The Lazarus War Read Online Free Page A

for.”
    “Thanks, Nate. I appreciate it.”
    Before the rest of the crew could ask questions or argue, I turned and disappeared into the crowd.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE MEET
    The pain as I pulled the glass free. Wet, warm blood. I wished that it had been mine; wanted it to be mine. Cold eyes staring back at me. Accusing me.
    As I walked, I considered that I could bump into
her
at any moment. I scanned the faces in the crowd around me; thought about what I’d say if I saw her.
    The District wasn’t very well demarked. Rather than a clear, security-approved checkpoint between the Civilian District and the rest of the
Point
, the character of the corridors seemed to gradually shift. Less commerciality, more practicality. There were security cameras poised over the corridors. My natural inclination was to hide from those. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t the Pen any more, and that I had every right to be here. Even so, I expected to hear tell-tale whirring as the device tracked me but they didn’t seem to be working. Instead, the cameras were dull-eyed, hanging slack from their moorings.
    “Something that I can help you with, miss?” a robot asked me as I lingered at a junction.
    It was an old security-issue model, fitted with chunky wheels and manipulator claws. A vid-screen set into its torso displayed a variety of facial expressions as though caught in a loop.
    “I’m looking for the visitors’ centre. For military personnel.”
    The droid paused for a long while. The face continued to fluctuate from happy, to sad, then back again. I thought about just walking away, but it finally answered.
    “Local communications are offline at this time. Please consult me later for further information.”
    “All right,” I said, backing away from the robot. It was freaking me out.
    “Have a better one,” the machine said. It circled around erratically. “Thanks for the memory, Colonel.”
     
    Eventually I found a terminal point and called up a map to the visitors’ centre.
    It was on one of the upper decks, a few sectors from Civilian Docking and the District. I found a monorail station – the lines ran across the base – but there was a ten-deep crowd of passengers waiting on the platform.
    “What’s going on?” I said to a woman in uniform standing beside me.
    She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Who knows? It’s been like this for a week or so.”
    “Really?”
    “Sci-Div needs to sort this out. I’m working Systems Admin – over in Sector Sixteen – and we’ve had a sensor grid blackout for the last two days. No one seems to be doing anything about it.”
    I grimaced in sympathy. The woman disengaged from the conversation, cursing as the overhead screen updated to MONORAIL OUT OF ORDER – SYSTEM FAULT .
    “Figures,” I whispered.
    The rest of the station was doing just as badly. Wall-screens around me flashed with error messages, if the terminals worked at all. Military and scientific staff were arguing, each accusing the other of not doing their jobs properly.
    Ahead of me, under a security arch set with amber lights – the word INACTIVE on a monitor above it – was the
Point
’s visitors’ centre.
     
    There had been a visitors’ centre at the Van Drake Penitentiary. It was a cold, severe building. Somewhere you went to be reminded that you were in the correctional, that you were held at the government’s leisure. Lots of the inmates lived for their visits. Not me. I only went there twice, during the first few weeks of my internment. My mother came the first time, my grandmama the second. I cried through both visits, pleaded with them to get me out of there. They looked on through the glass windows with dead expressions; told me that there was nothing they could do, that this was all my fault anyway. They were right, of course, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to hear it. I was only fifteen years old.
    I recalled that memory as I walked into the
Liberty Point
visitors’ centre. It