The woman grinned. “I’m a hundred and ten.”
Chase raised his brow and turned to face Fiender.
“Still working in her field, Chase. She’s a genius.”
“How does she—”
“How do I keep going?” the woman asked.
Chase looked into her eyes. “Yes.”
“Had most of my organs replaced. They won’t wear out. Funny thing about scientists—we’re like dentists who don’t get their teeth fixed or plumbers who let the faucet drip.”
A few of the other geniuses nodded and snickered, but Chase didn’t follow.
“You see,” she said. “I make skin. Miracle skin—never wears out. But I didn’t bother with it for myself. Didn’t trust the rest of these imbeciles to do it right, so I just let it go.” She smiled big. “But the rest of me will be young for a long, long”—she came even closer—“long time.”
“That’s enough,” Kerstin said. “Dr. Gaha, you are something. Now leave him alone. We all need some rest. We’ll wait until morning for the examination.”
“Examination?” Chase crossed his arms.
“Never mind, darling,” Kerstin said. “Robert, can you have someone show us to our rooms?”
“Yes, of course, my dear.” Fiender pulled out his VPad and summoned a clerk.
A small woman who spoke no English escorted Chase and Kerstin to another building. The woman used an automated translator programmed in the VPad that hung around her neck. The digital voice came out feminine, with a slight Mexican accent, perfectly suited to the woman it represented.
Between the buildings, Chase stopped. The solar shafts were powered down, except for the one directly in front of the building on the right. He lifted his face to the dark sky and examined the stars.
“Chase, what are you doing?” Kerstin didn’t waste time getting to the door of the guest quarters. “You look like you’ve never seen the sky before.”
“It’s been a long time.” He continued his star gazing. A coyote bellowed in the distance. The smell of the desert brought burned toast to mind. But it was good to be outdoors. “Just let me enjoy the night air for a few minutes.”
“What can you see?”
“I see what you see. A black night. No moon. A million stars. It’s glorious, isn’t it?”
“Power your night vision.”
“No, I just want to see it like it is. Robert thought this place might be therapeutic. I can see why.”
“Just do it, Chase.”
He turned his gaze to her. She stood near the door of the building, her arms folded. “Are you afraid of the coyotes?”
“Not at all,” she answered. “They’d never make it past the guards.”
Chase powered the night vision and looked beyond the ten-foot fence. Every few feet, a cyber-guard with a laser gun looked back at him.
“You really don’t trust me, do you?” He followed Kerstin into the building. “So you put a whole unit of mindless robots out there to watch me. Don’t you think I could outsmart them with my augmented brain?”
“I didn’t ask for the guards. That was SynVue’s idea.” She walked behind the computer-voiced girl.
Chase took in the plain décor. A desk with a data screen and a couple of chairs were spread on a beige rug. Paintings on the walls brought a little color to the place.
“Why is it that I haven’t been visited by any of the execs? Not that I ever saw them much before. Now that they own me, you’d think they’d come around once in a while.”
“They’re busy men, Chase. They run the country, you know.”
The Mexican girl took the hallway that shot off from the lobby and stopped at a door.
“Your room, Señor Sterling,” she said in Spanish. The translator spit it out almost in unison. The door to the left came open at the wave of her hand. “Your room, Señorita Bennett.” The door on the opposite side of the hall opened. The girl smiled and walked away.
Chase stood there for a moment, looking at Kerstin. His room was behind him. He turned and went inside, waved his hand, and smiled as the door shut. Then he waved his hand again and the door opened. He laughed.
“What so funny?” Kerstin asked, her arms folded.
“I can go in and out of my room. First time I’ve been allowed that privilege since—”
“But you may not leave this building. Not until morning. Don’t even try it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to join me in my room?” he asked. “In days past, we would have never gone on a trip and stayed in separate rooms.”
“You’re not serious.”
He wasn’t—that was the truth. “Things have changed between us, I know. But the kiss the other night…”
“Nothing has changed. Not on my part. I feel for you what I have always felt.” She came near him and put her hand around the back of his neck. “After tomorrow’s exam, perhaps.” She kissed him lightly on the lips.
“What happens tomorrow?”
She left him and entered her own room. “Good night, darling.” Her door slid shut.
25
Chase dropped to the soft bed. A Picasso hung on the wall above a gray settee. The painting was an early one, pre-1907. Chase remembered it from his studies in college. Science and Charity. A woman lay ill in her bed, a doctor on one side, a nun holding the woman’s child on the other. If it wasn’t the original, it was a very good reproduction.
Chase wondered if anyone viewed the painting through his eyes.
“Kerstin, do you like Picasso?”
Ten seconds passed. His VPad chirped, and he swiped his finger across the screen. Kerstin’s face appeared.
“It’s not a Picasso, Chase. He painted abstracts.”
“He painted this when he was sixteen, before the abstracts.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look it up, Kerstin. And turn off the monitor. I need a shower, and I’d like some privacy.”
She smiled. “Maybe I’ll leave it on.”
“Then I’ll never shower again.”
“You know it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been monitored in the shower.”
“That’s why I never look down,” he said with a grin.
She laughed, and the sound of it brought Chase back to days of success and routine and control of his own life. And love. “Please,” he said.
“OK, Chase. But don’t think I won’t check on you as soon as I wake up.”
“Thank you.” He ended the call and put the VPad on the nightstand. His suitcase waited on a small table. He opened it and pulled out flannel shorts with a drawstring.
The bathroom had a huge tub with jets, and Chase opted for a hot bath instead of a shower.
The big bed welcomed him and sleep came quickly.
At four seventeen, his eyes flew open. He knew the time without thinking about it—the clock in him worked consistently now, and he never shut it off. The room remained dark and quiet. He sat straight and propped a pillow behind him. He powered the night vision and was surprised to find his door wide open. Kerstin’s door across the hall was shut. A black t-shirt, jeans, and loafers waited at the foot of the bed. They were his, but he hadn’t pulled them from his suitcase. Someone had come in.
Someone wanted him to come out.
He pulled on the shirt and slid the jeans on over his pajama shorts. He grabbed the VPad and dropped it in his pocket and then stepped into his shoes.
The hall was empty. No one waited in the lobby. The front door stood wide open.
Chase walked outside. All the solar shafts were dark. He could see only three guards now, as opposed to the dozen he’d seen before. They walked fifty feet apart, and soon they were all at various points at the rear of the compound. They didn’t seem to see Chase, but he knew they must have night vision. No doubt, they could power the solar shafts. The black limo waited in front of the building that housed the laboratories. The ten-foot gate at the front of the compound was open.
Chase walked to the
big vehicle. Knowing he couldn’t possibly escape, he put his hand on the car’s door. He shouldn’t try it. They’d be after him in seconds. Why would he even want to run? They’d done amazing things to him, and they must certainly have an amazing life planned for him.
Why did he want to escape?
He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Everything in him, original and augmented, told him to get out of the limo and go back to bed. Why would they lead him out here? It was a test. Or a trap.
The small party of guardsmen came around the square of the compound and walked the front quadrant. They did not stop to shut the gate. Their heads did not turn toward the interior of the fence.
Chase powered his hearing. He hadn’t done it since the night it had caused such pain and agony. This time he knew he could control it.
The only sound was a voice coming from inside one of the buildings. Fiender’s voice. “You can leave, son. The guards will not stop you. But you must leave now. Soon it will be too late.”
Chase waited. The message repeated. They had it on a loop. This was a trick.
But if the doctor didn’t know when Chase would hear the message, he’d program it to repeat. Maybe he really was trying to offer release from the whole outlandish plan.
Why would Fiender help him escape? Regrets about what he’d done?
Fiender and his team had made a prison for him—one monitored by his own eyes and ears. Running wouldn’t do him any good. He thumped the steering bar with his finger. Once. Four times. Twice. The code from Fiender—142. Maybe. Chase didn’t have that many processors. But he had thirty-three.
He searched for the one programmed as number fourteen and found it in halfway down his spine. He concentrated on the fourteenth processor, and with a mental tug, he drew out the number two. Like a dying man might envision his life, Chase saw the day’s events in his mind. He saw the compound as he entered it, the scientists greeting him, the Mexican girl leading him to his room, the painting on the wall. He viewed these things and mentally replayed the sounds occurring from the time he arrived at the compound until he closed his eyes in the guestroom bed.
Only the blackness and silence of sleep remained. And that’s where he set the COP. He didn’t know if it worked, but he was sure this was the lesson Fiender had tried to teach him days earlier. He could set the program to replay recent past events rather than report in real time. Anyone checking on him, he hoped, would assume by what they saw and heard that he was asleep in his bed.
Maybe Fiender was helping him escape.
But even the man in charge couldn’t get away with releasing Chase. And maybe it was the doctor who tested him, a game Fiender played with him. Still, to be free, it was worth taking this chance.
Of course, the limo wouldn’t start for just anyone. He tapped the starter on the control panel. The electric engine quietly fired. Chase smiled. The guards should be coming back around, but they weren’t. Maybe he’d missed them as they circled, and they were already at the rear of the compound.
He eased his foot onto the pedal.
“This is stupid,” he said. “They’ll kill me.”
But he knew they wouldn’t—he was too valuable. He drove the limo slowly past the gate and into the desert.
Increasing his speed on the narrow dirt road, he let out a whoop. He laughed as he passed a mile marker, then another. A few lights from the nearest small town came into view. He increased his speed.
But then the limo slowed and came to a stop. It shut down. He touched the start panel. Nothing. He pounded on it with his fist. The doors locked.
“OK, you got me.” The trick with the COP didn’t work—they must be monitoring.
“If you expect me to walk back you’d better let me out.”
A thin stream of white smoke, or something, came through the air vents. An acrid smell filled the limo.
“Let me out,” Chase screamed as he pulled on the door, and then turned to open the window between the driver’s seat and the passenger area. It did no good. He could not hold his eyes open. They’d find him dead.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Darkness swallowed him.
26
Chase opened his eyes, but the pain in his head drew them shut again. He couldn’t move. Someone came near. “Things will change now.” The voice was Fiender’s. “The COP is deactivated—no one can hear me except you. No need to monitor you while you’re in this condition. You learned this morning that there are ways to override the system. You can do it again, son.”
Then silence. Hours must have passed as consciousness came and went. A chemical taste remained on his tongue. He wanted water. No one offered.
Sometime later—he didn’t know how long—Kerstin spoke to him. “I knew you would run.”
Chase struggled to open his eyes. “So you tested me?”
“What are you talking about? There was no test. You shut down the cyber-guards and took off. I didn’t know you had the capability to turn off the guards.”
“The guards surrounding the compound? I didn’t do anything.”
“Chase, don’t pretend with me. You said you could outsmart them, and you were right.”
“But you programmed the limo to let me escape.”
“No one here let you escape. I don’t know how you got it to start, but it’s equipped with an anti-theft device. That’s what knocked you out. Under normal circumstances you’d be in a WR holding house now.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“That’s what we’ve been discussing. Our plans have changed.”
Chase couldn’t hold his eyes open. The muscles in his arms and legs twitched. He struggled against the restraints that had his wrists bound to the gurney. “What were your plans?” he asked.
“To add a state-of-the-art tracking device, in case you learned how to shut down the COP. I’m impressed that you figured out how to use the replay option. But I’m not surprised. I always knew you were too smart to be a game-show host.”
Now that I’ve tried to escape, you’re not going to add the tracking device? Doesn’t make sense.”
“You’ve shown yourself to be completely uncooperative, so we’ve decided on something a little more fail proof.”
“You’re going to turn me into a puppet.”
“I’m going to make you manageable. I can’t have you taking off.”
“Why not go through with your other plans? Why not add the tracker?” He knew the answer.
“I don’t want to waste the money. When we’re through with you, darling, you won’t want to run.”
He pulled his eyes open again. Her smile was cunning. Her eyes sure. She kissed his forehead.
“I won’t run again, Kerstin. Please don’t do this.”
“It’s already set in motion. Just go with it, Chase. It doesn’t have to be difficult.”
He clenched his fists, turned on his strength sensors, and broke free from the restraints. He sat straight on the hard gurney. A blanket covered his legs, and he pitched it across the room.
“Chase, there’s nothing you can do.” Kerstin backed against the wall.
He lunged at her and pinned her arms. “You said you knew I could break you in half. It’ll be the last thing I do before they destroy me.”
“They are not going to destroy you,” she screamed.
Fear showed in her eyes, and that was all Chase wanted. He let her go. “They’re going to try. But they won’t succeed.”
A few orderlies rushed in. Before he could verbalize his surrender, a needle slid into Chase’s shoulder. The effect was immediate, and he needed help climbing onto the gurney. “Where is Fiender?” he asked.
“In a virtual conference with network execs,” Kerstin told him. “He has some explaining to do.” The fear was gone from her voice.
“About how I turned off the guards?”
“Yes.”
“Kerstin, I didn’t turn them off.”
“Hush now. When you wake up,
everything will be fine. You’ll go home to SynVue Estate and get ready for your big debut.”
“I want to go home to my own…” He could not form the word. His eyes fell shut.
“Soon, Chase. But not to your old townhouse. You have a beautiful new house in the country waiting for you.”
“A new house? Am I the winner?”
She laughed. “We have changed your life, haven’t we?” She laughed again.
Wheels moved under him and the air cooled around him. Did they know he was still conscious?
Dr. Fiender’s voice melded with others. The sound seemed distant, but a hand came to rest on Chase’s arm. “We’ll begin in a few minutes,” the doctor said. “All of you go up to the observation deck, and let me prepare my subject.”
Footsteps. A door slid open and then shut.
Fiender came so close that Chase could feel his breath. He smelled like an old man’s aftershave.
“I can’t stop this from happening, but I’m programming a code into the exoself that will help you. Like the one for the COP. Use it to override the system.”
The door slid open and the hand released its grip on Chase. “Start the drip now. We’ll begin in five minutes.”
A warm sensation came through Chase’s hand and up his arm, and the consuming darkness returned.
27
“Charles, what do you see?”
He was back in the game. Who was the man behind that voice? The first time, Chase thought he was a director, but they all swore there was no regression game. They didn’t know what he was talking about.
And yet here he was again.
“Tell me who you are,” Chase said. “Are we going to watch old movies again?”
“Answer my question. What do you see?”
Like before, Chase couldn’t see anything. “A black hole and I’m falling in.”
He felt beside him and found the nightstand, like before. The metal bowl rested there. Everything was the same.
“Show me the movie screen,” Chase said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The screen lit up.
Wake the Dead Page 12