Ultraviolet (13 page)

The perky redhead hurried over, all smiles. “Pete, this is my friend Veronica. We’re just going to pop out for a minute for a pretzel across the street.”

Pete nodded and strode away, as though the business of pretzels was far beneath his pay grade. I glanced at the woman’s ID badge and saw her name was Carol. “So, how’s your day going?”

“Pretty good, same old.”

We walked over to the elevators, pressed the button, and got in. As soon as the doors closed, I started to ask her if she was the tipster, but she shook her head sharply at me, still smiling brightly. I glanced around and saw the camera in the corner above us.

“What’d you have for lunch?” I asked. “I had fish again.”

“Ugh, fish. I can’t stand fish anymore.”

The doors opened and we walked out across the lobby and into the parking lot. We kept chatting about food all the way to the gate and past the frowning guards, and across the street to the food truck selling, among other things, hot pretzels.

Only when we were around on the far side of the truck, did Carol stop smiling. “Oh my God, that was tense. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks. I take it you were the one who saw my friend?”

“I did!” Carol was suddenly a very different woman. She looked ten years older and deeply angry at every word coming out of her mouth. “I saw them hurry her out of the conference room and into the elevator, and then I watched from the window as they put her in a car and drove off. They went that way.” She pointed west. “Sorry, that’s all I know.”

My heart fell a little bit. I really thought I was about to save Mercy, and now I was right back where I was an hour ago.

“But it was a company car, so take this.” Carol pressed a dime-drive into my hand. “This will give you the GPS of all the company cars. Maybe you can use that to find them.”

I stared at the drive. “Thank you. Thank you so much. But… why are you helping me? You could get in a lot of trouble.”

She gave me a cold look. “My father worked at the old Howard Landfill, until he died seven years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“They say he was hit by a truck on the highway just off the Landfill property, so his death wasn’t work related, so my mother never got any death benefits. But I heard from some of his friends that he was killed on the work site, and Howard Enterprises covered it up so there wouldn’t be any safety inspection, and so they wouldn’t have to pay up to my mother. Bastards.”

“I’m really sorry. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Howard, Cygnus, they’re all the same. I want you to make these people pay for what they’re doing to us.”

I looked into her eyes and saw so much anger, so much pain, all wrapped up in a shell of fear and exhaustion. “I will. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

I started walking away, glancing back several times to make sure that Carol got back inside the compound without any trouble. And then I climbed on my bike and headed back west with the tiny dime-drive tucked safely away in my pocket.

I swung north up the expressway for a few minutes and then dove off into some old neighborhood I had never been in before. With the bike and armor shut down, I walked off the road into some trees and down a little hill where no one could see me, and sat on a stump. My phone linked with the dime-drive the moment I connected them, and I found the GPS app ready to go. It displayed a simple map of the city in pale blue lines and then flashed several dozen white dots.

So, those are the Cygnus company cars. Now, which one took Mercy?

I scrolled the timeline backward and the dots began to move, crawling across the thin lines of the city streets. I kept my eye on the east side, right next to the Patterson Plant, and waited for one of the dots to back up to the Cygnus East compound. When the dot arrived, I tapped it and got a serial number.

Got you.

Then I played the tracking data forward in time, watching the little white dot that had Mercy inside winding its way across the city and then up the expressway, past the exit I had taken, almost all the way up to the beltway. The dot stopped. I checked the time. It was current.

That’s where she is now.

I frowned at the map.

That’s the Cygnus North office. That’s where Frost took me to meet with Brian. Maybe he had them bring her to him too. But why? To interrogate her? She doesn’t know anything. But then, they don’t know that. And they might not believe that.

I punched the ground next to me.

I pulled out my phone. “Hey Felix, she wasn’t at the East campus, but I know where she is now.”

“That’s great. Can you get to her?”

“I think so. Any more progress with the fan mail? Does anyone know where Dom is?”

“Nothing about Dom yet. All I’ve got right now is about eight hundred messages from guys debating whether or not you’re hot enough for them to score with.”

I rolled my eyes. “So what’s the tally?”

“The majority seems to think you’re hot.”

“Good to know.” I trudged up the hill to the road. “Anything else?”

“Just a lot of news reports on your big air show this morning. I’m seeing the name Ultraviolet just as much as Carmen Zhao, if not more.”

“Neat. Remind me to give my PR manager a raise.”

He laughed. I liked it when he laughed.

“Are we still on for dinner tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think I’ve got a lead on a guy who’ll let you crash on his couch. He seems to think he makes a wicked lasagna. His words, not mine.”

“It’s a date. I’ll call you when I’ve got Mercy.”

My bike flashed to life and I flashed away on the highway, racing around the slow trucks and the slower cyclists. I tried to focus on Mercedes and figuring out how I was going to rescue her, but I kept thinking about Felix instead. There was a part of me that felt pretty sorry for myself, for losing my job and my home and my friends, and that part of me really wanted to stop running around and just go sit on the floor in Felix’s room and talk about movies and act like everything was okay.

I really wanted to.

But I can’t. Not until Mercy and Dom are safe.

I rolled up outside the Cygnus North building a few minutes later and walked into the lobby with my tactical armor on, all flat black and glowing dreamily at the edges, like violet fog rippling off my body. I walked straight up to the guard’s desk and said, “Tell Brian Rosewater that Carmen Zhao is here to see him. And tell him to bring Mercedes Ortiz with him, it should save us some time, and save him some windows.”

“I’m going to need to see some ID,” the guard said testily.

“Lux, sword two.” The enormous fantasy sword in the shape of a pillar of fire appeared in my right hand. “Here. Here’s my ID.”

The guard frowned at me. “ID.”

I shook my sword at him.

He kept frowning. Not in an evil or mean way, just in a tired-old-man sort of way, and the longer I looked at him, the more guilty I felt about trying to be a loud-mouth showoff.

“Lux, sword off.” I pulled out my wallet and showed him my actual photo ID.

He glanced at it and then picked up the phone.

Two minutes later, the elevator doors opened and Brian stepped out with the very bland and yet strangely sinister Mister Frost beside him. I looked around quickly to make sure there weren’t other men in dark suits closing in around the exits. There weren’t.

“Carmen, nice to see you again. I believe you remember Mister Frost.” Brian stood over by the guard’s desk. He looked tired and very unhappy. “I assume from your message that you are ready to surrender your technology and research to us in exchange for the release of a certain individual.”

“No, I’m just here to pick up my friend,” I said. “Let her go.”

“I can’t do that, Carmen.” He sighed. “You have to understand, this is a matter of law. You broke a contract.”

“And you kidnapped innocent people!”

“They were lawfully detained under the Espionage Act, and you know it.”

“If you don’t let Mercedes and the rest of my friends go, then I’m just going to come upstairs and find them for myself, and I really don’t care how many doors or windows or walls I have to rip open to find them. I hope you believe that I’ll do it, and I hope you know you can’t stop me.”

“Carmen…” Brian rubbed his eyes. “Carmen, if you don’t stop all this, they’re going to turn this matter over to someone else, someone a little less concerned with following protocols and procedures and a little less concerned with whether or not people get seriously hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Brian, if you don’t release your prisoners, then this morning’s little show at the harbor is just going to be the first of a hundred stunts to show everyone that they don’t have to be afraid of your drones and your private police.”

“You think you’re hurting the company?” Brian shook his head. “They had three new drones on station over the harbor within twenty minutes of that little show of yours. I’m told we have thousands of those things in storage. You’ll never knock them out for more than a few minutes.”

I smirked. I wasn’t really amused, but I was surprised how literal and dense Brian was being. “You don’t get it, do you? I wasn’t out there just to smash a few drones. I could have done that with a long pole. I sure as hell didn’t need to jump off a skyscraper to do it.”

“Then why the big production?”

“Eyeballs. I’m showing people that they have a choice, that they don’t need to keep living like this, spending their whole lives in these terrible jobs, living on scraps, living in fear of the megacorps, watching their rights and freedoms wear away in the name of progress and profit. It’s simple. It’s so simple. All they have to do is have the courage to walk away.” I swallowed. “I didn’t have the courage to do it. Not a bit. I was going to play the game, I was going to work my ass off for the next fifty years like a good little drone.”

“But you did walk away.”

“Yeah, I did. Because you forced me to. You took my future, you took my home, you took my family, all in a day.
In a day
.” I took a breath as I struggled to keep my voice calm and even. I didn’t want to stutter or waver or look weak in front of Frost. I didn’t really care about Brian at that point, but Frost was another matter. He was the dangerous one. “I did everything right, and you took everything away from me. So now I’ve got nothing. No home, no money, no food. But it’s okay. I was afraid before, but I’m not anymore.”

“Well, good for you, but that doesn’t change anything.” Brian shrugged. He looked more than a little apologetic. “You’re still on the wrong side of the law.”

“Laws used to be made by people. Now they’re made by companies. But no one voted for the companies. The companies bought the votes, they bought the government, they bought the laws. But not me. I’m not buying it anymore. And pretty soon, neither will anyone else.”

“What does that mean? You’re going to get a bunch of people up in arms to attack Cygnus? You think you can change the system with a few riots?”

“No. I think I can change the system by convincing people to walk away from it.”

“Never happen.”

“Well, I guess we’re going to find out. Now, give me Mercedes.”

“I can’t.”

“Then stay out of my way. Lux, armor two.”

Armor number two was another design from
Demon Age
. It was big and bulky medieval armor, a huge steel suit covered in spikes and iron feathers, valkyrie-class paladin armor. Like the sword that went with it, it was insane to look at, and just as effective.

I stormed upstairs and began tearing apart the second floor of the office, slicing through walls and doors, shouting Mercy’s name, and generally terrifying the well-dressed people who ran screaming from their workstations to get away from me. I ignored them.

I was just beginning to smash my way through the third floor when Frost stepped out of the elevator with Mercedes in his grip. He pushed her toward me and I shifted my armor back to the simple military version, and we hurried downstairs and outside where we jumped on my holographic motorcycle and took off down the expressway.

Chapter 10
Cold Calling

We drove straight to Mercedes’s apartment and I dropped her off at the door. I kept the bike online. I didn’t think Cygnus would be able to get there fast enough to bother me, but I wasn’t about to risk being wrong about that.

“Carmen, what is all this?” Mercy stood on the sidewalk, her arms crossed, her eyes unreadable.

“Look, I’m sorry about all this. It’s completely my fault, I know. I never meant for any of this to happen. It just, sort of, did.” I wanted to go inside and talk about it with her. Hell, I wanted to talk about it with anyone, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the time. It was too dangerous. “The good news is that they can’t detain you again, at least not for another ninety days, so they shouldn’t bother you anymore, okay?”

“But why are you doing this? Why were you destroying that office?”

“To make them let you go.”

“So you destroyed half a building and scared all those people? Did you hurt anyone? Someone could have been killed!”

I frowned at her. I wasn’t expecting a lecture. “Look, I’m trying to be really careful. I don’t want anyone to get hurt at all, but these people… they’re not reasonable people.”

“They said you broke your contract, and you broke the law. Doesn’t that make you the unreasonable one here?” Her tone was getting sharper, as was the glare in her eyes.

I sighed and shook my head. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Don’t worry, I won’t call again, and no one should bother you anymore, okay?”

I hit the throttle and my solid-light bike hummed away down the street, leaving her to shout something after me. I didn’t hear her, and I didn’t want to.

Why couldn’t she see that I was a victim, just like her? I mean, Cygnus broke into her home and kidnapped her. Why wasn’t she mad at them?

I called Felix. “I got her. I got Mercy. She’s home now.”

“That’s great!” I could practically hear him smiling. “I bet she was happy to see you.”