© 2022, 2025 Duleigh Lawrence-Townshend. All rights reserved. The author asserts the right to be identified as the author of this story for all portions. All characters are original. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. This story or any part thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review or commentary.

This story was originally written for the AI Era event in 2022. My writing back then was best described as 'enthusiastic,' and more accurately described as 'sloppy.' Hopefully, I scrubbed the sloppiness out of the story and made this an exciting reading experience.

AI Era: Agent AI

SWAK

Artificial Intelligence

Additional Intellect

Augmented Individual

AI

For some, it's a terrifying word; it's man playing God; it's a Pandora's Box that threatens to destroy the world when the box is opened. For some, it's the by-product of a life-saving treatment that needs to be handled carefully, similar to the high that accompanies opioid pharmaceuticals. Computer science has been trying to create a true artificial intelligence, and somehow, artificial intelligence created itself inside of Ming Yu Long and Alicia Ingersoll, Agent AI.

Cliff Staunton woke late at night to find his boss and lover, Ming Yu Long, was gone. Her side of the bed was empty and cold again. It was always like that when her top agent and chief of corporate security, Alicia Ingersoll, was in the field for a long time. Alicia and Ming had to be in contact with each other, both physically and electronically; they believed that their survival depended on this contact. Both of them were horribly injured through accidents and physical abuse. Ming ended up being a scar-covered quadriplegic; Alicia ended up being a paraplegic with hands so mangled that they were replaced by a miracle surgery developed for her at the order of Ming. Both of them are now walking, jogging, practicing yoga, and martial arts due to millions of nanobots in their bodies that act as nerve cells or muscle cells, depending on their programming. Because of this, they both called themselves Augmented Individuals.

Cliff sighed; he knew where Ming was. He stepped out of her room into what was once a hall that Alicia once thought looked like an old gold mine; the wood was actually barricades to protect the inhabitants from the construction that was going on behind the barricades. Now, when you step out of an apartment in the VIP complex, you find yourself in a tropical courtyard. With an artificial sun overhead, the center of the courtyard was dominated by a fountain covered and surrounded by tropical plants and beautiful blossoms. The walls of the courtyard looked like several buildings that came together to form the courtyard. Each apartment was two floors tall, and each upper room had a balcony overlooking the courtyard. It's a bright and cheery place dominated by the sound of splashing water, cheerful music, and the laughter of the two healing AIs. This is where they take many of their meals and meet with clients.

It was early morning. The artificial sunlight in the courtyard was silvery to simulate moonlight. Wearing a t-shirt and jeans, Cliff crossed the courtyard and ducked down an alley hidden by a hanging banner and several vines. The alley was dark, and after a few twists, the light from the courtyard was gone, and he was guided by Ming's "fireflies," small greenish lights to guide the way. Then, ahead, he could see a firefly seemingly hovering in the darkness, and he knew that was a doorknob illuminated by the firefly. He turned the knob and entered a large closet containing a wide iron spiral staircase illuminated by more fireflies. Up he went.

Cliff wasn't comfortable climbing the iron spiral, it was creaky and a bit wobbly, but he went up, when he came to a floor, it was like entering his grandfather's attic - dusty wooden floor, wooden crates and trunks stacked up, dim lighting from a bare overhead bulb, and at one end of the room a door with light emerging from underneath the crack, and scratching, beeping, hissing sounds radiating from within.

Cliff eased the door open and found Ming sitting at a desk covered with radio equipment. She was tuning in a frequency, her hands shaking. She was late. At 3:43 AM, she needed to be tuned to 5.90 megahertz because every morning, a signal would come in.

-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.-

Dah dit dah dit, dah dah dit dah - in Morse code, they were the letters CQ, or Seek You, repeated over and over... It was Alicia looking for Ming. Ming waited for a pause and then began tapping out on the Morse code keyer.

-.- -.- -.-

Dah dit dah, the letter K in Morse code, which she repeated over and over. After a pause, a series of dits and dahs could be heard. Alicia was sending the message:

-.-.--.. -.-.-... -.-----. -.--.-.. --.-----.

Ming started writing, but she wasn't writing letters; she was writing digits.

01010011 01010111 01000001 01001011 00100001

When the transmission ended, Ming sighed happily and sent the letter K, then shut down the radio equipment. Cliff stood behind her and massaged her temples. "She's ok?"

"Yes, she's ok. The checksum is good, so all those messages we got today are invalid." Ming looked up at Cliff happily. They received several messages through several methods claiming to be from Alicia and begging to be pulled back because she was in grave danger. Ming came up here to their "radio shack" at a predesignated time, on a predesignated frequency, and exchanged a quick conversation using something that looked and sounded like Morse code but was not, yet it assured Ming that everything was okay.

"I don't get it," said Cliff as he helped Ming out of her chair.

"It's simple, we agreed on something short and sweet, and she sends that at a predetermined time on a predetermined frequency, it tells me everything is good. We can ignore all those other messages. If the Morse code message is different from the value we agreed upon earlier, she's in trouble."

"You're telling me that if the checksum is good, the previous messages are bad; if the checksum is bad, the messages are good," Cliff considered what he had just said and then announced, "That's just stupid!"

"Well, yeah, but remember Edwardo's cabin? That was stupid, too, but it worked."

Cliff nodded. Edwardo's cabin was a cabin in New Mexico with a computer connected to a cell phone that occasionally sent and received text messages. If you sent a message to the cabin saying that you were going to visit, then showed up within 48 hours without a follow-up message of any kind, the cabin blew up, taking you along with it. It was stupid, but Ming used it to kill two dozen mercenaries who were working for Hans Stavros Baumgarter. Baumgarter and his men knew that Cliff and Ming were geniuses, and they expected elaborate, complex traps from the young couple. Instead, it was the weird, stupid traps that took them down.

Back to the here and now, Cliff asked, "What if Alicia doesn't send a Morse code message?"

Cliff looked back up the stairs at Ming. Her normally cute features were sad. "That's a signal to extract her, but she said I had to wait for three missed messages in a row before extracting her."

Cliff went down the spiral staircase one step and turned around. This put them at eye level with each other. "Why didn't you wake me?" he said as their lips met. Their kiss was long and sweet. Her slim arms wrapped around him and held him tightly. He was so much like Kevin, her fiancé, who was killed by that bastard Baumgartner nearly a decade ago.

Finally, when their lips parted, Ming said, "I wanted to spend some time together with her... just us, her and me, you know? That's what this radio conversation is."

With a smile, Cliff turned around and hoisted Ming onto his back, and started carrying her piggyback. "I completely understand. I just worry about you on these stairs." He carried her out into the black hallway, and they headed back to Ming's apartment. "Why do you use the radio? It's so archaic."

Ming held him tightly and said, "Because it is so archaic. It's analog, so it's kind of fun, we have the equipment, might as well use it, and who would think that a high-tech super spy would use such an old, archaic mode of communication?" As they entered the courtyard, Ming rested her head on his shoulder. "Let's get to bed, you have a meeting with the senator tomorrow."

"Me? Alone with Senator Nourse? Wait a minute... Ming? Oh no, you didn't go to sleep..."

Alicia's uncle, US Senator Amos Nourse, was coming to learn about the nanobots that are keeping his niece Alicia and her boss, Ming, alive and moving, and Ming planned to do the roll-out of the change she's planning for Long Air Services Security. Along with other changes, it will change its name to Twin Dragons Security Systems.

The nanobots that the senator wanted to learn about create a network inside their bodies to perform these miracles, and hidden in the background, they have developed a secondary Artificial Intelligence, an Additional Intellect, practically an electronic person who lives inside of them. These AIs are not mirror images; they're as individual as Ming and Alicia are, but they know their place. What Ming's AI says, Alicia's AI obeys. But they have become dependent on each other; the mental well-being of Ming and Alicia seems to depend on the ability of their AIs to communicate in the background.

When Ming and Alicia need to upgrade their AIs, which can happen as often as weekly and as rarely as every third month, they will spend an entire 24 hours in bed together, letting their new nanobots replace worn bots, then allowing their AIs to update, synchronize, and harmonize, which ends up being a very private event. Ming doesn't classify Alicia as her lover. Ming says she's 100% straight, and her only lover is her aide-de-camp Cliff Staunton. Alicia says that since she was horribly disfigured by her former aide, Dennis Boothroyd, she no longer likes sex. However, she and Ming sleep together every night, the two traumatized women find comfort in each other's arms, and Alicia often makes love to Ming. Alicia never lets Ming touch her vagina. She's still emotionally traumatized from the torture she survived, but she allows Ming to touch and suckle her breasts.

While Ming and Alicia both claim that they're not lesbians, they say that what they do with each other is "something else" and that "you wouldn't understand" because it's "none of your business." The only time that Ming is an enthusiastic, orgasmic lover for Cliff is when Alicia is nearby, and she's best when Alicia is in bed with them. Alicia isn't part of Cliff and Ming's lovemaking; she's generally lying on her side next to them, her eyes closed, a gentle smile on her lips, and her fingers entangled with Ming's, and their AIs sharing data.

She often comes when Ming does. The only time Alicia shows any physical reaction at all is when Ming sucks Cliff's cock; then, Alicia becomes a very active spectator, quietly encouraging Ming and cheering her on. Occasionally, she'll take over for Ming to show her how something is done, like keeping her tongue active during deep throat. Alicia is a very adept, enthusiastic fellatrix, but she doesn't have a lover and claims that she's not interested in one.

Other than Ming and Cliff, Alicia's only real friend is Jim MacDonald, her second in command for Long Air Services Security and the head of Ming's personal security detail. Jim is huge. Easily over twice as big as Ming's slight 101 lbs. or Alicia's curvy 135 lbs. (not counting nanobots and artificial joints and bones). It's amazing to watch sexy little Alicia sparring against "Mac" using a combination of Wing Chun Kung Fu and yoga (she got the idea from a Jackie Chan movie) against Mac's combination of "Taekwondo and Ol' Fashion Ass Whuppin'." Alicia has promised Mac a blowjob if he ever beats her two falls out of three, and Ming enjoys coming to the practice bouts because she wants to see what Mac promises as a "South Alabama Black Anaconda" but has yet to see one.

Alicia brings life and vitality to "Ming's Mine," the massive data warehouse and nanobot development lab built in the remains of dozens of mines that honeycombed Ganley Mountain. The canyon between Ganley Mountain and Mt. Kelso often rang with her laughter and often echoed with Ming's joy, generally caused by Alicia's antics. Inside the mountain, Alicia went from office to office smiling, laughing, encouraging the scientists who make her nanobots, begging them to come up with "gin-flavored bots," and looking for potential security breaches by putting the employees at ease and getting them to talk. She believed that the best security inspections started with a smile and ended with an ass-beating for the guilty party.

There are three entrances to the facility: the employees' entrance, which is at ground level at the base of Quayle Creek Canyon, and the helicopter hangar, which is at the same level over a mile further up the canyon. The employees' entrance leads downward to a security check-in, and then from there, the employees proceed to their location, the nanobot labs, or the data stores. There are dormitories, cafeterias, and theaters for employees who will spend up to a week in the mountains working on their projects before taking the bus home to Silverthorn or Golden. The Helicopter Hangar entrance is used primarily by contractors who are continuously upgrading the tunnel system and expanding the ever-growing data storage business. Every day, an armored car makes the trek up the mountain to store data for customers in a mine so protected that it would take a series of pinpoint nukes to endanger it.

The third entrance is the VIP entrance, somewhat halfway between the two canyon level entrances and over 1,000 feet up a twisting and winding narrow mountain road. The VIP entrance gave access to Miss Long's offices, apartment, and spa. That is where Miss Ming, Miss Ingersoll, and Mr. Staunton live; their support staff commute internally from the dormitories and offices in the mountains and reach the VIP level via a secured elevator. When the weather is good, a trip up the outside of the mountain is required. Except in dire emergency, the internal elevator that connects the executive suite and the company offices is shut off because it's easier to secure a slow-moving UTV/ATV outside a mountain than a stealthy infiltrator inside a mountain. When the weather is bad, this exterior road becomes a playground, and the men and women of Long Air Services enjoy sliding down the snowy road on plastic inflatable mattresses.

<><><><><>

A sleek Bell 407GXP helicopter in the cheerful crimson and gold colors of Long Air Services made the long trip from Denver International Airport, far out in the Colorado prairies, to Ming's home in the mountains. "Why are we doing this today?" asked Albert Dirkson, Senator Nourse's top aide. "The Dragon Lady won't be there, and neither will your niece."

"I'm not here to see Miss Ming or Miss Ingersoll, I'm here to see Cliff Staunton and the scientists in the nanobot lab."

"I think it is disrespectful to make an appointment with a serving US Senator and not be there for the appointment," said Amos's second aide, Betty Chapelwaite.

Amos could only chuckle, but he was honest when he said, "It may save your life, Miss Chapelwaite. The last time we were here, you didn't exactly go out of your way to make friends with Alicia." Then he grew stern. "I made an appointment to speak with Cliff Staunton, and I expressly told Miss Long not to let my visit interfere with her plans."

The pilot of the beautiful helicopter said, "The mountain to our left is Mount Evans, the highest peak you can see from Denver, and the lake below us is Echo Lake, a popular hiking and fishing location. We are ten minutes out."

"I want all three of you to relax," said Senator Nourse. Then, in a stern growl, he said, "Or you can wait in the chopper."

Soon, the helicopter swung left and followed the course of a canyon south. They began losing altitude as the canyon narrowed. Two bald rock faces with occasional patches of trees grew closer to the helicopter, and then they saw it. A large landing ramp of poured concrete at the base of the mountain on their left. Four huge circles with a huge H in the middle were painted on the concrete ramp, and the mountain had an enormous set of hangar doors built into the face of the mountain. "Welcome to Ganley Mountain," said the pilot as the skids lightly touched down on the ramp.

US Senator Amos Nourse of Maine climbed out of the helicopter. He had brought with him a Secret Service agent for security, plus three aides. They were met by a small Asian woman in a red business outfit trimmed with white, with a matching pillbox hat. The outfit reminded Senator Nourse of the old-fashioned airline stewardess uniforms of the late 50s and early 60s. "Good morning, I am Zhang Wei of Twin Dragons Security Systems. I will be your guide for the first part of the tour. Miss Ingersoll has asked me to start you on a familiarization tour of the facility and acquaint you with Twin Dragons Security Systems. If you follow me, we will start the briefing in the meeting room."

"Are you a security guard for Twin Dragons?" asked Betty Chapelwaite, her voice dripping with scorn.

"Yes," said Zhang Wei, ignoring Ms. Chapelwaite's tone of voice.

"Miss Wei," asked the senator's aide, Albert Dirkson, "Is this where the so-called battle occurred?" Using his fingers, he put scare quotes around the word battle to show his disdain.

Wei paused and chose her words carefully. "This is where the criminal Hans Stavros Baumgartner was captured as he attempted to kidnap Miss Long."

"You and I both know that your description is a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it?" asked Albert with a snide "eat shit" smile.

Wei leaned to the side to peer around Dirkson and look at the face of Senator Nourse, who showed a look of ill-concealed annoyance with his aide. Straightening up, Wei stepped up to the aide, a man who was a full foot taller than her, and said, "My description falls far short of the horror of what my supervisor, a disabled veteran, had to endure at the hands of a man that your government seems too eager to coddle." The tiny woman glared at the aide, who grinned with the self-assurance of a big man who knows he can hurt a smaller opponent. But as she continued to glare at him, his confidence appeared to waver. As his resolve wavered, Wei spun on her heel and went back into tour guide mode.

"Above this hanger are a series of mine shafts extending nearly a half mile up, crisscrossing through the mountain. Those shafts have been sealed and are now filled with clean, clear mountain spring water, enough to fill this entire hangar to the brim with clean drinking water. I'm told that it's enough water to fill two mile-long freight trains with Coors beer. The water is used by our residents for drinking water for cooking, and cleaning, and for cooling, as it can get quite hot inside this mountain. It's also used for power generation as steam created by geothermal sources deep under sublevel 25."

Again, Albert Dirkson questioned, "Doesn't this water belong to Denver?"

"They are free to purchase our excess water, but considering that it has been filtered and purified, much has even been distilled, the fair market costs make it economically unsound for Denver's needs." Water rights under Ganley Mountain were a hot-button topic that political wannabes loved to press in an attempt to "make their bones" politically, and Zhang wasn't happy that Dirkson was showing off in front of his boss.

Senator Nourse cleared his throat. When Albert Dirkson turned to see what was wrong with his bread and butter, the Senator called him over and growled, "What the fuck are you doing, Dirkson?"

"Just trying to uncover..."

"I ask the questions here; your job is to hold my pen. If that's too difficult, I will find a nice lobster boat in Rockland that needs a paint job." The fire in Senator Nourse's eyes was unmistakable.

"Yes, sir, just trying..."

"Just shut up and pay attention. You are here to observe... only." Senator Nourse shook his head. Where the hell did this clown come from?

Zhang Wei went back to her prattle, explaining how Long Air Services donates hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of maintenance and support for Mountain Rescue search and rescue helicopters and forest fire fighting. As she led Senator Nourse's entourage, they exited the massive hangar and entered a hallway that could be a hall in any modern building in any city in America. "Industrial" carpet squares on the floor, drywall walls, overhead lighting, and large framed motivational posters on the wall. It could be a hall in any Manhattan skyscraper, but this hall had nearly a mile of solid rock above it. She opened a side door and ushered the group into the briefing room.

The briefing room was dominated by a large oak table designed with laptops in mind. There were provisions for power and a network at each comfortable chair. At one end of the room was a table with coffee, juice, donuts, and bagels. A large screen/whiteboard stood centrally on the wall opposite the snacks. It was flanked by two windows that showed the mountain scene outside the hangar doors. The windows were actually UHD screens connected to cameras outside, mounted near the hangar door. For fun, the normal users of that room will display beach scenes or cityscapes as a change of pace. They give a realistic illusion of being in a brick-and-mortar building with windows to the outside world instead of being deep inside a massive stone mountain.

"Ok, if we're seated," started Wei after everyone got their snacks, "let's take a quick look at our new venture, Twin Dragons Security Systems." With that, the room lights dimmed a bit, and the mini venetian blinds on the windows drew up and disappeared, and the two windows, along with the central whiteboard, became a single wide-screen display. Onto the screen crept a very real-looking red Chinese dragon. Chinese dragons are long, ornate, and, unlike Western dragons, they do not have wings. The dragon stopped, still only a third of the way onto the screen. It turned and looked at the Senator's entourage with happy curiosity as Morgan Freeman narrated.

"In the east, the dragon is the symbol of nobility, wisdom, and prosperity. Eastern dragons are intricately connected to the seasons, and the dragons are often associated with one of the four cardinal directions. The red dragon is associated with luck, fire, passion, and the heart. It is the dragon of summer and the South. The Chinese word for dragon is Long..."

"That explains a few things," whispered Betty Chapelwaite, an aide of Senator Nourse.

On the screen, mountains appeared in the distance, stretching from wall to wall, and the dragon happily inspected them. At the same time, an airplane taxied to the middle of the wall and then turned to taxi toward the audience. It was the Dreamlifter II, a huge Boeing 787 with the oversize LCF (Large Cargo Freighter) body. The dragon walked happily to the airplane and wrapped itself around the plane, and the scene became the logo of Long Air Services as Morgan Freeman explained how Long Air Services can make your company more profitable.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

At one AM local time, Navy Petty Officer Andria Irving stepped out of her dorm room on Dae Yang Naval Air Station. She was short, busty, and a tough-looking chick with pale blond hair, and those skintight jeans showed off a fine, fine ass. She held her ID card in her mouth as she locked up her room, just as Mojito Dave staggered out of his room down the hall. He held a large Yeti insulated steel tumbler, which probably contained the nectar of his nickname. "Where to Wing Nut?" he called as he schlepped down the hall toward her. He was shirtless, wearing gym shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

She slid her ID card into her back pocket and held out her fist for a fist bump. "I feel a need for bulgogi and some harbor bottom." Harbor bottom is a nickname for rice served with all forms of sea creatures, tiny squid, octopus, shrimp, and other things best left unidentified. Americans raised on burgers and tacos generally don't eat it, but the adventurous will try it, and many will fall in love with it.

"We're playing some Texas Hold-em down in Zohner's room if you wanna join in," He waggled his eyebrows and raised his drink. "It could be fun."

"I know you people, and I know how you play. I'm not taking off my clothes, and we can save a lot of time if you just hand me your wallet."

"One of these days I'm going to beat you," said Dave as he reached Zohner's room.

"Not before I get tired of spending your money, I hope," she gave a rare grin and headed toward the stairs.

"What's up with Wing Nut?" Jesse Hamilton asked Mojito Dave as he walked into the party.

"She don't wanna play," said Dave as he slurped his mojito.

"Her loss," said Harry Zohner as he shuffled the cards.

"She ain't never lost in here," said Tom Condron as he sold Dave a stack of chips. They've never seen someone who could play poker like that. Well, Jesse Hamilton has, and before the game started, he picked up his cell phone and sent out a quick message to a few folks who might be interested in Wing Nut.

The woman known as Wing Nut pulled on her denim jacket as she descended the stairs and stepped outside; she looked for her bicycle in a sea of bicycles. The NavEx sells only one brand of bike, one style, one color. It's too hard and too expensive to get a driver's license in Korea, so, like all American servicemen on base, she bought a bike. She was soon the proud owner of a black Huffy 21-speed mountain bike exactly like a thousand others. She added a few decorations that she cut from reflective tape so she could identify it from a thousand other identical bikes and tried to park it in the same area every time she got off of it, but that still doesn't prevent a long search for it when she was in a hurry.

Petty Officer Irving is a communications specialist. She coordinates radio communications between the Navy and the Air Force, but since the two services don't spend too much time actually working together, she's got plenty of time to do other things. She peddled her bike out to the main gate, waved at the gate guard, then peddled her way into A-Town, the small village that's been just off base probably since before the base ever existed.

She pulled her bike up to a small restaurant in A-Town and locked her bike to a drain spout. It was late; it should have been closed, but even in the middle of the week, there were a few drunk sailors or soldiers with a few dollars in their pockets, and Korean businessmen and women were out to get those dollars. The dining room was tiny. There were four tiny tables, each had four small chairs and a barbecue grill in the center of the table fed by a rubber gas line. One table near the door held four Americans who were drinking Coke and eating rice and bulgogi and could barely keep their eyes open.

Andria took a seat at the table closest to the kitchen, and a smiling Korean woman brought her out a teapot and a cup. "The usual tonight, Miss Irving?"

"You betcha! Can't get enough," the blond sailor said with a grin.

The waitress returned to the kitchen and soon came back with a plate of thinly cut Korean barbecue beef and a mound of delicious sticky rice, and a bowl of the steamed sea creatures that Andria immediately mixed in with her rice and doused with soy sauce. The waitress and the cook came and sat down with Andria, and they chattered back and forth and occasionally broke into English to include Andria in their conversation. They spoke mostly about the recently arrived young sailor, who looked like he would probably go home with a Korean wife within a year. These two women were good at predicting that kind of thing.

As Andria grew close to finishing her meal, she set her cell phone on the table. The young waitress continued to chatter about the new sailor and how much she'd like to be the one who was going home with him. The waitress brought out her cell phone and showed Andria a picture of herself with the sailor in question, then she set her cell phone next to Andria's cell phone, and quietly, the two phones transferred information. Three minutes later, Andria looked up at the cook in shock, and the cook nodded, affirming the information that Andria had just assimilated was true. "Well, I gotta go, keep an eye on my bike for me, will ya?" Andria stood and dropped a wad of bills on the table.

"We will!" the waitress said cheerfully as she counted up the money that Andria dropped on the table.

Then Andria stepped into the kitchen, leaving her cell phone on the table with her Korean friends. The drunk sailors at the front table suddenly sobered up when Andria stepped into the kitchen. One dashed to the kitchen door, which was covered by a half-curtain, and, peeking in, saw that there was no one in the kitchen. He made a gesture to his buddies, who dashed out the front door and looked around in the dark.

There was a small garage behind the restaurant, and a Korean woman was loading a small suitcase into the back of a black Hyundai sedan. "Hey, lady, did you see a blond American come out the back?"

"Only blond is you!" cried the Asian woman in a deep Korean accent as she got in the Hyundai.

"Damnit!" spat the American, and the four of them searched desperately for Andria as the Asian woman with the fine, fine ass drove away.

<><><><><>

The video explaining Twin Dragons Security Systems was now explaining how a western dragon is the opposite of the peaceful eastern dragon, how the western dragon will fight to preserve and protect what is put in his care... Zhang Wei noticed that the Senator and his team were glued to the screen. It was a great presentation; it fascinated her the first time she saw it. The CGI alone cost Ming a fortune, that big, slinky, sexy CGI Chinese dragon wrapping itself around an actual cargo airplane... it almost made Zhang want to be an airplane. Then came Chris Evans walking between stacks of servers, explaining data security. Alicia told her that he was such a nice guy to everybody the day they filmed that scene.

Just then, a hand, the size of a hubcap, clasped her tiny shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up, and Jim MacDonald was grinning down at her. For a big guy, he could move so silently! He jerked his thumb toward the door, and she nodded and slipped quietly out of the briefing room. There in the hall was her roll-away suitcase. She grabbed the handle and stepped down the hallway as quickly as possible.

Soon she was out in the hangar, blinking in the glare of the mountain sunshine streaming through the open hangar doors, and she saw that the ground crew had moved the Senator's helicopter inside the hangar. A loud rhythmic thumping could be heard approaching through the hangar door and as she drew closer, the double doors opened into the hanger from a side tunnel and a large six passenger golf cart entered the hangar and pulled up next to her as the big crimson and gold Long Air Services Boeing Rotorcraft Model 234ER twin rotor helicopter, the civilian version of the famous Army Chinook, swooped toward the Helipad like an avenging dragon (western dragon) then at the last moment the nose pulled up and the massive helicopter leveled and settled to the pad gently.

Zhang looked to her left, and there she was, Long Yu Ming, the Big Boss. The woman who rebuilt Long Air Services from a border-jumping drug pipeline to a global powerhouse. And suddenly, the enormity of the task at hand overwhelmed Zhang. It was now her job to protect Ming Long. Ming's security team was too well known, and she had to go somewhere, so they tapped Zhang to be her protection on this trip while her normal security team remained in Ganley Mountain as a decoy... SHIT!

Zhang tried not to shake as Ming got out of the golf cart and stood next to her. She kept hearing that Ming was tiny, but Ming stands three inches taller than her! She looked like Ming's kid sister! She felt like crying. Now, a fellow who made Zhang think of Clark Kent got off the golf cart and stepped up to Ming. He could only be Cliff Staunton, the guy who made Ming's visions become reality. He was a nice, nerdy guy, but then Ming was a nice, nerdy girl; they were cute together.

As the helicopter's ground team got the massive machine stopped and were setting the wheel chocks and ground straps, Cliff and Ming adjusted each other's clothing and quietly reassured each other that they would do fine, then that kiss! Zhang has worked for several CEOs, and she's never seen any of them kiss anyone like that. So sweet! So loving! They weren't a powerful CEO and an uber genius programmer; they were real people!

Then a mountain of a man, Dunkan O'Reilly, a member of Ming's security team, stepped up to Zhang, handed her a folder, and said something. She got the impression that the folder was for Ming, but the auxiliary power generator on the helicopter was screaming so loud she could barely hear Dunkan. He must have realized that she was having problems hearing, so he leaned way over and said into her ear, "Go get 'em, tiger! You're going to do great!"

"Yes, sir," Zhang said, trying not to giggle like a schoolgirl. And now it's time, the side door on that huge helicopter lowered, becoming a boarding ladder, the LAS crew grabbed several cases, including Zhang's luggage, and stowed them in the back of the helicopter while the flight attendant beckoned to Ming and Zhang from the forward door. Zhang walked side by side with Ming and Cliff out to the enormous machine with the lazily turning rotors while Dunkan trailed behind them, alert, looking for threats in all directions. When they got to the helicopter steps, they paused while Cliff and Ming kissed once more, those sweet kisses that somehow reminded Zhang of her prom, and then they were on the helicopter. The helicopter was lavish! It reminded Zhang of those executive jets you see in the movies, with captain's chairs and couches and coffee tables and wood paneling... It's amazing! It was hard for Zhang to remember to look for threats and not a drink.

Ming wasn't impressed; she was looking out a window, gazing at Cliff, and the sad look he gave her was the kind of look a man gives a woman he loves that he's afraid he'll never see again. They maintained eye contact as the blades spun up to speed and the huge helicopter leapt into the air.

<><><><><>

On the screen, the red Chinese dragon sensuously wrapped itself around the massive air freighter one last time while behind it, a huge gold Western dragon rose and spread its wings to cover and protect the Chinese dragon. Then the western dragon snarled as if to prepare to breathe fire on an intruder, and the scene froze and became a logo.

"Twin Dragons Security Systems," said Morgan Freeman, "Here for you today, tomorrow, and always."

"Does anybody have any questions?" asked Mac as the lights came on.

"That was very impressive," said the Senator. "Is there any symbolism to the color of the dragons?"

"That's an excellent question," said Mac. "The red dragon embodies power, strength, good fortune, wisdom, knowledge, courage, passion and transformation across various cultures and spiritual beliefs. "

"Everything an air cargo company needs to be," said Senator Nourse. "And the gold dragon?"

"In Chinese culture the color yellow symbolizes the earth, not just the planet but the entire sphere of existence, and Guoxin, the yellow dragon is the emperor of the earth."

"But that's a Western Dragon," said Albert Dirkson.

"Emperor Guoxin can appear in any shape he desires," said Mac. "I'm told he enjoys having wings."

"You speak like the gold dragon is a real being," said Albert.

"Are there any other questions?" said Mac, ignoring Albert.

"What happened to Miss Wei?"

"Miss Long was called away, and Miss Wei is assisting her, so you're stuck with me now," grinned Mac. "I'm Jim MacDonald, everyone calls me Mac."

"What is next on the agenda, Mr. MacDonald?"

"Call me Mac, please, Senator. If we return to the hangar, we will take a look at the rest of the facilities."

Mac led the senator's party out to the hangar; his helicopter had been moved back to its original position, and the six-person golf cart was waiting for them. No one heard the massive Boeing Rotorcraft landing and takeoff because of the massive weight of the mountain. Its mass shielded the party from the vibrations caused by the heavy bird landing and taking off, and became the perfect soundproofing. The senatorial party loaded up on the big cart and headed toward the double doors that swung open for them.

Up in Ming's office, Cliff used a laptop to watch the inspection party clamber on board the big golf cart and head into the long tunnel that stretched the length of the mountain. Their first stop was the Data Storage area, row upon row of identical servers backing up tens of thousands of customers' machines remotely. Then, further down the tunnel was media storage. Many customers still believe in removable storage. Twin Dragons Security Systems provides not only secure, safe, dry storage, but storage safe from dangers like cosmic rays, sunspot activity, solar flares, and electromagnetic pulses. Huge vaults held removable drives and backup tapes as robot arms placed devices in their programmed positions or removed them from storage to return them to the customer for use.

Mac could talk for hours about secure data storage. He received his doctorate for a paper on data security, and he loved this facility. Unfortunately, he couldn't take anyone in this tour group into the data storage center; they didn't have the security clearance to enter the storage center, and they probably wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much as he would. Cliff and Mac both received text messages. Cliff saw it on his laptop. Mac looked down at the tablet he uses for notes on these tours and saw, "Drop on schedule." Mac chuckled; the little lady is probably having a hell of a ride.

<><><><><>

The massive Boeing twin-rotor helicopter dropped down the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains like a bobsled rocketing down its run. This flight was called the "Front Range Drop" because it dropped from 13,000 feet to 4800 feet in just a matter of minutes, skimming the mountains, flying progressively lower and lower until they shot out over the prairie and out to Denver International Airport. No helicopter could keep up with the Model 234, which is why Alicia insisted that Ming repurpose the Bell 407GXP for visitors and ride in the big 234. It was big and fast with a lot of armor.

Seeing peaks and trees flash past the windows unsettled Ming to no end. To her, flying is done at 30,000 feet, where the ground is a patchwork quilt far below. Barely able to contain her scream, Ming took a deep breath and sent a command.

'AI: Send message to nanotech cluster RN372-48-AI94θ1012, message as follows: OH MY GOD I'M SCARED! Message ends'

>> Message sent

In her head, Ming kept repeating the mantra "please answer, please answer, please answer." Her cell phone chirped from the floor far forward in the cabin. She had dropped it when they took off, and it's been sliding back and forth on the plush carpet since they started this crazy ride. Her AI finally said:

>> Incoming message from Agent Ingersoll. Message as follows: Answer your phone. Message ends.

"I can't get it!" whined Ming.

"What can't you get?" asked Zhang.

"My phone, I need my phone."

"It's over there. If you let go of my arm, I'll go get it." Ming had a death grip on the arm of the helicopter's couch with her left hand, and Zhang's left arm with her right hand, and those nanobots were not letting go. Until those nanobots let go, Zhang was going nowhere.

"NO!" Ming screamed.

Zhang's phone began to ring, and she dug it out of her purse and saw that it was Agent Ingersoll. She answered it one-handed. "Agent Wei," she said professionally.

"Zhang, put Ming on, please?"

"Ok, hang on." Zhang tried to hand her phone to Ming, but Ming was too terrified to take it. She then tried to twist her arm around so that it would allow her to hold her phone to Ming's ear, but Ming was bouncing around too much for that. Zhang finally settled on turning on speaker mode. "Ok, she can hear you now."

"Ming? Honey? Baby, you have to loosen up; these folks are trying to get us together."

"This is too scary," howled Ming.

Zhang glanced out the window and realized they were too low, way too low. She watched buildings built on the mountainside in Genesee Park pass over them. Suddenly, both AIs shrieked to life. Alicia and Ming received the message at the same time:

>> Security Alert - Security for LAS Flight 001 has been compromised.

> Security Alert - Security for LAS Flight 001 has been compromised.

Zhang couldn't receive that message, but she knew something was up when she heard Alicia on her phone shout the Korean word, "Ttong!"

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

On the Korean peninsula, a commuter boat paddled across the Geum River, crossing from the Jochon-dong area of Daesan to Janghang-eup. In the boat, an Asian face lost in a boatload of Asian faces watched with bored amusement at a salesman who walked through the crowd of commuters trying to sell the latest trinkets and gizmos. This was the price of riding inside the cabin out of the spray of the crossing. If you wanted to stay dry, you had to listen to the salesman. His job was to make the sale before these folks got off the boat and trooped over to the train station, where they would catch a train to Seoul. The switchblade hair comb was a big hit. He sold twenty of them in the past five crossings of this river, and the companion piece was doing well as well. The salesman was sure that the pretty lady near the bow would be interested in a genuine copper-plated windproof cigarette lighter/brass knuckle.

The pretty lady watched the salesman with a look of amusement as he waved the lighter around to show that the wind would not blow out this miracle of modern Korean technology, but she pulled her phone out and made a call and waited impatiently for an answer. She made another call, and again she didn't get an answer. She made a third call and got through, but had to wait impatiently. The salesman continued his prattle, and he moved closer to the lady to find out what she was up to. To the salesman's shock, when the person she wanted to speak to came on the line, she started speaking English.

Suddenly, the pretty lady went pale; her face was covered in cold sweat, and she suddenly looked terrified. She leapt up and shouted, "Ttong!" (Shit!) into the phone, then whirled around to face the oncoming shore and started jabbering. The only thing the salesman knew for sure was that she was talking to someone named Ming, and that thanks to her tight jeans, he could see that she had a fine, fine ass.

<><><><><>

The huge twin-rotor helicopter was now edging the trees, following I-70 down the mountain. "Where are you guys now?" demanded Alicia.

"Genesee Park," shouted Zhang as she tried to pry Ming's hand off her arm. "We just flew under the Sleeper house!" The Sleeper House is an architectural marvel on Genesee Mountain that Woody Allen used in his movie 'Sleeper.' Its name is Sculptured House. Everyone thinks it looks like a taco on a pillar and calls it the Sleeper House because it was featured in the movie.

"Ming!" cried Alicia into her phone as the boat docked on the north side of the river. "You have to let go, let Zhang do her job." She thought for a moment as she headed up to the gangway, then said, "Ming, they're trying to keep us apart."

Something clicked in Ming's mind. No! That can't happen! She released Zhang's arm and jumped up, her eyes on fire. She was fast, but Zhang was faster. The tiny woman dashed forward and shouted into the phone, "She let go, I'm headed for the cockpit." She tossed her phone to Ming, who dropped it, and followed Zhang.

The Boeing Model 234 is an enormous bird. The interior is laid out like an executive jet, with a bulkhead separating the cockpit from the passenger compartment. Inside the cockpit, a flight attendant lay unconscious, blocking the cockpit door. Zhang yanked the door open and stepped over the unconscious attendant, then Ming pulled the flight attendant into the back. In the cockpit, Zhang found the pilot wrestling with the controls while another flight attendant tried to pull him off the controls. The co-pilot appeared to have been knocked unconscious and was bleeding from a head wound. "Stop him!" screamed the flight attendant. "he's trying to kill us!"

Zhang reached over the flight attendant and hit a lever on the pilot's safety webbing, and his five-point harness released immediately. Almost like a professional wrestler, Zhang got her hands under the pilot's arms and hauled him bodily out of the pilot's seat and almost lobbed him over her shoulder, then she scrambled into the seat. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." muttered Zhang. She's never flown anything this big, mostly an old Huey UH-1 and a Bell Jet Ranger. Right hand on the cyclic, left hand on the collective, feet on the pedals... easy, easy. Zhang slowly leveled the chopper out and calmed down the headlong rush down the mountainside. She brought the nose up and steered a course due east out over the southern prairies while the co-pilot wiped the blood out of his eyes. Zhang took a deep sigh of relief and then wondered, Where the hell did the pilot go? Then she heard Ming screaming, "Keep us apart?"

Behind Zhang, the pilot scrambled to his feet after being ejected. He whirled and dove to get back at Zhang as she eased her tiny body into the pilot seat, but before he could reach her, he was grabbed from behind and pulled back into the main cabin. "Keep us apart?" shrieked Ming, and he felt a tiny foot slam into the back of his head. Due to the solid construction of her shoe, the blow nearly knocked him out. He spun, and there was his target, Long Yu Ming, in a fighting stance. The look on her face showed that she was ready to take him on.

"Bitch!" he roared, and he advanced on Ming. Kick, spin, kick, punch, thrust, spin, kick, his hands and feet were a blur as he pressed his attack, but she parried everything! He was lightning fast, but she was faster. His kicks were easily cast aside, his punches were all dodged, blocked, or countered. Her hands were like lightning, her kicks were so fast he rarely saw them, and her elbows were daggers punching between his ribs.

"Keep us apart?" she shrieked again. Now the pilot realized that she was toying with him, feeling him out, gauging his moves, getting ready to go on the attack. He had to take her down now, before she analyzed his every move and reaction. As he released his arm for what should have been a knock-out blow, she turned sideways, avoiding the hit, and her left hand got past his hands; the heel of her left hand hit his solar plexus just as his heart relaxed from a beat. As his heart tried to open and draw in blood, his ribcage was slammed in the opposite direction, squeezing his heart and sending a sudden hypertensive shockwave through his circulatory system. He was paralyzed with pain for over a second, but in that second, Ming Long released a barrage of kicks and punches that the pilot had no answer for. He sagged to the floor like a drunken salaryman.

The shocked flight attendant saw Ming kneeling on the chest of the pilot, her right arm cocked, then a lightning-fast blow to the pilot's temple, and the threat to LAS flight 001 was over. Slowly, Ming got up and went back to the couch she had been sitting on and found Zhang's phone, then sat down. The call to Alicia was still open, so Ming held the phone up to her ear and snarled, "This is why I hate helicopters!"

<><><><><>

Cliff Staunton stood at the end of the table in Ming's dining room. The table is a marvel of American furniture. It is primarily used as a kitchen table for Ming, Alicia, and Cliff, and a formal dining table for visitors, but also a conference table like the one in the hangar conference room with connections for power and network for each person. However, this one has more surprises for dinner guests.

"You ok, boss?" asked Dunkan O'Reilly, who was tasked with VIP security.

"Not yet," muttered Cliff. Cliff's mind was filled with horrific images of Ming's body splattered on a rock wall among the wreckage of a huge helicopter.

"Lil' bit will bring our Ming home, don't you worry," said Dunkan. Cliff made a tight fist and thumped his knuckles on the tabletop over and over. She's going to be gone for two weeks, and it already feels like she's been gone a month. She just made it to the airport! Dunkan massaged Cliff's shoulders. "Buddy, relax! They'll be ok."

"Is Dunkan your real name?" asked Cliff, trying to get his own mind off the possibility of Ming's death.

"Aye, sure that it is, laddie!" said Dunkan, his voice sounding like an extra from The Quiet Man. "Duncan Seamus O'Reilly, me pappy was Michael Finigan O'Reilly from Ballyvaughan in County Clare, me ma, bless her heart, was from Kilkee not far away. I was born here in Colorado, in Empire, where my folks ran the gas station."

Cliff smiled sadly and handed a folder to Dunkan. "This guy doesn't get up here. I don't care where you hide the body."

"I don't think that will be a problem, sir," said Dunkan, who studied the documents inside. He turned to leave and patted Cliff's shoulder. "It'll be ok, sir, she'll be back home before you know it."

The big golf cart pulled up in front of the employees' entrance, where several "turnstiles" were used to enter and exit the mountain. "As you can see, the employees' entrance is near the dormitory, so off-duty folks can step outside for a smoke if they so desire. Let's take a trip on the wild side and go upstairs where the bigwigs live," grinned Mac. The six-passenger golf cart turned as it wheeled out of the lower mine entrance and followed the road up the outside of the mountain.

The road followed the contour of the mountain, clinging tightly to the rock wall. Below the road, the Quayle Creek Canyon fell away. The few buildings and vehicles clustered around the employee entrance looked like toys as they climbed. Most of the time, the riders had a clear view of Mt. Kelso, which makes up the other side of the canyon, but occasionally trees grew, blocking the view and hiding the road from viewers on Mt. Kelso. Mac talked about the days of miners and pulling tons of silver ore out of the mountain, mostly out of the east face, known as the back side of the mountain, and on the west face, where they were right now, the big haul was gemstones. As they crept up the steep, narrow road, the road turned and was pointing straight south, their left-hand side was brushing the rock wall, while their right-hand side was hanging out over the edge of a sheer cliff, nothing but sharp rocks far below. Mac grinned. Unless the riders tried to jump off of the cart, there would be no harm to them. There were bumper rails built into the road to keep the cart from going off into the abyss, and the road is engineered for this purpose.

Reviewing the message he received from Dunkan, Mac swallowed his anger and put on his "happy face." Four huge steel rods rose up out of the road, blocking progress. The cart pulled up to the rods and stopped. "About a year ago, a fellow named Hans Stavros Baumgartner invited himself here and planned to kidnap Long Yu Ming, president and CEO of Long Air Systems. These rods prevented a group of his men from going up that road any further..."

"Didn't they still get into the mountain?" asked Abert Dirkson from his seat in the rear of the cart.

"Right you are, they did get into the mountain, and since that day, Miss Ingersoll has been placed in charge of mountain security. Things have changed. Let me give you an example..." Mac swung off the cart and, holding the upright roof support pole, he swung around over a 500-foot drop and ended up standing in front of the cart. He leaned forward over the front of the cart, and he grabbed a one-foot square piece of plywood that was next to the seat. Mac then turned around and walked up past the steel rods and hung the piece of plywood on a rusting spike protruding from the rock face ten feet in front of the cart. The square was painted white with a large black circle in the middle. Returning to the golf cart, Mac pulled a huge bullet from his pocket. "This is a fifty-cal round..."

Suddenly, the piece of plywood hanging from the rock wall exploded into a myriad of fragments. The destruction of the wood was followed by a loud crack, which was followed by a distant roar of thunder from the other side of the canyon. As everyone was jumping with surprise at the explosion, Albert Dirkson disappeared. He was pulled off the back of the cart by two Twin Dragons security specialists, zip-tied, gagged, and dragged into the mountain through a metal door that the visitors missed seeing open.

"What the fuck was that?" shouted Senator Nourse as he noticed his "aide" was gone.

"That was a little bit of cleanup," said Mac. "Let's go have lunch and discuss it."

"My man is missing!" snarled the senator. "Yes, he was an asshole, but he was MY asshole and..."

Mac leaned forward and handed his tablet to the senator. The tablet was displaying a photograph of the senator's asshole having a "Tomahawk Ribeye" at the iconic Buckhorn Exchange restaurant in downtown Denver. His dinner companion was Daniel Boothroyd, the man who raped and tortured Alicia Ingersoll in Saskatchewan over three years ago. In the photograph, he was wearing an eyepatch, a recent addition to his wardrobe thanks to the pistol-whipping Alicia gave him when he tried to kidnap Ming a year ago.

"We're not taking kindly to this," Mac rumbled quietly.

Eventually, they completed the switchbacks and blind curves and arrived at Ming and Alicia's little forest, where the cart parked and the visitors, now down to one senator, one secret service agent, and two aides, got off the cart and stretched. The two aides were still upset about Dirkson's disappearance and Mac's silence about it. After a chance to look at Quayle Creek one thousand feet below, Mac led them inside, where they were led through the amazing and beautiful courtyard. Half a dozen budgies fluttered among the tropical plants as a few newts and geckos climbed around the fountain. They were led into an apartment and into an elegant dining room where waiting for them was a man in his mid-30s wearing thick glasses and a really nice suit that he didn't look comfortable in at all.

"Hey, I'm Cliff Staunton, pleased to meet you." He shook hands with everyone, including the Secret Service agent. "A person is missing from your entourage. I understand you're upset. I will be speaking with the senator about that, but don't worry about Albert, right now he's in the cafeteria having lunch." That may or may not be the truth, but to be honest, Cliff was hoping Dirkson didn't have any teeth right now.

Cliff continued his introduction. "I'm not, y' know, an actor or a writer or anything, I'm just a computer nerd..." his voice drifted off. He looked at his notes and started again. "Cliff is not my real name; my real name is Mountain." After the obligatory chuckle, he continued, "My parents were hippies and lived in a commune in West Virginia. They picked names that they liked; their names are Ocean and Mist, my sister's name was Flower, and we had a dog named Paisley because they believed that the truth of the universe was captured in the paisley design. We eventually moved to San Francisco, where my parents became political consultants."

Cliff opened his mouth to continue, but it was difficult. He had seen security footage of Ming's helicopter ride to the airport and was horribly torn up over what he saw. Taking a deep breath, he tried to continue, but nothing came. He gestured to Elisabeth, his nutritionist, at the back of the room, and she started serving lunch. "Mac, maybe you can tell them about that time..."

Luckily for Cliff, Mac was not one to hold back and entertained the small group for almost an hour, telling stories about his year in the NFL playing for the Dolphins to great laughter. During a light lunch of flatbread pizza and salad, Dunkan sat next to Cliff and gently urged him to try again. They wrote out a road map of talking points to guide his words to the senator's team. Finally, as Mac's story of how he was tossed off the team bus in a Cleveland blizzard for the sin of smuggling a sheep into the Brown's locker room wound down, Cliff tried again.

"Years ago, my sister, Flower, was injured in a car accident and ended up quadriplegic. We were very close; she was my world. My parents gave up their hippie lifestyle to try to raise her... about the only thing she enjoyed doing was to help me with my homework." He smiled at the memory of sitting on Flower's bed with her as they reviewed his coursework.

"Life is difficult for quads," said Cliff as the memories of Flower filled his soul. "Even breathing becomes a chore." She was ten when he was born and was twelve when the wreck that paralyzed her happened. His parents were driving home from a party. He did not know if they were drunk or stoned or both; all he knew was that he was the only person in the car not injured because he was the only person buckled in properly. He grew up in a world centered on Flower, and he was too small to help with Flower other than feeding her applesauce and occasionally washing her hands and face. "Life was a constant struggle, and when I was ten, Flower grew too tired to continue with the struggle."

The next part of his life is a secret only Ming knows. His parents blamed him for Flower's death and ignored him. It's not that they were neglecting him; neglect would be kindness compared to what they did. Neglect shows that you know how to care for someone; you just chose not to do it. To Ocean and Mist, now named Marcus and Claudia Gaulin, Cliff didn't exist. If he ate it was because they left some food unguarded in the cupboard; if he had new clothes, it was because he stole them. Finally, a child protective agent paid an unannounced visit to the Gaulin household and found Cliff living alone in a small house with no power, no lights, blaming himself for Flower's death. At some point earlier in the year, his parents had left. They picked up and moved to Seattle, leaving Cliff behind. They didn't consider themselves evil; after all, they left him a table, a chair, a bed, and a case of canned vegetables. It took him a week to locate a can opener.

"I decided to dedicate my life to help people with spinal column injuries..." he looked confused again, then continued. "How does a computer nerd help a paralyzed victim? Luckily, I didn't have to figure that out; Ming did that for me. I was working at the Picorobotics lab at Stanford when a really, really big guy entered my lab and said..."

On cue, Mac said, "Miss Long wants ta have a word wit' youse. Git in da car."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

When Albert Dirkson's blindfold was removed, he blinked open his eyes and saw that he was in a police officer questioning room. It looked exactly like the questioning rooms he had seen a thousand times over on Law & Order, Blue Bloods, and any of a dozen other cop shows. The grimy walls were covered with two-foot by two-foot acoustic ceiling tiles down to 3 feet, where a cheap wainscoting ran down to the floor. His handcuffs were locked onto an industrial-grade gray table, and the wall facing him was dominated by a huge two-way mirror. A door behind him opened, and a tired-looking fellow wearing a button-down shirt and gray slacks, and with a tie loosened at his neck, sat down facing him.

The man opened a folder that was filled with pages and photographs. "Mister Dirkson, my but we've been a busy fellow," said the fellow, but Albert refused to talk. The fellow started laying out photograph after photograph. "Here we are in London, and we're talking with who?" Albert glared, but he didn't reply. "That appears to be Aleksi Volochenkov, Secretary of State of a country we're not all that happy with? Is Senator Nourse aware of your visits with him?"

Albert just glared as the photos showed him meeting with one foreign power after another. Finally came the photograph of his meeting with Kyler Johnson. "Look, it's a picture of you with Daniel Boothroyd."

"What? That's Kyler Johnson," cried Albert.

The pseudo-cop gave Albert a look akin to the look a child gets from mom when he reports there was a bear in his closet. "Kyler, that's rich. Daniel Boothroyd is wanted in several countries for a litany of crimes, including kidnapping, rape, and murder. He's now into industrial espionage, and we've been following his moves. You are just another minnow that got caught up in his web of lies. What did he promise you for a transcript of the senators' discussions?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"How much for the video of the nanotech labs?" asked the cop as he placed a miniature camera on the table. It looked like a common lapel pin, the crossed US and State of Maine flags. "This was on your blazer."

"I've never seen that before."

"Here's a picture of Zhou Jing Wen pinning it on your lapel." He placed a picture of a very cute Asian girl, pinning the lapel pin on Albert Dirkson's lapel. "You look pretty happy."

"Who?"

"Zhou Jing Wen, you know her as June Lee. That cute little Chinese girl who thinks you walk on water. Actually..." He flipped another photograph; this one was a mock-up of a newspaper front page. The headline read, "Top Aide to Senator Nourse Sleeping With Chinese Spy."

Albert went cold. "Don't... think of my wife!"

"Buddy, if you had thought of your wife, you wouldn't be in this mess."

Albert went pale. He was sweating and shaking, then he finally said the words the 'cop' was waiting to hear. "I'll do anything... anything you want."

"Maybe we can come to an agreement, Mr. Dirkson."

<><><><><>

Far above them, the meeting with Senator Nourse continued. Cliff and Mac spent a few moments trading barbs, and when the laughter died down, Cliff shrugged and said, "At Stanford, I was working on microscopic robots that look like a tick, and I was trying to get them to do something. I wanted them to do something big, something physical, catch a ball, build a house, something cool and exciting. Miss Long had an idea that my little bitty robots were better suited to do something small, but as a group, they can do something big; she believed that they are more like free-moving transistors. A transistor is best described as a tiny on/off switch that's controlled remotely, like a relay. Individually, they're just a tiny thing, but they do their tiny thing in concert with millions of other tiny things. That's what a computer CPU is, just millions of tiny transistors counting from zero to one. That's all they do. You can count from zero to nine, a computer can't, just zero to one."

Cliff was on a roll now; he could talk about nanorobotics all day long, and, for the senator, it looked like he was ready to do just that. As he spoke passionately about his "botletts," Ming appeared on the screen behind him. A viewer could tell that someone else was with her as she listened to Cliff talk about the nanobots. He spoke about their use as a three-way logic gate, as a conductor of electricity or as an insulator stopping the electron flow, and as a muscle cell. "Each nanobot has six legs that can latch on to tissue on either side of the bot and pull inward, which is almost exactly what a muscle cell does. Now if you get a hundred thousand nanobots tugging on a bit of tissue at the same time..."

A small computer monitor rose out of the table in front of Cliff, and on the monitor was Ming, the same image that could be seen on the big screen behind Cliff. "Hi, baby," said Cliff softly, hopefully so softly that no one else in the room could hear him.

It was clear to everyone else in the room that Ming and Cliff were in their own world now, just a pair of nerds who were convinced that they were rejected by the world. They spoke softly, and Cliff traced his fingertips over the screen, hoping to contact Ming just one more time. "You're doing really good, honey!" Ming said. "I knew you could do it!" Her smile was broad, genuine, and radiant. Cliff didn't like public speaking in the least, and having a small group of strangers in Ming's dining room was such an alien experience.

Ming finally looked up at the senator and his staff and said, "Cliff gave me my legs and my arms back; he is my hero... How long did we deal with that, honey?"

"Twenty-seven months," said Cliff, now embarrassed by the adulation being heaped upon him.

"We grew our business out of the idea that nanobots can help the paralyzed," said Ming.

Before Ming or Cliff could add another word, the screen split and the American Asian actress Ming Na Wen appeared and said sternly, "This briefing is classified For Official Use Only. If there is anyone who does not meet the security requirements, I'm going to ask Mr. MacDonald to escort them from the room."

An angry and flustered Senator Nourse said into the screens that rose from the table in front of him, "And how shall I address you?"

"That's not important," said the actress. "Call me whatever you want, but all my life I've called you Uncle Andy."

Senator Nourse looked shocked; only his niece Alicia knew that. When she was five, she had heard about the Amos and Andy radio show and started calling her Uncle Amos "Uncle Andy" occasionally, and has never stopped. For his part, the senator had heard that Alicia had become a master of disguise, but this was amazing. Ever since he first watched the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Amos had become a huge fan of the actress Ming-Na Wen and had recently met her at a Washington gala. If this truly is Alicia, the senator now wondered if he had ever met the actress Ming Na Wen at all.

With a wry chuckle, he studied the two Mings on the screens before him. Ming Yu Long appeared to be sitting comfortably in a first-class cabin on an airliner; there was someone else with her who was occasionally whispering in her ear. On the other side of the split screen, Ming Na Wen, who played Agent May on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., appeared to be riding on a commuter train. Amos noted several advertisements hanging on the inside wall of the train behind "Agent May" and realized that they were printed with the Korean Hangul alphabet. If his guess is correct, she is on a Korean train while Ming is on a Long Air Services plane.

"How can I help you, Miss Long?" the senator asked Ming, "or more correctly, why am I here?"

"Why did you people release Hans Stavros Baumgartner?" demanded Ming. Her sweet face suddenly changed to a mask of anger.

Senator Nourse's aide, Betty Chapelwaite, flipped open a notebook she carried and said, "We had no credible reason to detain..."

"Shut the fuck up," said Alicia, still in the guise of Agent May. "Where did you get this loser from Uncle Andy?"

"She was on staff from my predecessor," said Senator Nourse.

"She's currently being paid five thousand dollars a month by Gunter Haag for any information stemming from your re-election campaign." Gunter Haag was a Belgian arms dealer who masqueraded as an environmental activist and generously funded any candidate opposed to Amos Nourse and his party. He is also a vocal advocate of disarming the US military. Gathered intelligence shows that Gunter Haag is now Hans Stavros Baumgartner's number two man and was running Baumgartner's empire for the year that he was being held.

"Preposterous!" snorted Betty. "My only loyalty is to the constitution..."

"Duncan?" said Agent May, and Duncan O'Reilly laid two sheets of paper in front of the senator and Betty Chapelwaite. The pages outlined months of deposits in a bank account accessible only to Betty Chapelwaite and Albert Dirkson.

"Far be it from me to pass judgment on your personal relationships," said Cliff, "but I can't wonder what your husband thinks about you having a joint bank account with a married man." A small snigger of laughter could be heard from the unseen participant on Ming Long's screen.

Two security guards in Twin Dragons uniforms entered the room, and Ming said, "Mrs. Chapelwaite, if you follow my security team, they will ensure you make it safely off my mountain."

The room was silent for a few moments as the guards led Betty away, until finally Alicia said, "You should have hired me when you had the chance, Uncle Amos."

"I guess I should have," sighed the senator. "Do you have any more surprises for me?"

Suddenly, the screen was filled with a view of the Long Air Services' huge Boeing Model 234 helicopter as it careened out of control down from Ganley Mountain, narrowly missing trees and rock walls. The view switched to an interior shot of the cabin, where a heroic flight attendant kept an out-of-control pilot from crashing into a mountain or house. Zhang Wei entered the cockpit, disconnected the pilot's safety belts and tore him out of the pilot seat, and took over control of the aircraft. The scene shifted to the main cabin, where Ming stopped the pilot with one punch to the chest and then let loose an Ip Man-style barrage of hits that would impress any fan of kung-fu movies.

"Holy shit," muttered Senator Nourse. "When was this?"

Cliff watched the video in shock; he could have lost Ming! Everything that was anything to Cliff would have been over. "That was about ninety minutes ago," said Mac, "when we were viewing the nanobot lab."

"I can't believe this," said the Senator as they viewed the video again. The only people left in the senator's party were one aide known as "Ziggy" to the senator, Zane Zigler, and the Secret Service agent sent by the executive branch.

"Here's a document that outlines the future of the nanobots and the planned rollout of our picobots," said Cliff as they took an elevator to the lowest level. The senator opened the folder that Cliff had handed him and took a glance at the document in it. The document looked like complete and utter bullshit. In private discussions with Cliff, Alicia, and Ming said that picobots are currently impossible, but research is continuing. This document mentioned a rollout of picobots by October at the latest. The document is bait to draw out spies.

"When I get back to Washington, I'll discuss this with DOD and see what we can do about our idea of super troopers," said Amos as he put on his reading glasses and scanned the document. Just as he suspected, it was all bullshit, a red herring to throw someone into a tailspin.

"This elevator is clean," said Cliff. "We don't have to play-act here. There are no picobots, there are no super troopers. If there were, I would know."

"I hope you're right," sighed the senator. "A robot a thousand times smaller than a blood cell? I couldn't begin to imagine the trouble that could cause."

Cliff nodded in agreement. "We're here to develop therapy for spinal cord injuries, but when we began to see what our treatments could really do, we realized that we have to guard them carefully."

Was it Baumgartner they were worried about? Haag? Boothroyd? Or was it someone else... "Fuck..." muttered the senator aloud.

"Pardon?"

"It's nothing," muttered Amos. "Just pissed about Betty, she was pretty efficient. That just leaves me with Ziggy."

"Ziggy's good, he's quite the office manager, he may make a good chief of staff for you," said Cliff.

"Really? How do you know?" asked the senator as he closed up the folder he was carrying and handed it to Zane Zigler, his remaining aide on the trip.

The elevator door slid open to the sublevel four parking garage. Cliff held the door open as the senator stepped off the elevator and said, "He works for me."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

Zhang was tired of traveling! Occasionally, she'll travel to Hong Kong to visit relatives, and that is always an outlandish affair where she'll end up sleeping for eighteen hours after arriving, but this romp was killing her. First, she played tour guide so she could get a good look at some of the operatives that are trying to infiltrate Long Air Services Nanobot Division, then she ended up having to give some asshole a "Jackie Chan" and take over flying Miss Ming to Denver. Then a non-stop flight in (the luxury suite of) a Long Air Services priority cargo flight to Hawaii, seven hours. Then a flight to Tamuning, Guam, on a 747 freighter (in another luxury suite), another seven hours. Then, after that, a sailboat ride from Guam to Rota, the Friendly Island.

Her boss, Alicia, arrived before them. She was in Korea and had to travel to Inchon then catch a flight to Guam. Alicia opened up the villa and had a pitcher of sangria ready and waiting for them. Sweet, fruity, cold and 25% vodka - just the way Zhang likes it. Alicia met Zhang and Ming at the villa wearing a cool and breezy tropical print mesh sarong skirt, and nothing else. Zhang stopped at the entrance to the lush green patio. It was all on display: the plants, the flowers, the ferns, and Alicia's big, beautiful tits. You could even see her pussy through the mesh of her sarong... "Come on!" coaxed Alicia. "You're on the island, this is Shangri-La! let's relax. Take that nasty old TWA suit off!" She held up a sarong skirt for Zhang that was as concealing as a fishing net.

Zhang's outfit did indeed look like a stewardess costume that came from one of those old movies, Holiday in Rome or something like that. It was heavy and hot, but it allowed a lot of freedom of movement, but most importantly it was made from Kevlar and was worn to deflect a knife thrust. "Ok..." said Zhang, unsure of what was going on. "Where's my room?"

"Right here!" giggled Alicia like a hyper-excited sorority girl. She grabbed Zhang, spun her around, and unzipped Zhang's outfit and yanked it off the girl, almost spilling her sangria. "Who dressed you this morning? Grandma?" shrieked the mousy brunette assassin when she saw Zhang's underwear.

"I like these panties," insisted Zhang.

"I used to wear panties just like that," said Ming as she adjusted her sarong, "then she took over my underwear drawer."

Soon the three were sitting in the breezy shade of a vine and flower-covered lanai, with the sound of waves crashing in the distance, an enormous pool just yards away from the lanai and the pool's lazy river flowing through the lanai. Ming and Alicia sat side by side, their fingers entangled, their drinks in their other hands. Across from them, Zhang sat and sipped her sangria, her head spinning from all the occurrences of the past 24 hours.

"What's the matter mija?" asked Ming.

"Mija?" chuckled Zhang. "You called me Mija?"

"What's wrong with mija?" insisted Ming.

"She's never met Roberta," said Alicia without opening her eyes.

Ming closed her eyes and slowly her skin darkened, her facial features changed slightly, then when she opened her eyes she saw Zhang staring at her, her jaw dropped. "Hola mi amiga!" smiled Roberta, the middle-aged Hispanic nurse.

"Oh my god!" gasped Zhang. "That is so... fucking... weird..."

"You didn't do the eyes," pointed out Alicia, "or the boobs."

"It hurts to do the eyes," said Ming as she leaned back and enjoyed the closeness with Alicia. Slowly her skin returned to pale gold, and her facial features returned to normal.

Alicia opened one eye and glanced at Zhang, who sat with her jaw open. "She's freaked out by the tits."

"I am not!" It was a lie; she was getting into the swing of things, but walking around topless? Her puritanical Chinese mother would die if she knew her daughter was not wearing a bra; not wearing a shirt would kill her.

"We knew it would happen," said Ming.

"I'm going to look around..." said Zhang, as she took off her sarong and slipped into the lazy river. She grabbed a flotation ring with a duck's face and said, "Be right back!" and she floated along the cool, gentle stream that carried her past a grotto where a couple could find refuge, around a ten foot tall coral mountain that had a slide and a diving platform, through a waterfall, through a grove of banana trees and beautiful ginger plants that were so green they practically glowed, into a waist deep pool that had a volleyball net stretched across the middle, then back into the lazy river which took her through a bobbling rapids and then through a garden that opened to the lanai where Ming and Alicia waited for her.

Zhang dried herself off and put her sarong back on. "How the hell did you get him out of the pilot seat?" gasped Alicia.

"What?"

"The helicopter pilot! What a cool move!" Alicia had heard about Zhang pulling the pilot out of the helicopter's pilot seat; she was reviewing the surveillance video with Ming and saw it with her "own eyes" just now.

"I released his harness and when he tried to get up to hit me, I used his momentum to pull him up out of the seat," shrugged Zhang. "Same thing you do with guys who come at you."

"She's good," said Ming, "watch it from this angle..." both Ming and Alicia leaned back in their chairs with their eyes closed, then suddenly at the same time both went, "OOOOHHH!"

"What are you two doing?" demanded Zhang.

Alicia sighed and reached for the tablet that was on the side table and handed it to Zhang. The screen came to life, and Zhang watched a video taken from a camera mounted above the co-pilot. It showed the pilot suddenly hitting the co-pilot in the face with a bar or baton and then looking for a target to dive the helicopter into. "He wanted to find a religious icon or synagogue to crash into," said Alicia, "we found a video that he left behind that was scheduled to be sent to numerous news outlets, he wanted it to look like a new religious war."

As the video continued, the male flight attendant tried to get him out of the pilot seat, and the pilot beat him savagely with the baton, then the female flight attendant tried to get him out of the seat, but he just shrugged her off. Then tiny Zhang appeared and ripped him out of the seat. It looked like she was attempting a professional wrestling move like a suplex and was fairly successful. Zhang dove into the seat and regained control of the massive helicopter.

The video changed to a video of the main cabin with Ming and the pilot. He was trying desperately to knock Ming down; in return, Ming was blocking every punch and kick he could throw. Alicia still had her eyes closed and said, "Watch this!"

In the video, Zhang could see that Ming was clearly tired of the pilot and hit him once in the chest, and he went down like a marionette whose strings were suddenly cut. Then she gave him one punch in the side of his head, and he was done for. Then you could see Ming sit down on the couch and calmly rejoin her phone conversation with Alicia.

"Damn!" gasped Zhang. "When did you guys see that?"

"Just now," said Alicia.

"How?" Zhang was completely confused. Just then, a Hispanic woman in hospital scrubs stepped onto the patio and said, "Come on you two..." Seeing Zhang, she brightened up. "Do we have a new playmate?"

Zhang looked at the new woman; her face was almost exactly the same face Ming was wearing earlier.

"Hi momma," Ming said without opening her eyes.

Seeing the confusion in Zhang's expression, the woman said, "Miss Ming! Were you using my face again?"

"Busted!" laughed Alicia, who finally sat up and opened her eyes. "Hi Roberta."

"Sorry," said Ming sheepishly.

"AHHH Santa Maria! What are you three doing? Drinking alcohol? You have nanobots to do today!"

"Ours is alcohol free, momma," assured Alicia. "It's just the new girl; she's a terrible example."

"I don't have nanobots... do I?" asked a confused Zhang.

The Hispanic woman turned to Zhang and said, "I don't think so," She looked at a clipboard she was carrying. "It's just these two as far as I know, unless someone's been experimenting." Shaking her head, she lowered the clipboard and extended her hand. "I'm Doctor Roberta Romerez, the head of nanobot investiture with Long Picorobotics."

"Investiture?" asked Zhang as she shook Roberta's hand.

"She makes sure that nanobots programmed for your fingers don't end up in your pussy," said Alicia as she sipped her sangria.

"I don't understand...," said Zhang.

"Miss Ingersoll is crude but correct," said Dr. Romerez. "It's my job to make sure that your nanobots settle down in the location they were programmed for." Roberta crouched down next to Ming and said, "Quick! Get a picture!"

"Ok, uh... why?" said Zhang as she took a quick shot of Ming and Roberta hugging and grinning for the camera.

"Oh god," groaned Ming, "the world is going to see that and realize that I have no tits."

"You have an athletic figure," said Alicia as she squeezed Ming's hand, then she said to Zhang, "As I was recovering in Archuleta, Roberta practically lived in my room. She was always there. Stub my toe, Roberta was there. Break a fingernail, Roberta was there. Beat the living dogshit out of a Russian cosmonaut, Roberta was there..."

"Ok, I get it," said Zhang. "Roberta was there. So what?"

"No, mija, I was not there," said Roberta. "I was in the Ganley Mountain laboratory with my assistant Roberto," she said with an emphasis that made Zhang think there were multiple layers to the story.

"Um... how?" This was getting weird, and Zhang was almost afraid to ask for details, but...

"I kind of borrowed Roberta's face..." said Ming, blushing furiously, "...for two years." Ming and Alicia leaned close to each other and kissed gently.

"I forgive you," said Alicia to Ming as their kiss ended.

"Then she used my face to kidnap a patient from a medical facility..." snapped Roberta.

"So naughty," said Alicia as she kissed Ming again.

Roberta put her hands on her hips and glared at Ming and Alicia. "No more alcohol! We have too much work to do!"

<><><><><>

Zane Zigler was a ghost. He was a man with a record in the intelligence field that made James Bond look like an office drone who did little more than get the Starbucks order correct for the Wednesday meeting, yet no one knew him personally. It was said that if "Ziggy" was assigned to protect someone, that person would live forever, protection by Ziggy inferred immunity to bullets, strangling, car accidents, and cancer. If Ziggy went out with the boys for a drink, he was the guy who slipped home early in the evening and nobody noticed, if he were the guy who went skiing with the gang, he was the one that picked up the delicious snow-bunny that everyone remembered but no one could describe and disappeared without fanfare.

Cliff was right. Ziggy made an outstanding office manager, and within days he became Amos Nourse's choice for chief of staff. The problem was that Ziggy would disappear for days on end without an excuse. It's not like he would leave work unaccomplished; office productivity was higher than it had ever been. Finally, after a late afternoon bullshit meeting with a bullshit committee head who was looking for support for a bullshit piece of legislation that would do nothing, go nowhere, and be ignored everywhere except on the congressional record, Senator Nourse called Ziggy into his office.

"Quite a weekend you had, Mr. Zigler," said Amos as he opened a file folder that had the imprint of a Chinese dragon being guarded by an angry western dragon. "How was Florida?"

"Pardon sir?"

Senator Norse showed Zigler the cover of the folder he was carrying with the emblem of Twin Dragons Security. "I got a document from Cliff Staunton..."

Ziggy looked around the office and said, "We need to get coffee sir."

Thirty minutes later, Senator Nourse and Zane Zigler were walking up the drive to the US Naval Observatory, the office and residence of the Vice President of the United States. As they walked, Zane told Senator Nourse a story. "Frida Alvarez and her two-year-old daughter Jovita were driving from Nashville to Atlanta to visit Frida's parents. She stopped for gas, and as she filled up, she was approached by two men and was told that if she didn't comply, they would kill her child. They then forced her to drive south to Waycross, Georgia, near the Florida state line."

"A secure transport was traveling from Atlanta to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Florida. They weren't supposed to stop, but there's a restaurant in Waycross that supposedly has the best alligator in the US, so the secure transport called ahead and had an order of gator tail waiting for them. The restaurant is next to a small MacDonalds. They get to the restaurant and the restaurant says that they're too busy to bring their order out to them, so the co-driver walks into the restaurant."

By now they had reached the main door of the vice-presidential residence. "So, what happened?" asked Amos as the valet opened the door and escorted them to the vice-president's office.

Zigler shrugged, "The co-driver came out with their order of gator tail nuggets and a side of ranch dressing, and they continued on their way."

"There's a bit more to it than that," said Cameron Swanson, the Vice President of the United States, as he stepped out from his office and shook hands with Ziggy and the senator. He beckoned Ziggy and Amos into his office.

"There's more?" asked Senator Nourse. He looked at Ziggy and said, "Color me shocked."

"It appears that shortly after the secure transport left the restaurant an unconscious man was found in a storage room in the restaurant, his arms zip-tied behind his back, he had LSD and fentanyl in his system," said Cameron. The vice president opened the Twin Dragons Security Systems document folder and scanned a document, then continued.

"About the same time Frida Alvarez waited in a McDonalds parking lot a dozen yards away. One of her captors had taken her baby Jovita into the restaurant and told her that if she did anything, tried to warn anyone, he would slice Jovita to ribbons in front of her eyes. After about fifteen minutes a fellow wearing a hat that identified him as an employee of McDonalds came out of the restaurant leading Jovita who was carrying a happy meal. He gave Frida a sack full of quarter pounders, and a couple of large cokes, then advised her to head for Atlanta and do not turn back, he even gave her money for gas. Later a man was arrested for public intoxication, he had passed out in the dining area of the MacDonalds, he was stoned on a cocktail of LSD and fentanyl."

"What was the deal with these two men?" asked Senator Nourse.

The VP reviewed the document and said, "Both had ties to Hans Stavros Baumgartner and the Agency."

"AND the Agency?" He shook his head. Once upon a time, the Agency was the last vestige of government that could be trusted. "The Agency has been compromised," said Nourse. It wasn't a question; it was a statement of fact. "Is there anything else?"

The VP flipped the single-page report over and scanned the document for a moment. "The quarter pounders had no pickle," he shrugged.

"Why were these men after that woman?"

"She was just a cover," said Ziggy. "They used her as transportation to Waycross, and if anything had happened, she was going to take the fall. They carried a cocktail of fentanyl and LSD to tranquilize anybody who got in their way. It's amazing how the justice system will blame events on a person with traces of LSD in their system."

"You used their own drugs against them?" grinned Senator Nourse, but Zane held his hands up innocently. "What was the end game? Why did they want that secured transport?"

VP Swanson leaned forward and handed the senator the Twin Dragons document he had been reading. "The transport was carrying several doses of nanobots for my daughter." The VP's daughter, Dianne, was born blind. The hope was that the nanobots would correct the rare genetic disorder that was blinding her.

"Why would they do that?" asked Nourse.

"We don't know," said Swanson, "there were several bags of nanobots in the backpack the kidnappers left in Mrs. Alvarez' car. Cliff Staunton at Long Picorobotics is analyzing them, and it looks like they are clones with bad programming."

"Why do you think they would want to give the twenty-five-year-old daughter of the Vice President cloned nanobots?" said Nourse.

"She could become a walking bug relaying anything that was said in her presence," speculated Zane.

Senator Nourse nodded. "Could she record everything she sees and hears then download it later?"

"That's a question for your niece," said Zane. "However, I'm not convinced. Were those nanobots meant to go into Dianne for a reason? Or were they merely a red herring, and the mission was to steal the nanobots and try to replicate them? Or copy their coding? Cliff and his team are studying the programming of the replacement nanobots to see what they are."

"But you had the good nanobots," said Senator Nourse. "Why didn't you go ahead with the procedure."

"We didn't know we had the good nanobots," said VP Swanson. "The packaging was identical, so by the time we had determined the bots we had were the correct bots, they would have died off. They have a short shelf life. We're sending her to Archuleta Mesa next week to try again with signed nanobots flown directly from the lab to the clinic," said Swanson as he poured a gin and tonic for the senator. Ziggy just drank tonic water.

"It's just amazing," said Senator Nourse. "Thanks to these little bugs the lame can walk, and maybe even the blind can see. Do you think they can fight cancer?"

"Mini robots that fight cancer? I can see the headlines now," said VP Swanson. "They won't say anything like 'Administration Paves Way to End Cancer,' it will be something like 'Administration Hates Oncologists, Puts Many Out of Work.'"

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"Other than that, how are you doing baby?" said Cliff softly. He was talking to Ming through her upgrade process; it was the second one this week. He wasn't happy doing it from 7,000 miles away, but this was what Ming had asked for. The first eight hours are weird, sometimes she doesn't notice the process, other times it makes her nauseous, and she once told him it's like a type of morning sickness, she believes that there's a big change going on and her body was having problems getting used to it. For some reason, she's not appearing in her own video call today; instead, Cliff is seeing Zhang drifting past on an inflatable mattress in an artificial stream. He tried to ignore her bare breasts, but he's a guy and they are pretty... very pretty.

"Do you want me to describe what is going on right now?" purred Ming. Often their upgrade was punctuated with sex play. Cliff would lie in bed with Ming and Alicia and take part by gently stroking Ming's long, ebony hair as Alicia kissed her tender inner thighs.

"Yes, tell me," said Cliff.

Ming stretched and purred in boneless pleasure. "It's warm and sunny, the sun just came up, Abbie is here next to me in a big fluffy bed with silky smooth sheets, we're on a patio, and we're laying in the shade of a lanai that is covered with vines and flowers and leaves. Zhang got tired of serving us fruit juice and snacks and is going for a cruise."

"Sounds beautiful," said Cliff. He's never been to the tropics, and he was getting jealous.

"Alicia won't let us wear shirts!" whispered Ming. "My boobs are getting tanned!"

I should be there to put lotion on you," said Cliff.

"I wish you were... there's birds singing, and I can see the ocean, can you see it?" Ming held the phone up for Cliff, and he could see distant waves crashing on shore not too far from the villa.

"It looks like heaven," smiled Cliff.

"It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon," cooed Ming, "we kind of own this place."

"Are you proposing to me?" asked Cliff. Holy shit! His breathing stopped. He didn't want to push; he's just a penniless nobody that she found in the Stanford micro-robotics lab and hired. Almost every dime he makes goes into paying off his student loan, but everything he builds, everything he does is for her. Suddenly the view switched, and he saw Ming lying next to Alicia. They both had green goop on their faces. Seeing his shocked look, Alicia said, "It's an avocado mask!"

"Who would want to dress up like an avocado?" asked Cliff, truly confused, and then he got back on track. "Are you... proposing?"

"I don't know," Ming giggled. "I guess one of us has..." With a sudden click, the connection went dead.

"What the fuck?" He redialed her number, and it rang seven times before going to her voicemail. "Hey baby, what happened? You were talking and the line went dead. Were you proposing? Call me so I can say yes."

He was sitting at Ming's picnic table outside of the VIP entrance to the complex; it was chilly, and the sun was getting low, but it was still a pretty day. "This is just my luck," he muttered. The girl he loves might have been proposing to him, and the line dropped. He called back again, and he got that annoying three-level tone and that icy voice saying, "The number you dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check your directory and try again."

"Is there a problem boss?" asked Dunkan from over by the mine entrance.

"Yeah, I was talking to Ming and the line went dead."

To Dunkan, everything is a threat, every broken twig in the forest, every pebble skittering down the side of the mountain, every bird circling lazily overhead. That's only because twigs don't just break, pebbles don't just fall, and not everything in the sky is a bird, like that one he's been watching. He reached into the gun locker and pulled out his .20 gauge "Snake Charmer." A very handy little side by side shotgun to have in a land that rattlesnakes like to patrol.

He sighted down the rail between the barrels of the gun, and he swore that the bird noticed him. It turned hard and tried to dive for the cliff face, but a stand of lodgepole pines was in the way. Birds don't "notice" people pulling a shotgun; birds notice movement. Dunkan's stepping into the tunnel and opening the locker should have been threatening enough; this "bird" didn't register a threat until Dunkan leveled his gun. Just as he let fly with both barrels, something in the distance behind the "bird" alerted Dunkan. "Boss! Get in the tunnel! Now!" shouted Dunkan, and he dropped the gun and dashed toward Cliff.

For his part, Cliff had more important things to worry about, starting with what had happened to his phone. He got up from the table and started walking toward Dunkan who was shouting and urging him into the tunnel, but Cliff was dialing the phone trying to call Alicia when suddenly the picnic table behind him exploded in a shower of wood fragments knocking him face first into the ground.

"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" shouted Dunkan as he sprinted forward. Looking to the west, he saw the setting sun highlight three narrow columns of smoke shooting up from Loveland Pass to join a fourth column, which was dissipating. Rockets? Better safe than sorry, he grabbed the microphone for his radio and shouted, "INCOMING FIRE! ROCKY IS DOWN! ROCKY IS DOWN!"

"I hate that name," groaned Cliff as he tried to get up, but his left leg wasn't working properly; it felt weak. Suddenly Dunkan was scooping him up off the ground and carrying him like a child to the tunnel. "Let me down!" complained Cliff. He knew he was a scrawny nerd, but...

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

Three explosions erupted around Ming's picnic grove. One went off inside the pine trees, something hit the rock face above and to the left of the tunnel entrance and exploded showering Cliff and Dunkan with rock fragments and sharp glittering shrapnel, and one hit to the right of the tunnel, low, near ground level blowing Dunkan and Cliff backward. Before he realized what was happening, he was in the tunnel, and the annoying "Oooga" horn was howling, reminding Cliff that something was wrong.

The tunnel grew dark as the door slammed down, blocking a well-aimed warhead in a third volley from entering. Cliff was hurt, and he felt sleepy, and he didn't like Dunkan bothering him, so he tried to get away from the big security guard. But he couldn't get away; Dunkan kept bothering him, doing something with his left leg which hurt a lot. Cliff just wanted to go to sleep and dream about resting in a tropical paradise with Ming. Dunkan was annoying. He kept shouting, "Stay with us Cliff..."

<><><><><>

At the US Naval Observatory, Zane Zigler sat with Senator Amos Nourse and Vice President Cameron Swanson. Swanson was a fascinating, knowledgeable person, and the chance to sit and talk with him about the collapse of The Agency was an incredible opportunity not to be squandered. However, the Vice President's time was limited. He had a meeting with President Turner soon, so it was time to leave.

"Ok, Amos, Mr. Zigler, if you come with me, let me show you a dog and pony show that can't be matched," smiled VP Swanson as he stood and buttoned his suit coat. A cloud of policy wonks and secret service agents clustered around the vice president as he walked down the sumptuously decorated hallway of the Vice-Presidential office and residence; staff photographers clicked shot after shot of the three men walking toward the exit.

The Washington weather had turned gray and rainy; temperatures were dipping, and Amos dreaded a cold walk back to his office. Zane and Senator Nourse waited with the VP as his car pulled up, and they got to watch the Secret Service prepare the VP for his move over to the White House. Just before the car pulled up, Cameron leaned over to Zane and the Senator and said, "Do not take your eye off the General, his power is rising."

"General Long? He's dead, he was killed in Singapore years ago."

"General Boothroyd," corrected the Vice President as he stepped outside and walked to his limo, Secret Service protection cars ahead and behind the VP's limo. Just as VP Swanson ducked into his car, three shots rang out and a car sped off on Naval Observatory Avenue.

VP Swanson disappeared into a cloud of secret service agents and was hustled back into his house immediately, uninjured and safe. But Senator Nourse sagged to the ground, and Zane clutched his shoulder, blood spurting out between his fingers. "Damn," he groaned, "I just bought this suit."

The world went insane. Helicopters and ambulances filled the area surrounding the Vice President's residence. An abandoned van was located near the Naval Observatory, and the FBI swarmed the van. The Washington DC Police Department, FBI, CIA, and the Agency all vied for the lead on the investigation, they begged and hounded President Marcus Turner to be appointed the lead agency in the investigation, but in the end, President Turner said, "Vice President Swanson has decades of experience in law enforcement, I will abide by and enforce his suggestion, the WDC PD will take the lead, the FBI will provide support, personnel, and lab equipment. I fully expect to see cooperation on this investigation that will set a benchmark for all future inter-agency investigations." The gauntlet was tossed down; cooperation will be the order of the day, or "Operation Rolling Heads" will commence.

This situation sent the Washington press corps into a tizzy. VP Swanson wasn't giving a press conference at the moment, the Naval Observatory grounds were locked down, and all that could be seen at the VP's residence was a driveway full of official-looking cars. One ambulance left the residence and headed over to Walter Reed, which sent the Washington press corps stampeding in that direction.

Finally, Doctor Jose Martinez, head of emergency surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center stepped outside and made a short statement to the press, "Senator Amos Nourse of Maine was admitted with a bullet wound to the left thoracic area, the bullet penetrated his left lung and exited his body cleanly. The senator is in good spirits and is expected to make a full recovery. A second person, a member of the senator's staff, was grazed and has been treated on an outpatient basis, his name has not been released. I will take a few questions... Yes?" Dr. Martinez pointed to Bill Gaines, the face of the Global News Network.

"Bill Gaines, GNN World News. Doctor Martinez, could this attack be a reflection of President Turners precipitous plunge in the polls regarding women and disaffected minorities?"

Dr. Martinez couldn't believe he had been asked that question. He was a doctor, not a spineless political earthworm. Luckily, he remembered a bit of wisdom that was handed down to him by the hospital head of public relations, who once said, "When asked a stupid question, ignore it and answer a smart question." This was advice that Dr. Martinez clung to. "As I said, Senator Nourse's vital signs are encouraging we are expecting a complete recovery and a return to work within a few weeks."

Dr. Martinez looked at the crowd and realized that they had no clue if he had answered the question; they wanted to hear themselves talk more than they wanted to hear him.

The doctor scanned the sea of "journalists" for any sign of intelligent life and picked a mousy-looking brunette; she looked like a news nerd if ever there was one. "You, do you have a question regarding Senator Nourse?"

"Yes, Nora Slatery, Washington Dispatch. Doctor, can you speak to the mindset of the shooter?"

Doctor Martinez looked at Miss Slattery, so proud of herself for asking such an important-sounding stupid question. "The senator's wife is with him; she reports he is in good spirits and eager to return to work. Thank you, that will be all," and he turned and entered the hospital where, unlike the crowd outside, here inside the hospital the IQs averaged higher than the current room temperature.

In Senator Nourse's room, an intern wearing an N95 mask was taking his vitals while two staff doctors were discussing physical therapy with the senator and his wife. Joanna Nourse was a tall, slim, sexy sixty with beautiful long silver hair. She knew what she was getting into when she married a man who had aspirations for political office. She was there to bind his wounds after every political setback, and there to ensure that every political victory was capped off with a night that reminded them of their early courtship years. When Senator Nourse said that his wife was his number one advisor, Amos wasn't lying. Joanna was smart and tough. She knew how to navigate the Washington DC swamp, and she could track down a disloyal staffer like a bloodhound finding a lost child.

When Amos waved off the staff physicians with a tired groan, the intern stepped back and reviewed the Senator's medical condition on the computer terminal in the room. "How do I look Ziggy," said the Senator. "Am I going to live?"

Zane Zigler pulled off his mask and smiled. "You're a lucky old buck, an inch or so to the right and you would have drowned in your own blood."

"It's going to take more than a two, twenty-three round to take him down," Joanna bravely smiled, but on the inside, she was shrieking in horror. Zane and Amos were both hit by 5.56mm rounds, commonly fired from an AR-15, but Zane doubted that it was an AR-15 that was aimed at them, the shot was too accurate for that distance to be from a light, plastic gun. It had to be something heavy that wouldn't be affected by the shooter's heartbeat or an unsteady breeze pushing against the fore stock and barrel of a plastic popgun like an AR-15. He was thinking it could be a Ruger AR-556, a heavy barrel semi-auto rifle that still looks like the macho Rambo weapon that all the kiddies like to buy. Zane expected it was more likely to be a Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 Pro, a true shooter's weapon, and with a price tag of $1,900, there are not a lot of weekend warriors carrying one.

"At least they missed the target," sighed Amos. He was sure he could ride the adulation of taking a bullet for the VP to another term in office.

"They hit the target," said Zigler. "The first shot hit you, the second shot hit me, the third shot hit the building. The third round was to make it look like the Vice President was the target."

The room went silent. Finally, Joanna spoke. "What are you saying Mister Zigler?"

Ziggy took a deep breath. Joanna is an awesome woman; he hopes what he has to say doesn't break her. "It appears to me that it wasn't the vice president that the shooter wanted. Amos and I are both associated with Long Air Services and Twin Dragons Security." He turned to Amos and said, "I don't know if you've been briefed, but Ming Long and Alicia Ingersoll were planning to use every asset available to them to either clean up or eliminate the Agency and take down Baumgartner, Haag, and Boothroyd."

"The little general," groaned Amos.

Zigler continued with his bad news. "Six modified 2.75 inch rockets were launched against the Long Air Services Secure Data Storage known as Ming's Mine, each rocket carried an advanced three pound flechette antipersonnel warhead, they struck around the VIP entrance tunnel injuring Dunkan O'Reilly and Cliff Staunton. Dunkan is expected to recover, I don't know about Cliff."

"What do you mean modified rockets?" Amos had to keep his mind on the topic. Goddamnit! He liked Cliff; he's a good kid and a good match for Ming, whom the senator was considering a stepdaughter.

Zane opened up the tablet he always has handy and showed the senator some data charts on the Mark X version of the 2.75-inch diameter FFAR (Folding Fin Air Rocket) "They have a boosted propellent, it burns hotter and longer giving them a straighter trajectory and a longer range. It also lets them carry a larger warhead. These are military only weapons, they're not intended for use in anything except US military aircraft."

Amos held Joanna's hand. "This is where it gets worse, right Ziggy?"

Zane nodded his head. "In this case they had a guidance unit that was flown remotely. We think the rockets were launched from Cupid Peak near Loveland pass, the rockets went straight up, the motors burned out at apogee over Mt. Kelso, and as they fell they were steered to target on Mt Ganley."

"Where did they get a guidance device for something that's one step up from a bazooka round?" demanded Senator Nourse. Rocket attacks inside America? What the hell did the previous administration leave us?

"As soon as we find enough pieces of one to analyze we'll be on it. Right now, as far as we can tell, Dunkan O'Reilly is in charge of Ganley Mountain, and he's locked everything down." Zane was sure Dunkan had the people and the skills to locate parts of those rockets.

"Six three-pound warheads... It was a diversion, a message and they got lucky," said Amos as he tried to sit up, but Zigler shook his head.

"They got lucky that we were exposed the same time Cliff was. We know they had targeted Cliff; he likes to sit at Ming's picnic table and talk to her while she's on Rota in a villa owned by Long Air Services. With you and I, we were followed and were exposed at the exact moment Cliff was on the phone."

Rota! Finally! Someone admitted that Ming and Alicia were out of the country. "You got more, let's have it," said Ambrose.

"The FAA air traffic control system is being bombarded with contradictory data regarding LAS cargo flights inside the continental United States." Zane placed a pulse ox meter on Senator Nourse's finger, "Their flights are being lost in the shuffle and running critically low on fuel."

Amos groaned. Long Air Services is a prime contractor for moving government assets. Additionally, the LAS cargoliners have a "VIP pallet" which allows cargo 747 and 787 aircraft to haul passengers unbeknownst to the FAA and often the air crew of the cargo plane. It's safe, it's comfortable, it's not cheap, and it's not legal, but it works. Several government agencies move personnel quietly around the country with that clandestine capability, and it was a lifeline for the Agency when the Agency was clean.

"What else?" Amos moaned.

"Archuleta Mesa Picorobotics in Colorado Springs is under actual physical attack, their access to the internet has been cut, hundreds of cyber-attacks are being recorded every minute and a large number of men are trying to enter the building."

"Oh great," groaned the senator. "Someone needs to tell VP Swanson to cancel his daughter's appointment until we can get this shit straightened out."

Joanna looked at Amos with concern. She had been his lover and partner for over three decades and had never seen him this concerned before. Ming came into their lives years ago when she was kidnapped and brutally injured in a car that was sent careening down the face of Colorado's Mt. Zion, known to millions of tourists as "Lookout Mountain." Amos led the legislative charge to allow her to research the use of nanorobotics, which restored functionality in her paralyzed body. Since their union was never blessed with children, Ming became their daughter, a cousin to their absentee niece Alicia who was always out doing something heroic, and at one Washington gala Joanna told a recovering Ming that if she ever marries, Amos would be proud to walk her down the aisle.

Amos Nourse saw that look in Zigler's eyes. Zane always prided himself on having a face that never revealed a secret, but Amos apparently learned the secret of reading Ziggy's face. "There's more," said Amos. "Spill it."

"There was an explosion in the Long Air Services villa at Rota, there's been no contact with Miss Long, Agent Ingersoll, or Agent Wei since the explosion."

"Thank you, Ziggy, you better go, I think Cliff needs you. I think I have someone warming up in the bullpen to cover for you."

Zane Zigler found a LAS flight from DC to Colorado Springs via Denver. There was no passenger pallet; in fact, it was a shaking old McDonnell Douglas MD-90, a twin-engine lawn dart with a two-seat flight deck and a busted "jump seat." Zane spent the flight sitting on the floor eating sandwiches and reading dispatches from Archuleta Mesa. The "Cosmonauts" of the picorobotics lab are surrounded, and they're not getting help from the city or state of Colorado. It appears that money has changed hands, and their police forces are highly skilled at doing nothing. Zane sent a message that let them know he was on his way.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"I can't find Cliff."

It's been a rough week for Twin Dragons, their first week of existence, and they've been attacked, bombed, shot, and blown up and their only 'leader' is laid up. Cliff's legs were utterly mangled, a three-pound flechette bomb went off less than three meters away from him, filling the air with winged, pointed razor steel projectiles, it was like going after his legs, hips, ass, and lower back with a chain saw. Dunkan was almost useless. He blamed himself for Cliff's injuries and spent all his time nursing Cliff. Jim MacDonald couldn't do a thing to light a fire under Dunkan, he couldn't cheer Dunkan up, and he couldn't get Cliff to respond.

Ever since he lost contact with Ming, Cliff had been a wreck. The scientist was seriously injured, heartbroken, and starving. He hasn't eaten a bite since the rocket attack, and now Dunkan is reporting him missing. Mac called for a dozen researchers and programmers from the nano-robotic lab, and they began searching Ming, Alicia, and Cliff's apartments. Team after team reported no contact with Cliff, but one team found a hidden dark hallway lit by "fireflies."

Mac and Dunkan found the closet with the spiral staircase, and they climbed up and found the attic and the radio room with Cliff nearly dead at one of the radios. Dunkan crouched down in front of Cliff and whispered hoarsely, "Come on Cliff, it's time to get some rest."

Cliff looked at Dunkan as if he were crazy. "Ming is going to call me in a few minutes," he whispered.

"Cliff, you haven't eaten in days, your hands are shaking, please come down with us and get some food."

"No. Be quiet. I'm waiting for a message." Cliff was weak and sick, but there was iron in his words. Mac tried again to talk him into coming downstairs, but he barely got a word out when Cliff said, "Mac, I love you but shut the fuck up... please?"

At 3:40 AM, Cliff had the radio tuned to 5.90 megahertz and set his filters to the lower sideband. "She'll be here."

"How do you know it's not going to be one of those HAMs?" Mac asked.

"Shhh!" Then Cliff continued, "this isn't a HAM band, it's for commercial broadcasting, this frequency is illegal for HAMs to use." Cliff had printed copies of messages he said were from Ming. They said various things: "Strike tomorrow!" and "Abbie is on her way," and "I will be home soon," and "Marry me." Each one ended with CRC=343.

"What does that mean?" asked Dunkan.

"It's Alicia's Dumb Code," said Cliff. "She sends messages by text or email then on radio she sends a checksum message. If the checksum message equals 343, then these messages are false. If it does NOT equal 343 then they're true."

"That's just dumb!" said Mac.

"That's right," said Cliff. "That's why she calls it her Dumb Code. Now hush; it's almost time.

"Have you gotten a checksum that equals 343?" asked Dunkan.

Cliff nodded. "Every night," he sighed. They paused and held their breath. 3:43 AM came and went, and Cliff fiddled with the tuning, then finally, cutting through the static, whistles, and howls, came a single tone:

-.-. --.- It was Morse code, the letters C and Q, Seek You repeated over and over

"That's her! She's calling me," gasped Cliff. "I told you!" Cliff had a chart of the Morse code, a pencil and paper ready to copy. His shaking hand reached for the key, and he sent the response she taught him what seemed like ages ago:

-.- -.- -.- the letter K repeated three times.

"Ok, shhhh! Here comes the message," said Cliff, and soon the code started coming.

-.-.--.. -.-.-... -.-----. -.--.-..

Cliff started writing, but he wasn't writing dits and dahs (dots and dashes) or letters; he was writing ones and zeros.

01010011 01010111 01000001 01001011

When he was done, Cliff sent the letter K three times and turned off the radio. He looked down at his notes and smiled. "It's not 343!"

"How can you tell?" asked Dunkan. "I don't remember a whole lot of morse code but that wasn't morse code."

"It wasn't," said Cliff, "It was binary. The dits are one, the dahs are zeros. She sent four binary characters; she usually sends five. We convert those binary numbers to decimal, and we get..."

83 87 65 75

"Total them up and you get three hundred ten." The enormity of the message washed over Cliff, those messages he received all day were true, the long, agonizing days of waiting were over, they could respond to the multitude of threats... and the message at the top of the stack read, "Marry Me!"

"Finish converting them," said Mac.

"Huh?" asked Cliff.

"Those are ASCII characters," grinned Mac. "She's been sending you a brief message every night."

Cliff looked up the ASCII code and found 83=S, 87=W, 65=A, 75=K, so Ming's additional message was SWAK - Sealed With A Kiss. Cliff shook with the need to break down in tears and release the pent-up emotions that were continuing to grow. "It's ok man, let it out," said Mac as he massaged Cliff's shoulders. "Our little girl likes you!"

"She's not going to want me now..." Cliff moaned.

"Don't you worry, we have a mountain full of medical marvels, we've got docs that will fix you up in no time."

Cliff swallowed a bitter pill. She's never going to want him now. She's going to take one look at him and run away in horror. It was a beautiful dream while it lasted. His eyes burned as he said, "No. We have work to do; Agents Ingersoll and Wei should be in position soon." With shaking hands, he picked up his cell phone and sent a quick text message to Ziggy that read, "As soon as Zhang gets there, lock them up."

"You relax," ordered Dunkan. The knowledge that Ming was returning poured hope and a sense of purpose back into the normally vibrant Irishman. "That's an order. You come up with an idea, you tell me, I'll get it done. Your job is to heal up for that wedding night of yours."

"Yeah, right," moaned Cliff. He was exhausted. The climb up to the radio room completely wore him out. He dragged himself up the stairs on his hands, just to hear those dits and dahs one last time, one last chance to touch Ming. Dunkan scooped Cliff up and carried him back to his apartment; he was easier to carry now that Cliff didn't have legs.

<><><><><>

Senator Nourse eased back into his recliner, an old, worn-out, threadbare, much-loved ancient La-Z-Boy. The ancient chair didn't match the perfection of decor that his office embraced, but his aching back doesn't care, and when he's in the chair, he can't see it. Rich wood paneling, shelves lined with perfectly bound law books, plaques, photos, bits and pieces, and reminders of a life lived in the most beautiful state in the union, Maine, were the mainstay of this room, this celebration of manhood. For looks, the ancient recliner didn't match the rest of his den, but for function, the den was all about that chair.

Finally, seated comfortably in his recliner, he pulled the lever back, raising the footrest. Fruit Loop, their tiny four-year-old Shih Tzu, leapt into his lap, overjoyed that Daddy was home. As Fruit Loop curled up into a peaceful, fuzzy little ball, Amos said, "play me some Mendelssohn," and soon the gentle strains of Lieder Ohne Worte, opus 67, played by Daniel Barenboim filled the air.

Joanna curled up on the arm of the chair and clung to Amos. She was happy that Daddy was home too. As they relaxed, the music changed to Mozart's Flute Concerto number 1 in G major, and Joanna massaged Amos' cock through his pajamas and felt his growing excitement. "Darling," she said as she kissed his full head of silver hair, "When Ziggy told you that the villa on Rota was blown up you didn't seem too concerned."

"He didn't say they were killed, and he very specifically said that the villa AT Rota was blown up, he also said that they were in the villa ON Rota. If someone overheard our conversation, they probably would have missed that very important note."

"I don't understand," said Joanna as she slid to the floor and knelt at Amos' feet. She reached for the lever and lowered the footrest slowly, seductively. Fruit Loop knew what Mommy wanted and hopped to the floor.

"Many people know Rota, a city on the south coast of Spain, on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar. The Agency has a villa there AT Rota that was blown up. But north of Guam there is an island that the Spaniards called Zarpana, but the conquistadores gave it the nickname Rota for their home port and the name stuck." Joanna fished his cock out of his pajama bottom and their eyes met. Amos continued, "That is where our girls are, on Rota, the friendly island. If their villa was attacked, Mr. Zigler would have most definitely said ON Rota."

Joanna leaned forward and opened the fly of Amos' pajama pants and kissed his balls, then her tongue swept up the length of Amos' hot, throbbing cock. He wasn't going to last long; she was going to make sure of that. Reaching the head, she licked away the collected drop of moisture. "Mr. Zigler is that precise in his manner of speech?"

"Oh, very much so darling... dear god that's divine!" he groaned. Her tongue and mouth were incredible! Joanna couldn't wait any longer; she'd been waiting for this moment for days. She plunged her mouth up and down on his cock, maximizing the hot, wet friction of her tongue on the sensitive underside of his cock. "Joanna, darling!" he gurgled in blissful agony.

"Don't hold back," she gasped and went back to his cock, sucking and slavering. "Give it to me," she gasped between swallows. Her tongue slithered and writhed on the sensitive underside of his cock. Normally she can keep him hard all evening long, but sometimes they both need this... With a strangled cry he came hard. His sperm was incredibly hot as it splashed into her mouth in a series of spurts that shook the senator's body. He eventually relaxed in joyful satiation; his wife swallowed his cum and then sucked his cock dry and cradled him in her mouth as his cock softened. To Joanna, feeling his cock soften in her mouth was a powerful thing. She built up his erection and then she settled it back down, the circle of life. Happy, she leaned back, and Fruit Loop hopped back into Daddy's lap and curled up as Amos drifted off to sleep.

Joanna picked up her cell phone and dialed a familiar number. "Aunt Jo?" asked a familiar voice.

"Abbie darling," said Joanna, "Your uncle Amos is home and resting peacefully, the Secret Service guard and Ming's people are in place, we're fine at this end."

"Ok Aunt Jo, you guys just keep your heads down and I'll let you know when it's all over."

"Thank you darling, talk to you soon," And with that, Joanna curled up on the couch where she could monitor her partner of three decades. She pulled a quilt over her and drifted off to sleep, her first sleep since the day he was shot.

<><><><><>

Zhang stepped into the office shortly before the expected van arrived across the street. The accounting firm of Osborne, Woodley, Cloutte & Associates was in high gear. The new administration promised to "Tax the Rich" but their new tax regulations dropped the burden right on the middle class, leaving their rich supporters untouched. The accountants of Osborne, Woodley, Culotte & Associates were preparing themselves and their clients for the new tax season coming up in less than a month. Money for the IRS, money for the lawyers, money for the accountants, and maybe some money left over to feed their children, if they're lucky.

The tiny Asian woman in a warm, charcoal gray cloth coat, with flowing black hair, black leggings and dark sunglasses strolled through the office like she owned the place and not a single accountant looked up from their cubicles to watch her pass, there's too much work to do, too much money to be made.

She stepped into the corner office to find a handsome Caucasian man sitting sideways behind the desk, his feet up on a drawer that was open. He was looking at the front door of the blank, windowless building across the street. There was no sign to tell the world, but that building housed Archuleta Mesa Picorobotics. Inside that building, some of the most advanced research in the medical application of nanobots in the world was being conducted. Currently, they were "growing" a volunteer, a new set of hands. The volunteer is named Aishah Insari. She was a financial investigator with the Agency. She had reviewed Long Air Services and was then kidnapped and "questioned" by General Boothroyd and his animals. They suspected she had found something in Long Air Service's books that would reveal the design of the nanobots. She was questioned her like they questioned Alicia Ingersoll, but this time the "questioners" actually chopped her hands completely off. The "cosmonauts" in Archuleta Mesa were working without a template; they had nothing but photographs of Aishah's hands to work from as they tried to rebuild Aishah's life.

And now the self-proclaimed "General" Daniel Boothroyd has decided that he's not done with Aishah and his team is trying to break into Archuleta Mesa without raising suspicion. Ming's army has been on hold, waiting for Ming to give the word to fight back. As soon as Boothroyd, Baumgartner, and Haag thought they had beaten Ming's forces to a standstill, Agent Ingersoll ordered her team to retaliate. Zhang rushed 7,000 miles back to Colorado with orders to assist Zane Zigler in anything he directs, and his orders were to sit and wait until Zhang got there. Once she got there, he had free rein to protect Aishah Insari and Archuleta Mesa any way he saw fit.

Zhang entered the office and looked around. In the corner of the office, a coffee machine gurgled as it made a new pot. "Coffee?" Zane asked without looking up.

"I'm more of a tea kind of person," said Zhang.

Hearing her voice, Zane turned to look at her, then did a double take. She was gorgeous! His shoulders slumped, and he moaned, "Awww damnit."

"What, I'm too tall?" asked the five-foot-tall Zhang.

"No, you're too..." Zane frowned and shook his head. "You're too beautiful."

"Me?" Zhang scoffed. "too beautiful?"

"I asked Alicia for someone who could fit in a crowd without raising suspicion, just an average plane Jane. Instead, she sends you."

"Gee, I'm sorry I'm not ugly enough for you," said Zhang as she crossed her eyes at Zane.

Zane shrugged, "Me too. I'm hoping for Miss No One Special, just an average girl, instead I get a goddess."

"Goddess? Me?" Again, she was shocked at his compliments.

Zane shrugged. "Girl, you are gorgeous." He got up and walked up to Zhang, which made her self-conscious. Zane continued with a soft voice, "We need someone who can easily be forgotten, but you are far from forgettable. Anyone who looks at you will say, 'Damn it, that girl is stunning.'"

"It's a burden I have to bear," Zhang sighed. This guy was smooth, but she couldn't sense a note of sarcasm in his voice. At best she's been described as cute; suddenly she's a goddess? "What about you?" she said as she brushed an imaginary piece of lint off of his lapel. "You walk into a dinner party, and someone is going to ask, 'Who invited John Hamm to the party?'"

The two agents studied each other; their eyes roved over each other's faces for a long time. Zane hadn't allowed himself the pleasure of studying a woman in ages. He found her smile captivating, her scent intoxicating, her warmth mesmerizing. For her part, Zhang found herself being drawn to this man, and finally she spoke, "Alicia warned me about you."

Zane chuckled, "no she didn't. She didn't tell you anything about me. She tried to hook us up."

Zhang nodded. "Good guess."

"I've known Alicia for a long time," said Zane. "We were in the Agency together, and we both came to Ming at the same time, for different reasons. Alicia knows everybody's heart, except her own." He led Zhang to the window. "Come on, this should be fun." Looking out the window, they saw a van pull up and several men pile out, and they started assembling a device that looked like a massive camera tripod. Atop the camera tripod they placed a cylinder of metal about as big around as a basketball and about four feet long. It was clearly incredibly heavy because it took six men to hoist the cylinder into position atop the tripod.

Wordlessly, they moved the tripod into position in front of the door. Another van pulled up, and a large group of men hopped out, but this time they brought out of the van a large portable generator that they plugged into the tripod. Several more vans arrived, and men poured out of them. At least twenty men assembled in front of the door, and they were heavily armed with what looked like AK-47s. "Looks like Mister Boothroyd has ordered them to get inside," said Zhang.

The large metal cylinder slid away from the door, then changed direction and slammed into the door with a loud clang! "Electromagnetically driven battering ram," said Zane. "Very nice."

"Looks like someone has been watching their Captain America DVDs," agreed Zhang.

Zane produced a professional-looking microphone and plugged it into a small control panel on the desk. He held the mic up and said, "I hear someone knocking, do you want to talk to them?"

"Sure!" Zhang took the mic and smiled. "Can they hear me?"

"Yeah, it's a microphone for the intercom for the front door."

The ram slammed into the door with another loud CLANG! and Zhang turned on the microphone. "Hello?"

The men at the door looked around and then knocked on the door again with another loud CLANG! Zhang responded again with "Yes? Is someone there?"

Zane snorted with laughter as the mercenaries glared at the door. "Can I help you?" Now they were both laughing.

Then one of the mercenaries said, "We're here for Insari!"

"I'm sorry, she says she's indisposed, can you come back tomorrow?" Now Zane was doubled over in laughter, trying his hardest to keep quiet. The mercenaries snarled in anger. One of them took a shot at what they thought was the speaker, and the ram reared back for another CLANG!

"We want Insari NOW!" CLANG!

"Hold on, I'll ask if she's taking any visitors."

CLANG!

"Ok, we're going to let them in," whispered Zane. Zhang gave him a funny look, but he just nodded.

"Ok, she says you can come in, but please be quiet, we have neighbors."

And with a click, the door opened four inches. The door was not a free-swinging door; it opened slowly regardless of how many mercenaries were pulling on the door. When it finally opened enough for people to slip inside the mercenaries realized that the door was eight inches thick, it was made from the armor belt of a scrapped Navy cruiser, there was nothing their little ram was going to do against something that was built to turn aside Japanese torpedoes.

When the door opened a full two feet, the mercenaries poured into the breach, leaving two men behind to guard their equipment, and then it slowly closed behind them. "Now what?" said Zhang.

"Come on," said Zane. He led her out through the sea of accountants, down a flight of stairs to where the half dozen Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans were parked. Some were blocking traffic. "Just be my secretary for a few minutes, ok?"

"Yes mister..." she looked at the business card that he had just handed her, "Mister Reagan."

As they neared the vans, about ten police cars marked for the Castle Rock PD arrived, lights flashing, sirens wailing. "These are the vans sir!" said Zane, "Jeremy Reagan, Reagan Mercedes-Toyota, Castle Rock Colorado. These guys, they took these vans right off the lot." Now, Colorado Springs police showed up, and Zane handed out his business card to any cop that would listen. Just then another car arrived, and an older businessman appeared. "This is my dad Frank, he'll be handling this mess, he's got the paperwork for every one of these vans. I want to find those people." Then, in the crowd of cops and spectators, Zane gave Frank a hug and said, "Thanks buddy, I owe you one."

Several tow trucks arrived to impound the stolen vans and their contents, and police disassembled the battering ram while they hauled away the two remaining mercenaries. Zane walked up to the door and pressed a buzzer, and a voice could be heard: "Archuleta Mesa, can I help you?"

"Yeah, we're looking for a dozen or so guys who came in here, can we come in?"

"Yeah sure, hang on," and with a buzz the door opened. The two mercenaries who were being led away in cuffs watched on in shock as Zane, Zhang and several cops entered the fortress they'd been trying to break into for over a week.

Walking past the mercenaries that were being shoved into a cop car, Zhang smiled sweetly and said, "Sometimes it just takes a little sugar," causing the mercenaries to shout and rage in anger. Inside the "fortress" they found the security turnstiles, and the on-duty security guard was still raging about a dozen or so "Army guys" who jumped the gates and ran up the hall and disappeared.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"I need you to relax darling," said Alicia as she snowboarded through knee-deep snow on Cupid Mountain.

"They tried to kill Cliff!" Ming was barely able to contain her anger. She sat in her control room, the same room where she taught Cliff to answer their coded messages on an illegal frequency. "I need to get back to him!"

Since returning, Ming has not moved more than a foot away from Cliff. They spent every minute holding each other, crying, loving, and making plans together. Alicia was part of their connection, and the three slept together every night as the retaliation rolled out. The first thing to happen was that several FAA fat cats were jailed for taking bribes and giving credence to documentation that was obtained outside official channels, causing huge scheduling conflicts. Long Air Services was soon flying on time again.

"Let's get this done and you can get back to our boy, ok?"

"Ok," moaned Ming, "Give me another 180-degree scan, left to right."

Numerous computers were now displaying different views of what Alicia was seeing right now: thermal images, enhanced color images, ultraviolet images, sonar representations of the snowpack, and digital breakdowns of what Alicia was seeing. Now that Alicia was no longer with the Agency and was an investigator for Twin Dragons Security Systems, she needed a controller back at the primary data center to help her, and Ming became her Babe In The CHair, her BITCH.

"It's ok, I got it together," panted Ming. "Look down at the snow... to your right... Right there, that's where they came in. I can see the changes in snow density." Yellow circles appeared in Alicia's vision as Ming circled the buried footprints. "The dummies didn't wear snowshoes; the snow wasn't deep, and they must have counted on the sleds they were pulling to cover their tracks... maybe they didn't care... give me another 180-degree scan left to right."

Obediently, Alicia turned her head to the left, and then slowly turned it to the right. Her multifunctional glasses recorded everything she saw, and the relay set in her backpack sent that data via satellite to Ming. Ming was able to analyze it and return data via her AI to Alicia's AI. Alicia's AI would then project any data or markings that Ming entered on the computer onto the glasses. If nothing important could be found, Alicia would see hearts and smiley faces appear at the edges of her vision from Ming doodling, but right now, she could see Ming drawing outlines of footprints that were now covered by two feet of snow, now revealed by sonar, then an arrow that showed the route of travel.

They've been working non-stop ever since Dunkan found the bird he shot. It was a mechanical drone covered with feathers. From a distance, it looked like a bird. The six clear plastic propellers and guards were nearly invisible when in flight. This is how they could see that Cliff was sitting outside at the picnic table. They targeted Cliff to be killed. The thought drove Ming nearly to the breaking point. She's been working night and day, designing new nanobots with Roberta for Cliff, and plotting her revenge on the "Triumvirate of Asshole" Boothroyd, Baumgartner, and Haag.

Up on Cupid Mountain, Alicia followed Ming's markings until she came to a level area. The ballistics track that Ming developed showed a 98% chance that this was the area the rockets were launched from. "Give me another 180, left to right..." Now Ming was silent as she worked the analysis, lines and circles appeared in Alicia's vision as Ming analyzed the data and filtered out what was natural and what was man-made. "This is the place," she announced. "Here's your launchers." A bright oval appeared downhill from Alicia.

Moving slowly down the incline, keeping her snowboard perpendicular to the slope, she edged closer to the bushes Ming indicated. When she got there, she found three simple launchers, each made of two boards screwed together to form a V. The launchers were propped up by two more boards, making a tripod. The rockets were simply laid in the trough of the V and launched, then after their motors burned out, they were guided as they fell back to earth. "Oh shit," muttered Ming and Alicia at the same time, followed by Ming's little cry of "Jinx!"

There was a rocket still sitting in one of the primitive launchers.

"Footprints are really confused here," said Ming, even though Alicia was looking at a pristine layer of snow. While Alicia unscrewed the guidance head from the rocket and put it in her backpack, Ming studied the snowpack density using sonar; a series of circles began appearing in Alicia's vision. "This doesn't make sense," said Ming. "There's stuff scattered everywhere. These were the messiest terrorists I've ever seen..." A series of lines under a snowdrift appeared; it looked like a game of pick-up sticks. "I think this is a stash of rockets."

"Da fuck?" said Alicia. Rockets are fragile things. She didn't like dealing with them in the military; a good bump could fracture the solid propellant, turning the rocket into a long, skinny grenade just waiting for someone to launch it.

Another circle appeared near the fallen rockets. "Dig here, it looks like a laptop."

Alicia dropped to her knees and began digging, and less than a foot down, she struck pay dirt. It was a laptop, but it was severely trashed. The screen was half torn from the main body, and it looked like someone was beating on the keyboard with a hatchet...

A rectangle appeared in Alicia's vision. "Here's another," said Ming. "Let's get those two hard drives back here, and we'll send up a crew to clean up this area."

"Sounds good to me," said Alicia, and she dug up what was indeed another laptop. This one was severely damaged as well. Someone really hated these laptops... or tried to eat them. Alicia brought up her AI.

'AI: go to thermal, please.'

> Thermal vision on.

Suddenly, the world was plunged into a sea of blue; it was hard to tell what she was seeing because everything became the same color, because everything was the same temperature... except for one thing. Alicia had to move uphill a little, not easy to do on a snowboard, but it was possible. She moved from side to side, trying to see something that was warm, but not incredibly warm. It was just under 90°F, and there was very little movement, but there was still a very slight, regular movement, like it was breathing.

"What is that?" Ming asked.

'AI: thermal off, please.'

> Thermal vision off.

Alicia found herself peering into a cave. She couldn't see what was in the cave because normal vision plunged the interior of the cave into darkness, but she knew what was in there. "It's a bear."

"A bear?!? Sooo cute!" Line drawings of teddy bears filled the edges of her vision, and Ming's chatter of teddy bears almost blurring the macabre sight of a human hand sticking up through the snow, which caused Ming to quiet down immediately.

Alicia dropped to her knees and began digging again, and found that the body she was digging up was only an arm and a shoulder. She pulled out her Navy issue Ka-Bar fighting knife and cut away a frozen piece of muscle tissue from the shoulder, and in her earpiece, she could hear Ming retching. As she put the frozen meat in an evidence bag, she asked, "Baby, are you ok?"

"I need a new trash can," Ming answered weakly.

"I keep telling you to put liners in those things. Find me a track back to the road."

<><><><><>

Moving down the mountain on her snowboard was all Alicia needed to cleanse her soul. She was snowboarding down Cupid Mountain, much of which was nearly vertical, and all was heavily wooded. She was lucky; the lower tree branches had broken off years ago, so now she was weaving back and forth between tree trunks. It was beautiful, and it had been years since she was able to get moving this fast on a snowboard, but eventually she broke into an open area and was able to make good time. Ming was watching Alicia's progress as she sailed down the mountain, weaving between trees and avoiding boulders. Alicia could hear Ming retching again. She gets motion sickness easily.

Soon she was on a snow-covered track, and as she sat down on a snowbank to take her feet from the snowboard bindings, a highly modified Ford Bronco appeared on the road. It was Dunkan O'Reilly in what he called a Rock Crawler. The truck was jacked up quite high, with huge tires and cutaway fenders. It was built for climbing over rocky terrain, but it also dug its way through deep snow quite well. As long as it has a heater that works, it was fine by her. She took off her Comm Pack, glasses, and headset, then climbed in the truck and opened a plastic-covered topographical map and marked the bear cave with a grease pencil.

"Right here we need a recovery team, there's at least one body frozen in the snow, we also need EOD, Ming counted eight rockets. Their coffin is there but the rockets are scattered."

"Not a problem," rumbled Dunkan.

"Oh, and there's a bear..."

<><><><><>

A late-season storm blew in over Senator Amos Nourse's estate in Belfast, Maine. The senator's 150-year-old stone mansion groaned as the Nor'easter dumped a wet, nasty, slushy mix of ice and rain on the picturesque town on the Maine coast. Windows rattled, and the building shook as gusts blowing in off an angry ocean assailed the town, and suddenly the house was plunged into darkness as the power went out.

A barely audible click was heard, and then the kitchen door opened silently on well-oiled hinges, and four men wearing dark green entered and began searching. They knew where the senator and his wife were sleeping, and the leader of this band grinned. He was promised the first crack at Joanna. He didn't care that she was over sixty; she looked hot.

Slowly, they made their way through the dining room and into the family room, a large open room where the children of the senator's staffers celebrated Halloween and Christmas every year, then slowly up the stairs, missing the third and seventh step, they were briefed that the risers on those steps creaked loudly. The leader of the hit team was halfway up the stairs when the sound of a stair riser creaking filled the air. He whirled to see who couldn't follow simple instructions and found himself staring down the barrel of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol. "Give me a fucking reason," growled the huge black man holding the pistol. The man's hands were so huge, they made the big .45 caliber look like a squirt gun.

The hit team was gone. The men had been spirited away one by one and replaced by Twin Dragons security agents. As they crept through the darkened house, two dragon agents silently came up behind the last man, grabbed him, and took him away. One by one, the hit team dissolved until only the leader was left staring at a gun. The leader brought out his knife, ready to strike. He might be able to take out three of these guys by himself. Just then, the lights came back on, and he saw exactly who he was looking at. Jim MacDonald was a legend in the world of espionage. If he wants you to be put down, you get put down; there was never a question about his skills. "The senator isn't here," said Jim. "Do you want to die over an empty bedroom?"

The leader slumped. It's just like this new crew of assholes now running the show in the Agency to get everything ass-backwards. The leader flipped the knife in his hand and handed it hilt-first to Jim. "Good," said Mac, "let's put on some coffee and talk."

<><><><><>

A cell phone rang in Alicia's apartment in the Ganley Mountain VIP suite. Senator Nourse reached out and answered with a muffled, "Amos here."

"Senator, Jim MacDonald here. We were right sir."

"Aww shit." He tried not to wake Joanna, but she was up. "Was anybody hurt?"

"No sir, and they're singing like canaries. I do suggest laying low for a while longer though."

"Ok, thanks Mac." As he sat up, Joanna sat up and turned on the TV and found a re-run of an old Johnny Carson show. They snuggled and watched as Joanna tried to let her nerves settle down. She wanted to scream and beg Amos to retire.

Instead, she looked at Alicia's beautiful bedroom. She looked at the faux window with a view of the moon and the stars outside and said, "I guess this isn't bad for a cave."

<><><><><>

Alicia normally managed the weekly Twin Dragons Security conference call, but she was up on Cupid Mountain again with the recovery team, so Ming was in bed with Cliff and three laptops managing the information pouring in as Alicia sat in on the call from outdoors near a sleeping bear. "Mr. MacDonald, what do you have?" asked Ming. During business calls, she's the epitome of decorum.

"We snagged a team of four at the Senator's house in Belfast and they dumped everything. It looks like Gunter Haag is running the Agency now, and like we expected he's getting his marching orders from Baumgartner, but at the same time they're doing side work for Boothroyd's traveling circus. Oh, and get this, Boothroyd calls himself "The General" now."

"Ok," grinned Ming, "Get a DNA sample and let 'em go with a reminder that we can target their DNA with a modified bubonic plague virus."

"Can we do that?" asked Mac.

Ming gave a sweet shrug. "Maybe," followed by a giggle. She may be kidding, or she may be able to do it. Ming was in a ruthless mood. She blamed those people for targeting her in a helicopter and hitting Cliff with a rocket attack, so mercy is out the window. "Abbie, what do you have for us?"

Next appeared Alicia. She was back outside, on the mountain, dressed in snowboard pants and jacket. Snowboarders' fashion looks like something grandma bought for Christmas thinking that the recipient will eventually "grow into it." Everything is big and baggy, and nothing matches, so the boarders love it.

"A bear ate my homework," moaned Alicia, holding up a frozen leg in one hand and a bent 2.75-inch rocket in the other. Speaking over the sound of Ming retching and Mac's guffaws of laughter, Alicia said, "We're finding enough bits and pieces to tell us there were four people when they were assembled and breathing, we think that Momma Bear did not like guys trying to camp out in her cave, and she really didn't like them launching rockets in her front yard. The good news is that Momma and Baby Bear are doing fine; they're hibernating peacefully with full tummies.

"I hate it when you talk like that," moaned Ming as Cliff put the trash can he was holding on the floor. "Did you find out anything on their laptop?" Ming looked pale and shaken; she definitely puked again.

"From the hard drive we recovered, the emails showed that they thought I was on the helicopter with you, the lunatic that they selected for the suicide flight never bothered to relay back a proper manifest, he just said he was carrying two women."

"They don't know about your trip to Korea?" Ming asked.

"It appears not," grinned Alicia. Her trip to Korea was to bribe the Korean manufacturer of the military hardware used by the Agency to embed a chip in the products that allowed Twin Dragons to track the equipment. The negotiations went smoothly as the Korean manufacturer didn't like Gunter Haag any more than the rest of the free world. The guy was a pompous jerk and a fitting match for Hans Stavros Baumgartner. "Gotta go, it looks like there were five guys up here, the boys just found another foot."

When Ming was done retching, she recovered her composure and said, "Zhang? How did things go at Archuleta Mesa?"

The smiling faces of Zhang Wei and Zane Zigler now filled the screen, "It was so cool" gushed Zhang, "These guys tried to break down the door, they had a battering ram and everything!" she gestured with her tiny fist to simulate the battering ram. "Then Ziggy lets them in and traps them in a hallway!" Her eyes were wide with admiration.

"You what?" Ming practically lived there as Alicia went through her nanobot therapy and rehab.

"Ok, you know how when you go through the entry turnstiles the hall turns to the right, about a 45-degree turn?" asked Zane

"Yeah, so?"

"There's a battleship door like the front door that closes off that hall and opens another, so after you open that door and you go through the turnstile, the hallway is straight ahead. We waited for them to run down the hallway then closed the door behind them.

"What's in that hallway?" asked Ming.

Zhang grinned. "Nothing, just sixteen pissed off mercenaries and a water fountain."

"They'll start to calm down soon," said Zane. "They've been in there four days."

"So, what have you two discovered so far?" asked Ming.

Zane and Zhang looked like they were concentrating, then Zhang said, "There's this really cool train up in Manitou Springs, it goes straight up the side of Pikes Peak."

"Please don't tell me..." said Ming in a tiny voice.

"Yep," said Zane, "two-mile-high club, on a train!"

"Ha!" cried Zhang. "Beat THAT!"

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

The next few days were spent mostly doing paperwork and searching through CCTV video looking for anyone who was close to both Senator Nourse and "General" Daniel Boothroyd. They don't have a lead on the shooter, and neither does the DC Police. Since their last meeting, Alicia's fondest desire was to tie Daniel Boothroyd to a bale of hay that was soaked in kerosene and start tossing lit matches at him.

Intelligence poured in from the hit squad that was sent to kill Senator Nourse at his house in Maine, none of them had any love for the agent that hired them, and all had a desire to jump ship and work for Jim MacDonald. But Mac wanted proof of their desire. "You bring me Daniel Boothroyd, and we'll talk. Anyone else is just something to scrape off my boot."

One by one, the mercenaries in Colorado Springs came out of the hallway through a door at the back end of the hall and questioned. At first, they tried to rush to the door, but that earned them another 24 hours of isolation in a hallway that was intensely brightly lit. They tried to shoot out a light or two, but the lights were protected by bulletproof glass, and that earned them 24 hours in total darkness. When the lights came back on it was agony, their eyes were so adjusted to the dark that this light felt like it was burning their retinas, even closing their eyes against the light wasn't enough, they had to cover their closed eyes with their hands and then slowly remove their hands.

"Dude!" cried the self-appointed leader of the group. "There's no food in here!" That was a lie; they were provided with two MREs per man every day. They were all the same MRE, the Veggie Omlet, the most hated MRE ever produced. 1,600 calories per day are required in a healthy diet. Each MRE contained 2,400 calories, so they were being well cared for, but Zhang and Zane couldn't help but poke the bear.

"Yes, there is," replied Zhang in her best business leader voice. "You can take volunteers or find some other way to select someone to feed your men. Traditionally you go for the smallest among you."

"Speaking of food," said Zane, "Have you ever been to a Brazilian steak house?"

"What's that?" she asked.

"A Brazilian steak house is a whole different world," said Zane. "They have these gauchos going from table to table with swords covered with meat, everything, chicken, beef, pork, lamb... they give you this medallion one side is red one is green and you put it on the table. Green side up tells the gaucho to bring more meat, red side up and they go on to another table."

"That sounds AWESOME!" gasped Zhang. "I could wear out a few gauchos, I've been eating nothing but salad and fruit for weeks."

"...and the salad bar is to kill for... all you can eat, you don't stop till your buttons pop."

"Let's go! I've never had lamb."

"Oh! The lamb chops! Marinated for twenty-four hours then grilled over an open flame, with mint sauce... oops, I left the mic open... grab your coat, let's go *click*

The conversation was planned to be pure torture, but the dinner was incredible. They had a small table near the kitchen where they could see swords covered with meat roasting over an open flame. The salad bar was huge, and there were a million things on the salad bar for Zhang to explore, but the top attraction was the huge silver tureen of lobster bisque. But there was also tabbouleh salad, couscous salad, hearts of palm (which she really didn't like) fried bananas (which she really loved) and then came the meat, filet mignon medallions, sliced flank steak, grilled picanha steak, chicken breast wrapped in bacon, garlic wing drumettes, marinated Pork Loin, BBQ Pork Ribs, sliced leg of lamb and the flame grilled lamb chops with mint jelly that Zane brought from the salad bar. She had heard of the caipirinha, the Brazilian national cocktail. It was made with cachaça (Brazilian rum) lime and sugar, but Zane introduced her to Brazilian lemonade, a concoction made from limes, water, sugar, sweetened condensed milk, and cachaça.

As dinner drew to a close, Zhang chose the crème brûlée for dessert and Zane had the bananas foster pie. As they enjoyed a delicious dessert with stout Brazilian coffee, Zane slid a small jewelry box across the table to Zhang. "I would like you to have this and wear it." Zane, a legend in the espionage business, the man who single-handedly foiled two presidential assassinations, sounded nervous!

Zhang opened the box and found a beautiful diamond pendant. "Ziggy, darling..." she gasped. It was beautiful. It was a free-form design. The shape represented nothing, but the sparkle and the flash of the diamonds were enchanting. "Ziggy, this cost you a fortune, I can't..."

"I really don't have anything in my life, I have a small apartment in Ganley Mountain and a car, and that's it. Zhang, even if what we have tonight is just a fleeting splash, I want to share my joy with you, the joy I feel any time you are near..."

Zhang took a bit of crème brûlée on a spoon and reached across the table and put it in Zane's mouth. "Shush! That's enough. Come here and put this on me." Zane rose and walked over to Zhang and took the pendant out of the box. She bunched her hair up and held it up off her neck as he clasped the pendant in place. It hung perfectly in the V of her blouse's neckline. She picked up her phone and, pulling Zane close, she took a selfie that showed off her pendant. She sent the picture to Ming and then turned and kissed Zane.

Just as the kiss was heating up, he said, "hold on a moment." He turned the pendant around and showed it to her. On the back, in the setting, she saw a tiny computer chip. "Agent Ingersoll wants us to wear these... The items she was handing out were ugly so I had her put the chip on this pendant for you... The chip allows us to find the pendant should it get lost or stolen... including the pendant wearer."

Zhang looked closely at the chip but didn't say a word. She was a spy. She understood that if the boss requires a tracking device; you wear a tracking device, but she was still enamored with the diamond pendant. Zane could have just given her the chip and said, "here, you figure it out," but he gave her this beautiful gift.

"If you need help," said Zane, "you just hold it like this, with your thumb covering the chip; the chip will send out a distress beacon. I will come running."

Zhang nodded brightly, then she saw the distress in Zane's eyes, and she said, "It's ok, I like it. What's wrong?"

"It's the first gift I've given you and it's a work related item."

She kissed him gently and then said, "I love it, the pendant is beautiful. And if it brings you running, so much the better." She grabbed his tie and pulled him close and kissed him with all the passion she's been saving for all of her 25 years.

As they walked back to the Archuleta Mesa building, Zane held her close, keeping her warm. The day was sloppy, slushy, wet, and unusual for Colorado in early November. It's usually pretty warm down here at 6,000 feet. Now the evening was freezing, the slush and the frozen slush crunched under their steps. "You into football?" asked Zane as they walked the two blocks back to the medical facility. They hoped that if the rest of those guys wanted to come out one by one, they could DNA match them and let them go, unless Alicia wanted more answers out of them.

"Kinda, I don't have a favorite pro team if that's what you mean."

"I'm talking college," said Zane. "There's an academy game next Saturday, wanna go?"

"Who's playing? Zhang asked.

"Air Force versus West Point at the Air Force Academy here in town. It's a great game, all the folks come out of Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base to watch a bunch of people they're going to be saluting next year knock themselves out playing kids games."

The idea sounded like fun. Zhang turned to Zane and opened her mouth to answer when they were hit from behind by a car that was driving with its lights off.

<><><><><>

"One, two, three, lift!" called Ming, and she and Alicia transferred Cliff from his wheelchair to the bed. He had just finished re-bandaging down at the little hospital on sublevel six, just above the nanobot lab. It's where they flew in specialists who tried to help, but in the end, it's where they amputated his mangled legs. Cliff then became a recipient of nanobots. Their primary task is to push out the flechettes as they find them, then hold the flesh closed as healing begins. They also deal with pain management, preventing the need for harsh pain killing medications. When the bandages come off, they're sodden with blood and filled with flechettes.

A flechette is a metal dart that's propelled by an explosive warhead. The warhead explodes and propels flechettes in all directions. They're nasty, they're deadly, and they're illegal by several international agreements. These flechettes weren't the heavy darts used in the past, which were modified ten-penny nails with stamped fins that looked like small versions of the darts you'd see thrown at cork dartboards in every pub in the United Kingdom. These modern flechettes were small and flat, stamped out of a sheet of razor steel. They didn't have significant weight, but you could pack so many into each warhead that when the warhead went off, it was a cloud of flechettes expanding at supersonic speed, and they're so much harder to remove. Their barbed heads work their way into the flesh with every movement of the victim. The vast cloud of flechettes released by the explosion mangled and mauled anything within ten meters. They weren't designed to kill; they were designed to maim and demoralize.

Everyone that works for Twin Dragons Security received a small pendant that was an oval made of a clear resin casting of a flechette that was removed from Cliff or Dunkan, the tiny, nasty warhead was a visual reminder of the tactics that their enemy will sink to.

Since the only interaction the nanobots have with Cliff's nervous system is to suppress the pain, he's not aware of an AI in his body, Alicia told him he's got maybe a tenth of the nanobots that Alicia or Ming has, maybe it's not enough nanobots to create an AI, but then they're still not sure how the AI is created so maybe he has one that he's not aware of. Cliff had his bandages changed three times a day, and the number of flechettes that the nanobots were finding and pushing out didn't seem to diminish. They swept his body with a metal detector three times a day, and it's hard to find a part of his body that wasn't hit, but his lower legs took the worst of the hit. Ballistics show that the rocket struck the ground beneath the picnic table, and the table shielded his upper body from the deadly flying razor blades, saving his life.

After lifting Cliff into bed, Ming and Alicia sat him up in bed and covered his lap with blankets, but that hid nothing. The lumps in the blanket where his legs and feet should have been were not there. Many times, he begged Ming to leave him out by the new picnic table and walk away, and she answered, "No, if you jump, I go with you, if I jump, Alicia comes with us and Boothroyd wins."

Tonight, he was in a better mood, and they were talking wedding plans. Because Cliff is going to Archuleta Mesa in December, where they will engineer him real legs, they wanted to marry before he becomes bedridden for 6 to 12 months. "You will love your new legs, it's really weird getting used to but look at the work that they do!" Alicia flexed her "test tube hands" and then ran her fingertips over Cliff's face. "They feel just like original equipment... you need a shave."

"I just shaved," he pouted.

Ming kissed his cheek, and yes, he needed a shave. "Ignore her, she's too sensitive."

Talking about the wedding made the girls happy; their joyful chattering made Cliff happy, and later when Alicia makes love to Ming, Cliff just might get an erection. It's a sign of healing Alicia claimed, it happened yesterday, there's no reason it won't happen again tonight. Finally, Ming brought up the item that she and Cliff had been talking about for several days. "Abbie darling," said Ming as she gently held one of Alicia's hands. "Sweetheart," said Cliff as he gently took her other hand.

"We would like you to play an active role in our marriage," said Ming.

"I know," said Alicia, "I'm your maid of honor..."

"No," said Cliff, "that's the wedding, we're talking about our marriage."

"I don't understand..."

"Alicia, I love you dearly," said Ming.

"And I love you just as much," said Cliff. "You are an integral part of our relationship."

"Without you, there really isn't an us," said Ming.

"What we're saying is," Cliff paused, then in unison he and Ming said, "Alison Ingersoll, Abilene Irons, will you marry us?"

"Wait... what?... a thrupple? No... we just can't... Definitely no. End of discussion."

"Ok," said Ming. "Wedding's off."

"Saves me from buying a ring," said Cliff as he and Ming slid under the covers.

"You're saying that if I don't marry the two of you, you're not getting married?"

"Yeah," said Ming.

"'Nite," said Cliff. "Get the light, will you?"

"Wait... how is this possible? What if I meet a guy? What if..."

"We'll figure that out as life happens," said Ming.

Alicia thought about it; in reality, Alicia only had Ming all to herself one night, maybe two. Ever since Ming introduced Cliff to her, he's always been there. When Ming was out of the mountains on business, she and Cliff always spent the night together; each other's presence filled the gap that Ming left. When they were both on Rota, all they did other than tease Zhang mercilessly, all they talked about was Cliff. They were right; this wasn't just a hookup; they loved each other; they depended on each other. "If..." began Alicia, "if we can talk Roberta into flooding his system with nanobots so he can develop an AI and link with us, then yes."

Three-way hugs were easy, three-way kisses were a challenge, but they think they have them down. As excited chatter about how the wedding ceremony should look began, Ming and Alicia suddenly froze. Both of their AIs roared to life with a warning that was impossible to ignore.

> Alert. Incoming Alert from RC3305-37-LC37Σ0029, Incoming Alert from RC3305-41-LC37Σ0051

>> Alert. Incoming Alert from RC3305-37-LC37Σ0029, Incoming Alert from RC3305-41-LC37Σ0051

"Epsilon fifty one... that's Zhang," said Alica.

"It's Zhang and Ziggy," said Ming.

"What's going on?" asked Cliff. He didn't have an AI to give him an alarm, but he had a feeling of dread.

Still staring off into space like Alicia, Ming answered, "It's Zhang, she set off the alert chip on the pendant Zane gave her. Ziggy's alarm went off also."

"Could it be an accident?"

"Not likely," said Alicia as she had her AI locate the beacon and share the location with Ming. "She's northeast of Colorado Springs and still moving northeast along US-24." At the same time, Alicia and Ming were conversing through their AIs. They both started helping Cliff with a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt as they were reviewing Helicopter status. Alert klaxons started blaring throughout the mountain; the Dragons were going to war.

Dunkan O'Reilly knocked on the door as Alicia and Ming were nude and pulling on their one-piece fighting suits. "Dunkan," called Ming as she struggled to get her suit on, "Take Mr. Staunton up to the radio room then report to the hanger, you're going to be leading Mac's team."

"Yes ma'am," he said. Dunkan saw both Ming and Alicia's bodies as they suited up, and he didn't express or actually think of anything other than getting the job done; he's a professional military man. If he felt anything, it was a shock at the scars both had on their backs from surgery and around their breasts and other parts of their bodies from the torture that they endured.

"I really hate these stairs," said Dunkan as he carried Cliff on his back up the spiral staircase.

"Tell me about it," said Cliff. "We're moving the equipment down to my apartment, it's going in the second-floor study. They just finished stringing the coax from the study to the antenna. Once we get the power straightened out, we can move everything down there."

"It can't happen quick enough for me," gasped Duncan as they finally reached the top of the stairs. As Dunkan caught his breath, a young woman wearing hospital scrubs followed up the stairs.

"I'm Susan Bianchi," she said as Dunkan prepared to drop Cliff and engage her. "I work in Doctor Rodriguez' team, I was told to follow you up here in case you need medical assistance with the extraction."

Dunkan crouched low to allow Cliff to wriggle into his chair and then examined her ID. "Excellent," said Cliff, "Roberta is an excellent doctor and has an incredible team. Thank you again Dunkan, go on and head out."

"Are you sure you're ok?" Dunkan was highly concerned about leaving Cliff alone with someone he's never met before.

"I'm good, no sweaty-da."

Dunkan nodded. "No sweaty-da" was an expression used in Vietnam; he remembered his father using it. Here at Twin Dragons Security, it merely means, "This is real, I can handle it," What was it that Cliff was talking about? The Dude In The Chair responsibilities? Cliff rewrote the book on that job. It's a whole different world than it was two years ago now that Ming and Alicia are bringing nanobots to a knife fight. "Oh, Dunkan, before you go?"

"Yes?"

"Will you be my best man?"

Dunkan suddenly softened with a huge grin. "You know anything you ask me is yes."

"I'm asking as a friend," said Cliff.

"Then the answer is, Oh FUCK YEAH!" grinned Dunkan, and he gave Cliff a slap on the back that nearly knocked his fillings out.

"Thanks man, now go save the world." With a backwards glance at Cliff in the radio room, Dunkan dove down the stairs. He had to travel a full kilometer through tunnels to reach the helipad, and he ran the full distance with a grin.

Cliff put on a set of wraparound glasses that were mirrored, and Susan immediately thought of Jordi Laforge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. "This is going to be a bit boring for you, these monitors are re-polarized to give me an accurate 3D representation of events as they unfold. Unfortunately, because of the polarization you don't get to see any of that."

He then spun around and faced the bank of monitors that were all white screens to her. Much of what Cliff said was a lie. Yes, the monitors are polarized, but then all monitors are. Cliff had removed the top layer that makes the polarized light viewable to our unpolarized eyeballs and replaced that with polarized glasses made from the layer he removed. There was no 3D anything going on, but there was a lot of data on the screens that Cliff didn't want anyone else to see, but Cliff was still able to see it thanks to the glasses. The glasses repolarized the light coming off the monitors and allowed him to see the monitors as they would appear to a normally sighted person if the top layer had not been removed from the monitors. Visitors looking over his shoulder simply saw four white monitors.

Cliff turned around and asked, "Everything cool?"

She settled into the chair he provided and said, "I brought a magazine, I guessed that this all would be over my head."

Cliff smiled and nodded to Nurse Susan Bianchi. She was a bit on the chubby side; her hair was permed and bobbed a bit short, and her oversize glasses made her eyes look angry. "Hang on Sue, it's going to be a bumpy ride," And with that he spun around and went to work.

<><><><><>

>> Message from DITChψ001, Inbound LAS flight 001, 003 landing in five minutes, air lanes to Simla, Colorado, are clear, support units are planning to leave in two zero minutes.

Ming laughed a clear, joyful laugh when her AI relayed that message from Cliff; he loved being a DITCh. On the open radio channel she called, "I love you too honey... what's with the letter Psi?"

After a long wait, Cliff said, "Everyone else gets a Greek letter, you guys have a theta, the locators have Epsilon, I picked Psi. If you'd watch Babylon 5 with me, you'd understand."

Alicia broke in. "If you ever find a VHS player I'll watch too. Everyone is here, start with the briefing."

Suddenly everybody in the hangar paused as their earpieces rang with, "Standby for the pre-task briefing." Cliff looked at the CCTV video feed of the hangar, and as soon as everyone had stopped their preparations, he continued. "A distress beacon from Agent Zhang Wei and Agent Zane Zigler was heard at Nineteen thirty hours in front of La Brazillia Steak House in Colorado Springs. Local police received reports of a hit and run involving two pedestrians. When they arrived at the scene a private ambulance was loading up two victims."

The men and women of the Twin Dragons response team put on a professional, bored, "so what?" expression, until Cliff continued. "The alert was heard again at twenty-one thirteen hours; the location was in Simla Colorado. Periodic pinging of tags Epsilon zero zero two niner and Epsilon zero zero five one are stable and shows them in the same location, a closed convenience store. At last report, tag Epsilon zero zero five one was in possession of Agent Wei who was with Agent Zigler who has Epsilon zero zero two niner."

Zhang was a Twin Dragons legend. On their first day of existence as Twin Dragons, Zhang foiled a terrorist plot and saved Ming's life. The Dragons looked at each other in shock, this was their little sister in peril! And Ziggy was the agent they all aspired to be; a legend admired the world around.

"Thank you, Cliff!" shouted Alicia. "Listen up people!" she said as she climbed atop an equipment coffin. "There are two agents missing, Agent Wei and Agent Zigler, I want them back here, in this hangar before midnight, is that clear?"

"Yes chief!"

"We WILL bring the person who is responsible for this back here to this hangar and make an example of them, is that clear?"

"Yes chief!" roared the agents.

"NO ONE FUCKS WITH A DRAGON! IS THAT CLEAR?"

"YES CHIEF!"

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

Cliff glanced at the upper left-hand corner of his Geordie Laforge glasses; a little square showed Nurse Susan reading her magazine. He didn't know what it was with that woman. Something was trying to warn him about her, some unknown feeling from deep in his gut, so a camera was trained on her constantly...

Then he looked at the readout on his monitor. The air over Simla was clear, but just to the west of the small town it looked like a parking lot after the big game. The air was filled with helicopters, but only two were under Cliff's control. Two dots on the screen were colored, one red and one gold. They were his; the rest were white, belonging to the United States Army. Cliff had found out that Fort Carson was having a local exercise, and their air crews needed a little experience in short-notice assault missions, and a friend owed him a favor. He smiled grimly as he typed.

Simla, Colorado, is a small, dusty, patriotic town that loves its sons and daughters in the US Army and quite often allows the 4th Combat Aviation Brigade to "invade" their town. This exercise is going to be a bit late in the evening, but at least it's not a school night.

Cliff was in communication with the Army units flying out of Butts Army Airfield; they were planning a victory parade to start and end the show. His monitors, which were blank to Susan, was showing to Cliff several video feeds, one was a video taken from LAS 001, that big Boeing model 234, the picture was looking forward at LAS 003 a speedy little McDonald Douglas MD 520N, Ming called it the Flying Easter Egg. It was a raucous little helicopter with the speed to keep up with the Model 234, and it doesn't have a tail rotor, which makes it safer in busy, congested helipads, and it's very quiet without the tail rotor. The tail boom had a directional jet that countered the torque from the tail rotor.

One by one, the dots flew over Simla, 5,000 feet up. The helicopters paraded over Main Street, their spotlights illuminating the helicopter ahead of them, and the townspeople loved it! On the east end of town was a huge open field, and the helicopters landed at night, their spotlight illuminating the airborne troops that dove off the whirly-birds and took positions in the field, then proceeded to shoot blank rounds and fight the "enemy" that was waiting their assault.

While the buildings of Simla were rumbling from the Blackhawks, Apaches, Chinooks, and other Army helicopters flying overhead, an MD 520N flew overhead also, 4500 feet lower than the Army choppers. The side doors opened up as the little red and gold helicopter approached an old five and dime that had been closed for over twenty years. A length of heavy rope dropped from each side of the helicopter, and a small figure climbed out on each rope and slid down their rope to the ground. The helicopter dipped, and as the figures' feet touched the ground, they released from their rope and ducked into the shadows while the little helicopter sped off into the night.

"You did fantastic for someone that doesn't like helicopters," said Alicia.

"I'm pissed off, they have my people in there, it's their turn to be afraid," said Ming.

<><><><><>

Cliff saw the heat signatures of six people in the Five and Dime, two standing, hands over head and not moving, obviously strung up, three were apparently guarding the doors, and one was beating the crap out of one of the two strung up figures, Cliff could hear the woman scream with every hit, and he could hear Ziggy begging, "Leave her alone, hit me instead." Cliff knew that the sound of their agony was going to cost him sleep for a very long time.

He sent a text message to Ming and Alicia via their cell phones; he knew their AIs would read the message to them. "That is Zhang and Ziggy, they are alive, just barely. I see two guards out front, and one in back by your position, bad guy centered in the building with Zhang and Ziggy." He didn't send a voice message because the nurse behind him would hear it, and he didn't trust her. There was something "too innocent" about her.

"I haven't heard anything in a while, how is it going?" Susan Bianchi asked.

"Pretty good, we're almost done," he said softly.

"I wish you hadn't said that" said the nurse sadly. She stood up and slid a long knife out of a thigh sheath that she wore under her scrubs. "I was beginning to like you."

"I'm glad I didn't make that mistake," said Cliff. He was wondering what the hell he was going to do. He had a pistol in his lap, but he had no idea how to use it. Dunkan gave him ten seconds for familiarization, and he forgot every word.

Cliff decided that his best move was to slide off the chair and hide under the desk. But instead of sliding off, his left hand grabbed the desk and spun him around. His right arm raised the Beretta M9 9mm pistol he held in his lap and put two rounds into the heart of the knife-wielding nurse.

-> Targets advancing three o'clock

"Who said that?" cried Cliff. He was in a quandary; sounds came from behind the door to his right. Unfriendly sounds.

"Me! I said that!" snarled a voice behind the door and BAM! BAM! two bullet holes appeared in the door, but whoever shot aimed high and missed Cliff and the two bullets smashed into a shelf holding electronic equipment above Cliff's head.

"What the fuck!" shouted Cliff as his arm came up and fired two rounds at the door, which crashed open, a large man wearing a set of scrubs collapsed against the door forcing it open. Before he could put together another thought, the gun fired once more, killing someone who was halfway up out of the spiral staircase. The person trying to climb up slumped, and Cliff could hear his body tumbling down the stairs.

-> One target remaining, injured. Possible broken leg. Target number three knocked it off the stairs.

"Who the hell are you?"

-> If you need us, think the command AI: followed by an instruction for us

Cliff tried to calm himself, but his hands were busy clearing the pistol and replacing the magazine with one that was fully loaded. Cliff had never touched a pistol in his life, but there he was, clearing and reloading a military-issue M9. He set the pistol on the desk and began to shake. With nothing left to lose, he thought... 'AI: Identify yourself.'

-> We are nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015

Suddenly he noticed Ming hissing in his earphone, "Cliff! Where are you?"

'AI: Send a message to all other nanobot clusters, tell them that I'm possessed.'

-> Message Sent.

<><><><><>

"Who was that? What does he mean possessed?" shouted Alicia.

"That's the message I got, from cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015," said Ming. "I don't know who that is."

"Wait!" Alicia tugged Ming's arm. "The 377 release? The only one with that release is Cliff. When is his birthday?"

"October fifteenth, he's a libra too!" she said dreamily.

"Congratulations, you're engaged to an Augmented Individual with an Artificial Intelligence."

"WE'RE engaged to an Augmented Individual with an Artificial Intelligence," corrected Ming. "Cliff honey, we need you back on the air." Alicia and Ming's AIs received another message from nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015

>> Host of nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015 is unresponsive; however, data gathered from multiple inputs show your best option is to let Miss Ingersoll take the guards and Miss Long take the questioner. No other targets located, LAS flight 001 will only be needed for medevac.

"Unresponsive? Is Cliff ok?

>> Standby... nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015 reports host body temperature 96.9°, blood pressure 90 over 58 and recovering, heart rate 55 beats per minute, blood oxygen saturation 98%, blood INR 1.1...

Ming forgot that for as smart as they are, an AI is the dumbest thing on earth. They have no common sense. It's like walking on eggs; you have to step carefully, putting your foot down just right with every request you make. Now that Ming has asked an AI to check Cliff's medical condition, she's going to get everything. When you put a quarter in, you have to let the whole song play.

Ming turned to Alicia. "He's ok, but something is wrong, he's not responding. Our DITCh is down; we'll have to play this one by ear."

Alicia jacked a round into the chamber of her M1911 .45 pistol. "Time to make the chimichangas!"

"Seriously? You quote Deadpool?"

They could hear the sadist who was hitting Zhang shrieking, "Where are my men?" The next thing the sadist knew was the back door flew open; two women dressed in black shot the guard at the door. Before he could hit the ground, they raised their guns and with one shot each dropped the two guards protecting the front entrances.

The sadist moved to put the dying woman in a choke hold and use her as a hostage, but a black screaming cloud of fury crossed the distance in an impossibly quick time, slammed into him and drove him into the plate-glass window which rang like a bell as the back of his head smashed into the tempered glass.

Alicia cut the woman down from the rope her wrists were tied to, and she slumped to the floor. The wounds on her ass, breasts, and vagina looked oddly familiar. "It's ok baby, we have a bird inbound, we'll get you in an ER ASAP."

She then turned to Ziggy. He was shattered emotionally. "He wouldn't stop. He kept hitting, hurting, biting. I begged him to take me, but he made me watch. I couldn't do anything..."

"Ziggy, what happened to your shoulders?" she asked as she cut him free. Both of the shoulders of his suit coat were soaked in blood, front and back.

"He put a gun next to her ear and said, "Don't move, I need target practice." Then he shot me in the shoulder. She never moved a muscle. He did it again, he shot my other shoulder and she never moved... she was so brave... I think she's deaf now..." He knelt over Zhang weeping. His arms hanging limp; he was no longer able to control them.

Alicia rose and went over to where Ming held their prisoner in a very painful-looking chokehold. She was sitting on the floor with the prisoner sitting in front of her, almost in her lap. "Ming, tag out, this one's mine."

"No, you'll kill him."

"You're going to kill him too."

Ming snarled, "I have a three-thousand-foot mine shaft to drop him down, it's just been waiting for him and his owner Mister Baumgartner, isn't that right Q?"

"Fuck you," snarled Daniel Boothroyd.

Ming tightened her chokehold, and his neck made a crunching noise. "Ooops! Those vertebrae are kind of fragile, aren't they?" Ming put her mouth next to his ear. "Look at those two, you beat and broke them, but I can fix them. You? There's no fix for what I'm going to do to you. When we're done with you, children are going to see your face and run screaming to their mothers, they will have nightmares after seeing your face, and there won't be a single nanobot to spare for you."

Alicia crouched in front of Boothroyd and snapped her fingers in front of his nose to get his attention. "I hope you enjoyed pissing standing up," she said softly, "because it's never going to happen again."

Ming's leg twitched, causing her heel to slam into his balls. "I just wanted to do nanobot research, I wanted to give hope to the hopeless, to get the injured out of their wheelchairs, and you tried to shut me down... After a few years in a wheelchair staring at your useless, twisted legs you'll see how bad of a decision that was..." She twisted his neck again and more crunching noises could be heard. "Oooo that sounded painful. Was it painful?"

Q was in agony; he realized that his neck was going to hurt for a very long time indeed. "Yes," he gasped before he could stop himself.

"Good, here's a hint." Then she whispered very quietly, "Never piss off a nerd." With a shove of her foot, she launched him off of her lap straight at Alicia, who was waiting for him with the baton he used to beat Zhang.

The big Chinook opened the rear cargo door and sat that door on the edge of the Five and Dime's roof and hovered in place, the passengers piled off and placed a few demo charges on the roof and blew a hole in the building's roof. "Get me two blankets and send the stretcher down!" called Ming on their radio connection. Working quickly, the team soon had Zhang hoisted aboard, followed by Zane, who immediately went to Zhang's side the moment he was freed from his stretcher. He had to be there if she regained consciousness; he had to apologize. The hoist came up a third time; this time, a prisoner was attached to the hoist by his ankles. As soon as the prisoner was out of the hole, the helicopter took off, the shrieking prisoner dangling by his heels.

Alicia and Ming left the three guards where they lay, but in the center of the room they left a bag of fentanyl pills, a stack of 100-dollar bills, and enough evidence to point back to the head of the Agency, Gunter Haag. As the Army helicopters finished their exercise and flew homeward in formation, their formation lights flashing letting everyone know where they were, the cheering people of Simla Colorado waved and cheered and not a single person noticed a small MD 520 rise out of the city park and join the formation.

"In and out in eleven minutes," said Alicia, "not bad," but Ming didn't hear her. The anger had drained out of her and allowed her to feel the terror of riding in a helicopter again.

<><><><><>

'AI: query Cliff's AI on status of Cliff Staunton'

>> Searching... "Cliffs AI" not found. Please enter a nanobot cluster.

'AI: query Cliff Staunton AI on status of Cliff Staunton'

>> Searching... "Cliff Staunton AI" not found. Please enter a nanobot cluster.

Ming discovered that a sure cure for fear of helicopter flight is getting angry at her AI. Ok, one more time...

'AI: pseudonym for nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98θ1015 is "Cliff's AI"'

>> The pseudonym "Cliff's AI" for nanotech cluster RN377-36-MS98 θ 1015 is set

'AI: query Cliff's AI on status of Cliff Staunton'

>> Mr. Staunton is conscious but not responsive. Cliff's AI theorizes that the dead bodies may be the reason.

What the hell! On the helicopter intercom, Ming called to the pilot, "You need to drop me on the VIP entrance, something is wrong with Cliff, his AI is reporting dead bodies."

"What's he doing with dead bodies?" demanded Alicia, "that's our job!" The little helicopter sped northwest toward Ganley Mountain, and the two women comforted each other. "He's exaggerating," said Alicia, "that's all it can be."

"Yeah, he saw the video of when we took down the guards and... yeah, that's it," said Ming. "That's what freaked him out."

>> Cliff's AI reports that he was not in his chair and could not see the video.

The speedy little helicopter reached the VIP tunnel entrance with five minutes of fuel left. It was a tight fit. There wasn't a lot of clearance between the rotor tips and the rock wall on one side, and trees on the other, but their pilot made it fit and carefully lowered the helicopter to their picnic/campground. Ming and Alicia leapt out with the runners five feet off the ground and dashed into the tunnel as their helicopter rose to clear the trees then dove for a safe landing on the helipad.

As they got into the garage area, the elevator opened, and two orderlies with wheeled stretchers and a nurse stepped off the elevator. "What's up with this?" asked Ming.

"We don't know, the ER sent us up here, five stretchers and a nurse were requested," explained one of the orderlies. "But no one knows where they need us, we were told to wait here."

"Follow us," said Ming. Then, she and Alicia dashed to the courtyard where two more stretchers waited for them, then they ducked down the dark hall and into the closet. At the bottom of the spiral staircase lay a man in agony and a dead man lying on top of him. The dead man had a bullet hole perfectly centered between the eyes. Ming raced up the stairs and at the top of the stairs she found another body blocking the radio room door open, behind Cliff's chair was a dead woman, all the bodies were wearing scrubs, and in the corner, under a shelf sat Cliff, staring at the bodies and shuddering, his unfocused eyes not recognizing Alicia or Ming.

"Baby, we're here, it's over," gasped Alicia as she and Ming cuddled with Cliff under the desk. "It's over honey, it's all over. You're safe now..."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

Georgetown Loop Railroad #111 is a husky little oil-burning 2-8-0 Consolidation built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Eddystone, PA, in 1926. It worked on the little narrow-gauge International Railways of Central America, where it primarily operated in Guatemala. It ended up returning to the US in 1973, where it sat as a museum piece, a shining example of the narrow-gauge locomotives used in Colorado until the mid-1930s. The Georgetown Loop Railroad gained it in 2008, and now it hauls passengers instead of sugar cane, and on that particular day it was hauling three very excited people.

It was December, and the snow was falling gently. The Georgetown Christmas Bazaar had a great opening weekend. Tourists poured in from all over the country, and next weekend promised to be as good if not better. The little city was decorated with pine boughs, colored lights, ribbons, bunting, there were sleigh rides, hayrides, reindeer, and roast chestnuts, it was almost Alicia and Cliff's favorite weekend of the year, second only to Georgetown's July 4th weekend. But Wednesday was normally a day of rest between the two weekends of the bazaar, a respite for the businessmen and women of Georgetown, CO.

Even the Georgetown Loop Railroad settles down on Wednesdays, saving up its energy for the Christmas trains and the Polar Express trains on the weekends between Thanksgiving and New Year's. However, on that one Wednesday a special train was running, decked out in Christmas bunting and flying the white flags that decades ago meant an Extra Train, Locomotive number 111 pulled out of Georgetown station heading uphill with two special cars on the tail end of the train, two narrow gauge first class dining cars, rebuilt from the axles up and donated the previous year to the Georgetown Loop Railroad from their "partners in transportation," Long Air Services, mostly from a pair of train loving nerds who run the company. The cars were named Red Dragon and Gold Dragon, and the Georgetown Loop Railroad passionately loved them. The cars were put into service on their famous dinner trains and wine trains immediately, and they became the pride of the fleet. All that Long Air Services asked in return was that the Georgetown Loop allowed them to lease an extra train occasionally for business functions.

A kitchen car was placed ahead of the two dragons, then ahead of that were a few cars for throngs of tourists and rail fans who just wanted to ride an unscheduled run of the Georgetown Loop Railroad. There were even a few open cars for the brave who wanted to truly experience a Colorado Christmas and enjoy the ride in the snow. Locomotive 111 chuffed merrily up the hill as Christmas music played on the loudspeakers in the cars, holiday decorations and lights glittered, and there was a party in each of the Dragon cars, a bachelorette party in the lead car, the Gold Dragon, and a bachelor party in the last car, the Red Dragon. The Kitchen Car was busy serving holiday-themed drinks, snacks, and hors d'oeuvres to the parties, hot chocolate and cookies to the tourists.

"What do you think of our little choo-choo?" Sally-Ann McCarthy, a board member of Long Air Services, asked Alicia over the laughter and music.

"Oh gawd!" said Alicia. "If I knew coming out of my coma that I was rescued by a couple of train nerds, I would have said, "Put me back under!"

"That can be arranged," said Ming as she rested her chin on Alicia's shoulder. "We LUV our train, and we prefer to be called Railfans."

"I'm falling in love with our train too," admitted Alicia. "Doctor Romirez and I go for hikes up the Argentine trail and you can hear ol' Huff 'n Puff chuffing away, the whistle echoes up the canyons and it just sounds right, like the train and the mountains were made for each other."

A doctor from Roberta's robotics lab came up to Ming and asked, "Is it true that Cliff is changing his name to Long?"

Ming nodded. "Uh huh, and he's changing his first name too!"

"Can't wait," said Alicia. "I'm throwing a party when his fucking parents die."

"He doesn't like his family name?" asked a nurse from Archuleta Mesa. "Staunton isn't a bad name, I've been to Staunton Virginia, it's a friendly town."

"That's not his family name," said Ming. "he was conceived in Staunton Virginia, so that's what they named him."

"Well, who would name their kid Cliff anyhow," said one of the girls.

"That's not his name either," said Alicia. "they named their baby Mountain Staunton. His sister's name is Flower Rochester, his parents' names were Ocean Bronx and Mist Yonkers so Cliff isn't sure what their family name is. They changed their names to Gaulin now."

"So is his new name going to be Mountain Long?" asked Roberta, who knew his real name was Mountain but never used it because it made her laugh.

"Shan. Shan Long."

"S-H-A-N? The Chinese word?" asked Wendy Chung, a Chinese girl in the nano-robotic breeding lab.

"Yes," said Ming. "His mom was Chinese, so why not?"

"You know that's the Chinese word for mountain, right?"

In the Red Dragon car, the bachelor party was in full swing as well. The big talk was Cliff's shoes. He had been fitted with prosthetic legs to wear for the wedding a few days previously, and the only shoes he had were neon green sneakers, which clearly did not match his tuxedo. He was wearing a burgundy red frock coat, a tuxedo jacket that reaches to the knees with a gold satin vest, burgundy ascot, white high collar shirt, black trousers and neon green sneakers, he wanted to look like a 19th-century mine owner and with the frock coat he pulled it off. Then there were the sneakers...

He got a lot of good-natured ribbing about the shoes, to which he answered, "I'm just happy to have feet to put them on, even though they're rentals."

"Are you ready for this?" asked Jim MacDonald as his wife Sheila helped the guys put on their boutonnieres. The boutonnieres were burgundy red rose buds surrounded by gold holly leaves, red holly berries and a light tail of silver garland.

"I got everything, something old is my sneakers, something new is my hat, I had it custom made in Fairplay, something borrowed... my legs."

When the laughter died down, Sheila, a pretty, slim black woman who is the ultimate opposite of her hulking husband, said, "I'm afraid to ask, but what is blue?"

"My balls."

"And THAT'S why we don't let men do this kind of thing," and she stormed out of the car through gales of laughter, successfully holding back her own laughter until she got into the Gold Dragon car.

After a nice slow climb from Georgetown to Silver Plume, the train pulled into the station and the Conductor called out, "LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL!" The revelers got their last drinks as the locomotive swapped ends on the train with a series of clanks and a lurch, the wedding special headed down the hill to Georgetown. Soon the parties broke up, and the guests moved forward to the Red Dragon. The entire trip to Georgetown was downhill, so the locomotive was nearly silent as they drifted down the 4% grade.

Cliff spent most of the bachelor party sitting in his wheelchair at the end (now the front) of the Red Dragon car where a Christmas tree and seasonal flower arrangements were located, and there he remained, that's where the ceremony was going to take place. As the guests gathered in the Red Dragon and found their seats, Gold Dragon was almost empty. It was just Ming, Alicia and their attendants, the matron of honor, Roberta, and their "stepfather" Amos Nourse along with Joanna Nourse and Sheila MacDonald who decided that somebody has to be an adult, so it might as well be her. It was just them and all those snacks.

"I can't believe you kids are doing this," said Amos.

"It's already done," said Alicia as she adjusted "Uncle Andy's" tie. "In Colorado you can self-spiritualize your marriage license for an extra $15, we've been legally married for a week."

"There's still only two spaces for names on the license..."

"Amos!" warned Joanna.

"I'm sorry, I just don't want to see anyone hurt. You two girls are like my own, and Cliff... everybody loves an underdog. But stuff happens and I don't want to see any of you hurt."

"Amos, we already are hurt," said Ming, "and not just physically, we've been broken mentally and emotionally. Now with our AIs starting to merge we can't hide anything from each other, our nano-bugs constantly talk to each other, nothing is hidden, everything is shared. We really are becoming one person in three bodies."

"We really are overjoyed for all three of you," said Joanna. "Now you stop causing trouble," she said to Amos as she swatted him on the shoulder, then she gave him a kiss and turned to help Sheila give the brides' dresses a final inspection. "No one is going to miss the theme colors of this wedding, that's for sure."

"Mmm, mmm, mmm. Ain't that the truth," exclaimed Sheila.

Like Cliff, Ming and Alicia wore 19th-century styled outfits. The dresses were nearly identical to each other in style, with corsets, petticoats, and puffed sleeves. Ming's dress was burgundy red, and her bouquet was primarily gold with green holly leaves, while Alicia's dress was gold and her bouquet was burgundy red with holly.

"Ok," said Sheila, "last check, something old?" Both girls displayed antique lace handkerchiefs, "something new?" Both girls showed off pendant necklaces that Cliff gave them. "Something borrowed?" both girls showed a dollar that they had borrowed from Senator Nourse. "Something blue?" both girls showed their turquoise bracelets that they gave each other. "I think you're ready. I'm not going to tell you what your husband came up with for something blue."

"His balls," chimed Alicia and Ming in unison. "We've been teasing him pretty horribly," said Ming, who made no effort to look innocent.

"The three of ya!" huffed Sheila. "You were definitely made for each other!" Then she and Joanna headed forward to the Red Dragon to sit down.

In the Red Dragon car, people settled in as the trip back down the mountain neared the end at Georgetown. As the train eased into the big loop that the railroad is named for the bridal march was played through the entire train's speakers and Amos proudly led Ming and Alicia up the aisle to the end of the car where Cliff, Dunkan, and the conductor, Scott Harlan waited. Along with being a conductor, Scott was a justice of the peace.

On the Devil's Gate High Bridge, the train stopped as it normally does for photo opportunities, and there the wedding ceremony was held. They had practiced the ceremony with Alicia and Ming on either side of Cliff's wheelchair, but as they lined up, Dunkan and Roberta stepped up to Cliff and helped him stand up on his prosthetic legs. The emotion of that moment was overwhelming. Ming and Alicia didn't expect it in the least, and their friends and co-workers broke into applause as Dunkan handed Cliff a pair of crutches to support himself.

From "Dearly beloved..." to "do you take..." the entire ceremony was lost on the three as they spent the entire ceremony silently talking amongst themselves through their AIs, pledging their love and sharing their joy. In that time, an individual became a partner, Miss became Missus, friend became spouse, Cliff became Shan, and as they said.

> I do

>> I do

-> I do

Their AIs mingled, mixed, merged, and they realized they'd never be alone again.

<><><><><>

It was Shan's worst nightmare, his wedding night, not one but TWO beautiful brides, both so gorgeous and passionate that it made his heart pound rapidly just to think about it, and he didn't have legs. Not only didn't he have legs, but he also had little, microscopic robots inside of him pushing little metal arrowheads made of razor blades out of what remained of his legs. And to top it off, he was in so much pain that an erection was impossible.

Shan sat in front of the fireplace in his wheelchair gazing at the fire. How could he satisfy two women when he couldn't even take care of himself? The fire crackled merrily, snapping and popping; beautiful music poured out of the player piano; the jacuzzi in the corner gurgled happily; and here he sat, an anchor made out of meat.

The girls came in from the kitchenette with platters of cut up fruit, cheese, nuts, berries, both of them had a glass of wine and both were wearing diaphanous gowns, keeping with the theme of the wedding, Ming's robe was burgundy, and Alicia's robe was gold. "Come on! We're opening wedding presents," called Alicia.

"I thought we told the guests no gifts," said Shan as the girls pulled up chairs around him.

"No," said Alicia, "we told everyone that any gifts must be receipts of a donation they make to a charity. We would then make a matching donation to that charity as our thank you.

"Ooo, it's nice and warm here," said Ming as she fluttered her robe while standing in front of the fireplace.

"This is going to be a lot of paperwork," mumbled Shan as he looked at a stack of cards.

"Ok, new rule!" announced Alicia. "Anyone who's grumpy has to kiss everyone else."

"Kiss their what?" asked Shan.

"Whatever is offered for a kiss," said Ming sweetly as she offered a grape to her new husband. "How do you like your new name?"

Shan actually brightened. "I love it! I can't wait to talk to my lawyer. I'll probably have a ton of paperwork to do, but it's worth it." He put an arm around Ming's hips as she stood next to him and pulled her close. "Who ever heard of an Asian named Cliff? Or Mountain for that matter." He grinned and said, "From Mountain Staunton to Mountain Dragon!" He leaned over and started nibbling at Ming's pussy hair.

"I can see the headlines now," said Alicia. She moved her hands through the air as if revealing a headline printed in 128-point type, "Stanford Revokes PHD, Grad Student's Name Not Goofy Enough For Academic Board."

"I can see that happening," groaned Ming. Occasionally she has to go "doctor shopping," looking for fresh new minds to strengthen her stable of "nanobot makers." She likes to get them young with fresh ideas before the weight of policies tears down their hopes and dreams. Stanford is a breeding ground for outstanding young scientists eager to find a cure for spinal column injuries; it's also a breeding ground for a strange culture populated with kids with really weird ideas.

Ming opened up a laptop and drew up a quick spreadsheet to track the gifts. As they opened the cards and read them to each other, Shan called, "New Rule! Anyone who sent us a Christmas Card gets a double grant to the charity they chose. The more glitter, the better!"

Alicia, who was as crazy about Christmas as Shan, said, "I second that motion!"

Ming didn't have much Christmas in her past; she spent a lot of time as a child on the road with her mom on the run from her father. When her mother died and she ended up being raised in a series of foster homes, Christmas was a sometime thing, but she liked the decorations and colored lights and the Charlie Brown special. "Let's do it," she said, there weren't a lot of them, but they went back through the pile and marked them on the spreadsheet with a bold 2X.

Shan grabbed a card from the pile that caught his eye. He held up the card; the envelope featured a Christmas tree that sparkled brightly. "Here is an example of someone who thought this out and played to my heart."

"You haven't even opened it to see if there's a donation in there," said Alicia.

Shan held the envelope at arm's length and stared at it. "I hold in my hand the envelope, inside this envelope is written a question. As a child of four can plainly see, this envelope has been hermetically sealed. It's been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls' porch since noon today. NO BODY knows the content of this envelope. But in my mystical and borderline divine way, I will ascertain the answer having never before heard the question."

Hearing Shan's speech, Ming gasped; her face beamed with joy at his words. "What question?" demanded Alicia, not understanding what Shan was doing, but Ming had a case of the giggles.

Shan held the envelope to his forehead; Alicia looked even more confused, but Ming was shuddering, trying to hold back the laughter. Alicia demanded, "What are you doing?"

Shan looked at Alicia and spoke. "May a bloated yak change the temperature of your Jacuzzi," caused Ming to snort in laughter. "I need total silence as I try to divine the answer to the question contained in this envelope." Finally, Alicia went along with whatever Shan was doing, and Shan put the envelope to his forehead one more time. He wrinkled his eyebrows and said, "Sis boom bah"

Laughing, Ming repeated, "Sis boom bah."

Alicia watched in confusion as Shan opened the envelope and pulled out a Christmas card, looked at it and said, "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes." Shan and Ming collapsed against each other in laughter while Alicia repeated, "Sis.... Boom.... Bah.... I don't get it."

When Shan and Ming finally settled down, they tried to explain to Alicia that it was a routine from the old Tonight Show. "Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, The Amazing Carnac... you know?"

"You two are crazy," muttered Alicia and picked up the card that Shan "divined" and a check fluttered out. Instead of the card having a signature, the words "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes" were written in Shan's handwriting. She picked up the check and saw that it was a $10,000 personal check to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, an organization dedicated to curing spinal cord injury and improving quality of life for individuals and families impacted by paralysis. It was a personal check written from the account of M. Cliff Staunton.

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Alicia choked up. This was a charity near and dear to their hearts. She placed her hands on each side of his face and turned him toward her, then kissed him as sweetly and as passionately as she could. Their tongues danced around each other, slithering and sliding over and over. Finally, when their kiss was over, she looked deep into his eyes and said, "Oh my God I love you."

"That's the first time you ever told me that you loved me... I had to marry you to get you to admit that?"

"I know, I'm sorry, you've treated me and Ming so sweetly, you've put up with so much shit from us... me. It's not fair to you that I can't take a man."

"It's not fair to you and Ming that I really can't do much of anything right now," said Shan.

"You still in that much pain?" asked Alicia, her voice filled with concern.

"Yeah, I wanted to stand up for you two so bad today, I was nowhere near ready for that. I only wore those prosthetics once before."

"Oh God," cried Ming, "You were standing for nearly a half hour!"

"I wanted to stand for my women."

"Oh, you dumbshit, you were standing at the dinner too!" Alicia was angry.

"That was supposed to be dancing," mumbled Shan.

She slid to the floor in front of Shan and pulled the blanket off of his lap. Sure enough, the "socks" on his stumps were soaked in blood. She pulled the socks off and inspected his stumps.

"Please don't look..." he gasped in a tiny voice.

"Baby, we have to look to make sure you didn't tear open any new wounds," said Ming, trying to divert his attention from Alicia, who was checking for torn skin and open wounds. "I know how you feel; it's the exact same way I feel when you look at my scars. I want to crawl in a hole and die. I used to look so clean and healthy and now I'm so corrupt." She gestured to her gauzy robe. It was as concealing as a light fog, but she wouldn't go without it if Alicia or Shan were anywhere nearby. Her scars are easily seen through the robe, but to Ming it feels like she's concealing the hideous scars.

"How long have you been sitting up today?" demanded Alicia.

Shan counted on his fingers. "nineteen hours."

"What's the most your doc said you could do?"

"Twelve hours," said Shan slowly, then under the scrutiny of her glare said, "Eight... no... six hours."

"Let's go off to bed," said Ming, who wheeled her husband of ten hours to the bed. "One, two, three, lift!"

"What's the matter?" Alicia asked as they pulled Shan's clothing off.

"Not much of a wedding night," he groaned.

"Look at the bright side," said Alicia as she pulled on one of Shan's old t-shirts and crawled in bed with Shan and Ming. "There's nowhere to go from here but up."

Shan lay awake hating himself but thankful for these two women. He felt like he was an anchor dragging them down, and he was beginning to understand Alicia and Ming's desire to jump off a cliff. He wanted so badly just to get up and do something by himself without asking for help... take a shower, make a sandwich, anything. He eased himself up to a sitting position and sat in misery, wondering if there was a way he could disappear, to stop being a burden on these women that he loved so much.

Then he heard gentle laughter. It was Alicia laughing softly. He slid back down and whispered, "What's so funny lady?" He expected to get a lecture on suicidal thoughts with a stern "I told you so" at the end.

Alicia just said, "Sis, boom, bah. It's so stupid!"

"You just got that?"

"Yeah, I want to see that show."

Their quiet chatter woke Ming, who cuddled sleepily with Alicia and Shan. "Thank you for changing your name," she muttered. "You weren't a Cliff."

"I wasn't a Cliff?"

Ming sleepily muttered something in Mandarin, which surprised Shan. He's been with this woman for years, and he's never heard her utter more than the occasional word in Chinese. "What did you say babe?"

"She said "A cliff is something to avoid; a mountain is something to admire," said Alicia.

Shan scoffed. "Admire, right. I'm a nerd who can't even take a piss by myself."

"Oh stop!" cried Ming. She sat up, tears filling her eyes. "For years you've done everything for me, you wiped me, you fed me, you bathed me... you ran this entire company for me while I was in a medically induced coma, you built the labs and our home in Ganley Mountain because I said it would be good, and you did it all without question!" She snuggled close to Shan. "You even changed your name for me..."

As Ming wept, Alicia whispered, "She's saying please let us do the same for you."

The fire snapped and crackled; the flames rose as the logs settled as he gazed at the Christmas lights that decorated their B 'n B suite. Now he made the person he loved most in the world cry. This honeymoon is getting off to a great start.

Then he realized that Ming and Alicia were both kissing his shoulders. He brought his arms up and hugged his girls close. Finally, Ming spoke. In her tiny voice, she gently asked, "If I could give you anything in the world this Christmas, what would you want?"

Shan sighed; the answer was always there in his mind. "An erection."

Ming suddenly glanced at Alicia. "Are you sure Abbie?" she whispered. Alicia nodded, and Ming responded with a nod. The two wives held their husband's arms straight out to the sides until their AIs told them to release his arms.

"Wait, what?" asked Shan, but his AI replied to him.

-> Ssshhh. Relax. Trust us.

US? Shan fumbled with the response then he finally remembered the way to get his AI to respond. 'AI: Who is us? Who do I trust?'

>> I am Ming's AI

> I am Alicia's AI.

-> I am your AI. Relax, trust us...

The "voices" of Ming and Alicia's AIs were different in his head, definitely female voices, more mature sounding than his AI, but then their AIs had existed longer. Soon a feeling of complete relaxation washed over Shan, the aches created by standing so long in those prosthetic limbs faded, the pains of the remaining flechettes being pushed out faded as the nanobots in charge of moving the razor-sharp shards of metal paused and emitted soothing vibrations. He realized that he couldn't move his arms. He panicked, but again the voices reassured him.

>> No, you are bound only through us. You can move if you need to, but...

> we are holding you motionless to prevent pain and...

-> our girls are a bit kinky. Enjoy the ride! :-D

An emoticon? So weird! An artificially created intellect sent an emotion-based symbol. Shan decided to review the source code of the AI when he gets a chance. Right now, the girls were nibbling on his earlobes, their tongues gently exploring. Their gentle exploration and teasing were delightful. Now their lips and tongues moved lower, down his neck, kissing and licking down to his nipples. They sucked on his nipples, and the sensation that shot through him was incredible! He arched his back toward the source of the pleasure, and pain from the mangled muscles in his glutes and thigh shot through him. "Aaagghhh!" He cried in pain.

>> I'm sorry, darling

> I'm so sorry

-> They're sorry, see? Relax, this is a learning experience; that's us pushing the pain back down.

Their touches became very gentle, and from now on when they tried something new, like broad swipes of their tongue on his nipple, the sensation started very gentle and increased in sensitivity to a point that is enjoyable, but not shocking, as if the volume was being slowly turned up...

-> that's what is happening

Alicia and Ming moved down his chest, their kisses growing closer and closer to his cock, which was showing signs of life. Alicia took off the T-shirt she was wearing and laid it on Shan's face, covering his nose and eyes. "No peeking," she said.

"Why not?" He got the answer immediately from their AIs.

-> We like to sit up and watch, but...

>> that will cause pain. You need to lie back and...

> Relax, just let us do this... it's for all of us.

The AIs were right. Shan loved to watch Alicia swallow his cock. She's a master of fellatio, and with her help, Ming is becoming a champion in her own right. But their AI cloud was right; sitting up would cause him pain and end everything. Somehow, they numbed his legs and ass and spread his stumps, then allowed some of the feeling to come back as a tongue slid up and down his hardening cock and another mouth engulphed his aching balls.

Shan knew that the mouth gently stimulating his balls was Alicia and the lips that now joined the tongue on the sensitive underside of his cock was Ming.

-> That's right

Ming's touch was always so loving and sweet. Shan's love for Ming started the day he first met her while she lay paralyzed in a hospital bed and had always been a deep romantic love.

>> Awww, you're so sweet

His love for Alicia came about through Ming. Ming passionately loves Alicia, and she brought Shan along for the ride.

-> Yes, she did!

Shan's love for Alicia is like the love you have for the girl you've known your entire life, the one you've played alongside on the same softball team and the one that goes fishing with you and you never want to let her go.

> You'd better get your shit together; we're getting a corporate box at Bandimere Speedway

When Shan's cock was rock hard and throbbing, he felt Ming's tiny tongue sweeping over the head of it, her little hand stroking it perfectly as always. While she did that, she felt Alicia carefully moving his legs closer and closer together, then she bound his ankles together.

'AI: Tell me how she tied my ankles together!!!'

-> It's just phantom sensations; we're okay.

Shan realized that his arms were now tight to his sides, almost like being tied up, and again he relaxed, and it felt kind of kinky; he was loving this game. Now someone was straddling his hips, and someone was straddling his shoulders. A lubricated hand slid up and down his cock, causing him to groan in pleasure, and then that hand guided his cock toward a pussy.

Shan felt the girl's AIs calming him as the wet pussy eased down his well-lubricated cock. Slowly, it swallowed him centimeter by centimeter. The feeling was indescribable, so wet! So hot! So smooth and inviting and tight! Just as Shan was about to groan his pleasure, Alicia shifted and lowered her sweet, sweet pussy to his mouth. Shan's lips and tongue gently caressed her pussy when the thought hit him: Alicia lets no one except her doctor touch her pussy. His eyes flew open, but all he saw was a t-shirt. He could feel her pussy hair on his lips and tongue; she tasted exactly like Ming.

He suckled on the clit, his tongue lashing that sensitive little nub, and Ming cried out in pleasure, so he began tracing his hands up the sides of the woman impaled on his cock. He broke the imaginary bonds, and as he drove Ming out of her mind with his tongue, his fingers lightly danced up the ribs of the only other woman in the room. His hands found and squeezed the round, firm breasts of Alicia Ingersoll as she slid her pussy up and down Shan's cock.

He suckled on Ming's clit just the way she likes it, his tongue flicking over her clit, his mouth sucking just enough to increase the pleasure, meanwhile he trapped Alicia's rock-hard nipples between his thumbs and the side of his forefingers and began to squeeze and roll them as he squeezed and manipulated her breasts, almost a milking motion.

Ming let out her strangled cry of passion that Shan and Alicia loved to hear so much. She tangled her fingers in Shan's hair and gasped and cried out, pulling his mouth to her pussy as she shuddered with each wave of passion. Shan realized he was feeling her orgasm as his AI relayed it to his nervous system, and suddenly Alicia was cumming. Her hips twitched back and forth, scrubbing her clit through Shan's pubic hair, sparking her own orgasm even though she claims that she no longer has a clit.

Shan's worrying about her clit became too much, and Ming dove to the side and curled up, shuddering in her ecstasy. She snuggled up tight to Shan and watched Alicia spike herself on Shan's cock over and over. Soon Shan gurgled a warning, and his orgasm washed over him just as Alicia wound up for a second climax. "Oh Abbie!" he growled as he spurted into her clutching pussy.

Alicia wanted to hop off and drink Shan's sperm, but she couldn't do it; all she could do was sit on his pole and accept every drop he offered. She eventually allowed excitement and exhaustion to overcome her and she fell over and curled up next to Shan and cuddled close. As their excitement relaxed and Shan's erection faded, Alicia said, "I can't believe you did that."

"Did what?"

"You fucked me! You're a married man and you knew it was my wedding night and yet you did it anyway."

"That is pretty rude," said Ming as she leaned over Shan and licked his cock clean. "You guys taste good together," she said.

"That doesn't get him off the hook," insisted Alicia. The spark in her eyes told Shan and Ming that she was play acting, and the joy radiating from her AI told all three that she was overwhelmed by the idea that her vagina and clit were properly repaired after the torture and mutilation that Daniel Boothroyd inflicted on her three years ago. Roberta and Ming, wearing Roberta's face, tried to tell her that the nanobots and a team of skilled surgeons put her back together, but the emotional damage was as great if not greater than the physical damage he did to her. "Hey! What are you doing?" demanded Alicia as Ming began gently licking her pussy for the very first time.

"I'm getting my husband's sperm out of you."

"NO! He put it there, you can't take it, it's evidence."

This is why I love these two sighed Shan. He kissed Alicia's cheek and whispered in her ear, "Sis, boom, bah."

<><><><><>

A new year dawned on the trio, and it was time for Shan to get his legs. Their long Christmas holiday started at an exclusive Georgetown, Colorado bed and breakfast, then moved on to Belfast, Maine, where they feasted on lobster daily at the Senator's mansion and Shan spoiled Fruit Loop rotten. The happy little dog could sit in a lap and tour the entire house thanks to Shan's wheelchair. Their holiday then moved on to Rota Island, where Shan spent glorious weeks gazing at his wives' breasts while they basked in the sun and made love to each other for their and his entertainment on the patio at their villa. He loved to watch his wives frolic and tease each other. It's something he passionately loved since the day Ming brought Alicia home and, luckily, they both loved his watching and touching.

His Christmas wish for an erection was a fleeting thing, the jolts of pain from his injuries were stone cold erection killers, and if his pain wasn't bad enough, the pain that Ming or Alicia felt when they brushed against a flechette that his nanobots were pushing out hurt Shan much more than they hurt his wives. They had time to make love together a couple more times, but the pain really caused problems.

Eventually, the nanobots pushed out the last flechette, and he was deemed "MRI Safe" by Roberta, who came to Rota to check on her next patient, prepare him for the next steps, and bask in the sun. She even sunbathed nude with Shan. "I am completely surprised that you're laying here with me... naked!" said Shan.

"I am not afraid of anyone that can't run," said Dr. Romirez without a hint of a smile.

"That's cold, that's really, really cold," said Shan as he admired Roberta's small but firm breasts becoming steadily darker in the South Pacific sun.

"So is this," she said as she handed him a San Miguel beer from an iced bucket next to her lounge.

"Damn, you are cold enough to be one of my wives," said Shan as Roberta held up her own beer to tap against his.

They watched Ming and Alicia practice volleying in the water volleyball pool and realized that even with Shan's lack of legs, they could probably beat them. "This time next year you and I will take them on," Roberta said to Sean. Their bottles clinked again.

"What the hell is this?" demanded Alicia when she saw Shan sipping his new favorite brand of beer.

"Rule number one of medical ethics," said Roberta, "You can't kill the patient." Their bottles clinked again. It was a pretty good working vacation for Doctor Romirez, except for the calls from Agent Aishah Insari, who started hearing "voices" as her nanobots started developing their own AI.

The honeymooning trio returned to the snow-covered mountains refreshed, happy, and ready to finish the task they had set before themselves, the destruction of everything related to Hans Stavros Baumgartner which would start as soon as Shan got legs. Ming, Alicia, and Shan arrived at Archuleta Mesa early in the morning. It was going to be a long process, so Ming and Alicia brought cases filled with clothes and office equipment. They were temporarily moved to Archuleta Mesa as Shan's treatment progressed.

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Before anything started for Shan, there was a small task to take care of. They wheeled Shan's chair past Zhang's room, where she still lay. The medically induced coma was ending, her physical healing was proceeding nicely thanks to her nanobots, and soon the emotional trauma needed to be addressed. Next to her sat Zane Zigler. For two months, he sat next to her and refused to move. He helped bathe her; he changed her dressings; he did anything and everything he could to help. In fact, the clinic reported back to Ming that if Zane didn't return to the field; he was so good at caring for Zhang that he was welcome to remain at Archuleta as an orderly.

Ming wheeled Shan into his room as Alicia stuck her head in Zhang's room and said, "Agent Zigler, over here."

Ziggy got up, unsure of what she wanted, and he was reluctant to leave Zhang. He walked to the door where Alicia was standing and said, "Yes boss?" He was wearing mismatched scrubs and had a two-month beard.

She handed him a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and a bottle of shampoo. "Go shower up, scrub that hair, and report to me in the room next door."

"But she..." He looked genuinely worried.

"When she comes around, she'll have bandages on her eyes, they have to come off slowly, trust me, I've been there. I guarantee you will be here and first in line when that happens, now go! Step it up!"

"Yes boss!"

He was done in less than fifteen minutes. As he entered the next room, he saw Cliff in there in a bed hooked up to the monitors, a silver bag of nanobots hanging from a hook, connected to his arm, and there was also a fellow waiting with a collection of barber's tools - trimmer, scissors, combs, razor, shaving cream. "Hey Ziggy, this is Fran Morehouse, he's my barber and he agreed to cut back that jungle you have going there."

"I... I don't... shit, I'm sorry, I'm so fucked up. Thanks Cliff." As he sat in a chair, Fran put the paper sanek strip around Zane's neck, then put the chair cloth on and snapped it up tight, then folded the top of the sanek strip down over the collar of the chair cloth.

"I'm not Cliff Staunton anymore," smiled Shan. "I've thrown away the names that those damn people gave me and I'm now Shan Long." It felt good every time he said that he threw away the names that those damn people gave him, "those damn people" being the parents that neglected and hated him so much.

"Shan Long? Does that mean... did you guys get married?"

"Yeah, all three of us," said Shan, "but Alicia didn't change her name. Here, check out my ring, the design is made of Red Gold."

"Red gold?" Zane asked as he looked at Shan's ring. The design looked like a Chinese dragon wrapped around the ring. "What's red gold?"

"It's gold with copper smelted in, it turns reddish. The girls have matching rings."

"Wait... both?"

Shan watched Fran's eyes. Fran has been cutting hair for fifty years and has heard a lot of things, but three people getting married? Fran's eyebrows shot up, but he remained silent. He did start to whistle a cheery tune softly, indicating that he'd love to hear the rest of the story. "Yeah, most of it is classified but we decided that because we're mentally tied together for the rest of our lives, we might as well tie the knot so to speak."

"Oh wow..." Ziggy knew that there was something that Shan needed to talk about after Fran was done and gone. He looked for something to change the subject, then he noticed that he didn't see the telltale signs of feet under Shan's blanket. "Oh no, I didn't realize they amputated..."

"Yeah, don't know if you heard, but those rockets they tossed at me had generation three flechette casting warheads." Shan lifted the blanket to show his stumps to Zane. "They had to take the right one at the knee and the left one at mid-thigh. I lost a few pounds of ass too."

Zane looked shattered. "I missed so much sitting here feeling sorry for Zhang and myself, I'm sorry I've been useless to you..."

"No! Do not think that way. You're doing what needs to be done. And you know that orderly that you've been talking to every day? He's a psychologist, you're getting the treatment we would have taken you out of the field and ordered you to get. And you've been here for Zhang, that's truly important to us."

"Thank you," said Zane. "I don't know if I..." the words caught in his throat.

"Stop," ordered Shan. "This ain't like some fucking cable company, I don't throw good people away. If you don't want to go back to the field, I have a ton of other things that need to be done. I may end up sending you to flight school and dropping your ass in a 787. If Zhang wants to hit the field but you're not there, you can be her DITCh. I'm not letting you go, copy?"

Zane didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He finally muttered, "I don't know about the field anymore. I screwed up bad and it hurt someone dear to me. DITCh... I don't know if I can do DITCh either."

"You don't have to make any decisions, not for a while. We've transferred you from Investigations to Medical, you're working for me now instead of Alicia and your time here counts as on-duty time. OK. Enough of that!" Shan pulled a tablet off of his bedside table. "Here's photos of the wedding..."

Zane scrolled through the pictures. "You guys got married on the train? That is so like you and Ming... how did you talk Alicia into it?"

"That wasn't hard, she's a gearhead, a true car freak. She drives a '71 Mustang Mach 1 with a 429 Cobra Jet... to her a steam locomotive is just a big Stanley Steamer. The hard part was talking her into wearing a dress."

"That was something else," said Fran as he started brushing off Zane. "I was there on the platform going to ride the next train after the wedding and I saw you all getting off the train, then we saw you again at the Red Ram. You and the big guy, what's his name, something Irish, those suits were really something else."

"The big guy was Dunkan, he was my best man."

They chatted for a while until Fran left, then Zane asked, "Did you find out who launched the rockets?"

"Oh hell yeah, Alicia found their remains. The dumb shits had set up their launcher outside of a bear's den and that bear had a yearling cub in there with her. They ate gooood. She chewed up four guys, but she didn't eat their feet... she must have hated their boots. We traced them and their equipment back to the Agency, Senator Nourse will start a senate investigation on the use of illegal weapons by the Agency this summer and we're going to provide security for the senator."

"Damn!" said Zane. "You must have pissed somebody off.

"We certainly did. They used YOU as bait to distract us and they tried again," said Shan.

"Wait, what?"

"It's a nasty little circle. Baumgartner wants Ming and/or Alicia because they have the world's most advanced nanobots in their bodies. Both are paralyzed without them..."

"No shit?"

"Seriously. Boothroyd broke Alicia's spine in Canada about three years ago, Ming found her and fixed her here in Archuleta Mesa, right here in this room. Baumgartner found out about the nanobots, and he wants to try to clone the nanobots and sell them on the black market. Then he found out that Ming wants to get the nanobots FDA approved and flood the market with them making them free for veterans and dirt cheap for anyone else. Baumgartner found out about our plan and decided to kill Ming. If he can get his hands on the technology and kill Ming he can dominate the market and make a fortune."

"What a dick!" gasped Zane.

"Zhang's helicopter rescue? Baumgartner thought Ming and Alicia were both on the helicopter and he tried to get some suicidal nutbag to crash it where he could recover their bodies, but he hired an anti-religion fanatic who was busy looking for a synagogue or a church or a Buddhist temple, something like that to crash it into instead of following orders. That gave Zhang time to ruin his plans for that."

"That was the beginning of all this, wasn't it," said Zane.

"Yep, Baumgartner took over the Agency and put his lackey Gunter Haag in charge and gave Gunter orders to harass Long Air Services by flooding the FAA with false reports and bad data using the FAA and the Agency to drive us into bankruptcy so he could get those nanobots. We believe that the guys who shot you and the senator were Agency hired goons. The Agency also got at least six deep cover agents inside the mountain trying to get nanobot technology, but the closest they got was the health office and the ER."

"ER?" asked Zane.

"Yeah, since we're an isolated organization and have over X number of employees. We need to have medical care available nearby in case of an accident, so we have an ER. They really only get work during ski season when they assist up at the Loveland ski slopes. Anyhow after the helicopter caper failed, they launched a flock of rockets at me, shot at you, flooded Long Air with issues and tried to kill Ming and Alicia while Zhang was with them, but they blew up the wrong villa."

"What about us, Zhang and me, why did they attack us?" Zane asked.

"Agent Aishah Insari also has those nanobots now, we spent half of our honeymoon dealing with her nanobots, they're kind of scary when they kick in and start talking to you. If you become a DITCh, she's going to be yours also. Anyhow, Boothroyd found out and decided to get her at Archuleta Mesa, but you stopped him and captured his men in the secure storage hall."

"Is that what that is?" asked Zane. "I saw that on the blueprints and thought it would make a good place to trap his men."

"That's where the equipment to create the nanobots is supposed to be stored, we decided that the building wasn't secure enough and put everything in Ganley Mountain instead. On top of the team that you caught, Boothroyd lost four of his best mercenaries when he tried to kill the senator in his home at the same time. He lost his entire crew in one night and he's pissed at you. He's pissed at me, but he's really pissed at you."

Shan continued after a drink of water. "Baumgartner gets even more pissed, he's got a lot of money on the line, so he orders Boothroyd, "You get Ming, or I get you." Boothroyd takes whoever he can get his hands on and runs you two over and drags you out to Simla. He finds the locater chip on Zhang's necklace and sets it off several times, which causes Ming and Alicia to come after you. In the meantime, Baumgartner finds out that I have the nanobots in me now and sends four of his deep cover people after me while I'm playing DITCh for Ming and Alicia. Ming and Alicia rescue you, capture Boothroyd, leave evidence linking Baumgartner's pet weasel Gunter Haas to the fentanyl trade, I shoot the bad guys, Alicia sticks Boothroyd in a mine shaft and Bob's your uncle! I end up marrying the two hottest chicks in Colorado... On a train... In a frock coat."

Zane looked at Shan for a long time and then finally said, "You're so full of shit."

"What! You don't believe me?"

"You had me, you had me convinced, you really did! I swallowed the hook, the line, the sinker, rod, reel, tackle box, oars, outboard motor, lunch box, beer cooler, and half the water in the pond, and then you said you shot four deep cover spies. You're getting good Rocky."

Shan shrugged, "I tried to cheer you up, hope it worked. There's a suit hanging up in my bathroom, put it on and go say hi to Zhang."

Chucking, Ziggy went into the bathroom and found a garment bag containing a suit, socks and a pair of shoes. "You think it will fit?" Ziggy called out as he put on the shirt.

"We sent your ruined suit to my tailor, and he made his version of it."

Zane looked at the tag in the jacket:

DEGE & SKINNER

10 Savile Rowe

London, W1S 3PF

+44 (0) 20 7287 2941

"What do you think?" called Shan. "Does it fit?"

"It's a bit large," said Zane.

"You haven't been eating."

"Yeah, you're right," said Zane as he stepped out of the bathroom, straightening up his jacket. "This is incredible." He leaned over the bed and gave Shan a hug. "Thanks for cheering me up."

Zane stepped out of the room and into Zhang's room, still chuckling. In there, he found Ming and Alicia leaning against the wall while a nurse checked out Zhang. "She'll be waking up any moment now," said the nurse. "We'll give you a couple of minutes with her then we'll have to kick you out while we do a full workup on her."

"What were you laughing about when you came in the room," Alicia asked.

"Cliff... I mean Shan," laughed Zane. "He told me a long-ass story about all kinds of shit, but he blew it when he tried to convince that he killed four spies that were undercover in some ER somewhere in the mountain."

"Sublevel six," said Ming.

"Take the elevator at the employee entrance down to S6, it's straight across from the cafeteria."

"Bullshit," said Ziggy, his jaw hung slack. "There's no ER down there."

"You're right, it's an urgent care, but they do have a doctor on staff, one of our nanobot programmers is an MD."

"You have an apartment down on Sublevel 5!" cried Alicia. "how could you not see it?"

"I guess I don't eat in the cafeteria."

"The chicken nuggets are to die for," said Ming as Alycia nodded in agreement, then they both paused and said, "the Carrot Cake!"

Zane tried to recover, "Anyhow he told me that he married the both of you..." his voice drifted off as they both held up their left hands and displayed matching gold wedding rings highlighted with red gold dragons, and matching gold and red gold highlighted engagement rings.

"Ok, he said he shot and killed four deep cover spies in the mountain."

"Now that's bullshit!" said Alicia.

"Yeah," said Ming, "my Shan... our Shan never did that."

Alicia nodded. "Never did that at all. He shot and killed three, the third one fell fifteen feet and landed on the fourth breaking his leg."

"Then he went and hid under the desk," said Ming. "Poor thing freaked out."

Alicia nodded, "poor thing."

"Ok," said Zane, "You two are starting to freak me out. Cliff? I mean Shan? OUR Shan shot three..."

Just then, Zhang coughed and groaned. Zane grabbed the plastic ice-water bottle and put the straw in her mouth. "Just a sip!" warned the nurse as Dr. Romirez was paged.

"It's ok darling, there's bandages on your eyes," He gently caught her flailing hands. She heard his voice and felt his touch and relaxed. Slowly, Zane took the bandages off her eyes, and Zhang tried to look around. She was trying to focus her eyes; everything was cloudy, so the nurse stepped forward with some eyedrops that she gave to Ziggy. "Here babe, here's some eyedrops," he whispered. His anxiety over Zhang blaming it all on him came roaring back, and he panicked inside as she tried to touch him.

Zhang leaned her head back and opened her eyes wide as Zane gave her a drop or two in each eye. She blinked, and shortly she was able to see clearly and recognized Zane sitting next to her. "Hi baby," she said softly. Her hand gently touched the back of his neck, and she pulled him close for a gentle kiss. Their lips parted reluctantly, and their noses touched gently. "I think we missed our football game," she whispered.

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