Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

dogs are served. And whatever happens, if you run into your counterparts, don’t let them touch you. The two of you will end up blown back to your own realms, and I might not be able to figure out how to get you back.”
    “That’s silly. Robots don’t eat corn dogs,” Sam said.
    “That’s another thing. Cam hated being called a robot—don’t use that word.”
    “Well, what are we supposed to call them?” Sam said.
    Ping interjected, “We shouldn’t call them anything. They are just people. We shouldn’t refer to them as robots or synthetic any more than you and I refer to each other as human or homo sapiens. Understand?”
    Sam nodded.
    Mara walked around the end of the gurney and crossed the room to the door. She grabbed the doorknob and turned to the side, pressing her ear to the door. Stepping back, she slowly turned the knob, making as little noise as possible. After a soft click , she opened the door a crack and peeked out. Glancing back, she waved Ping over.
    After taking a look, he stepped away and whispered, “It’s not a garage. It’s a hallway.”
    Nodding, Mara said, “I don’t hear anyone. Hold the door. I’ll step out to see where we are.”
    She slipped outside and didn’t release the edge of the door until she saw Ping nodding to her. Turning, she looked toward what had been an open garage with an asphalt surface and row after row of painted lines marking each parking space, broken up occasionally by rounded concrete columns. Instead, she faced a concrete wall containing a row of doors with entry keypads identical to the wall behind her. It seemed someone had enclosed the garage and added additional storage units into the basement of the hospital. If this was a hospital .
    The only other point of reference she could remember was the elevator. Spinning to her left, she looked down the hall. She took several long measured steps—strides a tad longer and slower than was natural for her—and stopped. Off to the side of the hall, in a tiny alcove, stood a set of closed beige elevator doors below a single plastic arrow that pointed upward. To the left of the doors, mounted on the concrete wall, was a white institutional placard displaying S2 in bold black letters. Below that was a single silver button with an arrow pointing upward.
    Mara glanced back to the storage room for a moment, then stepped into the alcove. Pressing the Up button, she self-consciously tried to center herself with the elevator doors as she waited. The button and the arrow above the door lit up, emitting a loud bing . The doors slid open. Holding the doors apart with her left hand, she leaned into the elevator. It looked ordinary enough. On one side were two vertical rows of numbered buttons. On the other was a floor directory. The title at the top of the directory read Cascadia Community Hospital. She stepped inside, let the doors close behind her and pressed the L button.
    The elevator car rose and continued past the S1 level, slowing as it approached the lobby. Mara tensed as it came to a stop and the doors opened. A cacophony of chaotic sounds filled the elevator, screams of pain mixed with bellowed orders, the clattering of metal and plastic, the sounds of soft-soled shoes running, ripping cloth and slamming doors. Scrub-clad orderlies and nurses sped by the open elevator doors pushing a gurney and several pieces of equipment on wheels.
    After they passed, Mara stepped out, accidently kicking something on the floor. She watched it slide across the hall into the wall opposite the elevator. It was a leg—a woman’s leg torn from mid-thigh with both its calf and red high-heeled foot still attached. The ragged top of the appendage sprouted white plastic fibers bunched around a gun-metal-colored femur and oozed a thick white liquid. Mara grimaced and stepped back, but the elevator doors had closed behind her.
    A young man in scrubs and a white lab coat pushed her out of the way and dashed around the wall at the end of the