The jagged hole was roughly square, one and a half metres high, its lower rim a metre off the ground. She put a leg through.
"All right, lady, hands where we can see them, and moving real slow."
The room inside was huge, its floor an intricate mosaic of olive-green and cream tiles; there were chandeliers hanging on gold chains, pastel frescoes of waterfowl on the walls, Regency furniture, a grand piano. Smoke layered the air, two people were using fire extinguishers on the window frame, glass crunched under her foot. A small army was pointing Uzi hand-lasers at her.
Standing in the middle of the room was a dignified grey-haired man whose face was stiff with tension and suspicion. Had to be Walshaw.
Suzi was lying on the floor, chest a mass of gore, blood pooling on the shiny tiles. There was a woman kneeling beside her, working frantically. Medical gear modules were scattered round, red and amber LEDs flashing, their needle sensors jabbing through the remnants of the jumpsuit. The woman slapped a bioware mask over Suzi's face, a rubbery sac concertinaed out of it and began palpitating.
Nicole was slumped motionless against a wall. Two of the security people were covering her with Uzis while a third wrapped fluffy aquamarine towels around her shredded arms, blood staining them brown.
Victor was standing, hands on head, eyes red with pain. A grim-faced woman was frisking him with expert thoroughness.
Three security people surrounded Teddy. He was facedown on the floor, spread-eagled, his hood thrown back, an Uzi pressed against the back of his bare neck.
Right at the back of the room Eleanor saw a tall teenage girl with a pretty oval face, and long straight chestnut hair, wearing an expensive black dress. Julia Evans; shouldering her way past a big man and an imposing woman, arm rising to point a rigid accusing forefinger straight at Eleanor.
"SIT!" Julia barked in a voice so commanding that Eleanor's nerves went dead.
She heard a quiet sighing sound at her back, and turned to see a sentinel folding on to its haunches not a metre behind her. It licked its muzzle with a long pink tongue.
"Good girl," Julia enthused warmly. "Who's a good girl, then?"
Eleanor's legs gave out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"Greg!"
"Huh, yeah?"
Monastic silence had enveloped the tower, the light diffusing into their makeshift prison reduced to the minutest candle glimmer from above. The basement was inky black.
Gabriel's strained face was ghostly pale. "Greg, we're going to die."
"Come on, Gabriel. Don't give the bastards the satisfaction."
"Screw you, Mandel," she hissed. "I'm not cracking up. I've got it back again, thank Christ. The future. It's all fuzzy. But I can see it, and it all comes to an end in about forty minutes."
Greg's cuffs clanged loudly against the rail as her words penetrated. He squirmed round to look at her, trepidation and hope heating his blood. Psi meant crushing Armstrong's mind inside his skull, raping every thought with obscene distortions, drowning him in his own agonising insanity. Making him love his own death.
Greg hadn't known he could hate someone that much. But he could do it. For Armstrong, he could do it. No messing.
The gland: quavering like a cardiac victim. He waited in a funk of anticipation for the tower to fade from sight, for his thoughts to levitate, liberating him from the confines of his own skull. But there was nothing, only the bitter sense of frustration.
"Are you sure?" he hissed back testily. "I still can't sense your mind."
"Sure? Course I'm fucking sure," Gabriel raged. The old Gabriel. Fabulous. But why hadn't his own ability returned?
"Can you see a Tau line which has us escaping?" Greg demanded.
"It's not like that. Not my usual ability. No Tau lines. There's only the one vision. Christ, Greg, the whole tower's just going to blow. Like an atom bomb, or something."
"A nuke?" he asked incredulously. He was picking up on the rising panic pulling at her thorax. He believed without the espersense. An event so powerful it'd burst through the twins' nullifying blockade. Which meant it was all too real.
There was the weirdest tickle at the back of Greg's throat. He knew if he opened his mouth it would burst out as a giddy laugh.
"I don't know," Gabriel protested. "There's no details, just a bloody great bang."
"Electron compression," Greg said, half to himself. "Has to be." Doubt rotted the upspring of bold conviction. Philip Evans had been given a warhead once. For one specific task. The American government wouldn't hand them out like sweets. And yet… the original warhead had been intended for Armstrong. Could Julia or Walshaw have got hold of another one from Horace Jepson? They would have to prove Armstrong was still alive, first. Concrete proof.
"Ellis," Greg said excitedly. "Lord bless that skinny little fart. He came through." But uncertainty still nagged malevolently. Even if Ellis had left details about Armstrong in the Crays, someone had moved bloody fast to mount a strike by tonight. Perhaps it was just a colossal conventional bomb. Julia had Prowlers, maybe she'd got a B5 stashed away somewhere, too. Or a Hades. Or a Tochka. Now that was an interesting way to spend your last half-hour, he mocked himself. See how many tactical weapon systems you can name which could blow you out of existence.
At least anything powerful enough to take out the entire tower promised to be quick. Not for Gabriel, though. She had half an hour of mental torment left. Better than being beaten to a pulp for his heroism, or thrashing about in the mud's embrace.
"This attack must mean Armstrong and Kendric aren't having it all their own way," he said with a barely suppressed excitement. "Maybe Julia survived. Yeah. And Walshaw interrogated the mole. They're hitting back, Gabriel."
Gabriel's breathing was coming in ragged gasps. "But what do we do?" she whined.
Greg took an iron grip on his nerves. "Say nothing. At least this way we'll take Armstrong and Kendric with us."
"Is that all you can think of?"
"Well, what the hell else is there?" Greg snapped back, suddenly furious. Despising his own fear, because it would be so easy to let it win.
"You want to shout a warning?" he asked, "Is that what you want to do? Is it? Wake them up, tell them what you can see, let them get clear? Silence is all we've got left, Gabriel, our vengeance weapon. This way we get our revenge. It doesn't matter that we don't get to see it, we're dead anyway."
Gabriel bit her lower lip, trembling. He caught a glimpse of moisture glinting in her eyes as she hugged the railings hard.
CHAPTER FORTY
Eleanor sat on a hard wooden chair in Wilholm's study. Someone had put a bone china breakfast cup of tea in front of her. She hadn't drunk any. The air was warm and stuffy from too many people breathing it. Six Event Horizon security hardliners were standing watching her and Teddy, four on the other side of the table, two behind them.
Stupid. Farcical. But Eleanor hadn't complained. Didn't have the energy. Her belly was cold now, colder than ice.
A harassed Dr. Taylor had broken off attending to Suzi long enough to give Eleanor an infusion that'd taken her down to a state where peripheries, like injuries and the manor's fabulous wall-to-wall glitter, didn't register much. Then some kind of bioware dressing had been stuck over the claw wounds, and a salve was sprayed over skin that was red-raw where the maser had leaked through the dissipater jumpsuit. Dr. Taylor wanted her to lie down for a more elaborate treatment. She refused point-blank.
Eleanor had to know about Greg, persuade the Evans girl and Morgan Walshaw to help find him. Except they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. She was wrapped in a jade towelling-robe, sitting beside Teddy who was also in a robe, one which was too small for him. Julia Evans and Morgan Walshaw sat opposite them. Matched contrasts.