Riley ran for what seemed like hours; the night was fading around her as she finally gave up and fell to her knees, gravel biting easily through the worn fabric of her jeans; and she got up again, heedless of the blood drizzling from the skinned patches on her knees, of the pain—only dull now, nothing more than an itching ache—and of the greying out of the world around her; she got up again, and she kept running, but this time it was too much, and when she fell again she did not rise; she merely lay there, crumpled in a little heap, looking like a pile of pale rags.

She had no idea how long she'd lain there when the little weary voice from the road flickered through her consciousness; had no idea how many cars had whished by on the dawning concrete, no idea how many hours it had been since she'd slept, or eaten, or known anything beyond the howling crushing grief that closed its fist inside her chest. But she was still just conscious enough to hear when someone behind her murmured her name, in a voice that had no strength to it at all.

"Riley," said the little voice, softly, helplessly. "Riley."

She made no move; didn't think she could. It was in her head. It wasn't real.

"Riley," it said again, and then: "Jane."

And now she managed to raise herself on an elbow and saw, through the shifting black flowers that had begun to bloom in her vision, a black car; a black car, still and enormous in the dim light of dawn, with no one behind the wheel.

"Jane....."

And another voice, an even more familiar voice, soft and tight with pain, but stronger. "Please," it said. "Please, Riley."

She reached out for the black car, and it slid closer to her, the hissing whine of a turbine engine very loud in her skull, and a warm dented bumper insinuated itself under her hand. The little weak voice came again.

"Jane....."

".............Karr?"

"......don't.......go......."

She felt her nails scrape down the MBS, felt rather than heard Kitt's stifled hiss of pain as they bit into his already-wounded shell. "Karr....."

"Riley......" said Kitt hoarsely. "Riley......Jane.....come back with us."

She swallowed and managed to lever herself more or less upright, lungs burning, her knees and her shoulder where she'd hit the ground utterly on fire, and leaned on Kitt as he opened his driver's side door for her, and fell inside.

A soft, helpless voice rose around her. "Go lightly down your darkened way," it gasped. "Go lightly underground...........I'll be down there in another day......I won't rest until you're found......."

Dimly she could make out something that looked like a battered black VCR lying on Kitt's passenger seat, and then there was simply nothing else.

**

"How is she?"

"Stable. She's done a lot of harm to herself, but nothing that can't be fixed. I'm amazed at her endurance......she made it about nine, ten miles down the road.....she can't weigh more than ninety-seven, it's astonishing she had the strength to run as far as she did....."

"Desperation does funny things," said Bonnie quietly, leaning against the wall. Michael, rather paler than normal but looking better than he had, gently closed the door of the guest room behind him.

"Desperation," he repeated.

Bonnie took his hand and led him downstairs. "Is it true?"

"About Harrington?.....Yes. He....they said it was a blood clot. Inoperable, huge. It was sudden. Because of the accident." He didn't say, Because of her.

"I don't believe this. Any of it."

"I know." Michael fished absently in his jacket and came out with a crumpled pack of filterless Luckies. "It's horrible. It's like a James Ellroy thriller."

"Give me one." Bonnie held out two fingers, and he slipped a cigarette between them. "God, Michael......how much has she had to endure? How much of this?"

"I..." He lit their cigarettes, heedless of the fact that they were in Devon's office. "It began with Karr, I think. No. The KARR. Back before."

"And she always wanted him back," said Bonnie, coughing raggedly on the harsh smoke. "But it was Richard who brought him back."

"Richard, and that friend of his. Jay Rose. Karr was calling out his name....." Michael broke off. "Some famous shrink. He must've................must've helped. With the memories."

"And she loved all three of them."

Michael said nothing, smoking. Bonnie turned her face against his chest, finding a little comfort in the familiar smell of him: steel, motor oil, a faint memory of leather.

"That woman," she said after a long moment. "The drug dealer."

Michael buried his face in her hair, holding her. "Yes. Alexandra Spar."

"She died for them."

"I know." His lips moved gently against the dark tangle of her hair. "She......was different. She drank the red sky for her evening wine."

Bonnie said nothing for a moment, just letting his strength, the strength of his arms, comfort her. She would not ask about Alexandra Spar. She thought she didn't want to know.

"What about Schreck?"

"Leavenworth," said Michael quietly. "Maximum security. Murder one and two counts of attempted manslaughter."

"Two counts?"

"Kitt and Karr," said Michael, and she thought she could almost hear a suppressed sob in his voice at the thought of losing his partner. They had all come so close. So very close.

"How.......?" he asked after a long moment. "I....remember Kitt was hurt, badly hurt, but I was knocked out for most of it......how did he.......?"

"I'm still not sure," said Bonnie honestly. "I think he backed himself up to the mainframe, wherever Harrington had it. I think it was an old self-preservation mechanism, some sort of central export and protection program, a holdover from the KARR. All I know is after she......ran out, into the night, after she cursed us all out and ran away, my laptop started flicking lines of code at me." She dragged on the Lucky, clinging to him.

"He was back?"

"He was trying to come back. It was awful, Michael. I....couldn't help remembering those lights going out, one by one. There was just a little flicker of him left, and he was trying to come back. He was......" She trailed off, trying to find words. "He was crying."

"Crying?"

"I don't know. Little helpless noises. The voice modulator on the CPU was......flickering. I found him, somehow, I don't even remember what I did, but I managed to get his core program out of wherever he'd put it and transfer him into one of Kitt's redundant backups. From there, it was just a question of replacing the bits of the CPU that Schreck had blown to shards, and then putting him back where he ought to be." She coughed again. "It was.....like a miracle, Michael. He had been gone......so long, so very long, we'd tried everything.........and he came back. On his own."

"And then? How did she get back here?" Michael butted his cigarette in Devon's seldom-used ashtray, curling his arms around Bonnie. "I only remember waking up and hearing them talking about her condition."

"I....." said Bonnie, sighing. "I did what he asked me to do. He was in pain.....I couldn't replace all the circuits that had been shot....but he wanted back in his CPU, and he wanted......" She gulped. "He wanted to talk to Kitt."

"Kitt was hurt....."

"I know," she said harshly. "Kitt listened to him, and Kitt demanded that I accede to his request. He wanted to go after her. Kitt wanted to take him." Bonnie sighed, taking a last drag off the Lucky and crushing it beside Michael's. "I patched up the CPU as best I could and put him in Kitt's passenger seat. They drove off. I don't remember anything until afterwards—I think I crashed, too.....no sleep for thirty-six hours......."

Michael hugged her to him. "You did a wonderful job, love," he said quietly. "You did what had to be done."

Her face buried against his shoulder, Bonnie sighed. "I don't know what will happen," she said miserably. "I don't know how this can come out right."

**

Karr's Shadow sat pristine and perfect in the dull light of the arc-mercs in Kitt's garage. It was as if he had never been scratched, as if the nightmare of the past three days had never happened. The car sat alone, utterly alone, in the concrete silence; Kitt was in a different hangar, had been moved on the request of Michael and Bonnie, to give Karr......if there really was still a Karr......some privacy. Kitt had been in a lot of pain when he'd returned with Riley Stone's unconscious body slumped in his driver's seat, and they'd wasted no time in extracting both Karr's CPU and Riley from him and taking him in for repair. Karr........had been left alone, after they'd repaired the rest of the damage to the car body and to his computer circuitry. No one really wanted to be the first to break that silence. It was a silence too thick for anyone to touch.

Now, in the dim twilight of the empty garage, an alarm beeped. And beeped again. It rang for quite some time before Karr reached out a tendril of energy and opened a channel.

Silence, then, in the silence: "Karr?"

More silence; but a more pregnant, conscious silence.

"Karr. It's Jay Rose."

"I know," said Karr dully.

"Listen to me," Jay's voice echoed in the concrete vault. "Are you alone?"

"Yes." He doesn't say, utterly, but it's obvious.

"Karr.......Riley needs you. She's.......in love with you. Has been for a long time. Since she first met you, in fact."

Karr says nothing. In France, Jay Rose's green, emerald and malachite, mismatched eyes close in pain. "Listen. I never thought I'd say this, but I love her too. I've never loved anyone like I love her. But she's not mine, Karr. She's never been mine."

Karr's silence changes texture a little. Jay takes heart. "Listen. Riley Stone......Jane Balardine......both of them love you. Have always loved you. Don't throw that away, Karr. She needs you badly. She......I know you don't want to hear this, but you have to. In the hospital in Utah.......I bet you saw us. From the balcony. She and I kissed, Karr. You saw that." He pauses. "That's why you left, wasn't it. I knew. She knew, too. She looked for you, and she saw you were gone. Karr........I've never seen anyone grieve like that. She crumpled." He swallows. "Richard........was unconscious when she left. She got the call halfway down to California, Karr. She figured you were heading south, and she followed. She was about twenty miles north of LA when the hospital called and said Richard.....had died. It was a blood clot. Painless and instantaneous. From the accident." Jay pauses again, and Karr can hear him swallowing back sobs. "He died for her, you know. For her. That's why he wrecked Grey. For her. He wanted not to live any more." Karr can hear Jay trying to regain his talking-to-patients voice. "His time was over. He'd had fun."

On the other side of the world, in his Loire chateau, Jay Rose thinks he will never be bored again. He is thinking about writing all this down, making something elegiac out of something dreadful, and he knows he can never do this; this is his dead friend's tale, not his, and it will never be his to tell. "Karr," he says. "Karr, listen. If you never listen to me again, just hear this. Richard loved you. He loves you now, wherever he is, and he did what he did for you and for the hope that you could be you again, only you, not bound by programming or rules. Just you. And that's the you that Riley loves............that Jane Balardine loves. She always saw you, even when your programming limited what you could be. She told me about you. That night, after we kissed on the balcony, after you drove down to LA, she sat down and she smoked two packs of cigarettes and she told me about you. About how you were. About what you could have been. About the conversations you had, just the two of you, after everyone else had left Lab 3. Karr............listen. Even when you were the KARR, she loved you. She could see that you weren't bad, you weren't evil: you were doing what you were supposed to do. It wasn't your fault you had been programmed badly." Jay's voice is rough, hoarse. Karr bets he's been smoking, too. Humans tend to do that under stress.

"I know," Karr says quietly, his voice modulator still rough, still having a bit of difficulty. It sounds like coughing.

"Karr," Jay says. "Karr. She needs you. Please, don't leave her."

"I won't," Karr coughs. "Will.................will she be all right?"

Jay is silent for a long, long time. "I think so," he says at last. "If you are with her. If you forgive her."

"What should I forgive her for?" says Karr, honestly puzzled, and Jay Rose laughs; it's a wonderful thing, since he has thought he will never laugh again.

"If you have to ask that," he says, "she will understand."

"I don't get it," says Karr. "Any of this."

"Neither do we," Jay assures him. "Just..........just love her. That is all she needs."

"I think I can do that." Karr coughs a little. "I just.......hope she can understand."

"You need not worry about that, my friend," Jay tells him warmly. "She will."