She smiled despite herself. “For a man scheduled to die by more means than I can count, you have a remarkable sense of humor. I’m going to put that in the positives column as hopeful signs of humanity emerging.”
“Strictly stress suppression. I told you.”
She commenced his sponge bath, enjoying going over him slowly, forever astonished by the free anatomy class she was getting. The guy didn’t have a speck of body fat on him. “How come you’re still this built? I thought you said you’ve just been following me around for several months.”
He hesitated only briefly, but it was enough to tell her he was holding something from her and whatever was coming next was likely a complete line of bull. “It’s possible my metabolism is still a little racy and hasn’t adjusted yet. I know I’ve barely been eating.” Lies and more lies, she thought. Why? His eyes had gone up and to the left, suggesting he was using his imagination to fill in the blanks, and not his memory.
“You realize withholding critical information from me that pertains to your health or anything going on inside your body is just likely to get you killed all the faster, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. The way he said it suggested he knew and he still wasn’t going to tell her, even if it cost him. Not a good sign.
Whatever was going through his mind, it wasn’t affecting the flying at full mast salute his flag pole was giving her. His willingness to soak up her affections, whatever form they took, overweighing his other senses, once again diverted her attention from the subject at hand, and caused her to drop her guard some. Only time would tell just how much her dropping her guard around him in general would cost both of them.
“I can’t decide if you’re trying to get me to worship your body to heal the hurt to your psyche caused by the once missing arm,” she said, taking broad strokes with the sponge to unknot his clenched muscles, “or if it’s just attention from females you need to validate yourself.”
He grunted. “Both maybe. My overbearing father chased away most of the girls before anything got too serious. God forbid he lose his whipping post. Then the army came along as the only escape. Not much chance for meaningful relationships there, just quickies, which were more like a drug release from all the tension.”
She tossed the sponge in the water. “What?” he said. “What did I say?” He seemed to sense the mood change before he’d even turned around to look at her.
“So what you’re saying is any woman who’s willing to love you will fit the bill. Doesn’t that make me feel special?”
He stood up suddenly, forgetting he was naked. “Why must everything be a test? The more I feel I’m not going to pass the more likely I am to say something stupid.”
“That wasn’t fear of failure a second ago. That was truth.”
“So what if it was? There are more than enough special things connecting us that are unique to the two of us, more than most people have. Maybe it’s not my insecurity that’s at issue.”
He retrieved the sponge from the water and held it out to her. “Now brush me down like a stud racehorse.”
“You don’t need any more validation in that department.”
“I feel better inside my body when you’re not mad at me. Those nanites stop wanting to crawl outside of my skin. You wouldn’t want to torture me over a little spat, even if you feel I’m in the wrong?”
Jane wondered about what her thoughts were doing to him. If it was a psychic ability amplified by the nanites or something less spectacular, like their ability to read EMF frequencies at this distance. There still wasn’t enough evidence to tip the scales one way or the other. She figured he had the moral high ground in any case, and resumed her sponge bath. He remained standing, and she found she enjoyed sponging him down like a horse in a stable. The analogy he’d provided her helped them both to get some distance on one another.
Once the heat of her emotions had dissipated along with the heat from the water in the tub she handed him the sponge. After he stepped out of the tub, he toweled himself off, slipped on a pair of frayed shorts. He didn’t have far to go to get to her work station in the small cabin, just a few strides.
She took out her alcohol saturated pre-packaged gauze, swabbed his arm, and stuck him with the needle. He didn’t flinch quite so much this time, just kept eying the blood as if he expected it to come out green.
“I’ll be a while with the microscope,” she said, turning her back on him and facing her work station. She didn’t even have to scoot the chair over; the small cabin was a time saver in any number of ways.
“That’s okay,” he said, “I’m curious to see how long my erection lasts with you totally ignoring me.”
She bit her lip. “The eager puppy dog approach doesn’t work on me, I told you,” she said. “Try being less of an overgrown adolescent.”
“I appreciate the overgrown comment, if nothing else,” he said, looking down at his crotch. Maybe she was making him feel sufficiently insecure the trauma was bombing him back to his teenage years. Then again, by his own admission, he might still be stuck there, needing her love to break him free of the old patterns and the old him, which couldn’t happen in the absence of a mature loving relationship. Suddenly his past with his father and the military seemed like a reason to cut him some slack and be the healer she was in yet another realm.
Hours later, she rubbed her eyes and looked up from her microscope, glanced over at him. He was reading her iPad, which he’d liberated from her desktop when she’d switched to her laptop, and as hard as ever. That wasn’t natural for someone his age. Maybe the “generic adolescent” thing was an act, a really good one. The idea he could role play so well as to overcome the hormonal limitations of a man in his early thirties versus his early teens, just unnerved her.
Maybe this was all play acting to him and he was still on assignment, doing exactly what had been asked of him, protect her while she worked out the kinks in her formula, not from this government’s secret agencies, but from all the others. Nothing like growing suspicion for nipping budding romance right in the bud.
Perhaps she was being paranoid and it was the nanites to blame for his superhuman erection. Or perhaps it was simply more placating to believe that.
“What are you reading?” she said.
“I’m giving myself the equivalent of a PhD in your respective areas, as best I can anyway, and in some companion fields as well. I figure if we can finish each other’s thoughts for one another, it’ll facilitate that ‘you complete me’ vibe I’m going for.”
“I thought we agreed you weren’t that smart.”
“I thought we’d agreed I really was that desperate, for your love, and for the two of us to survive.”
“It’s not a half bad idea to at least pick up some field medicine along the way. If you ever have to patch me back together, or take care of me past the nano’s ability to restore order… it might be the only way either of us survives. Sorry I didn’t think of it myself, if only from a more self-severing perspective.”
“So what’s the verdict, doc?”
“I was still on the fence about you being friend or foe, but seeing you play super soldier, and now super-learner, all while sporting a hard on for several hours that a fourteen year old would envy, I’d say I’m safely off the fence. You’re too good of an actor, who loses himself to new roles too readily, to ever be trusted, plain and simple. And too important of an asset to be off anyone’s radar. My guess is they know exactly where you are, down to some tracking mechanism implanted in you. And the only people coming for us are the other government agencies and private interests they need you to protect me from until they can get their hands on my precious cargo.”
“It’s only me that’s so desperate to get my hands on you, doc. Don’t overthink it.”
“You’re too smooth all around. Maybe if you played it down a little, I’d never have guessed.”
“Keep you on your toes? Never let you drop your guard, remember? Those were your instructions.�
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She grunted. “Well played, soldier. As always.” He hadn’t looked up from his iPad screen the entire time, just kept flipping pages, speed reading. She was the smarter one in the room, right? Somehow that thought was headed south along with the rest of her blood flow staring at his crotch. If she liked marrying up, this guy could be scary smart, if half of what she suspected of him was true.
She sighed and came clean as much as she could. Why fight it? She didn’t need him hacking into her computers while she was asleep. She needed him well-rested and sharp for whatever was coming through that door next. “So far the nano inside me is just getting better at doing what it does. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say I was now immortal and impervious to wounding. I doubt even accidental death could take me out of play.”
“No shit!” he said, jumping off the mattress. “What makes you say that?”
“I looked at healthy cells under the microscope. And they kept making them healthier. They never really stopped improving. And when I put poison in the petri dish, heated it over a flame, starved it of oxygen, their work only slowed for a time before rebounding.” She put the pistol she’d kept from one of the cases within reach on her desk up to her head.
He pulled her hand away. “We’ll take it on faith for now.” Taking the gun away from her, he said, “So why then were you giving me the okay to bone up on field medicine?”
“This metamorphosis could be temporary, the condition fundamentally unstable.”
Mike paced as he thought, tapping the gun absently against his head. “Men, I could use some of that indestructibleness in my line of work, definitely. No wonder everyone and their son is trying to get their hands on you.”
“That’s what it’s doing in me. I didn’t say that’s what it’s doing inside you.” He took a cautious step back, dropped the gun on the mattress. “Okay, let’s have it.”
“The truth is I can’t say what it’s doing inside your body, exactly.”
“But if you had to hazard a guess…”
“I’d say it was weaponizing you.”
“No, shit. As in I might blow up at any moment? A walking bomb?”
“That’s one possibility. I can’t say how far they’ll go or if I’m even reading the signs right.”
“Why would it be weaponizing me?”
“Again, if I had to surmise, I’d say because that’s who you are. It’s turning the soldier into the super-soldier. It’s just trying to help you to be all you can be. That was a part of their initial programming. Only I never expected them to be quite so bright about it, or quite so diligent in pursuing their ultimate agenda.”
“But this could be everything we hoped for and more.”
“There you go counting your chickens before they’re hatched again. Hopeful thinking in my line of work is a great recipe for disaster. As it is in yours. So I suggest you get off it.”
He took a deep breath. “They’re here. I can smell them. About a hundred clicks out.”
“No way you… the nano. Well, so far so good, at least. That’s a modification I can live with.” She had spoken too soon.
Mike screamed in agony and fell to the floor as his body started twisting up. “I’ve got to get to them before they get close enough to destroy your virtual lab,” he said, wincing out the words in a staccato rhythm between bones poking out of his skin. His attempts to stifle any additional position-giveaway groans were proving futile.
“You worry about yourself. From this moment on, you are my virtual lab. The rest of this equipment is highly replaceable.” She gulped as she continued to watch the metamorphosis, and took a step back. Fear over what was happening to him was quickly being replaced by fear of what could happen to her once the metamorphosis was complete.
His body was growing in size even as the direction of the joints in his legs reversed themselves. Coarse black hair was erupting over his entire surface, abrasive enough to scratch and gouge the floor just with his squirming about. The front of the face elongated, making more room for more teeth of the canine variety. He began teething on the metal frame of her swivel desk chair to quell the agony of the erupting canines. The metal tubing snapped like toothpicks.
He didn’t keep her in suspense for long as to what he was turning into. In less than a minute she was regarding a full-fledged werewolf, as big as any she’d seen in the movies. The acid drool—a nice touch by the way—was eating through the floorboards. He had to step back as the reagents in his saliva collapsed the support his forelegs were relying on. She was stricken by the fact that it took a couple feet of earth to neutralize the reaction, leaving a gaping hole in front of his mouth. Whatever that substance was, it wasn’t just acid. It wasn’t just chemical in nature. There was DNA in there morphing the reaction to accommodate the substance to be eaten through.
The glowing eyes emitted lasers that were slicing through the flooring as well in bursts while he fought to get himself under control. He bounded through the window. “Guess the weapons upstairs are for me then,” she said, racing up the ladder. “Let’s hope he can remember where he set those traps in his current state.”
By the time she was at the loft her mind was racing. How the hell did he pull that off, nano or no nano? They’re evolving fast, but not that fast!
She reached for the rocket launcher, grabbed several rockets which she slung over her shoulder. This was going to play hell with her environmentalist streak, not to mention what getting caught in the blast radius could do to him. But it was the middle of the night. And it wasn’t like she had super night vision suiting some predator. She had less than zero chance of hitting what she was aiming at otherwise.
Think, Jane! While you still can. The screeching howls he was making outside didn’t make it any easier for her to get a rational grip on the situation. Whatever he was doing to them, they seemed quite able to inflict pain in kind.
The night she had the nightmare… Did she dream of werewolves? Or did the nano infesting her brain just go searching for their own best solution in response to her irrational fears of being chased by an unknown, all-powerful enemy, only to find in her memory banks a repository of beloved film genres to choose from? Nice. Neat. But damn implausible. Unless…
She was continuing to underestimate the hive mind effect. Individually none of those nanobots were half that clever or resourceful. But maybe collectively? She needed to see what was going on inside her brain under a scanner with sufficient resolution to address some plausible scenarios that did suggest themselves and that might explain how her outlandish theories so far might be right on the money. Forget that such scanners didn’t exist yet and if they did they’d be every bit a safeguarded secret. Maybe she could do a little hacking to find out. Maybe, somewhere on the net was Christmas come early.
She hiked it back down the ladder with the RPG launcher slung over her shoulder and the belt of projectiles. GI Jane was never her thing. Let’s hope she didn’t totally suck at it as a result.
THIRTEEN
A SHORT WHILE EARLIER…
“Are you sure this thing’ll work?” the soldier said, helping several others with hoisting the net out of the truck’s bay.
Even after all this time, many of the men still questioned Serena’s competency. She had chosen to let them think what they want rather than challenge them directly on it, as she had grave misgivings about her competency as well. But this assignment was different. She couldn’t afford doubt about what she could and couldn’t do slowing their reflexes. There was too much at stake. “I designed the netting myself.”
“So what, you’re part-time scientist, part time FBI special ops lead? How does that work?”
Serena elected to fry the chip in his head and he dropped like a stone. “I wish I had time to explain.” She looked up at the other soldiers still yanking the net out of the truck who’d paused what they were doing to stare at her. “I’ve let you entertain what doubts you had about me because it seemed like your right, having me foisted on you like this.
But this mission requires a higher level of group cohesion. If you have an ounce of reservations about me or what we’re doing we’re all dead. For that reason I’ll drop each of you like I dropped him if you can’t put those second thoughts about me aside right now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them said, and that was that. They went back to pulling the mesh out of the truck. If it weren’t for their cyber-enhancements, they couldn’t even lift the hi-tech alloy web. The weight of the net alone would kill any creature that wasn’t nano-enhanced. She had no idea what Mike could turn into, or if he could morph at all, but she’d designed that net to work around most any contingency. And it was a fair bet Jane would have injected him by now, if only to enhance her own perimeter protection, whatever the risks of her solution to the test subject. It’s what she would have done if she were in Jane’s position. She really didn’t know what she was up against; neither did Mike for that matter. He was always need-to-know. He could assume the worst, but none of them knew the worst; they had that much going for them.
Serena moved on to the next vehicle, modified like all the others for this assignment. “You sure these tranq darts’ll do it?” the soldier said, loading his rifle with one. Several others were following suit.
“There’s enough poison in one of those darts to kill a small city of fifty-thousand when diluted in the local water supply,” she explained. “Another of my designs.”
“I thought we wanted to capture him, not kill him,” said another one of them.
“That’s correct,” she said. “Use your discretion as to how many additional darts he can take after the first three.” The soldiers gulped and their eyes darted amongst one another. It wasn’t fear she was detecting; they were too professional for that. But they weren’t used to being surprised either. If she’d had time she would have briefed them better before coming or en route. But they were here for their adaptability as much as their ingenuity. They were the best of the best. Each one of them could be training special ops troops in their own rights overseas, and many of them had done just that at one point or another.
Nano Man Page 9
