James Axler – Cold Asylum

“Wouldn’t expect it to be patrolled by sleepy, unarmed sec men,” J.B. muttered, getting a freezing glance from the woman.

“If you die because you have not listened to my warning, Mr. Dix, then I hope you will not blame me.”

“Course not. Can you get on with it?”

“These guards have orders to shoot on sight without the formality of a challenge. You must not leave your rooms.”

“Sure,” Ryan replied.

“To help ensure your safety, Baron Mandeville has instructed me to lock your rooms after you are within them. They will be opened in good time for tomorrow’s activities.”

“What if there’s a fire?” Michael asked.

The boy got a wintry smile. “That has all been taken care of. Emergency procedures will liberate you safely.”

It occurred to Ryan that there was an awful lot of “safe” and “safety” being talked about. He wondered just whose safety was really involved.

Mercy Weyman looked at the group. “Of course, if there should be any problem during the hours of curfew, such as a sudden illness, then you all have the bells within your room to summon assistance.” She paused a moment. “Which will, of course, arrive with a full security presence. Now, good night.”

RYAN HAD PLANNED to talk with the others as soon as they were left alone, but the curfew, confirmed by the turning of the key in the heavy brass lock, canceled that. He went straight to the windows, pulling aside the maroon velvet drapes.

It was pitch-dark outside the ville, and the leaded windows were locked shut. High-grade steel bars had been set deeply into their stone frames.

“Those’ll stop anyone getting in at Mandeville,” Krysty commented.

Ryan tested them, finding they didn’t budge at all. “Or stop any of us getting out.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Ryan had always found it difficult to fall asleep in a strange bed, particularly when the bed was as vast and luxurious as this one in the west wing of the ville of Sun Crest. Krysty prodded the mattress, shaking her head. “I swear that it’s goose feather, lover.”

“Goose feather! We had one like that back home in Front Royale. Great in winter. In summer you lay on it and it kind of enveloped you, like a sucking pit. All you could do to fight your way out of its embrace.”

“I think it’s romantic. Like in that old folk song about the princess who runs off with the gypsy into the forest. You know it, Ryan?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

He walked across the deep-piled carpet and pressed his forehead against the chill metal of the bars that closed off the window. “Guess we didn’t have a lot of free choice coming here.”

“I can’t get a true feeling about it. There’s a sort of softness in the ville, but hard underneath. Like Well, like this mattress but with barbed wire hidden at the bottom.”

“We could have opened up and blasted them away when Dean fell.”

“Sure we could, Ryan. And one of those sec men could easy have blown the boy’s skull apart. You said yourself they were well trained.”

“I guess. Still, let’s go to bed and catch up on sleep. Then see what the baron has to show us in the morning.”

RYAN FOUND the immensely soft mattress was just like his worst childhood memories. Wonderful for the first five minutes, then it became too hot, wrapping itself around his body, so that he seemed to be sinking slowly into a quagmire.

He tossed and turned, trying not to keep Krysty awake. But she had used the meditation techniques taught by her mother and was fast asleep, lying on her back, breath clicking faintly in her throat.

Eventually, grudgingly, he slithered into a shallow, fitful darkness.

THE SUN, directly overhead, had the pinkish-purple hue that threatened a serious chem storm. Only a few torn fragments of maroon clouds marred the perfection of the bowl of the sky.

The ground beneath Ryan’s boots was bone dry, shifting as he moved his feet, composed of the finest dust. A tiny tailless lizard, its scales an iridescent turquoise, scuttled from one shadowless rock to another.

The landscape was featureless, stretching around Ryan, making him feel like a man sitting at the bottom of a soup bowl, the gray desert seeming to rise all about him.