"Guardians, sirs, I need in there," Ellen said, pointing to the ornate, iron door behind them. "I've got to speak to the good doctor."
"What good doctor? Step away," one of the guards--she could not tell which--replied.
"You're going to have to let me through, guys. You can't hold up the doc's personal business."
One of the guards lowered the blue tip of his electric spear toward her.
"You're out of your mind, lady," he said. "Go away."
Ellen held up her arms. She wore a custom-made, white leather jacket, the right sleeve of which was about six inches longer than normal.
"Here's a magic trick, guys," she said. "I've been working on this one for years."
"You got to the count of three before I put you on the floor," a guard replied. "One..."
Ellen shook back her left sleeve to reveal her hand. It was a normal enough hand, sunburned and small, a bit dirty, perhaps, but definitely human.
"Nothing up there," she said.
"...two..."
"Let's try the other sleeve, shall we, kind sirs?"
She shook back her right sleeve. About ten inches of hand and arm were missing. Instead, sticking out of the flesh of her forearm was the shiny, black end of a rifle.
"Well, looky here," she said, her jaw dropping in mock surprise.
The two guards started to move, but they were not faster than bullets. The slam of the rifle firing rocked her on her feet, threatening to throw her to the ground, and made her muscles throb. The explosive sound of the shots echoed like screams around her. Slivers of plastic tore free from the armor suits of the guards and brushed past Ellen. The guards fell to the ground, their electric spears clattering away harmlessly.
"Three," Ellen muttered, stepping over the bodies.
She stood before the iron door, in the fading afterglow of rifle shots and her own crude final comment, and fought a sudden twinge of guilt. The guilt weighed on her heavily, like liquid lead pouring into her guts, pulling her down. There was always guilt but focusing on the doctor usually drove it away. And she was so close to him, just a few steps away. She brushed her sleeve back down over the rifle and concentrated on the door. There were thick letters--maybe the name of this place--carved into its surface. She wished she could read, but she had never had the opportunity to learn. She ran her hand over the carvings, trying to get some sense of them, but it was a useless gesture.
Off to one side, she noticed a small control panel set beside the door. There was a series of red buttons on the panel, lined up in rows and numbered. Numbers she knew, but what they might mean in this context, she did not. She reached over and touched a few of the buttons at random, producing a series of soft beeps.
"Invalid sequence," an electric voice said after a moment. The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond the heavy door. "Step back and enter the sequence again in ten seconds."
Ellen tapped more buttons.
"Step back and enter the sequence again in ten seconds," the electric voice said again.
Ellen stepped back, avoiding the dead guards. She stared at the control panel. It was tiny enough, fragile.
"Count to ten," she said to herself. "Fine, then. One..."
She lifted her right arm and drew back the sleeve, exposing the rifle.
"...and two makes ten."
She flexed the trigger muscle deep in her right arm, and the rifle fired, destroying the control panel in a shower of metal and red button shards. The bitter, smoky stench of burnt gunpowder filled her nostrils. Immediately, an alarm sounded, blaring at an ear-piercingly high pitch. Ellen covered her left ear, and aimed the rifle at the door. It flew open before she could fire, the alarm's roar rolling out from within the building in a wave. A tall, spindly security robot stood in the open doorway, vaguely human-shaped yet grotesquely hunched and thin. Its arms, tipped with nasty-looking stun-guns, lifted to point at her. Before it could shoot, she opened fire on the thing. Under a barrage of rifle fire, the robot flew to flaming pieces, stinking of oil.
When it ceased to move, Ellen reached under the bottom of her rifle arm and pulled out the empty clip, tossing it aside. Through the open doorway, she sensed frantic movement, other security robots rushing down a dim hallway. Quickly, she jammed her hand into the inside pocket of her leather jacket, grabbed a fresh clip, and shook it free. Two security robots appeared in the doorway, raising their stun-guns. Ellen slid the clip into the rifle. The churning, metal click it made as she cocked it sent a pleasing ache up her arm.
Ellen shot off her first round at the same time as the robots. Two darts nailed her, one in the left shoulder, one in the gut. The bullet from her rifle tore a ragged hole in one of the robots' metal heads. She continued to fire rapidly, her whole body throbbing with each explosive burst, but she could feel the cold points of the darts. Halfway through the second clip, Ellen could feel numbness coursing through her. She hurried through the open door, over the piles of burnt pieces that the robots had become.
"Got you anyway, didn't I?" she muttered down at them.
Inside, she found herself standing in a large, sweetly-scented foyer, a marble desk to her left. Whoever usually sat behind the desk had apparently taken the fastest road out of town. The cold, high-ceilinged room was deathly still. In the steady blare of the alarm, Ellen stumbled toward the hallway on the far side. She was feeling weaker with each step, and her rifle arm grew unbearably heavy, so that she slumped over on that side as she moved. The darts were working quickly, too quickly.
"Doc, Doctor Russell," she called. "I'm here. I've come to rescue you. Doctor!"
She entered the hallway. Narrow doors lined either side, numbered sequentially. Some of the doors had paper cards taped to them. Ellen leaned toward one, barely able to stand, and inspected it, but, of course, she had no idea what it said. She could only assume it was either a patient's name or some kind of warning about a patient's condition.
"I'll break 'em. I'll break break break." She heard this voice distantly, coming from behind one of the doors. The voice began to shriek repetitively with a kind of mindless determination that made her skin crawl.
Others joined in.
"Help me, Mama! I'm in the box. Help me!"
"Dey make all bright! All bright!"
Ellen felt as though she were surrounded by shrieking clowns. She wanted to cover her ears, but she was too weak to lift her hand. She leaned against a door, blackness creeping into the corners of her vision.
"Doctor Russell, where are you?" she called out weakly. "Answer me, you friggin' retard. I'm here to rescue you."
She heard only the voices of madmen howling around her. With a groan, she slid to her knees and began to crawl down the hallway. It seemed the more she fought the poison of the darts, the more control she lost. Her vision was narrowing to a cone of light, as though some invisible hands were squeezing reality down to a speck in front of her.
"Doc, wake up. Say something!"
And then, through the cacophony of gibberish, she picked up one sane voice, speaking insistently but gently.
"I'm Doctor Russell," it was saying. "I'm here. I'm Doctor Russell. Room 132. Room 132."
Ellen glanced up. It took all of her strength to lift her head. She saw the numbers 124 etched onto the door beside her. Beyond that, room 126. With a disgusted grunt, Ellen let her head droop back down and continued crawling, her rifle arm dragging along beside her like dead weight.
"I'm here. Room 132," the sane voice said again. "At the end of the hall, by the stairs."
Ellen looked ahead. Through her fading vision, she could see the stairwell, but it seemed impossibly far away now. To the left of the stairwell, she could see the last door, what she hoped was room 132. She fell onto her stomach on the icy, hard floor, dust puffing off the brown tiles. She no longer had the strength to move her rifle arm, but it only took a twitch to fire it. Reaching over with her good arm, she grabbed for the sleeve of her rifle arm. She managed to hook her middle finger in a fold of leather and proceeded to drag the arm forward. She aimed the barrel of the rifle at the silver lock in the middle of the door, which was little more than a gray blur to her.
"Stand back, Doc," she said, her voice a dying whisper.
She fired the rifle. The fury of it spun her to one side, but she heard the sound of the metal lock break.
"As good as ever," she hissed, her vision fading to a speck.
She blacked out...
...and awoke to the ugliest face she had even seen. The face was upside-down, and had patches of red-gray whiskers around its chin. It had thick, cracked lips and a broad, unhealthy-looking nose. The whole thing had a dark, ruddy complexion. At first, in her drugged state, Ellen had the strange notion that she was standing in a museum, staring at a photographic example of a natural aberration, but then the face above her winked one large, green eye.
"Good afternoon," the man said. "You might want to wake the rest of you up, too. It's not good to lie prone in a loony bin, my dear."
Ellen realized her head was in the man's huge lap. She quickly removed herself, sitting up. She still felt weak and rubbery, but she was alive. Smiling to herself, Ellen turned to face the ugly man. He had planted his large self in the middle of a tiny room, a loose-fitting, orange robe draped over his girth. There was a numbered tag stitched to the robe at his chest. From this perspective, she recognized the hideous face and was surprised to discover that she was not really all that happy to see him, after all.
"Well, Doc, you've ballooned up. I take it they feed you well here," she said, absently massaging the bicep of her rifle arm. "Where have you dragged me off to?"
Doc Russell smiled. "Ah, Ellen Riggs, I remember what a sweet little lady you are now. It's nice to see you. What are you doing dressed like that?"
Ellen glanced down at her clothes. She was wearing an armored shirt and pants with combat boots, all black except for the white jacket.
"What, you don't like it?" she said, holding her arms out. "It's almost bullet proof."
"What good is almost? And you know I never liked those ridiculous crooked sleeves, Ellen. Tu es folle," he replied.
"I need the long sleeve to hide this thing you gave me." She patted her rifle. "And stop with the foreign languages, Doc. You always had a real problem with lapsing into nonsense. Anyway, where have you dragged me off to? That's a nice enough question. Answer it already."
"We are in my own private room in the lunatic bin, the door of which you have savaged, my dear Ellen. Soon the A.T.S. soldiers will be here to cleanse the earth of us, I'm afraid." With that, he pushed his ponderous bulk up.
"The A.T.S.? Never heard of them," Ellen said, standing up herself. Her legs felt like bundles of yarn, as if her own weight would crush them. She swayed precariously for a moment, then leaned against one of the cell's green walls.
'The Anti-Terrorist Squad," the doc explained. "Since you've never heard of them, I take it you aren't a very experienced terrorist, or you don't watch the news. They're pretty cold, as soldiers go. The alarm you tripped was sent, I'm sure, over the city mainframe to A.T.S. headquarters. So, then, your rescue of me was really not much of a rescue."
"Doc, you ugly chunk of blood," Ellen replied through clenched teeth. "Get over here and help me. We're leaving the building."
He took a step toward her, a smile playing over his lips. Ellen stared at him as he approached, alarmed to find that she felt no particular warmth for this ugly, old man. She had considered him a friend, once upon a time, but now his presence was not stirring anything in her. And that, in turn, was really irritating her.
"Well, at least you're insulting me creatively," Doc said, taking her by the arm. "Here, lean against me."
She pressed against his shoulder and stood, waiting for her strength to return.
"Good, good," she said. "I'll be fine in a minute. Now, let's break out of here."
"Ellen, the only way out is up."
Distantly, through the howls and shrieks of the other lunatics, Ellen heard the alarm die. She held her hand up to shush the Doctor.
"The alarm just killed itself," she said. "What does that mean?"
Doc drew in his breath sharply.
"That bad, huh?" Ellen sighed. "Okay, Doc, let's go."
"But...but..."
She pushed off of him.
"Stop stuttering, Doc. If you can still move yourself, follow me."
Ellen hurried toward the cell door, which was standing open, a small black hole where the magnetic lock used to be. On passing, she stuck a finger in the burnt hole. In her dazed condition, it disquieted her deeply, and she paused.
"Yes, it was a nice shot," Doc said. "I made you into quite a woman, didn't I?"
The comment annoyed Ellen, though he had obviously meant it as a joke. The guilt came with the gun, after all. Would Doc Russell be willing to admit he'd given her that, too? Ellen almost lashed out at him but fought against it. She had rescued him, as she had planned to do from the day she had discovered he was in here, and now all that mattered was getting out alive. She shoved the door out of her way and stepped into the hallway. Doc followed, his feet shuffling along the ground like the hooves of a very large cow.
"You know, I haven't said it yet, but it is nice to see you, Ellen," he said. "It's been a long time."
Ellen ignored him and glanced to her right. She could see down the hallway to the foyer. It was empty. Sunlight was streaming through the open door, reflecting off the broken robot pieces so that they sparkled blindingly, like bits of diamond. Ellen was transfixed by the sight--she had caused that.
"We'll have to go up the stairs," Doc said, rousing her with a gentle pat on the back. "To your left, Ellen."
"Thanks for the tip, dip," Ellen replied, shrugging off his hand.
"Did you rescue me because you needed someone to make fun of?" he asked a bit testily, pushing past her and moving into the stairwell.
Ellen stared at his broad back for a moment, wishing desperately that she could shrug off her annoyance the way she had shrugged off his hand. She had rescued him, and he was the same old doctor. Uglier, perhaps, but still the man she had known, the man who had, in a sense, rescued her from her poverty. He had given her power, and he had been a friend. But she just wasn't feeling the friendship.
She followed him up the stairs. He moved slowly, unpleasantly, his legs swinging out and up like cement posts while his hand wrapped around the handrail in a vice grip to support his weight.
"I don't know where you expect us to go, Ellen," he said. "This only leads up to more loony cages and then to the roof. The A.T.S. will be up there, too, I'm sure."
"We'll jump over them," Ellen replied jokingly, "if we ever actually make it up there."
"Ellen, please. The insults grow tiresome. I'm moving as fast as I can, and as far as jumping goes..." He left the sentence hanging.
"It was a joke," she replied sadly.
There was a low thud and flash from below them. It threw Doc Russell off his feet, dropping him on his stomach on the steps. Ellen grabbed at his robe, but it slipped through her fingers.
"What was that?" she asked, spinning around, her rifle arm coming up instinctively. She could hear a distant rumble and the shrieks of the lunatics rising like a tidal wave.
"A flash grenade, maybe," Doc said, pushing himself to his feet. "Something that goes boom, anyway, and that means the A.T.S. has arrived, and right now they are probably surging down the hallway. They will probably be coming down the stairs from the roof, too."
The two of them were near the opening to the second floor. Ellen pointed toward it.
"What good will it do us to hide on the second floor?" Doc asked. "I mean, thanks for the rescue, dear, but it might be best to put me back in a cell. Not to say I'm not glad to see you. It's nice to see you're healthy and everything is working, but..."
"Doc, shut your ugly trap and get moving." Ellen gave him a shove to get him going.
They walked into the second floor hallway. The lunatics in here were shrieking, too, with insane fervor. Ellen paused, wondering just how possible it would be to fight off the A.T.S. as they tried to rush her from the stairs.
"Lovely," she sighed. "Why did I do this?"
Doc laid a hand on her shoulder. "Ellen, this was a mistake. Leave me behind. I'm just a lunatic, a mad scientist of the old order. Take off."
The rumbling sound was growing.
"Forget the argument, Doc. What's that rumbling?"
"The A.T.S. soldiers. They wear hydraulic armor. Heavy stuff. Have you never stormed a building before?"
"No," she replied, moving away from his hand. "But I'm big in the underworld, you'll be happy to know." She glanced at him wryly.
"Ellen, they're coming. There's nothing your rifle arm can do to them. Leave. I'm a nut. I belong here."
"Doc, you're not insane," Ellen replied, pushing back the sleeve of her rifle arm to expose the black barrel. "You know perfectly well why you're here, Doctor Frankenstein."
Doc was silent. The sound of crazy shrieks and hydraulic armor seemed endless around them, stretching on forever. Ellen rested her rifle in the crook of her left arm, unsure what to do.
"If you hadn't made a freak out of me, I wouldn't be here in the first place," she grumbled.
"Ellen, please. It was all about empowerment. What were the career options of a poor, homeless girl like yourself, anyway?"
"I could have become a nun," she replied absently.
She could hear fresh yelling, separate voices from those of the lunatics. The A.T.S. soldiers were searching the first floor. It was only a matter of time.
"Any windows in this hole?" Ellen asked.
"No. Not on this floor. Not on any floors, I don't think," Doc replied, moving his hand back to her shoulder. "Ellen, I'm one of the nuts. This time I'm insisting. Leave right now. It's nice to see you, of course, but--"
"You said that, Doc," Ellen said through clenched teeth. "You've said that a few times, actually. I'm totally screwed. You realize that, I hope."
"I don't know what to say," Doc said. "I never anticipated that you would come after me."
Ellen brushed his hand violently off her shoulder. The rumble of the soldiers was changing now, hollowing out. They were in the stairwell.
Ellen drew close to the doctor. "Doc, I wish I could make up my mind. Either I hate you or I don't."
She could remember the operation, her arm being surgically sawed off. She had been numb at the time, of course, but quite awake. She had agreed to it because she hadn't had anything else in her life. She had come from the poorest neighborhood in the area, and the possibility of real power had overwhelmed her.
"I suppose, if I have to pick, Doc, I'll go with the hate, after all," she whispered, her face close to his. He stank of sweat and filth.
"Don't move." It was a deep voice.
Ellen turned and found herself facing five men in heavy, metal armor. There were gears and hydraulics at each joint, and their faces were sealed behind massive helmets of steel and clear plastic. They held machine guns that looked like small coffins, thick blocks like bundles of gray death.
"Get away from the patient," the foremost soldiers said, taking a threatening step toward her, his broad foot thudding harshly on the tiled floor. "Get away from him and drop the rifle."
Ellen stepped away from the doctor and lifted her rifle arm.
"I can't drop it. It's attached," she said.
The soldiers merely stared at her, disbelief and revulsion on their faces. The foremost soldier took another step toward her, reaching out with one gauntleted hand.
"Lower the arm and freeze," he said. "There's no way out."
Ellen sighed and dropped her rifle arm to her side. "Yeah, I figured that part out a few minutes ago, while I was waiting for you guys. You think I would be standing here with this fat friggin' tub if there was a way out of here?"
The soldier grabbed her rifle arm, holding it tightly in his metal glove.
"Just let her go," Doc said quietly. "She...she didn't do it."
The soldier looked at Doc, frowning.
"What do you mean? Of course she did it," he said. "We've got her on the security vid blasting out the door lock."
Ellen considered discharging her rifle into the soldier's stomach, but she was sure the bullet wouldn't penetrate the thick shell the man wore. She groaned and let herself be dragged back toward the stairs.
"It's a trick," Doc said. "I made her do it."
"Nice try," the soldier said. "Come on, whore."
"Hey, when did I become a whore?" she grunted, trying to maintain her balance. "I don't remember whoring anytime today."
"Shut up!"
She threw a glance back at the doc. He was slumped in the hallway, looking very tired and very old. He met her gaze and shrugged.
"I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have this friggin' arm, Doc," she said, following the soldiers back toward the stairway, her rifle held securely.
"Shut up," the soldier said again, jerking on her arm.
Doc turned suddenly and took off running down the hall, moving much faster than Ellen would have thought his fat body could handle. Even the A.T.S. soldiers seemed stunned, staring after him until he had disappeared around a corner.
When he was gone, the soldier who was holding Ellen turned to the soldier on his left.
"Go and snag him. He can't get far."
The other soldier nodded and took off in the direction of the doctor. Ellen stared after him, but she was quickly dragged down the stairs. At the soldiers' return to the first floor, the lunatics' voices became so intense the walls shook. There was a white crust of smoke along the ceiling, what she assumed was left from the flash bomb. It made the hallway look and sound like the entrance to hell, burning and full of the howling damned.
"Okay, I'll radio headquarters, let them know the situation is under control," the soldier holding her arm said suddenly.
The words were barely past his lips when a deep, steel thud arose from behind them, the unmistakable sound of many doors coming open. The soldiers paused and turned around. Ellen tried to slip her rifle arm free, but it was still being securely held.
"What was that?" one of the soldiers asked. "Did you hear that? It sounded like a door."
Ellen glanced over her shoulder in time to see a sea of the insane pouring out of the stairwell. They were all dressed in orange robes, waving their hands over their heads and dancing as they ran.
"Well, this is nice," she said. "Real nice."
The soldiers said nothing. They were frozen in place. Ellen tried again to remove her rifle arm, but she couldn't.
And then the crowd washed over them. Lunatics knocked them to the ground, kicking and punching. Ellen cowered, her rifle arm firing instinctively every time she flinched. She didn't see if any of her bullets struck flesh, but in the pressing chaos of the crowd, she was sure they did. In her panic, she was unable to stop firing until the clip emptied.
She could feel hands pawing at her, voices screaming in her ears, feet swirling around her. And then the soldiers, though they seemed safe enough in their monstrous suits, opened fire. Blood and groans exploded in the midst of the insanity. Ellen realized she was no longer being held and drew her rifle arm back. The machine gun fire was deafening, and she desperately wanted to cover her ears but resisted. She began crawling through the collapsing crowd, between legs and over the fallen, beating the lunatics back with the barrel of her rifle. Soon she found herself in the front foyer. Some of the lunatics had made it this far, and she simply followed them through the open door and outside.
Outside, there were more soldiers, and they were trying to contain the lunatics, but there simply were too many of them. Ellen flowed with the crowd through an opening in the line of soldiers.
When she was around the corner and out of sight of the building, she ducked into an alleyway and laid down. She was not well hidden, but she was too tired to care. Distantly, the gunshots continued like the crackling of a fire. Exhausted, Ellen let her eyes slip shut.
"Ah, you were right, my dear."
She awoke to the sound of the Doc's voice. She opened her eyes and saw him standing over her. He had a fat lip and a bruise on his cheek.
"How did you find me?" she asked sleepily, sitting up.
"This is the direction the crowd went," he replied. "I went to the guard room and tripped the switch for the second floor. The second floor housed the real crazies. Hopefully, they'll be rounded up soon. You know, sometimes you have to do crazy things to survive. One of those nutcases slugged me, though. Can you imagine? Lashing out at the man who freed you?"
Doc sat down, massaging his cheek.
"So, freak, I guess I rescued you after all," Ellen said, patting him on the stomach. "And you rescued me. We're even now, huh?"
Doc's smile collapsed. "Well, not exactly."
"No, not exactly. But close enough."
"Operations can be reversed, though," Doc said, tapping her rifle arm. "I think I could reverse this, give you back a human hand. What do you think?"
Ellen glanced down at her rifle arm. She was shocked to realize that the thought of not having it scared her.
"I don't know. Let me think about it for a while, okay?"
Doc nodded.
"And, Doc?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks for trying to accept some of the guilt, but it's really not yours. I might as well blame whoever invented gun powder."
"The Chinese."
"Thanks for the useless bit of trivia. Anyway, the guilt's mine."
"Oh, I think we'll have to learn to share," he said gravely.
She sighed. "It might help if I just stopped shooting at people, what do you think?"
"That's sounds like a start."
He smiled weakly, and she joined him.
Jeff Miller is a graduate of the University of Arkansas, working in student ministry. He is currently furiously at work on a fantasy novel.
E-mail: nuffynoe@earthlink.net
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