Sam, are you okay?
Yeah.
I took another swig off the bottle, and fished the pistol out of the backpack.
You’re all over the news.
I know. I’m okay.
Where are you?
Someplace safe. Don’t worry.
Don’t worry?
I headed over to the window and sat on the sill with my head against the glass, peering through the rain toward my apartment building. I pointed the gun up toward our balcony, then squinted through the scope, trying to frame it.
They took Dragan, I said.
He paused, his heart icon beating several times before answering, I know. Did you hear what they’re saying?
No. What who’s saying?
The feeds are already buzzing. Word is he got picked up for smuggling some kind of weapon into Hangfei. Something bad.
I clenched my jaw. That’s bullshit.
I’m just telling you, that’s what they’re saying.
What do they mean “weapon”? Like a bomb or something?
No one knows. It sounds like it’s worse than that.
It’s bullshit.
I know.
You better know.
I found the edge of the shattered glass through the scope and followed it to our balcony, where one of the curtains flapped in the open air like an ugly flag. There were lights on inside, and I could make out movement.
Where are you? I’ll come over.
You can’t, security’s got Tùzi-wō locked down. I’m going to hole up for tonight and lie low. I’ll message you tomorrow once things have cooled down a little. Another pause.
Okay.
I wanted to tell him what happened, to tell someone what happened, but they might actually be scanning the feeds for keywords and I didn’t want to risk it. Not until I was ready to put some distance between me and Tùzi-wō.
I put a call in to Kang. I can trust him. Hopefully he’ll get back to me soon.
Isn’t he with security? What if he just comes after you instead?
He doesn’t know where I am. I know it’s not perfect, but I need info, Vamp. I need to know something, anything.
Okay, I get it.
Dragon isn’t a traitor.
I know.
Peering through the pistol’s scope, I adjusted the zoom until I could see past the mangled railing and through the hole the airbike had left. Something moved inside again, and I spotted a shadow cast on one wall as whoever was there stepped in front of the light. It was someone big, someone tall, but there was something weird about him, like he had a sheet draped over him.
“What in hell?” I said under my breath. The shape moved, and seemed to come apart as a series of ropy silhouettes undulated slowly across the drywall.
I blinked and rubbed my eye, but when I looked again the shadow was just the shadow of a man wearing a helmet and poncho. I sighed, lowering the pistol before tossing it on the bed. All the adrenaline had burned through whatever meds were left in my system, and all I had in hand was the shine. It was going to be a long night.
Can you come tomorrow? Once things have cooled off? I asked him.
You got it.
Thunder rolled as I took another swallow from the bottle. It burned going down, but it helped keep my hands steady. I took another one and leaned against the window. Below, clusters of rain-slick, helmeted heads moved down the street through an alternating blue and red strobe while the whoop of a siren occasionally drifted up. I brought up the eyebot again and watched the orange markers move in time with the officers on the street.
The eyebot works really well, I sent. Are the security guys tracked by people who are running the app, watching from windows?
Mostly. Some are on the street. If you’re watching now then your feed is part of the model.
You realize they’re going to crack down on this, right? Hwong isn’t going to like people being able to track any officer or soldier who…
I perked up a little suddenly, wiping breath fog from the window. As the helmeted heads moved, so did the markers.
What?
Does this thing keep a log?
You mean like a history of troop movements? The users can’t access it, but yeah, I store it so we can see how operations like this play out.
How many people are running it?
Actively running it, I’m not sure. Downloads are in the tens of thousands, though.
Then could I use it to track Dragan maybe?
Someone has to see the guys who took him. He’s wherever he’s going by now.
Not track where he is now. I want to know where he was between the time he came back to Hangfei and the time he got to the apartment.
The app only tags security, though. A person only gets painted if he’s fitted with a security transponder.
Dragan was still kitted when he came home.
Vamp thought about that for a minute. Okay, yeah. He’d get picked up for sure then.
Can you find him?
Problem is, with the sweep and now the mess at your place, he’d be like a needle in a haystack.
Can you do it?
He wasn’t part of the sweep, so he might have been out of the main jumble. I don’t know if I can pick him out of the general noise of regular patrols, but I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks. See you tomorrow?
Tomorrow. Be careful, Sam.
I logged off and took another swig from the bottle. Good guys like Vamp didn’t come along every day.
He was kind of famous online, but that wasn’t why I liked him. I mean, I used to think he was cool, and when I kicked in a yuan to his pet project I was psyched when my name actually got picked. I wasn’t his first contest date, but he was my first real date ever, which was kind of funny because it was a complete disaster on almost every level.
I smiled, remembering it. Afterward I really didn’t expect to ever hear from him again, but he wouldn’t leave me alone until I let him apologize and try again. Our second date wasn’t really a date, but that was when we clicked for some reason. He became the first real friend I ever made, and we’d been close since.
I sighed and stared up at the ceiling. I forget when I first noticed the change, but now his voice dropped when he talked to me, and his eyes had started to linger. He sat closer to me these days, and smiled more. I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I mean, it wasn’t like I totally couldn’t see myself with him, but I didn’t want to ruin things, and it seemed like moving either way could do that now. I’d been avoiding the whole thing so far, but it had gotten worse and now he was too ready to go out on a limb for me. I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later.
Not tonight, though. Tonight I didn’t have the strength left to think about anything. In the morning I’d figure out what to do next. Until then, I just wanted to get numb. Fuzzy wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted to be numb enough to sleep through the night.
With half the bottle gone I got pretty close, but I still didn’t get my wish.