Monster Planet(39)

They moved in close to the shore, running the engines just a touch though the diesels still grumbled and coughed and roared, well to the north of the Tsarevich's landing zone. Sound travels far over water, especially at night. Sarah hoped the waves would cover their noise. The got as close as they dared and then Osman cut the engines and they drifted in until the tug's flat bottom hissed on the bottom. Ptolemy scampered over the side and onto the beach in a spray of sand, then disappeared instantly into the blackness.

'Okay,' Sarah whispered, and Osman took them back out to sea. They needed help. Jack had told her as much'she couldn't face down the Tsarevich on her own. They needed an army he said, or atom bombs, well, they weren't going to get that. But maybe they could get some help. Farther up the coast, around the curve of New Jersey, past Raritan Bay and the Harbor. New York, the place she didn't want to go. 'Next stop Governors Island,' she whispered to Osman, and he nodded, didn't even chance a verbal agreement.

END OF PART ONE





Monster Planet





Chapter One


It was hot, the air was dry. Ayaan could hear a constant thrumming, a rumbling, bass sound that tickled the bare soles of her feet. Her feet... her feet hurt. She could feel pain in her ankles, her legs, her toes. When she looked down at them they seemed too big, they seemed to swim up at her, swollen and very dark and bruised. Blisters surrounded her toenails, blisters that popped and wept a clear fluid.

Her arms... her armpits were numb, she couldn't feel them at all. Her arms were replaced with twin bars of searing light. It was the only way to describe it. There were no arms there, just pain, and only an abstract kind of pain at that.

In the unmoving air of the engine compartment they kept her metabolism ticking over slowly, so very slowly. When a doctor came and asked her to lift her head, it took all the energy she possessed. She wanted very much to sit down.

'Come now, come, that's better. Open this mouth.'

She let her jaw go slack. There were needles in her, needles she felt sliding through her flesh, impaling her. Hands touched her in places she could barely identify. Her body had become a vast country with a poor communications infrastructure. Information from her extremities took most of the day to reach her brain.

'Blood oxygen levels good, yes.'

The green phantom kept her alive, but just barely, while men came and went from the room, their hands on her, their eyes everywhere. They attached wires to her, they scraped samples of the scum between her teeth.

'Basal body temperature is being normal.'

Sometimes she could see them moving around her, their faces flat, their hands cold. Sometimes they were only blurs or the flickering of a moth's wings against her skin.

'You be interested to seeing this,' someone said, their hand on her lower belly, a latex glove in her pubic hair. She felt half a dozen people all around her look up, she could feel them paying attention. She could see Cicatrix across the room, the living woman in soft focus as her nostrils flared, her eyes fixed on Ayaan's midriff. Her bald head flushed with shame. Something metal and cold touched her, spread her skin open.

'She's still virgin,' the doctor said.

Ayaan kicked against her bonds but it was useless, her body barely rippled. It must have looked like a muscle spasm. Then time went blue...

...she wasn't sure, wasn't sure what that meant, but she knew it was right, blue...

...and needles, there were needles on her skin. Pricking her. She felt a single drop of blood roll down her collarbone, smash apart against the papery collar of her paper gown. She looked down and watched the blood wick through the blue fabric, a spiky blossom as capillary action drew it away from her skin.

'You need to lift head,' someone told her. She listened'it felt like she could only use one sense at a time. Something buzzing, an insect, a horrible nasty wasp right next to her ear, climbing on her throat, dragging its sting through her flesh.

'I can't... I can't do this, not with head like this,' the voice said. She couldn't see who it belonged to.

In front of her the Tsarevich faded into existence. Like a cloud passing in front of the sun. His very pale eyes looked up into hers. His voice... she'd never heard it before... it fit him perfectly. High, clear, a boy's voice. The voice of a soloist in a boy's choir. 'Is called strappado, some time ago. Now, we call it stress positions. KGB make it perfect. Is very effective.'

'Hand me silver again,' the other voice said. Right behind her head. The wasp stuck its tail into the back of her neck.