I smiled. “I guess great minds think alike — it’s the same as yours.”
She leaned forward and hugged me. “That’s so wonderful. See, we’re compatible in so many ways.”
Benny was still snoring in the corner. I hated to spoil Laura’s moment of happiness, but we had to talk. I held my finger to my lips and led her into another room.
“You can’t come with me,” I whispered when we were out of Benny’s hearing.
The expression of joy still lighting her face collapsed. “Why not?”
I looked at the floor.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
I looked up. She was trembling.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “But it’s going to be dangerous.”
“I don’t care.”
“Don’t argue,” I raised my voice. “You have to go back.”
I heard Benny move in the other room. I snuck back to check on him. He’d just rolled over.
“Benny can take you,” I whispered, nodding in his direction. “Neither of you can be where I’m going. Maybe you can convince him to get Dr. Treadwell to look at his wound…”
She started to cry. I took her in my arms. “Look, if what I’m planning works out, I’ll come back, I promise.”
“And if it doesn’t?” she said, her voice choked with tears.
I looked away.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said. “If you don’t want me around, say so. Otherwise, wherever it is you’re going, I’m coming with you.”
CHAPTER 32
Cutting the Cord
The next day the three of us continued toward the border of the Dregs and Tintown. I gave the gun I’d taken from the rapist to Laura, for protection. Benny let it slip that we were going to meet Wickham. When Laura heard, she gave me this suspicious look, but she didn’t say anything.
Laura and I talked as we walked. As always, I was torn between Cindy’s memory and the feelings that were building inside me. I kept reminding myself about Laura’s Appraisal, that we could never have a life together, but part of me refused to believe it. Maybe the doctors had been mistaken — maybe there was some way to fix it after all. They kept saying there was no way to lengthen your Appraisal, but had anybody tried to shorten it…?
Benny got more and more jumpy as we approached the border of the Dregs. I prayed that his fear would win out. There was no way I could take either him or Laura where I was going.
I started seeing stuff that was familiar. Late in the afternoon we crossed the fuzzy transition between the Dregs and Tintown. There were more people, who looked at us suspiciously. Once or twice a passerby gawked at the scar on Benny’s right temple, where his HUD should be, at the absence of a controller on his wrist, and at the oozing wound in his side.
Every time we passed someone Benny would get more anxious and slow down, like he was being held back by some invisible force. I had to Cam-surf all the time now. Benny’s eyes would go wide as he stared up at the cameras we were passing.
Late in the afternoon he started hanging back. He’d stand talking to himself, like he was trying to convince himself to keep going. I was stressing out too, as we got close to my old apartment. The image of my dad’s face when I told him about my Appraisal, the sound of the SecureCorp guys interrogating him, and his body smashing to the pavement, rushed through my brain.
Benny started lagging farther and farther behind. Finally, he disappeared altogether. I probably could have gone back and tracked him down, but he couldn’t be part of what I was planning, so I let him go. Anyway, I had a feeling he’d show up again before this was all over.
Now I had the problem of getting away from Laura. I’d been hoping that Benny could take her back to the Rebel hideout, but that option was gone now. As we got further into Tintown I felt more at home. Finally we were only a few blocks from where I was headed — the Center, our old meeting place. There was a danger that SecureCorp might know about it, but for what I wanted to do, it was necessary.
When we got there, I left Laura in one of our hiding spots nearby and staked the place out. It looked the same as always. I went back and got her. We pushed through the secret entrance, and settled in for the night. Again I told her to wait, and took off for a while. I had to make a phone call.
Sorry about your uncle, Richie texted over the crypted phone when I got through. I’d told him about Zack’s betrayal, and how he finally died.
You said you were looking for him, Richie continued. He had proof who he was…
It’s not your fault, I texted back. Neither of us knew how things would turn out.
He told me about the other guys in the Lost Souls. Jake had an Appraisal of 1.1. Not great, but acceptable. I envied him. Richie hadn’t heard from Spiro since my ‘death’. That couldn’t be good…
I worried that SecureCorp could somehow trace me through the crypted phone. Richie and some of his buddies are a lot more tech-savvy than I am. He convinced me that the phone really was safe — that even SecureCorp couldn’t hack into the signal.
I need a favour, I texted. It’s totally fine if you don’t want to get involved.
You’re dead, remember? he texted back. You need all the help you can get.
I described my plan to him, and he agreed.
Back at the Center, I talked to Laura. “A friend of mine’s coming to meet us tomorrow morning.”
“Why?” she said.
“He’s going to help us get to the Corp Ring without getting caught,” I lied. The lie didn’t really make that much sense, and anyway I hadn’t told her why I wanted to go to the Corp Ring, or what I wanted with Wickham, but she seemed to buy it.
I smiled. “So, if you see a big lug with curly blond hair coming at you in the dark, don’t freak out and shoot him — it’s just Richie.”
Her eyebrows came together. “What do you mean? You’ll be there too, won’t you?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I was just joking.”
She looked at me funny. We were both exhausted. I brushed the dust off the old mattress we used to sit on when we hung out here, and we both lay down on it. I put my arms around her. She didn’t resist.
“You know how I felt about my girlfriend, Cindy,” I whispered to her. She nodded. “I really like you,” I said, “but I’m still trying to work all that stuff out.”
“Sure, I understand,” she said.
I held her more tightly. “No matter what happens, know that I’ll always care for you.”
Her body stiffened, but she didn’t say anything. A few minutes later we were both asleep.
☼
I woke up, the HUD alarm beacon I’d set earlier flashing. I was still wrapped around Laura. She was asleep, breathing heavily. I carefully worked my arm out from under her and moved away. She twitched a couple of times, but didn’t wake up. I took one last look at the dark wavy hair flowing over her shoulder. She was so beautiful I had the urge to bend down and kiss her, but I didn’t dare.
I couldn’t just run off and leave her. I’d contacted Bailey and arranged for somebody from the Rebels to come and get her, and Richie had promised me that he’d look after her until they showed up. I knew I could trust him, but I had to be sure he’d even make it here. SecureCorp knew he was my best friend — they’d be watching him.
I climbed up high into the rafters of the building, where I’d be out of sight. I could still see Laura lying there, her knees drawn up and her hands together like she was praying, a childlike form on a torn-up mattress in a crumbling building in a dying city.
I must have nodded off for a while, because I was jerked awake by voices below. In the shadows, Richie was moving toward Laura with his hands raised. She was cringing behind a pillar with her gun drawn, and glancing desperately around, looking for something — someone — me.
I wished I’d found a spot that was closer. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Richie got within an arm’s-length. He said something to her. She lowered the gun, but st
arted yelling at him. I still couldn’t hear what she was saying. Richie was shrugging and trying to calm her down. She glanced around one last time. Finally, she just seemed to collapse inside. She hung her head and started to cry. Richie put a hand on her shoulder and she batted it away.
I felt tears running down my own cheeks. I wanted to go down there — to jump up from where I was crouching in the dark like a coward and tell her I was sorry — to make it all go away. But I stayed where I was.
Richie gestured for Laura to follow him. She resisted at first, and yelled something else at him. In the end, she stuffed the gun in her belt and followed. She didn’t have any choice. As soon as they were out of sight I made my way down.
I checked my pockets: the crypted phone in one, the bag of cards in the other. Once I was far enough away I’d check the melded card again to see what direction I should go.
I told myself I’d done Laura a favour, and I knew it was true. I couldn’t form any attachments; not ever, but especially now. Nothing could stand in the way of my completing my mission.
CHAPTER 33
Train Hopping
Now that I was back in the Quarters it was slow going. If I used the beacon too often I was bound to get caught. I only felt safe checking it a couple of times a day. Each time, I’d have to make a note of the number indicator to make sure I was actually getting closer. Once or twice I drifted in the wrong direction and the next time I looked I was actually farther away. The location the card was guiding me to was far to the west. I traveled west in the Quarters for as long as possible before turning south and crossing into the Corp Ring.
Something else had been scratching at the back of my brain since the beacon appeared. Apps like this always came with some kind of security. You didn’t want some creep who stole your card to end up at one of your private meetings. But there was no hint of that with this one. Was the card leading me into some kind of trap? After all, it was the melding of cards for Vita Aeterna and SecureCorp. For now, I shoved the idea into the background. Chances were that I wouldn’t live long enough to get that far. If I did, I’d deal with the consequences when I got where it was taking me.
In the afternoon, two days after I’d snuck away from Laura, I contacted Richie and he confirmed that somebody from the Rebels had shown up and taken her back home. He said she’d been upset, but in the end, had accepted it. She should be back at the Rebel hideout by now. I hadn’t seen any sign of Benny. Had he gone back to the Dregs and forgotten about me, or would he overcome his fear and try to follow me to Wickham?
☼
On the third day I finally made it to the edge of the Corp Ring. Now I had another problem. The distances I’d been traveling up to now had been small enough that I could make good time on my board. But according to the card display, there was another twenty kilometers to go inside the Corp Ring. Not only was that a long way to board, but there were far more cameras here. For every one of those kilometers I’d be under tight surveillance.
I decided to try a trick the kids used sometimes in the Corp Ring — train-hopping. It was a good way to travel long distances without being seen (or paying anything), but it was also incredibly dangerous. Hardly anybody I knew was wacko enough to do it on a regular basis, and a lot of kids had died trying.
The idea was to find a hidden spot, usually some kind of overpass, that spanned a transit line. First, you climbed up underneath the structure to a position directly over the line (which was dangerous enough — I knew kids that had died just doing that). The spot you chose had to be on a hill or a curve, someplace that the train would slow down (to at least give you a fighting chance of surviving what followed).
Then, when the train passed under you, you fought to keep from shitting yourself and jumped, and hung onto the roof by your fingernails until either you got bounced off and died, or got where you were going. The train made regular stops, so you could get off pretty easily (though doing it without getting caught was another issue).
I’d only ever done it once, and I had no desire to ever do it again. I like danger, and I like taking risks, but there’s a difference between taking risks and committing suicide. The line between the two was really thin for train-hopping.
The joke was, I still had the four hundred dollars in my shoe. For the first time in my life I could actually afford to pay for a ticket, but I couldn’t take the chance that I’d be recognized.
The spot I’d jumped from that one time wasn’t far from my current position, just inside the Corp Ring. I swallowed hard as I approached it — a truck overpass with a latticework of supports that spanned a line running in the right direction. Images flew through my head of the time I’d nearly died doing it before.
There were cameras on all the access points, but the crazies who were into train-hopping usually broke them as soon as they were installed. I gaped up at the angular web of steel above my head, and was grateful to see they’d kept up that tradition. I was lucky; right now there was nobody else around. With my board slung over my back, I climbed up the supports and made my way to a location directly above the tracks.
When I got to the jumping point, I was ten meters in the air. I held on tight. There were trains every few minutes. Whenever one passed below, my perch vibrated like an earthquake hit it. If I was to fall, and if by some miracle the fall didn’t kill me, I’d probably get run over by the train.
I let a couple of trains go by, mentally rehearsing what I would do when the time came, and working up the nerve. Finally, I couldn’t stall any longer. I was facing away from the oncoming train, but I could hear it rumbling behind me. In seconds, it was directly under my position. The vibration almost knocked me off as I straightened up, getting ready to leap to my doom.
I waited for the lead car to pass, then leaned out and tensed my legs. I could see my distorted reflection in the stainless-steel roof of the car flying below me: squat and ugly, like the toad I was about to imitate. I said a prayer, and jumped. I landed okay, but the shaking bounced me toward the edge of the slippery-smooth roof. There was nothing to hang onto. I was an arm’s length from being tossed over the side and cut to pieces by the wheels. I scanned the roof in a panic. A finger-sized knob, an antenna or something, stuck out a couple of meters away. I kicked at the slick metal and got enough traction to propel myself at it. If I missed, I was dead.
As I jumped, the car jerked sideways and knocked me on my back. I saw the knob go by, but I was bouncing sideways. It was all over. I rolled off the rounded edge.
I was waiting for the end, but stopped with a jerk in mid-air. I twisted my head around and looked up. The strap of my board had caught on the knob. I was hanging from it, with buildings and streets flying by at eighty kilometers an hour, the steel wheels grating on the rails below. I turned my head and looked in the window. Inside the car, a middle-aged woman stared at me in horror.
The strap was old and frayed. It wasn’t going to hold for long. I twisted my body enough to grab it, and hooked my right toe onto the gutter of the window beside me. My muscles screamed with pain as I hauled myself back up. After what seemed like an eternity, I worked my way onto the roof and held on.
So far we hadn’t made a stop, and I knew we still had a long way to go. I wondered whether the woman who’d seen me would say anything, but when we made the first stop, nothing happened. If you were pressed flat on the roof, you weren’t visible from the platform, so if she kept her mouth shut, I’d be safe — until I tried to get off.
I hung on, vibrating and bouncing around like a marble in a slot machine, for five more stops. The blur of buildings flying by gradually grew in size and got fancier, as we approached one of the wealthiest sections of the Corp Ring. I’d managed to sneak a look at the card at one of the stops, so I knew the almost empty station we were approaching was close to where I wanted to go. Now it was time to get off.
Somehow I had to do that without running into SecureCorp.
☼
The train slowed as it approached the platf
orm, with me still lying in plain sight on the roof. There were hardly any SecureCorp people watching. That was unusual. It occurred to me that a lot of them might have been siphoned off to look for me in the Quarters.
I heard the stations had algorithms that analyzed the camera scans of the train and picked out anybody riding on top. It was dangerous, but I decided to get into position while the train was still moving. There was a spot at the very front of the car I was on, near the exit doors but away from any windows. My plan was to slide down onto the platform at the exact moment the train stopped. Then I could merge with the crowd pouring out of the exit.
It was easier than I was expecting. Once the train slowed, there was almost no vibration. The few guards I could see were looking the other way. I crawled along the roof and got into position. A female voice echoed through the sound system announcing our arrival. The train finally shuddered to a stop, and the bell dinged to say the doors were opening. I slid down and jumped to the platform just as a mass of humanity started pouring out. An alarm went off — the cameras had seen me. A couple of SecureCorp guys rushed over, but I was lost in the crowd.
I smiled. Something had finally gone right. I was alive and free. We were almost at the main exit.
That’s when I heard it — a woman’s voice shouting: ‘that’s him there’. I glanced around. The woman who’d seen me hanging outside her window had ratted me out after all. She was standing with two SecureCorp soldiers and pointing at me.
“Shit,” I said, and took off.
“Stop!” yelled a voice behind me.
The exit turnstiles were straight ahead. There was a soldier to one side. I flew toward the opposite side and took a flying leap over them.
“It’s him!” I heard a voice yell.
I had a big head start, but I had no idea where I was going, and I was in too much of a panic to Cam-surf. I turned down the nearest corner, then down another one. The excited voices behind me faded, but I heard cars starting, sirens wailing, and a chopper approaching in the distance. This wasn’t like the Quarters — there were almost no abandoned buildings to sneak into.
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