“Kai?” I called. “Kai?”
But my voice echoed hollowly in the empty apartment. Kai was gone.
CHAPTER 6
The laser torches lit the hallway in streaks of purple and red. Will saw them first while I rummaged through a stack of paper and notebooks on a desk made of real wood.
“RGs,” he hissed.
RGs were members of the Republic Guard who were armed with high-tech gear. Feared and loathed in equal measure, they protected the republic’s border and what was left of its infrastructure. But there wasn’t enough time to wonder why the RGs were here. Their arrival was never a good thing. There was a dead body and spent ammunition and two kids old enough to be saboteurs. We had to flee before we were trapped.
The lights danced across the open doorway. Will and I huddled in the back of the small room that served as Kai’s father’s office. There was a second door that led into a bath, and from there into Kai’s bedroom. We tiptoed to the bathroom. Outside we could hear the guards’ electronic communications. They spoke in clipped military language, most of which I couldn’t understand, but I clearly heard them say we were cornered in the building.
The only thing that saved us was Kai’s medicine kit on the side of the sink. As I stopped to examine it, the RGs entered the bedroom. They would surely have seen us if we had continued into the room. Instead Will bumped into me and we both froze behind the door. Then we quickly retraced our steps to the office, back through the living room to the front hallway—and out the open door.
Two men stood just inside the perimeter of the fence by the front gate. They were dressed in the same blue shirts as the men I had seen at the gaming center, and each carried an automatic weapon.
Will raised a finger to his lips. He signaled toward the hole in the fence. We scurried quickly in the twilight and slipped through the opening before anyone noticed. Then we leapt on our pedicycles and rode silently like madmen until we were within sight of our building.
“We can’t stay here,” gasped Will as we stopped to catch our breath about fifty meters from our front door.
“What do you mean? Where else can we go?”
He nodded at the security cameras mounted on nearly every building corner. Of course: the cameras at the Wellington Pavilion had filmed our arrival. It wouldn’t take long for the RGs to review the logs and identify us in the database.
“But we didn’t do anything!” I protested.
“It won’t look that way.”
I was still gripping Kai’s medicine kit. Now I looked inside. Four neat, contoured insulin reservoirs were secured in an insulated pouch next to two boxes of blood-testing strips and a spare adapter for the injector pencil.
“He left without his insulin,” I said.
“Why would he do that?”
“He didn’t do it,” I said. “They took him.”
“We don’t know that. He could have been running.”
“You saw the bodyguard! Do you think he shot himself?”
“Maybe he got shot protecting Kai and his father, and they got away.”
“Then where’s the blood and the other bodies?”
“Could be no one else was wounded.”
But Will knew I was right. No matter how desperate Kai’s situation, he wouldn’t leave voluntarily without his insulin. It was a death sentence.
“We have to help him, Will.”
“We can’t go to the Guard, or the army. They’ll be looking for us.”
“Then we have to go ourselves.”
“Don’t be crazy. They’ll have guns, and we don’t even know who they are.”
“If we stay here, the Guard will arrest us. You said so yourself.” My voice cracked; my throat was bone dry.
“And what do we do if we find him? Shoot our way inside?”
“If we have proof, the Guard will come. Especially if there’s money in it.”
Will frowned. But he knew the Republic Guard would help a wealthy driller if we had a holo or even an audiogram—anything they could link to bank records.
“We should tell Dad,” said Will. “Just in case.”
I couldn’t believe Will was suggesting this. Our father would never let us leave. I told Will he was scared and making excuses. He said he was being rational and weighing the risks. The more we argued, the more forceful I became. For once I was the leader and Will the reluctant follower. He may have had logic, but I had passion and desire.
“If we lose Kai, we lose the river,” I said. “We lose everything.”
The lights had come on outside our building, and soon the grid would shut down. Will’s face was smeared with dust and grime from the ride, and I assumed I looked the same. My lips stung, and my hair felt matted with sweat and sand. But I felt exhilarated and prepared for anything. Will’s uneven grin told me he felt the same way.
“We don’t know where to start,” he said.