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A rumbling came up from below them.
“Is that a helicopter?” Abe demanded of the man.
“What?”
“I said,” Abe said, grabbing the man by the coat with both his fists, “is that a helicopter?”
“I heard you,” the man said, blinking, trying to shake his head. “Groggy.”
“Abe,” said Lars, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. That rumbling is coming from beneath us, like, from within the mountain.” Abe released the man, and he slumped back, unable to protect his head from the ground. Lars voiced disapproval.
The rumbling came up again.
“You mean like an earthquake?” Abe said.
Lars pondered, then said, “Technically speaking, yes.”
Blake resumed the questioning. “You and your mates got up that bluff in a real hurry. Are you bionic?”
The man said, “What?” but this time it came with a different tone.
“Bionic: nanotechnology, corporate conglomeration conspiracy technology from Canada.”
“Blake, come on!” said Lars.
“How did you know?” the man said.
Blake said nothing.
“Wait, he’s right?” said Lars.
The man shook his head again, as if clearing static within.
“No?”
“Well, yes, and no. But that’s the gist of it. I probably should have played dumb, but my head still feels like a loose car axle whacked me across the forehead.”
“I have Command Plant Life!” said Abe proudly.
“Abe!” Blake said, shaking his head in disappointment.
“What?”
Lars answered, “Just, Abe…just be a little more judicious about your reveals.” The man looked on, puzzled. Lars turned his attention to him and said, “Yeah, we have a little firsthand knowledge about the program. I guess you could say we are undocumented test subjects in the effects of free machine learning nanotech.”
Blake spoke up, interrupting the interrogation. “His job is to keep us stationary so they can track us. We have to move.” He turned to the man. “How’s your amplification?”
“What?”
Lars said, “I doubt they’ve developed an amplifier that powerful yet, not unless they figured out how to shield human flesh from RF burns, and even in that case, we’re talking real directional transmissions.”
“Good enough,” said Blake, satisfied, “but the receiver is near at hand, isn’t it? Were you ordered to come up by someone down there, or are you under general orders to recon and recover the dingus?”
“What?”
Abe pulled his pistol. “Hold him down, Lars,” he said. Lars didn’t move. “HOLD HIM DOWN!” Lars blinked and did as he was told. All three of the bionic men, the conscious one between the two unconscious ones, were lying in close order, shoulder-to-shoulder. Abe knelt down and held his pistol against the temple of one of the unconscious men.
“Now you listen to me,” Abe said. “Can you hear me?”
The man nodded.
“I don’t know much about guns, so I want to learn, see? I want to learn whether a single bullet can go through three skulls. If you say ‘what’ again, I’m going to find out with you and your two friends, here. Okay? Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“All right then,” said Abe. He took the safety off his pistol. “Ask him again, Blake.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Your headquarters are down there, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We actually saw that. About your HQ: is there a commander down there still, or were the four of you left alone?”
“The sniper isn’t with us, but yes,” said the man.
Blake blinked. “Well, that was my next question: why was she shooting at us, but you, with proximity, didn’t even have your pistols drawn?”
“We thought you were the objective. We are to recover the objective alive. We don’t know her orders. We don’t know her at all.”
“We call him the dingus,” said Abe. “You can let him go, Lars.” Abe stood and clicked the safety in place. Well, Stoic, that was something. Where did that come from? We are not familiar with this particular room within your internal home. Abe stood out of sight of the rest of the party because he felt himself shaking.
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“Yes what?” Blake said. “You didn’t answer the question. I interrupted things.”
“Yes, we were left alone to discover the whereabouts of the objective—you say you know him?”
“We’re not saying,” said Blake, “but if you guess ‘yes,’ you’re probably right that we know him and that we have him and that we’re about to take you to him.”
Lars started to object.
“As prisoners,” Blake said. “As prisoners.”
Sano said, “What were you going to do with us when you figured out we weren’t the dingus?”
“What do you think?” the man said, his eyes leering. Abe felt stirrings within him, unvoiced.
“Ugh,” Sano said, “and to think I considered you to be our friends!” The man looked confused again. Abe’s murderous stirrings subsided.
The rumbling beneath the mountain continued intermittently. A distinctly warm breeze rushed up the mountain. Lars looked up and about. The treetops were snapping to and fro in chaotic fashion, but driven by the wind, not by conscious will.
“We should get moving,” Lars said.
“Gotta wait till these guys come to,” Blake said.
“Well, obviously,” said Lars. “Do you fellas have an on/off switch or something?”
“What?”
Abe twitched, but didn’t move.
“No,” said the man. “No such developments.” He laughed. “They way I understand it, in a few minutes they’ll trigger my self-destruct sequence, probably a capacitor or two rigged to overload and leak acid from their place in my brain.”
“Huh, I never thought of that,” said Lars. “But we can take care of that.”
“You can?”
“Might be why you’re having such a hard time locating the dingus, if I may say,” said Lars, proudly.
The warm breeze suddenly ceased, giving way to a downdraft which was much colder, and it carried ice within it.
“You need to talk to your mates, there, when they wake up. You can easily overpower us, even if we loose only your ankles so you can walk. We seen what the dingus can do, and, boy, let me tell you, if you’re anything half as dexterous as he is, why, we don’t stand a chance. The only defense we really have is Abe, here, with his Command Plant Life power.”
Blake said, “Can you shut down other nano powers, like in Abe here?”
“No,” said the man. “It’s not really a technology so much as the technology opens up pathways and neuroreceptors. Other than a bullet, really, there’s no way to stop nanotech once that has happened.”
“The point being,” said Lars, “is should we kill you three now, or will you come with us? We can set you free from your slavery if you promise to help us.”
The man gazed at Lars. Abe saw what looked to be a glistening of emotion in his eyes. The man said, in a still, soft voice, “Slavery?”
Lars nodded.
The ice began to give way to driving snow.
“Bower us,” said Abe. The trees obeyed, and the party found themselves within a cold shelter, protected enough for waiting out unconsciousness.
“This will attract attention,” said Blake. “Fortunately we’ve got the makings of a blizzard.”
“Should we stay here?” said Lars. “And I don’t think this is just any blizzard; the earthquake and this blizzard cohere in character, I think.”
“I say no; we get back to our HQ, character coherence or what-have-you,” Blake said. He paused to think. “My instincts say no, but I need a moment to articulate why.”
The other two men began to stir. They were less unconscious and more in a fitful sleep, as though drugged and waking. Sano and Abe knelt to help them awaken, rubbing their faces and gently slapping them.
“This is just like episode seventeen from the fourth season when Abigail had been knocked unconscious by a waterwheel. Nami kept trying to wake her up, but everything she tried failed until she started crying. The warm tears falling on Abigail’s brow was the remedy.”
“Anime tears?” asked Lars.
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means: sloshing buckets of slimy, snot-fortified waterworks not seen on this side of waking up in another world.” Lars laughed.
Abe grumbled. “Well, of course they were anime tears.”
“It’s lucky Abigail didn’t drown, then.”
“I swear,” Blake said. “You two do beat all. We’re about to be swallowed up by the global conspiracy or by this mountain or by the cold, and all you can do is argue about cartoon TV shows.”
“How dare you,” Lars said, feigning indignation. “Anime is not cartoon TV.”
The other two men came to some awareness of their surroundings, opening their eyes.
“Stand him up,” said Blake. “Stand this guy—what’s your name?”
“My name is Perry Tuck,” said the first man. “This is my crew.” He waggled his head back and forth.
“Stand Mr. Tuck up,” said Blake, “so they can see him and he can talk to them.”
Sano and Abe stood aside while Blake and Lars hoisted the still-bound Perry Tuck on his feet. They held him steady while the blood in his body rearranged itself, causing him to swoon a little. “We gotcha,” said Lars.
Abe caught the scent of Sano’s breath. It was very sweet and warm. Oh, Stoic. Steady on, lad. Let’s be sensible and sober, like a good little stoic.
“Donaldson, Rojacamiseta, wake up bros,” Perry Tuck said. The other two men blinked awake, groaning a bit, and murmuring acknowledgment. “Get your systems going. These people are going to help us if we do not harm them. Do you copy? Come on, Rojacamiseta: no more sleeping. Up! Donaldson!”
The man called Donaldson spoke, “Listen, Tuck, I can barely hear you over this ringing in my head.”
“This isn’t fast enough,” said Blake. “And there’s no way to guarantee our safety. I don’t think this is going to work.” He pulled out his pistol. Perry Tuck blanched with fear.
“Let me talk to them,” Sano said. “Stand the other two up.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Lars.
“Listen to Sano,” Abe said.
Blake and Lars stood the other two men up, propping the three of them on the wall of the bower. Sano looked them in the eyes and began to speak.
“You’ve come from your homes where you are safe. Now you are in our home, here at the end of your pursuit. You have accomplished your goal, and it is time to be safe again.”
“It is time to be safe again,” the three of them droned.
Lars, Abe, and Blake exchanged glances.
“You, the one called Rojacamiseta: what name did your mother give you?” Sano said, gazing directly into his eyes.
“Madre mía?” he said, gazing into her eyes. “My name is Manuel.”
“He doesn’t look Mexican,” Blake whispered.
“On government forms he probably checks the ‘White Hispanic’ box,” Lars whispered in return. Blake nodded.
“You are going into the bosom of your mother,” said Sano to Manuel Rojacamiseta.
“I am going into the bosom of my mother,” Manuel Rojacamiseta repeated, in the same drone as before.
Sano repeated the process with each of them until they learned that they were dealing with a very compliant Perry Tuck, Meredith Donaldson, and Manuel Rojacamiseta.
She has two superpowers! Stoic! Do you see this?!? She has two superpowers!
“Let’s go, then,” said Blake. “This place is marked. It has to be zeroed. If we linger to wait out the storm, they’ll find us before we can disappear. Abe, release them.”
“Release them,” Abe commanded.
While they were bundling themselves against the blizzard that was waiting for them outside the bower, Sano spoke again, “Can you explain to me why it was important that the sniper was a woman?”
No one answered, Lars and Blake pretending to be deaf against the sounds of zippers, whipping wind, and pull cords. They began to exit the bower.
“Lars?” she said.
He opened his mouth reluctantly to speak, but a gust of wind took his breath away. It took all their breath away with a roar as though they were standing behind a jet engine where arctic air was the exhaust. Lars choked on his own words, then shouted against the roar:
“Because!”
“Hold on to me!” said Abe, shouting. “I’ll lead from tree stand to tree stand!”
“Good idea!” shouted Blake.
And the seven of them disappeared, a line of shadows against the snow quickly graying lighter and lighter until they were into the white.
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