It was the wet sharp crunch of a body breaking.
He spun toward it.
Brody was down.
Another timber had collapsed right across him, one of the heavy braces that had let go, and it had caught him across the lower legs and pinned him to the chamber floor.
Brody was hissing through his teeth, which was the equivalent of a scream from someone less resilient than a Guardian.
The ceiling and the ground above it were still coming down, and Onidu, who had been bracing the far side of the breach, let go because there was no one left on that side.
He crossed to Brody in two strides and lifted the timber off his legs.
Between one pendulum swing and the next, Anandur could see the unnatural angle of both legs below the knees.
He rushed over and lifted Brody into his arms, while Onidu held the useless legs so they wouldn't flop around and make the injury worse.
"Julian," Anandur bellowed. "Brody is injured. Both legs badly broken."
Okidu, who had been holding the failing passage open, released the weight the moment the last body cleared it and threw himself backward out of the breach. The passage closed behind him with a final grinding crash.
The roar died in a long settling rumble, and then a patter of small stones falling. Then there was silence.
Anandur knelt on the floor with Brody cradled in his arms, his body curved over the Guardian. He was coughing dust, and his ears were ringing, but he was still counting bodies through the murk to make sure no one had been buried under the debris.Yamanu, Drova, Pavel, the Guardians, and the other Kra-ell were all there.
Brody was limp in his arms, his face ashen and sweating.
Anandur scanned the area again, suddenly panicking because he hadn't found Julian in his previous scan.
"Hold on," Anandur told Brody. "Julian is coming."
Or so he hoped.
When the doctor emerged from behind a pile of debris with his medical case, Anandur was ready to kiss him.
Julian knelt beside Brody's legs, dropped his medical case, and started moving his hand gently over the breaks.
"Clean breaks, both of them, which is the only good news here."
21
DAVE
The hotel suite was quiet except for Anita's breathing and the low murmur of the comms.
She was asleep on the sofa, curled on her side with one of the brocade cushions under her cheek, her green wrap dress smoothed down over her knees and her gold sandals set side by side neatly on the floor where Number Five had placed them after she'd kicked them off. She'd come at nine, escorted by the same handler as always, and they'd played three hands of Crazy Eights and eaten most of the fruit and some of the cakes. Sometime in the second hour the effects of the drug she'd been pumped with before coming started to wear off, and she'd grown lucid and melancholy and asked if it was okay if she lay down.
They'd said yes, and she'd fallen asleep.
After six visits, all lasting until morning, the pattern was established, and no one wondered about her being requested anymore.
It had become routine.
In a few days that routine would change a little and then a lot. They would request her for two full days, so no one would come to collect her while they took her to the ship along with the other women.
Naturally, she didn't know that, but the Eight had no doubt that she would have said yes if they'd asked, and not just because Petrov wanted her freed. She just wanted to be free, and once she was free, she would decide if she wanted Petrov in her life.
Number Three was sitting with his feet on the desk, his hands behind his head, and his eyes closed. He was listening to the comms, but since there was nothing interesting happening tonight, he was mostly listening to static and thinking about his mother, and the collective was trying to give him space to do so in his own private corner of the hive mind, but without much success. Number Three's thoughts were louder than most and ignoring them was next to impossible.
