He wasn’t lying; he’d been by her side all along. Stalking her, yes, which was very creepy. But protecting her too. Maybe he was just protecting his own self-interests, making sure she led him to the formula he was after, and making sure no one else got in the way of his plans. At least he hadn’t tried to kidnap and torture her to get the information out of her, and failing that, he hadn’t tried to kill her either.
He stood there as if allowing her the time she needed to put the pieces together in her head. As she did so, she experienced an overwhelming sense of panic and loathing and anger, but crawling over all of that was the realization that she’d never know when this guy was coming for her if he meant her harm. So far, he’d had plenty of opportunity and hadn’t taken it. All this bode well for his argument winning out over her more natural inclinations to react emotionally and defensively, and flee yet again.
She thought some more about what he’d said; it may have been smart-alecky on some level, but it also felt genuine on another. He stepped closer, brushed her whisking blond hair out of her face, if she read him right, to help her scrutinize him better for sincerity. As he did so, he caressed her cheek softly and dared her to see any lies in his eyes. True, he was one hell of an actor; he’d proven that much… Still, something in her gut… “Nicely played, soldier. Yeah, come on. Let’s see what we can do to keep each other alive. And you just keep right on testing me. Doesn’t sound like I can afford to let my guard down for one second from here on out.”
“You learn fast, Jane.”
“Yeah, well, it comes with the three PhDs. Not too many thirty-year-olds can boast that.”
“Just not an ounce of common sense, huh? About avoiding the psychos chasing you at all costs?”
She grunted. Touché. “If you are what you say you are, and it stands to reason—I can well imagine a lot of people are after my formula—then my best chance is to let you do what you do best, keep the others at bay while I…” She let her voice trail off, still unwilling to share too much. “The only problem with my little plan is…”
“The second I have my hands on the formula, I won’t need you anymore.”
“For reasons that will soon become apparent, you’ll need me for quite some time. Long enough I hope to foster a bond with me that’s greater than it is with them, assuming you were exaggerating about being smitten by me. It’s a dangerous game that I’m likely to lose, but I like my other options even less.”
The truth was that long months of relentless research had isolated her, even from the people on her team, with whom she seldom took the time to do any more than issue orders. And even if she had developed trust with any of them, science geeks weren’t going to cut it where she was going. Let’s hope this guy really is a worthy champion, because that’s the only person who’s going to get you out of this. And let’s hope that learning to trust again isn’t going to set you up for an even bigger fall than it did last time.
He brought her close, squeezing her tight, trying to keep her form shaking. “So you aren’t shivering with excitement over the thought of sex with me.”
Her nervous chuckle carried more than a few tears in tow. “You reason well when fully terrified,” he said. “I think you’ll find that comes in handy in the days ahead.”
EIGHT
They were in one of the patient rooms where Jane held her practice, and where she served as an MD, well away from the labs where she did her research, where she served as a PhD. Labs which had been ransacked several times. It was the best place she could think to stash her secret formula for ready access if she had to get out of town in a hurry. The building was one of many in a large medical complex shared by numerous part-time doctors, all PhD researchers on the side. They never used the same rooms, adding to the needle in a haystack approach she was going for. There had been a few break-ins in the medical complex as well. But so far no one had cracked the randomized code she’d snuck into the computer for assigning rooms, making sure she never got assigned to the room or the building with the hidden formula. And for all she knew, those other break-ins had to do with one of the other researcher’s work. Though she knew she was probably just kidding herself on that score.
“Can I ask, why you decided to run off with me?” the one arm man asked. “What tipped the scales? It couldn’t have been an easy, or an entirely rational decision.”
“I had a stalker husband once. He’s in jail now, and we’re divorced. But I learned a thing or two about that kind of deviant. You may be every bit as lethal, but you’re not that kind of predator. You just don’t have the same vibe, despite all the evidence to the contrary.”
“What, did you think if you were wrong a few martial arts classes were going to deter me?”
“How did…?”
“Kind of goes with the profile.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, her voice taking on an angry edge before she was even aware she was angry. “And, for your information I’m also quite proficient with guns, and how to go on the lam to avoid relentless people. In fact, you might just find I’m a little more prepared to deal with people out to get me than you could have guessed. I decided a long time ago that I’d never be a victim again.”
They locked eyes for what seemed like forever before he said, “Glad to hear it.”
With One Arm’s help, she peeled up the linoleum tile floor. She couldn’t believe she still hadn’t gotten his name. But maybe she was more hesitant to play his game of “make me fall in love with you, it’s your best bet,” than she let on. Distrust and distance seemed the better emotional response even if her rational mind had already calculated the odds of surviving taking that approach. “My name is Michael, by the way,” he said, looking into her eyes, as if reading her mind. “Michael Murphy.”
“Jane Goodall.” When he smiled, she said, “But I guess you knew that.”
She brushed back her hair to get it out of her eyes. “Well, Michael, as a professional in these kinds of things, what do you think of my hiding place? Figured cracks between real tiles would be too obvious. All someone would have to do is check for the one tile that seemed to fit a little more loosely.”
“But who’d think of ripping up an entire linoleum floor, when you’d have to peel away the trim against the walls first? I mean, who could keep a hiding place like that secret in a medical facility used by how many staff? Any one of which could barge in on you at any time. Nice, Jane. Did I tell you I marry up? Love smart women.”
She left him holding the floor at one end of the room in his one hand, while she peeled up the next layer of spongy foam matting. She handed that layer to him as well. And she walked the labyrinth of copper pipes providing heating from the floor up until she found the segment she was looking for, again as anonymously placed as was its hiding place in any of the medical buildings. It was a dummy joint which actually had no water flowing through it. She unscrewed the piping, took out the vial, and replaced the tubing.
With him helping, they restored the room to make it look as if it hadn’t been disturbed in short order.
She held up the vial of glowing lime green liquid just far enough from her face to eclipse his entire body. It was as if the substance and Michael had already become one. The shock snapped her back to her senses, and she lowered the vial.
The full brunt of terror that she’d failed to feel at the hotel’s poolside, perhaps because Elizabeth Kubler Ross was right—denial was the first step of dying out of your old self—hit her. What if he’d thrown her into a panic just so she’d make a stupid move like this and reveal the location of the formula? He had been following her around for months and she hadn’t led him to it because she was too cool and calculated for that. So what better strategy than to throw her off balance? He seemed to read the expression on her face, maybe with all the sensitivity of a predator as opposed to someone infatuated with her as he said he was.
“You’ll notice I’m not taking any lunging moves toward you, Jane.”
Yeah, and risk breakin
g the vial.
“I’m not even taking any steps closer. I’m stepping out of the way of the door so you can flee with the formula if you like. If you still think that’s your best shot.”
She stepped toward the door, and with each step he moved more out of the way, until finally he was standing at the opposite end of the room. He had had several chances to jump her, and now there was no way to stop her getting out of the room even if he wanted to.
She held the vial up to him again, until, from her perspective, the two had become as one. The juxtaposition seemed to snap her back to her senses once again, and this time she went into a warning mode of a different kind.
Lowering the vial, she said, “You realize this could kill you? Or worse.”
“What’s worse than killing me?”
“I think you know. You’ve seen enough people who didn’t die on a battlefield right away to imagine dying slowly and painfully, maybe over days, weeks, months, even years.”
“You aren’t the only one that’s scared, Jane.” She noticed, this time it was he who was shivering. “Let’s be honest, I may be very good at my job, but how long do you think I’m going to last as your bodyguard against the kind of onslaught they’ll continue to send after us without some souping up?”
“We don’t know that this will soup you up. It’s designed for rapid tissue healing, assuming it does that correctly. Not enough time for proper lab testing, not after the first break-in showed me I had to first get clear of whoever they were.”
“So, if you break me worse than I am now, you’ll just keep tweaking the formula until you get it right. In my line of work, that’s sort of like coming back from the dead not once, but multiple times. I’ll take it.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. By then her decision had been made. She hoped she wasn’t letting his rhetoric sway her because she was more concerned about her survival right now than his, because that would go against everything she stood for. Because he was right; they needed another ace in the hole.
“Take the tee shirt off,” she said. He smiled wickedly. Truth be told, he probably couldn’t wait to take the tee shirt off or for her to ask. And neither could she. She ran her hands over him, sitting on the examination table in her physician’s office. She shook her head. “My God, you’re magnificent.”
“That sounds like something a man would say.”
“It used to be a man’s world. Now it’s ours, going by our fifty-two percent of the vote, anyway. I guess that means in the name of equality, from time to time, we get to objectify people too. I’ll try and not let the power go to my head if you don’t.”
He took her hand, which she’d yanked away defensively, wanting to be in control of any shifts in tide between them, and started tracing it over his scars. “Getting to know my body, all part of being a good doctor.”
Feeling herself succumbing to his hypnotic allure yet again, she yanked her hand away. He sighed and said, “I appreciate you letting yourself be swayed by lust, if only from time to time. Makes it easier for me to manipulate you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t count your chickens yet. You’re my first guinea pig.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors, Jane.”
“You’re not my English teacher.”
“And you’re not my doctor. So don’t pretend my health is any of your concern. Just go ahead and stick me with that thing already. Unless, of course, you prefer I stick you first.”
“Ha-ha.” She drove the needle into his amputated arm. He winced. “This is going to hurt,” she said.
“Hope your timing is a little better in bed.”
She rubbed his arm with the alcohol wipe where she’d driven in the needle. “What now?” he said.
“Now we wait to see if you grow another arm. Or another head.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“You see, that’s what I don’t understand. I’m not even sure my formula will work. And even if it did, there are a hundred and one things that can still go wrong this early in the game. Takes years of clinical trials to work out all the kinks, and pardon me for saying so, but usually a long chain of dead bodies as well.”
“I don’t know, Jane. I’m no scientist. But if I had to venture a guess, someone who is a scientist, perhaps someone nearly as smart as you, got ahold of your paperwork and decided it was time to start worrying.”
“Or start getting excited maybe about warfare applications. I keep forgetting those guys don’t care if things go right. They much rather see things go very very wrong. Which might make my failures a resounding success from someone’s perspective.”
“You mean like if I turned into a frog, maybe.”
When she didn’t laugh and instead said, “Precisely,” he clenched.
“Yeah, I bet that would get some people excited in Washington, probably more than me growing another arm.”
“Probably. Why the change in attitude? A second ago you were prepared for me to get things wrong in the early stages.”
“That was back when I was imagining growing an extra finger, not an extra head!”
She smiled, perhaps inappropriately, considering what it must feel like to be in his shoes right now.
“You mind telling me why you were so quick to stick that needle in me, considering what you knew and I didn’t? I’d have thought you’d insist on beta-testing it on some poor monkey first.”
“Until proven otherwise, I have more respect for the poor monkey. Besides, if they are coming after us like you say they are, you’re right, even super soldier isn’t going to cut it.”
She saw his expression pale at “super soldier.” “Let me guess. They tried to make you into a super soldier already. When that didn’t exactly take, a failed mission was it…?” His eyes alit, and his face lost some of its beauty, twisting into a grimace. “They could add guilt to all the leverage they had on you. And then you saw your chance to redeem yourself with this assignment.”
“If you’re going to read me like a book, at least make sure it isn’t a potboiler.”
It wasn’t the smile she had to stifle so much as the sentiment; she actually felt a little sorry for him. She knew what it was like to be manipulated. Smart girls liked smart men. And often, highly manipulative bastards, sadly, fit the profile.
“Michael is such a common name,” she said. “Prior to the injection, were you just another guy?”
“No more common a name than Jane. Before running into me, were you just another girl?”
When her expression showed she wouldn’t be so easily deterred, he took a deep breath. She enjoyed seeing his ripped muscles swell further. His tale, as it turned out, would take all that hot air in his lungs and then some.
NINE
SEVERAL YEARS EARLIER…
“What do you think?” Mike didn’t like the expression on his scout’s face, even partially hidden as it was behind the field binoculars.
Pete groaned. “I think this so-called two-man mission is more like a sixteen-man mission with accompanying air support and a navy just off the coast.”
“Anything out of the ordinary?” he said with impatience.
“Nope. The heat signatures suggest the bodies are distributed throughout the compound exactly where we expected them to be.” Pete pulled his face away from the infra-red endowed binoculars to check out Mike’s expression. He was raring to go as always, so he didn’t expect Pete to find anything out of the ordinary there either.
“You sure about this?” Pete said. “Your telemetry is down. You won’t have the map of the place being updated for you on the fly courtesy of satellite recon and the rest of the cyborg package.”
Mike laughed. All outfitted out as he was with his computer telemetry, he did look like the first of the cyborgs on line. Most days, the laptop strapped to his back seemed to serve as a deterrent for bullets better than as an internet hook up. It had taken one too many hits. The VR assist that was part of the helmet that wrapped over one of his eyes had been
shot out; hence the loss of his night-vision. The lightweight armoring, a kind of aerogel, lighter than air, was molded to cover key areas, making him look more like a wingless insect than a person. But the tech upgrades were things he wore outside him; underneath, he was one hundred percent human. He patted his head. “Got it all up here.”
“Yeah, sure. Until the first explosion and you can’t remember your name and then the computer assist is the only thing you have to walk you out.”
“I’ve got you.”
“Yeah, I’ll be dead inside of five minutes, and then what?”
“I think you’ve been running too many simulations up in that head of yours. Time for some real action.”
“I swear, GI Joe action figures have nothing on you. Do you ever stop to deliberate?”
“I find the less time spent thinking, the less time spent worrying, and the more the enemy stays out there instead of inside my head. I don’t need to be fighting myself too.”
“True that.”
“Come on,” Mike said, leading the stealth mission in the dead of night into the Afghan compound. In some respects this assignment would have been easier in the light of day, when the temperature was so damn hot, the soldiers were likely to be on siesta. The middle of the night like this, they were actually coming to life. But with Pete pulling up his rear, he couldn’t stand to think of him having nothing but his ass to look at in the light of day. God knows, this far away from women, he didn’t need to put any more pressure on the guy. Just keeping up with him was enough.
The dust and the dirt had halfway settled with what little water vapor was in the air before the early morning sun burned off the moisture. And the troops on patrol sent the dust to flying and to reminding him that Afghanistan had a lot more in common with Mars than it did with Earth. That was a plus. A lot of the guys that would ordinarily be holed up in the compound were now outside enjoying the low humidity, the absolutely scintillating seventy degree temperatures and star-studded sky. That was a minus. Although, they were mostly looking up, when they weren’t looking into their bottles of rotgut. Whichever direction their attention was aimed, by the time their eyeballs rolled back to level so they could take in Mike and Pete, as they approached the entrance of the compound, Mike had slit their throats ear to ear. The two guards crouched down to either side of the door looked more like statues of soldiers giving mock protection the way estate homes had stone lions to watch over their owners’ properties.
Nano Man Page 6