Terminated (22 page)

T
he compound was just coming awake by the time they’d made it to the tree line near the fence; roosters were crowing, people were chattering, and Bryn heard the laughter of kids as they ran close to the ditch where she and Reynolds had spent the night dead.

She wondered if they were used to seeing bodies there. She hoped not. She hoped that was why their surly body-disposal team had been up so early, to avoid letting the kids see that ugly truth.

But she wasn’t really sure Walt would have even taken that into consideration. He was probably of the “they have to grow up sometime” school.

She had no way of knowing whether Patrick was okay inside those walls, or what his plan was to try to get out . . . at least, until the front gate opened, and a dusty, mud-stained black pickup rumbled out. Walt was in the driver’s seat, and next to him . . .

Next to him was Patrick.

Patrick seemed perfectly at ease. They were laughing together. Walt shook a cigarette out of a pack, and Patrick took it and lit up with casual competence.
I didn’t know he smoked,
she thought. Not that it mattered. Patrick didn’t smoke; the role he was playing did. Even the little motions—the way he sat, the tilt of his head—those were alien to her from the way Patrick normally moved. She’d never realized he was such an expert chameleon.

Funny how that seemed such a betrayal just now.

“Come on,” Bryn said, and grabbed hold of Reynolds’ arm. He was feeling better now, and from the look he shot her, he was starting to think about resisting. She twisted the arm up behind his back and stepped in close. “I’m not feeling like putting up with this, so let’s not dance, all right? Just move.”

“You won’t kill me. You need me.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But I have a really sharp knife, and I promise you, regenerating things that have been cut off is painful and slow. Think about all the things you could lose. I’ll be nice. I’ll just start with an ear.”

That got him moving, willingly. He kept up with her when she settled into a run, though he was out of shape—she wondered how that worked. Did the nanites see his extra pounds as being normal? That would suck. It meant no matter how much he dieted or exercised, he’d never permanently lose a pound. They’d just find a way to put it back on. Another way that medical miracles could screw someone, she thought, and almost laughed. Almost. Luckily, she didn’t really have the breath.

The vehicle trail was full of switchbacks, to avoid too steep a grade for safe braking, but Bryn plunged straight down the slope, with Reynolds running beside her. He wasn’t too sure-footed, but he grimly kept pace until she slowed about halfway down to check their progress. Good. They’d pulled ahead of the truck, and the farther they went, the easier the footing . . . but then, the vegetation was growing more dense as the elevation fell. More brambles, thicker trees. She cut right, trying to keep the switchback road in sight as they ran.

By the time they’d forced their way through the thickest mass at the very bottom of the slope, she was exhausted, and Reynolds was gasping for breath like a man about to expire of a heart attack. He wouldn’t, of course, but he definitely wasn’t looking too good. Was his skin just a little gray, beneath the brown? She thought it might be. And his eyes had dulled, too.

He’d been Revived, not upgraded, like her. The nanites were starting to lose their ability to heal him completely, and unlike her, his couldn’t be recharged through proteins. They were starting to break down into waste products in his blood.

He was in the early stages of decomp. She saw it in the clumsy way he folded up when they reached the edge of the road, clinging to a tree. There wasn’t much time to get what they needed out of him, not without another shot of Returné on hand.

She almost, almost felt sorry for him.

“Please,” he whimpered. “Please let me rest.”

“Soon,” she said. “Just stay put.”

He didn’t have the energy to bolt, even if he had the will, so it wasn’t much of a risk leaving him there. She readied the knife, and watched as the truck made the last set of turns on the access road and stopped.

This was the moment. She had no idea where Walt was heading. . . . If he was going toward civilization, he’d probably go left, and pass near her. If not, he’d go right, and she might miss her chance.

But she saw Patrick point, and the knot in her chest eased. They were turning toward her.

One . . . two . . .
on three, she bolted from cover and jumped onto the running board of the truck. Walt reacted exactly the way most people would have, with an instinctive flinch away from her, and so he didn’t see Patrick making a lightning-fast grab for the knife in Walt’s belt holster.

She didn’t have to make a move. Walt slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, and Patrick jammed the knife into the flesh at the base of his throat—almost exactly the same spot Walt had selected when they were in opposite positions. It wasn’t, Bryn felt, an accident.

“Well, shit, Vaughn,” Walt said. “What kind of special-effects dickery is your dead girlfriend?”

“No CGIs were hurt,” Bryn said. She opened the door and stepped down from the running board as she did. Patrick unlocked Walt’s seat belt—she was mildly surprised a rebel like him was bothering to wear one—and Walt, upon some gentle knife-related urging, eased his way out of the cab. Bryn watched carefully, waiting for the tensing of muscles she knew would come; the second it did, she added her own knife, pressing in just over his kidneys. “This doesn’t have to go badly for you, Walt. Just relax.”

“What happened to my men?”

“Sorry.” She wasn’t. He turned his head just enough that she saw the hateful gleam in his eyes. “Didn’t have much of a choice. They weren’t going to just let us go.”

“You were dead. I know you were. . . .” Walt’s voice trailed off, because he’d caught sight of Reynolds clinging to the tree. His mouth opened, as if he intended to say something, but nothing came out.

“Yeah, we were,” Bryn said. “Call it a miracle.”

“Not from any god I’d worship.”

“I’d be surprised if you ever worshipped any god except your own ambition,” Patrick said. He was no longer being Vaughn, and the cigarette was gone, stamped out on the road. He looked taller now, and straighter. “Taking the truck, Walt. Do you want to live to make it back to your compound?”

“If you’re offering.”

“I am,” he said. “But you have to make me a promise.”

“Why the hell would I do that?
Vaughn?
”

“Because I know how much you hate governments and corporations and rich fat cats,” Patrick said. “And we’ve got all three of those things looking for us now. They’re going to find their way to you, eventually, and I need you to do exactly what comes naturally—put up a fight. I’m not asking you to fall on any swords, but just don’t help them. Not right away. If you could forget about the truck, I’d owe you.”

“Owe me what?”

“That half a million you lost on the Stinger deal,” Patrick said. “By the way, that was me. I took it and I burned your weapons contact. Sorry. The job was to close off the dealer, and I did it. And I wasn’t too wild about someone like you having the missiles, either, to be honest. But if you do this for me, I’ll get you the half million back, in cash, untraceable bills.”

“Not enough,” Walt said. “I want a full million. Interest.”

“For doing exactly what you always do, fight whatever comes at you? No.”

“A million, or I pick up the phone and call the cops to tell them my truck’s been stolen.”

“We could just kill him,” Bryn said. Her voice sounded light and cold, and utterly at odds with the beautiful sunrise and the twittering birds in the trees. “Kill him and dump his body in the ditch. Seems like karma.”

“It does,” Patrick said, but he sent her a glance that let her know he was worried by what she’d said. And the way she’d said it. It worried her a little, too, but in a distant, arctic-ice-locked way. “But I think Walt understands there’s a better outcome to be had.”

“There is if there’s a million on the table,” Walt said. Bryn had to admit that she would not have been that calm in his situation, with a knife at his throat and another at his back, and a woman who was evidently capable of resurrection calmly threatening to slice.

Patrick knew when he was beaten, even with the upper hand, and he shook his head a little and said, “All right. One million. Deal?”

“Why would you believe a thing I said? Considering how long you’ve been lying to me.”

“I just do,” Patrick said. “Because I’ve lived behind those walls, and I know you care about those people. And I know you keep your word.”

Walt hesitated, then said, “All right. My word on it. You take the truck, and you get me the million. I won’t tell whoever comes calling.”

“It may take a while on the million. Seeing as we’re on the run right now.”

Walt grinned. It looked maniacal. “I trust you, brother. Tell your bitch to stop poking that in my back unless she wants to buy me dinner first.”

Bryn thought about pushing the knife home. Thought about it a lot. But she saw the clear warning in Patrick’s expression, and finally took a deep breath and stepped back. “I think this is a mistake,” she said, “but if you want to trust him, it’s on you.”

“Then it’s on me,” Patrick said. “Let him go, Bryn.”

Walt gave her a second, very long look. “Bryn. You don’t look much like a Bryn to me.”

“What do I look like?”

“A dead woman,” he said. “Because I don’t forget.”

She laughed. It sounded crazy.

The hackles raised on the back of her neck as she thought,
I sound like Jane
.

Patrick grabbed the shaking, exhausted Reynolds and shoved him into the truck, then took the passenger seat next to him. “You drive,” he said to Bryn. He nodded to Walt as she took her spot behind the wheel, with Reynolds sandwiched in the middle. “Good luck, brother.”

“Be seeing you,
Bryn
,” Walt said, and aimed a finger gun at her. She managed not to bite it off. Just barely.

“I liked it better when he called me bitch,” she said, and threw the truck into gear.

They left him, and his compound of maybe-crazies, behind in a veil of dust.

Patrick said, very quietly, “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” she said. “Shot in the heart by the man I love, thrown in a ditch, dragged to the edge of a cliff for disposal, forced to kill four guys to cover our escape. It’s Thursday, isn’t it? Typical Thursday.”

He didn’t laugh. He was watching her; she could sense it without glancing in his direction. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“It was the right play for the right time. I’m fine.”

“Bryn—”

“I’m fine. How about you, Mr. Reynolds? Catching your breath?”

He had at least enough to say shakily, “Fuck you.”

She tried to laugh, but it turned to a cough. Her throat felt very dry. Dry as the dusty road. “Pat?”

In her peripheral vision, she saw him turn his head away. “You’re right. Typical Thursday,” he said.

And that was the last of their conversation for a while.

T
he truck was good for about two hundred miles before the tank signaled it was about to give out; it was good timing, because they were running on fumes when the first gas station appeared on the horizon. It was miraculously in business, and Bryn used the last of the cash Patrick had on him (and the last of what Reynolds had in his pockets when they searched him) to pay for the gas and the entire jar of Slim Jims, plus a jug of drinking water. The attendant didn’t seem to think that was strange at all, but then, he was in a part of the country where it was probably survival instinct to aggressively mind your own business. Once they were fueled, they got off the main road again and angled for another freeway, where the nondescript truck joined convoys of tractor trailers heading north.

“It’s probably time to get some answers,” Patrick said, and shook Reynolds by the shoulder. The man was dozing. He didn’t look any better than before; in fact, he looked worse, which didn’t surprise Bryn in the least. When the nanites started dying, there was no recovery without more Returné, and it wasn’t exactly going to appear on a convenience store shelf.

Reynolds was going to suffer, and he was going to rot, slowly. Bryn supposed she ought to feel worse than she did about that, but honestly, she didn’t really care. Fuck him. Fuck him and his feverish, dishonest greed. He hadn’t cared about how many died in horrible agony; he ought to have a chance to live through it himself.

But first, he needed to
talk
. He’d been stubborn so far, but with the right pressure . . . the right tools . . .

You’re becoming her,
a still voice inside her whispered.
You’re becoming Jane. Listen to yourself.

She pushed it aside, because another thought struck, one that rang inside her head like a tuning fork. Returné. He was on
Returné
, not on the upgrades.

She didn’t think there was a chance in hell that it would work, but on the off chance that hell had rolled snake eyes just this once, she said, “Condition sapphire.”

Patrick sat bolt upright, as if she’d hit him with a cattle prod. “Can’t be,” he said. “Didn’t they factor the command sequences out of the batch of drugs they gave their executives?”

“They lost their best scientists,” she pointed out. “Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they didn’t bother, because
these
men—these men would believe they were invincible, wouldn’t they?”

He shook his head. “I think you’re dreaming.”

“We’ll see. Hand me a Slim Jim, Reynolds.”

Reynolds, without hesitation, reached for the jar wedged into the narrow opening between his feet and Patrick’s, and took one out. He extended it to her.

“Unwrap it,” she said. He did, and held out the raw jerky stick. “Now eat it.”

He did, expressionless, chewing like a machine and swallowing until it was all gone.

“Good. Now eat the wrapper,” she said.

He raised it to his mouth. His dulled eyes looked terrified, but he was doing it. He was really doing it. The wrapper crinkled and buckled as it hit his lips, but his fingers continued their relentless progress to shove it in.

“Bryn,” Patrick snapped. “Stop him.”

Reynolds had jammed most of the plastic into his mouth. She was tempted to tell him to swallow, just for the hell of it, just to watch him choke, but the anger in Patrick’s voice penetrated the lazy fog of cruelty. It was misty red, that fog. Like an aerosolized spray of blood.

“Stop,” she said. “Take the plastic out of your mouth and drop it on the floor, Reynolds.”

He did, and, lacking instructions, folded his hands and just sat. Waiting.

Waiting for her orders.

It had worked. Condition Sapphire, the hidden feature that made Returné victims into slaves . . . it was still encoded in the nanites. Into these nanites, at least. It rendered Dr. Reynolds completely, utterly helpless and at her mercy.

She thought about what she was going to do with him. All the terrible and wonderful and horrifying things.

And then it all collapsed inside her into a black hole of pain and anguish and horror.

Bryn pulled over to the side of the road with a sudden jerk of the wheel, spewing gravel and bringing the truck to a juddering halt. She bent forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, gasping for breath, gagging for it. The wheel was gritty on her skin, coated with the sweaty, oily deposits of those who’d driven it before. It stank of strangers, and she thought of her own skin rubbing off, joining this horrible anonymous mixture of castoff. Thought about rolling down that hillside, ripping into the flesh of a man she’d never seen before. Thought of snapping necks and slicing flesh and the joy, the unclean joy of it made her stomach suddenly twist and try to escape.

“Drink.”

Patrick’s hand on the back of her head, gentle and steady. His other holding the gallon of water, uncapped and ready. She took it and gulped, gulped, trying to wash the taste of all of that away.

All of
her
away.

The water tasted like tears.

She sat back, taking deep breaths, and said, “Dr. Reynolds, we need to know where to find the rest of the Fountain Group. Please tell us where they are.”

He turned that terribly dull look to her, and she saw him in there, trapped. Maybe not a good man. Maybe a man who deserved every wretched and awful thing that was going to happen to him. But, like Thorpe, she couldn’t look into his eyes and not see herself . . . not understand that human spirit, however twisted, however flawed. He was staring into eternity, and she knew how that felt.

She knew how it
would
feel, when she arrived there. It was something every single human, even those like her, would eventually face.

She couldn’t look at eternity and not feel small, and frail, and alone. She had to reach out.

“I’m sorry, Martin,” she said, and took his hand. His fingers were limp and cool against hers. Not damp quite yet. The skin still felt firm. A near-perfect simulation of life. “I’m so very sorry. Please. Please tell us before it’s too late. You know what’s going to happen to you. You know how horrible it is. You don’t want that for your children, too. The Fountain Group—what they’re doing is evil. You know that. Somewhere deep inside, you
know.
Listen to it.”

“Bryn,” Patrick said, and his warm hand cupped the back of her neck for a moment. “He’s conditioned to respond. You don’t have to convince him.”

“I know,” she whispered. Tears blurred her vision. “I
want
to convince him.”

Reynolds let his breath out in a slow, rattling breath. It smelled of slow death and sickness. “I don’t know where they all are,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know where
any
of them are?”

“Yes,” Reynolds said. And that was the moment when she knew she’d reached him, because even as she started to ask for the necessary clarification the conditioning required . . . he went on. “Most of them are going to be gathering in the Trigon offices in San Francisco in a few days. All the ones that matter will be there. The others—the others are like Thorpe. They don’t agree with the program. They were outvoted.” He swallowed. She heard the wet, thick sound, and she remembered how that felt, dissolving inside. Coming to pieces in slow, dreadful motion. “If you want to stop it, stop them. They can give you everything.”

She nodded. “We will.”

He held her gaze very steadily, and said, “Will you kill me now?”

The awful thing was, some part of her was still eager for it. Still hungry for pain and blood and flesh and screaming.

“Do you want me to?”

“No,” he said. “I’d rather live.”

Still. Even now.

How very . . . human.

“Then we’ll find a way to keep you alive,” she told him, and locked gazes with Patrick on his other side. “Somehow.”

She put the truck in gear and sprayed gravel again merging back into the sparse traffic. It was colder up here, and the skies were gloomier. Thick silver-edged clouds threatened rain, or snow, or worse.

“Bryn?” Patrick said. “San Francisco is the other way.”

“I know,” she said. “But we have to go somewhere else first.”

“Where?”

“Alaska.”

He didn’t even ask if she was crazy.

The perfect definition of love.