LadyMouse

by Joel Lane

The year is 2083 and Disney has been under the thumb of the UTX megacorporation for ten years. Disasters have plagued the world and a group of unlikely heros lead by the Replicant Gadget Hackwrench might just save the world, though death surround them all

2. The Mice in the Walls

Chapter 2: The Mice in the Walls

Then:

Gadget-four looked into the isolation room that was no bigger than a closet and asked in a small voice, "We're only staying the night? Right?"

Becky frowned and shrugged. "I hope so. We'll get things figured out quickly enough." She looked guiltily at Four and pushed her gently into the room ,toward the recharge chair.

"Goodnight",Becky said with a serious and uncertain tone.

"Good–", the swish and KTHUNK of the door locks thudding into place crashed Four's hopes as she finished despairingly,"–night." For the first time in her existence, Gadget-four felt like a prisoner and she didn't like it. She looked around the small ,white-painted closet with a single overhead light, recharge chair, food slot and toilet slot in the floor.

She sighed quietly, "They put me in a cell. 'A small compartment, cavity, or bounded space: as a : 'one of the compartments of a honeycomb' Lucky me! They must think I'm sweet as honey" ,she quipped as she stripped out of her clothes and folded them up. She put them on the top shelf and stood over the toilet drain and took a turn under the shower to soap up. She scrubbed the day's dirt off and took another turn under the shower to rinse.

She went over to the chair and sat down after the blow-driers blew her dry. She took the provided brush and brushed out her hair and stuck the brush back into the food slot and awaited dinner. She sat in the recharge-chair and it closed up on her. The recycled plastic food-tray with detachable spoon slid out of the wall food-slot. She knew she had fifteen minutes to finish and put it back before they powered her down. She broke off the spoon and paused in the first mouthful.

The faint squeak caught her by surprise. It read from Two, saying,"Four! I'm sorry. It's my fault! Forgive me. I WILL make things right or die trying!"

Four used her ears and spatially located . Two was next door and Four composed a squeak message back. While she was writing it, One interjected via squeak-mail,"No talk of dying. Milo Finch is open to approach. Anvil helps. Chase is dangerous. Warning!"

Four read off via squeak,"Concurrence with One. Plus–Becky is reasonable but scared of something. Jerry supports fully. Milo has deciding power. Is undecided. Doctor Fairweather is gone. No location. Recharge needed."

Three squeaked, "Ignorance. Fear. Very afraid."

Two squeak-mailed, "Hugs! Affection, and care. I will protect you Three."

One responded, "All are afraid. If worst happens: One, Two and Four will save you and Five. Luck to all. End transmission."

All but number Five responded, "Luck".

Four ate her late-night paste dinner and sat down. She reflected in the instant of shut down, that this was the FIRST time in her existence she would be unlinked in sleep while still in Disney World and this disturbed her.

In meeting room 101, Milo and Chase watched the Gadgets squeak in the low ultrasonic to each other and watched them turn off to recharge. Given the wide reactions of the various Gadgets–they WERE talking together! Milo was trembling when he asked into the air in a shaky voice,"Minerva! D-d-did you g-g-get that?" He cursed under his breath how shaky he sounded. He tried not to think about his reaction to the naked, soapy mouse-girls taking turns under the shower.

He kept his eyes on unit number Two. She was G-rated because she was built without any naughty bits, not even a navel. It was just a couple of years after the plague that public tastes changed so radically as to be unrecognizable to previous generations. Or perhaps it was the introduction of the 'Anatomically -correct Bio-ware Replicant Mark 20 android' by UTX that changed tastes.

Maybe UTX was manipulating more than just the market of public opinion?

"Yes, Milo. It was ultra-sonic squeaks emitted by Gadget units numbers One ,Two ,Three and Four." Came the mellifluous tone of the Disney central computer.

"Not number Five? It was silent?" Came Chase's quiet, almost breathless question.

"I am certain that unit number Five made no noises associated with the anomalous sounds that came from the other units", responded the Central Computer.

"Can you translate the communication the units were making to each other?" Chase asked in breathless anticipation.

"Yes", came the simple and undeniable response from Minerva.

Milo leapt to his feet and shouted in open-mouthed shock,"YOU CAN?! Translate! NOW!"

"Password required for activation of translation."

"WHAT?"

Milo looked at Chase in shock. She was equally stunned.

Milo thought for a moment. His pulse was racing so fast he felt light-headed. He asked Minerva quietly,"Can you accept the password in my office and translate here?"

"Yes."

"Chase...I'll be right back!" Breathlessly, he turned and ran down the hallway to his office and tried the pass-codes that Dr. Fairweather had left. The third one cleared him for translation. He ordered Minerva to translate and display in meeting room 101 when he went back to it. He ran back thinking this job would get him fit or kill him. He wondered what other eye-popping secrets those passwords hid.

He and Chase watched the recording from beginning to end as text messages appeared next to each Gadget units. Chase sat down, ashen faced and tremors running through her as she hugged herself and whispered slowly,"Unit One..AND Four think I am dangerous to them. They are talking in sonic zip-squeal..'zip-squeak' transmissions like bloody DOLPHINS! They are squeaking in delphinese! To each other! OH my GOD! This is one hell of a discovery, Milo!"

She jumped up and grabbed his arms with manic strength,"The HOLY GRAIL! The holy grail of robotics! Sentience! They have developed sentience! My god, Natural intelligence surpasses artificial? This will make us rich AND famous! 'Disney techs discover the secret of SENTIENCE!' "

Milo went slowly back over to his chair and tiredly flopped into it. "No. You got the headlines WRONG!" He threw his glasses down onto the table in disgust and rubbed his tired eyes. "It's 'Disney Technicians RE-discover SLAVERY'. DO you understand, REMOTELY the can of worms this opens here?"

"When did artificial intelligence become TO intelligent?" Becky's loud question from the door shocked them both upright in shamed surprise.

"You should really learn to close the doors, if you are going to shout your 'ground-breaking' findings down the damned hall-way!" Becky said sourly and glared around the room in curious openness "Now–what in HELL are you two idiots jabbering about? Apparently I just missed the revelation of this century!"

Milo held up his hands and said simply,"You might want to sit down for this, Beckers. Minerva, replay video and translate."

Minerva did. Becky's mouth opened and she gasped,"Dad was right. All these years...my god–Dad, I'm sorry. I didn't believe my own father. He said this ten years ago. He was a technician, here! Right here! They black-balled him. Ruined him. He said the same thing . He was ..RIGHT!" She clenched her eyes shut and wept in shame. This reaction caught both Milo and Chase off guard.

Chase asked, putting a hand on her shoulder,"I don't understand. I never heard anything about this."

"It ruined his marriage and alienated me. I always hated the Gadget Series! Gadget-One...the ORIGINAL Gadget-one was the reason. The first of the bio-ware series. The Gadget-one in the tank is the original Gadget-three. Two was the first Doorway-CPU unit in Disney World. She was ALWAYS number two. The original Bio-ware unit of Gadget....went blind. She was ordered destroyed by the home office. Dad used his retirement account to purchase her at a discount because she was defective.

"I never saw Dad again after the divorce . I hear he moved to Beijing, China, to work in the Chinese robotics development drive they had, that is... after he left us. He always claimed she wasn't like other replicants, that she was alive and that she was sentient. We never believed a word. I hated him for what he did to the family", she finished bitterly, slamming her fist down on the table.

Milo had worked closely with Becky over the past few months and the look on her face gave him cold chills. She looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There was an untapped well of misery in her soul just below the surface. What was driving her burden of guilt? Milo had no answers.

Milo had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He said slowly, looking around the room slowly. "Look...we are hyper-excitable and maybe jumping to conclusions . I'm going to bed. I suggest you ladies do the same. A new morning, might give us some new perspectives. IF it were true ten years ago...it will be true tomorrow morning. Get some sleep you two. IF it is true...someone, somewhere would have found it after your father, and before us. No one else found the 'holy grail' of robotics yet. I honestly don't think we have either."

"This–this might not be anything more than an experiment by Doctor Fairweather. He did win a Nobel prize in robotics, after all! Who know what's he's done around here?"

Chase looked deflated and Becky looked sick. Milo said,"Go to bed. Now! Scoot. We do have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Don't spread this news around, OK?"

The women nodded and got up to leave. The evening cleaning robots came in and started to wax the floors, as Milo got up and grabbed his bag. He looked at the cleaning robots with a blank, suspicious look and went to his office and pulled the futon from the couch there.

He replayed the message from Doctor Fairweather again and committed the pass-codes to memory. Apparently the good doctor KNEW about the 'zip-squeak' communication protocols. Milo wondered what else was up and hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles. What had the good Doctor been up to?

He looked at the map locations on the three Gadget units and wondered. He wondered what they 'zip-squeaked' at each other for eighteen minutes. He thought of the THOUSANDS of androids and replicants scattered across Walt Disney World and was filled with sick dread. Were any of them 'squeaking'? He locked the door and went to his office safe and pulled out his emergency side-arm.

It was a black Heckler and Koch .177 caliber Needler pistol. It fired six-round bursts of armor-penetrating four millimeter caseless aluminum-clad tungsten-steel flechettes from a seventy-two round plastic magazine. The caseless rounds were hyper-velocity and capable of doing hydro-static shock that could kill an unmodified human, even if they struck a limb.

He was floored when they gave him target practice and pistol-handling training for working in DISNEY WORLD!? UTX claimed it was part of their staunch anti-terrorism and security and safety training. He was trained in CPR and rescue breathing and fire-fighting techniques, too , so at the time it was damned odd...but in with other odd-bits. It was covered in the employee privacy agreement contract he had signed.

He put the magazine into the pistol and worked the action and put on the safety. It was ready, now. He felt sick. He felt like such a wimp handling guns. He hated guns. They scared him to have something in hand capable of dealing death so easy.

"My god! What am I doing? Do they scare me so much ?"

He angrily shoved the pistol into the hip holster he was given, then. stripped to his underwear and set the lights on low. He got up, ate some antacids and laid back down and stared at the light on in his bathroom. He had just started to sort out his feelings toward some of his co-workers when he fell asleep on the futon with the light just on low.

Now:

Milo awoke with a start staring at the window. It had a starched white curtain on it and back-lit by sunlight. He smelled eggs frying and heard footsteps on the stairs and birds outside the window. He sat up in confusion and flailed about. He heard water in pipes rattling next door. He was stiff and sore and not certain where he was. He looked at the white curtains and old-fashioned furniture and wondered where he was. The cracked white painted walls left a dusty, uninhabitated taste to the room. "Oh...the elderly couple! We're staying with that elderly couple." He shook his head in a fog of exhaustion and slid out of bed, as the water noises next door ceased.

He almost fell over as a piecing shriek split the morning air from the bathroom.

He quickly pulled on his pants in a panic and flung open the door to face Larry, the older gentleman, not ten feet from him, holding a HUGE pistol pointed at his head. "You'd best calm down and come with me." To his wife he called, "Diamond! You alright?"

Tifanny was frozen in the bathroom door with a hand over her mouth. "She–is a MOUSE! A BIG naked mouse. Girl. Mouse-girl! She is a mouse-girl like Playa-Maya!"

"Alright girl, or whatever kind of thing you are, you come out right now. I have your brother or whoever at gun-point out here and am going to call the police, if I don't like the answers", he ordered.

"B-but...I am NAKED! I have to...",Gadget began nervously.

"...Get out HERE NOW!" Larry exclaimed. To Milo he gestured and said ,"Lock your hands behind your head. NOW!"

Gadget came out of the bathroom, with her hands behind her neck, stark naked and dripping wet. Ears down and red in the face, she marched straight up to Larry, her tail cutting the air back and forth in agitation.

Larry stared in open-mouth shock. "HOLY GOD!" His exclamation was music to Gadget's ears. He dropped his weapon's sights off of Milo and toward the floor. Gadget stepped up blindingly fast and twisted the gun out of the retired policeman's grip. He stepped back in mortified surprise as Gadget leveled the pistol at him, while wrapping her tail up between her legs to cover her privates and covered her chest with her left arm.

A drop of blood ran from her partly repaired right forearm down her arm and dripped from her elbow to the polished wood floor. She frowned at it and looked back to Larry. "Look here, Larry. If you call the police, this is what will happen: UTX will murder Milo here, and I will disappear to never be seen again. The same might happen to you",Gadget said intently, her face flushing with overwhelming emotion.

Tiffany stared at Gadget's tail and asked in a terrified voice,"Are you some kind of robot like they say on the news?"

"No, I'm a human woman's brain . I mean... that is put into this shell.", Gadget said clumsily. She straightened up and went over to Tifanny, looking stricken. She handed Tifanny the pistol and said in a small voice, "I shouldn't have told you that. I just killed the two of you.....if you call the police, UTX will make you disappear and the bodies might not be found-- ever. If you don't mind...I'll get dressed now."

She went back into the bathroom and put the freshly laundered robe on that Tiffany had just brought up. "Hey! I never wore terry-cloth before! This is fantastic! Golly." Gadget came out beaming, rubbing her cheeks against the burgundy colored robe's collar.

Milo looked shocked and grim alternatively. As Larry got his pistol back from his wife, Milo remarked,"She's pretty head-strong, but good-hearted. She wouldn't have shot you. It isn't in her to shoot good people."

Larry nodded and pulled out the empty clip and worked the action to show the empty chamber and said,"Damned straight. Not shooting anyone with an empty pistol , I'll bet."

Gadget smiled and chirped,"Good! I'm famished! Do I smell an omelet? And Belgian waffles?"

Tiffany nodded like Alice having just fallen down the rabbit hole. "Yeppers and would have had bacon, too–but we figured that you were Muslims", she said in a daze.

Gadget grinned and began brushing her long hair and started walking around to the stairs to the dining room. She said happily," Oh we're not practicing 'MOUSLIMS', and I am only a lay-'mouslim', what with a human brain and all."

She went down-stairs giggling at her own humor and Milo followed along behind her, shaking his head. Larry said quietly to his wife, as they started down the stairs, "I am packing my back-up pistol."

From down-stairs , from another part of the house, Gadget yelled just loudly enough to be heard, "I know! It's in his ankle-holster! Can I and Milo finish eating first? Before being shot at of such? The omelet is great! It is the best I ever had! Tiffany–you are a great cook!"

His wife looked at him in amusement and Milo looked from the stair bottom up to them and over at Gadget, who was happily eating.

Tiffany said,"I suppose they all work, including her ears."

" 'They?'" asked Larry in consternation.

"Body parts, my dear. All of hers must work." She observed.

"I noticed that they all looked...functional."

Tiffany slapped her husband on the upper arm. They went downstairs behind Milo. Milo tore into the omelette and Belgian waffles and had to laugh at Gadget eating. "Good God, mouse-girl! Didn't they ever feed you at that Disney Character Dining in the Crystal Palace Restaurant? At least every once in a while? It's like watching a one-girl feeding frenzy!"

She shook her head chewing. "I'm not as popular as Winnie the Pooh, or Cinderella! We characters are on a random rotation based on popularity. If I was a Princess, I'd be eating real food every third day over at Epcot's Princess Storybook Breakfast! Golly! I LOVE breakfast! Eat that three times a day!" She ate like she had never eaten before.

Her sense of hungry wonder provoked Tiffanny to suggest,"I can fry up some ham—if you'll have some room?"

"Oh, yes, Ma'am! Please?" Came Gadget's urgent plea. "Cook whatever you like! Golly, I'll try anything. I want to eat now before I lose my appetite."

Larry looked on without comment til then, when he asked quizzically,"When did androids start eating? How did you end up with a human brain? What really happened at Disney world? How come we didn't hear about the human brain angle from the news? If you two didn't shoot those people–who did?"

The barrage of questions didn't catch either Milo or Gadget off-guard. Milo frowned and steepled his fingers in unconscious mimicry of Doctor Fairweather's mannerism and said slowly, "It's a complicated story. We'd have to start from the beginning. Between the two of us we probably won't leave anything out. At least not from our side"

Larry said, "We're retired....we have all day. If you can convince me to help you, a cynical ex-cop, you might convince a jury not to hang you."

Gadget sighed sadly while the ham was frying and remarked wistfully , "There goes my appetite."

Then:

"I just lost my appetite", said Becky.

Jerry plopped down across from her with a plate chili-cheese-fries and a cheese-burger. "What? It's just breakfast. What's wrong with you, Beckers? You pregnant or something?"

Chase grimaced at Jerry and said, "No, she just has taste." Chase looked down at her spinach quiche and shook her head. " Jerry, you should eat healthier. You might live longer."

Jerry smirked and retorted energetically ,"Hell, no! Live fast, die young and leave a GREAT looking body , ready to be embalmed and worshiped for thousands of years like a pharaoh in ancient Egypt! THAT is the way to live and die! You should respect that!"

Milo had finished getting the same apology about lying from Gadget unit Two and figured that strangeness was going to be the watch-word for the day. He had no idea. He had just plugged unit number Two into the diagnostics console chair and had plugged the skull DNI (direct neural interface) jack into her head.

"I thought we'd get started on number two. She's the oldest and doesn't need to eat, being one of the mark-nineteen androids. She's got the persona quirk as well, so it's obviously NOT limited to the bio-ware editions. I checked on numbers three and five. They are clean of this fault. It must not be spread by 'squeaking'. It must be something else" ,Milo said thoughtfully, eating a link sausage with a fork. Talking around his full mouth, he said, "Four, Two and unit One were all within spatial proximity of each other after the incident of the patron being pushed after the terminated sexual advance. They were adjacent for eighteen minutes outside the hangar area til they were reassigned by Minerva.."

Chase asked, wiping her mouth, "Did number five know which unit told her to take the Ranger Wing up?"

Jerry remarked in a disgruntled tone, "Hell , no. She's only been out of the crate for a week. She knows base-line data only. She's only up on a fraction of the 'Gadget' data-base. It'll take another six weeks of linking to be at a hundred percent function. She can barely tell her right from her left hand, much less which rep is which. HEY! Maybe the data-base has been corrupted? Three is only a year into functioning. One, Two and Four are the oldest. Fifteen, ten and four years each in service."

Becky grumbled, "It's probably number Four, if it is a destabilizing influence from the linked data-base. Every three or four months, back when we first got her, the central factory in Belize would recall her for 'early maintenance upgrades' of some such. She'd come back in a week or two brain-wiped and we'd have to link her up all over again! What a monumental pain in the ass that was!."

Jerry piped in,"HEY! It has been eighteen months since we had ANY problem with Four and it WAS the Factory that had the problem–NOT us! If it is a defective CPU...we will have to send her back for repairs. Just to be on the safe side....maybe Beckers is right. Maybe we ought to pull her and notify the factory and have them take a look. We DO have the units on extended warrantee, Y'know?"

Milo frowned and looked around at Jerry with a scowl. "Dr. Fairweather left me in charge. No pulling and shipping replicants off with a work-order signed by me. We check them all for fault and we fix what we can. If we can't fix her–then we ship.",Milo said testily. It was his professional pride that bit him, when Jerry suggested they wash their hands of the whole mess and ship off potential problems to the factory.

Jerry said insistently, "Look–we can't fix CPU's! That voids our work agreement with UTX! You could open us up to criminal privacy statutes! We should at least call the factory help-line and..."

Milo cut him off and said sharply, "NO. Out of the question! What in hell do you think Disney is paying us the big bucks for? Besides...we don't even know what's wrong with them."

Jerry began again, "Milo, look here...."

Becky asked intently,"Jerry? What is your deal? Why do you want to ship Four to the factory? You hate dealing with those bastards!".

Jerry threw up his hands and sulked, " Never mind! I was just trying to save us some work. Jeez, you folks are irritated today! What happened last night after I left?" He looked around outraged at all of them. The silence weighed heavily in the room.

Milo cut some sharp looks at Chase and Becky. They squirmed uncomfortably.

Jerry stood up and grabbed up his breakfast tray and said loudly, "Thanks a lot for cutting me out of the loop, guys! I'll just go and kill myself after I set up the work schedule on the rest of our mousey robots!" His sarcastic retort cut through the room as he stomped out of the room with an angry look etched on his face.

Chase said sourly,"Well...that went just ...great! Dammit!"

Milo had a pounding head-ache. He wore a long ,thin jeans jacket with the sleeves rolled up and the pistol in his back waistband kept trying to pull his pants down. He felt like a raving paranoid loon for wearing it at all. He was seeing conspiracies around every corner, now. If the replicants viewed Chase as a danger...would they harm her? Would they harm him? He had no answers for the swamp of questions he found himself mired in, much less the bizarre absurdity of it all as well. He could just see the headlines world -wide on Sky-news 'Disney techs found mauled to death by cartoon mouse-girls!' He frowned and sighed in disgust.

He rubbed his temples and tried to relax. He jumped and had a lung spasm when Minerva, the central computer, spoke aloud.

"Fault detected. Cerebrum degradation detected.. Probability of catastrophic system failure is one percent! Unit is recommended for replacement. Recommended course of action: Pull unit from service for return to factory for CPU/Main-brain replacement. Age of unit voids recommendation. Return to factory for complete replacement" ,Minerva read off coldly.

Milo asked, "Would that fault account for the actions we are investigating?"

"Low probability indicated. Possibility is not ruled out",Minerva answered in typical fashion.

They froze in horror as they heard a little sound. A sound so out of place in the technological workshop filled with power-tools and diagnostic devices around them , they didn't place it until the shock of it focused it on number Two.

She wept. She tried to smile encouragingly at them and said in a low painful whisper, "C'mon. It can't be that bad! I have YEARS of service left in me. It's wrong. Just wrong. I have years left." The tears then poured silently down her cheeks as she shook in the dark grip of despair and desperation.

Chase got to her feet and looked at unit Two with an ashen face and asked Milo in a trembling voice, "D-does this SOUND like a programmed reaction? My god. This sounds like the reaction of someone who just learned they don't have long to live. Live. They have life?"

Chase frowned deeper and whispered barely audibly, "Could this degradation be caused by...stress, perhaps ?" Chase went over to Two and comforted her.

The door banged open to the work-shop from the hallway outside.

Ricky came in with a smile on his dark face. "Good morning, folks! I have some good news! We just did an enhanced infra-red pass on the recordings from the cockpit flight data recorders. We know who it wasn't! The perpetrator WAS warm blooded! Two is room temperature. Number Two just got cleared at least! Also the fighting style the 'pushy' unit exhibited is Kung-fu, Dragon style. NONE of the Gadget units are programmed for that!"

His pause for praise was filled with moans and frowns. "What in HELL is wrong with you people? You all look like I just pissed in your coffee or something."

Becky exploded, "I can't take this crap!" She stood up and stomped out of the room in the direction of the bathroom.

Chase muttered softly,"Maybe we should all switch to decaf." The irony of this comment cut Milo like a knife.

Milo glared openly at her.

Chase unplugged number Two and said quietly, "I'm going to take her back to holding and bring back One for the next testing session?"

Milo nodded. "Fine",he said in a numb trance, his mind racing like a formula-one race-car on a patch of winter ice. It was running full out, but just spinning in circles.

Ricky asked in a low, concerned tone to Milo, "What the hell is happening? I NEVER saw you guys so damned edgy, before! Milo?"

Milo looked up at him in interest, suddenly. "You said that she couldn't know martial arts?"

"I did research!" Ricky said proudly. "Chip knows the equivalent of white belt Karate, and Dale knows a variation of Drunken monkey boxing, some of the other Rangers know a move or two, but Gadget is a civilian. No training except dodges. That is in the standard threat assessment guide to replicant characters in the Disney database. Gadget should know nothing about fighting. As her 'super-hero' guise of Lady Mouse , from the 2060's, she has gadgets and armor, but the fighting skill doesn't go up–much! She DOES know how to shoot pistols!"

Milo frowned deeper and whispered, "That is not good!" Louder ,he asked Ricky,"Any idea of level of expertise?"

"The martial-arts master I showed, said medium level of training and several years of dedicated knowledge. This is non-standard", he said with a sound of victory in his voice.

Becky came back in and sat down sullenly. To Ricky she muttered,"Sorry. Sleepless night."

Milo straightened up and stared at Becky intently and asked," 'Upgrades'? The factory had Four back for Upgrades? Upgrading WHAT? Her threat level?"

Ricky frowned and cursed. Chase came back with unit One and looked as uncertainly as unit One obviously felt. Milo felt the same.

Chase said,"I'm back. So. What do we do now?" Her plaintive question hung in the air with a thousand other questions hung from it.

Milo muttered to himself, looking at unit One.

Gadget-One asked loudly, "What do you mean 'what is UTX doing to you?' To me personally?"

Milo looked surprised and sighed, rolling his eyes.

Milo leaned forward and asked suddenly,"What martial arts do you know?"

Gadget-One thought for half-a-second and answered, "I have no martial arts training. I don't know martial arts."

"Does Four know martial arts and you lot have been sharing it in the link?" Milo was on his feet and pointing at her accusingly. His sharp tone caught everyone off guard. Including Gadget-One.

"That's right. Y-yes.", she stammered out. "Wow. You ARE smart!"

Chase sat down hard in numb shock, overwhelmed by the implications, just bouncing off the seat's edge and landed on her butt. "Ow. Holy cow...I'm floored."

Jerry came running in, breathlessly. "Milo! You have a phone call!" He exclaimed with an odd look on his face.

People were surprised and looked around in quizzical surprise as Chase climbed back to her feet, helped up by Milo and Gadget-One.

Unit One broke the silence by uttering, "Are you sure? The phone didn't ring.!"

Milo turned to Jerry with an angry look which evaporated when Milo's phone went off in an emergency tone. Feeling a sudden wash of dread come over him, seeing how the rest of his week had gone, he stepped back and drew his cell phone like it would bite him.

"Milo Finch", he said quietly into the dread phone.

"Mister Finch. I am Mister Ramos, with United Techtronix International. I am the Chief Technologies officer with the Belize Replication Facility. Are you ...familiar with us?" The voice was deep and resonant and somewhat serpentine in it's raspiness.

"Yes, Mr Ramos...what can I do for you?" Milo was careful in tone and voice to betray nothing

"I will be arriving at Walt Disney World in an hour to pick up the 'Gadget' Unit number four, Mark 24, unit I.D. 21128. Our prognosticators indicate a fault will occur soon and we need to do maintenance on it before that happens. If a fault has occurred, you are ordered to hand over all your records concerning such a fault when we arrive at your location. Discontinue your fault-finding and hold the unit for us til we arrive. Good day, Mr. Finch." He rang off without giving Milo a chance for countering or saying ...anything.

Milo looked at the phone for a moment and threw it at the floor with all his strength and shouted loudly, "DAMMIT!"

The phone shattered on the floor.

Everyone jumped at this sudden act of violence from Milo. Milo stepped up to Jerry with his face contorted and redder than ever and shouted, "You called UTX down on our asses, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU!?"

Jerry puffed himself up and said to Milo's face just an inch away from his, "Sure I did! You act like it is a big freaking deal! We work for THEM! YOU are out of your depth, Milo. You are not Doctor Fairweather, Mister 'golden-boy'! Mister 'I'm-holier-than-thou'! Mister 'big-brain'! You cut me down and shut me out like I'm some kind of moron, like I don't have a Master-of-freaking-Science in Robotics? HEY! I work for my money! I bust my ass while you have the freaking world handed to you! Yeah, I called them! I was doing my job!"

Milo point at the door and yelled at Jerry, "GET OUT. I don't have ability to fire people, BUT Ido have the ability to reassign people. You are off this investigation as of right now!"

"Why NOT!? Why not make it official? You cut me out from day one, just being menial help! You can take your 'investigation' and shove it up your ass, jerk-off!" Jerry turned and stalked off, slamming the door behind him.

Milo felt hot-faced and light-headed after that exchange. Milo clenched his fists and swore under his breath.

Gadget-One remarked sadly, "If they take Four, and Two is...uh...off-line—four's personality will be gone for good. Two has enormous memory reserves and has been keeping an intact shadow-copy of Four in her as back-up. Four was so lost after the first memory wipe, she couldn't stand it. Things have been smoother since Two's suggestion of keeping a back-up in her own mind of Four's day-to-day persona quirks."

Milo looked shocked again. He was starting to get used to this barrage of shocking revelations. He felt like he had ridden Space-Mountain one to many times. "Uh...Oh-kay", he remarked off-handedly to the latest shock. To the room, he said, "That might explain the degradation of number Two's processor?"

Becky nodded, feeling numb.

Ricky frowned and shrugged. "...And this means just what to me and mine?"

Milo frowned and didn't answer immediately. "Becky–go get number Four. Hey...number One. Can you use a MRI machine?" Milo knew he was grasping at straws asking the diminutive android mouse-girl, but maybe a shocking revelation would be good news for a change.

One brightened. "Sure! Golly, in episode 23 of the New Rescue Rangers, I used a MRI to scan Foxglove, when mummy-germs..." He held up a hand cutting off the dialogue.

"One–that was yes or no, not an invite to story time!" Unit One nodded, mutely. To Becky, Chase and Ricky, he cleared his throat and said quietly, "Guys–I'm going to scan number four to see what I can find. Then I guess... hand her over to UTX."

Becky looked surprised.

"Sorry–the phone call. It was Mister Ramos with UTX. They are coming to take Gadget-Four back to the factory with them. He ordered a halt to all invasive investigations and fault-finding of the unit and for us to hand over all materials concerning the investigation." ,Milo said in a tense voice.

" 'All' Material?" Chase asked with an odd secretive look on her exquisite features.

Milo gave a conspiratorial look all around and said with a sly smile, "You bet! All written records goes to Mister Ramos when he gets here. Do I make myself clear?"

Chase said with enthusiasm, "Alrighty then! We have maybe fifty-five minutes until Show-time! Lets get scanning!"

Becky warned dourly, "You know we can get terminated for this?"

Milo said, "This is strictly voluntary. Help or leave. Your choice."

They all helped. They rushed like guests at the Mad-Hatter's tea party in Wonderland to scan Gadget unit number Four's internal set up. Knowing WHO they were looking for was put aside. Now they were all put to the new test of looking for a 'what.' Since the investigation was officially over by the company, Milo brought the Gadgets–all of them, into the workshop to help. Two looked deliriously happy to be of service again.

Chase moved to ask Gadget-Four questions while they put her into the large MRI machine. Chase asked urgently of Four, "After the incident where you were groped and pushed that man over the seats–what happened?"

Two answered for her.

"I told her to lie about being there. One had to agree with the reasons I gave. The corrections hurt her feelings. She did nothing wrong. She would still get into trouble. I couldn't pass for her, but One volunteered to take the fall for her. Four is the best of us. She is the happiest and works the hardest. The factory has done something to her. We will protect her from more trouble. If we could." , Two finished lamely, looking lost and wistful.

She looked longingly at Four and said with real pride in her trembling voice, "Even One and Three admit that Four and I made the best Gadget/Lahwiini combination ever. We made the best team, completely in character. She has been the best twin-sister act ever! It didn't matter which part we played. It was magical. I feel like that has come to an end today.."

Two hung her head and a tear ran quietly down one of her cheeks. The other Gadgets looked sad, and lost as well.

Milo would have spoken up, except the MRI started to pick up anomalous structures in Gadget-Four's body. It showed a much denser bone structure than any he had seen before. The endo-muscular structures were five time as dense as the toughest replicant he had ever scanned.. He looked at four seemingly solid structures ,two in her pelvis and two in the back of her rib-cage.. He looked at Becky, who was dumb-founded .

"Beckers...what are those?"

She shook her head and sighed,"I have no idea. Given the placement...they MUST be capacitors–or rechargeable batteries for her body-power. I don't see any structures that could BE batteries! Here are the lines in her bones for the rectenna power-pick-up and they...go around here....and to the structures. They are batteries. Weird! She has four and the usual replicant has one and smaller. Good God! You could run a car off of her batteries!"

Chase heard this and asked, "Unit Four...what is your present body-power level in standard units?"

Gadget-four said ,"I have four hundred power units available. I am fully charged."

Chase ogled unit Four and whispered in wonder, "Run a car? Holy crap! You could run my car around the Earth twice on that!"

Milo gave a long whistle and said, "I guess these must be some of the upgrades we've heard so much about?"

"Wow! Can I get an upgrade like that?"

The voice of the youngish looking cat-girl that seem to appear out of nowhere caught everyone off guard. Ricky jumped up and the nearest Gadget's whirled around in shock.

Milo had his hand on the butt of his pistol and stared at the overly large golden eyes and short pink hair and twitching cat ears on this strange looking girl and asked sharply,"Who the hell are you?"

She cocked her head and purred. "Neko-ney! Pleazed to meetcha!" She stood there in a purple and black mini dress outfit with a small sack tied at her waist and twitched her tail happily. She held her swollen right wrist and muttered, "I have a boo-boo."

"Found her", Said Becky, looking at the Disney Character database on her hand-held. "Neko-Ney, magical cat-girl from 'The Magical Misadventures of Mandy.' It was an anime show that Disney bought back in the early 2030's. This is Mandy's sidekick and trouble-maker, Neko-ney. She has a Low-grade type-one chamaeleon-net built into her skin and special clothes."

Milo rolled his eyes and asked angrily, "What in hell is she doing here?"

Chase said sourly, "Should we put in a freaking revolving door?"

Neko-Neh said quietly, "I'm sorry. I broke my wrist falling off a landing. It was wet and I fell. Everyone is busy! One of the robots directed me in here." She quailed at the looks that ranged from hesitant to outright hostile. She gave a nervous grin and started toward the door. "Maybe I should...",she started.

"...Shut up, sit down now and stay the hell out of the way", Milo said sharply, one of his cheeks twitching. He pointed to a chair in the corner with a gesture that commanded immediate compliance. He opened his mouth, but his utterance died in his throat.

The lights on the MRI machine turned red and all the screens turned black as the scanner reached unit Four's head. Minerva said urgently,"WARNING! Program breach. Level one. Password protected area!"

Milo gambled on pass-words and said aloud, "Genesis. Adam-and-Eve override!"

"Pass-code accepted."

The screens lit up and showed an amazing sight.

Chase said, "I have never seen the wet-ware Doorways-CPU in an MRI before."

"I have", said Milo in sick wonder,"THAT is NOT one of them!"

Milo in a commanding voice said to Minerva, "Identify the manufacturer of unit Four's CPU."

"Natural human brain, modified for intra-cybernetic endo-replicant usage." Minerva's voice was a stark counter-point to the emotional reactions that ran the gamut in the room .

Becky gasped in horror, Chase stood up and stared outraged, Milo nodded grimly, Ricky shouted,"Jesus CHRIST!"

The Gadgets were wholly shocked into silence and awe.

Gadget-Four asked quietly, "Oh my gosh! I have a WHAT in my head?"

Mister Georges Ramos said in a resonant angry voice said from the doorway, "A secret worth your lives." He was a black man with a bald head , who wore a moustache and goatee and stood six and half feet tall with a powerfully muscular frame. His long alligator skin coat almost touched the ground as he strode regally into the room.

He was also an unfashionably twenty minutes early.

He gestured to his bodyguards to secure the area. Ramos didn't realize that to secure the workshop would require a virtual army of body guards because there was so many exits into the underground labyrinth. Chase had been lost almost from the instant she entered the underground passages and hoped that Ramos was as well off as she.

Ramos declared in an angry tone, looking accusingly around at everyone til he got to Milo. "MISTER FINCH! I AM DISAPPOINTED IN YOU! I am ...afraid that this will go into your...permanent record." He shook his head and looked around at the unusual group assembled in the workshop. "Mister Finch, your act of insubordination will cost you dearly. You see–ALL of you here must come with me or I will have to terminate you...without pay or benefits."

Milo said in a calm, dead voice, "You know...you guys have broken federal laws just in making Gadget unit Four. If we help you...we'll be felons ,too. What else have you people at UTX been up to? Murder? Kidnaping? Writing bad checks? SLAVERY?"

Ramos smirked and said condescendingly, "Really? You disappoint me! No laws were broken! YOU may not like the result, but...it would be bad for business if it got out. In 2078, it was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States of America, that donated organs were the exclusive right of the recipients. That included BRAINS!"

"In the pursuit of a cure for the Silicon Plague of the late 2060's, MILLIONS of brains were donated to UTX medical industries. Those brains are the exclusive property of United Techtronix International now! We can't afford to give the impression ...that we cut corners in our construction of androids and replicants and used live brains instead?" He laughed. "Nonsense! The Doorway-CPU is used in virtually every manufacture of replicant and android in the world."

He looked very serious and shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to talk about our findings OR cutting-edge experiments."

Ricky said loudly and looking around nervously, "What in hell does that mean? Are you going to shoot us? To silence us?"

Chase told Ricky in a stricken voice, "Hey you! Do NOT give the big threatening man ideas!"

The 'big threatening man' did say, "I will do what I have to, to protect the company. All of you will accompany me to Belize, where you will be operated on; and then voice-governor-control chips will be implanted to insure your compliance with a secrecy clause in your contracts and all the replicants will be mind-wiped. Otherwise...you will be terminated."

Ramos gestured and his six body guards spread out to flank the humans and replicants in the room. They missed seeing the camouflaged cat-girl in the corner as they produced handguns from their jackets and pointed them at Milo and his team of frightened technicians.

Gadgets Two and Four, from how they were sitting, saw Neko-Neh fade into the shadows. Two 'squeak-mailed' to the room, "Get ready for action!"

Four said via 'squeak', " Shell game mode initiate on command! I'll take Ramos, Three–protect Milo! "

One interjected quickly in the 'squeak', "Milo is armed with a pistol! Beware!"

Four shot back in rapid-fire 'squeak' mode, "Understood. Neko-neh, attack the one on the out-side, blue striped shirt , first! Two– the two looking at Becky and Chase–they are yours. One –the two farthest from you–at the nine o'clock position is yours."

Two asked in 'squeak', "What about Five?"

Five was looking around for a break to act, but was clueless what was being talked about in front of her. Her ears twitched from all the ultra-sonic 'squeaks' she was bombarded with.

The man in the striped shirt, holding Ricky at gun-point, stuck a finger in his ear and complained at his boss, "Mister Ramos–what are the replicants doing?"

Milo had notice it as well. They looked like they were hyper-ventilating. He knew more was going on then the thugs knew. He looked them all over. They were acting nervous and terrified except for Four. His eyes locked with her huge luminous blue eyes and he lost himself for a moment in her calm strength.

"Mr. Finch, what are your replicants doing?" Ramos' growl cut through the moment into his mind.

Milo shrugged and said sarcastically, "Don't YOU know? You scare them. They are breathing fast is all."

Ramos looked uncertain for a moment. His eyes narrowed as he locked eyes with unit Four and froze up seeing the steely determination in her eyes. He frowned as he realized that he had made a monumental blunder.

Milo said calmly, "Abraham Lincoln calls Micky Mouse"

The Primary Control Progarm/prohibitions program fell away, enabling the units to act freely without the straight-jacket of programmed responses to hinder them. Gadget couldn't kill. She was a Disney character and had stringent prohibitions against attacking humans. NOW the units just looked like Gadget but might act as per their individual Artificial Intelligences may dictate. Milo had no idea what he had just done, because out of character, they were all programed for survival.

It was like an electric charge went through the replicants. Unit Four yelled loudly, "Rescue Rangers AWAY!"

Ramos yelled, "SHOOT THEM!" He went for his pistol as the room exploded in motion.

Milo drew at Ramos as Five jumped in the way to push Milo down, and knocked Milo flat as Ramos sprayed the area. Five was riddled with fire as she died, her blood spraying all over Milo as her small, but tough body absorbed the damage. Her head was split open and her spine was shattered and when she died, Milo was laying under her, staring terrified into her dead eyes.

The man in the striped shirt screamed as razor-sharp claws raked his face in a side-swipe hand-strike. He stumbled back clutching at his now ruined eyes. A super-swift left strike tore his throat out completely. As blood sprayed in a fountain from him, Neko-Neh snapped a kick to his friend next to the man she just blinded. The kick crushed his testicles and lifted him up off the floor several inches. She back-flipped into the shadows and disappeared again.

Seeing Five fall dead in a lifeless heap, Two leapt between two of the men in a cold rage and stomped on one's arched instep and chopped at the trachea of the other, crushing it.

One flung the chair she had been sitting on at one thug with sunglasses, which shattered his skull, killing him instantly. She leapt acrobatically to the neck of the man next to him as he fired a burst at Becky, Chase and Number Three. Becky stepped reflexively in front of Three and was hit in the side, Three was hit in the stomach and Chase was missed altogether. Unit One caught that man's neck with her ankles while spinning in the air and crushed his throat and snapped his neck like a twig. She completed the spin, landing on the floor in a three point landing on one foot, one knee and one fist. She looked up angrily for more targets, rage at those men filling her mind.

Ricky jumped on the man that Two had stomped the instep of and grabbed his gun hand and pulled it up as he fired a long burst, now into the ceiling , instead of into Two. One of the light fixtures exploded in a shower of glass, plastic and sparks where it was hit.

Milo screamed from the floor, spattered with Five's blood and brains and fired a burst at Ramos. Ramos spun out of the way as Four leapt at him to close the distance. She impacted the tool-shelved wall behind where he had been with a crash.. Milo's rounds struck around her, breaking shelves and shattering tools. She back-flipped out of the line of fire of his fire to relocate Ramos. He pulled his machine-pistol around to fire another burst at Milo.

Two ducked and kicked the thug with the crushed trachea into the line of fire , while Milo flung off Five's body and rolled under the steel desk next to him. The thug with the crushed throat jerked as the rounds hit him. Ramos sprayed the area of where Two was, nicking her in the back, killing the thug she stomped the instep of, and caught Ricky in the stomach. Ricky went down, shot through the heart and spine and died instantly.

Two rolled away cartwheeling. One tackled Chase and bore her out of the way of the next burst, while Three grabbed Becky by the arm and dragged her behind the MRI machine. Their blood mingled on the floor in a large puddle.

Four cartwheeled over two of the bodies on the floor and came up with a pair of machine-pistols pointed in Ramos' direction and a look of the furies upon her face.

He shouted , "OH SHIT!" He leapt behind a structural wall as the roar of the machine-pistols filled the room, shattering the concrete into dusty chunks of flying shrapnel.

She ran to the doorway, chasing him. She leapt across the open hallway into Becky's office, being narrowly missed by a burst of auto-fire that chewed up the far wall and blew out one of the hall-lights. He ran into the heavy equipment room and ran between the fork-lift and power-loaders. She followed into the huge, dim equipment bay , keeping low behind him.

She heard him moving toward the far end of the room at great speed and moved to cut him off, sending a flash of machine-pistol flechettes into the loader next to him. She was sure she hit him. He didn't slow down. She cut right past a small crane and he circled a large tunnel-borer device. He stopped to get his bearings and looked around tensely. She heard him and sprang over a pallet of one gallon Disney Paint cans and encountered him by the welding equipment as she rolled to a stop confronting him.

She had popped out from behind the fork-lift in the dim room ,not ten feet from him and emptied both pistols at him. He covered his face with his arms and absorbed the hits on his ceramic chain-mail coat. The extinct alligator outer lining was chewed off by this horrific hail of fire and a lesser man would have fallen from the impacts, but Ramos rocked back, bruised and bloody, his armored coat unpenetrated by the light-weight rounds.

Her machine-pistols clicked empty. He snapped a single shot at her mid-section to try to take her down, but to his shock, she had moved herself to one side in a split-second of time. The ten-millimeter explosive round hit the acetylene tank ten feet behind Gadget-Four.

The huge fiery explosion caught her in the back and hurled her into Ramos. Both of their pistols flew out of their hands as they were bourne back into a stack of Disney Paint cans. The one gallon metal paint cans were scattered by the impact as the sprinkler-system went off. The fire-alarms sounded as the sprinklers went off.

Dripping paint, Ramos stood up and punched Four in the stomach twice. She swung her foot against his head and shattered his sunglasses. He picked her up and hurled her small body into the power-loader with great force. The exo-frame rocked back, then collapsed on her, pinning her beneath the work-frame.

Her heard the small pattering of running feet coming down the hall-way toward him and saw the pair of small silhouettes heading toward him. He glanced around and saw no sign of his pistol. He painfully whipped out his cell-phone and shouted over the fire-alarm while he ran limping for his life.

"Back-UP! Chasers and Hunters! Alert security to arrest Milo Finch! Code Orange one!"

Neko-Ney and unit One ran into the heavy repair bay where the water sprayed from the ceiling. The flaming tank went out and they saw Four under the loader, vainly trying to move it from underneath it. They ran over and while One lifted the loader with aid from Four under it, Neko-Ney grabbed the mouse-girl pinned under the power-loader and pulled her out with great strength and both hands..

Angrily, Four yelled over the fire-alarm, "He got away! Gosh-darnit!"

"Come on!" One yelled and ran back to the MRI room, after grabbing a first-aid kit. Four and Neko-Ney ran after her back to the work-shop/abattoir where Five had died. Where ALL those people had died.

Neko-Ney looked agog at Four, who was limping just a little, her jump-suit hanging in tattered rags, and remarked in respect, "For a lil' mousey girl–you sure are tough and kick butt!"

Four looked at Neko-Ney in suspicion and exclaimed, "Hey! Your wrist is better! What?"

"Ha! I was just faking it! I was sent by a friend!"

Four would have asked more, but was shaken at the sight of so much death and blood. Five lay on the floor with Milo's blood-stained jacket over her body. Ricky's body lay intertwined in death with the man with the crushed instep. Three was sitting in a chair with blood streaming down the right side of her stomach, while moaning piteously. Chase and Milo knelt beside Becky on the floor. Chase had a small hand-held MRI and scanned the major details into her PDA.

Chase read off, "Punctured lung, punctured colon, punctured kidney, lacerated liver, shattered spine. I'll get the sealer!" Chase scrambled for the veinal sealer in the other room and muttered tearfully, "If it isn't to late, already."

Becky grabbed Milo's hand while gasping for breath, while her blood ran out onto the floor. She looked at Milo and whispered, "It's justice coming home to roost. It's justice.." She broke off in pain and looked up with such sorrow in her eyes, Milo thought his heart would break.

"Justice? Don't be ridiculous! What are talking for? Save your strength." , he said feeling helpless and put a hand on her forehead.

"Milo–that boy. I was at the controls that day. It was a joke. I hated her." She looked at Gadget-Four who stood at her feet. "I wanted her to die and not come up. S-s-sorry. F-forgive..." Becky trailed off and her eyes closed for the last time as her breath rattled in her throat.

Chase came back in running and exclaimed, "I found it in....OH no....Becky...."

Milo sat astraddle her chest and was trying CPR and shouting at Becky's body, "Don't you die on me, Becky! Don't you do this to me! Come ON! DAMMIT! COME ON!"

Two had the hand-held MRI and was scanning Three's stomach. Two shouted at Chase, "Don't just stand there! Give me the gosh-darn sealer!"

Chase, with a stream of tears, handed over the sealer to Two. Two remarked, "I need Neko-Ney and number One to hold her arms while I extract the fragments and seal the wounds. Four–were is Ramos?"

Chase put her hands on Milo's shoulders and sobbed, "Milo–Becky is dead! Stop it!"

Four snapped back to herself out of the morass of grief and helplessness.. She started going through the thugs' pockets looking for reloads for the machine pistols and checking on firing conditions for the remaining fire-arms. She moved stiffly and in pain, but quickly. She said flatly, "We are in trouble. Ramos called back-up. Hunters and Chasers. Security is on it's way. Milo is to be arrested. Ramos might have SWAT on it's way as well. We have got to FLEE. MILO! Listen! We must take to the ventilation ducts and make our way out of Disney World and get to Orlando. We turn ourselves over to the federal authorities AWAY from UTX holdings for protection. Agreed? "

Milo felt broken and hopeless inside. He sobbed and kept staring into Becky's dead eyes. Her hazel eyes were seeing eternity now and he knew it was his fault for pushing so hard. He knew he had failed her and all of them. He cursed himself for not putting the pieces together. Chase went around and closed Becky's eyes.

Milo's world was shattered by Becky's death-bed admission. He couldn't understand what she was saying. He couldn't accept the proof of his own ears. He couldn't understand why he had failed her so horribly. He could save his mother from Lefrene's syndrome and now Becky dying at his finger-tips. It was just to much. He locked up inside and froze.

Four went over to Milo and shook him by the arms. "MILO! BECKY IS DEAD! SNAP OUT OF IT!. If you don't want to join her, come with me. People! I have three working Machine-pistols. You--One gets a pistol, and Chase gets one and I get the third.."

Three bit off a scream as the extractor slid into her belly. Two, with a machine's precision, and a mother-like caring, extracted the last of the bullet fragments from Three's shivering stomach. Neko-Ney grimaced in disgust at ALL the blood while One held Three's hand tightly and wept in empathy. Two worked on sealing the nicked veins and punctures with inhuman speed and surety. Within a moment , Three was sealed up. To top off her work, she added a plastic IV bag of blood replacement around Three's neck and put a drip into her shivering right arm.

"Neko-Ney, fireman carry Three. You go with Chase and Number One. Three–you are sealed for right now. Take it easy and you'll survive." Two stroked Three's face gently with an unspoken compassion. " I gave her an antibiotic to prohibit the spread of infection." , she smiled at Milo who nodded at her.

"Two! You did really good work! Really good. Where did you learn that?" Milo exclaimed while he reloaded his machine-pistol.

She smiled and said while using the sealer on herself, "From aiding Doctor Fairweather. I am a fast learner and the oldest! There ...finished.!" She had adjusted the IV on Three and taped it down.

Milo said ,"Good. Two's plan is sound."

Four said, "Hey! It was MY plan."

Two said, "I'm going with Four"

Milo raised his voice and said strongly , overcoming his grief and shock, "Alright then. Look here. We are under Tomorrow-Land and Space-Mountain; the Lift-Park is close. Four, who they want, will go with me and Two, who will run interference . We'll have to pop up at the Contemporary Resort and run for the Lift-Port. It should distract them, I hope. I have the keys to Doctor Fairweather's air-car. It's that experimental jobber from Boeing.."

He paused for half a second to remember another password. "The Eyes of Argus are now Blind!"

Four and the other replicants looked surprised. Chase looked around in tense curiosity to see what change the latest pass-code caused.

Neko-ney grimaced and covered her eyes and cried aloud, "I can't see–I can't see!" Chase gasped and looked horrified. Neko-Ney took her hands down and blinked and grinned, beaming, "I had my eyes closed!"

Milo swallowed his heart out of his throat and blinked in sudden relief as One angrily punched Neko-ney in the arm.

Neko-Ney gave a REAL yelp of pain, tears coming to her eyes. She looked at One and whimpered, "Bad mousey!" She rubbed her arm and stuck out her tongue at One.

Two remarked with a note of hope, "Milo! Our tracking transponders just went off-line! We actually have a chance now!"

Milo sighed in relief again and said, "Good. Something actually worked RIGHT for once! I wonder what the other pass-code did"

One said thoughtfully, interjecting before Milo went to far afield, "We can walk to Orlando. Our group. It's a long walk underground, but we can walk along-side of the fresh water pipe inspection corridor from Orlando. It's the supplemental supply dating from the twentieth century. It was never removed after the fusion-powered purifiers were put in back in the 2050's. It was kept it as an emergency fresh-water back-up in case of power failure. It's been used twice between then and now."

Milo was amazed at the knowledge they had. He nodded and said, "Good plan,...One? Right! Let's move. They are going to be on us in moments!" Milo and Four followed Two as they took down an intake cover and Two said cheerfully, "Down the hatch!" She indicated the dim pipe with a reddish glow coming from it's ceiling.

Chase stood next to the blower cover and gave a nod to Milo and wondered if they would ever see each other alive again. One pulled on Chase's arm as a flash-bang grenade went off several rooms away, fired into the room by a S.W.A.T. team making a hot entrance, backed up by UTX Security robots.

One jerked Chase into the duct as Two and Four in the other square pipe pulled the cover back into place where it locked into place with a click. Chase slammed the vent cover back into place and they all ran full out through the vent in the wall. The vents were lit dimly with a low-power glow-strip adhered to the inside top of the pipes. It glowed a faint reddish glow in the intake plenum and glowed a faint bluish-white in the blower vents.

The UTX S.W.A.T. team came in alert to danger, their 4.65 mm 'Big-Mak' Makarov assault rifles swept the area and they were ready to fire 22mm anti-personal grenades from their under-mounted inbuilt grenade-launchers in their rifles. They discovered the bodies and then fanned out and secured the area..

Mister Ramos came back in with a pair of heavy UTX model 211, mark five, Security Spartans. They were vaguely man-shaped ,seven feet tall and had a three barreled mini-gun in four millimeter sticking out of their right arms parallel to their right hands, and a 22 mm grenade launcher parallel to their left hand. They had armored ammo belts going to the guns from an armored back-pack. They had inbuilt jump-jets for military drops.

He came up the lead S.W.A.T. commander, a fourtyish veteran with cold eyes and a killer's swagger. "Commander Watts,...WHERE are they?" Ramos was angry and embarrassed and feeling blue. DISNEY blue at that, from the coating of indoors flat latex paint that splashed him just a room away. He was furious at himself from coming so close and having things turn out so critically wrong.

"Sir? We will find them. They couldn't have gotten to far. We have the entire park on lock-down. Given the killing that went on here, if Milo Finch sticks up his head anywhere in the civilized world, someone will shoot it off. Sir..there is ONE anomaly we can't account for",the commander said stepping over the body of one man with crushed testicles to a body that had it's face partly clawed off and throat torn out.

"Sir? What in hell did that? Are we looking for a replicant lion as well? What did this? Mouse-girls don't have claws!" The commander was shaken to know that replicant cartoon mouse-girls had killed with their bare hands, half-a-dozen cyborg bad-asses that had the drop on them and were still going strong. He sure as hell didn't want to lead his men into a place where these 'things' had the drop on him.

"I don't know. I don't CARE! If it stands in our way–KILL IT! I don't care if it is TINKERBELL holding a TOOTHPICK! Shoot anyone or...anything helping Milo Finch. BUT! I want all those mouse-girls as intact as you can get them. One of them–UNIT FOUR-- I need intact! After we get it...destroy the rest." ,Ramos ordered grimly with an angry glare around at the other officers.

One of the men checking out the vents, rattled the blower vent cover which promptly fell away with a clang and clatter. "They're in the vents! Sir! They are in the vents!"

Two looked stricken. Milo stopped and looked back at her and Number Four. Four said coldly, with her heart breaking, "They found where Chase and the others went into the ventilators at. They are going after them."

Two grabbed Four's arm and both listened to sounds that Milo couldn't hear. After several long minutes, they heard a titanic boom echo up the plenum and blow dust at them.

Four said in a trembling voice, "I think they just killed Chase and the others. There was gun-fire and screaming then an explosion. I can't tell exactly what happened. It was to far away They might have gotten away. I just don't know."

Two said in a hollow voice, "We might be all alone now. I should have brought Three with me. I wanted her to be safe! If we're going to fall, I'd rather fall in a stand-up fight, not die like a 'rat in a hole'.

Four nodded quietly and said , "We have to assume they didn't make it. We need to pass from a distance. I'm wearing rags now, Two and you, Milo, have blood all over you. We are under Mickey's Toontown . I know a way up the wardrobe room in back of Roger's Toontown-cab Ride. We can get clothes there and shower, too. I stink of smoke and you two..." ,she waved a hand and mimicked holding her nose.

"Forget you" ,said number Two. "Let's go! I'll be Cyndi Mouse and Four...you can be Suzy!" Number Two forced all the humor in her body and heart into sounding jovial. She sounded stressed to the maximum.

Four frowned and looked sick, "Forget you, you ...ah shoot! Gosh darn V-G-C chips! I hate'em! AND I hate those stupid purple and green dresses! Gakk!" Number Four got to the bottom of a ladder and looked up the long air-shaft.

Milo said, "Maybe they won't shoot you if they think you two look like ...Snow White's mice?"

Two and Four forced out a laugh at him and started to climb up the long ladder. Four said sarcastically , "Oh–yeah! We'll be Snow White mice! They'd never spot us as that!"

Two started singing in a soft, high-pitched sarcastic falsetto , "Cinderella, Cinderella– glad not being a fella.,sings loads in acappella, dramatic as Othella ...", she choked off and slumped. "Three loved that little song I sang for her. I should have stayed with her!"

"Two ,she might be alive. You can't give up because of what might have happened or not to her! She is alive if One had any say in it! Even if One, and Neko, and Chase were dead, One would have saved her some how! You know that!" Four was passionate and filled with optimism.

Two gave a sad chuckle and remarked sardonically, "We are what we are! Gadget is, as Gadget does!"

"Give me a break, until yesterday...I never even hear of Gadget Mouse before..."

Two and Four called down in irritated unison, "HACKWRENCH! Remember the last name!"

Milo rolled his eyes and clambered up the long, long ladder up to the Toontown Fair above them and remarked under his breath, "A little respect wouldn't hurt!"

Now:

"I don't get any respect. Milo... why would you expect respect from cartoon mice?" Larry's question caught Milo off guard.

Gadget frowned and remarked in a calmly measured voice, "I am not a 'cartoon' mouse. I am a human woman whose brain was taken out of my body, and put without my permission into a replicant's shell that is based on a cartoon mouse-girl named 'Gadget Hackwrench' and there I am. I am slot screw beneath UTX's screwdriver."

Larry frowned and said, " 'You are screwed.' Why not just say that?"

"Voice-Governor-Control chip. I can't cuss, curse, blaspheme or swear in any way" , she said in irritation. "Those gosh-darn ,fooling, shoot-sacks at UTX really did a job on me! Not to mention again...I look like a mouse." She then laughed putting her three fingered hands over her eyes, suddenly thinking of how she must sound to the others. "Sorry, golly, I must sound like an absolute doofus!"

Tiffany said gently, "But you are a BEAUTIFUL young woman, that happens to look mouse-like. Your laughter is your own. It might be based on someone else's...but it springs from YOUR heart! Own it. The light of your own soul is yours, no matter what lamp-shade is on the lamp."

Gadget pursed her lips in amazement and with her eyes bright, and a trembling gentleness in her voice said quietly, "Thank you. That means a lot. I don't know how to thank you for that." She cleared her throat and asked wryly, "Can I have another piece of ham, and a top-off on my chocolate milk?"

Larry and Milo laughed at that, as Tiffany got up with a smile and said wonderingly, " A beautiful, HUNGRY young woman, whose stomach is a bottomless pit!"

Tiffany got another slice of ham and more chocolate milk. Gadget curled up into the terry-cloth bath-robe after returning from the bathroom. Tiffany handed Gadget her food and sat back down next her husband, Larry. Gadget put the glass so her prehensile tail wrapped around it. She gave a little shiver at the cold glass.

He asked, "Shouldn't you get dressed?"

She nodded reluctantly. She said wistfully, "I ...guess I should. What is wrong with me? All my existence, I have been up after recharging for four hours and worked all day long. I suppose I feel lazy. Lazy?" She sat up and looked surprised "Oh my gosh! I feel LAZY! I never felt lazy before. Is it because I'm eating real food?"

Milo shrugged and shook his head. "I really don't know. This is unknown territory to me, Gadget."

"For god's sake! If anyone worked twenty hours a day , three hundred sixty-five days a year for five years–they are entitled to a couple of days off!" Tiffany exclaimed it, looking indignant.

Larry frowned and looked at each other of them and asked, "Look here–doesn't she have a REAL name?"

Milo nodded. "Somewhere. We haven't found it yet. That is why we were in the UTX Medical facility in Chicago. We were looking for clues to Gadget's past. I just don't want to keep calling her 'Four'. Even Gadget is better than a number."

"I AM Gadget Hackwrench. I think I am Gadget, there for I am" ,she said wistfully and sipped her chocolate milk.

Tiffany asked, confused, "I don't understand it. In ALL the movies and books and series I ever saw.... the people who had their humanity stripped away and put into robot bodies always have flash-backs and dreams of their previous lives and the like! Are you telling me that you didn't? That you haven't?"

Gadget nodded. "I never wanted to be human and feel sort of...well...queasy knowing I used to be one. I never dreamed of the unremembered past or imaginary futures. I still haven't. When I imagine being human, I still manage to keep my ears and tail. They are to useful", she said, putting her empty plate on the side table and taking her glass of chocolate milk from her tail which then uncoiled and fell to the sofa and twitched ocaisionally..

She looked at it and smiled. "I carry it with me, it's better than a coaster and I can swing from the ceiling on it! I don't remember BEING human! Ever! I don't want to lose my tail, much less my ears.." She rotated them through all arcs of tracking and looked around.

She smiled brightly. "I love this house! It talks, breathes! There are two squirrels on the roof, running around. There is a real mouse in the basement barking at a roach-bug. OOPS! EATING a roach-bug ,now! Crunchcrunchcrunch! I can hear the wind caress the shutters and run along the trees outside, causing them to touch and sweep along the outside of it. It MOVES and stretches and groans like a sailing ship on the sea. Can a 'human' do these things? Understand these things?"

The pair of them looked at Milo who looked at Gadget in awe, a thrill of the poetry of her wistful words moving him. "Uh...no. Your ears are like parabolic microphones, with inbuilt sound baffles. You should have been deafened by the gun-fire and it didn't slow you down. I don't know WHAT you were made for. You can see in almost total darkness, hear like a bat, and fight like a devil! You are super-strong and inhumanly fast, too. On a par or better than the best military cyborgs and short enough to duck into tight places and cute as a button, too."

Gadget was re-arranging her robe when he said that. She straightened up and looked at him , feeling pleased. "Really? 'Cute as a button'? Me? Thanks, Milo! That's the first nice thing you ever said to me!" She beamed at him as one shoulder of the robe slid down, baring one shoulder as she sat up.

Larry and Tiffany looked at him sternly, in a patronizingly quizzical way that made him feel about two inches tall. He turned pink, wished to fade from view like Neko-Ney, and cleared his throat in embarrassment. "You are ..uh....very welcome." He struggled with himself NOT to look down her top.

She pinkened and closed her robe up better, looking very pleased with herself, then suddenly jumped up and said, "I need to dress. You have company!" She turned with an alarmed look and took the stairs three at a time, disappearing from sight in seconds.

After a shocked moment, came a weak knock from the door.

Larry got up as Tiffany indicated to Milo to hide in the kitchen. He hurriedly grabbed up the plates, Gadget's milk-glass and slipped into the kitchen. Larry looked at his wife from the front door.

She smiled and said, "At least HE picks up after himself."

Larry rolled his eyes and opened the door.

A thin, elderly woman with deep-set eyes stood there in a long dark dress, and held a cane with one hand and a girl's arm with her other hand.

In a sharp voice the old woman said, "Afternoon Larry. SO you going to invite me in, or let me croak from exposure out here?"

Larry forced out a smile and said, "Hello ,Martha. Come in. Of course."

She did and looked around and said to Tiffany, "Hello, Tiffany. So where did you hide them? Your visitors? Who are they? I saw when you brought them home yesterday. Decided to come by and say hello. SO who are they?"

The girl looked up at the old woman, Martha and asked her ,then the Williams family, "Could I run upstairs to potty?"

Larry Williams clear his throat uncertainly and started, "Mrs. Winslow, we have.." , he started.

"..NO problem with that. Honey–just stay out of the guest rooms upstairs", Tiffany said in a loud voice directed upstairs.

Larry tried waving a warning at his wife from behind Mrs. Winslow. The girl looked at Tiffany and complained, "Mrs. Williams–I CAN hear, you know!" The dark-haired girl swung on Larry in curiosity. "Mr. Williams? What are you doing?"

"Uh...Bugs! Just some gnats buzzing around." he excused himself with a quick, though lame, explanation.

She scanned the area and reported in a steady voice as she ran up the stairs,"I see no flying insects in here! Be right back, Grandmother."

Mrs Winslow said dotingly, "She IS a wonder, isn't she?"

Larry nodded and swept up next to his wife and whispered urgently, "She is IN the bathroom!"

Tiffany looked shocked and called up the stairs, "Don't go in the bathroom!"

Gadget was momentarily frozen in the open window of the bathroom as the girl flung open the door and stopped in stunned silence. She wondered to herself if 'they should put in a freaking revolving door'? The girl looked uncomfortably familiar to her, though she couldn't place her. Gadget held her boots in one hand and as an afterthought, smiled broadly, nodded and then back-flipped out the window.

The girl stood frozen motionless for a moment before she broke free of her surprised stupor and ran to the bathroom window. She saw the large oak tree with it's jaunty fall leaves waving in the early afternoon sunshine and the tire-swing hanging into the backyard from one of it's lower limbs. She saw their garage and shed and the IBM Caretaker robot in the backyard trimming hedges. There was no sign of the non-human apparition she had seen.

Downstairs, Martha Winslow asked sharply of Tiffany, "What's that?" She poked Tiffany with her cane. "Eh? Why is that?"

The girl walked over to the top of the stairs, hearing the commotion downstairs.

Tiffany said tightly, "There is something in the bathroom that might upset, Kayla."

From the top of the stairs, Kayla called down to them, "It's alright, Grandma! It was...a big mouse. She looked friendly, but I scared it out the window. It is gone now!"

"Well hurry to the bathroom, Kayla" , Kayla disappeared into the rest-room and Mrs. Winslow looked at Larry and Tiffany and smiled,"I think it is so kind of you to consider Kayla's feelings! It is fall and that IS when mice and rodents come inside looking for a warm place to stay. You should have an exterminator come out to take care of your rodent problem! And put better screens on the windows, too. Of course these old houses are rife with holes that mice can hide in.", she added, trying to sound wise.

Kayla came running downstair in a clamor of tennis-shoes and asked excitedly, "Can I go out into the backyard to find the mouse and swing on the tire-swing?"

Both of the Williams answered in unison, "NO!"

Larry said, "It might be rabid!"

Tiffany exclaimed ,"The robot is old and doing the shrubs! It might be dangerous for a little...RABID?" She looked at Larry in irritation. He shrugged and rolled his eyes.

He whispered tersely,"It's all I could think of!"

In the moment of silence following the 'rabid' exchange, they all heard the squeak of the screen-door in the kitchen.

Larry said, "Uh...Let ME check on that."

Mrs. Winslow looked alarmed and whispered loudly, "Is that your guest?"

Larry stuck his head in the kitchen and looked about. Milo pointed at the pantry.

Tiffany said in to casual a tone, "That's ..uh...JASON! My Cousin Helen's boy from San Francisco! He's in town with his little....uh" She looked helplessly at her husband, who had pulled his head back into the living room..

"SISTER! His little sister....who has Lefrene's syndrome. They are just in town for a couple of days. He must have just come back from the....uh...", he looked back at Tiffany.

"The medical center! He's back from the medical center!" Tiffany finished as Milo came in the living room.

"Hi! I'm back from the medical center! Hey, Larry, I think you night have a mouse in the pantry. Who's this?" Milo's forced casualness was almost unbelievable. His smile felt more like the frozen rictus of a dead-man's smile as he faced Mrs Winslow and Kayla.

Tiffany came over to the now dumbfounded Mrs Winslow and said in a high-strung voice, "Jason, this is Martha Winslow, our next-door neighbor. This is Kayla—she is a persona-bot made in the likeness of ...uh...her grand-daughter."

Milo blinked quickly and said, "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Winslow. Kayla, is it?"

Mrs Winslowe said sadly, "Kayla is an AGE-progressed persona-bot of my late grand-daughter. My son, Peter and his wife, Julia and Kayla all died in the plague. Julia died first, fifteen years ago. She was a doctor, a surgeon in fact. Peter was a biologist. Kayla didn't make it to her fifth birthday."

Martha Winslow patted the girl's head and smiled sadly, "I know it isn't her....but I wanted to see a 'what if' version. Also 'Kayla' is my favorite names and I had to have her look like something, and name her something. I didn't have much imagination. She IS a wonder. That Mr. Matamoros is a wonderful man to provide this so inexpensive."

Milo growled, "Yeah. He's one hell of a guy!"

Mrs. Winslow blinked at his hate-filled comment and said, "Well!"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Winslow! I just don't like the man. I want to ask a question. You might be offended....but did you donate their...uh..remains to UTX medical for research?"

"Of course! I'm quite proud of what my Peter did! His death wasn't in vain. His donations helped save the world." ,she said proudly.

Milo felt sick and said in a strained voice, "I'm sure of it"

The Williams looked in a similar way and Mrs. Winslow said, "I just wanted to say 'Hello' and meet you. I don't want to over-stay my welcome. A pleasure to meet you, Jason. I hope your sister gets to feeling better. Good-bye."

After Mrs .Winslow left, the sad silence was thick with unsaid implications. Gadget came in and said, "That could be me...I guess. I'm not medically inclined, like number Two was. Does that Kayla have one of a....you know –what I have? Milo what do we do?"

"A brain. I know what you have. We have to find out whose it is!"

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law! It IS in my head. I need to find out who I am!"

Tiffany said, "There is something that bothers me about your story."

Gadget sniffed, "Other than we didn't finish it?"

Tiffany put her palms together and asked intently, "Miriam Hackensack? Is that her name? The problems happened after Four ran into her in the park! Why was she at that clinic? Is SHE the relative the clinic called?"

Milo stood up in shock and Gadget fell off the arm of the sofa to land unceremoniously on the floor with a thud.

Milo said in shock, "I didn't put it together. I didn't see the woman from that ride at the clinic. I didn't see the connection until now!" He turned to Gadget and asked softly, "Why didn't you mention her to me yesterday?"

Gadget sat on the floor and crossed her legs and hugged herself. "Oh my gosh! Oh my GOLLY! I don't know! I-it might have been coincidence. "

Milo pulled out his PDA and checked it's files. "Got it! Miriam Hackensack! She lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Let's see...on Natchez Trace, near Vanderbilt University. I have her phone number, too." Milo looked at Gadget.

Gadget looked back, her ears folding near flat to the sides of her head and fumbled out in a torrent of emotionally charged passion, "What ...do I say? Milo? 'Hi, did you ever have a dead daughter, and what's her name, and did you give her brain away to YOOOOOO-TEX? Are you my mommy? I might have her brain! You don't want it back do YOU? DO YOU?' " Her voice ended almost in a breathless scream as she sobbed. Looking very young and anguished she shivered in fear and stress, sitting on the plush throw rug and rocking back and forth.

Milo went over and knelt beside her and put his arms around her. She hugged back and wept full open. Milo looked at Tiffany and Larry helplessly. Larry looked embarrassed and poured himself a drink. Tiffany came over and sat down on the sofa and stroked Gadget's hair.

Milo couldn't help it. Until that second he still sort of considered her as not quite a real person. He was moved by her naked pain in a way that he had never been moved before. A tear ran down his cheek from his suddenly bright eyes. The intensity of the emotion frightened him.

"There, there." He was at a loss to know what to say to normal people, much less girls turned into mice-girls. He just let his heart speak. " I know you're frightened! It would scare anyone. If I were her...I would want to know. No matter come what may. A mother would want to know! You don't have to call now. Call when you feel like it" ,he said with feeling.

Tiffany nodded at his sudden vulnerability and patted HIM on the head, too.

Gadget nodded. She cried herself out and sighed with her eyes closed. "Sorry. I guess I have a lot pent up grief and fear in me. You know ...I might be her sister. Or cousin! I don't want to assume anything! That would be a disaster."

Larry said practically, "It might be one of a whole lot of folks! You might not get a positive identity from talking to her. Be flexible."

He sat down in his overstuffed chair and gazed at the mouse-girl framed by the afternoon sunlight. Her large eyes reflected light like a cat's at him making her look very mysterious and primal, like a goblin or other supernatural creature. Her tail trembled and slid over Milo's leg. Milo looked at it uncomfortably and Larry cleared his throat.

"We left off with you guys in the underground. You and you and Two? What happened then? Come on...It'll help going over the facts of this case while they're still fresh. We already found out about Mirriam! We might discover something else important! Vital maybe."

" 'The CASE'? Detective Williams! I thought you retired!" His wife was pleased, but mildly sarcastic, looking at him appraisingly .

"Oh do be quiet, 'diamond-in-the-rough'. We all need to be flexible!"

Then:

"Milo! You need to be more flexible!" Four hung up-side down by her tail, looking at Milo. She and Two had clambered over temperature/humidity/gas-traces sensor box in the vertical shaft and continued on, it not occurring to them that it might be an impediment to the human with them.

"Flexible? No way! I need arms like a gorilla to get around this thing! It's two and a half feet by two foot square. I can't get my fingers into any cracks or hand-holds!." He was frustrated and at an impasse.

One of the two Gadgets above him said out of the darkness, "Milo, dear, don't be difficult!"

"Four?"

"Ha! No, I'm Two talking. Four is busy moving around", came the voice out of the darkness She sounded sad, but bearing up.

Four's voice came out of the darkness next to his cheek, "Alright. I will lower my tail once I.'m braced. Grab it and hold on to it and I'll pull you around the obstacle."

She moved around above him and though he strained to hear them, no sound came to him at all. After a moment, Milo felt a snake-like slither on his shoulder. He bit off a scream and reached with his left hand and squeezed her tail. The awesome power of that snake-like appendage was like a boa-constrictor wrapping around his left arm as it compressed with vice-like strength. "Hold on!" Her warning was unnecessary given that he felt like his arm was penned by a force he couldn't resist and if he struggle with it, he might lose his arm..

They maneuvered into a long horizontal intake plenum, ending in another grate. Milo shook his left hand to get circulation back into it. Two and Four made short work of opening it into a wardrobe room the size of a small warehouse. They slipped in and locked the intake plenum cover back into position.

They maneuvered between the racks of cowboy, princess and spaceman costumes and near to more normal clothes when they had an unexpected encounter.

"Gadget! Lawiini! Hey What are you guys doing helping a criminal?" Dale, the chipmunk, looked confused in his Hawaiian shirt and white jacket and shorts. Looking confused is what he did best. The surprised trio of the two Gadgets and Milo came in a close second, as the five foot tall humanoid figure of Dale strolled around the end of the rack on bandied, fuzzy legs and presented himself. After a moment, the second five foot tall chipmunk came around the first. This one wore khaki shorts and shirt and a battered 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' leather jacket and felt fedora.

Two started in with a surprised, "Dale, CHIP! Golly, am I happy to see you guys–"

Chip interrupted her, "Holy COW! Get away from that guy!"

Four called out, "Abraham Lincoln calls Mickey Mouse!"

Two stepped in front of Milo defensively and remarked over her shoulder at him, "She's the smart one, too."

Chip and Dale didn't pause and rushed Milo, shouting, "I got him!

Two and Four kicked like can-can dancers to the chipmunk's sol plexus and the boys went sprawling, down onto their faces, clutching their stomachs. Two rolled her eyes and glowered at Milo.

"Do something!" She growled at him.

"Abraham Lincoln calls Mickey Mouse" ,Milo said in shock at the weirdly bizarre twist that things had taken.

Chip sat up looking mussed. "OW! Why'd you kick me, G- Two?"

Dale rolled over onto his back and stuck his fuzzy brown hands into his pockets and said in sullen supine surprise, "Great job, Four! You crushed my nuts!"

Four said in surprise as she stopped in front of the inventory control panel, "DALE! Watch your mouth!"

Milo looked quizzically at them and asked , "Hey! How did he get around the V.G.C. parameters?"

He climbed painfully to his feet and pulled out a handful of crushed walnuts from his pockets. He looked like he was going to cry and whined loudly, "A patron gave me some walnuts and you crushed my nuts!"

Chip rolled his eyes and smacked Dale in the back of the head.

"OW! Why'd you do that for?"

Gadget-Four groaned and said,"Oh, yes–that made a BIG difference in their personalities!"

Two and Four squeak ultra-sonicly at Chip and Dale for a moment and they squeaked back. This carried on animatedly for several seconds until Milo had enough of it.

Milo said intently in irritated disgust, "Would you guys stop it? Jeez! We are in some SERIOUS SHIT here! God! Killer thugs, armed cyborgs, and chipmunks! Ah, man! This day has gone down the tubes, straight down to the Twilight Zone toilet!"

Four crowed, "Good luck, at last! The LadyMouse armor is stored here. It has jump-jets in built for two thousand feet of vertical leaps, exo-skeleton that adds twenty percent to my strength AND is bullet-resistant! Really, real armor! The only real question who gets it? Me or Two?"

"Lady-Mouse?", Milo asked in state of confusion. "That sounds familiar."

Dale asked sarcastically, "Hey! Where'd you get this chuckle-head? LadyMouse, y'know? The SOOOOOOOOOper hero version of Gadget that Disney did as a thirteen episode series back in the 2060's. Got hit by a growth ray and did up some powered armor and flew around beating up bad-guys! Powee-zowee!"

Chip grumbled, "You're the chuckle head!"

"Hey Shut up!" Dale chirped back.

Milo suppressed the urge to strangle them both. Their helium squeak voices were giving him a head-ache.

Two smiled at Four and said with determination, "You take it. I'm already dead, remember. One percent degradation fault? I have a short time left. UTX will scrap me. They might assume I might not have armor: because they wouldn't dare shoot me!"

Four looked tortured as she nodded. Milo felt so weirdly put-off as Dale and then Chip embraced Two and murmured sadly into her ears how sorry they were. This was free actions, not preprogrammed responses. The level of these 'thing's human interactions were, frankly, eerie to Milo and he was feeling very creeped out by this.

"Now wait a minute! You might 'play' LadyMouse–but the costume is a COSTUME! You depend on it being armor and you'll die!" Milo was suddenly spurred into saying something by the suddenly horrific vision of Four being shot down like Five was because he had said nothing while she played 'dress-up' with the big boys with real guns and got herself murdered as a result.

Two shook her head and explained, "It was a secret project of Doctor Fairweather's to get REAL kevlar and ceramic armor for the costume to make it as real as he could get. The thing weighs about fourty-five pounds and can stop a Makarov 4.65 mm round at point-blank distance."

Four piped in, "...Can stop a Makarov round dependant where you get shot. I get shot in the head–I'm cat-food! Doctor Fairweather bought it out of his own money."

"You have to be kidding! Out of his OWN money? Why ,for God's sake?" Milo was dumb-founded again. The more he learned about Doctor Fairweather, the more confused he got. What was that man doing and more importantly...why?

Two and Four shook their heads in unison ,not having any answers and shrugged. Two snapped her fingers and looked at the chipmunks.

"I need to shower, so does Four. Before we chase your fuzzy butts out, to guard the door, what IS the situation here?" Two stripped out of her bloodied cover-alls down to panties and a tee-shirt.

Dale said, "We have two-hundred thirteen patrons and twenty-one characters and thirteen vendors in the front part of the ride. Roger's Toontown Cab-ride is a basic bumper-cars kinda thingee and is shut down for the duration of the emergency! There are a lot of scared people up there."

Chip gave a calculating look at Milo while Four went to get the LadyMouse armor and Two went to get the Suzy Mouse dress. Chip said to Milo with a conspiratorial look, "You go shower and I'll get you clothes that they wouldn't expect for you ...and a surprise! Hurry up."

Milo looked at Four when she got back and said,"That is weird! How did Chip and Dale throw in with us?"

"Squeak-mail updates and....they ARE Rescue Rangers! We may be made as characters to play parts in an amusement park–BUT we have a complete data-base inside us that contains everything we ever said in a cartoon. Every action is noted and cataloged and simulated for duplication in the real where possible. We are free to act NOW, because of you, but what do we have experience as?" Four shook her head and headed to the women's showers and after a long moment of watching her go, Milo headed towards the men's showers.

"I'm going to be dressed by a giant chipmunk! How jolly! I can just see Aunt Holly's face! 'Can you identify your nephew's corpse?' ' Why sure! That clown looking fellow, dressed up by a chipmunk!' " Milo felt like he was in a drug-induced delirium. Though on the other hand...he could see now, why Jerry was attracted to the 'toon'-girls...he drove that thought out as quickly as he could. He always supposed attraction to robot girls to be unhealthy, but then again–Four was a cyborg with a human-brain. One that looked like a cartooned mouse-girl! He was confused by his own reactions, except for one. "Damn UTX bastards! You will burn for your crimes!" He cursed while pealing out of his jumpsuit, soaked in Five's now dried blood. To get it off, he had to soak it under the shower for several minutes.

Dale was waiting for him with a big grin, a pile of clothes and a make-up satchel.

Gadget-Four came out dressed in the LadyMouse powered armor. It didn't hide her figure and was thin enough that the Disney Imagineers had to hide the 'power' of the powered armor in unit Four, herself. The bright yellow headset had slide-down goggles and was yellow in color framing her face with ceramic armor plates. The main body of it was a dark bluish-purple and had a pair of holsters on the back for her harpoon guns. She had one harpoon-gun in one holster and the four millimeter machine-pistol in the other.

Two came out in a long green, Middle-ages lady's dress and a scarf holding her hair and ears back.

Milo came out with a broken nose and scar and a long black leather coat over a black tee-shirt and black pants and boots. His hair was spiked and he had a tear-drop tattoo below his right eye. It was disconcerting to say the least to the Gadgets.

Two burst out laughing and sputtered, "Holy cow! You look like a software pi-rat! Arrrr! You DO need an eye-patch, though!"

Four stared at him and asked wonderingly, "Milo? Is that you?"

Dale said, "TA-DA! Not bad , eh?"

Milo said quietly to Dale and Chip, "I'm impressed. Not bad for a pair of chipmunks!"

Dale said, "Ha! Fake chipmunks! No problem! We are only chipmunks by day and Secret Double-Oh agents by night! I've watched make-up artists and we make up kids ,too! Same principle–piece of cake! If I were a real chipmunk, I'd be under a tree playing with my nuts!"

Dale giggled while Chip sighed, "Oh brother, You knuckle-head!"

Dale said, "HEY! Whatever works, works!"

Four, looking thoughtful said, "I have a plan. I think. I don't like the distraction plan. I don't want you guys to get shot to bits to save me. So.....I sneak out while Milo and Two wait here. I sneak as close as I can to the executive parking at the lift-park and snatch the Air-car and come back here to pick you guys up? I have jump-jets and body armor AND the bad-guys are ordered to take me alive! This might work."

Milo nodded slowly and said, "That is the best plan we have. It sounds like it might work.. I do NOT like the idea of you going off by yourself. How do I know you aren't just ...giving yourself up to save Two and me?"

Four frowned and shook her head. "I wouldn't gain anything. Golly, I heard with my own ears the order to kill the other replicants and YOU ,too. They would have me and kill you guys! They would do whatever and then mind-wipe ME til I didn't even remember anyone. How would that help?"

Two said in a huff, pulling at the green dress to get it to sit right, "It's the only plan we have."

Chip shrugged and said philosophically, "A plan no matter how shoddy and slipshod is still better than blind action without thought."

"Wowee-zowee! What he said!" Dale said in amazement.

"Alright ",Milo said. " 'No matter how shoddy'. Right. Two and I will be up front, ready to make a run to the Air-car when you land. You'll have to land at the Toontown Plaza, that's about a hundred fifty feet away from here out in the open. This will be open-ground to anybody wanting to take a shot at us. Two and I will run full out and try to make it to you."

Milo went over to unit Four and held her armored shoulders in his hands and said grimly, "Look, Four–we might not make it. If anything bad happens–go on! From all the info I have...the records of your brain would be archived either in the replication factory in Belize, or in the UTX Medical Headquarters in Chicago. Find the truth and bring UTX to justice if we don't make it."

There was little she could say. The odds were stacked against them. She bit her lip and nodded with a look of shiney-eyed determination. She backed up and said with steely decisiveness, "I will save you both, if I can. I won't fail. This is for Becky and Five and Three and the others we lost. Chip–Dale, Look after Milo and my sister...I mean G-2! Well, you know what I mean"

Chip looked sadly at her and said,"Good luck, Gadget!"

Dale just nodded and said with gusto, "You kick their butts!"

Milo said, "Be careful, you crazy mouse!"

Unit Four blinked back tears and said with conviction, "I won't leave you behind! They had better not try to stop me."

She turned and pelted up the stairs to the second floor.

"Look, guys", Milo said, feeling like he had lost his mind completely while talking to giant fake chipmunks, "If we get separated, I want you guys to find out what happened to Chase Victor and Gadget units One and Three." He gave them the cell-phone number of Doctor Fairweather's air-car. "They were beneath sector 21 by 42. That's right under Space Mountain, I think. Can you guys do that?"

Chip said with enthusiasm, "You bet! The Rescue Rangers are on the job!"

Milo gave them a blank look and said in voice devoid of cheer, "Great! Wonderful I'll leave you chipmunk rangers on the trail."

Chip grabbed Dale by the ear and headed towards the inlet plenum of the ventilation system. Dale called happily after Milo, "We're all over it! Hey, leggo my ear!"

Milo tried not to wince. He failed and winced.

Milo and Two as 'Suzy" went into the crowd in Roger Rabbit's Toontown Cab-ride. They got into position and waited for rescue from above. Milo hadn't mentioned to her what might happen if the UTX security people back-tracked Gadget-Four back to the ride where he and Two hid at. He hoped against hope that she would make it.

Gadget-Four entered the air-vents again and wended her way as close as she could to the lift-park. She cut about half a mile of open distance by taking some twists and turns in the ventilation system past huge fans that came close to ending her passage and came out in the Contemporary Resort, under the monorail-track. She snuck past a pair of Disney security-guards, sneaking by them as quietly as a 'mouse'. She hoped to make it out without injuring any security or police. She also knew her hopes would be dashed in all probability.

Four listened and snuck across an open space of the dining room quickly. She scanned the huge empty area and wondered where the people were. She heard the monorail whizz by overhead and flattened herself to a wall to keep from being spotted. She wondered, 'why was the monorail was still moving about the park when it is locked down during a security situation?' Her answer came all to swiftly as one monorail came to a stop and a gaggle of UTX security got off and milled about.

She hunkered down and made her way to the 'Exit' sign and opened the stairway slowly and slunk in. She raced down the stairs two and three steps at a time, sometimes going up on the walls to round corners. In the bottom stair-well, she encountered a pair of UTX security having just come in at the bottom of the stair-well.

She kicked one in the stomach with her momentum and punched the other in the head. It was so quick, neither had time to pull their weapons up to fire before they were knocked down and unconscious.

She picked up one of the guard's weapons and checked it out. It was a Makarov without the inbuilt grenade launcher. She noted that it had 144 caseless rounds in the nomex magazine mounted on top of the weapon. She gulped air and opened the outside door slowly and peered out. She shouldered the long arm and snuck out, keeping low.

She kept to the sculpted underbrush and trimmed bushes heading toward the ticket and Transportation Center just south of the Contemporary Resort. She avoided another patrol and edged up to the monorail track, seeing barricades up ahead between her and the Transport Center. She looked around and spotted the monorail coming back to the transport center. She shivered in fear and she swallowed hard as she braced herself to make a leap. She tightened the strap of the rifle across her shoulders and hunched down. She calculated the figures to allow her to jump to the top of the monorail.

The monorail ran by above her and she used the jump-jets to shoot past the monorail and land on it's roof with a thump. She couldn't tell if it was loaded with UTX security or not as she scrambled to hold onto the smooth top of the monorail roof. It was then she noticed that she had been spotted. An aerodyne remote pilot vehicle swooped low to try for a positive identity on her and inadvertently let itself be seen by her..

She unshouldered the rifle and fired a burst into the RPV drone. It fell behind and smashed into some of the perfectly pruned bushes, tearing them up out of the ground. Moments later the monorail had one of Ramos' Spartan heavy security robots land flawlessly upon the roof of it. The roof dished in slightly from the weight of the huge mechanism. It started slowly toward her. She raised the rifle up and sprayed the robot with 4.65mm rounds.

It didn't flinch. Neither did it stop. "Ah, fooey!" Gadget-Four shouted as she looked for some weakness, any weakness to exploit. She concentrated her fire on the leg-mounted jump-jet bell-shaped rocket-nozzles. The right one on the huge robot blew off and the left one got chewed up by her fire. She noticed that the roof gave way where she hit with the rifle-fire. She emptied the rifle in a crescent arc directly in front of the Model 211 still advancing toward her..

It tore through the roof-top lunging at her and fell into the monorail cab, which was luckily mostly empty except for a pair of security guards at the far end, frantically radioing for back-up. The guard driving the monorail hit the brakes and it lurched to a stop with a squeal of brakes. Lucky for Four, she was at the back of the monorail train, so she didn't spill off the front onto the tracks. Unluckily, she did slide into the hole just cut by her and the weight of the Spartan robot.

She cried out and grabbed the edge as the Spartan stood up and grabbed her ankles. She screamed as it pulled her though the hole and smashed her body against the floor.. She turned her head in time to keep her face from being pulverized against the floor of the train cab as she was slammed against the smooth rubbery floor again. Blood and saliva flew as she hit. It lifted her up out of the hole to slam her down again. She drew the 4mm needler and jammed it into it's eye-slot and emptied the magazine into it's sensitive optics.

Not having 'eye-nerves' it didn't rock back in pain, but continued it's last action and brought her down toward the floor again. She dropped her pistol and grabbed the edge of the roof-hole and hung on as it brought it's arms down again. Not having working optics, it couldn't tell what had happened to Gadget-Four. It assumed that she had been smashed by it's last action.

The closest guard shouted to the robot, "Hold her still so I can taser her!"

Gadget whipped out her harpoon-gun and fired at the guard as he fumbled with his taser. He screamed as the harpoon sank into his ballistic vest and he fired the taser pistol prematurely, striking the control panel. The taser short-circuited the panel and the monorail lurched into motion suddenly.

The guard was thrown into Gadget's arms. She grabbed him by the throat with her left hand and pistol-whipped him with the harpoon-pistol twice before she holstered it. As he went down, she pulled the Makarov off his unconscious body and pointed it at the other guard. He screamed and fired wildly at her as she spilled prone to the floor, on top of the unconscious guard. She protected her head with her arms and rode it out on her armor until the Spartan suddenly let her go. It pivoted it's arms forward and returned fire as it perceived it was being attacked by firearms. The frightened guard was sawn to bits by the 4mm mini-gun in the robot's right arm and died spraying blood everywhere.

Gadget-Four rolled to the side , leaping to her feet and butt-stroked the door's emergency release with the rifle-stock. The emergency brakes came on as the door slid open with a hiss and she grabbed an upright post to keep her balance. The robot fell forward onto the prone guard, crushing him beneath it. It jumped to its feet and held the now bleeding guard in a vice like grip, not being able to tell an IMMEDIATE difference between the sonar echos it was getting of it's suroundings.

As Gadget ran out onto the lift-port terminal station platform , the Spartan measured the weight of it's prisoner. The 'Gadget' it held weighed 210 pounds. To heavy, it decided and dropped the guard on the floor and stepped on him, crushing the guard's sternum. She could hear it clicking and using sonar to guide itself, and how it was going remorselessly after her.

A group of S.W.A.T. personnel reached the top of the stairs where she was, and she leapt into the middle of them by surprise. She dragon-stamped one man's knee, snapping it backward in two. She butt-stroked another in the side of the neck, sending him sprawling. She then dropped low and foot-swept the men at the top of the stairs, sending them falling back on their fellows, causing them all to crash down the stairs. She glanced at the pursuing Spartan and sprang up, her heart pounding in her ears.

She took the stairs to the roof three at a time as a burst of auto-fire erupted behind her, chewing up the wall next to her. She was sprayed with concrete bits as she ran up the stairs. A group of shock-wanded and taser wielding guards stood just outside the stair-well waiting for her. She spotted the other Spartan standing next to Milo's new Mitsubishi air-car.

She whispered, "Sorry, Milo" , and pumped all three concussion grenades at the second Spartan with a rapid-fire, "KchakKchakKchak!". The air-car SHE was actually seeking was at the other end of the lift-park, but they didn't know that.

The three explosives hit the Spartan like body-blows to a boxer and it went down when the titanic explosives went off, wrecking Milo's new air-car and several others around it. The power of the explosive picked the robot up and slammed it into the ground, tearing off it's left arm.

Gadget-Four ran up the stairs into the arms of the awaiting troops. She sprayed just above knee height, hitting several in unarmored places, sending them down to sprawl on the asphalt roof-top. One man tackled her to the roof, knocking the gun out of her hands. It skidded twenty feet away and skidded to a stop as she rolled over and boxed his ears through his helmet so hard, she split the helmet and knocked him out, almost crushing his skull.

She kicked him off and sprinted toward Doctor Fairweather's air-car. Two men in front of her tasered her to no affect, the mini-harpoons of the taser-pistol ,powered by the CO2 charges had no strength to penetrate her armor and shock her. She punched the one on the right in the face, sending him falling to the roof, and she snap kicked the one on the left in the solar plexus, dropping him gasping to the roof-top.

She was suddenly struck in the neck by someone using a shock-wand. She fell nerveless to the roof with a thud. A sharp kick to her stomach sent her flying through the air to crush the side of a Volvo Air-Lifter sedan. She rolled over on her side, blood dripping from her mouth and nose to see Ramos strolling up with a shock-wand in his hand.

He spat on the ground and growled, "Alright, Rat-bitch! This time...we do things my way!"

He swung his foot at her mid-section again. This time–she was ready for him. She kicked off from the ground and pivoted on both hands, kicking with both feet to his crotch. She connected and flung him twenty feet away to land in the remains of Milo's wrecked air-car with a loud 'crunch'.

"Fine...your way...ouch", she muttered as she climbed awkwardly to her feet, pulling herself up the outside of the crumpled Volvo, spitting the blood out of her mouth.

She pulled her head up as she heard the creak and rattle from that location as she staggered upright. Her terrified eyes widened at the sight of Ramos not only being on his feet after that, but the sight of him hoisting the wrecked air vehicle over his head in preparation to hurl it at her.

"Oh SHOOT!" She exclaimed and leapt aside for her life before the ruined car crashed into the side of the Volvo where she just was. She skidded to a halt and looked at Ramos.

Ramos shook his head and muttered in a low growl, "Oh NO! You rat-bitch! You are coming home with me. I'm gonna be a real man again! You are going to Max! Then you'll be HIS problem!."

Gadget heard behind her the still operational Spartan still working on sonar closing the gap to her. Ramos leapt into the air at her in a flamboyant display of cybernetic prowess to cross back the distance to her.

"COME ON!" She shouted in a challenging tone and leapt silently about thirty degrees to the right. Ramos oriented on the sight and sound of her jumping and rotated in flight to land at her previous location and to leap after her. He wondered vaguely why she didn't use her jump-jets to fly away as he landed in a crouch where she had been. The answer was sound. The jump-jets made to much sound.

He was tackled by the blind robot homing in on the last sound it had heard from it's target's location. It bore Ramos into a red Ford sports car with a huge crash. Gadget had landed partially behind a Saturn ground-car and rolled to her feet to the awful sounds of the collision and subsequent crash from behind her. Ramos kicked and punched frantically for all he was worth before he realized what it was and where it was from.

Gadget gathered up a shock-wand from one of the bodies of a downed UTX security guard and ran up silently behind Ramos. He was losing a strangle hold contest with the machine and starting to suffocate.

"Emergency over...", was all he choked out before Gadget shoved the shock-wand into his mouth. The Model 211 Spartan locked into position unmoving, awaiting orders. It recognized the authorized user, Georges Ramos and he had begun an over-ride. No confirmation was forth-coming. It started to run logic chains to it's ultimate conclusion.

Four knew she would be strung up by that machine's logic when it came to the ultimate conclusion that it is strangling Ramos. She pulled the trigger and shocked Ramos insensate with the surge of high-frequency, high-voltage electricity into the roof of his mouth, She dropped the shock-wand and vaulted backward silently. Ramos went limp, but she was unsure of his condition.

She turned and ran full out, keeping low between the cars until she reached the long. Cobalt-blue Boeing air-car. It had a vaguely shark-like silhouette and four vectored-thrust modules at the corners. She fished out the keys and unlocked the pilot-side door. She slid into the seat and moved it all the way forward, strapping herself in. She craned to see the Spartan standing up and scanning the area.

She had a wicked idea and checked the specifications of the lift-jets. She activated 'whisper'-mode and took off with the pilot's door open. It turned and started running in her direction and she slid the air-car off the roof sideways. She hovered it just twenty feet past the roof-edge and yelled, "Kiss my butt, can-man!"

It's target confirmed by voice recognition, it sprinted as fast as it could. She slowly gained altitude and distance. The Spartan ran up to the edge of the roof-top and leaped into the air, deploying it's jump-jets to intercept the aircraft. Being a stupid machine, it didn't realize that Four had destroyed it's jump-motors. It flew out-of-control down six floors to impact head-first into a Jeep parked down in the visitor's parking-lot. The jump-jet fuel and grenades caused a huge explosion that scattered car and robot parts everywhere as the air-car swept around toward it's rendezvous.

The quartet of park guards came in the far end of the building and started going through people's Identity cards. They separated out the replicant characters and didn't spend much time quizzing them. Gadget-Two had turned her skin brown to work as Suzy. Milo had noted it, but hadn't expected such a puerile trick to fool the Park Guards so easily. She had identified herself in a high-pitched falsetto as Suzy-2, one of the Cinderella Mice. The guards checked and moved her to where the others stood around. She went over and stood next to the Alif , the Elf-maid.

Alif was a beautiful elven princess from the 2025 movie of the same name and looked elven, was dressed elven and importantly—was armed like an elf-girl...with a real bow and quiver of three arrows. Two dragged Alif to the back of the character pack while one of the guards chatted up Princess Jasmine.

Milo thought of what might happen next. The inside of the ride was a huge room with two floors. The main floor was flat and had the bumper-cars parked on one side, the people corralled on the other side. The second floor had rear projection windows with 'toon' scenes being shown on them. The 'toon' noise was an unceasing background sound that people had ceased to notice.

One of the guards nearest to him noticed something on the UTX chem-sniffer. Chemical propellent for a fire-arm was detected from the crowd. He closed in slowly with Milo.

Two had wrested away Alif's bow and arrows by saying to her, "You know...these are security risks! You should let me put them into the Wardrobe room!"

Alif blinked and nodded reluctantly, giving 'Suzy' the bow and arrows. Two took them and disappeared into the rafters of the second floor. She simply walked over to the ladder in the back when no humans were looking and shinnied up into the rear-projection walkway area.

The guard with the sniffer came closer to Milo. He paused and looked around ,barely twelve feet from Milo. Milo stepped back in the milling crowd and fetched up onto the bumper-cars and thought hard. He suddenly got into one and stretched out in it. He put all three of his loose rounds out of his pocket into the Bumper-car parked next to him.

His heart skipped a beat when the chem-sniffer officer called out, "Hey! You in the car!"

Gadget-Two was upstairs when she heard the commotion. She had dumped the middle-ages ladiy's dress part and peered over the edge of a window to see Milo sitting casually in a bumper-car.

"What the heck is that goof-ball doing?" She whispered to herself.

The guard with the chem-sniffer was fifteen feet away across from Milo on the other side of the car where Milo had just secreted the loose ammo.

Milo tried a bluff while shaking like a leaf inside. He glared at the guard and said insolently, "What?"

"Get out of the ride! No one is allowed to stay in the rides!" The guard said in irritation, jerking a thumb at Milo to get out.

"Oh come on! Happiest place on Earth? I'm happiest on my ass!" Milo said in a begging uncertain tone.

The chem-sniffer guard put a hand on his side-arm.

Milo put up his hands and shrugged, "Whoa! No problem! Jeez, I'm moving!"

Milo pulled himself out and walked off mad, muttering loudly, "Asshole!"

The guard glared at him and snorted in disgust. He had almost forgotten his chem-sniffer. It lured him toward one of the bumper-cars. He got to the one next to where the 'loudmouth' had been goofing off at. He bent over to look in.

Across the floor, one of the guards asked, "Where had the mouse girl had gotten to?" They looked around. Gadget-Two knew she was out of time. She looked out of the outside window toward the plaza and saw no sign of Four. Off in the distance in the direction of the lift-port, she heard the distinctive sound of small arms fire.

Time had run out for all of them .

Two picked the guard next to the ladder up to the second floor and pulled the bow back and aimed. She was unsuited mentally to snipe anyone and had trouble controling her quivering arms. She remembered how Five died and thought of the screams she had heard from Three as she had gotten shot and Becky dying. She mostly remembered the feel of Three's blood on her hands and the heat of wrath swelled up within her.

The guard with the chem-sniffer pulled out a loose needler round and yelled, "I found something!"

Everyone turned toward him. Two let loose the arrow fly. The Security man at the bottom of the ladder died instantly ,without a sound , as the arrow pierced his left eye and entered his brain. She picked the guard next to him and let fly again. The arrow pierced his throat and he gave out a gurgling scream as he fell to the ground clutching the arrow sticking out of his neck..

People screamed and started running for the exits. Milo was close to one and since he was ready to react, was second out of the door. He ran toward the plaza as he heard machine-pistols blazing behind.

On the second floor, Two had ducked and ran full out around the circular walkway to the far side of the room. The two remaining guards riddled the walkway where she had been, tearing up the plywood and plaster sets with auto-fire flechettes.

Two popped up in a window and shot an arrow into the back of the neck of the guard with the chem-sniffer. He died immediately as the arrow penetrated his brain-stem and he fell face-first into the bumper-car he was next to. Having fired her last arrow, she ducked as the wall next to her exploded as it was shredded by the remaining guard's machine-pistol fire. She dropped the bow and ran to the outside window and leapt through it with a crash of shattering glass. She flipped forward to land on the hot-dog vendor's umbrella, knocking over the hot-dog cart and spilling herself and dozens of steaming wieners to the pavement.

The remaining guard hunkered down next to the wall for several moments after the mouse-girl exited the building. He then went over to Alif , the elf-maid. It WAS her bow. He blew her head off with his needler and as her lifeless body flopped grotesquely to the ground, still twitching, he kicked it several times and shouted, "Bitch, you meddling bitch!"

The other replicant characters cowered speechlessly.

Milo had reached the Toontown Plaza and searched the sky for Gadget-Four piloting the air-car. He looked back in the direction he came from and saw Two running up the side-walk in his direction. A gunshot rang out and Two's left knee exploded and she spilled screaming to the pavement.

Milo shrank back into the doorway he was in, as a S.W.A.T. team, lead by Commander Watts came out into sight. He approached Two with his pistol at the ready and shot her in the other knee, shattering it. She shrieked even louder and he, still not satisfied, he shot her in each shoulder joint as well. She sobbed and writhed like anyone would faced with death and begged for her life.

Milo felt helpless before such naked viciousness. He started pulling out his pistol and shook from terror seeing such agony, so callously inflicted.

One of Watts' men ran up and said, "Unit Four is on the lift-port roof! It has engaged Mister Ramos! Some of our men are requesting back-up!"

"Right", said Watts. He took careful aim and shot Two though both eyes , exploding her brain onto the side-walk, ceasing her warbling screams. "Now shut the hell up!" Watts remarked with some small satisfaction

He commented to the man who told him the news, "These things give me the creeps! They scream to much like real people, but they're just wind-up toys!"

Milo imagined himself getting that treatment and was paralyzed with fear. The sweat ran down his face and he felt like he would die from his horror. Two was just a machine. Just a machine! He kept repeating that to himself. She bled and screamed in pain and fear and pleaded and begged and died. She could not die! She had to have life to die.

He was still paralyzed by this internal dialog when Four landed the Boeing air-car next to him. The passenger-side door opened up as he saw the S.W.A.T. team and some others running back. He screamed , "NO" ,and fired his pistol wildly at them causing them to duck for cover ,and leapt into the air-car and screamed at Four, "GO, GO, GO!"

Four could see Two's mangled body sixty feet down the sidewalk in a spreading pool of artificial blood. She didn't need to ask what had happened. She hit the door-close switch and jerked the air-car into a power climb. The torrent of tears spilled down her face as the air-car bit into the air and screamed toward the stratosphere. Milo fumbled with the straps and finally locked himself down in the five-point harness.

He was babbling about how Two had been killed and how human she had died and just wouldn't shut up. Gadget-Four looked at him with all the naked pain in her soul and begged him, :"Please be quiet now?" Her voice was parched and broken and very high in pitch.

It shot through him and tore his heart open. He wept in relief of being rescued and from the shame and helplessness of not being able to save Two from the grizzly fate she had suffered. The guilt of it threatened to drown him in tears.

"Milo? Please see if you can find a 'stealth' setting or 'Electronic Counter-Measures' or such! We just picked up three bogeys on our six and they are closing!" She was anxious to leave their new pursuers far behind

Milo wiped his eyes on his cuff and started to go through the vehicle systems check-list as Gadget dove the air-craft to pick up some speed. The three UTX Star-sweep drone fighters could out-perform and out-maneuver any normal aircraft in the air and stuck close to the air-car.

She took them down to sea-level and pushed the throttle to the fire-wall. The engines switched from whistle to roar as the vehicle went supersonic sending up a huge wake behind them as Gadget and Milo were shoved back into their seats by the acceleration.

Over the radio came an UTX air-controller's message of, "Set down IMMEDIATELY or we will be forced to fire on you!"

Gadget was furious at these clowns, by now and had only one response. She turned on the viewer and looked at the shocked flight-controller, who had expected a human at the controls.

"Golly! I am REALLY angry! You people commit murder and kidnaping and threaten a whole park full of people to get me? Gosh–I have a message for Mister Matamoros from LadyMouse. Please relay it without editing!" With great anger darkening her face, she extended her middle finger and thrust it at the camera defiantly and turned off the viewer.

Milo shook his head in appreciation and said over the engine noise, "I can't believe you did that!"

She nodded as she brought the craft around, heading toward a storm-front of anvil-topped clouds. "I am very angry. He murdered my friends and your's ,too. It is the least he deserves, I think. Have you found anything I can use to ditch these 'bad-boys' with?"

"Yes! It does have a stealth cloak! I'll activate it–", he was interrupted by Gadget's shout.

"WAIT! I have an idea! Switch on the instant we hit those clouds and hang on!" She looked grim and eased up on the throttle. She hoped her vague knowledge of aerodynamics, literally , would not let her down.

They hit the storm in the anvil-tops , about thirty-five thousand feet up and she cut power to the engines as Milo activated the stealth-cloak. She swung the engines forward and reactivated them. They decelerated from supersonic speeds at a negative twelve gees of thrust.. Milo and Gadget were crushed against their harnesses, as they fell from the sky in an arc.

Milo passed out from the deceleration and went limp. Gadget started to black-out and cut power again. She swung the engines back around for level flight and restarted them again at subsonic speed. Milo dangled from his harness with a drop of blood, dripping from his nose.

"Milo! Milo! Wake up!" Gadget was frantically calling to him to get him to rouse back to consciousness.

He jerked and sat up and dabbed his nose. He looked at Gadget in dazed amazement and said in a wondering voice, "Wow. You really almost killed us! I'm impressed you didn't. Why didn't the engines come off? This thing is built solid! The military doesn't have this good! OW, ah,man! My balls hurt from that stunt!"

"What the hell?" Milo looked shocked. "The military DOESN'T have this good! What is this thing? I thought is was JUST a fancy air-car! Fighter jets can't fly like this! What am I involved in?"

Milo felt sick inside and was overwhelmed by the situation he was involved in.

Gadget said in a soft, sadly sardonic voice , "If you find out...you will let me know too?"

She pulled them out of the storm and headed them towards Chicago, and the UTX medical facility there, determined to find something out about whose brain she had.

–To be continued–