Deadstock

CHAPTER TWENTY running to stand still

Floor Three. Then, the button for the basement again, before the door could open. Sometimes when they briefly stopped before ascending or descending yet again, they heard fists pounding on the outer security door. Thank God the things didn't think to try the elevator keyboards on each floor. Thank God the elevator's mechanism had not given out and trapped them somewhere between floors. Javier had visions of the Blank People shimmying up the cable from below. Or worse, dropping down the shaft from above onto the top of their carriage, and prying open the hatch above their heads.

The elevator had to keep moving and moving, like a shark that will die if it stops passing water through its gills.

Javier looked at Patryk, who leaned his tall body in the corner, playing around on Nhu's wrist comp.

He felt a fondness and a bittersweet pride. The last of the Folger Street Snarlers besides himself. Quietly strong, loyal and calm, with an unquestioning faith in his leader. But Javier felt no less fondness for the others, despite the flaws that might have led to their deaths. How could he have outlived them? He was twenty-five. Some of the others had been teenagers. He had passed through more fires in his life on the streets than they had, but had still come out the other side where they had not. So far.

He took in the last of the Tin Town Terata. Barbie had fallen asleep, hunkered down near Patryk's feet with her arms around her knees. Her two cognizant faces had closed their eyes, but the largest of the five faces flicked its eyes back and forth madly as if in a panic. REMs, Javier realized. For the sake of room inside the cramped elevator, Satin had folded up and collapsed the limbs of his mechanical body as best he could. He glowered at something only he could see, but occasionally roused from his distanced fury to glance around at his remaining comrades as Javier was doing.

And Mira. She had fallen asleep, too, curled on her side like a child at his feet. He wanted to kneel down close to her and touch her hair, her face, her shoulder, but was too self-conscious in the presence of the others. Why was he so attracted to her? Had this circumstance drawn the two of them together only because they needed each other? He had heard that the nearness of death brought out the instinct to fuck, to procreate, to continue the species. Could that impulse have found a more tender manifestation in the both of them? If he had met Mira on the street would he have done anything except maybe crack a joke behind her back to Mott or Hollis? He had had beautiful women of all races. Whole women. Mutants were to be scoffed at, shunned, or at best pitied. Maybe she had used her gift, he kidded himself. Got inside his brain and twisted it like a balloon animal into the shape of love.

Whatever the case, whatever the cause, that was what he felt when he lowered his eyes to her again. He felt love.

The elevator had reached the basement level. Javier was quick to poke the button for Floor Three. They began to rise up smoothly through the body of Steward Gardens again.

Javier noticed Satin's eyes were on him. They had an angry look, but then they always did. He realized the mutant had been waiting to say something to him. Maybe waiting for quite a while.

"You like our little girl, huh?" he grumbled.

Ha, Javier thought. Maybe Satin had a touch of a gift, himself. "Yeah," he said. "I like her."

"Yeah, well, she likes you, too." Satin turned his eyes away. "Can't blame her. She needs a man with those extra touches-like arms and legs. Real arms and legs. Not much someone like me could do for her."

Javier understood a lot then; not that he hadn't suspected it before. "Hey. I seen you fight those Blank People. If it wasn't for you, you most of all, none of you Terata would be alive right now. Mira wouldn't be here right now." The gang leader chuckled. "I know I wouldn't want to go up against you, man."

Satin returned his gaze to Javier. And smiled. "Uhh," Mira said.

Javier flicked his eyes back to her, saw that she was shivering violently. Her strong features were clenched in an expression like pain. No longer caring what the others thought, he crouched down beside her and gripped her shoulder, leaning his face in close to hers. "Mira! Mira, wake up!"

"Javier," she murmured, as if talking in her sleep. But he could tell it wasn't quite that. "Something in the basement. Somebody. Something."

"What is it? What do you see?"

The purple veins at her temples stood out engorged and throbbing. Their branches were spread wider than he remembered them, touching the ends of her eyebrows and the tops of her cheekbones like cracks in the porcelain head of a doll. "Javier, there's something in the basement now." She spoke clearly but her eyes were still crunched shut. Awake but not. "It's swallowed the brain. The encephalon. Merged with it. It's sitting down there, getting bigger. Stronger."

"What is it? What are you talking about?"

"Dai-oo-ika." Then she gave a shudder, and seemed to change her mind. "Outsider. Dai-oo-ika. Outsider. The Spawn of Ugghiutu. Outsiders. the Outsiders…"

"Okay, that's enough-wake up." He shook her.

"Wake up."

She didn't open her eyes, but her features relaxed somewhat and her trembling became more subdued. Javier stroked her hair and looked up at Satin, who said, "We got to get out of here. We can't keep riding up and down in this thing forever. We have to make a run for it."

"We'll die, like Nhu," Patryk said.

"What else can we do?" Satin growled. "There's nothing else left. The question is, do we go out the front door or through the basement?"

"The building is too full of them now," Javier said. "We'd never even get to the front door alive. But we don't know about the basement. Unless the Blanks are getting in from outside, there might only be a few left in there."

"Nhu took her key card with her, didn't she?"

"We don't need it anymore," Patryk said. "She overrode the basement lock-out and now we have access to general door functions."

"Well, what about that thing Mira is talking about? What's that mean?"

"I don't know," Javier said. "But of the two choices, I guess we're going to have to make a run for it that way."

"There's another idea," Patryk said. "Nhu's idea."

"What was that?" asked Satin.

"Call the forcers in here. They're the lesser of two evils. Let them fight the Blank People. We might even be able to escape more easily while they distract each other."

Javier held Patryk's gaze for several long seconds, and then said, "Let's do it."

"Okay. Her wrist comp is acting funny-I can't get on the net-but there's some hand phones in my backpack." He slung it off his shoulder and fished around inside. He produced one of the little devices and passed it to Javier.

Javier took it, recognized it as Tabeth's. He activated it, punched the emergency number for the police, and held the phone to his ear. Hissing, crackling static. He made some tuning adjustments, but to no avail. He tried to call other numbers programmed into Tabeth's address book. He couldn't get through on those, either. "Let me see another one," he said.

Patryk traded him Hollis's hand phone. Again Javier tapped out the number for the forcers and pressed the device to his ear.

A sizzling, fizzing aural clutter, rising and falling in waves. Then, through it, teases of multiple voices, surfacing briefly then submerging again, elusive fish in an ocean of static. But Javier heard one voice that he recognized. It was almost comical, because it was a high-pitched voice cursing with hysterical vehemence.

"Fuck! Fuck you! Fuuuck!"

"Tiny Meat," he whispered.

The voice faded away. Patryk was watching him. "Some kind of interference. It shouldn't disrupt the net and the phones."

Javier put away Hollis's phone, now essentially become a Ouija phone. He looked down at Mira again, slumbering peacefully now. "It's that thing in the basement doing it," he said. "Whatever it is Mira was talking about." He knelt down to gently wake her up. "But we got no choice. We're going out that way."