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But despite all those impossible strides, she felt one thing very clearly: fear. Because while they’d been suffering in Jane’s personal killing jars out here in the desert, the meeting of the Fountain Group—their opportunity to take the brains of the beast—that had happened and passed without incident.
And they didn’t even have names to track.
“We’re boned,” she whispered, echoing Joe from before, and closed her eyes as Riley turned the Challenger on the main highway, heading east. The only thing west was Mexico, but Bryn knew that if she asked, Riley wouldn’t have any sort of destination in mind except not here. No point in even asking about directions until they reached some point where a decision could be made . . . which, from El Paso, would be two hundred miles at least.
They searched the car, and came up with an interesting assortment of goodies—concealed panels in the doors yielded up a couple of poorly maintained handguns and a stack of stained bills, mostly twenties and fifties. When they stopped for gas, they found the trunk was filled with stained empty cups and fast-food bags . . . but underneath, at least ten prepaid cell phones, still in the packaging.
Bryn took one out and typed in the number that they’d used to reach Manny, before—before everything had gone to hell. “Think he’s still answering?” she asked.
“I think that when we didn’t come back in Barrow, he folded up the tents and vanished, along with everybody else on that plane,” Patrick said. “He’d have considered us dead. He’d have been perfectly right to do it. ”
She couldn’t argue with that, but something was bothering her—something much bigger. “Patrick . . . he knows how big this is, better than any of us. He knows the risks, if the Fountain Group goes unchecked. They’ll take over strategic assets, like the military, or the government itself. Once they do that, it’s over for the rest of us. They want to live forever—them, and their handpicked best people. Sooner or later, they’ll own us. All of us. What do you think Manny would do about that?”
“He’s got the cure,” Patrick said, watching the numbers roll by on the pump as the Challenger drank down the fuel. “He’ll concentrate on taking it apart down to the molecules, until he understands everything about how it works. And then he’ll put it back together again, synthesize it, and use it. ”
“He’ll act. ”
“Yes,” Patrick said. “He’ll do it because it needs to be done. ” He frowned, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know how long we were—in there. Do you?”
“Long enough,” she said. “Long enough for my nanites to mature and migrate. ” Which made her think, suddenly, about Riley . . . who hadn’t shown any signs of the same impulse, though they were on the same schedule—had to be, since Riley’s bite had infected her. “You’re not—?”
The other woman didn’t look up from where she was loading trash
from the Challenger’s trunk into the pump-side bin. “Jane used them,” she said. “Yesterday. She brought me one of her people. ”
“And you upgraded him?” Patrick said. It sounded like an accusation, though he probably didn’t mean it that way.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she snapped back. “Ask your girlfriend. Doesn’t matter. He was—she doesn’t like to share. She had him put down. ”
“Put down?” Bryn said, and went very still. “What do you mean, put down?”
“We can still die, Bryn. Figure it out. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t easy to do, but with enough ingenuity and cruelty you can do anything. ” When Bryn continued to stare at her, Riley looked away. “Acid. She dissolved him. Trust me, you don’t want to know the details. ”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she could,” Patrick said. “And because she wanted to be sure she could destroy an upgrade if she needed to do so. Research and fun: her favorite combination. I’m sorry, Riley. She found ways to hurt all of us, one way or another. That was her specialty. ”
Riley nodded. “At least I’m not contagious now for another thirty days. Neither is Bryn. ”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it another thirty days,” Patrick said. He sounded calm, and sure, and nodded to Bryn. “Call Manny. Maybe he’ll pick up. We can hope he will. ”
But Manny didn’t pick up. The phone rang, and rang, and rang, and then a distorted recorded message reported the number had been disconnected.
Manny was gone, along with Pansy, and Liam, and Annie. They’d even taken her dog.
It was ridiculous, after all she’d been through, to want to burst into tears, but . . . suddenly, that last little piece of normality being chipped away seemed to take the last solid ground from under her feet, and Bryn had to brace herself against the Challenger’s sleek fender, just to stay upright. She gently folded the phone and put it in the pocket of her fatigues.
Patrick was watching her. She couldn’t afford to break down now; she couldn’t let him down. The four of them—they might be all they had, now. She would not be the weak link.
So she simply shook her head. He didn’t seem surprised. Just grim.
Fueling finished, he took a trip to the station’s probably horrible restroom; Bryn used one of the smaller bills in their drug dealer’s bankroll to supply them all with water and high-protein snacks, mainly for her, Riley, and Joe. She didn’t know how the other two felt, but her stomach was aching with need, and Riley was probably just as starved.
After that, it was more than a hundred miles across open desert before any significant towns, broken by occasional twisted eruptions of ancient rocks and the twisted, spiked growths of Joshua trees and mesquite. Green balls of desert sage growing out of mounds of pale sand. Rotting shacks. A cloudless, bone-dry, unforgiving sky.
And nothing ahead.
They didn’t talk much. She offered a phone to Joe to call his family, but he refused; Riley wanted one to call her superiors in the FBI, but that was overruled fast. “Yeah, the last time you checked in with them, they had you pull a gun on me, and then they ratted us out to Jane,” Joe said. “FBI means Fucking Bastard Informants, in my book. No phone for you. ”
