Vigilantes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

now just how human-centered his life and his work were.
    If he had been focused on other cultures sooner, he might have figured out how to get the information everyone needed about the Peyti sooner.
    He hoped he knew enough about them to find the information now.
    He leaned over one of the keyboards and corralled some of the documents that the filters had flagged as important to his search. He would investigate those while more information filled the files.
    Then he would examine what he could, looking for patterns.
    He hoped he found some sooner rather than later.
    He hoped he could find them without asking for help.
    Because the more people who got involved, the longer all of this would take.
    And he knew, deep down, that the Moon was running out of time.

 
     
     
     
    TEN
     
     
    MELCIA SENG REACHED the first floor of the S 3 building, out of breath and slightly nauseous, her feet aching. She had careened down the stairs, hand gripping the metal railing, barely able to keep her balance as she hurried. Then she slammed through the stairwell door, into the lobby—and remembered. It wasn’t really a lobby at all.
    Just a lot of empty space.
    Her stomach cramped, and her heart pounded. Some automated voice on her links told her that an ambulance was on the way. She acknowledged, but didn’t speak.
    There was movement outside the main doors.
    She wanted to run back up the stairs and hide. Police had kicked Mr. Zhu. Police . And then they had left him on the sidewalk.
    All the way down the stairs, she’d been hoping that the river of dark stuff she had seen had been whatever he was drinking (coffee?) and not something else (blood).
    She was shaking.
    She could see shadowy figures through the opaque doorway. They moved, and it seemed like they were moving near Zhu.
    At that moment, she realized that she had called an ambulance . Which meant that whoever was outside might be taking care of Zhu rather than harming him.
    Or about to harm her.
    She owed it to him to see what was going on.
    She swallowed and walked toward the door. Behind her, the elevator pinged. She turned, saw—what was his name? Vigfusson. Yeah. That was it, the last name anyway. She could fake the first name. He burst out of the doors and hurry toward her, a small kit in his left hand.
    “Where’s the injury?” he asked, his pale skin flushed with red.
    “Outside,” she said. “Be careful.”
    God, she was a coward. She was going to let him go first. He hurried across the empty lobby, leaving scuff marks on the thin carpet, and slammed the door open.
    Then he stopped, and for a brief second, she held her breath. What did he see?
    He didn’t look at her. Instead, he moved forward, and the door closed behind him.
    Whatever he saw obviously hadn’t scared him.
    Seng squared her shoulders, made herself breathe twice to calm herself, and then she walked to the door. Now there were two moving shadows, and a lump on the ground.
    Her people, maybe. Because she had contacted them before heading down here.
    She pulled the door open, and stopped just like Vigfusson had. Zhu blocked the door. He was twisted, his legs bent. It took her a second to realize why that looked wrong to her: the legs bent at the upper thigh and the knee. One foot was turned inward and the other outward, but neither position looked natural.
    She couldn’t see his face or his torso, just his fingers, curved and bruised. The river that ran from him to the street wasn’t brown, like coffee. It was thick and dark, with a reddish tint.
    Vigfusson knelt beside Zhu, kit open. He was doing some kind of nanowork or something. The other person beside Zhu was one of the other new hires—a man named Rosen. She couldn’t remember his first name either. God, she’d only met these people the day before, and there had been two dozen of them, names and faces and eagerness, and she’d been frightened, and oh, God, what was going to happen now?
    An ambulance turned onto the street. In her links,