Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(51)

They’d taken him down to the Vault in a service elevator, and then, because this day’s fucked-up-o-meter apparently wasn’t pegging its max yet, Angela watched as Dr. Farad stripped insulation off a cord, wrapped one wire-end around the mech-clone’s exposed in-skull electrical, and plugged the other end into a SIP port on the back of his own head.

The nest of sleeping snakes on the floor shifted, waking.

In his command chair, Heron Farad closed his eyes and breathed in time to the slither.

“All right, Senator, I see your subroutines, recent iterations. He has been busy lately, hasn’t he?”

Busy becoming Daniel. Busy resisting the transformation. Busy saving her life. Busy trying to end it.

“He’s always busy,” Angela said, “even when it looks like he’s just standing there. His neural uses pattern analysis to learn, so he’s constantly sifting data and altering himself to better perform his tasks. But if you mean the planning to kill me thing, yeah, that’s new.”

A slim frown formed on Farad’s forehead. “You installed a back door to access his behavioral profiles.”

“He was a gift from my mentor, and neither of us trusted Vallejo’s base-model programming. We had him wiped and reset, and my programmers added the back door then, for privacy. But it must be corrupted or something, because I tried to access that subroutine over and over, and he just kept coming.”

He just kept coming. A deep shudder started at her sternum and rolled through her body, and she had to close her eyes and wait for it to pass. She endured it, like the memory of the hotel disintegrating around her. The universe could stop putting her through these convulsive events any damn time now.

Farad went on, his voice sleek and clinical. “No, your Dan-Dan subroutine is intact. As is the other back door.”

“What other?” asked Kellen, his voice deep and resonant, wrapping itself around her.

“I’m seeing a secondary access key, the word Ashe. Not yours, Senator?”

“No.” The word was a tremble, drawn up through her throat. She swallowed, but her voice wavered when she said, “Ashe was Daniel’s name, before we were married. But he never had access to the mech-clone.”

“Interesting,” said Farad. “Perhaps exploring this subroutine will provide us with some clues about mech-Daniel’s motivation today.”

“Mech-clones don’t have motivations,” Mari piped up, her voice unusually brittle. “They’re machines, extensions of somebody else’s will.”

Angela thought of a goofy as-you-wish puppy with a three-year-old’s wave and an almost obsequious desire to please. Mech-Daniel had gotten none of his charming behaviors from Vallejo’s base model or the Daniel-impersonation programming. Wasn’t will defined as a purpose carried out? Calming her during that gala hadn’t been her purpose, and it hadn’t been Kellen’s… Had somebody else commanded mech-Daniel to do it? Or had he thought it up on his own?

“Dan-Dan’s unique,” Angela said, consciously using their private name. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he had developed something approximating a will of his own.”

If Dan-Dan was in that body somewhere, she hoped he heard. She wanted him to know that she’d seen how hard he had fought the instruction to harm her.

In his chair, Farad stilled more completely. If that was even possible. At the same time, in his calf-table trap, mech-Daniel twitched. His eyelids opened, breaking the crust of dried blood. Irises whorled as he came online.

Angela wanted to lurch for the door, but she took the hit, remained still. Kellen’s big hands slid down her arms, warm and steady.

“Breathe,” he whispered beside her ear.

Survivor. Queen. I am the fire.

She raised one hand and clasped his, not looking at him. Steady.

“I’m in,” Heron said. “You can take him out of the cage now. He is no longer a danger.”

“Wait. How can you say that for certain?” Angela said. This was important, especially to her. Any danger he would pose, if he was still dangerous, had a high probability of falling smack on her head.

The mech-clone slumped in its too-small cage, and in his chair, Dr. Farad opened his own eyes. “Because I have closed both back doors. He is secure.”

“Any idea where that other door led? The Ashe one?” Kellen asked, his voice tight. She could feel the tension in his hand.

“Not precisely,” said Heron, “but I can tell you where the last user was when he accessed it.”

“Where…” She let her voice trail to silence, didn’t really need that question answered. She knew.

Mari’s voice was venom when she spat, “Texas.”

? ? ?

Shit devolved fairly quickly after that to planning and packing. As shit tended to do. Emergency alerts continued to pellet Kellen’s blip board all the rest of that day, mostly casualty reports and a steady stream of offended and stern speeches from El Presidente. Medina sure could talk.

Responders were still calling the operation at that Minneapolis crater a rescue, but nobody had much hope. The land was scrubbed bare, like nothing had ever existed there. Mari started out roiling fury off her body like sun heat off macadam, but as the information kept coming and hope kept leaving, she calmed. Her mouth moved, and you could almost visualize the constant tether of communication between her and Heron. He never let her get out of his sight.