Fox Forever (Jenna Fox Chronicles 3)

“What about the inside?”

“I can give you some pain meds, but your BioPerfect is on its own there as far as healing goes. Concentrate, Locke. It’s all connected, your thoughts, the biochips, and everything you want them to do. Put them on speed dial.”

I grin. Only Jenna would know that obsolete phrase. “Even the ribs?”

“Bioengineered with the blue goo?”

I nod.

“Then even the ribs.”

I spend the next couple of hours concentrating as Jenna suggested, and while I think I might be seeing some improvement, it’s still not fast enough. I promised everyone, including Raine, I’d be able to go to the meeting tonight.

By nine A.M. Livvy arrives, and a few minutes later, Carver and Xavier show up, both dressed in building maintenance uniforms. How many different kinds of uniforms do they have stashed away? They all acknowledge that I’m looking better, but when they watch me hobble from the kitchen into the other room like an old man, I see their faces drop.

“How are you possibly going to be able to go by tonight?” Livvy asks.

I have no idea, but I don’t see that I have any other choice. “I will,” I answer.

Carver lowers his shaking head into his hands. “This isn’t going to work.”

“We need to put it off another day,” Xavier says.

Carver looks up. “We can’t! We’re running out of time! We’ve got less than a week before the money’s gone forever and we still have no clue where Karden is!”

“Yes we do,” I say.

They stare at me, their attention focused. “On the old westbound track, about a hundred yards in, there’s another tunnel, one of those unofficial tunnels that doesn’t show up on any maps. There’s probably hundreds of them down there but I had a feeling about that one and I went down it. I had only gone another thirty yards or so when I sensed something.”

“Sensed what?” Livvy asks.

“Karden.”

“What? Did you see or hear him?”

I shake my head. “No, no, I just sensed him. I knew I was close. He was there, somewhere. I know it.”

Carver jumps up. “Sensed? Somewhere?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Is this what we brought you in for? So you could guess?”

Xavier stands too, shaking his head, rubbing his hand across his scarred cheek. “We need to rethink this.”

“You’re damn right we do. Maybe it’s time to go to Plan B. He still has an in with Raine. All he has to do is lure her away from that big ugly chunk of metal that’s always by her side, just long enough so we can grab her and then use her as a bargaining chip.”

Lure? No. We can’t go to Plan B. That one’s no longer an option for me. “Wait. You’re jumping to—”

“No. You wait.” Carver points his finger dangerously close to my face. “The clock is ticking. A minute after the money’s gone, Karden’s a dead man.”

Livvy nods in agreement.

“He’s right,” Xavier says. “We need to move on to—”

Jenna, who has remained quiet until now, steps forward. “You’re all assuming that Locke won’t be able to do what he says he’ll do. He knows the situation with Raine and the Secretary better than anyone right now. Would it really be wise to prematurely abandon one plan in favor of another that has no guarantee of working either?”

They still aren’t convinced. “Look at him,” Carver says. “He can barely walk.”

I stand. “I said I’d do it. I will. I get a little bit more information each day.” I tell them about reading LeGru’s lips and his going down there that night to prepare someone for scanning, and the faint red light that I saw in the distance, and the hum I heard.

“Why didn’t you tell us about that before?”