"Mary—Oh God, Mary—the gun, that's—that's a real gun, Mary—"
The charge was light. It contacted the Guard's face just above the chin. It dissolved instantly all of his face and most of his brain. It left only a smeared shell of bone behind, like a bowl tipped up.
She ran on down the slightly curving tube. They were never never so kind to me. For he is free from the directives that pull and push and pry and pick at the brain. He is free from pain.
When this was done, she would be free. As free as the guard.
Once near the rocket, the long task would be ended. She would then theoretically be free from the complex thought which her body was incapable of handling without pain. Free from the pain of an imbalanced body and nervous system. And free of the coercion bands, the directive waves that could sometimes rip the cells apart.
She pressed the down button of the elevator. At that moment the high scream of the alarm sirens shrieked in her ears. She cowered a moment. It came from all around. It bathed her in painful sound. It became a pervading throb that seemed to come from the metal everywhere.
They had discovered the guard already. That was one of those unpredictable elements. Purely chance that anyone would have passed there just after the guard was killed. That could be the only reason for the alarm!
She had to get outside the buildings. She had to get over there near enough to the rocket to blast the firing tubes! She wasn't even off the tenth floor.
There was nothing to fear except failure. Death itself would be a welcome if not a preferred kind of freedom for her. But if she failed and lived, there would be torture. And the misty worlds of pain, not only in the labs but from the coercion directives. As far as she knew, perhaps the directive rocket buried somewhere high in the pines near the lake would contain even more duties for her, if this failed. Except that now she would be known and they would hunt her down and—but so far they did not know who had killed the guard.
No, if they caught her they wouldn't kill her. That was sure enough. There would be the labs again. They would probe, cut her open, try to find out why. She had long been a living instrument for finding out why.