บท 32: C: Caught
A cold, rational, part of Rafaela's brain pointed out that the security officers had taken her away from any public area, and thus a public area with lots of people would probably be safer. She lacked the kind of station communicator she'd carried on the registration station, but she started watching for identifying markings on the walls.
When she finally reached an obviously public corridor, a cool voice overhead warned her calmly to, "proceed in an orderly fashion."
Rafaela slid to a halt and gasped for breath. The station AI could see her. Other people could see her. They were pointing, and whispering, but they weren't looking at her with cold or hostile faces.
It was ridiculously hard for her to open her mouth and speak. In an anim the heroine would scream or shout at the drop of a hat, but it was almost painful for her to force out a single word, "Help?"
Rafaela was just as startled as the onlookers when a line of amber light streaked across the floor, leading from her feet to the slidewalk in the center of the broad corridor, and the station AI announced calmly, "Rafaela Donatella only, should follow the marked path. Brendan Aldrich will meet with you shortly at Vincini's Pasta Kitchen, one of C Station's most popular fine dining spots."
Everyone else immediately stepped away from the line of amber light and stared at her. She stared back, her eyes moving from face to face. After a moment someone asked nervously, "Aren't you going? That's the Prince of Eks Corp…"
As soon as one person spoke, half a dozen more joined in. "Is she okay?" "Is that blood?" "Quick, can we still get a table?"
Rafaela instinctively straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, but she couldn't help wincing at the pain that still radiated from her shoulder and thigh. She stepped forward, onto the indicated slidewalk, and then caught her reflection in a mirrored panel as she slid effortlessly past.
She looked like she should be headed for an infirmary instead of a restaurant. Her lip was split and her clothes had been sliced by something in several places, and from the blood that soaked the edges, so had her skin even though she couldn't feel pain from… but as soon as she started the thought she began to feel a sharp sting from those spots and other pains that she'd been oblivious to began to flare up.
She raised her face to the ceiling, as though that would help the station hear her voice, and asked uncertainly, "Can you add an infirmary to my route please?"
She wasn't sure what kind of reply she'd expected, but she hadn't expected the emergency lights to come up along the edges of the corridor and the calm voice to announce loudly, "Please clear the center for an emergency medical transport. Please clear the center…"
The other people in the corridor began to move aside. Many of them were whispering and pointing again, and there were more of them than there had been when she'd entered the corridor. She lifted her foot to step off the slidewalk in case the station wasn't talking about her, and the voice added authoritatively, "Remain still Rafaela Donatella. Assistance is enroute and will meet you at the next intersection."
She felt the spike of adrenaline hit her when the Eks Corp Security uniforms appeared in the opening where the two large corridors met. Everything slowed down again, but she felt nauseous and she started to shake, as she stepped off the slidewalk. She almost hit the person that she accidentally bumped into as she stumbled on the unmoving section of floor, and stopping that unintended reaction made her arm muscles start to echo the burn in her shoulder.
The station was calmly instructing her not to move, but her feet were already carrying her clumsily, but quickly, away from the intersection. A familiar logo caught her eye and she veered toward the door it marked. She didn't even think that there was any point in running, in the small part of her that was still rational. If the Prince and Eks Corp security were the ones who wanted her, she had no chance of escaping them on an Eks Central station.
The door resisted her shaking hands for a moment, but then opened smoothly, and she could hear the station AI speaking calmly as if from a distance, "Eks Corp Emergency Shelter Protocol allows the override of private security access restrictions within C Station."
"Hey you can't, what kind of emergency? The atmosphere alarms haven't…" someone protested.
--
Rafaela woke up with a jolt that spiked into fear as she realized that she was confined. As soon as she got her eyes open she relaxed a little, because the display was familiar and explained the confinement. She was inside a medical pod.
A standard medical system AI soothed her further by informing her in familiar tones that she was going to be released from its care soon, and began summarizing the wounds that she had been treated for. Her moment of relief faded as she listened to the voice report that a cyst full of toxin had been removed from her shoulder and that the electrical burn on her thigh had required tissue removal, and that both wounds would require additional sessions to recover completely.
The small room that the pod released her into was empty of people, but a familiar logo marked the message sheet that lay on top of the neatly folded clothing. The same logo had been on the door that she'd opened right before she'd passed out.
Her fingers were steadier than her whirling mind, as she lifted the message sheet that informed her that the company was glad to honor the voucher she'd received that had promised her a full body suit of smart fabric if she won the Princess Race, and encouraged her to visit their shops again. She stood naked in the center of the room for an unseemly amount of time, before setting aside the message sheet, and figuring out how to pull on the smart fabric and calibrate it.
Once she was dressed she looked around the room again, but there was nothing else. "Hello? C Station?" she ventured.
The station AI did not reply, but ordinarily a station AI would communicate only through a standard device except during an emergency, although it should be monitoring all of the public spaces within it. After a moment she walked to the door and examined the controls. The door was also standard issue for a station infirmary compartment, and she felt paranoid as she instructed it to turn off its privacy mode and become transparent.
Rafaela took an involuntary step backward, as the unimposing man leaning against the corridor wall outside of the compartment with his arms crossed, visibly startled when the door in front of him suddenly became transparent. He abruptly pushed himself off the wall and stepped forward to reach for the controls, but then he met her eyes and dropped his hand.
She knew his face, not because they'd ever met, but because Brendan Aldrich, the Prince of Eks Corp, had been waiting outside her infirmary door.
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