“I don’t know,” Hailey said. “I can see you, but there are no obvious human parts.”
Once they’d developed their strategy, Rylee, Dakota, and Tank presented themselves at the starting line.
They got their signal, and off they went at the speed of a sloth.
“Wow, this is really slow,” Rylee said as Dakota sent Tank out to sniff around.
“No slower than the somersaults,” Dakota said, adjusting his branches into his belt loops.
“Do you think we can make it across by dinner?”
“The boxes are still out there in the field.” He reached over to adjust Rylee’s branches so they were less of a burden. “Ares is either crawling or squat walking. Either one has got to be miserable.”
“It’s in the name of science. Look over there, the flag’s still up. So far, we’re evading detection.”
“Rylee, we’ve gone all of two feet.”
They were silent as they made their slow but steady way. Tank followed Dakota’s instructions to the letter: lie down, run right, run left, and circle. He was having a great time sniffing all the scents, but Dakota had to keep him busy so he wouldn’t run over and give Rylee kisses again.
After a while, Dakota said. “What are you thinking? You hanging in there?”
“Three things are top of mind,” Rylee answered. “First, this is one hell of a workout; my abs will be wrecked for weeks. Second, I bought these leggings after I saw a woman post a five-star review saying she got scared on a cliff trail and had to go down the mountain on her butt. Afterward, the leggings were still in great condition, no worn spots or tears, and so I’m grateful for these leggings.”
“And third?” Dakota asked.
“Honestly? I should have gone to the bathroom before we started. I have to pee pretty badly.”
Chapter Nineteen
Rylee
Friday
When the test ended, the engineers were stunned — the AI hadn’t detected a single team. The system, trained on predictable human patterns, couldn’t comprehend movements that were chaotic, illogical, or even as absurd as the two Marines somersaulting across the terrain.
Thwarted by creativity, the engineers would go back to the drawing board.
For now, the human brain reigned supreme.
“What are you thinking about this, Rylee?” Dakota asked.
It was the three of them in her car—Rylee, Dakota, and Tank. While Dakota changed in the Cerberus Headquarters, Neely and Jasper decided to head off for dinner in his car. And because Neely had given Rylee a puppy dog look, Rylee had agreed to drive Dakota and Tank home.
That was a lie.
Rylee wasn’t doing her bestie a solid. Her being with Dakota was pure self-indulgence.
“I think that kind of system is too dangerous to play with.” Rylee was driving, and it had been a non-issue when she fobbed her car open. With men in her past, they got a little twitchy when they weren’t the ones behind the wheel and in control of the vehicle. “You’ve heard about that kid in Maryland who got jumped by the police for having a gun when he was eating a bag of chips? Someone’s going to get killed. That’s my prediction. Why? What are you thinking?”
“It was fun to thwart,” Dakota said. “A chess game when you weren’t sure of the rules. I mostly have questions. Who would rely on this system? If the system failed, what would the ramifications be? Something we didn’t test was the breaking point. No one simply crawled forward. No one skipped, or limped, or did a squat every three paces. No one wore a balaclava or carried an umbrella. If I were designing the test, I would have said, ‘Do less, okay, now do less, and once again with less.”
Rylee gave a little finger wave as she passed by the Iniquus gate guard. “They might have already tried all that, so they needed special ops to get in there and do what wouldn’t occur to their engineers.”
“Possibly. We’ll never know.”
“Where am I driving?” Rylee asked, turning on her windshield wipers as the first blobs of rain obscured her windshield. “Do you already have plans for tonight, or would you like to hang out?”
“I’d like to hang out with you. But you’re going to want to get cleaned up. You haven’t seen your backside.”
