Chapter 18 - No More Inventory
"I'll go," Wren said.
"Not alone," I answered.
"You can't fit. And I know the controls."
I looked at her, at the woman whose life had been reduced to being useful inside a cage.
"Then you make the choice," I said. "Not Rusk. Not me."
Wren swallowed and climbed.
Below us, Ada guided the medical team from chamber to chamber. The first patient was transferred onto portable oxygen. She was alive and frightened, but she was out.
I followed Wren's progress by the scrape of her shoes on the ladder. She reached the manual relay and held it in place while an engineer worked to restore the generator.
"Twenty seconds," he called.
The door behind us opened. Rusk stood there with two guards, staring at the medical team moving through her laboratory.
"You have no idea what you're destroying," she said.
"A prison," Iris answered, coming up beside Grace.
Rusk pointed toward the tanks. "They wouldn't exist without me."
Noelle, now on a hospital stretcher, lifted her head.
"That doesn't make us yours."
For the first time, Rusk had no answer.
The engineer shouted, "Power restored!"
Wren released the relay and climbed down, crying hard but silently. I caught her as her knees buckled. A doctor immediately checked the irritated port at her ear.
Grace placed Rusk under arrest. The guards surrendered after seeing the officers and the growing line of medical personnel.
My father emerged from the generator room with soot on his coat. He looked at the frightened women being lifted toward daylight.
"I helped make this possible," he said to Grace. "I signed the first authorization. I want that in my statement."
Iris stood beside me, her hands trembling.
Outside, the sky had begun to lighten.
May you like
Then Ada's voice came across the radio, strangely small.
"We have one chamber that isn't responding. Clara, it's the woman who first reached for you through the glass."
