The man shuddered with the impact but still came for him. Probably wearing some kind of bulletproof material under the black T-shirt. Jaxon met him halfway, throwing a fist covered with the pointed-edge brass knuckles he’d also managed to slip from his pocket. The man screamed and staggered back.
Jaxon risked a glance at Reese, who was sagging against her opponent. Was that blood glistening on her side? With so little light, it was hard to tell.
At that moment their eyes met, and her lips quirked up in the slightest of smiles. Then she exploded into motion. He caught the glimpse of a knife in her hand before she twisted and raised her fist, plunging the knife into her attacker’s throat.
The result was instantaneous—the man dropped her and grabbed at the blood spurting from his neck. Jaxon had no time to see if the man was permanently incapacitated because his own opponent was coming at him again. This time, two well-placed bullets, one in the man’s bare arm and another in his leg made his attacker turn and flee.
By the time Jaxon turned back to Reese, the man she’d stabbed was also running away. She brought up her gun to fire, but was shaking so much she gave up and let her hand fall to her side. A side definitely stained with blood.
Abruptly, she sat down on the sidewalk, her breath whistling through teeth gritted from pain.
“Come on. Let’s get you to a hospital.” Jaxon called an ambulance shuttle on the emergency channel, and he was grateful they only had to wait three minutes for it to arrive. The shuttle was unmanned, but inside he had access to medical supplies, and his enforcer ID allowed him access to additional medications. He carried Reese to the shuttle and laid her on the patient bench that extended lengthwise through the back half of the vehicle. The door slid shut as he settled on a chair near her head.
Choosing from the special supplies, he pulled out a container of skin sealant. He eased up her shirt and grasped the wound tight with pinchers before pouring the liquid over the spot.
She moaned slightly with the pain before clamping down on the noise, but he was pleased to see the blood flow slowing. “I think you might live,” he informed her.
“That might sound better if they have chotks.”
“I don’t think ambulances have a habit of handing out stiff drinks. But there’s a pain patch, if you want it.”
“Make it two. But you owe me a glass of chotks.”
“Anytime.”
After a few minutes, the ambulance slowed, letting Jaxon know that Reese’s vitals had steadied. He sat back, his mind whirling. Was this attack related to the gathering of his old crew? He didn’t see how it could be. If someone wanted to knock them off, why bring them together first?
No. But it could have something to do with his informant and El Cerebro. Or maybe it was related to the missing scientists and software engineers—and whatever was causing the evidence to change or disappear. Of course, the girl Reese had questioned also linked it back to the murder today, so it could all be related.
He glanced over to see Reese watching him from the bench, her head slightly raised on a stiff cushion. “Who would want to kill us?” he mused aloud. “Or rather, kidnap. Because they could have shot us if they wanted us dead.”
“Only if they have black-market weapons.”
“And somehow they always do.” The CORE had strict gun control laws, and only enforcers and other leaders supposedly had access to weapons, but somehow criminals kept getting and using guns on the unarmed populace. It was a continual frustration. Fortunately, the induction of psychological reconditioning and medical enhancement decades earlier had helped reduce the problem.
He expected Reese to say more, but she turned away and looked out one of the series of windows that lined the shuttle. Like most shuttles, the window worked only one way, so if anyone was in the streets watching for them, they wouldn’t be able to see inside.
What was she hiding?
Suddenly, she reached over and took his hand. It should have felt odd, this half-stranger touching him, but it didn’t. She’d taken his hand in exactly this way on numerous occasions when they’d been happy or scared or worried. They’d shared it all.
“I missed you,” she said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “So much.”
His hand tightened on hers. “I missed you too. I’m glad you’re here.” Saca, she was beautiful, even with her hair askew and face drawn and pale. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I’d so rather not be here right now.”
He laughed. “Okay, not right here this minute, but in Dallastar.”
“You’re bleeding.”
He grabbed a pad of gauze and pressed it against his forehead. “Stupid punk bucket’s punches felt like a baseball bat.”
“He had to outweigh you by ten kilos. You held your own.” She sounded impressed, and that definitely didn’t make him want to tell her the real reason for his preparedness, especially the reason he’d been carrying those pointed brass knuckles.
“I did okay.”
Silence stretched between them, and then Reese said, “I wonder if the other kids we knew . . . not those in our crew, but the hundreds of others we went to school with. What happened to them? Do you think any of them made it out? How many are still living in those tiny boxes?”
“I don’t know. I mean, CORE is set up to help them succeed and leave if they can contribute to the overall growth, but it’s a steep climb. I never realized how steep until I was out.”
She opened her mouth to say more, but the moment was lost as the shuttle rolled into the hospital emergency bay. The doors clicked open and medical personnel swarmed them.
“Here. Take these.” Reese let go of his hand and shoved her iTeev, two pistols, and a blood-tinged knife at him. “If you could put them in my bag and keep an eye on them . . .”
“Sure.” He wiped the knife on gauze before putting it inside the bag and following the hospital workers. They allowed him to walk with her only to the surgery wing, where she disappeared behind the set of double doors.
He sat in the sterile waiting room, dominated by a Teev holo that dwarfed any public one he’d ever seen. The life-sized characters carried out their drama as if he didn’t exist, which for them he didn’t. The seamless footage and the skill of the actors marked this as a pre-Breakdown effort. The CORE still hadn’t been able to match the old tech, though in the past decade their feeds had improved greatly. He wondered why there weren’t more old movies to choose from. Many had been damaged by the bombs, of course, and even more had been damaged by the ensuing chaos and looting, but with so much stored digitally, he felt there should be more available.
Turning off the feed, Jaxon brought out his iTeev to call division, unfolding it to its full size and placing it over his eyes. He was patched through immediately to Captain Brogan, who was still at work. “You look awful,” Brogan said, making Jaxon wish he’d turned off the iTeev’s automatic image scanning broadcast feature. The iTeev might sit on his face, but its built-in holo scanners would be showing Brogan a frontal rendition of him. “What happened?”
Keeping an eye on the waiting room door in case anyone entered, Jaxon recounted the events, knowing Brogan would be recording it for later use in the official report. “Reese is going to be fine,” he said. “Everyone here seems to think so.”
“I’ll send someone out to her place now,” Brogan said. “Maybe they can find something. And we’ll pull the surveillance feeds. Did you get a good look at them?”
Jaxon shrugged, which had him stifling a grimace as pain arched through his shoulder. “Not sure if it’ll be enough for identification. It was really dark. I’ll go through the suspect database while I’m waiting here.”
“Maybe Reese saw them. She could draw a picture at least.” Brogan paused before adding, “Later, when she’s feeling up to it.”
“She’s probably asking for a sketchbook already.” Jaxon realized that probably sounded too familiar, but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know her. The captain would find out soone
r or later, if he hadn’t already. He hoped that didn’t mean they’d be split up.
“Okay. I’ll want to know if you think of anything more to add to the official report. Oh, and Jaxon? I’m glad you’re both okay. I’ll send a shuttle for you there. Go to a hotel or to a friend’s tonight. We don’t know if they might try again. Tell Reese, if they aren’t keeping her overnight.”
“Thanks, Captain. I’ll tell her.”
His screen went blank.
Jaxon leaned back in his chair, stretched out his feet, and called up the holo menu. It hovered obediently over his chest as he began flipping through the suspect database, swiping left to dismiss and right to save for later comparison with Reese. Mostly it was just the size of the man he remembered. And he couldn’t remember Reese’s attacker at all. He gave it up after saving ten photographs. At this rate, they’d have to scope out half the local suspect database.
Meanwhile, Reese’s comment in the ambulance had started him thinking about their old classmates, and maybe while he was waiting for them to fix her up, he could find an answer.
With a few more hand motions, he connected to the enforcer database of citizens. The database listed every valid resident of the CORE Territories as well as those living in the six welfare colonies. There was even a list of possible “lumpers,” people who had started out with the CORE but had been stupid enough to roam close enough to the desolation zones to be abducted by fringers. These last were marked presumed dead.
There were currently two million live citizens in the database, a number that the CORE strictly controlled. No one wanted to risk another financial disaster similar to the one that had initiated Breakdown. Currently, three hundred thousand of the two million citizens were confined to the six welfare colonies, where they lived out their lives if they didn’t level out of school and show enough initiative to be released into main society.
Something dripped into his eye under the iTeev, and Jaxon wiped it away. Blood. Lacking a tissue, he rubbed it on his jeans, which were already stained with Reese’s blood.
Narrowing down the geographic region to Colony 6, the Coop, he typed in half-remembered names from level ten: Dustin Faulker, Aida Boone, Pene Sadat, Joe Rosen. Of the first four there were two errors, which meant he’d probably remembered the names wrong, and the other two were deceased within the past year.
That didn’t seem right, but it was likely a coincidence. He needed more names for a valid sample. Problem was, as in his own crew, many of the Coop children had gone by nicknames, had parents who didn’t share the same last name, or were living with relatives. Most of them had been born before enforced birth control, which sometimes meant unplanned or unwanted babies that ended up being raised by someone besides the parents.
He thought of two more kids who’d lived next to him and Reese. It was hard to forget the oversized, vicious brothers who had been a few school levels above them. Both showed up in the database, apparently still living in the Coop. Going through his memory of the rows of school kids in level ten, his last year there, he managed to dredge up six more names, plus three boys from level nine that had lived near him and Reese. The database brought back three more errors, three more deaths, and two people who still lived in the Coop. Only one of those from level nine was alive and living outside the colony. Most interesting was that each of the five deaths from the ten valid names so far had been people who’d leveled out of school and left the Coop.
A fifty percent death rate? That was high, though admittedly the names were only a small sample of the fifty thousand he estimated lived in Colony 6. But why had they died?
There were no records on file to give him the answer, but the Coop was located near the South Desolation Zone. Though it wasn’t the closest colony to the restricted area, maybe they’d died of cancer or exposure from their time inside the colony. But if that was true, those still in the Coop would have fared worse because of continued exposure to whatever had made the others sick.
Had the other welfare colonies also experienced an unusually high number of deaths? He tried pulling up old census records for the Coop.
Immediately, the screen flashed black. Then bold, red, capital letters on a pale yellow background popped up in the middle of the screen: INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE. CLEARANCE NEEDED. Smaller letters flashed into existence below this: Please see your supervisor if you need this information for a case.
Obviously, the system knew his identity, and for the first time in his life that made Jaxon uncomfortable. But he’d come this far, so he might as well try for current records. If he had those, he might be able to match the names in his memories with people his age. It might even be worth a visit there to check out more data.
The same warning appeared on the screen, but this time the display flashed almost angrily, as if to emphasize its point.
“Well,” he said. Another few minutes crawled by, but he used them to remember two names from his short time at Colony 5, the Sty. They hadn’t been friends, exactly, but they had been less persecuting to the new kid than the others.
Both were alive but still living in Colony 5. Strange. If any of the kids he’d known there had been destined to get out, he would have bet on them. At least they were alive. Were the strange deaths only related to the Coop? Again, he didn’t have enough evidence to support the idea, but fear slithered across his shoulders.
He removed his iTeev and wiped his forehead again, staring at the blood on his fingertips without really seeing it. Maybe Ty in personnel would help him again—if Lyssa would agree to that first date he’d promised.
A sense of certainty crept over him with the subtle steadiness he experienced when one of his hunches kicked in.
There would be more deaths. A lot more deaths.
But who and where? Sometimes the hunches were worse than full-blown premonitions because they were so vague.
The feeling didn’t subside but continued to increase in intensity, and he knew something else was coming. More often of late, his hunches had been followed by a glimpse of premonition, usually related in some way to the initial feeling.
Then it came, stealing his breath and sending his heartbeat pounding. He sees Ty lying on a cremation slab in his dress blues, hands crossed over his chest. The high collar can’t hide the fact that his neck is broken.
The premonition vanished, leaving Jaxon breathing hard. Was this Ty’s fate now that Jaxon had considered talking to him about the database? Jaxon had no way of knowing, but he’d never experienced a premonition that hadn’t come true. That meant Ty was in serious danger, and Jaxon wouldn’t exacerbate it by asking him about the database now. Should he warn Ty? Or would that put him in danger that much sooner?
As he debated, a nurse came into the waiting room, a clipboard in hand. “Are you Jaxon Tennant?”
“Yes.” He stood, pocketing his nearly forgotten iTeev. “Is my partner going to be okay?”
“I’m not here for that.” She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very impressive. “They told me you refused medical care, but you can’t go around bleeding like that. You’ll scare our patients and visitors. I need to patch up that wound in your head. It’s covered by the enforcer division, of course.”
Resigned by the determined look on her pretty face, he nodded and let her lead him down a hallway. They both jumped in surprise when his weapons triggered noisy in-wall alarms. A sour-faced security guard appeared immediately and made a show of searching Reese’s bag and scanning Jaxon’s CivID before letting him pass. Once in a small examination room, the nurse mopped his brow, administered a shot that made Jaxon grit his teeth, and finally brought out a small laser that was designed to seal muscles or skin together. It worked by destroying the tissue it connected but ultimately made the wound heal faster and almost without scarring.
“You still look pale,” she said when she was finished.
“Bit of a rough night, but I’m fine.”
She smiled and started rubbing a smelly salve on his cheeks
and forehead. “I bet. Your face is going to be black unless I put this on.”
He cringed at her ministrations, but after a few seconds, a numbness spread through his skin, blotting out the ache he hadn’t realized he was feeling. “Thanks.”
Without moving away, she signaled the blinking Teev feed, and a holo screen appeared. “I’m giving you a prescription for bruising and for pain.” She quirked one side of her mouth as she typed. “Unless you’re too macho to use it.”
“Thanks,” he repeated. Now that he was noticing, she was a cute little thing, all feminine curves, brown eyes, and mounds of dark hair. She was friendly too, and the vibes she sent hinted that she might be interested in him.
Maybe another day. “My partner?” he asked.
“She’ll be out soon. I can tell you that much.”
Jaxon toyed with the idea of talking her up to elicit more information, but it was too much effort. He thanked her again as the security guard marched him back to the waiting room, where a young couple now stared at the life-sized Teev holo.
Reese’s iTeev rang, and Jaxon dug in her bag to see who was calling. Theena Parker, the iTeev display said, flashing an image of an elegant older woman. After a moment’s debate, he answered without unfolding the compact square or enabling the holo. If Reese’s aunt was calling, he’d need to tell her something so she wouldn’t worry. “Hello?”
Silence, though he could tell someone was on the line. “Who is this?” he asked.
“The question is, who are you?” a woman answered, her voice firm and authoritative. “Why haven’t you enabled the holo?”
“You must be calling for Reese. I’m her partner. Sorry about the lack of the holo feed—my prints aren’t programmed into her iTeev yet.”
“I’m Theena Parker, Reese’s great-aunt.”
What should he say? If it was Bobby, he’d just tell him what happened, but Garrett never told his family about any dangerous circumstances they endured, and Jaxon had no idea what Reese’s policy might be or how close she was to her aunt. Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t access her holo feed.
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