Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [118]
“Changing my body is very unusual to me.”
“I understand. This is a skill that could save your life, though.”
“The fewer changes I have to adjust to now would be great.”
Stampede shifted a couple of meters away and snorted in disgust. “Maybe we could leave off the chatter and concentrate on studying the complex.”
“What would you like to know about the complex?”
Stampede looked at Ocastya. “What do you know?”
“The construct buried in that mountainside is three hundred forty-one point seven meters above sea level. It measures one point nine klicks from north to south, two point three klicks from east to west. It is five stories deep.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have hacked into the computer security that monitors the systems throughout the complex. Not all of them are working, nor are they all working at peak efficiency, but there is enough information in the data files that I can tell you that. I can also tell you the average ambient temperature inside the structure is sixty-eight degrees.”
“You did that from out here?”
“Of course. My mate aided me.”
Hope leaped inside Hella. They hadn’t discussed Scatter in hours. “He’s still alive?”
“Yes, but he is dwindling.” Ocastya pursed her lips and stared at the building. “I am afraid there is not much time left to him. If we are going to do something, it will need to be soon.”
Stampede turned his attention back to the building. “Can you get us inside?”
“I can get us through the cybernetic safeguards monitoring the building, but I cannot keep the guards from seeing us.”
“Getting us in will be enough.” Stampede focused his telescope. “I’ve got a plan for the flesh-and-blood contingent of the security system. Can Scatter hold out till tonight?”
Ocastya was silent for a moment. “I believe so. He says he can.”
“ ‘He says’?” Hella glanced at her palm. The image of Scatter there wasn’t saying anything.
“Yes. He is hard to understand because the machines Colleen Trammell has him hooked to are attacking his personality core.”
“Why is she doing that?”
“I do not know. My mate does not know.”
Stampede rolled over onto his back and put his telescope away. “We’ve got a few hours before we need to make a move. Until then, we need to rest. Ocastya?”
The fractoid looked at him.
“Do you know where Scatter is inside that building?”
“Counting the topmost floor as the first, my mate is on the fourth floor down.”
Stampede rummaged in his pack and took out paper and a pen. “Can you draw a map of those floors? Show us what we’re headed into?”
Ocastya took the paper but ignored the pen. She held her palm over the paper, and Hella watched in amazement as lines burned onto the page. “I am using thermal energy.” The fractoid smiled at Hella. “If you were trained properly, I believe you could do this as well.”
“If you can do all of this, why can’t you or Scatter turn your hands into weapons?”
“We are no longer organically based. Your ability to process materials and chemicals is something that is uniquely yours, Hella. You are very special. I do not know why, though I am curious.” After Ocastya burned each page, she handed it over to Stampede.
Hella took jerky from her chest pouch and started eating. She lay back, grateful for the shade that covered them, and closed her eyes. Stampede would wake her when he had something she needed to know. Until then, she’d rest. The previous night’s excursions had left precious little time for sleep, and she was still tired from helping repair Ocastya.
She didn’t sleep well, though. In her dreams she was helping restore the fractoid, but she got sucked into Ocastya’s memories like a fly on a spiderweb and couldn’t free herself.
Three hours before sundown, Hella and Ocastya rode Daisy through the wilderness in the direction Pardot’s expedition had gone. Stampede easily loped alongside the mountain boomer, and it became difficult to keep Daisy from breaking out into a full-fledged run.
As expected, the expedition had gone right by the hidden