Join (28 page)

Don has a handgun pointed at Terry's forehead. He says, “Keep your hands where I can see them, Terry.”

Terry is loose, relaxed. “Don, what are you doing?” he asks.

In a quick motion, Terry's left hand lifts his jacket and his right hand dives inside it, toward the place where a sidearm would be holstered. Don shoots him in the forehead. The report of the handgun sounds for moment. It doesn't echo. It doesn't reverberate. It happens quickly enough almost not to have happened. Terry's body drops.

Inside the apartment, Jackson staggers backward as she's turning toward the man coming through the apartment entrance. She falls against the back of the couch, her eyes wide, gasping for breath. The man shouts something at her. With visible effort she straightens up. Then she turns toward Leap Three, her lips pulled back, teeth clenched. Very slowly, she draws a hunting knife from its sheath at her hip. She sways, straightens, and then takes an unsteady step toward Leap, the knife held just before her.

A shot booms through the metal apartment, deafening Leap Three. Jackson's head jerks sideways, pulling her body off-balance. She drops against the couch and slumps to the floor. From the clean hole in the side of her head, above her ear, Leap sees a wisp of smoke rise. Then thick blood bubbles for just a moment.

The man who shot Jackson is at Leap Three's side. “C'mon,” he says. He's got a firm hold on Leap's arm and is pulling him toward the truck's exit.

Don is bent over Terry's
body. He moves Terry's right hand and opens the jacket. He grunts, “No gun.” Then he turns and says clearly to Leap and Chance, “You're going to have to trust me for now. Don't ask questions yet. We're going to move quickly, and I'll explain everything in a bit.” He turns to one of the men who met the truck. “What do you think?”

“I don't know,” says the other man. “Maybe Alan saw something inside.”

Don straightens as he's looking at Terry's body. “Dammit! He made like he was going for a gun.”

“That's what a join would do,” the other man says. “You did what you had to, Don.”

Don says, “Whatever this was, we're gonna have to melt the inside, then get the hell out of here. They can't be more than a few minutes away.”

“Yeah,” says the other man. He and the third person who met the truck run around toward its back.

Leap Three is at the door of the truck. He jumps awkwardly down from the control cabin, ears still ringing, followed by the man who shot Jackson, a tall thick-limbed man with dark hair. He's wearing jeans and a worn denim jacket and might be in his midforties.

“Alan,” Don says, “tell me you saw something.”

“That was a join,” Alan says. “When you shot this one out here, that one took a hit. She was staggering. She could barely move.”

Don looks at Leap Three.

Leap Three, pale, blue eyes squinting, says, “I think they were a join. They were humming a tune, the same tune, an old one. But they were humming it at exactly the same time, I mean, exactly. When she saw that I knew she . . . I know it was a join.”

“Okay, then,” Don says. “Alan, you're gonna have to help Raj and Deepak melt this thing. Sorry, man.”

“No, never mind,” Alan says. “We'll get outta here okay. You guys get going.” Then he nods to Don and runs toward the back of the truck.

Don turns to Chance and the four Leaps. “We're gonna have to run,” he says. “I'm going to be figuring out where we're running to as we're going. Stay close, and just follow me. I'll get us out of here.”

Chance Four nods, but none of Leap's drives acknowledges the instructions. Something is not right with Leap. Chance glances toward Leap Two and Four, who are standing on her left. The two bodies could hardly be more different physically, but right now both of their faces are frozen and tense. Chance shouts, “Leap!”

All of Leap's drives stiffen and begin to drop to the ground. Chance is jostled by Leap Three, who has fallen on her other side. Then all four Leaps are on the ground, thrashing violently, mouths open, making choking sounds. Chance takes a few steps to avoid hitting the writhing bodies. Don moves forward and bends, struggles to hold Leap Four.

Chance watches Leap's drives shiver and twitch in the gravel, with Don pressing down on Leap Four. It doesn't look real. Chance bends so that she's nearer the shoulders of Leap One, Leap's closest drive, who is thrashing about, cutting himself on the stones, but she can't think of any way to help. A moment later, the seizure has passed, and Leap's drives are stretched out and panting on the ground. All of them have a glazed look in their eyes.

Leap One looks up at Chance. Between clenched teeth and rasping breaths, he says, “Aw, shit.” There's gravel in his hair. His face is cut, abraded, and his chin and right cheek are bleeding. Chance Four's right hand is on his chest. She moves her left hand to the side of his head. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“I don't know,” Leap One says, and then begins to sit up. Leap's other drives are also trying to rise. Leap Two is clutching her knee and rolling. Leap One, staring at the gravel, says. “I think I twisted Two's knee.”

Alan is back, standing next to them; his voice is urgent. “C'mon, c'mon! You guys gotta go!”

Don says, “Get these drives water. Quick, Alan.”

Alan climbs into the control cabin. Leap Two is sucking in each breath. Chance helps Leap One rise unsteadily. Leap One says to Don, “I can't walk on that knee.”

Don says, “She's gotta come with us. We have to move fast.”

“I can't use that knee.” Leap One is shaking his head. “I think the joint might be separated.”

Don says, “Shit.” All of Leap's drives look drained, shaken. In a moment, Alan jumps down from the control cabin and starts handing out water.

Leap Two is raggedly gulping breath. She's pale, lying on her back with her injured leg outstretched, her other leg bent, her face squeezed in pain. Leap One takes a bottle of water and pours some on Leap Two's face, then puts the tip of the bottle to Leap Two's mouth and trickles in water while Leap Two struggles to drink.

Don says harshly, “Alan, help Deepak and Raj.” Alan leaves them reluctantly, jogging toward the back of the truck.

Don says, “Okay, listen. Whoever that was, whose drives we shot, they work for the Directorate. The Directorate is trying to find Hamish. This is it. You have to make a decision. I can leave you here. The Directorate will pick you up. They'll probably question you, but you don't really know anything. You'll be fine. Back to the world you came from. Leap here will die from this flip. Or you can come with me. You've seen it. This isn't a game. I'll get you to Hamish, but we're gonna lose bodies. There is a possibility that Hamish can help with the flip. Maybe, maybe not. But you've gotta decide now.”

Chance doesn't think, but says through Chance Four, “We're going with you.”

Leap Four, sitting with her arms around her knees says weakly, “I know all of my drives may not survive.” She swallows, props herself with one arm, pushing her hand into the sharp gravel. “I want to see Hamish.”

“All right,” Don says. “Leap, I need all of your drives, except Two, to be sitting.”

Leap's drives sit. Don moves close to Leap Two, pushing Leap One aside a bit to get closer to Leap Two's head.

“Wait a minute,” Chance Four says, suddenly, panic rushing through her. “Why did you tell them to sit?”

Leap Four looks up at her. Leap Four's eyes are pained, aware.

Then Don, very quickly, puts his gun to Leap Two's forehead and shoots her. Again, the report of the weapon is flat and quick. The air after is clear as if nothing has happened. Leap Four drops backward from her sitting position to the ground. All of Leap's drives have collapsed again, are unconscious.

Chance Four steps forward and pulls Don up from where he's squatting by Leap Two's corpse. Don comes up quickly, smoothly. The hot barrel of the gun is suddenly under Chance Four's chin, pressing into the skin. Chance's eyes are smarting, tearing, and she can smell the burnt cordite from the shot. “Don't make me shoot you,” Don says evenly.

Neither of them moves. Chance is aware of Chance Four's speeding pulse. With great effort, Chance focuses, clears as much noise as possible, as much fear and grief as possible, out of the situation, works to borrow cycles from other drives. And then Chance Four's arms relax slightly. Her voice is choked. She makes two attempts but can't speak. Adrenaline surges through the drive. Finally, she asks, “Why?”

“You know why,” Don asserts calmly. “That drive couldn't keep up. The Directorate would have gotten it, and then they'd use it to find us. To find Hamish. You helped make that kind of tracking possible, remember?”

Chance reels, tightening her grip on Don, the world leaving and then returning. Chance Four tenses.

“Don't.” Leap Three's voice. “Don't, Chance.” There's a pause, and then Leap Three continues, his controlled, deep voice inflecting his language the way Leap Two would have. “I knew. I knew that's what he meant. When he asked if we wanted to keep going, I knew I was going to lose her.”

Don lowers the gun. Then he growls, “We've gotta go, fast. Or it won't matter.”

Chance lets go of Don. She turns away from him and bends over, her hands on her knees, eyes pressed closed. She's gasping. “I didn't know,” she rasps. “You knew, but I didn't. I didn't know.” And then she can't speak.

In the next few minutes,
Leap's remaining drives rise haltingly. Leap and Chance follow as Don leads them from the truck. They move slowly at first but gather speed until very soon they're running.

They run between a handful trucks separated from each other by twenty or thirty yards and then through a building. The few people they pass are weather-worn, dirty, hardened. Some stare at them; some point in one direction or another. Don seems to recognize some of them, and some respond to an unspoken question from him.

Once, he stops running to talk with a tall, thin man, entirely gray except for his sun-reddened face, and then they're running again. They run for a long time, turning and winding through areas with walls that close in claustrophobically, then suddenly open outward. They run between vehicles and around a massive machine with belts that roll and shriek and gouts of steam venting upward; they pass huge metal limbs hammering slowly and shifting panels that slide and turn in front of other panels. They rush forward for what must be close to an hour.

Then they round a final corner, stagger a short distance, and Don stops in front of a tough and battered-looking gray van. He slides open a side door to load them in.

They sit on fraying black vinyl cushions. Don fires up the van, and it speeds away, swaying and bumping. He's driving fast, the van jerking when he turns. They hear gravel rattling around its wheels and off its underside.

He drives the van into a tunnel, and then they're barreling through a close, dimly lit space, Don jerking the wheel occasionally to take a sharp turn. On one turn, the van ricochets violently off something to its left, smashes into something on its right, flinging everyone back and forth as it jostles, but they keep driving.

They come into a broad open area, mist clogged like the place where they left the armadillo, and Don barrels through it, swerving sharply to brush by shapes that suddenly loom out of the dimness, stopping twice to let people clear vehicles and machinery out of the way. Both times, the disassembly and removal happen with efficiency and precision. Chance has the impression that what was cleared was only there in the first place as a distraction.

After several minutes in the new open area, the van stops near a massive wall. Don tells them to get out quickly. They slide the door open and tumble out.

As time allowed, Chance has been using One, Two and Five to search vid feeds from the underground facilities. Despite all the desperate movement of the group accompanying Don Kim, there hasn't been a sign of them.