“My friend?” She sniffs, lifting a tearstained face, giving him the full force of her big eyes and running mascara. She’s trying, even now, to protect my identity—or maybe just to protect her own. “I don’t know anything about the guy I was with, I promise. We didn’t go together. He took me hostage.”
Easy there, Dimples. Definitely not trying to protect me. I find one of my reversible T-shirts, with a LaRoux Industries logo on one side, black on the other. I flip it black side out and haul it on over my head, followed by my climbing harness. It’ll attract attention, but if I end up needing it to reach Alexis in time, I don’t want to be fumbling with straps—and I’ve seen plenty weirder fashion on the streets of Corinth. Then I’m digging through a nest of wires to find what I—usually laughingly—call my crime bag, and slide my lapscreen in beside the supplies already there. I shove my night-eye goggles on top of my head and jam an earpiece into my ear, and running a wire from it to my screen, I’m ready. “I’m going mobile, Mae. Lock the signal down as tight as you can for me.”
I hate the idea of broadcasting our conversation, but we don’t have time to rig up anything more elegant. Alexis doesn’t have time.
“Done,” Mae says, her voice crisp in my ear. “I see the car they’re using, I’m ready for them.”
“Careful, there’ll be traps.” But she already knows that—LRI brings a whole new meaning to system security. I press my face against the iris-cam at the door and shove my thumb against the scanner, and my door releases with a hiss.
Mae laughs, though she doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Please. I know what I’m doing, kid.”
I bolt out into the alleyway outside just as Dimples and her friends leave Kristina’s apartment.
With a ping from Mae, my headset throws a transparent projection of the camera feeds up in front of me, the audio streaming directly into my ear as I hurry down the alleyway and out into the broader street beyond. It’s lined with stalls and shouting hawkers, roofed over by the next level of housing above us.
Alexis is speaking as she’s bundled into a car, and I’m smelling Mama Samorn’s rice as I run past the stalls, focusing on the voice in my ear as my worlds jumble together. “What, you think because he picked me for his safety shield he decided to tell me his master plan?” Alexis’s voice is still shaking. “If you want to know why he was there, why don’t you find him and ask?”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” the gorilla replies, as the camera angle switches to one inside the car, mounted by the driver’s head. “And you’re going to help.”
“But I don’t know anything,” Alexis wails, drawing her knees up to her chest. The way her gaze darts around, I think she’s wondering if she can kick one of them in the guts, then lunge for the door. But it’s some kind of stretch limo, and she’s got three of them in the back with her. It’s not going to happen.
“In our experience, people often know more than they think,” he says calmly, as Mae overlays the footage with a GPS, showing the car’s movement. “Especially when they’re properly motivated to turn their minds to the question.”
Man, this guy would be a blast at a party.
They head out of the fancy sector where her borrowed apartment was, and my headset throws up projected routes as I push through the shinkansen barriers in the wake of a couple of laborers, cramming onto the last carriage of the bullet train right before the doors shut.
“Honey, I think…” Mae’s voice trails off.
“Yeah, I know,” I mutter. They’re in a LaRoux Industries–branded car, wearing LaRoux Industries uniforms. This is how arrogant these people are—but more, this is how powerful they are. That they can do this in broad daylight, knowing nobody will stop them or ask them their business.
There was still a faint hope they’d head somewhere off-campus to do their dirty work, but four out of five routes our program is projecting say the same thing: they’re taking her to LaRoux’s headquarters. His fortress.
Alexis doesn’t give them a thing, spending most of the car trip in silence, responding to their occasional questions with sniffs and half sentences and pleas. The signal flickers and cuts out occasionally as I switch from the bullet train to an inter-level elevator, cramming in with a bunch of bodies as we rocket up to the wealthier levels. The air grows clearer and the buildings grow taller, fancier—down in the slums, every street’s roofed over, with level upon level stacked on top of each other. Every time they make a turn, my computer updates my routes—at this rate there’s no way I can intercept them, only trail after them.
It’s only a few minutes from LaRoux Industries Headquarters that they hit a traffic jam—Mae throws me an image of the protest causing it, but I don’t bother trying to read the signs. Finally, finally, something’s going my way. All my projected routes have narrowed to one now, and lungs straining as I run down the sidewalk—subtlety be damned—I fight my way through the crowd.