“There’s something happening,” I said. “Something weird. According to my friend Richie, I’m supposed to be dead.”
A light seemed to go on behind Travis’s eyes, then it disappeared.
“Does that mean something to you?” I said.
He shook his head. It was so good to meet someone I knew, and share what was happening to me, I kept going.
“My dad talked about something called Vita Aeterna. I think it’s some kind of organization.”
Travis’ eyebrows came together. “Don’t know them. I can make some inquiries…”
I studied his face. This time he really didn’t seem to know.
“My dad also told me I should find my Uncle Zack. I don’t understand what he was talking about. Uncle Zack’s supposed to be dead.”
Again, a flash of something crossed Travis’ face.
“Dead?” he asked. “How did he die?”
“He fell hitching on a RoboTaxi forty years ago,” I answered.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He smiled and put a fatherly hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know. But together we’re going to find out.”
The woman that had been taking care of Benny appeared at the door. She smiled over at me. “Your friend is going to be okay.”
I relaxed a little — one less person dying on my account.
Travis gestured for her to join us. “This is Patricia Treadwell,” he said. “She’s our doctor-in-residence. She was a doctor to some of the Corp heads before she got fed up.”
Treadwell offered her hand and I shook it.
She gestured with her head back to where she’d been treating Benny. “We’ve stitched him up — he’s resting. I’d leave him for now — you should be able to talk to him later.”
“G…Great, thanks,” I said.
We got up and Travis took me in to meet the others.
“What do we want with him?” One of the men, a bearded, intense-looking guy named Rolf, complained after Travis had introduced me. “We’re just drawing attention to ourselves for nothing. We don’t know anything about him — he’ll give us up.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Travis put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head.
“I know him,” Travis said. “And I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. Yes, it’s a risk, but if SecureCorp is so hot to get him, keeping them from getting him is probably a good idea.”
I tensed. Not all the Rebels were happy I was here.
☼
“I feel a lot better,” Benny said a few hours later, as I knelt beside the cot he was lying on. “I’m just kinda tired.”
“You’re a tough guy.” I smiled at him. “It takes more than a SecureCorp bullet to take you out.”
“But why are SecureCorp after you?” he asked. “It’s some kind of test, right?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure how to answer him. “Yeah, something like that,” I finally said.
“You’ll tell them?” he said.
“What?”
He winced in pain as he leaned over and whispered. “You know, them — you’ll tell them I took a bullet.”
“Yeah.” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll tell them.”
The run-in with Rolf had made me edgy. I leaned in and whispered. “What do you know about these guys? Can we trust them?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “They hate the government, so they should be okay. But I heard them say something bad about…” He leaned closer and mouthed the words, ‘Mister Wickham’.
“I know the leader, Travis,” I said. “He’s a good guy, but I didn’t know about any of this…” I gestured around the room with my head. “Makes me wonder what else I don’t know about. It’s too bad. I had a crypted phone in my backpack that I could have used to do some research, but that asshole gang took it.”
“I could…” Benny started to say. He put out his hands and tried to push himself up.
I stopped him. “You’re not doing anything right now. Just get some rest.”
Benny lay back down and closed his eyes. Dr. Treadwell was examining another patient in a far corner. She stood up and turned to leave. I caught up with her as she was going out the door. I asked her about Benny.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said as we walked, “but the wound was pretty superficial. He should be okay once his stitches heal.”
I stared at her. “Did you really quit working for the Corps to be here?”
She smiled. “I’m not the only one. It happens more than you might think.”
“What do you mean?”
She nodded toward the main work area. “You don’t know about Travis?”
I shook my head.
“Travis was once a senior programmer at InfoCorp. He gave it all up, to join our cause.”
“What!” I turned and stared where she’d been looking. “No way — nobody would do that.”
Dr. Treadwell smiled. “You’d be surprised at what people will sacrifice for what they believe in.”
She turned and walked away. My head was spinning. I thought about it — the things Travis knew about, the mystery of where he’d come from. It seemed impossible but…
I realized that I was pretty exhausted too. I found Travis again. I couldn’t help looking at him differently after what Dr. Treadwell had said. He arranged for a cot for me not far from Benny. As soon as I lay down I passed out.
☼
I woke with a hand shaking me. “Alex,” a voice said. “Alex, wake up.” I sat bolt upright and stared around in confusion. Then I remembered where I was. Light was pouring through a nearby window — it was morning. I looked over. The voice belonged to Travis. His hand was on my shoulder.
“Your friend,” he said, his expression grave. “He’s disappeared.”
CHAPTER 20
Reappearance
It didn’t seem possible that Benny could sneak away from this place. I didn’t think he could even walk.
“Somehow he got past the guards,” Travis said. “It would be impossible for anybody to break in unnoticed, but they’re not watching as closely for people leaving. His wound was pretty severe. We all thought he was too injured to go anywhere. Obviously that’s not true.”
“Benny might be a bit slow,” I said, “but I can’t believe how well he knows these streets. If he’s gone, we’ll never find him.”
“He’s put all of our lives in danger,” Travis said. “We’re going to have to move. They’re packing the stuff up as we speak.”
“What?” I said. “Because of Benny? He’d never tell.”
“We can’t afford to take a chance.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, hanging my head.
“It was my decision to rescue him,” Travis said. “It’s me that’s responsible. Anyway, moving’s not that big a deal. We’ve done it so often we’ve got it down to a science.”
Travis didn’t seem like the same easy-going eccentric who’d taught me at the co-op school. Now he had an angry edge, something I’d never seen before. I had a fleeting thought that the Rebels might have gotten rid of Benny, then made up the story about him leaving. But then why save him in the first place? And why move if he wasn’t a threat? I put the idea out of my head. Anyway, I had no way of finding him. If he’d wanted me to know where he was going he would have told me.
After a wash and a quick breakfast of some kind of mashed grain, I followed Travis over to a group that was packing up the sleeping area. They were folding up the cots, which were made from thick canvas strung across hinged tubular frames, and piling them on a wheeled cart.
“You can give them a hand,” Travis said, gesturing at the group.
I nodded and joined them, collapsing the nearest cot and carrying it over. Nearby was a young girl, probably about my age. She had light brown skin and dark, curly hair tied back in a ponytail. Something about her was familiar. She looked up, caught me eyeing her and smiled. I felt my cheeks flush. I looked away and concentrated on cot folding.
Fifteen minutes later all the cots were ready. A couple of guys tied them down on the carts and wheeled them away. The guy in charge directed us to another room, to start packing up the cooking utensils. I tensed when the girl moved up to walk beside me.
“You’re Alex, aren’t you,” she said.
I looked up, shocked. “Do I know you?”
She laughed and her face lit up. “Sort of. I came to a few of your classes at the co-op school.”
I thought back. I couldn’t remember. Finally it came to me — a skinny kid that showed up for class a couple of times. But she didn’t look like this…
Suddenly I realized who she was. “You’re Travis’ daughter.”
She nodded. “I’m Laura,” she said, holding out her hand.
I shook it. Travis had never mentioned to anyone in class that she was his daughter, and I guess nobody asked. She’d only come a couple of times.
She had black eyes and a smile that overflowed with life. She was really cute, but I felt a stab of guilt even looking at another girl so soon after what happened to Cindy… Suddenly it all came rushing back and my throat tightened. I felt tears welling in my eyes. I looked away.
“Are you okay?” I heard Laura’s voice, and snapped out of it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, pulling myself together.
We headed for a door at the far end of the room.
“It must have been rough to go on the run like this,” I said, fighting to take my mind off things.
She shrugged. “Yeah. I’m still sort of getting used to it. It’s a hard life, but we’ve got no choice now.”
I imagined what her life must have been like before, if what Dr. Treadwell had said was true. If she’d really gone from the luxury of the Corp Ring to living in squalor and on the run, she didn’t show any bitterness about it.
We split up again as the guy in charge directed us to different tasks. I didn’t see her again that day. I tried to focus on what was happening with Travis and the rest of the Rebels. I asked Travis about trying to find out if Uncle Zack was still alive.
“I’ll get some of the tech-savvy guys to check into it,” he said. “While we’re waiting, maybe you can help us out. We can always use another man.”
☼
The move went pretty smoothly. Like Travis said, they had the process down to a science. Our new digs were several hours away, in a monster building with a row of steps running up to a wide terrace, with big stone pillars at the entrance. I guess they’d scouted out lots of potential hideouts ahead of time and picked one far enough away from the one we’d been at. The building had running water, which was pretty awesome.
Even with all the Rebels’ experience, it had taken half a day to pack, and another full day to complete the move. I felt like I was responsible for it and all the disruption it had caused. I had no control over Benny, but he’d been taken in along with me. Some of the Rebels were already down on me. This wouldn’t help. I still felt guilty when I found myself keeping an eye out for Laura, but anyway I hadn’t seen her since that first time.
A few days later we were settled in. I helped around the place, doing odd jobs. One day we were hauling some equipment up the front steps, which was pretty tiring work. During a break I stepped to one side to get my breath, and caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I scanned around. At first there was nothing. Then I saw it again, beside a building to the north. I glanced over at the guards on either side of the steps. They hadn’t seen anything. I kept an eye out, careful not to let the guards see me. I didn’t want to alert them until I knew what was going on.
Finally I saw it. Benny. He peeked out from the corner and waved. He was in a position where only I could see him. I took a chance and looked in his direction, nodding to let him know he’d gotten my attention.
Tonight, he mouthed the words, pointing at the north side of our new hideout. I nodded again, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to swing it.
I’d been assigned a cot in a large room with a bunch of other guys. It was nothing fancy, but it beat sleeping in some alley waiting to get my head bashed in. But it made it hard to slip away. I wondered what Benny was up to. He was probably wise not to show his face back here after running off like that, but why did he leave in the first place? And now why was he back?
I decided there was no point in sneaking around. Late that night I just got up headed for the front door. A guard with a rifle was posted just outside of it.
I moved to push past him. He shoved his rifle out and blocked me.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said.
“I can’t allow that,” the guard said.
I stepped back. “What do you mean? Am I a prisoner here or something?”
The guard hesitated. “It’s a safety thing,” he said. “It’s dangerous out there.”
I stared at him. I knew he was right. It was dangerous, but was that the only reason?
“I need to stretch my legs and get some fresh air,” I said. “I won’t go far.”
He stood for a few seconds in the moonlight, studying me. “You can walk along the side of the building,” he finally said, “but stay in sight.”
I gave him one last look. At some point I was going to have to test whether I was free to leave, but not right now.
“Okay,” I nodded, and started walking.
The guard moved out past the northeast corner so that he could watch me. I had nowhere to go anyway. I just headed down the wall, like he’d instructed. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to find Benny. I assumed he’d contact me somehow.
I walked right to the end, to the farthest corner, and turned to look back at the guard. He was still standing there, where I’d left him, nervously, with his rifle at the ready.
I stared into the blackness ahead of me, waiting. I respected Travis and the Rebels, but there was something else going on. I’d see some of them whispering to each other and stealing glances at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. I kept bugging Travis about trying to find out more about Uncle Zack. He always claimed that they were working on it, but they didn’t seem to be working very hard.
I glanced around, looking for Benny, trying not to be too obvious. There was the sound of a cough to my right. I froze. The space behind the building was in shadow even in the daytime, and now it was late at night — all was blackness.
“Hi,” a voice whispered. A large shape stepped into a nearby patch of moonlight, behind the building, out of view of the guard.
It was Benny.
“Where have you been?” I whispered back. I made sure my back was to the guard so he wouldn’t see my lips moving.
“Around,” he said.
“Keep it down,” I whispered. “They’re watching me.”
He reached into his inner jacket pocket. I couldn’t see very well, but his shirt was torn open and it looked like he’d pulled out Dr. Treadwell’s stitches and crudely sewn the wound back up himself.
“You’re going to get an infection,” I said. “You shouldn’t be walking around like that.”
“It’s nothin’,” he said. His hand emerged gripping a small rectangular shape.
“You said you wanted this,” he said, holding up the object. It was my crypted phone.
“What!” I had to fight to keep my voice down.
He held the phone under the brightest part of the light beam. “It still works,” he whispered. “I tried it.”
“How the hell did you get it back?” I said.
“You’ll tell them?” he said. “How I got it for you?”
He held it out. I stepped around the corner to take it. There were blotches of what looked like blood on it.
“That’s great, Benny,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have done that. It’s too dangerous.” I gestured with my head back the way I’d come. “Come on, let’s go in. I’ll smooth things over with Travis and we’ll get the doctor to look at you.”
He drew back. “Don’t like those guys.”
�
��What’s wrong with them?” I wasn’t sure what they’d done that put him off. “They’re trying to get rid of the government — that’s good, isn’t it?”
He hesitated.
“What’s going on there?” the voice of the guard called out behind me. “Get back here. Are you talking to somebody? Who’s there?”
I stuffed the phone under my shirt and stepped back around the corner where the guard could see me. He was walking in my direction.
“It’s nothing,” I called back, and tried to wave him off. He kept coming.
I turned my back on him again to talk to Benny. “Come back with me and I’ll get Dr. Treadwell to sew you up again properly,” I whispered. I glanced over, but he was gone.
CHAPTER 21
A Dilemma
It was tough finding a hiding place for the phone. There was no ‘private’ space for anybody at the hideout. Travis might be okay, but I didn’t trust some of the guys around him. I didn’t want to tell them about the phone, and if I kept it on me someone would notice it sooner or later. I hid it behind a broken electrical panel in one of the storerooms. It wasn’t that secure, but it was the only place I could think of.
The next day there was another big meeting. I wasn’t a full-fledged Rebel member, so I wasn’t invited. The hideout was almost empty. I rescued the phone from its hiding place, found a deserted room, and checked it out. The battery was three-quarters drained. The phone had a solar panel. It could be charged in sunlight, but I’d have to leave it out somewhere for at least a couple of hours.
I was about check for messages when the phone vibrated in my hand. The ringer was muted but it was clear what was happening — I was getting a new message.
A jolt went up my spine as I checked the display. Was it one of Fatso’s cronies? Or even Fatso himself? That would make sense. A disturbing thought surfaced in my head. The phone wasn’t supposed to be traceable by SecureCorp, but what if Fatso had his own special way of tracing it? He was a crook, after all. Worse still, what if he’d contacted SecureCorp and was working with them to recapture me?
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