Flashback: 2 years' past: Worth

“No, over there,” Kailey said, inclining her head away from the two round tables where several groups of older men and women in light green scrubs and mismatched bathrobes sat.

Jordan wheeled her around, past the collection of walkers and crutches arrayed behind their seats, and he parked Kailey at a small square table for three against the wall, below the windows.

“I’m doing my best here, K” — the way he said it, it sounded like just the letter, that was it. “They want you to socialize. It doesn’t do you any good, just sitting in your room when you’re not in sessions.”

“Session” was the Institute’s term for therapy, be it physical or mental. Kailey had four sessions a day, a counseling session after breakfast, followed by conditioning until lunch.

“Conditioning” was the Institute’s term for ever increasing bouts of torture with large metal machines and slabs that surely weighed more than the numbers painted on the sides would lead anyone to believe.

After lunch, it was a schooling session. Because she was under age — as well as a year behind — she spent three hours a day with a different tutor every day, fulfilling the state’s requirement that she maintain schooling if at all possible.

After studies, she spent three or four hours with another group of physical therapists, and they worked her lower body, bending, stretching, lifting. She was glad she couldn’t feel anything they did down there, if how she felt above the waist was any indication of the results of a session.

Kailey picked at the cereal in her pre-measured, pre-heated bowl. This was the cereal for babies, consisting of… mush… rather than, say, something with flakes, or berries, or O’s.

“Maybe I should go over there, and sweet talk one of those guys with the new hip out of a slice of bacon,” Kailey said with a narrow-eyed glance over her shoulder.

One of the other old men happened to catch her glance, and he smiled, lifting his box of orange juice in a toast.

Kailey hoped his eyes were bad, and he mistook her grimace for a smile so he wouldn’t think her too rude.

Jordan hunched over his own tray, concentrating on peeling the grapefruit he’d selected. In his hands, it looked about the size of an orange in any normal person’s grip, and he peeled it apart and ate it in sections like an orange.

Kailey glowered at the banana.

“No,” Jordan said, as he ate another slice.

“I didn’t even—”

“Don’t have to, K. Nothing too acidic for another three weeks. That banana has everything this grapefruit does. And don’t forget to take your pills.”

She glowered at the little cup of pills, piled half-full, then began fishing them out one by one, taking them with a slurp of low fat milk. She wasn’t sure if she grimaced more from the chalky texture of the pills, the nasty taste of whatever the coating it was they used on the vitamins, or the milk itself.

She pushed her tray away after she finished her pills.

“You didn’t finish. Eat your banana.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not going to sneak you any snacks between sessions,” Jordan said, wiping his hands.

“I would never ask you to do that for me,” she said, trying to sit straighter in the chair.

“You never do. You just make those puppy dog eyes and stick that lower lip out.”

She pouted.

“See? There you go. Girlfriend, aren’t you a little old for that trick?”

“That depends. Does it still work?” she asked.

Jordan sighed, and slid her tray atop his.

“So.. What? You’re saying it makes me ugly? Are you saying I’m ugly now?”

He rolled his eyes, then undid her brakes, and wheeled her over to the table full of old men.

“Gentlemen, good morning. Could I ask your opinion on something? I seek the wisdom of my elders.”

“Best watch that tone, sonny. I may have a new knee, but I can still get up and kick your butt from here across the room,” one of the men said. Kailey wasn’t sure if he had his teeth in or not.

“My patient here is doubting her appearance. As my opinion may be biased because I’m stuck looking at her sorry self all day, every day, maybe you could give her a fresh perspective?”

With her hands full of tray, trying to keep it even so the grapefruit rinds didn’t fall to the floor, Kailey couldn’t smack Jordan. He must have planned it that way.

“She’s cute when she’s mad. Which she is, most of the time I see her in here,” said one of the men with a toothy smile. “You keep saying whatever it is you say to her, sonny.”

“Bit scrawny. They should feed her more than bird seed, put some meat on those bones.”

“If I was fifty years younger… And you were a few years older…” He winked.

Kailey felt her meager breakfast begin to turn an uncomfortable flop in her stomach.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Until lunch hour, then,” Jordan said, and with an incline of his head, he wheeled Kailey to the doors, slowing to allow her to deposit their trash and trays on the receptacles.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” he said, as the doors whisked shut behind them.

“He winked at me,” she said, crossing her arms.

“You still got it, Girlfriend,” Jordan said, beginning to whistle the tuneless song he’d been composing all week.

“They’re a bunch of dirty old men. Next time you bring me by there, I’ll tell them you’re gay, that’s why you don’t find me attractive at all.”

“I never said you weren’t. Just not my type, is all.”

“And what is your type, then?”

“I like my girls tall, with a lot of… spark in them.”

“I think you meant to say ‘big boobs.’”

“Well, yeah, those would help, too. Nothin’ at all wrong with a nice, healthy pair of—”

“Shut up, Jordan.”

“I’m talkin’ cantaloupes, not apples, you know?”

“Shut up, Jordan.”

“Well, you asked.”

Flashback: Two years before....

The man with the long face and gray hair and eyes sat by her bedside, holding her hand. When he smiled, he seemed… grandfatherly.

“Good morning, Kailey. How are you feeling?”

The doctor always started the day with the same routine. He would come, sit by her side, with her hand in his, and ask the same three questions.

She swallowed. “Good morning, Doctor Harris. I feel all right, I guess, all things considered.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“With whatever it is they give me at night, I can’t do anything but sleep well,” she said, trying to smile.

The doctor’s eyes twinkled with his own smile. He patted her hand. “We’re trying to wean you off those. Do you feel any pain or discomfort anywhere?”

Kailey took a deep breath. The first time she’d answered the question, she thought he was merely asking to be polite, to see if there was anything she needed. She closed her eyes.

“My back is aching again, where you say they reconstructed the two crushed vertebrae. Deep down, like where the muscles are.

“They all feel stiff, achy — my muscles, that is. Joints feel okay. My head still feels… fuzzy. The buzzing is still there, and it gets worse when I talk, or look around too fast. The double vision has gone away, except when I get tired.”

Another doctor, standing unobtrusively by the door, scratched away at a datapad.

“Do you know what time it is?” the doctor asked.

Kailey’s eyes flicked over his shoulder, to the clock up on the wall. It had no numbers on it, just two black hands, and a sweeping red second hand.

“8:37 a.m.” she said, making a guess at where precisely the big hand was positioned. She saw the doctor with the datapad nod as he made more notes.

“On the wall beneath the clock, can you tell me if anything is different from yesterday?”

She looked at the three paintings. The two on each end were familiar, maybe by Norman Rockwell. In the middle, though…

“You put van Gogh up in the middle,” she said. “I remember we studied about him in art class… when I went to school.”

“Very good,” the doctor said. “Do you know what that painting is called?”

“Everybody knows ‘Starry Night,’” Kailey said.

“And what did you have for lunch yesterday?”

“Egg salad on wheat. Orange Jell-O cubes. Something clear and fizzy to drink.” She frowned, as did the doctor. More scratching at the datapad.

“What color was the can it came in?”

“I don’t know. They poured it into a cup before I got it.”

The tension eased from the doctor’s shoulders, and he smiled.

“Just one more test, Kailey, and then we’re done for the morning, and you can get some breakfast.” He lifted her arms up, his hands palm up under hers. “Now, press down.”

She did, and the doctor pushed back, increasing the pressure so Kailey had to do the same to keep the equilibrium.

“Now, fingertips to your nose, first left, then right.”

She touched her nose twice, and the doctor nodded, getting up.

“Thank you again, Kailey. I’ll see you again this evening.” Dr. Harris held the door for the other doctor, and then kept holding it for Kailey’s morning nurse.

She was a rather matronly woman, with a round face and her graying hair up in a bun. The woman made light conversation as she turned down the side of Kailey’s bed. She slid arms under Kailey’s legs and back and with what seemed hardly an effort, slid the girl over into the wheelchair that sat by the bed.

She wheeled Kailey across the room, to the restroom, and helped her take care of the usual morning routine. She made it all seem so businesslike, that Kailey had long given up being embarrassed.

“Soon enough, you won’t need to see me anymore, dear,” the woman had told her. She said that once or twice a week, and yet she kept coming back, morning after morning. She waited calmly as Kailey brushed her hair. The way the woman had smiled when Kailey finally had the strength to brush her own hair, the girl thought perhaps she didn’t like the chore as much as she’d let on.

“No, dear, that’s not it at all,” the nurse said. “Each day, you seem to need me less and less, but that’s a good thing. That means you’re getting stronger, recovering from whatever ordeal it is that put you here.”

Kailey frowned. “You mean… that isn’t in my charts? They don’t tell you any of the details?”

“Heavens no, dear. At least, not at my pay grade. I don’t need to know much beyond the basics to help you along out of this wing and up to the next floor.”

There came a knock on the door. Kailey glanced up at the clock. 8:55, the same two knocks at the same point every morning.

“And now, dear, I will hand you over to your chauffeur,” the nurse said, opening the door for a large black man. They nodded to each other, and then the nurse left.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said with a broad smile. Everything about Jordan was broad. His smile, his nose, his shoulders. He was over six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. It was what he’d been, before he finished his degree, making the most of his football scholarship.

As big and imposing as he was, though, Jordan’s big hands were gentle, steady. He lifted each of her legs and tugged at the light blue scrubs, making sure the fabric was smooth before they got underway.

“You always do that. It’s not like I can feel any of those wrinkles.”

“Just because you can’t feel it, doesn’t mean they aren’t there, girlfriend. I spent a few weeks in a chair back in college. Knee injury. Trust me, you don’t want to sit on a wrinkle for more than a few minutes. You’d be lucky, not being able to feel the blisters. They aren’t fun.

“And they don’t pay me enough to take care of blisters on your scrawny butt. And speaking of that scrawny butt, breakfast dead ahead.”

The double doors whooshed open ahead of them, and Jordan maneuvered Kailey into the chow line.

“You do this to torture me,” she said, glancing up at him. “You know I’m not allowed to eat most of this stuff.”

One of the serving women behind the counter smiled. “Kailey, good morning, here you go, sweetie.” She passed over a pre-prepared tray, and Kailey held it in her lap. Jordan wheeled her down to the fresh fruit section.

“Can’t I have just one slice of bacon?” she wheedled.

“They don’t pay me enough to clean up the kind of mess that would make.”

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.