Ntshona (15 page)

“It’s gonna be difficult for me not to hit civilian cars with this,” stated Lon. This was to be his first time to fire a real automatic.

At this point bullets were taking to the air from both directions.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit civilian cars, the windows won’t break!” Cat shouted.

“I’m worried about cosmetic damage! I told you I’m not gonna shoot directly at the policemen!” He took several deep breaths before exposing himself through his window.

Cat ceased firing due to Lon’s obstructive head. “Be careful you idiot!” she focussed on the rear-view camera screen and noticed that, thankfully, the civilian cars behind them had retreated.

Lon’s exposed upper body was an obvious target
for the one policeman, who switched his sights to him from Cat. Lon dodged the next couple of bullets by pulling his head and arm back into the car. “Dammit, I have to use my left hand!” He took another deep breath in an attempt to control the adrenaline. His heart was thumping with such strength could feel his eyes beating. The grip of the gun felt strange in his left hand; he felt weak. He squeezed it for a few seconds, and tried to make it feel more comfortable. Again, he took a breath and re-exposed himself. The pistol outside was still pointed at his head; he knew that he likely had less than a second to take a shot. The scene unfolded before him in slow motion, and he felt an intense surge of adrenaline as he fumblingly lined up the shot. He pulled the trigger.

The motorcycle’s front wheel partially shattered, and the whole thing began to spin dramatically as the rider was launched off and slewed down the side of the road.

Lon pulled himself back in through the window and collapsed into his seat. “Adrenaline is one
hell
of a drug!”

Eve dropped herself back in her seat as Lon had, looked at him and asked, “How the hell did you do that?”

“Nice one!” Cat yelled at him. “That was fucking amazing! Now do it again!”

The remaining motorcyclist was gaining on them with a clearer intent to ‘apprehend’ them.

“Okay, Eve, let’s swap seats,” he said, and he climbed over her to the opposite side of the car. “It should be much easier with my right hand!” he shouted, then pushed his head and arm through the window. He was initially surprised as this policeman was closer than the last, but despite Lon being an easier target than the previous time, destroying this wheel was a much simpler task. He squeezed the trigger and again let off a single round.

Cat, Lon and Eve were treated to an encore of the previous show, however, they had no time to applaud, for they saw in the not too remote distance two or three, or possibly more, extra police motorcycles headed for them.

“We need to turn at the next junction so I can change my plates and paint again,” said Cat.

“How did they still know where we were?” asked Eve.

“They’re tracking us somehow,” stated Cat.

“Oh!” Lon had a bingo moment, “I think the policeman who stopped us at the checkpoint threw something at the car when we pulled away, it could’ve been a tracking bug”.

“Why are you only telling me this now?!” Cat yelled at him.

“Because it just looked like he was pointing at us”.

“You’re right!” said Eve, “I thought it looked strange how he was pointing at us, it makes sense”.

“Dammit, that means we must stop and one of us has to get out and check for the thing,” said Cat.

“I’ll do it,” Lon volunteered, thinking he could perform the action more quickly than the other two. That, and he did not want them to be in such a vulnerable position.

“Good, I’ll pull up once we get round this corner”. Cat took a left turn and quickly stopped the car by the side of the road. “If you find a tracker, throw it,” she said.

“Lon swang open the door, jumped out and ran to inspect the back of the car. In plain sight attached to the boot door was a roughly one-inch wide, almost spherical electronic device. Without time for a thought he ripped it from the metal of the car and launched it far in the opposite direction to which the car was facing. He saw it hit the floor and bounce several times before rolling into a drain. He hastily returned to the door he exited from and took his seat within the vehicle once again. As he did so, he became aware of a colour change in the car’s paint.

“
Now
we can relax,” said Cat, whose heart remained pounding for some time afterwards, and off they went once again in the direction of her apartment.

“Lon, how did you get so good at shooting guns? I thought you’d never used one before,” said Eve.

“Chris has a VR room. Because I’m not really employed I get a lot of free time to play games. Obviously that’s a good thing!”

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” said Cat.

Lon would have blushed, had his cheeks not already been red. “Well, I’ve got the skills to pay the bills”.

Eve gave him a small laugh. “You know, you can be cheesy sometimes”.

“Ha
ha, that’s not one of my own, I got that from Marcus”.

The situation of their friends had slipped out of their minds up until that point.

Eve sighed. “How are we going to get them back?” Her eyes began to dampen.

“Don’t worry too much,” said Cat, “we’ll definitely think of something”.

The mood in the car became sombre, and hardly a word was spoken afterwards.

In the rear
-view camera display Cat could see the police motorcycles take the wrong turn at the last intersection. Now she was certain the three of them were safe, at least for the time being. She changed the car’s number plates and paint colour several times over the remainder of the journey.

Chapter 7

“We’re almost home,” Cat informed Lon and Eve.

The area was unfamiliar to them, yet they could tell that it was not far from the city centre. The buildings were tall, but not quite as tall as others in the city.

The car slowed as it approached a relatively new looking apartment block on the right, and turned into the building’s vehicle entrance.

Cat reverted the car to its factory colour and registration.

They climbed more than ten storeys before reaching Cat’s designated parking space.

Before Lon and Eve opened the car doors to alight, Cat stopped them. “This isn’t a government owned building, but I’m not sure if the owners are linked to the government or not. Just to be safe, we have to take out the cameras before we leave the car”.

“How can we do that?” asked Eve.

“Remember I told you earlier how I’ve been working on a palm screen mod that helps you avoid cameras?”

“Yes, I remember”.

“Well, I haven’t finished it yet. What I’m about to try is a much simpler method; one that you two are aware of”.

“And what would that be?” asked Lon.

“I’ve installed a small EMP generator”.

“Oh, I see! You’re gonna fry the cameras’ circuits?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right”.

“But won’t it mess up your palm screen?” asked Eve.

“Obviously I considered that when I made it. It’s small, and I’ve designed it to mostly only take down camera systems”.

“Oh, I see,” said Eve.

“Well, let’s give this a try, shall we?” said Cat as she powered on her palm screen and activated the new device.

A few moments passed and nothing seemed to happen.

“Okay, we can get out now, make sure you put the weapons back under the seat” said Cat.

“What? Nothing happened,” said Lon.

“Did you expect an explosion or something?” she asked.

“Not an explosion, but some indicator that the cameras are now offline”.

“Don’t be daft,” she said, and opened the car door to get out.

Lon and Eve did the same after replacing the guns in the compartment under their seat, and followed Cat to the nearest lift, which they entered.

“What’s the radius of that thing?” Lon inquired.

“To be honest, I’m not sure. It can vary depending on the surrounding area”.

“How so?”

“Well, it can be affected by walls, floors, ceilings, but sometimes it can make it through doors”.

“Ah,” Lon looked upwards to the ceiling of the lift compartment, “so that camera should’ve been taken out too?”

“Here’s hoping,” she was now back to using her casual, relaxed voice.

They waited for the lift to request instructions, however, it did not ask.

“Hmmm, looks like I configured this wrong and took out too many electronics,” she said, “I’ll have to do it manually, let’s see
…” she began to ponder over the manual input system to the right of the door; a grid of buttons on a panel numbered zero to nine, plus a button with “
10x
” marked on its surface. She pressed 10x followed by 7 and 2.

The display above the manual input grid lit up with blue letters saying “
Next floor: 72
”.

“Ah, did it right,” she said, and the lift began to accelerate upwards.

“You said earlier that you were working on a different type of surveillance avoiding device; what’s that like?” asked Lon.

“I’m trying to create a palm screen add-on that obscures computer facial recognition in the area surrounding the user, but it’s a little tricky. I want to be able to finish it, because the EMP device is too crude and destructive. It’s more of an ‘if all else fails’”.

The lift began to slow and soon came to a stop. The doors opened and introduced them to a lengthy corridor with numerous doors spread along both sides of its distance.

Cat exited the lift, and Lon and Eve followed her to the door of her apartment. She unlocked the door using a retina scan, and it slipped open.

The interior of Cat’s place had a similar layout to the apartment behind Chris’ workshop, although not as impressive, yet it gave off a more comfortable, homely impression. Furthermore it was, to Lon’s surprise, quite feminine; he was expecting something a little less… warm. Perhaps her calm, yet serious and stern attitude was simply a cover for Cat’s more girly nature. Or perhaps Lon did not yet understand women that well.

“Please make yourselves at home, but don’t make a mess,” said Cat.

Lon and Eve walked over to and sat at the opposite ends of a three-seater sofa, while Cat went to the landline telephone built into the wall by a sixty inch television screen to check her messages.

She removed the flat, transparent receiver from its holster, touched a few buttons on its display and put it to her ear to listen. She had no messages to reply to, so replaced it in its holster on the wall. “Sorry my TV isn’t so big,” she said, “I don’t often watch it, so I didn’t feel the need to get a bigger one installed”.

“It’s okay,” said Eve, “my apartment’s really small, so I only have a sixty-inch too”.

“Ummm, I don’t want to overstay our welcome after just arriving,” said Lon, “but do you have a washer-dryer we could use? We only have these clothes with us, and we’ve both been sweating all day; I think they need washed”.

Eve nodded in embarrassed agreement.

“Of course I have one, and yes you can use it. However
…”

“However?” echoed Lon.

“I don’t know what you will wear while your clothes are being washed and dried”.

Eve’s cheeks turned pink.

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” stated Lon.

“Well, you do have a choice,” continued Cat, “I have several nighties, which would look cute on you Eve, but I think the best thing I have for you Lon is a baby-blue bathrobe, unless you want to wear a nightie too”.

Eve giggled.

Lon frowned. “Okay, if it’s blue, I can deal with the bathrobe”.

“Settled! Now, I have a bathroom and a small shower room, so you can decide between yourselves who uses which. I’ll go and get the clothes for you,” with that, Cat exited the room to retrieve the clothing she had promised.

“I’ll take the shower,” Lon declared to Eve.

“That’s fine, I need a good soak”.

They waited a few moments for Cat to return with the clothing before going to wash.

Eve was still bathing when Lon returned to the living room with wet hair and donning the lovely, fluffy blue bathrobe.

“That looks good on you,” said Cat, who was dissecting her palm screen on the coffee table next to the sofa.

Lon’s cheeks quickly developed a sort of crimson hue. He did not know whether she was being sarcastic. “This is embarrassing,” he said before sitting down next to her on the sofa. He had brought with him, in a neatly folded pile, the clothing he was wearing that needed washed.

“You can put those on the floor for now. I’ll put them in the wash with Eve’s later”.

He placed them on the floor as per Cat’s suggestion. “What are you doing to your palm screen? Are you altering the EMP
… chip?”

“It’s not really a chip, but it acts like one. I’m trying to reconfigure it to
not
destroy voice and motion activated systems”.

“I see. How many EMP ‘chips’ do you have?”

“If you’re asking if I’ll upgrade yours and Eve’s, then yes I will, but I need to get this problem fixed first. I don’t know how long it’ll take”.

“Okay. Where do you get the money to do the things you do? Are they funded by your company?”

“You could say that, but that particular money which comes from the company originates from donors and investors”.

“Like who?”

“Most of our investors are small companies, most of them you’ve probably never heard of, and some donations are from private entities, but our main ‘anonymous’ investor is a certain company called ‘Silvertech’”

Lon was surprised to hear this, “So you get money from Chris?”

“Yes, he’s been a major proponent of our cause right from the beginning”.

“I had no idea!”

“Of course you didn’t, not many people do. It’s too dangerous for his company to be openly associated with ours, in that if we’re taken down by the police or the government, he probably will be too”.

“I thought he would’ve at least told
me
, if no one else”.

“There’s more to it than that. Your brother is quite a powerful man, despite his humbleness”.

Lon was intrigued. “Seriously? How?”

“I can’t tell you, it’s too dangerous for too many people to know. In fact, I don’t even know the half of it myself”.

“Okay, so how much does he donate to you guys?”

“I don’t deal with the numbers, but he’s got us out of some really tight financial situations in the past. That’s one of the reasons I feel I need to take care of you for the time being. That, and because I’m such a nice person,” she gave Lon a huge, creepily sincere smile, which he certainly was not anticipating.

Lon smiled back at her, trying his best not to laugh.

They were both silent.

For a brief moment Lon thought he felt a connection between them. He kept forgetting that Cat was young like him, thus rarely took the time to admire her beauty.

Their moment was cut short by the sound of the bathroom door opening down the hall from the living room.

Cat returned to working on her palm screen, while Lon’s face began to glow more brightly.

The light stepping of Eve’s feet could be heard slowly emerging from the corridor. Eventually she came into sight, looking very shy. She wore a low-cut, above knee-length nightgown composed of a light coloured, silk-like material. It was relatively loose fitting, yet made visible the shape of her slender body. She held her arm across her chest so as to leave to the imagination the contents thereof. “Sorry, Cat, I feel a little exposed in this,” she whispered.

Cat looked up from her palm screen at her. “Wow, it looks so cute on you!”

Lon was blown away; never had he imagined Eve in such a capacity. The skin on his cheeks shifted an extra tone of red.

“Sorry, Cat, do you have anything a little less… revealing?” she was clearly uncomfortable.

“I’m afraid not, that’s my thickest winter nightie”.

Eve’s lip began to quiver.

“Don’t worry, I don’t mind, I’ve seen it all before,” said Cat, “Come, sit,” she patted the sofa in between her and Lon in a gesture for Eve to take a seat.

Eve reluctantly obliged, and slowly walked to the sofa and sat down.

Lon did not know where to look. After briefly checking out her figure, he decided it was more polite to look at the floor.

She examined Lon in the bathrobe. “You look nice,” she said attempting to improve her mood.

“You look nice too,” replied Lon, biting his lip and still looking towards the floor.

Eve broke the following awkward quietness by asking Cat, “How can I pay you back for my hospital bills? My bank account is probably being monitored, and I can’t contact my insurance company because it’s a government broker”.

“Oh, there’s absolutely no need to worry about that,” Cat responded.

“But it must have been expensive”.

“No, I paid using virtual money”.

“Virtual money?” said Lon.

“Most money is virtual,” said Eve.

Cat thought for a moment. “Then it’s ‘virtual’ virtual money”.

“I’m not following,” said Lon.

She sighed. She had hoped she would not need to explain this, “I used an app that can credit anybody with any amount of money, at no cost to me”.

“What?” said Eve.

“Where the hell did you get an app like that?” Lon asked.

“Obviously I made it
… well, it was a joint project”.

Lon and Eve were silent.

“I only use it for legitimate reasons though,” she quickly added.

“Did you use it to pay for the apple pie you bought us?” asked Eve.

Cat pondered over a decent answer. “That’s a legitimate reason!”

Lon burst into laughter, and Eve joined him, but in a softer manner.

Cat frowned and faced back down towards the coffee table to continue working on her palm screen.

More uneasy silence ensued.

Lon could not help himself from taking the odd sneak peek at Eve’s attire, trying to be stealthy as he did so.

Again, Eve broke the silence. “I wonder if my parents are okay,” she speculated.

“I’m sure they are,” said Cat, adding solace to her situation. “If the police really do think you’re a terrorist, then your parents are likely to be questioned, that’s all. Even if they’re just trying to find you to kill you, your parents will still only be questioned as to your whereabouts”.