The Courier (San Angeles) (28 page)

Quincy had replaced the ceiling tile and moved as quickly as he could away from the police. Hanging from the roof supports, he knew that one mistake and he would fall through the weak T-bars and flimsy tiles. When he thought he was far enough away, he moved a tile and dropped down to a desk below. He had come down somewhere in an administrative section, which was a good thing since everybody seemed to have gone home for the day. It took him
another ten minutes to figure out how to get out of the maze of offices and cubicles before he placed his call to Jeremy. He knew Jeremy wasn’t going to be happy, but it had to be done.

The phone call itself had been short and sweet, and by the sounds of it, Jeremy didn’t think he was responsible for the woman being shot. Hell, if she had waited before pulling her gun, he would have been in range. Boom, done. No more problems. He knew it was going to happen, though. You get one of these snipers, so used to being removed from the carnage, you get them in close, and they panic.

He was lucky she didn’t scream. That would’ve given him a headache. He hated screamers. He always made sure he taped up his target’s mouth before getting the job done. It just made life easier.

Now he had to find the girl. How the hell was he supposed to do that? She’d fallen off the detection net like water off the Level 2 ceiling. And to top it off, he didn’t have access to a car. Abby wouldn’t get into his, and then refused to give him a set of keys to hers, just in case. He should have cut them out of her.

When they got to the hospital, the third one they had tried, they had checked the front parking lots, looking for the car. They didn’t find it. They were walking to the back lot when he looked in through the emergency doors, and saw the girl inside. Close timing, too; she had just gotten up and walked further inside.

Well, if the girl’s car wasn’t in the front, it had to be in the back. And if it wasn’t there, then she was already in it. An untrackable girl in an untrackable car. Life was just getting better.

Jeremy said to find the girl. He didn’t say how, or to keep it quiet. So be it. He was going pull in some people. His best bet was to watch the ramps in a ten-kilometer radius. Both up and down. She was more comfortable on the lower levels, so she’d probably head that way. Get out of sight and try to hide.

It’s what he would do.

The back parking lot was huge. It was going take forever to walk the aisles and look for the damn thing. Better set up the ramp watches first. He pulled out his comm unit and started dialing. When he was done, he entered the lot and started walking through the rows of cars.

It would take a while for the people he called to cover all the ramps, but with some luck, they’d see her car.

After twenty minutes of walking and searching, his eyes were starting to cross. Every red car in the lot looked the same. What happened to the damn car companies trying to make their stuff look different? He sat down on a curb and rubbed his eyes.

“Hey, bud, did you lose your car?”

Quincy looked up. A security guard was walking up to him. Quincy moved his hand to his pocket and stood up.

“No, but I’m looking for one in particular.” He glanced over to the ambulance entrance. Several police cars were still there. “They sent me to look.”

“I thought the uniforms were assigned jobs like this.”

“Yeah, well, the shit rolls down, you know. I pissed someone off and I get the crap jobs. I guess I’m lucky I’m not on foot patrol.” Quincy started walking again. He turned and stopped. “Hey, you haven’t seen this car, have you?” He gave a description.

“Nope, but I already told the guys in the ER. The guy that was shot drove up in a blue one. Well, the girl was driving. I had to move it out of the lane for her, you know. If an ambulance came and the drive was blocked, I’d lose my job.”

Blue? Damn Abby. “I hear ya. Where’d you park it?”

“A couple rows over. It had blood all over the front seat.”

Quincy started walking toward where the security guard indicated.

“I wouldn’t bother. The car’s already gone. I’m surprised the other cops didn’t tell you. I went looking for it as soon as things settled down.”

“Figures. They’re getting a good laugh out of me this time.”

“Yeah, well. It isn’t there.”

“Thanks for the help, you saved me a lot of walking.”

“No problemo.”

Quincy pulled out his comm unit again and confirmed the ramps were being covered, updating them on the car. Most of the down-ramps had people watching. The up-ramps weren’t quite there yet.

He had everything covered. Or did he? Quincy knew what he would do, but every time he thought he had this girl figured out, she went and changed something on him. What if she wasn’t heading back down? What if she was heading up, running away as fast as she could?

Two cars drove into the parking lot and stopped by Quincy. The driver got out of one and Quincy got in. He’d check out the shuttle port, just in
case.

I
LEFT THE HOSPITAL
area and drove until I found an up-ramp. I felt lost and out of control. It was strange, not knowing where I was and how to get around. I’d spent the last year memorizing every shortcut, every detour on my levels and in my area. But Level 6 was new territory.

Was I doing the right thing? Miller had made it very clear he wanted me to get out of the city. With the black box running out of power, I had to agree it was probably the best idea. As soon as that thing went down, I was a goner. But I wasn’t sure it was the
right
thing to do.

He had kissed my hand. You didn’t do that if you’re just doing your job. Do you? Maybe it was my imagination taking off, just being a stupid little girl. Miller made me feel different. New. Like I wasn’t damaged goods. Maybe I was just pushing what I felt onto him. Was running away from that worth it?

Every thought was driven from my mind when I reached the Level 7 up-ramp. My world turned upside down and I felt weak and nauseous.

There wasn’t anything above me.

The vertigo increased when I pulled off the ramp into a parking lot and got out of the car. Other people had pulled over as well, all of them staring into the darkening blue sky.

Sky.

I felt like I could see forever. I fell against the side of the car, another wave of dizziness rushing through me. I had seen open sky before, of course, but the vids just didn’t do it justice. There was
nothing
above me. It was as if someone had cut open the top of my head and let the whole universe rush in.

A cloud moved overhead, pushed by some unseen and unfelt wind. The light felt . . . warm. And the colors. The grass was greener, my skin looked whiter, almost sickly.

The concrete under my feet radiated heat collected throughout the day. My mind tried to grasp the vastness of everything. Tried and failed. It went way beyond my wildest imagination. A shuttle roared across the deepening sky, leaving a soft white trail in its wake.

I climbed back into the car and sat staring through the windshield, thankful for the roof of the car over my head. The sun had turned a musky yellow, fat and pregnant near the horizon, and the sky was layered in vivid oranges and reds turning to a dark blue as it went higher.

The shuttle’s contrail deepened, the bottom still reflecting light from the setting sun while the top faded into a dark gray.

The experience left me breathless. Miller had probably seen it before, but still, all I could think about was sharing this moment with him.

I sat in the car until the sun moved below the horizon, watching
the shifting colors play across the darkening sky, reminding myself to breathe when I realized I was holding my breath. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I wiped them away roughly with the back of my hand. I started the car again and moved onto the street, following the shuttle’s trail back to the shuttle port.

Finding a road that went in the right direction was relatively easy, but finding the entrance to the shuttle port wasn’t. I drove down dead-end streets in the middle of low-slung warehouses, and once, through what must have been lower-cost housing. I could almost hear the glass rattle in the windows when another shuttle came down.

Even here though, the houses were better than anything I had seen below, except on Level 6. Each house was self-contained. Individual bungalows with play sets and palm trees in the backyard.

It felt so far from where I had come from. These families had more than I ever did, more than I ever would. They probably didn’t even care.

When I finally found the entrance to the shuttle port, I drove along the winding approach and parked as close to the terminal as I could. The parking garage was actually above the ground. Each level open to the sky at the sides.

I was tempted to walk to the edge and look out over the city; I could see the lights and signs twinkling in the dusk. But time was running out. I had no idea how long it would take to get on a shuttle, or even where they all went. I took all the money from under the back seat, shuddering when I saw the tiny box again, and put it in the envelope with Frank’s money. I found the stairs back to ground level and took them. My body ached after sitting in the car. It hadn’t been that long, but the previous days were taking more than their toll.

The terminal itself was exactly as I had seen it in all the vids. The front doors opened on to a massive concourse, all chrome and glass. The floor was tiled, mostly white with angled grid lines of light
and dark gray spaced about two meters apart. Ticket counters with smiling people in brightly colored uniforms lined the far wall. Overhead, extending about a quarter of the way over the concourse, was a second level filled with restaurants, bars, and stores. The lower level reminded me of the hospital where I had left Miller behind, and regret again settled into my gut.

I moved toward the counter, reading the displays posted overhead. The departures listed places whose names I only knew from being forced to read about them in school: New York, Budapest, Paris, SoCal Sat One, Moscow. The list went on and on. None of them were places I could go.

Off continent would be too obvious, and I’d be asked questions about luggage and passports, neither of which I had. Would I need them for local flights? I had no clue. I moved to the next board and started reading local destinations: San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas. Everything along the west coast was part of SoCal’s city, San Francisco would just be a flight into a different neighborhood.

Las Vegas was IBC territory. Not my first choice, but the flight was leaving in an hour, and from there I could catch another short hop somewhere else. Maybe Denver or Minneapolis. They were still owned by the government outright. So were the corporate cities, in theory, but in reality the government had no control over what happened in them.

I must have starting walking to the counter a dozen times, each time veering away before I got close, before they could see me coming. Once, when the line was long, I stood in it for a while before chickening out and walking back to a bench.

How was I going to do this? I didn’t have any ID, except for my driver’s license and my courier’s ID card. Was that enough? Or would they alert the police? By my tenth time up, I was in such a panic, I was sure they could see me shaking from across the entire airport.

I had to get myself under control. I found a washroom and went inside. My jacket was stained brown—Miller’s blood—and there was a streak of it on my face as well.

I pulled Frank’s gun from my pocket and tucked it beneath my shirt. A few minutes under warm running water and a few more with the dryer, and the jacket looked pretty good. A wall dispenser sold toothpaste and combs and other assorted items. I dropped in some coins.

With my hair combed, teeth brushed, and face washed, I felt like a whole new person. The shuttle I wanted to get on left in fifteen minutes, and I hadn’t gotten a ticket yet. There was no way I was going to get on that flight now. I had to go back to the board to see what was available.

I left the bathroom, but not until I dropped the gun into the garbage can, burying it under the used paper towels. The thing may have made it through the security check, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

I picked the next flight to Las Vegas, leaving in a couple of hours, and started the same pattern of trying to buy the ticket. It only took me three tries to realize it just wasn’t going to happen. For the first time, I noticed cameras mounted high on the ceiling. Was one of them watching me?

Miller had told me to leave the city. He had told me to get on a shuttle. But just the thought of leaving filled me with guilt. Why? I was only doing what he told me to do.

He had kissed my hand.

I knew he wouldn’t, didn’t, leave me. But he was trained for this shit, I wasn’t. Thinking it made the words sound hollow. Before I fully realized what I was doing, I had walked away from the ticket counters, back down the concourse. I needed my gun if I was going to do anything.

The way I figured it, I still had at least until noon tomorrow
before the black box stopped working. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew that running away again was not going to solve this problem.

Taking a quick glance at the cameras, I walked into the bathroom and retrieved the gun from the garbage. As I left, a large hand grabbed my arm, jerking me off to the side.

“Move or scream, and you die right here.”

I looked up at the face of my attacker. Quincy.