Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel (9 page)

Mae laughs, though she doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Please. I know what I’m doing, kid.”

I bolt out into the alleyway outside just as Dimples and her friends leave Kristina’s apartment.

With a ping from Mae, my headset throws a transparent projection of the camera feeds up in front of me, the audio streaming directly into my ear as I hurry down the alleyway and out into the broader street beyond. It’s lined with stalls and shouting hawkers, roofed over by the next level of housing above us.

Alexis is speaking as she’s bundled into a car, and I’m smelling Mama Samorn’s rice as I run past the stalls, focusing on the voice in my ear as my worlds jumble together. “What, you think because he picked me for his safety shield he decided to tell me his master plan?” Alexis’s voice is still shaking. “If you want to know why he was there, why don’t you find him and ask?”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” the gorilla replies, as the camera angle switches to one inside the car, mounted by the driver’s head. “And you’re going to help.”

“But I don’t
know
anything,” Alexis wails, drawing her knees up to her chest. The way her gaze darts around, I think she’s wondering if she can kick one of them in the guts, then lunge for the door. But it’s some kind of stretch limo, and she’s got three of them in the back with her. It’s not going to happen.

“In our experience, people often know more than they think,” he says calmly, as Mae overlays the footage with a GPS, showing the car’s movement. “Especially when they’re properly motivated to turn their minds to the question.”

Man, this guy would be a
blast
at a party.

They head out of the fancy sector where her borrowed apartment was, and my headset throws up projected routes as I push through the shinkansen barriers in the wake of a couple of laborers, cramming onto the last carriage of the bullet train right before the doors shut.

“Honey, I think…” Mae’s voice trails off.

“Yeah, I know,” I mutter. They’re in a LaRoux Industries–branded car, wearing LaRoux Industries uniforms. This is how arrogant these people are—but more, this is how
powerful
they are. That they can do this in broad daylight, knowing nobody will stop them or ask them their business.

There was still a faint hope they’d head somewhere off-campus to do their dirty work, but four out of five routes our program is projecting say the same thing: they’re taking her to LaRoux’s headquarters. His fortress.

Alexis doesn’t give them a thing, spending most of the car trip in silence, responding to their occasional questions with sniffs and half sentences and pleas. The signal flickers and cuts out occasionally as I switch from the bullet train to an inter-level elevator, cramming in with a bunch of bodies as we rocket up to the wealthier levels. The air grows clearer and the buildings grow taller, fancier—down in the slums, every street’s roofed over, with level upon level stacked on top of each other. Every time they make a turn, my computer updates my routes—at this rate there’s no way I can intercept them, only trail after them.

It’s only a few minutes from LaRoux Industries Headquarters that they hit a traffic jam—Mae throws me an image of the protest causing it, but I don’t bother trying to read the signs. Finally,
finally
, something’s going my way. All my projected routes have narrowed to one now, and lungs straining as I run down the sidewalk—subtlety be damned—I fight my way through the crowd.

Mae’s speaking in my ear again, and I know what she’s going to say. “Honey, I can’t come in there with you. They’ll pick up on the signal.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” I say, ducking around a crowd of tourists taking pictures of the huge silver lambda that adorns the front of the building. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

“If you’re not out in a few hours…” She trails off, because really, what’s she going to do?

“Then you can have my stuff,” I finish, then break off my transmission before she can try to talk me out of what I already know is a terrible idea.

My visual feed cuts out a moment later, but I know I’ve beaten Dimples and her escort by a couple of minutes. I make for the door and the stairwell we escaped through the other day. My skin’s crawling at the thought of coming back here, heart still thumping from my run, but I’ll be feeling much worse if this girl vanishes off the face of the planet because these guys were after me.

The jammer I stuck on the door lock to delay the guards chasing us is long gone, but the signals it transmitted to my data banks aren’t. I have only to connect the chip for half a second before all the keys light up green, and the door clicks open. Keeping my back to the wall of the stairwell once I’m inside, I ease the door shut and then slide sideways until I can glance up, up through the endlessly spiraling stairs of the emergency fire exit. While there are no guards that I can see, the security cameras here are on a closed system, and without hard access to that system, I can’t turn them off. I need a way up that isn’t monitored.

I shut my eyes for a moment, feeling the phantom ache in my shoulders already. But it’s all too easy, with my eyes shut, to see everything they could do to Dimples if I don’t get to her in time.

I jam the lock on the door leading to the lobby one floor down, and slip inside. Cavernous and echoing, the space isn’t empty like the stairwell—I have to ease by in the shadows as the night-shift security guard watches the latest episode of some holodrama on his palm pad. The elevators are each under their own spotlight, illuminated like big neon
TRY AGAIN SOMEWHERE ELSE
signs. But I know one access point that won’t be lit up like a holiday tree: the service elevator.

I’ve barely made it around the corner when I hear voices—one telling the security guard to take his break, then another ordering, “Bring her through.” I wait, hoping against hope that they’ll give me the floor they’re heading to, but no luck. Silence, as they wait for their ride up.

I hold my position until I hear the elevator doors close out in the lobby, then get to work. The elevators require a security key to operate after hours, one I can’t replicate digitally—this one’s a combination of a physical key with a digital signature. So instead I tear open my backpack and pull out my crowbar—wondering briefly what a normal person keeps in a backpack, if not equipment for breaking and entering—and start prying the doors open.

I keep my face averted from the camera once I’m inside, and knock the panel next to it aside so I can grab at the lip of the wall and clamber up out of the elevator, onto its top. I rip the cord from the camera and stick my own transmitter in its place—and suddenly I’m in, the whole lobby and elevator security system at my command. It’s the work of a moment to relay it to my headset, but I know I’m going to lose Dimples as soon as she and her new friends step out of their elevator.

I can see the one elevator in use, and the display beside the door: 20. The same floor we were on the other day. My heart sinks, but my body’s already moving. I pull out my magnetic grips, sling my bag back over my shoulders, and start to climb.

My shoulders start to protest and ache after the fifth floor, but I push the pain aside, focusing on the video feed I’ve got. They’re going to get there—and, picturing the giant rift frame in the holosuite, I’m pretty sure I know where “there” is—long before I can. I just have to hope they’re questioning her before…

My thoughts grind to a halt before they can arrive at the conclusion of that thought.

Just. Keep. Climbing.

A scientist with narrow lips and a stoop in his shoulders is retuning the cage around the thin spot. He has forgotten to disconnect its power source. The thin spot remains silent, giving no warning. He is one of the people who hurt the stillness in order to learn about it.

The cables spark and scream as he pulls them free, flooding his body with electricity. He is dead before he hits the ground, and as the other scientists come running, the thin spot is quiet and satisfied.

The other scientists are quiet and sad even after the dead one has been taken away. They normally talk and laugh as they prod at the thin spot in the universe, but now they are silent. The silence is heavy and thick.

So we make them a new scientist just like the dead one. If they are pleased, maybe they will stop hurting us.

THE MEN FROM LAROUX INDUSTRIES
have been very, very well trained. They stay
just
on the plausible deniability side of torture. They don’t touch me, except to jab a needle into the back of my shoulder—drugs to make me more pliable, maybe, or to sedate me. My skin crawls as I try not to think about some foreign substance coursing through my system, doing God knows what to my mind. They don’t feed me, don’t bring me water. They don’t utter threats, but their gazes say what their mouths don’t—that I’m alive only because they haven’t decided to kill me yet. They don’t waste time telling me what will happen if I don’t give them what they want, because they know that nothing they can say will be worse than the things my imagination conjures.

My throat is like sandpaper, thirst starting to make my head throb in time with my heartbeat. It’s been hours—at least, I think it has. The holosuite, without programming, is a barren, white nothingness. Only the security cameras and projectors punctuate the vaulted white ceiling, and the cameras are dark—not a single one glows. They’ve shut off surveillance in this room. They don’t bother to turn on most of the lights, choosing instead to use only one set, leaving the rest of the room shrouded. It gives the impression of infinite space—and yet here I am, in this chair they’ve brought in for me, unable to move.

The metal ring, the one that had started to glow right before everyone’s eyes went blank, is silent and dark. But I feel its presence just beyond the circle of light like a towering monster, some terrible creature lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to be left alone so it can strike. I know why they’ve brought me here—if I don’t tell them what they want, they’ll use that ring, and the creatures Flynn talked about in his broadcast, and take whatever they want from my mind.

Whenever my eyes close for more than a breath, one of them rams the toe of his boot against a chair leg, sending vibrations screaming up through my body and setting my bruised, aching bones on fire. It’s all I can do not to groan, but I refuse to give them the satisfaction of seeing me in pain.

“You must be getting tired.” It’s the big guy, the one who threw me onto the bed, the one I’d been planning to shoot. His voice sounds almost sympathetic. “Just give us something we can use to track him down, and this will all be over, I promise.”

Almost
sympathetic.

“I swear to you,” I whisper, not bothering to conceal the weariness in my voice, “I’ve told you everything I know. I have no idea how to find him. I was a hostage, nothing more.”

At first I’d tried to get information out of them—overconfident stooges like these often give away more than they realize, because they’re so focused on extracting what they want. I did learn that it’s the Knave they want, not Gideon. And they’ve been after him for some time.

I’m positive the Knave has worked with them in the past—I can only assume that he’s gone rogue now and is no longer taking orders from LRI, or perhaps he simply knows too much and LaRoux wants him erased. These men aren’t aware of my identity, as far as I can tell—and they don’t know I’m from Avon. If I hadn’t chosen Gideon to be my unwitting partner in escaping LRI Headquarters, I wouldn’t even be here.

They don’t know I was at LaRoux Industries to try to kill Roderick LaRoux.

I stop myself before I can lean forward and let my head droop. Slumped body language is a sign of defeat, and if these guys know anything about nonverbal communication at all, they’ll take it as a sign to push even harder. I fight to keep my eyes wide to signal fear, but moving from face to face; too much direct eye contact suggests you’re hiding something and trying to counteract the natural tendency to look away. I need to be scared—because innocent bystander Alexis would be terrified—but I can’t look guilty.

But the truth is that even if I told them what really happened, even if I gave them his name and the icon on my computer I used to send that desperate distress signal, they wouldn’t have anything they could use to track him down. I doubt “Gideon” is the hacker’s real name, and even if it were, one first name on a planet of twenty billion people wouldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know.

So why don’t you just give it to them?

I swallow hard as the man sighs, straightening up and moving away to speak to one of his partners in a low voice. I want to strain to listen, but I can’t make myself focus. It’s all I can do to remember the story I gave them well enough to stick to it.

Ordinarily, I’d know what happens next. With no witnesses and no record of this interrogation, they’d take me someplace quiet and have me killed, and I’d simply vanish. If it were any other company, any other organization—I’d die. But this is LaRoux Industries, and the things they could do to me are far, far worse.