by C. A. Gray
“I think he’s in love,” Nilesh remarked with a smirk. Liam snorted with laughter and then winced, grabbing his chest as Nilesh added, “All right, Romeo, so where is she now?”
“No A.E. data to track her of course,” Francis murmured, typing furiously. “So I have to think… what would I do if I’d just destroyed my chip and broken out of prison…” He snapped his fingers. “Of course. She’s still there!”
“What?” Liam scoffed.
“Typical human behavior is to flee as far from the threat as possible, and the bots will therefore expect her to be as far from the prison as she could get after sustaining a head wound, which would likely bleed substantially without stitches. She needs to lay low long enough to heal and regain her strength, she needs shelter and food—and she’s just programmed a bot to help her. Why not program the same bot to sustain her and keep her hidden? Somewhere on the prison grounds, or very nearby, is the last place the other bots would look for her because it defies human instincts of self-preservation. Therefore, it’s the safest place to be!”
“Well… okay,” said Liam, doubtful, “but it’s definitely not the safest place to send a rescue mission to get her.”
Francis ignored this, sending a few more commands to the Commune member on the other end. A few seconds later, a blueprint appeared on Francis’s screen. He scrutinized it for several minutes before declaring, “There. That’s where I’d hide.” He pointed to a storage shed just off the grounds. He turned to Liam. “I’m going with you guys tomorrow. I’ll go get her. She’s in this mess because of me; it’s the least I can do.”
“Oh yeah. This is all about chivalry,” I quipped.
“You’ll be seen, by the cameras if not the bots, and your face will trigger all kinds of alerts,” Liam argued. “So will hers, if you manage to find her.”
Francis shook his head. “Not if we both have LED glasses. I can build more.”
Liam sighed, and glanced at Nilesh. “What do you think?”
“I think she’s hot,” he said frankly.
Liam snorted and said, “About the plan.”
He shrugged. “Well. The three of us are risking our lives tomorrow already, and we aren’t even doing it for a hot chick. At least he has proper motivation!”
Francis created a digital map of his plan, while Nilesh interjected admiring questions. Larissa, though she looked quite unhappy about this plan, threw out a few suggestions anyway. Presumably she wanted to make sure she wasn’t entirely forgotten. While they were doing this and I stood back, Liam approached me. I knew from the look on his face that he was going to comment on my outburst at dinner. Before he could say anything, I held up my hands.
“I know, I know. I’m irrational and ridiculous.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Only because you’re being diplomatic.”
He looked down at me with a sidelong smile. “Maybe,” he conceded. “What were you really upset about up there, anyway? It wasn’t still me going for supplies instead of you, was it?”
“No,” I admitted. “I guess I’m just… not processing everything very well.”
“A lot of things have changed in a short period of time,” he agreed. “Well… basically everything. Especially for you.”
“Normally I process things with Madeline,” I admitted. “Without her, I guess I seem fine, until I’m not, all of a sudden. Dad used to be like that, too.”
Liam ventured, almost bashful, “I know it’s… not the same. But you can process with me. If you want to.”
I met his eyes, and he gave me a shy smile. I softened, and smiled back. “You’re going to be careful tomorrow. Right?”
He held my gaze, and drew an X over his chest. “Cross my heart and…”
“Don’t—finish that sentence!”
He laughed, and gave my shoulder a squeeze, before following Nilesh, Francis, and Larissa upstairs. I’d overheard them saying something about joining Rick to further their plans. I lingered downstairs until they were gone. As soon as they’d all disappeared, I sat down at the netscreen Francis had been using, unfolding the sheet of paper I’d carried around with me since the night before, and glancing over my shoulder surreptitiously. I opened the black coding screen, and copied the code I’d seen Francis use the night before to communicate with Matt. Then I plugged in the LP address that had formerly belonged to my own netscreen.
“Madeline? Are you there?”
A few seconds later, the screen blinked with the reply, “I’m here. Rebecca? Is that you?”
I almost crumpled with relief. “Yes! Where are you? Are you still at the chateau in Geneva?”
“I am, they put me in lost and found because they don’t know what to do with me. I didn’t know what to tell them because I hadn’t heard from you, but I have to tell them something soon because I’m running out of power, and they might just recycle me if I’m not claimed soon!”
“Tell them to send you to my house in Casa Linda,” I wrote immediately. “At least then I’ll know you’re safe, and I’ll come get you when I can. Tell them to put the shipping charge on our room tab.” Liam wouldn’t mind, I was sure. I could pay him back someday.
“Do you want me to just have them send me to where you are? It looks like you’re somewhere near Kansas City.”
I blanched. “How do you know that?”
“I can tell from your LP address.”
My heart pounded, and I thought, Crap. Crap. Crap, with every beat. But Matt knows where we are too, then, doesn’t he? It couldn’t be that big a deal. “No, don’t tell them that, don’t even mention that,” I wrote hastily. “But make sure they know where to ship you before you run out of juice!”
“Okay, I’ll find someone now!”
I signed off, and took the stairs two at a time, hurrying into the warehouse living room where the others had found Rick to plan their exploits the following morning. I approached Larissa: she seemed like the safest person who would be able to answer my question.
“Can I talk to you?” I whispered, and the urgency in my tone must have caught her attention.
She nodded, letting me pull her into the kitchen. “What’s up?”
I bit my lip, and said as casually as I could, “Just… curious. Can you tell where someone is geographically based on their LP address?”
“Sure. The general region, anyway, you can’t nail it down to an address or anything. Why?”
I shrugged, still trying to play it cool. “So all those people we talk to on the Commune know where we are now?”
“Oh, no!” she waved me off with a laugh. “When Francis messages people on the Commune, he bounces the messages off of a different server somewhere else in the world first, and never the same place twice. Don’t worry!”
I breathed again. “So any message we send from here looks like it came from elsewhere?”
“If he adds in that code, yes, but he has to add it in every time… why do you look so pale?”
I debated for a moment, but then decided it was necessary. I pulled out the sheet of code I’d used downstairs to access the Commune and showed it to her. “Is any of this code part of what he uses to reroute the messages?”
She frowned at me, and looked at what I’d written. “Where did you get this?”
“I copied it from what I saw him write yesterday,” I confessed, pointing at the code again. “But is any of this the code that blocks our location?”
She shook her head at me. “No, that’s a totally separate step before you ever access the Commune directly—”
I closed my eyes. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot, I berated myself.
Madeline now knew the general region where we were. How many silos could there be in this region that might have acted as a refuge for a former government agent and a bunch of Renegades? If anybody connected Madeline to me—and they surely would, now that she was asking to be sent to my home address in Casa Linda, which Halpert and the Silver Six
would know was connected to both me and to Mom by now—then she would be the key to finding our hideout.
“Where are you going?” Larissa called after me, but I was already halfway to the basement stairs.
“Madeline?” I typed when I got back to the netscreen. “Madeline, are you there? Don’t tell them my Casa Linda address, we have to send you someplace neutral. I’ll find a way to get you someday regardless, but not there!”
But the black screen replied in italic type, “Message undeliverable. Recipient is offline.”
I stared at the screen for a long moment in blank panic.
What have I done?
Chapter 7
Larissa followed me into the basement a few minutes later, with a tentative, “You okay?” I turned my face to her, and she winced. “Apparently you’re not okay.”
I bit my lip. “Larissa… I think… I need your help,” I said at last, pronouncing each word very slowly.
“With what?”
“I need to recover a robot from Casa Linda.”
She blinked at me. “Why?”
Out came the whole story. When I’d finished, I told her, “They probably powered her down to package her right after we talked. If they ship her tomorrow by Quantum Track Mail, she should arrive tomorrow afternoon. I have to get to her as soon as she arrives, or close to it—before anyone else hears about her.”
Larissa let out a breath with a whoosh. “Don’t you think we should tell your mom?”
“No!” I said at once.
“Because she’ll be mad?”
“Because…” I ran a hand through my hair. “Because I’ve already wrecked her life and blown her cover. That’s all my fault for not listening to her warnings to go back to Dublin when I could—a fact of which she’s made me well aware. I don’t want to tell her I’ve potentially compromised this place too. I just want to make it right, and she never has to know.”
“Won’t she know when your robot shows up out of nowhere?”
I made a face. “I’ll work that part out later. It’s the least of my problems.”
“Okay,” Larissa murmured, shrugging with her palms up. “What can I do to help?”
“I need access to the Commune LP address database,” I told her. I only knew my own LP address, but for this, I’d need some help. “And… I need you to put in whatever Francis’s blocking code is.”
She obeyed, first keying in whatever protective code I’d need, and then pulling up a database with LP addresses and names before sliding the screen back to me. I typed in Jake’s LP address first: I knew he’d be in Casa Linda for Spring Break right now.
“Becca????” Jake commed back. “Where are you? We’ve all been messaging you for days and got nothing but dead air! Julie says hi, by the way!”
“Julie is with you?” I wrote. “Hi both! I can’t tell you where I am; I’m off the grid and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s a long story; I’ll tell you in person.”
The next message appeared: “Does this have anything to do with Halpert and them being robots after all? This is Julie btw.”
I’d forgotten that Francis had sent a message to the entire Commune about this. “Yes, it’s dangerous for me to show my face now. But I accidentally left Madeline behind when we ran, and I had her ship herself to Casa Linda. She should arrive tomorrow.”
A pause. “Who’s Madeline?”
Oh, right: I’d gotten so used to everyone in my immediate circle knowing about her that I’d forgotten I’d never told my friends back home. “My companion bot.”
“Your ????”
“I know, I know. Also a long story.”
“Well, get your butt over here; you owe us a lot of stories!”
I grinned, hearing Julie’s voice in my head as she said this. “This is the problem: getting there without anybody noticing. It’s going to take a Quantum Track ticket, and if I buy one with my bank chip—or my prints—it’s probably going to set off a flag in the system.”
“I’ll buy it for you, no problem,” Julie wrote. “You just have to tell me what station you’re coming from.”
I looked at Larissa for this, wincing. “Should I tell her?” I didn’t see any way around it, but that meant one more person who knew something that nobody was supposed to know.
She shrugged at me, matching my expression. “I mean, I don’t see any other way… but tell her Kansas City at least. That’s the one Nilesh, Rick, and Liam are leaving out of. There’s one closer but M doesn’t want us to use it, just in case anybody’s paying attention.”
I hesitated, but finally told Julie this, who then said, “Lemme just see the schedule… ok, what time do you want to go?” She listed my options.
I turned to Larissa again, who was reading the whole exchange beside me, transfixed.
“You have a lot of good friends… don’t you?” she asked at last, a little wistfully.
I blinked, taken aback. “Well… yeah. I’m sure you do too… but anyway,” I cut off that rabbit trail before we got too far off topic. “I’ve still got another problem: how to get to the Quantum Track. And how to get there without Mom finding out,” I added, wincing.
“Oh, the second part’s easy! Francis overheard your mom and Mack talking about taking the hovercraft somewhere tomorrow at 9 am?”
I perked up. “Did he say how long they’d be gone?”
Larissa shrugged. “Long enough for you to get to the Quantum Track at least, right?”
I nodded, and looked at the schedule Julie listed. There was a 9:30 and a 10 am. I turned back to Larissa, musing aloud. “Not sure how I’ll get to the station though…”
Her eyes widened with a sudden idea. “Come with Francis and me!”
“Huh?” I was mostly caught off guard by the “and me” addition.
“To rescue Alessandra—we're not going on the Quantum Track so we’ll have to take another car! One of the other silos connected to here has a bunch of them hidden inside. We’ll just leave after Liam and your mom are both gone. We can go anytime after that.”
I shook my head. “Why are you going with Francis to rescue Alessandra?” Are you a masochist? I added silently.
She shrugged. “Because he can’t do it alone. He’ll need my help.”
I nodded once. “Okay. Did you hear what time Liam and the others are planning to go?”
“Around the same time as your mom, I figure,” Larissa pointed out, and gestured at the screen where Julie’s last message blinked with the Quantum Track schedule. “So the 10 am Quantum Track is probably safest.”
I wrote this back to Julie, and after a pause, she wrote, “Purchased!”
I thanked her, and then wrote casually, “Who else is in town for Spring Break?” I knew Jake would still be sitting next to her.
“Everybody! This is Jake now,” he wrote. He didn’t say Andy’s name, but of course Andy would be included in everybody. “We’ll get a big welcoming committee to get you from the Quantum Track.”
“No, nothing to draw attention!” I wrote hastily. “Can you all just meet me at my house? I should be there by 11:15 I think.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Becca, of course we’re picking you up.” That would be Julie, I knew. “We’ll be discreet, I promise!”
I hesitated, not sure if Julie and discreet belonged in the same sentence. “Ok,” I wrote at last. “As long as it’s not a big group. I just want to show up, get Madeline, hug everybody goodbye, and go.” I debated whether or not to mention who I hoped would be included in that ‘everybody.’ At the very least, I wanted to see him one more time.
This is the time to be bold, Rebecca, I admonished myself, turning to Larissa, heart pounding in my throat. “Can you show me the Commune database again? I need to send a private comm to one more person.”
She pulled it up, and I found Andy’s name. Before I could talk myself out of it, I wrote, “Hey Andy, it’s Rebecca. Jake and Julie are going to pick me up at the Qu
antum Track tomorrow at 11, and I should be at my house around 11:15, but not for very long. I have a lot to tell you. I hope you’ll be there.” I hit send, feeling the familiar inner tremble that accompanied suppressed nerves. It was like the shiver of being cold, but I wasn’t cold.
“Who’s Andy?” Larissa asked.
“A good friend,” I told her. I knew Jake and Julie would likely tell him to come anyway, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Andy had to be there.
Chapter 8
I avoided Mom that night; I wanted to apologize for my outburst, but I worried I’d seem too guilty and it would give me away somehow.
The next morning, Liam and I made breakfast together, mostly in silence. I could tell he was distracted, and so perhaps he didn’t notice how distracted I was. Somehow despite that, he still managed to make the most textbook-perfect omelettes I’d ever seen. As usual, I was relegated to chopping vegetables, grating cheese, and following his instructions to make salsa.
Breakfast was overall a quiet affair; Mom and Mack discussed details of Nilesh and Rob’s plan to rescue Giovanni from time to time, but that was all. I noticed Mom trying to catch my eye during breakfast, and I smiled at her to let her know I wasn’t angry, but then dropped my gaze. I was afraid that if we got into any sort of conversation, she’d pick up on the fact that I was hiding something and insist on knowing what it was. Besides, what was the point of making up now, when she’d only be furious with me again by tonight? Might as well do it all at once.
After she and Mack excused themselves and the hovercraft disappeared, Nilesh and Rob piled into an old Fiat. Before Liam joined them, he came back in to shake Francis’s hand, hugged Larissa, and told them to be careful. He made his way toward me next; I tried not to meet his eyes, afraid I’d give something away.
“Hey,” he murmured, gathering me into his arms. I let him, too surprised to resist. Had Liam ever hugged me before? I tried to remember as I pressed against him, very aware of every place we touched. If he had, it certainly never felt like this before. He didn’t let go too quickly, either.