The electronic voice boomed again. “Laser cuff this one first.”
Two creatures grabbed him. A third attached dull silver bands to his wrists and ankles. Then they let him go.
Doyal stared uncomprehendingly at the ornaments. They weren’t connected to each other. They didn’t limit his movement like manacles. What they were supposed to do, or prevent him from doing, he couldn’t imagine.
“Can you run, Baron?” the monster said.
Doyal looked up at visor. He nodded. “I can run.”
“If you make it past the fence, off the parking lot before I can zap you with this,” the creature said, patting the side of its laser weapon, “I will let you live. Otherwise you will die where you stand. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Doyal said.
The monster then addressed the other captives, “This is a lesson meant for all of you. Watch closely.” To the baron, it said, “Feel free to start whenever you’re ready.”
Doyal had butterflies in his stomach and the muscles in his legs were locked tight. He couldn’t do anything about the butterflies, but he stretched his thighs, first one, then the other, all the while looking over his shoulder at the monster. He had no doubt that clearing the parking lot was his one and only chance to survive.
As he turned away, preparing to make his sprint, the creature lowered its weapon, pointing its muzzle at the ground. The weapon stayed down as Doyal took off running. Arms pumping, legs driving, he dashed as fast as he could for the line of monsters that stood between him and the downed fence. As he approached them, the monsters stepped aside to let him pass. Doyal immediately began zigzagging, figuring that their leader had its weapon up and a clear line of fire.
His legs started to give out fifty feet from the crushed fence. At every stride he thought surely he would be hit. Wheezing from the effort, Doyal threw himself across the finish line. He stumbled over the mesh and turned to face the parking lot. Still backing away, he had enough energy to thrust his balled right fist into the air. A gesture of victory.
Cut short.
His legs buckled under him and his right hand sailed away from his wrist, arcing back toward the parking lot. The baron sat down hard on his backside. At first, he didn’t understand what had happened. His brain couldn’t make sense of what his eyes were seeing. The silver cuffs lay on the dirt beside him, along with both of his severed feet and one of his severed hands. Awful truth and awful agony struck in the same instant.
The monster in charge turned its back on Doyal’s shrill screams and snarled an order to its subordinates. “Now that they understand how short the leash is, cuff them all.”
Chapter Six
Ryan Cawdor awoke in pitch darkness, gasping for breath. The air reeked of ammonia. It burned like cold fire inside his nose, his throat, all the way to the bottom of his lungs. Though he couldn’t see anything, he sensed he was in an enclosed, crowded space.
Sitting up, Ryan fumbled at his belt for the rubberized grip of a battery-powered flashlight. When he turned it on and played the bright circle of light over his surroundings, it revealed a confusing world of green on green. Slick, convoluted drapes hung like baffles from the high ceiling and trailed down to the floor, blending into the landscape of erratic folds and rounded humps.
It was quiet.
So quiet Ryan could hear the pounding of his own heart.
He knew exactly where he was. Somehow he’d materialized in the Slime Zone of the parallel Earth, a whitecoat created no-man’s land deep beneath the surface. With every breath he was sucking in spores of genetically modified cyanobacteria. Unless he found a way out and quickly, the microscopic organisms would fill his lungs like wet cement and suffocate him.
He used his free hand to push up from the ground. As he did, his fingers slid off a solid object hidden beneath countless layers of bacterial membrane. Whatever was hidden, it shifted under his weight. It shifted, then slowly twisted back. Automatically, he swept the flash beam over it.