The Phoenix Code (15 page)

The android
, she typed.

Have you had problems with him?
Graham asked.

Nothing we weren't prepared to handle. But he said something that suggested he had been out searching the nets.

Go on.

He asked me if I knew about the Phoenix Project.

Graham revealed almost no reaction.
Almost
nothing. But it was enough. The tensing of his facial muscles, the way he sat a little straighter—it spoke volumes to Megan, who had grown sensitized to nuances of body language after working with Ander. Graham recognized the name Phoenix and didn't want her to know.

What did you tell him?
the general asked.

That I knew nothing about it.
She thought back to the conversation.
He claims he picked it up on the Web. He also said Raj worked on it.

I see. Graham leaned forward. You must leave NEV-5 immediately.

Sir, what's going on?

We need to talk to you, but this isn't the best venue. Say nothing to Dr. Sundaram. Is the RS unit active?

We turned him off last night.

Leave him that way.
Graham paused.
Go to Las Vegas. Call 555-8956. The person you reach will give further instructions. My concern right now is to get you safely out of NEV-5.

She wanted to grill him about it, but she held back. If he had thought she needed to know more, he would have told her.
I'll go right away.

After they broke the connection, she took a deep breath. Then she went back to the bed. Raj lay sprawled on his back, his legs stretched out, one hand on his stomach. She felt a surge of awe at the phenomenal intellect contained within that vulnerable human body. She hated to leave him this way.

He stirred and reached for her, then lifted his head when he realized she wasn't beside him. He spoke in a drowsy voice. "Come on back. It's cold."

Megan sat on the bed. She felt as if a thread in their lives was breaking before they even finished spinning it. "Go back to sleep," she murmured.

He pulled her down into his arms. "I haven't slept this well in weeks." His voice caught. "Not since my father died."

"I'm sorry." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she whispered again, she wasn't sure why.

They held each other until he fell asleep. Then she slid out of his arms and stood up next to the bed.

The lights went off.

Megan froze. Having the power go out
again
, by accident, seemed about as probable as all the air in the room suddenly moving to one corner. Ander had caused the first power failure, but he was inactive now, as far as she knew.

Megan made her way to her console, but it had gone dead. She had no light at all and her flashlight was still in the lab.

Now what? She felt even less comfortable at the thought of leaving Raj here. If he had no link to this, he was probably also in danger. She should wake him up so they could escape NEV-5. But if he was involved, waking him could be a disaster. Graham had warned her against trusting him. He didn't have her positive view of Raj, but that could work against her too. A plethora of black curls was unlikely to affect the general's judgment.

What had caused the failure: Ander, Raj, or something else? She and Raj had checked the NEV-5 local area network, but she had looked for Ander's tampering. If Raj had done something, he could have hidden his work. She had no intention of going to the power room. If she brought up the generators, it would alert whoever had killed the power that someone was awake. What she ought to do was take a vehicle from the garage and drive to Las Vegas. With the power off, she might have trouble operating the elevator, but it was almost impossible to trap someone inside who knew the base. Security was meant to guard NEV-5 from outsiders, not prevent legitimate inhabitants from leaving.

And Raj? She had to go on instinct; she had no time to work this through like a mathematical proof or a software algorithm.

She returned to the bed and sat by Raj, then nudged his shoulder. "Wake up."

"Megan?" he mumbled. "Why do you keep getting up?"

"We have to go."

"Go?" He yawned.

"Raj, please. We have to leave."

"Do you mean your bedroom?" He sounded more awake now. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude—"

"It isn't that." She heard him sitting up. "We have to leave NEV-5."

"Why?"

"I can't say right now." By going against Graham's advice, she had already taken a risk. She had to minimize the potential damage, which meant saying as little as possible until she better understood how Raj came into this.

"I'm not leaving unless you tell me why."

"I can't. Please trust me. We have to go." She couldn't even risk taking the time to change her clothes.

"Why won't the lights go on?" Raj asked.

"I don't know. Even the backups are out." She took a breath to ease the tightness in her chest.

"Again?"
The bed rustled as he slid past her. "We have to check Ander."

"No." She grabbed his arm. "We have to
go
."

"Why?"

"I can't talk about it."

"You 'just' want me to trust you."

"Yes." She prayed she had done the right thing.

Raj blew out a gust of air. "All right. For now. But I'm going to want answers."

Standing up by the bed, she said, "Deal."

The corridors were dark, without even the emergency lights that were supposed to provide such good backup.

Going through large open areas with no light was unnerving. They made their way by feeling along the walls. Megan kept her fingers hooked in Raj's belt so they didn't get separated.

"You know," Raj said, "if this is just an ordinary power failure, we're going to feel pretty silly about skulking around this way."

She managed a wan smile. "No kidding."

"Ander might have cut the power."

"We turned him off."

"He could have hidden a program and set it to start later."

Although it made sense to Megan, she regretted what such an act on Ander's part would imply. "He doesn't trust us."

Raj snorted. "Trusting people is bloody stupid."

"Why do you think that way?" When he didn't answer, she said, "Bugs."

"You think he bugged these halls?"

"No. The reason you distrust people. It has something to do with insects."

"Megan, chill on the bugs, okay?" His muscles had tensed against her hand where she held his belt.

She persisted, trying to understand him. Her life might depend on it. "People don't usually go out of their way to rescue insects just because kids at their school swatted bugs."

"So I'm eccentric."

"What else did those kids do?"

He suddenly stopped and swung around, pulling her in front of him, his hands gripped on her upper arms. "They fucking made me eat them, all right? After they beat me up. Satisfied?"

"My God. That's appalling."

"Yeah, well, I learned how to fight back."

"Couldn't you get help?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I was too proud to ask." Raj took a breath and exhaled, as if to release the memories. He continued in a quieter voice. "I felt like the insects they made me eat. They knew I wanted to be an entomologist. So they tried to make me hate those dreams. Well, forget them. No one takes my dreams."

"I'm sorry. They had no right." Megan knew firsthand the pain a child's peers could inflict on those who were different, and she had dealt only with taunts, never violence or brutality.

Raj shrugged. "I'm more successful now than the lot of them combined, ten times over." His grip on her arms loosened. "Ander is our problem now. He can model our behavior and predict our actions. He may already have guessed we would do this."

She wondered if Ander's misconduct had stirred up Raj's anger from the past. "If he's the one behind this."

"Who else would it be?" It wasn't reassuring the way Raj pulled her into his arms; he could break her ribs with that rigid embrace.

Megan had to turn her head against his chest to breathe. "I don't know."

"Why are we running?" he asked. When she didn't answer, he said, "Just trust you. Sweet, idealistic Meg. Except I know the other side. You didn't survive this cutthroat, high-stakes game in our industry by being sweet. I want to know what you know."

She spoke quietly. "What makes you think I trust you?"

It was a moment before he answered. "Touche."

"Let's just go, okay?"

His hand clenched around her hair. "Go where?"

She drew in a breath against the alarming constriction of his hold. "We have to do what Ander wouldn't expect."

"The Solarium. If we climb to the top, we can go through the safety hatch to Level One."

"Why wouldn't he expect that?"

"Because he's probably hacked our records."

Megan recalled what Graham had said about her files at the Pentagon. Who had done it, Ander or Raj?
Who?
"How does that connect to the Solarium?"

His voice tightened again. "Because I'm afraid of heights, damn it."

His anger didn't surprise her. The situation was forcing him to reveal aspects of his personality that she suspected he usually locked behind fortified defenses. Heights, bugs, insomnia, soap shavings: how many coping mechanisms had his life inflicted on him?

And
why
?

The power was out in the Solarium too. Megan had never been that interested in having implants put in her body, but now she wished she had IR lenses that would let her see in the dark by making objects glow according to their temperature.

They made their way forward, bumping tables and trees. Suddenly Raj's hand yanked out of hers. Someone grabbed her around the torso, forcing the air out of her lungs. She tried to shout, but only managed a choked noise.

"No one can hear you," a voice said near her ear. It sounded like Raj. Then he pressed an air syringe against her arm.

With her strength driven by fear, she tried to jerk away. He must have stolen the syringe from the NEV-5 med room. They weren't supposed to use it without a prescription from a doctor.

"Megan!" That was also Raj, several meters away. "Run!"

Whoever was holding her let go. As she swung around, moving with adrenaline-driven speed, a scraping came from nearby, followed by a grunt, then a thud.

"Who's
there
?" Megan lunged forward, but she collided with a chair. She fell across it and hit a table with an impact that jarred her teeth.

Someone yanked her upright. When she twisted around and struck out with her fists, he spoke in Raj's voice. "Enough."

"No."
She didn't want to believe it was Raj. Ander could mimic him. Who had warned her to run? As she struggled, her bare arms scraped the rough cloth of his jumpsuit. It almost made her freeze. Ander had stolen Raj's jeans and sweater, and they had left the garments on a console after they undressed him.

Raj had been wearing the jumpsuit.

Megan thought she heard breathing nearby, but she couldn't be sure. Her captor held her around the torso, pinning her arms to her sides as she struggled. If this was Raj, then the same muscles she had so admired before now made her a prisoner.

Damn. She should have let him sleep. Her intuition was usually sound, but this time she had let affection cloud her judgment. She kept fighting, driven now by anger at herself.

Her awareness faded and the dark that filled the atrium came in to fill her mind as well.
 

Jolt. A jerk knocked Megan against a hard surface. She opened her eyes into moonlight. She was in a vehicle, the HM-15, what they called a desert floater. Silver light slanted through the windows, but her sight was too blurred to see much else. They had to be on the desert; even with the advanced shock system that gave this vehicle its name, it still vibrated as it drove, which it wouldn't have done on a road.

She was in the front passenger seat, still in her nightshirt. Someone had wrapped her in a blanket and pulled it over her head. A blur sat at the wheel. As her gaze focused, she saw that it was Ander, wearing Raj's sweater and jeans, his blond hair brushed back from his face. She wondered how he could look so innocent and cause so much trouble.

The floater had an angular shape with flat surfaces. Its systems diffused heat to help it blend into its surroundings like a chameleon. The composite body, dark color, shielded engine, high-tech wheels and suspension, and camouflaged exhaust made it hard to detect. The holographic displays in front of the driver's seat looked the way Megan imagined the cockpit of a starship.

Ander had pulled a cable out of his left wrist and jacked it into the dash, no doubt linking into the vehicle's tracking system. The floater could drive itself, but he kept his hands on the wheel anyway. A meter on the dash indicated he wasn't linked to any of the electronic driving grids that crisscrossed the country, regulating traffic. Someday the law would probably require all cars to link up, making accidents and traffic jams a thing of the past, except when a grid malfunctioned. But for now it remained voluntary, and Ander hadn't volunteered to take part.

"What's going on?" Megan asked.

Ander glanced at her. "Are you all right?"

"Megan?" That came from the back, unmistakably Raj.

She turned around. Raj sat behind her, his wrists tied to a hook where the doorframe met the ceiling. He had a bruise on his cheek. His ankles were bound with a net they had used to store potatoes in the kitchen.

"Good Lord," Megan said. "What happened?"

At the same time that Raj said, "Ander knocked us out," Ander said, "Raj tried to kill you."

Raj swore. "He's lying. He hit me in the Solarium and drugged you."

"That's bullshit," Ander said. "I caught him using the NEV-5 system to steal files from other installations. He realized you were on to him, Megan. So he tried to get rid of you and make it look like I did it."

Megan stared from one of them to the other, trying to make her groggy mind absorb the situation. Either could be lying. At one time she would have said Ander couldn't tell a deliberate untruth, but she could no longer be sure.