There was also an exit tunnel and a still-warm chair. Lights receded down the tunnel into the distant darkness, far faster than any of us could move. I closed my eyes for a moment. Dammit, dammit.
    "Just like that damn plane," Phoenix muttered.
    Lucky made a call to their backup to let them know that Tempest was on her way, in who knew what condition—they had backup? I found myself thinking with some surprise. Reilly and a PITS team, I quickly learned.
    Minor explosions were going off above us from the secondary suicide devices and people were screaming outside. We were probably in the strongest part of the installation. Scott directed everyone out there into the cold room and closed the door. The group of actors included my "parents" and "John." Phoenix took a look at the latter and frowned for a moment.
    "You know, you're good looking," he decided. And decked him.
    "They told them all that the old project where you got your memories had been refunded," Scott told me as we waited for things above to quiet down, holding our breath while things creaked ominously above us. Computer banks committed suicide around us. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, actually.
    "Something just took off," Reilly told Lucky. "We're in air next to it, and—"
    Static hissed.
    Shit.
    "You know, if we're down here long enough the strong will have to eat the weak," Phoenix mentioned to a terrified actor.
    "Jesus, Phoenix," I muttered, decided we had waited long enough and headed down the tunnel with him in tow. Lucky ran after us, and Scott stayed behind to ride herd on the prisoners/actors.
    The end of the tunnel was a dock of some kind for a vehicle which had lifted straight up and out. No sign of it now. It was night out, which I found extremely disorienting, and suddenly wondered what day it really was.
    Then I saw the helicopter. It looked as if something had just peeled the skin off the thing, then let it bumble to its death. They must not have been very high; the PITS guys were stunned, Reilly's got a broken leg. I haven't had a chance to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing there.
    Lucky says she didn't find a trail of any kind, just two burning organic... things, which had probably been engineering clones. Scott showed up with his column of prisoners and gave me Ellis' lab coat to wear over my gown.
    "Thanks."
    "She shredded my chopper," the PITS pilot mumbled, staring at the sky where they had disappeared. I patted him on the shoulder and tried not to imagine her doing to him what I'd done to the guard downstairs, only with that gigawatt of power behind it. There was no doubt it had been her; the pilot confirmed a naked, dazed-looking woman who bore a significant resemblance to me, including the glow.
    "Your mom did that?" Phoenix asked me. "Shit!"
    "Shit," I echoed, trying to think of a more expressive word, looking around at the disaster. The installation continued to crumble behind us. "Where are we?"
    "Poughkeepsie," a chorus answered me.
    "What the hell happened?" Lucky finally asked.
    "Don't make me go into it now," I sighed, then looked around at the group with renewed intensity as I remembered. "Where is that bitch?"
    "What bitch?"
    "She flew off in the chopper," Phoenix said helpfully.
    "Winters," I spat.
    "No, I think it was Tempest."
    "Winters?" Lucky repeated.
    "Is she still in Boston?" If so she was a dead woman.
    "No, her brother's sick, she had to go to Santa Fe," Lucky said, still appearing confused.
    I looked for something to hit and saw a small stand of trees off to the left. That would do. One of them exploded. Lucky ducked reflexively. "Shit. Winters," I explained to her. "Was working. For them." A second tree went. "We'll never find her now." I expect she's left the country already, and/or had cosmetic surgery. I gave her picture to Interpol, just in case, but I doubt we'll ever see her again.
    "Lieutenant Winters?" Scott sounded shocked.
    "Sorry to destroy your entire worldview, Scott. She shot me, I woke up here."
    "Shot you?" Lucky glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
    "Don't even start," I snapped. Third tree. I felt better after that and headed over to Ellis and scanned him for inorganics, just making sure that his head wasn't going to explode on us. He watched the secret base implode with a numb expression. I watched, too. I'm not sure what my expression looked like.
    After that it was a constant stream of arrivals and departures. Emergency vehicles screamed up, saving those who could be saved. There were a lot of wounded from the upper floors. None of the other clone batch, the exploding ones, lived. The FBI showed up, stat. New York state cops swarmed over the scene, resented the feds and tried to look good for the press. MEDUSA types made an appearance a little later, and some people the MEDUSA types deferred to who refused to identify themselves beyond "government" and who took the fusion reactor, cloning equipment, and various other exotic pieces away in a series of big black trucks over the next few days. Trailed by a roll of thunder, Rumble and Justin Caine from the Manhattan Project arrived early on. Rumble helped move the heavy stuff, along with Lucky and Scott. Justin just looked at everything with a penetrating intensity. Nice tux.
    At about that point I found it necessary to go off a little ways by myself while I had a brief fit of hysterics, leaned on what was left of one of the trees I had killed and just shook for a while, as I tried to come to grips with the fact that it was over, I was all right. It lasted maybe twenty minutes between onset and the point where I felt as if I could rejoin the group without embarrassing myself. Reilly, an inflatable case in place on his leg, glanced over at one point and seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then evidently decided against approaching me. Phoenix Talon doesn't have that much tact, came over to put a tentative hand on my shoulder and tried to talk to me for a while, but seemed to accept my shaky, "I'm okay, I'm okay"—said more to myself than to him—at face value.
    The actors, of course, claimed to have no idea what was going on, and probably didn't. I don't think anyone ever explained it to them, either. I stayed as far away from them as I could manage. I'm sure they're decent people, but I didn't really need the humiliation, not on top of what I was eventually informed had only been the past twenty-four hours. They really did a number on my time sense, among other things.
    The doctors, on the other hand, will be going to jail for a very, very long time. Before they carted him away I managed a brief, private interview with "Ellis" to ask, "What was the point?" His real name is James William Kenny, Jr., by the way. "Why the whole brainwashing thing?" (Albert has since told me that they can't just redo my brain; any new memories will just do what Javelin's first attack did. Some small comfort, I suppose.)
    "You were too valuable," he shrugged. "None of the other clones had anything even vaguely resembling your experience base. We hadn't even assumed that the sort of powers you were displaying were possible. You had a vast degree of experience the others hadn't garnered. It would be a shame to lose you. We had been given a week to try and reprogram you to the point where we could release you somewhere like Seattle, set the hypnotic blocks back up, and have you disappear."
    "I suppose that makes sense." By the end of a week I probably would have been ready to believe the earth was flat. I moved on to a question even nearer my heart: "Where are the others?"
    "I don't know. I only knew enough to be able to do this," he told me, sounding a little bitter about his employment. "Bad enough I had to have plastic surgery."

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