Haywire (17 page)

“
I… I will. Where are we going?”

His mother turned back and reengaged the rover’s engine. “We’re heading to the spaceport, and from there we’re going to Mars.”

A heavy thud struck Shawn’s heart at the thought of going home. “Mars?”

Artemis held up the data tablet his mother had taken from her office. On it blueprints flashed by in a steady stream of grids and schematics. “I compared the data I have on all of Groesbeck’s known facilities against what your mom has, and only one of them had differences – the one we just came from. That means the rest have been fully searched and cataloged already. Nothing there for us. But, according to chatter she recently heard on the scholarly grapevine, a secret lab of his was uncovered on Mars a short time ago, and the person overseeing the site is a former colleague of hers. Even better, it’s in the nethers of Bellona.”

“
The nethers?” Shawn said, taken aback. “That’s crazy. Why would Groesbeck set up shop in that hell hole?”

His mother half turned and spoke over her shoulder. “Because he needed access to supplies and transportation, but he couldn’t be too close to them either. The nethers would have given him that, along with anonymity. He could have easily setup a lab down there without any authority noticing, coming and going with impunity. If Groesbeck was going to hide Titan research anywhere, that would be the perfect place, and I think I can use my friendship with Sheldon to gain access to it.”

Shawn was impressed. He’d never thought of his mother as the detective type. Probably one of the many changes her federal agent boyfriend had helped foster in her. He opened his mouth to say as much, but suddenly his vision swam with floating numbers and letters, information he didn’t need or want. He shook his head violently, and after a couple of seconds most of it disappeared. Fighting down a wave of nausea, he leaned back and said, “Alright, sounds like a plan.”

“
In order to get to Mars, though,” his mother continued, “we can’t take regular passenger spacecraft. Neither of you would make it past the first security checkpoint, and even if you could we don’t have any kind of legal travel documents on us, so instead we’re going to the commercial port on the west side of Arcadia to see about taking a freighter out.”

A laugh rumbled in Shawn’s unsettled stomach. He pressed a hand against his forehead and gritted his teeth through a fresh wave of queasiness. “We’re gonna ride hobo, huh?”

“
We don’t have a choice. The only way we can get off Callisto is if we hitch a ride with a cargo hauler who needs money more than he needs proper documentation.”

“
And which of us is going to negotiate this joy ride?” he asked, his insides finally settling a bit. “I don’t know about you two, but the closest I’ve come is begging a friend for a lift.”

His mother laughed and nodded. “I’ll be handling that. I wasn’t always a mother and museum director, you know, and your father wasn’t always a doctor. We were both young and broke once, and when college kids need to be somewhere on the cheap they take the rides they can get. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve hitched a ride or two in my time. I’ll get us to Mars.”

Shawn smiled at the idea of his parents hitchhiking around the solar system. It was an image that didn’t jibe at all with the people he’d grown up knowing, especially his mother. He smiled even more as the ever-present pain coursing through his chest and head diminished further.

Hoping he was beginning to recover, Shawn looked down at his body. Even though metal covered him from the neck down, he felt like he was naked. He wiggled his fingers, and they moved with enough ease that he didn’t doubt he could still play his guitar if he wanted to. As he looked at his right hand he remembered the talon that had sprung from Artemis’s finger, and the thought had barely formed in his mind before the metal along his fingers liquefied and reshaped itself into pointed claws in less than a heartbeat.

“
Whoa!” he said, his heart pounding. The connection between himself and his nanites was instinctive, beneath conscious thought, each tiny piece of intelligent metal as much a part of him as his own skin. It was an amazing feeling of empowerment.

Artemis nodded from the far side of the truck bed. “That’s good. You’re already starting to gain some control. The younger recruits always did have an easier time of it. A lot of your systems are autonomic, meaning that if you go somewhere that has toxins in the air, or the temperature is too high or low, your nanites will react to protect you from it. Over time, though, you’ll learn to control it and manipulate it with ease. If we were able to touch I could download some of my training and experience directly to you, making things much easier, but . . .”

Horror and amazement rolled through his mind in alternating waves. “Yeah, let’s not do that. But... you’ll help me?”

The Titan didn’t respond at first, but eventually she nodded. “As much as I can. Your nanites also come with a basic amount of combat and weapons training, which over the next few hours will integrate into your brain without you even knowing it. It’s like instinct for digital minds.”

Shawn was thankful. He felt strong, so strong, yet he worried that he was a bull let loose in a china shop. Just a day ago he’d considered Titans little more than storybook characters, but now... now he was one. Suddenly the elation left him, and in its place was the cold spray of reality. He was a Titan. But, what else was he now? Was he still a high school student? A lead guitarist? A boyfriend? His life had been saved in the bowels of the museum, but had it really? Did he still have a life? Could he ever be again who he’d once been? Had he lost his old life forever? A shiver started at the base of his spine and raced up to his shoulders, and his body trembled as the full implications of what had happened hit him.

“
It’s not easy, is it?” Artemis asked as though she knew what was going through his mind. The Titan looked at him with her head tilted and her eyes boring into him.

Pushing the increasing list of questions into the dark depths of his mind, he shook his head and tried to slow his runaway heart before it pounded through his chest. He didn’t know where to start answering them, and they were all moot if the problem of the crazed Titans wasn’t solved. That had to be his focus, the one fear he let himself have.

With his mind calmed for the moment, he looked again at his right hand and imagined the gauntlet as it had been. Instantly the metal reshaped itself. He then imagined his hand without the metal covering it, and the nanites sank down into his skin. Surprised that the tiny machines could be so easily hidden, he wondered if it was possible he could resemble his old self again one day. When he glanced over at Artemis in her fluffy spacesuit, he didn’t get too hopeful. His armor was thick, and there had to be limits on how much of it could be contained within him before he burst.

“
We’re here,” his mother said, bringing the rover to a stop.

Shawn stood up and glanced out a small window on the wall next to him. The rover was parked twenty meters from the airlock of a large building, but positioned far enough from exterior lights to keep them in shadow. Figures in dingy spacesuits loitered off to one side of the airlock, their helmets lit up bright orange as a small ship landed half a kilometer away.

“
All right,” she continued, “I’m going to go inside and see if I can find a currency terminal. Once I have the chits I’ll try to purchase passage on one of these freighters. Will the two of you be okay in the meantime?”

“
Yes, we’re fine,” Artemis answered, crossing her arms in her billowy lap and closing her eyes.

His mother nodded and closed the portal. A few seconds later the rover rocked as she got out, her helmet covering her head, and bounded toward the airlock. The people next to it moved out of her way, but their bodies pivoted as they tracked her movements. It was like they somehow knew she didn’t belong among them. It could have been the way she bounced from foot to foot instead of with the ponderous steps they took as they shifted away from the airlock, or the ill-fitting delivery spacesuit she wore. Either way, they continued to stare at the airlock long after she’d passed through it.

“
You should put on a suit,” Artemis said, her eyes remaining closed. “There are extras in the crate next to you.”

He stood up, walked to the crate, and opened it. Inside were suits similar to what his mother had on, all of them bulky. He pulled out the biggest one he could find and laid it against his body. It just barely fit him. His limbs trembled as he slipped the suit on and tightened the straps. Once the seals were secured, he leaned against the wall of the rover’s bed and gasped.

“
It’ll get better,” Artemis said, looking up at him. Her words were kind, but her tone said she wasn’t in a mood to coddle a hurting child.

Shawn took in a deep breath and stood up straight. He was determined to be strong, even if it killed him. “I’m alright. It’s a good thing we have these extra suits.”

The Titan nodded. “When your mother told me her idea, I knew we’d need something to cover us up out here and keep us from being noticed. It isn’t easy.”

A question bubbled up his throat, but before he could ask it, the launch center airlock opened and his mother bounced back into view. As soon as the airlock closed behind her she went to the group of people near it. Hands waved and helmets nodded for half a minute before she turned and walked toward the launch pads further down the port.

“
I hope she can get us transportation quickly,” Artemis said as she got up and stood at a window three meters down from the one Shawn looked out of. “The more people she has to talk to, the more people are left behind to answer questions we don’t want answered.”

A few minutes later his mother bounced out of the lights of the spaceport and reentered the rover’s cab. Once it was pressurized she opened the portal and said, “I found a ride. No one here is going straight to Mars, but one ship is going there after a brief stop at the Hygeia Mining Cluster in the asteroid belt, and its captain seemed to appreciate our need for transportation.”

“
Are you sure we can trust their discretion?” Artemis asked.

“
With as much as I had to pay for it? Yes. She also has a small crew, so we’ll have a cabin all to ourselves.”

Shawn’s spirits lifted. “Sounds good. What’s the ship’s name?”

“
The
Bonny Lad
.”

He lowered a bulbous helmet over his head and snapped the locking collar closed. “Sounds friendly at least. Let’s go.”

Once the three of them were assembled outside the rover, the orange glow of Jupiter shined like fire against their helmets.

“
Did she have an ETA on when we’d reach Mars?” Artemis asked.

His mother nodded. “If everything goes as planned we should make landfall in approximately fifteen hours from now.”

“
That’s longer than I’d like,” the Titan replied with a heavy sigh, “but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

As one they walked toward the collection of launch pads, leaving the rover behind to await whoever came along after them. Shawn didn’t know how long that would be, but he hoped it was long enough

Alex looked around the entrance of the museum. It was as quiet as a tomb, and nearly as empty of people. Eye witnesses were going to be few and far between until the museum’s door logs were pulled and everyone who’d been there was contacted. What few patrons and employees were still on site were sitting in offices waiting to be questioned.

“
Good to see you, Agent Delgado,” Lieutenant Ritchie said as Alex entered the area marked MUSEUM STAFF ONLY, his dark face grim and hard as obsidian.

Alex had met the police officer only a few times since being stationed on the moon, but he liked him. Ritchie took his job seriously, kept himself in shape, didn’t give in to the low crime belly bulge that so many small moon cops did. His grip was firm when they shook hands, his dark brown eyes steady.

“
I got here as quick as I could, Lieutenant.”

Ritchie dipped his head and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Everyone who was here when we arrived on scene has been ID’d and detained, but so far all we’ve turned up are museum employees and a few visitors who were either too lost or too slow to leave quickly. Hopefully their witness accounts will be helpful, because you won’t have any video recordings to look at.”

“
What?” That brought Alex up short. The museum, like most federal sites, was packed with cameras to record every coming and going. If they’d been turned off, finding out what had happened just got much harder.

“
When I tried to pull up the video feeds to make sure no one was lurking out of sight, I found they were all turned off. Since security inside the museum is automated, no one noticed until we got here.”

Anger flashed through Alex’s chest like a brushfire. He’d recommended increasing the level of security at the museum months ago when he’d arrived on Callisto and performed an inspection, but no one above him had deemed it necessary. “Low value target,” they’d said. Not so low value now, apparently. “Dammit.”

“
Sorry,” Ritchie said with a knowing nod. “I do have a piece of good news for you though. Dr. Campbell’s assistant, Joseph Beddor, is here, and from the look of it he was right in the middle of the action. What you’ve lost in video surveillance you might make up with him. He’s over there.” The lieutenant pointed behind him with his thumb.