She had no idea how long it lasted – forever would have satisfied. Yet when they did separate, they shared the awkward smiles that said, “What just happened here?”
Michael looked around.
“I think we landed. That was quiet.”
The duopod came to a rest in the park. A walkway adjacent to their landing pad took them into the woods in one direction and to a small pond in another.
“Which way?” She asked.
“Dunno. Think I’d rather sit here and kiss my new girl for a while.” He laughed at himself. “I sound like a dude out of a 50’s flick.”
She looked west. “Well, we probably only have a couple hours of sunlight. Maybe walk a little way? You can hold my hand.”
He faked a gasp. “What? Solomon holding hands with a Chancellor?” He took on a Southern drawl. “Now, we just can’t have that around these here parts. Get my speed, missy?”
She laughed. “I always loved your Cracker imitation.”
“I’m gonna be a standup comic. Dunno if they have those in the Collectorate, but these jackasses need to lighten up.”
“Good luck with that.”
They walked hand-in-hand toward the pond.
“How about that?” Michael said. “Ducks. Just like back home.”
“Yes. Maybe this is how we get on with it, Michael. Find the things that remind us of back home.” She laughed. “All the years I dreamed of being here, Albion was my home. I never appreciated it.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You were on loan.”
They stopped at the edge. She wished she had food for the ducks, which approached as if expecting a treat.
She caressed Michael’s cheek. He wore four-day stubble.
Sammie started to ask if he ever thought about growing a beard. The words came, waited, but never passed. She heard a muted pop and felt a sudden itch in her belly.
A familiar gaseous taste rose from deep within. Her vision blurred. Michael asked her something, but she didn’t hear. Sammie held her hand against the source of sudden pain and lifted it. Blood.
“Sammie?”
She twisted, lighter than air, but he held her up. Then another muted pop broke the silence. A hole opened in the left side of Michael’s chest, just above the Solomon tri-crest. He coughed, and she thought he apologized for everything.
She fell to one knee when he let go. She heard a splash. Then Sammie slipped into the night.
51
M ICHAEL DREAMED OF STATIC INTERFERENCE. He turned every channel on his Granddaddy’s old set. Nothing. Sometimes a voice cried out through the white noise. An image passed by in a single frame. He adjusted the rabbit ears. No better, but the geometry changed: Lightning, thick snow, scrambled flashes. He banged on the set. Then he dreamed of more static interference.
In time, the pain became too much for his fists, and it radiated through his arms and into his chest. It burned. His ribs cracked.
And still, the white noise.
His Granddaddy said, “You doin’ it wrong, child. Give me here.”
An old man’s hand took a hammer to the screen. Again and again. The screen cracked, shattered, rebuilt itself.
Each time the white noise diminished, the scrambled signals formed images which lasted seconds. Voices inside the screen demanded his attention. Warned him to be ready. Said the pain would never go away. Take the hammer, they said. You need the hammer. Hang on.
The pain seared his chest, snaked up his throat, and burst between his lips. As he screamed, his eyes opened.
Lights flashed yellow and green, blurred and frazzled. He heard a rhythmic series of hums and whirrs. Voices unfamiliar, rushed, frightened. He tried to move, but his arms and legs felt bolted down. Through short, panicked breaths, Michael made deductions. He was lying on his back; the flashing device hovering over his chest was sending waves of heat into his body.
“What?” He said it three times before someone noticed.
“You’re back,” a woman said. “Incredible.”
Michael refocused and took stock of the tall, imposing figure at his side. He needed a moment, making sure he left the dream world.
“Chief? What are you doing here?”
Patricia Wylehan, who he last saw dispersing mercenaries on Seneca, shot a smile Michael recognized as one of utter disbelief.
“You are one tough soldier,” she said, dabbing a cloth on his face, wiping away perspiration. “I was sure you were gone. We all were.”
“We? Who is? I don’t get this shit. Chief, what the hell is …”
Flashes struck him broadside. The duopod. Her lips, her tears.
Ducks.
“Sammie,” he said, pain shredding his chest. “Where’s Sammie?”
The Chief’s smile vanished. Michael didn’t want to hear it …
“It’s bad,” she said. “Worse than yours.”
Patricia stepped back and looked across the room. Michael’s eyes followed her to another large hospital bed. Machines hovered over the patient, head to foot. A doctor passed by, reading holographic data. Then Michael saw Sammie’s face. Quiet, at peace, pale.
“She’s alive?” He tried to speak loud enough for the doctor to hear, but his voice cracked. “I don’t understand.”
Patricia closed in and blocked the view.
“They’re doing everything. I promise. Do you remember it?”
“Just … we were happy. I was about to tell her something important. It was … Yeah. I was gonna say I loved her.”
“Good for you, Michael. Anything positive to come out of this day! OK, OK. So, here’s the situation, and I need you to listen carefully. Remain calm. The machines are healing you, but you’re not clear of danger. Understand?”
He nodded. Michael wanted to know what was happening to Sammie, but he saw stark terror on the face of a woman who spent years in the thick of deadly combat.
“You were both shot by a flash laser. It was an assassination.”
“What? How? I …” The lightbulb flashed on. “Perrone.”
“Not Perrone. Worse. Look, Michael, there’s so much to tell you, and everything has been falling apart. We don’t have long to talk.”
“You’re scared shitless, Chief. What’s going on?”
Patricia took a deep breath. “Things have happened since you went down. The city is being evacuated. We must leave here soon. They’re going to bring in stasis mods for both of you. Keep you stable during travel.”
“The city? Philadelphia Redux? Why?”
“Because it’s more or less the end of the world.”
“Holy … sorry, what?”
“Calm down, Michael. You’re fragile. I shouldn’t be talking to you. Look, I was being dramatic, but this day will change everything.”
“How does this … Chief, this is nuts. How long have we been here? How the hell are you even here?”
Panicked voices echoed from the hallways. Patricia darted her eyes back and forth.
“You were shot three hours ago. Michael, I’m here because I was looking for you and Sammie. I was trying to save you, and essentially I failed.”
“Back up. Seriously. Tell me what happened.”
“Michael, everything we thought was going down on Seneca was a lie. It wasn’t about picking up the Ukrainian. It was about setting up Perrone. This thing was bigger than we imagined. Ophelia was in on it, and so was Emil Bouchet.”
“J’s father? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t have the details. They took down Perrone in SkyTower, but everything went south. I don’t have any news about your friend. It’s madness. Just listen, Michael. OK?” He nodded. “The people running this game wanted to make sure they silenced all the loose threads. That meant everyone who took part in the operation on Seneca and at the interdimensional fold. I should be dead. You and Sammie gone. Plus, our pilot Rikard, the observers for the Ukrainian, and anybody who violated the lockdown at Heinlein Outpost.
“We’re alive because Ophelia Tomelin drew a l
ine. I knew she was ambitious, even more ruthless than people gave her credit for. But she has a heart. We can be thankful. She sent a message to my stream stack after leaving Seneca. She said Perrone gave his peacekeepers orders to execute me and my team over the Atlantic. We were onboard the shuttle by then. We commandeered it before they could act. I persuaded most of them these were illegal orders to commit murder. Two of them stayed loyal to Perrone and fought us. I lost one of my team, but we killed two of theirs.”
“I’m sorry. That bastard put you through the blender.”
“I’ll be fine, Michael. I’m an old soldier.”
He feared the next part. “So, how did you find us? If Perrone wasn’t trying to kill me then …?”
“Turns out, Perrone didn’t give up his vengeance. Ophelia sent a message to Rikard’s stream stack, too. She revealed the spy’s identity. Same guy Perrone commissioned to kill you. Brey Grinderson.”
“How did …?”
“Rikard took him out. Brey is shark food by now. And Rikard, there’s more to him than meets the eye. At any rate, when you landed at Redux, Ophelia sent me another message. She said you two weren’t under her protection anymore. She begged me to find you. Explained where you’d be. You were with one of her associates?”
“Yeah. Dr. Langdon.”
“That’s the one. He didn’t want any of part of this business.”
“Explains why he got the hell out of town so fast.”
“I just landed in New Stockholm when I received her message. One of my team came along. We hired a private uplift, but we missed Sammie’s hearing. Fortunately, you were assigned TransComs, and there aren’t many of those around. We homed in on TransCom signatures and narrowed down possibilities. We detected you in the park, seconds before you were shot. We knew it was you when you saw your signatures collapse. The shooter came out of hiding to make sure of his work. My associate is a trained sniper. He took out the bastard. Another few seconds …”
Michael didn’t want to think about it. All this, just minutes after Sammie asked him if he wanted to go home. After reminding him how dangerous this world was.
“Thank you, Chief. You saved us.”
“No, don’t thank me, Michael. There’s other business at play here. Neither one of you should have survived those wounds. When I jumped out of the uplift, I was sure you were both dead. The pond was already stained with your blood, and Sammie … she all but bled out by the time we got here. Michael, I’ve seen nasty wounds in battle. Things that take down peacekeepers. The shooter didn’t miss. Your wounds should have been fatal. Nobody can explain why you’re alive; but for whatever reason, the tissues and blood vessels within the wounds tried to regenerate. Not enough to heal but enough to keep you alive at a minimum. It was as if your body was buying time.”
All the dots connected.
“Jamie. It was Jamie.”
“What, Michael?”
“Before we crossed the fold, they shot me in the back. Jamie healed me. His touch brought me back. Sammie, too. She took a bullet in the gut. He just reached down and healed her. Jamie, he was like a damn savior sent from God. Whatever he put in us, whatever that special juice, I reckon it kept us going this time, too.”
Patricia leaned back, appearing more frightened than impressed.
“Look, Michael, about him …”
“He can fix Sammie. He went to SkyTower. We need to bring him down here. I’m telling you, he’s got the power of life in him.”
“And death. No. I’m sorry. It’s too late anyway. Michael, we …”
A heavily-armed man raced into the room and pulled Patricia back. He did not whisper.
“Five minutes, Chief. We go or we’re stuck. It’s insane out there.”
“Thanks, Cam. Tell the doctors we’re ready for the stasis mods.”
Michael’s chest still blazed, but his impatience hurt more.
“What is going on out there?”
“Nobody is certain how it happened. There are rumors. But Earth will never be the same again.”
Two doctors raced into the room and launched a pair of flat stretchers. They tapped their amps and tossed out cubes, which they reshaped into translucent cylinders. As the first one hovered over their heads, the doctors raised and leveled Sammie’s bed. They dropped the stasis mod over her and refashioned it until the mod encased her like a cocoon.
A vicious whistle outside turned into an explosion that rocked the facility. The doctors and Patricia lost their footing. Michael rocked about under the yellow/green monitors. Patricia cursed then regained her composure. She raced to Michael’s side.
“Do you remember when we were walking to Rikard’s shuttle, after what happened at the fold? Remember what you asked me?”
Michael couldn’t unpack that segment of his memory, although he remembered the journey – mostly for how it ended, with energy slews from the night sky. He shook his head.
She obliged. “You asked me if I thought you would die if you stayed on Earth. I said yes. I’m sorry, Michael. I didn’t know you as I do now. You will not die here. Not on my watch. And neither will she. We will get you out of the city, and you will heal. Might take some time, but as I said before, everything has changed.
“I have to go. I’m going to prep the uplift. You’ll be asleep in the stasis mod. I’ll see you again. Soon.”
She dashed away as the doctors turned their attention to Michael. He didn’t have a chance to thank her, but he had a hundred other questions, one leading into the next.
Just before the mod wrapped around him, Michael took one more look at Sammie. He made a promise.
Three words.
That’s all he planned to say when she woke.
52
Bouchet compound
Three hours earlier
O PHELIA TOMELIN DID NOT LIKE THE TONE of these voices. She gave up too much, made too many compromises, to see the deal change at the last minute. She despised everyone in the room – Emil and Frances Bouchet, Sexton Marshall, and the toads from the Marks Presidium. You made this deal because you had to, she reasoned. You breathed their oxygen because you had to.
Five minutes after the meal ended, the banter became more contentious, the conspiratorial whispers more insidious. She felt whatever morsels of leverage she held to be slipping away.
“No,” she told Emil. “I never agreed to this delay. You promised me a system-class transport with enough capacity for a crew of thirty. You own a fleet, Emil. Why are you backing down?”
“Calm yourself, Ophelia.” He sipped wine. “Your theatrics have not grown endearing with age. A smaller ship is docked at Hinton Station pending instructions. I will send the details to your steam stack with an adjusted timetable.”
“Why the delay, Emil?”
“The Marks Presidium has legitimate concerns. You plan to take my son and the Ukrainian off-world to rendezvous with the other hybrids then establish a base for their training and procreation.”
They incensed her. “You call it training. I call it education. They are starting new lives. They need cultural and social adaptation skills. We agreed to this months ago.”
“We did,” Maj. Marshall intervened. “Emil, if I may? Dr. Tomelin, agreements related to the hybrids were reasonable. But conditions on the ground changed. We did not foresee the deaths of so many observers. Then there is the flawed hybrid programming.”
The Marks Presidium nodded in unison, and she saw Emil and Frances share a suspicious glance.
“You call it flawed, Major. Yes, James and Rayna are non-compliant, and they are head-strong. They are angry for what they have experienced. We need …”
“They are nuclear weapons, Ophelia. Or worse.”
“As are the other hybrids. You don’t like losing control.”
“Over weapons of untold power? Absolutely not, Ophelia. I do not need Berserkers who think for themselves.”
“They can be re-educated.” She turned to Emil. “As long as they don’t consider us the enem
y, we’ll have no issues. Once we receive the final reports about the other eight, we can adjust our plans.”
She caught Emil’s sly grin, an unusual giveaway from the most stoic man she knew. Frances and the Major followed suit.
“I should have known. You already have the report. When?”
Emil sighed. “Yesterday morning.”
“And why wasn’t I told?”
“Because,” the Major said, “you would have wanted details. We feared you might introduce a new variable.”
“What truth, Sexton?”
“The other eight are in our custody, some are already en route to the rendezvous site, and all are compliant. Perfect programming.”
Her heart sank. She saw their treacherous minds at work. As long as the math worked for them, they were happy.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” she lied. “All I’ve ever wanted was to educate the hybrids and give them the best possible future.”
“Which is why we kept you close.” Frances spoke up. “Your devotion has been impressive. Now is the time for practicality. We have eight compliant hybrids. Four males, four females. We can begin procreation in weeks, through both natural and artificial systems. Will two more hybrids make a vital statistical difference?”
She hated Frances the most. A cold chill preceded the woman.
“You dismiss them by calling them hybrids, but James and Rayna are incredible specimens. Analyzing their genome to understand how they sidetracked the programming will be worth the investment.”
Emil shook his head. “We know why they are non-compliant. James was the original prototype. Rayna received the same package. We had concerns about the Mentor program then refashioned it before infusing the other eight. A clear denominator.”
“So, that’s it?” She spoke to everyone. “You plan to kill them?”
Again, she heard conspiratorial asides while eyes looked askance.
Marshall took point. “Understand our position, Ophelia. This is a fragile maneuver, both militarily and politically. We are about to dismantle two presidiums and remove a First Admiral and Rear Admiral from the Guard. The uproar will echo throughout the Chancellory, here and off-world. When evidence reveals the existence of the hybrids and the extended-life prototypes, factions will scramble for control. Others will demand the extermination of these projects. And you thought The United Green was influential?
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