“I don’t have anything in my medical charts for that shade of purple. It stops at blue, in fact.” She took off her high heel and hooked the heel into Hulk’s right eye, gouging out the eye.
“Nice,” Mike gasped.
She did the same with the left eye, leaving Hulk eyeless.
“Like I said, fast learner, Jane. You’re a keeper,” he said, before passing out.
When Hulk didn’t release him, she took a step closer to examine the situation more clearly. Hulk was dead, frozen where he was standing, the air embolus doing the trick at last. “You can stop pretending,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Why hasn’t his grip let up any?” Mike asked, opening his eyes and fighting to get it off him with both his hands. That’s right, both his hands; didn’t that feel good?
“Might be the drugs I shot him up with. They could well trigger rigor mortis in someone who’s alive.”
Mike succeeded in peeling Hulk’s hand off his neck. “Could you help me down? I’d hate to sprain an ankle jumping from this height.”
“Yeah,” she said, kicking a foot stool toward him used for reaching into the higher cabinets that existed once upon a time.
He used the assist to descend Mt. Kilimanjaro for the third time in the last few minutes. “You’d think he’d have nabbed me and cleared out of here,” she said. “You were the secondary target.”
“Eliminate the biggest threat first. Standard procedure.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You can only kill one at a time. I can wipe out all of humanity just by spilling the wrong substance into the drain.”
He gave her a funny look. “And you’re scared of me?”
“Logic doesn’t run in the family. Just genius.”
“Well, Genius. Where to from here?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? You’re the army logistics, strategy and tactics guy.”
“I’m guessing they can get inside my head a lot more easily than they can yours.”
“Back to buttering me up, I see. Well, if you’re going to be nothing more than a brainless boy toy, it’s the least you can do.”
“This is the first time you’ve married down, isn’t it?”
“As a matter of fact it is. And who said anything about marriage? Although, I am impressed by your dating style,” she said, throwing an eye over the room and back at Hulk. “Not a lot of mindless prattle, just a lot of getting down to brass tacks.”
Finished packing her leather bag, she zipped it shut, then eyed him guiltily.
“What are you not telling me?” he said.
“That the only serum I have is inside you.”
“Can you make more of it?”
“Possibly, if…”
“If what?”
“If a lot of things. But no time for that now.” She navigated around Hulk and into the hall. Lining the corridor were posters capturing snatches of adventure travel, featuring a rock climber, a downhill skier, white water rafting, a treetop collection of orchids in the amazon, all mocking her desire for a little adventure and excitement outside of the office which she dreamed about but never really allowed herself. The posters followed them into the waiting room, by which time, even Mike was picking up on the theme of the repressed girl looking for some raw excitement she didn’t entirely cook up in a test tube. But by then there was another surprise awaiting both of them: a room full of patients, sitting frozen still. Molly, her assistant was pressed flat against the wall, her mouth hanging open. So it wasn’t Sunday. It was Saturday, when she did see a few people for a few hours. Apparently the stress of being stalked had thrown her off her game even before Mike showed up. Turning to Molly, she said, “Better cancel all my appointments for the foreseeable future. Write yourself a fat check on me and give yourself one very long vacation. I’m sure you could use it after today.”
She tiptoed through the waiting room. “Why didn’t they flee for their lives?” Mike asked, eying the patients.
“You know what it’s like to get an appointment with a good doctor in this city since Obama care?”
“Point taken,” he said. “Though, they could just have not had the guts to complain about the long wait considering how you dealt with the last patient to barge in on you.”
ELEVEN
“What is this place?” Mike said, his eyes going over the broken down cabin full of cobwebs he’d be afraid to let his dog stay in overnight, if he had a dog.
“A patient, I had once. She died. No relation and no connection to me. I just remember her saying she had no relatives, the place was paid for cash. It was out in the middle of nowhere, wasn’t worth much. I’m guessing the state owns it now and likely won’t get around to condemning the place for another hundred years. Just not worth the money to bring in the tractors. Besides, it’s buried in a few thousand acres of land they already own. Short of sitting right atop some well-coveted mining rights, can’t see anyone bothering to put us back on the map, ever.”
“Next time just go with ‘some place off-grid.’ We action types tune you out as soon as we’ve decoded the essentials of the message.”
He checked the views from the various windows from a security vantage point. “You sure you aren’t some kind of tree hugger?”
“I prefer the term ‘staunch environmentalist.’ I’ll have you know your nanites incorporate my observations of the natural world, not just my observations of human biology. So you can thank me for connecting you better not just to your human nature but to nature in general.”
“That part of the metamorphosis must not have taken yet,” he said turning his attention from the views whose rustic charms were lost on him.
“How’s that arm?” she said, seeing him flexing and relaxing it multiple times in succession. She was feeling rather proud of her creation. And what was that in his eyes as he looked up at her? Real feeling or doctor/patient transference?
“Only one way to know, and that’s to test it out.” He walked over to her, used his new arm to trace her contours. His eyes followed his hand as if he were intent on tracking both sensations at once, her and how his new arm allowed him to get closer to her.
Once he’d lost himself in what he was doing enough, the last of his inhibitions folded. He lifted her off the ground, pinned her against the wall, and kissed her.
“I can’t fault your logic,” she said, “about testing out the new body. Only I don’t see a mattress.”
“That’s what the cobwebs are for. Once I roll you around in them enough, we should both be sufficiently cocooned that it’ll be well worth seeing what crawls out the morning after. Fellow lusters, or fellow lovers.”
“You make a compelling argument for a meat head.”
“Just try and not change too much,” he said, sinking his tongue into her mouth and not giving her a chance for any more sprite repartee, unless you counted her moaning.
They awoke a couple hours later, Jane sitting up, piercing the silk coverall that surrounded them, screaming like a banshee.
“No surprise what you turned into,” he said. “You mind cuing me next time so I can make sure not to clean the wax out of my ears.”
She calmed down slowly as she started to orient herself to persons, place and time, still panting and sweating. “It was just a nightmare.”
“Of what?”
“We were being chased through the woods.”
“Newsflash, that’s not a nightmare. That’s our life anymore. I appreciate you giving us a head start, in any case,” he said, jiggling his finger in his ear, trying to get the ringing out of his eardrums. He finished peeling the cobwebs off her like a child unwrapping his Christmas present. “Probably not a bad idea to take a run through the woods. We had better know the terrain better than anyone else should we pop back on someone’s radar.” His tone was tender as he spoke and his touch gentle, attentive. “Speaking of which, I have traps to set.”
“It can wait,” she said.
“You don’t know these people. They will f
ind us. Just a matter of time.”
“We better figure out what to do about that first.”
“Do about what?” He followed her eyes to his new arm. It was all atrophied and twisted up. “Indian giver.”
“I gather you can’t feel it.”
“Nope, which is probably a good thing, considering what it looks like.”
Jane massaged the twisted limb, realizing it was quite pointless. She was just giving herself time to think.
He was having trouble standing vertically now, and stifling the winces as muscles along his back began to spasm, no longer wanting to hold their shape. And she was having just as much trouble keeping her emotions from crawling over one another, the confusion, the panic, the fear, the empathy.
“Jane, the reaction is spreading. And you’re growing more excitable. I thought I’d squeezed all the excitement out of you last night.”
“Quiet, let me think.”
“Without the whip-cracking repartee, you’ll see me tighten up for real. And that wouldn’t be good.”
“Quiet, I said.”
She concentrated on the arm until it started unfurling like a morning flower. Finally it was back to the way it was prior to the contraction. Then, she focused on the pathetic staccato jig he was doing on the floor, unable to control his own body until the “dancing” too stopped. “What did you do?” he said, eying her suspiciously.
“I did what I could to calm the nanobots inside you. They’re keyed to my mind. So I guess you have a point about staying loose. You just keep cracking wise, buster.”
“What, you saying you’re psychically connected with the things?”
“No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
He kept reading her face for clues, which she kept hiding from him. He saw past her defenses anyway. “You injected yourself first with these things. That explains why you were so quick to inject me.”
“Doesn’t make the experiment any less insane, and any more safe. I was supposed to be the guinea pig, not you.”
“So, what, some kind of radio transmission? What’s the range exactly?”
“There you go, thinking like a soldier again. I suppose it’s for the best.”
“And you’re artfully dodging the question because…”
“I honestly don’t know. Just like I didn’t know my moods would affect you, or what thoughts were going through my head. That should have you a hell of a lot more worried than what you might find out in the woods. Trust me, we could be surrounded by ground and air troops right now, and that’d be the least of your worries.”
He just stared at her. “What, no argument?” she said. “That’s a first.”
“Please tell me you’ve had some training in mind control. A Zen class or two? I’d settle for tai chi or yoga at this point.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “It may just be our proximity. Maybe when we’re not touching, it’s a non-issue. Maybe this close the magnetic fields of the nanobots intersect to where they can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.”
“So like the next time we make love we could become Siamese twins? Why does that feel like even more of a turn on?”
“You get to work on those traps around the cabin. I’ll get to work on tweaking the nanobots. I can’t have you dying from the inside before they get a chance to kill you from the outside. You’re a soldier. You deserve a proper death.”
“Your bedside manner is better than most doctors, but it could still use a little work.” He stretched his new arm around behind him, peeling the last of the cobwebs off his back.
“What are you going to do for tools to build your traps?”
“What are you going to do for tools to tweak your nanobots?”
She reached for a couple dusty hard shell carbonite suitcases, opened them to reveal the high-tech treasures inside. “No faulting your planning,” he said. “Mine on the other hand…”
Jane opened a couple more suitcases. These were filled with weapons. “Go in much for Bruce Willis movies, do we?” he said.
“He’s my hero.”
“What about the rocket launchers, and the high-tech booby traps?”
“Upstairs in the loft. Might take you a while to sort through it all, especially since half of it is Russian, the other half is Arabic.”
“I may not speak Russian and Arabic all that well, but I’m very fluent in the use of their weapons. Is that how you kept all this stuff off-grid?”
“Yeah. You shop American, you get asked all sorts of funny questions. Even if you have the smarts to shop under an alias and hide your IP address. Someone will just keep looking until they get past the last of your security measures. But if you bring it in from overseas with false paper trails. No one’s any the wiser. Besides, it’s last year’s tech. That’s the only thing we sell the bad guys. One more reason for them not to get too excited.”
“Unlike me. One year in our business, doll, and I may as well be throwing sticks and stones at them.”
“I told you I was a genius, even if that doesn’t extend to logic.”
He kissed her on the forehead, noticing for the first time he was just tall enough to do that without bending over. “The thought of dating Plato never appealed to me. You leave the logic to me, the military logic, anyway.”
His attention was already shifting to the overhead storage space.
“What, you’re not going to ask me how it is I came by all this stuff and know how to use it, in theory, anyway?”
“When you realized you were being followed by nefarious parties, you boned up on lethal countermeasures. The ex-husband might have been good for provoking you to take a karate class or two. But you recognized the need to up your game since people started breaking into your lab. It’s what I would have done if I was a newbie at all this. Besides, you don’t strike me as willing to play the defenseless female type. Not against these guys any more than against your ex.”
“Just the opposite.” She let the innuendo linger in the air. He stared at her as if he realized there was more to the story.
Then he bounded up the ladder to the loft, too eager to play with his new toys than to plumb her depths further. She heard some cases snapping open as she was setting out her computer stuff. Then she heard a high pitched whistle. “You sure you’ve never had any military training?” he said, shouting down at her. She still couldn’t see him overhead.
“I’ve seen every American action movie ever made. Who needs military training after that?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
She was being tongue in cheek, of course. She had had a lot more work to do figuring out how to best make use of the bounty upstairs when he’d come along. In fact, the more weapons she’d surrounded herself with, the more defenseless she felt. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that a trained killer she wasn’t. It was strange the way he’d walked into her life as the answer to her prayers, as the champion she needed. The timing was, well, more than felicitous; it was downright suspicious.
TWELVE
Mike came back many hours after leaving the cabin all dirtied up from setting traps. It was too dark to continue, not without using torches of some kind, which would just give away his position. Besides, he was exhausted. Playing spy wasn’t nearly as physically intensive as playing soldier, and it’d been a while since he’d messed around with the latter. Most of the traps he set he didn’t need the stuff she’d packed for. There was a time to go medieval on people’s asses and there was a time to go hi-tech; the secret was knowing when to employ which method.
The axe out back in the shed had served him fine. That, a shovel, rope, and a bowie knife, was pretty much all he needed, all provided by the former inhabitants of the cabin. Judging from the amount of rope, Dad must have had a mind to make a rope bridge or catwalk for the kids, connecting the trees and maybe some tree houses. The rest of the supplies didn’t seem like they could be put to much else. Well, not to someone without combat training.
&nb
sp; All the same, he’d be at this trap setting a few weeks at least. She wasn’t kidding about being buried in the heart of a national park. That was a lot of ground to cover, and pray the whole time that tourists didn’t venture out here too often to get caught up in his handiwork.
She ran her eyes over his largely naked body, looking as if he’d deliberately painted camouflage on himself, when he hadn’t. “Please tell me a dirty man is one of your turn ons,” he said.
She appeared too tired to smile and just returned her attention to her handiwork. “It’ll be another couple weeks at my end, easy,” he said. “How about you?”
Jane just shook her head, which he didn’t take as a good sign. “More like a couple years.”
“What’s the problem now?”
“They’re evolving. I can’t seem to stop them. Nor do I have any idea what they’re evolving into exactly. Better give me your arm so I can draw some blood. Maybe the process hasn’t started in you yet. Maybe it won’t ever start. This batch was keyed to my genetics, after all.”
“Doesn’t that mean my body is more likely to reject them? Or they will be more likely to reject me, and go on the attack?”
“Both very real possibilities. Now, your arm, please.”
“Honestly, if you can’t do anything about it, I’d rather not know.”
“Sorry, not an option. The arm, before I cut it off myself.”
“Shouldn’t I shower first? You don’t need a dirty needle contaminating your experiment.”
“That’s what alcohol swabs are for. Stop stalling. Besides, we don’t have running water. The best you can hope for is a sponge bath.”
“You’re right. That is the best I can hope for.” He handed her the sponge, ripped from the lining of one of her instrument cases.
Nano Man Page 8
