Sunshine Read Online Free Page B

self-destruct charge. I want you to activate it in the event that I die.”
    The computer sounded indignant. “ That has already been taken care of, Miss Kyung. Dr. Leonard uploaded specific instructions for conditions under which self-destruction should occur.”
    John Leonard already did? Kyung was about to ask more when she stopped; the dog-things had woken up. They shrieked, and she thought their sound was like a human scream that shifted into a dog’s howl, so loud that her helmet pickups snapped off and shielded her from the brunt of it. Even then the echoes locked her in place. A kind of numbing paralysis ran from her head to her legs and froze every muscle, her mind speeding through the day’s events in a way that suggested none of this was real, none of it could be happening. And why her? Why would John Leonard upload instructions for self-destruction without telling her and what were his orders, and even if Kyung made it out, made it back to Pak, what would he have waiting for her there? The fear became a thing alive, a squirming mass in her chest that threatened to force a scream in answer to those that now surrounded her, only Kyung’s would be the howl of surrender, one to signal that she had finally given up because it had all become too frightening. But she tried to convince herself there had to be answers somewhere, and if anyone had a way to figure it out…
    Despite her proximity to the now-awake creatures, she risked another question. “When are you to self-destruct?”
    It took the computer a moment to answer. “It was supposed to occur when your chances of falling into Chinese or North Korean hands exceeded ninety percent or if you found this facility. I should have destructed when you fell.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “The fall disrupted the charge so that it is no longer functional.”
    Kyung didn’t know what to think, the reality of what she had just learned creating more questions than it answered. “I thought you said that you didn’t know about this place or what it was.”
    “That’s not accurate, Miss Kyung. I indicated that my data on the facility had been removed and that such an occurrence was unusual. But general data existed. And Dr. Leonard was quite clear in his instructions.”
    The news shocked Kyung. He tried to kill me? She was about to follow up with another question when the creatures moved.
    All three dog-things rose from the floor and loped toward the production hall, one of them nipping at the other two to hurry them through. A few seconds later Kyung was alone. She had almost died—been blown up after surviving a fall that could have killed her but didn’t—and part of her was furious with Leonard for having tried to murder her, but mostly she was furious with herself for ever trusting him, for having let her guard down to the point where she hadn’t bothered to interrogate the computer fully before landing on Koryo. Kyung should have known better. John didn’t make director by being an idiot, and in his business covering one’s tracks on the wrong moves was almost as important as making the right decisions on new product lines, maybe more important, but neither was as important as the golden rule of weapons sales: watch your own back. It would have been easy for her to run a simple check just by asking as many questions as she could have on any topic related to systems that could have killed her. When she saw the stupidity of it, Kyung had to stop herself from pounding the floor, enraged by her own carelessness. But anger helped. Slowly she inched her way from under the carpet, moving through the wide hallway to where the dog-things had slept, until ten minutes later she had drawn even with the production hall entrance where she peered in using the carbine’s sight.
    “Movement, Miss Kyung,” the computer warned.
    Kyung hissed her response. “No shit, movement. I can see them myself. How many are there?”
    “I count three hundred of the largest size,