Girl From Above Escape (The 1000 Revolution Book 2) Page 4

  “Don’t kill him,” James whispered. His poised hand trembled.

  Scheffler fell limp in my arms. I dropped him and stepped back. “I executed a choke hold. He’ll recover in under a minute.”

  James’s mouth fell open. “What? A minute?”

  “Yes, approximately.”

  “But …” James immediately discarded the touchpad and started pacing. “What am I going to do? I can’t just—We—You—”

  “Killing him is the most viable option.”

  He stopped and shook his head. “No. No! Killing is never a viable option. This shouldn’t even be—”

  “Forty-four seconds.”

  James paled and chewed on his bottom lip. “Besides killing him, what other options are there?”

  “Tie him to the examination table.”

  “Okay …” James took a step forward and then backed away. “I can’t. I just—I can’t.”

  I stripped Scheffler of his lab coat and, with James’s help, strapped him down to the table. Tearing a strip of fabric from the lab coat, I balled it up, jammed it in Scheffler’s mouth and tied it off while he roused. He’d be disorientated for a while yet. I shrugged on his torn lab coat to cover my nakedness.

  “We need to find an exit before he is discovered.”

  “An exit? Yes, an exit. Right. Okay … well, you’re not going to fool anyone with that coat on. The best I can do is walk you through the repairs unit and hope that anyone who sees us believes you’re a synthetic in for a system check.” He paced again. “Yes, yes, that could work. Give me the coat.”

  I handed it over, naked once more. Cool air skimmed across my skin. I shut out the surplus sensations, already balancing enough sensory input.

  “We’ll need it if we get outside.” James spoke aloud to himself and then turned hard to me. “But in here you must behave like a synthetic unit and nothing else. No emotional outbursts. Are you in control?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled in air through his nose and sighed deeply. “We can do this. We have to do this. We can do this?”

  “Yes. I’ve scanned the floor plan. If we leave the repairs unit by way of the maintenance bay, we can slip outside, assuming you have security clearance to get through the outer door?”

  “Yes, unless he …” James avoided looking at the doctor. “Unless he’s discovered and they remote lock it.”

  A locked door wouldn’t stop me. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Five: Caleb

  I reached up and skimmed my fingertips along the underside of Starscream’s cool hull. She bore a few scars, some heat fatigue cracks, and more than a few dents where phase bullets had bounced off her heat shielding. I knew the source of every wound and gently ran my fingers over those I could reach. She’d taken some knocks in her time. I could relate.

  A crazy smile tugged at my lips. I thought I’d never see her again.

  I followed Fran up the cargo ramp and into the hold. The air inside the ship smelled like hot metal and mechanical grease; it smelled like home.

  A few branded crates occupied one side. I recognized the sweeping ‘C’ logo as belonging to one of the most influential families in the nine systems.

  “Paying cargo?”

  “How do you think I got the clearance codes for Asgard’s airspace?” Fran answered.

  The hold doors clunked closed, sealing Asgard out. A shaky sigh escaped before I could swallow it. Relief lifted off my back—off my soul—and a spiked knot tightened my throat. I turned my face away from Fran, pretending to admire the cargo. I managed a few steps before reaching out to steady myself against one of the crates.

  Fran’s keen gaze caught mine. I’d already thanked her and didn’t need to say the words again. My gratitude must have been plain as day on my face, because she nodded once and headed through the personnel door, calling back, “We’re flight-ready when you are, Captain.”

  Her first stop would be to get a hit of phencyl. Once we were black-bound, my first stop would be at any bottle of whiskey I could find.

  Alone in the hold, I leaned back on the crate and listened to Starscream: the dry, metallic smell of the ship, the echo of the hold, and the occasional rattle of the air recycling system. She was my life, my freedom. The knot in my throat tightened some more, and I let it. My vision may have even blurred.

  I had believed I’d die in Asgard. I’d gotten out once, with help. Since then, due to my association with alleged fleet spies, the Nine had made it clear that they didn’t want me on their payroll. People like me didn’t get second chances. Yet here I was, out a second time, thanks to Fran.

  The engines rumbled to life, shuddering through the ship and through me. Soon, I’d be back-in-black, where I belonged.

  * * *

  Fran was waiting for me when I arrived on the bridge. A touch of color warmed her cheeks while the phencyl high brightened her eyes. She hadn’t even bothered hiding the jet-injector blister on the inside of her arm. Fuck, I envied her quick fix. If only my problems could be so easily dealt with.

  I gripped the back of my flight chair. Through the obs window, the Asgard forest painted the view all the way to the horizon, where the trees blurred into black. The prison was vast; Fran never would have found me without my prisoner ID code, and those records weren’t public knowledge.

  Easy enough to find my number if she’s fleet.

  At the moment, I didn’t care who she was. She’d gotten me out of that hell before I’d lost what little humanity I had left.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  She gripped the flight controls, flicked the systems to manual, and lifted my baby off Asgard’s earth. The background din of Starscream’s engines tickled the hairs on my arms.

  Fuck, I missed this.

  At a few thousand feet, I dropped into my chair and buckled up. “Switch controls to me.”

  If Fran had noticed the fractures in my voice, she didn’t comment on it.

  I wrapped my filthy, trembling fingers around the controls. Starscream responded as though we’d never been apart. These controls, they meant freedom. I lifted her high above the planet’s surface, checking scans for any patrols, then switched systems to orbit and boosted her away from the prison rock, leaving after-burn residue in our wake. By the time we were back-in-black, I almost felt as though I’d never left. Almost.

  “That feels good,” I muttered softly, and then dialed in the coordinates for the nearest jump gate. I wasn’t expecting trouble—inmates didn’t check out of Asgard by way of tugship—and Starscream had clearance, but I didn’t want to hang around any longer than necessary. In fact, I’d happily jump across the nine systems to get as far away from Asgard as possible.

  I leaned back in the flight chair with a sigh. “I’m really out of there.”

  Fran smiled as she worked over the flight controls, checking that all systems were good. “You are.”

  She concentrated on the controls to avoid looking at me. I needed to ask her how, and why, she’d done this. I needed to speak to her about a lot of things, but not yet. It could wait. First, I wanted a shave and to wash the stink of Asgard and the foxes off me, and then I wanted some food and whiskey. Not necessarily in that order.

  “Go,” she said, finally looking me over. “I’ve got this. Go reacquaint yourself with Starscream. You won’t find anything wrong. I serviced her myself.”

  Her smile, the delight in her eyes, as well as the relief—I wanted badly to believe all of it, but I couldn’t help thinking I’d been plucked from one hell, only to find myself in some variation of another, one where fleet was sitting right beside me, watching my every move.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do.” She nodded, her smile softening. “When you don’t smell like the dead, and after you shave that face-fur off. Go on. Take some R&R. You’ve earned it.”

  She was being nice. Maybe that was okay, or maybe she was fleet and she was trying to sweeten me up. I didn’t kno
w, and—as I pushed up from my chair and left the bridge, running my hands along the catwalk’s rails—I couldn’t care less. I was back-in-black, right where I belonged, and for an hour or two, I’d enjoy it. After that, I was making plans and getting answers, whether Fran wanted to hand them over or not.

  Chapter Six: #1001

  James walked me through Chitec’s maintenance sector, bidding his colleagues a good day, sharing some easy smiles, and sprinkling in some small talk. He lied well enough that his colleagues didn’t notice the strain on his face or in his voice, or if they did, they didn’t care. I walked beside him, head up, gaze forward, resisting the slippery urge to break into a run as soon as I saw the exit signs. Could it be so easy to escape? Just walk right out?

  James stopped by the exit. His worry-pinched eyes flicked to me. Behind us, the lab techs milled about the hall, passing between laboratories and oblivious to the fact that one of their own was about to steal a billion-credit piece of Chitec hardware. He swiped his wrist comms over the lock. It gave a shallow bleep and blinked red.

  “Oh.” James bit his lip and tried again. “This is bad.”

  I tilted my head and watched the technicians behind us, looking for any signs of alarm. “The doctor has been discovered?”

  He swiped again at the lock, which clearly wasn’t going to change its mind and let us through.

  “Yes. They’ve restricted my access. They must want to keep it quiet, since they haven’t set off the alarms.” He swallowed hard with a click and looked at me for answers. “They’ll be looking for us.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the door handle, pushed pressure from my shoulder, down my arm, and into my grip, and twisted. The casing popped with a metallic clang and the handle crumpled. I didn’t stop to see whether the noise had drawn any attention, giving the door a shove and fracturing the locks, and pushed out into the cool, artificial sunlight of the Janus Orbit Station. The sparkling city curled upward into the infinite orbit station curve, turning into the sky as it rolled back overhead. Elevator lanes crisscrossed the space like a vast spiderweb.

  “Go, go!” James shoved me forward, out onto what looked like a staff parking lot.

  “Stop them!”

  I snatched at James and shoved him ahead of me. “Stay in front. If they fire, they’ll hit me, not you.”

  He stumbled into a run, white-lab coat flapping. I internally pulled up a street map of Janus and followed him while searching for someplace to get lost in the crowd.

  “The retail district.”

  “That’s ten blocks away!”

  He veered right—the wrong way. I grabbed his shoulder and swung him ahead of me, shoving him forward between two stationary delivery trucks. The building’s alarm wailed and with it came the sound of distant Janus security sirens. Janus was the surveillance capital of the nine systems, with old Earth a close second. James’s face and bioscan would already be circulating the network. My face looked like every other female synthetic, and there were more than a few on Janus. Six in fact, so the datacloud informed me.

  “You need a disguise,” I said.

  He slumped against a truck’s side panel. “This—This is … I can’t do this.”

  He handed me the lab coat, shaking his head the whole time.

  “You just did.” I shrugged the coat on.

  Doubt clouded his eyes. He was likely wondering whether it was too late to walk into the open with his hands up. It was.

  I moved to the front of the trucks and scanned the street. Blue flashing lights strafed the dazzling glass buildings. I caught sight of a nimble autobike and pulled its maintenance instructions from the cloud.

  “Come.” I grabbed James by the arm and pulled him out of our hiding place. “Get on.”

  While I threw my leg over the bike, he blinked and winced away. “I er … I can’t.…”

  “Then stay.”

  I cracked open the ignition casing, leaned over, stripped the relevant wires with my teeth, and rewired the bike.

  “Swipe your comms here.” I tapped the handlebars where the comms receptor awaited instructions.

  “Desist immediately!” Janus Security announced by loudspeaker.

  There wasn’t time to look back. James ran his comm over the starter, and the electric bike hummed to life. He climbed on and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  “You know how to ride one of these?” he asked, his breath hot against my neck.

  “I downloaded the manual.”

  I kicked the bike off its stand and applied power, surging us out of the parking bay. We bumped over the median strip and threaded into traffic. Sirens wailed behind us, and James’s grip clamped tighter around my waist. I smiled at it all.

  ‘Who’d have guessed that Chen Hung’s daughter has a weakness for speed?’

  ‘I blame you, Caleb-Joe, for broadening my horizons.’

  ‘I can’t broaden what isn’t already there.’

  My smile cracked and broke apart, the fragments turning into a snarl.

  I killed him.

  I hunkered down behind the small windscreen. “Hold on!”

  Cranking up the power, I snaked the bike through traffic, building up speed with every breath. Autocars buzzed by. The sirens faded beneath the rush of the wind. Janus’s jagged glass buildings blurred into streams of movement. My focus narrowed and sharpened until all I could see was the route to freedom. The wind rushed over my synthetic skin, not unlike water. The thrill lifted me higher and stripped me down to my most basic functions: To run. To survive. To make them suffer. I’d do anything to live. Chitec wouldn’t have me.

  I am #1001 and I will survive, at any cost.

  * * *

  We bought some clothes, including a hoodie to hide James’s face from the bioscanners, took the bike on another run to shake Janus security, and pulled into a district that J-Security avoided if they wanted to keep their autocars intact. Tech scavengers infested the warehouse district, stripping anything of value and smuggling it off the Orbit Station, or so the district’s datacloud entry informed me.

  “This part of Janus gives me the creeps,” James said, closing the motel door behind us. “You know they sell augmented body parts here too?”

  He strode into the room and started checking the drawers and cupboards; for what, I wasn’t sure.

  “It’s not just tech they trade,” he said.

  I stood dead center and scanned the room from floor to ceiling for any signs of surveillance equipment.

  “They’ve been known to attack people, operate on them, and then toss them back on the streets without their liver, or a lung, or an eye.”

  The datafiles contained no proof of any such incidents, so I suspected James might have been the victim of urban legends.

  “At least they don’t sell whole bodies for a billion credits each,” I said.

  James paused his search through an empty cupboard and turned to me with an apologetic wisp of a smile.

  “You’re right, of course. I look at you, hear you talk, and I feel …” He closed a hand over his heart and sent his gaze about the room, either searching for the word or avoiding my stare. “Guilty, I think. Like I should have done more.”

  “You did enough.”

  Guilt? Was that the wriggling unease I felt whenever I recalled how I’d killed Caleb Shepperd? I blocked out those thoughts, knowing they’d soon sneak their way back in, and checked the bathroom. Filthy, but no hidden tech. Given that the motel charged by the hour, I assumed their clientele preferred not to be recorded.

  “When I secured a position at Chitec, it was the best day of my life.” His voice carried an airy touch of pride. “And then, when I was promoted to the life-ever-after program, it was like Christmas, you know?”

  “No.” I joined James in the main room. “I don’t know what Christmas is like. As far as I can ascertain, it’s an antiquated lie told to keep young children under control, much like any religious faith attempts to control adults.”

  James
opened his mouth to speak, paused, and then closed it again. “If I try to explain it—Never mind. You’re probably right. What I mean is, I was proud to be a part of Chitec. It was a dream come true.”

  “I don’t dream.”

  Stars are wishes, and wishes are dreams. I looked away as the memory asserted itself. Haley was still inside, in my datafile, my memory.

  “Okay.” He laughed softly. “Sometimes you’re entirely too human and other times you’re too cold to be anything other than synthetic.”

  “All one thousand of the synthetics are machines, Doctor Lloyd.”

  He frowned. My words weren’t what he’d wanted to hear.

  “How much do you know about the life-ever-after project?” I asked.

  He shrugged a shoulder and came to sit on the edge of the only bed. His hand trembled as he ran it through his short, chestnut-colored hair.

  “I er—everything, I suppose. I mean my employment commenced after the synthetic units were already sold. I saw the glitzy auctions and the celebrations. Like any kid, I grew up worshipping Chitec. My parents talked about how Chitec saved us from the Blackout. We owe them everything. The nine systems wouldn’t exist without Chitec. I was honored to be a part of that.”

  He was searching for something on my face, acknowledgement perhaps. I couldn’t offer him agreement. His datafile told me he rarely left Janus. He couldn’t know what it was like in the nine. Life on Janus was a perfect bandage over an ugly, festering wound of riots and exploitation. But the news channels and infomercials didn’t broadcast the reality.

  He cleared his throat and continued. “I’m a maintenance technician, so if a synthetic develops a fault, I’m on the team that fixes them up like new, like I did with you. It’s a privilege, really.”

  He smiled. His smiles were fluttering things, there and gone again, like his restless gestures and darting glances. His constant movements stood in stark contrast to my stillness.