Silver Eyes (21 page)

“I will.”

Anaximander didn't wait a second longer. He raised his voice to a shout. “Sir, it's Anaximander.” He pulled himself around the corner, leaving me to kick off after him and follow.

By the time I got there, Anaximander had already expertly shot the remaining robot. It tipped over backward and began a slow spin.

“What did you do that for?” Behind his transparent faceplate, Eddy looked put out.

“The Spacers have a device that disrupts their programming,” Anaximander lied. His Augments gave him a definite advantage when it came to keeping a straight face. “My robots both malfunctioned and started firing wildly. They're now in the hands of the enemy. We need to abandon the mission.”

“No. I'm too close.” Eddy noticed me. “What's she doing here?”

“I tricked the terrorists into thinking I was one of them and talked them into sending me along with Timothy. He and President Castellan are being held back this way.” I pointed.

“My, my, you have been busy.” Eddy sounded paternally proud, as if I were a loyal dog who had performed some especially clever trick and now deserved a doggie biscuit.

“Come on,” I said. “The Spacers might get nervous and kill the hostages.”

Eddy hesitated, then smiled. “You first.”

Was he suspicious? I couldn't tell.

My skin crawled at the thought of turning my back to him. Even though both Anaximander and I were free from the slavery of our chips, I was still afraid of Eddy. I told myself firmly that Eddy was no more dangerous than any other armed man— and probably a much poorer marksman—and started back around the corner to where Mike and Rianne waited in ambush.

At that point everything was still going well, but Eddy paused, one hand gripping a handhold, and looked at Anaximander, who had been staring at him expressionlessly. “Anaximander, I congratulate you on your training. It seems the student has surpassed the master.” And he lifted his visor so he could pull the black butterfly token out from under his armor, taunting Anaximander, as it had always been safe for him to do in the past.

Anaximander snapped. He lunged forward, slamming Eddy into the tunnel wall. He ripped Eddy's gun away before Eddy could do more than
blink. “You killed Francine!” He tore his wife's heart off Eddy's neck.

I threw myself onto Anaximander's back, but all I could do was float with him in zero-G. Anaximander ignored me and started pounding on Eddy, concentrating his blows on Eddy's unprotected face. “Help me!” I called to Mike.

“Do I have to?” Mike asked, but he braced his feet on the wall and pulled on Anaximander's waist while I pulled on Eddy. Even working together, the two of us couldn't budge them an inch. Anaximander's fists continued to fall, blackening one of Eddy's eyes and bloodying his nose. Eddy screamed and tried feebly to shield his face.

Anaximander bared his teeth in a primal smile, and behind him, Rianne echoed the expression. For the first time, I saw a father-daughter resemblance.

“You made me stand there and watch her die.” Anaximander
started to unscrew Eddy's helmet. “Now it's your turn to die.”

“No. We need him to find the embezzled millions, remember? Francine would want the money to help the Spacers,” I said.

My words penetrated. Breathing hard, Anaximander slowly released his victim. Eddy curled up in a ball. Anaximander loomed in front of him, menace exuding from every pore, Eddy's obscene necklace still clenched in his fist.

A glint of gold caught my eye, and I saw a broken necklace floating by one of the bulkheads. The more delicate gold chain must have been torn off Eddy's neck with the butterfly token.

On the chain floated a tiny golden angel.

Fear goose-stepped down my back. Eddy must
have taken the pendant the last time I'd seen him, when he'd asked if Timothy was violent.

Why couldn't I remember his taking it? Mike had restored the memories that had been blanked out by my Loyalty Induction. The pendant had disappeared afterward.

I realized then why I was so afraid of Eddy, and I started to move, but it was too late.

“Thanks for saving my life, Angel,” Eddy croaked.
“Code fourteen.”

I went rigid.

The others didn't immediately understand what had happened.

“My Loyalty chip has been removed,” Anaximander sneered. “The override code isn't going to help you now.” He punched Eddy again.

But my chip hadn't been removed, only put in Passive mode. The override coded to Eddy's voice reactivated it. Helplessly, I froze in place, awaiting instructions.

“Kill them,” Eddy gasped, clutching his nose. “Protect me.”

T
HE OVERRIDE WAS FIVE TIMES
worse than the Loyalty chip's regular mode. It left my mind intact and aware but gave complete command of my body to Eddy.

If I'd had a gun, I would have shot them all—
bang, bang, bang.
Anaximander first, because he had threatened Eddy, then Mike, then Rianne.

Fortunately, Eddy's last command had been, “Protect me,” so it took priority over “Kill them.”

Eddy's blastgun was drifting up against a notch in the tunnel. I kicked up to the ceiling and had already snagged the gun by the time Mike figured out what was happening.

“She's under his control!” Mike yelled.

While I somersaulted back down in front of Eddy like a tigress defending its cubs, Anaximander pulled Rianne back around the corner.

Mike hesitated a moment longer. “Fight it, Angel!”

I fired off a burst, but my body was still moving from my earlier gymnastics and I missed by a foot.

Mike dove around the corner.

“What are you waiting for?” Eddy screamed, gesturing toward the tunnel.

My body started to move, but I stalled it by repeating his last command. Questions didn't count. “You told me to protect you. If I follow Mike, Anaximander might double back and kill you, moron.”

Eddy puffed up with outrage. “What did you call me?”

“A moron.” The override gave him command of my body, not my tongue. “You are a moron. And that wasn't your first mistake, either, you mental midget.” The childish taunts felt incredibly good.

“Don't insult me again.” A command. “I don't think I care for your attitude,” Eddy said coldly. He pinched the bridge of his nose to stop the bleeding. “When this is over, I think I'll make some changes.”

Ice filled my spinal column. In override mode, Eddy could play with me like a doll. If he told me to jump off a cliff, I would do it.

“I'm wearing body armor; I'm perfectly safe,” Eddy said inaccurately; he wasn't safe as long as his visor was up. “Go after them now.”

I obeyed, cursing inwardly, but a moment later he took the bait. “Wait! Tell me what mistake you think I made.”

“Mistakes, plural. You haven't told me who is my primary target or what to do after I kill them.”

“Anaximander's your primary target, Mike is secondary. Forget the girl. She wasn't armed, and she's crippled.”

Which just went to prove how stupid he was.
Mike would smile at Eddy's funeral, and Anaximander might kill him in the heat of anger, but Rianne was the one capable of drilling a hole in his heart while he slept. I happily followed his command and blanked all thought of Rianne from my mind.

“After you kill them, come help me hunt down my sister and her brat. It's too bad I can't be in two places at once. I'd love to watch you blow away your boyfriend. Oh, yes, Michael Vallant used to be your boyfriend, didn't you know?” He was trying to hurt me by engaging my drowning reflex.

I left him puzzled by my lack of response.

Override mode made no allowance for caution. I pulled myself along the tunnel as fast as I could one-handed, finger on the trigger, alert, not knowing if I was the cat or the mouse.

While I trusted Mike to shoot to wound even with his own life in jeopardy, Anaximander was another matter entirely. He was a Spacer. The stakes were higher for him.

One of the hatches I passed wasn't completely closed. I saw Rianne hiding inside, then, as commanded, promptly forgot that I'd seen her and kept going.

Around the next corner, I saw something red ahead of me—Mike's shirt—and fired even as my eyes registered that it was just a piece of cloth.

The recoil threw me violently backward, and Rianne snatched the blastgun out of my hands. I immediately forgot her again as I thumped the back of my head and skinned one elbow on the wall before bouncing off again. Debris pelted by me.

Then Mike attacked from above, catching my wrists and holding them fast.

We banged around in the narrow tunnel. “Don't let go,” I panted, even as the chip made me squirm like an eel.

“Never,” Mike swore.

My feet touched a wall, and I kicked off with all my strength, smashing Mike against a protruding bulkhead. “No!” I cried out, anguished, as he let go of my wrists.

Then Anaximander grabbed me from behind and pinned my arms against my body. Mike uncurled from the wall and gamely tackled my legs, immobilizing them. I noticed that Mike's forehead was bleeding and knew that I had done that. Guilt choked me, even as I fought furiously.

Rianne said something and waved a blastgun in my direction, but I forgot about her and her threat as soon as I heard it and continued to thrash.

“Code one.” Anaximander's lips moved, but it was Eddy's voice that I heard. “Code five.”

Anaximander was apparently searching through his Memory Recorder's vast library of conversations with Eddy, scanning for numbers, because he called out numbers in random order, “Code seventeen, code seven, code thirty,” instead of a one, two, three progression.

“Code fourteen.”

I stopped fighting and went limp. “That did it. Thanks, you guys.”

Mike grinned, cute even while bleeding, and released his hold on my legs.

My foot lashed out, aiming for Mike's vulnerable
throat, but Anaximander jerked me backward, preventing the blow from connecting.

Mike's face whitened, but he soon had me pinned again.

“Code fifty,” Anaximander droned. “Code fifty-one, code fifty-two . . .”

Despair clenched my heart. There were too many numbers still to go through. Eddy might find Timothy by the time I was released.

“Code thirty-two.”

I relaxed. “That one did it, guys. For real this time.” I smiled, but Mike and Anaximander didn't believe me.

And they were right not to. We had to go through the whole depressing process four more times before hitting it right with code twenty-four.

I knew immediately because I stopped forgetting Rianne. She had a foot hooked through one of the wall handholds and was holding both blastguns. Her heart seemed to be holding up so far.

“Okay, I'm free, and I can prove it. Anaximander, command me to do something in Eddy's voice.”

“Don't kill us,” Anaximander
said instantly.

Mike swore in disgust. “You couldn't have thought of that a bit earlier?”

Anaximander refrained from pointing out that Mike hadn't thought of it either. “Don't open your mouth.” The words came out jerkily, four words from different sentences replayed separately.

I opened my mouth wide.

“Good enough for me,” Mike said. He released my legs, and Anaximander let go of my arms.
Rianne wasn't quite so trusting; one blastgun remained leveled at my gut.

I ignored her, focusing on Mike. I'd almost killed him. I held his hand. Squeezed it. “Thank you. Again.”

“It's not your fault,” Mike said, reading my mind.

“I know.” But it felt like my fault. Eddy had installed Loyalty chips in all three of us, but I'd been the only one affected by the override. I felt as though I should have been able to resist, too— however stupid that was.

“I should have taken you to a surgeon.” Mike's grim face made me realize I wasn't the only one who felt guilty. “Made the UN pay up like what's-his-face promised you.”

“You can assign blame later,” Anaximander said. “We have to capture Eddy.” He retrieved both blastguns from Rianne. “You stay here and tell Jerome what's happening. Mike, Angel, let's go.”

Rianne didn't look happy, muttering, “Yes, Dad,” but she stayed behind.

“What's our plan? Eddy's armor will protect him from our blastguns,” I said as we backtracked down the corridor.

Anaximander hesitated. “A hail of bullets won't kill him, but it might smash him against a wall hard enough to knock him out. It's our best chance.”

My blood chilled, but I made myself speak. “No, it's not. Innocent people could get killed if the two of you start blasting away at each other in your armor. Plus, you might rupture the hull. Our best plan is to send me in alone. I'll tell Eddy I killed
you both, then take him by surprise and disarm him.”

Mike nodded reluctantly. “You're right. You're the only one he won't shoot on sight. But you'll have to be careful. As soon as Eddy realizes you're free, he'll activate the override again.”

“I can fix that,” Anaximander said. “Code fourteen. Don't. Obey. My.” A pause while he searched for the right word. “Commands. Code twenty-four.”

“Great.” I smiled in relief. “I hate—”

“Code fourteen,” Anaximander said, double-checking, and I stopped smiling because the override command overrode the previous command not to obey Eddy.

Mike read that truth on my face. “Hell.”

“Code twenty-four,” Anaximander said, and I was free again.

All of us were unhappy, but our options were severely limited. The plan had to stand as it was.

Anaximander contacted Rianne on his palmtop. “Where's Eddy?”

Rianne came through. “According to the latest reports, he's in the cargo bay. He's getting close to finding Timothy and his mother. They're hiding in some containers.”

It took five long minutes to reach the entrance to the cargo bay, but Eddy was still busy blasting containers when we peeked through the door. He must not have found Timothy and President Castellan yet. From the looks of the exploded water containers, he was getting frustrated.

Mike stopped me before I could expose myself by going through the door. He kissed me twice,
one fierce and one sweet. “You can beat him.”

I hung onto his neck a moment longer than was necessary. I was afraid that the next time I saw him, I might have to shoot him.

I called up the memory of how I'd felt when the chip had made me shoot Mike, set my face into lines of sorrow and murderous hate, then pulled myself through the doorway into the cargo bay.

Eddy was only ten feet away, and he saw me immediately. His avid gaze drank in my pain like a parasite latching on to flesh. “Did you kill them for me, my angel? Did you kill your teacher and your boyfriend?”