Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(49)

But she was an internationalist, a policy wonk, not a goddamn athlete. She didn’t run for a living. This was…

Thoughts came in sharp, panting bursts, flaying their way through her chest. The sun had risen fully, like it was trying to help, but winter roared through the concrete supports.

She knew how to get to the barn. She thought she might even know where the stairs were, if the elevators took too long.

She could make it there. She could.

Mech-Daniel’s heavy steps pounded behind her. He moved more smoothly than she did, faster, and he wouldn’t tire. He was like the goddamn Terminator. But when she’d ducked under his outstretched arm and run for the stairs, he hadn’t come after her right away. He had paused.

And there was that matter of the warning.

What if he was mostly Daniel now but also still Dan-Dan, deep in there somewhere? She knew how to talk down kidnappers and crazies. That had been part of her diplomatic training. Would he have enough logic containment to even listen if she stopped, if she tried to reason with him?

Ah, fuck. That question was about to be moot anyhow. Her legs hurt so much, it felt like they were about to seize into tight little balls of muscle-stuff. Couldn’t feel her feet at all. She no longer had complete control over where her footfalls landed. She tripped, skidded, got back up, kept running.

Across the skywalk, into West.

Wild, wild west, run west. Just keep going.

She didn’t want to think of what she’d do if Kellen wasn’t there. Who else could she run to? Where did the refugees live? Fanaida? Mari? Where were they right now? In the nightmarescape, she was the only person here, the last person in the world, and that thing made of titanium and evil was coming after her. She’d tried to com Chloe several times, but the nanite cloud wasn’t replying.

Keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.

The elevator doors were closed in West, but she couldn’t wait for the carriage to arrive. No time. She pushed through to the emergency stairs and started climbing. Her thighs shuddered the last eight steps, bones turned to rubber, muscles clenched in spasm. She had to haul herself up with her hands. Gloveless now.

Skin scraped concrete. Broke. Bled.

And then she burst into the barn level, into the bright morning sun. Through the gate, calling his name.

“Kellen! Are you here? Please be here, please please please.” When had she started crying? Her voice was riddled with crags, breaking and slipping, unable to maintain register. Her heart hammered in her chest, on the edge of exploding. Her eyes stung.

Behind her, the elevator dinged.

Mech-Daniel stepped into the shadow of the elevator house.

“Ah, there you are. Come here, Ang. Let me get a good look at you.” So Daniel. So wrong. Hey-girl smile, planting ice seeds in her chest.

Couldn’t. Breathe.

He started toward her.

A shovel leaned against the fence, and Angela grabbed it, backing toward the animal pens. Her bare feet scuffed trenches in the ice-crackled grass. What the hell was a shovel going to do against a titanium frame that could hold up a goddamn building? But her fists would be even more ineffective. At least with shovel in hand, she could go down ugly.

Fighting it.

A couple of the goats wandered out of their barn, curious at the noise. Getting behind them, using them as shields, might buy her time. But it would also, ultimately, buy her a bunch of broken, bloody cattle. They weren’t offering themselves in her place, and she couldn’t sacrifice them. No consent. It wasn’t fair.

None of this was fair.

You weren’t fair, Daniel. You weren’t even in the small print of the deal they shoved down my throat. Fuck fuck fuck. I should never have. I should never.

“Dan-Dan,” she said, her voice breaking. She repeated it, louder, his name, the code. Was the back door still there? Could she get through to him? “Hibernate.”

He paused. It was slight, that pause, not even a full second, but Angela grasped at the shard of hope. “Dan-Dan,” she repeated, louder. “Be still.”

He lurched, but something inside him fought back. He raised a foot to continue, but then froze with it poised in the air, not completing the step that would bring him closer. His face contorted, and his movements jerked. Unnatural. Nothing about this creature belonged in nature.

Vallejo might have grown a clone body to stick the machine inside when he made mech-Daniel, but the result was pure monster. Horrible. Wrong. Angela wanted to vomit.

But she wanted to live more.

“It’s okay, Dan-Dan,” she said. “This is just a software glitch. We can fix it. I can fix it. Be still.”

Her hands were shaking, slipped on the shovel handle, and she had no idea how she was still holding onto it. But at least she’d gotten some control over her voice. She had trained that voice, practiced wielding it like a weapon. It was good. It was strong. It was working.

“Angela.” In a keen this time, sliding up into falsetto. His head cocked to the side, violently, like switches were resetting themselves but only after an epic internal struggle.

“I’m here, Dan-Dan,” she said as calmly as she could, though her throat was still crammed with sobs. “I am safe. You are doing a good job.”

His foot came down. One step toward her. The expression on his face shifted from one second to the next: hate then hurt then fury then horror. “No, no… My programming is bad,” he said through lips that refused to cooperate. “All I ever wanted was to serve you. Angela! My programming is bad.”