MICHAEL PA
The top of the tower held a wide, circular room. Aware that my pursuers might at any moment come charging up the steps behind me, I cast around for somewhere to hide. The room and walls were bare Plate material, save for a central pillar of smooth, marble-like stone surrounded by a low circular bench.
Puffing for breath, I backed around the room’s circumference until I’d placed the pillar between myself and the top of the steps. There were no other ways in or out—only a high, glassless window to break the chamber’s dull sameness.
I rapped my knuckles against my temples. I’d exchanged one dead end for another.
Slowly, spine pressing against the wall, I sank to my haunches and closed my eyes. The air in here was dry, as if all traces of life and moisture had been leached from it.
I thought of Cordelia and wondered where she was, what she was doing. Was she enjoying herself out among the stars? Had I made the right decision in abandoning her like that? It seemed likely I’d never know. I certainly wouldn’t see her again. In a few minutes, I’d be caught and killed, and my body would lie here in this horrible room for decades, slowly drying out until found and wondered at by the next scavenging expedition to find their way through the metal ferns and up the winding staircase.
I’d lived a scavenger’s life, and now it seemed I was going to die a scavenger’s death.
Something touched my cheek.
I opened my eyes. Tendrils reached for my face. They were growing like roots from the pillar, undulating through the air towards me like the blind heads of sightless questing snakes. I already had one up my nose; two more reached for my eyes.
With a scream, I tried to push back, but the wall gripped me. My boots scraped at the floor, but I couldn’t move. Even the back of my head seemed fastened in place, so I couldn’t turn my face away as more and more of the questing tendrils advanced, seeking out my lips and ears. I tried to scream again as the one in my nose punched its way up into my sinus, but opening my mouth only cleared the way for another half-dozen, which struck like cobras, worming obscenely into my gullet, choking me.