Terminated

Chapter 7

Coming back wasn’t fun. Bryn hadn’t expected it to be; she’d gone into this on instinct, and instinct had a fatalistic sort of acceptance to the pain that she’d earned. At first, it was all instinct—whimpering, twitching, just an overwhelming sense of the world rushing over her, sweeping her back into a bloody swirl of agony and fury, and it took time for her conscious mind to fight its way to the front and be able to begin to analyze the inputs.

There were a lot. And they weren’t good news.

Sight came online before hearing. She knew they were speaking to her, but she couldn’t lip-read; it was simply too much effort. Instead, she watched Joe’s face for clues about how bad this was going to be.

He was pale, and his face was set into a hard mask. So, presumably not very good at all. Riley was on her other side. She became aware that her bones were resetting, slowly. Usually they snapped together like Legos, but this was more of a . . . bending, a slow knitting that felt torturously deliberate. Her lungs were full of blood that was being pushed up, out through her mouth. Muscles twitched and convulsed as they repaired themselves.

The nanites had a lot to do. But, incredibly, they were doing it. She’d given herself only about a twenty percent chance, tops, of surviving the blast, but damned if the little monsters weren’t pulling it off. She could almost like them, in that moment.

Almost.

She coughed out a massive amount of blood that left Riley and Joe exchanging horrified looks, but Riley toweled her face and hair clean. The water on her burning skin felt as good as paradise. Running a fever, she thought, and almost laughed, because a little cold was the least of her problems, wasn’t it? She coughed again, and this time managed to drag in some sweet, life-giving air.

Riley patted her shoulder in congratulations. When Bryn concentrated on the movement of her lips, she thought she was saying, Good, Bryn, just breathe. One thing was for sure: if Riley Block looked shaken, Bryn had truly been on the edge of permanent, gruesome death.

She wasn’t sure she ought to find it quite as oddly funny as she did, that deep concern on Riley’s face. But hysteria was probably about as good a way to deal with this horror as screaming, and a lot more fun. There’s that PTSD, she thought, and was instantly sobered up. Dying over and over was bound to have a cost—mental, if not physical. What had Patrick said about Jane? She hadn’t been the cruel bitch she was now, not at first. It took time.

It took agony, and the wearing away of sanity against the hard rocks of immortality.

Her eardrums healed, finally, and sound crashed in raw and hard, and she almost cried out just from the shock of it. Everything sounded wrong, and too loud, and vertigo hit her, hard, even though she was flat on her back on the ground. She gulped in tearful breaths, heard the uneven, too-fast beat of her heart, and felt the last important, load-bearing bones seal together. Just ribs and fingers and toes left now. They’d heal up in a bit.

“Do you have it?” she said. Her voice sounded raw and garbled, and she tried again, and again, until finally Riley got the message and held up something bloody, wrapped in duct tape.

“This?” she asked. Bryn nodded. It probably looked like a convulsion. Felt a little like one, too. “It survived, Bryn. You did it.”

Bryn shook free of Joe’s hand and rolled over on her side, then shakily pushed herself up to a sitting position. That was hard. It was only then that she realized she was lying on the hard shoulder of the road, surrounded by blood like one of those old-time tape outlines from old cop shows. Blood dripped from her hair, from her clothes, and she smelled the hot coppery tang of it everywhere.

Then she smelled the smoke, because what was left of the billboard—a couple of ragged poles and collapsed wreckage—was burning with furnace-level intensity. It looked ghastly. She didn’t see any sign of Calvin Thorpe, but she expected that if she searched around, she’d find pieces of him, here and there. Not big ones.

He was right. It had probably been very quick.

Riley said something to Joe, and he jogged back to the truck, which was idling nearby; he came back with a stack of fresh clothes and a big jug of water. Bryn, with Riley’s help, stripped off the tattered rags of her clothes and stood in her burned and shredded panties and bra to pour the water over herself, washing off the worst of the blood and grit before she threw on the loose jeans and blue work shirt. Her shoes were mostly intact.

There were a lot of small, round metal objects on the road. Larger than shotgun pellets. Ball bearings. There were also nails, bent and broken and scorched, littering the road as well. They’d built a first-class dirty IED, all right.

It made her light-headed to think about all of that shrapnel tearing through her flesh and bone, turning her into a shredded bag of meat. What the concussion didn’t rupture in the first place. God, she hated bombs.

“You okay?” Riley asked, and then gave her a very pale imitation of a smile. “As much as possible, I mean.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.” Her voice still sounded as if she’d gargled with those nails, and she hoped it would get better. The nanites were focusing on the important things first, and being comfortable didn’t really figure into their priorities.

The first hunger pangs hit her after she took three steps, and doubled her over like a cast-iron fist in the guts. Bryn stumbled, choking, and felt something feral clawing its way out from inside her. The nanites needed fuel. They were overheating, operating beyond their capacity.

Food. Now. NOW.

Joe stepped down out of the cab of the truck, and before she could think what she was doing, before she could even try to think, she was lunging at him.

Riley got in the way. Thank God. Bryn fought her, hard and violently, trying to get not to Joe but to the fuel that Joe represented—the raw energy stored in that fat and blood and muscle and tissue.

Riley wrestled her down to the road and held her there, and after a few minutes, forced something into her open mouth.

Meat. Sweet, salty meat, tough and chewy . . . salami from the meat store in Kansas City. She chewed and swallowed with mechanical intensity until it was all gone, and the red eased its grip on her just a bit, until she could signal to Riley that she was back in control.

Riley didn’t trust that, and kept hold of her, but let her have another big chunk of the salami. She chewed and swallowed again, a process that had nothing of pleasure to it and everything of desperation. She ate at least three huge hunks of the stuff before suddenly the need just . . . switched off, like a circuit being cut.

She burped, mumbled an apology, and handed the rest back to Riley, who offered her—incongruously—a napkin. Bryn used it to wipe the greasy residue from her mouth and hands.

“Sexy,” Riley deadpanned. “Better?”

Bryn nodded. The taste of meat was metallic and sweet in her mouth, and she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to give an actual answer in words. She was still shaking, but that was terror, not hunger.

She hoped she’d never get the two of those confused. The idea of hurting Joe Fideli brought tears to her eyes, and she couldn’t look at him as, with Riley’s help, she walked to the truck and climbed inside.

Lonnie wasn’t looking too happy anymore. He seemed scared, flinching from meeting her eyes, and he was only too happy to put the truck in gear as Joe settled in next to him while Bryn and Riley sat on the bunk behind them. “You—you were dead,” he said. “Not just wounded. I saw you, lady—you were fucked.”

Bryn didn’t have the energy to try to convince him otherwise. He’d seen it, he knew it, and it terrified him. Fair enough. It had spooked Joe, too; she saw it in the wary way he studied her, as if he was waiting for her to turn feral again. She gave him a shaky, apologetic sorry, and he nodded. Not like he quite trusted her, but as if he understood she was trying.

Lonnie’s wide brown eyes were staring at her from the rearview mirror. He looked away when she glanced his way. She knew she ought to feel something about that—feel sorry, maybe, that he saw her as such a monster. But truthfully, it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered that much.

Nothing except that blood-smeared syringe in its nest of duct tape, that Riley was still holding.

Joe said, quietly, “Lonnie, focus. You’re nearly done with us—I promise you that. We just need you to take us the rest of the way and we’re done. Another two hours, tops.” He patted Lonnie on the shoulder, brother to brother, and Lonnie didn’t flinch from him, at least. Though he did shoot him a doubting look.

“You—you’re going to let me go, like you promised, right?”

“Absolutely,” Joe said. “And I want you to do me a favor, man, I want you to call in a 911 on the fire when we’re pulling away, okay? Just tell them the billboard’s on fire and you’re not sure what happened. You would normally call a thing like that in, right?”

“Right,” Lonnie agreed. He took a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay. Okay, we can do this.”

“Bet your ass,” Joe said. “Now let’s roll.”

Lonnie engaged the gears, and the truck growled forward. The blood-angel that Bryn had left on the road surface disappeared under the tires, and then they were past the smoke, to the clear air beyond. The truck was moving at decent speed by the time they crested the next hill, and beyond it was . . . a normal world. Hawks soared the skies, planes skimmed the roof of the world, and on the ground it was just blank, empty road and countryside, with some scrub houses in the distance. They’d probably have seen the smoke, Bryn thought. Maybe even the explosion.

Lonnie made his emergency call, and reported it as simply as possible; his voice was shaking, but that probably wasn’t too unusual for someone calling in a thing like that, especially on a long-haul drive. He looked relieved when it was over, she thought, and settled in behind the wheel to drive.

She dismissed him as unimportant, at least for now, and focused herself on more important things. Who the fuck are these people? She was shaken, she had to admit it. Somehow, while they’d been driving, the Fountain Group had found out who Thorpe was, tracked down his allegedly foolproof contact, and probably tortured and killed him. . . . Then, instead of sending an assault force (since the last overwhelming onslaught hadn’t gone so well for them) they’d done something incredibly smart—they’d gone unmanned low-tech. There’d been some surveillance, most likely remote-piloted, but they’d thought that they’d be able to take out Thorpe, his weapon, and (as a bonus) at least one of them, too.

And they nearly had, with something as simple as a pressure bomb. Something you could build from plans on the fucking Internet.

Whoever was running this—and Bryn was now sure it wasn’t Jane, Jane wasn’t sane enough, or flexible enough, to plan this way—it was someone capable of making cold-bloodedly rational decisions. Losses and gains, offset by risks. Varying tactics. That wasn’t Jane; she was smart, and brutal, but she wasn’t a fantastic tactician.

Bypassing Jane and getting to the brains of the operation would stop this, stop it dead and cold. Then she could destroy Jane, but it was important just now to learn something from her enemy—to change tactics.

“We need to get out,” Bryn said.

Lonnie sent her a startled, scared look, and then Joe turned and frowned at her. “What?”

“Just trust me on this,” she said. “We get the hell out of this truck, and head out on foot. Then we split up, and you give me Patrick’s burst transmitter. You and Riley, you get back to whatever hole Manny is hiding in. Please, Joe. You know me. You know I’m right.”

“Right about what?” Riley asked sharply. “We’re two hours from our goal. If we ditch our transportation, we add a day of hard hiking. Besides, do you think you can run off on your own, without backup, and get anything accomplished? Jane is out there. And she can call on half the military and, for all we know, half the law enforcement in this country. She’s rich in resources, and we’re not. Don’t throw away what little we’ve got.”

Joe was watching her without replying. She felt closer to him than to Riley, even now—even after both of them had experienced the infection of the nanite upgrades. Joe was basic version 1.0 human, and he had always had her back. Always. Even when he couldn’t trust her not to turn flesh-eating monster on him, which was . . . quite a lot of trust.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said after a long moment. “Lonnie, stop the truck.”

Lonnie clearly didn’t want to, but he hit the air brakes, and the truck sighed to a halt on the road’s shoulder.

“You can’t let her do this,” Riley said, and put a hand on Bryn’s shoulder as she tried to get up. “No. Just—no, Bryn. This is the wrong move; I know it. I’m telling you, just stay. We need to stay in the truck.”

Bryn looked at her for a long moment, and then shook her head. “We can’t,” she said, and moved Riley’s hand away. “I see something. You don’t. You take that vaccine to Manny and get him to start making more. I think we’re going to need it. Badly. We have no idea how far the Fountain Group has taken this—how many upgraded foot soldiers they have besides Jane.” She nodded at the duct taped syringe.

Riley pulled her sidearm. She did it in a motion so fast Bryn hardly even saw it; the muzzle of the gun stopped with perfect precision in line with Bryn’s eyes. Close range. Messy. “I have no idea what you think you’re doing, but you’re going to get yourself killed,” Riley said. “Stay with us, and help us get this to Manny. This is precious. It’s more important than you or me or any of us or all of us. It can stop them.”

“Riley—we don’t even know if it works,” Bryn said. “The Fountain Group had access to that syringe before we did; they could have swapped out the drug with saline, for all we know. If they did, if they’ve got the genuine cure and we don’t . . . they can take us out, and we’ve got nothing. Thorpe told me something important, and I need to follow it up.”

Riley didn’t move, and didn’t holster her weapon, either. “So you want to leave our transportation and just . . . go. Where?”

“We have the lead Pansy gave me.”

“What, somewhere in Northern California? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a big area. That’s insane. You’re just asking Jane to kill you.”

“Maybe,” Bryn said. “But if you don’t make it back to Manny, or if that syringe is useless, we might lose our only solid lead. So we need to follow both tracks, don’t we? I’ll go. You two go the other way. I’ll see you again.”

“Are you sure?” Joe asked her.

“Yes.”

“Good enough for me,” Joe said. “Ease off, Riley.”

“No.”

“Jesus,” Joe sighed, annoyed, and drew his own gun. He wasn’t as fast a draw as Riley, but he didn’t need to be, because they both knew he was probably just as good a shot. He aimed straight for her, two-handed. “Back the fuck off. Bryn’s right. We get out now, and split up. Lonnie, you’re welcome to come with us if you want.”

“Uh . . . no, thanks. I’ll . . . stay here,” Lonnie said. He looked rigid, hands locked to the steering wheel, and his eyes were about to bug right out of his sockets. His blood pressure must have been through the roof. “Thanks . . . ?” That last came faintly, almost as a question.

Joe didn’t take his eyes off of Riley as he said, “Okay then. Sorry, man. About everything. You didn’t deserve any of this, and I wish I could change it.”

“No, it’s okay, it’s okay. I won’t say a thing, really.”

Lonnie thought Joe was going to shoot him, and Bryn thought he was probably right. . . . But then Joe shook his head, opened the passenger door, and descended from the truck. “Bryn,” he said. “You next.”

She cocked an eyebrow at Riley. “You going to shoot me?”

“Probably not.”

Bryn took her at her word, and eased backward out the door, hopping down onto the pavement and standing next to Joe. Riley followed, smooth as a snake, landing flat-footed and absolutely steady with her aim on Joe. “Are we done with this bullshit?” she asked.

“Guess so,” he said, and holstered his sidearm, apparently unconcerned with what she would do. Bryn watched her—not the eyes, because it wasn’t the eyes that betrayed people, it was the micro-twitches in the hands.

But Riley simply put her gun away, too, and the standoff was over. “Hold this, Joe,” she said, and gave him the syringe. “I’m going back for supplies before Lonnie rabbits it out of here.” She disappeared back into the truck, and emerged about fifteen seconds later with backpacks, which she tossed to each of them. Bryn strapped hers on, and the weight settled in nicely. One thing about being in the infantry, you never forgot the feel of a kit on your back. Like riding a bike. Or at least, like going on twenty-mile hikes carrying half your weight.

By unspoken consent, they moved away from the truck and into the shelter of a big, low-spreading tree—the kind of landscape people called trash trees, Bryn recalled, short-lived and strong-willed. Lonnie wasted no time in laying the hammer down, and he was over the horizon in less time than it took Bryn to get her directional bearings.

“You’re sure about splitting up?” Joe asked. “Because I get where you’re going, but I’m not sure you’ll make it.”

“Riley’s right about the formula,” Bryn said. “It needs to get back to Manny; that’s vital. If this is the answer, he’s the only one we can trust to analyze and—hopefully—reproduce it.”

“You really think he’s going to let us back inside? He seemed a little, I don’t know, paranoid.”

“Pansy will make him.” Bryn tried to sound sure of that, but in truth, she wasn’t sure; no one could be sure of what Manny would do. But she hoped she was right, anyway. “And this plays into his paranoia, because he’ll be the only one with the cure. Then it’ll be up to you to pry it out of his hands, of course, but one step at a time. I love the guy, but he’s definitely Handle With Care.” She turned her attention on Riley. “Unless you think you’re going to take it and give it to your bosses.”

Riley cocked an eyebrow. “I never made any secret of the fact that I work for the FBI. I never said I quit. And it doesn’t matter, because in this, the federal government and our little rogue op have exactly the same goals: stop the spread of infection, and stop the Fountain Group. Manny’s our best option.”

“Are you under orders right now?” Joe asked. It sounded like a casual question, and it would have been easy to mistake him for relaxed, standing here under the gently rustling leaves of the trash tree, with the sun beating down. But he wasn’t.

“Not as such,” Riley said, and tilted her head just a little. Her eyes narrowed. “You think they surveilled us. Satellite?”

“Wouldn’t put that shit past them,” Joe said. “We already know they’re into the air force’s command and control; all it would really take would be a drone flyover. Could have been slipped in without anybody noticing at all. But yeah, if they were sharp enough to set the trap, they’re sharp enough to watch and see who walks away from it. We stay in the truck, we’re marked, at best. Or we’re—”

“Dead,” Bryn finished softly. She looked after the truck, but it was lost to view now, heading fast down the road. “You made the offer, Joe. Whatever happens now, you made the offer to him.”

“Look, let’s not kid ourselves, the best thing that guy has to look forward to now is torture and death, or—if he’s really damn lucky—they’ll just bomb the shit out of the truck and kill him that way. But he’s not walking away unscathed. We all know that.” Joe was expressionless, but there was a glitter in his eyes, something sharp and angry. “We owe it to him to not fail, you understand. We don’t owe Thorpe; he started this—fuck him. We owe Lonnie. We owe the Lonnies of this world who get caught in the middle.”

Bryn was caught by surprise, but she slowly nodded. So did Riley. “I was Lonnie once, too,” she said. “I walked into this. I was just—taking a job. I went in the wrong door at the wrong time. And you’re right. But I can’t forget that we got Lonnie into this—not our enemies.”

“Innocent people are going to die in this,” Joe said. “Don’t like it, but I have to accept it. Innocents are who we’re fighting for. Not ourselves, not the government, not the military, just . . . the ones who don’t even see this coming.”

It was almost as if they’d made some kind of pact, and Bryn supposed they had—a quiet, unspoken sort of promise that didn’t need handshakes or salutes. Just nods.

Joe dug in his pocket and handed over what looked like—lipstick? No, it was the same general cylindrical shape, but when he pulled the cap off, there was a round black button on it. “You get where you’re safe, you push this,” he said, and recapped the thing. “Patrick will read the coordinates and come to you. But make sure you’re someplace you can wait for him. Like I said: one use only.”

“Got it,” she said, and zipped it into a pocket on her pants. One thing she was hoping not to lose this time: her pants.

“Want to tell us where you’re heading?” Riley asked.

Bryn slowly shook her head, still watching the horizon. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Probably not wrong,” Joe Fideli said. He hugged her hard, and she hugged him back, suddenly shaky inside because, although she didn’t particularly mind splitting from Riley, Joe was . . . different. And he must have known that, because he kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Want to know a secret, kid?”

“Sure.”

“If I wasn’t already married . . .”

“Tease.” She kissed him back on the cheek, and stepped away, and got a real, and very sweet, smile from him. “Take care of yourselves.”

Riley didn’t hug. She settled for a nod, and then Bryn set out at a run, heading west.

When she looked back, they were gone.