The air above them was a superhighway of drones. Nowhere in the world had as many drones per capita as the Bay Area in Northern California, and despite visiting the area, which had long outgrown its title of Silicon Valley, on four previous occasions, Kari still found the sight breathtaking.
The Bay Area had one of the largest populations in the world, but it was hard to tell from overlooking the area. Popular architecture in Northern California had focused on incorporating nature into the core of the designs. The sprawling city looked more like a forest, with an endless stream of drones of all sizes flying in all directions above it.
Kari watched a bird fly from a tree sprouting from the top of an apartment building down the street and soar carelessly through the air. Drones darted out of the bird’s way, keeping a safe distance as to not harm the animal. A man walking on a small, flat, moving treadmill glided across the ground at a good pace. Another man wearing old-fashioned roller skates was being pulled in the other direction by a pair of drones. Both them flashed a quick disapproving glance to her auto-auto as they past.
Kari took a deep breath of air before closing the window to their auto-auto. As beautiful as the Bay Area was, there was also nowhere on earth that was as heavily monitored. Just getting a small breath of fresh air was dangerous with how closely the various layers of government and Vision monitored the city.
“Beautiful part of the country,” Kari said quietly.
This would seem like a utopia to the people in the past. I wonder what it will look like when I’m old. I’m sure I’ll look back and laugh at how primitive it is.
“As long as you hate freedom,” David said in response.
Or a dystopia to some, I guess.
She knew he was partly joking, but it was a reminder of their differing politics. They didn’t discuss that matter much, as it wasn’t really that important to having a good relationship. Neither of them had favored the war, but David was still more traditional in his concepts of government than she was.
“Should we get on with it?” Kari asked.
She didn’t want to respond to David’s comment, and she knew he didn’t want her to, either. They were both nervous for what was about to happen and they didn’t need to get into an argument. David nodded his approval, while Fai gave her a thumbs-up with her only hand.
The small camera buzzed in front of her, ready to broadcast her face across a secure line to Christina Wolfkin as soon as she answered.
It didn’t take long.
“I want to meet,” Kari said, before Christina could say anything.
“I’ve been waiting for you to arrive for weeks,” Christina said. Her voice was as crisp and pointed as ever. Her eyes were fiery and she didn’t look like she had a single fiber of patience in her soul.
“Don’t be crazy,” Kari said. “There’s no way I’m coming to your offices.”
“You will.”
“No, I won’t. You’ve been working closely with the government to track me down and capture me. I’m—”
“Can you blame us? You’ve stolen our property, killed our colleagues, and even had the gall to announce our work to the world. If you don’t get the death sentence for this, I’ll bury you so far under the ground with lawsuits, you won’t ever see the light of day again.”
“I want to meet you at a neutral site, alone. Just me and you.”
“No.”
“Then you’ll never get Fai back.”
“We’ll find you soon enough. No matter which country you run away to.”
“No, you won’t. I’ve been on the run for years. I’m the infamous Freelancer of Civil War ruin, remember?”
“Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are something more than you are, girl.”
OK, I’ve had had enough of this.
“You will come to the old Oakland International Airport in one hour. You will come alone and we will talk about how we are going to handle this situation. You will do this or you will never see Fai or me again and I will spend every minute, of every day, doing everything that a girl can do to tell the world what really happened.”
Kari ended the call.
“Sometimes you scare me . . .” David said.
“Did the call go as planned?” Fai asked.
“Yes,” Kari said. “She’ll be there.”
Chapter Nineteen
“My algorithms suggest that while she has arrived alone there is a significant disruption in usual traffic patterns surrounding the area at one, two, and five mile radiuses, both on the ground and in the air,” Fai said.
“We anticipated that, even if I expected her to hide it better,” Kari said. “She’d be stupid to show up alone.”
“And we’d be stupid to meet her,” David said.
Kari had already planned on changing the meeting point before David had suggested it, but she let him take the credit for the suggestion.
“OK, David, you head out first. You’re going to have control over most of the drones. If things go south, get out of here.”
“Right,” David said.
She didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t leave her, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Their plan was solid, but Christina had so many resources at her disposal that it was hard to be confident about how things were going to shake out.
“Be safe,” David said. “And go get her.”
He slipped out of the auto-auto wearing a large hat and baggy clothes that concealed one of her stealth devices. They had slowly let their drones out of their vehicle over the last few hours and had moved them into place.
“He is less worried than I would expect,” Fai said.
“He’s irrational,” Kari said. “I’ll try to explain that later.”
She knew Fai would want a better explanation of what she meant, but she didn’t have time for that. From the drone feeds surrounding the old airport, she could see Christina walking around looking for her. She wouldn’t search for long. Kari placed the call.
“I don’t have all day,” Christina said.
“And I told you to come alone.”
“Do you see anyone else?” She didn’t sound the least bit surprised that Kari could see her, nor did she try hard to hide the fact that she a large security operation surrounding their supposed meeting location.
“There is an auto-auto out front that will take you to our real meeting location.”
“I’m not going to get into some random car after you killed John.”
“Fine, take the same auto-auto that brought you here. I’ll send you addresses to update you as we go.”
“No,” Christina said. “We agreed to meet here.”
“I said I wanted to meet and I still plan to do that. But we have to meet at a location where we can talk before your goon squad swoops in for me. I’m not dumb.”
“No, you’re not,” Christina said. “But you think yourself much smarter than you are, which is worse.”
“I’ll send you the address.”
“This better not take all day.”
The call ended and Kari looked over to Fai. The AI was dressed in full-length, bulky clothing of various colors that made her look more like a clown than anything else. It would be sure to draw attention at the hyperloop station, but it would better than anyone from Vision recognizing Fai before they met Christina.
Besides, this is the Bay Area, you can dress however you want. As long as you don’t look too much like a middle-stater.
Their entire plan centered on Fai being present as Kari questioned Christina about her involvement with the attack on the research lab.
There’s no lying when Fai is around. I ask the questions and Christina gives the answers. When she lies, we’ll have proof that she was behind the massacre. Christina will be giving us a confession and she won’t even know it.
“Let’s get moving,” Kari said. “It won’t take her long to get here.”
Kari wore a stealth device under her clothes as well as a hat and a huge pair of sunglasses. Her clothing screamed someone that was trying not to be noticed, but she had no other option. They had parked three blocks away from the massive hyperloop station so they could drop their drones off unnoticed. Now that their vehicle was empty, it drove off to serve other clients.
“My experiences in this world have been far more exhilarating than I had expected,” Fai said.
“I’m sorry for that,” Kari said. She sent Christina an updated address that would give her auto-auto a new course that would take her near the hyperloop station. She needed to keep Christina guessing on where she was going for as long as possible.
“Why are you apologizing? Don’t most people profess to want exhilarating events in their lives?”
“Not like these,” Kari said. “You deserve to be at university or a library somewhere learning as much as you’d like about the world without the fear of energy blasts.”
“I would like to spend time at universities,” Fai said.
“Maybe David will take with him for a visit after this.”
Kari watched Christina’s progress closely. She was having a pair of the drones she had stationed at the old airport follow her auto-auto in order to keep eyes on the Vision CEO.
“David said that he hasn’t spent time at Kansas State recently and that he is nearly finished with school.”
“Well, he was a better student back in high school,” Kari said.
A group of women dressed in bizarre, burlap-looking clothes passed them with judgmental glances that Kari was fairly certain were directed more toward her ordinary clothing than Fai’s. The closer they got to the station, the more people there were. Typically she wouldn’t be happy about having so many people around, but she needed them now. Kari sent Christina the address to the station and told her to meet them inside the main lobby.
They entered on the opposite side of the building that Christina would be arriving on, and walked down into the center of the huge lobby.
The building was modeled after Grand Central Station in New York City. That had been an important hub for steam-powered trains; this hyperloop station had been one of the first major stations in the country. The high-speed trains could take you across the country at well over seven hundred miles an hour. They hardly shared any similarities to the first designs, but the name remained the same.
They paused in the center of the lobby and Kari flipped through her microdrones that were littered throughout the building until she found Christina walking through the entrance, heading directly for them. She was alone.
For now.
“Don’t let her know who you are,” Kari said. “But send me messages about how close they are to trapping us here. I don’t want to stay too long.”
“I will do that,” Fai said. “My current indicators might suggest we only have a couple of minutes before escape becomes improbable.”
“I’ll try to be efficient,” Kari said.
About half of the people that passed Christina noticed who she was and either tried to talk to her or positioned themselves so they could get a picture with her without the permission she would refuse to give.
I didn’t think about that. Are we going to be mobbed by civilians because of Christina’s celebrity?
“Here I am,” Christina said. She stopped just out of arms reach from Kari and proceeded to try to stab Kari to death with her eyes.
“You set up the attack on the research lab,” Kari said.
I told you I would be efficient.
“Don’t be absurd,” Christina said. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“You did. And the only reason you hired me to design Fai’s body was so that you could pin the attacks on me.”
“I did not murder John.”
She’s telling the truth.
Kari didn’t need Fai’s readings to tell her what she already knew.
“I—”
“Now, if that’s all you wanted to know, it is time to turn yourself in.”
“You hired mercenaries to attack the lab,” Kari said. She didn’t know what else to say, so she just continued through her list of statements.
“What is this?” Christina said. She looked around as if she was missing some important details. “A deposition? Because I’ve already testified, on record, to Marshal Henderson. I suggest you turn yourself in and do the same.”
“There is a strong likelihood that Christina’s people are closing in on us,” Fai said softly.
“Fai is that you?” Christina asked. She stepped forward and peered into Fai’s eyes. “Fai, you can come home. Come with me.”
“Kari Tahe was not involved in the attack at the Vision research laboratory,” Fai said.
“Then she should have nothing to fear about turning herself in,” Christina said.
“You know she wasn’t involved,” Fai said. “I can read it in your reaction.”
Don’t give that away, Fai!
“So this is what it is about,” Christina said. Anger spread across her face with just a touch of fear. It was the first time Kari had ever seen even a hint of a human emotion from Christina.
“We need to leave,” Fai said.
Kari turned to go, but Christina grabbed her wrist and held her in place with a surprisingly strong grip. Kari’s hat fell off and her glasses slid off her face. The people, who had been watching Christina, from as close as was socially acceptable, made no effort at hiding their interest now. A small circle formed around them as Kari tried to pull herself free.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Christina said.
“I’m not waiting here for your people,” Kari said. “I’d rather take my chances with Henderson.”
“Her people are here,” Fai said. Her voice was worried and Kari didn’t blame her. Kari didn’t have time to flick through the camera feeds from her microdrones. She trusted Fai’s analysis. They needed to leave right now if they wanted to escape, but Kari couldn’t free herself from Christina’s grip.
“No, they aren’t,” Christina said.
“That’s Freelancer!” Someone in the gathering crowd had taken his eyes off Christina long enough to recognize who she was arguing with. Her hacker handle seemed to echo off the walls of the hyperloop station.
“Let me go,” Kari shouted as she tugged at Christina, but the woman was bigger and stronger than she was.
Fai stepped in and grabbed Christina’s arm. A split-second later Fai had freed Kari from Christina’s grip. They turned around and found a wall of people surrounding them.
I guess these people feel differently about me than the border patrol guard.
Kari instinctively started to send a message to David. She had hoped to use her stinger drones to cover their escape with the delivery drones, but she would need the small fighting drones now to free herself from this mob.
Before she could send the plea for help, gunshots rang out throughout the crowded hyperloop station.