor Harad is waiting on-line; so is Councillor Corain. They've asked about your safety."

Strange bedfellows,she thought. But of course they would—Harad because he was an ally; Corain because, whatever he feared from her, he had more to fear from the Paxers, the radicals in his own spectrum; and the radicals in Defense.