SLAM (10 page)

She racks her brain for reasons
she would choose a place if she was on the run, and frowns. She
wouldn’t be going to the sort of places the runner is; the number
of people in the areas chosen alone should guarantee that the
person wouldn’t get away clean. No, she’d be aiming to get out of
the City. There must be something the person wants in the
buildings, or maybe they can’t travel far? She tries to figure out
what the longest distance between any two of the focal points is –
less than three kilometres, if she’s doing her math correctly.
Nothing that couldn’t be jogged inside half an hour, even by
someone who was pretty out of shape. If the streets are overrun by
the Institute, though, there might not be a reason for the
selections. It could be that they feel safer inside, and are just
moving to stay ahead of the soldiers.
Urgh. Come on, Serena. You can’t mess this up.
Think!

Abial spends a few minutes in silence as well,
scanning the nets for useful information, while Leaf wriggles his
nose from side to side, swooping eyebrows narrowed in
concentration. Then he brightens suddenly, unhunching himself and
waving a hand in the air to get their attention.

“They’re all wired!’” he exclaims, excitement
filling his hushed voice. “All the buildings’re on the original
wire trunk, holdin’ massive servers. Maybe the terrorist chap needs
a pluggable connex for summat, not just wireless. Look!” He takes
the datapad right out of Abial’s hands so quickly that she’s still
blinking at the empty space where it was when he starts typing away
on the touchscreen, pulling up and discarding things so rapidly
that Serena can’t even make out what they are.

Pickpocket, she’d bet on it. She snerks at
Abial’s mildly shocked expression, then looks back at
him.

“Aha!” He taps again, and the city map is
overlaid with a blueprint that shows massive swathes of wiring
under the city. The original underground power lines for the entire
City’s grid. Serena’s eyes scan the map, and then the blueprint
over it, her heart racing. Leaf is right – every building hit is at
a terminal point on the wires, meaning direct access to the City’s
power if you manually spliced in. That would explain the
electricity cuts, for sure.

It seems that whoever they’re chasing needs
power, lots of it, for whatever they’re doing.

Leaf pauses, his face suddenly growing
serious, concern painting his features. “Nukeslints! If I figured
it out this fast, either the soldiers are thicker’n rocks, or they
know too.”

“And they’re probably already on their way to
the next stop.” Serena finishes his thought for him, mind flashing
through the possibilities. Whoever this person is, they’re taking a
traceable route. The soldiers have to be on to it, which means
they’re probably waiting at the next building. If Serena and Abial
are going to get there first, they don’t have much time.

She nods, pursing her lips. “You’re right,
there’s no way they missed this. Not with the sort of tech they’re
running. Look, there’s three buildings that make sense as a next
stop, and four more a little further out, if this person is willing
to move an extra klick. So she could be hiding in any one of these
seven locations!”

“She?” Leaf raises a sharp eyebrow, black eyes
glittering like oil. “Why she?”

Serena smirks, raising an eyebrow
back at him. “Why not? Anyway, if they’re sending the Institute
scrabbling like this, it doesn’t matter
who
they are. Just that we get to
them first. They’ve got to be important, and that means we need
them.”

Abial scrapes her hair off her face, pulling
it into a firm horsetail. “Right, we’re gonna need an evac plan,
and a safe house other than this one. Can’t risk coming back to the
same place. I vote we get some food, put a plan together, and
bounce ASAP. If you guys are right, we don’t have much time.” She
slaps her hand on her hip to check her zap, then realizes she isn’t
wearing it, and sighs. “Weapons would be nice, too. Leaf, could ya
try and pull something together for us?”

But he’s already sliding toward the door,
moving like silk. He pats his hair back into place, and suddenly
the guttersnipe is gone, replaced by a self-confident, affected
young gentleman. The chameleon effect is impressive; Serena would
never guess that he was the same pickpocket who’d been entertaining
them for the past ten minutes. He grins at them, and the mask
disappears for a second. Then he listens at the door, waits a few
beats, and slips out of it without a sound.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Abial
breaks it.

“He’s kinda creepy.”

Serena blurts a laugh at the idea of Abial
being creeped out by their new friend. She’s usually so
unflustered, taking everything in her stride – something Serena has
always been envious of. “Eh, pretty neat trick, changing it up like
that. I wonder if he can do any other characters. Maybe he can give
us some pointers.” Then she nods, jerking her head at the map.
“We’d better get to it. Like you said, we don’t have much
time.”

They settle in at the workstation, anchoring
the holo map to the wall so they can refer to it as they start
pulling information from the city archives and nets, working
together seamlessly to formulate a plan that will get them to the
right place, and then get them out of the City. Preferably with
their lives intact.

WHEN LEAF COMES
back, he slips down the stairs at the side of the
room without making any sound whatsoever, scaring the nuke out of
them. Some slight change in the room alerts the girls, and they
whirl simultaneously, thrusting power at him. Serena herself – and
she expects Abial as well – intended to slam the intruder into the
wall, but he just slides sideways untouched and snickers, raking
his now-messy hair off his forehead again.

Serena’s heart is in her throat, hands
outstretched from the failed attack. Blanks are notoriously
difficult to affect with telekinesis. Without the implicit
understanding of their body position that comes with the reading of
minds, it’s impossible to wrap mental ‘muscles’ around them. Which
means that half of her martial training is useless against him.
That pisses her off, as well as the fact that he caught them by
surprise when they’re supposed to be on high alert.

“Blank or no, you’d be a splat on the wall if
we had zaps, idiot,” she snarls at him, dropping her hands and
turning back to the datapad she’s been using to familiarize herself
with all possible routes to the sites they’ve designated as likely
targets.

He doesn’t wilt under the hard stare he’s
receiving from Abial, Serena notes, watching from the corner of her
eye as she pretends her muscles aren’t juddering from the rush of
adrenaline. Instead, he just chuckles again.

“Nah if ya had zaps, I’d have taken the back
door and disarmed ya before ya got a shot off at me.”

“Or you could have knocked, like a
normal human being.” Abial’s tone is scathing, but a smile lurks
around the corners of her mouth. Serena scowls at her; her own
hackles are still up, leaving her totally on edge, but Abial seems
to be over it already, which only serves to irritate her
more.
Don’t you think we should be taking
this a little more seriously?

Leaf hops up onto a handy set of plastic
crates and grins broadly at them both, clearly pleased by their
reactions. “Well, that’d only work if we had a secret knock,
wouldn’t it? Else ya’d never have answered. 'Cuz yer not supposed
to be ‘ere.”

His matter-of-fact ridiculousness
breaks through Serena’s frustration, and she sighs, throwing her
hands up in defeat in the face of his unshakable smugness. “Fine,
sneak in, make us,
trained
soldiers,
jump, but don’t come complaining
if we accidentally hurt you. Deal?” She looks across at him, deadly
serious. It wouldn’t do any of them any good if they accidentally
crippled or killed their only ally in this City, but they’ll need
at least some cooperation from him to keep from doing
that.

“If ya got extremely lucky!” He looks so
unbearably cocky that she clenches her fist and uses her powers to
yank the crate he’s sitting on forward. He lurches, teetering
dangerously before regaining his balance, and purses his mouth in
wry acknowledgement. Her point made, she shoves the crate back into
its place telekinetically, and raises an eyebrow at him in
challenge.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll knock. Don’t want ya
throwin’ a table at me pretty face! What’s the plan?”
Satisfied that he understands that they’re not here for fun and
games, she leans on a table, waving her hand at Abial, who spins in
her seat and gestures, bringing the map around so it’s in front of
her where Leaf can see it better. It’s still vertical, though, and
his face is lit up with an eerie blue as he leans in, emphasizing
his rather feminine jawline and casting ghostly shadows that hide
his eyes.

“As far as we can figure it, our
best shot is to wait and find out where the soldiers are heading
next, and then get there first. Knowing where they
might
be heading is all
well and good, and if we had a whole crew we could hit up each
joint at the same time, but we don’t have that. So we have to beat
the bad guys to wherever they’re going. And then we should be
golden.

“We’re working on the assumption that someone
has stolen something, and that the Institute wants it back pretty
badly, which means it could be something that damages them. It
could be equipment, but it could also be intelligence. Anyway, the
plan is that we lend whoever they’re chasing a hand, if we can and
should, and then get them out of the City. Quick as we can. Without
getting killed.

“Of course if they don’t want to cooperate, we
might have to rethink our aims.”

Her face is hard in the cold lighting, and
Serena twists her mouth unhappily. They just don’t have a lot of
good options, but kidnapping sounds a little too much like the
methods the Institute uses. Whoever they’re after might not welcome
their help, and it’s all too possible that he or she won’t want to
go back to ARC at all.

In which case Serena and Abial will have to
relieve them of information and possible items. And she’s not
exactly comfortable with that.

But it would be irresponsible to leave a
weapon that could help ARC behind, no matter the cost. War brings
impossible circumstances with it, and sometimes all the choices are
bad, but she truly hopes it doesn’t come down to hurting someone
that they could, instead, form an alliance with.

Whatever happens, she’ll have to deal with it.
This is the hand they’ve been dealt, and combat training has
prepared them for high-risk situations like this. If they leave the
person behind to be captured, it could compromise their chances of
getting out of the City safely. And if Serena or Abial is caught –
because the person they’re chasing refuses to come with them, and
knows too much – their minds will be plundered; the chances of them
being able to resist for very long are low. That’s why ‘Ways to
Commit Suicide’ is a class she’s been taking since she was
fourteen. If they’re out of touch for more than a day, the rotating
entrances to the ARC headquarters will be destroyed, presumed
compromised by their capture. Of course, they’re not privy to
everything; ARC, by necessity, keeps information as
compartmentalized as possible. In the hands of a skilled Reader, a
captured operative could spell the end of the entire
resistance.

Taking her own life, if it comes
to it, is something she thinks she’s accepted. But murder? She
pushes away the unwelcome thought that they may have to kill
someone who could be an ally. There’s no point in worrying about
that before they even manage to catch up. Besides, she can’t
imagine being alone and hounded by the Watch and Institute alike
and
not
wanting
help.

Everything will be fine. That’s the idea for
right now, and she’s sticking to it.

She clears her throat, wanting to
pull Abial’s thoughts away from killing. “They’ll probably be happy
to cooperate with anyone that can keep them alive. By the looks of
the track so far, they’re only one step ahead of the soldiers,
which means they’re either hacking comms or the cameras, to see
where the bad guys are headed. If the Institute goes dark
and
turns off the city
cams, whoever it is will be flying blind. He or she could end up
surrounded without even realizing it. So we don’t have much time.
If it was me in charge, it would already be a dark op, just because
it’s so obvious that the body they’re after is tuned in to their
approach.”