| Rubbing his face, he started to walk. It was
getting hotter, despite
the early hour, the sun still being low, and he could feel
the heat
through the thin cotton of his shirt. Every step was
painful, knowing
what he was heading into; another attack by Garth at best,
finding the
stripped-down remains of his partner at worst. Throughout
this
nightmare, before Kitt had been taken from him, the thought
utmost in
Michael's mind was how the hell Garth had returned from the
dive they'd
taken over the edge of the cliff he and Kitt had thrown them
off so
many years ago. Adrianne hadn't made it, Garth had made that
much
clear, although Michael doubted he'd ever felt anything real
for the
woman. But he hadn't bragged about how he'd survived, just
that he had,
and that he was finally going to get his revenge. How egotistical had he been to imagine Garth had been speaking of him when he'd said he was going to enjoy ending his life? That it was Kitt he'd been referring to hadn't once crossed Michael's mind. It was typical of him as he'd once been, presuming he was the only one of their partnership in danger; he hated himself for falling back into such a trap. How many times had he sat inside the Knight Two-Thousand and berated Kitt for putting his driver's life so far ahead of his own in importance? How many times had he stated, assured, begged that Kitt's life was just as priceless, just as unique, just as vital as his own? And yet when it had really mattered, when it had been needed the most, he'd forgotten his own council, done what most other people had always done, and looked upon his partner as a means to an end; an escape route and nothing more. How could he have done that to the soul he treasured above all else? And how the hell had Garth survived all those years ago?! He kept coming back to it, not that it mattered any longer, but if he could take Wilton Knight's insane son with him when he went himself it would at least be something, his own revenge for Kitt's life. He heard the rumble, turned to look back over his shoulder and couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. Goliath was turning too, slowly and carefully on a road that didn't have the space for a three-pointer by a ten-tonne semi. But it managed. And half a minute later, it pulled up next to Michael, trying to drive on the part of road he was trying to walk on. He felt sun-heated iron touch his shoulder and he took a couple of steps to the side - it was like being nudged out of the way by a giant. But it took him a second to realise what was happening, what - impossibly - the truck was doing� blocking the sun, giving him shade. He couldn't quite believe the idea that was forming unstoppably in his head. Goliath had tried to kill them time after time� but not Goliath. Garth. Because of Kitt, and recently Karr, he was anthropomorphising the giant truck. Goliath had never had a personality. Goliath had never driven itself�. Stopping, Goliath stopping too, Michael cautiously walked around the sheer vertical rise of the cab's grilled front and climbed back up onto the footplate to peer inside. Could he let himself believe it? "Kitt?" For a second there was nothing, and hope almost died, and then the dashboard lit up, every light, every LED bursting into life. "Oh, God�." Tears filled his eyes as he impatiently touched the link. Still there was nothing but that deep black hole. And yet� he dragged himself back to stand in front of the truck. "Kitt� if it's you, flash the headlights." A second's hesitation, and then the high breams exploded into light and relief coursed through him like life itself. "Oh God�." Tears streamed over his face. "Oh, Kitt�. I thought you were dead. The link�." Joy started to warm the parts of him chilled by grief, so convinced was he that Kitt was inside the truck's engine compartment, and although his head still pounded it was easier to cope with for the moment at least. His partner was in a much worse state than he - not only missing their link, but unable to communicate in any way, torn from the car and transplanted into his worst nightmare. How had they managed to get to him? The headlights went out and came on again, dimmed this time, and Michael approached, reaching long fingers into one of the iron squares, touching the smooth plastic of the driver's side light, laying his forehead against the deadly metal grid. "I'm here, Kitt. It's okay, Beauty, I'm here." He didn't dare think about details, about what had been done to his partner, about the missing link, about how and why. He ached for Kitt, to be close to him, to be able to touch him, to know for sure that he wasn't going crazy. Taking a deep, deep breath, he tried to pull himself together. Trailing his hand over the rough grille, he walked around to the driver's door and this time hauled himself up inside the cabin. Wrapping his hands around the steering wheel he watched the dash lights dance. "It's okay. I'm here. Take it easy. Let me drive." Getting settled, he took the wide, unfamiliar steering wheel in his hands and gently pressed the accelerator. He felt dirty somehow, driving this thing which had so many times tried to kill him and his partner, but now Kitt was a part of it, against his will and Michael couldn't imagine how he must be feeling. He wanted nothing more than to reach through the link and comfort, reassure, but he couldn't, there was nothing, and it scared him to wonder why. If they'd simply transplanted Kitt's entire CPU the link should still have been functioning, he didn't understand why it wasn't. For the couple of miles they had to go to reach the facility Garth had taken them to, Michael talked. He started to make a joke about Kitt's current looks, about the car being a lot sexier and something about size not being everything. But he knew in his heart that it wasn't what Kitt needed to hear. So he found words he hoped would assure his partner, told him over again that everything was going to be okay, that they'd get him back into his own body soon, that he loved him very, very much. Around the next long bend, the sprawling facility came into view. Michael had been held in a cell somewhere underground, under there, for the last five days as what he understood was just supposed to have been the start of Garth's revenge on Michael Knight. Early this morning, several very long hours after Kitt had vanished from his mind, Michael had overpowered the three guards that had come to deliver his meagre, stodgy breakfast - presumably one of Garth's prison recipes - and escaped. He'd made it up above ground, there'd been guards everywhere and he couldn't raise Kitt, not on the Comlink, not through the implant. He'd done the only thing he could think to do; he'd started to walk to find a phone to call for help. He'd been walking when Goliath - Kitt - had come after him. The sprawling facility came into view. And it was nothing but rubble and dust. Michael felt his stomach plunge into his gut. It looked as if someone had gone through the place with a ten-tonne� Michael let his eyes drop to the dash. No point asking if Kitt had done this, not at the moment. What the hell had Garth been thinking? Michael slowed the truck and stopped when they reached the edge of the devastation. "I have to find the car, Kitt," he told his partner, hearing the hint of desperation in his own voice. "It has to be here." With a useless squeeze of the steering wheel, he flung open the heavy door and dropped down from the cab. He took four steps forward and found himself standing between Goliath's grille and the business end of a high-powered automatic weapon. ~ ~ ~ The digital readout was in triple figures; Nick's foot was flat to the floor. Luckily he'd been driving late last night when Karr had lost his connection with his brother. He'd felt the surge of dark panic, had known something was suddenly wrong, and a second later Karr had told him to stop. Taking the next exit from the smooth California highway, Nick had pulled up at the side of the road at the first opportunity. <Kitt's gone> He didn't need any more details, he could feel it. <Where are we going?> Struggling to remain calm, Karr had given him the co-ordinates, the location, and Nick had turned the Stealth around, following directions as they were given; sparse detail, as and when he needed it, in a voice rough and sore. They'd covered the nine hundred mile distance in under six hours and they were finally closing in on Kitt's last known position. In all that time Karr had desperately tried, over and over again, to find Kitt at the other end of their severed link, without success. He'd tried other methods of communication - a broadcast on their private channel, a 'telephone call' via satellite, an encrypted routing through FLAGNet to the AI's secure wireless IP address. Nothing. This wasn't just a block, wasn't just signals being jammed. Kitt was gone, either from his CPU or altogether. There was no way of raising Michael either. Like Nick with Karr, he so often worked with only Kitt as backup. He didn't want or usually need anyone else. Something had gone badly wrong this time, and Nick had been away on his own case for weeks, he had no idea what their friends had been working on or who they might have been involved with. Whoever, whatever it was, it was in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of the Nevada desert. "What's out here?" "Nothing that is listed." "What's out here that isn't listed?" "A research and development facility belonging to King Military." "King Military? What the hell is that?" "It is a subsidiary of Knight Industries." It was fair to say Nick hadn't been expecting that, but there was more to come. "It is registered under the name of Elizabeth Knight." "Elizabeth Knight is dead, isn't she?" "You are correct." He didn't comment on the tone of his partner's voice, Karr was having a bad enough morning as it was. "King Military appears to be fronted by her son, Garth Knight." "I was under the impression that Garth is also dead�?" "It would appear not if the Foundation for Law and Government's own intelligence is to be believed." Something cold unfurled in Nick's stomach. "FLAG knows Garth's alive and running R&D on weapons and they've done� nothing about it?" "Perhaps Kitt and his driver were supposed to be the solution." Nick considered the possibility. Michael no longer worked directly for the Foundation but he took cases when Devon called, which he did far too often for Nick's liking. "Can you access Michael's emails?" "Do you want me to?" <Karr...> "Accessing." "Are their any recent mails from Devon Miles?" "One. Subject line is, 'Christmas Fundraiser, Attendance Requested'." "Who was his most recent read mail from?" "Unknown, I'd have to trace it back to source. Subject line is blank. Email reads, 'Come alone'. There are co-ordinates given which are no more than half a mile from Kitt's last known location." "Trace it. I want to know who sent that and where they sent it from." "Understood. We are approaching the facility." Through the windshield, that which was a dot on the sandy, sunny horizon a minute before was now a field of destruction coming clearly into view. Whatever had been there was now only bricks and wreckage. Nick slowed the Stealth to double figures. "What's that?" Coming towards them on the same road was what looked like the cabin of a large semi. "It is a truck." "Thank you. Scan it for anything unusual." "It is protected by a molecular bonded shell with the same formula as the one used for the original Knight Two-Thousand." Original. Before they changed it for one that hadn't been known by too many eminent scientists open to blackmail. "Garth Knight attempted several times to murder Kitt and his driver utilising such a truck." "You're seriously telling me that it's an indestructible truck?" "I did not say it was indestructible. A projectile weapon fired through either headlight will cause the engine to fail." "Thank you." This time he meant it. They closed in on the carnage and on the truck in a matter of seconds and he reached behind the Stealth's passenger seat for his trusted high-powered rifle; he lived by the old saying, 'always be prepared'. The truck had stopped moments before them, and sliding the Stealth to a halt, he was out with the weapon loaded, prepped, and aimed through a nasty-looking metal grille at a bright headlight. "NO!" Michael found himself between a rock and a lethal place, pulse racing, head pounding, stomach churning. "It's Kitt!" He saw Nick hesitate. "What?" "Kitt's in the truck. Garth� must have shifted his CPU�." "Karr's lost his link." "Yeah? Well he's not the only one." Nick lowered the rifle, sympathy flashing across his face. "I need to find the car." Making the weapon safe, Nick turned away and called over to Karr for Kitt's last known position. "Thirty yards North-East from where you're standing." They both headed that way, picking a path carefully through the debris. "What the hell happened here?" "Kitt, I think, after they transplanted the CPU." Michael wasn't one hundred percent sure it was the question Nick was asking, but it was the only reply he was willing or able to give right then. A few more steps, and then he saw it, poking through the choking dust and rubble, the smooth, familiar black prow. The relief was palpable. "What the hell were they thinking?" Michael had asked himself the same question and he still didn't have an answer. All he could think of was how fucking frightened Kitt must have been, disconnected from everything he knew, relocated to somewhere his partner couldn't follow. He swept masonry and twisted metal from the bodywork, having to stop himself from greeting the car's AI. The Knight Two-Thousand didn't look damaged in any way but the scanner was black, dead. Every time he'd seen it like that the situation had been bad. The door opened, though, security systems either down or simply opening to him as programmed, and the engine started first time, turbines humming. He drove the car carefully, taking it out of the wreckage, parking it next to Karr and leaving it there, going back on foot to where Nick was crouching, no more than ten yards from where he'd found his car. As Michael neared, he saw what had distracted his friend. The body of Garth Knight lay prone on the ground in the ruins. He was covered in sand and dust; a square criss-cross pattern had been imprinted in oil in his clothes and in blood on his skin - Goliath's grille. He'd been hit by his own creation, and Michael knew exactly what Nick was thinking. It was something he wasn't ready to acknowledge yet. "Let's get out of here." Nick didn't even hesitate. "Karr's already called Bonnie and Justin, they'll meet us at the warehouse and they know what to expect." Michael sighed softly, rising on his feet, he didn't have to explain to Nick how he was feeling. Nick was probably the only one who could understand. "I'll take your car, you go with Kitt." He nodded. "Thanks." "No thanks necessary. No explanations either. Don't forget that." |