Cronos noticed Giradelli was on ice, literally. He was surrounded by a solid block of it cut in a clean rectangular shape. “This is how they found The Thing From Another World,” Finelli said, leaning into Cronos. “By the time aliens do get here, who’ll be able to tell them apart?”
The captain slapped Cronos on the back. “Yeah, the DARPA boys put in a special request to stow him on ice. Something about tissue necrosis. Honestly, I stopped listening after they said they were wiring a couple mill to the department expense account for safe return of said Giradelli. Oh, and it turns out, it’s the only way to shut him down, that anyone has found to work, that is.”
“Who’s next at bat?” Cronos said.
“You don’t want any time off?” The captain made a mock show of surprise. Though everyone knew full well Cronos never came up for air. It just wasn’t in his nature.
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t leave the office this time until the pot on me is up to at least a 100K.”
“Considering who you’re going after this time, I think we can manage that. Right this way,” the captain said ushering them into his office. “Some guy just tore up Times Square. They’re calling him Nano Man. I think you’ll find the footage quite choice.”
TWENTY
Michael pressed his hand against his face before the mirror, his new face, the one he was still getting used to. Even a bit distorted, it was rather handsome. The dimpled chin was a nice touch, as was the square jaw. The black curly hair reminded him of Michelangelo’s David. He’d always wanted curly hair. Very low maintenance. The blue-green eyes had the hue and shimmer of shallow Caribbean waters. The physique was every bit as sculpted as his last body, only there was more of everything. More muscle. More height. He figured he stood about 6’ 4” in this new body. All in all, he couldn’t say he’d traded down any.
Jane on the other hand, could stand to look a little less plain in this guise, he thought. But he figured he better keep that to himself. Who knows? Maybe in this new body, your tastes will change. She was taller than the old Jane, 5’ 11” or so. The legs were long and sleek. It was her best feature. The hips though, too narrow, the breasts, too small. This wasn’t the old fashioned archetype of beauty of a Marilyn Monroe, that is to say, nicely curved and voluptuous. It was the more modern type of good looks preferred in the media, too gaunt for him, too much like a pair of railroad tracks stood on end. She was nicely bronzed, but he would feel like a bird settling into a twiggy bird’s nest every time he drew her into his arms. Could he love someone he just didn’t feel particularly attracted to? The only people he knew to talk of things like unconditional love came with names like Buddha and Christ, a bit out of his league.
He stepped out of the bathroom to find her performing more or less the same ritual before a compact mirror. She clamped the compact closed and slipped it back into her handbag, embarrassed. She took another look at the rented suite. “Not sure this seedy dive is the best idea around the nanites. Don’t need the germs complicating the experiment any. If there’s anything they can’t handle, my guess is they’d find it in here. I think pig pens where swine flu originates are cleaner.”
“A little ambiance, coming right up.” Mike pressed his hand to the wall, and a cleanup wave of nano spread throughout the place, returning to him, and leaving the flat made over to look something a lot closer to their Park Avenue digs. The space was the same size, just as austere, only now, what few items made up the room, did so with flair. The furniture had gone antique and was now ornately carved, ebony dark, as opposed to what it was previously, unsculpted compressed particle board. And instead of grungy, dirty, everything was mint, the room coming alive with its warm hues with the rising sun.
She stifled her surprise. “You’re weaponized, not outfitted to play interior designer.”
“I guess the nanobots bought into your argument of do harm to them before they do harm to me. Besides, there’s no denying love and war go together, at least judging by the two of us.”
He pressed his body up against hers and kissed her long and slow. He was pretending, but “fake it till you make it” had long been a credo he’d lived by. He was desperate to get some heightened emotions flowing towards her again, felt damned ashamed for a simple change of her exterior altering the degree of passion he brought in to play. But realistically, he wasn’t going to crawl into bed as the Dali Lama either any time soon, love or no love.
Either she was reading his mind, or wondering how she could be so alluring herself in her current guise, judging by how she pushed him away.
“We need to think,” she said.
He doubled over in agony, and pressed against his midsection in a feeble effort to push back the pain. “Ordinarily, I’d argue with you. You scholarly types think too much. But this once, maybe it isn’t such a bad idea.”
Lickety-split she cracked open the suitcases and started setting up her mobile lab. She laid him back on the bed. “You’re feverish.” She stuck a thermometer in his mouth, and drew blood. By the time she had the test tube filled, she pulled out the thermometer. “A hundred and sixteen. Brain death in a normal human would have happened long ago.”
He snorted, although it cost him another wave of agonizing pain. “I guess meathead isn’t such a bad nickname after all, if there’s brain damage, I mean.” Seeing her go through her moves, the concern in her face, he was quickly forgetting about all his shallow reasons for falling out of lust with her. There was something between them that was stronger; all he had to do was give it time and see her the way she saw him now, and the love would quickly have him finding all sorts of things about her body he liked.
“Try standing under the shower, while I check the blood under the microscope,” she said.
“If that’s your latest ploy to get me naked… smooth, doctor, very smooth.”
She smiled weakly before turning her back on him to attend to her experiment. Maybe he’d over-taxed his ready supply of nano by showing off with the apartment trick. Maybe they couldn’t fully neutralize the toxins before re-entering his body. Maybe they had only so many tricks in them before they went belly up. Just like human cells that mutated slightly with each division, causing aging, among other things. Maybe he’d leave the speculation to her. He had enough to think about figuring out how to thwart the next attack against them in his current state, that would be coming at the behest of whatever private corporation or government agency.
He stripped so fast he’d think he was desperate to get laid instead of get cool. Then again, it wasn’t like he had much on to begin with. He said, “Last chance to check me out before the shower.”
She turned to take him in. He turned around three hundred sixty degrees for her, but he was mostly concerned about her appraisal of his crotch area. “You’re as exquisite as ever,” she said.
“Hard inside and out, that’s me. And just as hard-headed.” He darted inside the bathroom and ran the shower head, afraid he was going to faint.
Mike had no idea how long he was in the shower stall, probably secondary to the delirium. In the waking nightmare he was running from black clad, masked figures with automatic weapons. He kept shapeshifting to avoid them. They’d walk or run past, but he couldn’t hold the forms he’d taken. When he disguised himself as a stone carved figure looking around a brick wall, as the perfect piece of urban art, he’d been perhaps too clever. The mercenary emptied his automatic weapon cartridge into him, demolishing his sculpture. He used the aerosolized cloud of dust to devour the guy. When he solidified, another merc spotted him. He morphed into a crotch rocket and sped away. But the automatic weapon fire coming from the latest attacker shattered the bike, ultimately sending it up in flames. He directed the flames at his attacker, until he once again was forced to resume human form. When a drone aircraft searching for him, spotted him and fired its laser at him, he morphed into a reflective mirror and took out the drone. Each time he came back into the present moment, he wondered if he really could morph into any of those
things or if it was just the fever talking.
When he finally marched out of the shower, he forgot the water running. He stood in the living area drip drying. “Can’t get the erection to go down either. Wasn’t even thinking about you.” She turned to take it in and smiled feebly. “Maybe it’s the Viagra effect,” he said. “You can’t deny you’re plainer looking in this form. The little guys must just be giving me the extra lift I need until I can get over myself and love you as selflessly as before.” He couldn’t believe he’d just come clean after promising himself to lie to her until hell froze over.
“It’s not a half-bad theory,” she said. Though her shifting expressions suggested she had to get her emotions in check first. Smooth operator, Mike, that’s you. “They may see it as advantageous to their survival to keep the link between us as strong as possible.”
He picked her up and threw her on the bed and started stripping the clothes off her. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“It feels like an attack.”
“It is. Between kissing you and sweating all over you, I’m hoping enough of my nanites will enter your body, get the help they need to correct what’s going on with my body.”
“Again, not a half-bad idea. And what makes you think they won’t make me sick?”
“Nothing. What about honest to goodness attack don’t you understand? I’m a soldier. Survival comes first.”
“I could hate you for saying a thing like that. But hating someone for being reasonable has never been in my vocabulary.” She succumbed to his lovemaking, getting into the hot, feverish nature of it, which was arguably quite the turn on. She even liked the idea of “cheating on him,” being as she was still mad at Michael—the other Michael, the one she associated with the other face, the one that had killed two people in front of her without blinking twice, all with the most convenient of rationalizations.
When pressing up against her was just overheating her further, he took her into the shower. He wasn’t cooling down enough to keep from getting sick; forget what the heat was doing to her.
He had to admit, she felt great against his body, and this version of her was better with the moves too. Of course, she could just have been trying to distract him from worrying and thus making a bad situation worse. It was the smart tactical thing to do, and he’d have done the same if the situation were reversed.
She turned off the shower. “What did you do that for?” he said.
“You’re panting like a dog.”
“I’m sorry if I couldn’t hold my breath during the kisses! You pick now to call me on this. Could we make this more about me?”
“Cute. If you can still crack wise, maybe you’re not as far gone as you think you are. Time to get back to my computer in any case.”
She traipsed back into the main room, and he followed her. “Sorry,” he said, “meant to ask you before I got distracted by all the delirium. What have you found so far?”
“The nanites just aren’t morphing with the same rigor as before. They’re built to be ageless, but it’s as if they are aging.”
“I beat you to that conclusion! And I’m not even a scientist.”
They were both pacing the room, not really looking at one another. He was too busy rubbing the pain points out of his body that was starting to stiffen up. She was too busy thinking of a solution.
“Please tell me you’re accomplishing something besides wearing a hole in the rug, because I’m doing a good enough job of that for the two of us,” he said.
“You said earlier you were having trouble getting into this version of me? As best as I can figure, you have to be in love with me for the nannies to do their work. Maybe they rely on the endorphin releases to work their magic. Maybe it’s just too hard for them to pull off what they have to do at their end in a more hostile biochemical environment. The instant we’re out of love, we’re stressing in all sorts of ways we’re not even conscious of. But it affects them.”
“Brilliant. So insta-love is the solution?” he said sounding sarcastic.
“Insta-shallowness certainly isn’t. If you could be an ounce less male!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll just change you back. Problem solved.” He reached out and touched her before she could even think about a response. “It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?”
“They’re not exactly at a hundred percent.”
“You gave me one way out and that’s to love you! This just takes female manipulativeness to a whole new level.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I can’t believe I meant it.”
“Just relax and visualize yourself being in love. Act the part.”
“Two steps ahead of you, Jane. Guess I’m not the actor I thought I was. I can fool you well enough, I just can’t fool myself.”
“Nice. If that doesn’t just cement all my fears about you up until now.”
“Yeah, well, what do you want me to say, that I’m trained not to lie to you? Even you’re not that naïve.”
“Was I being naïve when I fell for you the first time?”
He interrupted his pacing, deciding if he was going to answer her truthfully or not. “Yes. But don’t feel bad. Everyone falls in love with me at first sight. You don’t think that’s not factored into the equations when they send me after someone?”
“What about up in the cabin, before wolf boy made an appearance?”
“Let’s just say the acting required a lot less effort by that point. For one, you weren’t half bad in bed.”
She screamed. “God, I hope that fever burns through your brain. Maybe like a good forest fire, it’ll free up the space for something worthwhile to grow inside there besides this walking, talking primordial ooze.”
He looked down and realized he was getting hard again. “Sorry, the primordial ooze thing got me thinking of lube and that…”
She shook her head. “The work of a lifetime and I have to invest it in you. Boy, you’re right to call me naïve. That’s record setting naïveté there.”
He stopped his pacing, took a deep breath, and took her into his arms. “I’m not myself right now, okay? I’m sure when I calm down I’ll recognize that there was a lot less acting going on than I’d care to admit. Getting in touch with my feelings is contraindicated in my line of work. Dampening them down, on the other hand, that’s rewarded with all kinds of positive reinforcement from day one of entering the program.”
“Well played, soldier. That might just get you a pass. Sincere. Reasonable. I love sincere and reasonable.”
“So you hook up with the most dangerous guy you know who couldn’t do sincere if his life depended on it? You do realize how insane it is to volunteer for a mission like this, don’t you? Well, surely you do now at least,” he said feeling his forehead with the back of his hand for temperature. She felt his forehead with the back of her hand for him. “You’re cooling down some.”
“Sort of like this relationship.”
She went back to her pacing. “Why aren’t you looking any less worried?” he said.
“Because another explanation as to what’s going on just occurred to me. I think I almost like the idea of you being a lying, cheating bastard from the beginning better.”
“Oh, pray tell.”
She sighed. “It’s just possible that the nanites are trying to get an adrenaline fix now that they can’t get their love fix.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“It stands to reason if they feed off the ‘love drug’,” she said, making air quotes, “that the adrenaline drug is just as addictive. In fact it’s only when you started getting worked up in here with me that your fever started inching back down again.”
“Shit, you cannot be serious. Even I can’t be in warrior mode all the time. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
“I start to get numb after a while. Can’t imagine that does anything for the adrenaline high.”
&n
bsp; “Brilliant!” she said, packing the suitcase with everything she’d pulled out earlier.
“What is?”
“We’re taking you back into fight or flight mode until you finish healing, and until the nanites feel the numbness wave kicking in. By then you’ll both be looking for the closest replacement drug you can find. And there’ll be just one thing left.”
“Falling back in love with you. Outstanding!” he said, helping her with the packing. “We keep the adrenaline high going long enough for you to find your way back into my heart.”
“You don’t have to like the theory so damn much.”
“Why not? I live for being under the gun in one way or another. Best chance of falling in love with you again is to feel that the desire for being under the gun is something we share in common. Which I’m sure it will be by then; nanites aren’t the only things that get addicted to adrenaline rushes after a while.”
“So long as the plan works, guess I shouldn’t care how you get across that mountain. Maybe actually caring is just sheer vanity.”
“Vanity you’re entitled to in any case. But I embrace the new pragmatism.” He snapped the suitcase shut. He waited for her to catch up. When she grabbed two pieces of luggage and made for the door, he realized he wasn’t following behind her.
“What now?” she said, turning to face the human statue with the worried affect, like Rodin’s thinker, only standing.
“What if there’s a third explanation? You didn’t look at me too nicely when I killed those two in the restaurant. Maybe your falling out of love with me is really what’s behind this.”
“Don’t put this on me. Men fall out of love with women on a dime, not the other way around, because they confuse lust with love.”
“Is that so?” he said, opening the door for her and reading her face for signs she was lying to herself. Yep, no doubt about it; she definitely was.
“You’re lying to me and to yourself, Jane. Want to know how I can tell?”
“No, not particularly.” He could sense from her tone that she knew she was busted.
Nano Man Page 17