Lightning (22 page)

B
odhi listened to Mojica bark orders, moving squads of TFs around to hot spots throughout the fifty square miles of the Mountain. She tapped off her earpiece and navigated the wide pedestrian roads below the MagLev tube trains, which ran on the frictionless magnetic rails winding through the Mountain.

Bodhi worried that so many incidents going on seemed to pull Mojica's sense of duty back to her Mountain. “Are we still headed toward Cleon's last known location?” He counted the time in his head—twenty-one hours to extract.

“The coordinates on the surveillance log are in the Green Court sector. I called for a backup team, but we have to wait an hour or so. They're spread too thin in there now.” Mojica maneuvered expertly around stalled traffic and bottlenecks.

Bodhi winced at some close calls. There were many more people in here than he'd realized, and all of them were in
the streets. He was hoping that tracking down Cleon would lead to revelation about Selah's whereabouts. This seemed too convenient a time to get stalled waiting for a backup team. “Are you trying to slow me down for some reason?”

“Green Court has been a recent hotbed of scandal because the local government was proven corrupt and removed from office.” She raised the AirSkid to the same level as the MagLev trains but on the opposite side of the road, then shot forward, pressing Bodhi back into the seat. The lane marker on side poles read S
ECURITY
. “But local enforcement backed the fallen administration and won't help the interim government with security. And GC enforcement gives Mountain security a hard time for coming into their sovereign court.”

Bodhi stared out the side as the cities buzzed by. It didn't seem to matter where he went, there was always corruption. Glade had mentioned the Protocols and some long-ago government involvement. He wondered if the Mountain had more to do with this situation than he could see. He'd never gotten a chance to get back on the subject with Glade.

Mojica's DashCom squawked. Bodhi blinked to clear his thoughts as Mojica spoke in clipped sentences and tapped off the earpiece connection. “Please don't yell inside my closed vehicle, but . . . we have to make a detour.” She steered to an adjacent lane bending around a curve to the right and punched the throttle.

The hairs at the nape of his neck stiffened as his frustration mounted. “You know how much time we have left to find all of them?” Had he chosen wrong in staying with Mojica?
Maybe he'd find an opportunity to sneak away and start searching on his own.

“I know, I know. But since we can't get a backup team in Green yet, the detour won't cut into our time.”

Bodhi leaned over. Stress made the pounding in his head match his heartbeat. He had to trust someone in here, and it would make his life easier if he chose Mojica, at least until a better circumstance came along. Then he could stop guessing at her reasoning.

“Let's go. If you're sure we won't lose time.” Bodhi raised a hand. “I'm dressed and armed for the part. Where are we going?”

Mojica glanced at him and shook her head. “There's been a TF action in Blue Court. The Mountain is in charge of this investigation, and we've finally run up on one of the baby extortion rings—”

“Baby extortion? You mean they're selling babies?”

“No, by
baby
I mean young. ‘Like father, like son' sometimes has validity. These young men are taking after their disgruntled parents, and it's leading them on the wrong path away from the court spirit.”

“What's court spirit?”

“This is Blue Court. A group of communities banded together to create a governing entity whose board decides everything from the court economy down to personal freedoms, and everyone happily agrees—ergo, court spirit.”

Bodhi narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to have resistance from Green Court about looking for Selah? Is that why you're getting backup?”

“Yes. I didn't want to tell you. Green Court doesn't want any Mountain TFs in their territory. They want to conduct the search for Cleon and his family.”

Bodhi lurched in his seat. “They don't understand the situation—”

“And we can't tell them. Let me handle it. I've got the right team.” Mojica slowed and dropped down to a street-level side lane.

The crowd separated to either side of the market area, allowing Mojica's AirSkid to set down in front of a multiunit row of residences where MedTec and TF units had gathered. Pulsing blue lights on the official units bathed the area in a strange, almost icy glow. A long, lanky teen lay stretched across the rocrete walkway with his head on the single step to the incursion unit.

Mojica hopped out and looked back. “Do you want to come see how we work?”

Bodhi looked at the splayed-out kid and shook his head. “No, I don't need to see any more death in the name of peace.”

“Death? What? No, that kid's not dead. He's just immobilized for an hour by a pulse cannon. Very effective new weapon. With one shot from out here, everyone in the house is incapacitated for an hour.”

Bodhi waved her off. “I'll be here when you're done.”

He watched Mojica stride up the walkway, check the boy's biometrics, and then angle into the house around a couple of other TFs congregating in the doorway and hall.

Bodhi sat up. This was a perfect opportunity to strike out on his own. He bolted from the vehicle and dashed through a
square grouping of trees and a fountain. Clearing the other side, he turned left and back west to Green Court.

He jogged down the long, wide road, staying close to the buildings. His armband vibrated. He stared down at it and stumbled to a halt. His heart thudded. He'd forgotten to take off the gear. Mojica knew where he'd gone. The armband buzzed again.

Bodhi started to unlatch the device but stopped. Probably every bit of gear had a locator, and he wasn't willing to give it all up, especially the weapon. Besides, if he was out of uniform someone might notice faster than if he just ignored her. When she was ready to give help she could catch up.

He slowed. People had stopped on the street and were staring at him like he was naked or something. He walked down the road and his armband buzzed again, spreading the vibration up to his shoulder. He walked faster, passing slower-moving people. He could hear feet behind him. They were following him.

Bodhi wheeled, ready to fight. Two little boys of about eight or nine tripped over each other getting out of his way. They plopped to the ground with mouths hanging open and hands outstretched as though to ward off blows.

“We're sorry, sir, please. You're a TF, aren't you?” the one on the right said. Bodhi noticed he looked just like the one on the left—twins, just in different shades of blue clothing.

Bodhi kept moving, trying not to notice the vibrations shooting up his arm. He glanced at the quickly thinning crowd, then up at the few still coming down the stairway from the MagLev. He could take the train to Green Court.

The other boy hopped up and ran after Bodhi, grabbing his arm. “Wait, please. You're from the Mountain. Our brother is being attacked and no one else will help.”

“They all walked by,” the other boy said. “Please.”

The boys pulled him by the arm. Bodhi opened his mouth to protest, but then he heard a child's wail echo off the underside of the MagLev tube.

Bodhi tensed. His eyes darted across the structures. “Where is he?”

“There!” The boys ran and Bodhi followed. His arm vibrated and he almost answered it to get help. They darted around the building closest to the MagLev. A row of trees blocked a container area in the back. A short, stocky man with a shoulder-length mop of dark hair was dragging a boy, who mirrored the other two, up a set of outdoor stairs. First he had him by the arm. The boy wiggled free, and then the man snatched him by the hair. The boy clung to the railings, kicking all the way.

“Help me!” he screamed, clawing at the hands dragging him up the stairs backward.

Bodhi clenched his fists and charged the stairs. “Let him go!”

“This is none of your business. I didn't call for Mountain security. You got no jurisdiction,” the man yelled. “He owes me ten hours' work to pay for my destroyed product.”

The boy's eyes pleaded. “It's his fault—the machine doesn't work right and he won't fix it. No one will listen to me. I'm only a boy.”

Bodhi pulled the boy free. “You will have to take that up with the proper authorities if you want to make a complaint,
but you can't drag children around by their hair.” The boy scrambled down the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps disappeared around the building.

“Why, you—” The man swung a right.

Bodhi pulled back and dodged the fist. As the man's shoulder passed in front of him, Bodhi gave him a shove into the building. Maybe he pushed the guy harder than he needed to—his face smashed to the wall with a thud. Bodhi almost apologized, but the guy was a menace, dragging a kid that way.

The guy came away from the wall, leaving a spray of blood on the surface. He touched his nose and looked at the blood on his hand. He clenched his fists without a word and charged.

Bodhi captured the man's outstretched hand in a scissors hold with his arms, used his leverage to rotate the man, and pushed him onto the hard rocrete surface of the stairs. Strange. It felt natural to make those restraining moves. Where had he learned that?

“Stay there and don't try that again!” Bodhi said, moving his hand to his sidearm.

The guy held his nose and suddenly became all smiles. “I see you're a new one here. For your well-being, you'd better go back to this section's unit command and find out who you're dealing with. Tell them you met JB, and then take the reassignment.” The man plastered on an evil smirk, pushed off from the stairs, and slowly went up to the next floor.

The man had never questioned Bodhi's authority, but he had practically dismissed it. What was going on in this section
that little children were working any hours, let alone long hours? He shook his head. Not his problem—he'd be gone in less than a day.

The cords in his neck tightened. Time was running out.

His armband buzzed.

Bodhi's shoulders sagged. He punched the button. “What do you want? There's nothing you can say that would make me come back. You're slowing me down.”

“
I'm
not slowing you down. You seem to have stopped in the same area for quite some time,” Mojica said.

“There was a problem with a shop owner and an employee, I guess.”

“Oh, so a deviation got in the way of your plan and you actually stopped to do something, hmmm?” The lilt in Mojica's voice indicated she was smiling.

“I don't have time for sarcasm, Mojica. What do you want?”

“How about if I say Selah.” Mojica's voice lowered. She must have turned away from her unit to speak to others around her.

Bodhi stared at the armband. “What about Selah?”

“I have her. And Treva.”

He stiffened. “How is that possible? Are they all right?”

“They were in the incursion unit. Apparently they were just netted.”

“What's netted mean?” He dashed back in the direction of Mojica, but holding his arm up cramped his speed.

“Basically kidnapped. We were very lucky. They might have never turned up if this gang had gotten them sold off during the night.”

“I'm almost there. How are they?” Bodhi didn't wait for the answer. He dropped his arm and ran full-out.

Bodhi knelt on the hard-pad floor between the two bio-beds in the MedTec unit. The other occupants of the incursion unit and their old lady leader had been shipped off to security. Mojica promised him that Selah and Treva would be fine in a few minutes. By the time he got there, they'd worked through most of the cell displacement from being shot. Since it was such an effective method for taking down a riot, MedTec had great remedies to restore cell organization once security gained control of a situation.