“Alfred?”
“You bet,” I said.
The stool fell to the floor and then the girl into my arms, burying her face between my shoulder and the base of my neck. A world of blond under my nose and its sweet atmosphere of lilacs. She touched my cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded. Just outside the door I saw the legs of the guard as he started to crawl toward the stairs.
“Hold on,” I said. I went into the hall, yanked him to his feet, and pressed the muzzle of the gun behind his ear.
“We’re leaving,” I told him. “You’re our guide.”
“I don’t think I can walk,” he said.
I squatted, pushed my left shoulder into his gut, and stood up. His head smacked me in the back when I swung around to motion Ashley out of the room.
We trotted down the hall, away from the stairs that led back to Mingus and the OIPEP twins, Ashley on my right side, her guard flopping over my left shoulder.
“Tell me there’s a back door to this place,” I said to him—or rather to his butt, which was two inches from my nose.
“There’s a back door to this place.”
I grabbed his dangling legs with both hands and swiveled hard. His head hit the wall with a satisfying smack.
“Hey!” he said, like he was shocked I whacked his face against the wall.
I did it again. Whack!
“Stop that!”
I started walking again. The hall ended. One corridor branched off to the right, another to the left.
“Which way?” I asked him.
“The right way.”
I smacked him again—whack!—and he shouted, “No, the right hallway—literal right, literal right!”
We took the passage on our right. Ashley had said she was okay, but she was wincing with every step and breathing hard. My head hurt. Was my head pounding now from all the running and fighting—or was it broadcasting our position on the Kropp Channel?
“I’ve got a bomb in my head,” I told her.
“I’ve got a bullet in my foot,” the guard said.
I ignored him. “An SD 1031. It’s also a tracking device.”
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Didn’t know about the device or didn’t know it was in my head?”
“Didn’t know they implanted you.”
“Well, probably best you knew, in case I go down with blood pouring from my orifices.”
We came to some stairs.
“Up the stairs, first hall on the right, door at the end of the hall,” the guard said.