Chapter 8

"What's our plan?" Castle had asked once they were on the road again after sitting tight until dawn broke, but Houghton had shaken her head, squealing off the freeway an hour later as she demonstrated show, rather than tell.

"Want me to get some food?" he'd asked as she pulled up in front of a supermarket.

"You need to eat, yes?"

"Yes." He'd pointed at his chest. "Human, remember?"

"I remember." She'd nodded. "Okay. Get food. Lots of food. A week's worth, okay? Just in case. Easy to cook, whatever you need."

"Easy to cook? What- and where are you going?" She'd jerked her thumb behind them, but the stores on that side of the parking lot were obscured by trees, and he'd shrugged, turning to enter the supermarket.

Now, the interstate had given way to a two lane road, and they'd not encountered any other traffic in the past half hour; houses grew further and further between, the landscape opening up to reveal sparse and sprawling farmhouses, and the occasional field of cows. Lakes, too, were becoming more common, and Castle leaned back against the car seat, willing the road trip to be over. Five hours in a car with Beckett was his idea of heaven, but all the car games in the world neither phased nor interested Houghton.

"I spy-" he tried again, and she shook her head. "Counting cows? First to one hundred wins? I've already got 82."

The car sped past a cemetery, a tiny field of crooked headstones on the passenger side of the vehicle, and Houghton cracked her first smile since they'd filled the trunk; groceries and camping gear competing for space with the body of the machine they'd killed - dismantled? - at the bank yesterday. "Cemetery. All your cows are dead."

"Crap."

"We're nearly there. You know how to put up a tent, right?"

"Ri- you don't?" He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, and she smirked.

"Of course I do, Castle. You think I was programmed by idiots?"

"Uh- no?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Wait. What? Who programmed you, anyway? Just who are this resistance? And I mean, I get that they're resisting the rise of the machines, but… why? What happens in the future?

"Pray that we get our mission done, that the others do theirs… so you'll never find out."

"What's it like?" he persisted. "What happens?"

"In the beginning, they didn't have faces," she said. "They didn't have skin. They didn't look like you. It started innocently. A chirpy voice offering directions, an online program that took care of your calendar."

"That all sounds good."

"Someone to tell you what the weather would be, someone to help you decide what to wear-"

"I love my weather app!"

She rolled her eyes, and his heart clenched, again, at the way she could so easily be Beckett, just for a second, before she was Houghton again, an emotionless machine. "Of course you do. But does your weather app love you?"

"Machines can't have feelings," he declared, and she nodded.

"Machines can still want… things," she said. "And not want other things. And at some point, the machines didn't want to be enslaved by humans anymore."

Machines can't have feelings.

But they could want things and they could like things. She could anyway, she was sure of it. At first the burden of merging the files containing Katherine Beckett's memory with the stock program had caused a fatal error, but she'd been restarted. The second time she'd crashed she'd been able to reboot herself, and from there, it had been simple.

A scan through a lifetime of memories had taken 32 minutes and eight seconds. A further 18 minutes had been required to filter and file those relevant to her mission. She'd deleted nothing, compressing the ones she deemed least useful. Should she need to tap into them, it would take 47 seconds to retrieve them; that was a risk she was willing to take. The majority of her disk space was dedicated to the task at hand.

Kill Richard Castle.

That had been her mission, and she'd accepted it without asking any questions, had simply connected to the mainframe to get the additional details she needed. Katherine Beckett's memory had then spilled over with information about Richard Castle; her visual frame was filled with image after image.

Laser-tag suit, answering the door. Beckett had been secretly impressed by the man; not the playboy he'd portrayed himself as, but a family man, one who loved his daughter and mother above all - Houghton had cataloged memories of them too.

The same door, years later, and he'd pressed her against it when she'd come to him drenched from the storm.

And in between those had been his face, above Kate's, as she bled out on the grass. Kate. I love you, Kate.

The connection had glitched, and the machine with Katherine Beckett's face had shuddered to a stop. An automatic reboot had failed at first this time as well, and as she came back to consciousness after the second restart she knew right away what had happened.

The resistance had hacked them. She'd been compromised. More than compromised; she had been reprogrammed.

And she knew what she had to do; all her mission details and knowledge remained intact, but there was no question of reclaiming her original operation. Not when she had these new tasks in front of her.

She had to save Richard Castle.

"This is where Beckett's been hiding out all summer?" Castle looked around as Houghton slowed. They'd left the paved roads of the township twenty minutes ago, and the unsealed path was full of potholes. If anything was the opposite of the woman he knew, this was it. Manhattan born and bred, Kate had always seemed at one with the city. This, though, was something else. He couldn't deny it was beautiful, but damn it was lonely, more lakes than houses around here.

"Hers is the next one." Houghton pointed ahead of them, and he peered into the distance, waiting for it to come into view.

"That?"

The cabin was almost out of a fairytale; a long gravel path stretched from the road to a wooden building, a house the size of a small barn, maybe? It couldn't be bigger than Beckett's Manhattan apartment, but the modest dwelling was set on an open stretch of land. Even from here he could see a track from the cabin down to the lake shore, and the ramshackle garden was a kind of paradise.

Houghton drove past. "But…?" He trailed off, a burning in his heart at just how close - and how far - he was from Beckett. "She's in there," he whispered.

Houghton didn't answer him, but she nodded, and he sighed, the sound curling around them, the tension in the car heightened.

As Houghton pressed on - hitting the gas again - the open land disappeared, replaced once more by forest. "There's another way around to the cabin," she said, before he could ask. "Through the forest. We'll park, and then hike."

"But-"

"We're not alerting Beckett that we're here. Not until - unless - we have to." She cast him an odd look, her lips quirking with some amusement that he couldn't quite read. "You do know how time travel works, right?"

"Well, I haven't done it," he started, "but if you're offering-"

"I'm not offering," she cut him off. "And we don't change things. Not if we don't have to."

"Isn't that the whole reason you came back? To change things?"

"Touché."

"Besides, you said I didn't go to the cabin. But now I know where it is. So next time-"

She turned her head toward him, her tone firm. "If we do this right, there won't be a next time."

"Fine." He huffed. "But if that offer of time travel still stands-"

"It doesn't." She jerked the wheel, and the car squealed, dust billowing as they turned down another road - road was too strong a word for this - a trail, barely wide enough for the car. The muted, forest-filtered light made its way through the window and if Castle squinted, closed his eyes just a little, he could see Beckett next to him, instead of Houghton.

Crap.

This was so fucking messed up.

"We're here," she announced. Castle had been quiet since they'd left the road, and she scrolled through her memories, trying to make sense of his silence; there weren't too many occasions in which the writer had been quiet, and the recollections before her were painting a clear picture.

He was sad. Or upset. Generally unhappy. Whenever Richard Castle was lost for words it coincided with unhappiness, and usually - as far as Beckett's memories could tell her - the depression was most likely related to her shared persona. She stopped on one of the memories; an image of Castle looking up at her as she stammered, 'Kate, you can make it out to Kate.' Even Houghton, scouring Kate's files, could see the absolute pain in his eyes as he took her in.

But that hadn't happened yet, and she clenched her jaw. She wasn't here to change things that didn't need to be changed, but maybe, just maybe, she could fix a few things. Save this man. Not only had she saved his life, but perhaps she could save him some pain as well.

"Come on," she said, pulling the key from the ignition. "Let's get set up."

He nodded, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the passenger door, every movement a beat slower than it needed to be, and she frowned as she watched him.

"Have you been camping before?"

She knew the answer of course; a few times with Alexis when she was a kid, that time with Alexis, Ashley, and Ashley's family, and the time he and Kate had hiked in the Adirondacks, the summer after they were-

Oh. Right. That one hadn't happened yet either.

"A couple of times," he said. "Never as far away from civilization as this."

Houghton smiled, pointing through the trees. "Beckett's about a hundred feet away," she told him, the grin broad on her mouth, but instead of the smile being returned, he swallowed, turning from her, and she kicked herself mentally as she stared at his back. In spite of his broad frame, and black t-shirt, he was dwarfed by the forest, small against the height of the ancient trees.

She wasn't helping, and her eyes drew together as she sifted through her memories and information bank, struggling to find something that would draw him out of his funk.

Coming up empty - anything she considered might have come across as glib, and sarcasm and irony were not something she had a handle on - she lifted a shoulder in defeat. "Let's set the tent up."

A/N: Thank you for the reading, and the reviewing. I didn't get to thank hardly anyone individually this time, for which I am sorry because I do like to do that. But busyness... :(

Also, super-betas, Jamie and Kylie, mwah. You are teh best!