Part 6 (2/2)
”But I never seen men with skin color like Ryan's and J.B.'s,” Alton continued. ”It looks, well, it don't look natural. Looks kind of funny.”
”Well, it isn't. We got into a sc.r.a.pe a while back and had to dye our faces and J.B.'s hair. Long story, but we got out alive,” Ryan replied. ”You should have seen us right after the deed was done.”
”Man does anything to stay alive,” Alton agreed, not pus.h.i.+ng further. Curiosity could get a man chilled triple fast, and the bearded man had escaped death already for the day. He believed in playing the odds and not causing problems. Whatever had forced Ryan Cawdor to dye himself a new skin tone was the one-eyed man's business, and since there was no offer of volunteering to explain what had happened, it would remain a mystery.
”Good thing most of the dye has worn off, lover,” Krysty said. ”I was starting to get used to your new look until our new acquaintance pointed it out.”
”Here we are,” Alton said, gesturing toward the door of the cryo laboratory. He'd been very close to entering the actual lab. His chosen hiding place was outside the main doorway in the air lock, with the contents behind him kept sealed by a single steel door. He'd peeked inside through a small round window, but had gone no farther. Again, as in most of the lab complex except for the gateway, there were no codes or secrets for full access and entry, just a simple Admit b.u.t.ton to cycle the air lock.
”Ready?” Mildred asked, an anxious tone in her voice as she stood in front of the doorway, clenching and unclenching her hands.
Ryan waved her on, and the woman stuck out a stocky finger and pushed the b.u.t.ton. The air lock hummed, then opened with a sigh, and the pressure quickly equalized, allowing easy entry to a pair of double swing doors hanging on the far wall inside.
Mildred stepped through, followed closely by the others.
Ryan held out an arm, stopping the newest addition to the group. ”Why don't you and Jak stay out here,” he said, nodding toward the waiting albino. ”A pair of jacks to back up our hand once we're in.”
Blocked by Ryan's arm, the scavenger's eyes narrowed and his face took on a suspicious look. ”I've played straight with you and your group. You're not looking to cheat me, are you, Cawdor?” he asked.
”Not much you could do about it if I was, is there?” Ryan asked.
”No, but”
”I was just thinking we needed some men outside in case another band of stickies came calling. Don't worry, we'll protect your interest.”
The scavie looked dubious and glanced at Jak.
”Okay, Cawdor. I owe you anyway. I guess you know best.”
”Be here,” Jak added. ”Come running if hear shots.”
”Like the wind,” Ryan said, stepping into the cryo facility and sealing the door to the air lock behind him.
”OUR FRIEND'S OUTSIDE with Jak. Told them to watch out for muties.”
”Good idea,” Mildred said. ”We can talk more freely.”
As in other cryo centers, the layout was elementary a control room filled with comp panels dominated by a mammoth central unit in the center and a long side wall of clear gla.s.s. However, the difference came from behind the gla.s.s. There, angled on a raised platform, were a dozen silver capsules, and recessed farther into the wall on metal shelving behind the capsules were an additional twelve smaller cylinders.
”I confess, I have seen the larger cryo beds, but what are the little containers for?” Doc asked, his face reflecting his confusion.
”I don't know. Midgets?” Dean guessed.
”Little people,” Mildred retorted. ”And no, there are no little people in those casks.”
”What do you think?” Ryan asked, looking at Krysty. ”Anybody in there still alive?”
”No, I don't think so. Feels wrong,” the crimson-haired woman replied, her voice whispery as she struggled to concentrate and expand her consciousness outward. ”Feels empty.”
”How so?” Mildred asked as she continued to inspect the room's equipment.
”Not like when we found you,” the green-eyed beauty said in response as she blinked and tried to focus a second time. ”Or Rick.”
”Rick” was Richard Neal Ginsberg, born March 22, 1970. Ryan and his bandbefore Mildred and Dean had joined themhad discovered the man housed within one of the cryo chambers inside a military redoubt in California. An expert in the operation of the mat-trans units and the gateways, Rick had been frozen to halt the spread of the disease that was slowly killing him, waiting in the hopes of being revived when a cure was available.
Suffering from an advanced case of Lou Gehrig's disease, he'd been a companion for only a short time before determining that the disease was still relentlessly killing him. When the opportunity arose for a valiant sacrifice to save his new friends, Ginsberg had made the gesture.
Like Ginsberg, Mildred had also been placed in cryo sleep, but her problem was different from a life-threatening disease. Instead, the doctor had been hospitalized to undergo abdominal surgery for a possible ovarian cyst when an unexpected and completely idiosyncratic reaction to the anesthetic plunged her into a coma.
As Mildred's life signs plummeted, her personal physicianas well as her best professional colleaguehad chosen to take the step of placing the then dying Dr. Wyeth in cryo suspension in order to save the woman's life. In an ironic twist, some of the tech used to preserve her fading vital signs had been invented by Mildred herself, but the sleeping physician was in no condition to appreciate the irony.
When Ryan and company had reawakened the woman from her deep sleep, her life-threatening symptoms and coma had miraculously vanished during the long years she'd been under. ”Must've been like a healing trance,” she'd later decided.
”I'm not getting any sort of vibe, lover,” Krysty finally said, putting her hands to her forehead and ma.s.saging her temples. ”Usually with freezies, I get a strange, creepy-crawly feeling. Alive, but not alive. Dead, but not dead. A suspended-in-limbo, hovering sensation.”
”Trapped between two worlds,” Doc whispered. ”Sleeping, but not breathing.”
”I don't have the poetry you do, but yeah, exactly,” she agreed.
”And this time?” Ryan asked, already knowing the answer.
Krysty shook her head to the left and right. ”Nothing.”
”Then they're all chilled,” J.B. said. ”Literally and figuratively,” he added laconically.
”Not necessarily,” Mildred mused, who had been examining the cylinders with a careful eye from her vantage point behind the gla.s.s wall. She was now sitting at a comp station and rapidly typing in commands. She was amazedusually these systems were encrypted and required a series of pa.s.swords to enter, but for some unknown reason, she was being provided full access to the information stored within.
”There's a dozen freeze tubes in there, Mildred. I can tell from here none of them are operational,” Ryan said firmly. ”The liquid displays are all off-line and blank. And all of them have red malfunction signs glowing across the tops of the pods.”
”Just give me a minute,” Mildred said softly. She slid across the polished floor in the wheeled desk chair, checking a panel marked Coolants Input. The readouts were all blank, matching those on the canisters and coffinlike tubes. She flicked a switch, once, twice, before pounding a fist against the inert panel in protest.
”Dammit,” she said in a tight voice.
J.B. had been carefully squinting down over her shoulder and peering at the cryo controls.
”Don't see an emergency-ma.s.s-release box,” he said. ”Course, I still can't see much of anything without my specs. Point it out to me and I'll blow the sec locks. See about doing a quick meltdown in here.”
”There isn't a ma.s.s release for this setup, J.B.” Mildred replied tiredly. ”This isn't a redoubt, remember? Some military technology is here, but not enough. This has the smell of a bought-and-paid-for kind of deal. There are no secrets hidden here to require locks. In case of an emergency, you just hit that red b.u.t.ton and there's a quick coolant drain and shutdown. Or if you're at a computer like I'm sitting at, you just enter the correct computer command and it also engages the primary release.”
”So, go ahead and do it,” J.B. urged.
Mildred looked sadly at the controls. ”There's no need. Krysty's right, as far as I can tell.”
”Sorry, Mildred,” the redhead said.
”I'm being irrational, I know, but I feel a kins.h.i.+p to many of these freezies,” the physician continued. ”Would've been nice to find another batch alive, safe. But if there are no vitals, I'd be wasting a lot of time we don't really have. Takes hours to do a cryo-chamber drain and hours more to resuscitate, and there's no rus.h.i.+ng the process. Those stickies could have friends, and we don't want to get caught down here a second time.”
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