Killswitch (18 page)

“Oh,
I
get sent to the doctor, but
he
…”

“He what?” Switchblade asked.

“Nothing.” Chase would have to talk this doctor into coming to Blue Sky Field. “Amos is the boss. But I can't walk all the way to Gagnon, and you can't carry me.”

“Transportation is on the way, thanks to Melody's code. Good thing you got all that stuff programmed into the underground before Sparky ran out on you.”

Mel rose up and headed for the steep trail that she and the others had cut through the dense underbrush. “Sparky. I have got to hear that story. But right now we need to get out of this ravine. It'll be harder than coming down. We'll be lucky to get out of here before the sun comes up.”

“Our ride is bringing a sling for Charlie. We'll pull him up,” Switchblade said. “But they only got room for him and two more. Michael and Joseph over there will have to hike back to Blue Sky Field.”

Chase had met Michael and he'd seen Joseph in the dining hall. He'd never spoken to him. “Tell them to come over here so I can thank them.”

“Hey, guys. Over here,” Switchblade yelled.

The men joined them, and Chase shook their hands. “Tell my mother I'm OK. Tell her I'll see her soon.” he told them. They both nodded.

“We're glad you're going to be all right, Chase,” Michael said.

“Thanks to you.” Chase looked to the other man. “Both of you.”

The two climbed up the hillside to wait for the vehicle that had been summoned by the coded instruction of the command center at Blue Sky Field. No exoself needed. Chase could make out their forms as they moved upward with their laserlights. Mel worked at the base of the trail, gathering some straps and machetes and stuffing them into a duffle bag.

Switchblade sat on the ground beside Chase. “Just so you know, game over. Robot gets the girl. I'm done.”

Chase smiled. “How gallant of you to bow out.”

“She loves you. Shoulda seen the look on her face when she realized I didn't bring you back with me. Then she got all irate, yelling about how you were sending her a message and she was going to find you. Didn't even care that Amos said a rescue mission wouldn't include her.”

Chase looked past the broken branches. “Got the girl, but lost the robot.”

“Don't sweat it. Could be you'll get it back.
Something
sent your location to Mel's computer. The two of you can figure this out.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Chase couldn't let these people suffer because of him. The Feds and the team at the Helgen were closing in. Not to mention Kerstin. And he had a bounty on his head. No way this would end well.

He had to turn himself in.

“So the systems I integrated into the computers at Blue Sky Field are functioning without me?” he asked Switchblade.

The man gave him a sideways stare. “Like you was sitting right there. Just the way Mel planned it. The underground is connected. And no government body on the planet has got a clue.”

“Amazing. My job is done.”

“You thinking about moving on, Charlie?”

Chase didn't know the answer. Only one of two places to go—back to the Helgen Institute or prison. But the people of the Underground Church wouldn't allow that. He leaned back and closed his eyes. An emptiness remained where the exoself had been, and the pain of it was almost as great as the physical toll of a laser wound and a broken leg. How could the exoself leave after it had seemed so determined to protect him?

“You know, Switch, I'm useless without Sparky. You ought to just leave me here.”

“Get over yourself,” Switchblade said. “And get some rest. Our ride should be here soon.”

29

Riding up the side of a cliff in a sling didn't require an exoself. What Chase needed was a tranquilizer. “Don't be afraid,” he told himself. He swayed below Switchblade, Michael, Joseph, and some guy named Shorty. The four of them tugged on the ropes that had Chase tied in a blanket. None of them seemed to hear his faint muttering.

“Don't be afraid.”

He wished he knew what time it was. He wished he could read the intel that must be filling some WR file about the almost capture and subsequent loss of Chase Sterling. He wished he had night vision and super hearing and the strength to pull
himself
out of this predicament.

An animal—he wasn't sure what sort—let out a squeal and then rustled away from the spot right next to Chase's head. Maybe it was best that he couldn't see in the dark right now.

“You doing OK, boss?” Mel waited at the top with a VPad. Chase had another one strapped to his chest close enough for him to speak into it.

“Mel, what time is it?”

“Quarter ‘til four.”

Couple of hours until daylight. They'd never make it to Gagnon before then. What kind of vehicle waited above? Something inconspicuous, he hoped. Pain crawled up his leg. His head throbbed, along with his shoulder. His processors felt nothing. That was the cruelest wound of all.

“Almost up, Charlie.”

The voices at the top of the ridge became clearer. Chase could make out the figures of the four men tugging the ropes. Mel seemed to be on her knees, leaning over the edge, watching him.

At last he reached the top. Mel practically fell on him and kissed his head. She gave a swift and quiet voice to a prayer. The men released Chase from the sling and moved him to the back of—

“A hearse? Seriously?” Chase lifted his head to examine the windowless rear compartment of the old car as his would-be pallbearers lifted him inside.

“Compliments of the Addams family,” the guy named Shorty said with a laugh. “That's an old TV show.”

“I know all about old TV shows,” Chase said. “But I've never in my life seen a car like this on the road. Don't you attract attention driving this old thing?”

“Nah. I really am an undertaker. I serve the downtrodden. Locals know me. Feds know me. They think I'm doing them a favor by burying the homeless free of charge. They don't know I'm hauling goods for the Underground Church.” He laughed again. “And they sure don't know what I'm hauling tonight.”

Chase lay his head down on a soft pillow and Mel covered him with a blanket. She settled in beside him, and Switchblade pushed the door of the carriage to eternity shut. He'd ride up front with Shorty. The two men from Blue Sky Field would head home with a message for Chase's mother and for the rest of people waiting there. The ones depending on a transhuman.

“I'll be of no use to you at Blue Sky Field now. I don't want to let anybody down.”

“Boss, nobody will be let down. I talked to Amos and he told everybody you're going to be all right. And they're all relieved. You've done so much for us. Now it's our turn to help
you
.”

“It's funny, Mel. At first I wanted to be free of the stuff they put in me. Then I realized how important it was. Now I want it back. It's who I am. I'm a transhuman.”

Mel's worried expression was all Chase got in response to the statement he never thought he'd make. He couldn't hold his eyes open. The old car's engine roared, unlike a modern electric vehicle. The sound lulled him into a relaxed state, but his mind, alone in its search for answers, reached for any crumb of information.

Everything had been swept away. Dreamless sleep was all that was left.

He didn't know how long he'd been out when he opened his eyes, still in the back of the hearse. The absence of a motor running and the voices of strangers meant they must have arrived at their destination. The back of the big car let in sunlight. They were in the open. In the daylight.

“Mel?”

She poked her head in. “Right here, boss. We're in Gagnon. This town is even deader than Herouxville. We'll be moving you to the old school.” She stepped away with a VPad to her ear.

Chase lay back and studied the ceiling of the hearse. Some words were scratched there by a previous living passenger. He'd learn to recognize a Bible verse when he saw one. He read it out loud, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? Psalm fifty-six, three and four.”

The number of this Psalm wasn't a code—they'd all fit within the number of processors he had—thirty-three.

“Anyway, the code is worthless now.” He read the last part. “What can mortal man do? He can steal the insides out of an immortal man. That's what he can do.”

But Chase knew he wasn't immortal. He was just a man who could get shot and broken. And unplugged. Isn't that what he wanted? To just be a man? He read the verse again.

Touching the words above his head, he thought of the dream. The voice. “Don't be afraid. But when I
am
afraid…I should trust?” He dropped his hand to brown flannel and then pulled the blanket tight to his chin. “Somebody shut that hatch. I'm cold.”

A young man peered into the opening. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Sterling? I'm sorry it's taking so long. They're bringing a gurney to move you.”

“I could use some water. And some clean clothes. And a lab at a cyber-medical facility.”

The man lifted himself into the hearse and handed Chase a bottle of water. “Clean clothes at the clinic—the barely stocked clinic—which is as close as we can get you to any kind of medical facility, cyber or otherwise.”

“Yeah. I'm grateful you're letting me in at all.”

“You kidding? The place is buzzing. You're a hero.”

“Look, I'm not who I used to be, and you don't have to call me Mr. Sterling. The host of
Change Your Life
is a has-been.”

“Host of…? No, man, we don't care about that. You got us all situated with the computers. You and Miss Melody. Now we can communicate. You know what a big deal that is?”

“Glad I could help. Wish I could do more.”

Chase lifted his head to see Mel and Switchblade, along with a few others, rolling a gurney with a squeaky wheel up to the open end of the hearse. The young man moved out of the way. Chase winced as the team of mock med-techs moved him onto the contraption. They pushed him in the daylight to an old building.

Cameras positioned above the poorly maintained road had been shot out. Or busted with rocks. A few people loitered at the entrance to a run-down shop of some kind. They didn't seem to take any interest in what the believers were up to today. Must be a regular event to see them wheeling a patient into the abandoned schoolhouse. Maybe this doctor was the only medicine-man around.

The man in question met Chase at the entrance. Mel made the introductions.

“Chase, this is Dr. John.”

Chase held out his hand. He hadn't noticed until then that he was trembling, either from cold or from the shock of the whole experience. Or both. He shook the man's outstretched hand.

“I'm sorry to make you wait in the cold,” the doctor said. “We're beyond over-crowded here. But we've managed to arrange a private spot for you to rest after I set the break and check the wounded shoulder.”

“No need to go to all that trouble,” Chase told him.

“Are you in pain anywhere other than your leg and shoulder?”

“Head. Back. I don't know how many times the truck flipped, but I was free falling. I hurt all over.”

Chase rolled past an assembly of smiling, giggling teenage girls. He gave them a sideways grin. Other people lined the hallway. This place was not hidden in a cave. Seemed like the whole town was in on the secret. The Underground Church was alive and well in Gagnon, and everybody knew it.

When the gurney stopped, Chase was in a small area that seemed like any other medical examination cubicle. At least one from decades past. Not too much in the way of technology. This doctor wouldn't be reinstalling what was taken from Chase. The exoself was probably back in the lab at the Helgen. A visible entity in the center of a different kind of exam room. Scientists would be poking at it, pulling code, trying to get it to give up Chase's location, which the Feds had been too inept to hold on to.

But the exoself would not respond because it no longer knew the whereabouts of its former host.

“Dr. John—is that your first name or your last name?”

“Yep. Lots of people in the underground have new names. Mine is John. Just John.”

“Got it,” Chase said. “I don't guess you know anything about techno-medical advancements.”

“Not much, but it's fascinating. I hear Melody's an A.I. expert.”

Chase lifted his brow. “Yeah. She is.” He pushed up on his elbows. “Could the two of you—”

“I know you lost whatever it was you had, Chase. And I'm sorry. I don't have the equipment or the know-how to get you plugged back in. And Melody's a programmer—she doesn't have any medical training.”

“Right. She might be able to turn a machine into a person, but not a person into a machine.”

The doctor shook his head. “I hope she wouldn't try either.”

Chase lay back and the doctor administered a shot to relax him. A mild concussion and too many contusions to count were added to the list of injuries. If there had been a list. The doctor didn't write anything down or use a voice recorder. No nurse penned notes. But Mel joined them and rubbed Chase's head. He blinked at her.

“Dr. John wants you to stay awake for this. Well, almost awake.” She lifted his limp hand and let it fall.

“You mean while he sets the break?”

The doctor leaned over Chase. “Anesthesia is hard to come by. I'll save it for the next appendectomy. And I don't know enough about your technology. Putting you under might have an adverse effect.”

“On what? My technology is useless.” Chase snickered. “They put me under at the Helgen. More than once.”

“But they knew what they were doing. I'm just a general surgeon whose license expired twenty years ago.” He took hold of Chase's leg.