A Plague in the Heavens
Burakh was nearly ready to make his break from Dankovsky. But he wasn't going to leave without accomplishing one thing - discerning whether or not there really had been an outbreak of the plague within these walls.
Landin was clever and curious and usually up to something he shouldn't be - Artemiy was going to miss him - and he had showed Burakh an interesting trick to get past the airlocked doors. (Dankovsky insisted on maintaining dictatorial control over the underground labs, but he was a scientist and not an administrator. The electronics were falling apart.) With that advice he could expand a little further into the labs than he had been able to before.
Burakh had tried to keep his plans secret - the last damned thing he needed was for Landin to risk exposure. The plague would have him dead within hours.
He had managed to get deeper in the laboratory on his own, anyway. It looked as if this area had something to do with advanced physics - a little hobby Daniel had no doubt kept up after discovering the transdimensional properties of the glass Tower. Artemiy wondered idly if Dankovsky ever did anything useful down here. Invented things, ran experiments on the public record. What names were the patents and papers under?
Then Burakh spotted something interesting. The centerpiece of the room was some sort of technology - he had never seen anything like it in his life - that appeared to have something like a handle on one end. Well, the circuitry was exposed (Solomon never would have stood for that! Burakh thought), if it were important it would be covered or protected somehow. Maybe it was some kind of crude door handle. Pull it and a wall would slide back, or you'd get access to an underground room. Dankovsky would have hidden the pestilence even deeper underground than Burakh - seeing where it led was worth a shot.
Artemiy reached out and grabbed it. There was a satisfying give, like sliding a USB plug into place -
- and then the light blinded him. He felt his mind lifting from his body, the way one succumbs to surgical anesthetic, and -
- and when he woke up, the first thing he saw was the face of a woman. "Aglaj - " He coughed compulsively. The air here didn't feel right. Too clean. Too thin. No, it wasn't Aglaja (though as beautiful as she was, and in a similar way). It wasn't a living being, in fact, but a poster of a redheaded woman, smiling beatifically from the wall. An actor or a singer, maybe. He couldn't make out the text.
Burakh sat up, and immediately wished he hadn't. The light here was incredible. Every surface shone. Was he in the city? How had - Well. So he was caught sneaking and Dankovsky threw him out. Made too much trouble, got tired of him. It was bound to happen. His lip twitched in irritation. So be it.
No. That was out of character. Oinon would have yelled at him first.
He pulled himself to his feet.
It only took a minute to convince him that he wasn’t anywhere he had ever been before. He hadn’t seen all of the city, but nothing there was like this. He eyed the odd, floating patterns above him. Was that a ceiling? A wall? Just some kind of colored light? Was he inside or outside? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t like that he couldn’t tell.
Where were all the people?
He sensed movement down an alleyway, heard quiet murmuring. Worried voices. The surgeon in him didn’t like their tone. Someone was in trouble, he thought, quickening his footsteps, and those people didn’t have a clue what to do.
A small crowd of people were surrounding a collapsed woman, and Burakh - Well. Burakh recognized it instantly.
That girl had the plague.
He had nothing. Damn it, he had was nothing - not his herbs, not the sacred blood - Then the only thing he could promise her was a more comfortable death. (And to get those people away from her before she infected them all.) He brought a handkerchief to his nose, pushed a richly dressed gentleman out of the way, and knelt by her side. He checked her pulse - it was still strong. It hadn’t been long since the disease found a nidus in her heart. She coughed a little and moaned with pain.
“Water,” he commanded. (Had none of them ever seen a sick person before?) “One of you, bring her water!”
