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the building. She pushed herself to her feet and ran.
"What is it?" she shouted, flinging open the Monitor Room door. The technician turned toward her,
white-faced and scared. GALLIARD, her nametag said.
"I was watching them every moment," the tech babbled. "Every moment! They didn't go anywhere,
they couldn't have, I locked them in myself "
The denials made no sense until Jeanette looked at the screens. Eight were live. Six showed sleeping
subjects, lying on the floors of their padded cells.
Two cells were empty as in, nobody home.
Well, Galliard, you're going to wish you'd chosen another career when I get done with you.
"Where the hell are they?" Jeanette asked in dangerously reasonable tones. She took a step toward
the cringing girl.
A scream from the monitors stopped her. The subjects were awake, going from a comatose sleep to
full consciousness in instants. She watched, spellbound, as first one, then another, of her test cases began
throwing himself about his cell, violently seeking escape, battering and tearing at the padded walls until
streaks and flowers of blood appeared.
After a timeless moment, Jeanette realized that the technician was staring at her, waiting for her to
give orders. Jeanette reached out and turned the master audio control on the console to "Off." It didn't
totally shut out the screams, audible even through the soundproofing, but it did make it easier to think as
she mulled over what to do next.
Sedate them? No, with the dose in their systems, that would be a quick ticket to the boneyard, and
even if they were doomed, she didn't want to kill them so quickly. Restrain them? Gazing down at the
gyrating madmen, Jeanette wasn't sure there was enough money in the world to pay anyone to enter one
of those cells. One of the madmen the display at the bottom said his name was Nelson cheated of
any other outlet for his rage, had turned his fury on himself. He'd gouged out both his eyes and clawed his
skin to bleeding ribbons, and was still tearing at himself, howling in a deep voice as he drooled blood
from a mouth from which he'd torn his own tongue.
Galliard was still staring at her, eyes wide and scared.
"Go find Mr. Lintel. Tell him two of the subjects have escaped. Tell him to find them," Jeanette
ordered. That should keep both Robert and this bimbette busy!
Galliard scuttled out. Jeanette settled down in the vacated chair to watch the show.
Urla was inside the building now, crawling through the ventilation system unseen, making slow
progress against the invisible headwind of madness that buffeted it. The presence of Cold Iron was a
palpable weight against its bones, but unlike others of the Seleighe kin, the redcap was not affected by its
poison. It winced as the first mind was joined by one, two, three others, until the four of them raged in a
torment that was almost Power the rage of a demon lord. What was it the mortals did here to cause
such anguish? Urla desperately wished to learn their secret, for it would make the redcap's kind a rich
banquet. Some there were among the Unseleighe Court who fed on emotion as Urla fed on lives, and did
it own the secret of such cosmic despair, it could trade it to them to its advantage.
But then something happened that thrust all thought of self-interest from the redcap's mind. For the
last of the mortals prisoned here awoke, and the uprush of true Power nearly blinded his Sidhe senses.
Here was the power of Bard or Elven mage trapped in mortal flesh a wellspring of such Power as the
dark lord Aerune had sent him to find. It was here, somehow here where it had not been a moment
before, in mortals who had not possessed it before this instant.
Daniel Carradine awoke with a sudden start, shivering and sweating, his strongest emotion a cheated
anger that whatever it was that Keith had supplied, it hadn't taken the edge off his need. The
long-unslaked craving, stronger than he had ever known it, filled him now like a wild thing desperate to
be free.
His Lady... his beautiful White Lady.... Somehow Daniel could sense her somewhere near,
somehow certain that this was Truth, and not some withdrawal-fuelled hallucination. His hunger was
strong enough to tear down walls, to see into all the hidden places of the world as if they were made of
glass. He knew she was here, knew that all he had to do was reach out for her, and he could have her.
Daniel reached. The first attempt brought pain, enough almost to blot out the fire in his bones, but it
also carried a teasing promise of certainty. If he could only try a little harder...
He reached out again, whimpering as he did it, his whole body shaking and drenched in a greasy
sweat. The pain flared again, blinding him, but behind it he felt a strange cool flexing of senses he'd never
known before, and abruptly there was a hard roundness in his hand the object of his desire, summoned
to him through all the walls and barriers that separated them. In his surprise, he dropped it, and then
crawled frantically across the padded floor after it until he'd grabbed it in both hands.
He looked down at the stoppered jar half filled with glistening white powder. He didn't need to open
it to know what it was. His Lady. The White Lady. Pure, pharmaceutical-grade heroin.
He could have taken her that way, opened the bottle and snorted its contents or spilled it across his
tongue, but now Daniel knew he didn't need to. The rest of what he needed to make everything perfect
was out there. All he had to do was imagine it, and its location appeared in his mind. Then all he had to
do was... reach. This time, when his hand was filled, he clutched the bottle tightly, chuckling with success.
Here and here and here. And wilderness is paradise enow,3 he quoted out of some half-full store of
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