Redwood lifted Ziplock’s chin until their eyes met. “You know something, Francis? That’s the first clever thing I’ve ever heard you say. It isn’t smart to mess with me, because I do whatever I please. The only reason I don’t get rid of a dozen of you freaks every day is the paperwork. I hate paperwork.”
Ziplock should have left it there, but he couldn’t. His big mouth wouldn’t let him. “I heard that about you, sir.”
Redwood tugged harder on Ziplock’s chin, cranking it up a few more notches. “What’s that, Francis? What did you hear?”
Cosmo tugged on the cuff chain. A warning. Redwood was not a man to push over the edge. Even the psycho kids were afraid of Redwood. There were stories about him. No-sponsors had gone missing.
But Ziplock couldn’t stop. The words were spewing out of him like agitated bees from a hive. “I heard you don’t like the paperwork, on account of some of the words have more than three letters.”
The sentence was followed by a high-pitched giggle. More hysteria than humor. Cosmo realized that Ziplock was headed for the psycho ward, if he lived that long.
Redwood transferred his fingers to Ziplock’s throat, squeezing casually. “Morons like you never get it. Being a smartmouth doesn’t win you any prizes in this city, it just gets you hurt, or worse.”
The Satellite saved Ziplock’s neck, beaming down a transportation plan before Redwood could tighten his fingers another notch. The truck lurched from its spot in the parking bay, rolling onto the main highway. A guiding rod extended from below the chassis, slotting into a corresponding groove in the highway.
“We’re locked in,” called the pilot. “Ten minutes to the Institute.”
Redwood released Ziplock’s neck. “You’ve got the luck of the Irish, Francis. I’m too happy to inflict pain on you now. But later, when I’m in a foul mood, you can count on it.”
Ziplock drew a greedy breath. He knew from experience that soon his windpipe would shrink to the diameter of a straw and he would whistle when he spoke.
“Keep a lid on it, Ziplock,” hissed Cosmo, watching the marshal continue down the aisle. “Redwood is crazy. We’re not real people to him.”
Ziplock nodded, rubbing his tender throat. “I can’t help it,” he rasped, tears in his eyes. “The junk just comes out of my mouth. This life just drives me crazy.”
Cosmo knew that feeling well. It visited him most nights as he lay in his pipe listening to the cries around him.
“You must feel it too, Cosmo? You think anybody is going to adopt a borderline psycho kid, or a moody teenager like yourself?”
Cosmo looked away. He knew that neither of them fit the likely adoptee profile, but Ziplock had always managed to pretend that today was the day his new parents would show up. Denying that dream meant that Ziplock was teetering on the brink of crackup.
Cosmo rested his forehead against the window, watching the city beyond the glass. They were in the projects now, flashing past gray apartment blocks. Pig-iron buildings, which was why the locals referred to Satellite City as the Big Pig. Not that the material was actually pig iron. It was a superstrong steel-based polymer that was supposed to stay cool in summer and warm in winter, but managed to do exactly the opposite.
The truck shuddered violently. Something had rear-ended them. Redwood was thrown to the floor’s plastic planks. “Hey, what’s going on up there?” he said.
Cosmo raised himself to the cuff’s limits, straining to see. The pilot was on his feet, repeatedly punching his code into the uplink unit. “The Satellite. We lost our link!”
No link! That meant they were out here on an overcrowded highway with no pattern to follow. Minnows in a sea of hammerheads. They were struck again: sideswiped this time. Cosmo glimpsed a delivery minivan careering off the highway, bumper mangled.
Redwood struggled to his feet. “Go to manual, you cretin. Use the steering wheel.”
The pilot paled. Steering wheels were only used in rural zones or for illegal drag racing in the Booshka region. More than likely he had never wrestled with a steering wheel in his life. The choice was taken away from the unfortunate man when a revolving advertisement drone hit them head on, crushing the cab like a concertina. The pilot was lost in a haze of glass and wiring.
The impact was tremendous, lifting the truck from its groove and flipping it onto its side. Cosmo and Ziplock dangled from their chairs, saved by the restraining cuffs.
Redwood and the other marshals were scattered like so many leaves in a storm.
Cosmo could not tell how many times other vehicles collided with the truck. After a time the impacts blended together like the final notes of a frenetic drum solo. Huge dents appeared in the paneling, accompanied by resonating thunderclaps. Every window smashed, raining crystal rainbows.
Cosmo hung on—what else could he do? Beside him, Ziplock’s hysterical laughter was almost as piercing as the shards of glass. “Oh, man, this is it!” shouted the Irish boy.
The truck revolved a half turn, slewing off the highway in a cascade of sparks. Chunks of asphalt collapsed beneath the onslaught, leaving a thirty-meter trench in the vehicle’s wake. They eventually came to rest after smashing through the window of the Dragon’s Beard Chinese Restaurant. The spicy odors of ginger and soy mingled with the smells of machine oil and blood.
Cosmo put one foot on a windowsill, taking the strain off his arms. “Ziplock! Francis, are you okay?”
“Yeah, still here.” The boy sounded disappointed.
Throughout the bus, no-sponsors were groaning and yelling for help. Some were injured, a few were worse. The marshals were generally out for the count. Either that, or staring at whichever limb was pointing the wrong way. Redwood gingerly touched a swelling nose. “I think it’s broken,” he moaned. “Agnes is gonna love this.”
“Oh, well,” said Ziplock, dangling above Redwood’s frame. “Every cloud has a silver lining.”
Redwood froze, crouching on all fours like a pit bull. A fat drop of blood slipped from one nostril, falling through an empty window frame. “What did you say?” The marshal spoke slowly, making sure every word came out right.
Cosmo swung his foot across, catching his cuff partner in the ribs. “Shut up, Ziplock. What happens to you, happens to me!”
“Okay! Okay! I didn’t say anything, Marshal. Nothing at all.”
But it was too late. An invisible line had been crossed. In the midst of all the chaos, Redwood retreated into himself. When he came back out, he was an altogether more dangerous individual. “The way I see it,” he said, standing slowly to face the dangling boys and running a pocket comb through his precious red locks, “is that your cuff ring snapped, and you tried to escape.”
In spite of his quick mouth, Ziplock was a bit slow to catch on. “What are you talking about, Mr. Redwood? There’s nothing wrong with our cuff ring. Look!” He tugged the cuff to demonstrate.
“I ordered you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen.” Redwood sighed dramatically, his nose whistling slightly. “I had no choice but to shrink-wrap you.”
Shrink-wrap
was security-speak for the cellophane-virus slugs that the marshals loaded their gas-powered rods with. Once the slug hit a solid object, the virus was released and coated the target with a restrictive layer of cellophane. The cellophane was porous enough to allow shallow breathing, but had been known to squeeze so tightly that it cracked ribs. Cosmo had been shrink-wrapped once before. He had spent a week in a body cast as a result.
Cosmo elbowed Ziplock aside. “Marshal Redwood, sir. Francis didn’t mean anything. He’s just an idiot. I’ll teach him, sir. Let me take care of it. You get that nose fixed up.”
Redwood patted Cosmo’s cheek. “It’s a pity, Hill, because I always liked you. You don’t stand up for yourself. But unfortunately, all wars have collateral damage.”
The marshal reached over, inserting his swipe card into the cuff ring. The boys dropped two meters, crumpling onto the carpet of glass.
Redwood drew his rod, checking the chamber. “I’m a reasonable man,” he said. “You’ve got twenty seconds.”
Cosmo shook the glass from his clothes, dragging Ziplock to his feet. This was it. His chance had come. Live or die. “Why don’t you give us thirty seconds?”
Redwood laughed. “Now, why would I do that?”
Cosmo grabbed the marshal’s nose, twisting almost ninety degrees. “That’s why.”
Redwood’s eyes filled with tears and he collapsed, writhing in the broken glass.
“Let’s go,” said Cosmo, grabbing Ziplock by the elbow. “We have thirty seconds.”
Ziplock stood his ground. “I want to spend my half a minute watching Redwood squirm.”
Cosmo ran toward the rear window, dragging the Irish boy behind him. “Use your imagination. I prefer to live.”
They climbed through the broken window into the restaurant. Diners were hugging the walls, in case the truck decided to lurch another few feet. In a few more seconds the city police would arrive, and all avenues of escape would be shut off. The searchlights from TV birds were already poking through the decimated front wall.
Ziplock grabbed a couple of duck pancakes from a stunned diner’s plate. The no-sponsors had heard of freshly prepared food, but never actually tasted any before.
Ziplock stuffed one into his own mouth, offering the other to his cuff partner. Cosmo was not stupid enough to refuse food, no matter what the circumstances. Who knew when they would get to eat again, if indeed they ever did? This could be the condemned boys’ last meal.
He bit into the pancake, and the tangy sauce saturated his tongue. For a boy raised on prepackaged developmental food, it was an almost religious experience. But he could not pause to enjoy it. Sirens were already cutting through the engine hiss.
Cosmo ran toward the rear of the restaurant, dragging Ziplock behind him. A waiter blocked their path. He wore a striped jumpsuit, and his hair was exceptionally shiny even by product-tester standards. “Hey,” he said vaguely, not sure if he wanted to get involved. The boys skipped around the man before he could make up his mind.
A back door led to a narrow stairway, winding out of sight. Possibly to freedom, possibly to a single-room dead end.
There was no time for conscious decision. Redwood would be coming soon, if he was not already on his way. They took the stairs, squeezed together shoulder to shoulder.
“We’re never going to make it,” panted Ziplock, plum sauce dribbling down his chin. “I hope he doesn’t get us before I finish this pancake.”
Cosmo increased the pace, the cuff digging into his wrist. “We will make it. We will.”
The boys rounded a corner straight into a luxurious studio apartment. A man’s face peered out from beneath a large double bed.
“The earthquake,” the man squeaked. “Is it over?”
“Not yet,” replied Ziplock. “The big shock is on the way.”
“Heaven help us all,” said the man, retreating behind the fringe of a chintz bedcover.
Ziplock giggled. “Let’s go before he realizes that his reporters are runaway no-sponsors.”
The apartment was decorated with ancient Chinese artifacts. Suits of battle armor stood in each corner, and jade dragons lined the shelves. The main room had several windows, but most were decorative plasma; only one led to Satellite City. Cosmo popped the clip, pulling open the triple-glazed react-to-light pane.
Ziplock stuck his face into the outside air. “Excellent,” he said. “A fire escape. A way down.”
Cosmo stepped through, onto a metal grille. “Down is what Redwood will expect. We go up.”
Ziplock held back. “Up?”
Cosmo pulled him through. “Don’t tell me the boy who irritates marshals for fun is afraid of heights?”
“No,” replied Ziplock, pallor washing his gaunt face. “I’m afraid of the ground.”
Marshal Redwood did not pass out. He wasn’t that lucky. Instead, a block of pain battered him like a malignant glacier. He combated the agony using a trick from his army days.
Locate the white center of the pain and concentrate on it
. Redwood found to his surprise that the root of his pain was not his nose, but in the center of his forehead. He focused on the spot, sucking the pain in and containing it. He trapped it there long enough to pop a pain tab from its plastic bubble in his medi-kit. Barely a minute later the pain receded to a dull throb behind one ear. Under control. For now.
Back to business. Those no-sponsors had thrown his authority back in his face. Those two were getting shrinkwrapped for sure. Still, best to pretend to follow the rules. He unclipped a communicator from his belt. “Redwood to base.”
“That you, Redwood? We thought you were dead.”
Redwood scowled. Fred Allescanti was on duty back at base. That man made goldfish look smart. “Yeah, well, I’m alive. But I’ve got a couple of runners. I’m leaving now in pursuit.”
“I don’t know, Marshal Redwood. You’re supposed to stay with the vehicle. Regulations. They’re sending a truck for you. Five minutes, tops.”
Redwood lifted a rod from one of his unconscious colleagues. “Negative. The no-sponsors are armed and have already fired cellophane slugs. Can you imagine the lawsuit Clarissa Frayne will be looking at if they wrap a civilian?”
Fred did not answer for a few moments. Doubtless he was checking protocol in the security manual.
“Okay, Redwood. Maybe you could knock them around a bit first, that way we get to test some of the new pharmaceuticals.”
That was typical of the institute, always looking for the upside. A new batch of synthetic skin had just come in, but they needed people with wounds to test it.
Redwood hid the throw-down rod inside his jacket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
In the restaurant, patrons were escaping through a side door. Not that they were guilty of anything, but nobody wanted to spend their evening answering questions from private security, state police, insurance agents, and lawyers.
When Redwood clambered through the remains of the escape hatch, people instinctively stepped out of his way. The marshal’s fierce eyes and pulped mass of a face made it seem not wise to obstruct him.
For a man in pursuit of fugitives, Redwood did not seem overly eager, or even anxious. And why would he be? Though the no-sponsors were not aware of it, escape was impossible. Every move they made was being tracked. And these were not the kind of trackers that could be discarded. They were in every pore. Whenever the no-sponsors took a shower, their skin was coated with micro beads of an electronegative halogen solution, which would show up on the Clarissa Frayne scanner. Even if the orphans stopped taking showers, the solution would take months to wear off.