Footsteps rang on the other side of Basilard’s door. He leaped out of his cot. The hours he had spent searching, pressing, pulling, and pounding his fists had not revealed any weaknesses in his prison.
The door opened, revealing the burly young soldier who had held a pistol on him earlier. An equally young and burly man accompanied him, though this one had a scraggily rat tail hanging down his back and wore no military clothing. Both pointed pistols at Basilard.
“Move,” Rat Tail said.
Basilard measured both men as he squeezed past them. The tight doorway and corridor forced closeness, and he thought about trying for their weapons, but they watched him carefully. And what if he did overpower them? He had no idea where he was or how to get back to the city. Hoping he would not regret it later, he decided to wait for a better opportunity to escape.
The men pushed him through a corridor so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls, and he had to duck frequently for pipes that crossed overhead. He waited for a porthole that would provide a glimpse of their location, but nothing broke the monotony of the dark gray bulkheads. The glowing orbs provided the only lighting, and he had no idea if it was night or day outside. Oddly, though engines pulsed somewhere in the structure, he had no sense of forward movement nor the rise and fall of waves.
Clanks, clacks, and a rhythmic sucking sound came from ahead. The engine room? The corridor ended at a chamber, but a transparent barrier filled with glowing yellow tendrils that writhed about like snakes blocked the entrance. Basilard blinked, questioning his eyesight.
“Stop,” one of the guards said before Basilard reached the entrance.
The man pushed him aside and stepped forward. He leaned into a bronze box mounted on the wall at head level, and he pressed his face close to a concave indention. A blue pulse of light washed over his face.
The shimmering tendrils winked out, and the guard stepped through. The second guard shoved Basilard from behind.
They entered a chamber cluttered with pipes, equipment, moving machinery, and tanks of yellowish blue liquid. Flesh-colored blobs floated in some. Machinery and pipes filled the center of the space and one could go left or right down confining aisles jammed with consoles and narrow tables, or perhaps those were beds. Some lay horizontal and others were tilted upward to stand against the wall. Trays near them held scalpels, saws, and scissors.
Basilard swallowed. He did not know what this place was, but it was nothing so innocuous as an engine room.
The men prodded him toward the far aisle. He rounded a tight corner and stopped. Two red-haired women leaned together, heads almost bumping. One wore her hair in a long braid and the other had hers pinned up in a wild swirl of hair. They spoke in soft tones. Litya and the sister.... What was the name? Metya.
One of Basilard’s guards cleared his throat. The women turned in unison. They were twins, identical except for a few freckles and an old half-moon scar on one’s temple. He picked Litya out as the woman without the marking.
As one, their eyes shifted up and down, studying Basilard. Under other circumstances, he might have flushed with embarrassment—he was naked, after all—but there was no sexual interest in their perusal. He struggled to keep from squirming under their scrutiny.
The aisle behind them held more beds, occupied by nude men and women. Most were propped upright against the wall, the people held tight by leather straps, but the bed behind the twins lay in the horizontal position with a muscular man on it, not strapped like the others but chained, the links so secure that he could do no more than lift a hand or twitch a toe, though he did neither while Basilard watched. Cords snaked from a machine to coin-sized, spider-like devices with the tips of the “legs” digging beneath the skin on the man’s naked chest. Translucent tubing ran from a pulsing green globe, and a viscous fluid of the same color flowed through it and into a needle in his arm. Not just his arm. His vein.
“Put him on that table.” Metya pointed to an empty one behind her. “I have the pok-tah solution ready.” She stepped to the side, so the guards could shove Basilard past. “Once we hook him up, he won’t—”
Basilard sucked in a startled breath when the view opened up and he saw the face of the man on the table. He should have guessed. Sicarius.
His eyes were open. That surprised Basilard again—he would have assumed, even with the restraints, someone would keep Sicarius unconscious if they dared to detain him. When those dark eyes swiveled toward Basilard, though, they were glazed and dull. No sign of recognition glinted in them.
The guard shoved Basilard, trying to force him around the end of Sicarius’s table and toward the vertical one a few feet away. He balked and groped for a way to communicate.
“Wait.” Litya pointed the pen at Basilard. “Do you know him?” She shifted the pen and tapped Sicarius on a bare toe.
Basilard choked on her audacity. He didn’t think even Amaranthe would poke Sicarius’s toe, and he tolerated more from her than anyone else.
“Well?” Litya demanded. She grabbed a clipboard from a wall where it dangled on a string, a pen attached.
Basilard did not know whether admitting he knew Sicarius would help him or hinder him. He just knew he would have to make his escape attempt soon—if these people strapped him down and drugged him, he might never wake again.
Basilard lifted his fingers and signed, Can you understand me?
“Why does it matter?” Metya asked. She stood near the second bed, tapping buttons beneath a dark orb identical to the green one at Sicarius’s station.
“Aside from this one—” Litya waved her pen at Basilard again, “—the assassin is the only one here whose lineage we haven’t been able to discover. He proved resistant to the truth elixir, and he’s the one I’m most curious about.”
“It’s not crucial,” Metya said.
“No, but the information could prove useful for our studies. He’s already what our clients wish us to create.”
Basilard lifted his eyebrows. Assassins? Gifted warriors? Superior athletes?
Metya sniffed. “I’m sure we can make improvements.”
Litya gave her sister a slit-eyed glare and shuffled a blank page to the top of her clipboard. She held it out to Basilard. “Can you write? I can read Turgonian, Kendorian, Kyattese, and Nurian.”
Which of those was her native tongue? He took the implements and wrote, I know him. What’s in it for me if I can extract the information?
When he handed Litya the notepad, the other sister came over as well. Not a foot from Basilard, they bent their heads together to read his message.
If he could grab one, spin her about, and use her as a shield against the guards’ firearms, maybe he could barter for his freedom.
Before the thought had finished, a cool pistol muzzle pressed against the back of his neck. He sighed. He would have to find a better moment, one when the guards were less attentive.
“Help us,” Litya said, “and we’ll let you walk out of here when we’re done collecting specimens.”
Purpose of specimens?
“Nothing you’d understand,” Metya said.
“Stay focused,” Litya said. “Are you willing to cooperate for your life, or not?”
All these other people will die?
Metya shrugged.
“Not by our hands,” Litya said, “but our colleagues have more invasive experiments. Some of them prefer fresh cadavers. However, you were something of a bonus. We’d already collected our handful of chosen men and women.” She laid a hand on Sicarius’s bare leg and smiled.
Basilard shifted, uncomfortable with the entire situation and not certain how to read her. He had never had much of a knack for perceiving when women were telling the truth, but going along would prolong his stay amongst the upright and un-drugged.
What about him? Basilard nodded to Sicarius, then wrote, Will you let him go as well?
He wasn’t sure why he asked it. If Sicarius met his death here, at the hands of these scientists, that would be a way to see the Mangdorian royal family avenged. It seemed cowardly to shy away from doing it himself, but if God had other plans, why should Basilard interrupt?
“Well...” Litya started.
“No,” Metya said, throwing her sister a sharp look. “Why do you think we were trying to get him to show up at the stadium where we could snatch him? This is a long-term project, and the bounty on his head will fund the latter half of our work. It’s far more than we’re getting from our clients.”
“I wanted him for research,” Litya muttered.
The speculative gaze she cast Sicarius made Basilard wonder if this one had more than science in mind.
He wrote, Research for what?
“The main goal of our research is to—”
“Litya,” a male voice said from the corridor. Footsteps thudded, and Taloncrest appeared at the head of the aisle. “I know you’re a newcomer to our land, but here in Turgonia we don’t explain ourselves to our captives.”
The guards shuffled aside to let Taloncrest through, and Basilard took note of the pistols no longer pointed directly at him. Unfortunately, people fenced him in on either side, so his odds of getting by were poor. Besides, where would he go? He had yet to glimpse a door to an upper deck on this ship or even a porthole so he could see what lay outside. Footsteps sounded as other people walked in and out of the laboratory, and he suspected there were far more people on board than he had seen.
“We’re not interested in adopting Turgonian tactics,” Metya said. “Your people aren’t known for their negotiating skills or anything else that doesn’t involve bloodshed.”
Taloncrest leaned against one of the tanks, apparently intending to watch. Though he carried no weapons beyond a utility knife at his belt, he towered over the women. Sensing they would be less forthcoming with Taloncrest there, Basilard pointed at Sicarius and indicated he was ready to start.
Can you lessen his stupor? He doesn’t recognize me. I won’t be able to get answers from him.
“I wouldn’t,” Taloncrest said, the first to respond to Basilard’s scribbles. “You girls aren’t from the empire, so you may not be that familiar with his reputation, but he’s dangerous. That you got him at all was...”
“Impressive?” Litya suggested.
“Lucky,” Taloncrest said.
Metya snorted. “We are highly trained practitioners. Setting a trap for a mundane warrior is easier than a first-year telekinesis test.”
“Turgonian men are horrible at acknowledging that women can be skilled,” Litya said, sharing a look with her sister. “One wonders why the intelligent women living here don’t leave.”
“Perhaps,” Taloncrest said, “you’d have them go to the Kyatt Islands where they’d be kicked out if their research methodologies did not fit in with the humanitarian values of your Polytechnic?”
“We’ll handle this,” Litya said. “Go back to your research on your side of the lab, the lab that our gold funded and that we are graciously letting you work in.”
Taloncrest stepped past Basilard to thrust a finger at the woman’s nose. “Don’t order me around. You presume—”
Metya closed her eyes briefly, then flicked her own finger. Taloncrest lurched to the side, his head cracking against the back of the machine he’d been leaning against. In the process, he bumped against Basilard.
Basilard feigned a stumble and used the movement to palm Taloncrest’s knife. The ex-officer glared at the women and did not seem to notice. He clenched his fists and stood to his full height. The veins in his neck strained beneath the skin.
The twins smiled sweetly.
Basilard watched, hoping the confrontation would elevate into a worthy distraction for an escape, but Taloncrest took a deep breath and stalked back the way he had come.
“Tie him up next to the assassin,” Metya said. “They can chat from adjoining beds.”
Basilard wriggled his fingers to remind them he needed his hands free for talking, but Metya had already turned away. She stroked the globe controlling the liquid oozing into Sicarius’s veins.
The guards pushed Basilard past her. He resisted the impulse to make their work difficult. If he cooperated meekly, they might be less prepared when he did strike. He kept his hand down, the knife pressed against the inside of his arm. It was not a small blade, and it would take luck to keep the guards from noticing it while they tied him. Should he strike before then? No, he would probably need Sicarius’s help to escape, and Sicarius would need to be alert for that.
The guards pushed him back against the table while it was still vertical. Its cold metallic surface pressed against his bare flesh. One guard bent to strap his ankles and thighs to the table. Basilard inched the knife around his side.
He wondered if he was being a fool for waiting and letting them secure his legs. He glanced at the other table. Metya was still fiddling with the globe, and Sicarius’s eyes remained vacant.
Basilard slipped the blade behind his butt and pressed his cheeks into the cold metal. A heartbeat later, one of the guards grabbed both of his wrists, yanking them before him.
“Leave them free for now.” Litya held out her clipboard.
Basilard hesitated. Would it be a mistake to reveal that Sicarius could understand his signs? At the moment, they did not realize Basilard and Sicarius worked together. The writing would be slow, though, and the women would be able to read everything he shared.
He pointed at Sicarius, touched his own temple, and signed, He understands, figuring the women would get the gist.
Litya’s eyes narrowed. “The assassin knows your sign language? Why?”
Basilard accepted the clipboard and wrote, He’s traveled to my country. To slay people.
“I see.” Litya took the clipboard away and flipped it back to her papers. “Give him a few moments, and he should regain a measure of cognizance. I mixed in some of my truth elixir, too. He resisted it before, but perhaps if he’s familiar with you and doesn’t see you as a threat...” She eyed him a little too knowingly. “The more you can get me, the more favorably things will turn out for you. I want to know his parents’ names, whether they were distinguished warriors or athletes, and what mix of blood is in his veins. The Turgonians are mongrels through and through, but most of them are a combination of their ancient Nurian roots and the brawny tribesmen that roamed these lands before they came. He looks like he might have some Kendorian in him though. Find out as much as you can.”
Basilard nodded. She propped her hip against Sicarius’s table and waited. One of the guards at the head of the aisle yawned. No privacy for this chat.