Authors: Matthew S. Cox
Shame crashed on her with the sound of Blake grunting. She fell to the ground as if his cheese-scented mass crushed her to the Comforgel pad. Anna mused about asking James to take that memory away from her. Her jaw tightened.
I don’t want him to see me like that.
Anna fought out from under the emotional burden, and clutched her wrist. Zoom would make the awful memory of that video go away. Seeing it from the outside would make it easy to think it was someone else, someone other than her. The Pixie was not her anymore; it could all be a nightmare.
No.
She spat and swallowed the urge to throw up.
I’ll not be any good to Faye or Penny if I get high again.
That meant dealing with pain, not running from it any more. She covered her face in her hands, breathing until she calmed down. All she thought about was how terrified Faye must be.
Everything wrong with my life can wait.
She took a tiny electronic bud from her pocket and snugged it into her ear. She winced at the insect-like sensation of the cold metal moving, adjusting its shape to fit without gaps. An electronic tingle spread over the side of her head with Mr. Orange’s voice as loud as if he stood inches away. It required no microphone, picking up the vibrations in her skull.
“Signal’s good, Pixie.”
“Call me Anna.”
“Nathan.”
“Hello, Nathan. Just sitting here until the sun goes down.”
His voice carried a smile. “Understood, Anna.”
While waiting for darkness, she observed a dozen men in grey uniforms and black-visored caps patrolling the outer perimeter. Most were on foot, but one had a six-wheeled rover bearing a mounted cannon. Aside from the men in military garb, the complex maintained an innocuous appearance that would cause anyone passing on the road to disregard it as yet another abandoned farm.
By the time the sun went behind the western horizon, she had gotten a fair sense of their pattern. Her jog down the hill slowed as she felt something in the air.
“I’m sensing a field at the outskirt.”
“One moment…” His voice sounded different; grim and deep, it carried a hint of a Japanese accent.
“What happened to your voice?”
He laughed. “I’m in the net now; it’s my avatar modulation. Does it bother you?”
“No. Caught me off guard is all.”
“It’s a trigger field for explosive restraints. I bet the auggies have bombs around their necks or put inside them.”
Anna advanced, chilled silent by the thought of it. Fifteen meters later, he told her to wait.
“Okay, that’s got it. Just nixed the thermal sweep on this sector and replaced most of their security monitoring with a four-second loop of empty space. Go in 3…2…now.”
She darted ahead, bounding through the grass down a long slope before she reached a metal fence.
Electrified, cute.
Anna leapt onto it without hesitation; her power guided the current across her skin without harm. By the time she leapt to the ground inside, the charge had made her feel as though she’d drank an entire pot of coffee.
After a short dash over open ground beyond the fence, she slipped among old hydroponic tanks. This close, they made her feel like a mouse. The stack reached a touch past forty feet tall, each individual row about seven. White metal glistened in the starlight, framing murky transparent plastic coated with ten years of neglect. Most large food producers used orbital farms now, where gravity and space were nonissues. Due to economy of scale, land-based farms had become almost extinct outside of the third world.
She jogged to the end of the row, leaning up against a tank while she waited for the patrol. Due to their spacing, her best bet would be to walk right past one. When the guards came around the corner of a red corrugated building, she latched onto their mental presence and forced their brains to ignore her.
Striding out into the open, she bee-lined for the nearest door. Two soldiers passed within an arm’s length, not even batting an eyelash. Anna ignored Orange’s frantic shouting until she arrived at a grey door.
“Relax, I got a few more tricks.”
“I… I don’t even wanna know how the hell you just did that.” His rapid exhale flooded her ear. “One sec, I’ll get the door.”
She squatted low, keeping her body in shadow as she looked at the code panel. The next pair of guards was due in about fifty seconds. Based on her count, these two would have a live dog. She had never tried telepathic invisibility on an animal before, and had no idea how to make it not smell her.
Come on, Orange.
A pleasant beep and a dull green light signaled the acceptance of the forged code from cyberspace. She ducked inside, closing it as the next patrol walked into view. The room looked like an old storage barn converted into a garage for military rovers.
Nathan’s voice in her head made her jump. “Cameras are off, go now.”
Anna ran through the dark toward a small light on the wall and another code panel. It beeped green a second before she reached it, and she went through into a sparkling metal hallway. The harsh change from dark garage to bright passage blinded her for a moment.
“Left,” he whispered.
Her run began as a drifting fall to the side, rubber soles squeaking across the gloss black floor.
“Duck behind the bulkhead, now.”
She did, squeezing herself into the wall in an effort to become part of it. The sound of voices went past in an offshoot corridor.
“Clear. Take the next right turn and go for the elevator.”
Two silver doors opened in the otherwise featureless grey wall, taking her into a large octagonal chamber with silver grating around a polished black center.
“Sublevel three.”
Her finger flicked at the controls and the room rumbled. A large elevator consisting of a foot-thick slab of plastisteel slid to the level of the floor from below. Four heavy protrusions jutted from three sides of the platform into reinforced grooves lined with gear tracks. It wasn’t hydraulic; the elevator crawled up six-inch deep teeth.
Bloody elevator could lift a tank… and probably as slow as the National Health Service.
“This is a right bit of overkill for a little kid. What the hell did I just walk into?”
Orange snickered. “Cyborg prison, remember? This is the only facility the CSB has complete oversight on. Anywhere else they tried to stash her, some other agency would have noticed. I’m surprised they slipped a little girl in here without anyone saying a word. I bet your friend Gordon is operating a small cadre within the CSB that isn’t exactly playing by the whole rulebook.”
“Probably not even one page.”
The great elevator crept downward. Anna came close to screaming out of impatience. When the doors opened, she edged into another corridor of silver, black, and white. A single row of lamps along the ceiling painted glare spots down the hall in both directions. Two guards walking away glanced at her, yelling and going for rifles at her lack of uniform. Anna raked her hands downward through the air, calling lightning from the overhead lights into them. Rapid-fire flashes connected thin threads of electricity to their skulls with a series of cracks. The woman passed out without a sound, the man managed a weak gurgling howl before he fell. Lacking the time or the strength to drag them anywhere, she secured them in a handcuffed hug before frying every bit of electronics on them. Communications, rifle firing circuit, and binders sizzled and smoked.
“Way to impose a time limit, girl. Next patrol will find them in a hair under four minutes.”
“Sorry. I could’ve just let them shoot me.”
Orange sighed. “Don’t argue with me, run.”
Every ten feet, an armored door stood emblazoned with a four-digit number.
“Crikey, Nathan. These doors would stop an airstrike.”
“Right turn. Go to the end and wait.”
She fought the urge to sprint, moving as fast as she could without creating too much noise. Heavy scrapes and moans came from some of the cells, making her jump. Something smashed into a door from inside; a grungy face appeared in the tiny strip of armored window. A man with a half-metal face howled at her and licked the glass. More whooping and screeching made the place feel like an asylum more than a prison.
Anna’s heart resumed beating. “This is what they call sane enough to keep cybernetics?”
“What’s that? Signal fell away there.”
“I’m okay, at the end of the hall.”
“To your left is a monitoring station with two guards. You’ll need to get through it and go straight; do not turn right at the node. I’d suggest not frying the systems counter. That will set off alarms, and might make it impossible to get the doors open.”
Peeking around the edge, she attached her thoughts to two minds. A slow but deliberate walk took her through an octagonal room with an arrangement of consoles at the center. A man and a woman in green military dress flicked idly among security cameras, sometimes looking in at cells from which a particular lot of noise emanated. They spent most of their time watching hallways.
“What the fuck is that?”
The man’s voice almost stopped Anna’s heart.
“What?” asked the woman.
“There’s a thermal anomaly floating down the hall…” He looked right at Anna. “Should be right there, but there’s nothing.
The woman jumped up, reaching. Her fingers came within an inch of Anna’s face as she leaned away.
“Doesn’t feel warm. Must be that dodgy sensor again. You fill out the IT request this time. I did it last night.”
Anna didn’t even breathe as she edged out of the chamber. She finally gasped for air forty meters down the subsequent hall.
“You have to show me how to do that.” His chuckle reverberated in her skull. “Would come in so handy.”
“You missed a thermal.”
“Sorry. I made it go away.”
“It’s a lot harder than it looks. Can’t run while concentrating. Which one is it?”
“Another ten meters, hook left here. There ya go, fourth door.”
Anna stopped at the indicated point and stood on her toes to peer through the strip of six-inch thick glass. Faye trembled in a ball on the bunk at the far end of a room big enough to park a van in, wearing an oversized yellow prison jumpsuit made for someone much taller. Bare feet poked out from under the loose pant legs, and she hid her face against her knees. Her eyes were red and she had thrown up several times on the floor.
“Sons of bitches. Orange, open this fucker.” Anna smacked the door.
The sound of metal clanging played background to his voice. “One second… one second…”
“What’s the racket?”
“A swordfight.”
“A what?” She blinked. “Did you just say a bloody swordfight?”
“Yep. Security construct found me. Doesn’t much like me being in here. Be just a moment.”
“You’re playing a bloody video game while I’m up to my tits in a military prison?”
“It’s…” He grunted, the sound of clashing blades clear in the background. “Not a game. Defense software.”
After a quick left-right glance, Anna stretched upwards once more. Faye stared at the window, clutching at the bedding with a terrified expression. As soon as she recognized Anna’s face, she shouted. Whatever she said came through the immense door as a weak murmur. Seconds later, muted banging and screaming echoed inside the cell. The only word clear enough to understand was “help!”
Anna clawed at the metal, finding the wait agonizing. After an intolerable seventeen seconds, the door rumbled with a heavy clank and rolled to the side. When the gap became wide enough, Faye squeezed through and wrapped her arms around Anna, trying to speak, breathe, and cry at the same time. She smelled like vomit and cheap food, and couldn’t get a word out between sobs and coughing. Anna held her, patting her back.
“We haven’t time… We have to go.”
“W-what d-did I do? They w-won’t tell me. H-how did you get in here?”
Anna squeezed the air out of her. “I’m so sorry they took you… It’s my fault. They wanted to use you to make me kill someone.”
“I want my Dad!” Faye bawled.
She propped the girl up, holding tight. “Be quiet. I’m going to bring you home, Faye.” Anna wiped tears from red cheeks. “I need you to be strong for me, okay? You can fall to pieces once we’re out of here. We have to run.”
Faye’s fear turned to petulant anger. “I can’t. I’m―”
Anna took her hand and pulled the girl behind her down the hallway. Three steps later, Faye stumbled and fell, hitting the ground with the squeak of skin on plastisteel. She got a hand over her mouth to mute the whimper of a banged knee, but when she tried to gather her legs underneath, it became obvious she was hobbled.
Aghast, Anna helped her up, pulling at the oversized jumpsuit to expose the glimmering silver links of a pair of metal binders connecting her ankles. Faye cringed, wearing a growing cloak of shame. Anna stooped and pulled the leggings further, revealing a high security electronic restraint. She cast a disbelieving glance upwards, pondering for a second. A healing bruise on Faye’s lip triggered understanding.
“How many did you hoof in the plums?”
The girl fidgeted her thumbs at the pockets, staring down. “Four.”
“Good for you. At least they’re powered. I can get them off, but it might pinch a bit.”
Anna put her hand on the shackle above the code-entry pad. Her mind mapped the threads of current within, looking for the contacts to operate the drive motor. The circuitry of these was more complex than the ones from Lord Thompson’s staff, but the hasp motor felt the same.
Faye yowled and leapt back, almost tripping over the short chain. “Ouch.”
“Shock or too tight now?”
“Shock… What the fuck did you―”
Covering Faye’s mouth with her other hand, Anna shook her head. “Quiet, sorry, and you’re too little for that word.”
When Faye didn’t come back with a smartass remark for being scolded on language, Anna worried.
She grabbed onto Anna’s shoulders, crying and trying to break the chain with kicks. “I wanna go home, I wanna go home!”
“Hold still!” Anna looked back and forth to make sure no one was coming, and focused again. A second gap in the circuit path proved more fruitful; when she zapped it, the motor revved and threw the hasp open. Faye jumped and flailed, trying to get her other foot away from Anna’s hand as two false zaps made her hair stand up. The girl fell, scooting backwards to get away from the painful electricity, but Anna held on to the loose end of the binders and pulled her close.