Without giving herself time to think it over, she sliced the flesh as deeply as the razor would cut. Seconds passed before the pain caught up with her brain. She’d already dug her fingers into the cut, grasped the locator and yanked it free of the bone before fire poured through her. Gasping at the wave of dizziness that washed over her, she dropped the locator to the pavement, picked up one of the weapons and smashed it with the butt.
Blood was gushing from the cut. She studied it for several moments, but she knew there were no major veins in that area. Regardless, she couldn’t allow it to continue to bleed. They’d be able to follow the blood trail almost as easily as the locator. Then, too, she might run out of fluids before she managed to get hold of a medical kit.
She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have any options. Lifting the weapon, she set it on its lowest setting and carefully sited it along the cut, firing off one quick burst.
The pain didn’t take nearly as much time to reach her brain that time. She staggered back and fell to her knees, fighting the blackness that threatened to overwhelm her.
Dimly, she saw she’d attracted some attention from the local lowlifes. Lifting the weapon with an effort, she fired off several warning shots. When they scattered, she grabbed her trousers and the other weapon and began moving again. She wanted nothing so much as to crash somewhere, if only for fifteen or twenty minutes, but she couldn’t afford the luxury until she’d put a lot of distance between herself and the locator she’d just destroyed. Her pursuit would almost certainly have triangulated on that position by now.
The faintness didn’t recede. She had to fight it every step of the way. Finally, she managed to put at least a mile between her and the locator, before she reached a point where she knew she couldn’t go another step without falling on her face.
Pausing, she leaned back against the wall of a building and searched the area. She hadn’t seen anyone in a while, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, watching, waiting for her to let her guard down so that they could steal anything she had of value and probably kill her in the process.
The building she was leaning against was ancient, deserted, crumbling. She climbed through the nearest opening and studied it, moving slowly through, her weapon at the ready. Skittering noises filtered to her from time to time, but she thought it must be some sort of animals. They didn’t make enough noise to be human.
She came upon a partial stair leading upward and debated briefly whether it would be better to find a hiding place on one of the other floors or on the ground floor. Finally, she decided to try the second floor. It would give her a little lead time if she heard anyone coming. She could, if she had to, jump from the second floor without doing too much damage to herself ... as long as she was careful to land correctly.
Shouldering her weapon, she placed her back against the wall and moved carefully from step to step until she reached a gap. Checking the strength of the handrail to see if it would support her if the stair collapsed, she leapt the distance, coming down on her wounded hip. Her knee buckled, but she managed to catch herself with the railing.
When she’d reached the top, she turned to study the stairs and finally pulled one of the weapons from her shoulder and cut a larger section out. It would be far easier, she knew, for her to leap the hole downward than for anyone to leap it coming up. She found another set of stairs near the rear of the building, or rather a stairwell. Those stairs were completely gone.
The place reeked of death. As tempted as she was to just find a corner and collapse, she knew she couldn’t rest until she’d assured herself she had the place to herself. The building had looked like it had at least six floors, even as ancient as it was, but there were only two floors accessible from the floor she was on. The upper floors had begun to slowly collapse down upon each other.
She found a badly decomposed body two floors up, which explained the god-awful smell and the lack of other occupants.
Relieved, she made her way down again, found a comfortable corner that was relatively free of debris, and collapsed. She’d hardly even settled when blackness closed in around her. She was disoriented for several moments when she woke. Sluggishly, her mind kicked in and memory flooded back to her. She had no idea how long she’d slept--there wasn’t enough sunlight filtering so far beneath the city to judge from the sun’s movement. She could’ve been out mere minutes, or hours, or even days--but she struggled to her feet and checked her perimeter.
Satisfied that they hadn’t discovered her and surrounded the building while she rested, she found a corner to relieve herself and then returned to her corner and sat down to figure out what options she might have.
There weren’t a lot. She didn’t know why they wanted her dead, but they seemed pretty damned set on seeing it done.
The tech had seemed to indicate that it was because she was gestating, but that was nearly as inconceivable as the fact that she was gestating at all. No oneboreyoung anymore. It was too unpredictable and too inconvenient. If they happened to want one, they bought a permit and ordered one from the med lab. They hadn’t practiced the ‘natural’ way of doing it in nearly a century. As far as she knew, though, there was no law against it, certainly not a death sentence, anyway.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d arrested her for breeding without a permit. She would’ve expected something like that, if she’d been engaging in sexual activity and stupid enough to do it without protection. But that would’ve been followed by a brief trial, maybe, and then release as soon as she coughed up the fine and bought a permit.
Maybe it was a law that was still on the books but hadn’t been used in so long that nobody, except the lawmakers and the law enforcers, even knew it was there anymore?
It seemed possible. The morons never got rid of laws. They just made more when the need arose. There were laws still on the books, she knew, from centuries before, laws that people didn’t even understand anymore because nothing they pertained to even existed now.
Briefly, she wondered if there was any way to remove the parasite, but it occurred to her fairly quickly that that wasn’t going to help. If there’d been a way, or if that would’ve made a difference, they would have done that instead of deciding to kill her. She hadn’t come cheap. The company had spent a lot of money training her to be a rogue hunter, and even more bioengineering her for strength, stamina, high pain tolerance, computer assisted mental capabilities, and a broader hearing and sight range.
Anyway, she felt strangely possessive about it. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t really want to examine it at the moment. But she did know she didn’t want to make any kind of decision about, possibly, removing it until she’d had time to think it through and consider every possibility.
Besides, the tech had been dying. How much faith could she place in anything he’d told her? The company’s reasons for trying to terminate her could be something else entirely.
Unfortunately, no amount of carefully reconstructing her actions over the past month, or the month before that, produced any possibilities. She hadn’t failed her last mission and, even if she had, punishment for failure was only a death sentence if the rogue dealt it out. The company was content to fine her all her pay and half her previous paycheck.
Shaking her head, Dalia finally decided she couldn’t waste time trying to figure it out. It was enough to know she was dead if ... when they caught her. The only chance that she could see of turning the ‘when’ to ‘if’ was if she managed to get off world. Sooner or later, if she stayed, they were going to catch her, with or without the locator.
She could die a slow death here without food or water, or risk getting caught going for supplies. One retina scan and she was done for. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to buy anything without having her barcode scanned, even in the black market, and once they had that, they’d have a bead on her location.
They would be expecting her to try to get off planet, though.
Her only chance, as far as she could see, was to locate a smuggler and either take the ship, or bargain a ride, and that meant she was going to have to figure out a way out of the dome.
Chapter Three
It took her almost a week to locate a man who claimed he not only knew a way out of the dome undetected, but also knew where the smugglers usually landed. It stood to reason that he would since there wouldn’t be any other reason for leaving the protection of the dome.
