In reply, Ahn had looked pointedly at the bulge in Ginny's overall where the handgun sat heavily in her pocket.
“I should go back and explain,” Ginny muttered, trudging into the biting wind. “I should tell her everything.”
“You'd only put her in more danger than she's in already.”
They walked in silence. When they reached the building with their flyer on the roof, Ginny said she needed a pee.
“Well, there isn't anywhere.” Rafe had grown grumpy and resentful from listening to her unreasonable whining and the unrelenting cold wind. “You should have gone before we left like I did.”
“I didn't want to go then.”
“Well good luck finding a public toilet around here. Just find an alley or something. I'm going up to get in the flyer before I die of exposure. You can join me at your leisure.” He pushed ahead into the building, leaving Ginny standing in the street looking helpless.
The wind on the roof was stronger and colder than it had been at street level. Rafe broke into a jog at the sight of the flyer and the expectation of relief. He'd gone just a few paces when a man stepped out from behind a water tank and quickly moved to stand between Rafe and the quadcopter. Rafe stopped dead.
The stranger waited, keeping his eyes on Rafe. He was a young man, late teens maybe, but tall and broad. He had a look of contempt on his face and his eyes were still and calm. There was no shred of doubt in Rafe's mind that the man was there for him. His insides turned to water. His heart pounded in his chest. A footfall behind him made his head twitch round. A second man had appeared, as young as the first, but bigger, standing between him and the stairwell.
The fear made Rafe's head swim. “Oh Jesus,” he said. A kind of prayer. He'd been hurt too much. He couldn't take it again. He held out his bag of documents. “Here. This is what you want.” He threw it to the first man but it fell well short, sliding across the tarmac roof. “Just take it. I don't want anything to do with it. I won't write the story. I won't say a fucking word. Just... Just don't hurt me.”
Still the two men said nothing. Rafe knew it was hopeless. They were going to beat him, kill him, make him tell them everything he knew, name everyone who had helped him. He looked about for a way of escape. There were two quadcopters on the roof now. His own and the one these men must have arrived in. Why hadn't he seen it as soon as he came out of the stairwell? How could he have missed a bloody great flyer?
He made an effort to compose himself. He was panting, he realised, every muscle taut. He needed to run. He couldn't let them catch him. His stomach was so knotted it hurt. The man in front of him took a step, then another.
And Rafe was running. He didn't remember starting but he was sprinting across the tarmac. He reached the knee-high wall that ran around the whole roof before he dare look around. The first man was vectoring across to cut him off and the second was following behind. He glanced over the wall at the wide street beyond and the dizzying, six-storey drop. He felt sick, hopeless. He stopped running and his pursuers slowed to a walk. He climbed up onto the wall. It was barely wider than the length of his feet. The empty space in front of and below him seemed to suck at him, making him teeter.
“Don't come any closer,” he yelled, not daring to turn around, not daring to move at all. He could not hear their footsteps but the wind blustering in his ears made it hard to hear anything. “If you touch me, I'll jump.” And he would. He meant it. I should have died in Melbourne, he thought. At the time he'd prayed for death, longed for release. Everything since then had been borrowed time. He looked up at the grey sky and thought about stepping out. It would take so little and yet would change everything so profoundly.
“Go ahead and jump you fuckwit,” one of the men said. “Save us the trouble of pushing you.”
“Shut up, dickhead,” the other said. His voice was an angry snarl. This one was in charge and he didn't want Rafe swan diving onto the pavement. It did not comfort Rafe that they wanted him alive.
“Get down from there,” the boss said. “We only want to talk to you.”
“Don't come near me,” Rafe shouted through clenched teeth. He was shivering in the wind and he didn't know how long he could stay up there on that wall. He didn't know what to do. If they touched him, he'd jump. He knew that.
“We're just here to warn you off,” the boss said. He was trying to sound reasonable but Rafe could hear the lie. “You don't have to do this, mate. We're all reasonable men.”
“Yeah, just keep your nose out of Consortium business,” the second man said. “Then you can walk away with all your fucking body parts still attached.”
The boss was not happy with the interjection. “Will you keep your fucking trap shut? Or do I have to cut your fucking tongue out?”
“I was just trying to – ”
“Shut up!”
After that yell of rage, the boss seemed to need a few seconds to compose himself. Rafe didn't care. They were going to kill him. They'd try something soon and then he could jump and it would all be over. Everything would be over.
“Look, Rafe... That's a bloody stupid name if you don't mind me saying, mate.”
“Up yours,” Rafe said. “Go fuck yourself.”
“We just want to talk, Rafe. We want to know what you know, who else is in on it, if you're working for someone, that kind of thing. Just a few questions, that's all. After that, you can go on your w – “
Rafe heard a quick rush of footsteps. This is it. It's happening. He closed his eyes, feeling his body sway.
There was a grunt and the sound of a weight falling. Then a shot. He jerked, shocked. He hadn't thought that they might shoot him. He reached with his mind to where the pain must be and didn't find it. Would he be dead before he hit the ground? There were more steps. Someone running. Another shot. He turned to look and lost his balance, toppling over into the void, arms flailing.
Then Ginny caught him and yanked him back.
He twisted and fell onto the roof. Ginny let go of him and bent down, fumbling for the gun that was lying there. One of Rafe's attackers lay on the ground in a heap. Ginny lifted the gun in both hands, pointing it across the roof to the stairwell, and fired it twice. Twice more, he realised. Ginny had jumped those two thugs single handedly. He goggled at her, not yet able to take it all in. She cursed and turned to face him.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“I... I...”
“He got away,” she said, glancing back at the stairwell.
Rafe was still on the ground. He tried to move towards the fallen man but his arms were trembling and his legs wouldn't work. “Is he alive? Did you... ?” There was blood pooling under the man's head, but not much. If she'd shot him in the head, surely there would be more.
Ginny walked over to the man, pointing her gun at him. “I don't know,” she said, her voice shaky. “I hit him from behind. With this.” She lifted the gun briefly. “I hit him as hard as I could. Would that kill him?”
Rafe nodded although Ginny wasn't looking at him. He tried to get up and this time found he could manage it. “They were from the Consortium,” he said. He glanced back at the edge of the roof. Had he really been about to jump? It already seemed incredible.
Ginny put a foot against the man's shoulder and pushed him. He stirred and groaned. Ginny jumped back, gun aimed at him, holding it desperately, as if it were a charm against evil. But the young man did not wake up. “He's alive,” she said, almost a cry of triumph. “And I didn't hit the other one.” She seemed to feel exonerated of some charge that Rafe had not made. She had fired four shots, two of them probably at close range, and had missed every time. It seemed to Rafe that the survival of either man was pure good luck. “We need to find out what the Consortium is,” he said, trying to stay focused.
But first they needed to get off that rooftop. Every building, inside and out, every street, every field and farm had sensors of all kinds, all feeding their data into the local networks, all feeding the augmented reality that th
e world lived and worked within. Without doubt, the sensorium had picked up the gunshots, identified them for what they were, triangulated them, and fed the location to the local police. They could only hope that the nearest police officers were a long way off and would take a while to arrive.
“We could bring him round and ask him. Make him tell us,” Ginny said, sounding queasy at the idea.
Rafe shook his head. No, he couldn't do that. Never that.
“Come on,” he said. “Let's just go. We should just get out of here.”
Ginny nodded and they moved away from the fallen man, watching him, moving slowly. When they were a few metres away, the hold he seemed to have on them weakened and they looked towards the flyer, began to hurry. Ginny made a beeline for it, her distaste for the machine seemingly over.
Rafe took a detour to his attackers' quadcopter, grabbing up the bag of documents on the way. Even latched, the flyer bore no markings, no company logo, no registration number. He opened the cockpit and looked inside. It was bigger and more luxuriously appointed than the rental he and Ginny had hired. It smelled new. He poked around in pockets and cupboards but found nothing to identify its owners. He stepped out of it and saw Ginny sitting in the other flyer, watching him anxiously. The very least he should do was to disable the machine.
The wall that ran around the roof was brick with concrete coping stones on top. He ran over to it and pulled at the nearest coping stone, a flat slab of concrete as long as his arm but not very wide or deep. The crumbling mortar gave way easily and he soon had it free. He dragged it back to the quadcopter, it was too heavy for him to carry for more than a couple of seconds. He leaned it against one of the rotor cowlings to get his breath.
Immediately an alarm sounded from the machine and a loud voice in his aug said, “This machine is the property of the Rice Consortium. Any damage to this machine will be reported immediately to the police and could result in a criminal prosecution.”
Rafe stood back in surprise and almost laughed out loud. After all his searching it had been that easy. A yell from Ginny made him look up. She was pointing the gun back towards the stairwell where the second of Rafe's attackers and two friends he'd found somewhere were emerging onto the roof. With an adrenaline fuelled heave, he lifted the heavy concrete block and let it fall onto the rotor, crushing several of the blades and knocking the plastic cowling sideways. There was no way they would be flying that quadcopter without a replacement part.
A shot exploded from the other flyer and ricocheted off the roof. He bent low and ran to join Ginny.
“What the hell were you doing?” she demanded as he climbed in. She fired the gun again, shooting across him. His ears rang and he yelled at the machine to get them airborne. The canopy began to close over them and Ginny yelled, “No! Don't close it or I can't shoot them.”
“It won't take off if we don't let it close the canopy,” Rafe said, feeling her fear, looking around for the three youths. They had spread out and were closing in on the flyer. Ginny fired off a last shot before the lid closed and one of the men twisted around and fell over.
“Shit! I hit one. Oh my God. Is he all right?” She looked like she might try to climb out to check on him. The flyer's struts lifted from their parked position and the rotors whirled into motion. He glanced out of the canopy at their pursuers. The shooting of one of them had sent the other two running for cover, but the wounded man was shouting from the ground and signalling towards the other flyer. Rafe prayed he'd done enough damage to keep it on the ground.
“He's all right!” Ginny shouted, clutching Rafe's arm.
“Like I give a shit. What is wrong with this bloody thing?” The rotors were whining and the flyer trembled. He could feel the machine coiling itself to spring into the air, but it didn't take off. He thumped the side of the cockpit and scanned through the virtual displays. Everything was fine, no warnings, no squawking alarms. Why wouldn't the damned thing move?
“Uh oh,” Ginny said and he looked up. The two men at the other flyer had given up trying to make it start and were climbing out.
“Put the canopy up so we can shoot them,” Ginny shouted.
Rafe shook his head. Sitting up there on the roof shooting people while the police made their way to arrest them made no sense at all. He focused on the instruments again. Had the two thugs who'd jumped him sabotaged it in some way? Some insanely, improbably subtle way? He gritted his teeth. It had to be something he'd done, or hadn't done.
“They're coming,” Ginny said. “What the hell are you doing? Take off! Now!” A young man appeared beside Rafe, pounding on the canopy with the pommel of a large hunting knife.
“If you think you could do any bloody better, just – ”
He saw it. A small prompt saying, “State your destination,” patiently waiting for him to tell it one. “Brisbane, for fuck's sake, you fucking stupid pile of junk. Brisbane. Take us to Brisbane!”
“Thank you,” said the little prompt and the flyer whooshed up into the air.
-oOo-
They landed in Anzac Park, near Cal Copplin's home after Rafe had struggled with the flyer and it's handbook for most of the four hour flight home. Anzac Park was not a designated landing site and Rafe had to convince the vehicle they had a medical emergency before it would let him take manual control. Ginny had closed her eyes and whimpered as Rafe steered the aircraft down between the trees onto the grass. As soon as his feet were on solid ground again, he turned and kicked the stubborn machine and told it just what he thought of its design and its designers. Then they left it to ponder these home truths and walked back to Cal's apartment. As they came out of the little park, they heard its engines start up and turned to see the quadcopter rise up above the treetops. It made a beeline for the city centre and the Transit Centre roof where it had so wanted to take them and where Rafe suspected his attackers or their friends might be waiting.
-oOo-
They sat in silence, staring at the food cooling in front of them.
“I don't think we can stay here any more,” Ginny said. Rafe nodded, not really paying her much attention. “I mean they're bound to come looking for us soon. They're bound to think of this place.”
He nodded again. What he really needed to do right now was get back to Canberra. He had friends there and places to hide out. It had been bad enough when the police and the terrorists were the only people trying to catch him. Now there was a third group, the Rice Consortium – whoever the hell they were – and they not only seemed more efficient at finding him, but rather more direct in their methods of dealing with people they didn't like.
“That was a complete waste of a day,” Ginny said. “We nearly got ourselves killed and I lost my big break with WorldEnough. And all for what? Just to confirm what we already suspected.”
Rafe lost the thread of his thoughts and blamed it on Ginny's whining tone. What did she know about conducting an investigation anyway? Of course you verified your suspicions. You verified everything. That's how you knew you were writing the truth and not some load of old rubbish. He shook his head, irritated with himself. This wasn't a story – not any more – this was Rafe Morgan trying to stay alive.
“Can't the Sentinel help us?” Ginny asked. “I mean, they must have reporters in trouble all the time. Don't they have safe houses or private security or something? Why don't you call them?”
God! Was this woman stupid or what? “Because it's a bloody news feed, not the CIA. It's just a bunch of people, like Becky and Jan and... and me.” He stood up, agitated. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be safe. “I've got to get back to Canberra,” he said. He pointed to the door. “Anyone could walk in here at any minute.”
“That's great,” said Ginny, also standing. “Yesterday you were doing your best to keep me here to help with you bloody investigation. Today you want to turn tail and run. Well what happened to 'The only way past this is through it'?”
“You don't understand.” He tried to walk away from her but she foll
owed him.
“Enlighten me then. How do you go from man of resolve to quivering jelly in twenty-four hours? I saw you on that rooftop today. You were going to jump. If I hadn't come to your rescue, you wouldn't even be here now. The bots would still be scrubbing you off the pavement. Now you think you're off to Canberra and leaving me behind. Well, think again Brainiac. You owe me.” She poked him in the shoulder. “Do you hear? You owe me.”
“What do I owe you? What the hell do you think I can do for you now?” She scowled at him, clearly ready to argue with anything he said. OK, crazy lady, try this. “The police don't want to catch us. If they did, they'd have us by now. My guess is they're hanging us out there like bait, waiting to see who snaps us up. The terrorists aren't after us either. For them we're just pawns – well, I am anyway. They want me to write the story.” He waved a hand at the bag of documents. “They want me to put all that crap out on the Net. And it is crap, I bet. Hints and suggestions, a few names that everybody already knows, all pointing at some terrible plot that probably doesn't even exist. September 10 wants to use me for God knows what. That's their only interest in me. You, they don't care about at all.”
Ginny's angry scowl had become a puzzled frown. “So who – ?”
“The Consortium! That's who your friend Dover Richards is working for. That's who's been tracking us.” He corrected himself. “Tracking me. Again, you're a bloody irrelevance. The Consortium doesn't want me writing the story. This is all some kind of game between September 10 and the Rice Consortium, and I'm piggy in the middle, with the bloody police cheering from the sidelines. And you, you're just running around like some stupid mascot in a chicken suit confusing everything.”
Ginny gaped at him. The hurt look in her eyes just made him more angry.
“You were a pawn once,” he told her. “But now you're just noise on the channel. You should go home. I should go home.” He stepped past her and began collecting up his things. Ginny remained where she was, staring at the wall. It was all so clear to him now. The only way he could be safe would be in a crowd. He had to get all of the September 10 documents into the public domain and then surround himself with people, night and day. He'd call Becky and get that organised. He needed people to meet him at the airport. Real, physical people. They'd only take him if he was alone. They wouldn't dare show up if he was with people.
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