Ultraviolet (12 page)

But either way, it was slowing me down, and by the time I got away from the crowd and got the solid brick walkway under my feet, the two cops on the bicycles were only a few seconds from tackling me to the ground. I saw the crowd start to move, to get in front of the cops, to shield me.

“No!” I shouted. “The cops are the good guys. The companies are the enemies! Don’t let them confuse you. The cops don’t work for Cygnus. They work for you. Don’t hurt them, don’t get in their way!”

The crowd looked at me and I saw the anger and confusion in their eyes, but I couldn’t stand around and explain it to them any better than that. I was out of time. I turned and leapt into the air.

“Lux, bike!”

The motorcycle appeared beneath me and rolled about three feet before the huge black bike flickered and vanished, dropping me to my knees. Then my armor flickered and faded out, piece by piece.

No, no, no…

The water! The water is glitching the suit!

Stupid rubidium!

I started to run, and shouted over my shoulder, “On second thought, it’s okay if you slow them down a little!”

I ran into the nearest galleria, a small two-story building full of tourist restaurants, most of them offering “the best crab cakes in town”. Once upon a time I’d tried some of them, and I don’t recommend any of them.

I dashed through the mostly empty corridor between the restaurants, looking for something, anything that might help me. A place to hide, a way to escape. But all I saw were people sitting at tables, eating, looking bored and tired.

“Stop that girl!” the police shouted from far behind me.

I veered left into the first open doorway, right past the hostess and right into a waitress with a tray covered in water glasses. As the glasses crashed to the floor I bolted through the maze of tables and surprised people, and shoved through a door into the kitchen where I found a narrow room full of shiny metal appliances and cabinets, and two men in white, covered in stains, and looking rather menacing, mostly because they both had large knives in their hands.

I hesitated, not so much because of the knives but because I was looking for a way out, for a back door. There had to be a back door, but I just wasn’t seeing it.

I probably only stood there for two or three seconds, and just as one of the cooks was about to say something, I saw a flicker on my left arm. A panel of armor had appeared for a moment. I looked down and saw that I was holding my arm near a grill with a handful of unimpressive crab cakes sizzling on it.

The heat was seeping into my arm.

The heat.

It’s drying out the suit!

The armor on my arm flickered again and this time it stayed on.

“You’re her!” The young cook grinned. “The one from online!”

“Who?” The old cook looked confused.

I spun around and leaned over the grill, spreading my gloved hands over it so the heat would rise into the jacket. The heat was intense and I wanted to pull away, but I wanted my suit to work even more.

“Hey, what are you doing?” The old cook started moving behind me, and the young cook moved too, but I couldn’t see them. I also couldn’t see whether the cops had followed me into the restaurant, but I knew they would. I’d made too much of a scene. I only had seconds.

Violet armor flickered on my arms and chest, and my helmet sizzled back into place around my head.

Good enough.

“Is there a way out?” I asked.

“There!” The young cook pointed down a narrow gap between the cabinets to a narrow door darkened with some sort of filth I didn’t want to identify. I just yelled “Thanks!” as I slipped down the gap, through the door, across a storage space, and then out the back door into an alley right next to Pratt Street.

I ran some more and the rest of my armor glittered and fizzled back into existence as I shook off enough of the harbor water to get the fabric back online. And then suddenly my motorcycle blazed to life as I jogged down the sidewalk, catapulting me into the seat, and I streaked away from the harbor, onto the road, and away, far away, zigzagging into the west side until I felt safe enough to stop running and start hiding.

“Lux, clear.”

I jogged to a stop as the bike and armor vanished and I turned to walk down a narrow alley with my hands in my pockets. I was covered in sweat and my heart was pounding, but the fear was gone.

I can do this.

I’m already doing this, and people are helping me.

It’s happening.

I was only a couple of blocks from my old apartment, but I knew I couldn’t go there, not with the cameras and the gas traps and who knew what else hiding there, waiting for me. I suppose I could have tried going to my parents’ house. They were safe from Cygnus, and even if Frost spotted me going into the house, I was pretty sure I could get away if I had to. Still, it was better if I didn’t put my mom and dad in any danger if I could help it.

I kept walking. I was getting hungry.

When Felix called, he sounded more than a little excited. “Are you all right? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I got away clean, I think. I’m fine.”

“Good. I’m really glad. I was so worried.”

I smiled. It was nice to know that someone cared whether or not I was okay.

“So listen,” he said. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Bad news.”

“Okay, well, the bad news is that there’s another standard warrant out for your arrest now. It looks like Cygnus is pressing criminal charges for smashing those drones, and they’re publishing lots of photos of you, with and without the helmet, so you’re going to need to keep your head down.”

“Nothing surprising there. What’s the good news?”

“The good news is that one of your fans just found your friend Mercedes.”

“What?” I stopped walking. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I just got a message from a woman who works at Cygnus East, and she said she’s pretty sure there’s a young Latina woman being detained in the conference room right down the hall from where she sits.”

“Wait. This tip is coming from someone who works for Cygnus?”

“Yep. Sounds like she saw your little aerial show just now and finally got up the courage to say something. I’ll follow up and see how legit she is, but for now it’s our best lead.”

“You do that. Lux, bike.” The bike appeared and I got on.

“Where are you going?”

“To Cygnus East. If Mercy is really there, I’m not going to leave her there one minute longer.”

Chapter 9
Allies

It was still mid-afternoon with the sun blazing overhead and plenty of people and bicycles in the streets, but I didn’t care. After my flight over the harbor, I was feeling almost as invincible as I really was. After all, it was one thing to have holographic armor that made me bulletproof, but it was something else to actually trust that armor to save my life when people were shooting at me.

Traffic was light and I had no trouble getting through downtown in the middle of the day, weaving around slower riders and parked cars. I saw hands wave as I flashed by, and a few cyclists tried to keep up with me, smiling and waving. I waved back, and streaked away.

I called Felix again. “Any news?”

“More of the same. Are you really going to try to get Mercedes out right now? In the middle of the day?”

“Yep. It’s my fault she’s in there.”

“No, it’s Cygnus’s fault she’s in there. Remember that,” he said. “You’re not responsible for the shit they pull. That’s their choice. All the paper pushers, all the security guys, they’re the ones who get up every morning and decide to do bad things to people all day long.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“I’m serious.” He paused. “I wish there was more I could do to help. I hate just giving you tips and then sitting here, waiting to find out if you’re okay.”

“Felix, without you, I’d probably be in a private prison right now. You know that, right?” I frowned. I wished we could be having the conversation in person so I could see his face. “If it weren’t for you, I would have made those spare gloves and handed them over to Susquehanna, and then they probably would have made me disappear. You’ve already saved me, and now you’re about to save my friend too.”

“I just… I just want to help.”

“You are. Big time,” I said. “Listen, after I get Mercy home, how about you find me a place to crash for the night, and then meet me there. We can talk, and eat.”

“That sounds good.”

“Good.” I blew out a long breath. It had been a while since I asked a guy out, and I wasn’t sure if this really qualified, but it was the best I could do right now. “Okay, so I’m going to go break into an office building in broad daylight. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, Carmen.”

I shot across town, often going the wrong way on one-way streets, and cruised into the east neighborhoods. I had only been in the east side a handful of times, mostly when I was much younger and dumber. There were bad spots all over Baltimore, but this was one big bad area. It had always been poor, but several companies had come in and steamrolled whole residential blocks to make room for industrial facilities. The Patterson Recycling Plant now stood on what had once been a park with a bad reputation for hookers and drugs, but now it was just another dangerous plant with a bad reputation for worker injuries and deaths.

Cygnus East was a small compound just north of the recycling center. The parking lot was surrounded by a concrete wall, and the wall was topped with a wire fence, and cameras sat on poles high above the fence, slowly sweeping around and around to watch the grounds. Behind the walls and fences, the campus itself consisted of two identical buildings, both very boring concrete cubes striped with dark glass windows.

Crap. Which building is she in?

I called Felix and asked the question out loud, and after ten minutes of typing and chatting, he came back and said, “The left one. Fifth floor. The conference room is named Canton.”

“Okay. And you trust this woman?”

“I think so. Her profiles all look very real, right down to the drunken party pics from high school. She’s been working there for six years now, assistant to the deputy director of something-or-other.”

“Right, well, I guess that’ll have to be good enough. I’m going in.”

There was one gate through the wall, and there were two guards at the gate, so I headed around to the back of the compound. “Lux, stilts, four yards.”

I shot up into the air on my holo-stilts and then stepped forward onto the concrete wall, inches away from the wire fence and right below one of the camera poles. I got rid of the stilts and summoned a holo-knife, which cut a nice hole in the fence, and then I sliced through the center of the pole and whatever cables were in there. The camera stopped rotating and I stepped through the fence and dropped to the grass inside the wall.

There were at least a dozen cars in the parking lot, all of them new, but none of them looked like the black sedan that Frost had driven when he grabbed my parents. I hoped that was a good sign.

There was no guard and no guard desk in the lobby of the left building, so I walked straight in and found the stairwell, and headed up.

I guess all the security is focused on the wall.

When I got to the fifth floor, I leaned against the stairwell door, listening for any signs of life, especially life that might be nearby. I did hear voices, but they were faint, so I cracked the door an inch and peeked out.

Empty hallway.

“Lux, clear.”

I hoped my clothes looked decent enough that I could find the conference room before someone stopped me. I had completely dried out from my dip in the harbor, but I still smelled like oil and fish. I stood up straight and started striding down the hall, trying for all the world to act like I belonged there and had somewhere important to be.

I marched past three private offices containing people, and then past about two dozen workstations in an open area where only half a dozen people were working. No one glanced up. And then I was in another hallway, passing closed doors with names like “Fells Point” and “Butcher’s Hill”. I’d found the conference rooms.

My phone buzzed, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to make any noise, not even a whisper.

Near the end of the hall was a door marked “Canton”. I reached for the handle, but hesitated. I listened to the door, but couldn’t hear anything inside. Was Mercy alone in there? Should I knock, or barge in, or what?

I tried the handle. Locked.

I knocked softly. No answer.

My phone buzzed again. I glanced at it. Felix.

In a minute.

I cast a guilty look down the hall behind me. Someone could step out at any moment and see me.

“Lux, knife.”

I sliced through the gap between the door and the frame and felt the lock break. I opened the door and slipped inside.

It was empty. Just a long table and a few chairs on wheels. No people. No signs of people. Nothing. Frowning, I took out my phone and called Felix back. “There’s no one here,” I whispered.

“I know. I was trying to call you. The woman just sent me a message. They just moved Mercedes about ten minutes ago.”

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know. Just get out of there.”

“Okay.”

I slipped back out into the hall, planning to retrace my steps. I made it as far as the open space with the workstations before someone said, “Excuse me.”

I kept walking.

“Excuse me, young lady, stop right there.”

I grimaced and stopped, and glanced over my shoulder. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” said a heavy-set man in a blue suit. “Are you looking for someone? Where are you supposed to be?”

“I’m…” My mind went blank. I guess I’m not really cut out for the spy game.

“Ronnie!”

The suit and I both looked over at the woman waving from one of the workstations. “Hey, Ronnie, I’m all set. Thanks for waiting.”

“Uhm. No problem,” I said as calmly as I could.