“I’m sorry he’s doing this to you,” he half-whispered. “Fight it if you can. I promise we’ll try to save you.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and ran.
Behind him, he heard the piercing cry of Renee’s voice, echoing up and through the air as if she’d used a bullhorn. “He has my blood in his right pocket! Don’t let him leave with it!”
And then came the sound of hundreds of people running and screaming in a synchronized cry of pursuit.
“Can you pull him out yet?” Master George asked for the twentieth time in the last ten minutes, pacing the floor of the command room.
“No,” Rutger replied, his eyes riveted to the nanolocator monitor. “But his heart rate is spiking again—I didn’t think it could possibly get higher, but now it’s in the danger zone.” In his hands, Rutger held the Barrier Wand, programmed to wink Sato back from the mountaintop.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Master George whispered under his breath.
“Should’ve gone with ’im, I should,” Mothball said from her chair in the corner. “Bugger, I should’ve ruddy gone with ’im.”
Master George stopped, turning toward his tall friend. “Perhaps, my good Mothball, perhaps. However, we all agreed that this was the perfect opportunity for Sato to snap out of the haze of his past and find himself. If you were there to save him, he might never truly join us.”
“He needs to make it back to the execution cliff,” Rutger said. “Until then, there’s nothing I can do.”
“He’ll make it,” Master George said. “I know it. And when he returns, he’ll truly be a Realitant, the shade of his parents’ death no longer a crutch to bind him in shadow.”
“Very poetic,” Rutger muttered. “But the way his heart’s racing, we’ll need to give him a transplant as soon as he gets back.”
“Just keep that Wand ready, Rutger. Keep it ready.”
Sato gasped for breath as he ran through the dimly lit tunnel; it hadn’t seemed so long the first time he’d walked through its winding path. The escalating screams behind him brought horrible images to his mind of what would happen if he were caught. Every muscle in his body begged him to stop, but he kept running, limping slightly from the pain in his shins, especially on his right leg.
Worried the blood-filled syringe in his right pocket might break, he reached in and pulled it out, gripping the plastic cylinder once again like a dagger in his hand. It almost slipped from the sweat on his palm—he shifted it to his left hand while he wiped his fingers dry, then switched back.
He kept running.
He turned a corner and saw the elevator up ahead, its steel cage open and ready for him. He could see the lever mechanism inside the sliding mesh door. He was almost safe.
The hollow echoes of his pursuers bounced through the tunnel like thunder crackling along open plains. Sato heard noises of feet stomping on stone, kicked rocks, heavy breathing, grunts. He heard Renee shout something; he couldn’t make out the words, but the intensity of the screams jumped a notch.
Sato looked over his shoulder and saw the pack of crazies only thirty feet behind him and gaining ground. Renee led them, her eyes focused, her hoard of followers on her tail, waving their arms, shaking their fists. It was like the villagers chasing Frankenstein’s monster—the only things missing were pitchforks and torches.
Sato faced forward again; so close, the elevator was only a few feet away. He reached up, slipped the backpack off his left shoulder, then his right, still running, still holding tight to the blood sample.
He windmilled his left arm and threw the backpack forward. It landed with a thud in the back corner of the elevator just as he crossed the threshold of the cage. He reached out with his free hand and slid the door shut with a squeal and a clank as it landed home. The latch to close it was small and weak—Sato knew it wouldn’t last long. He closed it anyway then knelt on the floor and pushed up on the lever with his shoulder, screaming with the effort until the thing finally snapped into position.
With a lurch, the elevator started moving upward just as Renee and dozens of the screaming mob slammed into the cage, clawing at the steel, screaming and spitting. Hundreds of scabby fingers squirmed through the small openings, some of the crazies climbing onto the elevator, others violently pulling and pushing on the door. Sato scrambled to the far corner, staring at the sickening sight.
The elevator had only gone up a few feet when dozens more of his pursuers crawled beneath it and gripped the floor through the checkered holes, hanging on, pulling toward the ground. The cage slowed to a stop, the weight of the people too great. Sato knew if he could make it to the narrow shaft cut into the stone above, then the psychos clinging to the side would have no choice but to let go or be crushed to death. He jumped to his feet, kicking at the fingers below him, stomping repeatedly in a ridiculous dance, watching in triumph as those he smashed let go and fell to the floor.
The elevator stuttered and paused, screams coming from above as the topmost section entered the main elevator shaft and crushed several of the inmates who still clung to the side. The cage slowed again, and Sato closed his eyes before he could see the gruesome results. He heard the thumps of bodies on the stone below, and the elevator lurched upward again, regaining its normal speed.
Please, he thought. Please be over, please let me go home.
A wrenching click of steel made his eyes pop open just as the door to the cage slid open with a screech. Renee had somehow broken the latch, squeezing her body against the elevator until she could get it open. She and Sato were alone, having left everyone else below, their wails and cries already dying out with the distance.
“Almost made it, didn’t you?” Renee said, her chest heaving with her deep breaths.
Sato reached down and pulled the plastic cover off the blood-filled syringe, then held it out like a knife. “Stay back,” he said, bending his knees in a crouch. “There’s no way you can win a fight with me.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” she replied. They circled, each staying as far apart from the other as possible in the small cage. “He’s in my head. I’ll do whatever he asks.”
“Why are you doing this?” Sato asked.
“I told you, he’s in my—”
“Not you!” Sato screamed. “Reginald Chu! Why are you doing this!”