Eleanor watched Walshaw stare up at the ceiling, brows knotted with furious concentration. Greg's life was being decided inside his skull, she realised. It was obvious that Julia would follow his decision. The girl looked dreadfully unhappy.
"Miss Evans?" Eleanor said. She was distantly bemused by how such an awfully reedy voice as hers had become could attract everyone's rapt attention. They all wanted someone to produce a miracle, blow away their dilemma. She couldn't, of course. "You don't know me, Miss Evans, but I live with Greg, and I love him. He would never betray you. I suppose you think of him as a hard man, never showing much feeling. He is in a way. I have only ever seen him let emotion overrun common sense on one occasion. That was when he found out what di Girolamo had done to your friend, Katerina. All he could think about was getting her out. He cared about her, a girl he'd only ever met for a few minutes before. Does that tell you anything about him? I have also met Royan, the hacker Teddy wants to plug into your grandfather's NN core. I was sick to my stomach for a day alter I met him, I couldn't eat, couldn't drink. Royan doesn't even have any legs, Miss Evans. He doesn't have any arms. He doesn't even have eyes. To look at him you wouldn't even believe he was a human being. Physically he is a lump of flesh with a digestive system and a brain which is plugged into some gear. The PSP did that to him, their People's Constables. But I've talked with him, had coffee with him, he's one of the most decent, bravest people in the world. He knows what pain really is; he isn't about to harm you or your grandfather."
Julia might've been carved from stone, staring at Eleanor with fascinated revulsion, unable to look away.
"Right now there are two people lying dead in your grounds," Eleanor went on. "The only reason they came to Wilholm was to help Greg. I'm going to wake up screaming every night for the rest of my life remembering that trip. But I'm glad I will, because I thought coming here meant there would be a chance of getting Greg back. All of us, Miss Evans, we all believe in Greg. Even you did once, I think. He's just an ordinary man, nothing special in the way of the world. But I'd be very grateful if you could do what you can to bring him back to me. Thank you."
The speech exhausted the last of her strength, she withered back in the chair, spent. Someone gripped her freezing hand in a vice-like hold, which verged on the painful. She knew it must be Teddy.
Julia turned to Ryder. "Plug it in."
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
"What are you doing?" Gabriel asked tersely.
Greg had crouched down, squashing his face against the cold banister, trying to bend a wrist double to reach his dinner jacket's breast pocket. "What I should've done hours ago. Getting us out of here."
"How?" she squeaked.
"Tell you, it's not going to be easy, all right? At the moment, we're already dead, so a bit of damage now isn't going to make a whole load of difference. Handcuffs are a bureaucrat's fallacy to the condemned. Especially the condemned fitted with cortical nodes."
"Oh." Gabriel's eyes widened in comprehension.
"Yeah," he said, suddenly disquieted. "Besides, you should've thought of this too; you went to the same tactics courses as me."
"Tactics courses! Christ, Greg, I was a flaming nurse before Mindstar dragooned me."
Greg's scrabbling fingertips found the top of the handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket, and he tugged the square of white silk out into the air. It wasn't as big as he'd have liked, but it would have to do. "Listen, this is going to look bad, OK? But self-mutilation is a damn sight better than dying. If you've got a different solution, now's the time."
She shook her head silently. Very pale now.
Greg outlined what he wanted her to do and stretched out to give her the handkerchief. Her hands were shaking when she took it.
She leant forwards to press her face into a gap between the stair rails and bit into the handkerchief, chewing it into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged out.
"Bite hard," he instructed.
She ducked her head in acknowledgement.
"OK. Now let's get into position."
They faced the tower's curving wall, as though they were praying at an altar, Greg thought. He held Gabriel's eyes as she knelt on the floorboards, willing her on. She pulled the cuffs right up to the railing and rested her hands on the ten-centimetre lip of solid oak planking. Her fingers stuck out over the edge, but her knuckles remained on the wood.
Greg went the other way, sliding his arms right up to the banister and standing on his left foot. He pushed his right leg through the gap in the railings above Gabriel's left hand.
"Fist your right hand," he told her. "Then disengage all the nerves below the left elbow."
She looked up at him, her shoulders quivering, dry weeping. The sight nearly broke his determination.
Slowly her right hand clenched into a fist, leaving the left open.
"Can you feel your left hand?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Are you sure?" He was worried about the stunshot charge they'd both been hit with; if there was any damage to the cortical node there'd be no chance of pulling this off.
She glared at him.
"Look away," Greg said.
Her head turned.
"Right away," he said, deliberately harsh. He couldn't risk her flinching.
She jerked her head forcibly aside.
He concentrated on the leg he'd stuck through the railings. He had to get it perfect first time. If he didn't, he doubted she would ever allow him a second go.
He was wearing sturdy leather shoes. Grubby and scuffed now, but with a hard, flat sole.
Lining the heel up in the funereal glimmer of light.
Greg pushed up with his hands, as though he was trying to lift the banister off the top of the railings. Bunched muscles tightened the jacket fabric across his shoulders. His left foot was pressed hard on to the floor. He could even hear a feeble groan from the oak as it adjusted to the new stress pattern. Praying the strength he'd built filling up the chalet's water tank would be sufficient.
Ready.
He stamped down.
The heel smashed down on to the top of Gabriel's knuckles, giving. Bone snapped, a liquid-dulled crack.
She convulsed, slumping forward into the railings, her puling muted by the ball of silk.
Greg tugged his leg back out of the railings, and hooked the back of his calf inside Gabriel's left elbow. Her head twisted round, there was a small tail of cloth sticking out of her mouth. Shock-wide eyes screamed up at him in pure terror. He jerked his leg back savagely.
Her arm moved with sickening slowness. Then suddenly there was no more resistance, and Greg was swinging wildly, left foot slipping, backside coming down fast. The cuffs made an excruciatingly loud racket scraping down the railing. He sat heavily, his coccyx trying to punch its way up into his throat.
But Gabriel was free. She lay facedown on the floor, right hand still through the railing, left arm curled limply at her side, its pulped hand brushing her hair. Her whole body was quaking softly. The handkerchief had begun to emerge out of her mouth like some vile glistening imago escaping from its chrysalis.
She rolled over, gulping, a half-choke. A trail of thin vomit ran down her chin. She wore the expression of the torturer's victim, an utter incomprehension of how one person could do this to another. Frightened eyes found her left hand. She drew it up to her face, mesmerised, and began to cry.
"Gabriel?"
She was curling up into a foetal ball, sucking down air in shallow gulps.
"Gabriel, did the cortical node work?"
"Yes."
"Gabriel, you have to get up."
A shiver ran down her spine. "I want to go home," she whispered through clenched teeth.