“Except you,” Kirsten comments, her sarcasm thick enough to be cut to ribbons with a butter knife.

Another short bow, another half smile. “Except me,” he allows, spreading his hands. “As I have said, I was less blind than he assumed. Unfortunately for me, my knowledge came a bit too late to make a full-out escape. I was, however, able to flee to the lower levels where, as you both have duly noticed, humans other than Westerhaus himself were forbidden.”

“Speaking of which,” Kirsten intones, eyeing the rifle that, in her unthinking flight to Dakota, she’s left on the other side of the room, “how is it that you can stand this ‘white noise’ when we can’t?”

Adam places a finger into his ear, then removes it, lowering his hand enough so that both women can easily see what looks to be a tiny microchip sitting on the pad. “The white noise you heard is a neural impulse interrupter, a very effective security precaution. This chip completely neutralizes the effect, allowing its wearer free access to all levels of this facility.”

Kirsten’s eyes, already glittering slits of distrust, narrow further. “And just how were you able to score such a prize?”

With a soft laugh, Adam replies, “From Westerhaus himself, actually.”

“Ah. I suppose he trusted you with his secrets so much that he just willingly gave up the keys to his kingdom. Very generous of him.” She tenses, ready to make a play for the rifle.

“On the contrary. The only trust Peter Westerhaus gave was to his precious androids. This, I took from him. Not that it mattered at the time, as he certainly had no more use for it.”

Kirsten thinks on this for a moment, then her face pales even as her eyes widen. “He’s dead? Westerhaus is dead?!?”

“Oh yes. On the very date he set his final plan into motion, actually.”

“Wha-at? But how?”

“By his own hand.”

Kirsten’s barked laugh is bitterness personified. “That figures. That just fucking figures. That yellow-bellied chickenshit coward was too spineless to even watch the destruction his fucked up plans created. Shit. Now what?!?”

“That, Doctor King, depends entirely on you.”

“Alright, that’s it. How in the hell do you know my n—.” Kirsten begins to rise, only to be halted by Koda’s firm squeeze to her hand.

“You were the one who opened the shaft grate,” Dakota says, eyeing Adam directly.

“Yes.”

“And the retinal sensors?”

“Ah. That was Mr. Westerhaus’ doing, actually.” He grins at Koda’s sharply raised eyebrow, though the smile fades as he eyes the microwave timer, counting down its last minutes. “We don’t have much time. His inner sanctum is just down the hall. The answers you seek are there.”

Kirsten still looks as if she wants to fight, but soon bows to the inevitable. She turns to Koda. “Maybe you should just….”

“No,” Dakota quickly interjects. “We’re in this together, remember? Just give me a minute and I’ll be ready.”

“Dakota—.”

“Please.”

A whole regiment of reasons why this is a very bad idea parading through her mind, Kirsten sighs and moves away, watching her lover intently as Dakota crosses her legs and closes her eyes. They open briefly, latching onto Adam. “This neural interrupter. Is it a steady frequency, or does it pulse?”

“There is a pulse, regulated to the average human heartbeat. Sixty eight to seventy two pulses per minute.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes slide closed again and her breathing deepens as she journeys through her own body in the ways of her ancestors. Her skin cools as blood is shunted to more vital organs. Her breathing and heart-rate slow. Her blood-pressure drops. When her eyes open, her pupils are dilated, like cat’s eyes, taking in all available light. Slowly, she rises to her feet, her mind fully in the present, sharp as sunlit steel. The microwave counts out its final seconds. “Turn off your implants, love.” Her voice is slow, and deeper than Kirsten has ever heard it. She hastens to obey the order, for even pleasingly phrased, that’s exactly what it is. Kirsten’s world goes to silence just as the microwave timer ‘dings’ its end. A slight tremor in the long muscles of her thighs is Dakota’s only response to the neural interrupter’s return. She eyes the two before her steadily, and nods, once. “Let’s go.”

*

True to his word, Adam leads them down the hall only a few dozen yards before stopping at Westerhaus’ door. Looking at it, Kirsten admits to herself a pang of disappointment. It is a door identical to the dozens of others they’ve passed. Beige-painted metal, like might be seen on board the Enterprise. No deep mahogany with pure gold trim and cut crystal knob. No ostentatiously scrolled signs announcing for the peons that the Boy Genius is currently in residence. Probably too paranoid, she thinks with a mental shrug. Further examination is interrupted by a tug to her sleeve. She glances to Dakota’s raised eyebrow, then to Adam, on her other side. He gestures to the door, then takes a deliberate step back, sending her nape hairs to sudden attention. Her gaze switches back to Dakota, who nods and gives her a small smile of encouragement.

Turning to the door, she takes in a deep breath, then steps forward until her eyes are level with the retinal scanner. At the same time, she presses her thumb against the print-and-DNA pad just beneath. She can’t hear the soft hum of the processor, nor the faint click of the lock disengaging, but she can see the five red lights blink to green, and so is not surprised then the door slides open, displaying the interior of Westerhaus’ office.

If the door itself is non-descript, the office within is anything but. Though if the door reminds her of the Enterprise, that comparison is doubly reinforced by an interior that looks as if it’s come straight off the Paramount lot. Touchscreen computers fit like puzzle pieces into a rainbow shaped glass table whose interior arc fronts a rather ordinary high-backed leather office chair. CPUs and server boxes rest on utilitarian tables, their processing lights blinking and strobing like signs over a carnival ride—one of the really scary ones where the rock music blares so loud that you can’t hear yourself puke.

She finds herself drawn inward, Dakota’s strong, soothing presence to her right, Adam’s to her left and a step behind. Though she can’t hear the door slide shut behind them, she’s nevertheless aware that it does, and when it does, it brings with it a feeling of being, if not trapped, at least locked in, as if the last piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place. For better or for worse, she knows, it ends here. There is nowhere left to run. There is nowhere left to look. There is nowhere left to hide.

It ends here. It all ends here.

Her interest in computers somewhere in the horse latitudes, Dakota finds herself drawn instead to the myriad of security monitors arranged, like the Jeopardy! board, in long, neat rows, stacked one atop the other. The view on all the screens is blessedly monotonous. Empty rooms, empty corridors, empty stairwells, empty bathrooms, though the latter doesn’t surprise her. The others, though…. There are androids here. She can feel them, can feel their weight pressing in on her from above, like the sea during a dive. Her adrenals throb dully just above her kidneys and she closes her eyes, willing her heart to keep its slow, steady beat even as she becomes aware of the fact that Westerhaus’ little security surprise hasn’t filtered through into this, his inner sanctum.

It ends here, she thinks, opening her eyes to the still monotonous view of the security screens. It all ends here.

Kirsten, for her part, moves silently around the room, keeping her hands prudently away from the equipment, scanning everything with a sharp eye and a sharper mind. Scrolling along the bottom of most of the monitors is an alien script that seems almost…alive. Looking at it makes her, by turns, very uneasy, and very dizzy as her brain tries to make sense of something it has no reference point for understanding. She looks quickly away, then up as Adam’s smiling reflection comes to her in the glass of the table.

“You can turn your implants back on if you like,” he says, smiling. “It’s quite safe in here.”

“That figures,” Kirsten snorts, though her trust of this stranger doesn’t quite extend quite so far as to take him completely at his word. Setting her left implant to its lowest gain, she flicks it on, ready to turn it back off again the very second something seems hinky. She relaxes as only the quiet sound of Dakota’s breathing comes to her over the still, chill air.

Adam moves silently across the thick pile carpeting to a nook in the near left rear corner of the office. An old coffee maker, dirty with the ghosts of coffees past, stands sentry on an impressive credenza, flanked by several equally stained mugs. A matching table stands at a right angle to the credenza, and upon that table rests an old, battered CPU, its nineteen inch monitor huge and bulky and as out of place among the sleek technology as a dinosaur in New York City.

“This was his personal computer,” he remarks, fiddling with the mouse to bring the beast out of hibernation. “It has something on it that I believe you’ll find very interesting.”

Eyeing him warily, Kirsten slowly crosses the room until she is standing beside the much taller man, her face bathed in the ghostly glow of the monitor. Her brows pucker as she quickly scans the text, which looks as if it’s been written by ee cummings on crack. It’s a long, rambling vomit of words written by someone whose mind had clearly left them for far greener pastures quite some time before. “What is this?”

“Look at the header.”

As she looks, her eyes widen. “Me? He wrote this to me??”

Adam nods.