“You want the next level up,” the cabbie says slowly. He hesitates, and I try not to seize on that; I have to let him get there himself. “There’s a pedestrian bridge about a kilometer back that way,” he says, jerking his head back the way he’d come.
I sniff hard, letting the driver see me trying my level best to pull myself together. “Maybe you could draw me a map? I’m so lost without my palm pad. Everywhere we go they keep telling us we’re on the wrong level, and I just—I can’t walk anymore. I just want to go home, but I can’t even see the Regency Towers from here.” It’s one of the most expensive buildings in this sector of Corinth—if the damsel-in-distress act won’t sway him, maybe greed will.
The driver’s eyes narrow a bit as he glances at his meter. His thumb drums against the control stick, and when his gaze comes back to me I’m waiting for him with big eyes and wet lashes. I just wish it hadn’t been so easy to find those tears; the blank-eyed people in the holosuite and our escape have left me more wobbly than I want to think about. I ought to be used to running by now, but my hands are starting to shake. I brace them against the door of the cab to hide it.
The driver sighs. “Your aunt lives at the Regency Towers?” When I nod, he glances back toward the hacker, who’s still leaning on the cab—now, he’s not even watching what’s happening, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance, jaw clenched and arms folded tightly across his chest. The most obvious belligerent body language there is. Thanks, asshole, for making this so easy. Finally, the cab driver tilts his head toward the back. “Get in. Your aunt’ll pay when we get there, yeah?”
“Oh, really?” I gasp, as though the idea of him driving us hadn’t occurred to me. “Oh my God, you’re my absolute hero, thank you!” I dash for the door before he can change his mind, making the hacker stagger back as I haul open the door he was leaning on. “Come on, brother dear,” I add in a mutter, for his ears alone.
He ducks inside without a word, sliding along the bank of seats to make room for me. The door slams closed after me as I settle myself on the faux leather. “Thank you so much, I’ll have my aunt give you an extra tip for being so kind.”
The cabbie glances over his shoulder at me and grins as he eases the stick forward to start nudging the taxicraft back out into the flow of air traffic through the midlevel of the sector. He’s handsome, in his own way—he reminds me of the guy who does my fake IDs, except I’m pretty sure the cabbie doesn’t break your knuckles if you don’t pay. I sure hope not, anyway. “So where you from, originally?”
His question catches me off guard; I’d been trying to catch my oh-so-useless partner’s eye, without success. I blink at the driver. “What?”
“You said you were new to Corinth. Was wondering where you were from?” He’s facing forward again, but his eyes flick up to watch me in the rearview screen.
“Oh. Babel,” I reply, giving the first planet that comes to mind that I’ve never been to.
“Get out,” the cabbie exclaims, with a laugh. “I was born on Babel. What sector? You ever been to the gravball bar a couple of levels below Regency Towers? The Babel T-Wings’ home away from home. Huge turnout every home game, you should come sometime.”
So sex appeal did work. I glance at my “brother” to see if he’ll maybe do something stereotypical and overprotective to forestall the driver’s questions—and freeze. The hacker’s looking down at his arm, where his hand’s been clamped this whole time. What I’d misread as insolent body language was something else altogether; when he lifts his hand away, it’s stained red.
He catches me looking at him and slaps his hand back in place. The cab driver’s still talking, flashing me glances every now and then in the rearview screen, but his words have faded out to a distant buzz.
I can’t tell how bad it is, but the blood’s seeping down despite his attempts to stanch its flow. I’ve patched up more than my fair share of wounds back on Avon, but I can’t stop to inspect it, and I can’t ask him if he’s okay. The second our driver realizes he’s got a gunshot victim in his backseat, he’ll pull over and dump us on the side of the road. No way to get that kind of injury where we were except from the authorities, and no amount of sex appeal is going to make a cabbie risk charges of aiding and abetting.
This time, I really do have to fight to keep my voice from shaking. “How mad do you think Aunt will be at us for being so late?” I ask my “brother,” the cab driver’s voice trailing off as I interrupt him.