Alien Diplomacy (60 page)

We stepped closer to the other supersoldiers, and as we did, Spiky took its place with its brethren. They were three abreast in four lines.

As we walked around the platoon, I heard a bonging sound. It sounded far away. “What’s that?”

Adriana cocked her head. “I believe that’s a fire alarm.”

“Huh. You think that was the signal for them to attack?”

“I doubt it. Fire alarms tend to make people run out of the building.”

The light dawned. “Amy figured out my clue!” As I said this, I heard the sound of voices in the distance. Adriana and I looked at each other and moved so that the platoon hid us. I took my shoes off; she did the same. I considered and ripped the bottom of my dress off, though I held onto the skirt, just in case.

I heard a scream. It sounded like a scream of rage more than grief. “They’ve found Cartwright’s body,” I whispered.

She nodded. “They’ll come looking for us, then.”

I studied the remote. “God, I wish Chuckie was down here with us. He’d probably have a decent guess for how this works.”

“It has to be simple enough for the average person to use.”

“Does it? These are the prototypes.” I looked back at the remote. There were twelve buttons on the top, arranged three across in four columns. There were also buttons on the sides, three of them, where
it would be easy for someone to use their thumb to activate. No time like the present to find out. I hit the button I thought corresponded with Spiky.

Of course, I had no idea which way was up for the remote. I found out, though. Because I’d actually activated a soldier at the back, not the front. It stepped around and stood right next to me and Adriana.

The voices were coming closer. I hit the button for the supersoldier that had moved. It didn’t make it go to the off position, as I’d hoped it would. Instead it activated in a way we hadn’t seen yet—it was much more “awake” than Spiky had been. Not good.

“What the hell?” It was Leslie, and she sounded pissed. Adriana and I dodged behind nearby supersoldiers. The activated one just stood there.

“Here, Kitty, Kitty,” Bryce called. Hilarious.

I couldn’t see them, ergo I wasn’t in a position to shoot, so I hit the button for the activated supersoldier again. It moved from where it had been and headed toward where the voices had come from. It stopped walking. But I hadn’t pushed anything.

“Stop playing around,” Marling said. “We know you’re here. I have no idea how you were able to get the drop on Madeline, but I have the master remote.”

Well, that was bad news. I could see Adriana. She shook her head, vehemently. I took this to mean she didn’t believe Marling. I considered. Cartwright hadn’t seemed the type to allow someone else to have the master anything. So either Marling was lying, or he and I both had masters.

I heard footsteps, and Adriana disappeared from my view. I took this as a hint to keep moving. The supersoldiers were wide as well as tall, so they did provide good hiding, but there were three people looking for two of us.

“Found the bad Kitty,” Bryce called out. He was really enjoying the cat jokes a little too much. He also had a gun trained on me. I wasn’t going to be able to shoot before he could.

But I could press buttons without him noticing. So I pushed the three on the side.

T
HE SUPERSOLDIERS CAME TO LIFE.
This was good in that Bryce was too busy to shoot at me. Of course, he was too busy screaming and running, because whatever I’d hit had said “KILL” to these things.

They were flailing and stomping around. No projectiles going yet, but getting trampled was just as crappy a way to die as getting shot.

Adriana leaped out of the way of a couple of metal feet, which meant she was exposed. I ran and grabbed her. We both hit the ground as bullets flew around where she’d been. I’d used hyperspeed without thinking about it. I hoped that was a good thing.

But since the hyperjuice was flowing, might as well continue to use it. I ran toward Marling. Of course, I overshot. Oh, I hit him. We just kept going until we did my standard hyperspeed move and slammed into a wall.

On the plus side, this knocked him out. I grabbed his remote and ran back. Overshot. Ended up in front of the stairwell just as the door opened to reveal Amy and Caroline.

“What are you two doing here?”

“Following that bitch Leslie Manning,” Amy said.

“To back you up,” Caroline added.

“Caro and I saw her come back in the ballroom without you, and we knew she must have done something to you.”

“Ames and I figured we’d be more useful here. The others are handling the evacuation. Chuck and some of the others are after the people who started shooting after the fire alarms went off.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Nope. Senator McMillan took over, and everyone listened to him,” Amy said proudly.

“Yeah. He and Ames figured out your clue, and we got rolling,” Caroline added. “Nice to know all your friends from high school are as smart as you and Chuck, Kit-Kat.”

Amy beamed. Well, one good thing had come out of this—Amy and Caroline had clearly bonded. Amy’s expression went back to pissed off. “We’ll have to congratulate each other later, Caro. Where’s Leslie?”

Crap. “Um, follow me. Or the sound of screaming.” I turned around and ran off.

This time I slammed into a supersoldier. Well, it was sort of what I’d been aiming for. It grabbed at me, but its hand, or handlike thing froze when it got near me. I had no idea why.

There were walls down in this part of the rat maze already. I hoped we weren’t going to destroy any bearing walls and then figured, if this fight continued for too long, of course we would. But maybe I could get things under control before that happened.

Bryce and Leslie were shooting at the supersoldiers near them. I had no idea why. The bullets were ricocheting everywhere. “Stop shooting, you morons! You of all people should know bullets won’t work!” They ignored me, but they ran out of ammo fast and went back to running and screaming.

The metal monsters were well programmed. They had the three humans surrounded, and they blocked every exit. I’d only gotten in and out because of the hyperspeed. Which I hoped meant they weren’t programmed for it.

I jumped away from the supersoldier I’d run into. It turned away from me and went after Adriana. “The remotes!” Adriana yelled as she rolled and dodged. “They control them! Do something!” I hit some more buttons.

Not a good choice. Whatever I’d done flipped the “Fire Now” switch. I ran and grabbed Adriana and managed to turn us so that instead of running into a wall, we zoomed around and ran into Amy and Caroline. We all went down in a pile, and the remotes flew out of my hands. I realized I’d dropped Cartwright’s Glock where I’d left Marling. I had no idea where my skirt was. I wasn’t exactly batting a thousand, though my wrap and fancy handbag were somehow still with me.

“There’s one coming after us!” Caroline shouted.

There was, and it had everything aimed at us. It fired—and the projectiles slammed into a shield.

I looked up to see Naomi and Abigail, holding hands and clearly concentrating. Adriana and I scrambled to our feet, I grabbed Amy, she grabbed Caroline, and we trotted to the Gower girls. You only had to teach me three or four times—I didn’t want to knock the Gowers over.

“Can you stop them?” Adriana asked.

“No, I lost the remotes.”

“That means you’re not safe anymore. They seem programmed to not harm the one holding the remote control.”

“We have limited range,” Naomi said, sounding like talking was taking a lot out of her. Not a good sign.

“Okay, let me out or whatever. I’ll be back.”

Abigail nodded. “Hurry.”

I breached the shield and ran for where the remotes had gone. Sadly, Bryce was diving for the one nearest to me. No problem. I slammed into him and didn’t worry about hitting a wall. Once we stopped I hit him in the face, just for fun. It hurt. And he didn’t go down, though he seemed a little dazed.

I pulled the wrap off, wrapped it around his neck, and tied it around an exposed piece of pipe. Then I kicked his chin, which sent his head back into the wall. He sagged, and I took off.

Unfortunately, Marling wasn’t where I’d left him, nor was Cartwright’s Glock, and neither Bryce nor I had grabbed the remote. I sighed and trotted back at human regular speeds.

Marling had one remote and Leslie had the other. Not good. They had all the supersoldiers firing on the girls. There was no way the Gowers were going to be able to hold a shield against this onslaught for long.

I went for the weaker link and tackled Leslie from behind. Happily, she lost her grip on her remote, and it skittered across the floor. Unhappily, a supersoldier I was fairly sure was Spiky stepped on it.

This caused the supersoldiers some issues, which Marling had to handle. I couldn’t really give this any attention, though, since I was busy discovering that Leslie was actually not weak in any way.

I wasn’t sure if she’d ingested a Surcenthumain cocktail, but I should have been able to beat the crap out of her, and it wasn’t happening. “Did you do something special to yourself, Leslie?”

She smiled—a weird smile. “No.
I
didn’t do a thing.”

She hit me in the gut, and I went flying. I landed on the skirt part of my dress that I didn’t even remember dropping. I grabbed it and scrambled to my feet. Leslie faced me and seemed to ready herself.
She cracked her neck, and it didn’t look or sound like a human neck cracking.

“You’re not really Leslie, are you? I mean, not in what I’d call the human sense.”

She ran at me as fast as any A-C. But I didn’t think that’s what she was. Titan had made some real leaps in technology with the supersoldiers. Who was to say that they hadn’t also been working on androids? Amy’s dad had been trying to create a zombie army that looked like every guy I knew, after all.

As she headed toward me, I used my skirt like a bullfighter. It worked. She missed me. “OLE!”

She skidded to a stop, spun, and went for me again. I used the skirt, but she was smarter than the average bull, because she hit it. I wrapped it around her head, twisted, did a spin, and let go.

She and my skirt went flying. She slammed into a supersoldier, which grabbed her and flung her back. Right at me.

As Leslie slammed into me and as we hit a wall, I noted that my skirt had hooked onto the supersoldier, making it look as if it were waving a fancy silk flag whenever it moved. I had no time to appreciate the humor, though.

Leslie really didn’t seem any the worse for wear, so I stopped fighting the way I’d been trained to and started to fight like a girl. I clawed at her face and pulled her hair, only I did it with A-C level strength. Sure enough, skin and hair came off. To reveal bone laced with circuitry. “Ick!”

It didn’t stop her. She grabbed my throat, lifted me off my feet, and started to squeeze. “My father’s a genius, haven’t you heard?”

Bryce joined us. He looked no worse for wear either. He smiled at me. “Father does excellent work, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” I managed to choke out. “But why?”

Marling heard my question. “My children died, just like the reports all say. But I had some of their DNA. I was able to replicate them. Not all the models worked well. But once Gaultier made his advances…”

“Ewww.” The only reason I didn’t gag was that Leslie seemed to have cut that function off along with most of my air. I gasped as my lungs made it clear they were close to exploding.

Marling noticed. “Let her breathe.”

Leslie grimaced, which was freaky looking now that her skin was off, but she loosened her grip on my windpipe considerably. I was still up in the air and it wasn’t comfortable, but air was coming in and going out, and that was good enough for the moment.

I took a deep breath, then figured it was time to go back to getting the bad guy to monologue for a while. “You mean they’re made from like real people bodies?”

“In a sense. I grew new children from their cells.”

“Clones? Or rather, clones put over an android, or vice versa?”

“For the nonscientifically inclined, yes. As they aged, I made…adjustments. You may have interrupted Gaultier’s plans, but you’ve hardly stopped us.”

“You know
Aliens 4
sucked, right?”

“Only because the filmmakers insisted on having the plucky humans win. You know it won’t work like that. Even though you’ve gotten lucky in the past.”

“So, you and Gaultier, best buds for life or bitter rivals?”

“Oh, we were good friends. I quite enjoyed Ronald Yates, too.”

“Nice to know you were all members in good standing of the Club of Evil Geniuses.”

He chuckled. “Well, it’s worth it to share data with some people.”

“Did Madeline know about your offspring?”

“Of course. She and Ronald Yates suggested we try replicating them in the first place. And Gaultier knew—he and I shared information rather freely, since we weren’t in competing businesses. No one else alive knows, however. Well, all of you know now, I suppose. But you’ll be dead soon.”

Marling had the supersoldiers back under control. I could see the Gowers’ shield start to flicker. We were about to run out of time.