As a side plan, call it “b2,” maybe I could latch onto a commercial ship of some sort like a barnacle and hitch a ride to elsewhere in the world, lying low in a lifeboat or something. This felt like more of a long-odds plan, and I dismissed it, too.
c) Land, lay low. That was less evasion, which I considered to include movement, and more sheltering in place. Break into a house like with John, take a hostage and keep them for a few days. Downside: taking hostages meant exposing yourself to the risk that the people you took would be missed. Over the course of several days, this became more and more likely, and produced the offshoot result that even if you imprisoned them as I had with John, unless I killed them and hid the body (which I was unwilling to do) they’d eventually rat me out.
The other alternative to this plan, let’s call it “c2,” was the idea that I should find a cave or other natural formation, a spider-hole kind of thing, and pull the earth in over me. No movement, no food, nothing, just stay there until some of the heat subsided. Major downside: a few days without food and water and I’d get weak. Especially water. If I could find a place that had water it was slightly more feasible, but when I did come out, I wouldn’t be in peak fighting condition.
Not that fighting had been much of an option thus far, but…still. I wouldn’t be in peak running condition either.
I turned my head and took another gasping breath. The shore was drawing nearer and nearer, sand and sea meeting in a glorious symphony of salvation. I couldn’t quite hear the crashing of the waves yet, because my own splashing was heavy in my ears, but I dreamed of a moment when my feet would touch dry land again, and I could stop swinging my arms like I was a motorboat, maybe spit the saltwater out of my mouth and not have it seep back in again.
Modest goals.
I didn’t like plan c at all, nor plan b. Staying still or evading by sea seemed like non-starters to me. Even the idea of trying to catch a commercial ship relied heavily on the idea that I wouldn’t get caught, or that I could somehow bribe the crew. It seemed unlikely I could survive without water in a lifeboat, so I gave up on that idea.
It was going to be plan a all the way. Which begged the next question:
Where should I go once I made landfall?
I needed to get the hell out of Scotland, that much was sure. Here, Rose was on her home ground, and however she had done it—I was doubting the Siren explanation, but I had no reasonable alternative—she seemed to exercise a certain control over portions of the populace. Or at least the cops in Edinburgh.
Which meant if I could avoid it, I should stay the hell out of Edinburgh.
That left me with a few avenues. I could try for the Channel Tunnel. That was really the only convenient ground route out of the UK. I could potentially get on a ferry at Dover. Maybe there were others, I didn’t know.
Or I could try and get a plane. Though we’d seen how that worked out the first time around.
Which brought me to another question: How had Rose found my rendezvous point at the airfield? Just simple luck seemed right out, especially since a US government team had shown up at the same place, same rough time.
That suggested my fears of some sort of NSA cell phone hacking might be well founded. Shit. When I called my banker again, I’d need to use a landline, for his safety and mine. Less chance of interception that way. I’d have him make arrangements this time, leaving it to him to make contact with and to get money to someone who could.
I didn’t want to rely on Fritz again for transport, given what had happened last time I’d put my future location out there. Which meant exfiltrating the country was on me. A commercial flight was pretty much out, because even if I could procure fake ID—which seemed difficult, again, owing to the trouble that came from having to rendezvous with people and giving away my location in the bargain—I doubted if I’d be able to pass the scrutiny of a security checkpoint given that I was the most wanted fugitive in the UK right now. They’d be on high alert, and watching for me.
The tunnels and ferries? Maybe I could sneak through there, though that was kind of suspect too. I would have laughed in the face of the EU meta embargo now, at the thought of crossing into France only to be arrested there for being a powered person, but…it wasn’t that funny.
Either way, if I wanted to get into position to do that, I needed to get the hell out from under Rose’s nose.
I needed to get the hell out of Scotland.
Car, rail, or on foot. Those were my main options for getting back into the south of the country. Once there, maybe I could exfiltrate myself. Hell, I could swim the English Channel. Though, maybe I’d be better off making contact with Wexford—in person, or via landline somehow, or even better, dreamwalk—and letting him sort out my escape, given he probably didn’t want me caught here.
Hopefully, anyway. If Wexford was off my side…
Well, then I was really alone.
The shore was in sight now, my excessive thinking roiling in my brain like my arms were doing to the water around me. Only a few hundred yards to go and I’d be out, out of this frigid wash, out of immediate danger, out of…
Well, not out of the soup, because I was still in deep shit, but…closer to a break, at least.
And I needed a break.
I couldn’t see anyone on the beach, and suddenly I was thankful for the utter lack of sun overhead. Hell, if it wanted to break loose and start pouring, that would only aid me, really. So long as the choppers weren’t flying with IR sensors, I was safe as houses in a downpour, though I’d look suspicious if anyone peeked out their window and saw me hotfooting it across the hills in a tempest at metaspeed.
Dragging myself through the rough surf near shore, I fought against the breakers that threatened to knock me over. Apparently the tide was high. Who would have guessed, given how late it was probably getting in the afternoon?
The exhaustion was sweeping; it had me from toe to head. My brain swirled in a slow eddy of worry, looking up and over my shoulder for helos. Still none in sight. There were ships out in the Firth, but none that had gotten terribly close to me. As long as none of their crew picked up their microphones and called in the sight of a crazy person swimming like mad through the water…
I couldn’t rely on that. Up on shore now, I was dripping across the clumped, tan sands and occasional rock like I was the sky letting loose. My clothes were clinging to me like weighted chains, threatening to drag me down. They weren’t actually that heavy, especially to a meta, but to a meta who was battling exhaustion?
Yeah. They felt heavy, soaked and cold and clutching at my skin like an industrial-strength full-body suction cup that had been licked by someone who’d just taken a drink of ice water.
I dragged myself up on the beach and forced myself to go on, kicking up the sand as I went, my feet barely lifting with each step. I needed to keep going, just a little farther inland, somewhere that I could find a safe spot to take a break…
And maybe pass out for a few hours, before I ran myself to death, maybe literally.
18.
I was pretty damned sick of running through the Scottish countryside by now, but at least it gave me the ability to dodge the hell out of the Scottish people, for the most part. Being this far out from most of the cities and towns meant fewer people, which was good.
Because right now, there was a deep uncertainty factor with people. They weren’t all Rose’s servants, but the fact that she seemed so annoyingly ever-present was…concerning, to say the least.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, I felt strangely safer. Avoid people, avoid Rose, because, obviously, she was a people. A person, I guess, if you want to get all grammatical about it.
I hooked the long way west, avoiding a pretty good-sized town that I spied from a hilltop. Skirting my way around the edges of fields, running low over fences and hedgerows, I knew my luck had to be running short. Sooner or later, someone was going to see me bolting through the fields, and that’d spell disaster.