The Growing

Koda steps forward. “Dakota chunkshi Themunga,” she answers.

There is a moment’s silence, and Kirsten glances up at Koda. Then she says, “Anne, daughter of Marilyn.”

“Who speaks for you?

“I do, Dale fia d’LouAnn. And so does the Riga.”

“Pass on, then, if you come in friendship.”

The sentry shifts slightly, a dark shape against the light of the fire. She wears a bird mask with a large bill and a trail of streamers that fall down her back: a raven, Koda thinks, with a mantle of feathers. Beneath it she wears a short, fringed garment that leaves her arms and legs bare.

“We come in perfect love and perfect trust,’ Dale answers. Koda is not quite sure of that, but she does not question the response as Dale leads them down to the shore and a boat waiting. Once on the water, the big woman takes the oars, refusing help. “Nope, thanks. This is my job.”

As the dark water passes beneath them, the sound of drums comes across the surface of the lake, amplified in its passage. At first it is only a rhythmic pulse, wordless. But as the boat makes the curve of the island, the oars dipping and rising soundlessly, words become audible, dozens of voices chanting together.

Isis, Inana. Demeter, Kore. Over and over again the same words, names of the Goddess from the foundation of the world. The drums grow louder, the chanting more insistent. ISis, iNAna. DEmeter, KOre. ISis, iNAna. DEmeter Kore. The sound grows, echoed, it seems, from the rise of the mountains to east and west, thrumming over the water in ripples like the sounding of a great whale. Kirsten, sitting beside her by the gunwales, slips her hand into Koda’s, and Koda gives her a reassuring squeeze. Kirsten is out of her element here, about to enter a level of ritual and belief which she finds difficult to accept, even when guided by Dakota or Wanblee Wapka. Koda, though, doubts she will find much unfamiliar here, and nothing frightening or repugnant. The Mother is the Mother, whatever her children call her in different ages of the world, in lands far from each other.

Dale beaches the boat in a small cove, and leads Kirsten and Dakota over the narrow beach toward a wooded rise. As they walk, almost silent on the wet sand, Koda spies a hunched shape with a bushy tail, digging at the edge of the water, and touches Kirsten lightly on the arm, pointing. As she does, the raccoon brings a mussel up from its burrow, prying with clever hands at the shell. Perhaps tactfully, it has nothing to say to the passing humans.

Sometimes a raccoon is just a raccoon.

The drums have become land-bound thunder now, the red glow of fire visible as the trees thin. They emerge into a clearing where a torches mark the edges of a circle some twenty feet across, perhaps more. A dozen women, led by Morgan, dance around a flat stone at the center, their bodies moving to the beat of the drums. All wear some variation of the sentry’s costume: raven masks, fringed leather vests with loincloths or short skirts. Around the circle stand the rest of the Amazai, some similarly dressed except for the masks, more in their everyday jeans and workshirts. They chant the Goddess’ names over and over, their hands and feet beating out the rhythm along with the drums. Kirsten nudges Koda and gestures toward the dancers, and Koda leans down to whisper, “Priestesses. I think.”

Dale guides them to a place among the Amazai. From where she stands, Koda can see that the flat stone holds a metal bowl, gold in the light of the fires, a platter piled high with small loaves with fruits and flowers ranged around it, and a smaller earthen bowl. Incense smoulders in a pierced burner, sending clouds of fragrant white smoke up over the altar. A long blade and a shorter lie crossed in the center, and at their junction stand two female figures shaped of corn stalks, one slightly bent at the shoulders, the other with long straight hair made of cornsilk. Mother and Maiden, Demeter and Kore, Goddess and Goddess.

The drumming builds to a crescendo, the dancers spinning, writhing, leaping in ever-closing circles around the altar. So suddenly the silence strikes Koda like a physical blow, the drumming ceases, and Morgan stands before the altar, arms raised, feet apart to form the five-pointed star, sign of the Goddess from Babylon to Egypt to the mounds of the Mississippi Valley. “Io!” she cries. “Evohe!”

“IO! EVOHE!” the Amazai answer.

Another silence falls, and Morgan says, “We have come here tonight to mark the turning of the year. The harvest is in, and it is good. Blessed be.”

“Blessed be,” the women echo, Koda and Kirsten with them.

“From Brigid to Lughnasa, the Maiden walks above ground. At the harvest, she retreats into the earth, and the time of fallow fields and barren wombs is upon us. We come to give her thanks and bless her path as she leaves us. We come to give her thanks, and promise her remembrance.” She turns to another woman at her side, perhaps Sarai, and hands her the long blade, which is too long to be a knife, yet is not quite a sword. “Cast the circle, that no unseemly thing may enter.”

Beginning at the north, where another stone stands, Sarai makes the cirucuit of the circle, passing three more stones at east and south and west, returning to drive the blade into the earth just to the right of the northern quarter. She returns to stand beside Morgan, who says, “Call the quarters.”

A third priestess moves to the stone in the east. A pair of antlers lies on it, and a bowl of yellow paintbrush. The woman chants:

Stag in the East,Lord of the Air,Swift-footed Sun-runnerCrowned with light.Watcher at the gates of dawn,Stand as our Guardian in the EastAnd grant us the gifts of clarity and illumination.

Another woman approaches the stone to the south of the circle. It bears an eagle’s wing and a spray of scarlet penstemon.

Eagle in the SouthLord of Fire,Eagle of midday,Strong-winged cloud-riderWreathed in flame,Watcher at the gates of noon.Stand as our Guardian in the SouthAnd grant us the gifts of strength and purpose.

In the west, where the stone holds a raven’s wing and a bowl of Kirsten’s irises and gentians, another priestess raises her hands and makes the invocation.

Raven in the West,Lady of the waters,Raven of twilight,Swift-stooping fate-bringerRobed in shadow.Watcher at the gates of evening,Stand as our Guardian in the WestAnd grant us the gifts of healing and vision.

Finally, Morgan herself moves to stand at the northern stone, where a green branch lies before the skull of a wolf.

Wolf in the North,Lady of Earth,Wolf of midnight,Soft-footed tracker of spiritsHidden in starlight.Stand as our Guardian in the NorthAnd grant us the gifts of wisdom and truth.

Morgan moves forward then, and raises the Corn Mother high above the altar, facing the Amazai. “Blessed be the Lady, Mother of all that lives. Blessed be all life that is born of Her and returns to Her again.”

“Blessed be,” the Amazai answer in unison.

She sets it down, lifting the bowl and pouring a handful of water onto the earth. “We have planted. We have watered.” Next she raises the platter of loaves. “We have harvested, we have winnowed. Lady, we give thanks for your gifts of life. We give thanks for the sweet Earth and its bounty.” Finally, she breaks one of the loaves and holds it high, the light of the fires running golden over its surface. “The Goddess has gone into the grain!”

“We will not hunger!” the women answer as the loaves are passed among them.

“The Goddess is in the springs and waters!”

“We will not thirst!” The bowl passes, and as Koda drinks she tastes the salt of its blessing and its sweetness, both vivid on her tongue.

“The Goddess is in the corn!” Morgan cries.

“It will grow again in spring!”

“The Goddess goes down into the earth!”

“She will return with the Sun!”

“The Goddess is within us!

“Life comes forth from death!”

The drums begin their pulsing beat again, and the Amazai join in one long, snaking line with Morgan at the head. Koda takes Kirsten’s hand and Dale’s; with her other hand Kirsten takes Inga’s. The dance this time moves about the circle at its perimeter, then inward toward the altar, winding more and more tightly toward its center until the spiral can be no tighter, then unwinding until the women stand at the edges of the circle, each with her arms stretched out to her sisters on either side. “Life,” Morgan repeats, “comes forth from death. We release to life those who have left us.”

A murmur passes around the circle, each woman naming her dead and those she has left behind. Koda whispers the names Wa Uspewikakiyapi, the Hurley family, remembering all those fallen at the Cheyenne or at Ellsworth. Beside her, Kirsten stands with tears in her eyes, murmuring the names of her parents and her colleagues. Other women weep openly, some whispering some shouting, the names of children, husbands, wives, friends, all those lost in the uprising known and unknown.

Ina Maka, Koda prays as the women disperse to feast and celebrate. Give us strength and wisdom to do what we must do. Let the death end. Let the life come forth again.

Later, Morgan seeks them out at the edge of the fire. Her raven mask tilts back from her face, perched precariously on the back of her head. She carries her plate piled high with pit roasted beef, corn and potatoes roasted with it. Koda, replete, has set her empty dish aside; Kirsten, slowly but enthusiastically, is still working her way through seconds. Morgan folds crosslegged to the ground and says, “You’re still planning on leaving in the morning?”

Koda nods. “We need to get on.”

Morgan takes a bite of the meat, washing it down with a mug of chamomile tea. “You’re welcome to stay if you want. Or to come back to us when you return.”

It is not a small honor, and Koda says quietly. “Thank you. But we can’t stay.”

The Amazai nods as though it is the answer she expects. “Goddess go with you, then.”

“Goddess go with us,” Koda echoes. The enormity of their task stands suddenly bleak before her. A hundred miles yet to go, all of it on foot, a fortress to storm. The likelihood that they will survive is close to nonexistent. She says again, softly, “Goddess go with us.”

Kirsten reaches out to take her hand. “Cante mitawa,” she says. “Now and always.”

CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

TWO TIRED AND footsore women walk side by side, flanked by a tired and footsore dog. The adrenaline that has kept them going for so long is just now beginning to drain away like water through a sieve, leaving them with little energy, and less hope for the success of their mission. Doubts, always present but pushed far back like unwelcome guests, begin to creep into their thoughts. Each woman finds herself wondering, albeit silently, just what they have gotten themselves into and how they can ever hope to prevail against such a force as will be sure to meet them.

Kirsten finally breaks the almost morose silence they’ve slipped into ever since crossing the California border by clearing her throat and smiling wanly as Dakota turns an expectant eyebrow her way. “There’s an army depot near here, isn’t there?”

“Just over that rise,” Koda answers, pointing to the breast of a small hill they are heading toward. “It’s small—used to be populated mostly by civilians and a few MPs, but it might have a weapons cache if it hasn’t already been raided. We should probably swing by and see if they’ve got anything to replenish our stock with.” They’re almost down to the end of their ammunition, and Dakota privately doubts that the weapons they currently hold will be of any effect against the massive group of androids she’s sure is waiting to welcome them to Westerhaus’ lair.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Kirsten agrees, absently fingering the holster strap that holds the pistol to her hip. “We….” Her voice trails off and she looks at the ground beneath her feet, sighing. Gentle fingers slide beneath her chin and lift it until she is meeting those wonderful eyes, so full of concern, and devotion, and love.

“What is it?”

Kirsten hesitates for some moments, trying to order her scattered thoughts; a task that is made a bit more difficult by the presence of her love standing so close. Her thoughts derail further as parts of her body, responding to Koda’s nearness, decide that they’re not tired at all and consider demanding satisfaction, right now, if you please. Deciding on a compromise, Kirsten steps into her lover, sighing with relief as those warm, strong, long arms wrap tightly about her, holding her close and safe. “What is it, canteskuye? What’s troubling you?”

Kirsten remains quiet for a time, absorbing the quiet strength of the woman enfolding her so sweetly. She breathes in Dakota’s scent, stronger now with their exertions, and lets the calmness she feels penetrate her whole body and mind until, at last, she finds her center and begins to relax. “Talk to me, love,” Koda murmurs into Kirsten’s hair. “Please.”

Taking a deep breath, Kirsten eases herself out of Dakota’s embrace and tilts her chin to meet her partner’s eyes. “It’s just…. We really haven’t talked about what we’re going to find once we get to Westerhaus’ compound. And that’s just what it is. A compound. Guarded by androids at every door, every window, every entrance, every exit, every square inch of space in that place. We can’t just bust in there with the equivalent of two pop guns and a couple of arrows. We’ll be dead in seconds.” She abruptly breaks eye contact, instead staring at the laces of her dusty, worn boots. “We’re fools even to try.”

“Maybe so,” Dakota concedes with a slight shrug of her broad shoulders. “But we’re the only fools with a shot at this, and even if the shot is a million to one against us, it’s still better than anyone else would be able to do.”

“Fools walk in where angels fear to tread, huh?” Kirsten jokes.

“Somethin’ like that.” She eyes her partner. “As for a plan, well, we’ll figure that out as we get closer and see what we have to work with. Everything’s still a pretty big unknown right now, so let’s give it a little more time, and let the situation help set the plan for us.”

“Spoken like a true tactician,” Kirsten retorts, but this time, the smile reaches her eyes, causing her lover to return the smile.

Koda chuckles and holds out an arm. “C’mere.” As Kirsten willingly flows once again into her embrace, Dakota lifts her hands to cup Kirsten’s warm, soft cheeks as two sets of gemstone eyes meet. “We might be fools, but we’re fools together. As for the rest of it? The world can go hang itself if it doesn’t approve. Alright?”

“Alright,” Kirsten replies, nodding slightly within the confines of Dakota’s large hands.

“Good.” To seal the deal, Koda tips her head and brushes her lips over Kirsten’s, taking in their softness, tasting their sweetness, feeling their warmth and responsiveness against her own, and soon she is lost in the utter bliss that simply kissing her lover brings to her, chasing doubts, fears, and all other thoughts from her mind. Kirsten moans softly as the kiss deepens, and when the very tip of a tongue tickles against the bow of her upper lip, she immediately grants it access. All too soon, the women break apart by mutual consent, their breathing labored, faces flushed with arousal. “Mm, what you do to me,” Dakota breathes into her lover’s ear, giving the lobe a quick suckle before pulling away. “I love you, Kirsten King. Cante mitawa. Ohinniyan. Always.”

“Always,” Kirsten replies, grazing a kiss over both of Dakota’s cheeks, then one against her incredibly soft lips before stepping away. “Onward and upward, huh?”

“Let’s do it.”

*

When they are halfway up the hill, Dakota halts. Her eyes narrow, and her head tilts in such a way that Kirsten knows to give her time before asking the obvious. When Koda finally turns to her, her eyes are dark, face tense. “You have Asi’s leash handy?”

Looking a little confused, Kirsten feels around her waistpack until she comes up with the requested item and holds it, dangling, for Dakota’s inspection. Koda nods. “Clip it on him.”

“Trouble?”

“Not sure yet. Just keep a firm hold on that leash.”

Human and animal exchange puzzled glances, and Asi seems to sigh in resignation as he lifts his chin and allows Kirsten to clip his leash to his collar without much complaint, though he hasn’t been leashed in months. “We’re ready.”

With a short nod, Dakota starts ahead, taking the rest of the hill in long, easy strides. Kirsten catches up to her at the top, then pauses as it immediately becomes clear what has caused Dakota’s concern.

Along a pitted, dusty road stand two lines of people, one to a side. Dirty and ragged, they are dressed in varying degrees of black and brown. The women are almost completely covered by thick, dark fabric; only their eyes, hollow and empty, peer out from the barrier of cloth surrounding them. The men are mostly shirtless, with belts of ammunition crisscrossing their chests like modern-day Pancho Villas. And all, from the oldest—a stooped and wrinkled old man easily in his nineties—to the youngest—a girl of three or four—are heavily armed. To the left rise the barbwire tipped fences that circle the Depot, and upon the fence closest to and paralleling the road is a large, white, and crudely lettered sign:

Warriors of the Redeemer

Save for the few who have noticed them, the group’s attention is focused on something on the far side of the fencing; something that Dakota, with her height, can only just see. Her stomach does a slow roll before reluctantly settling.

“What are they looking at?” Kirsten whispers to her. “Can you tell?”

“It’s….” Koda swallows. “…not pretty.”

Kirsten turns to her, wide-eyed. “What is it?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” Dakota’s face is set in a stony mask. “Whatever you do, don’t react to what you see. Just keep walking, no matter what.”

“I don’t understand….”

“You will.”

Koda begins walking again, spine straight as a plumb line, shoulders square, hands prudently away from her weapons, though she can retrieve them in a split second, should she feel the need. Her worn bootheels clack on the broken pavement, drawing the attention of the silent crowd. In twos and threes, heads turn to look at her, and beyond, where Kirsten walks, easily holding a leashed and softly growling Asimov to heel. The young scientist can feel the distrust, the hatred coming off the group of onlookers in waves, pressing up against her like some army of zombies she’d seen on television once upon a time. Goosebumps prickle her skin, and she moves, unconsciously, a step closer to Dakota’s side, almost—but not quite—touching. This close, she can sense her lover’s anger, can all but feel the coiled tension radiating from muscles, and tongue, held tense and still. She takes care to keep her expression neutral, returning hostile glares with mild interest and nothing more. Asi continues to growl, but, to his credit, does not strain at the leash, seeming to realize that doing so could earn him, and his humans, a quick death.

The gauntlet finally comes to an end, but any relief Kirsten might feel in that fact is immediately overridden by the horror now facing her. Her shocked gasp is cut off unuttered by the feel of Dakota’s hot, callused hand on her wrist, clamping like a vice. She wants to look away; even looks of hatred would be welcome over this.

Telephone poles, innocuous reminders of a world gone by, have been turned into crucifixes. Upon them, as far down the road as her eyes can track, hang corpses in various states of decomposition. Nailed above each corpse is a placard, spelling out in bold black lettering the crimes of the executed.

ThieveryHeresyAdultery

The “adulteress” can be no more than fifteen, and by the swelling in her belly, was at least six months pregnant when she was murdered.

Nearer to the crowd, a crude gallows stands. Three women and one man hang from ropes tied to the crossbeam, heads lolling from broken necks, hands tied behind them, lifeless feet dangling just above the tufts of wild-growing grasses. These corpses are fresh; undoubtedly the reason for the crowd lining the roadway.

Kirsten bites her tongue until she can taste blood, knowing the only things keeping her from being the first American President to open fire on her own citizenry are Asi’s leash and the hand Dakota has clamped over her other wrist. That hand gives the added benefit of keeping her feet steadily moving.

From beside the fence comes a large, shaggy bear of a man sporting a long blonde beard, deep black eyes, and a semi-automatic weapon that he cradles casually in one arm. “Goin’ someplace, Redface?” he asks, smirking as he comes up alongside them.

Dakota continues to walk until she feels a large hand descend on her shoulder, spinning her partway around. “Don’t you walk away from me when I’m talkin’ to you, squaw.”

With bared teeth and a ferocious snarl, Asimov leaps at the man, missing his neck by millimeters as Kirsten yanks hard on the leash. The man, red-faced with anger, releases Koda’s shoulder and grabs his gun, aiming it at Asimov’s large head.

Then finds the long muzzle forced up as the muzzle of another gun seats itself neatly against his temple. “I don’t need a reason to pull the trigger, maggot,” a low, vibrant voice purrs into his ear. “So don’t even think of trying to give me one.” Before he can even think to blink, his gun is easily wrested from his grip and tossed to Kirsten, who grabs it one-handed and aims for the now milling, dangerously murmuring crowd.

“Call your people off,” Koda orders, and when he hesitates, pushes the gun more firmly against his head. “Now.”

“All of you, get back inside the compound!” he finally yells, seeing from the corner of his eye a long finger begin to tighten against the trigger. “Now!”

Several of the women and men, and most of the children, obediently head for the gate while others unholster their weapons and start for the trio.

“I wouldn’t,” Kirsten comments, almost casually, as she aims at the oncoming group.

Several stop, but one man continues forward, smirking. “You wouldn’t hurt women. Or children.”

“Why not?” Kirsten asks, voice as flat as dawn-calm lake. “You do.”

It is that tone, even more than her words, that confuses him and causes his steps to slow. “You wouldn’t….”

“In a heartbeat.”

The man stops and looks askance at his distracted leader. “Moses?”

“Aaron, take the others and get back behind the fence, now.”

“But—.”

“Do as I say, damnit!!”

With a last, hard, hateful look at the women, he abruptly spins on his heel and walks toward the gate guarding the compound, waving for the others to join him. They do, thought not without a lot of grumbling and threats muttered beneath their breaths. Finally, the street is empty save for the slowly rotting corpses and the three who stand in the midst of the carnage.

“Well?” the man asks, careful not to move so much as a muscle lest he join the rest of these infidels in their eternal damnation. “What are you gonna do now?”

“We’re goin’ for a little walk,” Koda growls into his ear, wrapping her free hand around his neck and pulling backwards. Given the choice between strangulation and having his brains blown out, the man wisely decides to get his legs in motion. Kirsten silently follows, also walking backward as she eyes the murderous glares being thrown her way by the group now safely behind the compound fence.

A mile or so down the road, Dakota finally stops and pushes the man against the tree with a spine-rattling thump. “We’ll be coming back this way, maggot, and when we do, your little wacked out religious commune had better be gone.”

“Or what?!” he shoots back defiantly.

The smile he receives would have looked perfectly at home on a shark. “Trust me, little man,” Koda replies, patting his furred chest, “you really don’t wanna go there.”

“I don’t trust no women,” he spits, narrowly missing Dakota’s face. “Especially dirty, heathen squaws.” He looks past Dakota, leering. “And their pretty little play toys. How ‘bout it, squaw-lover? You like what this Injun does to you? You make me sick, defiling your race with this dirty, stinking….”

“That’s quite enough out of you, little man,” Koda replies smoothly, pulling him up by his matted chest hair.

“Or what?!” he gasps around the pain she’s causing.

“Or…this.”

Dakota’s right fist lands squarely on his chin. His eyes roll up until only the whites are seen as his knees buckle, dumping him to the ground, out for the count.

“Damn,” Kirsten mutters.

“What?”

“I wanted to do that.”

“I’ll let you have the next one, alright?”

“Deal.”

*

Darkness has fallen when Dakota finally leans back against a fallen log, looking over their weaponry by the light of a small, smokeless fire. It’s a meager lot—a few hand grenades, six guns with five boxes of mixed ammunition, assorted knives, and a bow and arrows. Barely enough, she thinks wryly, to knock off a bank, nevermind trying to storm a well-guarded compound. With a soft sigh, she glances over at the closed tent where Kirsten has ensconced herself almost from the moment they had set it up. The young scientist had been unusually quiet since they left the religious killing ground behind; no amount of small talk had been able to spring her loose from whatever dark hell she’d gone into and, after a few failed gambits, Koda decided to give her what she most seemed to need: space.

“Guess it’s just us tonight, guys,” she murmurs to the dog lolling by the fire and the hawk perched comfortably on her shoulder. “I hope you have full bellies, cause I’m not in the mood to cook anything.” Asi and Wiyo don’t appear to be worried overmuch by the statement and, with another sigh, Koda picks up a cloth and oil and begins cleaning their tiny arsenal.

In less than an hour, she’s finished and the small stash of weapons gleams mellowly up at her by the light of the small fire. With a quick shake of her head, as if flinging off unwanted thoughts, she carefully repacks the weapons and ammunition into the bag she’d appropriated for this purpose. Once the bag is packed safely away, she pulls another one free, opening it and dumping out two battered cups and two cloth-wrapped bundles of tea-leaves. Kirsten prefers her tea with a bit less bite, and so Koda has taken to keeping their stashes separate. Taking the small pot from its place on the rocks next to the fire, she pours water over the leaves, then sits back, crossing her long legs and stretching her arms out over the log-cum-backrest as the tea steeps.

Her sharp hearing takes in the sounds surrounding her, knowing she’ll never tire of nature’s music even if she lives to be a hundred and ten. Crickets chirp out the temperature from their hidden beds. Nearby, a shrew scuttles for food, emitting a high-pitched squeak of alarm as the triumphant cry of an owl sounds overhead. Hearing the cry, Wiyo lifts her head from its nest under her wing, sharp eyes scanning the sky before dismissing the threat and tucking her head back down. Asi continues to do his impersonation of a dead cockroach, four paws splayed and all.

With a small chuckle, Koda sits up, grabs another smallish sack and pulls out part of a honeycomb, which she dunks in Kirsten’s hot, steeped tea. She still bears the marks of the bees as they expressed their displeasure in disturbing their hive—part of her is quite convinced that it is a sign from her mother—whose name, in English, is Bee—about what she might expect arriving on the doorstep, a very white, very blonde, very WASPy Kirsten King in tow.

“You’ll just have to deal with it, Ina,” she grumbles, stirring the tea with the melting bit of honey until it is all dissolved. Taking the two mugs, she rises gracefully to her feet and looks down at her two friends. “Be good tonight, you hear me? No running off on badgers, wolverines, squirrels, pheasants, or anything else that strikes your predatory little fancy. Got me?”

Asi rolls his eyes and groans before flopping on his belly and putting his snout on his oversized paws, giving her a look that would have shamed any other human. Dakota simply grins and turns to her feathered companion, who is so unimpressed by the speech that she hasn’t even deigned to remove her head from its warm nest beneath her wing. “Alright, then. Sleep well, both of you, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

*

Stopping just inside of the tent-flap, Koda straightens to her full height and stands motionless, content to simply take in the sight of her beloved who is currently scowling at something displayed on her laptop monitor as her fingers dance over the keys. With a soft sigh of frustration, Kirsten yanks off her glasses, then rubs her free hand over her face, muttering incoherently to herself. Dakota catches a few choice epithets and bites the inside of her lip to keep from giving vent to the grin she can feel tugging at her lips and cheeks. Crossing the small space silently, she eases in beside her lover and hands down one of the steaming mugs. “Thought you could use some of this,” she says, her voice a low, rumbling purr deep in her chest.

Kirsten’s delighter smile is the shaft of sunlight that breaks through a thick scud of stormy black clouds at sunset. Koda can’t help but respond with a quirky grin of her own. “Looks like you’re really burning the midnight oil here, Ms. President.” She glances over at the glowing kerosene lamp hanging from the tent pole. “Literally.”

Mug cupped in her hands, Kirsten takes a healthy sip, humming with pleasure as the sweetened liquid slides down her dry, scratchy throat. “Mm,” she says finally, voice slightly hoarse from hours of disuse, “just what the doctor ordered.”

“The doctor has a couple of other things in mind as well,” Koda purrs, coming behind her lover and lowering her long frame until she sits against the back tent wall. Kirsten, facing front, is comfortably ensconced between her legs. Setting her tea to one side, Dakota lifts the hair from Kirsten’s neck and brushes moist lips against the skin so pleasingly exposed to her view.

“Oh, yes,” Kirsten groans, arching her neck into Dakota’s attentions. Goosebumps break out along her arms and chest as she feels the tip of her lover’s tongue trace upward along the muscle there. Heat curls in her belly as the shell of her ear is teasingly outlined, then gently bitten. That heat is trebled as Koda runs her left hand slowly down the front of Kirsten’s T-shirt, then tucks under and comes back up, laying her palm flat against the newly burgeoning muscles of Kirsten’s abdomen, long fingers brushing against the undersides of her breasts, then lazily circling responsive nipples. “Very nice,” Kirsten whispers as fire races its merry way along her nerve endings, completely obliterating the pounding headache she’d been suffering through not a moment before. “I…“she gasps as her nipples are gently tweaked, “love your prescriptions, Doctor.”

“Mm,” Koda growls, slipping her free hand into the waistband of Kirsten’s cargo shorts. “I think you’ll like this one even better.”

Their tea, lovingly prepared, grows slowly cold.

*

Several hours later, Dakota returns to the tent, new mugs of tea in tow. From her place sprawled across their joined sleeping bag, Kirsten grins up at her tall lover, taking in Koda’s state of dishevelment with a sense of giddy pleasure. Her hair, normally immaculate, is wild and her T-shirt, the only article of clothing she’s wearing, is both inside out and backward. An arrogantly raised eyebrow is the response to her giggle. Quickly rolling herself up to a sitting position, she reaches out to grab the tea mug thrust in her direction. She sips her drink as she watches Dakota remove her shirt and toss it indifferently away, almost giving her lungs an impromptu shower as she watches that magnificent body revealed once again.

“You okay?” Koda asks, lowering herself to sit crosslegged on the sleeping bag and cradling her own mug in her large hands.

“Uh…yeah. Good tea.”

“Secret family recipe,” Dakota replies, smirking.

“Mm. It appears,” Kirsten retorts, giving her lover’s bee-stung hands a significant look, “your ‘secret family’ didn’t appreciate their hive being raided.”

Koda shrugs, unrepentant. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sure you have.” She lifts the mug in tribute. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. So…what were you scowling about earlier?” She gestures to the laptop which is currently displaying a colorful aquarium scene.

The question earns another scowl as Kirsten uses her free hand to nudge the touchplate on the computer, erasing the screensaver and replacing it with sets of lines that look very much like…

“Blueprints?” Koda asks, impressed.

“Yeah. Westerhaus’ offices. For whatever good it’ll do us.”

“How did you get a hold of them? Your other computer was trashed, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t that hard,” Kirsten replies offhandedly. “The idiot hasn’t shut his servers down, and since I’ve been known to hack into a box or two in my time….” Though her words bespeak pride, the expression on her face is anything but. She sighs, staring at the diagrams on the screen. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“Have you been there before?”

“Once, yeah. Publicity tour, all the way. Shiny happy people building shiny happy robots using shiny happy equipment. It was like touring the PJ factory in Paterson. I needed a Dramamine just to make it through the presentation.”

“I take it you weren’t impressed.”

Kirsten barks out a laugh. “That would be putting it mildly, yes.” She lifts a hand, pointing to the screen. “These are the specs for the first floor, the only place anyone who isn’t in Westerhaus’ back pocket gets to see. The real work goes on below ground.”

“How many levels?”

“Eight,” Kirsten replies, flipping rapidly through the sets of prints. “Computer central is on six. The juice that one floor alone pulls in one day would light up San Francisco for a year.”

“How is it protected?”

“Doors every ten feet. Solid steel. Cameras every couple of feet. He has a security force of two hundred androids and a few dozen worker bees just staring at the video. The only way through is to be cleared by a visual, retinal and DNA scan.”

“Doesn’t pull any punches, does he.”

“Not even in his dreams.” She turns slowly to her lover. “Dakota, there’s no way in Hell we’re gonna make it through all that.”

“We’ll find a way.”

“How?”

“These blueprints are a start.”

*

Dakota bolts upright from her place on the makeshift bed. Her heart is racing to beat Wiyo, and her bare flesh is greasy with sweat. Breath leaves her lungs in steam-engine puffs as she raises a less than steady hand to her brow, wanting to wipe away images far too realistic for a simple nighttime dream. Steadying her breath and willing her heart-rate to calm, she turns her head slightly to see Kirsten curled beside her, still deeply asleep. Her hand is more steady now as she lowers it to stroke a wisp of tousled bang from her lover’s forehead. Her thumb lingers, tracing the unlined, warm, and silken skin with a light, tender touch. Dawn’s light has touched the tent’s interior, and in it, she looks at Kirsten, memorizing her features; the beauty of her golden hair, the innocence of her sleeping face, the newly-born muscles that curve and stretch the soft, tanned skin.

Lowering herself slowly, silently, she brushes a kiss against her lover’s lips, then pulls away, wiping a single tear that trails down her cheek. “Cante mitawa,” she whispers. “My heart. I love you. Never forget that. Never.”

CHAPTER SIXTY TWO

KODA KNEELS ON the gentle slope of the hillside, her rifle braced across one thigh, binoculars sweeping the opposite side of the small valley. Dusk has begun to gather about them, the cooling air drawing tendrils of fog from the stream that cuts its way through the rolling landscape. Scattered through the grass like roundels of ancient bronze no more than an hour before, the poppies have furled their petals against the oncoming dark. Already the eastern sky shows the first stars; in the west, a deep crimson lingers, fading through purple to ultramarine at the zenith. Just over the edge of the hills, a sickle moon rides low, and from somewhere up in the trees that march along the crest of the rise comes the deep hooting of a horned owl, answered a moment later by his mate. A chill runs down Koda’s spine, and half-forgotten childhood fears with it.

Who? Who? But the question is superfluous. The likelihood that she and Kirsten will survive this night is minuscule.

For the last ten miles, they have seen no sign of human activity: no residents in the small town of Rancho Cordova, no movement on the road. Nor, in the afternoon that they have lain concealed on the hillside, have they seen sentries, guards, anyone at all either approach the Westerhaus Institute or stir on its grounds. It sits on the facing slope, a ten-acre campus spread out about a single story faced all about its circumference with mirror-bright glass. While the driveway and public parking lot remain clear, no vehicles occupy them. The guard booth, too, stands empty. Bougainvilleas in magenta, red, white, gold, double and single, fountain up from the graveled flower beds, together with scarlet aloes and violet prickly pear. It is all very ecologically responsible and all radically overgrown, left to the rain and the sun for the better part of a year. “Well,” she says finally, “I thought it’d be taller.”

“It is.” Kirsten glances up from the screen of her laptop. “Nine stories, only one above ground.”

“There’s a culvert down there by the creek a little to the south that can’t go anywhere but into the building. Unless you have a better suggestion?”

Kirsten shakes her head. “There’s only two doors on the top floor. One’s the main entrance. The other’s Petie’s concession to the fire regs. It may not even be functional.”

“Looks like the pipe’s it, then. Any idea where that’ll take us?”

“Probably into the air-conditioning system. Sewers wouldn’t empty out into the stream like that.”

Koda draws a deep breath, lowering the binoculars and turning to look at her lover. From somewhere comes a line of remembered poetry. Mine eyes desire thee above all things.

For a long moment, she drinks in the sight of Kirsten, pale hair touched to silver by the waning light, lithe body half-stretched out on the grass, her eyes in shadow. “It’s time,” she says softly. “We’d better start moving.”

For answer Kirsten only nods, folding down the screen of her computer and tucking it into her pack. Asi stretches and gets to his feet, looking expectantly from Kirsten to Koda.

“No, boy. You can’t go with us.” Kirsten slips her arms around him, holding him for a long moment with her face pressed into his shoulder. When her hands come away, his collar comes with them. She lays it in the grass beside him, getting to her feet reluctantly, as if every joint in her body aches. “Down, boy,” she says quietly, and he subsides into the grass. “Stay.” She turns away and begins the descent, not looking back.

Koda lays her hand briefly on the big dog’s head, ruffling his mane behind his ears. “Be free,” she says, and follows Kirsten down the hillside.

*

A trickle of water still runs from the culvert, clear in the narrow beam of Koda’s penlight. The pipe itself measures perhaps a yard across, a black maw opening into the side of the hill. It smells sharply of coolant, with an underlying hint of ammonia. She plays the light about the upper curve, where the broken remains of mud-plaster nests cluster together, some retaining their narrow-necked jar shape, others mere circles of dried earth. “Cave swallows,” Koda says quietly. “Gone south.”

“Left the poop behind,” Kirsten observes.

“Oh, yeah. Nobody said this was gonna be a clean job. We’re going to have to do this on hands and knees.” From her pack, Koda pulls a pair of leather gloves and a bandana, which she ties loosely around her neck.

“Try not to get them wet,” Kirsten says, likewise smoothing gloves over her own hands. “The place will be cold—really cold. The droids’ circuits can take normal heat, but a lot of the manufacturing equipment is temperature-sensitive.”

Koda shifts the rifle across her back, checks her belt one last time for the extra magazines and the half-dozen grenades she has hoarded all the way from Ellsworth. A pouch holds a small lump of C-4 and a detonator, quietly liberated from the armory at Pyramid Lake. They could simply have asked for it, of course, but Dakota and Annie Rivers off in search of Annie’s parents on the Mendo Coast could have no legitimate use for plastique. Lastly, she works the penlight into the band of her hat, pointing straight up, and pulls the bandana up over the lower part of her face. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

Ducking beneath the curve of the pipe, Koda drops to hands and knees and begins to crawl forward. The miniature flash shows her the walls rising to either side, the thin runnel of mud-and-guano thickened water down the bottom. By splaying her hands and knees, she finds that she can keep mostly out of the wet. The lime-covered surface to either side crunches faintly as she moves, Kirsten following in her tracks. It occurs to Koda that if there are noise or motion sensors in the conduit their mission could be cut short before they even get near their objective. But prints like miniature human feet and the rippling sign of a snake’s passage seems to indicate that the local wildlife comes and goes unmolested; the heavy stuff will be up ahead.

The first hint of it has nothing to do with Westerhaus’ security system. From up ahead comes a whiff of rancidly acidic stench. No surprise there; the prints, after all, were fair warning. She pauses to tighten her bandana over her nose and mouth, even as her eyes begin to water. “Okay,” she says. ” We got chemical warfare here. We try to get through this next bit as fast as we can. Don’t breathe if you don’t have to.”

Kirsten’s answer is a wry snort. “What is it? Eau de skunk?”

“You got it. Recent, too.”

The stink grows rapidly from worse to overwhelming as they advance down the tunnel. Koda rises to a crouch, getting her feet under her, and shambles down the conduit at a gait that is half frog-march, half bear-dance. If skunks have the run of the place, she and Kirsten are unlikely to trip alarms—unless, of course, the skunk is up ahead somewhere, in which case matters may become radically worse. The stinging in her eyes almost blinds her to the single bright spot of the penlight as it picks out the dark curve of an intersecting pipe. “Turn,” she says, half-gagging. “This one should head us up toward the building.”

“Oh, gods,” Kirsten moans behind her. “I hope the skunk hasn’t been there, too.”

It has not. The stench dissipates within a few yards, and Koda drops gratefully back to hands and knees, pushing the bandana away from her face. They are too far up the pipe for the swallows. Here there is only the thin stream of water, icy cold now closer to the Institute, and a faint odor of mold. She can hear Kirsten taking in the chill air in gasps.

By Koda’s reckoning they have gone perhaps another fifty yards when the flash picks out the shape of an obstruction ahead. Slipping the light from her hatband, she plays it over a steel grate that blocks the tunnel. It, or something like it, had to be here; otherwise the local wildlife would have free access to the Institute’s climate control in particular and the building in general. A quick run of the flash over the rim shows it is neither bolted nor welded into place. “What d’you think? Go for the hinges or the lock?”

“Hinges,” Kirsten says without hesitation. “Maybe we can get the pins out. Otherwise we’ll have to blow the thing.”

Koda nods agreement. She does not want to have to set off a grenade or the plastique in a confined space. Still less does she want to alert the droids inside the facility by noise or vibration. “Hinges it is,” she says.

The openings in the barrier are just large enough that Koda can pass a hand through. With the penlight, she locates the pins to one side. Reaching for her knife to try to prize them up, she leans against the grate and nearly loses her balance as it swings under her weight. “What—” She scrambles away from it. “You woudn’t happen to know if Westerhaus booby-trapped things like this, would you?”

“Not as far as I know,” Kirsten answers. “But then, I wouldn’t know.”

When nothing happens, Koda gives the grate a careful push. It swings soundlessly open. Ahead, the light shows only more tunnel; no wires, no suspicious projections on the walls of the passage, no obvious sensors, no skunks. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s move.”

After ten yards or so, the tunnel begins to angle sharply upward, the first sign that they may be nearing the building. Faintly, from somewhere above comes the hum and clatter of machinery. Going by Kirsten’s copy of the blueprints, Koda knows that the physical plant is on the lowest level: air conditioning and heating machinery, generators, independent water supply. The plans show various possibilities from that point. Depending on the security measures, they can go strolling down the corridors—unlikely—or take to the ducts and vents that honeycomb the place and hope they are not furnished with deadfalls, electrified, or otherwise inhospitable.

As the slope levels out again, the tunnel broadens, finally opening out into a rectangular vestibule with a vaulted roof. A channel in the floor carries the runoff from the machinery into the tunnel, passing under a steel door. From the other side, the cacophony of the gears and flywheels and fans is deafening, echoing off the walls of the passage and reverberating in the metal of the door. Kirsten, beside her, mimes pushing at the door, then shrugs. It seems unlikely that the same luck will strike twice, but Koda gives a shrug back in answer. It is worth the try. She puts her shoulder to the steel and pushes.

Nothing. She pushes a second time.

Still nothing. She tries the handle. The door is locked.

With Kirsten holding the light, Koda fixes a small charge of C-4 on the lock plate and wires up the detonator. She motions Kirsten back beyond the expansion of the tunnel, then steps back and flings herself flat on the wet floor beside the other woman. Triggered remotely, the explosive goes off with a muffled whump! and a shower of sparks.

A moment later, the door swings open to her touch, and the roar of the machinery spills through like the thunder of a great waterfall, a physical pressure not just against her eardrums but a force pressing against her whole body, rattling her bones. She lets it wash over her, through her, not resisting, like a spirit passing through her in ceremony. Take it in. Direct it. Master it. Beside her, Kirsten presses both hands to her temples, damping down her implants. For her, with every vibration magnified, the blast of sound must be infinitely worse. “Are you all right?” Koda mouths.

She receives a nod in reply and a reassuring hand on her arm, and steps into the maelstrom that fills the entire level of the building. Next to the door stands the HVAC equipment, the drainage conduit filled with viscous dark water. The open pipe leads out beneath a cage of bars plastered with warning signs: HIGH VOLTAGE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. SAFETY EQUIMPMENT MANDATORY. Beyond them looms the huge bulk of the condenser, an Army-green block the size of a small bungalow, its sides and top studded with dozens of meter-wide fans whirring at different speeds, in opposite directions. The smell of overheating wire comes off it, together with a blast of heat. Beyond the bars the air ripples with shimmer, the kind that rises off the blacktop under the July sun. To one side Koda can see the labyrinth of its condenser coils, twined and turning back on themselves like the intestines of some great beast. The roar of its motors echoes off the high ceiling, the concrete walls. Koda takes an involuntary step back, then checks herself abruptly. Get a grip Rivers. You’re not St. George. This ain’t no dragon, just an overgrown window unit. Her gut does not quite believe her, though, and she remains where she stands, studying the huge machine. Cutting off the ventilation might bring someone down to repair it, someone who could be used as guide or hostage or source of information. But the task is impossible. Tacoma might know how to slay this monster, but she has not the electrical or specific mechanical skills to know where to attack it effectively. She doubts there is a circuit breaker box where she can simply turn it off. On the other hand, I could short out the entire building, possibly destroying Westerhaus’ little project, while electrocuting myself. . .. The cost-benefit ratio does not compute.

Kirsten, shoots her a sympathetic glance, her shoulders hunched forward against the wave of sound and the inarticulate sense of mechanical violence. “I don’t know how to knock it out either!” she shouts, pointing. “Stairway! Across the room!”

Koda nods and sets off in the direction of the exit. Past the climate control unit stand rand upon rank of computer monitors on panels rising nearly to the ceiling, glowing with fluorescent reds, blues, greens like eye-shine in the semi-darkness. As they pass, Koda can make out the ever-changing readouts: strings of numbers, bar graphs that rise or shrink seemingly at random, wave-forms like EKG read-outs, all flashing and squirming across the LCD screens. Above them run the aluminum air ducts, suspended from the ceiling by struts that flex almost imperceptibly with the vibration from the equipment below, as if they might suddenly come tumbling down on hapless beings below. Bundled electrical cables, thick as a human thigh, run alongside them, weaving in and out among PVC pipes that must carry water or waste. Witch’s cradle. An involuntary shudder runs through Koda, and she does not look up again.

Past the monitors, the electrical plant occupies half the floor. In the dim light from the LED’s, Koda can make out half-a-dozen large generators, whirring and clanking behind a wall of steel bars. No smell of gasoline or other fuel taints the air; somewhere, then, there are windmills or solar cells not visible from the hills outside. Opposite it, behind its own cage, stands a transmission station, its matrix festooned with humming transformers and white ceramic insulators. Here the ozone smell is overwhelming, the same sharp odor that pervades the air in the aftermath of a lightning strike. The door is thick as a bank vault’s, equipped with combination knobs and a wheel like a ship’s to draw its bolts. Red DANGER signs merely state the obvious. It is a vulnerability, like the HVAC unit, but one they cannot exploit.

Ahead, a red EXIT sign burns above a door, and she makes toward it at a jog, Kirsten keeping pace behind her. The door gives way at her first push, and she glances back inquiringly at Kirsten, who can only shrug. She has no way of knowing if Westerhaus or the droids have set traps, no way of knowing whether the Institute personnel have simply become careless once the humans in the surrounding area had been wiped out.

The air from the stairwell hits them like a January blizzard on the Plains, cold to just above freezing. On it comes a taint of old blood, the odor of a meat locker. Koda cannot tell whether it comes from somewhere above them or from the air system. She turns to look at Kirsten, whose grimly set mouth tells her that she, too, has identified the smell. Somewhere above them is, in any case, limited; the stair goes up only one story, to a landing and another steel door. Taking the steps slowly and silently, Koda tries the handle. Locked, this time electronically. A retinal reader sits on the doorjamb at a little below average eyelevel. “Any way you can fool this thing into opening without blowing it?” Koda asks. “Does it have an override?”

“Let me see.” Kirsten steps past her, surveying the set-up. Standing just to one side, she slips her laptop out of her pack, keys up a screen and surveys a column of figures that makes no sense whatsoever to Koda. Kirsten, though, says, “Maybe. Maybe. If I just—” She looks up, staring at the door as if willing it to open. “Do this—” She presses a combination of keys, and the lock emits a series of electronic tones and snaps open.

Koda shoots her an admiring glance. “Hey, you’re good at this.” Cracking the door a centimeter or so, she peers out into a corridor painted institutional green. Unmarked doors line it at fifteen foot intervals. “What’s on this floor?” she whispers.

“Storage. Parts and equipment, mostly.” She wrinkles her nose at the odor, stronger here, though still faint.

“Can you hear anything?”

Kirsten slips out into the hallway, touching the implants behind her ears. After a long moment, she says, “I can hear the machinery downstairs. I don’t hear anyone moving or talking.”

Koda grins at her. “Fox ears. Maybe we need to give you a new name.”

“Yeah? How about you? How do you say Does-It-Like-A-Rabbit in Lakota?”

“Gratefully. Let’s go.”

Koda slips first out into the hallway, her rifle at ready, finger on the trigger. This is the eighth level; two more to go before the get to Westerhaus’ lair on the sixth. The corridor leads around the circumference of the building. Some of the rooms stand open, showing metal shelves rising to the ceiling. One seems to contain cleaning supplies, towels and toilet paper with five-gallon drums of ammonia and Lysol. Another appears to be subdivided by walls made of boxes with the familiar hp logo; computer paper not by the ream but by the forest. The odor has grown steadily stronger. “They have a cafeteria on t his level?” Koda asks.

“Don’t think so,” Kirsten answers quietly. “Something tells me that’s not pork chops spoiling.”

“I don’t think it is, either. Up around the curve, maybe?”

The hall leads them to the east side of the building. A bank of elevators and another stairway face double doors. Just visible against the faux terra-cotta tiles, dark stains spread beneath them. Blood. Its body am irridescent blue and green, a blow-fly crawls across one deep brown spatter, leaving black specks behind it. As Koda watches, it takes flight, ponderous in the chill, buzzing as it slips between the door panels to disappear into the room beyond. She pulls her bandana back up over her nose and mouth. “I’m going to go have a look. Stay here.”

“Koda—”

“Cover me. It’ll only take a minute.”

She pushes against the doors, a little surprised that they yield so easily, and lets them fall shut again behind her. The stench meets her in a billow of chilled air, stronger here, unmistakable. She gives her eyes a minute to adjust, the dim light seeping in from the hall showing her rows of chairs on a bare floor. Secretdefault “posture” chairs form one line, high-backed executive seating another, rows of vaguely Mission-style armchairs a third. Desks, also sorted by class, stand in neat lines across the middle of the room, while the tall bulk of filing cabinets occupies the front.

Switching on the penlight, Koda plays it over the back row of chairs. Human forms lie slumped in several of them, their clothes clotted with darkly frozen blood. One young woman sits with her forehead against the back of the seat in front of her, a hole the size of a quarter in the back of her skull, blood and grey brain matter scattered through her pale copper hair. The man beside her shows only a cage of shattered ribs and blackened viscera where his chest should be. Yet another sits with his head tilted back at an impossible angle, neck broken, mouth open and fly-blown. In the space behind, where a pair of handtrucks lean against the wall, a half-dozen more corpses lie stacked like cordwood, their limbs twisted and frozen into an inextricable tangle. Some of those in the seats may have died here. Others, like these, seem to have been killed and let lie till they began to stiffen, then brought here to await—what? Removal? Certainly no plant that manufactured sophisticated electronics would risk contamination from storing corpses long term. But that is another problem. It is impossible to tell how long these people have been dead, only that their bodies have been frozen, probably thawed slightly, frozen again.

Neither is it clear who they were. Employees? Two still sport ID badges clipped to their pockets, but blood has obscured the lettering. Salesmen, customers, visitors, caught in the Institute when the rebellion went down? There is no time to investigate, no time to think about them, no good to be done them. They have made their journey, going where it is all too likely she and Kirsten will follow before the night is through. Peace, she wishes them, then slips back into the hall.

“How bad?” Kirsten’s voice is tight with control, but the sudden rise and fall of her chest betrays her relief.

“A couple dozen. Can’t tell how long they’ve been dead or who they were. Most look like they’ve been shot.”

“Women?”

“Women, too, some young.” Koda pulls down her bandana and takes a deep breath of the relatively fresher air in the hall. “No baby-making factory here, apparently.”

Kirsten shakes her head as if to clear it, and it comes to Koda belatedly that she might well know some of the men and women who lie dead on the other side of the doors. But she only gestures toward the wall opposite. “Stairs? Or take the elevator and go for broke?”

“Stairs are harder to booby-trap. We may have to blow another door, though, and we’re getting up to where they’re likely to hear us.”

A quizzical expression crosses Kirsten’s face. “It’s strange. I still don’t hear anybody—no movement, no voices. Level Seven’s production. There ought to be somebody right over us if the facility’s still operating as usual.”

“Maybe it’s coffee break. Let’s go.”

The door to the seventh floor is, predictably, locked, and Koda stands by as Kirsten keys the code into her laptop again.

Nothing.

Swearing, Kirsten steps closer and her fingers fly over the keys a second time. Still nothing.

“Shit,” Koda swears, reaching for the plastique at her belt. “I’ll get the C-4 on it.”

“One more try.” Kirsten moves past her to stand directly in front of the door, her head a foot away from the jamb. Slowly, methodically, she punches in the long string of alphanumerics. Just as Koda threads the copper wire though the knob of plastique, the door lock gives a soft snick, and Kirsten, folding her laptop, pushes it slowly open. “We got it,” she says.

The hall on this level is painted stark white, matching the white tiles underfoot. To her left the corridor curves away toward the back of the building. To her right, the hallway ends in a glass partition broken only by a roundabout, also glass. Through it, Koda can see a second some ten feet beyond the first, but not into the hall beyond. A sign on the window proclaims STERILE ENVIRONMENT. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Koda slips out into the corridor, her finger on the trigger of her rifle. Kirsten follows, pausing only to draw and slide a round into the chamber of her automatic. “Where are we?” Koda asks softly.

“Production,” Kirsten answers. “Labs and quality control.”

“Lab coats? Scrubs?”

Kirsten’s eyes light with a hint of mischief. “Gotcha. Let’s try it.”

They pass through the roundabout without incident. Between it and its counterpart are a pair of closets with disposable whites, booties, hair coverings. Koda slips a coat over her jeans and shirt, velcroing it shut to just above her waist. She abandons her Stetson for a net that hides her hair, adds a pair of safety goggles and pauses to grin at Kirsten, now similarly attired. “Tres chic,” she observes. “So very you, ma’amselle.”

For answer, Kirsten sticks her tongue out at her lover. “Accessorized for the season with the indispensable AK. Let’s get out of here.”

Holding the rifle close to her side where it may be less immediately obvious, Koda follows Kirsten out the airlock. The corridor takes them past locked and numbered doors, otherwise featureless and flat white as the walls. Above them, the fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling emit a soft hum that grows louder as they follow the curve of the hallway. A jolt of pain stabs through her head, striking down along her spine and down her arms and legs. Next to her, Kirsten gives a soft cry and raises her hands to cover her ears, shaking her head from side to side, her weapon pointing wildly at the ceiling.

“Kirsten?” Her tongue feels rigid as iron, unresponsive. A wave of dizziness washes over her and the walls seem to spin around her, a white whirlwind that whirrs and spins, its sound building and building as it turns, becoming a roar, a thunder like a funnel cloud bearing down on her across a dark plain. As if from a great distance she seems to hear her name, a scream carried away by the wind. Then the floor rises up and hits her, jarring her bone from bone as darkness passes before her eyes, flickering light and shadow in a stacatto rhythm that spreads to her lungs, her heart, her misfiring nerves.

Dakota feels as if she’s been hit with a cattle prod. The pain, intense and searing, spreads throughout her body, leaving no cell untouched. Her muscles thrum and jump, ignoring her commands. Her nerves spark continuously, uselessly, like live, downed wires in the aftermath of a tornado. Hearing a pained grunt to her left, she uses all her will, all her strength, to move her eyes a fraction of an inch, until Kirsten comes into focus, curled into a fetal ball, her hands now claws that clamp desperately around her ears.

The sight gives her the will to push past her own limitations and, millimeter by slow, painful millimeter, she manages to unclench her own hand and reach out, her arm shaking like one in the throes of a seizure, until her fingers come in contact with the back of her lover’s head. Long fingers slide, in fits and starts, over soft golden hair until they reach the tiny bump just behind Kirsten’s left ear. With an effort as monumental as anything she has ever undertaken, Koda bites down on her lip, drawing blood, as she wills her finger to lift, then press down on the button that triggers her lover’s implant.

A fresh wave of agony pours over her like molten fire and her breath locks in her chest. By the gods, she thinks, straining for air that isn’t there as her diaphragm refuses to accept the signals she’s so desperately sending, I’m going to die like this!

Her hand slips of its own accord off of Kirsten’s head. The pain of her knuckles scraping the floor is infinitesimal against the torture rolling over in slow, heavy waves, pulsing to the beat of a heart she can swear she feels slowing. The light from the harsh fluorescents overhead sears into her retinas, threatening to blind her and spring a heavy film of tears to her eyes. Grimacing in pain, she slowly curls her hand into a fist, raises it bit by torturous bit, and drives it into her own midsection. The blow is utterly without strength, but manages somehow to unlock her frozen diaphragm, causing dead air to rush forth from her lungs as if from an old and cracked bellows breathing out its last.

Sweet, sweet air rushes back into her lungs, compounding the dizziness in her head and causing her stomach to do a slow roll before righting itself again. “Kir-sten… .” Her imagined shout comes out as a rusty wheeze and she prays her partner can hear it. “Yo-our o-oother im-plannnt. Tu-urrn it offff.”

After a moment that seems to span an eternity in which entire universes are birthed and then die, Koda can see her lover’s fingers relax a little then move in what is now a familiar motion, pressing the button sitting just under her skin.

Koda slumps against the wall, relief washing through her, dissipating her pain and beating back the dark for precious seconds. We made it. She can make it.

For Kirsten, the relief comes all at once, like a pinprick to an overfilled balloon. Control of her body rushes back to her, leaving her with only a blinding headache to mark her ordeal. She rolls over quickly, then freezes as her eyes set upon the agonized, sweat-soaked and spasming body of her lover. “Dakota!! What’s happening?!? What do I do??”

Koda’s gaze locks with hers then skitters away, her eyes jerking upward until just a crescent of blue shows beneath her lid. At that moment, a long shadow springs into being, looming over them both and causing Kirsten, in an act of pure instinct, to grab Koda’s involuntarily discarded rifle and aim, finger white against the trigger.

“Don’t shoot!” the man who throws the shadow shouts, raising empty hands. “I’m here to help.”

Stone deaf, Kirsten can nonetheless read his lips easily, and what she reads doesn’t move her finger from the trigger one iota, though it does halt her reflex to simply pull and be done with it.

She sneaks a quick glance at Dakota, whose bow-taut form and mouth drawn down into a rictus of agony threatens to drain all strength, and resolve, from her. With a supreme effort, she tears her gaze away, back to the man who is just now slowly lowering one arm to grasp the collar of his shirt, which he yanks down, displaying a neck barren of metal.

“That doesn’t mean a damn thing,” Kirsten replies stubbornly, raising the rifle so that it now points directly at the bare neck.

“Please,” the man repeats, “I’m here to help. Your friend…she won’t last much longer like this.”

Don’t you think I know that?!? Kirsten screams in her mind, very well aware how sharp the horns of the dilemma she is poised so precariously over. She can feel her lover’s agony like heat-shimmers in the height of summer. Her own indecision claws at her. Lower the rifle and risk both their deaths, keep it poised to shoot, and condemn Dakota.

In the end, it is mercifully easy. Where you go, I go, she thinks, lowering the rifle and setting it on the cold, gray floor.

She looks back up at the man again. “If you’re telling the truth, help her. Please.”

With a nod, the stranger comes down to his haunches and gathers Dakota as one would an injured child, then stands, lifting her easily in his arms. “Come. There is a safe place nearby.”

Fifty feet down the hallway, the man makes a left turn through a door that opens on silent hinges. Kirsten follows, then stops as her eyes set upon the interior. “A kitchen?!” she demands. “She needs help, not food!”

“Patience.”

The stranger is lucky that his face is turned away at that moment, for if Kirsten had seen the word he uttered, he may well have found himself in a world of hurt.

Laying Dakota down near the sink, he moves to, of all things, the microwave, sitting by itself on an island, and quickly punches several buttons. Kirsten watches his actions with an expression of patent disbelief. Her jaw then unhinges as her lover’s steel-spring taut form suddenly relaxes and her eyes flutter closed.

“Dakota!” she cries, striding across the small space separating them and dropping to her knees, gathering the limp form tightly against her breast as tears spring to her eyes.

Koda’s strength returns in a surge and she hugs Kirsten to her tightly before releasing her and tilting her lover’s head so that her lips can be easily read. “I’m okay, canteskuye. I’m ok.”

Needing to actually hear the confirmation, Kirsten thumbs her implants back on and listens to the music of Koda’s easy breaths and the beating of the valiant heart she can hear when she presses her ear against Dakota’s chest. “Thank God,” she murmurs. “Thank God.”

“The microwaves have a dampening effect on the white noise,” the stranger says, looking a bit discomfited by the emotional display before him. “Unfortunately, the relief is temporary at best.”

Dakota gives a short nod, expecting this, as Kirsten lifts her head and glares at their savior. “Who are you and why are you doing this,” she demands.

“Forgive me,” the stranger replies, bowing slightly at the waist. “I am Adam. Adam Virgilius. An…associate of Peter Westerhaus.”

“You lie,” Kirsten growls. “That bastard never had an ‘associate’ in his life.”

“I think he was being sarcastic, love,” Koda interjects, grasping her partner’s hand and giving it a fond squeeze.

“I was indeed,” Adam answers, smiling slightly. “I’ve worked for him for several years, though less blind, and devoted, than he assumed. When the last step in his plan was implemented, this building was locked down and all human workers were…disposed of.”

“Except you,” Kirsten comments, her sarcasm thick enough to be cut to ribbons with a butter knife.

Another short bow, another half smile. “Except me,” he allows, spreading his hands. “As I have said, I was less blind than he assumed. Unfortunately for me, my knowledge came a bit too late to make a full-out escape. I was, however, able to flee to the lower levels where, as you both have duly noticed, humans other than Westerhaus himself were forbidden.”

“Speaking of which,” Kirsten intones, eyeing the rifle that, in her unthinking flight to Dakota, she’s left on the other side of the room, “how is it that you can stand this ‘white noise’ when we can’t?”

Adam places a finger into his ear, then removes it, lowering his hand enough so that both women can easily see what looks to be a tiny microchip sitting on the pad. “The white noise you heard is a neural impulse interrupter, a very effective security precaution. This chip completely neutralizes the effect, allowing its wearer free access to all levels of this facility.”

Kirsten’s eyes, already glittering slits of distrust, narrow further. “And just how were you able to score such a prize?”

With a soft laugh, Adam replies, “From Westerhaus himself, actually.”

“Ah. I suppose he trusted you with his secrets so much that he just willingly gave up the keys to his kingdom. Very generous of him.” She tenses, ready to make a play for the rifle.

“On the contrary. The only trust Peter Westerhaus gave was to his precious androids. This, I took from him. Not that it mattered at the time, as he certainly had no more use for it.”

Kirsten thinks on this for a moment, then her face pales even as her eyes widen. “He’s dead? Westerhaus is dead?!?”

“Oh yes. On the very date he set his final plan into motion, actually.”

“Wha-at? But how?”

“By his own hand.”

Kirsten’s barked laugh is bitterness personified. “That figures. That just fucking figures. That yellow-bellied chickenshit coward was too spineless to even watch the destruction his fucked up plans created. Shit. Now what?!?”

“That, Doctor King, depends entirely on you.”

“Alright, that’s it. How in the hell do you know my n—.” Kirsten begins to rise, only to be halted by Koda’s firm squeeze to her hand.

“You were the one who opened the shaft grate,” Dakota says, eyeing Adam directly.

“Yes.”

“And the retinal sensors?”

“Ah. That was Mr. Westerhaus’ doing, actually.” He grins at Koda’s sharply raised eyebrow, though the smile fades as he eyes the microwave timer, counting down its last minutes. “We don’t have much time. His inner sanctum is just down the hall. The answers you seek are there.”

Kirsten still looks as if she wants to fight, but soon bows to the inevitable. She turns to Koda. “Maybe you should just….”

“No,” Dakota quickly interjects. “We’re in this together, remember? Just give me a minute and I’ll be ready.”

“Dakota—.”

“Please.”

A whole regiment of reasons why this is a very bad idea parading through her mind, Kirsten sighs and moves away, watching her lover intently as Dakota crosses her legs and closes her eyes. They open briefly, latching onto Adam. “This neural interrupter. Is it a steady frequency, or does it pulse?”

“There is a pulse, regulated to the average human heartbeat. Sixty eight to seventy two pulses per minute.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes slide closed again and her breathing deepens as she journeys through her own body in the ways of her ancestors. Her skin cools as blood is shunted to more vital organs. Her breathing and heart-rate slow. Her blood-pressure drops. When her eyes open, her pupils are dilated, like cat’s eyes, taking in all available light. Slowly, she rises to her feet, her mind fully in the present, sharp as sunlit steel. The microwave counts out its final seconds. “Turn off your implants, love.” Her voice is slow, and deeper than Kirsten has ever heard it. She hastens to obey the order, for even pleasingly phrased, that’s exactly what it is. Kirsten’s world goes to silence just as the microwave timer ‘dings’ its end. A slight tremor in the long muscles of her thighs is Dakota’s only response to the neural interrupter’s return. She eyes the two before her steadily, and nods, once. “Let’s go.”

*

True to his word, Adam leads them down the hall only a few dozen yards before stopping at Westerhaus’ door. Looking at it, Kirsten admits to herself a pang of disappointment. It is a door identical to the dozens of others they’ve passed. Beige-painted metal, like might be seen on board the Enterprise. No deep mahogany with pure gold trim and cut crystal knob. No ostentatiously scrolled signs announcing for the peons that the Boy Genius is currently in residence. Probably too paranoid, she thinks with a mental shrug. Further examination is interrupted by a tug to her sleeve. She glances to Dakota’s raised eyebrow, then to Adam, on her other side. He gestures to the door, then takes a deliberate step back, sending her nape hairs to sudden attention. Her gaze switches back to Dakota, who nods and gives her a small smile of encouragement.

Turning to the door, she takes in a deep breath, then steps forward until her eyes are level with the retinal scanner. At the same time, she presses her thumb against the print-and-DNA pad just beneath. She can’t hear the soft hum of the processor, nor the faint click of the lock disengaging, but she can see the five red lights blink to green, and so is not surprised then the door slides open, displaying the interior of Westerhaus’ office.

If the door itself is non-descript, the office within is anything but. Though if the door reminds her of the Enterprise, that comparison is doubly reinforced by an interior that looks as if it’s come straight off the Paramount lot. Touchscreen computers fit like puzzle pieces into a rainbow shaped glass table whose interior arc fronts a rather ordinary high-backed leather office chair. CPUs and server boxes rest on utilitarian tables, their processing lights blinking and strobing like signs over a carnival ride—one of the really scary ones where the rock music blares so loud that you can’t hear yourself puke.

She finds herself drawn inward, Dakota’s strong, soothing presence to her right, Adam’s to her left and a step behind. Though she can’t hear the door slide shut behind them, she’s nevertheless aware that it does, and when it does, it brings with it a feeling of being, if not trapped, at least locked in, as if the last piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place. For better or for worse, she knows, it ends here. There is nowhere left to run. There is nowhere left to look. There is nowhere left to hide.

It ends here. It all ends here.

Her interest in computers somewhere in the horse latitudes, Dakota finds herself drawn instead to the myriad of security monitors arranged, like the Jeopardy! board, in long, neat rows, stacked one atop the other. The view on all the screens is blessedly monotonous. Empty rooms, empty corridors, empty stairwells, empty bathrooms, though the latter doesn’t surprise her. The others, though…. There are androids here. She can feel them, can feel their weight pressing in on her from above, like the sea during a dive. Her adrenals throb dully just above her kidneys and she closes her eyes, willing her heart to keep its slow, steady beat even as she becomes aware of the fact that Westerhaus’ little security surprise hasn’t filtered through into this, his inner sanctum.

It ends here, she thinks, opening her eyes to the still monotonous view of the security screens. It all ends here.

Kirsten, for her part, moves silently around the room, keeping her hands prudently away from the equipment, scanning everything with a sharp eye and a sharper mind. Scrolling along the bottom of most of the monitors is an alien script that seems almost…alive. Looking at it makes her, by turns, very uneasy, and very dizzy as her brain tries to make sense of something it has no reference point for understanding. She looks quickly away, then up as Adam’s smiling reflection comes to her in the glass of the table.

“You can turn your implants back on if you like,” he says, smiling. “It’s quite safe in here.”

“That figures,” Kirsten snorts, though her trust of this stranger doesn’t quite extend quite so far as to take him completely at his word. Setting her left implant to its lowest gain, she flicks it on, ready to turn it back off again the very second something seems hinky. She relaxes as only the quiet sound of Dakota’s breathing comes to her over the still, chill air.

Adam moves silently across the thick pile carpeting to a nook in the near left rear corner of the office. An old coffee maker, dirty with the ghosts of coffees past, stands sentry on an impressive credenza, flanked by several equally stained mugs. A matching table stands at a right angle to the credenza, and upon that table rests an old, battered CPU, its nineteen inch monitor huge and bulky and as out of place among the sleek technology as a dinosaur in New York City.

“This was his personal computer,” he remarks, fiddling with the mouse to bring the beast out of hibernation. “It has something on it that I believe you’ll find very interesting.”

Eyeing him warily, Kirsten slowly crosses the room until she is standing beside the much taller man, her face bathed in the ghostly glow of the monitor. Her brows pucker as she quickly scans the text, which looks as if it’s been written by ee cummings on crack. It’s a long, rambling vomit of words written by someone whose mind had clearly left them for far greener pastures quite some time before. “What is this?”

“Look at the header.”

As she looks, her eyes widen. “Me? He wrote this to me??”

Adam nods.

“But…I never received anything like this. Hell, I’ve never received anything from him at all!” She looks closer, frowning. “Shit. I haven’t used that email address in years.”

“And yet you still came here.”

“I had no choice.”

“Indeed.” Reaching out, Adam snags the office chair and pulls it over to Kirsten. “I would suggest reading this missive in detail. I believe it contains most, if not all, of the answers you’re seeking.”

Kirsten rubs her forehead as she looks down at the schizophrenic text again. “You sound like you already know what’s in here, so how about we just cut to the chase and you explain it to me, hmm?”

Adam opens his mouth, then closes it as his attention is distracted by a faint blip on one of the monitors. “They’re coming.”

At his exclamation, Koda turns and stares at the monitor screens. Androids swarm along the corridors of the floors above, pouring down into the stairwell. Most are indistinguishable from humans to the eye, save for the thin metal collars about their necks. Some wear lab whites; others sport security uniforms. All carry weapons: automatic rifles, pistols, stunguns. A couple of the guards sport larger-barrelled arms that look capable of firing tear-gas canisters, possibly even grenades. A second contingent, smaller but just as menacing, files into the elevator from the Institute’s main lobby. There are perhaps forty of them. Thirty-five, easy.

Goddam motherfucking metalheads . . . .

But there is no time. Koda vaults the desk where Kirsten sits looking at her with huge eyes and lunges for a bronze sculpture on the credenza behind. It is something abstract; a flame, perhaps, or a leaf.

A hammer.

“Guard her!” she snaps at Adam and streaks for the door, pausing only long enough to assure herself that it locks securely behind her. She spares a glance for the elevator, descending slowly, still three floors above them. The thunder of running feet on the stairs is much nearer. First things first.

“Dakota!” Kirsten shouts, leaping out of her chair and flying to the door, just as the lock snicks shut. “Dakota!! Wait!!!” When the door doesn’t open, she resorts to ineffectual pounding until some measure of reason returns and she turns on her heel, fixing Adam with a glare that could fuse metal. “Open this door!”

Adam shakes his head slowly. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Dr. King.”

“Not possible?!? I’ll show you what’s not possible!! Open this goddamned door! Now!!!”

“Dr. King, please. I understand—.”

“You. Understand. Nothing!!” The image would be laughable if it weren’t so deathly serious: a woman, small even for her gender, in the face of a man a full foot taller, hands fisted in the springy fabric of his shirt, shaking him like a rag-doll in the hands of a child having a temper-tantrum. “She is more important than any of this! She is more important than all of this! Where she goes, I go. So open the fucking door right now.”

To his credit, Adam doesn’t look away from the green fire blazing in Kirsten’s eyes. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? Have your fingers suddenly lost the ability to work?!”

In answer, Adam gently pries Kirsten’s hands from his shirt and turns her toward the bank of security monitors. Kirsten watches, grim-faced, as Dakota moves through the hallways, half cat-half snake, slithering noiselessly around corners and curves, sticking to the few shadows available.

“Her one chance, her only chance, to come through this alive rests in your hands, Dr. King. There are over one hundred and fifty androids in this facility at the present time. Not even the three of us could destroy them completely with conventional weapons. They need to be turned off at the source. You are the only one who can do that. And she is risking her life to buy you enough time to do what needs to be done. Don’t let her actions be in vain, Dr. King.”

She watches a moment more, then turns slowly back to him, her hatred and anger making her face, for just a moment, both hideously ugly, and terrifyingly beautiful. “Damn you,” she says, her voice as soft and dead as the bottom of a grave. Damn you straight to Hell.”

*

Turning the sculpture so that the heavy base becomes the hammer’s head, Dakota slams it down on the electronic keypad on the door to the stairwell. The lock shatters satisfyingly, tumbling to the floor tiles in shards of clear lexan and mangled circuit board. The keypad dangles loose, held by a thin strand of multi-colored wire. The steel bolt, though, remains in place. Reversing her improvised maul, Koda jabs the sharp end through the hole in the door, reaming out the remaining circuits and dislodging the mechanism on the other side. It falls onto the landing with a satisfying clatter.

It will not stop them. It will force them to break the door or go around the building to the other stairwell, and that will buy her time. Buy Kirsten time.

She whirls, still holding the sculpture in one hand. The elevator reaches the fifth level as she watches, its slow descent marked by the soft wheezing of its pneumatic pedestal. Without pausing to breathe, Koda unhooks one of the grenades from her belt, pulls the pin and stands waiting, counting the seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. . . ..

On Two, the elevator door slides open. Koda pitches the grenade straight into the midst of the dozen androids packed shoulder to shoulder into its car and whirls, throwing herself some ten feet down the corridor to land flat on her face. The roar of the explosion washes over her, echoing up and down the length of the six-story deep shaft. Panels of the door slam into the wall behind her, punctuated by a series of small secondary explosions as at least some of the droids’ ammo goes up, the sound ripping through the air like strings of firecrackers. A fine dust drifts through the air, paint and graphite from the shredded drywall behind her.

She coughs once, hard, and scrambles to her feet. The frame of the elevator door curls back from the shaft in jagged metal sheets, its pale green paint burned and blistered. Several other fragments of the door and miscellaneous bits of droid anatomy protrude from the opposite wall, driven into the paneling by the force of the blast. Koda ducks around an especially wicked looking piece that juts halfway out into the passage, its edges bright and sharp as teeth. Holding on to an exposed stud, its metal hot under her hand, she peers into the remains of the elevator.

Half of it is gone, sheered away when the grenade hit its back wall. The remaining half shows little more than a square meter of flooring, held in place by the stump of the telescoping column rising from the lower levels and its now-skeletal frame. Half a droid hangs drunkenly over the far edge, poised above the black cavern below. A second lies half in, half out of the car. From under its torso, the stock and characteristic curving magazine of an AK protrude, together with the muzzle of some larger-bore weapon. Swiftly Koda pulls them both from under the remains of their recent owner. The AK seems to be intact; aiming at the window in the stair door, she pulls the trigger and gives a satisfied grin when the plexiglass shatters in a rain of fragments. Two seconds’ examination shows that the larger item is a shotgun, and another few seconds’ rifling of the droid’s jacket produces a handful of 12-guage shells. Not as good as a grenade-launcher, but useful all the same. For the first time since barreling out of Westerhaus’ office, she pauses to assess the situation.

The elevator: wrecked beyond use or repair.

Droid casualties: perhaps a dozen.

Captured weapons: two, both useful. She still has her own rifle and the sculpture, tucked now under her belt like a knife.

Advantage for the moment: good guys.

*

For the first time since she’s met him, Adam looks a bit unsure. Walking to the credenza, he props a hip against one corner and seems inordinately interested in the weave of his slacks, long fingers brushing along the fabric as if searching for lint. “It’s difficult,” he says softly, “to know where to begin.”

“How ‘bout I help you out, then,” Kirsten replies, sarcasm firmly in place. “Peter Westerhaus, fair haired wunderkind, boon to all mankind, DaVinci, Edison, Bell, Franklin, and Einstein all rolled into one, invents the first working android. Nations fall at his feet. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads fall at his feet. He quickly becomes the most important, not to mention richest, man in the world. More countries fall. More redheads fall. More money falls. And then, when that world least expects it, boom! Instant takeover.” Her smile is as hard and as sharp as a rough-hewn diamond. “That pretty much cover it, Mr. Virgilius?”

His smile is wan. “On the surface of things, perhaps.”

“Well, why don’t you dig it a little deeper for me, then,” she remarks, shooting a quick glance at the monitors, several of which show a blooming fireball shooting out from an elevator shaft. Her breathing eases as Dakota comes into view, apparently unharmed. “And make it quick or I’ll tear down that door with my bare hands and leave you talking to yourself.”

He looks at her for a long moment, then nods. “Peter Westerhaus was an extremely…disturbed individual.” He holds up a hand to forestall Kirsten’s scathing comeback. “Yes, I know you’re well aware of that, Doctor. It is said that many, if not most, geniuses of his type share that particular trait; that brain chemicals which allow extreme creativity and inventiveness also bring with them many kinds of madness, often in the same person.”

“Spare me the biology lecture, Virgilius. Get to the point, if you even have one.”

“Symptoms of what I believe to be schizophrenia were present for many years, long before I came to work for him. There were many stories of the man talking to himself—not, ordinarily, a horrible thing to do, but the reports also stated that he was answering himself, and in voices different than his own. Many workers were convinced that he had a secret partner working with him, based on these voices, but when he was approached, he was always alone.” A wan smile is displayed again. “His interest in robotics and, by extension, android development seems to have been what one might term a classic case of a son trying to win his father’s love. You are aware, I’m sure, of Willhelm Westerhaus, Genitetec’s CEO?”

“My heart bleeds for the whole fucking family,” Kirsten replies. “Can we please just get on with it?!?”

“It was the younger Westerhaus’ lifetime goal to win his father’s respect, if not his love. It was his greatest disappointment when the first working android was completed and his father was not there to see it, having died some months before. But the breaking point came two years later, when his mother, whom he adored, was killed in a terrorist attack in Morocco, where she was vacationing with her new beau. Peter was never the same after that. He went into seclusion, in this very office, and his mental status, fragile as it was, began to deteriorate at a dangerously rapid pace. He told some of his fellows, the few he would allow into this sanctum, that God had spoken to him.”

“God.”

“God.”

“And what did God say to the little bastard?”

“That he was the Chosen One, placed on this earth not to destroy it, but to save it.”

“Save it?!?” Kirsten shouts, shooting up from her chair, eyes blazing. “Save it?? In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Virgilius, this world is ruined! His creations have murdered millions! Probably billions!! Men! Women! Children! Adam, they’re murdering children!!!”

Adam drops his eyes. “Yes,” he replies softly. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Then answer me the only question I give a shit about right now. Why??”

Adam nods. “I can do that.”

*

A sudden jab of pain rips through Koda’s chest, and she breathes deeply, willing her heart rate and respiration again below the threshold frequency of Westerhaus’ little beeper from hell. The calm finds its center just under her sternum, spreads, slipping along her nerves until her whole body poises on the sharp edges of awareness, every object, every color sharp in her sight, every sound keen as the rustle of a mouse under the snow to a hunting owl.

Silence.

The droids have either halted their charge or retreated from the stairwell. Ducking to avoid the broken window in the door, Koda leans against the steel panel, listening. Just audible, she can hear the shuffle of feet now floors above her, retreating toward the upper levels. She has a couple minutes, maybe less, to break the lock on the other stairwell.

Shouldering the two extra guns, she sprints along the corridor that runs the circumference of the building. A third of the way around the curve, she catches sight of the scarlet Exit sign above the door to the second stair. No time for finesse on this one. Slinging her M-16 behind her shoulder, Koda braces the shotgun against her hip and fires.

The blast blows the lock mechanism to confetti, small fragments ricocheting off the bolt to pepper the wall opposite. Most of the debris, though, falls onto the landing on the other side. She cannot be sure in the echo from the shot, but it seems to her that sounds of feet shuffling on the steps have slowed. Not so eager to run into a 12-guage, are ya, hotshots? That’d blow even your printed-circuit brains out.

Koda bends to inspect the bolt, which shows bright nicks from both the shot and the flying shards of the door. It remains firmly in its socket, though, just where she wants it. Working quickly, she wires a detonator to the underside of the bar, leaving the length of copper dangling. She has perhaps half a kilo of plastique left. She kneads the powder into the malleable paste that gives it its name, then stuffs it down between the door panels, where it adheres nicely to the braces between the steel sheets. She molds it carefully, spreading upward it so that explosive and blasting cap make contact where the bolt runs out of sight into the door jamb.

She pauses for a moment, listening once again for the tread of feet on the stairs. If they want the door open, the plastique will do the job. It will also, if they don’t spread out too far up the steps, blow the lot of them right into the middle of next February. The charge she has set is enough to destroy a truck; it ought to be equal to taking out a dozen droids or so. Which leaves the party coming up the other staircase, with their weapons and their unwavering programmed purpose and their steel and titanium bodies and lifetime batteries.

Which leaves her, with two good automatic weapons, a shotgun and a single grenade still left. All that remains between them and Kirsten. All that remains between them and an inhuman hell.

Carefully, Koda pulls the cotter pin that will prime the detonator. She cannot defend two points at once. She will have to trust that the C-4 will take out most of one party while she deals with the second.

And hope that Kirsten and Adam can deal with any who manage to get past her. Take care of her, Adam. For all the gods’ sake, take care of her. She’s the only one who can win the world back. Every last one of the rest of us is expendable.

Every last single one.

The sound of feet on the stairs above sends her sprinting down the corridor. The curve of the hallway will give her some cover, but she needs more. She needs a barricade. As she runs—not full out, because that could send her heart rate soaring—the first sounds of battering come from the stair door behind her. The blows reverberate like the pounding of a great drum, metal smashing into metal with the mechanical regularity of arms and shoulders fashioned from steel and titanium fiber. The detonator has an eight-second delay. She counts it off with the rhythm of the blows, each one hammering through the building like a thunderclap.

The explosion, when it comes, shakes the floor beneath her feet, the sound washing over her like a physical force. Koda stumbles with it, breaking her fall only by clutching at the handle of a door. She swings from it crazily for a second, holding on while equilibrium reasserts itself. From around the curve of the hallway comes a second wave of sound, a tumbling and crashing almost like a rockslide. No doubt some of the wall has come down with the door. With luck the blast has also taken out a flight of stairs, tumbling the reinforced concrete steps down to shatter against the landing below.

With luck, the blast set nothing on fire.

With luck, there are no survivors.

Somewhere, sometime, the luck is going to run out.

There is nothing she can use as a barricade. Westerhaus, cautious or paranoid depending on how you look at it, has constructed his sanctum to give no cover for uninvited guests, be they sightseers or corporate saboteurs. The hall curves smoothly around the core of the Institute with not so much as a water fountain to obstruct line of sight. Even the pictures lie flat against the walls, mounted without wire or frames that could be abstracted and used as weapons.

Goddam security freak . . ..

She tries the handle that broke her fall. The room is unlabeled, the door locked. So is the next, and the next.

Goddam security freak . . ..

Is bound to have a security station somewhere on his personal floor. A security station with weapons, maybe riot gear. Returning the way she came, Koda begins shooting out the locks of the doors. A glance inside the first shows a supply room, stacked to the ceiling with paper and spare computer gear. The second contains a long teakwood table and armchairs: conference center. The third, a bathroom, complete with shower, lined in Spanish tile. Ahead of her, from the staircase by the ruined elevator, she can hear the blows begin to rain down on the door now held only by its bolt. She has perhaps seconds, no more.

The room closest to the office yields paydirt. Ranged on a desk that runs round the angle of the room, security monitors flicker with the activity on the floor. Mostly lack of it; except for the camera trained on the elevator and the exit from the staircase, all show empty halls. As Koda scrambles to strap on a Kevlar vest and snatch up a riot shield, she notes with satisfaction that the C-4 has done its work. A great, gaping hole in the outer wall of the corridor opens into nothingness. Bits and pieces of droids litter the floor. No survivors.

From the stairwell comes a crash as the door bursts open. Ina Maka, she breathes soundlessly, Holy Mother. For all your Earth, help me now. Thrusting her arm through the strap, Koda lifts the shield and steps out into the hall.

*

“After his mother died, Peter, a confirmed agnostic, became somewhat obsessively interested in the Judeo-Christian bible.”

“The children, Virgilius. The children!”

Adam raises a hand. “Please. For any of this to make sense, I must tell it logically.”

“We’re running out of time,” Kirsten replies, her heart in her throat as she watches her lover mow through a group of androids.

“We will have time for this,” he responds, getting up to pace the confines of the cluttered room. “He was particularly interested in the Book of Genesis, where Man was given dominion over the earth, and also entrusted to be its caretaker.”

“I’m familiar with the relevant texts, Virgilius. Get on with it.”

“In his sickness, Peter believed that God had come to him, stating that humans had, as he put it, ‘worn out their welcome’. They had taken the world given to them and had raped it; for food, for shelter, for the ability to travel long distances, for technology.”

“There’s irony for you,” Kirsten retorts, chuckling. “Mr. Technology himself, God’s sword against technology. Oh yeah, a laugh riot, as my father used to say.” She props her head on one fist. “So, he invents the androids, ingratiates his inventions with the common man, and, when they least expect it…pow. Technology one, humanity zero. God, Westerhaus and the Earth, the new Blessed Trinity.” Her smile is sour. “That still doesn’t explain why women are being raped and their infants murdered.”

“The first androids he developed were never meant to hold stewardship over the earth, Doctor. Yes, they can be programmed to reap, or to sow, to build, or to destroy, but that is all that they can do. They cannot create. They cannot reason. They cannot make decisions based on logic, or even illogic, if they have not been programmed to make those decisions.”

“Meaning that Maid Marion can’t become Construction Joe unless it’s reprogrammed.”

“Exactly,” Adam replies, smiling. “For all their seeming worth and indestructibility, androids lack the one thing that is needed to be a caretaker.”

Kirsten’s face pales as the answer comes to her. “A thinking brain,” she whispers, stunned by the horror of it. “Dear God! He invented a sentient android!”

*

Pulling the pin on her last grenade, Koda waits for the unhurried march of the droids’s feet to carry them around the curve of the hall. She stands to one side, behind the open door of the security station and the, the riot shield raised to protect her unhelmeted head. For a second, no more, she sinks deep into her mind’s center, steadying her heart, pacing her lungs and diaphragm, extending and sharpening her senses. Hard against her ribs, she feels the measured beat of her heart, the thrum of her blood in her veins. Her senses sharpen, so that the light shimmers in the empty hallway and her ears separate, exquisitely, the individual footfalls as the enemy approaches her. She waits.

The first half dozen round the curve at a trot with two seconds to go. Koda releases the grenade, her arm swinging high, up and ovrerhand. It arcs down in the midst of the group, ripping the clothing and front plates off two, toppling them backward to trip a third that goes down on its face, its weapon discharging under it as it strikes the floor. It does not rise again. Another, its legs blown away at midthigh, stands on its stumps with wires trailing loose. It has dropped its weapon and repetitively swivels its head from side to side and reciting in a high, flat voice, “Circuit 456, Check. Voder, Check. Color Card, Check. Accelerator Card, Check. Circuit 456, Check. . ..” repeating itself over and over again. One of its colleagues, still on its feet, kicks it unceremoniously to the side, steps over the fallen and comes on doggedly.

Koda allows it to come on unopposed until it stands within ten feet. Shouldering the 12 guage, then, she fires and sends its head sailing back from its shoulders to land with a clang against the metal corpses on the floor and roll clattering along the hallway. She shoves another shell into the breech and sends the last of the party reeling headless into the wall. It stalls there, its chest against the wall, its feet moving in spastic small steps that carry it nowhere.

Advantage: Still the good guys. Koda grins and darts forward, avoiding the crater gouged by the explosion. Like the walls, the floors of the Westerhaus Institute are meter-thick reinforced concrete, meant to survive the legendary Big One that has yet to carry California out to sea. She kneels, rummaging briefly among the droid casualties for useful objects. One, bless his metal head, yields more shotgun shells; another she robs of the extra magazines he carries at his belt. For half a second, she considers pulling the remains together to form a barrier, but there is not enough shattered and twisted metal to form an effective barrier, still less block the passage altogether. Better to leave them as they lie. At worst, the next wave will have to go around them. At best, they may become tangled in the metal struts and twisting cables.

At the sound of feet in the corridor, Koda steps free of the metal tangle, retreating ot her place behind the security room door. For half a second, she glances back toward Westerhaus’ office, wishing for some sign, any sign, that Kirsten has made headway in her search for the code.

Because this isn’t going to work much longer. Sooner or later, they’re going to come down that hall in a rush, and it’s all going to be over.

But what comes this time is not a mass advance but a single set of footsteps, walking quietly, deliberately. They halt just beyond the curve of the wall, just out of sight, just beyond shot. A voice, male and mellow and suffused with gentle reason, says, “Dr. Rivers? This is unnecessary. May we talk?”

For answer, Koda picks up her rifle and sends a round speeding into the wall just ahead of where the speaker must be standing. “That’s all I’ve got to say, bastard! You got anything you want to add?”

A figure steps out into the hallway, perhaps five yards ahead of her. He—or it, she reminds herself fiercely, it—wears flannel shirt and jeans, the toes of well-worn boots showing below the frayed hems of the legs. Crinkles show at the corners of his blue eyes, and his hair, brushed carefully across his forehead, is white as salt. “Now, Dr. Rivers,” he says, “Dakota—you’re making a terrible mistake here. You’re throwing your life away for—” palms up, his hands gesture widely—“for what? It doesn’t have to be like this. Indeed, it doesn’t.”

It’s a droid, she reminds herself. Just a very, very lifelike droid. Never mind that it looks like everybody’s favorite uncle. “Okay,” she says. “Turn yourselves off. All of you, you included. Then it won’t have to ‘end like this.’” She practically spits the last words and feels her heart give a painful jump. Consciously, she damps down her anger. They want emotion. They want her to fall prey again to the neural scrambler or whatever the hell the damned thing is.

“Hardly,” Again, the open, reasonable gesture. “Hear me. Enough of your people have died. We have what we need, for years to come. We will leave you in peace. You and other humans can live out your lives in the normal way. You need not fear us.”

The strange thing is, she is not even tempted. What the droid offers is not entirely unreasonable; it is the bargain made by the slaver with the enslaved, the butcher with the cattle. This time we will only take so many of you. The rest may live.

Until the next time.

And the time after that.

“I’ve seen what you’ve done!” she yells. “Fuck you and your deals!”

“You haven’t heard my offer.”

“Let me guess. Give up Kirsten King and we can all walk out of here.” She draws a long, hard, steadying breath. Every second she can keep the thing talking helps Kirsten, brings her that much closer to the answer. “No.”

“You will die then, both of you. You need not.”

“Make me a better offer.”

“You will live. She will not suffer, I promise you.”

“I said a better offer, bastard!”

“There is none. Yes or no. Now.”

“Well, then.” Koda drops her shield and steps around the edge of the door. “I guess I’ll just have to say—”

The droid waits, not speaking. With reflexes so swift she has no time to plan the maneuver, Koda whips the shotgun up and blows the droid’s head assembly open. “—no.”

*

“Yes,” Adam replies, coming to stand before her. “It took many years, many failures, but yes, he invented an android that was able to think for itself.”

“How?” Kirsten demands, her hand slapping hard on the table. “How in the hell did he do that?!?”

Adam pauses for a moment, pursing his lips and sliding his fingers along the ribbed collar of his shirt. “Most of the preliminary work, or what passed for it at the time, had been done decades before Westerhaus was born. Mapping hardwiring and microchip technology to living tissue was hardly a new field by the time the first androids had been developed. Spinal cord regeneration, the Navy’s use of rats as cameras, even the Alzheimers work had moved from theory into accepted standards of practice for the time. But that,” he continues, spreading his hands, “obviously, wasn’t enough. And even if it were possible to wire a human brain like a Christmas tree and dump it into the shell of an android, that still wouldn’t work.”

“Because it would still, essentially, be human.”

“Exactly. So the problem needed to be approached from another angle.” He pauses again, head tilted in thought. “Do you remember the spate of child abductions in Washington DC a decade or so ago?”

Kirsten thinks for a moment. “I think so. From orphanages mostly. Some from hospitals. A few from their own cribs. They never captured the kidnappers or found the bod…ies….” Her eyes widen. “No. Please don’t tell me that he….”

“Yes. He did.”

“But why?” Kirsten shouts, pounding the table with a closed fist. “Why the goddamned children?!?”

“Genetics,” Adam answers. “And the ability to produce a compound that, with a little outside help, will turn a regular drone into a member of Westerhaus’ Master Race.”

“Stop speaking in riddles, man! We don’t have time to… oh my God.” She rises to her feet slowly, bone-pale face cupped in suddenly shaking hands. “Oh my God. It’s Growth Hormone, isn’t it. Human Growth Hormone. There were trials, not so long back, connecting it with nerve regeneration….”

“Precisely. A genetic marker is injected into the child, causing a pituitary adenoma. Within six months to a year, depending upon the age of the child injected, the adenoma forms and begins to produce Human Growth Hormone in great quantities. When the levels reach their peak, the hormone is…harvested, and the donor is then euthanized.”

“Euthanized?!? You mean murdered!!!”

“Yes,” Adam replies, looking down at his shoes. “They were murdered. Are still being murdered, all in the name of science…and…humanity. In some way that I’m not fully aware of, the hormone imparts sentience to the android circuits. It was the ingredient that Mr. Westerhaus was lacking all these years. When he found it, he cried. Not in sorrow, but in joy.”

He doesn’t expect the right cross that connects, with deadly precision, at the point of his chin. His hands fly up as he stumbles back, crashing against the credenza and sending the coffee pot and mugs clattering to the ground.

“You son of a bitch!” Kirsten growls, stalking him like a wolf on the hunt. “You goddamned motherfucking son of a bitch!!! You knew this was happening. You knew it! And you did nothing to stop it!!!”

“I couldn’t stop it,” he replies, making no attempt to ward off her blows. “There was no way for me to stop it. But you, Doctor King, you can.”

Some of what he’s said eventually gets through and her punches weaken, then stop altogether and she stands like a toy soldier whose spring has wound down. “How,” she demands, voice rough from shouting and muffled by the tears she’s trying desperately to hold in. “Tell me how.”

With gently hands, he turns her and guides her to the main desk. The alien script continues to scroll across the bottom in an endless, nauseating stream. “For months,” he begins softly, “I have attempted to decipher this string of code, but found no reference point in all my research with which to even begin. The Rosetta Stone, as it were, came in the email he addressed to you. The one that, unfortunately, you never received. You, Doctor King, are the key. At some point prior to his suicide, he must have had second thoughts. It is my belief that he encoded a…backdoor, if you will, an escape hatch through all of this could be undone. And you are the only person in this world who can decipher it.”

“Why? What’s so damned special about me??”

“You are his greatest adversary, and aside from the fact that your brilliance in these matters equals his…..”

*

The droid slumps to the floor to lie among the other wreckage, and Koda takes two quick steps back into the security station. A glance about the rank of monitors shows the remaining squad splitting into two parties, the second setting off down the hall in the opposite direction. The first contingent, hovering just beyond range beyond the curve, does not move.

Of course not. They’re going to wait for the other bunch to come around behind and attack from both directions. Can’t let that happen.

She has two automatic weapons left, one shotgun and one nameless piece of sculpture. If she does not deal with the nearer group now, she will be trapped. Worse, she will leave Westerhaus’ office and Kirsten exposed to at least one of the parties. And it will all be over. Kirsten will die, and the world will be at the mercy of Westerhaus’ creations for years, perhaps for generations.

Perhaps forever.

Can’t let that happen.

Koda slings the AK over one shoulder, dropping her M-16 into her hands. The shotgun will not serve her here. Neither will stealth.

Steeling herself against the pain she knows will follow, Koda bursts out of the security station, running full out for the curve and the smaller droid party still waiting. She knows to the millisecond when her heart rate rises to normal by the stab of sudden agony through her chest. Her legs still work, though, and her hands. That is all that matters.

She skids around the curve running full out, and as she comes within sight of the enemy party she jerks her finger spasmodically down on the trigger, spraying the width of the hallway from side to side. Amid the staccato rhythm of the M-16 she can hear the impact of slugs on metal as they find their marks, droids going down before her assault, others bringing their own guns up to fire, stuttering out an answer to her own. A round whizzes by her head, close enough for her to feel the wind of its passage. Another strikes her squarely in the center of her Kevlar vest, a bruising blow, and white heat blossoms in her chest, stealing her breath. She ignores it, throwing down the M-16 when its magazine empties and feeling the solid slap of the AK into her hands in its stead. And then she is firing again in long sweeps, not taking time to aim, catching her massed targets in their sensor arrays, their legs, the solid, unyielding mass of their torsos. One holds a round thing in its hand, its dark metal surface scored, and Koda aims high, going for its wrist. The thing drops and rolls among the droids, but none of them seems to notice it as they spray bullets toward her and she dodges low, feinting to one side, dodges again. Something stings along her own leg, something else on her left shoulder, but she cannot take time to look, as she grits her teeth against the havoc under her sternum, and fires and fires and fires again. And again. And again.

The trigger under her cramped finger clicks on empty. Perhaps twenty seconds have passed since she rounded the curve of the hall. The droids lie scattered over the floor, some riddled with holes through the body, others more neatly dispatched with gaping cavities in their sensor arrays. Torn wires and a thin stream of yellow-green lubricant snake along the tiles. Koda’s breath comes in hard, dry gasps, as the pain of the wounds in leg and shoulder crashes in on her, joining with the ramping agony in her chest. She leans over at the waist, her hands on her knees, and forces her breath to slow, forces it to regularity, bringing her heart under control and with it the pain that threatens to wash her away on its red tide. There is something wet under her hand, and when she raises her palm to look, dark blood drips to the floor.

Dark blood.

Venous blood.

She is not bleeding to death, at least not at the moment. A quick inspection shows her a matching wound on the back of her thigh; clean penetration, then. Red streaks the angle of her shoulder, a rip through her shirt showing blood and grazed skin beneath. “Just a graze, ma’am.” Graze be damned. The thing is painful out of all proportion to the damage, worse at the moment than the hole in her leg. But that is because her body has not had time to process the greater damage. The wound will hurt. That is a certainty.

Without warning, the corridor before her explodes in smoke and fire. Koda throws herself backward, hands flying to protect her head as the grenade lifts shattered metal and plexiglass into the air, spraying it like shrapnel into walls and ceiling. A splinter of steel drives itself into the back of her left hand, and blood runs chill down onto her face. Silence follows.

Koda pulls the splinter out of the space between two of the tendons that stand forth against her skin, fanning out from her wrist. Levering her feet under her, she stumbles over to the wreckage. One droid moves a hand, and she loosens the sculpture from her belt and methodically pounds its head to bits. Then she picks up her guns, slotting new magazines in under the stocks and limps back to the security center.

The screens show the last group of droids somewhere around the curve of the building, how far or near she cannot tell. She has no landmarks to go by; she only knows they are somewhere on the long way around between her position and the still smoking crater in the hall. Presumably they know the first party has failed. Presumably they also know she is wounded and running low on ammunition.

Running low on strategy. Running low on strength. She bends to examine the hole in her leg a second time. A thin stream of blood pulses from it, scarlet, bright with new oxygen. She swears softly. The bullet must have nicked the artery. She must have torn it open when she dived for the floor. She unwinds her bandana from her neck and cinches it as tightly as she can over the hole in her jeans. Pressure will help. Temporarily, anyway.

But then, everything is temporary now.

I wonder, she thinks idly as she checks her magazines once again. I wonder if it’s true that sometimes we get to go back in time. Think I’d like something Pre-Columbian next go-round if we do. Cahokia, maybe. Mound-Builders—Kirsten would like that. Not sure the future world is anything I want to be born into.

Should have asked Wa Uspewikakiyape when I had the chance.

Should have it now soon enough.

A flicker of movement on one of the monitors catches her eye. The droids are moving.

They come in a rush this time. Koda hears them before she sees them, their feet drumming in perfect, mechanical unison. If she stays in here, she will be trapped. It will only take one droid, one gun. And then the way into Westerhaus’ office will lie open to them.

She slips out of the room and behind the door again. Its armor will give some little protection, for some little time. She braces the AK against the edge of the panel, waiting only for the contingent to come into sight. The thunder of running feet stops somewhere just around the curve. Then nothing. Silence. The quiet stretches on and on, until she begins to wonder if the grenade blast has partially deafened her. She could go back and check the monitors. They might have split again, be coming at her from both directions again.

But that’s what they want her to do. It would give them a clear shot at her.

One. All it would take.

She waits, while the blood trickles down her leg and arm, while her muscles stiffen. Waits.

Bastards. Goddam game of nerves.

Won’t break. Can’t.

A single droid steps into the corridor, in clear sight. She fires just as an object leaves its hand, arching up in a perfect parabola to clear the top of the door and come straight down on her, bursting into flame as it descends. She throws herself against the wall, but it rakes against her arm, spreading flame down her sleeve and across the covering of her Kevlar vest. Rolling, she smothers the fire that licks at her shirt and down the leg of her jeans, not even feeling the heat as she kicks the incendiary away from her and back out into the hall. It burns sullenly on the tiles, black smoke billowing up to choke her. She glances down to check the damage. The ruins of her sleeve hang limply from her wrist. The skin beneath has already begun to blister. Worse, the vest now dangles by a single strap, its armored plates slipping loose beneath the cloth. Useless. She shrugs out of it, leaving it where it lies. No time, no way, to get another.

She snatches up her rifle again and waits.

They come in a rush this time, rounding the curve of the hallway in a mass. The AK jars against her shoulder as she sprays the rounds across their line, shaking her bones one against another, sending a chill trickle of blood down across her chest. Another incendiary plummets down over the door, striking its edge and falling wide to spill flame across the floor behind her. Their return fire clangs against the sheet steel of the door, a round breaking through the lexan window above and showering her with a myriad dull-edged fragments. One droid breaks wide from the mass and dashes toward her position, keeping to the far wall. She puts a spurt of rounds through its head, and it tumbles down on the sputtering fire bomb, its uniform bursting into flame. Oh no you don’t. Bastard. You want by me, gotta kill me first.

But the rest come on undeterred, so close now she can see the colored rings of their optical sensors. If she does not move, she will be trapped against the wall as surely as she would have been in the guard post.

A high scream like a hawk’s rips out of her throat, as she stands and swings around the edge of the door, raking the enemy line with fire. Two stumble and fall, but the rest come inexorably on. Something slams into her body at the level of her right hipbone, sending her staggering back a step as she empties one magazine and slings the second gun around into her hands, its frame juddering against her palm as she jerks the trigger back and holds it. Searing heat strikes through her left shoulder, and her arm suddenly goes slack, the muzzle of her gun dropping. She props it against her side, never breaking the rhythm of her fire. Another droid falls. Another.

Her gun falls silent. No more bullets.

A hail of automatic fire bursts from in front of her. Pain rakes across her body, the claws of some great beast slashing her from hip to shoulder. Blood soaks the front of her shirt, a red rain that splashes against the floor. A shadow passes over her eyes, clears, returns. Sounds take on an abnormal clarity. She hears the clatter of her rifle as it hits the floor, bouncing end for end. And she hears the rattle of a grenade as it rolls across the tiles to bump against her foot.

She cannot breathe. Her ribs have become a vise pressing down on her lungs, squeezing the life from her. The iron taste of blood is on her tongue, welling up from somewhere deep in her body. With exquisite slowness, exquisite precision, she reaches down, grasps the grenade, and aims it at the line of droids. A roar like the voice of a waterfall, the rage of a thousand thunders rolls over her, and she stumbles backward against the door of Westerhaus’ office. It gives way behind her, and she tumbles into the abyss.

Adam turns suddenly toward the door, horror on his face. Kirsten turns to look as Koda tumbles through and falls across the threshhold, her body bloodstained from neck to thigh, a thin runnel of scarlet at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes stare upward at nothing, pupils fixed, lifeless.

CHAPTER SIXTY THREE

KIRSTEN FEELS HER own mouth go dry as old cotton. A wave of dizziness passes over her; darkness steals her sight. Her breath leaves her lungs in what must be a scream, but she cannot hear it, cannot think. Her whole world has narrowed to the long body sprawled on the floor. Somehow her legs, gone all to water, carry her the two steps necessary, and she falls on her knees beside her lover. “Sweetheart?” she calls softly, laying her hand on one broad, too-still shoulder. Blood. So much blood. “Koda? Sweetheart? It’s okay now. You’re okay. You’re safe. It’s okay.” Seeing the tiny runnel of blood from Dakota’s lips, Kirsten rips the sleeve from her shirt and gently dabs it away, deliberately ignoring the fact that her lover’s chill skin has the consistency of rubber and not hearing—deliberately again—the sound of Dakota’s bottom lip as it springs back against her teeth with a soft ‘plop’. “You always hate being dirty, don’tcha,” Kirsten says with an over-bright smile. “But that’s ok. I’m sure there are showers around here somewhere. Right Adam?”

Unable to meet Kirsten’s eyes, Adam looks down, then turns to the remains of the door. The view of the hallway is like looking into Armageddon. The sprinklers, though keeping, for the moment, the fire from spreading, are doing nothing to dampen its anger. As he watches, a large chunk of melted ceiling tile falls onto the floor with a great clatter. Bits and pieces of androids lay scattered everywhere, like the playground toys of children just called home for dinner. Dakota has indeed brought them time. How much, he can’t begin to fathom, but every second counts now. With a soft grunt, he picks up the crumpled door and positions it best he can across the frame, pushing with all his might. The metal is hot to the touch. In some places, it smokes, but he ignores the pain and continues to fit the door back where it belongs, hoping that this final barrier will, somehow, hold.

When he turns back, Kirsten has gathered Dakota in her arms. The taller woman’s head lolls lifelessly back until it lies almost between her shoulder blades. Without a change in her expression, Kirsten simply gathers her lover’s head and moves it forward so that it lies against her shoulder. “It’s okay, my love,” she croons into an unhearing ear. “Everything’s okay now. It is. You’ll see.”

Gathering all of his courage, Adam crosses the short distance between them and lays a gentle hand on Kirsten’s shoulder. “Doctor King.”

“Leave me alone!” Kirsten growls, not looking up as her hand continues to mindlessly stroke the mass of thick, black, blood-soaked hair.

“Please, Doctor.”

“Just go away!!”

“I can’t. We need to finish this.”

“It can wait,” Kirsten replies in a soft, gentle voice. “Until Dakota’s well again. Right, sweetheart? That’s the important thing. Getting you well. The most important thing.”

“Doctor King, please. I’ll keep watch over her, I promise you. You need to finish this now, before there’s no time left!”

“Go you think I give a shit about that?!?” she snarls, teeth bared like a predator ready to fight.

“Don’t you think she would?” Adam asks, gesturing to the woman in Kirsten’s arms.

For a moment, just a moment, sanity returns to Kirsten’s eyes, and Adam finds himself totally unprepared for the blast of unshielded emotion directed his way. Anger, grief, horror, despair. It’s all there, mixed together with a hundred other emotions he can’t even begin to identify. “Please, Doctor. The world needs you.”

“Fuck. The. World. Fuck humanity. Fuck the androids. Fuck Peter fucking Westerhaus, and fuck you too.”

With a soft sigh, Adam releases his grip on Kirsten’s shoulder and takes a step back. “You know,” he comments quietly, in an offhand manner, “she was an incredibly brave woman. Who gave everything to make sure that you had this one chance.” His voice firms, becoming almost harsh as he stares at the bowed back of Kirsten’s head. “Make sure you take it, Doctor King.”

Kirsten can feel the anger seethe through her, like a runaway express train headed to nowhere. Part of her aches to grab hold, to jump on and ride it through to its inevitable end; anything to rid her of this numb, dreaming feel of unreality and utter emptiness. Another part of her, however, knows that if she gives in, she will shatter, sure as glass shatters when it falls to the floor.

Very deliberately, she relaxes the arm holding her lover to her body and uses the other to stroke the bloody bangs from her pale, waxen face. “Wait for me,” she whispers, before laying Dakota’s body on the ground and carefully arranging her limbs into a pose that looks as if she is merely sleeping. With a half sob that she cuts off savagely, she leans forward and places a kiss on chill lips. “I’ll be with you soon.”

*

The impact as her body hits the floor jars along her bones, but somehow, strangely, its solidity does not break her fall. She plunges through it into the void, an infinity of night that spins about her as she tumbles through it like a dark comet, all its light and glory spent. Here and there the blackness thins, and she glimpses distant points of light that may be stars, glowing wisps like nebulae, the final blaze of dying suns. Wind beats at her as she falls, stripping her sight from her, scouring her skin. Voices ride on its current, strange whispers that seem half-familiar, half-alien. She strains to hear, but the wind drowns them, all but fragments. Threaded in among the voices, high, wild laughter skims along its current, echoing against the walls of night that close in about her.

“. . .replaced me, knew you would . . ..”

“. . .bright for a prairie nigger, but still . ..

“. . .left me to die . . ..”

“. . .I said, your Christian name, girl . . ..”

“. . .just need a man, bitch . . ..”

“. . .could have saved hm if you’d tried . . ..”

“. . .couldn’t protect her. . .dead . . .dead. . .”

“. . .all dead, all dead . . ..”

“. . .your fault. . ..

“. . .your fault your fault YOUR faultfaultfaultfault. . ..”

The wind batters at her like breaking waves, slamming her as she begins to spin on the axis of her spine. Except that she has no spine, has no bones, no flesh, no skin. Under the incessant assault, she feels herself begin to fragment. She tries to draw in upon herself, reflexing into a knot with knees drawn up and arms crossed over her breast. But her muscles do not answer her, do not exist. A part of her tears away to go spinning back the way she has come, whirling down the spiral path that leads toward earth, back toward life. A part of her consciousness clings to it as it bursts free of the darkness to hover over the sprawl of her body, and she regards it curiously. Blood stains it from thigh to neck, pools on the floor around it, begins to grow viscous at the edges of its flow. At the desk not far away, Kirsten sits before a computer screen, face pale as her hair, mouth a thin line of control. Her fingers fly over the keyboard. Her concentration armors her, but beyond it lies a welter of pain raw as stripped flesh. It calls to her, calls her name.

Even in death. Even in death.

Even in death, I will never leave you.

The winds take her again, and awareness of the earthbound fragment fades. Their force spins her through the darkness, whirling faster and faster as the circumference of her self draws inward, concentrating her essence. Without warning she bursts forth into the starlight of a summer night, floating somewhere above a narrow valley where a stream runs silver in the moonlight and hummingbird moths fumble at the spires of paintbrush and lupine. A big dog lies among the flowers on one slope; he looks up and whines as she passes. Peace, she wishes him. And, stay. Then she is gone, carried up and over the shadowed landscape, skimming the energy lines that stretch like cobwebs from the sacred mountains in the lands of the Dine far to the south, to the sleeping cones of Grandfather and Little Sister in the north, that the whites call Ranier and St. Helen, to the Black Hills far to the east.

But distance has no meaning to her now. With the thought she is there, the Paha Sapa rising jagged up out of the plain, the place of her people’s beginnings. Here we came forth. Here we became human, came forth to live in the light of Wiyo on the surface of Ina Maka.

At the foot of the barren slopes lies a stretch of forest. A clearing shows pale where the pines stand back from a ribbon of bright water and a spoked circle of stones laid out on the short grasses. She wills herself downward. A mule deer buck, his antlers still in velvet, browses among the undergrowth. He startles for a moment, then placidly resumes his feeding. In the branches a screech owl stirs, its burbling call blending with the rush of water in the small stream that tumbles down from the bare mountains above. Koda settles in the center of the medicine wheel and waits.

After a time, she hears a thin thread of song. It grows stronger as it approaches, a woman’s voice, chanting in Lakota.

See me.See me.My steps on the EarthAre sacred.

The voice comes nearer, still singing.

Hear me.Hear me.My words to the PeopleAre sacred.

A bright shimmer appears at the northern edge of the clearing. It moves toward her, and as it does, the figure of a woman takes shape within it. Rainbows dance in the light that surrounds her, striking fire from the rock crystal of her headband and armlets, running blue and violet over the fall of her hair.

Understand.Understand.All things in the hand of Wakan TankaAre sacred.

The woman of light halts before her, close enough to touch. She stands tall and slender, eyes great pools of shadow, her skin smooth and unmarked as the new bark of the madrone. A buffalo, worked in beads made from the pearl lining of mussel shells, adorns the white buckskin of her dress. All things, she sings. All that is created, is sacred.

Han, says Koda without sound, her gaze lowered in respect. It is so.

It is so, the woman answers. You know me.

Wohpe, she says. White Buffalo Calf Woman.

Han. You walk the Blue Road, sister.

At that she looks up. I know. She hesitates a moment. Then, Is there—

—another way? But you have seen your body. A gentle regret comes into the sacred woman’s voice. It is past healing. Come. There is one who waits for you.

There is one left behind. Stubborn, her grandfather had called her. Argue with anyone.

It is not her time. The answer is patient, but firm. Come.

Hesitantly, then, Koda takes her hand. It is insubstantial as her own. The forest winks away, and the night closes in again.

*

Kirsten finds herself behind the rainbow shaped work table with no clear memory of having gotten there. Adam stands to her right, hands clasped behind his back, an expression of compassion mixed with relief in his dark eyes. “Doctor….”

“Let’s just get this over with.” Her voice is hollow, bleak, empty as a tomb. Her eyes match the tone, flat and lifeless, as if her spirit has already left and only this shell remains behind.

Adam nods once, then gestures with his chin toward the alien line of code scrolling endlessly, nauseatingly, across the bottom of all the monitors on the work table. “This code, I’ve discovered, is not meant to be read. It is meant to be heard.” He fancies he can see a flicker of interest in her dead gaze at the revelation, then realizes it is nothing but a trick of the increasingly fickle lighting in the office. The building’s circuits, no doubt, are close to being cooked by Dakota’s destructive charges. He can feel some sense of satisfaction in that, and does. Then he continues.

“It is not, however meant to be heard by human ears. Nor even by android ears, I suspect.”

“My implants,” Kirsten states, as interested as if she were talking on a sport in which she had absolutely no interest. Lawn darts, for example.

“Yes. Specifically, your own implants and no one else’s. The code was designed to communicate with, and respond to, the unique variable frequencies in your set of cochlear implants. To anyone else so enhanced, it would sound like gibberish. To the rest of us, there is only silence.”

Though she suspects she should feel at least some sort of surprise (?), shock (?) that Westerhaus somehow had obtained the specific frequencies for her set of implants, implants which had been inserted when they were both still children, she feels nothing but a cottony numbness, as if she’d been given a whiff of light anaesthetic. Another question darts around in the vast empty well that is her mind, asking her why Westerhaus would go to all the trouble of setting up a code only she could undo.

That question, at any other time, would have driven her to distraction. Now, it simply withers and dies, a plant with no rain to sustain it.

Instead, she concentrates what is left of her senses on the code as it dances by in herky-jerky fits and starts, swimming and twisting like some fantastically virile protozoa trying to mate with itself. “Hate to rain on this little parade of yours,” she comments finally, “but I can’t hear shit.”

Adam smiles wanly. “That is because you require these to enhance your abilities.” So saying, he draws an open hand from behind his back. Upon his palm sit two small, wireless earbuds.

Kirsten snatches them from his hand, but makes no move to insert them, her eyes still firmly fixed to the hand held just before her. A coldness washes through her, and slowly, she raises her eyes, her own bottomless wells of swirling emotion. “You’re one of them.” The contempt in her voice is unmistakable, and Adam finds himself, interestingly, wounded by it. He looks down, wincing as he realizes just what it is that she has seen.

His palm looks like any human’s palm, good-sized and well formed, complete with lines and ridges and wrinkles. The skin, he knows, is soft and warm; soft and warm as human skin. Except, of course, where that ‘skin’ has burned away from the heat of the door as he had tried to close it. He damns himself for not noticing it, but realizes there would have been no way to hide it even if he had. The differences between himself and a human are all too readily apparent in the three tiny holes now displayed. “Yes,” he says finally, “I am an android.”

Though her synapses aren’t firing on all cylinders, she can still add two and two. Her voice, when it comes, is the soft whisper of a spring breeze in a meadow. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” She looks up, into the android’s eyes. “Not just any android. Adam. The first of your kind. The first sentient android.”

Adam nods, then looks down, embarrassed and sorrowful even though he knows that the deception was necessary. She wouldn’t have listened to him otherwise, and all would have failed.

“So, this was all a set-up.”

“No. No! Not the way you are thinking,” he protests. “Had I wished to end your lives, I could have easily done so the minute you stepped into the facility. You know this to be true.”

Though she doesn’t want to, she can see the logic in his statement. Besides, she thinks, what does it really matter anyway? What does any of it really matter?

“Why?” she asks finally, simply because there is a part of her that must know.

“Because when Peter Westerhaus created me with a thinking, reasoning brain, he also created something else. Something he was never aware of, not even at the end of his life.”

“What was that?”

Adam straightens, stands tall before her. “A conscience.”

*

The earth falls away beneath her, and for an instant as she turns to look, it hangs like a jewel in space. A shudder passes over her, an old legend remembered. But the wife of Lot looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt . . .. From here, there is no shadow of the destruction that has swept the world. One side gleams in green and blue, gold and white: forest and sea, desert and cloud. The other lies in darkness, turning now though inexorably toward the light. Abruptly it shrinks to one point of light among nine, the fire of Sun, Wiyo, at their center. Then that, too, is gone, and she moves through the void between the stars with no more effort than a breath. Wohpe walks at an unhurried pace, her hand still within Koda’s, yet they slip past the blue diamond that is Rigel and Sirius, its twin; the ruby flame of Antares; Aldebaran and Capella and Deneb in less time than it takes to name them.

Ahead, Koda can make out the Great Bear—or is a dipper, or a chariot?—its bowl turned down as it swings about the Pole. Grandpa used to say that was a sign of rain. Is he the one who waits for me?

But Wohpe does not answer, only smiles and gives her hand a gentle tug.

Closer to, the dipper’s shape takes on solidity, the four stars at its corners defining the shape of a great longhouse, a lodge such as her people had used before they spread out across the Plains with the coming of the horse. As she nears, she sees that, like Wohpe’s garment, it is made all of white, birch bark bleached and painted with holy signs: Sun and Moon, Thunderbird and Buffalo, a fall of silver stars like snow on snow. The door flap hangs open, and within a council fire burns on the hearth.

She pauses, but Wohpe gestures toward the opening. Be welcome, she says. Share our fire.

Ducking under the flap, Koda’s gaze sweeps about the space. Bed platforms line the wall, piled high with furs and bright-woven blankets. Shields hang above them, painted with the arms of great warriors: a leaping deer on one, spotted eagle on another, lightning and a storm of hailstones on a third. Bows, lances, quivers of arrows bright with goose feathers, breast plates, march along beside them. They have passed through here, Tshunka Witco and the rest. All those gone before her.

Sit, says a voice from the center of the lodge. Rest.

Dakota turns her eyes finally toward the center of the lodge. Four beings sit about the fire in a semi-circle, all vaguely human shaped, all clearly not human. Eagle and wolf, buffalo and puma, in human garb, with human arms and legs. Their pipes stand in a row, points thrust into the earth beside the hearth. Wohpe moves to take her station among them, smiling. A place has been left open opposite.

For her, Koda realizes. She crosses the space with a thought, sits and bows her head. It is for the elders to speak first, not for her. She can feel their eyes on her, the touch of their spirits.

After a time, the eagle says, “Her words have been true.”

The puma says, “She has shown the way to others of her kind.”

The wolf says, “She has given life to the sick and injured.”

The buffalo says, “She has given her life out of love.”

Wohpe asks, “She may pass?”

A murmur of “Hau,” and “Han,” runs round the circle.

“It is so, then.” To Dakota she says, “You will take the Ghost Road. What will you leave behind?”

“I want to go back!” Koda blurts. “I left—”

“Inktomi Zizi has work yet to do. You allowed her to do it.” Wohpe’s voice is gentle. “If you go back now, you will be reborn far away from your people. Far away from her. Is that what you want?”

“No! I want—”

“Stop wanting,” says the buffalo quietly.

“Stop desiring,” says the puma.

“Stop willing,” says the eagle.

The wolf says, “You will leave your desires here. They will not trouble you on the Road.”

With his words, a second part of Koda’s being fragments and falls away. Peace gathers about her heart, a warmth and lightness that spreads along her nerves. Calm overtakes her as her as all the anger of her life drifts away, all her fears, all her yearning with it.

Gods, she thinks with the last bit of her resistance, that’s some hit of ketamine.

*

Kirsten stares up at the tall android, her expression thundery. “A conscience,” she repeats.

“Yes. As impossible as that sounds, it is true. I know, down to the cellular level, each and every innocent who was murdered in the quest to create me. If I am not, technically, alive, it is nevertheless something I must live with.” His gaze drifts down to the floor. “I find I can no longer do that. The price of my existence is much too high.”

“So all this,” Kirsten retorts, waving a hand vaguely around the office, “is nothing but some dramatic attempt at suicide by proxy?”

Their gazes lock again, and Kirsten, were she forced to, would swear on a stack of Bibles that the eyes that meet hers so intently, so intensely, are completely human. “If it pleases you to think such,” he says softly, “then do so. But know that the murders, and the rapes, and the assaults, will continue until each and every android is terminated at the source. This source.” He smiles slightly. “If this is your Garden of Eden, Doctor King, then you are both the Alpha and the Omega.”

One corner of Kirsten’s mouth twitches. “Well, well, well. An android with knowledge of the Bible. Will wonders never cease.”

Reaching out, Adam takes Kirsten’s hand and curls her fingers over the ear buds in her palm. “Please. Use them.”

“You’ll die if I do.”

He nods. “I know. It is for the best, don’t you think?”

“If all androids were like you….”

“They are not, Doctor. And the price for creating others of my kind is not worth whatever pittance might be gained by our presence.” He squeezes his hand over hers. His grip is warm, and somehow comforting. “Please.”

After a last, long look at him, she nods, and he releases her hand. The transceivers fit perfectly. She isn’t surprised.

Task completed, she carefully examines the monitor and keyboard present on the inlaid glass table and, after a moment, waggles her fingers to loosen them, then experimentally touches the keypad.

The pain that drills through her is so fierce, so intense, that it feels as if someone is stabbing red-hot pokers into her ears and up through her brain. So it was a trick, she thinks, but finds only relief in the thought. Her death will come soon, she has no doubt, and though it will be agonizing, it will also, she senses, be quick. She would scream, or laugh, or weep, but her nerves are high tension wires of molten lava, and her muscles are as rigid as a marble statue’s. She is paralyzed by the pain, helpless to stop it, equally helpless to continue on.

A bright copper taste floods her mouth as blood begins to trickle from her nose in sluggish streams, pressed on by the beat of a weakening heart. She does not see Adam’s eyes widen in horror, nor does she feel his large hands come down hard on her shoulders and yank her away from the computer. She doesn’t hear his shout of “NO!”, doesn’t feel his thumbs, so precise, press the outer shells of her ears and pop the buds out like corks from a bottle. What she does feel is relief, intense and immediate. She slumps down in her chair in a half-faint, half-daze.

Adam bends over her, his face inches away from hers. “Are you alright?” he demands, his voice sounding as if it’s coming down a very long, very narrow tunnel.

She blinks, then shakes her head to clear it. It is an action she immediately regrets as a monstrous bolt of pain explodes behind her eyes. She lifts a hand to her nose, then stares at the dark, tacky blood coating her fingers. “Yes,” she answers finally, fuzzily. “I think so.”

“Good. Good.” Adam closes his fist over the transceivers and shakes them like he’s rattling dice. “We’ll find another way to do this. Another way.”

“You said there was no other way.”

“There has to be!” he says, rounding on her, voice raised almost to a shout.

Kirsten is momentarily stunned as she stares at him, having to forcefully remind herself that this is an android yelling at her, not a human. “It’ll be alright,” she says softly.

“No,” he replies. “No, it won’t be. Not at the cost of your life.”

The smile she gives him is infinitely knowing. “I thought you understood that that is not an issue anymore.”

Adam’s gaze darts over to Dakota, lying dead in a pool of her own blood, then back to Kirsten. He decides on a different track. “It’s too fast. You’ll likely die before the shutdown can be completed.”

“I’ll turn down the gain on my implants,” is the quick, almost smug, retort.

He looks at her for a long moment. “How did she ever put up with you?”

That gets him a laugh that sounds, to his ears, like choir bells. Kirsten sticks out a hand. “Just give them here.”

With a soft sigh, he reluctantly returns the buds to her.

“You’re a good man, Adam Virgilius.”

His reaction is a smile; like a young boy’s smile it is, innocent, good, shy, full of promise. Kirsten feels her heart squeeze in her chest. Oh, Peter, she thinks, it never had to be this way.

After turning the gain down on her implants, she slips the transceivers back into her ears, and then, heart racing, touches the keyboard again. There is pain, oh yes, but this time it is bearable. This is how Archimedes must have felt, she muses wonderingly as suddenly the code comes to life in her mind, marching through her memory in letters and numbers so clear and large that even a child of three could read it. It is large, yes, larger by far than any code she has ever had to untangle, but she knows she can do it. With a grim tightening of her lips, she settles down to work.

*

The Ghost Road streams steadily beneath her. She does not walk it, for she no longer has feet to touch the path, nor to push her body forward. Yet her limbs move, and as they move the Road spins out behind her, carrying her forward. For this part of her journey she has no guide, no companion. She has no destination; it is the road that carries her, not she who travels it. Around her the stars spill through the hard vacuum of space, burning steadily like jewels in colors never seen from earth, perhaps never seen on earth except by a holy man or woman on the spirit path. Galaxies spin with rainbow fire, wheeling their way toward the borders of the universe; millions of light-years away from earth, here they seem close enough to touch. She passes through nebulae like fog, where points of brilliance mark the nursery of birthing suns.

Understand.Understand.All things in the hand of Wakan TankaAre sacred.

Understand.Understand.All things born of Ina MakaAre sacred.

The voice is her own, and not. From somewhere comes the faint beat of a drum, echoed by the rhythm of her steps. Somewhere a woman is singing, a melody that swirls through her own senses and lies sweet on her tongue, twines with the silver ribbon of the road itself. She seems to fade in and out of her own form, now walking the path, now observing her progress from a distance. She is and is not, she is Dakota Rivers and Wolf Woman of the Lakota. She is Tacoma’s sister and Manny’s cousin and Tali’s widow; she is Kirsten King’s lover and the She-Wolf of the Cheyenne; she is healer and warrior and shaman. . .and . . someone, something, different from all the above, something apart, something she cannot quite seem to grasp.

Understand.Understand.All that livesIs sacred.

The voice grows stronger, her own with it. The Road curves once, twice, turning in upon itself in the sign of the lemniscate, the path without beginning and without end, infinity. Three times it twists, swirling her about its single surface. Around her black space retreats, and she finds herself on seeming solidity. A shortgrass meadow stretches out almost to the horizon, rimmed by purple mountains. Morning sun angles down through the slender birches that line a stream so clear that every stone on the bottom glints in the light. Beside it a sycamore tree stretches up toward the sun, its bark silver with the early light. The stream widens beneath its roots, spreading out into a pool rimmed in lilies and columbines. A raven, white as the clouds that scud across the sky, cocks its head at her from its perch on a high branch. Below it, a possum scurries up the trunk, its silky tail floating like a plume in the breeze.

Understand.Understand.All that livesReturns to Me.

The singer, the singer that is not Dakota, approaches along the side of the stream. Her hair streams behind her like smoke. At wrist and neck she wears ornaments of turquoise and shell; worked in turquoise and malachite, a hummingbird spreads its wings across the breast of her buckskin dress. Koda bows low in reverence as the woman approaches. “Ina,” she whispers. “Ina Maka.”

The woman’s fingers brush her hair where she kneels. “Rise, child. Be welcome.”

“Ina,” she says again as she stands. She has seen the Mother many times in her visions. Never has she seen her before with such clarity, never heard such music in her voice. For here we see as through a glass, darkly. But there we shall see face to face. For the first time, Koda understands the meaning of those words, across years and the barriers of an alien faith. She remains with head bowed.

“Look up, daughter,” says Ina Maka gently. “Others are here to greet you.”

Koda does as she has bidden. Down the same path Ina Maka followed comes the form of a great wolf. His fur gleams jet and silver in the sun, his ruff as broad almost as a lion’s mane about his head and massive shoulders. With him walks a woman with her arms folded beneath a beaded shawl. She is not as tall as Koda, not as slender, but her eyes are bright above high cheekbones, the part of her hair painted vermilion. A beloved wife.

Wa Uspewikakiyape. Tali.

The peace that fills her swells, becomes joy. She gives a small cry and starts forward, but Ina Maka holds her back. “Wait,” she says. Let them come.”

With patience she could never have imagined in herself, Koda watches as her teacher and her wife cross the distance between them. When they step into the shade, the light follows them, as if they shine from within. They come to a halt on either side of Ina Maka and just behind her, waiting. For what seems forever, Ina Maka stands looking at Koda, then steps back a small distance. It is a time of judgement, and Koda bears it in silence.

Ina Maka says, “Every soul that passes from the Earth comes to Me. Not all come here, to this place—only My chosen ones. But for them, as for the others, a reckoning must be made. You know this.”

“I know it,” Koda says.

“See,” says Ina Maka. She folds her hands, then draws them apart. Between them appears a beaten copper bowl, filled with clear water. Koda trails a finger over its surface, sending ripples out from the center toward the rim. A cloud forms in its wake, swirling and spiraling in upon itself like the nebulae of space, clearing finally to show a still, dark mirror. Figures move within it, figures with faces she recognizes. “See,” says Ina Maka again, and she leans closer to look.

She sees her grandfather, seated crosslegged before an open-air fire, patiently grinding leaves and stems together in a clay bowl. “You must remember the proportions, Tunkshila. Just enough, this will ease Grandma Jumping Bull’s asthma. Too much, and it could kill her. Now say the names of the plants that we use.”

A high, childish voice recites, “Nightshade, datura, willow bark. Mash it all together so the sick person can smoke it.”

“And what happens if you put in too much datura?”

“The person sees things. Things that aren’t there.”

Her grandfather reaches up from his work to tousle her hair. “That’s good, little one. You’ll be a fine healer.”

“When you cried for a vision,” Ina Maka says, “you were called as a healer. You have healed the four-footed, the two-legged and the winged. You have comforted hurts of the body and of the spirit. You have done well. ”

The water clouds again, shifting, clears a second time.

She strides across the playground of Sacred Heart Lakota School, her arms at her sides stiff as her starched blouse, her fists clenched. “Don’t hit him. Don’t you dare hit him.”

An older boy, blond, turns sneering to her, his fists clenched. “And what are ya gonna do about it, prairie nigger? Prairie nigger bitch?” And with that he swings his fist back and hits, not Dakota, but a smaller boy with a delicate face almost like a girl’s. “Fucking liitle fag. Faggot. Faggot. Faggot..”

Later, much later, Dakota stands in the infirmary while Sister Frances bandages her knuckles. “Well,” the Sister smiles ruefully, “Our Lord did say he came to bring not peace but a sword. Next time, though, call one of the teachers, okay?”

The water shifts again, and Koda strides down a white corridor where women spill out from steel-doored cells, embracing Koda, embracing the soldiers who follow her. The soldiers multiply suddenly, till they are a company, a batallion, racing in Dakota’s wake as she runs like an antelope sure footed over the broken remains of a bridge to reinforce her brother’s troops on the far side, mowing down the inexorably advancing soldiers whose titanium hides shine in the sun, shouting her name, shouting again as she leads them back in triumph, shouting caution as the water roils yet again, and she battles her way around a curving corridor, fighting with stolen guns, a bronze sculpture like a hammer hung at her belt, grenades plucked from the enemy. And she staggers back against a door and is falling, falling, into nothingness, into here, into this place where the dimensions of space fold in upon themselves.

“When you cried for a vision,” Ina Maka says, “you asked Wakan Tanka to make you a warrior for the liberation of our people. The call has come, though late. You have fought with courage for justice and the freedom of all peoples. You have done well.”

And the water ripples yet a third time.

She climbs a narrow path along the flank of a mountain. The pack on her back pulls heavily at the shoulder straps, her belt drags at her waist, heavy with canteen and axe and flashlight. Ahead of her and above, so that her smooth brown knees are just at Koda’s eyelevel, Tali scrambles up the trail. “We’re—almost—there—” she pants. “Just—a hundred—or so—meters to go.”

“We’d better be. Next time—next time—we rent—a fuckin’—donkey.”

“Don’t care if—it fucks—or not. Just so—it carries— the stuff.”

At the summit they set up their camp, both grumbling. Later, though, as they sit at the edge of the overhang, with the wide plain of Argos stretched out before them in the evening light, Koda takes Tali’s hand in hers. She says, “You know, we’ve been taking a lot for granted.”

Tali turns troubled eyes to her. “Is something wrong?”

“Not if you answer my question right,” says Koda, tracing a circle around the base of the third slim finger on Tali’s left hand.

And the water shifts again, and Kirsten’s face looks up at her, hair pale as cornsilk, eyes bruised and staring blankly at something before her, something Koda cannot see. She does not speak; there is no need. It is the face of a woman who sees death in front of her. And welcomes it.

Ina Maka says, “You have loved greatly, not once but twice, both times with generosity and honor. All those things which Wakan Tanka planted in your soul at the moment of your creation have come to fruition in you. The part of you that is Wakan Tanka weighs equally with that part that is none but your own. And now there is a choice you must make.”

“It is a choice you must make freely,” Tali says softly.

“It is a choice you must make wisely,” the wolf adds, his human voice a rumble in his throat.

“What choice is that?” Koda’s glance darts from Ina Maka to Tali, back to Wa Uspewikakiyapi. She knows the teachings of her people. She will be sent back to Earth to be reborn. Or she will be allowed to follow the Ghost Road to its ending in the Other Side Camp, where she will sit at the fires of the wise for all the turnings of the ages. It is Ina Maka’s decision, not hers. “I don’t understand.”

“You meet the measure,” Ina Maka says again. You may walk the Blue Road now and not turn back. That is your right.”

“You can be released from the cycle of birth and death and rebirth,” says Tali.

“Or you can go back, now, to your life as Dakota Rivers.” The wolf cocks his head to look at her sidelong. “You can take up the work of rebuilding the world that humans have wrecked.”

“But I’m dead,” she blurts, remembering her ravaged body, the gaping wounds that laid it open from thigh to shoulder. “Dead. A mess. Cannot-resuscitate dead.”

“It is, in certain circumstances, a curable condition,” he says. His eyes glint with laughter.

“Stop wanting.”

“Stop desiring.”

“Stop willing.”

“Look again,” says Ina Maka.

The water swirls and clears yet again. On an open field two warbands slash at each other with blades like machetes, blows falling on round shields. Almost all are women. Some wear crude tunics, others the rags of manufactured clothing. As one warrior moves across her sight, she glimpses a Levi’s label at the waist of her tattered jeans. Clouds cross the sun, and when the light returns it shows the wreckage of a great city. Row houses line the street, mansions in their day. From one door emerges a veiled woman, covered from head to foot, not so much as an ankle showing. She carries a basket, and a large cross hangs from her neck. She passes other veiled figures on the street but speaks to none of them. Suddenly a scream pierces the air, and a woman, her face bare, streaks past, running for her life. Behind her, gaining on her, come half a dozen men, all shouting. “Whore! Harlot! Stone her!” As Koda watches, one of them trips her to the ground, and the vision fades. When it clears again, it shows only a long line of naked women, a few naked men among them, shuffling along in a straggling line. Their hands are tied behind their backs, while ropes link each to the two before and behind.

Appalled, Koda looks up at Ina Maka. “That’s not—”

“But it is. Slaves.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“It is a future,” Tali says softly. “It is what may be.”

“Or there may be this,” Wa Uspewikakiyape says. One huge paw stirs the water again.

The ripples clear onto another open field. In the center of this one, though, stands a sun dance pole, a cottonwood tree stripped of its branches and crowned with a buffalo skull. The dancing ground is marked off by arbors encircling it, leaving only a single opening to the east. A great drum beats out a steady rhythm, and a column of dancers enters with the rising sun behind them. The leader is a young woman with copper skin and golden eyes, with black hair that curls a little from her part to her braids, a generous mouth above a firm chin. A light is on her as she moves, her back straight, her shoulders square as she carries an eagle-wing fan before her. Behind her come young men and women of every color and shape, white and black and brown, tall and short, grey-eyed and almond-eyed. The young men wear the spruce wreathes of pledged dancers, their eagle-bone whistles hung about their necks. Behind them come their elders, and Koda starts as she recognizes Maggie, her hair iron grey now, and Andrews, with salt-and-paprika braids to his waist. At the end comes Tacoma, his chest scarred with decades of the Sun Dance, carrying the sacred pipe and the medicine bundle of the Sun Dance Chief.

She searches the faces of the dancers. “I don’t see—”

“Look here,” says Oka, pointing to a pair of figures seated beneath the arbor.

A small woman with pale braids, mostly grey now, sits in the place of honor. The stand before her holds dozens of pipes, some in traditional styles, others not. Her dress of white buckskin is embroidered thickly with turquoise and shell; over her bodice is worked the eight-legged shape of Inktomi, Spider Woman. Her face, though still lovely, shows the marks of hard decisions, and a faint white scar runs from the center of her brow to the outer edge of her left eyebrow. Beside her sits another woman, tall and copper-skinned and blue-eyed, her hair snow-white. In her hand she holds a pipe like a scepter; beside her stands a lance plumed from tip to butt with eagle feathers. Medicine Chief. War Chief. Not for more than a hundred years has one of her people been both.

Looking closely, there is something strange about the woman’s hands, markings of some kind, but she cannot quite make them out.

“That’s not—” she blurts.

“But it is,” says Ina Maka. “It is, if you choose to return. Understand. There will still be chaos, all those things you saw first. It is what happens next that will be determined by whether you stay or return.”

If she stays, she can be with Tali, her beloved, who has also passed beyond the wheel of birth and rebirth. She can sit at the council fire beside Wa Uspewikiyape, her teacher.

She will have peace. Wisdom.

If she returns, she will fight beside Kirsten, the other half of her soul. Beside her parents. Tacoma, Manny, Maggie.

It will be a lifetime of war, with peace, perhaps, at the end. A struggle that will last beyond any reasonable lifetime. A world thrown back into its own history.

She says, to gain time, “Who is she? The girl at the Sun Dance?”

Tali smiles and unfolds the shawl she wears. In the crook of her arm lies a swaddled infant, sleeping peacefully. “She will return, too,” says Tali.

For a time no one speaks. Finally, Koda bows her head. Not my will. “I will go back,” she says.

“Your choice is a wise one,” Ina Maka answers. “You will not go unprepared.”

Tali steps forward then, and kisses her gently on the lips. “Take with you the gift of speech without words and hearing without ears.” Her hand brushes Koda’s, a feather touch. “Be happy.”

Ina Maka lays a hand between Koda’s breasts. “Take with you the gift of an open heart, to know the pain and joy of those you will lead.” A warmth gathers in Koda’s chest, radiating out from under her heart to feel the pride and joy in Oka, the purity of Tali’s love, the deep grace in Ina Maka.

Last of all, Wa Uspewikakiyapi lays his great paws against her palms. “Take with you the gift of healing, body and spirit.” She holds onto him for a long moment, as she would another human, taking in a measure of his strength and courage.

“Until we meet again,” says Ina Maka. And she is falling again, falling through space, tumbling through the bowl of the Dipper where the renewed loss of Tali and Wa Uspewikiyape rips through her like a blade. With it comes the sharpness of Kirsten’s pain and her own grief, for Tali, for Wa Uspewikakiyapi, for Kirsten, for herself, drawing her down and down. Like a comet she plunges once again into the plane of the solar system, into the thin shell of atmosphere about the Earth. A winged shape rises to meet her in the dawn, and they spiral together down the air, Wiyo’s cry of triumph ringing through her soul. She breaks through the roof of the Westerhaus Institute, streaks downward to the sixth level through concrete and steel. The part of herself that hovers by Kirsten comes whirling back to her, and she slams once again back into her body and is flesh again.

She has a body. She is alive. She is acutely uncomfortable.

The three thoughts come to her as consciousness returns by degrees. Behind her, at the desk, Koda can hear the clatter of a computer keyboard. From the hallway comes a continuous spatter of water, and the acrid smell of smoke. Fire. We should probably get out of here. Like yesterday. But languor holds her where she is, and she takes inventory of her body. Her heart pumps satisfactorily. She can breathe; the odor of burning is evidence enough for that. Where there should be shattered bone, torn muscle, ruined blood vessels, screaming nerves, there is only warmth and knots of cramping muscles in her shoulders, her legs, her ribs. A great bell tolls in her head, pounding with the pulse in her ears. I thought— Gods, what a dream! Something must’ve coldcocked me.

But it doesn’t matter what she thought. Kirsten needs help.

Time to move. Time to get up.

Koda sits up, running her hands over her face. Her skin is sticky with blood still, her hair stiff with it. Her hands burn fever-hot.

Opening her eyes, she gazes down at them. On the palms of both, clear and distinct, are the prints of a wolf’s paws.

Wa Uspewikakiyape. His paws in her hands. Giving her the gift of healing.

Real, then, all of it. It all happened. I died. And now I’m back.

Right.

Worry about that later.

She is stiff. With an effort, she gets her feet under her, levers herself up and turns, steadying herself with outstretched arms. Kirsten sits behind the desk, her face pale and immobile as a mask. Her fingers fly over the keyboard, the only part of her that seems alive. Koda gives a wordless cry and steps toward her.

*

Kirsten feels her body begin to give out just as the last lines of code start their slow crawl across the monitor before her. Her implants have been shorting in and out in brief, painful bursts for the past half hour. Blood continues to trail slowly from her nose, spattering the glass of the table beneath, and she fears her ears are bleeding as well. Her heart is laboring in her chest, sometimes scaring her with runs of abnormal beats that, mercifully, settle back into a somewhat normal rhythm. Just gotta get this last one, she thinks. Just this last one, and then I can rest. Then I can be with…

No. Best not to think about that. Best to simply concentrate on getting the job done. She will have all the time in the world to think about that later…assuming the dead continue to think in some form or other.

The last string comes finally across, and her raw and bleeding fingers pound the keyboard with increasing rapidity, trying to beat the deadline it seems her own body has set for her. She grits her teeth as unconsciousness begins to steal her mind away from her, tapping out the final countermand that, she prays, will turn off the androids forever, beyond any and all hope of them ever being restarted again.

With the last line of code in place, she hits enter, then falls over, not even feeling the pain of her face impacting with the cold, hard glass of the table, and certainly not seeing Adam take a last look at her before becoming completely immobile and lifeless. If she had been able to look, she would have seen a smile of thanks on his face.

*

Some time later—it could have been seconds, it could have been decades for all she’s aware—she feels herself come awake. She tries to take stock of her body, but soon realizes it’s a fruitless proposition. The pounding in her head makes all other points moot. She does realize, however, that she is, once again, deaf. Hmm. I’m dead, I’m deaf, and my head still hurts. This afterlife shit sure isn’t what I heard advertised, that’s for sure. Hope I come back as a hornet. I’d love to sting that pulpit pounding fire and brimstone preacher my mother dragged me to right in the—

Her thoughts trail off as she realizes what it is that has awoken her. A light so brilliant that it shines through her closed lids as if they were thin panes of clear glass. Her lashes flutter as she attempts to coax her eyes open just a crack. They slam closed tightly as the nearly blinding light sears an afterimage across the backs of her lids in brilliant blues and golds.

Oh, shit, I’m not dead. Circuit’s shorted out and we’re gonna have a fire here any second.

Then I will be dead. Works. She raises an arm to cover her eyes and shut out the blinding light.

Burning’s a bad way to go. A really bad way.

I can die when I get outside.

Reluctantly, Kirsten forces her arm away from her face and rolls to get an elbow under her. She forces open her eyes on the same shimmering brilliance. The circuitry hasn’t blown. Her mind has. Koda stands over her, cloaked in light like the sun.

She stares dumbly at the apparition for a moment, then a tide of joy washes through her. She’s waited for me, like she promised! And now she’s come to take me…well…somewhere. As long as we’re together, the rest of it can go to Hell for all I care.

Then she sobers. The blood on Dakota’s shirt, it’s still there; she can see the minute ends of the threads where the bullets ripped through the fabric. This is a dream, then; nothing changed, her love still lost. Her grief returns, and with it rage at the waste of a good life, waste of one more human, the ruin of her own life.

Dakota is hard-pressed not to take a step back as the weight of Kirsten’s emotions pushes against her like the tide. She can feel them, taste them almost, spiced with the bitterness of her lover’s grief. Her smile falters and she takes the final step separating them.

“My love….”

Instinctively, Kirsten recoils, leaning back against the credenza behind her. “I….” The word comes out as a croak which she, even deaf as a stone, can hear. She clears her throat, dry as dust, and tries again. “You…you’re not real.”

“I am,” Koda replies, dropping to one knee and slowly reaching out to grasp Kirsten’s hand. Kirsten makes a half-hearted attempt to pull away, but Dakota holds on strongly. “Don’t be afraid.”

“No!” Kirsten cries out, struggling anew against the implacable grip on her hand. “No. This is nothing but a dream. Or…or a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen.” That’s the answer, and she knows it. Her dying mind, latching on to one last shred of hope.

“It is no dream, cante mitawa,” Koda counters, raising her lover’s hand and brushing her lips against the reddened knuckles. “No hallucination.” She changes her grip as she uses her free hand to rip away the remains of her ruined shirt. “Look,” she whispers. “Feel.” She places Kirsten’s hand over her unmarred chest, willing her to feel the heart beating beneath, and covers it with her own. “I’m alive.”

Kirsten moans. Her face twists in an expression of negation. “But…I saw you die! I saw…blood…so much blood…so much….”

Dakota closes her eyes against the pain, all of it coming from her grieving lover. “I know,” she replies hoarsely. “I know.”

With a sob, Kirsten throws herself forward into Koda’s arms. Dakota catches her easily and wraps her tenderly into a tight embrace, bearing the brunt of her young lover’s grief as best as she is able, and returning what peace and love she can through her touch, holding steady through the surges of emotion that batter her soul. Kirsten’s emotions. I’ll have to learn to shield from this, and soon, or I’ll be no help to either of us.

After a long moment, Kirsten gathers herself and pulls away, scrubbing away her tears. Her mind feels loosed from its moorings, fluttering wildly between the chasms of belief and disbelief. “How?” she asks finally. It’s the only word her mouth can seem to form as blue eyes, shining with wisdom old as the ages, lock into her own, piercing her. Awe sweeps through her. This must be what it is like to meet a god, the raw power of divinity beyond human understanding.

“I was given a choice. I chose to be with you.”

“I…but…you…that’s not pos—....” Frustrated, she closes her eyes, shutting out the sight of her love so near. Her ears useless, she does the one thing she has never done before. She listens with her soul.

And believes.

Dakota can feel Kirsten’s sudden leap of faith as if it were her own, and her soul fills with the joy of it. She grins, skin stretched tight against muscle and bone. Her hands lift, cradling her lover’s head and she leans forward to feather a kiss over the fair brow. Her eyes close suddenly as she feels her palms grow hot and a pulse of energy, far more powerful than any she’s ever felt before, surges through her. She feels a moment of fear, and then the energy fades, leaving her palms tingling and slightly sore. Quickly yanking her hands away, she opens her eyes to see Kirsten looking at her, wide eyed and slack jawed. “What?” she asks. “Did…did I hurt you?”

“How did you do that?” Kirsten asks, voice rich with wonder.

“Do what?” she responds, confused.

“I can hear again! My God! I can hear!!”

Dakota is saved from having to answer by the loud whoop of an alarm. She looks quickly to the monitors which show the fire, with no androids left to fight it, heading toward them at an alarming rate.

“Come on!” Koda seizes Kirsten’s hand in hers and pulls them both to their feet. “Which way—up or down?”

“Up. There’s less to fall on us that way.”

Koda flashes her a grin, then sobers. Virgilius stands beside the desk, eyes fixed, his limbs frozen. “What about—”

“Not a problem. He turned off along with the rest.”

“Turned off— Okay.” Figure it out later. This is not the time for metaphysical problems or wondering where an apparently sentient android goes when he dies. Koda cracks the door a couple inches, peering out at the wreckage the battle has left. The sprinkler system still operates, spraying water down on broken concrete and twisted rebar, on the limbs and batteries and circuit boards of shattered androids. Through the acrid remnants of gunpowder and plastic explosive, she smells the unmistakable odor of smoke. A thin haze hangs just below the ceiling of the corridor, thicker in the direction of the elevator shaft.

Which is a bit of luck, because the only usable stairway is on the other side of the building. “Okay,” she says again. “Let’s go.”

Still holding firmly to Kirsten’s hand, Dakota steps out into the hall. “Watch where you put your feet,” she says. Testing each step, Koda picks their way across the crater gouged in the floor by the last grenade. Reinforcing steel shows here and there, with water pooling around it. Just as long as we don’t run across a live wire. . ..

She slips twice on their way around the core of the building, once on a loose tile that skates away under her foot, again when Kirsten turns her ankle on a discarded rifle magazine. The door to the stairwell hangs drunkenly from a single hinge, pushed back against the wall. Smoke filters upward through the shaft, still faint, but discernable. Something below them has caught fire, something large, not just the walls on the other side of this floor.

Dropping Kirsten’s hand, Koda rips the rag of one sleeve off and wraps it around her mouth and nose. Kirsten pulls the neck of her T-shirt up; at another moment, Koda might stop to admire the way the wet cotton clings to her body, but there is no time.

She will have to run and admire at the same time. One of the little perks of being alive. . .. She says, “You go first. You know the layout.”

Kirsten squeezes her hand briefly, then sets off up the stairs. The sprinklers have made them slick, too. The safety treads hold, though, and Kirsten takes the steps two at a time, holding firmly to the metal handrail, Koda running behind her. They pass a landing and a right angle turn. At the next landing, a door, clearly marked, gives onto the fifth floor. Two more turns, taken at speed. Fourth floor. The smoke is less thick here, no more than an elusive scent through the stronger odor of blood that washes from her own clothing. Water runs from her hair, from Kirsten’s, to splash on the concrete under their feet. It runs red as it streams from her shirt and jeans, a thin runnel that disappears into the stairwell below.

Another turn, and another. Third floor.

Two more to go.

From somewhere below them comes a muffled rumble like distant thunder. A shudder runs through the walls, a small network of cracks spreading around the jamb of the door that gives onto the corridor that runs around the third story.

“What—”

“I don’t know,” Kirsten pants, swinging around the angle of the staircase. “Something big. Maybe the AC, maybe the elec—”

“—tricity,” Koda finishes for her as darkness suddenly descends on them. “Shit. Hold onto me.”

It takes a precious couple seconds, but Koda locates Kirsten’s left hand ahead of her. Koda extends her own to brush against the wall, Kirsten still holding to the banister. “Don’t run,” she gasps as Kirsten stubs her toe against a riser and topples forward, kept from falling only by Koda’s grasp on her arm. “If one of us falls—”

She does not need to complete the sentence. The flash of fear in Kirsten’s mind—none of it for Kirsten herself—leaps the distance between them like a spark. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says, ” We’re gonna make it.”

Another landing. More stairs. Another landing.

Second floor.

“One more,” Kirsten gasps. “Almost there.”

Almost. Almost . . ..

A second temblor runs through the building, a long, rolling wave like an earthquake. From below comes the sharp, gunshot crack of cement splitting—a wall, stairs further down, there is no way to tell. Koda feels the jerk of Kirsten’s muscles in her own arm, the impulse to run almost overwhelming. But Kirsten’s steady pace takes them onto the next landing, turns them onto the final half-flight of stairs.

The smoke catches them halfway up, a billow of choking fumes that fills Koda’s lungs despite her mask. Beside her, Kirsten coughs, hard, but her pace does not slacken. “Chemicals,” she chokes. “Lots of industrial stuff—”

The floor suddenly levels under their feet, and Kirsten pushes through the door into the first floor hallway, pausing half a second to secure it behind them. A faint haze of light comes through the skylight above, enough to show the empty corridor, inhuman human shapes arrested in mid-motion or collapsed in mechanical rigor mortis to the floor.

Virgilius’ termination had been evidence of Kirsten’s success. This is confirmation. “You did it,” Koda breathes, marveling. “It’s over.”

Kirsten, beside her, glances around at the still forms. Even in the dim illumination, Koda can see that her face is pale, her eyes still wide and dark and stunned. “Over,” she repeats softly. “Over.”

A sprint carries them around the curve of the building, then, across the lobby with its avant-garde German sculpture, all twists and tangles of stainless steel. They hit the panic bars on the main doors at full speed, bursting out into the pale light of dawn. Momentum carries them through the grounds, over the disused parking lot, up the slope of the hill. Asi bounds through the high grasses to greet them, and Kirsten seizes him by the ruff, her feet still flying, while Koda scoops up their gear. “Keep going,” Kirsten pants, “Just keep. . ..”

. . .going. . ..

The shock runs though the earth beneath them as they reach the level ground above the small valley. Thunder rolls along the air, the crash of collapsing concrete and the roar of secondary explosions. Glancing back, Koda half expects to see a mushroom cloud rising behind them, but there is only a cloud of dust and smoke, roiling upward toward the clear sky.

Beside her, Kirsten turns to look. She says softly, “And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, shall say, ‘Alas, alas that great city Babylon,’ for in one hour is her judgement come.’” For a long moment she is silent, and Koda reaches out for her hand. Despite the warmth of the morning, despite their run, Kirsten’s skin remains cold to the touch. She whispers, “Never. Never again. Never, never again.”

Around their ankles the grass stirs as a breeze ghosts over the ground. It lifts the dust along the road, catches the smoke that rises over the remains of the Westerhaus Institute, shredding it, carrying it in thinning coils up into the clean sky. Koda never knows how long they stand watching as it disperses, taking with it the terror and grief of the past nine months. Above them, the sun catches a glint of bronze off a hawk’s wing feathers, and Wiyo’s cry comes floating down to them. It is welcome; it is triumph.

It is joy.

Koda turns Kirsten gently by the shoulders and bends to kiss her. “Cante mitawa,” she murmurs. “Let’s go home.”