The cutter warmed in my hand. “Come on.” I still couldn’t see the Enforsers, but I could hear the sirens on their pods. I wondered how many pods were on my trail.
I’d caused a lot of trouble tonight. They obviously were seriously angry. I thought of Bren, and wondered if his parents had been told yet. My Papa told me it was 03:40. Less than two hours had passed.
It felt like I’d been dodging Enforsers for days.
Now I saw the flashing lights. They were coming from several directions, but they were all converging toward me. Maybe half a kilometer away and not moving as fast as I would have expected. They must have noticed I’d stopped. They thought that I was trying to hide and that they could sneak up on me. They must’ve thought I was a bugging idiot. Like I was going to miss Enforser pods sneaking up on me.
The nanocutter softly beeped. Finally! A moment later, my Papa fell to the ground, taking the soggy wad of glue with it. The glue left a sticky residue behind. I rubbed at the sticky spot and bent to pick up the Papa. My wrist felt naked, cold, raw. I guessed the Papa would keep working even if I wasn’t wearing it, so I could use it to throw the Enforsers off my trail.
I had to get rid of the Papa fast.
I cast a fond glance at the rocket cycle, whispering thanks to Rojer. Something caught my eye and I peered closer. A word had been embossed on the left side of the machine in fancy letters.
CYJET
He must have done that after I’d gone to Fil’s station. I patted the CyJet and broke into a run, pocketing the cutter again. You never knew when a tool like that would come in handy. I stuck to the edge of the house I’d hidden the CyJet behind. I would throw the Papa as far as I could down the street and then make for the edge of town. Without the Papa, the odds would be evened out. If I found a good place to hide, they’d have to give up. Or something.
I took the Papa in my right hand and, giving it one final glance to say goodbye, wound up to toss it.
The cutter.
I fished the cutter out fast, goose bumps covering my neck as inspiration struck. I dashed back into the shadows near the house and crouched, peering through the gloom to see what I was doing. A soft blue light emanated from the nanocutter’s readout. It was just enough to see by.
I set the nanocutter for rez-stik again, guessing that the Papa’s case would be no more than a millimeter thick. I had to be fast. Luckily, the nanocutter hadn’t cooled down completely, so it beeped gently within twenty seconds of placing it on the side of the Papa. I kept the nanocutter activated as I tried to work the casing of the Papa open. No luck. I’d have to cut another side, maybe even two more.
It felt like forever before the nanocutter beeped two more times. I had an extremely shallow cut on three of the sides of the Papa’s casing, but the sirens were getting louder, the lights flashing brighter and brighter.
If this worked, I would need the Enforsers to be as far away from the CyJet as possible. I got moving, ducking behind the house and making my way through the yards, deeper into the city. After a few minutes, I hid behind another house. Holding the cutter’s handle in my mouth, I tried to direct the soft light at the Papa in my hands. I could just barely get a fingernail into the cuts I’d made, but wasn’t able to budge the case open at all. Had I cut it deeply enough?
No time to check. I needed something stiff and strong but very narrow. Pointy even.
No way. The spoke in my pocket. Pulling the bent spoke out, I worked one end carefully into a cut and wedged the casing slightly open. A little crack widened. I increased the pressure, thrilled. So far, so good.
An Enforser pod screamed overhead.
I ducked instinctively, dropping the spoke. I hit the ground on all fours, mentally screaming at myself, searching for the skinny metal bar. There! I propelled myself to my feet and tried to find a better place to duck into to give myself more time.
Nothing. Every yard was the same. Two trees and an eight-by-eighteen–meter yard of oxi-grass. I had to figure this out fast. I kept moving, peering into the tiny innards of the Papa. It was hard to keep my hands steady as I moved. Saliva dripped out my mouth around the handle of the nanocutter. I fought back the need to gag at having my mouth forced open for so long. I needed the light.
I had to be careful not to destroy whatever the CyJet was calibrated to sense so it would start. But that was secondary. There had to be a transmitter somewhere in the Papa. A tiny capsule caught my eye. That had to be the knockout. Using the spoke, I popped the capsule out and crushed it into the oxi-grass.
Two more Enforsers flew by overhead, much slower than before, spotlights probing the yard I was in. I hugged the house wall, forcing myself to focus. The only way to get away from them was to destroy or remove the transmitter. I knew what those looked like. I held the Papa closer to the light of the nanocutter, sweat and spit mixing into sticky drips that slid down my face and chin.
There would be an antenna of some kind. Maybe more than one. Using the spoke, I tapped each miniscule component. Needle. Slide that out, drop it. Heart rate monitor. Leave it. Several incredibly tiny chips and multiple rails of circuit. Leave those. On the edge of awareness, I heard several pods land in the street on the other side of the house. I scrubbed sweat from my eyes.
No time! My heart thundered loudly in my chest, distracting me. I swallowed around the cutter handle. I blinked. It looked like another needle, but it was pointing up. It had to be the transmitter. I prodded at it; it wiggled a little. I poked at the solder around its base, scraping it away. I wanted to keep the transmitter intact. I prayed it had its own power source, guessing that it must have some kind of failsafe battery.
It was finally loose. I gingerly eased it out of the Papa. I heard voices as I stepped away from the house wall. Commands and shouts. Lights flashed from several directions. I took the cutter in my left hand, which still held the Papa. I ran across the yard and headed toward the house whose back wall faced this house’s rear. This was going to work. “Come on,” I said. A grunt escaped me as I flung the tiny transmitter, so light I could barely feel it in my palm.
No time to wait and see where it had landed. I took off, praying nobody would come around the house I’d been hiding behind. The shouts were suddenly louder. They’d seen the transmitter signal moving. Or they thought I was making a break for it. Either way, I had to move. I ran hard, ducking around the east side of a house on the street behind the road the Enforser pods had parked on. Then I ran like crazy, trying to stay in the shadows.
CHAPTER 12
I found the CyJet where I’d left it. I was a little surprised that the Enforsers hadn’t tracked it down so they could take it in. I guessed they were too intent catching me. And killing me.
As I’d run up the street, I had folded the casing of the Papa back into place and put the spoke back into my left pocket and the handy nanocutter in my right pocket. I racked my brain. I needed to be able to keep wearing the Papa on my wrist so I could still ride the CyJet. That is, if the Papa would still start it.
I passed my hand holding the Papa in front of the sensor on the left of the console and pressed the start button. The CyJet rumbled to life. Unreal. It had worked. The casing needed to be held closed, and I still needed to be able to wear the Papa. In the shadows, I could only barely make out the time. 03:50? I guessed I still had a couple of hours of darkness. I needed to be out of the city and a long way away before the sun came out.
As I took my hand away from the sensor, the CyJet settled back down. I briefly thought of wrapping the spoke tightly around the casing of the Papa. No way. Even if I could bend the spoke that tightly, which I doubted I could do, it would hurt my wrist when I tied the Papa back on. I needed something thin, or some glue. A strap would work.
I could make a strap.
It took some doing, and when I checked my Papa, it showed that two minutes had passed, but I was able to tear a short strip of cloth off the bottom of my shirt. Using my hands and teeth, I got the strap tightly tied around the Papa’s ca
sing. I shook it; the strap stayed in place. I tied the Papa back on my wrist with another piece of shirt, got on the CyJet, and fired it up. The Enforsers would figure out what I’d done with the tracker soon if they hadn’t already. I needed to go.
Staying low, I directed the CyJet to the road, glancing behind me. In the illumination of the streetlamps a few blocks away, I saw two Enforser pods with a lot of movement around them. I’d seen another pod on the next street over as I’d run this way. I eased the CyJet across the road and started putting on speed, hoping to make it at least to Edge Road before the Enforsers got in their pods again. They could easily track me if they were flying above me, and I was sure the pods could get higher than the CyJet could fly.
Besides, I really didn’t want to spend any more time as high as I’d gotten coming out of the Enjineering Dome.
Before long, I was on Edge Road, cruising toward Hope Park and finally feeling like my heart rate was coming down to normal levels. I knew I needed a plan, but for now, I just wanted to find a place to hide and rest. As the adrenaline that had been carrying me most of the night dissipated, exhaustion hit me. I felt drugged, almost dizzy. Like I was fighting a couple of knockouts.
Behind me, the sirens of the Enforser pods shattered the relative calm that had returned to the New Frisko night. I poured on the speed and was soon crossing over the grounds of Hope Park. If I could get out of sight quickly enough, they wouldn’t know where to pick up my trail. I remembered momentarily that Hope Park had surveillance sensors here and there, but given the short moments I’d spent exploring past the park, I was pretty sure that the sensors didn’t extend into the wilderness beyond the park.
And suddenly I was out of the city of my birth and life. I was moving fast, skimming the ground and dodging trees and shrubs as the CyJet climbed with the slopes of the foothills. I’d never been so far outside the city. Every kid in New Frisko tried leaving the city at least once, curious and wanting to explore. But that had been one of the clues that Admins knew where we were at all times. Enforsers always showed up within minutes of the sensors catching the kids leave.
What about the EarComs? Were they tracked, too?
I reached for mine but stopped. If I got rid of it, I’d be completely alone; I’d have no way to talk to anyone.
The New Chapter’s motto came to me: Better safe than sorry.
But not yet. I pulled the CyJet to a stop under a tree and activated my EarCom. I paused a second before saying my dad’s name. If I started talking to people, the Admins might be able to pinpoint where I was. But I was going to be quick.
I mentally apologized to my parents and then called my dad.
“What? Who—” my dad’s voice was rough.
“Dad. It’s me. I’m sorry.” I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “I don’t know what happened. But I have to go. The Bug’s gone. I—” What else to say?
“Nik? What are you—”
“I’m sorry. I have to go. I’ll stay safe.” I disconnected immediately. I couldn’t answer questions. I didn’t have time and I had no idea what was going on.
I pulled the EarCom out, but I had another thought. The sweat pouring down my back felt suddenly cold. My face went hot. Bug me, this was bad. But I had to. I put the EarCom back in and whispered Jan’s name.
“Who is this?” Her voice was much clearer than my dad’s.
“Jan. This is Nik. I can’t stay on. I know it’s late.”
“Where’s Bren? He’s not in bed.” How did she know that? Bren must have actually woken her up.
“Something really bad happened. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how—”
“What? Something what happened?” I could almost see her eyes go wide from the fear in her voice.
“It’s Bren. We snuck out. We thought the Bug was gone.” I couldn’t stay on if the Admins were tracking my frequency. I had to finish this. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” The words. I had to say the words.
“What happened to Bren?” Jan’s voice broke on his name.
“He’s dead. The Bug got him. I don’t know what happened because it didn’t get me. I have to go; they’re trying to kill me.”
“Nik, what—”
I yanked the EarCom out of my ear and threw it past the tree I was hiding under.
Fighting the pain and fatigue back down, I pulled out of my hiding place and got moving, but I went back the way I’d come. After a few kilometers, I veered off and followed a different path between trees and around rocks. Maybe getting rid of the EarCom would throw them off my trail. As I rode, I tried not to think about my parents and Jan. And Bren and Jan’s parents.
I focused on the road. I wished the CyJet had a light that would illuminate the ground ahead of me. I should have thought of that. But no, it was probably for the best. The Enforsers would be looking everywhere; I didn’t want to give them a bright light anywhere out here to home in on.
The terrain was rough. Trees clustered thickly here and there with bushes and irregular small hills, so I had to pay close attention to the path in front of me. As I rode, I climbed higher. I wasn’t heading directly up a mountain or anything, but if I turned more to the right, I would be. There was a place where a few of the foothills crested in front of the larger mountains farther to the east. I wanted to get over that crest.
I’d grown up calling everything to the east of New Frisko the Wilderness. In Ekosystems class, we’d learned that there was more to it than just wild lands. There were remnants of old cities and smaller towns. We’d been taught about lakes, forests, and the animals that populated them. On one memorable day, Teacher Harper had talked about why New Frisko got so much rain, how the ocean to the west of the old city had currents and stuff and made the clouds and wind. Or something like that.
I noticed that I was crossing over, for the second or third time, an ancient road from before the Infektion. Finally the CyJet brought me to the top of a big foothill. I looked around, trying to figure out where to go. I lost a long minute or two just sitting on top of that hill, taking it all in.
Behind me, to the west, were the streetlights, regular buildings, and large domes of New Frisko. I couldn’t see any sign of the old city that they said was even farther west or of the ocean they’d always talked about. I’d always wanted to see the ocean. I noted for a moment that my heart rate had returned to a steady 90 or so. I heard my pulse louder, just inside my ears, for a moment as I scanned the countryside, seeing signs of the old civilization and how the wilderness had taken it back over. Would New Frisko look like this one day? Would there be a day that all humans were gone and our cities all looked like they’d been ground down, softened, and broken up by some unstoppable force?
Old roads and highways, more pale than the rest of the land, criss-crossed the foothills as far as I could see. They looked like paths where huge ghostly creatures, maybe huge snails, had wandered, leaving a trail of asphalt and pavement behind them. Some of the roads were wide and cluttered with debris; others were narrower and mostly free of what I assumed were old cars.
The pre-Infektion people drove those machines everywhere. Huge, unbroken areas of homes had been so isolated from work areas and supply stores that the people had been forced to drive to do even the smallest of tasks.
Based on what we’d been taught in school, I imagined that if I kept going east, I would eventually get to a place of fewer roads and no towns at all. But for now, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dark shapes of trees pulverizing their way up through old roads and hundred-year or more old buildings falling to pieces. In the faint light, the buildings, roads and sagging signs were like ghosts haunting the new world that we’d created, reminders of what had come before.
I shook off the strange feeling. The tightness around my eyes reminded me that I hadn’t slept at all that night, and it was already past four in the morning. I needed to find a place to hole up and rest. I tossed a final look over my shoulder. The Enforser pods had fanned out over the city; they were probably waking p
eople up with their racket. Two pods were headed in my direction.
Leaning forward, I angled the CyJet down the hill and aimed for a road that could have fit maybe eight CyJets flying side by side. Why had they made these roads so wide? What a waste. Once I hit the road, I poured on the speed and let the ghostly path lead me generally to the east. I had to dodge strange, twisted piles of metal and trees regularly, but that didn’t slow me down. It seemed like the longer I was out in the dark, the more my eyes got used to the poor light. Part of my mind wandered as I rode. I wasn’t sure how far I had to go before they stopped searching for me. But if I left New Frisko, I couldn’t figure out what had really happened with Bren.
I thought of Bren’s mom and dad and sister, and I shoved the image of their heartbroken faces out of my mind. I couldn’t deal with that right now. Then there were the other Pushers. When word got out about Bren, Melisa, Koner, and Pol would have no way of figuring out what had happened. The Admins would have to say something that kept people reassured and calm. Like blaming me.
If they did, they’d be right.
I knew I was responsible for Bren; I shouldn’t have been so careless. I couldn’t think about that right now. I had to get away, find a place to stop, rest, and think.
I must have outdistanced the Enforsers because for the next hour, I saw no sign of them. By that time, I must have gone thirty kilometers or more. I couldn’t believe how far I’d come from New Frisko. The road I was following led me deeper into mountains where trees sprouted thickly. Most of the trees had pale trunks that glowed in the moonlight. As I rounded a hill, I saw a road that branched off of the one I was on. The new road headed almost directly east and looked like it cut through thick groups of hills and incredibly tall forests. That should work.
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