The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes Page B

Lukas started.
    “Don’t waste your breath.” Raul slapped Lukas between the shoulder blades. The small man winced as his towel dropped off. “Hypnos has probably been discreet about whatever extras they have packed in their sensors.”
    Even from the government
, Laurel thought. The air was thick with bactericides and the penetrating smell of lanolin wafting from Russo’s body. “I wonder what else they forgot to publicize.”
    Laurel stepped over to a gleaming table. Under the harsh light of an overhead LAD array, Russo’s emaciated and unnaturally pale body—bare of hair or nails—resembled a cross between a model of a giant fetus in its early stages of development and the larvae of a stick insect. She gaped, aghast, at the wasted shape. His pruned skin, with an unnatural sheen, twitched at intervals as if subject to electric shocks. Laurel neared the head of the table and reached to pry open one of Russo’s eyelids. In slow motion, his pupil contracted. She glanced at the steady rhythm of his heartbeat on the screen. So far, so good. A peppering of wireless pads dotted his chest and head, while two lines snaked from IV ports in his hands to unlabeled bottles dangling from a frame. From his penis, a catheter drew whitish fluid into a transparent bag. She spotted tiny perfusion marks on Russo’s neck and several discarded ultrasonic syrettes on a rectangular tray atop a wheeled cart. Dr. Carpenter had probably been working to stabilize Russo and scrub the sedatives from his blood.
    A series of sharp beeps issued from a bank of automatic analyzers.
    She scanned the printout scrolling from the printer. “Holy—”
    “That man has not had his blood scrubbed in ages. No maintenance, nothing. Nobody told me. He needs a total transfusion.” Floyd stood just beyond the swinging doors, a buff sheetfolded in his hand. “Right now he’s a toxic dump. His blood is laced with complex chemicals and heavy metals.”
    Laurel nodded. Another detail they hadn’t known. According to Shepherd, Russo would be unconscious and weak but not a living corpse.
    “Total transfusion? More like a new body. You have large scissors?”
    Floyd nodded to a door set flush on the wall to a side of the theater. Laurel opened it and selected the largest shears she could find. “Bring the apron over.”
    Cursing under her breath at the toughness of the lead and polymer-fabric sandwich of the radiation protector, she managed to cut three-inch strips. When she finished, Laurel hurled one to Raul, another to Floyd for Russo, and wrapped the last around her neck. Then she stepped back to the wall cupboard to retrieve the adhesive bandages she’d spotted earlier.
    When they finished, Russo and Raul looked like accident victims after having their necks immobilized. Laurel didn’t hold any illusions of looking better. On the screen, the spiky trace had disappeared, leaving only Russo’s heartbeat sailing across.
    “Now what?” Lukas croaked.
    Laurel darted a glance at Raul; it was her decision, but her legs had started to quiver again. After hearing an incredible tale from a man she’d never seen or met, judiciously doled out in several telephone conversations, she’d volunteered to help in springing Russo from the DHS’s clutches. Shepherd’s original plan contemplated enlisting three ex-professional soldiers to make up the team, but it was clear from the onset that it wouldn’t work. Men with proven military records would stick out like sore thumbs when they went through the sham trial. She had recruited Raul and Bastien, in the process becoming the team leader.
    “Now we get the hell out of here.” Raul made a show of looking at an overhead digital clock. “The DHS’s legions must be massing outside.”
    “Get out? Beam out is more likely.” Floyd seemed to have recovered his wits.
    Raul wrinkled his nose and Laurel felt her stomach heave. “We go the same way we came in.” It was their only chance. To seal the sewers, the DHS