Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(46)

But Heron’s attention had gotten snagged on something. “Oh, no.”

Wild hares and cosmic destinies evaporated. This thing that had turned Heron’s face white was something else entirely.

Please God, don’t let anybody precious be in trouble. Reflexively, he pinged Yoink for her status report and found her still sleeping on Angela’s lap. Both his girls, safe. “What?”

Heron turned the chair and extended his hands along the rails. Data-input tablets extruded from grooves on either side, and without even looking down, Heron was keying commands into the Pentarc system. “You know how Garrett is always planning for the giant flaming apocalypse?” he said in a voice made of tension.

“Among other things,” said Kellen.

“I think we might have to admit that he has a point. Look at this.”

On the screen directly in front of both of them, the world exploded.

? ? ?

It was early, before the sun had a good shot at thawing the winter world. The wind sliced through the tower, shrilling like a Viking ghost. Angela was bundled in a blanket and lying in a haptic hammock she’d strung up between two columns in Northy. Nobody had ever filled in the window glass here, and cool morning air shifted her hammock, lulling her half to sleep while she electronically reviewed yesterday’s cast from a full-sensory news channel.

Yoink, who adored this setup enough to comment on it every fifteen minutes or so, had spread her furry self across Angela’s belly, her little head resting lightly on her human’s thigh and her feline hiney propped on Angela’s sternum. Butt to the face, baby. Angela wondered if this was typical of all cats or if hers was just a special kind of nasty.

Mech-Dan stood at attention maybe fifteen feet away. He’d told her he was hibernating till she needed him, but she knew he wasn’t. He was guarding her, probably iterating behavior patterns for Daniel Ashe Neko in his mind. He hadn’t made a secret of disliking the Daniel personality protocol. Poor Dan-Dan. Somewhere inside that mind, he was probably very put out.

It occurred to her that she could purge him and reboot, back into Dan-Dan mode. Daniel had, according to all accounts, died for real in the Hotel Riu, and there wouldn’t be any bringing him back a second time. The ruse was up, even if she and mech-Daniel did figure out how to prove their identities and gather the pieces of their pre-Guadalajara lives.

She didn’t need him to pretend to be an asshole anymore. And letting the Dan-Dan personality control the mech-clone again would make him so happy. She almost called him over right then to schedule the protocol.

But the morning was so cool, and the wind lulled, and Yoink slept. Angela’s limbs felt heavy, and all she really wanted to do was rest. Dan-Dan could hibernate or play sentinel or whatever he was doing for one more morning. They had time. They had all the time and more than she could stand.

“Psst. Hey, Angela.” Chloe sliced into her peace, just a voice in Angela’s in-ear com. Private, secret. Ignorable. “The Pentarc system is about to issue a push notification, separate from the daily cache. Important news. You’ll wanna be on top of this one.”

Chloe’s digital voice wasn’t as nuanced as a human one, especially when she was communicating subvocally, but her words sounded ominous.

Angela rolled to one side as if she were napping and replied subvocally, “Why? Did something happen?”

“Drone strikes are coming out of Texas again, only this time, the attacks aren’t limited to the Red River area. Simultaneous coordinated attacks: Akron, Seattle, Atlanta, all within eleven minutes of each other. Transits are down. Landjets have stopped running. The whole country is en fuego. Or wait, maybe that is not the correct context for the Spanish? Does en fuego mean ‘on fire’ or ‘bitchin’ cool’? Am I on a tangent?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Oh, hello, logic thread, there you are! Anyway, the president is using your death as a rallying cry. He’s saying you were the first casualty of this string of attacks. So things are getting a bit messy out there. I thought you ought to know.”

“Thanks, Chloe,” she mouthed, pushing just enough air through her mouth to engage her vocal cords. Her com would detect the organ movement and extrapolate sound on Chloe’s end. She hadn’t seen the nano-entity since that day up at the barn, but they chatted from time to time. It had been a long time since Angela had had a girlfriend, and Chloe, for all the Schr?dinger-esque uncertainty of her existential personhood, was very girl.

“Oh wait. One more thing,” Chloe said. “The bombs are GBU-12s. Mari flagged that weapon in a search a little while ago. Does it mean anything to you?”

GBU-12s. Like the fucker that took out the Riu. And now oodles of them were pouring out of Texas? Honestly, it wasn’t as surprising a development as all that. Once again, all arrows pointed at Vallejo.

Kind of ironically, these renewed attacks would have been a clear excuse for war and her ticket to a cabinet appointment.

Damn you, Vallejo. You’re too late. Dead girls can’t hold office.

“Hey, Dan,” she called, waking him from his not-hibernation.

The mech-clone moved slightly at his post by the girder. He inclined his head. If she were closer, she could probably see the irises in his eyes shift into focus, coming online. “Yes, Ang?”

Shitty, shitty nickname. Made her sound like a citrus. She wished words were physical things, so she could catch this one out of the air and shove it back down his throat.