No Place Like Home

The electromagnets’ hum was something she felt more than heard, a deep thrumming quiver in the vanadium microfilament network threaded through her musculature. She supposed if she didn’t feel the tingling pinpricks that she should be worried.

She thought she could still feel the tingling in the soles of her feet, in her toes. Random misfires actually reaching Guenevere from the magnetically-scrambled nanos?

How much longer? she thought, knowing it would be useless to voice the question. The microphones inside Bertha only worked half the time during routine system checks.

3 minutes. Stop worrying. Autonomics will be back online in 5. The Wizard’s response scrolled along the bottom of her optic screens, green lettering against the dark of her eyelids.

Kailey sighed.

Stop fidgeting, you’ll throw off the calibration.

* * * * *

Jordan swept Kailey off Bertha’s ‘tongue,’ settling her in the wheelchair, holding each leg up as he tugged wrinkles from her scrubs. As routine and seemingly endlessly-repeated — and at times maddeningly irritating — as the motions were, Kailey felt comforted by them this time around.

Jordan glanced again at her smile. “What? That thing scramble your brains like it did the rest of you?” he asked, his brown eyes narrowing in suspicion.

She shook her head, dismissing his question with a wave of her hand.

“Well, aside from the usual burn from forced-motion control, your wiring looks to be all right,” the Wizard said, from the doorway of the glass control booth. “Guenevere’s diagnostics checked out, BODY-ROM autonomics are intact. You should start feeling some tingling right about… now,” he continued, glancing from the clipboard over to his watch.

Kailey’s legs twitched, and she sat up straight as the nano machines began transmitting again, waves of pins-and-needles through her lower body. She gripped the arms of the chair, closing her eyes, gritting her teeth.

“I hate this part.”

“Two more minutes,” the Wizard said, his eyes still on his watch.

Kailey gasped, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. The pins and needles seemed to’ve ignited, white-hot. She bit down on the scream, but it still came out a slow whimper.

“Jordan, you might want to stand clear,” the Wizard cautioned.

“It’s okay, Doc, I’m sure—”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by his own sharp cry as Kailey’s right foot jerked up, connecting with the big orderly’s knee. He stumbled back with a curse.

Kailey’s knuckles had gone white, and she curled forward in the wheelchair, shivering, gasping for breath.

“Thirty seconds.” The Wizard watched the second hand sweep by on his watch.

The door to the Motion Control lab opened, and Dr. Singh slipped inside.

“Oh, dear, I had hoped—” he began.

Kailey pushed herself back in the chair, panting, wiping sweat from her brow with a shaking hand.

“Kailey, it could not be helped. A total purge of the nanos… it has never been done before. I did not think it would be this bad,” Dr. Singh said, as he knelt by one side of the chair.

She gave him a weary smile. “Been through worse,” she said, her voice ragged. She craned her neck, looking up at the transceiver. “Can I…?”

“It’s against protocols. No padding on the floor. Lots of sharp corners,” the Wizard said.

Kailey sat for a long moment, her breathing, still labored, but she wasn’t gasping for breath any more. Her breath caught, and she looked back up at the transceiver. Two green lights.

She stood, slowly, her balance wobbling. Her whole body seemed to fall limp, and the two doctors and Jordan all sprang forward at the same instant.

But Kailey swept herself in a half circle, poised, her back straight, facing the wheelchair, heels together, legs flexed, one arm stretched out behind her, the other held out in before her, as if she were reaching for the transceiver. Two green lights blinked furiously.

She slowly lowered her arms, smiled at Dr. Singh.

“It was worth it,” she said.

Jordan caught her as her legs gave out.

Kailey paced the rooftop, circling the XG at the perimeter of its static defense field. The warning tingle of the field was constant against her left side, and provided just enough of a buzz to stir the gel-suit’s nanos into random discharges, which functioned as a makeshift massage for her shoulder.

Deliberately calling the suit to perform such a task would bring down the wrath of Dr. Carter, who already worried too much when Kailey was on assignment. The training missions had been bad enough when it was simple flight maneuvers. Dr. Carter’s unease increased when mention of combat simulation was brought up, and Kailey could just imagine how furious her doctor was at how the day’s training had turned out. It had to rank slightly below the aftermath of Red Thursday.

** Neuro-processor lag at .355 nms. Current motion halted and locked to upright gyro-stabilization. **

Kailey blinked at the network error message. She hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped walking.

Guenevere, unlock motion control, prep for sleep mode in 3 minutes.

** Sleep Mode in 2:59:57….**

Kailey retreated inside the rooftop trauma center, climbing onto the gurney by the door. She closed her eyes, and sank into sleep even before Guenevere induced the delta-wavepattern.

* * * * *

Kailey sat bolt upright with a strangled gasp. She sucked in several deep breaths, hand at her throat. It was a dream. Only a dream.

Guenevere, sitrep.

** REM cycle interrupted due to adrenal spike and respiratory distress. Brainwave force from delta-1 to beta-active state at 23:33.45.55.**

So that was what motion control thought of dreaming of being choked again.

Still clad in the gel-suit, the sweat along the rest of her body had been quickly absorbed, but her forehead was still beaded, and a drop of trickled down around her right eye. She shivered.

In the dream, she’d felt his wrist snap, felt herself kick him, over and over again, just like she had the Master Sergeant in the dojo on what came to be called Red Thursday.

Tears joined the beads of sweat creeping down her cheeks. She clenched her fists. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

She tried to slow her breathing, tried to ease into the meditative state she’d used so often as part of her therapy. But she kept hearing the hard ‘snap’ of bones, the choking gurgle as the Master Sergeant bit down on the scream, the snarl of the man at the department store, his struggling causing Sensei to tighten her grip on his arm.

It was Sensei, she told herself. Personal contact safeguards tied to her adrenal levels and the fight or flight response. The Wizard had Seinsei keyed to act if she froze, to use as lethal force as necessary to subdue anything perceived as a threat while Panic mode was engaged.

She didn’t want to hurt the man at the store. Not like she had the Master Sergeant.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Everything all right, Dorothy?”

Kailey leaned back, the wall cool against the back of her sweat-damp hair.

First session will need to be extended when I get back to the Institute, she thought back to the Wizard, through the cellular link.

“Auntie Em is already coordinating with Psych-eval on that. The neural team want you in Bertha first thing. Full dialysis, total nano replenishment. Then a full scan. Motion control therapy is last priority.”

I’m going to tingle for days.

“I can ask them to pause the magnets along certain spots if you like.”

Now you’re starting to sound like Jordan, she thought.

“Whatever it takes for a smile, Dorothy.”

Tails and Tales

“Well, we dodged that bullet,” Danz said, reaching out to take the duffel bag.

Kailey glanced up at him with a dark look. “Dodge, hell. I can’t believe you shot me.”

“Still with the ‘you shot me!’?”

“Well, it hurts!”

“It should have taken your whole arm off! You’ll have some bruises and be good as new in a few days. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my hand. It feels like I hit a brick house.” He flexed his fingers, wincing. The knuckles were purpling over and looked swollen.

“Serves you right, for insinuating that I’m fat,” she muttered.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“I’ve got it immobilized. The suit is cooling the tissue to keep the swelling down. There are some pain killers in the pill caddy if it gets too bad.”

Danz stopped, resting the bag on a bench and rummaging until he dug out the container.

She sat heavily next to the bag, grimacing slightly.

“Which number?”

“I don’t—”

“I’ve seen your definition of ‘too bad.’ That’s ‘beyond hope’ for the rest of us. Which bin?”

“Fourteen. Naproxen, 550 mg.”

“Is that the best you’ve got in here?”

“Do you really want me loopy on codeine?”

“Might be good for you to loosen up a bit,” the lieutenant muttered, shaking out two big light blue pills. He handed them to her, and popped one himself.

Kailey managed to choke them down dry.

“C’mon,” Danz said, hoisting the bag again. He held out a hand to Kailey, and she glared at it, then got slowly to her feet on her own.

After they’d walked a bit, she asked where they were supposed to be going.

“Back to the parking garage. I think it’s time we called it a day.”

Kailey grabbed his arm, and turned him around.

“Hey,” he said, “if you don’t like the idea—”

“It’s 900 steps back this way.”

* * * * *

“When were you going to mention the two men that have been following us since we left ground zero?”

Danz kept staring straight ahead, as they went up the escalator.

“Well?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said.

“Says the man who hit me at close range with a plasma round.”

“The suit stopped it!”

“I’ll run into you with the SUV so you can feel what it’s like.”

The rode to the top of the escalator in silence, and Kailey glanced back over her shoulder. The two men were at the bottom, stepping on.

“So what do we do?” Kailey asked the lieutenant.

“Nothing. They’re not professionals. Very sloppy.”

“They’re not in the MIRROR database,” Kailey said. She’d had Guenevere query the global law enforcement records to try to face-match the two men.

“Think they’re—”

“No. They came up within normal parameters on thermals. They’re not hosting.”

Danz picked up the pace, and Kailey had to hop every few steps to keep up.

“Why are you hurrying? They’re probably harmless.”

“I want to get us within running distance of some Agents,” the lieutenant said.

Guenevere, ping all Agents within 500 meters.

A chime in her ear went off, and within seconds, a schematic of the shopping mall sprang up in her short term memory, speckled with glowing red dots.

“Holy cow. How many did they send?”

“All of them,” Danz said. “Asset in danger and shots fired will get that sort of response from the brass,” he said with a shrug.

“‘Asset,’” Kailey repeated, somewhat dully.

“Kailey, it’s just a word. A shorthand. It doesn’t mean—”

“I know just what it means,” Kailey said. She walked in silence the rest of the way to the SUV.

* * * * *

The two men came up to them as they were buckling up. Danz rolled down the window.

“What?” he asked.

The man on the right, medium height, dark haired, dark eyed, smiled. His teeth were very white. “I wonder if I might ask you some questions about—”

“Are you local? Or federal?”

The man blinked. “Oh,” he said, the smile still in place. “Neither, I’m—”

“We don’t need to talk to you, then,” Danz said, and started the SUV.

“We saw what you did back there. We have pictures. Video. It’s going up on the network in just a couple hours, with or without quotes from you two.”

“We have no comment.”

“Were you also involved in the fireworks outside of town this morning? We have some footage of that fancy plane you were flying. You look an awful lot like the pilot type.”

“I said we have no comment.”

“Look, I’m just trying to get to the truth here. The people—”

“The truth is,” Kailey said, leaning forward, “I’m a cybernetically enhanced test subject flying the most advanced AI fightercraft in the North American arsenal, which will be used to defend mankind against the growing threat of alien incursion.”

“Look, I write for a respectable newssheet. If you don’t have anything to say, just say so and stop wasting my time!”

Kailey smiled at the man as Danz rolled up the window and backed out. He intentionally swung the front bumper as close as he could get to the two men.

“And what would you have done if he’d believed you?” Danz asked.

Kailey smiled. “Yeah, like that was ever going to happen.”

“How long you think that story will last online?”

“An hour, two tops. If they even write it. Two Agents were closing in on them when you started backing out.”

“They don’t call it the ‘Silent War’ for nothing,” he said, and pulled into traffic.

Blanks

The muzzle flashed, and there was a hard, high-pitched ‘crack’ accompanied by a thrumming buzz from the oddly-shaped handgun. Many in the crowd screamed, and they pressed back and away from the lieutenant.

The shot took Kailey in the shoulder, hitting with a hissing, fizzing shower of blue-white sparks, and spinning the girl halfway around.

She let the man go as she staggered a half-step back. Murmurs ran through the crowd, along with several disbelieving gasps.

“Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned,” the man with the gun said, almost to himself. Then he glanced at the cowering security man on the floor. “Now that I’ve got her attention, that’s your cue to get out of the way.”

Kailey’s red eyes stayed fixed on the gunman as she grabbed her left arm with her right hand, and gave a sharp tug, pulling her shoulder back into place.

The lieutenant took a step to the side, keeping the girl’s attention focused on him as the security man scrambled towards his compatriots at the edge of the crowd. The lieutenant’s eyes flicked once to the side, making sure the other man was clear.

Kailey took that opening, spinning, the bag dropping from her shoulder. She swung it hard, bringing it up and around, into the lieutenant’s arms.

His sidearm skittered away across the floor, as he staggered sideways, off balance from the blow.

Kailey let the bag go, turning again, her arms up, using the power of the spin to bring one elbow and then a stiff-fingered chop down on the man’s arms and shoulder.

He staggered again, but turned the hits aside, rolling with them, and brought his fist up, hard, slamming it into the girl’s stomach.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

It wasn’t like the girl’s abs were rock hard — although they were lean and solid and muscled from her years as a dancer and the subsequent years’ conditioning.

The gel-suit reacted to the impact as it had for the bullet, microbeads of glass aligning themselves as impulses from the embedded nanos reacted to the strike, momentarily turning the supple skin of the gel-suit into armor stronger than kevlar, then radiating the force of the blow away like ripples in a pond, carrying most of the energy away across the entire surface of the suit.

The girl gasped. An impact was still and impact, and the suit was somewhat less effective against blunt hits than pinpoint impacts from bullets or shrapnel.

It still hurt like hell.

The fraction of a second as she reeled from the hit was enough to let him move closer, inside her guard, wrapping his arms around her upper and lower back.

Then he pressed his lips to hers.

Her whole body jerked, the tension running out of her muscles, her arms dropping from where they’d been poised to strike, as though the puppet’s strings had been cut.

Her body gave another shudder, and her feet planted themselves again. With a twist and heave, she somehow managed to send the lieutenant sprawling across the floor, while she wiped at her mouth with the back of her sleeve, spitting.

The optic screens had gone clear, and Kailey regarded the man with a mix of disgust and gratitude.

Danz already had his cellphone to his ear.

“Yeah, it worked,” he said, and snapped the phone shut, looking up at the panting girl. “Well, aren’t you going to help me up?”

“You shot me,” she gasped.

“Well, I had to get your attention somehow, figured that would be the best way.”

“And… ugh, worse than that, you kissed me!” She spat again.

“And that stopped you colder than the bullet did. What does that say about me?” he said with a grin.

“That you’re a pig! Ugh!”

She turned on her heel to stalk away, but two men in police blues were cutting through the crowd, hands on the butts of their pistols.

“What’s going on here?” the older looking of the two asked.

“That girl attacked me!” the security man spat, from where he was sitting against one of the makeup counters.

“Oh, Christ,” the officer said. “You again?” Then he looked over at Kailey. “Miss, is this true?”

“Well, he grabbed me first and—”

Danz made to make a ‘shushing’ motion, but the security man beat him to it.

“She attacked me, threw me on the ground, eyes as red as blood!”

The officer stooped, glancing at Kailey’s eyes.

“They look brown to me,” he said, giving the man a sidelong glance. “Miss, I have to ask. Are you currently using drugs?”

“You don’t have enough pages in that little notebook to list all the drugs I’ve got prescriptions for,” Kailey said, holding her arm, and trying to make the move look casual.

“I mean … recreational use,” the officer said, clearing his throat.

Kailey’s eyes widened. “Why, no officer. Those kinds of drugs are bad. They could impair your judgement. Or perception. Make you do or say or see strange things.”

“Like… little girls with glowing red eyes,” Danz said, looking over his shoulder from where he was talking things over with the other officer.

The older officer narrowed his eyes. “What do you weigh? 105? 110?”

Kailey shifted her feet. Guenevere, deduct metallic enhancements from current body mass. Recalculate.

** 50.80235 kg **

She leaned forward and whispered her weight into the cop’s ear.

He glanced over at the security man, who leaned exaggeratedly on his ‘good’ arm.

“You let a girl half your weight put you on the ground?”

“She used some jujitsu crap!”

“Aikido,” Kailey said, then snapped her mouth shut.

The officer made a few more notes in his little notebook.

“And she didn’t even flinch when that guy shot her. Point blank, right in the arm!”

“Blank is right,” the lieutenant said. “Do you see any blood? Casings? Large, gaping exit wounds from the girl’s back? It was loaded with blanks, you nimrod,” he said, glaring at the security man.

“Miss, are you going to press charges against this gentleman?”

Kailey blinked.

“Um, charges? Me? I thought he—”

“If he grabbed you first — which I’m sure the store’s video surveillance will show — then you were merely defending yourself. Would you like to press charges?”

Kailey shook her head. “No, I don’t want any trouble. I was just trying to find the juniors section and he—”

The officer nodded. “And would you like to press charges against this gentleman?” He pointed his pen at the lieutenant.

Kailey bit back a snicker. “No, I uh… work… with that gentleman. No charges for him. Today.”

He snapped the notebook closed. “I think we’re through here,” he said, motioning his partner.

“Hey, what about me?” the security man yelled, rising to his feet, pushing himself up with his ‘bad’ arm.

“You want me to write a report that a teenage girl, weighing half what you weigh, mopped the floor with you—”

“Don’t forget the glowing red eyes!” the partner supplied. “And bullets not even phasing her!”

“But that’s—” the man began, then stopped.

“I get one more complaint about you ‘apprehending’ a ‘suspect,’ and I’ll be dragging you in. Do you understand me?”

The security man paled, fists shaking.

“And you, miss?” he said, turning to Kailey. He lowered his voice. “If he ever does that to you again, when you take him down, give him a kick for me.”

Kailey picked up the duffel bag. “No, I don’t think I’ll be shopping here. Ever.”

Shopping Trip

Kailey didn’t realize that she was being followed until she’d rounded the third makeup counter at the upscale department store. She went to another counter, caught sight of him in one of the mirrors.

He wore tan slacks, and a dark blue sport coat, with the store’s logo over the breast pocket. As Kailey made her way to the escalator, he increased his pace behind her.

“Miss,” he said, voice brusque.

She turned, and he kept walking until he’d interposed himself between her and the escalator.

“Miss, I’m going to have to take a look in that bag,” he said, nodding to the duffel she wore over her shoulder.

Kailey took a half step back as he uncrossed his arms.

“It hasn’t been opened since before I got here,” she said.

He frowned. “Miss, the bag. Could you open it, please?”

She could open it. And show him the drab grey Joint Projects flight suit. The carbon-filament gel-suit gloves, and matching ovaloid collar rig that, paired with the helmet aboard the XG, made the gel-suit spaceworthy. None of which civilians were supposed to see.

She took another half-step back, placing her foot to pivot and turn. “I’ll just leave,” she said, and turned to go.

The man grabbed for the bag, but she turned too quickly, and his hand closed around Kailey’s upper arm.

She was intensely aware of her heartbeat, it thudded too loudly in her ears.

Thump!

Her whole body shivered, ice lancing through her nerves, white-hot static racing nanoseconds behind it. Her optic screens flared red. She suddenly had the eerie sensation of being thrust away from herself, as Sensei overrode her motion control centers, impulses firing entirely through the synthetic nervous system.

Thump!

Her free hand crossed, closing over the man’s hand upon her arm. She let the momentum of his grab spin her around, and she kept going, her turn fluid, dance-like as she sidestepped around him, holding his fingers fast against her arm, bending them back as she flowed around him. His hold dissolved in a gasp of shock and pain.

Thump!

Kailey planted a foot behind his, driving her knee into the back of his, sending him awkwardly to the floor. She followed him down, her knee moving to his lower back. She kept her hand on his fingers, keeping his arm straight out behind him as he fell, the other hand moving to his shoulderblade, keeping that shoulder to the floor.

Thump!

Behind the surging rush of her heartbeat and the hissing static in her ears, she heard shouts, several cries of alarm. She couldn’t look around. Sensei kept her eyes locked on the man on the floor before her.

He tried to rise, and Sensei twitched Kailey’s hands, the man gasping as his body jerked with the pain of her hold.

“Stay still,” Kailey hissed, fighting her way through to her speech center.

Motion in her peripheral vision prompted a quick glance around and behind her. More men in dark coats were coming, two down the escalator, another from each side around the corners.

“The trouble you’re in just got a lot deeper, kid,” the man snarled beneath her. Again, he tried to rise, to push her off him, and again, Kailey’s hands moved, this time a bit further as they bent the man’s hand in ways it wasn’t quite meant to go.

“Tell them to back off,” Kailey said. “I can’t let you go while I’m being threatened. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Hell of a way to show it,” the security man gasped. “Just let go, kid.”

She wanted to. She wanted to close her eyes, take some deep breaths. Relax.

But Sensei kept her eyes open, watching the men advancing from the corners of her vision.

Static surged in her ears.

“-ley, we’re registering a Panic mode activation. What is going on?”

Wizard, help me! I don’t want to hurt him, but there are more coming. He won’t stop struggling, and—

“Kailey, you’ve got to calm down. Tin Man is on his way.”

Great but that won’t help this guy. Or the four others that are closing in. It’s going to turn into another Red Thursday if I don’t—

“Stop thinking, Kailey. You’re only feeding the adrenaline spike. I’ve closed your link to the motion control mainframes, but Sensei has already buffered up quite a bit of material.”

Wizard, this is going to be bad, I know it! I don’t want to hurt—

The communication link closed with a squeal of static in her head, and Kailey felt her right leg lift and snap sharply behind her.

The man beneath her grunted, as she shifted all her weight to the knee in his back, and her right heel connected solidly with the knee of the security man who thought he was sneaking up behind her. She felt him stagger back with a choked off curse.

There was a commotion towards the front of the store, someone shouting. Kailey’s eyes darted that direction and she saw a tallish man with short blonde hair pushing his way through the crowd.

The man beneath her thought to try to take advantage of the distraction, and he cried out anew as Kailey flexed his wrist back even further.

“Bitch!” he spat.

“Nobody but me calls her that,” came a voice from the crowd, and Kailey again looked up to see the tall man drawing bead on her with a sleek, oddly rounded handgun of some sort.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt too much, Hot Cakes,” he said with a wink, and then pulled the trigger.

Lunch Hour

“So, I see you managed to paint that thing on,” Danz said, gesturing towards her collar. “You should have let me know if you needed help with it, ‘cause—”

The girl glowered, then stalked past him, hitching the duffel bag higher on her shoulder. She slapped at the “down” button along the bank of elevators.

“So now where?” she asked, after a stretch of silence.

The lieutenant shrugged. “Well, we’re pretty much on shore leave until Command shows up.”

“We’re in Arizona. There is no shore.”

“R&R, then. You do know how to do that, don’t you? They give you time to just… do your own thing at the Institute?”

Kailey chewed at her bottom lip. When was the last time she’d had time to herself? Besides sleeping, she couldn’t remember very much time of her own. Breakfast, she supposed, though most days Jordan took her to the Institute’s cafeteria, and she mingled with patients from the hospital and recovery wards. There weren’t any patients her age, though, and between not being able to relate to their experiences and the various government gag orders, it didn’t leave her with much to talk about.

The one thing she wanted to do, they never seemed to have time for: motion control libraries needed indexing; they needed another round of trials in the dojo to gather more data; her systems showed abnormal stressor signals, and she needed the day to cool down….

She sighed.

Danz’s hand on her shoulder snapped her out of her reverie.

“First order of business,” he said, guiding her into the elevator, “is to grab something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Kailey’s stomach let out a low grumble, as if on cue.

* * * * *

They cruised part of the way across town, in a hunt for restaurants that met at least some of Kailey’s dietary needs. Two restaurant strips and several shopping districts later, Danz pulled the black SUV into a mall parking lot, shaking his head as he killed the ignition.

“Why didn’t you think to use the satellite link to the GPS before?”

Kailey shrugged. “I just now thought of it. So sue me. Let’s go. Guenevere is griping that I’m past my lunch time.” She held up a hand. It shook noticeably.

Danz frowned at it. “You… shouldn’t do that, should you?”

“I’m always a little bit shaky after dialysis. But,” she sighed, leaning back in the seat, “it hasn’t been this bad since they first activated the nano network. I’m really having to think to get things moving.” She popped open the door, sliding out, and her legs buckled as they hit the pavement.

Guenevere, diagnostics, she thought as she pushed her way upright.

** Increased lactic acids impeding fine control threads. Potassium deficiency degrading neuronano interface. Effective clock speeds reduced 45 percent due to excess Nanoattenuation calls. **

Report findings to Guild.

** Action already completed. **

ETA on reroute compensation?

** Ticket is known and in development. No ETA at this time **

Kailey sighed. Activate suit embedded compensation network.

** Biologicals prohibit gel-suit self-activation. Override required. **

She gritted her teeth.

“Hey, you don’t look so good, Hot Cakes.”

“I’m lagging big time,” Kailey said. “I need your override.”

Danz stood up straighter, staring down at her, frowning.

“I know, it’s classified. I’ll turn off direct audio and you can whisper it in my ear, straight to Guenevere. Just say ‘full encrypt’ and give your override, and then say ‘done’ when you’re finished.”

The lieutenant blinked. “That has to be the darnedest thing I’ve ever heard of,” he said, shaking his head.

“The Wizard does it a lot during tuning sessions. Bypasses my brain completely, and goes right to the chips. Just.. Tap my shoulder when you’re done so I can turn my ears back on.”

“So that’s how you survive the briefing sessions,” Danz said with a grin.

Kailey smiled back, thought a few commands, and the world around her went silent.

She saw Danz’ lips moving, felt his breath against her ear when he moved out of her line of sight. She suppressed a shiver as her hair tickled her neck. She felt his words, in her ear, pressing against her eardrum, but there was no sound, not even the quiet murmur of her blood circulating.

A tingling shock washed over her, and her heartbeat jumped for a couple beats.

Danz’s hand touched her shoulder.

“— Saw you give a little jump there. I guess the suit is up and running.” His voice sounded somehow louder after the silence, the echoes of it in the parking garage standing out.

Kailey held up her hand. It gave the slightest of tremors. She pushed herself away from the side of the SUV, and her steps weren’t as sluggish.

“A lot better. Not perfect, but it’ll do. Thank you,” she said.

Danz shrugged. “The faster you walk, the faster I get to eat.”

They made their way across the elevated breezeway, into the mall.

Kailey got a steak fajita salad, and then ordered a protein shake from another establishment. A couple weight-lifter types in line behind her stared open-mouthed as she left with her order. She ignored them, making her way over to the table where Danz sat. It was on the far side of the court, facing the stairs and escalators.

“No, this doesn’t look the least bit suspicious, sitting over here away from all the other people,” Kailey said.

“Clear lines of sight to exit routes. Clear lines of fire in case of trouble. Or do you want me and the bad guys trading fire in the middle of all these people?”

Kailey stabbed at the salad. “What happened to R&R? Aren’t we off the clock?”

“Eternal vigilance,” Danz said. He peeled at the grease-soaked paper-wrapped bundle before him. Once he’d crinkled aside some of the wrapping, Kailey saw several oozing layers of meat and cheeses. And bacon.

Guenevere cross-referenced the Burger Barn to Kailey’s caloric and nutritional scheme. Everything on that menu lit up bright red. Even so, Kailey felt her mouth water.

The lieutenant looked down at the burger, then at her salad.

“Burger Barn,” he said, nodding in the general direction.

“I know,” Kailey said. “Diet,” she said at his lingering look at her salad. “Gotta watch the girlish figure.”

Danz snorted a laugh as he bit into the burger. The top of the bun shone with grease or butter in the fluorescent lighting.

“Should’ve got one. Surely one won’t kill you?”

“That thing has nearly two days’ worth of fats and would be 90 percent of my calories for the day. Not enough protein in that equation.” She sounded almost wistful.

The man blinked. “Don’t tell me you actually read all those nutrition facts.”

Kailey nodded, sucking down more of the shake.

“That’s not vanilla, is it?”

She shook her head, cheeks puckered. She swallowed, and opened her mouth to explain, but Danz put a hand up.

“No, it’s probably something all vitamin-and-supplement-laced that I want nothing to do with.”

They finished lunch in relative silence, and then Kailey dug into the duffel that she’d taken with her when they left the hospital.

In addition a spare flight suit, and the gloves and helmet mounting-rig for the gel-suit, it held a large, snap-topped pill organizer. She fished it from the bag, popping open various cubbies, and extracting one or two pills of various sizes. She didn’t stop until she had enough to cover the surface of her cupped hand.

She began taking them in twos and threes, sucking them down with her shake.

“Couldn’t you just take a multivatamin?” Danz asked.

Kailey gave him a long, level look, then popped the last two pills.

The lieutenant stood up, taking her tray. “Well, since we don’t have anything better to do, we might as well take in the sights.”

He stashed the trays on top of one of the spots atop the trash bins, then fished his wallet from his back pocket. He slipped a black card from one of the slots, and held it out to Kailey.

“R&R,” he said. “Don’t worry about the limit, the government’s picking up the tab on it. Just don’t buy out any of the stores.”

Kailey stared, openmouthed.

“Go on,” he said. “It won’t bite.”

Kailey took it, digging out her ID wallet out of the duffel. She slipped the card in behind her UNJPTF ID card.

“Why are you…”

Danz shrugged. “You’re a girl. If you’re even still remotely like the rest of your kind, I know how much they like to shop. And I get the feeling they don’t let you do much of that at the Institute. You’ve got my cell number if you need anything. Now go have some fun. That’s an order.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

Danz started walking away. “Definitely not. Then I’d have to carry the bags.”

Wardrobe

“Kailey! Kailey! You’re all right! Kailey, you were dreaming, now wake up!”

The Black shattered, flying to pieces as a hand cracked hard against her cheek.

She blinked, staring at her right arm, a needle embedded in it, a tube trailing down and away.

Her left hand went up to her cheek. It was hot, slightly tender.

“You hit me!” She still hadn’t processed just who’d done it, but whoever it was…

“You were bringing half the hospital down on us!” a fuzzy, buzzy voice was saying.

“I can’t—” Her voice was all fuzzy-buzzy, too. “It sounds like I’m chewing on bees.”

“Did you hear that, Wizard? Bees? What the heck is in that IV besides nanos, and where can I get some?”

** Remotehost override /tuneaud/pitch-4— var-3-44-/ **

The bumble-buzzing stopped abruptly.

“How’s that, Kailey?” came the Wizard’s voice in her head. “Pardon the temporary relaxation of Assignment naming protocols, but your brainwaves are all over the place, and I don’t want to confuse you any more.”

Kailey blinked. Had she imagined those words, glowing in her vision?

“It’s fine, thanks.”

“You don’t have to talk out loud. Just thinking the words will cross them through your speech centers, and—”

Okay, okay, I’m starting to wake up now, Wizard, she thought. God, I hate when Sleep mode gives me nightmares.

“That’s not something we can tune on this end, Kailey, those are all your demons.”

She sighed.

How long was I out?

“Coming up on three hours. You’re almost done with the nano drip. About ten percent left. Can you run calibration tests on your own?”

Yeah. The dreams were bad this time. Starting to fade, though.

“Take your time. There’s no rush.”

I’ve been sitting still too long.

“Diagnostics first, then running around.”

* * * * *

“You’re not even old enough to drink, what are you doing with the whole field sobriety test?” Lieutenant Danz asked.

Kailey was walking heel-toe, her balance improving with each step.

“Not that I’d know anything about field sobriety tests,” Danz muttered.

“Every batch of nanos has to learn its place, and attune itself to the network. That would be me,” she said, as she bent down and touched her toes.

Danz looked up, at the wall, anywhere to avoid making a comment that would get him slapped.

A small fist hit his arm, and he scooted along the counter a bit with the impact.

“Hey! I didn’t even say anything! What was that for?” he said. He rubbed his arm. “You’ve got a hell of a right.”

“You should see what I can do with my left,” she said, blowing on her other fist and dropping into a perfect boxer’s stance.

“Uh uh. No way. I don’t hit girls.”

“You smacked me in the mouth!”

“That was different. You were yelling, thrashing around. Scared the poor nurse half to death.”

“I told you, it was the dream.”

“I know, nothing personal. Look, I smack you, you smacked me, so now we’re even, right?”

Kailey stood, feet together, arms straight out at shoulder level. She touched one shoulder, then the other.

“You do the hokey pokey, and you turn it all—”

“Don’t make me use the left, Danz,” Kailey said as she glowered at him.

“Well, when you get done with all that,” he leaned down, picked up something he’d been standing in front of. He set the shopping bag on the counter.

“I was supposed to give you these earlier, but there was that whole nasties-in-the-blood thing and you going ten shades of white. Anyway, something a bit less conspicuous than the Grays and combat boots.”

Kailey went over to the bag, stood on tiptoe to peek into it. She saw cotton, and denim. A box with a familiar sports shoe logo on it. Not a ruffle or frill in sight.

“Oh,” Danz said, picking up a duffel that was lying by the door. “This, too. Wizard says you’d best wear this as backup. Said some of the nanos in the soup might have been fried by the flash.”

Kailey frowned.

Guenevere, flashmail to Wizard. Start: Wiz, the suit? I hate the suit. End. Send.

A minute later, there was a chime in her ear, and a message began rolling across the bottom of her optic screens:

**Incoming text: Forgot to mention that. Wear it. For your own good, and in case you need to go up again. Permission granted to hit Tin Man if he ogles. **

She picked up the bags, and the nurse, who’d been watching the diagnostics tests and banter with some amusement, showed Kailey to the nurse’s lounge, where she could change in comfort.

* * * * *

With the gel-suit, “comfort” was a relative thing. It looked like a wetsuit, and fit even tighter. Kailey had to have one of the nurses who’d walked in help her roll the suit on. She held her hair up and away and sucked in as deep a breath as she could as the nurse tugged at the zipper up the back.

“Goodness,” the nurse said. “It certainly doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it?”

Kailey grimaced. “Unfortunately, for this thing to work, it has to stay against my skin. All of it.”

The nurse nodded. “It almost reminds me of the burn suits I’ve seen in the medical journals. That lining looked a lot like it.”

Kailey nodded. “It’s similar. Microchannels for coolant circulation, using excess moisture. Never let them see you sweat,” she added with a smile.

The nurse ran her fingers over the arm.

“I’ve never felt a fabric like this. And it’s… it feels almost… squishy.”

“Carbonfilament weave,” Kailey explained. “Think… Kevlar on steroids.”

The nurse’s eyes went wide.

“Between that and the squishy layer of inertial gel, I’m just about bulletproof.”

The nurse looked in the duffel bag. “I see gloves and what looks like a hood. No cape?”

Kailey laughed. “It’s still at the cleaners.”

“Well,” the nurse said, laying her hand on the girl’s arm again. “My shift is about to start. Did you need help with anything else, Supergirl?”

Kailey laughed again. “No, thank you. I think I can manage the rest.”

* * * * *

She emerged from the lounge in a pair of relaxed-fit jeans, mid-top cross-trainers, and a nondescript tee under a gray-and-red-on-white flannel button-down. The gel-suit’s collar stuck up from the neckline, but the flannel shirt covered the sleeves.

Danz was at the nurse’s station, and he looked up with a grin as Kailey approached him, holding out the shopping bag. The boots clunked against the counter as he took the bag. He looked down, saw her rolled-up flight suit. His grin fell as he poked a bit deeper in the bag.

“Aw, you mean you’re not wearing them?” he asked.

Danz stood a good foot and and some change taller than Kailey. Two of her didn’t even weigh as much as he did. But she managed to grab his hand, twisting it and a few fingers in such a way that had the rest of him twisting in all sorts of different ways, down on one knee, his back hunched, bringing his face even with Kailey’s.

“I’ve got something to wear under my flight suit, so I don’t need any spares, thanks.”

She gave his pinky finger a jerk, and he flinched.

“And when I say ‘no ruffles’? That goes for whether it gets worn on the outside or the inside.”

“C’mon, Hot Cakes, can’t you take a little joke..?”

“You try to pull five or six gees wearing those, and tell me how it feels,” she whispered.

She let him go, and he rose slowly to his feet, cradling his arm.

“Did you see what she did to me?”

“Yes,” said one of the nurses. “I wonder if she can teach me that trick, too.”

Sleep

“That has to be the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” the lieutenant said, as he watched the dialysis machine run. Jammed in between two of the filters was the nanotrap, and it sparked and crackled like a bug-zapper going through a swarm of bees.

“Is it supposed to do that?” the technician asked, wrinkling his nose at the faint smell of ozone drifting from the machinery.

Kailey grinned. It was just like the old days, before Switzerland had sent them the custom-made filtering device. The Wizard had jury rigged a machine much like the one she was piped into, and the Wizard had been just as surprised as the technician was.

“It’s got something to do with opposing polarities in the fields. Live machines slip through, repulsed, and the dead ones get sucked up into the trap.”

“Machines?” the technician asked. “In your blood?”

“Teensy-weensy ones,” Kailey said. “That’s the technical term for them. Oh, Lieutenant, please have him and the nurse both fill out those bundles of paperwork.”

“Joint Forces Official Secrets Act?” the tech read, flipping page after page.

“I could recite it to you, if you like,” Kailey said. “Might be a way to pass the time. How much longer?” she asked the nurse.

The woman glanced at the machine, looked at the readouts. “Two hours or so. There’s a lot of cleaning needs to be run through, based on that lil blood test.”

Kailey leaned her head back against the headrest, closed her eyes. “Maybe I’ll just shut down and take a nap. Be a doll, and make sure the tall man over there doesn’t take advantage of me while I’m asleep?”

The nurse smiled nervously, then glanced over at the lieutenant. He stood in front of the door, blocking it, going over the gist of the paperwork with the technician.

“He’s rather handsome. Maybe I’ll let him do that to me and —”

“Ugh. Please,” Kailey said, her face screwing up in disgust. “He’s a total pig. You could do so much better.”

Kailey sat back, closed her eyes.

Guenevere, standby for sleep mode, standard assignment wake parameters.

** Sleep mode in 3…2…1…

* * * * *

Sleep mode induced a nearly instantaneous delta state in Kailey’s brain, holding her activity to 2 to 3 cycles per second, just below the dream threshold, when the body is in its deepest sleep state.

But while her biological systems dropped into sleep, her synthetic system went into overdrive, running feedback processing, trimming response times, finding alternate routing for input and output. Guenevere ran system diagnostics throughout Kailey’s entire body, but paid particular attention to all the feedback from the fibers and filaments below the two ceramic-and-vanadium-steel lumbar vertebra in her lower back, that had replaced the two pulverized when the ceiling collapsed on her.

Guenevere piped all the triple-encrypted data through the hospital’s network, pushing it out the radar dish atop the medical center, and into the nearest UNJPTF satellite. From there, it fed to the Wizard and his so-called “Lollipop Guild” — the men and women who maintained the vast archive of motion control data.

What the Wizard and the Guild did with it was something that most people at the Institute couldn’t even guess at (those who could were already doing the work). Whatever they did, their magic let Kailey walk, run, and dance.

More importantly, the Wizard thought, as he looked over the preflight logs, what he and his people did let Kailey smile.

The Wizard, on the other hand, was not smiling, as he flipped to the logs of data compiled after the airburst flash.

He dialed up some of the senior Guildsmen, and they started running simulations.

* * * * *

Kailey drifted up, slowly, her ears waking up before the rest of her, her head filled with the buzzing of thousands of bees. But they buzzed inside her head, and outside, as though through a thick curtain, she heard a low murmur — the crowd, row upon row of people at the Le Grande Theatre.

Was it time for the recital already? Her mom and dad would be there, her aunts were supposed to be coming in from out of town to see it, as well, and both Grans and Granpas. She didn’t want to let any of them down, or make a single mistake, so she’d been practicing extra long, the dance instructors letting her stay an extra hour.

It couldn’t be time for the recital yet, could it..?

There were other noises… beeps, clicking. Whirring. The sound of a door, opening and closing.

Were there any doors left in the dance studio? She remembered watching one wall disintegrate in a roar of noise and a flash of white light. And then the ceiling had come down, and she’d rolled back to her feet, but she couldn’t get any purchase on the floor, and she’d fallen flat, chunks of ductwork, plaster raining down around her. She’d struggled to her knees — tearing her tights to ribbons, crying out as she cut herself on shards of glass and rubble.

But then there was a sweeping shadow behind her, she heard too late the groaning shriek of metal folding, and the beam came down across her back as she tried to rise, bearing her down to the floor with it.

She remembered how nice it was, that the pain in her knees had gone away….

The darkness leapt at her then, taking her down away from the heat and white light.

It had let her up on a few occasions, releasing her to drift, as though she’d been under water, and was floating back up to the surface…

She remembered hearing the crunch of booted feet across gravel — no, not gravel, but the debris from the dance studio. Red and blue and orange lights strobed across her closed eyes, but she was too tired to say anything. Maybe one of the people she’d heard crunching around her could tell her mom that she’d need a new pair of tights, that the ones she just got were ruined….

She remembered being jostled, and there was a shuddering under her left shoulder. The jittering was sending pain through her, firing it down her back in white hot bundles of needles, that scattered when they got to her lower back. Her knees… she knew she’d gotten glass in them, but they weren’t bothering her.

“Wouldn’t it just figure the one with the spinal injury gets the bad gurney. This won’t do, get ready to lift her on three….”

There was a jolt, and the blackness leapt back to claim her….

The beeping sound again, and the whirrring. And another sound, like the black-robed villain in that classic sci fi movie. Hisssss, choooooo. Kailey tried to giggle, because that sound had frightened her so badly as a child, the first time she’d seen that movie… But she couldn’t get enough breath, and there was something in her throat....

“Michael,” a voice said, “we may never get another chance at this. This girl is dead, as far as the world knows. And if you pull any of those plugs, then she will be dead. She has a chance. We have a chance, with her. It’s a miracle she pulled through, but she’s going to need a lot more than a miracle to ever wake up. Look at these fracture patterns. Perfect anchor points. Her muscle tone is superb, very little degradation over these past couple days. She’s young, she’ll be able to withstand the strain. Look how she fought back in the O.R. Michael, we have to act fast if we’re going to open her up again….”

Kailey wasn’t sure about being opened up… didn’t want to know what that ‘again’ meant. A second time? Third? Thirtieth? She was tired, very tired, she just wanted to sleep…..

When she next swam up from the Black, the bees were in her head, and there was a steady hammering, from the back of her head, that sent flashes of whiteness through the Black, jagged patterns against the darkness. Each jolt was agony, and she felt herself slipping back into the black. Maybe the bees were trying to get out….

Then the Black didn’t give her up, but was stripped away, like a magician pulls a tablecloth out from under the dishes. But the dishes hit the floor, shattering, splintering, and someone had poured all those shards into Kailey’s head, where they sifted down her back, across her shoulders, prickling and tumbling through her arms, fingers, down her throat, rolling through her stomach. She screamed, her voice as ragged as the torn-away Black, as jagged as the shards of fire that were racing through her body. Everything was bright, hot pain. Bright, flaring white. She screamed, trying to cough up the shards, to get them out of her…..

“Put her back under! Get her sedated, damn it! Get her back under before she starts rupturing more stitches….”

The Black didn’t bring her gently down like it usually did, but descended like dead weight.

Waiting Room

“Miss? Would you like a seat? I can—”

Kailey put a hand out, keeping the man from rising. “No, thank you. It’s all right. I… I need to walk this off,” she said, and resumed her pacing around the perimeter of the ER waiting area.

Kailey paced not because she was nervous (well, she was, but she’d gotten mostly used to that), but because it was one of her guilty pleasures. Though she didn’t care much for the clomping oddity of walking in combat boots — she wondered again how they’d managed to find a pair small enough to fit her — she relished the challenge of the flat sole, the low rise of the heel, the rub of the two pairs of socks she had to wear to keep from blistering. But even the aggravating pain of a blister was a welcome feeling.

She could feel — the wrinkle in the sock on her left foot, the groove in the floor, between the tiles as she paced over it. She wished she could take the boots and socks off and walk barefoot. When they let her walk around the Institute, she went barefoot in the labs, and in the dojo. The rest of the time, they kept her motor control idle, and Jordan had to wheel her from place to place, then back to her room, and lift her into bed. She had feeling, but they didn’t allow her movement except in the labs, or when she was out on assignment with the Joint Projects Task Force.

So she paced, walking while she could. Once this assignment was over, who knew when she’d next be out and about.

A black SUV swung through the ER’s visitor drop off, and a tall, rangy man in khaki slacks, matching button-down shirt, and short-cropped hair much the same color ambled up to the sliding doors, glancing around the room, his eyes hidden behind painfully cliched mirrored aviator’s shades.

Kailey looked up as she paced up to him, along the front of the ER, which was all window behind the row of people waiting. Most of them had begun ignoring Kailey as she clomped past, but the change in her pace as she approached the man in khaki caused more than a few to glance up from stale magazines or newspapers.

“Real subtle, there, Skywalker,” she said, clomping to a stop.

“Don’t you dare click your heels and salute,” he growled.

Kailey’s shoulders sagged a bit.

“We’re supposed to be inconspicuous, remember?”

Kailey rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Like getting dropped off by a black SUV with UN JPTF plates, and then marching in here is ‘inconspicuous.’”

“Look who’s talking, miss ‘I’ll-just-land-this-thing-on-your-roof.’ I almost hope that somebody coming in on a Life Flight croaks because they have to reroute.”

Kailey balled her hand into a fist.

** Blood Pressure and Adrenal spike. Standby to engage Panic mode. **

Guenevere, stand down. Confirm Rocky Road. Log amend: Stupid Danz end log.

** Panic mode presets abort: journaled **

She slowed her breathing.

“The AI showed immediate landing. It looks like one of the floaters took a stray hit. Where was I supposed to set down?”

“Cool your jets, there, Hot Cakes. It was a good call, setting down here, in case you’d been hurt. You all right? You look pale. Well, paler than usual.”

“Achy. My legs are tired. I feel like I’ve run about ten marathons. At once. I’m still buzzing over that weird flash thing, too. I think it fried some of the nanos, because I’m getting some blind spots in my legs and feet.”

“What else?”

Kailey stared up at him, her jaw set.

“You can tell me, or I can have the Wizard pull logs.”

“Well… I might still be having some lower back pains.”

“‘Might be?’ Either you are, or you aren’t.”

Guenevere, full reception from L 3-6 filaments.

She gave a sharp cry before she could bite back the pain, and staggered back a step as the pain impulses started flowing again.

“That would be a ‘yes,’” the lieutenant said, as he grabbed her, dropping the shopping bag he’d been holding. He hoisted her up in his arms with a little more effort than her frame would indicate.

“You’re a lot heavier than you look,” he grunted.

“Well, titanium weighs a bit more than bone, all those little bits add up,” she gasped. “Wow, it’s gotten really bad,” she said with a wince.

He gave her a heft to resettle her weight in his arms, causing her to yelp. A good portion of the eyes in the waiting room turned their way.

The lieutenant strode over to admitting.

“Point me the way to— what is it that you need?” he asked the girl.

“Dialysis. Too many dead nanos. They’re piling up.”

“Right. That’s got to feel like a whole rock garden of kidney stones,” he said. “Dialysis unit? Which way?” he asked to the woman behind the counter.

“Sir, if you’ll just—” She slid a clipboard towards him.

His eyes didn’t leave the woman behind the counter. “Quickly, please, the girl is in quite a bit of pain.”

“But she’s been pacing here for over an hour—”

“When she should have been in the dialysis unit. Which way, please?”

The woman got up from behind the counter, waving him through into the treatment section.

“The medkit, in the cockpit,” Kailey gasped. “It has an emergency filter, and a run of nanos in saline.”

“Great, so you’re going to give me the keys to the XG, then?” the lieutenant said with a grin. “Which pocket?”

“Yeah, like I’d let you rifle my pockets. Who knows where you’d put your fingers.”

The nurse pushed open a pair of double doors, led them down another hall, the pointed to another wing.

“Third door on the right should be free.”

“We’ll need a technician and a qualified nurse,” Kailey said, and the woman nodded, heading for the nurse’s station.

The lieutenant kicked the door open, and deposited Kailey in the chair.

“What else do I need to do?” he asked. “I only know the basics of the process, from what I’ve read in the files.”

Kailey waved him away. “Go to the plane. Bring the whole medkit. It’ll have schematics the tech can follow to jury rig this thing.”

“Right. And how do I get in? You still haven’t given me the keys.”

She pointed to her head. “Key’s in here, silly. I’ll just wait for the proximity alert to go off, and after the static field is done making you tingle, I’ll pop the canopy.”

“You’d let it fry me for sheer spite, wouldn’t you?”

“Relax. Phasers are set to ‘stun.’”

Lieutenant Danz turned, and asked the quickest way to the roof.

Hospitality

In the end, Kailey used the antigravity pods rather than redirecting the turbofans. As if the fightercraft streaking in over the city didn’t cause enough of an uproar, the same fightercraft drifting over the hospital’s landing pad like a leaf on the wind…. Well, in the privacy of their own homes, well after the terms of the NDAs the government would have the hospital staff signing, it would be a story for the grandchildren, that was certain.

Green Five looked like most fightercraft — two wings, two engines, two tail fins. Spots where the guns would probably be. It perched on three normal-looking tires attached to normal-looking landing gear.

But it also sported two extra bulges alongside the engine housings, nearly big enough to disrupt the airflow over the frame and make flight difficult. That was where the engineers had mounted the two bits of alien technology they’d salvaged at the beginning of the war: two functional gravity-arresters. Overheated as they were, they were venting vapors from whatever they used for fuel, and Kailey saw the lefthand pod housing was scored, and it was leaking inky black smoke.

The hospital staff “ooh-ed” and “ahh-ed” as the canopy lifted open. Someone had dragged one of the helicopter maintenance ladders over. It was the tallest thing they had, and even then Kailey had to drop a bit as she climbed out of the cockpit.

She staggered, gripping the railing, and two of the mechanics steadied her. One of them hastily moved his hands as he realized the pilot wasn’t a “sir.”

A doctor hustled over as the mechanics helped Kailey down the steps.

When her feet touched the rooftop, she finally had the presence of mind to get the flight helmet off. Lord knew how much she hated wearing that thing, anyway.

The “ooh-ing” and “ahh-ing” continued as she shook her dark curls out from under the stifling helmet. Dark brown with auburn highlights, spilling just past her shoulders, Kailey ran her hands through her mane, closing her eyes as she soaked in the feeling of real air against her scalp.

Guenevere, she thought to the tiny computers in her skull, lift WHISPER protocols. Satellite search, download and recompile preflight backups. Utilize local wifi and broadcast supports. Scrambled message to Command and the Wizard: Ruby slippers are secure but in need of resole. Dorothy is fine and will be back in Kansas soon. End.

** Acknowledged. Weathersat uplink enabled. Compiling. Message sent. Reply from Wizard. **

“Miss? Are you hurt? Do you require medical attention?” The doctor’s tone suggested he’d asked the question more than once.

“No, no, I’m fine. A bit shaken up. Rough flight.”

The doctor looked up at the smoking aircraft, then back down at the girl. “I thought pilots had to be taller,” he said. He narrowed his eyes. “And older.”

Kailey came up to the man’s shoulder. A close look indicated that the cuffs of her flight suit had had some serious modifications.

“Desperate times,” she said with a shrug. “And speaking of desperate,” she said. “Ladies room? I’ve been in that thing all morning.” She jerked her thumb behind her.

“Oh, yes, right this way.”

* * * * *

Kailey felt better once she’d had a chance to wash some of the grit from the cockpit off her face. One of the doctors had let her use her contact lense solution, and Kailey was able to clear off her optic screens. It felt fantastic, being able to blink without it feeling like she had boulders rolling around behind her eyelids.

“I’m blind as a bat without my lenses in,” said the doctor. “You too?”

“No,” Kailey said. “I see fine. These just help me see better.”

“Distance, then? You don’t look old enough to need help with that.”

“UV, infrared, polarization in extreme lighting conditions. And readout feeds from the computers in my head,” she said with a smile, pointing to the back of her head. Just for fun, she had Guenevere cycle the screens from green to red to black then back to clear.

The doctor went pale, picked up her cup of coffee, and fled the room.

You know, you’d make more friends if you didn’t do things like that, the Wizard’s voice crackled in her inner ear.

Kailey jumped.

“I hate when you do that!” she said, then swallowed her anger. She glanced around, glad that the hospital staff lounge was empty. Not that she’d care much what they thought of her talking to herself. They certainly couldn’t detain her for evaluation against her will, could they?

Reverse to feed: Where are you? she thought fiercely.

You never call, you never write. We worry. Commander has a convoy headed for the hospital. We’d have gone by air, but that little stunt of theirs with the lights and drones has him paranoid. Rightly so. Techs are scrambling to find out how they did it. I see your systems are shaken, but intact. Good.

How steamed is the Commander?

Scale of 1 to 10? 12. But you’re safe, Five is in one piece, so not a whole lot he can make a stink about. The lieutenant is on his way from the airfield, and some calls ahead have local agents working to quiet things down. Just keep a low profile.

I dropped out of the sky in a part-alien space-plane. I’m wearing Joint Projects fatigues under my Joint Projects flight suit. If they get a good look at my legs, or back, they’ll think I escaped from some psycho with a thing for knives. About the only thing I don’t have going for me is one of those fancy sidearms the boys get to carry.

Dr. Carter will be hurt to hear you say that about her. The scarring isn’t that bad. And you’re dangerous enough without being able to zap people. If you do need to get out of a scrape, I’ve left the back door to Sensei open, but only non-lethals are active.

I never get to have any fun.

Skywalker will be there in an hour or so. He’s picking up a change of clothes for you. We’ll be a day behind. Try not to get into too much trouble.

If he brings another dress, I’m hacking into the lethals.