Ultraviolet (17 page)

And while holograms can defy the laws of motion, like the whole “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” deal, a hologram still has to occupy space and repel other objects, and oh yeah, deal with gravity. And that was a problem, because now my weightless shield weighed over three hundred pounds.

I fell to the ground with the lioness on top of me, snarling and growling in my face with only a thin wall of cold photons between my nose and her teeth. Her weight wasn’t crushing me, thanks to my armor, but her weight was definitely keeping me from moving. I was lying flat on my back, legs stretched out, unable to even bend my knees.

It’s hard to think clearly when there’s a lion lying on your body, and the lion is trying to eat your face. Even if you’re not in pain, and you’re pretty sure it can’t kill you, trust me, it’s still pretty terrifying, which makes it hard to figure out how to escape. So I lay there, staring into this lion’s mouth and eyes for a second, just babbling noises as I tried to get my brain in gear.

“L-L-Lux, Lux, Lux! Lux, shield two!”

The round shield morphed into a longer, rectangular shield, more like the ones police officers use in riots, and that pushed the claws away from my body a little, and it put another layer of cold photons between my face and her fangs.

“Lux! Lux!” My brain was stuck in neutral. All I could think about were the constructs I had used recently. The bike, the wingsuit, the stilts, the skates. Nothing that would help me escape from a hungry lioness on my chest.

And then I figured it out.

“Lux, sphere!”

The sphere expanded outward from my body to form a protective bubble around me. Where the bubble touched the ground, it simply ended, flowing and adapting to the contour of the earth to keep the sphere as perfect as possible.

The good news was that the lioness was gone, pushed out by the expanding bubble, forced far enough away that I could stand up and breathe and feel slightly safe again.

The bad news was that the hologram was perfectly black, except for the violet glow along the bottom edge where the sphere met the ground. So I couldn’t see through it. I couldn’t see the lions, or Frost, or the way out of the enclosure. I couldn’t see anything at all.

I turned around and faced the direction where I was pretty sure the window was. Then I took a deep breath and yelled, “Lux, sphere off!”

The moment the bubble vanished, I sprinted toward the wall and dove through the broken window. It wasn’t the most graceful dive, but I did get through the window, and slipped to the ground without too much flailing around. My body armor kept me safe and sound, and a moment later I was standing on the sidewalk, all limbs accounted for.

Frost was standing beside me, his head and hands streaked with blood. His glare shifted from me to the lions and back to me again. “That was a hell of a thing. You’re some piece of work.”

For a tiny moment, I felt ashamed. I had almost killed someone. Those lions really could have killed him. And not just killed him like a gun kills someone, but they would have killed him horribly, tearing him to pieces, eating him while he was still alive, or something equally awful, I assume.

What the hell am I doing? Who the hell am I now?

But that moment passed, and I shrugged. “You started this. You kidnapped my parents and my friends. Innocent people. You put them in danger, just to steal something from me, something I created, something that could help a lot of people. And for what? Money? Screw you.”

I turned and started walking away.

“Carmen.”

I didn’t look back. “Lux, bike.”

And I rode away.

Chapter 12
Unpaid Leave

“You don’t understand, Felix, it was like… like I was someone else. I was doing things, saying things… I could have killed him.
Killed
. For real.”

“But you didn’t. You saved Dom, that’s the important thing. You did what you had to do to protect the people you love. That’s what matters.”

“You’re not listening!”

I couldn’t look at him. He didn’t understand. He was being too nice, because he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t seen what I did, he couldn’t understand how real it was. To him, it was just a story that I had told him. But for me, it was the sight of Frost standing in a field, covered in his own blood, being stalked by a giant deadly animal.

It sounded crazy, but it was real. I was there. I did it to him.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I… I don’t see why you’re so upset.”

We were sitting in the park near his house. It was out in the open and there were plenty of people around us. If anyone recognized me, I didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid of being seen, or even being caught. Let Frost and his security team come, let the cops come. I was bullet-proof, and I could out-run anyone. I’d been running for days. I was starting to expect it, the running. It was almost normal now. So who cares if I have to run again?

“I’m upset because… what if this is how it happens? One day you’re normal, and the next day you get scared, so you do something terrible and it works out for you, and then the day after that you figure it’s okay to do something even more terrible.” I shook my head and looked away. The thoughts were coming faster than I could say them out loud and I got up to take a few steps away from him.

“Hey, no, no, don’t even think that.” He stood up and put his arms around me. “You’re not like them. And you’re not going to turn into one of them.”

“But what if I do? I mean, right now I feel like I’m the victim, I’m the good guy, I’m justified,” I said. “But what about tomorrow? Next month? Next year? I wrecked an office full of innocent people yesterday. They probably feel like victims now, they probably feel justified in hating me, wanting me locked up. I mean, where does it stop?”

“Yeah, I guess there is a vicious circle, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. Vicious.”

We stood for a minute, holding each other, watching people heading home on their bikes, riding past the park and chatting to their neighbors, or trying to check their phones as they rode.

“I want to leave,” I said.

I said it and I meant it, but I don’t know where it came from. It just suddenly seemed like the right thing to do.

“Leave where?”

“Leave the city. My parents are safe, my friends are safe. For the moment. But if I stay, then I’m putting people in danger. And I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. Running around, freaking out, fighting, sleeping in strangers’ basements.”

“Yeah, okay.” He sighed into my hair. “I get it. I do. Let’s just think about this for a minute. I guess I know some guys over in Essex who can put us up, help us get jobs, you know, off the record, under the table, that sort of thing.”

“No, you’re not hearing me.” I turned around to look at him. “I’m serious. Out of the city. Outside the beltway. Like, gone.”

“You mean, the suburbs?”

“Yeah.”

“But… there’s nothing out there. It’s just empty old houses. Everything’s all rotting and falling apart. There’s no people, no power, no food. Nothing.”

“Yeah, I know.” I didn’t know, not really. Sure, I’d read about it in school, and every now and then there would be some sort of special report about the horrible decaying conditions out past the beltway, with lots of pictures of collapsing buildings and old rusted cars with trees growing right up through them. But still. I wanted out. “I think I’m going to go. As long as there’s sunshine, I’ll have all the tools I need. Hammers, axes, prybars. If I can’t find a safe shelter, I can make one. And I’ll figure out how to find food. And it’ll be okay.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” He half-grinned. “You’ll figure out how to find food? That’s crazy talk.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I closed my eyes. “I’ll figure it out. And worst case scenario, I’ll steal from the farms. I mean, I did almost kill someone today, so petty theft is a big step up for me, right?”

He frowned. “We’ll figure something out. Just give me more than ten seconds to think about it.”

“No. I’m going. I am. Cygnus isn’t going anywhere, and they’re more than happy to destroy people’s lives for their precious market share and profit margin, so… I’m out. I’ll call Frost and Brian, tell them that I’m leaving, and hopefully they’ll believe me, and that will be that.” I took out my phone and stared at the blank screen.

I’m really going to do this. I have to, don’t I? I have to get out of the city. I have to disappear, maybe even leave the country.

Wasn’t I a normal person last week? I had a home, and a job once upon a time. I had a morning commute and bathroom breaks, and now… wow.

When I turned my phone on, I got a handful of message alerts, which was strange. I usually only had one or two, and they were always from Felix these days. No one else was ever trying to reach me, but now I had pings from Dom, Mercy, my parents, and… Frost. I scrolled through and read them quickly.

“Oh no.”

“What?” Felix twisted to read the screen. “Oh God.”

“He’s gone nuclear,” I whispered.

Apparently, Frost’s drones had recorded the entire episode at the zoo. Breaking the window, throwing him into the lion pen, holding him at sword-point while a lion stalked him. In the last hour, the vid had gone viral and the comments were not pretty. The word
terrorist
came up more than once. And his video was getting at least as much play as mine, if not more.

I checked the news feeds and the name Ultraviolet was everywhere. Hero, vigilante, criminal, killer, psychopath. They were all over the map trying to figure me out, but even the reasonable ones sounded pretty negative. But then I skimmed the articles to read the comments, and that’s where it got really bad. Some people thought I was awesome, they wanted to see me kick more ass, conjure up more crazy holograms, and post more wild videos of myself hurting rich people. But lots of people were scared of me too, they thought I was crazy, thought I was going to go around killing people at random. They’d heard about the rampage when I saved Mercy, although they seemed to conveniently overlook the part about actually saving Mercy and just focused on the rampaging part.

I kept scrolling and searching and reading.

“There’s another warrant for my arrest. Attempted murder. The cops are looking for me.”

“Yeah.” He took out his phone and started reading along. “And it looks like I’m a person of interest, too. Known associate.”

“I’m sorry.” I looked up at him.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong, as far as I’m concerned.”

I read a little more, but the comments were getting pretty vicious. Lots of death threats. Obscenities.

…slice her ugly face off…

…psycho ought to die in a fire…

…should kill her parents for raising her…

…want to shoot her in the head…

It made my skin crawl to think there were so many people out there who knew my name, knew my face, and wanted to do those things to me. But even the fan mail made me sick.

…wanna see her kill my boss…

…hope she kills some cops soon…

…gonna get me a sword and throw my dad in with those lions…

…think she’ll kill my ex if I give her a place to crash?

“Yagh! These people! God!” Felix shook his phone. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

“Stop, stop looking at it.” I pushed his phone back into his pocket. “Just stop. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. What if these psychos actually come looking for you?”

“They won’t find me. I’m going. Right now. Just head out on 95 and keep going until I don’t see lights or people anymore, and then I’ll find a place to live.” I swallowed. It was a scary thought, deliberately planning to go off into the wasteland of some hellhole forest like Howard County, to eat berries and drink from streams. But I couldn’t think anymore. I had to do something. I had to do this. “Will you… do you want to… come with me?”

He stared at me, then glanced around the park for a minute, and looked back at me again. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go. Right now.”

“Okay.”

We didn’t go right away. We walked back to his place and put together a bag with a few clothes, blankets, and about half of the food in the apartment. Felix left a note for his brother, and then stood in the room, staring around like he was trying to remember something. I didn’t rush him. Eventually he nodded and we went back downstairs and out to the sidewalk.

I have to admit, there wasn’t much conviction in my voice as I said, “Lux, bike.”

We got on and rode slowly through the streets around the evening commuters, picking up speed the farther out we got, until I found an exit ramp for the highway and we headed out west, all alone on the elevated freeway, chasing the setting sun.

I felt scared and sick. I had no idea what I was doing, but the thought of those comments, all those people back in the city, or even in other cities, all over the world, all hating me, wishing terrible things would happen to me, or wishing I would do terrible things for them. I could feel it, their hate, like some sort of dark cloud in my mind, pressing down on me, hollowing me out, following me no matter how fast I ran away.

“Can we slow down a little?” Felix asked.

I hadn’t realized how fast we were going. Everything was a blur, and it must have been at least eighty miles an hour, which is a pretty bad idea when you’re not wearing helmets. I slowed down.

We passed the old neighborhoods on the edge of the city where the poorer families lived. Most of the old strip malls were empty, and the dry gas stations were still standing because there was no reason to bother tearing them down since no one was ever going to build anything new there.

Then we passed over the beltway.

Last week when I went out to the warehouse near the airport, I had gone farther away from home than this, but that was down the parkway, and the companies were still using that area, so it looked alive, with the lights and the maintained roads.

But this was different.