Those three words scrolled up the screens almost too fast to be read, and then accelerated until they became a blur. Finally, the speed was so fast that the screens flared with blinding white light.
And then darkness again.
“Bug…?” whispered Auntie. “What the —?”
Instantly, fragments of code flashed onto the screen. Binary and other forms. Old computer languages and exotic forms the technicians had never seen before. Bug recognized some of it, or thought he did, as it flashed there and was gone.
“Bug!” snapped Auntie. “Do we have to shut MindReader down?” There was panic in her voice.
“No,” he said. “That’s not MindReader. It’s not quantum computer language.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
“It’s Good Sister,” said Bug, getting it now. Finally understanding, feeling the pieces of this part of the puzzle all snap together. “Good Sister is a computer.”
The scrolling stopped with the abruptness of a slap.
Nothing.
And then…
I am awake.
I am alive.
I am in hell.
Save me.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN
It all went to hell right then and there.
Ram Acharya lunged at me, slashing with his fingernails and trying, all at once, to grab, tear, and bite. I jerked sideways and slap-parried his reaching hands and then knocked him away with a flat-footed kick to the hip. He crashed into two other scientists. They turned on each other, snarling and biting.
Like dogs.
God Almighty.
I heard Rudy yell and Ghost begin barking furiously, and I whipped around to see them retreating into a corner. Rudy held a metal folding chair, and Ghost was lunging in to snap at fingers and groins. Panic flared in my chest. Not for Ghost, because he had all his rabies shots, but for Rudy. Inoculations wouldn’t save him. It wouldn’t save any of us.
Within seconds the place had turned into a killing floor. Every scientist in the tent had turned savage. Every single one. The very specific people who were most likely to help us understand what was happening. The brilliant minds who could maybe save the world from the plan cooked up by Zephyr Bain and Nicodemus.
Our actual last, best hope.
Now they were tearing one another apart as the disease hidden in their blood and tissues was triggered by nanites implanted in them. I understood now why Major Schellinger had been smiling. She knew this was going to happen. She was in the pocket of Zephyr Bain. An employee or an ally. Or whatever. That didn’t matter anymore, because I realized that this had all been a nicely baited trap. My intention of coming to the DARPA camp had been in the MindReader data files before Bug took the old system offline. The importance of Dr. Acharya and these other men and women had been crucial. How many times had I communicated with Church or Auntie that I was coming out here?
Now here I was.
With no combat team. With Rudy, who wasn’t a soldier.
Me and Ghost.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
That was my thought as the wave of rabid killers swarmed toward me.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
The pigeon launched itself from the edge of the roof as soon as the ambulance came wailing toward the emergency-room entrance. The bird circled once and then swooped low, racing the truck, passing it, flying straight at the heavy reinforced-glass doors.
The security guard looked up as the bird flew past him. He had time to say one word.
“Jesus!”
And then the bird struck the glass.
The explosion turned the doors into whirlwinds of glittering splinters that tore the guard to rags and slashed at the people crowding the waiting room.
A moment later the heavy ambulance smashed through the fiery wreckage, turned, skidded sideways, and crunched against the nurse’s station, driving it back against the wall, killing two nurses, and crushing the legs of another. Screams of pain and fear filled the air, rising to shocking clarity as the echoes of blast and crash dwindled.
Then the rear door of the ambulance opened and men poured out. Six of them, dressed for combat and carrying assault rifles. And something leaped out with them. It ran on four legs, but its hide gleamed with a metallic sheen. It moved with oiled speed, first racing to catch up with the men and then outpacing them. The men followed it into a stairwell and up three flights, and when they burst out onto the floor the men opened fire.
So did the WarDog. Heavy-caliber rounds tore through everything and everyone in the hall. A female doctor heard the commotion and leaned out of Lefty Ledger’s room and was instantly punched back against the doorframe, her lab coat puffing and popping as the rounds chopped into her.
Outside, the driver and two other soldiers guarded the truck and listened to the music of slaughter echoing from inside.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN
The Junkyard made it all the way to the front doors of the house before continuous gunfire ripped away enough of the tough rubber to send the big RV skidding on bare wheels. Bullets continued to hammer the hull, but the chain guns were on continuous feed and the barrel turned, guided by sensors, to find sources of active gunfire and responding with a belt-fed barrage. Shrubs and trees disintegrated into storm clouds of shredded leaf and bark and gooey sap, and, in the midst of that storm, scarecrow shapes danced, weapons falling from their hands, Kevlar body armor made futile by armor-piercing rounds.
“Go, go go!” yelled Top as he kicked open the back door. He led the charge, with Cole behind him and Bunny guarding their backs with a drum-fed AA-12 shotgun. Bunny slammed the door shut to keep Lydia Rose safe inside the armored hulk of the Junkyard, and she kept up covering fire with the powerful Bushmaster autocannons. The guards at the Bain estate had been prepared, but not for all-out war.
Or so Top and Bunny thought.
A siren began wailing atop the house, and the guards stopped firing and fled. They ran for the walls and began to scramble up. Fleeing in absolute panic.
“Uh-oh,” said Bunny. “That can’t be good.”
It wasn’t.
There was a sound that wasn’t a roar. Not exactly. It was too unnatural for that, too mechanical. It was a kind of harsh blare of squelch, as if something was howling with a computer voice instead of an animal throat. And then sections of the lawn snapped upward on stiff steel springs, revealing them to be trapdoors over hidden compartments. And from each of these holes sprang gleaming machines. They had no fur and no teeth, and their eyes burned with intense red. Gun barrels rose from their backs and flanks.
“Jesus Christ…” breathed Cole, stumbling backward as the WarDogs began stalking forward. Six of them. Huge and deadly.
The howl of feedback came again from the left, and more of the WarDogs emerged. Another four.
And four more from the right side of the house.
Fourteen kill robots, armed and armored.
Top Sims yelled, “Run!”
He, Bunny, and Cole scattered.
The pack of WarDogs roared and gave chase.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN