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of pressure. Alter-Talon’s escape route seemed carefully scripted, but incredibly risky, and my limited interaction with the guy showed him to be psychotic. Not the type you trusted making good plans.
    Before the rays from the sun completely disappeared, I noticed a dark shape on the lake’s bottom.
    A dark shape that seemed to be coming up at us extremely fast.

Chapter 6
    There were no whales in the great lakes. The biggest fish prowling these waters were genetically engineered salmon, bred to control the overpopulation of lampreys. They reached weights of several hundred kilograms, then began to eat swimmers, and the scientists who created them were given some very stern lectures by protest groups. But the dark shape coming into view was many times bigger than a whole school of man-eating salmon, or even a pod of whales.
    As we sank, I noticed the object was long and relatively symmetrical. It was also stationary, and I quickly realized I wasn’t looking at something nature had created.
    “It’s a shipwreck,” I said.
    Alter-Vicki snuggled against me. “The SS Wisconsin, sir. Sank in 1929. Sixty two meters from bow to stern. Can you shoot us free, sir?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Reverse the polarity on the magzer. Then demagnetize us, sir.”
    The magzer, incredibly, was still in my hand. With everything going on, I’d forgotten about it. The only switch on the weapon was on its side, above the grip. I’d assumed it was a safety of some kind. With great effort I extended both of my arms and flicked the switch back, then aimed the beam at Alter-Vicki’s finely sculpted rear end.
    I fell on top of her, pinning her naked body to the curved polycarb bubble. I half-expected the poor Rick Schieve.”
    ow watch the dissyI pu girl to wrap her legs around me, but she’d gone from sex vixen to all-business so quickly there was no mistaking passion for love. Even in the low light, I could see that Alter-Vicki’s eyes shone with obvious venom.
    Which made me more than a little paranoid. If her intention was to do me harm because she mistook me for Alter-Talon, who had treated her cruelly, now was a good opportunity to do so. Of course, she could have just allowed me to be executed by the state if she hated me so much.
    But that would have taken some of the fun out of revenge.
    “I’m not your husband,” I said. “I’ve never met you before today. I’d never do anything to hurt you. And thank you so much for breaking me out of prison.”
    I touched her cheek, tucking her red hair behind her ear. Her return stare contained zero warmth.
    I was in some serious trouble.
    “When I open the bubble, we’re swimming to the hatch on the Milwaukee’s stern.”
    We were at least ninety feet deep. “And what’s inside the hatch?”
    “The hideout, sir. Surveillance satellites can’t penetrate this far underwater. Even if they send a dive team, all they’ll find is wreckage of the heliplane. They’ll assume the salmonsters got our bodies.”
    “What about out chips? They can be tracked.”
    “There are obfuscation disks on the ship.”
    “The hideout is inside the ship?”
    Alter-Vicki squinted at me. “You really don’t remember any of this? What did they do to you in prison, sir?”
    “Please stop calling me
sir
. And I don’t remember this, because I’m not your husband.”
    The heliplane hit bottom a few yards from the shipwreck. We lolled to the side like a teeter-totter, and Alter-Vicki fell into my arms. Looking at her, smelling her, she was so much like my wife that I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that she was actually an entirely different human being whom I’d never met before. Vicki—my Vicki—was the most charismatic person I’d ever encountered. Though I’d never admit to mushy feelings, she was like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds on a rainy day.
    I sensed Alter-Vicki also once had this aura, under the surface, before Alter-Talon had turned her into his personal