“The. Book. Won’t. Help,” Rog said slowly, like I wasn’t capable of understanding. “I could print up a thousand books and make them say whatever I want and call it history!”
I reached deep in my bag, letting the book settle. I exhaled and breathed deep again. I held that breath. I reached past my grappling gun to the small knob on the canister of sleep gas. I turned it slowly and counted in my head.
“Would you like some more?” he asked, gesturing to the books all around. It would take maybe ten seconds for the gas to reach him. I didn’t know if I could last. I closed my eyes. I shrugged ever so slightly, silent, my mouth sealed tight. He laughed at me.
“That was communication!” he exclaimed, victorious. “And a willful skirting of the Law! Bronsky versus State of Maryland—‘Sight occlusion whilst in commission of a deliberate gesture without authority from the state shall be considered...’” His head cocked slightly as he sniffed and swayed, trying to keep his Cuff trained on me.
My lungs burned. I longed for air.
He went on, voice slightly slurred, “‘...willful elusion of Intellectual Prop...’ Wait...” Panic radiated from him as I rifled through my bag, hoping to find my mask before I needed to draw a breath.
The elevator pinged. Rog frowned, his eyes unfocused. “They shouldn’t...” But he was not able form the words he wanted.
I only had to stay conscious a little longer, before his guards—or whoever was on that elevator—arrived. Rog faltered. I moved toward him. My lungs felt ready to burst, and stars swam in my vision.
There was a loud bang and a shattering of glass. Had he shot at me? I inhaled in shock—a gasp. My plan wasn’t working. I needed to get to Rog, but the room began to darken around me. I heard a woman’s muffled voice calling my name as my legs buckled. Rog said something, but his voice came out strangled.
The room swam away from me, the blue dawn at the windows dimming. I saw Sam, Saretha and my parents gathered around a spinning table, all talking at once, but I couldn’t hear them. Kel was there, but Henri wasn’t. I opened my eyes to a darkening blur and thought, for just a moment, that I saw Margot. Then everything went black.
THE STAIN OF A SENTENCE: $51.95
A bell kept sounding.
“Where is Henri?”
The bell sounded again.
Something struck my face. My eyes opened to see Margot’s hand hovering in the air.
“Where is Henri?” she demanded. She was sitting over me, her face tight and hard. She had Kel’s Pad in her non-slapping hand. The Pad was working again, lit up with the building’s map. She shoved the map in front of my face.
I looked at her blankly. She slapped me again. The bell sounded. My head ached.
“Wake up, Speth. Tell me where Henri is.”
The bell sounded again. We were on the elevator, going down. Where was Henri? We were on the sixtieth floor. Was Henry still on seventeen? Margot took a small, bean-shaped device from a pocket near her biceps. It looked like it had a little stinger. She jabbed it into my arm, and I felt my heart start racing. She slapped me again, one more time than was necessary. I sat up angrily.
“Type it!” she demanded. She held the Pad out to me. I hesitated, and her face grew red with anger. “You typed Silas Rog, goddamn it, you can type Henri’s location.”
We weren’t in a Squelch, but I didn’t know if that mattered. The Pad wouldn’t register it, and I had no Cuff to report it. I was too groggy and panicked to have the debate in my head about what I could or could not do anymore. We had to get to Henri and the others. I raised myself up and swatted at the 17 on the elevator’s control panel.
“This elevator is stupidly slow,” she complained. We were on the forty-fifth floor and dropping.
I looked around in a foolish pantomime, as if Rog might be on the elevator someplace, hoping Margot would understand what I asked.
“I hit Rog very hard on his head. Maybe he is dead. Maybe he is up and plotting. We should move quickly.”
Damn it. Our next moves would have been simpler if I knew he couldn’t interfere. She should have made sure he was dead, but murder was rather a lot to ask.
I tried to stand, but I felt weak. We were on the thirty-fifth floor. Margot looked determined.
“I told myself not to come back,” Margot said, rummaging through her bag. “I said to myself, Henri is a big boy.”
The thin bell rang again. Thirtieth floor. I looked at the elevator’s display, scanning down to the lowest level. I had a plan. What had it been? I needed to get beneath this building. I needed to find the place where the WiFi was housed. That’s what I needed to do. I stood and pressed the elevator’s glass display. I queued the garage, the lowest floor I could find. Margot noted what I did and shook her head.
“Kel is an idiot,” she said, examining her green pony bottle of sleep gas. “We’re going to save her, too.”
She attached some kind of nozzle. I didn’t have a nozzle. I wouldn’t have been able to use one anyway, since I couldn’t have let Rog see me take the canister out.
“You are coming with me.” She canceled my garage call with a swipe. Maybe she was right. Maybe she could help me after we rescued Henri and Kel. Maybe they all could.
The elevator slowed. I stood and looked for my bag.
Margot hooked it on my arm for me. I put my palm to my temple. There was a small spot of blood when I pulled it away.
“You’re fine,” Margot said, and she gave me a little shove halfway between playful and impatient as the elevator doors opened.
LICIT AUTHORITY: $52.98
The seventeenth floor was nothing but a hall of doors from the center out to the windows. Two Lawyers were walking toward us, dressed in their Butchers & Rog best. One was a blonde woman with legs so thin they looked insect-like. The other was a man with a narrow mustache. They seemed to greet the morning with determination, noting us without alarm. It scarcely seemed to register with them that anyone would dare intrude at Butchers & Rog. They kept walking. The woman typed diligently on her Cuff, like a reflex, coming off the last tap with a delicate flourish.
An InstaSuit? appeared on Margot’s Cuff. Twelve thousand dollars for associated pain and suffering from our trespass. The two Lawyers looked from her to me. Their satisfaction crumpled when they recognized I had no Cuff. My heart was beating fast, almost too fast. I was alert, but unsteady. Or maybe I was afraid. I couldn’t think of how we would escape from this. The tower seemed to be crushing in on me from all sides, and I was still far from where I needed to be.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to escape. I needed to get down to the WiFi.