by C. J. Hill
Taylor pulled a laser box from her belt. “That’s it. Your two seconds are up.”
Before Taylor could fire, Allana let out a shriek and darted behind Echo, using him as a shield. Well, he thought bitterly, why shouldn’t she use him to block laser fire?
Echo lifted his hands. He had seen enough historical feeds from the twenty-first century to know it was their sign of surrender. “You don’t need to shoot anyone,” he said. “Allana will do what you say.”
Allana didn’t comment about that, so Echo looked over his shoulder at her. “Won’t you?”
Allana made a huffing noise that might have been agreement.
Taylor reluctantly lowered her arm. Her expression was firm. “She’d better.”
Echo lowered his hands as well. “Taylor is a friend of Joseph’s,” he told Allana. “We need her help. We’re in a restricted section of the Scicenter, and if anyone finds us, we’ll face a questioning. Taylor and Xavier will take us out of this building to . . .” He hesitated to tell her they were going to meet up with the DW. Most Dakine members hated the DW. They were the only group in the city the Dakine couldn’t intimidate. It was better to hold off telling Allana that news. “We’ll go someplace where the Dakine won’t find us.”
Allana glanced over at Xavier, then peeked around Echo, casting Taylor a suspicious look. “Joseph didn’t have such low-ranking friends. Where did these people come from?”
“While we’re on the subject of rank,” Taylor said, “you might want to hide yours.”
Allana looked down at her badge and let out a second shriek. Her badge was blank, devoid of numbers. The screen showed nothing but the same dull gray that badges had when someone died and the government turned off their crystal for the funeral.
She pulled her badge from her shirt and clutched it, tight fisted. “What did you do to my rank?”
The blocking band on Allana’s wrist not only hid her crystal’s signal from the building sensors but obviously blocked it from the rank program too. Echo unzipped his overalls enough to see his own rank badge. Blank. Just like a funeral. Seemed fitting. Since his scene with Allana, a part of him felt dead.
Allana jiggled her badge as though she could shake numbers into it. “It’s illegal to tamper with badges. Fix mine right now or I’ll report you to the Enforcers.”
Taylor lifted her laser box back up. “You’re bothering me again.”
Allana let out a third shriek and darted back behind Echo. He had never seen her like this—without her calm confidence. She was being not only foolish but irritating too. Didn’t she realize you shouldn’t antagonize someone with a laser box?
Allana gripped the back of Echo’s shirt. “That girl is neurofailed. Make her leave or take me somewhere else.”
“Or,” Echo said slowly, “you could always do what she says, and then neither of us will be shot.”
Allana didn’t reply. Taylor didn’t lower her box. “Well, Little Miss Dakine, what will it be? Are you going to follow my orders?”
Allana let out an offended scoff. “I’m not Dakine,” she said, as though the suggestion was ridiculous. “You shouldn’t accuse people you don’t know.”
Echo hadn’t noticed before how easy it was for Allana to lie. No, that wasn’t true—he had always known she lied convincingly and hadn’t cared because he had been part of the lie too. Belonging to the Dakine had been their secret, their bond that Joseph hadn’t shared.
But there was something pathetic about lying to people who already knew the truth.
Taylor wasn’t amused. “That’s it,” she said, and pressed the button on the laser box. A beam of light winged by Echo’s shoulder, narrowly missing Allana’s head.
Allana let out shriek number four.
Taylor didn’t lower her box. She squinted, sizing up Allana to take her next shot. “I knew I should have spent more time practicing with this thing.”
Echo raised his hands again. “Yeah, about that—you nearly hit me, so until you’ve got better aim, could you not shoot your laser box off randomly?”
Taylor still didn’t lower her box.
“Remember,” Echo went on, “I’m Joseph’s brother and he loves me. You wouldn’t want to tell him you shot me, would you?”
Echo heard footsteps coming toward them and then Xavier’s voice behind him sounding worried. “Taylor, what are you doing?”
Taylor gave Xavier a calm smile. “Just having a talk with our new friends about mission expectations.”
Echo turned to Allana, frustration making his words short and low. “Use a gram of sense and agree to do what they ask. They’re trying to help us.”
For a moment Allana didn’t say anything. Her gaze slid between Xavier and Taylor. “All right,” Allana finally said. “I’ll follow their orders.”
“Good.” Taylor clipped her laser box back onto her belt. “We need to get out of the building and find a place to lie low until the others rescue Sheridan.”
“Lie low?” Allana asked. “What sort of activity is that?”
“We’ll go somewhere safe,” Taylor clarified. “A park or shopping center where we can blend in with the crowd.”
Xavier’s features grew stern. “What about the QGPs?”
“I already queued up the my program. I’ll take care of the QGPs when we’re ready to walk out the door.” Taylor held out her hand to him. “Give me your comlink. That way I know you won’t tell the rest of the team when it’s done.”
Xavier unclipped his comlink from his belt, disappointment flashing in his eyes. “You really don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“I can’t afford trust,” she said, her hand still out.
He put the comlink into her outstretched palm. “Have you ever considered that perhaps you can’t afford not to trust people?”
She clipped the comlink onto her belt. “Not since a physics adviser stole the credit for my invention. That pretty much cured me of trust.”
Taylor walked over to where Xavier’s packs lay on the ground. She knelt down, sifted through the contents, and pulled out a gas mask. “Our first problem is that we don’t have enough gas masks. No one brought one for Echo’s girlfriend.” She gave Echo a quick look. “I mean ex-girlfriend. Sorry about that.”
Echo took his gas mask out and noted how it attached. “Allana and I can share one. In between, we’ll hold our breath.”
Xavier shook his head. “Once gas is in the air, each time you put the mask to your mouth you’ll capture some of the gas inside. The mask won’t be able to filter it out before you breathe it in.”
Allana finally stepped all of the way out from behind Echo. “Why can’t Echo and I just leave? We didn’t do”—she gestured around at the scientists sprawled on the floor—“whatever it was you did to these people. We’re not with you.”
“Fine with me,” Taylor said. “Once we go out those doors, you can go wherever you want. But Echo comes with us.”
“Why?” Allana asked, wary.
“Because my sister’s imprisonment isn’t going to be for nothing.” Taylor turned to Xavier. “What about the faulty gas masks? Is there a way to fix one?”
“If we can find the leak.” Xavier walked over to where Taylor’s old mask lay on the floor. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, examining it. She went to look at it with him.
Allana tapped her rank badge with disgust, then slipped it into her pocket and fingered the band over her crystal. “How do I get this off?”
“Don’t,” Echo told her. “If you take it off, you’ll trigger the building alarm.”
She kept fiddling with it, clearly not understanding the seriousness of their situation. He stepped over to her and pulled her hand away from the band. “You need to leave that on until we’re out of the city.”
Allana’s head jerked up. “Out of the city? We can’t leave Traventon.”
“If we don’t, the assassins will find us again. We’ll be killed.” Echo didn’t add that he had already seen it happen, that
he had watched a newscast of her being carried, limp and bloody, to the morgue collector. “Xavier and Taylor can take us to another city.”
“No,” Allana said, twisting at the band on her wrist again. “We can’t leave our friends, our jobs—our rank.”
“I can.” Rank didn’t seem so important anymore. Echo waited for Allana to ask if Joseph would be going with them, braced himself for the question. He didn’t want to see the relief on Allana’s face when she found out Joseph would be there too.
She didn’t ask. Instead she kept yanking at the band over her crystal. “I can’t leave all my things.” More yanking. “My father will find a way to protect me.” She let go of the band and reached for her comlink. “I’ll call him and tell him what’s happened.”
As soon as she pulled her comlink from her belt, Echo reached over and snatched it from her hands. “Allana, you need to understand this: If you stay in Traventon, the Dakine will kill you. Your father couldn’t protect you the first time assassins came for you, could he?”
She frowned, then set her jaw. “That’s because he didn’t have time to get a signal-jamming detector for me. I’ll get one though. A bodyguard too.” She stepped toward Echo and reached for her comlink, trying to take it from his hand.
He held it away from her. “Then the Dakine will find another way to kill you. They always do. As soon as the signal on your crystal is unblocked, they’ll know where you are every second of every day.”
Allana’s hands drooped back to her sides. He could see the fear clicking through her gray eyes as she considered his words.
“Are you going to trust the waiter in the next foodmart you eat at?” he went on. “If he’s Dakine, he might get an order to poison your food. And you’ll have to be careful about when and where you call for a car. One could show up with explosives attached to it.”
Allana took several deep breaths and composed herself. It was almost like seeing her put on a persona. She smiled at Echo, suddenly calm, and stroked the edges of the band. “Then I’ll keep this bracelet on so my crystal stays blocked.”
“You can’t,” he said. “Someone would notice. Besides, how would you use food dispensers or cars without a crystal?”
Allana put her hand on Echo’s arm, her face raised hopefully. “You could figure out a way to make things work for us. Your mind—Echo, it’s special. You sprint where others crawl.”
Now that she needed something from him, he was special again. She had said the same sort of thing when she’d asked him to join the Dakine. He wondered if it had always just been manipulation.
He brushed her hand off his arm. “I’m leaving. You can stay behind if you want. Maybe the government will believe that you didn’t have anything to do with this. Should we tell Xavier and Taylor you don’t need a gas mask after all?”
Allana hesitated, grimaced, and looked around at the unconscious men and women on the floor. She let out a grudging sigh. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”
Echo smiled, relieved, but didn’t give her back her comlink. He slid it onto his belt, then turned and walked over to where Xavier and Taylor had taken the gas mask. Xavier was holding the mask up to a light, turning it one way and then another. “I can’t see a leak,” he said, “and I don’t have a sensor that identifies gear failures.”
Echo let his gaze sweep over the equipment in the room. “They must have one of those around here.” His eyes stopped on Taylor. She had dumped out a container of tools and was filling it with water from a dispenser. “What’s Taylor doing?” Echo asked Xavier.
Xavier glanced at her, and his brows drew together, puzzled. “I thought she was looking for a sensor.”
Taylor straightened and waved to Xavier. “Bring the mask over here.”
He did, eyeing the container full of water. “Thirsty?”
Instead of answering, she took the mask and plunged it into the water.
Xavier stared, incredulous. “What are you doing?”
Echo cocked his head, watching as she held the mask down. “She must be cleaning it. In the twenty-first century, people used water to wash everything. Clothes, dishes, themselves.
Xavier kept staring. “Dirt isn’t the problem.”
Taylor’s arms were immerged up to her elbows. “Sometimes the simplest method is the best.” She lifted the mask out of the water, her finger pressed to one of the folds in the breathing tube. “Here’s the hole.” She handed the mask to Xavier. “I followed the trail of air bubbles.”
“Ah,” Xavier said, and nodded. “That would be an equally good way of finding the leak.” He headed to his pack, his finger over the hole. “I’ll put some artificial skin on this. That should patch the hole.”
Taylor shook the water off her hands and motioned to Echo. “Help me get a pair of overalls off one of the scientists for Allana.” She walked past the nearest one, and went to a man with short-cropped bronze hair. It took Echo a moment to realize it was Helix, the science chairman. Taylor’s eyes narrowed at him with clear dislike. She knelt beside him and, without any gentleness, undid his belt and dropped it to the ground beside him. Then she worked on his overall fasteners.
Echo knelt by Helix’s feet, pulling the man’s boots off. “Do you know Helix?”
“He tried to kill my sister. Nearly succeeded, too.” Taylor stopped herself. “I guess that didn’t happen in this timestream. Who knows what he’s done to her in this one.”
Echo watched Taylor for a moment, noting the hard edge in her expression, which seemed a contradiction to the soft curves of her face. He’d never seen Sheridan, wouldn’t have known her if he passed her in a hallway, but he felt responsible for what had happened to her anyway. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Taylor yanked one of Helix’s arms out of his overalls. “Not as sorry as I am.”
Echo pulled Helix’s other arm out and then turned the man on his side so that Taylor could slide the overalls off his legs. Helix had the skinny, wrinkled legs of an old man. “This,” Echo said, “is not a sight I want to remember.”
Once the overalls were free, Taylor threw them at Allana. “You got a promotion. You’re the new science chairman.”
Allana caught the overalls and sullenly put them on.
Taylor gestured to Helix’s rank badge. “You’re in luck. It comes with an awesome rank.”
The overalls were too big for Allana, and she had to fold the sleeves under so they didn’t hang past her hands. “We’ll all get memory washes if we’re caught,” she said.
“Which is why we can’t get caught.” Taylor strode over to the computer, sat down, and went to work on her program. Navigating around code barriers usually took a while, but before long Taylor stood and headed toward the door. “The deed is done.”
Echo didn’t know what a deed was although he vaguely recalled it had something to do with buying property. Still, he knew what she meant. The destruct signal had been sent. He headed to the door behind Xavier and Taylor, gas mask in hand.
Each of their shirts came with a hood, one that not only covered the head but had a clear flap inside that could be pulled over the face. Xavier and Taylor had already put theirs on. As Echo grabbed his from the back of his shirt, he told Allana, “Stay behind the rest of us. Our clothes deflect laser fire.”
Allana gripped her gas mask. “But no one gave me any protection? How nice.”
Xavier paused, unfastened his overalls, and pulled off his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Taylor asked in disbelief. “You need that.”
He handed his shirt to Allana. “Let no one say I protected myself instead of protecting an innocent woman.”
“No one would say that.” Taylor fluttered a hand in Allana’s direction. “She’s not innocent. Did you forget she’s Dakine?”
“Lies and libel,” Allana said, glowering as she pulled the shirt on. “There are laws against defamation.”
Taylor ignored her and hit the button on the door panel. “You know what people will say, Xavier? They’ll s
ay you’re foolish. I’m already saying it.”
Before the door opened, Helix’s comlink went off. Almost simultaneously another scientist’s comlink chimed. Then more went off, a discordant symphony that filled the room. Outside, a buzzing alarm sounded in the hall.
Xavier placed his gas mask over his face. “The front entrances will be blocked,” he told Echo and Allana. “Follow the wall to the stairwell. We’ll escape off the roof.” He stepped out into the hallway, laser box drawn and gas vials in his hands.
“The roof?” Allana repeated in disbelief. “How are we going to get off the roof?”
No one answered her. There wasn’t time.
Chapter 18
Joseph, Ren, and Lee walked quickly down the street. Getting out of the Scicenter had been easy enough. After they’d gone through the hole, Ren had reached back inside, grabbed the edge of an equipment station, and pulled it against the wall to hide what they’d done.
From the outside, the hole had been much too noticeable—an uneven oval standing out against the smooth, white surface of the building. So Lee had pulled a small hologram camera from his belt and taken a picture of an intact portion of the wall. He left the button-sized projector sitting on the ground where it could project a flawless holographic picture of the wall to cover the ruined spot.
Hopefully no one would realize what they had done until Xavier, Taylor, Echo, and—Joseph didn’t even like thinking her name—Allana had left the building.
Allana. Joseph clenched his teeth, angry that his brother had brought her here, and angry at himself for not realizing beforehand that Echo might do it.
This was just what they needed now when the mission had already become impossibly hard: a Dakine member to drag around and protect. Hadn’t Echo already learned that he couldn’t trust her?
Ren checked the scanner on his comlink to make sure nobody had rushed out of the Scicenter to come after them. No one had.
The walkway wasn’t too busy. A few people strolled by. Other people stood at the edge of the street waiting for cars.