Ultraviolet (8 page)

“Yeah. I know.”

“So what do I do? I can’t stay here. I can’t get a new apartment or a new job. I can’t sell my invention. I can’t help myself, let alone my parents.” I shook my head. I couldn’t see a way out, and it was really starting to piss me off. I wanted to punch something, but the people I wanted to punch were all far away, safe in their offices and private homes on the north side of the city.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure we can figure something out. But right now, let’s just get out of here and back to the city, someplace safe, and we’ll come up with a plan.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. Felix pointed back behind him and I followed him down the aisle to one of the side doors, where he swiped his stolen badge to open the lock and let us out. It was pitch black outside, except for the glaring parking lot lights. I couldn’t see any stars overhead, but that was nothing new. They say you had to drive halfway to Pennsylvania before you’d be far enough from the city to see any stars. Sounds about right.

Felix pulled an old red bicycle from the rack against the side of the building. “Do you have a bike or something? How’d you get here?”

I glanced at him, still clenching my jaw, still not really trusting myself to be civil. I held out my gloved hands. “Lux, scooter.”

The hologram materialized, glowing and humming softly, and I stepped on.

“Damn!” Felix stared at me. “That’s amazing.”

I almost smiled. Almost. “Thanks. Let’s go.”

Felix started pedaling across the lot. I could ride three times faster, but I didn’t mind slowing down for him. It was the first normal company I had had in over a week. It was nice. It was nice all the way across the huge parking lot, until we got to the front gate.

Felix was just about to swipe his badge to open the bicycle gate when we saw the headlights on the road coming toward us. One, two, three cars, close together.

“Quick, get back.” I zipped back from the gate into a shadowy spot between the glaring floodlights, and he hurried to follow me.

The three cars rolled up to the fence and the gate rattled open to let them in.

“Oh crap.”

The cars pulled into the lot, but didn’t stray far from the gate. Doors opened, men in suits got out, and then they all took out their phones.

“What are they doing?” Felix asked.

I didn’t answer. It looked like they were all tapping away at some app, but then they started walking slowly away from the cars, gradually turning left and right as they moved. I focused on the man closest to us. He peered at his phone, then looked up and turned to face directly at us, and he started coming forward.

“He sees us!” Felix moved like he was going to start pedaling away, as if there was somewhere he could possibly go on that bike to get to safety.

I grabbed his arm. “No, he’s tracking us.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know. Can they track the rubidium?” I pointed my thumb in the direction of my backpack.

“No, no way.”

“Then…” I looked at him. “It’s the badge. Throw away the badge, now, as far as you can.”

“But I need it to—”

“Get rid of it!”

He grimaced, and then hurled the little plastic rectangle as hard as he could. It sliced cleanly through the air for a moment, and then tumbled over and dropped to the ground. It hadn’t gone very far.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

I rolled my eyes. “Get on my scooter.”

“What about… okay.” He set his bike down quietly on the ground and swung onto the seat behind me with his arms around my waist.

I had no idea if there was a weight limit for holograms, but there wasn’t time for any tests. The man with the phone was getting closer. In a few seconds, he would see us. The men behind him were starting to move in our direction too. It had to be now.

I gunned the throttle and the black scooter accelerated across the lot. The man with the phone looked up sharply and reached for something that might have been a gun, but we shot past him and then I aimed straight for the open gate behind the cars. The other men saw us too, and they all reached for their weapons or started barking orders or reports into their phones.

But it didn’t matter. We were going at least forty miles an hour already, and in another second we’d be through the…

The wheels of the holo-scooter stopped turning and we started to slide and skid across the parking lot. It was all I could do to keep us from falling over, especially with the extra weight behind me, but then the scooter flickered and we both fell off. Or should I say, we fell through.

Right before I hit the ground I shouted, “Lux, off!” just to make sure the scooter didn’t try to rematerialize and burn some nice laser holes in my legs.

We both hit the ground moving, still hurtling forward with the momentum of the scooter, and we rolled hard several times toward the gate before our bodies stopped.

I guess there is a weight limit.

I blinked. A little stunned, a little dazed, but not hurt. I stood up with the sounds of shoes thumping on pavement in my ears.

The men!

“Lux, shield!”

The black shield appeared just as the first shots were fired, but the bullets pinged harmlessly off the cold photons and clattered on the ground.

“Stay behind me!”

Felix scrambled around behind me, putting his hands on my back like he was afraid to lose me. He probably was, what with the guns and the shooting.

They fired a few more shots at the shield, and a few more smashed bullets rattled on the ground at my feet. I knew I should have been more scared at that moment, but the shield didn’t even let me feel the impacts, so it sort of felt unreal.

“Carmen Zhao, put down the weapons and surrender immediately,” one of them said.

“Is that you, Frost?” I asked.

“Give it up, Carmen. You’re surrounded. No one wants to hurt you.”

“Then shooting at me just now was a really bad idea, wasn’t it?”

“Cygnus wants the gloves, not your head.”

“No, they want what’s
in
my head, they want the tech.”

“That’s the law.”

“The law is wrong!” I shuffled sideways toward one of the cars.

“Maybe, but I’m no lawyer. And where are you going? You think you’re going to drive out of here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I glanced at the car. “Lux, sword.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Felix asked as the black blade appeared in my right hand.

“Auto repair.” I jabbed the sword into the hood of the car and felt it cutting into something big and heavy, which I assumed was the engine. “Oops. Sorry, Frost. Guess I’m not that good with cars.”

I started shuffling toward the second car, still holding the shield between us and them so I could only barely peek around to see the bottoms of their shoes or the tops of their heads.

“Carmen, stop!” Frost ordered.

“What’s that? I can’t hear you.” I killed the second car with a swing of my glowing sword. The blade nicked the tire as I pulled it out and the whole car sagged a little as the wheel deflated.

“Think about your parents,” Frost said. “Think about what you’re doing to them.”

“I’m not doing anything to them!” I wanted to run out there and wrap my hands around his neck for that. “You’re the one who took the job, you’re the one who went to their house, you’re the one who shot them full of drugs and carried them off! That’s you! Not me! I don’t hurt people for a living!”

“I enforce the law.”

“The law is wrong!”

“Take it up with the government.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I’ll just throw a little party, maybe a thousand dollars a plate, to do a little fundraising for my best friends in Congress to buy a few votes. Easy. No problem. We’ll have freedom and justice for all by the dessert course, right?”

Someone fired a bullet into the car behind us and we shuffled over to the third car. I nudged Felix and said, “Get in the car and start it.”

He got in and I covered him.

“I need the password to start the car,” he said.

“Password!” I yelled at Frost. “I won’t kill you, but you don’t want me to start poking you with this thing.” I waved the sword over the shield.

“Farmhurst,” he said calmly.

The engine started.

“Where will you go?” Frost asked. “Everyone’s looking for you. If you run now, you’re just setting yourself up for another confrontation, another shoot-out, somewhere else, maybe with lots of innocent bystanders nearby. But if you surrender now, right now, then no one gets hurt.”

I hesitated. He was right. It was only going to get worse, more dangerous, more desperate. And I could stop it whenever I wanted. I could choose, right now. I could. “Pass.”

I jumped into the back seat of the car behind Felix and he tore out of the parking lot as I held my shield-arm out the window to cover us. We roared out onto the main road, leaving Frost and his friends stranded in the dark.

“Lux, off.”

I leaned back in my seat and let myself just breathe for a minute. The guns had been less scary this time, for some reason, but my heart was still pounding and I felt exhausted.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Fine.”

“So what now?”

“I don’t know. Get back to the city, around people. They’re probably going to come looking for us with helicopters or drones, something that can track our heat out here, or the signals from our phones. Let’s just get back and—”

The engine died.

“What the…” Felix banged on the wheel and the console as the car rolled to a stop.

I glanced back up the road. I could still see the parking lot lights. “We only went a mile. I guess the security system locked out the engine because we don’t have the keys with us.”

I sighed as I opened the door and stepped away from the car.

“Lux, scooter.”

My glowing ride materialized and I swung onto it. “You coming?”

“But it won’t hold us both.” Felix got out of the car.

“Not for long, but it’s all we’ve got.”

So he got on and we rode. With a little trial and error, I found that I could keep the scooter stable for about thirty seconds before it flickered out and I had to re-spawn it. So that’s how we got back to the city, thirty seconds at a time. Twenty-five seconds at sixty miles an hour, and the other five seconds slowing down to stop before the scooter vanished out from under us.

It was a long ride.

Chapter 6
Upgrades

Felix’s brother rented a room in a row house just a few blocks from my parents’ house. Getting that close to them made me a little nervous, but I shut off the scooter the moment we rolled up to the front stoop and we walked straight inside, so I felt pretty certain no one had seen us.

We went up to the bedroom where Felix slept on a small cot and his brother slept on a slightly larger cot, both positioned well away from the extremely large wall screen and its impressive array of gaming hardware on the floor. Headsets, gloves, controllers, sensor guns, cameras, microphones…

So far, so normal.

“Marcus probably won’t be home before midnight. He’s got a girlfriend now.”

“Oh? Recent development?” I sat down on the floor in front of the screen and dropped my bag beside me.

“Yeah, he’s really into her, and she’s not a flake like the last one, so maybe it’s getting serious. Which is good for him, but it means we don’t hang out much anymore.”

I nodded. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “Whatever. Hungry?”

I felt guilty for taking anything from him, but I was hungry, and I was starting to remember that I had literally nothing now. For the last two months since I got fired, I had been clinging to the idea that I was still special, still educated and experienced, still on the verge of getting out. But now, after a night in the woods and two days on the run, it was finally starting to sink in that I couldn’t go back to the way things were. Not ever. I was broke, and technically homeless. “Yeah. Whatever you’ve got.”

He had leftover Chinese, and it was really good. I finished off the sweet and sour chicken and then leaned my head against the wall. Riding the scooter had given me a couple aches and bruises, including a very stiff neck and shoulders.

“So.” Felix tossed the trash in the bin. “Want to watch a movie or something?”

“Actually, I need to work for a little while.” I nodded over at his printer in the corner. It was the same model as mine. “Mind if I do a little printing?”

“Seriously? You’re still going to make those gloves for Susquehanna?”

I grunted. “Nope. I’m going to make more gear for me. I think I need more projection fabric to keep the scooter stable, and to render bigger objects. I’m going to do a jacket and some sort of boots, I think.” The idea was still pretty vague in my mind, but I’d had a lot of time to decide it was the right thing to do when we were struggling to make our way back into the city, thirty seconds at a time. I got out my phone and started working on the new specs to print the holo-projector fabric pieces.

“Oh cool, good idea.” He paused. “I don’t suppose you’d consider making a couple extra gloves, would you?”

“For you?” I glanced up from my little screen. “No, no way. Sorry.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Felix, this little invention of mine has pretty thoroughly ruined my life, and now it’s the only thing keeping me safe. You know, from the men with the guns. If you have it too, then they’ll be after you too. Let’s just hope Frost and his buddies didn’t get a good look at you tonight. You’ve got a home, and family… and food. Trust me. You don’t want to lose that.”

“Oh come on, Cygnus screwed me over, same as you. I can’t work. I’ve got nothing except what my brother gives me. I’m a burden on him. I’m useless.”

“Yeah, well, at least no one’s trying to kill you.” I said it pretty sharply and I gave him a cold look, and I’m not sorry if that was rude. “So drop it. Please, just drop it.”

He shook his head. “Fine. Whatever. Sorry I asked.”

I kept working and he put on the TV to watch a rerun of some sexy prison show. I hate prison shows. It seems like there’s always a dozen of them running at the same time, and they’re all the same. My dad says that when he was kid there used to be tons of shows about outer space. Star Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, Stargate, Babylon 5, Lexx… it sounded amazing. Too bad no one cares about space anymore. They did vampires and superheroes for a while, and then pirates and princesses, and now prisons. Just prisons, which are always oddly full of sexy teenagers with really dramatic problems.