He whistled, and classical music started playing. He slowly edged off the side of the table and sidestepped gingerly.
The cacophony of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 streamed from hidden speakers. Strong, powerful notes enveloped the air between them.
Vance faced her and dropped the sheet to the floor.
Nancy gasped and took in his naked form. His legs had been replaced with metallic silver, thin but strong. Android legs like those of the robot police he manufactured.
Both arms were cybernetic steel, his tattooed flesh gone.
His entire chest above the abdomen to just below his neck had been replaced with a high-sheen metal that resembled a human’s chest. What was once skin was now replaced by the same strong, indestructible steel used for his police warriors.
Then there were the changes to his face. His left side remained human, but the right side of his face and skull had become cybernetic.
He stared at her with his fierce blue eyes, but they had changed too. His pupils were tinged with garnet. They glowed as he watched her.
“You won’t believe the things I can do now.” He strode from the table toward a large medibot. Bending at his knees, he lifted the droid in his arms and hoisted it above his head as a grin spread across his face.
Nancy shivered as she took in the transformation of Vance Drem.
Fifteen
Ida mulled the situation over while sitting on a skybus bench outside the TV station the next morning. A clear and sunny late winter day, she could see her breath as she contemplated the abduction of Nancy Brown.
After the events of the previous two days, she was scared of being discovered. What would happen if people found out about her power? She’d kept it hidden for so long.
She wanted to immediately leave Spark City. To run as far away as possible and try starting over again.
But at the moment, she needed to find Nancy and claim the reward from the station. Once she had the cash, she could make a comfortable life in a new city, and disappear. Maybe she’d travel west. She’d heard Denver was a good place to start over.
Too bad she had no idea where to start looking. Would Gatz have information? Ida had almost convinced herself to show up at his bar tonight for the job.
Almost.
She still hesitated, not wanting to get pulled into something dangerous. Her wartime nightmares had returned, and she feared sleep. She jumped at loud noises and was on constant edge, continually scanning her environment for danger. Am I going crazy like the other soldiers?
Worse, she had the eerie feeling she was being watched.
People hurried around the frenetic intersection that morning near the commuter skybus station. A market had been constructed along one of the avenues. Those who lived nearby could purchase vegetables such as potatoes and carrots. Farming was expensive and becoming rare. The available land had been destroyed over the years by environmental damage and territorial fighting between city-states. Farmers had relocated their plots to the rooftops of tall city towers. Only the wealthy could afford to shop for produce. Everyone else had to sustain themselves through protein packs they fed into cheap 3-D printers that churned out bland pellets.
Two men stood out from the rest of the daytime crowd. Wearing dark glasses and black suits, they didn’t look like office workers. One of the men purchased a coffee from a stand. As he paid, Ida crossed quickly toward another street.
This is a test. This is only a test of your emergency broadcast system. Ida remembered Tyren would say this as a joke when they were about to start a new mission. He always got a few chuckles, and usually a smirk from Ida.
Let’s see what these guys are up to.
She ducked into a small cafe with a glass facade facing the street front. She chose a table in the rear, noted an exit nearby, and sat with her back against the wall. Tyren had drilled it into her that a good soldier—a smart soldier—always positioned herself to see everything.
How would the two men react? She ordered a coffee when the barista asked her order from behind the counter. She waited and watched the street outside.
Sure enough, one of the men passed by and stole a quick sideways glance into the cafe. Ida had grabbed a digital magazine when she entered the cafe. She held it in front of her now and pretended to listen as it read out the day’s headlines.
Where is idiot number two?
Two minutes later, the second man entered the cafe and took a seat at a front table. She noticed a bulge under his suit coat.
Ida paid for her cofee, grabbed it from the counter, and took the seat opposite the stranger. Surprise registered in his eyes despite his dark glasses. “Let’s cut the bullshit and get to the point,” she said. “Why are you and your friend out there following me?”
He smiled a thin, flat smile that looked more like a smirk on his strong-jawed face. “You live an interesting life. My employer likes to keep tabs on newcomers.”
“Who do you work for?”
He said nothing and raised an eyebrow.
“You keep following me, and…”
He cut her off. “And what?” He wore a creepy smile now.
She waited.
He leaned in across the table toward her and said in a low voice, “Will you touch me and make me all better?”
She felt rage within her, and before she knew what she was doing, she launched the wooden table up and onto him. The man’s mouth twisted in surprise, and he crashed onto his back.
Ida pressed her foot sharply on his neck, a move she’d learned in the marines to quickly and painfully disable her opponent.
He gasped and gripped her boot, trying to push her foot away. Then she felt cold steel at the side of her temple. His companion.
She froze, then released her foot from the man’s neck, slowly raising her hands in surrender.
The man below crawled on his knees a few feet and coughed loudly. He struggled to speak to his partner, but his voice sounded raspy. “She’s the—” He suffered through another coughing episode. “The one we’re looking for.” He leaned against the wall, his color starting to return.
“She the one from the video?” the other man asked.
What the hell? What video? she wondered.
“The one,” the choked man replied.
The man with the gun smiled at Ida. “You’ll fetch a hefty price from Vance.”
He glanced at his partner on the floor, about to say something, when Ida slid two feet forward and, with two quick, sharp jabs, punched his throat and yanked his arm up and painfully behind him. She heard a snapping noise—a bone cracking—and the gun clattered to the ground.
She kicked it away, where it slid to a stop at the rear exit. The man staggered back in pain. The seated man started to rise and reach for his gun. Ida grabbed a metal box of napkins and threw it as hard as she could at his face. She followed with the steaming hot cup of coffee.
Before they could regroup, Ida sprinted out the back exit. She raced through a courtyard past empty outdoor tables toward a metal gate. She yanked on it, but it was locked.
She jumped on one of the tables and leaped up and over the gate, using one hand to steady herself as she cleared it.
The two men had recovered and chased her onto the patio; they spied her just as she cleared the gate.
She landed with a thud and rolled to protect herself against the impact. As she climbed to her feet in the alley, she thanked her lucky stars a sharp object hadn’t broken her fall.
As she ran, she hoped to reach the main street before they could see her. A gunshot sounded behind her, and she realized they must have fired at the lock securing the gate.
Idiots.
By then she’d turned a corner onto another street. She ran as fast as she could past store windows, street stalls, and bystanders.
Ahead, a skybus cruiser filled with passengers. She darted across the street and through a few near misses with oncoming street cars and motorcycles.
The skybus door began to close, and
she shoved her arm between the panels to wedge it open. An A.I. voice said, “Caution,” and it slid open for her. She hopped onto a seat, shrinking down to hide as the two men searched the street outside.
Next to her, a boy about ten years old studied her with curiosity, but said nothing. As the driverless skybus started to rise above street level, she whispered, “Did you see those two guys outside chasing me?”
He slowly nodded.
“They gone?”
The boy nodded again. Ida slowly rose from her seat and scanned the street below. The two men scrambled among the crowd, searching for her.
She kept her gaze on them as they faded into the distance, feeling hopeless that Vance had discovered her. Somehow a video existed that revealed her secret, and she had one guess as to who’d sold her out. It had to be the wolf hybrid.
She would go along on the job after all, she decided. She’d have to kill Gatz before he could do more damage.
Sixteen
“Well, look who it is,” said Gatz as he poured a whiskey for Ida. “I wasn’t sure you would show up tonight.”
Tonight, Dox was filled with patrons. Humans and hybrids mixed in the dimly lit space.
As Ida took an empty seat at the bar, Gatz asked how she’d been getting to know the city. She pushed down her anger at his betrayal, laughing like nothing was wrong, and downing her whiskey. “I’ve had quite the forty-eight hours since meeting you.” She took another sip.
“I love a good story. What happened?” asked Gatz.
“Let’s just say I’ve caught the attention of some people.”
“Wait,” said Gatz, glancing around the room. “Let’s talk in my office.”
She followed him through the door next to the bar, and he made his way to a large executive chair behind his desk. He offered her the other empty seat. “We have to be careful we’re not heard,” said Gatz in a low voice.
Ida frowned. “Exactly whose side are you on?”
Gatz studied her a moment. “You watched the video I gave you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?” he asked.
“I saw a mayor who is building a damn police force of robots that’ll be on every corner. Not what I would consider a good thing.”
Gatz rose from his desk. “Vance Drem sells it as a safety issue—that our citizens will be better off. But you and I both know better. We’ve seen what those things are capable of. They shoot and don’t discriminate between guilty and innocent.”
Ida shifted in her seat. Could she catch him in a lie? Would he admit to selling her out, or would she have to force him? “So you’re against Drem. What are you doing about it?” She tilted her head. “What else do you do besides owning a bar?”
“The bar is my main business, at least, on paper. I dabble in political causes near and dear to my heart.” He checked his biocuff. “Time to get going.”
She crossed her arms. “Where are we going? What exactly are we doing? I don’t want to get involved in any—”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to a meeting. You’re my bodyguard.” He unlocked a large cabinet in one corner of the room. “You can fire one of these, right?” He placed a gun on the desk in front of her.
She held it, admiring the shape and the gleam of light on its polished surface. “I can manage all right.”
“Good. That’s for our protection. Things have gotten…complicated. Tell me what happened to you today.”
Ida considered what she should say and, more importantly, leave out. It must have been Gatz who sold her out to Vance, she reminded herself. Unfortunately, the list of people who knew she could heal had grown longer. First Gatz and Paul, then Lucy, and now the two men she had run from. How could they have known?
“I was followed today.” She paused to see what kind of reaction this would register.
He studied her with his intense, amber wolfish eyes. It was hard to gauge his expression because his face was so foreign. “Go on,” he said.
“Two men. I’ve never seen them before. I lost them, but they said something. They were looking for me, and they mentioned a video. They knew my—”
“Your secret,” Gatz finished.
She nodded. “I have no idea what they meant by a video.” She pointed the gun at him. “But I bet you do.”
He stepped back. “Hey, calm down. I’m trying to help you.”
“You sold me out.” Ida glanced at several wall screens of video cameras displaying the interior and entrance to the bar. “You have a thing for videos. Look at all this shit, and the device you gave me with the police attack.”
“It’s for security.”
“How did you get the footage of the police attack in the square?”
He paused, as if searching for an answer. “It was given to me by a…colleague who paid someone for the footage. If the person had been caught filming, they would have been executed by the police. A group of us are fighting against the mayor, but we’re hidden.”
Ida’s military training had prepared her for interrogation. She knew certain facial tics that told when a person was lying, but nothing had prepared her to interpret honesty in a mutant wolf’s face.
Gatz stood his ground. “I’m on your side. Let’s think this through. These men have evidence of your power on film. It’s possible the alley where you healed the boy had a surveillance camera. The city is heavily monitored—cameras and drones in the sky that are so high, they’re invisible. Unless you used your power again, and that was filmed.” He paused. “You didn’t, did you?”
She felt a lump in her throat. Lucy’s mother could have told someone. One of her drug dealer boyfriends? But why, when Ida had saved her life? “Yes, I helped out a girl whose mom was sick.”
“Where?” he asked.
“In their apartment. No camera that I recall.” She pictured the events from that evening unfolding. “The men who followed me said I would fetch a high price.”
“So they want to sell information about you to the highest bidder. I’ll give you one guess who that’ll be.”
Ida lowered the gun.
Gatz relaxed his stance. “I’ll put feelers out and try to find out who is selling information. We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to get to this meeting.”
They took Gatz’s SUV. On the way, Ida plotted her escape from Spark City. She still badly needed money, and wondered about her pay for the job; they’d never negotiated rates, and he hadn’t mentioned how all this worked.
How far she could trust him? Somehow she believed his story. So far.
But she still worried he was double-crossing her as they drove through winding city streets. He could be using this “job” as a means to deliver her to Drem and cash in.
But why, then, had he bothered sending those two men to follow her? He already had her practically working for him.
They came to a stop on an empty, dimly lit avenue in what looked to be a now-deserted industrial area. He parked and started down the street. Ida caught up and checked the gun at her side. He’d given her a holster to wear underneath her jacket.
They passed a vacant lot. Not the right place, thought Ida. No cover for a meeting.
Past the deserted lot, they tread across concrete overgrown with wild grass and weeds. Ida spotted a side alley, and as they approached, Ida slammed her body into Gatz, using her weight to push him into the mouth of the alley.
Damn. He was heavier than she’d expected, but what did she know about wolf-human body mass?
He nearly lost his balance, then started to steady himself. She rushed him again with all her might, and used her foot to sweep one of his legs out from underneath him. He fell hard on the concrete ground. “What the hell?” He glared at her.
She loomed over him, the gun trained at his chest.
“Admit it. What we’re doing—this meeting. You’re selling me out. Even if you didn’t film me, you’re cashing out.”
“Ida, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,”
he said.
“My name! I never told you my name. How did you know it unless you’re spying on me?”
“So I did some research on you. You would do the same thing in my position.”
“I think you calculated how much money you could make off me,” she said. “Deliver me to the highest bidder.”
“Fine. If that’s what you think, leave. Keep the gun. But I need to get to my meeting. I can’t be late.”
Was he bluffing? Ida couldn’t be sure. She didn’t want to go voluntarily into a situation where the powers that be were ready to buy her. Or worse.
“So be it.” Ida turned and ran from the alley. She doubted Gatz would try to follow, and even if he did, she was faster on her feet. On another street, she spied a ladder, which she used to climb to the roof of a three-story building. She slid to the roof’s edge and lay on her belly.
She could see Gatz in the alley, dusting off his fedora. As he exited the alley, he surveyed his surroundings, probably checking that a deranged ex-soldier lady didn’t run up and knock him down again. She smiled at the memory of taking down the mutant. It took a hard body slam, but she got that sucker on the ground.
Would I have shot him? A chill ran down her spine followed by a slight pang of guilt. He was facing this situation alone. The fact she’d abandoned him hadn’t stopped him.
He started jogging down the street, anxious to get to his destination. Ida made a quick check of her biocuff to view the GPS map. Nearest landmark was a condemned planetarium.
In the distance, she spotted the abandoned museum with its large, circular dome. Although the city hummed in the distance, all sirens and bright lights, no people or vehicles traveled this deserted area.
Until now. Two private sky cruisers soared into view and landed next to the deserted museum. Cabin lights off, she couldn’t tell their make or models from so far.
She glimpsed Gatz circle one side of the building and disappear through a door.
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