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.

Freefall

There was nothing but darkness in her eyes, but inside her head, everything was a bright and shining white, as if someone had lit an arc welder behind her eyes.

The warble of the Master Alarm was nothing to the shriek of data streaming through her audio cortex. It was like listening to one of those ancient modems as the data crawled along the copper wiring. But a dozen times louder.

Guenevere! she shouted in her head. Guenevere, bypass all audio subsystems. Go to visual.

The screaming whine died in her head, as static bloomed before her eyes. She squinted, trying to see through the snow. The sky was spinning.

The static died and her vision cleared. She watched code — too small to read— scroll rapidly up through her field of view.

Guenevere was rebooting.

**Intercept alert — firewalls 1-4 compromised. Intruder flushed after forced reboot. BODY-ROM BIOS uncompromised. Barriers secure. Encryption secure. Set to WHISPER protocol.**

The words flared across her eyes in high-contrast lettering. A hack attempt at 20,000 feet?

She hit the choke button one last time, and the engines sputtered to life.

Orient, she thought, and Guenevere superimposed a horizon in her vision. Thankfully, the aircraft was still pointed the right direction — meaning, not at the ground. She nudged the stick a few times, righting the craft.

**Intercept alert — Chrome 1 & 2 inbound. Mass drivers online.**

“Green Actual to Tactical,” Kailey said. The headset didn’t even return static. “Green Actual to Command. Come in, Command.”

**Intercept alert — communications carrier signal scrambled. Chrome 1 & 2 jamming.**

What the hell were combat drones doing jamming communications? Or coming back online with weapons hot, for that matter?

“Guenevere, rerun Red Baron,” Kailey said.

** Program not found **

A cold sweat broke out down Kailey’s back. “Download piloting feedback and response from Sensei mainframe.”

** WHISPER protocols prohibit data reception while communications are compromised **

“Dammit,” she said. Neither of the two drones were showing up in her mirrors. She looked up, didn’t see the gleam of them above her. “Storage stack inventory,” she told the computer.

** Fleur de Lune, Swan Lake, Street Fight Combos IV **

Two dances and a library of fighting-game finishing moves.

“Crosslink to onboard AI, plunder fly-bys,” she said, thinking quickly. Hopefully Guenevere could make sense of the AI’s flight controls, and link them to the appropriate muscle commands.

** Compiling **

** Proximity alert — Chrome 1 & 2 inbound. Contact in 30 seconds **

** Warning — fly-by commands corrupted. Aborting compile. **

Kailey gritted her teeth, then pulled the fighter up, climbing to give herself plenty of room to fall. The two drones were bright streaks.

“Emergency action,” Kailey said, trying to remember the right sequence of codes. “Alpha. Echo. 3-5-5-7 Sierra. Repeat, emergency action alpha-echo-3-5-5-7-sierra. Request weapons hot. Beacon active.”

Guenevere piped the information to the figher’s comms system. There was a brief hum and then a muffled “whump!” as a small buoy ejected from the underside of the plane.

Something must have gotten through, as there was a thrum and rattle from the underside of the airframe.

**JERICHO protocols confirmed. Mass drivers online **

Kailey breathed as steadily as she could. Blind and lame, but at least now she had some teeth.

* * * * *

The two drones passed through her airspace, completely ignoring her. She jerked the stick, bringing the fighter around in pursuit.

“Guenevere, trajectory, heading. Target tally.”

** NNW, no military presence. Civilian objectives probable **

Kailey punched the afterburners, gritting her teeth. On the horizon, the mountains were leveling out, and a town was visible. The drones were streaking towards it.

She opened up the throttle, buzzing between the drones, praying that whatever had hacked them would recognize that her weapons systems were online.

She pulled into a long, gentle banking curve, and sure enough, one of the drones peeled off in her wake.

The plane bucked and rattled around her, and she bit her tongue. The drone’s mass driver rounds chewed through the atmosphere around her.

Kailey peeled away from its cone of fire, twisting the stick and throttling back, then back up as the chrome-plated drone shot by below her.

She pulled the triggers, and rather than the thrumming shudder of the electron guns, the mass drivers gave the plane solid jolts as they threw pellets the size of BBs along magnetic rails. Small as they were, they carried immense kinetic energies, and she watched the drone’s plating buckle as she scored two solid hits. The wing snapped off as it tried to bank left. The craft smoked as it spun Earthward.

** Proximity Alert **

The other drone must have followed when it saw her engage its twin. There was a hard shudder along the figherplane’s left flank. Kailey mashed down on one of the pedals, twisting around to the right, out of the line of fire.

She climbed, and saw the twinkle in the mirror as the drone followed her up.

“Okay, you want to play?” she asked it. “Let’s see how well you dance.”

She flipped the glide controls, and the aircraft gave a little jolt as the gravity pods thrummed to life.

She twisted the nose of the craft back round, picturing herself back on stage.

The drone kept coming at her, but she spun away, the fighter spinning along its nose, engines skyward.

Kailey rolled the plane away and behind her dance partner, her feet working the pedals, turning dance steps on the stage into an even more beautiful dance among the clouds.

The drone slewed back around for another charge. Stupid, simple-minded machine. It was falling back on its preprogrammed engagement protocols.

She let it come towards her, meeting its charge. At the last moment, she tromped the pedals, her thumb spinning the gimbal controls she wasn’t supposed to know about. She shifted the plane’s center of gravity up to the nosecone, pulling the engines up and over, cartwheeling over the top of the drone.

She pulled the triggers in the split second it passed under her, and watched glowing holes open up along the craft’s hull.

She pushed back on the throttle at the last second, remembering that the thing was very likely to explode, and the plane sprang back from its target, arcing away as the drone did indeed go to pieces in a blaze of avionics and jet fuel. Her fighter shook with the force of the blast, and she heard debris pinging off the hull.

** Airframe compromised. Seek immediate landing **

Kailey blinked, leveling the plane out and reengaging the conventional engines.

The Master Alarm was singing again.

But she also had radio static in her ears.

“— son Air Traffic Control, I repeat, identify yourself. United States Air Force fighter planes are on an intercept course.”

“Green Five,” a voice cut in on another channel. “This is Lieutenant Danz, of the Joint Projects Command. Good to see you back on the screens. We’re here to escort you back to White Sands.”

“Hiya Skywalker,” Kailey said, using the Lieutenant’s callsign. “I won’t make it back to the Sands. I need to park this thing now.”

“Commander’s going to have your skin for this,” the other pilot said. Kailey saw the two figher planes streak by from the south.

“Local air traffic,” Kailey said, on the emergency channels. “This is Joint Projects Command Fightercraft XG - 5 requesting immediate nearest airfield clearance.”

The engines coughed, and smoke began to billow from one of the engines.

“XG— Holy cow,” came the air traffic controller’s voice. “It’s an honor sir — uh, ma’am! We can clear you on runway—”

“The airport is too far away. I can see a hospital, though. Clear me through to their rooftop.”

“But that’s for helicopters!” the voice squawked.

“No, it’s for VTOL-rated aircraft below 26 tons.”

“But—”

“I can land it, or it can fall out of the sky, your call,” Kailey barked.

“RIght. Uh… We’re clearing you now…. You have clearance to land at Memorial Medical,” the voice said. “And can I say again, it is an honor to—”

“Thank you,” Kailey said, and switched off the radio.

She’d need the radio silence to concentrate on the landing. She knew there was at least one good reason to keep the AI online.

It was a lot better at landings than she was.

20,000 Feet

“Green Five, this is Tactical. We register catastrophic AI failure. Confirm?”

Kailey pulled the fighter into a long banking turn, blinking to clear the smoke from her eyes. The grit burned at her eyes, even shielded as they were behind the helmet’s visor, and behind the contact-lens-like optical screens. Unfortunately, like contact lenses, they trapped irritants, no matter how teary-eyed she got.

“Tactical, Green Actual, AI is.. Uh.. Offline. Engaging using manual subsystems.” She coughed on the smoke still lingering in the cockpit. She’d have to talk with the maintenance crew about the extinguishers and scrubbers.

“Green Actual, we register no hits on your craft. Can you confirm?”

“Tactical, if you keep chattering, you’ll be registering a whole lot of hits on the craft. Shut up and let me fly.”

Twin flashes along the horizon, sunlight off the chromed outer shells of the training drones. Kailey blinked furiously, angling her fighter off to the left of the two drones. Stupid AI, wanting to tackle them head-on. They’d be shot down in about ten seconds that way.

“Green Actual,” a different voice crackled over her headset — she actually wore a headset under the helmet. They at least realized that she needed the full bandwidth spectrum to pull down all the data pouring into the fighter craft, and didn’t clutter it up with a lot of audio-chatter. Telemetry, tacticals, firing solutions. And now piloting feedback and procedures, Kailey thought with a grimace.

“Green Actual, this is Project Command,” the voice growled, a sound like gravelly sand. “Kailey, please tell me you didn’t pull the AI’s plug.”

“No sir, I did not pull it,” Kailey said, her voice straining as she pulled the fighter around in another turn. The radar-reflective skin was holding up, the drones hadn’t detected her yet, but the closer she got, the better chance they’d get to “see” her.

“I cut it, sir, along with the fly-by-wire feeds and the fire-control subsystems. All due respect, sir, the AI’s tactical assessment was crap.”

“Winters, you are there to babysit, to observe and take over if something should go wrong. You are not to judge—”

“Sir, I am a pretty good babysitter. I don’t let babies run out into traffic or get themselves shot to pieces at 20,000 feet. I’m just doing what you told me to do. Entering engagement proximity, and engaging radio silence, per exercise protocols. If it’s a dire emergency, then tap the feed to Guenevere. Green Actual out.”

She reached over and flipped the radio receiver off.

Then she gave the afterburners a squirt, sucking in a deep breath as the G’s forced her back into the seat.

Guenevere chimed in her ear — or rather, in her audio cortex. “Piloting feedback compiling complete. Standing by to run Dogfighter.”

“Stack Dogfighter, Ace of Aces, rename Red Baron.” Kailey said. Guenevere chimed in response.

She could almost hear the boys in the War Room. They thought all the time they were playing flight simulators with her were for relaxation, that the aerial combat video games were all fun and games. The commander would be furious.

He could be as furious as he wanted. It wasn’t his butt in the pilot’s seat, cruising at Mach 5.

“Compiling complete. Standing by to run Red Baron.”

“Red Baron, go,” Kailey said, and braced for the brief tingling thrill through the carbon-filament nervous system as the program calibrated itself to her muscles. The shiver came and went, the information buzzing in her head like a tune she couldn’t quite remember fully.

* * * * *

Kailey’s teeth rattled as the fighter cut sharply to the right, the nose aligning with the rightmost of the two drones. She felt the fighter’s undercarriage thrum as the electron throwers spat bursts of static at the drone.

The two of them cut right and left, arcing back and away from her. Splitting up. Kailey was inclined to go with the rightmost drone, and apparently the Red Baron’s tactical assessment was the same, as her hand jerked itself to the right, pulling the fighter around in a hard turn. Kailey bit back the gasp, as her leg muscles spasmed, forcing the blood back up towards her head, working better than any pressure suit. The wonders of modern science, she thought drily.

She chased the drone through the clouds, dodging and weaving with it, giving it enough space that she’d be able to compensate if it did anything rash. Not that it would, the drones never did. The same team that programmed them had programmed the experimental fighter’s AI.

“Proximiy alarm. Chrome-2 inbound at 3 o’clock high.” Guenevere flashed a rear-camera shot into Kailey’s short term memory. Eyes in the back of my head, too, she thought. She’d have to thank the Wizard for that trick when she made it back to the ground.

“Okay,” she muttered to herself, “let’s play with glide control.” She flipped two switches on one of the control panels, saw two green lights flicker on above them.

Antigrav pods and directional thrusters. This was an experimental space-superiority fighter. She pulled back on the stick, wondering just how loud the boys in tactical were shouting. Orbital controls weren’t supposed to be used inside the atmosphere — they weren’t even supposed to be online yet. They’d better hide the coding a little better, next time, she thought.

The figher kept going on its chase-trajectory after Chrome-1, but the air-breathing engine had cut out. The nose of the craft flipped up and over, until the cockpit was facing the New Mexico desert, 20,000 feet below.

Kailey pulled the trigger, sending electrons streaming at the incoming drone. They sparked off its nose and cockpit, scorching the plating. The craft gave a jolt, then banked away. Kill-shots. Their onboard computers would direct them to land if they took hits to certain parts of the frame.

Guenevere pinged in Kailey’s audio center. “Chrome-2 down, onboard AI redirecting to White Sands.”

Kailey yanked the stick again, turning the fighter the rest of the way around.

“Le’t’s give them a thrill in Tactical,” she said to Guenevere. She killed the two orbital systems, but held down the engine choke switch.

Green Five began to drop.

Guenevere pinged, but the voice in her head this time was the commander.

“Winters, you bring that aircraft back online this instant. What the HELL do you think you’re doing? You—”

There was a white flash, the whole sky going blindingly bright. The audio feed burst into static.

Kailey’s optic screens darkened immediately. The Master alarm was blaring. She had no visuals — the optic screens had no feed from the cameras to paint into her retinas.

She jerked her thumb off the engine choke, then pushed it two or three times. Nothing.

The fightercraft’s engines weren’t restarting, and Guenevere was screaming in her head.