Kaleidocide (54 page)

So I turned around again and saw the unmanned helicopter swivel toward the two Chinese who were still trapped by the aeros. The Hawk opened fire on them as well, and the odd death scene repeated itself, with blood spraying out of nothing.

I couldn't believe it, but now there were no more live targets in my glasses. I was the last man left standing on the floor of the hangar. I turned my rifle toward Sun, who was frantically trying to work the controls for the helicopter he was in. But the same force that had animated the other vehicles was apparently preventing him from using that one.

“Nice work, Min,” I said to what was left of the big cyborg, hanging nearby.

What?
he said in my glasses.

I ignored the question, because I was now looking at Lynn and seeing that the nanites had reached her face and were entering her mouth and nose. I threw down the rifle, tore my glasses off, and pulled out one of my boas as I bounded over to the nearby Firehawk. I dragged Sun out of the cockpit and threw him down on the floor near Lynn's twitching body. I straddled him and pointed the gun at his face.

“Turn it off,” I said through clenched teeth, gesturing toward my dying wife.

“I can't,” he said, raising his hands to shield his head.

I moved the boa downward and shot him between the legs. He screamed and put both his hands down there, so I dropped my body down and trapped them with my knee, pressing them against his wound. He screamed some more, and I held the gun tightly to his head.

“Where's the remote control?” I asked. “Tell me or you're dead.”

“Your friend Terrey,” Sun answered with difficulty, coughing up some blood, “is the only one who could stop it. And he is long gone.” He forced a twisted smile onto his bloody mouth. “Not a very good friend.”

I looked over at Lynn again, and saw that she had now stopped twitching. So when I turned back to Sun, the hatred on my face was enough to wipe the smile off his, at least temporarily. I pressed the boa against his head and my finger against the trigger, ready to send him to the hell that I hoped was waiting for him, and stared hard at his face so I could see every gory detail of his death. But then my mind recalled the similar image of me shooting General Ho—the act that had precipitated all this—and I ended up grunting in disgust and pulling the gun away.

Sun smiled again and repeated, as if to stab at me a second time, “Not a very good friend.”

“He's right,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a figure in one of the invisible suits, which could only be identified by some splashes of blood on its front that had not yet been eliminated by the metamaterials. Then the figure became visible, and it was Terrey, wearing a shiny black suit with blood at the same places. He held in his hands an Alliant Trinity, the same three-barreled weapon I had used in the Taiwan assault, and finished his statement. “I
am
the only one who can stop her from dying.” He walked casually over to Lynn, kneeling down to look at her head, which was now completely covered with the living tattoos.

“There
is
time to save her,” Terrey said to me, as I sat there with my mouth hanging open, in a state of shock, “but you're gonna have to pay me, mate, because I only got half of what I was hoping for from Sun. Cash would be a bit risky, because I don't know if I could confirm the payment in time to save Lynn. So I'll take this aero as your fee.”

As he said that, the car he had been using all week flew into the hangar from outside, and Ni and San stepped out of both sides of it.

“I know there's a code that will deactivate the self-destruct system,” Terrey said, “and allow us to take it anywhere we want. Give it to me, and I'll take care of your wife.”

“I'll pay you twice what I offered you,” Sun grunted out from the floor. “If you kill both of them.” Terrey turned his way, but then shook his head and snorted through his nose like someone would at the foolishness of a child. The injured Chinese leader then offered him three times as much, but Terrey ignored it and looked back at me.

“Give him the code, Min,” I said without hesitation, even though it would mean that our Sabon technology could be out in the open for the first time, because Terrey might be able to reverse engineer it and sell it to the highest bidder. I was still confused by my friend's apparently double betrayal, but one thing I was sure of was that I wanted my wife to live.

Almost immediately one of the
Trois
confirmed to Terrey that the code was correct, so he knelt down next to Lynn and inserted two small, thin vials into the apparatus attached to her ankles. Suddenly the skin near them started to turn gray, and the new color spread up her body the same way as before, but much faster. It was like the nanites were turning to dust, and leaving an inanimate covering where the living one was previously. When the gray reached her mouth and nose, Lynn coughed up a bunch of it and was soon breathing again. Terrey blew on her face to clear the dust off it, but left it on the rest of her body. He stepped away from her to make room for me, as I rushed toward her and took her in my arms.

“Lynn, are you okay?” She coughed some more and turned sideways, to make it easier for the dust to come out. As she did, one of the triplets brought a long coat over and draped it over her, sending an apologetic glance my way. I looked around briefly and saw that Terrey was untying Jon's hands, and that the other Japanese sister was standing near the groaning Zhang Sun. In my confusion, I wasn't sure whether she was guarding him or protecting him.

I looked back down at Lynn and said “Are you okay?” again. I was glad that she was breathing, but also worried that she might have suffered some kind of brain damage from the asphyxiation, and might never be herself again. Considering how long she had been unconscious, I wondered if I really would be getting my wife back.

Lynn pushed her head forward, like she was trying to sit up, so I helped her to do so a little and supported her weakened form with my arms. She then moved her head around slowly, taking in the scene around her in the hangar. She grimaced in pain and made some unintelligible sounds with her mouth hanging half open, and I wondered if my worst fears were coming true.

“What?” I asked.

She coughed up some more gray dust, and blew the remainder off her lips.

“Who's gonna clean up this mess?” she asked, clearly this time.

Yep, she's fine,
I thought. It was definitely Lynn, and she was definitely back.

I didn't know how long she or I would be safe, however. Sun was still alive and able to buy another reversal from Terrey, and I was still holding my gun under Lynn's back and feeling a strong desire to blow both of their heads off.

 

48

DEBTS

“The baby?” Lynn asked as she became more aware of what had happened.

I looked at the triplet who had put the coat on her, and the female cyborg put a hand under it to examine Lynn's belly. Apparently the hand itself had a medical scanning augmentation, because the manga girl soon declared that the baby seemed okay. Now that I had some degree of confidence that Lynn and Lynley had survived their ordeal, I could turn my attention to the one who was responsible for it.

“What the hell, Terrey?” I still gripped the boa in my right hand, which was supporting my wife, and I still wanted to shoot my so-called friend for putting me and my wife through this. But I also wasn't eager to endanger either of us again, so I had little choice right now except to give him a chance to explain himself.

“Never die young, mate,” Terrey responded. He had brought the three barrels of the Trinity into a ready position in his arms, though I couldn't tell which firing option was selected. What I could tell, however, from my special forces training and experience, was that he had moved his body into a position indicating that he saw me as a potential threat. He had the same training and experience, so he might be aware that I had a gun in my hand, even though it was currently hidden behind Lynn. And he was smart enough to know that saving my wife's life was not enough to make up for the fact that he had put her in danger in the first place.

“So you're the traitor,” I said, for lack of a better way to begin sorting all this out. I looked briefly at Ni and San, who both shrugged at the same exact time.

“That's why we wore black all the time,” Terrey said with a smile. “You should have known.” But then he turned serious, because he was also smart enough to know that I was confused and under significant duress, and could be easily tempted to do something stupid that would not end well for any of us.

“Make sure you get the whole story, mate,” he said. “When I heard about old Zhang Bang here, how he was planning the kaleidocide on you and Lynn, I approached him and told him that I could probably get you to hire me, and asked what he would pay me to get close enough and kill both of you. It was big bikkies, of course, so we made a deal. To convince you that you needed to hire me, I asked for the location of the assault team in Oakland, so I could show you how good the
Trois
were, and one of his new Wraith suits, so I could show you how vulnerable you were. That's how I got into the house in Sausalito without being seen or detected, and that's why I've got all the good toys now.” He gestured toward the aero I had just given him, and turned himself invisible again for a brief moment, the splattered blood that I saw before having been absorbed by the metamaterials.

“Why did Sun believe you would betray me?” I asked. “Didn't he know that I saved your life in Taiwan?”

“No,” Terrey said, visible again now. “He only knew that you were the one who killed his Ho. He wasn't one hundred percent sure that I would betray you, of course, but that's why he sent all the other methods, so he didn't have to bank on just one. And speaking of banking, I'm sure he checked on me, found out that I was in big-time debt, and thought I would do almost anything for money.”

Lynn was recovering somewhat, and moved as if she wanted to sit up further. But I wanted to keep the boa hidden for now, so I told her to be still until she regained her strength more.

“Why didn't you kill them right away?” asked Jon, who was recovered enough himself now to speak, but not enough to be thinking very clearly about what had happened. I, on the other hand, was starting to put the pieces together in my mind.

“Because I
was
in debt, for one,” Terrey said, “and saw a chance to eliminate that problem forever. So I told Sun that I would protect Michael and Lynn for a while—‘May the best man win,' I said about that part. Then if I did protect them long enough to get paid a huge amount of money from BASS, I would then get paid another huge amount from Sun to end them. He bought it all, because he's always dealing with people who can be bought.”

“I still don't get this,” Jon said with a blossoming anger, and took a step forward. “You
were
bought. You drugged us and left us here at the mercy of this monster—he took apart Min and would have killed Mrs. Ares. You took the money and ran away like a coward.”

“First of all, mate,” Terrey said through clenched teeth, “settle down, and sit down.” He waved the Trinity at the double, and I instinctively moved my finger toward the trigger of my gun. But I nodded to Jon, who sat down, and Terrey continued. “I didn't run away—in fact I never went anywhere, except to the other side of the hill to make sure that Sun got out of his jet. Who do you think figured out how to detect the Wraiths, by studying the suit they gave me? Who had my Sheilas take control of the vehicles in here, and who entered the fray personally in said suit to kill the ones you couldn't? I'm very sorry for all the pain I've caused you, Min and Lynn especially. But it was a necessary evil.” It was his turn to nod, at the two of them, when he referred to them.

Jon grunted in disgust and exasperation at this, which earned him another wave of the Trinity and hard look from Terrey. Despite this threat from the man with the big gun, my doppelganger looked at me and spread his hands in further disgust and exasperation. I was surprised at how much bolder he had become through his experiences in the past week, and I also noticed that there were tears in his eyes.

“What are you so upset about?” Terrey asked, noticing them, too. “You survived all this, which no one expected you to do, including me. And now you're rich and healed and can start a new life. What's not to like?”

“I guess I don't like the feelings it brought back,” Jon said, wiping his face with the sleeve of my shirt, “seeing her die like that.”

“Terrey used us as bait,” I said, for his sake and Lynn's. “He wasn't only trying to make a fortune, he also wanted to take out Sun in the process. In fact, I'm guessing that was probably the main endgame, while the money and toys are just icing on the cake.”

“Well, I wouldn't go that far,” the Aussie Brit said.

“You knew that Sun hated me so much,” I continued, “that he might even be lured here if the other assassination attempts didn't work, and that he might be tempted to expose himself just so he could see me and Lynn die in person. Not to mention Min.” I looked up at the dismembered cyborg, silently watching all of us. “But it all had to line up, and you had to create a safe place, or he would never come. You could do it because I gave you control of the hill and Valley systems.”

“The
Trois
spent the last week figuring out how to pull it off,” Terrey said. “Remember how we had Stephenson running around the property, modifying the security equipment?”

At this mention of the little man with the big dreams, I thought of the violent end he had met, and I looked over at the dead body of his partner Korcz. I pushed gently on Lynn's back until she was sitting upright, making sure she was okay, and then stood up with the gun hanging down at my side.