Vanessa turned, tried to escape between the armrests, but another of her legs went, and she canted over. Then a pair of her pincers disintegrated before her eyes. There was no pain, but the sight of herself being physically dismembered triggered terror reflexes that it was impossible to control, and she screamed.
“What the hell is it?” Garsten’s voice yelled, coming from a different world.
Vanessa tumbled over, out of control. The tiger-like apparition loomed over her; its blade shimmered and grew larger.
“Aghh! No—ooo! . . .”
“What is it, Vanessa?”
Everything went blank, and then the helmet was being lifted away. Finnion was standing in front of her, holding the unplugged interface lead. For several seconds Vanessa couldn’t react, unable to shake off the horror of the image. Finnion slapped her cheeks once each in rapid succession, hard enough to sting. “Are you okay? What happened? Say something,” he snapped.
Vanessa blinked, rubbed her face in bewilderment as she reorientated. Then she stood up and began peeling off the body suit. “Get my clothes,” she said in a voice trembling from a mixture of remnant fear and confusion. “Forget everything. Something screwed up somewhere. It’s off. The whole thing’s over.”
As Mozart’s aria swelled to its crescendo, Kevin lifted the blade from the partly severed head. The saw wasn’t built for hardened mec alloy, and hacking off the limbs had dulled the teeth. This would do all the same, he supposed.
He planted a triumphant foot on the carcass, raised his saw in a victory salute, and switched off the blade.
“Nifty,” he pronounced, with deep satisfaction. “Definitely nifty.”
“What’s ha—” Finnion began, but Vanessa cut him off.
“It’s that boy again. He wasn’t just snooping around here. He was there in the car too—controlling other mecs. I don’t know how.”
“I thought you said you dialed in over the phone line and fixed him,” Finnion accused. “How—”
“I just told you, I don’t know how. But it’s obvious that he knows everything.” Vanessa took the clothes that Garsten had brought from the room at the back where she had changed. “Get Martin on the line,” she told him. Then, to Finnion again as she began dressing hurriedly, “Kevin may be onto us, but it doesn’t mean that anyone else is—yet. He may still be immobilized physically in the machine. . . .”
The phone rang just as Garsten was about to pick it up. He answered it and blinked in surprise. “It’s Martin for you,” he said, handing the phone to Vanessa.
“Yes, Martin?”
“Vogl just called me from the house. The police were there with Corfe, looking for the lawyer. They could go there, to the firm next. You have to get her out.”
“Oh God, that’s all we need.”
“Why do you say that, Vanessa? What’s happened?”
“The hit messed up. Look, Kevin knows everything. He’s at Neurodyne . . .”
“Christ, no!”
“. . . but—and don’t ask how, just now—there’s a good chance that right now he’s stuck in the system there and can’t decouple. If we can get to him before anyone else does, we might still find a way to save things somehow.”
“Christ . . .” Payne said again. There was silence for a few seconds. “Does anyone else know?”
“No, I don’t think so. Could Andy send somebody down there? It would give us more time, anyway.”
“Is Andy there with you?”
“Yes. I’ll put him on.” Vanessa handed Finnion the phone. “Martin wants to talk to you,” she told Finnion needlessly. She finished dressing while Finnion listened for most of the time, nodding with occasional interjections.
“Yeah. . . . Okay. . . . That’s what she says. . . . Sure, they’re here. . . . Okay. . . . Okay. . . . I’ll get on it right now. We’ll call you when we’re on our way.” Finnion depressed the hook, released it again, and punched in another number. “We’re sending Ollie and Royal down to Tacoma for the kid,” he told Vanessa and Garsten while he waited for an answer. “The rest of us are going straight on to the boat, and they’ll meet us there. The lawyer comes with us for insurance. . . .” He looked away and spoke into the phone. “Hello, Kyle? This is Andy. Put Ollie or Royal on. I got another job for them. It’s urgent. . . .”