Isolation by Dan Wells Read Free Book Online Page A

followed. She was an artificial thing, not a person but a product, and every decision she had ever made had come from him or someone like him. Her life was his, and always had been.
    But she didn’t like the way he was using it.
    Heron stepped back, turned to the side, leading Latimer’s hand as he reached, twisted, and lost his balance. He teetered, slipped on the wet tile floor, and fell. She caught a metal stool with her foot and slid it into place, perfectly aligned with the back of his neck. He hit it with the full weight of his fall, snapping his spine with a tiny, life-ending pop .
    She looked around the shower, at his body, at hers. She tousled her hair and pinched her cheeks, giving them a bright, flustered sheen. The welt where he’d slapped her was already going away, no match for the incredible damage repair system of Partial physiology. She picked up the bottle and walked carefully across the wet floor, then ran through the locker room to the outer hall. She dropped the bottle in a half-full garbage can and then threw open the door to the hall, crying for help.
    “Somebody come quick! My trainer slipped in the locker room! Get a paramedic team in here, now!”
    It was late, but the training complex never truly slept, and the hall was soon filled with a flurry of motion and emergency responders. Heron walked back to the shower and watched as Latimer’s clothes slowly soaked up the water from the floor of the shower. Paramedics arrived quickly, but there was nothing they could do.
    I suppose I’ll have a new trainer tomorrow, she thought. I’ll follow his orders, and do what he says, and be a good little soldier.
    But their goal is to use me, not to protect me. From now on I protect myself.

ZUOQUAN CITY, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
    June 9, 2060
    T he generals’ office was in Building 1, the farthest west, and as she ran through the courtyard to reach it, she passed crowds of terrified workers and hundreds of soldiers running back and forth. The men on the eastern wall were already firing, telling Heron the Partials were closer, certainly closer than she’d thought. The early attack wasn’t completely unexpected—her 2300 deadline implied only that the air strike was coming at that time, not the entire invasion. Under standard tactics they would launch the air strikes early, blunting the Chinese counterattack before it started, but they didn’t have to, and Heron knew that there was nothing standard about these tactics. The orders still bothered her, and particularly her handler’s suspicious way of delivering them—not to mention his timing. She needed to figure it out.
    She heard the generals yelling through the door, but she wasn’t sure how many other people were in the room with them. It would be safer to enter in character, assess the situation, and build a capture strategy around it. She smoothed her skirt and entered the room, and both generals cried out immediately.
    “Where have you been?” shouted Wu, slamming the table angrily.
    “Mei Hao,” cried Bao. “You’re okay!” He rushed toward her a step, then stopped, and Heron noted his lapse of protocol without reacting visibly. She realized she was still tarted up from the roof, though her skirt had worked its way back to a normal position. She buttoned up her shirt and made the best excuse she could, because it was partly true.
    “I was caught on the far side of the courtyard when the shelling started,” she said. “I barely survived the crossing.”
    “Bah,” said General Wu. “Now that the entire Chinese army has waited on you to arrive, perhaps you would deign to activate the satbox.”
    You can turn it on as well as I can, thought Heron, though this wasn’t the first time he’d waited to make her do it. Men liked exerting their authority. She glanced around the room, counting the people there with her: both generals; Bao’s elderly secretary, Jin Wong; and three soldiers. She knew all of them, and she knew their capabilities,