"Back off!" she snarled. Furiously thinking, she waved the keyboard; its cord stretched tight in her hand and would go no farther. "I don't believe that Ron Labane would approve of killing people, even misguided people. He's always preached doing things the legal way. Always!"
Balewitch, clearly annoyed, moved slowly toward her, her hands outstretched for the keyboard. "Things are different now, honey. You know that. Give me the—"
"How would Ron know the codes?" Ninel shouted. "How would he know anything about a place like this? He hates the automated factories. No way would he know them well enough to run one!"
Dog laughed. "She's got you there, Bale."
"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Balewitch said in disgust. "Labane is dead."
"No!" Ninel shouted.
"Yes, he is," Dog said, coming another step closer. "I know because we killed him. I was there."
Ninel's breath froze in her throat, choking her. Dog launched himself forward to grasp the keyboard and she swung it like a bat, hitting him in the face. He backed off and Balewitch laughed at him.
"Jesus Christ." She sneered. "You don't believe in doing anything the easy way, do you?" She pulled a pistol from her pocket, a silencer disfiguring its barrel.
Ninel gasped and backed away, holding the keyboard in front of her like a shield.
Balewitch snapped the fingers of her other hand. "Gimme,"
she said. "And you'd better hope you didn't break it."
Holding the keyboard more tightly, Ninel blinked at her. Did the woman think she was just going to hand it over? "No," she said, her voice small but steady. "I'm not going to help the people who killed Ron Labane."
With a snarl Dog started forward again, but Balewitch put her arm up like a bar. "I don't want that keyboard damaged," she said to him. Then she glared at Ninel. "If this Skynet wants to kill the human race, well, three cheers for Skynet. The human race is nothing but vermin for the most part, and the rest are too stupid to know they're even alive.
"Look what's been done to this planet! It was beautiful once; now it's shit! Just shit! Everywhere you look. Humanity has to go, or nothing will survive." She spread her hands. "So. Are you gonna help, or do we kill you?"
Her eyes wide, Ninel just stared at her, mouth open. "Y-you're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"
Dog's grin spread. "Yeah."
Balewitch shot him a look, then raised her gun. She tipped her head to the side like a shrug. "Well, we weren't going to right away. But…"
Ninel's eyes widened as John slowly rose behind her and she took a breath to scream. Something in her chest felt icy cold.
Then hot, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.
"Oh, good job, Bale. Right through the keyboard." Dog started forward.
"Couldn't let her scream," Balewitch muttered.
***
John felt the double vision vanish as he saw Ninel fall limp.
Again, he thought. Wendy, now her. Again.
The scream that bubbled out of his lips wasn't a giant no: that was in there, but most of it was raw rage and inconsolable grief, grief for an entire lifetime past and the one he saw stretching out ahead of him.
The knife tucked into his boot had a seven-inch blade; nothing fancy, just a sharp tapering steel wedge. His hand moved in a blurring arc; the woman who'd shot Ninel seemed to be turning in slow motion—unable to move more than a quarter of the way around before the blade bisected her kidney with a violence that punched the inside of his fist against the cloth of her jacket as it rammed home.
He moved with her, like a dancer—his left hand grasping her gun hand, turning her in a pirouette and throwing her forward at her companion. That one's eyes and mouth gaped in Os of surprise as he caught at the sprattling weight; the same motion pulled John's blade free. He flipped it to a reverse grip and punched it forward over the dying woman's shoulder, right into her friend's eye. Faster than the flicker of a frog's striking tongue, deep enough that the narrow shoulders at the hilt of the blade stuck on the bone of the socket.
"You're terminated, fucker," John wheezed, then ignored the falling mass. Neither of them were going to bother anyone, ever again.
Kneeling beside Ninel, he slowly reached toward her neck with two bloodstained fingers. No pulse. He hadn't expected there would be. He wiped his hand on his pants so he wouldn't stain her face and closed her eyes so that the whites no longer showed.
Then John took her in his arms—something in him sickening at the limpness of her body—and lifted her as he stood. He pushed his grief aside, putting himself outside the emotion.
Guess I'm not meant to have relationships, he thought. He opened the door and took her down to where the other casualties lay. This one they'd be leaving behind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
USS ROOSEVELT
So you traveled all the way from Alaska to Argentina on your own?" Captain Chu asked.
Sarah took a sip of her coffee, looking at him over the rim.
He'd invited her to dinner in the officers' mess in a not very subtle attempt to interrogate her. She didn't mind; if she'd been in his position, the interrogation would have taken place on that Argentine beach, not en route to Alaska.
"Yep," she said after a very long sip. "I have a Harley that we adapted to run on alcohol. It's not all that clean, but you get decent mileage."
"What's it like?" he asked.
"Meaning the world outside the Roosevelt?" she asked. He nodded.
A totally honest question, Sarah thought. Deserves an honest answer. "It's hell," she said. "I can't overstate that. Death everywhere—from the bombs, from disease, from marauders, starvation."
There'd been an old-folks home that would haunt her to her dying day.
"That bad?" he asked, flinching almost imperceptibly at the expression on her face.
"Worse. Rape, murder, you name it. Most people were completely unprepared to take care of themselves and there's always someone to take advantage of that. It's the ugliest thing you can imagine out there. And I didn't even go near the cities."
He closed his mouth and sat back, looking a bit pale. "How did you manage? I mean, a woman alone."
He didn't mean it as a put-down, she could tell. Sarah smiled, a curve of her lips that didn't reach her eyes, and he blinked. "I am prepared," she said. "I've been prepared for a long time. Most people, even the lowest, have some sense of self-preservation, and they can see that. Those that don't are better off dead."
"Ah-huh…" He looked at her for a moment, and she met his eyes. Then he nodded and went back to his dinner.
Sarah raised a brow. "No further questions?"
"Not at this time." He dabbed his lips with his napkin, then set it aside. "When we reach our destination I'll undoubtedly have more. But for now there's no point. We do indeed owe you a debt, both for getting us out of that harbor and for the food." He tipped his head. "And so, providing you with transport to Alaska might be considered fair barter. It doesn't mean we're throwing in with you."
She smiled, this time sincerely. "Understood." She knew they'd join the resistance. There was no other choice, really. And these were the kind of men who wanted to make a difference; they were a good match. Her smile turned to a grin. "You'll like my son."
TATILEK, ALASKA
Tatilek sprawled in weathered wooden buildings along one side of a narrow fiord, fir-clad mountains rising blue around it until they topped out in ragged snowpeaks. On the rare sunny days, those colors matched the waters; more commonly the sky was gray above, and gray green topped with foam, as it was today. The town was pretty much closed to outsiders unless they could somehow verify that they had legitimate business there.