Kamikaze by Jayel

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Kamikaze, Part 11
by Jayel

In spite of Val's continued protests, Tara was determined to forge ahead with our experiments. I suggested she wait and give herself time to recover, but she insisted that she was fine and that she didn't want to "get better" until everyone else could, too. "How much more can he do to me?" she pointed out.

"That's the tricky part, isn't it?" Val said, following us to the med-tent. "We don't know what he can do."

"I know," Tara said stubbornly. "Before, when he was real, I didn't really know him at all." A knowing, even malicious smile played around the corners of her mouth, still painfully raw from Reilly's strike. "But I know him now."

"Maybe you just think you know," Val said. "Maybe he wants you to think that--has it occurred to you that he wants you in there with him?"

"Of course he does," she said impatiently. "That's exactly what he wants, but he isn't going to get it. Or at least, not really."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Val demanded. "Girl, you tell me right now what you're planning--"

"You know what I'm planning," she said, stopping at the tent flap and turning back to us. "You both do. Now hush before we scare poor 'Zo out of ten years' growth."

Would that we could have scared Alonzo out of anything or even have gotten his attention. He was still exactly as we had left him. Although the rest of the group had apparently retired to their own devices, I couldn't see where he had moved at all. "Where's Yale?" Tara asked him as if she didn't notice he was in some sort of trance. "I need him."

"He took Uly and True for a walk," Alonzo replied without opening his eyes. "John's out there trying to keep everybody else calm. Magus said you guys produced some pretty impressive fireworks in the ship."

"We did," Tara answered, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's going to work, 'Zo, I promise. I think . . . " Her voice trailed off as if talking to him were hopeless. "Julia, I'm going to try to convince Yale to come back into the ship with me," she said, turning back to me. "His connection to EVE may be the strongest, but it's also the easiest to access and therefore the easiest to break. If he's agreeable, will you help us?"

"Of course," I replied.

"I'll come with you," Val said in a tone that broached no argument. "You're not getting out of my sight."

Tara laughed. "It's the Plutonic Pleasure Station all over again, eh, 'Zo?" she said. Alonzo didn't answer or even look up, and she shot me a worried glance. "Yeah . . . ," she said, taking Val's hand. "See you in a bit, Julia."

I nodded, and they left us alone--me, Alonzo, and what was left of the woman who had led us here in the first place. The sound of her almost-totally-artificial respiration seemed deafening, closing in around us. "That was sort of rude, you know," I ventured, sitting down across from him. "They are your friends, and they're just trying to help."

He looked up, his brown eyes meeting mine over Devon's barely heaving chest. "What?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. "Oh, Tara . . . " He shook his head. "It doesn't matter . . . "

"Alonzo, what are you waiting for?" I asked, near tears. "What do you think she's going to tell you?"

"I don't know," he admitted softly, staring into Devon's face. "I can see her dreams, but from a distance, like I'm standing a long way away and barely catching sight of her on the horizon. And I can't get any closer. I move toward her, but she just keeps moving away . . . But she's calling me, Doc--I can hear her calling. There's something she wants to tell me; I'm sure of it."

I reached out for him, letting my hand close over his wrist. "Why you?" I whispered, more to myself than to him.

He just shook his head, his eyes closing again, shutting me out. He didn't push my hand away, but he didn't take it, either, and finally I just let him go and went out to find Tara and Yale.

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"Here, sit across from me," Tara told Yale, pulling a chair up to the back of her curving access station. "I'm going to use my access to wake EVE up, and I want you to be ready to activate your holo when I tell you to and take hold of my hand."

"That should be fun," Val grumbled, earning himself an impatient glower from Tara.

"Yale, he's right, you know," I said. "This is likely to be very painful."

"I realize that, Julia," Yale said kindly, as if I were the one about to face an ordeal, not him. "But what choice do we have?" He looked back at Tara and smiled. "Just tell me what I must do."

"You shouldn't have to do anything," she said, smiling back gratefully. "Julia there is going to try to find that shut-off switch again while I forge a connection with your network. If I can connect with you, I should be able to download your EVE data into my memory banks as she deletes it from EVE's--a fairly simple transfer. Your holo will act as a monitor, so I can read what's happening and make any necessary adjustments. The whole thing, if it works, shouldn't take more than a few seconds."

"And if it doesn't work?" Val asked.

Tara glared at him again. "You know, for a sleep jumper, you sure are squeamish," she said. "Obviously I don't know the answer to that question, because to my knowledge, no one's ever done this before. But if it causes any sort of medical damage, Julia's right here to fix us up."

"Assuming she isn't one of the critically damaged parties," Val pointed out.

"Yes," I said, managing a weak grin. "Assuming that."

Tara's eyes narrowed, and I was struck again by her eerie resemblance to Reilly when provoked. How many times had I seen his eyebrows draw together just that way when I questioned his orders? "Baby, I love you," she said, her pretty drawl sounding a bit brittle. "But I don't have the time or the energy to fight with you every step of the way on this. Now either help me or leave me alone."

The look on Val's face was strangely familiar, but it took me a minute to place it . He looked just like I had felt when I saw Alonzo crouched beside Devon's sick bed. Like this someone he loved was someone he wasn't sure he knew at all. "Yes, ma'am," he said ironically, turning on his heel and stalking out.

Tara watched him go, her mouth falling open either in shock or to call after him. "Oh, lord," she groaned instead.

"It's all right," Yale soothed, touching her arm. "He's only concerned for your safety, Tara. Once he knows that you are safe, he will be fine."

She looked up at him with eyes as trusting as Ulysses' for a moment. "You think?" she asked, half-teasing. "I hope so." She sat down at her terminal. "Okay, Doc, you ready for round two?"

I sat down on the floor--if Reilly decided to toss us around again, I didn't want far to fall. "As ready as I'll ever be."

With a final reassuring smile at Yale, she laid her hands on the terminal again, conjuring up her usual firestorm. This time Reilly appeared almost at once, standing in exactly the same position we had found him in before.

"Why look who's here," he said sarcastically. "My two favorite little girls in all the universe."

"Deja vu all over again, eh, Doc?" Tara murmured.

"Oh no, not the Yale unit again," Reilly groaned extravagantly. "Really, Heller, you're as bad as Adair, using that thing for everything."

"Don't be rude, Papa," Tara scolded teasingly as I found myself in the phantom corridor again. "Yale happens to be here to help you."

"Really?" Reilly asked, his voice distinct even from my sensory "distance." "And why, may I ask, do I require his help?"

"Don't you remember?" Tara asked, sounding genuinely concerned. "Oh no, it's worse than I thought. I can't believe Bennett was so stupid, mucking about in a device he could barely run, much less alter." I heard Yale's holo come to life, transferring the roar of babble that came from Tara's screen into a low, rather pleasing hum. Meanwhile, I could see the door I wanted just down the corridor, less than ten yards away.

"With the Yale unit's maintenance systems, I should be able to isolate the problem fairly quickly," Tara went on. "As soon as I made him show me what he had downloaded from you, I knew they'd planted a new bug. Are these people insane?"

"Yes," Reilly replied, obviously relieved. He seemed to believe every word she said, that she truly had his best interests at heart. "Or at least extremely naive. I apologize for forgetting . . . I seem to have a shadowmemory of seeing you recently . . . I should have known you'd get the better of them soon enough."

"Of course," Tara said with a lilting laugh. "I learned to be a dictator from the best, didn't I?"

"Got it!" I couldn't help but shout as I flung the download door/switch open wide. I expected another maelstrom of sensory overload, but instead the corridor simply disappeared. I could see the actual room again, where Tara was gripping Yale's hand like a lifeline as he looked into her eyes. Anyone just coming upon them would have thought they were in the midst of a heart-to-heart, but I knew it was actually a mind-to-mind.

"Heller, you little bitch!" Reilly roared, obviously furious. "Don't you realize what you've done? You think the Council was bad, just wait--"

"Oh, shut up," Tara said, carelessly slamming the lid of her terminal shut. Reilly's image winked out like an imploding star, leaving us in silence. "Yak, yak, yak, yak, YAK!" she mocked triumphantly toward the air where he had been.

"Yale, how do you feel?" I said, going to him. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said, looking up at me, somewhat wide-eyed but almost smiling. "I think I'm fine."

"Of course he's fine," Tara chortled, all but dancing around the room. "Doc, you were great! I knew you could do it." She beamed at both of us, the picture of pride. "I knew we'd pull it off."

Suddenly Val burst into the room, waving a rifle like an old-fashioned gunslinger. "Shut it off!" he yelled. "You're killing them!"

"Oh no," I said, struggling to my feet.

"Val, wait!" True shouted, running in. "It's okay! It stopped!" She looked around at us in bewilderment. "We're all okay," she finished slowly.

"Oh, True, baby," Tara said, rushing to her, her energetic glee instantly transmuted into motherly concern. "Are you sure? I'm so sorry . . . I should have realized there'd be exponentials, just like before." She looked at me. "You did say there were exponential effects in everyone when Elizabeth 'cured' EVE before, right?"

"If you could call them that, yes," I said, putting on my glove. "We thought our heads were going to explode."

"Yeah, that was it," True said, tactfully extricating herself from Tara's embrace. "What are you guys doing in here?"

"Tara's science project," Val said gruffly, going to his wife. "What happened?"

"We did it," she laughed, going up on tip-toe to kiss him. "Yale is no longer a component part of the diabolical device known and despised as EVE/Reilly."

"Or at least that's the theory," I added cautiously.

"Ask him," Tara said. "Yale, run a system diagnostic on your memory banks. Can you find any connection to EVE, even using the secondary program Elizabeth installed?"

Yale's expression clouded for a moment as his eyes scanned the coded lists. "None," he admitted with an incredulous smile. "Julia, I believe the young lady has done exactly as she professes. I believe that, for me at least, EVE is gone."

"I knew it!" Tara repeated, throwing her arms around Yale and hugging him before flinging herself back into Val's startled embrace. "Now we just give it until morning to see if there are any side effects, then do everybody else."

"Side effects?" I asked.

"Just a precaution," she assured me. "You know better than I do that any time you mess with someone's brain, things can conceivably happen that shouldn't. But all indications now are that Yale is perfectly, marvelously okay."

"How about you?" Val asked, putting his hands on her shoulders as if to hold her down to earth. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she promised. "As a matter of fact--and as you should have noticed by now--I feel great." She caught hold of his shirtfront. "Val, don't you get it? I win! After all this time, I finally get to win!" She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed. "We win . . . ," she murmured. "At last."

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