He took the dare, but unlike Kennedy he didn’t have the advantage of surprise. One of the two dropped him with a punch that he didn’t see coming and couldn’t even reconstruct after it had hit. He was left in a foetal position on the floor, struggling to draw in a breath through a solid wall of agony.
‘You better not give me an inch of slack,’ Kennedy gasped.
‘I won’t,’ her captor promised her, sounding almost amused.
‘A human being,’ Nahir said, musing. ‘Would you claim that status for yourself? I wonder. I imagine you would. And that you’d do so without the slightest sense of irony.’
‘You want irony?’ Kennedy snarled. ‘I’ll tell you what’s ironic. That you people are so prissy about killing each other when killing is the only thing you’re any good at!’
Nahir signalled to the Messenger to release her — a negligent wave of the hand. Kennedy could see from his face and his posture that he expected her to attack him, and was ready for her if she did.
‘This is personal for you, isn’t it?’ she asked him, clutching her numbed arm to her chest.
Nahir’s mouth pinched in a minute grimace. ‘Not in the slightest.’
‘I’m just trying to figure out why,’ Kennedy said. ‘Is it because we found your Ginat’Dania? I can see where that would hurt.’
‘Nothing you can do could ever make the smallest difference to us.’
‘And yet here we are.’ Kennedy forced a grin. ‘Saving you from yourselves. Because three thousand years turned out to be nowhere near long enough for you sorry sons of bitches to get your act together. You saying you don’t need us is a really bad joke after you went to so much trouble to get us here.’
Nahir put a hand to the back of his belt. ‘Say another word,’ he invited Kennedy. ‘And find out for yourself how much I need you.’
She opened her mouth — and the creak and swish of the door at her back interceded, probably saving her life.
‘Good,’ Kuutma said. ‘Everybody is here, and everything, I assume, is in place.’ Diema entered the room behind him and closed the door. For a moment, her gaze was locked on Kennedy’s — a wordless catechism. Then she looked away.
‘Doctor?’ Kuutma said.
The doctor, a man of the same age and with the same physique as the Messengers, bowed perfunctorily and made the sign of the noose. ‘I’ve completed a physical evaluation of the patient,’ he said. ‘He seems to have been in excellent health before he received these wounds. His system is massively compromised now, but I believe I can wake him by injecting adrenalin and methylphenidate directly into his heart. Obviously there are a number of risks involved in this procedure. But if time is of the essence …’
‘Time,’ said Kuutma, ‘is very much of the essence. Do it, please.’
The doctor turned to the racks and trays against the walls and began to select from the bottles there.
‘What risks?’ Kennedy asked.
Assembling the hypo, the doctor answered over his shoulder. Possibly he hadn’t noticed that he was being questioned by an Adamite. ‘Haemorrhaging within the heart is possible, but not very likely. The main risk is tamponade — massive, uncontrolled vaso-constriction that will starve his system of oxygen. I’ll have a stand-by injection of benzamine ready in case that happens.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Kennedy said. She was speaking to Diema.
‘Restrain her,’ Nahir ordered. ‘She’s capable of disrupting the procedure.’
Two Elohim took Kennedy’s arms. The remaining two stood over Rush, who by now was sitting up but hadn’t managed to stand.
‘Proceed,’ said Kuutma.
The doctor used an epidural needle that looked more like a duelling sword. Kennedy forced herself not to look away as the doctor, without preamble, inserted the point between Tillman’s fourth and fifth ribs and pushed the needle in slowly and smoothly, to a depth of about three inches. He thumbed the bulb at the end of the syringe, and the plunger inside the hypodermic slid across, instantly, like an eye blinking shut.
For a split-second longer, Tillman’s body remained calm and motionless. Then it quaked, riven by a massive interior shock. A powerful muscular contraction went through him, making the restraints tighten and his body lift clear of the bed — then slam down again with enough force to make it rock.
‘Hold him!’ the doctor said, to the two angels, and they stepped in on either side to enfold Tillman in a rigid embrace. There was a second contraction, then a third, not so severe as the first but more protracted.
Tillman’s eyes and mouth gaped open. His throat worked and so did his chest, but there was no sound of indrawn breath. Quickly, the doctor gave him a second injection into the side of his neck. Sputters and gasps came from Tillman’s throat, as though he were doing a bad mime of a coffee percolator. They peaked, then died away.
The doctor turned to look at Kuutma, tense, seeking instruction or permission. ‘He’s barely breathing. I need another chemical antagonist to fight the adrenalin. But there are none here. This house is not so well stocked as my own surgery. I didn’t think to bring—’
‘Glyceril trinitrate,’ one of the angels said.
The doctor blinked, his mouth dropping open. ‘But that’s … that’s the chemical composition of nitroglycerin. It’s an explosive.’
‘And a vaso-dilator.’ The woman looked to Nahir. ‘Do you have any?’
Nahir shrugged. ‘Almost certainly.’
One of the Elohim went in search of it. The rest of them were summarily ejected from the room so that the doctor could prep Tillman for an emergency ECMO. If necessary, they would force oxygen into his blood using cannulae and membrane oscillators.
Kennedy was still in the grip of the two Elohim who Nahir had told to guard her. But she’d stopped struggling against their grasp, and they were holding her loosely. If Leo died, she intended to try to tear loose from their grip, but she had no idea whether she was going to attack Nahir, Kuutma or Diema. She just felt that leaving a mark on one of the three would be a memorial that she owed Tillman, even if she died trying.
Her gaze kept going back to Diema, who stood with her arms folded, her expression sullen and guarded. Everything that was happening here was being driven by her. She could still stop this, but she said nothing, engaged with nothing, let it flow around her while she stood and thought.
The nitro was brought. Kennedy was expecting a gelid brick, wrapped in grease-proof paper, like a package of C4, but it came in a bottle, looking a lot more like medicine than explosive. The Elohim took it into Tillman’s room and closed the door behind them.
‘You know the one thing I regret, in all of this?’ Rush asked. He was speaking to Diema, who turned to stare at him, startled out of her reverie.
‘That I let you touch me,’ Rush said.
She didn’t answer. Kuutma frowned, and looked at Diema — a look of surprise and deep thought.
The door opened, and the doctor looked out at them. His bland expression gave nothing away, but he nodded. ‘He’s ready for you,’ he said to Kuutma.
They filed back into the room. Tillman’s eyes were open and he was breathing — not normally, but deeply, with an audible rasp on each in-breath like the blade of a hacksaw dragged through cardboard. Kennedy tried to go to him, but the Messengers who held her arms wouldn’t allow her.