Free The Chamber in the Sky by M. T. Anderson Page B

or if all the lights were new.
    He saw that Gregory had lain back on the floor, and was completely lost. The blond boy no longer even seemed to notice the Thusser in the corner. He stared at the ceiling and held one arm straight up with the fingers twitching, as if he could play with the bobbling sparks ten feet above him.
    Brian knew exactly what was happening. And so he shut his eyes.
    He clamped his arm over them. He rocked forward.
    Then he heard the Thusser walking over.
    He did not open his eyes. Carefully, he hid one of his hands behind his back.
    The Thusser put gentle fingers on Brian’s arm, and began to pull it away from the boy’s face.
    For a moment, Brian opened his eyes. The hideous, childlike face with its pudgy tongue stared down at him.
    He shut his eyes and then there were fingers on his face.
    He pulled his one hand from behind him. In it, he had the strap he’d grabbed and snapped off as he was thrown into the room — and the little dagger that hung on it.
    The Thusser pinched Brian’s eyelids and tried to drag them open.
    The boy stabbed upward.
    He hit the torturer’s stomach. The guard bellowed — let out a wheeze — and stumbled back. Brian opened his eyes.
    The lights were still whirling all over the room. They scraped across the gasping Thusser’s wide face.
    The Thusser grabbed a curved sword and whipped it out of its strap. His eyes wide in pain, he swung it, lurching toward Brian.
    There was a crash, and the room went dark. Gwynyfer had knocked the projector off the table. Brian scuttled into something metal and staggered. He ducked.
    The Thusser would be able to see in the dark as soon as his eyes adjusted. Gwynyfer would, too, to some extent. But Brian and Gregory were blind.
    Brian heard the Thusser running for him. He darted to the side — trying to make his way to the door, where the light switch was.
    The Thusser followed him.
    Brian found the wall. He began feeling along, scraping his hands over the rust. There was a crash and Gwynyfer exclaimed, “Take that!”
    She must have thrown the projector at the Thusser. Brian could hear the man kicking aside the refuse.
    Brian turned on the light.
    Gwynyfer was standing on a table, about to throw a length of metal pipe like a javelin. Gregory was on the floor, wincing at the brightness. The Thusser, bleeding heavily, was right by Brian.
    He swung his scimitar.
    Brian fell back. That was lucky: If he’d stayed on his feet, he would have been sliced in two.
    The torturer swung again.
    And this time, he might have killed Brian if, three hundred miles away, a heart hadn’t beaten, and a pulse hadn’t hit.

T he heart that had beat was called #4 (McRiddle’s Plum). It was a muscle as large as Iceland. It twitched and collapsed and expanded again, blasting out a tsunami of gore into the arteries, sucking up a rich tide of flux through the veins. The wave of blood coursed through the Great Body, tearing up forests of weeds, hurling dim monstrosities through valves and corridors, slamming submarine boats — and sending the abandoned extraction facility spinning like a jack tossed hard in a game.
    Everything was thrown into the air. The Thusser and Brian were hurled onto the floor — then onto the curved wall, where they stuck while the whole base swirled down the artery. Gregory and Gwynyfer were plastered right near them. The metal walls vibrated with the rush of flux.
    Gregory had fallen to the wall right next to the half-absorbed Norumbegans. They gaped at him. As thefactory tumbled, Gregory found himself rolling toward their vanishing bodies. He scraped with his hands to try to keep himself away.
    The Thusser was breathing heavily, losing a lot of blood through the wound to his stomach. Brian thought there was a chance of escaping if they could only make a run for it.
    He watched as the heavy cauldron that blocked the door on the other side of the room slowly slid across the floor.