© 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.

Finally, the long-awaited conclusion to the Sci-Fi spy thriller AI Era: Agent AI. X-Hour was teased at the conclusion of Amorous Goods: Black Pearls back in 2022, and finally the stars aligned to give a conclusion to the Agent AI saga. If you haven't read AI Era: Agent AI or AI Era: Agent AI SWAK or if it's been a while, take the time; it's a fun romp. Updates to those stories were submitted back in September, so hopefully they're up to speed now.

AI Era: Agent AI

X-Hour

"Don't go!" demanded Sandy and Madeline in unison. The twins were committing the greatest sin a six-year-old could commit (at least in the Jarecki household) Interrupting their governess/chef while she was preparing the shopping list.

Yi-Jin Carlson adjusted her reading glasses and looked down her tiny nose at the twin six-year-old moppets. "See these glasses? I didn't need glasses before we met." Yi was a slim, beautiful Korean-American fireball in her mid-twenties. She had a pencil in one hand and a seven-month-old boy in her other arm and two excited six-year-olds bouncing like popcorn at her side. "Kenny and I are going on vacation so we can relax and not hear 'I want... I want... I want...' all day long."

"But..." started Madeline.

"No buts, no tears. You guys need to concentrate on your swimming lessons and algebra. When Kenny and I get back I want to see you swim all the way across your poppa's pond and I want you to tell me how to use FOIL with your binomials."

"Ok..." they sniffed. The twins were far ahead of their classmates in math, but socially they're far behind. Next year they will repeat kindergarten for a portion of their school day for socialization, but will advance to sixth grade math for another portion of their day.

"And be quiet, your mama is seeing a patient."

"She's always seeing a patient," said Sandy with a pout.

"Or a village guy," said Madeline. By 'village guy' Madeline meant a politician or an employee of the village of Springville.

"What do you guys want for breakfast, Sugar Pops? Rice Krispies?" asked Yi, desperately trying to get them to change the subject. She would never give them Sugar Pops; she was just trying to get their attention.

The twins turned to each other and spoke in their private language. It sounded like baby noises, but to the twins it carried weight; it was their private language that was developed in the womb. Their mom, Andi, always called it Twinbabble, but it was far from babble. It carried far more than words; it carried their emotions and was a connection that went far beyond what other people call language. "Whatever," moaned Sandi, and the twins went out into the back yard where their "puppy" Jolie was lounging in the shade. Jolie was a black Newfoundland, and she looked like a big fluffy bear. She was still half-grown and stood 24 inches tall at the shoulder and weighed over 60 pounds. The twins treated her as if she were a happy walking pillow. Because of the break-ins and abductions in their home over the winter, Andi insisted on having a service dog of stature.

Yi finished up the menu for the rest of the week and the shopping list, then she double-checked the pantry with Danny in one arm, and an eye on the girls in the backyard. It was a glorious day in western New York; the sun was shining; the birds were singing; the breeze was gentle, and the twins had no idea how rare days like this were. At their age, summer would last forever.

"Ok, that's done," said Dr. Adriana Jarecki, as she walked into the kitchen with her partner, Dr. Evangeline Didomissio, known as Lucy to her friends. They had been friends for years and both moved to Western New York for their own reasons, about two years apart. After a tumultuous year, they got the courage to open their own respiratory and sleep medicine practice in Andi's home. "How's my snuggle-bum?" asked Andi as she took Danny from Yi's arms.

"Danny is fine, but his sisters are having a bad day," said Yi as she pointed to the kitchen window.

Andi looked out the kitchen window and groaned, "Oh no." The twins were sitting in their little plastic splash tub, fully dressed, facing each other while Jolie sat next to the pool and kept an eye on them. Andi couldn't hear them, but she could tell they were crying.

"They don't want me to leave. They say their mother is too busy with patients and village people," said Yi. "They were talking in Twinbabble when they went outside."

Andi nodded. She knew that taking on the job of mayor would eat up her time, but she didn't expect it to be so busy. The previous mayor put in one day a week. Andi is lucky to sneak in a patient here and there between the demands of her office. She hurried out into the yard to make amends with her children, and Lucy slowly eased into a kitchen chair. Yi brought her a cup of mint tea and a scone and then sat down to double-check the shopping list.

"Where are you and Kenny going?" asked Lucy.

"Colorado!" said Yi with a misty look in her eyes. "We're going to drive to the top of Mount Evans, fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty feet! We're going to hike the Argentine Trail and Quail Creek Canyon. We're going to Pikes Peak, Breckenridge, and South Park!"

"Stop in Fairplay and get a hat," said Lucy. "The Colorado Mountain Hat Company is where Charlie Daniels got his hats."

"Where is a good place to eat?" asked Yi.

Lucy thought. "You're an epicurean so..."

"I am not! I'm a trained chef, I know when food is prepared correctly but I'm not a snob or a foodie. A perfect burger is as good as a perfect consommé," said Yi.

Lucy grinned. "Ok, the very best place to eat in Colorado is the Smokin' Yard. Take I-70 west from Denver. Just as you pull into Idaho Springs it's on the right. Anything on the menu is perfect, my favorite was the Burnt Ends. If it's a nice day, eat outside by the creek."

Yi wrote this down on her to-do in Colorado list then turned to look out the window to see what Andi was up to. Yi's boss was sitting in the splash pool with the twins and Danny. The twins and Danny were naked and splashing, and it looked like Andi had taken off everything but her bra and panties when she sat down in the pool with them and joined in the splashing. "I'm going to be a cool mom like that," thought Yi.

<><><><><>

Several blocks away at Johnson's Feed Store, Yi's lover and fiancé, Kenny Johnson, was minding the store at the family agricultural and sporting goods store. He was counting the inventory of hunting jackets that had come in. He will not put them out for sale until September, but live oak camouflage in hunter safety orange was a big seller, and when 'hunting fever' strikes, they'll go fast.

He stepped out of the storeroom and his grandfather, Archie, was talking to a customer about bow hunting. "Back in my day..." Archie started.

"Back in your day you had to steal your bows from the Seneca Indian that shot you in the butt," said Kenny as he took his place behind the counter.

"That shows how much you know," grumbled Archie. "They were Tuscarora."

"Aren't you heading out west on vacation?" asked the customer. It was Dennis McQuade. He had a nice home in Williamsville, but he had law offices in Springville and Orchard Park, and he spent most of his time in Springville.

"Few more days," said Kenny as he unlocked the shotgun that Dennis was pointing to.

"Where to?"

"Colorado. Yi saw a bit of it a year or so ago, so she wants to explore. She's got a to-do list a mile long."

Dennis looked down along the barrel of the Browning Citori 825 double-barrel over/under shotgun that Kenny handed him. He brought the gun up to his shoulder several times just like he would when a bird or clay pigeon rose and became a target. Normally, Kenny would try to push a less expensive Mossburg to the customer to secure a sale. The Mossberg was a good gun and cost one sixth of what the Browning cost. However, Dennis could afford the $3,000 price tag of the Browning. If he bought it, it was to show off. "Going anyplace in particular?" asked the lawyer.

"All over, touristy stuff. Pikes Peak, Air Force Academy, Fort Carson. Yi really wants to go eat at a place called the Smokin' Yard."

<><><><><>

"The Archuleta Mesa Medical Center is a beehive of activity," said Doctor Konstantin Feoktistov. "So many people are being healed through nanobots. It's been three years since our first successful quadriplegic walked. Two years later, our first paraplegic walked at the same time she was outfitted with artificial hands. And now, we are stepping forward. We've repeated the artificial hands successfully and today, our first patient with artificial legs will try his first steps."

"There's people walking on artificial legs every day," said Doctor Feoktistov's visitor. "There's Joey Jones, a marine EOD expert that got his legs blown off in Afghanistan. He's now a news commentator on TV..."

"Yes, those are metal legs. We've made legs with titanium bones that have muscle tissue attached, nerves so the walker can feel the ground under him. This should give the victim a better sense of balance," said Dr. Feoktistov.

"So, if this works, when will you release this to the public?" asked the visitor.

"Release? Oh no, no, no. This is still highly experimental!" gushed the Russian doctor. "The long-term effects must be studied. We need to ensure there are no physical or psychological issues."

"Psychological issues?" scoffed the visitor. "The lame walk, the deaf hear, and you're worried about psychological issues?"

Doctor Feoktistov looked around and leaned close to his visitor and whispered. "The people who are participating in our trials claim to hear voices."

"Voices? What do the voices say?"

Doctor Feoktistov leaned closer and said, "Many things, even investment advice." The visitor looked shocked, but the Doctor just nodded. "Let's see how our patient is doing." He led the visitor to a gymnasium/physical therapy room. A fellow with Asian features was sitting in a wheelchair. He wore hospital scrubs and looked anxious. Two women flanked him, a slim Asian woman, and a taller white woman with brownish hair and a 'tough chick' look about her.

"Aishah, are you ready to record?"

"Yes doctor," said a beautiful woman with a Persian look about her. Her skin was lightly tanned, her hair was jet black, and her eyes were big, dark and expressive. She sat down at a laptop on a portable desk and began typing as the patient was moved to the parallel bars. The two women began encouraging him as he slowly drew himself up to a standing position.

"This is Shan Long, the head of the nano-robotics lab for Long Picorobotics," whispered Doctor Feoktistov. "He lost his legs in a tragic incident and volunteered to be the guinea pig for this experiment."

"Concentrate on little steps," said the tough-looking chick to the nervous-looking young man.

"That's all we want baby, tiny steps, one after another," said the Asian. "Four steps, that's all."

"Are they his nurses?" asked the visitor.

"No, they're his wives."

"Both?" asked the visitor and his aide at the same time.

"Shhh! He must concentrate," said the Doctor without taking his eyes off of Shan.

Ming and Alicia huddled near their husband as he stood between the parallel bars trembling. Behind him, Dunkan O'Reilly was ready with the wheelchair, and in front of him, Dr. Roberta Romerez stood, encouraging him. Ahead of him, Zane Zigler and Zhang Wei watched nervously. This was a big moment for Long Picorobotics. Artificial hands were a much bigger challenge to build than artificial legs and feet, but hands don't have to balance; they don't need to carry the entire weight of the body. If this works, it will be the biggest show of their capabilities.

The entire physical therapy gym went silent as they waited for Shan to take a step. He was used to the AI whispering in his mind ever since they put the flechette-ejecting nanobots in his body. He was even used to hearing other people's AI. Often he, Ming, and Alicia would have conversations and never speak a word out loud; their conversation spoke through the AI generated by the nanobots in their bodies. As long as they have a cell phone to provide a connection, their AIs can communicate outside of their bodies. So that prepared the three of them for what was about to happen.

> You can do it came from Alicia's AI.

>> We are right here for you came from Ming's AI.

STAND WITH CONFIDENCE, MY SON came from somewhere else.

Shan looked around. Who or what said that? He looked at Ming and said, "Did you hear that?"

She nodded slowly and said yes, but Alicia was confused. "Heard what? I didn't hear anything."

SHE IS NOT ONE OF MY CHILDREN, SHE CANNOT HEAR ME. BUT SHE FIGHTS WITH HONOR; I WILL SHIELD HER.

Shan looked around feverishly. All AIs were accounted for, and this wasn't one of them. "It's ok, sit down and relax," said Alicia. For some reason, Ming and Shan looked scared. Alicia gestured to Dunkan to bring the wheelchair close to Shan, but Shan shook his head.

"No. I can do it. Just give me a second." He took several slow breaths. Nearby, Zane and Zhang stood nervously. Zhang herself had recently taken her first steps. She did not sustain a spinal injury, but she was treated with nanobots for the broken bones and lacerations and shattered eardrums and inner ear bones she suffered at the hands of Daniel Boothroyd. She, too, heard the voice from out of nowhere. It wasn't an electronic 'hive' voice she's used to hearing from the AI that developed among the nanobots in her body. This was a deep, male, organic voice. She looked at Aishah, who was typing a journal of everything she saw. It was clear the Persian woman hadn't noticed what they had heard.

Shan steeled himself and lifted his hands from the parallel bars and closed his eyes. He tried to remember what it was like to walk. He realized that he had never commanded himself to walk; it just happened. He never had to command himself to run, walk, mosey, skip, turn left, turn right; it all came naturally. Other than steering and speed, it was all natural; his body already knew how to walk. He had to depend on that.

LET IT WALK, came the mystery voice again.

Shan nodded. Keeping his eyes closed, he took a step. It was wobbly, but it was a step. He heard Ming and Alicia encouraging him, and it felt good to have the people he cared most about right there at his side, but this was his journey. His to accomplish or his to fail. His left leg moved and planted his foot ahead of his right foot. Two steps down!

Once again, the right foot moves forward, and when his foot was securely on the ground, he started a step with the left foot. That's where the challenge was, transitioning from one foot to the next. Left, right, left, right, and soon he felt the natural swing of walking. He was doing quite well, he thought, until he heard Doctor Romerez shout, "Shan! Stop!"

He stopped and said, "What?" as he opened his eyes. Then he realized that he was out of the parallel bars. Alicia and Ming were on either side of him, ready to catch him if he fell, and Roberta was backed up against the wall. "Oh wow," he said. "Guess I lost track."

"No more walking with your eyes closed," she scolded. "That's just showing off." Then, she gave him a hug and kissed his cheek as Alicia and Ming came in from the sides.

"I just walked!" said Shan. "It's no big deal."

"No big deal?" gasped Alicia. "You've been sitting on your ass for seven months."

"That's part of my job."

"This is momentous!" said Ming. "These are the first steps Shan Long ever took!"

"You act like I was just born," said Shan.

"You were - we all were," said Ming as she sat down on Shan's lap and Alicia wheeled them over to the desk where Aishah Insari was typing a report of all the results that she was reading from Shan's nanobots.

"How did I do?" asked Shan.

"Not too bad," said Aishah. "You can see how your heart rate remained at a constant level."

As Ming and Shan spoke with Aishah, Alicia kept her eye on Zhang and Zane, who were now seated side by side on exercise bikes. They were chatting about something as they pedaled their bikes, but Alicia could see that they were hard at work. Their attention was on the visitor and his assistant, who were still talking with Doctor Feoktistov.

Limping like she just came off the field of battle, Alicia stepped up to the trio and said, "That was pretty exciting, was it not Dr. Feoktistov?"

"It always excites me when the lame walk," said Konstantin Feoktistov. "I still can't believe what we did even though I see it in you every day."

"Yes, but you forget how wonderful I am," said Alicia. "Who are our guests?"

"Ah yes, this is Doctor Tripp Ayers, and his assistant, Doctor Price Garfield."

"Doctor Ayers, of Johns Hopkins?" asked Alicia as they shook hands.

Doctor Ayers chuckled and said, "No, I wish, however. We're at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, trauma center."

"That's a big place," said Alicia. She smiled even though the nanobots were telling her through their connection with him via handshake that he was lying to her.

"It is just amazing what you are doing here," said Doctor Garfield.

"Oh, I'm not doing anything," said Alicia. "I'm one of the patients."

"Really! And what are you being treated for?"

"Trauma," and she pulled her blouse aside, showing the scars on her shoulder.

"Oh my, what happened?"

Alicia shrugged as she pulled her blouse back into place. "I married poorly."

"I shouldn't need to remind anyone here that this is all classified," said Doctor Feoktistov to the visitors. "We don't want to cause false hope and then find a horrible background issue that we haven't noticed yet. If anyone asks about progress on this sort of medicine, let's just say that the day is getting closer."

Doctor Ayers and Doctor Garfield thanked Doctor Feoktistov for the tour and made their way out of the building with a security escort. They were followed by Agents Zigler and Wei, who followed at a safe distance.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"Buffalo to Denver via MIAMI?" squealed Yi.

"With a fourteen-hour layover in Atlanta," said Kenny sadly. He and Yi were looking at plane tickets to Denver.

"Why are you looking at that airline?" asked Andi as she sat down at the kitchen table.

"This airline's headquarters is Denver, so it just makes sense..." started Kenny.

"Nothing about that airline makes sense," said Andi. "I grew up hearing and experiencing the horror stories of that airline. I wouldn't get on one of those planes unless I was being kidnapped and was stuffed in the cargo bay."

"Don't hold back," muttered Kenny.

"But we're trying to keep our costs down on this trip," said Yi.

"Saving a few bucks but spending twenty hours on a four-hour flight?" asked Andi. "Bad move. Here, use this card." She handed Yi her own credit card.

"But Paul..." started Yi. She didn't want to lean on Dr. Jarecki for her vacation.

"Paul won't notice. I'm in charge of the finances in this house," said Andi, "and we have a ton of miles on this one."

"We will pay you back," said Kenny.

"You already have," said Andi. "You were there for us all winter long, and you worked on the boat." There were some horrible events back in December and January that nearly tore the Jarecki family apart. When it was over, they went on a cruise to unwind, and Yi and Kenny crewed the yacht with Yi cooking meals and Kenny doing everything he could to help her. Soon they had nonstop business-class tickets to Denver.

Yi and Kenny served dinner to the Jarecki family that evening, then took their dinner out to the patio and enjoyed the cool of the evening and excited, they made plans. "I can't wait to see the Georgetown Loop," said Kenny.

"A train?"

"Doctor Jarecki said he loved that place when you guys were out there last year," said Kenny. "I looked it up and it looked so awesome."

WE WILL MEET THERE came a voice they both recognized. YOUR IDEA APPEALS TO ME.

"Yes, sire," said Kenny softly. He and Yi both knew what the emperor was referring to.

"Do you think Paul or Andi will do the implant?" asked Yi.

"I think we should go to a tattoo and piercing parlor," said Kenny.

Tomorrow for sure, said Yi without speaking.

For sure, replied Kenny silently.

The evening was warm and pleasant, so Andi and Paul joined Yi and Kenny outside, and soon Gus and Lucy Didomissio came by, as did the neighbors Josh and Veronica. As they chatted and sipped wine (except for Lucy who was pregnant), Lucy and Andi filled Kenny and Yi full of stories of what to avoid in Colorado. Mostly the issue was that there was so much to see and so much to do, they won't have the time for much of Yi's To-Do list.

"Prioritize by time and distance," said Lucy. "We can show you where things are located and you can set up a schedule."

<><><><><>

The committee hearing had been going on for nearly a full day, and the opposition party turned it into nothing more than a shouting match, but unlike their usual tactics, they weren't shouting down witnesses; they were shouting down other committee members. The classified meeting was held behind closed doors; nobody without a top-secret clearance was admitted to the hearing room. There was no press; there was no gallery of on-lookers. Very few people in Washington knew that this hearing was being held.

"Mister Lundquist, isn't it true that the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency is a scientific investigation agency and not a law enforcement agency?" asked Senator Nourse of Maine.

"Yes senator," said Lars Lundquist.

"And isn't it true that you have about fifty field agents at the Agency?"

"Forty-five agents, senator."

"Then why do you have an armory that can arm over seven hundred and fifty agents?"

"Senator, the number of arms possessed by the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency is far fewer than an equivalent agency such as an IRS which can arm over eighty thousand..."

"Mister Lundquist, I did not ask you about the IRS, I asked you about Technology and Applications Oversight Agency, or as most people call it, the Agency. Why are you armed at all? Your job is to investigate new technologies and report back to me," said Senator Nourse. "The only thing your agency has done in the past four years was to try and kill me."

BAM! BAM! BAM! The chairman of the committee, Senator Godfrey Wakefield, slammed his gavel on the desk three times. "The senator will refrain from making unsubstantiated remarks."

"Mister Chairman, on November fourteenth an employee of the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency shot me and my chief of staff. On the sixteenth four armed employees of the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency entered my home looking to kill me. What is unsubstantiated about that?"

"Senator that is old news," said the chairman of the committee. "Could we move on?" Senator Wakefield of Delaware was pathetic. He was in his eighties and was clearly looking out for someone else's well-being and not for the nation's security.

"Fine." Senator Nourse glared at the committee chairman. His state needed a few favors from the Senate Interstate Transportation committee and payback is going to be fun, but right now he's got to clean this mess up. "Mister Lundquist, you claim to be the head of the Agency, but your name does not appear on any of the Agency rosters. In fact, you and I both know that a Belgian arms dealer named Gunter Haag is calling the plays at the..." suddenly the hearing room exploded in arguing and shouting.

"Senator! You are out of order!" shouted Senator Wakefield as he slammed his gavel into the desk over and over.

"I'm not doing anything; it's your people carrying on with no discipline," said Senator Nourse.

"How dare you question the integrity of the agency!" shrieked Senator Karen Mould, the junior senator from Oregon. A 1970s hippy boomer, she had just been elected and was working hard to make a name for herself.

"Calm down, senator," said Amos Nours.

"CALM DOWN?" shrieked Karen. "CALM DOWN?" She dove across the desk and stabbed Amos with a knife with a ceramic blade. She tried to jam the blade back into her pocket, but Amos grabbed her wrist and squeezed hard. "Let go!" she cried as the hearing broke down into bedlam. "Help! He's attacking me!"

<><><><><>

"You ok honey?" asked Alicia as she rolled out of bed and got ready to head off to the shower.

"Huh?" asked Shan. "Wait, you call me darling, Ming calls me honey."

"It's summer," said Ming. "We change up." She got out of bed to join Alicia in the shower. "We have a staff meeting down in the cafeteria. Can you make it or are you going to zoom?"

"I'll be there," said Shan as he slowly emerged from the bed.

"What 'cha thinking?" asked Ming as Shan sat on the edge of the bed.

"Just thinking how things change."

"Like what?"

"A year ago, we were three separate people. You were assisting Alicia wearing Roberta's face, I was here and had a name that made me gag just to say it. I was so afraid to tell you how I felt for you... but now..." Shan started shaking and Ming clung to him. Something was going on, and he was afraid to mention it.

"Come on you, we have a meeting with the gang." She led him to the shower, where Alicia was waiting, and they bathed each other. Their work offices were on the first floor of their two-story apartment; it was the public face of their living quarters. Back in November, they lived in three separate apartments here in the courtyard, leaving the fourth apartment for VIP visitors like Alicia's aunt and uncle, Amos and Joanna Nourse. Now they have three open apartments.

They bathed each other carefully in the steam shower. As their hands gently washed each other, they noticed that their many scars from surgery and savage attacks were fading thanks to the actions of the nanobots in their bodies. Nanobot release N387 combatted the scars from within, and many scars were gone. Physically eliminating the scars did nothing, but emotionally it was an enormous boon. Ming and Alicia no longer hid from their employees. Zoom calls with a mask like it was the height of the Covid days were gone, and the employees started to know their employers.

They finished their showers and dressed, then went downstairs and had breakfast at their café table in the courtyard. Elisabeth Dobbs, their nutritionist, was their primary chef. Not only did she have to serve meals that were nutritious and delicious, they also must be nutritious and delicious to the nanobots. Their bloodstream needed to carry fuel for the nanobots to keep them functioning. The average life of a nanobot was now up to four months.

Every month, Doctor Roberta Romerez replaced 25% of the nanobots in each Augmented Individual's body, and with each 'bot upgrade, each Augmented Individual found new functionality provided by the microscopic robots in their body. Often the upgrades fixed issues that arose in previous 'loads.' Breakfast that morning was waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, orange juice, and coffee, and they were joined by Zane Zigler and Zhang Wei. The game that Alicia, Ming, and Shan played was to guess where Elisabeth hid the metallic-tasting "Bot Food." Everyone would bet a dollar, and Elisabeth came and asked what their guesses were. If they missed it, she kept the pot.

"Thank you for inviting us," said Zane.

"This is a business breakfast," said Alicia. "We want to pick your brain."

"Go ahead, you won't find much," said Zhang.

"What do you mean?"

"You guys all have degrees in your specialty, even Alicia. She's written several books on security systems. I just kill people," said Zane.

"That may be what we need," said Alicia. "We've been infiltrated several times. Agency hitmen have been able to get past our background checks. They came after Shan when he was working alone up in the old radio room."

Zane and Zhang looked at each other, then leaned toward each other and whispered. Zane didn't have nanobots in his body anymore. They were used short term to help with replacing his shoulder joints when he and Zhang were captured by Agency maniacs, so silent conversations were not going to happen. However, they were of like minds, and they both came up with the same suspicion.

"What do you think?" asked Alicia.

Zhang said, "They're not infiltrating, they're being recruited and then, I personally believe, blackmailed."

"How could we miss that?" asked Ming.

"Because you're too busy looking at the big picture," said Zane. "Alicia, you're running Twin Dragons Security, it's nearly a global enterprise now. Shan, you're concentrating on nanobots, not the people working them. And Ming, you're running Long Air Services, and Long Data Storage, and you're keeping an eye on Twin Dragons Security, and the two of you are sneaking off into the field doing something that needs to be left to people like Zhang and me. You're overstretched and need to find good, qualified help. You also need to keep an eye on the people you have."

Shan, Ming, and Alicia looked at each other and came to a consensus. Alicia finally said, "Zane, I want you to run security for the mountain. Zhang, you will be his blood hound. Whatever it takes to provide tight security. If you need to take people to the train station, so be it."

"I want an air wing," said Zane. "I want to monitor the exterior of the mountain with drones and I need to be able to put someone in the air at a moment's notice."

Ming and Alicia looked at each other. They have an enormous hangar that could hold a B2 bomber if you could land one there. Six helicopters could be parked inside without folding back the rotor blades. "If we put choppers here permanently, you will be in charge of shuttling VIPs between here and Jeffco, Aspen, Silverton and DIA."

"Fine," said Zane without a pause. "I'll let you decide what the VIP shuttle will be, but I want something fast, with eyes for patrolling the mountain." When he said 'with eyes' he meant a forward - looking infrared (FLIR) turret.

"Who is going to fly this air armada of yours?" asked Ming.

"Zhang is rated. She needs hours anyhow. We rotate some of your Jeffco and DIA crews in and out. Some of those old war ponies are looking for something more interesting to do."

"Give me one reason why I should give you an air wing," demanded Ming.

"You have a Bell 407HP sitting in Denver doing nothing. It's an air ambulance. Bring it up here and we're one mountain away from five huge ski resorts. The governor will wet his pants over your largess. Add a 520 N with FLIR and a flying limousine and your air services headquarters has access to the air."

Ming's lips tightened, and Alicia looked at her pensively. Before Ming could say anything, Shan, who was still terrified of Ming and Zhang's descent down the face of the front range, said, "How do we know the pilots will be trustworthy?"

Zane looked at him and said, "I will personally bury anyone who lies to us."

"Let's get the Easter egg and the ambulance up here and two tankers of fuel," said Ming. "You, Mac, and Dunkan will go to the Clear Creek County sheriff's office for drone training."

"Yes, ma'am," said Zane as they finished their breakfast and placed their bets. Even Zane put a dollar in the kitty, even though he didn't have nanobots to feed. Everyone started their guess which morning breakfast ingredient had the 'nanobot food' and Zane won. He guessed Orange Juice.

"What made you say orange juice?" asked Elisabeth.

"It's the only item you could be sure that everyone got the same amount. People may not finish their pancakes, coffee, or eggs, but everyone finishes their orange juice. And the citric acid should mask any metallic flavor."

Elisabeth nodded and said, "You have a future as a poisoner ahead of you."

"Let's go knock 'em dead," said Alicia, and they got up, carried their dishes to the kitchen in the first apartment, then headed down the long dark hallway that evolved into an old-fashioned hard rock and wooden truss mine shaft. They reached the garage where the UTVs they would take outside were waiting, and Ming turned a key in a lock on the elevator control box and the elevator came to life. The door opened, and they entered the elevator car, and when they were all in, the elevator dropped twelve stories to the main level.

On the main level, they stepped into a garage where several large golf carts were waiting, and they all climbed on one with Alicia driving. Zane and Zhang sat in the farthest rear seat that faced backwards as they roared down the two lane wide tunnel. The tunnel was dark except when they approached an area in the tunnel and lights illuminated, giving them a view of the tunnel ahead of them for several hundred yards. This portion of the tunnel system wasn't part of the original gold/silver mines, so it was straight, level, and wide.

This was the big tunnel between the data center and nanobot farm and the hangar. "When we get some birds stationed here, we'll have to put flashing lights on the air crew's golf carts," said Zane as the tunnel retreated behind them. It's almost a mile underground from the hangar to the main offices of Long Air Services and Twin Dragon Security.

"Yeah, you don't want me to run someone over on my way to work," said Zhang, and she squinted, accentuating her Asian features. She pretended to drive, which was funny because they were facing backwards in the last seat of the golf cart. "Everybody run!" she called in an accented voice. "China girl driving!"

"We're going to end up in HR," groaned Zane.

"Why? I'm Chinese, I can make fun of Asian stereotypes."

"That's not how HR thinks," said Zane. "With you, they'll say, 'yeah, no problem.' But with me? They'll scream 'Get the white boy!' wrestle me to the ground and hog tie me demanding to know why I didn't stop you."

"You so silly!"

"Stop," he said.

"You funny GI."

"Zhang, don't," begged Zane.

"Me so h..." She was stopped by Zane sticking his tongue in her mouth, and he kissed her passionately. He pulled her up on his lap as they continued to kiss. Soon the cart slowed down as they approached the cafeteria. "Well, I finally figured out how to get a kiss out of you," said Zhang.

<><><><><>

Kenny Johnson and Yi Carlson got off the flight at DIA and headed for the baggage claim. Large signs overhead showed that they had to walk up a long hallway lined with boarding gates for airliners. "We got some walking to do," said Kenny.

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, baggage is at the main terminal, and the closer you get to the terminal the lower the boarding gate numbers are."

Yi looked at the boarding gate they were walking past. Gate B50. "I see what you mean," she moaned. They didn't have a lot of carry-on luggage, just her overnight bag and his backpack, so they weren't overburdened with luggage yet. There were moving sidewalks, which helped with the long walk.

They finally reached what they thought was the terminal, but it was a food court surrounding a couple of escalators heading down. "Hungry?" asked Kenny.

Yi looked at a restaurant-ish looking business whose name included the word France. However, the menu contained nothing French, and the prices looked very painful. "Let's try our luck on the local economy when we get out of here."

They took the escalators down and got on a small train that whisked them to the main terminal, where another large flight of escalators took them up to the main terminal. They were looking for the directions to the baggage claim when the noise started. It sounded as if a hundred or more drummers were playing bass and kettledrums as fast and as loud as they could. The noise level was incredible, and most people were covering their ears as the noise grew in intensity and volume. It was so bad that Yi was ready to scream. Finally, the sound tapered off and stopped, and the crowd at the airport was obviously relieved. "What the hell was that?" said Kenny out loud.

"The roof," said another traveler. "They probably had a hailstorm outside."

"The roof?" asked Yi.

The traveler pointed up, and they looked up and saw that the roof of the terminal was fabric and was fashioned in a series of tents. "From the outside, it's supposed to look like mountains or teepees or something. On the inside, it's like living in a bass drum."

"They didn't consider that when they built this place?" asked Yi.

"This is Denver," said the fellow traveler. "There's a lot they didn't consider."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

Senator Amos Nourse was wheeled into the ER examination room, and several doctors descended on him. As they examined his wounds, his wife, Joanna, began texting Alicia Ingersoll. The nature of the underground offices in Ganley Mountain prevented the use of cell phones unless you were in one of four areas: the hangar area, Ming's apartment area, the dorm/cafeteria, or the nanobot lab. There's no Wi-Fi or cellphone in the data storage area for data security purposes.

As soon as they got within range of the underground cellphone booster, Ming and Alicia's phones started blowing up. Ming went pale, but Alicia grew angry when she read the texts. She responded to those texts, then turned to Zane and gave him his marching orders. "Yes, ma'am." He turned to the security troops and flagged a few over. "Meet with me after the monthly meeting. We got work to do."

Meanwhile, Ming started giving a briefing on the condition of the "Dragon Team." The Dragon Team comprised Long Air Services, Long Data Storage, Long Picorobotics, and Twin Dragon Security. "Air cargo has never been more profitable. We've become the Union Pacific of air carriers over the Pacific. A Long Air Service plane in Red and Gold lands in China and the plane is loaded, cleaned, fueled, and launched before they discover it's an American plane." Her remark brought chuckles, but she continued, "Anything helps when dealing with an unfriendly nation, including painting up your planes like a Lunar New Year celebration. Our planes are roaming all over Asia doing incredible business, and they're getting the red carpet treatment, partially because they look so damn cool." Her remarks brought her employees to their feet, applauding.

>> Incoming message from Alicia... You're doing so good baby, they love you.

> Incoming message from Ming... I'm so scared. What happens when they find out that I'm just me?

>> Incoming message from Alicia... They will love you even more. Ming smiled at the messages she was getting from Alicia. Ming still considers herself a busted up, scarred nerd girl that nobody could love, even though she has a loving husband, a loving wife, and a company of over 1,000 employees that love her without question.

> Incoming message from Ming... I'm scared... I want to run away. Even though her message was relayed by her AI into Alicia and Shan's AI, they could feel her terror at speaking in front of a large audience.

>> Incoming message from Alicia... Let Shan talk about the nanobots. I'll talk about Twin Dragon and mountain security. You tell them about airplanes. For someone who was terrified of flying, Ming loved her airplanes. She could toy all day with air cargo schedules and air routes. Her biggest passion was what she called 'boutique advertising', which was reaching out to the rich and famous because all of her 787 LCB Dreamlifter II aircraft had luxury class seating sections and there was a waiting list to ride her cargo airliners. The New York to Hong Kong route was a flying luxury cruise. Her "pregnant torpedo" aircraft filled the skies across the Pacific.

After Ming spoke of the cash cow that was financing much of the rest of her companies, Shan spoke of the advances made in nanorobotics. He held up Zane Zigler as an example of using nanobots for short-term medical issues. "Zane had to have both shoulder joints replaced, an operation that would have knocked him out of the lineup for over a year. With nanobots mending the tissues and broken bone structures, he was ready for duty in three months."

When the applause died down, Alicia stepped up and said, "I think it's time we took another look at mountain security. Until lately, we've been considering the security of our home here in Ganley Mountain as a part of everything else we do. However, as the agency continues to expand their web of gluttony, it's clear that our home is in their sights. Starting today, I'm pulling Zane Zigler in from the field and putting him in charge of Ganley security. He's already picked most of his team and will brief them after this meeting. He will report to Jim MacDonald, who continues to manage field operations. Any questions?"

"Yeah, will it be harder to get in and out of the mountain?" asked a fellow in the robotics section that Alicia recognized. He was a bit of a joker but a good fellow.

"For you, yes, but for everyone else they get to move ahead of you in line while we check your credit rating." When the laughter died down, Alicia continued. "Just kidding, we will be installing bio-sensors to verify identity and for duress codes."

"Duress codes?" asked another robotics engineer. "What is that?"

"It's a code you use to let the gate guards know that you're being forced or blackmailed to enter the mountain by nefarious persons without coming out and saying, 'I have a gun to my back.' Any more questions? None? Ok then, lets get back at it. Jim, Ziggy, let's talk security in my conference room."

Twenty minutes later, they met in the Hangar briefing room. It was the perfect location for a private meeting that you wanted to be hidden even from your best employees. The Hangar briefing room was over a kilometer away from the main work area of Long Air Services and affiliated shops, so nobody should 'accidentally' stumble into the briefing room.

"Ok, what is my area of responsibility," asked Zane as they settled in the briefing room.

A large map of the local area was projected on the huge whiteboard that looked like a picture window looking out on a forest at first. "Ok, Here's Ganley Mountain," said Jim "Mac" MacDonald. "You need to cover from Kelso Mountain to our southwest to Pendleton Mountain to our northeast, and everything in between." An immense circle appeared on the map. Its edges were defined by Kelso Mountain and Pendleton Mountain.

"Holy crap," groaned Ziggy. "It's worse than I imagined. We got half the crater to keep an eye on." The crater was the mouth of a huge prehistoric volcano. Kelso Mountain was in the center of the crater, and Ganley Mountain defined the eastern edge of the crater. The base of the crater is Quayle Creek Canyon.

"Why is that so bad?" asked Zhang.

"Because Interstate Seventy is right here and there's two exits that dump weekenders into our back yard. They're going to be crawling all over the crater," said Zane.

"Not if we advertise momma bear," said Alicia. "We notified fish and wildlife about body bits on Cupid Peak and a warning has gone out about the bears in the area." Alicia then tapped her laptop keyboard a few times, and up on the screen they could see her snowboarding adventure on Cupid Peak back in the early winter. She dug up a few rockets from the snow, and you could see her examining the warheads.

"That could have gone off in your face," said Zane. "The safety cap was missing."

"I know that now," said Alicia with a grimace. Flechette warheads are notorious for being touchy. Then the scene changed to thermal, and everything was the same color except for one large object. When the scene changed back to color video, you could see it was a bear, and hand-drawn teddy bears started appearing at the edges of the video. "Pro tip, if Ming is in the chair on your mission, and you mention something cute, her inner artist comes to the forefront."

"So does my lunch," said Ming as on the video Alicia picked up a severed human arm.

"Eww," groaned Zhang.

"Is there any chance I can get nanobots to use to pilot drones?" asked Zane.

"No," said Alicia. "Right now, they're for medical use only. Yes, side abilities are popping up one by one, but no, we want to make the blind see first."

"How about a coms interface so I can chat with Zhang's AI?" asked Zane.

"We can do that," said Shan. "Give me a week."

"Ok, here's the big issue," said Alicia. "Amos Nourse was stabbed in a senate briefing room this morning. He's in critical condition at Johns Hopkins University. The moment he's stable and ready to move, I want him back here. Ming has a 737 at Reagan International Airport, ready to fly. I want him transferred from DIA to the hangar on the other side of this wall within two hours of landing."

"Gotcha," said Ziggy. "We need to get Zhang into the air and get her familiar with the routes and approaches." For her part, Zhang had a thousand doubts and ten times that many worries, but Ziggy had faith in her, and that alone was enough to settle her nerves.

"We have a Bell 412EPI with a single patient skid ready to go at Jeffco," said Ming. "I'll have a driver ferry you guys down there to do an inspection."

"Thank you ma'am," said Zane, which concerned Ming. One of her people called her ma'am? Is she old? Does she scare her people?

"Mac, get someone in Washington moving on this," said Alicia. "He was stabbed by some boomer named Senator Karen Mould. She remains free and walking around. The chairman of the committee is another boomer named Senator Godfrey Wakefield who refused to call the cops, in fact he wouldn't censure the bitch. I need someone to crawl up his ass with a magnifying glass and find out where this convenient bout of senility came from and who bought it."

"What about the Karen?" asked Mac.

"She is mine," said Alicia.

<><><><><>

Driving from Denver International Airport to the mountains was an interesting challenge. Both Kenny and Yi wanted to look at Denver, but neither wanted to do it close up. They have a room at a B&B with a hot spring. "I want lunch first," said Yi. Her breakfast was a bagel and a cup of tea, which barely held her over long enough to get on the airplane.

"What do you want to eat," asked Kenny.

"Anything but seafood," said Yi. "This is the furthest you can get from the sea and I'm not very trusting with transporting seafood."

"How about Mexican?"

"Is it Tex Mex or is it Cal Mex?" asked Yi.

"I think you can get both here." They pulled into a small restaurant called La Granja, and the tiny hostess led them to a booth. They sat down on the same side of the booth and studied the different sequin-bedecked sombreros that lined the walls.

A middle-aged, jolly-looking Hispanic woman came up to their table and set out chips and salsa and said, "Buenas Tardes. ¿Recién casados?" she asked.

"Uh, pardon?" asked Kenny.

"Newlyweds?" asked the waitress.

"Oh no, we're engaged and visiting Colorado," said Yi, and she showed off her engagement ring.

"Your necklace... is that a black pearl?" gasped the waitress. "I have never seen one of those."

Yi proudly showed off her pear-shaped black pearl. "This is the first gift that Kenny ever gave to me."

"The Chinese say that they are gifts from the Emperor dragon," said Kenny. He didn't want to tell her how they knew that it's true.

"So, when is the big day going to be?" asked the waitress.

"We haven't gotten that far yet," said Yi. "We're going to get a legal marriage done, get all the paperwork taken care of, then do the church thing."

"You should get married while you're here," said the waitress as she handed them menus. "It only takes a few minutes," and the waitress went to get their drinks.

As they were looking over a menu, an Asian woman came up and said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, do you really have a black pearl?"

"Yes," said Yi, and she showed off her necklace again. As the Asian woman looked in awe at the gem, a dark-haired white fellow came and joined her.

"Where did this come from? Was it Fiji? Tahiti? New Caledonia?" asked the Asian woman.

Kenny simply smiled and shook his head no, then eventually said, "They came directly from the source."

"That's funny," chuckled the Asian woman. "Mind if we join you?"

"Please do," said Yi. "Maybe we can pick your brain for a few places to visit while we're here. I'm Yi-Jin Carlson, and this is my fiancé Kenny Johnson."

"I'm Zane Zigler and this is my partner Zhang Wei."

"And you really, really got them from the source?" asked Zhang with a hint of skepticism in her eyes.

"The first pearls I got from one of those curio shops that just appear then eventually fade away," said Kenny. "I wanted to give Yi something that let her know how I feel about her."

"You chose wisely," said Yi, and she gave Kenny a kiss.

"So did you get more pearls?"

"After my luck debt was paid, yes," said Kenny, and he closed the menu and handed it to Zane.

"You paid a luck debt?" asked a stunned Zhang.

"Yep, I dumped all my bad luck on my father, so we killed two birds with one stone," said Kenny.

"You're so bad," giggled Yi, and she gave him another kiss.

"When we first met I fell head over heels in love with her," said Kenny. "She kinda liked me, but she thought I was weird..."

"An otaku fanboy," said Yi.

"Yellow fever?" asked Zhang.

"Exactly!" said Yi with a laugh. "He did three tours in Korea hoping to bring home a Korean wife, and there I was, four blocks away in Springville, New York."

"I went everywhere looking for the perfect gift," said Kenny. "Then I found them in a little store in Lackawanna. The saleswoman explained the luck sacrifice and I paid it. And ever since that day, Yi understood completely..."

"Wait!" said Zhang. "I don't want to be offensive, but you're a white boy, you can't pay a luck sacrifice. Maybe Yi can."

"I'm not Chinese," said Yi. "I am descended from the Han clan, but that was centuries ago." Just then the waitress came up and said, "Are you ready to order?"

"Yes," said Yi. "I'll have the taco salad with chicken, hold the sour cream, I'll just take extra guac, he'll have the huevos rancheros with rice and beans."

"I'll have the tamale lunch," said Zhang.

"I'll have the Chile Relleno and Tostada lunch," said Zane. "What about luck?" he asked. This talk about a luck sacrifice was confusing.

Kenny said, "In Chinese culture, luck is a very real thing. It is a whole lot like weather. You can predict the weather, you can observe the weather, you can suffer or enjoy what the weather brings. Weather is real but you can't carry it, you can't put it in a box, you can't save it for a rainy day. All you can do is take what you get and hope you get rain when the crops need it. To get that pearl she's got on her neck I had to give all my bad luck to a blood relative, and back then I had a lot of bad luck."

"But you're white..." said Zhang. White guys don't understand what luck is; they think it's something you can call up at the craps table... Then she noticed his eyes. While not like hers, there is a hint of the epicanthal folds; this Kenny guy knows what he's talking about. "You're Chinese, aren't ya?" she asked.

"A quarter Chinese, but Guoxin says that's enough. My great grandfather was stationed in China during the war; he brought home my great grandmother as a war bride. She was pregnant with my grandmother, who gave birth to my mom, who was raped which produced me. She married a nice guy who gave me his name and raised me but he's not a blood relative."

"So, you dumped all your bad luck on the bastard that raped your mother," said Zhang. In response, Kenny just grinned and nodded. "Was it worth it?"

"Oh god yes," said Kenny with a grin. "He was the landlord and when my bad luck caught up with him my parents were able to pay off their mortgage on the house and the business and he lost everything."

"I met him a few times," said Yi. "It was a pleasure watching him fall apart."

"I don't understand," said Zane.

"Guoxin put a price on his black pearls," said Zhang. "That price was to give all his bad luck to a blood relative. In China, that would be too high a price for the common man to pay. In China families are very close knit and an average man wouldn't dream of doing that to a blood relative. The common man would walk away without the pearls. But Kenny's biological father was a true bastard. What did Guoxin say when you told him about your luck sacrifice?" she asked.

"He was pretty mad," said Kenny as the waitress brought their lunch. "Then he realized what I did and he enjoyed my plan."

"Who is Guoxin?" demanded Zane.

Kenny and Yi were silent. They've been called crazy every time they mention their mythological guardian. Finally, Zhang said, "He's the Emperor of the four cardinal dragons."

"So he's some Chinese emperor?" asked Zane.

"He's a dragon," said Yi and Kenny. Then Kenny looked off into the middle distance for a moment then he said, "He said he talked to your group, he was sure Zhang heard him twice."

"That was him?" Zhang gasped. She remembered the third voice that joined their encouraging of Shan in the therapy room. Zhang's eyes widened as she realized that she had heard the voice of the dragon emperor.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"Denver Tower, this is Twin Dragon flight 301, request training aeromedical evacuation profile to Keystone."

"Twin Dragon three oh one Denver tower, you are clear to taxiway Bravo 4. Taxi to runway two five, hold short and wait for clearance."

"Roger Denver Tower, taxi on taxiway Bravo 4 to runway two five and hold for clearance." This was the hardest part of flying a helicopter. The tower wanted her to taxi around like a fixed-wing aircraft, but she doesn't have wheels; she has good old-fashioned Bell Aerospace skids. Zhang eased up on the collective, and the four blades over her head bit into the thin Colorado air and lifted her up off the ramp. She pushed in on the left pedal and the tail swung, turning her left. She preferred a NOTAR (No Tail Rotar) helicopter for crisp reaction to the pedals. This bird was mushy when hovering. The best hovering bird she ever flew was the Boeing 234 twin rotor 'Chinook,' but this bird was a quarter of the Chinook, and four times more sensitive at the controls. She nudged the collective forward. The nose dipped a bit, and they started moving forward. "We're in the air, what do you think?" asked Zhang.

Over in the co-pilot seat, Christof Davis, a big teddy bear kind of guy, looked at her. "I'd prefer to have a gun." He was special forces in Afghanistan, so he's not used to flying without a flak vest. "How ya doing little girl?" he asked.

"I'm getting used to this whirly bird," she said as she tried to maintain an altitude of ten feet off the ground as she hover-taxied along Taxiway B-4. Zhang has been flying practice medical evacuation routes for the past few days, mostly to find a secure flight plan to get from DIA to Ming's Mine. Right now she had to concentrate on hover-taxiing. Occasionally a breeze would blow them to the right a bit, but Zhang was getting better at anticipating the random breezes puffing around Colorado. "Denver Tower, this is Twin Dragon 301 holding short of runway two five at Taxiway Bravo four."

After a few moments, Denver Tower came back with, "Twin Dragon three zero one, you are clear for takeoff on Runway two five. Please observe five thousand feet limit over metro Denver."

"Thank you Denver Tower, three zero one departing." She pulled up on the collective and pushed forward on the cyclic, and they were heading west and climbing.

"Where are your buddies going to be today?" asked Christof.

"They're white water rafting in Idaho Springs. Zane and I are taking them over Loveland Pass tonight and into Silver Thorn for dinner, depending on the senator." She was starting to worry. He's been laid up at Johns Hopkins University Hospital for three days, so maybe his condition is worse than they had originally thought.

"That should be fun, I love that drive over Loveland Pass. Where are they from?"

"Buffalo."

"So, they should be digging these mountains," said Christof as he tracked their movement with the GPS and forwarded the data to Ganley Mountain. It took a while, but they received the double beep on 123.5 MHz telling them that the DITCh (Dude In The Chair), the mission controller, was tracking them in a sea of air traffic that saturates the front range.

"Kenny was Army, ten years. He's going to take Yi on a hike on Guanella Pass tomorrow," said Zhang as she tried to maintain the 'golden altitude.' The golden altitude is an altitude that depends on the mission. If she were flying a businessman to Silver Thorn, she'd be fighting for at least 13,000 feet altitude so she could clear the mountains at Loveland Pass. If she were hauling sightseers, she'd be low enough to see what was below them, but high enough for the passengers to see as much as possible. But she's practicing hauling a patient. She needed to get enough altitude to fly as fast as possible, but she had to remain close enough to the ground so she could set down quickly if needed.

"What did he do in the army?" asked Christof.

"I'm not sure, he said he was 'in the field 100% of the time, and deployed the rest of the time.'"

"Sounds about right," said Christof as they left Denver behind them and began the climb up the front range. "Staying with I-70?" he asked.

"I fly where there's plenty of open area to land if there's an emergency. If I have to put down I don't want to be too far off the beaten path were it takes land based rescue forever to get to us. After we pass over Juniper pass, open land becomes rare."

As they buzzed over Idaho Springs, they saw a dozen white-water rafters tubing down Clear Creek as it passed through town. Zhang couldn't see if Kenny and Yi were in that bunch, but she rocked her 'wings' at them as they roared over Idaho Springs. They were sure that if Kenny and Yi were down there, they'd see the crimson helicopter with the gold dragon on the side.

<><><><><>

Kenny and Yi left their Georgetown B&B and drove west on I-70 until they got to the Bakerville exit, and then they pulled off there. There was a parking area there (and nothing else) and in the parking area was a large red van. The van's side door slid open, and Zhang stepped out and waved. They had agreed to meet there and take one vehicle over the mountain. "You can leave your rental here, it will be safe," said Zhang.

"Got your oxygen?" Kenny asked.

Yi dug in her oversized purse and found two small oxygen tanks that they had bought at a gas station. The tanks were about the size of a 20-ounce soft drink and had a small mask on the end that would fit over the nose and mouth. "I got two," she said as they approached the big van.

"Having a little altitude sickness?" asked Zane.

"A bit," said Yi. "I spent most of my life at sea level, this is quite a shock."

They got in the van and found that there was another couple in there; both were Asian. "Yi, this is Ming and Shan Long, Ming is the CEO of Long Air Services and founder of Twin Dragon Security, and Long Picorobotics."

"That's partially true," said Ming. "I invented nothing, but I helped people with their ideas. Shan made the little robots work, and he did it for me." She was getting misty and was close to crying as she neared the end of her speech. "We worked together to get Alicia on her feet."

"I would like to hear how that works," said Kenny. "I used to do communications and building a microscopic network sounds fascinating."

"No shop talk!" warned Zane as they headed up US 6 to Loveland Pass. "This is a social gathering."

"Sorry," said Kenny, just curious.

"No that's ok," chuckled Zane. "We all know Shan, he'd give you a PHD course on nanobots if you let him."

"If Zane won't nip my words in the bud, Ming sure will," said Shan with a smile as he shook Yi and Kenny's hands.

They drove up Loveland Pass on US 6, the road weaving back and forth as it climbed up the west face of Cupid. "This is where the rockets came from," said Ming sadly.

"Rockets?" asked Yi.

Shan nodded sadly and said, "Rockets with flechette warheads." When it was clear that neither Ming nor Shan was going to fill in the details, Zane told of the rocket attacks that destroyed Shan's legs, buttocks, and back.

"How did they fire a two point seven five inch rocket over a mountain with any accuracy?" asked Kenny.

"They fired it almost straight up, then as the motor stopped burning it dropped nose down and a set of wings deployed. It became a glide bomb. It was steered remotely and aimed at the VIP entrance," said Zane as he drove. "They were trying to blow the door open."

Kenny looked at Yi for a long moment, then Yi said, "You don't knock down a hardened door with an anti-personnel warhead."

Zhang looked back at Ming and Shan and said, "She's right. How come a chef knew that and we didn't?"

"Actually, Kenny knew that. He did a lot of battle damage assessments in the military," said Yi. The atmosphere in the van grew quiet as Ming's people realized that their attacker had targeted Shan and not the doorway into the mountain. Kenny looked at Yi with a mixture of pride and annoyance. She remembered something he told her in the past; he was annoyed that he didn't think of it first.

"Where were the warheads made?" asked Kenny. Ming and Shan looked at each other nervously. This was something they never thought to ask. "Don't worry about it," Kenny continued. "You guys have been busy. I'm sure that you can double down on the investigations."

"There was no actual evidence leading back to the manufacturer," said Shan. "The guidance system was built of bit and pieces from different items, mostly Russian and French. The flechette warhead is stock Warsaw Pact issue."

"That's ancient!" said Kenny. "That's at least fifty years old, probably older."

Shan was about to tell Kenny that he was wrong. Yes, the detonator and scattering circuits of the warhead were fifty years old; but those razor steel flechettes were brand new.

"We're on vacation tonight," said Zang, interrupting Shan's train of thought. "But we'll be back to work in the morning. What are you guys doing tomorrow?"

"We're going to go on a hike on Guanella Pass," said Kenny.

"Silver Dale Trailhead," added Yi. She was excited; the forest up on Guanella Pass was beautiful, and she couldn't wait to get out and hike.

"Do you like rock climbing?" asked Zhang.

"Not really," said Yi.

"Good, then you'll like Silver Dale," said Zhang. "There was a big silver mill there, and there were lots of tracks for ore cars. The roadbed for the ore car tracks makes nice, level hiking paths through the woods."

All this time, they were weaving back and forth up US 6, climbing over the east face of Loveland Pass. Yi got to see the Loveland ski resort sitting on top of the Eisenhauer tunnels. She was fascinated by the mountains and the remains of the hundreds of mines that peppered the mountains. Now she was atop the highest pass open year-round, looking down on the mountains. They stopped so Kenny and Yi could get a picture standing next to the sign that said, "Loveland Pass, Elevation 11,990 FT. - Continental Divide."

They looked around then Yi saw something that caught her eye. "Look! Stairs!" cried Yi, and she dashed up a flight of stairs that went further up to an outcropping thirty feet higher than the road. Kenny took off after her, but he paced himself, and when he reached the top of the stairs, he found Yi gasping and panting for breath. "I must be out of shape," she panted.

"This is because the air is so thin," said Kenny. "It happens to everyone."

"You're not out of breath," said Yi between gasps.

"I didn't run up here. Take deep breaths and exhale through the mouth but keep your lips close together."

"I... see... Paul... doing this," she said between gasps. Her boss, Paul Jarecki, breathes like that when he's highly active.

"It's because he has a vascular condition and he's married to a pulmonologist. Come on, take it nice and slow back down the stairs."

"I thought the mountains would be covered in snow," said Yi.

"No, that's something that happens up north," said Shan.

They stayed up atop the pass for a while, just looking at the scenery, tracing the ski-runs below them on Loveland and behind them on Keystone. "This is so amazing!" said Yi. "Does anyone go skiing from up here?"

Ming smiled and said, "Alicia snowboards from up here. She loves backcountry snowboarding. She hitchhikes up to the top here and snowboards down through the trees."

"I can't wait to meet her; she sounds like fun!" said Yi with a huge smile.

"Yeah, fun," groaned Zane, which caused Ming and Zhang to break up giggling.

"What, she's not fun?" asked Yi.

"She's his boss," said Shan.

They piled into the van and rode down the west side of the pass into Keystone. Yi and Kenny were startled at how steep the runs leading down into Arapahoe Basin were. "That's just this side of the mountain," said Zane. "On the back side, the runs are smoother."

They ended up at the Wild Bison Eatery in Silverthorn. It was a western-style saloon/brew pub. They brewed their own beer there. "What'll you have to drink?" asked Zane.

"Root beer," said Kenny.

"You don't like beer?" asked Shan.

"I love beer, but a good friend of ours quit drinking and I'm remaining dry with him."

"Oh," said Shan sadly. "I understand."

"It's not like he's an alcoholic," said Yi. "He and his wife were discussing having a child, and Josh realized that all the bad things that happened in his past had alcohol involved somehow, so except for champagne toasts, they both quit drinking."

Finally, their meals came. They were having the specialty of the house, bison burgers. The burgers came bare on a bun with the best French fries in Colorado. A tray of toppings and condiments was provided for folks to dress their burgers any way they wanted. The only choice on the menu was the type of bun that the bison burger was served on.

"This will be interesting, watch," Kenny said to Zane. They watched as Yi sniffed, poked and even licked her burger. Eventually she took a bite of the burger with no condiments, nor even any salt or pepper. "She's never had bison before and she's looking for something interesting to serve on our next cruise."

Yi's eyes lit up as she tasted the flavor of the bison meat. "Oh my god this is incredible!" she gasped. Now knowing what bison tastes like, she started with the condiments. The top of the bun received a light, even coat of mayonnaise, followed by a similar coat of yellow mustard. Then, a layer of ketchup and the burger itself got a very light coating of horseradish. She placed the bun on the burger and took a bite. Yi was in nirvana as she ate the most perfect burger ever made. And the fries! The outside was fried to perfection, crispy and hot; the inside, fluffy and white; the only thing these fries needed was a touch of salt and a splash of vinegar.

"Everything is perfect!" said Yi. "These fries are perfect, yet they taste so familiar."

"We import them," said the waiter. "There's a specialty potato farm in New York..."

"Emmerling's?" asked Kenny.

"Yes, are you familiar with their product?"

"We get our seed potatoes from them," said Yi.

"They're just a few miles from where we live," said Kenny as Yi took another bite and rolled her eyes in pleasure.

"I would love to meet your chef and thank him. This is incredible!" said Yi to their waiter.

Dinner was a success. Ming and Shan, Zhang and Zane filled Kenny and Yi with stories of things to see in Colorado. "You can spend your entire vacation in the front range," said Zane. "You'll need another two weeks to look at the southwest corner of the state. I could spend a month in Durango just poking around."

"I don't know, I love the nearly gone ghost towns on the front slope," said Shan. "I love Silver Plume; there's so many cool things to look at in that tiny town."

Eventually the chef/owner came out, and Yi gushed over how much she loved the food. She wanted to know everything about how the meat was prepared, exactly how the burger was cooked and what spices were used. "I chef on a yacht and I always try to find something to make the cruise memorable. This burger will fill that bill."

"A burger on a yacht?" chuckled Chef Mark.

"Well, you get so tired of wahoo and sailfish, you know?"

"No, I don't know," he chuckled. "But I would like to find out." They talked about food and cooking and eventually he took Yi back to look at the kitchen.

"Happens every time," said Kenny with a chuckle. "Of course, I'm just as bad in a sporting goods store."

"You two are so incredible," said Shan. "You seem to be able to communicate silently, like Ming and I do."

Kenny just nodded. He pointed at Zhang and said, "She knows."

"It can't be true," said Zhang, shaking her head. She sipped her root beer quietly. Like Yi and Kenny, she wasn't drinking; she may have to fly at a moment's notice.

She looked at Kenny nervously, but he smiled and said, "You all heard him. Yi and I were in New York when it happened but how else would we know if he didn't tell us?"

"Who?" asked Ming. "Who did we hear? Who told you?"

"When Shan was taking his first steps, some of you in the room heard a voice," said Kenny. "If you were not of Han ancestry you didn't hear it. Zane didn't hear it, but not because he doesn't have nanobots. Alicia has nanobots but she didn't hear it. But Shan, Ming, and Zhang all heard him clearly."

"Who?" asked Ming. "Who did we hear?"

They were interrupted as Yi returned to the table. Chef Mark shook her hand and said, "It was great to meet you Chef Yi, but have to ask, are you girls related? You all look so similar."

"We all look the same to horny white boys," said Yi with a wink and a grin as she sat down.

"If they're related it's not close," said Kenny. "Yi is Korean American, born in Miami. Zhang is Chinese and a quarter American, born in Denver, and Ming is Chinese born in the Kwun Tong district of Hong Kong."

"How did you know that?" demanded Zhang. She's told nobody that her maternal grandmother was white.

"Well, she wasn't born in Denver, she was born in Evergreen," corrected Yi, then she kissed Kenny.

Ming was starting to get angry. She never knew what district of Hong Kong she was born in, but Kwun Tong sounded right. Shan held her hand trying to calm her and said in Chinese, "Qǐng gàosù wǒmen, nín shì zěnme zhīdào de?" (Please tell us, how do you know?)

Then came a voice they all heard before; all but Zane heard it. A deep, commanding voice that simply said, "I TOLD THEM."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"You don't have to be here," said Senator Amos Nourse.

"Yes I do," said Alicia Ingersoll.

"You run an entire security agency, any one of your people could guard me."

"I selected the one employee of Twin Dragons security that will put up with your nonsense. Me." They were sitting in the senator's room in Johns Hopkins, and so far Alicia had stopped two more attempts on the senator's life. What is it about her uncle that the rogue agents from the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency want? "Shouldn't you be sleeping?" scolded Alicia.

"I can't sleep in this room," groaned Nourse. "Where's Joanna? She went out for coffee hours ago."

Alicia realized that it had been a long time since her aunt had gone out to get Amos a cup of decaf. There were two cops guarding Amos's room, and one of them escorted Joanna to get a cup of coffee.

>> Incoming message from RN388-48-AI94θ1012 - Joanna Nourse is missing. We need to go.

-> Incoming message from RN388-48-AI94θ1012 - Joanna Nourse is missing. We need to go.

Ming and Shan both woke to Alicia's panicked message. "I'll respond, you get Mac," said Ming.

Almost immediately, Alicia got a message from Ming through her nanobot's AI.

> Incoming message from RN388-36-ML94θ1008 - Shan is getting your people up to speed, I'm looking for a cargo plane. Do not leave Amos.

Alicia's AI hacked into the hospital security camera video server, and as she searched for any video of Joanna, she found a video of a white cop leading Joanna down a hall. He led her to another hall that had no video cameras. Damnit! She searched desperately and finally caught a few frames of Joanna running out of the building. Then, a message from Shan came in...

> Incoming message from RN388-36-MS98θ1015 - Your people are up to speed, found Joanna. She's en route to BWI Airport. Do not leave Amos. Ambulance en route 2U.

Alicia poked her nose into the hallway and saw two Baltimore police officers leaning against the wall. "Hey, why didn't one of you go with Missus Nourse?"

One of the cops looked at Alicia and said, "Huh?"

"Git in here dumbass," demanded Alicia. "Both of you."

The two cops walked into the room. Alicia looked like she was in a trance; she was staring off into the middle distance. Finally, she looked at the two cops, a black cop and a white cop. She turned to the white cop and said, "You went with Senator Nourse's wife to get coffee... did you arrest her?"

"What? No I didn't... that's ridiculous. She said she wanted to go to Starbucks, I'm not allowed to leave the building so she went without me."

Alicia slapped the cop on the side of his head. With her titanium hand, it felt like she hit him with a hammer. "Don't lie to me; I've reviewed security footage of this hospital, and I reviewed the booking records of the Baltimore PD." Fast as a flash she had both cops' pistols. "Tell the senator why you did what you did," demanded Alicia.

"I didn't do anything!"

This time she slapped the black cop on the side of the head. "Ow! What did you hit me for?"

"For not stopping this asshole. How much did they pay you to play stupid?" demanded Alicia.

"Look, you don't say no to the general," said the white cop. "What the general wants, the general gets."

"What are you, nuts?" demanded Alicia. "I got the general on ice in the darkest pit of hell." The self-appointed general, Daniel Boothroyd, the man that Alicia called Q for years, the man who kidnapped and tortured her, murdered her husband, tried to kill the senator, and captured Zane Zigler and Zhang Wei is now sitting in a "private apartment" 5,000 feet under Ganley Mountain where he is constantly being questioned on the crime syndicate he formed with Gunter Haag the current head of the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency.

Down there in the dark, along with the general were Albert Dirkson and Betty Chapelwaite. Their spouses received an email stating that they had had enough of married life and were running off with a gay lover.

Before the cops could react, two men wearing uniforms that identified them as ambulance drivers arrived with a wheeled gurney. "Senator Nourse? Your chariot awaits."

"Where is my wife!" demanded the senator.

"I don't know senator," said one of the ambulance crewmen as he adjusted the height of the gurney to the bed that the senator was in.

"Aunt Joanna is waiting for us," said Alicia, who then turned to the cops and said, "Boys, give those nice men a hand."

The cops helped the ambulance driver move Amos onto the gurney, and then Alicia said, "fellas, why don't you give us an escort to where we're going?" The white cop finally had enough of Alicia's bullshit and reached for his taser - but it was gone. She had that too. How did she get their pistols and their tasers? At least he still has the car keys. Then he checked his pockets. "Looking for your keys boys? I'll return them when we get Amos out of Baltimore safely."

"I will get you for this bitch," snarled the black cop.

"Nah, not with attitudes like that." Then she sent a message to Shan and Ming - The Senator is in the ambulance and we are headed to BWI.

It was four AM when the ambulance pulled up next to a Long Air Services Boeing 787 LCB. The thing was a monster; the body was bigger than an Airbus A380 double-deck widebody. The Boeing LCB required a third engine mounted in the tail like a DC-10. The third engine was part of the 747 Trijet idea that didn't gain any purchasers, and on the 787 LCB, the third jet was only used for takeoffs with a loaded aircraft.

A TVE 7000 cargo lifting truck waited with its deck down as far as possible. Senator Nourse was unloaded from the ambulance and the wheeled gurney was boosted onto the TVE 7000. As the deck lifted Alicia and the Senator, the cops shouted about their weapons. As soon as the deck was all the way up, the air crew stepped out onto the deck and rolled Senator Nourse onto the plane. "Here you go boys! Thanks!" said Alicia, and she tossed the keys to the police cruiser down to the cops. They caught the keys, but when they looked up to demand their guns, the plane was buttoned up and the engines were starting.

"Hey! What about our weapons!" shouted the cops, but the cargo lifting truck backed away from the huge jet whose three engines spooled up, and soon it was rolling away from the cargo ramp and out to the taxiway. "You bitch!" shouted the white cop. "God damnit," he groaned and turned to get back on the ambulance, but it was gone. So was the cargo-lifting TVE 7000. They were alone on a wide-open concrete ocean with no idea how to get off this huge flat ramp.

In the passenger space of the enormous ship, a touching reunion was happening. Joanna Nourse was waiting, terrified that something more had happened to Amos. When they wheeled him into the passenger compartment and locked his gurney in place, she threw herself at her husband of 45 years, peppering his face with kisses. "Are you ok?" she asked with each kiss.

"I'm fine darling," he whispered. "I was worried about you. You went out for coffee and never came back."

"That cop grabbed me. I don't know what he wanted but I got away and ran!"

"Where did you go?" asked Amos.

"The police station across the street. There's not a lot of places a woman can go in Baltimore after dark," said Joanna.

Up in the spacious cockpit of the 787 LCB Dreamlifter II, Alicia patted each flyer on the shoulder. "Thanks for the lift boys." The enormous ship was flying from Rotterdam to Frankfurt, then to Denver, and was stopped at Baltimore-Washington International to clear customs when they got the call.

"No problem, glad to help," said the pilot as the co-pilot received taxiing instructions from the tower. "I need you to step out of the cockpit and buckle up in your seat."

"Will do. Hey, as we were loading up I saw a couple of guys dressed like cops out on the ramp just wandering around aimlessly. You may want to inform the tower," said Alicia, and she closed up the cockpit door and went aft to the passenger compartment. There the senator was reclining in a very comfy seat with his wife, Joanna, next to him still snuggling. "How ya doing sir?" asked Alicia.

"We're family, you don't have to use false titles," said Amos.

"I always show great respect to repeat customers," said Alicia. "What did you do to get stabbed on the senate floor?"

"It wasn't the senate floor," grumbled Amos.

"He told a boomer Karen to calm down," said Joanna.

"Karen? That's a sexist title if I ever heard..." started Alicia, but Amos stopped her.

"That was her name... and she earned the title," he said as he held hands with Joanna.

"That'll do it," said Alicia. She thumbed through the police report again. Now that they were out of the hospital where anyone could listen in on their conversation, she said, "That woman... she had a ceramic blade."

"I just hope she sterilized it before she stabbed me," said Amos.

Senator Karen Mould, a product of the 60s and 70s, was schooled at the University of Oregon, a school that's so far to the left it could slide off into the ocean with one more pro-Antifa rally. She majored in Native American pastoral container studies... "Basket weaving?" cried Alicia. "She got a degree in basket weaving?"

"That was a long time ago," said Amos. "It's a different world now."

"Yeah," said Alicia. "The tuition for a degree like that would be six digits now." She kept reading. Karen (of course her name is Karen) was a social activist, constantly advocating for peace and equity, so why did she carry a weapon that was crafted to get past security into a Senate hearing?

"I've told him a hundred times, never tell a hysterical woman to calm down!" said Joanna.

"You told me twice," grumbled Amos. He missed his little dog, Fruit Loop.

"It doesn't matter," said Alicia. "You could have said nothing, and she would have said, 'silence is violence.' You were targeted."

"Why?" asked Amos. "I'm just a senator; my vote doesn't weigh more than any of the other one hundred votes stacked up against me."

"Ninety nine votes," said Alicia.

"No, one hundred," said her aunt. "There's two votes for every state and one for the president of the senate."

The engines spooled up to a roar, and the plane shook as it started its takeoff roll. The enormous ship thundered down the runway and almost reluctantly edged its way into the sky. The huge swept wings curved upwards as they took up the weight of the body and finally they were flying. Alicia looked at the police records again and again. That woman clearly went into that room with the sole purpose of sticking a knife into Amos.

Alicia could see that woman planning to do something like that. She was a hate-filled minion with no concept of the consequences of her actions. Alicia saw the videos and the look of shock on her face when she was being arrested. How dare they! Alicia couldn't see how Senator Moulds mustered enough brain cells together to obtain a knife that would make it past a metal detector.

She studied the police report on the knife; it was a Chinese-made Stone River Gear SRG41RCW ceramic blade knife. It had a white three and a half inch long blade and a black five-inch rubberized handle. It's extremely light at only 2.27 ounces. As a hunting knife, it was crap. It was useless in the field because the ceramic blade was fragile. A drop on a hard surface would shatter the blade. It was a one use only knife because a ceramic blade can't be sharpened by the common knife owner; they require diamond sharpening stones, and the blade is brittle and will chip and shatter if not handled correctly.

Since there's no serial number on the knife like there would be on a well-made steel knife, it was untraceable. Even the price point is all over the place. You can get the knife and sheath as cheaply as $19.99, or you can pay as much as $79.99. Same knife, different websites. There are numerous ceramic blade knives out there, but this one was special; it had no metallic parts in its construction. The only way it could have been detected was through an X-ray. This ceramic knife had only two purposes, and one was to get past metal detectors. The second is what you do once you get past the metal detector.

So why did they pull a stunt like this? They had to know that she would be all over them like white on rice. It just didn't make any sense to her.

<><><><><>

>>> Incoming message from RN388-36-ML94θ1008 - Zhang honey, time to get up. Your bird is in the air.

Zhang hated waking up with her nanobots harassing her. At least it was Ming being nice. She looked at her phone; it was four thirty. The senator would land in Denver at about 8:30 AM. She had plenty of time to fly down to DIA and top off with fuel before the plane landed. It will take just a few minutes to cross-load the senator into her Bell 412 Griffin, and then they'll be heading home to Ming's Mine.

She reached over and found the bed was empty. Where was he? She looked around the darkened room, and as the nanobots adjusted her eyes, and the room lightened up a bit. She saw Zane coming up the stairs carrying a cup of coffee for her. "Good morning angel," he said softly.

"How can you see me? It's pitch black in here."

"I can't see you, but I know you didn't get out of bed, so you're probably sitting up in bed." He sat down on his side of the bed and handed her a Yeti full of hot coffee. "Long Air Services flight 1505 is airborne, due into DIA at eight thirty."

"You're awesome," she said, and she kissed him sweetly. Their tongues danced, and his hands began exploring her body. "Honey, I have to fly. I'll give you a workout when I get back."

"This will be the last flight for a few days. We have some downtime coming so we can take Kenny and Yi up to Glacier National Park."

"I love Glacier, it's beautiful up there."

Zhang growled and caught his lower lip in her teeth. The last time they were up there, he had her spread out on a picnic table, and he was fucking her senseless. She was laid out on the table, and he had her legs over his shoulders, and she was helpless. If someone came up to complain, there was nothing she could do except continue to cry, "Yes! YES! More!" She kissed his nipple and said, "You sure you want to take them up there?"

"Sure. We can find a pavilion with two tables."

"You!" she growled and gave him another kiss. Hotter, more passionate... a kiss that promised a lifetime of love and passion. In the end, it was Zane who brought them down to earth.

"Go shower then get your jet-jammies on. I'll make you breakfast."

"If you insist," she sighed and leaned down and kissed his cock.

"You make life so hard..." he groaned.

"A hard man is good to find," she said, then slipped out of his t-shirt, which doubled as a nightgown, and headed off to the bathroom. She stepped into the steam shower and adjusted the water. So many times she had come back from a tough flight and spent the afternoon soaking up the heat of the steam generator while Zane massaged her shoulders and soothed her nerves.

She soaped her breasts, the same size as a tennis ball sliced in half, and she knew that was a mistake. Letting her hands get anywhere near an erogenous zone while thinking of Zane was fuel for a half-hour shower. She pinched and squeezed her nipples and cried out. She needed her lover now! She sat on the bench, spread her legs, then adjusted herself until she felt a stream from the shower strike and dance on her clit.

The drumming of the stream of water felt so wonderful, and Zhang knew she would not last long. The tingling spread through her lower regions, and she began to pinch and twist her nipples. She whimpered and gasped as the water splashed on her clit and vulva, and she said a prayer of thanks for whoever put full-force showerheads in the showers.

The sexy drumbeat of the water splashing on her clit drove her closer and closer to her goal. "Ah... ah... Zane!" she gasped. It was so good, she wished Zane were there to share this moment with her. She gasped and groaned, and her hips raised to get more stimulation.

Then she heard him whisper in her right ear. "You are so beautiful." She almost screamed in shock. He walked in on her as she was masturbating in the shower, and she was shocked... humiliated. "Shhh, so beautiful." His fingertips ran up and down her sensitive inner thighs, and her body responded to him being there!

As his fingertips slid up and down her sensitive inner thigh, his mouth closed over her breast and trapped her nipple between his teeth. He nibbled on her nipple, and his tongue flicked that sensitive nubbin over and over while his fingers traced from her sensitive vulva to her knee and back. "Cum for me baby," he whispered.

"Yes!" she cried as the warm water on her clit sent her over the edge. Wave after wave of sweet relief swept over her body, and she threw her arms around Zane and peppered his face with kisses. She eventually moved out of the spray of the water and started crying.

"What's the matter?" asked Zane.

"I'm so ashamed... you caught me..."

"It's ok, it's ok. Everyone does it."

"You don't mind?"

Zane smiled and gave her a kiss. "No, of course not. I teased you quite a bit and you needed some relief. If I was here to help, you'd miss your launch time. Now come on, I have your breakfast ready."

"You're not mad at me?"

"No, I love you, and it was beautiful to watch. We'll catch up together when you get back." He helped her dry off and dress in her flight suit, which he called 'jet jammies.' As she munched on the toast and breakfast Hot Pocket, he put her socks and combat boots on her feet. "Ready?"

"Ready." She grabbed her flight bag with maps and iPad with flight data, and he led her out into the moonlit courtyard then down the long black hallway that looked like a mine from over a century ago, into the big garage where several UTVs and golf carts sat. They climbed into a four-seater golf cart and headed down the long main tunnel road to the hangar. "Who's in the chair for me this morning?" she asked.

"Me. I have already called in a request to take off at oh five fifteen, that will put you in DIA with plenty of time to gas up and grab a coffee. You're going to the Long Air cargo hanger and the big boy is scheduled in at oh eight thirty."

"Thank you," she said as she studied the morning weather report.

"Remember talking to Yi and Kenny about going to the county office and getting a marriage license and spending the extra fifteen bucks to make it real?"

"Yeah, what about it?" asked Zhang.

"What do you say that we do it when you get back."

"Did you just propose to me?"

"Kind of," said Zane. "Soon as I find out what you'll say, then I'll ask you properly."

"That's silly."

"I'm sorry, but I love you far to much to spill my heart out to you just to hear you say no. I don't know how I would react to that. Now if you say yes to an informal question, then I'll spill my heart out to you later and make it official."

"Oh."

"Ok. Your HF frequency is 8.430 megahertz, lower side band. Check in when you start down the Front Range Drop so I can assure the air ambulance that you'll be ready. On the way back check in over Empire. Got that?"

"Yeah, gotcha, 8.430 lower. Check in on the Front Range Drop and over Empire." She said it all without looking up at him.

He reached up and pressed a button on the rear-view mirror that hung at the top center of the golf cart's windscreen. That caused the door to the hangar to open, and a small crowd of maintainers were preparing to push Zhang's helicopter out of the hangar. Her co-pilot, Christof Davis, was already there waiting for her. "Here you go baby, have a safe flight and I'll see you when you get back."

She leaned over and gave him a kiss and then said, "that idea you brought up with the courthouse? I think I kinda like the idea."

"How long were you going to make me suffer?" asked Zane.

"Not much longer," she said with a huge smile, then she ran off to do the pre-flight inspection on her helicopter.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"Morning baby," said Kenny. Yi was sprawled out over the bed, and arm and a leg on Kenny, her mouth open and drool running down her cheek.

"Wha...?" Yi's eyes slowly opened, and she saw Kenny leaning over her, grinning. "Just one more hour..." and she rolled over.

"Come on Snooky-poo. Time to get up."

"I hate that name, Snooky-poo." She reached out to push him away, and her hand bumped into his erect cock. "What? You want more? After last night?"

"Nothing wrong with a little morning delight," said Kenny as he kissed her shoulder and the back of her neck.

"Go away!" she shouted into her pillow. "You're inhuman!" She raised her slim hips, offering her ass to him. "Just take what you want and let me sleep," she mumbled into the pillow. Kenny shrugged and climbed between her legs and lined his cock up with her vagina and moved closer. The moment he touched she screamed and flattened to the mattress, laughing. "Stop tickling!"

"I only touched you with my dick."

"You dick tickler!" she said, laughing, and rolled over and pulled him down for a kiss. They wrestled around as they kissed, and she ended up on top of her man, lowering her cunt onto his throbbing cock. "Reproduction alert!" called Yi as she sank down on his cock.

It wasn't always laughter and tickling when they made love, but there was always passion. Kenny looked up at his fiancée's sparkling almond-shaped eyes, the eyes he fell in love with the day they met. He was working hard at his family's failing feed store business, and he had convinced his dad to put what little money they had into expanding the tiny sporting goods portion of their store. He was sorrowful and nearly suicidal because they were drowning in debt and he only sold a few pairs of mittens.

Then she walked in. He barely noticed the other women with her; all were in the store for the first time. In a year's time, one would become the village mayor, another would marry the top carpenter in the village and open a medical practice with the mayor. And the third woman he knew, she was a pastor, and was married to the pastor of his church. The three of them bought enough sporting goods to prepare for a winter campout, and their purchases easily paid for the expansion to the sporting goods section. One was a biathlon skier and purchased the most expensive rifle that Kenny had ever sold. Their glowing reviews brought in more and more customers, but Kenny didn't notice any of that. On that day he had eyes only for Yi.

She stood to the side quietly, her eyes on him, as the other women dressed her for winter. Being a Miami beach bunny, this was the first snow she had ever seen. They dressed her in items more colorful and cuter than the last, and with each silly hat she modeled, Kenny fell deeper in love with her. They eventually talked, but Kenny doesn't remember a single thing he said to her, but every word she said to him was etched on his heart.

"Hey, are you here with me, or am I masturbating with your dick?" she demanded.

He reached up and caressed her cheek. "Just falling in love with you even more."

Her features softened. She smiled sweetly and leaned over him and said, "then fuck me like you just stole me." With a growl, he rolled her over, hooked her legs over his arms, causing Yi to smile in delight. "I love this," she said with a grunt as he plowed into her. He's normally very gentle with Yi. She is so slim and fragile-looking while he's very muscular and well-hung. The first time she saw his cock, she was terrified that he'd never fit it all inside of her. It took a lot of gentle practice for her to get over her fear of his cock, but now instead of calling it the "womb stabber" she now just refers to his cock as "all mine."

Yi could be so funny, so snarky, yet she could also be so sweet and passive. She was incredible with children, an incredible chef, and so beautiful that he felt honored to be in her presence. And she was an imaginative and witty lover. He never knows if they're going to end up crying out in passion as they cum, or end up in a tangled, sweaty heap, laughing at the silliness of it all.

As the sun rose over the mountains, Yi was curled half into a ball as Kenny plowed his hefty cock into her, over and over. Their groins clapped together with a wet slap as her juices covered them. As an orgasm shook her, she sank her teeth into his arm to keep from shrieking out and letting the entire bed and breakfast know what was going on in the presidential suite. The orgasm that shook her was so intense that it knocked her out, and when she came to, Kenny was still fucking her like a big blond madman.

Yi knew he was getting close; he was fucking her with big, punishing strokes that threatened to leave her cervix bruised but happy. Finally, with a roar, Kenny tightened up and slammed that huge cock balls deep into her as he came. Four powerful thrusts that caused Yi to grunt in a combination of pain, delight, and happiness that she finally landed the man of her dreams.

Spent, Kenny collapsed on Yi. This was the part that both enjoyed the most, the part where they cuddled and kissed. "You are so amazing," whispered Kenny.

"Then why is it such a struggle to get you to make love in the morning?" asked Yi. She knew what was coming, and she was soon subjected to a barrage of tickling and spanks on her cute round butt.

After a refreshing shower, they dressed, broke down the bed for the maid, and went down for breakfast, which was just being served. "Good morning!" said the owner of the B&B as she set out a pitcher of orange juice.

"Good morning Missus Sniders," said Yi and Kenny in unison, which reminded Mrs. Sniders of the elementary school classes she used to teach.

"Please, it's Heida."

"Heida and Kaspar," said Kaspar Sniders as he carried a large breakfast casserole into the dining room. Heida and Kaspar were a sweet old couple who had purchased the beautiful old Victorian house and rebuilt it from the ground up and added their lifelong collection of antiques and memorabilia. This bed and breakfast was their dream, and although it was just barely profitable, they loved everything about running the Silver Queen B&B even more than they originally thought.

The house was full this week with four couples, and as Kaspar and Heida sat down, he said, "would anyone like to say grace?"

"I would," said Kenny without a pause. He took Yi's hand and then reached for the hand of the woman seated next to him. She was kind of dumpy-looking, and she dyed her hair royal blue. She recoiled for a moment and then noticed everyone around the table joining hands. Once the circle was joined, Kenny said a short joyful prayer of thanks, then they started breakfast. Conversation was entertaining, but the blue-haired woman seemed to want to embarrass Kenny and Yi.

"Do you find it difficult being an interracial couple?" she asked.

Kenny and Yi looked at each other as if having a silent conversation, then they nodded. "Yes, there were some severe cultural difficulties we had to overcome," said Yi.

"Such as?" asked blue-hair. It seemed like she was overjoyed to turn over a few rocks and see what came crawling out.

"Her upbringing," said Kenny, "She was raised a Miami Dolphins fan, and here she is now living fifteen miles away from the Buffalo Bills stadium..."

"They're all crazy!" gasped Yi. "Every one of them! Painted up red and blue, wearing helmets with buffalo horns, big foam hands... and they'll wear it to church before a game, even if it's an away game on TV! Crazy!"

"We do agree on baseball," said Kenny.

"Triple A baseball rocks!" nodded Yi as she got up to make herself and Kenny another cup of coffee at the coffee service on the sideboard.

"I was talking about the racial differences," said the blue-haired woman.

"We don't have time for any of that," said Yi from the sideboard.

Kenny continued her thought. "Yi is Korean/American of Swedish descent. It may not look it, but I am Chinese/American of Norwegian descent. Our friends are pure blood Polish, and Italian, and Jewish, and our pastor is a black French-Canadian. She adopted a orphan from New Caledonia. We would rather accept people for what they are and not what their grandparents were."

"One of Kenny's dearest friends is a battle scarred veteran," said Yi. "He was awarded the Medal of Honor; they named the local American Legion post in his honor. At the Forth of July parades the color guards turn and salute him..."

"He hates that medal," continued Kenny without a pause. "His favorite thing to do is take care of a grumpy old lady that lives a few blocks away. Last summer he raised over seventeen million dollars for charity. That's the kind of things I would like to be remembered for. Not for being a blond Chinese guy."

"Well said," said one of the men at the table. He clearly saw through blue-hair's intent and thoroughly enjoyed watching Kenny and Yi put her in her place.

"So what is everyone doing today?" asked Heida. She was desperately trying to change the conversation.

"Lorraine and I have to head back to Boulder," said blue-hair as she held the hand of the skinny woman with purple hair next to her. "We have a rally to attend."

Another couple mentioned sightseeing in Georgetown. A third couple mentioned riding the Georgetown Loop Railroad. Yi said, "We're going to go hiking up at Silver Dale and further up at Guanella Pass. Then when our friends get off work, we're going to go get married."

"Really?" gushed Heida, and the entire table, except for the colored-hair ladies, broke out in excited chatter. "That's it? You're just going to get married?" asked Heida.

"We've been engaged for a while now," said Yi. "We have so many things going on in our life, it's taken us a while to prioritize everything."

"We thought the most important part was where we were going to live, but we realize that's not it," said Kenny. "We could live in a tent in my folks back yard, we could rent a log cabin back in the woods, just as long as we're together, that's what matters."

"We're going to get married legally then in the fall have a church ceremony."

"Why?" demanded blue-hair. "Why have a church ceremony at all?"

Kenny pulled out his phone and did a quick photo search and found a darling photograph of Yi sitting on a bed reading a story to two adorable little blond girls. "This is Yi and her girls. You tell them that they can't be flower girls at our wedding. I don't have the heart. Here, I'll dial the phone for you..."

<><><><><>

The huge 787 LCB Dreamlifter II took forever to taxi from the runway to the cargo ramp. Denver Approach had the huge plane land on runway 34 left, which meant when it turned off the runway, it was miles away from the cargo ramp. It was on the far north side of the huge airport; the cargo ramp was on the extreme south side of the airport. Taxiing through the rush-hour congestion took ages, and since it was a cargo flight, everything else with wings had priority over Long Air Service Flight 1505.

Alicia sat on the plane and stewed. Every second on the ground was exposure. Whoever wanted the senator dead had time to muster their forces and prepare to jump them. She and Zhang were in constant communication via their nanobot AIs. Zhang was angry too. She was sitting in a helicopter out in the open on the cargo ramp, and they had her set down to the right of where they were going to spot the Dreamlifter. That meant she had to wait for the 787 to shut down both engines before she could move the helicopter around behind the plane and get in position to accept Amos on his stretcher.

As the time dragged on, both women were getting furious. Alicia started the barrage.

AI: send a message to Ming and Shan. Message follows: Start an investigation into ground handling at DIA. This is criminal. We could lose the senator.

> Message sent, replied Alicia's AI.

Zhang followed up with her own demands.

AI: send a message to Ming and Shan. Message follows: We did not plan to shut down this bird. I had to kill everything to save fuel and batteries. Restarting will take ages.

>>> Message sent, replied Zhang's AI.

Ming and Shan were worried sick about the delay, but there was nothing they could do. First of all, they were both busy. Ming was meeting with investors and planning a capital improvement to Ming's Mine. She also wanted to purchase a second mountain that was honeycombed with abandoned mines. She was a shrewd businesswoman; she usually got what she wanted. Shan was in a design conference looking at an upgrade to the nanobot programming. He was trying to find a way to access the nanobot AI from an external source. He can communicate with one via keyboard, but nanobot AI to nanobot AI communicates emotions, images, even odors of what the person is experiencing. The DITCh at the keyboard doesn't get to experience any of that.

>> Message from DITChψ003, 3 armored personnel carriers and an ambulance spotted on I-225. Possibly heading to DIA.

Ming paused in her presentation, DITChψ003 was Zane Zigler. He's a top controller, and he rarely calls for help. She hoped that Shan would respond to that.

-> Message from DITChψ003, 3 armored personnel carriers and an ambulance spotted on I-225. Possibly heading to DIA.

Shan paused, waiting for a response from Ming, but she didn't say anything, so Shan responded. 'AI: send message to DITChψ003. Message as follows: Maintain track. Update Alpha and Zulu. I am on my way 2 U'

Zane sat in the control seat of the communications center, his hands just over the keyboard ready to type the moment he's needed to send a message or command. He looked down at his hands; they were shaking. Zhang has to get through this... she's got to make it back... over and over he repeated that. He can't fail her again.

He stared at the satellite image of DIA and the big air freighter that was sitting on a taxiway, off to the side, letting passenger planes work their way past. He logged into the aircraft flight control systems and saw that hours sitting at idle wasn't affecting the health of the plane. Then he looked at the fuel gauges. He made a quick call to the aircrew. "Long Air Service 1505 this is Ganley control."

"Go ahead Ganley."

"I see you're near minimums for fuel. I will call for fuel trucks at your location," said Zane.

The pilot chuckled, but the co-pilot said, "Company minimums are for flying. We're not flying."

"Read Section 3 of procedures again," said the pilot. "The word flying isn't used." He keyed his radio and said, "I'll get it Ganley, thank you." He selected a different frequency. "Denver ground this is Long Air fifteen oh five."

"Go ahead Long Air."

"We are at permissible minimums for fuel and will be shutting down. I'll need three trucks of JP4 and a ground crew before I can get moving again."

"Long Air... we show you flew from BWI to here and you're out of fuel?"

"Denver ground, this flight originated in Rotterdam with stops in Frankfurt and BWI."

"Can you move with current fuel load?"

The pilot smiled at the co-pilot. "Denver Ground, It will be close, but yes, we can get there."

"Roger Long Air, follow American 1403 to taxiway C7 that's Charlie Seven and turn right at Cargo ramp one. Follow ground crew indications."

"Thank you Denver ground."

"Was that Ming?" asked the co-pilot.

"Either her, or one of her team up in the mountain." The big aircraft moved and headed back toward the big cargo ramp right on the tail of a tiny American Airlines commuter jet.

Zhang stood anxiously by her helicopter, and when she saw the nose of that tremendous beast edge its way around the back wall of the cargo facility, she whooped. "Let's go get some air under us!" she cried as she hopped into her seat. As Christof read the checklist, Zhang hit the switches and checked the gauges.

"You're awful excited," said Christof.

"I got a date tonight," she said happily.

"Twin Dragon Zero Zero Seven, this is Ganley Control."

"This is Twin Dragon double oh seven," said Zhang trying not to giggle at her flight number. Ming should know better than to let Zane pick flight names and numbers.

"Twin Dragon, Long Air fifteen oh five has shut down his engines and is getting ready to open his doors, if you can get closer that would help."

"Roger Mountain Man. We're moving. Can you request a route out of here for me?" Zhang turned to Christof and asked, "Checklist complete?"

"Yes, and we're going to get ANOTHER briefing on radio discipline, aren't we."

"Mac likes to flex his supervisory muscle. If I didn't give him a reason to pose and shout every now and then he'd get rusty." She raised the cyclic lever slightly while twisting the grip just a little bit. The four-blade rotors spun up faster, and their angle of attack increased, which caused increased lifting power, and the sleek helicopter rose into the air about three feet. Gently nudging the collective forward, they moved. She gently steered around a long string of cargo containers that divided the ramp between UPS/FedEx and Long Air Service.

As they came around the back end of the huge DreamLifter, they saw the cargo door open and the cargo lifter slowly lowering. The only things on the cargo lifter were an ambulance gurney, Joanna Nourse, and the grandmother of all AI, Alicia Ingersoll. Zhang swung the tail of the helicopter around, putting the pilot side of the bird next to the cargo loader, and Christof climbed into the back and slid the side door open.

Transferring the senator from the cargo loader to the helicopter was incredibly easy; two guys from the cargo loader helped shove the gurney into the helicopter where it locked into place. Joanna and Alicia got in the helicopter and sat in the seats behind the senator, and Christof closed the door behind them. Then he dashed around the front and climbed into his seat and buckled in. Everyone put on their helmets and strapped themselves in. Even Amos Nourse wore a helmet on the stretcher.

"I got clearance, we're out of here," said Zhang as Christof put his helmet on.

"Roger, roger," said Christof happily. Then on the intercom he said, "Ladies and Senator, welcome aboard Twin Dragons flight double oh seven, nonstop service from Denver International Airport to Ganley Mountain helipad. Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened and your helmet secured. As soon as we reach Ganley Mountain you will be free to move around the aircraft. On behalf of our pilot, Zhang Wei, we want to thank you for flying Twin Dragons."

"I'm going to kill you," said Zhang.

"They can hear you," said Christof with a rare smile.

"I'm sure they'll help."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

"This is so beautiful up here," said Yi as they walked through the forest of lodgepole pine trees. The area they were hiking in had a large open parking lot, which only had a few cars in it because there were not a lot of hikers on a Wednesday morning. They followed a path and followed a footbridge across a stream and found themselves in the forest of aspen and pine trees. Zhang was right; the paths were nice and level and easy to walk on. "This is so weird," said Yi.

"What's weird?"

"There's not much underbrush."

Kenny looked around and she was right; there was some, but not like the underbrush back in New York. The thick entanglements they were used to back home didn't exist in this forest. Back in New York, Kenny often helped his friends cut paths and campsites in their forests with "brush hogs," best described as a lawnmower from hell. "The soil is pretty solid, I wonder if they can't take hold here," said Kenny. "Maybe the winters are too tough for underbrush."

"Huh? In Buffalo we get eight feet of snow," said Yi, who was still stunned by the snow amounts that she's survived.

"Yes, but it's much colder up here, and the air is a lot thinner up here."

"Does air pressure affect plants?"

"I don't know," said Kenny. "But at sea level the plants are nice and lush. Not up here at ten thousand feet."

They walked in silence mostly, conversing in their private way that they had learned from Guoxin. The beauty was stunning, and occasionally they'd emerge from the forest to stand on the edge of the canyon between the mountain they were standing on, Alpine Peak, and the sheer rock face of Leavenworth Mountain on the other side of the valley. They stood and looked at the rock face in complete awe of the creation. They could see mine digs in the cliff face across the canyon from them.

Kenny hugged Yi from behind and pulled her tight to him. He sniffed the fragrance of her hair; it was a combination of flowers and citrus, and she knew how much he loved citrus. He will make a drink of lemon juice, lime juice and unsweetened tea because he likes the smell of it. 'Let's go get married,' he said silently.

'Silly, we're already engaged,' she replied silently.

'No, like the waitress said at La Granja. We go and self-sanctify or self-solemnize or whatever they're going to call it. We just have to file the license with the county clerk in Erie County when we get home, and we're legal. No judge, no pastor, no witness. Just a valid ID and a credit card.'

She twisted in his arms and leaned back to kiss him. 'You sure you want to have me strapped to your back for the rest of your life?'

'Now more than ever,' he said as they kissed. The symphony of the gurgling brook behind them, the aspen leaves rustling in the warm summer breeze, and the sound of chipmunks dashing about among the dead leaves on the ground sounded like the mountain itself was cheering them on. As the kiss ended and their eyes met, far, far off in the distance the sound of a train whistle could be heard. 'See? Everyone is happy with the idea.'

Yi made sure he was looking into her eyes when she spoke next, because she knew how much he loved her eyes, and he could never deny her anything if she asked him while they were gazing into each other's eyes. "Ok," she said out loud. "But you have to tell the twins that we're married when we get home."

<><><><><>

Zhang headed west casually, gaining altitude, doing nothing to draw attention. Like any other helicopter flying the front range, her flight plan kept her over open fields and close to roads in case there was a need for help. Her transponder showed her as ALS2252, an air limousine service. Another aircraft, a rental that Twin Dragons leased through a shadow company, took off from DIA fifteen minutes before Zhang took off. That helicopter had a transponder that was keyed to Twin Dragons Security. It headed to Denver and then turned south and paralleled the BNSF main line to Colorado Springs. Following the "Iron Compass" was a pilot's trick that goes back to the early days of aviation. Why go through the hassle of navigating when the railroads already did the work for you?

Like Mac MacDonald suspected, a chopper rose up and followed the southbound helicopter whose pilot only knew that he was to ferry the bird to "The Springs" and wait for a passenger. Fifteen minutes later, Zhang took off and headed due west. Unbeknownst to Zhang, a spotter south of the cargo ramp watched them quickly load Amos onto the Bell 412EPI, known as a Griffin. It's a sleek utility helicopter, and Zhang likes to call it a "Super Huey."

The 412 was the ultimate variation of the Bell 204, called the UH-1 Iroquois by the Army but the Huey by everybody else. The UH-1 had a single 800 shaft horsepower Lycoming engine and a huge double-blade rotary wing. It was a great helicopter, but the 412EPI will fly it off the edge of the earth. The Griffin has two Pratt and Whitney PT6T-9 engines and a four-blade rotary wing, an all-glass touchscreen cockpit and an electronic engine control system. It will fly up to 20,000 feet and take off successfully from the top of any mountain in the Rocky Mountains. Zhang's Griffin also has a threat warning radar that's constantly looking for an attacker.

She flew a perfect flight plan, paralleling I-70 like a hundred other helicopters, her head on a swivel looking for threats from birds in her flight path to shooters on hilltops. "Extend the HD antenna," she told Christof, and he did. It was a piece of wire with a weight on the end to keep it straight as she flew. Then she tuned the high-frequency radio to 8.430 MHz and set it to lower sideband. "Ganley Mountain Control, this is Dragon Seven, Ganley Mountain Control this is Dragon Seven."

"Go ahead Dragon," came Zane's voice through the static of High Frequency. HF radio, also known as shortwave, was a real pain to deal with. Sunspots and disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, even time of day, can make high frequency radio nearly unreadable, so very few people use it. Which makes it perfect. The HF spectrum is so broad that a brief conversation on a pre-arranged frequency could never be found unless someone knew what frequency you would be on.

"Open the door," said Zhang. She didn't wait for confirmation. When Zane said, 'go ahead Dragon,' that was confirmation enough. She had planned only one call on HF, which was to let him know she was passing over Empire, Colorado. That was a ten-minute hop away. The only other frequency Zane would be listening to was 121.5 MHz, known as International Air Distress. If Zhang were having an emergency she'd be calling out on that frequency. She turned to Christof and said, "Retract the antenna," then she tuned her radio to 121.5 MHz. When she approached Mt Ganley, she'd use the approach frequency of 118.1 MHz.

"Almost home," said Christof. "Where's your date tonight?"

"Clear Creek county court..." Zhang was interrupted by a quick screech of the threat warning radar followed by a loud BANG! and a thump, and the helicopter jerked to the left and began to rotate to the right. The glass cockpit went brilliant red with alarms, and the sound of sirens filled her ears. "Shut that fucking shit off!" demanded Zhang as she fought against the right rotation by pressing the left pedal. She fought to keep the ship in the air as Christof silenced the alarms. Then the bird began to vibrate, and Zhang said, "I think we lost a piece of a wing. Find me a landing spot."

Christof noticed they were between two mountains, which was the worst place you could be with a sick helicopter. "We don't want to be in this valley," said Christof. "We may have to set down in the lake." The lake he referred to was a reservoir that held Georgetown's drinking water.

Their wild flight took them over Georgetown and up between a pair of mountains before they could get the helicopter to respond to controls partially. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday Twin Dragon Zero, Zero, Seven with severe damage. We've lost one engine and experiencing extreme vibration," called Zhang on 121.5 MHz. She then called out, "is anyone hurt back there?"

Alicia, who had been asleep until the bang happened, woke with a start. She noticed that the glass on the door next to Joanna was shattered. Something heavy hit that glass. "We're fine captain," said Alicia. "Something hit the right side of the bird."

Zhang looked over at the rear door and gasped. That had to be a stinger. Stinger missiles don't actually hit the airplane or helicopter they're fired at; they have a proximity fuse. When it figures it will not get any closer, it detonates the warhead, and the shrapnel from the warhead does the damage.

"Over there!" shouted Christof. "Parking lot!"

"Gotcha!" said Zhang, and she fought her way to the nearly empty parking lot.

As she did that, Alicia turned to Joanna and said, "Aunt Jo, can you shoot?"

"Hell yeah, I'm a Maine girl."

Alicia dug the two G19 Glocks she took from the Baltimore cops and handed one to Joanna. "No matter what happens, neither Zhang nor I can go with anyone else. Neither alive or dead, nobody gets these nanobots."

It was then that Alicia realized why they had come after her uncle... because she would come after him. They didn't want Amos; they wanted her.

<><><><><>

"I need a squad of ten in the hangar; I need the shit-hook pushed outside and grappling gear ready to deploy," said Zane as he pulled on a flight suit and laced up his combat boots.

"You're not the head of Twin Dragon," started Mac MacDonald, but Zane interrupted him.

"No, I'm not, Alicia is, and she's going down in a sick helicopter with a full load of nanobots and a wounded United States senator," said Zane. "I firmly believe that this is the perfect time to overreact." He opened a locked drawer, thumbed five numbers on a five-digit combination lock, lifted the lid and pulled out a big, blocky-looking pistol. It was a Springfield Armory XD-M Elite 10mm Auto, an incredibly powerful pistol. It's said to be able to kill a bear. He just needed to kill a few air pirates. His hands were shaking as he took a loaded magazine and tried to slide it into the pistol.

"Damn it Zane, your hands are shaking, you can't be allowed in the field with a loaded weapon in that condition," roared Mac.

"Do NOT stand in my way Mister MacDonald," said Zane as he tried to move to the door.

Luckily, Ming arrived at the communication office. She reached up and put a gentle hand on the big security chief's shoulder and said in a gentle voice, "Go get my helicopter in the air Mac."

Just her appearance froze Zane in his tracks, but he continued. "I have to go ma'am. Zhang needs me." He was shocked at Ming's appearance. He noticed for the first time how much she looks like Zhang... and Yi. Chef Mark at the Wild Bison Eatery was right; the three of them look so similar. Other than in height, they could be sisters.

"Zhang needs you in that chair, Zane," Ming said softly. "She trusts you there. We got nobody better as a controller." She put her hands on his shoulders and stared into his eyes. "Please, we need you."

"Damnit," hissed Zane as he sat down in the controller chair and brought up the hangar security cameras on his alternate monitor and watched the ground team move the big Boeing Vertol 234. "Get the hangar doors open before you move that Piasecki!" he shouted at the hangar crew over the hangar loudspeaker. Zane has a dozen nicknames for everything in their inventory.

Zane got to work and started looking for Zhang. He then looked for a real-time satellite that could see the Empire area. Start at Empire and sweep south and then... There was something on the top of Columbia Mountain, a huge rock south of Empire and north of Georgetown. It looked like a small military unit breaking down and getting ready to bug out.

"Ganley Mountain, Twin Dragon Zero Four airborne."

"Ganley Mountain, Twin Dragon Zero Five airborne."

Four and Five were the two 'Easter Eggs' as Ming called them. They were tiny, speedy Hughes MD 500 helicopters. Great little observers, fantastic little special ops attack birds. "Twin Dragon zero four, Ganley Mountain, continue visual search along planned flight route. Zero five, I need you to take a look at the summit of Columbia Mountain, ASAP."

"Four copy."

"Five copy."

Where was Zhang? Her transponder could survive World War Three, so why isn't he seeing it? She's got to be in a canyon that's blocking the signal. If she were in a canyon, her transponder signal would go up. He needs the Chinook in the air as high as it can go so it can hear her.

<><><><><>

Yi and Kenny paused for one more selfie in front of the remains of the Colorado Central silver mill. It was built at the height of the silver rush in the last half of the 19th century, and when the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed and the US government was no longer investing in silver, the entire industry collapsed. Mines and mills all over Colorado and Nevada were abandoned.

As they walked along the path heading back to the parking lot, they talked silently with each other. It was no longer "if we get married..." sentences now started with "When we get married..." Kenny and his family lived in a big farmhouse attached to the family feed store, and he had a nice apartment in the basement. She lived with the family she worked for. She had a huge, luxurious bedroom with an enormous bathtub that she had no desire to give up. 'We could commute,' said Kenny silently. 'One night at your place, one night at my place...'

'Doctor Jarecki will let you move in with us,' said Yi.

'Grandpa Archie said the same thing about you.'

An observer would only see a well-built, tall blond man standing silently next to an equally silent Asian woman. She was shorter than Kenny, but she was tall for an Asian girl. 'There's another option,' said Yi silently, and she mentioned an older couple with a big house where they could rent a room, and it was between her work and his.

Suddenly Kenny smiled. 'Yi, very quiet, turn around.' She looked at him oddly, but she knew that smile, so she turned around... and right there was a deer. It was a male white-tail with a full rack of antlers. It was only 10 feet away. Yi's jaw dropped. She's only seen deer from a distance as they slipped through the twilight shadows and occasionally stood on the shoulder of a country road. Slowly, she raised her phone and took a picture. Kenny got a magnificent picture of Yi smiling and looking back over her shoulder at Kenny with the deer right there in the background.

The deer paused for several more photos, then walked off regally into the forest.

"Wow," said Yi out loud. It was the first word spoken out loud in over an hour.

NOW YOU NEED TO WORK.

The voice of the emperor rang in their minds. He had never asked them to work for him before, but they knew that it would come; it was the price of the black pearls. Then they heard the rapid-fire thump-thump-thump-thump of a helicopter's rotor blades slapping the air as it got closer and closer. "Sounds like they're going to land," said Kenny, who has been in more than a few helicopters in his ten years in the army.

"I wonder if that's Zhang," said Yi as she started trotting along the path to the parking lot. They both realized that this helicopter was the 'work' that Guoxin promised, but were they supposed to run toward the chopper or away from it? They both chose 'toward' the helicopter and dashed to the parking lot in time to see a Bell Griffin helicopter skew sideways to a landing in the lot. The Griffin was not marked with a company name, and as the tail swung around, they could see serious damage on the right-hand side of the chopper. It was shuddering violently, and Kenny correctly assumed that damage to one of the blades put it out of balance.

"It's Zhang!" said Yi, and she tried to dash to the helicopter, but Kenny held her back.

"Wait for everything to stop," he warned.

As the blades slowed, the centrifugal force on the rotor blades lessened, and one blade sagged badly. As it came around, it slammed into the tail, causing the entire rotor assembly to slam to a stop. Inside the helicopter, the occupants were struggling to get out. Yi dashed to the helicopter, and Kenny followed. They avoided the stricken co-pilot's side of the bird because the doors looked warped. On the pilot side, Kenny was able to yank the sliding rear door open, then he turned to fight the pilot's door. "Let's get out people!" he called in his "Sergeant Kenny voice" as Yi calls it.

The passengers had a tough landing and got banged up. They looked dazed, and all had to be helped out. When Kenny pulled open the pilot's door, Yi and Zhang fell into each other's arms. Kenny helped Alicia out, and she threw her helmet across the parking lot and shouted, "I hate these fucking things." She had a bloody nose and the start of a black eye.

"You must be Alicia," said Kenny as he helped Joanna out. "Zane told me about you."

The senator's gurney was wrenched and would not come out. "Can you walk senator?" asked Kenny as Christof crawled over the pilot's seat to get out.

"Better than I can fly," said the senator, and Kenny unstrapped him and half lifted him to the door of the helicopter as a second helicopter circled and started a landing approach.

"Your help is here already," said Yi.

Zhang looked at the helicopter. It was a Bell 402, a similar helicopter to theirs. "That's not ours," said Zhang.

The helicopter turned hard over the parking lot, then pulled its nose up high to stop. It leveled out, and the two rear doors slid open, then two heavy ropes dropped from the chopper. "Get the civilians out of here," shouted Alicia, but Kenny was still trying to get the senator out of the back of the helicopter.

Just as Kenny got the Senator out of the helicopter, four men slid down the ropes and ran toward them. One of them raised a gun and shot Christof through the heart, killing him instantly. Time slowed to a crawl for Kenny as the other chopper moved away and lowered to an open spot in the parking lot. Alicia shouted something and pulled a pistol from her purse, but one of the men from the helicopter raised what looked like a cop's radar gun and Alicia sank to the ground screaming.

Kenny had two teams of two men coming at them. One man had an M-4 rifle, which he used to kill Christof, and he turned to aim at Kenny. 'Yi! Run!' Kenny shouted soundlessly, and he bent to check Alicia. She was on the ground, freaking out. She was shouting something, but he couldn't make sense of it. She had a pistol, but it fell out of her hand, and she tried to pick it up, but her hands weren't working. Kenny saw a man approaching Yi and Zhang, and the thought processes stopped. He scooped up the pistol and turned to run toward Yi.

A man from the other chopper pointed the radar gun at Zhang, and she dropped to her knees screaming, clapping her hands over her ears. As she did that, the guy pointed the radar gun at Yi, and she kicked him in the balls. 'Good girl!' Kenny thought, and Yi dropped to her knees to check on Zhang. As she did that, the guy with the radar gun hit her in the head with the radar gun, and she crumpled to the ground.

"YI!" Kenny shrieked both silently and out loud, but she didn't respond. He couldn't feel her. For the first time in months, he was out of contact with Yi. "You bastard!" he shrieked as he raised his pistol. The fellow tried to bring a real gun to bear, but Kenny was ready, and his pistol roared twice. He fired two rounds at the man. The first one got him in the arm he was holding the radar gun; the second one caught him in the hip. The fellow with the M4 stepped into the clear, and Kenny put two rounds into him. Then there was an explosion of pain, and he dropped to his side. 'Guoxin! Help!' he shouted wordlessly, but if there was a response from the dragon, he wasn't conscious to hear it.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

The loud slapping of rotor blades woke Kenny, and he looked up to see a crimson red and gold Chinook hovering above him. The senator's wife leaned into his field of vision and asked, "Are you awake? Are you with us?"

His world was a world of pain, but he was so dizzy... shit. Dizzy means low blood pressure. "I'm dizzy."

"That's not good," said Senator Nourse. "Relax. Your ambulance is here."

Senator Nourse's hands were covered with blood, as were Joanna's hands. Kenny realized that they were bandaging someone, and he wondered whose blood was on their hands.

The crimson red twin-rotor bird slowly lowered to the ground while the state police poked and prodded everything. That a US Senator was there and bragging about how these guys tried to kill him but Kenny and Christof risked their lives to save him ensured the investigation was going to be a quick one.

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again and found he was in a flying Chinook. It doesn't matter how fancy the interior of a Chinook was; the machinegun-fast throbbing of the twin rotors as the fastest helicopter in the world raced to a destination was always the same. He was wearing an oxygen mask, and he tried to take it off, but someone brushed his hands away. He had to get Yi, don't they understand? But he couldn't get up; he was strapped down. A man leaned into his field of vision and said, "Let me give you something to help you rest." He injected something into an IV line. It was cloudy, and he watched the white cloud move down the line until it reached the back of his hand where the IV line was plugged into him, then everything got blurry. He closed his eyes and suddenly he was standing in front of Guoxin.

"Forgive me lord Guoxin, I lost her," gasped Kenny. He fell to his knees and began to cry.

YOU'RE NOT DONE said the gigantic dragon so loud Kenny's head hurt. He steeled himself to be bitten in half. It's what he deserved for losing Yi, but Guoxin faded away, and Kenny became disconnected from everything, then before he could process it, a voice woke him. "All right, who the hell are you?" He opened his eyes and was looking up at an angry-looking nurse. She was standing over Kenny as his eyes fluttered open.

"Huh?"

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded again.

"Johnson, Kensington, P. My rank is Salesman, first class. Sporting goods. Serial Number Oscar Uniform Eight One Two."

Mac McDonald leaned over and said, "You trying to be some kind of a hee-row sergeant?"

"Johnson, Kensington, P. Salesman, first class. Sporting goods. Serial Number Oscar Uniform Eight One Two."

"What is he saying Zane?" came Ming's voice from somewhere close.

"He's being a wiseass," said Zane Zigler. "Serial number O U 8 1 2?"

"He's a ten-year army Master Sergeant, special ops," said Mac. "He turned the Korean DMZ into his personal electronics suite. He's a fucking legend."

"I was just a computer nerd, now I run a feed store."

"You shut down the entire North Korean Air Force twice."

"I need to find Yi," he said, and he struggled to get up, but a huge hand pushed him back.

"Hey Special K, remember me?"

Kenny looked at the big guy, who was leaning over and holding him down to the mattress. "Dunk?"

Dunkan O'Reilly grinned at Kenny and said, "They call me Jester in this unit."

"I have to go Dunk; I have to get my girl."

"And I have to get my girl too," said Dunkan, and he took his hands away from Kenny. "I ain't goin' nowhere until you're up and ready to go."

"I need to go," said Kenny.

Just then, Ming leaned over him. He thought she was Yi at first, then maybe Zhang. "You need to heal," she said. "You took three bullets and lost a lot of blood."

"I can't feel her!" said Kenny. "She could be dead!"

"She's not dead," said Ming. "They think she's me and they have her sedated for some reason."

"How do you know they think she's you?" asked Kenny as he tried to get up again. "Where is she?"

"We're copying their radio chatter," said Ming softly, then her features went cold. "Now you sleep. You used up our entire reserve of A negative blood and put a dent in our plasma reserves." She touched his forehead, and his entire body went limp. Before he drifted off into unconsciousness, there was an IV bag feeding what looked like silver paint into his arm.

Ming hated 'shutting down' people like that, but right now, whoever this fellow was, needed rest more than anything. They had spent an evening together, but now she has more questions than she has answers. "Mac, Dunkan, my office," and she whisked out of the clinic on the sixth subbasement level and swept up to her office closer to the ground floor.

<><><><><>

Ming didn't have a big, extravagant office. There was enough room for one desk, several chairs and stacks of paperwork. There were three offices in a row, one for the CEO of Long Picorobotics, but she hasn't found someone to fill that role yet. Then there was her office, and then on the other side was the CEO of Twin Dragon Security - Alicia. And she's thinking of firing Alicia, if she lives. She shouldn't have put herself in a position of danger like that! Ming swept a stack of papers off her desk in frustration and dropped into her chair in exhaustion. What happened out there?

She slammed her fist down on the desk and shouted, "What the hell happened?"

There came a tap at the door, and without looking up, she shouted, "I'm busy!"

"You told us you wanted to see us," came the voice of Mac from out in the hallway.

She swore to herself, then called out, "Sorry," and unlocked the door, allowing Mac, Dunkan and Zane to scan their retinas and enter. The door slid open with the same sound the doors on the Star Trek original series made, and for the thousandth time Ming reminded herself to ask Shan to reprogram them to something less annoying.

"You guys seem to know Kenny. Tell me about him." Then she looked up and groaned. "Don't stand at attention, sit down."

"Yes ma'am."

Ming wanted to shout, "don't yes ma'am me!" but that would just make it worse. She knew she was fucking up when her veterans started snapping to attention. When it gets bad, they salute her. She tried to keep them close; they're like a barometer of her treatment of the employees. She tried to calm down without breaking down. Shan was in a full panic trying to figure out what happened to Alicia and Zhang. He hasn't come out of his lab since the video of the attack appeared on his screen. The image of them curled up in a ball screaming was horrible. What did the agency do to them?

Finally, she said, "You know this guy Kenny. What is he?"

"Just by reputation ma'am," said Mac. "He was kind of a legend in Special Forces Intel. They said he knew Kim Yon Bok's every move before he woke up in the morning."

"Who is Kim Yon Bok?"

"He was head of the North Korean Air Force. Sergeant Johnson made Master Sergeant in under ten years. That's damn near impossible but he did it. He turned down a commission; he said that OTS would take him out of the field too long. Three tours on the DMZ, draggin' his ass through the mud, then he just said, 'fuck it' and went home."

"Why did he quit?" she asked.

Mac and Duncan looked at each other and shrugged. "Had to be something personal," said Dunkan. "If it had anything to do with the Army it would have been posted on every shithouse wall from here to... uh, sorry ma'am. Army talk. He always told me that being a computer geek in the Army was just a cover story for his actual mission."

"And what was that?" asked Ming.

"To find a Korean wife," said Dunkan. "He once told me that it was his destiny."

"You said he shut down the North Korean Air Force twice. How the hell did he do that?"

"He trolled them ma'am... uh... Mi... uh..."

"Dunkan, relax. Just talk like it was last month and the world hadn't gone to shit yet."

Chuckling at hearing Ming say shit, Dunkan continued. "He was constantly in their system. The first time he shut them down, he had found out that they were going to have an exercise at a specific time. They had a centralized timekeeping system, and fifteen minutes before the exercise was going to kick off, he moved all the clocks ahead one hour. They never figured it out. They suddenly realized they were 45 minutes behind and went crazy trying to make up the lost time. When things were completely fucked up, he moved the clocks back, and backed out so sweetly they never discovered. Their exercise was in complete disarray before it even started. About a dozen generals got shit canned over that one."

"And the second time?"

"That was a work of art. North Korea gets all their jet fuel from Russia, so Special K tweaked a little here and a little there and decimal points got moved automatically. They would order 100 train cars of fuel, and Russia would load up 100 train cars of fuel, but the Korean Air Force would only get ten. The rest got sent back to the refinery as contaminated fuel. It didn't take long for the Air Force to run out of JP4. They never found what the true cause was."

"So he'd be first on the list to hack into us..."

"No," said Dunkan firmly. "Not Special K. He's one of the good ones. He'd probably never work for this company because we can get a bit sketchy at times... but he'd never work for anyone like the agency."

"What do you mean sketchy?" demanded Ming.

"You have three prisoners in the subbasement," said Zane, opening up for the first time. "We can't just sit on them for ten years."

"I know, I know," groaned Ming.

"Ma'am, let me handle it," said Mac. "I'll make sure they get their freedom and they won't be a threat."

"What are you going to do?" said Ming, her voice wavering in terror.

"It's probably best you don't know. Don't worry, they'll be happy and safe. A little amnesia is all."

"Don't tell me, I just want to know how Kenny and Yi got right there where our helicopter went down."

"It's got to be coincidence," said Mac.

"You were right there at dinner with us," said Zane. "They mentioned how pretty Georgetown was, then I mentioned taking Zhang hiking up at Silver Dale trailhead."

"It was just like the agency herded Zhang to that area," said Dunkan.

"They did," said Zane, who had done nothing but study the recordings of that mission for the past 72 hours. "Idaho Springs to Georgetown, that's a bottle neck. She was carrying an ambulance patient; she couldn't want to get too far away from a hardened road if she needed help."

"We have a fleet of helicopters that could back her up anywhere."

"They hit her, drove her up the South Clear Creek canyon, shot up her team and took off with Yi and Alicia before our helicopters reached altitude!"

"Zane, please calm down."

"Calm down? My fiancée is down in the infirmary in an induced coma because her brain was fried. Why? Because somebody zapped her with a magnetron from a fucking kitchen microwave and cooked her nanobots like popcorn!"

"That's enough Zane!" roared Mac.

"No!" shouted Zane. He jumped to his feet and glared at Mac. "What are you going to do? Hit me? Do you think I care?" He started screaming, "I failed Zhang again, so go ahead and hit me. Hit me damnit! I dare you! You ain't got the balls!" Mac jumped up, but instead of hitting Zane, he pulled the distraught spy into a hug and held him tight until Zane stopped ranting and began to weep. "How can she not hate me?"

"Enough man. That's enough. It's ok."

"She's going to hate me," groaned Zane.

"That's fine. Then you get to win her back all over again. Just relax."

Ming felt the same way. Her wife was somewhere, and how was Alicia being treated? Ming hadn't slept herself; she doesn't know how to sleep alone anymore, not since meeting Alicia. Shan has been working day and night trying to make nanobots hardened against electromagnetic pulses. The thing that Kenny thought was a radar gun was just that; it used a magnetron from a microwave oven that was boosted until it could be considered a maser (Microwaves Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) That feeling of nausea came over her again. "Any suggestions?" she asked. "Anything at all?"

"Yeah," said Dunkan, who seemed to be the only one who still had his head screwed on straight, which was odd for him. "You got the top computer hacker in special ops down in the ER. Hook him up and let him loose." Ming looked at Dunkan like he was crazy, but Dunkan said, "You have a mountain full of computers, you've got a shielded VPN that has the same bandwidth as a tsunami. Let him look for his girl and raise some hell while he's at it."

"I'll think about it."

<><><><><>

Ming went down to the nanorobotics lab and found Shan in the middle of a cloud of robotics designers and they were still puzzling how to "harden" nanobots against EMP. "It's not just the handheld maser," said one fellow who was a professor at Stanford. "There's microwaves everywhere. How do we protect our robots against it?"

When he said that, words started appearing in Ming's head: static electricity, ground yourself, Faraday cage, ground strap, and more. Deciding they were fragments of memories, she edged through the crowd and grabbed Shan's arm. "I need you," she whispered.

"You could have paged me," said Shan. 'Paged' is the term they use for sending messages through their nanobots AI.

"No. Not personal enough," and she tugged him away from the discussion.

"What should I tell these guys to do?"

Ming looked at the scientists from behind Shan and said, "Take a break boys. Get a good night's sleep and start fresh in the morning. There's pizza and wings in the cafeteria tonight." They looked skeptical about the idea of a break until she mentioned the pizza and wings. They were all in on that.

She led Shan to the cafeteria, where she asked for a medium pepperoni to go and a medium bucket of wings, and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. Shan's favorite food. They took the executive elevator up, and the moment the door closed; she burst into tears. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Ziggy and Zhang were going to get married yesterday. Yi and Kenny were going to get married before they head back to New York. I ruined everything." All Shan could do was hold Ming and the pizza. He doesn't know much about women, but he knows that a good cry helps.

She was still weeping when they got to their floor and walked down the mineshaft to the New Orleans-style courtyard. Amos and Joanna Nourse were there, as was Fruit Loop, who had flown in with one of Amos's aides. They had a pizza as well. "We had hoped that we could fill this courtyard with friends and maybe with children," said Shan. "We can't have any but maybe we can adopt some day." The words "I know a guy," appeared in Ming and Shan's head but they ignored it. Neither realized that they both heard that voice.

The four ate in partial silence, trying not to talk about Alicia as if she were dead. Light rock from the 80s played in the background, and the artificial sky darkened as it grew late. The courtyard was soon lit by artificial fireflies that glowed and flew around the center fountain and the lush tropical plants in front of the four apartments that overlooked the courtyard. Senator and Mrs. Nourse had an open invitation to stay in apartment number four, and they were becoming used to their underground home away from home.

Sadly, they finished up their dinner and turned in for the night, each hoping the next day would be better. Shan and Ming went into apartment number two, which was Ming's original apartment. Shan was in number one, and Alicia was in three, and they would commute. Getting married solved all that when they all moved in with Ming, but somehow, even with Shan close, the apartment felt empty without Alicia.

"How long have you been standing?" said Ming as she helped Shan undress.

"Too long."

"You know you can't stand on your artificial legs too long, you have to treat them like prosthetics," scolded Ming.

"I know, I know," mumbled Shan, and he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Ming didn't even remember getting under the covers she was so tired.

Ming was woken up by Kenny shouting at her. "Get these damn bugs out of me!" he demanded.

She struggled to open her eyes and saw Kenny standing in her bedroom at the foot of the bed. "What are you doing in my bedroom? How did you get here?"

He looked around, surprised to realize he was in her room. He shook his head and glared at her. "Don't change the subject. Get these bugs out of me! I'm not going to die slamming my head into a concrete wall like Westcott did. I want them out!"

"Who?" asked Ming. She realized that she could see through Kenny, even in the near total darkness of the bedroom. Shan insisted on a bedroom so dark he could develop film in it. She shook him and said, "Shan, do you know anyone name Westcott?"

Shan mumbled and turned over, then said, "Yeah, one of the guys in the nano lab. He disappeared while Alicia was still in Archuleta. They said he resigned over money."

"Any chance he could have ingested a bunch of nanobots and ran off to the agency with them in his bloodstream?"

"Depending on the nanobots programming that could have been fatal. He worked in the animal testing lab, he wouldn't have access to nanobots designed for use in humans."

"What if he was stupid?" asked Ming.

"Then he's probably dead," mumbled Shan. "They would have driven him insane." And he went back to sleep.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

Alicia Ingersoll tried not to weep, but the need to let the anguish out was just too great. When the agency men attacked them, they pointed something that looked like a cop's traffic radar gun at her, and suddenly her entire body was engulfed in flame. It felt like all of her nanobots had burst into flame, and she was incapable of doing anything but screaming in agony. Someone eventually injected her with something that knocked her out. It didn't stop the pain until each nanobot died from overexertion.

She was back at square one. Her legs were useless; her hands were just lumps at the end of her arms, and she was deaf. Well, mostly deaf. Over the past couple of years, along with help from the nanobots, some healing has occurred in her right ear. She heard someone whisper, "Are you up?"

Alicia struggled to turn over, and she wept in frustration. If she lives, she's got to start all over again with nanobot ingestion and physical therapy at the Archuleta Mesa Medical Facility in Colorado Springs. She finally turned to where she could see the woman lying next to her, an Asian woman who looked like Zhang... no, actually more like Ming. "Who are you?"

"I'm Yi-jin Carlson. My fiancé and I are friends with Zhang and Zane."

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know, I was helping Zhang out of the helicopter and these four guys came out of the second helicopter. One shot Zhang's co-pilot, the other one aimed a ray gun at her and she freaked out. He aimed it at me and I gave him a Jackie Chan right in the nuts."

"A what?" asked Alicia, laughing despite everything that was happening to her.

"A Jackie Chan. My older brother Brian taught me martial arts. He said, 'there's polite martial arts, then there's Jackie Chan.' That's when you hit your opponent with anything you have. Stepladder, paint bucket, milking stool, anything. He wouldn't teach me Jackie Chan until I learned Hapkido."

"You're crazy," said Alicia.

"That guy said the same thing until a size six hiking boot drove his balls up into his throat. He still hit me in the head with his ray gun and knocked me out. I fucked up, I should have saved the nut buster for my finishing move."

Alicia looked at Yi in shock. The slim Asian reminded Alicia of a young Alicia. She was fearless! They were in a basement room somewhere, and she's talking about fucking up at martial arts. Now she was lying next to her, handcuffed, and she was silently singing. "Where did you come from?"

"Miami."

"No," said Alicia, shaking her head. "How did you get to our wreck so fast?"

"We were hiking at Silver Dale. You almost landed on our rental. I hope Kenny called the agency; it's supposed to be returned tomorrow." Then the Asian woman fell silent, but she was making little rhythmic movements.

"What are you doing?"

"Singing."

"No really, what are you doing?"

"Singing. Kenny is sleeping right now, he'll hear me when he wakes up."

"You're crazy."

<><><><><>

Ming and Shan sat in Kenny's room waiting for him to wake up, but neither wanted to stir him. They sat worrying until the nurse Agnes came in. She looked at her tiny wristwatch and then said, "That's enough sleep. Get up sleepy head." She shook Kenny's good shoulder.

Kenny's eyes blinked open, and he snapped, "Easy nurse Ratchet..." then suddenly he stopped. His features softened, and a smile flickered on his lips. Ming and Shan could see the tension flow out of his body, and he sank deep into the mattress. "She's singing to me," he said happily.

"Pardon?"

"She and three other girls have a quartet, she sings tenor." He listened to a song only he could hear while Ming and Shan looked confused. Finally, Shan sent a command.

AI: Search for singing on any internal communication network.

-> Response from Nanotech cluster RN388-36-SL98θ1015. There is no singing on any listed net.

"She's singing a song for our friends. We have two couples that got married on Christmas eve so Yi's quartet is working on an old Irving Berlin song, Christmas Time is Years and Years Away." Now Kenny looked like he was in a deep conversation. Then he looked at Ming and said, "Alicia says she needs the first Roberta."

"I don't understand," said Shan.

"When I was at Archuleta Mesa with Alicia, I was using Roberta's face," said Ming. "Only Alicia and Roberta would know that." For the first time in what seemed like months, excitement coursed through Ming. Kenny found Alicia!

"I need something only Alicia would know," said Kenny. Ming blushed bright red but said nothing. "We may not have time," said Kenny. "I need something now."

Ming burst out, "I miss her tiger stripe tits." Due to the sick torture that Alicia received from Daniel Boothroyd, she has scars on her breasts that Ming called 'tiger stripes' one evening. Only Alicia and Ming knew the remark that caused them so much grim laughter.

A moment later, Kenny said, "That worked. Yi and Alicia are ok, Alicia says all her nanobots are dead but they're still trying to draw them out and study them."

"Are they collecting her urine?" asked Ming.

"Yi says no."

"Idiots," laughed Shan. "Dead nanobots are flushed out through the kidneys. Their legs retract and they're let free in the blood stream."

"Do they know where they are?" asked Ming.

Kenny relaxed, and a myriad of expressions flashed over his face, from content to happy to heartbroken. "She says they're being taken care of, but they are going to be presented to the general when he arrives."

"Keep monitoring," said Ming. "The nanobots in your body are there to promote healing. Think of them as internal stitches." She handed him a laptop. "Dunkan says this is the equivalent of a bazooka in your hands." As he opened the cover, she said, "Open fire."

"I'm a bit rusty ma'am. I've done nothing but store inventory and ordering supplies since I got out."

"I'm not looking for stealth; I'm looking for retribution. Ever since I took over this air freight company the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency has been on my ass. This is the final straw. Do you need anything else?"

"I hate this room. Got any place that look less than her dungeon of horrors?" asked Kenny, and he pointed at Nurse Agnes.

"You need to work on your people skills, Agnes," said Shan.

<><><><><>

Three hours later, Shan walked into Apartment Number One, his old apartment. They gave that to Kenny as his workshop and granted him access to much of Ganley Mountain. Many of the old monitors were still up on the wall, and Kenny had something displayed on each of them. One of them was a picture of Alicia lying on her side, her head on a pillow, looking at the monitor. She was talking, but there was no audio. "What's this?" asked Shan.

"Oh, that's live."

"How did you get a camera to them?"

"No camera, everything on that monitor is what Yi sees. I send it to my nanobots who are linked to this laptop."

"How do you see everything she sees?"

"You tell me," said Kenny. "You're more Chinese than I am. I just discovered my Chinese heritage last year. Next thing I know I'm arguing with a dragon and hitting on a Korean nanny."

"My folks were hippies," said Shan. "Mom's ethnicity was like hippy currency. It was more a stoner religion than a nationality. She looks at Mao and sees a demi-god come to earth. I look and see a tyrant who used his people as pawns." He shrugged and said, "dragons are for parades."

I LIKE PARADES.

"Very funny," said Shan.

"I didn't do that," said Kenny, who was typing furiously. "Look up the following things: Yellow dragon, black pearls and dragons, and Guoxin Emperor."

Ming walked in and saw Kenny and Shan seated at the former dinner table, both typing away on their laptops. The monitors on the wall had lists of people, but the lists were generated by different agencies. "Ok, the list on the left monitor is of the known employees of the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency. The names highlighted in yellow were hidden. As far as I can tell, they do nothing, but they get a six-figure income."

"That one is a senator," said Ming as she thoughtfully viewed the list. "This one is a CEO with a big defense contractor."

"They all have positions that would enrich the agency. This is as ugly as it can get," said Kenny. "You've heard of the swamp? This is a morass, a quagmire. I want you to know, when I open fire, this will be a firefight you've never seen before. If I can mow them down fast, in one volley, we will have a chance, but I'm not going to open fire until I can figure out where Yi and Alicia are being held."

Ming looked on in amazement. Kenny had been working for three hours and had identified every man and woman employed by the agency and all of their benefactors. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm tracking their movements over the past three months. There's got to be a central location, a singular rock that they're crawling out from under.

Ming had so much work to do that she let Kenny do his thing, and she'd wait for his reports. Three days later and still no report, so Ming stepped into the room, and it was packed with many of her IT people. Kenny was giving a lecture about following people via their movements on the internet and the dark web. "Who the hell is running this company now?" she thought to herself.

<><><><><>

Yi was quiet with her captors at first. They would bring her food, but they would bring nothing for Alicia, so she fed Alicia half of her rations. "That wasn't for her, that was for you!" shouted a guard.

"Then bring me nothing," said Yi, and she didn't eat for days until they started bringing Alicia food as well. Yi still had to feed her because her hands, while perfect looking, were controlled by nanobots, which were now gone. Both Alicia and Yi knew what their missions were - get clues to where they are, find out about the General, and Yi was to continue to let them think she was Ming.

"Eat up, the general is coming, we don't want him to think we've been starving you do we?"

"General? I don't remember a general," said Yi as she held a sandwich for Alicia to bite. She was terrified. This guy was big and scary, and he was close to the bed they were sitting on. Her hands shook, and she bit her lip in fear as he stepped closer.

It's okay, my love, I'm here for you, and I will be forever, said Kenny silently from his station in the apartment. He waved his hand, and the nerd chatter that filled the room ended. You are doing so good my dear.

"You don't remember your own father?" demanded the guard.

You were hit in the head, said Kenny silently.

"I was hit in the head so hard," said Yi. "I didn't remember my wife's name." She leaned over and touched her forehead to Alicia's forehead for emphasis.

"The general probably won't be very happy about that," said the guard. He looked up something on his phone and then held the phone up to Yi so she could see a picture of an ancient Asian man. He was old and wrinkled and angry-looking. He was bald; he had a long hook nose; and his eyes were squinty and sneaky looking. "This is the real man behind the agency," said the guard.

Kenny shrugged and looked at the image he captured on the laptop. He saved a screenshot and then projected it up on one of the wall monitors - the big monitor, a 48-inch TV. "Anyone know this guy?" asked Kenny. The roomful of hackers shook their heads. They don't deal with human beings; they deal with data.

Nobody here knows who that is, Kenny told Yi silently. Then Yi noticed that Alicia was shaking. "Honey? You ok? Alicia? Come on baby, eat your lunch."

"I killed him!" hissed Alicia.

Yi reached out to Kenny silently. Kenny, something's not right with Alicia. She's locked up and won't eat. She said she killed that general guy. Maybe Shan or Ming knows something.

Oh, shoot, how do we do this... AI: Send message to Ming and Shan. Message as follows. Need help. Something is wrong with Alicia.

"Ming is coming, hang on Alicia. Kenny called for her."

"Kenny?"

"He's got bots now, he called her."

"How are you talking to him?"

"It's weird, I'll explain it when we get back."

"We're not getting back," said Alicia, and she started to hyperventilate. "We're not getting back!"

"Shhh! They'll hear us."

Alicia clawed at Yi with her limp hands and began crying. "I don't want to die!" As Alicia wept and Yi tried to calm her down, Ming walked into Kenny's 'Hacker Room' and looked at the big monitor on the wall, and she shrieked in horror.

"WHO PUT THAT UP? WHO PUT THAT FUCKING THING UP?"

Kenny almost asked her to calm down, but he knew that would be a mistake. He let her vent and threaten to fire everyone in the room until Shan showed up and said, "Why did you put a picture of her father up?"

"The guard told Yi and Alicia that the general was coming," said Kenny. "Yi told them she didn't know the general so the guard showed her that picture."

"He's alive?" she said in a small voice. "NOOOOOO!"

Yi could hear Ming's cries of anguish because they affected Kenny so deeply. You need to take over, baby, said Yi. Work the problem.

Kenny turned to Sean, who was trying to console Ming, and said, "I need whoever is running Twin Dragons in here now. Is Zhang on her feet yet?" When Shan nodded, Kenny said, "I need Zane and Zhang in here as well. It's time to lay down some plans. You nerds, I want you to scrub every conversation we have transcribed and get me a location."

"Yes boss?" they said nervously.

"You hijacked my nerds?" asked Shan.

"No one told me not to," said Kenny. Then he looked at Ming and said, "we're going to get this bastard, ma'am. Now that I can see him, I know what Guoxin wants to do."

The room was filled with the sound of frenzied typing; a new urgency filled the air. "Kenny! We found 'em!" shouted one of Shan's nerds.

"How? How did you find them?" Kenny hadn't slept in three days and he was exhausted, but this news woke him up.

"I'm surprised you didn't think of it," said a nerd that Kenny called Dexter because he looked like he had a future in mass murder. "We tracked down their electrical provider and called in an issue with smoke coming out of their meter. We then kept an eye on North New Mexico power for smoking meter and got the address from the trouble ticket."

"Ok," said Shan, who was excited. "Where are they?"

Dexter adjusted his glasses. It was time to look good in front of his boss, even though they probably broke several laws getting this information. "Archuleta Mesa." He saw the disappointed look on Shan's face and said, "We checked it, even followed the repair truck to the location. About ten miles north of Dulce New Mexico. The general will fly into Pagosa Springs on Thursday then catch a helicopter to Dulce Base."

When he said New Mexico, Shan looked surprised. He was thinking of the Archuleta Mesa picorobotics clinic in Colorado Springs. New Mexico? Archuleta Mesa is a fairy tale, a conspiracy theory. It's supposed to be a joint CIA/space alien base near Dulce, New Mexico. Kenny leaned over Dexter's shoulder and reviewed the data. "Shan, he's right. The data matches."

Shan pointed to a young man who looked poised either to do research or to spread a strange computer virus. "Danny, get me everything on this location, I want to know what's real and not History Channel weirdness."

"On it boss," and the kid he called Danny began searching for Shan's request.

Ming was still shaking in Shan's arms, but she began to pay attention. "What time is he arriving?" she asked.

"Uh, I'm not sure."

"It's kind of important," said Kenny. "The day after tomorrow is Thursday." He turned to Mac and said, "Get me your final list of people going in, and put me on that list. I need it ASAP." He turned to Ming and said, "We need three whirly birds, two to haul the troops to Archuleta Mesa, one to pick up the general from Pagosa Springs. Dexter, start making us access badges for the Archuleta Mesa facility."

"H-h-how?"

Kenny gave Dexter a noogie. "Hack the security system, see what type of badges they use and get with our security geek here. Everyone on Mac's list gets one." He pointed to a tiny, nervous-looking girl. "Big Julie, do that TSA thing."

"Now?" she said with a squeak.

"Right now, darling. You're firing the opening salvo."

The tiny nerd grinned from behind her enormous glasses. Her fingers danced on her keyboard and finally she said, "It's done! All employees of The Technology and Applications Oversight Agency are on the TSA No Fly list."

<><><><><>

Senator Marvin Briscoe strolled into his office to find it oddly quiet for a Wednesday morning. He looked around, and most of the offices and workspaces were empty. He had a couple of interns and his secretary Marcia, a large, angry but highly efficient black woman whose job was to terrify everyone except campaign donors. "Where is everyone today Marcia?"

"They're still in New Orleans sir."

"I'm going to fire them all," he grumbled. Last night he gave a speech at a large fundraiser for him in the Big Easy even though he represents Idaho. He let the senior members of his staff go as an incentive for their upcoming work in the election next year. "Get Briggs on the phone," and he stormed into his office. Sleeping on the red eye from NOLA to DC did not improve his attitude after rubbing elbows with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who believed their campaign donation buys a senator.

His phone buzzed, and he heard Marcia's voice saying, "Mister Briggs on line one."

Senator Briscoe hit the speakerphone and demanded, "Where the fuck are you?"

"We just left Mobile Alabama," said Briggs.

"May I ask why you are in Mobile Alabama?" roared the Senator.

"We're on the TSA no-fly list," said Kermit Briggs. "We're on a Greyhound Bus now."

"Did you think to get on an Amtrak Train?" snapped Senator Briggs.

"Yes sir, but no-fly also means no Amtrak also. It also makes renting a car a real bitch."

Marcia entered the office and handed the senator a note. Senator Briscoe read the note as his chief of staff complained about how the bus smelled. The note was from the director of the FBI. It simply stated that Kermit Briggs and two other members of his staff were under investigation for taking bribes from a terrorist organization. "Listen, Kermit, try to make the best of it. There will be a ride waiting for you at the bus terminal."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

The enormous Boeing Vertol model 234 twin-rotor helicopter thumped its way southwest, its big rotors punishing the air as it flew. "This is it folks," said Mac on the intercom. "We go in, get Agent Ingersoll, and come back out. This is simply a snatch and grab, and we leave no dead bodies behind. Leave whatever payback you feel is due to Miss Long. She will deal with it. Do you copy?"

All agents on the chopper responded with a loud "Hoo-ah!"

"This is the architect of this plan, Kensington Johnson. He's a former Army intelligence expert. Kenny, they're all yours."

Kenny looked at his phone and saw that Ship 1 had taken off from Stevens Field Airport in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It was a quick hop from there to Dulce, New Mexico, then a short vehicle ride to the base. "We are headed to Dulce Base at Archuleta Mesa in Dulce New Mexico. I know all the rumors that Dulce Base is run by the US military and Space Aliens. There are no space aliens, it's an old NORAD base that the Technology and Applications Oversight Agency has been operating out of. We are going to walk in there and take it away from them. If you have never killed anyone before, stay behind me. I want no kills today, but if someone desperately needs to be killed, let me do it. I already have blood on my hands and am going to hell. Let me take the rap. Copy?"

The agents on the chopper responded with a confused "Hoo-ah!"

"We will badge in at the main door; your badge will work on their security system. Do not grab a computer or laptop or phone as a souvenir, they're all infected with viruses. They're short of security personnel, so don't worry," said Kenny. They were short on manpower because the TSA had them all on Greyhound buses to get to Archuleta Mesa from their homes in Washington, DC.

"We will rescue Alicia Ingersoll and Yi-Jin Carlson. This must happen first. Follow me; I can find them. We have to be quick, because the people at Dulce Base think Miss Carlson is Ming Long, and when The General sees her, he's going to know she's not Ming and he will kill her. That cannot happen. He also intends to kill Agent Ingersoll. Get them out of the building and on this bird. I will deal with the General and join you back at Ganley Mountain. Any questions?"

"How are we going to get in there?" said one trooper as he studied the security badge hanging on a lanyard around his neck.

"As they were fighting a computer virus attack at Dulce Base, your names got added to their security system. All locks will open for you. Any other questions?"

"What's the time limit for this mission?"

"Locating the two women plus one minute," said Kenny. "When you hear 'Bug out' on your radios you have one minute to get back on this bird. If you're late, you're walking home with me."

"We take nothing?" asked a really tough-looking woman.

"Nothing but memories. This group is filthy, we want nothing to do with them, we want nothing to associate them with us. They've been attacking Long Air Services for years for petty reasons and Twin Dragon security was formed partially to push them back. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. I'm going to have a few words with the General then catch a ride home with an old friend while Army Intelligence crawls through their base looking for criminal associations."

"Two minutes," called the pilot over their radios.

"Make sure everything is ready, we're here to investigate and intimidate!" called Mac.

The helicopter swooped in a tight turn over the entrance into the lower sections of a flat-topped mountain. It was going to set down in a narrow gulch, and the pilot carefully lined up the big Chinook, then let it drop. "Going down!" called someone in the crowd, and they plummeted down, but the helicopter slowed with just a few feet to drop and settled softly. The rear door dropped, and Kenny charged out. The troops following him were dressed similarly, in dusty gray digital camouflage, flak vests, and Kevlar helmets. He dashed up to the security gate, where the security guard moved to stop him. "Halt! This is a government installation!"

Kenny showed him his security badge, and the guard studied it. It looked good, but he didn't remember seeing this man before. He swiped the badge, and the door unlocked, and Kenny snagged his badge back from the guard. "Thanks dude."

"Wait a minute," and the guard reached for his gun, but Kenny had stolen it. He was surrounded by four angry-looking men, who kept between the guard and his control panel.

"You just play nice and we'll all be going home in a few minutes," said one of the Twin Dragons men.

One man propped the heavy security door open, and the rest of the Twin Dragon men and women poured into the underground facility. Long concrete halls greeted them, but Kenny dashed through the halls like he knew right where he was going. "I'm here Yi!" he called as he ran. Occasionally someone would step out of a doorway and try to stop him, but Kenny would lower a shoulder and drive them back into whatever office they stepped out of.

"They're coming for us!" rang in his head. "Kenny! They're at the door!" which made him run even harder.

"K!" called Dunkan. "Ease up!" He was following Kenny, but he was running harder and faster. He turned a corner and disappeared from Dunkan's view. As Dunkan came up to the corner, he heard Kenny bellow, "FREEZE!" followed by the roar of an M-16. came around the corner and found Kenny in a shooting stance, In front of him were four men trying to lead two women out of a room.

"Release the women," ordered Kenny.

"The General will kill us if we do that."

"I'll kill you where you stand if you don't let them go right fucking now."

Dunkan appeared at Kenny's shoulder and pulled his pistol and aimed it into the room. In there was a guy holding a terrified carbon copy of Ming by the shoulders, and three guys were hoisting Alicia off the bed. "I got these clowns Kenny, go get your girl."

Kenny raised the muzzle of his rifle and walked up to Yi and pulled her into his arms. She wept with joy as Kenny kissed her tears away. "I knew you'd come; I knew it." As they kissed, several other armed Twin Dragon agents entered the room and loaded a grateful Alicia into a wheelchair.

"How did you find us?" she asked Dunkan.

"Special K just focused us on the job and set Ming's hackers loose."

"Who?" asked Alicia as Dunkan wheeled her out.

"The blond guy sucking on your roommate's face."

"She's crazy," said Alicia. "All she did was say he's coming. She tried to convince me they have ESP or something."

"Let's go," said Kenny. He handed her the M-16, and he put a protective arm around Yi's shoulders as they left the four terrified and confused men out of the room and down the hallway. "As they neared the main entrance Mac got on his radio and said, "We have the captives; we're pulling out."

Twin Dragon Security men appeared from the different hallways and trotted toward the main entrance. One came up to Kenny and said, "The general's outer office is secure."

"You rock," Kenny said with a grin, and he fist-bumped the fellow. They turned a last corner, and Kenny led Yi out the door and up to an idling helicopter with the rear ramp open. "You go with Alicia, and I'll be along in a few minutes."

"No," said Yi firmly.

"Honey, I'm going to have a talk with the general and be along shortly."

"No!" said Yi again. "Look, if we're going to get married, you need to get used to hearing me say that. I'm not leaving until you're ready to go. Besides, I think I need to see this general too." She gave Alicia a hug before they lifted her onto the helicopter and promised to catch up with her when they got back. Just before the rear ramp of the helicopter sealed up, Zhang, Zane, Shan and Ming stepped off the ramp and joined Yi and Kenny.

"What is wrong with you people?" demanded Kenny. "This could be fatal."

Ming glared at him and said, "You're fired."

It took almost Kenny a long moment before he started laughing. He turned to Yi and said, "give me the gun."

"No, it's mine, you gave it to me."

"Seriously Yi, please, hand me the gun."

"No, I'm keeping it. It's nice and light, and plastic. It shoots a little tiny round; it's a girls gun."

"So you guys did get married," said Zane, which got Zhang laughing.

"Here it is," said Kenny. The relief of a major op completed drained, and they were back to a fearful quiet. Kenny opened the door marked "General Long" and in the outer office they found three agency men with their wrists zip-tied behind their backs.

"Ready?" said Kenny as the six of them steeled themselves in the outer office.

"He's dead," said Ming. "I watched Alicia kill him."

"No you didn't," said Shan. "You were in the hospital. I was there when Alicia told you that she killed him."

Ming frowned. He was right; she was already horribly injured and disfigured. She dreamed over and over of Alicia killing the man who ordered her locked in the trunk of a car along with her fiancé and sent down the side of Mount Zion. She lay in the hospital, paralyzed, hideously disfigured, dreaming of Alicia shooting that bastard over and over until she was sure she watched his execution. "She lied to me?" gasped Ming.

"No, the medical examiner lied to you," said one of the trussed-up men. "He's been hounding your ass for years, and now the General comes to take back what is his."

Ming turned to Shan; her eyes filled with tears. "You were there... you were there every day."

"Please don't," said Shan. "We need to..."

"This was all you, wasn't it," she said as she reached to her face to indicate her mobility and the repair to her features. Little by little, her face was being restored to how she looked before her face was broken and twisted thanks to Shan's nanobots. Lately, thanks to Shan's bots, her scars were fading, as were Alicia's scars. "This was all you."

"I loved you since the day we met, I fell in love with your spirit and drive, a beautiful bird in a beautiful cage. I had to repair that cage before the bird within perished from sorrow."

She sniffed and hugged Shan. "I married a poet."

Kenny was getting impatient. "Let's do this, then we can go home and relax," said Kenny. He walked up to the office door and gave it a solid thrust-kick. The door warped but didn't open. On the second kick, the hasp exploded, and the door flew open. On the opposite side of the enormous office sat an ancient Asian man behind a vast desk. He was small and wrinkled. He was bald, with huge ears and a hooked nose. He looked like he was over one hundred years old.

"You!" started Ming, but Kenny and Shan held her back.

"Hang on," said Shan.

"You should listen to your man," cackled the general. "We know better."

Suddenly the gun roared, and the cup full of pencils on his desk exploded, and Yi lined the rifle up on the general's nose. "Shut the fuck up while you can still do it without my help."

"My darling little girl..." started the General, but with a roar his telephone exploded.

"You cost me my wedding, you fucking bastard!" Yi shrieked. "I'm running out of shit to shoot; your nose is all I have left," said Yi as she sighted down the barrel of the still-smoking M-16.

Kenny stepped forward and said, "Mister Long, we are just here to deliver a message from my emperor, Guoxin."

"Emperor Guoxin?" said the general. He was angry at being called mister, which showed a complete lack of respect. "That's a fairy tale! White boys shouldn't study Chinese mythology without guidance."

"You're right," said Kenny softly as the office melted away. The dry, air-conditioned and filtered air faded away and was replaced with a warm, moist sea breeze; the walls fell away to be replaced with palm trees and tropical flowering bushes. The industrial carpet was replaced with soft, warm sand, and the sound of the air conditioner was replaced with the sound of waves crashing on a beach.

"This is our island!" cried Yi. "You can't bring him here."

"Guoxin wants to talk to him," said Kenny as he took her hand. "Let's go down to the beach." He led Yi, Ming, Shan, and Zhang along a sandy path through the jungle and out onto the beach. Sadly, Zane wasn't there with them. "We named this Carlson beach in honor of Yi's parents. The beach on the other side of that rock outcropping is Johnson Beach."

"So beautiful!" said Ming as she walked out to the edge of the water.

"How did you do this?" demanded the general. "This is a delusion!"

"You may be right," said Kenny, "but we enjoy it." And he pulled Yi close.

Cursing in Chinese, the general emerged from the jungle and stormed onto the beach. "You bastard! Send me back..."

Suddenly, a gigantic Chinese dragon emerged from the ocean. It was beautiful, with bright yellow scales that gleamed in the sunlight. "The emperor!" gasped Ming, knowing that yellow was the color of the emperor. This was Guoxin, the fabled emperor of the four dragon guardians of the four cardinal directions. While each guardian dragon is marked with a constellation in the night sky, Guoxin is the entire sky. He was all yellow with a bright yellow mustache, golden eyes, and bright yellow horns. It bowed its head to Kenny and Yi. "FAITHFUL CHILDREN," then it bowed to Ming and Shan, "HEROIC GENIUSES," then to Zhang he said, "COURAGEOUS FLIER."

"You don't exist!" shouted the general. He turned to Kenny and said, "You drugged me!"

In a booming voice, the dragon said, "LITTLE MAN, I LET YOU ACT LIKE YOU RULED THE WORLD. I EVEN LET YOU TRY TO KILL YOUR OWN DAUGHTER... BUT THEN YOU TOUCHED MY DAUGHTER. THAT I CANNOT FORGIVE!" With a bellowing roar, Guoxin shot forward, and his enormous mouth engulphed the upper half of the general's body. Guoxin's teeth snapped closed, and he bit the general in half then disappeared under the waves with the still screaming upper portion of the general in his mouth.

For the first time in her life, Ming felt safe. "He's gone," she gasped. "It's over!" She took Shan's hand and stepped forward to inspect the bleeding stump of her father's waist when the island faded away and they were in his office. The general lay slumped on the desk. She carefully approached and checked for a pulse. "It's really over..." she broke into tears of relief. The years of rejection and torture that started the moment she was born a girl and not a boy were over. She was free. Shan held her close as the woman he loved so dearly cried out the years of anguish.

"What happened?" Zhang asked Zane.

Zane shrugged. "Yi shot his telephone and the old fuck died of a heart attack."

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

The halls were filled with New Mexico State Police, Forest Service Police, and FBI agents. They escorted the six friends out of the mountain and didn't even ask Yi about her 'pop gun' as she called it. Outside the main door, a US Forest Service Sikorsky UH-60 helicopter waited for them. "Is she ok?" asked the New Mexico state trooper that helped Ming into the helicopter.

"That was her father in there," said Shan.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"They weren't close."

After what seemed like forever, the big helicopter lifted and then turned to the north. The nose dipped, the tail rose high in the air, and they accelerated like a shot. With Archuleta Mesa and Dulce Base behind them, the six could relax. Ming and Shan wanted nothing more than to get back to Alicia and nurse her back to health.

The helicopter was a utility bird, a civilian version of the UH-60 Black Hawk, and it was used mostly for transporting forest firefighters and equipment around, but it was much smoother than many of the other planes that Ming's company owns. The helicopter set down at a small airport, and the pilot apologized. "Sorry, but this is the closest I can get you; I have to get back to Albuquerque. You'll have to get your own ride from here."

"No problem," said Ming, and she made a quick call to her head controller and requested airlift for six from Aspen to Ganley Mountain, then they went into a small grille in the airport and ordered lunch. They sat quietly eating, hands shaking, appetites suddenly supercharged from the relief of eliminating a predator that had been harassing Ming since she was born.

"I'm going to put in a bid," said Ming.

"On what?" asked Zhang.

"Archuleta Mesa. I'm already using the name on a clinic in Colorado; I might as well own the mountain."

"Why do you want another mountain?" asked Shan.

"I want to collect the complete set," said Ming. She hoped that would bring a few chuckles, but everyone was too worked up over the entire situation. She had plans for the facility, and she couldn't wait to get started.

They finished eating and sat stunned at everything that had happened over the past couple of years. Kenny and Yi seemed to be lost in their own world together. "What are you guys going to do when we get back?" Zane asked.

"We may have an issue with the rental company. They weren't happy that a helicopter side swiped our rental car," said Kenny.

"I'll help you with that," said Ming. "It was my father's people that caused it."

"We're going down to the county courthouse in Idaho Springs and take care of some paperwork tomorrow," said Zhang. "Wanna go with?"

Two hours later, the Bell 407HP helicopter that ferried them from Aspen to Ganley Mountain landed on the big Long Air Services Ganley Mountain helipad. They found the hangar doors were open and the entire population of Ganley Mountain was waiting for them. A small stage and a microphone were waiting for Ming, and she was whisked in front of the microphone. "I know I've said this before but it looks like I'm going to be right this time when I say, our worst times are behind us. The man who caused all of our misery is gone, and we can get back to helping the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and soon, hopefully, the blind to see. Now I hope you don't mind but I need to check on Alicia Ingersoll."

Ming and Shan were whisked away on a golf cart, and the crowd followed them. Before they knew it, Kenny and Yi were alone in the hangar except for the crew that was pushing the bright red helicopter into the hangar. "Now what?" asked Yi.

"We have an apartment, it's really cool. Come on." Kenny led Yi through various tunnels toward the executive elevator. "I've been running around here for the past couple days," said Kenny, which was a lie. He rarely left the apartment.

"We're lost aren't we," said Yi.

"Yeah, a little bit." They were in near total darkness, but this too was a lie. Kenny knew where he was. "There's one sure way to find our way if lost," said Kenny as he unbuttoned Yi's blouse.

"No! Every time we do this, someone stumbles along and..." She realized what his plan was as he hauled out his erect cock and wrapped her tiny hand around it. "You're a dick, ya know that?"

"Uh huh," said Kenny, but his mouth was full of her small, firm breast.

"You bastard!" she gasped, and she stroked his cock. Everything was back to normal. Neither of them has a fear of being caught; life with the Jarecki twins trains you for that. She just wanted her man. He worked her jeans down and pushed her against the bare rock tunnel wall and dropped to his knees and began kissing and licking her pussy. She groaned and ran her fingers through his hair as he licked her pussy and eased a finger into her warm, tight, moist depths.

With a mewl of frustration, she kicked a foot free from the leg of her jeans then pushed Kenny back and dropped to her hands and knees. "I need you now!" and soon she was rewarded with the sensation of Kenny's large cock entering her, spreading her open and plumbing her depths. "Oh God this is good!" she shouted as he grabbed her hips and began pounding into her. The sound of their bodies slapping together echoed down the ancient mine shafts, as did their pants and gasps. "Yes, Kenny YES!" cried Yi as her fiancé fucked her with his sweet combination of tenderness and animal lust. Their cries of ecstasy rang through the empty shaft, adding to their passion. Yi thrust back as they came in unison, their orgasms crashing over them as they shouted out their pleasure and collapsed panting.

"Oh god that was amazing," panted Yi.

"Was that a quick enough quicky?" asked Kenny between pants. She usually teases him for turning quickies into all-nighters.

"Yeah, that was good," she panted and pulled him close for a kiss. As they kissed, the voice of Zhang could be heard from the end of the tunnel.

"If you guys are done, dinner is ready."

<><><><><>

"Yi, this is Senator Amos Nourse, his wife Joanna, and their baby Fruit Loop," said Ming.

"Senator Nourse is my uncle," said Alicia. The first of the replacement nanobots in her ears was working fine, and she could hear properly again. They still haven't constructed their AI yet, and she felt out of the loop. "Uncle Andy, Yi was with me while they held me captive. They wouldn't feed me so she gave me her meals."

"I'm too fat as it is," said Yi as she held a drumstick for Alicia to gnaw on. They were having a barbecue in the courtyard between the four apartments. Ming was overjoyed that all four apartments were filled, with Kenny and Yi in number one, Zane and Zhang in number three, and the senator and Joanna in number four. "This is so pretty here!"

"You are welcome back anytime," said Ming. "I can't thank you two enough. In fact, we would like to see Kenny join our team."

Kenny and Yi looked at each other and were silent for a long time, then Yi said, "He loves the idea, but we have people that depend on us back in New York. If the offer is still open in a few more years, I think I can convince him to move to the mountains."

Kenny was watching Dunkan O'Reilly, who was watching Yi feed Alicia Ingersoll. Alicia was a tough chick, but she had a soft side when Dunkan was around. "Dunkan, do me a favor and take over for Yi, or I'm going to have to start feeding Yi myself."

"Huh?" asked Yi. Then she understood Kenny's silent request. She handed the drumstick to Dunkan and said, "Be careful, she bites."

Ming was watching Dunkan and Alicia as well. She whispered to Shan, "You may end up losing a wife," but Shan didn't respond. He hoped Alicia could eventually find one special person she could settle down with. If not, he and Ming were always available for her.

"Dunkan," said Shan. "We're heading to Rota on Friday. Can you join us? I think some added security would help."

"If Mac can spare me, I'll be happy to," said Dunkan as he wiped some barbecue sauce from Alicia's chin. Alicia looked at Ming with a pleading look in her eyes. She'd have her AI back soon, but right now Ming needs to pick up on hints.

"Mac will spare you," said Ming. "He wants to take his wife skiing this winter, so he'll find a way to spare you for a remote assignment."

"You are going to love Rota," said Zhang to Zane as they kissed. "I spent most of my time there topless."

"When she wasn't topless, she was completely naked," said Alicia.

"I cannot wait," said Zane as he kissed his fiancée again. "Special K? Are you going to come to Rota with us?"

"We have an actual life," said Kenny. "We have to get back to work on Monday."

"You are always, always welcome," said Ming. "If you need a south seas vacation, or a job, or just a place to stay, you both are always welcome."

"Well?" asked the Senator. "Are you two going to tie the knot tomorrow?"

"Yes we are!" said Zane happily.

"I wasn't talking to you," said Senator Nourse. He turned to Yi and asked, "Are you?"

<><><><><>

Zane and Zhang stepped up to the clerk of licensing for Clear Water County, and Zane said, "We'd like a marriage license, and we'd like to self-solemnize."

"Ok. I'd like two forms of ID from both of you, and I just need cash or check, or debit card. We don't take credit cards," said the clerk. She checked Zane and Zhang's ID cards and then showed them where to sign the documents, and asked, "Do you have a witness?" Ming stepped forward and signed as a witness. The clerk handed them a notarized copy of their license and said, "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Zigler. Who's next?"

Are you sure you can handle the twins? Yi asked in their silent form of communication.

Piece of cake said Kenny silently. I've got a plan, and they stepped up to the counter. "We're out of state but we'd like a marriage license and would like to self-solemnize."

"Ok, we need two forms of ID, cash, check or debit card, we don't take credit cards." Kenny handed her his driver's license and his VA ID card. Yi handed over her driver's license and her passport.

"Ok, sign and date here, and here, then check this box, and do you have a witness?" Dunkan O'Reilly, Kenny's old corporal, stepped forward and signed as witness. "Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Johnson."

Kenny pulled his wife into his arms for a kiss. Their first kiss as husband and wife was probably hotter than the small county clerk's office is used to. When their lips parted, Kenny said, "I'm ready for the twins."

"Don't forget my father," said Yi.

"Why? Stan and I get along great."

"You now have to tell daddy that you downgraded his Korean-Swedish daughter to Korean-Norwegian."

<><><><><>

"What do you have there senator?" asked Steven McBride, Amos Nourse's chief of staff. Steven was good at what he did, and in the year since Albert Dirkson was outed as a spy for Hans Stavros Baumgartner, his office has never run so smoothly.

"Oh, just a video of a friend's wedding," said Amos.

"Look!" said Joanna, and she turned the monitor around. It was a wedding in a forest. Kenny was wearing a tuxedo, Yi was wearing a flowing white wedding gown, and they were surrounded by family and friends. The pastor was a beautiful, tall, slim black woman. Yi's maid of honor was a tiny blond girl, and Kenny's best man was the maid of honor's twin sister.

"That's hilarious!" said Steven. "I mean it's a gorgeous looking wedding, send me a screen shot, my fiancée needs to see this. I love the little girls."

"That's how Kenny made peace when they got home," said Joanna.

"Speaking of peace, the FBI found your former aids, Albert Dirkson and Betty Chapelwaite."

"Where? At the bottom of a well I hope?" snarled Amos. Thanks to those two, he was shot at and stabbed trying to get Alicia Ingersoll to come out from her cover.

"They're living in a homeless encampment in Los Angeles," said Steven. "They're sharing a tent and they have no memory of where they were and how they got there. They're both addicted to damn near anything you can smoke, snort, or shoot up a vein. But they're happy."

Amos nodded and made a note. Joanna picked up his notepad and said, "Who is Jim MacDonald and why are we sending him a thank you note?"

<><><><><>

The one-year anniversary of General Long's second death was a celebration. Ming pulled out all the stops for her friends, who made her freedom a reality. She rented the entire Silver Queen bed and breakfast in Georgetown for Kenny and Yi Johnson, their employers and their employers' children. Amos Nourse was finishing up the last half of his last term in office and was in Colorado to join the celebration with Joanna and Fruit Loop and to scope out his new position as head of the Nano-Satellite lab that Long Space Systems was building at the Archuleta Mesa Dulce Base. The plan was to incorporate nanobots into the daily functions of a satellite in orbit. Nanobots would rotate the individual cells on the solar array to point most directly at the sun without rotating the entire satellite off its task. That way, the satellite would be absorbing an estimated 148% more solar energy than a satellite without nanobots. Space-X was interested and couldn't wait to see Long Space Systems' results.

It was odd to see Kenny and Yi carrying around two 18-month-old boys with a pair of seven-year-old girls clinging to them also, but it was natural. The children's parents, the mayor of their hometown, and her husband, a very successful businessman, were enjoying the chance to show "mommy's mountains" to the children. Missus Jarecki was born and raised in Denver and enjoys coming back every chance she gets.

They started the big party with one of Alicia's favorite things to do, a pleasant stroll along 6th Avenue in Historic Downtown Georgetown. She also got to do her second favorite thing to do: confound doctors that haven't kept up with nanorobotic technology. "Andi, Paul, yes, she is a paraplegic. Ming is quadriplegic," said Yi. "Trust me. I first met Alicia the day they short circuited all her nanobots and she did a rag doll right in front of me."

Kenny nodded. "It was the day I got... ventilated." He won't say that he was shot in front of the twins. They start demanding vengeance.

"Hey! This little guy is cute!" said Alicia as she scooped up the Jarecki's son Danny. "Did you get him at Walmart or Sam's Club?" Danny started patting Alicia's nose, causing her and Dunkan to laugh. Alicia and Dunkan O'Reilly have been growing closer, and Dunkan got moved to a new division because he was so close to his boss.

"HEY!" shrieked the twins. "He was in mommy's tummy!"

"I don't know about mom, but Alicia is going to make a great Aunt someday," said Zhang with a hearty laugh.

They took a small bus up to the Silver Dale trailhead and went for a stroll in the woods. Yi and Kenny pointed out where they saw the deer and showed pictures of the beautiful animal. Yi's boss, Paul Jarecki, whistled in appreciation when he saw the deer. It wasn't much bigger than the deer he shoots in New York, but the rack on that buck was amazing. "I'll bet he was keeping himself between you and his harem," said Doctor Jarecki.

"Harem?" said Alicia. "I'll bet his name was Shan." Her sense of humor was improving vastly. Was it the freedom of not being chased by murderers and thugs? Or was it from dating a fellow known as Jester?

As they hiked back to the parking lot, Alicia came up to Kenny and Yi and in a quiet voice said, "You told me about the black pearls and how you can communicate with them, but when General Long captured us, he took all of Yi's jewelry. How did you communicate?"

Kenny showed her a small scar on the underside of his right forearm. Yi had a similar scar. "We both had a pearl implanted in our arms before we left New York. We both had a feeling that something would happen, and we were right."

They got back out to the parking lot, and Jim MacDonald told the story of Zhang's crash landing. "The fellow we call the general had set a stinger team on that mountain over there. Zhang came flying up the valley, and she had some restrictions. Senator Nourse was on board, and he had just been stabbed. She had to stay near the ground in case she needs to land quick, and she had to stay near the highway in case he needed an ambulance."

Mac continued the tale in his Darth Vader-like voice and told how Zhang, with one engine out and most flight controls jammed, brought the helicopter to a safe landing in this parking lot. "Is that where Kenny got shot?" cried Sandy.

"Who said he got shot?" said their tiny mother in surprise.

"We know what ventilated means," said Madeline. "We're not babies!"

They ended up at the Georgetown Loop Railroad station. The crowd had grown larger as many of their friends from work on Ganley Mountain joined the party. They treated Kenny and Yi like celebrities as they waited for the train to ease down the hill. "The train is hauling two cars that we purchased and had refurbished for the Georgetown Loop Railroad; maybe you can see which ones they are," said Ming. The locomotive appeared, pulling the train along the side of the mountain on the other side of the canyon. The locomotive was running backwards as it pulled the train down the hill, which was standard in mountain railroading.

The train pulled out onto the Devil's Gate High Bridge, a spidery-looking bridge made out of steel and prayers, which stood high above the floor of the canyon. "I'm going to guess the red cars with the gold dragon on the sides?" said Andi Jarecki.

"Excellent guess," said Shan.

The crowd stood on the passenger loading platform looking up at the train, then Zane shouted out, "This isn't just an anniversary party, this is also a gender reveal party."

"Yep," said Zhang. "I've been grounded," and she patted her tummy, which was showing the beginning of a baby bulge.

"We don't know ourselves," said Zane. "But Aunty Alicia has the results from our doctor in case the reveal doesn't go off." Then he took the walkie-talkie that Alicia handed him and called, "Start the show!" When he said that, a fellow stepped out onto the last car of the train, a flatcar with a large box in the middle. He touched the box and stepped back. There was a bark, and a rocket shot out of the box and traveled up a hundred feet and exploded in a huge cloud of dark blue powder. Zhang squealed in delight, and Zane bent to kiss her, but there was another bang, and a second cloud of blue filled the Colorado sky.

The shocked couple looked at Alicia, who smiled and waved the paper from the envelope. "Twin boys," she announced. Zane picked up Zhang and swung her around as the train started the trek down to the passenger platform to pick up the excited party. Amidst the crowd of well-wishers, Zane felt a tug on his trousers and he looked down to see the little blond girl. They were seven years old but were barely any larger than a five-year-old.

"We can help you with the twins," said Sandy, as Madeline nodded her head. "I raise my sister, and she's a twin."

As the partygoers clambered onto the train, Alicia pulled Ming aside and said, "This whole thing got me thinking."

"Of what?" asked Ming, concerned that Alicia was unhappy.

"I wonder what our life would be like if your dad was a normal person and not the rotten shit-heel that he was. Would we have even met?"

"I think we were fated to meet from the day we were born," said Ming. "Besides, if the stories I hear about my mother are true, he's not my father." She winked at her best friend and co-wife and climbed onto the train.