Chapter 8

I actually remember the last time Kristy and I made love. We had been on the lam for nearly four years and I had come to consider her my sidekick; her shortcomings were all too familiar to me and we were not equals. I was in charge.

We had stopped outside of Flagstaff, AZ and were staying in a cabin that had once been a way station for Mexican illegals who had crossed the border and were making their way north. Since the oil shortage and the "flat earth" economy emerged, few saw the need to flee to the US anymore.

I was reading a day old newspaper when Kristy jumped through the paper tearing and crushing in one fell swoop. I went to stand up and dump her ass on the ground but she grabbed hold of chair seat and I was caught. She gave me her predatory smile and proceeded to lick me from my ears down my bare chest. I was moaning, groaning and stamping my feet but she still wouldn't let me up.

"Kristy," I yelled between clenched teeth, "when I get up from here I'm gonna fuck you silly until you can't walk tomorrow."

She giggled and launched herself backwards. I spent the next ten minutes chasing her around the cabin while shrieked and caterwauled. Finally she let me catch her and I practically ripped her shorts off. I threw her on the rug and dropping my own pants, came up behind her and rammed her good. She cried out again and then proceeded to milk me with her cunt muscles while I tried to force myself into the deepest recesses. I felt a frenzy building in my brain when suddenly Kristy reached back and slapped the daylights out of my hip.

"Goddammit that hurt," I bitched. Kristy gave me a naughty look reached under to grab my cock and placed it at her asshole. I pushed and soon I was firmly entrenched in her butt and she set another fast pace.

I felt the familiar clenching of her rectum which signaled her close orgasm. I reached for her shoulders as she hit her peak with a small scream that sent a final shiver through my spine and I came as well. We stayed in the same position, unmoving and sweating terribly in the heat.

Even with the great sex, Kristy had been worrying me all day. Her hand would twitch or her head, just for an instant. I would ask if anything was wrong and she would look at me in confusion and answer "no." She seemed to stare off into space for periods of time.

By late afternoon I was looking forward to a baseball game and splurged for seats behind home plate. We had passed the old ball field the day before and noticed that it predated most the digital security systems; it was a crappy old field but some bumpkin minor league team used the park. My eyes were on the players but Kristy's hand kept twitching. I put my hand on hers and she gave me her trademark smile. Bottom of the third inning, Kristy was staring off into space when I felt her hand move under me.

She didn't twitch, she convulsed. Kristy started to stand and her entire body went into an involuntary convulsion. She fell towards the seat and I barely caught her head before it slammed into the back of the seat. Her eyelids were fluttering manically and her eyes were rolling up and down underneath. Foam was forming the corners of her mouth.

I heard someone calling for the paramedics in some far distance as I watched my woman, my lover, crash in my arms. There was no choice, no escape from the electronic grid, as the paramedics hustled my incoherent, drooling charge into the emergency room.

It was over, I knew it from the depths of my guts.

The doctor shook my hand as I stood over Kristy. After he interviewed me, he asked me to wait while he analysed the MRI results. In those few moments, the professional in me urged me to flee, reminding me that my duties were complete and nothing further could be done. Once Christy was scanned into the national healthcare database, she would be tagged by the police, the Chinese, and whoever else wanted her body. The other parts of me warred in my thoughts, sentimental and emotional parts that I wasn't supposed to use, and they urged me to stay.

Later that night, I sat in the chair next to her bed. "Severe epileptic convulsions with probable brain damage" was the doctor's diagnosis. The door opened. Instead of the nurse a man in fashionable leather stepped in, closing the door behind him. When I looked into his face I spit out in wonder: "Mr. Fuckit!"

"Excuse me," he deadpanned.

"That's the last words you said to me, in the garage, on that day. You said 'fuck it, take care of her.' I didn't know what your name was."

He chuckled. "An appropriate name under the circumstances Mr. Hughes. My name is Victor." He offered me his hand and we shook.

"What did you name her? I'm curious."

"Kristy. After the model Kristy Argenta."

"Really, Mr. Hughes, isn't that a little, ah, immature."

"No. She was on a billboard advertising the BMW that you were driving when you took off for the turnpike back in Jersey. How did you get away?"

"Ah, a mnemonic device. Very clever," he concluded. "I got away the same way you did - I switched cars and identities."

"I know more about you Mr. Hughes, or should I just call you 'Jamison, ' than you probably know about yourself. Enough chitchat, we don't have much time. Come stand on this side on the bed and hold her hand. When I tell you to do so, squeeze her hand."

He placed a recording device on her chest by her mouth. He took her other hand and bent towards her ear. He ordered me to squeeze and we both did as he whispered something into her ear. Something happened like we had triggered a key in her brain.

Immediately a mechanical voice, certainly not Kristy's issued from her throat reciting binary code and mathematical formulae. The monologue carried on for at least twenty minutes and then suddenly stopped.

"This unit held the only copy of the core programming; the others were destroyed in the raid. She has fulfilled the last of her objectives and she will cease to function in a few hours," Victor clinically dismissed.

We both stared at her draped form in silence. I heard the door open again and saw a male nurse with a covered tray stepping into the room. Victor slipped his hand into jacket, whipped out a pistol with a thick barrel and shot the guy two times, phfft, phfft. The nurse went down and the tray flew against the opposite wall. I watched another gun clatter to the ground by the tray.

"How did you know?" I whispered.

"How many Chinese agents have you killed Jamison, and you're asking me how did I know? Look on his right shoulder. Do you see a tattoo?"

I peeked under his surgical garb. "Yeah, one I've seen before: a curved claw with Chinese characters balancing on the tip."