Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

V
asco met the girls by
the river at 7:00. He and Monkey were tired, but he nodded when Hannah told him about the plight of Rebel Seven.

“We’ll have to move them. Soon. I don’t like that mounted patrol finding you, and we can’t afford to lose Seven this close to blowing the comm center.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m too tired to get back there tonight. We’ll go over and see how Marty’s doing, then head north in the morning.”

“Do you know where Seven can go?” Neahle asked.

“I’ve got a couple of ideas. If we had time I’d go talk to my brother, but I’d rather not spend the extra day. We’ll try to make it work, the sooner the better.”

“We’re not going to cross the bridge now, are we?” Monkey asked as they walked under the trees in a riverside park. It wasn’t full dark yet.

“No, we’ll hang out awhile. I’ll probably take a nap if you’ll take the first watch.”

Monkey nodded.

“What did y’all do?” Neahle asked.

“Went up to La Defense,” Monkey said. “Scouted around, looking for ways in. We found a few, but didn’t have time to explore too much. We’ve got some places to start next time, though.”

“Don’t most of the Firsts live there?” After her one encounter with a First, Neahle knew she would be terrified to go anywhere near a First enclave.

“Yep. That’s why we’re a little tired…” Monkey grinned. “A couple of guards saw us and started chasing us. We did a lot of climbing and running on the roofs. We lost ‘em in five minutes. Seems like those dudes never look up unless it’s raining.”

They passed two hours in a cluster of thick shrubs, then Vasco repeated his instructions on how to run across the bridge.

“Dive off?” Neahle said, craning her neck to look at the river.

“Dive off,” Vasco confirmed. “You sound like Marty. I thought you guys were from the beach.”

“The beach, sure. We didn’t go around diving off bridges.”

“It’s no problem. It’s only happened twice, and everyone lived to tell about it.” Vasco cinched his back pack tighter around his chest and grinned at her.

“Great,” Neahle muttered, picking up her own pack and putting it on.

Thirty minutes later they were in the vault; Neahle was speechless at both the computer array and the electricity.

“Do you have hot water?” she asked hopefully.

“A bit. Not enough for a proper shower, unfortunately,” Marissa said. “The bank had a small hot water heater for the sinks.” She stood and looked at Marty, who was still glued to his three active monitors. “Coming, Marty?”

“Be there in a while. Let me finish up here.” He never looked up.

Marissa laughed. “For the computer geeks among us, this is heaven. Come on, I’ll cook up some dinner. Vasco looks dead on his feet.”

Marty left reluctantly in the wee, dark hours of the morning. Vasco had promised that he would be moving to the vault for good the next week. That made him feel only marginally less upset at leaving.

“How’d you like the bridge?” he asked Neahle as they walked down the dark street.

“Didn’t have to dive in,” she said.

“That’s a plus!” Marty laughed.

“Shh!” Monkey hissed back at them. The cousins looked at each other and covered their mouths with their hands, trying not to burst out laughing.

“Guys…” Hannah warned, keeping an eye on Vasco’s back.

“Sorry!” Neahle managed, then looked at Marty and started giggling again. Hannah rolled her eyes and gave up.

No one had to dive into the Seine on this crossing, either, and soon they were riding motorcycles back to the Depot to meet Samson and Clay. The sun was just over the horizon when they arrived. They turned off the bikes and walked them silently down the alley and through the narrow door.

“It’s us! Don’t shoot!” Vasco called out.

“Shoot?” Neahle asked.

“Joke,” he assured her. “Just didn’t want to freak them out.”

Samson wandered out from the office, rubbing his eyes. “You’re early. What time is it?”

“A little after six. Change of plans—we’ve got to move Rebel Seven. They’ve been having watchers. We’re gonna need some help.”

“Bikes?” Samson asked.

“No, I don’t think it’s worth it. We’d have to come all the way back here tonight to get them; it’s too far. We’ll just head up there now, I’ll take Gilles to look at a couple of places I know about, and we’ll try to shift them overnight. You done here?”

Clay emerged, his blonde hair sticking up. “Mostly, I think.”

Samson nodded agreement. “We got all the broken ones fixed and the routine maintenance done on all but two. Those ain’t bad, though. Should be fine until next time.”

“Great. Let’s all have some breakfast, and then we’ll head north. It’s going to be a long day.”

It took them most of the day to get back to Rebel Seven. Marty felt completely lost in Paris, but Neahle was relieved to realize that she recognized a few streets and intersections, and she correctly pointed out where the Royal Palace was.

As soon as they arrived, Gilles left with Vasco to scout out safe houses. He took a moment to kiss Neahle on both cheeks as he was leaving; Hannah rolled her eyes at Neahle’s shock.

“He likes you. Get over it.” Hannah put a kettle on the single burner and turned on the heat.

“He doesn’t know me,” Neahle said. What she was thinking was that she liked him pretty well, too.

“Honey, when you’re always running for your life and when everyone around you can get captured or killed at any moment… Well, people on Ixeos don’t take a lot of time getting acquainted. It’s not like you can go on a date, get pizza and a movie.” Hannah looked around and found a couple of tea bags. “We need to start packing all this up.”

“How about you?” Neahle asked, looping the string of her tea bag around the handle of her mug.

“Me, what?”

“You find someone here?” Neahle set her mug next to the kettle and moved over to the little pantry, helping to remove the tins and plastic containers and set them on the table.

“I came with someone,” Hannah said.

“Yeah, Rod. Your ex. But he’s gone, right?”

Picking up a cardboard box from a small utility room, Hannah set it on the table and started stacking in the canned goods. Neahle handed her more containers from the pantry while she waited for an answer. Finally, Hannah sighed.

“Yeah, he’s gone. Truth be told, I guess he was always kind of bad news. My mom told me that, but, of course, I didn’t want to hear it.” She sat down. “We haven’t heard anything about him in over three years. I really should be over it by now… I guess I’m not, not really. I keep thinking he’ll come back, having done something super heroic, then everyone will love him and he’ll want me back. It’s stupid.”

“It could happen, couldn’t it?” Neahle asked.

“Not likely. Rod was all about Rod. And no, I don’t know why I can see that about him and still be hung up on him. Well, yeah, I can. He’s from home. He’s one of us, you know? From my time, my place, my people. Even the rest of you—from Earth, I mean—we didn’t come from the same places, or even the same
years
. Sure, we know most of the same movies and celebrities and stuff like that, but having Rod here was like having some of home here.”

Neahle thought about it. She had to admit, she’d have been a lot more terrified if she hadn’t had Clay and Marty with her. In fact, she probably would have assumed she’d either died or gone crazy and was hallucinating in a hospital somewhere.

“I know what you mean about having some of home. Someone to share memories with, someone who knows what your mother looks like, and your school friends. Someone you still have a few inside jokes with. Everyone here is really nice, and, except for having to try not to get killed, it’s not so bad once you get used to it. But having a piece of home… Well, that’s priceless.”

Hannah smiled at her and stood up again. “So no, I haven’t met anybody. Now, let’s get these guys packed.”

Clay and Marty sat in the living room which was dark due to heavy velvet draperies and shared their stories from the last couple of days.

“Looks like we both landed on our feet,” Clay said, stretching out on a small sofa. “So let me ask you something.”

“Shoot,” Marty said. His mind was with his computers, trying to mentally map his way to Simon Lockwell.

“I think there’s a chance that the Firsts are using something like the Enigma machine to send out codes about the prison.”

Marty sat up straight in his chair and stared at his cousin. “Enigma? You mean like the code machine from the war?”

“Yeah. Of course, they could be using some kind of communication technology that we don’t even know about, in which case the whole thing is a wild goose chase. But what if they’re using an Enigma machine to encode messages and that’s how they’re passing them on without anyone figuring it out.”

“How does it work exactly?” Marty asked, intrigued.

“Well, I’d have to find a book to refresh my memory, but basically, there’s a machine that looks kind of like an old typewriter. Inside there are rotors.” He paused, thinking. “It seems to me that there were a lot of rotors to choose from, maybe eight, but you only used three at a time inside the machine.”

“But how did they make codes someone else could decipher?” Marty asked impatiently.

“Jeez, hang on, I’m thinking! Okay, so there were code books. Every unit that had a machine had the same code book, or at least each network did. The book was organized by date, I guess like the day of the year, and the date told them what keys and rotors to use. With every message, the starting place of the rotors changed.”

“So if they knew the date it was created, they recreated the code?” Marty was confused.