The building was dark inside even to his night-adjusted eyes. The air smelled of the gun discharge, and his foot kicked debris. Then he b.u.mped into something hard and angular at hip height.Thomas swore under his breath. "I can"t see a thing.""Here." A beam of light flashed behind him.He squinted in the sudden glare. "Why didn"t you use that outside?""I can see in IR.""I can"t.""The light reveals our presence. We"re better hidden in here.""You think someone might be out there?" He would have guessed they were miles from civilization.
"Not really. Just being careful."
As his eyes readjusted, he made out crates stacked all around, some of them cracked or shattered from the machine gun blast. "What is this place?"
"A storage hut." Alpha had pulled off the cover on one crate and was peering inside.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
"Medical supplies." She frowned at the crate as if it had personally offended her. Then she went to
another stack.
If Thomas could have run, he might have sprinted to the car while the search occupied her attention. He doubted it would work, though. She moved two or three times faster than a human being, and she could also accelerate faster. With his injured leg, he would be lucky to get a few yards before she caught him.
She probably wouldn"t use the EL-38, but he couldn"t be certain, and even if she didn"t, she might break
more of his bones. Better to conserve his limited physical resources for when he had a better chance of escaping.
He found a low pile of crates and sat down, stretching out his broken leg. Alpha moved about the stacks,
never letting him out of her sight, though she could keep track of him with her internal sensors even if she lost visual touch. After about fifteen minutes, she pulled several packages out of a crate.
"Will alteplase work for you?" she called.
Lost in his thoughts, Thomas jerked. "What?"
"Alteplase," she said. "It"s the only thrombolytic medicine I can find."
He had never heard of it, but he wasn"t going to quibble about names. If he had another attack, he would need thrombolytic drugs to dissolve blood clots. His nanos could release beta-blockers to ease his blood pressure and heart rate, but they produced fewer anticlotting agents. Daniel would have a metaphorical heart attack himself if he knew Thomas was using drugs without supervision, but under the circ.u.mstances, he would take whatever he could get.
"Are there beta-blockers?" he asked. "Nitro? A defibrillator?"
"I"ll look."
Alpha eventually found a defibrillator. She slung its carrier over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing,
and hooked a rectangle to her belt, a handheld device that resembled the calculators Thomas had used decades ago, before the advent of the mesh gloves that contained entire computer and communications systems.
"This will have to do." She came over to him. "We need to go."
He climbed to his feet. "You want me to drive for a while?" Maybe he could get control of the vehicle.
"We"re done with the car." She clicked off the flashlight. "Go outside and turn left."
Thomas limped out the ruined doorway. "How are we traveling?"
No answer.
He grimaced and headed into the dark with no idea where he was going. He felt disoriented, the way it
had sometimes happened at night when he was flying on instruments in a storm, never sure what was up or down. He suspected she had timed their arrival for night so he would see less of their location. He could barely even hear her behind him. Her silence was unsettling, given the dead leaves and twigs underfoot.
"You"re veering too far left," she said.
Thomas had thought he was taking a straight line. He changed direction, going who knew where, off into the dark.
Over the next ten minutes, Alpha gave him a succession of terse directions. Eventually they reached an
open area, and the sky was clear enough to let scattered stars gleam overhead. Thomas stopped and leaned heavily on his cane, taking deep breaths to slow his heartbeat.
Alpha halted a few paces to his right. "You okay?"He almost said yes out of habit. But he was tired and the temperature had dropped. Daniel always warned him against too much exercise in extremes of heat or cold. Don"t shovel your sidewalk after a snowstorm. Don"t exercise on a hot day. Don"t overexert yourself. He was no longer the kid who could jog miles in freezing weather or the officer who could lead his men in the desert. As much as he resisted his limitations, denying them could kill him.
"I need to rest," he said.
Alpha hesitated. "You could be saying all this about your heart just so I"ll drop my guard."
"Believe what you want," he said shortly. "You"re strong enough to carry my corpse. Or you could leave
my body here."
"I don"t want you to die."
"Could have fooled me."
"You are an intelligent person, Thomas Wharington." She sounded frustrated. "Crafty, gutsy, skilled. I"m
sure you"ve a.n.a.lyzed possible escapes: run for it, grab the gun, steal the car. You may not calculate the way I do, but your instincts compensate for your lack of computing power. The only reason you haven"t tried anything yet is because you know the probability of success is essentially zero. But you"ll keep pushing for a weakness in my defense. Convincing me you are less dangerous because you suffer life- threatening cardiac problems would be a clever ploy. It would be more effective against humans, who can be swayed by emotion, but even in purely logical terms, it works."
He clenched his cane. "And if those problems are true?"
"That"s the dilemma." She paused, watching him as if he were a riddle that had stumped her. "I would
say either you are a phenomenal actor, one who can fool even someone as well trained as I am to interpret human emotional cues, or else you really are sick."
He was too tired to argue it. "I need to sit down."
"I"ve something to show you. You can sit when we get there. I think you"ll like it."
He stared at her, incredulous. "What on Earth makes you think I"ll like anything here?"
"It"s only a little further." She lifted her hand, indicating their direction, and he set off wearily,
wondering what she was up to. After a moment, he made out a large, low warehouse.
Then he realized it wasn"t a warehouse.
"Hey!" Thomas stopped and stared. "That"s a hangar."
"Yes." Alpha pulled the handheld off her belt and pressed several panels. b.u.t.tons glowed on it like
green fireflies lighting on its glossy black surface. A wall of the hangar retracted to reveal an even darker interior.
Then the beauty appeared.
It rolled out, glinting in the starlight, and Thomas thought he could die happy just for a chance to fly it.
Sleek in some lines and blunt in others, it resembled the F-42, an experimental Air Force fighter unmatched in stealth, maneuverability, and weapons, with a thrust that well exceeded its weight, and aeroelasticity that allowed its wings to alter according to commands from its...o...b..ard mesh. He couldn"t be certain in the dark, but this jet looked as if it boasted an even lighter-weight construction. He could
make out sleeves for missiles it would carry within its body rather than under its wings, to create less drag during flight. Its shape also suggested it was designed for supersonic travel.
"That"s gorgeous," he said.
Alpha joined him. "You can be my backseater."
At that moment, Thomas didn"t care a whit if he was a prisoner. He only saw, and wanted, one thing. "I"ll fly it."
"I don"t think so," she said dryly.
He exhaled, coming back to himself. "This belonged to Charon?"
She waved her hand at the mountains and forest around them. "He owns all of this."
"Owned."
Her voice tightened. "He will come back."
"He"s dead, Alpha." He had to make her see the futility of carrying out the same orders, again and again.
"You said yourself you hadn"t found any copies."
"I said I hadn"t received any response when I initiated his reactivation program." Her gun glinted as she shifted it back and forth in her hands. "That doesn"t mean the program didn"t begin."
"It didn"t begin because we destroyed every copy of him."
Silence.
He tried another tack. "How did he get a military fighter?"
"It isn"t military. It"s private."
"Yeah, right. That"s why it"s armed." He couldn"t actually see the missiles, but he was willing to bet it
carried weapons.
Alpha didn"t answer.