27

No other message surged from the exoself. Chase couldn’t reach out to the underground. He wasn’t able to access WR programs. He didn’t even know what time it was. The simplest capabilities were gone. Kirel’s laserlight spread its beam as he dragged Chase toward the highway. Good thing the man had a light—Chase’s night vision was no more.

Kirel forced Chase over a fallen tree and then pulled him down to sit on the huge, rotting log parallel to the road. “Any Feds in the area?” Kirel asked.

“I have no idea,” Chase answered.

“Don’t mess with me.”

“My systems are down, Kirel.”

“From a shot to the shoulder? Are you telling me that’s all it took to shut you down?”

Why tell the man the truth? Except that Kirel handing Chase over to bounty hunters might take longer than WR deputies showing up with an armored car. Either way, he’d end up back at the Helgen plugged into machines. And Kerstin would be there to hold his hand. They’d make him functional again or they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t escape a second time.

“I’m not going back,” he said.

“Back to the laboratory that birthed you?” Kirel asked. “Oh, I think you are.”

“You won’t get a chance to turn me over for payment. WR Feds are on their way to get me.”

Kirel lifted the weapon and cuffed Chase across the head, knocking him to the ground. “You said you didn’t know,” he yelled. “How long?”

Chase pulled himself up on his elbows. “I can’t tell you that. Before the exoself shut down, I got a message. I’m being tracked. They’re coming. That’s all I know.”

“You’re lying.”

“I wish I was. Even if you deliver me to your contact, they’ll still be tracking me. Whoever gets caught with the goods won’t make it out of this alive. The best thing for you to do is run. Leave me here and tell your people I got away.”

“Nice try. Get up.”

Chase eased to his feet without using his right arm. “I’m telling you the truth. The last thing the exoself did for me was reveal my location to the Helgen. The Feds are on their way.”

“So are the Dissenters of the Republic,” Kirel said. “The only Feds you’ll see tonight are the ones we deliver you to.”

A truck like the one Chase had seen earlier rolled up the highway and pulled onto the mucky shoulder. Four men jumped out. Two carried old-school machine guns. The other two, laser guns like Kirel’s. One of the men lifted the roll-up door at the back of the truck, while the other three moved toward Chase.

“He’s injured,” Kirel said. “Says his powers are gone. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth, but he’s not so strong anymore.”

Two of the men grabbed Chase’s arms and hurried him to the rear of the truck. He climbed onto a metal step and dropped into the truck’s cargo box. He backed away from the men with their guns and grunted out a breath.

“I told him the Feds are coming for me,” he said. “I’m being tracked and it won’t take long for them to find me. You can’t outrun them.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Kirel said. “Let’s go.”

“But he knows what the Feds are doing, right?” one of the men said. “What if he’s not lying?”

Kirel pulled the door down, leaving Chase in darkness. “The man has a gift for lying. He’ll say anything to get what he wants.”

“You tell him we got a bomb at the museum?”

The voice had a slight French accent. Chase wished for the powers he’d once thought ridiculous—night vision and super hearing. His human eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the truck. A dim glow from laserlights made lines where the rolling door’s sections joined. But then the men walked from the rear of the truck to the cab, their voices fading, the light gone.

The engine hummed and the truck bounced from the roadside and bumped along until it picked up speed. The men’s voices were muddled. Their indistinguishable words found a rhythm in the smooth roll of the truck’s tires.

Leaning back in the hollow bay of what had become his prison transport, Chase pulled off his blood-soaked jacket and felt the small hole in his shoulder. His arm throbbed, but the wound didn’t seem too bad.

“Sparky, how could you leave me like this?” He laughed. “Seriously. God, how could you leave me? I thought the whole point of me being a transhuman was to help your people. Now I’m nothing. And they’re in more danger than ever. How could you?”

Loss of blood and being yanked from his power supply began to affect him. He tried to spark every processor. To reverse the killswitch. He crawled to the door and tried to lift it, then to bust through it. He had no strength. Not even that of a normal man. He went limp onto the floor of the cargo box. His useless eyes fell shut in the darkness.

“Charles Redding,” the voice called.

It was the voice of his dreams. Chase reached to the side, expecting to find a metal bowl beside him in the darkness. But he wasn’t in the place of his previous encounters.

He opened his eyes. “Here I am.” He lay in a green field. The brilliant blue sky filled his vision.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Chase sat straight. His heart raced and he clutched at his chest.

“What’s the matter?”

“My heart rate hasn’t varied since I got…”

“Turned into a transhuman?”

“It’s gone—the exoself. I can’t help the underground anymore. I’m useless. And there’s a bomb. And I can’t stop it.” Chase looked upward and squinted at the brightness.

“Your heart rate didn’t increase. It’s the same bio-designed pump they put in you. It’s your mind telling you that your heart is beating too fast. Don’t be afraid.”

“How can you say that?” Chase yelled. “People are going to die, and I can’t stop it.”

“No, you can’t. Don’t be afraid,” the voice said.

Chase gazed across the vast green hillside. “I didn’t know I had a killswitch. How could You let them unplug me?”

“It’s what you wanted. Remember?”

“Well, I changed my mind when you sent my dead father to tell me to come here and help these people!”

“Why do you always call them that?”

“What?” Chase asked.

“Why do you call them ‘these people’? As if they’re freaks. As if you’re not one of them.”

“I’m not one of them. I don’t know how to be one of them. Because they won’t tell me.”

The voice didn’t respond to this. Chase waited, sitting in the grass, watching the cloudless sky. A soft breeze cooled his brow and somehow eased the trepidation inside him. He almost smiled before he closed his eyes.

“Don’t be afraid,” the voice said.

Chase awoke sliding across the cold steel floor of the truck. The man driving this thing had found a reason to increase his speed and leave the main highway. The ragged beat of a country road kept Chase from landing too long in one place, and he cried out when he banged his injured shoulder into the side of the cargo box.

This could only mean one thing—the Feds had found them.

He lay flat on his stomach in a vain attempt to keep from being tossed like a rag doll. Even his inferior hearing could tell there was more than one vehicle closing in. Light filtered in through the door of the bay. He tried to spark the code—32-7. Nothing. If he didn’t die in this pursuit, his captors would return him to the desert.

The truck veered off the road, it seemed, and the terrain got rougher. Chase flipped onto his back and hit hard against the floor, then flew to one side and crashed into the wall. The men up front yelled loud enough for Chase to hear them. One cursed. One prayed.

The transport rolled. Then rolled again. Chase went flying. He lost count of the rotations. At last the turning stopped. Chase landed on his back. He couldn’t move. No sound. No light flashed in through the door. He didn’t even know where the door was anymore. The truck could be upside-down. It creaked as it swayed. Then there was no sound at all.

But the tracker wouldn’t have been disabled by a fall down a cliff. They’d be coming for him. He wished for the green hillside he’d known only moments ago. For the breeze that passed him by and almost made him hopeful that all this would somehow work out. But there was no hope. As in the dream, he imagined his heartbeat had ramped to meet his fear. But that was impossible. A lab-grown heart remained forever constant.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said into the darkness. Then he lifted one hand into the void. “Don’t be afraid.”