Chapter One
Dalia VH570 stared at the bright, white light above her, watching it flicker as she felt her thoughts dissolve into the same nothingness as the whiteness that surrounded her. She had always hated physical examinations. She just wasn’t certain why.
The prick of something sharp jolted Dalia into sudden, crystal clear alertness and the absolute certainty of danger. Opening her eyes, she surveyed her surroundings, searching for the threat she sensed.
She was still in the examination room, but she was bound to the table now. Turning her head, she looked at the man who’d just stabbed a syringe into her arm.
Her movement brought his gaze to hers, and she saw his eyes dilate instantly with fear, guilt, and the certainty that he was looking into the face of death. His reaction forced a healthy shot of adrenaline through her body and her heart leapt into overtime, pumping it through her. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated, tensing every muscle and sinew in her body, and heaved upward, breaking the restraints. The technician was still staring at her stupidly when she gripped his hand. Snatching the syringe from her arm, she drove it into his carotid artery, depressing the plunger.
His eyes rolled back into his head. The saliva in his mouth boiled, foaming, spilling between his gasping lips. She sat up, grasping his throat, half lifting him from the floor. “You tried to kill me. Why?”
His mouth worked. He gagged, coughed up spittle and blood. “Help me,” he pleaded.
Dalia shook him. “First tell me why.”
“Gestating... you’re gestating. Never supposed to be able....”
She stared at him blankly, trying to understand the word, trying to figure out what it had to do with his attempt to kill her. “What is this word?”
“Reproduction. To bear young,” he gasped, clawing at her hand frantically.
She dropped him, staring down at him as he sprawled on the floor beside the gurney she sat on. Tossing the sterile sheet off that had covered her, she slipped to the floor. “A child? A baby? You tried to kill me because I’m ... breeding? It’s only a fifty thousand credit fine!”
He shook his head frantically. “Not human. Not human.”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly for several moments but finally lifted her head, realizing at last that the alert was sounding, had been since she’d broken her restraints. She blinked, calculating the time. Anywhere from three to five minutes had passed. The exits would be blocked by now and guarded. A contingent of guards would be racing toward this room.
She glanced down at the technician, but he’d stopped gurgling. His eyes were wide and staring now.
A wave of nausea washed over her. That should have been her. It would have been if she hadn’t awakened when he’d speared her with the needle. She’d never killed another human being before, though, and she couldn’t decide whether she was more horrified at having a hand in his death, revolted by what a human being looked like in their death throes, or because she’d been a hair’s breadth from experiencing rather than witnessing. She didn’t have time to analyze her distress, however. Shelving it for the moment, she glanced around the examination room, but no windows magically appeared. There was still only the one door.
She checked the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
Why had she allowed them to take her into a room with only one exit? Her training had taught her better. It was stupid to have relaxed her guard only because the med lab belonged to the company, the company she killed for.
She’d never trusted the damned company.
Leaping up onto the examination table, she reached up toward the ceiling and realized she was still too short. She could just touch the tiles above her with her fingertips. She went up on her tiptoes, bounced. Finally, she managed to dislodge the panel above her. It was a suspended ceiling, she saw, held aloft by thin wires. She seriously doubted it would hold her weight, but she was out of options.
Leaping up again, she caught the frame that had held the tile. As she’d more than half expected, it buckled, bringing down a rain of tiles around her.
The sound of running feet, many feet, came to her. It must be a full squad.
Good, she decided. The noise they were making would help to cover the noise she made. Leaping down from the examination table, she raced across the room, bent her knees and leapt upward, her arms extended. She crashed through the tile. It hit the floor around her. The wall, she saw went all the way up, approximately ten feet. Metal girders supported the floor above her.
It was the girders or nothing.
Whirling, she raced back toward the examination table, hit it flat footed and leapt upward, catching the bottom of a girder. With an effort, she pulled herself up, but she saw the space was too small for her to walk her way across hanging by her hands. Supporting most of her weight from her arms, she pulled her legs up and swung until she could hook her heels along the girder, as well.
It was dark above the ceiling, particularly since she had only just come from a room blindingly white, but she had excellent night vision. She focused her eyes and looked around. As far as she could see, there was nothing but girders, pipe, electrical wires and ductwork. The ductwork was too small to crawl through, and too light to support her weight.
She closed her eyes, mentally tracing her path through the building and into the examination room. Only a corridor separated her from the closest outer wall of the building, but the guards were racing down that path. She took the opposite direction. It was a good deal further from the outer wall, but it was also less likely that guards would be stationed there.
Moving swiftly now, she crawled, spider like beneath the beam until she’d reached the wall she’d seen on the other side. She turned then, following it until she found an opening. A catwalk ran through it and she dropped down onto it. Looking in first one direction and then the other, she finally decided to continue as she’d begun and crawled through the opening. She’d only just cleared it when she heard the guards pounding on the examination room door. Crouching low, she ran as fast as she could.
It wouldn’t take them long to figure out she was in the overhead ceiling and probably not much more than that to realize that the only way she could traverse it was along the catwalk.
She heard them behind her before she reached the outer wall.
