Safe House

likely to reach you without interference—”

Maj nearly dropped it — then took a breath, and started to fold it up again — then stopped herself and opened it once more. It was addressed to me, after all. He would have realized I would probably read at least some of it—

“—and I want to thank you and your family for agreeing to make him welcome. There is, however, some information which you and he will need to know now, since it may take me a short time before I am able to follow him—”

Maj read the letter and felt her hands starting to shake. She turned the page over, read the other side.

Then she went straight down the hall to Laurent’s room and knocked. “Nggh?” he said.

She opened the door and put her head in. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but you had better see this. And then we’re going to have to decide what to do….”

About ten minutes later Laurent was still sitting on the edge of the bed, looking profoundly uncomfortable… and not just because of his illness. Sluggish as he was, Laurent had started to read the letter for the third time, and then had stopped himself and laid it aside.

“They are inside me,” he said. He shook his head. “The only ones left from all his work. That last cup of tea…”

“Could be,” Maj said.

Laurent looked at her, somewhat unnerved. “Still,” he said. “My father made them. They would never hurt me.”

“If they were still running your father’s programming,” Maj said, very softly, “no. I do understand, now, why you looked so good, the first couple of days. The little monsters have been running around inside you, pulling the lactic acid molecules apart, keeping you healthy…”

“They do not seem to be doing that anymore,” he said. “Maybe they, too, are jet lagged?”

“What do you think the odds of that are?” Maj said. She swallowed. “Laurent… there’s one other piece of news that wasn’t in the letter.”

He looked at her, eyes wide at her tone of voice.

She told him about the arrest.

It was a good few moments before he spoke again. “Then they have been interrogating all the people he worked with,” Laurent said. “Anything they knew, the internal police now know. Or soon will.”

“Including,” Maj said, “I very strongly suspect, how to reprogram your little friends the microps. Laurent…I don’t think they’re your friends anymore. I would bet you serious money that the internal police or whatever were waiting for you to go online. And when you did — they reprogrammed them…and then told your father that if he didn’t come out from where he was hiding, they’d leave them running.”

Laurent looked stricken. Maj herself was fighting with a huge load of guilt which she would otherwise have wallowed in for a good while. Dad told me, Laurent’s dad told him, to keep him off the Net — why didn’t we take him seriously! Or seriously enough! But there was no time to waste on self- recrimination right now. They were going to have to do something.

“I think you are right,” he said. “That chill last night…”

“Yes. And now the problem is, where do we go from here? Because the next thing they’ll do, I bet, is try to get their hands on you. The prototypes, the only ones there are, are swimming around inside you…and no one else knows about it yet. Though they will in about five minutes — because once Net Force and the people over here know, not all Cluj’s horses and all Cluj’s men are going to be able to touch you.”

Laurent still had a fairly shocked look.

“But we need to get moving,” Maj said, “because Mom’s gone now, and Dad won’t be back, and I bet you money they’ll decide that this is a great time to make a move, while there’s no one home but the kids.”

“The kids—” He looked even more shocked. “The Muffin is here….”

That had been on Maj’s mind, too.

“I would not want anything to happen to the Muffin. She is special.”

“No argument there,” Maj said.

“Even if she does make me sit with her while she reads to dinosaurs with bad breath.”

That made Maj burst out laughing. She much needed a laugh, for she was starting to shake inside. “Look,” she said. “None of this is your fault. But we’ve got to move.”

“And do what?” Laurent said, sounding as helpless as Maj felt. “They are inside me. I do not know anything about them — not the important part, anyway, not anything about the codes that would stop them. I am sure that only my father and the government have those…and the government will not issue them unless—” He broke off.

For the first time Maj saw his face start to crumple toward tears. But he held them off. “I do not want to be a weapon,” he muttered. “But that is what they will use me for. That is what I am, Maj! They are using me for that right now. I will not let them use me that way! It would be better if I was—”

“Don’t say it,” Maj said. “It’s a lot too soon to start making decisions like that.” All the same, she was not going to there-there him or waste her time with other arguments. There was a toughness about this kid that made Maj suspect he would do something that desperate if he felt there was need…because he really did love his dad that much. “Besides,” she said, “they may not know what they’re dealing with here.”

“Which is what?”

“Which is us,” she said. “We’re plenty…so let’s move first. Get into your sweats, get into the den, get online.”

“Is that a good idea?” he said. “I am really sick. Things are starting to hurt, Maj….”

The thought immediately went through her mind — call an ambulance, get him to the hospital. She hesitated—

— then rejected it. The hospital would not be able to do anything. To get Laurent well, these little monsters needed to be deactivated. Then they needed to be removed. The hospital emergency room would be equipped for neither. Better to keep him safe here, Maj thought, and not let him out of my sight until someone from Net Force shows up.

And until then…there has to be a way to fight them…. But boy, this sure doesn’t match the nice evening we had planned. A peaceful evening with a few of the Group, out in the depths of—

And the idea came to her. It was not complete, but Maj had a few minutes for that yet. Broad strokes first, she thought, then fill in the detail—“Go on,” she said to Laurent. “Dress, get moving, we don’t have a lot of time!”

He got up and started rummaging around for his sweats. Maj ran for the machine in her Mom’s office, threw herself into the chair, lined up the implant, flung herself into her work space. “Red alert,” she said to the work space, and the intervention lighting in the big room came on all around her. It was atmosphere, nothing more, but it made her feel better. “Panic button call, James Winters!”

There was an intolerably long pause. “The party you are calling is not available,” the system said. “Please leave a message.”

“Where is he?!” Maj yelled.

“That information is private. If you have clearance of level 8 or better, please state your clearance number.”

“Never mind that.” She gulped. “Panic button call, Jay Gridley!”

“The party you are calling is not available. Please leave a message.”

“Tell him to call Maj Green immediately. This is an emergency. End call,” Maj said. She took a long breath, and tried to calm herself and sort out the sequence for what she was going to have to do.

Call Dad, scream for help. Good, but anyone could tap into a cell phone call these days, and she had no desire at all to advertise to Laurent’s dad’s enemies that she was on to them. Nonetheless, she had to tell her dad about this and get him to drop what he was doing and come help. Leave a message for Winters, let him know what you need and what you’re going to do. There must be someone’s desk that his urgent-tagged messages land on. Then yell for other help. Someone who can help me defend Laurent while the high-powered stuff is coming.

In the end she called her dad’s phone. As she was afraid, it was turned off. She left a message tagged MOST URGENT on it, telling him to come straight home. Then she called James Winters’s code again, got the same