Me own Knight Rider? Ha Ha Ha! If I did it would of never been cancelled!

Here's a little present to all the faithfull readers! Happy Holidays!

Switching Places

Chapter 12

Greedily the Colonel's eyes traveled over the money that sat in Mr. Smith's open briefcase; one point one million dollars. It was enough money to keep his camp running for another sixteen months, longer if he got rid of a couple of slackers.

"What's that thing? Hopefully you were not stupid enough to bring a homing signal into my camp?" The Colonel asked as he picked up the small gray box and noticed the USB ports.

"A homing signal?" Mr. Smith laughed at the absurdity of the man in army fatigues holding the portable hard drive. "Do you think I want someone to be able to find this little camp? With my prototype missiles still in it? Don't be daft! That is just a computer program to override the Knight Three Thousand's programming; I need it so that I can take control of the car." He spoke slowly as if explaining to a child and it wasn't far from the truth, Smith thought as he reached over and took the hard drive from Hancock.

Smith looked down at the small gray box. Only he knew just what was on it and how important the programs that it contained were to his ability to control the Knight Three Thousand. It had taken him months of careful planning and manipulating to locate these programs while he stayed out of the SSC. Then his timing needed to be perfect to go to the SSC and retrieve the programs, the impending capture of the Knight Three Thousand along with the communications black out caused by the electrical storm had provided the ideal situation for him to go to the SSC.

Poised, as he was on the edge of finally achieving his greatest heist, he knew he was past the point of no return. He would never be able to return to his former life, but with the abilities that the Knight Three Thousand possessed he would easily be able to manipulate any computer system and he would be untouchable.

Lying on her stomach, Sarah peeked out under the edge of the tent canvas. It was almost twilight, and the camp was cast in deep shadow by the mountains to the west. She couldn't see much except the outline of the tent across from her, however there weren't any guards there either. For a moment she paused, she knew that at anytime the Colonel or one of his men could walk into her tent, and she wasn't exactly sure how much time had passed since the Colonel and the man dressed in the business suit, Mr. Smith, had left.

She had already decided that if she could get loose she would go free Mike, and then they could go find KITT together. It was a simple plan, however executing it without being caught would be the problem.

Taking a deep breath and double checking to make sure the coast was clear, Sarah slipped out from under the edge of the canvas and carefully made her way toward the back of the tent and some crates that were piled up there.

Once she was safely hidden she carefully looked out through the holes in the wooden slats of the crates. Her hand was shaking slightly as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. All the time she had spent while growing up, playing in the woods with Mike hadn't prepared her for this deadly game. If she was caught she had no doubt about what the Colonel would do with her, and if she weren't careful she would probably end up getting Mike killed too.

A slight movement to Sarah's right caused her to freeze.

A guard had just walked around the far end of the tent carrying a rifle. He paused and looked towards the crates.

As she stared at him through the slats she was afraid that her pounding heart might give away her location, even though she was hidden behind the crates and in total darkness.

It wasn't until the guard turned and walked away from her that she allowed herself to draw in a shaky breath. She was beginning to realize how dependent she had become on KITT and his surveillance to guide her through sticky situations, and this was the most dangerous one she had ever been in. Without thinking she raised her hand to her ear and pushed the silent earwig securely in place.

Frustrated to the point of breaking, Mike still sat alone in the tent staring through the gloom at the indistinct shape of the other chair. His legs had gone numb from sitting for so long, and his shoulders screamed in agony from having his hands tied behind his back. The pain had been made worse from his frantic struggles to get free after Sarah had been taken away.

The only reason he was sitting upright was because the chair he was sitting on was bolted to the steel plate beneath it, to conduct the electricity more easily through his body. However without that plate he would be no doubt laying on the ground now, his struggles would have knocked the chair over, making the current predicament even more uncomfortable.

Mike briefly wondered if he was starting to lose it, when he realized he was thankful for sitting upright.

The past hour or two had been hell on him. His fear of what was happening to Sarah was eating at him like a cancer. He hadn't been able to completely drive the thought that he might never see her again from his mind.

He knew that if he could get free, he was going to kill Hancock for ever touching Sarah. Deep down he knew that he was in love with her, had been ever since he was just a kid. He'd been so confused and angry as a teenager always striking out at everyone who had tried to get close to him, everyone except Sarah. He'd never really thought he was quite good enough for her though, that's why he had walked away from her when Charles had told him she wasn't home that summer. Why he'd joined the army and gotten into the Rangers, because he knew deep down that for all his badass ways that made him think he was cool, he just wasn't good enough for Sarah Graiman.

Giving his head a shake he tried to clear it. This line of thinking was doing him no good. He had come here to rescue Sarah, but all he'd managed to do was to get himself caught.

He wondered again where KITT was, Sarah had said that the AI was here but Mike hadn't seen the Shelby at all.

Did that mean the Shelby was out of commission? He wished he had been able to ask Sarah more while he had the chance, but he'd been kind of out of it after the shock treatment. The water had revived him, even though he had only been able to drink a fraction of what he wanted to quench his thirst.

If KITT was disabled then he knew his job had just become harder.

"Great, just what I need, more problems." He muttered disgustedly to himself.

Even though he didn't want to admit it, he had been counting on the Shelby to escape in. And no small part of that worry was about whether KITT was all right or not.

If KITT had been damaged… Mike shook his head again, he didn't like thinking about his partner being damaged. He knew the AI didn't have real feelings, but still he had seen the AI, usually caused by something Mike had asked the Shelby to do, damaged and it did bother him. Somewhere along the way Mike had stopped thinking of the Shelby as a car, and started thinking of him as his partner and… a friend.

The sound of voices outside the tent brought Mike's wandering thoughts back to the situation he was in and he listened to the two male voices as they passed near the tent. The two were discussing tonight's football game, and Mike wondered if they were guards or not as he had been attempting to keep track of the intervals between men passing his tent, so that if he did get free he'd have a good base knowledge of their routine checks.

A seemingly useless endeavor at the moment, but Mike's military training had instilled in him the need to gather as much info as possible and always be prepared.

With a disgusted snort Mike knew he had botched this mission, but he hadn't been so successful in the rangers because he gave up easily. No, giving up wasn't in his vocabulary. Unbidden, Sarah's face appeared before his mind's eye; the brave look on her face as Hancock led her away from him; but in her eyes he had seen her fear, the image would be forever burned in his mind.

With renewed vigor Mike struggled against the bindings that held him helpless in that chair.

Sarah had just made it to her new hiding place behind a tarp covered crate, as another guard appeared around the corner of the next tent. Heart pounding she watched as he looked in her direction, then kept walking up the row of tents he had just come from.

Drawing in a deep breath, she tried to slow her pounding heart and calm her jittery nerves.

"Sarah!"

Sarah almost jumped out of her skin, her hand covered her mouth to stifle her scream.

"Can you hear me?"

Relief flooded her as she recognized that familiar voice.

With her heart still pounding erratically Sarah answered with a shaky voice. "Oh god KITT, you scared the crap out of me!"

"I am sorry I scared you Sarah, that was not my intention. Are you all right? Your heart rate is extremely high." Concern lightly tinted the AI's voice.

Taking a deep breath again to calm her frayed nerves, Sarah's voice was steadier as she replied softly. "Yeah, I'm ok KITT. It is so good to hear your voice again." Taking another deep breath, she organized her thoughts and asked, "Did you disable the jamming device? Do you have full scanner range?" Her mind whirling with the new possibilities, if this was the case.

"No, I was not able to disable the jamming device completely, although I was able to modify the signal so that I have limited scanner and communications capabilities. I was able to locate you and your earwig, and I have located whom I believe to be Michael in a tent 57 feet to the northwest of your current location. I am also able to track the movements of the armed personal in your general vicinity. "

"You know where Mike is?" Sarah whispered before she could stop herself.

"Yes, I believe so. I have located a heat signature sitting in a tent, that is the same mass and height as Michael."

A thought occurred to Sarah and she asked. "KITT if you know where he is why didn't you go get him?"

"Did you not tell me to stay where I am Sarah?" The AI's voice took on a note of frustration as he continued. "Also the chain attached to the prototype missile is caught on my front wheel, I can't move without setting it off."

Sarah groaned, she had told the AI to stay where he was, but how did he manage to get chained to the missile? Deciding that it wasn't an important point right now, she resolved to keep with her original plan and free Mike, then go get the Shelby.

"KITT, tell me how to get to Mike."

"Sarah there is an armed guard approaching you from the southwest. If you head north 15 feet then turn east you will be hidden from him."

"Which way is north?" Sarah glanced up towards the night sky but she was only able to see a few stars in the small patch of sky that wasn't blocked out by mountains.

"Go 15 feet straight ahead, then turn right. Hurry Sarah! He will be able to see you in 10 seconds!"

Sarah stood from where she had been hiding behind the tarp covered crate and hurried about 15 feet to the end of the structure then turned right, keeping close to the wall.

Within five minutes, and several close calls of being seen by the guards, she was outside the tent KITT believed Mike was in. She looked around but she couldn't see anything that identified this as the tent in which she had been taken with Mike to be tortured.

Suddenly her mind was swamped with the image of Mike as he was electrocuted, the way he jerked and his muscles contracted as the electricity flowed through his body. She would never forget his face contorted in pain, his jaw locked as he endured it without uttering a sound and his eyes locked on her.

"Sarah?" KITT's voice was filled with concern. "Are you alright? Your heart rate just escalated, is something wrong?"

Giving her head a shake to dispel the image from her mind, she whispered to the AI. "No, I'm okay, is Mike in there alone?" Her voice trembled ever so slightly though.

"Yes. My scanners do not pick up any other heat signatures in the immediate vicinity."

KITT's scanners had picked up the two men and identified them as Colonel Hancock and the mysterious man whose voice he had heard at the SSC, as they came into his scanners limited range from the opposite direction as Sarah headed straight for the tent he was in.

The AI again wondered who this mystery man was and what he was doing here in this guerilla camp. His clothes and mannerisms didn't fit in with the other members of this camp and KITT's complicated algorithms gave a slight flutter, and the AI wondered briefly if he had his first premonition.

The tent flaps swung back and the two men stepped into the tent with the Shelby. The mystery man headed straight for the computer that sat on the desk and attached an external hard drive to it.

KITT was glad that he could still communicate with Sarah while the two men were here, but what the AI wasn't prepared for was the programs that the hard drive contained.

They were override programs that no one other then Dr. Graiman was supposed to have access to.

Mike heard a whisper from outside. It had been too low for him to hear what was said, but he could have sworn that it was a female's voice.

Sarah

Mike heard the shift of canvas and the sound of someone moving behind him, but try as he might, by looking over his shoulder, he couldn't see anyone in the gloom of the tent.

"Mike?"

Mike's heart slammed against his chest as relief washed over him. He'd recognize that voice anywhere.

"Sarah? Oh god is that you?" Mike asked in a hoarse whisper as relief warred with other emotions when the tall slender woman he had been so worried about materialized out of the gloom to his left side.

"Yeah, it's me. Are you okay?" Sarah's voice whispered back as she came closer and stepped around to his front. In the gloom Sarah could just make out the outline of Mike, his bare, pale skin showing none of the marks that she knew were there from the torture he had endured.

"I'm fine." Mike whispered back. He had recovered from his initial shock. "You need to get me untied before anyone comes."

Sarah nodded and bent to untie the ropes that held Mike in the chair, working quickly she was able to release his legs and the rope that was tied to the handcuffs, keeping him from getting off the chair. "Hold still, I should be able to pick the lock on the handcuffs." Sarah said as Mike began moving his legs and shoulders, she could imagine how stiff and sore his muscles were after being tied up for so long. Pulling the filament out of her pocket that she had used to pick her own handcuffs, she made quick work of the ones on Mike.

Sarah heard Mike groan softly as he brought his hands around to the front of his body, and began to rub them together.

"Mike?" Sarah whispered, suddenly worried that he might not be able to use his hands after they were tied up for so long.

"I'm fine. I just need to wait until I get some feeling back in my hands and legs." Mike whispered as he rolled his shoulders and worked his legs. When he was sure that he could force his legs to work through the pins and needles that pulsed up and down them, he stood up swaying slightly.

Sarah reached out and steadied him as he continued to shake his hands and feet, attempting to restore their feeling.

"Sarah, are you alright?" Mike asked, he wanted to reach out and touch her, to pull her tight against him so that he could feel her body and know she was alright, but in order to do that he needed to wait until the feeling came back into his arms.

"Yeah I'm okay." Sarah whispered.

"Sarah? Is Michael all right? You need to hurry. I have picked up two heat signatures headed in your direction." KITT spoke into Sarah's earwig.

"He's okay KITT. Thanks." Sarah answered softly to the AI, before looking up at Mike. "There's someone coming."

Mike nodded and he took a hold of Sarah's hand and guided her to the side of the tent, the desire to hold the woman beside him still strong but the need to protect her was even stronger.

"KITT can you hear me?" Mike whispered once he heard the two guards pass by their tent.

"Yes Michael." The AI answered and Sarah nodded her head to show that KITT had responded.

Mike was already forming a plan in his mind as he asked. "Are you damaged? What is your current status?" The plan that had formed vaguely in his mind before when he was tied up solidified and he needed to find out if the Shelby was going to be able to get them out of there or not.

Before the AI answered, Sarah quickly said, "KITT is at about 93% however he somehow managed to get chained to one of the missiles since I left him in one of the tents."

"I was just following your orders Sarah." The AI said sounding slightly put out, before he continued in a brisk manner. "There is a man here now who has some programs that your father designed to override my current programming and take control. I am attempting to block him."

"How long can you block him?" Sarah gasped in surprise.

"Not long, maybe only another three minutes or so."

Mike was looking at Sarah in concern as she quickly told him what KITT had just imparted to her, and his expression turned to fear.


I know I'm SORRY! There is no excuse for the year and a half hiatis between chapters. And this is another cliff hanger! Again I am sorry, but I PROMISE I am going to finish this story.

Thank you for waiting and reading. I have never forgot about this story I just hit a major writers block. I won't say I will update soon but I WILL update and finish this story. Here's wishing you all a Happy Holidays!

Until next time, ( when ever that will be! ;) )

cytpotter