“Hey!” someone called from behind me. The crowd was starting to grumble.
I turned the key three more times before I spotted a sign for the metro on the other side. I jerked the twistkey out of the socket and stuffed it back in my pocket.
“Sorry!” I called, and jumped through.
On the other side, I turned back and saw the men and women in the crowd glaring after me. One was trying to flag down a cop, but in less than forty seconds the gate would revert to its original setup and I’d be long gone.
I took the first metro tunnel entrance I spotted. Slipping by a clot of people, I vaulted over the pitted metal rail and down onto the gum-spotted concrete steps below.
I jumped the turnstile just as a businessman in the row next to me presented his pass to the scanner. An alarm went off and when I looked back I saw a security guard headed my way, a scowl on his ruddy face.
“Hey!” he barked.
I scooted through the crowd on the other side of the turnstiles and ran until I spotted a platform where a train sat with its doors open. I slipped in and headed toward the back of the car, past rows of commuters. There, I leaned forward as best I could with my hands on my knees to try and catch my breath. My legs felt ready to buckle.
My forehead tingled, like a gentle tug at my sleeve, and I looked down to see a male haan looking up at me from his seat with his big yellow eyes. He stood and made a graceful gesture toward the empty chair.
“Oh,” I said. “You don’t have to-”
“I know,” he said, the light on his voice box fluttering. He gestured again, and I felt another tingle, a cool, soothing calm.
“Thank you,” I said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze and then plopping down in the seat. When I looked back through the window, I saw the guard staring back at me from the top of the stairs. He looked angry, but he didn’t bother to follow. He must not have gotten word about the bounty, at least, not yet.
The haan stood in front of me with his back turned, holding the bar and letting the material of his suit form a makeshift privacy curtain for me. I tried to stop shaking, but my whole body just didn’t want to stop, even when I hugged my ribs and squeezed. I made myself take a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“You’re okay,” I said to myself. I’d lost her. I was safe, for now.
A bell chimed, and out on the platform a voice began to rattle something off over the loudspeaker. I remembered the pill tab I’d nicked from Eng’s hotel and dug it out of my pocket. I pushed the double cross into my mouth and crunched down on the chalky pill, grinding it into a bitter paste.
“You’re okay,” I told myself again.
The little pink heart appeared in the corner of my eye again. Another friend request from Nix, this time with a message:
I spoke with Ava. You can stay in the program.
I sighed, feeling annoyed and relieved at the same time. The pill acted superfast, and my jitters were already smoothing out.
Accepted.
He appeared on my list and I sent a quick reply.
Thank you, Nix. Very, very much.
We need to meet—
No time to chat, though.
I signed off as the doors slid shut, and the intercom chimed followed by an unintelligible stream of babble. Sucking the last of the pill grit from my teeth, I swallowed, watching out the train window as the buildings peeled away to reveal the expanse of tidal flats and blue-green ocean beyond. Off in the distance I could see waves crash against the platform housing the desalination derricks, steel-frame pyramids around pumps that sucked up seawater twenty-four-seven.
Six hexagonal shadows appeared in the sky in a tight formation, and a low sonic boom sounded as the ships rocketed past the shoreline toward the foreign fleets in the distance. Foreign jets scrambled in response, rising off the carrier like little scaleflies, but our guys wouldn’t start anything. It was just a message, a reminder that with the haan tech on our side their ships were powerless against ours.
The opiate synth kicked in for real, slowing my heart as it eased me toward a mellow pharmaceutical calm. The adrenaline throttled back, and the alarm bells in my head grew muted as I watched the world pass through the window.
My phone buzzed again, three quick pulses that said I had a message. I reached into my pocket and felt a wad of toilet tissue with my fingertips as I grabbed the phone and checked the screen. It was a text message, from Kang.
Don’t call this number. I’ll try you again in ten.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and grabbed the wad of toilet tissue, then coaxed it apart to reveal the wet drive nestled inside.
“Gonzo, Dragan. What did you do?” I whispered.
I pinched the lanyard that dangled from behind my ear, and a little notification popped up on the 3i’s display as I pulled my drive out. I unclipped it from the lanyard and swapped in Dragan’s, then reached back and nestled it into the port.
Initializing…
Some music files got pulled into my library, and two new contacts were read and added to my 3i list as the drive was scanned.
Alexei Drugov.
Innuya Drugov.
I knew those names. Innuya was the Pan-Slav woman he’d been e-mailing right before he went AWOL, and Alexei was her son, the one the soldiers were looking for. The status icon for each of them was gray.
“He wanted fake passports and passage to Duongroi for four… himself, two women, and a kid.”
Himself, Innuya, Alexei… and me. According to Eng, Dragan was alone when he stopped at the hotel, so he had to have dropped them off somewhere beforehand. If it was true and one of them really did smuggle something back with them, they might still have it.
I checked the drive’s contents. Other than the stray cached stuff, Dragan had wiped it except for one file, some kind of video file. I dragged it down to the tray’s media player and dropped it in.
When the player window first popped up, it was mostly dark. Shadows shifted at the edges, like the frame was moving.
“This is Specialist Dragan Shao.” His voice was tinny in my ear through the 3i’s audio tap. “I am making this recording in the event I am captured or killed. If anyone finds this message, it is critical that you deliver it to Military Governor Jianguo Hwong immediately. Do not hand it over to security, only to him.”
A flashlight snapped on, lighting the way ahead of him. He was in a dimly lit corridor, water-stained cinder block scrolling past at the right edge of the screen as the view jostled a little in spite of the image stabilizers. He stopped, and turned to look down at a woman in tattered clothes. She was obviously Pan-Slav, with round eyes and thick eyebrows.
Scaleflies buzzed back and forth through the flashlight beam as he turned back and moved quickly toward a dim light at the far end of the hall. They weren’t in the PSE; the graffiti was a mishmash of hanzi, so they had to be back in-country, but wherever they were, it looked like no one had been there in years.
“I have evidence that a major attack is under way,” he said quietly as he hurried on. “The attack involves an engineered bioweapon that violates international law, designed to wipe out human life on a massive scale.”