CHAPTER NINE: WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY


Everyone wants their first day at a new job to go well.

Doreen knew that Darkwell Defense Systems was under contract with the O.S.I., an organization reputed to be the most secretive of all the dark corners of the Department of Homeland Security. Her supervisor had warned her not to ask questions about what the company did. This had not bothered Doreen. She was not curious.

But then the "radiation leak" had happened, followed by the unplanned evacuation of the building. It was only a drill, her supervisor had told her. Then came the sound of gunfire and the strange young man who crashed through the wall into her workspace from the parking lot. He hadn't stayed long, however, being eager to jump back through the hole he'd created. This had been followed by more gunfire and shouting from outside.

Doreen hid behind her desk for twenty minutes. When she thought it was safe to reemerge, she stepped cautiously through the debris to the new gaping hole in the office wall and emerged blinkingly into the light.

"Hello?" she whispered. "Are they done fighting?"

Three security guards stopped what they were doing and pointed guns in her direction. "Freeze!" shouted the nearest one. "Don't move, or we'll shoot!"

"Oh, god! Don't hurt me!" she cried, throwing her hands up in surrender. "It's my first day!"

The guards closed ranks with each other, but did not lower their weapons. The nearest one said politely, "Ma'am, please step out of the way."

Only now did it occur to her that the weapons were not actually pointing at her. In fact, the guards positioned themselves to try to keep her out their line of fire. This confused her until she saw the sasquatch standing behind her.

Does he work for the government too? she wondered after running for her life.

Bigfoot stood squinting in the light that streamed through the opening as the three security guards stood their ground and wished they'd brought bigger guns.

The giant glared judgmentally before turning and disappearing back into the darkness.

"Where is he?" asked the guard bringing up the rear.

"We'll have to go in after him," said the nearest guard.

"Agreed," said the third guard. "You first."

I have failed the boy, thought Bigfoot in the dark. I told him the woman was safe when she was not. I allowed the wicked man to take her.

He looked at his arm and the Velcro pouch that carried his smartphone. The device inside suffered from a cracked screen that had separated from its casing. If he had not fallen on it, he might have used it to send an electronic message to his friend.

José was on his own now.

As the men with guns stumbled through the opening, the giant cursed himself for having become old and weak. He picked up a filing cabinet with some difficulty—though it was hardly full—and threw it at the armed men, tumbling them against each other like hapless bowling pins.

The wicked man has a head start, thought Bigfoot as he leaped over the idiots and ran toward the mountains. If I am to redeem myself, I must hurry.

ELSEWHERE

Again, José felt as though he ran in slow motion. This was not a good thing.

Spencer's behind me. He's dropped back to follow at a distance, but I know he's there.

He didn't have a plan. He didn't know where he was running. He dared not return to Oscar, as much as he wanted to.

What would Steve Austin do?

He jumped across a gully without slowing down.

I have no frickin' clue. I can't emulate a man I've never met.

He reviewed in his mind what Jessie had taught him about his bionics—their strengths and their shortcomings—hoping to remember something he could exploit to his advantage.

I'm vulnerable to cold—which means he is, too.

He reasoned that anything affecting his bionics would affect Spencer's superior bionics more because they were more complex. More parts meant there were more pieces that could break.

It's true of cars, so it must be true of bionics, right?

He had no idea but scanned the horizon for snow-capped peaks that might be within reach.

It's a theory I might have to—Whoa!

He dug his heels into the earth. They plowed a long furrow in the ground which brought him to a halt on the edge of a deep gorge.

He didn't know where he was, but the view was spectacular. The gorge was at least a hundred yards wide and stretched endlessly in either direction, carved over the centuries by the churning river that flowed far, far below. He could see for miles in either direction, including the fierce thunderclouds that were blowing in from the west. Distant shadows revealed where the rain was already pouring while in other places the elusive sun cast brilliant shafts between the clouds into the valleys.

He would have taken a picture if he hadn't been in mortal danger.

KRAK!

The sound was that of his enemy landing on a rocky shelf roughly thirty feet behind him, slamming his feet into the stone as if he had fallen out of the sky. He carried with him an improvised club—an axle torn out of a car with a wheel attached at one end. His white ribbed tank top was an odd match for his dress slacks, but the coat and tie he'd been wearing earlier had been too cumbersome for murder.

José stood between Spencer and the chasm.

Stop thinking about Austin. . . . What would Oscar do?

"I have to admit," said Spencer from his vantage point above his opponent. "I thought you had a better plan than this." He gestured expansively at the panorama. "That's the Royal Gorge behind you. Twelve hundred feet down to the Arkansas River. Kind of a dead end, I'm afraid."

"I came for the view. It's fantastic," said José.

Oscar would study his motives. Wait for him to reveal a weakness.

"Why did you do this, José? What did you think you would gain from fighting me?"

José knew the answer but was too tired to put it into words. It would have had something to do with the right of a nation to know how far its government was willing to go for its defense—also the concentration of power, transparency in government, and other high-minded concepts that would mean nothing to his boss.

"The truth," said José out loud.

"The truth?" repeated the bureaucrat. "Here's the truth! I gave you your legs back! A job! A swanky apartment! Money!" He grasped the axle like a scepter. "Everything a man your age should want!"

"I never volunteered to be an assassin. You lied to me."

"I did what it takes to protect this country! People think that ISIS is the worst thing out there! They don't know about sentient viruses from outer space! Psychic foreign agents! Death probes! Did your pal Oscar even mention the FEMBOTS?"

The red-faced bureaucrat answered his own question with flecks of spittle.

"No, of course he didn't! He thinks his people GOT 'em all! Well, I don't have the LUXURY of being that ignorant! If people knew what really threatened America, they would FREAK THE HELL OUT!"

Spencer leapt toward his opponent, hoisting the heavy axle over his head to bring it down on his enemy's head. José leaped backward just in time.

KRUK!

The wheel on the end of the axle dug into the ground, bursting the tire on its rim. Spencer lifted the improvised club to swing again, trailing shredded rubber behind it.

José stepped back from Spencer's club, aware that his enemy was trying to maneuver him toward the cliff's edge.

Spencer swung again. This time, José grabbed the wheel and did not let go. The wheel came loose from the axle and propelled him into the side of a boulder near the cliff's edge.

Spencer continued to advance, gripping his axle as a fighting staff.

"You've been lying to Congress!" accused José. He lifted the wheel and threw it at Spencer's head.

"Dammit!" Spencer shouted, deflecting the projectile. "You sound just like Senator Feinstein!"

Spencer lunged toward him, but this time José charged in return, grabbing the staff, determined not to be herded any more. The two combatants glared at each other, their faces inches apart, neither wanting to relinquish control of the weapon.

"What more do you want?" screamed Spencer. "I gave you the power of a GOD! ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ACT LIKE ONE!"

Wow! I hit a nerve . . .

José glanced down and saw the furrows left by his own feet as he was pushed unwillingly toward the cliff's edge.

My time's up. No time for anything smart. Have to settle for Plan Stupid.

He relaxed his knees and dropped onto his back, forcing his opponent to roll over him. Without letting go of the axle, José pushed with his feet against the ground for a little extra backward momentum.

Take him with me.

The two men tumbled into the chasm.

Astonishingly, even in free fall, neither man let go of the weapon. Spencer actually pulled it closer to scrutinize his opponent's face more closely. They glared at each other, realizing how far each was willing to go to defeat the other.

I might have a chance to test Newton's third law.

José waited for the right moment and pushed his opponent away. Spencer fell away from the cliff face as José fell toward it.

José saw the rocky surface blurring past him—and one fast-approaching outcropping that might be within reach. He extended his arm.

This will hurt. . . .

His fingers made contact with the rock, leaving five parallel furrows in the cliff face behind a trail of sparks. This was immediately followed by contact with his other hand, his elbows, feet, knees, and more of his chest than he had planned. And he remembered, to his regret, that necessary sensors in his bionics were designed to register pain.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRHHH!"

He didn't know how far he slid along the cliff face, but when he finally stopped, he was thankful that his limbs were intact, although his clothes and much of the artificial skin on his limbs had been shredded.

I've stopped. And I'm alive. And Spencer . . .

He looked down and saw Spencer fall, looking more angry than afraid. He raised his left palm toward José, but not to wave goodbye.

SPOF!

The hand detached from its arm, propelled by a burst of compressed air, and hurtled toward José who lurched aside to avoid it.

That son of a—!

The hand dug itself into the rock face at José's side. A sturdy cable connected the hand to Spencer's arm. Spencer swung easily to safety on an outcropping a hundred feet below.

A cold gust of wind surprised José as he clung to the rock face. He glanced toward the sky and remembered the storm that approached. When it started to rain (as he was certain it soon would), a slippery rock face would be the worst place for him to be.

He located a narrow ledge only a few feet below. He grabbed the cable from Spencer's grappling hand and allowed himself to slide down it toward the ledge.

A glance downward confirmed his suspicion. The fight was not over. Spencer was rapidly climbing the cliff by retracting the cable back into his left arm.

José recognized a strategic advantage that wouldn't last long. He reached upward for Spencer's cable and tugged the grappling hand out of the rock face.

"Hey, Spencer!" he shouted, looking down at his opponent whose full weight he now supported and whose grappling device he plainly held. "Need a hand?"

He wished Jessie had been there to hear it.

Then his body seized up because Spencer used the cable to send 400 milliamps of electricity into him.

MILES AWAY

"Kirkland, stop!"

Jessie had had enough of being dangled over the shoulder of a super-powered assassin who bounded from ridge to ridge like a mountain goat. "I mean it!"

He ignored her cries as well as the punches she hurled at his back, but he found it harder to ignore her clawing fingernails when they found his face.

"Hey!"

They landed on a lonely mountain road where he dumped his hostage carelessly on the asphalt.

"What's the matter with you?" he demanded as he checked his face for signs of bleeding.

Jessie made an attempt to stand, but could only manage to rise to her hands and knees. "I can't take all that leaping," she said staring at the pavement. "I'm gonna be sick."

"Be quick about it. We're on a schedule, and you're going to cooperate."

She did not vomit, but instead forced herself to her wobbly feet. "You don't need my cooperation," she said, rising to her full height. "You need a hostage!"

"Whose fault is that? You've betrayed your country!"

Kirkland stretched his arms expansively, feeling empowered at last to say exactly what he thought.

"You were part of the O.S.I.—the most elite group in the world. The benefits are amazing for those of us who follow orders. You and I could've been friends!"

"No," she said. "We could never be friends." She turned her back and hobbled away from him. "You could never see the big picture."

Her superior tone enraged him. "What does that mean?" he demanded, following her. "What is it that I don't see?"

Oncoming traffic, she might have said as she turned around, but instead she watched the van hit him.

Kirkland tried to leap out of the way, but recognized the danger too late. He cleared the grill only to strike the windshield, leaving behind an impact crater of cracked glass as he cartwheeled over the roof.

The driver hit the brakes only after the collision, causing the vehicle to momentarily skid out of control, swerving across the road and onto the opposite shoulder near the rock wall. It came to a rest after hitting a traffic sign, nudging it askew.

Before Kirkland hit the pavement, Jessie was already running toward the vehicle.

The driver nudged the door open. He was unhurt.

"Help!" she called, knowing the driver was now in as much danger as she. "We have to get out of here!"

But Kirkland grabbed her by the coat and pulled her toward him. His red face was a twisted knot of rage.

"I've HAD it with you!"

THE ROYAL GORGE

That hurt, thought José as his mind pushed its way back toward consciousness. My bionics insulated me from the worst of the shock . . . but if that hand had dug into my body . . .

He was on a high ledge against a cliff face, he remembered. He felt the wind upon his skin and an urgency that came from knowing he was not alone.

I should open my eyes.

He did and beheld the windblown face of his employer, Eli Spencer, leaning over him. Spencer's left hand (the one with the grappling function) was anchored into the rock wall over José's head, ensuring that the cyborg could not be easily dislodged from the narrow ledge that held them both over the chasm. The sky had grown dark and heavy with the incoming storm.

"This adventure has been very instructive," said Spencer. "It's not often I get a chance to test the limits of an agent's bionics this way." He lifted José's limp left arm to study it. The false skin on the forearm had been shredded, and some of the electronics within had been exposed to the elements. "I never knew what your tolerances truly were. Thank you for that."

Spencer held up his right hand, palm out. Two-inch blades extended from the fingertips while longer blades extended from the edges of his hand, radiating outward from the wrist.

"I see your arm is damaged," he observed.

The hand began to spin in an unnatural way. José remembered archival footage Oscar had shown of a robot with a buzz saw for a hand. This was the same technology as seen close up.

"It'll have to go back to the shop," diagnosed Spencer who jabbed the rotating blades deep into José's bicep.

Pain erupted. Sparks flashed. Reflexively, José pounded his attacker's face with his good right hand.

Spencer was taken off guard—surprised that José had any strength left—and listed sideways. He could not fall because of the grappling arm, but the cyborg was greatly annoyed.

José sprang to his feet but felt something wrong with his left arm. The fingers twitched intermittently and no longer responded to his will.

He ignored the problem. Spotting an outcropping of rock twenty feet away, he leapt for it to put distance between himself and his attacker. As he jumped, a small cylinder fell out of a cavity in his damaged arm. His bionic eye caught a glimpse of it as it dropped away toward the river where it would never be found.

My atomic battery . . .

ELSEWHERE

Kirkland held her close, making certain she saw his anger when he said, "The next time you run, doctor, I break your ankles."

He approached the van and its driver, tugging Jessie behind him. "But there's something I have to do before we go," he said, remembering his last order.

"No civilian witnesses."

Jessie was horrified when she realized what was about to happen. It was too late to warn the driver. There was nothing she could do.

The driver, an elderly gentleman in a coat and tie, was standing outside his vehicle. He was unhurt and unafraid. He took something out of his coat.

Kirkland recognized the face of Oscar Goldman, the man targeted for elimination. Kirkland's bionic eye zoomed quickly to the weapon in Goldman's upraised hand.

BLAM!

The final image recorded by Kirkland's eye was an extreme close-up of a muzzle flare, captured an instant before the eye was shattered by a bullet on its way into his brain.

Jessie flinched. Blood spattered her white coat. Some got in her hair.

Her captor collapsed face up. No training was needed to see that he would never get up again.

She turned to the stranger with the gun—which thankfully was now pointed unthreateningly at the ground. The gentleman seemed to be in a hurry.

"Who are you?"

"Your best friend. Get in the van."

THE GORGE

Spencer watched José with amusement. The boy seemed desperate to ascend to the top of the cliff, frantically leaping from one outcropping to the next as his damaged left arm flopped uselessly in the wind, hindering all his efforts.

Near the top, José looked back once and saw Spencer staring up at him. With bionic vision, the adversaries might as well have been standing next to each other.

Then the boy turned away and leaped upward, disappearing from Spencer's view over the top edge of the cliff.

Spencer admired the boy's determination—annoying as it was. The O.S.I. director leaped to the top of the gorge and landed on its edge.

He did not immediately see his quarry. The top of the gorge had grown dark as storm clouds crowded the sky.

"José!" he screamed over the wind. "You can't hide from me!"

Snap!

It was the sound of a thick branch being torn loose with bionic strength.

He turned toward the only tree in the vicinity, one which happened to overlook the gorge. It was small, dead and brittle, like its occupant was soon to be.

José was on its only remaining limb about ten feet up, facing Spencer, brandishing the branch like a club. He held the weapon with one hand—which only betrayed the severity of the injury to his other arm.

Spencer asked, "Why don't you just surrender?"

"Why don't you just shut up?" demanded José. "By now, you should have killed me—a LOT—but you keep making so damn many SPEECHES!"

José needed his opponent angry for his plan to work.

"Hiding in a tree is a bad strategy, soldier!" taunted Spencer. "You know I can push it down. Or cut it with my hand."

"And miss this view?" He gestured with his club toward the vista. "Fly up here and look for yourself! You can fly, can't you?" He swung his club like a propeller. "Go, go, gadget 'copter?"

Spencer snarled, firing his grappling hand at José's head.

SPOF!

Good, thought José as he blocked the projectile with his club. The grappling device latched onto the detached tree limb with all five of its fingers.

He leaped at his attacker, raising his one-handed club over his head as if it were the legendary Norse hammer.

This time I won't touch the hand.

Spencer calmly stepped back a couple paces and watched José land on the spot where he had been. The grappling hand was still attached to the club as José landed.

I remember something else Jessie told me about my prosthetics.

José looked at the pile of slack cable on the ground which still connected the grappling hand to Spencer's arm. Then he looked at the cloud-filled sky.

Bionics attract lightning.

José hurled the club with the attached hand into the sky, trailing conductive taser cable beneath it.

The sky, heavy with negatively charged water particles, looked down to see an unexpected lightning rod and released its static electric burden with ear-splitting candor.

KRAkkkK-KOWWW!

José raised his hand to shield his eyes, but the spectacle was already over. Spencer flinched backward—the result of a system-wide overload in his bionics—which created the illusion that he'd been struck in the chest with a cannonball. He somersaulted twice before landing face-down in the dirt.

José waited. He watched the first wisps of smoke rise, but still waited to see if the smoldering ruins of the cyborg would move again.

They did. Spencer slowly propped himself up on an elbow to look at his enemy. It was obvious now that the skin on his face was fake because real skin wouldn't bubble and ooze as his face now did. Just enough of his old face remained to convey how angry he was.

"You stupid PUNK! You think a little LIGHTNING is enough to stop me?"

"Nope," said José and kicked his boss into the gorge.

José's perfect kick sent the cyborg hurtling in a wide parabola that would eventually deposit him far below in the Arkansas River. The grappling hand followed on a slightly different trajectory, and when it reached the end of its tether, the super-heated, suddenly brittle cable snapped, allowing the hand to find its own path downward.

José watched from the edge of the chasm.

Twelve hundred feet, he said. According to everything I know, that fall should kill him.

My gut tells me it probably won't.

Still, it'll take him a long time to climb out of a hole that deep.

I think I've earned a little rest.

José collapsed on the edge even as Spencer continued to fall. He felt the first drop of rain hit his face. About time, he thought.

Soon it was a downpour, but José did not care, notice, or move.

This was the scene that Bigfoot discovered as he loped over the horizon, desperate to find his friend before rain washed away the trail. The youth he discovered at the cliff's edge appeared lifeless. His face was caked with blood, his left arm was mangled, and his clothes were shredded from the violent descent down a rocky cliff.

He knew it was unsafe to remain in this place while others from the O.S.I. still searched for them. With infinite care, he lifted his young friend in gentle arms.

To his great relief the boy stirred.

"Who's that?"

The boy opened his eyes and recognized his friend.

"Oh, it's you," said the youth. "You look like hell. What happened?"

A FEW MINUTES LATER

The pouring rain made it difficult for Oscar to navigate the Dodge Sprinter van through the mountain pass, but luckily the cracks in the windshield were confined to the passenger side, and the windshield wipers still functioned as they should.

Jessie hadn't stopped talking since they'd gotten to the main road. Oscar had identified himself as a friend of April's—which had been the only credential he could claim that would put the young doctor at ease. Jessie had guessed the rest and started telling him her side of the adventure.

"It was some kind of monster," she said with broad gestures. "It was shaggy. It growled, and it picked me up and—" She pointed at something moving on the road. "—and there it IS!"

Oscar hit the brakes harder than he'd intended, going into a momentary skid. The van stopped just in time.

Illuminated solely by the van's headlights, Bigfoot stood like a statue holding his young friend in his arms, his expression one of dread. José's head and arms drooped lazily in Bigfoot's grasp. Both figures were battle-scarred and drenched with rain.

"That's no monster," Oscar declared. "That's a friend."

THE ARKANSAS RIVER
DOWNSTREAM

Eli Spencer awoke with wet gravel in his mouth. He was face down in the rain on the river's edge and couldn't remember quite how he'd gotten there.

He remembered the fall into the gorge. Before landing, there had been a moment of optimism when he realized his feet would land first, but then he struck the riverbed and his legs snapped at both knees.

Now, with difficulty, he twisted his head sideways to get his bearings. He knew he couldn't stand. His feet were upstream somewhere, but maybe he could see some clue as to where he was.

The cliffs were not as high here, nor as steep. Someone dressed in black at the top of the cliff saw him and jumped down into the gorge, landing like a grasshopper. He ran to Spencer's side faster than an ordinary man could. He looked up and shouted, "Here!"

Within moments, three more men in black landed as if they'd been dropped by the sky.

Spencer's bionic army had arrived too late, but they'd arrived.

"You'll be all right, sir," said the nearest agent. "Dr. Endo will have you fixed up in no time."

"Status report?" gasped Spencer.

"We're searching the area for Agent Mendez and Dr. Goodwin."

"Goodwin? What happened to Kirkland?"

The agent briefly looked away—as subordinates sometimes do before delivering bad news.

"Sorry, sir."

WESTBOUND I-70
SIXTY MILES WEST OF DENVER

The driving rain continued, as did the unmarked van with the cracked windshield. Oscar was alone at the wheel now and was starting to relax despite the rain. If anyone were going to stop them, they likely would have done it by now.

He took a call on his flip phone.

"Oscar," said the caller. "It's me, Nick. How's the kid doing?"

"He was hurt pretty bad, but I think he'll live," reported Oscar. "We got him to a good doctor."

Behind him, Jessie tended to José in the van's rear cabin which had been hastily rearranged into a makeshift trauma center. The surveillance equipment had been pushed aside and switched off, and the backseat had been turned lengthwise to serve as a gurney for Jessie's patient. She kneeled at his side and applied bandages from Oscar's first aid kit which had been presciently stocked for combat medicine. Bigfoot crouched and cradled José's head in his massive hands.

"You're going to be all right, José," promised the doctor. "Just relax."

"I beat him, Jessie," said the patient dreamily. "Did Bigfoot tell you how I beat him?"

Jessie smiled reassuringly, knowing her patient was experiencing a morphine-induced euphoria.

José answered his own question. "My speech was shorter."

Jessie smiled, but remained concerned. She didn't want to say it while her patient was awake, but he needed more help than she could give him.

In the front cabin, Oscar steered with one hand while listening to Nick on his phone.

"Don't know if this is a good time, Oscar, but you said you wanted to know right away if I found something. You were right. The O.S.I. is searching, and they're looking all over the world—except they're not looking for something. It's someone." Oscar heard keystrokes on the other end as Nick called up a picture of the hunted man. "A retired air force colonel by the name of Steve Austin."

"What?!"

"It seems like they were tracking him for a while, but he must've given them the slip. Wasn't he an astronaut or something?"

Oscar almost dropped the phone in astonishment.

"He's alive. . . . My god, he's still alive. . . ."

FROM THE EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. RICHARD ENDO:

Mr. Spencer:

Attached is the autopsy report on Agent Kirkland. I'm afraid it isn't conclusive.

The data stream from his bionic eye documented some kind of accident in our lab. We found first and second degree burns on his face and scalp, and some scorching on his bionic arm. His eye stopped transmitting shortly after he left the base, and ruptures in his artificial skin suggest he was struck by a car. There were indistinct skid marks on the scene where his body was discovered, but most of the marks were washed away by the rain, making it impossible to identify the tread.

Even more frustrating, the data stored in Kirkland's bionic eye is unrecoverable. The bionic implant was destroyed by the bullet that killed him.

Mr. Paulson has been very thorough in overhauling our security. Passwords have been changed and protocols have been tightened to prevent further breaches. Paulson is filing his own report to you, but he tells me that we were victims of a well-organized conspiracy that included Agent Mendez, Dr. Goodwin, and a large, powerful man in a Bigfoot costume.

Paulson doesn't want to admit it, but this smells like Goldman's work.

ON THE ROAD . . .

José recovered on the journey—except for his left arm which remained in a sling.

Oscar drove west. He and his passengers spent nights at campsites well off the main roads, stopping along the way for essentials like food, gas, medicinal supplies, tools for repairing fine circuitry, and one tent big enough for a sasquatch.

They couldn't use their credit cards for the same reason they couldn't go home, but Oscar had been astonishingly well prepared with cash for their needs, prompting José and Jessie to wonder how long he'd been planning for this unplanned trip.

Although the four were all now friends, they were also strangers thrown together by circumstance, so many of their more relaxed moments on the road were spent learning about each other, especially Bigfoot. His smartphone had been repaired by Jessie with a combination of solder and duct tape, so the sasquatch was able to use it to share stories about his past on earth and in space. The trip was not long enough for him to answer all of their questions.

There was never a discussion about where they were driving, however. Bigfoot had invited them to return to the safest place he knew, and upon reaching the San Angelo Mountains, he led them through the White Tunnel himself. Jessie took a bit longer than the others to take in the sight because it was her first visit to the sanctuary with its unearthly glowing entrance.

When they reached Shalon's examination room, Bigfoot disappeared for a while to confer with the other sasquatches. José resumed his normal daily routine by submitting to a diagnostic session with Jessie—a ritual he missed more than he wanted to admit. It was only then that he brought up the subject they had all been avoiding.

"Are you ready to stop telling me that I'm all right?" he hinted.

"He knows," Oscar concluded.

"About his missing nuclear battery?" asked Jessie. "Of course, he knows. I've been avoiding the subject to keep his mind off of it."

"This was part of my training," said José grimly. He looked at his bandaged left arm in the sling, knowing that the bandages hid an empty battery chamber in his bionics. "To stay alive, I need an atomic battery for each of my bionic limbs." He pulled the sling off the damaged arm so the doctor could help him remove the bandages. "If this one isn't replaced soon, I'll die of organ failure."

"We don't know that, José," she said with stubborn optimism. She located the battery connectors inside the damaged arm with needle-nosed pliers and carefully pulled them into the light, being sure to leave the connecting wires attached.

"An off-the-shelf battery won't do," said José. "My bionic arm pulls a lot more amps than a pacemaker."

"That doesn't mean we're giving up," insisted Jessie. She connected her smartphone to his arm using a small cable and launched a diagnostic app she had written for this purpose. "We can rotate the batteries in your remaining limbs to extend your time—until I figure out something else."

"Jessie . . . ," prompted Oscar from the doorway. Jessie recognized the discretion in his voice and nodded.

Bigfoot entered the examination room as Jessie set down her smartphone and left for a few moments to speak with Oscar.

"Can the arm be removed?" asked Oscar in a whisper. His decades of experience with bionics left him with little doubt that the missing battery problem was far graver than she had yet revealed.

Jessie peeked through the doorway at José who waited without complaint on the exam table. She saw Bigfoot curiously poking the empty battery chamber with his finger.

Jessie whispered to Oscar, "It's a major surgery. I don't have the tools or the training."

"What if we cut it off?"

"The sensors in his arms are powered organically—by his body." She shook her head. "He'd feel the pain."

"I can hear you talking, you know," reminded José.

Their hushed fretting over him convinced him that he should take charge. He would have stood dramatically at this point if Bigfoot were not still examining the wires in his arm.

"I don't want this to be awkward," he continued. "It's been a long drive since Colorado, and I've had time to think about how I want to use this time I have left." He reached for his sling to demonstrate his readiness. "I want to start the next mission."

"Mission?" asked Oscar.

"You know," said José. "Finding Steve Austin. You're going to go look for him, right?"

"Now just a minute . . ."

"You need to conserve your strength," warned Jessie.

"No, I need to kick some ass," her patient insisted.

Before an argument could begin, Jessie's phone made an unaccustomed noise where it lay on the table—still connected to José's arm.

BOOP-BOOP-BOOP!

"My diagnostic app." Jessie picked up her phone.

"Hey, guys?" said José as he watched his suddenly reanimated bionic limb. "My arm just came back to life!" His eyes widened in surprise at the flexing fingers of his left hand which now responded to his will, but none of the humans in the room seemed to understand how this was possible.

"Bigfoot? What did you do?"

The giant was surprised that the others were staring at him. José's battery connectors were concealed in Bigfoot's closed fist, and the connecting wires were still visible leading from the fist to the damaged arm.

The giant looked embarrassed. He opened his fist and revealed a metal cylinder attached to the wires.

"Mergeron," said José. "Bigfoot just texted me. He says it's a mergeron cell."

Oscar scoffed, "But that's—"

"An antimatter power cell," finished José who, like the others, stared at the giant in utter confusion. "Bigfoot used to use these 'mergeron' cells to power his own cybernetic parts, but he says he doesn't need them anymore."

Amidst the gathering of open mouths, Bigfoot conscientiously tucked the miraculous power source into the open cavity in José's arm.

"Bigfoot hasn't been a cyborg since the aliens left," said Jessie. "Are you saying that there's more of that tech here on earth?"

"That's impossible," said Oscar. "The aliens took it all."

Bigfoot stared guiltily at the floor as if he'd been caught in a giant fib.

I should have said the colonists THOUGHT they took it all, he thought.

The sasquatch signaled the others to follow him as he left the examination room and walked toward the deeper caves.

Because of Shalon's illness, she was asleep—frozen in time—when the Colonists left, so the others collected her things while she slept. The other Colonists did not know about the Safe Room, and she made me promise never to tell.

He had never forgotten what Shalon, his human mother, had told him in the privacy of the Safe Room when tensions within the colony had threatened to tear it apart:

"I created this secret room, even though Apploy would never approve if he knew. You and I are the only ones who know about this place, and it has everything I need to take care of the both of us—in case things get worse."

Bigfoot walked slowly so that Oscar could keep up. He touched what appeared to be a rocky protrusion on a cave wall, but which was actually a centuries-old palm scanner designed by Shalon to recognize his touch. A metal door appeared and slid open.

I have kept this secret for a long time. Forgive me, Mother, but this is no longer the time for secrets.

The room was similar to the examination room in the upper caves, but instead of being furnished with second-hand chairs and old boxes, it was fully equipped with extraordinary technology from another world. Crates of unknown circuitry stocked the shelves, and one wall was adorned with a hexagonal view screen that had been dark for decades.

"This . . . ," Jessie stammered as she entered the room. "This is amazing."

"Bigfoot says he doesn't know how it all works, but you can figure it out." José's eye received a new text message that made him smile. "Bigfoot says, 'Jessie is smart.'"

Jessie looked at Bigfoot, then at José, and felt suddenly overwhelmed. "This stuff is alien. If I can figure it out—and that's a very big 'if'—it would change the world."

"You'll do it. You'll figure it all out," José assured her. "This can be your mission—while I'm out looking for Steve Austin."

He turned toward his new boss. "What do you think, Oscar? Can we do it?"

The former head of the O.S.I. gazed incredulously at the gadgets in the room. "Oh, yes. . . . Of course, we can." His mouth widened into a very broad grin.

"We have the technology. . . ."

DARKWELL MEDICAL FACILITY
COLORADO

Eli Spencer and Dr. Endo walked side-by-side toward the patient's recovery room. Spencer walked with some difficulty, using a cane for support (as his father once had). The damaged bionics had been recently replaced, but there was always a recovery period when the brain had to relearn how to control its new parts.

Amber—whom Endo had recently chosen to be his new personal assistant—nodded politely at her superiors as they walked past, but did not interrupt their private conversation.

"And how's the patient?" Spencer asked the doctor.

"Awake. After he's had a few more days to recover, I can introduce you to—"

"Now. I'll talk to him now."

"Sir?"

"I need to replace two bionic agents. We need to step up the pace."

"Very well, sir."

Amber lingered in the hallway as Spencer and Endo entered the patient's room. Eavesdropping had been such a rewarding habit for her in the past, she wasn't going to stop now.

"Good morning, soldier," said the man with the cane. "I'm Eli Spencer, director of the O.S.I. You probably have some questions about how you came to be here."

Amber could not see the patient through the open door, but she could hear a voice.

"Was I in an accident?"

"Yes," explained Spencer. "We rebuilt you. We had the technology. We had the capability to make the world's first bionic man."

The door slowly closed.

"You, Marcus Koehler, are that man."

The end . . .


FROM THE AUTHOR:

Yes, it IS weird to have "The end" at the bottom of a chapter like that, and the dot-dot-dot that follows is significant. A question mark would have been silly.

What began as a thought experiment for my amusement grew into the story you've just read—something that consumed a lot of my time because my nature demands closure. These characters took on a life of their own and demanded that I continue to write until I reached some kind of conclusion.

Posting this project online was another experiment—to see if there's an audience for a story like this. The results are inconclusive. Compared to the Buffy and Doctor Who sections, the Six Million Dollar Man corner of this site gets very little attention, and the total hits have been few. This may change when Hollywood remakes the franchise—and it WILL, sooner than you think, and Matt Damon will apparently be involved—but for now, it's hard to tell.

I have reasons for optimism, however. The traffic data for this story suggest that those who DO see my work seem to stick with it for a while. Thank you very much.

You may be wondering: What's Callahan up to? Why does everyone think Steve and Jaime are dead? How did Rudy Wells die? What's the deal with Amber? I intended this story to be a launching point for a longer series, but until I find a publisher for stories like these that include these very licensed characters, I have to find a way to put a concluding period at the end of it (or perhaps three in a row) so that I can move on to other things.

If you enjoyed this story, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please write a review or send me an email. You have the technology.