Shahim went silent and John looked down at him, “You are wrong, at least about one of us, my lord. I am no coward. I am no bully. I fight for the innocents.” He looked at Shahim and his mind raced. Really, could he really trust this man? The risk was massive, but then, in truth, he could not explain the destruction of an Agent by a human anyway. They were already in more trouble than he could imagine. In the end it was all about the individuals who made up the resistance. The few people who risked everything to stand up for what they believed in. Shahim was no different. The only way this strayed from his own recruitment back on Mobilius was that John alone must decide whether to accept this man, where a committee of conspirators had decided John’s fate, with equal risk to themselves if they were wrong. Here he had his instincts, and only his, to rely on.
Cautiously, John Hunt said to the beaten and battered Shahim, “Together, you and I might help these humans defend themselves. Together we might stop our race from committing the greatest crime in history. Trust me when I say this, Lord Mantil, I do not do this just for the humans. I do this for us. I do this so that our generation does not have to answer to our descendents for committing this genocide on the first sentient species we ever meet. How will you explain it to your children, Lord Mantil? When this is all said and done, which side will you have stood with?”
The words penetrated through to Shahim, and he looked up at John like the savior that in many ways he was. Like the only man who could help him redeem himself for what he had done.
John saw this and put the fate of them all on this last statement, “Help me save our race from ourselves, Lord Mantil. Help me stop this madness.”
Shahim was still for a long, dry moment. And then he nodded.
John extended his hand and Shahim reached up and grasped it. As the beaten Agent arose to his feet, his list of tactical options sprang to life once more, unbidden. The list surged with new proposals. Shahim had a grip on his opponent and his machine mind thrummed with ways he could spin and throw the man, using his weight against him, negating John’s intact weapons array with physical blows to his head and face. But as Shahim looked into his would-be ally’s trusting eyes, he knew that the man had been right about him, and he was glad of it.
Deep within the substrate that housed his operating systems, he reached out and opened the virtual heart of his machine sub-consciousness. With precise mental movements, he began to reprogram it. He had an enemy, but it was not this man in front of him. It was time to put his crimes to right. It was time to salvage what honor he had left.
* * *
Fourteen hours beforehand, as he had closed the connection with the Council, John Hunt had debated his options. It had become riskier than he had ever wanted it to be, and he had considered rolling the dice and letting the team be discovered, allowing them to die if that was what happened. He could, hypothetically, start a new resistance, maybe even here in England, with all the additional access that would give him to them, but if he was discovered trying to save the American team, then John would be destroyed along with them, and, realistically, any chance for Earth’s survival would die with him.
He had debated it long and hard, for over a minute of real time, an age to his synthetic consciousness. He had wrestled for relative hours. But in the end, it came down to the same emotions that had swayed him to the resistance’s cause back on Mobilius: these people no more deserved to die than the billions of humans who remained completely unaware of the threat that hung over them.
In fact, given their bravery in the face of annihilation, they deserved his loyalty all the more. And so, after John had sent his notes to Madeline and Ayala, he had requested and been granted shore leave from a surprised Captain Bhade. The captain was not one to give out passes willy nilly, especially not to junior officers asking that they immediately be allowed twenty-four hours away from the ship. But they were, for now, briefly, in Portsmouth for systems maintenance, and the junior officer in question was the man who had not too long ago saved three of his sailors’ lives and possibly his entire ship. Given that John had rarely, if ever, requested shore leave before, the captain had allowed the junior to cash in whatever credit he might have, and made an exception. In fact, if the captain remembered correctly, the boy had not taken leave since his famous visit to San Diego, when he had apparently bedded an American female naval officer, and for two days straight, or so the rumors had gone. Smiling at the memory, Captain Bhade had waved the man out the door to whatever conquest he had in mind.
So while Madeline had been rushing to catch the last flight out of Minneapolis, John had been using a fake passport and credit card Ayala had given him to discreetly head to Heathrow Airport, boarding the last of the daily flights across the Atlantic en route to Philadelphia. Landing at one in the morning, he had then taken the train to DC.
He had approached Neal’s house emanating a healthy, humanoid warmth to assuage any suspicion from the Agent he knew was, even then, watching from across the street. Entering through the basement, John had met Ayala there, already hard at work cauterizing the room. They had formulated a plan, John bringing her up to speed on the full scope of the threat.
They had left Neal be, in order to avoid any sign of fear or concern on his face when he left for work the next day. They knew that if he came to the basement in the morning they would have to tell him what was going on, but fortuitously Neal had a late start the next morning, and he left unhindered and unencumbered, just as they had hoped.
When Neal had boarded the bus from Georgetown, Ayala was already rushing to catch up with him. If things did not go as they hoped, they might still have to disappear. They had a plan for that. He would need to be warned, and she had his documents with her along with five loaded hard drives containing his combined research to date culled from the now magnetically scrubbed PCs in the basement. Along with the disguise he would need to get out of DC alive, she had everything they would need should they have to flee.
Waiting to hear from John was as tense a fifteen minutes as Ayala had ever experienced, and she had known more than her fair share. After fifteen minutes, she had assumed the worst, as planned, and pulled Neal from the bus.
They would eventually hear from the English Agent, and return from their aborted escape run, frazzled and more aware than ever of the fragility of their entire enterprise.
* * *
Meanwhile, as John gambled their scheme on the honor of one Agent, a thousand miles to the south another Agent was arriving at the assisted living facility, which Madeline’s mother called home. As she approached, Lana was receiving the AI’s reports of a lack of contact with Agent Shahim Al Khazar. The AI had not received any distress call or anything that might indicate there was an issue, but it had been nearly twenty-five minutes since Shahim had entered the building. The AI was not speculating, merely conveying facts. It was aware of nothing in the human’s arsenal that could harm the Agent, short of prolonged heavy weapons fire from a large team of highly trained soldiers, and it saw no reason to believe such a group was hiding in Neal’s basement.
Given that it was unlikely that Shahim could have found anything that could pose any threat to him without destroying the building itself, the delay was merely being noted as unusual, and the AIs were monitoring. Despite the AI’s pragmatism, Princess Lamati felt a surge of self-righteousness. They should have killed the other humans back in India. Now she was here, she would go in and find out where this Madeline Cavanagh was. Maybe Shahim was even now interrogating one of Madeline’s cohorts, and Lana could imagine nothing more satisfying than doing the same here. Without a hint of her malice showing on her beatific face, Lana parked her rental car and got out, strolling toward the front entrance of the Sunny Valley Assisted Living Apartments.
Across the parking lot, Madeline was watching as Lana got out of her car; she had only just arrived herself. She had seen so many photos. She had even had nightmares about these Agents, but it took a moment for her to reconcile those images with the beautiful young woman she was watching walk up to the entrance of the nursing home.
She fought a wave of panic welling up inside her. They were here for her, she thought. She should run. She should hide. She fought an instinctive desire to glance at the sky and the threat that loomed there. Instead Madeline sat there, staring at the Agent Madeline knew as Lana Wilson as she opened the door and went into the nursing home.
Steeling herself, she thought about the situation as clearly as her rising panic would allow. If there was a threat on her life, then the code phrase that would have been sent to her would have been different. She would not have been warned to return here, but instead to never come back here, or ever use the name Madeline Cavanagh again. That was a contingency they had planned for and it had a different trigger word altogether.
But the message had not said to stay away. Instead it had said that she should return here immediately. They were checking her cover story. Lana was here to confirm that Madeline was inside the big assisted living apartment complex.
And while the alien assassin walked up to the front desk Madeline was sitting outside.
Shit, Madeline thought, and started to move.
* * *
“We have a
Sarah
Cavanagh on record here,” said the receptionist after Lana’s polite inquiry, “and I see Madeline marked as her next of kin and a caregiver, though I haven’t seen her in a while. Wait … let me call Ms. Cavanagh’s apartment for you.”
Even if Lana had not already found Ms. Cavanagh’s apartment number in the AI’s extensive database, she could comfortably read the receptionist’s screen by its tiny distorted reflection in the older woman’s thick spectacles.
“No, don’t worry about it.” said Lana, “I have her cell number. I don’t want to risk waking Sarah with the house phone.” said Lana smiling idyllically, “You know how loud those things can be, and I kind of wanted to surprise them.”
The receptionist nodded and smiled in return, she had always liked seeing women in uniform. She was so proud that they were taking advantage of something that had never really been an option when she was young. Good for her, thought the receptionist and she leaned in conspiratorially, “Listen, do you know their apartment?”
Lana nodded, “Sure, I see them all the time, apartment 258 in the Serenity Wing, right?”
The receptionist smiled at this sign that this clearly clean-cut officer was obviously a friend of the Cavanaghs, “Why don’t you just go on back, sweetie?” she winked.
Lana tilted her head to one side and smiled innocently, “Oh, are you sure that would be OK? Well, that is just so nice.” she flashed the woman a big, perfect, and thoroughly fake smile and winked as well, inwardly thinking what a fool the old lady was, and then she headed back toward the Serenity Wing.
Serenity Wing. What a ridiculous name. But then this was a ridiculous place. The concept of welfare, of caring after those who no longer contributed to society, and had no intention of doing so in the future, repulsed the princess. She reassured herself, as she always did, that places like these, along with their residents, would soon be eradicated.
Running down a side corridor on the far side of the building, Madeline rushed to change her appearance. If only she hadn’t gotten this preposterous haircut. She brushed it back fiercely with her hand, trying to smooth it down, and used the same keycard that had gotten her in through one of the complex’s side entrances to enter her mother’s room. Luckily her mom was out, probably in the TV room or playing bridge by the pool. Thank fuck for that, Madeline thought. Hopefully it would stay that way. Madeline didn’t know how long she had before Lana arrived from the front desk, so she didn’t even try to change clothes. Instead, she just started ripping off her things and stuffing them under the bed.
The doorbell rang all too soon and Madeline grabbed a towel from the room’s bathroom and threw it around herself, grabbing one of her mother’s shower caps and covering her hair with it. She took a deep breath, opened the door and found herself standing face to face with the machine that called itself Lana Wilson. It was the single scariest moment of her life.
Madeline stood there, sweating and panting, half from exertion, half from fear, “Yes?” said Madeline to the woman who she knew had come to Earth to kill her and everyone she had ever known.
“Hi,” said Lana Wilson, pleasantly, “oh, sorry, is this Jane Matthews’ room?”
Madeline looked at the Agent, but the other woman’s face was unflappable. Madeline realized that between her mad rush to get to the room and her innate fear of facing this woman she was dripping with sweat. It was lucky that she was pretending that she had just come from the shower. Madeline’s blue eyes looked into Lana’s deep black eyes and Madeline thanked god she did not have to feign being confused by the other woman’s sudden appearance, “I’m sorry. Who did you say you were looking for?”
“Is this apartment 258?” asked Lana, pretending to check the door number again while she scanned the room with radar and reflective X-ray. It was not a large space, there was a mid-sized living room and kitchenette with a small bedroom off to one side. It seemed unlikely to Lana that two women lived in it. But, that said, here was Madeline Cavanagh, Lana had scanned her facial structure against the AI’s records and confirmed the woman’s identity the moment she had opened the door. It appeared the computer had been right, and the woman had been in here all this time.
But that was ridiculous. There was something wrong here, and Lana longed for the simple authority to just kill the woman and set her mind at ease, a power she had always enjoyed as the daughter of an emperor.
The clearly naked human stood in front of her, wrapped in one of her mother’s well-worn pink towels. How had Madeline stayed off the grid for so long, thought Lana? She needed more information, so she decided to press her pretense of being in the wrong room further.