Fox Forever (25 page)

“How much and what kind?” the clerk asks.

I eyed the amount I would need earlier today but I throw in a few extra feet for good measure. “Sixty feet. And whatever kind of rope will hold me.”

The clerk looks at my build. “That would narrow it down to about everything we have.”

“Something lightweight that throws easily,” I add.

“That helps.” He leads me to a wall of spools and pulls one out that has a thin flexible rope—but it’s bright orange. I tell him I need something less conspicuous and he pulls out a spool of lightweight black rope that is perfect. I leave with sixty feet of rope tucked into my pack and head for my next stop.

The Information Exchange on State Street is a secure place for the exchange of sensitive information. An Information Bot asks me to peruse the menus as I wait in line before I engage a Service Kiosk. Births, Deaths, Real Estate, Taxes, Banking, Utilities, Licenses, Transportation Applications, the list goes on and on. I look at the various occupied kiosks and I can see people who look like they’re talking to themselves. Virtually nothing is visible other than the customer. Even sound is secure within the invisible boundaries of the kiosk. When it’s my turn, I request Banking and I’m directed to a kiosk with a Virtual Representative. A woman, who appears to be a real woman in some other reality, sits in front of me.

“I’m here to inquire about foreign banking accounts.”

“You wish to open an international bank account, sir?”

“Not exactly. The thing is, when my aunt died she left me some numbers to an account, but they weren’t complete. She lived all over the world. Can you tell me anything about these numbers?” I pass the note window to her with the twelve numbers.

She looks at it and shakes her head. “It appears you have only the last twelve numbers, and the IBAN identifiers for country and branch are within the first twelve numbers. Without the first half of your IBAN, it’s impossible to trace the account.”

“So this is the last half of the numbers?”

“Yes. Do you know which countries she resided in?”

I shake my head, explaining she lived just about everywhere.

“Well, you may want to search her belongings for the other half. It’s not unusual to see foreign account numbers split up this way. The objective of most of them is secrecy for one reason or another. I’ve heard of customers finding account numbers in the most unlikely and unsecured places—slid between the pages of a treasured family book, tucked in socks, even engraved on the inside of wedding bands.”

I know for a fact that Miesha doesn’t wear a wedding band, and their belongings were destroyed in the fire, including Karden’s socks. Besides, if the Secretary had found anything among the belongings before he burned the place down, we wouldn’t be in this race right now.

But at least I know I have the second half of the account number. “Do you have a list of the country codes?” I ask.

She brings up a list and flicks me a note window containing 179 countries and their respective four-digit identifiers. “But without the missing numbers, this won’t do you any good. Searching through her personal belongings is your best bet. If it’s a significant amount of money, you can be sure she left more information somewhere.”

I glance at the ridiculously long list of countries and their codes—countries I didn’t even know existed—and I slip the note window into my pack. I thank her, saying I’ll search through my aunt’s socks. She disappears and the private walls of the kiosk vanish.

Socks, wedding bands, books. Or maybe a time-sensitive biochip hiding somewhere inside Raine waiting to be procured as LeGru suggests. The thought makes my pulse race, but I move on to my next task. Staying the course as Xavier would say, but this is
my course.

I head for the PAT.

“Need a lift?”

I look at the CabBot who has offered the ride. As convenient as a cab would be, I need the rest of the money on my card for my next stop. I wave him on. “No thanks.”

“No charge,” he says. “For you.”

He’s not a CabBot I recognize. He seems to notice my hesitation. “I hear you can tell a good story,” he adds.

So word
has
gotten around. Dot has friends who are passing along her story. And they’re obviously pointing me out.

I accept his offer and he takes me to a market where I buy as many groceries as my card allows. Fresh oranges, strawberries, chocolate peaches, fresh kale and squash, bags of nuts and beans, slabs of brisket, and on a last impulse, four dozen animal cookies, the kind that make animal noises. I carry the groceries to the waiting cab and give him directions to Xavier’s neighborhood.

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Xavier’s wife says as I unload bag after bag of groceries and set them on a table in the center of the courtyard.

“Where I came from, people reciprocated,” I say. “I’m afraid I’m never going to get the chance to cook for everyone here—which is probably lucky for you—but this is something my parents drilled into me. You’re never too young or too old to reciprocate. They liked that word a lot.”

Children flood out of the surrounding buildings. I pull the box of cookies from the cab. “May I?”

She nods, and I pass out the cookies. The courtyard becomes a barnyard of noise and squeals. I leave a few cookies in the box and point to the rest of the groceries. “Will you see that some of this goes to Livvy’s family?”

“Of course, but—” She pushes back a strand of hair from her forehead and frowns. “You act like we might not see you again.”

After today, it’s quite possible that they won’t. “I just wanted to take care of something while I still have the chance.” Before I run out of chances.

Some lessons I learn later rather than sooner.

Unmasked

I sit in my apartment waiting for darkness, wishing I could fast- forward the clock, anger simmering in me as the time gets closer, good fuel to sharpen my focus. I empty my pack out onto the kitchen table. I’ll have to travel light—only the essential things I’ll need—and I sort through the contents. I rewind the rope so it will unfurl with a single throw and place it back in the pack. Karden’s knife could be useful and I put it back in too. I look over the note window the clerk gave me, skimming over the countries and four-digit codes again. I look at them again and again, trying to memorize them in case I come across any similar numbers, and then set it in the pile with the other things that will be staying behind.

I shuffle through the other contents and pick up the eye of Liberty.
Let’s find the other eye of Liberty together.…

I squeeze the green sea glass in my fist. So much can change in just a few days. She wants nothing to do with me now but I throw it into my pack anyway. I slide the note window that Carver gave me to the no-go pile but then stop to look at it. I already looked at it several times today when I was showing it to the clerk, but something about it stops me this time. I examine the numbers again, hastily handwritten the first night I met him, but they still mean nothing to me. I’ve looked at too many numbers today. I shove it back into the no-go pile. I won’t need it for where I’m going. Now there isn’t anything left to do but wait.

You’re nothing but a spy.
No, I’m so much more than that, Raine, and somewhere down deep you know it too. Or you will. You’re just too wounded to admit it.

* * *

A cloudy night. I couldn’t ask for better to muffle light and sound. I stake out a section of the north wall that’s hidden from the street, analyzing the best path to the top. I find a dark section with no footholds more than three feet apart. I begin my ascent, finding hand- and footholds between the stones, on broad window casements, and on the narrow three-inch stone ledge marking the lines between floors of the seven-story office building. Another ledge, another casement, carefully making my way to the top until I finally hoist myself onto the roof. Roosting pigeons are disturbed by my presence, flutters rising into the air, but they quickly go back to their bird dreams.

The roof tiles are steep and slick with fungus. I crouch low as I move across to the rooftop edge and I eye the chimney of the building next door looming another three stories above me. I walk farther up the steep roof trying to get the best angle I can until I’m nearly at the peak. I’m about to pull the rope from my pack when a tile slips loose beneath my foot and I find myself sliding down the roof toward the edge at breakneck speed. I frantically grab at anything, my fingers digging in but only catching mold, my feet, my knees, every part of me trying to stop my deathly descent, and finally, just a few feet from the edge, my right hand catches a vent pipe. I barely reach out in time with my other hand to grab my pack as it slides past me. The loose tile falls to the ground seven floors below, a dull thud on the soft earth.

With a desperate grip on the vent pipe, I carefully pull myself back up. Half-humans couldn’t stop me, but a simple loose roof tile nearly did. Sometimes it’s the smallest and most innocent things that you have to watch out for.

I retrace my steps back to the peak, crouching even lower this time, and pull the rope from my pack. I need to be there before she is. I throw the looped rope, missing the top of the chimney by a good twenty feet. I rewind and throw again, closer but still missing it. I widen the loop and try again, this time hitting my mark. I pull the rope taut, testing it, hoping the old chimney stones hold and that I can pull myself up to the roof garden without detection.

I grab tight and am just about to make the swing to the wall when I see something falling from the rooftop above me. I stop breathing, fearing the worst, but then I see it’s only Raine’s rope ladder swinging directly in front of me, like a wagging invitation. I’m not sure what to think. It’s not where Raine would normally drop it. Did she see me coming?

I look at the ladder. Regardless of her motivations for dropping it here, it’s an invitation and I swing to the wall with my rope and climb it. When I’m almost to the top I look down at the staggering distance to the ground and I’m jolted by all the times Raine has taken this risky path. I crawl over the ledge and look for her but no one’s here. “Raine,” I whisper.

Hap steps out from behind an arbor.

“You,” I say.

“Yes, me.”

“Where’s Raine?”

“Still inside.”

I look around, wondering if the Secretary is watching from the shadows. “So this was only a trap.” I let my pack slip from my shoulder to my hand and reach inside for the knife.

“Yes, a trap,” Hap confirms. “But probably not the kind you’re imagining.”

“A trap is a trap. And I bought it. But if you think I’ll go easily, you’re wrong.”

Hap eyes my hand in my pack, like he’s amused at whatever defense I might be reaching for. “This trap isn’t for you,” he says. “It’s for Raine. She’ll be coming out soon. I suggest you conceal yourself until I can lock the door behind her. That way she’ll be forced to stay and listen to whatever you have to say. And I assume you have a lot that needs to be said.” He waves me to a dark corner.

I don’t move. He’s trying to help me?

“Why so surprised?” he asks. “Who do you think carried you up to your apartment the night you were injured?”

I shake my head. It makes no sense. “Why?”

“Word gets around.”

Hap has an odd weakness for talking to other Bots.

Like CabBots?

“Dot isn’t the only Bot who has ever dreamed of Escape, Mr. Jenkins,” he says. “However, Raine is my priority. My assigned task is to guard her, but even for a being such as myself, assigned tasks can develop into something else. My task as guard has evolved into protector, and sometimes that even requires protecting Raine from herself. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for her.”

I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. It’s more than loyalty. He
loves
Raine. He loves her like a protective uncle. I shake my head, still in disbelief. “Why do you portray yourself as such a hard-ass?”

“That’s my job. I’m not a chatty Tour Bot the way Dot was. And if you must know, I don’t have the ability to smile. It was not considered a necessary add-on for my job—rather, a hindrance. But trust me, it’s far more debilitating than having no legs, especially when one comes to care for the Eater and Breather one is assigned to look after. But you above all others should know about limitations.”

If he carried me up the stairs, he saw the BioPerfect oozing from me. He knows everything, including my unique limitation. He could have turned me in at any time and gotten me out of the way. But
word gets around
. I never would have guessed that he was a Bot like Dot, one with hopes for being more, maybe even with hopes for Raine to have more.

“Now I suggest you hide yourself because Raine will be coming through that door in approximately twelve seconds. I hear her on the stairs. If she sees you before I can lock the door, she’ll run, and there won’t be a second chance to arrange a meeting like this.”

I move, hurrying to a black corner just a few feet from the rooftop door.

The door swings open and Raine emerges.

“Hap, what are you doing up here?”

He tells her he was checking her ladder for wear and then dismisses himself, exiting through the door she just came through. She hears the click of the lock and pulls on the door handle but it doesn’t budge.

“Hap?”

This is my cue. I step from the shadows.

“Hello, Raine.”

She spins around, her eyes wide, her mouth open as she catches her breath. She turns and lunges for the door, hitting it and calling for Hap. I grab her from behind, pinning her against the door to quiet her. She struggles under my grip.

“Ten minutes,” I whisper in her ear. “That’s all I ask. Ten minutes to explain. Are you afraid to give me even that?”

“I owe you nothing. Not even ten minutes. You’re a liar.”

“Are you sure, Raine? Are you one hundred percent sure about everything? You said you wanted the truth. I think that’s what you’re really afraid of. The truth. Because I’m willing to give it all to you right now. Everything.” My lips touch her ear, slide to her cheek, my breath warm against her skin. “Do you really want the truth?” Her chest heaves. Seconds tick past. Her arms relax beneath my grip.