Just like in Dancer’s house.
Reaching the back door, he spotted another witness, a pimply faced kid wearing a FedEx shirt, with phone pressed to his ear, desperately trying for a signal that was blocked. Raiff burst past him outside into a nest of massive trash bins overflowing with paper, crushed cardboard boxes, and shredded document remains that now blew like confetti across the scene. His feet crunched over the glass shed by outdoor light fixtures the androids had broken, likely to cloak their presence long enough from a big trash hauler with an automated pincer assembly that grasped, hoisted, and dumped the contents of the trash bins. Its engine idled, no driver anywhere to be seen.
Raiff’s eyes scanned the scene and saw two of the androids dragging Dancer and the girl off, along the back alley of the FedEx store and the others in the strip mall, barely wide enough to accommodate the trash truck.
The girl’s presence here had thrown Raiff a bit. His mission, though, remained unchanged:
Save Dancer, the one and only priority. He could not risk Dancer to save the girl.
Complicated.
Right now it was moot. Right now the androids had both of them in tow, and Raiff couldn’t attack without alerting the androids to his presence well before he reached them. They’d be ready this time and, worse, might kill Dancer to make sure the secret he was keeping remained just that.
Raiff’s mind was made up in a fraction of a second, the pieces falling into place as he turned and slid off in the opposite direction.
*
Alex struggled but it was useless. He was a feather in the first drone thing’s grasp, being dragged along. The other had Sam by the hair and throat at the same time, dragging her too, her face red from lack of air, mouth gaping for breath.
They’d walked right into the trap set outside the back of the store.
The only working computer at the FedEx Office in Capitola, the one the motel clerk had recommended, was being used, so they’d driven a few miles up the road to this FexEx Office in Santa Cruz.
So how had the drone things found them? And who was the guy who’d driven his car into the store, saving them from the man-like machines, at least for the moment?
Alex couldn’t bother considering that or any other question right now. He needed to figure out a way to break free and escape.
And take Sam with him.
“Sam!” he cried out and felt a hand clamp over his mouth, crinkling like a soda can.
Her eyes were gaping in terror.
He needed to do something, but the drone thing was now holding both his hands in a single, gloved grasp by the thumbs. When he struggled, he felt the wrenching pain of the thumb jerked so hard, it strained the bonds of its tendon.
Sam’s taser was still tucked just behind her hip in her jeans, hidden by her jacket. If he could reach it, maybe, just maybe …
But he couldn’t. Only thing that would get him was more pain. He needed to bide his time, wait for an opportunity—which came when a shape lunged out from an idling trash truck, complete with compactor and arm-like assemblages, parked across the alleyway directly before him.
*
The route out blocked, Raiff projected himself through the passenger window of the garbage truck, having looped all the way around the strip mall to avoid being spotted. He hit the ground tucking, rolled once, and was back on his feet. His whip was useless to him with Dancer pulled in so close to the android holding him. The android didn’t let go, pulled Alex in even tighter against it, backed up closer to the trash hauler. Raiff let it, showed the whip he had no intention of using to make the android retreat even farther.…
Directly beneath the pincer apparatus’s electronic eye.
It had engaged automatically when Raiff had put the truck into “park” and now it lowered with a mechanical whir and captured the android in its grasp at the shoulders, a near match to the width of the trash containers for which it was fitted. The pincer apparatus clamped on tight, lifted the android up and out. The thing desperately tried to free itself, almost managing to when the pincers lowered it into the compactor.
Raiff grabbed Dancer and shoved the boy behind him before he could move to rescue the girl. Above, the android was clawing desperately for anything it could grab, as the compactor sucked it further and further inside, until a crunch sounded and nothing but its hands remained visible. The compactor bucked once, settled, then opened anew.
The other android tossed the girl aside to move for Raiff, who went for his whip, now to find it gone, lost when he’d grabbed Dancer in its place. The android flashed its laser knife, reeled it back to send the first blade flying, Raiff’s best hope that it might miss him.
He caught a flash of motion at the android’s rear and then the girl was on it, something in her hand coming forward.