“Ham, take the boy,” the thickset man ordered his companion, and Ham—who was swarthy and squat— seized Dean with a strength of grip that gave lie to his fat frame, lowering the youth to the ground as Dean fell, upside down, from the opening of the duct.
Dean sat on the floor of the tunnel, a small crowd gathering around him. The thickset man seized the boy by the hand, pumping it and announcing himself as Donal. “Where have you been, son? Where have you been?” he kept repeating.
Dean found himself without the opportunity to answer, the man’s concerned questioning cutting across his attempts to speak. So the youngster used the man’s arm—hand still pumping—to pull himself to his feet.
“Yeah, yeah, please,” Dean said quickly, trying to speak between the concerned questioning, which was now beginning to come from the small crowd as Dean still found himself unable to answer. “Look, thanks, but I really can’t…” He shrugged, not able to finish the sentence. Detaching his hand, he backed away from his rescuer, through the crowd. “I can’t stop, really, thanks…”
Dean turned, looking around to orient himself. He now knew which way he had to go in order to reach the unit where his father and friends had been billeted. He started to run, despite the protests of his aching limbs.
“Well, what do you make of that?” Donal asked no one in particular. “Is that what you call friendly?”
The fat man Ham shrugged. “Outlanders,” he said simply, as though that were all the answer needed.
RYAN OUTLINED the situation to his party.
J.B. blew out his cheeks and pushed his fedora back on his head. “Well, I guess you’re not chilled yet, so that’s a start.” He sighed.
“Yeah, John, I find that really reassuring,” Mildred said with heavy sarcasm.
“He’s right,” Ryan replied. “We’re here together, and we know what we’re walking into later. If it’s some kind of mock trial and then a chilling, at least we can make a fight of it.”
“Or find Dean, get out first,” Jak added.
“Always ask the impossible and expect the unexpected.” Doc smiled. “We do not even know where he is.”
But even as he said this, they all noticed Jak—on sentry duty—suddenly stiffen. The albino turned to them, a rare smile cracking his scarred white face. “Always expect unexpected,” he said simply.
With which he disappeared around the curtain, returning a few moments later supporting an exhausted Dean, who had run despite the aches and strains of his muscles, and had collapsed into Jak’s support gladly when the albino rushed to greet him.
Krysty aided Jak in seating the youth on the edge of the bed. Mildred immediately stripped him to the waist to stem the bleeding from some of the deeper scratches on his back, which had soaked the back of his shirt in blood.
“God in heaven, boy, what have you done to yourself?” she whispered.
“Listen,” Dean said breathlessly, his head suddenly swimming with exhaustion now that he had reached relative safety and was no longer moving solely on adrenaline. He had to concentrate on every word, forcing them out. “Listen, you were right, Mildred. Jenna, she has old tech, and these muties that she’s made. She wants—”
“The master race,” Doc interjected. “As ever with these people. History never learns. It just keeps making the same mistakes on an endless loop.”
“Yeah, right, Doc, but saying it doesn’t help now,” Mildred snapped. “Let Dean finish. We don’t have much time.”
Dean gasped out what had happened to him.
“You think that both her and Harvey will use the meet to get us chilled and mebbe try and get Alien out of the way, as well? Say he’s weak for letting us in?” Krysty posed.
Ryan frowned. “Alien’s a good man, and popular. That’d be hard for them, unless they’ve got the whole of the sec force with them, and I doubt that from what I’ve seen.”
“Yeah, second that,” Jak added.
“So we need a game plan,” J.B. said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “We’ve got to get our asses out of here, and keep our backs covered as we go.”