Read Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02] for Free Online

carve its way through the man’s torso, cutting off his arms and his head. He seemed to fall apart in slow motion as Pham watched, and then something happened which she could not explain at the time, and which changed her life forever.
     
    A fraction of a second after the laser sliced the man into pieces, a white light seemed to bounce from his head and streak towards Pham. Before she could move, it hit her full in the face, knocking her backwards. She cried out and scrambled to her feet, feeling her face with her fingers. She expected to touch burned flesh, but oddly her face seemed okay.
     
    Had the laser bounced off the man and hit her, weakened, so that it hadn’t sliced her up?
     
    She realised then that there was a killer out there, and she knew she had to get away. She quickly jumped from the open mouth, tapped down the steps, and raced along the alley between the attractions. Ahead she saw the toilet block that Abdul had told her about. She hauled open the door and dived inside. Thankfully Abdul had left the hatch in the floor propped open. She was about to squirm through it, hopefully into Abdul’s arms, when something exploded behind her and a laser shafted through the door above her head and drilled a neat hole through the far wall.
     
    So the killer had seen her escaping, and was chasing her...
     
    She dived through the hatch and hauled it shut after her. She found herself in a narrow shaft and scrambled down the rungs of a ladder.
     
    Seconds later she emerged onto a lighted catwalk high above a busy tunnel on the second level. Above her, she heard the hatch scrape open, then the sound of boots on metal rungs.
     
    She fled. Further along the catwalk was a ladder that descended to the corridor. She reached it in seconds, slid down the ladder and slipped into the crowd. She squirmed through the bodies, pausing only once to look over her shoulder at the catwalk. She made out the bulky figure of man in a technician’s overalls drop onto the catwalk and look up and down the length of the tunnel.
     
    Then she was on her way again, turning down corridor after corridor on a crazy zigzag course across Level Two. She wished that Abdul was with her, but at the same time she was proud that she had managed to escape all by herself.
     
    Perhaps half an hour later she came to a big park surrounded by tall trees. She looked at her map-book and found to her delight and surprise that this was Ketsuwan Park.
     
    She bought a plate of masala and pakora from a kiosk just inside the western gate of the park, then found a bench and sat down and ate. She was famished, and minutes later she had wolfed down the meal and was considering what had happened in the amusement park.
     
    She hugged her bare legs and stared across the grass. The lighting was low here, to simulate the darkness outside. She could see street-kids huddling in the bushes all around, and sleeping on the park benches.
     
    She pulled her blanket from her backpack and arranged it on the bench, then lay down and stared up into the amazingly complex arrangement of a tree’s branches high overhead.
     
    She had seen someone murdered. One second they had been alive, and the next someone had killed him. Then the killer must have seen her jump down and run, and maybe the killer thought that she’d seen him, and decided that she must die too.
     
    But the white light that had hit her in the face?
     
    She fingered her snub nose and high cheekbones and her forehead under her fringe. They felt fine, no burns or cuts or anything.
     
    She had a headache, but that might have been from all the excitement of the past hour.
     
    She snuggled down into the blanket and closed her eyes. She thought about Abdul, and wished he was still with her.
     
    Minutes later she heard a voice in her head.
     
    Pham, it said, do not be frightened. I can help you.
     
    * * * *
     

THREE

     
    THE CUT
     
     
    Vaughan awoke to dazzling sunlight and sat up, hospital linen cool to his