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  Yeah, you have it so rough, Gemma. Quit whining and get moving.

  The last of my coffee swirled at the bottom of the cup. I downed the dregs and crushed the paper. When I felt that I had some wits about myself, I trudged toward a transit stop. Two transfers later, I stepped off a bus a few blocks from my new digs.

  So weary! Three blocks seemed three miles.

  I stumbled down the alley, over the wall, to the back door, and performed a cursory check for recent footprints or other signs that Cushing had found my hiding place. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I let myself in. I closed and locked the door behind me.

  Safe. Safe for the moment.

  I glanced around the simple kitchen and sighed. After all my careful preparations, I had brought nothing with me, not one thing: no spare clothes, no personal items, no food. No treasured keepsakes. Just what I wore—Uncle Eduardo’s baggy old shirt over worn jeans and t-shirt—and some wadded-up cash in my pocket.

  I wonder what Cushing will make of my bug-out bags and the chunk of change I left in them?

  I was grateful for the few dollars in my pocket; I was more grateful for the large stash of bundled bills I’d hidden in the wall behind the kitchen stove here in Dr. Bickel’s house. Yeah, I’d lost my shopping bags and would have to jury-rig another set, but what were my handy-dandy bags in comparison to my freedom?

  Still, I felt their loss. Those items would have lent familiarity and comfort to this foreign place where I’d gone to ground.

  With growing pessimism dogging my steps, I wandered through the house and took stock: typical single-floor, one-bath, three-bedroom, ranch-style home, circa 1950-something—so archetypical of the “mid-century modern” look that was coming back into vogue. Thick, lined drapes covered every window, blocking all but the brightest of outside light—and, I figured, blacking out interior lights, too. Dr. Bickel had prepared this place to hide in, after all, had the circumstances dictated.

  The shotgun kitchen was clean and functional but dated like the rest of the house. It included an old-school microwave featuring real numbers that flipped over when you turned the timer knob rather than a touchscreen digital readout. Bifold doors near the back door hid an aged washer and dryer. I say “aged,” because they looked exactly like the washer and dryer Aunt Lucy owned when I was a kid—and that set had seemed ancient back then.

  Dr. Bickel’s appliances were at least twenty-five years old, but they still looked new. Like they’d been set in place decades ago and were still waiting to be used.

  Yeah. Weirder and weirder.

  The tiny bathroom echoed when I stepped inside. The room had no window and, like the kitchen, the enameled fittings were an outmoded pinky-flesh tone and the tub’s tiles were plain white interspersed with a smattering of faded turquoise ones. Dr. Bickel had not stocked the bathroom—it contained not a single item: no hand soap, no towels, no bathmat, no shower curtain.

  No wonder it echoed!

  Oh. And no toilet paper.

  Thanks a lot, Dr. Bickel. Were you planning on grabbing a roll or two before you ducked in here to hide? Or did you leave an old Sears catalogue handy?

  The smallest bedroom was unfurnished; the largest had an empty dresser and a single bed. I stared with longing at the bare mattress. A pillow and folded sheets and blankets waited on the bed. I pounded the pillow, shook fine dust out of the sheets and blankets, and—sneeze, cough—made up the bed, after which I checked out the last room.

  Dr. Bickel had, at one time, used the middle-sized bedroom as an office. The room contained an old desk, a chair, and some discarded office supplies. I could tell where a computer and printer had sat at one time—a power strip and some cords lay scattered under the desk; even spied a few five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks in the trash.

  Wow. Way old school.

  I picked up a cheap extension cord from the office floor. I went back to the bedroom, plugged the cord into a wall outlet, and collapsed into the bed with the cord’s other end clutched in one hand. I stared at the ceiling in the dim light, declining the invitation to give in to despair—but only because I was too tired to indulge in full-blown depression. Besides, the hopelessness would be waiting for me when I woke up.

  I will have plenty of time to wallow in self-pity.

  The last thing I remembered before sliding off a cliff into oblivion was the tingling sensation of electrical current pulsing through my hand as the nanomites fed.

  ***

  General Imogene Cushing walked the length of the table and considered the “take,” the various objects her people had retrieved from the home of Gemma Keyes. The array of belongings spread out on the table seemed an odd, eclectic collection.

  “What are these?” She pointed to two fabric grocery bags and addressed the three agents hovering nearby.

  The two men slanted looks at each other and then at the third agent, a woman. Agent Janice Trujillo sneered at the men before answering Cushing. “We found these bags and the laptop in the dining room after the second team went in, ma’am.”

  “They weren’t in the house during the first raid?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Really, Miss Trujillo? How interesting.” Cushing fingered one of the bags. “And what do you make of these, er, sacks?”

  Trujillo swallowed. “They are ordinary, reusable shopping bags, ma’am, but the straps have been lengthened so that, we assume, Keyes could carry them over her shoulders.”

  “And all these items were in the two bags?” Cushing eyed the bags’ contents, including a large amount of cash, laid out on the table in a neat line. “Even the money?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What do you deduce?”

  “The bare essentials, ma’am: clothing, toiletries, food, water, cash, cell phone. Everything she would need on the run.”

  “What of the phone?”

  “Never used, ma’am. No incoming or outgoing calls. Ever.”

  “And yet she left all these things.”

  “I believe we surprised her with the second raid—as we’d intended.”

  Cushing held herself erect; her silvered hair sat at the nape of her neck in an elegant, knotted braid, not a strand out of place. She was polished and commanding, the epitome of a career military woman. However, she was not a tall woman; Cushing was, in fact, short and somewhat rounded.

  Those moderating factors, nevertheless, did nothing to allay the anxiety in the room: Every agent under her authority knew that Cushing suffered no fools.

  “Ah. We surprised her, did we? And yet she was, somehow, able to wipe and destroy the hard disk of her laptop in a matter of minutes? Or seconds?”

  She spoke her question with mild curiosity, but the strain around her grew.

  Agent Trujillo focused her sight on the wall over Cushing’s shoulder rather than risk being snared in the net of Cushing’s deep, beady eyes—much as a doomed deer is caught by the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  “Yes, ma’am, she was, and the forensic team has not been able to ascertain the, uh, method by which she destroyed the hard disk.”

  “Oh?”

  Tensions ratcheted up another notch.

  “The disk was burned, um, melted while inside the laptop, and yet the laptop’s case bears no evidence of a point of entry. The forensic team says they are, um, stumped as to how she burned the disk without leaving an entrance point.”

  “What could melt a hard disk in this manner, Miss Trujillo.” General Cushing did not ask; she demanded.

  “Our technicians suggest a tiny, focused laser would do similar damage, ma’am. Again, however, they are unable to ascertain how a laser could be brought to bear on the laptop without melting the plastic case surrounding it.”

  “And they could pull absolutely nothing from said disk?”

  “Nothing, ma’am, not even fragments. One of our technicians suggests that the disk was degaussed prior to it being melted.”

  “Harrumph.” Cushing’s glare could have blist
ered Trujillo had the younger woman’s eyes not been fixed on that invisible point somewhere over the general’s shoulder.

  Cushing turned on her heel and picked up the offending laptop. She turned it over in her hands. “A laser, you say.”

  “One possibility, ma’am.”

  “You have another possibility in mind, Miss Trujillo? Care to share?” Cushing barked.

  “N-no, ma’am.”

  “But if a laser did this, then how did it leave no mark on the outside?”

  Trujillo realized that Cushing was speaking to herself and, wisely, made no answer.

  Cushing set the laptop down and placed a hand upon one of the grocery bags. She muttered under her breath, “She had these bags packed and ready to go, but she left them—and yet she took the time to burn the hard drive on her computer, to wipe it first and then melt it? How? And why? What was on the laptop that was of more importance than survival gear? Than this money?”

  Cushing’s focus shifted. “Where did the cash come from, Miss Trujillo?”

  “The forensics team is working to track the serial numbers, ma’am, but none are sequential. The team did detect trace amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine on the plastic wrapping and on the bills themselves.”

  “Drug money?”

  Trujillo nodded. “That would be my assumption, ma’am.”

  “Gemma Keyes and drug money? Absurd.” But Cushing replayed her conversation with Gemma’s twin sister from the night of the raid.

  Gemma’s sister had smirked and said, “Whatever my sister’s involvement in your ‘serious national security incident’ might be, I can guarantee that it is minimal—at best. She is not what you’d call the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  And Cushing had replied, “I believe Gemma likes to give that impression, Miss Keyes. However, I’ve become convinced that she is, ah, sharper than you credit her.”

  Cushing’s upper lip twitched. Yes, Gemma Keyes, you are sharper than even I had believed. Where are you, dear Gemma? What are you up to? And how did you manage to escape my agents not once, but twice?

  Not for the first time did Cushing’s puzzlement turn to the interviews of Gemma’s neighbors from that same night. Of particular interest were the comments of Gemma’s next-door neighbor, the ever-so-helpful Mrs. Calderón: “Why, I haven’t seen Gemma in weeks, even though I know she is in there. She ignores me and will not open the door when I knock and ring the bell . . . she picks the mail up after dark and she puts the garbage out during the night before collection day and puts the can back the night after . . . .”

  At Cushing’s frustrated growl, the three agents stood straighter, but the general did not notice.

  I am missing something. It is right here, in the evidence, in the melted hard drive, in the witness statements.

  Her upper lip lifted in what might have been construed as a smile by those who were unacquainted with Imogene Cushing.

  The three agents exchanged covert looks: They knew better.

  It was not a smile; it was a predator’s snarl.

  Cushing’s mouth curved more, and her eyes narrowed. It is only a matter of time before I put the pieces together, Miss Keyes.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 3

  I slept through the afternoon, evening, and night and awoke before dawn, groggy and disquieted. I had dreamed of Zander, Abe, and Emilio; of Mateo and Arnaldo Soto and his dead eyes; of General Cushing and my evil twin, Genie. My dreams had mashed all these people together into strange, implausible scenarios and anxiety-generating chases.

  As I came awake, my heart was thumping; my mouth was dry.

  No bueno.

  While I downed two glasses of water, I forced myself to mentally pull apart my mashed-up dreams, sorting truth from lie, fact from fiction:

  Zander, Abe, and Emilio—my friends and the good guys. Check.

  Mateo and Soto—gangsters and very bad dudes. Check.

  Genie and General Cushing—baddies and bosom buddies (not!) who registered at a whole other level on the Universal Scale of Evil. Check.

  My friends—safe for now. No one chasing them. Check.

  My enemies—unaware of my location or state of invisibility. Check.

  I was safe.

  My friends were safe.

  The dreams were figments of my exhausted body and overstimulated imagination.

  Check and check.

  I rinsed my face and more cobwebs from my mind. I needed coffee in the worst way and my stomach rumbled its needs, too.

  The lengthy sleep had done me good, but what the mites had done to deplete me—followed so closely by Cushing’s assault on my home—had worn me down to a nub. It would take time to heal from the nanomites’ drain, and I would not be able to do much until my body recovered its strength. To recuperate, I would need fuel.

  I wandered into the kitchen and opened cupboards. The kitchen was furnished with most everything I’d ever need to prepare meals except for, you know, actual food.

  “Great.”

  Yet I had to eat, and soon.

  I snuck out the back door in the predawn light and walked four blocks to the nearest gas station/minimart. Those four blocks seemed like miles and took most everything I had left.

  Inside the little store, I grabbed a handful of little packs of cashews, some bags of trail mix, and two energy bars and stuffed them under my t-shirt, tucking the hem of the shirt into my jeans to hold the items. The cashier was busy with a line of customers gassing up on their way to work, so I grabbed a coffee, too. The hot cup was too dangerous to carry around under my shirt, but the nanomites provided cover for it before I asked them to.

  It was downright galling how the mites could be so accommodating one minute and utterly obstinate the next.

  As the line to the register began to clear out, I left a grimy twenty-dollar bill on the counter and pushed through the door. The cashier looked up from habit when the buzzer on the door sounded, but I kept going.

  What’s he gonna do? I mean other than think he’s lost his ever-loving marbles?

  I didn’t much care. I was famished. Weak. I plopped down on a patch of grass not far from the gas station and pulled my loot out from under my shirt. I selected an energy bar, but broke off and ate only half of it.

  I don’t know how long I’ll need to make these last, I told myself. Besides, what my convalescing body wanted, the food I really craved and needed, was hot and filling—like the full-on breakfasts they were serving at the pancake house when I’d awakened early yesterday.

  I sipped the coffee and ate the rest of the energy bar anyway. I was just too hungry. Then I walked home—not to the comforting familiarity of my little casa, but to Dr. Bickel’s sterile safe house. My new digs.

  Guess I should be thankful to have a place, any place, I admitted, even as my stomach demanded more fuel.

  Inside Dr. Bickel’s home, I penned “to do” and shopping lists and salivated at the images dancing in my head: platters of buttery scrambled eggs, syrupy waffles, and fat, juicy sausages.

  Oh! And steaming hash browns, all golden and crispy on the outside.

  Gurgle. Growl. Drool.

  I sighed and penned “car” at the top of my list.

  I can’t do much on foot. I need transportation.

  Big problem.

  I had cash, so money wasn’t the hitch—human interaction was.

  I’m so stinking tired. I must have food, real food to recover. Then I need a phone. A computer and Internet access. And—

  The astonishing events of two nights past popped into my head: Apparently, the nanomites could do a whole lot more than I’d thought they could. I simply needed to figure out how to use them differently. Make them shoulder more of the load.

  “Nano.” I spoke aloud and felt that inner stillness as the nanomites came to attention. “Nano, we had better get on the same page, you and I. No more ignoring me—or, worse still, fighting me and my decisions. We are stuck with each other, but I drive this boat, not you.”<
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  The quiet in my head persisted; I closed my eyes to revel in it.

  That peaceful, welcome solitude had been my underappreciated norm prior to the nanomite invasion. However, since that day, I’d endured a continual hum in the back of my head when the mites were at rest—an indefinable but incessant vibration some might describe as “white noise”—not to mention the chittering, buzzing, chipping, and droning of their activity when they were up to something.

  At present, they were still—and the hush was bliss.

  I’d figured out that absolute silence on the part of the nanomites meant one of two things: Either they were waiting for me to speak, or they were holding a confab. A confab, Dr. Bickel had told me, was a summit of the five nanotribes, a meeting where they presented data, reasoned with each other, and arrived at a consensus regarding a decision or a course of action.

  Were they listening or confabbing?

  “Nano! Do you hear me? We have got to work together to survive and find Dr. Bickel. You need to help me when I ask for it, like you did when you burned my laptop. Um, thank you for that, by the way.”

  I waited and the intermission lengthened. I guess I was waiting for an answer, but we hadn’t hammered out a communication strategy, a means for them to respond to me—now that it was obvious that they could communicate if they chose to.

  How could I prod them into regular communication? If—and a very big “if” at that—if the nanomites were willing to talk, how could I get them started? What would it look like?

  I had already tried everything I could think of, to no avail: The mites had been determined to ignore my overtures. But now that we knew Dr. Bickel was alive, could the nanomites have changed their collective mind?

  I thought back to Dr. Bickel’s lab in the tunnels. He had spoken aloud to them and the swarm had propelled itself into the air and bunched up to form letters.

  HELLO

  That was how they had greeted me in Dr. Bickel’s lab under the mountain—in blue letters hanging in the air within the glass cage Dr. Bickel had constructed, the letters formed by the shimmer of the mites’ billions upon billions of coordinated mirrors reflecting light. The problem here and now was that the swarm was in me, not in front of me—and they had shown their obdurate, pigheaded election to never leave me.