Looking around to make sure no one listened in, he learned over and said, “Scotty, see if you can find out the location of the BL prisoners, including Brogan’s parents, will you? We’ll try to come by your house later tonight to talk to you to see what you found out. What’s your address?”
He wrote the address on his hand, not wanting to allow anyone who might be monitoring his calls to know where he would be going. He quickly strode to the elevator and told the tube to go from the 27th floor to the ground floor as he tried to call Brogan on her vid-phone. No answer. She was probably still in her Nano-circuitry class. He looked at the time; almost 4:30 pm. It would take him about 15 minutes by transport tube to make it to campus. Her class was in McCombs building, so he had enough time to catch her as she got out of class; hopefully before she looked at her vid-phone and saw the news. He needed to travel by tube back up to the dome exit and then laterally to where she was.
His mind tumbled through various scenarios. Will the major be coming after them next? Knowing the major’s willingness to use any strategies necessary, like trying to assassinate Brogan the year before they bonded, Bryan wouldn’t put it past him to torture her parents to find out the names of other leaders of the BL movement, which meant all council members were in danger, but especially them.
He mentally urged the driverless tube to go faster. He quickly sent a coded message to his father, letting him know they were going on the run and would be in touch with him as soon as possible.
A warning flashed on the tube’s vid, tornadoes expected in the area, but it didn’t register. The pre-programmed tube stopped in front of the building where Brogan’s class was, so he scrambled out as soon as the doors opened. As he exited the lateral tube, a crack of lightning split the darkening sky and he heard the distant rumble of thunder.
He raced up the steps of McCombs building just as the doors slid open and students began to pour out. He desperately searched faces. Fortunately, his partner, being taller than most women, would be easy to spot. But she saw him before he saw her.
“Bryan, honey,” she shouted, waving and smiling. “What a surprise! I did not know you were meeting me.”
She ran toward him. And then she saw his somber face.
“What’s going on?”
“Honey, I have some bad news.” He pulled her over to a nearby bench, just as the storm hit. Taking her hands in his, he gently told her about the arrests and her parents. He put his arm around her as her face turned pale while she watched on the vid-phone the executions and the brief glimpse of her parents. For a few minutes, they sat on the bench in shock as rain began to come down in sheets. They held each other and tried to grasp what happened. Brogan was too shocked to cry, her mind racing and scrambling for solutions.
Wherever a dome sat over buildings, it absorbed the brunt of any storm. As it rained, a fine mist seeped through the dome to water trees and plants but without flooding or damage. But they sat outside of a dome and the pounding rain only added to the tears of sorrow on their faces.
They had been prepared for something bad happening since BL started. But, they always expected they would be the ones arrested, not her parents. Bryan reminded Brogan of the uneasy feeling she had as they left her parents after their ceremony. They had been so busy with work, school and BL business they had not had time to go back to see them. Bryan finally spoke out loud.
“We must alert cell leaders and council members to go into hiding. After that, we will figure out if there is anything we can do to help your parents.”
Shakily they stood and decided to travel by tube to their apartment, rather than stay in the rain. As they tried to calmly discuss the situation, they knew it would probably be only a matter of time before their arrest.
They hurriedly arrived at their apartment on the 15th floor of the student housing building. Brogan stood at the door for a moment and looked around at their first home. They knew when they moved in they might leave it suddenly. Even so, they painted the walls a bright, cheerful yellow. Soft white chiffon curtains hung on the only window in the living room, pulled back by cheerful blue gingham bows. A tiny wooden table for two sat under the window where they ate their meals. The comfy king-sized bed filled the small bedroom. Bryan covered the walls of the apartment with shelves; behind which sat dozens of hidden storage areas for the books they loved.
In their spare time they enjoyed poking around antique shops in surrounding areas: Fredericksburg and Wimberley two favorite quaint villages. They discovered inexpensive art and nick-knacks they both liked and old comfortable furniture fitting their eclectic tastes. Nick-knacks camouflaged and filled the shelves in front of hidden books. Friends who visited loved the old-fashioned vibe of their small apartment. Now they had to leave it all behind.
Brogan suddenly fell to the floor sobbing. Bryan, who had gone into the bedroom to dry off and begin packing their backpacks, rushed back into the room, knelt and pulled her into his arms, letting her cry. Nothing he could say would ease the pain of the moment. Increasingly loud rolls of thunder and cracks of lightning outside their apartment seemed to echo the awful, pounding ache he felt for his partner. His own eyes filled with tears.
But it was the last time Brogan cried for many years. She stood up and threw back her shoulders, physically and mentally steeling herself for whatever was ahead.
As she calmed, Brogan looked up at him and said shakily, “Okay, I’m ready. What should we do first?”
She stopped for a minute, putting a hand on his arm. “Oh, Bryan, what about your father? He’s in danger, too.”
“I sent him an encrypted message, so he knows what to do. I know he’d want us to focus on getting ourselves to safety.”
Brogan shook her head as though to clear emotions away, grabbed the towel Bryan held out to her and began to vigorously dry her soaking hair. They quickly moved into the bedroom, throwing off their wet clothes and shakily pulling on their black temperature-adjusting jumpsuits.
Although they planned for this moment, now it had arrived it was extremely difficult to take those first irrevocable steps toward becoming fugitives. They talked about everything they needed to do as they filled their back packs per the list Janice Wu prepared for all council members at the beginning of the BL movement. At least they did not need to figure out what to do with a dog. Their neighbors had a large Doberman they often took for walks or used his collar as the hiding place for their T-chips when they attended protest rallies.
They made sure they had what they needed in their backpacks. All electronics, including their vid-phones, they left in the apartment. They destroyed their sim cards, after memorizing Scotty’s address. Brogan’s journals they tucked away in a hidden compartment, then flushed their T-chips down the toilet.
They had just completed their packing when they heard heavy footsteps in the hallway outside their apartment. As pounding started on the door, they quickly opened a hidden entrance behind the laundry synthesizer connected with the building’s air duct system. On their hands and knees, they silently closed the secret door behind them, quickly moved through the duct system, past several apartments, and then climbed down through the elevator shaft. They almost reached the bottom of the elevator shaft when the elevator began to move. With only inches to spare, they squeezed through another air duct into a janitor’s closet before the elevator box arrived on the same floor. They clung silently to each other as they listened to the echo of voices and the stomping of feet.
“The students in the apartment across the hall said they were just here.”
“They can’t have gone far.”
“Come on. Move it!”
“Major’s going to throw a fit if we don’t catch Finlay’s daughter.”
“T-chip locater says they are moving through the underground sewer system.”
As soon as the voices died down, Bryan whispered, “Let’s wait a while. They may have left someone outside the apartment building.”
Brogan nodded, and they carefully sat
down in the tiny room. Making sure the locked door was secure, Brogan wedged a robot vacuum against the door to prevent someone from entering. They decided to wait until dark before trying to leave. As they waited, the rain storm increased in ferocity, shaking the building with explosions of thunder and spiking the sky with streaks of lightning, flashes they could see under the door of the tiny room where they hid.
While packing, they agreed to post an emergency message at Cowboy Joe’s before they left town. They trained and prepared for this moment. Marco’s communication system would help to quickly get word to all BL cell leaders and members.
But right now, time seemed to stand still. Brogan felt totally responsible for getting her parents into the situation. Bryan folded her into his arms without saying a word, knowing exactly what she was thinking.
When no daylight showed under the door of the closet, Bryan carefully opened the door and looked out. The storm had let up. The hallway appeared to be empty, and no one walked the dark street in front of the building. Grabbing Brogan’s hand, he led the way as they quietly moved toward the glass front door. They almost made it to the door when the building security guard came around the corner. He whipped out his laser pistol and pointed it directly at them.
“Stop!” he yelled. “I saw your pictures on my vid-phone.”
The couple slowly raised their hands.
“Look, George,” Bryan calmly said with a grin as he lazily moved toward the guard. “You know us. I don’t know who you think we are, but my partner and I are just going down the street to pick up a pizza. We’ll bring one back to you, if you’re hungry.”
He raised his arm and moved his T-chip hand toward the guard.
“Here, you can read my T-chip to verify who we are. And why don’t you put down the gun and tell us whether you want pepperoni on the pizza or sausage?”
For a moment, the short, balding and overweight man seemed confused by Bryan’s attitude, his emotions easy to read on his face. Had he made a mistake? For just an instant he looked down at the vid-phone to verify the identity pictures splashed all over the news. It was all the time Bryan needed to reach the guard and wrench the gun away from him.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” George asked as he backed up, his face reflecting terror as he looked up at the very tall, athletic man now looking down at him. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, honest,” he said shakily.
Brogan saw a set of plastic ties hanging on the guard’s belt and used them to tie his hands behind him.
“Now what do we do?” she asked Bryan.
Bryan turned and looked at the closet where they just spent several hours and then back at Brogan. They grinned at each other and herded the little man none too gently into their former hiding place. They found a rag which they used as a gag and used another set of plastic ties to tie his feet together. They trussed him against a metal shelf, so he couldn’t move and locked the door behind them.
“Someone will find him in the morning,” Bryan said with a grin. “Serves him right for pointing a gun at us.”
They walked out the door. A few blocks later they reached Cowboy Joe’s where they posted a simple coded message on his menu board for council members and BL cell leaders, telling them they were in danger.
Next stop, Scotty’s house to see if he had heard anything about where Brogan’s parents were imprisoned. Scotty lived with his mother in one of the oldest houses in the Round Rock area, north of UTA and outside the dome. Since neither of them had a T-chip anymore, using robo-taxi or transport tube were not options. It meant they had to walk twenty miles, a long walk. Fortunately, they were both in good shape, their adrenalin was pumping, and the rain had stopped. Shifting their backpacks to more comfortable positions, they started out, keeping away from street lamps as much as possible, trying to avoid puddles of rain. It wasn’t long before they slipped around the dome’s perimeters and into the dark.
Chapter Ten
Scotty Helps
Brogan and Bryan left their apartment about 7 pm and it was now about 4 am. They made good time, considering it would take about ten hours of walking to Scotty’s house. While they walked, another storm hit, and they sheltered in a transport tube overhang, since they had no way to access the protection of a dome. Transport tubes scattered all over the city were accessed by either elevator or stairs. Similar in principle to ski lifts, they had two individual seats, surrounded by a tube and connected to an overhead trolley system immediately activated if someone sat on a seat. To stop the tube, passengers simply pushed a button at the correct stop. But a T-chip was needed to access them, and they tossed theirs into the sewer to avoid detection by law enforcement.
After the storm stopped, they continued walking and now they stood in front of Scotty’s home on the west side of Round Rock. Fortunately, Bryan recalled the address he entered on his vid-phone. They made some wrong turns, but finally located it.
Scotty never bonded and still lived with his mother. He often bragged about the old Victorian-style wooden home to anyone listening. The three story-house could not be missed, covered with gables and gingerbread wood ornamentation in elegant designs. It even had a small tower on the south corner. Ten steps led to a maple carved front door, buffed to a glass shine. A wrap-around porch completed the old-fashioned look. Subdued lights glimmered in front of the house; the couple could see the house was painted Robin’s egg blue, trimmed in white.
Ornate azalea bushes, beginning to bud flanked steps to the porch. A well-manicured lawn surrounded two ancient giant oak trees in the front yard. Daffodils starting to bloom poked their heads out of well-manicured flower beds, surrounded by beds of blue bonnets. The obviously well-maintained, beautiful home seemed to be transported from a by-gone era.
They weren’t sure how to attract Scotty’s attention. Maybe they should wait until daybreak. They quietly moved to the back of the house to stay away from street lights. An old-fashioned gazebo sat in the large backyard. Bryan pointed it out to Brogan. She nodded, and they moved toward it. If they spread their solar blankets on it a couple of hours of sleep might be possible. They started up steps to the gazebo, but a very large black and tan German shepherd dog started barking loudly and lunged at them from near the back door. His chain was too short, and he couldn’t reach them. It wasn’t long before the dog’s barking caused lights to go on in the house.
“Who’s there?” Bryan heard Scotty call tremulously from the back door. “You better leave or I’m calling law enforcement.”
“Scotty,” Bryan called softly, “It’s us. Brogan and Bryan. We need to talk to you.”
“Oh, my God!” Scotty said as he switched the back-porch light on. “I’ve been so worried about you two.” The dog continued to bark.
“Turn the light off, Scotty!” Bryan called.
“Oops, sorry about that. Hush, Herman!” And the light went off and the dog shut up.
“Come on into the house and I’ll make you some coffee.”
“But what about your mother?” Brogan asked.
“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Scotty said, “She has old fashioned hearing aids and removes them at night. She can’t hear a thing without them.”
Scotty unchained the dog and the weary couple followed him into the large house, the big dog tagging along like a giant puppy now that Scotty okayed them. Scotty looked even thinner in his old-fashioned pajamas, his skinny legs and arms sticking out and his hair standing on end. Brogan met him several times at UTA events. She struggled to hold back a giggle threatening to explode from her exhausted body. She swallowed hard and concentrated on looking around at museum-like furnishings.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, “Scotty, your home is magnificent! Has it been in your family long?”
“Oh, yes,” he said with obvious pride, “we are the fourth generation of Wilson’s to live here. By the way, may I get you something to eat?”
Before Scotty launched into what Bryan knew from experience could be a long and detailed family history,
Bryan interrupted.
“Something light to eat would be great, Scotty. And is there a room where we might catch a few hours of sleep before we head out? As you might expect, the major’s men are looking for us. We are members of Book Liberators, same as you.”
Scotty’s eyes bulged at the news, a large Adam’s apple in his long, skinny neck bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard. His voice squeaked, but he finally replied, “Sure, but before I take you upstairs, let me get you those refreshments while I tell you what I found out about your parents, Brogan.”
As he bustled around the surprisingly modern kitchen making hot tea for them, and laying out some bread, cheese and fruit, he brought them up to speed on the news.
“Apparently, the major has no evidence you are involved with BL, but he has spread the word he wants to bring you in for questioning. Your parents, Brogan, have been transported by a prison robo-van to San Antonio, along with the other 50 prisoners, and placed in the Alamo Prison Intake Center for processing.”
Rumors were flying at MC Carusco’s office, that both of her parents were in bad shape. The major’s men beat them in Van Horn, trying to force them to reveal names of other BL leaders. They refused to talk, so the major instructed his team to transport all the survivors to San Antonio where he would oversee using chemicals to get confessions. It would be a few days before the major arrived in San Antonio. He was in the New York Province when the arrests occurred and was scheduled to make a presentation to a House of Lords committee on Monday on his progress toward stopping BL protests. Scotty told them protests had increased across all four provinces since the executions.
While Scotty talked, and they sipped the tea and munched on the food, Bryan periodically held Brogan’s hand. Her grip tightened so much as Scotty talked, he thought she might cut off his circulation. He reached over and gently patted her hand.
“Honey, what do you want to do next?”
The White Warrior Page 12