by Joe Peacock
fingers.
"The 'target'?" Jacobs asked. "You mean MK? The woman sitting right next to you? Who wouldn't even be here if it weren't for me? Is that the 'target' you meant?"
"Dude, you shot your Sergeant," Poet said. "Big deal."
"Yeah, it WAS a big deal!" Jacobs yelled. "I didn't see any of you raising your hands to ride in the belly of that beast!"
"You're MilSec Police!" Angel replied. "Who the hell else could have had access?"
"That's right, I had the access, and I pulled her out!" Jacobs said, pointing at himself and pounding his chest with his index finger. "I did this! Me!"
Jacobs looked at Poet, and then turned around in his seat to glare at Angel. He waited for a reply from either of his teammates. Neither offered one, apart from exasperated sighs.
"That's what I thought!" Jacobs said. "Go on, say it...tell me which of us got Marlowe out!"
"The Judge did," Angel said. "This is his operation. He put this together. Know your place."
The mention of The Judge froze Jacobs in his tracks. He took a breath and sat back in his seat. After a moment of sullen contemplation, he muttered "Well, we're still famous."
"Shut up, Jacobs," Poet said as he slowed for a stop signal. Realizing that he was breaking approximately thirty separate laws simply by driving the vehicle he was in, carrying the people that were in it, he abruptly changed his mind and slammed the throttle lever forward, flying through the red light.
"What the fuck did you just say to me?"
Poet pulled his mask from his face. "I said shut up," he repeated, looking over at Jacobs. "Need me to say it again? Okay fine: Shut up. Shut up, shut up. Shut. Up."
Jacobs stared at Poet for a moment, before finally saying, "Fuck you."
"Witty," Poet replied, returning his eyes to the road.
"Get a haircut, you reggae fuck."
"You wanna try cutting my dreads?" Poet said. "Be my guest."
"I could, you know," Jacobs said with a slight smile.
"Better men than you have tried. Even blonde ones."
"Oooooh, look at you! Mister 'Tough Guy From The Subs' pulling the super hard job of driving the getaway vehicle..."
Angel shook her head and rolled her eyes as she sunk into the back seat. Poet and Jacobs continued to bicker as the car rolled through the streets from Terminus Citadel through Five Points, into the neighborhoods of Old Atlanta.
Marlowe sat in frank disbelief -- not just because this group seemed incapable of collectively tying a shoe without picking a fight with one another, but also for the simple reason that she was even in the same vehicle as them. She had at least thirty questions flying through her brain. Who the hell were these people? What did they want with her? How did they pull off this elaborate rescue? But only question bubbled up from her lips.
"Does anyone have any food?"
The vehicle fell silent. Jacobs turned around in his seat. Angel jolted out of her reverie. Poet looked at Marlowe in the rear view mirror. It seemed to hit them all at that moment: they actually had the most famous -- and dangerous -- person in the nation sitting cuffed in their vehicle.
“Well?” Marlowe demanded, snapping them out of their starstruck trance.
"Um... yeah," Angel said, reaching into a pouch on the front of her vest. She pulled out a Battery bar and offered it to Marlowe.
Marlowe narrowed her eyes at Angel. She lifted her eyebrows and widened her eyes, as if to say Really? Angel looked confused. Marlowe extended her cuffed wrists as far as they would go toward Angel, which wasn't very far. She fluttered her fingers, then turned her palms upward. How, idiot?
"Oh right," Angel said, embarrassed. She peeled back the packaging on the nutrient-rich bar and started gingerly toward Marlowe's face with it.
"That part I can do myself," Marlowe said. "Just...put it in my hand."
Angel complied. Marlowe leaned forward and began devouring the bar in her cuffed hands.
"Think that'll be enough for you to bust out of your binds?" Jacobs asked.
"Hardly," Marlowe said with a mouth full of half-gnawed food bar. She chewed as quickly as possible, swallowing a little prematurely. She coughed, choking. Jacobs flung himself into the back seat, poised to save his hero. Marlowe shot him a look that caused him to swiftly slink back to the front.
"I'm fine," she said through her coughs. "I just haven't had...well, anything to eat in months. And to answer your question, no. These shackles...never seen anything like them before. Considering I can't even stand up straight, even at full strength, I don't know if I could manage enough leverage. I hope you guys have something in mind, because my hands are literally tied."
Jacobs composed himself. “Yeah, they're magnetically coded. I have the unlock codes from Terminus Citadel. Poet's got an emulator at the safehouse. We can clone the release key once we get there.”
“And where is this safehouse?” Marlowe asked.
“Atlanta Beach. Like, literally on the beach, in Jonesboro," Jacobs said, a smile of pride creeping across his face. "My aunt’s old house. She left it to me when she died. It's pretty sweet, actually! Infinity pool with its own distillation evaporator, and a full bar, too! I know how much you like scotch, and I even got you some of your favorite cigars--"
“You're kidding, right?" Marlowe asked as she leaned down to eat the last bit of food from her fist.
“Nope,” Jacobs replied. “Only the best for you, MK!"
"It's dead," Marlowe stated.
"Huh?"
"Your safehouse. It's dead."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're using a property that was in your family's name as a safehouse?" Marlowe asked. "After your Feed was watched by over ten million citizens? Your face -- all your faces -- are probably pinned in every MilSec soldier's HUD, unclosable. Everything about you is in their briefing. Family history, property you own, places you visit...nothing connected to you is safe."
Angel looked at Jacobs. Jacobs looked at Poet.
"Don't look at me, mister mastermind!" Poet said. "The safehouse was your responsibility."
"It's solid!" He insisted. "The whole place is dark. I have a faraday cage and thermal insulation built into the walls. Power runs off a generator in a lead-lined, underground bunker. It’s completely invisible! I rigged it myself. No one can scan us.”
Marlowe scoffed. "So you have a house you inherited from your aunt, and you went and rigged it up to look like a gigantic black hole on a thermal scan? And that makes it safe?"
"What the hell does that mean?" Jacobs asked.
"It's a huge black spot in a sea of yellow and red. You might as well hang a sign out front that says 'Super Secret Safehouse' -- but that doesn't matter. They don't need to scan for it. It was your aunt's, right? As in she willed it to you?"
"Well yeah, but I transferred it to --"
"Doesn't matter. Your name's on the paper trail. It's dead. Better find somewhere else."
The vehicle was silent once again.
“Goddammit, Jacobs!” Angel yelled. She punched the headrest of the seat in front of her. “I told you!”
“JAQi,” Poet said “Show me the feed from Location Alpha.”
"Seriously?" Marlowe said with a chuckle. "Location Alpha...good fucking God, this is amazing -- wait a minute! You had to be blocked after being on NewsFeed. They have your face and your biometrics...how are you able to use JAQi with a blacklisted Pod?"
“It’s rooted," Angel said, referring to the method of hacking equipment by completely overwriting its core operating system. "Poet's got a black market flash for his Pod. We will get one too, once we get clear of all this."
"And you two?" Marlowe asked, looking at Angel and Jacobs. "They're not tracking your Pods?"
"Jammed," Poet said, pointing to a small box wired into the dash of the car. "No data out, only in. Yours is, too."
"She doesn't need Pod-jamming though, do you, MK?" Jacobs said with
a wink.
“How’d you…”
"I noticed the scar,” Jacobs answered, pointing to an area on his own face just behind his jawbone. “And see? I told you, we thought of everything!"
A square patch of the vehicle’s windscreen darkened, flickered, then displayed the Feed requested by Poet. It showed a normal looking house in a normal looking neighborhood.
“Switch to thermal,” Poet said.
The screen changed from a video Feed to a temperature-based scan. Figures and objects in every house glowed in hues from red to yellow to orange, all radiating some sort of heat in every house except one, which was pitch black.
“See?” Jacobs said. “We’re clear!”
“…Except for that mass of green two doors down on the left,” Marlowe said, nodding toward the display. “The one that’s three times larger than it should be.”
“That’s just thermal radiation from that house,” Jacobs replied.
“It’s moving,” Marlowe said as she sunk back into her seat. “Houses don’t move. That's reflected heat.”
“Aw, fuck,” Poet said with a groan. “They’re using thermoptics.”
Jacobs studied the screen. To the average eye, it wouldn’t register. But Marlowe and