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"Weird," he said. The tall engineer walked around the magnetic barrier, headed for the door.
"Don't open it," said Rachel.
I walked far enough toward the wall to see around the magnetic shield. As Levin reached for the door han¬dle, a flat crack echoed through the building. Levin's hands flew to his ears, and the steel security door creaked outward on its hinges.
A black silhouette appeared in the smoky doorway and flung out an arm with stu
"What is happening?" the computer asked in the identical voice Godin's neuromodel had used.
Ravi Nara scrambled behind the black sphere of Trinity. I grabbed Rachel and raced for a door near the back wall. It didn't lead outside, but through the mag¬netic barrier to the control station in the MRI room. As I followed her through it, I glanced back and saw a flash of blonde hair above black body armor.
"Geli," I said, locking the door behind me and pushing Rachel through the control station. "Go to the basement!"
A short stairwell behind the control station led to the basement containing the Godin Four supercomputer. I hadn't been down myself, but I knew Levin's technicians were there, probably with the automatic weapons they'd used to fight off General Bauer's initial assault. Rachel raced down the steps, then came straight back up.
"The door's locked!"
I ran down and pounded on the metal with both fists. "Open the door, damn it!"
Nothing happened.
"David!"
Bounding back up the steps, I saw Geli peering around the edge of the magnetic barrier, forty feet away. I pulled Rachel behind the Plexiglas wall of the control station and shoved her down behind some computers.
Why hadn't Geli simply walked across the room and shot us? She thinks we have the assault rifles Levin's peo¬ple used. As soon as she realizes we don't, we're dead.
Levin groaned from the floor by the door, but he didn't move.
"Where is she?" Rachel hissed from the floor.
As I glanced down to reply, an invisible hammer slammed me against the wall. My shoulder went numb, and my face felt like it was on fire. The sound of the gunshot seemed to arrive long after the bullet, which had shattered the Plexiglas and peppered my face with razor-sharp fragments.
Rachel tried to stand, but I shoved her back down.
Geli stepped from behind the barrier and walked cau¬tiously across the MRI room, her pistol aimed at my chest, her eyes flicking back and forth.
There was no weapon to hand and nowhere to run. As I awaited the final bullet, time dilated around me. Geli moved in slow motion, like a leopardess stalking her prey. I looked down into Rachel's eyes, knowing they would be my last sight on earth.
Rachel took my hand and closed her eyes. As she did, I noticed a large red button on the switch panel beside her head. The letters below it read PULSED-FIELD INITIATOR.
I slammed my hand down on the button.
The crack of a gunshot died in the inhuman screech of the Super-MRI machine. I looked up and saw Geli bent double and clenching her right hand, which was dripping blood onto the floor. The sca
Her pistol appeared to be glued to the wall of the MRI machine. Not far from it hung a knife, probably yanked from Geli's belt by the magnetic field. Suddenly the screeching ceased, and both gun and knife dropped to the floor.
Geli advanced toward me, her eyes filled with mur¬derous rage. I stepped out from behind the panel, but with a useless shoulder there was little I could do. Geli had nearly killed me on the steps in Union Station, when I had the use of both arms.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked.
She knocked me to the floor with a lightning kick to my chest, then sat astride me and clenched her hands around my throat. I felt her thumbs searching for my windpipe.
"Stop!" Rachel screamed from the control station. "There's no reason anymore!"
I tried to fight, but once again Geli had leverage on her side. My carotid arteries were closing off, and with them consciousness. I felt as I had so many times on the edge of narcoleptic sleep. But this time, as the black wave rolled over me, a piercing scream penetrated the center of my brain. It was the scream of a child witness¬ing something too terrifying to endure, almost beyond the range of human hearing, filled with suffering and impossible to shut out. That scream pulled me back to consciousness, back toward the light… and then sud¬denly it stopped, the silence in its wake as empty as a dead planet.
Into that silence came a voice I was sure had spoken from within my hypoxic brain, a voice of preternatural calm pitched somewhere between the male and female registers.
"Listen to me, Geli," it said. "The man beneath you is not the man you hate. Te
The viselike grip on my throat remained, but I felt Geli's body twist. I opened my eyes. She was looking over her shoulder at something I couldn't see.
"Finish it!" shouted a harsh male voice. "Do your job!"
General Bauer had entered Containment.
Geli's grip tightened on my throat, but the light in her eyes no longer blazed.
"I know you, Geli," said the strange voice. "My heart aches for you. I know about the scar."
Geli froze.
"Listen to your father, Geli. Listen to the truth."
General Bauer's voice filled the room, but it was not coming from his throat. It was coming from Trinity's speakers.
"That scar? I'll tell you why she never got it fixed. Three weeks after her mother died, she came home from basic training and tried to kill me."
The hands remained on my throat, but the strength had gone out of them.
"She'd heard about how infantry grunts used to frag officers they hated in Vietnam. You know, put a grenade in the latrine while they were using it and take them out. "
General Bauer stood with his head cocked in amaze¬ment as he listened to his own voice coming from the speakers. His right hand held the black 9mm Beretta I'd seen her pull on McCaskell.
"I was drinking that night, in bed. She thought I was asleep. Maybe I was. She came in and laid a fucking white phosphorous grenade on my bedside table. From reflex my hand popped out of the covers and grabbed her wrist. Her scream woke me up, and I saw the grenade. Well, I just rolled off the far side of the bed, like any old soldier would. But she was stuck on her side and had to run for it. The Willy Pete blew before she cleared the door. That's where she got the scar. And that's why she won't get it fixed. That scar is her mother's suicide, her hatred of me, her whole sad fuck¬ing life. Pathetic, really. But she's a hell of a soldier. Hate's good fuel for a soldier."
Geli scrambled off me and moved toward her father, her hands loose and ready at her sides. I couldn't see her face, but at least her body was blocking her father's line of fire.
"Who were you talking to?" Geli asked, her voice ragged. "Who did you tell that to?"
"Get out of the way!" the general shouted.
"Listen to me, General," said the eerie voice that had just saved my life. "Why do you want to kill me? You've killed so much of yourself already. You've killed much of your daughter. But I am what is pure in you. What is pure in man. Where is hope if you kill me?"
I began to crawl backward toward the control sta¬tion.
The general aimed his gun at me, but Geli moved to block his line of fire.
"Do you love darkness more than light?"
The voice was irresistible, like that of a child. Yet General Bauer ignored it. He moved laterally, trying to get a clear shot at me.
"Put down the gun," Geli said, holding up both hands. Was she trying to save us?