by Lee Driver
“S…” Dagger hesitated, not wanting to mention her name. “Don’t use our names,” he whispered to Sara. He wasn’t sure if anyone was monitoring their words and feeding it back to another location. The image on the screen vanished, replaced by what looked like a training camp. All of the boys had shaven heads and were dressed in white karate outfits. It progressed to boys a couple years older dressed in black uniforms shooting at small robot tanks as target practice.
“No wonder you knew the tank had an energy pack,” Sara said.
Sara was too eager to ask questions when he had too many questions of his own. First and foremost was the tracking device in his neck.
“How are the explosives ignited?” Dagger asked.
Explosives?
“You don’t know that others were vaporized when their missions weren’t completed?”
A cursor blinked on the screen, as though Connie were searching for facts, or waiting for instructions.
You compromised site. Corporation moved to undisclosed location. If modifications
were made it was after you left, to prevent future defections.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sara blurted. “If you were given instructions, how could you deviate? And it’s the computer that gave you the instructions. Why is it cooperating now? After all, Demko was following Connie’s instructions.”
All computers named Connie.
Mother reprogrammed directives.
Changed some sentries. Changed you.
“What happened to her, the mother?” Sara asked.
Eliminated
“Where are the other locations?” Dagger remembered additional lights on the map. One had been in a location pretty close to where they stood now. Two were in Europe and more in Asia. If he could only get exact locations.
Unable to retrieve
“Of course you can’t,” Dagger said, the frustration building. If this facility had been vacated, probably all the rest had been moved, too. “If you aren’t supposed to be online then you aren’t connected to the rest of the computers.”
“Why is it you don’t remember her? You don’t remember anything.” Sara asked.
He erased your memory
“But you remembered the numbers,” Sara told Dagger. “The coordinates that led you here.”
“No, I only recognized the numbers as coordinates. Big difference.”
“But you remember destroying their satellite.”
“I did that right before I escaped…I think.”
Dagger rubbed his eyes. The light from the monitor was blinding. None of this made sense and if he had heard it all yesterday, he wouldn’t have believed it.
“Wait.” Sara grabbed Dagger’s arm, remembering the family in the director’s home. “Who is he? Who’s the director?”
The computer was silent for several seconds as the cursor blinked in the middle of the screen. Was it searching through videotape? Searching its stored information? After several more seconds one word appeared on the screen.
Father
Dagger stumbled back remembering that brief image of shoving a gun against a man’s head. “Is he dead?”
Several more seconds passed before a response appeared.
Unknown
Dagger was beginning to doubt Connie’s memory. How could it not have a record of everything that happened down here? It wouldn’t be hard for someone to erase a hard drive and replace it with fabricated information.
“So I’m supposed to believe a computer just sat down here dormant until I walked in. That no one destroyed you when the place was evacuated.” Dagger felt even more like an idiot addressing the computer as though it were human.
They gave me the command to destroy all backups. Mother assumed their next
step and gave me a counter-directive.
“She took a big chance,” Dagger said. “It was possible I would have never come back.”
Eventually someone would have found your computer chip.
Mother made sure coordinates were on the cover.
I am patient
“Why all the special effects?” Sara asked. “The park, the people, dogs, sun, rain. What was all that about?”
I was lonely
For a while neither one said anything. This computer was so advanced it had the emotions of a human. It had the desire to surround itself with familiar faces, sights, and sounds. Suddenly the screen filled with the same phrase, repeating I was lonely hundreds of times.
“What’s happening?” Sara yelled. She looked at Dagger but his eyes were entranced, jerking left to right as though reading every line.
Sara studied the words filling the screen. She called on her enhanced eyesight and could see they weren’t just words but also snapshots of people. But everything was moving too fast for her to read. Then the alarm sounded followed by the tramping of heavy feet coming from above.
“STOP! TURN OFF!” Sara wasn’t sure what command could get the computer to stop but whatever it was doing it was doing it to Dagger. Had the computer kept them there until guards could arrive? Had it notified someone that they were there? And was the computer giving Dagger new instructions? She had to do something to stop it since she couldn’t get any response from Dagger. She wanted to yell out his name but Dagger had cautioned not to use their names. Sara looked for a switch on the wall, something to turn off the computer. A box the size of an air purifier hung in the corner of the room. She doubted it would house the hard drive. It was too small for a computer that controlled as much as it did. But the entire facility was so advanced that nothing would surprise her.
Sara pounded at the buttons, checked the screen. “MOVE AWAY,” she yelled at Dagger. Now the clanging of heavy boots against the grated staircase grew louder. Sara kicked at the unit and three doors popped open. Small key fobs were inserted in the CPU. She yanked out the fobs and kicked the CPU off the wall. It clattered to the ground and the computer monitor disappeared.
A loud voice sounded over the speakers.
“THIS FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN FIVE MINUTES.”
Dagger shook his head, feeling a stabbing pain behind his eyes. “What the hell is happening?”
“We have to get out of here. Someone’s coming.”
Dagger joined her at the doorway. In the next sector, past the surgical rooms, four men marched in swat team garb, helmets concealing their faces, body armor covering every inch of exposed skin, boots heavy enough to rattle the thick glass walls. The lead guard raised a dull black metal object. A bright stream of light shot out, disintegrating the door frame.
“Holograms?” Dagger asked.
“No.”
“Aim for the weapons,” Sara said. “There isn’t any part of their bodies that’s exposed.”
“Their necks. I see a small segment where the body armor meets. It’s not all one piece.”
Sara aimed the gun at the second guard as Dagger took care of the first, firing at the guard’s hand, sending the weapon sprawling across the hall and the hand shattering into several pieces.
“More fuckin’ robots,” Dagger said. “Which means they don’t die.”
“Which means,” Sara clarified, “that they have to have a power pack somewhere.”
“THIS FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN FOUR MINUTES.”
“Where to?” Dagger whispered.
“Back to the hallway. I think the office with the elevator is by the exit door at the end of the hall.”
“Four minutes,” Dagger reminded her. He let Sara lead the way while he covered her.
They charged out of the room and down the hall. A blast of hot air skidded across the wall to Dagger’s right. He fired several shots.
“Shit, they have bulletproof everything. And what the hell kind of guns are those?”
They rounded a corner and ran right into another guard. Dagger charged the guard but was knocked away like a pesky fly. He hit the wall feeling all the air rush from his lungs. The guard raised his gun but Sara kicked it away, du
cked a blow from an arm the size of a tree trunk, drove a hard kick at his chest and sent him flying fifteen feet. She grabbed the guard’s weapon, found the trigger and fired. A stream of white light lit up the man’s suit.
“What is this?” Sara stared at the gun.
“This way,” Dagger said pressing a hand to his ribs.
Sara glanced across the aisle and recognized the office. “No, this way.” She rushed across the hall, firing the weapon at the pursuing guards. Dagger fired several shots as Sara crossed the threshold. Dagger stumbled in after her, feeling a blast of heat at his side. For some reason his fingers lost their grip and his gun dropped to the floor.
Sara said, “I think that’s all of them.”
The office door slid shut like an air lock. Then Dagger’s legs gave way and he slowly slid to the floor leaving a trail of red along the wall.
“Dagger?” Sara wrapped an arm around his waist and felt her hand slide into his side which was warm and sticky. She pulled back her hand. It was covered in blood. “Oh my God.”
He struggled to focus, tried to reason why he didn’t feel any pain.
“THIS FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN THREE MINUTES.”
“Don’t you die on me.”
“Go.” His breath came in ragged gasps. “This is where I belong.”
“I am not leaving without you.” She wrapped her arms around him in an attempt to lift him from the floor. “You can’t die. Think of all the things you have left to do. You are the only one who can expose BettaTec.”
What exactly did he have left to do? Destroy BettaTec? Seems impossible now. He is only one man and he hadn’t been able to even slow them down. No, he could only think of one thing he would want to do before he died. Dagger stared at Sara’s face, wanting to remember those fabulous eyes, those lips. Yes, there was one thing he wanted to do before he died. Where he found the energy he didn’t know but he reached up, placed a hand around the back of Sara’s head and pulled her toward him. He kissed her and for several seconds forgot that there was a ticking time bomb, that his blood was seeping from his body and spilling onto the floor. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to taste her, remember the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin. She clung to him as though she were the one dying. The one memory he would take with him would be a kiss from a beautiful angel.
His arm started to feel heavy and he felt it slip from Sara’s shoulder. And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 33
“NO YOU DON’T!” Sara cried. She grabbed the belt at the back of Dagger’s pants, lifted him from the floor, and with the guard’s weapon under one arm, she half carried, half dragged him across the room to the waiting elevator. As the cylinder-shaped door closed, she heard the parting announcement:
“THIS FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN TWO MINUTES.”
Sara felt the whoosh of air and silently prayed that they made it to the surface in time, that the guards hadn’t somehow destroyed the elevator’s controls. She didn’t want to die trapped in the shaft. She counted away the seconds until the door finally slid open. It had taken ten seconds for the elevator to rise one mile.
“Dagger, stay awake.” Sara dragged him through the store to the street outside. The Cobalt was parked several doors away. Sara quickly settled Dagger in the passenger seat, tossed the weapon into the back seat, then rushed around to the driver’s side. How many minutes left now? Seconds? She didn’t see a key, didn’t even see an ignition. Just some type of print pad. Sara grabbed Dagger’s hand and pressed his thumb against the pad. The car rumbled alive. “Skizzy and his toys.” The dashboard clock said it was just after nine o’clock. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, but dusk provided enough light so Sara could avoid maneuvering her way through pitch dark.
She continued to tick off the seconds as she floored the accelerator. The Cobalt shot off like a rocket. Sara didn’t know what Skizzy did to the car but it was the fastest thing she had ever driven. She looked over at Dagger. He was leaning against the door, his face gray in the dim street lights. His shirt and jeans were wet with his blood. He wasn’t responsive enough to put pressure on his own wound. Maybe he needed water but they had left the gym bag in the lab.
Sara’s eyes kept watch on the clock, losing track of exactly how much time they had left before the explosion. And what kind of explosion would it be? Would two miles be a safe distance, or did she need to be one hundred miles away, a goal she couldn’t possibly achieve. The speedometer pulsed at 140 miles per hour.
Her eyes scanned the road looking for signs designating a hospital. She looked for houses along the way but the area was a flat, desolate piece of land. She felt the pockets of her jumpsuit to make sure she still had the sub-compact. That’s when she noticed the blood on her hand, her arms, and now on her clothes.
The ground started to shake. The console said the Cobalt had traveled four and a half miles. Sara checked her rearview mirror. A huge cloud of sand had kicked up but it was getting too dark to see if the ground had opened up. At least there wasn’t any fire or a mushroom cloud, not that she would have been surprised to see one.
A couple blocks ahead off of the main road Sara saw two houses. She slammed the gear shift into second and peeled around the corner. As she got nearer she saw a ranch style home. The detached building a couple lots away was a smaller one story building with a sign out front that said, Animal Hospital, Doctor Judith Engles.
“We have help, Dagger.” Sara looked over at him as she slammed the car into park and laid on the horn. His eyes were closed. “DAGGER?” She saw the outside house lights flick on and blew the horn several more times. Sara ran around to the passenger side and helped Dagger out of the car and up the sidewalk to the hospital.
A woman in stone-washed jeans and a blouse came running toward them. “Excuse me. The hospital is closed.”
“He’s injured,” Sara said. “Are you Doctor Engles?”
The woman gasped as she saw the blood streaking his arm and Sara’s clothes. Since Dagger’s clothes were black, it was difficult to tell the extent of his injuries. “Get him inside.” Doctor Engles opened the door to the reception area. A blood trail followed behind them. She led them through a doorway and turned on the overhead lights.
Sara hefted Dagger onto the examining table. Doctor Engles stared in shock at Sara’s ability to lift Dagger by herself but she didn’t say anything. The doctor peeled Dagger’s shirt away from his chest and gasped.
“How did this happen?” She opened a cabinet and pulled out a stack of white gauze pads. She pressed a mound of them against the wound.
“He was shot. I don’t think the bullet lodged in him.” Sara wasn’t sure of anything. The weapons didn’t appear to shoot bullets. She felt nauseous looking at all the blood.
“He needs a blood transfusion.”
“Do it.”
“I can’t. My hospital is closed. I don’t have any supplies. Besides, this was an animal hospital, not a normal hospital.”
Sara reached into her pocket, pulled out the gun and pointed it at the woman. “I said to fix him.” The doctor’s eyes grew wide as she stared at the gun. Her hands froze above the gauze pads that were turning red with Dagger’s blood. Sara looked at the gun as though wondering who put it there. Her hands started to shake and tears ran down her face. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed as she slowly lowered the gun. “Please, please make him better.”
Doctor Engles averted her eyes from the gun and pulled more pads from the package. She tossed the bloody pads onto the floor and pressed clean ones to the wound. She flicked stray hairs from her face leaving a bloody stripe across her forehead. “Damn,” she said in frustration. “He needs blood, lots of it, and I don’t have any.”
“Take mine.”
“You don’t understand. He needs LOTS of blood.”
Sara pulled a second examining table over and butted it up against Dagger’s. “Take as much as you need.”
“You don’t…”
“DO IT!” Sara
closed her eyes. “Just take whatever you need.”
More bloody pads hit the floor. “There’s a reason people only give one pint of blood at a time.”
The vet pulled tubes and catheters from a drawer. Sara wasn’t sure what all of the supplies were and had only been in a hospital one other time. She didn’t remember a needle that large.
The vet worked quickly, wrapping a blood pressure monitor around Dagger’s arm, then doing the same to Sara’s arm. “He’s lost way too much blood.”
“I’ve heard of people losing ten to twelve pints of blood and surviving,” Sara said.
“Yes, but those patients usually get immediate attention in an E.R. This isn’t an E.R.”
“Close enough.”
“Listen,” the doctor said with a hint of exasperation, “I don’t have extra blood lying around to give him. And I can only give one pint of my own blood but that is provided we are the same blood type. Are you a blood match for him?”
“Yes,” Sara said but she wasn’t sure. When she had been in and out of consciousness in the hospital she vaguely remembered Dagger saying his blood type was universal donor. That’s fine for him, but would her blood kill him? All she knew for sure is if he didn’t get any blood he would definitely die.