CHAPTER SIX
[Sutter]
Sutter was still sitting on the ground outside the building, his back against Block Eight, his hand hanging off his knee. The Nix had opened the doors and turned on the fans. The gas was clearing out. There was no way Isobet could have survived in there.
If there was one thing Sutter knew about death--and he knew a great deal about it without having actually experienced it himself--it was that nobody came back from it. He'd checked. Not one of them had. It didn't matter what you felt.
Jaunt came and sat by him. "Half hour, maybe, to make sure," Jaunt said.
The Nix weren't far, most of them standing around with tragic faces. Sutter looked away. When he saw her, he'd know it.
Rab finally came over. "The gas is cleared. We're going to go in and get her. We can bring her out, Sutter."
Sutter shook his head, getting to his feet, his muscles sore, his jaw. Tired. He went through the door, Jaunt beside him, the Nix following. The institute might have been shiny, but Block Eight was the same old misery he'd known it would be. These places were all the same. They walked through and found the cells.
There was debris in the middle of the hall. He looked up. The ceiling had caved in, where she'd fell through. He didn't want to think about her fear when the gas came, nowhere for her to go to get away, fighting to breathe, but he couldn't stop.
It was a long drop. That would at least have slowed her down. Maybe. She'd probably landed on her feet. Each cell had a bed with manual restraints. A toilet. Tray slots for food. Ugly memories for all of them. Yeah, this was entirely familiar. These places. You could escape from them, but a part of you never really left.
They were searching the cells, going in different directions, looking on the ground, walking the long halls. Sutter looked under things where she might have crawled to try to avoid the gas. His chest had a familiar weight, frozen and heavy. He was aware Jaunt stayed with him.
"Anybody?" Rab called, his voice rough.
"Nothing down A corridor," Ulen said.
"B's clear," Ero said not much later.
Sutter reached the last cell in corridor C, looking around. They had to have missed her. He turned back, all of them meeting at the center.
"Over here," Cope said, Sutter's gut falling out from under him, but Cope hadn't found her. He'd found something else. "The medical lab."
"That's where she hid the data ring," Sutter said, going to the door. He turned the handle. It was open. He should have realized. This was probably how she'd set off the alarm.
Coming in here wouldn't have saved her. Nothing would have. The gas had been released into the same ducts she'd crawled through, the whole section flooded with it.
This was where her body would be.
They went in. It was a large room, bulky vague shapes everywhere. It looked like it had been used for storage, medical equipment with dust covers, machines still humming and low lighting. Rab hit the light and they fanned out, Sutter looking under a table and then behind an imager with a long retracted arm, the polished metal surface gleaming in the low light.
"Here," Rab said.
Sutter could tell from Rab's voice that he'd found her. Sutter turned and walked, hearing his footsteps echo, the floor stretching on. All the Nix were gathered, yielding to him as he approached. Rab was standing in front of a large rounded white box with a clear dome on top, a green light blinking in the corner.
A stasis pod, Sutter realized. He got closer. A medical stasis pod, clear, transparent polymer on the top, lit from the inside. Sutter stopped, looking down at her.
Isobet.
She'd probably gotten in when she knew the poison gas had been released. Isobet was lying on her back, her dark hair against the white lining, her eyes closed, long lashes. Pink in her cheeks. She looked like she was just sleeping.
Sutter's hand came out, touching the surface. He could suddenly hear the blood rushing in his ears. "Open it," he said. "Open it, Jaunt. Open it right now."
Jaunt looked on the side, finding the panel and hesitating, Rab shoving his hand away and pushing a button. The green light became a flashing green light. The pod released, a loud chuff and long hiss.
Because a medical stasis pod had its own oxygen supply.
The top of the pod opened and Sutter reached for her and she was warm, Sutter dragging her out of the pod and sitting on the floor at their feet with her across his lap, letting her head fall into the crook of his arm. Isobet was warm and all the Nix were gathering around, looming over them. Sutter felt for a pulse with his other hand.
"Is she alive?" Hops said.
"Is she all right?" Cope said. "Sutter?"
"Sutter," Rab said.
He found it. "Yes," he said, all of them breaking into talking, laughing and loud. "Okay," Sutter said, breathing, bringing her up with his arm. He leaned down and kissed her mouth and then drew back.
Isobet opened her eyes, blinking. Sutter leaned back as she sat up, beginning to cough.
"Let me in there," Rab said, squatting beside them, looking at her closely. "Can you talk to me, Isobet?"
"What do you want me to say, doc?" Isobet said, coughing again.
"What happened?" Hops said to her, squatting, all of them around her. "I heard the crash when you went through the ceiling. I waited and you didn't come out."
* * *
[Isobet]
Isobet coughed again. They were all standing over her, looming, and she saw Sutter's face. Someone had hit him, his jaw red. He was still holding her. She didn't understand what they were doing here. She got her breath. "I was in the ducting," Isobet said, pulling her breath in more carefully, recovering. "And it collapsed under me."
"There was a groundshake," Ero said.
She nodded. "I couldn't figure out what was going on. I was almost there when I fell through. When I landed, I was in the section of Block Eight with the cells. I saw the medical lab, so I thought I could still get the ring. When I opened the door from the cells, I set off an alarm, and that's when I smelled it and I started coughing and I realized it was the poison gas. So I got in the stasis pod and turned it on and closed it."
They were all staring at her.
She waited. "What?" she said, her eyes shifting.
"We thought you were dead, little sister," Rab said.
"I'm not," Isobet said. "Why are you all here?"
"When you didn't come out, we took the institute," Cope said.
Isobet blinked, and then she remembered. "The data ring. There." She pointed. "In the drawer, third on the right, in the fifth test tube."
Miter went and looked, upending it and bringing it to her.
She looked up at Sutter, frowning lightly. "Are you all right?"
Sutter took the ring when she offered it. "Fine," Sutter said, nodding, putting it in his pocket.
"Let's get out of this fucking place," Ero said.
When they walked out, Ulen approached at a run, talking to them even as he arrived, the most Isobet had ever heard him say. "Bruja might have gotten a message out, but she fried the enhancer board in the control room. Communications are down. Hey, Isobet. It's good to see you're all right."
"Hi, Ulen," she said.
"We've still got the institute shuttle," Jaunt said. "Let's get off this rock."
Sutter looked at Jaunt as Jaunt looked at Sutter. Isobet's eyes shifted between them.
"What?" she said.
"The shuttle," Jaunt said at the same time Sutter did.
All of them broke for the front gates, the Nix pulling ahead, Isobet staying with Sutter and Jaunt. Arriving, they were just in time to see the shuttle lift off the roof of the transport building.
Bruja.
They were all looking up as it passed over them, Isobet's stomach sinking. After all Bruja had done. After putting in the order to gas the Nix, so many dead. After killing Isobet's father, hurting him, and then giving Isobet to the guards to rape and brand and forcing her into the forest and trying to make Sutter kill her, Bruja was going to escape. Isobet was breathing fast, her nose flaring, so angry she was vibrating with it, her hand going to her shoulder.
"She won't get away from me, killer," Sutter said, meeting her eyes when she looked at him.
"We'll hunt her," Jaunt agreed.
"Look," Rab said, pointing.
The shuttle began to lose altitude. They all stood, staring, Isobet's anger fading, her hand dropping.
"What is she doing?" Jaunt said.
"Does Bruja know how to pilot a shuttle, Isobet?" Sutter turned and asked her as the shuttle wobbled over the field, wavering and dipping.
"I don't know. Why would she?" Isobet said. "I don't."
Sutter looked at her, a long assessing glance that said she also hadn't known how to make a fire, either, like these were skills one just naturally acquired along the way. "Would you know how to program it?" Sutter said.
"What?" Isobet said, dragging her eyes away from the shuttle and looking at him.
"Nothing."
"She didn't have time to have anyone program it," Jaunt said. "She's trying to fly it manually."
"Where is she going?" Ero said.
The shuttle's spin was slowing, but the wobbling was worse, the craft suddenly heading toward the ground, a slow crash, landing, dragging the runners across the dirt. The sound of shrieking metal was loud even from here, ripping the grass up as one of the runners separated from the body of the shuttle, which was still moving forward. Then the other runner caught, the craft making a slow fall onto its side with a dull crash, sliding and stopping. Isobet didn't think it was going anywhere again.
A figure opened the door straight up, the shriek of the twisted metal audible from here, climbing out.
"Bruja," Rab said, his teeth coming up.
The Nix men all focused on the small figure across the field, and then they were off, all of them, running across the field.
"Don't kill her!" Sutter yelled after them. "Son of a bitch." Sutter ran.
Jaunt ran after him, and Isobet ran after Jaunt, overtaking them.
