And two minutes later, she was outside, and he was inside, and she felt like her body had been flayed from heel to temple. Dazed and disbelieving, she hobbled from the room, giving her head small, swift shakes to try to reorient herself. The elevator creaked slowly down its shaft, then deposited her on the bottom story. She made her way carefully across the marble floors, once more employing that cautious glide and shuffle, and pausing several times to lean against the wall and give her aching foot a rest.

It was during her third such break that a strange indigo man approached her at such a fast pace that she felt a moment’s panic. She straightened against the wall and tried to assume a forbidding expression, and she was astonished when he grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild but hooded, as if he gazed at interior horrors; his face seemed ravaged by some disaster.

“Kitrini Candachi,” he said, and it frightened her even more that he knew her name.

“Yes,” she choked out.

“If you don’t come with me now, I’ll see to it that your gulden boyfriend dies. We have to leave instantly—you and I—for Gold Mountain.”

CHAPTER TEN

The transmetropolitan trolley, which cut east-west across the city, could be caught three blocks from the Complex and deposited travelers half a mile from the West Two gate, nearest to the wealthy gulden residential district. From there, buses took travelers up and down the main residential roads. Oddly enough, there were no existing public transport routes—except the Centrifuge—which would efficiently take commuters from the north side of the city to the south, though Ariana Bayless was working on temporary ways to correct that omission. But, for the time being, the majority of business commuters who were stranded in the city were indigo.

Pakt had offered his house to any of the Biolab employees who wished to stay with him until the Centrifuge reopened—or bus routes were installed to the southern sector of the city. Cerisa, of course, who took a limousine to and from work, had no need of such offers; and since Melina and Varella lived within a few miles of Cerisa’s home, the two young blueskin women had accepted transport service from her for the duration. A few of the other biologists had also found alternate places to stay or methods of transportation, but Nolan, Hiram, and Sochin gratefully accepted Pakt’s offer.

Cerisa lent them all the use of her limousine so they could return home and pack enough clothes to last a week or so. “Though it will be a miracle if the Centrifuge is repaired by then” had been her dry comment. “But maybe Ariana will have buses in place by that time.”