Chapter 31

Artemis

When Zeus disappeared from the GPS track, I wanted to go out to Reedy Lake immediately.

Io was the voice of reason. "Going out there two and a half hours early and getting picked up by the police will not help Zeus at all. We should keep to the schedule and rely on Zeus to meet us at the agreed time," she said. "In the meantime, I am starting to pick up some radio calls on police frequencies that are relevant."

So we listened as the police went through their painstakingly slow but thorough process. When they turned up the Disney guard we had spoken to, I paled.

"ME! That would be me he could identify," I complained to Io. "The Hummer certainly made for an easy-to-identify shape. I had even spoken to him. And it had all taken place a full hour before the police were activated. How could I be so stupid? I wanted to not have any random traffic at the scene, instead I brought attention to me."

"Arti, do not chastise yourself unnecessarily," she replied. "You told me, once, that if you made a reasonable decision, that is all you can do. There were reasons you did what you did. Now, we simply have to deal with it. If the guard identifies you, then he does. We shall simply avoid police interdiction. On the positive side, they will certainly be looking for a perpetrator that left by car – not the way that Zeus left the scene.

"Frankly," she went on, "I am more concerned by the second marksman. Undoubtedly he is from 5225. That means he is probably well trained. He is hunting Zeus now, and we have no means of knowing where he is. Further, the police do not have him, yet, although the bloodhounds seem to be tracking him. It disturbs me that he is traveling generally northwest. He could have chosen to escape in any direction, but he chose to go northwest.

"Reedy Lake is northwest of the encounter scene."

We were both silent at that thought.

By quarter after two, 1415 in Zeus' language, the tension had me wound tighter than a watch spring. I needed to do something, even if it was wrong.

"Io, I'm going to Reedy Lake. Zeus is out there. He's being hunted by that killer from 5225. We don't know if he's okay, or not."

"I am sure that he is fine," Io said in her maddeningly calm voice. "He is probably half way, or more, through his swim now. It has only been thirty minutes since he disappeared from our GPS track. What can you hope to gain by going to Reedy Lake now?"

"I ... I can warn him about the guy from 5225. Or I can help him if he's hurt."

"Or get caught by the police," she insisted.

"We can agree to disagree. I just feel like I have to be there."

She started up the car, and by 1435, we were at the appointed meeting place.

"I'm getting out, with Sonny. Io, you have to drive around, not get stopped by the police, and come back. My mobile phone is fully charged, so I'll call. Or if you see me turn it off and back on, that means I'll be ready for pickup soon, but can't talk for some reason. 'K?"

"I dislike this even more than having Zeus out of the car. A car with no driver is conspicuous. But that is all right, Arti. I shall be ready for your call. Be careful. I calculate the probabilities of coming out of this mission with no one hurt at under 50% now."

"Fine, I'll go pick out a hiding spot, where I can see the lake, and not be seen ... C'mon Sonny."

The Timeline

1435 hours

Artemis is exiting the H2 with Sonny, the dog. Alpha 1 is approaching Reedy Lake along the western side. Zeus is somewhere in the canal, approaching Reedy Lake from the southeast. Io is driving around, trying to not get stopped by the police. The bloodhounds are in the woods tracking Alpha 1, some distance away.

1530 hours

Artemis has found her hiding spot and is watching. She is sitting against a tree, in a sunny spot, and getting drowsy. Sonny the dog has done a little barking at a real squirrel (as opposed to the 'squirrels' that Zeus was hunting). Alpha 1 thought he heard some barking, and was worried about the hounds hunting him. Zeus is still swimming, presumably. No word from Io. The bloodhounds are getting closer to Reedy Lake. They are progressing slowly.

Martinez

I was following along with Zeus' progress. He was done with the canal now, and trekking through the undergrowth, getting close to Reedy Lake. He was tired after a nearly four hour swim, and frustrated that his GPS / cell phone wasn't working.

He put on his swim fins and headed for the middle of the lake. I knew what he had planned. He was going to bury the dismantled rifle, now in a heavy duty trash bag, in the middle of the lake, and then bury the rifle barrel in some other spot, really deep in the sediment.

When he started swimming toward the middle of the lake, he caught his left leg on a branch, or some sharp piece of metal. Zeus tore open a gash along his left thigh. It was bleeding profusely. I did not think it hit anything major, but we couldn't see it, the water was murky and nearly opaque.

With not enough hands to hold the rifle, the gun barrel, try to swim, and grasp his leg, he headed for the bottom, where he could ditch the rifle and barrel. It took a few minutes to bury them and I could tell he was bleeding heavily. Probably the water was encouraging it – or it was a bigger, deeper wound than it appeared at first.

"Zeus!" I nearly shouted at him. His thinking was getting 'cloudy' – that's the best way I can describe it. It was like the sun coming through on a cloudy day: sometimes clear other times occluded.

"You've got to get out of the water. Look at your watch! Your watch! How long before the pickup? That's at 1600 hours."

The watch showed 1540. Good that left only twenty minutes.

Zeus swam to the surface, and then over to the east side of the lake. He took a long time. I couldn't tell time, but he seemed like he was moving in slow motion. The leg was numb now, and of not much use in swimming.

He got to the shore, not that it was much of a 'shore.' It was more like a more solid area of lake/swamp. I urged him to keep going up to drier land. He failed and collapsed in a wet, swampy area. When he got there, he fell asleep.

He was not asleep, exactly. His brain didn't have the usual indicators of sleep or extreme fatigue. I guessed that the leg wound was bleeding steadily, and he was unconscious.

There was a sharp, sudden pinch in his shoulder. Like the bite of a huge mosquito ... or more ominously, like a dart gun. In a few seconds, Zeus was completely out, drugged. That's a brain activity pattern – or more precisely, lack of a pattern – I easily recognized.

I had to get out. I began to cast about, trying to feel someone else.

...

This was an entirely new mind. I did it!

Now, whose mind was I browsing through at 1540 hours, more or less?

It was asleep, that was clear. She (she!) was wet in the crotch – uncomfortable, that. There were images of food and comfort – from a mother's breast, although she couldn't formulate that image correctly. The mommy's face looked nice.

I couldn't use an infant's mind. I began to search again. Maybe if I concentrated on a target.

Artemis. I needed to find Artemis.

...

Now I was in another's mind. She (again, she!) was sleeping in the sun. Comfortable. I cast my feelers gently into her mind. There was a proto-dream of an intelligent computer that lived in a car. It was Artemis!

"Arti," I said quietly. I didn't want to wake her, since I was here in her dream. I didn't know much about this body-jumping – maybe I could only go to sleeping people.

"Arti, this is Martinez. Zeus is in trouble. He's been drugged. I don't know where you are, but you have to wake up and get help. I think he's been taken by 5225."

I tried repeating that over and over, gradually stimulating her brain.

She was waking up. I repeated the message again.

And then I was back in the slumbering body of Zeus.

Artemis

I startled awake, with memories of a strange dream in my head. The strange dream coalesced with Martinez' voice present – he didn't have his 'avatar voice, ' with which I was familiar. But he said his name was Martinez.

'Martinez. MARTINEZ!' I shouted in my head. 'Are you there?' Or was it a dream?

I couldn't take the chance that it was only a dream. I pulled out my Glock and screwed the suppressor on. Now what?

"Sonny. Find Zeus."

Sonny got to his feet and ran off into the forest. I followed as quietly as I could. Sonny came back to me and led me in a slightly different direction. I doubted that he could understand as well as Lassie, on the TV series, but he seemed to have the idea: 'Lead me to Zeus.'

In about ten minutes I came to the sight I feared: a man was strapping up the leg of a prone man. The unmoving man on the ground seemed to be Zeus, but I wasn't sure. I motioned for Sonny to 'stay.'

I whispered into the phone in my shirt pocket, "Io, can you hear me? Flash the screen's light if you can." I took the phone out and looked at it.

FLASH!

I put the phone back. "Okay, run what I say through some voice changer. I want a male voice to come out."