I gave a half smile. “I’m a salter, remember?”
Moti harrumphed. “Good luck, Aher.”
As his fingers toyed with the conductor console and the room darkened, the most disturbing thing occurred to me: How the fuck does Moti—a man whose nation is fundamentally opposed to the very notion of teleportation—know how to operate a TC console?
Then there was a white flash.
THE CRETAN LABYRINTH
THE LIGHTS DIMMED back to normal. Moti’s disappearance reassured me I had made it to the vestibule in the San José hospital. Better yet, there was no Costa Rican security force awaiting my arrival.
I ambled out of the TC and into the hallway. My first task: find some sort of staff locker room. Somewhere I could change out of my ass-revealing—
“Mr. Byram!”
Are you fucking kidding me? Had IT tracked me down already?
Adrenaline coursed through my veins. After everything I’d been through, I was surprised my glands were still able to make the stuff. I turned and saw a nurse coming toward me. He had a pleasant face and super-thick eyebrows.
Act cool. It’s just one guy. You can overpower him. That’s first. Second, you take his scrubs and get to the parking lot. Third is you find an ambulance and drive it straight to Sylvia. Even though you’ve never actually driven anything outside of video games.
I curled my right hand into a fist, ready to clock him if need be, but his expression was one of concern, not apprehension.
“I’m really glad you came back,” he said. “You know, I felt a little guilty that I didn’t work harder yesterday to make you stay. Kept me up a little last night. I never saw injuries like that.” He looked me up and down. “Looks like you got some new ones since then.”
Shit, my bruises. “I—uh—fell,” I said. “Off a cliff,” I added unnecessarily.
He blinked, unsure if I was kidding or not. “Is your wife around, by any chance? Some IT people came by yesterday to fix the TC, and they had some questions for her. They’ve been talking to everyone after that attack.”
My wife? I thought. How does he—Oh. This guy must have met the “other” me. “Yes. She’s—um—outside. I’ll tell her.”
“Okay,” said the nurse with a cheerful smile. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
Guess other me wasn’t looking so hot.
He walked off, and I wandered the halls until I found a directory that led me down to the basement laundry. It was occupied by bots, who kept offering to help me find the exit. I salted them with some story about my clothing accidentally being sent down for cleaning. Getting around without comms was already proving to be a pain in the ass. Even the most basic tasks required either salting my way past an app or explaining why my comms weren’t working. I couldn’t even operate a printer on my own.
“I can’t go back out there like this. Can’t you print me some clothes? Or point me to a lost and found?” I kept asking the bots, until finally one handed me a clean pair of scrubs and a lab coat. It ushered me back out through the exit, leaving me to change in the hallway. Thankfully, no one walked past.
It felt weird to walk around like a half nurse, half doctor, but at least I was fully clothed again. I wiped my sweaty forehead on my sleeve. In fact, my whole body was sweaty. I began to suspect Moti had me pegged. I wasn’t cut out for this shit.
I took the stairs up to the ground floor, avoiding both the elevator and as many security cameras as I could see.
Outside, the late-morning Sun was glaring, and the piss-warm rain was unpleasantly piss-like. Something buzzed by my ear, and for a moment I was certain it was some IT nano carrying synthesized venom. I looked around for the man Moti told me I wouldn’t see coming but couldn’t find him. It’s just a bug, Joel. Keep it together.
I took cover under an awning. I had no idea where to find an ambulance. Was there a dedicated ambulance garage? Man, I’d give anything to have my comms working right now. I circled the entire circumference of the hospital to no avail. Fuck. Moti hadn’t told me what to do if there were no ambulances to steal.
After a second tour around the cluster of buildings that made up the hospital, I ended up settling on the emergency room entrance as my perch. My assessment was that sooner or later an ambulance would show up there. I scanned the white-and-green skyline of San José. The column of smoke from yesterday’s explosion was gone, and the jungle-covered mountains were clear in the distance. Everything looked pretty normal. And to think, less than twenty-four hours ago, the city had been in chaos.
A siren wailed, drawing my attention back to the road. It was an ambulance, coming straight for the hospital. Finally some good luck. I stepped behind a concrete column as the white-and-orange-striped vehicle pulled into the circular driveway in front of the emergency room entrance. A crew of paramedics popped out—one from each door, and another from the rear. With the aid of a fourth paramedic in the cabin, they extracted a rolling gurney upon which lay a poor bastard who had cracked his head open like a bloody coconut. Two of the paramedics took the patient into the ER, but the other two stayed outside. Damn it. I didn’t know if they were getting ready to go on another call or shoot the shit; I only knew they were in between me and my best chance of getting to Sylvia. Who knew when another empty ambulance would show up?
Confidence, Joel. I stepped out from behind the column and walked briskly toward the ambulance. The rasp of my slipper-covered feet on the asphalt sounded deafening. But I kept going, pretending I didn’t see the paramedics, even though they were less than three meters away. One of them—a blond woman who looked young, maybe midtwenties—called after me. “?Doctor! Estábamos a punto de irnos. ?Viene?”
Shit, the lab coat. She thought I was a doctor. “Sí, sí,” I said to them without turning around. I did not speak Spanish, and I didn’t have my comms to translate. “Uh—buenos nachos. Gracias.”
She frowned. “?Cuál es su nombre? Espera.”
“Sorry! Apologismo or whatever, but I’m in a hurry. Rápido. Adios.” I threw a wave over my shoulder and got in the front of the ambulance. There was a U-shaped steering wheel before me, as well as a small console. Which was blank. Shit balls.
The problem with my video game driving experience is that old-fashioned cars from the twenty-first century had things like speedometers and gearshifts. I tapped the screen, but saw nothing like that. I swiped through a few menus in hopes of finding words like manual or start, but to no avail. The blond paramedic began walking toward me, so I broke down.