The guard nodded and turned to open the door. He hid the panel with his body and punched in a number. The door stayed locked. He punched in the number again with no success.
“Oh for . . . I’ll do it.” Ms. Peters pushed him back and entered a code, still blocked by the guard’s back. The lock opened and she stormed out. The door banged shut behind her.
To me, it looked like Ms. Peters had helped it.
The guard swore. He tried the door five more times before it finally unlocked. He stood in the doorway, holding it open.
“Come on.”
As I stood up, an arm reached around the door and grabbed him, slamming his head into the edge. He fell, and I jumped over the table, landing on his chest. I felt his ribcage give and break just as a knife cut his throat.
A soldier stepped around the corner and wiped the blade clean on the guard’s shirt. “I’m Cecil, your contact. I didn’t think that bitch was ever going to leave.”
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 12:02 P.M.
Bryson was scared. He’d been scared before. In fact very recently, but this was something new. This he felt emanating from his bones until it numbed his face. Here he was, sitting in a tin can in space, surrounded by nothing but vacuum and death, and things were going very wrong.
Even in the sheltered environment of the lab and his rooms, the rumors were starting to filter through. Key systems shutting down and coming back up. Simple things like primary lighting in a hallway or vid screens in one of the bars on the promenade. And scary things like environmental control and the attitude jets. A huge thing like the city didn’t stay in orbit on its own. Even something as simple as docking a shuttle could affect its position—nothing that could be detected by a human, but things could move over the course of a thousand dockings.
He was scared of dying up here, alone in his lab, while the rest of the station evacuated or panicked. He knew he had released the virus into the systems. It was that damn memory chip the ice queen had given him. His routines had awakened the virus and spread it to the internal systems. He wasn’t happy about it anymore. This was no ordinary virus that would cause some problems before being eradicated. This one was destructive, and if left unchecked, would bring the station down. And it was moving fast! It needed to be stopped. He hoped SoCal’s scanners and firewalls were up to the task.
The door to the airlock opened and Bryson turned around in his chair to look. The only thing he saw were the guards standing outside staring in. Both the inside and outside doors of the lock had opened at the same time, allowing unfiltered city air into the lab. An impossibility. The interior airlock shut and his view of the guards disappeared.
He faced his screen again, his entire body tense and the blood running cold in his veins. He was going to die down here, along with everyone else in his lab. His first thought went to Ailsa.
If they got out of here, the first thing he would do was get to the closest escape station and use it. He—they—had been walked down the hallways to their rooms enough times to know there weren’t any along the way. Their best bet at finding one was to go somewhere they hadn’t been before—if they got the chance. It was also the best way of getting lost.
The airlock doors opened again. This time it was only the inside one, and a guard stood on the other side.
“They’ve ordered everyone to their quarters,” the guard said. “Let’s get moving. Same routine as always, three at a time.” He pointed at Bryson. “You’re in the first group.”
Bryson filed out with Ailsa and a tech. They were herded into the elevator and rode the two floors to their living spaces. The doors refused to open for a full thirty seconds when they reached their floor. When they finally did, Ailsa scrambled ahead of the guard to get out and sat panting on the floor.
“Come on, Ailsa,” Bryson said. “I’ll help you to your room.”
“They’re just gonna let us die here, you know. The city will shut down and they’ll leave us behind.”
“We’re too important for them to do that.” He wasn’t sure he believed it, but it was what she needed to hear. He put an arm around her back and under her arm, helping her to her feet.
“You are. I’m not.”
“Then we stick together, okay? If they evacuate me, they’ll have to take you too. Okay?” He watched as relief flooded through her eyes.
“O . . . okay.”
“Good. Now come on.”
When they got to their quarters, the guards didn’t even put up a fuss when he helped her into his room. He heard the familiar sound of the door closing and locking.
twelve
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 12:11 P.M.
TOGETHER WE PUSHED the body back into the room and closed the door. There wasn’t anything we could do about the blood on the floor.
“How did you find me?”
“I was waiting for you to get out of the shuttle when I saw the soldiers head in. When they escorted you out, I figured it was my job to try and get to you.”
“And you’re a SoCal soldier?”
“Nah. It’s a great cover up here, though. One of the most common articles of clothing in the city these days.” He led me from the room, my hands still zip-tied together. “I’ve been up here since ACE fell. Good thing I stayed. I think.”
“When do I get these things off me?” I lifted my hands behind my back, even though he couldn’t see them.
“As soon as we get off this floor. Not a good place to be.”
He led me to the end of the hall, stopping at a panel flush with the wall. It had a single round keyhole in it. No electronic locks here.
“Come on. They build these things to get easy access to everything for maintenance. Easy is a relative term though. You won’t have any issues, but the place is a bit small for me.”
Great. More small places. It seemed to be a constant that ran through my life. Cecil fished a key from his pocket and opened the access way.
“Took me three weeks to get a key.” He pushed me ahead and closed the door behind him. “Nice and quiet,” he whispered. “These places have been crawling with people since the city started having issues. Follow me.”
The space was narrow. I could walk facing forward with my shoulders barely touching the outer walls, but Cecil had to do a sideways crabwalk. The walls were plain composite and covered in pipes and ducting. Dust blew up with every step. I struggled to hold back a sneeze, finally giving up and trying to bury my nose into my shoulder. It didn’t work. Cecil looked at me, motioning for me to turn around. I saw the flash of a blade in the light, tensing at the sight. The freedom from the zip tie felt wonderful. He struggled to pick up the tie from the floor.
“No use leaving this here to tell people where we’ve been,” he said. He shoved the zip tie into his pocket.
There was light in here, but it wasn’t much. A simple square patch of cold blue light every four feet on the ceiling. With Cecil walking in front, all my light came from behind me. His head blocked everything until we had passed it.
The corridor split into two. We turned right until we got to a simple ladder embedded into the composite. He started climbing without a word. I followed, careful not to get too close to his feet.
We skipped the next corridor, continuing up one more floor. Cecil stepped off the ladder and waited for me. Voices echoed up from below. He held his finger to his lips and motioned for me to follow again. The door we stopped at looked like the one we’d used to get into the maintenance corridors.
“The other side of this door is living space for some of the tradespeople who keep this city running. It’s the best place for us to emerge. They’ve been running around all day, trying to solve the issues that are cropping up. Walk around like you belong, and we should go unnoticed.” He took off his guard jacket and reversed it, hiding any trace of its military aspects.
“Where
are we going?”
“My room. From there we can figure out what to do next. Come on, let’s go.”
Pulling a spring-loaded lever on the door released the catch, and the door swung open. We walked out. A few people looked at us as we emerged, but he started talking about electrical problems on E-17 that had disappeared by the time he got there. I nodded and the interest waned. We were just a couple more people chasing down ghosts.
The conversation was the perfect cover. From what I overheard, everyone around us had had similar experiences over the last few hours. Things were getting worse. We passed through the residential area into what looked like a monitoring center. Vid screens were lit up, text scrolling red. Half of the text would turn green and disappear only to be quickly replaced by new problems.
“They control everything from here?” I asked.
“Nah. We’d never get into that section. Security is so tight, you need eight levels of clearance just to know where it is.” He winked. “Dead center of the city, actually. Same place all the computer equipment that runs this place is. It’s no big secret. Protected like nobody’s business though. This is a monitoring station. They put it close to where the tradespeople live so they can see what’s happening. This is a display of this segment. There are seven more.”
All the text on the boards suddenly went green and one by one fell off the display. Nothing red came to replace it. Within seconds, the screens were blank. There was a palpable sigh in the room.
“See, told ya,” one man said loud enough for others to hear. “It’s a bloody computer glitch. If they would have rebooted the damn thing hours ago, we could have all had regular days. Bastards don’t care about us working folk, do they?”
His question was answered by a quiet murmur. Everyone still watched the screens, waiting for them to suddenly jump back to life.
“Come on,” Cecil said.
We walked side by side out of the monitoring room, following the slow trickle of others doing the same.
“How many of you are up here?” I asked.
“Just a handful. I think there’s a couple of people from the insurgents that are creating havoc in San Angeles, but I don’t know who they are. Above my pay grade, I guess.”
“I know I’m here to get Bryson, but I really want to know how Ms. Peters knew so much about me. ACE was supposed to have created new records for my new name. How is it possible that she—that SoCal—managed to put the two personas together?”
“You have no idea how big and how powerful SoCal really is, do you?”
“I’m beginning to. I still want to know how she found out. Is there any way I can get into her office while she’s not there? Get a look at her files?”
“I don’t think so. She’s about as high up in SoCal as you can get and still be on Sat City 2. She’s higher than some on SoCal 1, but they say she likes it here.”
“So, how do I get in?”
“Not easily.”
“Not even through the maintenance corridors?”
“Sure, but you’ll never get out of them without being checked for ID.”
“Let that be my problem.” I rested my hand on my belly again. Sorry kiddo, I said to myself. But if they have all that information, we’ll never be safe. I gotta see what they know and if I can get rid of it, or we’ll never be free.
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 12:20 P.M.
The last thing Janice had expected was another ride up to SoCal 2, but that was exactly where John had taken her. They’d driven directly to the shuttle port on Level 7 and boarded the next commercial flight up. She didn’t get a private one this time.
The incoming shuttle had been packed to capacity. She’d watched as people streamed off almost like they would never stop. The look of relief on their faces was confusing. Something was going on. She didn’t dare ask John. He looked ready to snap as it was.
They boarded the shuttle with five other people and rode up to SoCal Sat City 2. Why was no one heading up with them? When they got there, there was no waiting. The shuttle landed and docked. The crowd trying to get on the departing shuttle was massive and bordering on unruly. They had to fight their way through.
From the shuttle port, it was a brisk walk across the promenade to the elevators, exiting at the top floor. They stopped at the security checkpoint before they reached their destination.
Ms. Peters’ office was the same as the last time Janice had been here. The same man offered them both glasses of water. This time, she waited for Ms. Peters to arrive and have a sip before she drank. She had always been a quick study.
“I had a conversation with your friend,” Ms. Peters said, looking straight at Janice.
“My friend?”
“Yes, Kris Merrill.”
Janice stood, almost spilling her water. “Where is she?”
“Sit. Down.” It was the first time Janice had heard emotion in Ms. Peters’ voice, and it scared the hell out of her. She gently lowered herself back into the chair. John hadn’t moved.
“But never mind that now.” Ms. Peters went on as if nothing had happened. “I believe I placed too much trust in you. Sending you back to monitor the girl was obviously a mistake.”
“I was attacked from behind.”
“So I’ve been told. And Manfred? Where were you when he was attacked?”
Janice reiterated her story. Ms. Peters didn’t interrupt her.
“And where is your stun gun?”
“She says the girl took it,” John said, speaking for the first time.
Ms. Peters never took her eyes off Janice. “I believe I asked you the question.”
From the corner of her eye, Janice saw John shift deeper into his chair. “What he said. It was in my hand when Kris attacked me from behind. When I came to, it was gone.”
“I see. You do know that Manfred was one of my best?”
Janice thought it was better not to answer. If he was one of her best, it was a miracle SoCal got anything done.
“John. Take her to medical. Have her completely checked out to see if it can corroborate her story.” She looked back at Janice. “I’ll check our data feeds. Let’s see what the cameras and sound pickups have to say about it.”
Janice shivered and the water in her glass formed concentric circles over the previously still surface.
Ms. Peters smiled.
John led Janice from the office. When they exited into the hallway he turned to her. “You better hope you’re telling the truth.”
“I am.”
What she really hoped was that there had been no cameras or audio pickups anywhere near the place. It was pretty unlikely. What she needed was a plan to get out of here. If the crowds kept up around the shuttle bay, it could help her. She followed John, trying to walk with more confidence than she felt.
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 12:28 P.M.
“I’m telling you, you’ll never make it. The maintenance shafts don’t go all the way there. You have to pop out and go through security to get back to maintenance,” Cecil said.
“Shit. Their very own fucking Level 6.”
“I never thought of it that way, but yeah.”
“People from maintenance go through all the time though, right?”
“Yeah, with special orders. They have to show the paperwork and get scanned before they’re allowed through.”
That had me stumped. There was no hiding under the back seats of cars or in tanker trucks filled with water to sneak through this one. “Is there any way you can fake the forms?”
“Not well enough to get through.”
“But enough to make them think I’m legitimate for a few seconds?”
“What are you planning?”
“If they always let through the trades with the proper paperwork, then as long as I can fool them long enough to get their
guard down—”
“Then we can take them out when they’re not expecting it.”
“Right.” I noticed he had used we instead of just me.
“These guys are highly trained, it won’t be easy.”
“Better trained than us?”
“Yes. And they have years of experience before they get a post like that. Someone with no field experience won’t have any hope of getting past them at all.”
“Not alone.”
Cecil paused. “No, not alone. Dammit. We’ll have to get you a weapon. Guns aren’t allowed up here, same rules that they have in San Angeles. They’re a bit more strict up here, though. Even security doesn’t have guns.”
“So what do they use?”
“Stun guns, tasers, shock sticks. That kind of stuff.”
Great. “I have experience with tasers and stun guns, and we trained on the shock stick in camp.”
“Any field experience?”
“With a taser. I guess you could call it that.” He looked at me sideways, but didn’t ask any questions.
“A shock stick is too big and bulky. They’d see it right away. A taser or a stun gun you can keep in your pocket. I have a couple stashed we could use.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have the taser and stun gun combo, would you?” May as well stick with what you know.
“Yeah, but I hate those things.”
“I love them.” That got me another sideways look.
We got back to the monitoring station. All the screens were still blank, and the place was almost deserted. Cecil had hidden his stuff in a maintenance corridor, so we were heading back into them the same way we’d come out. He stuck his key in the lock and we got back inside while the hallway was empty.
“Which way?” I whispered.
Cecil pointed left and up. I followed the corridor to another set of rungs in the wall. When I pointed, he nodded.
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