I needed a way to get us both out of this. I unfastened my jacket to use as some sort of shield, still gripping the branehook tightly.
It seemed she must be within range by now. I held the jacket in front of me, as if it would help block a bullet. That's when I noticed the Werth-Trojan was linking to me. It was trying to find a crack in my firewall, but I'd routinely blocked all possible ports and protocols since what happened in the den. That gave me a desperate last hope - I linked back. Her WLAN was also pretty impregnable, except that one obscure port seemed to be fluttering. But there was no time for a concerted attack. At last she let loose a shot, and the hammer-sting of it ignited my left shoulder in ferocious pain. At least the jacket had obstructed her aim. The tiny explosive pellet must have detonated in the jacket and the shrapnel had just carried on. Now she was close enough to finish me off. I checked on my Hook one last time and noticed from afar how tightly my teeth were clenched against the pain.
That's when I saw Edgecomb hanging in thin air behind Helena. I must have yelled my head off in a coherent fashion, for he took a long, cold look at her. I don't know what I expected of him. "I suspected as much," is what I heard him say. She glanced over her shoulder as the distance between us narrowed, unwillingly granting me one more moment, and she looked back just as I twisted the Hook's ring in desperation.
This time the transition was painful beyond description. My body thumped down onto a solid surface and I collapsed with Helena rolling off me. The inter-verse jump must have stunned her badly. For a moment I couldn't remember who I was, or where, and merely stared at the smooth, steak-coloured plain of rock stretching away in all directions from where we lay. Boulders sat around, ranging in size from potato-sized to house-sized.
Helena's eyes were wide open and staring at nothing. Muscles twitched on her face. Maybe the jump had crashed the Trojan. I stood up and tried to link her. That port was staying open for spaces of twenty milliseconds or more. I prepared my own Trojan packet and sent it. The port had already snapped closed, and stayed closed. I'd failed. My shoulder felt like it had swollen to the size of a pineapple. I'd had enough. I almost wanted to die at that point.
She was mumbling something. It sounded like her own voice. It sounded like she was saying, "Get Out!" over and over.
I told her to fight it. Her eyes fixed on mine. "Help me," she gasped, "he's coming back! He's waking up!" I tried to slip the fingergun off, but the ring was sealed on.
I knew I only had the one chance.
I pushed her hands onto my cheeks and held mine on hers. In some popular configurations the lips are used to encrypt confidential transfers. I pressed my lips to hers. Although it hardly qualified as a kiss, her eyes seemed to blaze with indignation. All the while I was battering her BAN with requests for access. Finally she must have managed to force a port open against Werth's program, and in went my packet of tools. I had picked it to disable the pseudo-rootkit that had hijacked her decision-making centres.
Then she gasped and sat up. That very Helena Szychter look was back, seriously pursed lips, but she was worried. She said the Werth-thing was still running, trying to find a new handle on her pre-frontal cortex. She said it would kill me, and then her.
So I had a choice, between loathsome and terrifying. I could hit her hard enough to make sure that the malware in her would never trouble either of us again, but she'd be dead too. At least then I could escape, find the ravine and get on with my new life of exile. The alternative was to throw away my freedom and try to save her life. And then there was the question of testifying against Werth. I searched Helena's eyes for an answer.