"With us." Alpha rested her hand on the barrel of the pulse gun at her hip. "Both of you."
Remembering her injured arm, Sam decided not to push her luck. She set down her coffee, then stood up next to Alpha, wishing the other woman didn't do such a good job of towering over her.
Then they all left.
* * *
The elevator car had off-white walls and a plush carpet. Alpha and Hud flanked Turner, Hud to his left, separating him from Sam. Hud also put Sam in front of himself, which she didn't like in the least. To see Turner, she had to swivel her head. He had hunched his shoulders—
Then Turner moved.
It happened so fast, his body blurred. He whipped his arms straight out from his sides, hitting Alpha's stomach with his right and Hud's chest with his left. Caught off guard, Sam lurched back into the wall. How could Turner move so fast? She would have sworn he had two clubs, one in each hand, but it happened too quickly for her to see clearly.
Hud doubled over, his arms crunched into his body. The blow threw Alpha into the wall to the right, across the car from Sam. Alpha managed to whip up her gun, but Turner was already lunging forward, and he struck her arm before she could fire. A loud crack sounded and her arm snapped back as she dropped the gun.
It took Hud only seconds to recover. Then he went after Turner. But in the same instant Turner broke Alpha's arm, he also slammed his other club into Hud's solar plexus. He didn't even look to aim the blow.
With a grunt, Hud reeled into the back wall and slumped to the floor. Sam stood flattened against the left wall, unable to believe it. Alpha and Hud were both unconscious, collapsed on the floor, Alpha's arm twisted at an unnatural angle. The entire fight couldn't have taken more than five seconds.
"Holy shit," she said. "Where did you get those clubs?"
Turner glanced at her. "What clubs?"
"I—don't know." He wasn't holding anything now. His arms hung by his sides, his fists clenched. He couldn't be hiding anything as large as the clubs she had thought she saw.
Her adrenaline surging, Sam went to the panel at the front of the elevator. It had no floor numbers, only a mesh screen. "We need that floor where we came in. If we can get out, we might be able to reach the Rex." Realistically, they had little chance of succeeding, but she intended to try.
Turner joined her. "Let me see." He tapped the luminous panel in a staccato pattern.
Sam watched him. "You had two clubs, like baseball bats."
He kept working. "My arms looked that way because I moved so fast."
"Turner, you were holding clubs."
"That would be a feat, given that I have none." He turned to her. "This car should go to the top floor now."
"You figured out those codes too fast." Although she had no doubt an EI with his sophistication could break into secured meshes, an installation like this would probably have protections against him in particular, given that Charon had built him.
He wouldn't look at her. "I know many of Charon's codes."
"For his house in Oregon." Sweat beaded her forehead. She didn't want to believe he could be lying. "But you said it yourself. You've never been here."
"He used the same ones here."
"Anyone who could set all this up would never be that stupid." Another thought came to her. "These elevators must have security monitors. Hell, Alpha and Hud probably carry them, maybe even inside their bodies. So why haven't we set off the alarms?"
He stared at the panel. "Maybe we have."
The doors opened, revealing the gold hall where they had entered the building. They raced out of the elevator and took off in what Sam thought was the right direction. The hall looked exactly as it had before, going on forever. She traced her hand along the wall as she ran, but it felt smooth and unmarked.
"Where is the door?" she muttered. "We should feel it even if we can't see it."
"Don't know." Turner did the same on the other side of the corridor. So they ran, each trailing a hand on the wall.
Suddenly Sam scraped a seam in the metal. "This is it!" She stopped to check the surface. This close, she could see through the camouflage, enough to discern a mesh-panel. She pressed, tapped, and banged it, all to no avail.
Turner came up next to her and went to work, trying codes while Sam pushed and pulled at the door. It remained firmly in place.
"We have to get out of here," Sam said. "Fast. They must monitor this hall."
"I can't get the lock." He looked frantic as he worked on the panel—
And then the eeriness started.
The surface of his hand peeled back like a snake shedding its skin. The muscles retracted next, baring a metal skeleton. He raised his finger, and the metal "bone" elongated, the tip glowing. He pushed it into a depression on the wall. Lights flickered within the panel—
The door slid open.
Sam's pulse ratcheted up. She had known Turner had skin unlike anything she had seen before, but she hadn't expected dynamic plastic. Sure, research on programmable matter had begun in the twentieth century with quantum dots, including the notable McCarthy patents, but this was beyond anything she had seen. Her mind whirled with possibilities. The patent for this plastic alone could make Charon obscenely wealthy. Until he had it, his work was at risk. He sure as hell wouldn't want his competitors to know. She was one of the few people alive who could appreciate and replicate the work, given a sample—like Turner. Charon would never let her go, especially if he really was paranoid. She would be surprised if he even let her live.
They ran out of the building into a night brilliant with moonlight. The tremendous mountains reared against the sky in great, dark shadows. A profusion of stars sparkled, endlessly deep, strewn across the sky like gem dust, a vista richer than could ever be seen from a city. Icy wind razed through their clothes.
The Rex crouched on the tarmac, a dark predator. As they ran toward it, Sam struggled to pull in enough of the thin, sharp air. The mobile stairs were several yards away from the Rex, but she and Turner easily rolled them to the aircraft. Turner bounded up the steps, two at a time. At the top he fooled with the cabin door. By the time Sam caught up with him, he was inside the Rex. She looked back—
Three men in fatigues were running toward them across the airfield.
"Damn!" Sam strode inside and sealed the door. "Can you lock this thing?"
"I already did." Turner heaved open the cockpit door. "Wireless. I'm talking to the Rex."
As Sam followed him into the cockpit, she looked through the windshield. More people had run out of the building and the first three were almost at the Rex.
Turner slid into the pilot's seat and looked over the front panels, which were smooth and featureless, their digital-ink displays inactive.
His choice of seat startled Sam. "Do you know how to fly this thing?"
"Yes." He was just sitting, his forehead furrowed while he gazed at the front panels.
She stared at him. "A hotel bellboy who can fly a state-of-the-art hypersonic airplane?"
He grasped her arm and pushed her toward the copilot's seat. "Web yourself in."
Sam froze. The hand gripping her no longer resembled a human skeleton. His metal fingers had lengthened and he had seven now, plus an enlarged thumb.
"Oh, Lord." She dropped into the copilot's seat.
Turner let her go, returned his focus to the controls—and clicked the prongs of his fingers into a socket. Displays rippled into view all over the forward panels. He immediately began checking the meters, screens, and gauges. Sam fastened the high-pressure webbing of her seat around her body, always watching Turner, mesmerized.
Someone pounded on the door, followed by scraping and a loud hum, what sounded like a high-powered torch. Lights were flashing all over the cockpit. Then the engines roared into life.
Sam felt as if a band constricted around her chest. "You sure you know what to do?"
"It can fly itself," Turner said.
She gripped the arms of her seat, ri
veted while the Rex cold-started. Turner's metal hand, plugged into the controls, flickered with lights. He had to be exchanging code with the aircraft, overriding safeguards that normally kept it from responding without proper authorization.
G-forces slammed her into the seat, like an elephant on her chest. She was dimly aware of the webbing pushing against her body, helping counter the acceleration. It was all that kept her from blacking out.
Mercifully, the pressure soon eased. Sam let out a long breath, her body sagging. Outside, the sky had turned violet, and a panorama of mountains spread out below them. Turner's metal hand had become part of a front panel, jacked into it. His sleeve covered his arm to the wrist, so she couldn't see how far up the transformation went.
"How can you talk to this Rex?" she asked.
He turned to her. "The knowledge is stored in my memory."
"Why would you have a memory like that?"
"Charon downloaded it into my matrix."
With chilling clarity, Sam realized why they had taken Turner away at the base—to give him specifications for operating the Rex. She didn't want to imagine what Charon could do with rebuilt human-forma constructs and a Rex. Dynamic plastic, hell; stealing this aircraft gave him technology at a whole different level. It went beyond patents; this threatened international security.
Turner turned back to focus on the controls, but Sam suspected he could see her in his side vision. He might have scanners all over his body that could monitor her. She kept remembering how he had held her last night. A machine. She had wanted to make love to a machine.
"What are you?" Sam asked.
Anger sparked in his voice. "So my arm is biomech. You knew that."
She indicated his metal hand. "Where did you get the energy for the transformation?"
"I didn't transform materials." He hesitated, seeming uncertain with his own words. "I restructured the arm and shifted external tissues to internal areas."
He made it sound easy, but she knew better. "That still takes energy, especially given how fast you changed."
He stared at the controls.
"Turner?"
Finally he looked her. "I've a microfusion reactor in my body."
Sam didn't know whether to laugh or panic. "Sure, yeah, I could have overlooked that when I examined you. I mean, it's only a reactor."
"You had no reason to look for it."
"For me to miss something like that, it had to be deliberately hidden."
"Of course Charon hid it." He motioned with his free hand, the one that looked human. "How could I interact with people otherwise? Just say, 'Oh, excuse me, hope you don't mind my MF reactor.' "
"You don't say that about your biomech."
"That's not the same."
"That's my point! We barely have the technology to make an MF prototype, and what we do have is classified." The only reason she knew it existed was because of her NIA connections. "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to create such a reactor and integrate it with your systems?"
He blinked at her. "No."
"Charon would need some damn high-level contacts in the military."
His voice sharpened. "Like your dear friend the general."
"Thomas wouldn't betray us." She couldn't be that wrong about him. As much as she hated to admit it, though, she no longer felt certain. "You should have told me about the reactor."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"How do I know how far I can trust you?"
He had a point, given what had happened when she tried to help him. She took a breath, then slowly let it out. "How did you deactivate the alarms in that elevator?"
At first he looked ready to deny he had done anything. Then he spoke tiredly. "All right, yes, I acted like a mesh instead of a man. I infiltrated the IR security ports in the elevator. Same with Alpha's implants and Hud's mesh glove. It wasn't that hard."
Sam wondered what he considered "hard," if he found it easy to crack what had to be prodigiously well-protected systems. "That's impressive."
"Not really. Low-power consumption devices are notorious for having less encryption. It's because they have less juice."
"True." It had been a hot research topic for decades, which was probably why his download for the Rex included that information. "But Charon knows that, too. He would compensate." Then again, Charon had made this Turner. Perhaps it helped his creation outsmart him.
A rumble came from outside and acceleration pressed Sam back in her seat. Her injured arm throbbed, though at least the bandage was smart enough to compensate for the g-forces.
"We're going higher." Turner's forehead furrowed. "I'm not sure why."
She fought the bile that rose in her throat, until finally the forces eased. The release made her lightheaded, especially when she looked out the windshield. They weren't high enough to see the Earth as a ball, but she had never been this far up before. It made her mind spin.
Turner was watching her. "Did we go into orbit?"
Orbit? The naïve question floored her. He acted with such confidence in taking up the Rex, she had unconsciously assumed an expertise on his part that he didn't really possess. That he could fly the aircraft didn't mean he understood physics or orbital mechanics.
"It would take more rocket power, fuel, and speed than we have to reach orbit," she said. "A combined cycle propulsion system more sophisticated than what this Rex uses."
He seemed lost. "I have stuff about that in my memory filaments now, but it's hard to integrate it all. I don't even understand a lot of the words."
"You are amazing to fly this Rex at all. And it is a gorgeous airplane. But I really, really don't like to think why Charon set this all up."
He spoke softly. "You see why I had to escape?"
"Yes." To put it mildly.
With a click, Turner retracted his hand from the panel. His fingers had three joints now instead of two, and his thumb had extended into an eighth finger. The digits bundled into a cylinder, silver-and-black metal with embedded components. It reflected the lights of the cockpit. She bit her lip, remembering how he had stroked her with that hand last night. In his arms, it had been easy to forget what made him a living, thinking being, that in many ways he was a machine.
She touched the back of his hand. "Can you make it human again?"
"To some extent." He held still, letting her touch him. "I could manage five digits and a covering similar to skin. But I'm no biomech expert. I can't reverse the process exactly. It wouldn't look like the other hand. It probably wouldn't even look fully human."
Sam thought it would be more disturbing to see him with a facsimile than a cybernetic hand. "What did you do to your arms in the elevator?"
"I stiffened them." He spoke awkwardly. "You were right, they were clubs. But I didn't change their actual structure."
"So you could unstiffen them?"
"Yes."
"How much of yourself can you transform?"
"Any part, I think, if I don't overload."
She indicated the port where he had jacked his hand into the Rex. "Why did you need the hard link before?"
"Higher bandwidth. It gave me better control."
"What's different now?"
He spoke with difficulty, as if his answer disgusted him. "I copied part of my brain into the Rex. So now I have direct control."
Her amazement was growing. "No wonder Charon wants you back."
Turner curled the bundled digits of his hand into a ball, its version of a fist now. "I'm not his project."
Her emotions were adrift, without moorings. "I don't know who you are."
He reached out and touched her cheek with the tip of his seventh finger, metal on skin. "Just Turner. The man who held you in his arms last night. I haven't changed."
Sam stiffened. She took his hand, her five fingers curling around his eight, and moved it away from her face. "You should have warned me."
"I was afraid you would think I was a monster."
"I'll
deal with it." Sam hoped that was true. For all her experience in discussing the emotions of an EI, she had never been articulate about her own. She didn't want to rebuff him, but she wasn't sure what to say, either.
After a moment, she asked, "Do you know where we are?"
"Here." The heads-up display activated with a holomap that showed part of Eurasia. "If I understand the Rex right, we're shrouded enough to hide for a short time, while we decide what to do, but probably not for long."
What to do. That was the question of the hour. "Can we land?"
"The Rex says it is reusable and has heat shielding." He tilted his head. "Does that mean yes, we can land?"
"I think so."
Turner rubbed his eyes with his cybernetic hand. "I've never really understood why Charon did this to me. If he wanted a slave, surely easier ways existed."
She spoke grimly. "He's making an army. You're the prototype."
"An army for what?"
"Himself, maybe, for his own power, but I would guess he has the support of some political entity." Sam shook her head. "I wish I knew how Thomas fits into all this. I can't believe he would be part of it."
"Why not? Power can warp anyone. How do you know this isn't some flipping Air Force project?" A muscle in his cheek twitched. "You would think I would know. I am the project. But then, people don't usually inform the equipment."
She hated the mistreatment that put bitterness in his voice. None of it fit with the Thomas she knew, who had a strong sense of right and wrong. But he was also one of the most pragmatic men she had ever met. If he thought it necessary for the defense of his country, he was capable of involvement in such a project. Could Turner be right? His fear of Charon certainly seemed genuine. She wished she could tell whether he simulated emotions or really felt them. That had a personal aspect, too; she didn't know how to trust his emotions toward her. Maybe he didn't know himself. She almost gave a dry laugh. In that sense, their situation wasn't any different than a human relationship.
Sam spoke self-consciously. "Charon put us together last night to give me more of a vested interest in you."
He wouldn't look at her. "Did it work?"
His question made her flush. It shouldn't have; she was no untried ingénue. She had dated, had a lover, been married. But around Turner she felt as nervous as a schoolgirl. She answered in a low voice. "I think so."