Paw-Prints Of The Gods Read Online Free PDF

control, but as expected the mechanism
remained locked. She considered the implant image that represented
the lock, a plain red square centred upon a stylised key, then
carefully gave it a mental prod. With a soft clunk, the symbol
changed from red to green. Ravana tentatively reached for the
control again. This time, the door opened.
    “Piece of cake,” she
murmured.
    The darkened corridor
beyond was empty. Ravana pressed the wall-mounted release button to
unlock the room next to hers and pushed open the door. Artorius sat
on the floor next to his bed, looking downcast. Seeing her enter,
he smiled and gave a little wave.
    Ravana offered the boy
her hand. “Coming?”
    Artorius nodded and
took her hand without a word. Ravana quickly led him into the
corridor and down towards the interview room, which now she thought
about it was the limit of her geographic knowledge of the hospice.
Her implant detected security cameras, but no alarms sounded and
any red symbols quickly became green, just as when she broke into
Que Qiao’s headquarters on Yuanshi to rescue her father. Upon
reaching the door she sought, she was annoyed to find Artorius
trying to pull her further along the corridor.
    “This is the way out!”
she whispered urgently. “There’s a window leading outside.”
    “We need to go down
here!” the boy protested stubbornly.
    “But...” Ravana began,
then saw Artorius’ expression. “Okay, have it your way. Don’t blame
me if we run into angry lizard monks!”
    Artorius led her to a
set of double doors at the end of the corridor. These too were
locked and this time the wall panel demanded a security code, but
Ravana was able to override the control with her implant as easily
as before. The door unlocked with a clunk.
    “How did you do that?”
asked an awestruck Artorius.
    “Magic,” she said.
    He wriggled past and
pushed open the doors. Lights flickered on in the room ahead.
Ravana’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she caught the musty metallic
odour of raw meat.
    “Oh my word,” she
murmured.
    The space before her
was crammed with racks of cages, medical apparatus, work benches
and all sort of paraphernalia ideally suited to a mad scientist’s
laboratory. The windowless chamber was not large and the chaotic
jumble of equipment left little room for manoeuvre. When Ravana saw
the empty cages and flecks of blood upon the floor, a tremor ran
down her spine. It reminded her of the secret animal-testing
laboratory she and her friends had stumbled upon on Yuanshi some
months before.
    “What is this place?”
she asked.
    “This way!” cried
Artorius, pulling her forward.
    Not all the cages were
empty. When Ravana saw the final large enclosure, her heart leapt
and her head filled with so many different emotions. The caged
creatures were the size of small apes, humanoid yet lizard-like
with grey hairless skin and mournful almond-shaped eyes peering
from an inverted triangular face. Spindly fingers clung
despondently to the bars of the cage as they lifted their gazes
towards their visitors.
    Ravana was one of the
few people ever to get close to the greys, the near-mythical aliens
of Epsilon Eridani. Incredibly, she recognised one of the creatures
now before her. The older-looking grey had distinctive blue
markings on its skin that had stayed in her mind ever since a
strange encounter in her childhood. Taranis later captured the same
creature and awarded it the dubious honour of being the mother to
his hybrid cyberclones. The grey was present at the birth of the
priest’s disciples on the Dandridge Cole , but despite
Ravana’s efforts had been condemned to the same fate as Taranis and
his creations. Yet at least two of the clones had survived. So it
seemed had their unwilling mother.
    “Pretty cool aliens,
eh?” remarked Artorius. The younger of the two greys, which wore
faint zebra-like red stripes upon its back, was reaching through
the bars towards the young boy, its lips twitching in what looked
like a