Terminated

Chapter 24

Bryn passed out three times before she managed to dig the bottle out of her upper intestines. Packing her guts back in was horrifying, and she had to hold the wound closed, lying on her side, until the flesh began to knit together enough to ensure it all held together properly. She passed out with the bottle—still sealed, amazingly, though the seal showed signs of pitting from her stomach acids—clutched tight in her other hand.

Cleaning up was a challenge she decided to skip, for the most part; after the blood was dry, she put the coverall back on to disguise the worst, and spit-bathed her hands and the splashes on her visible skin. That was harder than she’d thought, simply because she’d been a long time without water, and her saliva was starting to dry up. She emptied her bladder and used the contents to scrub the blood from the floor. It was still stained, but not recognizably. If Jane asked—which she doubted—she’d tell her she’d lost control of her bowels.

Jane would find that funny.

It took another three days before her nemesis came for another gloat. Bryn had chosen her spot carefully—a corner, angled so that she could push off from the wall and reach Jane with the shortest possible path.

Jane came in with two guards—uniformed, wearing surplus military fatigues. Bryn hadn’t expected that, and felt a cold chill; she didn’t think she could take both armed men and still do to Jane what she’d planned. It would be too chaotic, and give Jane too much time.

But Jane had decided to up the stakes, and behind the two men came Patrick. Pale, unshaven, bruised, he walked with his gaze focused on the floor, and the curve of his shoulders . . . He looked utterly different in the way he carried himself.

He looked . . . broken.

“I brought you a friend,” Jane said. “Patrick said he’d like to see you through this time of . . . challenge.”

She pushed him forward, into the center of the cell. Bryn couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t look away from him. His hair had grown about half an inch, and it looked lank and unwashed.

He didn’t meet her eyes. He just . . . stood there.

“You should be starting to feel it by now—tingles in your arms and legs. Loss of feeling in toes and fingers.”

Bryn ignored her. So did Patrick, but he seemed to be walled off from the world now, as well as Jane.

Jane had expected something, she knew—some reaction from Patrick, or from her. When the silence stretched on, Jane frowned and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted, shall I? See you in a few days. We’ll come and remove any bits that fall off. Oh, and Patrick’s body, since you’ll definitely end up eating most of him.”

She waved her guards out first, clearly sure there was no threat now.

Patrick looked up and met Bryn’s eyes, and in that moment, she saw that he’d never been broken at all.

She launched herself out of the corner. Jane was right, she felt clumsy—arms and legs growing weaker, fingers unsure around the sharpened brass weapon. But that didn’t matter. Jane saw her coming and stepped back, pulling the door shut.

Patrick got there first and shot his arm out. She slammed it in the door, and Bryn heard bone crack, but he shoved it open, grabbed Jane, and dragged her inside. He flung her toward Bryn, and as Jane skidded to a stop and pulled her sidearm, Bryn’s right hand moved in a precise arc, as beautifully timed as anything she had ever done in her life.

And she cut Jane’s throat, laying it open through the trachea. Blood sprayed, and Jane jerked back, but Patrick had her arms, and he stripped the gun away, turned, and fired at the two guards, who had only just now realized something had gone wrong. He dropped them both.

Jane sank to her knees, both hands clutching her fountaining throat. Bryn crouched down, too, not caring about the blood hitting her, only about meeting Jane’s surprised, furious eyes.

“Yeah, that won’t kill you,” she said. “I know. You were looking for the cure, though.”

Jane bared her teeth, a cornered animal ready to bite.

“Well,” Bryn said, and stripped the seal off the vial she held. “Congratulations. You found it.”

She had time to savor Jane’s look of incomprehension, and horror, just for a second before she forced Jane’s head back with a grip on her hair and poured the serum straight down Jane’s severed throat.

Then she kicked her into the corner, bleeding out, and turned to Patrick.

He was watching Jane with the coldest eyes she’d ever seen. Colder even than Jane’s. But when he looked at her, the ice broke, just a little.

He held his hand out to her, and she took it. They watched for long enough to see Jane start to convulse as the cure took hold, shutting down her nanites.

Ending her.

And then they walked out. The door shut fast behind them on a peculiar whispering sound, and it took Bryn a moment to realize what it was.

Jane was trying to scream.

She supposed she ought to have felt guilty about it but in truth, she just felt relieved.

Patrick paused to strip weapons from the guards and tossed her one; she checked the clip, nodded, and fell in behind him. The paper slippers were annoying, so she kicked them off in favor of bare feet as they went down a narrow concrete hall lined with cinder-block walls. More doors, all shut. Patrick rapidly entered a code into one of the locks and opened it, and Bryn saw, over his shoulder, that Riley was lying on the floor with her arm over her eyes. She sat up quickly to stare at them. The paper jumpsuit didn’t look any better on her, Bryn thought, and despite what Riley had done, what she’d cost them . . . the joy that ignited in Bryn on seeing her was undeniable.

Riley threw herself to her feet and stumbled toward them. Bryn buried her in a hug that lasted only a few seconds, then gave her a sidearm. “Good to go?” she asked.

“God, yes,” Riley said, and double-checked the gun. “Where’s that evil bitch?”

“Dying,” Bryn said.

Riley looked up and smiled, with teeth. “Good.”

Patrick had already moved off to the next cell. It was empty. So was the third.

The fourth held Joe.

“Oh Jesus,” Bryn whispered, appalled. The big man was lying on his back, like Riley, but that was the only real similarity. He was black and blue, and very bloody; he was still breathing, but the sound was labored and disturbingly wet. Patrick knelt down next to him. Riley, after that first horrified glance, watched the hall, ready to shoot. “Patrick . . .”

Patrick was unsnapping Joe’s paper jumpsuit, which was wet with blood, and he uncovered a gaping gut wound. A wide pool of red soaked the concrete beneath Joe’s body, and a wide stream ran toward the drain in the center of the room.

He’d been bleeding for a while—steadily, fatally bleeding. Hours. Maybe days.

His skin, beneath the bruising, was a shocking blue-white. The fact that he was still alive, still breathing was nothing short of a miracle, but . . . but it was a battle he couldn’t win.

That was obvious to all of them.

“Joe,” Patrick said, and put his hand on the man’s forehead. “Joe, can you hear me?”

Joe’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused, and he said, “Jesus, took you long enough. Bitch got me. Sorry. Kinda lost my temper.”

“You? Never.”

Joe’s eyes slowly fixed on Patrick’s. “Been friends a long time,” he said. His voice was soft and lazy-slow. “Brothers.”

“Brothers,” Patrick agreed, and took Joe’s weakly upraised hand.

“She said she was fucking you,” he said. “I pretty much had to shut her up, you know?”

Patrick shut his eyes for a moment and went very still, but he somehow kept smiling. Bryn couldn’t imagine the strength it took to do that. “Rest, man. We’ll get you help.”

“Help’s not coming; we both know it. Don’t fucking lie to me,” Joe said. “You tell Kylie I love the hell out of her. You tell my kids the same, all right? And you take good care of them.”

“I will. But you stay with me, man, stay—”

It happened just that fast, like a switch turning off. Joe went still, and a slow, uncontrolled breath bled out of his mouth. His eyes were still open, still damp, but they didn’t move their focus as Patrick said his name.

He was gone. Just . . . gone.

“Fuck!” Patrick snarled, broken and angry and desperate all grinding together in that single word. “No, Joe, don’t you fucking do this—”

Riley had vanished, and Bryn hadn’t even noticed her departure until she came back what felt like an eternity later. She stepped into the room, crouched down, and held out a capped syringe to Pat.

“From Jane’s stash in her bag down the hall,” she said. “Do it. Give it to him.”

It was a shot of Returné. He wouldn’t want this, Bryn thought. He’d want to die clean and stay that way. She believed that, and she knew that Patrick did, too, but she also knew it was impossible just now, in this raw, painful place, to make a rational decision.

Not when there was a chance. That was the awful thing about the drug . . . about having a choice at all. Because, in the end, love wanted more time.

Patrick grabbed the syringe from Riley’s open palm, uncapped it with his teeth, and jammed it without a pause into the motionless vein in Joe’s neck. He pressed the plunger, withdrew the needle, and threw it violently away, spitting the cap after it.

Revolted by what he’d just done, but desperate for it to work, all the same.

“Come on, Joe, come on—you’ve never given up a fight in your whole life. . . .”

Nothing. Bryn could—on some weird meta-mechanical level—actually feel the nanites in Joe’s blood, moving through his body, but there was something wrong. Something not quite . . . adaptive. They were going too slowly—underpowered, perhaps. Maybe the shot was flawed. Maybe the drug was too old, past its sell-by date.

But in any case, it wasn’t going to work. She knew that.

From the sick despair in Patrick’s eyes, he knew it, too.

Bryn felt it all spiraling up inside her, all the pain, desperation, hunger, anger, frustration, black despair, and raw, pure anguish of losing someone else—someone else who did not fucking deserve it. She was shaking, she realized. Shaking and desperate and something . . . something was driving her now, something beyond her control.

Riley had told her in the first, horrifying moments of her own infection: The nanites are programmed for self-transfer if the host is awake and mobile. They’ll transfer the excess supply to the nearest identified ally.

What was Joe, if he wasn’t her ally?

She walked over to Patrick and Joe, and that, too, was beyond her control.

“Bryn!” She heard Riley say from behind her. “Bryn—”

She felt something moving inside her, under her skin, inside her flesh, a horrifying sensation of something breaking free, splitting off, becoming . . . and she could not control the hands that pushed Patrick away.

She grabbed Joe’s arm in one hand, raised it to her mouth, and felt a rush of heat through her blood, through her entire body, that seemed almost orgasmic in its intensity, though it hurt, hurt horribly . . . and she bit down, into flesh and muscle, all the way to the hard crunch of bone. She didn’t have to bite to infect him, but . . . but she needed to. Some sick part of her craved it.

And the activation would be faster than simple skin-to-skin transfer.

She knew Patrick was trying to pull her away, but there was no part of her that cared about self-preservation just then; her attention was only on one thing.

This.

The nanites rushed out of her, into Joe’s open wound—an army of microscopic warriors charging into a battle almost lost. It wasn’t that she chose it, any more than he had asked to receive it. . . . Riley had warned her that the nanites would mature, would reproduce, and would force implantation.

But it was a small mercy that at least it was to save someone she loved.

Patrick finally succeeded in tearing her away from Joe, and he flung her into the wall hard enough to draw blood from her banged head. She didn’t care. The rush left her exhausted, and she couldn’t react when he hauled her upright and shook her hard enough to send blood drops flying from her head wound.

“What are you doing?” he was asking her, but he knew. He knew all too well. “Bryn, Jesus . . .”

Joe didn’t move. Silence fell. No one spoke at all. The sound of a drop of Bryn’s blood hitting the floor was the loudest thing in the room . . . and then Patrick let her go and collapsed on his knees at Joe’s side to check his pulse.

He shook his head.

“Wait,” Bryn said. She felt unnaturally calm now. It was—was almost as if she could feel those nanites that had left her body, feel them spreading and working, reviving and reinforcing the tiny army that the first shot had delivered. “Wait.”

A minute passed. Riley shifted uneasily at the door. “Something’s wrong—it shouldn’t take this long. We have to go,” she said. “Bryn—”

“Are you feeling it yet?” Bryn asked. “The compulsion to spread them?”

“No,” Riley said, which didn’t make sense. They were both nanite factories, both primed to infect others; Riley ought to have been ahead of her on the harvesting curve. “Guys, I’m sorry, but we have to get out of here.”

“Wait.”

“He’s gone,” Patrick said, and sat back. “It didn’t work. He’s dead.”

“I’ve been dead,” Bryn said. “Have a little faith.”

They waited another full, agonizing minute before Joe’s eyes opened, and he let out that horrible, mind-shattering scream—the scream of a newborn, dragged from safety and comfort into a raw, painful world.

Or the shriek of a soul dragged out of peace and into hell.

Patrick took his hand and held it tight. “Easy, Joe, easy. I’m here. We’re here. Breathe. Breathe.”

Joe did, big, whooping heaves of air that rattled with liquid. He coughed out blood. The next panicked set of breaths was clean.

Riley nodded and left the room.

Patrick checked his gut wound. It was still raw, but it was already better. The bleeding had stopped.

“Jesus,” he said, and it was half a prayer. “I know I’ve seen it before, but—” He shook his head. “We have to move. Joe, can you get up?”

“Pat?” Joe blinked and, for the first time, really focused. “That bitch stabbed me, Pat. Wish I could say I got her back, but—”

“Easy, man, she’s done. Come on. Get up.”

Bryn helped get Joe to his feet, and after an unsteady few seconds, he started shaking in earnest. His face went pale, and his eyes . . . strange. Empty and yet very focused.

He said, in a low, rough voice, “Hungry. I’m hungry.”

Of course he was. Bryn realized with a jolt that he’d used up whatever energy the nanites had brought with them in this massive healing effort, and he’d need food. Fast.

Or he’d turn on Patrick, as the next available food source.

Riley had already realized that, and she came back . . . dragging a body. One of the men Bryn had killed in the hallway. Jane’s men.

“Oh God,” Bryn murmured, but she knew there was no choice.

Riley, expressionless, ripped the sleeve from the dead man’s arm, and said, “Patrick, you’d better wait outside. Bryn—”

Bryn was only too happy to join him.

Patrick didn’t say anything, but the tight expression on his face was more than enough to communicate how repulsed he was.

I did this, Bryn thought, with a wave of sick horror. I did this to Joe.

She tried not to listen to the sounds inside the room.

A few minutes later, Joe came to the door. He was visibly stronger. Shaken, confused, but solid on his legs. His face and hands were clean of any evidence of what he’d just consumed—that would have been Riley, and kindness. The trauma would come later for Joe, she thought—it always came, sooner or later. But for now . . . for now it was just survival.

“Good to go,” he said hoarsely.

They took him at his word.

Riley took point on the hallway, all the way to the end. There was another keypad, and she eased out of the way for Patrick to work his code magic, which Bryn assumed he’d learned from watching Jane . . . and the door opened.

It also set off a shrieking alarm, and flashing strobes.

“Go!” Patrick yelled, and Bryn charged after Riley. The next hall was another cinder-block nightmare, door after door, with another code-keyed exit. He opened that, and set off more alarms.

This time, when the door opened, there was a hail of gunfire. Riley took hits, but she fired back, and Bryn stood next to her, calmly taking down three more in addition to Riley’s two. These were also wearing fatigues—not official current army camo, but Desert Storm–era. No identifying marks.

Joe was trying to be himself, and he almost managed it. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he stripped a machine pistol from one of the fallen men, “we are officially, truly screwed if this is a military op.” He spoiled it only by the trembling of his hands and the haunted shadows in his eyes.

He was right. There was a window on this hallway, neatly painted and clean, and Bryn looked out to see clear white gravel, carefully raked. Trimmed hedges. Camouflaged vehicles, and the American flag flying high.

Truly screwed just about covered it.

She looked at the four of them, in bloody jumpsuits. . . . None of them looked passably military, at the moment. “Joe, Pat, they’re close to your sizes—” she pointed to two of the downed soldiers, and went to strip the clothing from the smallest man. It felt horrifying; it felt dishonorable. But there wasn’t any other choice. I’m sorry, she told his lifeless, empty corpse. I hope you weren’t innocent, just posted here on orders.

And my God, I hope you’re not actually military.

Bryn—hair just starting to emerge in a blurred fringe of pale gold around her scalp—looked like a particularly gung-ho recruit. Riley’s shorter hair could at least pass muster. Nothing could be done about Patrick’s messy, unshaven state, or Joe’s bruising, but if they walked quickly and quietly out of the building to the vehicles, they might just manage it.

Of course, the alarms going off would be a problem—or at least, would have been, except for Joe. As doors banged open at the other end of the hallway, admitting a flood of soldiers, he bent down, grabbed one of the fallen still wearing a uniform in a collar-pull, and began towing him toward the oncoming men. “Medic!” he yelled. “We need goddamn medics in here—we’ve got men down!”

It was confusing enough, with the sirens and strobes, that he seemed to be on their side, and with Bryn, Riley, and Patrick all uniformed and pulling their own bodies, the crowd simply flowed around them.

Joe left his man as soon as it was clear and ran for the door. They all followed. Bryn was acutely aware that anyone could twig at any second to the thin deception, but the general chaos—and the fact that all this was undoubtedly top secret, and nobody knew what was going on, or who was supposed to be there—contributed to just enough confusion for it all to work.

They made it to the parked vehicles lining the side of the gravel, and Patrick elbowed Joe aside to take the wheel. The keys were in it, and they’d managed to get halfway to the gate—manned, of course—before the first alarm was shouted behind them.

Patrick hit the gas. Bullets started flying as they accelerated, and Bryn felt two hit her in the arm and shoulder, but then they were smashing through the barriers just before the tire-shredders raised up, and taking the turn on two screaming tires to reach a main road.

When she looked back, she realized that it wasn’t a genuine army base—couldn’t have been. There were no signs, beyond PRIVATE PROPERTY and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. It was far, far out into what looked like . . . scrub desert.

“Where are we?” Riley asked. It damn sure wasn’t Alaska; not a flake of snow in sight. The mountains in the distance were blue and more like foothills. It looked and felt like the far Southwest, but Bryn wasn’t entirely sure until they took a sharp left at the next main road, heading west.

All of a sudden, the nagging familiarity fell into place.

“I know this,” she said. “My God. It’s El Paso. Somewhere near it, anyway.”

“El Paso where?” Riley asked. “California?”

“Texas,” she said. “Right at the corner of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.”

“That wasn’t Fort Bliss,” Joe said. “I’ve been to Bliss.”

“I was stationed there,” Bryn nodded. “That back there is some bullshit paramilitary compound, probably one Jane bought out or took over. If we’d been at Bliss, they’d have killed us in the hallway.”

“We’d have never gotten out,” Joe agreed, and then, after a pause, said, “What just happened to me?”

“You know already,” Riley said, quietly. “You were dying, Joe. In fact, you did die. Don’t blame Bryn. She did it to save you.”

He narrowed in on her then, and she felt a sick surge of guilt and horror. She hadn’t intended any of this.

“No, you should blame me,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Joe. The nanites were driving me, but I still—I wanted to help you. Jane left you there to die, and I couldn’t bear that. I really couldn’t, for Kylie and the kids. And because you’re just—better than that.” She was on the verge of tears, and the guilt felt overwhelming. She knew how much she’d hated waking up to . . . that. How traumatic it was.

Joe gave her a smile. It was almost real; she had to give him credit for the effort. It was possible to see past it, to see the uncertainty and the horror and the shock, but he was holding together. Fake it ’til you make it. It was probably his family motto. “I’m not angry about it. Look, I want to live for them, too, even if this is not the way I expected it to come out. And let’s face it: being nearly invulnerable in my line of work . . . isn’t a terrible thing. I got the upgrade, right?”

“Yes,” she said, and just stared at him for a while. “You’re okay with that?”

“Oh hell no,” he said, and that at least was heartfelt and honest. “I’m not okay with a lot of things. But if I was lying on the battlefield and you had to cut my leg off to save my life, I’d be okay with it because the alternative sucked worse. I’d be not so okay with all the pain and coping, but everything’s a tradeoff. I’m trying to believe this is—no different.”

“It—” She eye-polled the others. Riley shrugged. Regardless of what she believed, she couldn’t add to Joe’s general distress. He was too pale, too controlled. Let him keep his illusions, if they got him through the day. “I guess maybe it isn’t.”

“Then I’ll whine about my awful life later,” he said. “But even then, I’ll be alive to whine about it. Relax, Bryn. I’m cool.”

“That’s why we love you,” Pat said.

That was too close to real emotion for Joe to handle. Bryn saw it, and he put up the armor again. Fast. “Moving on . . . What about Jane?”

“She’s dead,” Bryn said. “I slashed her throat and poured Thorpe’s cure right down the hole.”

“Jesus!”

“She deserved it.”

“Yeah, I know, but Jesus, Bryn. You sounded just like her for a minute; you know that?”

She did, and it made her fall utterly silent. Patrick kept them moving, speed high, until they reached another turnoff—actually he passed it, then studied that side of the road, looped around and came back.

This side road, after half a mile of badly paved road, led to something that had sometime in the seventies been a happy family mobile home community, complete with convenience store and pool and campgrounds. Today, it was polluted by crumbling ancient trailers with blacked-out windows, trash, and prowling stray dogs. The pool was empty and full of rusting junk. The convenience store had long ago been left to rot in the sun, and taggers had left their discontent all over it in primary-colored swirls of graffiti.

“What are you doing?” Riley asked. “This place looks like they might as well call it Meth Manor.”

“You know what I love about meth cookers? They usually have a lot of money and drive good cars,” Patrick said. “They also love weapons, and tend to not call the police when you steal from them.”

“Ah,” Joe said. “Supply run.”

“That, and I’m pretty damn sure this truck is LoJacked. So they’ll be tracking us in it. On the other hand, if they come rolling hard into this place and start shooting—”

“Lots of bullets come right back,” Riley said, and smiled broadly.

“It’s a side bonus, along with the heavy potential for explosions. Meth cooking is not exactly a low-risk business, especially when you combine it with firearms. I think it has the potential to make our friends’ lives very interesting for a while.”

“There,” Bryn said, and pointed. In front of a particularly decaying trailer that had once been disco-era antique gold sat a new Dodge Challenger, matte black. If Batman had a casual car for running errands, that was what it would look like, she thought—and the Challengers had a lot of power under that hood. Enough to get them out of a lot of trouble.

“Outstanding,” Patrick said. “Riley—”

She gave him a cartoon salute, and was out of the truck the second it stopped. The Dodge was locked—not an unreasonable precaution in this neighborhood—but she took a second to search around the rocky ground near a Dumpster, and came up with a flat, thin piece of metal that she rapidly fastened into a slim jim.

“Somebody ought to tell the FBI they need to check their criminal records,” Joe said. “Because she’s done this before.”

Fifteen seconds after Riley found the metal, she was in the car, and fifteen seconds after, she had it running, a low throb of engine that Bryn felt even through the battle-tested metal of what they were in. “Go,” Patrick said, and bailed out to join Riley; Joe and Bryn were right behind him.

Bryn was still outside the car when a skinny, pale dude in smudged underwear opened the trailer’s door and stepped out on the rickety front porch, mouth open in an outraged yell. His front teeth were gone.

She waved, jumped in, and Riley jammed the car into gear and smoked tires on the way out.

Joe started laughing, and the rest of them joined in, not out of any real amusement but simply because ripping off a meth cooker was probably the funniest thing that had happened to them in a long time, and it felt good to laugh.

Bryn finished with a last hiccup that was almost giggles, and sagged against Joe. She put her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Really.”

He shrugged a little, but he was careful not to dislodge her from that position. “I’ll adjust,” he said. “So will Kylie. Really.”

In the front seat, Patrick was quizzing Riley about her car-boosting skills; she was electing to reply with a frosty, regal silence that was funny in itself.

Jane was dead. They’d roused at least some part of the government to act directly against the Fountain Group, if Riley was to be believed. And against all odds, they were still together, still moving.

But despite all those impossible strides, she felt one thing very clearly: fear. Because while they’d been suffering in Jane’s personal killing jars out here in the desert, the meeting of the Fountain Group—their opportunity to take the brains of the beast—that had happened and passed without incident.

And they didn’t even have names to track.

“We’re boned,” she whispered, echoing Joe from before, and closed her eyes as Riley turned the Challenger on the main highway, heading east. The only thing west was Mexico, but Bryn knew that if she asked, Riley wouldn’t have any sort of destination in mind except not here. No point in even asking about directions until they reached some point where a decision could be made . . . which, from El Paso, would be two hundred miles at least.

They searched the car, and came up with an interesting assortment of goodies—concealed panels in the doors yielded up a couple of poorly maintained handguns and a stack of stained bills, mostly twenties and fifties. When they stopped for gas, they found the trunk was filled with stained empty cups and fast-food bags . . . but underneath, at least ten prepaid cell phones, still in the packaging.

Bryn took one out and typed in the number that they’d used to reach Manny, before—before everything had gone to hell. “Think he’s still answering?” she asked.

“I think that when we didn’t come back in Barrow, he folded up the tents and vanished, along with everybody else on that plane,” Patrick said. “He’d have considered us dead. He’d have been perfectly right to do it.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but something was bothering her—something much bigger. “Patrick . . . he knows how big this is, better than any of us. He knows the risks, if the Fountain Group goes unchecked. They’ll take over strategic assets, like the military, or the government itself. Once they do that, it’s over for the rest of us. They want to live forever—them, and their handpicked best people. Sooner or later, they’ll own us. All of us. What do you think Manny would do about that?”

“He’s got the cure,” Patrick said, watching the numbers roll by on the pump as the Challenger drank down the fuel. “He’ll concentrate on taking it apart down to the molecules, until he understands everything about how it works. And then he’ll put it back together again, synthesize it, and use it.”

“He’ll act.”

“Yes,” Patrick said. “He’ll do it because it needs to be done.” He frowned, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know how long we were—in there. Do you?”

“Long enough,” she said. “Long enough for my nanites to mature and migrate.” Which made her think, suddenly, about Riley . . . who hadn’t shown any signs of the same impulse, though they were on the same schedule—had to be, since Riley’s bite had infected her. “You’re not—?”

The other woman didn’t look up from where she was loading trash from the Challenger’s trunk into the pump-side bin. “Jane used them,” she said. “Yesterday. She brought me one of her people.”

“And you upgraded him?” Patrick said. It sounded like an accusation, though he probably didn’t mean it that way.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she snapped back. “Ask your girlfriend. Doesn’t matter. He was—she doesn’t like to share. She had him put down.”

“Put down?” Bryn said, and went very still. “What do you mean, put down?”

“We can still die, Bryn. Figure it out. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t easy to do, but with enough ingenuity and cruelty you can do anything.” When Bryn continued to stare at her, Riley looked away. “Acid. She dissolved him. Trust me, you don’t want to know the details.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she could,” Patrick said. “And because she wanted to be sure she could destroy an upgrade if she needed to do so. Research and fun: her favorite combination. I’m sorry, Riley. She found ways to hurt all of us, one way or another. That was her specialty.”

Riley nodded. “At least I’m not contagious now for another thirty days. Neither is Bryn.”

“I don’t think we’re going to make it another thirty days,” Patrick said. He sounded calm, and sure, and nodded to Bryn. “Call Manny. Maybe he’ll pick up. We can hope he will.”

But Manny didn’t pick up. The phone rang, and rang, and rang, and then a distorted recorded message reported the number had been disconnected.

Manny was gone, along with Pansy, and Liam, and Annie. They’d even taken her dog.

It was ridiculous, after all she’d been through, to want to burst into tears, but . . . suddenly, that last little piece of normality being chipped away seemed to take the last solid ground from under her feet, and Bryn had to brace herself against the Challenger’s sleek fender, just to stay upright. She gently folded the phone and put it in the pocket of her fatigues.

Patrick was watching her. She couldn’t afford to break down now; she couldn’t let him down. The four of them—they might be all they had, now. She would not be the weak link.

So she simply shook her head. He didn’t seem surprised. Just grim.

Fueling finished, he took a trip to the station’s probably horrible restroom; Bryn used one of the smaller bills in their drug dealer’s bankroll to supply them all with water and high-protein snacks, mainly for her, Riley, and Joe. She didn’t know how the other two felt, but her stomach was aching with need, and Riley was probably just as starved.

After that, it was more than a hundred miles across open desert before any significant towns, broken by occasional twisted eruptions of ancient rocks and the twisted, spiked growths of Joshua trees and mesquite. Green balls of desert sage growing out of mounds of pale sand. Rotting shacks. A cloudless, bone-dry, unforgiving sky.

And nothing ahead.

They didn’t talk much. She offered a phone to Joe to call his family, but he refused; Riley wanted one to call her superiors in the FBI, but that was overruled fast. “Yeah, the last time you checked in with them, they had you pull a gun on me, and then they ratted us out to Jane,” Joe said. “FBI means Fucking Bastard Informants, in my book. No phone for you.”

Riley glared, but she didn’t ask again. Most likely, even she didn’t trust her people anymore, Bryn thought. Their circle of trust was about as big as this car, now.

They were still at least fifty miles out from the next landmark—Van Horn—when Bryn’s phone rang.

They all froze, staring at her as she pulled it from her pocket. The shrill ring filled the car’s interior, and Patrick said, “Wrong number?”

“Wishful thinking,” Bryn said. No choice, really. The caller ID was blank. She flipped it open and said, “Hello?”

There was a few second’s silence, and she had an intuition of the call being forwarded through a variety of cutout points, and then Manny’s voice said, “Bryn?”

“Affirmative.”

He let out a slow breath. “We were pretty sure you were all—”

“We aren’t,” she said. “Jane is.”

“You killed Jane.”

“If Thorpe’s cure worked, then she’s beyond help.”

“Oh, it works,” he said. “Better than any of us ever expected. The nanite shutdown takes about two minutes, five at the most. And they don’t come back.”

“How do you know—”

“You’re coming up on an exit for Highway 285. Take it northwest toward New Mexico. You’ll be met.”

“Manny, wait! Annie—”

Click, and he was gone. Dead air.

She felt short of breath. Two minutes. Five at most.

And they don’t come back.

He didn’t have any guinea pigs.

Except her sister. No, no. She doesn’t have the upgrade.

What was to stop him from giving it to her? He’d have samples, she knew that. Manny always had samples. He’d probably managed to take one from her, while she was close by.

That made her feel faint and sick, and she gripped the phone so tightly she felt the plastic crack in her hand. Don’t you fucking hurt her. Not anymore than she’s already been hurt.

“Bryn?” Patrick asked. He sounded worried.

She swallowed and said, “Take the exit to 285 toward New Mexico.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust Manny not to kill my sister.”