Sam whispered, "Thomas . . . ?"
"Over here." Alpha slid her hand under Sam's head and turned it toward the other side of the lab, scraping the skin on the strap. Thomas was in a chair, his wrists bound to its arms and his ankles to its legs, his face ashen. Hud stood next to him, his hand resting on a staser at his hip. He also had a laser carbine slung over his shoulder. The gun reflected the harsh light in its mirrored surfaces.
Sam wet her lips. "What—?"
"We're going to operate on you," Alpha said. "Unless our dear general gives us back Turner."
"Operate?" Sam tried to clear her mind.
"On your brain." Alpha considered her. "I've heard it doesn't feel pain. I imagine you'll soon find out if that's true. You won't live long once we start removing slices, but you might be aware for part of the process." Her voice oozed. "Charon thought it could be an interesting memory."
"No." Sam choked out the word.
"The general here has a front-row seat," Alpha added.
"Thomas." Sam willed him to listen to her. "Don't give in to them."
He spoke fast. "To arrange Turner's release, I would have to contact General Chang at the Pentagon. Even if I could manage it, they would only use him to find you all. You won't achieve anything by this."
"I'm sure you can get him out without alerting your superiors," Alpha said.
"It's impossible."
With her gaze fixed on Thomas, she set the syringe against Sam's neck. "This will numb Samantha's head so she doesn't feel us cut it open."
Samantha. That did it. "Go to hell."
"It's too hot," Alpha murmured.
"Damn it, she can't help you!" Thomas said.
Alpha moved to the head of the table, out of sight. A familiar rattle came, the opening of the drawer that would contain surgical equipment. Sam recognized every noise: the crinkle of gloves, the clink of a knife, the hum of a drill being tested. She jerked against the straps, fighting whatever drug they had given her.
The drill hummed close to her head.
"No!" Thomas shouted. "Stop!"
Alpha sighed. "I can't do that."
"Wait." Thomas spoke raggedly. Then he said, "I'll bring Turner."
* * *
"You shouldn't have done it." Sam was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands in her lap. She couldn't look at Thomas, though she knew he was slouched in a chair across the white cubicle where Alpha and company had brought them. She and Thomas had been here for hours, Sam didn't know how many. Alpha had confiscated her clever-card and Thomas's glove.
Before that, though, while she had been strapped to the table, they had taken Thomas off somewhere. Sam didn't want to know. If he had arranged to bring Turner here, he had set himself up for the court-martial of the century. She didn't believe it; his people had probably planned for a scenario like this. But so would Charon, and none of them had outwitted him yet.
She hated the relief she felt, knowing Thomas had bought her life at the price of Turner's freedom. Nor would that sacrifice ultimately matter. She didn't see what would stop Charon from operating on her once he had Turner. His sense of integrity? Yeah, right.
"I couldn't let them kill you," Thomas said.
"Yes, you could." Sam was immensely grateful he hadn't, but that changed nothing. "More is at stake than my life."
"You're damn right." He crossed his arms. "I don't know if it really is possible for Charon to steal your brain and take it into himself, and I don't want to find out."
"Maybe Alpha is Charon." Sam would have liked to strangle her.
"She is rather alarming."
What an understatement. It was comforting to know that for all his savvy of world politics, intelligence, and the military, Thomas in some ways would always be naïve. He came from another era, one that in her more nostalgic moments seemed more genteel than the present. Other times it just seemed stifling, but right now she could have done without the technological marvels of modern times.
The door across the room slid open, framing a man in fatigues in the doorway. Hud. Sam got off the bed, standing to face him. She didn't like the way he sought her out with his gaze. He came inside, followed by three other people: Alpha, Raze—
And Turner.
"Ah, no." Sam felt as if they had punched her in the stomach. "Turner, no."
He looked as if he hadn't slept in ages. "Hi, Sam."
Standing, Thomas spoke to Alpha. "So it went without a hitch."
"No, it did not go without a hitch." Alpha hefted her pulse rifle from hand to hand, almost aiming it at him in the process. "Seems our friend here was sabotaged."
Turner spoke in a subdued voice. "They found implants in my body, General Wharington. It would have given away our location."
Thomas shrugged, the barest motion of his shoulders. Sam wondered if Alpha was supposed to find those implants. Possibly Alpha and company might have missed some signaling devices, but so far they had been all too effective. Alpha studied Thomas as if she wasn't sure whether to kill or to devour him.
Hud leaned against the wall, his arms folded. "Hello, Dr. Bryton."
Sam rubbed the back of her aching neck. "I would say it's good to see you, except it's not."
"Oh, I can't be that bad." He was acting oddly today, less like a mercenary, less formal, more—covetous? Both Thomas and Turner tensed when Hud spoke to her, and Turner stepped forward. He stopped when Raze lifted his laser carbine, its large size making the room seem smaller. Hud continued to watch her—
And Sam remembered.
It had been fifteen years ago. He had been standing just like that, a younger man then, about thirty, with less rigid control of his emotions. She had been a postdoc in Linden Polk's AI lab at MIT. Linden gave a party in honor of another postdoc who had accepted a job as a professor at Caltech. Hud wasn't part of the MIT group, but he had come to the party at Linden's invitation.
That day Hud had told her how he met Linden years before as part of a program for disadvantaged kids in New York. Linden had been his mentor, convincing Hud to stay in school, then go on to college and graduate school. His name hadn't been Hud then, but she didn't remember what he called himself or where he had worked.
"Oh, God," Sam whispered.
"You finally remember?" Hud asked. Bitterness edged his voice. "Apparently I didn't make as much of an impression on you as you did on me."
"But—why do you want to kill me?"
"I never planned to kill you."
Sam sat down on the bed. Everyone was watching them. Thomas's forehead furrowed and Turner looked confused.
"Why would you remember me all these years?" Sam asked, bewildered.
"Why wouldn't I?" Hud's voice hardened. "I could tell you weren't interested. Then you married that idiot."
Even if Hud had done nothing else, Sam would never forgive him for that crack. "Richard was a finer human being than you will ever be capable of comprehending."
"You know this man?" Thomas asked her.
She spoke heavily. "He's Charon."
"You can't be," Turner said to him. "I know Charon. I spent two damned weeks as his slave."
"You spent two weeks with a forma I made out of Linden Polk," Hud said. "A forma running me on its EI matrix." He looked Turner up and down. "Just like you."
Sam felt nauseated. "You killed Linden."
"Actually, I didn't." Hud turned his crushing focus on her, suffocating. "Linden had a heart attack. I had nothing to do with it. But while he was dying, I imaged his mind. Then I rebuilt his body." His expression changed as he spoke, losing anger, gaining warmth. "I would never have harmed him. He was my mentor. He stood by me when the rest of the world thought I would never be more than a worthless street kid." His voice shook. "So when he died, I gave him a gift. I offered him a second life as a forma—with me as his brain."
"That's not life," Sam whispered.
Hud leaned forward. "Don't you see? I offered him exaltation." His manic intensity switched into hardness. "It was
too much for him. Instead of thanking me, he tried to gain control of my matrix in his rebuilt body." He shrugged. "I was stronger, of course."
Sam wanted to rip the matrix threads out of his body. "Where is Linden now?"
"I deleted him. His body wasn't ideal." He glanced at Turner, his gaze covetous. "So I made a better one."
"Deleted him?" Sam leaned over, her arms folded across her middle, trying to keep from losing her dinner. "You murdered him after he had already died."
"You will understand better," Hud said. "In time."
Turner spoke bleakly. "Now you see, Sam, why I hate him."
She stared at the floor, wishing she could deny it all. Then she made herself straighten up and meet Hud's gaze. "What do you want with me?"
He looked her over. "Everything."
"What? A lover? Slave? A mind you can control?" She made no attempt to hide her revulsion. "You won't have me by my own will, Hud. Know it. Believe it."
"You'll change your mind. Eventually."
"Like hell." Thomas stepped forward, but Alpha caught his arm. Sam didn't know how hard the android gripped him, but he froze. Alpha raised her laser carbine, watching his face avidly. As he met her stare with a hard expression, Raze shifted his gun so he was covering Thomas as well. Sam caught Thomas's eye then, and shook her head, worried. She didn't want him killed trying to protect her any more than he had wanted her killed to protect Turner.
Thomas let out a breath, but he stayed put. To Hud he said, "If you're Charon, who is Hud? And where?"
Hud looked down at Sam. "What do you think, Doctor?"
"You made a forma from a street kid," she said. "Then you put your mind into his matrix and tricked Linden into being your mentor."
Hud laughed bitterly. "Hardly. I was that kid. How would I know how to do any of that? Linden taught me." He motioned at Turner. "What you describe better fits the man he knew as Charon. It was me in Linden Polk's rebuilt body, with Polk's mind as a submesh I controlled."
"But it didn't work on me," Turner said. "And I'll tell you what else, asshole. I'm rewriting your brain. Changing it."
A muscle twitched in Hud's cheek. "You must be. I outgrew foul language."
Sam wished this nightmare would end. "Then who are you? What are you?"
"I used to be Hud. Now I'm Charon."
"You rebuilt your own body?"
"That's right."
"Why?"
He just looked at her.
Sam remembered the elevator ride when Turner had knocked out both him and Alpha. "You let Turner and me escape your base in Tibet."
"Actually, I didn't, initially." Hud was considering Turner as if the younger man were a specimen in a lab. "You developed faster than I expected."
"I'm still doing it," Turner said.
Hud didn't respond. Instead, he spoke to Sam. "You are partially right, however, about the escape. I regained control of security about the time you two ran out of the building. But I let you go anyway. I thought you would run straight for Sunrise Alley." His jaw worked. "I never expected you would go to the military, not when you had every reason to believe Wharington betrayed you. And not after the way your father died."
Sam didn't want to think about her father here. "I knew Thomas wouldn't betray me."
"I take back what I said about you not being Charon," Turner told Hud. "You must be him. You misjudge good people according to your own flaws, just the way he did. It makes you surprised when they act with integrity."
Hud looked him over with a disdain so pronounced, Sam wondered if he was compensating. She would bet anything Hud felt threatened by the construct he had rebuilt for himself. Turner had obviously developed in ways other than Hud expected, ways that suggested Hud might not be as superior as he considered himself.
Hud turned back to Sam. "You will come with me."
She stood up, lifting her chin to face him, though he stood a good half a foot taller and had to be almost twice her weight, all in muscle. "No."
"I'm not giving you a choice."
"Tough," Sam said.
Hud closed his hand around her upper arm. As Sam pulled back, Thomas tried to wrench his arm out of Alpha's grip. The android whipped up her carbine, her thumb on the firing stud—
And Turner moved.
His body blurred. Sam had known he was fast, but she had never seen him push himself to his limit, at least not since Sunrise Alley had enhanced his body. Now he became a smear of motion that swirled around Hud.
Hud responded just as fast.
Caught off guard by Hud's speed, Sam stumbled back and almost fell. He and Turner fought at such a boosted rate, she couldn't see details, only the two of them careening toward the wall.
Suddenly they froze. Turner was backed up against the wall, holding Hud in front of him, with Hud's back to his front and Hud's arms pulled tight behind his body by one of Turner's metal limbs. At first Sam thought he had a knife to Hud's throat. Then she realized Turner had transformed his finger into a blade.
For a man with a blade microns away from slicing his jugular vein, Hud spoke with amazing calm. "It doesn't matter if you kill me." Although he was looking at Sam, she knew he was talking to Turner. "I have copies. Destroy this body and four more of me will come after you." A trickle of blood ran down his throat from the knife.
Alpha released Thomas and stepped back. While Raze kept Thomas covered, Alpha aimed her pulse rifle at Turner—which meant she was also pointing it at Hud.
"Want me to shoot him?" she asked Hud.
"Right," Turner said. "After all this trouble to recapture me, you think he's going to destroy me?"
"I can always find another body," Hud said.
Although Hud made a show of sounding unconcerned, Sam suspected Turner had hit close to the truth. It would take immense resources to rebuild Turner. She doubted either Hud or his backers wanted to waste such a valuable project.
Sam went to stand a few paces in front of Hud. He watched her like a wild animal, one that would attack if Turner relaxed his vigilance even for an instant. "Your body is based on the original Hud, yes? But you're an android with an EI matrix and augmentations that enhance your speed and strength. Like Turner. You knew what you were doing with Turner and Polk because you had already done it on yourself."
Hud watched her with greedy eyes. "Did you know Linden Polk loved you?"
He couldn't have hurt her more if he had struck her. "No," she said softly. "I had no idea."
"I have his memories. And I'm in Turner, too." His gaze traveled over her body. "When he made love to you, so did I."
Sam felt as if he had poured rancid oil on her. But she also knew now what would get to him the most. "You'll never know what it is like, because Turner won't let you access your own brain in his matrix. Even if you could, you wouldn't recognize yourself. Turner is rewriting and deleting you. Pretty soon nothing recognizable will be left of you in his system."
"Until I get his matrix back." A muscle twitched under his eye. "It will be a pleasure when I rewrite it with my own."
"It won't work," Sam said. "You can't create a permanent EI. Your personality isn't stable enough." Let him chew on that.
"I'm perfectly sane, I assure you."
Sam snorted. "That's why you committed suicide to image your brain when you could have made a copy without harming yourself."
A runnel of blood trickled down his neck. Turner remained motionless behind him, his cybernetic arm gripped around Hud's arms, wrenching them behind Hud's back.
"I couldn't live." Hud's voice had become shadowed. "We've learned to cure many syndromes. But not all."
It hadn't occurred to her Hud might have been dying anyway. "You were sick?"
"I had the Cambodian virus."
That told her a great deal about the original Hud, possibly more than he intended. The virus had been named for the region where it originated ten years ago. In most people, it remained dormant. However, certain chemical imbalances in the brain activated a deadly
form of the virus that created symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease. It had no cure yet and always proved fatal. Hud's delusions of grandeur, his paranoid behavior, all of it suddenly made more sense. The imbalance that activated the virus was found primarily in schizophrenics.
Thomas spoke. "So you made yourself a new body, one without the virus."
"Yes. I'm healthy now."
Healthy. Sam wondered if he realized he had created a schizophrenic EI. He could be insane forever. "You have immortality."
Hud inclined his head. "Smart lady."
Then he blurred.
He caught them off guard, acting so fast that he had twisted out of Turner's hold before Sam realized what happened. Turner responded faster than the rest of them, tackling Hud a fraction of a second after Hud lunged out of his grip.
The two of them moved past Sam at such high speed, she couldn't see them clearly. Human limbs without the added strength and flexibility of biomech couldn't have borne the stress. It gave her an eerie sense, as if the rest of the world had slowed down. She could tell they were fighting, but nothing more. Thomas moved toward the fighters as they lurched into another wall, but then Raze lifted his gun in an obvious warning: Stay back. Don't interfere.
It was over within moments. Hud wrestled Turner to the floor and held him there, face down, while Raze locked Turner's metal arms behind his back with steel cables.
Except it wasn't over.
Sam had heard that in a crisis, a person's sense of time could slow down, but she had never believed it. Yet now hers turned into molasses. Turner seemed to move in slow motion as he clenched his fists, flexing his cabled arms—and the steel bands around his wrists snapped. His arms had changed again; powerful and elongated, they bulged with ridged metal.
Turner jumped to his feet, raising his arms above Hud. The other man ducked, but Turner moved just as fast, and caught him on the arm with a blow. Even as Hud stumbled, he grabbed Turner in a wrestling hold around the waist. Sam wasn't sure what happened next. Hud lost his grip and grabbed Turner's shirt, tearing it. No—Turner had ripped his own shirt—his arm had—
"No," Sam whispered.
With nightmarish clarity, Turner's transforming arm shredded his sleeve. His fist formed a nozzle and shot a projectile. He misfired, aiming at empty air—but no, in that instant Hud lunged into the path of the bullet. How Turner predicted his movements, Sam didn't know, but she feared he had released his version of Charon, running it in full so he could outthink Hud—who was also Charon.