Chapter Forty-Six Sadie
Forty-Six
Sadie
We had to get out of here. Ivy was allowing Arturo and me to talk because she thought there was no chance of us escaping. Made sense, since she had us locked inside a box.
“Arturo,” I said, “You almost here?”
“Hang on,” Arturo said.
“Even if he manages to fight through,” Ivy said, “my varvax will have another flight of pilots awake and ready soon.”
I smothered the urge to scream. “I thought you wanted some humans alive to appreciate you! You murdered an entire planet’s worth of people and now you’re going to kill us too?”
“I did not,” Ivy snapped. “Much of the population had emigrated, and another large percentage had evacuated. Of those who were left, some of them survived.”
“How many?” I asked.
Ivy didn’t respond.
“How many?”
“Twelve million,” Ivy said. “Ten and thirteen one-hundredths percent of the remaining population of the planet.”
“And where are those people now?” I asked. “Frozen? Or did you only preserve the useful ones?”
“Their descendants…evade me,” Ivy said defensively.
I bet they did. Stars, Earth was yet another prison colony.
“Almost there,” Arturo said.
I kicked at the glass doors with my boots, then picked up the grate cover—no longer caring what Ivy might think—and banged it against the glass, but to no avail. Arturo wouldn’t be able to fight all the way up here and free us. We had to get ourselves free if we wanted to join him when he returned.
I threw my whole body against the glass, and this time the unit rocked forward, just slightly. I looked back at Nedd. He met my eyes, and I leaned against the back of the unit again.
Then we threw ourselves at the glass doors in tandem. The box rocked forward and then righted itself with a thud.
“What are you doing?” Ivy asked. For the first time, she looked concerned.
“Come on,” Nedd said, and together we threw ourselves against the glass again, then threw ourselves backward, rocking the unit back and forth, each time tipping it a little farther.
“Stop that!” Ivy said, then began calling for her varvax assistants in hisses and clicks.
“So about that date,” I said to Nedd as we tossed our bodies back and forth. “What are we going to do? Dinner? A moonlit walk through a scion forest?”
“Picnic on the beach?” Nedd asked, strain evident in his voice. “I think I could arrange for us to visit one on Evershore. There are some kitsen who owe me a favor.”
“Evershore it is,” I said, wincing as I hit the glass with my shoulder. “I want to swim in the ocean.”
“Yes,” Nedd said. “Please.”
“Where in the building are you?” Arturo asked.
On the next tip, the unit came precariously close to toppling over before it fell back again.
Stars, he was listening to this. “Second floor,” I said as we rushed the doors again. “Room above the warehouse floor with big windows facing in.”
“Here it goes,” Nedd said, and the whole unit tipped forward. Nedd and I landed on top of the glass doors as they shattered against the floor beneath us, and we both immediately braced ourselves against the unit above us and lifted.
We pulled the thing off us, our arms bleeding, and scrambled out from beneath it in time to see two things: Ivy’s alarmed expression as she frantically called for help, and the warehouse outside exploding inward, concrete showering the cryopods, forming a second large hole next to the first one.
The door flew open, and several varvax barreled through. I grabbed the nearest gurney and rolled it into the path of the varvax, knocking the nearest one off its feet.
“Stop them!” Ivy shouted.
These varvax were medical assistants, not warriors, and they didn’t have weapons, though I imagined those who did would be following soon.
One of the varvax grabbed medical implements from a tray and began hurling them in our direction.
I ducked the first one, but the varvax picked up a second.
It lifted it high, ready to throw, then screamed.
The tool changed in midair, becoming the multicolored body of Hoid.
Another implement on the tray turned into Twist, who shouted an impressive array of swear words at the varvax.
I was as surprised to hear her conjure so many original words as I was by the content.
They had managed to camouflage themselves. I grabbed for Twist while Nedd stumbled to the door, nearly colliding with a team of varvax with destructor pistols, flanked by more electric shock drones. Nedd swore and threw the door closed.
Stars, we were still trapped in here. Just then Arturo’s ship flew through the hole he’d blasted, and the ceiling outside exploded in destructor fire, sending more chunks of concrete raining down.
The windows shattered with it, and Arturo shot his light-lance at us, hitting one of the gurneys near the hole where the window had been.
“Grab on!” Arturo shouted over the radio.
The varvax in the room were now cowering behind the tank of cryogenic fluid. Nedd grabbed Hoid and stumbled across the room to the line of light.
“Stop them!” Ivy shouted again, and I tucked Twist under my arm and ran to where Nedd waited.
He grabbed me by the hand and hauled me out through the window, where we hung from Arturo’s light-lance, the gurney falling to dangle beneath us.
Destructor pistols fired below us, and Arturo canvassed the room with fire, vaporizing varvax and humans alike.
Nedd and I clung desperately to the light-lance with our limbs still partially numb.
We hung just beneath the fuselage as Arturo cruised through the portal, out of the facility, and into the arena again.