“So, they were Army?”
Zander shrugged and flinched. “Sorry. Cracked collarbone. Why they have me trussed up like this.”
He tried again to shift to a more comfortable position. “Army was a figure of speech. I don’t know military well enough to distinguish between the different branches, so I can’t say what they were. Their uniforms were all black, and I don’t remember seeing any identifying insignias. I never saw a warrant, either. They gave no notice when they stormed Gem—Miss Keyes’—house. Just broke down the doors.”
“And you have no idea why they were looking for Miss Keyes?”
“No idea,” Zander repeated.
Ha! You just told a lie, Reverend Cruz, I chortled.
Gamble was, I’m pretty sure, thinking the same thing. He chuckled under his breath and slid a card from his jacket, put it on the rolling table near the bed. “Know what? I like you, Reverend. You’re all right. Here’s my card. I’ll bet if you sit on it a while, you can come up with something.”
Just a dash of sarcasm and emphasis on “something.”
“Got it. If I remember something that will help you catch Martinez, I’ll call,” Zander answered.
Just a hint of sarcasm. Emphasis on “catch Martinez.”
Gamble grunted. “Well, thanks for letting me talk to you.” He studied Zander and shook his head. “You sure took a beating, Cruz. I don’t envy you the next few weeks while you recuperate. Can I get you anything before I go? More water?”
I reexamined Ross Gamble, liking him better for his human side.
“No, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Right. Well, take care.”
Gamble nodded and strode out of the room, his long legs making him fast, even at a walk. I followed him all the way to the elevator to see if he’d jump on his cell phone and report to a fellow FBI crony or, perhaps, a person higher up.
Higher up—like maybe Cushing herself? I wouldn’t have put it past her.
But Gamble, his brows bunched together, head bent, deep in his own thoughts, never pulled a phone from his pocket. When the elevator dinged, he shuffled into the car and pressed a button—still in his own thoughts, not once looking up.
When I got back to Zander’s room, he appeared distressed and whipped at the same time. I reached over and squeezed his foot again.
“Gemma?” He tried to sit up. “Gemma!”
“Don’t!” I urged him. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Where did you go? I called your name, but you didn’t answer.” He fumbled around with his good arm, trying to find me.
I grabbed his hand. He gripped it so hard, I feared for my own bones. He pulled me closer to the bed. I scooted a chair up to the rail and sat.
“Hey, loosen up a little, okay? You’re crushing my fingers.”
“Not a chance. I don’t want you walking out on me again.”
My smile had to have been a yard wide. “I promise not to leave without notice.”
Now that I was only inches away, I took a closer inventory of Zander’s injuries. He had so many bruises, that even his bruises had bruises.
“When you squeezed my foot, I about jumped out of this bed, Gemma.”
“I saw, but you hid it well. Did you feel the mites come over to you?”
“Yeah, I did. What were they doing?”
“Mending things. Giving you a dose of endorphins.”
“I do feel better.”
“Um, I’m glad. And, uh, is the phone I gave you in a safe place?”
“Yeah, I think so. I took it home and taped it under my dresser.”
We ran out of steam just like that. I fumbled around for a couple of seconds before adding, “I visited Abe. The mites did some work in him, too.”
Zander’s face creased with apprehension. “I heard that he’s not doing well, Gemma.”
I nodded, tears puddling up in my eyes. “I know. I saw him. But . . . I prayed for him and . . . well, I hope what the mites did will help him pull through.”
“Wait. You prayed?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, it seemed like a good idea. At the time.”
“Acknowledging God is a step in the right direction, and I’m really glad, but . . .” The “but” hung between us for a while before Zander finished his thought.
“Gemma . . . I want you to know that I’ve been praying for you. A lot. And I think the reason you thought to pray for Abe? I believe the Lord is calling you, calling you back to him. The thing about God is that he is persistent. In fact, his persistence is why some have called him the ‘Hound of Heaven.’ He is tireless and will confront you when you least expect it. At that time, he will bring you face to face with truth. When he does, well, it will be the moment of decision for you.”
I was astounded and without words to answer him. Shivers ran down my arms, and I kept hearing, “He will confront you when you least expect it,” and wondered what that meant.
After a long, charged pause, Zander switched subjects. “Tell me what you’ve been up to, Gemma.”
Wow. Loaded request—but I was more than happy for the turn in the conversation. I exhaled before diving in.
“Been up to? Bunches. And lots of changes, too.”
“Tell me?”
Right then I realized that I wanted to tell him everything, that I craved someone other than the nanomites for company, for friendship, for confidences. I broke it down for him—just about everything that had happened since I’d last seen him. I told him everything except my new name and the location of Dr. Bickel’s safe house.
He listened with amazed interest as I explained how the nanomites had unlocked doors, hacked into any computer system I asked them to, and had helped me acquire a new identity.
“Incredible!”
“I know! It’s really cool.”
I went on to tell him about the mites speaking in my ear—and on the way, I maybe, in my excitement, got ahead of myself. Like, I kind of overlapped the telling of how they first talked to me with telling him about the merge—and that might have been a mistake.
“You see, it was really late that night, and I was frustrated about a lot of things—mostly at how tedious and time consuming it was for me to get anything done. I knew the nanomites could do so much more if I could just figure out how to use them better. So, I told the nanomites that I wanted to improve our communication and cooperation. Asked them if there wasn’t a way for us to interact and work together in a more efficient way. Then I went to bed.”
With a wry chuckle, I added, “Apparently, the mites heard me.”
I filled him in on what they had done in response to my request. Told him about how I woke up to a headache, nose bleeds, and pain, about sleeping around the clock until my body had adjusted. Then I was able to tell him how the nanomites could “speak” in my ear, right?
“The mites now vibrate in my ear canal to mimic human speech. And somewhere and somehow, they say I’m merged with them and that they . . . they have sort of adopted me.”
As I’d described the merge, his expression had turned from disbelief to alarm . . . to something else.
I recognized my mistake about then and tried to lighten my tone. “They even made me an honorary tribal member—you know, one of the tribes Dr. Bickel described? Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omega Tribe? And now, Gemma Tribe. Ha-ha, right?”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
I shook my head.
Oh, yeah. You can’t see that.
“No, I’m not joking. Not a bit.”
“But what does ‘merge’ mean? What has it done to you?”
“I’m not sure about it all yet. I only woke up from the adjustment this morning.”
Was it just this morning?
I rushed to go on, to push him past the shock. “But one really cool part happened when I read the news online about you and Abe and we—the nanomites and I—started looking for you guys.”
I told him about the “warehouse,” about searching and sor
ting data to find which hospital he and Abe were in. Myself, I was over the freaked-out part now, and I was starting to revel in it, to think of the possibilities and vistas it opened to me.
Not Zander.
“You go to this, what? This warehouse place in your head where you, um, search and filter information from the Internet? Information that just comes to you by itself?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. When I close my eyes, I’m in this big, cavernous place where the nanomites and I can interact, so I slapped the word ‘warehouse’ on it. And, no, the information doesn’t come by itself; the nanomites feed it to me. They stream the data to me at incredible speeds—and I can see, sort, and understand the info just as fast as it comes to me—which is astonishing, don’t you think? I don’t know how or why yet; still, it is really amazing.”
Zander said nothing more, but a wealth of emotions flitted across his banged-up, beat-up, swollen face, until he said, “But, Gemma, what in heaven’s name does that mean?” his voice rose in pitch with each word, rose until it was at least an octave higher, “And how can that not hurt you? None of this is normal or right!”
“Hey, calm down, cowboy,” I teased. Zander’s concern was spinning him up, and I didn’t think that would be good for him.
Teasing was probably not the best approach to employ on a young Hispanic male.
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he shouted, sitting up. He groaned and clutched at his bruised ribs, but he stayed upright anyway. “Those things are in your brain? Making you bleed? Making you part of their ‘collective’? Gemma Tribe?
“And don’t tell me to calm down!”
“Pastor Cruz? Is everything all right? Who are you talking to?”
Saved by the nurse. I shot out of the chair and tried to move out of her way, but I was penned in. I scrunched up between the IV tree and the wall.
Zander waved the nurse to the other side of the bed. “Come over on this side, please. The, uh, gentleman who visited me earlier stood where you are and gave me, um, a crick in this side of my neck.”
The nurse walked around the bed and peered at Zander, picked up his hand and felt his pulse. “You act like you feel better, but who were you talking to?”
“Yeah, I was, um, just indulging in a little rant. The guy who was in here earlier was asking me a bunch of questions that I don’t have the answers to. Got me riled up. You heard me blowing off some steam.”
By then I’d gotten to the end of the room close to the bathroom, out of the way.
“Well, all right, then. Are you feeling hungry?”
“Yes, but I don’t think I can chew much.”
“Think you could manage a protein shake?”
“Through a straw? Yeah. Sounds good.”
The nurse left, and I returned to Zander and positioned myself on the same side of the bed the nurse had been.
“Gemma?”
“I’m here.”
Zander grabbed my hand again and didn’t waste any time returning to our conversation. “I’m worried about what the nanomites are doing to you, Gemma. The ‘talking’ to you by making vibrations in your ear I guess I can understand, but how in the world can they make you see things at their level? How is that possible? And how can it not be harmful for you?”
He ended with, “I don’t like it, Gemma. I don’t like it at all.”
I gave his concerns some consideration before I answered. “I don’t have answers for you, Zander. It is so new that I haven’t had much time to think about it myself. However, now that my body has adjusted to the merge, I feel good. In fact, I feel more energetic. I don’t know how it will work out long term, but for now, I don’t know what I could do differently. I can only accept what the nanomites have done and employ the, um, abilities they are giving me through the merge.”
I switched tracks. “I’m hoping Dr. Bickel can tell me exactly what the mites have done. And, eventually, I hope he can get them out of me so I can have my life back.”
“Dr. Bickel?” Zander’s voice ratcheted up that scale again. “What in the world are you talking about? Dr. Bickel is dead, Gemma!”
I slapped my free hand against my forehead: Zander didn’t know about Dr. Bickel’s garbled email.
“Oh, wow. I guess I forgot to tell you. The night of Cushing’s raid on my house, after I left Abe’s? I went back to my house and slept for a while—I was still pooped from the mites draining me earlier that day. When I woke up, I opened my laptop to download the file of my journal and trash the hard drive. But before I could do that, I found an email waiting for me. From Dr. Bickel.”
Zander looked as stunned as I had felt when I’d seen the words “Position Description” in the subject line of an email I’d deleted in a folder I’d emptied.
“Turns out Dr. Bickel didn’t die when Cushing raided his lab. She captured him and is keeping him a prisoner somewhere. The whole world already believes he’s dead, so she’s getting away with it. He doesn’t know where she is keeping him, only that it is a ‘military installation’ of some kind. The nanomites are looking for him. So far they haven’t found anything, but they are searching.”
Zander’s mouth flattened into a stern line. “And then what?”
“Then what? I don’t know yet. What do you mean?”
“I mean, you aren’t thinking of trying to spring him, are you? You know you aren’t capable of ‘invading’ a U.S. military prison, don’t you, Gemma? Even if you managed to sneak in to such a place because no one can see you, you couldn’t possibly get Dr. Bickel out. You know that, right? What if it’s a trap? What if Cushing sent that email just to lure you? Do you know what she would do to you if she caught you?”
Zander’s voice had risen once more, and each question he asked was less a question and more a demand than the previous one. He was getting himself spun up, and I didn’t like it or think it healthy in his condition.
I closed my eyes. Nano. Calm him, please. Um, in fact, if you can, just knock him out.
I held his hand a little tighter and stroked his arm as the mites swarmed out of me and into him. “Zander. Please calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to—hey, what are you doing? Stop it!” But Zander’s words were already growing sluggish.
“Listen to me, Zander. I will be all right. I promise not to do anything precipitous. Just . . . don’t worry, okay?”
“How can I not worry . . . Gemma? How . . . can . . . I . . .”
“You say you trust God, Zander? If you do, then please pray for me.”
I didn’t know where that had come from, but since he claimed to ‘know’ God, it wouldn’t hurt to have the extra help, would it?
Put your money where your mouth is, Pastor Cruz.
“Gemmmm . . .” he was fading. The nanomites were putting him under.
I should remember this trick.
I leaned over and placed a kiss on his forehead. Not a romantic kiss, just a kiss.
Because I care about you, Zander. Because I can’t stand to see you hurting like this.
Because you are one of only two people in the world I know I can trust.
“I’m going now, Zander, but I’ll be back. You rest now, okay?”
When I left Zander’s room, I stood in the hallway, thinking. The things he’d said to me about God someday confronting me? Well, his words kept poking around in me, churning up questions and—I admit it—trepidation.
I wasn’t ready for a face-to-face with God.
After a while, I shook my head and made myself review the conversation between Zander and the FBI agent. It was a relief to turn my attention to something other than me vs. God or me vs. Cushing. Besides, I wanted to find Mateo Martinez. I wanted to find him a whole lot more than Special Agent Ross Gamble did. But maybe this FBI guy could help me?
Maybe we could help each other.
~~**~~
Chapter 10
Wow, I was so relieved to get out of that hospital!
I sucked in fresh, clean air to clear
the sick and antiseptic smells from my nostrils. I gazed toward the peaks and valleys of the Sandias hoping to dispel the sights and sounds of so much pain and discomfort.
As I waited for the first bus in my trek back to the safe house, my concern turned toward Emilio. I had hoped to find his school and drop in on him before I went home, but it had taken me too long to get to the hospital using the transit system—and I’d spent more than three hours visiting Abe and Zander. By the time I caught the right bus and hoofed it the rest of the way to Emilio’s school, classes would be out and he would be back at his foster home.
The bus pulled up, and I started to swing aboard.
It’s too late today to catch you at school today, Emilio, but I promise that tomorrow—
The nanomites cut in on my thoughts.
Gemma Keyes.
I stumbled on the bus step, caught myself, reversed course, and backed away from the bus door. “Um, yes?”
We took you at your word, Gemma Keyes.
It wasn’t a question. It was a cringe-worthy accusation.
A flat-footed rebuke.
Ouch.
I knew what they were getting at: They had made me a “tribe,” part of “the whole.” I was supposed to communicate and cooperate, all that coming-to-consensus stuff—that touchy-feely, mutually agreeable junk that was so difficult for me.
I moved away from the bus stop. Started down the sidewalk away from the hospital. “I, um, I’m sorry, Nano. I guess I have a lot to learn. Humans aren’t by nature cooperative and acquiescing. We are . . . independent. Often headstrong and stubborn.”
Silence.
Guilt-generating silence.
“Nano?”
Were they listening?
“Again, I apologize. I made a mistake, but it was because I was upset about my friends. I’m willing to try; I’m, um, willing to learn how you do things. I hope you will be patient with me?”
More silence.
Were they paying any attention to me at all or were they confabbing? I closed my eyes and tried to go to the warehouse. It wasn’t working.
If they were holding a confab, I was not included.
Wow. Did they block me? Are they discussing how to kick me out? Did I just get “unfriended”?
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