About four klicks down the road from the petting zoo, I find a roadside saloon, the Iron Horse. It’s late. The guitar solo coming from the jukebox inside is louder than the handful of remaining patrons. Three big dudes in chains and leather jackets are on the porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking pint glasses by a row of formidable motorcycles. They’re the old-school kind, requiring a physical key for the ignition.
A bald biker with a Civil War general’s massive bushy beard is facing me as I approach, and he watches me walk the last half mile. He stops talking when he sees me turn into the dirt parking lot, and his two friends see his face and hear the crunch of my boots on the gravel and turn around and face me just as I walk right up to them.
“Shee-it, boy,” the tallest, hairiest one says at the sight of me, “that’s some makeup. You a mime or something?”
“Which one of you has the fastest bike?” I ask them.
They look at each other. “They’re all pretty much the same make,” says the third guy, who’s wearing green sunglasses at two a.m. for some reason, “not that it’s any business of yours.”
I nod. “I should probably apologize for this, but I’m not really good at that, and I’m in a big hurry, so,” I say, and then punch the guy who spoke in his nose, shattering his glasses and laying him flat on his back.
The biggest guy cries out and reaches for me, but I step between his hands and uppercut him just below his solar plexus. His breath isn’t completely done exploding out of his lungs before I grab him by his hips and flip him upside down and piledrive him headfirst into the porch, splintering the wood.
Bald Boy’s shadow falls over the front of me, a knife coming out of his belt sheath, so I lash my foot back and into his jaw. He’s stumbling back as I turn around and ram my fist into his throat as hard as I can. I feel his trachea collapse beneath my knuckles. He drops the blade, and I snatch it in midair. It’s a pretty slick high-carbon steel hunting knife. I point it at him as he gurgles and gasps. He’s breathing, but he can’t get air down into his windpipe.
“Listen up,” I say very calmly. “You are going to suffocate in less than a minute unless I save you. Which bike is yours?”
He hesitates, choking, turning blue. He bumps up against the porch post. He clutches at his neck, but it doesn’t do him any good.
“Hey. Buddy. Look at my face. This isn’t optional.”
He sputters out blood and spit and points at the third bike from me.
“Keys.”
He reaches into his right-hand pocket, but his arm is shaking, so I pull them out myself.
“Hold still.” I grab him by one shoulder to steady him against the porch post, and I stab him in the trachea right below where I made the break. Breath wheezes through his body from the hole instead of his mouth. He drops to his knees, gasping gratefully. In the doorway I can see other patrons approaching, their faces struggling with whether to get involved.
“Thanks. I wish I could say I’m going to bring your ride back in one piece, but . . . I’m not.”
I get on the hog and fire up the ignition just as the other bikers rush out of the bar, followed by a bartender with a hunting rifle. I gun the bike forward onto the porch, making them scatter before I smash through the railing and roar out onto the road. I hear one futile shot behind me.
I open the throttle all the way, and the trees and streetlamps on the side of the road flatten into a blurred ribbon. Just because the connection to Kalea’s iPhone was cut off doesn’t mean I can’t still track her using its GPS. Ever since I reached the highway on foot, they’ve moved her and, presumably, any other captives they nabbed with her. I don’t have much time.
* * *
Where Kalea is is thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, or, if you prefer, 2.78 degrees Celsius.
Where Kalea is is eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, or, if you prefer, negative 7.7 degrees Celsius.
Where Kalea is is zero degrees Fahrenheit, or, if you prefer—
“I do not prefer, Kalea’s iPhone, thank you.” Kalea’s local temperature has been dropping rapidly for the last eight minutes, even as her speed remains constant at around seventy miles per hour (or, if you prefer, 113 kilometers every 100 minutes—metric time, why did you never catch on?) in a relatively straight path along what is clearly a highway.
I am easily clocking over 110 mph on my bike, passing at least one speed-trap cop car that tries booking after me, siren screaming, before I leave him in my deafening wake.
My mind reaches out across the same satellite network I am snatching Kalea’s signal off of and expands the map. They are transporting her in what is presumably a refrigerated truck, not on an interstate, but on local highways. So this is not a cross-country haul. They are bringing her to a local destination. I scan the map for likely possibilities. The nearest airport is in the opposite direction. Arrows fan out from Kalea’s blip on the map. Plenty of abandoned warehouses and factories on the route. Even more jails and police stations. Two private airstrips, one for a twin-prop flying school.
Then I see a blinking red box with the most direct route: Capshaw Air Force Base. At eight thousand acres, a big one. At current speed and distance, Kalea will arrive there in fifteen minutes, assuming that’s her final destination.
There’s no way those little gyros they sent to grab me have enough fuel for long-distance flight. When it’s not tormenting American schoolchildren with standardized testing, PRS is a defense subcontractor. They could be using honest-to-Washington military bases as launching pads for further supply runs.
It’s logical, but logical doesn’t mean right. Little about the world is logical. I’ve been conscious for just over twenty-four hours, and I’ve already figured that out.
But I am not going to catch up to them on my current course, so it doesn’t matter whether I’m right or not. I’ve got to guess their route and triangulate an interception point between here and there. Sure, I could try to grab them after they pass through the AFB gates. Can I take on the United States Air Force and win? Maybe. I’d rather not bet Kalea’s and Clark’s lives on me finding out the hard way, though.
I find an interception point on the map ten kilometers ahead of the current route of the transport—assuming I’ve guessed their destination right. I have three minutes to make it and cut PRS off.
I turn off the highway at the first gap in the railing I see and gun the bike into the woods, smashing through a flimsy wood fence and into a backyard, veering to avoid slamming into the aboveground swimming pool on the other side. I roar through other backyards. Dogs bark at me, then flee in yipping terror when I jet through. Flying through an employee parking lot behind a strip mall, I cut through an intersection between endless ribbons of fast-food joints, forcing a bunch of cars to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting me.
I come up on my interception point—an overpass of a local road over the highway—way too fast and squeeze hard on the brakes. I fishtail into the lane next to me, making an approaching pickup swerve and smash into the concrete parapet. The I-beams it was carrying in the flatbed come spilling out, and the furious driver opens his door and tears his trucker hat off his head.
“You son of a—what are you on? You coulda killed me!”
I ignore him. I look over the bridge onto the highway. The blip is approaching fast—in fact, it should almost be on top of me. Night is about to cross over into dawn, and all eight lanes below me are moving fast, bumper to bumper.
She’s in a refrigerated car. There are scores of semitrucks and tractor trailers approaching me, passing under my bridge, but I don’t see anything that looks refrigerated—no beer truck, not even a Mister Softee.
Meanwhile, the truck driver has got his phone out. He’s taking photos of me and the bike’s license plate. “I already called the cops, man! You’re messing with the wrong guy!”
Kalea’s blip is almost on top of mine on the map. Then, just as we’re about to converge, I see it:
A long dark-blue semi with the blazing white AccuChieve logo on it.
Its cab is passing under the bridge as I lurch the bike around in the other direction and gun it right at the pickup driver. He screams and dives out of my way, leaving me clear to drive up onto the I-beams spilling out of his flatbed and launch over the chain-link fence lining the bridge.
The AccuChieve truck is already halfway out from the overpass by the time I’m airborne. I swear I’m not going to let it get away from me.
So I leap off the bike.
My hand grabs the rear edge of the trailer as I hear my bike bounce and crash into the car behind me. The latch for the back doors is too far below me to reach, so I haul myself up onto the top of the truck.
I’m gasping for breath, on my back, in a perfect position to see the buglike gyro descend out of the graying sky above me, the Minigun mounted under the cockpit spinning to life. I am aware of radio chatter erupting all around me.
“Did you see that? Bogey just jumped onto the back of the—holy—it’s Bloodshot! I’m not takin’ any chances!”
I am on my feet and sprinting toward the front of the trailer just as the Minigun whines to life and spits death at the spot where I once was.
“Eye in the sky, ceasefire, I repeat, ceasefire! You damage the assets inside that rig, and Red Cell’ll make sure your life ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit! Let the ground crews handle it.”
Ground crews?
The Minigun’s whine cuts short sharply, but all of a sudden, I am flooded by light from down below. A quartet of formerly innocuous-looking passenger vehicles, all different makes and models, have floodlights mounted on their roofs that all train on me at once. The shadows of arms with assault rifles fall over me and open fire just as I reach the edge of the trailer and drop down between it and the cab, the fusillade missing me completely.
Riding now on the flat platform between the two front sets of wheels, I see the floodlights on the pace cars darting wildly, trying to pick me up again. I could try to climb back up and into the tractor and replace the driver. But that would leave me open to several seconds’ worth of fire.
Three spiraling wires—red, blue, and green—connect the front of the trailer to the back of the tractor. I yank all three of these out at once with one hand. Hydraulics hiss and hot air burns the side of my face, but I pay it no mind, not when I am about to do something even stupider.
I crouch down and reach under the trailer, where a raised plate attaches the trailer to the tractor. Comms chatter continues in the background, but I barely pay attention to it:
“Red Cell, should we open fire? He seems to be trying to hide under the trailer.”
“Negative,” breathes the same hollow voice as before. “Might hit the tires or damage the assets. In about a half klick, we should be able to turn off the highway, and we can light his ass up away from any pain-in-the-ass witnesses.”
I don’t need a half klick, boys. There’s a hole in the side of the plate for a large key to be inserted. I don’t have a key, but I do have a high-carbon steel hunting knife. I unfold it and find the blade just fits into the slot, letting me crank the plate lower until the pin attaching the trailer to the tractor is released.
“Wait—what is he doing? No, no, no, tell me he isn’t actually trying to—”
Unyoked from its burden, the tractor cab zooms out from under it at seventy miles an hour, nearly taking me with it, but my hand passes the flailing green coil and I grab onto it just as the front of the massive trailer drops onto the ground, spitting up a cascade of orange sparks. The rear buckles, the wheels squeal, and the back pinwheels into the trailing SUV with the floodlight and the guns. A voice on the radio screams and goes silent as the vehicle explodes into shrapnel.
I grab the red cable too and hold on for dear life as the trailer starts tumbling, over and over, off the highway and down an embankment until finally it stops with a crash, right side up, in a stream dribbling out of a metal cistern by the side of the road.
I let go of the cables and drop on my side into the rust-colored water. My head is spinning from the sudden upside-down, topsy-turvy trip down the slope, but I manage to put one foot in front of the other, hugging the side of the trailer. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the gyro swooping down, and I remember it won’t risk opening fire and hitting the trailer itself.
I reach the back of the trailer just as the rear doors pop open, and two guards stagger out. I grab the edge of the door nearest me, smash it into the head of the first one out, and drop him into the shallow water. The other tries to point his XM7 rifle at me, but his head is spinning too, so I smash him in his sternum, grab the rifle by the strap, and slam him headfirst into the ground.
“Wait—wait!”
I hear her before I point the rifle into the back of the trailer. A woman with glasses and dreadlocks pulled back in a scrunchie is sitting up on the metal floor. She’s got both hands up.
I start to say something, but what I see behind her distracts me. Mounted along the trailer, from end to end, are eight cylindrical meter-tall containers, four on each side, with small viewing windows set at different heights. Through the windows I can see five currently occupied—with Telic, Headspace, Animalia, Kalea, and Clark. Their eyes are closed, as if they’re asleep.
I step over the fallen woman. She flinches, but I ignore her and proceed to Kalea’s tube. I grasp the handle to open it, but the woman says, “Ray! Don’t!”
It hits harder than any bullet—the name. “Ray?”
“The assets have achieved full cryopreservation. If you open the stasis chambers, expose them to room-temperature air, that could cause irreparable cell damage. The younger ones, in particular, won’t survive.”
“You can thaw them from inside here, though?”
She swallows. “I mean—I—”
I shoot over her head, and she yelps. “Why would you do that to me?! Ray, you know me, I—”
I point the muzzle of the XM7 at her. “Remind me.”
“Nina? You don’t—” Her jaw drops. “Oh, is that—is that why you’ve turned against us? Are you—oh, this is all a huge misunderstanding.”
Nina flinches as I place the end of the still-hot muzzle on her forehead. “Show me how to free them.”
“You—need this key card.” Nina jiggles the ID on the lanyard around her neck. “And voice recognition.”
“Do it.”
“Ray, listen, that’s a really bad idea.”
“Thanks for your input. Do it or I’ll kill you.”
Nina looks into my red eyes and doesn’t see any doubt there. With a wince she rises to her feet. She limps over to a console covered in flickering screens. She shows a barcode on the bottom of her ID to a laser reader, and a beep sounds.
“Perlin, Nina. Revive assets.”
A hiss from the tubes, and a countdown appears on one of the screens. Fifteen minutes. I groan. In combat, fifteen minutes is a lifetime.
I can hear the screech of tires up on the embankment, shouts. Chatter on the comms converging. The rest of the mobile ground crew has circled back and is preparing an assault on my position.
Nina watches my mind work through my face. “They’ll be here long before this countdown ends. You should just surrender. It’s the best for everybody. Including these kids.”
When I don’t say anything, she takes that as license to keep talking. “Red Cell—Dodge is with them. He’s never been your biggest fan. If you stay with me, we can talk, we can figure out why you’ve been acting so—erratically. If it’s a . . . memory issue, we can fix that too. You’ve been talking to Cronus, haven’t you? Ray, that kid is out of his mind. Whatever he’s told you are lies. If you stand down, I can protect you. If you keep acting like a mad dog . . . somebody’s going to try and put you down.”
My mind races. My eyes fixate on the ID card around Nina’s neck. In addition to the barcode, it has her name, her face, and the title “Field Medic” on it. “Anyone out there got one of those cards that can operate the console?”
“No, only me. Field medical decisions can only be made by field medics. You see? Your father’s not a complete monster. Not what Cronus says he is.”
My . . . father.
I can hear the PRS goons trying and failing to slide down the embankment silently. I see the light shining down from the gyro overhead outside the open trailer doors.
I tear the lanyard with the ID on it off Nina’s neck.
“If anything happens to those kids in the next fifteen minutes, I am going to hold you personally responsible. And if you haven’t noticed, I am extremely persistent.”
Nina sighs. “Ray, it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Funny how the people shouting orders always say that. You’re lucky you have a bum ankle, or I’d make you come with me.”
She doesn’t look too thrilled by that info. “I’m pretty sure it’s broken.”
I stick my head out of the back of the trailer and see the gyro overhead. I blow out its spotlight with one shot. Cursing on the comms.
Before I run, I look back at Nina, leaning up against the console. “What’s my father’s name?”
“Ray Garrison. Same as yours.”
I don’t know why, but that feels significant. That all this persecution and corruption would have such a direct connection to me.
Once again, Nina fills my hesitation with words. “Do you have anything you want me to tell your father if I see him?”
I think about it. “Yeah. Tell him I’m disappointed in him. Very disappointed.”
I sprint out into the night.