Breaking an uncomfortable silence, Sabrina said, “I had hoped you would know someone here.”
“Sorry,” Jason said. “Maybe I do know some of them, but not from those pictures. Anti-Corp members like to be anonymous, even when they talk to friends.”
“I understand.” It might be too late for those people anyway. She could still save others, though. “Do you have a secure way to communicate with your friends?”
“Yeah, of course.”
The smug bastard was lying the whole time after all. “Good,” she said, though she silently seethed. “Contact everyone you can who was associated with non-E or the Anti-Corp movement. Tell them to go off the grid, out of town, whatever.”
“Or to fight back?”
“I can’t advise that,” she said; a small part of her wished she could. “I’m not looking to start a war, I just want to help save people from a worse fate than they deserve.”
“I understand,” he said. She wasn’t sure he did.
“Your friend Steph,” she said, “she was in a lot deeper than you might have known. Probably deeper than she even knew herself. There was going to be a massive organized cyberattack that would’ve crippled the American economy by crashing thousands of crucial websites and databases. There still might be. Silte Corp and Guardian have been working to foil this plot for months by identifying all possible conspirators and accomplices. We were counting on Steph to give us some names.”
“Are they going to…kill us?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Delaney, but you read the Houston report, didn’t you?” He said nothing, staring at the wall in deep thought. “Tomorrow morning,” Sabrina said as she stood up to leave (she needed to be back before Erris got too worried), “I will arrive here in a car, early. I’m guessing you know how to make a car untraceable? Good, I thought so. You need to leave with me. I won’t force you, but I can’t guarantee your safety otherwise.”
“Why?” he said.
Still so defiant. “Because I need you, Jason, and I think before this is over you will need me as well.”
* * *
Back at the hotel, Sabrina undressed and made as much noise as she could getting into bed. As she’d hoped, Erris’s big blue eyes opened, and she yawned and sat up against the pillows. The sheet slipped down below her breasts; her pink nipples were just visible through a sheer white tank top.
“Where did you go?” she asked sheepishly.
“Out.”
“Your note just said—”
Sabrina cut her off with a kiss. Erris didn’t object. She kissed back with even greater fervor until Sabrina pulled away, starring longingly at Erris, who smiled lasciviously and said, “Where did that come from?” Her hand began tracing gently back and forth against the bare skin of Sabrina’s belly, working its way lower and lower.
Not wanting to answer or to say anything at all, not wanting to waste everything with pointless words, Sabrina instead rolled over on top of Erris, straddling her, and buried her face in the nape of her neck, breathing in her scent, wondering if it would be the last time.
Afterward Sabrina lay in bed watching Erris sleep, her chest rising and falling ever so gradually. In the morning, this sweet creature would wake up to an empty bed and an empty hotel room. Confused, she would wait a while, call a few times, send dozens messages, and then she would ride the train back to San Francisco and find an empty house. She would be hurt, frightened, angry. Heartbroken.
That’s the way it had to be, though. Sabrina had to leave. First, she would get on the hyperloop to L.A. to make a quick escape from the city. After that, she did not know. Maybe to Dallas, to the Silte Corporation headquarters and the last known location of Silte’s number one target, perhaps its greatest enemy. If Silte wanted Dellia Thomas dead so bad, maybe she was the key to stopping them.
Erris mumbled and shifted in her sleep. Her mouth was slightly open, and there was still sweat glistening on her forehead. She would be lost tomorrow and maybe many days after that, but Sabrina had to get over it. Erris might need her, but there were a lot of people out there who needed Sabrina more, people whose very lives may depend on her.
Leaning in to kiss Erris one last time then stopping, afraid to wake her, Sabrina eased out of bed and didn’t make a sound as she filled her suitcase and prepared to leave.
8
The tablet’s glowing clock read 6:15 a.m. In through the window came the first stretching fingers of sunrise; it was dawn and for the second night in a row Steph had not slept.
In her bed, where she had sat upright most of the night, Seito lay splayed out on his belly, naked beneath the covers. His eyelids fluttered and his leg twitched a few times. Steph wondered what he was dreaming about. Enjoy it while it lasts, she thought. The dream will end soon, for all of us. Or was it just beginning?
She gently pulled the covers off her legs and got out of bed, carefully, so she wouldn’t wake Seito from whatever world he was in. She padded to the window and looked out at her little portal to a brighter land. It was amazing, she had always thought, the view she had. She was living in a shit apartment, barely getting by on a journalist’s salary in one of the most expensive cities in the world; but despite all this, despite the cheap rent and shady neighbors, the musty smell in the hall and the plumbing that never seemed to stay fixed, the cockroaches and the cock neighbors, she had this breathtaking piece of beauty right here in her bedroom window. Through a few tall buildings she could just see the San Francisco Bay, and when the sun came up in just the right spot…for a few moments, occasionally, when she was up early (or late) enough, she felt like she was living the life she had always wanted.
But then it ended, and she went back to having the same dreams she’d had all her life, the same ones that she could always imagine but never catch.
A low bzzz bzzz told her that her tablet had received a message. It had been doing that a lot lately, but she had stopped paying attention sometime yesterday. Deciding it was time to reconnect with the outside world, she opened her recent alerts. There were various messages, a few missed vid-calls, the Anti-Corp com app had been going crazy, and…what was this? An app she hadn’t used in many years was showing recent activity; it was the one they had used for non-E in college, the one Jason had made. She had sent a copy of it to an AC friend who used it as a foundation for the current AC com app, but she had kept the original all these years for some bullshit sentimental reason or another. Only a handful of people had it, and two of them were in her room right now.
Curious, she tapped the alert and selected the most recent entry: a video message sent just now.
It was Jason.
Before that fact had fully sunken in, the face on the screen began talking. “Steph, I…I guess you got my other messages. I just wanted to tell you, I’m leaving. I don’t know where to, but I’ll stay in touch if I can. Actually, I think we’re going to need your help. Someone could be monitoring my tab, so we can only talk on the non-E app. I don’t have that new one you guys use. I—” He paused and glanced sharply off screen. “Looks like my ride’s here. Just pass along the info I gave you earlier to everyone you know. As far up the chain as you can go. And stay safe.”
That was it. Steph was more confused than anything. Maybe she needed to watch his other messages, but not right now. Right now she was feeling strange—not bad, strange. She had felt bad, terrible in fact, which is why she hadn’t wanted Seito coming here at first. She had heard the rumors about a Silte bioweapon, some kind of disease or virus, and those tear gas canisters that had no tear gas in them had seemed to confirm it, to her horror. But she felt much better by last night, enough so that she had convinced herself that it was nothing, that no such horrifically indiscriminate weapon could possibly be used, even by Silte. There was just no way they would risk inflicting such massive collateral damage on the world.
The strangeness must have begun sometime during her and Seito’s intense (by their normal standards) lovemaking, because by the time she had cleane
d up and Seito had dozed off, the strangeness had become a powerful force that permeated every cell in her body and even the air around her. It went with her wherever she walked, and whenever she stood still it grew in intensity. It was like the feeling she used to get after staying up all night at parties, except so intense that she was having trouble thinking straight. With a sinking sense of dread she wondered if there had been a bioweapon after all; she may not feel sick anymore, but this was worse somehow, whatever it was.
She went back to the window to find the comfort that sometimes greeted her there, but the sun, mostly above the horizon now, was too bright. And white. And flashing, coming at her in blinding waves. Could this be right? Is this how it’s always looked? No, the light did not dance off the buildings; it was the buildings that danced off the light, writhing and wriggling and trailing up into the white sky in columns of smoky dust.
Steph turned and stepped away. What was that? What the fuck is going on?
“Steph?”
Seito’s voice was distant and grainy, coming at her from behind thick curtains. She stumbled towards the sound and stopped when her knees hit the mattress. The voice called again, more distant, “Steph, are you alright?” The strangeness was so intense now that she didn’t want to answer him. She only wanted to climb in bed, curl up under the covers and hide.
And that’s exactly what she did.
To be continued in
Dreams in the Tower
Part 2
Coming soon
Dreams in the Tower Part 1 by Andrew Vrana
Copyright © Andrew Vrana 2014
All rights reserved
Published by Distant Star Press
for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
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Dreams in the Tower Part 1 Page 6