The screens show the last group of droids somewhere around the curve of the building, how far or near she cannot tell. She has no landmarks to go by; she only knows they are somewhere on the long way around between her position and the still smoking crater in the hall. Presumably they know the first party has failed. Presumably they also know she is wounded and running low on ammunition.

Running low on strategy. Running low on strength. She bends to examine the hole in her leg a second time. A thin stream of blood pulses from it, scarlet, bright with new oxygen. She swears softly. The bullet must have nicked the artery. She must have torn it open when she dived for the floor. She unwinds her bandana from her neck and cinches it as tightly as she can over the hole in her jeans. Pressure will help. Temporarily, anyway.

But then, everything is temporary now.

I wonder, she thinks idly as she checks her magazines once again. I wonder if it’s true that sometimes we get to go back in time. Think I’d like something Pre-Columbian next go-round if we do. Cahokia, maybe. Mound-Builders—Kirsten would like that. Not sure the future world is anything I want to be born into.

Should have asked Wa Uspewikakiyape when I had the chance.

Should have it now soon enough.

A flicker of movement on one of the monitors catches her eye. The droids are moving.

They come in a rush this time. Koda hears them before she sees them, their feet drumming in perfect, mechanical unison. If she stays in here, she will be trapped. It will only take one droid, one gun. And then the way into Westerhaus’ office will lie open to them.

She slips out of the room and behind the door again. Its armor will give some little protection, for some little time. She braces the AK against the edge of the panel, waiting only for the contingent to come into sight. The thunder of running feet stops somewhere just around the curve. Then nothing. Silence. The quiet stretches on and on, until she begins to wonder if the grenade blast has partially deafened her. She could go back and check the monitors. They might have split again, be coming at her from both directions again.

But that’s what they want her to do. It would give them a clear shot at her.

One. All it would take.

She waits, while the blood trickles down her leg and arm, while her muscles stiffen. Waits.

Bastards. Goddam game of nerves.

Won’t break. Can’t.

A single droid steps into the corridor, in clear sight. She fires just as an object leaves its hand, arching up in a perfect parabola to clear the top of the door and come straight down on her, bursting into flame as it descends. She throws herself against the wall, but it rakes against her arm, spreading flame down her sleeve and across the covering of her Kevlar vest. Rolling, she smothers the fire that licks at her shirt and down the leg of her jeans, not even feeling the heat as she kicks the incendiary away from her and back out into the hall. It burns sullenly on the tiles, black smoke billowing up to choke her. She glances down to check the damage. The ruins of her sleeve hang limply from her wrist. The skin beneath has already begun to blister. Worse, the vest now dangles by a single strap, its armored plates slipping loose beneath the cloth. Useless. She shrugs out of it, leaving it where it lies. No time, no way, to get another.

She snatches up her rifle again and waits.

They come in a rush this time, rounding the curve of the hallway in a mass. The AK jars against her shoulder as she sprays the rounds across their line, shaking her bones one against another, sending a chill trickle of blood down across her chest. Another incendiary plummets down over the door, striking its edge and falling wide to spill flame across the floor behind her. Their return fire clangs against the sheet steel of the door, a round breaking through the lexan window above and showering her with a myriad dull-edged fragments. One droid breaks wide from the mass and dashes toward her position, keeping to the far wall. She puts a spurt of rounds through its head, and it tumbles down on the sputtering fire bomb, its uniform bursting into flame. Oh no you don’t. Bastard. You want by me, gotta kill me first.

But the rest come on undeterred, so close now she can see the colored rings of their optical sensors. If she does not move, she will be trapped against the wall as surely as she would have been in the guard post.

A high scream like a hawk’s rips out of her throat, as she stands and swings around the edge of the door, raking the enemy line with fire. Two stumble and fall, but the rest come inexorably on. Something slams into her body at the level of her right hipbone, sending her staggering back a step as she empties one magazine and slings the second gun around into her hands, its frame juddering against her palm as she jerks the trigger back and holds it. Searing heat strikes through her left shoulder, and her arm suddenly goes slack, the muzzle of her gun dropping. She props it against her side, never breaking the rhythm of her fire. Another droid falls. Another.

Her gun falls silent. No more bullets.

A hail of automatic fire bursts from in front of her. Pain rakes across her body, the claws of some great beast slashing her from hip to shoulder. Blood soaks the front of her shirt, a red rain that splashes against the floor. A shadow passes over her eyes, clears, returns. Sounds take on an abnormal clarity. She hears the clatter of her rifle as it hits the floor, bouncing end for end. And she hears the rattle of a grenade as it rolls across the tiles to bump against her foot.

She cannot breathe. Her ribs have become a vise pressing down on her lungs, squeezing the life from her. The iron taste of blood is on her tongue, welling up from somewhere deep in her body. With exquisite slowness, exquisite precision, she reaches down, grasps the grenade, and aims it at the line of droids. A roar like the voice of a waterfall, the rage of a thousand thunders rolls over her, and she stumbles backward against the door of Westerhaus’ office. It gives way behind her, and she tumbles into the abyss.

Adam turns suddenly toward the door, horror on his face. Kirsten turns to look as Koda tumbles through and falls across the threshhold, her body bloodstained from neck to thigh, a thin runnel of scarlet at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes stare upward at nothing, pupils fixed, lifeless.

CHAPTER SIXTY THREE

KIRSTEN FEELS HER own mouth go dry as old cotton. A wave of dizziness passes over her; darkness steals her sight. Her breath leaves her lungs in what must be a scream, but she cannot hear it, cannot think. Her whole world has narrowed to the long body sprawled on the floor. Somehow her legs, gone all to water, carry her the two steps necessary, and she falls on her knees beside her lover. “Sweetheart?” she calls softly, laying her hand on one broad, too-still shoulder. Blood. So much blood. “Koda? Sweetheart? It’s okay now. You’re okay. You’re safe. It’s okay.” Seeing the tiny runnel of blood from Dakota’s lips, Kirsten rips the sleeve from her shirt and gently dabs it away, deliberately ignoring the fact that her lover’s chill skin has the consistency of rubber and not hearing—deliberately again—the sound of Dakota’s bottom lip as it springs back against her teeth with a soft ‘plop’. “You always hate being dirty, don’tcha,” Kirsten says with an over-bright smile. “But that’s ok. I’m sure there are showers around here somewhere. Right Adam?”

Unable to meet Kirsten’s eyes, Adam looks down, then turns to the remains of the door. The view of the hallway is like looking into Armageddon. The sprinklers, though keeping, for the moment, the fire from spreading, are doing nothing to dampen its anger. As he watches, a large chunk of melted ceiling tile falls onto the floor with a great clatter. Bits and pieces of androids lay scattered everywhere, like the playground toys of children just called home for dinner. Dakota has indeed brought them time. How much, he can’t begin to fathom, but every second counts now. With a soft grunt, he picks up the crumpled door and positions it best he can across the frame, pushing with all his might. The metal is hot to the touch. In some places, it smokes, but he ignores the pain and continues to fit the door back where it belongs, hoping that this final barrier will, somehow, hold.

When he turns back, Kirsten has gathered Dakota in her arms. The taller woman’s head lolls lifelessly back until it lies almost between her shoulder blades. Without a change in her expression, Kirsten simply gathers her lover’s head and moves it forward so that it lies against her shoulder. “It’s okay, my love,” she croons into an unhearing ear. “Everything’s okay now. It is. You’ll see.”

Gathering all of his courage, Adam crosses the short distance between them and lays a gentle hand on Kirsten’s shoulder. “Doctor King.”

“Leave me alone!” Kirsten growls, not looking up as her hand continues to mindlessly stroke the mass of thick, black, blood-soaked hair.

“Please, Doctor.”

“Just go away!!”

“I can’t. We need to finish this.”

“It can wait,” Kirsten replies in a soft, gentle voice. “Until Dakota’s well again. Right, sweetheart? That’s the important thing. Getting you well. The most important thing.”

“Doctor King, please. I’ll keep watch over her, I promise you. You need to finish this now, before there’s no time left!”

“Go you think I give a shit about that?!?” she snarls, teeth bared like a predator ready to fight.

“Don’t you think she would?” Adam asks, gesturing to the woman in Kirsten’s arms.

For a moment, just a moment, sanity returns to Kirsten’s eyes, and Adam finds himself totally unprepared for the blast of unshielded emotion directed his way. Anger, grief, horror, despair. It’s all there, mixed together with a hundred other emotions he can’t even begin to identify. “Please, Doctor. The world needs you.”

“Fuck. The. World. Fuck humanity. Fuck the androids. Fuck Peter fucking Westerhaus, and fuck you too.”

With a soft sigh, Adam releases his grip on Kirsten’s shoulder and takes a step back. “You know,” he comments quietly, in an offhand manner, “she was an incredibly brave woman. Who gave everything to make sure that you had this one chance.” His voice firms, becoming almost harsh as he stares at the bowed back of Kirsten’s head. “Make sure you take it, Doctor King.”

Kirsten can feel the anger seethe through her, like a runaway express train headed to nowhere. Part of her aches to grab hold, to jump on and ride it through to its inevitable end; anything to rid her of this numb, dreaming feel of unreality and utter emptiness. Another part of her, however, knows that if she gives in, she will shatter, sure as glass shatters when it falls to the floor.

Very deliberately, she relaxes the arm holding her lover to her body and uses the other to stroke the bloody bangs from her pale, waxen face. “Wait for me,” she whispers, before laying Dakota’s body on the ground and carefully arranging her limbs into a pose that looks as if she is merely sleeping. With a half sob that she cuts off savagely, she leans forward and places a kiss on chill lips. “I’ll be with you soon.”

*

The impact as her body hits the floor jars along her bones, but somehow, strangely, its solidity does not break her fall. She plunges through it into the void, an infinity of night that spins about her as she tumbles through it like a dark comet, all its light and glory spent. Here and there the blackness thins, and she glimpses distant points of light that may be stars, glowing wisps like nebulae, the final blaze of dying suns. Wind beats at her as she falls, stripping her sight from her, scouring her skin. Voices ride on its current, strange whispers that seem half-familiar, half-alien. She strains to hear, but the wind drowns them, all but fragments. Threaded in among the voices, high, wild laughter skims along its current, echoing against the walls of night that close in about her.

“. . .replaced me, knew you would . . ..”

“. . .bright for a prairie nigger, but still . ..

“. . .left me to die . . ..”

“. . .I said, your Christian name, girl . . ..”

“. . .just need a man, bitch . . ..”

“. . .could have saved hm if you’d tried . . ..”

“. . .couldn’t protect her. . .dead . . .dead. . .”

“. . .all dead, all dead . . ..”

“. . .your fault. . ..

“. . .your fault your fault YOUR faultfaultfaultfault. . ..”

The wind batters at her like breaking waves, slamming her as she begins to spin on the axis of her spine. Except that she has no spine, has no bones, no flesh, no skin. Under the incessant assault, she feels herself begin to fragment. She tries to draw in upon herself, reflexing into a knot with knees drawn up and arms crossed over her breast. But her muscles do not answer her, do not exist. A part of her tears away to go spinning back the way she has come, whirling down the spiral path that leads toward earth, back toward life. A part of her consciousness clings to it as it bursts free of the darkness to hover over the sprawl of her body, and she regards it curiously. Blood stains it from thigh to neck, pools on the floor around it, begins to grow viscous at the edges of its flow. At the desk not far away, Kirsten sits before a computer screen, face pale as her hair, mouth a thin line of control. Her fingers fly over the keyboard. Her concentration armors her, but beyond it lies a welter of pain raw as stripped flesh. It calls to her, calls her name.