“I couldn’t stop it,” he replies, making no attempt to ward off her blows. “There was no way for me to stop it. But you, Doctor King, you can.”

Some of what he’s said eventually gets through and her punches weaken, then stop altogether and she stands like a toy soldier whose spring has wound down. “How,” she demands, voice rough from shouting and muffled by the tears she’s trying desperately to hold in. “Tell me how.”

With gently hands, he turns her and guides her to the main desk. The alien script continues to scroll across the bottom in an endless, nauseating stream. “For months,” he begins softly, “I have attempted to decipher this string of code, but found no reference point in all my research with which to even begin. The Rosetta Stone, as it were, came in the email he addressed to you. The one that, unfortunately, you never received. You, Doctor King, are the key. At some point prior to his suicide, he must have had second thoughts. It is my belief that he encoded a…backdoor, if you will, an escape hatch through all of this could be undone. And you are the only person in this world who can decipher it.”

“Why? What’s so damned special about me??”

“You are his greatest adversary, and aside from the fact that your brilliance in these matters equals his…..”

*

The droid slumps to the floor to lie among the other wreckage, and Koda takes two quick steps back into the security station. A glance about the rank of monitors shows the remaining squad splitting into two parties, the second setting off down the hall in the opposite direction. The first contingent, hovering just beyond range beyond the curve, does not move.

Of course not. They’re going to wait for the other bunch to come around behind and attack from both directions. Can’t let that happen.

She has two automatic weapons left, one shotgun and one nameless piece of sculpture. If she does not deal with the nearer group now, she will be trapped. Worse, she will leave Westerhaus’ office and Kirsten exposed to at least one of the parties. And it will all be over. Kirsten will die, and the world will be at the mercy of Westerhaus’ creations for years, perhaps for generations.

Perhaps forever.

Can’t let that happen.

Koda slings the AK over one shoulder, dropping her M-16 into her hands. The shotgun will not serve her here. Neither will stealth.

Steeling herself against the pain she knows will follow, Koda bursts out of the security station, running full out for the curve and the smaller droid party still waiting. She knows to the millisecond when her heart rate rises to normal by the stab of sudden agony through her chest. Her legs still work, though, and her hands. That is all that matters.

She skids around the curve running full out, and as she comes within sight of the enemy party she jerks her finger spasmodically down on the trigger, spraying the width of the hallway from side to side. Amid the staccato rhythm of the M-16 she can hear the impact of slugs on metal as they find their marks, droids going down before her assault, others bringing their own guns up to fire, stuttering out an answer to her own. A round whizzes by her head, close enough for her to feel the wind of its passage. Another strikes her squarely in the center of her Kevlar vest, a bruising blow, and white heat blossoms in her chest, stealing her breath. She ignores it, throwing down the M-16 when its magazine empties and feeling the solid slap of the AK into her hands in its stead. And then she is firing again in long sweeps, not taking time to aim, catching her massed targets in their sensor arrays, their legs, the solid, unyielding mass of their torsos. One holds a round thing in its hand, its dark metal surface scored, and Koda aims high, going for its wrist. The thing drops and rolls among the droids, but none of them seems to notice it as they spray bullets toward her and she dodges low, feinting to one side, dodges again. Something stings along her own leg, something else on her left shoulder, but she cannot take time to look, as she grits her teeth against the havoc under her sternum, and fires and fires and fires again. And again. And again.

The trigger under her cramped finger clicks on empty. Perhaps twenty seconds have passed since she rounded the curve of the hall. The droids lie scattered over the floor, some riddled with holes through the body, others more neatly dispatched with gaping cavities in their sensor arrays. Torn wires and a thin stream of yellow-green lubricant snake along the tiles. Koda’s breath comes in hard, dry gasps, as the pain of the wounds in leg and shoulder crashes in on her, joining with the ramping agony in her chest. She leans over at the waist, her hands on her knees, and forces her breath to slow, forces it to regularity, bringing her heart under control and with it the pain that threatens to wash her away on its red tide. There is something wet under her hand, and when she raises her palm to look, dark blood drips to the floor.

Dark blood.

Venous blood.

She is not bleeding to death, at least not at the moment. A quick inspection shows her a matching wound on the back of her thigh; clean penetration, then. Red streaks the angle of her shoulder, a rip through her shirt showing blood and grazed skin beneath. “Just a graze, ma’am.” Graze be damned. The thing is painful out of all proportion to the damage, worse at the moment than the hole in her leg. But that is because her body has not had time to process the greater damage. The wound will hurt. That is a certainty.

Without warning, the corridor before her explodes in smoke and fire. Koda throws herself backward, hands flying to protect her head as the grenade lifts shattered metal and plexiglass into the air, spraying it like shrapnel into walls and ceiling. A splinter of steel drives itself into the back of her left hand, and blood runs chill down onto her face. Silence follows.

Koda pulls the splinter out of the space between two of the tendons that stand forth against her skin, fanning out from her wrist. Levering her feet under her, she stumbles over to the wreckage. One droid moves a hand, and she loosens the sculpture from her belt and methodically pounds its head to bits. Then she picks up her guns, slotting new magazines in under the stocks and limps back to the security center.

The screens show the last group of droids somewhere around the curve of the building, how far or near she cannot tell. She has no landmarks to go by; she only knows they are somewhere on the long way around between her position and the still smoking crater in the hall. Presumably they know the first party has failed. Presumably they also know she is wounded and running low on ammunition.

Running low on strategy. Running low on strength. She bends to examine the hole in her leg a second time. A thin stream of blood pulses from it, scarlet, bright with new oxygen. She swears softly. The bullet must have nicked the artery. She must have torn it open when she dived for the floor. She unwinds her bandana from her neck and cinches it as tightly as she can over the hole in her jeans. Pressure will help. Temporarily, anyway.

But then, everything is temporary now.

I wonder, she thinks idly as she checks her magazines once again. I wonder if it’s true that sometimes we get to go back in time. Think I’d like something Pre-Columbian next go-round if we do. Cahokia, maybe. Mound-Builders—Kirsten would like that. Not sure the future world is anything I want to be born into.

Should have asked Wa Uspewikakiyape when I had the chance.

Should have it now soon enough.

A flicker of movement on one of the monitors catches her eye. The droids are moving.

They come in a rush this time. Koda hears them before she sees them, their feet drumming in perfect, mechanical unison. If she stays in here, she will be trapped. It will only take one droid, one gun. And then the way into Westerhaus’ office will lie open to them.

She slips out of the room and behind the door again. Its armor will give some little protection, for some little time. She braces the AK against the edge of the panel, waiting only for the contingent to come into sight. The thunder of running feet stops somewhere just around the curve. Then nothing. Silence. The quiet stretches on and on, until she begins to wonder if the grenade blast has partially deafened her. She could go back and check the monitors. They might have split again, be coming at her from both directions again.

But that’s what they want her to do. It would give them a clear shot at her.

One. All it would take.

She waits, while the blood trickles down her leg and arm, while her muscles stiffen. Waits.

Bastards. Goddam game of nerves.

Won’t break. Can’t.

A single droid steps into the corridor, in clear sight. She fires just as an object leaves its hand, arching up in a perfect parabola to clear the top of the door and come straight down on her, bursting into flame as it descends. She throws herself against the wall, but it rakes against her arm, spreading flame down her sleeve and across the covering of her Kevlar vest. Rolling, she smothers the fire that licks at her shirt and down the leg of her jeans, not even feeling the heat as she kicks the incendiary away from her and back out into the hall. It burns sullenly on the tiles, black smoke billowing up to choke her. She glances down to check the damage. The ruins of her sleeve hang limply from her wrist. The skin beneath has already begun to blister. Worse, the vest now dangles by a single strap, its armored plates slipping loose beneath the cloth. Useless. She shrugs out of it, leaving it where it lies. No time, no way, to get another.

She snatches up her rifle again and waits.

They come in a rush this time, rounding the curve of the hallway in a mass. The AK jars against her shoulder as she sprays the rounds across their line, shaking her bones one against another, sending a chill trickle of blood down across her chest. Another incendiary plummets down over the door, striking its edge and falling wide to spill flame across the floor behind her. Their return fire clangs against the sheet steel of the door, a round breaking through the lexan window above and showering her with a myriad dull-edged fragments. One droid breaks wide from the mass and dashes toward her position, keeping to the far wall. She puts a spurt of rounds through its head, and it tumbles down on the sputtering fire bomb, its uniform bursting into flame. Oh no you don’t. Bastard. You want by me, gotta kill me first.