Time exited her body. After a period apart from it, the headache came back. It wasn’t as bad, and then it got a lot better. The blackness didn’t go away, but her other senses started to come online. There was something rough under her face that smelled like wax crayon and lemon cleaner, and she was drooling—her mouth was full—full of something disgusting and sticky. Her mouth opened and it all fell out. She was lying down. Nona, so well-versed in thinking about what her body was doing in various states of consciousness, could tell that.
An unfamiliar voice was saying— “Cancel that! I said, cancel that order! Merv, do you hear me? Merv, if I see even one of your bastards step into this building I will call such hell down on you that they’ll put your names up on the Extinction Roll—Don’t you hang up on me, you motherfucking kingmaking piece of shit, I will rip off Hope’s head and shit down his neck! Goddamn it! Fuck! Fuck.”
Then the Angel— “What did they say?”
“They said sure, no prob,” said the unfamiliar voice. “What do you think they fucking said, Aim? Oh, boy, we’re fucked. Oh, God, we’re fucking fucked.”
The Angel said, “Go unlock the door. We’ll take the girl and get out of here.”
“No. We leave her here.”
“She’ll get liquidated.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you started playing teacher with the frigging Troia experiment.”
The Angel burst out frantically: “I didn’t know! How the living hell was I meant to know? You’ve kept me away from all that, I’ve been completely separated from any intel!”
“You knew Merv went mental on us yesterday, said it was a power play,” snapped the unfamiliar voice.
“I don’t mean that! How the hell could I have known about these two? I only realised they lived in the safe house last night!”
“Yeah, well, Ctesiphon is short on cash, we don’t have anywhere to stash anyone,” said the voice. “If you’d just let me within two metres of this place I could’ve told you months ago—”
“I was protecting my Edenite kids on the roll. They would’ve gotten transferred to the other side of the city and they needed this—”
“Pull yourself together, Aim! You don’t get to think about what some snot-nosed kids need!” bawled the voice. “What’re we going to do, what the hell are we going to do?”
“Yelling at each other won’t help,” said the Angel tightly. “You are the least respectful bodyguard I have ever had.”
“Okay. Cool. Nice. Great. Cool,” said the unfamiliar voice. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking. Oh my God, this is such a fuckup. Not on a personal level, because as far as I’m concerned good job, but this is such a fuckup.”
“We go to the roof, like you said,” the Angel suggested, but the unfamiliar voice said, “Changed my mind. That’s not an exit. They won’t shoot at us if you’re with me, but we can’t account for anyone else.”
“Then what? God, I’m too old for this.”
There was a big clanging sound. It hurt Nona’s ears. An awful pressure travelled through her head that felt like she wanted to hold her nose and blow something out her ears, like when she was swimming. It sounded as though someone was dragging furniture.
“Anyone comes at me, I take them down,” said the voice.
The Angel sounded torn between amusement and annoyance. “You discharge a firearm with me in the room, you’ll get court-martialled and hanged.”
“Everyone’s too busy for bureaucracy,” said the voice. “We play our cards right here, I can get Suffer out clean. Hell—I play this really right, nobody’s going to know a thing until it’s too late.”
“Oh, God, you can’t believe that. You’re going to get yourself shot.”
“Not with my pedigree.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Nine. Maybe ten. Plus driver, probably eleven.”
“That’s a massacre.”
“It’s a compliment,” said the voice modestly. “Anyway, they’re still defusing the door.”
The pressure got lots and lots worse—it got better—something went klink! in her very close vicinity. Her sight softly shaded back in—it was dark—the room was hot and close and stuffy again. Nona stared at a huge sopping red patch of blood on the floor. Her head felt wet and itchy. The unfamiliar voice was saying, “Hang on a mo. I’m just going to deadhead these two.”