Slip (The Slip Trilogy Book 1) (22 page)

Pushing as much command into his tone as possible, Michael Kelly says, “We have to be sure there aren’t others like him. Take the Slip into custody for questioning. We need to know how he avoided detection for so long. We must learn from our mistakes. Understood?”

“Yessir.”

“Out,” Michael Kelly says, and Hodge’s face disappears.

He leans back in his chair, satisfied with his plan. If he can get to Benson before Corr, maybe he can help his son disappear once more.

This time forever.

~~~

When the Destroyer finds the Slip, he’s going to kill him slowly. A bullet to the head will be too good for the kid that made him look like a fool in front of his new boss. Corrigan Mars spent an hour chewing him out for his failure to terminate the Slip when he had the chance.

Perhaps he underestimated this Benson Mack kid, but he won’t make the same mistake twice.

But now he needs to unwind, take his mind off of a day he’d rather forget forever. He’s back at the makeshift “base”—the three middle floors in a nine-floor office building—that Corrigan Mars managed to procure on almost a moment’s notice. Even estranged from Pop Con, he has to admit that Corr’s got clout. The Destroyer even has his own office, although with its fake wood-paneled walls and dinged-up filing cabinet it’s in desperate need of some redecorating. “Right hook, left uppercut, kick to the knee,” he rattles off, watching his virtual fighter pummel a completely unworthy opponent. A woman. Why are women even allowed in law enforcement? He thought being on Mars’s clandestine squad he’d be rid of them from a professional standpoint, and yet two of his core team members are of the female variety. Easy on the eyes, but useless otherwise. No wonder the mission failed. He has half a mind to tell Mars exactly what he thinks, but smartly knows now is not the time to make excuses.

Since Mars insists on including them, however, he might as well put them to good use.

It starts with a knock on the door.

“Off,” he says, and the screen goes blank. He’s mildly disappointed that he didn’t get to see his warrior finish bludgeoning his opponent to death with an iron bar. “Enter.”

The door eases open and Davis, the exotic beauty, walks through, her strides rigid. Thankfully, she’s no longer wearing her armor or helmet. Instead, she’s garbed in tight black leggings and a black tank top. Although personally the Destroyer thinks she’s wearing far too much eye makeup, he admits to himself that she probably needs it. At least fifteen years older than him, she’s probably lost at least half of her beauty. And yet, she’s still a real looker. Her dark hair is pulled into a tight bun.

“Shut the door,” he says.

She obeys and he gawks at her from behind.

When she turns back, he pretends to be studying something on the portable holo-screen on his desk. He looks up and right away notices how severe her stance is. “At ease,” he says. “Consider this meeting…informal.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says. “May I?” She motions to the chair opposite him.

“Of course.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir, why am I here?” she asks.

The nerve of this girl! He can tell by the look in her dark eyes that she has zero respect for him; that, like Long Legs Lacey, she thinks he’s just some stupid teenager fighting way above his weight level. All the
Sir
s and posturing in the world can’t hide the contempt on her face.

“Because I said so,” he says, immediately exerting his authority.

“Okay,” she says. She doesn’t even bother to add
Sir
this time.

“I just want to know my team members better. I’m having meetings with each of you.”

His explanation seems to put her at ease, her body slumping slightly. “Oh,” she says. “What do you want to know?” Stupid girl.

“Why you’re not at Pop Con anymore, for starters.”

She blinks. “Like you, I was terminated.”

“For?” He doesn’t really care, but she needs to think otherwise.

“Who the hell knows?” Her expression tightens, her words coming out sharp and frustrated. “I accidentally shot a civilian,” she admits. “But it wasn’t my fault. The fool tried to jump in front of the UnBee I was terminating.”

Hmm…maybe Davis won’t be as easy to hate as he first thought. But then he feels the familiar itch, the one he’s had ever since he felt the last throb of pulse in Lacey’s neck before her heart stopped. He knows if he doesn’t scratch it soon, he’ll grow crazy. After the day he had today, he deserves a release.

“Michael Kelly’s a douche,” he says.

“I know, right?” She’s nodding firmly, her entire demeanor toward him changing the moment the words left his lips. She’s as moldable as a block of children’s putty.

“I like you, Davis,” he says. “I want you to be my second-in-command on the team. The one I can count on. You interested?” He barely manages to keep a straight face.

The look of surprise on her face is classic. “Wow. I—I’m honored…sir. I didn’t really expect…I didn’t think…yes. The answer is yes. Of course.”

Dumb. As. Rocks. The bait is out and the silly mouse is scurrying toward it. Time to add the trap. “Excellent. I was hoping you’d say that. We have a lot to do tomorrow, and I’d really like your opinion on a few ideas I have. But, seriously, I can’t look at the walls of this office for one more second. What do you say we get out of here and grab a bite to eat? We can talk about your promotion, too.”

He holds his breath. Does she suspect the lie?

A faint smile crosses her face. “You sure this isn’t just a ploy to bag an older woman?” she says.

“Uh…”

“I’m just messing with you. Let’s just see where the night takes us.”

He realizes she’s flirting with him, probably thinking he’s just a dumb kid who will fall for that crap. Or perhaps she’s really into him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

She stands and opens the door, his eyes following every sway of her hips, every curve of her body. Davis really is gorgeous, he thinks.

But another conquest is the last thing on his mind. First he’ll take care of Davis and relieve his murderous itch, and then he’ll take down the Slip.

~~~

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Speak ‘I’m a Hunter’ into your holo-screen.

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Application process includes medical and psychological exams.

Former military training preferred.

H
arrison got an hour of sleep. An hour if he’s lucky. Every tiny sound sent his mother into a panicked frenzy, muttering under her breath.
Zoran
and
Shut up
and
Go away
, and a number of other nonsensical utterances.

Once, she screamed, and he thought for sure they’d be caught. It had been a rat, scurrying over her leg. Gross. Do people really live like this? He knows they do, because he once watched a holo-screen special about ‘People of the Tunnels,’ where homeless folks actually sleep in the Tunnels, set in rows, like fallen-over dominoes.

Sleeping on the hard concrete floor in an old building isn’t much better. They had no blankets, so they huddled under a dusty old carpet.

When he can’t take it any longer, he creeps up the steps to ensure night has fallen, even though his holo-screen says it’s nine in the evening. Due to his mother’s hospital-red clothes, staying hidden during daylight hours was the safest move, albeit an awfully boring day.

Sure enough, the streets are dark.

But before they venture out, Harrison knows they have to talk. He’s been dreading the conversation all day, especially because he doesn’t have the slightest idea as to his mother’s mental state.

Before he settles in beside her, he checks his hoverboard one more time. There are a few long, deep scratches along the bottom, from where it contacted the surface of the alley, but other than that it seems okay. With a bit of tinkering, he might even be able to amplify its hoverpower so it can hold two people, something he should’ve thought of before trying to bust his mom out of the asylum. Lesson learned.

His mother watches him as he approaches, her lips moving nonstop. It’s almost creepier when she’s not saying anything. “S-S-Son,” she says, her teeth chattering. It’s not cold enough to make anyone’s teeth chatter.

“Mom,” Harrison says, sitting far enough away to give her some distance. “How are you?” He feels stupid asking such an inane question to someone who’s been confined to a mental institution for almost a decade.

“You look beautiful,” she says. “Beautiful like a wall-less house. Beautiful like bags of garbage and cracks on the streets. Beautiful like—”

“Thank you, Mom,” he says. He can’t let her get going too far in the wrong direction. “You look beautiful, too. Like a sunny day.”

She claws at her arm, but her fingernails are trimmed short, and they only leave faint white lines on her skin. “That’s what I should have said. Much better. Much much better.”

“It’s okay. It’s all okay. I was really impressed by the diversion you created to help get us out of that place,” Harrison says. He still can’t quite believe how well she performed. It’s like she was half-acting, if such a thing is possible.

“I’m crazy, not stupid,” she says, and then cackles to herself.

“Uh, yeah. Well, anyway, I came today because…”
I’m so sorry.
Now that the moment is here, he’s not sure whether he can have this conversation. He’s not sure he wants to know the truth. And what if there is no truth? What if what she said to him so long ago was just the ramblings of a woman whose mind was shattered beyond belief? Has he risked everything for a woman past the point of repair?

“Your father never did anything like this for me,” she says, interjecting. “He only brings bad memories and boiling blood.”

He sighs. Pointless. This whole thing is pointless. The mother he once knew is long gone, replaced by a vague shade of her former self.

“You don’t have to be sorry for not coming sooner,” she says. “I forgive you every moment of every day so there are no more sorrys. The sorrys have been kicked and punched and smashed. Your father’s sorrys are big and mean and take up the whole room.”

Harrison feels a shiver run down his spine, even less from the cold than his mother’s chattering teeth. Perhaps she’s not as far gone as he thought. She practically read his mind. He blows out a breath and starts again. “Thank you, but I
am
sorry, and always will be. I should’ve come sooner. I wanted to…forget…those times. But as hard as I tried, I coul—”

“We never forget. Never,” she says. “You and me and your father and your brother. We all pretend to forget, but we never do. We have the longest memories of anyone in the entire flooded world.”

Her voice sounds more lucid than ever and yet she’s rambling more and more with each monologue. And he couldn’t possibly have missed that word she said—the one he’s only heard her say once before, in another lifetime.

Brother.

“I never knew I had a brother,” he says slowly, as if the wrong word might spook her, send her into another fit of screaming.

More clawing at her arm. More white lines. If she had nails her arm would be bloody and torn. He remembers the padded walls, the injury-free zone. Has he put her in serious danger by taking her out of the protective bubble she was in?

“Your brother isn’t a real person,” she says, as if it should have been obvious from the beginning.

His heart sinks, although he’s not sure why. “Then why do you talk about him?” Other than because you’re insane, he adds in his head.

She giggles. “Just because he’s not called real doesn’t mean we can’t talk about him. Anyway, he’s dead.”

He has the sudden urge to march her back to the asylum. He takes a deep breath. No. He’s been a bad enough son already. At least he can offer her freedom.

“Your brother got a dud and you got a match,” she says. “So he wasn’t real and you were, even after you were both born. And they say
I’m
the crazy one.”

Wait…

What?

Like a gear shifting, something clicks inside him. If all the marbles are lost, then does that mean none of them are? “So he was unauthorized, you mean?” Harrison says. He forces himself to keep breathing, although his chest feels tight.

“Yes. Not real. Not a boy. Not a human. An UnBeeeeeee.” She draws the word out eerily.

Holy. Freaking. Crap. Could she be telling the truth? No. No. But somehow he knows the answer isn’t no. “They found him.” Wait.
They
would be his father’s department. “Father killed my brother?”

“No. Yes. No.” Mother nods and then shakes her head.

“Mother, please. Focus. What happened to my brother?” He realizes he’s leaning in, his face a mere handbreadth from hers.

Harrison pulls back sharply when she laughs.

“Focus is the bullet from a Hunter’s gun. Focus is a laser with your skull in its sights.”

He shakes his head. If he ever had a brother, she’s not the one to tell him the truth about what happened to him. How he—he swallows—died. Plan B: Ask his father. He shakes his head again. As if his father—the head of FREAKING Pop Con—would admit to ever having an UnBee kid.

“Got to save him. Got to got to gottogottogottogotto.”

“Mom?” Harrison says. “Save who?”

Her eyes cross and then uncross and she laughs. “You know. The Slip.”

“What? You want to…help the most wanted person in the entire city?”

“Do the walls crush us like bones in a grinder?” she says.

He takes that as a yes. “We can’t,” Harrison says. “We’ll get ourselves killed. Anyone trying to aid and abet an unauthorized person will be terminated on sight.” He couldn’t have recited it any better in class.

“Not you, silly,” his mother says, rolling her eyes. “Me. Me. Memememememememe.”

He never should’ve gone to the asylum. He never should’ve ditched school. He should’ve walked down the hall, enjoying the slaps on the back and the
Way to go
s and the huge kiss Nadine would’ve given him. A hero’s welcome. That’s his life. That’s who he is. Right?

I had a brother. An UnBee. Killed. By my father?

“I want to help you,” he says, surprised by his own words and the truth he feels behind them. “I want to help you save the Slip.”

After all, if he’s cutting class and is wanted by city enforcement he has nothing better to do.

And maybe, just maybe, he can finally get his father’s attention.

~~~

It takes Harrison less than an hour to rewire his hoverboard. The moment he steps onto it he can feel the added lift. Hopefully it’s just enough to hold his mother’s bird-like weight.

“C’mon,” he says, offering her a hand.

“Are we going to fly again?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, nodding strongly, mistaking her question for excitement.

“No,” she says. “Crash bang boom scrape.” She shows him her scabbed over elbows as proof of his previous failure.

He sighs. “The board couldn’t hold our weight before,” he explains. “I didn’t think about that part. I didn’t plan it well. This time will be different.”

Her eyes dart from him to the board and back. “I’ll walk.”

He grits his teeth and watches as she starts away from him, down the alley. They’ll be caught in three seconds flat if she insists on travelling on foot. “Mother. No.”

“No no noise noise nose nose hose hose,” she sings, not turning around, not stopping.

For a fleeting second, a thought forms in his head.
Leave her. Let her get caught and returned to the asylum. You can still try to help the Slip if you want.

Instead he races straight for her on his hoverboard, hoping she’ll forgive him for what he’s about to do. At the moment of impact, he brakes sharply, scooping her up in his arms, thankful that he’s been hitting the weights hard and that she’s all skin and bones.

And she screams. No, more like
wails
, her cries reaching a crescendo and surely waking everyone sleeping within a two kilometer perimeter.

“Shush, Mom!” he hisses as he steers them into the night sky, out of range of anything that might scan their eyes or illuminate their presence. She kicks and squirms and fights and it’s all he can do to keep her from throwing herself to her death.

And then she stops, her face turned toward the sky. “Oooh,” she says. “Sparkly. Like fireworks.”

The stars wink and twinkle from above, and his mother stares at them as if she’s never seen them before, making baby-like coos and murmurs. Harrison holds her tight around the waist and heads for the one place he knows they’ll be able to get help.

~~~

Harrison doesn’t know if the Hawk—which whirred overhead only ten minutes ago—spotted them, but just in case, he takes the most convoluted route to his friend’s place. In this case, friend is a loose term. In truth, Harrison wouldn’t be caught dead in public with his childhood acquaintance; and yet, in this particular situation, he trusts him above all others.

Arriving at the nondescript yellow-siding row house, he lands the hoverboard gently on the sidewalk. A floating holo-ad drifts by, attempting to scan his eyes, but he averts them and stands in front of his mother, who’s whirling in a circle gawking at the sky. “Move on. I’m not buying,” he says, and the holo-ad floats away.

He presses and holds the button on the wall. “Chet, it’s me, Harrison. Open up.”

No answer. The house is dark and silent.

“Dammit,” he mutters, knowing that Chet rarely sleeps, preferring to do his business in the safety of night. If he’s not responding, it’s either because he’s not here or doesn’t want any company. He presses the button again and again, jamming his thumb down and up, down and up, hoping that the annoying sound will force his friend’s hand.

“The Slip lives here?” his mother says.

“Maybe,” Harrison says neutrally. As if he would know where the Slip lives when all of Pop Con doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea. “Chet, open up!” he growls into the intercom.

“That’s not my name,” a voice replies.

God. Not this crap again. “Chet, quit screwin’ around and open the freaking door!” Any second a holo-ad or a Crow or a Hawk could cruise by and catch them out.

“Sorry, never heard of anyone named Chet around these parts,” the voice says.

He knows he doesn’t have time to be stubborn. “Okay, okay. Wire. It’s me, lowly holo-illiterate”—he lowers his voice—“Harrison Kelly. I come to bow before you and kiss your holo-hacking feet.”

“It’s not really my feet that do the hacking. It’s more my hands, if you’re being literal; or my brain, if you’re not.”

“Wire. Just let us in!”

“Your name is hitting the citywide alerts.”

Harrison’s heart flutters. This is bad. “I need your help.”

“That her?” Wire asks.

There would have to be a reason given for the alert. The whole city must know that he’s responsible for busting his insane mother out of the asylum. “Yeah,” he says glumly. No way Wire will let them in n—

The door clicks open and Harrison exhales a heavy breath. “Thank you,” he says, stepping inside. He turns back. “Mother, come on—”

Oh no. She’s halfway down the street, chasing after the floating holo-ad, arms outstretched as if trying to catch it. He hurls himself through the doorway, skimming his hoverboard in front of him and leaping aboard in one swift motion. Ahead of him, the holo-ad stops and turns, focusing its attention on the woman in pursuit.