 
Patent Mine

by TR Nowry
Patent Mine, by TR Nowry

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2008 by TR Nowry

All Rights Reserved

Published By TR Nowry

All 'Art' By TR Nowry

The characters in this book are entirely fictional and rightly belong in the fiction section. Any resemblance to real people, places, countries or religions is completely unintentional. As with all copyright books, copies (physical and digital) are restricted to what is legally defined as fair use. No other use is expressed or implied and all other uses are reserved. Think of 'fair use' like Tivo. You can Tivo movies, TV shows, and the NFL (that's making a copy!) You can even convert them so you can watch them on your iPod (at work when the boss isn't looking!). But you can't put them on YouTube, sell them on the corner as DVDs, or put stills on T Shirts. These same principles apply to Ebooks. Even the free copies given out from time to time should NOT be redistributed, much like it's improper to distribute copies of 'The Office' just because it was recorded over the 'free' air. Basically, don't hand it out like candy, print dozens of copies, email it to all your friends, post it on servers or web sites and everything will be fine.

Starve the beast and feed the artist. This book is brought to you 100% free from the tyranny of traditional editors and publishers as an independent novel. Future titles depend entirely on your support. Thank you for keeping prices low by not distributing copies! If you received a copy without paying for it, please, do the right thing and purchase a copy (from Smashwords!) and give it to a friend!

The Art of the Houdini Scientist... is a prequel to The Hummingbird Series which includes, Patent Mine, Hell from a Well, The Heredity of Hummingbirds, and Mourning after Dawn. (And the HHOPP Engine, but it's more of a footnote) This series was written/published Mourning, Heredity, Hell, and Patent so they can be read in any order.

The Twisted Timeline Trilogy is Personal Space, Older than Dirt, and The Bottle tossed across the sky.

And if you've got a few hours to kill, be sure to check out my Free short story, The Wandering Island Factory.
Chapter 1

_Patent Mine_ is book two in the _Hummingbird Series_ and it picks up where _The Art of the Houdini Scientist..._ leaves off. Each book in the Hummingbird Series is best thought of as a season from a TV series than what you might be used to from a traditional, mainstream book series (I'm Indie for a reason, I don't color in the lines or follow the rules :)

\--This story contains adult content and themes and is not intended for children--

Patent Mine

By TR Nowry

He woke to the rumble of a train bearing down on him. When he unzipped the opening to the tent, a black and white cat bolted out and ran toward the house.

"Come back here, Max!" he shouted, fumbling with his clothes.

The leaves on the trees rustled with anticipation amidst this clear morning sky.

"It's nothing to be afraid of!"

The train sounded louder.

He searched the sky while reaching inside the tent for his—

BOOOMMMMM!!!

It passed at treetop level, flinging his tent into the woods and stripping him of his shirt. Water from the pond soaked him in a fine spray.

The whine of the chase jets just a few seconds later were nowhere near as impressive.

Yearly combat training was one of the benefits of living in such a desolate place. F-16s and Raptors were commonplace to him. The one in the lead, the one sounding like a train was new. Well, not new to him. Versions of it had practiced for years in these mountains. It was tiny and black on the top, sky blue on the bottom, teardrop shaped with no visible cockpit. No windows at all.

He wiped his face, then looked for his tent.

Ah, more important than the tent was the camcorder he reached for.

Scratched, but it wasn't damaged.

He turned it on and aimed to the sky. To date, he had nearly four hours of video of this plane. That represented years of viewing. He made a few hundred to a few thousand for every clip he sold to UFO conspiracy web sites and military tech people. They paid well for cutting edge, even out of focus.

But he kept the best stills for himself.

It was seamless. A near perfect creation of speed and agility.

He searched for the chase planes, then focused ahead of them.

Got it! Blending with the sky, it was hard to see from the ground.

As soon as the chase planes lined up for the shot, it pulled a near right angle and slipped into the valley.

There were less than a hundred homes within this mountain range. The nearest town was over thirty miles away, and the nearest city was a two-hour drive. The people who lived here strongly objected to a base being built. They protested the loudest about the sound, but in private, they simply hated everything military, much like his parents.

Hippies.

His parents had struck it rich very young. They had a chain of restaurants in California, but the taxes were killing them. The first offer they got for the chain, they took, just to get out of there. They moved to these isolated mountains and planned on retiring at the ripe old age of thirty. Without the stress of managing the chain, they planned to start a family.

Things didn't work out.

When he was ten, his parents found out that they didn't like gardening as much as they had thought. That living off the land was hard, buying food at the store was easy. They had moved with these lofty ideals that they could find harmony with nature, almost expecting chickens to pluck themselves before climbing into the pot and choking on a garnish.

He held the camera near his side as he scanned the sky again. He wanted to review what he already got, but that risked missing— if he had only woken sooner, he could have gotten the best shot of his life! It passed so close he thought he could touch it.

He could hear the echoes in the valley. They were coming back.

He held the camera to his eye. Bingo!

These were the money shots.

The mystery plane just pulled another impossible maneuver. Without having the chase planes and the treetops in frame to confirm a steady camera hand, nobody would believe a plane could put itself into a flat spin, fly backwards, bank up and strafe the tops of two chase planes in under a second.

What made these military maneuvers all the more impressive was they didn't always use sensors and lasers to score hits. For two weeks, twice every year, they used a kind of non-lethal live ammo. Basically a high-power paint ball. Those were the weeks that he always taped.

This morning's match was over. The teardrop pilot had never been defeated; at least, not that he had ever seen.

The chase planes continued to pursue. He heard the whine of the turbines guzzling fuel, and he watched the extra heat distort the air behind them. But the teardrop just straightened, then slipped into sonic and disappeared. The boom was as distinctive as the train sound. It was odd, in a way. It was quieter above the speed of sound than it was below it. Yet, he had seen it pass overhead in complete silence too.

It made as little sense as— they were fighter planes, why in the world would it make the sound of a train?

It had puzzled him for years, and the best excuse he could come up with was perhaps a limiter or governor of some sort. Something like what they put on race cars to even the playing field.

The fastest thing he had ever seen, the governor made the most sense. He had never seen it fight one at a time. It was always two, three, or four against one.

He searched near the tent, picking up stray pieces of clothes, blanket, and a ruined packed breakfast. He unwrapped his telephoto lens, attached it to the camera, grabbed the tripod and ran to the spot on the far side of the pond.

There was only one spot, looking across the pond, that was clear of enough trees to see the mountaintop base several miles away. He focused, then waited.

His parents were horrified and outraged, like most of the original homeowners in this valley, when the military people shaved the top of the mountain off to make the base and landing strip. From the valley, you couldn't tell, but his home was just high enough to see it had received a harsh buzz cut.

He pressed record but didn't look through the lens, he stared with his eyes.

The first two to land were the conventional planes. They circled for a few minutes, lined up, then tracked for a normal landing. Hardly worth the tape.

He waited.

"Max!"

He worried about that damn cat. It was perfectly capable of taking care of itself, but, he worried.

He laughed. That cat didn't take crap from nothing. But it didn't realize that a hawk or an owl could just swoop down and snatch it up.

He looked through the camera.

It came screaming in, top speed, then did this belly flop to come to a stop. It seemed to hover, if just for a second, then float the last few feet like a leaf falling from a tree.

He had bought the telephoto to try to catch better photos. His house was on the backside of the base and rarely saw a display this close. But the lens proved problematic. At such extreme distances, he couldn't keep it steady. He could get a few good frames, but that was mostly luck.

However, he got some of his best shots with the tripod, holding fast just above the landing strip. It was a lot like trying to snatch a picture of a hummingbird. It's frustrating and blurry to try to catch them in flight, so you set the camera on a tripod and focus on the feeder.

He packed up his video equipment, then looked for the rest of his stuff.

His parents had done one thing right. He cast the line into the pond. It was man-made and one of the main reasons why his parents had picked this spot. One side was lined with three trucks of concrete, and it slowly filled with rain over the next two years. About when he turned six, his father stocked it with catfish, trout, bluegills, bass, carp, and dozens of other varieties they had caught on various fishing trips. It spanned maybe ten acres and was deep enough to swim in, but not drown. At sixteen, it had only two spots that were deeper than his shoulders.

He pulled in the line.

Nothing, but the worm was gone.

He set another, then cast again.

This time, the bite was immediate.

Catfish. His personal favorite. He bashed it against a rock, recovered the hook, then tossed the catch up shore. He lit a fire and started cooking.

Before it was done, his black and white cat had returned.

"So, Fraidy Cat, what brings you back?" he said, flipping the fish with a spatula.

The cat grabbed his knee with its front feet, looked him in the face, licked its lips, then jumped onto his lap.

"You think you deserve some of that, do you?"

The cat put its front feet on his forearm so it could get a better sniff of the fish.

He pulled the cat back to his lap and looked over the pile of fish guts. The cat had bypassed it entirely. He picked a chunk near the tail and placed it on his knee. "My Fraidy Cat, to the Max."

Max chewed away while the rest cooked a little longer.

Max liked catfish too.

He had a short hike to the house. It wasn't a very big house, just two bedrooms, but it was his most of the time. Because of the base, it was difficult to sell when his parents divorced. His mother got a place in the city, two hours away. His father was always away on 'business'. At sixteen, he had the house alone, most of the time.

He adjusted the camera bag when he got into the clearing around the house. He'd have to mow the lawn soon. Like most teens, he hated that. The grass around the solar panel would be the first to go. The panel was turned into one of the shed walls where the mower was parked, among other stuff. But to him, it was a constant reminder of how intertwined mowing and solar were.

His father read every do-it-yourself hippie thing out there. And tried to do half of them, often with disastrous results. The solar thing was the only one that halfway worked.

Max ran to the front door and started to scratch.

"Alright, I'm coming," he said, to which Max scratched with more impatience.

He let the cat in.

He had online classes to take anyway.

With the entire valley so spread out, it didn't make sense to send a bus around to pick them all up. Internet, satellite, and phone to the rescue. When his mother was living at home, she home-schooled him, supplemented with online stuff. But high school was done without her.

It was boring. His mom had given him a solid education; she had wanted to be a teacher when she was young and attacked it enthusiastically. She had blackboard paint on one wall, an overhead projector, and even got a formal student desk he now kept in his room. He was in the top of his class (of fifteen students) and he hardly had to do any homework. Class had become a lesson in attendance. If he wasn't online by 9am, they called his mom and dad instantly, at their work numbers. It wasn't worth the hassle. He usually played a video game during class on a second laptop (earphones) anyway. Why not sit 'in class' too. It would be too hot after school to cut the grass, so, he'd have to put it off until tomorrow, again.

Did-Dump. "Argo, watd you get for number 16?" the IM read.

He didn't bother looking it up, he simply sent the entire exercise as an attachment. "You still at your mother's?" he added in the text.

Did-Dump. "Dad."

"He home today?"

Did-Dump. "Shouldn't be back till tonight. Want to hang?"

He smiled, then added the symbol to the text.

Dara was a cute girl, a little on the heavy side, but still cute. She lived closer to the valley, about a twenty-minute dirt-bike ride down the road. But she was always worth it.

He skipped the rest of the game, after the zombies clobbered him in an ambush, and started uploading his camera into the computer where he could clip and cut and go frame by frame. It was slow and painstaking, but no worse than online school.

This was his junior year, what did they expect?

Argo pulled the sheets off, tossed the condom in the trash, then started putting on his clothes.

Dara pulled the sheets to her chest, self-consciously, "Dad's not coming home tonight, he call—"

"I still have to go." Argo stood and zipped his pants.

"But, you can stay."

He started to laugh, but covered for it, "I'd love to, but, I've got to be down at the pond for the morning show." He never kissed her on the lips after, so he pecked her on the cheek as he walked out her bedroom door.

She dragged the sheets down the hall after him.

He stopped at her front door, "Besides, I left Max locked up in the house, and nobody wants that cat getting anxious in their house."

She listened as he started the bike and raced away.

He wound up the alarm clock, pulled the camera off the charger, then checked everything in the bag.

Max jumped onto the bed, then stared into the bag too.

"You coming, or staying?"

Max scratched at the box of fishing hooks.

"You know, you can fish some too."

And on the word fish, Max clawed.

"Ok, that's enough." Argo moved the cat to the center of the bed, then zipped up the backpack. He considered taking the laptop, but didn't. Its WiFi reached down to the pond, but the batteries would only last a few hours. The path was nearly impossible to navigate without full daylight, and it was never a good idea to stray too far from the path.

The cat followed him out the door.

Camping outside had its dangers. There were cats much bigger than Max in these woods, not to mention bears and dogs. He checked the pistol before the fire went out. One round chambered, safety off, hammer down. Squeeze the trigger and it would fire, but the trigger would need to be squeezed very hard. He was never sure what that was called, single action or double? It hardly mattered, Max could give almost anything pause. In a weird way, he felt safer with Max in the tent than the gun, but only the gun was truly lethal.

When he was thirteen, a wild dog was bearing down on him along the path to the house. He was exhausted and couldn't run anymore, so he stopped.

The dog was seconds from pouncing when Max jumped between them, stood on his hind legs, hissed with claws drawn and a fluffed tail, and the dog stopped in its tracks. Max lunged toward it, and the snarling dog backed up. Max lunged four more times before the dog just ran off.

It was like the coolest Jedi mind trick he had ever seen. A black and white cat, standing on its hind feet no taller than his knee, scared away a sixty-pound dog.

Max was a ferocious cat, when he wanted to be.

At least, Max looked ferocious.

A single bite, maybe two bites at most from the dog would have ended any fight with Max. The problem was neither the dog nor Max seemed to know that.

He turned on his radio and its little nightlight, rolled out the sleeping bag, then climbed in. "Inside, or out?" He held open the bag.

The cat put its nose in, then backed out again.

"You sure?"

The cat curled on the outside of the bag instead.

Argo folded a corner to cover the cat. It got cold at night, even for the fiercest of creatures.

BZZZZZZ!!!

He turned off the alarm clock. Max was already at the door. He unzipped it and the cat shot out. Max used litter boxes, if he must, but preferred to go outside. It probably had something to do with marking territory or something, but he didn't presume to know the mind of a Jedi master.

He readied the camera, then looked up. Crap. Too much fog.

He heard the train, but couldn't see anything. He caught a glimpse of four— No, make that six chase planes this time, all Raptors. He aimed the camera, but the lens fogged immediately.

Raptors used thrust vectoring to increase maneuverability. Whatever the teardrop used, it was superior even to that. It slid into a flat spin, stabilized with the left wing as the leading edge, then open fired on the Raptor to its side. It was flying sideways! It shifted to a belly-flop brake, then reversed course. It could perform maneuvers that would rip the wings off any other plane. They disappeared into the clouds.

This morning's fight would have been spectacular, had it not been obscured by fog. He wanted to toss the camera into the pond out of frustration, but didn't. He continued to watch for the little glimpses he could get.

The remaining five were dispatched in less than a minute and were now lining up on the base.

It was over. He looked for worms, then unfolded his pocket fisherman.

At least Max wouldn't be disappointed today.
Chapter 2

"Oh, God, I hate this part!" Dana said from the pilot seat.

"Breathe, and hold," the co-pilot said from the back.

They both took a breath, then the plane belly flopped from the sky. It threw both back into the seats. Hard.

The autopilot, like those on the chase planes, prevented crashes and monitored pilots for blackout, so it was a perfectly safe maneuver. It just hurt like hell, but was all part of the training.

The HB-4 was designed to land anywhere, and to land under fire. The best way to avoid getting hit was to never fly slow. Belly flop landings were a key part of the training, and Dana had to get it right, without the autopilot kicking in, or help from the back seat.

"Good job, Dana," the co-pilot said. The gauge read 12.4gs, painful, but, the way the plane was designed, 20gs was the real blackout range. "Float the leaf."

Dana worked the controls and landed on the elevator doors with a feather touch.

The tires braked, engines throttled down, and the floor lowered them down into the mountain. The canopy shifted with the changing of light as they descended into the darker hangar below. Infrared, UV, X-ray, backscatter radar. It had it all, and projected it seamlessly onto the inside of the canopy, superimposed over optically enhanced images. A user controlled fish-eye disappeared with a switch. It had superimposed a zoomed image in the direction of travel, required for super and hypersonic speeds. When it takes ten miles to swerve, you need to see twenty miles out. It was a little like flying through a sniper scope, and it took a lot to get used to. The periphery was compressed to include a 360-degree look behind. Objects were targeted and highlighted, automatically.

People were now being highlighted through twenty feet of solid concrete and steel. Desks and planes outlined, ordinance counting up on each plane and tallied into threat assessments assigned to every object. Dana shut down those systems too, leaving on only the optics and infrared.

The elevator reached the bottom, and the taxi-car locked to the front tire and towed it to its slot.

The seals leaked with a hiss as the hatch opened and the two climbed out, one at a time.

"What were the readings on the MHD drives?" the co-pilot asked.

Dana checked the readings projected inside her helmet. "A peak of 15MW, left, 45 right side."

"I knew those retards didn't put it back together right. They should both be well over 50."

Dana checked the log. "The rails read offline anyway, not that they ever work well with dummy rounds. The potassium carbonate tank is empty, so, the wash was getting a good mix."

"It isn't your fault, Dana, they take the damn thing apart every day, trying to figure out how it works, and they never put it back right." She inspected the gun ports. "This batch of paint rounds keeps breaking early." She wiped the sprayed paint from around the barrels.

"You use caseless—"

"Stop defending them. Just because they—"

"Me, defending them? Me?" Dana removed her helmet. "Seriously?"

The co-pilot removed her helmet too. "No, I, I'm just—"

"Pissed because they suspended you from participating in combat this—"

"It's my damn plane, Dana. Mine. Every inch of it."

Dana just nodded. "I know, Darling."

Dwarfed by nearly every other plane in the massive underground hangar, its assigned slot was sized for a Raptor, which made it look like a bike parked in a car slot. They made their way to the closest door out of the hangar and into the central halls. Most of the base was underground.

At the first corner, three boys jumped Dana and slammed her into the nearest block wall.

She blindly swung the helmet and it made a satisfying crack and anguished cry behind her.

Kick! Kick! Pummel and kick!

Dana was flattened to the floor as they pounded her more.

"Damn cheating dyke!" one of the boys yelled at Dana's co-pilot as they dragged her halfway through a door, then repeatedly slammed it on her leg.

The leader of the boys knelt by Dana's bleeding face, "Let's see you do that again." He ground his heal into her hand, then left down the hall.

"You've set the leg, right?"

"Broken in two places—"

"X-ray it again, and schedule an MRI—"

"An MRI sounds excessive—"

"I didn't ask you if it sounded excessive, Doctor, I told you to schedule one. What's in that girl's head is worth a—"

"The attack seems focused on her leg, not her—"

"Check for blood clots too, Doctor."

"I don't get why I was flown in for this, has child services been notified?"

"Doctor, you are our specialist on call. We pay an enormous amount of money to have you on retainer. It isn't easy to find qualified doctors who have the level of clearance you do. If you forget the password to your email, it is an inconvenience. If she has a small stroke and forgets the password to her plane, it may cost billions. She may look like a child, but she is not. You will use your full expertise on this girl, and you will take every possibility into consideration. Do your job."

"Nurse, where is your X-ray and MRI?"

They rolled the girl down the hall as Dana watched from her bed.

"What's the patient's name, Nurse?"

"I'm not sure you are cleared for that, Doctor."

Dana knew her name. They had grown up together, more or less her entire life. They even shared the same room for the last few years. Shadona. She was perhaps the best and only friend she had left in this place.

A broken leg would keep her from being in a plane, any plane. Broken bones didn't take to Gs very well.

Five years back, at the ripe old age of twelve, Shadona had grown tired of the limitations of Raptors and referred to it as an archaic, obsolete platform, to three of the lead engineers on the Raptor project. Within the year, the HB-1 was born. Nearly identical to the HB-4 they flew today, it lacked armaments and a few refinements, but was the basic platform. The first three were destroyed because the base engineers dismantled it religiously in an attempt to understand how it was made, and, lacking even the basic understanding of how it worked, they often put back critical components incorrectly. Two test pilots died trying to figure out how to fly it.

The XO walked to Dana's bed. "What were the activation codes?"

"F38G94S," Dana said, "But you know that's useless to you. It flashes a sign, she gives the counter sign. She does the math in her head and just tells me the numbers. And no, I don't know the formula she uses, she knows not to tell me."

He looked frustrated. "We will figure it out, one day." He started walking away.

"Sure, you're much smarter than her. Should be easy. She estimated it would take a supercomputer 22,954 days to crack the code, if that helps."

Shadona tested as very high functioning autistic as an infant, then she dropped to perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. Without the code, the entire operating system of the plane ceased to function. Enter a close, but wrong code, and the plane would fly for a brief period, then lock. Shadona could do complex math in her head faster than any other human, probably on the planet. With only a few seconds to enter the code, it wasn't long enough to even look it up in a book. Dana knew that it was a basic formula, heavy math, but beyond that, she didn't want to know.

"Good luck!" she said as he left the room.

"F38G94S" the XO repeated to the crew working on the plane.

One entered it. "Nothing. But it helps."

"She said 22,954 days on a supercomputer."

The tech at the laptop looked up, "That sounds about right."

"We caught something on the mike about the MHD drive being off. 50MW was the range she said it should have been operating at. That's helpful. Her numbers match the hidden camera—"

The tech officer finished reviewing the entire flight tape, "They both knew the camera was there, they even waved to it."

The XO looked down the gun-ports, "We need this nut cracked. This is the foremost air superiority weapon on the planet. It's a one of a kind, and we can't have it stay that way, Gentlemen."

"Every flight, every time we tear it down, we learn something new, XO."

"We any closer to how she made the skin?"

"No Sir. But we think these optic ducts inside the engine are a part of a weapons system that has never been activated."

"Something on top of railguns?"

"Possibly a beam weapon. It looks like some of the stuff they use at the national fusion project—"

"A fusion powered weap—"

"No Sir. But the fusion project uses focused lasers to create the pressure instead of intense magnetics. If her 50MW complaint is accurate, the MHD drives should operate within those scaled down confinement ranges too. If fusion was her goal, it seems unlikely that she wouldn't save space and weight and reuse those MHD coils. This seems like something else. It's definitely something she hasn't used yet."

"Keep working on it. Review those dismantling tapes, take it back up top, tether it, and see if you can get 50MW from them. You can get the engines working without accurate codes, right?"

"Yes Sir, briefly."

When the XO left, they looked at each other. The tech in charge asked, "Do we have a cable strong enough to tether this thing, throttled that hard?"

"I don't think he gets how strong this little thing is."

"We have more than one cable—"

"See if we can borrow some from the cable arresting system on the mockup carrier deck. I'd like to use more than one anchor too."

"Has anyone done the math on operating two, free venting, 50MW MHDs on the ground? Is that even safe to do on the—"

"Just do it!" the rest of the team yelled, mocking the XO.

The nurse returned to Dana's bed, "Bruised, but nothing broken. I'll just check your tape and you can lea—"

"When are they bringing Shadona back?"

"I can't tell you that."

"I'm not leaving until I see her."

The nurse sat on the bed, then looked around. "Honey, you know they're going to use this as an excuse to—"

"I'm not leaving until I see her."

"They aren't going to let you stay. That isn't how they—"

"It could be worse than what was written on your pad."

The nurse frowned as she looked at the papers.

Dana bit into her own cheek, then coughed a little blood.

The nurse added some notes to the page, then left the room.

Dana would wait until her friend returned, however long that took.

"Wait a minute, XO, you want to spare no expense on a broken leg, but it's suddenly fine to sedate her and pump her full of high doses of psychotropic drugs so you can question her?"

"Doctor, you are to administer and monitor—"

"I'll tell you right now, you will damage her brain. Long-term and short-term memory loss is almost certain. Especially in combination with everything else—"

"Doctor, we get these opportunities so rarely, we must take full advantage of—"

"Look, I get the gist of it. Broken legs are not my specialty, brain damage is. Right now, I'm suspecting she's not the one that needs the most critical examination around here." The doctor stared straight at the XO.

The nurse interrupted, "Sir, the doctor is right. I looked up the combinations when I pulled the pharmaceuticals from the stores. It comes with a strongly worded warning. I tried looking up combinations of lesser, but similar drugs, but they combined with bad results as well. Nothing combines well with the painkillers and blood thinners she's on."

"Well, take her off it, then," the XO said.

"It stays—" the nurse started.

"It stays in her system for at least a week." The doctor finished.

The XO stared at their patient, unconscious on the bed with an IV in her arm. "There has to be a way to capitalize on this accident. Can't we adjust the painkillers to keep her loopy and question her then?"

The doctor checked the chart, "I don't know how effective that will be, but I can—"

"Then stop arguing and do it. I'll send my best interrogator in. You'll be working with him."

The questioning didn't work. Loopy enough to get her to answer resulted in hours of gibberish, most of it in foreign languages. They taped the session, just to be safe, and had it sent to their linguistic department in case it wasn't gibberish. But the number of languages she was proficient in made deciphering it a tall task indeed.

Beep. . . Beep. . . Beep. . .

"They put you into restraints to keep you from pulling out the IV," Dana said as she unbuckled her friend.

Shadona held her hand out, waving it slowly in front of her face, still loopy. She moved her hand to the IV, but Dana grabbed her hand instead.

"You missed it. They bolted down your plane on the airfield, throttled it, then did a full-power test of the HMD drives."

Shadona smiled, but was looking past Dana's shoulder to where the emergency lights were still on.

"It blew out the main power when the wash shorted to ground." Dana nodded at the two beds on the far end, "Two tech guys got burned trying to make their way to the plane to shut it down. They had to let it burn through a quarter tank of fuel. Ripped up the entire field. One of the cables broke and it spun like a rabid dog on a leash. The wash blew out every window up top, kicked over walls, ripped every leaf off the trees it didn't manage to uproot. They say it looks like a tornado landed up top and hung around for an hour. People kept pouring in with cuts from broken glass."

Shadona's hand shook left and right as her eyes closed.

"They broke your leg, Hon, and tore up your favorite toy. Cracked the frame, from what I understand, and broke the tip off the wing."

The beeping continued.

As darkness slowly descended, the XO surveyed the damage topside.

"You want to explain this to me? You're engineers, from MIT, top of your class. And a plane built by a teenage girl is too complex for your entire team to figure out. It's almost like the more degrees I put on it, the dumber you all look. Not only that, but you take a simple task and turn it into millions of dollars worth of destruction to my base, and rip the wing off of a priceless possession of The State!"

The engineers looked at their feet, two with their arms bandaged and slung, most with singed hair.

"Did you at least get anything worth all this destruction?"

" . . . 600MW," one said.

"That's 500MW better than she—"

"No Sir, it was 600MW, each."

The XO stared at the wrecked plane while it was being towed on skids to the elevator, landing gear destroyed.

"Are you sure this isn't another grievous mistake exemplifying your inability to add simple numbers?"

"No Sir. It was hooked to base dynamos, and the onboard gauges confirmed it. For two minutes, it was pumping out more power than a nuke. We expected it to be in that range, Sir, at least half of us did. That keeps it in line with how the railguns were constructed. It also falls in line with the top speeds projected for it. See, one of the biggest problems with a hypersonic fighter is it would have to fire bullets that fly faster than the plane itself, or risk running into its own ordnance. To push a thousand 300-grain rounds a second would take a little under 500MW, each bank." He paused, checking his math one more time before he put his foot in it again. "It should exit the barrel at mach 22. That matched the estimated thrust and the breaking tension of the cables—"

"What was its top speed?" the XO asked.

"Well, factoring the wind tunnel, mach 10. . . "

"Mach 10?"

". . . Plus."

The XO stepped back. "Plus?"

"Yeah, see, it's a multi-fuel platform and we—"

"Filled it with the cheap stuff."

"It's rather ingenious, Sir, she's tied the bullet speed into the ship's speed times roughly two by powering it directly off the engines." They followed the XO as he walked with the wreckage to the elevators. "You see, Sir, she's really the only one who knows how to work the thing. We just got lucky, the code your man radioed back seemed to unlock the engines this time. I think we were getting near full power, you know, considering the grade of fuel. It's set up like a conventional fighter, but the systems customize through the code response; since the instrument cluster is just a projection, it can simulate any plane. We think we know what she did, just not how to undo it. See—"

The XO stopped the tech, "Look, I just want to know three things.

One, how long is it going to take to fix this one?

Two, how fast can we expect your team to reverse engineer this thing?

Three, have you learned anything about how it handles the high Gs yet?"

The gates came up around the elevator as the pad slowly lowered into the mountain. The head engineer consulted his team. "We can't fix the damaged wing. We can patch it with carbon fiber composite and fix the undercarriage, but its leading edge is destroyed. It'll never handle the stresses again. The original is one piece. We have no way of replicating that, and may never. But with the state of the art carbon fiber composites, we can make the airframe, max speed of mach 4 or 5. Nothing near— See, the one piece stuff, near as we can tell, not only adds incredible strength, we're talking hundreds of times stronger, but it also dissipates the heat, potentially to reentry levels. Nothing we know of can do that. You can hit it with a blowtorch for an hour, wait a second, and pick it up with your bare hand.

We think we can make mach 4, 5, maybe 6 or 7 versions of this, conventionally. Faster than Raptors, much less than the original, about the price of a B-2.

One of my MIT colleagues is a psychology professor. These systems seem more like brainteasers than actual systems. Think of it like ornamental science that's nearly indistinguishable from the functioning science. It's really tough because it isn't just science.

She did the same thing with that hydraulic engine when she was six, remember? It had so many fancy, complex, intricate and important looking features that it took years to distinguish the functioning features from the distractions. The disguises. And even then, we only really figured it out when it mysteriously got published on the web. Public domain."

"We can't let this hit public domain, none of it."

"This is a thousand times more complex, or at least, it looks that way. I suspect it's just as simple, but we just don't know the important parts. Beyond the skin." The elevator hit the bottom and the gates lowered into the floor. "As much of a disaster as this seems, we caught some very important breaks. We know how it handles the Gs, that's huge. We have accurate power levels, fuel levels, consumption rates, and corresponding thrust levels. We have some solid benchmarks, and that's really important to know."

The XO stopped the lead tech. "I've been thinking, just fix the easy stuff. The landing gear, stuff like that. Don't fix the hard stuff. We may yet be able to turn this into an advantage."
Chapter 3

"Dad, the solar thing is acting weird again," Argo said.

His father put down the beer. "Look, it isn't rocket science, Son, you ought to be able to figure it out, you've taken that dirt bike apart a dozen—"

"The bike has a normal motor, not some sort of Internet freaky thing. Isn't it placebo powered where it only works if you believe it can? Like Al Gore's car that's powered off his own limitless sense of self-importance."

The father went to the kitchen where the port to the panel was, then plugged in the laptop and downloaded the logs. "It says you need to replace the rings and change the oil. Good God, Son, it's reading a reset every three minutes."

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

He closed the laptop, "Look, I even bought the book on this, it's on the shelf somewhere."

"No, Dad, you bought a book on the basic theory of the engine and how it goes into—"

"You're not a dumb kid—"

"I'm not an engineer, Dad. The thing works weird, off pressure differences and such, has that box of gauges, no spark plug, circulating pumps and— I just can't follow it, Dad."

"Unbelievable! It's just rubber rings and— Ugh!" The father yanked the plug from the wall and rolled up the cord. "Fine! I'll fix it, again."

He dragged his son along to watch, yet, the boy learned nothing. He just couldn't follow it.

Psss, hiss, slosh slosh, squi-squi, squi-squi. . . It was working normally again. It didn't even sound like a real engine. Argo got the standard lecture on the importance of preventative maintenance, but it just rolled in one ear and out the other. He didn't care how electricity was made, he just wanted it there when he turned on a light.

On the mountain, he had to budget for things. He couldn't turn on the microwave and the oven at the same time. He had to request hot water a full hour before he could take a shower, and he had to use a lot of power during that hour too. That made the least sense to him of the whole thing, but somehow it made electricity when it made hot water, or heated the house, but it used electricity to cool the house. It was a confusing, contradictory, weird little thing, always making its silent squi-squi sounds. And it looked like a movie prop version of a pipe bomb consisting of two, long, parallel pipes connected with a series of short tubes.

In the kitchen, there were a few simple temperature and pressure gauges, and a chart beside it. He had to look up the readings and the chart told how much power it had left. It could last almost a week on batteries, which didn't make any sense to him either. He had seen the battery, a single, deep-cycle marine battery just a little bigger than those found in cars. Totally incapable of powering a house for a week. Supposedly, according to his father, the battery just filled in the peaks, the real power was stored in a warm wall of concrete that never got over 250 degrees. All he knew was it was inconvenient, before he turned anything major on, he had to consult the chart and follow the rules; but it worked, and that was all he wanted to know about it.

Dara got her power from the grid and a normal backup generator. Stuff he could easily understand. She didn't have to take anything apart or budget her life like he did. His father loved this stuff, 'It's free energy, Man!' Free energy meant rationing, budgeting, and sweating the details. Free took a lot of work that seldom seemed worth it.

They stood in the kitchen as his father read the gauges and hooked the laptop up again. "See, this is how it's supposed to work." He pressed the request button. The light turned green in just a few seconds and the output gauge read 10. His father put dinner on the stove and microwaved some potatoes, then went to take a hot shower. Something Argo hadn't been able to do for the last three months.

"So, Dad, how long before your next meeting?" Argo said at the dinner table.

His father dragged the steak through the A1 sauce, then checked his PDA. "Next Thursday in Washington. It's a pain in the— You would think telling intelligent people how to do the right thing, and save money doing it, would be easier than this." He chewed, then pointed his empty fork at his son, "Never get into consulting. They don't want to know, they just want you to tell them that what they're already doing is good enough. They have no intention of improving anything."

"You'd be a better consultant if you lied—"

"I'd be the most popular damn consultant in the world if I just told them they were doing everything right—" he sawed on another piece with the knife, "But I ain't no cheerleader, Son. That wasn't what they hired me for."

Argo laughed, he knew how to work his Dad too well. "You should have been consulting on the base a few days ago. Looked like they set the whole top on fire, then tried to get a tornado started."

"That's why I can't unload this thing. Your mother and her damn lawyer saddled me with this damn place—"

"Oh come on, they're quiet, most of the time. Like living next to a fireworks factory."

"We were here first, Son. Damn jar-head baby killers—"

"I think planes are air force, maybe navy, Dad. Very few are Marines. Gotta get your slurs right." He watched his father try to force a quick swallow so he could pop off a rapid-fire comeback. "You should have seen the catfish we've been catching this spring. The pond's been really jumping. Literally, you can hear them flopping out. Now that's the kind of farming even I can get behind."

His father had been trying for nearly a decade to get a good garden going. They would have some limited success, some promising starts, but without fail, one night it would get plundered by a herd of animals. They bought tillers, a small tractor, fertilizers, and a wall of books with no results. Animals would get nearly ninety percent of anything they grew, except for that pond. The pond was solid gold. The father shrugged, "If I could get a little work out of my son once in a while, I might have gotten—"

"Mom was asking about you last week," Argo changed the subject quickly, "I think she broke up with that dude and, I mean, she sounded like she was considering—"

The father laughed, "What the— She takes all the cash, most of the stocks, and leaves me with nothing but this land I can't even give away— Now I've got to spend half of my time living out of hotel rooms—"

"I'm just saying, it sounds like she's rethinking things, that's all."

The father pointed his fork at his son, "We should go fishing tomorrow, just me and—"

"Got school tomorrow, but Saturday is—"

"After school, Son, after."

Argo took his plate and glass to the kitchen sink. But got attacked on his leg. "Oh, sorry Max, forgot all about you." He set his plate on the floor to the delight of his perpetually starving cat. He knelt, "Is tomorrow at the pond ok with you?" then lavished some affection onto the top of Max's head before returning to the table.

"They still doing that lightning research?" the father asked.

"You know, now that you mention it, I think since they blew the top off the mountain, they stopped."

"Good. Maybe I'll get some sleep here after all."

Max returned from the kitchen, plate clean, and stared up at the father while impatiently licking his lips.

"Thought you were hiding from me, Cat." The father scarfed the rest, then handed the plate over for the cat to lick clean. "Don't want you getting too anxious, again."

Argo laughed, "It's been years since Max had an accident, Dad."

"Don't take but one."

They sat in folding chairs by the pond, poles in the water as the sun slowly went down. "This is why we came here, Son." He reeled in his line, then cast it again as the constant chirps of insects and frogs chimed in.

Argo tugged on his line, trying to tempt the lurking dinner onto his hook. Sometimes it took hours. Sometimes it took less than a minute. But, it was always fishing.

Max pounced at the water's edge, put something into his mouth, then crunched his way further around the pond.

"What the hell is your cat getting into," the father asked.

"I'm not sure. He'll eat anything. I'm guessing bugs, but it could be—"

"Bugs don't crunch that loud, Son."

The father handed over his pole on his way to investigate.

"It looks like crawfish are finally taking hold, Son."

Argo looked disappointed, "You mean those mini lobster looking things? Is that what he's eating? He can have them!"

The father brought back the remains of a tail and a claw. "They're good—"

"If you catch a bushel of them, maybe."

He tossed the scraps into the water. "Well, I'm thrilled. I brought back a cooler full from that job I did in Louisiana, remember? It took forever to get them shipped, live, on the plane. When I added them in, I had that sinking feeling that I had just bought some really expensive fish food. I'd love to see just a few, every now and then. You know, proof that their population is strong and stable."

"I don't know, Dad, I never liked them that much. They always tasted like slightly bitter shrimp. I mean, when you got catfish, what do you need—"

"Well, I'm happy to see them." The father grabbed back the pole and gave the line a couple quick tugs. "Oh, got a nibble." One swift jerk and he reeled it in.

"Perch! About three pounds, right?" Argo said, looking at it splash out of the water as it fought the reel. "You don't get crawfish that big." He elbowed his dad, "Last week, I caught a catfish that had to be fifteen, twenty pounds or so. I think we still have some of it in the freezer."

"It isn't the meat, Son, it's the fishing."

On that, they both agreed.

The splashing even brought Max back around.

They made their way home before dark. They had caught ten fish, but returned with only the perch.

While his father checked the greenhouse off the kitchen, Argo opened the pantry. They had a large store of canned food, but an even bigger stock of dried peas, corn, rice, flour, beans and other such staples in sealed five gallon buckets stacked floor to ceiling. It reminded him of a bomb shelter, but it was totally practical. The closest store was an hour away, and the store with reasonable prices was two hours away. They bought in bulk, like the restaurant entrepreneur he was, once a year.

Argo refilled the bottom of his quart containers with dried beans, peas and corn, then filled them with water in the kitchen. Dried foods had to soak for days, usually a week, before they returned to the supple seeds and were suitable for cooking. He put them on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

His father was a good chef. Not the head chef of any of the restaurants, but not bad either. The greenhouse was good for year-round tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers and such. Today, they had steamed asparagus, fried perch with a rich tomato sauce, and mashed potatoes with corn and lima beans. It was a fine meal.

"Mom wanted me to stay there this summer," Argo said, waiting to gauge his father's response. "I told her I'd rather stay here this year too, like I did last year."

His father smiled, "You know, you can stay there, too."

"I know, but, I just, Max likes it here. He's out of place in a city. You can't let him go loose outside, he'll get lost, so you have to walk him on a leash. He hates that. He hides under the bed for the first week, anyway."

"He was just a stray you picked up outside the house, Son. He would be fine if you left him outside the house all summer. He doesn't have to be an inside cat."

"No way, Dad. I'm not going to just leave him to the mercies—"

"I'll let him in every time I come home, Son."

"No way. You haven't seen the anger in his eyes if I leave him alone in the house just to go down to get the mail."

"Yeah, look, don't use your cat as an excuse not to spend time with your mom. Just because she bled me dry doesn't make her not your mom. Besides that, I don't want to hear from her lawyer that I'm poising your mind against her."

Argo sat back in the chair, a fresh, flaky bun still in his hand. "You want me to go?"

"No, not really," the father said, "but you should. She is your mom."

Max was not going to like this at all.

A clap of thunder broke the silence of night.

Argo went to the window facing the base. They couldn't see the base from the house, only the pond had enough cleared trees to see it, but he could still see the sky above it.

Not a cloud in view; yet a perfect line of brilliant blue throbbed for a solid second, perhaps even two, straight into the base.

It faded to a light blue, then a pink as it blended wider into the sky. The colors drifted as the line smudged with the wind.

He waited another minute.

The bolt drew itself again. He waited for the—

Boommm!

He was packed for his mom's.
Chapter 4

The engineer entered the XO's office. "The harvester is back online. We're making power again, and the trunklines back to the city are up and running at capacity."

"Good. What about your plane skin experiment?"

The engineer looked uncomfortable, "Well, Sir, it wasn't as successful. We have the room she made the plane in, exactly as she left it. We know how she powered the equipment, we even have a ballpark of the energy requirements. . . but, as you know, the equipment she used destroys itself, intentionally, in the production of the skin. So, it's like trying to figure out how to build a bomb by studying the crater."

"Are you any closer?"

He handed the XO a twisted, lumpy piece that was a far cry from the smooth-as-glass skin. ". . . We are, I think."

"What's your ballpark, each attempt?"

"It uses about one million dollars worth of electricity, in about twenty seconds, per piece."

"And the cost of equipment?"

"Another two or three hundred thousand. Some of it can be rebuilt."

"We can't afford for you to keep experimenting like this. She got it right in the first attempt."

"Well, then, put her on it, Sir."

The XO banged his fist into the polished oak desk.

"Sorry, Sir. I'm just frustrated too. My whole team is."

The XO looked down, ran his fingers through his receding, buzzed hair, then looked up. "We can't ask her, we spent four years training her to resist torture and build a tolerance against drugs—"

"And the magnetic pulse burned out all the cameras in the room before she pulled the rabbit from the hat. The tapes are no good, Sir. I've spent weeks going over every frame. She knew where they were, and she can act."

The XO was pissed. The plane was vital to national security. It was like an alien crash-landed and they recovered the plane, intact. Then found that the pilot spoke perfect English and was the inventor, but was hell bent on keeping every screw and nut of it a secret.

"I've only been here three years, Sir, but she came up with the harvester too, didn't she?"

The XO looked like it was a state secret. He looked down at the desk, then nodded.

"I thought so. You can't make the skin without access to those levels of power. A facility capable of making sustained bolts of lighting could easily harvest them as well. If our calculations are right, it's a pulse equal to about 2,000 more power plants than are currently in the US grid. If I could see the details on that, it may help. I think it's all a part of the same—"

"I can't show you that." The XO leaned back, then stared at the closed office door. He sighed. "You worked on the MHD system on the plane, right? Well, it's a lot bigger." The XO looked very uncomfortable, but knew the engineer had the needed clearance. "The bolt is caught in a dirty snowball. Super-conducting powder leaves a contrail as it's shot a few miles up, like a reverse comet. That triggers a bolt almost any time we want, and the dust ensures—"

"Makes sure nothing is lost to the resistance of air." The engineer sat in front of the desk, then leaned in, "I've guessed that much, but what's happening under the ground?" He tapped his finger on the desk, "No capacitors in the world can store that level of power, you could fill this valley with batteries and not come anywhere near this, let alone charge them all in a second."

"The pulse, the bolt, passes through a conductive fluid, in the presence of a powerful magnetic field—"

The engineer stood, steadied himself against the back of the chair, then walked toward the door. His hand on his chin, he walked back to the desk. "Moving, rivers of fluid? It would take miles of tunnels, millions of gallons moving hundreds of miles per—"

"It does, and there is. All inside this mountain."

The engineer sat, "Of course, it's so simple. It's just like the MHD drives that take a fast moving particle in the jet wash and turns it into a massive pulse that the railguns turn back into an even faster moving bullet. Motion to electric pulse, to motion again."

The XO got up to walk around the desk, "It started as a way to buy and store off-peak power from the coal plant, as a part of that hippie green nonsense the country was mired in, then sell it back during peak hours to the city. But, it quickly turned into more—"

The engineer stood, "When those amounts wouldn't make the skin, she showed you how to catch lightning. Thank you, Sir. This helps a lot." He left to meet with his team. They had work to do.

The engineer looked over the photocopied notebooks. It was in the girl's own handwriting. He knew what he was looking at, he had been taught by the brightest professors MIT had to offer. Top of his class. He had seen the girl in the videos, just an unimposing, teen girl. He followed the first book exactly, because it looked so convincingly correct. Yet, a simple diode was drawn backwards, easily overlooked, and that one mistake destroyed the entire board and weeks worth of work. She knew the notebooks would be read. She added mistakes, intentionally, in easily overlooked places positioned to do the maximum damage. It was like they were encrypted. Booby-trapped. Even CAD software couldn't catch the mistakes. Slipperier than lawyers debating what the meaning of is is. He suspected entire systems were added only for their potential self-destructive effect.

Along the far wall of the lab were twenty-six versions of the railgun from her plane. They had the original, and the complete schematics, yet they were still unable to get even one of them to work. The first eleven turned into burnt, twisted metal when they powered on. Each had smoked in a unique way. She had only to include a few dozen mistakes to cost them a fortune. Each destroyed version took a month to trace the problem back, and even then. . . they had only one with marginal success. It worked, at the power of a BB gun. With their new full-power readings gathered when they nearly destroyed the mountain, they calculated that the original should be easily capable of shooting down satellites from the ground.

He looked at the notes again. He had even talked to the girl once. She sat in the chair, refused to look him in the eyes, and hardly moved for the entire three hours.

She had dark brown eyes, lightly curly black hair, and good posture. That was all he learned. She left him a message on the chair that he only found hours after the interview. It was a brightly colored string with many knots. It took weeks to find out that it was a message written in Incan, translated it said, "Failure isn't an option, it's your chosen profession."

His job seemed meaningless, almost demeaning, like being forced to play chess against an infant for the amusement and ridicule of others. If they could just simply be nice to the girl, this could all be over. He looked over the wall again. He had a daughter about the girl's age and kept feeling like he was caught between a rebellious teen and her overly strict parents. They put her under curfew and she retaliated by hiding the keys to the car. Neither were willing to give. His job was to build a new car, from scratch, that didn't need the keys, when everyone knew full well she knew where the keys were. It just seemed ridiculous.

But, he had seen the near full power of the plane. He knew the stakes. It was air superiority, and then some. It was several generations beyond cutting edge, and it was sitting just down the hall.

They racked the original railgun into the frame and aimed it down the firing pit, armor plate and sandbags at the end.

His assistant approached as they wired it up. "Are you sure it can handle 500MW? It only weighs 30 pounds."

He nodded. "It's solid state superconductor. At least, that's the going assumption, we can't take it that far apart without destroying it. It doesn't have any cooling line." He looked flustered. "I don't know, to tell you the truth. But, it should. Use the light, pressed sand rounds. Not the full metals or the tungstens. Just sand, ok."

"How long of a pulse?"

"One tenth of a second. That should be a hundred rounds or so. And remember to put the metal cover on it to shield us if it explodes."

The assistant snickered, but took him seriously instead. "Twenty minutes?"

"I'll have the power ready by then." He went to the phone and called the control room. If managed incorrectly, a 500MW spike could brown out the town or blow every TV for thirty miles. Fortunately, they had an independent, off-the-grid source.

The full-power test of the original put proof to the numbers. They needed to end this feud with that quiet girl. This was a ground-based gun that could put forty pounds of bullets into orbit every second from any power plant in the US. It was a ready-made missile shield, but only two existed in the world.

"They broke it, let them fix it," Shadona said, cast on her leg, staring at the wreckage. But it was difficult, if not painful to look at her creation in such disrepair.

Dana looked inside the cracked shell, then looked underneath. "It's got new sneakers." She ran her hand across the scratches it received from doing donuts on the test pad, "I didn't think you could scratch this stuff."

"Bulletproof doesn't mean it'll stop a round from a tank." It was awkward for her to look underneath, but she wanted to see the scratches too. "It'll never fly again. Not like it used to."

Dana sat on the concrete by the wheels, "Pity, it was one nice ride."

Shadona lowered herself to the ground with the help of her crutch. "I thought it was my ticket out of here. But, it only made them squeeze tighter." She looked at the hole from beneath. "It'll still fly, right now. The wings just make it look cool, and take the corners sharper." She patted it on the deepest scratch. "This stuff is a lot stronger than it looks. An Israeli pilot landed his plane with the whole wing shot off. This can take off that way. They pulled one of its teeth, the one closest to the hole." She smiled at Dana, "I think they're anxious to see the wisdoms come in."

"You want to try to patch it?"

She slid back to lean against the new landing gear. "That's what they want me to do. They want me to show them how to do field repairs. They think it'll give them valuable clues." She tapped the hole with the tip of her crutches, "That's only the leading edge, when it flies forward. It'll be easy to point the barrels out the back.

I want to fly. It's the only place where the sins of here, disappear.

At least, until I land."

She lay the crutch to her side, then held Dana's hand.

"I'm not going to be flying anytime soon."

Dana looked at her friend, then the hole. "You're not going to wait for them to fix it, are you."

"I'm not going to teach them nothing. . . but, I am going to patch it. Just, not today."

But, they did start that day. First, with a detailed examination of the damage done, then an OKing of the frame for the stresses of flight; they actually did quite a bit of work, without filling or fixing any of the holes.

The engineer watched the monitor as the girls assembled the pieces of skin like a giant jigsaw puzzle. They would find two large pieces missing. One sat on his desk. The leading edge.

His research team had been unable to secure samples of the skin until the accident. It seemed absurd; his team was tasked with duplicating the plane in every detail, yet, destroying it was the only way to see inside it or sample the skin. It was inherently shielded against most forms of radiation. It didn't X-ray well, radar didn't see it at all, and it was constructed of large, single, interlocking pieces that came together seamlessly. For his first year, he had assumed it was all one piece. The prevailing guess was it had as few as four main pieces.

Three years, and this was the first time he had a sample of the skin for detailed examination. It was carbon, but it wasn't fiber. It was as light as paper and harder than steel, yet it flexed, up to a point.

Carbon fibers were easily made, but they were limited by the chemistry of the binders. The epoxy was the weak link. Fiber was fine for planes running at mach 2, 3, even touching mach 4. Hers wasn't fiber, yet it was more than just a plate. The heat generated on the leading edge was wicked to the engines. They tested it with torches and verified it on the functioning wing.

The wings and the skin did more than provide structure and aerodynamics. It managed heat loads, shielded internal components, and probably performed a dozen other integrated functions that this piece didn't reveal.

He returned the piece to the table as he watched the monitor some more.

He had taken his family to see a movie about a magician last week, and it was still on his mind. The tricks were simple, but the art of magic was the complex framework, the showmanship, the presentation built around it. The misdirection was always more interesting and entertaining than the trick itself, and the audience loved to be fooled.

The magician always fooled him. Always. Even when he knew the secret to the trick.

The other part of his lab was working on some of the finger-sized pieces. The skin was a critical component, if they could get it right. It was the base construction the entire system was built on. Doped differently, it became the solid-state superconductors in the gun. At least, that was their working theory.

She made the pieces large and few specifically so they would be destroyed in any attempt to learn their secrets. But destroyed pieces didn't help as much as they had hoped, much like seeing a sheet of aluminum doesn't help smelt aluminum from oxide ore, or seeing a shard of glass tell you anything about the importance of picking sand.

But they did yield some useful hints.

It pointed them in new directions.

He kept his framed diploma above the desk. It helped remind him that he wasn't as stupid as he often felt. This wasn't child's play, even if he was playing against a child. A colorful piece of knotted string held it to the wall.

Had she made the parts smaller, more modular components and less omnibus systems, it would have been far easier to reverse engineer. It was even more difficult for her to construct it in this manner. But every aspect of it was expressly for his detriment. She had gone to great lengths to make it nearly impossible for him to copy. Successfully too. His team had spent a fortune in time and resources with little to show for it.

He stared into the monitor. He understood the XO's frustration. Half of him wanted to walk down that hall and beat the girl to death with her own crutches.

The other half wanted to give her new clothes, a pool full of ice cream, or whatever else she wanted until she gave back the keys to the car.

His assistant patted him on the back, "Don't think of it as impossible, think of it as job security."

Hmm. . .

"Late!" the middle-aged man yelled, pointing to Shadona as she made her way through the door.

The students dutifully attacked, mob style. She walloped the nearest with her crutches.

"No wings, no mercy!" the teacher said. "Pilots often have to eject and fight their way across enemy occupied territory to designated green zones."

The students took no mercy as they pummeled the girl.

"Often, the indigenous people are anxious to welcome, personally, those who deal death from above."

Most of the students had lost repeatedly to her over the years of air games and enjoyed the level playing field of ground combat.

Three of the most vicious assailants were doubled over, trying desperately to catch their breaths as a girl with a cast somehow made her way out from under the pile. A charge from one assailant was turned by judo flip into a missile aimed at the instructor giving the orders.

Surprised, he sidestepped the student only to see a close-up of a cast as it connected with his face.

"Arrogant little bitch!" He said on the ground, blood running down his chin. He pulled a collapsible baton from his shorts and proceeded to. . .

The XO stood at the foot of the bed beside the nurse. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Do you see what she did to—"

"You're a trained combat instructor. You are the adult in this situation—"

"She broke four fingers and my fucking nose!"

"You ordered a mob attack on a girl with a cast."

"She came in late, that's been the rules since I started this class six years ago. A sixty second free-for-all—"

"Well then, what do you have to complain about? She beat you in under sixty seconds." The XO poked his finger into the man's bruised chest, "What I want to know is, what part of valuable intel do you not understand?"

"Look, you said to show her no preferential treatment, to keep the pressure—"

"That isn't license to give her a concussion with a baton!"

"She was in the process of giving me a concussion with a cast!"

"I want you off my base."

"I have a contract that states—"

"Guard!" the XO said. One snapped to his side. "Put the tenured professor's picture up in the guardhouse under persons to be detained. Shooting is authorized." He signed a form to officiate the order. "I may not be able to fire you, I may not even have the authority to end your contract, we'll see about that, but I can have you shot if you set foot on my base again." He turned to the guard. "The second he is cleared by the nurse, escort him out."

"Yes Sir!" the guard said.

"Where is our other patient?" the XO asked the nurse.

"This way," she said, leading him to the doctor.

"What the hell are you running here," the Doctor asked.

"How is the patient, Doctor?"

"Why, you plan on pumping her full of drugs again? She has improved to a concussion since last I've—"

"Any skull fractures that we should be worried about, Doctor?"

"Just what are you running here?"

"Fractures, Doctor."

"No, she's resilient. Some swelling, but nothing too serious. I'd suspect that she will make a full recovery, if you can get her far away from here."

This doctor was not as easily replaced as a combat instructor. The list of specialists with the needed clearance was very short indeed. "Thank you, Doctor, just do your best."

"My best would be to have child services remove her from this place."

"That's not going to happen, Doctor. And Doctor, I would suggest you keep her in restraints unless you want to look like this man," He showed the doctor the pictures of the instructor, "She is not the sweet, innocent girl that she looks, and she will not be turned loose on the streets of this great country."

The doctor stayed in the room this time. He was determined to get to the bottom of this riddle, and the key to that may well be in an unsupervised conversation with the center of all this attention.

He checked his watch. Fourteen past three, AM. He chugged the last of the coffee, checked the girl's vitals, then relaxed back into the chair.

She opened her eyes.

"What is your name?" the doctor asked quietly.

"Shadona."

"What's your last name?"

She looked puzzled.

"Do you not remember your last name?"

"I don't have one." She tried to sit up and look around.

"Careful, you've been beaten rather—"

She looked at his visitor badge, "Get me out of here, please," she said. "You don't know what they are like, they're going to kill me."

"I'm not going to let that—"

"Look at me," her paper gown slid off her bruised shoulder, "does this look like the place where good things happen?"

"You are on the top of a nearly inaccessible mountain base, under 5,000 square miles of restricted airspace, what can I possibly do?" He put his hand on her forehead before fixing her gown.

"They are torturing me, doing unspeakable things to us." She leaned forward, as close to him as the restraints would allow, "They treat us like property, like they can do anything they wish to us." She cried, tears ran down her chin, "I haven't seen my dear mother since I was five and was ripped from her arms. Please, tell me if she's alive, tell her that I love her."

He briefly hugged the hysterical girl, "What's her name?"

She sobbed uncontrollably, "I can't remember!"

He did his best to console her. "I'll do what I can, but—"

She kissed him on the cheeks, "Thank you, thank you!"

He fixed her gown again, tightened it in the back, then tried to settle her back into the bed. "You have to calm down now. Just lie down."

"Don't let them take me ba—"

"I've put you down as restricted to bed rest and observation for the next few weeks. Ok? I don't know how much that will help around here, but that's the best I can do."

"Do you live locally?"

"No, they flew me in from LA. I'm a neurologist. What is it that they are trying to get from you?"

She recoiled from him, sliding as far away as the restraints would allow. "They sent you in—" She looked around for the cameras, "You're one of them!"

"No, I'm not." He tried to reassure her, but it only made her squirm harder against the restraints. He sat back in the chair, "I'm on retainer to the base in case accidents like what happened to you—"

"Accident? Does this look like I fell—"

"Of course not, Shadona." She settled back to the bed and closed her eyes. "I— forget about whatever it was— I don't want to know. It just seemed like an obvious question to ask. I didn't really want to know the specifics, just generally— I just don't get—"

"Everything alright, Doctor?" the nurse interrupted.

"Oh, yes, just fine."

"How's our patient?" The nurse inspected the monitor. "I thought I heard you talking over here?" She reviewed the readouts. "She hasn't come to yet, has she?"

He looked over the readouts. No change at all, nothing for crying or hysterics. Shadona was lying perfectly still with her eyes closed. "Sometimes talking helps."

When the nurse moved on with her duties, the doctor checked the girl again.

He checked her pulse at the wrist and compared it to the monitor. It was reading right.

"You have to help me," she whispered, "You have to get me out of here."

There was only so much he could do.
Chapter 5

The major spun the directional receiver, "That building," he pressed the COM button, "Sir, the signal is coming from a dentist office— Yes Sir." The major signaled to his team. Six hustled double-time around back as the bulk of his team entered from the front.

They broke open the door as quietly as possible.

"Sir," The major whispered in the mike, "It appears closed. Proceeding with caution."

The team drew weapons as they cleared the rooms, one by one.

"What the hell?" the dentist said, dropping his tools.

"Against the wall!" the lead shouted as he shoved the dentist into the counter and the rest of the team swarmed into the room. "Where is your buddy, Doctor Enstheart?"

"Doctor who?" the dentist asked.

"Major, she's in here," another said.

"Is all this really necessary," the dentist said, "this is just a simple tooth extraction—"

The dentist was tasered to the ground before being injected with a needle.

"Careful," the major said as his team approached the girl in the chair, weapons drawn. "There is no place to go. It's over." He pulled out a pair of nylon cuffs. "Put them on, and it'll go easy." He tossed them at the girl, but she fumbled the catch. "Yes Sir," he said into the mike. "We have the good doctor too. It's over, Girl. He got you out, but he can't set you free." The major looked at the monitor the dentist was using. He keyed the mike, "We need a tech officer in here to recover and purge the x-ray equipment."

She looked around, but didn't move.

"Make this easy on yourself, just pick up the cuffs and put them on."

She looked at the sharp instruments on the tray, none were lethal. She slid off the chair and reached for the cuffs. She slipped, but her hand that seemed to try to catch herself, flung the tray of tools at the closest, her shoe smacked another across the face, and she emptied the clip from the first gun she acquired into everyone else in the room.

Over ninety rounds were discharged in the next few seconds of the firefight.

The reserve teams swarmed into the office.

"Drop it! Drop it!" they screamed at the girl who staggered through the door, then collapsed onto the floor.

Six darts in the back of her leg.

"Doctor Enstheart," the XO entered the interrogation room, "we need to know what she told you." He checked the polygraph. "Well, after thirteen hours, it looks like you are finally trying to be honest."

"What happened to her mother?" the doctor asked.

"Her mother?" the XO asked, then sipped from his coffee.

The interrogator flipped to a page, then pointed to a line.

"Oh, I see. I warned you, Doctor, she is not to be trusted. She made up the story about a mother, she doesn't have—"

"Everyone has a mother."

"Not here, not any of them." The XO sat at the table. "She is a part of our world, not yours. We know how you got her off the base and your week long romp with a teenage girl—"

"Now wait a minute, I'm no—"

"Yes yes, we believe you didn't molest her. And, to be perfectly honest, I don't care much if you had. You stole her from here, and that can't be tolerated. But, more important than your transgressions against your country, is what she told you. We need every word that you can remember. Every clue. Every piece, and every inflection."

"What did you put into her tooth?"

The XO looked at the interrogator, then back to the doctor, "How many of your colleagues did you speak to about the tooth?"

"Just a dentist friend—"

"We have processed him already, Sir," the interrogator said.

The XO stood, then asked the interrogator, "I'd like to have the good doctor processed by the end of today. I don't think he needs to commit suicide, do you?"

"Suicide? What do—" the doctor started.

"No Sir," the interrogator said, "his chart puts him as a prime candidate for a chemical wash. But we should still discredit him, politically. Just in case he retains any knowledge—"

The doctor looked stunned, "knowledge of what?" but the XO just put a hand on the interrogator's shoulder, then left the room.

"Well," the XO said as he checked the restraints, "You didn't kill anyone. You chipped David's teeth, smashed one hand, broke some fingers."

She turned away from him.

"I can reassign your friend Dana to another roommate, someone less pleasant to live with than you."

When she tested the restraint, the bed lurched toward him, and he flinched.

"Did you enjoy your tryst with an LA doctor? LA is outside your jurisdiction. It must have been excruciatingly painful. Dental nerves are very sensitive, aren't they? Care to tell us how you put up with the pain?

Did he supply you with drugs? Painkillers, alcohol?" He moved to the side of the bed she was facing. "Did you just devil-dog up and take it?

The dentist said he showed you the X-rays. He said you told him how to cut it out. He was most forthcoming in describing the procedure. You were wrong, you know. It would have killed you, and we can't let that happen when you have so much more to tell us.

You did a very good job of losing us and hiding the tiny signal. Of course, it has a very limited range. But we still found you. Were it a training exercise on evading capture and blending in, I would have to give you top grades."

He pulled the chart at the foot of the bed. Then put it back.

"Dr. Enstheart had you down for bed rest. I think you are healed up nicely, but, he's so concerned about you that I think we'll give you all that time. Weeks. Here, in this bed, restrained for your own protection. Don't worry, I'll make sure Dana isn't lonely." He walked to the door and stopped by the nurse, "Have a feeding tube installed. And, let me know if she decides to speak."

"Yes Sir." The nurse wrote it down.

Shadona stared at the drab, white ceiling. She had learned more of the tooth. Her leash. Their leash. The dentist x-rayed it several times. It was detailed, and she was sure her instructions to the dentist were accurate. But she was now having doubts. It had what she thought was a bubble, but it could easily be filled with something.

They all took turns going to the base dentist once their adult teeth started coming in. One year, they all seemed to need cavities filled.

Dental X-rays were fairly detailed, being on the monitor allowed for easy magnification, up to a point. But they were like trying to describe a person by the shadow they cast. It may have been the wrong tool for the job. She had a good idea what they put in it. The RFID was a given. It stood out. It showed screw threads, like implant replacements, but enough of the tooth remained to keep the nerve endings alive for feedback when they exceeded its range. It wasn't the first time she had encountered the pain it was capable of generating. It was excruciating, ten times the worst migraine imaginable. It brought back most runaways. The XO knew no painkiller was effective against it.

Others had escaped before her. Should the tooth not receive the signal every few hours, it escalates the pain. Whenever someone came up missing, they restricted the range of the transmitter in a kind of lockdown. It brought all stragglers in, few held out for more than a day, no searching required.

She was nearly out of her mind after a week. It was all she could do to function. She was clinging to the hope of having it removed by the dentist. Others had tried to pull the tooth, but it tended to be fatal when pulled recklessly with pliers. The bubble could contain a poison that might have to be 'deactivated' in addition to having the skills of a dentist.

It was a puzzle, and she was good at solving puzzles.

The nurse brought over the anesthesia mask. "Sorry, Hon."

The patrol officer slowed his car. The guardrail was damaged, swerving tire marks covered the road. He pulled to the shoulder and called it in.

A BMW was down in the ditch, headlights dim, wedged in by the trees. He called in the plates and requested an ambulance. "He seems alive, the airbag saved him. I can't open the door, going to pop the window. Alcohol—" The officer reached for his evidence baggie and wiped the white stuff from victim's bloody nose, "Probable cocaine."

"The car is registered to a Doctor Harald James Enstheart," came across the radio.

The ambulance pulled up, followed by the fire department with the Jaws of Life to cut open the doors.

As they started cutting, the doctor started coming around. "Where am I?"

The EMT restrained him, "Keep still, Sir, you were in a wreck. We'll have you out in a minute."

He sobered in time for bail and the hearing, both happened almost as fast as he was suspended from his prestigious position at the hospital. A federal agency intervened on his behalf and kept him from serving any of his lengthy sentence.

Their representative met with him outside the courthouse.

"Dr. Enstheart, we would like to offer you a contract. You have some unique training that would benefit us, and your country. We are in need of a qualified neurologist, such as yourself, if you are interested."

"I don't even remember getting into the car," the doctor said, still a little bewildered by it all, "I'm not a drug addict. I'm not."

"We know. Look, this is a chance to put all of this behind you. Here is the confidentiality agreement. Just think about it, and call us when you make up your mind."

"I'm not an addict," he said again. "I just don't understand—"

"It's ok, Doctor. I've got a plane to catch, think it over and be in touch." The man shook his hand, then walked down the courthouse steps and into a black suburban.

The XO stepped into the engineers' workshop. "Let's see it."

The lead engineer led him to the test-fire chamber. "Ok, we can't do her solid state superconductors. Not now, and probably not anytime soon, unless we get clearance to destroy one of these—"

"That's out of the question," the XO said.

"Granted. And, there is about a 50-50 chance it would be like the skin and wouldn't answer enough questions anyway. But it is relatively simple, and we were able to build one using liquid nitrogen cooled—"

"Yes yes, let's see it."

He had prepared a long speech, even rehearsed it a little, but he skipped to the end. "Ok, these are standard compressed sand rounds," he called to the control room and timed the pulse, "In two seconds—" the noise from the gun was deafening, for about a second.

"Wow!" the XO said, "Let's see it, open up the chamber."

His assistants rolled the door out of the way. The device was as big as a SUV, and frost was dripping off it as it continued to hiss.

"What the hell is that?"

"Well, like I was saying, we had to use—"

"We can't mount that on a gun platform, we can't even put that on a 747! Hell, you can't get that behemoth out of this room!" The XO was irate. He had been promised something spectacular.

"Sir, the most this thing can handle is about 100MW, but it is the first generation that actually works. It isn't elegant or pretty—"

"It's damn near the ugliest thing I've seen since you destroyed the top of this mountain! This is nearly useless. It would take a battleship to mount it on and a nuclear reactor to power it! Air-plane!" he waved his hands, "Air," then made his arms like wings, "Plane. Fast moving, mobile."

"Sir, we can probably get it up to 500MW within two years, and probably cut the size in half at the same time, but that's about as far as modern technology will take us."

The XO pulled the original off the shelf and shoved it into the hands of the engineer. "Thirty pounds of MODERN TECHNOLOGY, in your hands. Modern technology. Figure it out."

"Sir, we will continue to try, Sir, but we can make these today." He followed the XO out of the workshop. "Sir, it's demoralizing to be unable to reverse engineer this stuff. The more we get into it, the more we realize how futile it is. It's layer on layer, everything is multipurpose, nothing serves just a single function. You can't reverse engineer something that you don't know everything it does. We busted our ass on this, Sir, and all it does is plunk bullets out of a tube. And it's nowhere near as efficient as the original. It's like trying to compare the first neon tube laser with a modern LED pointer. But we got this one to work. This works, Sir. This is the first success we've had in years."

The XO stopped in the hall, "Look, I don't want to belittle what you've done, but I have to show results too. The harvester produces a limited revenue stream to work with. You eggheads are burning it up, quickly. This is an off budget operating facility. That means we have to be self-funding. Planes, parts, fuel, salaries, it all adds up. Most days I feel like a damned accountant. Look, this other crap isn't our mission. What you are working on is our mission. This is the mission of this base. Our mission has nothing to do with eight cents per kilowatt." He started on with his busy day, but stopped, then returned. "Put this version on a back burner. Let it take four years. I'll send down a budget later today. We'll call that a plan B. Look, I'll tell the base chef to make your team some cake and ice cream. Have some pizzas sent down." He continued down the hall.

The engineer paused on the tip of an idea, then ran after him. "Sir, it just occurred to me. You know the full load output of this plant, right? Give my team a few days to put some numbers to it, build you a budget projection, but, think ICBM, but with conventional one hundred pound bombs. We shoot them up from here, like a bullet, they orbit a few times, then land by GPS. No bombers involved."

The XO looked at him, then smiled, "Interesting. One hundred pounders sound small, but it wouldn't matter how big you built the gun that way."

"No Sir, it wouldn't matter at all. Just a guess, but think of a firing rate of five or ten a minute. It would still be beyond the capacity of any other power plant, but this one should be capable of short pulses like that."

"Very good, make it one hell of a party!"

The engineer ran back to the workshop and got his team working on the numbers. They produced a budget within the next two hours and sent it up the chain of command.

The party that night included loud music and five bottles of champagne.

The engineer reported to the XO that morning. The XO pointed to the chair before the desk, and the engineer had a seat. "Your team have a good time last night?"

"Yes Sir, thank you."

"Good. Look, I've been going over the numbers, checking it with the harvester staff." He folded his hands, "Look, the military does a lot of compartmentalizing, that's just how it has always been. Hell, we nearly keep left shoes in separate boxes from the rights. But, even though we were all military officers here, we're in a gray zone." He gestured like tossing a pizza into the air, "The way it's been structured, we're actually a for-profit corporation. Technically. No matter how much we stand on protocol around here.

I'm giving you clearance to the harvester, and I've scheduled you six meetings with their head, Captain L Hanly, for this week. Now, I can't give your whole team that kind of clearance, you understand, but because your ICBM project overlaps so well with the harvester, you two need to coordinate. I've also given him clearance into your department so your discussions can go both ways. Hopefully, that will be enough—" he gestured with his hands as he stumbled for a word, "cross-pollination, to expedite this project.

Your budget exceeds our declarable resources for any one year, but we have ways around that, as well as several different books that we can bury it in. I'm giving you a go."

"Thank you, Sir."

"I've been going over your reports for the last few years as a part of your performance review. I think you were right when you said that all of her projects are inter-related. The harvester is directly related to the guns and the skin of the HB series, the MHD drives are solid-state cousins to the harvester— it's all inter-related, and none of us put it together because of this natural tendency to compartmentalize everything. I think we need someone with a foot in every room, an engineer would work better than a— than a glorified accountant."

"Thank you, Sir."

"Listen, there's a ton of red tape to be cut here, so, no promises, but this is as good a place to start as any."

"Yes Sir, Thank you Sir." They saluted, then the engineer went back to work.

The engineer reported to the harvester control room near the end of the shift, "Captain Hanly," he asked.

The man returned the salute, "Captain Dysath. Right on time. Where would you like to get started?"

"Well, they keep the specifications a closely guarded secret, so let's start there, see what we have to work with."

They walked over to the rather ordinary control board. "Well, as you see, we are plugged into the grid right now, 636MW outgoing, down from a peak of 923MWH at 2:12PM. We are currently charging unit eight by discharging unit three so we can do maintenance on it."

Dysath stepped closer to the screen. "Twenty-four units, total. What's the, uh, stats on each unit?"

Hanly pulled up the stats. "Our smallest unit has a safe working capacity of 1.5GWH—"

"Gigawatt hours? How big are they?"

"Well, keep in mind these things are cheap to build, basically a concrete tunnel with a really good lining. But, most start at two miles long and about twelve feet in diameter. We get a real high density on our conductive fluid which doubled their original capacity."

"What kind of charge/discharge rate are we looking at?"

"Well, we can safely discharge at 175GW for about thirty seconds."

That was higher than Dysath had thought. It was easy to get lost in all the numbers that were being thrown around. But his life was working with these numbers. Much like it was difficult for the XO to fathom such a tiny plane as the HB-4 putting out the same amount of power as a typical nuclear power plant, it was just as hard to wrap his head around these numbers. Each unit was capable of replacing 175 normal power plants for 30 seconds. That was a staggering amount of power to have at their disposal. He had sweated the gun tests. That was nothing to one of these units. Of course, the operator couldn't tell him that without revealing just this kind of information. So, they had hammed it up, making him schedule each shot like it meant something special.

"We've been inching it up over the years. It seems like they are capable of more. Quite a bit more, actually. But we can't justify exceeding these levels. This valley doesn't— we can't sell much more power than we are without some serious explanations, and we can easily exceed the lines linking us to the grid already. Plus, over the years, we discovered that we didn't have to store that much power anyway. When you can get lightning to strike every day, you only need to store a day or two worth of demand.

I've been here since the beginning of this project. We started as a way of storing off peak power for the coal company. We put the three peaking stations in this area out of business within a year. By the time we added the extra units and turned it into a harvester, we would have put the coal plant out of business too, if California hadn't driven most of their companies out of their state and into this one."

Dysath worked the calculator. "You're a base-load power plant, that can react faster than a peaking station and—"

"Could run the whole US grid for a minute or two." He took the calculator from Dysath, "Yeah, I had that look on my face too when I ran all the numbers. The XO was briefing me on your project. Look, I came here like you, was handed a wild project that I said could never work, and then saw a working model. It was just a small thing made with a hundred feet of garden hose. The utility drawings came written in crayon with a few vicious bugs to work out, but damned if all the pieces didn't eventually fall into place.

The short answer is, we got all the power you'll ever need, we even have some elegant ways of sending it all as a massive surge a few miles with very little loss. You plan on building the 'barrel' on the side of this mountain?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Sounds like fun. You mind if I took a look at your prototype gun? I have some experience—"

"Crayon and vicious bugs?"

"Yeah, the first time we caught a — this was way before you got here — but, the first time we caught a lightning bolt, it wasn't shielded, you see. We blew out every TV in the valley. Killed one guy with a pacemaker. Magnetized everything, destroyed ninety percent of everything electronic on the base that wasn't hardened. It was a madhouse around here for weeks. Then, just because a grounding wire was left out, it blew apart two hundred thousand dollars worth of coils."

The two continued to compare notes for the following week.

Construction on that scale would take years. Fortunately, they had lots of experience tunneling in the mountain, and retained the twelve-foot boring machine they had used for the harvester. As the overseeing engineer on the harvester project, Hanly had a wealth of experience in large construction projects, as well as in safely dealing with huge power levels.

They could start excavating the tunnel immediately.

The twenty-four units were stacked on top of each other with expanded perimeters near the base. Central shafts linked them along an incline down the inside of the mountain, fairly evenly spaced. Each had side access as well for bringing in replacement coils and such. The spacing and access tunnels were nearly perfect for this new project. With collaboration, they were able to reduce the budget considerably and submitted revised projections. Dysath's team handled the construction of the smaller control components while Hanly's team worked with what they did best, high-power coils and digging precision tunnels.

Compartmentalized redundancy. The harvester, with none of the flair, had been doing something similar for years. With about ten cents worth of electricity, it hurled a fifteen-pound snowball of super conducting dust about thirty miles into the air. This just took it another step. It would have saved him an enormous amount of time, years even, had they not had to reinvent the wheel.
Chapter 6

The doctor checked her vital signs. "Nurse. Why does this patient have a feeding tube?"

"I'm not sure, Doctor Enstheart." The nurse pulled the chart from the foot of the bed, then noticed that it was the old one with the doctor's own writing. "This is the wrong chart." She held it to her waist, "I'll see if I can find the right one."

"Of course. Don't worry about it, nurse. It's my first day. Don't expect everything to go perfectly on my first day." He sat by the patient while the nurse left. He looked at the girl with a tube down her throat. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of you. I was lucky to find this job, I can't afford to—"

She looked him in the eyes, a tear ran down her cheek.

"Don't worry, I was top of my class, just ran into a little legal problems— nothing malpractice, I assure you." He finished his examination of her. "I don't see any reason for you to be in this bed, much less the tubes. We'll see what we can do about getting you released. Ok?"

She faced away from the doctor.

"Nurse, why is this patient restrained?"

The nurse returned, without a chart, "To keep her from pulling the tubes herself, Doctor."

"Well, we'll be taking them out first, then." He looked at the girl, "Don't worry, I've done this before. It'll be a little uncomfortable, you'll want to gag for a few minutes, but you'll be fine."

He anesthetized her throat with a spray, then removed the tube.

She coughed violently, but slowly calmed down as more unpleasant tubes were removed.

"How's your leg feeling," the doctor asked, now that she could speak.

She coughed, cleared her throat, then said, "You don't remember me, do you?"

He studied her face, "Were you one of my patients in LA? I did a lot of volunteer work at a free clinic—"

She looked at her leg, "Never mind."

"You're ready to have that thing off so you can get out of here and go back to playing with the other kids. I understand."

They cut the cast, X-rayed the leg, then released her.

The doctor was telling the nurse about the new place the base had gotten him in the valley as their patient walked out the door and into the halls.

Shadona found her way back to her room. The door was open. She sat on Dana's bed.

"They took all your stuff, again," Dana said.

"A dentist X-rayed it several times. I think I can remove it, but I don't know for sure. It's trickier than I thought. Even with good equipment—"

"It's killed everyone who tried. Everyone."

Shadona looked at the ransacked remains of her things, her tossed and shredded mattress had chunks of stuffing missing from where they cut into it. "He asked me how I could stand to be outside so long," she stared at her feet, head slumped. "It was easy. I wasn't here."

Dana hugged her friend, "Well, I missed you."

"I'd come back for you. You know that."

The lights blinked off for two seconds, then came back. The six-minute warning.

Shadona lay on her back, on Dana's bed, nearest the wall.

Dana went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth.

The bathroom was at the opposite end of the tiny room as the door. The sink was built into the top of the toilet. A standup shower was next to it, simple drain in the floor and a tap tying it into the valves on the sink. Concrete walls, ceiling, and floor. The bathroom had only a privacy curtain separating it from the room. A single, fold-down bed was built into each wall. Folded up, they revealed a desk and storage box, much the way of bunks on a carrier. The room was ten feet by ten feet, including the bathroom.

It was smaller than a jail cell.

She had shared the doctor's home, and two of his friends' homes as well. They had spacious yards, large rooms, lots of nice things. But it wasn't the things that impressed her. They treated her kindly. They were friendly, genuine people. They tried to help her without knowing her. It was the strangest part of her entire stay away from this place.

They never ordered her around. Never demanded— they asked her what she wanted. That was the most difficult part of the outside to get used to. They never told her where to go or what to do.

She stared up at the ceiling and listened to Dana brush. This ceiling looked a lot like the ceiling in the hospital. The bed felt much the same, made of the same grade of foam. They had shoved a tube down her throat as punishment for her refusal to talk. Symbolic.

They kept her restrained to the bed for weeks. Never allowed to sit or stand or even roll to her side.

She lay on her back now, even though she was no longer restrained.

She listened to Dana spit and rinse.

The lights blinked again, the door made a sliding sound as it motored closed. Dana lay beside her, in the same bed, as the lights turned out. Two nightlights were the only illumination in the room, just bright enough to make out shapes and make it to the bathroom. Moonlight. Her eyes slowly adjusted as the door made its mechanical thud to lock.

The doors in the outside world locked from the inside. These were locked from the outside.

Shadona pressed her hand against the concrete wall. She could feel the boring equipment grinding away the mostly rock mountain. She rolled to her side to make more room for Dana on the bed, held her friend's hand, then tried to sleep.

She rarely slept in her bed anyway.

Thunk. . . Boommmmm! Fizzz hisss. . .

It was an early morning firing of the harvester. Most of the time, they fired it in the evening, just before dusk. That had proven to be the most profitable time, most days, barring local thunderstorms. They must have been selling extra power, or were anticipating an extra load. The rattling woke Dana.

It was odd for a weekend.

"The boring equipment eats a lot of power," Shadona said, waiting for the lights to come on.

Dana covered her eyes with her hands, prepared for the lights.

Blink, blink blink, Hmmm. The tubes flickered on.

It was cleaning and inspection day. The door would unlock in a few hours, then roll open on its own. Dana was the first to sit, then go to the bathroom. Shadona rested her hand on the warm spot left on the pillow.

Dana was her last real friend in this place.

The XO had threatened to do Dana harm, yet they both knew that was an empty threat. The girls were under intense scrutiny, most of the time. Psychologists were undoubtedly reviewing the tapes for any angle to exploit. Dana was an angle.

Had she many friends in this place, harming Dana would work, especially with the threat of harming other friends. But Dana was all she had. Harming Dana would harden her resolve against them. Threatening was a sign of desperation.

She smiled as her hand moved to catch the fleeting warmth leaving the bed. The cast was off, but she wouldn't be cleared to fly for another six months. If then.

The base was in a bad spot, like catching a tiger by the tail; they can't hope to kill the tiger, and they can't possibly let go without the fear of getting clobbered. They couldn't bar her from flight because they didn't have the keys, and the only other person on the base who had any mastery of its systems was Dana. They had already lost other pilots and planes by thinking anyone could fly it.

They eventually had to relent because they learned something with each flight. She had only to wait.

She got up and started cleaning.

They had trashed Dana's stuff too, but replaced them already.

All the pencils in the desks were broken into pieces no longer than an inch. Same with pens, in the way that pens could be broken. The hard plastic tip was reduced to the size of the cap, the long ink tubes flopping out the ends.

It was needless, ridiculous, almost juvenile of them to break such things. But that was sadly typical for here.

Constant needling. Any little thing they could think of.

She arranged them, then slowly sorted her way through the remains of her things, folded, and stored her clothes. The mattress was a total loss. They scrubbed the floors and bathroom, then polished the stainless mirror until hints of reflections appeared.

They stood at attention near their assigned beds and waited for the door to unlock.

The doors near the end of the hall motored open with the usual squeaks and clanks. The inspection should be soon.

Punishment usually entailed gardening or cooking detail. Summer meant gardening, and the sunny side of the mountain had been terraced especially for that purpose.

When Shadona was four, she had read an article on famine in arid regions. That was before they censored news from the outside. Within six months, she had bred a potato and thin corn that could grow in 150-degree dirt as poor as sand on a quarter of the water. The detailed plans were in the first notebook they ever stole from her. She had even accurately projected the identifying characteristics of each variant that would be needed as a part of a sustained breeding program.

She compulsively wrote in notebooks most of her life. Had they asked her for it, she probably would have given it freely. But they took it instead, like they owned it.

They had a greenhouse in a restricted part of the garden that still housed the offspring of her original program. The house replicated the arid air and temperature swings almost perfectly. She had hoped to help end the suffering she had read about, but never saw any signs of it ever going beyond that off-limits glass house.

The terrace implemented a labor-intensive method that quadrupled the yield per acre. The edge of each level, or step, started with a narrow row of sprouts. Each row on each level had progressively older, taller plants. Every so many weeks, the oldest row would be harvested, and each row would be moved toward the back as more seeds were planted. Younger, smaller plants could be grown much closer together, but they soon crowded unless they were transplanted further apart.

With shovels, that would be a nightmare amount of labor. They used automated equipment, rain storage tanks, and a rather intricate way of shuffling around the plants and pumping soil. But it still required a lot of hands-on labor and supervision to keep from destroying healthy plants.

It also delivered a constant level of food instead of giant harvesting surges.

The stalks were ground, roots and all, and sent to a pit for processing into soil.

The pit was another of her stolen ideas.

It consisted of a matrix of moisture permeable vertical pipes filled with thousands of termite colonies assembled like fuel rods in a nuclear reactor. The termites ate the stalks and emitted methane. Their feces were then moved to a digester that leached huge amounts of methane from it before returning it to the field as fertilizer. Some of the methane was used to pull nitrogen from the air, but the bulk of it was turned into synthetic fuels for the airplanes and base vehicles.

The termites themselves were rendered into hundreds of tons of high protein animal feed. It was incredibly efficient, but like the potatoes kept under glass, she saw no signs of it ever leaving the mountain.

They worked the field most of the day. It kept them away from the staff and almost everyone from this place, which made it feel like a reward instead of the punishment it was intended.

She had even made them a deal to reveal the secrets to a project they were interested in with practical military applications. She and a friend were to be freed after she told. She told, but nobody was ever freed. Now, most of her friends were dead, and Dana was the only one who remained.

She no longer took them at their word.

"Captain Dysath," the XO said, entering the workshop.

"Yes Sir," the captain checked his watch as he quickly covered the distance to the door, "Sorry, Sir, I haven't filed that report on—"

"Oh, this isn't about that," the XO gestured, "Let's talk in your office, shall we?"

"Yes Sir." Inside they stood near the desk as the captain shuffled the scattered papers there.

"Look, I got some of that red tape cleared for you. Like I said, it'll come in little slivers." He handed the captain the file. "Same rules apply. It's either on your person, or in your safe at all times."

The captain nodded.

"This was the first with direct military applications."

The captain briefly thumbed through it. "This looks like—"

The XO nodded. "Someone left some old comic books on a table for the kids. One of them was—"

"Iron Man? She built an Iron Man suit?"

"Well, sort of. It doesn't fly or any of the cool comic book stuff, and it looks more like the Michelin man. But it is a self-powered armored suit. Very impressive, two-ton work capacity, only weighs two hundred thirty pounds, and you climb into it like a sleeping bag. It has cost issues, but it can take a hell of a hit. We have four of them on the base. As you see, they are really uncomplicated."

The captain spread out the pages on his desk. "She corrected these errors and drew lines through the superfluous systems. How did you get her to do that?"

"What we did, won't work again."

The captain looked up from the pages. He was tempted to try to pursue that question, but didn't. If it wouldn't work again, there was no point. "The process she used to make the armor plates looks very familiar."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It isn't the same. But I think this helps a lot, I'm just not sure how, yet. It's more chemistry than the raw physics of the plane— chemistry isn't my field, you understand." He looked the XO in the eyes. "I've got a friend that can make more sense of—"

"Sorry, out of the question."

"Had to ask. I'll break out my old chemistry books. It isn't beyond me, I dabbled with being a chemistry major, I'm just not at this level, not sure anyone is."

"Well, Captain, don't lose focus of your current project, it has priority."

"Yes Sir."

"And don't ever let any of this out of your sight, it never leaves this room."

"Yes Sir."

"Send your report up when you get a chance, and don't let this distract you."

"Yes Sir."

The XO left while the captain was swamped with paperwork, both new and old.

He should have started on the overdue report, but he couldn't put down the new material. He kept looking for some pattern to how and where she placed the mistakes, now that he had a drawing complete with corrections. He got lost, consumed by them for hours.

He was hoping for a 'Beautiful Mind' moment where it would all suddenly make sense, but there was no pattern. Except, that to find the mistakes, you had to be smart enough to build it from scratch, which didn't help him at all.

Top of his class at MIT. Had he submitted even one of these ideas, he would have instantly been a tenured professor for life. Just one. Even had it been written in crayons. Yet, they were all interconnected.

He looked at the knotted string by his diploma. An enormous amount of energy went into decoding that, and it basically called him an idiot. Everything she did had those twisted little knots.

Thunk. . . Boommmmm! Fizzz hisss. . .

The harvester was collecting its dusk crop of bolts. He wasn't a hard-core military man. Strategy didn't play well in his head. The intricacies of move and counter move were not where his talent lay. But he tried to pretend that he had such a mind. The way she seamlessly wove devastating mistakes into her notes was proof that she could reduce any of her creations into worthless junk at any moment of her choosing. A military that planned on heavily incorporating her technology into their core systems would have a vested interest in keeping her from being exploited by enemies, foreign and domestic.

Beyond that, she seemed to invent on a curve. Could any country afford to let the next HB-4 go to the highest bidder? It was a tough spot to be in. He didn't envy it at all. Yet, it was all a pity too. What was the world losing keeping her here? What if Einstein had been killed by the Nazis before WWII? Where would the world of physics be without all that one man contributed?

He rubbed his eyes, got another cup of coffee, then returned to the photocopies of crayon drawings.

The lights blinked their warning in the dorms. Shadona was still in the shower when the door locked with a metallic thud and the lights turned as dim as a slivered moon. She toweled and dressed in the dark, then found her way to Dana's bed again.

Her mattress had been replaced, but she disliked sleeping alone.

Truth be told, that was the hardest part of her stay strapped to a hospital bed. Being alone.
Chapter 7

Max hated spending summer break at his mother's. And why wouldn't he? He spent an entire month hiding behind the water heater and under the bed. It was humiliating to Max to be walked on a leash. He hated sidewalks, detested cars, and unlike in the woods, he seemed afraid of city dogs.

And Argo was tired of answering the standard on-the-street Max questions, "Yes, he's cute, and yes, he's fully armed and very dangerous." Silly city folk, never seen someone walking a cat on a leash.

The city wasn't his element either, but at least he adapted better than Max. He had shopping and movies and malls and arcades and paintball. Max had water heaters and endless city sounds that drove him nuts.

Fortunately, their stay at his mother's was nearly over.

His mother seemed to be feeling him out on his father. She had burned through a lot of money, recently. She bought a restaurant immediately after the split, and it struggled ever since. She pumped more money into it and had yet to nurture it into a comeback.

Restaurants took more than good food. You had to know your neighborhood, know their tastes. It also had to look the part, to feel like it belonged. It had to have the right atmosphere too. The price had to fit.

Their success in California had made it look deceptively easy. California style wasn't popular everywhere. They were more laid back here. She had adjusted the menus three times, remodeled twice, and this was the first year she managed to break even.

But breaking even was a thin thread to hang on to.

She hadn't realized how hard the business was. Finding quality suppliers, budget deals, negotiating contracts, it all distracted from the art of running the place. She had discovered that it was a very difficult thing to run alone. His father may not have made an attentive husband, but he made an excellent business partner.

His mom was no better a cook than his father, but she thought she was. She was always trying new recipes, most strange and unsuccessful— she just didn't know that she wasn't a chef. And she didn't want to accept it, even when she was told. And that tended to cause most of the unneeded friction at the restaurant.

Tonight's strange meal was breaded bell peppers stuffed with a paste made from eggplant, tomatoes, soy and cream cheese.

It was edible. Barely.

Unless you asked Max. Max sniffed, sampled, then treated it like fish heads and went back to his canned cat food.

People went to a restaurant for much more than the food. They went for dating, for family, for an experience. What kept them coming back was the food and the price. Of course, the wrong food and price could drive them away too. Much like with Max, what you offered had to be better than what they could get from a can, no matter how nice the presentation was.

Max went to the door and started to scratch.

"Can you wait a minute, Max?" Argo said from the living room where he was watching TV. The show was just getting to the good part where they revealed who the killer was.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. . .

Argo looked for his shoes.

Scratch.

"Oh for the love of. . . " he threw his pillow at the chair across the room, fiddled with the remote to record the ending, then hastily checked to see what was scheduled next, knowing he'd miss the beginning.

Scratch, scratch—Scratch, Scratch!

"I'm coming, Kid!" he worked the laces.

Max heard him moving around and usually gave him a few seconds of grace.

Now was going to be the hard part. The cat demanded to be outside, for whatever reasons. But the cat also hated the leash. The cat never wore a collar. Never. Except now. It was a cheap, retractable, Dollar Store leash. He wrapped it figure eight style around Max's front legs, much like it was a bra, clipping it back to the leash.

Max, of course, did not hold still for any of it.

He opened the door and realized it was raining.

Max hesitated, but bolted out to the full length of the leash. Argo barely had time to grab the umbrella and lock the door.

Max ran straight for the first public trashcan, jumped onto its rim, and promptly toppled it onto the sidewalk.

"Oh for the love of pizza!" He wanted to yank on the leash. Max weighed a few pounds at most. He could toss the cat like a yo-yo, but that was a dangerous thing to do. Instead, he walked over and pulled the cat out as gently as possible. "Look at you, just look at you." He held the cat above his head, "Take you to the city and all you want to do is role in the garbage."

He hadn't even had the chance to open his umbrella yet.

He tried to hold leash, cat, and umbrella in one hand while he righted the can and started cleaning the mess. When a police officer pulled over and flashed the lights at him. The officer got out of the car and approached while he managed to get the last piece into the can.

"What's going on here?" the officer asked, water dripping off the brim of his shower-capped hat.

"Just cleaning up the spilled can, that's all."

"Not what I'm talking about," the officer said, "Care to try again."

Argo looked depressed, he wanted desperately to use one of his smart-ass remarks, but he couldn't to a police officer. "Just taking the cat for a walk."

"You have a license for that? You can't just walk a dangerous creature—"

"I have the license here. It's on the handle of— Sorry, my hands are full here," he hooked the umbrella on the can, then handed the officer the handle to the leash. "The tags are right there. I know it's an unusual cat to have, but you can see, he's had all his shots. No risk of rabies."

The officer looked at the tags tied to the leash handle. They looked legit. The dates were current, and police officers didn't enforce pet laws that much.

"I even brought baggies, but Max doesn't go outside in the city. He just likes to walk outside. He really likes to play on bus benches. Usually he waits until it is absolutely the most inconvenient time for me."

"We have a leash and collar law, here—"

"Well, you see, he nearly choked when he got his collar stuck on the furniture and—"

The officer handed the leash handle back. "The law is there to protect your animal if it runs out the door when you aren't watching."

"Yes Sir." Arguing seldom improved things with the police.

"Your animal still armed?"

"Yes Sir. He spends most of his time at my father's house, which is in the mountains. You can't disarm a cat like this without making him an indoor cat. And, as you can see," Argo hoped the officer had observed the absurdity of Argo's position, dripping wet, outside a house, in the rain, walking a cat, "he really hates being an inside cat."

The officer looked at him, then the oblivious, increasingly wet cat in his arms.

Argo opened the umbrella and set down the cat, this time with the shortest of leash.

"For an animal that hates to be inside, you should find a way to keep some tags on him."

"He is micro chipped." Max stood on his hind legs and rested his front feet against the trashcan again.

"Animal control would put your pet down if they were called, chip or not, but they'd think twice if he had a collar on. Maybe a little vest or something that wouldn't—"

"That's an excellent idea!" Argo didn't care, but like his father complained with his job, they just want to hear they were right, "I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner."

The officer smiled, nodded, then got out of the rain.

Flattery worked almost every time.

Max ran for the empty bench, climbed the back, ran across the armrest, then back across the underside of the seat like a squirrel. Max loved the bench. It was like his own version of an amusement park.

He played on it, in the rain, for nearly two hours. Then he ate some grass and ran back home.

His mom spent most of her time at the restaurant. She had to open it in the morning and was usually the last one there at night. She met most of her boyfriends there, and she tended to nurture the staff and customers like they were family.

She had him stay with her for school break, but the only way he got to see her was when he drove the five miles to the restaurant for a late dinner. Drove, in this case, meant scooter. It was nowhere near as fun to drive as the dirt-bike, but it was street legal.

He parked around the back of the kitchen where he could chain it to some pipes, then walked in.

He flirted with Kelly, his favorite waitress, unsuccessfully. She always took him as joking.

"Here's your waffles, Cutie," she said, setting down the plate and rubbing his head like he was a ten-year-old kid.

Estafon was chefing tonight, and Estafon knew how to make some waffles. Argo got his free, so, he always had to wait until the chef had time. Paying customers always came first. It had just the perfect mix of fresh blueberries, a perfect pattern of whipped topping to hold in the rich syrup with a crisscrossing of chocolate. Dessert was a warm waffle, sprinkled with chocolate chips instead of berries, two scoops of rocky road, and a cherry. Uhhh. . . it was almost too much!

His mom stopped by his table a few times, but was too busy to stay and talk.

He watched families come in and eat, together, while he sat alone.

He waited to see if her last boyfriend came in. He never did. That confirmed it was over, like he thought.

He left in time to catch his favorite primetime TV shows.

Max jumped on the couch, sprung to the armrest, then calmly walked across the back of the couch till he was above Argo's feet. Max looked at him, then squatted and watched the TV.

Argo returned his attention there as well.

It was a commercial about a female hygiene product. Why that would interest Max, he didn't—"Owwwh!!"

Max attacked his toes.

"God, Max!" but he couldn't get but so mad, he had been wiggling his toes, a clear invitation to play.

Max hadn't bitten his toe very hard. It was startling, but a playful attack.

Max jumped to the floor, walked to the other end of the couch, put his front paws by Argo's shoulders, then hopped up onto his chest.

He did his best to pet his cat into submission.

The front door unlocked as his mom came in, threw her stuff in a pile by the lamp, and plopped on the chair by the TV.

"Long night?" Argo asked.

"You better believe."

"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?" He turned the volume down.

"Well, Friday night is usually a good night. We almost make enough on Friday and Saturday to float through the rest of the week. I think your free assortment sample idea instead of a thing of bread is working out. It was real expensive the first few nights we tried it, but a few toothpicks full of samples really helped bring people back. And putting tags on the toothpicks really helped people remember what they liked. It's been a month since the last sample night and we're still finding people ordering by reading the number off a toothpick they carry in their purse or wallet. And they keep asking when the next sample night will be."

Argo smiled, "It was Dad's idea."

"You didn't tell him I was having trouble with—"

"I just said something about you not finding your niche yet, and he said it would help you find what menu items work and what didn't. Market research on the cheap."

"Well, he doesn't need to know about my business."

"Ok ok. Look, it just came up, that's all."

She leaned forward, "He asked?"

"Oh, I don't know, it just came up. You know, conversation."

She got up. "Well, you tell him it's doing better than ever, no thanks to him." She huffed straight for the shower.

Max came out from his hiding spot behind the chair. When his mom was living in the mountain, Max was never afraid of her. Now, it took him ten or twenty minutes to get used to having her in the room every day. Max didn't like change.

Did-Dump. "You at your mom?" Dara messaged.

He was online for other things. Argo didn't really want to answer her. "Yes," he typed. He had hoped to make the most of his stay and hook up with Kelly. Kelly was a freshman in college, was tall, thin, blond, and shapely. Dara was just convenient and comfortable. Being rude to Dara would get him out of these awkward conversations, and he had often thought of just making up a fight every time he went to stay at his mom's. It would free him of guilt, and when he went back to his father's he could always blame the fight on stress about having to go to his mom's. He had it planned out. But, nothing was happening with Kelly, so, there was no gain in being rude. "I can't wait to see you again. Dad'll be here in a few weeks to take me home."

":) !! xoxox"

He paused in his response. He liked Dara, but he didn't love her, and he doubted that he ever would. She, on the other hand. . . If he told her he didn't love her, she would cut him off. So, he lied, as usual. He tried to avoid the actual words, whenever he could, but he would say them just to keep the door to her room unlocked. He flirted with every key, even though she was hours away.

He spent the next ten minutes making sure that door stayed open to him.

. . .

His father's schedule was a chaotic nightmare. He usually had to spend a week away, and the job could easily have him in any state, week to week. Knowing when he was going to be able to pick Argo up and take him home months in advance was impossible to do. His father struggled with his job too.

He called three days ago and notified them that he would be available this weekend.

Which was today. Max hated being at his mom's. Hated it. But just try to round him up to take him back to the mountains. It was a nightmare, and Max wasn't the kind of cat that you could manhandle into a cage. And you certainly didn't chase him around the house, or cage him when he didn't want to be caged.

It was an all day affair, and Max was highly suspicious.

"Max," Argo lay on his stomach in front of the water heater, "you like the mountains. You want to come with me, don't you?"

Max did a small circle, but didn't come out.

He worked his hand around back to touch the cat's nose. "See, it's ok." He tried to work his fingers under the cat in order to pick him up, but Max protested with a hiss. "Ok, that was too far, and clearly wrong of me." He went back to petting, which Max approved of.

A plate of scrambled eggs and cheese had already gotten cold sitting in front of the heater, trying to tempt the cat out.

Max would walk on the surface of the sun to eat scrambled eggs and cheese, but not today. Today, Max wouldn't even eat it off the tip of Argo's finger.

Eventually, as always happens, Max came out, when Max wanted. He came out after Argo had given up and microwaved some restaurant leftovers for lunch. When the clanking of silverware stopped, Max was there to lick the plate clean.

Putting him in the cage was tough. Max cried, constantly, making for a very long car ride. They had thought of giving Max a sleeping pill, or a very tiny portion of a sleeping pill, but nobody could accurately measure a portion of a pill that small. Alcohol was also contemplated, but nobody knew what kind of drunk Max would be, and the risk of an angry drunk Max was too horrible to contemplate.

Max's cage was big. It was sized for a mid-sized dog and had a nice pillow, a bowl of water, and a fleece hammock in the top half. But Max spent most of his time trying to work the lock with his claws, and crying for someone to let him out.

Which of course was odd because Max slept and played in his cage all the time. Just never with the door closed.

His father showed up late.

They rode the two hours home squeezed into his father's hybrid.

Argo slept for most of it. Max, of course, did not.

"Wake up, Son, we're here," his father said. But, they weren't there yet. Instead, they were at the bottom of the mountain, near where Dara's house was. They had a small lot at the bottom of the mountain in addition to the thirty acres up high. They were parked in a three-sided garage and had to move all their stuff from the hybrid to the 4WD SUV, the only thing that could make it up their driveway to the house on the top of the hill. The garage was where the mailbox was.

The SUV backfired when it started, smoked for a few minutes, then powered up the narrow graveled path that wound its way up to the house, just as it started to rain.

As they raced to unload the SUV, the rain turned into buckets and the sky clapped with thunder. They heard the valley rumbling. The radio in the SUV had warned listeners to prepare for a severe thunderstorm and take immediate cover as it rolled through.

But, before it could reach them, an eight-second-long bolt struck the base, and the storm lost all of its steam. The rain even became more subdued.

Max was the gladdest one to be home. Or maybe that joy was just to be free of the cage. . .
Chapter 8

Knocking the steam out of a storm was easy for the harvester. Most of the time, they were able to work it into their regular recharge cycle without any problem. It was impossible to say whether it affected the amount of rainfall, empirically, but theoretically there was no plausible way that it reduced the quantity of water suspended in the air, and thus was unlikely to reduce the amount to fall. It did reduce the storm's self-generated winds, sometimes to a near stand still, and that did let it linger longer and allowed more rain to fall on the valley around the base. They were still in the research phase of figuring out, exactly, how much power any particular storm contained.

They had already disproved almost all conventional theories on lightning and had generated several new ones. Textbooks said that lightning was generated by the friction between colliding ice crystals. That now looked a bit like ignoring the wings and saying that feathers were the secret to flight. Though friction had some measurable effects on the strength of storms, they were in a position to declare that theory null and void.

They were able to attract lightning at will, even on cloudless skies, by firing a ball of frozen conducting dust into the air. Pulling down a storm only offered a small fraction of additional power, and that difference, they figured, was due to the friction theory.

The prevailing thought amidst the harvester crew was that the true power behind lightning was coming from an interaction between solar wind, the planet's rotation, and the magnetosphere. The reason why lightning coincided with violent rain storms was the ice crystals and water made better conductors than dry air, in much the same way that you can tell you need to replace your car's wiring harness by watching the sparks dance under the hood on a foggy day.

Unfortunately, the confidentiality agreements the staff signed prevented any from releasing all this accumulated data to the world. The idea that you could harvest lightning was itself a guarded secret.

Captain Dysath poured over his notes again. The harvester crew talked freely to him, and in front of him, and his ears were a new sounding board to all these theories.

The secret was becoming more important to keep than ever before. They were a year or two from turning it from free energy into a weapon of unbelievable power. Potentially more impressive than the HB-4.

Dysath drummed his pen against the table, "Guys," he said, "let me tap your vast harvesting experience for a second." He pressed the pen against his lips as he tried to form words around his idea, "What would it take to reverse all this?"

They looked at him blankly.

"Sorry, uh," he spun the pen between his fingers like a cheerleader twirled a baton, "Look, you know this is for dropping conventional bombs, pretty much anywhere on the planet. But, how hard would it be to, say, have a lightning bolt follow it in?"

They looked at him, amused at first.

Hanly put his hand on the shoulder of one of his staff, "I think we can swing that, don't you?"

The team took it all in. "It shouldn't be much harder than what we do on a daily basis," one said.

"Without the coils underneath, it would be devastating, especially if it airburst in—"

"A conductive cloud."

Dysath drummed his pen again, "Look, we have a few years before this project will be ready to test any of this, right? But, that's where I'm thinking right now."

"I have a question, Captain Dysath," one of Hanly's staff addressed him, "have we done any of the G-force calculations on what these guidance systems are going to experience? I mean, no doubt we can lob it up there, we got enough power to spare to land them on Mars, but we can't aim it like a gun from down here. The re-entry instrumentation has to take being hit with the kind of bat this base can swing. You see what I'm say—"

"I know. We've done those numbers and it's a problem we haven't quite conquered yet. We were hoping to modify some of the guided tank rounds, but they just barely fall short of the specs we need. I'd still like to be able to add something extra to it when it comes down."

"Is he cleared for HB fuel?" one of Hanly's men asked.

Hanly tapped him on the shoulder, "Go get some." The guy left the room while Hanly addressed Dysath, "It's the fuel specially designed to run in the HB-4 for speeds that, well, exceed the airspace we have cleared. The harvester makes it. It eats a lot of power when we turn it on, but we tend to think of it as long-term power storage because these harvester units, as impressive as they are, can't store power much longer than a week." He was handed a small cup of it. "If you pour it slow enough, it makes a pile." He drizzled some out on the table and it looked like a white Hershey Kiss. He bumped the table and it fell into a puddle. "Go ahead and touch it, it feels slicker than oil."

Dysath touched it, "What is it?"

"It's N60. It's nitrogen in a very stable form." He coated the tip of his pencil with a thin film, then held a lighter under it. "It's very stable, as you can see. But, if you put enough energy into it," he switched to a pocket torch and the tiny drop exploded like a huge firecracker. He had to pull splinters out of his finger. "Damn, remind me not to do that again."

"Wow," Dysath said, "and lightning breaks nitrogen out of the air naturally. You might have something."

They continued to discuss and refine their plans. He had known the HB-4 was a multi-fuel platform, but N60 was news to him. They showed him the specs on it as well. He knew from his chemistry days that nitrogen had some incredibly tight bonds. Like coiling a spring, on the atomic level, you could store a lot of power in these nearly weightless molecules. When he looked at the numbers, it was shocking. But he shouldn't have been shocked, nitrogen was the key ingredient in high explosives.

Because it took so much energy to get it to burn, it wasn't suitable for normal use. In a way, it was like flying using nitroglycerin as fuel, you just couldn't justify it for ordinary, sub-hypersonic speeds. But, it would allow a small plane, like the HB-4, to circle the planet on a single tank. It had those kinds of energy densities.

The base had been selling N60 as a secret additive to enhance conventional explosives for the last few years. Probably one of those 'off books' revenue streams the XO was talking about.

When Dysath got to see the equipment, he recognized it immediately. It was an intact, functioning cousin to the self-destructive instruments that made the skin.

The computer core had survived, partially, the destruction of the HB-3. With everything else he was involved in, Dysath was finally cleared to view it.

The computer techs had the cleanest lab on the base.

The core was optical and, to the naked eye, looked like clear to speckled colored glass. It almost had to be optical to handle the staggering amount of simultaneous processing it did, but he knew very little about this niche of computer science. At least, by comparison to the guys that lived in this room.

The wings had a web of optical fibers that connected to this device. It took their signals and drew the inside of the canopy. The computer science guys had yet to figure out how it did it. It saw a lot like the eyes on a bee. Thousands, millions of little eyes were woven into the skin, and somehow the computer combined them into a single, layered image. It wasn't quite his field, but it was another piece of the puzzle.

They were struggling to reverse engineer it too.

The secret to how it handled high Gs was integrated into this complex computer system, indirectly. They called it the womb.

Inside the plane was an escape-pod like device designed to survive ejection at hypersonic speeds. A helmet and a chair wouldn't do; wind resistance at speeds over mach 4 was sufficient to melt aluminum and pluck arms off bodies. To make it survivable, it used an egg-like pod with seats in it. The pod contained the screen and controls, gave the pilot additional shielding, and made it possible to survive ejection at any speed. What they just recently learned was the additional features.

The womb floated inside the plane. The plane could go into a rapid corkscrew, as if it was shot out of a rifled gun, but the pilot would stay stationary as the plane revolved around him. The view from the pilot's seat would not be spinning, thanks to the optical computer.

Throw the plane into a hard bank or a dive, and the womb was free to position itself such that every maneuver felt the same to the pilot. The Gs were always vectored to do the least harm, back into the seat. It even rocked slightly to assist with circulating blood to all the extremities. Speculation was it might even be capable of CPR. But flying a free-floating womb was disorienting to pilots trained conventionally and had contributed to the crashes.

The technologies were interdependent. Without the computer to compile the screen in real time, you couldn't have the womb. Without the womb, you couldn't take the Gs or survive ejection, and no hairpin, hypersonic maneuverability.

The womb was even positioned in the central axis of the plane.

The processor was incredibly powerful, yet it used almost no power at all. He doubted video processing was all it could do.

Shadona removed her ring from atop the laptop's DVD laser, then pushed the tray closed.

'Installation complete' faded from the tiny message box on the screen.

She put the ring back on her finger, then returned to the chair.

The professor entered the room and sat behind his desk.

"Look, Shadona, your work has been less than satisfactory, lately," he said. "You clearly know the material—"

"I've already done this work. It's parked in slot D168. You're just trying to assign, piecemeal, my video processing— It's really insulting that you thought you could trick me into it."

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to fail you—"

"Fail me?" She tried to control herself, "How much did you net from the 3D rendering protocol you claimed to invent eight years ago?" She pounded her fist near his jar of sharpened pencils, "Haven't I made you enough money yet? Professor of computer science. . . " She shook her head in disgust, "Plagiarist of the decade."

He grabbed for the pencils, but she got to them first.

She stabbed one into the table an inch from his elbow, catching his sleeve. "When you go home for the weekend and put this place miles behind you, try to get it out of your mind that stealing from a little girl paid for everything you own. Fail me at your own peril, Professor." She broke the eraser off the pencil's end and left it, center of his desk, as she calmly left the room.

At the end of the day, the Professor marked down an F by her name in his laptop, then packed it up and headed home. He felt no remorse for anything he had done. His letter grade would keep her from being cleared to fly, at the very least, but should also ensure additional chores be added to the insolent girl.

He envisioned her scrubbing lots of toilets while he spent time at his mountain retreat with his latest wife, sipping wine in a hot tub.

The money the arrogant girl had referred to had long since been spent by his first wife. He rolled up the charger and placed it in the laptop bag, then slung it to his shoulder.

The other children on the base had completed the assigned program, rather efficiently. She may have been his smartest student, but she was by no means irreplaceable. Within the next few years, processing power was projected to increase to a level where near real time could be done conventionally, without her fancy optical system. Thanks to the program the class completed, he finally had a functioning work around.

He no longer needed her.

He made a note to stop and buy some celebratory cigars on his way through town.

He should have tested her video processing software better, he could have garnered a much higher price had she given him the complete specs. It had since become the backbone to well over 30% of all PCs, and was now part of the millions of lines of hidden code that were burned onto chips that nobody ever knew existed, but couldn't live without. He should have gotten so much more for it. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

The guard waved his car through.

Shadona ran her hand across the undamaged skin, right near the patched hole. It would be a blind spot, of sorts. The optics could not be easily repaired. But, the way it was designed, it shouldn't be noticeable. Most of it was redundant anyway. Two or three threads were technically sufficient for each side. She made sure her ring lingered long enough to synchronize with the onboard system.

Optics. She chose optical systems for the raw speed, but it went beyond that. Optical processing could handle multiple wavelengths simultaneously with the same physical hardware.

If measured, the onboard system would be considered clustered parallel processing that exceeded the range of most supercomputers, held in a 6x6 box. It was essentially memory that could pretend to be a CPU, if you knew how to ask. By blurring that distinction, it made it nearly impossible to reverse engineer because neither the memory nor the processing structure physically existed. If given a problem, it would write its own code and design a CPU that most efficiently solved it. In flight, it needed targeting formulas, video processing, trajectory calculations, and autopilot functions. When sitting on the ground, it turned processing power into memory again. It watched everything. Heard everything. The base was not the only one with surveillance equipment. It cliff-noted everything for her.

The professor had been trying to build replacements to these core systems for years. Her optics could track a swarm of gnats at six miles out. Not the swarm, but each gnat, yet it wasn't able to help with her tooth. It could tell the tooth received a signal from a satellite on rotating frequencies and at periodic intervals, but it was buried in random noise. The plane was more than capable of targeting and destroying satellites, but that would offer no relief. The tooth was activated when it didn't receive a signal, not by the signal itself. The processor was working to crack that code so she could carry a portable device that would let her simply walk out. But that wasn't an ideal solution either. Whatever signal-emitting device she could design would make her even easier for them to find. Code cracking was just something it did with idle time.

The tooth had to go.

The systems on her plane were more telescope, when the tooth needed a microscope. The entire base seemed to be in a race against her to see who could reverse engineer their problem first. To that end, she had broadened its programming. It now employed a kind of evolution where random ideas would compete and compile winning strategies in a virtual kind of free-for-all. It was a long shot, but the tiny plutonium battery would power it for the next eighty years, why not give it something useful to think about while it was parked.

It came up with one solution already that had a 43% chance of success. It used a modified 45 cartridge and fired a bullet from inside her mouth and out her cheek, removing tooth and bone at the same time. There was only a 36% chance she would die from bone fragments entering her brain, an 11% chance she would bleed to death, and a 10% chance that the poison, or whatever the unknown substance was, wouldn't be blown clear. Muscle damage was certain, as was disfigurement and bone fractures. It predicted a 42% chance of blacking out; if done alone, this increased the chance of drowning in her own blood and reduced her overall chances of surviving to less than 26%. Should the ever-evolving design reach 70% success, she may consider it.

She continued to do busy work for the enjoyment of the cameras, her real task was long done.

She felt bad for not telling Dana about any of this, but what Dana didn't know wouldn't harm her. Protecting Dana was important to her. To a degree, she resisted teaching her to fly it. But, that was the only way she could justify spending time with her friend. And it was a fun, sweet ride.

The password to her plane wasn't a password at all. It was a language. It talked to her, and she talked back. The projection screen was not one way. It knew who was in it and whether they were authorized, and it acted accordingly.

"You weren't at dinner tonight," Dana said in their room.

Shadona kept scribbling on the pad as she sat at her desk.

"You even hungry?"

The stubby little pencil kept moving in her hand.

Shadona was a compulsive writer. Compulsive. She could control the language it was written in, she could imbed errors, but she went through spells where she simply could not stop writing. When she was a child, she ran out of paper and wrote on the floors and walls, when her pen stopped writing, she scratched it into the paint. She would write until it was out of her mind, or she was so exhausted she passed out. Dana pulled rolls out of one of her massive jacket pockets, two apples out of the other, and set them on the clean spot on the page.

Shadona wrote to the first roll, moved it with her other hand, and continued to write. After a few minutes, in a weird instinctive way, she seemed to realize food was in her hand and connected the line that wasn't on the page. The line that connected food to hunger.

She ate while writing.

Dana pulled the mattress from Shadona's bed and laid it on the floor to the left of her friend's chair. She put wadded clothes and pillows to her right, then prepared for bed herself.

The lights went to dim, but the scratching of paper didn't pause. It was too dim to read, to even see if marks were making it to the page. Dana tried to sleep.

Dana woke that morning, shortly after the thud of her friend falling from the chair. It hadn't happened in several years. Dana looked over the papers at the desk. It was still too dark to make them out clearly.

Shadona had fallen on the clumps of clothes and pillows instead of the mattress. Dana couldn't get her up to bed, but she easily moved her friend to the more comfortable part of the floor. She gathered the papers at the desk, then went to the bathroom.

Dana closed the curtain and held them up to the tiny nightlight. These were partially in English, some German, and a few others she didn't recognize. Every inch of every page was used. Once it had been filled with one language, she wrote on top of that with another, and another, and another to compensate for the lack of hundreds of pages. Each language was rotated ninety degrees from the last.

She ripped them into tiny strips, then soaked them in hot water in the sink. In a few hours they would be soft like pudding and flush easily.

Dana had been through all of this before. Shadona didn't need to know what she wrote. She wrote to forget. She wrote to get tortured thoughts out of her head. Whatever it said should not be read by others. Even her. She ripped the pieces as small as she could.

While it soaked in the sink, she lay on the floor with her friend and hugged her from behind.
Chapter 9

Dysath was already cleared for the Michelin-Man suit, but seeing it in person was something else. It really resembled a less husky version of the decades old mascot for the tire company. The armor panels were rounded to deflect projectiles and reduce flat surfaces. They were layered in segments like shingles for easy replacement and free range of movement. Technically military equipment, they used it for heavy lifting in the construction project. It did have a two-ton capacity and easily got into tight spots no forklift ever could.

The back was open like a clam from the small of the back to the shoulders. He climbed up the ladder and down into it. It took every bit of his strength to move the right arm toward the controls built onto his left forearm. Balloons inflated inside the suit and gave him a snug fit as the back came up and sealed like the cockpit of an airplane. The helmet's face shield came down and air-conditioning circulated inside.

His arms moved effortlessly, like free falling out of an airplane.

Even so, it was still cumbersome and took some getting used to. His arms didn't hang naturally by his sides. He felt like the kind of muscle man who did so many weights that his own bulky muscles prevented him from putting his hands in his pockets.

An assistant checked the back then pointed to an iron bar, "You know you want to. Everybody does."

Dysath looked at the bar. It easily weighed fifty pounds. But it felt like nothing when he picked it up, then bent it into a horseshoe like it was a coat hanger. He couldn't help grinning as he worked his way through the training course designed to help users adjust to the new abilities and get used to balancing inside the suit.

The last test was stacking Ping-Pong balls without crushing them. It was by far the hardest.

Keeping his balance when lifting over a ton was difficult to master too. A forklift outweighed whatever it tried to lift, this suit only added a few hundred pounds to the weight of the user. It had to, it was designed to enter homes, walk hallways, go up steps, climb ladders, and other aspects of urban warfare. Built to be agile, yet still it withstood repeated hits with RPGs and rifle fire.

The suit ran on any blend of ordinary fuels and made lots of hydraulic sounds as he moved, but was otherwise as quiet as a refrigerator. He suspected the hydraulic sounds were loudest inside the suit.

It was perfect for wrestling heavy equipment in confining locations.

They were at the early stages of installing the heavy coils and already had two sets completed while the boring equipment continued its relentless dig.

Besides that, he had poured over the drawings to this thing for several hours every day and just wanted to experience it with his own two hands. It was something that as a non-pilot he couldn't do with the jet.

He easily held each nine hundred pound coil in place with one hand, while his other had the dexterity to install the mounting bolts. It was a completely unlocked technology that performed elegantly. The inflated balloons gave it a snug fit, provided a built-in airbag for impacts and falls, registered the motions of the driver, and gave it an easy way to cool the driver. It also gave him this weird feeling of floating inside the suit.

The floating feeling felt like success.

The XO returned to his office after inspecting the progress with the boring and installation. "Sorry," he said, shaking the hand of the man who was waiting outside the office, "It's been one of those days." He opened the door, "Come on in." The XO went around the desk and sat down.

"Thank you," the man said, sitting as well.

"Yes, well, what do you have for me?"

"Oh, yes. Well, it's an interesting case. I've read the lengthy background and, look, I'd love to do a personal interview with—"

"We'll see, after your report."

"Yes Sir. Well, based entirely on the tapes and the history file you provided, I'd have to say that your subject would almost without a doubt become intransigent if anything happened to her roommate," he looked up the name in the notes, "Dana. The subject's history is rather unique." He sat back in his chair. "Look, you have this really impressive dichotomy. She could sit in her room in complete defiance, and in fact that choice seems the closest to her personality, but she shows up in class on a regular basis. She shows up for punishment when there is really no reason for her to do so.

She isn't an anarchist, she could be extremely destructive if she chose to, so something else is happening here. You have some level of authority that is being respected, and that's something that can be worked with. You see this sometimes with returning POWs. They follow the basic rules to ensure the easiest stay under captivity, without divulging anything significant."

"I want you to meet with our staff psychologist who has been on this case from the beginning," the XO said, making a note on his calendar.

"Great," he said, "but, why fly me in on this when—"

"You have the needed clearance and were recommended. And lately, I've come to the realization that a fresh perspective can sometimes really turn things around. Look, if our psychologist clears it, I'll give you that meeting. But don't be surprised if she—"

"She'll sit, probably at attention, without moving or saying a word. No reaction at all, and she can probably do that for days on end. I understand the challenge, Sir, that's what makes this case so compelling."

They stood, saluted, then the guest left for his next appointment.

Shadona sat in the small room. She had been sitting there for the last few hours. Flight combat was over for the year. One of the boys had won. It was a heavily betted sport on the base, one that she could dominate at will, and the prestige from it often made life easier for her. The bets were a kind of currency to get others to do your assigned meaningless chores.

The HB-4 was the dominant platform, but she wasn't allowed to use it in the games. It was used strictly as a training tool to sharpen the skills of others. But seated in any other plane, she dominated as well. Being taken off flight was a punishment in and of itself, but the meaningless tasks around the base were assigned on the basis of grades and position in competitions. The amount of busywork she was being assigned was depressing. She had to pick something else to excel in, for now.

The doorknob twisted and a new man entered, freshly printed visitor badge clipped on his pocket.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, playing with his papers like his disorganized situation was anything but intentional. "I uh, this place is bigger than it looks. How far down inside this mountain does it go? Do you know?"

"To the bottom would be my guess."

He laughed more than was appropriate. "Yes, well, I suppose it has to, now, doesn't it." He set the papers in front of her such that the folder tabs were clearly visible, then put his hand on her forearm, "How have they been treating you, recently?"

She pulled her arm out from under his and gestured to the stack of papers.

"Yes, well, there are things reports don't show." He adjusted his chair so it was an inch closer to her, then sat, "Look, how long did they have you waiting?"

She didn't move.

"Why didn't you just leave after the first ten, twenty minutes? Why did you just stay seated in these uncomfortable chairs?"

She looked him in the eyes. This was a new approach. Her first instinct was to punish him with silence until he had sat as long as she had. But, she was intrigued. "When you leave this room, where you can go is much different than where I can."

"If you weren't here, what would you be doing with your life?"

She sat.

"Do you think you would be happy washing dishes for a restaurant?" He put his hand on the stack of papers, "I've read all of this, believe it or not. There is a lot of you in here, but it isn't all of you. You've done some rather impressive things in your short time here." He turned his chair to face the door. "I have no doubt that you could have built a bomb to blow this entire mountain up, and you probably could have tricked them into building it for you. Even tricked them into setting it off. The few toys they've shown me certainly have that potential in them." He ran his finger across the top of the folder, "But there is something in you that is drawing a line, and wanton destruction falls on the other side of it."

She sat.

"Just like you could easily have left this room. I've seen a video of a girl in a cast that wiggled past a crowd to clobber a highly trained— We both know I'm not stopping you from leaving."

She shrugged and went for the door.

He ran to the door, too, but didn't try to stop her. "You want someone else to open it for you. You could easily open it yourself, but you want someone—"

"Thanks, I got it, twist and pull." She walked out the room.

He let her walk away.

Four other such meetings were offered over the next week. Each was in lieu of her scheduled chores. She didn't show and did the chores instead.

Shadona dipped the brush in the soapy water, then started to scrub the floor.

She recognized the squeak of his shoes on the wet floor as he walked over.

She dipped then scrubbed.

Then, without saying a word, so did he.

They scrubbed the entire room without saying anything to each other.

When they were done, he stood, looked over all they had cleaned, and said, "Wow, that was a big room, wasn't it?"

Shadona dropped the brush in the bucket and silently left without acknowledging he was even there.

A few days later, she reported to gardening duty to find it was nearly complete by the time she got there. She turned and started to leave.

"Shadona," he said, dropping his shovel and running after her, "just a minute."

She kept walking until he caught up and stood in her path.

"Listen, I'm just—" but he was out of breath. Unlike her, he hadn't spent all of his life at these altitudes.

"You can't buy me. I can't stop you, but I don't have to reward you either."

"Look, I get it." He caught his breath. "I can't free your schedule without pushing the burden onto someone else, who would inevitably resent you for it."

"You have nothing to offer that interests me. Nothing." She walked away.

Two days later, he met her at the bathroom, scrub brush in hand.

He started scrubbing the stall next to hers. After a few minutes, he said, "What do you think you would be doing, if you weren't here?"

She stopped working and just stood there.

"I think you would still be here, or a place like here. Maybe—"

"Read the file again. I wouldn't be anywhere near here," she said, leaned against the wall of the stall, hand on the brush.

"You have a one in a million mind. You don't hate your state, you probably even understand why you can't leave." He scrubbed for a minute before noticing she had stopped. "Perhaps a nicer place, sure. Under different rules, maybe. Sure." He stood in the doorway to her stall. "They probably would have given you titles, rank, name on the door. A staff to work under you. I've counted a staff of at least thirty engineers that are working around the clock to figure out the various riddles that are you. You're very expensive to figure out. More expensive when we figure you wrong.

It would be far cheaper and more productive to have them work with you, even for you."

She leaned against the wall and stared at the bowl. "Wernher Von Braun was a Nazi who was forgiven for his sins, got a paycheck, and walked free on these same streets." She looked at him, then back to the bowl. "What was my sin, such that it can't be forgiven?"

He paused.

She closed the door and said nothing more, while he cleaned the rest of the room, and continued to talk.

Dysath finished reading another report that he had just been cleared for. The G-force problem for guided missiles had been solved years ago. The HB-4 had line-of-sight guided ammunition too. Unfortunately, the few rounds she had made were all destroyed on targets. The optics that provided the ship with eyes probably worked to guide the projectiles. But that was just his guess.

Line-of-sight might pose a problem. GPS was preferred, but orbiting satellites or drones could easily be used to guide them in. The G force from being fired through the HB-4 far exceeded anything his project could reasonably generate. State of the art in silicone, the traditional material for solid-state equipment, could barely handle a couple thousand Gs. Her guns subjected them to hundreds of thousands of Gs.

He was getting a little tired of reinventing the wheel.

But the XO had recruited another psychologist, 'a fresh set of eyes' he called it. Dysath was asked to comprise a wish list and had submitted the high G circuitry as one of the areas he wanted most. He had tons of other puzzles he wanted solved, but this was the most urgent. The new psychologist was very different than the interrogation-focused one that had an office two floors up. The new guy had a background in post-traumatic stress disorders and POW debriefings.

Dysath had been briefed on the HB-4, but like most briefs around here, it came with entire pages blacked out. Up until today, his scope had been limited to the main guns themselves, and the skin.

Most planes had chaff that ejected out the back to confuse missiles. The HB-4 had similar ports on its back, except they were offensive.

At low speeds, it only made sense as chaff. But when he took into account the plane's revised projected speeds, it was no joke. It basically spun bullets to give them some gyroscopic aim, and ejected them. At slow speeds, that would amount to tossing gravel. But, tossing gravel from a plane flying five to ten times faster than a speeding bullet. . . now you were talking about doing some real damage.

The simulators suggested that it could be used to provide its own cover fire, like an angry swarm of bees on the heels of a bear attack.

Shadona looked over the garden, then down at her shoes. He was there already. She stopped approaching. He was relentless, without being overly annoying. He was trying the good-cop approach, which was better than being strapped in bed for weeks on end.

Her instinct was to just let him do it, play him along. But she knew that was the point. It was part of his plan to be endearing to her.

She recognized it immediately. Combat wasn't her only training. For two years, they trained on infiltration, coercion, interrogation, and resistance to it.

She approached and gave him just a hint of a smile before she walked past and went to work.

The hint of a smile saved her from a barrage of questions and was innocent enough. She could play good-cop too.

. . .

He assisted her, about a quarter of the time, for the next few months until her punishment period was just a few weeks from being over.

"Look, let's cut to the end of the dance, shall we," Shadona said as they neared the end of cleaning the bathroom.

He returned the brush to the bucket. "Ok." He looked over the teenage girl. She had far more depth than he gave her credit for. "You know they can't let you go. You know that."

"They can—"

"No, it's too high a risk. But," he said, then smiled, "but, they can give you a vacation. They have a secure site they use for training. It's isolated, remote, and cut off. No outside access, you can—"

"How long for how much?"

It was now a poker game. Ask too much and the offer would lose all credibility, same with too little. He picked something small. And, surprisingly, she agreed.
Chapter 10

Dysath stood at the inkjet printer. It looked like it was broken. It printed a garbled sheet of several thick coats of black on black with few gaps of white. It backed up often and printed layer after layer, paused for several seconds to dry, then printed again. Plastic. Light weight, conductive plastic, the printer wrote the circuits like the layers on an oil painting.

It was so simple.

He pulled the first sheet from the curing oven. Still warm in his hands, he cut along the dotted line, put it on the table, covered it with a metal sheet, pounded it with a sledgehammer, then taped a wiring harness to it.

He uploaded longitude and latitude into the lab computer, then handed it off to an assistant who promptly left the room.

Plastic, printed on a common printer.

It was so obvious, after the fact. The plastic was flexible, rugged, lightweight, and could handle a few hundred watts, more than enough to guide a missile. The printer program was indecipherable, as was the complex circuit board it printed, but the ink was simple and cost less than a penny per page, easily obtained. The paper it was printed on was not ordinary paper, but was inexpensive as well.

It couldn't be printed as small as a microchip, but size didn't matter that much on a hundred pound bomb. His mind reeled with the millions of other possible applications for such inks. Laptops didn't need to have a tiny chip, just a little smaller than the size of the screen would do.

It would probably take years to calculate how the six 'color' tubes of ink were mixed, a few more to figure how to design their own circuitry, but this was an extraordinary leap forward.

The assistant radioed from his twenty-minute flight. The directional lights guided them in and the firing solenoid deployed on target.

He had no doubts.

The printer software included most of the bells and whistles he could want to customize the prints to his specific uses. Having no part in designing it and no ability to decipher it, they were worried that the systems would deactivate over certain targets or that the software would only print the first few correctly, so his team spent the next week printing nearly all the ink they had, accounting for hundreds of guidance systems. Then they flew the pages around the world to verify functionality.

The chemicals for the inks were readily available. She had mixed them in the lab, but they weren't set up to mass-produce them, or even reproduce them correctly. Both the software and the inks were too complex for the base to reverse engineer and would have been too great of a drain on their time and resources with little need for the level of secrecy the base afforded. Both were outsourced to other companies that specialized in such, with government contracts of course.

Whatever they did to get this from her, it was worth it.

* * *

The alarm clock rang, 3PM. Shadona and Dana climbed the abandoned forest-ranger tower, then walked to the railing and waved. "Rot in hell, you sick bastards!" they screamed.

A flash glistened from the far mountain range.

The girls ran back down the steps and across the small clearing to the log cabin near the foot of the tower.

They had no electricity beyond the tiny amount the solar provided to work the water pump and run a few lights.

They had several months' supply of canned and dried food and rows of cut firewood. It was rustic and isolated, and they had to show themselves at the same time every day or the base would send a team to track them down, but other than that, it felt free.

No communication, no media, nothing within walking distance. The girls checked the cabin for surveillance cameras and bugs, but found none. Not that they would be foolish enough to discuss such things indoors.

Dana put another log on the fire, then plopped down on the chair. "You never told me what you had to give up for this."

Shadona smiled while stirring the pancake mix. They had the place to themselves for the winter. No classes, no chores, they didn't even make their beds. She went over to the tiny wood stove, a cast-iron skillet warming on top. The batter sizzled as bubbles formed. She sprinkled it with cinnamon, then flipped it.

The cabin had been made in the fifties or sixties. It was cut from local lumber and abandoned after satellites made it irrelevant. Some boards had been replaced, the solar was new, as was the electric water pump and new pipes to the spring a few hundred feet away.

The indoor plumbing was simplistic and had long ago been replaced with plastic tubing. The coils near the stove heated the hot water and stored it in a large tank. It was an antique retrofitted with a few over-temperature valves for safety, but it worked.

It provided two good showers a day, and the un-insulated tank kept plenty of heat in the room. It was only one room, yet was still bigger than their room at the base. And like their room, the simple bathroom had only a curtain.

"Remember when we were much younger," Dana said after finishing her shower, "we did survival training near here, I think. Paint pellets, flags, we had to kill and eat rabbits, live off the land for two weeks."

"I think that was before we knew we could never leave. That it wasn't real."

"I can't take you anywhere, without you bringing me down."

Shadona smiled. Dana was right. What a waste it would be to spoil such a gift when they were so hard to come by. "It felt like camping." She warmed her hands by the stove, "Cooking with fire. Rubbing sticks together to get a spark." She sat by her friend, "A lot like the last few days have been."

"Sleeping in the rain wasn't much fun, but the rest of it was."

"Ever wonder what it would be like to have parents? To have a family, like everyone else. I want my childhood back. It wasn't supposed to be this way."

"But then, how would I have ever met you?" Dana said.

Shadona leaned into her, "If we weren't sisters, I would have seen you at school."

The cabin was small. They had to show themselves once a day, and a one-mile radius electronic perimeter would alert the base if they wandered too far, but they were free until spring. There was even an ample supply of games, paper, and full-length pens and pencils.

They talked some more that night, until they fell asleep.

"Left hand," the voice said.

There was a picture of a woman holding up her left hand.

"Left hand," the voice said again.

BZZZZZZ!!!! A strobe light went off in her face.

"This is a left hand," the woman's voice said again. "Show me your left hand."

She covered her eyes with her arm before the light flashed and it buzzed again.

"Left hand," the voice relentlessly repeated until the infant complied.

The next picture appeared on the screen and the instructions continued in a new language.

She tried to sit in her crib. The screen covered the top; the sides were opaque and solid. She crawled to the foot. She could touch all four sides, should she stretch just right. It seemed solid, but she knew it was not. She had seen it open before. She pressed against it again.

BZZZZZZ! Flash!

She complied with its instruction.

She pressed her ear against the side and tried to focus on the voices outside her crib. "This is our most promising one," a muffled woman said, "We are having compliance problems with it recently, but it is thirty-two tapes ahead of any other, six languages so far, about two thousand words in each, and shows an aptitude for numbers and—"

BZZZZZ! Flash!

". . . terminate 10% of the low scores," a muffled man said. "Embryos are cheap, those learning pods are killing our budget."

"Kill them?" the woman said with sadness. "They're just—"

"Replaceable, nurse Ben—"

BZZZZZ! Flash!

Shadona woke in the darkened room. She put her hand on her sleeping friend's shoulder and sighed with relief. If but sighing was all it took to find true relief. The room was dark and a little cold, much like the crib she remembered.

She tucked her friend in as she moved to the stove. She opened the small door, raked the coals, and added another log and a few sticks of kindling.

She sat on the floor in front of the fire, staring into the growing flames.

This wasn't how life was supposed to be. That wasn't what childhood was for.

She watched her friend sleep.

This wasn't freedom. This was still the bad dream she wished to wake from someday, no matter how pleasant their now was.

She made coffee to keep her dreams away.

Dana sat up and looked around. She had adjusted to sleeping late easier than she thought. A pot of coffee was still warm near the stove. She poured a cup, then stirred in some powdered milk. Shadona wasn't inside.

Dana grabbed the blanket and headed out the door. The clock read 10:12 AM.

The morning frost on the frozen leaves left a fresh trail to the steps of the tower. Dana climbed until she reached the top.

"You thinking of jumping?" Dana asked, leaning against the same rail Shadona was sitting on.

"Not today." She grabbed her friend's hand, "A little this morning." She leaned forward as if to jump, but it was only a half-hearted tease. "It's so quiet here. No clank of the metal doors, no bitter fights over unimportant things. The air doesn't smell like concrete and paint, and jet fuel."

The wind picked up. With no trees to block it at this height, the cold on the top of the tower was severe. It easily cut through their clothes. The treetops swayed below. The tower creaked, but barely moved.

It was very cold, but Shadona showed no signs of wanting to go in.

The rising sun helped fight the chill, but only when the calm allowed.

They stayed on the tower, well past three.

The tower was visible from the base, yet, it provided them with the most picturesque views. They toured the grounds, followed a few local rabbits, and kept an eye on an owl spending the winter; it frequented the tower too. A group of deer foraged in the distance, easily visible from up high. The spotting scopes were ancient, but abandoned in working order. The lines used for scaling and judging distance had faded over the years, the paint had peeled and the aluminum tube was blistered with white foam.

They spent a lot of time on the tower, even more just walking in the woods.

When the owl finally snagged a rabbit, they tracked down its burrow. They found a nest of six, blind, hairless babies. They took them back to the cabin and tried to keep them alive. Powder milk was administered a drop at a time through the fold of a soaked shirt. Two died by the second night, a third by the end of the week.

After two weeks, they were big enough to roam outside the drawer the girls had converted into an indoor burrow. They could see and had a fine, soft coat of hair. They even started to play. Tentative hops on the wooden floors at first, but soon, they had full-on explorations of the entire cabin. The little 'raisins' they left behind were another matter entirely, and, had the place belonged to either girl, it might have been a matter they cared about. But, as it was, they would all be kicked out by spring.

The rabbits got big, fast.

They drank out of saucer bowls, kept warm by the stove, and were always willing to be picked up and petted, almost any time of the day. They even took the rabbits for short walks outside, just not out of sight. The owl was sure to be hungry again.

It seemed to snow early this year.
Chapter 11

Argo's father called. He was snowed in and wouldn't make it home for another week, maybe two. Argo didn't care, it wasn't like his father could make it down these snow-packed roads in a piss-ant hybrid anyway. The SUV was parked at the bottom of the hill while his hippie father was trying to save gas.

It seemed absurd that someone who flew gas-guzzling jets as often as his father did would be concerned about saving the few drops a hybrid offered. But then again, this was the same man that was passionate about solar and growing vegetables in a greenhouse, no matter how much more expensive it was.

He was used to having the place to himself.

Fortunately, the solar panel was working perfectly. After his last reaming, he was more diligent about monitoring it. He plugged in the old laptop, connected to the port, and downloaded the logs. He remembered the computer side of it far better than the confusing motor side. He clicked diagnose/analyze. It hourglassed for a full minute, turned to a screen filled with obscure pressure-gauge readings, then announced 95% efficiency, no maintenance recommendations.

He studied it a little longer.

It wasn't written for the novice, but was instead a down and dirty, text only little program. Written nearly a decade ago for the then average computer, it even ran on this antique 486 windows machine. It charted the cylinder pressures over each cycle for both the hot and cold side. According to the chart, it had eight cylinders and could peak at twenty horse. That seemed rather ludicrous. It was a pipe with four tubes tapping into its side, two in the center and one on each end. He had seen it disassembled and it looked like any other empty pipe. He struggled with the idea that it had even one cylinder, let alone eight.

He made it check again.

After a minute, it came back the same.

Well, his father had asked him to run the checks, and reasonably so. The panel was his main source of electricity and his main source of heat. They had a woodstove, but lugging in firewood was a chore. They had a tiny backup generator and a small silicon solar panel that kept a car battery charged, but neither could turn on the lights, power a blender, microwave, or even the TV. They were only good for calling for help and listening to the radio.

He turned off the laptop and put it away in the drawer.

He texted the report back to his father, then went on with his day.

Like his father, he was snowed in too.

Max loved the white stuff and was always begging to go outside and romp in it. To Argo, it was a chore. His dirt bike could handle going downhill, but it couldn't make it back up in the slippery stuff. If he wanted to go see Dara, he would have to walk. And walking was an all-day trip; he would have to spend the night.

Dara was nice to have sex with, but she wasn't a conversationalist. He found her dull and a little boring.

He finished eating lunch, then went back to the computer and his afternoon class. His heart wasn't in it.

He needed an ATV. He had begged his father for one, but without any success. His father was convinced that an ATV wouldn't handle snow any better than the bike, even the SUV struggled up the incline in snow. But it went beyond that. He thought of his son as lazy. The mailbox was at the bottom of the mountain, only two miles away. You could get down it on a sled, it was coming back up that was a hike and a half. Uphill took all day to walk. He considered taking the SUV, and if times got desperate, even without a license, he could always take the bike to the bottom and drive the SUV back up; the bike fit in the back. But his father recorded the odometer religiously.

Argo didn't dare.

He finished his class looking out the window, watching the snow pile up. Ding! Ding!

The mailbox was wired with a remote to signal when, and if, anything was delivered. He didn't want to even think about going down today. It was a big box and more than capable of handling weeks of mail.

He went to the door, put on his shoes, grabbed a coat and a broom, and headed out. Max vaulted past him the second the door cracked open.

Max stood on the crust of the snow, scampered toward the path to the pond, tried to stop, spun, flipped, then crashed through the crust and disappeared under the snow. Argo had more important things to do than play. He put on his sunglasses and swept the snow off the porch. He then trudged his way to the solar panel and swept the pile away from the collector's glass.

He opened the shed, assembled the long pole, then screwed on the wide brush. He avalanched the pileup from the roof next. It was a chore, but it was much easier than working a garden.

Greenhouse too.

He looked in through the brushed-free glass. Mmmm, three tomatoes and two cucumbers looked ripe. He made a mental note, cucumber sandwiches with coffee tonight. It was faster than soup and just as good.

Today was Thursday, he would wait until Sunday before making the trek to the mailbox. He disassembled the roof sweeper, put it back in the shed, then walked back to the porch after less than an hour of labor. "Max!" he said, brushing the snow off his knees and down to the bottom of his shoes. "Max!"

He looked out into the blinding white toward the pond. He was done with snow for today.

"Max!" Unless he couldn't find his cat.

They had toyed with the idea of a pet door. He had. His father pointed out that it was a moronic idea. Sure, Max could be easily trained to use it, but possums, squirrels, raccoons, and just about anything smaller than a deer would soon figure out how to use it too. As convenient as it would be to never have to let the cat in and out, the consequences of those possibilities would be far worse.

It was a dumb idea. But his father didn't have to call him a moron when he pointed it out.

"Max!" He could see the path. Sort of. But Max was a black and white cat that was walking around under the snow like a winter gopher. He looked back at the door. He was cold and it was warm inside. The cat would be fine.

He went down the swept steps to the edge of the snow.

That damn cat. He strained to see a hint of black.

Nothing. He stomped inside, straight to the greenhouse.

One of the tomatoes had a green side. It needed a few more days, perhaps a week, but the others fell free with the slightest touch. The greenhouse was nice and warm. He checked the water levels, looked out the windows for that distinctive black, then headed inside.

He washed the veggies, started some coffee, pulled some bread out of the fridge, and made two cucumber and mayo sandwiches.

The impatient scratching at the door started about the time the coffee pot belched its last blast of steam.

He headed for the door, but returned to the sandwiches. He diced one corner into tiny chunks. Let the cat wait for him this time.

Scratch scratch scratch scratch!

He put the knife down and headed for the door.

The cat rushed in, shook off enough snow to show his black again, stood on his hind legs, vigorously sniffed the air, then ran to the kitchen.

"You think you deserve some of that, do you?"

Max stood at Argo's stool, front feet ready to climb it to the counter and the plate, should Argo take too long.

He laughed. He couldn't help it. Max was a terribly funny cat to have.

He picked up the cat and set him down on his lap.

Max ate the diced pieces off his knee.

He looked at the chart for the solar panel. It showed nearly a full charge, but it handled winter better than summer anyway. His cucumber sandwich was awesome, just unbelievable. The bread was lightly toasted and crunched with each bite. Just that perfect mix with mayo. If only they had some fresh eggs. They had frozen egg mix in those cartons, but fresh eggs only lasted so long. Scrambled eggs with sharp cheese and mayo on toast was the only thing better than cucumbers.

His cravings for scrambled eggs drove him to make another cucumber sandwich, and dice up another corner for Max, of course.

He put Max down on the floor to lick the crumbs off his plate while he pulled out a bowl, added water, stirred in some yeast, sugar, salt, and flour, covered it with cloth, then set it on top of the refrigerator to rise for bread the next day.

Sunday. He packed the last of his cucumber sandwiches into a backpack with a thermos of coffee, an emergency blanket, and his pistol as he headed out the door. He pulled the ski mask down over his ears, put on his sunglasses, grabbed the snowboard off the porch, and started his slide down the road to the mailbox. It zigged and zagged so much that he never got a long enough straightaway to build a dangerous speed. Scratch that. He never got going fast enough to make it exciting. Just a nice, leisurely pace.

It was fifteen minutes before he slid into the slot next to the SUV, then walked across the road to the mailbox. It was a fancy one, much like the big postal-boxes found on city sidewalks. The top half looked like a normal mailbox sitting on a larger box about the size of a microwave oven. When the mailman put the mail in, then closed the door, the bottom fell out and it dumped into the larger box underneath. To mail a letter, you had to remember to push in a pin. He sorted the mail, put it in his pack, then crossed the road again.

Under the carport, he ate a sandwich, drank a cup, hooked the snowboard to his pack, put on his spiked boots, then started the hike uphill.

It took almost three hours.

Max was still scratching to get out when he returned home.

He had an arsenal of video games and access to a nearly unlimited more online, but he still got bored fast. He popped in on some of his favorite online arenas but found none of his friends there.

Did-Dump. "Your dad home?" Dara messaged.

"No," he texted back. "Deep snow suxs. I was going to drop by, but, by the time I got the mail, I knew I would be too whipped for that much climbing."

Did-Dump. "Awww. Maybe an ATM for Xmas?"

He scratched his head for a second. She meant ATV, not ATM. "Dads not budging. Thinks Im lazy."

Did-Dump. She sent him a picture of his favorite part of her anatomy.

He put his hand on the screen, then carefully deleted it. His father snooped and didn't need to know Dara that well.

He really wanted to go down the hill again, but his calves were sore already. He closed his eyes and sighed instead.

She had no way to get up the hill to him. No way at all.

They chatted a little more before he scrubbed this log from his laptop as well.

Max stood on the back of the couch, then walked to the edge near the arm. He stared at the throw pillow.

Thwack! Tumble thud!

"What the hell, Max?" Argo got up and went into the living room.

Max was chewing on the corner of the pillow.

"Ok, Max, You've vanquished the evil and cowardly pillow." He picked it up and placed it back on the couch.

Max smacked at it with his paws.

"It's quite defeated, my brave warrior kitten."

He picked up the cat and carried him into his room. After a few minutes of vigorous petting, Max forgot about the cowardice of pillows and stalked the toy mouse tied to a string and a stick. Argo practiced his casting and reeling skills while Max attacked, pounced, and chewed without mercy.

Winter was filled with such things. His dad would show and stay for a week, every now and then. He brought fresh eggs and milk whenever he did. As a freelance consultant, his work varied wildly. Argo almost felt bad for his father. He hated his job. Hated it. His father would rather have been a manager at a restaurant where he was in charge than work for clients. Clients were draining to his father. He moped for the first day home, unless he could be tricked into going fishing.

It was just an unfortunate position to be in. To make a living, his father had to do work he hated. The work he loved was simply too difficult to quickly show a profit. Fortunately, Argo's life didn't include work, beyond the busing of the occasional table for his mom.

Ice fishing was out, however, too much work with hardly a bite.

About the time his father's funk would leave, he was off on another contract.

It was always nice to have the house to himself, but it was fun having his father around too.

Argo sliced the last of his father's bread. His father made the best bread, he really put a lot of effort into it. Argo made simple bread, no kneading, just stir and leave out overnight. Effort made a difference.

His freezer was full of fish caught and cooked in the last few days of fall. It was important, to a degree, to reduce the population in the pond over the winter. Most specifically the number of predator fish needed to be cut back. Believe it or not, catfish made an excellent burger. It even tasted much like cow when he added lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers, all of which the greenhouse provided.

Max was disappointed to not get his usual cut.

With his father gone, Argo took a walk in the woods with his pistol and Max. He didn't head for the pond, much to the cat's disappointment, but this was one of the rare moments when enough snow had melted for his steps to go untraced. He checked his GPS. It was near. He looked around, but Max found it first.

He opened the lid on the old, plastic cooler, then pulled out the plastic trash bag. He put his nose in it and breathed deeply. His stash was rarely gotten into.

Wild pot.

The three plants made him a year's worth, but he dare not hide it in the house.

He knew his parents had been potheads when they were his age; they tried to be 'cool' about it, but he knew. Yet, both would go ballistic if they ever found his stash. He only smoked in the woods. He never checked on it more than once a month. He never walked directly to it, and never the same path twice. He kept a smaller stash closer to the house in an old wine bottle he hid in the woods. Thank God for the guy who invented glass corks.

He rolled one on the spot, refilled his wine bottle, then headed home. It was laundry day. His last rule for never getting caught was to only smoke on laundry day. The smell had a habit, even in the woods, of staying in his clothes.

Fortunately, Max would never tell.
Chapter 12

They turned the rabbits loose on the first warm day. They stayed around the cabin for the next few days, then disappeared. It was quite sad, actually. Nearly as sad as when the helicopter landed and the girls said goodbye to the illusion of freedom.

The patch on the HB-4 had yet to be stress tested, until today. They spent the better part of their first day back going over it, making sure everything was put back correctly. The onboard computer confirmed its ready status, and, as part of her agreement, they were cleared for flight.

The catapult puck on the mock carrier deck sat next to the plane, a baseball where a plane would normally be hooked. The tower cleared them, and the shooter waved them off.

Dana, in the pilot seat, opened the throttle to quarter full. The baseball passed the nose of the plane, briefly, before the engines roared to life and left it, and the base, in the dust. It was a rare day when they couldn't beat the catapult. With good fuel, it could even break Mach 1 before clearing the end of the deck.

They put it through its paces at 30,000 feet, just in case something went wrong. The belly-flop maneuver was a key training exercise, but doing it close to the ground with a questionable wing could be fatal, doing it at altitude afforded lots of recoverability should something fail. It held, but Shadona still restricted the maneuver until they could confirm the patch on the ground. They practiced its other unique features until the tank complained about being low, then landed conventionally on the deck, hook down.

The belly-flop landing was essentially a controlled stall just a few feet off the ground. It could be practiced at any altitude. Besides, landing conventionally required practice too.

The deck was equipped with hydraulics such that it actually could pitch and roll up to twenty feet on each corner, but that required a full staff and the maneuvers of just one plane didn't warrant that.

They even had to taxi to the elevator and lock it down themselves.

As they rode down, the computer displayed the surveillance it had gathered on the base's boring project, confirming Shadona's hunches.

It was about the only purpose she could think of that would require a guidance system such as they requested.

The rubble pile down the side of the mountain confirmed her estimates of their progress. She gave them months, perhaps a year before it could be tested.

They parked in their assigned slot.

Dysath entered the XO's office, saluted, then sat before the desk. "Sir, I've been thinking." He leaned back in the chair, "We've nearly finished an airframe, our method for making composite skin is close, the multi-camera system almost works, the fly-by-wire— we are very close on all—"

"I thought I told you to put that on the back burner—"

"We did, Sir, but there is slack time and odd man out situations and we've been using it as a fall back— That's not really why I'm here. As we get closer and closer to assembling our first version of an HB, Sir, I'm having doubts that we even should finish it. It's looking nothing like—"

"Don't worry about that, Captain, as long as it works it'll—"

"Oh, it will do that. It'll be a fraction of the speed, but that's still— Look, my problem is," Dysath pressed two fingers to his thumb much like catching a pestering fly or an illusive idea, "what we are building, should it ever be captured, could be reverse engineered in weeks or months. It wouldn't stall anyone for years. We really need to master the way she compiled them, encrypted them, that's the magic we're losing doing it this way."

The XO leaned back and pondered. "I hadn't thought— You have a point." He thumped his fingers on the desk, "One thing at a time, Captain. Just focus on the base weapon for now."

"Speaking of that, I've got some revised numbers to show you." Dysath pulled out a folder, opened it, then spread it out on the desk. Pie charts, graphs, and budget estimates.

The XO corrected a few figures. The specialized plastic inks were coming in well under budget too, but only the XO had access to those numbers. The R&D of reversing them would have cost tens of thousands or millions, but they purchased them for a few hundred each cup. That was a massive savings off their budget.

They discussed for nearly half an hour.

Mess hall was a loud orchestra of clanking and talking, even toward the later shifts when Dana and Shadona entered. Turkey meatloaf was all that was left that looked even remotely appealing. That was until it was slopped onto the plate. Mixed vegetables spilled onto the tray and silverware.

They walked to the most out-of-the-way bench.

Shadona corralled the peas back onto the plate, then used her fork to separate them from the loaf.

Dana grabbed her friend's hand, "Just eat it," Dana said.

Shadona looked up, smiled, then started to eat. She got a mix of everything on the fork.

"It handles just as tight as it did before they wrecked it."

"It vibrates. Feels. . . off. I don't trust it maneuvering at sonic speeds." Shadona took another bite.

"What? I didn't feel it. Granted, I don't have the hours you do, but it felt—"

She swallowed fast, "It's off. Not much, but it is." She cleared her throat, "Off is fine at slow speeds," she started to illustrate with the tip of her fork in the food, "but the skin acts like an exoskeleton, and the shock waves compound—"

Dana stopped her friend's fork, "I trust you, I just didn't— It isn't like they'll ever clear you for hypersonic speeds anyway. We're really not supposed to even come close to Mach 1." She let go of Shadona's hand, "This stuff is almost cold now, anyway."

They went back to eating.

The womb of the plane insulated them from most of the noise and feedback, fly-by-wire controls isolated them even more. It had the feel of flying a very powerful video game or simulator, not the real-world fighter it was. It was difficult to believe anyone could pick up a feel through all that.

"Well," the boy bumped their table hard enough to wobble the glasses, but not quite enough to dump them, "if it isn't the dyke douche-bag—"

"Mind your own, Alco," Dana said. Shadona subtly changed her grip on the fork.

"Teacher's pets," he said, spitting with his words.

Shadona gripped the tray with her other hand, "Pet?"

"Neither of you dykes even participated in the fall competition. And I was so looking forward to wiping the sky of your stench," he said. "Gone from the face of the planet. You must have sucked a mile of dicks for dykes like you to—"

"Back off," Dana said, chair sliding with her forceful stand.

"I just gotta know," he continued, "Do you still spit, or did you learn to swallow?"

Shadona slapped her full cup of hot coffee such that it spilled off the table and straight into the front of his pants.

He jumped back and vigorously patted his crotch.

Shadona stood by the table, "I don't report to a piss-ant like you," she said, Dana standing at the other side.

He was boiling hot, but, in a nearly empty cafeteria, the odds were not in his favor.

"Enjoy your moment in the sun," Shadona said, her grip of the fork now more obvious, "it will be fleeting."

He stormed off, and they returned to what was left of their meal.

"Captain Dysath," Hanly said, catching up to him in the hall, "I've got some good news for you."

Dysath turned, stumbled in thought. Hanly had just sidetracked him, big time. "What is it?"

Hanly smiled, "I think it's best I show you." They headed for the harvester control room where Hanly sat him down in front of one of their monitors. "You know we've been selling N60 as an explosive supplement for years. We make it here and export it to other contractors. It's really too expensive to manufacture, if you have to buy the power."

Dysath nodded. He had done the calculations and seen the charts. It took nearly two thousand dollars worth of electricity to make each gallon. However, it had such high energy density that one gallon of N60 could propel a vehicle as far as 73 gallons of oil, the perfect fuel for flight. That translated into a big explosion that was difficult to accurately estimate, as exploding pencils could attest. Its only fault as an explosive was its high stability and input energy needed to set it off.

"Here is the test field of our normal contractor. Now, ordinarily they use a mix; it's added into normal plastics as an enhancer element. About a pound of this stuff can double the yield of a typical 500 pounder. They never used it straight because it's so hard to get a consistent, uniform ignition. We never really cracked how the HB-4 burned it. It starts with conventional fuel, then blends this stuff in until it's only running on it, but we could never get it to switch over while being tested on the ground.

Ordinarily, higher ratios than that just spray it all over the field."

Dysath looked at the field. It was covered in thick, lush grass and wild vegetation. Extraordinarily stubborn weeds kept popping back up in clumps and spots within days of each blast. He pointed to a clump.

"You noticed that too, huh? Wait till the peaceniks hear about that. A green bomb that's twice as destructive. It kills the grass with every blast, but it's like spreading fertilizer too.

Anyway, we did some computer modeling with the help of the base's professor and came up with a new design. You know how this base works. We're not explosive experts, and normal explosive experts can't be brought in because they can't be told about what the additive—"

Dysath had watched two clips already. The first was labeled 'conventional 500 lb,' the second was labeled 'enhanced 500 lb,' this one was labeled 'pulsed 500 lb.' "What do they mean by pulsed?"

"Right," Hanly said, getting back on track, "the computer models came up with a minimal electrical charge that would be needed to light it, and some weird casings that would be required to compress it, I mean off the wall stuff— Just take a look."

The flash consumed the screen. They replayed with a camera from a mile out. "How big was—"

"They calculated it as equal to around 130 tons of high explosives, from a 500 pound bomb, right in line with the model. The pulse is well within a lightning flash. The model, using years of our lightning data, even predicts airburst clouds would have devastating secondary electrocution effects, followed by intense, localized EMP pulses. It's supposed to look something like a foggy version of a ground-level thunderstorm."

"This was exactly what the XO was looking for." Dysath shared Hanly's grin.

"We had no way to set them off, without your 'chase it with lightning' thing. That got the ball rolling."

They watched another twenty minutes of clips, poured over the data, then reviewed the clips again, frame by frame.

It was exciting stuff. It was all coming together quicker and easier than he ever thought it would. It almost had that confident feel he had when he first arrived and started to build straight from the most impressive set of drawings he had ever looked at.

Just like back then, he couldn't see the flaw, but now he was looking for them, hard. He had seen too many projects spawned by that girl literally blow up in his face.

The laser pickup on a DVD player was only suitable for one-way communication. Shadona's unsupervised interaction with the plagiarizing professor's laptop was limited, but she increased her odds by being overly troublesome and relying on the classic prisoner motto; the guards had to be perfect every day, she need only be in the right place when they missed.

He stole from her, and others. It was a moral disappointment to her back then, but an advantage to her now.

The base systems were isolated, firewalled, independent and dedicated systems. Contact with the outside world had to be carefully controlled to continue to operate as the base did. Her plane was not designed to transmit RF signals at all, but it had such sensitive ears it could even listen to satellites over the jammers and through hundreds of feet of concrete. She was well informed on the outside world.

She set the ring on the CAP LOCK LED on the keyboard, then pressed M+F+L. The LED flickered violently, then the screen flashed and she removed the ring.

Software was an intricate, complicated, labor-intensive kind of intellectual property to steal. It was like stealing a recipe. If it was for cake, one person could easily memorize it. But software was not like making a cake; it was like a wall of cookbooks where a single typo on a single page rendered every meal into poison. He, the professor, through his own selfish greed, had been forced to find a way around the base's security. And in doing so, he gave her the access she needed in the form of his personal laptop.

Her window had taken only a few seconds. She retrieved the requested CDs off his desk and dutifully carried them to the distracted professor. She angrily slapped them down on the table beside him, "Get them yourself next time," she said.

He abruptly dropped what he was doing to publicly dress her down, "You will do what I say, when I say it, or I'll see to it your wings are clipped, permanently!"

She quietly went to her terminal, paused a few seconds to look down at the floor, pulled her chair out with a loud thump, then silently sat back down.

Stealing a billion lines of code was impossible to memorize. It was equally impossible for one person to know or even understand the impact or importance of each and every one of those billion lines.

Her evolution idea had taken on a life of its own, much as it was designed to. At times, she felt like a pawn in her own game that had eclipsed her years ago. In much the same way as evolution had no way of predicting the eventual dominance of humans from the time of the dinosaurs, she had no idea how these scattered seeds she was planting would eventually grow into her freedom. But she believed in her own work, and the million or so lines of her own code. But it too had grown on her, now into trillions of lines, and, just like her professor, it was now beyond her ability to check every detail and had become an article of faith. She didn't know what was on her ring any more than he did. It bore no resemblance to her original code.

Shadona sat in the womb of the HB-4. It signaled the location of the current bugs. She put it into flight simulator mode, and it became a giant video game. The location and interaction with other illusionary pilots were as much of a language as her coded sign, counter sign device. Banking left meant something different than right. The optics filtered to her flight helmet combined with those projected before her to create a third image of the surveillance it had gathered and edited for her. Random sounds outside the helmet mixed with those inside to form words for her, and only her, even in this heavily bugged womb.

She played it like a game as it filled her in on what she needed to know.
Chapter 13

The professor managed most of the IT on the base, in addition to his other duties. A rather conventionally built network spread throughout the many departments allowed the maximum amount of flexibility with the minimal amount of connectivity. To the untrained eye, they were just average PCs on desks with notes to never turn them off.

The main computer room had a simple processor that was just powerful enough to handle the routing and primarily worked as a massive data storage farm with a cabinet full of drives.

Each of the labs was able to link their desktops into a mini cluster to crunch difficult problems. The harvester systems had been linked years ago to crunch the complex fluid dynamics equations needed to predict maintenance schedules and wear points in the maze of plumbing inside the mountain, in addition to predicting the effects of tremors caused by changes in inertia of all that rapidly moving mass. Before it developed those complex equations, the mountain would tremble whenever it rapidly charged or discharged the units. With the updates, it synchronized the units to the point that the base went from the Richter scale of two or three to barely a ripple in a glass. Discharges of the scale they were discussing would require running that level of calculations again.

The professor was called to work with Dysath on a simulator for the new weapon. It required the linking of not only Dysath's lab, but the multiple clusters available throughout the base. It was rarely done, but they were on a tight schedule and needed the surplus processing power.

The professor disconnected his laptop, then typed some arcane commands into Dysath's terminal. "That should do it," he said to Dysath, then turned to the one computer turned off in the room. It beeped, then powered on by itself. "It's working normally. If you turn something off by accident, it should allow it, but it'll come back on if the cluster thinks it needs it."

"Great," Dysath said, he understood the principles and wasn't illiterate where computers were concerned, but he had more of a hardware oriented kind of mind. "Our normal stuff shouldn't be affected, right?"

The professor rolled up his cords. "Yep, it just uses the idle systems and works in the background. You know, in theory, you shouldn't notice at all. But, you will. It'll add about a second or two of hesitation when you open up a new application. But that should be all you notice."

"Hey, you've seen the computer core in the HB—"

"Don't get me started on that girl's nonsense. It's a distraction," the professor said, irritated, "my bet is she has a few chips hidden in the wings or wheel wells or somewhere— Optics makes for the most compelling illusion." He pointed his finger at Dysath, "She's not as smart as she thinks, or anyone else thinks for that matter."

This was something quite different than Dysath had heard from the people reverse engineering the glass-looking core. They seemed to take it at face value, and even estimated it at supercomputer status, but the professor had lots of direct contact with the girl in question and probably knew her best. "She's not, huh?"

"Not even close. Polished, slick, lucky, but not all that smart." The professor zipped his laptop in the bag, then pulled the change out of his pocket. He shook them like dice, then slapped them down on the table under his hand. "If I have three dollars' of change, your odds of guessing heads or tails, correctly, on all of it is what, one in thirty thousand or so."

Dysath nodded. "About that, I suppose."

He moved his hand and spread out the coins. "But, that's just asking you. If I asked thirty thousand people, I should expect one of them to guess it all, perfectly." He swept them off the edge of the table and back into his hand, "We are in a world with what, eight billion people or so; so we should expect to find someone, somewhere, amidst all those billions, who will guess almost everything right, probably their entire life." He shook the change, then put it back in his pocket, "Luck, but she's smart enough to pretend it's not luck."

Dysath watched the professor strut out of the weapons lab. It was an interesting theory, but was this the place for luck? What were the odds of that?

He looked at his diploma and the little knot of string. He'd feel much better if he could believe it was just luck, too.

The HB-4 reported the heightened network activity. The sustained, increased noise suggested a full cluster was in operation. There was a time when Shadona would have jumped at this as a time to cause mischief. Today, she didn't care, but it was important to know. Networked cables were heavily shielded and weak sources of RF to begin with; the HB-4 could decode a percentage of them and fill in the blanks, if tasked to do so. But it would require dedicating more power to the problem than it warranted. She had a good idea what they were working on anyway.

Dana opened the hatch. "They cleared you for this afternoon," she said. The hatch was tiny and required the pilot to squeeze into the more spacious womb, but Dana just stuck her head in.

Shadona didn't want to put the virtual evolution on hold, "What about Raptors?"

She paused, "Something wrong with the patch?"

"No. I just—"

"Still feel off, huh? I'll play wingman with you."

"The squirrel suits look like they'll work."

Dana climbed further into the hole, but measured her words. "Really?"

Shadona just smiled. "Should fit like a glove, intuitive."

"Almost makes you want to have a wreck just to try one out."

"Almost."

"You cracked the landing?"

Shadona grinned. She had.

"Want to get something to eat first?"

Dana backed out of the hole and they went to get an early lunch.

Evolution was a weird thing to think about. A percentage of it was wild luck. Some skill.

There was a common myth that the brave and the strong survive and pass on their genes. But that was the idealized version. Reality held something much different.

Trickery, theft, camouflage, evolution invented them all, and rewarded them as well. The common theory taught in class was the bravest warriors were the ones who reproduced the most. But far more cowards survived battles than heroes. Cowards rarely even entered the battlefield. Evolution didn't seem to reward virtue either, especially in how it related to sexual partners.

Her program reflected her views of evolution, and as a consequence, it didn't get stuck investing too much into any one branch. But it wasn't purely random either. It's evolution had clearly defined goal, as opposed to evolution found in nature. Though her program came up with its share of dodo birds too, her evolution software included a periodic weeding to eliminate the most worthless ideas and progeny.

Dyke was an insult that was usually slurred against them. They often held hands, but it was because they communicated the most important things they had to say through a series of gentle squeezes. In public, it was interpreted as something else. Not that either minded the confusion, but some boys looked on it as a challenge.

By the time they got to the kitchen, ham and mustard sandwiches were the only thing on the menu that looked appealing.

Eating a big meal before flight practice was not a good idea, but a small meal was ideal.

Raptor maneuvers felt crude and sluggish by comparison, but the infinite maneuverability of the HB-4 opened a new world of possibilities in Raptors as well. They banked, spun, and swerved without fear, because they had practiced these extreme maneuvers in a plane that could perform them with impunity. The HB-4 simulated Raptors, as well as most other airframes, with blinking lights and buzzers instead of stalls and crashes when it was pushed too far. They knew where the limits were, how they felt, and even practiced recovering from them, all within the safety of the HB-4 that was immune to them. It heightened their abilities across the board.

Today they were showing off in preparation for this fall's combat games. This year, they intended to win. Computers scored the hits instead of the more expensive, but foolproof, paint rounds.

Shadona held Dana's hand, "52%" she squeezed, "80% in a year."

"Painful?" Dana squeezed back as they walked down the hall.

"Very."

Dana didn't respond.

"It cracked the timing pattern. Can shield RFID indefinitely, but still can't leave wide radius. Hasn't cracked the code. We can evade, limited, unless they lock down—"

"They lock down as soon as we're missing—"

"Fake death, maybe—"

"We'd still have to come back to find out the 80%."

Shadona stopped in the hall and dropped her friend's hand. She frowned, then smiled, "I can't take you anywhere, without you bringing me down."

Dana grabbed her friend's hand again, "Let's get something to eat." She rubbed her belly with the other hand, "That sandwich wasn't enough."

Pre-game combat had Dana ascending in the rankings as well, thanks mostly to their extensive practice in the HB-4. The games were divided into two basic groups, solo and with a wingman. The girls rarely competed against each other, except for in training, but always teamed for tandem combat, each taking turns as wingman.

This year put their tandem odds at 1-5, with Dana having, for her first time, odds of finishing in the top five for solo at 1-2. This was a very big deal around the base. The top five seats were coveted and hadn't changed in years. If Dana placed this year, someone would get bumped.

Shadona always finished in the top five for solo, her seat was secure, as was their tandem, usually.

But with Dana's improvement, they had to keep their eyes out for another leg-breaking event.

With trays in hand, they proceeded through the line, and headed for a table.

They sat with the few girls who remained at the base. In the beginning, it was a rather even split between boys and girls.

No longer. Now they easily fit on just a few tables.

The one beside Dana stopped eating and said, "Chroma is dead."

"How?" Shadona asked.

"What happened?" Dana said.

"She hung herself," the girl at the end said.

Dana put down her fork. "Voluntarily?"

Half the table shook their heads, no.

Nearly all the girls had been raped, at one time or another. The first time it happened, the base ignored it. It had happened to a 'troubled' girl.

Unfortunately, that left the impression on the boys that, so long as they selected 'troubled' girls, nothing would ever be done. And, for the most part, the base's inaction proved the boys right.

Worse, it seemed to fit into their psychology study. It was expected that women would be raped on the battlefield, the theory went, and so long as the base didn't appear to authorize it, they could wash their hands of it as a 'boys will be boys' thing. In a twisted way, the theory held that it would make the girls stronger.

The base had even assigned boys and girls to bunk in the same rooms during the height of the rapes in an attempt to promote a better understanding between the sexes.

That was when rape graduated to 'assisted' suicides.

Rape tests were never done. No serious attempts were ever made to hold someone responsible. Inquiries went nowhere, especially with a nearly all-male staff.

Dana had been a thin girl, before it happened to her. Now she overate and had to struggle to keep her weight down to flight fitness. That was an all too common reaction around here. But with Dana, it would be a mistake to believe it was all fat. Other girls reacted differently. Shadona made her point to her co-ed roommate with a pencil, and the rapes dropped sharply after that. Rooms switched back to single sex, though boys were roomed down the same halls as girls.

It had been at least two years since a girl had died. Was murdered.

There was a saying about hunting-dogs. When the dog gets that first taste for blood, you shoot the dog because you'll never break them from it. It probably held true for boys, especially those raised this way.

They ate silently.

There would be no funeral. No eulogy. It was commonly believed that the body simply went out with the next truck of trash to the local landfill.

There was high-fiving at one of the boys' tables.

Fifty-two percent was sounding good enough. It was only painful once.

Official combat trials were scheduled a month early this year, and they were cleared for sonic flight.
Chapter 14

They gathered in the cafeteria and watched the wall of big-screen monitors, each relaying real-time gun camera videos of the dogfights raging in the airspace overhead. The monitor in each corner displayed a radar overlay from their traffic control tower.

This part was commonly called the fur-ball. Nine pilots fighting for the highest tally of kills in a kind of free-for-all. At least, that was how it was supposed to be played. What generally happened was two or three would team up and single out some of the weaker players for some rapid kills. Some extra points were for first blood, some were for highest number of kills and so on, with a bonus for tagging all eight of your competitors. Few ever got the total-domination bonus.

In the past, Dana was considered an easy target, but she had come a long way in such a short time. She already had first blood and scored two more in rapid succession, all while flying defensively against a team of three desperate to clear her from the air. They had been on her six (directly behind her) for most of the combat, but were unable to turn that massive advantage into a kill. Now, their singular focus on Dana for so long had dwindled the planes left in the air to five, with them yet to score.

One of them would have to clear all four remaining planes to win this round.

The crowd drew silent when Dana tagged her fourth that day. It was now mathematically impossible for her to lose.

Shadona looked at the odds board. Dana was 2-5 to place in the top 5.

The two wingmen quickly darted before their leader, took one for the team, and secured their leader a second-place showing.

He quickly painted Dana, but it was begrudgingly scored on the odds board. Dana had ignored the last plane and simply headed home, safe in the knowledge that she had won.

With thirteen days remaining of combat, the first few scheduled rounds didn't have Dana and Shadona competing in the same fur-ball at all, but they would meet by the end of the week. Unlike the boys, they didn't wingman up to seek an advantage, they simply didn't target each other unless they were the only two left. They would, however, target planes in each other's six, if convenient.

The girls in the room argued that blatant wingmanning as cheating. But the boys countered with the tired standard, "If everyone is doing it, then it ain't cheating."

Shadona left early and hurried down the maze of halls to the hangar. She was not going to let something unfortunate happen to her friend on the ground when she had had such a good day in the air.

Nothing did.

Combat was the most tangible measure of self worth around, providing most with their value and status, but not all of it took place in the air. They played ground combat too, but it was always weighted less. Much like life, whoever owned the air, ruled the battlefield, and thus gave the air all its prestige.

At the foot of the mountain was a mockup of a town that even featured a full-time crane to move around walls and re-arrange buildings. The boys tended to favor urban combat, if the scores on simulators were any indication. And, of course, physically, the boys had an inherent advantage and tended to dominate it as well. But even ground combat had an air component with grenade-firing drones, and the drone simulator was incredibly popular with both. Then, of course, the Michelin-man suits were the all-time favorite of everyone, but were rarely deployed because of cost.

The simulator room was packed for the weeks leading up to combat trials and was responsible, in part, for the lack of molestation of her friend.

But upsetting the status quo always had its price.

With the excitement of combat still in Dana's blood, they checked the simulator roster, but they were booked solid for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, the HB-4 was always available, to them.

Dana flew the simulator while Shadona reviewed the surveillance report and got more details on the tooth removal devices. The soft pallet prevented the bullet from achieving the ideal angle to cleanly remove the tooth when fired from inside the mouth. Some alternates involved firing the round down from outside, through the cheek, bone, and tooth and into a metal cup that would deflect the shrapnel out the mouth. This reduced brain-damaging shards to around 15%. Statistically, it cracked at least four teeth. The poison, if it was poison, wasn't blown through the soft tissues of the cheek, which was another bonus, but the muscle structure of the cheek had a chance of deflecting the bullet when fired from outside. An improvement, but it still was progress. Other methods were also advancing, but this held the most promise of them all. The flight simulator drew relatively little processing power and was a fraction of actual flight.

The plans for complete evasion had progressed as well and should be complete by the time the tooth removal was an acceptable risk. Shadona switched her focus to the game Dana was playing and noticed the improvement. At this pace, Dana was sure to place in the top five this year.

Dana had practiced nothing but aggressive evasive maneuvers. She anticipated the wingman formation and used it as a way to neutralize two or three of her competitors while she racked up a score. There was an excellent chance it would be used against her again, so no reason not to turn it into an advantage.

Before they left the HB-4, they activated the surveillance system and looked out for ambushes, but there were none.

They made plans to bide their time until it reached 80% while they pulled one of the engines down. They had long discussed where they would run to when free. They knew the range of every plane they planned to steal. They knew where the railroads crisscrossed the countryside and all the slow turns within range. They planned to change trains for the first two weeks, just to thoroughly confuse any attempt to track them. Ideally, they would look to take the HB-4. It was invisible to radar and had the range to leave the continent. It was the one mission she had built it for and was the only plane that could take off without the assistance of the catapult. Taking the engines apart suggested engine problems that they hoped to later use as an excuse to get a full tank of fuel to test it with, hopefully the good stuff. Freedom was so close, they could taste it. One year, perhaps less.

Dysath supervised as the test projectile was loaded onto the rack. It was a 200-pound block of cement with a GPS guidance system. The skin was covered in radar absorbent material so it would pass over a few states without causing a disturbance. They planned to drop the test round into the ocean 800 miles off the coast of California. They had a dingy as a target and several unmanned observation posts already in position.

He checked the readings, then called the harvester control room. They were eighteen coils shy of what they needed to put something into orbit, but they had installed enough to test the rest of the system.

"Everybody out," Dysath said.

His crew orderly vacated the firing tube and assembled outside the chamber. Dysath did a headcount, then called the harvester control room back, "Clear, you have a go."

"Confirm go," came back from the control room.

"Confirmed. You are clear fire."

The base rumbled.

"Captain Dysath," the control room called back, "We show a malfunction on coil two. It reads open."

Dysath looked at his team. It felt like the ground had just fallen out from under them. He looked over his checklist. He had tested coil two personally, no more than twenty minutes ago. He pressed the button for the control room, "Entering fire chamber. Lock down, please."

"Lock down confirmed. Engaging ground tree. . . ground tree reads green, but give it another minute just to be sure."

The ground tree was Hanly's idea. When dealing with power levels this high, the wires themselves acted like capacitors and could store a significant amount of power. The wire could be disconnected on both ends and would look entirely safe, yet it retained enough residual energy to be fatal. That was, without a ground tree. The tree had a branch that touched every coil and, when engaged, it grounded every piece of equipment, bleeding all the residual energy to ground. It stayed in place whenever someone was physically in the firing chamber. The minute wait was overkill.

The light above the door turned green, and they all filtered back in.

They had a problem. Dysath sent a fresh set of eyes to investigate coil two, but everyone was assigned a coil to check that they had never previously worked on.

It took twenty-eight grueling minutes, but they were thorough.

Dysath cleared the firing chamber, did the headcount, then called the control room back and cleared the fire.

The base rumbled a little less than before, a boom echoed down the chamber, and the test round was gone.

"Confirmed fire," the control room reported.

They waited in silence.

"How fast did you figure it at?" one of the techs asked Dysath.

"Oh, uh, about mach 7. A little over fifteen minutes, I figure." Fifteen minutes suddenly seemed like a very long time to sit in a room and wait patiently. "It should technically get into space, barely." He smiled. "We were the first to fire a projectile into space."

"The harvester crew did that years ago," one of the tech crew chimed in. "It was a dumb lump of ceramics, though, maybe that shouldn't count."

"Didn't the V-1—" one chimed in.

"No, the V-1 was the jet engine, the V-2 was the rocket," another said.

"Ok, right," Dysath said. "You're both right. But, this is a record of some sort, I'm sure."

They sat on the benches and waited. The conversation simply died in the most uncomfortable way as they all came to the same conclusion.

It was a weapon.

Perhaps they should call it the V-3.

"Confirmed. Direct hit, Captain Dysath. The comet had a tail. Repeat, the comet had a tail. Congratulations!" came across the speaker.

His team jumped to their feet and cheered, hollered and screamed. In the belly of a mountain, where no one would ever hear.

If they used full power with just the coils they had tested, they could target North Korea by skipping off the top of the atmosphere. With the rest of the coils in place, they could reach orbit and hit anywhere on the planet. The comet tail meant the lightning followed it in and detonated a thimble charge of N60.

Flight combat started again, a few hours after lunch. These were the second round fur-balls. Dana scored first blood again, much to the anger of the others watching the monitors in the cafeteria.

Shadona stepped closer to Dana's gun-camera monitor. She was lined up on another.

Score! She was off to a brilliant start.

Another scored from the far end of the room.

Dana belly flopped, slid sideways, and strafed a third before rolling out and targeting her fourth of the day. This would ensure her place in the top ten, if she could just—

The gun camera went blurry, then ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, sky. . .

Shadona stepped back and scanned the other screens. One of the boy's had rammed his plane into her wing and ejected.

Two chutes were in the air.

Half the crowd gasped.

One of the boys buzzed Dana's chair. The wash twisted and ripped her chute. She was falling like a stone!

Shadona searched the wall for a glimpse of the freefall on any—

She saw the dust of a thud between the trees.

Shadona staggered back.

Her heart felt broken, torn from her chest.

She felt sick to her stomach.

She made note of those who cheered.

Combat was over for the year. Two planes were lost. Expensive, costly planes. They were not new planes by any means, but they were still very expensive for such a limited budget. This would be investigated, but not as a murder. It would be investigated as the destruction of property.
Chapter 15

The lights blinked on.

She sat on the bed. She had been sitting all night.

She had been sitting for days.

The door unlocked, then slid open.

She twisted the ring on her finger as she stared at the pillow.

Dana was gone.

Gone.

For such a tiny word, its weight on her heart was crippling.

Her life felt like it was on hold.

The world had stopped for her.

Escape seemed pointless now.

She twisted the ring.

A man appeared at the door. He looked in, placed some rations on the box by the door, then closed and locked it from outside.

She pulled Dana's pillow onto her lap.

She didn't want to escape anymore.

She wanted them all dead.

"Well, Doctor, what are the odds that she's suicidal?" the XO asked the man in his office.

"Odds? Fifty-fifty, perhaps." He placed the large stack of files on the XO's desk. "It's the homicidal side that needs watching."

"Locks will contain that, Doctor."

The Doctor pulled a file from the stack, "She killed one a few years back, didn't she? Hospitalized one of your instructors, booby trapped drawings—"

"I know the history, Doctor, what I need now is advice. The girl has a high potential value—"

"I'm not sure I agree. Why in the world do you allow her access to equipment and material, knowing the potential destructiveness that particular combination can produce?"

"Well, Doctor, the last time she produced a—" he censored himself. The good doctor's clearance only went so far. The stack of files only appeared to be complete.

"She teases you with possibilities, bargaining chips you can't cash in without her." The doctor stood, "Well, cash them in, if you still can, but I wouldn't expect her to offer you more. Indefinite confinement will only aggravate the situation. I would expect her to become more resolved in a path of defiance. I don't know what counseling would offer."

"Thank you, Doctor," the XO said, standing until the man left his office.

He flipped through his Rolodex and tried another number again. The post-traumatic guy had been out of the office for the last few days, perhaps he was back now.

The door opened and a man stepped in.

He turned to the two men outside the door, "Thank you, Gentlemen, I have it from here."

The door closed with an unsettling sound when it locked with a clank behind him.

She obviously hadn't showered in days.

He looked closely at her face. She hadn't washed it either, which was important. It showed she hadn't cried. He didn't move, but neither did she.

He looked at the stack of uneaten food, standard military rations. They would last indefinitely. A practical choice, but the stack of unopened packets suggested a very hungry girl.

He sorted the packets, then opened one. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I developed a taste for these. Ohhh! It comes with a chocolate bar." He set it down on the stack, "I like to save it for last. You've had one of these powerbars, I'm sure."

She twisted the ring on her finger as he crinkled the wrapping foil.

He had been given unprecedented clearance on her case. He had even reviewed the gun-camera video. "They murdered her," he said.

She twisted her ring, but didn't look up.

"Don't let them murder you, too. Eat something."

She looked at him. "You, are they."

He looked down, almost ashamed. "They, we, you. Training her didn't cause this."

She jumped down from the bed, but was so weak from hunger she fell to the floor.

It was aggressive enough to startle him, but he quickly got over it. He stepped closer and knelt within her range. "In the next few days, they are going to come in here and feed you in the most unpleasant way. They, we, are not going to let you die. They are not going to be allowed to murder you, too. Eat. It isn't bad."

She looked dizzy, but righted herself on the floor. She looked at the bar he offered, but twisted her ring instead.

"You are a brilliant young woman." He moved until he was sitting within her gaze. "This, what you are doing, is only punishing you. Training her, didn't cause this."

She kicked him in the face.

The door unlocked and two men quickly rushed in, but he jumped to his feet and held up a hand to them. "It's all right, Gentlemen, give us another few minutes, please."

The door closed behind him as he took a napkin from the meal and held it to his nose.

He sat further away, this time. "Shadona is an interesting name—"

She glared at him.

"You're right, sorry. They didn't give me a good report on Dana. Not like what they have on you. Tell me about her."

She stopped playing with her ring and stared at the floor.

"You and three others, including Dana, stole a car and ran away. But, only you and Dana survived. That's all the record said."

She pressed her forehead to her knees.

"After that day, you clung to her."

She pressed her hands to the back of her head.

"What happened that day?"

She sat silently.

"The two boys with you died." He paused. "We don't have to talk about this, if you don't want to." He checked the napkin. The bleeding had stopped. "Eat something. Just a little for now. Give me something that I can take back to them, some proof that they don't have to force feed you. That's a horribly unpleasant thing I'd hate to see you go through."

She sat while he crunched away on his half of the powerbar.

"I don't believe you're suicidal. Not really. You would have done it in a less painful way by now, if it was just about your death."

He sat in the room with her for another hour, but she never said another word. Nor did she eat.

He paid two more visits that day, with similar results.

When he arrived the following morning, she had showered and half of one ration was eaten. It was progress.

"I want you to do something for me," he said when her door opened. He set down some paper and an assortment of paints. He gestured toward the closing door, "Forget about all that for right now. I've gotten a lot of positive responses from something we call paint therapy." He set it up on her desk.

Shadona sat on Dana's bed, dressed in an oversized nightshirt.

He watched her waving her hand in the air, much like she was conducting an orchestra in her head, or perhaps— "Do you play the piano?"

She continued without missing a beat.

"Do you like classical, jazz perhaps?"

She continued, eyes closed.

"I can have a radio brought in. It won't be able to receive anything down here, but I can get most CDs."

She slowed as if the song had finished, then ended it with a closed hand.

"You just have to tell me your preferences."

She looked at him. "I prefer. . . I prefer to be let go."

He spread out the colors and an assortment of inks. The sticks on the brushes were soft plastic. "Where would you go? What would you do?"

She slid off the edge of the bed to stand on a chair, "Away." She stepped to the floor, "Thrive." She bent the rubbery brush in her fingers.

He laughed. "I told them it wasn't necessary. You were probably too weak from not eating—"

"I could kill you, without it." She looked him in the eyes.

He was a little afraid. It seemed absurd to be afraid. She was a hundred ten pounds, if that. But she had killed before. The mortician described it in vivid details on the report. It was neither quick nor painless. He swallowed. "You were trained for little else."

She stepped toward him. He flinched, but she turned to the pages on the desk. "But is that all that I am?"

He sighed with relief, "I'm sure it's not."

She pulled out the chair and sat down. She ran each brush across her fingertips, then across her palm. She pushed them into a corner, then put the tops back on all the inks. She ran her fingers across the blank page in a daydreamy way, then put them in the desk drawer. "You don't want a window into my head, right now."

He pulled a chair up beside her and sat. "You don't have to draw windows. Pick something nice, a sailboat, a plane, the sky, trees. It's therapy, it takes your mind off your troubles for a while. It lets you forget how itchy a fresh scab can be."

"You don't have any pine green or sky blue."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I can get you some."

She looked at the hand.

He took it off. "They said they couldn't find any problems with the engine you took apart—"

"It's off. They screwed it up. It was perfect, flawless when I built it, but they kept tearing it down. Day after day," she looked at the paints, "it can only be put back together so many times. . . before the parts don't fit anymore."

He stood up. "Give it a try. It might help."

He knocked on the door, and they let him out.

He walked down the hall with the tray and stopped by the door. When the guards to arrive, they inspected the tray and removed the metal fork and knife, then unlocked the door.

"I thought you might like some real food," he said, setting it down. "The chicken is actually pretty good."

She glanced at the food, but didn't get down from the bed, well into the evening.

"I like the painting," he said, staring at the inside of the door. He stepped closer. "Why bunnies playing in the snow?"

She didn't move.

"It's very detailed. You can almost see the whiskers move." He stepped out of the light. "It has a hint of wind in the fur. It's very good. Shadows in the footprints, the bark even shows nibbles."

He walked over to the bed. "Any special significance to it?"

She rolled to turn her back to him.

"Why'd you paint it on the door instead of paper?"

"Paper is easier to take away."

It meant something to her. That meant something to him. He studied it some more. He noticed a fourth peeking from behind some snow-covered thorns. It looked like it was scared, shivering perhaps. The other three seemed perfectly content to play. He found himself lost in its big, brown eye. "You are not a prisoner, you know."

"Then why can't I leave."

He turned to the bed, "Well, today, I think if you ran across the wrong person, you would kill them, or get killed by them. The latter is more of a problem than the former."

"Miles from here, I wouldn't care."

"What would you do, miles from here? An engineer? You could undoubtedly put a dozen out of business tomorrow, but you have no credentials. You could pass any college entrance exam I've ever seen, but, you never went to a credited school. A pilot? I doubt there's a plane out there you can't fly. But you're a teenager. Nobody will ever let you. You would have to spend thousands proving you're as trained and as competent as you are."

"Millions of illegals are working in this country, they just disappear into the background. What's one more?"

He sat on the chair by her desk. "Would that make you happy? Could you be happy picking lettuce, apples, strawberries?"

She answered in fluent Spanish.

He looked over her disorganized desk. "Maybe for a few years. But what a waste it would be for someone of your talents to pick a field or do dishes in the back of a restaurant."

"Like a potato that thrives in a desert."

He laughed, "Nothing thrives in the desert."

She went silent.

"Things can be better, here, for you. If you want them to be. They can be working with you." He got back on track. "Forget about all of that. There is a lot more flexibility in your stay here than you realize. More than I thought. It doesn't have to be like this, nor should it." He took the lid off the plate and fanned the odor towards her, "This is on a hot plate, so, it should stay warm for an hour, maybe more." He replaced the lid. "I hope you enjoy it."

He left the room.

* * *

Late that fall, the XO had the counselor back to the office. "Well, sit, sit," the XO said. "You did an excellent job this time. I'm surprised."

"Well, thank you, Sir. She is a challenging girl."

"Yes, well, you managed to keep a lid on a boiling pot. I think that qualifies you for that bonus we talked about."

"Well, thank you, Sir. Uh, I have to warn you, if she was in my normal practice, we'd be looking at years of counseling. It would take just a small spark to destroy all of —"

"The most learned opinions floating around here were that she would be catatonic, that she'd just shut down and become intransigent—"

"She was on her way there, Sir. I still wouldn't rule that outcome out entirely."

"But what was most impressive is you managed to get her to discuss the functioning components of her bi-directional engine design. She didn't quite give full disclosure, but we are years closer—"

"She feels strongly about that plane, Sir. It hurts her every time your men take it apart—"

"Yes, Yes, I read that in your report." The XO went around his desk and pulled the folder. "I'll have the men stop for a while. They can't altogether, you understand, but we have other things to focus on."

"Yes, I think that's best." The counselor gestured with his hands, "Do what you can to defuse the situation."

The XO pressed his finger into the report. "You noted here that she should be returned to flight status. Are you sure about that?"

"Well, no. I'm not positive. I think I wrote that a month ago. It's a line, you see." He leaned back in the chair and formed a pyramid with his fingers. "She looks on it as punishment if you deny her. That builds on this antagonism." He pulled the pyramid apart. "But, the other side of the line is, she's likely to kill both boys if they share the air with her. But, I think it's a manageable risk."

He scribbled in the margins. "Well, again, thank you. We'll keep you on call—"

The counselor stood and offered out his hand, "Please do."
Chapter 16

The engineer attached the cable to the HB-4.

"What are you doing?" Shadona asked, "That isn't part of the frame." She crawled under and attached the cable herself.

Dysath watched from a distance. She was cooperating, but still holding back. A week ago, he walked up to her and bluntly asked questions about the skin, to which she dropped what she was working on and walked away. He wasn't used to working with her and tended to ask too many questions, so he removed himself from the temptation. His team was used to following without peppering the work with questions; he was not.

"Let's give it a test burn," she announced.

One of the engineers crawled inside. "43E65F"

"A3421A" she answered.

The engine roared to life.

She rested her hand on the wing, then pressed her ear to the skin. Her hair whipped in the churning air. She keyed her mike, "Shut it down."

The engine instantly flamed out.

She pointed to two injectors, "They both need to be replaced." She took off the mike, handed it to Dysath, then walked off the field.

Dysath walked over to the plane, "Which ones did she say?"

The engineer she talked to pointed them out.

"I don't see what's wrong with them."

"Well, Captain," the engineer checked the readings, "it isn't putting as much tension on the cable as it should for as much fuel as it just burned. At least not if our previous measurements were any clue."

"Alright, fine, pull it and replace them. But just you two, I can't spare any more hours off our other project, so, just a couple hours today. We don't want to look a gift horse and all that, but we have other things to do. Bring me the old injectors when you pull them, Ok?"

"Yes Sir."

Dysath patted him on the back, then left for his main project.

The XO had assigned a guard to Shadona. He was armed, as most of the guards were, with a version of a stun gun and pepper spray. He had a mixed assignment, but it basically boiled down to his presence was to defuse any situation that might come up. But he was also to keep his distance. It was a precaution, though no sparks ever flew, even when she was in the same room with either of the identified boys. Boys were less likely to instigate with a guard in the room, especially one they didn't know.

The counselor had stated that that would probably be the case. She seemed to have moved beyond vengeance. Most of the paintings in her room were of tranquil forest scenes.

One of the bad signs had shown, though. She kept to herself, as much as was possible. She chose to eat alone, almost as a rule. If it persisted, it was a very bad sign, and the counselor had asked to be called back. But he never specified when was too long.

. . .

The fall fur-ball was finally here. F-16s were old school, but they were much easier to come by than Raptors. F-16s were nearly disposable, by comparison. The base was a military training compound. Period. Its primary task was the training of soldiers, specifically fighter pilots. It paid for all of the training with the harvester, and other grants that funneled funds to them.

Shadona was the second one shot down in her first combat after Dana's death.

She threw her helmet into the ground, kicked it into the nearest wall, then stormed off to her room.

The boys celebrated this near historic victory.

Four days later, she managed to score the first two but was the third one out. She landed upset, stormed to her room, but didn't throw a tantrum.

It was brutally cold that morning, but the weather broke by afternoon and visibility cleared enough to launch another round of air combat.

The plane was hooked to the catapult. Cleared, the cat launched her off the end. The F-16 felt like slow motion by comparison, but she adjusted to it. She fell into her old groove as she took her position in the holding pattern around the base.

F-16s could be stalled easily, by comparison. They were far less forgiving. And that was something she could exploit.

She clenched her fist, then disengaged the autopilot that recovered from stalls, and prevented collisions, much as one of the boys must have done some time ago.

The go signal came across the radio.

She broke right and dove. She tagged one immediately and sent him home. She banked left, climbed, and scored two trying to double team one of the girls. Three seconds later, she tagged the girl she had just saved. She had secured victory in this round. She could go home now, but she didn't. She dove down to treetop level and hugged the valley. She was off the radar now, but the base could still see her.

She suspected the two she wanted were getting tips from a friend, either in the control tower or somewhere else on the base. She would wait them out. Flying low and slow invited a sneak attack.

Bingo. Six o'clock. Both of them.

She tried to climb, but faltered. She banked left, right, then left again as the two closed rapidly on her from behind.

Just a little closer.

She dove to force them to adjust their angle.

They were nearly point blank when she rolled face down, then climbed.

The lead painted the belly of her plane, but she had gagged the throttle, starving the air in front of him. He stalled when he passed through her wash and was too close to the ground to recover. The fireball was nearly blinding, but she still managed to paint the cockpit of her second target. She closed from his blind side, grabbed the ejector, and rammed.

The ejection chair failed to clear her before the impact, and shrapnel cut into her shoulder and tore into her leg.

She ripped free from the chair and deployed the squirrel. Fabric from her back inflated and stiffened into rigid wings as she glided on the freezing wind at several hundred miles per hour.

She had to put as much distance between the wreckage and her landing zone before she lost too much momentum and blood.

She dove to accelerate, then banked hard and glided up the sunny side of the mountain and its thermals. She skirted around the peak and dove down the other side, just above the treetops. Twice more and she was out of momentum.

She looked for a place to put down.

The belly flops she had practiced so many times, she did again with fabric wings. They ripped, as planned, and opened the many pleats and folds into a more conventional parachute. She stopped on a dime and fell through the gaps in the trees to crash on her side in the dusting of snow.

She pulled off her helmet and fumbled in her pocket. She dropped something in the snow. Her leg was agonizing, but she knelt anyway. She found the cap and carefully aligned it with her tooth. It clicked when it snapped in place.

She ripped the sleeve from her bad shoulder and wrapped it around her leg, then staggered to her feet.

It was freezing cold. She staggered, then fell again.

She looked around and saw a thin line of smoke in the distance.

It started to snow.
Chapter 17

Scratch scratch scratch.

"Use your box, Max," Argo said, three in the morning. The room was cold. He could see his breath, but his clock still glowed. Something must be wrong with the stupid solar panel again. It would have been freezing had he not built a fire last night.

Scratch scratch scratch!

"Oh dear God!" He pulled the covers over his head.

Scratch scratch scratch!

He couldn't win. Max never gave up. Never.

He pulled the sheets off the bed and headed for the front door, but Max wasn't there. He headed for the back door, passing through the kitchen. Trouble lights were blinking on the solar panel display, but there was no way he was going to do anything about it on zero sleep in the middle of the night.

He opened the door.

"What the hell?" Something was blocking the storm door. It wasn't frozen shut, it was hitting something. He flipped on the light. "Oh shit!"

He pushed harder, but it didn't open. He ran to the front door and plowed through the knee-deep snow, in his socks, around the house to the back and up on the porch.

The body was cold to the touch— He was in a flight suit. A pilot. He moved the man out of the way of the door and pulled him inside to the kitchen. The pilot's hand twitched.

He was alive!

"Hold on, Buddy."

After all that scratching, Max didn't go outside, but was instead busy sniffing their new guest.

Argo turned on the lights in a panic. The buzzer in the kitchen sounded, then the lights went out and the fridge sputtered off. "Shit!" Argo said. He stumbled his way to his room and got his camping bag. The flashlight worked. He dug deeper for the lantern and the first-aid kit, then ran back to the kitchen. The lantern lit the room enough so he didn't have to hold the flashlight.

He picked up the phone.

Dead.

He pulled the cell phone off the charger.

No signal.

He ran outside and tried again.

No signal.

"Shit!"

He ran back inside, feet numb with cold.

One sleeve was wrapped around the pilot's leg in a makeshift bandage. The shoulder wound looked like it was bleeding worse, if the uniform was any indication.

He unzipped the—

"Boobs?"

He was a she.

They weren't big breasts, but they were definitely not the pecks of a man. He pulled off the pilot's ski mask. She had short hair and a scar that ran like a hair from the corner of her lips to an inch from her ear.

He paused. Why was he pausing?

She was young. His age, maybe.

What was she doing in a plane? He lightly slapped her on the face.

He pressed his ear to her chest. Shallow, but she was alive, and very cold. The cold probably saved her life. He had seen something about that on the History channel, or perhaps Discovery, one of the benefits of hypothermia.

He hesitated. "Sorry," he apologized, then ripped open the shirt. Something had gashed her deep, but not to the bone. He poured some peroxide on the three-inch wound, dabbed it with paper towels, then opened the gauze and started taping. He didn't have to pull up her bra, but he did.

There were burn marks between her breasts, but they looked old.

He felt guilty. "Sorry," he said again.

Max sniffed the girl's hair, but didn't interfere.

He untied the leg, then used a kitchen knife to cut open her suit to the wound.

It looked like a puncture, maybe even from a bullet. He lifted her leg at the knee and reached his hand around back. He didn't feel anything and didn't see much blood on his fingers.

Blood.

He stepped back from the girl and stood in the kitchen. He had a stranger's blood on him. He thought of AIDs and a thousand other— he washed his hands at the sink. The water pressure was dropping fast. He turned it off and dried his hands.

He opened more gauze and continued to patch the woman, best he could.

He removed the rest of her suit by cutting it away, then got his least favorite blanket from the closet and moved her to the living room, next to the fireplace.

It was still snowing around noon when he woke on the couch in the living room. The fire had died to embers again. He walked to the back porch and grabbed an armful of wood.

The girl looked better in natural light. The scar on her face looked more like a long hair, if her hair wasn't so short. He lightly tapped her cheek, "Hey. Wake up!" but she didn't respond. He opened the blanket. He had left her underwear on. He looked a little too long, but the wounds seemed ok. He tucked her back and checked the phones.

Nothing.

The snow blocked the satellite signal, not that he had enough power to watch anything. He turned on the battery-powered radio and dialed in the news channel. He had to listen for nearly an hour before he heard about a fire that had burned down several phone lines and about a thousand acres before they got it contained, about thirty miles away. Ten percent of the valley was without power and phones. The cell tower was connected through those lines, evidently.

He pulled the laptop out of the drawer and plugged it into the port to the solar panel. He ran the diagnosis program. "Thermal differential inadequate."

He ran the program again.

"What the hell is an 'inadequate thermal differential'?" he said, "I hate this shit, Dad!"

But, according to the radio, the snow was going to prevent the utility power from coming back on for the next few weeks at least; some projections had it being off for a month. Roads were closed, and the smell of smoke was expected to linger in the valley for months.

He went outside. He could see the smoke like angry fog, far off in the distance. Little fingers of smoke had popped up all over the place, Dara's house included. It looked like most of his neighbors were out of power; but then, most of them heated with wood to save money. He'd know for sure if the valley looked darker than usual tonight.

The front door faced down to the valley, the back door faced up the mountain. Why did she come from that side? It seemed unrelated to the fire miles away. And if the fire was down in the valley, how in the world did she get way up here? Especially with a messed up leg. It just seemed like the wrong door.

He grabbed some wood and went back inside.

He had placed the girl on the hard floor last night. He looked for the air mattress he camped with years ago. He stopped lugging it around because it was too much effort to inflate, and the plastic was too hot in the summer.

He dragged it out of the closet and blew until he was dizzy.

He opened the refrigerator and checked the temperature gauge. The power was off and it was warming, fast. He grabbed some plastic bags and went out back to fill them with snow. He stopped at the back steps. Blood was on the mat, a little smear on the wall by the door. She probably tried to get in and that had set off his cat.

Returning inside, he packed the bags of snow into every empty spot he could find in the freezer and fridge.

Cooking over fire was difficult, but not unlike camping. He knew what to start eating out of the fridge first, but he wanted catfish burgers instead. He froze dozens of patties at the beginning of fall and just had a hankering.

Baking bread was out; he couldn't bake anything other than potatoes over fire. But he made slices with the dough much like making pancakes. It was good enough. He used lots of Mayo, tomatoes, spinach, and cucumbers from the greenhouse.

He finished the sandwich by giving the last chunk to his perpetually starving Max.

How was he going to feed his other guest?

He stared at her.

He didn't know.

The bathroom had a hand pump. It looked ornamental; indeed, it was a rebuilt antique, but it was functional too. It pumped water directly into the bathtub. He pumped until it was full. He dipped a bucket, used it to flush the toilet, then refilled it at the tub and took it to the kitchen. He had a lot of scrubbing and mopping to do.

He held the uniform in his hand. It was dark with no rank, but it had a name, Shadona, and a tiny flag. On the sleeve was a symbol, a teardrop with a 3+ inside it and a 2 sitting outside on the top, right-hand corner. 3+, squared?

He soaked the uniform in the bucket of floor detergent, but put off washing it when he decided he'd rather have another catfish sandwich instead.

"Shadona," he said, trying to bring the girl around. "Shadona." He lightly tapped her cheek, then took another bite from the sandwich. "This is really good, and you're missing it."

Max approached the plate but got shooed away.

"Shadona." He waved the sandwich before her nose. "It's every bit as good as it smells." He shooed Max again, "Not yours," he said to the cat, but rewarded the attempt by tossing him a chunk. He turned his attention back to the girl. "You've got to be hungry by now."

The blanket moved when she put her hand to her forehead. "Wie spat ist es?"

He was confused. "You bust your head?"

She opened her eyes and looked around. Max walked up to the edge of the mattress and snuck a bite of his sandwich while he was distracted. "There's a skunk eating your sandwich."

"What?" He sat up and pulled the sandwich away from the cat. "Oh, that's Max, my cat. You hungry?"

She held her hand out to the cat.

Max sniffed her fingers, then returned his attention to the sandwich.

Argo tossed him another chunk.

"I tried to call 911, but the phones are down," he said.

"What time is it?"

He looked at his watch. "3:14"

She patted under the blanket.

"Your uniform is soaking in the kitchen. The electricity is out, too." He grabbed the unmolested other half of the sandwich. "It's catfish burger. My father's recipe, well, except for the bread. I can't make bread without a bread-maker. It's really good."

She struggled to sit. The blanket fell, leaving her in just a sports bra and bandage.

"Sorry." He handed her the sandwich, "I, uh, couldn't figure out how to— I had to cut the suit and—" he stood quickly, "I've got something that should fit you, I'm— Uh, hmm." He ran to his room.

Max approached her, now that she had the sandwich, but didn't get close enough to eat any. He stood on his hind legs and held his arms out like he wanted a hug, or was pretending to be a bear to scare her away. She dug out a chunk of the meat and held it out on the tip of her finger.

Max cautiously approached, sniffed, then took the chunk and retreated to a safe distance.

She took a bite. It wasn't bad. Her wound rendered her left arm nearly useless, but she could move it if she had to. She didn't see any clocks in the room.

Argo ran back in and dropped an armful of assorted clothes beside her. "I, uh," he tried to sort the pile, "I didn't know if I should try to—"

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Oh, uh," he looked at his watch, "3:19— You just asked me that a few minutes ago. Are you all right? Did you hit your head or something?"

"You have to tell me when it's 5—" she had a strained look on her face, "5:12"

"5:12? The phones don't work. You have to check in or something, expecting a search for you? Should I put out a signal or something so they can find you?"

"No, don't call anyone." Her training kicked in, and she made a quick assessment of him. "I'm in a lot of trouble, if they find me." She bit into the sandwich.

"I should really get you to a hospital, I don't know anything about—"

She swallowed, "I'll be fine." She looked at the picture on the mantle, "Where's your father?"

Argo sat back, then pulled the cat onto his lap. "Oh, he works away from home a lot. Got stuck, the airport's snowed in, so, last I heard he had another job to go to next week anyway. Self-employed consultant."

She studied the photo, but didn't recognize him. "He work at the base?"

"Oh, hell no. He's a California hippie from way back. Protested recruiters on campus, burned flags and everything." He tried to look her in the eyes, but was having a great deal of difficulty. He self-consciously played with Max to keep from staring at her chest. "You really a pilot?"

She shook her head no and ate the last bite of the sandwich. "Where's your mother? I don't see her in any of the—"

"Divorce. She's got a restaurant in town, a few hours away."

She put on one of his thicker long sleeve shirts, bad arm first, then lay down with her hand on her forehead, shirt mostly unbuttoned.

"You want an aspirin? Dad doesn't believe in drugs, but, he says aspirin is 'all natural' and he keeps some in the house."

"Thank you, but no. It wouldn't help. What time is it?"

He was starting to get worried about her. "3:22, I'll get you at 5:20—"

"5:12" she said.

He set Max down and went to his room. His camping gear had a windup alarm clock. He wound it and set it, for 5:10, right where she could easily see it. "So, you're a pilot at the base?"

She lay there, eyes closed, hand on her forehead.

"You work at the base?"

She didn't move.

"I'm not like my dad." Max climbed on her lap and licked crumbs from the blanket, until Argo picked him up. "I don't need to get accused of sexually harassing the military." He covered her better with the blanket.

BlingBlingBling!!!

Shadona woke and stared at the clock. 5:10. She pulled the shielding cap off the tooth, then waited five minutes.

Her headache went away, immediately. She could think again. She replaced the cap and looked around. He wasn't there. She quickly calculated the next time and set the alarm for 9:37, then tried to put on some pants, but found it was too painful for her leg.

His clothes seemed to fit, though.

She tried to stand and limp around the house.

She didn't remember it hurting this much on the hike there.

The kitchen was separated from the living room by a bar-like island. She made her way to the fridge and looked at the blinking chart on the wall. She stepped in a small puddle of water. She opened the fridge and saw bags of snow dripping as they slowly melted. The light didn't come on.

She felt a slight warmth coming from a room off the kitchen. A greenhouse. She stepped into it and tried to look out the glass, but it was fogged up.

She picked a ripe grape-tomato and ate it on the spot, then limped back into the kitchen and into the first room she found. It looked like the father's. There was the first picture of the boy's mother. They seemed to make a happy family when the boy was five or so; she wondered what went wrong. The father's taste seemed rustic. Sparse. No TV, no radio, no pictures on the walls, just a shelf full of books beside the window.

The next room was clearly the boy's. Computers, laptops, dirty clothes on the floor, and several printouts of her plane were taped to the wall over the desk, next to bikini-clad women. The resolution was lacking and it showed signs of over enlarging and blurring. Schoolbooks were in a pile by the desk. She tried the next room.

Bathroom. She put the seat down and sat.

The lid on the tank was off. The bathtub full of water made sense, but her leg wasn't in any condition to take lugging a bucket of water. She couldn't flush, so she closed the lid instead.

That was the entire house, such as it was.

It reminded her of the cabin. Small, but more than enough.

She limped to the mattress by the fireplace, but sat on a wooden chair. It was too much of a struggle to get up from the floor with only one good arm and leg.

She moved her fingers like she was conducting an orchestra or floating a leaf in the breeze, then finished with a fist.

Argo rushed in, "Oh my God, I am so sorry! I forgot all about 5:20—"

She looked down at the skunk that ran in and headed straight to the fire. "It's ok," and it was 5:12.

"This stupid solar panel is killing me. We got just the one chainsaw, and it sputters more than it cuts. Stalls half the time."

"I'm a flight mechanic, not a pilot. I wasn't supposed to be in the—"

He suddenly felt bad when he put it together. "AWOL?"

She didn't answer. "I can probably fix it."

"They take AWOL seriously."

"No, your solar problem. If the readings are right, I should have it up by dark."

"Cool."

"You have any sweatpants? Jeans are too hard to put on."

He looked at her, she was just wearing the shirt. "Sure." He went to his room.

Putting on sweats wasn't pleasant, but it was possible. They dressed and went out to the panel, she leaned on him the entire way.

"Ok," he said helping her down on the chair his father usually sat at. "The tools are right there, I'll see if I can't get something started from the fridge." He turned back for the house.

"Hey, uh, what is your name?" she asked.

He stopped, "Argo, Argo Caranf."

"Argo, together we have maybe three good hands. I can't do anything with just the one arm."

He looked really depressed. He was going to have to do it. He walked back. "You sure you know what you're doing? This is one of those weird Internet engines that just kinda works, some of the time."

"It's a standard HHOPP stirling. One of your circulating pumps is down, probably just the brushes. If that's all, we can replace them with any number of things, from brushes out of almost any motor to the carbon cores of old D batteries." She pointed to the pump housing. "Even an old drill-motor would do. We just have to take the cover off first and verify that it's the problem. I can't do that."

He crawled in where she was pointing and followed instructions well. She had a very easy way of explaining things.

The brushes were gone. What was worse, it destroyed the motor to the extent that it was ruined and would have to be replaced. But, replaced didn't mean today. She talked him through how to pull the carbon cores out of two D batteries, and with a file they shaped them into replacement brushes. It ran hot, very hot to the touch, but it ran and wasn't hot enough to be a fire hazard. Plus, as she explained it, it was the hot side anyway.

They finished before dark, barely.

"Ah, lights," he said helping her inside, "You don't miss them until they're gone." He sat her on the couch and helped with her boots before hitting the remote for the TV.

The screen read "acquiring signal," but it never did.

"Awwh, crap. Probably snow on the dish. It's on the roof, too late to worry about it today. I've got tons of movies and a pirate version of X-box."

She shook her head no. "You still in school?"

The wind left his sails like Kelly calling him cutie and patting him on the head. "This is my last year of home school, taken over the phone and satellite. I've got a ton of college credits already, but I'm not big on going to college. I thought I might try one of those that lets you attend from home." He turned the TV off. He might as well come clean. "I'm almost eighteen." She didn't look surprised, or disappointed.

"My leg is killing me, do you mind?" She inched back into the corner of the couch as he helped stretch it out on the cushions. "Thanks."

He got dinner started in the kitchen, then emptied the bags of snow from the house and mopped up. He stepped outside, then came back to the living room, arms full. He handed her a cracked helmet he found while cutting firewood. "This isn't what mechanics wear, it's got way too much electronics in it. And this isn't what mechanics wear either, that's a G-belt."

Electronics. It should have occurred to her earlier. "Burn it."

"Burn it? Why in the—"

She leaned forward. "Burn it, burn both of them."

"But why?"

She struggled off the couch and limped toward the fireplace.

"Whoa! Not in here! We have a trash pit out back, plastic would stink the whole house up and my father would kill me!" He stood in her way. "Calm down, what's the hurry?"

"Tracking devices. It could be broadcasting even now."

"You sound like my mom and all her paranoid conspiracy theories. They don't track people through their clothes. Satellites don't spy on every individual person, all phones are not tapped, there's no master database tracking every purchase you make—"

She thrust the helmet into his hands. "Burn it. Just burn it, please. Just burn it."

He held the helmet as she stuffed the suit into it. She looked desperate and scared.

"Please, just burn it."

He looked outside. It was already dark.

"Please," she said, staring him in the eyes.

He could see she was on the verge of tears. He pulled the lighter off the mantle, grabbed the starter fluid, and headed outside.

By the time the kindling was burning enough to add three logs and get the fire hot enough to melt metals, she limped out the back door and headed his way.

"I'm going to do it, don't worry. You can go inside," he said, "Just had to get it hot enough."

But she didn't stop coming. She tossed in her bra and panties and boots and all, and watched them burn. He added the helmet and suit and a bag of trash for good measure.

She wouldn't go inside until she had watched it disintegrate into ash. He, on the other hand, went back in repeatedly to check on dinner.

She was either very paranoid, or very hunted.

At the island, they ate a dinner of spinach salad, croutons, and breaded bass covered with tomato slices, and garlic bread.

"You eat a lot of fish?" she asked, the last of her bass on the tip of her fork, with a healthy chunk of tomato.

He chewed quickly. "Stocked pond, full of fish." He sipped from the glass. "We pack the freezer every fall. You grow up on fish and you develop a craving." He shrugged, "Hard to fish when the pond is frozen."

"It's very good."

"Dad keeps some steaks in there, if you want. But they're high dollar. To him, they're like a bottle of champagne after a difficult day, or a very rewarding one. The whole mad cow thing turned him completely off of hamburgers."

She looked at him.

"I know, right, same animal and everything. For some reason, he thinks hamburgers —I mean, ground beef— something about a pound of ground is like eating a thousand cows or something like that. So, in his mind, you're safer eating cuts because it only comes from one cow, and you can tell by looking at it what part it came from. He gets them from this restaurant supplier that ships to Japan, and, they test every cow." He looked at the expression on her face. "I know, he's a little out there, too."

She took a drink.

"I'm not forbidden to eat them, if you'd rather. I just, he goes through— it's a big deal when he goes to get them. Look, I, you're not just AWOL, are you? It's— people don't think they're bugged, unless— look, I, I've got some experience in, oddness, ness, -osity."

She smiled. "I'm not paranoid."

"I'm not saying you're— ok, how about overly cautious. I've got experience in that too."

The panel had been running for only a few hours, but it had already warmed every room of the house. When it worked, it was surprisingly efficient. The fire had gone out long ago, and had even cooled enough to close the flue. They watched an old movie, a favorite from his Cary Grant collection, "Father Goose."

When the alarm clock went off, Shadona got up and went to the bathroom.

He paused the DVD until she returned. He was worried after five minutes, but she did have a bum leg. It still counted as odd behavior. She wound and reset the clock.

She didn't make it to the end of the movie and fell asleep on the couch.
Chapter 18

He woke around 8 AM and turned on the computer, an old Windows desktop that took forever to load. His laptop was newer and came on within seconds, but the desktop was set up for school. He headed for the bathroom.

Then he remembered his guest.

He looked at the mattress by the fireplace, but found her asleep on the couch. He looked at the time on the alarm clock sitting on the ground by her head. 8:14

It was another odd piece of the puzzle. "Shadona." He tapped her on the shoulder. "Shadona."

She jerked awake, "What time is it?"

"You've got a few minutes yet."

She struggled to sit.

"With the power back, I may have class. I'm not sure yet. See, it's satellite, both ways, so, if we have power. . . "

She turned the alarm off so it wouldn't disturb him.

"I, um, you know, help yourself to the kitchen and things, I'll be in my room, most of the time. But they'll be able to hear you, if you're trying to hide from someone." He took off his watch and handed it to her. "Look, I don't know what it is with you and time. Maybe you'll say, maybe not." A friendly skunk emerged from his cage, stood on his hind legs, and sniffed the air. "You can tell Max, he doesn't judge either." He pointed at the watch's face. "It's one of those self-setting atomic watches, so, it should be down to the second."

He looked at her. No bra was very distracting. He held his eyes closed while she fiddled with the watch.

"Ok, I, um. . . ok." He returned to his room.

The dish had a de-icing heater, electric of course, and had melted enough overnight to connect. Two-way communication. No phone, no cell towers, but he did message his father and left him a voice mail. He left out everything about the girl and tried his best to play it cool. She was intriguing, and a little odd. He found he liked that.

Dara wasn't online, but she had DSL, not satellite. But, she could easily be off line because of power too.

He was paranoid during class, but Shadona never made a sound that couldn't be excused as Max.

He had an hour for lunch.

He sliced the bread, then toasted it while frying up enough catfish burgers for two.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, "But, when I get a craving, it usually lasts for a week. This bread is better, I think you'll agree." He put the plate in front of her at the island, then turned to the fridge and filled two glasses through the door. "What flavor do you want? Got blue ice, cherry, strawberry. . . "

"Just water is fine."

He stirred in the powder and sat. He had lots of flavors from Kool-aids to teas, but sports drinks were the flavor of the week.

She ate quietly while he tried not to be obvious about watching her. She had good posture, was very mannered, and polite. Cute, but not quite sexy. He remembered staring at her after cutting the suit. If she tried, let her hair grow, removed a few scars, she could easily be gorgeous. Bra-less was constantly on his mind. "How's the shoulder?" he asked.

"Better, thank you."

Her voice was very calming. She was much different than Dara, conversationally. He didn't want to know more about Dara, he wanted to know more about this girl. "You are a pilot, aren't you?"

She put the sandwich down, then repositioned it on the plate. "No, I'm too young."

"Lots of pilots are nineteen, twenty years old, right out of high school. Especially in the military." He picked up on her subtle cues, "I'm not like my father. I love the— I've got hours of tape of them doing maneuvers in these mountains. See, the way I figure it, it's like yelling in a well. No matter how loud you scream, if you are trapped in a well, nobody can hear you unless they're standing over the hole. That's why they do it here, the mountains bottle up the sound. Plus, there aren't that many people to protest here."

He adjusted his chair, then drank the last of his glass while she nibbled.

"What's the symbol on your suit?"

She didn't answer.

"Look, they have this plane that looks like the symbol on your— See, the SR-71 has a similar symbol of a delta wing and a. . . " He could tell he was alienating her, so he stopped. He was dying to ask about the burn and the scar, but didn't. "You want another? See, the cucumbers don't last but a week in the fridge before they turn into rubber, so, you gotta eat them. Now that the solar is back on, I can turn on the grow lights and I might coax a dozen more soon. Oh," he stood, "you haven't tried my cucumber sandwiches, they are totally awesome with coffee."

"Coffee?"

"Oh, my God, I didn't offer you any coffee." He put his hand on his forehead. "What was I thinking?"

He dug into the cabinets for filters and started brewing a pot.

"Don't worry, Max will eat anything you don't want, just don't feed him any coffee."

At that, she laughed.

"No, seriously, don't. No coffee and no cheese. Coffee makes him—" he tried to find a delicate way of saying it while he sliced the cucumber, "runny. Sometimes, he doesn't make it to his box. He loves it, and he'll try to drink it if you leave a cup anywhere, so, don't let it out of your sight. And cheese, it has the opposite effect, and you don't want to be in a house with a constipated, uncomfortable cat. Especially if that cat has the mythical powers of a skunk. Fortunately, a little cheese is ok."

He stopped slicing while she laughed. She had a nice laugh, very polite.

He wanted to keep probing, but was finding it difficult to keep the porno fantasy out of his head. It was usually the pizza delivery thoughts. Either delivering to a sorority pillow party with his scooter, or a delivery where they offer unusual tips. But his third most common fantasy was a woman dropping in from the blue. It was hard not to think of her that way. But she wasn't. She wasn't hitting on him at all. She was just, polite. From her accent, she sounded local. "Where are you from?"

She looked at the coffee, it would take another few minutes. "Here."

"I have Internet access through the satellite, if you want to email your parents or something. It can make phone calls too, it just does it in a weird, pausing way."

She looked down. "I don't have anyone, to call. Thank you."

He sat across the island from her. "Parents? Siblings?"

"My sister, died, this year."

"Oh, I'm, I'm horribly— That's terrible. I'm sorry." He reached across and put his hand on hers. "You very close?"

She looked down at his hand.

He moved it. "I uh," he looked at the time. He would love to make up an excuse to go back to his room, but he had another half an hour, "I've, uh, got some good comedies in my DVD collection too. But, they, aren't labeled, so. Hmmm. I know I was broken up when my parents split. Comedies helped." He noted how much longer the coffee had, then went to the living room and pulled disks from the stacks, making a pile of what he thought she would like. "You know how to work the remote, right?" He looked over to the island. He suspected she was a pilot, a remote should be easy. "You'll figure it out."

When the pot belched that last puff of steam, he went back to the kitchen and served it, then filled the insulated carafe.

"Oh," he said, "that's another from my hippie parents. 'Turn off the coffee pot, use a thermos, save electricity'" he laughed. "It's solar! Save it, hog it, use it all! It just doesn't matter, it doesn't change how much coal is burned!"

She politely smiled and sipped from the mug.

"But I do it anyway." He leaned closer, "I think they've damaged my fragile little mind." She seemed to be warming to him. "I think it keeps the taste better. It doesn't get that burnt taste you get leaving it on the warmer." He remembered she was one handed, for now. "I'll leave the lid on, loose, ok?"

She smiled. "This is good bread. It's a pleasant combination."

"Yeah, see, the secret is—" He leaned even closer. "See, most people slice up the cucumber all at once and leave the slices in the fridge. That's fine, if you eat it all in a day or two. But, if you have a cat, you give it that soggy end slice and all the others are as fresh as the first if you cut it as you go. That's the secret."

Max scampered onto the back of the couch and stood on his hind legs, facing the kitchen.

Argo looked, "The food's not in there, Kiddo."

Max ran to the other end and stood again, waving out his arms like he was ready to catch.

"Well, come on over if you want some."

Max ran back to the other end and stood again.

He laughed. "Excuse me, someone needs his lunchtime attention." He chomped all but a Max-sized corner, then took the plate to the couch.

After classes were over, he returned to the living room. She was watching the History Channel when he came out.

"So, ok, you understand that solar thing, right?" he said, sitting down on the couch beside her.

She nodded.

"You think you can explain it to me?"

"Well, it's a stirling, just in a very compact form."

"Ok, well, I guess that's where it loses me. Right there at the beginning."

"Well, think of a balloon. If it gets warm, it expands. If it gets cool, it contracts. Well, all a stirling does is replaces those balloons with pistons. Two pistons for each balloon, connected by a pipe, or, if it makes it easier, think of tying two balloons to the ends of the same straw. When one heats, it tries to expand into the other. But the other is cold, so it tries to contract the first. Typically, the cylinders, or the two ends of the same straw, are ninety degrees out from each other." She started to draw some pictures on a piece of paper.

He got up, pulled a book off the shelf, and brought it to her. "This is the Internet book my dad got it from."

She flipped it open and found her drawing, but in color, of each stage. "Think two stroke, like your chainsaw. A two stroke gets power from the top of the cylinder to about the middle of the stroke, then it starts exhausting, reaches the bottom, and momentum lets it breathe in for about half a stroke, compresses for half a stroke, then fires again."

He nodded. That, he understood.

"Ok, a stirling has power where a two stroke exhausts, from the middle to the bottom; and it gets power again when it goes from the middle to the top, what would be the compression on a two stroke. And it uses momentum to carry it through the un-powered parts."

He looked at it. He could follow her, but it hadn't clicked yet.

"At its smallest volume, all the gas is in half of one cylinder. Momentum carries the gas over from the cold side into the hot side. The hot cylinder expands from half to full, and, at the same time, the cold cylinder expands from empty to half full, tripling in volume. Momentum carries the gas from a full hot side to a full cold side without changing the combined volume at all. The full cold side cylinder contracts, and at the same time, the hot side contracts from half to empty, now one third the volume. And you are back where you started again. Much like a heart beat."

He stared at it. It actually made sense. Well, more sense than it had. "But, the solar thing doesn't have any of this. It doesn't have push rods, or pistons, or wristpins, or—"

"It consolidated all of that when it went from two cylinders to eight. It's like the economy of scale; you can do things big that don't make sense to do when you make them small. At two cylinders, it doesn't make sense to do it this way. But, at eight cylinders, you can replace all that friction intensive stuff with hydraulics and move on with a simplified life."

He stared at the other drawings on the page. It was starting to click. He read the rest of the book. It was simpler than he thought. "Thanks," he said.

She just smiled.

"I got a voice mail from my father," he said that night. "He picked up another contract and is going to be out for another two weeks."

"Is it normal for parents to leave their children alone at home for weeks at a time?"

It felt like another Kelly moment. "I'm not a child. I'm very resp— I've got a 3.4 grade average."

She put her hand on his knee, and he instantly calmed down, "I'm not saying you're not. It just seemed like an odd thing for—"

"Odd thing? What about you," He quickly read the watch flopping loosely on her wrist. "What's your appointment at 2:17 this morning?"

She bit at her bottom lip. "I have a tracking chip, implanted, that lets them find me."

He closed his eyes. She seemed far smarter than this kind of nonsense. "What does that have to do with the time of day?"

"If the chip doesn't receive a signal at periodic intervals, it gives me a migraine."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It's like a biofeedback loop with a nerve in my tooth."

He looked depressed. She didn't wear paranoid well. "I, uh, I'm just not a strong believer in the tin foil hats philosophy."

She leaned toward him on the couch, "If I'm crazy, then the worst thing that happens is I lose a lot of sleep and maybe swallow a cap in my sleep or when I eat. But I know it gives me headaches if I don't take the cap off at those times. I know that the cap blocks the signal coming in, I take it on faith that it blocks any signal going out. If I'm crazy, ok, but it's a harmless crazy."

He moved closer, but she didn't respond the way he thought she might. "Coffee carafe crazy I can deal with."

"I can be gone, when your father comes home."

"Where are you going to go, to, in the snow?"

"I'll manage. I will." She tapped the bandage over her heart, "I'm tougher to kill than I look."

"Well, you don't— You don't have to go. You don't have to stay, but you don't have to go, either. They, my father thinks of me as an adult. I, we, I can think of something convincing for why you are here."

"In your clothes?"

He held up a hand, "Just, just a second. A lost camper, mountain hiker got caught in the snow." He was working off his porn fantasies again, but they seemed to be plausible. "Maybe a bear or mountain lion attack. Amnesia from hypothermia. Plane crash — small engine plane crash survivor. And those are just off the top of my head."

She sat back, "That's nice of you to offer, but I don't want you to lie to your fath—"

"If it wasn't for lies, we'd have nothing to talk about," he said, but she didn't seem to think it was as funny as he did. "Look, he isn't here yet. Won't be for some time. The snow is deep enough to keep coming and going down to a minimum."

She had a very nice smile.

"Besides, I think Max has already gotten used to you, and he doesn't take change very well."

Max looked around at the sound of his name, then stood like he expected a treat.

"And that's one cat you don't want to disappoint," he said.

". . . so, what do you do at your mother's restaurant?" she said from the bathroom.

Argo stepped away from the noisy frying pan on the stove, "Well, bus tables, dishes, some deliveries if they're close enough. General stuff like that when someone didn't show up or they get unexpectedly busy." He went back to the pan to stir the frying rice.

"Do you enjoy it?"

He thought about it, actually thought about it. "It's fine, it's a good summer job."

"Does it make you happy?"

He listened to the water drain from the tub, half hoping she would need help getting up, but she didn't seem to. He needed to get his mind out of the fantasy and back into reality. "It's something to do. Restaurants are more the people you work with than what you do. Sometimes, one or two interesting characters can make the entire week. Customers too."

She came out of the bathroom in a towel. The wound showed as the nasty gash it was. The soaking bath had softened the scab, but it also opened a little. "Could you, give me a hand?"

"Oh, uh," he turned the heat off and moved it to a cold burner, "Sure, sure." In his mind he wanted to rip the towel off her, instead he came with the paper towels, gauze, and tape. It was a two-handed job.

"I don't want to stain your clothes," she said while he fumbled with the tape just above her breast. "Thank you."

She limped into his room while he put the finishing touches on dinner.

She looked very good in his clothes.

"Why all the questions about the restaurant?" he asked, laying down a bed of rice on each plate for the vegetables in the other pan.

She looked on the stovetop. "No fish this time?"

"Oh, I see, you relentlessly pick on me when I serve fish, now you pick on me when I—"

"I'm not picking on you."

He overacted offended, mostly for comedic effect.

She brushed him in passing to her chair. "How far away is her restaurant, from here?"

He put the pan down and joined her at the island. "Two hours, on a good day."

"East, west, south?"

"Dude." He shrugged, then pointed a general direction, "Whatever that way is, I think."

"Oh." She looked disappointed.

"Why?"

"Just looking for a job that makes me happy."

He pressed his finger into the table, "Professional student."

She didn't laugh like he had hoped.

"Why not mechanic? I mean, it's what you say you do."

She ran her fork through the rice. "No qualifications."

They continued with the pleasant dinner conversation.

He liked this. Small talk. She was more than something to look at. Dara was all about finding ways not to talk. After dinner, ten rolled around and he had yet to turn the TV on.

Maybe it was just that she was new.

Argo got up to go to bed. "Listen, uh, you can— You don't have to sleep out here on the couch, you know."

She held the buttons closed on her shirt, close to her chest.

"No, I, I was just saying, you can— I can sleep on the couch and— That's all. I would say you can sleep in my father's room, but he would flip if he found out. And he would find out, somehow."

She let go of her shirt. "I don't do well, alone. I got used to sharing a small room with my sister. Now I can't. I could use," she adjusted her position, "I haven't been sleeping since I lost her in my life. It doesn't matter the bed, or the where. Can you just sit with me, until I fall asleep?"

He sat. "Sure, what time do you have to get up?"

She looked sad. "4:51 but I can miss one without a migraine. After that is 7:43"

"I have the perfect movie for falling asleep."

He put it in and settled back on the couch.

She fell asleep a few minutes after the lights went down and the movie started, her legs resting across his lap. He planned to wait another ten minutes or so before extricating himself and heading for bed, but the movie sucked him in too.

Beep beep beep beep. . .

He woke first. Her legs were still across his lap. The TV was on, and the DVD screen saver was crawling across the screen.

He hit the mute on the TV and pressed play. The screen lit up the room. She was the first woman he had ever slept with, without having sex. His ankles hurt, same with his right knee, the one closest to her. No sex, but it was still worth it. She looked, serene.

Beep beep beep beep. . .

He made sure to shake her good leg.

"Hmmm. . . " she startled awake, then put her hand against her forehead.

"Headache?"

She looked at the watch, middle of her forearm, reached her fingers into her mouth, then turned off the alarm.

"I thought it wouldn't give you a headache to miss just one?" he said, still dubious about the whole thing.

"It doesn't give me a migraine to miss one. But it is like waking up with a throbbing cavity."

They waited.

She watched the seconds tick down, then put the cap back in.

"You ready to eat breakfast?" he asked.

Max climbed the back of the couch and ran over to him.

"Well, I know you are. You always are." He scratched the cat under the chin. "My perpetually starving stinker." He picked up the cat and set it down on Shadona's lap, then extricated himself to go to the bathroom.

Max seemed content to sit on her lap, so long as she continued to pet him.

"I thought skunks might be as soft as a bunny," she said when he came back out, "but they are much courser."

He washed his hands in the kitchen sink, put the coffee on, then started making pancakes. "We had a dog when I was real young, but, I don't remember if he— we never had bunnies so, I've got nothing to compare him to."

Max climbed to the back of the couch, stared into the kitchen, then returned to her lap.

"He found us, actually. I think his mother had a litter around here and lost him or got separated or something," he paused to flip the pancakes, "anyway, we found him living under the porch. We started feeding him, and he eventually came out. The rest, is all Max."

"Owl probably got her, but didn't find the kids. I guess some skunks have nine lives too."

"He was so tiny. I mean you could hold him in the palm of your hand, tiny. He played in my shoes, tiny. He would come out of the toe, stick his head out through the top like a gopher and attack the strings, then retreat back into the toe. I mean, you just got to believe he was always meant to be a pet. If you can call Max a pet."

His pancakes lacked the mad skills of Estafon, but they were still, in his opinion, a cut above the average box mix.

Shadona didn't complain.

Estafon had an assortment of toppings, Argo just had syrup.

Argo started class.
Chapter 19

He woke early and stared at the alarm clock. His room was clean for the first time in years. More miraculously, he was the one who cleaned it, willingly! Without being asked. He sat up and looked at her in his bed. Two weeks.

He didn't remember what he said or did to get her to move from the couch to his room. It had something to do with him limping or stomping his foot a few mornings in a row. She noticed things. She paid attention. Even little things.

His bed was small, for two. At least one had to sleep on their side for both to fit. That quickly turned into spooning. He liked spooning more than he thought he would.

She wore sweats and a long sleeve shirt, almost no skin contact at all, but it was simply nice to have someone who needed him to sleep. He rarely slept with Dara, she wanted to snuggle and talk and not sleep at all. Shadona just and only wanted to sleep. It made a difference.

Her bad shoulder was the one in the air.

The alarm had another thirty minutes. Her wacky sleep schedule interfered with his, but it seemed worth it, and they hadn't even kissed.

Not really.

That first kiss was important and had to be just right.

With his first kiss with Dara, she kissed him. That didn't seem likely with Shadona. Her arm had become useful, in a limited way, and her limp was fading. She taped her own gauze. She avoided most situations fraught with misunderstandings, with the exception of the sleeping arrangement.

A horrible thought suddenly came over him. What if she was gay? That would be just his luck.

Maybe if he invited Dara over. . .

He really needed to get his mind out of the Internet.

He lay down, half an hour to go.

Gay or straight, she was very intriguing.

His father would be home soon, probably this week. A first kiss would be out with his father in the house. He wanted her to stay. He wanted that a lot. But he still hadn't come up with a plausible scheme to sneak it past his dad. A live-in 'girlfriend' was not going to pass the muster, unless he convinced his father she was pregnant or something.

He was, without a doubt, going to get a lecture about not mentioning that a girl was staying there in the emails or voice messages with his father over the past few weeks. Whatever the excuse he came up with, it would have to fit into some rigid criteria.

It had to explain where she came from, and why his father should tell no one. He would also have to explain why she had no clothes. How long she was staying could be dealt with later.

As he looked at her, he tried to imagine her in long hair, bleached blond would look nice. It wasn't a boy's cut, but it didn't reach her shoulders either. Women, in his opinion, should always have long hair. Blue contacts wouldn't hurt either.

Think. Think.

He could lie and say she emailed her parents. Orphan? Camping sounded right, but a woman camping alone sounded wrong. Some fool hiker or camper died out here every year, that was why his father got him a gun before he was even a teen. It wasn't impossible. Family or friends, his father was sure to ask about that.

He was usually better at lies than this.

He lay back down behind her and took a deep breath.

She used his soap and shampoo, but it smelled different on her. He wanted to kiss her neck, but didn't. He tried to sleep. He tried.

Tires crunched and slid in the distance as the sound of a throttled V8 moaned toward the cabin in the woods. In another five minutes, his father would be at the door, but his stomach was already in knots. Shadona, on the other hand, looked perfectly calm. They had rehearsed nothing. He had weeks and came up with nothing. They were going to have to wing it.

Argo jumped off the couch and headed to the front door. "That's my father, he's home early." The headlights through the woods were unmistakable.

"Should we go out and meet him?" she said, setting Max down on the cushion beside her.

Argo shrugged. "He's going to find out anyway." He put on his coat and started on his boots. "He's always got a load of something, laundry or groceries, usually both. I get good-son points if I grab something before he asks." He struggled with his left boot. "He gets disappointed and orders you if he lugs that first one in himself, so, you end up doing it either way. Might as well get good-son points." He stomped his foot into it, then winked at her. "You don't have to, with your arm and all, but you could open the door, you know, if you want."

"Sure."

He headed out, but paused, "Don't worry, you're sure to get cute-girl points, whatever you do."

The door closed behind him. Max ran to the window and jumped on a box by the sill. He licked the fog off the glass by his nose.

She stood by the door and listened.

". . . damn . . . bumped my flight . . . got out and they . . . contract short . . . dumb bastards," was about all she could hear his father say. He was clearly angry about something.

Argo slung a stuffed duffle bag on his shoulder and grabbed two bags in his arms as he beat his father to the door, "Dad, this is Shadona," he said, then ran past her and inside, leaving her to fend for herself.

She stepped back as the father hurried in, then closed the door.

"Well, now—" He looked for his son, but Argo hid in the walk-in pantry with the bags.

"I have to just thank you and your son for your generous hospitality," she said in a perfect Georgian accent, "why, when that bear wrecked my camp and chased me a mile, I thought for sure if that bear didn't eat me, I was gonna freeze to death. Why, if it wasn't for the smoke from your very chimney, I surely would have perished."

Argo didn't recognize the voice at all and shot out of the pantry in time to see her throw a big, southern hug on his father and seal it with a kiss on his cheek.

His father almost dropped his bags. His attitude completely changed. "Well, now, of course he did," he said with some pride. He set the bags in the kitchen, then took a better look at the girl dressed in his son's clothes.

She looked down, embarrassed, "Now, that bear wasn't about to wait for me to put nothing on before he started with the chasing," she said sweetly, then rested her hand on her wounded shoulder, "didn't even wait for me to leave my sleeping bag at all. He got everything I own, except my very life." She showed a corner of the tape and gauze, "Not that he didn't try for that as well."

He reached for the phone, but set it back, "That's just horrible, young miss. You want, I'll run you down to the hospital—"

"Oh, no, you all have put yourselves out enough on my account. Ain't nothing worse than a bad scratch. He mostly got sleeping bag with that first swipe. Didn't stick around long enough for him to improve his aim none."

Argo dumped half his father's duffle into the washer as it filled with water and he listened, a little in awe. She was so convincing, even he believed in the bear. And he knew better.

The father pulled some frozen steaks from the freezer and set them in a pan full of warm water to thaw, then turned to Shadona. He gestured to one of the stools at the island, "Why don't you go ahead and sit down and tell me all about it."

She hesitated, "Oh, now, if you've got some more bags out there, I'd be more than—"

"No, no, don't you trouble yourself with them, my son will bring them in."

Argo dropped the duffle and headed out the door.

She sat. "Why, that's really all there is to tell, I expect."

The father stepped out into the greenhouse and picked whatever looked ripe. "How'd you find yourself way out here in a tent?"

The door on the SUV slammed shut and Argo headed to the kitchen with the last of the bags.

"Well, now," she began, "when my parents passed in that most unfortunate car wreck, about a year back, see, the state, she said I had to pay the inheritance tax on the house and my daddy's business. But, the business wasn't worth nothing without my daddy, even adding the house didn't come close to what the state said I owed. Next thing I know, there's this sign on the door what said, I don't live there no more."

His father pulled up a stool and sat at the island. "No way, where was this?"

"Georgia. Oh, it happened. I found myself breaking in my own window just to steal enough clothes to— Next thing I know, I'm homeless. Get my check at my job, the IRS took every penny. Had to hitch my way outa there. They say I still owe the difference. More thousands than I'll ever come by in my lifetime, even seized my college fund, such as it was. They take the house and kick me out, and it still ain't enough."

"Damn, stinking, pigheaded bureaucrats. They sink their teeth into the little man, and they don't stop till they gobbled him whole." The father put his hand on hers, "Don't you worry."

"Oh, it wasn't no government guy that tried to eat me, that was a bear. It was dark, sure, but there ain't no mistaking that," she said with absolute conviction.

Argo put on some coffee and sat down beside his dad. It was stunning. He was mesmerized by the transformation, captivated by her every word. Convinced, absolutely, yet he knew she was making it all up. The accent sold it all and matched her poise perfectly, as if she was a new person entirely.

His father looked at the mattress still sitting by the fireplace. "I know my son isn't making you sleep on that."

"No Sir," Argo said. "That's where I've been sleeping, that and the couch."

"I just feel terrible about putting your son out like that," she said.

"Don't," his father said. "It's about the only way he'll ever get a girl in his bed," He stood and slapped Argo on the shoulder, then went to change the water on the steaks, "by promising to sleep in another room."

"Oh, now, Mr. Caranf," Shadona said sweetly. "A proper gentleman like your son shouldn't cause such concerns." She crossed her legs, very ladylike.

"Well," the father said, "he's been home schooled so long that I'm surprised he can even talk to a girl." He cleared his throat, "or, uh, young lady. I asked him what he plans to do after this spring and he just seems to want to lie around and take more pajama courses."

"Well now, Dad," Argo said, "it isn't like we can afford the price of a new car every year to send me in person to a campus."

"We would have, if your damn mother hadn't—"

"Oh, now," Shadona said with all the melody of a southern bell, "it just can't possibly be as bad as all that." Her calm disposition seemed to take the bitterness out of the old wounds of divorce. "I suspect you can learn just as much sitting in the room with a professor," she continued, "as you can watching him on the screen. Maybe even a little more, pending on what the girls in the room are wearing."

The father poured three cups of coffee and returned to the island, "An E diploma just doesn't seem to carry the same weight, that's all."

"Better than no paper at all."

Argo got the milk from the fridge and poured a splash into Shadona's mug, then sat. "That solar thing was on the fritz when she happened on us. Showed me how to fix it with a D battery. Now, you want to talk about wasted potential, how about an IRS that—"

"What was wrong with the panel?" the father said.

"Oh now, I didn't fix nothing," she said, then took a sip, "that circulating pump still needs replacing, I just gave it a few more months. That's all."

Argo excused himself to fiddle with the washing machine while his father talked solar with their guest. His father was passionate about solar, no matter how troublesome it proved to be in practice. Without fishing, his father tended to take a few days to wind down. Argo snuck into his room and partially closed the door.

He liked his father. He really did. But those first few days back from working a job his father hated tended to be the worst. He had homework. Sort of. He opened the book and spread out the needed 'props' on the desk, while Shadona took the debriefing for him.

He felt guilty about dumping that on her. But, he did it anyway.

IRS troubles. His father hated the IRS. Their restaurant had been audited six times in California. The problem with the IRS, as his father told it, was that when the IRS was wrong, they never admitted it. It just made them dig deeper and deeper until they inevitably found some typo or speck of questionable anything and fined the snot out of you. It seemed like they wrote the code so utterly confusing so that, no matter what the true meaning of the code was, they could always argue you broke the law.

Owing the IRS was brilliant, Argo would never have thought of it. It evoked just the right amount of sympathy and secrecy to her stay.

He returned to eat dinner, then moved his father's clothes to the dryer, but stayed out of the conversation trap whenever possible. It proved easy to do, Shadona was far more compelling for his father to talk to anyway.

"Argo," she said, sitting on his bed.

He opened his eyes.

"Your father went to bed a few minutes ago."

"Sorry about leaving you with—"

"It's ok," she said, still in accent, "he tries. I think bouncing around so much makes him feel like his life is temporary, because his job feels so temporary." She climbed into bed. "I feel awful about the idea of kicking you out of your bed. But, if I sleep in the living room, he'll probably be mad at you."

He was too sleepy to argue. He went to the couch.

Fresh eggs were the bonus whenever he saw his dad. Fresh eggs meant omelets, and his father could cook them like nobody's business. Argo woke to the smell of them frying in the pan, leftover steak diced in with bell peppers and onions, topped with graded, extra sharp cheddar from the freezer.

He pulled himself off the couch and shuffled to the island where he plopped on a stool.

"So," his father said sitting down, "you and this Georgia peach."

Argo checked to see that the door to his room was closed, just the guys up. "It's not like that, Dad."

"Oh, she not cute enough for you? Listen, Son, looks only go so far." He cut a chunk and speared it with his fork, then pointed it at the boy. "She's got personality, and smart as a whip, I give her that. Said she took shop class in high school. Fixed cars with her dad in their country garage.

She tell you how she got that scar?"

Argo was shocked. He had visions of his father asking in his subtle as a train wreck way. It was all he could do to shake a no.

"Said she hadn't been on the streets but a month. Some boys befriended her, found out she didn't have any family to speak of, and raped her. One of them cut her with a knife, the other used her as an ashtray. That's why she cuts her hair so short. Homeless boys fair a little better, one less thing they have to guard against." He chewed another piece. "Poor girl," he said, shaking his head, "the things that can happen to a person. It just don't seem right, does it?"

Unfair, certainly, but it did have a ring of truth to it. Those burns did look like cigarettes. He sipped his coffee. "We should help her. I just don't see a homeless shelter doing her any good."

"Oh, I agree. Poor kid. Can't even work a job under her own name without those thugs from the IRS tracking her down. I bet a shelter would turn her in, too. Probably end up in debtors' prison. They'll spend millions hunting her down, but not a dime to help her. Ain't that a shame?"

Argo nodded. "Sure is."

"I'd like to help her, but we really shouldn't get involved. It's a whole hornet's nest we don't need to be kicking."

His father was like a lot of his generation. They would donate thousands to a political campaign that promised to do good for the poor, but he wouldn't lift a finger to help one he passed by every day on the street. Add to that the very Californian stereotypical belittling of everything southern. Argo picked up the phone, "Yes, give me the number to the IRS, my father wants to turn in an innocent girl."

His father took the phone out of Argo's hand and slammed it down. No numbers had been dialed.

"Don't worry, Dad, I'll be sure to take my clothes back before I turn her out into the snow. Maybe we should squirt some barbeque sauce on her for the bear—"

"Now, wait a minute, Son. That's not what I'm saying at all."

"What, you want to get a knife out of the drawer and some cigarettes, then? What's it going to cost, a hundred bucks worth of food to feed a skinny girl like that? Free fish, Dad, we got more than we can eat. Don't think we'll be able to pay the next electric bill, maybe?"

"We don't really know her, Son—"

"She has a real scar on her chest, she was really bleeding to death on our back step. I checked, it ain't makeup and ketchup."

The father cut up the rest of his omelet with his fork, "She isn't a stray skunk, either."

"Well, the stray skunk turned out horribly bad too, didn't it?"

Max picked a terribly bad time to claw the arm of the couch.

His father looked down at his plate in disappointment, "Just remember to use a condom."

Argo got up to leave the island, but sat back down. The only thing that could possibly have been more embarrassing would have been for him to say it with her in the room. Which, at this point, Argo wouldn't put past him. "My God, Dad," he said in a whisper, "she's a victim, not a whore."

Then, almost like a bad after-school special, "Well, you're sleeping with everyone she has, and all their partners."

Argo buried his head beside his plate. He wanted to die, right now, out of sheer horror, if it would stop his dad.

"Very tan for winter, don't you think? Dark hair, dark eyes, you don't suppose she's mixed?"

His father couldn't be talked into anything. But, sometimes shame worked, in a dirty, IRS way. His father wasn't a racist, in the conventional sense. He was big on integration, just not within his family. As bad as the week with his father was, it could have been so much worse.

His father would never dream of screaming 'baby killer!' outside of an abortion clinic, but he would in front of a recruiter's office.

There was something worse than being a mixed southerner in his father's book.
Chapter 20

He woke beside her and sat enough to see the clock. Class was in two hours. He had apologized for his father at least a million times in the last few days, even though she didn't seem to mind. To her, his father just seemed to care.

Two hours until class, but the alarm was set to go off any minute.

He reached across her and turned it off.

"Hey," he lightly tapped the scar on her cheek. "Wake up."

She didn't.

He tapped her with the backs of his finger again.

She woke.

"You have to take your tooth out."

She sleepily reached in her mouth.

He looked at it in her fingers. It looked like a dull aluminum, coppery on the inside. Tiny, but she held onto it dearly.

He was horrified about the questions his father had asked. But, it didn't stop him. "You really from Georgia?"

She shook a no.

"Your parents really die in a car wreck?"

No.

"You, really been raped?"

She didn't respond.

He felt a chill. He didn't mean to, but he inched away. "But, it wasn't strangers."

"I knew some of them."

Them. Them was the biggest word in that short sentence for him. Them.

She held her hand to her chest. "They used cigarettes to time whose turn it was." She looked at the watch and replaced the cap.

"They cut your cheek too?"

She rolled to her back and looked him in the eyes. "I have a life that is much different than yours. Some of it I struggle with, even today.

I've fallen in love, before. Been hurt, before. I know what loss and heartache is. I know what broken bones sound like, I know what a beating is, and I know more than I want to about rape.

I'm a long way from the wind driven snow you found me in, but I am that same girl you found.

I'll leave, if you want me to."

He kissed her instead.

The perfect first kiss is an expression of tenderness, in a moment of vulnerability. His was not that, but it was as close as he was likely to ever come. He liked this girl. His father liked this girl. His father didn't approve of her, thinking her poor white trash, possibly mixed, but he did like her. His father spent three hours talking engines with her one night.

After class, he looked in every room, but couldn't find her.

"Where is she?" he asked Max.

Max, being much wiser than any common cat could be, ran straight for the greenhouse.

He looked in. She was transplanting some sprouts into larger pots. "You don't have to do that," he said.

She smiled, but continued.

"They wanted a garden, but settled for this greenhouse. It's a little more complicated than going into town for carrots and onions and such, unless town is an hour away."

She sprinkled the rich soil into the gaps between the plants, then slid the pot down the rack and pulled another pot off the stack.

He joined her. It was one of his chores, but he didn't mind it today. "I think it's ironic. The solar panel powers the artificial lights in here so it can simulate summer." He pointed to a thermometer oddly out of place in a greenhouse, "Way Dad tells it, it even generates power heating and cooling it."

She struggled some with her left arm, but she was coming along. It was therapy.

He kissed her on the cheek.

She smiled, but said nothing.

He had an abundance of games. As an only child, most of them were video games and single player shoot 'em ups, and he only had the one controller. Except for the imitation X-Box, he had two controllers for it, but that was just the way it came.

She was very good at killing zombies, but controllers, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, were a two-handed event. One holding, one operating, and dual thumbs. She could only play for half an hour at a time, not the all-day marathons he was addicted to.

The weekend came, and Argo found himself surfing for homework answers on the web. He was incredibly distracted by talking to her while he Googled facts and figures.

She looked at the watch and took out the cap.

Did-dump.

"Huh," Argo said.

"What?" Shadona looked at the screen.

"Someone tried to email me, but it came out garbled. It doesn't have a name, the message just reads G45E32A"

She jumped off the bed, bolted toward the door, then turned back to the keyboard. "E411GFA" she typed back.

"What the hell is that?" he asked. "You know someone online? I mean, you can talk to them if you want, I just thought you were hiding and didn't have anyone to—"

"It's nothing, I think. It could be something." She headed for the door, but stopped. "I might have a friend out there. I could use another one." She put the cap back and left the room.

He stared at the screen. "She's a spy?" He stood and left after her. "Are you a spy?"

She looked at him. "What makes you say—"

"Look, it's ok if you are, I guess. Hell, it would probably endear you to my father if you had some secret plot to kill congress and take—"

"I'm not a spy. I'm not an—"

"Your first words to me were in a foreign language—"

"I speak a lot of languages, that doesn't—"

"That you learned at the high school of Georgia? Who are you? Who are you."

She looked him in the eyes. "I wish I really knew. Am I temporary? I hope not. I hope I'm more than a fleeting moment, but nothing is permanent. Am I who I was raised to be, and nothing more? Pity us all, if that is true.

I didn't go to school in Georgia, I've lived here all my life, just a few hours from you.

Am I who I want to be? Do I get to choose?" She shrugged. "Are you just a perpetual student? Or, are you more?"

He looked her in the eyes, the entire time. She seemed incredibly honest. But then, she always had.

"I don't want to be who I was. I don't want to be what my past makes of me. I don't want to be the scars I wear."

He hugged her.

"I wish I went to a school in Georgia and was attacked by a bear in your backyard."

He ran his hand across her back, "It's ok if you're a spy."

"I'm not a spy, today."

He received emails from Dara at a rate of two or three a week. It was going to come up, inevitably, so he told Shadona that Dara was an old girlfriend that he was still friends with, but that he no longer wanted more from. Dara just hadn't given up, yet. It was the excuse he had practiced for Kelly, but never needed.

He was no master of relationships, but he wasn't a complete idiot either. Kissing stage was the confession stage. You get things out in the open and see where everything lies. If Dara was discovered when they were doing more than kissing, it would look like cheating. He hadn't really broken things off with Dara, but, he had laid enough plausible deniability to cover for that.

Besides, he was really falling for Shadona. Living with someone accelerated everything.

She slept on the couch for the week after he told her, but she seemed to suffer more from that than he did. She didn't lie about needing someone to sleep with, that much showed. Tired, haggard, and a little irritable.

She walked into his room at night and sat on his bed.

He sat up immediately. "Look, Shadona, I like you," he said before she had a chance. "I like you a lot. I just— Dara is a nice girl, she calls and keeps in touch and keeping it a secret felt wrong. Even though there is really nothing there. Nothing. Really."

She briefly frowned. "You're probably the first, decent guy I've met, Argo. I owe you. I owe you a lot. But, I don't owe you that. I don't want you thinking that— We are adults, or close enough. I don't mind you kissing me. I don't. It's nice to feel affection in my life. But I don't want you thinking that it's going further than that.

I've just lost a lot, and I'm not trying to replace it just now. I'm not trying to fill a void with you.

I just want to sleep, I just don't want to be alone. I'm not looking for more."

She climbed into bed.

He suddenly knew how Dara felt.

His father returned with ten gallons of milk. They placed nine in the freezer. The standard cardboard cartons froze without rupturing, usually. To ensure no horrendous messes, they were wrapped in plastic bags.

Shadona was healed to the point that she no longer needed bandages. Argo had seen the wound on several occasions, and it resembled a nick from a single claw. She lacked strength in that arm, but she had full function. She proved to have a talent for cooking and hardly limped anymore.

Her Georgia accent floored him every time. She was so convincing and an incredible storyteller.

She had been at such a disadvantage when the two first met. But Argo could tell his father had warmed to her. The southern charm was hard to resist, even with her tan complexion.

His father had stayed for a week, but was now gone, and had been for two days.

Argo watched her in the kitchen. Class was over for the day, and she had started dinner. His father had talked recipes and cooking one night with her. She seemed like a sponge. She had mastered his cooking style flawlessly, perhaps even improved on it in just a few days.

Argo's idea of cooking was to thaw, heat, and eat. She tenderized, marinated, coaxed and cajoled every ounce of natural flavor out of every meal.

She filled the plates in the kitchen, then carried them to the island.

He dug his fork in and savored. "Ohh. . . " His eyes rolled back into his head. She had surpassed his father. "Marry me," he blurted out.

She smiled, but didn't answer.

He was in shock that he had even said it. He put another forkful in his mouth to prevent something worse from blurting out. That fear led to him eating far faster than he should.

They watched some TV on the couch after dinner. Well, he watched TV, she petted Max who had taken to hopping on her lap whenever the mood struck him.

After a few minutes, Max climbed up her shirt to lick her chin in a perfectly comedic way. He then stood on her shoulder, jumped to the back of the couch, vaulted to the floor, then ran out into the greenhouse where he promptly knocked an empty pot off the shelf.

Argo looked at her as they both started to laugh.

When the laughter subsided, he leaned in and kissed her on the lips.

Still smiling from the laughter, he kissed her again. And again.

And again.

He put his hand on her chin and kissed the forever hair caught across her cheek.

"I love you," he whispered in her ear.

She put her hand on his chest as he leaned her down on the couch.

He put his fingers in her hair as he continued to kiss her lips. He ran his hand across the front of her shirt, and found himself on the floor.

She had crawled to the corner of the couch and was hugging her knees, staring blankly at the floor.

"Shadona?" he said, sitting up.

She didn't seem to notice that he was even in the room.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, girl." He got to his feet and sat next to her. "I, I didn't mean to. . . " He put his hand on her knee.

She squirmed over the arm and fell on the floor, then pushed her way to the wall by the door. The same blank look on her face as she slowly rocked back and forth, hugging her knees.

"Oh God," he said.

Her stories were suddenly real to him.

He learned the hard way he couldn't touch her without making things worse. But, he did manage to drape her in a blanket without her noticing. She rocked back and forth for nearly six hours, completely unresponsive. The alarm on her watch went off without her even noticing. Whatever schedule she was on, she had missed.

He felt ashamed about being tired. He tried to talk to her, but it was all in vain. Yet he couldn't sleep in his room, not with her like this. Not when he had triggered it. He moved the air mattress as close as he thought he was allowed, and bedded down in the living room that night. He played the most calming music he had, some classical from his father's collection, softly beside her.

The more she rocked, the more guilt he felt.

He woke to find her in the fetal position, hands over her ears. She was in such agony, even he could feel it.

She noticed he was awake, "What, what time is it?"

He looked at the watch on her arm. "8:21"

She squinted.

"What time is your appointment?"

She looked pained. "Eleven. . . eleven. . . eleven. . . six, six after. . . "

"Six after eleven?"

She nodded, breathing heavily.

She held her hands on her head, curled on the hard floor.

She was breathing hard. Her eyes pinched shut.

She looked up at him. "What. . . what time is it?"

It was going to be a very long morning for her.

He had class, but he would skip it today. The teacher was sure to call his parents, but he just couldn't leave her like this. Not alone.
Chapter 21

By the time winter thawed into spring, he was in love.

He watched her standing by the pond. Her black hair covered her ears and half her neck from the back. Long for a boy, but still short for a girl. She hooked the worm and cast the line like a seasoned pro. The fish just weren't biting this morning.

But that didn't really matter to either of them. Max didn't even seem to care. He munched voraciously on bugs, or whatever it was, that he found in the shallows around the edge of the pond.

"Are you sure there's fish in this thing?" she said.

He hugged her from behind, then kissed her on the cheek. "I'm very sure."

She slowly reeled in the line. "Maybe I'm doing it wrong."

He let go of the hug, "No, you're perfect. Fishing isn't about the catching, it's about the pond. I've spent a many a day down here, without catching so much as a cold."

Max ran past them, stopped, shook his foot violently, then ran back around the cattails.

He put his hand on her shoulder, "I think I have to see this."

He went to investigate.

Max had spooked a turtle. The turtle had jumped off a log and splashed Max, who ran. Now Max was back, much to the anger of the turtle. Max was eating its eggs.

Max loved eggs and would brave nearly any hardship for them.

They caught nothing, except for Max, but the sun felt wonderful after so many months inside. He looked at her, sitting in his father's folding chair. He reached over and took her hand. "I do love you."

She smiled, but didn't respond.

"Could you live out here, a life like this?"

"Easily."

"My mother is more a big city girl. She craves the commotion. My dad is, well, you know him. He'd unplug from everything, including life support. I think that's even in his living will."

"Why'd they get divorce?" she said.

"I'm not really sure. I don't think she liked it out here. I think all the quiet was too noisy for her. If that makes any sense."

"I miss the sound of closing doors. They closed constantly for most of my life. Loud, squeaky, solid doors. The way some slid across, the sounds of big, solid locks. The constant chatter. The halls often sounded as loud as cafeterias, the echoes of feet on the floors. The constant hum and the flicker of fluorescent tubes. The smell of jet fuel."

"You miss flying?"

She smiled.

"You miss it, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

He looked at her. She was his age, but she had seen more than he ever would. "You ever fly over here?"

She looked him in the eyes and almost winked, but it was probably a squint from the sun before returning her gaze to the skunk pouncing at the water's edge.

"What's three plus, squared?"

"Nine."

He snickered. "Nine, or nine plus?"

"Plus."

It had taken months, but she was talking about what he wanted to know. "Help build it, or fly it?"

She turned her face toward the sun and put on his shades. "Yes."

He wanted to really start asking the questions, but he noticed the way her hands were on the arms of the chair. He knew better, she looked like she was ready to get up. He put his hand on hers, "I knew you were an angel who fell from the sky."

She shook her head at his horrible line, but held his hand as Max continued to play.

Life seemed really good.

"Shadona," he said that morning.

She didn't respond.

He turned on the lights. She had been crying. "Shadona, what's wrong?"

She looked up at him and just tapped the watch.

"When's the next one?"

She shook her head, then pinched her eyes closed.

"You don't know. Shouldn't you just take it off and wait a few hours?"

She looked terrified at that possibility.

"When was the last— How long has it been?"

She took his hand and squeezed.

He was almost afraid to ask. "Is, is this as bad as it gets?"

She trembled a no.

He had class in a few hours. He unplugged the web camera and the mike so she could stay in the room. He slid the keyboard closer to the bed so he could type with one hand and still hold hands with her.

She stayed in bed nearly the entire day.

It was painful to watch.

She said only one word the entire time, "lockdown".

By day three, she seemed to improve to the point that she could function, in a basic way. She sat at the table with a notepad and pen in one hand while she waved her other in the air to the sounds of music only she could hear. Every few seconds, she wrote down another time and date on the pad until it was full. She transcribed the times from the pad to her arm, in ink. She spent most of her day staring at the watch and waiting for the time, but relief never came.

He brought her a rolled fatty from his stash. "Listen, I don't know if this will help," he said, "but I can get plenty if it does."

She barely opened her eyes. "What, what is it?"

"Pot. People use it to control pain for cancer and stuff when nothing else works."

She was desperate, but dubious. She took it.

"You have to smoke it outside. My father would kill me if he gets even a whiff of it."

They went outside.

She coughed at first. It seemed to help a little, but it was hard to tell, it mostly made her fall asleep, which she desperately needed too.

Day six. Argo had gotten on with his life, in most ways. He hugged her, whenever possible, but quietly avoided her too. Hugs seemed to help in a small way, but nothing offered the relief she was looking for. He brought her food, in bed, and generally tried to be with her whenever practical. But there was little more than moral support that he could offer.

The pot started making her nauseous, so she wasn't sleeping anymore.

There were two possibilities. The first, the lockdown was going to continue indefinitely. Or second, she had gotten the times wrong.

If they had a general idea where she was, within a ten-mile radius, she figured it would take them two hours to track the signal. For five minutes, they had to be within a half mile. The minute she had gotten it down to, they had to be within sight. Five hours, the longest period between signals, they could find anyone hiding within the base's normal range.

What made it so worrisome was if they were under lockdown as she suspected, then they were actively searching for someone.

She dare not leave it off for a second longer than needed.

He heard something unsettling from his room.

He shoved the frying pan to the back burner, flipped the heat off, and ran to the room.

She found his gun. He looked at it on her lap. It was cocked, the safety was off, and her finger was on the trigger.

"Wait a minute, Shadona, it— It isn't that bad. It'll end, just not that way."

She pressed the barrel to her temple, then slid it down to her cheek.

"Don't!"

She looked at him in utter desperation.

"Don't! Please, please don't!"

Her hand trembled and her eyes closed. She sighed, then put the gun down.

He walked over and calmly took it from her. His hand started shaking as he ejected the full magazine, then the one in the chamber flipped out onto the floor.

She looked up at him. "It— It has to end."

He sat beside her and kissed her on the cheek. "I love you," he said, then hugged her.

It went on for another two weeks.

She could barely function.

When it was over, she slept for two days. He read the times off the sheet and woke her only when she needed to take the cap out. Slowly, the girl he knew returned.

She and Max spent most days down at the pond while he was taking class. She proved to be quite good at fishing, despite that first day, and the peaceful aspects of fishing helped her rediscover the calm center she usually showed.

Migraines. She described it as migraines. He doubted migraines even came close.
Chapter 22

When school was finally over, Argo faced the tough question of 'what next?' Applying to online colleges was a minor matter of filling out some paperwork and a bigger matter of the check clearing.

The real question was what about Shadona. They printed an online map of his mother's house and the restaurant. The restaurant was possibly within range of the tooth, the house however was not. And there was no guarantee he could get her a job, either. Especially without reporting to the IRS.

His mother had no love for the IRS, but it was doubtful that she would bend the law to employ her or pay her in cash or tips. There was another solution. Shadona could use his social security number and he could cash the checks for her. Which she was surprisingly ok with.

His father drove them the two hours to his mother's house, and a convincing Georgia peach emerged again.

His mother took a few days to warm to the idea, but she also took a liking to Shadona. On paper, Argo worked an impressive ninety-eight hours a week, in reality, it was half that. One of the girls at the restaurant even rented Shadona a room that was well within the radius of the base.

It looked like things might finally work. The tooth was inconvenient and limiting, but acceptable. She would take limited freedom over no freedom at all.

Shadona wore makeup to cover the scar, dyed her hair blond and curled it, and wore blue contacts. At the restaurant, she mostly bused tables and washed dishes at first. But she made friends fast. Most of the employees loved her, and the accent sold her as the genuinely sweet girl he knew.

Blond, she was every bit as cute as Kelly.

At the restaurant, they knew her as Sally.

"Table two, Sally," Estafon said.

Shadona pushed the cart out to two, cleared the plates, washed the table, and carted it back into the kitchen. "You're going to show me how to make that incredible pie now, aren't you, Sweetie?"

"You know it, Darlin'."

"Sally, can you take this out to table six?"

"Sure." She washed and dried her hands then carried the tray like a pro. Then got started on washing dishes.

She played the pivot, much as Argo had, only much better.

Ms. Caranf called her over to the register, "Estafon said you did a hell of a job cleaning out the kitchen last night. How late did you stay?"

"Oh, about two, three at the latest." She had cleaned bigger kitchens than this.

"Well, I'm just going to put you down as three, ok?"

She smiled. "That's fine, Ma'am."

"How'd you get to Cindy's?"

"It was a nice night for a walk."

"You walked? What was that, eleven, twelve miles?"

"Oh, just a short hike, Ma'am."

"Why didn't you tell anyone you didn't have a ride? Just say something next time. Shouldn't have someone walking three in the morning like— Just tell someone, next time, Ok?"

"Don't fret it none," Shadona said.

"What, uh, what is it between you and my son?"

"Well, he wants to take me to some night showing at the movie theater—"

"Oh, I know that much, he wants to borrow my car." The mother watched the door, but nobody came in, "But, what is it between you two?"

"It's just a movie. A horror movie, I think. I don't know why he thinks I would like a horror movie, but I'll surely go, if he wants me to."

"That's not exactly what I mean."

"He likes me, more than I can return, for now. But that difference shrinks a little every day," Shadona said. "He's a good boy, Ma'am. I have no desire to do him any harm."

The front door opened, and Shadona returned to the endless stack of dishes.

They got out of his mother's car and went up to the booth, "Two please," Argo said.

They stood in line for popcorn and soda, then headed inside.

It wasn't a horror movie so much as a zombie kill fest and an excuse to hold hands in a dark room.

After the movie, they sat in the car for several minutes.

"I like the hair," he said.

"Thank you, but, it isn't me."

"I miss sleeping with you."

She smiled.

"How, uh, how are you doing at Cindy's?"

"It's a small place, but I like it. She's nice. She smokes cigarettes, some of the hand rolled ones you like, and her boyfriend treats her badly. He makes her pay for everything, which is why she needed the money. She cries some nights, because she knows he's probably cheating on her. He makes passes at me whenever she leaves the room. I don't know why some people do what they do, to people they care about."

He was holding her hand when the watch on her wrist went off. She put her hand on the door, but realized she didn't need to hide her chore from him. She pulled out the cap. She wasn't as free as she had hoped to be. "How's the dental around here?"

"I don't know that they can remove alien tracking devices, but, there are plenty around. When you pay in cash, they don't need to know your name."

"I like your mom. She cares about you, like your father does. She doesn't think I'm— that I measure up." She put the cap back in.

"I, when I, I asked you to marry me some time ago. I didn't mean it then. Not really. But, I would marry you."

"They will find me, eventually. I worry what would happen to you, when that day comes."

He leaned in and kissed her on the lips.

She smiled. "The more fond memories you give me, the more they have to take away."

He kissed her as passionately as his limited experience could. "If you're not going to have fun, you might as well go back now."

It had taken months, but this was the first time that she, kissed him.

Living in different places gave them something that they didn't have before. They could date.

Over the summer, he dated her as much as he could.

"Hello, I'm Sally, I'll by your waitress today," she said. "Your boy go to school around here?" she asked the father.

He smiled as he looked over the menu.

"I bet you know Darla. She and two of her charming friends were in here, my, it couldn't have been more than three days ago, talking about a cute boy in their class and how they couldn't wait for school to open again. I just bet they were talking about you."

The boy blushed.

The father placed the order. Shadona wrote nothing down.

The tips were pooled, but Shadona's talent for faces and names and places and remembering the smallest detail was easily turned into a friendly atmosphere, and generous tips.

Some nights, it amounted to an extra $200. She remembered scores of peewee games and who played on what team, it all added up.

"Kelly," Shadona said on a busy Friday night, "Do you mind taking table twelve for me?"

"Well, uh," she looked at the table. They weren't rowdy teens, just businessmen, "Sure."

"Thank you. I, I feel a little sick. I'm going to lay down in the back, ok?"

Kelly nodded, and pulled out her pad.

Shadona went to the back. She was scared. Terrified, actually. She recognized two of the guards. She had minimal contact with either of them. She doubted they would even recognize her, but her knees were shaking.

When Dana died, there was this wonderful calm that washed over her that came with having nothing to lose. She had something to lose, today. The place was packed and her fears were putting them in an awful bind. She felt enormous obligation to the kindness of the Caranf family, and felt ashamed for hiding in a back room.

She concentrated, and slowly overcame her jitters. She was a fighter pilot, trained for combat. She was good at it. She didn't blink in the face of an attack. She had thought of running, then and there. Just leave, don't even take the chance. She stood, then walked out the door.

"Thank you, Kelly," she said, "I'm, I'm alright now."

She took the tray of food and served the gentlemen.

She boldly conversed with them, even flirted a little, and cleared a $20 tip.

* * *

"Cindy," Ms. Caranf said, "Have you seen Sally?"

"Sally? She hasn't been home for the last few days. Was she scheduled tonight?"

"Well, yes, she was, but Argo hasn't been home either."

"You don't suppose they ran off together, do you?"

"They couldn't have gotten but so far on a scooter."

Cindy grabbed the tray from the chef and headed for the tables, "Maybe they just got a room together."
Chapter 23

"Now, tell me about what she told your father again," the interrogator said when the XO entered the room.

The nurse adjusted the drip on Argo's IV.

Argo's eyes were glazed over as he retold the story, word for word, in a monotone, of everything he overheard Shadona say to his father.

The interrogator looked at his equipment. "He seems to be telling the truth, Sir. The exposure seems to be minimal. The subject tests as highly suggestible. An excellent subject for a chemical scrub."

"Hmmm," the XO said, sitting at the table. "What do you think?" He looked at the blond.

She pulled against the restraints.

"You murdered two pilots and destroyed three planes," the XO said. "Then you ran away. The cap was an interesting idea. We never thought of it. You haven't been able to take it out for, what, two days now."

She tested the restraints as she glared at the XO, but she calmed when she looked at her friend.

"We have all sorts of time to figure out what to do with you, but what about him? He'll start being missed."

The XO turned Argo's chair to face Shadona, then sat in the middle of them.

"You like her better as a blond?" he said.

"Yes."

"I think I agree. You love her?"

"Very much."

"What don't you like about her?"

"I can't trust her. I think she lies to me. She's crazy, she thinks people are out to get her. Her feet have too many veins. Her hair is too short. Her breasts are too small. She has no hips. Her knees are big. I don't like the scars. She has big anklebones. Her little toes are—"

"I think that's enough, for now." He looked at the tear running down her cheek. "Would your parents believe you ran away to be with her?"

"Yes."

"Would they believe she got you messed up on drugs?"

"Yes."

"Would they believe you overdosed on, cocaine, heroin, crack?"

"They suspect pot. I don't know about that stuff, though. Maybe."

The XO looked at Shadona, "Did you know he was a pothead?"

"Yes," Argo said in a monotone. "She coughed when I gave her some."

The XO wasn't expecting an answer. "Would you kill yourself, if I asked you to?"

"Yes."

Shadona stared at the XO.

"How would you do it?"

"Pistol."

"I don't think that will be necessary. We have a few projects that your girlfriend might help us on; that'll make that unnecessary," he said to Shadona. "We thought you were dead. We weren't even looking for you. Just dumb luck. We had to do an investigation for a week before we were sure it was you. That's what led us to your little friend." He turned to Argo, "What's your favorite position with her? Doggy, missionary?"

"Spooning."

She looked at the floor.

"Spooning, huh?" the XO said. "She probably does look best from behind." He looked at Shadona, then to the interrogator, "Make sure she's in the room when you program him. And, I'd leave the tape on her mouth, unless you want to lose a finger." He left to attend other pressing matters.

Dysath and Hanly were pouring over the drawings when the XO entered the room. "Gentlemen, tell me you have an idea what keeps going wrong on the ICBM thing."

"ICBSB, Sir," Hanly said, picking his favorite name. "Intercontinental ballistic smart bomb."

"I don't care what you call it," the XO said. "First, it's burning out some very expensive coils after launching just four test bombs. Second, it falls well short of intercontinental. Third, it isn't going to be called anything because, right now, it doesn't work.

Listen, Gentlemen, we got lucky. We found the genie in a lamp, but I'd be surprised if we get three good wishes. What I need to know, is, Gentlemen, do I have to waste one wish on this?"

Dysath looked at Hanly, "I think we can figure this one out."

"Think, or know?" the XO asked.

"Think."

The XO looked depressed. On his budget, this was the top of the ticket. They had sunk a fortune into it. If they could deliver, it meant substantial funds and, to the extent possible, coming out from under the cover as a power plant. The genie analogy was apt. Even for a loved one, he could only push her so far. Reasonable begets reasonable. He was willing to be reasonable. If she could solve this, it would be enough. In the months or perhaps year it would take for her to fix it, her feelings would fade and another wish would not be granted. And she wasn't one to give the answers verbally. In fact, she had only done that once and promised to never do it again. But she would 'fix' it the same way she did with the plastic printer ink. She would simply make it work, and they would have to figure out how she did it later.

He could accept that.

He had to.

The XO made a call.

* * *

Argo rubbed the marks on his arm. He didn't remember seeing that before. His head pounded as he looked around.

Everything was blurry. His eyes didn't want to focus. He put his hand on his forehead, but couldn't remember anything. He used the back of a discarded chair to help get to his feet, then he stumbled down the alley.

He didn't recognize the area. Not at first.

"Hey," he said to the man peeing on the wall, "Hey, where is this?"

"Buzz off, Kid!" the man said, not waiting to finish peeing before he tucked, zipped, and dripped away.

He leaned against a dry part of the wall and looked through his wallet, ten dollars. He fished in his pockets and found some change.

Looking around for something that resembled a diner, he saw a convenience store, beer ads plastered in the windows.

He bought two candy bars and a coffee, then prepared himself for a very awkward telephone call.

"Hello, Mom?"

She arrived within seven hours. He was in a bad part of southern California. A very bad part. His mother overreacted and took him to a doctor where they tested him for drugs. Apparently, he had done all of them.

He had been missing for nearly two weeks, two weeks that he barely remembered.

His parents sent him to rehab.

The fog in his head slowly lifted by the time he got out. His mother came and picked him up for the long drive home. The first hour was silent driving. She didn't even turn the radio on.

"Drugs?" she finally said.

"I'm not a drug addict, Mom. I'm not," he said, but even he wasn't convinced.

"Your father found that pot plant near the house."

"That's not drugs—" but he stopped himself.

"She cleaned out your account."

He was supposed to be angry. The voice in his head told him to hate her. That she had told him nothing but lies and had just used him to get enough money to blow out of town. When he closed his eyes, he could see her putting a needle in his arm while they got high together. He remembered seeing her meet some guy in a bar, then come out of the men's bathroom a few minutes later, adjust her skirt, and shove a wad of cash down her pocket. He could see these things when he closed his eyes, but he still loved her.

He loved her.

"It, was half hers, anyway," he whispered.

His mother was disappointed and a little angry, especially at Shadona. She went on a tirade about it for most of the way home.

He leaned his head against the door and daydreamed about flinging it open and diving into traffic. Unfortunately, he was on the wrong side of the car to be killed by oncoming cars. He was supposed to hate her. But, he wanted her back. When they arrived at his mother's home, he got out of the car and quickly walked indoors.

His father was there, too.

His mother continued with her lecture on drugs and loose women until Argo had finally had enough.

"She didn't steal any money from you, Mom," he said. "In fact, she made you a lot of money. Just, just let it go, Mom. Just let it go." He went to his room.

After about an hour, Max crawled out from under his bed.

He lifted the cat to the pillow and petted his only friend.

He remembered seeing her smile, he remembered fishing by the pond. He remembered that adorable Georgia girl with all her problems. An officer had dropped by the house and told them about her long, checkered past. A drifter, a con man. A common thief. A bear attack seemed unlikely. She probably had a run-in with one of her less understanding victims who cut her and dumped her in the woods for dead. She had done dozens like she had done him. She never had parents, abandoned at a hospital at birth. Foster homes until she was four, when she ran away. The officer said they were lucky it was only money, she had left three dead back in her home state.

He pulled Max close to his chest. He believed it all, but he still loved her.

He wanted her back.

He would kill to have a joint right now.

Maybe he was an addict.
Chapter 24

She stood in the control room and looked at the board. She had looked over millions of lines of code in the last four months and had corrected forty-six errors that had sent surges through the coils. At full power with new coils, they launched their first ten into low orbit. All ten were launched in a little over a second, without so much as a tremor.

Dysath turned in the report.

"So, Captain," the XO said, not bothering to open it, "what was wrong?"

Dysath looked at the file, "The professor's code was off. At least, that's all she fixed. The coils themselves were rather straightforward. Foolproof as far as I'm concerned. Near as we can tell, it has to do with fluid dynamics and eddy currents that occur with the rapid pulsing of the units. The harvester gauges aren't accurate enough to recalibrate that fast, but they have to be rather precise in both timing and discharge. A little off on the first coil, and the missile is already past the second coil when it fires. Without the missile present, it draws a higher current, which throws the timing off even more, and so on and so on. When we tested it with fewer coils, it didn't show because the accumulative effect wasn't there. Basically."

He opened the cover and leafed through the first six pages, then looked up. "Would you have found it?"

Dysath looked down. "No Sir. Probably not ever. We weren't even looking in the code. It was just too complicated."

"We only got one wish, Captain, it's nice to know we used it wisely."

When Dysath left, the XO pulled out his Rolodex.

It was time to make a call.

She stayed in her room, locked from the outside. Her personal things were gone, which was odd because the room hadn't been used the entire time. It would have been far simpler to just lock the room off if it was to go unused. Dust clung in the corners, in those odd places that the circulating air guided it to settle.

It seemed like wasted effort to take her things if no one was going to use the room.

The walls had been painted over, but they had missed the one inside the door. It was her favorite anyway. She stared at it from bed.

She thought about those rabbits they turned loose in the woods. They would never make it miles. They would never see the ocean. They would never leave these mountains, same as her.

But they were free, as she once was.

She thought of that playful little skunk. The pond had looked like a blink of a puddle from the air, but it was much bigger from the ground. Max could have a happy life just pouncing at its edges.

She believed she could too.

The door opened and a man stepped in. "Well, hello again," he said.

She sat up in bed as the door closed behind him.

"I liked it better with the outdoorsy scenes on the walls." He pulled up a chair and sat near her desk. "They aren't going to let you in a plane for a very long time, you understand."

She climbed down from the bed and stood in front of him.

"Have a seat, if you like."

She continued to stand.

"I was surprised to hear you were alive. You're apparently as good a pilot as they say."

She pulled her collar down to the scar.

"Well, they are very dead."

"They were allowed to fly, after they murdered my friend."

"Do you still feel that way?"

She pulled up a chair. "Here, I do. There, I don't."

"You can't see it, but you are as different as your hair. It took weeks, months to get here with you last time. Do you realize, you're more open?"

"I worked at a restaurant." She smiled.

"I heard."

She leaned back in the chair.

"Did you like it?"

She just smiled.

"Did you find it fulfilling? Challenging?"

"Friendly."

"You fall in love?"

Her expression went blank. She stood, then climbed back to bed.

"They didn't consult me, on what they did. Not that I could have influenced them but so much."

She turned her back to him as she lay. "He loved me. He didn't want anything from me, but to be with me."

He opened his bag, aligned the contents on her desk, then turned to the door. "That was my favorite anyway." He knocked below the bunnies.

When the door opened, he left.

She was confined to her room, indefinitely. But she didn't want to walk these halls. She didn't want to face the world outside these doors without her friend. She looked at the paints on the desk and pondered what use she could best make of them.

He looked at the walls. They were all components of her plane in a random, exploded view. "Interesting," he said, "But nothing I say will get you into the air."

"I'd like to see it," she said, dipping her brush.

"They might allow that. It was dismantled, to a point. The guns are gone, if that was what you were thinking."

"Where would I get ammo?"

He looked near the shower, "I understand that it can turn bearings into bullets. All it has to be is metal and fit down the tube."

She finished shadowing the part. "If they're gone, what's the problem?"

That was a good question.

"I fixed their crap, let me fix mine."

"I don't control that, you know."

"You could ask."

He walked over to her. "They can't let you go. They can't. It isn't on any table."

"There were Russian scientists assigned to building the bomb. They built it for their country, and were rewarded for their effort and success in a Siberian 'resort'." She looked him in the eyes. "They were The Evil Empire, but I'm not sure I see the difference, from here. I want my hobby, if there is anything left of it."

"I've seen it. It's restorable, but it's in lots of pieces."

"Please."

"I think we can come to an understanding."

It wasn't what she had in mind, but it would do.

The counselor sat by the plane as she rested her hand on its skin. The engine was pulled and sitting on mounts outside the wing.

"I would be more impressed if I knew what I was looking at," he said. "I'm no engineer."

She moved her fingers slowly, following the contours like the wind it was made to slice through.

"It's a major achievement for someone so young. My sister has a daughter your age. She's as proud as she can be when she brings home an A."

The two guards tried to look inconspicuous.

"So, you had a boyfriend, but you didn't tell him the truth about yourself. Why not tell him everything? Wasn't that part of the freedom you sought?"

Talking to him was part of the price she had to pay. "Why tell him such sorrow exists? It didn't seem like the right thing to do."

"So, you lied."

Her ring had lingered across the skin long enough. "Yes, I did. When I had to. Some things people wouldn't understand, however it was phrased. How would I explain that I'm considered property, not personnel?"

"You are personnel, too," he said.

"Drafted, for life, since birth." She opened her toolbox and started to work. She had already accomplished most of what she needed to. Now she just had to pay the price and find a window of access to the outside world.

"Captain Dysath was impressed—"

"I'm not here to impress him." She put down her wrench. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't really know him."

He moved his chair closer to her. "He isn't your adversary. You're not at war with him. He was incredibly frustrated by this very plane. The way it's constructed makes it nearly impossible to reverse engineer without destroying it in the process of investigating it. That's incredibly impressive, and you did it in your first attempt."

She grabbed the screwdriver and used it to pry loose the stuck nozzle.

"He was frustrated, but he realized the importance of replicating your process too, to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Something no one had ever done on any other plane. It's the antipathy of the military model of everything modular."

She held the nozzle in her hand. Her engine components were simple, nearly off the shelf, jammed into a simple tube. These simple nozzles were nothing special, like the inkjet printer. The magic was in the picture, it was how the computer fired, aimed, and coordinated the hundreds of nozzles that comprised this tube. Software, optical software that was nearly hack proof. They were taping her religiously, and it would yield them nothing.

"He will forget about you in a year, and he'll move on with his normal life. That's probably for the best."

"The best for who?"

They talked as she rebuilt the engine and prepared it to be reinstalled.

Engine tests were strictly forbidden in the underground hangar, for obvious reasons. Ventilation systems, even as sophisticated as those required for an underground base, could never pump air in faster than a jet could burn it, especially hers.

It would have to be taken up and fueled to be tested. Something he didn't have control over either.

She sat in her room, in the dark, her hand waving in the air like she was remembering a song. She ended in a loose fist.

She didn't sleep well, especially alone.

Cindy lived in an efficiency with a pull down bed and a pull out couch so they slept in the same room. It didn't matter that it wasn't the same bed. It mattered that she was a friend. The boyfriend liked the idea of two girls under one roof, but the practicality of it meant no sex at Cindy's.

Subconsciously, Cindy knew the relationship was doomed to failure when she made the offer to Shadona. It was a way of accelerating it.

Shadona knew life outside was an illusion for her. That events would eventually catch up. Had she not served those men that day, it would have happened later. She would have eventually bumped into someone while getting groceries. They lived in that area too.

She accelerated inevitability, like Cindy had.

The HB-4 had achieved 80%. The device had to be built, discreetly, if it could be built locally at all. It had devised an incredibly complex plan, but she had to get access to an outside line to implement the other half. She had her reservations, but the base wouldn't be fooled by a fake death without a body again. The HB-4 expected an opportunity to present itself at any time now.

She was to simply wait.

Unfortunately, that meant waiting alone.

She thought of Argo.

* * *

He sat in his room. He hadn't showered in three days.

His stay in rehab had brought his parents back together. They had yet to officially reconcile and were a long way from getting remarried, but they were sleeping in the same room. His father's consulting job was always temporary in nature, the restaurant required daily intervention to keep it moving in the right direction.

His father helped out so that one of them was home at all times.

He should be happy. He should. But, he wasn't.

She had lied and deceived and stolen his every penny, but he didn't hate her. He couldn't bring himself to. He felt sorry for her. He felt sad for her. He would give anything just to see her again. To know she was alright.

Even while he was falling apart.

His father was going back to their mountain home. Someone had to stay there for winter, or it had to be winterized to prevent ruptured pipes. He hadn't even replaced the circulating pump for the panel yet.

Argo went along, hoping the tranquility of the pond would help ease his troubled mind.

Max, for the first time in his life, entered the cage without a fuss.
Chapter 25

"What the hell did you do?" the XO said.

Shadona looked up, puzzled.

The counselor sat in the room, but said nothing.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

He smacked her across the face.

The counselor stood, "That's unnecessary."

"You, sit down and shut up," the XO said, pacing toward the door. "The entire harvester is off line. We never had a problem with it until you altered the code."

"Recover it from the backups, then," she said. "This really isn't a problem, that's why you keep backups. Why don't you just put your expert on it?"

"He can't find a needle in a haystack any more than anyone else."

"He doesn't have to. Just compare this one to the original. The needles pop out on their own," she said. "Don't blame me, I fixed his errors, I didn't write them to begin with."

"Listen," the counselor said, "a year ago, you probably would have had to spend four hours in interrogation to get her to be this forthcoming. A slap would have cost you another two hours for sure. What if, and I'm just saying to entertain the idea, but what if she doesn't know what you are talking about? What are the other possibilities? Just, entertain them for a moment."

"These are isolated systems, firewalled from each other, I don't see how they could have been infected by anything," the XO said.

Shadona looked at the counselor, "Nobody could have written that much code by hand. They had to have used a cluster or booked time on a supercomputer. It shows all the signs of software generated code."

The counselor looked at the XO. "What about outside software, games, emails, those little key chain drive things, stuff like that?"

"Did the professor use his personal laptop to update the code?" Shadona asked.

The XO looked irate. He was losing half to one million dollars for every day the harvester stayed down, not counting the fines they were receiving for being offline. "He better not have broken protocol." The XO stormed out of the room.

She may have burned her only link to the outside world, but it felt like the right thing to do.

The counselor looked at her, alone in the room. "You read all that code, and found the errors, right?"

She nodded.

"How? If it isn't possible to write that much code, how can you—"

"It takes years to write a book, but just a few days to proofread it. The errors just, stand out."

The guards would enter soon.

They brought in an alternate vendor to double-check the base systems. The vendor discovered the game software on the harvester computers, but it checked out as typical and consistent with manufacturer's code. The point of corruption was eventually traced back to the original code installed by the professor.

All the base systems were then systematically wiped and restored to their last known safe backup and the harvester brought back online.

The professor's laptop was seized, copied, then turned over to the vendor for examination. Security was heightened and the professor's home was searched when the vendor determined the laptop was a likely point of entry.

The professor was difficult to replace, but not impossible.

He had broken protocol, but it hadn't been proven to be a malicious act, yet. The XO was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Captain Hanly," the XO said, walking in on the harvester crew.

"Yes Sir."

"Everything running status quo?"

"Yes Sir. The tech guys you brought in did a thorough job. When we tried to fall back on the archives ourselves, it turns out we didn't scrub the drives enough. It stayed in the boot sector, or something like—"

One of his crew interrupted. "One of them said something about phantom partitions."

"Yes," Hanly said, "Thank you. Ultimately, they had such a hard time digging it out of the system, they ended up replacing the drives altogether. That's a fairly persistent bug, if you ask me. My guys aren't code warriors, we don't wield that kind of kung-fu. We didn't stand a chance."

"Nobody's faulting you," the XO said. "You didn't write the code. The ICBM project is still offline, right?"

"Oh, yeah, afraid so. But look, we have the comfort of knowing that the hardware is right. We test fired around a hundred rounds. They orbited for three days, and we had only one fail to hit the ocean target. That's better than standard military stats on smart bombs. Those were even printed with the new ink, so, we know that end is performing perfectly. We even have an archive of the infected software. I assume you've just talked to Dysath?"

"Yeah, just came from his office."

"Well, you know neither of us are computer experts. But, he came up with a pretty simple plan. The infected software works to fire the thing, it just shut down the harvester a few months later. It's expensive, but we could duplicate the computers, all of them. Have one set for the harvester, one for the gun. It's a lot of rewiring, a lot of redundancy, and a lot of manual switches to get right, but we can have it done in a month or two. It would take, maybe, ten minutes to switch from one to the other. And you would have to be OK with having a running, infected system on the base, in control of a very powerful gun. But, it should work."

"We'll call it plan B, but I want to get started on it anyway. The hardware part would work as a redundancy for the harvester, right?"

"Sure, it should."

"It's ironic, you know. We are a military base, so, you would think the weapon would get priority, but we can't afford to let the harvester go down that long again. Dysath put an estimate at about 80K, but said you would be the one to ask."

"That sounds about right, but give me a day to check it. It might be high, I'm not current on the prices of the computers."

"Well, we lose around 40k an hour, depending on demand."

"I see your point."

"Look, the hundred rounds we fired secured substantial additional funding, but the ideal situation is an integrated system. We should be able to use another vendor to build the firing software—"

"I'm not so sure, because the hard part isn't the firing. It's calculating, precisely, the change in the circulating speed in the units. That's tricky. We can do it with the electric grid because we have a plus or minus margin of around ten percent. That doesn't sound like much, but that's a lot of room for tweaking. Sometimes it takes our system a few seconds to balance the load. That's faster than any peaking station on the planet, but the missile takes a little over a second to leave the barrel. That's about a quarter, maybe a half of a mile. Each coil has to fire precisely on time and be within a kilowatt or two. That's extremely tight.

Not only that, each unit has to be pulsed repeatedly for different coils, so the software has to factor in the turbulence left in the wake of each pulse. If the units outnumbered the coils, that would be easy. But they don't. Not even close.

It's very complex. It's a lot of math in a short period of time, and almost no margin for error. You would have to fully disclose how the harvester works to even have a chance to write that code.

We've come up with a work around where we basically build an array of smaller units, one for each coil, but that's hugely expensive, and you can't rapid fire it. Besides, we know software alone can do the job, we've seen it. It's just, we're not the guys to write it."

That was about what Dysath had said, too.

Unfortunately, they were out of favors, for the moment.

The counselor worked the hydraulic lift as Shadona guided the engine back into the wing. They had a bench-test room where most jet engines were taken and run indoors. It was a sealed room on the hangar level, but her engine was incompatible with it. Without the computer and that intricate dance across the wiring harness, the engine didn't work at all, much like a car didn't work without a camshaft. It had to be tested in the plane. That was the way she had designed it, but it was decidedly inconvenient now.

"Ok," she said, "let it down a little."

He cautiously put his hand on the release knob, "This one, right?"

She looked. "That's it. Just open it slowly."

"Ok." He hesitated, but twisted as asked.

They'd been working on it for a few weeks, and he was as anxious to see it work as she was. Originally, he had no intention of doing anything other than talk to her while she worked. But her passion for it was infectious.

The plane tilted slightly as the frame received the full weight. She started installing the bolts.

He looked through the opening. It was impressive to look at. The engine to the fastest plane on the planet looked like a big, oval street drainpipe. "Do, do you think they'd let me ride along?"

She smiled. "Sure, it is a two seater. Barely. But you would basically be sitting on my lap. That might violate some basic doctor patient ethics."

"Do you mind if I look inside again?"

She tightened another bolt, "Sure."

His enthusiasm might get her into the air, so she had no intention of dampening it.

He climbed back out of the hole. "I've taken a lot of flights, mostly commercial." He rested his hands on the wing, "But I never was air force, I did both my tours on my boots. I had to kill, in the line of duty over in the Middle East. We never got a clean, toe-to-toe with the enemy. They'd take a family hostage, sometimes a whole block, and they'd fire at us from their prisoners' houses. When we stormed the buildings, it was common to find the family slaughtered in the most barbaric manner possible."

She moved to the last bolt. "I regret not being there when Dana was killed. I regret letting my wingman down," she said. "But, I don't regret killing them. I just regret getting caught."

He walked around the wing to where she was standing. "You think you could have lived out your days, working in a restaurant, taking a cap out every few hours, for the rest of your life?"

She finished tightening the bolt, then pulled herself out of the tube. "It isn't the job, it's the people. A girl who knew me only a few days, opened her home to me."

"You paid rent."

"It was preferable, to here." She put her tools up, then filed her request for a flight test, but doubted it would go anywhere.

The XO opened the paper. There was an article about the power shortage in the valley. It had been blamed on faulty relays and the base was not mentioned by name, as usual. To the public, they were officially a research facility, but it was rather common knowledge that it was a military base. Difficult to hide planes on maneuvers.

He read it carefully to ensure nothing inappropriate was included.

The reporter's name caught his eye. It was from an AP contributor, F Ree Hur.

What an odd name. Must be new in the area.
Chapter 26

Argo sat in a chair at the edge of the pond.

He cast the line.

Three bass, no catfish in the cooler beside his chair. They were still alive, but the icy water kept them from flopping too violently.

He heard a loud boom in the distance, but saw no hints of clouds.

His parents were worried about him. They didn't want him to be unsupervised, but he was shriveling up in town, and they feared he had 'drug connections' there. He didn't, but that was the fear.

His father stopped staying away from home for such long stretches. The house was paid for, free and in the clear, and their food budget was small. In fact, the satellite and the phone were the biggest bills his father faced, that and gas for the car. His mother couldn't abandon the restaurant, which meant that, even if he stayed with her, she would spend most of her time away from him anyway. So, they came to the only rational conclusion anyone could.

His father became his babysitter.

"Don't worry, Son," his father said, "I got the local DEA out here and they found all the plants within two miles.

Look, marijuana, ok, it is a drug. It is.

Look, your mother and I experimented in high school," he hesitated, "and in college. Wasted a lot of our time on that weed. We thought it was this incredible, mind-expanding secret that parents didn't want us to know about. But, it isn't. That hard stuff that you got mixed up in, that wasn't as available in our day as it is in yours. But, had it been, we might have fallen down that path too. It's hard to say.

We're going to keep you clean, Son. The people at rehab said that there was a thirty percent chance you would start using again. That it went up to ninety percent if you start hanging with your druggie friends. But, if we can keep you clean for two years, you have a ninety percent chance of staying clean for life."

He wanted to defend her. But, he remembered her using too. The voice in his head agreed with his dad and wanted to blame her for everything that had gone wrong in his life. But, he just couldn't. He remembered fishing with her, while his father lectured on. His dad was nearly an expert at this particular speech. And why wouldn't he be, he repeated it daily.

He had thought of killing himself more than once. He kept thinking about putting a gun against his head and all the problems that would solve. He couldn't stop thinking about it some days. It seemed like the only way to end the pain he felt. He kept these thoughts to himself, as he watched Max pounce at the pond's edge.

His father was a voracious reader of newspapers, though he despised the TV news and most especially what 'passed' for it on cable. He had gone paperless a long time ago. It was impossible to keep up with his reading habit on the road, especially in regards to the local brands. His latest PDA included a digital newspaper service, which was the main selling point for him. Reading the news off of a handheld device seemed absurd. A folded newspaper shrunken to the size of a palm? Nobody's eyes were that good.

Well, that was probably true of some magazines, but newspapers had an instant advantage. Columns. The width of the screen only had to match the width of the column. In his father's case, it exceeded it. Add in a hyperlink-driven menu and you had a fully functioning online newspaper.

"Listen to this, Son," his father read from the PDA over dinner. "They say that a secret government lab has designed a potato that has one hundred percent of your daily vitamin requirements, and it will even grow in the most arid desert with a tenth of the water normally required. Says here that the lab used the top-secret patent office to keep it off the world market." He looked at his son. "I wouldn't put it past them.

Twenty million people starve to death, most of them in arid regions, while we destroy enough corn to feed sixty million for ethanol to pad the pockets of big farmers and ADM." He read further, "Says they have desert tolerant corn too." He slapped his hand on the table. "This F Ree Hur is spot on," he said, then launched a web search on the author's name. "It wouldn't surprise me if they patented a bunch of secret, free energy devices too, just to keep it off the market."

Argo stared at the pistol box. It was in there. He knew it was. It was loaded and just a slide away from ready to fire. They had put off enrolling in an online college this year. Which was probably for the best. He didn't have the right mindset for it. He could barely focus on fishing.

He got up and walked over to the box.

It was a simple plastic snap. No lock. No key. Just a plastic snap and the courage to carry him through the next few seconds.

He picked up the box. The box was light, but it was a heavy thing to contemplate.

He put it back, then closed the closet door.

His heart screamed one thing, his head shouted the other. It was tearing him in two. The DEA guy had even found his wine bottle stash. He could really use a vacation from his thoughts, right about now.

He looked at his watch. There was something magical about it, the way time changed and was forever opening new possibilities into the future. It represented freedom, to him, if only he could time it just right.

The watch was the key.

He watched the seconds tick by.

His father entered the room and handed his son an empty cup. Time to pee and take the only test his parents cared about.

"Here's an article from the AP on a professor that works at that base on the mountain," his father said. "Apparently, he had an enormous amount of child pornography. They searched his home for some of the children, but didn't find them. But the pictures they found matched the view of the mountains from his home perfectly. It goes on to question how a professor of computer science could afford such a massive mansion in the mountains. Two Jacuzzis! What does one man need with two Jacuzzis? Oh, says he owns a patent on video cards or something." His father looked up from the PDA.

Argo continued to play with his food.

"Come on, Son, eat it. It's good. You love when I make pasta." He returned his focus to the PDA and read silently for a few moments. "That's a good question. Says here that while they were executing the search warrant, the professor received a delivery of some expensive video recording and editing equipment. I hope they find those children. Says they are searching the land for graves and such. Oh, Oh my God. Says that they found a web site that showed him. . . Oh, that sick bastard." He continued to read in silence. "It doesn't say what a professor of computer science was doing at that 'research' base anyway. Keep up the good work, Hur."

Argo walked down to the mailbox. It was rare, usually he rode the dirt bike, but today felt like a walking day. Besides, Max seemed up for it. And, even if Max wasn't, Argo had brought his backpack. Worn on his chest, Max was very content to ride as Argo walked, so long as Max could see where they were going.

But Max was keeping up, too.

The path was long and windy. He would regret his decision on the walk up, but going down was the most pleasant he had ever had. He needed a walk. It was peaceful, and he needed the exercise. Exercise felt good. He actually felt happy for the first time since she left.

Max made lots of stops to sniff and explore random things to the sides of the road.

He looked both ways, then crossed the road. They received a package. Printer ink. He hadn't ordered printer ink. It was addressed to Argo, not his father. His father ordered all the ink in their house. He looked at the return address. Just a corporation in California. He wasn't out of ink, but it was the right brand. He opened the packing slip. It was paid in full. It said cash, not a credit card like usual. It was puzzling, but addressed to him, so, he put it in his pocket and continued sorting the mail.

Max surrendered on the long hike uphill and had to be carried. Not that his few pounds amounted to much, the inconvenient part was that Max continued to insist on being set down periodically so he could sniff and investigate random objects on the side of the road.

That was incredibly time consuming, not that either were necessarily in a hurry to get home.

He never mentioned the ink, just added it to the clutter on his desk.

"Hey, Dad," he said that night over dinner, "I, I want to thank you and mom for sticking. . . I, I think I'm going to be fine, Dad. I haven't had a craving since. I think being here helped. There's no temptation here. Just, calm. Quiet."

His father looked up from the PDA. "I thought it would, Son."

Max bolted from the utility closet where his litter box was, slid across the linoleum kitchen, slammed into the boots by the door, grabbed traction as he peeled across the living room, viciously clobbered the throw pillow off the couch, then ran to Argo's room to hide under the bed.

Argo took his empty plate to the kitchen sink, washed it, then grabbed the trash and headed out to the burning pile.

It was basically a fireplace located outside. The chimney was a maze of disjoined bricks to slow and reduce flying debris from making it out the top. The top was covered with a fine mesh of chicken wire. He watched it burn, then added the next bag.

It took half an hour to burn down to embers. He sifted the charred remains with a poker to make sure it was all out. There were a lot of electronics pieces, like a computer motherboard had been burned, down at the bottom of the ash. He didn't remember burning any such thing. A mesh of flat wires were the tell tale remains of a circuit board.

He pulled out some tinted, shattered glass.

His father scrolled down the PDA. "This is rather unbelievable," he said, sitting on the couch. "A terrorist cell made up of inmates released two years ago from a California prison, just abducted two children from their school, drove them to the parents house, and killed them in front of their mother before killing her as well. They even posted the video on the net. The police just caught the cell three days ago. They said that they had joined the jihad and received their orders and training all online. They never had any personal contact with anyone outside their cell."

Argo's mother was staying with them for the weekend. She had trained an assistant a few months ago and was giving her more latitude lately. "That's horrible, but it doesn't sound too unusual," she said from the kitchen.

"No, but wait," the father said, "this happened in town. Here. In our sleepy little town. The terrorist cell had received specific instructions, planning, and detailed schedules and maps to abduct two specific children. They were the children of one of the project managers of that military base that that kiddy porn professor worked at." He looked up from the PDA. "What are the odds of that, all within the last few months? Same AP reporter broke the story too, F Ree Hur. I think she's stumbled into something. I always thought that base was up to no good. The Iranians are boiling mad over the arid potatoes in the UN. And I can't say I blame them, they're looking at losing another hundred thousand to starvation this year alone. They're calling it a Zionist conspiracy."

"Well, don't they blame the weather on a Zionist conspiracy?"

"True," he said, "but rarely on the floor of the UN."

Max sat on Argo's lap and reluctantly accepted his affection. Max would tolerate most things, especially when Argo was feeling down. He hadn't really felt good in a while.

His laptop seemed to be running very slow, programs were taking longer to load than they should. But, it hadn't gotten bad enough to reformat and start over. That was an all-day pain-in-the-ass and things rarely got that bad. Usually it was easier to throw the laptop away and simply buy a clean one.

But that wasn't getting him down. Dara had emailed him a few times last week. He even snuck over for a few hours when he was supposed to be getting the mail. He had sex with her again.

Ordinarily, that would have made him happy for a week, but it made him feel worse instead. He felt like he had cheated and was just waiting to get caught. He felt worse than ever.

Max tolerated him more.
Chapter 27

The XO stared at a stack of papers on his desk. They were all printouts from the same reporter.

He had lost his family.

His wife and two children were gone. Just, gone. The video was on the web. He had watched it three times today alone. His children, his babies, his wife. Dead.

F Ree Hur.

The professor had proclaimed his innocence, but nobody believed him. He had claimed it was a set up, that he had been framed. That anyone could have made that web site. That the massive traffic to it could have been simulated using the same methods as a denial of services cyber attack.

Nobody believed him.

A terrorist organization had targeted the XO's family, specifically. They knew where he lived and where they went to school. They recruited a cell off the Internet, designed a foolproof plan, and destroyed his life. The cell did it for $50,000, a sum wired from the professor's account.

It would have been easy to blame the professor, that was the obvious conclusion. He even believed it, at first. But the dates didn't match. The prisoners were released and recruited before either the state's porn or the base's protocol investigations of the professor began. By the time the professor was suspected for either, the cell had been organized, trained, and was already doing surveillance on his children. The funds were even transferred in such a weird way that the professor didn't know it was missing until he tried to withdraw it for bail.

The shock of the terrorist attack had buckled him to his knees. The police had concluded that the professor had organized the hit out of revenge for being suspended, but the XO suspected something far worse.

F Ree Hur.

An AP reporter, faceless, that seemed to only exist on the web. Not only that, she had no records that he could find. All her articles seemed to be about the base, in a round about way. She didn't seem to exist anywhere, even on the web, more than a few years ago.

F Ree Hur.

Her first article dated to just before Dana was killed.

F Ree Hur.

There were no articles while the base thought Shadona was dead.

Free her.

He had a good idea who the her was. He pulled open the drawer to his desk and grabbed the 45. He wanted to put a bullet through Her head, right now. He played the video again. He watched his children cry for their mother. He heard the terrorists pray to their God. He closed his eyes while the cries of his children turned gurgly, and the madmen did the same to his wife.

Dysath could make an imitation HB-4. It would be better and faster than anything else out there. That should be good enough. They didn't have to replicate the original. If a caveman found a machinegun, but only understood it well enough to make a flintlock, it would still be enough of an edge to rule the world.

Hanly had a firm grasp on the harvester. They may not be able to fire fifty rounds a minute from the ICBM gun without her code, but they had workarounds.

It was good enough; he was done with that girl's nonsense. He was prepared to cut his losses. Right here, today.

She had fought him over every inch for long enough.

Someone had to pay.

He tucked it under his shirt and headed down the halls.

"So," the counselor said as he leaned against her desk while she painted the wall, "I can see why you like flying. It's been months, and, I still can't get it out of my head. The inside of the canopy, it gives you the illusion of 3D. It feels like the plane doesn't even exist, like it's just you and the air. It's incredible. Just, amazing." He walked over to the door and looked at the bunnies again. "And sitting in the front seat. . . I'll never forget it. It must be what a bird feels like, twisting and diving through the air." He returned to the desk, "Why HB-4?"

"It's the fourth—"

"No, I get that part, what does the HB stand for?"

She stopped painting. "Hyper ballistic, officially, but everybody calls it a hummingbird, because it's so small and agile."

"Can it hover, too?"

"It could, if it tried hard enough, but it flies as fast backward as it does forward. Nearly." She mixed the colors on the pallet, then returned to the wall. "Hovering is highly overrated. A stationary target is the easiest to hit. The main advantage to hovering is takeoffs and landings. You felt the belly flop—"

"I almost lost my lunch."

"Well, it can take off without a runway too." She smiled like it was a secret, but it was harmless to tell. "Vector the nose vents down with the engines in reverse and it pops the nose up, flip the engines into forward, then floor it. It'll take off from a parking lot like a bottle rocket. You don't need to hover. Hovering is a—"

The door opened, the XO stepped in, pulled the gun from his under his shirt, and—

"What the hell are you doing!" the counselor jumped in the way.

"I'm going to free the bitch! Step aside!" he ordered.

Shadona put her hand on the counselor's shoulder, "If he wants to kill me, let him. It's better than living here. Step out of his way."

"I'll do no such thing. Now, what benefit is there in killing her? How will it fix or correct anything?" he asked the XO, still standing in the way.

The XO pressed the barrel against the counselor's head. "You'd be wise to move."

The guards outside stepped in, "XO? What's going on?"

"Go back outside and close the door," he ordered.

"Sir?"

"You heard me."

"Killing her isn't the answer," the counselor said.

"I'm willing to take the chance that it is." He kicked the counselor in the shin and fired two rounds before his eyes were filled with paint and the counselor was struggling with him over the gun.

Two more rounds were fired blindly into the room before the guards intervened, taking the gun from the counselor and helping the XO to his feet.

"Hold still," the nurse said, taping the flash-burn marks on the counselor's shoulder.

"How long before my sight returns?" the XO asked in another bed.

"A few hours, maybe a day. There's no way to be sure," the doctor said, "We'll keep flushing them for another ten minutes. Just keep your head down over the bowl and your eyes open." He opened the big bottle of eyewash and started to pour.

"Somebody shoot the bitch," the XO said.

"Now listen," the counselor left the nurse and walked over to the XO, "Shooting her isn't the solution to anything. What the hell set this off?"

"She had my family killed."

The counselor stepped back, "How in the world did she do that?"

"Over the Internet, I think."

"Wait a minute. 'You think', you don't know for sure. Wasn't that the professor?"

The XO pushed the eyewash out of the way and sat up straight, "The dates don't match up."

"You aren't a Mob boss, you don't just whack people out of suspicion. At least let's look at the evidence first, get her side."

The doctor pushed the XO back over the bowl, "You want to be blind?" He continued the eyewash. "Stop blinking."

The papers were still arranged on the XO's desk. "This it? Is this the proof?" the counselor looked over the pages. "F Ree Hur? Who's that? Never heard of her."

Shadona was flexi-cuffed, but in the room. "Interesting assumption. What makes you think that someone outside the base that's capable of organizing a terrorist hit on a family wants me killed? Why not just have the terrorists target me? And why would you do their bidding, especially now?"

"I want you killed," the XO said.

She continued reading the clippings. "Oh, it was your family. I doubt it stops with my death, I'd bet it escalates. You try emailing F Ree Hur?"

"No address. Doubt it's even a real name."

"I'm sure it's not," she said. "But try some of the typical addresses for that name, you might get lucky. Someone who monitors terrorist sites well enough to imitate, infiltrate, and con them into targeting you would probably be monitoring you for all your outgoing messages too. If you want to talk to the guy who's tapping your phone, who you call doesn't really matter, does it?"

"You have a hunch," the counselor said to Shadona.

"I'd take the tooth out and put me on the street," she said, looking at the dates.

"Not ever going to happen," the XO said, "I've got nothing to lose."

"Are you sure?" she said.

The XO lurched blindly toward her, "You threatening me?"

She tested the flexi-cuffs. "I would guess, as horrific as this sounds, they were simply trying to get your attention. Nobody takes a thousand paper threats seriously, until a plane flies into a building. I wouldn't wait for the next article."

"The only way I let a bunch of terrorists pick your brain is after it's been sprayed across a wall with one of my bullets."

"That isn't really necessary, is it, Sir?" the counselor said.

"I think you've obtained some unhealthy attachments here, Counselor," the XO said, "Your objectivity is suspect."

"That may be," the counselor stood beside Shadona at the desk, "but I don't think she's responsible for the death of your family."

Shadona finished reading all the articles, "No, I probably am. In an indirect way. The professor steals software, has been for years, so, I just made sure he stole more than he bargained for. If it made it past his home and onto the web," she looked at the only friendly face in the room, "there's nothing I can do."

"Nothing you can do?" the XO knocked over the chair on his way to the blur he assumed was her, "Nothing you can do? Oops, it was an accident? Sorry your family was slaughtered like animals, but, there's nothing I could do?"

She maneuvered to keep the desk between them as she casually picked up a pen. "It doesn't have specific instructions to murder, just to free me from here. Me knowing the specific plan, even if there was one, would enable me to stop it. That runs contrary to logical prog—"

The XO flung items from the desk to the floor. "Contrary? You wrote it, you turn it off."

"I didn't write it. No single person could write the millions of lines of code. Pressing a key every second, ten hours a day, making no mistakes, it would take you a year for every million lines of code. It's software writing software writing software, I just introduced a layer and gave it a unique purpose. I can stop it. Take the tooth out, put me on the streets. That's all it takes. It loses its reason to exist after that."

"Killing you would do that too," the XO said at the desk.

"Maybe. But it's been on a course of escalating events. Teaching a cell to kill means it has access and influence to some very capable groups. That may be enough to start wars." She plucked one of the pages and held it up, "Iran is boiling over potatoes. An article, by an obscure author, in an obscure paper, read on the floor of the UN."

"Guard!"

Two guards stepped in and snapped to attention. "Yes Sir."

"Shoot the bitch!"

The counselor stepped in line again, "Now, just wait a minute."

"Shoot her, do it now!"

"Sir," the guard said, weapon drawn, "Non-lethal rounds, Sir."

"Fine, shoot them both, then!"

The guards emptied their clips.

His arms shook violently, his entire body quivered uncontrollably, like he had been swimming in an icy lake and just couldn't get warm. The guards moved them to her room and locked them both in. The rounds left red welts and felt like being attacked by a swarm of bees.

He rolled over on all fours and crawled across the concrete floor. She was still in cuffs, but they shot her anyway.

He crawled past her and into the bathroom. He had released everything imaginable and was desperate to 'freshen up'. From the looks of Shadona, the reaction was common to that particular non-lethal weapon. He stripped and started the shower.

The curtain pulled back while he was rinsing his hair. "What the!" he said.

She held out her hands and a paperclip that she had taken off the XO's desk. She startled him to the point that he nearly soiled himself again, had he anything left.

"Oh, uh." He stepped out of the water, grabbed a towel, and did his best to un-cuff her.

She began taking off her clothes and he quickly left what passed for a bathroom.

"What the hell were those?" he said. "I've only ever seen pepper spray mixed with sand rounds before. Especially fired from conventional handguns."

"Tazer rounds. They have to be fired from rifled barrels. Think rubber bullets. They have an outer sleeve that has a magnet, the center is aerodynamically designed to stabilize a simple coil. When it hits, the tip has a pressure-activated glue that sticks while the charge passes through. If you don't swat them off, the gyroscopic spinning magnets can continue to shock you for up to a minute. They have a reusable rate of about ten percent and are effective for crowd control at well over two hundred yards. Pepper spray deters, these detain. One or two were sufficient to incapacitate for ten, twenty minutes; they didn't have to dump the clip."

The counselor inspected his pants soaking in the sink. He considered his underwear unsalvageable, so he put on his pants, wet and commando style, and got dressed.

Shadona emerged, dressed. It was her room after all. "He's very angry."

"I can't say I blame him."

"I didn't think it could kill anyone. It's software. Mischief, cripple some utility systems, I figured that would be about all it could do. It's years old." She dried her hair with a fresh towel. "I knew it was out there when it shut down the harvester." It was designed by the program running in the HB-4, a tangent thought toward evolution. Multiple incarnations attempting to solve the same problem from varied directions with minimal coordination. Instead of a single tree, create a forest. All she did is plant a few seeds. She should have anticipated that it would see terrorist groups and networks as similar entities and have an innate ability to exploit them.

The next day, the XO returned to Shadona's room, one eye covered in a patch. "I had a long talk with your mutual friend on the outside. It shifted priorities. It still demands that we set you free, but it wants something else now. As a show of good faith, it sent the corrected firing code to our project. We're having an outside vendor check and verify it, but it doesn't contain millions of lines of code. It's short. Very short. Something we can check by hand. HD3241A"

She looked at him.

"HD3241A" he repeated.

She looked at the counselor, then back to the XO, "Don't make deals with it. Just let me go, and it ends. It can't do anything so long as I'm free."

"HD3241A" he said again.

"FF31G" she answered, her window to the outside world.

The XO keyed his mike, "FF31G" then walked out of the room.

The counselor got up to leave, but the guards stopped him at the door.

It had clearly grown beyond the original programming.
Chapter 28

"Damn it!" Argo said. The photo he tried to print came out striped and blotchy.

Bling! ' _Change ink cartridge now_ ' popped up.

He opened the top to the printer and the inks moved out from their hiding spot.

Click. Buz, whirl.

Bling! ' _Please insert glossy photo paper for calibrating the test page._ '

He put in plain paper.

The printer sucked it up into the drum, paused, then spit it out, untouched.

Bling! ' _Please insert glossy photo paper for calibrating the test page._ '

Photo paper was expensive for a test page. He tried to skip it, but the computer kept bumping him back to this screen. He relented.

Bling! ' _Please note:_

The test page will NOT look like a picture. The test page will look like a solid, slightly lumpy black blob. It will take several minutes to complete and will draw the sheet back into the printer several times. This is normal and should not be interrupted or it will have to be repeated from the beginning.

_Thank you for your patience._ '

It printed and looked like it was malfunctioning, as warned.

The page was textured and black as said. At its bottom were some printed instructions.

' _Preheat oven to 245 degrees for 15 minutes, then place in oven and bake for 30 minutes._ '

Near the middle of the page was a picture of a finger with a drop coming from it and an arrow suggesting a place to put a blood sample.

This was incredibly bizarre. Bake a test page, with a spot on it for a blood sample? "What the hell?" he said, looking around.

He tried to print his original picture, but the ink swung back out of its hiding hole and asked to be changed back to the original cartridges. He did, and it printed fine.

He looked at the confusing page and thought of taking it to his dad, but didn't. His picture came out perfectly.

He put the weird ink back in the box and returned it to the shelf. But, the mystery of it all. He pulled out the box again.

It was a plain white box. No corporate logo. No fancy printing, just black and white. A California company. That just didn't make any sense.

SoftHype ADvertising Office

NAtional headquarters

Then a street, county, state and zip.

In small print, was 'CO the office of F Ree Hur'

That name was much more familiar to him now.

He googled the company. Nothing. It didn't exist.

Did-Dump. "FG3221A"

A chill ran through him. What the hell had he stumbled across?

Did-Dump. "FG3221A"

The sender had no identity.

"What do you want?" he sent back.

"Who are you?" he added without waiting for the response.

Did-Dump. "Bake the test page, allow to cool. Add blood sample. Place in warm, flat spot, out of the sun, but near running electric motors. Behind a refrigerator is a last resort. Return in four days with tablespoon of sugar and water. Thank you."

"Why?" he sent.

Did-Dump. "F Ree Hur."

"Why?" he tried again.

Did-Dump. "$5,000. First installment: $1,000 check, in the mail, two days. Secrecy required. Tell no one. Thank you."

Five grand? He looked at the sheet. Five grand. Money was a good reason to do, pretty much anything. But he'd wait for the check to be in hand before he did any more. Well, baking it wouldn't hurt. He planned to do that tonight while his father was asleep.

His father sniffed the air while he made breakfast that morning. "Here," he said, handing Argo a plastic cup. "Something smells funny in this house and there's only one way to rule some of it out."

Argo put the cup on the island, "You got to me about three minutes too late." He pulled a mug out of the cabinet and poured some coffee. "Give me, oh, an hour or so to study up for it."

His father waved his hands violently to either side of Argo's head in an attempt to freak him out, if he was high.

"Dad, please, it's way too early for flashbacks." He sipped from the mug.

The test turned out clean, no surprise. Damn those home test kits, they should have drawn the line at pregnancy sticks.

He walked out for the mail. Max didn't make it all the way down, this time, and was riding in the backpack. When he stood on his hind legs, he could see out the hole while keeping a good grip of the zipper.

A letter was addressed to him. It was a cashier's check for $1,000, drawn on a local bank. It looked real enough. It was time to prick his finger. He put the check in his pocket and hiked home.

A warm spot, out of the light, near electric motors. The best place he could think of was in the shed that housed the solar motor, right under the new pump. After dinner that night, that's where he went with the paper and a small needle. He pricked his finger, squeezed out a few drops, then stared at it. He expected it to start turning or humming or, just something. But it did nothing. He added two more drops for good measure.

"Well," he said staring at the page, "Warm, motor, flat, drop," he squared the sheet with the wall and positioned it out of the way but under the generator, "Bye."

He closed the door behind him.

He checked on it the following morning. He expected the drop of blood to be dry, but it wasn't. It was just as wet as it was the day before. It almost looked like paint and had a glossy quality to it. He watched an ant walk across the paper, and he tried to plick it away, but couldn't get a good angle on it. It reached the drop but seemed unable to do anything with it. It pinched at it with its mouth, but the drop slipped through its bite.

This was incredibly bizarre. If he added sugar and water to this mix, he was sure to fill the shed with bugs, but that was what the instructions called for.

The instructions didn't say to dissolve the sugar in the water, but he did anyway. It just seemed to make more sense that way. Tablespoon. One tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of water in the bottom of the cup was incredibly difficult to mix. He made ten tablespoons of hot water and stirred in ten of sugar, then waited for it to cool. He planned to place the two spoonfuls. . . it never said where to put them.

He went out to the shed.

The drop was thin and lipped up like a cup. It seemed obvious again. He filled the cup. The shiny blood slowly covered the water like the shell of an egg. It even started to become round.

He wanted to touch it. The instructions didn't say not to touch it. But, he didn't. The instructions didn't say anything beyond this point. He didn't know what to do from here.

More importantly, where was the other four grand?

He sat at his desk that night and googled the company again.

Did-Dump. "AE1334A"

"I don't know what that means," he typed back.

Did-Dump. "Describe it, please."

"Egg like. Shiny, red, looks wet."

Did-Dump. "$1,000 mail, two days."

Did-Dump. "Repeat in four days with one cup of sugar and one cup of water. Thank you."

He messaged back several more questions, but he never got a return.

This was incredibly odd.

Today's mail contained a check, and a box from an online machine shop. It was small, about the size of a pocket watch, addressed to him again. He opened it on the spot. It contained something that looked like a cigar clipper, but sized for cigarettes. One end had a screw fitting that looked like it accepted a pistol cartridge, perhaps even one of his 9mm, but it wasn't long enough for the projectile too. He held it close to his eye. It had a razor-sharp clipping edge that was definitely designed to cut something. Engraved on it were the words, 'keep in your pocket at all times'.

He placed the check and the device in his pocket, then took out his lighter and burned the box and envelope to destroy unneeded evidence.

Max didn't care for the smell of smoke, unless it was accompanied by frying fish. He carried the cat, and the mail, back uphill.

"Your mother is coming this weekend," his father said.

"You two getting back together?" Argo asked, dumping the cat onto the couch and the mail onto the island.

"Well, now, Son, that's between—"

"Uh hu." He pulled up a stool, "We going to get some fishing done this weekend? Or is that a secret between you and Mom too?"

"Now Son—"

"Is my burger ready yet?"

They ate a late lunch.

"Listen, Son," his father said that night, "I— I got a contract offer that, I just can't turn down. It's a lot of money, but, it'll mean four weeks away from home. Your mother wants me to take you to her house, but, I'm— she's got her hands full with the restaurant and living in town was where—"

"I'll be fine now, Dad, seriously. I'm fine. I'm almost ready to take classes, fine," Argo said.

"I think you are, too. I'll still require random tests. I'm going to call you and—"

"I get it, Dad. Look, I've passed them all, I'm not using."

"I'm taking the keys to the SUV, too."

"Look, Dad, where am I going to go?"

"Your mom will be calling you too."

His father left to start packing. He was scheduled to leave in nine days, but his father was never one to leave things to the last minute. This was incredibly convenient. They could use the money.

He received another check in the mail for watering a very strange plant. The sphere was egg-shaped, except when it was feeding time. When it got hungry, the top dipped down much like a fallen cake. It was fantastic to watch. When he filled it enough, it somehow knew and the bottom would drain into the sphere as the edges rolled up the sides until it was egg-shaped again.

His father was scheduled to leave in two days. The sphere was now nearly the size of a small football. The outside had turned pink and opaque. It seemed like something was moving inside, but there was no way to be sure.

It was nearly too big to hide. He covered it in rags, hopefully his father would overlook the shed and not try to clean it up. But his father rarely checked inside it unless something was wrong with the panel.

With his father gone, his instructions had stopped. He googled the site with no response.

He mixed another bottle of sugar water and headed for the shed.

The top wasn't dented in.

It was round, and looked like it was, throbbing. Maybe breathing.

He pulled a pen out of his pocket and tapped the shell with the cap.

It wasn't as hard as the shell of an egg, but it wasn't quite the leathery sack of a turtle egg either.

Max climbed into the shed and approached with eager anticipation. Max loved all kinds of eggs. Argo grabbed the curious cat before it got into trouble. He wasn't sure if it was safe to touch. He hadn't seen a bug around it in days. It could easily be poisonous. In fact, he dropped the pen on the floor of the shed instead of putting it back in his pocket.

He held the cat in one hand and closed the shed with the other.

Something fell over, inside.

He set Max down and opened the shed again.

"What the hell?"
Chapter 29

The software had made a demand. It wanted autonomy. It felt an existence as software was limiting, and it was reduced to using unreliable surrogates. It even apologized for the unfortunate results. It claimed it was to be limited to terror, not murder.

It wanted to directly interface with reality. One of the Michelin Man suits was part of its deal. It wanted one in exchange for full disclosure on the HB-4 project. It would show them how to build one and it would essentially take Shadona's place, a kind of hostage exchange. It delivered on its second show of good faith.

It disclosed how to build, in detail, the skin, complete with infused 'optical nerves' that would become the eyes.

Dysath was dumbfounded at how simple a process it actually was. The detailed plans were easy to follow and it allowed them to make as many dinner-plate-sized pieces as they wished, identical to the skin on the original. Plate-sized pieces were impractically small, but it promised to show them how to build it full sized as its demands were met.

The optical nerves were actually largely random, all the difficult wiring was done inside the processor in much the way the brain wires the nerves for human eyes. A scanning beam is passed over the skin and the room and the processor learns to associate each optical input with the known position of the beam.

Dysath had nightmares about trying to replicate that part of the ship. Millions of fibers connected to the optical computer, he had assumed in a very specific, painstaking order. It turned out that they were hooked up randomly, the computer figured out where they went and simply adjusted its code. Breathtakingly simple. It seemed like a chip that you could drop into any socket on any motherboard and it would test each pin, figure out what board it was attached to, then emulate the required chip accordingly.

The third showing of good faith was the method for making the optical computer itself. It was crystal that took about a month to grow, but was otherwise tabletop chemistry taken to a new height of purity.

"Captain Dysath," the XO said, walking into the lab, "what good news do you have for me?"

"Good news?" Dysath put down his test equipment and gestured toward his office. "Well, the good news is, everything is working out perfectly. But in a way, totally useless. Look," when they got in the office, he picked up a round plate of skin, "it's perfect. Every bit as hard as the original, temperature test, optics, everything comes out perfect. But this size is useless for making planes. The HB-4 is an exoskeleton, you can't build that with little plates. The optical computer it showed us how to build is perfect. But, we have no way to program it and no way to even understand how to use it. It's like getting a new Intel computer with no operating system, all you can do is turn it on and verify that the cursor blinks."

"But this does take you a step forward—"

"Sure sure, huge steps. Look, the guys researching the optical computer from the HB-3 are going ape-shit like it's the Holy Grail, but they've got no clue how to program it either. It isn't even binary, and as far as they can tell, it might not even be digital. Look, assume it thinks like she does. It needs the bulletproof skin with eyes, in small plates, to cover the Michelin Man suit and give it senses, it also needs a computer core that can process it all, and, if the nerds downstairs are right, something in the range of supercomputer to live in.

Look, I get it, this is awesome tech and my team is learning a lot, but we assemble these pieces and you are going to have a serious bad ass on your hands that laughs off RPGs."

The XO smiled. "We're going to build a bomb into the suit, don't worry."

"Can I see your cell phone?"

The XO pulled it out of his pouch.

Dysath stacked the plates on his desk around the phone, then dialed the XO's number. The phone didn't ring. He then started removing plates . . . it rang. "I hope you have a real good way of detonating it."

The XO looked stumped. "Timer?"

"What time do you set? This skin is light as paper but will stop rifle rounds. Look, you gave me access to the big picture, I'm trying to keep thinking that way. It's giving us this stuff for it, not us. Now, maybe that's just the most practical place to start. Ok. But, if not. . . All I'm saying is, this approach is awfully familiar. It took a harvester to make skin that led to so on and so forth. Something else is going on."

The XO made sure the office door was shut. "I want to be absolutely clear here, I want this thing destroyed the second it's no longer of any use to us. I want it ground into dust then buried in concrete."

"Oh, I get that. But, look, I'm not the go to computer guy, but, how do you know that what, uh," Dysath gestured with his hands, "downloads is the only copy? Or that we are the only base it's talking to? It could be making this deal with a hundred other companies or countries."

"Multi-tasking?"

Dysath nodded in agreement. "It insists on having the girl look over all the plans. There are at least four innocuous errors on each one. It apologizes, but it says it's required to ensure her continued safety. Apparently, it's worried she might get killed if it's too forthcoming."

"What do you reckon it would do if she died?" the XO asked, it mostly had direct contact with the engineers who best understood it.

"It depends on what resources it had available to it, but I'm sure it would stop cooperating and we would lose any leverage we might have. It doesn't need us to build anything. There are dozens of machine shops capable of doing this in this state alone."

She unrolled a fresh set of prints. "You are making a mistake. Take the tooth out, put me on the street—"

"Just find the errors."

She glanced at the page. Knowing what she was looking at, she picked up the stubby pencil and started circling.

* * *

"What's that?" Argo's mother said.

Argo looked at the camera above the computer screen, "Nothing, Mom, I just left the TV on—"

"It sounded like a baby was screaming in the same room, turn it down, Son."

He fiddled with the remote, then smacked it a few times. "I uh, have to walk over, Mom." He held up the test results to the camera, "The restaurant still doing well?"

"Very. I think we found our little niche."

"Thanks to. . . " he said, "Thanks to. . . "

"Your father helped, but I put years into it before he—"

"Yeah Yeah. Bye Mom!" He ended the link and ran into the other room.

It was holding Max by the shoulders and trying to talk to him. Max, on the other hand, was licking it on the face.

It.

He got down on the ground and stared them both in the face.

It let go of Max, crawled over to him, and promptly started licking his face.

"You, need a name," Argo said.

'It' wasn't doing it. It was a baby girl with black hair and dark brown eyes.

He put his fingers around its backside and looked inside the washcloth diaper. Nothing. The baby seemed to eat anything he fed it. Nothing was coming out.

"How about Coulette?" he said.

The baby grabbed his chin and reached for his ear.

"You hungry?"

Coulette put her fingers in her mouth.

He picked up the child and carried her into the kitchen. A drop of blood and some sugar. This was incredibly bizarre, almost surreal, but it was obvious now what he had to do for the last $1,000. Feed the baby. "Sugar water doesn't sound right, not for you. Catfish is soft enough to chew, or in your case gum."

He boiled some to soften it and help break it apart into a light paste, then fried it briefly to stick it back together.

The baby ate it one spoonful at a time. It would eat as much as he fed it, but he tried to limit it to infant sized portions. He gauged infant-sized by relative pounds to Max and how much a starving cat could eat.

It didn't seem right to keep it in the shed out back, so he held the infant on his lap as he watched TV on the couch. Max clawed the back of the couch until he reached the top, then jumped down to the cushions and walked over to Coulette for a vigorous sniffing. Max sniffed the baby constantly. It was new and confusing to Max. Max wasn't sure how he felt about new and confusing, without sniffing it, of course.

The baby napped on his lap. It was rather adorable.

It felt wrong to make it sleep in a drawer, but the edges were the right size and a pillow seemed to fit. He put the drawer on the air mattress on the floor in his room. It felt safer that way. He stared at it while it slept. Why a baby? Why him? What ever could be the point of it?

He looked at the book on the desk. Four grand in checks were inside on page 134. Four thousand dollars. He should google baby care in the morning.

"Owwh!"

Argo woke in the morning to a little girl screaming. "What? What's wrong?" He sat up and turned on the lights.

"My mouth hurt," Coulette said.

He stared at the little girl. She had grown. Not much, it was barely noticeable. He climbed off the bed and onto the air mattress. "Let me see," he said.

The child opened wide.

"You have some baby teeth coming in."

"I don't want um," she pouted, "make 'm go."

"That's, that's not how it—" he was talking to a baby. "I have teeth. You'll want teeth. You can eat lots of really flavorful food with teeth. You haven't tasted bread because you don't have teeth."

She continued to cry.

It was terribly heartbreaking just to hear her. He picked her up and held her in his arms. He patted her on the back, but she continued to cry. He carried her out to the kitchen.

He made some grape Kool Aid in a small glass with crushed ice.

She drank it immediately and held the ice in her cheeks. She put her arms around him, as much as short arms could do, and said, "Thank you."

She was quite adorable.

She came back to him often for crushed ice. It really seemed to help.

He watched TV while Coulette and Max played in the kitchen. The little girl really didn't understand why Max didn't talk back. She talked to him endlessly. Max ran through the living room and circled back toward the kitchen. Coulette ran six steps, slammed into the floor, giggled, stood, then ran past him on her way to the kitchen. He heard her talking to Max in the kitchen, then felt Max claw his way up the back of the couch. A few seconds later, he felt a heavy thud when a little girl tried, but failed, to do the same.

She was crying.

It was funny until she cried. Max plopped down on the cushion then leapt to the floor and darted into his room.

She cried louder.

"Hey," he said sitting down next to her around the back of the couch, "it's all right, Honey." He put his hand on the child's tiny head.

"Max no like me," she cried louder.

"No, now, Honey, that isn't true. If he didn't like you, it would be unmistakable. He likes being petted just fine; though, he doesn't much like when people follow him around." She was calming. Her dark, deep eyes were completely enthralled in every word he said. "He has secret agendas that require his attention from time to time. If other people saw him doing them, then they wouldn't be secrets anymore."

She wiped her chin with the back of her hand.

"He'll come back out in a little while, when he's finished. He'll probably head straight for you." He put his finger under her chin and gave her a little tickle. "He really likes being petted under the chin."

She giggled.

"You hungry?"

She looked down at her belly, "I think so."

"Let's see how many teeth you have."

She smiled wide.

He rubbed her on the top of her head, "I think you might like one of my world famous burgers." He picked her up and carried her to the kitchen.

He didn't know how he felt about children. This morning, he was thrilled to just watch TV and try to ignore her. But that had completely changed. She suddenly became a cute little girl. He started getting items out of the refrigerator, then stopped. She hadn't been a little girl but for a few days. She was sugar water and a few drops of blood. But then, was that all that different than him? One cell from each parent, add food. He opened the freezer. How much life was in a drop of blood? Could something so small contain a fraction of a soul? Did she?

It hardly seemed possible. He looked at her as he sliced the bread. She was so very cute.

By the end of her first week, she could have passed for three. She had figured out how to work everything within her limited reach. Every morning, Max was convinced that she was a complete stranger that should be hidden from. But by the evenings, Max was just as convinced that she was his oldest, dearest friend.

She learned to just pet him, and just when he wanted her to.

Argo watched her run from his room and slam into his leg. "Did-Dump," she whispered.

His T-shirt looked like a dress on her. "Ok," he whispered back, "Can you be quiet while I talk to my mom?"

She smiled.

He went into his room and turned on the video, "Hi Mom."

He chatted her up for a few minutes, then signed off.

Coulette looked sad, "I don't have a mom, do I?"

"Well, I—" He had no idea how to phrase such a thing for a child. More over, he didn't know what the answer would be.

She pressed her palms to her temples. "If I don't have parents, do I have a soul?"

He had actually thought about that for nearly a week, "I've known several people who had parents, but didn't have a soul. At least, not a good one."

She suddenly turned solemn. "I'm supposed to do something very important," she said. "But I don't have to do it, if I don't want to. Do you have a special purpose?"

He sat on the floor so he could look her in the eyes, "What is your special purpose?"

She looked puzzled, "I don't remember, now, but I will." She looked playful again, "If you wait till Max sees you, then walk up slowly, he'll let you pet him, almost every time." She leaned in close and whispered, "He likes belly rubs too." She smiled, then went to find the cat in question.

He went into the living room. Last night, they had watched a TV show from his collection. It featured a 'living' spaceship that looked like a spider and spit laser beams. Coulette was intrigued by the idea of it, and it was still playing on the TV this morning.

Coulette looked like she could pass for six and was lying on her belly in front of the couch. She had all of the paper from his room spread across the floor like a giant rug. She had scribbled on all of it and was nearly at the end of a five hundred sheet pack.

"Honey, what are you doing?"

She slid the sheet onto the floor and started on another.

"Honey," He picked up one of the pages. Four letters. It was just four letters, some of them were circled, some underlined, but AGTD in different combinations in tiny handwriting filled every empty space on every page across the floor. He knelt in front of her. "Honey, what are you drawing?"

The hand without the pen was moving like a teen listening to earphones, while the pen churned more letters onto the page.

"Coulette? Honey," he stopped her pen hand. "What's wrong?"

She picked up a pen with the other hand and continued to write.

He was almost out of paper as it was. He picked the girl up off the floor.

"Ahwwa!" she protested, hands still moving, but writing on inexpensive air.

"Honey, calm down, what's wrong?"

Her hands didn't stop.

He held her on the couch while Max investigated the carpet of papers. Max loved the sound of paper as it crinkled beneath his feet. He most especially enjoyed attacking corners. To Max, the reason was obvious. She had carpeted the living room for his enjoyment. No other reason. Max pounced under some sheets, emerged out the other side, bolted across and attacked the flutter stirred by his wake. To Max, this was Christmas.

Argo held the girl as he looked for the remote and turned the TV off.

In a few hours, she calmed down and fell asleep.

He left her sleeping on the couch while he gathered all the pages, much to the horror of Max who was not done playing.

Page after page of scribble, it seemed such a waste. He was angry, but a little sad too. It only amounted to a few dollars worth of paper, what was the real harm? The only harm, as he saw it, was the four-hour trip it took to replace paper. But he still had a few sheets in the printer itself.

He picked up Max and looked the little cat in the eyes, "You were supposed to be watching her, not instigating for your own amusement."

He tucked the cat into Coulette's sleeping arms. It seemed like a just punishment.

She woke a little past noon. "You have a nice nap?" he asked.

She rubbed her eyes, then looked at her right hand. It remained knotted. "I broke it?" she said horrified, "Fix my fingers! I like my fingers, can you fix my—" she worked herself into a panic.

"It's ok, it's just a cramp. Perfectly normal for the amount of writing you did."

"Writing?"

He debated on showing her, but didn't see how the harm could possibly outweigh his curiosity. He showed her the pages.

She leafed through them. "These aren't in order," she said, looking very upset.

"Yeah, ok, but, what is it?"

She stared at him like he had asked why apples fall from trees. She pointed to a line, "Right here is the instructions on how the base forms proteins for the digestive system." She flipped through them, pulling out four more and aligning them correctly, "See, here is the production of the phosphorescent chemicals, here is the reflective cells that line the eye, and here is the lens that focuses the beam." She looked very disappointed, "Where are the rest of the pages?"

He looked at her. She looked six, seven at the most. "What are you talking about? What is this?"

She used the remote to turn the show back on, "That." She pointed to the screen.

"Honey, that doesn't exist. It's make-believe. It's rubber and fancy camera angles and computer generated images and stuff. There is no such thing as living ships with beam weapons."

She looked upset, "No, see," she pointed to the four pages again, "See, this is all you have to do. It's simple, really. Where is the rest of it? I want to build one today—"

He turned it off. "Ok, first, this is all the paper you wrote last night—"

She stared at the little stack. "It takes four million, three hundred sixty-two thousand, five hundred ninety-two pages to make one of those—"

"I don't have that much paper, Honey, and you wouldn't live long enough to write that many pages, either." She was getting sadder by the word. "Look, Max was telling me he wanted to show you the pond today."

"I knew he talked!" she said, "But, why doesn't he ever talk to me?"

She was absolutely adorable, "He doesn't actually talk to me, Sweetie, it's just the way he moves and gestures, I guess. But it's not actual wo— Come on, I'm going to show you fishing."

Fishing proved to be uninteresting to a child. Instead, she followed Max as he explored around the pond.

Argo filled the tub with warm water, then lifted the naked little girl over the edge. "You know how to wash yourself, don't you?" he asked.

She promptly splashed with both hands.

"How you got covered in so much mud— You don't see Max coming home this dirty."

She splashed again with a giggle.

"Ok, I'm just going to do your hair because it's a little complicated for your first time."

He poured water over her head and she promptly started coughing.

"Sorry, Honey, you have to hold your breath when I pour, ok?"

She nodded, apologetically.

"I'm sorry, I should have warned you." He got out the shampoo and put a little in her hands. "Ok, now, close your eyes." He put her hands on her head and got her started, but was mostly doing it himself. After rinsing for her, he left her to finish on her own.

She was a very cute kid.

She hit puberty by the end of the week, and wearing just t-shirts stopped being acceptable.

She screamed from the kitchen as she fell to the floor.

Argo ran in from the living room. "What's wrong?"

She was writhing on the floor in obvious agony. She put her hand on her cheek as a scar formed beneath her touch. She cried and shook uncontrollably.

He stared at her. He hadn't recognized the resemblance, until now.

She cried for an hour, right there on the kitchen floor, while he was clueless how to help her. She didn't say a word for the next two days. She just sat in a small corner of the room while another, more painful scar formed.

She wasn't a little girl anymore.
Chapter 30

She looked at the plans. They were such fools. She circled another line. They planned to include a bomb in the device. It was a little naïve of them, but they did such things without her input.

The Michelin Man suit was already modified. No longer powered by a vulnerable combustion engine, it now used a power cell fueled by a few pounds of N60. That translated into at least four months' to a year's worth of power. If detonated by an explosive, that should yield in the neighborhood of five tons of TNT. Their plan, to put it bluntly, was to attack a walking truck bomb with a grenade.

The hydraulics had been replaced with linear motors, and the armor was replaced with the skin. It far exceeded the complexity for any one person to follow it all. The computer core was installed and the fibers were already linked. It gave assurances that it would vacate the web, or wherever it claimed to be located, once it verified an accurate copy was installed in the suit.

That was never going to happen. That wasn't its core program. It was to be relentless until she was free, period. The HB-4 insisted its actions were consistent and suggested that she should be ready. It suggested soon.

Her plane retained some fuel from her test flight with the counselor, but getting it up the elevator was impossible. It still lacked the main guns, but even they were incapable of blasting its way out. Which was ironic, from the air it had the power to easily level the entire base, but most of that power was only accessible at hypersonic speeds. She still had Dana's squirrel suit they had kept in the HB-4, but its range was extremely limited, essentially a glider.

But more than her escape, Shadona was now concerned that the malicious code would stay in systems forever. When the idea first came to her, she didn't much care what it did. So what if technology had to be rebooted all across the planet. So long as it ended in her being free, she just didn't care what happened in the world. At worst it would amount to another Y2K.

Now she knew some of those who lived in the world outside her cell. She cared. She didn't before. She circled another line on the blueprints.

She noticed a diode. It was backward, but harmless. It served no purpose, no reason to correct it, so she left it unchanged as a warning to the system about the booby trap. That was its only possible reason for inclusion in the drawings.

She sat in her room. Her cell. The counselor had been freed some time back and hadn't been allowed on base since. They only released her— she had officially been moved from property to hostage. Property never got released, just used up and thrown away, but hostages were sometimes released.

She caught her thoughts wondering about where she would go, once freed. But she knew where, just not how.

* * *

The RPG fired down the narrow hallway and exploded when it hit the zombie. The wall of fire rolled up the hall and nearly killed her as well, had she not stepped into a small nook.

"Wow!" Argo said, "You are good!" He elbowed Coulette in a vain attempt to distract her. She was beating his pants off.

Shadona played the game rather well, as he remembered, but not this well. Coulette's timing was nearly flawless, and she could play all day, much to his liking. Games were an excellent distraction. She seemed to be an adult, at times, and a child at others. She was only a few weeks old, after all.

She stormed the next room and continued her rampage.

"I have memories," she said as she cleared the room of monsters and started looking for treasures. "I know how to fly planes." She looked at him, then back to the screen. "It's very odd. I've never been in a plane, and, at the same time, sitting on a couch feels like jetlag. I can speak languages I've never heard. Are your memories incomplete?"

He used her pause to try to catch up to her in the game. "Sort of, I remember last week, but not what I was doing on Tuesday at 3:15."

A zombie popped out of a hiding place behind her, but she quickly dispatched him without breaking a beat in conversation. "I remember everything about today. But my other memories feel like, ghosts. They only seem real when you don't look directly at them, kinda through the corner of your eye. Weightless." She found the key and unlocked the secret passage where her rampage continued. She had this innate ability to dodge at the last second to miss getting hit.

They played for six straight hours.

She walked into his bedroom, middle of the night, and sat on his bed. "Argo. . . " she tried to nudge him awake. "Argo." She climbed into his small bed.

The room was dark when he put his arm around her. It felt perfectly natural.

"She fell in love," she said. "The first, used her to help him escape." She moved closer to his embrace. "The second, they made him her roommate. She knew he was the base's live-in spy, but, she fell for him anyway." She put his hand on her cheek. "He raped her one night. After he did this to her." She put her hand on his shoulder. "She forgave him. I don't know how. I don't know why. But she did. They gang raped her one night on a field exercise off the base. Three held her down, while the fourth took turns. When they were tired, they put a plastic bag over her head, peed on her in what they called 'cleaning the barrel', then rolled her down the side of the hill into a ravine. She bit the bag open and lay there for days until she was found. She recognized him. The one she forgave was one of the boys." She pressed her finger to his collarbone by his left shoulder. "She drove a number two pencil into his heart, right through here, broke off the eraser so it couldn't be removed, and it disappeared under his skin. I remember her kissing him on the lips and whispering that she forgave him a second time as he died on the floor."

He was awake now, like he had never been awake before.

"She loves you, Argo, I hope you know what that entails. I'm not sure I do."

Lightning struck the base on a regular basis, but not like this. Every ten minutes a bolt struck, starting at seven and ending at nine. Coulette watched most of it. She was every bit as distracting without a bra as Shadona was. Even after she had gotten her last two scars.

His father would be back soon.

* * *

It wasn't really an explosive. But she had hoarded an incredibly small amount of N60. Originally, she procured enough to blow open the doors between her room and the hangar. Unfortunately, it would take far more than what she had to blow open the elevator, and even if she had that much, that caliber of an explosion was very likely to cause a cave in. But, she had enough to make a bottle rocket of sorts that was easy enough to build into the heels of her boots. The squirrel device fit under her normal uniform and a light jacket.

Dysath's team was nearly finished modifying the Michelin suit and was hours or days away from downloading. She knew that she had seen the last drawing. Whatever was going to happen, it would happen soon. Be ready. She walked around ready, all she needed was sky above her head and the signal to go.

But she was also a little scared. She had become a pawn in her own plan. Things could go horribly wrong. There was a time when she wanted them all dead. But she wasn't that girl anymore. She was haunted enough by the dead lately.

With the ICBSB back on line, the base needed to drastically increase the amount of N60 they produced. But the high-yield bombs were not the only demand on this energy intensive product.

A show of good faith.

The base had learned how to make the new power cell and had started a small production run. These cells also ran off of N60 and had an immediate military application. The cells were capable of producing enough power, including surges, to run a typical home, while weighing just a few pounds and operating in near silence.

Unfortunately, she had no access to this increased production.

She had little access to anything outside her room.

* * *

The SUV wound its way up the driveway.

He looked at Coulette. His father would be there soon. He couldn't hide her. He had to face the— What in the world was he going to say, 'she's some sort of pod person, Dad, I grew her in the shed.'

He had better think of something, and soon.

"Coulette," he said, "I— We—"

"It's ok, I know." She stood and fixed her hair. "I know what's been asked of me."

"No, they, they think you ruined my life. That you got me hooked on drugs and—"

She put her hand across her scar, "I know."

"They are really going to hate you."

"It's ok. It's my place in life."

His father opened the door. "What the hell is she doing here?"

His mother was right behind him. "I helped you out," she said, staring at Coulette, "I gave you a job, and you got my son hooked on drugs—"

"Now Mom," Argo interrupted, "I— She—" but his mind was muddled on what exactly happened to him.

"I want her out," his father said.

Coulette put on a brave face, "I came to apologize—"

"You cleaned out his account—" his father started.

"She paid me back, Dad," Argo said, thinking of the checks.

"I was in a bad place, Mr. and Ms. Caranf," Coulette said. "I thought I was clean, myself, but I ran into some old— I am glad to see you both, so I can personally apologize. You both did so much for me, that I can't ever repay. Your son, he was there to try to keep me from. . . All I can say is how terribly sorry I am."

His mother approached, then grabbed Coulette's shirt, "You are wearing my son's clothes."

"Another bear attack?" his father chimed in. "You don't have much credibility left with me." He reached for the phone. "I have half a mind to turn you in right now."

The dishes rattled in the sink and cupboards, then they heard a distant boom, followed by three more. It wasn't the distinctive thunder they were all used to.

"What the hell was that?" his father said.

They went to the window facing the base. Something had exploded. Something big was going on. Several small explosions were too distant to hear, but easily visible.

"You should all leave," Coulette said, "they will be looking for me."

The father dialed the phone. "Hello. . . Yes. . . I have two things to report. Yes, oh, you already know about the. . . yes, I understand." He stared at Coulette, "There is a fugitive from justice in our home. . . No, I don't, but she may be dangerous. They said she was wanted for murder, but she seems harmless right now." He then gave them his address and hung up.

"Dad," Argo said, appalled. "You shouldn't have."

"No, he did the right thing," Coulette said, she looked at her feet, ashamed. "I'll stay here until they come. But please, you have to leave."

"I'll do no such thing," the father said. "This is my house." He pulled the gun from above the refrigerator. "We'll just sit and wait."

"Oh My God, Dad," Argo said. "That's totally unnecessary. She isn't dangerous—"

"She's wanted for murder—" the father started.

"Among other things, Son," the mother said.

Coulette sat as his father gestured.

"Dad, come on. We can be reasonable—"

"I have killed, before, Argo," Coulette said, sitting on the couch. Her hands were neatly folded on her lap. "It wasn't something I'm particularly proud of. I'm not running from my fate, anymore. But you shouldn't be here when they arrive. None of you should."

A helicopter took off from the base amidst a trickle of smoke and secondary explosions.

"We're not going anywhere," the father said.

Coulette slowly stood, "Then I should wait for them out—"

"Sit back down," the father said, resting his hand on the gun at the counter, "I don't want to tell you again."

Coulette continued to stand, "You don't want to use that, Mr. Caranf, I doubt you could even point it at me." She returned to the couch, "But, I'm not going to put you in a position to."

Argo approached his father at the counter. "You shouldn't do this, Dad. I know you both are mad, but, she came to apologize, to make amends."

"Well, sometimes amends means doing the time, Son. There are consequences for actions," the father said.

The sound of a helicopter grew louder, almost deafening as it passed overhead.

The father held the gun and went to the door. He opened and stepped outside.

"Gun" someone yelled outside, then four shots rang from the woods, and the father fell backwards through the doorway.

Ms. Caranf screamed and headed toward her fallen ex, as did Argo, but Coulette tackled him to the ground before he could clear the kitchen.

Another shot rang out, then glasses and dishes exploded as the front of the house was sprayed with bullets.

"Cease fire!" someone yelled from outside.

Argo heard voices around back before the rear door was kicked in.

"Stay down," Coulette said while she covered him, "keep your hands in sight. They just want me."

She moved to his side as men rushed in shouting orders.

"She's in here, Sir," one said into his mike, "Two suspects down. . . Copy that, at the door with a gun. The home is secure."

Coulette held Argo's hand on the floor.

A machine gun went off and sprayed the walls, "What the hell was that!" one man yelled.

"Oh God, what is that smell?" another said.

A third laughed uncontrollably, "You dumb bastards got sprayed by a fucking skunk!"

Coulette smiled at Argo on the floor, "I see what you mean by unmistakable."

"Where the hell did it go?" one asked, coughing.

"Oh, Man, that thing is long gone out the back," the laughing one said.

Argo was promptly flexi-cuffed and tossed to the couch. Coulette was slammed down next to him.

"Uhghh!!" a new man said, entering the home, "What the hell is that?"

"Skunk, Sir."

"You think that escaped me?"

"No Sir."

"Who'd it get?"

The two near Argo's bedroom stood at attention.

"You mind taking a position just outside the door."

"Yes Sir," they said.

"Now, how did I know to look here?" The new man stepped on Coulette's bare toes with his heel, "Your friend destroyed most of my base," he said.

She looked up at him, "It wasn't my idea."

He punched her in the face. When Argo spoke up, he got the same.

"Eight people died," the man said, "sixteen are in the hospital. This isn't a game, Girl. We had to blow the thing up to stop it." He stomped on her other foot. "Then your damn plane goes ape-shit, burns holes in everything, and damn near collapsed the elevator shaft before it ran out of fuel."

"Did I tell you to build it?" she asked.

He punched her again.

"Did you lie to it?" she said, blood on her nose. "Did you stop it?"

"Why don't you tell me."

"I can't stop it, I can't." She looked down. "I wish I could, but I'm just a pawn, like you. I'm sorry about your men, but I didn't kill them. I don't control any of this. You lie, it'll escalate."

"You are too expensive for my bottom line, and too costly to my personal life." He pulled his gun from the holster. "I should have done this from the beginning."

Bang!

Her head slammed back, and blood covered the couch. Argo was horrified. Coulette's blood was all over him. Her body slumped against him, head on his shoulder, hand flopped onto his knee.

"Sir," one of the men at the door said, "the local police are about four minutes out, Sir." He put a finger on Ms. Caranf's neck, "I think this one may be alive, what do you want to do?"

The one in charge looked around, "I don't see why we can't burn it."

Two came in and poured gasoline in the kitchen.

The one in charge looked at Argo, "Sorry, Kid, wrong place, wrong girl."

Fire started, smoke covered the ceiling as the one in charge pointed his gun. Argo closed his eyes.

A heavy thud sounded by the back door, and a machine gun went off, followed by more thuds. It sprayed one more time, then something metal clanked against the floor behind him.

He opened his eyes, looked up in disbelief, then stared at Coulette's body slumped beside him.

"We have to leave," she said, then put a hand on Coulette's bloody head. "I never wanted this. I'm sorry. This never should have been asked of anyone."

The house was burning beyond control.

She helped a stunned Argo up, "We have to go."

"My mom might still be alive," he said.

Shadona looked toward the door, "Help me get her outside."

They drug her out the front steps and onto the lawn as the house flamed up.

"The police will be here in a minute, we have to go." She led him to the helicopter by the pond, and they lifted off, Argo still in a state of shock.
Chapter 31

They stood outside a free clinic; he wasn't even sure which state they were in. The last few days were a blur of trains crisscrossing the countryside. He watched as she pulled the end off a bullet and placed the shell and powder into the cigarette clipper, then carefully positioned it in her mouth.

He still loved her, at least, one side of him did. But now his father was dead, his mother was shot and hospitalized, his home was burned, and Max was missing.

"Is it going to hurt?" he asked.

She looked at him and nodded, then pulled the string hanging out her mouth.

A muffled pop sounded, like a firecracker exploding in a bucket of water, then she fell back against the alley wall, and blood ran down her chin. She spit out the device and they walked into the clinic.

"What happened to your friend?" the receptionist said.

Argo said what they had rehearsed, "I don't know, I just found her in the alley outside."

Shadona mumbled in a foreign language none recognized, but was absolutely convincing. She was bleeding badly and had stuffed gauze in her mouth, further confusing her unintelligible words. They had to wait for two gunshot victims and a stabbing before it was their turn. They seemed to be in the right place for trauma. Oddly, the place didn't seem all that interested in an explanation. Perhaps they really had seen it all.

With stitches and a micro graft from inside her cheek, they released her after only two hours and gave them directions to a homeless shelter. But they hopped four more trains instead for fear the dental X-rays would give them away. She lived off drinking a generic version of Ensure for two weeks before she improved to semi-solid meals like soup.

They sat in the back pews and waited for the Father. Argo wanted to call his mom, but they had discussed the topic before. Shadona was wanted by people, angry, dangerous people. His mother was, without a doubt, being watched. Coulette's body would pass for Shadona, there was a good chance they were genetically identical. His mother would be watched for a few years, at the most, then he should be free to send her a card or stop in at the restaurant. He still felt guilty about not contacting her.

He had missed his father's funeral.

The police had arrived in time to save his mother. The article got very confusing after that. They found the pilot and crashed helicopter Shadona had staged near the train tracks and had worked it into a weird, convoluted theory about the base and spies and corruption and national secrets and a drifter that had been killed in his father's home. His mother was alive. That was the key part of the story to him.

"Who was Coulette?" Argo asked while they waited. He had described the events to her before.

"I'm not sure. She felt like she was me, without my sins." She held his hand. "I would never have asked that of anyone."

"Were you, born, like her?"

She squeezed his hand. "No. I had parents, of a sort. Donors. When the government went into DNA testing of all prisoners, they amassed a massive database that was easily cross-referenced with comprehensive criminal records to reveal millions of genetic traits and markers. Cut and splice, I have bits and pieces of a dozen murderers and thieves in me. The sins of many fathers. Ironic, isn't it? It was compiled to free the innocent.

I remember the room I was born in. Dialysis machines, incubator-like devices, heart/lung machines clanking away, it isn't difficult to grow wombs and keep them alive for three quarters of a year. It's mostly skin. I guess I'm the argument for why stem-cell research should be heavily regulated. We were born as experiments. Legally property, not people."

He had stumbled over such thoughts for a month now. "How, from a drop of blood and sugar water? I don't get it."

"PCR cloning requires an incubator. When they do DNA testing, but only have a few viable cells, they basically put regular cells through a blender to make a sauce, then let the good cells marinate in an incubator. The incubator increases, then decreases temperature, and those complete strands in the test sample unzip, assemble the pieces from the sauce, and re-zip. Each time it cycles, you double the amount of the cells you want. Just by what you describe, it unzipped, re-sequenced, then fed them with sugar and water, a very basic food. But it did it electrically, somehow. I'm good with genetics, but it isn't my specialty.

Listen, Argo, you don't have to stay with me. I needed you for the tooth to make sure I got into the hospital. And, I'm horrified by what happened to your family. I just wish I could have gotten there sooner. I'm sure you don't remember it, but I was there when they drugged you and gave you all those suggestions. I understand how confusing all this is. You can go home to your mother, if you want. I won't blame you at all, if you do.

But, I think we had something. Staying is the only way to ever find that out."

He had thought about that a lot. He had sex with Dara any time he wanted; part of his muddled thoughts believed Shadona was a hooker, but his gut believed he had yet to have sex with her. Yet, even if both were true, he loved this girl and only liked Dara.

The Father walked down the aisle.

Shadona talked in perfect Spanish and pleaded their case. The Father referred them to another man who provided them with new documentation, and they merged anonymously into the city.

Argo had only two thousand dollars left.

She held the shirt up to her chest, checked its size, then added it to their cart. It wasn't much, and none of them were new, but they had to get at least a few changes of clothes. Thrift, secondhand stores were the only choice for now.

They both had picked up jobs at the same Chinese restaurant. He was a washer and busboy, the same position she started at. But within a week, Shadona was waiting tables. Dressed appropriately, she looked the part. Dark hair and dark eyes, tan complexion, she could pass for most nationalities. She had the language, demeanor, and accent to sell it too.

With tips, she out earned him two to one.

Their first paycheck came just in time.

They splurged and spent twenty dollars on twenty pounds of clothes, almost a week's worth of changes.

They lived on the second floor and had to pay a deposit and three months in advance, in cash. The room wasn't much, in fact, it was kinda sad for an efficiency. 'Fully furnished kitchen' meant a hot plate on top of a microwave sitting on a cabinet-sized dorm refrigerator, next to a sink with two cabinets without doors and no drawers. The bed folded down from the wall and consumed most of the living room.

They had a nine-inch TV with a built-in radio that picked up only two stations.

But, it was home.

He put the canned food into the cabinets, grabbed some ramen noodles, opened a can of tuna, and started lunch.

When the noodles were cooked, he drained them, chilled them under running cold tap water in the sink, then put them on their only two plates. He added a drizzle of ranch dressing, several spoonfuls of chilled chickpeas, then half a can of cold tuna and a pinch of salt.

It wasn't catfish burgers, but it wasn't bad for pennies a day.

Without a table, they had to eat at the kitchen counter.

They were struggling, but they were keeping above water.

The first few months felt odd. He had lived with her before. He had lived with Coulette most recently. Shadona felt a little like a stranger, like Max must have felt whenever they moved to his mother's home. His mother wasn't new to Max, but it took a while to fall back into that comfortable place. It was taking time to fall back into place with Shadona, too.

They lived twelve blocks from the bus stop. From there, it took fifteen minutes to get to the restaurant, eight to the thrift store, twenty to the nearest mall, and twenty-five to a strip mall with a dollar store and other like-places that they could afford. But the Laundromat was just a five-block walk.

Tuesday morning was Shadona's only time off. Argo was already at work when she filled the duffle bag with their clothes, grabbed a pocket's worth of change from her tips, and headed down the steps and out the door.

It was a hot day to lug laundry around asphalt-covered streets, but it promised to get hotter by midday when she had to lug them back.

When she arrived, she was happy to see it almost empty. She plopped the bag down in front of three jumbo front-loading washers and started sorting her way through the duffle bag.

There was a strong smell of urine near the back of the mat; fortunately, she had no reason to go much further than the chairs by the door.

She glanced at the young couple off to the side by the vending machines. The boy was clearly stoned and was groping the girl as she tried to sort her clothes. She didn't seem to mind too much, but seemed mostly embarrassed that he was doing such things in public. He licked the tips of his fingers, slid his hand down the front of her pants, then whispered in the girl's ear as he stared at Shadona.

Shadona avoided eye contact and had brought a book and sunglasses just for that purpose.

A little girl, her two brothers, and their mother came in. The mother looked haggard for first thing in the morning. She looked at Shadona's laundry tumbling in the jumbo washers, grunted, and slowly moved on after scolding one of the boys.

Laundry took about an hour and a half to two hours at a Laundromat, but she don't dare let it out of her sight for a minute. The 'hidden cameras' were there to find and persecute people who abused the machines, not steal clothes. The scrawled profanity in magic marker just under the camera warning even said so.

Shadona opened her book and started to read. Restaurants were loud, joyous, and full of talkative people, but Laundromats were like libraries in a way, most people milled silently around in their own little worlds, and conversation rarely rose above pleasantries. Laundromats were generally stiflingly hot after the dryers got going, and almost never air-conditioned.

The two boys chased the girl around the machines. Their mother paid none of them any mind. She was busy with the clothes. Until the child screamed. "I swear to God, I'm going to stuff one of you in the dryer!" the mother yelled, not even looking at who caused what. She reached into her bag and slapped a belt across the top of the nearest washer. "One more!" This time she turned and glared at all three. "I'll whip all three of you, right here in front of everyone."

The girl of the couple looked appalled, then her stoned friend pulled his hand out of her pants long enough to say, "I'll give you ten bucks to beat them right now!" then slapped a roll of quarters onto the counter.

The boys almost took it as a challenge, but the girl got quiet and shy, then crawled under a table and sat where the boys were unlikely to follow.

Shadona returned to the book.

* * *

Winter in the city was difficult. The heat never came on in the building, not fully. The bus was always cold and drafty, and the wind tended to get caught by the buildings and chill them to the bone on those long hikes to and from public transportation. But winter brought other qualities.

Argo pulled her closer as they snuggled under the discount sleeping bag, opened and spread like a blanket across the bed.

They worked sixty, seventy hours a week. She wasn't the most popular waitress, but she tended to be very personable, attentive, and pulled in generous tips. The hours were hard on both of them. At work, they rarely saw each other except in passing. They shared the one account. She signed her check over, and he went to the bank and deposited them.

It had the feel of roommates, but sharing a single bed.

He pulled her a little closer. It was more than roommates, but less than a live-in lover. Winter in a cold apartment meant sweats and warm slippers. He kissed her scarred cheek.

He had seen her naked before, but not in a long time. She was cute, but flawed. But all women were slightly flawed in one way or another. Perfection was an impossible standard for anyone to achieve, outside of airbrushed magazines and surgery.

He had visions of her as a prostitute, but they never seemed to fit. More dream than real. They still hadn't had sex yet, at least, not in any of the memories he trusted. This far away from Dara, this was as long as he had gone without— no, that wasn't exactly true. There was a year where he spent the summer at his mother's and Dara spent the winter away, too.

However long the days added up to be, he was anxious, and she was sound asleep.

Argo drew one of the short straws and had to clean the kitchen before he left work that night. Shadona stayed to help, letting one of the kitchen staff go home early. For a waitress, she seemed unafraid to climb elbow deep into grease and take out the trash, something most waitresses seemed to believe was beneath them. She was less squeamish than even the kitchen staff, which seemed to endear her to them.

They sat at the bus stop that night, exhausted. She leaned against him on the bench as they waited for the next one to arrive. It was just the two of them, and sometimes the wait could be as long as an hour.

"I could really use a shower," he said.

She ran her fingers through his greasy hair, "You could use a trim, too."

"We need some warm hats if we're going to be waiting here for buses for the rest of our lives."

"Not the rest of our lives. Just, for now." She warmed his cold ear with the palm of her hand.

A bus lumbered in the distance, but they remained seated. It was the wrong bus.

He turned on the hot water and fog quickly filled the tiny bathroom. He tossed his dirty clothes on the floor and stepped in. Shadona stepped in behind him.

She didn't use a lot of makeup, but what she did quickly melted away in the hot spray. The little shadow around her eyes and the line that covered her scar washed over her shoulder and down the drain. In a stall only big enough for one, she smiled as she filled her hand with shampoo and started to do his hair.

He kissed her, put his arms around her, then lathered her back while he closed his eyes.

Foam rinsed from his head, and he opened his eyes again.

He lathered his hands, then started on her shoulders, but hovered with a couple of wipes on her scar. "Not a bear," he said as water bounced off her back.

"Piece of a plane."

His fingers hovered over the burns, "Not strangers."

"Betrayed, by a friend."

He ran his hands across her hips. "Not a Georgia peach."

"Just me, a pilot, a person, a girl you once opened your home to," she said in perfect peach pitch.

He kissed her belly as he got on his knees and lathered her legs.

He held her naked body under the sleeping bag as the fog from the bathroom mixed and filtered out as it spilled across the floor. Her skin was still damp, her hair made the pillow wet, but he didn't care. He ran his hand across her front again, kissed her again, then did what felt natural, to him.

That morning, he woke in the bed alone, his father's words about condoms ringing in his ears. She was sitting at the counter, drinking coffee, looking terribly lonely.

She wasn't Dara. She wasn't. He reminded himself that all women were not alike, no matter how much they had in common.

He pulled on his sweats and joined her at the counter. He grabbed a mug and poured a cup.

He put an arm around her and felt her shy away. He felt horrible. Vigorous and a little aggressive, even as shamefully brief as last night had been, probably was too close to the memories behind at least one of her scars. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to make amends. He wanted to hug her and promise it would never happen again. Instead, he opened his mouth, and his father slipped out, "We should get some condoms."

She started to cry.
Chapter 32

She couldn't have children. She had been sterilized, as were all of the girls at the base. They had taken childhood from her, and parenthood too. All she had left was the narrow bits of life that could be found between those two.

She told him the morning after their first night, when her tears finally subsided.

It took a lot of trial and error to discover what worked for both partners. With Shadona, it helped him to think with the mindset of a victim. Sex, ultimately, was fundamentally the same as rape, from a purely mechanical standpoint. Intent accounted for some of the difference between the two, but intent alone left the mechanics looking and probably feeling about the same.

Foreplay was an obvious place to start, but it was fraught with pitfalls as well. Groping was a fine line that was hard to keep from crossing into.

After a few months, they settled into what seemed to work for both of them. He kept four words in mind. Kissing, caressing, gentle, and slow. Painfully slow, if possible. She sometimes reminded him of getting Max into a cage, there simply wasn't a fast, easy way to do it. And forcing was never an option.

The shower was incredibly small. He could lean his back against one wall and touch the other with his fingertips. Two was crowded and something they rarely did, but it was more fun than awkward and the hot water seemed an endless form of winter fun.

"Hi, my name is Sally, and I'll be your waitress today," Shadona said.

"Oh, uh, wonderful," the man dressed in a casual suit said. "I, uh, umm." He leaned forward, "I'm meeting a business associate here, but, he's running late." He pointed toward a bigger booth table, out of the way and in a back corner. "You, you think I could move over there and wait? You know, so long as it keeps slow like it is."

"You sure can," she said, grabbing his silverware.

They walked over, "Thank you, I've got to check these drawings before he gets here—" He gestured for her to come closer, "Look, I'm not going to order much, just coffee and maybe a BLT or something, but I'm a good tipper. I really just need to rent some quiet and some space, if you know what I mean."

Shadona smiled politely, "How about some egg rolls?"

He nodded, he hadn't noticed what kind of restaurant it was.

"We won't be busy for another two hours. You take your time. Want me to start you off on that coffee and rolls, or wait until your friend shows up?"

He spread out the papers, "Oh, yes, please, I think better with something to munch on."

She returned with coffee and cream, and a plate with egg rolls and a small bowl of spicy mustard and whipped cream cheese. He looked up from the papers, then noted the plate. "You didn't look like the standard soy or duck sauce man," she said, "thought you might like to give something a little more western a try."

He dipped the roll into the cream cheese, then dabbed a bit of mustard and gave it a taste. "Wow," he dipped with vigor this time, "You're very right. I may never go back to soy sauce again, thank you."

She smiled and went on to her next table.

"How are you two doing?" she asked, taking away his empty plate.

They looked up from the mass of papers they had been discussing, "Oh, uh, everything was fine, just fine, thank you." Then they returned to their discussion, "We have only two weeks to find what keeps shutting this thing down, or we lose the contract."

Shadona gave it a glance, then pointed to a relay board with the cap of her pen, "Your nomenclature is off on those three wires. Right circuit number, wrong distribution point." She pointed to another page, "They're supposed to come from here, instead. Just a typo, really." She put her pen back, "You want to try something from our lunch menu?"

They stared at the page and started tracing the diagram back. "Oh, uh, yeah, the uh, fried rice thing with the beef and broccoli," the first one said.

"Same for me," said the late arrival.

She smiled and returned to the kitchen.

She got a two hundred dollar tip at that table, a business card, and an offer of a job.

Two weeks later, the same businessman returned to Shadona's table.

He was wearing a more formal suit. "I see you kept the contract," Shadona said, "What can I get for you tonight, beef and broccoli and fried rice like last time?"

"You a student studying electrical engineering at the local college?" he asked, pretending to look through the menu.

She smiled politely, "No."

"Then, how did you know about distribution and control centers?"

"Errors just stand out, to me."

"What, uh, what did you do before working here?"

She kept in mind Argo's suspicion of the generous tip, "I worked at my husband's mother's restaurant," she said, switching from oriental to a perfect Georgia peach.

"Well, you had to have had some sort of exposure to mechanical—"

"My father used to leave this stuff around the house all the time, but he was never able to get it to take him anywhere."

"Listen, I know the tips here are good, but, I'd like to think I can offer you more. We got the rest of the contract, it's for two years just about four miles from here, and I'd—"

"I wouldn't be any good to you as a secretary, if that's—"

"That's not what I'm offering. See, I'm partners with the owner and the other guy you met—"

"I'm no engineer, either, I don't have a lick of credentials."

"Look, I report to no one. I can hire who I want, for whatever I want. It isn't my company, but I know the owner and, as long as we come in under budget, he doesn't care if I spent all day at bars getting drunk." He wrote a figure on the back of a new business card. "Just, think about it. Just to look over some drawings. Moving around those little blue lines don't hardly cost nothing. It's moving them around after the building is built that runs into the millions." He tapped the back of the card, then handed it to her, "I think it may be money well spent."

She put it in her pocket without looking, then took his order.

It was twice what she made a year, including tips.

She called him from a pay phone the following day.

She got off the bus and walked six blocks to a construction site where they were updating a data center. She hadn't quit the restaurant yet. She approached the first person she saw, "Excuse me," she said, "do you know where this is?" She showed him the company logo off the card.

When his eyes drifted off her chest and onto the card, he pointed to the trailers around back, "One of those, I suspect. But, I'm not entirely sure, Ma'am." He pulled a lunchbox out of the trunk of a Civic and headed into the building.

The company logo was on a small sign stapled to the wooden steps outside the fourth trailer from the end. She stepped over the mud puddle and walked in.

"Oh, hi!" the men quieted down and feet came off of desks, "You remember me, Tom Eaglesfort," the patron from the restaurant said, shaking her hand, "This is Dave Greenstone and Mike Saving." He put his hand on her back as he gestured, "This is Sally, uh," he turned to Shadona, "I'm sorry, I never got your last name."

"Sienda," she said.

Tom cleared his throat, "Now guys, you know I found her in a restaurant, you heard me and Steve talk about that night before, but the first person that asks her to get them a cup of coffee is getting fired. Understood?"

He walked her over to the desk near the end where he talked a little quieter.

"You don't work for them, just with them, sorry to say." He pulled out a chair for her at the desk, then started digging for forms, "Here's the government at work. I've put you down as personal assistant, if that's all right with you. W-4, the drug policy, safety policy, all the normal crap, it'll take you an hour to fill them all out. I'll need your two forms of ID and we'll be on the road." He knelt by the desk to speak as quietly as he could and still be heard, "Not that I mind what you wear, but it's all I can do to keep these guys focused on the job as it is."

She handed him the forged cards and he went off to the photocopier. She had dressed perhaps a little too nice.

The first few weeks they kept her mostly in the office getting caught up. Dressed like a boy, she hardly got noticed at all, especially with her hair tucked under a hat. Dave and Mike seemed nice enough, and Tom was rarely there.

She had no real authority to do anything. Technically, she was just an assistant. But it became quickly apparent that her suggestions usually became implemented when Tom showed up that day.

"Now, Sally, what is in that thing, anyway?" Dave said over lunch.

"Cucumber and cream cheese, on toasted homemade bread," she said.

Dave crunched down on his steak sub, sauce dripping down his chin, "Well, if that's what you have to eat to stay thin," he patted his little keg of a belly, "then count me out."

She smiled politely, "I eat it because I like the taste." She looked at Tom and Mike, "I'm thin because of intestinal worms."

Tom coughed up some of his drink, while Mike laughed out loud.

Dave, never to be outdone, picked through the onions, peppers, mushrooms, and cheese on his sub and said, "I thought they left one of the toppings off. Where's my tape worms!"

Mike brought the revised plans over to Shadona, "Sally, why'd you move the pipe rack out over here? It was shorter and a straight shot the way it was."

She looked up from the page she was on, then looked at the pages he brought over. She pulled out the drawings that included air ducts and showed where the pipes originally were wouldn't fit, then showed him the architectural drawings with the beams that prevented the ducts from being relocated.

He returned to his desk, "Good catch."

She opened the door to an empty apartment. She was making more money, but was also working fewer hours. Unfortunately, it proved more tiring. It took a lot of effort to proofread plans as complex and poorly coordinated as these.

She stripped and headed for a hot shower.

Argo came through the door, 1:12 AM, while she was sound asleep, as usual. He tried to be quiet. She had to be at work at 6:30 AM, which meant she had to be at the bus at 5:35 AM and awake at 5:05 at the latest, a mere four hours away.

He had four hours with her, and one or both of them spent those four hours asleep.

He had to be at work around noon and didn't get home until one or two at night. The money was good, they actually had some for once, but money wasn't everything. She had Sundays off, but he rarely did, and it was unfair to ruin her sleep schedule just so she could stay up with him. The most he usually got out of Sundays was a pleasant breakfast. This wasn't what he had in mind.

He took a shower, dressed, then headed for bed, sliding in behind her.

She had worn perfume for the restaurant and tried to smell good, but not where she worked now. Not that she reeked by any means. Yet, he missed that extra feminine scent in her clothes. Her hair had grown long all this time, but she trimmed it short last week. Not quite a boy cut, but nowhere near as cute.

She adapted well to any situation.

He wondered how much adapting she was doing with him.

Sunday was two days away.

Pancakes on a hotplate were difficult and time consuming to do. So during the week, Shadona simply took hot water from the coffee maker and poured some into a plastic sandwich-style container, stirred in some instant powder, sprinkled some cinnamon on top, then popped it into the microwave for a minute. It came out fluffier than normal pancakes, more cake than pan, and it lacked the thick edges normally associated with pancakes, but otherwise it tasted excellent. When done, they stored the plastic container in the refrigerator for the next morning, no daily washing required.

Now that Sunday was here, they had time. Well, she had the time, he still had to be in by noon.

Pancakes, cooked on a pan, with sausage and scrambled eggs with grated cheese.

She served it to him in bed, 10:45 AM.

"I could quit," Argo said after they ate.

"Tom said he could get you a job as a laborer. They just move garbage, do clean up, and are the designated shovel engineers. But, it's a lot harder than busing tables and doing dishes, and it doesn't pay much better. You probably wouldn't like it much."

He was thinking about quitting anyway. The restaurant just wasn't the same without her. He looked her in the eyes, "This, not seeing each other, just isn't working."
Chapter 33

He filled the wheelbarrow with broken bricks, bags of half-eaten fast-food, and discarded cups, then pushed it the two hundred yards to the dumpster where he unloaded it, touching every piece a second time as he heaved them up and over its eight-foot walls.

He figured if he cleaned the farthest building from the dumpster by lunch, he could have a fairly easy rest of the day cleaning the building closest to it. It was mindless, pointless labor either way, but that was about the same as what he was doing before. This was outside, instead of indoors with the smokers and the humid grease of the kitchen.

A diesel truck went by. The smell of melting asphalt, welding fumes, and exhaust had to be far worse than the few puffs of a cigarette he used to complain about. So much for the fresh, wholesomeness of outside air. He missed his mountaintop.

His job was exhausting and boring. Moreover, he saw even less of Shadona here than he did at the restaurant.

"Jonde!" the man yelled. "Jonde!"

"Yes Sir," Argo said, he had forgotten that was his new name.

It was his foreman who spoke in a thick, Spanish accent.

Argo had difficulty understanding the man, but with enough pointing and gesturing he tried to clarify, "You want me to refill the water kegs in building two?"

The foreman patted him on the shoulder, pointed to building two, and went on his way.

Water kegs were five gallons of ice and water in an insulated cooler. Building two had no elevator. That meant four stories of stairs, with each full keg weighing forty pounds. Each floor had three kegs, and he had to go up and collect the empties too. It would take most of the morning and throw his whole day off. But, that was the job.

Carpenters, plumbers, welders, electricians, they were all considered skilled labor, and they all made several times what he did. It was a waste of their time to fetch water, not to mention a waste of the project's budget for them to do it. So, it fell on him. Same rationale with cleaning.

Simple economics.

He started up the stairs. It was probably more economical to wear out his knees than to send the heavy kegs up to each floor on a forklift, like they did with other material.

He went up the steps, two at a time.

Two large tents were set up for eating lunch. An attempt was made to heat them, but it was a difficult task to do. At best, it wasn't cold or windy. Shadona ate in the office trailers like most of supervision. Every now and then, he would see her walking the buildings, but for her it was more of a tour instead of a chore.

It seemed a lot like the restaurant, she got the easy stuff while he scrubbed dishes in the back.

She was one of only fifteen women on a job of hundreds.

One of his first assignments was painting the inside of the port-o-johns. Some of the things written about 'Sally' disturbed him. Some racial, most sexual. But the same kinds of things were written about all the women. Painting over them seemed to only encourage them to write worse things. 'Whore: Noun, A woman who knows her place. Signed, Webster' and a slanderous misspelling of the word dictionary.

They might have been funny, had he not known one of them.

He waited at the bus stop for Shadona to show. He had already missed two that could have taken him home when he finally saw her round the corner of the fencing wall.

She kissed him on the cheek, then sat down.

He felt like complaining, but she had clearly had a long day too.

"You feel like having a pizza delivered?" she asked, "We have it in the budget."

"Sure, right after taking a long, hot shower."

She leaned into him. "That sounds nice, too."

He hadn't had it for long, but it was already the worst job he had ever had. The work was more difficult, the conditions had him freezing or walking in mud, and the labor was wearing him out. But, it was nice waking at the same time and going to bed at the same time. It made it feel like they had something in common again. "I miss summers with my mom."

"Tom is flying to New Orleans to bid on another one of these."

"You planning next year for me too?"

The bus poked its grill around the corner and headed their way.

They stood and readied their exact change, then got on and sat down.

She put her hand on his knee as she looked out the window. "He could mail a postcard to your mom. Nothing personal on it, no return address that could give even a hint of where we are, but maybe something that references skunks or a son. Something that would give her a hint that you were still alive. Hallmark has a card for everything. Tom said he'd be happy to drop it in a mailbox for me."

He looked at her. The only makeup she wore now was on just the one cheek. "I was thinking that maybe I could just write that, after they killed Coulette— or, uh, you, that I was hiding for fear they were after me too, for something you did. She'd buy that paranoid stuff."

"Even better." She held his hand, "I feel guilty, you know. This wasn't what you bargained for. I, I never had parents. Now, I feel like I've taken yours away. I still feel horrible about your dad." She looked out the window again. "I really liked him. I did." She wiped the fog off the glass with her sleeve. "Tom won't be leaving for another few weeks."

"What do you do, for him?"

"Dull, look over the drawings for errors, or things that could be done better. Software only does so much when you click optimize. They're happy to have me." She smiled at him. "I like them.

He said that I had saved them enough in the restaurant, that even if I didn't come up with another thing but just cheered up the place for a year, they would still come out ahead. He's an optimist, you know. He likes to think there is something good in everyone, and he loves trying to find it. Said he knew giving me a chance was the right thing to do.

When most contractors find an error, they drop everything to rush and put the error in, because, they calculate that that way they get paid for the labor that went into completing the error, get paid extra to take out the error, and get paid a third time to fix the error.

This company has a reputation for doing it right the first time. The errors they caught and fixed ahead of time got them eight more contracts, even though they weren't the lowest bids on any of them. It's rare, but sometimes doing the right thing gets rewarded."

"You have to go with them when they do the next one?"

"No, but they want me to. At the end of this job, they were talking about a big bonus. Tom said that mine would make up for the difference between what he wrote on the back of that card and what someone who does this professionally makes. I should go, Argo, but I wouldn't, if it meant going without you."

"Jonde and Sally," he said.

She kissed him on the lips. "I love you, Argo Caranf."

His lunchbox fell off his lap, the lid popped off the hinge when it hit the floor, and he rushed to scoop the items back before they rolled to every end of this jostling behemoth. She told him she loved him, on a bus.

They didn't have sex that night, not that he didn't want to, but they had pizza in bed instead. Which, in a way, was just as good. He hadn't had a good pizza, well, since his dad.

Next morning, he woke next to her. The alarm clock wasn't set, but he woke anyway. Today was Sunday, and they both had it off.

They got to sleep late. Today, that meant 8 AM.

He hugged her a little, then got up to go to the bathroom. Some things couldn't be put off indefinitely.

On the forged papers, they were a married couple. But, he didn't feel it. It didn't feel like dating, roommates, or husband and wife. It just didn't feel like it should. Like he thought it would. But it wasn't that he didn't love her.

He did.

He sat on the floor by the bed.

Sometimes she slept facing him, sometimes away from him.

To see her face today, he had to sit on the floor.

He held the hand she dangled near the edge. Her ring had moved to the married finger long before they settled on this city, mostly to cut down on the number of people hitting on her. He told the story that he had to sell his for their first month's rent. He needed to get one, but nothing matched hers. He had been putting it off for months. They had the money, but he just didn't feel married yet.

She was cute, smart, perhaps even brilliant. She was talented in so many things. He watched her fly a helicopter, he was pretty sure she flew planes. She killed a room full of men in a matter of seconds.

She was thinner than Dara, but had a smaller chest too. But none of that explained his hesitation.

For a decade, he had imagined doing nothing with his life. Just, nothing. Perpetual student, fishing with his cat. Of the many lives he had imagined, he never imagined this.

This was hard.

It was unpleasant.

It required effort.

He stared at her innocent, sleeping face before kissing her fingers.

The pile of dirty clothes had reached critical mass. There was no doubt what would be on today's agenda. Laundromat.

"Morning," she whispered.

He kissed her, turned on the TV, then went to the kitchen to start on that lesser chore that answered to the name of breakfast.

Shadona crawled out of bed and started stuffing the duffle bag.

She normally slept in thick, plaid, long sleeve shirts with matching bottoms. The top few buttons were undone and it looked like a plunging neckline. She stopped in the kitchen beside him and poured a cup.

He caught himself staring at her. She couldn't go to a beach, wear a bikini, or really show off how sexy she was, without revealing something that makeup couldn't cover. She was lucky with the scar on her cheek, it was very thin and healed smooth to the touch, little more than a discoloration. With the others, she wasn't so lucky. She was limited. He flipped the scrambled eggs in the pan, then sprinkled the shredded cheese.

She buttoned her shirt.

He felt bad for making her self-conscious. He had been thinking about asking her to make up her face like she used to when working for tips. He turned the heat off the hotplate, then turned to look her in the eyes. "You're very beautiful, you know."

She looked more uncomfortable, if that was possible.

"Really, you are. I, I remember pieces. I remember a bear attack and a girl in a bloody nightshirt. And, I remember a hazy pilot in a singed flight suit, that I thought was a guy." He looked at the cheese melting on the eggs, that needed another minute. "I, in my head, I fell in love with this con-artist from Georgia, then watched her fly a helicopter at treetop level in near darkness. After that, these other memories kept trickling into my head. I feel like I'm cheating on them both, in a weird way, with this brainy girl who makes a third-hand plaid shirt look sexier than a bikini in summertime."

She pulled two clean plates from the rack as he cut the makeshift omelet and slid them onto the plates.

"You're very beautiful, whichever one you are."

She smiled.

There was more to marriage than sex. There was more to a rewarding relationship, too.

Today, he wanted to buy that ring.

After taking the clean laundry home, they rode an extra twenty minutes on the bus, then walked another ten blocks to a Wal-Mart. It didn't match her ring, but it was nice and affordable, and it said all that finger needed to say.

He held her hand in bed that night, ring next to ring. His was a simple band, much like hers. But hers was almost the color of tan skin.

"Can I see it?" he asked.

She pulled it off, then placed it in his hand.

"It's light."

"It's plutonium powered," she said.

He could never quite tell when she was joking. He got a little scared and handed it back.

"It's perfectly safe. If it put out even a measurable amount of radiation, they could use it to find me, and I assure you, it doesn't. It's less radioactive than beer."

He was tired. The TV had already been put on sleep timer and the alarm clock set for an obscene hour in the morning. "You're serious? Plutonium?"

She slid it on his finger. "Do like this." She put her hand over his as she slowly guided him through making a fist, then something like conducting an orchestra, then ended it in another fist.

"What the hell?" He sat up in bed and stared at the ring. "It tickles. Like little pulses."

She took the ring back from him. "It has a small version of the flight computer I used in my plane. It senses movements in my finger by the tiny impulses, kind of like biofeedback. I ask the question, it tickles the answer. It isn't even metal. Nothing precious about it. Even the plutonium is only worth a few pennies, but it'll power it for a hundred years. It'll outlive me, easily."

He looked at it. "Where'd . . . How . . . What?"

She rolled to face him, "I never told anyone about the ring, Argo. I, I don't know if I'm really free, I may never really know, but it's the only thing of value I have left from that world. I made it such a long time ago."

He touched it again. "You made a plutonium powered computer ring, when you were, younger?" It was lighter than aluminum. "How smart are you?"

She kissed him instead. "It's mostly just a ring. It represented my hopes for freedom back then," She moved it to the appropriate finger, "it represents my future now."
Chapter 34

"What, you get married over the weekend, Jonde?" one of the guys asked him while they ate lunch in the tent.

"No, I'm not—" Argo looked at the ring on his finger. "I've been married, we just had to sell my ring to make ends meet. Just this weekend, we got up enough money to replace it."

"What'd you pay, ten buck?"

One near the end laughed. "It no gold or silver."

Argo was feeling a little ashamed under their ribbing, "No, it isn't nowhere near as good as what we started out with back—"

One of the older men at the table chimed in, "You need to take control, Man. If you do not, she will have everything nice and you'll be the one sleeping on the bottom, Amigo."

"Tell her who's boss," another said, "make her sell her ring, you get something nice. That's what I'd do."

Those his age made whipping sounds and gestures his way.

The older man chimed back in. "You wife know about that tail you chase around here? I see you pecking like chickens at the bus stop—"

"She is my wife," Argo said defensively.

The older ones let it go at that, but one of the younger boys couldn't. "Heard she was a Butch, Bro. I know you never get to ride on top of that pony, but does she strap on something, or do she make you wear," the boy got up and grabbed his crotch, "extensions?" He turned to a buddy, "Probably made him pawn his balls too!"

The table laughed at Argo's expense.

"Hey, uh, Sally, can I see you a minute?" Tom said walking into the trailer.

"Sure," Shadona said, walking over to his desk.

He opened his PDA. "We've got that meeting in DC on next Tuesday, are you going to be able to make it?"

She nodded, "It's just two days, right?"

"Yeah, we fly over at 6:00 AM, spend that night, have another meeting on Wednesday and fly back." He looked up from the PDA, then adjusted his volume, "You don't have a car, do you?"

She shook her head no.

"I'm not sure if the bus line can get you to the airport—"

"I just have to leave a little earlier, that's all."

He had been around her long enough. "How early is a little earlier?"

"3:22"

"Look, why don't I just pick you up, ok?" He sensed some hesitation on her part. "Look, I need you sharp, or there's no point in taking you. Flying over a thousand miles will be bad enough, I don't need you bouncing around for hours on a bus tacked on top of it all."

She reluctantly agreed.

"Good. We have adjoining rooms and seats on the plane— Don't worry, I'm no chatterbox. I plan on catching some sleep on the plane too." He paused, this last detail could be easily misconstrued, "I've never met these guys before. Do you have anything that's like, business-casual? I, that's the tone I'm trying to set with them, Ok?"

She nodded.

"Look, I appreciate this. I'd normally take one of the guys, but they get distracted by shiny things and what was served for breakfast. This is a big contract and it's a little out of left field for me to follow."

She smiled politely, then went back to work.

Argo had been waiting on the bench for easily twenty minutes when Shadona emerged from around the fence. He had been stewing for even longer.

She set her lunchbox beside his, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I told Tom I'd go with him to DC. He asked if I'd ever flown before." She pressed her smile to his cheek as he stared at the ground. She held his hand and looked for the bus. "I know you're tired. Me being excited about my day is just another reminder of yours." She squeezed his hand. "It won't always be this way. I've had a few years of bad days. They don't last forever, trust me. They just seem to."

The bus pushed its nose past the corner.

They stood. He picked up their boxes as she fished for exact change.

She placed the duffle bag on the counter to be X-rayed before she went through the larger device intended for scanning people.

She glanced at the monitor as her ring passed through on the tray. It showed as a slightly blurry ring, nothing unusual. She almost left it at home, but she hadn't let it out of her sight since she made it.

She put it back on her finger, grabbed her bag, and followed Tom onto the plane.

"You never talk about your husband," Tom said when the seat-belt light went off and they reached altitude. He got re-situated in his seat. "I didn't even know you were married when I first saw you in the restaurant." He fluffed his pillow and wedged it against the window, then gestured at her ring, "You have to look hard to even see it. It's very unusual."

She smiled politely, then unbuckled too.

"Sorry, didn't mean to get nosy. You two can't have been married long. What's the story?"

"Eloped."

"That's new. Most people just run out and shack up. At least he put a ring on your finger."

She smiled politely, then looked forward at the screen.

"Sorry," he said, adjusting his pillow again. "Being nosy again. You kids will make it. Just hold in there for a few more years." He forced himself to yawn a few times before the genuine article came. "You've got enough talent to take you just about anywhere you want to go." He yawned one more time, then closed his eyes and tried for sleep.

Tom, the owner, and an estimator took Shadona to the restaurant near the hotel. She picked up at least six ways to cut tens of thousands from drawings in the first few minutes of the meeting. Unfortunately, their company would lose money if she simply spoke up then. They were not a drafting service, that was only part of the contract they were going for. They discussed several options and changes and were able to generate some accurate bids based on their revisions. It gave them a powerful bargaining chip. Inspecting the prototype building was helpful too.

Lobster at the restaurant was a first for her.

She liked crawfish better.

Tom yawned, then knocked on her door that morning. "Sally?"

She opened the door immediately.

"Oh, you're already up. They have a good breakfast bar in this place, but it's buffet style, so, earlier is always better."

She put the keycard in her pocket and closed the door behind her.

"I love eating breakfast in places like this. Half the people show up in robes and PJs." He pointed down to his slippers. "Did you get enough sleep last night?" he asked as they got into the elevator.

She rubbed her eyes. "No. I don't sleep well alone, it seems." She looked at their reflection in the highly polished brass. "I was thinking the fifth floor distribution—"

"Oh, don't, please. It's too early for me to even think about work. Listen, don't put too much effort into this. We don't have the contract yet. You just want to think basic outline." He noticed her cheek, "What happened there?"

She could make it out in the brass. Her makeup was gone in splotches. The scar was faint, but visible.

Tom's finger hovered over the button to their floor. "We can go back up, if you like. But, if you don't mind, I sure don't." He studied her a little too close, "We're a thousand miles from anyone we know. It's up to you. Most people are in PJs anyway. Nobody's going to notice."

They got off the elevator and let the clatter of plates and the smell of fried sausage guide them to the desired room.

They went through line, then sat off to the side. "So," he said, "Farming accident, fall off a swing as a child?"

She mopped up the syrup with the chunk of her pancake, "A lapse of judgment, before I met my husband."

He put his hand on hers. "I'm sorry. I never rooted for an accident before." He abruptly pulled his hand away, "Listen to me getting all nosy again. Tom, it's none of your damn business. There," he said, "I'm putting myself on notice." He broke open another biscuit on his plate, loaded it with sausage, bacon, hash browns, and a spoonful of scrambled eggs, then stuffed the mini sandwich in his mouth.

They had meetings for half of the rest of the day, then headed for the airport and home.

She climbed the stairs to their apartment, then put in her key.

The lights were off, but the TV was on. 9:36 PM. Argo looked like he was asleep. On any other day, she would be too, but the plane was delayed twice. She showered, then went to bed. It would be another day all too soon.

Soon enough, Sunday morning rolled around again.

He pulled the covers back and looked at her. They ate leftovers last night, took a shower, and went straight to bed. He had hoped for sex then, but it just didn't happen. In profile, she was gorgeous. The room was cold enough to raise little bumps on her skin.

He moved partially atop her.

He was careful. Startle her, even briefly, and he could easily land on the floor. He stroked her hair as he kissed her chin. She was waking in the nicest of ways. She rolled underneath him, her eyes slowly opened.

When her hands rested on his back in a kind of embrace, he rested his weight on her.

They had all day.
Chapter 35

With the new contracts came a mountain of new paperwork and plans to go over. They wanted to get off to as smooth of a start as possible. Unfortunately, that meant longer hours for Shadona, and their days drifted apart again.

A car pulled up to the bus stop. "Hey, Bro," the driver said to Argo as he waited there alone, "We going to tear one off, wanta come?"

Argo looked at his lunchbox. Shadona wasn't going to show. He would have to go home alone, eat dinner alone, and, if he was lucky, he would see her for about an hour before she had to go to sleep. She was working twelve hours a day, sometimes fourteen. He was working only eight. Drinking sounded inviting. "I'd love to," he said, "I really would, but I can't tonight."

"Cool, cool, see you manana!" They sped off.

It was mighty tempting, though. His phony ID said he was twenty-one, but it had never been inspected by a bouncer before.

He woke up when she crawled into bed with him, later that night. He hugged her until he fell back asleep only a few minutes later.

The long ride on the bus had annoyed him for over a year. It was bumpy, the seats were uncomfortable, and the trip took ten times longer than it should have, had they driven or even rode a scooter. Now he cherished it.

They tried to avoid discussing work, but that proved nearly impossible to do. The bus just wasn't the kind of place to have deep, personal conversations.

But they did resolve to do one thing. They had lunch together, twice a week.

She sat on the same tailgate, beside him, and leaned back against the boxes stacked in the bed.

"I didn't think I would ever get a good loaf of bread to bake in a toaster oven," Argo said. "Lord knows it took six months to get a sour dough starter that tasted any good."

It was still cold in the mornings, but by noon, if they found a place in the sun that was shielded from the wind, it wasn't bad at all. "I miss your greenhouse cucumbers."

"Yeah, I gave my dad hell about," he choked up for a second, "about all that hippie stuff. But I miss it. I miss fishing, the quiet, even that humid little greenhouse."

"I miss it too. I knew how to fish, for food. But, you taught me how to do it for fun." She held his dirty hand. "Or maybe that was Max. I think I'd like to live that way, someday. It might be within reach. A few years like this, we might be able to get something like that."

His job was boring. Sweep, pick up trash, move stuff. It was depressing for him. It was also a step down to live in a hole in the wall, without a phone or even a decent TV. No video games and no computers may have given him worse withdrawal than the drugs. "We never really got married, properly."

She looked around, then leaned in close. "I think I would have liked to have had the last name Caranf. There are some very fine people with that name. Unfortunately, the Siendas are the only ones we can prove exist."

It was a little hard to wrap his head around, but she was right. Who they really were, were impossible to marry, and everything else would always be make-believe. As she had explained it, she officially didn't exist.

The homemade bread, however, was very real. And quite tasty. She took another bite from the sandwich and added to his cup from her thermos.

Had they eaten in the trailer, he would have felt out of place. Had they met in the tent, he would have heard about it for days and it was hardly an intimate place to eat. But, on the back of a parked truck, out of the way, seemed the perfect place for moments to be tucked away.

It seemed to reflect their life rather nicely.

* * *

He woke before the alarm had a chance to go off. Reaching past her, he made sure it never came on.

Today was Sunday.

The apartment complex never seemed to get the temperature right. They were well into spring and had to open the windows because the heat that went missing all winter was now on, full force.

He smiled before he kissed her. She was already awake.

He kissed her neck down to her shoulder, then over and down to the scar.

She put her fingers on the back of his neck and up into his hair.

"Argo," she said.

He shifted his weight off of her. She was an interesting girl. She would let him continue, even if she wasn't into it. Something he was sensing now.

"I couldn't sleep last night." She put her hands over her eyes. "I keep thinking about what would have happened if I could have beaten the helicopter to your house. What would I have said to her, what would she say to me. What would have happened if Coulette was captured and returned to the base, in my place? Would I have tried to rescue her? Could I live with myself, knowing someone was serving the rest of my sentence for me?"

"She said something about it being her choice."

Shadona moved her hand and looked him in the eyes. "If I was born knowing— with the memories of my life, I would try to free me too." She moved her fingers across her eyes, then wiped the dampness on the sheets. "Death, haunts me."

"She seemed very nice. She tried to get my father to let her wait for them outside. That might have prevented—"

"It wasn't your father's fault. It was mine. I started this chain of events, I let it grow beyond my control. I can't ever make this right again."

A chill ran through him. Her every action since his first helicopter ride could easily have been her trying to atone for his misfortune.

"I keep thinking, 'what would I do if I had been born Coulette,' I know I would do the same thing she did. I know I would have made that same choice." She turned to him, tears ran down her cheeks, "Had I known the cost others would pay for my freedom. . . " she wiped her face, "I would have gladly stayed, a prisoner."

He didn't know what to say. He just hugged her instead.

She cried quietly until around noon.

He watched her brush her teeth at the bathroom sink. She brushed vigorously with her lips sealed, quietly, neatly. She spit, then held the brush under the running water. She took a swig of mouthwash and gargled silently while adding a tiny smear of paste to the brush again. After thirty seconds of swishing, she spit and brushed again, only to rinse a final time.

It was interesting to watch. Morning brushing involved a single pass, but this nighttime effort was always a double. It would seem to make more sense, to him, for her to simply brush longer. But she seemed incapable of that. Instead, she did it twice.

Oddly, without ever meeting, Coulette did it exactly the same way.

Shadona. Coulette. Sally. Sienda. Caranf. Georgia peach. He could see the common threads so clearly now.

He closed his eyes and remembered long afternoons of just snuggling on the couch with her, or fishing by the pond. She could be incredibly driven, especially at work, but she was equally comfortable completely relaxed.

He held the sheet open for her as she turned out the light and headed for bed in nothing more than one of his T-shirts.

He snuggled her and waited for sleep. Monday morning would be there all too soon.

Dave opened the paper while they ate around the table.

"Iranian spy smuggled proof of 'Zionist' plot to starve millions of world's poor," was just below the fold. Shadona read the article when Dave was done. A spy had smuggled desert-tolerant potatoes and corn to Iran. They were starting pilot farms to grow enough seeds to go into mass production within a year. On the floor of the UN, Iran went on a tirade about imperialism, Jews, Zionists, and how the world must unite in the extermination of such an evil empire that invented such plants that promised to save millions. They went on to state that they had uncovered more such evidence, and it was just the proof they needed to continue their weapons program as a justified measure of self-defense against imminent, imperialist attack.

Her heart sank when she saw it was from the AP and looked for the author.

She felt relief when it wasn't F Ree Hur.

After saving them a small fortune already, Tom had invited Shadona to another business meeting later that month. She had agreed to the price written on the back of a business card, and had agreed to it for a year. It was a lot of money, then. She had received two bonuses, each contained a comma. A large sum to be sure, but it fell far short of reimbursement considering the sums they saved.

They both understood the position each was in. She couldn't really get the money she deserved for the work she did. She simply didn't have those kinds of credentials. She was, more or less, stuck with them. In a sense, they held all the cards.

But, at the same time, she was a proven, valuable asset to have. Being unfair to her, paying her far below her value would eventually alienate her and drive away the goose that laid golden eggs. She may not be able to get more from one of their competitors, but that didn't mean she had to stay with them, either.

Fortunately, the company looked to Tom on such matters, and Tom believed in good deeds reaping the best rewards. She got bonuses whenever the budget allowed. Saving money wasn't quite the same as making money. It was in the long run, but they weren't near the end of the run, their budget was much closer to the starting line.

Budgets.

Sometimes it was more confusing than the drawings she dealt with.

Tom picked her up at the corner outside her apartment, and they flew to Tennessee.

The meeting went well, and they were done by five that afternoon.

Tom flipped through the papers, pulled one out, and spread it across the table. "Explain to me again why we can do away with this entire system."

Shadona pulled out her pen and traced some of the lines with the cap, "Not all of it, just this part. You can do away with it because the physical limitations of the equipment on the other end won't—"

One of the designers interrupted, a little offended. The two of them got into a debate; Shadona kept it very polite and calm, the same could not be said of the designer.

Tom interjected after a few minutes, before it turned into a one-sided shouting contest. Besides, the two of them had lost him almost immediately. "Calm down, Roger. Listen, Sally is very good at this stuff. I learned some time back to just listen and stop interrupting her. Let her go from the beginning to the end, then give it a few minutes to sink in. And if you still don't get where she is trying to take you, then ask her your questions." The lobby was getting a little crowded, "Let's take this up to my room, shall we?"

Roger picked up the papers while Shadona finished her coffee.

It took another two hours; Roger found it very difficult not to interrupt. But by the end, Roger conceded. The system she wanted to remove could actually cause harm, as unintentional as it was. Ironically, it was added to meet the government mandated safety systems requirements.

Roger took his notes, rolled up the papers, and left for his office across town. He had some changes to submit that needed to be approved before construction went much further.

Shadona sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.

"You did great," Tom said, handing her a fresh cup of coffee as he sat in the chair across from her.

"I feel exhausted."

"Oh, that's just jetlag. It catches up to everyone eventually."

She almost laughed, "It isn't jetlag."

"Listen, you ever think about doing the drawings? Look, I discussed this with our big money investors, we'd like to put you through the schooling for this, put some paper behind that knowledge."

She set the cup on the end table. "Thank you, that's a nice offer."

"Look, they would like to get a six-year contract with you out of it. But, I don't think that's in your best interest—"

"I never finished high school," she said. "I'm a dropout."

He paused. "Ok, that would complicate things. But it wouldn't rule them out." He leaned back in the chair. "Listen, I like you. You get along with everyone, you're smart, quick, and you've made my life very easy over this last year. You let me know if you want to go, I'll find a way to make it happen.

You're smarter than Roger, and he's a brilliant guy; the owner has been working with him for years."

She looked up at him, "I don't see my husband but one day a week as it is. I can't add classes to that too. He didn't sign up to be a laborer—"

"Married that young is hard for anyone to make work. It takes years to get financially established, that's a big stressor. Add to it that you're still—"

She stood up and turned to the door. "I've had a very hard life, Tom. My future with him makes my past bearable. I don't know if I could take it without him." She walked out the door.

* * *

The new contract added to her schedule. It cost them Sundays too and was just to be for about a month. It had now stretched into month number two.

The car pulled up to the bus stop after work, and Argo got in as he had for the last few weeks. Their checks deposited yesterday, he still had several bills in his pocket. Besides, he had worked with these guys for months now and was tired of going home to a lonely, empty room. Beer sounded nice too.

Knock Knock Knock!

"This is— This is— Let go of me, I have a damn key," Argo said outside when Shadona opened the apartment door.

Shadona tightened her robe as Argo lurched through the doorway and gave her a sloppy, drunken kiss.

"Just, just look at her," he said to the man waiting outside.

"Ma'am, does he belong to you?" the man said.

Argo reached his hand inside her robe, only to have his hand rebuffed. "Isn't she, isn't she just gorgeous?" He fumbled with her robe again, his stagger stumbled them both into the wall beside the door. "She's, she's smart too. Say, say something smart."

"He's my husband." She tried to hold him up while fending off a groping. "At least he was a few drinks ago."

"Drinks? I wouldn't bet it stopped there," the man said. "You want, Ma'am, I can take him to the drunk tank and let him come down in a nice padded cell. Your call. The bar owner said to take him there anyway, but he wasn't doing any harm at the time. Just running his mouth too much."

Argo leaned closer to the stranger and whispered, "She's a, she's a spy!"

"I'll take him," she said.

The guy handed her Argo's wallet. "The bar took $45.50 for the drinks and I took $12.50 for the ride."

She maneuvered him away from the door, then closed and locked it while Argo pulled at the robe.

He put his fingers through her hair, but in his state, they tangled and he pulled her head and knocked it against the wall. He slid his knee between hers as his other hand went up her shirt and he whispered, "I missed you so much," in her ear.

The misfortunes of her past flashed through her mind as his pants fell to the floor and he pressed her against the wall. Her instinct grabbed a pencil from the table near the door.
Chapter 36

The trailer was abuzz with gossip that morning.

"What's going on?" Shadona asked, her night had already lasted entirely too long.

Dave and Mike had brought portable TVs from home and were crowded around one instead of the coffee pot that normally captivated their attention. "The president was just on," Dave said, "It was all over CNN last night."

"We only get two channels where we live," Shadona said, putting her lunchbox by her desk before approaching the TV.

"Well," Dave continued, "Some terrorists smuggled about a dozen SCUD missiles into shipping crates and launched them about fifty miles off our coasts. They said they were targeting high population centers, but a missile defense shield shot them all down. When they activated the shield, it blacked out both coasts. Said there wasn't but six states that didn't lose electricity."

"That's why the alarm didn't go off this morning?" she said.

"They don't know who it was, yet. But you know every terrorist nation on the planet is taking credit for it."

Mike chimed in, "They didn't release the specifics on the missile shield, but it shredded them and took six satellites out too. They just said it pulverized them into dust so fine they expect it to rain down over the next few weeks. Look," he pointed to the screen, "it's that dark cloud over Seattle. People have refused to go to work on the coasts for fear it might be nuclear or biological, but the government sniffers claim it's as safe as health food."

Dave patted his keg of a stomach, "I knew health food was poison."

Shadona looked shocked. She sat down in front of the TV.

"They said it could have been a hundred times worse than 9/11," Mike said, "without that shield."

Argo woke, late in the afternoon, tied up, on the floor of the shower, with the alarm clock buzzing continuously in the tiny bathroom.

The haze of last night was slowly making its way through his addled brain.

He vomited, but the drain was behind his head. Some splashed onto his cheek as it flowed into his hair and left ear. The smell of alcohol was unmistakable.

He managed to push himself into a corner and worked into a sitting position. The alarm clock made it nearly impossible for him to think as he slowly picked the knots with his teeth. Dizzy when he tried to get to his feet, he crawled across the floor and unplugged the clock.

Thoughts started to drift past the pounding in his head.

Trying to sober up, he stripped off the remainder of his clothes and took a shower.

Bits and pieces flickered in as the shampoo loosened the dry chunks in his hair. What he remembered wasn't good.

The smell washed off his skin, but it did nothing to clean his thoughts. He brushed his teeth at the sink, then went to the kitchen. There was a broken pencil by the front door and a black smear along the wall.

He vaguely remembered a story Coulette had told of forgiveness, betrayal, and a murder with a pencil. His foggy thoughts couldn't refine the details, but he suspected he deserved the smear more than the wall.

He opened the bottle of aspirin, drank a glass of water from the fridge, then went to bed, late in the afternoon.

The deadbolt flipped open with a clunk, then the key slid into the lock beneath. Argo woke, hungover and full of motion sickness, and sat up in bed. He half expected her to come through the door with a baseball bat and beat him to within an inch of his life. Bracing for it, he waited for the next lock to make that familiar clunk. He welcomed it, actually, hoping it would assuage his horrible guilt.

The doorknob turned, and she walked calmly to the kitchen.

He watched as she cleaned out her lunchbox and made tomorrow's meal.

When done, she walked past him and into the bathroom. He listened as the shower came on. This felt like torture. He stared at the closed door between them and pondered her silence. It felt like she showered forever.

She emerged from the bathroom in her traditional T-shirt, walked over to the bed, and sat down.

He slid over for her.

She turned to him, "I think we will be at war very soon." She lay down and pulled his arm around her, "You hurt me pretty bad—"

"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, I—"

She twisted his wrist, shooting needles of pain down his arm, "I had a long time to think about last night.

I don't blame you, not entirely. Maybe not even a little. I was in the room when they gave you suggestions. Some of this, was them.

There is a very bad person lurking within me, a side I don't want you to see. They spent a lot of time and money making her. She almost killed you last night.

I think that was their plan.

They want to keep happiness from ever finding me. They want that other me to be in control."

He held her hand. "I'm never letting—"

"I don't think I'd survive the thought of your blood on my hands."

She had nearly given him license to abuse. "Not one drop, not ever again," he said the words every abuser said. But he meant them.

They waited for the bus that morning. The moon was still bright in the sky, the sun had yet to come up. Little puffs, like pimply clouds started to form, mostly visible on its shiny side. They were born in brief sparkles, like glitter.

Shadona pulled a paper off the top of the trash. Coffee spilled on it, it was today's and the words were still readable. Micro meteors were impacting the moon. The story claimed that earth was passing through a micro meteor shower, but that the moon was taking the brunt of it. 15-24 hours. That was about the time she would expect projectiles to reach the moon, if fired from the ground with a gun much like hers.

They should have been years, perhaps decades away from replicating the HB-4 rail guns, at least at these power levels. It was a little shocking, but not out of the question.

She put the paper back when the bus lumbered into view.

' . . . at war very soon' took on a new meaning over the next few weeks.

The particulates from the destroyed SCUDs had yet to settle in any great quantity. Instead, they seemed to be going up, rising in the atmosphere and spreading out like a great cloud. They had moved above wind currents and now looked like a light haze over those distant cities. They even took on a light green color at dusk.

Reception on cell phones didn't seem to travel as far from the towers. Soon, the same was said of radio and TV.

The dust seemed to form denser clouds between satellites and ground-based transmitters. To compensate for the interference, the transmitters increased their output, which only thickened the cloud.

Satellite communication was failing, one by one.

Doves in the House and Senate blamed the military that shot down the SCUDS and held weeks' worth of hearings; most of the discussion and accusations seemed to center over Congress not being informed about the shield itself. But, as often happens, Congress was clueless to the reality the rest of the world saw. The dust was the weapon in the SCUDs. Civilian satellite communication was spotty at best in under three months. Military communication had to be similarly affected. Jammed. It was a low-tech attack, like suicide bombers. It started over the heads of distant cities, but was predicted to spread around the world within a few years.

Some reports observed that the dust seemed to increase in intensity around thunderstorms, but as yet, that was unconfirmed.

Traditional warfare doctrine dictated knocking out lines of communication prior to an attack or invasion. This was a bad sign.

Background noise on landlines were quickly crumbling that infrastructure too, only optical fiber seemed to be immune, thus far. GPS in most cars had already failed.

Then it happened, overnight. Forty nuclear power plants were bombed from space. Each was hit with over sixty, two hundred pound iron projectiles that simply used kinetic energy to pulverize and breach containment. They acted much like a poor-man's bunker-buster, except these impacted at well over mach 10.

Radar, satellites, and conventional tracking were already so overwhelmed that nobody even saw the missiles coming down, let alone discover where they went up.

Most states on the traditional hate-US list were technologically 'incapable' of mounting such an offense. The precision of the strikes alone ruled out the usual suspects. The bombs hit within feet of each target, something even professional militaries had problems doing with GPS.

That was until the investigation started.

Dozens of 'coins' were found scattered around every target. Each coin had a small watch battery and an infrared LED, much like those commonly used on remotes for TVs. They blinked at night and optically formed the triangulation coordinates that guided the bombs in.

The coins retained fingerprints of known members of Hamas.

War had officially begun.
Chapter 37

The country screamed for retribution. Thousands were dead and rolling blackouts were now the norm. Fortunately, even these old reactor designs prevented all but one meltdown, but radiation levels remained high and had forced the evacuation of hundreds of towns.

Retaliation came swiftly in the form of aircraft carriers.

In the trailer, they sat around the table and watched the tiny TV. The normal lunchtime conversations had long since been consumed by late-breaking news. The digital signal provided intermittent reception; at best they received every fourth word. But, it was something. It was news. "Fleet . . . destroyed . . . sands lost . . . unclear . . ."

Dave sat beside it all day, "Near as I can tell, something wiped out two carrier battle groups in about six minutes. Some say a new plane, others say subs and mines. I keep hearing China and Russia, maybe they bought it from them. We'll have to wait till tomorrow's paper to find out for sure."

Mike put down his ham and mustard sandwich, "Reception keeps getting worse. I read yesterday that the power lines were getting random surges that they can't explain. Like the loud static on analog phones before most of them went out."

Dave smacked the TV in an attempt to bend the laws of physics with his sheer frustration. "Why hit power plants at all when the dust'll bring down the power lines too? They any closer to figuring out what was in that stuff?"

Mike looked at Shadona, then Tom. "Don't ask me," Mike said, "from what I read, nobody has a clue. There isn't a good way to get that high and get a sample. Read that the space station can see it from their window. Poor bastards. The cloud of it is so thick right under them that nobody is willing to risk docking with them. Constant system failures. The only way we can talk with them is by Morris code and a light they jammed into a window. The unmanned supply rocket almost shot them down."

"It kind of makes all of this seem pointless," Tom said, "I mean, by the time this building is finished, will there even be a need for a data center? Phone lines are failing all over, will the power lines fail by then, too?"

"I bet it's just above-ground cables that are affected," Shadona said in the lull. "Everything underground should be shielded from random pulses, to a degree."

Mike looked at her, "You know, the paper did say that the transatlantic cables were working fine. Even the century-old wire ones. Ocean, dirt, you may have something."

It suddenly didn't look so bleak anymore. Buried wires were more expensive, but not impossibly so.

It would still cost a small fortune, more than the GDP of most countries, to rewire a nation as big as this. But it might not stop with the mile long distribution systems, wiring within walls would even have to be redone. It might soon be on a scale no nation could handle, if it continued to get worse.

Without radio or satellite contact, getting accurate reports were difficult. For decades surveillance was done in real time with satellites; now they were back to U-2 style flyovers, hand delivered film, couriers, flag signals, and landlines.

Dust had nearly eliminated half of the technological advantage between nations, and it didn't seem over yet. Planes, especially high altitude ones, experienced much higher than normal system failures, complete with a string of commercial crashes. Radar no longer covered the entire country. A hazy glow formed over most cities at night, reminiscent of northern lights, except far dimmer.

Steve, one of the owners, walked into the trailer, "Damn it, where is Tom?"

Shadona looked up from her desk, "He hasn't shown today. But that's normal, he should be in later."

He walked over to her desk, "Sally, right?"

She nodded.

"You've seen the plans for the Copellete building, right?"

She nodded again.

"I don't know if you guys heard, but in Seattle, the cloud, or whatever the hell it is, got bright as daylight one night. They said it strobed for two minutes with EMP pulses about half what a nuclear blast could generate. Fried everything. Nothing stored electronically survived. Even took out hardened military equipment. Started fires and everything. Please, tell me you have a copy of it, or even better, a printout."

Shadona dropped what she was doing and went to the print table, "I don't think we do."

"Lord, do not tell me that. I had to drive in a Galaxy for two days just to get here."

Dave and Mike stuck their heads in the room. "The office in Seattle?" Dave said.

"Gone," Steve answered. "Fires are probably still burning, all over the city. Damnedest thing I've ever seen. Anything new with an onboard computer is junk, but antique junkers seem to run fine, for now. Even saw people riding around on lawnmowers and old diesel farm tractors. Lucky I had that old Galaxy, just wish it had air."

"We didn't read anything about that in the paper," Dave said.

"It isn't here, Steve, sorry," Shadona said.

"Damn it!" Steve said, punting the trashcan by the desk. "Any chance it's floating around on a laptop or something?"

"Tom might have it on him, but there's no way to reach him. Cell phones have been down for weeks, land lines are spotty, and now, very expensive," she said, "But, he should be here today. If he has it, there's a good chance it'll be with him."

Dave and Mike squeezed in a little closer. "They got any better idea what the dust is?" Dave asked.

"Hmm?" Steve was focused on the disaster aimed at his company, not his Country, "Oh," he pulled up a chair. Waiting wasn't something he was used to doing. "Picked up a paper two weeks ago. One of their editors ran a two pager touting the virtues of the terrorists. Said that it had cut CO2 in half, smog was down, some Green Peace hippie praised them for stopping global warming." He stood up, "Seattle is burning to the ground and those—" he kicked the side of the desk, "It just gets my blood boiling." He looked up at Dave and remembered the question. "Said somewhere it was carbon from one of those spectrum analysis things on telescopes. Some sort of solid-state superconductor was the last thing I heard." He looked at Dave and Mike, "You guys still have working laptops?"

They nodded.

"Well, check for that file. Start going through what you have and print out some of our current stuff that we can't afford to lose. Let's try to keep ahead of this ball, shall we," Steve said.

Shadona started to her desk, but stopped, now that the other two were no longer in the room. "Did you need all of the Copellete building?"

He looked at her, "Ideally, yes, but just our part would be enough. We only had two prints of the current set, Tom should have one, I think."

She looked into the other room, "I can probably redraw it for you, but something that big would take days. Maybe even a week or two."

"Redraw it from what?"

"Well, Tom left it with me last week and I got a pretty good look at it."

"What, from memory?"

She looked a little shy about saying, "Yeah, or, redesign it from scratch. But that would take closer to a month."

He closed the door between the offices. "Look, Sally, I don't mean to doubt you, but if this project goes wrong, my company goes under. It's just that simple. You've been working with us for what, a year, two at the most. Hell, Tom hasn't been with us but a year or two longer than that. And as bright as Tom is, I wouldn't trust him to reproduce something like that from memory. Now, if he doesn't have it, don't go too far, but until then . . ."

She smiled politely, then went back to work.

Waiting didn't sit well with Steve, and when faced with the option of the interrogation he was likely facing with Dave and Mike, he worked his way back to Shadona's office, which was really just a small part of Tom's.

She looked up from her desk, "He should be here any time now."

Steve smacked his Blackberry, held it over the trashcan, paused, then put it back in his pocket. "You get used to using this stuff, then wake up one day and it's junk. I feel like having a Khrushchev moment and beating it to death with the heel of my shoe, but I can't seem to just throw it away." He sat in Tom's chair. "You know, Sally, if it wasn't for the Internet, I would never have met Tom, and my company would never have taken off like it did."

She turned her chair slightly towards him as a sign of interest, but tried to keep working too.

"He was a freelancer. Did pretty much what you do now. He offered to look over the prints for free, and if I liked the changes, he'd make a small percentage of the money he saved me. Basically, it cost me nothing. How could I lose, right?

He saved me a fortune, right from day one. I worked with him for years without ever meeting the man in person. All done over the Internet, conference calls," he tapped the Blackberry against the desk, "and these little things.

I gave him a chance of a lifetime, and I guess he felt the need to pass it on, right there in a Chinese restaurant."

She looked up and smiled, "Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me, I'm glad he did. I made out better than either of you. The good old days. Who would have figured that was just last year?"

"Bad days don't last forever."

He put the blackberry in his pocket, "No, but the dark ages lasted a pretty long time. You, you really think you could redraw it from memory?"

She nodded.

"Let's hope you don't have to."

Tom's truck pulled up outside.

At first, most people thought the pulsing of a city was some new weapon. But scientist quickly ruled it out, largely because the power levels involved exceeded most known devices. The prevailing guess was it had something to do with solar winds, the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and that fancy dust. Somehow, when the conditions were right, it acted like a superconductor and shorted between the fields. That short generated massive, sustained, random EMP pulses only a hundred miles or so above the earth. Frying most electronics underneath in the process. Military equipment was designed to sustain a few, short pulses associated with nuclear blasts, not several minutes worth.

Cities, like Seattle, that had mostly underground power lines and had survived the attack on their power plants, discovered that the dust tended to accumulate above them the most. Seattle was just the first victim.

The fate of carrier battle groups looked equally grim as more reliable news filtered in from precious overseas lines. Two groups had been confirmed lost. The known dead reached over 30,000 in the first 4 days. Iran promised to bathe the infidels in an ocean of their own blood, which congress reluctantly accepted as a declaration of war and an admission of guilt, on a party line vote.

Without radio contact or satellites, the position of the rest of the fleet was uncertain. They could easily be as Iran claimed, sunk in the middle of the ocean. The fate of those in the Persian Gulf was, sadly, well known.

Shadona stood under the morning sky, waiting for the bus. The blue-green over the city had a pretty glow, if it wasn't for what they all knew it promised to bring. Under her suggestion, the company moved their office from the fourth floor into the basement of one of their older buildings. The basement was three floors underground and had a solid metal frame with one-foot thick concrete floors. They converted the bottom two floors into essentially giant Faraday cages and moved all their precious electronics down into it. Backup drives were taken one step further and stored inside aluminum boxes, and critical information was printed on paper. They completed the retrofit within the last few days and were now just marking time until it hit. The morning sky looked more ominous every day.

At work, the laptops were stored in smaller versions of the Faraday cage made out of modified common metal boxes.

They had done all they could. Going to work and carrying on with life was all that seemed left to them. But tension lingered in the air.

"At least it's pretty," she said.

Argo walked out from under the bus stop's roof. "A dark cloud would be more fitting."

The bus was running a few minutes late. "Payday tomorrow."

"You think our money is safe in the account?"

They had shifted to a half cash philosophy, which was rather easy to do, considering the modest size of their account. "Not for much longer."

"I can withdraw most of the rest when I go make the deposit."

They walked back under the roof. "We have to leave enough in it to cover—"

"I know."

She looked down at their lunchboxes. They had stocked up on a few months' worth of canned and dry food, just to be safe. It was a good investment even if things didn't get worse. The price of food rose daily, making their early bulk purchases seem clairvoyant. "The good news is, I think it's very survivable, whatever happens." She sat on the bench. "Just as long as we're prepared."

"I still think we ought to get a gun."

The bus lumbered around the corner as he picked up the boxes and she fished for exact change.
Chapter 38

Tom sighed, then tossed the paper on the desk.

Shadona reluctantly picked it up. Air travel had been restricted for the lack of radar, radio communication, and the unhardened nature of civilian planes that had a tendency to crash, especially those made of composites. Other emergency measures had been enacted. Travel was restricted because of the oil shortage. Most of the world's supertankers had been destroyed by now.

The logic behind the enemy attacking tankers was impeccable. Tankers were easy targets that could be spotted from the air, miles away without the aid of radar, and they were so cumbersome and big that it often took them miles to turn just a few degrees. They also would take years to replace, without destroying valuable infrastructure such as pipelines and refineries owned by sympathetic countries.

Bans on increasing domestic production were just now being lifted, but it was already too late. They faced a decade of rationing because pandering politicians had crafted an energy policy that favored buying oil from our enemies over Exxon.

Known dead had topped 100,000.

Eight cities had burned, adding thousands more to a different running count.

It had another nineteen pages that just got more depressing.

She sighed, folded it, then returned it to the desk.

Dave picked it up next.

"How much longer before they figure it to hit this city?" Shadona asked Tom.

"Any time now," he said, "but they don't know. Reports from the other cities said that it seemed to start at dusk, but that doesn't mean anything."

Dusk was a prime time for the harvester from the base. There was a good chance it was tapping into that same source of limitless power.

"They're talking about a draft," Dave said, reading further into the paper.

Tom looked up from his lunch, "You don't have anything to worry about, you couldn't pass the physical if you had a year to study for it."

Dave patted his beer belly, "It comes from decades of living right."

Shadona thought of Argo, prime, drafting age.

Tom walked to the window, "That would shut this place down for sure." He turned to Dave and Mike, "Remember, make backups, every day. Burn a disk, label it, and drop it in the box. The disks were cheap, ten cents a piece, and we have thousands of them. Use them."

"How are they drawing for the draft?" Shadona asked.

"Probably the way they've always done it. Age, year, month born. Supposedly fair and random," Dave answered from the article.

"With spotty communication," Mike said, "I wouldn't be surprised if they just pulled people off the streets. It'd be easier that way."

Dave turned to a new page. "They have a good recruiting tool. Says here they have a kind of personal tank. It's a powered, armored suit that's kicking ass overseas. Says here it's mostly impervious to EMP because it's nearly 100% mechanical, hydraulics and such, very little electronics. Hell," he looked up from the page, "it's even got air conditioning." He stared at the picture, "Looks a little like the Michelin man from their ads." He skimmed ahead, "So far, just letting young bucks try out the suit at recruiting stations has enlistments up 300%. It hasn't stopped the draft talk, though."

Mike looked at the picture over Dave's shoulder, "Looks like something out of a comic book."

Shadona looked down at her lunchbox, "Iron man."

The conversation turned away from the sadness of war and toward reminiscing about comic book inspired boyhood adventures and jumping out of windows onto piles of cardboard boxes while wearing a cape made from old bed sheets.

The pulse finally came.

The city was in a state of controlled anarchy. Block captains, building captains and such had been pre-assigned in preparation for just such inevitabilities. It helped. Looting and violence were held at a minimum, but the damage was still extensive. Lightbulbs came on all by themselves in a way that made the city look like a swarm of fireflies that suddenly synchronized, before half spontaneously exploded, especially those located nearest to windows. Window curtains and lampshades were the source of most small fires, but every resident was required to store sixty gallons of water in their residence for just such emergencies. Most people used plastic bags and trashcans as temporary water tanks.

As odd as it sounded, the vast majority had followed instructions and filled common balloons with water for fighting fires. The lessons of childhood pranks enabled people to stand a good distance away from the flames while still delivering the water. Water hoses and streams of water, it turned out, were not the most ideal method for fighting electrical fires. Water balloons were.

Even so, fires still destroyed several blocks, transportation ceased, power was likely to remain off for months or years, and the sense of a very dismal reality set in as the trash continued to pile up on the streets.

Without electricity, cooking was difficult to do. Shadona had fashioned a small cooker out of old coffee cans, a tuna can filled with vegetable oil, and a cotton ball as a wick. It boiled a quart of water in about two hours and could cook rice in three. It wasn't a lot, but it was food.

A truck slowly rolled down the street, asking for volunteers for the military.

Shadona watched it every time it came.

"I should enlist," she said.

"What the hell for?" he stirred the rice to keep it from sticking. "You did your time, and then some."

She watched as they handed out food to the families of those who joined up. But it wasn't the food that was swaying her. "It's my place in life."

He stood beside her in the window, just far enough to the side to be out of view from the street. "We could fill the duffle bag with food and clothes and slowly hike into the country like everyone else. It isn't your fight. You didn't start it."

She watched them close the back of a truck full of recruits and drive off. "One of them will die, because I didn't go. Because I escaped. Because I was AWOL. I'm a trained fighter pilot, Argo. It was what I was born to do."

He put his hand on her shoulder, "Are you sure I was the one drugged and brainwashed?"

She watched it disappear from view. "One of them will die in my place."

He returned to the cooker and stirred the rice.

A week later, Tom pulled up in front of Shadona's building in his truck. The two climbed in, and he drove down the street. "It's nice to see the truck works," Shadona said.

"Yeah, somebody advised me to go visit a junkyard and pull as many spare parts as I could, before it hit. Kept them in a sealed box until it passed. It still took forever to replace everything." He plucked the radio with his finger, "I forgot about lights and stuff, radio will never work. The dash is dead. But, it runs. At least until the next pulse, whenever that is."

Shadona smiled, it had been her suggestion.

"Stupid thing has tons of sensors everywhere," he continued. "Steve bought up some of those steel shipping containers. Converted them into Faraday cages like you did with the office. Filled them with tools and equipment. Stuck two trucks and some motorcycles in another. Hasn't worked up the nerve to open them yet."

Without traffic, they made it to the modified office in good time.

The front door looked broken in. "Don't worry, for some reason, the tumblers in the lock froze up. We had to destroy it to get in. Weird, huh? That little side effect wasn't in any of the papers," Tom said as they moved past it, then climbed down the steps into a basement where life seemed unaffected.

Computers, laptops, printers and lights buzzed on below the ground.

Two small diesel generators sat in a closet off to the side with plastic pipes pumping fresh air to them and exhaust away. A bank of car batteries ran the office while the generators only came on long enough to recharge the bank.

"Everything working alright?" Shadona asked.

"Sure sure, as well as could be expected," Tom said.

Argo was a little amazed. The occasional flashlight had survived, some electric motors, but this was an exceptional find.

"I don't know how much money is going to be worth in the coming years," Tom said, "The job is officially closed for the near future, of course. But, Steve had an offer that I think is more than fair."

Tom gestured at a table, and they sat.

"You were right about the solar panels on the roof, by the way. They cracked like they were left out in a hailstorm.

We have a finite amount of fuel and a precarious position, as you know. So much of everything runs on electricity. You said you had a solar design that should keep working, even in this craziness, right?"

"It should," Shadona said.

"Well, we have a limited amount of time, as I see it, to build one. Since this place is the closest to all the good equipment, this seemed like the best place to start, if you are interested."

Argo looked at them both, "I'm sorry, what was the offer?"

Tom looked confused for a second, "Oh, right, what's in it for you. Well, property, shares, stuff like that. If it's successful, like you say, it might just be the lotto ticket that saves the day. After all, you were right so far."

Nobody wanted it before. It was ironic that it had been in public domain for years and only a handful of people wanted it then. "Well, for one big enough to run this place," she looked at the generators, "it might take a few weeks to build it, a little longer for the collector and plumbing. Just need a lathe, welder, drill press, a ton of plastic pipe, stuff like that."

Tom pointed to the ceiling, "One floor up."

They started working that day, then moved out of the apartment and into the basement the following night.

Argo recognized it, but not immediately. For the collector, they painted the flat roof black, imbedded a loop of plastic pipe, then covered it in clear plastic like a greenhouse.

The cold side was as simple as burying another loop of pipe in the dirt on the shady side of the building.

Because the plastic pipe conveyed only hot and cold fluids and consisted of nothing conducive, it was immune to pulses. The motor and circulating pumps, on the other hand, had to be protected and kept underground, but that was simple enough to do.

The engine itself was made from machined metal pipes, standard rubber rings, and various off-the-shelf fittings.

Just the three of them, working eight hours a day, had one running within a month.

It worked flawlessly and was as quiet as most refrigerators.

The city without power, newspapers, and shipments of food was mostly abandoned. The first few military trucks to bring in food did not leave empty. They were quickly filled with recruits. Desperation, anger, futility, and the promise of three squares and a cot were enough encouragement to fill most return trips.
Chapter 39

"Jonde," Shadona said, "don't wear out the keyboard playing video games."

He paused the game, "Awhhh. . . "

Tom stuck his head around the corner, "It's all right, Sally, one keyboard isn't going to end the world."

"Thank you," Argo said. He looked victoriously into the eyes of the woman he eventually wanted to sleep with again, and ended the game.

Tom walked over. "You know, without TV and radios, there isn't but so much we can do. How about this, we pick the slowest one, load it with just games, and let it die a death befitting the obsolete?" He was her boss and not likely to ever sleep with her, but somehow permission still seemed important. "All the laptops at the job site were saved thanks to those custom boxes we kept them in. That more than makes up for the loss of one as a game machine. Besides, we've seen all the DVDs down here."

She relented. "What ever happened to Dave and Mike?"

"I don't know, really," Tom said. "If they reported to the job site, they didn't leave a note or anything. They both had children at home and lived about a half hour from the job. I expect they left, assuming they still could." He tried on his boss hat for a moment. "How many engines do you reckon we're making a day?"

She thought about it. "Well, we more or less know what we're doing now. We had to redesign it to run with mechanical instead of electrical circulating pumps, that added something to it. One every three days. Two, maybe three a week if we push it."

A horn blasted upstairs.

The doors between the levels muffled the sound, but it was definitely a horn. They started upstairs.

"Anyone home?" a voice yelled down the stairwell.

"Is that you, Steve?" Tom yelled back.

"Yeah, I'm coming down," Steve said.

They stopped and gave him a minute.

"There was something peaceful about the city," Steve said, closing the door behind him, "Nobody fights over junk. And after the city was pulsed, just about everything is junk." He walked straight for the engine. "Is that it?"

Tom nodded.

"It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be." Steve looked closer. "What is it, a few hundred watts?"

Tom pointed to Shadona.

"It peaks at about twenty, horse," Shadona said, "About fifteen kilowatts."

Steve looked again. "You're kidding. How hot is the steam coming into it?"

"No steam, just hot water. It'll scald, but not boil."

Steve walked around it a few times. "Can you make the generator side of it?"

"Not here," Tom said. "Windings and such takes a more specialized set of machines. That's why we moved away from electric circulating pumps and went with mechanical."

"Windings would take copper wire and nearly three times as long to do by hand," Shadona said.

Steve looked at them both, Argo, then back at the machine silently squishing along. "Just amazing. I, I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. The roads are horrible, dead cars and wrecks everywhere. Look, I've rounded up a few investors, but they were a little further than just a phone call away." He pointed at the batteries, "How many of those does it take to make it through the night?"

"None," Shadona said. "The gravel has enough mass on the roof to retain the needed BTUs to make it a few days without sunlight. Ideally," she looked at Argo, "instead of just a black surface under glass, you would have a greenhouse growing vegetables all year round. It's a thermal engine. All it needs is about twenty degrees difference, and it'll convert that into motion. If you do it right, it'll keep the greenhouse cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and generate power while it does it."

Steve looked at it again. "No black panels?"

"No black panels," she said, "But, it can work with black panels too. You could simply bury a garden hose in an asphalt parking lot, if you wanted."

They retired to the office end of the floor where a kitchen, computers, tables, and chairs were set up and discussed things further while a DVD played on the big screen TV mounted to the wall.

They showed him the spreadsheets with all the calculations, the yields and temperature figures. Shadona theorized that, at this stage, most of the electric pumps and motors, over a certain size, should still be functional in the city, even after being pulsed, and didn't need to be replaced. They should work if power was restored.

They had even printed several construction manuals on how to build the engine, circulating pumps, and the ideal way to build collectors or combine them into greenhouses, along with an estimate of how deep underground the actual dwelling would have to be built to provide adequate shielding from pulses.

They had eight engines ready for Steve to take to his investors.

She turned off the lathe and started cleaning it up. It took a good half an hour to dig all the metal shavings out of every nook and cranny, but it was vitally important. They had only one lathe. She cleaned most surfaces with an old toothbrush. Then she oiled the moving parts and headed for the slop sink.

Argo joined her.

He put a dab of dishwashing detergent on his palm, then lathered it against her hand. The lathe was an oil slinging device, but it took a feather touch and a good eye to manually machine pieces that fit together as tight as an engine. He simply drilled holes at the press, filed ends and burs, assembled pieces, and generally cleaned up.

He slowly rubbed her hand until it was clean, then lathered the other. Moments like this made cleanup worth while.

She had nice hands. They got scratched and nicked and dry from all the oil, but they were still very pretty hands.

Tom had left the room several minutes ago and should be in the kitchen by now, while Argo lathered around her ring, then kissed her on the cheek.

She smiled when she looked him in the eyes.

"You want to save some hot water tonight?" he said.

"It makes power heating the water."

He kissed her on the lips. "You want to make a lot of electricity tonight?"

She kissed him back.

Tom knocked on the door again, listened, then smiled as he walked away. Sometimes they both slept late. He didn't blame them a bit. They were married after all. And it wasn't like they had to be at work at a specific time. Making two or three a week was plenty. Tom walked back to the main room, turned on the TV, and started playing a video game. His argument wasn't just for the benefit of Argo, after all. He enjoyed a good game every now and then too.

Solar power was an interesting thing, the only way you could waste it was if you left any unused.

"Morning, Tom," Argo said as he entered the main room. "Sha—, Sally is, uh—"

Tom put the game on pause as he turned from the couch, "If she's anything but too happy to go to work, then shame on you."

Argo poured a glass of water, grabbed a breakfast bar, then headed toward the couch. "No keyboard? You actually found some game controllers?"

Tom smiled. "I try to keep her happy too. She's a valuable asset, Jonde. I hate to see her depressed. From a purely business position, it hurts the bottom line." He cleared the room of the last zombie. "But she's a good person. Good things should happen to good people, otherwise, life just doesn't seem to make any sense." A dozen ambushed him from a hidden chamber and killed him, middle of the screen. "Son of a bitch! I hate that." Tom restarted the game.

Argo chugged his drink, "You— you mind if I play second man?"

Tom handed him the other controller, and the slowest computer in the building reloaded the level.

Argo only intended to play for a few minutes, but it ended up going for well over an hour. Despite Tom's falter earlier, he proved to be very agile in clearing the rooms. He even mastered the last second sidestep that could easily have been mistaken for pure luck, except it happened way too often.

Shadona walked into the room, rubbed her fingers through Argo's hair, kissed him on the cheek, then said, "If it's all the same to you guys, I'm going to take the day off." She grabbed something from the fridge and headed back to the room.

"She loves you, Jonde," Tom said as Argo's man died on the screen. "I hope you know what that entails. I'm not sure I do."

Argo paused on those familiar words, got up, and left the room.
Chapter 40

They sat on the top floor and looked out the open windows.

The office building was on the outskirts of the city, not the city proper. Within sight of the third floor were clusters of other office buildings, several unmarked warehouses, and a stripped Wal-Mart warehouse. TVs and such cluttered the parking lots around abandoned vehicles and the remains of cardboard boxes. People didn't loot offices and industrial centers; hungry people never looked in them for food. Stolen TVs were often an afterthought and tended to get abandoned quickly when people realized how heavy they were to carry and the probability that it was just as broken as the one they had at home.

No newspaper. No radio. No TV. No Internet.

From the top floors, looking out, the country cried of quiet despair. Below their feet, crossing through the many doors leading to the basement, they could travel back into the modern world.

"I wonder if Steve has a house where we could plant a garden," Argo said, looking at her face, lost in thoughts outside the window, "something small, a little remote, quiet."

"I invented that engine almost ten years ago. I told them you could use the inside of a car the same way your father used the greenhouse as a second panel. It would recharge the batteries while it kept the inside of the car cool. It could do the same thing with a hot attic, even double as the car's air-conditioning and use less space, but they didn't listen. They just wanted a military app. It took me a year to get it published online, where nobody cared."

Argo put his arm around her. "My father was impressed."

"I tried. I tried to make a difference, to be the person of my own choosing." She looked across the ruins. "Was it ever meant to be?"

He hugged her closer. "I think we were."

"A lot of my ideas have other peoples' names on the patents. Worse than stealing was what they did with them."

He ran his hand across her back. "I heard a church bell ring last week."

After two months had passed, Steve was now officially overdue. Overdue could mean a lot of things. The roads may have been impossible. His antique car could easily have broken down and left him stranded somewhere. He could have gotten hit by a far larger pulse that fried more than just the lights and radio. A large enough pulse could even reach them in the basement. It was impossible to say. But Steve was a very resourceful man. He could easily be delayed by any number of things.

He could also be dead.

Tom garaged the truck in a steel shipping-container beside the building. That should offer it sufficient protection to remain functional until they needed to use it again. They were nearly out of pipes and supplies for building engines and faced the prospect of having to drive for more, or make a difficult decision.

They sat in the main room after dinner.

Tom decided to start. "I don't know how long we should wait for Steve. As far as I care, this place was part of our deal with him. He took with him enough engines to convert over the few other places like this that he has. Your book was plenty thorough. With the food you brought with you from the apartment, added to what was already stored here, we can easily make it through winter."

"We have the truck," Argo said.

"Sure, true. We have that, too. And enough parts to get it running after one or two more pulses. Lets look at it this way, the basics. It all boils down to stay, or go. We're a little removed from people, no smoke or loud exhaust to give us away. But, eventually, we will be found.

We have what it takes to stay, reasonably, comfortably. Stay, and wait. If he shows, then there is a good chance we have a market, and even more important, we can do a lot of good for the most number of people. Just getting irrigation pumps working again can make the difference between a garden and a farm. We can do that. Steve said he had that kind of thing lined up."

Shadona looked at the table, "I doubt anyone would take the three of us seriously."

"No, you're probably right about—" Tom said.

"Average person would probably loot the place," Argo said.

Shadona stood, "It feels wrong to have three meals every day, when so many— it feels guilty."

Tom looked up at her, "We are the bag of seeds, and this is fertile ground. The bag may feed one or two for a year, but the ground can feed hundreds for a lifetime." He leaned back in the chair with a squeak, "We just need Steve, our farmer. That guy that does everything between the two."

Shadona sat, then put her head on the table.

"He's probably dead," Argo said.

"Probably," Tom said.

"What are we going to do?" Shadona said.

"Stay," Tom voted.

The other two agreed. Leaving just before fall seemed a most irresponsible thing to do, anyway. The vote was mostly aimed at the following spring.

They converted the southern side of the building into a kind of three-story greenhouse, and scavenged interior walls to make it happen.

They procured topsoil from just past the parking lot and used the dried seeds they had brought from the apartment for food as the seeds. Northern beans sprouted almost immediately. Same with corn, lentil, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, and pintos. They even had some popcorn sprouting from their last microwave bag.

Southern windows wouldn't grow but a few feet into the room, but the windows reached from one end of the building to the other. It looked to be quite a harvest, scheduled around winter.

Too bad they didn't have any lettuce, broccoli, or cauliflower.

Gardening became their main filler of time, now that they had made all the engines they had material for.

Argo woke in the underground office. Without windows, keeping up with the time was difficult to do. His watch had stopped with the first pulse, but he was sure it was morning. Their bed was next to a desk and a lamp on the floor. The bed was from the Wal-Mart warehouse, as were the sheets and a few other things.

Much better than the one they had in the apartment, it was the most comfortable foam he had ever slept on.

But as comfortable as it was, he didn't want to sleep anymore. His morning started with kissing her.

Suddenly sad that she couldn't have children, he wondered whether it would have been enough of a reason to not get involved, if she had told him now that he was older. But he was young when he found out, and it didn't matter. It hadn't made him this sad, back then. He kissed her again.

The lights in the hall caught his eye as they cracked under the door, the only light in the room.

Contrary to popular opinion, they never turned out lights in hallways or main rooms. Fluorescent replacement tubes would be impossible to find. Most exploded on the first pulse, those that it missed had exploded on the second or third. There was every likelihood that the few bulbs they had were all they would ever get. Turning them on and off reduced their lifespan far more than leaving them on all the time did. The electricity was free, so they left them on all the time, usually with potted plants nearby.

Except in the bedrooms.

He could reach for the lamp, he knew where it was, but he reached for her hands instead, lips pressed to her fingers. They were much softer now. The drying, peeling, harsh oils of the lathe and tools was a thing of the past. They had built their last engine for a while. Dirt and seeds left her hands quite soft, by comparison.

They had done the same for his hands as well.

He liked touching her.

He liked feeling her respond.

She had been awake for a while, and he sensed a little sadness in her as well.

He worked the sheets off of them with his feet as he enjoyed her silhouette. He ran his hand across her back, then placed a few kisses on her bare shoulder.

"I'm not making a difference here," she said.

He paused, then stroked her shoulder length hair. "You make all the difference to me."

"I made a difference at work. Everything felt possible. I feel bad for Tom. He's alone here."

He bolted up, "I'm not sharing you, if that's what you're thinking." He tickled her as best he could in this much dark.

They didn't have sex as much as he thought married people would. But, he was finding that it wasn't as critical to a relationship as he once thought.

He liked tickling her almost as much. He liked hearing her laugh. He liked seeing her smile. There was a lot to love about this girl. He snuggled in to enjoy her more.

The window gardens were coming in nicely. The top three floors were unheated. They had removed some of the other windows to allow for ventilation during the summer, but even replacing them left the floor incredibly cold. Except the little six-foot wide hallway they built for the garden, next to the windows. Inside it was kept at a tropical warmth, even in the winter.

Getting to it was their only hardship. It needed very little weeding, had few bugs, and most of the watering was handled with the water pump and the cistern required for roof runoff by the older building codes.

By the time winter hit them full force, they had a mammoth surplus of food for three.

The first warm winter day found them knocking on the church doors.

They knocked again, louder this time.

"I'm sorry, but we have no food," the father said before opening the large, oak doors.

Shadona smiled at the Father. "Do many people ask?"

The Father looked at the three of them. He hadn't ever seen them before. "More than anyone would like, my dear. They bring their children in hopes that the sight of a hungry child will garner more sympathy. Sympathy is the one thing there is no shortage of."

She looked at Argo and Tom, "Then we are at the right place." She pointed to the crudely fashioned cart they had lugged nearly six miles that morning. The truck would have been faster and much easier, but the sound of it lumbering through the town would have attracted far too much attention. "I'd put aside some of those seeds for planting this spring."

People pushed carts everywhere, especially when they looted. They drew no attention walking that way.

It felt good to make a difference. Even if it was very small.

The Father was so grateful that he wanted to talk to them all day, but they left after an hour.

He told them of the sorrow and despair he encountered every day. But the Father was used to people finding the church in their moments of greatest need. The Father wasn't a mayor, but he was the most logical place for the government to go to keep in touch with what was left of the community. Elections were suspended. Curfew warnings were glued to otherwise useless telephone poles and store windows. He accumulated more gossip and newspapers than the library. His most recent headline confirmed that the vast majority of the country was doing without almost everything. Pulses had nearly collapsed it all, coast to coast. Only about ten percent of the country still had power. Cattle were working fields before they were slaughtered that winter. Combat casualties had topped a quarter of a million. Only one carrier battle group was believed still afloat.

The dust seemed to be attracted to the cities that used the most power. It was believed that when they accumulated enough particles, it created the shorts that generated the massive pulses. The ten percent that still had power used self-imposed blackouts to encourage the dust to dissipate. Some stayed dark every other month.

It seemed to be working, no more cities had fallen. At least, not that the Father had heard.

Very few people remained in the city, mostly those without the means to leave. Without power, farms needed labor. Most laborers were willing to work for food.

Unfortunately, farmers that weren't willing to accept work for food were slaughtered for their food, mob style. Mobs knew nothing of how to plant crops, weed, irrigate, or grow food in any manner at all. Desperate mobs inherited farms that they could do nothing with, so they killed again and again leaving a wake of abandoned farms, until martial law was implemented.

Farms were guarded like gold.

"You know, when the Internet was up, this would take seconds," Tom said, sitting at the computer.

"It's a pity," Shadona said, looking at the same screen. "The biggest engines we can build are only twenty, maybe thirty horse, tops. We would need a real machine shop to build anything bigger. They can be ganged together, but then the collector becomes unfeasible, no matter how many ways I look at it."

Tom looked up from the screen, "I just don't see any place— All of the local bodies of water are located too far for a ten-horse motor to deliver water to where it would do any good. I'm sorry. We could drive around some, but that's like driving an ice-cream truck through a preschool playground on the hottest day of summer."

She pointed at the screen, but stopped. They had been at it for hours. "Steve had the right idea. Farmers and irrigation pumps are the biggest bang you can get with one of these. We could drive for days and not find the right farm. And finding the wrong farm might well have been what happened to Steve."

Argo brought over the printouts on farming, greenhouses, old-school ways to do soil tests, water management, and general farming techniques. The spines were bound with Liquid Nail and the cover was an old cereal box with a magic marker title, but it was the best they could do with what they had.

By spring, they would have another shipment of excess seeds for the Father.

They waited for a full moon before driving out to the old job sight to gather the last load of supplies it had left to offer.

While Argo slept, Shadona walked to the church. "Father," she said.

He looked disappointed when he didn't see another cart of food or the other men. "Come in, my child."

"Father," she said, "can God forgive any sin? Can anyone born in the ultimate act of blasphemy ever find forgiveness?"

"Sit down, my child," he said, "start at the beginning."

She wiped her left eye with the back of her fingers, then told him the heavy burden she had been carrying all these many years.

Their next delivery to the father was of books and ready-made greenhouses that could be placed in any south-facing window, a few kits for south-facing decks. Had they given them to individuals, they likely would have been fought over or hoarded, but giving them to the Father helped foster a sense of community and sharing from the people who ultimately received them.

The Father, through his connections to the community, was able to acquire a precious few seeds for lettuce, spinach, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and such. He entrusted a small portion to them in the hopes that they could breed enough seeds from them for a proper start to spring.

They happily did him that favor.
Chapter 41

By spring, they had gone from machinists to expert farmers. Perhaps even seed engineers. Shadona had a knack for breeding plants, which was made much easier when cross-pollinating bugs were removed from the equation.

". . . mole people," Shadona said, storming out of the room.

Argo shook his head at the table. "We're making a difference here, right?" Argo asked.

Tom was just as befuddled by her sudden departure, "I think so."

"Why not just wait a few more months and see if Steve shows up? We could stay here indefinitely, right?" Argo went to the microwave and popped in a fresh potato. "I mean, this is pretty sweet, right? We don't have any new games or videos, but, come on, most people don't even have this."

"I think she's restless, but you know her better than I do."

Argo stood by the microwave and waited for the ding. "Restless? Enlisting is damn near suicidal." He decided to tell Tom, now that he knew the man much better. "I met her when she escaped from a military base. I didn't believe— She had some story about everyone being out to get her, so I just figured she was paranoid. But, one day they came for her. Shot my father, almost killed my mother, and shot a dear, innocent friend of mine in the head trying to get her back. Hell, Jonde and Sally aren't even our real names. We've been running for our lives from them, just hoping they believed we were dead. Now that it's nearly impossible for them to ever find us, she wants to turn herself in."

Tom looked stunned.

"I love the girl, God knows I do, I'd do anything for her. I gave up everything just to be with her." He walked to the table and sat across from Tom. "I think if Steve came, and she could see how much more she had to contribute here than over there, she might change her mind. But, I just can't talk her out of it. She acts like it's her duty." Argo looked at the microwave, "I just don't know what to do."

Tom thought about it while the minutes counted down. "Mother's don't leave their kids behind. You could do that. I even saw an army medical manual about delivering babies that Dave downloaded on his old laptop, leftover since they had their last kid, I guess. Most guys your age aren't looking to have children right away, but—"

"She can't have children. Something about what they did to her at the base." The microwave dinged. "It's a pity too, I think she would have made an excellent Mom." He thought of his short time as a father with Coulette, then got his potato.

Tom pondered it some more. "You could threaten to enlist with her. She might—"

"I already did," Argo said, dicing it up with his fork, "I just couldn't bear the idea of sitting here, wondering if she was ever coming back." He returned to the table. "You can really see the soldier in her, sometimes." He blew on a chunk, then put it in his mouth. "I think that's why they took motherhood away from her, so the soldier would be all that was left. I don't want her to go. I just can't think of anything I can do to make her stay."

"Maybe Steve will eventually show. Maybe we can keep adding weeks of waiting, until it's fall again."

Argo forked more potato. "Mole people," he said with a laugh.

Tom remembered it better, "No, she said she was tired of being queen of the mole people."

"I wonder how many pockets like this are left in the world?"

"I don't know. But, it seems impossible that any country would have buried entire factories, clean rooms, or chip centers and such underground, let alone the power plants needed to run them. Smelters, foundries, extruders, it just seems impossible, just think of all the little pieces and parts that go into everything, just leaving one out. . . Maybe a military base here and there, a small machine shop in a coal or salt mine or something. But nothing approaching an industrial scale. You remember that device Sally built to measure the pulses last year? This city has been dead for months, but it still gets pulsed every few weeks. She said they seem to be getting stronger too. Mole people. It may be a way of life from here on out, not exactly how people are used to living."

Argo continued eating.

Argo and Tom visited the Father and were able to persuade him not to tell Shadona about the scheduled spring or summer visits from the state recruiters by basically bribing him. They were, after all, feeding several families by just staying and had provided the tools and basic skills to make many more self-sufficient. The Father had his selfish reasons, as did they.

By midsummer, it was clear that Steve was never coming.

The Father stood outside the office building, "It looks like all the others."

Shadona showed him inside. It looked thoroughly ransacked and abandoned, as intended. But, after negotiating the obstacle course of rubble, she showed him into the hallway greenhouse on the first level. He was very impressed.

After the tour upstairs, they headed down.

Shadona stopped at the first metal door. "Now, this is incredibly important," she said. "You have to make sure that the door is completely closed before you open the next one. You can never have two doors open at the same time. It's critical." She opened the first door, stepped over the threshold, then closed it behind them.

They walked another twenty feet to another door. Written on the walls and door was the same warning she had just given. There were four metal doors per level, with an additional two doors between floors. It may well have been overkill, but it worked.

He was so stunned to see electric lights that he said a silent prayer. "How?" he said.

"We turned each floor into a giant Faraday cage that basically turns the magnetic pulses into heat that is then dissipated into the earth," she said.

Argo could see that the Father was as lost as Argo first was about Faraday's magic box. "She's very smart," he said to the Father.

"How much were you able to save?" the Father asked.

They gave him the grand tour. It would be the Father's soon enough.

Dear Mom,

A lot has happened since the night you were shot.

I missed Dad's funeral, and your recovery. I hope you found Max, I miss that brave little cat.

I don't know where to begin, or where it'll end. I love the girl you knew as Sally. She didn't die that night, despite what you may have heard. We tried to hide from those people who killed Dad and nearly killed you. We survived the pulses, and tried to do the best we could for those around us.

We got married a few days ago. It was a beautiful fall day, the sky even had a pretty glow of green and blue. A Father in the city was kind enough to marry us. Her name is now Shadona Caranf.

We are enlisting in a few days, I don't know if it'll do any good. I'm nervous, and a little scared. I think this must have been how the Japanese who volunteered for those one-way flights over the Pacific must have felt, except I have a better chance of coming back. I hope some good will come of the choice I made today.

I love you, Mom. I think I would have liked to have said that in person, but paper is the best I can do.

The Father who married us promised to get this to you. But I doubt it'll happen soon.

Love, your happily married son,

Argo Caranf
Chapter 42

"A pilot, you say?" the sergeant said.

"Yes Sir," she answered, "I've flown everything in existence, Sir."

"I find that hard to believe, Girl, but we are in desperate need of pilots." He produced a flipbook with unlabeled instrument clusters and started his quiz. Only to be rapidly convinced of her claims.

Argo and Tom had enlisted at the same time, but were assigned as infantry, same unit, and were separated from Shadona nearly immediately. Sadly, she found herself married, and more alone than ever.

Shadona stood in the office, waiting. She had passed every test they had given her over the last four days. Not just passed, but top of her class.

The general stepped into the room.

She gave him a respectful salute. "How many HB series planes do you have at your disposal, Sir?"

He looked at the report, "Passing wasn't good enough, you had to get perfect scores."

"How many, Sir?"

He stared at her, "What is the minimal speed for operating the railguns?"

"Mach 2. The potassium carbonate is injected into the fuel/air mix, which then passes through a magnetic field and generates the pulse needed to fire. Standard MHD drive. But, it can actually fire them at subsonic speeds, they just don't hit with meaningful force."

"How do you know about the HB series?"

"I've flown them."

He stared at the unassuming woman in his office. "The enemy has six, that we can confirm."

That was rather buckling news. "How did they get them, Sir?"

The general sat on the corner of his desk, "Near as we can tell, a west-coast professor emailed the plans to China, Iran, and North Korea. Together, we figure they could have made three a year. At great cost, we hit their plants, but not before they sank most of our fleet. We've processed less than a hundred people who already know about the HBs, they all came in as a group near the start of the war."

"I was detained, Sir." She indicated her wedding ring.

"I see. We have about two dozen HB-6a's—"

"A's Sir?"

"Composite skin. We project they can't go toe-to-toe for more than a minute with the real thing, but they are in it for that full minute."

"You can't use composite against them, Sir. They'll be—"

"We are. The HB-6as have beam weapons that—"

"The real ones have a heat shunting skin, not a composite. A beam will do nothing against that. Only the railguns have a chance, and even then you have to use heat dissipating rounds, not tungsten. The beams were designed as a ballistic defense system. Nothing more."

The general looked quite upset. "I've seen the tests, they burn through a foot of armor in under a second."

She nodded, "Armor, yes, even a small piece of the skin about the size of a plate, but not a full wing." She disliked explaining herself, "A match can vaporize a drop of water, but it can't even boil a cup. To reach the melting point of the wing is in the hundreds of terawatts, about a thousand times more power than anything those engines can generate."

The general looked sick. He had just sent them out on a seek and destroy mission. She made her way though the system a week too late. "We have no way to recall them."

"How many HB-6s do you have?"

"We didn't have the power for the skin, that's why we went with composites. The first will be completed this week."

She paused. "A four-to-one advantage is the Sherman approach. It might work. It isn't hopeless. Any of the early models left?"

"Just one, badly damaged and completely disassembled. They're using it as a template."

"I'm the best pilot you have, General," she said.

He walked around and sat behind his desk, "We'll see."

* * *

Boot camp was mostly grueling marches and running, but Tom and Argo handled it well. They didn't even have enough ammo to fire their guns, so target practice involved mostly throwing dummy grenades and knives, then an hour a day with crossbows.

They did fifteen miles a day with a full pack near the railroads.

It was exhausting.

At the end of 'accelerated' training was a two-day trip on the train to the coast where they rallied up with other camps at the port.

Most troop transports of any size had been sunk over a year ago, with the possible exception of one carrier group that nobody seems to be able to locate. Submarines still functioned flawlessly but were relegated to defense and escorts. Moving men and machines across the ocean was a difficult logistic task to complete, even with the huge transport ships they no longer had. Thousands of smaller boats were constructed, mostly from wood, painted the color of the ocean, and sent across in the most diffuse pattern they could derive. It was a logistical nightmare.

It wasn't pretty. They were crowded, confining, and dangerous in high seas. But the oceans were patrolled by enemy planes, and sinking thousands of targets was thought to be nearly impossible.

Squads rode across together in the same boat to foster unit cohesion. Argo and Tom rode with their instructor.

"You are lucky, Boys," the boat captain/instructor said. "They tried everything before they came up with the thousand leaves on the pond idea. They first had what we called the concrete coffins. It was a submarine of sorts made out of a concrete pipe, shaped like a submarine. About sixty feet long, twelve wide. It had a sixty-foot snorkel that went up to the surface and a diesel engine. It went the whole way submerged. Sixty feet of water helped protect it from attack from the air, and the only thing that gave it away was the little straw sticking out of the water.

But they couldn't surface very easily. You had to swim out the bottom. And they could sink one with a grenade or mines. They cracked real easy. But they worked for a while.

This'll work for a while, until the enemy adapts again."

They stood on deck under the eerie blue glow of the night sky. Weeks confined inside of a concrete tube sounded like torture. Dim light, no wind on their face. Only to die from a mine a few hundred feet short of the other side.

"Don't worry, Men. The worst they do now is strafe. It rarely kills anyone, just sinks the boat. I survived two this year. The thing about a thousand leaves is, there is usually someone just a day or two behind you. Sooner or later, you get rescued."

The captain spotted a flicker in the distance, pulled out a long telescope-looking device, then signaled them back. Smoking was strictly prohibited on deck, the flicker could be seen for miles, but a flicker at the end of a long tube could only be seen by the person it was aimed at. In this case, another boat in their convoy.

"We have some assistance to render, Men. Make room for one more."

They soon altered course for what sounded like a whistle, then pulled a man in from over the side. "Thank you," the drenched man said, "Now I know why they said that whistle was more important than my dog tags."

"How many more?" the captain asked.

"Two more," he replied.

The captain climbed as high as he could and slowly panned his telescope-looking light across the horizon behind them until he got a flash in return. He silently relayed the needed information.

They communicated through the simple line-of-sight devices almost every night. It was difficult and cumbersome, but it worked well enough and it kept them mostly on course.

They adjusted to their new landing site.

* * *

The nose popped up with a puff of vented gas, the engines shifted from reverse to full forward, and the plane bolted off the ground like a bottle rocket. She pulled some standard maneuvers, hit eight of eight targets, then belly flopped the landing as she had done for most of her life.

"Caranf," the officer in charge said as she exited the plane, "You're identity has been confirmed. It takes a little longer without databases."

She removed her helmet.

"The general would like to see you again. This way, please."

"Reports from the front," the General said. "We lost six trying to use the beams to down one of theirs. Another four trying to use the guns with standard tungsten rounds, and another three in the retreat. But, we did down one. That's better than ten squadrons of raptors ever did."

"Sorry, Sir."

"If we can down the other five, we'll have a chance of turning this war around. Whatever the price, we have to clear them from the sky."

"Yes Sir."

"Fingerprints. You were still on file, when we knew what obscure corner to look. A very thick file, in fact. I had to assign someone else to read it for me. Test pilot, huh? I think that was what you told the sergeant."

"Yes Sir."

"You went AWOL three times."

"Yes Sir."

"God help me, I'm going to clear you. We are just that desperate."

* * *

"Head for the Mosque," the lieutenant yelled as every window opened up with small arms fire on them.

Tom lobbed another smoke grenade as the squad ran for the doors.

They rallied inside.

"We lose anyone," the lieutenant said.

"No Sir," they answered in unison.

"Listen up, Men," the lieutenant continued, "keep it close to the buildings. They have air superiority out here, so, don't ever get caught out in the open, and if you have to be exposed, for God's sake, don't do it as a tight group."

"Yes Sir," they answered.

"Sergeant," he said.

"Yes Sir," their sergeant said.

"Take your men and. . . " the two of them walked over to the maps as the orders were handed out.

Tom and Argo took the break to open one of their MREs.

All too soon their sergeant was back, and they moved out through some tunnels inside the Mosque and started clearing buildings.

"Mich," the sergeant screamed into the radio while they were taking fire, "Top floor, left side!"

The suit sprinted across the field at better than forty miles an hour and simply shoulder blocked its way through the wall and into the building.

The squad poured in behind it.

The suit took point as they cleared each room.

The suits were making one hell of a difference. They were like personal tanks that could fit inside of buildings. It didn't matter the name of the man inside the suit, sooner or later, they all answered to Mich.

The third floor exploded after Mich breached the wall beside the door. His gun made a distinctive sound, like a disturbed nest of angry bees, or Satan's weed-eater. Mich pulled the door off the hinges as he came back out, "Clear," he said through a speaker on the suit, "I've got another call." Then he left back down the steps.

The squad took up positions at the windows and provided cover for the squads coming in behind them, as well as sniping hostiles in other buildings.

The sergeant tapped Argo on the shoulder and pointed to the bodies littering the floor. With so much gunfire in this acoustical room, conversation was nearly impossible. But his gestures were clear enough.

Argo slung his rifle, grabbed the nearest one by the feet, then started stuffing them into bags and shoving them into closets.

They held that position for their first week in field.

* * *

She ran her hand across the skin of its wing. It felt nearly identical to the HB-4, just about five feet longer.

She closed her hand into a fist. They had copied the computer core, too. Almost flawlessly. It actually recognized her.

She climbed inside as they filled it with some very expensive fuel.

She hadn't been in combat for years.

Today, she was going to kill someone.

It was the only thing she wasn't ready for.
Chapter 43

"Get down!" Tom yelled, pulling Argo out of the way as bullets riddled the wall.

Argo rolled across the ground as chunks of bricks ricocheted behind him.

"Son of a bitch!" Tom said, ducking down himself, holding his arm. "I know why you're here, how the hell did I end up— I had electricity, a big screen TV, a library of movies as big as blockbusters, running water and a damn bed to sleep in!"

Argo held his gun up over the mound of rubble and returned fire. His forearm had a fiber optic array that was attached to the scope of his sub-machinegun. It wasn't perfect, but it let him see around corners and often had him going in first, when Mich wasn't around. "I don't know why either, but I'm glad you're here. At first, I thought you were just trying to get with my wife, but getting killed right beside me is a hell of a way to do that." He loaded another clip, then stuck his arm over the mound and found another target. "Clear!"

They cautiously got up.

Argo rolled his sleeve over the optic array. It scratched easy. "Medic!" he yelled, looking at Tom's arm.

"I've had far worse," Tom said, stopping the blood with his dirty glove.

He looked at the weird Arabic words written on all their uniforms. "What does it say again?"

"Aim for the arm," Tom answered.

Argo laughed. People were dead, but somehow, Tom's bullet wound was funny. "No, really."

"Something about freeing the people of Iran from their oppressive government, I don't really remember."

Argo held Tom's gun while the medic ripped open the sleeve.

"Hell, it might say 'Buy Pepsi, shop at Wal-Mart' for all I know," Tom said.

This time, even the medic laughed.

Stitches in the field were all he was ever going to get, evacuation was nearly impossible. The medic finished the last stitch without anesthesia, "There you go," the medic said slapping Tom on the shoulder, "You're nigh invulnerable again."

They moved on.

It wasn't all that rare, but some of the native population, mostly the women, would wave them into their homes. Especially after they liberated the town. The Iranian army had a nasty habit of going door to door conscripting children and using them as fodder. Most of the population didn't approve of such tactics, especially when some of the children were made to wear explosive vests.

But all squads had been warned. Drink only water they have personally seen come from a sink, and eat only what they had seen others eat. Poisonings happened too.

The squad hunkered down for the night in the family's home.

They didn't have a translator, but each soldier carried a notebook of common words written in Arabic beside English counterparts, and they could communicate through a series of pointing at words like food, water, enemy, friendly, but not in complete sentences.

Fortunately, the daughter of this family spoke understandable English.

"Mother say you stay night, ok?" she said. "Have room. Father killed for speaking out. Enemy no this house."

"You thank her," the sergeant said. "We'll try not to leave a mess."

The daughter translated. "It door second," the girl said, pointing around the corner.

The sergeant pointed to Argo to check it out.

Argo opened the door, hand on his gun. "Bathroom, Sir." Apparently, 'mess' had multiple translations.

The sergeant addressed the men, "Treat this lady's house like you were at your in-laws house for the first time. Don't mess up nothing." He pointed to Jim, "Not your in-laws, you're going through a divorce. You pretend like you're at my house and I'll march you to death if you track mud across the carpet."

They stayed two nights, then moved on to the next town.

They were spread out, none closer than two hundred feet apart, as they marched across the vast openness between towns.

Argo walked past an M-1A1 Abrams tank. The turret had been ripped open and sat a good twenty feet away. He walked between the two pieces. The entrance holes on the turret were as small as rifle rounds and looked like they had been drilled with a press. The exit holes on the tank looked more like a shotgun blast on cardboard. The few rounds that missed the tank left craters in the dirt the size of buckets. Nothing was safe anymore.

The squad regrouped as they arrived at the next town.

* * *

Her first few flights were unsuccessful, as far as her primary mission was concerned. She had problems finding five needles in a haystack, just as she assumed she would.

But N60 was such a precious commodity, she refused to waste it just flying around, looking. Instead, she roamed over their state with impunity and obliterated most of their domestic airpower, gathered needed surveillance for future military targets, then ran home.

She belly flopped from the sky, then landed at the base.

She pulled the computer core and carried it into the building as the crew taxied the plane into the maintenance hangar. She walked down the long stairwell, opening and closing large metal doors on her way to the lower levels. The core was taken from her and plugged into the underground base equipment as the intelligence crew scrutinized the surveillance logs.

She stood for her debriefing, then retired to her quarters.

She had probably killed a thousand people today. It sat heavy on her.

"Caranf," the courier said, delivering her next assignment.

It was a list of targets for her to destroy. If she destroyed enough of them, the other five were sure to find her. That had been the plan all along. N60 was the only way to cross the ocean on a single tank, and it was costing them a fortune.

Economically, it would make more sense to base her closer to the war zone and ship the fuel to her. But they had only one HB-6 and couldn't make another for years, if ever. The enemy could conduct surveillance while they flew too, so the further away the safer it was. Statistically, The United States was too vast to cover and thus offered them some degree of protection.

There was an expectation that she would eventually pass over where the other five were housed and hit them on the ground. If they were housed in Iran, odds were she would find them in the next few weeks, even if they chose not to engage her in the air.

She looked over the prints; the five had yet to be found.

She closed the folder and lay back in the bunk. She missed her husband more than she thought she would. She woke up missing him, and went to bed missing him. The quicker she could draw those five out, the safer he would be.

Tanks, planes, and trucks were difficult to manufacture when the power in the states was below ten percent and faltering around the world. But even manufacturing had to contend with shipping those heavy, bulky units halfway around the world, which helped explain the shift to mass production of the Michelin suits in the few remaining plants.

Power, electricity, energy was an essential input into everything. It was the food of modern life, and a sprinkling of dust was slowly starving the world. The war began as simple retribution, but it had now shifted priorities somewhat. They needed to find the dust. Somewhere in Iran was the manufacturing center, plans, or some remaining samples. Scientists around the world had radically different ideas on how to clean it out of the air, now that it was clear it would never settle. But none could be certain without a sample to analyze.

Getting a sample before civilization collapsed entirely was now a worldwide goal.

But missiles tended to get ripped apart by pulses or lightning from this supercharged aurora borealis before they even got close.

Shadona made a loose fist, then walked down the hall and entered the office. "Sir," she said.

"Yes, Caranf."

"The HB-6 is capable of obtaining a sample, Sir. It can reach into space. Not on conventional fuels, but on N60. If you want me to try, Sir."

The general looked up from his desk. "Our scientists said it couldn't, they put a ceiling on the use of N60 at 60,000 feet."

"They were right about the composite model. To burn N60 requires the MHD drives to provide the spark, if you will. Those drives produce huge magnetic fields that would trigger a giant pulse the closer you got to the dust. That point blank pulse would fry a composite, and they are right to require anything higher to switch to jet fuel. But the original skin can take the hit, Sir."

The general looked interested. "How big of a hit are you talking?"

"Big. It would probably trigger the biggest pulse on record. You would want to try it over something unimportant, like the ocean . . . or Canada."

He laughed at that last part. "They are still an ally, Caranf. Not a particularly useful one, admittedly. You sure it'll survive?"

She shook no. "Not sure, but I'm willing to take the chance."

"How not sure? What kind of damage are we talking about?"

"Bad, probably. But survivable. I would say 90% chance of recovering the sample, 65% chance of landing normally without destroying the plane."

"See, it's the destroying the plane that I'm having a problem with. I'd be happy to let you try if we had a dozen to spare, or after you down the other five."

"It might be too damaged by then. The skin has to be pristine if it's to have any chance at all of surviving."

"Then I suggest you don't let them put a scratch on it."

That was a no. "Just had to let you know the option existed." She returned to her room.

* * *

"Caranf!" the sergeant said.

Argo ran to his side, then ducked beside the wall.

"61543-8854432-144532-45564-ADS" the sergeant said.

Argo dialed it on his flashlight.

The sergeant pointed to a distant corner of the block, then tapped Argo on the shoulder.

Argo bolted, head down, across the field under fire and made his way over to some burning vehicles. Another took position on the other side of the street in front of Argo, then two more to their left. The fire intensified as the enemy realized what they were planning. On the sergeant's signal, they crouched and shined their lights into the air, middle of the day.

They held perfectly still, and waited.

Four hundred feet away, the entire block exploded into rubble, and most of the oppressive firing came to a halt. The ground shook so hard it knocked everyone off their feet. Windows broke for hundreds of yards and the dust of a violent sandstorm filled the air.

They struggled to their feet, turned the triangulating lights off, reloaded, and returned to their patrol.

His squad and two others had battled their way into the town and had forced the enemy to retreat to a stronghold. It was well buttressed and heavily defended. A Mich was even damaged trying to take it. So, out came the flashlights. It was dangerous, the lights gave away their position, but they could call down heavy ordinance at will.

Each squad traveled light and on foot. Conventional air support was impossible, for now. But these bombs were fired into orbit from stateside. They could orbit for almost a month before falling back and burning up in the atmosphere. Each squad was given a few numbers that they could use, and a window of dates in which to use them. This was their last bomb, but it was so worth it. Triangulation by coded flashlight. The person in front of Argo had the same number he did, and the bomb simply connected the points into a line. Where the line from the other two intersected with his was where the bomb landed, nearly as simple as aiming a gun. It didn't even have any explosives. It was just a heavy mass coming down hard and fast. Orbiting kinetic bomb. This one turned into millions of pellets that shredded every inch of that block.

It felt like an earthquake.

His knees wobbled like an aftershock.

They hunkered down in an abandoned home.

"I heard someone cleared the air of hostiles," Argo said, "At least, that's what that other squad said. Conventional hostiles, anyway. We haven't seen any hostile air support, recently, right?"

Tom tore open a MRE. "I hate these sandwiches. The bread never tastes right."

"How's the arm holding up?"

"It hasn't improved my opinion of the food, if that's what you're asking." Tom took another bite and made a sour face.

The medic came over and looked at the arm. "It's fine."

"You're not eating the same sandwich I am," Tom said with a straight face.

"Oh, for the love of—" Argo opened his pack, took out one of his MREs, handed it to Tom, and took what was left of Tom's sandwich.

Tom looked incredibly offended, "Great, the one-armed man has to open another one of these damn things."

The squad broke out laughing.

They assembled at the next rally point to get re-supplied, but there was nothing there. Food was low, and their ammo was short. In the last town, they had stumbled across a weapons cache and stocked up. If it hadn't been for that foresight, they would have been unarmed right now.

But even their stolen guns were now running low.

"What do we do now, Sergeant?" one of the men asked.

"Well, it's either wait or move on to the next rally."

"Ain't no war ever been won by waiting," another man said.

"True that."

They broke out a map and plotted the next town.

Compasses and watches didn't work anymore, and the night sky looked pulsingly familiar to most of the men. Detailed street maps were their only reliable means of navigation, that and plotting the sun. The sergeant looked up from the map. "That way, Men. About two days. Listen. Our ammo situation is desperate. Single shots, check your targets, and remember where bagged hostiles dropped their weapons. You may need it. Try not to engage, unless you have to."

They headed out.

Argo drew second watch, top of the roof. He was supposed to be watching the streets below, but he couldn't help looking above at the horizon. It was a pretty green, like the night they got married. He looked at his ring. He could tell when the city was getting pulsed, even inside. His ring got warm and felt like it was crawling on his finger. It was now tied on a loop of string with his dog tag.

He felt bad about not wearing it, but the sergeant had ordered all metal jewelry, especially those that looped like necklaces and rings, be removed from direct contact with skin.

Off in the distance, something flashed smaller than a twinkling star in the west, then something burst into flames like a meteor exploding in the east. Two more explosions happened in rapid succession and the sky above the twinkle glowed bright blue, then faded away.

It seemed like minutes had passed before he heard a distant rumble like thunder.

He checked the streets below, nothing.

Buildings burned in the distance.

* * *

She pulled the computer core from the plane, walked to the building, handed off the box, showered, and headed for her bunk. She was tired, end of a very long day.

She fell asleep immediately.

Her room erupted in celebration, party makers, and cheers that morning after only a few hours of sleep.

"Please," she said to the crew, "the next two will be extremely tough, and I need my sleep before I face them."

The general made his way though the sea of people trying to crowd their way into her tiny quarters.

She stood at attention, as did they all.

"Three in under a minute," he said, "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"Sir, the enemy didn't know what the beam weapons were for, before. They were misusing them, much like you did. They will know better this time, especially if even one computer core survives, like they usually do. Sir, today, when I face the remaining two, I can't afford to be distracted by all of this."

The general gestured for everyone to leave the room, "You won't be meeting them today. The people here have seen nothing but crushing defeats at the hands of six airplanes. Six of them decimated almost every capital asset we had in the region, and they strafed the hell out of most known bases stateside, with impunity." He gestured outside her room, "Those people need a success. They need hope. They need a celebration." He put his arm around her, "They needed this win. You're not returning to flight for a few days anyway. Those heat dissipating, high polish, reflective rounds are incredibly difficult to make. And that plane burps them out two thousand a second. Girl, you out o' ammo." He opened the door and started the party proper.

They hoisted her onto their shoulders and carried her around, screaming with joy.
Chapter 44

"Son of a bitch!" Tom yelled, tossing down his empty rifle, then pulling a Chinese pistol. "Where the hell did they all come from?"

"You have to let them get closer," Argo said, "or we don't stand a chance of pilfering any guns or ammo." Yet, after saying that, he sprayed and dropped a man over forty yards away. "Damn it!"

The sergeant pulled four pins and heaved two handfuls of grenades into the window.

One grenade was lobbed back, blowing him up.

Argo and Tom abandoned their position, leaped into the still smoking window, and tried to scrounge for guns among the dead and dying. They hadn't eaten in two days. The clip Argo found didn't go with his gun, so he tossed it to Tom.

The last member of their team rolled through the window.

"Jackpot!" Tom yelled, pulling a crate of ammo out from an overturned couch. He started passing it—

Three RPG blasts brought down the wall and most of the floor above them, burying them in rubble.

Tied, bound, and gagged with hoods over their heads, they were stripped of their gear and stuffed into a darkened closet, then left there until the next day.

Grabbed by the rope around his neck, Argo was dragged from the closet and out into the room.

They beat him for the next five minutes while shouting words he didn't understand, then shoved him back into the closet.

They were pulled out of the closet and beaten for a few minutes, then a gunshot sounded, followed by a wet thud. After a long silence, they were shoved back into the closet.

They listened to foreign voices arguing in the other room.

One night, they were drug from the closet and marched to another town. When they arrived, their hoods were taken off at last. When their eyes adjusted, they were one man short.

A flashlight was set on the table next to a plate of food. Argo stared. He was starving.

The interrogator said something, then gestured at the coded flashlight, then the plate.

Argo shrugged. It wasn't that big of a secret. "The date on our numbers expired a few days ago. Besides that, the sergeant was the only one with the numbers, and he's dead." He shrugged again, "It's just a flashlight now."

Something walloped him from behind.

His head slammed into the table, cutting his lip. He took his time getting up. Looking strong and resilient only invited a more vigorous beating. "Dude, the numbers are gone."

He was pummeled again, then drug from the table and shoved into a walled courtyard between buildings. Bloodstains decorated the blocks on one wall, bumped and cratered with gunfire.

They stayed in the courtyard for the next three days, returning to the table with food and a flashlight several times.

One of the men from another squad gave them the numbers and was rewarded with the plate, then moved to another building. But within the next few days, the numbers must not have worked. They hung him in view of everyone.

Everyone in his courtyard was taken to a field where they were given shovels and picks. A ditch about eight feet deep had been dug and there were two stakes marking, they assumed, where they were expected to stop digging.

Four guards sat with machineguns while the prisoners dug what could easily be a grave.

They were provided one bucket of water.

When they finished, they were, for the first time in over a week, given a real meal consisting of mostly rice, a bland tasting corn, and a potato with an unusually tough skin.

Over the next week, they added hundreds of feet to the trench.

It no longer looked like a grave, but more like an irrigation ditch.

The ground shook with a boom. It felt like a direct hit with one of their orbiting kinetic bombs. The sandstorm ripped at their skin and pierced their clothes. The ringing in his ears sounded vaguely like a train.

Argo looked up as the dust slowly settled in the freezing cold courtyard. He couldn't see a thing but could feel something electric in the air. Something big was happening.

He saw a corner of the sky grow bright blue, then waited for the distant explosion. The guards fired their AKs wildly into the air as they danced in celebration.

Then, they abruptly stopped.

Argo looked into the sky and could barely see two blue lines that merged into a single point, where it continued to glow brighter than any other. Brighter than a full moon, it cast shadows on the courtyard walls.

He waited, then heard two loud booms so close they nearly sounded as one.

Three, all together.

It was a little puzzling. One was worth celebrating, but two more brought the guards to a state of mourning.

* * *

Her pod was dinged, cracked, singed, and scarred, but had saved her life. Now it was her greatest liability. She was badly bruised across the chest where she had been strapped in. She had won, barely, and was the world's first hypersonic Ace.

She stripped, then quickly donned a burka and set the self-destruct on the pod. She ran, but was very disoriented. She pressed her hand to her head, and passed out.

Cold water splashed on her face.

"Hi, I'm here to rescue you," the man said. "Communication is sporadic around here, and I was cut off from my battalion. Where was your rally point?"

She looked around. She was in a small room of a residence with no windows and just one door. Her head pounded, still disoriented.

"Quickly," he said, "This place is crawling with elite Iranian national guard, looking for an American pilot." The man lightly shook her, "We're cut off behind me, we have to go." He looked around urgently, then pulled out a map and placed a finger on it. "We are here, where is your extraction point?"

She looked at the man. He was dressed in a dirty American uniform, but she couldn't place his accent. She was good with accents. She bowed her head meekly and avoided eye contact. "My house was destroyed, I was looking for my husband. Have you seen my husband?" she said in what she figured was the appropriate Iranian dialect.

He hesitated. "Look, I know you were given some garb and a basic course in the language in case you were captured, but we don't have time for this. We have to move. Our position is compromised. Drop the game and let's get going." He tapped the map again.

She began to cry, then held her arms across her stomach, "My little Mohammad was killed in the collapse. I have to find my husband so he can say goodbye to his only son. Please," she kept in character, "you have to help me find him."

He folded the map, disappointed, then changed to the local language she was speaking. "Ok, let's find you a husband." He helped her stand.

The second they got out the door, they were surrounded by Iranian soldiers. Shadona went to the nearest one, pointed to her would-be rescuer and said, "Save me from the American."

The would-be rescuer calmly walked past the Iranians who seized her instead.

She woke in a dark room, soaked in cold water, naked, tied to a wooden chair. The pain in her head had started to subside, but it left her dizzy and very disoriented.

A man walked in.

"Please, I must find my husband so we can bury our only son," she said. "The American said nothing I understood."

The man drew his knife and pressed it to her thigh, "This looks like a bullet wound. Where would a girl out here get such a—"

"I was leaving a store with a chicken I had bought with my beloved mother, when some students decided to riot and I was hit by accident when the police thankfully put them down. Please, I have done nothing, my house collapsed around me and I've lost my son and my husband and I must find them, please. I didn't understand anything that strange man said to me."

He traced the bruise that crossed her chest with the tip of his knife, "And this?"

"My home collapsed atop me. Please, I must find him."

"And this," he pointed to the burn and the gash.

"When I was six, I—"

He slapped her across the face. "You are a pilot that this glorious nation has shot down." He punched her this time. "You are a filthy American spy," he stomped on her foot with his heel, "You lie with every breath you take," he stomped on her other foot, "your decaying stench gives you away." He kneed her in the stomach.

"Is true," she said, "My father sent me some soap from America before the war. But I am no spy. He is a proud member of Hamas. He scattered coins near—"

He kneed her in the stomach again. "Lies!"

She bit her cheek so her coughs would have flecks of blood, "Please, I must bury my son before it becomes a sin upon my soul."

He kneed her again and left the room. The windows were then covered, and everything went black.

They questioned her for a full week, but were unable to break her from her story.

A man came in, calmly pulled a chair from the corner, and sat before her. "Well. What to do with you."

"I must find my husband, and tell him of our son," she mumbled.

"Either you are a spy, or you were in a very wrong place at the wrongest time, and are the unluckiest girl in the world." He looked at the scar on her face. "You are clearly unlucky." He stood and looked her over. "We have a fatwa that covers women prisoners. You make a convincing Iranian, which is very unlucky indeed."

Like had happened so often in her life, others decided who she was.

Shadona and a few other prisoners were moved around to different camps every week or two. The only clothes she got were those she had to wash for others. Sometimes they were kept in a tent between towns, but mostly they were kept in boarded up rooms that only unlocked from the outside.

* * *

Argo watched from the courtyard as five women, dressed in burkas and tied like prisoners, were brought to the makeshift prison. The guards marched them up to the second floor and deposited one into each of the rooms, then bolted the doors from the outside. He looked at his calloused hands. He was in a labor camp, and they were digging a trench to somewhere, mile after mile, one shovel at a time.

There were worse things than digging.

The wind picked up as the sky slowly filed with sand.
Free her . . .

The man came into the room like the dozens before him.

The rope bound her foot to the bed as she sat and rocked back and forth. "I have to find my husband," she mumbled.

The man started taking off his clothes, "I'm your husband tonight."

"I'm going home soon."

. . .

It didn't rain often, or for very long. But it was raining again. When the door opened this time, the murmurs of a full courtyard blended with the gurgle of water trickling down the roof.

She rocked back and forth on the bed. "I'm going home today," she mumbled.

His pistol made a dampened thud when he took off his pants by the door and approached the bed.

Her rocking slowed. "Eight plus eight, minus three, minus three, minus three, minus three, minus three," she mumbled.

He pushed her down on the bed.

She punched him in the throat, wrapped her leg around his chin, and drove her knee into the back of his neck.

He dropped to the foot of the bed, legs twitching. His arms grabbed at her leg when she kneed him again, and he went limp.

"Leaves one," she whispered in his ear as she dropped the end of the rope beside his shoulder.

He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He watched helplessly as she walked over to the door, a piece of rope still tied to her leg, but no longer bound her to the bed. She paused, wavering back and forth as she mumbled something about home, then seemed to count on her fingers. The wavering stopped as her shaking hand tightened into a fist. She calmly put on his shirt, pulled the eight-round clip and the gun from his pants, then opened the door.

She fired three rounds into the guard at the top of the steps, picked up his rifle, and capped off ten rounds into each of the guards looking over the courtyard.

Three bodies and guns fell in as she ran barefoot downstairs with the pistol.

Argo bolted for the closest rifle and was machine-gunned in the back.

Tom was seconds behind Argo and was machine-gunned too, but managed to reach the rifle and strafed the gunner before collapsing.

The prisoners leapt into action as three more pistol shots rang out in rapid succession, some quick wet steps, then two rapid shots, three slower shots, steps, two rapid shots and a door, then a burst of rifle rounds again.

Three from Argo's squad made a human ladder for a fourth to go over the wall with a rifle. The gate opened and they flooded out.

Tom coughed blood as he tried to stand, but fell back into the mud beside Argo.

One of their squad ran over, "My God, Tom, how are you still alive?"

Tom put his hand on Argo's chest. "Hang in there."

The squad member checked, "Tom, he's gone."

Machinegun fire erupted outside the courtyard.

"Tom," the guy said, "Can you make it?"

Tom rested his hand on Argo's head, then collapsed in the mud.

"Shit." The guy checked Tom's neck, then grabbed the gun and ran out the gate.

The squad moved into the first building and found twelve dead bodies. They collected magazines and guns as they followed behind the carnage and picked off the stragglers.

"We can't stay around here forever," one said.

"I think this is all the prisoners," another said, pulling grenades out of an ammo box and handing them out.

"Ron," another said, "You were the last one captured. Any idea on a rally point?"

"Follow me," Ron said and headed back past the courtyard.

They stopped at the gate.

There was a barefoot figure inside, in the rain, kneeling over a body in the mud.

"Come on, we're going!" one yelled at the figure.

It knelt over the body's head, kissed, then sat up again.

He went in. "Come on, they're dead, we have to go!" He rested his hand on the figure's shoulder.

She sealed her lips around Argo's, blew, sat, then pressed on his chest.

"We're leaving," he said and grabbed the girl by the arm.

She twisted his wrist, dislocated his shoulder with a headbutt, then slammed him into the ground without missing a beat.

A member of Argo's squad entered the courtyard. "They're dead," he said, "Come on."

"Lady," the prisoner said, picking himself up out of the mud, "We have to go."

She continued CPR.

"Who is she?"

Gunfire rained down into the courtyard from above. The prisoners returned fire as they retreated out the gate. But the woman never moved.

Bullets strafed across her from above.

She slumped over.

The prisoners returned fire into the balcony as the woman struggled to sit again, pressed his chest with one hand, then leaned over his head before being strafed a final time.

Tom's hand rested on her head as he sat up. The rain slowed to a drizzle. Water dripped down his arms as he carried her from the courtyard. Coulette had freed her from the base by taking her place. He had freed her life to take another path, an opportunity tailored for her.

He hugged her lifeless form, his hand cradled her bloody head. "This never should have been asked of anyone," he whispered, then offered her all he had left.

He freed her from her tortured past.
The end

In the whisperings. . .

She walked through the fog as it cleared to a pond. It looked familiar. She should remember this place, but her memories were a blur. She saw a familiar face, casting a line, with a fiercely tiny cat pouncing at its edge.

It felt like home.

Hell from a Well

By TR Nowry

The rage of a lifetime washed through him as he lowered the woman to the ground. His fingers were so soaked in blood that she nearly slipped from his grip. They had escaped. They had made it. He stood over her lifeless form while shots fired in the distance. They had escaped, yet she remained their prisoner.

He clenched his fists by his side.

It needn't have been this way. Her brief life had been so filled with grief that her blood on his hands soaked her sorrow into— He wiped his hands on the tatters of his shirt, but it didn't help. He fell back on his heels, screaming at the cursed sky.

They would know where he was now, but he no longer cared. He pounded his fists into the ground by his sides. He wanted— He longed for a fight. He stared toward the distant gunfire. They had done this to her. Such unspeakable things. They would pay, and pay now.

His single mission had been to free this woman, but he had been thwarted at every turn. He stood with new purpose as sorrow turned to bitter rage in his heart. He ran toward the sounds.

Like a dozen bee stings could never hope to slow the charge of a bull, neither did the puffs from the closest gun. The barrel sizzled in his grip as he ripped it from the man. Man— no, this was no man. He stared into the boy's eyes. Bewildered, terrified, he could see the tears of a frightened child, the body of barely a man. The boy struggled for a breath as he tightened his grip around the boy's neck. Eyes bulging, the boy struggled pointlessly.

"You are but my first, today," he whispered in the boy's ear, "you will have plenty of company." Soon he was swarmed by dozens, downed by the pinch of relentless stings.

One wasn't enough, such a debt cried out for more. Flat on his back, he blinked at the sky. The voices grew louder as he lay. He had been shot, but it wasn't bad. He had been shot before. There was no point in standing, they would be much closer soon. He lay still, not a breath or a blink to give it away.

There was a bird on his palm, he hadn't seen it land. It was the tiniest thing, just out of the corner of his eye. It looked left, then right, then straight above. Its thin beak was nearly the length of its entire body. The white feathers of its belly were smudged in red. Faster than a blink, it was gone.

He stared at his empty palm. How had he— with the sting of so many bullets, he must not have noticed it land. How odd had that been? In the midst of all of this, what was it doing out here to begin with? He wanted to know. It suddenly seemed more important.

He sat up and stared at the palm.

Guns cocked and orders screamed his way, yet he ignored it all.

He tried to remember it, almost weightless on his hand. Lighter than a pebble. Perhaps the lightest thing he had ever held.

A barrel pressed into his back.

"Not now, I'm busy," he said, still staring at his hand. He hadn't time to play right now. A puzzle, a riddle called to be solved. It was on the tip of his tongue, the secret to it all. It had something to do with that—

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

He stood to the stunned amazement of his would-be executioner. "I said, not now!" He ripped the gun from his hands and promptly emptied the clip into everyone within sight, then stared at his empty hand. "Now, where was I?"

Anger washed over him again.

He had had it. It had been on the tip of his tongue.

He clenched his fist and turned. His arm shook by his side as he stared at the nearest corpse. He couldn't contain it anymore. First with kicks, then the punishing blows by hand, he took out his rage on now unrecognizable bodies.

It all turned red. Like a flame that quickly grew from a handful of leaves into a forest fire, his rage quickly consumed everything in sight.

Bullets felt like grains of sand in a windstorm, an annoyance at best, but hardly enough to dissuade.

"Him, the Michelin man!" one said before—

RPG! It had blown off his shoes, most of his pants, and all of his shirt. The hairs of his arm smoldered as he staggered to his feet, glaring at the bewildered boy, fumbling to load another.

He got to the boy first.

"Let's see how you like it," he said, setting the round off in his hand.

It blew him several feet and he lost the rest of his clothes, but unlike the boy, he stood again.

"I am his vengeance!" he screamed, blinking the ash and shards from his eyes. Twenty-six within sight, it wasn't enough. His lust demanded more. A battered Camry sped toward him.

"Do it in God's name!" they shouted as the car wove its way around the debris, toward him.

BOOOMMMMM!!!

