Slip (The Slip Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

The whole time he’s hoping his friends managed to escape.

As they wait for the Hunters to clear out, Benson and Luce sit across from each other, their backs to the wall. “Luce, I’m so sorry,” Benson says after a few minutes of silence. He rubs his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the angry expression he’s sure she’s wearing.

“You should have told us,” Luce says.

“I swear I didn’t know what I was—well, at least not for sure. My father never told me the whole truth. Anytime I started thinking too much about it, I pushed it deep inside me, where it wouldn’t scare me. I tricked myself into just thinking I was just…
unwanted
.” He looks up and, to his surprise, Luce doesn’t look angry at all. It’s worse than he thought. She looks disappointed in him, like he’s let her down.

“When I told you my secret you could have told me yours,” she says, dropping her gaze to her lap.

“I was a little…distracted,” Benson says, smirking slightly. The memory of her hand squeezing his warms his cheeks.

“And that’s my fault?” Her eyes are like lasers.

“No—I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know. You can be rather distracting,” he finishes lamely.

It’s her turn to grin. He hopes that’s a good sign. “Oh, really? Enlighten me, Benson. What is it about me that’s so distracting?”

“Umm…” Your smokin’ hot body, your tan skin, the way I sometimes can’t concentrate on what you’re saying because of your gorgeous lips, the strength you wear like body armor, your subtle, sarcastic sense of humor… “Everything?” he says.

“Is that a question?”

“No?”

“It sounded like a question.”

“It wasn’t?” Benson says, realizing too late that, once again, it sounded like a question.

Silence falls once more, and second by second, the moment of unexpected lightness passes. Benson can almost see a cloud of darkness falling over them, thickening the air, making it hard to breathe.

“I’m sorry I put Geoffrey in danger,” Benson says. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize who—what—I was. What I am. I know that’s why you’re so pissed off at me.”

“For being so smart, you can be really stupid sometimes,” Luce says.

Benson doesn’t know what to say to that, so he plays with one of his shredded shoelaces. It’s stiff and black, like the fabric of their old couch. How close did he come to being killed in the explosion? Pretty bot-lickin’ close, he imagines.

Thankfully, Luce changes the subject. “What color are your eyes really?”

“What?” Benson says, surprised. Like everything about his past, he tries not to think about it too much.

“Your eyes. They’re brown, but the reporter said your name was linked to a fake retinal signature. Are your real eyes the same color?”

“No,” he admits. “They’re blue. Like yours, only not so sparkly. At least, as far as I can remember. I was young when my father implanted the fake ones.”

“You mean Michael Kelly.”

“Yeah…him.”

“I can’t believe your father is the Head of Pop Con,” she says. “All this time…”

Great. They’re back on
that
subject. “Look, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. My father told me never to tell anyone, so I made up a story and stuck to it until it almost felt real, like it was better than the truth. Does that make any sense?”

To his surprise, she says, “Yes. I understand why you didn’t tell us, but I still hate it.”

Before he can even begin to understand how that makes sense, she says, “And Benson isn’t your real name, right? Your last name is Kelly, not Mack, so Benson must be fake, too.”

The way she says it makes it sound even worse. Like he never told them a single shred of truth, which, in some ways, is accurate. “I don’t have a real name,” Benson admits.

“What?” she says, her eyebrows lifting. The soft glow of the flashlight between Benson’s knees casts a reddish sheen on her skin.

“My father only ever called me ‘Son.’ And Janice only ever said ‘Child.’ I only became Benson Mack when Check first found me and scanned my fake retinas. So I guess Benson Kelly is my real name now.”

“You said Janice helped raise you,” Luce says. “Who’s Janice?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s my mother,” Benson says. A familiar pit opens in his stomach—the same pit he felt when he realized the harsh truth about his screwed up childhood. “Remember when Michael Kelly—I mean, my father—was forced to admit his wife into the asylum?”

Luce nods. “Yeah, it was a major headline. She’d gone completely mad.”

The pit grows bigger. “Something like that,” he mutters.

“Oh crap, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way,” she says, sliding across the lifter to sit next to him.

Of course there’s no other way she could’ve meant it. Benson says, “It’s okay. I think she lost it when I left home. She was always a bit…eccentric.” There’s an ache in his chest. He hasn’t thought about any of this in a long time. Although he knows forgetting is the coward’s way, remembering is too hard sometimes.

Luce hesitates, but then places her hand, palm open, on his knee. He’ll never take such a touch for granted, not anymore. Not after knowing her secret. He takes her hand, relishing her warm skin and the tingling sensation that her touch always brings. “Why didn’t you escape with the others?” Benson asks. “Why did you follow me?”

Luce runs her thumb across his knuckle, sending shivery tendrils up his arm. His heart beats faster. She licks her lips. Only now he notices a smudge of ash on her cheek. “No one should have to be alone,” she says.

He raises his other hand to her cheek, but then realizes his mistake before he touches her. He stops, his hand hovering inches away from her skin. “You have a…smudge,” he says, gesturing on his own cheek where it is on hers. She raises a hand and rubs at her cheek, but she only makes it worse, spreading the ash over a larger area. He can’t help her any more than she can help him.

And as much as it hurts he knows if he wants to save her he has to separate from her as soon as possible.

Because Pop Con—and his father—will never be able to stop hunting him.

~~~

Past article from the
Saint Louis Times
:

Ideal Population Reduced

A new study has determined that due to continued sea level rises, the U.S. landmass will continue to decline. Taking the new information into account, The Department of Population Control announced today that the ideal population level has been adjusted down by twenty million, to be implemented over a ten year period. Existing Death Matches will be honored, but all applications going forward will be matched against two aging members of the population. Both members must die before the applying parents will receive a birth authorization. In addition, a limit of one birth may be authorized for each family during the transition period. These changes will remain in effect until the population has reached the ideal level.

Have a comment on this article? Speak them into your holo-screen now.
NOTE: All comments are subject to government screening. Those comments deemed to be inappropriate or treasonous in nature will be removed immediately and appropriate punishment issued.

Comments:

SaraiHope12: Comment removed and disciplinary action taken.

SaraiHope12: Comment removed and disciplinary action taken.

SaraiHope12: Comment removed and disciplinary action taken.

M
ichael Kelly hasn’t left his office for hours, since the reports of the explosion on the outskirts of the city and the rumors of a failed attempt to apprehend the Slip. His face is hot, flush with anger and frustration, even as his hands are cold and clammy with anxiety.

How did they discover the fake identification he’d given his son? It was the best, most sophisticated fake ID money could buy.

He knows Corr is behind it. When he catches a scent he’s like a bloodhound. Not sleeping. Not eating. Not resting until he finds his prey. He would’ve diverted all of Pop Con’s resources to unraveling the convoluted trail Michael had created. The only thing he can take solace in is the fact that there’s no way it can be traced back to him. Which gives him the slightest of edges.

In all truth, he knows
exactly
how Corr and his team would’ve discovered his son. The auto-scans get more sophisticated and effective each year. A random scan would’ve identified Benson’s photo in the system as “unreadable,” meaning poor quality, grainy, and not particularly useful. It’s a photo that Michael, using computer aging technology, has updated every two years since he let his son go, in order to comply with laws requiring that all citizens maintain a current photo on the system.

He’s been using a dead boy.

He got the idea on a fateful night nine years ago. He’d been working late when he saw the news story. Nothing unusual. Even with all of the groundbreaking safety features of the aut-cars, tragedies still happened. A young boy, only seven years old, chased a ball out into the street. The aut-car stopped with more speed than if it had been controlled by a human; and yet, not fast enough. According to the medical examiner, the boy died on impact. No one’s fault. An accident.

But it wasn’t the boy’s death that caught Michael’s attention. It was his uncanny resemblance to his son. Same color hair, same color eyes. Similar height, weight and build.

The boy’s name was Benson Mack.

With his level of clearance, getting into the right parts of the system was easy enough. Unfortunately, the medical examiner had already recorded the details of the death, including the boy’s photo, in the system. The file had been transferred to Pop Con, but the next birth authorization had
not
yet been matched. So Michael simply hijacked the file and took the birth authorization number.

The rest was easy enough. First he edited the boy’s file, creating a sad story of an orphaned boy with a rocky early life. Next Michael had fake retinas made by a black market dealer named Eyeball. He assigned the birth authorization to the new retinal ID and presto!—Benson Mack was still alive.

Once the random scan identified the “suspicious photo,” an alert would’ve gone to an analyst, who would’ve used photo reconstruction technology to improve the quality of the image, quickly realizing the photo had been altered. That’s when the rumors about a potential Slip probably started, leaked to the press by Corr. They’d already had the false name and approximate age of the Slip, based on the information attached to the photo, but until they confirmed the truth, Corr would’ve withheld that information from the public, using the time to build public support for the investigation.

Then they probably found the medical examiner’s death file. Using advanced facial recognition software, the “clean” original photo of the boy as a seven-year-old would’ve been matched with the photo of the boy who died. Slip confirmed.

Freaking Corrigan Mars.

The news even has a shot of a cyborg entering the building. There’s no mistaking Domino Destovan. The brother of the last Slip is trying to catch the latest Slip. There’s something cruelly poetic about it, Michael thinks to himself.

He should have known there’d be repercussions for tossing Corr onto the streets. But what’s worse, a snake in your bed or a snake in the house?

His portable holo has been ringing nonstop, until he finally switched it to silent. Where the hell is Lacey, anyway? She couldn’t have picked a worse day to skip work.

The entire department will be waiting for his orders. They’ll be confused as to why there are other Hunters out there looking for the Slip. They’ll think they’re being purposely kept out of the loop; which, of course, they are.

Michael buries his head in his hands and tries to focus on the future, bleak as it may look, but can’t stop dwelling on the past.

His son wasn’t allowed to be born. Or, at least, not allowed to live once he was. But try to tell a parent to give up their child and they’ll go from civilized to wildcat in an instant. He got creative, found a back-alley doctor who would deliver the child without authorization papers. The doctor wasn’t in it to help—he was in it for the money, which Michael happily paid from his rainy-day fund. A million bucks was a small price to pay for his kid’s life and his wife’s safety.

When they brought the baby home, just a tiny bundle of pink skin, they were scared. But not scared enough to not come up with a plan. A separate house, registered under a fake name. A separate life. Janice would take care of Harrison, but also help raise their unauthorized child, but as a nanny, not a mother. They would hide him for as long as they could, try to give him everything to live a happy life. Michael knew all the tricks to keep Pop Con away, and, as the Head of the department, he’d be able to manage.

Every year, however, his analysts got smarter and he grew more paranoid. He felt like a net was closing in. His son was in danger. If they found him, they wouldn’t just terminate the boy, but he and Janice, too. His other son, Harrison, would be thrust into the system. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to protect his family—all of them.

That’s when the doctor began blackmailing him. A million dollars wasn’t enough for him, he’d said. So Michael gave him another hundred K. A month later, he came back for more. Michael lied and said he needed a few days to scrounge together the money. He knew the doctor would never stop—that the threat would be eternal. He had to snuff it out.

Michael was deaf to the doctor’s pleas as he begged for his life. It wasn’t the time for mercy, not for a man who he was convinced would one day ruin his family. As his hands closed around the doctor’s neck, he shut his eyes and thought of his son; not Harrison, but the one with no name. He squeezed harder and it was soon over.

From that point on, he knew there would always be another threat, so long as his son was squirreled away in his secret house. There had to be another way.

Unbeknownst to Janice, Michael created a new plan. To teach his son to swim, to give him a new identity and the chance to live a full life, one outside of the backyard fence. He almost didn’t go through with it. If it wasn’t for his son’s insistence on learning to swim, he might never have let him go.

His biggest regret was lying to Janice. If she’d known the truth, however, he knew she’d have gone after her son. She’d have put them all in mortal danger. So he ripped apart the house and told her the authorities—his people—had killed their son.

And the lie drove her mad, something he never expected.

There’s a knock on his door, ripping him back to reality. “Yeah,” he says, still agonizing over whether he really needed to send his son away. Would Benson have been safer with him? After all, he’s still the Head of Pop Con. No one’s arrested him or suspected a thing.

The door opens and a head pops in. “Is now a good time, sir?” It’s one of his investigators, Jonas something-or-other, an intelligent thirty-year-old with good instincts and the courage of a mouse.

He waves him in. “Did you check on my assistant?”

Jonas steps inside, frowning at the question. “I’m afraid she’s missing, sir,” he says. “Neither she or her boyfriend are at home. There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. They’re simply…gone.”

Lacey running off with her boyfriend is the least of his worries. “Okay. Thanks for checking in,” he says.

Jonas doesn’t leave.

“Is that all?” Michael Kelly asks.

“Um, no, sir,” he says. “Have you checked your holo-alerts today?”

Holo-alerts?
Why would his investigator care about his virtual mail? “Not yet. I’ve been slightly busy.” He can’t keep the edge out of his voice.

“I’d check them, sir. There will be an official one from your office to your Pop Con registered virtual mail address. I noticed it when I was running some analysis on, well, I guess you’ll see soon enough.”

Michael raises his eyebrows as Jonas scurries from his office. He’s not really in the mood to stare at a bunch of pointless interoffice messages, but now he’s curious. “Holo-alerts,” he says. The screen flashes to life, a 3-D image of a building being constructed brick by brick projecting from the screen. Ten seconds later, when the building is complete, a sphere appears, floating in front of him. One half shows black message headers on various parts of the sphere’s surface, like countries on a globe, while the other half’s messages are in bold red font, designating them as unread. There are dozens in red, so he says, “Filter by sender. Head of Population Control.”

The sphere spins, throwing off messages like drops of water being shaken from a wet dog’s fur. When it comes to a stop, there are no black messages and a single red message. Obviously, he didn’t send himself a holo-alert, so it must be one of the automatically generated messages as part of one of the many batch jobs they run on a daily basis.

The title freezes his blood.

Notice of Death Match Assignation

He knows the title could mean one of two things, which was because of some brilliant analyst who thought they could save a few lines of code by having the same title for messages going to two types of people on opposite sides of the same coin.

Someone receiving a Death Match or someone becoming a Death Match.

And he knows he hasn’t applied for a Death Match. The idea of he and Janice wanting to have another child is almost laughable. Which means that…

It’s a mistake, right? Has to be. But still…he has to be sure. “Open ‘Notice of Death Match Assignation.’”

A simple form message unravels before his eyes, like a scroll being opened.

Under Statute 7 of the Population Control Decree of the Reorganized United States of America, you are hereby notified of being assigned as the Death Match for Cindy and Grant Rogers (Control number withheld) of Saint Louis (address withheld).

Upon your Death (as defined below), the above named parties will receive one (1) Birth Authorization to be used within eighteen (18) months of Authorization Date.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This assignation is NOT an order for you to end your life. You have simply been matched with potential parents in preparation for your eventual Death, whenever that may be. The Department of Population Control wishes you the very best for a long and happy life. If you have any questions about this assignation, please contact the Pop Con Q&A operator by speaking “Death Match questions” into your holo-screen.

Definitions:

Death- the state whereby you are unable to function as a valuable member of society, including, but not limited to:

-actual medical death;

-prolonged coma;

-inability to move or speak;

-unawareness of the world around you;

-dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Death Match- the person who, whereupon their death, will allow a Birth Authorization to be issued.

Birth Authorization- authorization to conceive a child, to be issued upon Death of the Death Match. Expires eighteen (18) months from issuance.

Authorization Date- date upon which Death is achieved and a Birth Authorization may be issued.

“Close message,” Michael Kelly says, looking at his hands in disbelief.
He’s been assigned as a Death Match?
He’s in his forties, in good health, with little chance of kicking the bucket anytime in the next thirty years. By the time he dies, the potential parents will likely be too old to conceive a child. Which means he’s not a Death Match for medical reasons. He’s just a standard Death Match, the number of birth authorization applicants stretching enormously long, the backlog endless.

The system is broken, always was. But who is he to fix it? He’s the poster boy
for
the system. And anyway, he can’t even manage to fix his own fragmented family. All he can do is try to find Benson before Corr and his psychotic cyborg do.

He says, “Get me Hodge,” and the holo-screen chirps.

Moments later, Hodge’s acne-scarred face fills the screen. “Yessir,” he says.

“New orders. Find Domino Destovan.”

Hodge does a poor job of hiding his smile. “Yessir. And when I do?”

“You have authority to terminate him for crimes against the city.”

“Yessir. And what about the Slip?”

“You’ll find the Slip when you find Destovan.”

“Terminate the Slip on sight?”

It’s a risk he has to take. “No.”

“Sir? That’s highly unusual.”