by Jake Elwood
Cassie separated his right pinky from his other fingers. She wrapped her left fist around the finger and braced herself. There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of what she was about to do, but rage overwhelmed it. "I'm going to ask you four more times," she said. "Understand?"
"What the fu—"
She broke his finger, and he screamed. She waited for him to wind down, and when he was silent, she pried his ring finger away from the other fingers and took it in her fist.
"You're crazy, what are you doing, you can't—"
Cassie bent the finger back six or seven centimeters.
"All right, all right," he babbled. "Okay, you win." He turned to his daughter, panting, and opened his mouth. But no sound came out.
Cassie bent his finger one more centimeter.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it."
Cassie bent the finger another centimeter, making him yelp. "Of course you meant it, you scumbag."
"All right, all right. I meant it. But I'm sorry. I just get so mad sometimes. I mean, I was trying to sleep and you—" He yelped again as Cassie increased her pressure. "Right, right. It's my fault. I'm sorry. Very sorry. So sorry."
"Will you ever do it again?" Cassie asked.
"Oh, no, no. Never. I'll change. I'll be a better father. I'll do better. I swear. I'll never hit you again."
Bullshit, Cassie thought. There was nothing she could do about it, though. "I'll hold you to that promise," she lied, and let go of him. She stepped back, reaching for her pistol to stun him, and he rose, recovering faster than she would have believed. Rage twisted his face, he brought a big fist up to hit her, and she slammed the heel of her hand into his jaw. He fell back, bounced from the wall, and screamed, "Jarvis! Emergency! Intruder!"
Cassie lashed out with a kick, a moment too late. Her boot connected with his jaw, his head slammed into the wall behind him, and he went silent.
Alarms blared, and the lights came up. Cassie swore and raced out of the room. She drew her pistol as she ran. It was a moment's work to snatch the gem from the safe. The gun had an electric shock setting, designed to disable robots. She fired at the box, and a fat spark shot out. Smoke seeped out from under the lid, and she saw lights on the front of the box flash and then go dark.
Hoping that she'd fried the internal electronics, she holstered the pistol and grabbed the box. As soon as she touched it she heard a deeper alarm tone join the intruder alarm that was already sounding. She stepped quickly to the hole in the window.
"You bloody bitch!"
Cassie turned. Carmody was not in sight, but the little girl stood at the end of the hallway. She wore rumpled pajamas, her hair shorter than it had been in Cassie's holos. She looked frightened and lost.
"It'll be all right," Cassie said, but the twist in her guts told her the words were a lie. Carmody would be furious. He'd been humiliated, and the child had seen it all. He was going to take it all out on her.
"Crap," said Cassie, standing frozen in frustrated indecision. The urge to kill the man was strong, but she was no murderer, no matter how thoroughly the man deserved it.
Heavy footsteps came lumbering up the hallway, and the girl trembled. She knew what was coming just as surely as Cassie did.
"Crap," said Cassie again, and hurried forward. She thrust the mystery box at the girl, and the child's hands closed reflexively around it. Then Cassie scooped her up, moved quickly to the window, and threw herself out.
CHAPTER 3
The girl screamed as they fell. Cassie clutched her close, to keep her from dropping the box as much as anything else. Several floors went past and they slowed as the antigrav harness kicked in. With her hands full hanging onto the child, there was no way for Cassie to adjust the controls on the belt. "Roger," she said.
"I'm here," said a wonderfully calm voice in her ear.
"Crank up the antigrav, would you? I can't reach the buttons."
The rush of windows slowed even further. In moments they were falling at a slow walking space.
"Roger?" she said. "More, please. I'm still descending." She glanced at the top of the little girl's head, pressed tightly to her chest. "I'm carrying more weight than expected."
"The harness is at maximum, Cass," Roger told her.
Cassie swore. "All right," she said, "change of plan. Drop me faster. Just land me gently. And figure out where you can pick me up."
Roger didn't reply, but Cassie felt her stomach lurch as they plunged toward the street below. The girl gave a squeak of terror and shuddered in Cassie's arms. "It's all right," Cassie murmured. "Believe it or not, I've got this under control." Mostly under control. Okay, somewhat under control. Kind of.
She knew they were close to the street when the harness dragged at her and the kid was suddenly heavier in her arms. She bent her legs slightly, and grunted as she hit pavement. She hoisted the girl into a more comfortable position and started to run. A flashing green arrow on her lens told her to follow the street to the nearest corner and turn right. Roger knew better than to burden her with unnecessary chatter.
"Are you injured?" There was no note of concern in Roger's mechanical voice, just calm inquiry.
"No." She glanced down at the child. Roger would be wondering why she was running so slowly. She reached the corner, set the child on her feet, and dropped to one knee. She took the box from the little girl's hands, unzipped her jacket part way, and wedged the box under her breasts. Then she looked at the girl.
The child gazed at her with solemn eyes in a pale round face. Cassie said, "Look, kid." She thought for a moment. "Lark, right? My name's Cassie."
Lark just stared at her.
She's just been beaten and kidnapped. She went out a sixty-story window, for pity's sake. This is no time for small talk. Cassie took a deep breath. "All right. Here's the deal. I have to haul ass out of here. The cops are on their way. If you stay here, you'll be back home with your father in no time."
The girl didn't speak, just shivered.
"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. If you want to come with me, you have to keep up." Cassie stood, checked the direction of the arrow on her lens, and started to run.
Three or four steps later, the patter of bare feet on concrete told her that Lark was following.
"I can't pick you up between the buildings," Roger said. "They're too closely spaced."
"Lark," Cassie said. "Is there a park near here? Or a plaza? I need open space." She glanced back, and Lark, running with her mouth wide open, too breathless to speak, veered to the left and into the street. Cassie followed her.
The park was on the roof of a sprawling two-story building. The two of them raced up a broad staircase toward the beckoning glow of floodlights on broadleaf trees.
"I'm about three minutes out," Roger reported. "There are police units converging. I'm going wide around them."
Cassie was too winded to reply. Lark was right beside her, red-faced, gasping for air. She didn't slow down, though.
They reached the top and staggered toward a line of benches. Cassie chose a bench that would be invisible from the street below, close enough to a tree to be partially shielded from any police skimmers flying overhead. The two of them sank down, panting for breath.
"Wait here," Cassie said at last. She stood and walked deeper into the park, staying close to the trees. The park was a highly manicured space, with paved walkways, short green grass, flowers in boxes and trees in tidy rows. A basketball court occupied the center of the park, and a knot of teenagers sauntered down the path toward her.
It was the perfect place to leave the kid, she decided. Once Cassie was safely back on the Raffles she would look up whatever social services this planet had and get someone to pick Lark up.
The teenagers slouched past, giving her curious glances in passing. She turned her attention to the open lawn beside the basketball court. It looked big enough for the skimmer to set down. It would have to be a fast pickup. The cops would be all over th
em in moments.
Someone laughed behind her. It was not a nice laugh. It was a mocking laugh, the laugh of a bully who's just found a victim. Cassie turned, knowing what she was going to see.
The teenagers, five of them, were in a semi-circle around Lark. She was sitting on the bench, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head down protectively. She looked small and afraid and alone. A girl with spiky blue hair was making a snide comment about her pajamas when Cassie waded into their midst.
"Beat it," she said.
The girl with the blue hair made a show of looking Cassie up and down. She sneered, opened her mouth – and Cassie punched her hard just under the breastbone. "This isn't a conversation," she said. "Pound some pavement."
The biggest boy in the group bristled, but his eyes went to the gun on her hip. He backed away several steps before saying, "Screw you, bitch." A moment later all five of them were trouping down the stairs, trying to look as if it was their own idea.
Cassie looked at Lark, who was staring past Cassie's hip. A faint mechanical hum told Cassie what she was looking at. The skimmer was coming in for a landing.
"I guess I can't leave you here," Cassie said. "Come quickly if you're coming."
Thirty seconds later they were both inside the skimmer with the park dropping away beneath them.
Cassie slid into the pilot's seat and gestured Lark to the seat beside her. "Sit down. Strap yourself in."
Roger's voice came from a speaker in the skimmer's dash. "You've got pursuit, Cass. Police ships coming in fast."
"Damn it. Give me manual." She grabbed the control stick and brought the ship plunging toward the ground. They raced between skyscrapers, the skimmer's wings barely clearing the buildings on either side. Police ground cars careened through the streets, almost the only ground traffic. She ignored them, the skimmer racing past a meter or two above the flashing lights atop the cars.
A green arrow appeared on her lens, pointing straight ahead. As she wasn't sure she could manage a turn between the close-set buildings, it wasn't much help. Other shapes appeared, red circles indicating the direction of the nearest police skimmers. There were half a dozen of them at least, converging from all directions.
"Keep moving," Roger said. "I'll try to keep you on the widest streets. Once you get past the city core, it will be much easier to maneuver."
And much easier for the police to swarm all over me. She didn't bother voicing the thought. Instead she said, "I thought you said there wasn't room to pick me up in the street. There's plenty of room."
Almost immediately her left wingtip touched the side of a building, spraying broken glass and bits of aluminum onto the street. She twitched the control stick to the right, and the right wingtip broke through the plate glass on that side. She felt a jolt of impact, and the tip of the wing broke away. She fought the skimmer back under control and concentrated on flying in a perfectly straight line.
"I see what you mean," said Roger.
"Shut up." She flinched as a crimson line flashed down from above and scorched the street in front of her. "Find me a place to run," she said. "Something with cover from above."
"There's the flood water tunnel," Lark said.
"What?" Cassie shot her a quick glance, then turned her eyes back to the street.
"It's a big tunnel. For the spring rains. It's big enough for your plane. It's there!" She pointed, and Cassie hauled back on the control stick. She twisted sideways on the stick, the flitter banked sharply, the left wingtip sent up a spray of sparks as it scraped along the pavement, and the flitter made a ninety-degree turn.
The new street was more narrow than the one they'd left, and Cassie had to keep the flitter tilted to clear the buildings on either side. She held her breath as a pedestrian overpass appeared, nudged the craft lower, then hissed with fear as she saw a parked delivery truck just beyond the overpass. The skimmer slid under the overpass with less than a meter to spare, and Cassie tugged on the control stick, jerking the flitter up. She felt a jolt of impact and saw the roof of the delivery truck explode into fragments.
"Where's this tunnel of yours?" she snapped. "It better…" She let her voice trail off as the yawning gulf of a tunnel appeared several hundred meters ahead. The street ended in a T intersection, with a barrier several meters high to keep traffic and pedestrians out of the tunnel. Beyond the barrier the maw of the tunnel was a dark rectangle twice as wide as the street they were on.
The flitter flashed into the tunnel opening, the running lights coming on automatically. The tunnel sloped downward, pale lights on the ceiling showing a long passage that curved gently to the left. She tried to imagine what kind of rains this planet must get to need a flood tunnel of this size, and shook her head in disbelief.
"I'm losing my connection," Roger said. "You'll be on your own. You should know that a pair of police skimmers have entered the tunnel behind…" His voice trailed off into static.
"Crap." Cassie glanced at the rear-view monitor on the dash. She could see the flashing lights of the first police skimmer in the tunnel behind them. "Where does this tunnel come out?"
"At the lake," Lark said. "It's about five or six kilometers."
The cops would be waiting at the lake, Cassie was sure. If Roger brought the ship down, they would have a chance of fighting their way through. It would be messy, but it was at least a thread of hope.
"There's a corner we could turn," Lark said. "It's not very big."
"Where?" Cassie demanded.
"Up ahead." Lark pointed down the tunnel. "It'll be on the left."
The tunnel curved, and the police skimmer was briefly gone from sight. A dark rectangle appeared on the left, and Cassie cut their speed as much as she could. The skimmer was running more on antigrav than aerodynamic lift at that speed, but it was sustainable for short stretches.
She rocked back and forth in her seat as the ends of the wings banged into the walls of the tunnel. Pieces of the skimmer littered the tunnel floor by the time she got them lined up with a much smaller tunnel that entered the main branch at a sharp angle.
Cassie pushed the stick forward and they raced into the darkness.
"This comes out in Ogdenthorpe," Lark said. When Cassie gave her a blank look she said, "That's a neighborhood."
"How do you know about this?" Cassie demanded. "You're kind of small for a civic engineer."
"We hoverskate in the tunnels sometimes," Lark said. "We're not supposed to, but there's a couple of places you can sneak in. I went all the way to Clarkstown once. That's a different tunnel."
The seat vibrated under Cassie and a grinding noise filled the air. The bottom of the skimmer was dragging on the tunnel floor. The rear-view monitor showed a wild spray of sparks filling the tunnel behind them. Cassie swore and pulled back on the stick, then mashed buttons on the dash, increasing their lift. The grinding noise eased for a moment, then resumed.
"What's happening?" Lark said.
"Damn it! The skimmer's losing lift." She thought of the trail of scrap metal they'd been leaving behind. "I guess it's not that surprising." She pulled back as hard as she could on the stick, to no effect. They didn't have enough forward velocity for the wing flaps to generate lift. The grinding sound changed in pitch as the skimmer moved slower and slower. Finally they came to a halt, and the tunnel went silent.
"Crap. I had to put down a pretty big deposit on this thing." Cassie undid her straps. "Will you be all right here?" Lark had already undone her own straps. "Never mind," Cassie said, and popped the hatch.
"How far to the end of the tunnel?" she asked Lark when they were both in front of the downed skimmer.
"I don’t know. A long way."
Not good. The cops were eventually going to figure out which way she'd gone. "We'll have to run for it, kid."
"We should take one of the little tunnels," Lark said.
Cassie froze in the act of taking her first running step, and stumbled. "What?"
"The little tunnels," Lark repeated. S
he gestured at the roof of the tunnel. "Where the storm sewers drain. We should climb up."
"Little tunnels." Cassie shook her head in disbelief. "Show me."
They had to trot up the tunnel for a hundred meters or so before they spotted a dark circle in the ceiling. The walls of the tunnel had a slight slope to them, and Lark had no trouble scampering up to the outlet of the little tunnel. Cassie had a more difficult time, until she remembered the antigrav harness.
The smaller tunnel rose at an angle of thirty degrees or so. The floor was rough enough to provide adequate traction. The tunnel was almost two meters across, just big enough that Cassie could climb without ducking. Lark led the way, climbing toward a distant circle of pale light. Cassie clambered after her, wondering what would come next.
"Uh-oh," Lark said. "This one has a good grill." She reached the top of the tunnel and gripped the bars of a circular horizontal grate. Thin aluminum bars made a grid with spaces barely wide enough for Lark's hands. "Sometimes the grills are gone, or the bars are really wide and kids can fit through."
Cassie drew her pistol. "No problem. This will be one of those grills in a moment." She switched to "laser" and burned her way quickly through the bars on one side. Bits of aluminum clattered down the tunnel behind her as she finished the last cut. "Careful. It's still hot."
Lark squirmed through the opening, agile as a squirrel, not even brushing the hot ends of the bars. Cassie followed, careless of the hot metal, knowing her suit would protect her.
They emerged in a low tunnel that sloped upward in both directions. A moment of crawling brought them up to street level, and Cassie stood upright at last, Lark beside her. They were in a residential neighborhood, the towers of the city center glowing off to her left.
"I have you again," Roger said in her ear. "There are no police in your area."
A green arrow appeared on Cassie's lens, and she gestured at Lark, then broke into a jog.
"I've found a place I can land," Roger told her. "It's about a kilometer away."
