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Delvaux came with them in the elevator. They needed the chips under his skin and the blood vessels under his face. It was easier to take the whole Delvaux with them than just the parts they needed, but he was heavier than he looked. Otis held him up in front of the elevator's stand-alone, biometric authorization system with his arms locked and clasped over Delvaux's chest. While he contracted the chest in his best imitation of a heartbeat, Catherine gripped hair and held the lolling head up for the biometric scanners.
Voice was one biometric element the system didn't authenticate, and since the threat of vaporization had raised the general level of tension, Otis couldn't resist adding a voice to the Director's body. “I am Oskaaar Delvaux, take me down to zee Sanctum... quicklee befurr zee Goddiesss git heere!” The elevator chimed. None of them knew what it meant exactly, but it sounded affirmative enough so Carlos risked pushing the button at the very bottom of the seemingly endless line of buttons, and they felt a fractional and fleeting reduction in their perceived weight as the elevator started to drop and accelerated on its magnetic rails.
Casper had managed a chuckle at Otis' macabre puppet show, but when he looked down at Bonnie on the rolling service table his mirth disappeared again. The blood was soaking through the folded strip of golden cloth that he'd tried to bandage her eye with. It was truly awful to look at and the bandage would come off if she moved her head too much since he'd been afraid to tie it tightly. Well, shit, he thought, she's already got an eye patch, and she'll really freak if she wakes up blind. Casper reached down, lifted her eye patch, and moved it over the bandage he'd used to lightly dress the ruined right eye.
The emerald eye's lid opened and flitted around in its socket with a panic that was plainly evident even in the deep green crystal that had replaced her ruined left eye. “Whoa!” Casper exclaimed. He hadn't expected that, and he jumped back into Caine who somehow set him back exactly where he'd jumped from.
Shit, I thought I was dead, Bonnie thought. Oh, well. The room was a cool red and there were people in it... people she knew. They looked excited. She could see it in the blood rushing in green veins under their yellow-orange skin. Casper had a particularly blue-green set of veins in the center of his face. Bonnie thought, Oh, Casper, were you crying? That's so cute. Did I just even think that? “Fucking A',” she said out loud. “What the hell did you guys dope me up with?” She tried to move, and it didn't hurt, but limbs weren't going where they were supposed to so she thought she'd just try again later. Suddenly she realized she was using the emerald eye and it didn't hurt. That's new. Can't say I mind. “No, really, guys what did you...” Bonnie saw Hi-5 on the other side of her, and she still didn't know what they'd doped her up with, but she had a pretty good idea where it came from. “You. You know. I know you know,” she said to Hi-5. She thought she was pointing at Hi-5, too, but when she lifted her head to look, her arm was just sitting there on the wood table. She giggled. Goddamn, that sounds stupid. Was that me? She'd never seen Hi-5 with the multi-spectral emerald eye, and when her head rolled all the way to the left, her line of sight was level with her Hi-ness's codpiece, and Bonnie was impressed. “Wow, baby, you got a license for that thing?”
Casper glared at Hi-5 and asked, “What the hell did you hit her with?”
Hi-5 just shrugged and said, “I told you she'd be happy about it.”
“How long is she gonna be like this?”
“That shit loves you Longtime, baby. Maybe five, six hours, maybe more. She's kinda peaking now.” Hi-5 fished in her tiny transdermal wallet and came up with two more purple and an electric blue one. You know what the purple ones do. The blue is... some pure Action shit, lift a car kinda shit. It comes straight outta a pituitary gland... a human one, none of that pig crap. You'll know when she needs it.”
“You guys are so sweet...” Bonnie imagined her arms rising and rubbing Hi-5 and Casper both affectionately on their chests. Her arms lifted six inches and fell back to the table while she grinned at them.
“How long,” Carlos asked Crane Caine, “and don't give me any of that 'How long is a piece of string?' crap.”
“Twenty-two minutes and five seconds.” Crane Caine smiled. He liked counting down. Carlos wondered if he'd been into Hi-5's derm collection, and if maybe he should bum one just in case MUNI 5-7 was wrong and they didn't have enough time. He had no idea how long whatever MUNI 5-7 and Alvin were going to do together was going to take, and MUNI 5-7 had limited its responses as they left to, “Please comply” and “Compliance is Advised.”
Bonnie noticed Otis holding Delvaux. His skin was deep maroon and the veins in his body were faint, only a slightly more reddish-yellow tone. That, she thought is one dead Director. She saw herself waving but her arm just flopped around. “Hell-oooo Mr dead Director, Monsieur Dead-Guy.”
Alvin was standing, gently supported by two Sons of Caine, and Carlos squatted down and said, “So, Alvin.” Carlos spoke in a level just loud enough to be heard around the elevator and just soft enough so everybody knew it wasn't really their B-I-D-N-E-S-S. “What happened? I mean how'd you two end up in Delvaux's office?” Carlos was pretty sure he knew what happened, but he wanted everyone to hear it from the Buddha's mouth. Alvin was silent long enough for Carlos to know there was more to the story than he was going to let on. When he explained, Alvin spoke loud enough to be sure everyone in the elevator heard him.
He said, “Those auto-descenders were screwy... Bonnie fell real fast and hit Caine and Caine too, I guess. She grabbed me, took me back up, and we got nabbed by Monsieur Dead-Guy. Bummer trip, but the bottom line is that she saved my ass and took a lotta bullets meant for me. It sounds weird, but if it hadn't gone that way, I mean, if we hadn't ended up in Delvaux's office like we did, then I'd doubt her sense of loyalty. As it stands, I trust Bonnie Levi-Mei with my life. 'Nuff said.” Carlos didn't ask any more questions. That was good enough for him.