Falling by Debbie Moon Page B

unwanted. She leant closer to read the labels. Mrs this. Mr that. Dated last year, this year, years back. Same red stamp on the corner of every label. UNWANTED MATERIAL. Removed to be replaced by something new, stranger, better.
    Inside the cabinet, rows of carefully paired eyes stared disfocusedly back at her.
    She stepped back and hit the door, knocking it closed. Revealing a whole new dog-leg of the room, flat and depthless in the unsettling light. Square coffin-like tanks on steel benches bubbled with thick, gelatinous liquids, lapping the limbs of hunched and humanoid shapes.
    Suddenly, horribly sure she’d found what her past had summoned her back to witness, Jude edged towards the nearest tank.
    The bubbles rose in unbroken columns, blurring the details of the olive skinned huddle behind the glass. Dark hair floated horizontally on the surface, penetrated by tubes and pipes and long steel needles.
    As she pressed her cheek to the glass, finding it strangely warm, the creature on the other side shifted in her sleep and turned to face her near relative.
    Emma DiFlorian.
    Pale and cold and drawing hard on the oxygen mask buckled to her face, while the thick sea-green rose and fell, waves breaking over her shoulders in torture or in healing. Her lips parted – to offer some strange wisdom, perhaps, or to plead – but Jude was already stumbling backwards through the shelves, flailing arms knocking jars of once-precious body parts to shatter on the floor.
    Definitely time for back-up.
    Crashing back into the corridor, wide-eyed with panic and disbelief, she found that the salesman was trying to get past her.
    That was the only explanation for the suicidal headlong rush, the smudge of movement hurtling up the corridor towards her. She froze.
    For an instant, his face stabilised, still among a blur of racing limbs, and his dark eyes fixed on hers. Startled and somehow hurt, as if he’d expected something better from her.
    Jude raised the antibacterial spray bottle she’d lifted from the cleaning supplies and pumped the trigger.
    His head snapped back. Something too fast to resolve hit her in the ankles, the knees. The dark blur slowed and fell. Becoming a body, then limbs. A body she was falling onto as it slid along the corridor, face-up, knuckles ground into eyes, sweeping her feet from under her.
    Something hard and flat connected with her back, fell away; an opening door, spilling them into a darkened room. A table leg connected with her ribs, triggering a landslide of papers and coffee mugs and, finally, they were still.
    She was lying on his chest, staring into his face as he squirmed and struggled to cough up disinfectant.
    That was the other problem with heroics. They hurt.
    Swaying to her feet, Jude was astonished to discover that she hadn’t broken anything. Not even the stupid pointy heels on these ridiculous shoes. Last time she went anywhere in disguise.
    Last time, actually, she went anywhere on Schrader’s say-so.
    Superboy didn’t look like he was going anywhere for a while. In fact he looked sweaty and incoherent, which made sense, if he was suffering from exhaustion.
    She went and stood over him, doing her best to exude power and control over the situation. Which seemed to work. He looked dazed, and actually rather happy that she’d taken command. The relief of surrender.
    Either that, or she’d misjudged the angle, and he could see up her skirt.
    â€˜So. Tell me about DiFlorian.’
    â€˜I don’t know any more than you do,’ the young man wheezed.
    â€˜I know she’s in a tank down the corridor, breathing jelly, five or six days after you said she’d checked out.’
    He rolled his eyes heavenward, as if she’d completely missed the point. ‘We told you it – might take longer than usual. Several attempts. She’s fine. You have nothing to worry about.’
    You.
    GenoBond?
    My dear employers – DiFlorian’s dear