Armitage glanced once more at the monitor linked to the mages' improvised death cell; they were still motionless, sitting cross-legged in deep meditation. He felt sorry to be losing them, but he had decided that they were just too dangerous to keep alive. At least, when their bodies had been fully decontaminated, he would have a pair of dissection specimens. It would be interesting to see how the neural configuration, vascular organisation and gross structure of the Questor brain differed from that of an ordinary mage, and from the normal human encephalon.
The Administrator of Haven marvelled at the mages' powers of concentration; they had been sitting in the same uncomfortable position for at least ten minutes now. A faint warning bell sounded at the back of his mind. He remembered how, perhaps twenty minutes before, the younger specimen had seemed distinctly ill at ease in this pose after only a few minutes. Yet, now, he sat poised, calm and relaxed.
Armitage moved his face nearer to the screen.
Are the subjects even breathing?
He wondered if some small trace of the VX nerve agent had leaked through into the cell, but he was unfamiliar with the properties of the poison. He thumbed the comm stud.
"Terrence? Are you there?"
The senior Technician's masked face appeared on the monitor.
"Yes, Administrator; what is it this time? I'm busy." An unmistakeable note of irritation had crept into the tech's tone.
Armitage flicked his eyes back to the monitor. Nothing had changed. "I was wondering, Terrence, about the effects of this Victor X-ray stuff. What happens to the subject when he is exposed?"
"You'll see, soon enough, Sir," the Technician growled. "Just be patient, won't you?"
"Just tell me, Terrence; would he be frozen into impassivity?"
Terrence snorted. "Not likely, Sir: within a few seconds at most, he would be thrashing on the ground, with bloody foam around his nose and mouth, in an uncontrollable fit. Have you ever seen an insect after it's been sprayed with a pyrethroid aerosol? VX has much the same effect on a mammal: complete loss of autonomous central nervous system function."
Armitage's fears began to coalesce into full-blown suspicion. The stone-like immobility of the two mages bothered him.
"Thank you, Terrence," he said. "I'll get back to you."
"I can't wait, Sir," the disgruntled Senior Tech muttered. "Listening. Out."
Armitage reached for the camera's zoom control, but he jumped at the sound of the Control Room door opening behind him. Wheeling around, he saw a white-coated Technician enter the room. He did not recognise the burly, stubble-faced man.
"Yes, Tech; what do you want? Can't you see I'm at work?"
"You called me, Administrator," the heavy-set individual replied, his tone sullen and resentful. "Don't you remember?"
"What are you blathering about?" Armitage snapped, distracted. "I called nobody. I don't even recognise you."
The Technician, whose name-tag read 'Muller', rolled his eyes. "Oh, so I'm losing my mind, am I? 'Report to the Control Room, immediately', you said, and you summoned me by name.
"I had a full psych workout not six weeks ago, and I checked out as sane. I can show you the report if you like. If anyone's losing his marbles around here, it's not me."
He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the Administrator.
"Just you remember who you're talking to!" Armitage warned. "Show a little more respect, or it'll be full Pacification for you, my friend. You should be doing your job, not bothering me with some ridiculous fantasy."
"That's what I was doing when…"
A second white-garbed figure entered the room, breathless and flustered. Armitage recognised her, and he knew she was not one to barge into a room unannounced. "Santini; what is it?" Armitage demanded.
"I was hoping you could tell me that, Sir," the white-haired woman gasped, her spectacles askew on her nose. "I came as soon as you called me."
"I called nobody!" the Administrator insisted, frowning. "What's the matter with everyone today?"
With a convulsive jerk, Armitage grabbed the zoom control on the camera and focused on the image of the younger mage, Grimm. The youth sat with his eyes closed, his face a picture of peaceful composure.
Armitage closed in on Grimm's eyelids. Where he would have expected to see traces of eye movements beneath them, he saw nothing. Grimm's face resembled that of a statue, without the least hint of animation.
Manipulating the camera controls with sweaty fingers, Armitage focused on the boy's chest, watching every fold of his silk robes for an indication of movement. Breathing hard, the Administrator zoomed in on a single ripple in the sheer fabric, until he could almost see the individual threads of the cloth. Nothing moved.
Is the video playback corrupted?
Armitage switched to the camera in the Control Room, and the scene appeared normal. He waved his right hand, and his image responded at once, without a trace of stutter or image corruption.
"If the Administrator has quite finished with me, can I get back to that big, pink-eyed bastard I was conditioning before you called me?"
Armitage ignored the male tech, stabbing the comm stud with a vicious gesture.
"For heaven's sake, Armitage, I'm working as fast as I can!" Terrence yelled. The senior Technician's patience seemed to have been stretched to the limit. "You have no idea…"
"Terrence; just hang fire for the moment!" the Administrator screamed into the microphone. "Something is going on, maybe something bad, and I mean to get to the bottom of it!"
Another comm channel bleeped, a red light above the stud showing an emergency call, and Armitage, feeling cold panic seeping through his bones, swung around to the relevant security monitor.
This time, it was a security guard; an officer. A trickle of blood seeped from a cut over his eye, his body armour was smoking and damaged, and his face was red and sweaty.
"Lieutenant Martin here, Sir; all hell's just broken loose in Brown Sector." The man's quivering voice seemed close to sheer panic. "It's like a bloody abattoir here; I've got eight casualties, six of them fatal. Two guys in robes are on the loose, and nothing seems to stop them. My number-two, Grouillard, emptied a full clip into the older one, but he was cut to pieces instead of the target. Another guard turned into dust before our eyes. Some of the others were just blown apart. It looks like they're coming straight for you, Sir. What should we do?"
The Administrator's heart pounded. He had seen what a Mage Illusionist could do, and he now had no doubt that the image of inaction that the security camera in the mage cell was nothing more than a magical illusion; somehow the Questors had escaped!
"Abort the VX run, Terrence; abort, abort, abort!" he screamed into the mike. Security has been compromised!"
Turning back to the image of the wounded security squad commander, Armitage pressed the relevant button and yelled into the microphone, "Stop them at all costs, Lieutenant. I don't care how you do it, just…"
At that moment, the door to the Control Room burst from its hinges, slamming into the chamber with such force that Armitage's ears popped. The battered, flying piece of metal neatly decapitated Santini, who fell to the floor in a spray of blood, and it smashed into a bank of equipment, sending a shower of sparks into the room.
Armitage realised his worst nightmare had come to pass as he saw the two Questors standing in the doorway, and he felt warm liquid trickling down his right leg.
The burly Technician, Muller, seized a length of metal pipe, interposing himself between the Administrator and the two robed figures.
"If you want a fight, you've got one, freaks," he said, narrowing his eyes. "You just…"
The younger mage raised a hand, and shouted a guttural, unintelligible phrase. Muller flew across the room, as if shot from the barrel of a cannon, impacting against the wall with a wet thump. He slid down the suddenly red-stained wall to the floor and lay still.
"Greetings, Armitage," the older magic-user hissed. "You have made the very worst mistake of your life by angering a pair of Guild Questors. Give my regards to He Who Reigns Below; you will be meeting him soon."
Suffused by a sick, cold sense of purest horror, the defeated Administrator covered his eyes with his right arm as the mage raised his hands above his head. He heard the thaumaturge's rising chant and prepared himself for death, but the chant stopped abruptly.
Not daring to think he had been spared by some miracle, Armitage lowered his arm a little, to see the two magic-users measuring their length on the floor. Terrence stood over the older specimen, holding a pipe-wrench, and a blond Technician stood at his side, the steel pipe in his hand.
The Administrator drew a deep, shuddering breath. After a squad of heavily-armed guards had failed to stem the relentless advance of the two Questors, the mighty mages had been defeated by simple blows to the head. A harsh laugh arose from Armitage's throat at the absurdity of the situation, rising in pitch almost into the heights of pure hysteria, and tears rolled from his eyes as he fought to control himself.
"Thank you, Terrence," he gasped, between paroxysms of cackling laughter, as he looked at the two prone figures. "What would I do without you?"
"I'm sure I don't know," the senior Technician said. "Anyway, I guess we ought to…"
His voice faltered, and his eyes dropped to the ten-inch length of steel that seemed to have sprouted from the centre of his chest, transfixing him to the wall.