“Room twenty-three-sixteen! All paid for, man!”
By your parents, I thought as I turned the corner and jogged down the hallway, an exact replica of the one I had come from, finally stopping at 2338. The door pulled open before I could punch in the access code, and Vic dragged me in by the arm. I tripped into the room.
“Gods, Victor.” I straightened. “I’m happy to see you too.”
“Why didn’t you reply to my messages?” Victor hissed. He twisted the silver cuff link on his perfectly ironed shirt and glared at me.
“My Vox ran out of juice.” Good thing I had already memorized the access codes. I glanced around the large suite with a plush sofa and matching chairs. A smaller chandelier, similar to the ones that hung in the foyer, illuminated the rich, wood-paneled room. Two cylindrical enclosed pods were set on either side of the wall screen. I’d never tried it myself, but Vic said combined with the sim suits, gamers who were in pod had a completely immersive experience. Two sim suits were draped over the back of the sofa. It couldn’t be more different than the spare, concrete studio I’d been renting for the past month. “Why?”
Victor grabbed me by my shirt collar and shook hard. I shoved him off, more surprised than angry. “What the hell?” I asked.
He smoothed his hair with a hand, but not one carefully styled lock was out of place. “There are four men wandering Rockaroke asking about you.”
“What?”
“I was trying to warn you not to come tonight. To stay the hell away.” He cracked his knuckles in frustration. “But you, nitwit, couldn’t be bothered to recharge your Vox.”
“Who are these guys? Did you talk to them?”
Victor studied the monitor showing an empty hallway outside our door, then turned on the wall screen with a control, revealing a life-size sim. She had long brown hair, pretty Asian features, and wore a sheer white tank top that revealed every inch of her perky breasts. Inexplicably, the lower half of her body was that of a golden-colored mare. Vic was going to play with her after zipping into his full sensory sim suit?
I didn’t ask.
“No. My sources messaged me.” He flipped his Palm from his trouser pocket in one smooth motion, showing me the screen. It was a rendered image of me, with shoulder-length blond hair like I had during the kidnapping. But it wasn’t quite right; my eyes were off, as was the shape of my nose and face. It was like looking at myself in a distorted mirror. I’d since cut my hair short and dyed it back to its original black.
“How’s this possible—”
“Maybe the bodyguard you punched gave a description,” Vic said, tucking the device away.
“No. The smoke I used on them memory-wipes.”
“The friend, then. The shorter girl you mentioned—”
I shook my head. “I was turned away from her when I attacked, then dropped the smoke bomb. If she saw me, it was only in profile, and not for more than a second.”
Victor let out a frustrated breath. “Well, somebody saw you. Maybe snapped a blurry photo.” I’d never seen him like this before—and suddenly realized he was really worried. That’s why he was so pissed. “They were on the twenty-second floor an hour ago, making their way up.” He punched his fist into an open palm. “Thank gods you didn’t run into them in the hallway.”
“Look, I’m sorry I was offline—”
He waved a hand, adopting his usual laid-back manner. “Forget it. You’ve been keeping a low profile, but you need to be even more alert now. These guys are killers—”
A loud knocking startled us, and we spun at the same time to look at the door monitor.
“We know this room’s occupied,” a man with a gruff voice said. “We’ve permission from Rockaroke to ask you a few questions.” Four men dressed in black suits stood outside our door. The man who had knocked was short and thin, but there was one behind him built like a tank, and the two others were tall and lean. Dangerous. They reminded me of sharp blades.
I flipped my own butterfly knife out within a second and snapped it open, exposing the five-inch blade. Victor cursed under his breath and pressed another button on the screen control. His sim girl-pony reached down and pulled off her sheer tank top, revealing breasts even better than I had imagined. She pawed the ground with one hoof and tossed her thick hair.
“Let’s play, big boy,” she said in a sultry voice and swayed her pony ass at us.
I gaped, and Victor shoved me toward the wall of glass. “Get out.”
“I can hide in the bathroom.” Flicking the blade closed, I tucked the knife back into my jeans pocket.
“No,” he replied. “They’ll check the bathroom. I would.” He punched more buttons on the screen control. “You’ll have to go out on the ledge.”
I stared at him. Victor, who was always so collected, had lost it. “There aren’t any windows.”
“One panel opens,” he said. “I charmed it out of one of the attendants. You just need a specialized code. Safety measure.” The glass panel on the very far side of the room slid aside, and the street noise from below reached us, even as the humid air rolled in. “Quick!”
“We’re twenty-three floors up!” I protested.
“You’re a climber.” He pushed me again toward the gaping space. “Just stay put till I let you back in.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity. “It’s a crap image.”
“I recognized you from it,” Vic said. “We can’t risk it.”
Another knock. This time, even louder. “Open up!”
There was no fighting Victor. And there was no other option. I carefully stepped out onto the metal ledge, not more than a foot wide, and the glass immediately slid shut behind me. The windows went opaque, their surface crackling with blue and red laser lights. I stared straight ahead at the skyline, forcing my panic away. Don’t look down. I shuffled my feet until I was flush against the metal divider separating us from the other suite, also extended twelve inches out. The humid air made my skin sticky, but I was grateful there was no strong wind tonight. Sweat rolled down my back, and I suppressed a coughing fit, my eyes tearing with the effort. Coughing, even a sneeze, could send me plummeting to my death. I pressed my hand against the side wall and found a round metal hook set there. Gods. I curled my fingers through it, gripping so hard my nails dug into my palm.
The rumble and hum of aircars and -peds entering the garage a few floors below swept hot air upward. I only hoped none of them would pass too near, spot me, and call Rockaroke security. My palm grasping the metal hook was slick with sweat, and I felt it gather at my hairline, then slide down my forehead.