Terminated (13 page)

She counted down, and at the last possible second, stepped out in front of him.

The visceral need to run was almost impossible to overcome, but somehow, she managed to root her feet to the pavement, and turn to face the onrushing grill of the truck. She had a two-second glimpse of the face of the driver, going from bored to shocked to horrified, and heard the chatter of the air brakes . . .

. . . And then the truck hit her hard enough to throw her twenty feet down the road. She landed with enough force to snap several bones, and smash the back of her skull against the tarred surface. Red-hot agony blitzed through her, knocking out sensation and sense alike, until she rolled to a stop in a limp, broken heap. A rush of heat flared, then, and she distantly recognized it. Her trusty little zombie invaders, rushing to her rescue . . . assessing the damage, knitting together smashed cells. It would all take time, but she’d live. Of course.

She might hate it, but the little bastards came in handy sometimes. Like now, as the truck slid to a stop, and the driver hastily dismounted and rushed to her, pulling out his cell along the way.

Joe stepped out from cover, calmly plucked the phone away, and said, “Please get back in the truck, sir. We’re going to be joining you.”

“But—she’s hurt! She needs—”

“She’ll be fine, believe me.” Joe pulled his sidearm and held it steadily on the driver. “In the truck. Please. Now.”

The driver did it without any further protests, though he did look scared to death—and even more frightened as Riley picked up Bryn (a process that was beyond painful, from Bryn’s broken perspective) and carried her to the cab of the truck, where Joe pulled her in and laid her down on the narrow bunk in the back. Riley sat in the back with her, along with Thorpe, and Joe took the literal shotgun seat, with his weapon held with casual competence on the driver. “What’s your name, sir?” Joe asked.

“Um—Lonnie. Lonnie Brinks.” He looked scared out of his mind. “Please don’t kill me, man, I got kids.”

“Me too. And I love them, just like you do,” Joe said. “Relax. We just need a ride. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Where you heading?”

“Long haul to San Francisco,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“San Francisco,” Joe said.

“Uh—that lady—she’s gonna die, man.”

“No,” Bryn said blearily. “I might look like it, but I won’t. Promise.”

Lonnie looked frankly shocked that she could talk at all, and when he looked back, she gave him a shaky thumbs-up. He stared at her blankly, then at the rest of them. “Who the hell
are
you people?”

“People who need your help, if we’re ever going to see our families again, Lonnie,” Joe said, and the sincerity and warmth that radiated out of him washed away whatever fear Lonnie still held. “I swear on my kids that you’re gonna walk away from this alive, and maybe with some cash, too. You don’t have to do anything except drive.”

He was bluffing about the cash, Bryn thought; she’d left the rest of it in that locker, in compensation for the stolen car. Pansy was right—life on the run was expensive. Joe sold it, though—sold it so well that the driver Lonnie sighed, nodded, and put the engine in gear. “Okay,” he said. “But don’t get me fired. I need this job.”

“Worst case, you’re under duress,” Joe said. “I figure either way you come out of this a winner—especially if you deliver your load on time, right?”

Lonnie looked considerably more cheerful after that. Joe had a way of making just about anybody relax and feel normal in the most abnormal of situations. It was one of the key reasons Bryn liked him so much.

He was just a genuinely nice guy.

Bryn’s healing continued, snaps and pops of pain as bones pulled into alignment and muscles knitted themselves together. She’d gotten used to the sensations, but that didn’t make them any less awful.
I’m going to get PTSD,
she thought. Maybe that was part of what made Jane who she was—the trauma. The unending prospect of pain. Eventually, though, the worst of it passed, and she was just raw and aching, and that didn’t matter as much. Riley helped her clean up from the bloody impact. Nothing to be done about the stains and rips on her clothes, but Riley assured her they made her look tough and travel-worn. Bryn had to laugh at that. Even wearing army fatigues, she’d never looked tough, exactly.

But at least she’d
been
tough. And still was.

The beef in the bag was thawed, but it’d be edible for a while yet—and Bryn had to admit, she wasn’t sure that her nanites wouldn’t find rotting meat just as attractive. The thought took away her appetite for it, and she choked down two protein bars to help satisfy the nanites’ cravings. Thorpe ate in silence; he was watching them all with wary attention. He found a dog-eared paperback that Lonnie must have been reading, and contented himself with that.

As Joe and Lonnie—increasingly the best of friends—chatted away the miles, Bryn and Riley rested silently. Slept. Ate.

Thorpe kept to his corner, reading and rereading the battered novel with single-minded intensity. He clearly didn’t want to get to know any of them, and Bryn decided she was perfectly fine with that.

It was a surprisingly restorative journey. For the first time in days, Bryn felt free of the oppressive burden of being hunted, tracked, watched.

And by the time the sun had fallen below the horizon, and the road was a space-black ribbon lit by the headlights of fellow travelers, Bryn’s phone rang.

It wasn’t Pansy’s number.

Bryn felt a surge of paranoid fear that shattered the fragile bubble of well-being, and exchanged a look with Riley, then Joe, before she answered. “Hello?”

“I’ll keep it short,” said Brick, on the other end. “Hope you’re doing all right. Just wanted to report that your friend’s head wound wasn’t serious, so he checked himself out against my people’s medical advice. I guess he’s out there looking for you.”

Patrick.
Bryn felt a surge of mixed relief and guilt. She hadn’t tried to find out how he was doing, for his own protection, but she ought to have been worrying more, she realized now. “You let him leave.”

“Hit the brakes, he didn’t exactly ask me nicely. He pulled a gun from one of my guys and told the med team he was going, and they decided they didn’t want to see how far he’d take it. They get paid to take damage from the enemies of the clients, not the clients. That’s just screwed up.” Brick sounded calm and amused. “He’s all right, and since he stole one of our best trucks, he’s mobile and well equipped, if you know what I mean. So I’d be on the lookout.”

“We will,” Bryn said. “Thanks. I mean it. Especially for taking care of him; I know that was above and beyond.”

“I get the feeling you folks are going to be repeat customers,” he said. “And you know what they say—the customer’s always right.”

“I thought you said never to call you again.”

“Well, your friend Pansy airlifted me a pallet full of money, so I’m rethinking it. Also, took a look at your folks. They seem okay. We’ll keep watch. Take care.”

“You too.” She hung up and tried to dial Patrick’s phone, but got nothing but voice mail. Her own device was dangerously low on charge, and she didn’t have anything to power it with—but Joe did, stuffed in one of his many pockets.

He also didn’t think Patrick not answering was a problem. “If he got separated from his power supply, then he’s out of juice,” Joe pointed out. “Pat’s been in lots worse situations—trust me. He’ll get us a message, and he’ll rendezvous down the road with us. Good to know his head’s in one piece, though.”

Lonnie was, by this time, studying Bryn in the rearview mirror. “Why is hers?” he asked. “I saw how hard I hit her, man. She ought to be dead.”

“Stuntwoman,” Joe said. “Trained professional at bouncing off of moving vehicles.”

Lonnie considered that, and seemed to accept it—mainly, Bryn thought, because it was too weird to accept the alternative. “How does that pay, anyway? You work on movies and shit?”

“Yeah, we do,” she lied smoothly. “And yeah, it does. See, you’re doing us a huge favor. You’re helping us get to a gig—we’re working on a film with Spielberg.”

“Really?” His eyes rounded, and his face lit up. “I
love
the movies, man. Hey, why didn’t you just fly?”

Joe stuck a thumb at Riley. “She’s on a no-fly list.” She did, Bryn had to admit, look it, with her shag-cut punk-spiked hair and dog collar. Riley shot him the finger, just to sell it.

“Could have rented a car, right?”

“Yeah, if we’d had a credit card,” Joe said. He’d long ago put the gun away. “We got robbed, man. Suitcases, clothes, wallets, everything. We’ve got some cash, but that’s it. So it was stop you, or steal somebody’s car.”

Again,
Bryn thought but didn’t say.

Lonnie accepted that and went back to the shiny object. “What movie are you making?”

Bryn made up something out of whole cloth, an alien invasion of San Francisco, and Lonnie was rapt. She cast the thing with big-name stars, just for the hell of it, and promised Lonnie a photo op with Johnny Depp.

As long as it kept him driving.

Joe was—probably not surprisingly—a qualified and licensed semitruck driver, so Lonnie let him take shifts while Lonnie crashed in the bunk. Dr. Thorpe, who’d so far been dangerously quiet, took the opportunity while Lonnie snored to say, “If you let me go at the next rest stop, I promise, I won’t say a word. I’ll just disappear.”

“Why would we want that, Doc?” Joe asked him. “We’re just getting to know you. And also, you claim to be able to stop Jane and the upgrades, and believe me, we need that right now. What is it, some kind of device? A shot?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Thorpe said, and clenched his jaw in a way that he probably thought made him look determined. It actually made him look constipated. “You’ve got no reason to keep me alive if I show you what I know.”

“Actually,” Riley said in a low, silky voice, hanging right over his shoulder, “you’ve got that backward. We’ve got no reason to keep you alive if you
don’t
. Because if you’re not an ally, you’re a liability or an enemy. Which would you rather be?”

He flinched. “You wouldn’t hurt me. You’ve got no reason to—”

“I’ve got the same upgrades as Jane,” Riley said. “Try again.”

That shut him up, and made his face grow a shade or two more pale. He believed her. He would, Bryn thought, believe absolutely anything of someone like them—of the Revived. In any society, there are people accepting of difference—like Joe and Patrick—and people terrified of it, like Thorpe. That didn’t make her any more fond of him.

At least, until he said, with great reluctance, “I suppose I have to be an ally, then. You don’t give me much choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Riley said. “Just not a very good one. What do you need to make it happen?”

He
really
didn’t want to tell them, that much was obvious, but after a long, long silence, he finally said, “I just need a phone.”

They all looked at him. Thorpe’s face reddened.

“I have it stored in a safe place,” he said. “And I can get it for you if you let me make a phone call.”

“How about we make it for you?” Riley asked, and readied her dialing finger. He shook his head.

“I’m not giving that up,” he said. “You buy me an untraceable phone at the next place we stop, I will make a call, arrange for delivery, and destroy the SIM card so you can’t trace where it’s being held. Understand?”

Joe shrugged. “I’m okay. Bryn?”

“Not until I know what it is that’s being delivered to him,” she said, and Riley nodded. “You understand, Riley and I have something of an investment in this mutual trust thing.”

Thorpe sighed, clearly frustrated, and considered for another torturously long moment before he said, “It’s a vaccine. It contains another strain of engineered nanites whose sole purpose is to attack and destroy their opposite numbers.”

“I thought that was impossible,” Riley said. “Since they’d have to be programmed with the exact sequence codes for the existing nanites, and those get rewritten based on genetic structure.”

“Yes, yes, that’s true, but the genius of it—if I may say so—is that it uses the exact same replication technology in writing its own code. It fills in the gaps, so to speak. But of course, the shot can only be used once, for one person. The cure for one can’t be passed along the way that the upgraded nanites can be. One shot, one cure.”

“And how many shots do you have?” Bryn asked.

“One,” he said. “Just one. I had three, but I used two in the testing process. I was saving this one for replication in a neutral growth medium.”

“One?” Joe shook his head and exchanged glances with Bryn and Riley. “Fucking useless. If you use it, how long to develop more?”

“Days,” Thorpe said in a precise, clipped voice. “At a minimum days, and that’s if you have all the right equipment in place. If I use the last dose as you suggest, on Jane, then I waste it by downing one insignificant part of the Fountain Group’s army. She might be a general, but generals can be replaced, if you take my meaning.”

“Then why did you use your other doses?”

“The first one, for proof of efficacy. The second because I had no choice,” he said, and—for the first time—bared his teeth in a humorless smile. It was surprisingly unsettling. “They’d turned my colleague, you see. And it was her job to destroy me and take the antidote to her superiors. They want a way to control their own creations; that was why they allowed me to develop it in the first place. I thought I was acting for myself, when in reality, I was just another of their pawns. Like all of you.”

“How exactly are we pawns, genius?” Riley asked, and shoved him back against the shivering steel wall of the truck. “We’re the ones who found you. We’re the ones the Fountain Group has been moving heaven and earth to stop.”

“You think so? Then you’re more stupid than I thought. If they really wanted you dead, you’d already be buried in a ditch. Well, not the two of you. You’d be cremated like the rest of their failed experiments. But they’ve let you run. And that means you serve their purposes, somehow. I hate to explain this to you, but you’re nothing but meat puppets, and just because you can’t feel the strings doesn’t mean someone isn’t pulling them.”