by K. Gorman
He grunted. “Have you been unconscious at any time when you were not in my direct sight?”
She shook her head. “Not to my memory, no.”
“Does anything they did seem suspect?”
“Most of the bloodwork they did was to take it out, not put it in.” A frown crossed her face as she remembered Dr. Ma in the lab yesterday. “They did inject something. Said it was for the machine to better visualize things inside of my body. Like putting colored dye in a waterway.”
“Hmm. And we’ve been eating their food,” he said. “Let’s operate on the assumption that they have trackers on both of us.”
“Is there a way to deactivate potential tracking stuff?”
“Sure, if we can sneak into an Alliance military base and I can recognize the Alliance version of the deactivators I was trained in during my Fallon days—which is a bit of a stretch. My unit didn’t really deal with trackers. They’re more of a spy thing.” He cleared his throat. “I heard that those blood cleaners in hospitals did a fair job of it, but if they’re using nanites to move things out of the bloodstream, then that won’t work.”
An image of one of those old, clunky, last-century dialysis machines popped into her head, and she shuddered. “Yeah. Let’s not.”
“The good news is that this city is a perfect place to hide if one has trackers on them. They may find where we are on the longitudinal and latitudinal planes, but the z axis is almost impossible to track from above. They won’t know if we’re on level one or level ten. I vote we just keep running. That way, Nomiki will be looking for us, too. How long do you think it’ll take her to arrive?”
“A week,” she said. “Maybe more, maybe less. It’d be good to make contact with her if we can. She and I have a couple anonymous burn mail accounts for these kinds of situations.”
“Bless your over-prepared survivalist tendencies.” He gave her arm a pat and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Now go put some clothes on. I’ll get you to check me out, then we can be on our way.”
She shot him a grin and snagged him back as he was about to walk away. “What? You’re telling me to put my clothes back on? What kind of man are you?”
“The decent kind. Doesn’t mean I’m attracted to you any less.”
A flash of teeth mirrored her grin, but as he leaned closer, the thrill that went through her wasn’t so much sexual as emotional. She pulled him close, arms hugging tight around his back and her head pressing against his chest.
Caught by surprise, and at a semi-awkward angle, it took a moment before he reciprocated. He pulled her in, one hand patting her back. His head came to a rest on top of hers, breath stirring against her ear.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. We can do this.”
Yes. Yes, they could. She’d done it before, after all.
That didn’t stop her from being scared. And worried. And anxious about damn near everything. She’d been this way during her first escape, too. It had taken her and Nomiki months before they could get pockets of time where they relaxed. Even in the downtime, when they were watching pirated netdrama or reading the feeds, there’d always been a current of tension around them. They never played things aloud, and they never wore both headphones at once. Nomiki set traps at their door every night.
“I will never leave the Nemina again,” she said to his shirt. “I’m going to move into the bridge and sleep under her dashboard.”
“I’m okay with this plan. Now…” He gave her a pat and extracted himself from her grip. “Go get some clothes on before they walk in on us half naked.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were back on the streets fifteen minutes later after two brief stops, one to grab a pair of netlinks from another store—along with the registration keys from behind the locked cabinets—and the other in the mall’s public bathroom where, after they did their business, Marc jumped up on a toilet seat, opened a vent with the multitool they’d stolen from Warehouse Outlet, and tossed in their clothes. Just in case a search party had put tracking devices on them.
Then, for the next hour and a half, they ran.
They took odd breaks, dropping back to a walk every few minutes, keeping to the shadows around the bases of the disc’s superstructures. For one long period, they found a self-contained, inter-disc pedestrian walking path, complete with stores, kiosks, and autovendors. They stopped once to exchange their empty water bottles for new ones. This time, Marc broke the plastic-glass of the front and took them out through the hole, not wanting to leave a credit trail from a purchase. They acquired two small backpacks along the way, which they had neglected to get while in the mall due to a need for lighter weight while they ran.
Karin had about two months of workouts behind her, but that did not make her a marathon runner, especially when one of those months had been spent on a ship. Plus she’d had a blaster wound to recover from last month. With nanite technology, the wound itself had healed within a few days, but the shock to her system had gone on longer.
So, despite running around the base track every morning, by the time an hour had passed, she was more than feeling the burn in her legs.
But it was way better than before, when she’d been running and jumping around Caishen station.
Of course, stations tended to be filled with straight, short distances. Sprints rather than long-distance, with plenty of skulking and hiding and the occasional shimmying-between-maintenance-panels. Minerva’s lane, alleyways, and streets were long and continuous.
By the time Marc pulled them into a restaurant in another one of the city’s combination shopping-and-residential units, having transferred to the disc level beneath them, she was about ready to collapse into one of the booth seats. But she forced herself to stay upright and walk it off, drinking the last of her water in an even, steady manner before exchanging the bottle for a new one from the still-functioning fridge. She leaned against the counter and began to stretch her leg out.
Marc ducked past her and into the back room. She caught a glimpse of a dark, industrial kitchen counter and a flash of white tile before the door shut again. A few noises came back through the door as he rummaged around—for food, she guessed. They hadn’t done a lot of talking during their run, but they’d both been leaning toward a food break. Not a huge food break, since they still had to keep going, but something more than the packet of nuts she’d brought along.
She glanced around. This high, the windows offered a near-unbroken vista of the street below. Though most of the disc still retained the gray quality of its daytime shine, parts had taken on the gold, red, and blue tinge that marked a Novan sunset. A low mist frosted the air in places, hugging the spaces between buildings. The neighboring inter-disc column, located some eight blocks away, rose up like a staggered, blocky behemoth.
From this angle, the whole thing reminded her of a karst rock cave formation, or those straight-column rock formations famous in the southern area of China, except on a human-built, industrial scale. Bits and pieces of greenery sprang out in places where the design allowed for rooftop or crevice gardening—only the more expensive venues and abodes could afford to maintain them. Far below, the street settings looked like a realistic set of children’s toys.
The view was why Marc had chosen this place. There’d be no warning if anyone came down from above the same way they’d done, but they’d have about thirty minutes of warning if anyone came up from the street level. That the restaurant also happened to be one of the area’s few Fallon-themed eateries was a happy coincidence. She wouldn’t say no to a stick of kamanai seasoned chicken right about now, though she doubted that’s what Marc was producing in the kitchen—there was no way they could trust the meat in any of these places.
The power might be on now, but that didn’t mean it had been on constantly. The fridge and freezers’ contents could have melted and refrozen since the place had been abandoned.
As she took a break from her first stretch and came to the edge of the windo
w, following the next block building over down to the streets below, movement caught her eye. Two people—Lost, she assumed—wandered along a high balcony, visible only because they were on the same level as her and the windows that encased them didn’t catch the glare from the disc. They’d seen quite a few Lost in their time running, mostly glimpses here and there, but a few that had caught them off-guard around corners, gathered in a silent pack around some light source or another. Easy enough to avoid, if unnerving and unexpected. The ones that did try to follow only did so in the weak, shuffling gait that seemed to be their hallmark, whereas Karin and Marc never really stopped running.
She let out a loud breath. Gods above, I’m going to be the fittest fucker alive at the end of this.
Well, the fittest next to Marc, anyway. And if they didn’t get caught. That was still a big ‘if.’ Minerva was Alliance home territory, as much as its vertical discus construction made it better to hide from satellite trackers. She had no doubt the military could devise methods of finding them. If Baik hadn’t already cued up his air support, they’d be here soon enough, and with her status as the only person able to strengthen their defenses against both the shift events and the new, chimeric Shadow monsters, she doubted they’d lack in resources to find her.
But she was trying to look on the bright side.
She wandered back to the window to switch into the next stretch, using the counter as a leaning post. Constructed of something akin to vinyl, it made a gentle circle around the service area and the door to the kitchen. Several black smudges in the mahogany-tinted pre-fab floor tiles showed the door’s path. The floor switched to wooden slats—real wood, this time—that crisscrossed the floor in an angular design. The booths and tables were set to follow the slow curve of the building’s outer wall, with the most expensive seating segregated into their own enclave behind a stylized half-wall. The edge of a small dip gleamed in the disc light from the window, descending into the kind of conversation pit that had been trendy about ten years back.
Must be hellish to serve food on. And to clean. She imagined the servers had to bend over a lot, but she noticed that the table appeared suspended on four wrought-iron chains that hung from the ceiling. Perhaps they just lifted it out of the way?
She switched to another stretch—her arm, this time—and followed the window back, taking in some of the farther inter-disc blocks. Some had mini-discs around them, making them look like old-style UFO drawings before the more-modern age had subverted them into a boxed design.
With the suns still at midpoints in the afternoon sky, around three o’clock at this time zone, the buildings were several hours away from switching into their night time modes. In normal times, the level would be full of multi-story traffic, from the street-level vehicles to the flying craft, both manned and unmanned. When night hit, the throngs sprawled out of their workplaces and headed for the restaurants. She remembered streets bustling with crowds and sellers, with an entire system’s sampling of food condensed within a few blocks or towers.
Tonight, the streets would be dead and empty, the automated advertising echoing through the vacancy. Already, she’d heard a few advertising drones making their way around, their voices and jingles bouncing off the walls and street sides.
She didn’t want to think what Liber Pater would be like right now. What the old, third-level-east district would feel like, empty except for the Lost.
I will not feel bad for escaping. These people abducted me.
She wondered if Fallon, upon hearing what was happening on Nova, had let her go into the Alliance’s hands in an attempt to save the planet.
Giving her head a little shake, she pushed the thoughts away—I will not feel bad—and pulled the netlink out of her pocket to scan the message she’d sent. She and Nomiki had made plans for this sort of thing before. Even without the Shadow attack, they’d still been technically on the run and hunted, even if they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Seirlin’s pursuit. They’d memorized the serials to hidden accounts they’d made on each of the planet’s servers. Karin had sent her message an hour ago.
A small, muffled beep sounded from beyond the kitchen door. Marc re-entered the room a half-minute later, two bowls of instant noodles steaming from his hands.
“Found the wait staff’s cache, I think,” he said to her raised eyebrow. “There are some fruit packages back there, too. We should eat them.”
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” she said. “Impressed, actually. You’re a far better scrounger than Nomiki is. We survived off packets of tomato sauce for an entire week once.”
As well as some other things that she would never mention during the course of their relationship. Sandwiches made from canned cat food were not the highlight of her life. Much better than being dead to a mad scientist’s treatment plan, though.
“There’s juice, too. And prepackaged dessert puddings, though I’m not sure how much I’d recommend them right now.”
She made a face, imagining her stomach rebelling against her as they continued their wayward marathon. “I’ll take the noodles and fruit, I think.”
“Definitely a good choice.” Glancing to the side, Marc’s gaze snagged on the other side of the counter. He reached over, coming back with a few prepackaged forks. “Guess this place did takeout.”
“I think ninety percent of Nova does take out,” she said. “Or, well, did, anyway.” She cleared her throat. “They’re very proud of being always on the move.”
“Yeah, well, I’d be happy if they laid off that ‘on the move’ attitude for a bit while we’re trying to run away from them.”
She shot him a smile. “Only for a bit?”
“Hey, I only ask the gods for minor miracles. I feel they’re more likely to grant them.”
Marc turned his side to her and leaned his back against the counter, noodle bowl in his hands. She slipped onto the stool next to him. They fell into an easy silence, enjoying the quiet and the view. The sky had undergone a subtle shift since she’d last checked it, more of a gray blue than before. An atmospheric effect, she suspected, combined with Lokabrenna’s descent toward the horizon. At this latitude, the smaller sun only appeared during the highest parts of the day, which made it seem more prominent when it set, its blue color offsetting Aschere’s vibrant gold.
After a few minutes, Marc wandered to the window, his head bowing to view the street below. They hadn’t heard anything from their pursuers since they’d escaped, but they both knew just how fast and sneaky Baik and his people could be. Right now, their next move was to find a car that either had its keycard close by or that could be coaxed into starting by Marc’s limited engineering knowledge. They’d figure out where to go from there.
Of course, if her sister ever replied to her message, that plan could change.
Karin moved to join him at the window, standing just inside the glass. When they’d been running, she’d first worried that her face would be seen if she looked out windows, but she’d soon realized that any cameras pointed in their direction would probably be recognizing both their faces rather than just hers. Baik would have had time to update that system.
A thought struck her as she looked down on the empty streets, somewhat out of the blue: What about the animals?
She’d already read reports of abandoned dog kennels and an upsurge in the stray cat and dog population on Chamak. She imagined that, with the mass evacuation, quite a few others would have found themselves homeless—or worse, trapped. It was an absurd thought, considering everything, but something that sickened her.
As they went along, she’d be sure to keep an eye out for anything trapped.
She was about to make a remark to him about this plan when, outside, the light began to shift.
Above them, the discus light wavered and bent, the stick-like minimizations of the buildings and blocks above curling and shifting—then it went out.
Cold doused her skin, as if someone had flicked a switch. Underneath, the static rose.
; “Marc.” She stumbled back, the fork clunking against the rim of her noodle bowl. A second later, the bowl dropped to the floor. Broth spilled across the top of her shoes, wetting her socks. “It’s happening again. It’s coming.”
Part of her vision blinked out, half the world in dimness, overlapping like a persistent double. Everything fell in shades around her, partial inversions of the restaurant. Beyond it, she saw Marc turn toward her, saw his mouth move, his eyes widen.
Time slowed. Static rose.
She had just enough time to register the sharp gasp of her breath and the slight lift of energy in the air around her face, before a roar of voices crashed over her.
Half her vision blacked out around her. Part of her watched the restaurant tip and sway. Marc’s hands pressed against numbed skin as he helped her to the floor. The restaurant’s hardwood pressed against her cheek, cool to the touch, the smell of cleaning products mingling with that of her own sweat.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Only blink. Outside, the discus wavered. Parts of it flickered, like the clouds of a thunderstorm seen from space. Static grew in her ears, overrode her senses. It sounded like someone had switched on a radio inside her head, but had left it on the edge of a station, not quite tuned in. On one side, there was quiet. On the other, Marc’s voice, his shouts muted under the unintelligible conversation of others.
Slowly, minute by minute, the quiet won.
The slow, ragged rasp of her breath came to her. She felt the cold floor against her cheek. The tingle in her bones receded. After a few seconds, it left. She felt heavy, each part of her dragged down by the gravity—and the quiet. It seemed to tick around her, an absolute point of stillness. When she moved, she heard the creaks of her bones, the groan and rustle and subtle squeak of tendon, muscle, and skin.
Uneasiness pricked at the back of her mind.
This is wrong. This is very wrong.
The cold, solid floor met her reaching fingers. She found a line in between the wooden boards and followed it up. She didn’t remember closing her eyes. They had the same heavy, gravity-fed feel as the rest of her. But, when she opened them, her eyes only confirmed the answer to the question she didn’t want to ask.