Part 19 (1/2)

”Cool,” I said. ”Is that going to be right or left?”

”Left,” he said.

We walked fast. Signs in English, Spanish, and what I thought was Chinese pointed us toward the laundry, the film library, records storage. The mix of languages left me with the eerie feeling that I was in some universal ur-hospital, like I'd stumbled into a network of halls and tunnels that connected to infinity at the back. If I followed them long enough, I'd wind up in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Mayo Clinic or St Mary's in London or some tiny little hospital in the middle of Serbia. The pipes above us shuddered and clanked, locked in a conversation of their own. Ex led us left, and then right. We pa.s.sed through a warehouse, chain-link fencing on both sides of a single hall making storage cells for ancient medical equipment. The skeletons of beds with cranks on the fronts, wheelchairs of rotting wicker with shredding rubber wheels. Cabinets of gla.s.s jars filled with foggy liquid and covered in dust.

”There should be a stairway over here,” Ex said. ”It can get us down to the fallout shelter. The civil defense ward is underneath that.”

”Have I mentioned that this is really creepy?” I said.

”We're going to be okay,” Aubrey said, and the lights went out.

The darkness was total. Suffocating. I felt a hand brush my arm, and I yelped a little. Then a deep throbbing came, resonating all around us. Once, then twice, and then a vicious wind whipped through the pa.s.sageway, hot and damp and thick with the smells of old soil and corrupt flesh. To my right, a rat squealed in terror. The silence that followed was worse.

The lights flickered back on, dimmer and dirtier than before. They grew darker and brighter and darker again, like something breathing. A violent rattling pa.s.sed through the pipes overhead, something huge sprinting one floor above us. We all looked at one another. No one needed to say it. We all knew what had happened; we were too late. David had reached the coffin. The haugsvarmr, the demon, the Beast Rahab was free. The hospital, taken over.

I thought for a moment I saw the cold, blue glow of a demonic fish swimming through the air at the end of the corridor. I heard the rider's voice in my memory. I can't see you, but I know you're here. I can smell your skin. The hair on my arms was standing up straight.

”Okay, new plan,” I whispered. ”Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here.”

TWENTY.

Retracing our steps, we were all quiet. The walls around us seeped with the threat of violence and a sense of something vast and implacable. Even our footsteps were quiet. Careful. Frightened as mice in a cat's bed. Chogyi Jake wasn't smiling. Oonis.h.i.+ kept speeding up or slowing down, unconsciously keeping himself at the center of the herd. Kim and Aubrey were walking side by side, neither looking at the other but their strides matching perfectly. Around us, the hospital changed.

At first, I thought it was only the low light, fluorescents buzzing and flickering as we pa.s.sed them. It was more than that. The floors got damper, and the air thickened. The salt smell was somewhere between ocean water and blood. When we pa.s.sed back through the storage cells, I had the feeling that the old equipment had moved, that it was still moving whenever I wasn't watching it. The pipes started dripping rust-brown water that burned a little when it hit the back of my hand. We got to the elevator faster than I'd expected, and paused there. There were five levels above us, just to reach the surface. I didn't care about getting to the parking garage. Anyplace with a window I could break and crawl out of would do just fine. But when I reached out for the call b.u.t.ton, I couldn't quite do it. Somewhere in dim memory, there was a story about people getting into a haunted elevator and coming out as a thin, red soup.

Ex, at my side, saw me hesitate.

”Stairs?” he said.

”Stairs.”

We found the stairwell a few doors down, still marked by a glowing red exit sign. The door stuck when I tried to open it, but Ex and Aubrey pushed with me, and we got through. The railing was icy cold under my hand. I leaned in, looking up the central shaft. Two short flights to go up a story, twisting up for what looked like forever. Behind us, someone started shouting: a deep, angry sound. I started up.

I had felt the insectile press of riders pus.h.i.+ng in against reality from the Pleroma or Next Door or whatever we called the abstract spiritual place they called home. At best, it had been like standing in a lake where fish sometimes blundered into me. At its worst, it was like being the egg in biology cla.s.s videos about fertilization. This was different. Instead of the almost physical pressure, I felt like I was floating inside something, like if I pushed off from the concrete and steel landings, I could almost swim up into the air. Even the immediate solid touch of the railings and walls seemed unconvincing, and I heard voices talking just outside the range of hearing. Fighting. Weeping. Begging.

At the landing halfway to the ground floor, we paused. Oonis.h.i.+ looked winded, but he was the only one. He held up a hand, silently asking the rest of us to stop and let him catch his breath. I wondered for a moment what exactly we'd do if he had a heart attack or something right there. I didn't think I'd be taking him to the ER or dropping him with the night nurse at the Cardiac Care Unit. The thought skipped ahead of me into unsafe territory.

”Kim,” I said. ”How many people do you think are in the hospital right now?”

”We've got about five hundred beds,” Kim said. ”With night staff? I don't know. A little less than a thousand.”

A thousand men and women-kids, infants, newborns-who didn't know what was going on, only that all the familiar things around them were changed and changing. Would they think they were going crazy? That the sense of the hospital s.h.i.+fting, rusting, cooling around them was a kind of hallucination? Something rumbled deep in the earth, then a sound like metal shrieking.

”Okay,” I said. ”Anyone know what that was?”

”At a guess?” Ex said. ”Our hive-mind is figuring out that it's still trapped. May not be happy about it.”

”I can go on,” Oonis.h.i.+ said, still gasping. ”Really. I'm fine.”

The door marked G for ground level was green-painted steel with a bright crash bar. The exit sign above it looked like a promise. I pushed through. The hallway wasn't quite dark, but the lights were flickering and hissing. Something black was welling up through the paint and dripping down the walls, and the air smelled hot and close as breath. A heavy-set woman in pale green scrubs stood in the middle of the hall under a sign pointing us toward the Pediatric ICU. Her hair and clothes seemed to float, as if she were underwater. Her eyes glowed a cold, deepwater blue.

I didn't think. My body leaped toward her almost without me, swinging through my shoulder, and sinking a stiff-fingered hand in her belly even before she screamed. Her breath went out of her in a gasp, and she folded over.

”Sorry,” I said, moving her to the side so the others could walk past her. ”Really, really sorry.”

”You think you can hold me, Santur?” she spat, her gaze skittering across me like she couldn't quite get me in focus. ”I owned you once, and I will own you again.”

I gathered the vital energy of my qi, drawing the heat from the base of my spine, up through my belly and my heart, and into my throat.

”Sleep now,” I said, pressing the words into her. Her eyes closed with an audible click. She started breathing deep and slow.

”Nice trick,” Oonis.h.i.+ said.

”You should see me get droids through Imperial checkpoints,” I said. ”Come on, let's . . . Hey.”

I pointed to the sign. Pediatric ICU.

”Isn't that on the third floor?” I said.

”It is,” Kim said.

”Aren't we on the ground floor?”

”I thought so,” Kim said, her voice uncertain.

Something screamed off to our left, huge, inhuman, and soaked in rage.

”If we're on the third, the walkway should be over here,” Oonis.h.i.+ said, gesturing down the corridor at a set of closed staff-only doors.

I followed him, the others close on our heels, but as soon as we were through the doors and into the pa.s.sage beyond, Oonis.h.i.+ stopped, his eyes wide and staring. A T-intersection offered us the choice of Nuclear Imaging to the left and Gastroenterology Clinic to the right.

”It's right here,” Oonis.h.i.+ said, putting his hand to the blank wall. ”The walkway's right here. GI and Imaging are on the second floor. They're nowhere near Pediatric.”

I pushed the fear and rising panic away. My hands were shaking, but I could ignore them. I'd break down later, if there was a later.

”Guys?” I said. ”Any thoughts? Is this the rider?”

”Could be,” Ex said, but he sounded unconvinced. ”The haugsvarmr might be changing the physical connections in the hospital or controlling our perceptions. Not my first suspect, though.”

”No?”

”More likely, the hospital is working in its aspect as a prison. The trap's sprung, so now it won't let the rider out. Or us. Or anyone. It's folded in on itself. There won't be a way out.”

There was a rus.h.i.+ng sound, and a searing anger that wasn't mine washed over me. The others staggered under it too. And then just as suddenly, it was gone. Kim was weeping silently, but her expression was perfectly focused, and her voice didn't shake when she spoke. It reminded me why I liked her.

”Is there someplace we can hole up and make new plans? A secure area?”