Two Years' Past: Truths

He let go of her hands, got up, and came back with his briefcase. He set it on the exam table, and opened it up, pulling out a pile of folders several inches thick. He thumbed through them and pulled one out from near the bottom of the stack and handed it to Kailey.

“What’s this?” she asked. The folder didn’t have any kind of filing notation on it, just a number: 5.

“Kailey, I don’t want to scare you. But there are some truths that they didn’t tell you that I think it is very important that you know. Remember, when I said that the goal here is to get you on your feet?”

She nodded.

“Well, that is one of the truths. And in order to get there, we had to do some things to you. I say ‘we’ and lump myself into the group, so if you are going to be angry, then you have to be angry with me, too. And I accept full responsibility for my part in this.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me,” she said, her voice wavering a bit.

“You have questions. Ask them, at any time, and I will answer them, to the best of my ability. The best hope for all of this work to amount to anything is for all of us to be very honest with you. After all, this is your life we’re dealing with here. Some of the doctors, and scientists, I think, forget that there is a person on the end result of their work.”

“When you said you — they — had to do things to me, what did that mean?”

The Wizard sat back. “When the I-beam came down, it hit you in the lower back. Fortunately, you were on your knees at the time, and your falling with the beam after that point is probably what kept the damage from being more extensive than it could have been. Other debris was able to cascade into the gap and keep that beam from completely crushing you. Those fractions of a second were critical to your survival.”

“I… sort of remember when it fell. I was trying to get away, to crawl across the floor towards the door. I cut up my knees, but then I couldn’t feel them. I guess that was when my back broke.”

“It wasn’t a clean break. There was crushing damage, and your spinal cord wasn’t severed completely. But enough bone fragments were lodged in it to cause permanent damage.”

“Now you sound like a doctor,” Kailey said.

“They didn’t fly you to a normal hospital. You came straight to the facility where I was working at the time, and as your helicopter was landing, I got the call, that they had another candidate for the research project I’d been working on.”

“‘Another?’ Like, I’m not the first?” She glanced down at the folder. “I’m number five?”

The Wizard nodded.

“What happened to one through four?”

“They died.”

Something of the light in the Wizard’s eyes dimmed, then, and his jaw clenched, just the slightest bit.

“Oh,” Kailey said. Then she leaned forward, putting her hand on the man’s knee. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” he said, taking a deep breath. “That’s just it. It was. I pushed too hard, lost sight of the end result of the project. I forgot that there were people on the other end of my research. I shelved it. Stopped the work, shut everything down.

“Number four, Donald Brown, 32, My age, at the time, too. Construction worker. He fell, several stories, was paralyzed, like you are, from the waist down. I spent two years with him, in rehabilitation. Watched him take his first few steps. But he wanted to run before he could walk. And it killed him. Heart failure. That was eight years ago, last February.”

“If it’s so dangerous, then… why… Is it going to kill me, too?”

“No!” he said, and Kailey jumped.

“Sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath. “In the eight years, a lot of work has been done with the kinds of systems I was working with. Medical knowledge has progressed. And, I’m sorry, but you are a lot tougher than Don, and Kyle, and Vincent and Xavier.”

Kailey didn’t miss the slight hesitation between the last two names.

“Were you related to Xavier?” she asked.

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

Kailey shrugged. “Well, I have been seeing shrinks for the past six months.”

The Wizard smiled. “Xavier was my younger brother. Bit of a daredevil. Motorcycle accident.”

“I’m sorry,” Kailey said.

“So am I,” the Wizard said.

They sat in silence for several minutes, and then the Wizard cleared his throat.

“So, what the doctors and scientists did to you is very delicate, very intensive work. The fact that you survived that phase — phase zero — is a very, very good sign.”

“Phase zero, as in ‘might be over before it even starts.’”

The Wizard nodded. “Wow, talk about hitting the nail on the head.”

“So it was the operations to fix my back? And legs?”

“Yes, and then some. Your left leg was broken in several places, and they couldn’t pin the pieces together. So they regrew a new femur, around a titanium latticework. We did that for all your major skeletal bones — Oh, they didn’t pull them all out and replace them, that would be messy. It was non invasive procedure, injections that flowed through the bones while under special magnetic fields.”

Kailey stared at her hands. “I’m not going to grow claws, am I?”

The Wizard laughed. “No, and no yellow spandex. No fighting crime, no leaping tall buildings.”

“But… metal doesn’t radiate electro magnetic waves.”

“No. The superconducting wiring laced through your muscles is doing that.”

“Wires?”

“Well, thinner than wires. Filaments, really. Even thinner than fiber optics. It’s an artificial nervous system. Works just like it, bouncing impulses back and forth to the computers inside you. Eventually, those will get you up and walking again.”

“It’s a really good thing I’m already sitting down,” Kailey said.

“Bit much to take in, I know.”

“I know they make computers really small, but…”

“Three in your head, three in your spine.”

“They opened up my head?”

“Dr. Harris did, yes. He laid down the neural latticework and placed the primary processors in the back of your skull, and wired the filament system into it.”

“You make it sound like it’s something he does every day.”

“Well, he is a brain surgeon. The very best in his field. Every single doctor involved in this — in you — is the very best in their field. We are all working for you, Kailey. For you, not on you, like you’re some kind of car that just needs a tune up.”

“But… why?”

“You don’t ask very simple questions,” the Wizard said, with a sigh.

Two years' past: Halos

Kailey watched the numbers light up along the top rim of the elevator doors.

“Hey, the exercise rooms are on 4. We missed it.”

“We’re heading for the basement today, girlfriend. Time for Phase 2.”

“Phase 2?”

The elevator stopped on the ground floor, and a man in a tweed coat stepped into the elevator. He smiled.

“Jordan, Kailey, nice to see you again. You’re looking much better since the last time I saw you.”

Kailey blinked. “Um… Do I… have we met before?”

The man frowned. “No I guess you wouldn’t remember our first meeting. Well, introductions again, then,” he said, and the elevator dinged. He walked with them down the hall towards one of the labs.

“I was there when you woke up, the first time, some months ago. Bit of a mess, that was. I told them it would be a bad idea, so soon after the surgeries.”

“I know they did a lot of operations on me,” Kailey said. “But they were very vague about what they were all for. I have a lot of scars that I didn’t have before.”

The man nodded, stopping at a door and tapping in a code at the keypad that replaced the door’s lock.

He stepped in, holding the door.

The room was mostly dark, and was filled mostly with a machine taller than Jordan, that he could probably stretch out full length inside of with room to spare. An examination table sat on a track that would slide through a doughnut-like opening in the middle of the machine.

As Jordan wheeled her up to the table, the buzzing in her head picked up a notch, going up in pitch, as if the bees had started buzzing faster. They didn’t much like the machine, and Kailey didn’t think she did, either.

The man in the tweed coat stepped through a partition in the room, opposite the machine, that was glassed in. Even with the lights off, monitors tossed gray-green light up onto his face, making him look like the big floating head in the Wizard of Oz.

Kailey giggled, nervously. The man in the booth shrugged out of his tweed, and replaced it with a crisp white lab coat. He checked a few things here and there among the computers in the room, then wheeled a stool out into the main part of the room, and he sat facing Kailey. It was a refreshing change, not having a desk between her and the other doctor, or having to crane her neck look up all the time.

“Welcome to Phase 2,” he said.

Kailey blinked. “How many phases are there?”

“Including phase 0… five, that I know of.”

“Why didn’t they just call phase 0 phase 1 and then this would be phase 3?”

The man laughed. “This is a joint project between several universities and at least two governments. Somebody probably snuck something in at the last minute, after all the paperwork was filed.

“But that isn’t really all that important. What is important is the end result, and that is getting you back on your feet. Everything we do here, everything that has been done, and that will be done is being done with that goal in mind. They explained that to you, right?”

Kailey nodded. “You… Don’t talk like the other doctors,” she said.

“Well, I’m a doctor, too, but mine is a PhD, not an M.D. But please, don’t call me Doctor, or Doc, or anything like that.” He frowned down at the patch above the left breast pocket of his lab coat. In cursive blue letters, it read “Dr. Oscar Diggs.”

“We’re going to be working together, very closely for many years to come. This is not a doctor-patient relationship, like you have with Dr. Harris, or Dr. Burke. I would like this to start out as a partnership, and depending on how things progress, hopefully a friendship. We’re stuck with each other for this and future phases of the project, so get used to seeing me around.” He smiled. It wasn’t a “this won’t hurt a bit” smile, but a genuine one, that reached his eyes.

“My name, by the way, is Oscar. Oscar Diggs, but hardly anybody calls me that.”

“Then.. What do they call you? If you don’t like ‘Dr.’ then what should I call you?”

“Around here, and in the circles that I work, they’ve dubbed me ‘the Wizard.’”

Kailey stifled a giggle.

“I know, it’s a bit pretentious,” he said, hanging his head.

“No.. It’s just… when you were in the little room over there and the monitors were lighting you up… I thought you looked like the big floating head from the Wizard of Oz. So… does that make me Dorothy, then?”

The man smiled. “You know, it’s funny, but before I knew your name, I thought of you in my head as a ‘Dorothy.’”

Kailey frowned, and stuck out her tongue.

“Yeah. I much prefer your real name, too.”

Kailey’s eyes flicked over his shoulder to the big machine, which sat humming away, the bees in her head buzzing in concert with it.

“Oh, this?” he said, turning and putting a hand on the machine. “Ol’ Betha won’t hurt you. She’s mostly harmless. She’s a bit of an odd bird. She’s part CT scanner, meaning we’ll be able to do 3D X-rays. We’ll also be able to peek at your brain, and see it light up when I ask you to perform some simple tasks. And we’ll be doing a lot of that. This phase is going to be boring and repetitive. ‘Wax on, wax off,’ as it were. But, like the kid in that movie, the work we’re doing today will help us down the road. Questions?”

Kailey thought. He’d answered most of them, and even some she hadn’t thought of. Then… “So.. If this thing uses magnets and x-rays, is that why the bees buzzing in my head are so loud?”

“Bees?”

She nodded. “Like, bunches of them.” She brought her hand up to the side of her head, and shook it around. “All… buzzy and agitated.”

The man reached into his pocket, and pulled out a plastic wedge. He flipped a switch on it, and a series of lights blinked across the top, running left to right, in green. He held it up to Bertha, and the thing lit up all the way across, lighting up the very last red light. The lights decreased as he brought the device further and further away from the machine.

“K-2 meter. Measures electromagnetic fields.”

He held it between the machine and Kailey, and the first two lights flickered back and forth. Then the first light flickered as he drew it closer to Kailey, and another and another lit steadily as he brought it closer to her head.

“Got a bit of a halo going,” he said with a grin. He stood up, went into the partitioned control chamber, and came out with a camera.

“Say cheese.” He said, and clicked the shutter. Though the room was dark, it made no flash.

“That picture’s going to be terrible,” Jordan said.

The Wizard walked over, and turned the viewscreen around so they could see.

Jordan showed up as dark silhouette, the machine a bright flare on the right of the picture, blazing like a spotlight. Around Kailey’s head was a hazy corona of blue-white light. Her entire body was limned in the blue-white light. Another burst of light showed along her lower back.

“This isn’t in the visible light spectrum,” Kailey said. “I’m glowing!”

“Everybody puts out a little bit of an EM field,” the man said. “But it’s not strong enough to show up on most detectors. You light up like a christmas tree because of the hardware the surgeons installed.”

Kailey frowned. “Hardware? They told me they just fixed my back and the bones in my legs….”

The man frowned. “That’s it?”

She nodded.

He whistled. “I’m going to have to have a talk with your doctors, then. They were supposed to have given you a partial briefing at the very least.”

“What did they do? What did they do to me? Why do I glow like some kind of ghost?”

The man looked up. “Jordan, would you mind leaving for a bit? Kailey and I need to talk, it seems.”

The big man nodded, then patted Kailey’s shoulder. “Be right outside the door, Sunshine.”

She nodded.

When the door shut, the man took Kailey’s hands in his, leaning his elbows on his knees. “How much do you remember before you came here? Before you woke up?”

Kailey sighed. “I talk about this stuff in First Session.”

“Well,” he said, “let me give you something to really talk about with them, then.”

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.