She had no sooner begun than screams erupted around the silver van which hovered only strides away. Simultaneously, the ambient nager became a blinding sheet of white-hot Gen pain.
The cameraman on top of the van had caught his hand in the camera's aiming mechanism, and his pain was beating through every Sime around the van—Simes wide open to it because they'd been zlinning her. The redheaded Gen ground the camera mechanism back across the man's hand—Laneff could sense bones breaking– and the man yanked himself free, blood spraying in every direction. He slipped and fell off the van screaming in pain and terror.
Against her will, Laneff was thrown hyperconscious, the world dissolving into a shifting miasma of selyn fields laced with jagged slices of pain. Islands of damped-down calm identified channels working to control the ambient. Dead spots represented renSimes wearing attenuators tuned to maximum. The massive nager of the big blond Gen blazing shock moved toward the source of the ineffable pain.
But even that nager could not damp the shrieking Gen terror that dominated the ambient. That terror wakened her like nothing else since the experience of her First Need, the time she had killed.
Gens interposed themselves between renSimes and the pain-terror source that was triggering off the most basic hunting instincts in the Simes. But to Laneff, those Gens seemed to be holding off her competitors. Hardly aware that she moved, Laneff leaped the rope barricade and streaked for her prey, just as the redhead swung down from the van roof, also radiating delicious fear.
In one flashfire perception, Laneff knew the fallen Gen had not only a mashed hand, but also a broken ankle. She ignored the startle-ment in the massive Donor's nager she passed. Her ronaplin glands flooded her lateral sheaths with selyn-conducting hormone, and her whole body was tuned to killing pitch.
As she secured her prey, renewed terror took him when he knew the feral hunter was upon him. That promise of imminent satisfaction was too much.
Her hands seized the bloody forearm and the other clean one. Her handling tentacles lashed securely—bruisingly—into place. And her laterals flicked into position on the Gen's skin while she fastened her lips to his in a relentless demand for selyn.
She drew to her full speed, seeking the moment of egobliss she only half remembered and had renounced forever. He resisted, his nerves responding to her draw with a burst of that peculiar pain only Gens could feel—and junct Simes craved like nothing else. Lured by that hint of killbliss, she abandoned herself to the draw, increasing the Gen's pain by her swift demand.
In one crying burst of resonant triumph, the quintessence of kill-bliss overcame her. Too soon, the living vibration damped out of the selyn field. The brightness of soul-essence dopplered away. The pulsing surges of new selyn created in Gen tissue ceased.
The warm, pliant corpse slid from her grasp.
And as at her first kill, the amount of selyn she had been able to glean during the split instant of her attack was not enough. Need still growled within her.
She turned, unaware of the turquoise hem of her cloak trailing in the Gen's blood. The world had stopped.
I—killed ...
The vocalization of that fact rang through the emptiness of her mind. I—killed. Rejuncted.
Spectators had formed a wide ring about the scene at the side of the van. On the podium stairs, Mairis and Shanlun seemed suspended in the act of racing toward her. Beside her, the big blond Donor fought back his shock. The redheaded Gen woman had reached the ground and stood near the driver's door as the other camera crew swarmed down from the van roof.
And Laneff found herself zeroing in on the redheaded woman as her next victim.
With a strangled choking noise that was hardly a cry, Laneff threw herself into the Donor's arms, knowing that her selyn draw could never produce pain in him. His nager, though enticingly Gen and replete with more selyn than she could use in a year, held no hint of promise of killbliss. With all her will, she forced herself to cling to him —not to kill again.
As if that were a signal, pandemonium erupted. Mairis and Shanlun raced down the stairs, shouting orders to the guards right and left. Simultaneously, the two men climbing down from the van roof leaped onto Laneff, catching her around in her own cape and yanking her free from the arms of the Donor, who was left stunned beside the van.
Laneff was borne into the air toward the redhead and the driver while at the same time a furious wind whipped dirt and gravel into the air. The thrumming roar of a helicopter's blades beat down on them, scattering the spectators while the guards flung arms over their eyes and groped forward.
Laneff couldn't see. They'd wrapped her cloak with its black lining full around her and over her eyes, the pin of the clasp now digging into her chest. But she could zlin Mairis and Shanlun racing toward them heedless of the flying gravel. And she sensed the moment the Donor Gen overcame shock enough to see she was being kidnapped.
She struggled halfheartedly, a token resistance, for she knew that if she fought she would seek to kill again. It was the only honor she had left, for by Tecton law she was doomed to death by attrition of selyn —death in the Last Year House, where she would not be allowed to kill again. She was too old to disjunct again. She would die for lack of the kill. A year at the most.
Her captors set her on her feet, quickly and expertly lashing her forearms around with a tough belt, pulled up tight so the pressure on her laterals held at the very threshold of unbearable pain.
Hardly daring to breathe, she stood helpless as two of the men drew guns. One held a gun to her head while the other waved his at the security guards converging on them. Meanwhile, the redhead and the other man unfurled a banner fastened to the side of the van, reading The Diet Proves Simes Can't Be Trusted.
Before Mairis and Shanlun could quite work their way to the fore of the guards, the chopper almost touched down right beside Laneff’s captors, and the redhead scrambled for the open hatch, shouting instructions.
Numbly, Laneff thought, It's not the Tecton Security chopper!
And then the blond Gen moved.
He charged, head down, straight for Laneff, passing the redhead and the other man. One of Laneff’s captors got off a shot at the Donor, but he kept coming. Before the other, whose gun was pointed at Laneff's head, could react, the Donor had swept through them, catching Laneff below the waist and hoisting her up over his shoulders.
For several moments, the world vanished for Laneff, pain exploding through her nerves while her arms dangled over the huge Donor's shoulder, and then a slamming impact against the chopper's hatchway knocked the breath out of her. She heard the hatch bang shut behind them, and the patter-pop of several bullets hitting the side of the chopper.
Without instructions, the chopper pilot lifted straight up and then tilted hard as he raced for speed.
Diaphragm knotted and eyes watering, Laneff fought pain and dizziness. And then the Donor had the cruel belt off her arms, sending new lances of fiery pain through her whole body. It was only coming to her now that she wasn't dead.
"Come on, Laneff, help me take that pilot, and I'll get you out of this!"
She shook her head, unable to assimilate it all. "Come on, get up on your feet—there now . . ." Pulling her up, he worked with his nager to steady her, though how he could do that while he himself was in such a state she didn't know. "I can't . – – ," she gasped as breath came again. "Listen!" he commanded, spearing her with his eyes as he steadied her by the shoulders. "That pilot is part of this—that shen-be-flayed Diet set you up for that kill. They came there intending to make a Sime kill—maybe targeted on you!—just to prove Digen and Mairis are out to enslave or destroy Gens! Are you going to stand here and let that man take you to the Diet headquarters—where they'll treat you like that?" He kicked at the belt on the deck by her foot. "Gather your wits, woman, and zlin for me. How many of them are there up there?"