Setting aside her speculation about why anyone would want to break out, she slowed and dropped to one knee, then lifted her rifle to use the scope to see what was actually going on. Aligning her sights, she saw the man dropping to the ground inside the buffer zone. She didn’t recognize him, but for a moment it looked like the fall had injured him so he wouldn’t be able to get up again. Then he was up and running across the grass.
The guards at the gate were under strict orders. They wouldn’t fire on anyone without a direct command from a superior, unless it was in self-defense. And this certainly didn’t qualify. Besides, their job was to keep people from getting in, not to try to stop anybody getting out. So Kat couldn’t imagine they’d do anything other than keep shouting at the fellow—and obviously that was doing no good. They needed help, and that was what she was there for.
The man reached the fence and began climbing as she flicked the rifle’s safety off and took her time aiming. Whoever he was, and whatever he thought he was doing, he was more likely to get himself horribly mangled on the razor wire than anything. If he managed to make it over the fence, he would surely wish he hadn’t before long. Kat would be doing the man a favor by shooting him.
The man was halfway up the fence when she felt confident of her shot and pulled the trigger, the bullet hitting him in his right calf. His foot slipped, but he continued to cling. Kat flipped the safety back on and ran the rest of the way down the border zone to find the man had lost consciousness, but he was still hanging on. The mild electric current must’ve been keeping his muscles contracted in that tight grip on the fence.
They’d have to pry him off—and they needed to do that before he bled to death. She called out to the guards on the other side of the main gate. “Neilson, open that gate and get out here to help me. Wagner, call the clinic—this guy needs urgent medical attention.”
Kat would be happy to leave the care of this man to the sisters, but first she’d have to get him down to the ground, and that would be enough of a job. She laid her rifle carefully on the grass and turned to see Neilson push the gate back a bit, then hurry through the gap.
“Wagner’s calling the clinic first, then he’ll shut off the current!”
Kat didn’t wait for him to turn the juice off—she just grabbed the links and began to climb. She only felt a slight tingle as she scaled the fence, and in less than a minute had brought herself up level with the man she still didn’t recognize. Gently she started to pry his fingers away from the metal, one by one, but his legs were hanging loose, and his right was bleeding freely.
“Neilson, get underneath him and reach for his legs—you’ll have to try and catch him when he falls. As soon as I loosen his grip enough, he’ll drop. Ease him to the ground gently.”
He frowned up at her, but of course he obeyed—soon they had the man down and carried him across the border zone and inside the gate. An ambulance had already arrived and a couple of medical technicians were being held back by Wagner. But as soon as Kat and Neilson brought the man through, he let them and a sister rush forward with a stretcher.
Kat watched as the medical techs quickly bandaged the man’s leg and lifted him onto the stretcher under the supervision of the nurse. Then they were bundling him into the back of the ambulance, one of the techs and the sister climbing in after the patient as the other tech jumped into the driver’s seat. And then they were speeding up the main thoroughfare, toward the clinic. Where her father was.
Sgt. Carruthers hadn’t been the only one struck down by the flu—Kat’s father was also ill, along with a few high-level administration functionaries and a couple of the regular guards. To be on the safe side they had all been rushed to the clinic and into isolation. Apparently somebody suspected foul play, but her father had assured her that there was nothing to worry about. It was only a mild case of the flu.
Not having had the chance to check to see if the man who had tried to scale the fence had his FURCS pad on him, she still had no idea who he was or why he’d behaved so strangely. Surely the sisters would be trying to figure that out even now—Kat needed to send her father a message and see if he could satisfy her curiosity. If he was going to be lying around the clinic getting pampered, he might as well be useful. Not that it was his job.
Or hers either. Although she was still a security officer, at least technically, she’d been too busy with her Guard duties to spend any time around Security since being transferred. Thinking of that made her think of Tony, and the way he’d been trying to avoid her for the last eleven weeks.
She’d never tried to hide her feelings from him. After all he’d done, all he’d risked for her—he could no longer deny his feelings. Although apparently he was going to try. She thought she understood why—but he couldn’t just keep ignoring the situation, and it was up to her to make him see that. So far though, she hadn’t figured out how.
Kat turned to the guards, who were busy watching the ambulance careen into the distance. “You’ll be going off duty soon, but before you do, make sure the next shift knows all about this incident, and tell them to be extra vigilant. Since we don’t know what that was about, we have to assume more fools could try getting out.”
Naturally Neilson and Wagner would go gossip with the other guards about this, but she couldn’t let it be just an amusing anecdote—she needed them all alert to the possibility and prepared to handle it if it happened again.
Neilson was shaking his head. “How about that guy? Isn’t he dangerous? Shouldn’t somebody have gone to the clinic to watch the whacko?”
He clearly wasn’t volunteering himself. He likely thought that was her job. She set herself a mental reminder to check that they’d warned their replacements. And to talk to the guards herself in a day or two, if it looked like this might be an ongoing problem. As difficult as that was to imagine.
Kat grinned at the pair. “Trust me, he won’t be making any trouble for anyone anytime soon.” And it would be Security’s problem to deal with the man when he could. “I’ll be in the mess if you need something before Sgt. Rose comes on duty.” That would be in just a few minutes, so she could be forgiven for heading to breakfast a little early.
Or should that be supper? Whatever she called it, she’d earned some sustenance. They saluted, and she returned it before jogging off toward the Guard HQ and its good grub.
It had been a long night, and she would appreciate a hearty meal and a return to her quarters to get some sleep. As the lieutenant of the Guards she had been assigned a little house of her own, and recently she had started staying there rather than at her parents’. Her father never returned from the office, not for long enough to spend any time with her, and not living under the same roof as her mother was a definite relief. And then there was Tony.
She stalked into the headquarters and down the hall to the cafeteria, once again trying to force Tony out of her head. Walking into the delightful aromas that permeated the place did help. She even felt like smiling as she nodded around at the guards about to go on duty as they filed past her. Several remained though, and one in particular stood out as Kat took a tray. Lacey Petrovich.
The woman sat by herself at a table in the middle of the room, eating mechanically and staring out into space. How easy it would be to avoid her. Most of her fellow guards still seemed to be shunning her. But Kat wouldn’t.
She scanned the array of vittles. No pigs or beef cows meant no bacon or burgers, but a grilled chicken breast, some scrambled eggs, and a glass of milk should do. At least we have milk cows. She grabbed her grub and went to sit down with the woman who had deceived her and tried to get her killed.
Taking the seat opposite forced Lacey to look up and acknowledge Kat’s presence—though the woman wouldn’t smile. She didn’t ever seem to want to, but Kat hoped to change that.
Lacey kept staring at Kat until she could finally swallow her food and talk. “You shouldn’t be sitting with me. The guards won’t like it.”
Kat squinted at the former
mercenary. “You’re a guard yourself, now. Try to remember that.” She knew she sounded harsh. “And I’m sitting with you to show them you’re not a leper. If I can talk to you, then it must be alright. By definition.”
The woman just nodded. “Was that you, a little bit ago, setting off the alarms? What happened?”
Kat shook her head. “I wish I knew.”
“I tried to ask, but I thought they didn’t want to tell me.”
“At least you had enough courage to ask. I wish you’d make more of an effort to talk to them. Only be careful. Those guys can be terrible flirts.” Which made her think of Tony, but she swiftly directed her mind elsewhere. “Try thinking of them as your little brothers. That works for me.” Not all of them were on the make, though. Thinking about Sgt. MacTierney and his blushes brought a smile back to her face. “So, how is the new job?”
“I don’t know why you bothered to get me a parole. They don’t trust me enough to give me a gun, or a real job. I’m still sitting and staring at a bunch of screens in the monitor room.”
Kat shook her head. “It’s only been a few weeks. Give them time and let them learn to trust you. You know how to gain people’s trust.”
She realized how sarcastic that sounded as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Lacey had been hired to infiltrate the FURCS compound to help the enemy take over. To do that she’d tried to work her way into Kat’s favor. In return, Kat had found a way to give the woman a chance, a fresh start—to begin a new life.
“As far as your job, they can’t keep you watching those feeds much longer.” A new app for the FURCS pads would soon allow anyone to monitor the video from the security cameras along the buffer zone. At least there weren’t any video cameras to speak of inside the compound. Only in the Community Hall.
Anyway, soon everybody could be alerted when the motion detectors were tripped, though likely the guards on patrol would be the only ones who would bother. And if more guards like MacTierney started switching to Security, they couldn’t let Lacey just sit around. Even if Chief Cameron had beefed up their numbers.
Kat continued. “What about getting a job in Security? Perhaps people would be more comfortable with having you guard the inside than the out.”
Lacey frowned back at her. “I’m too much of an outsider. They’ll never accept me.”
“You knew it was going to be tough. Just give it more time—you’re not the only new person who has joined our community recently.” Though everyone else had relatives here. Lacey was truly on her own and an outsider in truth, but Kat believed that could change. And not just in how people treated her, but that the woman could make this a real home.
Glancing at her watch and then the remnants of her breakfast, Lacey moved to get up. “I’m on duty now, I’ll have to go.”
Kat waved the woman back into her seat. “I say stay. Finish your meal and talk to me. I want some of the guards who are coming off shift to see us together.”
“But Chief Cameron—”
“I’ll tell him you were under orders. It will be alright. And he’s really not as scary as he seems.”
The woman shuddered. “But what do you want to talk to me about?”
Kat smiled. “Just chit-chat, you know. As long as it’s not about men.”
Lacey shook her head. “Everything here seems so foreign to me. I don’t even understand half of the things I overhear the guards talking about—like this upcoming election. I thought the director, your father, was in charge of everything. Is that not so?”
The woman would ask about the one issue other than Tony that was irritating Kat. Of course she approved of the idea of democratic reforms in the abstract, but did her father really think it was a great idea to give up so much of his authority to the Community Council—especially considering who was on it? He said he’d be keeping all critical decision making for himself, but what did that mean?
“He has been the one running things here. But he wants the residents to have more of a voice in the way things are done. That’s why he’s expanded the Community Council and granted them more power and why we’re having an election to choose a kind of ‘civil’ leader.” Until recently there’d only been three people on the council, and one of them had been her father, the only role of the other two to advise him. Now there were seven different councilors, with actual authority, and one of them was Kat’s mother.
Lacey still looked perplexed. “But how can they argue about who they should vote for, when no one apparently knows yet who the candidates will be? I also don’t understand why the other guards seem to be so concerned about whether they are considered workers or administration?”
Kat paused with a forkful of scrambled eggs and nodded. “You’re not considered a resident. Yet. So you haven’t had to choose. But our community isn’t so big that it makes sense to be represented according to where people live. So somebody decided we’d be grouped by our place in society.” Likely her dad. “Except most people aren’t so easily categorized. As for me, am I a worker, a student, or a part of the administration? Since I’m all three, I’ve got to choose how I want to be represented, as well as by whom.”
Though she hadn’t attended classes for so long, it was hard to think of herself as a student anymore. Neither did she consider herself a worker. So she’d gone with admin. It made sense given her job, even if it left her with no choice about who her representative would be. The regular guards should have an easy decision—for most of them it was either admin or worker, and only one of those allowed the chance to vote for who would represent them.
Kat knew she was unusual, in that she would be only too happy that the only vote she could cast was for the new community leader. And she’d not worry about that until she knew what the alternatives facing her were. Besides, she had more than enough to occupy her mind already.
Her attention was brought back to Lacey as the woman scooted her chair back. “I really should get going. Permission to go to work?”
Kat nodded. “Granted.” And as the other woman left, Kat was grateful, actually, for the opportunity to dig into her food before it had cooled too much to enjoy.
While she ate, she wondered if she should have encouraged Lacey so, and whether she’d been right to mention the idea of her working for Security. Already two people had signed up because of Kat. Ben because she’d protected the boy from a mob and he wanted to help people in the same way, but he really wasn’t suited to the work. And then there was Sara, an old friend of Kat’s who seemed to want to be the kind of heroine she thought Kat was. Eventually the girl might make a good officer—if she could manage not to get herself killed first.
If either Ben or Sara died working for Security, Kat was sure she’d have a difficult time not blaming herself. She probably should have tried to stop both of them from signing on, but now here she was actually encouraging someone else to consider the job.
She had just shoveled her last forkful of scrambled eggs down the hatch when every FURCS pad in the place started buzzing. Including her own. Kat’s heart leapt, but whipping out her pad to find out the nature of the alert, she found it was only a breaking news bulletin.
Reading the report, Kat saw that the story of the sabotage of the wheat stores had finally broken. No bread or muffins in the mess for two morning meals in a row and now everyone knew why—the flour had been running out for a while, and soon there would be no more donuts. And Brandon Radley, Councilman George Radley’s son, had been responsible for that terrible betrayal.
She started gulping down the rest of her milk. If this was going to get nasty the way she suspected, it would be best to head over to Security to see if they needed her help, if Tony needed her help, instead of heading to bed. But first she needed to go find Sgt. Rose and fill him in. And ask him if he could work a few extra hours until Sgt. Carruthers had recovered—so he and MacTierney could take their colleague’s shift between them.
Coming from her it wouldn’t really be a request, and she didn’t want to tak
e him away from the time he spent with his family, or make MacTierney delay his orientation at Security. But such decisions were a part of her new duties, responsibilities she continued to find uncomfortable.
Kat stood as she downed the last drop from her glass, and then she was off. Tony would have to ask for her help. Between people getting worked up because of the upcoming election and the new realization that they’d soon be out of bread and pasta, tempers might begin boiling over before long.
Chapter 2
Falling Out
7:55 a.m. Monday, May 19th
DAVID blinked slowly as he lifted the pot of freshly brewed coffee—he was so tired he could barely hold the thing steady—and took care as he added some to his cream. It was all Ken’s fault, keeping him awake into the early morning reminiscing about old times. Having hardly slept a wink, he’d been too tired and running too late to grab a cup of coffee to take along with him on the tram, which he’d ridden to work because he hadn’t had enough energy to walk. Though the crisp, cool air could’ve revived him some, being stuffed in with the other commuters had only made him miserable. Now he was feeling irritable as well as drowsy and really needed the caffeine.
David poured more coffee, up to the brim as full as he dared, then glanced over to where Paul sat in a recliner in the corner of the break room. Sara sat on his lap, snuggled up against his chest, nuzzling him when she wasn’t whispering in his ear. Sweet nothings, probably. Why were they acting that way here, of all places? David tried to avoid looking at them—he wished they would just leave. It was an uncharitable thought, but he wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving this morning.
Taking his time putting the coffee pot back, he’d just returned it to its warmer when he heard someone coming. He turned too slow to see Sara leaping away from Paul, but leapt she must’ve—for she now stood a good yard to his right, pulling open cabinets as if she were searching for food. That amused him. But seeing his partner Lisa enter was a relief.
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