AMPED (20 page)

She quickly changed the subject, asking Jake about the base, the responsibilities of his group, and anything else she could think of to stall for time. She estimated she only needed to engage him in conversation for another ten minutes, but it turned out she was wrong. She only needed seven.

Kira’s
neurons reordered themselves in the mother of all chain reactions.

Her mind surged.

As familiar as the effect was, it never ceased to take her breath away.

She immediately turned her attention to analyzing various escape plans. She hadn’t bothered putting any effort into this beforehand, unsure of what situation she’d find herself in, what location, how heavily guarded, or what state of physical incapacitation. But she hadn’t been worried. She knew once her mind had jumped by orders of magnitude, she could figure it out on the fly.

A simple analysis made it clear that she should kill the colonel in front of her. It would make her escape easier. And he was talented, as far as normals went, and would be relentless in coming after her and the group. But she had to factor in the wishes of her pathetic alter ego, who controlled their body for all but a vanishingly small proportion of the time.

And moronic Kira thought Jake was a good man who was simply misinformed. Who fucking cared? Her analysis should only take into account the level of danger he posed, not whether he was good or bad, honorable or dishonorable, or just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Moronic Kira was pathetic and weak, and her superior self had come to loath this weakness. Kira’s brother had been right. She was nauseatingly self righteous, and managed to do everything the hard way, never willing to capitalize on the full potential of her invention. Always so worried that someone might get hurt, or she wouldn’t get her good Samaritan badge.

Nonetheless, she would honor Kira’s wishes in this case, and escape without killing anyone
—
if she could. Her first order of business was to incapacitate Jake and use his computer to plan her escape. Then she would take care of the guards patrolling outside his office.

She caused adrenaline to pour into her bloodstream to give her an added boost of strength to go along with her amplified reaction time.

Then, for the first time, she let the full power of her intellect shine through her eyes, and transfixed the colonel with a contemptuous, penetrating stare. She drew back her shoulders, tilted her head back haughtily, and her body language sent a shouted message of inhuman competence
—
and inhuman arrogance. The change in her bearing was unmistakable and intimidating on a visceral level.

The colonel gasped at the inner fire blazing in Kira Miller’s eyes and became a mouse, momentarily mesmerized by a cobra.

Recovering from his initial shock, he shoved back his chair and rose, drawing his sidearm as he did so. But during his brief hesitation Kira had snatched the heavy stapler from off his desk, and in a blur of motion she tomahawked it two-handed at his head, before he could get off a shot.

He slumped to the floor, dazed.

She moved around his desk and was on him in seconds, prying the gun from his hand and shoving it against his forehead.

She then turned a small fraction of herself into a dimwitted avatar, so she could communicate slowly enough to be understood. “Pounding your desk doesn’t impress me!” she shouted, in case any of the guards beyond the closed door had heard the commotion and needed reassurance that it was benign. “
And don’t you dare touch me like that again
,” she added for good measure. That should give the guards something to think about.

Jake’s eyes were only half open and he was just clinging to consciousness. “But how?” he whispered. “We checked every inch of you for a hidden gellcap.”

“You pathetic idiot!” she whispered with a sneer. “So worried about high-tech inventions that you forgot about a technology that’s been around for decades. I took a controlled release capsule,
dumbshit
. Timed to release its contents in eight hours. I swallowed it before entering the ravine.” She shook her head in contempt. “I hid a gellcap in my stomach,
you fucking moron
.”

With that she lowered her gun and maneuvered behind him. Despite having to keep her hands together, she was able to lock one slender arm under his chin in a chokehold, and slowly increased pressure to his neck until he bridged the short gap that separated him from unconsciousness.

25

Earth was home to almost two hundred sovereign countries, including dictatorships, democratic republics, theocracies, and constitutional monarchies, among others. And in every one of these countries, within every government, a frenzy of activity was taking place.

No one knew exactly what the alien craft would do once it arrived at its destination. But it was clear that whichever country controlled it might well control the secrets of the universe. It could contain a computer with blueprints for technology thousands of years more advanced than human technology. Even if it only—
only
—yielded the secret of zero point energy, the advantages this would give the country who discovered it were immeasurable.

So if it did come down to earth, where would it land? If its landing were random, it would most likely end up in the sea, which covered more than two-thirds of the planet’s surface. If it came down on land, the largest countries by land mass were Russia, Canada, the United States, China, Brazil, and Australia.

But even the largest countries were well aware that the chance of it landing inside of their borders was small. For all anyone knew, it might set down in one of the smallest countries, like Tuvalu, Macau, or Monaco. The cosmos had a way of playing absurd statistical tricks on mankind. And if it happened to land in the world’s smallest country, Vatican City—which comprised less than a square kilometer of the earth’s surface—what would that mean? Or the Western Wall in Jerusalem? Or the Taj Mahal? Would this validate the religious beliefs embodied by these locations?

The level and intensity of communication between allies and enemies alike was unprecedented. Each government jockeyed for position. None held back a single card in whatever hand history had dealt them. Seen by an omniscient observer, the maneuverings would look like a two hundred piece game of chess, played in fifteen dimensions. Only more complicated.

Endless simulations were run. If the ship landed within the borders of a major military power, all other major powers would almost certainly ally in an attempt to take it away. If it landed in a small, helpless country, the world would be thrown into chaos as all other nations battled to take it by forging complex alliances, or using their own economic, political, or military power—like two hundred starving hyenas fighting over the scraps of a wildebeest.

In the end the complexity of trillions of possibilities quickly boiled down to an elegant simplicity. Regardless of where it landed, and what alliances were struck, the ending would be the same: chaos and disaster.

There was only one simulation that worked. If all the countries of the world agreed beforehand to cooperate. If every government—Islamic fundamentalist, socialist, and democratic republic alike—agreed that wherever the alien ship landed, it would be the property of the world, examined by representatives of each of the world’s countries.

Different countries arrived at this conclusion at different speeds, but they all got there eventually. As more and more governments signed on, even the most independent, reluctant regimes had no choice but to do so as well. No nation could stand alone against the world. Or take the chance of not being a part of first contact with an envoy from an advanced alien species.

26

Kira found a paperclip in the top drawer of Jake’s desk and unwound it. With her hands so close together, cutting through the hardened plastic around her wrists was nearly impossible, even if she found a knife or scissors, but Desh had taught her how to remove these restraints with a paperclip or pin. Some magicians had incorporated this more modern mode of handcuffing into their acts, since freeing oneself from metal handcuffs had been done so many times it was no longer interesting. Success required a high level of skill and precision, but Desh had drilled her on the technique until she could perform it even with her normal intelligence.

Plastic handcuffs were simple in design. They were slipped around a prisoner’s wrists and ratcheted tight by threading the ends of the plastic straps through a centered retaining block. But the ratchet system housed in the sugar-cube sized plastic block could be disabled by shoving a paperclip inside in a precise way, between the roller lock and the teeth on the straps. Once this was done, the straps would slide out, almost as easily as they had slid in.

Kira calmly freed herself and dropped the intact plastic handcuffs on the floor. She lifted the photograph Jake had not wanted seen, although she was nearly certain of who it depicted. As expected, it turned out to be a young girl, probably ten or eleven years old. It didn’t take an amplified intellect to figure this out. This was the daughter Jake spoke of to Kolke. The colonel didn’t wear a wedding ring, and his divorce had probably occurred years earlier. He was in a line of work that made marriage very difficult, and any man who had five offices spread out across the country was never home. The failure of his marriage had been all but preordained.

Kira sat in Jake’s chair facing his laptop, and her fingers flew over the keypad and touch screen at a furious pace. She digested entire screens of information as fast as they appeared before jumping to the next. In minutes she had hacked into the base’s personnel files, which weren’t all that secure, and found what she needed.

Her escape plan set, it was time to leave. She just had to decide how to accomplish the simple task of getting by the three highly trained men outside. She could lure them into Jake’s office and shoot them, but this would likely result in their deaths. And if all three didn’t enter, the last could close the door and call in reinforcements and she would lose the element of surprise.

If she exited, however, all three guns would be trained on her before she finished opening the door. She calculated she would still have a ninety-four percent chance of taking all three men out before one could get off a shot, but these odds weren’t high enough.

The zipper of the jumpsuit she was wearing ran from just below her chin to just below her navel. She zipped it down all the way, pulled the jumpsuit open, and then, gripping the fabric with both hands, forced a jagged tear lower still, so that her vagina was now fully exposed along with her breasts.

She lowered herself to the floor near the door and calmly forced her tear ducts to release their contents from the corners of her eyes. She banged on the door, about six inches off the ground, with both fists together.

“
Help me
,” she yelled hysterically. “
Oh, God, please help me
.”

The door was thrown open almost immediately. The moment it was she rolled out into the hall, keeping her hands behind her, and lay sprawled on her back as if she were injured, tears streaming down her face. “Your boss is an
animal
,” she whispered through sobs. “He tried to . . . to rape me.”

The three guards all had their guns drawn and pointed at her, but her tears, her torn jumpsuit, and her nakedness had the desired effect. They had been trained to react decisively to almost any situation, but this was an exception. She counted on their chivalrous instincts to lead them astray, and they didn’t disappoint. They each lowered their weapon to assess this unthinkable turn of events, and determine the extent of injuries that had been inflicted on this beautiful naked woman, dangerous though she might be.

 
Two of the guards leaned through the opening in the door to see how the girl had managed to fend off the colonel as he had tried to assault her.

This was all Kira needed. She swept the legs out from under one of the guards so viciously, and with such precision, that he had no time to cushion his fall. His head hit the ground with a loud crack and he lost consciousness. She sprang up from the floor acrobatically and drove the heal of her palm into the neck of a second man, knocking him out cold. As he slumped to the floor she kicked the gun from the third guard’s hand and faced him.

Just before he assumed a fighting posture, his eyes darted down to her bare breasts for just an instant. The single-mindedness of the male brain, even during a crisis, was surprising even to the
enhanced
version of Kira Miller.

He attempted several blows that would have knocked out a moose had they landed, but none came close. Kira read his body language precisely and knew where his attacks were coming from, and going to, as soon as
he
did. She waited until he tried to land several more blows, with both his feet and hands, and then calmly drove a knife-hand into his neck while he was lunging at her, knowing he would miss and wouldn’t recover fast enough to block her. Sure enough, her strike landed with stunning force and accuracy, and he fell to his knees. Before he recovered his senses, she threw an arm around him in a choke hold and coaxed him gently to sleep.

She stepped out of the jumpsuit and began stripping the smallest of the guards, who was still quite a bit larger than she was. The clothing was ridiculously baggy but better than a torn jumpsuit, and would make a soldier hesitate before firing, if only for a moment. One of the men had a small night vision scope in his belt, which she confiscated, along with a gun and a number of spare clips. She returned to the office and retrieved Jake’s laptop and cell phone.

While she had been unconscious, day had turned into night, and she slipped out of the building and ran to open ground, where she shot out two lamps that were providing the only illumination for the area. She only had minutes before reinforcements would be arriving. She sprinted west and shot out several more lights in a straight line toward the nearest gate. She paused to toss the colonel’s phone into a thicket of trees, where it would serve as a decoy and draw a crowd, and then circled back to where she had started.