The Minus Faction, Episode One: Breakout Read Online Free PDF

waiting arms of his chair. It shook and creaked as if giving squeals of joy. John straightened his legs, strapped himself down, and threw the morphine drip to the floor. He wiggled the joystick fixed to the armrest near his right hand, his good hand. The electrical motor clicked and whined as the soldier moved toward the door. "What did he say?"
    "Who?"
    The captain maneuvered down the hall, to the elevator, and pushed the 'UP' button.
    "Gabe. What did he say about coming back?"
    The door dinged open and John moved in first. The metal walls of the car were polished. It smelled like new carpet. John spun his chair in a little arc and pushed the button for the ninth floor.
    Amarta had barely an inch on the soldier in the chair. She felt so short next to him. Short and fat. She tugged her white coat straight. "I haven't spoken to him. I just got the message. When I called back, I got his voice mail. I told him that I would be in today and he could come whenever he wanted."
    John nodded. It was a good sign.
    The elevator dinged again and John rolled down a bright hall on the ninth floor of the new, high tech hospital. He pushed open a heavy, polished wood door. Amarta looked at the sign on the wall.
    PROSTHETICS .
    She stepped into the room as the lights flickered on. There were no windows. The walls were beveled concrete slabs. "Why are we here?"
    Rows of hollow plastic limbs in a diverse selection of skin tones hung from hooks and rested on racks. A bank of dark computer equipment ran through the middle of the room. Large flat screens were mounted on brackets that hung from the ceiling.
    "No one works here on Sundays." John pointed. "Stand in that corner. As close to the wall as you can."
    Amarta stepped forward and disturbed a row of dangling cybernetic feet. It was creepy. She put her nose to the corner. The wall was cold. "Why do I feel like a dunce?"
    "You can turn around."
    Dr. Zabora complied in shuffling steps, keeping as close to the wall as possible.
    "We're near the roof at the dead center of the building. The main power cabling for the whole complex runs behind those walls. In that corner, you're surrounded by enough concrete and enough magnetic discharge that anyone listening will get nothing but static."
    Amarta crossed her arms and leaned against the two walls meeting at her back. John was several feet in front of her. "What about you?"
    Regent smiled. "I'm clean, Doc. Trust me."
    "You know, if this were anyone else, any one else at all, I would take this as evidence of severe paranoid delusion."
    "Thinking they are out to get you is a lot different than just assuming they might be ."
    Amarta looked at the dangling limbs. Loose electrodes coiled from small openings like frayed nerves. Some were wrapped in plastic. "That makes entirely too much sense for where I'm standing."
    "You hear about the coma patient with the bullet in his leg?"
    Amarta turned back to John. "Did they have something to do with that."
    John shook his head. "Not them."
    "Are you saying you had something to do with that?"
    Regent waited a moment to judge the doctor's reaction.
    "John?"
    "The place where I was held . . . I wasn't the only prisoner. Most people here think the world is full of countries with clearly defined borders, and inside those borders everyone is pretty much the same: Chinese, Indians, Russians. But there are parts of the world that are at least as diverse as your average American street corner, places where folks come from all over to work in mines or run pipelines. Arab money. Or Chinese. Western brokers taking a cut. Big time power plays planned by spies and politicians on kickback.
    "Assuming you can speak anything but English, a black man doesn't stand out there. The guys who took me didn't know who I was. They just knew I was foreign. A mark."
    "Mark?"
    John nodded. "For ransom. It's a business. Organized crime. Shit, in that part of the world, I'm not even sure it's a crime. It's just business. Energy companies pay