Free Alien vs. Alien by Gini Koch Page B

using Sandra as my ramming mechanism. Not only was this ensuring that I wasn’t getting hurt, but it was obviously affecting her.
    I sped up.
    We slammed through, by my count, over a dozen walls before we hit something I couldn’t get through. Right, we were underground. I stopped running, and Sandra managed to fight back. Not as much as she’d done before, but still, I didn’t enjoy getting punched anywhere.
    “Who’s really in charge?” I growled at her as I slammed her against the wall again.
    “Charles . . . Reynolds . . .” The words were slurred and coming out slowly. “He . . . is . . . your enemy.”
    Goody, my rage spiked again. I slammed us into the wall that didn’t want to give a few more times. This was fun, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to short her out or not.
    I heard voices. I wasn’t sure where we were or who might be coming, but if it wasn’t our team, what the NASA folks would see was me beating up someone they’d assume worked here. No time for that. I was fully revved and running on waves of fury. Time to go up.
    I ensured I had a really good grip on not only her clothes but her body, and then I ran us around the room twice to build up speed, then up the wall. Happily, my plan worked and we slammed through the ceiling and kept on going.
    My memory shared that we’d gone down about five floors, so after we slammed through four more ceilings, I turned so we were once again playing nicely with gravity, gave it a shot, and headed us toward a wall. Breached it as if it were tissue paper, and lo and behold, we we su, so re outside.
    I didn’t know this area very well, but the landmark I knew best was the lighthouse. I could see it, and I headed us for it. We were moving so fast I was certain no human could see us. I wasn’t sure if any A-C who wasn’t enhanced could see us, either.
    We reached the lighthouse and I actually managed to stop us by the water’s edge. I didn’t want to go into the lighthouse, not yet anyway.
    “We’re right by the alligator preserve. I guarantee that you can’t beat a full contingent of ’gators, even if you were at full power, which I know you’re not. Now, you tell me the truth or I toss you in and watch to see if my friends Gigantagator and Alliflash show up to reminisce.”
    “I don’t have to tell you anything.” Her voice sounded funny—metallic and recorded, not real like it had before. Her eyes looked funny, too—they were glazed and looked like glass marbles with irises painted on them.
    My brain none-too-gently reminded me that every recent superbeing cluster that had formed in either Paris or Paraguay had self-destructed before any of the good guys could manage to capture or disarm them. That Sandra had a self-destruct protocol installed seemed likely.
    I spun her around and checked her back. Circuitry was definitely exposed. High school science shared that the body of water was big enough and the voltage probably small enough that no ’gators would be harmed. Worked for me.
    I picked her up, chose a good spot in the swamp to aim for, and threw her in, hard.
    Water splashed up and I saw a little smoke escape as Sandra went under. I waited. No explosion.
    She didn’t bob to the surface, which made some sense. She had metal and wires and such and so probably not the same amount of air humans did, ergo, she was going to sink versus float.
    I saw what looked like a lot of floating logs converging on the area where I’d tossed her, which was still reasonably close to the shore. Time to get to higher ground.
    I zipped to the lighthouse and up the stairs, doing my best to slow down along the way. Either my technique worked or I was out of hyperjuice, because by the time I reached the top, I was both going at a human walk and utterly exhausted.
    Dug my phone out of my purse while watching the ’gators. They were still in the area and not following something moving, so I could hope Sandra was really shorted out and at the bottom of the