Roxanne stared through the windshield. The toothy outline of Old San Antonio-Austin was already visible on the horizon, rising out of a sea of scrub grass and sagebrush. It would have taken her four days to cover that much ground on foot.

She checked the time and frowned. Dane didn't have four days.

Candy tapped the auto-drive and swiveled his pilot's chair around to face her. He gave her a slow grin, his pink-rimmed piggy eyes flicking over the duffel on her knees, then higher, obviously honing in on her chest. "So." He sucked his front teeth and brought a calculating gaze back to her face. "What you got in the bag?"

Disgusted, Roxanne shot a dark glare at him. "I'm not paying you to ask questions."

Candy grunted. The roar of the hover engines filled the cabin for all of a minute before he shifted in his seat, his left hand sliding down his leg to his holster, a new, greedy gleam in his eyes. "What's in the bag?" 

Roxanne raised an eyebrow. "You won't get the rest of your money if I'm dead."  

He smirked and waved the business end of the M-Wav pistol now in his pudgy hands. "Aw, c'mon. Show me." 

Unbidden, Roxanne's gaze followed that red line glowing on the nose of the pistol, frustration settling like a cold stone in her stomach. She refused to come this far just to die in the desert. Slowly, she unzipped the main pocket of the duffel and pulled out the medical infuser.

"Before the Dome, I used to work with infectious diseases. Now I work in the Bio Development Sector. And this," she popped open the cooler unit at the bottom of the bag and withdrew a glass tube from one of the cradles in the box, "is the closest we've gotten to a cure." She held the tube up to the fierce sunlight streaming through the cargo hauler's windshield. The serum inside gleamed a pale gold. 

That got Candy's attention. "For real?" 

Roxanne nodded. She didn't mention that it had only been effective two times out of ten. Or that the eight times it wasn't, it killed the patient faster than the Red Valley Fever. She loaded the tube into the infuser and held it up. "It works as a vaccine too. You get me to the city, this dose is yours." 

 Candy licked his lips. Then he shook his head, staring at the tube in her hand. "Naw..." He reached for the control-stick at the end of his armrest. "See, that's not gonna work." 

A quick yank on the stick brought the huge hover drifting to a slow, ponderous stop. Then the passenger door sprang open in a rush of hot, dry air. 

Roxanne leaned away from the twenty-foot drop suddenly yawning at her right. "What are you doing!" she shouted over the unmuted growl of the massive CAT engine barely a yard from her seat. 

"I'm terminating our agreement prematurely! Go on," Candy yelled. He gestured with the pistol, as if the drop alone wouldn't break her bones. 

Roxanne made a grab for her duffel, but that glowing red line only centered on her torso. 

"Nu-uh-uhhh," Candy sang, still smiling. "Bag stays." Then he gave her an admonishing wag of his head. "I could just kill you. This way at least you've got a chance." 

For one dreadful heartbeat, Roxanne hesitated. She fought to save lives. But if she died, so would Dane. In one swift move, she lunged across the space between them and slammed the barrel of the infuser down on Candy's thigh. There was a click. Then Candy screamed. 

His screams gave way to wet coughs, his lungs filling with blood. Roxanne watched until his body stopped straining for air and his eyes stared at nothing. Then she reached out, tapped the release for the pilot-side hatch, and shoved his corpse out of the hauler. A moment later she was pushing the hover engines into high gear again. 

...........................

From outside, the city looked deserted. War-gutted buildings loomed over pockmarked pavement, burned-out hovers lay where they had fallen, all of it covered in a century's-worth of fine, pale grit.  

Roxanne's boots sent up plumes of the stuff with every step. The desert wind took it aloft, announcing her presence as surely as any signal flag. She could feel the gaze of mechanical eyes tickling up her spine like ghost fingers, but she didn't stop. The Hunters were bound to catch up with her eventually, she just had to get to Dane first. So she ran, pelting down the corridor that had been plowed through the debris, heading for the plexcrete pylons and razorwire that marked the entrance to the San Antonio Reservation. 

A mounted AK-748 swung around in its gunport above a pair of welded metal gates, tracking her approach. Next came a voice over a crackly P.A., "State your business!" 

Roxanne held up her hands and came to a reluctant halt in front of the gates. "I need to talk to Doctor Dane Houston! Please!"

There was a pause, then the voice said, "You alone?"

"Yes!" 

"Name, rank, and unit!"

"Doctor Roxanne Houston, 105th Engineers, Free Army," Roxanne shouted. "I'm clean, you can test me, I —"

The P.A. speaker hissed out a moment of static marked by sharp voices in the background. Then gunfire erupted from inside the wall, bright tracer fire zipping upward at something in the sky. 

Roxanne launched herself forward, desperation driving her toward the barricade as red laser-dots appeared on the ground behind her. A split-second later, Hunter rounds plowed into the plexcrete, the gate slid open just enough to admit a human being, and a man wearing old-world kevlar came hustling out to drag her into the bunker. 

........................... 

Roxanne shouldered her duffel and lengthened her stride to keep up with the militia Commander's longer legs, following the woman down a hallway made of cargo bins welded together. LEDs flickered overhead, bathing everything in blue half-light one moment, then pitch dark the next. 

Roxanne's heartbeat echoed the flux in the lights. It had been five years since the Free Army 'requisitioned' her to work in the Dome. Five years of watching Dane's handsome face on a black-market land-link. What would she say? Would he be glad to see her, or furious that she had risked everything to get to him? 

She swallowed hard. Probably the latter. He'd tell her to save someone else, and that she was endangering everyone in the clinic by bringing the Hunters to their door. She hadn't had a choice. She could only save one and he was the only person on the Outside who knew how to use the information in her bag. He could refine the serum. Save lives General Lamar deemed worthless.

Guilt still wormed through her conscience. She was about to do something Dane would hate, without his permission.     

The hallway took an abrupt turn to the left, and the Commander slowed. "You'll have to suit up. He's in the Stage Three ward."

Roxanne nodded. All she heard was that she wasn't too late. 

Ahead of them was the staging room Dane had cobbled together out of rubber sheeting. Roxanne recognized it immediately. She had walked him through what he would need back when the outbreak began. Now it was right in front of her, and she was ducking through the zippered flap. 

Bio-Haz suits hung like yellow spectres along one wall, their disembodied helmets next to them. Roxanne didn't bother putting one on. The Commander yelled, but Roxanne was already yanking open the airlock to the negative pressure chamber. She mouthed, "Thank you" through the porthole window as the door hissed shut behind her. Then the green light popped on, and she was through the second airlock door.

Hell waited for her on the other side. 

Medical cots marched in neat columns down the length of a repurposed pre-war transport hangar. In the distance, a handful of people in yellow moved between the rows here and there, bent over like field hands tending a crop. A crop of suffering, dying people. On every cot lay a human being, every one of them in some stage of Red Valley Fever. So many. Hundreds. 

Roxanne dragged in a breath. Dane was among them.

She made her feet move, and started for the section marked out by orange Stage Three flags, her heart pounding so hard her chest ached. 

He might not even recognize her if the fever had set in. He might have progressed to Stage Four already. The serum might kill him. All of this might have been for nothing. Roxanne ground her teeth and shoved that thought away.  

Twenty rows. Ten. Then she was walking down the aisle between the cots, forcing herself to search every face, reminding herself that he had a beard in that last broadcast. 

Above her, the ceiling let loose a trickle of dust as something struck the top of the bunker outside. Hard. They were coming for her. 

There. She would know that lanky body anywhere. She broke into a run, flying down the row. 

Another dull, distant thud sent larger bits of concrete pattering over the floor, raining down on the patients and the nurses tending them. 

Roxanne skidded to a halt, her eyes locked on the face of the man lying on cot 957. His hair was longer than she remembered, and graying at the temples, but it was Dane. She went down on her knees next to him, her heart in her throat. His face was gaunt from years spent on half-rations, his normally bronze skin jaundiced and already showing the leopard-spot bruising typical of the Red Valley Fever. All because of a two-inch tear in his Bio-Haz. She pressed shaky fingers to his throat, checking his pulse. Fast. His breathing was shallow and labored.   

Moving swiftly, she flipped the duffel around, unzipped it, and yanked out the reloaded infuser. She had talked herself through what she was about to do so many times it should have been a reflex, but she still paused. Once she shot him with the serum, he might very well die just like Candy and the others. She stared down at him. If she didn't, he would die anyway. It would just take longer.   

Another rumble, another shower of dust. She was almost out of time. 

Roxanne took a breath, released it through gritted teeth, raised the infuser, and brought it down on his forearm in a quick, smooth arc. Click. 

She lowered the spent infuser, and zipped it back into the duffel. Then she bent, framed Dane's face between her hands, and pressed a kiss to his burning forehead. "You better be here when I get back, Houston. You still owe me a coffee."  

He hadn't stirred when she gave him one last, lingering kiss and straightened, but he was still breathing. That was something. She tucked the duffel into the crook of his arm, got to her feet, and backed away, watching him as long as she dared. Then she turned and ran for the far end of the hangar and the swinging doors to the Admitting wing. 

The General's drones wouldn't stop until they caught her. Of everything she had done, what came next was the hardest. But there was only one way to keep them from doing real damage. 

She shoved through the Admitting doors and rushed past the orderly at the triage station desk. He shouted, the sound muffled behind his mask, but she didn't stop. She reached the controls beside the main outer blast doors, flipped the switch to 'Open,' then shot through the gap and out into the bright desert sunlight. 

........................... 

Dane Houston winced and brought his left hand up to his other arm. Something thumped against his chest. Frowning, he opened his eyes and looked down to find an unfamiliar duffel bag. 

It could have been the amber emergency lights, but one of the nurses swore later that his irises glowed gold.