Velvet Dogma

chapter 11



After a hurried goodbye, Rebecca ran to the door. She followed Andy down the hall for twenty feet, then dodged into an empty room. He shoved the door shut behind them, then broke off a piece of metal affixed to the ceiling light, and wedged it under the door to keep someone from opening it. When he turned to her, he was a little wide-eyed.

"We're about sixty seconds from an alarm sounding, the result of some friends of mine hacking into the system to render their internal transceiver nodes useless. When it goes, security vids will transfer to external control. That gives us a window of opportunity to get the hell out."

"Why'd they hack in?"

"So that they can't track you by your organs. You're a wanted woman, Bec. Panchet was monitoring global traffic and several alerts were broadcast about you. As of now, everyone who's anyone knows you're here."

"Oh, hell."

"Yep."

He stared at her as the seconds ticked. One eye normal, the other POD.

"What was up with that pirate thing?"

Andy smiled self-consciously to himself. "I told you that David and I would sometimes pop into her inDrama and goof around. I'm a reoccurring character. They call me One-Eyed Hoke."

Rebecca cracked a smile at the image of Andy with an eye patch and pirate garb. "You've got to be kidding."

"Nope. It's a blast. Maybe one of these days you can try it."

"Who was David?"

"None other than Wild William Bonny. He was quite the swashbuckler. He liked those old Errol Flynn movies, you know. Your grandma's inDrama was a way for him to live the life of daring do."

Rebecca imagined her brother swinging from a mast rope, throwing himself against a horde of boarders. He'd probably loved the hell out of it. David had always loved sports, but he'd never been particularly athletic. InDramas were the perfect escape for someone like him. By the look on Andy's face, she could tell they'd had great times. Getting to know her brother in ways like this made her miss him even more.

A shrill alarm interrupted, pulsing short crisp bursts of sound from the ceiling.

"That's our queue." Andy turned, manually adjusted his POD, and gripped the door handle. "Follow me and stay close."

He slipped out the door and padded down the hallway, moving away from the entrance they'd used and towards the rear of the building, looking for a back way out. Rebecca hurried after him, but only got a dozen feet before she felt a hand grasp her wrist.

"You aren't going anywhere." Singh snarled like a Miniature Doberman.

"Let me go!"

"I don't think so. You're wanted, you know." He actually tsked.

"That's none of your business." She tried to pull away.

"I'm making it my business."

Bad choice. Her face flushed with anger. No way was she going to allow this little twerp of a man to stop her as if she were a child. She jerked her arm once, then twice. His grip was strong. Suddenly she brought her heel down on his instep and watched as his expression collapsed. He jerked away and went down, cradling his foot. She left him rocking back and forth.

People began milling in the hallways, trying to find the cause for alarm. Twice Rebecca stumbled into someone, each time barely keeping her balance as she sought to push past them and catch up to Andy. Once she sent an elderly woman reeling to the floor. Rebecca didn't have time to stop and help her, but she did anyway. By the time she helped the woman to her feet grumbling about whippersnappers running in the halls, another sound intruded upon the cacophony of the sirens—that of booted feet.

Lots of them.

Glancing back the way she'd come, Rebecca saw a platoon of security guards running two abreast down the hall. Each carried a wicked-looking rod at port arms and they were closing fast. Andy had seen them too. She sped towards him trying her best to stay on her feet. She risked a backwards glance and saw the elderly lady she'd helped get trampled beneath their booted feet, her screams lost in the sound of their approach. Andy gestured for Rebecca to hurry, then ran ahead. They'd almost reached the end of the hallway. Andy reached it first and turned left.

She looked back again and regretted it immediately. The security guards were only feet from her. They marched in orderly formation, carrying batons which, now that they were close enough, she saw had electric sizzle emanating from their ends. Holy crap! She glanced forward again just in time to turn the corner, and as she did so, she ran right into an overturned cart, her shins making her howl with pain as she tumbled to the floor.

She rolled onto her back. They were too close for her to do anything but scream, but she was damned if she would. Instead, she lashed out with her legs, kicking and snarling, hoping to get one in the shin, maybe bring him down close enough for her to punch, even bite. By God, she wasn't going giving up without a fight. She kicked again but missed—

Impossible.

Then they were upon her. She lashed out with her arms and legs, wind-milling them in a furry of blows, but none of them landed. Not even a nick. Nothing!

And all around her the legs of her attackers stood still. A foot ran through her chest and another pierced her leg, but she didn't feel anything at all. She reached over and grasped the ankle above her chest, but her hand met no resistance. Ghosts. No, some kind of projection.

"You've got to be kidding me," she gasped.

She struggled to her feet. As she did so, the guards nearest her turned towards her movement, reaching out with ghostly arms. Although she couldn't touch them, nor could she feel them, she found herself flinching away from the electric batons and avoiding eye contact. They might not be real, but they were creepy.

She saw Andy down the hall with his back pressed against the wall. He held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. Someone, or something, had caught him. She couldn't see who, because they were in the other hallway facing Andy.

But she had an idea. She took three steps towards Andy, and sure enough, the guards around her took three steps with her. She took three more steps and they stepped with her again. The phantom guards might not be real, but they sure looked real. More importantly, she was camouflaged by the hulking men. She took five more steps before she saw movement from the hall entrance. She stopped and peered through a sea of legs.

"Where did she go?" demanded Singh. A real security guard with an electric baton stood at his side. They drew closer to Andy, taking in the twenty guards standing next to him. Singh examined them for a moment with suspicious eyes, then grinned. "Scared of a few guards, are you?" He waved his hand through one of the guard's faces. "See? Not real."

Andy glanced towards the fake guards and Rebecca saw him imperceptibly shake his head. If he meant that as a message, she was going to ignore it.

"Now tell me," Singh demanded, "Where is she?"

Andy refused to answer.

Singh waved his hand. "Hit him."

The baton came down on Andy's shoulder. A sharp zzaap was followed by Andy's grunt of pain. Smoke rose from where it'd touched his T-shirt.

"Where is she?"

"F*ck you!"

"Again."

This time Andy howled, the baton burning through his shirt and into his chest. He tried to ward off another blow, but his hands were beaten away by a blow from the baton.

"Tell me where she is and I'll stop." Singh's voice was emotionless, cold.

"No!"

"Again."

Rebecca took two more steps and launched herself, catching the baton with the side of her arm as it descended. Instead of striking Andy, it struck Singh in the center of his forehead. He tried to scream, but his entire body went rigid. She fell hard to the floor.

As Rebecca scrambled to her feet, she found the security guards had come to protect her. They'd surrounded her once again, their hulking bodies hiding her from view. She took the opportunity to kick out with her legs at the shin of the real guard. This time she connected. He wobbled; she kicked again and he toppled to the ground. She crab-walked towards him, but was beat to the punch by Andy, who'd snatched control of the baton in the melee. He hit the guard seven times, and each time the guard's body leapt from the ground as electricity pumped through it. After the seventh blow, Andy stood back and let the guard tumble unconscious to the ground.

Rebecca was the first to her feet. "Come on, Andy! Let's go."

He followed her, still clutching the baton. She spied an exit ten feet away. She tried the push bar, but it wouldn't budge. She took Andy's baton, pressed it onto the door handle, and squeezed. An arc of electricity formed between the two, pushing against the baton. She held it in place for as long as she could, then dropped the weapon.

Leaning back, she brought her foot up and kicked the door handle. The door crashed open to an alley, the sounds, smell and relatively fresh air of the outside a welcome change to what had become a stifling and nearly deadly interior.

They tumbled out and slammed the door behind them, sealing off the sound of the alarm and leaving the twenty fake guards who'd become her saviors behind. Too bad—she'd gotten used to them.

"Where to?"

"There." Andy pointed towards the street.

Rebecca took the lead and zigged through traffic, barely avoiding cars, a bus and psychotic gravBoarder. She sped across the sidewalk and into another alley. This one was right out of the ghetto, narrow, smelling of urine, and layered with debris. Worse, it was a dead end. They ran to the end, then turned, and found protection behind a large green trashcan.

"If they follow us here, we're stuck," Rebecca said.

"You're right. Lemme see if I can get this to work. Got zapped." He removed his Pod and opened a control panel on the side. As he began to work furiously, he reminded her to keep a look out. Three minutes later and it was working.

Just then, a flat disc appeared, hovering over the alley. About forty feet off the ground and the size of a trashcan lid, it moved slower than walking speed, like a UFO from a 1950s movie. The disc swung from side to side towards their position as if it were looking for something.

And it was.

"Surveillance board." Andy shook his head and cursed under his breath. "They've got us."

"What? Are we giving up?"

"We have one last chance. Do me a favor—see if you can keep it busy."

Keep it busy? Rebecca looked around at the detritus on the alley floor. There were tins of half eaten food, pieces of paper, and lengths of composite metals strewn everywhere. She'd never been good at baseball, but she was one hell of a shot when angry. She remembered Billy Picket, who'd caught Rebecca and her high school friends skinny-dipping in the neighbor's pool. The cherry red lump he sported on the back of his head for a week was a victory for all girl-kind.

With major league optimism, Rebecca plucked a piece of rock from the alley floor. She took aim, reared back and threw the rock straight and true. It would have hit had the board not moved gently out of the way. She grabbed another rock and hurled. This one missed as well. Now she felt challenged. The damned thing wouldn't keep still.

She picked up a piece of metal and an oblong rock, perfectly shaped to her hand. She feinted a throw. The board didn't fall for it. So she hurled, then followed up immediately with the piece of metal. The board juked and jived, both the metal and the stone down the alley. How the hell could it–-

At the entrance to the alley was her explanation. Two police cars had pulled to a stop, unnoticed by her and Andy until now. Four men stood behind the cars. Two were regular cops, dressed in light gray jumpsuits with black utility vests and headsets. The third held a circular hoverBoard against his thigh, probably awaiting the command to come in after them. The fourth was dressed in all black and wore twin PODs over his eyes.

Rebecca looked from the hovering board to the man and back.

She had a hypothesis.

Grasping a rock she feinted at the board, then hurled it the length of the alley with Billy Picket accuracy. One of the policemen jerked the POD-wearer out of the way at the last second, the rock bouncing harmlessly off the police car. That the hovering board sagged and seemed to momentarily lose control wasn't lost on her. The man with the PODs was obviously some sort of pilot for the unmanned hover board.

They didn't like the rock, though. One of the regular cops, began speaking rapidly into his headset.

"Uh, Andy?"

The other dropped his hoverBoard and hopped on. Already six feet off the ground, he seemed ready to charge down the alley at any second. An awful realization stuck her. The police had waited because they didn't know what kind of weapons she and Andy had. By her throwing the rock, they now knew that she and Andy had no weapons, because who in their right mind would throw a rock when they had a pistol or a blaster, or whatever weapons they had these days? Throwing the rock had backfired.

"Andy. I think we're in trouble."

"Hold on!" he shushed.

She glowered at him, promising herself that she'd make him pay for that. She left him to subvocalize with his POD while she scoured the alley floor for things to throw. By the time she had a good-sized pile, the policeman on the hoverBoard began to enter the alley.

She glanced at the rock in her hand weighing her options. What did she have to lose? If they caught her she was going back to prison, or worse, going back to prison without some major organs. Prison was the perfect place to put people if they didn't want them to complain. Screw it. She reared back and let the rock go with all of her might. It struck the edge of the hoverBoard.

Then she heard an ear-shattering pop, like an immense vacuum sucking the air from her body. As her hands went to her head, she watched the hoverBoard crash to the ground and the police rider sprawl. The lights on the police car ceased flickering. The regular policemen tossed their smoking headsets to the ground. The one wearing PODs collapsed, smoke curling from his mouth.

Andy joined her at her defensive position. He tossed his POD to the ground. "Useless," he muttered.

Her eyes widened as she took in the scene of electronic devastation. "Did I do that?"

Andy grinned and shook his head. "No. They did." Off to the side, a sewer grate had been pushed aside and a man slid partially clear, only his upper body visible. All she could do was make out his eyes. His face, arms, torso and hands were covered by strips of mismatched pieces of sewn together cloth. Only the strip of his eyes had been left uncovered. He beckoned to them.

"We've been rescued." Andy raised his hand and began to trot in the man's direction.

Rebecca hurried to keep up. "Who is that?"

"A Day Eater."