“There could be an entire underground world down there,” Nathans mumbled to himself. “If these tamperers are so carefully hiding all information about the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches, we can assume that they live in—or at least attach some extreme importance to—whatever is down there. How much else don’t we know? Damn! That’s frustrating.”
He drew in a quick breath, exclaiming to Jones, “And that means Danal might be alive! If he and that nurse/tech deliberately jumped into the patch, she must have known something. Hmmmm.”
The Enforcer could imagine the mental wheels churning behind Nathans’s forehead; the process fascinated him, but he offered no suggestions himself. The man finally sat up.
“I want you to keep this absolutely confidential, Jones. This could be vital information, depending on who these Net tamperers are… and if they have anything to do with Danal. What would they want with a Servant who had regained his memory?” He scratched his hairpiece.
“I want you to go right away and—” He frowned. “No… damn! You’ll have to wait until dark. But before curfew, it has to be before curfew! Find a deserted street with one of these ‘maintenance openings.’ Take one other Guard to help you, and verify what you’ve just told me—see what’s under there. And you’d better go fully armed—people with an operation this sophisticated won’t take kindly to being discovered.”
Overwhelmed by Nathans’s rush of words, Jones nodded and fitted his helmet back on.
“But most important of all, I must have a report from you before the High Sabbat tonight. I have to know what you find, and I’ll need your help with the final preparations for the ceremony.” He smiled beneath his red mop of artificial hair. Jones’s uneasiness rushed back to him. “It’s really going to be something to watch.”
35
“Elite Guard!” Laina whispered. “What are they doing in here?” Two of the blue-armored Enforcers marched down the dim hall of the hospital complex’s security wing, then vanished around the corner.
“Don’t talk to me!” Danal hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t even look like you’re talking to me!” As he walked beside Laina in her nurse/tech uniform, Danal kept his face blank and lifeless, as any Servant should. Next to them marched burly Rolf in his set of white Enforcer armor, their ‘security escort.’
The checkpoint guard at the entrance to the high-security wing verified their story on his Net terminal. Rikki had come through again, planting the proper story, the proper authorizations.
“I’m supposed to escort them wherever they go,” Rolf said ominously behind his polarized visor. “Orders.” The similarly uniformed guard passed them on, then went back to playing his Net interactive games.
The halls of the vast hospital complex were quiet and drowsy in the early morning silence. Outside, a thick blanket of damp fog seeped into all the alleyways as the sun rose, muffling sounds.
“This is wing six. Down that hall—it should be Room 29-A.” As Laina spoke, the heavy makeup made her face look artificial.
Another white-armored Enforcer stood at attention outside Room 29-A. Without hesitation the three imposters walked up to him. The guard tensed, but seemed reassured by Rolf’s presence.
“We have to let them in,” Rolf said gruffly. “The nurse/tech has special treatment for the patient. I’m supposed to escort her and her Servant, but… ah, because of the importance of this patient, I’d feel better if we both watched over them. Cover your ass—get me?”
The other Enforcer agreed. “Good idea.”
Confident, the other guard punched in the electronic combination for the door, stepping aside to let Laina and Danal enter first. Rolf and the guard stepped into the room side by side.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Rolf wrapped his massive armored arm around the other Enforcer’s helmet. With a twist he wrenched off the helmet to reveal the startled face of a pimply youth. Before the exposed Enforcer could speak a word, Laina jammed a hisser into his face. Rolf stuffed the helmet back on the tranquilized guard’s head as he slithered to the floor. He caught the unconscious Enforcer under the arms and eased him down to keep his armor from clattering too much.
Danal paid no heed to this, but stood gawking at the sterile room’s only inhabitant. The neatly made bed bore a quaint patchwork quilt; a lamp and small writing desk added homey but pathetically ineffective touches of comfort.
Sitting in an overstuffed chair and staring at them was the hideously disfigured remnant of a woman. Growths and tumors like rivulets of melted wax tangled her face. Most of the hair on her head had been swallowed up by crumpled ridges of insanely growing skin. But two hardened and intelligent eyes stared coldly at them from between twisted eyelids. When she breathed, air came through her distorted nose and mouth in a whistling, sucking sound.
Yet behind the havoc of her face, Danal could see the ghost of Julia’s appearance, a hint of the woman to whom he had once opened his heart. But the eyes them selves spoke differently. Danal thought he recognized her gaze, but he had seen it only a few times before—eyes set on the face of a woman masquerading as a Servant….
“Zia!” Danal gasped.
She turned her face disbelievingly toward Danal, the Servant, scrutinizing him with sudden interest. As she drew a labored breath to speak, she looked as if all of the questions canceled themselves out in her mind.
“Van Ryman—you were Vincent Van Ryman. I thought you’d come back to haunt us, one way or another.” Zia paused and pulled another sucking breath through the opening of her mouth. She smirked in a hideous grimace. “I take it you’re the welcoming committee for the Francois Nathans Fan Club?”
But Danal didn’t hear her. All words caught in his throat as the implications of Zia’s presence hit him like a sledgehammer. She wasn’t Julia. He staggered, taking half a step backward. Tears flooded his eyes again; his throat burned.
Julia was dead after all, leaving nothing but a walking mindless automaton, empty. Danal’s hope shattered into sharp pieces. He hung his head and shuddered, trying to say her name out loud. He needed to sit down, to collapse, but he locked his knees instead. He barely felt Laina gripping his shoulder. It didn’t matter anymore.
Danal spoke toward the floor. His voice carried a bleak, devastated undertone. “So what happened to you?”
Zia linked her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. Danal saw that even her hands were covered with tumors and malformed growths. “What the hell does it look like happened? Apparently the surface-cloning process doesn’t always work like a charm.” Her fingers jerked convulsively, as if she wanted to tear the fabric of the chair. “The bastard guaranteed it would work.” But then her volatile expression changed, leaving only a dry bitterness.
“And what’s Joey doing now? He must be all high and mighty alone in the mansion. He was a slimer, always more important than the rest of us. I was supposed to be with him—he took your place, and I was supposed to be Julia. Sure! Simple. Piece of cake. Just give us a few weeks of your time, Zia, and we’ll touch up your face a bit. Make you look just like Julia. Surface-cloning, the magic of modern technology. Besides, it was all for the good of neo-Satanism.”
Her bitterness oozed out of the words, making her pathetic. “Joey and I would pick up right where you two left off, and nobody’d know the difference… except for our radical change in philosophy.” Zia shrugged. “But you did that already once before, so we weren’t losing sleep over it.
“Joey’s genotype was a perfect match to yours, a model case for the surface-cloning technique, and we couldn’t hope for anything better. His disguise grew on his face like it belonged there.