I sat up. The guy on my left was lying in a pool of blood, clutching his gashed throat. The one on the other side wasn’t moving either, so I guessed Nueve had done the Company’s standard extreme extraction number on him too.
I looked at Nueve. Besides the saucer-sized bloodstain on the shoulder of his lab coat, you couldn’t tell he’d just been in a close-quarters fight to the death. He wasn’t even breathing hard. In fact, he was smiling.
“Uninjured, yes? Good! Up, now, Kropp. I need the chair.”
I stood up. My legs didn’t feel too steady, even with the help of the orthopedic shoes. Nueve locked the wheels on the chair and climbed onto the seat. I looked down at the dead men.
“How did you know?” I gasped.
“The shoes,” he said.
I looked at their shoes. They were the same white soft-sole numbers all orderlies wore.
“What about them?” I asked.
“They’re brand-new. Both pairs. One is understandable, but both?”
“Still, it could have been a coincidence.”
He shook his head. “No such thing in my experience. Yours?”
He popped open the access door in the ceiling with the butt end of his cane.
“I guess we’re not riding this to the bottom,” I said.
“Catch,” he said. He dropped the cane and I caught it before it hit the floor. There was a recessed slot in one end where the bayonet nested.
“I wouldn’t hold that too close to your face, Alfred,” he said. He heaved himself through the hole and disappeared into the darkness of the shaft. Then I heard him say, “Cane.” I handed it up to him.
“They must have been watching the room,” I called up to him. “I told you this was a lame idea. What are you doing up there?”
“Waiting for you.”
I took a deep breath before stepping onto the wheelchair seat. I hated heights, hated the dark, hated close spaces. On the other hand, I liked staying alive. Nueve reached down, slid his hands under my arms, and pulled me the rest of the way.
The elevator had come to a stop just past the second floor. Nueve hit some hidden button in the handle of his cane and the blade sprang out. He slipped the blade between the doors and then twisted it, forcing the doors open a couple of inches.
He put a hand on either door and slowly forced them open. He laid the cane lengthwise in the track between the doors to keep them open.
At that moment, the elevator motor revved, the big cable behind me began to move, and the whole thing started down.
“We’re moving!” I shouted unnecessarily.
He pushed himself through the opening, yanked the cane from the track, and held one end toward me as I began to accelerate away from him.
“Jump!” he called down.
I jumped, my right hand closing around the end of the cane with half an inch to spare. I looked down between my dangling feet at the roof of the elevator as it shot downward.
“Pull me up!” I yelled over the noise.
“Can’t! Climb,” he grunted back.
After a couple of hard pulls and kicks against the wall, I managed to grab the cane with my left hand and began to pull myself up. Nueve was having trouble keeping the cane still as my weight shifted back and forth.
“Faster please,” he said.
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
“Not fast enough, I think.”
I was about to ask why not when I heard the elevator motor revving below me. I didn’t have to look to know it was coming back up.
“Hand!” he yelled, letting go with his right and stretching it toward me. I let go of the cane with my left and reached toward his wriggling fingers. Not close enough. My fingertips brushed against his.
“Five seconds!” he yelled over the noise. “Pull!”
I pressed the pads of my feet against the concrete wall and pushed as hard as I could while yanking downward on the cane. The force of it nearly pulled Nueve into the shaft with me. His thin fingers entwined with mine and he heaved himself backward through the doors, pulling me up with him. The hurtling car caught the tip of my foot as I flew through the doors, ripping the shoe off my foot.
The doors closed, and we lay side by side on the cold floor, gulping air while a small crowd gathered to gawk at the old lady and the bloody doctor sprawled in front of the elevator, hugging each other.
A nurse finally said, “Can I help you, Doctor?”
Nueve scrambled to his feet and then pulled me up to mine. He scooped up his cane and gave the nurse an icily professional smile. Not a doctor’s smile—an Operative Nine smile.
“Elevator trouble,” he said. I started for the stairs. We were on the second floor, only one flight away from freedom. He grabbed my arm.
“No, Alfred—Freda—Alfreda, your room is this way.”
He pulled me across the hall to the nearest room. An old man lay in the bed under an oxygen tent.
“Harriet?” he called hoarsely to me. “Harriet—I knew you’d come!”
Nueve ignored him. He strode across the room to the window and pulled aside the curtains. He looked out, nodded, took one step back, and then slammed the gold head of his cane into the center of the glass. The window shattered on impact. Nueve cleared the remaining shards from the frame, then motioned to me.
“Quickly,” he hissed.
“We’ll break our legs,” I said, and then I saw we were directly above the overhang for the emergency room entrance on the first floor. Only a half-story fall, but still far enough to snap an ankle if you hit it wrong.
Behind us, the old man called, “Harriet! Harriet, don’t leave me!”
Nueve’s eyebrow went up. “Well, Harriet?” he asked.
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Somebody must have found the two dead guys in the elevator.
“Jump down, not out,” Nueve cautioned me.
I put one foot on the sill. The old man got mad.
“Always running out on me, Harriet!”
At that moment the door flew open and three men rushed into the room. They wore black jumpsuits and black bandannas across their faces. Nueve smiled and nodded, as though he had expected them: Ah, of course, the ninjas have arrived! The blade leaped from the end of his cane.
“Go, Alfred,” he said softly.
He shoved me through the window. I tumbled into empty space as the old man screamed after me, “Good riddance to you, then, you old witch!”
I hit the roof of the overhang feetfirst, bending my knees at the last second, so I managed to hit without breaking or twisting anything I really might need in the near future. I rolled a couple of times, coming to a stop at the edge, lay on my stomach for a second, then flipped over in time to see one of the ninjas coming through the window.