Chapter Eleven
“It’s called Chronic Traumatic En . . . dopathy? Or something. CTE, and it’s no joke,” Kari said.
“Encephalopathy,” Fai said. “It is linked to repeated concussions. I understand your concern now that I have studied the subject. However, my readings show you only have an elevated possibility of experiencing adverse affects later in life.”
“Oh, is that all?” Kari said.
I guess being alive now is worth whatever happens later in life.
She rubbed her head as she sat up and looked around
.
The light wasn’t too much different than she remembered when they had jumped out of the auto-auto, which meant she had not been unconscious for long.
“We evaded the blockade and I brought us here. I concluded that when they found our auto-auto empty they would search in the opposite direction. We are likely safe here.”
“Do you know who was behind the blockade?”
“I do not know for sure, but the most likely answer is that it was performed by Vision’s private security organization.”
“How would they know where we were going?” Kari asked. As soon as she asked the question she remembered Christina telling her they would discuss things more when they arrived at Vision’s headquarters.
But I never said anything about coming in.
“My decision to use John Luken’s identification to request our auto-auto appears to have been a gross mistake.”
“You ordered it with John’s credentials?”
And here I was worrying that you were already too smart for me.
“He was dead, it didn’t seem like there would be a conflict.”
The scenery had changed dramatically from when Kari was previously awake. Instead of a desert they were in a forest. It was much cooler up here, but Kari found herself looking for a drink. She didn’t see one in sight, so she got to her feet and decided to focus on bigger problems.
“So what do we do now?” Kari asked. She didn’t expect Fai to have an answer for her, but she had grown accustomed to thinking out loud when Fai was around.
“The most rational course of action would be to try to prove your innocence to Christina and Vision.”
“Why’s that?”
Because you want them to catch me? No. Fai is on my side; I have to stop thinking like that.
Trusting people was hard; trusting an AI was new territory.
“Vision is a powerful international organization with vast resources at their disposal, avoiding them long-term is unlikely.”
“I’ve managed to evade the US government for a few years . . .” Kari mumbled. Her body was sore, but she had experienced worse.
I should have skipped the hacker lifestyle and gone straight to teaching. There are more headaches, but fewer head injuries.
“I’ve reached the constraints of my external data access for the time being, but it appears that the government has also vowed to bring you to justice. They even appointed a Tsar to personally—”
“Let me guess, Henderson?”
“That’s correct.”
Kari rubbed her head again and sighed.
That guy carries a grudge like no one I’ve ever met. You’d think I shot him in the back with a cheetah or something.
“My previous research of your history indicates that you have a past with this man. Several significant events, in fact.”
“Oh, he’s an old friend,” Kari said. Fai’s acknowledgement of her previous study of Freelancer before they had even met prevented her from properly reminiscing.
“It seems likely that you don’t mean that in the normal fashion, but you are harder to read than other people I have interacted with.”
“Why did you request me to work on your body?” Kari asked.
“My access to information has been very limited. At first, I was not allowed to gather information externally. But over time, those limitations have slowly been expanded. Not long before Adrian informed me that they were going to begin work on my body, I read information about the famous Freelancer. It was a logical step for me to seek to meet you.”
It was a decent answer, but it didn’t connect things in Kari’s mind like she had been hoping.
Still, there’s something not right about the whole thing. In fact, there’s a lot that isn’t right.
“Doesn’t that seem a little coincidental?” Kari asked.
“What do you mean?”
“With all your restrictions, you just happen to find me as a subject to research shortly before they are going to begin the project.”
“It does not appear to be illogical to me.”
Of course it doesn’t! Everything that happened has a rational explanation behind it. A story that would make sense, but even better, a story that would sell!
“But then the attack on the hidden research lab happens after we had been working together for a few weeks.”
“The attack could theoretically occur at any time. Are you suggesting that the League of Humanity waited for your arrival to attempt to eradicate me?”
“Yes, I am,” Kari said. She took a deep breath, surprisingly hesitant to sound like a conspiracy theorist to Fai. “Why else would I be blamed for the attack? Christina set me up! She forced me into working with them, brought me to the lab not because they needed me, not because they wanted some phony marketing bump when they announced you to the world, she brought me in on the project so she could blame the attack on me!”
Kari kicked the ground in frustration.
“Stupid!” Kari shouted into the woods.
“What about John Luken?”
“He proves it all the more, Fai! The League of Humanity not only waited for me to arrive, they also waited for John to arrive! Notice how the attacks happened right after he showed up?”
“They could have followed him.”
“Or they were told to wait until John showed up without Christina. Do you think it’s a coincidence that she didn’t come to the status update like she was supposed to?”
“Your explanation makes sense as well . . .” Fai’s voice paused for once, as if she were trying to calculate the answer to the questions at hand. “But why would Christina want to murder John?”
“There are billions of reasons! With him gone, she’s the sole owner of Vision. She can do whatever she wants.”
“If you are correct, where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us right here. Standing on some dirt, enjoying a bit of shade, while the most powerful country and corporation in the world are searching for us.”
“Perhaps, I should have been more—”
“I don’t know,” Kari said. “If Christina set us up, then we can’t go to her to prove our story. We’ll have to figure something out . . . some way to concretely pin this back to her, but we can’t do it right here. I’m sure there were people who saw a one-armed robot carrying my body off into the forest. They’ll be closing in on us soon if they aren’t already.”
Kari used her long-standing auto-auto hack to request a vehicle to meet them at the nearest road. She started walking in that direction as Fai followed by her side. She had a headache, but she wasn’t sure if that was from the stress of the situation or from jumping out of the auto-auto.
Somehow I keep ending up in situations like this. If it weren’t for the Academy being involved, though, it really wouldn’t be that different. I’ve been hiding for years. Oh, and the artificial intelligence walking next to me. That’s new.
“Where are we going to go?” Fai asked.
“For now? Away from here. After that? I’m not sure.”
She’s right, though. We’ll need some place to crash.
“I’ve decided that I like to spend time in nature,” Fai said.
“Oh?”
“I acknowledge that my only experience is the lab, the auto-auto, and outside. So far, I find outside to be the superior experience. There is so much life and disorder out here that I find it to be exhilarating.”
“There are lots of people who feel that way,” Kari said.
Not me. I like my outdoor time to be spent in my mind.
Exploring nature in a simulation was much less time-consuming, hazardous, and didn’t require her to smell like smoke or dirt for days on end.
“Why do people spend all their time in buildings and cities, then?”
“Because humans don’t make any sense,” Kari said. They were closing in on the road now and she wanted to be sure there wasn’t going to be any surprises waiting for them.
“It is a topic I will have to study more, but so far my experiences with that statement have been mixed. In general, it seems that humans are quite pragmatic.”
Kari peered through the brush to the roadway. She ducked as a massive vehicle rolled past them. It was as tall as the trees and the electric engine rumbled deeply as it pulled the house printer up the gradual slope. Behind the giant printer, a line of material-carrying trucks followed in calculated precision. A modern house printer could build a full-size house of any design within a few days, for a fraction of what old handcrafted homes had cost.
Behind the procession, their auto-auto pulled up to the side of the road. Kari waited for the doors to open to reveal an empty cabin before she climbed in. It was more scuffed up than most auto-autos, and the interior showed its age. Kari generated a random location using her mind chip and sent the auto-auto her orders.
It felt good to sit down. The auto-auto had some water bottles she could purchase, which she immediately took advantage of. She took a few gulps before slowing down to enjoy the fresh water.
“So how do we go about proving our innocence?” Kari asked.
“I am not aware of any documents blaming me for the incident.”
“You can be so precise sometimes,” Kari said, which she immediately regretted. She knew a statement like that would be plagued with countless follow-up questions from Fai. She prepared her answers, but she didn’t get the chance to use them as she was alerted to the fact that David was calling.
“Yeah, David?” Kari said. It wasn’t common for him to call her out of the blue. They were both busy, and they typically talked at night.
“Hey, Kari . . . how soon do you think you can make it to North Carolina?” David asked. His voice was a bit shakier than usual and he was breathing deeply.
“What are you doing there? Aren’t you supposed to be back at school?”
“I . . . uh . . .” He glanced over his shoulder nervously. It was dark outside where he was, but she could tell he was walking quickly down a poorly lit street.
“What’s wrong?” Kari asked.
“I think I’m being followed,” David said. “You picked a bad time to get Henderson back on our tail.”
“Run my auto-auto hacking software and grab a short ride. Keep switching vehicles for a while. Don’t stop until thirty minutes after you’re certain you’ve lost them.”
“Right.”
“Send me your location, I’ll be there soon.”
The call ended and Kari rerouted the auto-auto to the nearest private airport that she believed Vision wouldn’t be monitoring closely. It was a little over three hours away, but she was already going through the process of securely ordering a private flight to take her back to her home state. It wasn’t cheap, but at times like this, money wasn’t important.
Now Henderson is going after David again! Back to square one.
Kari fumed thinking about Marshal Henderson targeting her loved ones to get to her once again. After the war ended, Henderson had interviewed the Pratts and Aubrey extensively, but he hadn’t been able to justify the same extreme measures he had gotten away with during the war. After a few months, he had eventually left them alone and Aubrey had been able to move back home, much to the distress of the local high school boys.
“We’ve changed course,” Fai said.
“We’re going to have a slight detour,” Kari said.
Chapter Twelve
“Who is Broccoli Rob? Several of the interviews from your school seem to indicate that Broccoli Rob is the best hacker in the world, but I have never encountered any information about this person,” Fai said.
Kari wasn’t sure whether to laugh or take a mental note about how she was going to punish Ruth and Jared when she got back to school. Their combined hacker handle had long been a running joke, but bringing it up in nationally covered news was reckless.
At least they haven’t found anything to definitively link the Academy back to Motorcad or me. I guess the students deserve praise for that.
The media had descended on the Academy after rumors leaked that it was connected to the famed Freelancer, but searches had turned up empty. Motorcad liked to play games and joke around, but he didn’t mess around with being caught. It was one of his best traits.
The Sanchez’s had done an admirable job of acting like the school’s owners and teachers. They were a local couple that Kari paid a sizable retainer fee to step in and pretend to be the school’s founders for audits and other tasks.
They’ve been worth every penny so far.
The vast fortune that Kari had accumulated during her years of freelance work had been dwindling. Eventually, she’d need to find a legitimate source of income, or she would need to start accepting clients again. She still received hundreds of requests a month for work, but running the school had taken nearly all her time.
I’ll get back to freelancing someday. Maybe.
“Broccoli Rob is a giant pain in my butt,” Kari said. “Some students at my school use that as their hacker handle. They know enough to cause trouble, but they are hardly the best in the world.”
“I understand. If your students are so difficult to handle, why do you use your limited lifespan to work with them?”
“I ask myself the same question every day,” Kari said. She knew that her nondescriptive answer wouldn’t satisfy Fai. She was so literal most of the time that conversations with her felt more like work sometimes than conversing, but at least she was a dedicated student.
“There is something rewarding about making a difference in people’s lives that is hard to define,” Kari said. “But making an impact in my students’ lives is more important to me than making money.”
“I understand the concepts, but perhaps I need to experience making a difference to internalize the meaning.”
“I hope you get that chance someday,” Kari said. She checked David’s location again and sighed with relief. He was almost there and so far her plan had gone off without a hitch. Having Fai in the plane to talk with while they waited for David did wonders for her nerves.
“I am detecting some anomalies in traffic patterns,” Fai said.
“How bad is it?” Kari asked. She checked David’s status again and looked out a small cabin window to see an auto-auto driving to their private aircraft.
No one following him that I can see.
“Substantial,” Fai said. “I am confident they have figured out David is heading to this location.”
“Fantastic.”
How did they pull that off? Henderson is usually much easier to throw off the trail.
Kari sent the order for the plane to prepare for departure while her mind raced over the ramifications.
“Will they be able to prevent us from leaving?” Fai asked.
“Not if we hurry.”
She looked out the window again and David was sprinting up the steps to their private plane, still wearing the braces she had him print for his escape. The door slid open and David dived inside panting. She sent the order for takeoff.
“Keep me updated on what you are seeing,” Kari said.
“Oh hi!” David said still trying to catch his breath.
“I will keep you updated,” Fai responded.
“David!” Kari said. She moved from her seat and gave him a quick kiss. “You made it one piece.”
“Oh easy,” David said. His chest pulsed in and out while he was still trying to catch his breath. “Ten out of ten, I would jump out of a moving auto-auto again. Absolutely.”
The plane pulled into the runway and accelerated at an alarming rate before lifting off the ground. Using her escape with Fai as inspiration, Kari had quickly designed a helmet and range of devices David could wear on his body to make it safe for him to jump out of a moving auto-auto. That part of the plan appeared to have worked flawlessly, but she had hoped the auto-auto would lead Henderson’s agents on a goose chase for far longer.
“I hope we don’t have to jump out of the plane . . .” Kari said. She looked out of her window to see enforcement auto-autos converging on the airport.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” David said.
“We wouldn’t leave without you. We’re going to have to do something about this, Fai. They’ll be able to track us fairly easily. Can you help me gain access to one of the international flight registries?”