Disclaimer: I do NOT own Knight Rider or any recognizable characters of it; just Cadge and the story.
Chapter 14: Remember Me Now?
Everybody jumped to their feet in surprise as a Ferrari racing car slid into the mansion's main yard at an angle, coming to a stop facing Kitt with Billy between them.
"What the heck!?" Billy exclaimed, leaning back against Kitt's hood.
"Billy, I believe the driver wants to fight me. Please step away from me, and take the flying machine with you," Kitt stated.
"Fight--?" Billy began to ask.
Sharp barbs pointed out from the car's wheels and began to spin and buzz like buzz saws, threatening some nasty damage and a trip to the wheelchair store.
"Woha-jeez!" Billy yelled, snatching the fallen drone machine from Kitt's hood and scrambling to the side.
"Driver of the Ferrari FXX!" Kitt declared, raising his voice volume to be heard by the other driver. "Shut off your vehicle before I am forced to do it for you."
The car gunned its engine and charged Kitt. Kitt shifted minimally to take the impact, being as calm and collected as always. Everyone shouted in surprise, though, when the Ferrari slammed against him, sending him sliding back up against the stone wall surrounding the mansion's main property.
"Kitt-!" Michael yelled, running forward. He drew his gun and shot at the Ferrari's driver window.
Bullets pinged uselessly off the window as the car continued shoving Kitt into the wall, pinning him there, but causing little damage. Michael raised his gun to try shooting again, but dizziness swept his head and he collapsed to the ground on one knee, clutching his head to keep it from spinning around.
"Mike, look out!" Zoe yelled.
Michael looked up in time to see head lights invade from the darkness beyond the mansion before a silver Mustang skidded to a halt, turning to be between Michael and the other people. Sarah screamed Michael's name uselessly as the car's passenger door opened up and long, black cables and metal gears snapped out, wrapping around Michael's arms and pulled him into the car. Michael struggled, but his body was groggy from the dizziness and the hit on his head. Michael's gun clattered to the ground as the passenger door snapped shut behind him. The Mustang revved its engine thrice as its lights flashed in a peculiar way, then it sped out of the mansion area. The Ferrari emitted a final snarl as a red electric pulse shot from it to Kitt before backing up and speeding off after the other Mustang. Kitt's pulsing grill light dimmed and turned off.
"Kitt!" Sarah yelled, running over to the car.
"I'm all right, Sarah," Kitt said as his red light began to pulse again. "I was just temporarily off line with the electric magnetic pulse the Ferrari emitted on me. But it is strange, Sarah; the car has the same base frame as Cadge."
"I knew he was bad news," Sarah muttered.
"I can't believe it," Billy was saying in the background. "Karr—that was Karr!"
"Should we call the police? What should we do?" Ms. Wild was asking.
"Sarah," Kitt ventured after a moment of silence. "According to my scanners, the other vehicle was Karr."
"I know, Kitt," Sarah sighed sadly, plopping her arms on the roof of Kitt and putting her head on top of her arms. "I saw the light…"
"Also, Cadge's programming seems to have been completely rewritten," Kitt went on. "It is 89 % possible that Karr assaulted Cadge and rewrote his data so that he became the hostile car we saw just now."
"No, Kitt, Cadge is bad and we have to stop him along with Karr."
"Sarah," Kitt said quietly. "Please, let's give him one more chance. We will stop Cadge, but attempt to return him the way he was, and destroy Karr. If we are unable to save Cadge, then we will have to destroy him too."
After a long moment of tense silence, Sarah sighed.
"Alright, fine. We'll try rescuing Cadge."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Michael, mean while, was trapped in the silver, black-stripped Mustang in its passenger seat, that was speeding down the road at unsafely fast speeds. Black leather surrounded him and his head throbbed from the hit he had taken earlier. He thought he may have passed out shortly once or twice. Groaning, Michael placed a hand to his head wound and found that it was bleeding freely again. Then he realized that the Mustang's engine, deep and commanding, was often making peculiar notes and sounds that were, in turn, responded with similar sounds from the black and orange Ferrari keeping pace beside the Mustang. The landscape was nothing but a black smear outside with vague, brief color smears crossing the darkness once in a while. When Michael glanced at the Mustang's speedometer, he saw why the landscape was impossible to see and felt his stomach hit the floor.
227 miles an hour. Horse shit, he was in trouble.
A whirr and click noise made Michael looked at the center of the dash. There, an orb a lot like the one in Kitt's dashboard had appeared after its metal shell had been drawn aside. With in was a glass orb colored emerald green and golden yellow. After a moment, the yellow jumped and moved as a deep bass voice spoke from the car.
"Michael…"
Memories flooded back then, filling in holes that the head hit had been unable to fix. Michael was suddenly remembering a time when he had been beat almost to death by some thugs on a mission. Karr had parked right by him, short of simply parking over him, and had talked Michael back into awakening before taking him to a hospital. Karr had scolded him for being so reckless, but that was just one of the things Karr tended to do back then; scold his partner for stupid mistakes.
"Karr," Michael replied.
There was an awkward moment of silence. A drip of blood from the back of Michael's head onto the leather seat made him snap out of awkward stupor.
"So, can I get a trip to the hospital or something here?" Michael asked, placing a hand to the back of his head. "I kind of need stitches here."
"No, you just need more adequate bandaging," Karr replied.
The glove box in front of Michael fell open. In side, Michael saw a cell phone, some bandages, disinfectant, and aspirin. Michel checked the cell phone first; no signal. He pocketed it, none the less. Michael then took some of the bandages and closed the glove box. before applying them to his head. He worked slowly and carefully, buying time to think.
Okay, so Karr's alive and I've just been kidnapped by him with some Ferrari partner in crime. What does he want from me; isn't he going to do some freaky merging thing with me, like he did to Alex Torres when he resurrected Karr? Where are we going? Who's in the Ferrari?
The Ferrari suddenly let off the gas, going behind Karr to come up on the other side and dangerously close to the passenger door and Michael. Michael saw the head lights turned towards him and felt like he was being stared at; an unpleasant feeling to understate it.
Okay, who's the nut case in Ferrari? Michael corrected, inching away from the window. And what is going to happen now?
Michael was nervous and that couldn't be lied with. He was with in an old enemy and Kitt was no where to be seen. Kitt…
"Kitt, can you hear me?" Michael asked, placing a hand to his ear to feel for the ear wig. "Come in, Kitt."
"I removed the ear wig, " Karr said. "Michael, do you remember me?"
"Oh yeah, charging around declaring 'Kitt must be destroyed' and something about it's your destiny to merge with me, yadda, yadda, yadda; of course I remember you," Michael said sarcastically.
"No, Michael, I mean about our encounters before that," Karr said.
Michael wanted to desperately have a snappy come back, but the memories assaulted him and his head spun. He closed his eyes and covered them, but this failed to block out the images and sounds of weeks upon weeks of successful missions and road owning. Of course he remembered, how could he ever forget again? He wanted to snap back at Karr and find a way of getting away and back to Kitt, but he was torn; which car was his true partner now? Which one could he trust?
"You do remember," Karr said. "From what I saw back there, it appears that Kitt shot out my messenger drone and she hit you on the head, returning your memories. At least she did not die in vain."
"She…?" Michel asked curiously.
"That was the preferred gender I gave her when I originally programmed her."
"How did you…?" Michel asked, letting the question fade out. He didn't know what to ask; his head was still dizzy and getting heavy.
"When I was reactivated the last time you saw me the programming Alex Torres had installed me was interfering with my own and I was, admittedly, acting stupid. I charged into battle with little to no tactic or goal in mind, much less sanity, and was thus defeated pathetically easily. Thankfully, my central computer core was picked out of the trash later by a rather clever mechanic man who installed me into his own computer as an innocent upgrade. I spoke to him through the computer, and he assisted me in making drones, which I programmed and thus used to create my new body from junk parts and, I admit, a stolen car. The drones later served the mechanic, but he and most of the drones were slain in a government-ordered raid when my existence was discovered. I have been looking for you ever sense, Michael."
Michael had a head ache and mixed emotions, but he could still pick out a lie.
"Bull shit," he said, calling out the lie. "That mechanic probably wanted to sell you off to the highest bidder when he saw what you were and you killed him."
"You could always sniff out a lie, Michael," Karr chuckled. "Yes, I killed him. He took out quite a few of my drones, but I won, none the less."
Michael knew what he was about to ask would be pointless, but he wanted to try anyway.
"Shut up, pull over, and let me out," Michael growled. "I don't want to be here."
Imagine his surprise when Karr actually complied and the passenger door opened.
Not wanting to test his luck, Michael scrambled out. The Ferrari sped on ahead of them, skidding to a halt and turning around to face them further up the road. They were in the hilly desert somewhere with a gas station about a mile up the road, just past the Ferrari. Michel looked around at the dark night, wary and confused. Just like that, Karr had complied? Was he about to start a game of cat and mouse with him?
He looked at Karr and slowly began to walk way, frequently looking back at Karr to make sure that he wouldn't pursue the human. He jumped and raised his hands to raise a gun that wasn't there when Karr spoke.
"I have just activated the cell phone you took in your pocket. Should you ever wish to speak to me again, simply dial our favorite number back in the old days and I will answer. Good luck, Michel."
Favorite number? Michael wondered. Then he remembered, 446-7689; the number of the pay phone Karr had to use once to contact me. Man, he complained for weeks after that, whinning about ground lines and all that, but it becamea joke after a while...
With that, Karr gunned his engine as drove away. The Ferrari followed him, and Michel was left standing the middle of the desert, absolutely confused. Karr had kidnapped him, but had just let him go on a simple request. He took the cell phone out of his pocket and looked at it.
"What do you want, Karr?" Michel whispered.
The desert night silence failed to give him a response.
AN: Just a head's up, won't be able to get on the internet very often for the next two weeks, so I won't be able to update everyday like I usually do. But hang tight, guys! And thank you so much for all the reviews! ^_^