Monster Planet(44)

Sarah was breathing heavily, unsure of what to do next. She put the pistol back in her pocket. Then she rushed forward and knocked the slack off its feet. It felt like she'd smacked into a pillowcase full of twigs. The gardener fell over, clattered to the ground. Then it got back up, retrieved its hoe, and went back to work. It didn't bother smiling at her. If she hit it again'and again'and again'it would do the same, she decided.

You're going to learn things, Jack had told her, and some of them are going to make you cry. Was this what he'd meant? Or were there worse shocks in store?

'Come back with me,' Jackie told her. 'Mommy wants to talk to you.' He held out his miniscule hand and Sarah took it.





Monster Planet





Chapter Four


Her feet ached, and fog wrapped the world in gauze. She was walking on wooden planks. Her arms were sore but her feet were just burning. She looked down and saw them huge, swollen, and dark.

Cicatrix wrapped a blanket around Ayaan's shoulders. 'Don't look, will only upset you.' The Russian woman put an arm around Ayaan's waist. 'Is not much farther now.'

Ayaan nodded absently. She couldn't muster much in the way of emotion. The fog on her skin felt good, it felt cool and soft and whisper smooth. That was about as deep as she went. She remembered everything'the engine compartment, the strap, the Tsarevich coming to her. His dark suggestions. The memories were flattened, though. Stretched out and made into mere visions, like something she had seen in a movie, with all the fear and pain carved away.

Her neck itched but she couldn't lift her arms to scratch. She had a bandage wrapped around her throat anyway. She remembered them working there, the hornet dragging its sting across her skin. What that had been about she couldn't have said. They were still walking, and then they weren't.

'Almost... and we are here,' Cicatrix said. They stopped there on the boardwalk and Ayaan lifted her head to look up.

Stay alive,she thought. Or she remembered thinking. Time had done something funny, had turned on her.

In front of her stood the shell of a building, no more than half a brick wall remaining, painted a blue the color of a clear sky. A painted face floated against that backdrop laughing hysterically in perfect silence. Even the sound of Ayaan's breathing was eaten up by the fog.

Ayaan thought of Sarah. She tried to think of Sarah. She tried to remember the girl's face, her close-cropped hair. That filthy sweatshirt she always wore which she thought might have belonged to her father. Sarah.

'There will be none of this,' Cicactrix said, and waggled a finger in Ayaan's face. She couldn't remember what she had been doing to earn such disapproval. Then she looked down and saw she was naked. The blanket lay behind her, pooled on the boardwalk like liquid that had dripped down.

Ayaan's hands were near her face. She had summoned up enough strength to lift her arms, to touch her face. No, wait. Her face hurt. It stung, in eight specific places. She could count them. She looked down at her fingers and saw bits of skin under the nails.

Had she... had she been trying to claw her own face off?

Time had turned on her. Time and... time and memory. They went inside. 'Can I lie down?' Ayaan asked. Her feet hurt so badly. 'Just for a while.'

'Oh yes,' Cicatrix told her. She led Ayaan into a little plastic tent set up inside the ruin of the building. There was a bed there... or not a bed but a place that looked like... well it looked a little like a bed, or maybe a long couch, a divan. But it was full of ice. 'Here, let me to help,' Cicatrix said, and held Ayaan's arm as she lay down on the cold, cold bed.

'It's sticking to my back, to my skin,' Ayaan announced. There were a lot of people in the tent, suddenly. Her heart pounded fast and then it skipped a beat. Someone shoved a tube up her nose, its tip slick with lubricant. She tried to sneeze and cough and fight but they wouldn't let her. They were so much stronger than she remembered. A woman in a nurse's uniform, complete with a little peaked cap, leaned over her, throwing her into shadow, and jabbed a hypodermic in Ayaan's neck.

'What'what was'what'was'that?' Ayaan demanded. Her arms were quivering, her body shaking. Was it the ice, was she shivering from the cold? She couldn't really feel it any more. She was shaking too much. She was shaking a lot, she was she was convulsing convulsing. 'What did you just give me?' she asked.

The nurse's mouth was a flat line, a slot that ticker tape might come out of. 'Cyanide,' she answered.