Impossible! She tentatively placed one finger against his temple.
“In a solution of MakerBot 211B. End of Message. Please—”
She withdrew her hand. Imi-imashii, was he bot or human? No, he’d been alive since before she’d been born, so he must be biological, yet he transmitted data like a machine. She touched him again, steeling herself to hear the message through.
“Immerse only the head. For biological reconstitution immerse in blood type AB solution. For machine reconstitution immerse in a solution of MakerBot 211B. End of Message. Please immerse only the head. For—”
She rubbed her face, afraid the heat had gotten to her. There had to be some crazy nanotech protecting him.
Oh boy, she wanted to run like hell, but she couldn’t ignore the situation; Leon required rescuing, and Mike … he needed something.
Why did this fall to her, a nineteen-year-old philosophy major? She sighed and looked around to see if someone else would show up and take care of this. Kuso!
She wasn’t going to carry two bodies, and the message only asked her to immerse the head. This was fucking insane.
Cat swallowed bile, then took out her boot knife and made a tentative cut into Mike’s neck. The blade came out dry. Pretty sure that wouldn’t normally happen, she assumed nanites protecting the brain had absorbed what they could from the rest of him.
Five minutes of sawing later, working to suppress the urge to vomit, she decided she needed a new approach. A vague awareness that Adam was alert and watching spread over her body, like thousands of insects crawling on her skin. Her gut said he’d activated agents all over the city to search for her.
She couldn’t sit here for half an hour sawing, so she finally reached down and grabbed hold on either side of Mike’s face. “Detach,” she sent through the contact, along with a visual of what she wanted, hoping that by some miracle the nanotech would be smart enough to figure it out. By the time she finished concentrating something came loose with a click, and she held the dead man’s head in her hands.
Her vision swam and she realized too late she was going to be sick. She threw up, barely missing Leon to one side. She closed her eyes for a moment and wiped her mouth.
“I’m just holding a hairy bowling ball.” She walked to the car, repeating her mantra. When she became conscious that the lumps under her palms were his ears, she had to put him down for a second. She blinked and stared at the sky, swallowing deep, until she was ready, and then without looking she picked him up and trudged the rest of the way to the Rally Fighter.
She popped the trunk, found a tool bag and dumped the tools out. She put the head in and stuffed the whole package behind the front seat, trying not to think about what she was doing.
“Good fucking grief.”
She wanted to curl up and make the world go away. She tried to swallow to get the taste of sick out of her mouth, but her throat was too dry and tight to find the slightest bit of moisture. The sun beat down, a pain penetrating eyes and skull, yet she had to go on. Leon was alive, but he wouldn’t stay that way unless she did something. She forced one foot in front of the other.
Cat mentally prepared to carry Leon to the car. She worked out every day, but two hundred pounds of dead weight … No, don’t say dead weight. Carrying him a thousand feet would be tough.
Until now she’d been sweating profusely, but the sweat slowed as she walked up the hill to stand next to Leon. She took a couple of deep breaths, steeled herself, and lifted, getting him about three feet up. When she tried to pull him over her shoulders, they both toppled to the ground. She started to cry, too dehydrated to make tears.
She tried three more times and on the fourth she finally raised him in a fireman’s carry, fought her way to standing, and marched toward the car. Once he was in position, she managed his weight, although her thighs burned with the effort of walking downhill. She went slowly, meticulous about her footing. If she fell again, she might never get him back up.
When she arrived back at the Fighter, she cursed herself for failing to open the passenger side earlier. She dropped him on the fender, propping him there with one arm as she opened the door, then unceremoniously pushed and pulled until she got him in.
Going around the vehicle, she sank into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the blast of heat from the vents giving way to cooler air as the A/C began to kick in. The last thing she remembered was giving the autopilot instructions and closing her eyes.
When she came to, the Rally Fighter was idling in the parking lot at Mountain View Country Club, near the extreme northern limit of Tucson. She drove onto a covered patio on the side of the abandoned clubhouse. where the car would be hidden from Adam’s observation drones or satellite coverage.
Cat fiddled with the building through the net, unlocking doors and disabling interior monitoring. She dragged Leon inside, left him on the floor, and accessed the A/C controls, cranking the settings for max cooling. She walked around until she discovered an industrial kitchen, turning the cold faucet on and letting it run until she found cabinets stacked with glasses. She drank a glass of lukewarm water, then another, and splashed a third on her face and hair.
She was suddenly exhausted, the cumulative effect of heat and fading adrenaline.
She walked into the dining room, pouring two glasses of water on Leon’s body. She didn’t think he could drink until he regained consciousness. Wandering back into the kitchen, she found the ice maker and filled a big bowl with cubes. She dumped the ice on him, watching as it melted and slid down his sides.
Cat sat in seiza next to him and waited, eyes half closed, breathing slowly. She visualized a golden beam shooting straight down into the ground, searching. The earth sent back qi, the energy flowing up and filling her legs, then hips and pelvis. She beamed light down, brought up more qi, pumping until the life force filled her stomach and chest. She opened her Baihui to let in heavenly qi, let that fill and calm her mind, flow down into her throat, and then into her abdomen. She churned heavenly and earthly energy until it was mixed, kept pumping, super-saturating herself with healing spirit. When the light poured out through her skin, she brought the qi up to her shoulders and it flowed down her arms and dripped from her fingers.
She leaned forward and placed her palms on Leon, her life force flowing into his body. He was still hot, too full of bad energy, so she imagined his own beam of light, grounding him to the earth, sending his stagnant qi down. As his body emptied, she filled him with good energy, pumping heavenly and earthly qi into him.
She felt a twitch. Her eyes sprang open to find him looking at her.
“Hello,” he said in a croak.
“Drink.” She held a glass up to his lips and tilted him forward, giving him a tiny sip.
“More.” His eyes followed the water.
“I don’t want you to throw up.”
Cat gave him small sips over the course of a few minutes, conscious, always conscious of the way his coarse hair lay against her fingers as she lifted him.
Exhausted and delirious, he made random moans and utterances that sounded like words. A minute later his eyes focused on her as he worked up the energy to lift his head. “There’s an AI here, in Tucson.”
“Shhh, I figured that out. Rest.”
“It’s a murderer,” his voice a cracked whisper.
“I know,” she said, though she had only guessed.
That was all for a minute, then he strained to sit up. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Now lie down. I have to run an errand.”
She went back to the kitchen for two more glasses of water, left them standing next to him, still on the floor of the dining room.