Free Runaway Heart by Stephen J. Cannell

three letters. He wrote them on a paper cocktail napkin on his
bedside table, then looked down at the letters once again, wondering what they
might stand for:
     
    OCT
     
    He was just starting the cracking
sequence on the fourth.
          OCT. October, maybe? But why would Gen-A-Tec go to all the trouble
of decoding the name of a month? Probably because it wasn't a month. It was
something else. Then his program beeped and he quickly had the next letter, 0.
     
    OCTO
     
          October: the tenth month. Ten maybe? He wrote it down. October?
Octogeneric? Octopod? Keep going, he thought. He was already over halfway
through deciphering it and started running sequences on the next two symbols.
     
    The windowless van had been parked
outside the new Fairview Hotel for almost ten minutes when Ranger Captain Dave
"Hi-Ho" Silver returned. He was dressed in a black business suit, and
he immediately began stripping off his tie as soon as he got back inside the
vehicle that was loaded with video and sound monitors.
          "I think Valdez must be psychic," Captain Silver said.
They have security cameras on all the floors. . . in boxes. We could disable
the one on his floor, or maybe throw the hotel video system into temporary
phase jitter, but it's not gonna be covert and will take too much time, so I'm
gonna put a DU down."
          The entire response-retrieval team looked at the heavy metal cage
on the floor of the van. They couldn't see the DU but they could smell it and
hear it breathing.
          "Pan," Captain Silver said. "It's time."
     
     
     
     
     
EIGHT
     
    P an is sitting in
the box, his Geega thoughts coming slowly at first. Most times Pan uses only his strange
language of the dark place. His memories of a shadowed past are verdant, humid,
and atmospheric. Murderous urges are at times just below the surface, more
powerful than even the Geega's commands. He has to fight to keep these urges
under control, to do what the alpha Geega wants. The murderous impulse is
natural to him, like tasting blood, or eating meat, or the savage instinct of
the kill. Hunting and killing are deep inside Pan, although shadowed and
obscured. The other things the Geegas want him to do are much harder. Geegas
feed him and tell him things. They make him run, and kill, and work with their
fire-sticks. Geegas are alpha and Pan knows he has to obey them. Sometimes he
presents himself to the main Geega, turning around, raising his privates,
offering himself to be fucked. But the alpha Geega never accepts Pan's
presentation. Pan then lowers his head to the alpha Geega's feet, placing his
soft pink lips in the sand, humbling himself. But the alpha Geega just says his
strange speaking words that Pan has to struggle to understand. Then Pan turns
back and sits, waiting to be told what he must do. They are the leaders. He is
nothing. He is alive only at their pleasure. On his arm is the machine to make
the Geega talk. He looks down at it and finds the symbols on the keyboard. He
punches in two syllables and waits. An electronic voice emits from his vest:
          "Pan go?" It says with metallic Geega precision.
          "Thirty stories up," the alpha Geega answers.
          Pan cocks his head and tries to listen, tries to do the Geega
talk. . . so hard for him, but he can do it. Pan looks down at the thing on his
arm with all the buttons and little symbols that he has practiced on for hours.
It does the Geega talk for him, but he has to concentrate for a minute to
decide how to make the right talk. Pan pushes several buttons and waits while
the strange Geega voice comes out of the heavy vest that he wears, with its
lightbox screen and cold metal straps.
          "Thirty what?" the mechanical voice on his vest asks,
while Pan jumps up and down in pleasure. This is good talk. This is the right
Geega talk.
          The alpha Geega, Dave, looks into the cage, opens the door and
lets Pan out. He leads Pan to the front seat of