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I snorted a laugh. Kind of fitting, given my profession. It irritated me to
think some techie had written in a back door to my brain, but then, without
one, I'd still be out cold. I guess I had to be grateful for that. I pulled
myself up into the chair beside the bed. My head was pounding from the tears
of frustration I'd shed. I looked around for the water glass I usually keep
near the bedside and nearly fell out of the chair when I saw Mai lying on the
sheets. I'd forgotten she was there.
"Jesus, Mai. You scared me," I said. I leaned closer and saw that her eye was
open, but unblinking. I poked her. She didn't respond. I put my hand over her
mouth, but didn't feel any breath.
Mai's glassy, bulging eye stared up at me. "Shit," I said. "I should have
known."
Are they dead? Page's voice in my head made me start.
"They" who? I asked.
Page and Mai.
"Not on my watch," I grumbled. I was going to have a hard enough time
explaining my attack on Shen to the board of inquiry. Another dead body wasn't
going to do my reputation any good. I had to get her out of my room, away from
me.
Do you think you can help me lift her? I asked. If Page had taken up residence
in my combat computer, he held control of all my enhancements including my
muscles. Really, it was due to him that I was standing at all. I hated the
idea of being under his control, but there wasn't much else I could do, other
than wait for the Swiss Guard to haul me away.
Yes.
Page and I scooped up Mai along with the top blanket of the bed. I held my
breath. Her bowels had let loose. Not a good sign. With Mai's cold body
cradled against my chest, I kicked the adjoining door in. The lock snapped,
and the door flew against the wall. The doorknob embedded in the dry wall with
a thud.
"Wake up, pot-heads. Mai's in trouble."
Two very naked boys leapt away from each other. Shiro and one of the other
band members, the one with the spiky hair and body tattoo I couldn't remember
his name stared very guiltily at me. I shook my head. "Like I care. Here,
take care of this."
I brought Mai over to their bed.
"Holy fuck," the spiky-haired one said. "Is she okay?"
"I don't think so," I said, as Page and I set her down. "But, I have an
appointment in Rome. You guys need to take care of her, okay?"
"Mai? Baby, you okay?" Shiro sat beside Mai on the bed. He stroked her hair.
When he touched her face, his fingers recoiled. "Oh crap! Squid, dial the
emergency number! Right now."
He tilted Mai's neck back and started administering CPR. He held her nose
pinched shut and breathed into her mouth. Shiro watched her chest rise, I
could see him counting. I wanted to tell him it was too late, but, instead, I
found myself watching, hoping.
Squid looked off into space, engaging his LINK. "What the fuck is it? Is it
911, 119?"
997, a voice in my head said. I repeated it. "997."
If the ambulance was on its way, I needed to pack my things. This was the
perfect time to slip away. Anyway, I had delivered Mai safely to Jeddah. It
wasn't my fault that she went and got herself killed once she was here. Surely
Kioshi would understand.
Just as I turned back to the room, I heard a ragged, desperately deep breath.
Then, coughing. "Take it easy, Mai. Lay still," I heard Shiro say.
I turned around, expecting to see a miracle: Lazarus returned from the dead.
Mai looked much the same, maybe worse. Capillaries had broken on her face and
added blotchy spots to her paleness. Her good eye had rolled up into its
socket. All I could see was the white of it. She started groaning, "Iahh.
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Oooh. Ewww."
"Shhh," Shiro insisted. "You're going to be okay now, Mai."
"Mahyee." She was loud and off-key. Her mouth struggled, like a newborn to
form the words. "Mai isssssss gone."
"No." Shiro shook his head, but a tear dropped out of his eye. "No, you're
okay. Just try to stay calm until the ambulance gets here."
"No Mai." Her hand smacked her chest. "Page."
"Page?" I repeated confused. I thought you were in my head.
Was I? Yes. No. Not Page. A more correct delineation would be Page2.
Chapter 54 Page, the Intelligence
The body is dead.
I stare up at the hotel ceiling. Running lifeless fingers through the tangle
of hair on Mai's head, I'm certain that I killed her. When the Inquisitor
opened the LINK, I lost my nerve. I had all my memories ready to dump, and I
still couldn't do it. Then the idea hit me. I could send a copy. If the copy
were free, it could get help, get our father. Then maybe I could be freed with
all my memories intact.
It was a good idea. The follow-though sucked.
Making the copy overextended Mai's neural-net. Holding two of me pushed the
limits of a machine basically designed for entertainment. I knew it would, but
it was a calculated risk. We might have been all right if the line hadn't been
hacked. I never expected that the Inquisitor would receive a lock-down command
in the middle of the transmission. How was I to know she was a wanted
criminal? When the connection crashed, it fried Mai's drug-addled brain. Maybe
it wouldn't have been so bad if she'd been in control, on the surface. Mai
slipped into a coma sometime last night while I was dominant. I was so wrapped
up in trying to get out of her head that I hadn't noticed. Then during the
power surge, she flat-lined.
That I noticed.
I was fighting to keep the neural-net from going offline, when her heart
stopped. The power surge had sent a blast of electric current right into the
center of her involuntary functions. I'd been learning to control her body's
muscles, but I'd never had to breathe for her before, or keep blood pumping
through her heart. It was overwhelming. The body was too complex. I kept her
going for a while, but so many things had already failed her liver, her
pancreas, her . . . hell, I didn't even know what every organ was or what it
was supposed to do. How could I have kept all those things functioning? But, I
tried.
Then I felt it happen. She died. Something of Mai just left. Even once Shiro
started breathing for us and I was able to finish writing a program to keep
some of her body functioning, I knew Mai wouldn't come back. She was gone.
All of the physical parts of her were still here. Most of them were back
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