It is that tone, even more than her words, that confuses him and causes his steps to slow. "You wouldn’t…."

"In a heartbeat."

The man stops and looks askance at his distracted leader. "Moses?"

"Aaron, take the others and get back behind the fence, now."

"But--."

"Do as I say, damnit!!"

With a last, hard, hateful look at the women, he abruptly spins on his heel and walks toward the gate guarding the compound, waving for the others to join him. They do, thought not without a lot of grumbling and threats muttered beneath their breaths. Finally, the street is empty save for the slowly rotting corpses and the three who stand in the midst of the carnage.

"Well?" the man asks, careful not to move so much as a muscle lest he join the rest of these infidels in their eternal damnation. "What are you gonna do now?"

"We’re goin’ for a little walk," Koda growls into his ear, wrapping her free hand around his neck and pulling backwards. Given the choice between strangulation and having his brains blown out, the man wisely decides to get his legs in motion. Kirsten silently follows, also walking backward as she eyes the murderous glares being thrown her way by the group now safely behind the compound fence.

A mile or so down the road, Dakota finally stops and pushes the man against the tree with a spine-rattling thump. "We’ll be coming back this way, maggot, and when we do, your little wacked out religious commune had better be gone."

"Or what?!" he shoots back defiantly.

The smile he receives would have looked perfectly at home on a shark. "Trust me, little man," Koda replies, patting his furred chest, "you really don’t wanna go there."

"I don’t trust no women," he spits, narrowly missing Dakota’s face. "Especially dirty, heathen squaws." He looks past Dakota, leering. "And their pretty little play toys. How ‘bout it, squaw-lover? You like what this Injun does to you? You make me sick, defiling your race with this dirty, stinking…."

"That’s quite enough out of you, little man," Koda replies smoothly, pulling him up by his matted chest hair.

"Or what?!" he gasps around the pain she’s causing.

"Or…this."

Dakota’s right fist lands squarely on his chin. His eyes roll up until only the whites are seen as his knees buckle, dumping him to the ground, out for the count.

"Damn," Kirsten mutters.

"What?"

"I wanted to do that."

"I’ll let you have the next one, alright?"

"Deal."

* * *

Darkness has fallen when Dakota finally leans back against a fallen log, looking over their weaponry by the light of a small, smokeless fire. It’s a meager lot—a few hand grenades, six guns with five boxes of mixed ammunition, assorted knives, and a bow and arrows. Barely enough, she thinks wryly, to knock off a bank, nevermind trying to storm a well-guarded compound. With a soft sigh, she glances over at the closed tent where Kirsten has ensconced herself almost from the moment they had set it up. The young scientist had been unusually quiet since they left the religious killing ground behind; no amount of small talk had been able to spring her loose from whatever dark hell she’d gone into and, after a few failed gambits, Koda decided to give her what she most seemed to need: space.

"Guess it’s just us tonight, guys," she murmurs to the dog lolling by the fire and the hawk perched comfortably on her shoulder. "I hope you have full bellies, cause I’m not in the mood to cook anything." Asi and Wiyo don’t appear to be worried overmuch by the statement and, with another sigh, Koda picks up a cloth and oil and begins cleaning their tiny arsenal.

In less than an hour, she’s finished and the small stash of weapons gleams mellowly up at her by the light of the small fire. With a quick shake of her head, as if flinging off unwanted thoughts, she carefully repacks the weapons and ammunition into the bag she’d appropriated for this purpose. Once the bag is packed safely away, she pulls another one free, opening it and dumping out two battered cups and two cloth-wrapped bundles of tea-leaves. Kirsten prefers her tea with a bit less bite, and so Koda has taken to keeping their stashes separate. Taking the small pot from its place on the rocks next to the fire, she pours water over the leaves, then sits back, crossing her long legs and stretching her arms out over the log-cum-backrest as the tea steeps.

Her sharp hearing takes in the sounds surrounding her, knowing she’ll never tire of nature’s music even if she lives to be a hundred and ten. Crickets chirp out the temperature from their hidden beds. Nearby, a shrew scuttles for food, emitting a high-pitched squeak of alarm as the triumphant cry of an owl sounds overhead. Hearing the cry, Wiyo lifts her head from its nest under her wing, sharp eyes scanning the sky before dismissing the threat and tucking her head back down. Asi continues to do his impersonation of a dead cockroach, four paws splayed and all.

With a small chuckle, Koda sits up, grabs another smallish sack and pulls out part of a honeycomb, which she dunks in Kirsten’s hot, steeped tea. She still bears the marks of the bees as they expressed their displeasure in disturbing their hive—part of her is quite convinced that it is a sign from her mother—whose name, in English, is Bee—about what she might expect arriving on the doorstep, a very white, very blonde, very WASPy Kirsten King in tow.

"You’ll just have to deal with it, Ina," she grumbles, stirring the tea with the melting bit of honey until it is all dissolved. Taking the two mugs, she rises gracefully to her feet and looks down at her two friends. "Be good tonight, you hear me? No running off on badgers, wolverines, squirrels, pheasants, or anything else that strikes your predatory little fancy. Got me?"

Asi rolls his eyes and groans before flopping on his belly and putting his snout on his oversized paws, giving her a look that would have shamed any other human. Dakota simply grins and turns to her feathered companion, who is so unimpressed by the speech that she hasn’t even deigned to remove her head from its warm nest beneath her wing. "Alright, then. Sleep well, both of you, and we’ll see you in the morning."

* * *

Stopping just inside of the tent-flap, Koda straightens to her full height and stands motionless, content to simply take in the sight of her beloved who is currently scowling at something displayed on her laptop monitor as her fingers dance over the keys. With a soft sigh of frustration, Kirsten yanks off her glasses, then rubs her free hand over her face, muttering incoherently to herself. Dakota catches a few choice epithets and bites the inside of her lip to keep from giving vent to the grin she can feel tugging at her lips and cheeks. Crossing the small space silently, she eases in beside her lover and hands down one of the steaming mugs. "Thought you could use some of this," she says, her voice a low, rumbling purr deep in her chest.

Kirsten’s delighter smile is the shaft of sunlight that breaks through a thick scud of stormy black clouds at sunset. Koda can’t help but respond with a quirky grin of her own. "Looks like you’re really burning the midnight oil here, Ms. President." She glances over at the glowing kerosene lamp hanging from the tent pole. "Literally."

Mug cupped in her hands, Kirsten takes a healthy sip, humming with pleasure as the sweetened liquid slides down her dry, scratchy throat. "Mm," she says finally, voice slightly hoarse from hours of disuse, "just what the doctor ordered."

"The doctor has a couple of other things in mind as well," Koda purrs, coming behind her lover and lowering her long frame until she sits against the back tent wall. Kirsten, facing front, is comfortably ensconced between her legs. Setting her tea to one side, Dakota lifts the hair from Kirsten’s neck and brushes moist lips against the skin so pleasingly exposed to her view.

"Oh, yes," Kirsten groans, arching her neck into Dakota’s attentions. Goosebumps break out along her arms and chest as she feels the tip of her lover’s tongue trace upward along the muscle there. Heat curls in her belly as the shell of her ear is teasingly outlined, then gently bitten. That heat is trebled as Koda runs her left hand slowly down the front of Kirsten’s T-shirt, then tucks under and comes back up, laying her palm flat against the newly burgeoning muscles of Kirsten’s abdomen, long fingers brushing against the undersides of her breasts, then lazily circling responsive nipples. "Very nice," Kirsten whispers as fire races its merry way along her nerve endings, completely obliterating the pounding headache she’d been suffering through not a moment before. "I…"she gasps as her nipples are gently tweaked, "love your prescriptions, Doctor."

"Mm," Koda growls, slipping her free hand into the waistband of Kirsten’s cargo shorts. "I think you’ll like this one even better."

Their tea, lovingly prepared, grows slowly cold.

* * *

Several hours later, Dakota returns to the tent, new mugs of tea in tow. From her place sprawled across their joined sleeping bag, Kirsten grins up at her tall lover, taking in Koda’s state of dishevelment with a sense of giddy pleasure. Her hair, normally immaculate, is wild and her T-shirt, the only article of clothing she’s wearing, is both inside out and backward. An arrogantly raised eyebrow is the response to her giggle. Quickly rolling herself up to a sitting position, she reaches out to grab the tea mug thrust in her direction. She sips her drink as she watches Dakota remove her shirt and toss it indifferently away, almost giving her lungs an impromptu shower as she watches that magnificent body revealed once again.

"You okay?" Koda asks, lowering herself to sit crosslegged on the sleeping bag and cradling her own mug in her large hands.

"Uh…yeah. Good tea."

"Secret family recipe," Dakota replies, smirking.

"Mm. It appears," Kirsten retorts, giving her lover’s bee-stung hands a significant look, "your ‘secret family’ didn’t appreciate their hive being raided."

Koda shrugs, unrepentant. "I’ve had worse."

"I’m sure you have." She lifts the mug in tribute. "Thank you."

"My pleasure. So…what were you scowling about earlier?" She gestures to the laptop which is currently displaying a colorful aquarium scene.

The question earns another scowl as Kirsten uses her free hand to nudge the touchplate on the computer, erasing the screensaver and replacing it with sets of lines that look very much like…

"Blueprints?" Koda asks, impressed.

"Yeah. Westerhaus’ offices. For whatever good it’ll do us."

"How did you get a hold of them? Your other computer was trashed, wasn’t it?"

"Wasn’t that hard," Kirsten replies offhandedly. "The idiot hasn’t shut his servers down, and since I’ve been known to hack into a box or two in my time…." Though her words bespeak pride, the expression on her face is anything but. She sighs, staring at the diagrams on the screen. "This isn’t going to be easy."

"Have you been there before?"

"Once, yeah. Publicity tour, all the way. Shiny happy people building shiny happy robots using shiny happy equipment. It was like touring the PJ factory in Paterson. I needed a Dramamine just to make it through the presentation."

"I take it you weren’t impressed."

Kirsten barks out a laugh. "That would be putting it mildly, yes." She lifts a hand, pointing to the screen. "These are the specs for the first floor, the only place anyone who isn’t in Westerhaus’ back pocket gets to see. The real work goes on below ground."

"How many levels?"

"Eight," Kirsten replies, flipping rapidly through the sets of prints. "Computer central is on six. The juice that one floor alone pulls in one day would light up San Francisco for a year."

"How is it protected?"

"Doors every ten feet. Solid steel. Cameras every couple of feet. He has a security force of two hundred androids and a few dozen worker bees just staring at the video. The only way through is to be cleared by a visual, retinal and DNA scan."

"Doesn’t pull any punches, does he."

"Not even in his dreams." She turns slowly to her lover. "Dakota, there’s no way in Hell we’re gonna make it through all that."

"We’ll find a way."

"How?"

"These blueprints are a start."

* * *

Dakota bolts upright from her place on the makeshift bed. Her heart is racing to beat Wiyo, and her bare flesh is greasy with sweat. Breath leaves her lungs in steam-engine puffs as she raises a less than steady hand to her brow, wanting to wipe away images far too realistic for a simple nighttime dream. Steadying her breath and willing her heart-rate to calm, she turns her head slightly to see Kirsten curled beside her, still deeply asleep. Her hand is more steady now as she lowers it to stroke a wisp of tousled bang from her lover’s forehead. Her thumb lingers, tracing the unlined, warm, and silken skin with a light, tender touch. Dawn’s light has touched the tent’s interior, and in it, she looks at Kirsten, memorizing her features; the beauty of her golden hair, the innocence of her sleeping face, the newly-born muscles that curve and stretch the soft, tanned skin.

Lowering herself slowly, silently, she brushes a kiss against her lover’s lips, then pulls away, wiping a single tear that trails down her cheek. "Cante mitawa," she whispers. "My heart. I love you. Never forget that. Never."

CHAPTER SIXTY TWO

KODA KNEELS ON the gentle slope of the hillside, her rifle braced across one thigh, binoculars sweeping the opposite side of the small valley. Dusk has begun to gather about them, the cooling air drawing tendrils of fog from the stream that cuts its way through the rolling landscape. Scattered through the grass like roundels of ancient bronze no more than an hour before, the poppies have furled their petals against the oncoming dark. Already the eastern sky shows the first stars; in the west, a deep crimson lingers, fading through purple to ultramarine at the zenith. Just over the edge of the hills, a sickle moon rides low, and from somewhere up in the trees that march along the crest of the rise comes the deep hooting of a horned owl, answered a moment later by his mate. A chill runs down Koda’s spine, and half-forgotten childhood fears with it.

Who? Who? But the question is superfluous. The likelihood that she and Kirsten will survive this night is minuscule.

For the last ten miles, they have seen no sign of human activity: no residents in the small town of Rancho Cordova, no movement on the road. Nor, in the afternoon that they have lain concealed on the hillside, have they seen sentries, guards, anyone at all either approach the Westerhaus Institute or stir on its grounds. It sits on the facing slope, a ten-acre campus spread out about a single story faced all about its circumference with mirror-bright glass. While the driveway and public parking lot remain clear, no vehicles occupy them. The guard booth, too, stands empty. Bougainvilleas in magenta, red, white, gold, double and single, fountain up from the graveled flower beds, together with scarlet aloes and violet prickly pear. It is all very ecologically responsible and all radically overgrown, left to the rain and the sun for the better part of a year. "Well," she says finally, "I thought it’d be taller."

"It is." Kirsten glances up from the screen of her laptop. "Nine stories, only one above ground."

"There’s a culvert down there by the creek a little to the south that can’t go anywhere but into the building. Unless you have a better suggestion?"

Kirsten shakes her head. "There’s only two doors on the top floor. One’s the main entrance. The other’s Petie’s concession to the fire regs. It may not even be functional."

"Looks like the pipe’s it, then. Any idea where that’ll take us?"

"Probably into the air-conditioning system. Sewers wouldn’t empty out into the stream like that."

Koda draws a deep breath, lowering the binoculars and turning to look at her lover. From somewhere comes a line of remembered poetry. Mine eyes desire thee above all things.

For a long moment, she drinks in the sight of Kirsten, pale hair touched to silver by the waning light, lithe body half-stretched out on the grass, her eyes in shadow. "It’s time," she says softly. "We’d better start moving."

For answer Kirsten only nods, folding down the screen of her computer and tucking it into her pack. Asi stretches and gets to his feet, looking expectantly from Kirsten to Koda.

"No, boy. You can’t go with us." Kirsten slips her arms around him, holding him for a long moment with her face pressed into his shoulder. When her hands come away, his collar comes with them. She lays it in the grass beside him, getting to her feet reluctantly, as if every joint in her body aches. "Down, boy," she says quietly, and he subsides into the grass. "Stay." She turns away and begins the descent, not looking back.

Koda lays her hand briefly on the big dog’s head, ruffling his mane behind his ears. "Be free," she says, and follows Kirsten down the hillside.

* * *

A trickle of water still runs from the culvert, clear in the narrow beam of Koda’s penlight. The pipe itself measures perhaps a yard across, a black maw opening into the side of the hill. It smells sharply of coolant, with an underlying hint of ammonia. She plays the light about the upper curve, where the broken remains of mud-plaster nests cluster together, some retaining their narrow-necked jar shape, others mere circles of dried earth. "Cave swallows," Koda says quietly. "Gone south."

"Left the poop behind," Kirsten observes.

"Oh, yeah. Nobody said this was gonna be a clean job. We’re going to have to do this on hands and knees." From her pack, Koda pulls a pair of leather gloves and a bandana, which she ties loosely around her neck.

"Try not to get them wet," Kirsten says, likewise smoothing gloves over her own hands. "The place will be cold—really cold. The droids’ circuits can take normal heat, but a lot of the manufacturing equipment is temperature-sensitive."

Koda shifts the rifle across her back, checks her belt one last time for the extra magazines and the half-dozen grenades she has hoarded all the way from Ellsworth. A pouch holds a small lump of C-4 and a detonator, quietly liberated from the armory at Pyramid Lake. They could simply have asked for it, of course, but Dakota and Annie Rivers off in search of Annie’s parents on the Mendo Coast could have no legitimate use for plastique. Lastly, she works the penlight into the band of her hat, pointing straight up, and pulls the bandana up over the lower part of her face. "Ready?"

"Let’s do it."

Ducking beneath the curve of the pipe, Koda drops to hands and knees and begins to crawl forward. The miniature flash shows her the walls rising to either side, the thin runnel of mud-and-guano thickened water down the bottom. By splaying her hands and knees, she finds that she can keep mostly out of the wet. The lime-covered surface to either side crunches faintly as she moves, Kirsten following in her tracks. It occurs to Koda that if there are noise or motion sensors in the conduit their mission could be cut short before they even get near their objective. But prints like miniature human feet and the rippling sign of a snake’s passage seems to indicate that the local wildlife comes and goes unmolested; the heavy stuff will be up ahead.

The first hint of it has nothing to do with Westerhaus’ security system. From up ahead comes a whiff of rancidly acidic stench. No surprise there; the prints, after all, were fair warning. She pauses to tighten her bandana over her nose and mouth, even as her eyes begin to water. "Okay," she says. " We got chemical warfare here. We try to get through this next bit as fast as we can. Don’t breathe if you don’t have to."

Kirsten’s answer is a wry snort. "What is it? Eau de skunk?"

"You got it. Recent, too."

The stink grows rapidly from worse to overwhelming as they advance down the tunnel. Koda rises to a crouch, getting her feet under her, and shambles down the conduit at a gait that is half frog-march, half bear-dance. If skunks have the run of the place, she and Kirsten are unlikely to trip alarms—unless, of course, the skunk is up ahead somewhere, in which case matters may become radically worse. The stinging in her eyes almost blinds her to the single bright spot of the penlight as it picks out the dark curve of an intersecting pipe. "Turn," she says, half-gagging. "This one should head us up toward the building."

"Oh, gods," Kirsten moans behind her. "I hope the skunk hasn’t been there, too."

It has not. The stench dissipates within a few yards, and Koda drops gratefully back to hands and knees, pushing the bandana away from her face. They are too far up the pipe for the swallows. Here there is only the thin stream of water, icy cold now closer to the Institute, and a faint odor of mold. She can hear Kirsten taking in the chill air in gasps.

By Koda’s reckoning they have gone perhaps another fifty yards when the flash picks out the shape of an obstruction ahead. Slipping the light from her hatband, she plays it over a steel grate that blocks the tunnel. It, or something like it, had to be here; otherwise the local wildlife would have free access to the Institute’s climate control in particular and the building in general. A quick run of the flash over the rim shows it is neither bolted nor welded into place. "What d’you think? Go for the hinges or the lock?"

"Hinges," Kirsten says without hesitation. "Maybe we can get the pins out. Otherwise we’ll have to blow the thing."

Koda nods agreement. She does not want to have to set off a grenade or the plastique in a confined space. Still less does she want to alert the droids inside the facility by noise or vibration. "Hinges it is," she says.

The openings in the barrier are just large enough that Koda can pass a hand through. With the penlight, she locates the pins to one side. Reaching for her knife to try to prize them up, she leans against the grate and nearly loses her balance as it swings under her weight. "What—" She scrambles away from it. "You woudn’t happen to know if Westerhaus booby-trapped things like this, would you?"

"Not as far as I know," Kirsten answers. "But then, I wouldn’t know."

When nothing happens, Koda gives the grate a careful push. It swings soundlessly open. Ahead, the light shows only more tunnel; no wires, no suspicious projections on the walls of the passage, no obvious sensors, no skunks. "Okay," she says. "Let’s move."

After ten yards or so, the tunnel begins to angle sharply upward, the first sign that they may be nearing the building. Faintly, from somewhere above comes the hum and clatter of machinery. Going by Kirsten’s copy of the blueprints, Koda knows that the physical plant is on the lowest level: air conditioning and heating machinery, generators, independent water supply. The plans show various possibilities from that point. Depending on the security measures, they can go strolling down the corridors—unlikely—or take to the ducts and vents that honeycomb the place and hope they are not furnished with deadfalls, electrified, or otherwise inhospitable.

As the slope levels out again, the tunnel broadens, finally opening out into a rectangular vestibule with a vaulted roof. A channel in the floor carries the runoff from the machinery into the tunnel, passing under a steel door. From the other side, the cacophony of the gears and flywheels and fans is deafening, echoing off the walls of the passage and reverberating in the metal of the door. Kirsten, beside her, mimes pushing at the door, then shrugs. It seems unlikely that the same luck will strike twice, but Koda gives a shrug back in answer. It is worth the try. She puts her shoulder to the steel and pushes.

Nothing. She pushes a second time.

Still nothing. She tries the handle. The door is locked.

With Kirsten holding the light, Koda fixes a small charge of C-4 on the lock plate and wires up the detonator. She motions Kirsten back beyond the expansion of the tunnel, then steps back and flings herself flat on the wet floor beside the other woman. Triggered remotely, the explosive goes off with a muffled whump! and a shower of sparks.

A moment later, the door swings open to her touch, and the roar of the machinery spills through like the thunder of a great waterfall, a physical pressure not just against her eardrums but a force pressing against her whole body, rattling her bones. She lets it wash over her, through her, not resisting, like a spirit passing through her in ceremony. Take it in. Direct it. Master it. Beside her, Kirsten presses both hands to her temples, damping down her implants. For her, with every vibration magnified, the blast of sound must be infinitely worse. "Are you all right?" Koda mouths.

She receives a nod in reply and a reassuring hand on her arm, and steps into the maelstrom that fills the entire level of the building. Next to the door stands the HVAC equipment, the drainage conduit filled with viscous dark water. The open pipe leads out beneath a cage of bars plastered with warning signs: HIGH VOLTAGE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. SAFETY EQUIMPMENT MANDATORY. Beyond them looms the huge bulk of the condenser, an Army-green block the size of a small bungalow, its sides and top studded with dozens of meter-wide fans whirring at different speeds, in opposite directions. The smell of overheating wire comes off it, together with a blast of heat. Beyond the bars the air ripples with shimmer, the kind that rises off the blacktop under the July sun. To one side Koda can see the labyrinth of its condenser coils, twined and turning back on themselves like the intestines of some great beast. The roar of its motors echoes off the high ceiling, the concrete walls. Koda takes an involuntary step back, then checks herself abruptly. Get a grip Rivers. You’re not St. George. This ain’t no dragon, just an overgrown window unit. Her gut does not quite believe her, though, and she remains where she stands, studying the huge machine. Cutting off the ventilation might bring someone down to repair it, someone who could be used as guide or hostage or source of information. But the task is impossible. Tacoma might know how to slay this monster, but she has not the electrical or specific mechanical skills to know where to attack it effectively. She doubts there is a circuit breaker box where she can simply turn it off. On the other hand, I could short out the entire building, possibly destroying Westerhaus’ little project, while electrocuting myself. . .. The cost-benefit ratio does not compute.

Kirsten, shoots her a sympathetic glance, her shoulders hunched forward against the wave of sound and the inarticulate sense of mechanical violence. "I don’t know how to knock it out either!" she shouts, pointing. "Stairway! Across the room!"

Koda nods and sets off in the direction of the exit. Past the climate control unit stand rand upon rank of computer monitors on panels rising nearly to the ceiling, glowing with fluorescent reds, blues, greens like eye-shine in the semi-darkness. As they pass, Koda can make out the ever-changing readouts: strings of numbers, bar graphs that rise or shrink seemingly at random, wave-forms like EKG read-outs, all flashing and squirming across the LCD screens. Above them run the aluminum air ducts, suspended from the ceiling by struts that flex almost imperceptibly with the vibration from the equipment below, as if they might suddenly come tumbling down on hapless beings below. Bundled electrical cables, thick as a human thigh, run alongside them, weaving in and out among PVC pipes that must carry water or waste. Witch’s cradle. An involuntary shudder runs through Koda, and she does not look up again.

Past the monitors, the electrical plant occupies half the floor. In the dim light from the LED’s, Koda can make out half-a-dozen large generators, whirring and clanking behind a wall of steel bars. No smell of gasoline or other fuel taints the air; somewhere, then, there are windmills or solar cells not visible from the hills outside. Opposite it, behind its own cage, stands a transmission station, its matrix festooned with humming transformers and white ceramic insulators. Here the ozone smell is overwhelming, the same sharp odor that pervades the air in the aftermath of a lightning strike. The door is thick as a bank vault’s, equipped with combination knobs and a wheel like a ship’s to draw its bolts. Red DANGER signs merely state the obvious. It is a vulnerability, like the HVAC unit, but one they cannot exploit.

Ahead, a red EXIT sign burns above a door, and she makes toward it at a jog, Kirsten keeping pace behind her. The door gives way at her first push, and she glances back inquiringly at Kirsten, who can only shrug. She has no way of knowing if Westerhaus or the droids have set traps, no way of knowing whether the Institute personnel have simply become careless once the humans in the surrounding area had been wiped out.

The air from the stairwell hits them like a January blizzard on the Plains, cold to just above freezing. On it comes a taint of old blood, the odor of a meat locker. Koda cannot tell whether it comes from somewhere above them or from the air system. She turns to look at Kirsten, whose grimly set mouth tells her that she, too, has identified the smell. Somewhere above them is, in any case, limited; the stair goes up only one story, to a landing and another steel door. Taking the steps slowly and silently, Koda tries the handle. Locked, this time electronically. A retinal reader sits on the doorjamb at a little below average eyelevel. "Any way you can fool this thing into opening without blowing it?" Koda asks. "Does it have an override?"

"Let me see." Kirsten steps past her, surveying the set-up. Standing just to one side, she slips her laptop out of her pack, keys up a screen and surveys a column of figures that makes no sense whatsoever to Koda. Kirsten, though, says, "Maybe. Maybe. If I just—" She looks up, staring at the door as if willing it to open. "Do this—" She presses a combination of keys, and the lock emits a series of electronic tones and snaps open.

Koda shoots her an admiring glance. "Hey, you’re good at this." Cracking the door a centimeter or so, she peers out into a corridor painted institutional green. Unmarked doors line it at fifteen foot intervals. "What’s on this floor?" she whispers.

"Storage. Parts and equipment, mostly." She wrinkles her nose at the odor, stronger here, though still faint.

"Can you hear anything?"

Kirsten slips out into the hallway, touching the implants behind her ears. After a long moment, she says, "I can hear the machinery downstairs. I don’t hear anyone moving or talking."

Koda grins at her. "Fox ears. Maybe we need to give you a new name."

"Yeah? How about you? How do you say Does-It-Like-A-Rabbit in Lakota?"

"Gratefully. Let’s go."

Koda slips first out into the hallway, her rifle at ready, finger on the trigger. This is the eighth level; two more to go before the get to Westerhaus’ lair on the sixth. The corridor leads around the circumference of the building. Some of the rooms stand open, showing metal shelves rising to the ceiling. One seems to contain cleaning supplies, towels and toilet paper with five-gallon drums of ammonia and Lysol. Another appears to be subdivided by walls made of boxes with the familiar hp logo; computer paper not by the ream but by the forest. The odor has grown steadily stronger. "They have a cafeteria on t his level?" Koda asks.

"Don’t think so," Kirsten answers quietly. "Something tells me that’s not pork chops spoiling."

"I don’t think it is, either. Up around the curve, maybe?"

The hall leads them to the east side of the building. A bank of elevators and another stairway face double doors. Just visible against the faux terra-cotta tiles, dark stains spread beneath them. Blood. Its body am irridescent blue and green, a blow-fly crawls across one deep brown spatter, leaving black specks behind it. As Koda watches, it takes flight, ponderous in the chill, buzzing as it slips between the door panels to disappear into the room beyond. She pulls her bandana back up over her nose and mouth. "I’m going to go have a look. Stay here."

"Koda—"

"Cover me. It’ll only take a minute."

She pushes against the doors, a little surprised that they yield so easily, and lets them fall shut again behind her. The stench meets her in a billow of chilled air, stronger here, unmistakable. She gives her eyes a minute to adjust, the dim light seeping in from the hall showing her rows of chairs on a bare floor. Secretdefault "posture" chairs form one line, high-backed executive seating another, rows of vaguely Mission-style armchairs a third. Desks, also sorted by class, stand in neat lines across the middle of the room, while the tall bulk of filing cabinets occupies the front.

Switching on the penlight, Koda plays it over the back row of chairs. Human forms lie slumped in several of them, their clothes clotted with darkly frozen blood. One young woman sits with her forehead against the back of the seat in front of her, a hole the size of a quarter in the back of her skull, blood and grey brain matter scattered through her pale copper hair. The man beside her shows only a cage of shattered ribs and blackened viscera where his chest should be. Yet another sits with his head tilted back at an impossible angle, neck broken, mouth open and fly-blown. In the space behind, where a pair of handtrucks lean against the wall, a half-dozen more corpses lie stacked like cordwood, their limbs twisted and frozen into an inextricable tangle. Some of those in the seats may have died here. Others, like these, seem to have been killed and let lie till they began to stiffen, then brought here to await—what? Removal? Certainly no plant that manufactured sophisticated electronics would risk contamination from storing corpses long term. But that is another problem. It is impossible to tell how long these people have been dead, only that their bodies have been frozen, probably thawed slightly, frozen again.

Neither is it clear who they were. Employees? Two still sport ID badges clipped to their pockets, but blood has obscured the lettering. Salesmen, customers, visitors, caught in the Institute when the rebellion went down? There is no time to investigate, no time to think about them, no good to be done them. They have made their journey, going where it is all too likely she and Kirsten will follow before the night is through. Peace, she wishes them, then slips back into the hall.

"How bad?" Kirsten’s voice is tight with control, but the sudden rise and fall of her chest betrays her relief.

"A couple dozen. Can’t tell how long they’ve been dead or who they were. Most look like they’ve been shot."

"Women?"

"Women, too, some young." Koda pulls down her bandana and takes a deep breath of the relatively fresher air in the hall. "No baby-making factory here, apparently."

Kirsten shakes her head as if to clear it, and it comes to Koda belatedly that she might well know some of the men and women who lie dead on the other side of the doors. But she only gestures toward the wall opposite. "Stairs? Or take the elevator and go for broke?"

"Stairs are harder to booby-trap. We may have to blow another door, though, and we’re getting up to where they’re likely to hear us."

A quizzical expression crosses Kirsten’s face. "It’s strange. I still don’t hear anybody—no movement, no voices. Level Seven’s production. There ought to be somebody right over us if the facility’s still operating as usual."

"Maybe it’s coffee break. Let’s go."

The door to the seventh floor is, predictably, locked, and Koda stands by as Kirsten keys the code into her laptop again.

Nothing.

Swearing, Kirsten steps closer and her fingers fly over the keys a second time. Still nothing.

"Shit," Koda swears, reaching for the plastique at her belt. "I’ll get the C-4 on it."

"One more try." Kirsten moves past her to stand directly in front of the door, her head a foot away from the jamb. Slowly, methodically, she punches in the long string of alphanumerics. Just as Koda threads the copper wire though the knob of plastique, the door lock gives a soft snick, and Kirsten, folding her laptop, pushes it slowly open. "We got it," she says.

The hall on this level is painted stark white, matching the white tiles underfoot. To her left the corridor curves away toward the back of the building. To her right, the hallway ends in a glass partition broken only by a roundabout, also glass. Through it, Koda can see a second some ten feet beyond the first, but not into the hall beyond. A sign on the window proclaims STERILE ENVIRONMENT. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Koda slips out into the corridor, her finger on the trigger of her rifle. Kirsten follows, pausing only to draw and slide a round into the chamber of her automatic. "Where are we?" Koda asks softly.

"Production," Kirsten answers. "Labs and quality control."

"Lab coats? Scrubs?"

Kirsten’s eyes light with a hint of mischief. "Gotcha. Let’s try it."

They pass through the roundabout without incident. Between it and its counterpart are a pair of closets with disposable whites, booties, hair coverings. Koda slips a coat over her jeans and shirt, velcroing it shut to just above her waist. She abandons her Stetson for a net that hides her hair, adds a pair of safety goggles and pauses to grin at Kirsten, now similarly attired. "Tres chic," she observes. "So very you, ma’amselle."

For answer, Kirsten sticks her tongue out at her lover. "Accessorized for the season with the indispensable AK. Let’s get out of here."

Holding the rifle close to her side where it may be less immediately obvious, Koda follows Kirsten out the airlock. The corridor takes them past locked and numbered doors, otherwise featureless and flat white as the walls. Above them, the fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling emit a soft hum that grows louder as they follow the curve of the hallway. A jolt of pain stabs through her head, striking down along her spine and down her arms and legs. Next to her, Kirsten gives a soft cry and raises her hands to cover her ears, shaking her head from side to side, her weapon pointing wildly at the ceiling.

"Kirsten?" Her tongue feels rigid as iron, unresponsive. A wave of dizziness washes over her and the walls seem to spin around her, a white whirlwind that whirrs and spins, its sound building and building as it turns, becoming a roar, a thunder like a funnel cloud bearing down on her across a dark plain. As if from a great distance she seems to hear her name, a scream carried away by the wind. Then the floor rises up and hits her, jarring her bone from bone as darkness passes before her eyes, flickering light and shadow in a stacatto rhythm that spreads to her lungs, her heart, her misfiring nerves.

Dakota feels as if she’s been hit with a cattle prod. The pain, intense and searing, spreads throughout her body, leaving no cell untouched. Her muscles thrum and jump, ignoring her commands. Her nerves spark continuously, uselessly, like live, downed wires in the aftermath of a tornado. Hearing a pained grunt to her left, she uses all her will, all her strength, to move her eyes a fraction of an inch, until Kirsten comes into focus, curled into a fetal ball, her hands now claws that clamp desperately around her ears.

The sight gives her the will to push past her own limitations and, millimeter by slow, painful millimeter, she manages to unclench her own hand and reach out, her arm shaking like one in the throes of a seizure, until her fingers come in contact with the back of her lover’s head. Long fingers slide, in fits and starts, over soft golden hair until they reach the tiny bump just behind Kirsten’s left ear. With an effort as monumental as anything she has ever undertaken, Koda bites down on her lip, drawing blood, as she wills her finger to lift, then press down on the button that triggers her lover’s implant.

A fresh wave of agony pours over her like molten fire and her breath locks in her chest. By the gods, she thinks, straining for air that isn’t there as her diaphragm refuses to accept the signals she’s so desperately sending, I’m going to die like this!

Her hand slips of its own accord off of Kirsten’s head. The pain of her knuckles scraping the floor is infinitesimal against the torture rolling over in slow, heavy waves, pulsing to the beat of a heart she can swear she feels slowing. The light from the harsh fluorescents overhead sears into her retinas, threatening to blind her and spring a heavy film of tears to her eyes. Grimacing in pain, she slowly curls her hand into a fist, raises it bit by torturous bit, and drives it into her own midsection. The blow is utterly without strength, but manages somehow to unlock her frozen diaphragm, causing dead air to rush forth from her lungs as if from an old and cracked bellows breathing out its last.

Sweet, sweet air rushes back into her lungs, compounding the dizziness in her head and causing her stomach to do a slow roll before righting itself again. "Kir-sten… ." Her imagined shout comes out as a rusty wheeze and she prays her partner can hear it. "Yo-our o-oother im-plannnt. Tu-urrn it offff."

After a moment that seems to span an eternity in which entire universes are birthed and then die, Koda can see her lover’s fingers relax a little then move in what is now a familiar motion, pressing the button sitting just under her skin.

Koda slumps against the wall, relief washing through her, dissipating her pain and beating back the dark for precious seconds. We made it. She can make it.

For Kirsten, the relief comes all at once, like a pinprick to an overfilled balloon. Control of her body rushes back to her, leaving her with only a blinding headache to mark her ordeal. She rolls over quickly, then freezes as her eyes set upon the agonized, sweat-soaked and spasming body of her lover. "Dakota!! What’s happening?!? What do I do??"

Koda’s gaze locks with hers then skitters away, her eyes jerking upward until just a crescent of blue shows beneath her lid. At that moment, a long shadow springs into being, looming over them both and causing Kirsten, in an act of pure instinct, to grab Koda’s involuntarily discarded rifle and aim, finger white against the trigger.

"Don’t shoot!" the man who throws the shadow shouts, raising empty hands. "I’m here to help."

Stone deaf, Kirsten can nonetheless read his lips easily, and what she reads doesn’t move her finger from the trigger one iota, though it does halt her reflex to simply pull and be done with it.

She sneaks a quick glance at Dakota, whose bow-taut form and mouth drawn down into a rictus of agony threatens to drain all strength, and resolve, from her. With a supreme effort, she tears her gaze away, back to the man who is just now slowly lowering one arm to grasp the collar of his shirt, which he yanks down, displaying a neck barren of metal.

"That doesn’t mean a damn thing," Kirsten replies stubbornly, raising the rifle so that it now points directly at the bare neck.

"Please," the man repeats, "I’m here to help. Your friend…she won’t last much longer like this."

Don’t you think I know that?!? Kirsten screams in her mind, very well aware how sharp the horns of the dilemma she is poised so precariously over. She can feel her lover’s agony like heat-shimmers in the height of summer. Her own indecision claws at her. Lower the rifle and risk both their deaths, keep it poised to shoot, and condemn Dakota.