Page 4 of Consume
Chapter Two
“You hearing me?” Pohasked through my earpiece.
I hissed into the mic attached to my shirt, the only affirmative sound I could get out. In addition to hearing her, I could also see the hospital on Wix from the safety of the dining room. It was the day after Poh had shown me the video of Captain Glenn, or maybe the day after that. Time passed strangely these days.
“Crispy, you good?” she asked.
“Uh...define good?” He sighed. “Yeah, I hear you.”
Before Poh had left, she’d attached a camera and microphone to the lapel of her shirt, hidden of course, and rigged it so that I saw her progress in real time on her Mind-I screen on the dining room wall. That way if she got into any sort of trouble by walking right into a trap set for me, I could have a good old-fashioned freak-out while I stood there helpless. But also to throw gibberish at Crispin so he’d rescue her since he’d gone with her. He had eyes and ears on her, too, from inside the small cruiser they’d...stolen? Hijacked? Some details I didn’t need to know.
The high glass doors of the largest hospital on Wix swished open for Poh, and she strode in. Only the slight bounce of her movements was visible because Poh blended into her surroundings like her chameleon ancestors when she wanted to. A damn handy skill.
During the good old days when I’d just been a ghost magnet—not a wanted murderer, fugitive, and bioterrorist—I avoided going to hospitals. That was easy for the most part since Ellison was my doctor, but now, watching Poh, I remembered why I’d hated them so much.
Ghosts swarmed the place. Some still had tubes trailing down their hospital gowns fluttering about their knees. Others were wisps of black smoke floating around a pair of midnight eyes that drilled to the back of my soul, even through the camera lens.
I reached out and touched the gurney table, a solid reminder I was here in the dining room, not there. My other hand automatically went to my pants pocket where I kept my iron cubes.
Neither the living nor the dead glanced Poh’s way once. She sidled up against the wall on her way to the room Captain Glenn and Parker had met up in, and then she slipped inside.
Two single beds crowded the small room, both occupied, with a white curtain providing privacy between them. But Captain Glenn’s wife and young daughter weren’t in either bed. I’d only ever seen them in his digital photo album he wore on his wrist, but these two people didn’t have their dark, luminous skin, neither of them were female, and neither were a small child.
“This is the right room, I’m sure of it,” she muttered. “Eleventh floor, room 1115. I checked the room number on the original video.”
“Find a patient list in a nurse’s station,” Crispin suggested in my ear. “Find out what room the captain’s wife and daughter are in. Maybe they were moved from this one to...”
“Spring a trap?” Poh asked.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Poh turned and headed for the door.
“Wait,” Crispin said. “This could just be the captain and the baron’s meeting room. What if the captain comes back and you’re not in there to see it?”
A pause, then, “I’ll leave the camera here. Don’t let me forget it.”
“I won’t.”
She set the camera down on a dresser across from the first bed, then she faded out of the room with the sound of the door closing behind her.
“Now we wait,” Crispin said with a sigh.
To my right, the double doors to the kitchen fluttered, offering comfort that even in death, Randolph bustled about where he felt most at home. Not cooking, obviously, but existing. I wished I could invite his spirit into me, but then he’d be stuck inside since I was pretty terrible at actually passing the ghosts to the other side.
And then to my left, out in the hall, footsteps. Soft, creeping, as if whoever made them didn’t want anyone to know they were here.
