A flash outside the Venetian blinds sent a crazy striped parallelogram of flickering orange light splashing across the wall of Clark Thatcher’s room. The plastic IV bag hanging at the head of his bed caught some of the light and reflected it onto his legs, a bright orange amoeba that danced and jiggled for a moment until the crash of the explosion frightened it away. Then he heard sirens, and shouting.
Thatcher craned his neck, straining against the straps that held him to the bed, but all he could see outside was a pale yellow flicker and moving shadows. Through the small window in his door, nothing but the same hospital-sterile light he’d seen since he’d been here.
How long was that? Hours. Maybe a day. Ironic, for a Knight not to know the time. But something soft filled his mouth, and no matter how hard he bit down his system would not activate.
He heard gunshots. More shouting. Was it getting closer? Hard to concentrate. The cold fluid seeping into his arm turned his muscles to putty and his brain to jelly. He pulled again against the straps. If he could get loose, maybe he could escape in the chaos of—whatever was happening out there.
If he couldn’t get loose, this was the end of the line. They would cut him open, take out the central stabilizer and a few other expensive and delicate parts, and let him die on the table. They probably wouldn’t even bother sewing him up again.
Knowing Duke—knowing what he knew now about Duke—they might not even put him under first.
Duke, you bastard, he thought, you used to be my hero.
Movement outside the door. Voices. Thatcher held his breath, listened with his whole body.
“Halt!” A pause, then: “This area’s restricted, ma’am.”
“Thank God I found someone!” A woman’s voice, torn with panic. “They came through the window! They’re in the staff lounge on the third floor!”
“Shit! Preston, stay here with the nurse.”
Thudding of boots down the hallway.
“Preston, was it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mister Preston, I... oh my God! Behind you!” Then a gunshot—astonishingly loud in the enclosed space, though it sounded like something small-caliber.
The doorknob rattled. A face in the window, briefly. Voices again: the woman, and others. Talking too softly for Thatcher to make out over the rapid thudding of his heart. Another shot, even louder, and the door shattered open. The hard fluorescent light cut solid slices in the dusty air. Sharp sting of gunpowder in Thatcher’s nose.
Three people entered the room: a nurse, and two men in fatigues, with blackened faces. The nurse and one of the men dragged a body in with them—one of the door guards. “Is that Thatcher?” said the other man, low and hard. He had a beard.
“Yeah,” said the first man. “Thatcher, we’re from the CLU. We’re getting you out of here.” A pang ran through Thatcher’s chest and stomach at the words—a feeling of being pulled in two. No going back now.
The first man pulled a scuba knife from his boot and began cutting Thatcher’s straps, while the bearded one braced his shoulder against the door and peered out the window. The woman ducked down below the foot of the bed. “You can call me Bravo,” the man with the knife said while he cut. “The other man is Judah, and the woman’s Angel.”
As soon as one arm was free, Thatcher pulled the tape off his mouth. It hurt. “Can you walk?” asked Bravo.
Thatcher spit out a plastic horseshoe, but before speaking he bit down three times, then twice more. Green digits appeared in his peripheral vision: it was 2:35 a.m. “I’m a little woozy,” he said. Other readouts glowed, green and yellow, as his system came on-line. System status was OK but energy levels were very low. He helped the man free his legs and sat up on the edge of the bed. He saw that the woman, Angel, had pulled on camouflage over her white dress and was smearing black paint on her face. “You’re not a nurse,” he said stupidly.
At that, the man at the door, Judah, looked at her. “What are you doing?” he said. “We might need the nurse outfit for a bluff!”
“Too late,” she said. “I’ve already put on the paint.” She pulled on a black knit cap and shoved most of her hair under it.
“Save it for later,” said Bravo. To Thatcher: “Do we need to find you a wheelchair?”
Thatcher got to his feet. “No.” Then he had to sit down again on the edge of the bed. “Maybe.”
The two men supported him while Angel took point, moving down the hall. Thatcher felt hideously exposed in his inadequate hospital gown. At the first corner, Angel started to peer around it, but Judah pulled her back. “Keep your head down,” he whispered. She glared at him, but crouched low and stuck her head out at knee level. Then, with another glare, she waved them forward.
Two more corners. They didn’t meet anyone—they must all be dealing with the explosion and fire. “The front door guard has a gun under the desk,” Thatcher said. He knew this hospital well; he’d spent seven months here having the system put in.
“Thanks,” said Judah, “but we’ve already taken care of that.” They rounded a final corner to find the door guard—his name was Dave and he had a girl, five, and a boy, three—on the floor, eyes open and unseeing. Beyond him were glass doors, black mirrors reflecting the bullet-shattered desk.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Thatcher said.
“Just another victim in the government’s war on the people,” said the woman. “Come on.”
They crouched low and scuttled to the doors, acutely conscious that the brightly lighted lobby was plainly visible to anyone outside in the blackness. The doors slid open—Thatcher’s heart jumped at the sudden motion—and they ran through to the shelter of a concrete traffic barrier.
The west wing of the hospital was on fire, flames roaring and clawing the sky. Fire trucks and medic vans twitched in the shifting orange light; silhouettes of firemen sprayed water on the burning building. Someone was cursing, over and over.
“We came through the fence over there,” the bearded man said to Thatcher, pointing into the darkness on the far side of the parking lot. “Doesn’t look like they’ve noticed it yet.”
“OK, let’s go,” said the other man. They kept low and moved quickly from car to car. The pavement was rough under Thatcher’s bare feet, and they splashed in cold water—runoff from the fire hoses. Bitter smoke mingled with the gasoline and asphalt smells of the parking lot.
Bravo was in the lead as they reached the edge of the parking lot—just a few yards of scrubby grass between them and the fence. As he stepped over the curb, yellow flashes of gunfire burst out of the night to his left and he fell with an “Agh!”
Angel raised her rifle and returned fire, while Judah pulled Thatcher back into the cover of a black Ford Bronco. “Get down!” Judah said to Angel, but she fired again and again while bullets buzzed past.
Finally she ducked back behind the Bronco. “I think I got one of them.”
“And how many more are there?” The bearded man kept his voice down, but it was taut with rage.
“Just one, I think,” she replied in a matching tone, “and if someone doesn’t take him out pronto we’re dead.” She checked her rifle, then jumped out from behind the car and began firing into the darkness. Answering fire cracked back at her and the van’s windshield shattered.
“Crazy bitch,” muttered the bearded man. “Come on, maybe we can find another way out.” He pulled Thatcher in the opposite direction.
“Wait.” Thatcher bit down twice, then once—code 21. Green digits read fifteen percent. “I think I can get us out of this.”
Angel came back behind the Bronco, breathing hard. “Sonofabitch clipped me.” Blood, black in the sodium light, stained her ear.
“Give me a rifle,” said Thatcher. “I guarantee I can take down that shooter. But after that I won’t be good for much of anything. You might have to carry me. Understand?”
Judah stared in incomprehension. “Got it,” said Angel. “Here. Three rounds left.”
“Thanks.” Thatcher bit down again, code 323. He looked over the rifle, then stepped out from behind the car and fired three times—waiting and watching carefully after each shot, making no attempt to conceal himself.
There was a flash and a bullet slammed into his side. He felt the crunch of ribs shattering and a cold numbness spreading from the entry wound. As he stumbled from the impact, he bit down once.
Rewind.
Uninjured, Thatcher stepped out from behind the car. He turned to his left and loosed one precise shot into the darkness. He heard a grunt and a thud as the shooter fell. Then he collapsed, his face slamming into the dirt.
He drifted in and out of consciousness. The bearded man and the woman carrying him between them. Streetlights going by, seen from below through a car’s rear window. Gunshots. Screaming. The car rocking crazily back and forth. Sirens.
Blackness.
-o0o-
Thatcher awoke to too-bright sunlight and a cracked, cobwebbed ceiling. He groaned and covered his eyes. It was 10:53 a.m. Goblins were tightening a metal band around his head, and his side throbbed with pain—remembered pain, pain from shots that had never been fired, but real pain nonetheless.
“Welcome back,” said a woman’s voice. Angel. “How do you feel?”
“Uhh. I hurt all over. And I’m starving.”
“All I can offer is aspirin, and some cold fried chicken. If it’s still good.”
“I’ll take it. And where’s the bathroom?”
“Just out the door, to your left.”
He pulled the hospital gown closed as best he could while he limped to the door. She stared, but didn’t say anything about the scars that webbed his entire body. He hoped she wouldn’t.
She sat at the foot of the bed while he polished off two thighs and a wing, a little styrofoam tub of cold mashed potatoes, and a half-gallon bottle of coke. Black paint stained the furrows of her brow, the crows’ feet of her eyes. She had a bandage on one ear.
“Where are we?” he asked between bites. The room was tiny, barely bigger than the bed. A grimy rectangle on one wall showed where a picture had once hung.
“My apartment. Belltown.”
“Is it safe here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if anywhere is safe. We got ambushed at the rendezvous point. They shot Judah when he got out of the car.” She sniffed, and wiped her nose on an already-black sleeve. “I never even knew his real name.” She began to sob, tears making black streaks on her face.
Not knowing what else to do, Thatcher patted her on the arm. She leaned into him and cried on his shoulder. She was all bones, her skin soft and loose, her hair colorless and wiry. She smelled of gunpowder. Thatcher held her awkwardly, wanting to give comfort but disquieted by her touch. He kept thinking about how his instructor Dr. Collins had been killed in a CLU attack.
This was crazy. He was a soldier in the most elite unit in the Army; she was a member of the terrorist “Committee for the Liberation of the USA.” They should be trying to kill each other, not huddling together in a squalid little bedroom in Belltown. Damn you, Duke, he thought. You’ve turned everything upside down.
After a while the sobs subsided and she sat up, wiping her eyes.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Thatcher said, “but how on Earth did a nice little old lady get involved with a bunch of terrorists in the first place?”
“I’m 48, and we aren’t terrorists!” she shot back. “It’s the government that’s waging an undeclared war on the people. We’re just fighting back.”
“Tell that to Dave’s wife. He was the door guard at the hospital.”
Her look was icy. “If that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll give you bus fare back there.”
“Oh jeez, I’m sorry. It’s just—I didn’t think I was getting involved with the CLU! I just wanted out of the Army.”
“Who else did you think could break into a military hospital and rescue your sorry ass?”
“I wasn’t supposed to need a rescue! All I wanted was fake papers. The next thing I know I’m strapped to a bed and waiting to die. I didn’t know Duke was tapping my phone. I didn’t know my friend-of-a-friend would call in the CLU.”
“Who’s Duke?”
“Major T. K. Duke. My commanding officer. Used to be my friend.”
“Used to be?”
“We had a... disagreement. About a girl.”
A harsh pounding rattled through the room. “Police!” came a voice. “Open up!”
“Oh Jesus,” said Angel. Her face suddenly looked like dirty white plastic.
“Keep calm.” Thatcher looked out the window. It was five stories down. No fire escape. “Do you have a gun?”
“A rifle. But it’s hidden on the roof. Couldn’t risk getting caught with it.”
The cop would be armed. No way he could take him on without a weapon, not as shaky as he felt. “Have you ever been arrested?” He looked in the closet.
“No.”
The closet overflowed with clothes, shoes, and junk, but there might be enough room. “They might not have your picture, then. I’ll hide in here. You answer the door. If there’s trouble I’ll come out and help, but with any luck he’ll just ask a few questions and leave. Whatever happens, keep calm!”
“Calm. Right.” She took a deep breath, then left.
He checked and armed his system as he closed the door of the tiny closet, hearing the cop’s rough voice asking Angel “have you seen this man” and demanding to search the apartment. Thatcher tried to visualize the place from the brief glimpse he’d had earlier, hearing heavy footsteps moving from the front door to the kitchen, to the bathroom... The cop seemed to be making a pretty cursory search of it. This just might work.
Booted feet came to the bedroom door. It squeaked open. Creak of the cop’s leather jacket and gunbelt as he looked from side to side. A pause. Two more steps.
The closet door jerked open. Thatcher saw his own terrified face in the cop’s black visor as he bit down.
Rewind.
Desperate, exhausted, Thatcher slipped under the bed as the cop’s footsteps moved from the kitchen to the bathroom. Sipping air he wanted desperately to gulp, he tried to ignore the smell of the worn and filthy carpet and make as little noise as possible. More footsteps; the door squeaked open. Dusty black boots trod inches from his face, while he held his breath. The closet door opened, then closed.
The boots paused, looking around. Drops of sweat slithered down Thatcher’s sides.
The boots departed.
Thatcher clutched the carpet, trembling with fear and fatigue, as the cop admonished Angel to report immediately if she saw this man, then tromped off. He blacked out for a moment, then saw Angel’s face, creased with worry. “I thought you were in the closet!”
“I was.”
She helped him out from under the bed, but even with her help he couldn’t stand up. “Angel. Please. Help me.”
“How?”
“Food.” He passed out again. When he came to, the apartment was silent.
Thatcher spent a long dead time staring stupefied at the scuffed and rusty leg of the bed before Angel reappeared with a warm and fragrant white paper sack. The burgers inside were leathery and greasy. The most delicious things he’d ever eaten.
-o0o-
After he’d eaten the last tiny fragment of french fry, he felt human enough to sit at the kitchen table. “All right, Thatcher,” Angel said, “If I’m going to risk my neck for you and keep feeding you like some mama bird, I want some answers.”
“I’ll tell you what I can.”
“First and foremost: what makes you so special? I’ve never seen the Committee risk so many people in an operation. Why?”
“You don’t know who I am?”
“Bravo never told me anything he didn’t think I had to know.”
“I’m from the Knights. K Division.”
“Jesus.” She sat back and crossed her arms on her chest. “That explains a few things. And opens up a lot more questions. Like, why should we trust you?”
“You saw how they had me tied down and drugged. They were going to kill me. I’m not going back.”
“Could be a set-up.”
“Um.” How could he prove...? “Wait. I shot that guard. By the fence. That wasn’t a set-up. They couldn’t know where we were going. He was really shooting at me. I really shot him.” Oh my God, he thought, I probably know him—knew him. I wonder who it was?
“That’s another thing. How did you do that? You just stepped out there and whipped one shot into pitch darkness. Got him in one. Can you see in the dark? X-ray vision? Telekinesis? What is the big secret that makes you K Division troops so damn unstoppable?”
“Sorry. Classified.”
She stood up, leaning over the table, heedless of the chair clattering to the floor behind her. “Fuck that, soldier-boy. You’re in bed with us now, like it or not, and you’re going to have to put out.”
“No.”
Without warning she slapped him across the face. “Two people died to get you out of there, maybe a lot more. You owe us. So talk!”
He stared silent negation at her, but her gray eyes burned back unblinking and he had to drop his gaze. He found his hands were clenched together on the table before him. Silver scars laced his fingers like meridian lines.
He thought about all the different kinds of pain those scars had caused him.
Finally he spoke. “We call it ‘rewind.’”
“Go on.”
“It’s a kind of time travel. We can go back in time, just a few seconds. Do things over.”
“I don’t get it.” But she pulled the chair back up onto its feet and sat down in it. Willing to listen.
“Let me give you an example. I got shot at the fence last night.”
“Not that I saw.”
“No. You didn’t. I rewound, back to a point before the shot. I saw where the shot had come from—was going to come from—and fired at that spot before he could shoot. You have to have a good memory and better aim to make it into the Knights.”
“So it never happened.”
“It never happened. But I remember it. And it still hurts.” The ache was sharp. It would take another couple of days for the pain to fade. There were some wounds he’d taken years ago that still twinged, even though he had no scars to show. Not from those wounds, anyway.
“How does it work?”
“I don’t understand the principles. God knows I tried, but I barely passed the exams and I’ve forgotten what I knew then. It’s bioelectrical, I know that. My body is an integral part of the system. Circuitry along the spine. Wires around every bone.” Seven months in the hospital to put the system in. Hoarse from screaming, sometimes.
“So you have... what, an atomic reactor inside?”
“It runs off ATP, the chemical that powers your muscles. When I’m rested and well-fed I can do six, maybe seven jumps. Right now if I tried I’d probably just pass out.” Eleven percent, said the green digits.
“OK,” she said, standing up. “It sounds plausible enough. I’d like to take you to my superiors. If what you say is true, we can use someone with your talents. Your knowledge.”
Again he felt as though he was being torn in half. He hated Duke, didn’t care about the government—but he couldn’t betray his unit. They were all he had. Job, friends, and family all rolled into one.
He bit his lip and nodded, not meeting Angel’s eyes. Maybe if he played along and paid attention, an opportunity to escape would present itself.
“Wait here,” Angel said. “I’m going to make some phone calls. And buy you some clothes.”
-o0o-
Wind whistled through a leaky passenger-side window, patched with duct tape, as they headed towards a rendezvous somewhere in Eastern Washington. Angel was at the wheel; Thatcher leaned against the door, eating trail mix and scratching. He didn’t know where she’d found the clothes he was wearing, but the shirt was too small and it itched.
The radio was talking again about the terrorist attack on a hospital in Seattle. It had been talking all day, yet somehow had avoided the detail that the hospital was a top-secret military facility. Thatcher switched it off.
“Time travel,” Angel said into the silence. “Sonofabitch. We thought it was a force field, or telekinesis. This explains everything.” She was looking at him like he was a bug under glass. He wished she would watch the road, and not just because he was afraid of an accident. “Did you ever use it for... personal reasons? Like, go back and undo something stupid you did when you were a kid?”
“I wish. My personal best is eleven seconds. Duke says he can do twenty-eight.” He watched wheat fields passing for a moment. There was nothing else to see, no other traffic. “Anyway, I’ve never regretted anything that much. Until recently.”
“Lucky. I can think of a hundred things I’d change if I could.”
“Like what?”
“My parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen. I wished every day for years that I could go back and keep them from going out that night. It was like I could feel another world, right nearby, where they were still alive. It just kept getting farther and farther away.”
“I’m sorry.”
She snorted. “Don’t be sorry. You weren’t even born yet. Save your sorries for stuff you’ve got something to do with.” She looked at him again. “Like the coup.”
“What? I was eight years old.”
“Yeah, but it was K Division that made it possible. There’s no way Haig and his little bunch of hotheads could have taken the White House without you. And you’ve kept them in power ever since.”
“I’m not going to apologize for that,” he said, sitting up. “I wanted out, yeah, but that was just a personal problem between me and Duke. I’m proud of the Knights and everything we’ve done. Everything. Before the coup we had stagflation and the misery index, and we were getting our butts kicked in the Mideast. Now we have a roaring economy and every country in the world respects the USA.”
“The world fears the USA. Most of the citizens fear it too. Look, you’re too young to remember what it was like before. Back in the last millennium,” she said with hard irony, “there was no barbed wire at the borders. No Citizen Checkpoints, no curfews, no National Identity Cards. And no fucking forced labor!”
“The new millennium doesn’t start until next year, we wouldn’t need those national security measures if it wasn’t for terrorists like the CLU, and don’t give me that ‘forced labor’ crap. Workfare keeps the country strong. Honest work instead of handouts, and a strong national defense to boot.”
Thatcher saw her knuckles whiten on the wheel. “Oh, we’ve still got handouts! It’s just that now the government hands out workers to the defense industry. Workfare laborers get paid minimum, and the average—the average!—lifespan on the job is under five years.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I watched my little sister Cherry die of beryllicosis.”
“What’s... gorillacosis?”
“Beryllicosis. Sort of like black lung disease, only not so pretty. Comes from inhaling beryllium dust. It’s what happens to people who run machine tools at aerospace plants where there are no goddamn workplace safety rules!” Her face was set in a rigid mask of hatred and grief, tears running down like rain. “It took her eighteen months to die, and they didn’t even cover the hospital bills. I joined the CLU the week after the funeral.”
“Uh, maybe you’d better pull over.”
“I am not going to fucking pull over!” she screamed, her face bunching up like a fist. “I am going to keep driving this goddamn car until we get to the rendezvous and I can hand you over, so I never have to think about you or the fucking K Division ever again!”
“You’re weaving all over the road! You could get us both killed!”
“What the hell,” she said. “One less soldier, one less freedom fighter, it all evens out...” And then she jerked the wheel savagely to the right and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt on the shoulder, crunching through gravel, the left rear wheel still on the pavement. Angel crossed her arms on her chest and leaned her head on the wheel, crying uncontrollably, her voice making a discordant chord with the sound of the horn.
Thatcher fumbled with his seat belt, ran around to the driver’s side. He opened the door, leaned in, and held Angel in his arms. She hugged him fiercely back. The gravel was hard under his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry.” There were tears in his eyes too.
“I’m sorry too,” she sobbed. “I’ve been stupid.” She pushed him away, wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “We need to get out of here before the cops show up.”
“Maybe I should drive.”
“Maybe you should.”
They got back on the road, and after a nervous half-hour Thatcher was ready to believe that no flashing blue lights were about to appear in his rear-view mirror. He kept rigidly to the speed limit.
Angel sat with one hand on her forehead, staring off at the point where the road met the horizon. Her eyes were still wet but her breathing had returned to normal. “I shouldn’t have said some of those things,” she said at last. “You seem to be a good kid. You’ve just been part of something bad.”
He started to protest. But then he thought about what she’d said about her sister—about Workfare. About the radio, and how it never told the whole story. About Duke.
He’d told Angel that he’d had a disagreement with Duke about a girl. That was true, as far as it went.
She must have been beautiful, before. Now that perfect, sweet face was frozen in an expression of pain and fear and despair, spattered with flecks of dried blood. The same blood that stained Duke’s hands. I’m sorry you had to see this, he’d said, but I’m sure you’ll understand.
He understood, all right. As he helped Duke dispose of the body, he finally understood that Duke was running K Division as his own private hunting club. It was while he was washing the blood off his hands that he decided to get out of the Army.
But it was only now, with Angel’s story fresh in his ears, that he thought about how Duke fit into the system. How his superiors must have known what he was doing, and had left him alone. It must go all the way to the top.
“What does this ‘rewind’ feel like?” she asked.
He blew out his cheeks. “Like having your bones pulled out of your body, all at once. Some guys can’t take it. Go through all the surgery, all the training, and after the first time they just can’t pull that trigger again.”
“What happens to them?”
“They get transferred out.” Like Duncan Mackenzie. He remembered clearing out Mackenzie’s quarters, packing up his stuff for shipment to Fort Benning, laughing and joking with the other guys about the “washout.”
Mackenzie had never answered his letters. Thatcher had assumed he was too ashamed to write back. But now he thought about Duke, leaning over him in the hospital bed. Do you know how much the central stabilizer on your spine costs? He’d said. Ten and a half million dollars. They have to build twenty thousand of them to get one that works. You didn’t really think we were just going to let you walk away with that, did you? Suddenly he wondered where those boxes of Mackenzie’s stuff had really wound up.
“They get transferred out,” he repeated, more thoughtfully. “At least, that’s what they say.”
“You can never trust them. They said they’d keep Cherry and me together, but when space got tight in the orphanage they transferred me to another facility. I had to kick and scream to get us together again. As soon as I turned eighteen I got us both out of there.”
“That must have been hard. Supporting two people at eighteen.”
“It was. But somehow we survived. I gave up a lot to keep her safe.” She closed her eyes. “I’d give up anything to bring her back. But I know that’s not going to happen, so I work to bring down the system that killed her. I’d give my life for that.”
“You came damn close back there. And at the hospital. If you don’t take a little more care, you’ll wind up an angel for real.”
“Yeah, I know.” She slumped in her seat. “But ever since Cherry died, I don’t really care a lot about me.”
“You should,” he said. “You’re worth caring about.”
“Thanks.”
But she didn’t seem convinced.
-o0o-
They reached the rendezvous point—an abandoned gas station near Ellensburg—just after sunset. There they found a couple of men who identified themselves as Dusty and Wolf.
Dusty was a round man with a gray beard and a black leather cap and jacket. “We’ve done some checking on Thatcher’s story,” he said to Angel, “and it seems to check out, but we need to interrogate him.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Thatcher.
“Sorry, but we have to take precautions,” said Wolf, a large muscular man in jeans and a flannel shirt. “With the ambush day before yesterday, we think there may be a mole in the Committee. We’re not going to torture you or anything, just ask you some questions.”
Wolf had a key to the empty gas station, and they went inside and sat around a table in what had been the repair area. The windows in the garage doors were covered with newspaper; the space was illuminated by a hissing gas lantern. Angel, Wolf, and Dusty became faces floating in the darkness.
They asked him a lot of questions, some of them over and over. Thatcher explained about the Knights, about Duke, about why he’d left. When he told them about the girl he’d seen Duke kill, Angel’s eyes went wide and she put her hand on his.
“Couldn’t you just transfer out?” asked Dusty.
“With what I’d learned about Duke, I didn’t want to be anywhere in the same Army with him. Anyway, I don’t think he would have let me go in one piece.” Poor Mackenzie.
Some of the questions they asked about the Knights’ technology were very perceptive. They seemed to know a lot about the system already, seemed to be probing to see how much he was willing to reveal.
He told them everything. Classified, Top Secret, Maximum Secret—he let them all go.
The other Knights seemed to be standing in the darkness behind Wolf, staring at him with disapproval. He knew them all—their names, their faces, their voices, their habits—and their scorn burned him. But behind Angel stood her sister Cherry, the girl Duke had killed, and Duncan Mackenzie, their eyes pleading for mercy. The girl had no name, and Cherry no face—but somehow those three were more important to him than all the Knights put together.
There was one other presence in the darkness. Duke. He seemed to stand behind Thatcher. His stare made the hairs rise on the back of Thatcher’s neck.
“One last question,” said Dusty. “How can you kill a Knight in combat?”
Even after all the secrets he’d betrayed, this was the hardest. It took him a long time to form the words. “You have to shoot him in the head, and it has to be a surprise. If you can kill him before he can bite down, his system can’t save him.” In the darkness, the Knights shook their heads, turned, and walked away.
Wolf and Dusty looked at each other. Dusty nodded. Wolf said “All right. We’re going to take you to a safe house a few miles from here. We have another defector there. I hope that you and he together can give us a weapon we can use to overthrow the government. Any questions?”
“Can we get something to eat first? I’m starving.”
They hid Angel’s car under a tarp behind the gas station and all got into a van. They drove to a little mom-and-pop diner, where Wolf called the safe house from a pay phone. Thatcher ate a huge meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, biscuits, and two slices of apple pie à la mode. The conversation was pleasant and trivial.
It was 11:03 when they came to a farm: a house and a barn and a couple of outbuildings surrounding a dirt courtyard. Moths fluttered in the cone of mercury light coming from a fixture near the peak of the barn.
Dusty was driving, and Thatcher could see his brow furrow in the cold blue light. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Booter?”
“Probably in the barn,” said Wolf.
“Who’s Booter?” said Angel.
“The dog,” said Dusty. “He’s kind of our chief of security. Whenever a car comes by, he’s out here barking his head off.”
“He’s probably just asleep somewhere.”
“I don’t know.” Dusty stopped the van. “I’m inclined to be a little paranoid right now. I think I’d like to back off and reconnoiter.” He put the van into reverse.
Machine gun fire rang out of the darkness; Thatcher couldn’t see from where. Steam spurted from under the van’s hood, and the engine coughed and died.
“Shit!” said Wolf.
“I think we’re in trouble,” said Dusty.
Thatcher’s system was at eighty percent. “Give me the gun,” he said, meaning the rifle they’d brought with them from Angel’s car. “I can hold them down while you make a run for it. We’ll go out the back door.”
“Why should we trust you?” said Wolf.
“We can trust him,” said Angel. Dusty nodded. “Good luck,” said Angel, handing him the rifle and a spare clip of ammunition.
“I’ll go off to the left. Give me half a minute, then go right. Good luck.”
Thatcher checked the rifle over—safety off, seven rounds in the clip plus one in the chamber—then clambered over boxes and tarps to the back door. He eased the latch open, then quickly threw the door open and jumped out.
The van sat in a rutted driveway between fields of winter wheat, a sketch in silver and black in the mercury light from the farm and the beams of a full moon. Thatcher kept low, hurried into rustling wheat. He dropped to one knee and examined the barnyard through the rifle’s telescopic sight. Nothing moved. Finally he sighted on the light that illuminated the scene, shattered it with one shot.
There was an immediate response, shots flashing from the darkness in the vicinity of the barn. He ducked and ran, moving to the left, forcing his way through the rough rattling stalks.
Thatcher poked his head up above the wheat, eyes beginning to adapt to the moonlit dark. He saw a heavy figure—Dusty—emerge from the van and run into the wheat to his right. Then two more figures. But instead of running away, they headed toward the farm!
Wolf was nearly carrying Angel, who struggled to no effect. Thatcher cursed and raised his rifle, but their jerky movements and the darkness prevented a clear shot at the traitor Wolf. He hurried after them, but the van was closer to the barn than to him and they reached the barnyard before he did. They vanished into the black square of the open barn door. A moment later, gunfire flashed out of that square at him, and he ducked back into the field.
Thatcher considered his options. He could run, hide out in the fields, try to make his way to safety on foot. It was what he’d advised the others to do. But now the situation was different.
He scurried back to the shelter of the van. At least it would block some of the bullets. A few shots rang out as he emerged from the field, but as he reached the van he heard a voice on a bullhorn. “Hold your fire!” It was Duke! “Sergeant Thatcher, listen to me. We have your co-conspirators. We have your girlfriend. Surrender, and they will live.”
Faintly, he heard Angel protest: “I’m not his fucking girlfrien...” The sentence ended with the smack of hard plastic against flesh.
Thatcher panted against the van door for a moment, then poked his rifle out from behind the bumper. He put five shots into the barn doorway, was rewarded with screams and an answering hail of flashes. He ducked back, hearing a bullet slam into the van’s tire.
He leaned out again and fired two more shots, then pulled back and inserted the second clip. Deep breath, then he charged out from behind the van. He would take as many of them down as he could. Then he stopped short.
Duke was standing in the middle of the courtyard, plain as anything. His face was cool and pale in the cold moonlight, features sharp and unperturbed, though he held the struggling Angel to his chest with a pistol to her head. Even his fatigues were crisp.
“Let’s not drag this out,” he said, not shouting—speaking just loud enough to be heard. “It’s quite simple. Deactivate your system, throw down your weapon, and the woman lives. Otherwise, she dies.”
In response Thatcher raised his rifle, sighted between Duke’s eyes, and fired. But even as he squeezed the trigger Duke ducked out of the way. He tried again; same result. Even a head shot was no good in this situation, when Duke was ready for him and looking right at him.
Duke ducked down behind Angel, putting her head between him and Thatcher. “Nice try, Sergeant,” he said, panting a little. “But I’m losing patience.” His finger tightened on the trigger. “You have five seconds to surrender. Four. Three.”
“Don’t let him use me against you!” Angel shouted, and threw back her head into his nose. He ate the pain—did not rewind—but he was distracted for a moment.
Angel’s face filled the gunsight. Her eyes were hard, looking right at him. She knew that the head shot was the only way to kill a Knight. I’d give up my life to bring down the government, she’d said. “Do it!” she said through clenched teeth.
He couldn’t do it. He dropped the gun, held up his hands. “You win.”
“Excellent choice. Deactivate your system.”
He bit down on his tongue. “Done,” he lied.
“Come forward. Private Keene, bring the syringe.”
“No!” said Angel, and elbowed Duke hard in the ribs. His grip relaxed and she twisted, caught him in the groin with a heel.
“You little bitch.” Duke’s finger tightened on the trigger and Angel’s head exploded.
Thatcher growled, a fierce animal sound, as he bit down hard.
Rewind.
“You have five seconds to surrender. Four. Three.”
“Don’t let him use me against you!” Angel shouted, and threw back her head into his nose. Her face filled the gunsight. “Do it!”
Thatcher pulled the trigger. Watched as the bullet slammed into Angel’s face, and through it. Into Duke’s face behind hers. Into the brain behind that face.
Stopping that brain before it could rewind.
Thatcher ran as hard as he could toward the courtyard even as the two bodies buckled. There was a stunned pause, then bullets flashed from the barn toward him. One caught him in the shoulder—he ignored the pain and kept running. He reached Angel, scooped her up, held her tight against his chest, and bit down hard.
Rewind.
“You have five seconds to surrender. Four. Three.”
It hadn’t worked. Angel was still in Duke’s arms.
He had to kill her again.
“Do it!”
He did it. Again. Then he stayed where he was, turned and fired shot after shot into the barn door before those inside could react. Blinking away tears.
In the end, he killed enough of them that the CLU members in the barn could overpower the rest. He took two bullets doing it, but neither of them hurt him as much as the ones he’d fired into Angel’s head.
-o0o-
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Dusty said.
“I do have to,” Thatcher replied. “I owe it to Angel.”
He lay on a couch in the farmhouse’s living room. An ATP/glucose mixture dripped cold into his left arm, and a power cord was alligator-clipped to wires that emerged from a bandaged incision at the base of his neck. His blood seemed to be fizzing.
“We could really use you right here and now.”
“If this works, you won’t need me here and now. It’ll be a whole new world.” He turned to the defector, Dr. Collins. He was a former K Division scientist; Thatcher had been told that he’d been killed in a terrorist attack. Somehow he was not surprised to find him here. “How many seconds again?”
“Seven hundred million. That’ll put you in early April of 1978, give you six months to find Fessler and stop him.”
“Someone else might discover the same thing,” said Dusty, “and it’d be all the same.”
“Maybe,” said Collins. “But I’ve been all over the theory. Fessler’s discovery was a complete fluke.”
Dusty held out his hands, supplicating. “We don’t even know if a six-year-old brain can handle a twenty-eight-year-old mind! And even if it works, what can a kid do?”
“I was a tough kid.” Thatcher bit down, and the green digits appeared—digits only he could see. Seven hundred million seconds. Jesus. One more bite would activate the sequence. “Let’s do it.”
“Good luck.” Collins flipped a switch, and Thatcher’s blood felt like it was boiling.
He bit down, and it all vanished.