by Jamie Davis
“Shelby, you saw what happened. We have to help ourselves. I don’t know where the police were while Eric died, but we can’t count on them helping us out of this.”
“What are we going to do then?”
“I don’t know, we need to get back to the dorm. It’ll be safe on campus. Then we can make some decisions about what to do next. Maybe the video we recorded can be used as evidence in some way to identify who those people were in the black masks.”
Cass started to say more, then froze as voices sounded from across the rooftop.
A man shouted at them, “You two, stay where you are. I want to talk to you.”
Cass spun around and saw a man marching towards them across the flat gravel rooftop. He wore a red Sapiens rally shirt and he pointed as he approached with a snarl on his face.
“I figured out where that video came from,” he said, waving his phone at them. “I knew it had to be from over here somewhere. It was you two, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cass said. “Stay away from us. We’re not hurting anybody up here.”
“You’re coming with me. Both of you. I think you need to speak to some of my friends. If you come along peacefully, you won’t be hurt.”
“How can you say that?” Shelby shouted. “You people killed my brother while the rest of them stood there and watched like it was some holovid drama. You killed him and nothing is going to change that. Our video is the evidence that proves that your so-called movement is nothing but a smokescreen for a bunch of animals.”
The wicked smile playing across the man’s face told Cass he’d just gotten the proof he needed. He now knew it was their video playing everywhere. He slowed as he advanced, hands outstretched to grab at them.
Cass tugged at Shelby’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” the man shouted as he reached out for Cass’s arm. “I’m taking you in so we can make an example out of you, too. If we can get the original footage, we can make people believe it was all faked by your precious AI.”
Cass yanked her arm out of the man’s grasp. She reached out and shoved him with her free hand. “Let go of me. We’re not going anywhere with you.”
Her desperate shove caught the man off balance and he stumbled backward.
His eyes widened as the back of his knees hit the low brick parapet of the rooftop.
For one horrible instant, his arms wind-milled, trying unsuccessfully to regain his balance as he teetered on the edge. Cass thought for a brief moment about reaching out to grab hold of him and pull him to safety. Something inside her stopped her hand midway there.
The helpless man reached out for her, his fingers inches from hers, then he toppled backward, disappearing over the edge of the roof.
She didn’t hear him yell or make any other sound. For a moment Cass wondered if he’d survived the fall somehow or maybe caught himself.
She ran forward and peered over the edge. The man lay in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk below, a pool of blood spreading outward on the pavement around his head.
“Oh my God, Cass,” Shelby said, now standing next to her. “You killed him.”
“Did I? I had no choice. It was an accident. He pulled at me and I just pushed him away.”
“We need to get out of here,” Shelby said. “We have to leave, now. When they find his body, they’re going to come up here to see what happened.”
Cass’s mind filled with a mix of emotions. Her sense of right and wrong waged war within her over what she’d done. She knew it was an accident and believed in her heart she could explain it to the authorities when the time came.
Another part of her wondered if the authorities would even listen to her given that she was part of the counter-march and had recorded that damning video. It didn’t show the city police in a good light as they stood by and did nothing.
Shelby pulled her arm. “Come on, Cass. We have to get down from here before someone shows up and starts looking for how he fell.”
Cass stumbled along the rooftop, her feet shuffling through the gravel as Shelby pulled her towards the stairwell door in the center of the flat roof. The door was unlocked and together they ran down the stairwell inside the building.
When they reached the ground floor hallway and started towards the front of the building, they saw people in the street outside where the body lay. Some of them pointed upward.
Shelby and Cass stayed back from the window by the front door. Shelby pointed towards the rear of the building. “Let’s head out the back and see if we can cross over to the next building behind us. We can get out that way onto the next street over. Come on.”
Cass moved like she was on autopilot. Her mind filled with excuses for what she’d done. Guilt over the man’s death wracked her.
Shelby tugged at her arm again and Cass nodded, following along behind Shelby as she led her by the hand.
They ran out the rear of the building into an alley. There were dumpsters along one side and across from them was another similar brick building like the one they’d exited. Shelby ran across the alley and pulled at the steel door there. She smiled when it popped open.
“Come on Cass, in here.”
Cass followed as Shelby darted inside. The instant the door shut behind them, Cass heard shouts from the alleyway behind them. For a second, she was sure they’d been seen.
Shelby slid a metal bolt across into the door’s steel frame, locking it. They crouched by the door for a few seconds, trying to get their wits about them and figure out which way to go next. As they did, multiple voices of people running by outside drifted in to them.
“He fell from up there.”
“Did anyone see what happened?”
“What was he doing up there?”
“I thought I saw two people up there with him.”
“He said something about knowing where the video came from. Maybe he thought there was a camera up there.”
The voices receded down the alley as the people ran around the corner towards the side of the building with the fire escape. Cass and Shelby stood up and looked out the small basement window beside the door. The alley was now empty.
Shelby pointed to the other side of the room.
“There are the stairs up to the main floor. Come on Cass.”
Once again, Shelby tugged Cass with her, heading towards the stairs up to the building’s first floor. They ended up in the entrance hallway with apartments off to either side all the way to the front of the building.
Cass no longer needed Shelby’s prodding to keep moving. They paused only long enough to look both ways out the front door for any sign of protesters. Seeing none, Cass opened it and she and Shelby headed out to the street.
Shelby must’ve already called an auto cab on her implant. One came up the street, homing in on her GPS location. The driverless car pulled to a stop right in front of the building as they reached the sidewalk.
“Get in, Cass. Hurry up. Let’s get out of here.”
Cass slid into the back seat. Shelby jumped in beside her and pulled the door shut. The cab pulled out into the street and drove away. It passed right by the square in front of City Hall.
Demonstrators milled around in front of the stage listening to the next speaker on the day’s agenda. They acted as if nothing had happened.
Cass wondered where they’d dragged Eric’s body to as the whole, strange scene passed by.
Shelby must’ve been thinking about the same thing. “What are they going to do with his body, Cassie? We can’t go get him. What will they do with him?”
Cass didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t think about anything but the horrible vision of that man falling to his death. She saw him reaching for her partially outstretched hand, the hand she’d pulled back to protect herself.
Twenty minutes later, the auto cab pulled up at the edge of campus. Shelby and Cass climbed out, standing on the sidew
alk in front of their dorm. They stood there for many long seconds just staring at the building as dusk fell around them.
After a long wait in the approaching darkness, Cass took a step towards the front door. She reached out and held Shelby’s hand, pulling her girlfriend along with her as they returned to their room. Cass didn’t know about Shelby, but her mind was in a daze on the walk to their room.
Chapter 27
The two of them didn’t talk at all on their return to the room. The day’s events had exhausted them. They ended up falling asleep in each other’s arms after only a few minutes in their bed.
Cass woke up with a start hours later and checked the time. It was 5:30 AM.
Shelby stood over by her dresser. Cass lifted herself up on one elbow in her bed trying to figure out what her girlfriend was up to.
“Shelby, what are you doing?”
“I’m packing.”
That caught Cass’s attention. She sat all the way up in bed.
“Packing, what do you mean you’re packing? Where are you going?”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Cass. I need to be with my family right now. My mother called me. They saw the video. She and Dad are devastated, as you can imagine. They didn’t find out from the authorities like they should have. They heard from another family member who saw the video and sent them the link. Mom sent me a message an hour ago.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to make sure I was all right. She doesn’t think it’s safe for me here and she wants me to come home for a while until things settle down.”
“So, you’re just leaving me? Now, after all of what happened yesterday?”
Shelby turned around to meet Cass’s eyes. Redness rimmed the edges of her eyes from crying. “Don’t make me do this the hard way, Cass.”
“What do you mean? Packing to leave while I’m asleep isn’t the ‘hard way?’ I think there are easier ways to tell me you’re leaving.”
“I think we need to take a little bit of a break, Cassie. I can’t be here for you and home for my family at the same time. My mom and dad need me right now, don’t you understand that?”
Cass didn’t respond. She was still sort of asleep and all of this confused her. “What about your classes? If you leave school now, you’ll fail out of your first semester.”
“I sent messages to my professors explaining there was a sudden death in the family. Hopefully, once they find out what happened, they’ll allow me to make up the work later or do it from home. Either way, family is more important than staying here at school.”
“But you have me here for you,” Cass said, trying to convince Shelby to stay. “Don’t you understand that we need each other, now, more than ever? How am I going to come up with a plan to go home at the end of the semester without your help? My family is going to disown me when they find out about my implant. I’ll never hide it from them the entire time I’m away on break. I don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
Shelby shook her head. “Cass, your dad doesn’t like me very much, but I can’t see him doing something like what they did to my brother just because you’ve had medical implants. He might be pissed about it, but he’ll find a way around his feelings.”
Cass heard the words, but she wasn’t sure. There was also the problem of her being a murderer now. As she thought about it, the shocked face of the man just before he toppled over the edge of the roof flashed into her mind again.
She shook her head to clear it and walked over to Shelby.
“Will I be able to see you after you go home? I could get a train up to your parent’s place in Boston to visit. I haven’t met your parents yet.”
Shelby shrugged. “We’ll see. A lot is going on right now and I don’t want to overwhelm them with somebody new.”
“So that’s it?” Cass asked. “We’re just through because all of this happened. This is when we need to be together even more. Don’t you see that?”
“Cass, you have to stop. I had to make a decision. Right now, I have to be with my parents. It’s not that I don’t love you anymore. I do. It’s that I need to be somewhere else right now and can’t give you the attention you need.”
“So, I’m on my own.”
“Don’t say it like that. Just give me some time. You finish out the school year. I’ll reach out to you when I get back home. I’ll help you plan for the semester break. I promise.”
“Really?”
“You’ve got that skin patch if you decide not to tell your parents. That should keep them from noticing anything. Your hair will finish growing back by then. Just be careful, take it one step at a time and you’ll be fine. Hopefully, I’ll figure a way to come back next semester after I get things settled at home. Then we can start over again.”
Shelby turned back to her dresser and continued placing her clothes in her bag.
Cass turned away and went over to sit on her bed. She had nothing more to say. How could Shelby abandon her at a time like this? Cass knew she’d promised to keep in touch with her, but it wasn’t the same as having Shelby here.
Cass sat in silence with her back to the room as Shelby finished packing up her clothes and grabbing a few personal items from her desk.
She walked around to stand in front of Cass. “I’ll be back to get the rest of the things later. Maybe it’s best if I let you know when that will be so we don’t have to see each other.”
“You’re leaving now? It’s not even six in the morning.”
“Mom and Dad caught the overnight train into the city. They need to go down and identify Eric’s body at the morgue when it opens. I’m going to go with them. They already arranged a ticket for me on the noon train back up to Boston with them.”
It was all happening so fast and Cass’s mind flipped through questions and angry retorts that she wanted to throw at Shelby. In the end, she stood and pulled Shelby close in a tight hug. Cass never wanted to let her go, but at least they’d leave on good terms.
Shelby took a step back and leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on Cass’s lips. It was a moment of peace in the midst of the chaos of the last twenty-four hours.
Then it was over.
Shelby sighed and stepped back. “Bye, Cassie. I’ll check in with you when I get to Boston. Good luck on your final. You’ll do great.”
Cass didn’t say anything. She tried a half smile and nodded, not trusting herself to speak at that moment.
Shelby smiled back at her and turned to leave. Cass watched her go until the door swung shut behind her.
She stood all alone in the place that had become her sanctuary, at least as long as Shelby was there by her side. Now she had to figure out the next chapter of her life all by herself. Between finals, seeing her parents again, and trying to live a lie at home, Cass had a lot to do if she was going to make it through the next few months.
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Cass Armstrong’s story continues with
Cyber’s Escape - book 2
coming soon.
Afterword
A note from the author -
Those of you who’ve read a lot of my other books might notice this one is a little bit different from my usual fare. I actually had the idea for this story rattling around in my head for a few years. It stems from a time when I was a journalist covering medical technology and the concept of using cybernetics to improve the lives of humans intrigued me. The ethical implications did as well.
As I started writing fiction a few years later and I thought about the future from time to time, my earlier thoughts on cybernetics came back to me. Those thoughts began to take shape into a story about the ethical and social concerns that might accompany a world with cybernetic implants and augmentation. I’d ponder the idea now and then over the next few years, then I’d put it away and let it percolate for a while in the background as I wrote other things.
About a year before I wrote Cyber’s Change, my youngest daughter challenged me to add more
diverse characters to my books. Part of the challenge she set before me was to make their diversity “there” but not the reason for the story. As she told me based on the books she’d read, many authors wrote stories about gay couples where everything in the story was about their orientation. She proposed I write a story where they were just a couple like any other.
Challenge accepted!
Not long after that conversation, I was finally ready to begin a new series project and got started tackling the Sapiens Run trilogy starting with Cyber’s Change. I dug in as I always do — with the main character.
As I created the character of Cass Armstrong, I realized she needed a love interest. To get through everything she had to face in her life after the accident, Cass would need a soulmate to pull her back to the surface when she was overwhelmed by the forces arrayed against her (from within and without). They could be male or female, but they had to love her with their whole being.
So, Cass and Shelby are just another couple. Yes, they happen to be gay, but in this world of the near future, there is no stigma associated with that. It just is. Instead, the drama and story action comes from elsewhere.
Cass and Shelby could just as easily be Cass and James. What mattered most was that they loved, argued, laughed, and cried together just like every other couple in the world. In the end, it was only important that they be there for each other when it mattered most.
To my daughter and her fiancé, I hope I’ve achieved the task set before me. I modeled Cass and Shelby not just after the two of you but also after my own early relationship with Mom. All couples face similar challenges as their bonds stretch and grow, no matter who you are. In the end, as Cass learns beside Shelby, we’re all human.
Also by Jamie Davis
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Sapiens Run Trilogy
Book 1 - Cyber’s Change