3rd World Products, Book 16 (45 page)

I finished my drink and sent my findings to Angie and Linda, then called Stephanie.
 

She appeared behind the screen and said, “I’ve reviewed your data. I can find no records concerning the birth of this child.”
 

“Under that name, you probably won’t. The towns Marjory and Wright are north and south of the silo crater, respectively.”
 

“I see. I should have realized that when I reviewed the data.”
 

Shaking my head, I said, “Not necessarily. I just realized it when you said you couldn’t find any record of her. Got any idea why they’re so scared of her? Wanna bet her actions are what made people react so poorly to Aria Wilson?”
 

“You could be correct.”
 

Tanya asked, “Aria Wilson? Yet another woman in your life?”
 

“Her mother’s an old roomie of mine, in fact. Aria’s only about ten, Tanya. She did something that freaked people out last year and they shipped her down from the asteroid station.”
 

“What’d she do?”
 

“She uses fields without hardware. BIG fields. Scared the hell out of some brass hats. We think this kid may be like her.”
 

Pointing at the screen, Tanya asked, “So that’s why she’s wearing that collar? It’ll stop her somehow?”
 

“Yup. See that black cord in the plastic? It’s det cord. We used it to cut down trees in Vietnam. Nowadays it’s used in mining and building demolition. That little bit’s a shaped charge that’s probably enough to make her head completely disappear.”
 

Shrinking back from the screen, Tanya muttered, “
Oh, my God… that poor little girl!
” Looking at each of us, she asked, “What can we do?!”
 

“Nothing yet. We need more info.”
 

“
What?!
We can’t just
leave
her like that!”
 

“Yes, we can, and don’t get fuzzed up, lady. We can’t just take the collar off. Break the circuit and the laser will fire. Break the laser and that’ll set it off, too. And beyond all that, we don’t know that removing it would be a good thing.”
 

Tanya looked at me as if I was insane, of course. She opened her mouth and yelled, “
Are-you-fucking-crazy?!
We…”
 

I lightly stunned her larynx and said, “Cool down or I’ll stun you cold. Just sit there and watch.”
 

Wiping the screen, I showed her clips of Aria’s evaluation run at Carrington. Seeing a full-sized car slowly floating downward in a column of bright light made her mouth fall open. When I sent a tendril to unfreeze her throat, Tanya swallowed a few times, then sighed deeply before she spoke.
 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize… Well, just never mind, okay? I can see how something like that would scare people.”
 

“It sure did. I figure Aria would have wound up like this kid if the government had gotten its hands on her first.”
 

“So… what now?”
 

“Now we try to find out all we can about what happened in Cosgrove and what she might have had to do with it. I have a feeling we won’t like the results.”
 

Steph said, “The damage in the bunker was caused by directed field energy, as you suspected. Miss Wright in 2009 was apparently many times more powerful than Aria Wilson. It would be impossible to calculate her current abilities.”
 

I studied the neck brace for a moment, then asked, “How would they have caught her, Steph?
She’d have had to sleep sometime, but they’d have had to find her.”
 

Putting a picture of the kid’s skull on the screen, Steph said, “Note the deep crease on her left temple.”
 

“A bullet, you think? A sniper barely missed?”
 

“It seems probable. A more direct impact by some other object could have created such a crease, but that would have precipitated other damages.” She canted her head slightly and added, “This wound appears slightly less than two years old.”
 

Tanya asked, “Can she be fixed? Like my mother?”
 

Steph said, “Of course, but as with your mother, the repairs would only be physical. In your mother’s case, she’ll have an opportunity to regain the use of previous segments that were missing. In Miss Wright’s case, that might not be true.”
 

I asked, “Because her healing is complete and locked and restoring that spot would just give her some empty space?”
 

“That would also be my speculation.”
 

Chapter Twenty-eight
 

Tanya yelped, “I can’t
believe
you two! Won’t you even
try?!
”
 

Steph replied, “Not without knowing much more about Miss Wright’s mental state, which would require relocating her to a place of safety and awakening her.”
 

Standing up, Tanya started to say something more and I held up a hand. She closed her mouth and gave me a dim glower.
 

I said, “Tanya, if
she’s
what happened to that bunker, she could be completely, murderously insane. There are forty other people plus staff in your mom’s nursing home and more below it. We need more info and that’s all there is to it.”
 

Steph said, “I’ve found a report by a Dr. Robert Treager concerning events at the bunker.”
 

She put it on a screen and Tanya and I began reading. When I glanced at her and asked, “Next page?” she replied, “Not yet,” so I sent a copy of the stuff to my previous screen and read alone.
 

Pages one through seven were preliminary info. Marjory was an orphan, presumed about nine at the time of the report. Field talents discovered in 2005 when she’d levitated herself out of her crib. A crib at age five?
 

Tests and surveillance had more or less determined what else she could do. In Treager’s opinion, her 2009 mental capabilities were still only those of a typical five-year-old at best.
 

On page eight, Treager finally got to the bunker bust. Marjory killed her doctors and several guards by simply punching six-inch holes through them, then went looking for someone named Arnie. There was nobody at the facility named Arnie. He seemed to be someone from Marjory’s past, but Treager speculated that Arnie might simply be an old imaginary friend. Marjory had gone on a rampage looking for him.
 

The doors to the place had been rigged to blow for Cold War reasons, but it turned out to be a good thing. Momentarily, anyway. Someone had set off the charges as Marjory headed for the main entrance, a concrete tunnel leading north and upward.
 

Finding the exit blocked, Marjory had gone berserk, destroying the place room by room until only the center room had remained. When the lights went out, Marjory had surrounded herself with a glowing ball of energy and continued her rampage.
 

Twenty-six people had died, some by Marjory’s glowing energy balls and some crushed when concrete collapsed. There’d been only two survivors; Treager and an injured guy named Roland. They’d hidden inside metal wall lockers.
 

What Treager said next gave me a case of chills. Marjory had apparently looked upward, taken a deep breath, and screamed her rage several times. There’d been massive rushes of hot air from the hole, then she’d simply lifted off the floor and drifted upward through the hole she’d made.
 

Treager had faintly heard her scream once more, then he’d heard and felt a massive blast that made more debris fall on their lockers. After a few agonizing hours trapped in his metal box in total darkness, he’d fallen asleep.
 

Then there were lights and people shouting. He and Roland had been found. Roland had been broken and bleeding and was barely alive by then. The upright position necessary to lift his basket stretcher through the hole nearly finished the job. He died in a hospital a few hours later.
 

Sitting back, I sipped and said, “Well, okay, then. Let’s
not
wake her up just yet. Maybe we ought to put her on a flitter and run her up to space before we try to talk to her.”
 

Tanya turned and shot me a glare, then returned to reading.
 

I looked at Steph, who linked to me on my personal frequency and said, “Unfortunately, I have to agree with keeping her unconscious. She appears to be uncontrollably dangerous.”
 

Switching back to the picture of Marjory, I sent, “And yet they managed to get that collar on her. Probably caught her while she was sleeping or distracted. I wonder if the sniper had orders not to kill her or couldn’t get past the fact that she seemed to be just a typical little girl?”
 

Steph sent me only a raised eyebrow in reply. While we’d talked and read, preparations had been made to transport Marjory. She’d been moved to a gurney and her cables and box had been fastened to it, along with a drip bag on a strut. They’d then rolled her to one of the side exits to wait
for her ride with a pair of guards.
 

But somehow someone had screwed up. Or maybe Marjory had been faking her near-comatose state? Doubtful anyone had screwed up. My probes told me what was in her drip bag. She should have been out cold, but she wasn’t.
 

A ball of visible energy formed above her gurney and abruptly zipped to her left. It cut her drip tube and a guard suddenly had a gushing six-inch hole completely through his chest. He fell back against the door and toppled in front of the gurney. The other guard quickly stepped away from the gurney and drew his gun.
 

Marjory looked to the right as I sent a couple of quick, heavy stuns at her through a probe. She grunted deeply as each one hit her, gritted her teeth, and forced herself back to consciousness. Another ball began to form above her. The guard fired twice and both bullets became plasma just above Marjory’s chest.
 

Steph had disappeared and reappeared by the fallen guard as I sent a bolt of energy through Marjory’s ball. It splattered her ball, but Marjory managed to sit halfway up in her restraints and quickly formed another one. The second guard started to reach for the box on her gurney, but the ball moved fast, much of his head disappeared, and he dropped.
 

I knew Steph was trying to keep the first guard alive as she tried to talk to Marjory, but the kid almost instantly sent another ball straight through Steph’s sim. When the ball had no effect on Steph, Marjory sent a field blast that seemed to obliterate Steph’s sim as well as the majority of the steel exit door.
 

Three armed guards came running from the front. Two took cover behind support columns and aimed at Marjory as the third guard yelled commands to get face down on the floor with her hands behind her head. Marjory launched three balls at once. Being behind support columns didn’t help those guys at all. The balls bored through the columns and through the guards.
 

I said, “Aw, hell,” and sent probes at the fire control box.
 

Tanya gave me a glance, but didn’t seem to realize what I was about to do. There were two covered switches. My probes lifted the switch covers, but they wouldn’t stay up. I quickly made two more probes for the switches just as Marjory’s next blast made most of the control box vanish.
 

With the power source gone, nothing happened to her collar. Marjory used a narrow field to slice through the restraints on her left arm and leg, then those on her right. She sat up and tried to figure out how to get the guard rails down, then simply levitated herself over them and let her feet touch the floor.
 

Her legs failed her instantly and she lay there for a time, struggling and apparently trying to figure out why her body wouldn’t work right. It occurred to me she might not have been unsedated since her capture, which is a long damned time to go without exercise. Maybe she’d faint with any real effort?
 

Apparently not. Marjory was woozy, but she wasn’t a quitter. She levitated again and tried pulling at the neck brace. No luck. She’d have been too feeble even if it hadn’t been bolted together. She groped around it and found the bolts with her fingers. Steph and I both sent stuns at her and all we got were a couple of unhappy grunts. The kid seemed almost immune somehow.
 

I had a probe send a tendril around her exposed upper neck to choke her out, but Marjory’s personal field kept it several inches away from her. Steph reappeared behind her and tried enveloping Marjory’s body in a cocoon, but the kid sliced her way out of that, too. When she turned and saw Steph, she seemed very confused even as she angrily blasted Steph’s sim again. The rest of the door and some of the wall disappeared.
 

More guards had cautiously arrived. One fired a big scoped rifle and Marjory’s field glowed brightly where it deflected and almost stopped an equally big bullet. The round barely grazed Marjory’s shoulder. She screamed and more of the wall vanished along with a couple of patients and some equipment.
 

I sent the biggest spike of energy I could manage at her with the idea of simply blowing away some of her head. My blast never reached her, but it caused much of the field around her upper body to glow as brightly as the sun.
 

The other guards fired. More bullets hit her field and focused on her torso and head. Marjory turned herself in the air and faced the guards, who seemed not to have sense enough to take cover as they continued firing. Two of her energy balls obliterated their heads as well as their weapons.