Irreconcilable Differences, page 19
“Don't sweat it,” Sparks says. “First time in a run that drew blood. You get used to it.”
“That's what they tell me, yeah.”
We all dive together, and the checked-tile floor of the pizzeria floats up to slap the soles of our feet. Sparks' and Micki's. And by extension, mine. The fan spins overhead. It, and the floor, are about the only things that haven't changed.
Look around. Viral code is gnawing at the waitress, and her head has disappeared into a twisted, ropelike, squirming mass, rendered flashing red by Micki's antivirus ice. It's wrenched the waitress sideways, folding her in half vertically along her spine until her shoulders are at a ninety degree angle to each other. One breast has pulled free of the shirt, and is lovingly rendered by the original code, jiggling as the viral code eats her. The other blinks with great eyelids over a gray, iris-less eye through the shirt, as digital code gets recombined in ways it wasn't ever meant to be. Her arms flutter toward where her head should be now, and again, and she makes organic, sucking sounds. She reeks of sex and pizza.
The viral code is everywhere. Tables. Chairs. Pizza. The smell in the room has degenerated to basic elements. Salty. Iron. Spice. We move a little in the representation. And inhale a cloud of pure capsicum heat. Like being maced.
“Fuck!” Micki says. A quick thought, and she turns off scent and air rendering. The room goes still, even though the fan still makes rushing sounds in nonexistent air. She takes a quick look around. Then looks down at her feet. “Oh, shit.”
The floor changes under her, and viral code jumps up over her black leather boots. “Fuck!” Micki says. “Virus picked me up!” A quick thought and she turns her virus protection ice from passive to active, and the viral code spikes purple and evaporates. And alarms go off everywhere. If I had legs. If I had arms. If I could do anything, I'd be hugging a wall for cover, waiting for a target to shoot at.
“Viral load's about twenty, thirty percent. This server's not very fast,” Sparks says. “Don't panic, Hotty. Nobody's around to hear the alarms.”
Micki's antiviral software shows about the same, vigorously killing the viral software as it tries to attach itself to her rendering code. “It's rough stuff, though,” she says. “Shit. I've never seen this one before, have you?” An alarm goes off in some of Micki's ice. “Oh fuck,” she says. “Fuck! It's tracing…”
Sparks feeds a piece of the virus to his analysis ice. Picks a viral squirm up. At least, that's how it's represented by the deck. “What the…”
“Sparks, out. Get out!” Micki screams in the gestalt. “Drop carrier! Drop carrier!”
Too late. All hell is here, breaking loose.
The virus reveals its true self. The whole room collapses into virus, and we plunge into darkness. Sparks' avatar is engulfed in the viral squirms, and I feel his brain spasm through the gestalt just once before I override Micki, sever the gestalt, and dump us both offline, all the way out into the seat of the Winnebago.
Micki yanks the optical cable out of her skull.
Kari's holding the optical cable that used to plug Sparks into his deck. He sags against her as Micki opens her eyes. The smell of urine accompanies the faint dripping sounds coming from him now.
“What happened?” Kari asks.
“He got scrambled. Some nasty shit grabbed us.” She yells forward to Nate. “Nate, kill the transmitter. Shut it down cold, then get us the fuck out of here, we're totally branched.”
“What happened?” he yells back, even as the Winnebago lurches into motion.
“It was a trap.” Micki slams her fist down on the table. “Fucking tar-baby trap. With a scrambler and a traceback! Damn, I've never even heard about anything like that before!”
Kari feels Sparks' neck. Then presses her ear to his chest. “Shit.” She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a patch, peels it with her teeth, tears open his shirt, and slaps it square in the middle of his chest. She unbuckles his seatbelt and hauls him onto the floor and begins chest compressions. “Shit!” she yells again. Inflates his lungs. Keeps compressing.
“Micki, get up in my bed and get that blue pouch. Hurry!” she says.
Micki unbuckles her seatbelt and works her way forward, climbs the ladder into the bed over the cab. She returns with the pouch and hands it to Kari.
Kari sits back a moment. Opens the pouch. She takes a tube of gel out of the pouch and squeezes a blob of it on Sparks' hairy chest, then takes the gadget in the pouch out and switches it on. Scans back and forth. “I was afraid of that,” she says, and leans back, all urgency draining out of her.
“What's going on?” Nate demands, practically at the same time Micki does.
“That was more than a scrambler virus, Mick,” Kari says. “That was a parasympathetic stressor-scrambler. They call it ‘junk food’ in CalTech. As in, ‘the next sound you hear…’”
“Will be your coronary arteries slamming shut,” I finish for Micki.
“You've heard of this?” she demands of me. But I haven't.
“Is this new?” I use Micki's voice to ask.
Kari nods a little. “Not very. Ed and I ran into it once before. A year ago.”
Micki looks down at Sparks. His color is fading to the usual yellow, white, and blue. “Ohgod,” she says. “Ohgod.” She squeezes her eyes tight and looks away. “Shit. Kari. Please. Tell me he'll be okay.”
Kari looks at her strangely, then down at the body. She gently shakes her head. “No, honey. Carl is dead.” She gets up. “Ed, bag up Carl, please.” She looks at Micki again. Reaches out to touch Micki's neck, just under the point of her jaw, and hold fingers there a few seconds. Micki's pulse is hammering. Kari sits next to her. “Take off your shirt, Micki.”
Micki turns to look at Kari. Then glances at Sparks. She leans forward and peels out of her tank top, and reaches behind her to unfasten her bra and take it off.
“Micki, don't,” I tell her. “If she scans you, she'll find me.”
Micki ignores me.
Kari squirts the same goop over Micki's breastbone.
“What's that?” Micki asks.
“It's just lube. Makes the scan head move over your skin better.”
“Micki please!” I say. “Don't let her!” But it's too late. Kari presses the scan head to Micki's chest. Micki looks up at Kari, and by extension, I look into the tech-ninja's deep black eyes. It's like she's looking back at me. Looking through the machine called Micki, at the ghost called me.
“Will I live?” Micki asks.
Kari nods. “Uh huh.” She lifts the scan head away, and looks carefully at Micki. “Your heart's fine, sweetie.” She flicks an arm toward me in a blur. And I take control of Micki's nervous system.
“Wait,” Micki says to me.
“Micki, she knows I'm in here”
“Trust me,” Micki says.
Kari scoops Micki into her arms and hugs her tight. “We'll talk about everything else later, honey. Right now, I'm just glad you're okay,” she whispers in Micki's ear.
I let Micki drive. Otherwise the hair on the back of my neck would be standing up. “Micki … this could be very bad.”
Micki hugs Kari back, and she doesn't answer me. Look over the tech-ninja's shoulder.
The Winnebago's network switch still shows a link light. Oh, shit. I use Micki's voice. “Nate, turn the fucking transmitter off!” Kari turns to eye the switch, then looks forward.
“I did!” he yells back.
“No, you didn't! It's still on!”
Kari turns. Pivots in Micki's lap in a blur that Micki's eye chemistry can't follow. There's a gun in her hand.
Snap Micki's hand up at full speed to intercept it.
But Kari isn't pointing the gun at me. At Micki. Her arm arcs outward toward the closet next to us, and she stitches the door with bullets from the MetalStak gun. The closet explodes into splinters, and the smell of burning electronics fills the air. She gives me a single hard glance as the link light goes out. She saw. And she's keeping an eye on me to keep me from doing exactly what I was planning to do. Pull the Talon and shoot her. Chaos. Micki and I are blown, the mission is blown. Damn it. How could I ever think this stuff was fun?
Kari reaches into the closet and pulls out yet another channel-fiber coverall, and a suit of surplus body armor, which she tosses into our lap. “Put this on, Micki. Things are getting a bit rough.” Kari, you have a gift for understatement.
Chapter 26
Kari dumps Sparks' body out the camper door while Micki is pulling her boots on. Throws him clear, so we don't run over him. While Kari's not watching, I move the chameleopoly holster from Micki's shorts to her belly under the armor. It blends in quickly.
Micki doesn't look at me in the gestalt. “You're going to shoot Kari?” she asks.
“Yeah. Because if she decides to shoot us first, we won't get the chance.”
“She won't.”
Stare at her a moment. “You're betting both our lives on that, Micki?”
“Yes, I am. I know her.”
“She knows I'm…”
“No, she doesn't know you're there. She knows I'm wired, that's all. She could have shot me right then, and she didn't. Stop being so fucking paranoid, Rae.”
Kari looks back toward us. Opens another closet and reaches out a K50. “Here. You can use this.”
“We should scatter, Kari. Go to ground.” I tell her with Micki's voice. Grunt a little as we take the heavy K50. “Long as we're in this thing, we're sitting ducks.” Why am I doing this? I have the drop on both Kari and her brother. Why? Am I really taking Micki's word on this?
Kari nods. “You're right about the camper, at least.” She yells forward. “Nate, you keep driving. Go somewhere. Ditch this thing. We'll meet up online and regroup. Ed, Micki and I are going to bail. You wait one minute, then you jump too.” She gives her brother a look, but doesn't say anything, then opens the door again.
Mick and I look out into the darkness. I take over. Jump. Tuck. Roll. Curl up around my K50. Let the armor absorb the impact. Kari follows us out moments later.
“Ow,” Micki says, when we finally stop moving. She says it aloud.
“You okay, sweetie?” Kari asks.
Micki rolls to her feet carefully. Moves this and that. “Yeah. I'll live. You?”
“Of course,” Kari says.
A bright flash lights the highway, a mile down the road, and the thunderous explosion follows it shortly.
“What the hell?” Micki yells. “Ed!”
Kari shakes her head. “Don't worry. Ed's smart enough to jump before that went off.”
Micki stares at Kari.
“Nate set us up, Mick. The trap. The transmitter. All of it. I thought you were in on it, at first, since a lot of this was your plan. Especially when I saw your wiring, and how fast you can go. We need to talk about it, but not right now. I was testing you. You passed.”
“Shit,” Micki says.
“Uh … Mick?” I ask.
“Don't rub my nose in it,” she grumps to me. “What would you have done?” she asks Kari.
Kari looks down. Then away. “I don't know.” She gets up. Looks out into the dark. “I thought you'd fight when I moved on you, or shoot me when I turned my back, if you were in on it. Ed was ready to take the shot from the front seat.”
“Um … Rae?” Micki says. But she knows I already know.
Kari frowns.
“What's wrong?” Micki asks.
“Ed's turned his transceiver off. Or he's inside a metal building or something. I can't reach him.”
Use Micki's voice. “We need to get out of here. Keep moving.”
“I have to wait for my brother, Micki,” Kari says patiently.
“Kari, if you're transmitting, they can track us.”
Kari looks at Micki, then just shakes her head. “Not my transceiver, they can't.” She reaches into a pocket and hands Micki something. “Transceiver. Put it on receive only, if you don't believe me about my hardware. When I hook up with Ed, I'll signal you. Pay attention. I'm not going to transmit long.” With that, Kari walks away.
Micki plugs the receiver into one of her jacks. We listen. Kari eventually disappears off the link as well. Sounds like she found her brother.
“Now what?” Micki asks me.
“We go home.”
Micki glances back toward the burning Winnebago. “You got any idea how far that is from here?”
“You gonna tell me we have a choice?”
She goes quiet, and we walk. The air grows progressively cooler, and thunder rumbles in the distance. “Gonna rain on us, isn't it?” she asks.
“Not a clue, Mick. Sorry.”
“Thought you were the information warrior.”
“Find me a net connection, and I'll tell you.”
“Fuck, even I can look that up.”
We're both quiet again. Walking in the darkness. Following the road, back the way we came. Carrying the K50. Listening.
Hear it. The UAV. It comes up fast. Look through the starlight video feed from the K50. Take the shot.
Recoil slams through Micki's shoulder. Report. Gout of flame a meter long. Micki's ears are ringing after the first shot. It takes two more before I hit the UAV. The little machine sparks, flips, and comes down in a shower of pieces. We run.
Bright light. Couldn't hear them coming through the ringing in Micki's ears. Shit.
“Freeze! Police! Throw down your weapon and raise your hands.” Not … how you expect to be greeted by gang bangers.
“Shoot!” Micki says. “Come on!”
“I trusted you with Kari,” I tell her. “Trust me.” And we set the rifle down, slowly. Carefully. And raise our hands.
“Get on the ground. Hands above your head,” the amplified voice yells. We do.
Marching feet.
“Rae…”
“They're cops, Mick. Anyone else would have shot first. Anyone.”
“So what? I go down for felony possession, if nothing else, and they erase you. This is an improvement?”
I don't have time to answer. An armored figure kicks the K50 away. “Jesus! Girl's carrying a fucking cannon.”
I hope I'm right about these people. I hope I'm right… Another gun muzzle at the base of my neck. Micki's neck. Our neck. A voice. “Put one hand behind your back. Slowly.” Micki does. Someone slides her glove off. “Now the other one.” She brings her other hand around. The same person slides her other glove off and zipties her wrists together. “Okay, let's go.” He helps us up and I get a good look at him. Close-cropped hair. Walks like military. Professional, though. Cops. Yeah, I certainly hope so. It'd be a bad time to turn up wrong.
“Who are you guys?” I ask him.
“None of your business, little girl. The less you know, the more likely you are to survive.” There's no malice in it, just a frankness that is, if anything, more disturbing. The casual dismissiveness, though. If it wouldn't get us shot, I'd hurt him.
“Now you know how I feel,” Micki says in the gestalt.
It's raining by the time we sit in the back of an unmarked black car. Hurdmobile Electra. The Crown Vic of the electric car era. Favorite of police departments, government agencies, corporate security, hell, even we use them for official work. The back seats have the usual cutout for your elbows when you're cuffed. At least it's dry.
“You want to give me a hand with the body?” the man in the driver's seat asks.
“Yeah. The boss will want to know if he's contaminated, I guess. I hope he's fresh, it's a bitch to get them in the trunk otherwise.”
Micki stares. But she doesn't say anything. Clam up. It works, sometimes, and Micki's good at it. “They're just going to pick Sparks up and stuff him in the trunk?”
“Sounds like it, Mick,” I tell her.
“I thought you said these people were cops.”
Hang my head. Micki's too. “I thought they were. They act like it. And there aren't any corporates around here with this kind of muscle.”
“Except Nate's big player. And Neil's. Especially if they're the same person.”
Sparks' body thuds into the trunk without ceremony. Micki's eyes squeeze shut, and I can feel the tears coming.
“Mick, let him go.”
“He's dead, Rae. I got him killed.”
“No, you didn't. He went along with the plan, too. He knew the risks. Probably more than you did.”
“You really don't give a shit about him, do you?”
“He wasn't my friend, Micki. Even if he had been, we don't have time.”
“Nice. So you probably won't feel anything about me either.”
“Mick, I hate to be the one to remind you of this, but if you go, I go. This life I have with you is the only one I've got.”
“Well, it's nice to know self-interest is still in play.”
“Just quit, Mick. Worry about yourself for now.”
“I got a choice?” she grumps.
Take over. Close my eyes. Focus inward. Gradually stimulate Micki's adrenal glands. Build up serious strength. Switch her muscles over to pure strength sequencing and slowly, carefully, pull at the ziptie. It stretches a little. They do, sometimes. Though it takes superhuman strength to do it.
“What're you doing? Just break it,” Micki says.
“Can't. There's a monomol fiber in it. If you break the thing, it pulls the fiber loose and cuts off one of your hands.”
“Oh. Nice. Try to avoid that.”
“Trust me, I will.”
“We get out of this, you have to show me how to do that,” she says.
The car stops by the wreckage of the Winnebago. Other cars are there.
“Okay, let's go,” one of the men says, and helps us out of the back seat. He keeps his hand on Micki's arm. I rotate Micki's other hand. Bring the root of her thumb up against the ziptie. Tuck. Wiggle.
“Got the girl, Boss.” Another helmeted face. Shorter. Probably female. She looks at Micki a moment. There's a voice from the Winnebago wreckage. “Hey, this asshole's still alive.”
She turns toward the wrecked Winnebago. From her body language, she says something, or sends it on wireless head to head. There's a quick report and a flash of light.
“Not anymore,” Micki mutters.
Wiggle the thumb. This is bad. The thumb slips. Grates a little on the ziptie. Slips loose.
“That's what they tell me, yeah.”
We all dive together, and the checked-tile floor of the pizzeria floats up to slap the soles of our feet. Sparks' and Micki's. And by extension, mine. The fan spins overhead. It, and the floor, are about the only things that haven't changed.
Look around. Viral code is gnawing at the waitress, and her head has disappeared into a twisted, ropelike, squirming mass, rendered flashing red by Micki's antivirus ice. It's wrenched the waitress sideways, folding her in half vertically along her spine until her shoulders are at a ninety degree angle to each other. One breast has pulled free of the shirt, and is lovingly rendered by the original code, jiggling as the viral code eats her. The other blinks with great eyelids over a gray, iris-less eye through the shirt, as digital code gets recombined in ways it wasn't ever meant to be. Her arms flutter toward where her head should be now, and again, and she makes organic, sucking sounds. She reeks of sex and pizza.
The viral code is everywhere. Tables. Chairs. Pizza. The smell in the room has degenerated to basic elements. Salty. Iron. Spice. We move a little in the representation. And inhale a cloud of pure capsicum heat. Like being maced.
“Fuck!” Micki says. A quick thought, and she turns off scent and air rendering. The room goes still, even though the fan still makes rushing sounds in nonexistent air. She takes a quick look around. Then looks down at her feet. “Oh, shit.”
The floor changes under her, and viral code jumps up over her black leather boots. “Fuck!” Micki says. “Virus picked me up!” A quick thought and she turns her virus protection ice from passive to active, and the viral code spikes purple and evaporates. And alarms go off everywhere. If I had legs. If I had arms. If I could do anything, I'd be hugging a wall for cover, waiting for a target to shoot at.
“Viral load's about twenty, thirty percent. This server's not very fast,” Sparks says. “Don't panic, Hotty. Nobody's around to hear the alarms.”
Micki's antiviral software shows about the same, vigorously killing the viral software as it tries to attach itself to her rendering code. “It's rough stuff, though,” she says. “Shit. I've never seen this one before, have you?” An alarm goes off in some of Micki's ice. “Oh fuck,” she says. “Fuck! It's tracing…”
Sparks feeds a piece of the virus to his analysis ice. Picks a viral squirm up. At least, that's how it's represented by the deck. “What the…”
“Sparks, out. Get out!” Micki screams in the gestalt. “Drop carrier! Drop carrier!”
Too late. All hell is here, breaking loose.
The virus reveals its true self. The whole room collapses into virus, and we plunge into darkness. Sparks' avatar is engulfed in the viral squirms, and I feel his brain spasm through the gestalt just once before I override Micki, sever the gestalt, and dump us both offline, all the way out into the seat of the Winnebago.
Micki yanks the optical cable out of her skull.
Kari's holding the optical cable that used to plug Sparks into his deck. He sags against her as Micki opens her eyes. The smell of urine accompanies the faint dripping sounds coming from him now.
“What happened?” Kari asks.
“He got scrambled. Some nasty shit grabbed us.” She yells forward to Nate. “Nate, kill the transmitter. Shut it down cold, then get us the fuck out of here, we're totally branched.”
“What happened?” he yells back, even as the Winnebago lurches into motion.
“It was a trap.” Micki slams her fist down on the table. “Fucking tar-baby trap. With a scrambler and a traceback! Damn, I've never even heard about anything like that before!”
Kari feels Sparks' neck. Then presses her ear to his chest. “Shit.” She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a patch, peels it with her teeth, tears open his shirt, and slaps it square in the middle of his chest. She unbuckles his seatbelt and hauls him onto the floor and begins chest compressions. “Shit!” she yells again. Inflates his lungs. Keeps compressing.
“Micki, get up in my bed and get that blue pouch. Hurry!” she says.
Micki unbuckles her seatbelt and works her way forward, climbs the ladder into the bed over the cab. She returns with the pouch and hands it to Kari.
Kari sits back a moment. Opens the pouch. She takes a tube of gel out of the pouch and squeezes a blob of it on Sparks' hairy chest, then takes the gadget in the pouch out and switches it on. Scans back and forth. “I was afraid of that,” she says, and leans back, all urgency draining out of her.
“What's going on?” Nate demands, practically at the same time Micki does.
“That was more than a scrambler virus, Mick,” Kari says. “That was a parasympathetic stressor-scrambler. They call it ‘junk food’ in CalTech. As in, ‘the next sound you hear…’”
“Will be your coronary arteries slamming shut,” I finish for Micki.
“You've heard of this?” she demands of me. But I haven't.
“Is this new?” I use Micki's voice to ask.
Kari nods a little. “Not very. Ed and I ran into it once before. A year ago.”
Micki looks down at Sparks. His color is fading to the usual yellow, white, and blue. “Ohgod,” she says. “Ohgod.” She squeezes her eyes tight and looks away. “Shit. Kari. Please. Tell me he'll be okay.”
Kari looks at her strangely, then down at the body. She gently shakes her head. “No, honey. Carl is dead.” She gets up. “Ed, bag up Carl, please.” She looks at Micki again. Reaches out to touch Micki's neck, just under the point of her jaw, and hold fingers there a few seconds. Micki's pulse is hammering. Kari sits next to her. “Take off your shirt, Micki.”
Micki turns to look at Kari. Then glances at Sparks. She leans forward and peels out of her tank top, and reaches behind her to unfasten her bra and take it off.
“Micki, don't,” I tell her. “If she scans you, she'll find me.”
Micki ignores me.
Kari squirts the same goop over Micki's breastbone.
“What's that?” Micki asks.
“It's just lube. Makes the scan head move over your skin better.”
“Micki please!” I say. “Don't let her!” But it's too late. Kari presses the scan head to Micki's chest. Micki looks up at Kari, and by extension, I look into the tech-ninja's deep black eyes. It's like she's looking back at me. Looking through the machine called Micki, at the ghost called me.
“Will I live?” Micki asks.
Kari nods. “Uh huh.” She lifts the scan head away, and looks carefully at Micki. “Your heart's fine, sweetie.” She flicks an arm toward me in a blur. And I take control of Micki's nervous system.
“Wait,” Micki says to me.
“Micki, she knows I'm in here”
“Trust me,” Micki says.
Kari scoops Micki into her arms and hugs her tight. “We'll talk about everything else later, honey. Right now, I'm just glad you're okay,” she whispers in Micki's ear.
I let Micki drive. Otherwise the hair on the back of my neck would be standing up. “Micki … this could be very bad.”
Micki hugs Kari back, and she doesn't answer me. Look over the tech-ninja's shoulder.
The Winnebago's network switch still shows a link light. Oh, shit. I use Micki's voice. “Nate, turn the fucking transmitter off!” Kari turns to eye the switch, then looks forward.
“I did!” he yells back.
“No, you didn't! It's still on!”
Kari turns. Pivots in Micki's lap in a blur that Micki's eye chemistry can't follow. There's a gun in her hand.
Snap Micki's hand up at full speed to intercept it.
But Kari isn't pointing the gun at me. At Micki. Her arm arcs outward toward the closet next to us, and she stitches the door with bullets from the MetalStak gun. The closet explodes into splinters, and the smell of burning electronics fills the air. She gives me a single hard glance as the link light goes out. She saw. And she's keeping an eye on me to keep me from doing exactly what I was planning to do. Pull the Talon and shoot her. Chaos. Micki and I are blown, the mission is blown. Damn it. How could I ever think this stuff was fun?
Kari reaches into the closet and pulls out yet another channel-fiber coverall, and a suit of surplus body armor, which she tosses into our lap. “Put this on, Micki. Things are getting a bit rough.” Kari, you have a gift for understatement.
Chapter 26
Kari dumps Sparks' body out the camper door while Micki is pulling her boots on. Throws him clear, so we don't run over him. While Kari's not watching, I move the chameleopoly holster from Micki's shorts to her belly under the armor. It blends in quickly.
Micki doesn't look at me in the gestalt. “You're going to shoot Kari?” she asks.
“Yeah. Because if she decides to shoot us first, we won't get the chance.”
“She won't.”
Stare at her a moment. “You're betting both our lives on that, Micki?”
“Yes, I am. I know her.”
“She knows I'm…”
“No, she doesn't know you're there. She knows I'm wired, that's all. She could have shot me right then, and she didn't. Stop being so fucking paranoid, Rae.”
Kari looks back toward us. Opens another closet and reaches out a K50. “Here. You can use this.”
“We should scatter, Kari. Go to ground.” I tell her with Micki's voice. Grunt a little as we take the heavy K50. “Long as we're in this thing, we're sitting ducks.” Why am I doing this? I have the drop on both Kari and her brother. Why? Am I really taking Micki's word on this?
Kari nods. “You're right about the camper, at least.” She yells forward. “Nate, you keep driving. Go somewhere. Ditch this thing. We'll meet up online and regroup. Ed, Micki and I are going to bail. You wait one minute, then you jump too.” She gives her brother a look, but doesn't say anything, then opens the door again.
Mick and I look out into the darkness. I take over. Jump. Tuck. Roll. Curl up around my K50. Let the armor absorb the impact. Kari follows us out moments later.
“Ow,” Micki says, when we finally stop moving. She says it aloud.
“You okay, sweetie?” Kari asks.
Micki rolls to her feet carefully. Moves this and that. “Yeah. I'll live. You?”
“Of course,” Kari says.
A bright flash lights the highway, a mile down the road, and the thunderous explosion follows it shortly.
“What the hell?” Micki yells. “Ed!”
Kari shakes her head. “Don't worry. Ed's smart enough to jump before that went off.”
Micki stares at Kari.
“Nate set us up, Mick. The trap. The transmitter. All of it. I thought you were in on it, at first, since a lot of this was your plan. Especially when I saw your wiring, and how fast you can go. We need to talk about it, but not right now. I was testing you. You passed.”
“Shit,” Micki says.
“Uh … Mick?” I ask.
“Don't rub my nose in it,” she grumps to me. “What would you have done?” she asks Kari.
Kari looks down. Then away. “I don't know.” She gets up. Looks out into the dark. “I thought you'd fight when I moved on you, or shoot me when I turned my back, if you were in on it. Ed was ready to take the shot from the front seat.”
“Um … Rae?” Micki says. But she knows I already know.
Kari frowns.
“What's wrong?” Micki asks.
“Ed's turned his transceiver off. Or he's inside a metal building or something. I can't reach him.”
Use Micki's voice. “We need to get out of here. Keep moving.”
“I have to wait for my brother, Micki,” Kari says patiently.
“Kari, if you're transmitting, they can track us.”
Kari looks at Micki, then just shakes her head. “Not my transceiver, they can't.” She reaches into a pocket and hands Micki something. “Transceiver. Put it on receive only, if you don't believe me about my hardware. When I hook up with Ed, I'll signal you. Pay attention. I'm not going to transmit long.” With that, Kari walks away.
Micki plugs the receiver into one of her jacks. We listen. Kari eventually disappears off the link as well. Sounds like she found her brother.
“Now what?” Micki asks me.
“We go home.”
Micki glances back toward the burning Winnebago. “You got any idea how far that is from here?”
“You gonna tell me we have a choice?”
She goes quiet, and we walk. The air grows progressively cooler, and thunder rumbles in the distance. “Gonna rain on us, isn't it?” she asks.
“Not a clue, Mick. Sorry.”
“Thought you were the information warrior.”
“Find me a net connection, and I'll tell you.”
“Fuck, even I can look that up.”
We're both quiet again. Walking in the darkness. Following the road, back the way we came. Carrying the K50. Listening.
Hear it. The UAV. It comes up fast. Look through the starlight video feed from the K50. Take the shot.
Recoil slams through Micki's shoulder. Report. Gout of flame a meter long. Micki's ears are ringing after the first shot. It takes two more before I hit the UAV. The little machine sparks, flips, and comes down in a shower of pieces. We run.
Bright light. Couldn't hear them coming through the ringing in Micki's ears. Shit.
“Freeze! Police! Throw down your weapon and raise your hands.” Not … how you expect to be greeted by gang bangers.
“Shoot!” Micki says. “Come on!”
“I trusted you with Kari,” I tell her. “Trust me.” And we set the rifle down, slowly. Carefully. And raise our hands.
“Get on the ground. Hands above your head,” the amplified voice yells. We do.
Marching feet.
“Rae…”
“They're cops, Mick. Anyone else would have shot first. Anyone.”
“So what? I go down for felony possession, if nothing else, and they erase you. This is an improvement?”
I don't have time to answer. An armored figure kicks the K50 away. “Jesus! Girl's carrying a fucking cannon.”
I hope I'm right about these people. I hope I'm right… Another gun muzzle at the base of my neck. Micki's neck. Our neck. A voice. “Put one hand behind your back. Slowly.” Micki does. Someone slides her glove off. “Now the other one.” She brings her other hand around. The same person slides her other glove off and zipties her wrists together. “Okay, let's go.” He helps us up and I get a good look at him. Close-cropped hair. Walks like military. Professional, though. Cops. Yeah, I certainly hope so. It'd be a bad time to turn up wrong.
“Who are you guys?” I ask him.
“None of your business, little girl. The less you know, the more likely you are to survive.” There's no malice in it, just a frankness that is, if anything, more disturbing. The casual dismissiveness, though. If it wouldn't get us shot, I'd hurt him.
“Now you know how I feel,” Micki says in the gestalt.
It's raining by the time we sit in the back of an unmarked black car. Hurdmobile Electra. The Crown Vic of the electric car era. Favorite of police departments, government agencies, corporate security, hell, even we use them for official work. The back seats have the usual cutout for your elbows when you're cuffed. At least it's dry.
“You want to give me a hand with the body?” the man in the driver's seat asks.
“Yeah. The boss will want to know if he's contaminated, I guess. I hope he's fresh, it's a bitch to get them in the trunk otherwise.”
Micki stares. But she doesn't say anything. Clam up. It works, sometimes, and Micki's good at it. “They're just going to pick Sparks up and stuff him in the trunk?”
“Sounds like it, Mick,” I tell her.
“I thought you said these people were cops.”
Hang my head. Micki's too. “I thought they were. They act like it. And there aren't any corporates around here with this kind of muscle.”
“Except Nate's big player. And Neil's. Especially if they're the same person.”
Sparks' body thuds into the trunk without ceremony. Micki's eyes squeeze shut, and I can feel the tears coming.
“Mick, let him go.”
“He's dead, Rae. I got him killed.”
“No, you didn't. He went along with the plan, too. He knew the risks. Probably more than you did.”
“You really don't give a shit about him, do you?”
“He wasn't my friend, Micki. Even if he had been, we don't have time.”
“Nice. So you probably won't feel anything about me either.”
“Mick, I hate to be the one to remind you of this, but if you go, I go. This life I have with you is the only one I've got.”
“Well, it's nice to know self-interest is still in play.”
“Just quit, Mick. Worry about yourself for now.”
“I got a choice?” she grumps.
Take over. Close my eyes. Focus inward. Gradually stimulate Micki's adrenal glands. Build up serious strength. Switch her muscles over to pure strength sequencing and slowly, carefully, pull at the ziptie. It stretches a little. They do, sometimes. Though it takes superhuman strength to do it.
“What're you doing? Just break it,” Micki says.
“Can't. There's a monomol fiber in it. If you break the thing, it pulls the fiber loose and cuts off one of your hands.”
“Oh. Nice. Try to avoid that.”
“Trust me, I will.”
“We get out of this, you have to show me how to do that,” she says.
The car stops by the wreckage of the Winnebago. Other cars are there.
“Okay, let's go,” one of the men says, and helps us out of the back seat. He keeps his hand on Micki's arm. I rotate Micki's other hand. Bring the root of her thumb up against the ziptie. Tuck. Wiggle.
“Got the girl, Boss.” Another helmeted face. Shorter. Probably female. She looks at Micki a moment. There's a voice from the Winnebago wreckage. “Hey, this asshole's still alive.”
She turns toward the wrecked Winnebago. From her body language, she says something, or sends it on wireless head to head. There's a quick report and a flash of light.
“Not anymore,” Micki mutters.
Wiggle the thumb. This is bad. The thumb slips. Grates a little on the ziptie. Slips loose.
